emily: i am emily chang in san francisco and this is "bloomberg technology." coming up in the next hour, wishful thinking, meantime ai lender upstart pops 30% out of the gate. we will talk to both ceos on the first day of trading. plus, the retail landscape could be transformed for good post pandemic. longtime e-commerce investor joins us to share her take.

free speech, privacy, and data sovereignty. these are the pillars touted by the ceo of parler. it became a magnet for conservative users. is the momentum keeping up? all those stories in a moment but first u.s. stocks rising on speculation that lawmakers are getting closer to a stimulus deal aimed at reviving the national economy. we have more from new york. president-elect biden just told reporters he doesn't think a deal will happen tonight. we will get a live update from capitol hill in a moment. how does this play out on the market? >> you saw the stimulus back and forth, will be or won't we get a deal, it did weigh on sentiment today, as did the federal reserve. crude oil and the s&p 500 did

end slightly higher, but stocks did drop initially after the federal reserve did not change its bond buying program and did not expand the majority -- maturity of its purchases. that initially lifted treasury yields and the dollar. even though stocks did squeak out again, there was a tilt to today's session. the nasdaq 100 close to a record high today. it was helped by gains in google, amazon, twitter, the quintessential stay-at-home stocks. another bright spot was paypal. it has to do a lot with bitcoin. in paypal began allowing its october customers to buy and sell cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin. that paid off for paypal today. they are over 4% higher as bitcoin shows another all-time high above $20,000 for the first

time. emily: katie, thank you so much. i want to get back to the much-anticipated stimulus deal. u.s. congressional leaders are rushing to finalize a really -- relief plan in time to pass crucial government spending legislation. the measures are expected to be worth $900 billion. president elect biden calling the talks encouraging. i want to bring in our congressional reporter. he is on capitol hill at this moment. president elect biden saying he does not expect a deal to happen tonight. what is the latest? >> things seem to be slowing down a little bit. we are getting very close. there are some remaining issues. one of the main problems, democrats did agree to the state and local government a, to make

up for lost revenues. instead, they submitted an offer to the republicans that hands them money to fema. democrats say it is not a backdoor. a lot of technical back-and-forth on that. we are down in the weeds. i think they are getting close. if they cannot produce a bill tonight, maybe a house vote on friday and the senate could vote on saturday. that raises the possibility of a brief government shutdown. i think we are very close. if we do not get it close, i think we will get it this week. emily: we are getting you details as we speak. one headline saying the deal is to include $17 billion in aid for airlines. what can you tell us about the sticking points? >> the airline thing seems to be a done deal.

a bipartisan proposal from senators came out with $4 billion for airports as well. one of the things we are still seeing on the direct stimulus checks, initially, they pushed for $1200. a repeat of the stimulus checks in the spring. we are seeing a concerted push from bernie sanders at house progressives. they will not bring a government shutdown over it, but at this point, the deal only has $600 checks. $600 for children. it is smaller than what they wanted. there could be some movement to get that higher. then you could bring the price tag over $1 trillion, and republicans say they cannot vote for anything over $1 trillion. there are sticking points there. at this point, it will remain that way because the alternative is to reduce the supplemental unemployment insurance benefit. that is a key item for democrats.

that is where we are on that. emily: biden has said this stimulus bill will only be a down payment. looking at how hard it has been to get this to pass, how much weight can we put behind that promise once he takes office? >> the major issue, especially if democrats do not take those two georgia seats, will be dealing with a republican senate. he does have some ability to get some things done next year toward putting forward an infrastructure package. he has to raise the debt ceiling, that will become a crisis next summer. perhaps he can do some government spending to increase the relief. it is going to be a tough slog. there are some critics, they could have cornered trump into doing a $2 trillion deal six weeks ago. they did not do that deal and they may never get it.

emily: senate majority leader mitch mcconnell yesterday finally acknowledged that president-elect biden had won the election. now that you are seeing more republican leaders getting on the side, how does that change the dynamic heading into inauguration day and the dealmaking that needs to continue? >> the key thing is getting the biden nominee approved. we talked to some senate republicans today and asked if they will send out questionnaires and do background checks for people like janet yellen, who will be the treasury secretary. or the health and human services secretary. we have not seen movement on that. they are telling us as long as there are the georgia runoffs, they cannot start organizing. that is going to be something we are looking at. biden wants to have his team in place on january 20.

are looking very closely at that. now that mcconnell has acknowledged there is a positive -- there is a possibility of getting moving on those nominees. emily: our bloomberg congressional reporter. lawmakers continue to hammer out that deal we will be waiting for , more updates. the parent company of a popular online marketplace wish went public today. their founder and ceo joins us coming up. this is bloomberg. ♪ when you switch to xfinity mobile, you're choosing to get connected to the most reliable network nationwide, now with 5g included. discover how to save up to $400 a year with shared data starting at $15 a month, or get the lowest price

for one line of unlimited. come into your local xfinity store to make the most of your mobile experience. you can shop the latest phones, bring your own device, or trade in for extra savings. stop in or book an appointment to shop safely with peace of mind at your local xfinity store. emily: the online e-commerce

wish, went public today, dropping below its ipo price for the first time in a while. tech ipos, to other including airbnb and doordash doubling in their debuts. founderthe now is the and ceo, thank you for joining us. you are priced at the high-end of the range. i'm sure you've thought a lot about the price. what is your reaction to breaking the ipo price when so many of these other companies have soared out of the gate? >> thank you for having me. very exciting day for myself and the team. no real reaction. honestly, if i watch the stock price all day, i will drive myself crazy.

in all seriousness, we expected a degree of market volatility. we are focused on the longer-term and utilizing the proceeds from the capital raise to achieve the vision we have been pursuing all along, to enable e-commerce and provide engagement, something more along the lines of tiktok for shopping on your smartphone. i think if we focus on that in the long run, the markets will reward us. emily: welcome to being a public company. unfortunately investors are going to be focused on your stock price. to be fair, your $15 billion company as of this ipo. how did you think about price in the final hours given what we saw with doordash and airbnb, wanting to strike the right

notnce of a nice pop, but too much and lee billions of dollars on the table? peter: honestly, this is not something i have done before. it was getting the right investors to come on board long-term and see us through this journey, which will last decades. emily: plenty of investors have said similar things. an ipo is about a long journey. let's talk about what is ahead for you, which is an online discovery platform where you connect third-party retailers with customers at low price points. what is your product roadmap? peter: continuing what we are doing. you mentioned value conscious consumers, we continue to double down on that. our core demographic, 75% of them earn less than $75,000.

60 million households in the u.s., and 300 million households in places like europe, where we have a larger consumer base. and really to continue to innovate on the product and make the shopping experience not just intent, but doing fulfillment but really innovating. whether it is video, all kinds of fun features. that makes the shopping experience fun again on smartphones. really complete the comprehensiveness of our catalog and be the shopping destination for value-oriented households around the world. emily: quality control remains a big issue. some customers have complained what they get does not look quite as good as it does in the picture.

maybe it is a counterfeit good. some people have received empty boxes. what can you do to get this under control? peter: it is another one of our core focuses, along with logistics. we have a huge amount of growing consumer feedback coming to us from different languages. in the first nine months of this year our customers provided us with 85 million reviews and ratings. over 72 million reviews and ratings of our vendors. uploading videos. it is a great way to get feedback from the customers. it is a way to find out if it meets customer expectations and amplifies the products that are working well. in terms of all of the work we have done on logistics, the reason why our business is much more robust than ever. we control over 90% of our shipments.

if you rewind back to the beginning of 2016, we controlled 0% of our shipments. we did not have access to the packages. this year we control over 90% of the shipments, and that allows us to do a lot more in terms of quality control and providing a much more reliable, faster fulfillment experience as well. emily: what about from a customer service perspective? when you are working with third-party retailers, you have only so much control over them. there are folks who buy things and cannot get an answer from sellers, especially if there is a problem. how can you take more control of that relationship? peter: we are a part of that relationship, whether it is customer support staff or power power users. that is not only providing objective feedback on the quality of products within their area of expertise, and providing guides, answering questions, and

really making that connection. a lot of our suppliers are in the manufacturing hub of the world, china, and a lot of them don't speak the language. even if they have the ability to communicate in english, we have transactions in over 100 countries on any given day. this is where we are empowering our community. that comes in handy, and is something that we will continue to scale for a long time. emily: you said you turned down an offer from amazon to buy the company a few years ago. now amazon is one of your -- if not the most formidable competitor. what is your plan to take on amazon over the long-term given e-commerce is growing? peter: the way i see it, we don't think we are competing with amazon. there are a couple reasons. first and foremost is human to computer interaction. i love amazon, and it saves me time.

especially during a week where you are doing a roadshow are taking your first company public. amazon allows me to do that and i can afford it. our customers are looking for different kind of trade up. they are looking to go to a brick-and-mortar store to pick up the product, in order to say -- from this engagement perspective, our platform, over 90% of the engagement and transactions and orders tend to be android over ios. it is a different kind of experience. it is a discovery oriented experience. even out of the daily active users who come to buy something, initiate -- we are predicting what kind of products they will like and getting them to buy them. we generate inspiration,

awareness, and demand for a lot of these products. emily: peter, we will have to leave it there. very interesting to hear your roadmap ahead. wish founder and ceo, congrats on getting out of the gate today. another tech ipo, the lending platform upstart going public. that one soaring 30% in its trading debut. i will speak to ceo next. this is bloomberg. ♪ emily: upstart, the company

focused on providing ai solutions to lenders to evaluate individual loan eligibility went public today, soaring 30%. above its pricing in a debut. almost 50% day up earlier. i spoke with dave girouard.

dave: i am not a believer that a pop is a bad thing. for most of us, you want to get through this process. we are a company generating cash. we are not as sensitive of getting the last dollar out of the process, but frankly just getting through it before the end of the year and focusing back on the business 2021 is the big win for us. emily: roadblock is going to delay the ipo. according to our source, get a handle on this crazy market. did you think, maybe we should wait until 2021? dave: we were ready to go. we started this process over a year ago and it was interrupted by covid. we have been in this process for the last 15 months. by no means do we have any interest in postponing it. emily: your technology helps make loans happen.

talk about the demand you are seeing during the pandemic? there are so many people out there. dave: 2020 has been a difficult year. the assumption going in that credit would be abysmal. what has happened is that for the government's stimulus, the consumer has done relatively well. savings levels are up. credit card balances are down. spending is down. which generally from a financial perspective is good for the consumer. ai lending has proven itself. with respect to the performance of the loans, it is almost like covid never happened. the model did well despite the disruption. emily: should investors be at all concerned about the risks they are taking on? technology and ai helping to make these loan connections.

can something fall to the -- fall through the cracks? dave: we provide the technology to the banks who are the lenders. 97% of our revenue is paid by the banks. we do not have direct exposure. our technology performing well through covid or any environment is vitally important. that is our proposition to the bank. we can help originate credit that performs better, that is more automated, and is a better product for the consumer. emily: tell us about the technology and how the ai opposition works. dave: it is like other ai systems. you have an enormous amount of data that you gather. you are developing machine learning algorithms. very analogous to autonomous cars or language translation. it requires a lot of algorithms.

it is a specific type of talent to develop. it is enormous training data. the system just learns and get s smarter every week and every month. when we say smarter, what that means is we can approve more people at lower interest rates. it is a better product for the consumer as each month goes by. it has that notion of ai in it. is perpetually getting better and learning on its own. we are upgrading the software, etc., and that makes it a better product for the consumer and a better product for our bank partners. they can have a profitable and more reliable product, and at the same time it is better for the consumer. emily: who are your competitors? what do you have on the competition? dave: almost anybody offering credit to the consumer is some sense is a competitor. they all kind of look the same to us because they use a traditional approach of credit score based lending.

they all in many ways are similar. we have a model that is so different. whether their five competitors or 100, we have built a proprietary system with a lot of advantages. on the other side, we have competitors that also serve banks with technology. that is a completely different world. we are both the consumer and an enterprise company wrapped in one. that is somewhat unusual. emily: now that you are public company, what are your plans? how does this help you accomplish more of your goals? dave: first year as a public company is super important. we will be really focused on the business. for us, we are a growth company and we need to push the ai further. we are pushing from personal into where we started now automotive lending, which is another category where millions

of people are paying far too much for their auto loans. we can help with that. emily: upstart ceo, dave girouard, day one as a public company. we will talk to the ceo of parler, coming up. ♪ emily: welcome back to

"bloomberg technology." i'm emily chang in san francisco. the social network, parler, bills itself as nonbiased, free speech social media. it is the alternative for right-wingers to facebook and twitter. at one point in november it was the number one downloaded app. john matze is with us now. in a crowded social media landscape, how do you differentiate parler from the other options? john: thank you for having me on. parler is a paradigm shift.

for the entire social media community. a lot of the tools and things that are central and authoritative on facebook, twitter, other platforms, we are giving back to the people to choose to use by respecting the first amendment and respecting people's privacy. emily: what kind of traffic have you seen since the election? it took off during the election, but it seems like since then things have slowed down. john: this has been a trend ever since parler was founded. if you go back to the beginning of this year, we had 300,000 accounts. now we have 12 million. a large chunk of the growth was around the election. a large chunk of it was six months before the election as well. this is a normal trend in our space. we insert ourselves into what is going on by offering people a solution to not being censored and not have their data pillaged. a lot of other laces are doing

this to people's data. during these viral events, we see some great growth and we look forward to having more of them next year. we will. we have a lot of fun ones planned. you are technically about free speech and not political ideology, but let's be fair, you have a lot of conservative viewers flocking to their platform. do you think this is something that there is something there that liberal users could find value in? john: tremendously, actually. there are a lot of people on the left on the platform. they are outnumbered greatly by conservatives right now. that is fine. we are not defined by he was on our platform but our neutrality. people on the left will want to have conversations across the aisle. as they are pushed away from twitter and facebook and platforms that do not want political discussions it seems,

they will be coming to parler to have that discourse. what is really nice, especially for everyone, when you follow somebody, you see the content that you opted into. there is no algorithm to show you what is best for you. on parler, you see what you want to see and you participate in away that you've created. if you want to see left-leaning content, follow people on the left. that is what you will see. if you want to see sports, you follow sportspeople. you get what you want and not what the platform wants you to see. that is why this is a paradigm shift. these other places are manipulating what you are seeing based on data they have gathered on you, which is why i call them data pillagers. it is a paradigm shift altogether. emily: the president has not signed up for parler yet. president trump. after think he will inauguration, and why isn't he

there yet? john: i see that as inevitable. it is not something we are basing our entire strategy off of. parler will succeed no matter what because we have founding principles that are required today in changing the atmosphere of social media, changing the direction of our conversation online, one that is more back to the people when the internet was new and fresh. that is what we are trying to bring us back to. a people's place online, not a place for big tech oligarchs. if he joins, that's great. we welcome him. if president elect biden wants to join, he is welcome as well. we want everyone to join. one day, we think everyone well. -- everyone will. emily: have you had any contact with the administration? john: i like to stay out of marketing and out of these conversations. i like to focus on the tech.

i am an engineer by trade and i like to stick to that world. emily: facebook really cracked down on qanon finally after many years. did you see a pop after that? have you attracted a number of qanon followers trying to find a haven? john: i do not think we are the preferred place for qanon. i'm pretty vocally -- i don't like them to be frank, not the people themselves but the movement -- i don't like it. i argue with them on the platform if they are there. we welcome everybody. they are allowed to be on the platform, not that we are trying to find them to bring them there but they are welcome. i am not -- it is not my preferred audience. [laughter] emily: let's talk about your audience. rebekah mercer, a big conservative donor, how much input does she have and how you run the business?

are you seeking her out for advice? and does she give it? john: she has a relationship as an investor. but is not part of the day-to-day. a lot of what we do is central around our marketing team, advisory team, our employees. she is not a part of those conversations because she is an investor. if you purchase shares of facebook, you are not welcomed to the day-to-day. it is a similar situation. emily: let's talk about the return on investment. there does seem to be an issue bots withand inappropriate interaction. what are you doing to get a handle on that? john: if you look at any social platform, you will get people trying to attack it, either to

promote advertisements, promote an agenda. yes, we crackdown very hard on anybody who does that. i would not describe it as a problem. 99% of people don't see it. anybody sharing that stuff, most of it is flagged automatically by our sensitivity filters. i would not describe it as a problem as what has been manufactured by the press to make us look bad. we are building more and more algorithms to put in the hands of people to use to work out any issues they have. whether it is they do not want to see that, which i do not take most of us do, or they don't like toxic speech. they can have the word filters, the moderation filters, things they can set themselves to avoid any scenario. emily: what are you doing then to make money? if you are not selling data, how will you build this into a long-term sustainable business?

john: we are doing what we like to call humane advertising. for example, right now, advertisers can blanket make and add to the community. they can also say, there is a prominent individual over here , and i want to advertise to everybody following him. they work out a deal with us, and they actually get to sent money because he offered his following list to be able to promote to the audience. the nice thing, people are not having their data mined and they are not being targeted in a creepy way, but we can still have humane ads that are making us a really good amount of money. we opened this network two months ago in beta form and we are seeing a tremendous return already.

a lot of interest. emily: there has been some concern about the experience being buggy. there have been some glitches. you have managed to rack up 12 million users. you have the ftc scrutinizing facebook along with other branches of the u.s. government. does parler's success prove that facebook is not a monopoly? or in your experience, do you believe facebook is stifling competition and unfair ways? gettingey are certainly in a lot of trouble, but parler is proving there is a possibility for competition as much as people are trying to stop us. rightfully so, because we are bringing in a lot of people every day. it has tremendous value. in regards to facebook and twitter, parler is the one thing

stopping the government from going into these antitrust suits because we are proving competition is a possibility. our success in a weird way is their saving grace. emily: interesting take. john matze, ceo of parler. fascinating to hear your vision for the service. thank you for taking the time to join us. coming up, another startup. we will hear from kirsten green on the rapidly expanding personal-care empire. next. this is bloomberg. ♪ emily: his and hers has

attracted a quarter of a million subscribers in just three years. best known for its generic drugs to treat erectile dysfunction and hair loss, the company provides primary care and mental health services and even covid tests. his and hers is also planning to go public. we are joined by kirsten green, who sits on the board of the company, and is founder and managing partner at forerunner ventures. his and hers has rapidly grown with a very customer friendly interface in just three years. it has turned into a telehealth provider. what has been the secret to the success? kirsten: from the minute the company launched, they knew they struck a chord with the consumer. in the first week, they generated over a million dollars in recurring revenue.

since then, the team has been focused on how do we get into as many categories with as many people to give the best offering we can. the moment is right. it is what consumers need. it is part of a modern trend. -- part of a broader trend. many sectors have not been approached that way. with this early traction out of the gate and success, the team was focused from early days and thinking about how to build an organization that can thrive as a public company. emily: they are now planning to go public. why go that route instead of a traditional ipo? why now? it is only a three-year-old company. airbnb waited 12 years. kirsten: true, it is a 2.5-year-old company. the team feels confident about the opportunity. they feel they have built a

trusted and high quality health platform. we are operating in 50 states today, enabled more than 2 million consultations across dozens of different categories. this year has brought to the forefront the demand and the need for telehealth services. doctors became harder than ever to access for consumers. it offered a couple of things that were relevant. one was the speed and the certainty and flexibility given that it is a young company. in this case, the team found a trusted partner with the oaktree team. that was a nice complement to them, given their institutional knowledge and capital markets experience. emily: you invest across consumer and retail technology, e-commerce.

you are on the board of nordstrom. how do you think the retail industry will be forever changed as a result of the pandemic? kirsten: that is a great question. in general, all of us are wondering how we will be forever changed. nine months has been a long time and new habits have been formed by consumers and companies. a couple of big things that came into view with retail and consumers were, new digital behavior. people were shopping across expanded categories like never before. instacart and many delivery companies, doordash. they were companies at considerable scale heading into this, but there were still a lot of people who discovered them. given the nine months in, habits have been formed. people are more comfortable shopping across a broader set of categories online.

a lot of it has been a positive experience. i have ideas about the downside too. this idea of omni-channel retail came a reality. we have been talking about it for over a decade. in many ways it has been largely lipservice. this is the first time you saw retailers at scale jump into action to say, how will we use the resources we have to meet the customer in this moment? you saw things like buy online and pick up in store take hold. even appointment shopping. those are new unlocks and new ways that people like to shop and new elements of the business model. lastly, the importance of local came into focus. in part driven by the need or the desire to go to your local store or the conversation of the importance is of those businesses to the fabric of our towns and cities.

people have shopped local. people have ordered food from the restaurants. not just because they needed what they were offering, but they wanted to support local business. all of those trends are going the direction where a lot of things were headed. this year, they really took hold. emily: you have been active getting more women entrepreneurs funded. i am curious how much progress you think we have actually made. we have seen companies like goldman sachs and nasdaq mandating more diversity. laws, think we need more do you think we need more mandates? kirsten: honestly, emily, apparently, we do need more mandates. generally the stats are nowhere near where they need to be. reality it would

take multiple decades to get to parity when you look at gender diversity and minority diversity. from any angle you look at it, the answer to the question of do we need more focus on it, and it is yes. mandates can be helpful because they offer a stake in the ground of what is minimally acceptable. i would not call it the bar, but it is the threshold you need to at least be operating at. i do think -- i imagine that since the nasdaq announcement that every board is having this conversation now. we will be required in short order to have two diverse directors. two is not enough but it is a start, and we will take it. one female and one underrepresented minority. today in the market, of the 3000 companies public on the nasdaq, 75% of them do not meet that criteria. so there is work to do and

putting something out there, this is the minimum, that will at least move the needle to that point. i'm quite convinced when people get there, they will start to see more dynamic conversations. they will have deeper connections to their audiences that they are serving. they are made up of people of diverse genders and backgrounds. that is constructive for business and those benefits will lead to more parity. over time. emily: obviously, at your firm, there are many talented women investors. it is exhibit a for how it can be. kirsten green, great to have you back on the show. thank you for taking the time. facebook taking a bite out of apple, taking out a full-page ad criticizing the iphone maker in major u.s. papers. i will tell you why, next. ♪ emily: facebook is attacking

apple in a series of full-page newspaper ads. the social network criticizing the iphone maker's plans to restrict some data gathering and arguing the anticipated software changes are bad for small businesses. joining us now with details is kurt wagner. interesting strategy facebook is taking. what can you tell us? >> it is very interesting. we know the two companies do not like each other. we have seen their ceos exchange barbs. we have seen them come out with statements especially around this ios update. this is the most aggressive facebook has ever been against a competitor. it seems to me they are trying

to do two things. they are obviously trying to deflect some of the attention they are getting for some of their own antitrust issues. they are trying to shape their own reputation. a company that is here to fight for small businesses during a time of need. i'm not sure how well it is working, but it is a big swing for facebook. emily: is it going to work? >> i don't think facebook's reputation is strong enough for anyone to take them seriously. i posted the ad on twitter and nine out of the 10 responses i got were -- this has got to be a joke, right? this is the company that uses our data to show us targeted ads and make money. there is not a lot of goodwill for facebook right now, and when you swing at a company like

apple that does have a lot of goodwill still, facebook is learning that is a hard thing to do. emily: that is my next point. is facebook being a little tone deaf here? it smacks a little bit of desperation. >> it does. someone today said, read the room, facebook. this is not the time or place for you to do this. i think facebook sees this as a chance to lean into the things it thinks it does well. that is really providing services for businesses that are struggling because they cannot do in person shopping or sales. if you are a small business, facebook is a good tool for you to reach people and sell goods. facebook understands that and realizes it is better at that than most anyone else out there. it is leaning into that in a way that is probably good but they are trying to stand up against apple at the same time, which is difficult.

emily: i assume not, but any sense that apple was at all rattled by this or would make any tweaks as a result? >> my understanding is that they were a little surprised with the aggressiveness that facebook showed today. they have been exchanging these types of barbs for a while so it was not totally surprising. but it was a big step for facebook. what i don't know is whether or not this will change anything for apple. we have seen them delay their ios 14 updates to give people more time to prepare for them. facebook can probably take a little but of credit for that, but i would be shocked if apple were to come out and change everything in the way that facebook wants them to. it is hard to convince apple to do that. emily: ok. one to follow. kurt wagner, thank you for that

update. that does it for this edition of "bloomberg technology." i'm emily chang in san francisco. this bloomberg. ♪

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