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[music] Join us on the horizon. You're watching TVPN.
4:38
Today's Tuesday, July 21st.
4:40
We are live from the TVPN Ultradome, the temple of technology, [applause] the fortress of finance, the capital of capital.
4:49
>> Let me tell you about ramp. com. Time is money. Save both.
4:50
You use corporate cards, bill pay, accounting, and a whole lot more all in one place. We got a sponsor collab.
5:00
Privy teaming up with RAMP to launch stable coin accounts powered by Privy. Congrats to both teams.
5:05
Uh we also have some other news from RAMP folks coming on the show later this week.
5:10
Very excited to chat with them.
5:12
Anyway, uh China, China, China, China is in the news.
5:17
>> But first, should we go through the lineup? >> Yeah, please take.
5:20
>> We have Ferdinand Deitz from Augustus coming on to RA uh raising $180 million series B [clears throat] at a billion dollar valuation.
5:27
[applause] Kai from Light Phone is launching a $299 Light phone.
5:34
>> They're calling it the dumbest dumb phone.
5:36
It's our dumbest dumb phone ever.
5:38
Actually, it's a slightly less It's a less dumb phone.
5:41
It's a smarter dumb phone.
5:43
It might be the smartest dumb phone. >> We'll see.
5:46
>> And then we got Chris Best from Substack coming on to talk against his war on slop.
5:51
They're partnering with Pangram. He's the best. Excited about that.
5:53
Then Steven Schwarz from live in the Ultradome on launching their new CLI.
5:59
And then the Roofinator, Katie Roof, >> the new editor over at Business Insider. >> We got Katy Roof.
6:05
We got the payw wall set up.
6:07
>> We do have a payw wall.
6:07
We have a payw wall here and the golden scoop.
6:09
Can we get a camera over here? >> There. We got the payw wall.
6:13
We're busting down the payw wall for Katie Roof today >> with the golden scoop. [laughter] >> Scoop.
6:19
>> So keep an eye out for that.
6:19
Uh then we have uh Zane from Division uh Dimension, sorry.
6:25
And then Chad Edwards capping it off with a cool $450 million raise at the end.
6:31
So stay tuned and uh let's get into it. >> Fantastic.
6:34
Well, top American execs are sounding alarms on these models.
6:40
>> Let's give it up for top American. Oh god, there.
6:46
Yeah, let's give it up for the top American AI exacts.
6:48
The White House is divided on how to respond to recent advances in Chinese AI has weighed crackdown measures.
6:54
Uh we we talked about how this was coming. It is interesting.
6:59
There's a there's there's a lot of like you know hurry up and pedal to the metal and then pull back and then ban the American model and then are we going to ban the Chinese model in the similar way?
7:09
Uh and lots of contradictions, lots of insider baseball.
7:14
Everyone's critiquing everyone else.
7:16
Uh lots of interesting takes.
7:16
also just some interesting data about what's actually going on with these models.
7:20
Uh how advanced are they? Where do they come from?
7:24
How cheap are they to make?
7:27
What are the economic impacts in America?
7:28
But the Wall Street Journal has a nice little round up here we can take you through.
7:31
So Silicon Valley and Washington are debating a multi-billion dollar question.
7:36
Should American companies be able to use Chinese artificial artificial intelligence models?
7:42
They certainly have been able to.
7:44
hasn't been a problem for years, but now they're getting stronger.
7:46
Open AI and anthropic executives are sounding the alarm about the rise of cheap AI.
7:50
Uh particularly powerful new models produced in China, suggesting that they will lead to quote a dystopian AI future and present unacceptable security risks without regulation.
8:04
Uh and that is the point of debate.
8:06
Are you on the dis the side of dystopian open source or liberating open source? The George Hans frame.
8:13
Uh some analysis some analysts who study the AI industry say the two companies which are preparing for public listings in the next year they just want to eliminate the competition.
8:21
The emergence of highly capable open autonomous AI systems including Moonshot AI's Kimmy K3 model and Alibaba Alibaba's Quen 3. 8 Max.
8:31
And Alibaba is actually a massive uh investor in Moonshot.
8:37
They have their own anthropic Google over there going on.
8:39
Alibaba is like very much their the the the Google too uh uh in the sense that they they they have a large position there uh which were released in recent days and viewed favorably by investors and users has turned the AI race on its head once again.
8:56
Kimmy K3 was also competitive with US models on some benchmarks.
8:59
Uh the debate over the new models which are quote openweight but not yet.
9:03
They're o they're about to open source them.
9:05
We'll see what happens next week.
9:07
uh allowing users to download and customize them with company data for specific tasks.
9:13
Very very good, very useful.
9:13
Uh coincides with division in the Trump administration about whether to take steps to limit the use of models in the United States.
9:20
Quote, "One probable outcome of an openweight model dominant world is full AI communism, which is precisely what China proposes rather than a market product.
9:30
AI is a public good, which will ultimately be provided by the state as a kind of digital public infrastructure."
9:35
Dean Ball, OpenAI's head of strategic futures said in an ex post Friday, Dean Ball made it to the pages of the Wall Street Journal.
9:41
Now, um the AI communism is just at the model level.
9:46
Like there would still be a bunch of like a lot of people who are long compute, long neoc.
9:50
They say like this is where the value should acrue.
9:53
The data centers will acrue a reasonable margin and they will still continue to make money.
10:01
And so um it's not that this automatically leads to nationalization of compute in any way.
10:06
People would still be paid uh but uh the but the margins might be lower is the is at least the formulation here.
10:14
So B a former Trump administration official called such a scenario a dystopian hellscape and he said he expected the Trump administration to make moves toward reducing the use of open source models.
10:27
Ball later clarified that he wasn't advocating for the United States government to discourage Chinese AI.
10:30
He also highlighted a central challenge with the AI race.
10:34
Top tier AI companies raise billions of dollars to pay for the vast computing resources needed to continue improving AI systems.
10:40
If everyone uses AI systems that people largely don't pay for, there would be no way to finance continued frontier AI development.
10:47
Um Ball, who started at the company earlier this month and focuses on policy and strategy and open AI, have said his comments don't reflect the company's official positions. He's just posting.
10:56
The company has developed its own models, own open models, and chief executive Sam Alman had previously said that open AI's past approach of only developing closed tools was unwise.
11:06
Other top AI executives have warned that open models present huge risk since developers and policy makers lack control over how they are used and modified.
11:14
Lot of risk of cyber attacks, a lot of risk of annoying spam attacks.
11:19
The cyber thing is very concerning and annoying if that really ramps up.
11:23
But the good news is that the closed source models have been available to cyber security firms and a lot of big major companies.
11:32
The finance industry for example has had access to mythos and GPT cyber for almost six months and then just today Google announced a specific model uh flash light cyber I think.
11:40
So they're trying to offer a similar capability but really go down the cost curve because a lot of the cyber tools there was incredible breakthroughs with Mythos GPT cyber like great benchmarks on those uh but could be very expensive.
11:58
We heard uh I think wasn't it Dash Aurora said he I think he spent like a million dollars to find some zeroday bug and it was like totally worth it but that's expensive for smaller companies that might just need uh it would be
12:10
great to just be able to go to a cheap cyber tuned model get approved by Google and say hey just go and read every line of code and just let me know if there's anything that's obvious and uh that could be good what >> yeah and just to be clear they released 3.5 flash light and 3.5 flash cyber so 5 flash light and 3.
12:22
5 flash cyber so it's not like flashlight cyber >> okay But Flash is still cheaper than the big model, right?
12:31
>> There's like the pro and then there's >> and so I have to imagine that if you I given the choice if you're like a midsize company uh and and and you're and your choice is like go beat down the door to get into Project Glass Wing to spend $5 million to have Mythos read every line of code or you're like oh well I'm already a Google partner.
12:48
well I'm already a Google partner. I have a really solid business relationship with them because I've been buying ads and I have Google web master tools set up and I just want to go set up flash cyber not flash light cyber I imagine that the cost would be cheaper because they fine-tuned this model for
13:05
this specific thing since they are benchmaxing or whatever semi analysis called them but that's useful in this case right so anthropic CEO Dario Amade for years has worry warned about the risks of powerful and open AI systems saying in a recent Bloomberg interview that having AI models with advanced cyber security capabilities that are free to download could be harmful. He
13:25
He said it's a serious concern.
13:27
Uh use of Chinese models which are far cheaper than US counterparts is surging at US companies prompting some investors to question the staying power of top model makers such as Anthropic and OpenAI.
13:37
The current US open- source frontier is starting to catch up with China's.
13:42
On Wednesday, Thinking Machines Lab, led by former AI technology chief Mirror Morati, released its f first AI model as openweight.
13:50
Nvidia's Neotron 3 Ultra is starting to see traction.
13:54
That's interesting to hear.
13:55
I haven't heard nearly enough buzz around Neotron.
13:57
I know Jensen has been investing in it.
14:02
He's also investing in a lot of, you know, up and down the stack.
14:06
>> I've been hearing buzz about the name, John.
14:08
>> Neotron's a good name. >> Neotron. >> Very cool name.
14:11
There people are, you know, there's there's some talks bubbling.
14:14
People are saying it's it's it's one of the best names for for a family of models ever.
14:20
>> What comes after Ultra?
14:20
Isn't that what the the Didn't Apple first do that with the the M4 Pro, the M4 Max, the M4 Ultra?
14:28
So, we got to come up with an even better word for what happens after Ultra. Giga, maybe. And then Exa.
14:33
You just keep going down the the uh Terara.
14:40
Although terrorists like land, that's a different one.
14:42
Um, anyway, the market's faith in anthropic and open AI continuing to build more cable models that push the frontier AI frontier has been the at the heart of the boom, helping justify trillions of dollars in spending on infrastructure in the coming years.
14:54
The threat that new players will vastly undercut what they can charge for advanced AI push down some tech and AI company stocks prices last week.
15:00
David Saxs, the venture capitalist and White House AI advisor, suggested that he read Ball's post as a confession to a regulatory capture strategy.
15:10
Saxs and others have long seen calls for AI regulation by companies such as anthropic as efforts to use new laws and policies to styy competitors.
15:18
The weaponization of regulatory uncertainty as a competitive tool should be completely unacceptable, he said.
15:26
Security focused administration officials in the past year have considered a slew of measures to crack down on Chinese AI companies developing open models.
15:32
People familiar with the discussion said they have weighed on uh they've weighed adding the businesses to trade blacklists, security warnings on Chinese AI companies, and a potential executive order targeting open models.
15:45
So, it does seem like even though Tyler Cowan, we were going back and forth with him about this about like can you even ban it?
15:50
You can't really ban anything in the land of the free.
15:53
Like the solution to piracy was not really to ban piracy.
15:59
Like you can still torrent things, but it's just so easy to use Apple TV and Spotify and Netflix that most people just wind up just paying $5, $2 for a song or or $10 a month for something that it effectively killed it just because the product experience was better.
16:17
This morning, uh, our Treasury Secretary, uh, Besson was on Fox and said, "This administration supports open source models, but what we do not support is IP theft.
16:31
>> If we see, especially that overseas models are stealing from our great companies, we have the ability to sanction them because of this theft."
16:36
So it will be if the admin does take serious action here.
16:45
Uh I would expect that to be the line of reasoning where they could just sanction the companies behind these models >> which I imagine would prevent >> it would create a real opportunity for American open source.
16:59
But uh you would you would ultimately see uh a lot of these you know neoclouds unable I imagine to uh serve the you know traditional [clears throat] Chinese open source models.
17:14
I imagine that even open router would probably have to >> yeah maybe >> uh stop supporting that.
17:20
>> But again with an open source model like how do you even define it?
17:24
Because if there's a research paper and then you go and implement that and you train it or you take it, you fine-tune it or you use the data to bootstrap your own model like just like where where in the supply chain how many steps away do you need to be to like not count on there?
17:38
You imagine I mean didn't perplexity do like a 1776 deepseek very quickly. They did a fine tune.
17:45
I think you did a fine tune on DeepSeek as well. >> Wow. >> Yeah.
17:49
It was like using sparse autoenccoders. Okay. I did it first.
17:51
So, but but and and what what nationality was the model that you used as the base?
17:58
>> Well, it was Deep Sea. IT WAS CHINESE. >> WOW. CONFESSION. Uh you can go now.
18:03
>> Um yeah, people are are already angry at at at Besson's comments uh in our in our saying.
18:10
Funny that he's not mentioning uh that yesterday US judge approved Anthropic's $1.
18:15
5 billion dollar copyright lawsuit settlement for I don't think they they I think they settled that they were in possession of books that had been torrented or or um basically acquired unlawfully.
18:29
Yeah, >> I don't believe that acquired unlawfully.
18:33
Sounds like they stole the books.
18:35
I think they bought the books. >> No, no, no, no, no.
18:36
I think this was no they they separately they bought a bunch of books trained on them and destroyed them >> and that just made people upset because no one the idea of books being destroyed of course.
18:48
>> Um I think those were rare like rare rare books.
18:51
>> The Wilmanitis collection was destroyed. >> Rare PDFs.
18:56
>> Um no but I but I believe so.
18:56
Judge William Alup of the US District Court for the Northern District of California issued a preliminary approval of the settlement last year after ruling that Enthropic had illegally downloaded and stored millions of copyrighted books.
19:12
Um, and the settlement was signed off on by a different judge yesterday.
19:14
Uh, the payout will deliver $3,000 per work across an estimated 500,000 works shared among the authors and publishers who hold rights to them. >> Mhm.
19:26
Um, >> I have more here, but first I'm going to tell you about Figma. Agents, meet the canvas.
19:31
Your AI agents can now create and modify your Figma files with design system context.
19:35
So, uh, Nick Carter, uh, who we love, former guest of the show, uh, he says, I haven't seen one person from OpenAI or Anthropic address John's argument here.
19:44
Quote, the point is simple.
19:45
The US government does not owe either of the large labs a business model. I think that's accurate. That's true.
19:51
The US government doesn't owe any company a business model. It's a free market. It's a free country.
19:55
Uh if the economics of selling tokens don't work due to distillation, cheap clones, Chinese AI magic, the American enterprise and consumer will be aokay. That is also true.
20:05
The American consumer and enterprise will be okay.
20:08
Uh flooding the market, dumping all this stuff is is great for consumers.
20:12
It's great for enterprises.
20:14
Cheaper products are great.
20:16
The the question is is the US government actually does kind of owe the the like the reason you pay taxes that actually does pay for the FBI who go and find spies.
20:29
And so if the allegation which has been sort of toyed around with some of the lab leaders at some conferences like off the record and then it's like made it to the record.
20:38
made it to the record. I don't exactly know where the allegations stand at this point, but if the allegation is look, there's a spy here who's stealing code and exporting it to another country or even the distillation which is in violation of terms of service and you
20:56
and it's a geopolitical debate because it's an international company, it's like that's the reason why you pay taxes to pay the government to actually help fight on your behalf because you if it's if it's if it's open AI stealing from anthropic or vice versa. They'll just
21:09
They'll just walk across the street and serve them papers and be like, "We're suing each other."
21:13
This is what happened with Apple and and Open AI.
21:14
Like they're going to solve that in the court of law, which is of course paid for by the US taxpayers as well.
21:20
That judge who oversees that and decides that case will be paid for by US taxpayers.
21:24
That is an amenity of the US government.
21:27
And a similar amenity is when you when someone is violating your terms of service or actively stealing from you, uh you actually can engage the US government.
21:37
So, I I agree that the US government doesn't owe anyone a business model, but the US government does sort of owe the ability to chase down something if it is truly illegal and there's no other recourse like just, hey, we're turning off your account because you're not uh you're not abiding by uh terms of service.
21:56
Um, but the rest of the point is is good and the knock-on effects are are good.
22:00
He he understands the the the value to the American consumer of of cheap goods.
22:04
he understands the value to the neoclouds and and other token factories. All of this is fine.
22:11
Um, but I just thought that that was that that that there is a line there that some people on the inside have been stronger about.
22:17
There's been a lot of debate on like is this distilled?
22:22
Is it going to say it's clawed or chat GBT?
22:24
And you know, it goes back and forth.
22:26
There's a bunch of examples.
22:27
It's always hard to chase down, but that's why we have like a real process to hunt that down.
22:31
Uh anyway, there was some news about like whether or not uh Kimmy K3 is distilled.
22:35
Tyler, can you take us through this Lissan Algib post because I want to know what this chart means because it seems important to this discussion. >> Yeah.
22:48
So, he he didn't actually make this chart.
22:49
It was from someone else.
22:50
But basically, this shows a bunch of models compared to another and it's like the kind of uh semantic similarities between them.
22:55
So it's like if you use similar kind of diction or phrases, stuff like this, >> um you just like pump the models a bunch of times and and you kind of can tell what's similar to each other.
23:04
And you can see >> uh in this version it looks like like Kimiki 3 is is very similar to Fable 5.
23:11
>> Fable 5 and then also Opus 4. 7, Opus 4. 8, and Sonnet 5.
23:14
So they might have gotten tokens from like all four of those models sort of mixed.
23:19
>> Also, I think this exact example like I I think only like a few prompts were used.
23:24
It's not like super involved.
23:24
It's also like this is very much just like correlation.
23:28
This this is not like proving that they still learn anything.
23:31
They could have just used like similar, you know, post-training techniques or something like this. >> Totally. But notably, uh GPD 5. 4, 5. 5, 5.
23:40
6 share very little similarity to the anthropic models and vice versa.
23:44
The anthropic models don't seem to be correlated with the OpenAI models.
23:52
Although the OpenAI models are correlated with the with with each other. So, uh 5.
23:56
6 Luna looks pretty correlated with 5.
23:59
4 because they probably were like, well, we're building on the shoulders of the work that we've been done.
24:05
And and it's the same thing with anthropic where Fable has some of the same flavor as an Opus or a Haiku. And that makes sense.
24:13
>> That makes sense because people have like been saying, "Oh, maybe those models were actually distilled from the the big like mythos pre-train, right?" >> Yeah.
24:19
or or vice versa or vice versa.
24:22
You have a bunch of users that are doing rollouts on Opus trying to vibe code different things and you take all that training data and then you feed that into Fable and Fable sort of like picks up on a lot of that because that's what the the the user said, "Wow, you really did a great job on this opus and or you did really poorly."
24:40
It pulls that out, but it's still learning the the the textual similarity.
24:43
Well, people will uh go back and forth on this and uh and debate the level of distillation and also what the punishment for distillation should be.
24:53
Should it just be a slap on the wrist or should it be something bigger?
24:57
Um it's obviously >> Yeah.
24:59
So, Bill Gurley's uh chiming in on on Besson's comments.
25:01
He says, "If there has been theft that suggests a crime has been committed, but I'm unaware of any lawsuits being filed.
25:08
No company should be allowed to declare infringement without education.
25:12
I'm not convinced a course a court would call using a product as it's designed theft.
25:17
There is a reason this is being lobbied in DC instead of the normal court systems.
25:22
The only thing I would say here is like distillation against against the terms of service. Yeah.
25:30
>> And I think that suing Chinese companies Yeah.
25:34
>> it would be a complete and total waste of time.
25:37
Ask anyone who's built a product that's been knocked. >> I disagree. Incredible.
25:40
>> I disagree. Incredible. or a farm if you if you personally serve uh Cin Ping the next time he's in San Francisco uh meeting with a you know a world leader you show up you have been served >> you show up to the UN >> serve [laughter] the world leader
26:01
there's something about that that's you know extremely bold [laughter] >> but no I agree with you uh very difficult I don't even know if you went to your law firm and you said like hey we want to sue this Chinese company like how they would trace that down. Also, uh
26:14
Also, uh deeply ironic and deeply unsympathetic suit, right?
26:19
Because uh the the general populace feels like AI is all theft and it's all been stolen from the the the public commons or the public internet.
26:29
It's like distilled on the internet.
26:29
We all did all these we all made all these websites and now they all have been distilled into this into these like frontier models.
26:36
And then you're saying, "Oh, well like the distillation stops at the Frontier Lab."
26:40
So, uh, not going to have a lot of sympathetic viewers.
26:44
>> Someone responded to Bill's, uh, post with a with a similar point to the one I made and said the reason, uh, there hasn't been any lawsuits, is that a trial would take years, assuming you can get a Chinese company to participate and the game will be over by then, China steals IP, this is obvious, you don't find many, many instances of US companies suing Chinese companies in US courts.
27:07
Bill Gurley fires back with a screenshot from Chad GBT saying here are 10 clear examples.
27:14
>> The first [laughter] the first five were filed in US courts. >> Okay.
27:19
>> You have Motorola Solutions. >> Okay.
27:21
>> Uh was a US plaintiff with a Chinese defendant of Hitera Communications.
27:24
This was Chicago federal court in 2017.
27:30
T-Mobile came after Huawei federal court in Seattle.
27:32
2014 Huawei employees copied and took parts of from Cappy.
27:38
It's phone testing robot. >> Cisco sued Huawei.
27:41
Let's give it up for Cisco.
27:44
>> Let me actually let me actually [applause] tell you.
27:46
>> Cisco accused Huawei of copying >> Cisco is critical infrastructure for the AI era.
27:49
Unlock seamless real-time experience of new value at Cisco. >> Continue.
27:54
>> Cisco accused Huawei of copying router source code, command line interfaces, manuals, and patented networking technology.
28:00
>> That's what I'm talking about.
28:00
Uh, Textron Innovations, the correct use of the US government.
28:05
>> DJI in federal court in Waco, Texas, home to a fantastic wave pool.
28:08
Textron [laughter] alleged alleged DJI drones infringed patents covering flight control and tracking technology.
28:17
>> Uh, and there's a bunch of other examples. >> Yeah.
28:21
>> Um, ASMC, AMC, the American >> Superconductor Company.
28:27
He's one shot by Chinese American >> Savel Wind Group. >> Okay.
28:33
>> Anyways, >> you want to give us >> lots going on here.
28:36
>> Uh, two of our former guests are are chirping at each other on the timeline.
28:41
Uh, we talked to Jim Kramer at the New York Stock Exchange.
28:43
Want to change the world?
28:45
Raise capital at the New York Stock Exchange.
28:47
Uh, we interviewed Jim Kramer at the New York Stock Exchange. Great time.
28:52
Uh, he's going back and forth with George Hotz, another former guest of the show.
28:55
[laughter] Uh Jim Kramer says, "We must not let our companies use these Chinese models to save a few bucks.
29:02
Open AI and anthropic are correct.
29:04
This is vital national security.
29:07
Please break please read Bing West's just released catch five.
29:09
I respect the Chinese people greatly, but these companies are run by the PLA for heaven's sakes."
29:15
George Hotspire's back under the tiny grad handle.
29:18
He says, "Is this a joke?
29:20
I'd be happy to use anthropic if they put their weights on hugging face like the Chinese.
29:23
American tech companies are rent extraction machines that have lost the plot.
29:27
No point continuing to defend them.
29:29
They need to change if they want to win people back. 474 likes on that.
29:36
The open source community is coming out strong.
29:38
Anyway, um the >> meanwhile, >> China is also thinking about export controls >> in the Financial Times. >> Okay.
29:46
>> Okay. Uh apparently Alibaba bite dance and keep going back and forth >> uh on li uh m what ministry is this the ministry of communic communications don't know >> m o m of comm >> uh help me out there Tyler >> Moffcom >> Moffcom uh talk to AI companies
30:09
including Alibaba bite dance and zipu on limiting the transfer of key data for the training of their models overseas as well as allowing their model weights to be download >> Ministry of Commerce, probably their Department of Commerce. >> That seems more like it. China would
30:19
>> That seems more like it.
30:19
China would still let overseas customers access the models and services, but sounds like they are >> leaning towards uh not making the weights open.
30:30
We're going to we're going to see with the new Kimmy K3 if they actually release the weights next week.
30:36
Dean Ball says, "Wow, two days in a row where things I said are likely to happen seem likelier to happen from two adversarial countries.
30:42
Almost as though my analysis was right and as though >> people should not have deliberately misinterpreted misinterpreted me as of making prescriptions. Huh.
30:53
>> Dean Ball victory laugh.
30:56
>> You got to take a victory laugh for Dean Ball. >> He called it.
30:58
No, he I mean he was saying like I I don't necessarily agree with this but just from his experience this is how things might play out.
31:03
Uh and people were very upset with him about chat says Ministry of Commerce, People's Republic.
31:11
Yeah, it's their department of commerce.
31:14
>> That would go hard on a business card. >> It would.
31:17
>> Um, >> anyway, you're trying to make a new business card, fire up Codeex, design it there, have it printed, have have Codeex do everything for you.
31:23
Fantastic at creating custom things and then running them off to special printers.
31:28
Codex, of course, is a powerful workspace for getting work done with AI agents.
31:32
Whether you're writing code, analyzing data, creating content, or automating business workflows, Codex helps you move projects forward from start to finish.
31:40
The great slop wars >> slop wars >> continue.
31:43
Let's pull up this video from Substack. >> Substack.
31:46
We got Chris Bass coming on at 12:15. Uh it's just an image.
31:51
>> They say, "Today, Substack is launching an AI detection feature via an integration with Panggram.
31:54
Going forward, you'll be able to scan posts, replies, and comments on the Substack app to see an estimate of how much of it was written by a human or with AI assistance.
32:03
We care about this at Substack because it gets to the core of our mission to build an economic engine for culture.
32:10
>> This is going to be bad for Tyler since he's mastered the ability to write exactly like an AI. What was that sentence?
32:17
Sentence you wrote by hand that was like according to studies you're absolutely right and you just threw in every possible uh AISM and uh and got flagged 100% by Pangram. No.
32:29
Uh I think people will enjoy this.
32:31
the the revealed preference is probably that people don't care if it's good and they enjoy the the content.
32:39
But uh we'll we'll we'll go back and forth and debate it with Chris Best today and see where all of that is going.
32:46
Uh he wrote a post against clawed fishing.
32:48
Uh he doesn't want people to be disingenuous about their process.
32:54
Now, do you think that uh Substack writers should admit when they hire essentially ghost writers?
33:05
>> Uh probably >> because sometimes you start a brand under a name.
33:09
Like not every post on bloomberg.
33:15
com is from Michael Bloomberg.
33:18
In fact, none of them are.
33:21
They're all from other people.
33:21
But they disclose this is from, you know, some writer.
33:27
This is from Joe Wisenthal, right?
33:29
Um, but some new influencer brands have grown.
33:33
Even in the pre-AI era, I had a writer on my team when I was doing YouTube videos where I would write something, he would do a draft, we'd sort of go back and forth.
33:42
I'd put them in the credits.
33:43
Um, but I wouldn't like kick it off with like, "Hey, just so you know, >> in the chat says book authors don't." That is certainly true. >> That's 100% true.
33:50
Uh some book authors will put like this is written by this person and this person.
33:55
It depends on like the aura of the ghost writer.
33:57
Some ghost writers actually do get credits in the book.
34:01
But yes, most book authors like Tom Clancy I think passed away and is still producing books.
34:05
There's a number of writers where their their individual brand grew so big that they can you can have like a new business. Yeah.
34:13
They become their own brand.
34:13
And so >> yeah, I would I would imagine that 30% of the books in like an airport bookstore are just 100% ghostritten and probably >> yeah, >> don't disclose it.
34:25
>> I think I I I do think it should be it should be possible to get to the the the the truth if you hunt hard enough, but I don't necessarily need you to put it front and center.
34:37
So, let's say that the next Tom Clansancy book, they hire someone who's effectively a prompt engineer and they're writing it using AI.
34:47
I would like to be able to, you know, look in the back of the book and see a paragraph that discloses that, but it doesn't need to be on the cover.
34:55
On the cover, it can just say Tom Clansancy. >> Yeah.
34:58
For a sub for a Substack author. >> Yeah.
35:01
>> Or creator, >> just put it somewhere. Yeah.
35:03
that you have a team of people that help you create >> your work.
35:09
>> Well, Dave Edgars took to the uh Financial Times saying that no one is going to read AI books.
35:14
He's of course the author of The Circle.
35:16
He's an American writer, editor, publisher.
35:19
Uh a heartbreaking work of staggering genius is his 2000 memoir bestseller.
35:23
Final for finalist for the Puliter Prize.
35:27
Uh he says gullible and ridiculous.
35:29
No one will read AI novels.
35:32
Uh, I think people are already reading AI novels, so he maybe he means like no one who's cool or no one who he likes or something.
35:40
Uh, let's read through a little bit of this Financial Times article.
35:43
Dave Edgars offers a hand so I can clamor aboard his 23 foot sailboat mored in the shadow of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge.
35:52
It's a grand setting with few frills.
35:54
As we sit on the stern, a meter apart, fuel cans and fishing nets at our feet.
35:59
There is no one around to disturb our conversation.
36:02
The nearest toilets are portaloos, a short bike ride away.
36:05
The birthing fees are negligible, making it one of the cheapest places to live in uber wealthy Silicon Valley.
36:11
I hadn't thought of that sailboat.
36:13
If you're at a tech company, this has got to be the next big lockin trend.
36:20
>> Antonio Garcia Martinez did this.
36:20
I've got in his book, [clears throat] Chaos Monkeys.
36:23
I'm not I won't be satisfied until I see larpers posting images on Twitter being like, "Hey, I just moved to San Francisco.
36:30
I'm building the next one person $25 billion."
36:34
>> I'm finding a housebo in San Rafale. >> Yeah. How much >> for $1,000?
36:41
Uh it it actually works out to $1,483 a month apparently if you finance it through Boat Trader. >> Goodbye.
36:48
>> It's only about $200,000 to live in a 2022 houseboat. 2022.
36:51
That's a brand new house boat. >> Yeah.
36:55
So, you have to think about the Yeah.
36:56
the slip fees, but you could easily come in, have your own house on the water.
37:02
>> The average the average one-bedroom rent in San Francisco is like two grand, three grand right now. >> Yeah.
37:06
You could have a whole house and a boat. >> And a boat.
37:08
[laughter] >> It's amazing. This is the hack.
37:09
If you get a job in tech and you're printing, making six figures, >> Wow.
37:16
>> move into a house boat. >> Let's pull this up.
37:19
>> Wait, is this an option in LA?
37:19
Should members of the team be doing this?
37:22
Should we Should we recommend this to >> Look at this brand almost brand new 2024 La Mer Modern 11. It's a 36 ft house boat. We have a video here.
37:34
>> Well, Dave Edgar says they call it a $10 dock with a million dollar view. >> Look at this, John. This >> Yeah.
37:42
>> Couple thousand bucks a month.
37:44
>> This is where the next great startup will be born for sure. >> Garages are out.
37:50
And also like, oh, take your shoes off.
37:51
It's nor it's natural to take your shoes off when you're on a boat, you know, right? Must got boat shoes.
37:54
Wear boat shoes to >> the La Mer Modern 11 offers reliable performance and strong power with two Yamaha 25 high thrust engines providing a total of 50 horsepower.
38:03
It's two cabins and one head ensure overnight comfort for extended stays.
38:07
How about year-long stays?
38:10
How about a decade long stay?
38:13
The boat's design includes an upper deck terrace with flexit teak flooring, enhancing its appeal for relaxation and entertainment and might I say locking in standard features such as air conditioning.
38:24
We have air conditioning on our house boats. >> Mhm.
38:28
>> Uh with reverse cycle heat, heated floors, LED lighting. >> Heated floors. >> LED lighting. >> Yeah.
38:35
>> The inclusion of foam filled composite floats and galvanized steel subframe ensures durability and stability.
38:40
Did we just solve the housing crisis?
38:42
Send this to Sager and Jetty immediately. This is seasteading. This is the teal thesis.
38:49
[laughter] >> Everyone living in houseboats just more >> boattrader.
38:52
com is saying that this is amazing >> modern housebo would come out to just $2,259 with only $52,000 down.
38:59
I promise that we have no financial relationship with boatrader. com. Yeah.
39:06
Even though I'm making a pretty strong pitch here >> yet. [laughter] >> I love it. >> Uh I'm tempted.
39:13
Maybe we should I mean you can I'm finding another a 2021 for only >> 99 now >> only. Yeah. Only $100,000.
39:22
This comes out to $738 a month. >> That is cheap. That is cheap.
39:30
>> Giving house boats away.
39:30
John, >> when I moved to San Francisco, we live in the tenderland.
39:34
Three people >> and it was 1,500 a month.
39:36
How many people do you think you could sleep in there?
39:39
Given that one of us slept in a closet and the other one slept in the living room, so there was only it was a onebedroom technically.
39:46
We had three three dudes in a onebedroom. 1,500 a month.
39:47
So it's equivalent to $500 a month.
39:49
Do you think you can fit two people in there in a $700 a month housebo? >> Oh, for sure. Yeah.
39:55
So we're finding the team is finding slip fees around LA for 700 bucks a month.
40:00
You get a >> Everyone's got to be houseboat maxing. Imagine just bombing.
40:06
>> You can get this house boat for only $600 a month.
40:09
>> This is This is elite. This is the future.
40:10
We must We must return to the ocean. Return to the sea.
40:13
Uh [laughter] anyway, Dave Edgars thinks no one's going to read AI books. We can move on.
40:20
Uh TLDDR, we got distracted. Sorry.
40:20
But congratulations on the sick house boat. It sounds amazing.
40:25
The the the article is actually funny.
40:27
It goes into a whole thing how he uh he was like chirping with Sam Alman goes to >> Welcome to the houseboat.
40:33
The business of buoyancy, >> the president of propellers. I love it. That's right.
40:38
The presidency of propellers.
40:39
Um, should you recline your airplane seat? What do you think?
40:41
People are going back and forth on this.
40:48
>> Brandon Duck says, "I don't remember subscribing to this channel, but I've been listening for 10 minutes. I'm having a good time." >> Welcome.
40:54
>> Last name Ducks comes on just for the [laughter] >> Yeah, make it make sense. >> Make it make sense. >> Make it make sense.
40:59
It's just like I just happen to be here for the duck section of the of the show.
41:04
>> Andrew says, "I'm going to need a double wide houseboat." Lol.
41:06
Bootlegging distilled anthropic models on the housebo. >> There we go.
41:11
[laughter] >> Living the dream. >> This is crazy. >> Okay. So, should you reply?
41:16
Should you recline your airplane seat?
41:18
Uh there's a central investigating the central dilemma of our time.
41:23
Joshua Rothman in the New Yorker wrote a uh a piece. Imagine this scenario.
41:28
After a long drive to the airport, you've just taken off for a 15- hour flight. Where are you going? 15 hours is so long.
41:34
How long was the flight to Austria from LA?
41:38
>> I think it's like 12 hours.
41:40
>> So, you're going >> I think you're going to the Middle East.
41:41
>> You're going to the Middle East, maybe. Okay.
41:43
Uh you're in coach and a family of three is sitting behind you.
41:45
A man, a woman, and a toddler.
41:47
They seem nice, but as the flight continues, the kiddo grows restless.
41:50
He kicks your seat and pokes her toys into your shoulder.
41:52
Stop that, you hear the father say.
41:55
The toddler incredibly quiets down. The cabin lights dim. It's time to sleep.
42:00
Yet, just as rest closes in, you sense motion.
42:03
The seat in front of you is reclining.
42:05
You watch as it comes all the way back.
42:08
Now, you feel cramped with someone else's seat in your face.
42:10
You also notice some stiffness in your shoulders.
42:13
Your fingers caress your own recline button.
42:15
Surely the reclined upon are entitled to recline.
42:17
Just as you start to lean back, you hear a clearing throat.
42:21
You turn around to see the dad who fixes you with his gaze. Excuse me, he says.
42:25
Would you mind keeping your seat up? I think it's game on.
42:27
They put the button there.
42:29
They would just take it away.
42:32
>> I've always expected everyone to just recline. >> Everyone recines.
42:35
Everyone has the same amount of space.
42:37
It's the conservation of space.
42:38
And >> it's really hard to make the argument that the the vertical seat is more comfortable than the recline seat. >> Exactly.
42:45
>> So, I think everyone commit to comfort.
42:47
>> Everyone commits to comfort.
42:48
>> And then the chat is sharing the real alpha.
42:49
Stand up immediately when [laughter] the flight lands.
42:53
Have you seen those Meta Rayban videos where people sprint to the front? It's so rude.
42:57
The guy is like like, you know, [laughter] he's like as soon as he goes beep, he just bolts and passes everybody and gets to the front. Very rude.
43:05
I don't think you should do that.
43:07
>> This is antisocial behavior.
43:07
I don't think you should recline your seat. >> How is it antisocial?
43:12
>> Because you're infringing on some.
43:12
Just because you can do it doesn't mean you should.
43:15
>> But they put the button there. Horrible take.
43:17
They're >> horrible take that.
43:20
>> That's like don't use the bathroom on the on the plane. entire my entire life.
43:25
My entire life, even as a child, I was looking up waiting for for you know the the seat belt sign to to you know to be up in the air. Seat belt signs off. You recline your seat. Everyone recines seat. All good. >> Yeah.
43:37
Uh what what about what about ordering a Diet Coke on a plane?
43:39
If I'm sitting next to you, will you order a Diet Coke or is that antisocial behavior?
43:44
Because there's a percentage chance that you will spill that Diet Coke on me, thereby inconveniencing me. the most pro.
43:50
If you really care about me, you should not order anything.
43:52
You shouldn't eat anything.
43:55
You shouldn't drink anything.
43:57
You should sit there in your unrelined seat, perfectly upright, silent. Don't make up.
44:04
>> That's completely different. >> Okay.
44:05
What's your stance on JBL in the airplane? >> Little JBL, you know.
44:10
>> I I I do think I do think that could be the next the next trend.
44:13
The big question is, are you bringing on your, you know, smart portable, you know, speaker maybe from a from a from an open AI, are you bringing that on the plane and talking to it the whole time?
44:26
You know, is that offensive?
44:30
>> I think that's deeply offensive.
44:31
>> Have you seen when like a a band is traveling and they start playing on the plane?
44:35
>> Have you seen these videos? >> No.
44:37
>> That sounds cool, though. >> I'll send you one. Yeah, >> send me down.
44:39
>> That would make me jump.
44:39
So, this all started because uh in 2014, 538, we got to have him on the show.
44:44
Um uh Nate, obviously, uh 538 asked around a thousand flyers what they thought about reclining their seats.
44:53
41% of them said that reclining was rude, so they lost. It's not rude. >> It's over.
45:00
>> Uh 59% said it's fine, I guess, if it was just binary.
45:03
Uh that number seems to have risen, though.
45:05
In 2020, Eric Jones, a math professor who writes about travel statistics on the website the vacationer, conducted a similar survey and found that 77% of respondents objected to reclining. Wow. Sheep. Shele over here. We got sheep. >> How about this?
45:20
I think you should be able to recline if you're like dressed nicely.
45:23
If you're wearing sweatpants, then you don't get to.
45:26
>> You don't get to recline.
45:29
>> Should kids be able to kick the front the seat in front of them as much as they want?
45:32
See, that's something I will I will totally put up with.
45:34
I'm totally fine getting kicked in the back by a kid because it's so brutal as a parent, as a kid to be on a plane.
45:41
They're locked up in the plane. That's miserable.
45:42
And just just tough it up. You You're reclined.
45:48
You have multiple inches of padding.
45:51
Unless you got Ronaldo back.
45:51
Order that hot pizza pocket.
45:55
[laughter] Live life in the permanent underclass. Live a little. For God's sake. >> Yeah.
46:00
Uh, let's pull up this video.
46:00
And >> what video we had now? >> All right. >> Oh, this is so good. I love this.
46:09
>> Like, this is so antisocial behavior.
46:12
This is so breaking the social contract, but it's also just such an elite performance that you got to respect it a little bit.
46:19
This is a cra that getting around that woman is crazy crazy work. I can't believe this.
46:28
I might I if I'm really in a hurry, I might go one seat forward like sort if I'm on the aisle, I might sort of like make sure I get the first position, pole position. I think that's fair.
46:41
>> Chat wants to know if if if the plane is in freef fall, [laughter] would you recline a little on the way down?
46:50
>> Engine engine failure.
46:52
>> I think Yeah, that's fine. I think that's fine. >> Okay. Okay. Okay.
46:54
So, you would you would be rude to your neighbors in that in in in this sort of stressful, you know, potentially uh terrible life-threatening moment.
47:04
You wouldn't mind being rude to your neighbors.
47:07
>> In my final moments, that's when you would choose to disrespect me, Tyler.
47:11
>> Not when I'm living life, having a diet coke, enjoying myself. You're fine then.
47:16
But when it when I'm at my last breath, that's when you decide to add insult to future injury. >> Yeah. >> Weird. >> Wow.
47:23
>> I don't I don't get it. Make it make sense. >> Wow. >> Make it make sense. Uh Coca-Cola rebrand.
47:28
We got to talk about the Coca-Cola rebrand.
47:29
There's a bunch of things.
47:31
Ah, there's so much good news today.
47:33
Uh Coca-Cola rebranded and uh there's a video of this and people are saying it looks like a tobacco brand.
47:39
I want your brand review.
47:41
Uh Coca-Cola unveiled a new global brand identity.
47:44
Uh it's not technically the Marboro font.
47:50
>> Flights crashing in 5 minutes.
47:50
Can you recline your seat back, please? [laughter] Ridiculous.
47:59
[laughter] Pull up the video of the uh Coca-Cola rebrand.
48:03
I want Jord's brand review. There we go.
48:06
The most recognized brand. This is huge for me.
48:17
>> [music] >> Wow, they did it. >> They did it. >> They finally did it.
48:29
Serifs border radius zero, [music] sharp edges, full bleed.
48:32
It's right to the edges and people were expecting it to look extremely boring.
48:40
Sans serif, sort of an apple ripoff.
48:42
We can pull up this post from Fabriio Rinaldi about what he was expecting to show sort of where things have been going in rebrands, high fashion.
48:53
Uh let's pull up Fabriio's uh rendition of the Coca-Cola rebrand.
48:59
Wasn't this something that you would expect?
49:01
But instead, we got something much >> minimalism is out for a while.
49:07
Maximalism started ripping early last year off a small base, but it's coming back.
49:12
It does sort of look like Marorrow.
49:14
People say it's not technically the Marboro font.
49:15
Uh it's not the Marorrow font.
49:18
It looks a little bit different, but um >> but it's pretty close.
49:22
>> But also, I mean, incredible alpha in the fact that Marorrow effectively hasn't been able to advertise in 30 years.
49:29
Like, it's a storyried brand.
49:31
They clearly put an incredible amount of effort into developing the brand, but it's vague enough that even a big brand like Coca-Cola can sort of rip it off and be in [snorts] the clear. like besides a few. Yeah. Yeah.
49:40
The the >> fridge sigs for the win.
49:44
A lot of people are Yeah.
49:46
saying they're leaning into the the fridge cigarette concept. >> Yes. Um very smart. >> Okay. Other other movie news. Point Break. Have you seen it? No.
49:54
But you will be able to see it because it's being restored in 4K and it's being re-released in theaters this summer for its 35th anniversary. Highly recommend it. Kiana Reeves. Fantastic movie. Patrick Sees.
50:08
It's such a good movie about a bunch of bank robbers who are also extreme athletes. It's super sick. You'd love it.
50:14
Uh maybe that's the next movie you see.
50:16
Uh maybe we can make it happen even this year.
50:18
Uh there's another story about restoods from the factory.
50:22
Companies are going back and offering the actual manufacturer.
50:26
Do you want to just describe for everyone what is a restood and then what are the critiques of it?
50:32
Like take [clears throat] me through uh the TJ Parker critique of the Restood.
50:35
We've talked to him about it.
50:38
What is when someone says restood, what are we talking about here? >> Uh, okay.
50:42
So, restoods can look like a lot of things.
50:46
there's like a range, but uh at the most basic level, you're taking a classic car >> and you're trying to >> uh not necessarily make it feel like it is a product that was made in the year 2026, but you're trying to make it at least feel Sometimes they do that, but you're trying to make it at least feel like it's >> fresh off of the dealer lot.
51:10
>> So, I'm restoring it, but I'm also modifying it a little a little bit. >> Uh yeah.
51:15
Well, well, there's range.
51:15
So, there's some there's some resto mods that are just they're restoring it >> to to a new condition even though it's an older vehicle.
51:25
>> And when you say you are restoring it, typically this is individuals who want this car.
51:30
They go to another company that is not the maker of that car.
51:33
And then they say, "I would like to purchase uh a Porsche 911 resto mod and it's from 2003, but it drives everything's been restored.
51:45
There's been some modifications.
51:47
Maybe it has CarPlay, heated seats, maybe they've they've updated little things here and there, tweaked the exhaust. So, it's not original.
51:53
It's not fully just purely restored."
51:55
But what's happening now?
51:57
Because that's been independent business, sort of unauthorized. What's happening now?
52:01
>> Yeah, there's a there's a huge there's a huge spectrum to it.
52:03
So, so some might just be making the interior a lot nicer, uh, up, you know, basically restoring the engine, uh, updating the the transmission, things like that, all the way through like adding features and functionality like CarPlay, all the way through sometimes like redesigning the entire interior to make it almost a new car.
52:23
There's some restood companies that will just partner with the best automotive designers in the world to just fully redesign the car.
52:30
And they're basically just keeping like they're keeping uh keeping everything is being turned over to some degree except the fact that >> uh from a regulatory standpoint, it's still the original car, right?
52:43
And so that helps you uh that helps it make it easier for restood company >> to like make a new car because they're they don't have to go through all the >> that's what that's what Tyler has.
52:54
He has a 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee Resto Mod. It is beautiful. It it's amazing.
53:01
Everything about that car is fantastic.
53:03
That's why it's so popular.
53:03
It's it's taste it's it's be it aura.
53:05
So, Singer, Singer is, you know, one of the most prominent companies in this uh category, but they become so popular that uh manufacturers are saying, "Hey, we want in on the action."
53:18
>> Who wants in on the action?
53:20
>> And so, uh the newest player, Range Rover, >> Range Rover, >> let's pull up this video if we can.
53:25
>> And classic Range Rovers are having a huge moment.
53:27
There's a piece in the journal about it. Look at this.
53:33
And people have been clamoring for the analog feel.
53:35
People have gotten sick of the endless buttons.
53:38
And this is a way to go back to a 1993 Range Rover classic, >> uh, but have it drive as reliably as a brand new car.
53:50
>> I'm super excited about this.
53:50
My number one pet peeve with uh Restoods historically is they take this beautiful classic car and then they fix it up and then they put their logo on it. >> Oh yeah.
54:04
>> And and I like like I I saw I saw a vintage Bronco >> that had uh that just like somebody applied this sort of um logo to it in the end that just said vintage.
54:18
>> [laughter] >> It's like I don't need you to tell me that this vintage car is vintage. Yeah. Right.
54:24
You can just make it look like the original version of it.
54:26
So anyways, I'm super excited for more uh more manufacturers to get into this space. Yeah.
54:33
>> Uh the category is growing quickly.
54:33
So I I think even the the you know many of the restood players will will still do quite well.
54:40
>> And this seems super bullish for Range Rover as a company.
54:42
like uh they say check with your local retailer or Land Rover Classic.
54:47
You imagine that a lot of people will be drawn into showrooms for this.
54:52
Will they leave with with a 1993 Range Rover Classic that's been restored from the factory or will they buy something new because they're like, "Yeah, maybe I want that, but that'll be my weekender and I just need something for the family, so I'll just buy something more modern or new."
55:05
Like it it's just another It's almost like a halo car like for just to bring people in, don't you think?
55:13
If you're driving by an Audi dealership and you saw the R8, you'd go in, maybe you wind up with an A4, but you know, it drew people in.
55:20
It brought it brought aura to the brand.
55:22
This does the same thing.
55:24
Just seeing more 1993 Range Rover Classics in perfect condition on the road will make a 2026 autobiography look cooler and feel cooler.
55:33
And so that's beneficial to the whole company. >> Yeah.
55:36
and and uh it will be it'll be very interesting to see the way the way in which manufacturers approach this category.
55:43
The criticism of a lot of restood companies is they'll take like >> they'll basically take a you know $20,000 car, >> do a little bit of work to it and mark it up like $200,000.
55:58
And >> that doesn't uh that doesn't that doesn't feel great. Yeah.
56:03
>> Uh but uh >> you know what feels great?
56:04
running a business on Shopify.
56:06
Shopify is the commerce platform that grows with your business and lets you sell in seconds online, in store, on mobile, on social, on marketplaces, and now with AI agents.
56:15
And we have our first guest of the show, Ferdinand Davids from Augustus.
56:17
Let's warm up the program. >> He's back. >> We got some big news. We raised some money.
56:29
Welcome back to Absolute. >> You absolute dog. Uh, how are you doing? Give us the update.
56:34
What's going on with the business? What's the news? >> No.
56:38
Um, yeah, I'm [laughter] I'm feeling good. I like this car stuff.
56:40
By by the way, I have a two 2009 Land Rover. >> There we go. Cool. >> myself. >> That's a great car. >> So, that was cool. Um, no longer Augustus.
56:50
Um, yeah, we raised some money.
56:53
Um, I think one thing we always liked about the >> about the bank thing is that it felt so hard, right?
56:59
And it was this like >> And now you're making it look easy.
57:03
>> Yeah, you are making it look easy.
57:03
I wanted something that felt hard [laughter] so I could make it look >> make it look effortless. Right.
57:10
[laughter] >> You are making it look effortless.
57:10
I remember we when we hung out uh I think it was at the end of last year during during the holiday season.
57:17
You were like, "Yeah, I'm working on this thing."
57:20
And here you are uh less than a year later.
57:24
>> $180 million series B1 $1 billion valuation. Tiger Global's in.
57:27
You got a bunch of other folks in.
57:30
uh what actually did unlock the new round like what's the progress of the core business?
57:37
I think it's a great question, right?
57:37
I think there are these probably there are these three free things that were and are still exciting about the business, right?
57:44
I think the first thing is just this big idea around dollarization, >> right?
57:48
And Augustus is built to dollarize the world.
57:50
Um, and I think people have really started to understand that that's a super important thing, right?
57:55
And I think over the last 20 years, we've seen a trend um towards dorization effectively, right?
58:01
dorization effectively, right? Like if you look at the distribution of the dollar globally um kind of like traditionally distributed through these clearing banks these correspondent banks that chart goes down and to the right like the number of clearing banks has just um has just fallen fallen off year over
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year um and people were kind of like excited about it right because post 911 people said okay it's like kind of risky to like um distribute the dollar and be a bank in Latin America be a bank in Middle East bank Africa like you probably don't want to do that and and so so should be super expensive um and
58:34
and so on so forth and people like from a macro point of view start to regret that and I feel like okay actually it's kind of great if people use the dollar all around the world right I think it's it's it increases dollar demand right it's anti-inflationary and it's also this incredible instrument of soft power right the first thing we do when Russia
58:49
goes to Ukraine is we take them off swift and we shut off their dollar clearing and this is amazing thing where we don't have to send the tanks and the the boys we can still influence what's going on right and so there was this like idea like hey should we maybe like revert that trend and build the modern correspondent bank, right? A modern
59:02
A modern dollar clearer um that that can dollarize the world, right?
59:06
And provide high quality dollar access to places outside of United States.
59:10
Um I think that was the first big idea that really made a lot of sense um from from a policy point of view, right?
59:17
I think it enabled us to charter this bank, but I think also like like private private capital markets were able to buy buy into it.
59:24
Um so I I think that was the the the number one thing. And ding ding.
59:29
Then the second macro thing was this idea AI bank, right?
59:31
If you now build a modern correspondent bank, what does that mean? >> I think so. Right.
59:41
>> I like the sound of it. I like the sound of it.
59:44
>> I I I think I think it kind of like um it makes sense, right?
59:47
Like I think a global economy is on this like consistent investment thesis to that every major industry is going to be transformed by AI.
59:53
And I think Augustus is genuinely one of the few assets companies that has exposure to doing that for banking, right?
1:00:00
Because Augustus is a bank itself, not yet conditionally approved as you guys know.
1:00:06
Um, and is also kind of young enough and and cool enough to be a legitimate technology company, >> right?
1:00:12
And so we felt like they felt this like legitimate opportunity to take this very operationally intensive business dollar clearing correspondent banking where City Bank has tens of thousands of analysts in the wire room that go through the payment file and do the reconciliation and payment office and take it and just automate a bunch of it and turn into a better business for customers with with better economics, right?
1:00:32
And so so that that felt I think pretty good.
1:00:35
And then I think the third thing was just the progress that the team has made over the last year or so, right?
1:00:39
We got the US National Bank conditionally approved.
1:00:41
I think we're the eighth company in the history, not in history of United States, eighth company since 2010.
1:00:46
Young history to to kind of like get the condition approval. That was a big one.
1:00:50
Um, and then we're already kind of like big on euro clearing, right?
1:00:54
And we scale clear a couple of billions of euros for some of the largest fintex in the world.
1:00:57
And that business was also growing very fast.
1:01:01
And so I think these things coming together felt like like a like a good moment and and kind of like resulted in that round I'd say is my little playbyplay. Awesome.
1:01:09
>> Do you have something? No, go for it.
1:01:11
>> Uh, >> how Yeah, I mean you mentioned that like we are on an upswing of dollarization right now and that feels like a narrative violation because over the past two years we've been in this period of delobalization, tariffs, there's international conflicts.
1:01:28
it like I don't love it, but I could totally imagine a lot of international countries saying, "Well, we're going to pull back from our relationship with the United States because they're, you know, levying tariffs all over the place and seem to be adopting an America first strategy."
1:01:46
Like, is is what am I misreading about the international climate that's actually driving increased dollarization in 2026?
1:01:56
>> Yeah, I think I think it's like less empirical as in this is actually happening.
1:01:59
It's more like normative.
1:01:59
Do we want this to happen? >> Right?
1:02:02
And what kind of world do we want to live in?
1:02:04
And I think people are starting to come around to this idea that we want to live in a dollarized world.
1:02:08
And that wasn't always a given.
1:02:10
And I I think it wasn't even a given for the last 20 years.
1:02:13
As I said, like since 911, like I think correspondent banking has been like increasingly unattractive business and people say stay away from banking non- US financial institutions. Don't do it.
1:02:23
And I think that the wind is changing on that a bit.
1:02:26
And then I do think that the administration is actually much cleaner on dollarization than people give them credit for. Right?
1:02:32
I think all the work that the Trump admin is doing on on stable coins for example is largely driven by dollarization thesis, right?
1:02:38
This idea that if we can like more effectively distribute the dollar abroad, it it's good for United States, right?
1:02:44
Because the instrument of soft power and increases dollar demand and anti-inflationary, right?
1:02:48
And I think um they're like like there's real school of thought in the admin that that's big on this and I think that's is in a way like a policy and like byproduct of that as a the public private partnership that is a national bank, right?
1:03:01
It's not just a normal company.
1:03:02
It has to live in these in these regulatory moments. >> Amazing. Well, congratulations. Keep up the great work.
1:03:09
I'm sure >> incredible update >> hearing from you in just a couple months at this pace.
1:03:13
Uh you're making it look easy. Making it look easy. We'll talk to you soon. Great to >> you. Have a good one.
1:03:17
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1:03:19
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1:03:22
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1:03:24
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1:03:27
Our next guest is Kawei Tang from Light Phone. He's co-founder and CEO. How you doing? >> Hey, all right. Thanks for having me. >> Welcome to the show.
1:03:41
>> Uh we were debating this earlier.
1:03:41
Do you uh so first let's start with an introduction and then I have a bunch of questions about uh the correct terminology for this category.
1:03:52
>> Uh a lot of people call it dumb phone but I call it simple phone. >> Okay.
1:03:55
So you don't like the term dumb phone. >> Yeah.
1:03:58
I mean you know your phone gets smarter you you actually get dumper.
1:04:00
So we you know the phone >> the phone need to do the tool need to do what the tool does for us like hammer screwdriver right?
1:04:09
It does that for you and you put it back.
1:04:11
If you don't swipe your hammer for 5 hours so the hammer company can make money.
1:04:16
>> So that's exactly how we design life and all the tools inside the iPhone. >> Okay.
1:04:20
So a minimalist flip phone is the newest product.
1:04:23
Uh talk us through the the evolution.
1:04:26
How do you measure demand? Why why flip phone? It's very nostalgic. I I love the idea.
1:04:30
But uh what was the broader thesis?
1:04:35
>> Yeah, I mean we've been doing this for 10 years.
1:04:36
10 years. I think back in 2015 >> we were in the incubators for [laughter] in for at Google created for designers and and through talking to a lot of VCs and successful entrepreneurs especially app entrepreneurs we realized that
1:04:52
everyone's bragging about how much time attention they get from their users that's why they're successful they could categorize you know analyze the data and sell the data to the highest bidder that's the whole attention civilian economy and I just don't like that. I
1:05:05
I don't want to see advertisement. I don't want to know.
1:05:09
I don't want people to know where I am 24/7. But I love technology.
1:05:12
I want modern technology without the civilians uh uh attention econ economic built in.
1:05:18
So what we're trying to do is offering a device that has all the modern utility tools but without that uh [laughter] uh business model built in to maximize your attention.
1:05:31
So you could call somebody, text somebody, get a direction home, listen to music, taking notes, you know, QR code reader, but no one's trying to maximize your attention so they can make money.
1:05:41
Same idea like we're not trying to ask people to give up technology.
1:05:45
We're trying to say, hey, you we all have different shoes, different car, different jacket, right?
1:05:52
You could use different tool at a different scenario, right tool for the time.
1:05:57
And that's the essential idea of life.
1:05:59
Be intentional about your time.
1:06:02
Don't waste it on social media.
1:06:02
When was the last time you or anyone else spent 3 hours swiping the Tik Tok and you snap out of it?
1:06:09
[laughter] I feel so good about myself. >> Every day.
1:06:12
Maybe I'm on the internet 3 hours every day.
1:06:14
But yes, I am the exception to the rule. I am the screen time.
1:06:18
Uh how how does how so so assume the you know people listening are with you know Verizon or an AT&T or maybe another another carrier for the light phone.
1:06:31
Do you have to get basically an entirely separate number?
1:06:35
Is there a way to use >> Yeah. the same number?
1:06:38
>> Is this something where I mean I think it's uh maybe Chris Williamson talks about this like the cocaine phone and the and the vegetable phone or something like that.
1:06:46
They will have one phone with all of the crazy apps on them and then one that's like essentially a work phone and when they when they carry that phone it's like brick.
1:06:54
There's a whole bunch of different trends.
1:06:55
But can you actually run like a single number with two phones? >> Yeah.
1:07:00
I mean that's that's that's healthy, right?
1:07:01
You we always need a balance.
1:07:03
You could there's different way to do that.
1:07:05
You could turn on call forwarding.
1:07:07
You could physically remove your SIM card from your smartphone and put into your to your uh light phone.
1:07:13
You could also utilize service utilize service like T-Mobile digits that give you two numbers sorry two SIM card that tied to one number. >> Oh interesting.
1:07:22
>> So different ways to to utilize life as a secondary phone or primary device but we actually seeing more of our customers using life as their primary device now especially younger generation.
1:07:33
I was in the >> Yeah, I was in an event in New York that um a group of young people that promoting real life experience and the performers in front in the stage and there was a woman in the crowd like taking to took out her smartphone and try to record the performance and everyone's booing her.
1:07:54
You know, I think this this is this is no longer short term, not a retro feeling that oh just temporary feeling good about retro technology.
1:08:02
technology. I think this movement started by uh by the young people the gen Z or younger is here to stay as the AI as this you know 5G iPhone 45 keep getting bigger and bigger I think this the other side of the movement is going to get bigger and bigger too
1:08:19
>> and we're trying to give people options so I can opt out >> what would it take to add Instagram real [laughter] >> or or maybe even like prediction markets [laughter] >> maybe you could make discounted if people commit to doing prediction markets enough on preload 10K. >> The phone is free as long as you're
1:08:40
>> The phone is free as long as you're trading sort of >> a gambling phone, >> $5,000 a month.
1:08:44
No, >> but pay a phone >> more more seriously.
1:08:48
Um, how are you uh how are you thinking about AI features?
1:08:53
because I I I imagine you're you're there's this tension between >> AI does give you the potential to interact with your devices in new ways, right?
1:09:03
It's it's cool to be able to like, you know, dictate uh to your to your devices.
1:09:09
That's gaining a lot of popularity right now, maybe later than a lot of people would have expected.
1:09:13
But then on the other side, um I can imagine that a lot of your core users to date like hate AI and they're trying to get away from it. Yeah.
1:09:23
>> So how do you how do you kind of thread the needle there? >> Yeah.
1:09:27
I mean I I always said that, you know, AI is a tool.
1:09:30
It's a software program that's very helpful and we should treat it as such.
1:09:34
Meaning that we when we start a life, it's not because there's a new technology being invented.
1:09:42
So we design product for that, right?
1:09:42
We design product because we seeing people frustrated, anxious, stressed out, not happy with the smartphone, social media, but there's no way out.
1:09:52
I think the same logic applied to AI or this program, this tools, it can be really useful.
1:09:57
It can be helpful as long as it save my time.
1:10:03
So I you free up my time to do things important to me and make me happy.
1:10:08
I think that's a good outcome.
1:10:10
However, you you guys probably know like with AI tool, more people walk more hours.
1:10:14
You you've been notified all the time with the things happening.
1:10:17
So, I think treating this particular technology as one of your tools and design and use accordingly is the way to go.
1:10:26
And we're not anti- AI per se, but we do see the sentiments among young people towards, you know, everything AI, the big cap push on AI.
1:10:34
the the discrepancy the gap is getting bigger every day as I witnessed it.
1:10:39
Um you know going to tech conference the potential of AI is being praised.
1:10:44
You go into this you know this this real life experience that young people started let club they don't they don't care about AI.
1:10:51
We've been interviewing flip phone users and the new product we created called life flip the flip phone that um that we just announced today.
1:11:01
We've been interviewing different flip phone users for for the last six months.
1:11:05
The one one thing they never bring up is AI feature.
1:11:08
No one wants a AI button on their phone.
1:11:10
I mean, I'm [clears throat] have no doubt it's very helpful.
1:11:14
I have no question that this it can be the future technology that save our time um to to do things that for us and we can move on quickly.
1:11:23
But I just don't think it's being um designed as such at the moment.
1:11:28
take us through the business side, the business model, the customer acquisition funnel.
1:11:32
This is a product that I feel like it generally generates a lot of organic earned media.
1:11:38
It's fun talking to you about this and all the knock on effects of of uh of phone use.
1:11:43
Uh I imagine every product reviewer reviews it.
1:11:49
Like there's probably a decent amount of attention that effectively comes for free in this category.
1:11:51
But, uh, what does the what does the actual scaling of the business look like?
1:11:56
Uh, are you doing, uh, like direct response ads on Instagram reels to get people to uninstall?
1:12:04
Are you are you admissar's worst nightmare? [laughter] >> No.
1:12:09
So, as a matter of fact, we don't utilize um advertisement.
1:12:11
We don't pay social media to promote life.
1:12:14
social media to promote life. So the last 10 years all our growth are organic >> from word of mouth from press from celebrities that using life including Aaron Paul from Breaking Bad Pete Davidson at Sharon from um uh UK we got
1:12:30
a lot of people that that resonating with what we're trying to do and support it and and and spread the word of a lifelong so the last 10 years we grow you know um every year 20% to 50% without um any advisement Um I I guess I think it's only human that this resonates with a lot of people. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
1:12:51
>> Uh talk about the decision to include uh podcasts.
1:12:53
Uh uh there's uh I I know some people that are addicted to both making and consuming podcasts.
1:13:02
[laughter] >> That's a tough one.
1:13:05
I think every tool that we designed follow the same principle.
1:13:10
I can summarize into three principle.
1:13:12
Number one, no advertisement.
1:13:14
Number two, every actional user take as a click.
1:13:18
>> We have ads in our but we have what [laughter] about what about ads in podcasts?
1:13:21
>> Yeah, we got we >> that's way that's how you get in front of the light phone users is you got to just advertise >> from podcast natively. Here we go.
1:13:31
>> Well, so similar to how we design music tool, right? Like it's not a Spotify.
1:13:34
We designed it as an MP3 player that you intentionally create a playlist for you to calm down, for you to be creative, for you to get into certain mood using that tool as the tool.
1:13:47
>> Spotify, Spotify podcast, I'm sorry, podcast the same way we sing as an educational tool, but I I get it like loophole might be advertisement in the podcast which we cannot control.
1:13:57
>> But I like the idea of an old school MP3 player.
1:13:59
There's something very satisfying about actually curating an intentional playlist, loading it up for a different moment like uh it is uh yeah it's a special special moment.
1:14:10
>> Well, everything intentional make things special, right?
1:14:12
Everything that you intentional doing make that experience special.
1:14:16
The object designed for one purpose make it special too. >> Yeah.
1:14:20
>> How do how do you think about what what does success look like for Light Phone?
1:14:24
Like is like a million is a million people globally that you know use and love their light phone and and you know get a new one every year when you make it newer, faster, lighter, longer battery [clears throat] life.
1:14:38
>> No plan obsolete is not something that we're interested in.
1:14:41
Like the last 11 years we we introduced three phones in life 2.
1:14:46
We we still have user using them.
1:14:48
We're still selling them. It's been six years.
1:14:49
We stand behind our product. We upgrade the software. We upgrade I'm sorry.
1:14:54
We repair life phone locally here in Brooklyn.
1:14:56
And and that's what we're going to do.
1:14:59
We we're not asking people to buy a new phone every year. There's no need.
1:15:03
There's no reason to buy a new phone every every year.
1:15:08
Like when's the last time you upgrade your hammer? >> Uh camera. >> Hammer. >> Oh, hammer. >> Hammer. Well, we have to do it.
1:15:15
>> We actually we have a gong mallet that we we upgrade a lot.
1:15:18
But yes, I take your point. It is a tool. I like that. Don't do hit it.
1:15:26
>> We We're We're pretty rough on our on our gongs. >> Yeah.
1:15:29
So, we got to upgrade them a lot.
1:15:30
But for the average person, winding hammer is a lif.
1:15:33
>> No, it's a great It's a great It's uh No, it's a great it's a great point.
1:15:37
Well, congratulations on the >> and uh but and yeah, I was just asking that because I feel like uh it's it's phones are somewhat like cigarettes in that >> people know that they're bad, but they're just so good in some ways >> uh for some people at some times.
1:15:53
But I was going to say even if you have a million people that are just like, you know, like true true believers that are willing to make certain sacrifices in terms of like some some features and >> things like that, you could still have a really thriving uh business uh and and uh and and it feels like >> you know it's not a billion users or bust here. >> Yeah.
1:16:19
of 20 28% of Gen Z are strongly interested in acquiring a noun smartphone.
1:16:25
26% of millennial interesting getting getting announced smartphone.
1:16:30
12% of Gen X interesting getting announced smartphone.
1:16:34
>> Gen X [laughter] this trend is not going to stop. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
1:16:39
This is going to get bigger and bigger.
1:16:44
>> Well, thank you so much for coming on the show.
1:16:45
Congratulations on your launch of the lightphone. com.
1:16:46
You can go and pre-order one.
1:16:49
It's available for pre-order and the light flip is shipping April 2027.
1:16:54
Thank you for coming on the show. Talk to you soon. Have a good day. >> Cheers. >> Goodbye.
1:16:59
Let me tell you about Crowd Strike. Your business is AI.
1:17:01
Their business is securing it.
1:17:03
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1:17:05
Uh, our next guest is the best.
1:17:08
We got Chris Best, the founder and CEO of Substack.
1:17:13
Welcome to the show, Chris. How are you doing? >> I'm doing good, man. Thanks for having me.
1:17:18
>> The great slop wars, >> yes, >> have entered a new era.
1:17:23
>> It's not just nice to talk to you. It is amazing. >> It is the best.
1:17:26
It is the best to talk to you.
1:17:27
Uh tell us about the slop problem on Substack.
1:17:29
Uh what is the shape of the problem? What motivated this?
1:17:34
Take us through the new product.
1:17:36
What's the state of the union in the slopfest? >> The in the trough. The state of the trough.
1:17:42
>> The state of the trough.
1:17:42
I mean, the place I started with this, I've had the experience that I think a lot of us have had, not on Substack, but just on the internet in general.
1:17:49
I'm scrolling the timeline.
1:17:51
I'm reading stuff and sometimes I just have this experience where I'm reading something.
1:17:56
Sometimes it's by someone that I think I know.
1:18:00
Sometimes it's something and I have this kind of invasion of the body snatchers experience where you realize you're sort of reading something that was actually just pure clawed. >> Yeah. >> Purely generated. >> Yep.
1:18:11
Um, and it's kind of, you know, it it makes the experience reading on the internet worse because you're constantly wondering.
1:18:18
You constantly have to wonder, is this real? >> Yeah.
1:18:21
>> Am I actually reading something this person believes in or, you know, did Brian Chesy get hacked or whatever is going on? >> Yeah.
1:18:28
>> Um, and so I like I've been feeling this.
1:18:29
A lot of the people I know who spend time online have been feeling this.
1:18:33
And then the guys at Pangram did this study because they've been running this browser extension, right, where they have their own browser extension you can install and you can just have stuff labeled. Yeah.
1:18:41
>> And they studied different platforms and they found that on some platforms like I think LinkedIn 40% of the long form text is generated by AI.
1:18:52
>> And you know in my view it's not the case that all is necessarily >> 90 but >> yeah it's going back >> 40 is a lot.
1:19:01
>> Well I mean you know a good point here is not not all slop is AI.
1:19:02
you know, LinkedIn, even preAI had a lot of had a lot of stuff on there that's, >> you know, uh, maybe not the best, >> pretty sloppy sometimes, >> depending on your perspective.
1:19:12
I mean, some people like it. That's fine.
1:19:15
>> Um, and I think, you know, they had Substack coming in about 10%.
1:19:17
Um, I started looking at this.
1:19:20
I started thinking about this and to to my mind, the problem is not people using AI.
1:19:25
The problem is when you have kind of the deception that comes with I'm expecting that I've got a real connection to a person and I'm actually reading something that's written by no one.
1:19:38
[laughter] >> This photo is my experience uh when I realize I'm reading AI text. [laughter] >> Yeah. >> This Yeah.
1:19:45
This is the moment you realize.
1:19:47
And the moment you realize that's when I think of this as cloud fishing. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Right.
1:19:51
It's about the violation of expectation.
1:19:52
And it's the fact that you realize and then you're like, "Oh, this changes the experience that I'm I think I'm having."
1:19:57
And it's >> I'm not against reading AI text.
1:19:58
I read AI text all the time. >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:20:01
When when there were those rumors that like OpenAI was thinking about a social network and it was still really really early.
1:20:05
I was like I would love to be able to subscribe to a feed of Tyler Cowan's deep research reports because I know he's using these tools.
1:20:13
I know he's coming up with really interesting and creative prompts probably asking about like what's the food like in this random town internationally and like I would like to learn what he's learning and but the but the whole premise of that would be that I'm just getting a link to chatbt.
1:20:29
I'm just getting a link to chatbt.com and people do share these around but we haven't really because we're not in like the link sharing world people haven't actually coalesed around like yeah I'm just going to share you a link to my
1:20:41
deep research report but sometimes that would be better than you took you you copy and pasted and you forgot to put the is there anything else you'd like me to help you with or whatever >> or you left it in then you get these sales emails that leak the prompt to you. >> Yeah. And so I can imagine that there's >> Yeah.
1:20:54
And so I can imagine that there's probably a really banger Substack out there that where the the journalist or the writer is going to say, "Look, I'm going to go I'm going to go find an interesting fact or I'm going to give you a roundup and I'm going to do the work of prompting and factchecking and making sure that this AI instantiated newsletter is high quality and high quality."
1:21:17
>> The example that I always give is like uh if Alex Heath >> Yeah. was using AI. >> He uses AI often. Yeah. All the time. >> He's talked about it.
1:21:25
But like Alex Heath using AI, I'm like great.
1:21:27
I I'm I'm not subscribing for the the like writing.
1:21:33
I'm I'm subscribing for information, the facts that he's finding >> plus the takes and like his point of view on that.
1:21:41
And if he's just ramble, if he just like finds the facts and then does dictation and just kind of rambles for 10 minutes, turns it into something that uh is, you know, >> Yeah.
1:21:54
>> short and >> but the disclosure is important. So, >> right. Yeah.
1:21:56
The way you can tell that's good is because the disclosure wouldn't ruin it for you. Totally.
1:21:59
And we have all takes on the platform.
1:22:00
We have everybody from, you know, Sam Chris wrote a piece recently that said, "If you let AI do your writing, I will come to your house and kill you."
1:22:06
Deathreat wouldn't be able to tell. I can tell.
1:22:11
Um, [clears throat] and then you know we have people that are doing the thing you're suggesting that are that are using these tools to like slop is not something made with AI.
1:22:17
Slop is something that nobody believes in that you didn't actually care about. Right?
1:22:21
If you just go and say, "Hey, write me a thousand viral LinkedIn posts.
1:22:22
Make no mistakes, that's slop."
1:22:24
if you spend, you know, if you're doing this deep thing where you're going back and forth and you're doing it.
1:22:28
I talked to a bunch of people who do this on the platform and they're worried about slop >> because in a world where you get a bunch of things that are like loweffort or like zero authorship stuff masquerading as somebody's careful work, it drowns out the actual careful stuff.
1:22:44
Like you can have a platform where like the good high effort thoughtful things get out competed by people just like spamming the zone with stuff. Yeah.
1:22:56
>> And I just think that's going to be I think that's already a real problem on some platforms.
1:22:58
It's not a huge problem on Substack yet, but we kind of want to make sure that we're just, you know, keeping the bar high and having giving the people who are making stuff they believe in the chance to win.
1:23:07
Have you seen any uh like generational divide between how publishing uh AI writing is perceived?
1:23:16
Because there's been a number of VCs at least over on X uh that are that are maybe maybe in like the back half of their career.
1:23:26
Well, they'll just publish an essay that is just like incredibly obvious that it's just like, you know, they they maybe didn't they maybe had like a couple key ideas that they gave the model and then they just took the output and just published it.
1:23:37
And they'll usually get kind of dunked on.
1:23:43
Um uh but uh it it seems as though the author author was not even necess or the author was not necessarily even sort of aware that that there's like a negative perception or that it's maybe obvious to other people uh have have you seen anything uh like have you seen a divide at all or is it just sort of random?
1:24:04
>> I think we're in a period where these there's like new norms that are getting figured out.
1:24:07
It's not clear what the rules and expectations are.
1:24:09
And there are there are people that have wildly different ideas of what good is.
1:24:12
I don't think it's purely generational.
1:24:14
I think there's people on all camps.
1:24:16
To me, the thing, you know, I think that anti-slop is a pro- AI stance. >> Yeah. >> Right.
1:24:22
You don't see Sam Alman or Dario Ammedday writing doing these like claude posting things and it's not because they don't believe in AI. >> Yeah.
1:24:29
Um, so I I don't think that it's a it's an anti >> like I I think you can be incredibly in favor of maximally using AI to to do research and be a be a, you know, even a thought partner and edit your work and help you think of even new ideas to include.
1:24:52
include. But it's like uh but it's about it's it's about ultimately >> it's about ultimately creating something that's worth people's time right that they couldn't have just gotten by asking the same question to the same model at least in my view >> Claude is great but if I want to talk to Claude I can just talk to Claude
1:25:12
>> and if I'm reading you it's because I want there's like something else I mean another way to look at this you know you gave the example of like what if Alex Heath were making this really thoughtful thing I would love that I think everybody has an example of something where they're definitely cool with it. Everybody's talking to AI. It's it's
1:25:23
Everybody's talking to AI. It's it's valuable.
1:25:25
On the other end of the spectrum, do you remember the guy when sort of openclaw was at its fervor that >> was famous for having the bot text his wife?
1:25:32
He was like answering his wife's texts [laughter] >> and like I think almost everyone can look at that and be like, "Okay, that's probably not legit." Yeah. Yeah.
1:25:38
And then there's a whole bunch of stuff on the internet that kind of falls in the spectrum between, you know, thorough research report with AI pros all the way to like, you know, having not having to answer my wife's texts.
1:25:49
Like if I'm going back and forth in the comments with you, what's the expectation?
1:25:53
If you're writing a piece, what's the expectation?
1:25:56
Does it m does it is it different if you're writing a personal story versus a I think these things are all like new norms that will have to get created.
1:26:03
I don't think we at Substack have all the answers.
1:26:04
And so this is why we're kind of leaning as a first step.
1:26:07
We're like, "Hey, let's just have some transparency.
1:26:08
Let's make it so that readers can scan this text if they want and have that information and do with that, you know, make their form their own judgment." >> Yeah.
1:26:17
>> Uh, how do you think um the how do you think writing is changing for writers who don't use AI?
1:26:26
I've noticed personally, I've been writing video essays in the pre-Chib era.
1:26:30
Then all the models were not really great for a while.
1:26:37
Then I started doing daily essays on Substack.
1:26:40
Uh got accused of using AI even though I wasn't.
1:26:44
Uh sometimes we would pass them through AI to just fact check and grammar correct and then that gave it the AI flavor.
1:26:51
And so I made the decision for uh with the team to just like not proofread them basically.
1:26:57
And so I will often be doing research in a bunch of different AI tabs and collect information, but then I'll go and just complete stream of consciousness, nonsense, grammar, all these weird twists of phrases like I'm just speaking out loud.
1:27:15
And I think it's remained like I'm getting less and less AI accusals, I guess, even though I'm like I I I just writing daily.
1:27:25
I think you're going to get accused of using AI because it's so obvious that you would save a lot of time by not actually going and doing the work.
1:27:33
But I'm wondering if you think that that is just a unique thing to me or if that was >> Well, it's not even just a problem with writing.
1:27:38
I I've noticed on YouTube there's creators that that uh that I used to love that would make like history or like geopolitical content or just like weird niche content, even car content.
1:27:50
content. And now I have that same experience of like ripping the headphones off because I realize that somebody that used to put like all this energy into like writing these great scripts and telling these stories, you
1:28:02
just start hearing the the clawisms in in the video and even though they're just like making an output, making a script and then reading it, you it's still like coming through and you can still tell that >> that they didn't put craft into it. Yeah. And so I've seen on YouTube Yeah.
1:28:16
And so I've seen on YouTube there's creators that are just like in the description or even in the introduction of the video saying and to be clear I don't use any AI in my videos.
1:28:26
>> Um and and again like even as somebody who's very pro AI I find myself like I I feel like a little bit comforted hearing that because of all the bad experiences where I've gotten three minutes into a video and realize like okay this person is just reading a script that was a a one prompt.
1:28:46
Yeah, and we added this to the feature we launched too.
1:28:47
So if you if you're a writing something on subjects like you can set like a how I make this statement where if somebody's scanning your thing and it can say hey I never use it or hey I use it in this way or even you know hey I use it extensively but here's the here's the perspective I'm bringing here's what you can get for me.
1:29:01
I think it's I think and I think this is true no matter how it gets more true as an AI gets more powerful. >> Yeah. >> Right.
1:29:08
One critique is is oh I don't like it because it's bad because it's like a claudism or because it's just like detectable but I actually think the underlying thing is like am I getting a human perspective here? >> Mhm.
1:29:19
>> And the more powerful the ai becomes the more important it is to know that because if I'm not it might still be great but again it's like if I want to talk to claude I can talk to claude.
1:29:28
The question is like what human believes in stands behind has the perspective that I'm spending my time and energy ingesting. >> Yeah.
1:29:37
The other the other thing with uh Substack is like you're paying for a media product when you subscribe to someone, but you're also paying to in many cases at least personally allow somebody to pursue a life's work.
1:29:49
And if and and that to me is like part of the sort of like social contract that you have when you subscribe to someone which is like you know I am in a small way I may I might be one of 10,000 people but I'm allowing you to ditch your job and just pursue like an understanding of this of this industry or you know this market or whatever.
1:30:14
And so that's also like, you know, if somebody just decides one day, okay, like I'm kind of done with this whole, you know, uh, independent writing thing.
1:30:21
I'm just gonna, uh, slop it up for the as long as I can and people will churn.
1:30:25
But, you know, like that that that would be, you know, violation. Um, at least in my view.
1:30:34
>> Do you think your recommener system will naturally sort audiences into what they like?
1:30:40
So if there's someone who's subscribing to more AI generated substacks, they would get recommended into that and they would be satisfied with that.
1:30:48
Is there going to be like a barbell effect here where you imagine there's like power law creators who use no AI, power law creators who use all AI?
1:30:58
>> I think there will be some of that and I think these these tastes will change over time.
1:31:01
But something I've noticed in myself and in people I talk to about this is a lot of these things are kind of an acquired distaste, >> right?
1:31:07
It's something where, you know, a few years ago maybe I wouldn't even recognize this as being different.
1:31:10
And now I sort of have that skin crawling feeling.
1:31:14
I think more people, not everybody has developed that already, but I think more people will develop it than have today.
1:31:22
>> But then look, I think ultimately, you know, our perspective on this, >> we're pro freedom.
1:31:25
We're not sitting here telling you what tools you can and can't use.
1:31:28
We're not sitting here telling you what you can and can't read.
1:31:31
As long as you're making the decision, you know, as your best self, what do I value?
1:31:35
what do I want to spend my time and money on? We're happy with that.
1:31:36
We want to kind of help people do that.
1:31:39
And so if you know I if there are places where people are, you know, paying for AI stuff and it's the stuff that they want and the person may like I we think that's great.
1:31:48
Uh as long as it's you know people are doing it with their eyes open, they know what they're getting. >> Yeah.
1:31:53
It's funny like how I I would certainly pay $5 a month to just get a feed of Tyler Cowan's like chatbt prompts, right?
1:32:04
because I would just be interested to follow like I would just be interested to like sort of passively learn about uh and I'm surprised no one has like you know figured out a way to create that kind of product yet.
1:32:13
Um what do you think is like the is there an AI writing product that is overtly AI that's actually been you know a massive breakout hit and that they've they've fully disclosed that this is you know AI generated but but it still works any any that you're aware of?
1:32:31
You mean are there examples of texts?
1:32:35
>> Like I mean somebody that like made a made a Substack and it's like, "Hey, this is $5 a month and I'm just going to give you breaking news and analysis on these types of uh topics and it's all AI generated and like actually have has anyone built a >> a real equivalent would be like Demon Flying Fox on YouTube.
1:32:54
He's the one that did the Harry Potter Balenciaga.
1:32:56
He is like an AI first video creator.
1:32:59
It's very clearly disclosed.
1:33:01
There's a number of Instagram accounts where like the whole thing is like imagined AI futures and they are creators but they openly use AI.
1:33:10
I'm wondering if there's a version of that for text or Substack >> there.
1:33:14
That definitely exists and that's a thing that I I believe in, right?
1:33:15
The idea of of like an AI power like an AI powered creator. >> Yeah.
1:33:21
>> The way I think of this is like AI gives you superpowers and it just also gives you new ways to be annoying on the internet.
1:33:26
Um, [laughter] but if you're if you're, you know, the A in AGI is not supposed to stand for annoying.
1:33:30
Um, >> but the like, okay, if you're saying like, I have this perspective and I'm using these tools like like I think that Harry Potter Balenciaga thing is genius. >> It's great.
1:33:40
>> Um, it's genius and I don't care that they used an AI tool to make. In fact, it's great.
1:33:45
It's like it's a new way to express the thing.
1:33:47
>> Um, and we have we actually there is a bunch of that on subst.
1:33:49
There are people who are doing analysis, people who are sometimes writing things in other languages.
1:33:54
There's people that are like writing in like English is not their first language but they have some important analysis or they're like you know they're doing some deep research or they have some perspective and you know the final pros is generated but they're transparent about that. I think that is great.
1:34:07
The the question the deeper question to me is like do you actually have to have a a human artist behind the thing?
1:34:14
Like I [clears throat] if instead of that, if instead of I I've used AI tools, if you're kind of doing the thing of like, hey, you know, generate 10,000 viral posts, make no mistakes, or generate 10,000 viral bots that each do 10,000 viral posts, make no mistakes.
1:34:29
>> Um, and my view is like that may be compelling, but that's not going to be valuable over time because it's going to be there's going to be no differentiation.
1:34:34
It's the thing of like, yeah, talking to Claude is great, but I can talk to Claude if I want to talk to Claude. >> That makes sense.
1:34:39
Do you know of any historical uh comps to this conundrum that we're in uh as citizens of the internet?
1:34:46
Like was there a period where where authors weren't real authors if they used a typewriter?
1:34:53
You know, you had to you had to write it with a with a pen or or or it was frowned upon.
1:34:59
Or is this just like a a a novel experience?
1:35:01
I found when I was looking for the art for the announcement post I did, I found a a reverse example from history, reverse claw fishing, which was the mechanical Turk.
1:35:12
Do you guys know the story?
1:35:12
It was it was supposed to be a robot that plays chess. Yeah.
1:35:17
>> And so it was it was supposed to be like a magic strong chess playing AI, >> but the the this the trick was there was actually like a chess master kind of like hiding in the bottom controlling [laughter] it just sort of it's the reverse of having the you know uh having that realization of you're absolutely right while you're reading something. >> Yeah. Yeah. That's great.
1:35:33
Well, uh, congratulations on the launch.
1:35:36
Uh, it seems like it's, uh, going really well and we're huge fans of Pangram and the team over there.
1:35:42
So, >> those guys are great.
1:35:43
They're the best detector. We're proud. >> We really are. Yeah. Yeah.
1:35:45
What a great >> In two more minutes before you leave, what what can people expect out of Substack for the rest of the year?
1:35:52
Like, are you are you >> Yeah.
1:35:54
How's the business doing in the age of AI broadly?
1:35:56
Like there's a narrative where it's like, oh, people would just talk to the AIS to get information.
1:36:01
They're going to spend no time on Substack.
1:36:02
And then there's another one which is like you'll be 10 times more efficient because all your software engineering can be automated.
1:36:09
Like what how is the business actually changing?
1:36:11
>> Business is doing well. We're growing.
1:36:13
You know the way I think about this is I think as you get sort of plentiful you can get anything from the AI you can get any content.
1:36:20
The value you you have infinite kind of like things that you can spend your time on the value of the trusted human connection and perspective goes up. >> Mhm.
1:36:32
And as long as we can have the platform reward that, as long as you feel like, hey, you know, like even if you're reading Tyler Cowan's prompts, the fact that you know, have some idea of Tyler Cowan as a person and have invest some faith and trust in him. >> Yeah.
1:36:48
>> Is a fundamentally valuable piece in this new world.
1:36:51
And we actually think this is again it's like if you take sort of a pro AAI stance, you can also have like a pro- human culture stance that thinks that we're going to be able to make that even more valuable.
1:37:04
>> Yeah, that's very cool. Well, congratulations.
1:37:06
Thank you so much for coming on the show. Great to see you. Always fun. >> We'll see you soon. >> Cheers.
1:37:10
>> Let me tell you about console.
1:37:10
Console builds AI agents that automates 70% of IT, HR, and finance support, giving employees instant resolution [music] for access requests and password resets.
1:37:18
Our next guest is here with us in the TVPN Ultradome live. How you doing, Stephen? Welcome to the show.
1:37:25
Stephen, this is co-founder and CEO blob.
1:37:27
Uh, how are things going with?
1:37:30
>> Things are going great with Bob.
1:37:30
Um, thank you guys for having me here. This is super cool. >> Yeah, welcome.
1:37:34
>> Um, yeah, it's a crazy time for for the whole world right now.
1:37:36
whole world right now. And uh you know I think a lot of the the work we've been doing over the last several years is now uh coming to light in a way where there's a bunch of themes converging and you know you have I mean you have all in in conjunction with AI you have a lot of
1:37:52
people trying to figure out what they're going to do for work what they're going to do with their jobs >> um you have an existential question of how to get value acrruel >> by spending money on tokens and um >> I think a lot of the infrastructure we've built is trying to answer a lot of that. So things are going well and it's
1:38:07
So things are going well and it's exciting times >> at at its best you're bringing like smallcale entrepreneurial opportunities to people at a very very broad basis.
1:38:17
>> I think that's one way to look at I mean we we grew up um my co-founders and I building businesses on the internet um piecing together a ton of different platforms and at times we'd have like three or four businesses running at once and we were always the weird ones.
1:38:31
one and now it's pretty normal and I think we are trying to build a platform that if we could go back in time we would be addicted to as a 15-year-old and um I think that technology is there now where there's virtually no excuse to not have a really awesome income stream especially from starting a business and uh yeah so so I I would say um it's pretty cool because >> I want your reaction to this uh take from Aporeia about Gen Z entrepreneurship.
1:39:02
They say Gen Z entrepreneurship increasingly looks like running a portfolio of asymmetric coups rather than betting on one serious long-term project.
1:39:12
The uh they go on to explain that half the people I meet at beach clubs in Sanrope and Marbella are doing exactly this.
1:39:20
One year it's crypto, then an Amazon brand, then an AI lead genen agency, then solar panels or some subsidized renovation.
1:39:26
And this was the interesting line.
1:39:28
I used to think this was unserious entrepreneurship, but some of them have become genuinely good at it.
1:39:35
Their real business isn't crypto, AI, or solar panels. It's being early.
1:39:41
>> That's one of my favorite takes I've heard in a long time.
1:39:43
And I think that the reality is the businesses are getting so ephemeral that one week it's a jewelry store.
1:39:49
The next week it's a education program teaching people how to use a new AI tool.
1:39:54
The next week it's a UGC marketplace and then the next week it's a agency that's selling data to labs.
1:40:01
So the amount of trends that uh people are tapping into to start businesses is through the roof.
1:40:06
And when that happens, you do get what resembles a portfolio almost.
1:40:10
Imagine like a crypto portfolio, but and and if you look at our new homepage, it actually looks like a crypto portfolio, but they're not tokens, they're businesses, and it's completely up to you to drive the business income up.
1:40:21
And we try to figure out ways to tell you exactly what to do next in order to do that.
1:40:26
Um, so I think that's a fantastic does feel like an exchange.
1:40:30
And yeah, >> if you if if uh if you were able to talk to the to the you know, take you today and you have the younger version of yourself, what what advice would you be giving on like where to start trying to make money on the internet?
1:40:48
>> I would simply look at what is working on the internet today and copy it.
1:40:51
And I think >> so, so when you were getting your start, it was trading sneakers and maybe having some bot tracking Supreme drops like what was it then and what what what is actually happening now?
1:41:10
>> Well, I think that you your question is interesting because you said if if they want to make money, that's one thing.
1:41:15
And if they if they I think when we were building businesses, it was never really for the money.
1:41:20
My co-founder Cameron dropped out of high school at 15 years old and um had virtually unlimited money for a 15 16 year old.
1:41:26
U I think the only thing he bought was a Tesla and other than that he would wearing flip-flops and t-shirt and be working all day and it was never really about the money quote exactly.
1:41:36
It was always about we have a hoodie building cool with your friends and I think that is much more the spirit that uh we get excited about and in many ways we want to make it actually not about the money and take out money from the equation so we don't have to worry about money.
1:41:48
Um, but this there's like the advice I'd give to a young >> that's sort of the unique luxury of being a teenager where it's like if you if you hit it out of the park and make $5,000, you feel like the king of the castle. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Totally.
1:42:03
It goes a long way and you have a lot of time and and you just have nothing else to do other than to experiment with different businesses and uh it's it's after roadblocks, what are what are all the kids supposed to do?
1:42:12
And I think that's how we approach it.
1:42:14
uh trying to build a very gamified arcade version of entrepreneurship and uh pursuit of building products for other people.
1:42:20
>> Talk about uh looking at what works and what's making money on the internet because I feel like there are layers to that onion.
1:42:28
Sometimes by the time I'm seeing Instagram reels of somebody driving a supercar and they say they made their money on Facebook ads, like the Facebook ad arbitrage might have closed and that person might now be selling a course to get you to sell a course to then sell Facebook ads.
1:42:47
There like four levels of abstraction.
1:42:49
um what is the correct way for young people to actually go and find the real opportunities and not the things that have been abstracted into LARs at this point? >> Yeah.
1:43:01
Well, I think the infrastructure in every single one of those businesses is always the same.
1:43:04
So when you when you go and experiment with one business and then you go to the next one, a lot of that carries over and I mean what I would suggest is is we try to do a very good job on Wob showing which businesses are actually working really well and which models are working really well.
1:43:17
Uh so my my advice would be to go do do that but I think it's ultimately just try to experiment as much as you possibly can and and don't feel like you're wasting a lot of time because the only real risk is is not doing anything and um my probably overarching advice to young people would be just to try things out and see what happens and uh around and find out if if you will a little bit.
1:43:38
So I I think that that's that's a very uh that's the spirit of where we are now in businesses and and how ephemeral everything's getting and how much experimentation you see when you open your Twitter feed.
1:43:47
Um and that's that's a good thing.
1:43:49
It brings compet it floods the market with competition.
1:43:52
It floods the market with uh people that are trying to differentiate ever so slightly from the prior iteration and that ultimately brings a lot more value to end consumers and uh makes everything cheaper and uh makes everybody a little bit more money.
1:44:05
So I think that's a pretty good thing. talk about the CLI.
1:44:11
>> Finally, we have a CLI. Uh, yeah.
1:44:11
So, >> why is that important? >> Well, yeah.
1:44:15
So, >> websites are pretty good. APIs work in many ways.
1:44:18
What's the point of the CLI?
1:44:20
>> I think people have historically found to be relatively confusing of a concept.
1:44:25
And I think the reason for that is because the UX that we've built >> made me feel like a boomer.
1:44:29
[laughter] I went I was on there try I was I was trying to spin up content rewards back in the day very early with the show and I was like I feel old. [laughter] >> Yeah.
1:44:42
I think like the the UX we've built has never really caught up to the API we've built and I think that we're we're a very fundamentally API first company.
1:44:50
We have a very engineering team and that results in a fantastic API that has I mean when you look at the functionality that our API supports it is literally every single thing that you could possibly need to programmatically run a business.
1:45:05
That's payment acceptance. It's ad creation. It's money movement.
1:45:09
You can even find people in the real world to do labor for you clipping and whatnot.
1:45:12
All via the API that is very difficult to build a UX around. Very very difficult.
1:45:17
And the CLI um allows all that functionality to be brought into your terminal and uh to be called a gen from from any agent uh via API and that results in way better experience.
1:45:29
So this CLI is very cool because you can yeah >> hypothetically if I start uh the three of us start a hair care business together since we all have wild hair.
1:45:38
[laughter] >> Uh there are a number of steps that I'm going to take to promote my business.
1:45:43
The the classic one that I would go to W for might be clipping.
1:45:46
I might uh film a whole bunch of content.
1:45:48
You film some videos about your hair care routine.
1:45:50
All of a sudden, we have an idea of a business. [laughter] I like it. It's it's style.
1:45:55
Um and and we want to take that to social media.
1:45:59
So, we want to engage with broadly.
1:46:01
Um now, I could use an AI agent to interact with the API, the CLI.
1:46:07
Does that just make it easier if I'm doing the programming or is there a world where I'm actually finding a programmer on WOB to help me with that side of the distribution?
1:46:14
So the old adage is that ideas are easy and execution's hard.
1:46:18
And we're seeing that be flipped on its face in in real time.
1:46:22
And I think that that what we actually prefer is that you know there's a saying this also like every business begins with a secret.
1:46:28
And a lot of times the secret lies in the execution but we want the secret to be all about the idea.
1:46:31
So we want the extent of that launch to basically be we want to start a haircut business for tech people with crazy hair. Okay.
1:46:40
And that's the whole business and every other part of the execution is handled and that is a way better world than uh what it is today where you actually have to think through everything from even making content the developer that's all semantics.
1:46:52
It shouldn't even be a conversation.
1:46:53
Um so that's what you get of the CLI.
1:46:55
I mean you can literally go to this W CLI today say start a haircut cutting business that's meant for tech people with crazy hair.
1:47:03
get me some customers and uh and you could go so far if it was localized to say find me a person to cut the hair and the CLI will end to end do that via any agent that you want. >> Okay, cool. Yeah.
1:47:16
>> Uh are are uh the youth hitting it big with SMB AI transformation?
1:47:20
So, everyone knows the big big consulting shops are >> I just saw I just saw a real about this.
1:47:30
It was like, if you want an SF90, uh, go to someone's, uh, real estate listing and like take photos, turn it into a beautiful website, go sell it to the real estate agent for 500 bucks.
1:47:41
Like, go to go tour a $30 million property that that they're trying to sell, but they don't have a nice website for, they're just on MLS.
1:47:47
Make a beautiful website, sell it to them for 500 bucks.
1:47:52
Even back in our day, something like that, you could, even when it was easy to build a website, there were still business owners.
1:47:57
I remember I remember you know like a friend's uh parent at one point was like if you can build me a website I'll give you 500 bucks you can just find a template for like 20 bucks >> but that's time people don't want to prop themselves. Yeah. >> Yeah.
1:48:12
I mean that is I'd say what it looks like to find all these hyper niche markets and call them arbitragees and then capitalize on them then go to the next one and there are so many more than anybody can remotely imagine.
1:48:23
I mean, I remember when I guess 8 10 years ago, uh, I was making websites for people and doing that exact tactic.
1:48:30
And now it's like you have all the leverage in the world and it's basically limited your creativity and grit.
1:48:36
>> And now you can just go, you can find 10,000 small businesses in your state, let's say, make them a brand new website.
1:48:43
Show them the website and say, "Do you want this?
1:48:46
>> I'll give it to you for 200 bucks."
1:48:46
And I think a lot of them would be like, "Looks good.
1:48:50
I'll I'll send you 200 bucks even though you just ripped it with like codeex or whatever agent you're using.
1:48:55
>> Totally totally totally totally. >> Uh talk about ads. ads.
1:48:56
What is the shape of that product?
1:48:59
How does it fit into everything else?
1:49:01
>> Yeah, I don't know if you guys have ever ran meta ads before, but it's a pain in the ass.
1:49:04
And um it's a it's a very difficult to uh go on and uh navigate simply the UX of that platform.
1:49:11
And that's coming from like for us, we grew up running meta ads to a Shopify store. That's all we did.
1:49:18
And when we look at our platform and our merchant base and what people want to accomplish on it and how we believe that the more vertically integrated it is, the be easier it's going to be for agents and for users to use it.
1:49:29
The next obvious jump was to say, okay, people are earning I mean now 400 $500 million a month on the platform.
1:49:36
And almost all that money is spent on ads.
1:49:40
>> And because of that, why don't we let people programmatically run ads immediately after getting the payment?
1:49:46
You don't have to wait any days for it to settle.
1:49:47
to settle. you get all the all the data on what's working can iterate on the fly and it's not just meta that you're running ads to it's actually the whole internet and uh that is the ads product that we have available and uh it's pretty cool people like it and I mean that's a very very fast growing product >> uh take us through your reactions to all
1:50:06
the trend pieces about clipping this year >> better late than never [laughter] >> wait uh when so uh what I'm referring to is like there's been a number of trend pieces is sort of like breaking down the clipping economy heavily driven by some of the kick live streamers like the Clvicular among others that sort of crossed the chasm and got profiled in the New York Times. And so there was
1:50:27
And so there was there were knock-on pieces about this idea that you create a lot of content like we do on a three-hour show, we clip it.
1:50:33
Uh or you do an 8 hour 12-h hour live stream, you clip it.
1:50:36
And your business has been very integral to that boom.
1:50:39
But when did that start for you?
1:50:42
Like when did you realize the power of clipping?
1:50:43
Like how has that evolved?
1:50:45
Yeah, I I think people overestimate how intentional we are about some of these markets that have come up and I think it more happens to us because we have such a good API and that's and it's just a platform and and people come up with all these crazy business models.
1:50:56
They explode, people exploit them and then it becomes so saturated that it's actually not even that cool anymore.
1:51:01
And I think what's what's happening with clipping is it is still a very very very powerful instrument u because of how much money is going into it because of how uh inherently like so much value can be gained by brands and companies etc.
1:51:13
Um you're going to have a lot of bad actors and people trying to exploit different people and and all all sorts of different bad stuff.
1:51:21
And I think that's where a lot of the uh what what people are are potentially saying on the the pessimistic side of clipping.
1:51:26
On the optimistic side of clipping, we look at it as yet another way to earn income on the internet for a huge amount of people and especially if they are not sophisticated enough to potentially start a business yet.
1:51:37
They actually start with clipping and that's a very great way to learn how to make content, learn how to help other businesses create real value and all the payments infrastructure.
1:51:46
It scales super well so that people can actually earn a sustainable income by doing something like clipping.
1:51:50
That can be extrapolated to data labeling, can be extrapolated to tennis coaching, can be extrapolated to all sorts of things that we're starting to see on our platform.
1:51:57
Uh other platforms integrate um and pay out uh via our our rails, which is simply creating more ways like clipping to earn money uh while still hopefully being value accreative to businesses.
1:52:08
So that's what I would that's what I would glean from clipping.
1:52:11
Have you talked to any legacy media organizations about clipping?
1:52:17
I'm thinking of like Fox News produces so much content.
1:52:20
Local news produces a lot of content.
1:52:22
ABC, NBC, CBS, like there are basically content farms that are effectively live streaming.
1:52:31
Uh it's a very different motion for these organizations.
1:52:33
Would you recommend they get into clinical?
1:52:38
Yeah, I mean our focus is trying to build the infrastructure and the platform and whatever happens happens. >> Yeah.
1:52:42
Whatever happens happens.
1:52:42
I think as long as it's it's it's abides by our terms safe and I I think um in the context of a local news station they're very underresourced typically and if we can make it so easy where they actually can couple clicks or even one click or even one prompt spawn a bunch of clippers to amplify their media that's great.
1:53:01
as it stands today, it's a little bit too difficult and I think that's where you have agencies fill in the gap and create these fill these arbitrage opportunities. >> Sure. Sure. >> Yeah.
1:53:10
How would you how would you rate sentiment among users?
1:53:12
Are is there because users are not necessarily reflective of like all of like the next generation of of entrepreneurs and people that are starting careers.
1:53:24
It's certainly selecting for people that are have higher agency.
1:53:28
they're trying to figure out how to make a living online or just make uh as you say make cool stuff uh with their friends.
1:53:34
But is there a feeling that there's a ton of a ton of opportunity and that now is like an amazing time to be like coming online or uh is there at all the same kind of like vibe session that you see among people maybe college students that are trying to find jobs and feeling like >> vibe session? Oh.
1:53:53
Oh, like like the vibe recession. >> Yeah. >> Oh yeah. Okay.
1:53:56
I thought you you were mashing up vibe and obsession.
1:53:58
You're obsessed with vibe.
1:54:03
>> I think that the the sentiment is overwhelmingly positive.
1:54:05
Like beyond optimistic and I' I've actually never seen it in such to this level.
1:54:08
I think where you look at a lot of the uh people that call themselves entrepreneurs, people that build are trying to build a business.
1:54:16
Um WAP users are unique because likely they're going to be earning money and that's very different than trying to launch a vibe coded app and praying for users.
1:54:24
So I think that what we see is that uh when when we talk to our users and businesses on the platform um either at inerson events or uh via our chat on on the platform, they are so excited about building their thing and they're actually equally as excited about experimenting with other businesses like we were talking about earlier.
1:54:43
Um because it feels like the the uh possibilities are completely in your control.
1:54:48
You know, you have so much opportunity right now.
1:54:50
There's so many micro markets that can be tapped into and exploited arbitrage-wise and I think the young kids realize that and they're going crazy right now.
1:54:59
I don't think there's a apprehension at least in our user base as to what they're going to do post AI.
1:55:04
I think that that's a very exciting thing for them and they feel like they're grabbing by the horns and uh taking control of their destiny which is exactly what's going to happen.
1:55:14
What's the state of enabling sort of human in the loop AI companies?
1:55:17
I'm thinking about your partnership with Replet, Poke, Cal. com.
1:55:22
It feels like there's a potential to launch something that the agents aren't quite there or it has to interface with the real world in some way, but if you can bring some extra humans to bear in a particular workflow, especially for consumer, there's like an opportunity to build businesses there. >> Totally.
1:55:42
>> Totally. I I think uh one of the largest markets that is being talked about but per perhaps not enough is just the demand for data right now is so crazy and when you look at especially developing countries um one of the uh most lucrative pieces ways to to earn
1:55:57
money on the internet is uh by submitting data and by recording themselves do day-to-day tasks and I think um if you look at the the broad base of uh human in the loop applications especially around money um of course you can start a business you can sell your time.com you can build a a
1:56:12
com you can build a a really cool website in replet and and build a business.
1:56:16
But if you want to think in the clipping construct and perhaps clip you can think of clipping as act one of this.
1:56:21
Um there is a lot of things people can do to uh that AI cannot and um that largely pertains to data.
1:56:30
I mean there's a huge crisis right now I think where people are realizing that the AI doesn't actually have the level of original thought that is needed to lift anything off the ground. And what are they doing?
1:56:39
They're spending billions of dollars to get people's ideas and and that is not I mean in some way that does economically get to the person but I think we can do it even better and the human in the loop we view is actually the most critical piece of any business and any real economic output because it does start with someone's idea and creative ingenuity then versus an AI being oh let's let's build a business that does uh haircuts for tech people.
1:57:03
That's not necessarily I don't think going to happen anytime soon.
1:57:06
Maybe maybe it does now because it's already out in the ether, but yeah. >> Uh, last question.
1:57:10
How's the business growing in 2026?
1:57:12
What's the financial plan?
1:57:14
Uh, do you want to raise more money?
1:57:16
Do you want to raise a bunch of money?
1:57:18
You want to IPO the company?
1:57:20
>> Well, I think we we want to deliver on our mission.
1:57:22
And I think it's it's the most uh confidence we've ever had that we actually can.
1:57:27
And um I would say there's going to certainly uh it's going to require investment and um there's clear prospects.
1:57:37
We're exploding internationally right now with very little uh real motion that we've established intentionally internationally and uh we're underinvested across the board.
1:57:45
We have a very lean team still.
1:57:47
Um the growth has been uh really record-breaking.
1:57:50
I posted a tweet last week.
1:57:53
We're underwater right now. It's really crazy.
1:57:56
I mean I I we we can't go 5 minutes without uh something crazy happening in in a good way or bad way and I think it's part of building building a business at our scale.
1:58:04
Um so growth is phenomenal.
1:58:07
I think I mean I don't really know if I can talk about a lot publicly but um >> you can you can say whatever you want.
1:58:12
You can give us all the numbers. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
1:58:13
I mean we're we're accelerating growth at a pretty massive uh uh massive scale. Um, yeah.
1:58:18
I mean, if if we're doing $45 million a month in earnings and I mean, a lot of our our takers are public, you can do the math.
1:58:26
It's it's getting uh it's getting a lot more serious and uh we we take that responsibility lightly. >> That's amazing.
1:58:33
Well, congratulations on the progress.
1:58:35
Thank you so much for coming on and breaking it down for us.
1:58:38
>> Uh we will talk to you later.
1:58:38
Uh but for now, we will bring in Katie Roof.
1:58:41
She is the editor of Business Insider.
1:58:44
We're very excited to have her [music] joining the show.
1:58:48
It's time to bust down the payw wall.
1:58:50
Jordy, you want to do the honors? That's right.
1:58:53
>> We got to bust down the payw wall because we have Katie Roof here.
1:58:54
We have a physical pay wall here. I'll bust it down. >> Do it, John. >> Bust it down. >> There we go.
1:59:04
[laughter] You know her from her scoops. Many payw wall bustings.
1:59:08
>> We built a real payw wall here in the Ultradome for you. >> Yes. For busting down.
1:59:12
Well, welcome to the show. How is life? How is the new gig? Well, good to be here.
1:59:18
I just started the new gig yesterday, so so far so good.
1:59:22
I got through a new hire orientation. Okay.
1:59:24
And ready to get scooping. >> Yes, of course.
1:59:27
We won't ask you how you get your scoops.
1:59:30
We all know signal DMs probably.
1:59:33
Uh but uh what is the shape of Business Insider these days?
1:59:36
How do you fit into the organization?
1:59:38
And then I want to talk about where Business Insider is going editorially. >> Sure.
1:59:44
So, um, I I know Jamie Heler from when we were both at both at the Wall Street Journal.
1:59:49
She oversaw all business and technology coverage there.
1:59:51
And she's been brought in to be the editor-inchief of Business Insider where she's changing the direction towards more scoops and original content.
2:00:01
That's partly how I fit in.
2:00:03
Um, you know, stuff people would actually pay for. And so, um, um, yeah.
2:00:09
So, I'm part of that new direction, that new chapter for Business Insider.
2:00:11
And I'm also part of a new program for the parent company Axel Springer.
2:00:15
Uh I'm in the global reporters network, which is a network where I team up with Politico and our other sister publications.
2:00:23
We just acquired The Telegraph in the UK.
2:00:27
We we own a lot of stuff in Europe.
2:00:27
So um you know, whatever whatever they acquire next, my stuff will appear in those news outlets as well.
2:00:37
>> Take us into into a scoop.
2:00:37
[laughter] I want to know I want to know how often you're working on a story and there's other reporters chomping at the scoop.
2:00:49
Uh what is that what is that process like?
2:00:51
How much time do you have for a lot of these stories with with how quickly AI is moving?
2:00:55
I can imagine you you catch a whiff of a story. You're chasing it down.
2:01:00
Sometimes hopefully most of the time you get to it first, but then other times it's a it's a dog eat dog world.
2:01:06
It's a dog eat scoop world out here, [laughter] >> right? It's true.
2:01:10
It's gotten a lot more competitive.
2:01:12
Uh, you know, these days, I feel like back in like 2020, 2021, I could get most of the scoops and I still get a lot of them.
2:01:19
But, uh, there's a lot of reporters now doing what I do.
2:01:23
And, um, you know, being first is is harder.
2:01:26
But, um, I think the the key is to not just go after things that are rumors that are widely circulating because everyone can hear about that.
2:01:36
Some of my biggest scoops have actually been predicting what happens next and I will I'll just ask around about my theories like would this company buy this company?
2:01:44
I don't call people up and say I heard this if I didn't hear this.
2:01:48
But if I'm having an extended conversation with them I just throw out a lot of scenarios and then sometimes are like you're right this company is buying this company or this company is going public or they're they're raising you know. >> Yeah. Yeah.
2:01:59
That makes a lot of sense.
2:02:01
Uh can you talk to me about uh in regards to the payw wall, the business of media these days?
2:02:05
Uh how is the you know original reporting scoop driven journalism uh versus opinion versus news aggregation actually changing and are are we firmly in the AI is affecting the business or are we still just seeing knock-on effects from uh social media and just a screenshot of something can change the business model?
2:02:30
Well, I think original reporting matters more than ever because regardless, you know, technology can change and the format in which we tell our stories can change, but people are always going to want to find out what's going on in the world.
2:02:41
And I think, you know, the reporters like myself who've been fortunate to make the decision to double down on human skills instead of just writing skills.
2:02:48
Um, we have, you know, we still have value because, uh, I do things that maybe AI is not doing by having a network of people asking questions that they weren't planning to share in informing the public of that.
2:03:03
>> Do you think any tech CEOs or people with potential scoops would ever talk to an AI reporter who's digging for a scoop?
2:03:12
>> Well, I mean, yes, if it's something they really want out there.
2:03:14
But the reality is, you know, people think that most of these stories are things people wanted out there.
2:03:20
It's usually they were kind of neutral.
2:03:22
Like if usually people weren't like trying to leak something, but like reporters were asking, they're like, "Oh yeah, you're right."
2:03:28
Like that's usually how it goes.
2:03:29
And so, uh, you know, AI, you know, unless they, you know, proactively want to plant something, which would be almost more like PR, what PR does, a PR pitches, >> then, yeah, I I I think it's it's not the same.
2:03:46
>> How do you clock when a story's been planted?
2:03:48
There was there was a story uh about Colossus Biosciences raising at between 20 and $30 billion.
2:03:58
And to me, that >> might be true.
2:04:01
>> That just screams like they planted a story because I don't I'm not I I'm just gonna say it.
2:04:07
I don't know that many institutional investors that are sort of clamoring to invest in Colossus Biosciences.
2:04:13
And it's a way my my theory is that it's a way to signal to potential retail investors that we're open for business.
2:04:21
>> Yeah, this this round's getting hot.
2:04:23
>> This is something I think about all the time.
2:04:24
I mean, I take accuracy super seriously and, you know, as much pressure as as there is to be first to the news, I think it's much easier to destroy your credibility than it is to build it.
2:04:35
And so, I always try to think, does this make sense?
2:04:36
Do they have an agenda here like to be misleading or dishonest?
2:04:41
And, you know, I used to say to some people, sometimes reporters, past jobs might hear about something and they would be like, "Compan X wants to be worth 10 billion."
2:04:48
And I would say, "Well, I also want to be worth 10 billion."
2:04:51
You know, can they can they get the 10 billion?
2:04:53
And I think that's the real question.
2:04:54
And so I think that you have to um obviously people have incentives to use us to uh manipulate public opinion.
2:05:02
We have to be savvy about that.
2:05:05
>> Uh do you think with how dominant tech is generally now?
2:05:10
It feels like it's a bigger story.
2:05:12
We see it uh you know tech has moved from the business and finance section of the Wall Street Journal to the front page more and more.
2:05:18
Not every day, but you know, just today, Chinese AI models raise alarms on the front page. It's international news.
2:05:24
Uh, is that is do you see that as driving business insiders TAM essentially?
2:05:30
Like is the TAM for technology scoops and in and private markets news going even bigger now? >> Yeah.
2:05:40
You know, and I think that's absolutely true.
2:05:41
I think there's a lot of curiosity out there about AI and the money behind it and and how it's going to change things and transform the world.
2:05:49
And so, yeah, I think that's part of um why, you know, there there's so many news outlets have been doubling down on getting more venture capital and AI reporters because I think that there's it there's broad appeal even if you're not an investor that's standing to make money off of this AI boom, you you're curious to see where it's headed. >> Yeah.
2:06:10
Uh and then uh last question for me. I'm interested.
2:06:12
I mean, we love business insider. We love business.
2:06:14
We consider ourselves a bit of insiders ourselves.
2:06:17
sometimes, [laughter] but uh I'm wondering where you want the the brand of Business Insider to go and where you see it in a few years after, you know, you've been on the job for a while.
2:06:31
>> Well, from what I understand is, you know, >> Jamie, you know, [laughter] I'm not running Business Insider.
2:06:35
I have a fancy title, but Jamie's Jamie is running this and she's got, you know, she's really um made a big difference already in bringing out >> to us.
2:06:45
You're the CEO of Axel Springer now. Okay. Uh, Dner, you're out. Katie Rof's in.
2:06:51
She's got the scoops that we know and love.
2:06:54
[laughter] And so, uh, sorry.
2:06:58
>> So, um, you know, she's already played a major role as our editor-inchief in in bringing it.
2:07:04
They they've doubled their exclusive content.
2:07:06
I think it used to be 40% and now it's 80%.
2:07:08
And so, um, I think that, you know, I'm part of that strategy where they want to just build upon on that. >> Fantastic. Well, congratulations.
2:07:18
>> Congrats on the new role and thank you for for all of your work over the last uh couple years that contributed to the >> lot to talk about.
2:07:26
We couldn't do the show without you. So, thank you. >> Thank you so much.
2:07:28
I really appreciate the shout outs.
2:07:30
>> Of course, we'll talk to you soon.
2:07:30
Let me tell you about public. com.
2:07:33
Investing for those who take it seriously.
2:07:36
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2:07:40
Uh, you know who's not public but you can still read the financials of is the German nightclub Berghine.
2:07:48
Is that how you pronounce it? Bergane. Burgine. >> Bhine. >> Bergheim. >> Bergheim.
2:07:55
>> Uh, >> I always sort of mumble through it.
2:07:57
>> Yeah, they maybe they should have the Axel Springer corporate retreat there.
2:08:01
That would be a good option. U sharing this.
2:08:04
Yeah, it's in the Financial Times. Read through it. >> Okay.
2:08:08
So uh basically Ara Karazian the uh economist lead economist at RAMP economics lab over at RAMP uh says today I learned German companies have to publish financials even when privately held.
2:08:20
We can talk about like how much of a nightmare that is but uh this club Bergine Bergane Burgane >> Bergine >> I'm all over the place with this pronunciation. Anyway, uh $1.
2:08:30
4 $4 million or euros in net profit in 2024.
2:08:36
Uh $414,000 in annual rent. 355 employees.
2:08:39
You can just go look it up. >> What?
2:08:45
>> 14 uh 414,000 euros in annual.
2:08:50
>> Okay, that's more like it because I've been uh I've I've only walked by it. >> Mhm.
2:08:56
>> Uh but it is a massive building and I thought you said 14.
2:08:58
And the Financial Times has a whole deep dive into the nightclub.
2:09:02
But uh >> yeah, so let's talk about the implications.
2:09:05
Yeah, >> let's talk about the implications of small business revenue being public. One, terrible for Bros.
2:09:11
That's why they have to go to Dubai cuz they can't LAR, you know, if you're laring around in London. >> Yeah.
2:09:18
And you're saying, "Oh, I make so much money in real estate."
2:09:19
Uh I remember there was a YouTuber who uh did an he he was above board.
2:09:24
He actually did a tell all on uh CNBC, how I make money, millennial money, some some segment they did on him.
2:09:31
And and he's like, I'm I'm I'm a real estate guy and I make $10 million.
2:09:36
And he broke it down and he was like, I made $300,000 from real estate, $9,700,000 from YouTube.
2:09:43
And it was because he was making so much money with this great media business that he had that he actually was.
2:09:48
And he had good advice about real estate, but he wasn't running a real real estate firm.
2:09:51
he was, you know, a real estate associate who created a fantastic YouTube channel that was uh equally impressive or maybe more impressive.
2:10:00
Um, but as we were talking to Stephen about, you know, like how do you know what's working?
2:10:04
Well, in apparently in Europe, you can just look up the financials of every company and know, oh, well, they have high margins.
2:10:12
I should just copy them, >> right?
2:10:13
Uh, basically, yeah, I looked at investing in a company in the UK and yeah, you could I I got the financials, but then they were like, yeah, you can just look this up and and confirm confirm it with uh you can do basically like a records request. >> Yeah.
2:10:28
>> Um, but yeah, the the it'd be it'd be very interesting if we had anything like that with startups, right?
2:10:32
Because every time there was a big funding round, people, >> how how does this make sense?
2:10:38
How does this make sense?
2:10:39
So, um >> although it does seem like it's it's on some sort of uh delay.
2:10:42
It's only annual reporting and uh >> I know but still imagine when that reporting came comes out and they're like wow this $10 billion company only did $10 million last year which would be happening >> for some of our private markets uh unicorns.
2:10:58
That would be a huge deal to dig into the numbers.
2:11:00
Although, you know, even even the even the massively successful ventureback companies have complicated financials.
2:11:05
uh the disclosures would be >> I just think it's I just think it's crazy that Berghind as this like you know cultural institution >> is only putting up 1.
2:11:15
4 million euros in net profit.
2:11:19
>> Well SA has a take says companies like like this and club don't really exist to deliver a financial profit.
2:11:24
They do absolutely drive social capital to those involved in ownership.
2:11:29
So perhaps you are uh owning a stake in this in this institution to uh meet people uh do business deals at the club, meet other >> Sam says we need to LBO and franchise ASAP.
2:11:42
[laughter] >> That's a good idea.
2:11:43
Uh anyway, um IMAX is in trouble loosely.
2:11:48
The 70 millimeter IMAX that has been running 24/7 at the Irvine Spectrum for the Odyssey overheated today.
2:11:58
Hey, Bill Hunt shares some extra news.
2:12:00
Says, "The scary thing here is that IMAX can't build any more new projectors."
2:12:05
This was reported earlier.
2:12:07
They apparently don't have a complete set of the engineering blueprints.
2:12:14
>> Most of the engineers who designed them have retired or passed away, and the parts supply chains have long since dried up.
2:12:20
That seems like a bigger problem than the blueprints.
2:12:21
You got to be able to oneshot a bunch of IMAX blueprints.
2:12:25
>> Can you just like take the part?
2:12:27
[laughter] That's a good That's a good point.
2:12:29
Yeah, you should just be able to take it apart, take a picture of every part and then figure out how it works. >> Codeex fire it up.
2:12:35
Um, >> so the goal for the foreseeable future is to upgrade and keep all of the existing projectors running for as long as they can.
2:12:45
This is the true reindustrialization project.
2:12:46
We were wondering like what's the next Anderoll? It's the next IMAX.
2:12:50
That's what we're looking for.
2:12:52
somebody cranking out Americanmade 70 millimeter IMAX projectors. That's the real goal.
2:12:57
Um, uh, big news out of Google.
2:13:00
Logan Kilpatrick, friend of the show, says, "Say hello to Gemini 3. 6 Flash."
2:13:04
We talked about this a little bit, but there's some benchmarks here. We love benchmarks.
2:13:10
Designed to be higher intelligence, more token efficient, and with a new lower price based directly on developer feedback, 3.
2:13:16
6 Flash continues our progress towards models that are deeply usable in real world scenarios.
2:13:23
Congrats to the whole Deepmind team over there.
2:13:25
He said this model is much more efficient and spends uh spends a lot less tokens to deliver bit better performance.
2:13:30
And also the big news he said we have started our most ambitious pre-training run yet for Gemini 4 and are excited by the progress.
2:13:37
I think that there's a lot of uh Isbo trolling him with hope it finishes one day too.
2:13:44
Wow, that's a spicy post.
2:13:47
But um I mean uh the the last uh pre-train that came out of Google was interesting.
2:13:52
It had a different flavor to it.
2:13:54
And uh they they did the initial responses.
2:13:57
They were a little more tur tighter.
2:13:58
I I enjoyed uh poking around with Gemini. I thought it was fun.
2:14:01
We're counting on you, Logan. Good luck.
2:14:05
>> Before our next guest, we have a post from Sheil Mona. >> What'd he say?
2:14:08
>> He says, "Very cool idea. Vacation with an artist.
2:14:12
travel the world and learn new skills like ceramics, street art, book binding via a mini apprenticeship, 3 to 10 days with master artisans.
2:14:19
In many cases, you stay with them, too.
2:14:24
This got me thinking, what if you could vacation with someone by AI? >> That sounds terrible.
2:14:30
I would like to vacation with a capital allocator at the Yellowstone Club and the Aman. Do a tour of the Aman.
2:14:36
You can do this, but not on a website.
2:14:38
You have to know them personally, I think.
2:14:40
But uh I I'm surprised this isn't an area.
2:14:43
>> It sounds Hey, this idea sounds crazy.
2:14:46
Vacation with a capital allocator, but there's probably a price, right?
2:14:49
It just might be it might just be egregious, right?
2:14:54
>> 20% of equity in your company.
2:14:54
Uh I I'm interested that this is its own website, VAWA, vacation [music] with an artist.
2:15:01
It feels like it's directly in line with the Airbnb everything app road map.
2:15:03
The idea was that you would be able to go.
2:15:08
Anyway, we have our next guest [music] in the waiting room.
2:15:09
Let's bring in Zane Dar from Dimension. He's the founder. Welcome to the show. >> Here he is. How you doing, >> guys? How are you? >> What's going on? >> Give us the news.
2:15:18
We got to hit this >> newest size lord.
2:15:21
>> The newest size lord, the capital allocator. >> Boom. >> Oh, yeah. He just hit it himself. That was that was good. Good alignment. >> Great stuff.
2:15:31
>> How much did you raise?
2:15:31
We didn't even get the number. >> We just went right. >> Uh 8 800 million. >> 800 million.
2:15:37
I'm sorry that you couldn't, you know, >> pull together the last 200 billion short, but maybe [laughter] 800. >> Who's counting? >> Close enough. Close enough.
2:15:49
>> Hey, they're over a billion six in assets. So, >> that's right. >> It's a good start. It's a good start.
2:15:55
>> Dimension three 800 million um at our legal hard cap.
2:15:58
So, I think we went out for 700 or thereabouts.
2:16:00
Legally, we can't raise more than than a uh >> put me in jail by raise anymore.
2:16:05
We all know there was We all know the demand was there.
2:16:09
We all know the demand was there.
2:16:10
Um yeah, talk about fund one and two since it's your first time on the show.
2:16:15
What what got you to this, you know, monumental fund? >> Yeah. Uh fund one 350. That was a 2022 vintage. Fund 2 was 500.
2:16:23
That's a 2025 uh vintage.
2:16:27
So uh just about 12 months ago. Uh we started the firm.
2:16:29
my co-founders Adam Naan and I would spend the last decade investing across the union of life sciences and technology.
2:16:38
Uh fund one was very much so at the intersection.
2:16:40
Uh so so companies that were equal parts tech, equal parts life sciences.
2:16:44
Uh fund two we started to expand uh more so the union. Fund three.
2:16:49
Uh it really is the frontiers of science and compute.
2:16:51
Uh so companies that are touching silicon nextg uh GPUs, CPUs for ML and AI architectures all the way through ML infrastructure.
2:16:58
And then on the science side, uh, world models, neolabs, uh, you know, really kind of pioneering both physics but then also biotech and nextgen medicines as well.
2:17:09
>> Do you think we'll see a coalescing of business models in the next generation of tech enabled bio companies, biotech companies, because we're the there's an opportunity to be sort of really full stack.
2:17:25
train a model, use it to develop a drug, take that drug all the way through the FDA approval process, use AI to write the applications and go back and forth and then own the intellectual property all the way.
2:17:36
That feels like a lot of different capex muscles flexing at the same time, but maybe that is the future.
2:17:43
How do you see it actually playing out?
2:17:44
What's the what's the common pattern?
2:17:46
You know, there's a my my co-founder Adam is Australian and he's a he has a want of saying horses for courses, which for uh I think the North American audience here it means to each their own more or less.
2:17:57
So we >> we're going to start using that for our North American audience. Horses for courses.
2:18:02
Horses for courses like >> big in big in Japan or uh for example, Chai, which is I think you maybe had Josh and Jack on your show in the past.
2:18:13
They announced obviously the round that we helped to co lead with index and sequoia and cliner last week.
2:18:18
>> They are very much so doing the latter what you described selling their services as a SAS product uh into pharma.
2:18:24
On the other hand, we have companies like new limit uh that are developing similar ilks of technology but doing so with the express intent of developing their medicines end to end and one day actually commercializing medicines that uh affect aging and longevity.
2:18:40
are aging longevity the the the the hot topics because they're so universal or do you think you'll see uh more of the I don't know if I'd call it the traditional biotech playbook but there's often this you know there's a whole pipeline of biotech companies that are targeting like there's 5,000 people that
2:19:02
have this rare disease and it still turns into a billion dollar acquisition and it's this odd pattern that doesn't really ever make it to the front page of Time magazine, but obviously has an impact both financially and medically on those people that were suffering from that disease. >> I think I think both both extremes are
2:19:16
>> I think I think both both extremes are true.
2:19:18
Earlier this year, Revmed uh had a had a very stunning phase three result for their lead drug uh affecting patients with pancreatic cancer.
2:19:25
For for the rest of humanity, for a thousand years from now, 2,000 years from now, if you have pancreatic cancer, you should have a somewhat effective treatment.
2:19:32
And that's really based on a biotech based in California that in the last 6 months developed and kind of showed that clinical data and that's stunning.
2:19:39
Of course, pancreatic cancer that's not as uh uh prevalent as aging which everybody has or maybe obesity or something.
2:19:46
Um at the same time we are I think witnessing a revolution of what it means or a reunderwriting of what it means to be diseased >> and even something like obesity or maybe 10 years ago or 15 years ago far and biotech frankly they didn't invest in these areas because they didn't consider it a disease they considered a behavioral problem.
2:20:07
Today it's considered a disease and it's the largest drug on the planet.
2:20:10
You're seeing it in in areas like aging and longevity, inflammation, immunology depict if anyone has attopic derm or eczema, it's one of the largest drugs on the planet today.
2:20:19
20 years ago, no one would touch that because diseases that were skin related weren't considered serious uh enough.
2:20:24
So we are starting to see I think a redefinition of the types of areas where biotech and pharma can actually play.
2:20:31
Uh I'm sure you got asked this uh you know during the fundraising process, but what's your overall world view on investment opportunities around peptides as a category?
2:20:44
Uh you know, basically drugs that that people are taking somewhat recreationally now, but have a bunch of different benefits that have uh that are in a you know, sort of continuous gray area.
2:20:56
Uh but what's your what's your outlook on on the category because there's billions of dollars of revenue there.
2:21:04
There's some really interesting uh uh exciting at least indicators that that they can have great impacts. But what's your view?
2:21:13
>> I take the red and the yellow shots on Monday and Tuesdays and the green and the blue shots on Fridays and Saturdays.
2:21:18
And my wife doesn't get I'm kidding. I'm kidding.
2:21:20
[laughter] I I would not recommend this stuff to anybody.
2:21:24
anybody. Um look we there is a history of peptides and hormone mimemetics as drugs GLP1s glip wands are in some sense uh uh those exactly whenever you're sticking anything into yourself you you want to actually know what it is you want to know make sure that there's no
2:21:39
impurities in it uh we don't understand the biology the mechanisms uh in many of these cases and so um I think even the scuttlebutt that you guys and I am probably hearing about the efficacy or effectiveness of you know the SF tech community or the New York uh kind of you know uh tech community taking these things. Um my suspicion is that's
2:21:57
Um my suspicion is that's probably more placebo uh uh than not.
2:22:02
I'd be very careful about doing any of this.
2:22:04
I certainly wouldn't myself do it nor would I let my friends and family kind of do it.
2:22:09
>> Uh how do you think AI affects uh sort of like I don't know if it's called like repurposing drugs but uh the big GLP1 breakthrough for obesity.
2:22:18
It was originally a diabetes drug and there's been a few examples of drugs in history, many examples actually, where it started as a heart medication and then became erectile dysfunction drug.
2:22:31
And it feels like in an age of AI, even if you don't get the super intelligence that can just imagine the cure for cancer, you at the very least could potentially test every drug against every indication maybe more efficiently.
2:22:44
Uh what what does sort of like uh crosslication of uh biotechnology look like in the future?
2:22:49
I I I think uh two things are true with ML and AI we are better able to understand the root cause of disease mechanism pathway um and and kind of the industry nomenclature uh and with a better understanding of mechanisms and pathways we can repurpose molecules whether they're biologics or peptides or small molecules uh against those where we know that they are known to be effective.
2:23:12
Uh uh the other which is simultaneously true historically we have um uh uh the vast majority of known targets for uh disease biology have been quote unquote undruggable.
2:23:23
And so it's not a question of taking a shelved acid from fizer or no virus or lily.
2:23:27
It's a it's a question of we just don't know how to design the molecules to actually perturb uh those proteins intracellularly or extracellularly yet. >> Sure.
2:23:37
Um my suspicion is in the next five to six to seven years with the companies in the in the modes of the chai of the world for example we will have technologies to perturb what we want to perturb >> and so we'll both be able to repurpose when there is a shelled asset against kind of our new knowledge of biology but then also leverage generative AI and ML to create molecules to perturb biology where maybe the shelled assets don't quite yet exist.
2:24:03
What uh letter are you most proud of and why? >> Z. It's a good letter.
2:24:10
>> No, no, [snorts] I'm talking about your letters.
2:24:11
[laughter] >> I'm kidding. I'm kidding. >> Uh what letter am I? >> Underrated letter.
2:24:18
>> Um [snorts] in terms of letters that we have uh uh published from dimension.
2:24:22
>> Yes, you published some beautiful letters.
2:24:24
But maybe maybe it's an idea in a letter. The chat was asking. >> Yeah. Yeah.
2:24:27
>> Yeah. Yeah. uh the what if we're right letter that was actually um you know first written as a letter uh uh confidentially to our partners and LPs in Q1 uh of this year as part of our annual 2025 uh recap and uh we we anonymized part of it we we took out some parts of obviously the financial
2:24:46
information uh and decided to share it uh with the broader kind of entrepreneurial tech and science um audience I think it resonated uh with people I think especially in this moment in time where there is so much tension geopolitically and technologically and from a class and labor perspective. So
2:25:00
So many so many things are happening and there's a lot of tension.
2:25:03
Uh and to maybe take a step back and say, "Hey, what what's the good that's happening if we're right in developing these technologies and sciences?
2:25:09
How does that bend the arc of humanity and society for the better?"
2:25:12
Um that was fun to write.
2:25:12
I think it got a groove with a good audience and so we're pretty proud of that.
2:25:17
I think more people can be espousing and writing, you know, that that sort of stuff. >> Last question.
2:25:22
How many cups of coffee a day do you drink?
2:25:25
>> There's new reporting that says a five Good for you. 15. Really? >> Are you a coffee? >> I I try to limit it. Yeah.
2:25:30
I have my fridge cigarette. >> There we go. >> Cheers. >> Cheers, man.
2:25:36
Yeah, I try to limit it to probably 2 or 3.
2:25:40
>> If I if I do have a cup of coffee after 4, I'm probably w until 2 a. m.
2:25:42
So, well within the healthy limits.
2:25:45
Healthy guy working on health and AI.
2:25:47
Uh well, congratulations on the fun. Thank you so much.
2:25:52
>> Congrats to uh to you and all your partners. >> Yeah.
2:25:55
on an absolute generational run over there.
2:25:58
>> Would love to >> look forward to meeting more of your founders.
2:26:01
>> Yeah, we'll talk to you soon. >> Have a good one.
2:26:03
>> Let me tell you about Railway.
2:26:03
Railway is the all-in-one intelligent cloud provider.
2:26:07
Use your favorite agent to deploy web apps, servers, databases, and more while Railway takes care of scaling, monitoring, and security.
2:26:16
>> Up next, >> up next, [music] >> we have Chad Edwards.
2:26:19
>> We'll bring Chad in in just a second.
2:26:21
Briefly, I'm going to tell you about this interesting screenshot [music] from Reddit, an LLM stenography tool. Uh, steganography tool.
2:26:29
How do you pronounce that?
2:26:31
Kind of neat with how the UI that the EU is trying to gain access to all communication.
2:26:35
So, basically, you use an LLM to transform your text messages, secret messages. They look normal.
2:26:41
Um, but in fact, there's a decoded message.
2:26:46
So, on the left, uh, it says, uh, message to Bob. I got coffee downtown.
2:26:50
And it's actually pretty good.
2:26:50
Thinking of what to make for dinner.
2:26:52
Want to come help me cook?
2:26:54
Overdid it on the soup yesterday though.
2:26:56
And that is actually secretly encoded to mean they caught Matthew last week because he spoke against them.
2:27:03
Explain how this works, Tyler. >> Yeah.
2:27:05
So it's not the um the LLM is not actually doing the encrypting.
2:27:09
Basically, you encrypt it first using some like standard process and then you get like the output of that is like some cipher text >> like a lookup table basically or something.
2:27:16
>> Uh so basically you you encrypt it.
2:27:16
>> Uh so basically you you encrypt it. you get some like something that looks like scrambled like a scrambled string and you basically you have these these bits and then you basically use the bits to determine which token you're going to use um in the LM you basically need to use an open
2:27:31
source LM >> people are accusing uh John Axley in the chat have been doing this for months sending coded messages to everyone uh well >> it is very cool though >> I thought this was a cool idea I think it's a cool demo uh I don't know that it's wildly useful but uh for certain people that need to send secret messages back and forth. Go ahead. Also, they're Go ahead.
2:27:48
Also, they're calling North Korea no co like it's the cool trendy part of town.
2:27:53
I thought that was a funny post.
2:27:55
Uh anyway, we have Chad Edwards from Cusp AI in the waiting room.
2:28:00
Let's bring in Chad Edwards, the co-founder and CEO. How are you doing, Chad? Welcome to the show. >> Thanks for having me. Yeah, doing the news. How are you doing? You raised some money. How much did you raise?
2:28:11
>> Look at this background. >> Incredible.
2:28:13
>> How much did you raise?
2:28:14
>> That's the UK as a semiconductor ship. We raised $450 million. >> Congratulations.
2:28:23
>> Anyone Anyone I've heard of invest?
2:28:28
>> It's a murderer's road. You got Jeff Bezos.
2:28:29
You got a bunch of other folks in, >> right? >> Yeah. Kleiner Perkins, NEA. >> There you go. Congratulations. What are you building? Break down the business. >> Yeah.
2:28:40
So, at KUSP, we're building essentially a search engine for materials.
2:28:43
also a generative AI platform where you can discover entirely new materials.
2:28:48
>> And of course, it's not something we think about in our day-to-day lives, but everything we hear and talk about day-to-day, such as the pursuit of intelligence or the energy transition or the climate crisis, if you boil all of these things down to the fundamentals, they're a material science problem.
2:29:03
>> And for example, a semiconductor chip is around 60 different plus elements. It's 99. 99 pure silicon.
2:29:09
And so if we can come up with a better way to discover new materials, we can come up with better chips.
2:29:14
We can improve the efficiency of solar cells.
2:29:16
And we can also work on climate technologies to leave the world a better place.
2:29:19
And so they're kind of the core focus areas for our company. >> Yeah.
2:29:24
>> What's the most underrated new material?
2:29:27
>> Probably most >> room temperature superconductors, I would say. What What do you think?
2:29:33
>> Yeah, I mean there's there's a few teams now pursuing room temperature superconductivity.
2:29:36
It's kind of the holy grail of material science.
2:29:37
There's still some pretty interesting physics to be figured out along the way, but if someone can crack that, then the implications are huge. So, yeah, let's see.
2:29:46
>> Is there a power law in applications of uh advanced material science broadly like battery technology would be by and far the biggest market if you could unlock that or is it sort of distributed and there's so many applications there's not necessarily one that you'll be focusing on in the short term?
2:30:05
>> Yeah, I mean the opportunity space is absolutely enormous.
2:30:06
We could be sat here talking about the the chip industry or the energy industry or you know climate.
2:30:12
There's there's just so much opportunity out there.
2:30:14
But I think what we've seen as a company is the semiconductor industry have basically pulled us by all four limbs in the direction of semiconductors.
2:30:23
>> So we didn't set out to build the company as a semiconductor company.
2:30:24
We we've kind of built a platform that was horizontal and we felt the market pull in that direction.
2:30:29
And again, it boils down to the very fact that with all everything we're now seeing in AI, there's a real demand on the chips to be more performant, have higher energy efficiency, and all of that fundamentally boils down to better materials.
2:30:41
So, I'd say if I had to pick one, semi >> Yeah.
2:30:45
So, I mean, obviously huge market, semi massive market, any application you have there will have huge demand.
2:30:49
Um, what is the capital incentivity of the business?
2:30:55
I mean, you raised a hundred million series A last year, now $450 million.
2:30:59
Do you have compute costs, training costs?
2:31:02
Is this just to hire the world's best uh material scientists?
2:31:05
Is there a big data acquisition bill that's coming?
2:31:11
Uh what is the use of capital over the next uh two years look like? >> Yes.
2:31:16
Obviously, we're nowhere near the kind of frontier model LLM type expenditure.
2:31:19
We don't need to train huge models like that.
2:31:21
We train more domain specific models. >> Yeah.
2:31:24
And as part of that, of course, our three big kind of cost centers would be um people.
2:31:28
So hiring the best people in AI and machine learning, which is what we've been able to do and retain those folks and we've seen some of the salaries that >> go around the world for for people in that category now. >> Yeah.
2:31:39
>> Um computers another one.
2:31:39
So we have a very big part partnership with Nvidia and they're part of a big announcement that we made yesterday.
2:31:46
>> Um and then third and foremost is data generation in an experimental sense.
2:31:47
So of course we have to ground all of our work in phys physical experiments and so we have a network of labs globally now where we generate data for us to train the models.
2:31:58
>> Would you vertically integrate there at some point to close the loop build your own material science lab where you could prototype new materials and test them?
2:32:09
>> Yeah, I'd say never say never.
2:32:09
But at the moment our our thesis has been we can move much faster if we have a network of existing labs around the world. We can tap into them.
2:32:16
we can get going very quickly.
2:32:19
>> Um, they have domain experts in those labs that know an awful lot more about the specific domain and we can't easily replicate that.
2:32:25
So, and a lot of our customers also have their own labs.
2:32:26
So, yeah, our model so far has been work with existing labs and customers that have labs and that allows them to move faster and us to move much faster.
2:32:33
But who knows, maybe one day we say, "Hey, we're going to build a lab in a certain domain."
2:32:39
>> How do you think about uh value capture?
2:32:43
It's very easy for me to imagine like how you would create value for your customers, but if you help somebody discover a new material that the application of that material could could be worth, you know, billions of dollars.
2:32:58
How do you how do you make sure that uh it's a fair trade? >> Yes.
2:33:03
So, we've taken a very different approach to the business model.
2:33:05
In fact, we're I think genuinely the first to have done this in the world.
2:33:08
And when we started the company and we pitched this business model to investors, they said, "Chad, forget about it.
2:33:13
This is never going to work.
2:33:15
You're never going to get big corporates paying you royalties on materials."
2:33:18
And so for the first two years, I made it my mission to make sure that every customer contract that we have has royalties built baked into it.
2:33:26
So we've now proven the kind of biotech type model works now in material science.
2:33:30
companies are prepared to pay you up front for the programs that you set up and then they're prepared to bake in a royalty at the end so that as that material goes into production, you can kind of share the upside commercial potential of that material. >> Very very cool.
2:33:42
This is what I was asking the the founder of Chai Discovery who's doing AI for drug discovery.
2:33:46
It feels very right now they just have a SAS fee I think but it feels very natural for them to uh get some type of royalty.
2:33:55
They help create a a hit drug. It's a win-win.
2:33:58
great customer alignment uh there and it makes so much sense for your business and you end up building basically a portfolio of of bets over time and even if you have a handful of big winners uh it could I can see how that would generate you know billions over time. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Exactly.
2:34:19
I I kind of see my job a little bit analogous to a VC in the way that we have a portfolio of materials and some of our materials are nearer term.
2:34:26
they have higher commercial potential and some of our longerterm frontier bets and if we have a balanced portfolio then hopefully our revenue projections and journey will will follow a very steady tra trajectory.
2:34:35
Um but I can also see merits of the the approach that CHI are taking and having predictable you know monthly incomes and subscriptions to software is also you know carries carries your base revenue whereas the the program aspects can be a bit more lumpy.
2:34:51
So I could see merits of both both approaches. >> Yeah.
2:34:53
So why not both which you're doing?
2:34:55
Uh do do you think that the next round uh KPI or key uh metric that you'll be underwriting the the the deal against will be revenue or or are there more like scientific milestones, benchmarks or sort of uh promising results where uh where you'll be able to totally justify the next expansion uh pre-revenue or do you think uh that that like the business will actually grow in the short term with the with actual revenue generating deals. >> Yeah.
2:35:28
So, we've tried to kind of go against the grain in that a lot of deep tech companies take forever to get to revenues and so we've tried to be very commercial very early on.
2:35:36
>> Before this, I built a quantum computing company which is kind of one of the most extreme versions of pre-revenue.
2:35:39
Um, and so, yeah, I've tried to be very very commercial in this company from from very early on.
2:35:45
And everything we do is grounded with with paying customers.
2:35:47
Um, but I think I' I've also given up predicting when the next fund raise will happen because in every raise I've said we're not going to race for another six to 12 months and then in a few months later we've been preempted and there's a round coming together.
2:36:00
So I don't know exactly what the next metrics look like.
2:36:05
[laughter] >> Well, congratulations.
2:36:06
I mean, I can't wait to talk to you in a couple months when the next round happens.
2:36:10
>> Yeah, looking forward to [laughter] it.
2:36:11
>> It'll be any day now, but you're always welcome.
2:36:13
>> Very, very cool business and business model and uh looking forward to the next conversation.
2:36:17
And what a great uh what a great group of partners uh with all the companies that you've worked with. It makes so much sense.
2:36:22
So uh good luck and congratulations. We'll talk to you soon.
2:36:25
Have a great rest of your week. >> Cheers, Chad. >> You too. >> Goodbye.
2:36:30
>> Another uh we have one last post I want to go through.
2:36:33
Uh RAMP launched a model router. Uh Braxton loves it.
2:36:36
He says, "Ramp launching a model router is god tier product expansion.
2:36:41
The winds are blessing it.
2:36:44
The market is exhausted with token maxing, proliferation of new models, sovereignty.
2:36:48
This is the first time I've looked at a launch and went, "Wow, this might be the start of a new core product." Yeah.
2:36:54
Uh there's been a bunch of speculation about this, but it makes a lot of sense.
2:36:57
Ramp's prog promise is to save you time and money.
2:37:02
The CFOs are increasingly annoyed by token uh routing.
2:37:04
We talked to Eric Lyman about this last week.
2:37:07
Um, are you using the craziest frontier model burning millions of tokens to answer the weather?
2:37:15
Maybe that should have an expense report attached.
2:37:17
And uh, so uh, very very exciting to see where this goes, how they roll it out.
2:37:21
I know it's in alpha with a number of customers.
2:37:24
And I believe that the product's actually available to non-ramp customers as well, so you can use their product exclusively.
2:37:31
Uh, >> you says going after everything time and money touches. [laughter] >> I love it. I love it.
2:37:37
Anyway, uh thank you for tuning in.
2:37:40
We will see you tomorrow, Wednesday at 11:00 am Pacific.
2:37:45
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2:37:46
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