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Myer kills WFH, and the power swings back to the boss
Myer is moving its corporate team into a new headquarters at 75 Dorcas Street, South Melbourne, in November, alongside staff from Apparel Brands (Just Jeans, Jay Jays, Portmans, Dotti and Jacqui E), which it bought from Premier Investments. The building holds about 1,200 staff and runs on hot desks. The AFR reported that corporate staff have been told to work from the office five days a week, putting Myer at odds with the Victorian Labor government’s proposed law giving eligible workers a right to work from home two days a week.
Adir: “I don’t want to get into a whole discussion about the merits of work from home, but whatever you think about it, you can say this: it only happens when employers feel like employees have the power. And its removal shows that it’s flipped the other way.”
Adir: “What Australia has right now is this strange situation of low quitting, low hiring. Basically, people are not moving. People are not quitting because they’re scared that no one’s going to hire them.” Adam: “It’s a pretty bold person to quit first.”
Adam: “If your job can be done from Frankston, it can be done from Bangalore.”
Adir on his pitch to politicians: “Create some zones in regional Australia. Make it payroll tax exempt if people work from there. All of these big banks don’t want to offshore, so push them into the regions.”
Adir: “I think it will be very unlikely that in a year’s time we’ll see Victorian public servants working from home.”
Netflix: from platform to hit factory, and down 51%
Netflix shares were about 51% below their June 2025 all-time high as of 21 October. In mid-October co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters cut about 1,000 jobs, roughly 6% of staff and the biggest round since 2022. A week later Netflix reported Q3 revenue up 12% to US$12.9B and net income up 44% to US$3.7B, but cut its 2026 advertising revenue forecast to about US$2.7B from US$3B. Antenna data has Netflix with the lowest monthly churn of the major US streamers, at around 2%.
Adir: “What sort of business is Netflix? It was always treated as a tech business. People confused it for a software business for some time. But what it is, is an entertainment business.”
Adir: “It decided to be greedy on returns and it forgot that risk follows returns. It shifted its variable costs of content to a fixed cost and piled tons of money in, and that meant it changed from getting the returns that a platform gets to the returns that a hit-maker gets. The problem with being a hit-maker is that it’s risky. You need hits, and sometimes you have misses.”
Adir: “Because they’re a hits-driven business bolted onto a subscription platform, when they don’t have successes on their hits, the way that shows up is low subscriber growth.”
Adam: “I’m going to disagree with the greedy comment. Netflix went from distributing other people’s products to their own, and I think that was absolutely the right call. They’re maybe not as good a business as everybody thought they were five years ago, but they’re a much better business than had they not done that.”
Netflix was the N in FANG. Now it’s a cash cow in waiting
Netflix stopped reporting subscriber numbers at the start of 2025. Its rivals have reshuffled around it: Paramount Skydance closed its US$81B takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery this month, after Netflix walked away from its own deal for Warner’s studio and streaming business in February, and Disney handed the CEO job from Bob Iger to Josh D’Amaro in March.
Adir: “I don’t really understand what Netflix’s long-term competitive advantage is beyond incumbency. It’s not brand. It’s a switching cost, and the sum total of their switching cost is that it’s a pain in the ass to switch.”
Adam: “It’s not just that. A lot of people will sign up to Peacock or HBO Max to watch one show, or Apple for Ted Lasso, and then cut it. Netflix has enough shows that you go, I’m not going to cancel, because there’s pretty much always something I can watch.”
Adir: “It was Netflix one, daylight, everyone else. I don’t think this is a five-year game, but in ten years it’s not hard for me to see that it goes from largely a monopoly play to an oligopoly play.”
Adir: “When you’re a tech disruptor with massive growth ahead of you, you get priced like tomorrow’s next hot thing. Unless you find the next hot thing, you’ll get priced like a reliable, cash-generating, somewhat growing business on 15 times earnings, not 80 times earnings. There are five businesses in the West that have been able to pull that off, and Netflix is not going to be the sixth.”
Bumble goes for a tenth of its IPO value, and matchmakers are back
Bumble has agreed to be bought by Ithaca Holdings for US$1.3B, or US$6.05 a share, against a valuation of roughly US$14B at its 2021 listing. Ithaca co-founders Ravi Gupta and John Hegeman will become Bumble’s co-CEOs, with founder Whitney Wolfe Herd stepping back from the top job but staying involved. Match Group is worth around US$10B, down more than 70% from its 2021 peak. Melbourne matchmaker Lauren Hunter joins Adam and Adir on why the old-fashioned version is doing better.
Lauren: “I work with high-end clients: celebrities, politicians, people that can’t be seen on dating apps. They hire me and I match them off compatibility. When you work with me, I’m your headhunter. I’m sourcing someone for your love life.”
Lauren: “We don’t go to bars. No one’s drinking. And even if you are standing in a bar, no one’s actually approaching anyone. People have become introverted and isolated after COVID, so it’s really hard to meet people in real life.”
Lauren on the client who arrived with 150 non-negotiables: “That’s a custom search, and that is going to be a billionaire paying me.”
Lauren: “I have parents that see the value in investing in their 20-year-old and not wasting time. Their successful parents are hiring me to say, ‘Lauren, just get the job done. Don’t tell her that I paid you.’”
$25,000 to find a billionaire a partner is too cheap
Hunter says her basic package, a search with her alone for a match in Melbourne or Sydney, costs US$25,000. Billionaires can take a “buyout” of her whole eight-person team for $350,000, which she says is common in Dubai and London but which she doesn’t promote in Australia.
Adam: “If someone’s worth a hundred million bucks and you’re doing the most important thing you can in their life, finding the perfect person for them, that’s worth ten, fifteen million bucks, not twenty-five grand. It feels insanely inexpensive.”
Adir: “I’m not disagreeing on value. But people perceive alternatives, and because the alternatives are largely free and well established, that is one of the challenges with pricing.”
Adir: “Maybe there’s no difference between 25K and 100K to the customer, and maybe 100K sends a signal.”
Adam on Hunter’s moat: “There’s probably a bit of cornered resource in you just knowing all these people, which is unreplicable. And you’ve got a bit of a network in your business: the more people who use you, the more powerful your business becomes.”
