Whether or not tsarnaev should be executed for his role. His defense says he was under the influence of his older brother. Minutes from the Federal Reserve meeting last month show that policymakers are split on whether to raise Interest Rates in june. Several members argued that the Economic Data and outlook were Strong Enough to warrant the rate hike, but others argued Falling Oil Prices and the strong dollar were reasons to hold off later this year at the earliest. A major deal is brewing in the generic drug business. Mylan has offered to buy perrigo for 29 billion, its largest acquisition ever. Says its board will meet to discuss the offer. A shakeup at the struggling Games Company zynga. Ceo don mattrick is leaving his role and the board. Founder and chairman mark pincus will return to the position. Last quarter zynga posted its first sales increased since 2012, but its string of losses extended to six quarters. Zyngas shares are down in afterhours trading. Google plans to launch a Youtube Subscription Service as soon as this year. The feature would allow paying subscribers to watch youtube videos without having to sit through ads. Revenue will be shared between google and video creators. This is according to an enough from google obtained by Bloomberg News. Now to the lead apple has a lot riding on the watch. The companys first entirely new product since the ipad in 2010. While it doesnt hit stores until april 24, the first reviews are coming up. Bloombergs josh to falsely spent a week with the watch and can tell you if it is worth your money. Josh the apple watch is a huge release for the company. It is the first new product they have made since the ipad and a depth of steve jobs. The watch is gorgeous in a surgical, sterile kind of way. Like any apple product, it is not about good looks alone. This is packed full of events full of technology. The display has a new sort of pressure sensitivity, that responds to not just where you touch on the display but how hard you press. When you get a notification, you feel an intense buzzing, almost like the tapping of a bell. That is thanks to an engine that controls vibrations. Most importantly, there is the digital crown, which is a navigational app that you use on the apple watch for moving through lists, selecting apps, and zooming in and out of photos and maps. Of course, the apple watch is also a watch, and it does the job of telling you the time, just sometimes not when you want it to. There are sensors in the apple watch that tell it when to turn on the screen and when to turn off the screen. When you bring it up to your face to check on the time, it works perfectly, but every once in a while, it doesnt turn on. That can be maddening when you just want to know what time it is. It is a beautiful, welldesigned, really effective apple product, and if you love apple products and use a bunch of them, this is a great companion. It is not going to make you a better person or change her life or change the way you look at the world. It is a great accessory. Maybe thats enough. Brad that was bloombergs josh temple ski. Lets continue this conversation from a luxury accessories perspective. Our guest is associate editor of bloombergs luxury vertical. You have read the reviews, and now the apple watch comes out in two and half weeks. Do you feel like the case has been made for people to buy enough only a smartwatch, but the apple watch . Steve i think what we can see is that apple did produce a great piece of hardware, and they have created software that is at least interesting, if not immediately valuable. Whether that is enough for people to run out and buy a smartwatch, that we will have to wait and see. Brad it seems like the central proposition of the apple watch is that it makes our lives simpler, this idea of glanceability, we dont have to pull our smartphones out of our pockets. Do you buy that . Do you think the watch makes our lives easier . Steve i think it can make accessing certain things easier, but the onus is on the user to be accountable for their own information. If you are the kind of person who is going to pull out your phone and be checking it, you are going to be the person constantly looking at your watch. You dont control which notifications go from your phone to your watch. You could really be inundated with a flood of notifications. Brad the message that i took from some of the reviews, from the review in the New York Times, is that there is a learning curve for the apple watch. It is remarkable. The watch was the simplest piece of technology there is, and now people are going to be paying for a device where you need a few days to understand it. Steve i have only spent a brief time with the watch, trying to get a handle on it, but the combination of touches, using the digital crown, it is not intuitive. Some things zoom. Some things scroll. Youre going to have to find a way to incorporate it into your life if you want to make this work for you. Brad if you are an executive in the luxury watch market, and you are reading these reviews, what are you thinking . Steve from the executives i have spoken to, i dont think anyone is worried that this is coming for their product yet. I do think they see echoes of what happened with an expensive watch is coming out of japan in the 1970s. They want to make sure they are getting out ahead of this. Brad what does that mean, getting ahead of it . Steve at the Worldwatch Feher in switzerland, we saw one of the largest producers of watches launch a partnership with google. It is going to run some sort of variation on android, and it will be built with intel chips. Brad last question from a style perspective, has apple cleared the bar . Is this pretty enough for people to wear . Steve if you are a fan of the johnny ive,s sleek metal, i think so. It is the most attractive wearable. You are not going to have a problem like you had with google glass or Something Like that. For lovers of traditional watches and vintage watches, it is a completely different aesthetic. Brad thank you very much. Up next, Ondemand Services are they making us more productive or lazy . Later in the hour, we meet alfred, the butler that manages all of these Ondemand Services. . Brad i am brad stone. This is bloomberg west. Still to come, instant convenience. There are thousands of apps with this goal in mind. How is a change in our society . Instagram is a smash hit, but it almost didnt come about. First, a check on todays top headlines. At t has agreed to pay a 25 t regulators. This afternoon investigation found workers at call centers in mexico and the philippines improperly disclose personal data on 280,000 customers. The fcc says names and Social Security numbers were passed on to third parties who were selling stolen phones they wanted to unlock. Germanys privacy regulator has rejected most of googles appeal and has ordered the company to limit the collection of personal data. This decision prevents google from combining user data that would allow it to determine a users marital status, personal preferences, and more. Who tried to overturn the ruling. A Spokesman Says google is reviewing what steps to take. Googles youtube is adding tools to improve as on mobile devices, thanks to a new feature called cards. Advertisers can highlight related content during videos. All video ads will limit clickable links to boxes at the end of the media player. Our guest host is om alec, partner at true ventures. For the rest of the hour, we will be looking at the rise of ondemand at the rise of the Ondemand Service economy. Do we need all these apps to offer instant gratification, and how much time do we actually save . She will discuss with the founders of a few of these service startups. Welcome back to bloomberg west. We have covered the valley for a long time, you and i. The latest craze is the ondemand economy. Are you a believer . Om im definitely a customer. Ive been a believer in a very long time. I think there is a lot to it. There are a lot of things which are not right. Brad what are the finer terms . When we say the on demand economy, we mean, pushed a button and summon a service, usually a physical service like uber or groceries. Om in my case, it was mostly mover or food. Brad there is a Company Called magic. The idea is, you text them anything, and they do it. I guess they raised money from sequoia, is the rumor. Are we seeing signs of excess . Om excess is a polite way of saying it. There is a level of insanity. Brad what are the tailwinds propelling this market . The emergence of smartphones is one, right . Om i think the smartphone is the driving force behind all of these Ondemand Services. It makes it relatively easy for us to quickly order and consume things, and it reduces the friction in the process, which is why i like the convenience of it, but there is a little bit of a dark side to it, which is, someone with groupon there were all these deals coming our way, but we only had so much money to spend. It is only so much money you have to spend on these Ondemand Services. It will be interesting to see when these Companies Run into a wall. Brad the website medium recently dubbed this the shutin economy. Is it propelling laziness . Om i think the San Francisco tech scene, people are used to using the phone and ordering food in. Ive lived here almost 14 years. That is prevalent behavior. Brad it is an open question whether any of these services has excessive appeal outside of our bubble in San Francisco. Uber has paved the way. Om big cities, urban cities have a lot of potential. I think new york has proved over many centuries that there is a market for Ondemand Services. I think the bigger cities will be interesting. L. A. , on not so sure. They cancel it because of traffic jams. Urban cities, which are very dense, these kinds of services make sense. Brad this is the first time you have been on the show since the untimely demise of the tremendously iconic website you found it. I know it is a different topic but i would love to hear your reaction . Om we didnt have an Ondemand Service. Thats the problem. I think we tried a lot of interesting things, a lot of new things. Startups are risky. Nine out of 10 fail. Brad you will continue to blog . Om yeah. A sports fan has to play, and i have to blog. I have a personal blog called om. Co where i resumed a lot of the writing i used to do. Mostly analysis and context, not news, and it is a supplement to my day job, working at true ventures. So be it. Brad om malik, thank you for joining us. Stay with us. Coming up next on bloomberg west, we look at the apps taking care of every need in your life. Also on the show, how do ondemand apps create customer traps, and why is it so hard to get a u. S. Work visa in Silicon Valley . All that and more coming up on bloomberg west. . Brad i am brad stone. This is bloomberg west. Imagine never having to refill your fridge or running out of clean socks or having someone text you the answers to questions you are trying to answer. What if you never actually have to know any of these people who provide these services . This is the on demand economy, a range of instant services that encourage people to feel less guilty about asking people for help. Ceo of the Alfred Butler act, and crystal rose, cofounder of sensei. Thank you for joining us. Crystal, perhaps you first. Tell us about your company. Crystal it is anything that a human can help you with right now. Brad text a question, and will funnel that to the proper person. Crystal we have seen things like, i need help studying for my exams, or i need to get a photographer for an event on planning. Even, im looking for an underground counter that very few people know about. All those things can be handled. Brad does alfred help you be a superhero . Marcella it sits on other services to automate your routine. We might use someone like sensei. Om to get this clear, these services will do anything i ask them to do . I have a problem in, lets say, doing my homework, for example. Do i get an answer . Crystal sensei is really around knowledge. It is knowledge work rather than busywork. Definitely. Om do you have to pay for it . Crystal currently, no. We let you transact basically like karma. Brad you are interfacing with other Ondemand Services. What are the advantages of aggregating all of these services and creating one portal to get your groceries or have your cleaning and laundry picked up and then returned . Marcella we dont even think about it as aggregation. We are actually curating the best services for you, and it is our responsibility to find the best services and provide them in a frictionless way. It is about anticipating you and getting smarter and smarter overtime. You get your very own alfred who visits every week, and you might order groceries on insta cart, but we order them on insta cart for you and put them away in your fridge. It is frictionless. We use lots of different Ondemand Services. Om is this machinegenerated activity, or are there actual humans involved in using alfred . Marcela great question. Software can get you 90 of the way, but the last 10 , it is so smile to actually have a human who you trust and with whom you have a relationship with that is getting smarter and smarter every week, especially since in our business, Customers Trust us with the key to their homes. We think about this being more than delivery. It is not about ondemand delivery. It is about having things there before you need to ask. Imagine having a number driver who is waiting even before you press the button. Brad is sensei a Technology Company . Crystal sensei is a human company. We are looking at the asset that is currently not being monetized, your mind. The most valuable thing you have. You can monetize your apartment on airbnb, or you can rent out your car on huber, but we have no way to transact information. Om the question i have for both of you is, how do we ensure privacy . You talked about at t being fined by the fcc for privacy violations were third parties were giving out data. How do we do that if all of these services, which have human intervention . There is a lot of private information, credit cards, rich data about us. How are you guys trying to protect the . Crystal we protect you by being completely anonymous. Sensay runs on anonymity. We know everything that you know. We look at a variety of factors to figure out, who is the right person to be talking to . A oneonone format is what we are providing, and currently everything is protected. Brad do you want to take a crack at that . Alfred, you know your customer just as well. Marcela this is another argument what you want to have a single point of contact for alfred, instead of 20 apps inside your form your phone. You trust us with all of your information. We have the security in the sense that we are not only retaining that information and holding it private, but this is a human that is interacting and knows you. It is the same human week after week. You have a relationship with you. They are identitycheck. Om the question i have, who are the people using these apps . What is the demographic profile . Crystal we have an Awesome Community of people in colleges. Those are the examples i just gave. As well as anybody using Ondemand Services we provide a layer of the ability to learn what is out there. Brad, you said there are thousands of these Ondemand Services, and there are many of them. We have seen things like, i need booze for my party delivered to me. That is something, part discover, but you can find it through sensay. Brad crystal rose and marcela sapone, thank you for joining us. . [office phone chatter] [frogs croaking] you know what, let me call you back. What are you doing . [scream] [frogs croaking] [yelling and screaming] its back Xfinity Watchathon week. The biggest week in television history. Its your allaccess bingewatching pass to tvs hottest shows, free with xfinity on demand. Xfinity watchathon week. Now through april 12th. Perfect for people who really love tv. Brad this is bloomberg west where we focus on innovation technology, and the future of business. Lets check out some of our top headlines. Mylan has made an offer for generic drugmaker perrigo for nearly 24 billion. The board will be meeting to discuss the proposal. Meanwhile, shell has agreed to by bg group in the largest oil and gas deal in more than a decade. Shell is paying 70 billion in cash and stock. Here is the ceo on transcanada on whether more deals will happen with the club of oil prices. Deals like this will be logical in this kind of environment. We have seen this kind of cycle before where we see consolidation of the industry. Then we see the consolidation at other points in the cycle. It is a Natural Evolution of where we are at the current time. Brad wti crude is down 50 in the past year. Procter gamble is moving forward with plans to sell some of its beauty brands. They have contacted possible bidders for it hair care cosmetics, and fragrance units. People familiar with the matter say companies contacted include revlon, unilever, and henkel. Super pacs affiliated with republican candidate ted cruz are expected to raise 31 million by friday, less than one week after launching, according to an associate of the senator. There are no known cases where an operation backing a white house hopeful has bank this much money in less than one week. Hackers back by the russian government are believed to have hacked into a nonclassified white house Computer Network last year. A person with knowledge of the investigation said malicious code and other evidence points to statesponsored russian hackers. That person said the attack was likely in retaliation for u. S. Sanctions over russia. The company that owns the popular hello kitty cartoon character is investigating whether the data of more than six thousand shareholders was leaked. The information may include names, addresses, and phone numbers of shareholders who participated in an Online Rewards program. Sanrio says some participants received investment offers from an unauthorized third party. The ondemand economy has made life easier for people everywhere, but as we let people into our homes and drive our cars, how do companies safeguard their customer paul privacy and security . Joining me are the ceos of two Ondemand Services. The ceo of handy, a service that allows you to book home cleanings and handiwork. Here in the studio we have the ceo of an ondemand app that parks or car for you in San Francisco. Of course, we have om malik. I would love to hear from both of you, how you solve the trust problem. 20 years ago, ebay created a pretty effective trust network. That was for online transactions. The worst that happened was you got defrauded. Then ebay made you hold. Today, we are giving our car keys to sell it to park the car. How do you trust that relationship . We provide as much information as we can. When you use our service, you can see the face of the valet. There is basically building a brand like uber. They built this brand and we are building it, too. Brad how does hand is all the same issue, you are setting professional to peoples homes. Think about every service you need in your home, from cleaning, electricians carpenters, that also its on a foundation of trust. We do the dark run checks on every Service Professional we put on the plot arm, we make sure we provide over 10 million in Insurance Coverage on every transaction. That has allowed us to grow incredibly over the last year and a half. We are at a place where we are doing over 100,000 bookings a month on our mobile app, and that is what drives the trust platform. Om on the handy thing, i use a maid service, the same one that i have use for almost a decade. I wonder and there is a relationship there. I know who my maid is. I am ok with her being in my apartment, in my bedroom. There is a lot of stuff there. Handy or another service could send different people. Forget that you are classified by the company. It is a little hard to trust a stranger in your home. That is one of the main reasons i have not used any of these services. You are absolutely right. People enjoy the idea of having that relationship with their Service Professional. We allow that same person to go back again and again. We see 50 of customers making a booking with the same cleaner or handyman over and over. It is not a case where we are trying to change the existing dynamics. We are trying to make it easier for people to do what they are already doing in their homes. Brad of course, that is not something that you can provide. There will be a different person parking your car every time you order. Yes, but usually we have the valets in front of the same places. We are more of a destination business, so we have ballets in front of certain restaurants these are restaurants that trust us. They are also background check. Brad are your ballets employees or contractors like uber . Contractors. We use 1099 contractors to fulfill our jobs. Om the challenge for a lot of these companies is finding people to work for you. There are four or five ballet startups in San Francisco. How do you find these people to work for you, how do you retain them in order to keep growing . First of all, we only work during the nighttime. It is perfect because it is a perfect parttime job. We have these kinds of people. People make good money with us. They make up to 30 an hour because there are a lot of cars. They like working with us. Brad we have to leave it there. Handy and vatler ceos, thank you. Coming up, a look at how startups are changing the wauy you eat dinner. . Brad lets get a check on bloombergs top headlines. The shanghai composite index crossed the 4000 mark for the First Time Since 2008. The benchmark equity gauge later pared gains. Chinas central bank has cut Interest Rates twice since november and analysts are expecting further easing. Shares of alibaba have soared in hong kong to a new high after its Parent Company said it considered injured in some of its entertainment assets into the unit. Alibaba may fold its movie ticket business and a crowdfunding platform into alibaba pictures. Mcdonalds posted its 14th consecutive months of decline in sales in japan. The number of customers in march fell more than 23 . This new ad is not helping. [speaking japanese] brad many in japan have called the ad dirty, gross, and unappetizing. Now lets turn back to our special look at the ondemand economy with om malik of true ventures. This time we are talking about food. Ondemand services are transforming the Food Industry providing everything from her favorite restaurant dish to farm fresh eggs. The business of perishables provide a number of challenges. Muncherys ceo is with me now. Thank you for joining us. We live in this amazing surplus economy of ondemand food startups. Tell us how you are different. We have our own culinary staff. We do not deliver the food from local restaurants. We have our own staff of talented chefs who work and cook us amazing menus, changing daily and exciting things to customers. Om you think you can compete with chipotle and roundtable pizza and all of these fast food establishments as an entity . We are different in that the food that we focus on our wholesome meals, balanced deals, and it is a daily changing menu. We have a system where the customer can tell us what they like or dont like. We cater to the local crowd with a local culinary team. Brad give us a snapshot of the logistics challenge that is delivering fresh food to peoples doorsteps. It is difficult. Especially with the Ondemand Service where we have everywhere in an urban environment, we have this Ondemand Service where you can get it in 30 minutes. Very difficult. We have a team of technologists that right special algorithms and apps for our drivers to do the best they can in the most efficient way possible. Om what are the big challengers of you guys . I am a customer of yours. It is a great experience, the food shows up as advertised, but what are the challenges that you have as you expand to new york or l. A. Or these other cities . A lot of it is execution challenges. As our demand is growing rapidly, keeping up with demand, keeping up with production volume, maintaining highquality and the level of service. Whether it is Delivery Service or the quality of the food, that is just an execution challenge. We think we know how to do that pretty well now but we have to continue finetuning that operation. Om one of the things which i never liked about uber was they would say they would show up in three minutes and they show up in seven and you get angry about it. That expectation of showing up within a specific period of time is what enters you to a service. How do you do that, given that you also have a very narrow window. The difference between munchery and a cable guy is very thin. The way we get around it is we tell the customer the precise eta before they place the order. As soon as they place the order, we update that, we show the location of the driver once he or she is on their way to you. You see the location moving on the map to uber in many ways. That takes away a lot of the object ability. Brad are you profitable in San Francisco . We are doing well here in San Francisco, yes. Brad you are convinced this model is effective and scalable . Absolutely. We know there is demand because we control the production of the food. We want to make it at a price point where people can use us on a daytoday basis, not an expensive offering that is only once in a while. Brad last question, the trash. I am a user but i feel there is a lot of refuse after. Are you working on that . We are working on our containers to be fully recyclable or compostable. Just like you eat a piece of meat and there is a bone remaining, you can toss that in the compost bin. That works really well. Brad munchery ceo tri tran, thank you. Instagram may never have been if its cofounder was not able to secure a u. S. Visa. . Brad instagram almost didnt happen, and the complicated immigration system could have been to blame. Before brazil native mike krieger created the popular app with kevin cistron, he was living on a temporary work visa. If not for some lucky breaks instagram may not exist. With more, im joined by Bloomberg News zachary mitre who cowrote the story. Great story. What is the Mike Krieger Instagram story so representative of the challenges and the defects of the h1b visa system . Zachary this is a really key week. This is the week everybody at the Big Tech Companies sends tens of thousands of visa applications to the government hoping they will get 50 of what they ask for. They want to be able to hire coders and programmers from india, china, russia, and other places. There arent enough visas to go around. It is kind of a crapshoot whether somebody with a great idea or a potential Company Actually gets to work in the u. S. Om do you think this is impacting hiring practices in other sectors, like medical professionals, wall street, or other Vital Services which are not tech. Zachary tech is responsible for the lions share of the h1bs. Tech, accounting, other kind of mathintensive professions things like that, but there are a lot of other industries that depend on h1b workers. Nursing is another one. You really see the concentration in fact. Brad how closely do you think congress is listening to guys like mike krieger at instagram and other executives who have continued to lobby and agitate for more visas . Zachary they are listening. The Business Community is pretty united in saying they want a cap on h1b visas lifted. They are also listening to other concerns that these pieces are allowing players to give work to foreigners or simply willing to work for less money. Om do you think we have these debates when there is an upmarket in tech . I have covered Silicon Valley for 25 years, and every so often, we had this conversation. Then it dies down. Do you think there is something to that, or do you think there is an actual need to remove the caps . Zachary the cap is basically the same every year. Unless the economy is really faltering like it was in 2009, the demand is just a lot greater than the sum. Last year, there were twice as many applications, and they kind of randomly chose 85,000 out of that pool of 170,000. This year, we dont have the numbers yet, but we are hearing that there may be even more demand. Brad any sense on the h1b part of the conversation, how it will factor into the next president ial election . Zachary the broader immigration debate is one that congress has been wrestling with. The problem is h1b is just a small part of it. You have many other policymakers are loath to separate off the h1b part where there might be consensus and not deal with more difficult issues like undocumented workers. Brad thank you. Great story. Just post what do you have . Om 2 the number of days in the apple watch online. Brad the New York Times referred to the pulse on the wrist like a bumblebee. Do you think there is a bias . Om they should be a reviewer, not a poet. Most people get between 37 days to use a product. To have an informed, longterm opinion about thing in such a short time frame is very hard. I like something new and shiny the first two and three and four days. After using it, i start to kind of maybe not. There is a little bit of a bias. I could not find one review brad they were all positive. Om but they were still hedging. Brad i think they were trying to be safe. Im skeptical. Does it make our lives simpler or are we replacing one screen with another . Om we dont know that. I think where technology is headed, directionally, it is the right direction the apple watch. The watch makes a perfect progression. I dont quite know i would use it. I cant speak to it. Hopefully, next time i see you brad are you going to buy an apple watch . Om it is a hard one. It is expensive. Part of me wants to own it mostly because i think it has the potential of catalyzing a lot of new technology, and i can use it as an excuse, but i like my analog watches a lot. I like collecting analog watches. Its my thing. It would be hard to give up that wrist space. Brad om malik, thank you for joining us. You can do the latest headlines all the time on your phone tablet, bloomberg. Com, and bloomberg radio. We will see you tomorrow.
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