Episode 187: Rich List, Atlassian Crash, Seek Horrors, Operation Epic Fury, Biennial Disgrace, Councils Behaving Badly and Adir's Great and Terrible Calls
The guys chat Rich List with private jet expert John Stensholt, Atlassian wealth drop, Seek brothers fortunes diverge, Operation Epic Fury and the real oil price story, and a Sydney Biennial disgrace.
The Contrarians catchup
Adir’s predicted call on Hims & Eucalyptus came good. He said Novo Nordisk would settle rather than burn its biggest distributor. The shares popped, then drifted. Adam’s bear thesis on Hims remains: “There’s a massive overhang. They’ve got convertible notes out of the money, and they’re buying Eucalyptus with stock, which is going to hugely dilute shareholders.”
Adir admits he got electric trucks wrong - he argued they’d never work due to charging times, then Tesla announced the Semi, capable of 800km+ on a charge with sub-30-minute charging to 80%. “I think in two years time we might see a lot of these prime movers driving around American roads.”
Adam’s local councils rant: Bayside Council tore up the Elsternwick Golf Course (a public beginner’s course that Ruslan Kogan famously used to collect golf balls from) and after five years and tens of millions of dollars, it’s still a dirt construction site. “Do they go to the lobotomy ward, pick people from the bottom, and appoint them councillor the next day?”
The guys discuss brand equity in politics, with Adir arguing One Nation is being overestimated. “They’re doing the political equivalent of discounting. It gets people’s attention in the short term but does material damage to your brand. The Liberal Party has lost both flanks - the moderates went Teal, and the right went One Nation.”
Kirkland Ellis, the world’s largest law firm, has smashed $10M profit per partner. Adir: “This is not a good look. The people making the most money are the ones not contributing to productive output. And eventually it’s torches and pitchforks, and we kind of deserve it.”
Sydney Biennale: taxpayer-funded hate
The Sydney Biennale, one of the world’s largest contemporary art events, descended into controversy when headline DJ Haram used her opening night set to declare “long live the resistance, glory to all our martyrs” and attack what she called the “vile Zio-Australian Epstein Empire.” The event received over $3M in federal, state and council grants. Sponsors PWC and Minter Ellison promptly distanced themselves.
Adir: “These fringe events - the Adelaide Writers Festival, now this - keep making their way into the mainstream conversation precisely by being extreme. They’re achieving exactly the objectives the people controlling them have set out to achieve. There’s a strong argument to just ignore this stuff entirely.”
Adir: “I couldn’t care less about the Biennale. The stuff that worries me is when politicians tell lies because they think it’s going to get them votes in Western Sydney. That worries me. This DJ sounds terrible, by the way.”
Operation Epic Fury: Iran strikes
The US and Israel launched coordinated strikes on Iran - killing the Supreme Leader, IRGC commanders, and key regime figures in what is being referred to as Operation Epic Fury. The Ayatollah’s son Mojtaba Khamenei has taken over, though many suspect he is dead or being propped up “Weekend at Bernie’s style,” having made no public appearances. Oil spiked to around $120 a barrel before drifting, as markets price in a relatively swift resolution.
Adir: “We can’t let these people get nuclear weapons because they’ll shoot them. And that will be World War Three. Something had to be done. Even if Iran is only severely weakened, so that this is a problem in 30 years not five, that is worth an oil hike.”
Adam: “Oil in terms of gold price is the cheapest it has ever been, even now. If this was having a dramatic effect, it would be $250 a barrel, not $110. And in real terms, the US Shale Revolution means the world is in a much better position than the last time this kind of escalation happened.”
Adir: “This is a regime that’s been illegitimate since day one. It has killed Westerners for the better part of 50 years. I don’t understand how you could be a Western liberal democracy and not say we’ve got to put an end to this.”
The Rich List: John Stensholt deep dive
Special guest: John Stensholt, editor of The Australian’s Rich 250 and co-author of the upcoming Atlassian biography TechBros (out July).
The Australian’s Rich 250 is out: the biggest annual edition of the paper on a subscription basis. Total wealth on the list fell by $25B, almost entirely due to the Atlassian founders and WiseTech’s Richard White. On Atlassian: Stensholt confirmed what Adam and Adir have long argued, that the culture has fundamentally broken down, with mass unhappiness inside a company that once defined what a great tech workplace looked like.
John Stensholt: “It’s a tale of two decades. The first decade was this incredible growth story - great culture, won every ‘best place to work’ award. Now it’s just not a happy place anymore. And they’ll deny all this, but that’s their stock response.”
Adir: “The founders pivoted from a business so disciplined on profitability to the pin-up for burning other people’s money to grow. And of all the companies imperiled by the rise of AI, Atlassian is probably at the front of the queue in multiple ways. If you’d told me that five years ago, I couldn’t have seen a way for it to occur.”
Seek: a decade of nothing
Embattled Seek CEO Ian Narev came out swinging in the AFR, claiming AI would not disrupt Seek’s 750M data points on candidates and hirers. Seek investors aren’t convinced - the share price has been smashed 50% in six months, back to levels last seen in 2014. The ASX has more than doubled since then. In its latest results, Seek wrote off almost $200M from its disastrous Chinese platform Zhaopin, and grew Australian revenue 14%, but only by charging advertisers 17% more, with volumes actually down 2%.
Adir: “If you’d invested in Seek in 2007, your compound annual return has been zero. Zero. In twenty years. Meanwhile REA is worth $21B, car sales $9B. Seek was always way above carsales. Now carsales are double Seek.”
Adam: “You can only increase prices by 17% until customers say ‘hold on a second.’ There’s a limit to that strategy and they’re getting close to it.”
Five other stories worth following:
Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince predicts bots will surpass human web traffic by 2027, driven by generative AI accessing more sites per query, requiring infrastructure like temporary sandbox environments to manage and isolate automated activity.
TikTok is testing vertical drama content in the US, following China’s success and a $1.4B market, with categories like crime and romance, some AI-generated, currently free unlike competitors that monetise after few initial episodes.
Danielle Boyer created SkoBot, a wearable robot teaching Indigenous languages using ethical AI and community voices, addressing rapid language loss while expanding access to STEM education through low-cost robotics initiatives for Indigenous young youth.
Chinese EV startups Nio, Li Auto, and XPeng have reached profitability, unlike US rivals where Rivian delays targets and Lucid cuts staff, though China’s market outlook remains uncertain amid intensifying competition and shifting demand dynamics.
Elon Musk is increasingly positioning Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI as a converging system, with SpaceX’s growth potentially offsetting Tesla’s slowing car sales, while a merger could strengthen Musk’s control and reshape the combined company’s trajectory.