♪ emily: i am emily chang in san francisco and this is "bloomberg technology." u.s. attorney general william barr has released robert mueller searching for hundred 48-page partially redacted report on russian interference in 2016 elections. social media is one of the biggest losers. we will tell you why. plus, more unicorns ride into the public market. pinterest shares soared 28%.

i speak to the ceo. samsung newrs of phone report flickering and failed displays for samsung's new phone. first, our top story. as president trump put it, it was a good day. that partially redacted mueller report is out for all to read, but the conclusions of congress may not align with the conclusions of the president. pres. trump: i said in front of my friends, this should never happen to another president again, this hoax. it should never happen to another president again. emily: meantime, while mueller concluded no collusion, the debate swirls on the issue of whether the president obstructed justice. mueller said the president repeatedly engaged in a series of "targeted efforts to control the investigation." house leaders have called mueller to testify and have

subpoenaed the full report. the most redacted part appears to cover russian meddling in the 2016 election via social platforms like facebook, trader, google. i want to bring in a bloomberg tech's eric newcomer in new washington, and a edge return who has been covering the report -- anna at edgerton. there is so much to digest. tell us which points are being focused on the most, where you see the most potential conflict? >> there are the two sections. one on collusion, the other on obstruction of justice. democrats are really starting to dig into this and look at some of the evidence laid out in this redacted report. when it comes to obstruction, there were 10 episodes where robert mueller said that there were legal theories why that could or could not represent obstruction of justice. the attorney general interpreted those to not present examples of obstruction of justice. however, democrats will look at that.

many have said, including jerry nadler, the chairman of the house judiciary committee, that it was a congress to decide whether that represents obstruction. on the idea of collusion, all the report said was that there was no criminal conspiracy between the trump campaign and the russian actors that did interfere in the election. congress will look at that and see, there were no criminal indictments, no criminal conspiracy, but there were examples of members of the trump campaign and his associate talking with russia and communicating with them in different aspects during the 2016 campaign. emily: right. including a failed effort to get hillary clinton's emails, which were later released by wikileaks anyway. eric, social media comes up repeatedly in this report. mentions ofbout the facebook and twitter, and what that means. eric: they are front and center.

obviously, facebook and twitter where the main places where russian operatives were trying to influence the public. there are two campaigns here. there was the social media manipulation effort, then there were the efforts to obtain emails and hack in and get information on the clinton campaign. so facebook and twitter played a key role. somewhat amusingly, google comes up, and it is mostly trump administration figures trying to google people and figure out how they are. so really, the focus in the mueller report when it comes to technology companies is facebook and twitter. , obviously this conversation is just beginning. you have the house judiciary chair saying impeachment is not out of the question. it's too early to draw conclusions. but are there immediate risks for the white house based on what we now know? anna: we now have more information about the actors within the white house, like attorney don mcgann and his

objection to participating in obstruction of justice and refusal to fire rod rosenstein, saying he did not want to participate in those activities the president had asked him to do. like eric said come at these companies are front and center in the way their platforms have been used, and that presents a risk for them as well especially as we look towards the 2020 election. and the ways that lawmakers will want to protect the next election from the same kind of interference, so there will be a lot of discussion on capitol hill about different ways to protect election security and make sure this interference does not happen again. emily: eric, i keep thinking about the day after the election when mark zuckerberg said it was crazy to think facebook in any way could have influenced it. obviously, we know so much more today, but there has been a resistance from the platforms to admit their potential role here. they have been working on it. i wonder if any of this news will come as a surprise to them.

what can they actually do about russian bots infiltrating their services undetected? eric: it just seems so core to what they do at this point. the idea that there are bots on facebook and twitter isn't news to anyone today, yet it still feels like all over the services you are anonymous accounts with motivated positions, everything. it can be everything. i follow that tesla twitter a lot. there are real people who have financial stakes when we are the other, then you think about something as durable as neo-nazis impersonating the very targets of their attacks to make mak them look bad. there are all sorts of ways to look at how anonymity on facebook and twitter has led to insidious behavior. you have to wonder if there are going to be approaches that aren't just going after known

russian agents and sort of saying, how can we build our actual systems so that people know who they are interacting with and have confidence that the facebook group they join is in run by someone who is working for the russian government, or as their proxy? i think those questions are still far from answered because they are so core to how these companies have set up their social networks. i think that is why it has been mostly a game of resisting criticism rather than coming up with, ok, here's how we will do things differently so this doesn't happen again. emily: right, they would say many accounts have been deleted. we are using humans and technology to fight this, but still these are still problems that they continue to fight. anna, what happens next, at least tomorrow? anna: like you said house , judiciary committee chairman has said he is not taking impeachment off the table. that could be one way that house

democrats hold trump accountable for some of the actions outlined in the report. he does want to subpoena the entire unredacted report as well as the underlying documents, so we could have even more evidence and information about the way that some of these companies were used in order to facilitate russian interference in the election. so there is going to be a lot more to look for on that front, and also the way that other committees, even the house ways and means committee, which is responsible for taxes, that could take this information in the report and use it for their own investigation to further the process of oversight over the white house. emily: a lot to continue to discuss. n andberg's anna edgerto our very own eric newcomer, thank you both areas just four weeks ago, facebook acknowledged that tens of thousands of instagram passwords were exposed. now it is saying millions were affected. in a blog post, facebook stated "millions of instagram users

were impacted by this lapse, users of facebook lite were also affected." facebook lite is designed for people with older phones or slow internet connections, mostly in emerging markets. coming up, pinterest is out of the gate. my conversation right after shares started trading is next. and if you like bloomberg news, check us out on the radio, listen on the bloomberg app, number.com, and sirius xm. this is bloomberg. ♪

♪ emily: pinterest rose as much 30% after raising $1.4 billion in the second biggest u.s. ipo of the year.

earlier today, i spoke with the pinterest ceo ben silverman after the stock hit the public markets and asked how he would describe pinterest to the public today? take a listen. : we really talked with investors about how regular people use the product every day . they use it everyday to get inspiration for a range of things. everything from the clothing they wear to their home. it is about your personal inspiration. it is less about your friends, it is not really about following celebrities in the news. we wanted to make sure everyone understood that. that is how our users use the product every day. emily: you launched nine years ago. many companies have gone public much more quickly with much deeper losses. why did you feel like now is the right time? : we are proud of the progress we have made. we felt we were at the point of stability so we could be in the public market. we were also excited to have

opportunities to have access to public market capital. the reason is that a lot of great companies have acquired other companies. finally, we have had patient investors and employees, so it is a nice moment to provide some liquidity for both those parties. emily: patience is a virtue. some might look at pinterest and say you are just another digital marketing company. so what makes your advertising model unique to other platforms? the thing that makes it special is the reason people are on pinterest is to get inspiration, and it is lined up with what advertisers want, to inspire new customers and get them to buy products and services they really love. what that means is that parts like for interest can be an additive as long as we do a good job of making sure they are highly relevant. that is different from a lot of media companies. that difference in alignment is the biggest difference between us and other media properties. emily: one of the primary criticisms is that the majority of user growth is coming

internationally, and that is where average revenue per user is lower than the u.s. how much room to run is there in the u.s. in terms of growing users, or is it more of a story of increasing engagement? ben: there is a real opportunity to grow over time and increase engagement. a lot of people might use pinterest for one or two things, but they don't know the different ways people use the product. we are super proud we are growing globally. a few years ago, the story would have been primarily a u.s.-based service. emily: what is the plan to grow international sales? >> we are in the first chapter of that story. we are hiring our first local sales teams in canada and western europe, germany, and france. so we are just in the beginning of the journey. i think there will be real opportunity to show the seen great results we have seen in

the united states for advertisers all over the world. emily: do you see profits coming soon, and if so, when? or is your focus going to be more on investing to grow the top line? : we will continue to invest in the long-term. we have shown good margins for the last few years, but i am watching what will make pinterest great 10 years from now. that will be how we continue to run the business and i am really excited to see it keeps growing. emily: pinterest is great at collecting dreams, but less so on executing them. what do plan to do to better connect those two things? ben: we are working to make sure people can bridge that gap between seeing something inspiring and doing it. we make sure we match inspirational images with more products at a price point that matters for people and from retailers they trust. we enable retailers to upload all of their catalogs of interest. we are investing in computer vision technology to match those

products with images. we are not just doing this with shopping but also with all different use cases. if you have a recipe, now you will see ingredients and people can write reviews. if you have a diy project, you can see other people's experiences. whether it was easy or harder than they expected. emily: you played around with viable pins back in the day, that didn't take off. do you think social commerce will be a thing someday? >> i don't know about social commerce over all, but our users often want to buy the things they find on pinterest. a lot of people say they discovered a product or service while browsing pinterest. we just want to make it easier for them to go from that is duration although it to reality, which in this case, would be a purchase. silbe pinterest ceo ben rmann there from the new york stock exchange. for more, i want to bring in one person who covers ipos for us. what is the quick take on how pinterest performed today, a nice, but not too big, pop?

>> i think that is exactly right, emily, you hit on the nose. a nice pop of 28% today. it was a stable day of trading. we didn't see too many wild swings. that is exactly what you want coming out of the blocks. you don't want to see a drop in the shares. a pretty good first day of trading for pinterest. emily: you had zoom on the same day. both in the same valuation category. zoom shares popped over 70%. i don't want to give too much away, but we will hear from the ceo later in the show, and he said, i think the price is too high. what is the risk when you have a company coming out of the gate that is so strong? >> zoom is an interesting case study. this is a company that was valued at about $1 billion in its last five funding rounds -- in its last funding round a year ago. then a $9 billion valuation in its ipo. today, $16 billion, bigger than pinterest. so it is actually a company where you are really buying into

the numbers. it is a profitable company. that is what makes it stand out amongst this crop of companies coming to market. but again, the higher you go, the further you have to fall. emily: i have a chart in my bloomberg library which shows the average first-day pop for ipos over time. it was much higher around the time of the dot com boom, then leveled off. we see what happened with lyft, big first-day pop, now shares well below their ipo price, which can sort of hang over the stock like a cloud, a psychological barrier for investors, whether or not it is subjective. so do you see lyft's overhang impacting ipos to come, or what we saw today is investors will -- is what we saw today evidence that investors will look at these companies individually? elizabeth: investors seem to be looking at them individually and

not this group of unicorns rushing towards the market. we see that in the different reactions. there is renewed enthusiasm for every single one of these stocks that hit the market. even though lyft was only two weeks ago. it is still early days for all these companies and it will take a little while for everything to shake out and for us to see where the valuations end up. emily: we have more with slack, postmates, palantir, airbnb. as always, thanks for stopping by. coming up, convoy taking a big step to modernize the trucking industry with high profile backers like jeff bezos. we will hear from the ceo next. bloomberg technology is live streaming on twitter. the sure to follow of global breaking news network tictoc on twitter. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: t-mobile has a new way to stand out from its rivals.

the wireless carrier will offer checking accounts now, a new t-mobile money app will provide access to know-fee checking accounts. monthly subscribers who deposit $200 a month will get 4% interest on up to $3000. the $800 billion trucking industry in the u.s. is only growing, thanks to the rise of e-commerce bringing more demand for shipping. enter convoy, a nationwide trucking platform that is working to modernize the industry, cutting operations and reducing waste, backed by big-name investors including jeff bezos, bill gates, and even bono. convoy just rolled out a new program. the ceo, dan lewis, joins us to talk a little more. dan, people often call you the uber of trucking. you are different. how would you describe what convoy does? dan: convoy is a trucking service nationwide. we help small companies get access to freight. if a shipper wants to move something, most of the time they

don't even own their own trucks. so they call convoy or use our technology on the web, and that is offered to thousands of trucking companies and we try to match it with the companies that can do it with the least empty miles, show up on time, get the job done best. emily: tell us about the new trends in are seeing in shipping and e-commerce and how your business is evolving to meet does. dan: there have been some different trends. companies have to think about where are they going to stage their products to make sure they can get shipped faster to their customers. so there have been differences in location, in this division systems, and fulfillment centers. we have been building tools to make the tracks in and out faster. emily: tools like what? >> convoy go. say someone is shipping coffee mugs, they can hire a truck with an empty trailer, and the truck has to wait for an appointment time, get to the dog, load the

mugs, then hours later, it is leaving. with convoy go, you can load everything on the trailer and 15 minutes, it is driven away. that was only available to big trucking companies previously that could afford to have pools of trailers at facilities around the country. convoy is managing a universal trailer pool. with convoy go, anyone can get access. even an operator with one truck. many more companies can participate, it is a much more efficient system. is important for quick delivery with e-commerce. emily: are you seeing patterns change at all with the trade war happening between the united states and china? dan: haven't seen a lot of difference in terms of the shipping cycles in the united states. there were a couple of periods where freight surged in l.a. because people were trying to get freight into the country before the tariffs hit. other than that, we have not seen anything. emily: you have big-name investors, including bono. why is bono investing in a

start up, except maybe he is try to make money. dan: making money. i am not a rock star, but what i found that was interesting talking to them is they really understand logistics. their business is putting on shows and moving stuff from city to city with hundreds of trucks moving their shows, so i think they can really appreciate trucking and logistics, and it is really personal for them because everything they do is related to that. emily: there are issues with uber rivers. we have seen some rulings in california where drivers of trucks actually have won in some of these cases. is that an issue you are dealing with? >> it is not related to our business in the same way, there have been situations where

someone completely dedicated to accompany and driving full-time uniforms wearing their , but in our case, we operate the way brokerages operate. we offer the freight to independent companies that are running fleets of trucks. they can then choose to accept that and do the job. via our app. it is the same way they would get freight from other brokers. emily: what is next? >> convoy go is really going to change things and reduce waste. we actually think about our business as a waste reduction business in many ways. there are empty miles driven all the time. 30%, 40% of the time, trucks are on the road waiting. you have hours of wait time for an appointment at a facility. when the truck is backing into that dock you have load time. all that is time truck drivers one are not running with freight. so what we are going to do is figure out how to reduce that waste and what is next is cutting that down and creating a better experience. emily: the ceo and cofounder of convoy, dan lewis, thank you for stopping by. dan: thank you.

emily: coming up, zoom saw big gains on its first day, but will it avoid lyft's start? we will discuss next. this is bloomberg. ♪

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♪ emily: another tech unicorn has hit the public market and unlike many of the other unicorns slated to go public, this one is actually profitable. videoconferencing companies will skyrocketed more than 70% in its trading debut thursday. shares opened at $64 in what is now the august ipo of the year. many others are looking at it as a barometer. i sat down with the ceo eric yuan and asked if he was feeling the pressure. eric: i do, prices are too high.

emily: you think prices are too high? eric: i think so. priceday we finalized the , and today, there was a bigger pump. it is out of our control. we just need to go back to work. emily: how do you live up to it now? eric: first of all, i would say the market opportunity is huge, right? over $40 billion in market opportunity. the customer trust us and so far there are very excited and very happy. as long as we stay humble, continue working as hard as we to keep delivering happiness to our customers, i think it will be ok in the long run. have jumpedpeople about how zoom is a rare unicorn in that you are profitable. should we expect you to grow profit this year, or focus on investing to improve topline growth?

eric: i think we should focus on both. we want to grow for sure. priority, but at the same time, we also want to have a much more disciplined approach, right? we want to have the right balance, and i think we should focus on growth and also at the same time focus on cash flow positive. emily: you were last on our show to talk about your immigration struggles. the u.s. government had denied your visa eight times before they finally approved it. now you are taking a company public on a major u.s. exchange. what does that mean to you? first of all, i appreciate the visa office finally giving me the approval to come here to silicon valley. ishink one thing i learned never give up, keep trying, keep working hard and never give up, if you have a dream. someday your dreams will come true. today is our dream coming true, to be a public company.

i think many years of hard work is well paid off. emily: cisco has begun to offer some of the features you offer. cisco being your former employer. how do you see competition from cisco evolving? >> cisco is a great company. i was there for four and a half years. i learned a lot and i appreciate all the support while i was there. we do not look at it as competitors. we're always spending time talking to our customers. customers' problems and work -- we try to be the first vendor to really understand customers' problems and work hard to come up with a much better solution. to serve our customer well. the market opportunity is huge. as long as we care about our customers, we will be ok. we will not focus on our competitors. emily: what about google? why should customers use your products rather than google if they are already, let's say, using google cloud products? >> i've been using google

product as well. i use in gmail, google calendar, youtube, google is great. google is great on many fronts like search, youtube, their mobile phone, but when it comes to videoconferencing, i think we just spend more time on that. we really care about our customer more than any other vendors. that's why customers like our solution. the feedback is zoom just works anywhere, on any device. i think we allocated more resources on that than any of our competitors. emily: what are the beyondnities you see videoconferencing? eric: i think video is a new voice, right? you look at traditional, i think in the next several years, they will all migrate to cloud-based solutions. i think this is not an opportunity because voice is part of the video. i think there's another growth opportunity.

emily: my interview there with zoom founder and ceo eric yuan. for more on the company's ipo, i bring in carl eschenbach who is on the board of the videoconferencing company. sequoia is one of zoom's largest stakeholders. he is with us from the nasdaq in new york. of course, the biggest question here is whether zoom can maintain its profitability. they did turn a slight profit last year and now, everybody wondering if they can keep that up. carl is with us now from the nasdaq. i don't know if you heard at the top, but the first question i asked was are you feeling pressure, and he said yes, i think the price is too high. what is your reaction to that? karl it is always fun to listen : to eric either talk or see him on a video like that. we were always so impressed with how grounded and humble and authentic he is. he always is forthright in his thoughts and does not hide his feelings. that is what makes eric so special.

he will share what is on his mind and at the end of the day, he is truthful about his feelings, and we have seen that over and over and over again with eric in our engagements. emily: do you think the price is too high? the risk is it cannot be sustained and it becomes a psychological issue for investors, which is what we are seeing with lyft. carl: to be honest, there isn't a lot we can do to control what the street thinks and where they price this one of company. what eric and the team can do is control their ability to execute. you look at what eric was just articulating, there is a massive tam out there of over $40 billion and zoom has an opportunity to tackle a big portion of that. if you look at their international business, which i think only represents about 18% of overall revenues, they are just now breaking into the phone market, getting deeper and deeper into the conference room

mark kirk, so i think if he and his team focus on delivering happiness and results , i think the price will take care of itself but not worry about where the street is sitting today. emily: by tam, of course, you mean total addressable market. zoom got a lot of attention because it is profitable. you don't see that a lot in a tech company just going public. do you think zoom canon will -- can and will maintain its profitability, that the focus will be profit, perhaps as opposed to topline growth? >> i think eric will focus on both. the company is unique in that they are growing more than 100% on last year's revenue. they are profitable and cash flow positive which is unique for a company of this scale, especially in the enterprise space. the way eric has structured the company, leveraging a lot of engineering and deep talent out of china and focusing on growing this business in a profitable way, i think he can do both

simultaneously. the unique seeing him a emily, about the product, is that it has gone viral. people always say "let's just do , a zoom," and with that virality drives the demand for the product was gets consumer business, small business, and now deeper into the enterprise, so i think if they focus on growth, they can do it in a profitable way and be unique just like they are today. emily: what is your take on the coming ipo market this year? if i remember correctly, sequoia is not really in the ride-hailing business. you are not an investor in lyft or uber, but you do have some companies that can be coming to market this year. carl: well, you can see just by the markets response to the ipo's today, zoom, pinterest and many others, there is an insatiable desire to invest in tech companies going forward, and i think we will see this

continue to be a rich ipo market going forward. for sequoia, our objective is to partner with all of our portfolio companies from idea to ipo and beyond. ipo is just a day, an event, a recor recognition of the success of the company in the public market, a great branding opportunity, but, really, it's how they perform after they go public and sequoia just has a strong desire to stay close to our companies and work with them in the public market. and hopefully continue to enjoy success just like leading up to those ipo's, but it's a healthy market for ipo's in the tech sector right now. emily: big day for you being on zoom's board. thank you for joining us today. google and amazon have declared a truce. the two will let each other's video services on their respective gadgets.

youtube will soon be available on fire tv and amazon prime video will show up on chromecast and android tv devices. the companies have feuded when it comes to businesses that they both operate in. coming up, samsung's folding sale. early test models show defects in the company's brand-new device. we talk about how it could impact the rollout next.

♪ emily: another samsung smartphone snafu. samsung galaxy smartphones are having screen issues after only days of use. the phone costs some $2000 and showcases samsung's foldable display technology, which doesn't seem to be quite ready. here to break down what this means for samsung is mark. mark, you got a review device

and started having problems with your phone. what exactly happened? mark: i can walk you through it from the beginning. monday, i went to new york city to a briefing to pick up the galaxy fold. they gave us a little bit of a presentation, pre-briefing on how the phone works. then we had to take some videos for of it, then i went to the airport, took it out of the box and unboxed it. as part of a normal on boxing, field off the screen protector that goes on the front of the phone and apparently, that is not something you're supposed to remove. little did i know that removing a sheet of plastic with any phone or tv would get out-of-the-box from this $2000 phone would be the reason for it to malfunction. here we are today. samsung will send us a replacement unit tomorrow. i will be sure to play through it paces and keep you posted. emily: i'm reminded of the

exploding battery situation which samsung was dealing with a couple of years ago, but otherwise, is this something you have ever experienced with a new model? mark: i have never seen anything like this, for such a high-end device to stop working -- it stopped working 100% probably within a day and after two days overnight, just sitting on my nightstand in my hotel, it just got progressively worse. i looked at it before i went to sleep. i posted a picture where you can see the left side of the screen is dead. i woke up, was about 75%, 80% dead, and by that morning, it was completely dead. i believe that was yesterday. it is very strange, unheard of, and it is surprising that samsung would put a device like that out. remember, a limited amount of people have these devices, these are tested devices. samsung said these are preproduction, that the review

units are different than the ones they will ship to consumers. so we will have to see what they say there. but there are at least two or three other reporters who from other publications have reported similar problems. emily: what is samsung saying? mark: right now they are saying they want the phones back, what to take a look and see what the issue was. they were quick to point some blame to removing the screen protector, but i don't think that is a really good way to go about it, blaming the removal of the screen protector. a screen protector should not be the difference between a $2000 phone working or not working. these companies have an obligation to build devices that take into account how people are going to use them. and people are used to taking screen protectors, plastic film, off devices before they can begin using them. any iphone or samsung phone bought over the last 12 years worked to the exact same way. so you are telling me with this one, you remove it and it just stops working? it does not make sense to me. emily: your tweet about the defect exploded the

twittersphere. we will continue to follow your story and the assessment of what happened here. mark gurman, thank you. the elon musk s.e.c. saga continues. in early april, a u.s. judge gave both guys two weeks to resolve their differences. if they cannot negotiate, renegotiate, she said she would determine whether or not to hold musk in contempt or not. now they are asking for more time. in a joint letter, the deadline for their resolution on thursday, the tesla ceo and the s.e.c. said they had been unable to reach an agreement over musk's social media activity. joining us to discuss is dana hull. they have failed to reach an agreement, what is the latest? dana: they met and talked for an hour by phone, musk's attorney, the s.e.c. general counsel, they asked for more time, and the judge said yes. i think it is telling that they

haven't received an agreement. they need to nail down, how does he use social media, how is it vetted, how is material information embedded ahead of time. emily: what is it that they need to back ahead of time? the: the issue is that judge was a clarified agreement that would make clear how his tweets are being reviewed, are they being reviewed ahead of time or not. emily: in the meantime, there was a debate about a specific tweet and in the middle of this, musk tweeted out tweets.her dana: in his view, he is not tweeting material information and has discretion.

in the sec's view, he is violating the agreement he agreed to in the fall. the judge made it clear she wants them to resolve this. she wants them to put on their adult pants and work this thing out. emily: is there any indication how the judge reviewed musk's behavior? dana: not today. she approved the extension. emily: so what happens next? obviously there were concerns about deliveries, first it was is the us first there were concerns about production, now it is about deliveries. what numbers are we watching for? dana: this is a big week for tesla. media havenly, no been invited, to my knowledge. monday they have an autonomy day for investors where they will showcase efforts to make a self driving car. everyone is expecting earnings to be terrible. thursday, they have to come back to the judge with some kind of an agreement. if they don't have an agreement, she could find them in contempt. emily: musk's tweeting has been a huge marketing tactic for the

company. they don't really do a lot of marketing. he is the marketer in chief. this is important to tesla. dana: absolutely. he's like the lee iacocca of chrysler. pitchey peac patch person for the company. they do do events for their owners. they have influencers in terms of hollywood stars, but, yeah, elon tweeting is how customers engage with him. emily: i know you will keep on it. musk keeps you busy. thank you for that update. still ahead, airbnb is betting on a startup focusing on inviting spaces for business travelers. leading a $160 million funding round. we speak to the ceo of eric next. -- of lyric next. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: the thought of extended business travel decisions of into thends dread hearts of many executives, including yours truly, but lyric hopes to improve the prospect. offering premium apartments into first days as long as 200 days, and i just got a big shot of support with a funding round led by airbnb. $160 million the lyric cofounder and ceo andrew kitchell joins us in the studio. welcome. andrew: thank you so much. emily: describe what you do. spaces,t actually rent you actually design them. andrew: think of lyric as a network of spaces. you can stay with us for a single night to 200-plus nights.

but the spaces we design our theyos and one bedrooms, come replete with a kitchen, if allowed to that works as a workspace, so think of them as really experienced workspaces. emily: we're looking at video of these spaces now. they are obviously beautiful, more beautiful than many hotels rooms i have stayed in. you do not necessarily get the currency urge service, the additional attention that comes with staying in a hotel when maybe you need something. how do you balance that? andrew: we do have 24/7 support for our folks. for business owners, the goal is to get as quickly to your space as possible, so all of our spaces have digital locks, digital access. we talk to folks who just want to get into their space and want to either work, relax, etc., so that is why lyric is designed to be seamless as opposed to really service-heavy. emily: what is an investment from airbnb mean? i suppose you could also be seen as a competitor of airbnb?

andrew: lyric is an operator. just like starwood sells inventory on expedia, we operate -- lyric designs and operates inventory which we sell on airbnb, expedia, etc. not a competitor, but it. -- we are at operator and we take care of our guests. airbnb's investment is a recognition that we are pretty done good at taking care of our guests. people enjoy staying with us so we are able to create far more supply for those folks. emily: some of your other backers include real estate folks. talk to us about who the other investors are and what they want in terms of having a stake in your service. andrew: airbnb led the round, tishman, rsr, and others. what they've seen as there's a different thing people want when they travel. modern business travel can be scary. at lyric, it's pretty darn delightful.

they are investing to support the growth of that. emily: the you look at wework for inspiration? andrew: we're looking at the definition of space and what people want when they travel. when they are working. so we have individual spaces. it is less kind of a shared workspace. suites forndependent folks to stay. emily: you have 380 suites on offer across the u.s. how do you expand that inventory? a good funding round and great partners. emily: is that how you will use this? what is the roadmap? andrew: the investments we will make with this funding is expansion of supplies, we expect to add 2000 units in the next 12 months as well as investments in the staff that may get seamless. everything from maintaining cleaning teams, making seamless access easy, personalizing your stay experience, we will be of a to invest significantly.

emily: was the long-term plan? we just saw airbnb buy a hotel. is that something that you are looking toward joining us for a bigger cooperation or going it alone and trying to grow? andrew: we are having too much fun to do anything but keep building. with the folks are supporting us, we have the opportunity to continue to invest in the next generation of supply, from a technology perspective and design perspective. there is so much room to grow and we are just focused on that right now. emily: maybe our next business trip will be less dreadful. of lyric,chell, ceo thank you so much for stopping by. that does it for this edition of the show. we will not have a show for tomorrow, it is good friday and the markets are closed. we will be here monday with an exclusive interview with the grab cofounder, and talk about how the ride hailer is holding on to its market share in asia.

we are live streaming on twitter, check us out @technology, and on tictoc. this is bloomberg. have a wonderful weekend. ♪

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