David Meier

To be Frank, I'm surprised it's not happening more.

Really, really think about this.

Like this was an outage.

Something bad happened, there was an outage for a few hours, everything's getting back online, everything's back up and running.

This is a massive system.

The fact that it has the reliability that it does is an engineering marvel.

So, yeah, I get it.

It's disappointing.

Thank goodness it happened at 3 a.m.

Eastern Time.

I don't know exactly how much traffic is flowing through there.

I remember in my backyard in Northern Virginia, 35% of the world's internet traffic used to flow through my backyard at peak times.

I'm not surprised.

But quite frankly, I'm impressed how quickly they recovered it.

And I'm surprised it doesn't happen more.

Maybe it does, and we just don't feel it.

The answer is yes, there is concern.

I don't know how much I should be concerned, though, because this is the direction that everything is going.

Many years ago, I was talking with some folks, and I'm like, when the internet came up, we are always going to be going more digital

not more analog.

AWS, Azure, Google computing platform, GCP, they all sprung up and they all provide these types of services.

I don't think we're going to a single point of failure.

There's not going to be one company that always does everything for everyone.

But we don't have nearly as many companies doing this as when the internet was first being created.

There aren't as many IP companies, things like that.

I don't know.

Like I said, it's one of those things where it's the cost of doing business.

If you're not going to own your own hardware and manage your own hardware, you're essentially paying for the risk of

someone else having an issue and your business being affected.

I agree with what Tom was saying.

I don't think there's any additional risk premium that's needed.

Part of the reason is, there's actually a market that's determining where people will spend their money.

We don't have a single point of failure.

This isn't a monopoly.

And if these incidences grew in frequency, what would happen?

people would switch.

There's actually a massive incentive for these companies to make sure that the systems are reliable.

Again, it happened early in the morning.

There was an immediate response.

It actually got back online pretty quickly.

If it was that serious, they responded quickly.

I'm sure that they've learned.

We'll see what happens going forward.

But I actually think the market is what controls the risk.

I realize it would be a pain to switch, but there are options available for substitution.

Robinhood is not for me as an investor.

We work for The Motley Fool.

We tend to think about things differently.

Robinhood is a type of competitor.

I will say that this is still a breaker.

The reason is because you do have founders who had their vision, they knew what they wanted to do, and they were executing on it.

The other thing is, they're serving a big market, and one that's growing.

In order to serve those markets, they continue to bring new products and services.

They have some ability that they seem to be turning into an advantage

to know, hey, this is what our consumers want.

So, more people are coming, more people are staying engaged.

And yes, whether it was free trades, or now it's crypto, or now it's prediction markets, again, not for me, but that's okay.

There's a lot of companies out there that don't serve me.

But I see this company as having a lot of the traits of a Rule Breaker.

Faker is hard, but I have to push in that direction.

It's interesting, if I remember my history correctly, Lyft started before Uber.

I think that's correct.

I think it was called Zimcar, and then it morphed, and then Lyft was created out of Zimcar.

But it got usurped by Uber.

Uber just went on a, we're going to gobble up the world, we're going to take this market share strategy.

Uber has done a good job of rebounding, but I don't see it as something that can really take serious market share going forward.

It'll still grow.

It still provides an excellent service.

It's the one I go to.

I don't go to Uber.

But no, I don't think I can call it a Rule Breaker.

But Faker is tough.

Faker is harsh, in my opinion.

You've got to make a call.

I'm going with Faker.

No, I'm going with Faker.

But I'm giving you the little caveat.