this week after years of shortages, stores worry they have too much stuff for the holidays. entrepreneur marcus chen ready to buy it up. plus steve saracino on what he's funding and crowd funding the movies with legion "m." that's this week on "press: here." good morning, everyone, i'm scott mcgrew. this time last year or even the year before, for that matter, we were talking about holiday shortages. of course, the supply chain broken or at least severely bent by the pandemic. things have changed. target warning its investors it

would cut prices and get rid of unwanted and excess inventory. marcus shen knows a lot about excess. he collects the returns that you make to the store and resells them on massive scale. what an iron problem to have an inventory problem. i think that things are turning around, we're starting to see go up a little bit, and we are having a lot more inventory and now people are trying to figure out what to do with some of their excess. >> well, what causes that excess. is it like, you know, a stopped up sink, where when the chain finally opens, it goes whoosh,

or stores thinking, we had problems from a year ago, where retailers couldn't get the things that they wanted to sell. once we started looking up, things started thinking about things, instead of adjusting times, they were target to buy stuff and stock their stores. so they kind of bought extra stuff, kind of like the way you're probably going to host a holiday party. you want to make sure that there's enough stuff for everybody to kind of have and enjoy and there's always going to be a little bit extra. >> a lot of those retailers are talking about lowering prices. warning their investors, we may have to lower prices. that said, is it disinflationary, uninflationer, i don't know that it's going to have a big effect on the topline inflation numbers, but anytime we can get prices down anywhere, that's good news.

>> i think that's right. particularly retailers who, you know, they certainly are trying to make sure that they can pass on as much as the value back to their customers, so, again, this issue of excess inventory does give them an opportunity to kind of give something back to the customer. >> and of course, a lot of that merchandise will eventually come back in returns, it's a little early to be talking returns. i'm sure this is something that's busy for you after the holidays. what percentage do you estimate of things come back? >> it varies definitely by category. so, from a -- when we are now going to the store, from an in-person or a kind of in-store experience, we see return rates between 5 to 10%, online, it's a little bit different, right? you and i don't get to touch it, we don't get to see it, try it on. so then you start to see return rates creep up in the 15 to 20, 25%, just depending on what it is and probably who gave it to you. >> i've had such a great

experience with online returns. they have made it so easy. the other day, i was returning a pair of shoes, because, of course, you can't try them on. and the instructions were to take it to a -- there was this makeup store, i think it's sephora or -- >> yep. >> or something like that, just down the street from me. it has nothing to do with shoes, but they had kind of signed up for this program where they would be a return store. i walked in there and just handed it to them, they hit it with a laser and said, okay, thanks, bye. it's amazing what companies are doing with returns. >> and we believe it's obviously a great customer value, it's a great kind of way for them to kind of get folks to buy stuff, like, make the returns easy. it's like advertising, right? it's a way to kind of get people to convert and buy stuff and the in-store return policy that you're talking about, now it gets you back into the store, potentially, you know, who knows if you're going to buy stuff from sephora, but it's very possible you're going to buy something there once you walk

back in the store. >> kohl's has a deal with amazon and it's brilliant, because you get a 25% coupon from kohl's and they put the amazon return in the back of the store. >> it's a win-win for kohl's. they got someone in the store. >> and people like me, i am not a store shopper at all, and here i am walking into stores. now, when i say that you -- you know, you collect these returns and resell them, it makes it sound like an ebay hobby. this is, instead, your company is, you know, a multi-national -- the kind of products we're talking about are pallets of things. i was just shopping on your site. you know, eight pallets of office chairs. or seven pallets of blow-up pools. you are doing re-sale on a massive scale. >> right, yeah, so we are a marketplace that kind of serves businesses. so the sellers on our platform are kind of a large brands, retailers, manufacturers, and the buyers or the customers on

our platform are small businesses, entrepreneurs who have resale stores, whether it's, you know, online stores that they're selling it through the ebays of the world or the poshmarks and things like that, or they may have have their own kind of thrift stores, discounts stores down the street. >> it's amazing the amount of things that are available, now, are you warehousing all of that? >> no, actually -- we are kind of, we play more of a matchmaker through our technology, right? and so the sellers, as well as we have a partner network of folks who kind of help us with the warehousing, but we kind of, we're really a technology company that kind of facilitates the transaction between the seller and the buyer. >> i think a lot of people would be surprised that stores -- whether they charge a restocking fee or not -- they don't restock. they tend to make it a secondhand item. >> depending on the category, a lot of categories, for example, like apparel, even consumer

electronics, there's a lot more willingness for folks to kind of buy stuff that maybe the box has been opened or even, you know, whether it's clothing that's kind of been, you know, returned, that stigma, i guess, of kind of the -- something that's been previously owned has kind of gone away. but a lot of stuff does get restocked. but there are things where it's just, from a retail perspective, the experience is one where it's -- everything needs to be pristine and in the box. >> and i guess my last question for you, i like going through your store and seeing all the different things. what's the most unusual thing that jumps out in your head as far as things that you have sold? >> well, we've certainly sold a whole kind of range of products, ranging from, you know, certainly, we have had some interesting apparel items. i think we talked about it on a previous episode, bras and things like that, and it goes all the way to shoes -- >> like a thousand of them.

>> exactly, right, right. and then i think we certainly see interesting food stuff. we've had cartons and cartons of ben & jerry's ice cream, things like that. which, actually, people were extremely excited about, as i'm sure our kids would be, too. so there's a lot of interesting stuff on there. and again, it's something for everybody. >> well, i encourage people to browse it. marcus shen runs b-stock. thank you for being with us this morning. i do encourage you to browse it, because it is good fun. you do have been to a registered business to buy, but it's fun to browse the website, and hey, it's not that hard to register as a busineness, eitither. "preress: here" " will be babac jujust a minutute.

welcome back to "press: here." we've talked a lot about how venture capital is drying up. to be clear, though, the money is still there. billions of dollars in what vc calls dry powder. 1.5 of that billion is in a growth stage fund supervised by steve saracino at activant capital. i asked steve to join us this morning. there is one analyst who says there's $290 billion out there in venture capital money, waiting to be invested. i know you and i can't add it up in our heads, but does that figure sound about right? >> that's the same figure that we've seen, scott. the same with that figure is in this market, and you and i both

saw this in the dotcom bust. a lot of that capital is going to be routed towards existing portfolio companies. as venture managers, growth managers, and buyout managers rationalize their portfolio. as capital becomes more scarce, more will be pushed towards their portfolio, more towards their new companies. the real number of dry powder for new companies and company creations in the bay area and new york and elsewhere looks like it's probably 20 to 30% of that number. so it's not really $290 billion of overhang, it's more like maybe 40, $50 billion of fresh, dry powder. >> that's available to new start-ups or new investments? >> correct. correct. >> now, you mentioned the dotcom bust. rather famously, you know, companies like google come out of the dotcom bust. and then there was a global financial crisis, and companies like uber come out of there. so, historically, we know that the downtimes are a time to look for those small companies.

you know, the really tiny ones like google and uber. >> that's right. some of the best companies will come out of the ashes of this new crash. what happens is the dna of these businesses is much stronger and these businesses being the ones that are formed this year, next year, in '24, they hire proficiently, and bootstrap for a period of time like google did. those businesses tend to have stronger dna that can survive is cylicality of the market. we saw this in '99 and 2000, when companies reinstruct, they don't spend properly and this is a generalization. there are obviously a lot of good companies out there, but we've seen it happen. that's why they require more capital to survive. so i'm optimistic about new company creation. it's going to take another year or two to shake out, but we could see the next big wave probably in '23 or '24.

>> as far as those new companies go, you know, do your due diligence, right? we have this example of ftx, and of course, before that, their theranos. to the viewer who's only casually familiar with theranos, who said, theranos fooled all of high tech, a lot of firms passed on theranos. a lot of firms said, oh, no, this is not for us. so they may have asked the right questions. but especially in the case of ftx, a very name brand firm, was all in. due diligence is going to be important. it's always important, but it will be important again as there's sort of a fear of missing out. >> absolutely, scott. again, i like to bring everything back to context, so frauds have been perpetrated throughout the history of time. you know, anytime when you have investors, someone is going to perpetrate fraud. you're right in the case of theranos, there are very few known institutional investors. most of institutional investors

will have assets that pass. ftx was different. the biggest difference is the market. the market at that point in time, there was -- it was driven by fear of missing out. it was driven by exuberance and other factors. and so you had firms that are storied firms that just didn't do their work. this is not the first time that's happened. it happened in '99. there were some very famous ones back then where people didn't do their due diligence, weren't on the board. i think ftx is probably the first to come out. there will be more. and we'll start seeing those flush out in the next, probably in 2023 and q1, q2. so this will be the first of many. but it won't be the last time. >> what about sasse? i mean, here's a category that was growing so quickly, and it just, as they said, software is eating the world. we do need to keep in mind that these sasse companies sell their software to other companies. and in a downturn, that's going to be one of the things that the companies cut.

so this business-to-business. what's your projections there? >> yeah, so, again, in 2001, cisco lost about 20% of their revenue and never fully recovered. that revenue loss was primarily from other venture-backed start-ups. what happened in sasse, you have a lot of what we call derivative risk, meaning that half of their revenue, again, generalizing, is coming from other venture-pac start-ups. as those stop buying generally across the board, it cascades in a very fast way. that's exactly what happened in 2001. what's happening -- on the transactional side, so companies that are more transactional, and some of the public ones like shopify or toast, we've seen -- they've taken the revenue hit already. because they're getting paid a percentage. we haven't seen the saas ones take the hit. so there'll be a lot of pain in

saas particularly on the b2b side. >> we spoke about the fact that most will stick to the investments they already have. but what's your overall strategy going into these next few years? >> we're privileged in that our portfolio is a balance sheet to very strong companies that are break-even and profitable. our strategies can be very patient, and there's two things that make it difficult in this market. one is matching our pricing expectations with the management team founders and board members. that's still taking time. i don't think pricing is adjusted, particularly at the later stage of the markets, so like series bs, cs, and ds, versus "c" and "a." how do we underwrite the destruction that's going to happen over the next year or two. these companies are going to have contracts canceled. how do we think about that, how do we think about that in the context of price. with those two things in mind, our pacing has slowed. this year, i think we led three

new investments. i think our pacing can be pretty slow next year, as well. and then in the '24, things stabilize, which is our base case view and we get a lot busier. '22 will be a very interesting year for all of us, but still, optimism comes from like, there are going to be great start-ups that come out of the ashes of this. >> as they have in the past. steve saracino, thanks for being with us. ng treatment for your meth or cocaine addiction is up to you. treatment for stimulant use disorder is often covered through medi-cal, medicare, and many private insurance plans. choose change california. find proven treatment options like contingency management that are right for you at choosechangeca.org. (gentle music)

tell me a story. >> it's a story about journeys. the journeys we take to prove ourselves. >> that is a clip from a movie made by a studio called legion "m." welcome back to "press: here." legion "m" is reimagining movies and the way we fund movies, in this case with crowd funding , you, too can be a crowd funder. what's legion "m" all about? >> legion "m" is our name, and if you look closely at the "m," the "m" has a bar over it, which is the roman numeral for 1 million. our goal with legion "m" is simple, to unite 1 million entertainment fans to co-own the

company, get behind the scenes, get a voice in what projects we produce, and then take over holiday. >> now, have i heard of any of the movies that you've done so far? >> i would hope so. we've been involved in probably almost ten movies now. one of our first movies was an anne hathaway jason sudeikis movie called "colossal," described as wildly original from the director there. we also were involved in a cult sensation called "mandy," a nicholas cage movie that came out a few years ago that's continuing to build its fan community. got a four-minute standing ovation at the cannes film festival. we have so many other movies -- >> you've jason sudeikis and nicolas cage at the cannes film festival. i think you've established your bona fides here. so there are two ways that you're collecting funding, right? i can fund a movie and i can buy

shares in your company, as well. but then again, i mean, our parent company is universal studios. i own shares in comcast and universal studios. you can buy them on the new york stock exchange. so how are you selling shares that makes it any different than buying shares in universal studios? >> yeah. all right, well, let's face it. most of the major studios like universal, they're primarily owned by wall street. and they're major conglomerates, they have multi-faceted, in legion "m's" case, we're start-up. we want to be owned by fans from day one. and being an owner in legion "m" isn't like owning shares in universal, where you might pay somewhat attention to the movies and films, but they're not asking for your opinion, you're not getting behind the scenes, you're not going to the set of your movies by being an investor. let's face it, for the most part, they're not interested in,

you know, their investor's opinion. at legion "m," we put our informers s investors at the center of everything that we do. >> do you find -- it -- the danger would be either too many cooks in the kitchen, or is it possible that we all got together and put together a car the way we wanted it, it might be the world's most awesome car. god knows we would come up with cupholders a lot faster than detroit did. but maybe it would be a disaster. they always say the platypus was created by a committee. >> it's absolutely true. one of the things that we really stand for at legion "m" is you don't make great art by committee. our community, they're not giving notes to the director. they're not giving notes on scripts and things like that. we don't believe in that. what we do listen to our community is, what types of content are they interested in, when we're make casting decision, we might get their opinion. and those are data points, but

ultimately, the decisions are made by the creators and the directors. and so we as a community are standing behind them to fulfill and support them in their goal to create grea art. >> so if i'm an investor, am i also getting a kickback -- not a kickback, but a piece of the action? >> so when you invest in legion "m," you're owning shares in effectively a pre-ipo start-up company. we're a new production company, hoping and our goal is to become, you know, one of the major studios. and one thing i wanted to point out, so there are primarily -- our investors are investing in the company. and the company is involved in a diverse slate of projects. we have four movies in post-production that we're putting out that will be releasing next year. we also occasional have an opportunity for our investors to invest directly in those projects. and in those cases, the return

on investment might be shorter term. you're not necessarily investing in a start-up -- pre-ipo start-up. you're actually investing in a project, and there could be, you know, financial returns from those projects. but we're just starting that now. >> so, let's say i invested in the movie, not the company, but just the movie. i think your next movie will be a blockbuster. what's an average investment? what's a typical investment? >> that's a great question. so, we've tried to keep the minimum investment, because of all the risk factors that i've pointed out, we've tried to keep the minimum investment as low as possible. so, typically, it's about $100 is the minimum. and the average is about $400. of but we just lowered the minimum to $40 in our -- in the round that we have open right now. >> okay, all right. that's the investment of two movie tickets to be, you know, at least on some very small level, the producer of a movie.

there's such a golden age right now for content. the amount of places that you can put a movie is not just the theater anymore, but all of those -- the netflixes and the peacocks and the hulus and the paramounts and the -- there's just a tremendous number of avenues that movie makers and content makers can take. >> yeah, no, absolutely. the entertainment space has been going through a lot of changes. and in some ways, it's been a renaissance. you know, there's a lot of creativity and a lot of new projects, a lot of new places to sell those projects to. i mean, it's one of the things that legion "m" is taking advantage of. but one of the things that we're really, you know, we take comfort in, is that no matter what changes in the entertainment space or on the horizon, the one thing that will always matter is the fans. at the end of the day, fans are the fuel that drives the entire business. no matter if it's, you know,

cable-driven or streamer driven, doesn't matter. fans and audiences, we're the ones that buy the tickets. we pay the subscriptions, we choose what to watch. so, you know, we feel like legion "m" and our model is futureproof for whatever the entertainment industry brings to us in the future. >> now, another movie you've got coming up is a documentary about bill shatner. i should point out, he's also an investor in your companies as well. i can identify a "star trek" episode -- you can show me a frame, i can probably figure it out. >> you're like shazam for "star trek" episodes. >> yeah, yeah, yeah. but that must have been great fun. >> i have to tell you, you know, getting to know william shatner has been one of the highlights of, you know, starting this company pip mean, he's truly an enigma. a complete renaissance man. one of the reasons why we're

make this documentary -- so he joined our company as an adviser. he heard about us, we told him about our model and what we're trying to do. he took a real passionate interest in it. wanted to get involved. he's joined the company as an investor. and as we got to know him, i mean, first of all, he immediately was adding immense value to the company. like, really, you know, just an incredible, very inciteful, deeply passionate, a very deep thinker and really, you know, really approachable and engaged. and as we got to know him and understand like who this man is, you know, living the life that he's lived, he's 91 years old. has more energy than anyone i've ever met, we came up with the idea, we said, bill, why has no one made a documentary like -- and he said, well, you know, there have been a lot of -- he's been pitched a lot of times, but he's never done one. and so, you know, we connected him with a director that we

really like and, you know, we're finishing that movie. and one interesting thing -- you know, we're going to be putting that movie out next week. it will be a definitive documentary. really understanding the bill most people don't know. >> i look forward to seeing it. paul scanlan, boldly going where no film company has gone before. paul, appreciate your time this morning. paul is the cofounder and ceo of legion "m." thanks for being with us this morning and "press: here" will be right back.

ththat's our shohow for thi week. mymy thanks t to o our guestst k you u for makingng us part o of sunday mororning.

damian trujillo: hello and welcome to "comunidad del valle," i'm damian trujillo, and today, an american legend and chicano activist, dr. josé padilla with crla, on our show here on "comunidad del valle." cc by aberdeen captioning www.aberdeen.io 1-800-688-6621 damian: we begin with another agency that is always on the frontlines. we're talking about siren and they're celebrating a milestone. with me is maricela gutierrez, a longtime executive director of siren. maricela, welcome back to the show. maricela gutierrez: gracias, thank you for having me, damian. damian: thank you for being here. thirty-five years. tell us what this means to you, to the community. maricela: well, it's been an amazing journey for siren, starting out in san josé as our founding place and so, 35 years