emily: we will take a look at how a potential merger between t-mobile and dish could change the landscape if it happens. ♪ emily: i am emily chang. and this is bloomberg west. should facebook be worried if google listens to chris sacca and buy twitter? is it a tech bubble or tech boom? how long the good times will last. big moves in the streaming music industry ahead of apple's announcement. how soundcloud is storing up its market share.

all of that ahead on bloomberg west. dish network has been in talks to buy t-mobile for years, but no indication a deal is imminent. still, recent reports of a potential tie up have sent t-mobile shares up 2.5%. the deal would put the ceo at the top of the comedy -- the top of the company while the dish ceo would be chairman, but the purchase price has not been decided, but together these companies have market value of $64 billion. will a good a deal like this help streaming customers? joining us now, alex sherman who has been reporting on this. we also had keith, who -- we had keith, who will be with us throughout the show, and we also have a senior analyst from new york. alex, you have been working the phones and you have status updates. alex: the wall street journal reported this morning that the two companies are in talks which is something that we have known for a while.

they have been in talks for years. they threw in a caveat, but no price or structure has been agreed on yet, but that is everything. can these two companies come to an agreement where t-mobile is willing to take some proportion of dish stock and cash? and can dish raise enough money and what's the premium going to be? is dish, a notoriously a cheap company, apologies to charlie -- he would say, "frugal" or "mark" -- are they ready to get this deal done? my sources indicate that there is a big disagreement on the valuation of dish stock. charlie feels like dish stock is severely undervalued, because the market has not taken into consideration the value of their spectrum. -- their wireless spectrum. really, that's always been the

hold up, even if you go back all the way to last year -- can a deal get done surrounding all those question marks? emily: twitter ceo john ledger deleted some tweets about this. not confirming or denying the reports, but singled out a recode article that he called a "sad story." we are not sure if he was referring to the analysis of the reporting, but it was referring to t-mobile and dish as the last two people at a bar. so why don't they just hook up? that said, we have been asking him this question about dish over the last several months and this is what he recently had to say about it. >> i just know that they are in an adjacent industry, playing in services that could be complementary from what we are doing, and if the customers are better served, markets will find a way.

emily: is this going to happen should it happen? >> well, we think that there's never been more urgency for that deal to happen, so, number one, you have got the immense consolidation in the landscape. and number two, wall street needs more clarity on the potential use of dish's wireless spectrum. i do share the view with alex that the petitioner -- the potential sticking point will be the valuation of the shares. if you look at dish now, they have a significant amount of embedded premium resulting from the spectrum over the last several years, so we sense that that will be a major hurdle to resolve with t-mobile. having said that, i think it's not even conceivable that they are going to pull off this deal because, everything put together, capital markets are still favorable, wall street is

itching for some deal to come together just to be able to realize a lot of this offset. emily: keith, what are your thoughts? >> i'm not an expert in this market. i am a directv customer. but what is obvious is i believe we will see these attempted mergers in the future. on wall street, clearly, the market is valuing growth. organic growth is difficult to come by, so in so far as regulators allow these kind of transactions, we will see them announced every week or every month. emily: are the regulators on board with this? >> probably. this seems to be a much easier deal to go through, then, say sprint and t-mobile. if deutsche telekom is set on selling t-mobile, there aren't

that many dance partners left for t-mobile. comcast could bid, but would comcast want to go through the regulatory process again on a major transaction like that? probably not now. sprint might want to try again but they would have to wait for a new administration. if deutsche telekom wants to do a deal, dish is the obvious buyer. emily: what does this mean for consumers? keith is a directv customer. i have comcast. what does this mean? >> it is an advancement of dish's long-term strategy of mobile video. they already have sling tv which allows you to get your package of channels over your device, so what they can do is bundle this mobile service with this ott package and offer you what is called quad play. where, although they are not offering landline broadband,

they are offering satellite broadband, and you can have mobile video, wireless service tv, and they would be the first of its kind to offer that. emily: does this deal make strategic sense? what does it mean for netflix? >> rarely do you see a deal where the strategic motivation is almost equally balanced between dish and t-mobile, so i think this deal -- all signs are pointing to the breakup of the bundle. if they think about what slink tv is doing, i think they are coming together with t-mobile will allow dish to kill that. all signs are pointing to wireless and mobile as the future of consumer consumption and that's the way the industry has been gravitating to. emily: i know you will keep us posted as soon as you get more. thank you for joining us. keith, you are sticking with me. the music streaming world is buzzing. is soundcloud making peace with

the music industry? it has made deals with 20,000 independent labels. among them are some of the best and -- are some of the most important. pandora is holding its shareholder meeting right now, days after it bought a local station in rapid city. this may sound old school, but it is a move for better royalty rates. over at spotify, the new plan for iphone tosses out musical genres as it focuses on programming. and apple will announce its answer to spotify. can it stand out? the jury is still out on tidal -- jay-z's platform, which is fighting to gain traction. uber's ceo sees one million new

drivers joining his fleet this year. where does that leave lyft? the internet is flipping out for fallout 4. the trailer was released yesterday and has already gone viral. take a look at what is in store. ♪

♪ emily: hp is in the middle of a historic split. the company is hiring 4700

positions internationally, around 2500 in the u.s. the company sees 65% of sales coming from overseas. meg whitman has said there are going to be layoffs. we are also learning hp was nearing a deal to buy computer sciences, a $9 billion company last month, until talks broke down. i had a chance to sit down with meg whitman to get her take on navigating the change the company is going through. meg whitman: it is hard. i think whenever you come into a turnaround, and i have done a couple of them, it's harder than you think. even though i was on the board you find out things that you could not see as a board member. it has been tough, because the company has been through a lot. it just takes perseverance. emily: you can catch the rest of my interview with meg whitman on studio 1.0 tonight at 7:30 p.m. eastern and pacific. uber turns five years old this week. at one of its celebrations last night, the ceo tallied up how big the company has become.

>> already, there are over 26,000 drivers in new york. 15,000 drivers in london. 10,000 in paris. and 42,000 in chengdu, china. recently, our millionth driver took his first passenger on an uber trip. in 2015 alone, we expect another million people to drive for uber. emily: so the numbers are huge and its nearest competitor in the u.s., lyft, is still far behind. keith is with us, an early lyft investor. we have talked about this before, but i wonder now if your thoughts are any different -- do you see uber and lyft both being huge players? >> i do. the media's focus on uber versus lyft is missing the bigger story. the bigger story is how cities are being transformed and car ownership is changing.

both are at the cutting edge of a transformation society. when i was growing up, it was important to be able to afford and buy a car. that is already starting to change radically in the united states. as well as, you are seeing self driving cars from google and others starting to come into play. i think it is conceivable in five or 10 years that normal americans will own cars and drive them to work in the way that we grew up. that is the bigger change. transformation driven by uber, lyft, and google. that is actually the bigger story. emily: what about all the workers in the middle -- if there will be more drivers without benefits, how is that sustainable? >> in many ways. people will not own cars. when i own a car, i don't pay somebody to drive it for me. if nobody owns cars, there may be lots of people who are working on those cars, maintaining those cars, driving those cars, not all cars will be self driving. emily: i want to talk to you

about twitter. because that has certainly been on our minds. chris sacca had an 8500 word -- >> have you memorized it? emily: i'm working on it. he made a strong suggestion that google should buy twitter. what do you think of that? >> from a google perspective it's a no-brainer. i tweeted this 3-4 years ago. that google should be buying twitter. emily: but there's no indication that that is happening. keith: i think that's a reflection of google not understanding social. it was a no-brainer to buy instagram. and it will be a no-brainer to buy twitter. you can't buy a company that doesn't want to sell. if twitter does not want to sell, it would be difficult for google to buy them. it's not clear if google hasn't tried. twitter wants to be an independent company. emily: is this going to happen? >> i think unlikely. twitter believes in its future and impact. if you think about it, the two

social networks and products that have really transformed society are twitter and probably reddit. i don't think twitter can fulfill its destiny as part of a larger company however, if someone made them an offer and throughout market capital, it's a difficult decision to turn that down. emily: do you think the product has evolved enough? >> i'm addicted to it. i use it all the time. i do start my morning every single day and end my day with twitter. it is the modern newspaper. when i was growing up, we would read the newspaper and glanced through it. that's what twitter is for the world. that's an important function. and it's a $30 million market -- 30 billion dollar market cap company, and there are not many of those so it has been very , successful. could it be better? possibly. can it innovate? sure. but that's true of every product.

emily: i want to ask you about the buy buttons that we have seen popping up, you worked with square, paypal, could this cut someone like amazon out? >> i believe that people will shop where they spend time. when we were growing up, we went to the mall for entertainment and commerce. i think the modern mall are pinterest, twitter, and facebook -- these platforms are where people are engaging and shopping. then the question is, what empowers that? if you try to buy something on a mobile device, it's painful. fortunately, there are companies likes -- like striped that are solving this problem. it can create a new commerce environment. emily: are we going to see consolidation in the payments industry, will we see square being bought? >> square is an independent company. i can't believe they will be acquired. it is vibrant and successful. i do think there is a shop that -- a shot that paypal gets acquired. probably not for 12 months after it pays, because of tax implications.

emily: who should buy it? >> i think a lot of people will try. samsung, visa, google. emily: we have to throw google's in there with every potential acquisition, don't we echo -- don't we? i want to ask you quickly about your apple watch. i got mine today. i found on twitter that you have three of these? why? >> there are different styles and moods. my job is to test products and use products. i would probably own one of almost every apple product over the last 20 years, so i think it's important to see the subtle differences, wrist sizes, etc. emily: what do you think of the team -- the pink colored band? >> that matches perfectly. emily: thank you for stopping by. >> we have heard reports of nuclear detonation. >> my god. emily: this is the trailer for

"fallout for." it came out yesterday and has already gone viral. we have had nothing from fallout since 2010. that's five years ago and back then, "fallout 3" shipped 4.7 million games in its first week. the internet is so excited that sales of "fallout 3" and "fallout: new vegas" have risen dramatically on amazon. some game makers just don't seem to need mobile. up next, everyone's favorite topic here in the valley. the tech bubble. we discussed that with scott sandel. as we go to break, have you ever wanted to swim with sea turtles or explore the great barrier reef? now you can virtually through google maps partnership. there are more than 40 locations to choose from. including bali and american samoa. ♪

♪ emily: it is time for the daily byte. one number that tells a whole lot. today's number is 7.12%. that is the stake that paul elliott singer just took in samsung's construction arm. singer spent at least $630 million to buy more than 11 million shares. here is the issue. singer opposes a $9.3 billion deal that would have tightened samsung error jay lee lost grip on samsung's subsidiaries. it is a de facto holding company, and lee is the biggest shareholder. with the 7.12% stake, he becomes

the third largest shareholder, perhaps buying him the muscle to disrupt a family succession plan, or force a higher sales price. now, to the biggest debate in silicon valley, bubble or boom? of all the newly minted unicorns have -- all the newly minted unicorns we have been talking about, new enterprise associates racing the biggest venture fund ever over $3 billion. is that a sign of confidence that there are still great investment opportunities? here with me, scott sandel. general managing partner of any a. -- of n e a. bubble or boom? which is it? >> i'm with mark benioff. one of our great entrepreneurs. i think it's a boom. it's not about the valuations but the fundamentals in innovation and disruption in which we believe will create companies of tremendous value and change every industry. emily: there are more unicorns than ever. how many are masquerading?

horses masquerading as unicorns. how many will go to zero? >> i don't know, but i do know that if i had to bid on a portfolio of them versus other companies, it would be a great portfolio. i expect they will turn out the way a venture fund turns out, a few companies make all the difference, and a lot don't work out at all and a bunch and up somewhere in the middle. on the whole, i think we will see spectacular results. emily: a third or so? >> if you look at any decent venture fund, 30% go to zero. you have a bunch of stuff in the middle that does ok, and you invariably only have a small number of companies that make the difference. emily: if it is a boom, how is your job different now than it was in 1999? there is more money flowing into silicon valley than ever before. you are seeing private equity firms and international investment firms getting interested in tech. how do you differentiate?

>> i characterize the environment differently. just like the late 1990's, there are lots of angels, $20 billion a year and investments, which is comparable to the whole venture capital industry until about a year and a half ago. at the earliest stage of the company formation, there is tremendous activity, which feeds the ecosystem. the venture capital ecosystem is smaller than it was in 1999. as you call, -- as you recall there was $100 billion raised in 1999. so i think it's a great time for venture capitalists because get to see all those things being born and hopefully fund the best of them. in the later stage, you have , as you said, people from all over the place coming in, which is enabling all these companies to grow and stay private longer. emily: what about valuations. we are seeing record valuations. for cooper airbnb -- four uber

airbnb, and interest. -- interest --pinterest. are these fair? >> there's no doubt about it. things are very expensive. if you look at the data, series a valuations have doubled. emily: how are you hedging your bets? >> you want to be selective about the companies that you invest in in the later stages of your journey. what we look for there are companies that can be really large and are emerging as leaders in the category. also, we go early where few people will play. emily: the ceo of hp says there is a lot of consolidation coming to tech. we are already seeing big deals like intel, do you see that happening to startups quickly? >> i am sure there will be some, there always is, but the difference to me between now and the late 1990's is that you don't have to merge with anybody, you can take on incoming companies and merge successfully. my favorite example in our portfolio is casper, the

mattress company. these stanford graduates -- emily: i have a casper mattress. i like it. >> they are growing like crazy. in the late 1990's, they would have to work for a mattress company. emily: we have to leave it there. thank you for joining us.

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