The Best One Yet
👸 “How Poppi got Pepsi’d” — Poppi’s $2B Cinderella deal. Apple’s SuperSiri delay. Law Schools’ app surge.
Tue, 18 Mar 2025
Poppi soda just sold for $2B to Pepsi thanks to 1 rebrand strategy… inspired by Cinderella.Apple quietly announced its “Super Siri” AI is delayed a year… and Warren Buffett sold.Law school applications surged by 21% this year… because thinking is AI-proof (we think).Plus, the untold origin story of… MTV.$AAPL $AMZN $PEP Want more business storytelling from us? Check out the latest episode of our new weekly deepdive show: The untold origin story of… MTV 📺 “How Video Killed the Radio Star” Subscribe to The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinks to listen.“The Best Idea Yet”: The untold origin stories of the products you’re obsessed with — From the McDonald’s Happy Meal to Birkenstock’s sandal to Nintendo’s Susper Mario Brothers to Sriracha. New 45-minute episodes drop weekly.—-----------------------------------------------------Subscribe to our new (2nd) show… The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinksEpisodes drop weekly. It’s The Best Idea Yet.GET ON THE POD: Submit a shoutout or fact: https://tboypod.com/shoutouts FOR MORE NICK & JACK: Newsletter: https://tboypod.com/newsletter Connect with Nick: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolas-martell/ Connect with Jack: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-crivici-kramer/ SOCIALS:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tboypod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tboypodYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@tboypod Anything else: https://tboypod.com/ Subscribe to our new (2nd) show… The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinksEpisodes drop weekly. It’s The Best Idea Yet.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: What led to Poppi's $2 billion acquisition by Pepsi?
They switched the container from a bottle to a can, and they changed the product description from apple cider vinegar beverage to prebiotic soda. Yeah, rolls off the tongue a little bit better. Add it all up, and Mother transformed into Poppy. Completely different look in every way, and yet the same underlying product. And Poppy's dressing itself up like Cinderella paid off big time.
Like a fairy godmother waved a magic wand. Jack, this was such a magical makeover. Poppy should start delivering the soda in a pumpkin carriage. Not a fairytale guy? So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Poppy? Sometimes to go to the ball, you need to go full Cinderella. Jack, can we talk about the financial results after Poppy pulled off that epic pivot?
The year after the makeover, sales grew by 100%. And they've doubled every year since that rename and rebrand. And it's changed everything about the company. First, they changed the customers. They went from niche remedy in your mom's medicine cabinet to a teen trendsetter. They also changed the use case from an infrequent health product for your gut to a daily soda alternative.
You can literally see Poppy's inflection point tied to that one exact moment when they went through the Cinderella makeover. Many founders are afraid to cut deep into their brand or to change the brand. Oftentimes, if you do change the brand, you just tinker with the name or the logo.
But Poppy is proof that sometimes the products can be perfect, but it might not succeed because of the wrong marketing. So Poppy just kissed the Pepsi Prince with a $2 billion deal because of that brave Cinderella pivot five years ago. For our second story, Apple just made an embarrassing confession. AI Siri just got delayed indefinitely. Apple stock has fallen by 17% since Christmas.
Because of all of big tech, Apple's doing the least with AI. down to its core. But yetis, let's check the calendar here. Jack, last June, 18 months into the AI frenzy, what did Apple tell us? They finally announced something with AI. It was called Apple Intelligence. Apple Intelligence, AI. But nearly a year later, Jack, I'm looking at my iPhone over here and I feel like I'm looking at an iPod.
Here's the only AI I see on my Apple products. Yeah. Nick will send me a five-word text message. Yeah. And then instead of seeing the five-word text message, I'll see Siri's attempt at an AI summary of his five-word text message. Which is also five words long. It's like, Siri, do less, man. Now, we thought that by now, Siri would be fluent in chat GPT because that's what Apple told us would happen.
We thought that by now the future of Apple would be here. We called it Super Siri. Super Siri, the ultimate personal assistant built into your iPhone, synced with your MacBook, in your AirPods too. So basically a Siri that you'd say, hey Siri, what was the name of that guy I got coffee with last week at Starbucks? Siri would check your calendar and tell you the name into your AirPods.
Or you'd be like, hey, Siri, can you go on Resi and book me a dinner reservation at that place that Alex just texted me about? It would go to iMessage, find the restaurant, and then book you the reservation on Resi. Or like, hey, Siri, what is this thing on my side? And who should I be seeing about this? Siri would figure that out.
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Chapter 2: How did Poppi execute a successful rebranding strategy?
Sorry, I don't understand.
Of course she doesn't understand.
So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Apple? Voice is the next revolutionary interface, but Apple has its foot in its mouth. Yetis, here's what Steve Jobs said at the 2007 iPhone unveil.
We've been very lucky to have brought a few revolutionary user interfaces to the market in our time. First was the mouse. The second was the click wheel. And now we're gonna bring multi-touch to the market. And each of these revolutionary user interfaces has made possible a revolutionary product. The Mac, the iPod, and now the iPhone.
The mouse, the click wheel, and the multi-touch screen made the Mac, the iPod, and the iPhone possible. Those physical innovations, that's what brought Apple the most profit of any company in history. But those revolutionary user interfaces, as Steve Jobs called them, they're all going obsolete.
Because the way we see it, the future of tech will be controlled by voice, completely hands-free computing. My iPhone's amazing. Yeah. But an iPhone I never have to pull out of my pocket or tap around on, that's even better. Amazinger, amazinger. Apple, they had a 10-year head start with the voice of Siri, but she still can't speak AI.
Which means that ChatGPT, Amazon's Alexa, or Meta or Google's chatbots could win the voice race. Yetis, listen to our epic podcast host voices right now. Whoever wins with voice wins the next era of consumer tech.
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Chapter 3: What are the implications of Apple's Super Siri delay?
Like, if I'm watching the dancing and I'm noticing the feet aren't touching the ground, there's something wrong with the movie.
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For our third and final story, hold on to your MBAs because applications to law school surged 21% higher this year. We'll tell you why your buddy is getting a JD instead of an MBA. But Yeti's first full disclosure, Jack and I are both the sons of lawyers. My dad's a lawyer. Nick's dad's a lawyer. Yeah, my mom's a lawyer too.
And actually, the reason we do disclosures in the podcast is because our legal parents told us that they're lawyers and we should do disclosures. Yeah, we're not lawyers. We actually went to business school. We did. But at business school, we were more impressed with our JD classmates. Our law school classmates, they're doing three years of school and they're doing way more reading than we were.
Law school. It's what smart people do when they don't know what to do. And here's the news. More people want to do that. Applications at America's top 200 law schools rose by 21% this current application season. At the University of Michigan, applications are up 30%, the most in their 166-year history. And the University of Michigan's law library?
is one of the great architectural feats of the Midwest, Nick. Over at Georgetown, 14,000 applications to the law school for just 650 spots. That's less than 5% application rate. This is a bar exam boom. It's an Esquire search. May I approach the bench? No, there's too many of you. You may not approach the bench. I heard there are so many law school applications.
Elle Woods got waitlisted at Harvard. That's not true. It is true. Now, yetis, the waitlists for this application season are so deep, the law schools are doing something they've never done before. Standby lists like airplanes do. They're giving people a sense of where they are on the waitlist.
So they can either write off their chances of getting into Michigan or still hold out hope that they'll get in. Now, Jack and I got fascinated with this story, and we discovered there are three interesting reasons that explain the law school boom. One economic, one political, and one tech. All right, Jack, let's start with the economic. What's the economic reason for the bar exam boom?
The hiring pullback, starting with the tech industry, has continued. So white-collar workers are looking for alternatives. Yeah, the tech session. Zuck started it with his year of efficiency, and then Amazon continued it by culling mid-manager white-collar jobs. According to the Wall Street Journal, the percent of MBA students still looking for a job one year after graduating is up to 23%.
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Chapter 4: What does Warren Buffett's stock sale indicate about Apple?
Chapter 5: How did MTV transform American culture?
daily let's do 15 years before this song two boys from the northeast met in the dorm they had an idea to cause a cultural storm it's the best one yet but the best is the norm jack nick that's it i don't even think they need to practice 50 that's a fat tip t-boy city on your at list if you know you know because we're ready to go we can't wait no more so just start the show
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For our first story, it's official. Pepsi is acquiring Poppy for $1.95 billion to get into the prebiotic soda craze. It's a really nice exit for Poppy, which actually pulled off the biggest brand pivot in the history of liquid. Trivia. Jack, what do SodaStream, Tropicana, Gatorade, Quaker Oats, and Poppy all have in common? They've all been acquired by PepsiCo. Yeah, Pepsi.
You got some taste buds over there. They're Gatorade bathing themselves right now because Pepsi just confirmed rumors on Monday that they're buying Poppy, the prebiotic soda, for $1.95 billion. Prebiotic soda. Yetis, we got to drop some definitions on you over here. Jack, probiotic soda- What is probiotic soda exactly? Probiotic is something like kombucha, which adds new bacteria into your gut.
Okay. If that's probiotic, what is prebiotic soda? Prebiotic is when the drink includes fiber, which feeds the existing bacteria that's already in your gut. So add it all up and Poppy's prebiotic soda is kind of like a yogurt, but liquidified in your gut. Like if Dr. Pepper and Tums had a soda baby.
In fact, when we jumped into the numbers T-boy style, Poppy is number two in sales behind Olipop with $100 million in revenue. But Poppy is growing fast. Meanwhile, Big Pepsi, their soda sales have been shrinking or flat for years. And you know what Jack and I say when you talk to a CFO, growth is good for your financial gut. So Pepsi is buying poppy.
But it's funny timing because just last week, Coca-Cola, they didn't buy a prebiotic soda. They launched one called Simply Pop. But Pepsi knows the age-old rule. If you can't beat them, buy them. So Coca-Cola is trying to beat them. Pepsi's just buying them. Looks like that vending machine drama really paid off.
Now, few know, but Poppy was actually called something else recently until it pulled off a huge rebrand. Poppy pulled off what Jack and I call a Cinderella rebrand. Because they changed every detail about the company except... the underlying product. Yeah, we call it Cinderella because this is a full body makeover that's going to require a whole lot of magic to pull off.
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