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>> Today is Thursday, October 29th, 2026.
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We are live from the TVN Ultradome, the temple of technology, the fortress of finance, >> the capital of capital. >> Oh, what? >> Oh, what? What? Why?
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Why don't you Why do you sound weird today? Are you okay?
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What were you doing this weekend?
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>> What are you talking a lot?
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>> Oh, I was surfing this weekend down in Malibu.
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Having a good time down there. >> That's good. >> Yeah. What do you mean?
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>> You You It seems like you're sound different or something sharp.
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Yeah, something's a little different. I don't know.
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I don't know where where to place it, but uh let me tell you about ramp.
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I'll try and figure it out. Time is money. Save both.
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Easy to use corporate cards, bill pay, accounting, and a whole lot more.
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All >> I was playing on my racing sim last night, so maybe I'm a bit tired. >> Okay. Yeah, that must be it. That must be it.
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>> How's your phone doing >> with the phone? >> Oh, yeah.
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My phone it it's feeling pretty good. What the heck? >> Who? What the Who is that?
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It looks like Tyler is wearing a perfect Jordy mask cuz look at Tyler today.
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He looks exactly like Jordy. This is crazy.
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I'm so confused by what's going on right now.
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>> No, of course uh of course Tyler was wearing the the Jordy mask, which is extremely freaky.
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When I ran into him this morning, I thought I didn't clock it as Jordy actually initially.
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I I just thought it was a guest who was here to hang out or say hi. But uh it is bizarre.
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You can't really move your mouth that much, right?
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That's the >> I can't really move my mouth.
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I can't breathe through my nose either, so it's a bit hard.
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It's pretty uncomfortable to wear, >> but uh but do a little spin because the back is pretty solid. Uh they nailed the hair.
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I think they got it pretty good back there.
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And I think the sunglasses do a lot of the work.
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If you take off the sunglasses, you'll give everyone jump scare.
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>> Yeah, the eyes are not good.
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>> I got to keep those on. >> Not good.
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You got to keep the sunglasses on.
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But it's helpful because Jordy wears the sunglasses a lot on the show, so it works.
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I think we're gonna sub the real Jordy back in.
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>> But uh this is an A+ bit.
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I I I thoroughly enjoy this.
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>> Tyler forgot your laptop.
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Um >> keep uh keep it on. Keep it on. >> It's so hard.
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>> Tyler, uh keep it on for the whole show. Cool. >> Do not do that.
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>> No, keep it on for the whole show.
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>> Uh we we we've tested these masks before and they are so uncomfortable.
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It feels like you're suffocating.
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It's absolutely absolutely brutal.
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Uh but it's a lot of fun.
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Uh the chat's saying you got Botox over there.
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Anyway, let me tell you about Cisco.
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Critical infrastructure for the AI era.
2:32
Unlock seamless real-time experiences. A new value with Cisco. Uh chip wars going on. There's another spy.
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There was a spy at OpenAI.
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Now there's a spy tracking Jensen uh over at Nvidia.
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Uh the wars are are waging.
2:46
Google earnings is today.
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We have Ice Cube joining.
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We got lots of stuff going on today.
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Uh can we start with a little Google earnings recap and then we'll go into the the Nvidia story.
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What do you think, Jordy? >> Yeah, let's do it. >> Cool.
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So, uh Google stock is cratering. It's down 12 a. 5% earnings miss. Rare.
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Um and here are the results.
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So, revenue consensus was 128 billion. Uh came in at 127. 6.
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like uh only a uh a third of a percent miss down, but to the negative, you usually want to be beating these these consensus estimates.
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Earnings per share not nearly as good. Uh 30% miss.
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Uh they were expecting $3 a share, 301, came in at uh 212.
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And so there was a little bit of nuance there because some of the earnings miss was related to owning SpaceX stock, which traded down in the interval.
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And so they had to take a little bit of a write down on that.
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But even if you factor that out, so that was an 8.
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7 billion loss that they technically took on the equity investments.
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Uh that reduced EPS by 55.
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And so even if you exclude that impact, EPS still would have been $267, still below the $31 that Wall Street was expecting.
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So um you can you can factor out that nuance and still get to a place where something went slightly Ara.
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uh there's a lot of good stuff happening, a lot of a lot of other uh worries and that's why the market's reacting the way it is.
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So the first key takeaway is that cloud is just a monster business.
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Um there was very interesting reporting years ago in 2018 that back in 2017 uh Larry Page had considered pulling the plug on Google Cloud.
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He was like we're competing with AWS.
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There's two executives that were sort of fighting at the time.
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There's too much going on.
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Maybe we shouldn't even be in this business.
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Maybe we shouldn't even do cloud and have a cloud platform.
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Well, uh that it's a completely different world today because cloud is so important to the business. Revenue doubled to 30. 7 billion.
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Operating profit tripled to 11. 1 billion.
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Operating margin is at 36. 2%.
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It's a fantastic business.
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If it were independent, it would uh be worth an incredible amount of money.
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Hundreds of billions, maybe a trillion dollars right there just in that value.
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And so Google and Alphabet truly have become this diversified uh portfolio of bets.
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Search is just one of them. They got YouTube.
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They also have uh cloud obviously.
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Um so the cloud backlog now is $561 billion dollars of companies labs that have gone to them.
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We just saw this with open AI buying cloud and TPUs.
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Um there is a lot of demand for their services.
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Uh and what's interesting is that you can look at that number 561 billion. That's a ton.
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is that over 10 years, you know, we saw in the anthropic S1, uh, some of these contracts go out, you know, to 2033, 2036.
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Uh, but 55% of that cloud backlog is expected to be recognized as revenue within two years.
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So even though you have this big number, you're getting half of that 275 billion, something like that, uh, over the next two years, that's pretty quick for a business that did 30. 7 billion in revenue.
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like you're getting 250 coming really fast.
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So that should be driving valuation upwards.
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Uh search advertising though growth slowed >> last quarter was 17% this quarter came in at 12%.
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Uh AI is accelerating query volume.
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So they are seeing a ton of token production.
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You see that when Sundar steps on stage and shows the the progress of their models the the the the the diffusion of Gemini models.
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uh query AI mode is is actually taking share.
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People are using it uh in place of the default search.
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Not really by their choice a lot.
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It just sort of pops up a lot of the times, but it monetizes less effectively than traditional searches right now.
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Now, what's interesting is that at the end of the day, it's a person asking a question and getting a bunch of pixels on a screen.
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And if you're on your phone, it's a vertical screen that's, you know, uh 9 by 16, right? >> Square for some. >> Square for some.
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if you're on the duo, I guess. >> Mark Garmin.
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Um, but at the end of the day, >> as a as a if you're Instagram, you want to monetize every pixel that you're showing the person while they're on Instagram.
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If you're Google, when someone asks a question, you want to monetize every pixel with ads.
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And that's what has happened with Google search over the past decade, right?
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Uh there was a time when it used to be a very clear call out for one sponsored post at the top and now it's been you scroll the whole first page and it's all ads. AI mode isn't that.
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AI mode might have some monetization going on, but it's not every single sentence is a sponsored ad just yet. They got to get there.
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They're not going to talk about that because that's rough and that's complicated.
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But, um, it's going to be a hard road to figure out exactly how do we monetize the full response.
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Everything that we're showing to the viewer should have >> a lot of things, a lot of links and and and offers and brand messages that are monetizable, paid for, bidded, auction style, uh to really maximize every view that they get.
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And so that is the that is the coming challenge.
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But you know, they've been doing this for 20 plus years.
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Uh and so that is the path that they're on.
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Uh the last thing, uh Google spending 200 billion on AI infrastructure this year.
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uh 2026 capex guidance 195 to 205 billion right in that 200 billion range.
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Uh they are also signaling that they will uh expect that they expect a significant increase in 2027.
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Q3 spending alone was 51. 4.
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So they're already on their 200 billion run rate and next quarter should be higher, following quarter should be higher, etc. So let's go.
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Um and then uh the last thing is that Gemini crossed a billion now monthly active users.
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Um the first party AI model uh the API is doing 32 billion tokens a minute.
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Hard to say what that means in the modern era because there's so many models that are to more token efficient and really just getting stuff done, getting answers, satisfying users is what matters.
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Um but uh it's up 40% quarteron quarter.
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Clearly they're serving their models, more people are using them.
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Uh and then of course they announced Gemini 4 carbon the newest frontier model the day before earnings two days before earnings sort of trying to uh reassure investors that uh they are still on the frontier that they're that the benchmarks look good and that uh the adoption will come and more importantly that they are vertically integrated.
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So even if they don't show up on the ramp data and the open router data, just having the frontier model internally is super valuable because it will it will drive YouTube, it'll drive AI search, it'll drive internal workloads.
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All there all be all these things where they aren't going outside for costs.
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Uh and they will be vertically integrated.
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>> Yeah, it seems like it's it's going to be incredibly strategic to be able to get frontier intelligence at 90% low, you know, lower than market prices. >> Exactly. Exactly.
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And then there's a whole bunch of other interesting things.
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They can fine-tune their own models.
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They can optimize them for their infrastructure.
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What do you the model that works in Google search?
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It does feel different than uh than a clawed model or a GPT model because it needs to be really fast because people expect that from that uh from uh the uh from the AI search results.
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And then on YouTube, you expect something different.
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you expect something that can piece can crawl over all the transcripts of YouTube with no, you know, robot block up, no captions and whatnot if you're asking for extra context.
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So, um, lots of lots of optimism there, but rough day in the market at least >> and a little bit rough for Birkshshire who, uh, their sort of blended uh, price per share of their recent $10 billion investment is around $350 per share.
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Um they did some part into class A, some into class C.
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Um down >> pretty uh pretty dramatically from that point.
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Alphabet now sitting at $280 a share um in uh just around 6 months. >> Got it.
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Um >> and yeah, it's basically like the OG Google Bear case is like rearing its head again, right? >> Yeah, that's right.
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Um, and you know, they've been >> it became sort of >> they've been there was a viral thread.
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I'll I'll try to find it.
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>> Talking about from uh Levels. io maybe.
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>> No, this was uh basically this guy July 23rd, Max Anderson says, "As someone who has personally spent 500K a month on Google ads for years, I can tell you with certainty this revenue growth in search is artificial and extremely unhealthy for Google's business long-term."
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He goes on to um make a bunch of points which have been refuted in different ways, but Satrini brought it up yesterday.
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>> The souvenirator at the time like pushed back on a lot of this, but either way, it just felt like search was already perfectly optimized like I think I was bringing this up probably, you know, over a year ago, like have you actually paid attention to a Google search recently where it's like for certain queries it's hard to find an organic result, right?
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where it's like ads at the top, first three results are ads, then you have maybe one or two organic results, and then a bunch more ads.
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>> I mean, you have you do you understand the structure of like finding a mattress on Google?
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It got so crazy that uh first off, there would be Google Shopping callouts that are also paid for.
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There would be a Google Shopping widget.
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Then there would be three or four sponsored results.
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So the links would be, you know, specifically this brand, specifically this brand, just directly brand keyword advertising.
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But then you'd go down and you'd get to mattress review sites that were like and they'd all been purchased by the various mattress companies.
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So So like there was actually no to end up.
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There was nothing that you could go to.
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There was no like Wikipedia.
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Um and and yeah, it's been uh it's been crazy.
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But but this stuff's just sticky.
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People are just in their flows still.
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So, uh that's why you only see like slight deceleration.
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It's not like falling off a cliff or anything like that. >> Yeah.
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>> Um >> um >> anyway, >> one other interesting detail, uh so Microsoft had earnings as well. Capex came in at 38. 37 billion. Estimate was 45. 9 billion. >> So Google was 51. 36 billion. Estimate was was 55. 7.
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>> Um this wasn't because they didn't want to spend the money.
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It was because of delays.
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So they're like they're trying to spend money. >> Powered shell delays. >> Yeah.
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There's a variety of different >> this whole rumor of like there's a whole bunch of GPUs that are waiting to get racked because stuff is slow and there's permitting and uh you're bumping up against the the the real world, the physical world.
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It doesn't really matter what demand is and uh everyone who's selling tokens is higher is is is pretty happy to be like, "Yeah, we wouldn't hate if our margins were good this quarter, even though we were delayed on supply."
13:47
Like being supply constraint isn't the end of the world for most people.
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people. Um well uh on the on the AI buildout and strategy specifically uh I'm just newai new new new I'm just new at AI I guess uh has a breakdown of some rumor saying that the internal models reasoning jump comes from more aggressive RL including training in
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games and simulated environments simulation hypothesis is going strong uh strategies learned there transfer to research method mathematics and other fields and obvious stokes and in ETH show the scale of the improvement inropics in some a similar direction with its internal quad model. Uh Musk's
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Uh Musk's digital optimist hiring explicitly calls for manufacturer measuring transfer from games into general computer use.
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So Ashley Vance over at Core Memory is saying that uh does this mean we're just in the midst of Demis Hassabis' original vision of how to get to AGI after a kind of brief brute force period um that that the games are the path to uh to AGI.
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And it is interesting that that Google has stayed the course with Genie when a lot of the other labs I mean anthropic has famously been like we're only focused on coding we're not even doing images.
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Uh, OpenAI has done a bunch of like quote unquote side quests.
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Some of the side quests were too computensive like Sora.
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Some of them like computer use. Remember operator?
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Do you remember operator?
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Like it was the original like go and computer use a computer in a virtual computer to go and click on buttons on a website.
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And it was pretty janky at the time, but now it's basically solved.
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And that was actually a good investment on the side.
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Um, and it'll be interesting to see which way Genie goes.
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It could just be, oh, it's only fun and it's really expensive, or it could be like, hey, this is a really really great next leg up for training uh potential and it's a really valuable asset for them to have internally.
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I think that's what people are are debating right now.
15:44
Um anyway, um where do you want to go next?
15:47
Let me tell you about the New York Stock Exchange.
15:51
You want to change the world?
15:53
Raise capital at the New York Stock Exchange.
15:57
Um do you want to stay on Google or move >> news invidia world? Yes.
16:02
>> Uh should we start with this this times feed?
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>> This is in the New York Times.
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Although they they had posted something similar a year ago, right?
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So take us through this piece and then we'll reflect.
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>> Um >> yeah, here we go.
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So uh in the times today, Nvidia chief seen as target of Chinese spy plot.
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>> A Chinese business woman who had a close relationship with Jensen was found to be passing intelligence to Beijing.
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President Trump was briefed and took no action. That's interesting.
16:28
Uh, American spy agencies had gathered striking intelligence.
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A top executive at a Singapore-based data center company was under scrutiny for possibly steering advanced NVIDIA AI chips to China.
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And now, American officials had concluded that she was a Chinese intelligence asset, funneling information to Beijing.
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But what came next was even more alarming.
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Surveillance of the executive, Alice Wong, a Chinese citizen, revealed that she had developed a close relationship with Jensen.
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For years, Washington had worked to deny China the technology needed to match or surpass the United States in the intense global competition for superiority in AI.
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The discovery that Beijing was getting reports from someone with direct access to Mr.
17:07
Hang, one of the most powerful figures in the AI revolution, as well as an influential ally, President Trump, set off alarms at the White House. Roughly a year ago, Mr.
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Trump was briefed about the intelligence findings which have not been previously reported and chose not to do anything with the information.
17:22
So, good opportunity to rewind and talk about a show that we did on October 10th where we talked about this company >> uh and the CEO, Mega Speed. >> Mega Speed.
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You called it a great name.
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>> Uh I mean it is a great gave her a round of applause for being a >> The name is fantastic.
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That's that's I you know it's always good to say something nice.
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So that the name is fantastic. >> Totally.
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>> So I asked chat to kind of summarize our discussion. >> Yes. question and a finding.
17:52
So, did you discuss Alex Hu Alice Hong, the the the CEO accused spy? Uh finding, yes.
17:57
Did you discuss her access to Jensen? Yes.
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Did you highlight her Chinese state media background? Yes.
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So, she had been a reporter for Chinese state media prior to starting a sort of Malaysian Singaporean hyper.
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>> Is there is there non-Chinese state media?
18:17
>> Did we question Mega Speed's activities?
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They don't have independent media, right?
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>> So if you if you do anything in the media, it's by definition you're working for the government.
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>> Uh no, I mean I I don't think that's like actually how they're defining it.
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>> Oh, this is actual state media press secretary.
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>> You Yeah, you can make the argument that all their media is going to come under the influence of the state >> cuz this is like Yeah. Is it is it working?
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>> Let me let me continue.
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>> Did you discuss Alice Wang? Yes.
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Did you discuss her access to Jensen? Yes.
18:44
Did you highlight her Chinese state media background? Yes.
18:48
Did you question Mega Speed's activities? Yes.
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Did you explicitly suggest she was a spy? No.
18:54
Could the discussion be interpreted as raising suspicions? Yes.
18:57
So, um, it was too early to go out and say like, you know, we didn't have any >> real details around the situation, but the whole situation was >> so suspicious that it was hard to >> I'm surprised it's taken this long for it to kind of bubble up. >> Yeah. Yeah.
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No, it's very very tricky. Yeah.
19:15
Yeah, I mean it seems like at at the very least it's like uh she is being accused of being deployed to figure out how to gain access to advanced AI chips.
19:26
So how can how can more Nvidia chips land in Malaysia, right?
19:29
Because the more the more chips that get to Malaysia, the more inference that will be available for China essentially.
19:37
>> And Matthew's in the chat pretty much saying what we're all thinking.
19:39
Fool me once, shame on you.
19:40
Fool me twice, you get fooled. can't get fooled again.
19:45
>> It's a great quote, George W. Bush.
19:47
>> One of the best quotes in >> one of the best >> White House history. >> Yeah, it's good.
19:50
Um, well, Jensen has not responded to this.
19:53
He he has not actually posted since October.
19:57
>> But, but here's the thing. Here's the thing.
20:01
Have they had interactions over the last >> We've been pretty together, right?
20:05
>> Over the last year, though. >> Oh, interesting.
20:06
This might be like kind of old.
20:08
>> I think it might be >> I think it might be old news. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
20:12
You'd imagine if like the the New York Times is on the hunt that like the CIA would also be like, "Hey, you got to stop talking to this person.
20:19
They are trying to get information out of you." Something like that. Um I don't know.
20:23
But uh it'll be it'll be interesting to see what happens with mega speed with Malaysia in general.
20:31
Like it's kind of a canary in the coal mine.
20:34
That chart of compute by country.
20:36
If Malaysia continues to ramp compute capacity, it's like we don't know the cause, but we know that there's a problem.
20:46
You know, it's kind of like if you're if you're measuring a like an athlete and you're and you're noticing like insane blood glucose levels or something like you might notice that there's a problem before you can diagnose it.
20:59
Uh Malaysia seems to be uh in that camp of like it's odd if they're scaling dramatically. >> Yeah.
21:12
>> Given the local business the local economy, >> it's suspicious. >> Yeah. Uh and so I don't know.
21:15
I mean there's there's a whole bunch of chip sanction chip control uh legislation that could be expanded, reworked, changed.
21:24
There's also I mean the incentive is just so high.
21:26
We've heard about uh uh people taking uh hair dryers and removing labels from servers to get them across the across borders.
21:35
Uh it's it's an extremely valuable >> That was called super micro.
21:41
>> I think it was super micro.
21:41
Uh but anytime that there's these geopolitical uh walls, there's just such an incentive for arbitrage.
21:49
I remember hearing about people that in the Russia Ukraine war would take basically like a first class fight to a western democracy, buy a DJI drone at like a Best Buy for $1,000 or buy a bunch of them, put them in their suitcase, fly them into the closest country, hop on a train or a bus, get into the conflict zone, and be able to sell them for like $10,000 a piece.
22:13
And so that arbitrage is just like, okay, one trip, if I have 10 drones with me, I make a hundred I make $90,000 in profit. People do that.
22:18
It's the same thing with with uh Nvidia GPUs.
22:23
So there's going to be an incentive not just to steal them and divert the cargo and do whatever you can, but also uh get close to the CEO, see what you can do, learn what is their actual process for making sure that chips aren't diverted, right?
22:37
how how can we uh mitigate the diversion as much as possible or divert as much as possible, right?
22:43
Um and so it's an ongoing ongoing battle.
22:46
But another another example of the uh the the high geopolitical stakes of the AI race is this the moment that AI 2027 was talking about.
22:56
China wakes up, >> wakes up and starts spying like starts going more aggressively.
23:05
>> Wouldn't that they they've been doing this?
23:06
I guess they've been awake for a couple years then. Yeah. >> Yeah.
23:09
>> This is the New York Times wakes up.
23:09
The New York Times wakes up to what's going on with the with the geopolitical spying.
23:16
>> No, but there was articles about this >> last year. >> Last year. No, I know.
23:19
Like, so that's why that's why this is like a bigger one.
23:21
I mean, if you look at the New York Times mast the revelation, Maggie Haberman, Anna Swanson, it's like they brought out their a team, six people, seven people on this on this by line. Like it's a big deal. >> Yeah.
23:34
Um, were there any other uh call outs that were driving conversations?
23:39
Um, I mean, we we already read the Ryan Mack uh screenshot, I believe, but uh it is never never more important to uh be careful around uh mega speed CEOs, I suppose. Yeah.
23:57
Odd funny name for a company. Anyway, >> yeah.
24:01
>> Um >> should we go down the rabbit hole? Yes, we should. Um, let's see.
24:04
Simulated markets, the simulation hypothesis.
24:08
So, this I went down this rabbit hole uh a couple days ago because you got served this video too on Instagram, right?
24:15
You saw >> Well, we have the exact same.
24:18
>> We have the exact same feed.
24:18
For some reason, Instagram doesn't show us any ads and sends us the exact same videos at the same time.
24:24
I mean, this is just the nature of like things that go viral. Everyone sees them.
24:27
But let's >> No, but we specifically are sending posts back and forth all day.
24:31
It's like you guys like the same thing. So there's this video. >> Yeah.
24:35
We have the We'll We'll each send the same video. >> Yeah. >> To each other.
24:39
>> And I'm just like like we're just like every scroll up.
24:42
Everyone's passing in the night.
24:44
>> Everyone sends the same video.
24:44
Um but uh there's >> two passing in the night.
24:49
>> That has the uh the the the title losing our house because of day. Really? What happened? >> I had to take it off. What?
24:58
Oh, you >> had to take it off. >> Wow. >> Had to take it off.
25:03
Sitting here in the capital of show business >> and you got a little bit uncomfortable with a with with your character.
25:11
>> Ben Mlin behind you over your shoulder.
25:13
He looks like a little angel on your shoulder.
25:15
I like the way it's framed right now. It's great.
25:16
Uh let me tell you about Console.
25:18
Console builds AI agents that automate 70% of IT, HR, and finance support, giving employees instant resolution for access requests and password resets.
25:25
So, uh, this this video came up and it says losing our house because of day trader. Did you notice this?
25:35
Not because of day trading, but because of day trader.
25:38
So, already odd uh grammatical error, but play this video because it's designed to sort of rage bait you and go go viral.
25:51
And it has this saxophone getting louder song >> and it's the whole family.
25:55
This would normally be a tragedy like you're losing your family home.
26:03
>> But really >> what's it's super dark and you're like this is awful. Like what is going on?
26:08
But if you dig into this person's uh if you dig into this person's account, the next video is like is like I lost my house day trading and like here's how I'm planning to win it all back and then it's like click my link in bio and then you click on the link in bio and it's like here's my trader ma trading mastermind.
26:28
I have a free course and then I have a $49 course and then I have a $100 course and so all of this is actually a funnel to an info product and this is designed to go viral and I don't know if they lost the house or not. Like I I I have no idea.
26:42
It could be that they're doing better than ever because they're not actually trading at all.
26:48
>> Very very counterintuitive way to market an info product being like I just lost my house because I was bad at something.
26:57
Now follow me as I run it back up.
27:01
>> Maybe it's it's it's again it's like it's I saw it and it made me very sad. >> Yeah.
27:07
Don't totally like that is the correct emotional response but the nature of the algorithm and negativity bias on social media is this is something that you see and you're like oh this is horrific. I can't look away.
27:19
And then a lot of there's just a funnel and some people click and they watch another video and they're like oh this is this is inspiring.
27:24
She's she's working her way back up and they're they're they're staying in the game.
27:30
They're they're not they're not uh you know hanging up their jersey, I guess, or whatever you want to call.
27:35
>> They're not quitting right before they hit it big.
27:37
>> Basically, that's the pitch.
27:37
And yeah, it's really really dark.
27:39
Um so so I I I started going down this because I was like, "Okay, um who's on the side of this?"
27:48
interesting because it just like it it it sticks in your mind because it is such a >> tragic scenario. Totally.
27:56
>> But then what's interesting is they're just like spinning it as >> oh yeah well it's all good.
27:59
We're I'm stick I'm you know I'm not we're not giving up yet. >> Yeah.
28:05
Um, >> so it's very very odd, but there's actually a something very interesting going on because when you see that, you think uh casino style gambling, you think that somebody took their capital, if they have their nest egg, their kids' college fund.
28:21
Like when I was a kid, like the the the don't gamble meme was he gambled away his kids' college fund.
28:29
Like that was the most degenerate thing you could do as a father would be gambling away.
28:31
Money that was in your retirement, money that was saved, your nest egg, your rainy day fund was gambled away usually at a physical casino because you couldn't resist the temptation of blackjack or poker or slots or something.
28:44
Uh then we came to the era of the phone and all of a sudden it became sports betting, offshore betting, casinos, uh crypto casinos.
28:55
People were losing money on crypto.
28:55
But again, crypto is a moment where you have to put capital at risk.
28:59
Like you have to have the nest egg. This is different.
29:04
This is people that are So there are people that are uh getting fleeced and losing money.
29:08
But what's interesting is that it's not that they're taking a nest egg and putting it in a stock that then goes down and they pick the wrong stock.
29:17
That's not exactly what's happening.
29:19
oftentimes what they're doing is they're signing up for subscriptions to trade fake stocks.
29:25
It's a simulated market that gives them the the feeling of okay, maybe one day they will be able to get good enough at day trading that they will have access to capital.
29:36
Well, and these platforms pitch it as do your simulated trading with us and if you're good then we will give you then we will stake you and we'll give you capital that you can trade.
29:48
We'll basically turn you into a mini hedge fund. >> Yes. Exactly. Exactly.
29:53
>> And uh we did a little bit of research on these companies and they're shockingly large.
29:58
We found and there's a lot of them.
30:00
We found one that has done hundreds of millions of of fees, which for them is like clearly like better than software margins, right?
30:09
Because they just have they basically have like a fake trading app. >> Yeah.
30:17
>> And they're like, "Yeah, place your trades. It's tied to real data." >> Yeah.
30:21
>> But then they just promise this pay the $100 a month, prove that you're good at trading, and if you're good, we'll give you capital, right?
30:27
Because it'll be a win-win.
30:29
win-win. Um but of course over time a lot of these companies have been exposed as um Ponzi schemes where they take other customers money and and basically like if you're doing the simulated trading and they're like >> you get an attab boy like you did a good
30:47
job then we're giving you like a reward and so they'll pay them which I think is part of what makes this process addicting which has driven some of these people to go and get a bunch of subscriptions, which is just like very very strange because >> every subscription could be $100 a month. >> Multiplying that out, it's like you
31:06
>> Multiplying that out, it's like you could just be investing, but when you're investing, nobody nobody says, "Good job.
31:12
If you do a little bit better, >> I'll give you a bunch of capital to invest, right?"
31:16
Because people like LPs are not sitting around being like, "How do I back the next like stay-at-home day trader?" Yeah.
31:22
You know, >> like >> No, 100%.
31:26
Like it these were so like jarring to me because I saw multiple reels from people who were like I I have a prop trading account or I'm working with a prop firm or I blew my account or I blew an account or several accounts.
31:42
And I was just like you are not working with Citadel or Jane Street.
31:46
Like this is just this does not compute.
31:48
Like you're not on the phone like your counterparty is not a a a hedge fund.
31:56
like something else is going on.
31:56
And it turns out that the counterparty is basically a SAS product that shows virtual trades that are completely simulated.
32:03
And it's and the crazy thing is that I I originally said this.
32:05
I was like, imagine like look at this horrific story.
32:09
Imagine being at like Citadel or Jane Street watching this and being like this is the person on the other side of the trades, right?
32:14
But it's not it's actually not the hedge fund that's making money off of this.
32:17
It's the independent >> the hedge funds would love to be trading.
32:21
They would love to be trading against these people. >> Yeah.
32:24
They're like, "Get in the real market. Go on a real go on. Don't be scared. Don't be scared. Come on."
32:28
And and we'll make a penny every time you make a trade.
32:31
Like, we're happy with with doing market making, but instead it's it's these firms that are that are actually um just taking a $100 a month from people.
32:41
They'll do it on credit cards.
32:42
And so, that's where you get people.
32:44
Again, we don't know if this one's real or not, but there are actual people who will put multiple $100 a month subscriptions for these simulated trading uh challenges on their credit cards and they're not even putting any capital in the market.
32:58
So, there's actually no chance of like, oh, you actually did get into a good stock and it did well.
33:03
Like, it's it's purely fake. It's crazy crazy.
33:06
Um, these prop trading firms >> Yeah.
33:13
they would end up having to classify like a bunch of people as independent contractors because they're not actually putting capital at risk.
33:19
So, if they're going to get a payout, they're getting paid as like a freelancer. >> Mhm.
33:24
>> And uh I know at one point uh there was some there was coverage around deal >> um supporting some of these companies.
33:32
they ultimately I think pretty quickly exited the market because they realized and there there was >> um basically the um >> I think I don't know if it's the I think it's SEC that's come after some of these I'm sure companies because they're they're again like >> simulating uh simulating trading but there's real money on the line and then of course the the Ponzi dynamic. Yeah.
33:56
Um, >> so Bloomberg had a breakdown of this back in December 15th of last year and it's fascinating.
34:01
Somehow somehow we missed it at the time.
34:03
I'm I'm so glad it exists because uh they did some they did some great journalism here um to kind of show you the full picture of what's going on.
34:11
Uh we can read through a little bit of this.
34:13
First let me tell you about CrowdStrike. Your business is AI.
34:16
Their business is securing it.
34:18
CrowdStrike secures AI and stops breaches.
34:20
So Bloomberg says the pitch is enticing.
34:22
Learn to trade like a Wall Street master of the universe. Pay a fee.
34:27
Typically starting below $100, just $99 maybe, and manage thousands in fictional funds in simulated markets for stocks, currencies, or commodities.
34:38
If you stick to the strict rules and meet your profit target, you can become a funded trader for the firm.
34:44
That means you could receive payouts as of as as much of 90% of the airsoft's profits you make.
34:56
If you fail, you can keep trying by paying the fee again.
34:58
More than 400 companies offer forms of these challenges, up from about 10 just 5 years ago, according to FPFX Technologies, a Florida based software provider for the industry.
35:11
So, there's actually a SAS company that's powering all of these different like prop firms that do the simulated trading because of course you need to take real market data and then create a a front end for the end customer.
35:26
Uh, and they are effectively reselling a skinned version of that software which is fascinating.
35:32
Uh, three of the biggest are FTMO group, funding funding pips corp and Alpha Capital Group. That's a great name. Alpha.
35:40
You want to go with Alpha Capital? That sounds serious.
35:42
Uh they have about six million customers collectively.
35:46
Well, >> personally, I would choose >> Sigma. >> Sigma. >> Two Sigma.
35:50
>> No, just >> just one Sigma. That is the problem.
35:51
If you've been following the drama two sigma, it makes sense because you never want to start a firm with two sigas. >> It's impossible. >> They're waring. You know this, right? They're actually waring.
36:00
The founders of two sigma are for are uh two lone wolves. That never works out. An alpha and a sigma. An alpha and a beta. but never two sigas.
36:09
That's not going to work.
36:13
Uh so they do actually disclose that the trading is simulated.
36:16
Uh the companies describe what they offer as proprietary or prop trading, a finance term for managing a firm's own capital.
36:23
Uh quote, "Enhance your skills with modern with modern prop trading firm."
36:32
FTMO's website says manage a trading count a trading account of significant size without risking your hard-earned money.
36:39
Funding PIP says a global leader in >> such a crazy >> crazy crazy um some customers complain that they've paid high fees while the chances of winning rewards are slim.
36:51
Only 4% of users get any payout based on their trading accord according to FPFX.
36:57
Uh in social media posts, people describe themselves as prop tra prop firm customers claim to have lost thousands on fees.
37:03
So they've they've done these $100 a month challenges, a couple of them for a full year and they never got a payout because they never won the challenge.
37:12
So uh because uh it's very hard if you're just an average stay-at-home trader.
37:17
What was your stay at home day trader?
37:19
Uh, one of them, Sam Sharif, 28, an accountant from London, estimates he's paid about $10,000 to simulated trading firm Pip Farm since last year.
37:29
When you have a bad streak, it's easy to think, I'll just buy one more.
37:33
Before you know, you've racked up a lot in losses.
37:35
Share says he's lost trading challenges because the rules are so strict.
37:39
Simulated trading customers are paid only if they adhere to certain conditions, which the companies say they spell out in advance.
37:47
They vary from firm to firm, but most of them stipulate a profit target, daily loss limits, a minimum number of trading days, and leverage restrictions.
37:55
Some require profits to be earned consistently rather than in one large trade.
38:00
Trading around news events can be banned, and many don't allow positions to be held over weekends.
38:06
Uh, Pip Farm says Sharief failed dozens of challenges by exceeding the amount of losses a trader can sustain in a day.
38:13
A pip is a price move in foreign exchange trading for for reference.
38:18
Uh when he eventually passed the hurdle, the company introduced a 1% risk per trade limit for him.
38:24
He and the company say that means a customer can't risk more than 1% of his capital in a single transaction.
38:31
The company calls it a standard industry practice for traders with an uns unsustainable approach, a restriction Sharief says is unfair.
38:40
Sharief and Piparm say the company recently committed to making some payouts based on his successful trades.
38:47
So you can't just find one stock, bet it and win.
38:51
You have to be diversified into over a hundred positions potentially to actually deploy all your capital.
38:55
I guess Adam Khalil, a former operations employing employee at Singapore-based PIPARM says the majority of users breach the rules and end up repeatedly paying signup fees.
39:06
People lose one time, they want to make the money back, so they buy another challenge, he says.
39:10
So, this is the I blew my account.
39:12
Like, you you zeroed your account, you you lost your $100, you got to buy back in.
39:17
It's like a casino with a with a ticket at at the door or something. It's crazy.
39:24
>> It's so It's so fascinating. >> Okay. Yeah.
39:29
>> Like, why would you just not >> dollar cost average into the Russell 2000? >> No.
39:34
Why would you just not take the money? Why? Why? Why?
39:38
I mean, I I understand it.
39:40
>> It's because they dream the dream of you will be given $100,000 to manage and you could 5x that and we will give you a portion of those profits and you could win $400,000.
39:50
So, it the the pitch is definitely >> $100 to try this.
39:56
If you're good, you could make $100,000 very quickly.
39:58
Uh needless to say, all of these businesses should be banned from operating in their current form.
40:09
>> Channeling the uh the solder and jetty deep down.
40:11
Uh no, it it seems rough at the very least like stronger FTC uh regulation around like how these are marketed, all the influencer workflows that are happening because it's very clear that the info products lead you to a sign up form that has a referral fee attached to it.
40:28
So, so they will go put out those viral videos that are bleak, then it's it's buy my free trading course, then it becomes sign up for at this particular prop firm.
40:38
I get 40 bucks when you when when you go in the door.
40:42
And so, uh, lots of lots of odd stuff going on.
40:45
Um, anyway, let me tell you about Shopify.
40:47
Shopify is a commerce platform that grows with your business and lets you sell in seconds online, in store, on mobile, on social, on market places, and now with AI agents.
40:56
What's going on at the top of the app store, Jordy?
40:57
I know you watch the top of the app store like a hawk.
41:01
>> New camera called Chromagraph. Okay. >> Camera. >> Is it good? >> Rocketed to the top.
41:06
>> Seems like it must be good.
41:07
>> Uh created by Ryan Johnson. >> Oh, that's amazing. Yeah.
41:12
>> Said, "I recently badgered my cinematographer Steve Yedlin into making my ideal iPhone still camera app.
41:17
It shoots raw, bypasses the iPhone's look processing, and instead uses the same image processing we use on our movies." went super viral. >> Cool.
41:28
>> This thing is like clearly printing.
41:28
I think it's $13 to download it. >> Pick this up.
41:33
This looks pretty attractive. >> I picked it up.
41:35
I haven't really been able to >> Okay.
41:38
>> properly use it yet, but >> Yeah.
41:40
>> No, I I I've been really excited about the the pro the the prospect of taking raw photos with the iPhone camera and then having a different way to manipulate them.
41:51
potentially some AI in there, but not AI image generation, like AI fine-tuning all the knobs of like contrast and levels and color grading and all of that stuff.
42:02
Uh, I don't know how much it does that, but it uh there's some of the photos here from Brendan Hodes you can pull up.
42:07
I took the app for a test run. Looks great to me. I think these are cool.
42:12
>> Yeah, it ends up looking like it was taken on a on a on a >> Yeah.
42:15
I think a lot of people have gone through the Instagram filter era on the low res iPhone and then sort of migrated to just stock iPhone photos which all have the same look and it's cool to sort of bring back that more filtered, more aesthetic, more uh more taste driven look.
42:34
Uh cool uh exciting to see people people having fun with this.
42:37
Uh Nishi now wishing I took more raw. I'm in love.
42:42
Uh, these are some nice photos of a uh of a pool and whatnot. So, go check it out. Go check it out.
42:48
Um, Tyler, you're on very thick ice, bro. I love you.
42:54
That's just such a funny post telling someone that they're thick on on thick ice.
42:58
On very thick ice instead of on thin ice. Thought that was funny.
43:01
Uh, anything else before we bring in our first guest of the show, Jordy? >> No. It's time.
43:07
>> It's time for MongoDB.
43:07
Let me tell you about MongoDB.
43:09
What's the only thing faster than the app?
43:11
The AI market, your business on MongoDB.
43:14
Don't just build AI, own the data platform that powers it. >> Triple cl.
43:20
>> Then we have Luke from Kino.
43:20
Building collaborative video editor. Luke, how you doing? Welcome to the show. >> Doing amazing. Happy to be on. >> Kino.
43:31
Great name for a business. >> Great name. >> Powerful. Powerful name.
43:38
>> Imagine if it wasn't called that. It would be much worse. >> Totally.
43:41
>> Introduce the product.
43:41
Like at what level of abstraction do you see the modern video editor operating?
43:47
>> Yeah, we've all seen the videos including my launch video co-director Donald's where Opus 5.
43:51
5 by itself can create unimaginably good motion graphics plus videos in general combining motion graphics, real life footage and everything that foul AI can give you.
44:02
>> Uh we are giving that a home.
44:02
uh and all of the things that you need to do real work where all of your teammates footage and all of your teammates edit decisions are in one place.
44:10
And to prove that this is something that is worthwhile, uh Donald, my colleague, and I, we spent the past few days living in one giant editor timeline, Figma style, while swarms of my agents and swarms of his agents all just chipped away at the same mega timeline.
44:26
Uh a thing that we've been working on for a while. >> Awesome.
44:29
So um how do you see the how do you see the business positioning between building a harness and building like a SAS workspace where AI work gets done like these are blurring but there are definitely companies uh I'm thinking of like Slack with Slackbot is AI powered but it's still mostly a software product.
44:51
Most people would not refer to Slackbot as a as a harness, but then you have like a like a cognition, a Devon, which is like a harness on top of the of the coding agents.
45:01
Um, how are you seeing the positioning of your product?
45:07
>> We are a managed service through and through in a way that is very similar to cognition and Devon, but I think what makes us different is that we really want you to use your subscriptions >> for OpenAI, for cloud code, for everything.
45:18
because we think that if you use $10,000 of code tokens, which is not hard to go through, uh it would mean a lot if you were to spend those productive work in our platform.
45:29
>> Uh that means that what can we do to help?
45:31
Uh agents make a lot of mistakes if they are left to their own devices in this weird and odd domain.
45:35
Uh and nothing really has a URL.
45:37
Uh we have have to be the ones to make a URL for every single timeline item and media item and we have to be the ones to manage this long tale of problems.
45:45
uh you cannot drag and drop the video the uh video files that come off of your guys' cameras into Chrome.
45:54
>> Uh so we had to make it so that you can we had to build all that those custom decoders. >> Yeah.
45:58
>> Uh you know everything from Blackmagic to RED to >> uh a few more a few more fun ones.
46:01
But uh there's a long tale of tasks that go into video editing from colorization to really in intense performance engineering that we're here to do for you.
46:12
That's why we consider ourselves manager.
46:13
Yeah, video is an interesting domain because it's it's like not you can't just oneshot it, >> right?
46:21
Because you could hire the most talented like video team in the world like >> and you can tell them here's my objective. Here's my influences.
46:28
This is what I want it to look like.
46:31
This is what I want it to do.
46:32
And no matter how good they are, you're going to have a bunch of feedback and things that you want to change.
46:36
want to change. And I feel like that's quite different than some of these other domains where you can oneshot like likeal you can you can there's a lot of different things in software that you can effectively oneshot basically say like >> this is the feature this is what it
46:51
needs to do this is how it should interact with the rest of the software >> and then it just does it and it's like okay it functions whereas like >> video is so is a it it can there's always you're always going to want to change things or at least for a lot of different Yeah. >> formats and outputs. >> formats and outputs.
47:08
>> Talk a little bit about >> Yeah. >> cinema.
47:11
>> Talk a little bit about uh like how close is Chrome to actual like native app performance because a lot of just rendering out a timeline can be vastly different if you're GPU accelerated versus doing on the CPU.
47:29
like there's a lot of when you're when you're deep in the Premiere or Blackmagic uh rabbit hole uh you actually wind up starting to think about the specs of your computer uh a little bit more than I think most creatives would like to.
47:41
But Chrome feels like there's been a lot of progress there with WebGL and Assembly, but is it 90% of the way there?
47:50
Is it 100% like where where are we?
47:52
Well, there's this new just like how web assembly allowed new businesses like Figma and many others.
47:58
Uh webc is what I is it's what allowing this formulation of our business. Okay.
48:03
Uh it is like f ofmpeg in the browser fully GPU accelerated if you want.
48:08
>> Uh which means that it's here like we we could not have done this business in 2024. >> Interesting.
48:13
Uh this has all been here pretty recently and we're building on top of that to do the really crazy stuff where >> you know vintage camcorders that people in Bushwick love to use that works in keynote now because we built those decoders on top of this new technology that every browser has now.
48:28
>> Wait, but what what's different about a vintage C is doesn't just give you an MP4 at the end of the day.
48:34
>> It's a lot of stuff is from the premp era and of course even kind of fancy podcast sets they're not exporting H. 264.
48:40
they're, >> you know, you have to do the ProRes and everything, but I think the the much more profound thing is that performance.
48:45
If people scrub back and forth and it feels crappy, they're just not going to use us.
48:48
>> Uh, and that's what we've been grinding along, grinding on, uh, and just pulling people in.
48:53
We talked to Tyler last year when we were much earlier in our journey.
48:56
>> Uh, his very early feedback was so useful and >> that's awesome.
49:00
>> Grinding towards where we >> Yeah, that's amazing.
49:01
Um, how are you thinking about integrating uh, AI video generation, more generative AI tooling?
49:09
It feels like we're oddly still in the slop era.
49:13
There's some projects that I'm seeing coming on the pipe where it's like, okay, this might be the time when we all sit down and collectively watch an AI generated film and think it's good.
49:24
Uh, but we're still not there yet.
49:27
Like, uh, Harry Potter Balenciaga was like three or four years ago.
49:29
And then, uh, there's there's an AI movie, The Gods Must Be Challenged or something.
49:34
I forget what the name is, but um there's there's an AI movie that's coming that people are optimistic about, but we're not quite there.
49:42
But it feels like a hybrid solution is fully embraced where it's green screen replacement, background, set extension, that type of stuff.
49:50
How are you thinking about integrating those tools uh seamlessly?
49:55
>> Like like so much knowledge work, I think LLMs are are going to be just so important here.
49:59
Seeing how Astra is such a good collaborator in things like Blender >> is exactly what I experienced alongside the people I made this video with where we just did crazy amounts of visual effects that I never knew how to do before this. Right.
50:10
Uh and uh if I could choose between some magical lab who could give me a model, a diffusion model that could make a Pixar like movie or a I would say coding agent that could use Render Man and Blender and video editors to make a Pixar-l like movie, I would choose the LM every single time. Mhm.
50:29
>> Uh there's a level of controllability that I think all real artists clearly want.
50:32
I think the method the model of AI movies as you type into a text prompt and then you get a beautiful movie at the end.
50:38
Um just kind of feels like the apocalypse for a lot of people and for good reason.
50:41
Uh and there's a there's a kind of positive vision that we're really excited to demonstrate here where it's like no everything is code.
50:49
Everything is uh but at the same time everything is what you remember.
50:51
The this part we're seeing right here.
50:52
Uh we just had Kino reskin all of Kino itself. Sure.
50:57
>> Uh, we downloaded the ISO of Mac OS Lever and then reskinned Kino to look like that instead.
51:03
>> And then my friend interrupts me and asks me if I'm going to stop goofing around and ship the video and >> yeah, >> all that.
51:09
>> So, how much of that was made in Kino? >> All that was all. >> Okay. >> Kino.
51:14
And are you starting with raw footage, a cut down, a rough cut, and then using AI tooling and Kino more for that final level of edit and polish, or are you starting with a prompt and saying, "Hey, like I just plugged in my my uh, you know, Sony FX3, like go grab the files and start start assembling. You do the rough cut."
51:36
Where do you lean into uh AI versus uh where do you want to dip in, dip out, etc.?
51:46
>> Well, I've I consider my friend Donald has got me to do this.
51:48
I don't even prompt anymore.
51:49
I just feed my granola link to Keynote.
51:52
>> And the granola link contains me and Donald brainstorming about what the video should be. >> Sure.
51:55
>> Uh and so Donald says, I'm going to let's do a scene where I throw the hard drive off the rooftop in our office.
51:59
Uh that granola which had enough context of us talking to each other about what the scene should become is what was used by Kino to then lay out the rough cut alongside a storyboard that we also made in Kino.
52:11
>> And then did you wind up generating the video of you throwing the hard drive off off the roof or did you wind up doing >> Yeah, that was a nightmare.
52:16
We a brand new seed dance model came out this weekend and we begged everyone we knew to get access and the video only came together because they gave us access to this like new checkpoint.
52:26
So, how much of >> should have just thrown a real hard drive off off of the right?
52:29
It'd be a little bit dangerous. >> True.
52:33
Yeah, catching is tricky. Yeah.
52:35
So, how much of that is is AI generated versus AI produced motion graphics that are deterministically rendered versus shot with a camera captured in real life?
52:49
>> Well, that what you just saw is all of them.
52:50
So, it starts that base plate that's motion graphics. That's real footage.
52:54
That's Cance doing it thing. C dance. Yep.
52:58
>> And then when you see my laptop screen, if you go a little bit further when I catch the Whimo, that's not real.
53:02
I rotoscoped my laptop screen to be something completely different.
53:07
>> But it is, but there is a there is a an actual footage plate of you in you with your hands on the computer. >> Yes.
53:15
Yelling at us and all that.
53:18
>> I like the game of figuring out what's real and what's not.
53:20
>> Uh before you before you bounce, how's how's growth been? >> It's been good.
53:24
We have been completely in closed beta until uh this morning and so we're really excited.
53:29
Uh >> for some reason I thought for some reason again I I thought you were going to launch I thought you launched yesterday but that but that's right. Uh it was this morning.
53:38
So I'm sure it's going to be tremendous and uh I'm sure uh someone will try to buy this company by you know the end of the week as well because you guys are clearly like insanely tapped in and and headed uh skating to where the puck is going.
53:51
So, uh, great to meet you and, uh, fantastic.
53:55
Yeah, we're excited to, uh, to to play around with it more here at the Ultradome. >> Have a good day. We'll talk to you soon. Goodbye.
54:02
Let me tell you about public. com.
54:04
Invest across all asset classes, automate anything with AI agents, run trading strategies, risk management, money movements, and monitor markets with AI agents for investing on public.
54:15
Our next guest is Ice Cube, the co-founder and CEO of Big Three.
54:18
Welcome to the show, Cube. How are you doing? >> Pretty good. How you doing?
54:25
>> We're doing fantastically.
54:25
Thank you so much for taking the time.
54:27
Um, get us up to speed on big three.
54:29
Can you take us back in time?
54:31
How did this get started?
54:35
>> Um, just as a fan wanted more basketball, >> I missed I missed Kobe's last game. He scored 60 points. >> I wasn't there.
54:44
I was a little uh, you know, po because I wasn't there.
54:47
M >> so um I was like man it's it's a shame that there's nowhere else for this guy where I could see this guy play >> and why and looking around there's nothing there no other pro um basketball you know >> is around the world but not in the United States and so um and and and then you know being at the time 47 years going through 47 summers between basketball and NFL.
55:29
You know, I used to have a I used to hibernate.
55:32
>> So, >> you're like, I'm not I can't do this again. No baseball.
55:36
>> I don't have I don't have another summer in me.
55:38
>> And there's got to be millions of people out there just like me. >> Yeah.
55:42
>> Uh that needs more hoops after the finals.
55:45
You know, we have the we have the finals hangover.
55:47
We we just we need more and um we found like a void in the industry because three on three was sitting there like >> why isn't it professionalized?
56:01
We looked at what FEA was doing >> and it was very amateurish and we was like we can do 10 times 100 times better than what they doing with the game of three on three.
56:14
And so me and uh my partner Jeff Quantinance, >> we um we we just tried to figure out we spent a year trying to figure out how to professionalized three on three.
56:27
>> So what was the first step? Was it you built a deck?
56:29
You made some phone calls.
56:30
Are you calling athletes or investors or uh stadiums or locations?
56:34
Like what's the sequence of events to actually get this off the ground?
56:38
I mean, the first step was uh coming up with cool rules that were cooler than >> what you see in three on three.
56:47
And why, you know, why was the FIA game, why did it feel so like a backyard playground game >> when we're trying to create a pro sport? >> Yeah.
56:58
So, um, it was just to build a better mousetrap, so to speak, and make our game, uh, more fun to play and fun to watch to make it bite-size where you can watch a big three game in a in an hour >> where, you know, most games are three hours.
57:18
So, those kind of things, uh, making a game faster.
57:21
Uh, so rules was and we argued, you know, back and forth on, you know, the intricacy of the rules and and how we going to make our game, you know, great for the public to watch.
57:38
>> What was the most contentious rule or or what rule were you when you found it, you were like, "This is the secret.
57:42
This is the rule that's going to that's going to make it work." >> First to 50 win. >> Yeah.
57:51
meaning this was a sprint.
57:51
No garbage minutes because there are minutes and and you know there's a 14 second shot clock though.
58:00
So >> you can't play around with the ball.
58:02
You got to get a shot up. >> Yeah.
58:06
>> So those rules that was to me every game >> there's a winning shot. >> Yeah.
58:12
>> You know there's always a game-winning shot in every big three game.
58:14
And so to eliminate the clock was to eliminate lazy play and people just watching the clock. Oh, we got a big lead.
58:23
Let the game let the time run out.
58:26
No, you have to score 50 points.
58:29
So, it's a allout sprint to the finish line. >> Yeah.
58:34
How did you think about uh marketing promotion of the league?
58:39
obviously of deep roots in media broadly, but uh what did you think was going to be the key to raising awareness, getting attendance up, getting distribution in the modern era or through traditional channels?
58:55
>> I mean, we looked at a lot of leagues and you know what what fueled them?
58:57
Uh you know, we we had to look at Vince McMahon. >> Um Dana White. >> Yeah.
59:08
um leagues that had personalities that could, you know, evangelize the league to the public and and and show the public why they should be interested in professional three on three.
59:21
and yours truly was the guy, you know, um passionate guy and >> founder >> have built up, you know, um decades of credibility >> of, you know, I'm not going to steer you wrong when it comes to, you know, hopefully music and and movies and the things that I say are cool.
59:49
>> Usually, you know, people agree.
59:49
So, um, you know, we had that and then it was, um, connecting with the history of basketball.
1:00:00
You know, some of the greatest names, Dr.
1:00:03
J been with the league 10 years.
1:00:05
Clyde Drexler been with the league 10 years.
1:00:09
Um, uh, Iceman, George Gervin just retired, but he was with the league eight years.
1:00:15
Now he's in the front office in our Detroit franchise.
1:00:19
Uh Gary Payeyton been with the league 10 years.
1:00:22
Nancy Lieberman um eight years.
1:00:26
Uh so it's been, you know, connecting with those great uh basketball greatness and having them endorse what we're doing, overseeing what we're doing, making sure we're doing it the right way so the athletes are um taken care of and you know, everybody's happy. coaches.
1:00:48
Um, we want everybody to have fun with the big three and and make it an enjoyable experience.
1:00:59
>> How are you attracting new talent, new athletes?
1:01:01
Because I can imagine if uh somebody who's in the NBA sees you calling, they're going to pick up, but uh at the same time, they might say, "Hey, I got a couple more years in me.
1:01:10
I'm I'm not ready to move on."
1:01:10
Uh what what has it been like building the talent pipeline?
1:01:18
What's been, you know, awesome, we've had some of the greatest players to ever play the game come through our league.
1:01:23
You know, far as first round picks, um, all stars, champions, you know, even Hall of Famers, you know, when you look at, you know, people like, uh, Allan Iverson playing in the big three.
1:01:35
So, you know, we don't have a problem attracting the talent.
1:01:40
The thing is, you know, we want to offer more.
1:01:42
We we we have eight teams. We need to expand that. We need 12 teams. We need 16 20 teams.
1:01:52
You know, we always have a pool of players who, you know, want to play in the big three but can't because it's a numbers game.
1:02:01
So this is this is what you know you know this IPO is going to allow us to do is expand and to really um you know grow and have a bigger footprint which is more attractive to sponsors.
1:02:16
Y >> um you know what's holding us back is we only got 10 games.
1:02:20
You know if we had 20 games or 25 like the NFL you know we could really expand um you know our sponsors.
1:02:30
you know what we can offer to, you know, a platform broadcaster, media deals, you know, we just got to offer more of this good stuff. >> Yeah. So, yeah.
1:02:40
What else are you using the capital for as you scale the business?
1:02:44
Are cities uh receptive to bringing new teams to town?
1:02:47
Is it is it easy to get up and running if you have the if you have the the the capital to go and do a new team in a new city? >> Without a doubt.
1:02:58
you know, it's pretty turnkey cuz we owned all the teams. Yeah.
1:03:02
>> For so long, even 12, you know, so we were able to make that work.
1:03:05
And, >> you know, we're able to, you know, get new owners, you know, and and kind of walk them through and and help them get up to speed and then let them take over.
1:03:18
Cities have been extremely receptive everywhere we go. They want the big three.
1:03:23
You know, we've been to London, we've been to Toronto.
1:03:25
You know, we see this as a global league.
1:03:28
We want teams in London and Toronto, Mexico City, Puerto Rico.
1:03:33
You know, we see this as not just, you know, stuck in the US, but uh we can expand um the league.
1:03:43
>> So, um sky's the limit.
1:03:43
You know, we we want to shore up.
1:03:46
We've been a lean and mean uh league, which has been great because we've been cost effective with how we operate, but we want to, you know, hire the best people to help us shore up the foundation of the league and, you know, really work on the growth of the league.
1:04:04
uh you know we we talking some smart pe talking to some very smart people across the board and they're just in the wings waiting u for the opportunity to help us you know kind of exploit and take out the opportunities that's out there.
1:04:21
Look, if you look at this, we can own three on three all over the world.
1:04:26
Not only just at the pro level, but the youth level and have the playing three on three all over the world.
1:04:34
Big three rules, big three colors, and the public can help us do it.
1:04:39
It's an amazing opportunity. >> Yeah. >> Uh yeah.
1:04:42
How what what's the team like today?
1:04:45
You're >> slated for a spa. Mhm.
1:04:50
>> Uh are you uh are you excited for the public markets for your first earnings call? >> I am.
1:04:56
Uh it's really about giving people who love sports and a unique opportunity that don't come around.
1:05:04
You know, it's a once in a-lifetime thing.
1:05:06
You know, if you look at the history of sports, it's been an exclusive club. >> Yeah.
1:05:12
>> Uh and you got to be part of the club to get in.
1:05:15
you know, here you just gota, you know, want to be part of the league in a bigger way than just buying merch or watching the game or, you know, you want to be part of the growth of the league and and participate on the upside when when we do, you know, uh start rolling downhill. Yeah.
1:05:34
>> Um if you look around, >> nobody else is emerging.
1:05:36
Nobody else has, you know, nine seasons proven that we have a great fan base and this works.
1:05:46
We just got to add some fuel to the fire.
1:05:48
Uh building that fan base.
1:05:48
How important is it that uh players have personal social media presences?
1:05:54
We were talking to Eli Manning about the the the intense pressure of young rookies in the NFL to start a podcast or start doing media or be in movies.
1:06:06
You've obviously been in entertainment for years.
1:06:08
Uh I'm interested in how you're talking to players about grappling those tradeoffs.
1:06:15
Is there is there because of the nature of the league, is there more flexibility to go and build your own fan base and then bring them along for the ride? >> Without a doubt.
1:06:23
You know, when we set to build the big three in 2016, >> Yeah.
1:06:30
>> we wanted to do things better than the other leagues.
1:06:32
you know, the other leagues, they lean into their sports, but you know, music and culture, you know, kind of is is is kind of like a byproduct. >> Yeah.
1:06:43
>> But here it's the perfect intersection.
1:06:47
You know, there's sports, which we take extremely serious, the game, >> but we also understand that there's culture, um, music, and this is an intersection of that. Mhm.
1:07:00
>> Uh so we want to do we want to have more fun than the other leagues.
1:07:03
We want our fans to have more fun. >> Yeah. >> With the gang.
1:07:08
>> Um and so we want to do things a little different.
1:07:12
We want to create more of a festival, more of an interactive uh experience with the fans and the and the uh players and the coaches. >> Yeah.
1:07:23
>> Um and we want to do things that like I said, other leagues are not doing.
1:07:29
You know, there's nothing stopping us >> from doing >> last year.
1:07:33
>> I want you to be really honest with me.
1:07:34
So, John is 6'8, >> never had a run in basketball, but I'm wondering if if there's a way that he could walk on. If there's way >> Yeah.
1:07:44
What does it take to >> What does it What does it actually What does it actually take?
1:07:46
He's got >> Are there open triyouts?
1:07:49
>> He's got at least at least, you know, a few thousand people that really want to see him ball >> for sure.
1:07:54
Um, >> any way he could walk on? Maybe like a celeb shot.
1:08:02
>> Well, you know, we definitely can have him in our celebrity game. >> Okay.
1:08:06
>> You know, there might be better to do a podcast or game. >> Oh, yeah. Yeah.
1:08:11
We can get Rogan in there.
1:08:16
>> No, we we have a If you invited to our combine, you know, I know some people that might can get you in there. >> Okay.
1:08:22
I'm not even Yeah, I'm not really asking for like, you know, an easy way in.
1:08:26
I just want him to have a chance.
1:08:26
I think he has what it takes to be a I think >> it's not easy.
1:08:31
No, >> getting to the, you know, going through the combine, you know, you got over a hundred >> guys, you know, maybe 120 guys going for like 23 spots.
1:08:42
So, >> and they and they've mostly played basketball before, unlike me. >> Definitely.
1:08:49
You know, they played all over the world.
1:08:51
I think I'll be at a disadvantage.
1:08:54
>> They played all over the world. Yeah, you need to come.
1:08:55
Just come, you know, kick it with me on the front row.
1:09:00
>> Yeah, I think I'll be in the stands.
1:09:01
Actually, now that I think about it, that's probably my owner.
1:09:04
>> My ideal an owner might be more suited for me. >> Yes. Yes. >> But, uh, it'd be fun. It'd be fun.
1:09:09
Um, I I you mentioned sponsors.
1:09:11
You mentioned the the revenue ramp.
1:09:14
I'm interested in how you've been, uh, thinking about prediction markets, betting sites.
1:09:18
We saw last year like every league was sort of are they going Khi, are they going Poly Market, DraftKings?
1:09:24
Have you solved that puzzle?
1:09:27
Are you still thinking about bringing uh those markets into the league in some way?
1:09:32
Is there demand for that?
1:09:34
How have you how have you personally sort of grappled with the last year of like the rise of prediction markets?
1:09:42
Yeah, I mean we uh we've been talking to them all seeing which one is ready to be, you know, a real partner with the big three.
1:09:50
You know, you can you can definitely uh >> you know, I guess gamble on on those sites or or have fun those sites with the big three, but we want to, you know, be a part of it um in some way, shape or form.
1:10:05
Uh but it got to be the right partner and the right commitment. >> Yeah.
1:10:10
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
1:10:12
Well, thank you so much for coming on the show.
1:10:14
Jordy, do you have anything else? >> No, this was great.
1:10:16
>> Yeah, this is fantastic. Very cool journey.
1:10:17
Congrats on the on the progress the the the S4 filing and the Spack merger with Graph Global Group.
1:10:22
Uh I'm sure it'll be a a huge a huge run ahead of you.
1:10:27
I mean, amazing >> public company CEO, >> multiple, you know, years and years of hard work to get here.
1:10:32
Years and years of hard work ahead of you, but we're extremely optimistic. >> Do yourself a favor. Yeah. >> Buy to O N T. Okay, thank you. Thank you.
1:10:42
>> Not financial advice though. >> Not financial advice. >> Have a great one. We'll talk to you soon. >> See you. >> Have a good one. Goodbye.
1:10:52
>> You know, more startup founders should do that.
1:10:54
You know, you get somebody coming on from a data bricks or a a base 10.
1:10:58
They should say just throw out the ticker, throw out the invest in the private markets. Why not? Why not?
1:11:03
Uh um there there's some more uh there's a debate about this cyber security news.
1:11:11
The Pentagon is treating a rash of freezer malfunctions that affected refrigeration and freezer units at commissaries that serve several US military bases in August as a suspected cyber attack.
1:11:23
People are saying IoT was a mistake all along.
1:11:26
A lot of people are just asking the question like how are the refrigerators connected to the internet at all? That's sort of crazy.
1:11:33
Of course, you might want to see the the the system like is like I want an alert on my phone if the uh refrigerator is not at the right temperature.
1:11:40
So, uh officials said that they've been in touch with French counterparts about a similar attack that hit more than 350 French supermarkets this uh earlier this month uh on a at least six on base commissaries were affected in late August per Reuters review of the base's social media posts.
1:11:58
In at least one case, the cooling unit's temperatures were raised overnight rep reporting in resulting in spoiled food.
1:12:03
Could be script kitty could be a a true cyber attack from a geopolitical rival. Uh crazy crazy times.
1:12:10
But overall, I was listening to Sam Alman on Cheeky Pint this morning and uh he said he was uh he was he was sort of pleasantly surprised by the progress around uh the PHP exploit and the fact that the industry responded so quickly and so effectively.
1:12:26
Uh what do you think, Jordy?
1:12:26
What are you laughing at?
1:12:28
GR says, "But John, my refrigerator needs Wi-Fi cameras and a two terbte a month data usage limit."
1:12:34
>> You got to be able to tweet from it for sure.
1:12:36
Now, return to the the old thing, the ice box.
1:12:38
You want the You want the gentleman stopping by in a in a gas powered vehicle to deliver you a cube of ice that you will use to refrigerate your milk.
1:12:48
Maybe there'll be a comeback in Milkman.
1:12:49
Maybe that's maybe that's what happens here.
1:12:52
Uh did you see that uh Wheel Gotchell and Man I don't I don't actually I'm not familiar with this firm but a very large wall uh law firm it's gone bankrupt.
1:13:03
>> It's on the cover of the Wall Street Journal. Yes, I saw it.
1:13:05
Uh >> can you pronounce it?
1:13:08
>> Storied law firm we'll go Shawl to close.
1:13:10
I just kind of steamrolled that one. Let's see.
1:13:12
Um >> uh Turner Novak says, "I'm genuinely curious.
1:13:16
How does a law firm go bankrupt?
1:13:17
They literally just sit at computers and charge people 1 to 10,000 per hour to do things that AI is now automating. No offense at all.
1:13:23
There's a lot of expertise required to do this.
1:13:27
How does that not print money?
1:13:27
John Woo followed up and said, "It's confusing why a multi- a major multi-billion dollar uh law firm is going bankrupt.
1:13:34
So I talked to a bunch of lawyer friends about why we could suddenly be insolvent.
1:13:40
Unintuitively, law firms are basically fixed cost businesses.
1:13:42
Revenue comes from a concentrated core group of rain makers.
1:13:47
Let's give it up for rain makers.
1:13:49
Those rain makers carry the whole business while the rest of the business basically drags a word I'm not going to say.
1:13:57
Junior partners are rain makers in training.
1:13:59
They can't yet bring in huge loadbearing dollars.
1:14:00
Interesting uh placement of loadbearing.
1:14:04
Um everyone else associates back of back office staff com uh comprises one gigantic fixed cost center.
1:14:12
Not to mention basic overhead like offices, revolver, interest, etc.
1:14:16
The problem with law firms in particular as opposed to other advisory businesses like banking, consulting, accounting is that the clients are inherently portable.
1:14:24
So any partner can take their team and clients and leave.
1:14:29
Doing so deleverages the rest of the partnership because a small number of partners carry most of the revenue while leaving behind fixed costs.
1:14:36
Once there's a crisis of confidence, it no longer makes sense for partners to stay because they're now getting underpaid in profit share relative to their revenue potential.
1:14:42
If they were to leave for a mega firm like Kirkland, they'd be properly compensated for their earning potential instead of being saddled by rising fixed costs as a percent of revenue.
1:14:52
There's not much IP or brand moat in a law firm.
1:14:54
Clients follow partners and the process of crafting exceptional judgment is mostly in partners' heads.
1:15:00
And lastly, the partners are the equity in the firm.
1:15:03
Law firms have no terminal value.
1:15:05
So when the partners leave, it's as if a huge chunk of the firm equity walks out the door.
1:15:11
TLDDR law firm bankruptcy is basically a crisis of partner confidence and the resulting departure spiral saddles anyone remaining with the gigantic fixed overheads of running a billion dollar business. So >> good.
1:15:24
>> To be clear, this is not a bankruptcy.
1:15:24
I think that I think that's why there's a lot of confusion on the timeline about this.
1:15:29
They're just winding down the operations.
1:15:31
It's more akin to like a a venture capital firm not raising the next fund.
1:15:35
It's not that they went bankrupt and uh had some sort of you know balance sheet issue.
1:15:40
It's just that they don't want to continue with the current firm structure.
1:15:44
Those lawyers will diffuse to other firms, start their own practices, do all sorts of stuff.
1:15:50
But uh it's not it's not bankruptcy like they're not going they're winding down the firm.
1:15:55
uh which is still surprising like it's on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, >> but they're working with uh restructurings. >> Yes.
1:16:01
But that's but that's not it's not bankruptcy.
1:16:03
It's like it's like every partner has a different stake on the equity.
1:16:06
There is value there and how you decide where that goes.
1:16:09
That's the that's why you bring in a restructuring firm.
1:16:12
Uh it's not that it's like in the hands of creditors like the the I believe the partners will own the the assets.
1:16:20
Uh I would be very surprised if it's like their I mean I don't know.
1:16:24
Amend and pretend says great succession planning by the greedy boomers >> just shut down. What does that mean?
1:16:30
>> No, I mean like you know one read on this is that uh the the the >> the partners the rain makers >> like the the the sort of legacy partnership probably had a ton of exposure still. >> Yeah.
1:16:42
>> And um if you're a rain maker and you feel like you're saddled with all of these >> um legacy basically owners of the firm, it make it could make a lot of sense to bounce. >> Yeah.
1:16:53
I mean that happens all the time in in hedge funds >> and and this is happening real time with like >> various venture firms where you have young partners that are that have effectively been retired that are still >> and they might pull out millions and millions of dollars every every year in uh in fees and that fee stream is not exactly being handed over to the next generation on any short uh time scale.
1:17:16
So the great uh the great investors are moving on and starting their own firms.
1:17:20
Um, what else is in the timeline?
1:17:20
Let me tell you about Figma. Agents, meet the canvas.
1:17:25
Your AI agents can now create and modify your Figma files with design system context.
1:17:29
Um, >> we got to talk about uh Snowflake. Oh, yeah. And bricks.
1:17:38
>> Uh, >> what's going on?
1:17:40
>> Pretty crazy exchange.
1:17:42
>> We've had both of these folks on the show.
1:17:44
Um, so, uh, Ben Horowitz posted something about, uh, just a blog post about Data Bricks.
1:17:54
Data Bricks is, uh, an incredible company.
1:17:56
Obviously, Lee is just is >> future Hall of Famer, hands down.
1:18:02
>> He basically said, "My boy wicked smart." >> That's what he said.
1:18:06
>> Um, and uh, Shridar says, "Release all the numbers.
1:18:09
Does 80% year-over-year become 65% when you remove pass through inference?
1:18:14
What does it become when you remove AI natives?
1:18:16
And how much of of it is from one-time software license versus a service transition?
1:18:23
>> Uh ask for a bunch of other metrics.
1:18:25
Curious people want to know. PS.
1:18:25
Oi, happy for your success.
1:18:28
The world is big and lifelong.
1:18:30
Um and of course, so so basically >> I wish I was private. >> Yeah.
1:18:36
So, uh data bricks has the benefit. Yeah.
1:18:38
Data Data Bricks is an incredible business and has the benefit of being able to selectively release numbers and not doesn't have to report things quarterly.
1:18:47
>> They don't have to release any numbers leaks.
1:18:49
They don't have to release anything.
1:18:50
They're probably saying leaking. Yeah. Yeah.
1:18:54
>> Um and uh yeah uh >> Shar is is is I think probably genuinely curious, right? >> Totally. Yeah.
1:19:02
It's actually good point.
1:19:04
>> There there's part of that, but it but it came across as um >> Yeah.
1:19:08
as uh you know antagonistic you that's definitely one way to put it.
1:19:13
Ali responds and that and says I don't think we should fight the two companies are complimentary since you're not doing this AI stuff. Shots fired.
1:19:19
I really think Snowflake should consider getting its AI tokens through data bricks.
1:19:22
You can get both cheap open source models as well as Frontier from our platform.
1:19:27
It all goes through Unity Gateway which has smart routing budgets and access turning it into an app.
1:19:33
Uh you can even use Omnigen which with any harness including Coco which is Snowflake's harness.
1:19:38
Most of our customers use this to reduce token spend 30%. >> Yeah.
1:19:44
>> Last few months while token count went up.
1:19:46
Genie lets you then track manage that spend all your financial. >> This is so elite. This is so elite.
1:19:50
If you're if you're in a little uh a little spat on the old Twitter, get Salon. Uh I love it.
1:19:59
Uh, but I think you are right about your take that he's like just genuinely curious because Snowflake is at almost all-time highs.
1:20:05
It's a $15 billion company.
1:20:09
It's not down over the last week.
1:20:11
It's not down over the last month.
1:20:12
It's doing fantastically.
1:20:12
It actually rebounded very very significantly since uh like mid last year.
1:20:20
And so uh the business has been doing fantastically.
1:20:22
The low was was uh $120 a share April 10th of this year. It's up at $320 a share.
1:20:28
So, every once in a while you will see a a private markets company lamenting what's going on in the public markets or vice versa and it's kind of motivated by uh the the the valuation shifts that are happening in one or the other.
1:20:43
This doesn't feel like that.
1:20:45
But it is funny that Holly is just pitching. I love it.
1:20:47
Uh anything else on this? Yeah.
1:20:50
I mean, I thought I thought for for people wanting this to be a Drake versus Kendrick, this was relatively tame and >> Yeah, it could have gotten a lot dirtier.
1:21:00
They could have taken the gloves off, throw them down, start fighting.
1:21:03
But uh oh well, maybe next time we can >> Goodart says, "Generous.
1:21:07
I was asking about the revenue, not uh about contributing to it."
1:21:15
>> Anyways, uh good good fun. Good fun.
1:21:17
>> Well, our next guests are already here. We have two.
1:21:20
We have David Rider and Jared Allen.
1:21:23
Welcome to the show, guys. How are you both doing?
1:21:27
>> Thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. >> Oh, good. Thanks for having us. >> Please.
1:21:31
>> Great to have you guys.
1:21:32
>> Uh tell us about uh about how you guys work together, introduce both of yourselves, and then we'll go into the story today.
1:21:41
>> Well, go ahead, David. >> Sounds good.
1:21:43
It's uh it's great to to to be on you guys. >> Um David Rider.
1:21:46
I'm one of the the uh founders and principles at Unisports Group.
1:21:51
We're an investment group that uh looks primarily at emerging sports um where we do control and and high influence uh investments um across sports.
1:22:01
So um we're investing today we announced our investment in in the curling group uh where we're working alongside Jared. Jared, jump in. >> Yeah.
1:22:09
Um so I'm just a retired football player and uh >> we're going to hit the gong for you for this We're very excited.
1:22:19
>> We got to We got to make gongs a sport.
1:22:21
We got to work on smashing.
1:22:21
Baseball players might have.
1:22:23
I think you you'd out compete us. Sorry. Sorry to interrupt.
1:22:27
You announced the investment I needed to >> rotation right there.
1:22:29
You know, you got a little core strength right there.
1:22:30
Was like going to Gong Smash. >> U anyways.
1:22:35
So, I got into curling on a bet years ago like trying to make the Olympics. >> Okay.
1:22:41
>> Fell love with the sport.
1:22:41
met our CEO of the Curling Group, Nick Solski, up at an event in Toronto.
1:22:46
>> Uh him and I started talking about how basically um underfunded, under um you know, promoted curling is and how it's kind of this this crazy sports uh niche sport game that is takes incredible athletic ability, but no one kind of knows about it and there's a bunch of really smart people that play it, but it's always kind of like, you know, been the side job of everybody. Yeah.
1:23:12
>> Um, and just all the different opportunities that the fan base, how loyal it is and and all the content creation around it.
1:23:17
And then with Nick's um, background in in gambling and and stuff like that in gaming, it was like, man, the opportunities for that was like a whole another level of all the different all the different metrics that come into a curling shot, right?
1:23:29
All the different measurables.
1:23:30
Uh, but but more importantly, it's these athletes that don't get a credit for being elite level.
1:23:35
I mean, you're talking about throwing a stone 140 ft and having to hit like a millimeter or a centimeter of of a rock to to make certain shots.
1:23:41
And so, it really is fascinating the athleticism to sweep on ice.
1:23:46
Um, if you watched our very first grand slam of curling in the United States, you'll see I snapped a broom.
1:23:52
So, it's not it's not always the easiest. >> There you go.
1:23:54
I mean, hey, hey, we break these mallets all the time, so we're we're familiar. >> Yeah. So, we got together.
1:24:00
I was one of the founders of the group and uh Nick's done a great job of taking it and you know we bought the grand slams and curling uh we we got the rock league and now with with people like David coming on board it really >> um it pushes the sport to the next level.
1:24:17
Um it when you know as an athlete I always tell people you know football basketball all that stuff would be nothing without the outside support without the media attention without the in influx of revenue from people other than athletes um the game wouldn't be wouldn't be what it is today and that's what we're trying to create with uh the curling group and the rock league.
1:24:35
And that's why people, you know, like David are so important to to see that dream, to see the the the business side of things, to to create that, to bring exposure to those athletes and and to create revenue based around it is is fantastic. >> Yeah.
1:24:49
>> Uh we covered that story of an American guy who's like a lawyer, I believe, who was competing in the Olympics and is kind of like a I I believe acts as somewhat like a father figure for the team.
1:25:01
I really really enjoyed that.
1:25:01
And then and then I want to ask >> that's one of my old teammates. No way. >> Awesome.
1:25:07
Um yeah, he seems seems like a legend.
1:25:09
Uh and then and then talk about the uh talk about like the the drama in the sport cuz I remember there was also this last Olympics there was like a bunch of cheating scand seem seemed like cheating happening and they were like catching them in 4K.
1:25:26
>> No, they were catching them in 4K. >> Oh yeah, they were. I remember that.
1:25:30
>> I I don't I think this is pretty black and white. >> Double touch. Yeah.
1:25:33
>> I don't you know what listen I don't know why uh I think it was Jacobs Brad Jacobs a team candidate.
1:25:37
I think he was the one that was involved with it with Switzerland.
1:25:40
You know you look at Sophie Cunningham.
1:25:42
She got all the attention for you know was pointing and sticking her tongue out.
1:25:45
I'm like Brad Jacobs did it first in curling. You did that. >> Yeah. Yeah. That's right.
1:25:51
>> All sports are downstream of curling. >> Yeah.
1:25:56
>> Well Jared brings up a good point of of the you know about the drama and all of that.
1:26:00
you know, there's there's it's co-ed, right?
1:26:01
There's there's women involved, there's men involved, and and on the same team, on the same ice at the same time.
1:26:06
It's one of the things we love about it, and I think it it drives the uh the excitement.
1:26:09
It drives a whole different audience uh for it.
1:26:12
The you know, these these kinds of scandals and uh and and you know, the the drive to uh to win um is what gets people excited.
1:26:22
And uh we actually, you know, the the the numbers are fantastic.
1:26:24
the interest from um from women is actually it's actually out drawing um men.
1:26:28
The audience is more female uh than male for the most recent um Grand Slam event.
1:26:34
And it's it's to Jared's point like it's cuz it's exciting and uh and and the drama from uh uh from many of it really really gets people going and um gets a good mix of an audience. >> Yeah.
1:26:47
How are you thinking about the revenue mix over time?
1:26:48
Is it like a third tickets, a third merch, a third ads and sponsorships?
1:26:54
Like give me a rough feeling for like how these businesses evolve. >> Yeah.
1:27:01
So, so look, we invest in a lot of emerging sports.
1:27:03
We we have an investment in the uh in the X Games League um which is super fun, super interesting. >> Yeah.
1:27:11
Won the championship uh over the summer um for for Club New York.
1:27:13
Um, and and a lot of these uh these sports have a similar model where it's look, we're going to we're going to sell a bunch of tickets.
1:27:21
We're going to have you you can see the uh the audience, the excitement for audience.
1:27:24
Um, but you also make a ton of the money on sponsorship. Sure.
1:27:29
>> Um, and it's it's the brands that are that are excited to to connect with these these audiences.
1:27:32
And so when you have uh a team that, like we said, has has a lot of drama there.
1:27:37
It appeals to both men and women.
1:27:39
It appeals to a younger audience.
1:27:40
um you're going to get more uh more sponsors, more interesting sponsors um and a good mix of of all of those kinds of things.
1:27:47
Then you add an incredible live experience and that's that's what it is.
1:27:51
Jared can tell you about the just the fun of being at um at some of these events.
1:27:55
You go there and you got live music going, you've got a fun crowd, you have a couple of drinks, you have have have you know some excitement on the ice.
1:28:02
I mean it's an amazing experience and that's why people want to go and then you add the third layer which is really the media deal.
1:28:10
So, uh, the current group just announced, um, you know, part of our thesis as we got in, um, was announcing 300 plus hours of, uh, of content on CBC, um, in Canada on an annual basis.
1:28:21
Uh, CBC is investing not just for, you know, in a short term, but, it's actually a 5-year deal, uh, replacing Canada, uh, Hockey Night in Canada um, on on many of the, um, uh, programs up there.
1:28:33
So, we're going to be all over TV.
1:28:35
You're going to love it if you're a sponsor.
1:28:37
um the fans are going to want to be there and uh and the and the revenue mix will come from that.
1:28:41
But um they're already it's already growing.
1:28:45
The uh the numbers um are kind of off the charts.
1:28:47
It was like 400 plus% growth.
1:28:49
Um over 100 million social uh uh views on social um incredible just just from the first uh event.
1:28:58
>> Yeah, I want to talk about that. It feels like curling. Sorry.
1:28:59
I it feels like curling is like uniquely great for social media in that uh one throw is the perfect length.
1:29:07
It's it's actually a vertical ice even like it frames up well.
1:29:11
well. And I'm interested in like are you are you having fruitful conversations with sponsors around hey we're going to bring you on social media and your logo will be there and maybe even you know ad reads overlays stuff like that to
1:29:25
monetize that attention that might be a little bit more passive but still extremely valuable and obviously it's a funnel to going deeper with the sport but are advertisers comfortable yet saying okay I'm getting a lot of impressions just on social media. Yeah. I mean, you're right. You want to Yeah. I mean, you're right.
1:29:40
You want to come be our head of sponsorship. We're happy. >> Fantastic. Yeah.
1:29:44
No, we love this pitch for us. >> Yeah. Exactly. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
1:29:49
We love We love clipping and bringing the advertisers with us.
1:29:52
You can see the advertisers at the bottom corner right here.
1:29:53
If this goes out one sec before David answers that, but so to your point, that was one of the the things that excited when Nick and I were talking about this.
1:30:01
So, curling is one of these rare sports that actually shows better on TV, right?
1:30:08
because you could you can reach such a broader audience because if you're live you need to have education when you got four or five games going on in one se or on one sheet of ice >> at one time you have to know what you're watching right so it's great in Canada it's great in Europe because the fact that they're highly educated audience
1:30:23
members in the US were building on that right but what's great and the numbers always supported you know is the Olympics through the roof right >> uh curly night in America we used to have it numbers were through the roof because you had educated commentators right that could tell people what they're watching. >> And so with this with this kind of
1:30:38
>> And so with this with this kind of contentdriven sports and mediadriven uh revenue bases that a lot of sports rely on, >> curling fits that model perfectly because it shows so well on TV because you have commentators telling people what they're watching and then they understand the complexity of each shot.
1:30:55
So that was one of our real, you know, when we decided to go full into this, that was one of the big deals is because we're like, we we don't have to create content for this sport.
1:31:02
The sport was actually built for TV, built for socials, and built for for generating content, you know, around the globe. >> Mhm.
1:31:10
Uh, do fights ever break out?
1:31:14
>> Well, so let me tell you, that was my that was the toughest thing I had to learn about, you know, getting into curling, there's this whole concept called in the spirit of curling >> where you're not allowed to hit your opponent.
1:31:24
I I don't I don't buy, you know, >> I'm not a full believer in it.
1:31:28
I think we should let some things down.
1:31:30
I think they must they must have created that.
1:31:33
They must have created that just to nerf you.
1:31:34
You know, they're like, "We can't have this guy.
1:31:36
We can't have this guy Jared coming in."
1:31:40
>> I will say though, there's some of the old-timers talk about some uh some brooms getting snapped in dressing rooms and um you know, in in in a game where the the winners have to buy the losers a beer.
1:31:50
It doesn't really uh you know, equate to fighting, >> but I think some of the old-timers would get a little more sly.
1:31:55
I wish there was some more crosschecking on the ice with those sticks. I'll be honest. >> That'd be great.
1:32:00
How do you how do you guys think about building uh >> building up uh like stars?
1:32:05
Like it feels like it feels like the sport like from a marketing standpoint as you guys think about growing uh the platform figuring out somebody that uh it's like your your thinking should be like what's the timeline to getting one of our players on Joe Rogan, right?
1:32:21
Like sort of the the pinnacle of modern media.
1:32:25
>> Um who's who's that person going to be, right?
1:32:27
Um, but yeah, how do you think about that?
1:32:31
>> Like do they need to have some like crazy like do they need to spend time in LA and get caught up in like the fast life, you know?
1:32:41
>> Like I think there there needs to be this like you know allure like yeah these curler you need a bad boy spotted with >> Alex and I I'll be honest I don't know if some of these people could handle some of these old time curlers.
1:32:52
I mean, you take the Kevin Cooies of the world.
1:32:56
I mean, the amount of the amount of drinks these guys can put down.
1:32:58
It's like, how how do they get up and function the next day?
1:33:02
>> Um, these these some of these oldtimes, you get around them and u I mean, they can still just absolutely be three sheets to the wind and put one right on the uh right on the pin.
1:33:10
You're just like, this doesn't even make sense.
1:33:13
>> Uh, but I think I think what it's coming to nowadays is is a lot of these athletes are realizing that it is you have to be you have to have a professional mindset.
1:33:20
like Scotland has a massive curling facility out there, right?
1:33:24
I mean, they dumped millions and millions of dollars into this sport for their national teams and all that stuff um to to train just specifically this sport.
1:33:31
And so, I think this younger generation is realizing, listen, this isn't wreck league anymore.
1:33:35
You know, we can't go do what our grandfathers did.
1:33:39
But at the same time, you you definitely I think you're right.
1:33:41
You have to have people that are going to have an edge about themselves.
1:33:43
Uh you got to have people that are going to be intimidating on the on the because that's what as fans, we want to see, right?
1:33:47
You you almost want it's like NASCAR.
1:33:49
you want to know see when that wreck's going to happen.
1:33:52
>> Um or you know you look at Rock League for example we we paired you know Jacobs from Team Canada was paired against um one of the SW or yeah Swiss players in the very first Rock League match ever and those dudes dang near went to fisticuffs in the in the locker room during the Olympics right when things were getting heated. So >> yeah.
1:34:10
>> Yeah, you got to have those moments, right?
1:34:11
You got to have those rivalries in sports.
1:34:13
You got to have those personalities that clash because that's what make competitive sports fun is when you got, you know, when you got it's like two, you know, two magnets pushing against each other, right?
1:34:22
>> Has there been a like a doping scandal at any point in curling's history or is that >> No, I mean there might be if they tested some if they tested some of these guys back in the day for drinking beforehand, that might that might have been the only scandal.
1:34:34
>> What about uh >> those people are pretty wholesome.
1:34:35
What about the fan experience?
1:34:37
You mentioned being a fan, having a couple drinks.
1:34:39
Uh, is heckling approved?
1:34:41
Is it that in poor taste?
1:34:44
How how far could you go?
1:34:44
You're you're good to have some heckling on the from the stands.
1:34:49
>> Yeah, I I welcome all of it.
1:34:49
There needs to be more of it. >> Okay.
1:34:53
>> Uh, and and problem is like we had a guy in uh I think it was like nowadays people on social media get paid to heckle people, right?
1:34:59
I mean, it's like they just it's, you know, so I I think I think you need more authentic uh heckling, not people out there for clicks. Sure.
1:35:07
>> And that really happens when you start building up fandom.
1:35:08
That's the cool part about having teams, right?
1:35:10
When you have teams, you build up fandoms, you build up rivalries. Absolutely.
1:35:12
There needs to be more heckling on the ice.
1:35:14
People need to let you know when you're great.
1:35:16
And they need to let you know when you suck.
1:35:19
Uh that's what's fun about sports. >> Yeah.
1:35:21
>> Imagine if we could do that in business.
1:35:22
Imagine if you if your CEO made a really bad call.
1:35:24
You could walk in and be like, "You suck today."
1:35:28
>> I don't know that was going to get, you know, >> that happens.
1:35:31
You should see our team after the show.
1:35:32
They go pretty hard on us. Uh, sorry.
1:35:34
Uh, you had something to say, David? >> No.
1:35:38
Yeah, I was just going to point to to some some similar sports like if you look at like the Waste Management Open and uh kind of notoriously in golf, it's the same kind of sport, right, where you know, you're trying to concentrate and all that.
1:35:49
Um, but uh but but the fans are having a good time and they may they they'll let you have it if if you're not.
1:35:55
And it's such a good sport where, you know, you can be miked up and you can have um you can get to know these these athletes as they're doing it.
1:36:02
And that's how you build them into stars.
1:36:03
Um and you build through the league.
1:36:05
And again, look, we're going to be on TV. 300 hours is is a ton.
1:36:09
And that's on CBC in Canada and it's on ESPN Plus and and some coverage on ESPN uh in the US.
1:36:14
Um you're just naturally you're going to get to know these people.
1:36:18
It's it's more hours than uh than than almost any other sport is is on television. And they're miked up.
1:36:24
They're uh they're doing things.
1:36:26
We're pushing it on social.
1:36:26
Like I said, the social engagement is just off the charts in terms of the growth um and the the the interest from from fans.
1:36:34
Um so, you're going to see a lot of these athletes starting to become bigger stars and you're going to see them um being being built up by their sponsors, by the league, by the by the sheer amount of content uh that's out there.
1:36:45
And so you you have some of that and you have the uh uh the opportunity to kind of turn them into into household names at least um at least amongst the the the right fan groups.
1:36:55
>> What's been the the the curling group strategy on prediction markets last year?
1:37:00
It felt like uh every league was picking aside poly market ki uh have you have you consult have you uh figured out a strategy?
1:37:08
Do you want to go all in with one be diversified?
1:37:10
How how do you think about maximizing the potential of the league there?
1:37:16
>> Yeah, I think it's I think it's an a, you know, a little bit of everything kind of a kind of an approach.
1:37:20
I think we want to be um open and and uh have those conversations with uh with all of them.
1:37:27
I think the the interest there.
1:37:29
It's a great sport for uh for for for betting markets and for people um who are interested.
1:37:33
Our I want to be clear our we didn't underwrite this deal as a you know for the betting side.
1:37:38
something that we think there's an opportunity on.
1:37:42
>> It's more incremental to revenue overall >> in the long term. >> Yeah.
1:37:45
It does feel like there's like a fever pitch last year of like every league's got to pay up for whatever.
1:37:48
Uh but then we will a we will enter like a more stable equilibrium with that as a revenue.
1:37:55
>> What is what's the what's the bottlenecks to growth in the US?
1:37:57
I I wouldn't know where to go.
1:38:00
I don't have a place like I'm coming out of this interview.
1:38:03
interview. I'm fiending to get my hands on a rock >> staple center could do or crypto arena sorry does ice hockey do you need to make sure that like on on for the for the US side and growth here like do you need a >> are is there a pathway to making sure there's like a curling center you know
1:38:21
within every major metro area or at least at least you know promising areas >> yeah so I think there's there's a few answers to that one is participation is definitely key and and helpful and I there um that that curling in general is growing in terms of um in certain markets. It's tends to be in the
1:38:38
It's tends to be in the Midwest.
1:38:39
It tends to be in in northern markets where um you know it's obviously cheaper and easier to to have uh have ice.
1:38:47
>> Um so there's some of that.
1:38:47
I think it's also bringing events to the US and showing how fun it can be to go to this.
1:38:54
So, um, we've got events in in Rock League coming up in, uh, in Calamazoo, Michigan, and in Udica, New York, um, to, uh, to start the season.
1:39:01
Um, and so you're going to get people and people are going to go, and I think they're going to go and they're going to have a blast and they're going to start to love it.
1:39:08
We love the way the way the curling league is is um uh the curling group, sorry, is taking rock league out to different markets um on a you know, there are smaller markets that don't necessarily have uh the you know where where you're you're not in as much competition for um uh for attention.
1:39:25
Uh so you go to these markets and they're doing it in Canada, we'll do it in the US as well.
1:39:31
And it's like, hey, this is freaking cool.
1:39:33
Look at look at what the curling group is doing.
1:39:35
and it's it's um look what we can go do and have a have a really fun time and it's the only show in town.
1:39:41
Um so you're going to get some grassroots excitement through that.
1:39:44
You're going to build it up through that.
1:39:45
Um you're going to see the the social media I think continue to take off and have more um of a of an impact on that.
1:39:52
And I think that's going to unlock a lot of the growth in the US.
1:39:53
I think the growth in Canada is going to be it's enough to support the investment to begin with because there's such opportunity and you go from um limited TV to 300 plus hours and you go um with the the growth numbers that we've already seen from the first events and everything that's happening there.
1:40:10
We see this as something that's got a a long history in Canada.
1:40:14
Uh, and that's kind of the the floor and and the what make this a good investment because the downside is so covered by by the existing market.
1:40:23
And then the growth is is by uh yeah, by by building it up, turning it into the league.
1:40:27
Same thing the X Games just did.
1:40:29
And we just saw huge growth in that in season one where you take an existing property, you add a new layer that's more interesting, gives fans a reason to stay um to stay involved, to stay engaged, uh, and gives them different things to root for.
1:40:41
uh you're going to see a lot more um sustained growth.
1:40:45
And by the way, 80% almost 80% growth year-over-year for the X Games.
1:40:49
We we think um and we're seeing similar kinds of numbers um early for uh for curling.
1:40:54
>> That makes me so that makes me so happy.
1:40:56
Like in my household growing up, like X Games was the pinnacle.
1:40:58
That was like the thing that that that was that was peak.
1:41:02
Like every other every other sporting event was secondary to the X Games. >> I love it.
1:41:08
We uh we're we're getting ready Aspen in uh in January to start the winter season.
1:41:13
So, we'll uh we'll have to get you out there.
1:41:16
>> Yeah, I would love that. Would love that.
1:41:17
We're trying to get more extreme sports happening in San Francisco, right?
1:41:21
We want >> if you want to bring if you want to bring X Games to San Francisco, >> we're your guys.
1:41:29
>> To San Francisco's credit, I mean, one of the most extreme sports is just trying to navigate downtown.
1:41:36
>> Set you up for it for sure.
1:41:36
Yeah, know the OG extreme sport. >> I can attest to that.
1:41:41
>> Driving driving driving stick in San Francisco for me as that was that was extreme as a 16-year-old just just trying to survive out the gearbox. >> That's crazy. Congrats, guys. >> Awesome, guys. Yeah, great to hang.
1:41:52
Um excited to follow along and uh yeah, hopefully we can get out there for one of the events soon.
1:41:59
>> Thanks so much for coming on the show. >> Cheers, guys. >> Have a good one. Great stuff. >> Bye.
1:42:04
Uh, very appropriate to talk about curling while we're just days away from Christmas.
1:42:08
I think of it as very Christmassy sport.
1:42:11
How many days are we away from Christmas? >> Just a couple now. >> Just a few. Just hours. >> 56. >> 56. Just hours away. >> Please assume. 56 years old. Just 56 more days.
1:42:23
Uh, we're we're on the home stretch.
1:42:29
We really are on the home stretch.
1:42:30
Uh, I got a I got a pitch for uh, you know, if we want to take curling really really big, fix global warming, global cooling, create a new ice age, freeze over Lake Castic.
1:42:43
Me and you are curling out there every week. You think? Yeah. >> Every day. >> Yeah.
1:42:47
Uh, Tahoe could freeze over.
1:42:47
If they froze Tahoe over, you get Zuck out there.
1:42:52
He's curling instead of riding the the wake board. Yep.
1:42:55
>> Uh, you get uh all all the other tech people out there.
1:42:58
They could get into curling if Tahoe freezes over in an extreme global cooling scenario. Who knows?
1:43:05
Uh well, let me tell you about Railway.
1:43:08
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1:43:11
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1:43:17
Our next guest is here from Serville, the co-founder and CEO, Jake Sto. Welcome to the show. How you doing? >> I'm great. How are you? Great to be here. Great to see you.
1:43:28
Congratulations on the new round.
1:43:30
How have you been since you came on?
1:43:33
You came on my birthday last year.
1:43:36
>> I was it your birthday? That's great. >> I I am great. I am horseed today.
1:43:38
I've been talking a lot as part of this announcement. >> That's what happens. Uh take us through it. How much did you raise? I want to hit the gong. >> Hit the gong. >> Let's do it.
1:43:46
150 million out of three. >> What unlock?
1:43:56
What unlocked what unlocked the new round besides uh Kevin Coup on your team? >> Oh, Kevin's a beast.
1:44:02
>> Kevin is part of a whole cast of characters that made it possible.
1:44:04
So, uh a lot of traction with large enterprises, companies like Fox, Live Nation, WVP doing massive transformations, adopting Serbal, ripping out legacy platforms. >> Mhm.
1:44:16
>> Bad day to be a legacy platform. Absolutely.
1:44:18
Absolute nightmare situation.
1:44:21
checking the news this morning as a legacy platform and just seeing that you guys have a bunch of fresh capital. >> Yeah, I saw. >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:44:27
Service Now stock price is having a a rough day.
1:44:33
>> How's it How's it actually doing? I'm kidding. Okay. Only down. It's only down 26%. >> Okay. >> Okay.
1:44:40
>> We'll do that next time. >> That is crazy.
1:44:41
Um what is the uh what is the go-to pitch for a large enterprise?
1:44:46
Is it come in we'll do everything?
1:44:46
Is it bring us in as a point solution for one specific use case?
1:44:50
Like how narrow are CIOS, Fortune 500 CEOs thinking when they come to you when in that first discussion versus how broad do you want to go like what's the right size of the prize?
1:45:04
>> It's it's a broad enterprise automation platform.
1:45:05
So we can start narrow but honestly people come to us and they actually want to rip out their existing system of record.
1:45:11
They want to rip out their enterprise service management platform.
1:45:15
We give them a path to do that.
1:45:16
We're the first to give them a path off of tools like Service Now >> in over a decade.
1:45:22
>> And so that's where most customers want to start.
1:45:24
Now that might take some time.
1:45:26
So we can plug in as this enterprise automation layer on day one while we migrate the system record over time.
1:45:32
>> What uh what what do you say to someone who's like I don't like my existing provider.
1:45:38
You might be better, but I'm worried that you're going to turn in to the previous legacy provider in a couple years.
1:45:43
And then yes, I I maybe have it good for a couple years, but then I'm back to headache world.
1:45:48
>> Yeah, it's uh it's something I get asked about a lot.
1:45:50
I was actually at a CIO meeting this morning and they asked me that exact question.
1:45:53
I think it starts with talent.
1:45:55
Um the first leading indicator of how a company's going to perform are the kinds of people you bring in.
1:46:00
>> And by focusing on keeping that talent density really, really high, >> that's how we can avoid becoming the thing that we set out to destroy.
1:46:08
How front and center is cyber security in these discussions today, this week, this month versus a year ago, five years ago, something like that.
1:46:19
>> It's always been front and center for our customers because Serbal ends up getting access to so many critical things. >> Yeah.
1:46:24
>> So, it hasn't really changed how our customers evaluate us.
1:46:26
They always looked at us through a very critical lens.
1:46:29
Luckily, our focus on these deterministic workflows that are audited, that are codebased, that have approval and and permission checks has always been an advantage for us.
1:46:38
That's becoming even more important to our customers today.
1:46:41
Uh we have doubled down like others on security internally.
1:46:44
We recently acquired a cyber security company and brought in the leader there as our head of security.
1:46:50
So, we're really passionate about locking down the platform because our customers rely on this for so many mission critical workloads.
1:46:57
What if you run into a CIO who's like a hipster and they're like, "I just like old PHP.
1:46:59
I just want to do everything in old PHP." You say, "Too bad.
1:47:04
You got to use the latest and greatest, the secure thing." >> Yeah.
1:47:07
I don't know if there's going to be a market for artal software.
1:47:12
>> I I think that might actually completely die off.
1:47:14
You You get the people with the wired headphones, the vinyl records.
1:47:16
I I think that the old PHP might just truly be uh forgotten forever.
1:47:21
And uh >> it'll be like pottery.
1:47:24
It'll be like a really nice skill that you learn in a class. Yes. On weekends as a hobby. >> Yes. Yes. Yes. I agree. I agree.
1:47:32
>> Uh how personal is com is is competing in this market for you?
1:47:34
The way that you talk about service now, it seems it seems like very personal. >> Gloves off.
1:47:40
>> I think you have to know who you're competing with and you have to have fun with the competition. So, it's not personal.
1:47:45
It's just we're trying to build uh a bigger company and that starts with what we've done, which is build a better product.
1:47:50
But now we've got a lot to do to execute on that and and turn it into a much bigger company.
1:47:56
>> Well, you've certainly done that.
1:47:57
>> You're playing with your food a little bit, but I love it. Very cool.
1:48:01
>> That's what a servo cat does.
1:48:03
>> Yeah, that's that was I was aiming for something like that. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's good.
1:48:07
Well, congratulations on the funding round.
1:48:10
Thank you so much for coming on the show.
1:48:11
>> Yeah, great stuff, Jake. We'll see.
1:48:13
We'll see you back here soon.
1:48:13
>> We'll talk to you soon, Jake. Have a good one. Cheers. Goodbye.
1:48:16
>> Let me tell you about Codeex.
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1:48:26
Our next guest is Jay, the co-founder and CEO of Eve.
1:48:29
More than 350,000 plaintiff cases run on Eve now. Up 75% since June. That's incredible. June of this year. Uh what's driving?
1:48:45
>> Uh the product's working.
1:48:45
>> Uh the product's working. uh you know we're helping we're helping people that are kind of back against the wall get second chances right uh >> and when they're using EVE they just get seen much quicker uh they get their life back on track much quicker and that is
1:49:02
just starting to happen at scale now so we're starting to grow a bit more >> how what's the go to market motion you sell to lawyers directly do you sell to uh like IT professionals who work in large law firms like uh what is the actual motion these days >> no so we're yeah it's a good questions. So, we're there for lawyers that
1:49:16
So, we're there for lawyers that represent people, so real people, not not institutions, >> and we basically help them service that client all the way from the very first time they talk to them all the way to the end. >> Right.
1:49:29
And on on this side, I guess the main difference compared to uh in-house legal or or um big law is that it's not really billable hour based.
1:49:37
They basically get paid more when they represent client more clients and win more for them. >> Yeah.
1:49:43
So incentives are really aligned and they've been using Eve now to scale their own business and that's part of what led us to growing so rapidly to being able to serve more than 350,000 individuals at this point.
1:49:56
>> What is your uh what is your long-term view of of the legal profession the legal industry like what's going to grow?
1:50:04
I mean it feels like cases are going to be resolved faster.
1:50:06
We understand that will drive to settlement faster.
1:50:10
But uh in the limit uh I was thinking about like if I drink Jordy's orange juice, I owe him a dollar.
1:50:15
He his agent autonomously sues me. I we settle.
1:50:20
We don't even know that this happened, but the money's exchanged or something.
1:50:23
Like how crazy does this get in the limit of are we going to see an explosion like a 10x the number of cases, 10x the number of settlements, 10 times the number of lawyers?
1:50:33
like what are the vectors of change that you're seeing in the data?
1:50:39
>> I think the biggest one that we're seeing happen already which I'm really excited about is you know historically I think we've dealt with in America the fact that if you have more money you do get better legal outcomes >> for the same set of facts. >> Yeah.
1:50:53
>> And the reason for that is lawyers need to get paid.
1:50:56
And historically representing one person might require 10 hours of work, 20 hours of work. >> Mhm.
1:51:01
But now with AI and Eve in general, that is now like a constant time on a work, >> right?
1:51:07
So like representing additional person is not really getting that much more expensive.
1:51:12
So they're able to represent a lot more people.
1:51:14
And ultimately what law exists for is advocacy.
1:51:17
Like you're an individual person.
1:51:19
You have your own circumstances and you're trying to get uh you know represented for those circumstances.
1:51:25
And what I see happening over time is that type of representation gets easier and easier.
1:51:32
And I don't think this means more lawsuits.
1:51:34
I think it just means people have an avenue to get represented. >> Interesting.
1:51:40
>> Uh have you bought any billboards with your face on them saying call call Jay when you to get in front of lawyers.
1:51:48
Maybe not the most efficient, but basically take their ad space from them and they're like who took my standing billboard on the freeway?
1:51:54
and then they'll they'll chase you down.
1:51:59
>> You know, we have uh our attorneys are much more attractive and handsome than I am.
1:52:03
So, we leave it up to them to get onto the billboards.
1:52:05
Uh but >> we we do help them.
1:52:07
So, like now what's happening is Eve actually has a component which you're able to take calls on behalf of law firm.
1:52:13
So, for example, like if you're calling in at 9:00 p. m.
1:52:18
, most law firms aren't staffed to handle that call because it costs so much more.
1:52:22
>> Now, Eve can actually handle that call. Mhm.
1:52:24
>> And how that's going to change their business is now on Google reviews and Google phones, they're getting ranked much higher for their marketing spend because it's able to pick up the call instantly. >> Mhm.
1:52:34
>> So this is kind of the ways it's starting to trickle itself down to the marketing side as well because you know the sad truth is like until today everything in how you represent a client has been so labor constrainted >> including even piece you don't think about like marketing. >> Yeah.
1:52:49
What are the other pieces that are less automatable?
1:52:53
I'm thinking about like uh the investigation discovery uh just you know if there's some like evidence needs to be collected in a lot of these there might need to be interviews that happen like what what is still the domain of the human investigator the contractor that's hired by the plaintiff's attorney.
1:53:10
Uh what else is is the is the picture that's complimentary to your business but maybe not in the in the sites just yet?
1:53:20
>> I think in in general today we're still very much on behalf of the law firm.
1:53:22
So law firms still has case managers, they still have attorneys and parallegals >> and we're just making that more efficient. >> Yeah.
1:53:32
>> Um today I think voice AI isn't quite at the spot where it needs to be >> to fully automate things like client outreach and talking to them getting there.
1:53:41
Those are features we have, but in terms of how far it can go, I still think you need a human element.
1:53:47
>> Yeah, it's the dial you would turn on voice.
1:53:49
I mean, Jack Dorsey launched a voice model like last week and it was like way more casual and it didn't feel like chatting with a super intelligent model, but that was kind of the point and people were wowed by that.
1:53:59
Are are you are you interested in latency or intelligence or reliability or or tonality?
1:54:06
like what are you searching for in the next great voice model that you will be celebrating when it comes uh when it's released?
1:54:13
>> For us, it's still latency and uh intelligence.
1:54:15
Like the latency intelligence combo is really important for us because we're actually trying to boil down the attorney knowledge right into the intake call itself, which has been >> historically impossible.
1:54:26
Like you're not going to be paying $500 an hour for someone to take phone calls. >> Yeah. No.
1:54:32
>> So that's what we're doing.
1:54:32
And I think we're close but not there yet.
1:54:34
probably the next model hopefully will get us there. >> Cool.
1:54:41
>> Well, congratulations.
1:54:41
Thank you so much for coming on the show.
1:54:42
Have a great progress and we'll talk to you soon.
1:54:45
>> See you again soon, dude. >> Goodbye. >> Congrats.
1:54:47
>> We have Arthur from Vibe coming back on.
1:54:49
Uh I if you want to if you want to market Eve, what do you think about this?
1:54:53
Go to the hospital, find all the Mercedes S-Classes, put pamphlets under the windshield wiper, chase the ambulance chasers.
1:54:59
I think that's the way you you you build that business. No.
1:55:03
Wait, why are the Oh, >> cuz all the lawyers are in the S-classes in the hospital parking lot cuz the cuz they're chasing the ambulances to get the to get the personal injury attorney.
1:55:12
This is the the famous ambulance chaser joke.
1:55:14
>> Any blah blah blah blah blah. We got Arthur from Vibe.
1:55:17
Welcome back to the show, Arthur. Great to see you.
1:55:22
>> Hey guys, how are you? >> How you doing?
1:55:23
Always good to catch up with you. What's the latest? What's the latest?
1:55:28
Well, look, >> are you here to correct the record about your your your fake joke quitting?
1:55:31
You got to set the record straight that you do in fact.
1:55:37
>> I got in so much trouble.
1:55:37
I got in so much trouble.
1:55:39
First tweet I do, post acquisition from Walmart, billion dollar acquisition. I say I quit. >> They freaked out. They freaked out.
1:55:47
>> I freaked out cuz I read it.
1:55:47
I read it just randomly in the timeline. I was like, "Oh, wow." Like Arthur's out.
1:55:50
And then I didn't You obviously a joke.
1:55:55
It was like perfect meme.
1:55:57
If you're in tech, you understood that it was a reference to Jacob Coxin, the AI researcher who quit anthropic and went on national news tour for it.
1:56:02
Uh but yes, lots of people uh didn't have all of that context.
1:56:07
So, good to correct the record.
1:56:09
Still going strong in Vibe, still going strong at Walmart.
1:56:12
Uh how separate are the are the two organizations today?
1:56:15
Are you in the same building?
1:56:18
Are you are you moving things together?
1:56:20
What's what's the day-to-day like?
1:56:21
>> No, we're still in our building still some kind of an independent uh company.
1:56:26
So, >> but >> but uh we're supercharged uh by Walmart and it's been pretty amazing.
1:56:33
It's always scary to join such a large >> They're backing the truck up for you. I like it. We needed that. >> We needed that. >> So, yeah, it's great.
1:56:42
>> Um >> so, today we're announcing the Walmart audiences. >> Okay. >> Y >> fantastic. Congratulations. >> Okay.
1:56:47
So, what does that what does that mean?
1:56:48
Uh what does that mean for for business owners? >> Yeah.
1:56:51
So, >> how do we make money off of this? >> Huh?
1:56:54
How do we make money off of this? I have a DTOC brand.
1:56:56
Am I going to use Walmart audiences to grow my brand? How how do I profit? >> Yeah.
1:57:03
So, basically, this is some kind of a meta advertising moment. Uh Walmart audiences.
1:57:08
So, you know, Walmart has half a billion uh SKs in their catalog and now all these buying signals, whether it is people who have intend to buy or people who are regular buyers of product, you can target them based on what they've bought directly on streaming TV.
1:57:21
So that gets like hyper precision for performance marketers.
1:57:23
Our mission has always been to transform TV advertising as an acquisition channel for performance marketers and now it's even more real.
1:57:30
So it's super super exciting.
1:57:33
This is the first time in history that TV is so enabled um by commerce signals.
1:57:38
So if you're if you have a DTC brand, you can now target like competitors product those kind of things.
1:57:43
It opens up to tons of crazy and super cool use cases for TV advertising. >> Yeah. >> Very cool. Yeah.
1:57:49
There's like a bunch of companies that I'm going to send this to.
1:57:53
>> How excited are you about uh I know you probably can't speak specifically for Walmart's strategy here, but just you're on the team that's open for business in the AI agent commerce era and it feels like there's clearly a world where you're doing connected TV advertising.
1:58:11
You see something, there might be a QR code, but it's a lot easier to text your agent, go buy that for me, and Walmart's open for business.
1:58:18
Is this exciting for you?
1:58:21
I don't I I'm not trying to get a scoop.
1:58:22
I know you're not >> very exciting.
1:58:23
What I what I what I can say uh is that AI leadership is led by Daniel Danker.
1:58:29
Uh and so it's super exciting to have someone so experienced, so knowledgeable on the on the topic.
1:58:34
I know Walmart released um their agentic profiles um >> to open up agentic commerce uh a few days ago. Yeah.
1:58:43
Uh and so that shows the kind of vision they have and super cool ambition they have around AI in general and being part of such a such actually a tech company.
1:58:51
I think this is what the most surprising thing about Walmart.
1:58:54
It's a tech company at the end of >> Yeah. Yeah. No, totally.
1:58:55
Um >> uh and so being part of them uh is really awesome. >> Yeah.
1:59:00
It feels like there's probably a lot of interesting like like Vibe is a very technative company like a true startup, right?
1:59:06
Uh and then you go into a company that's you know very old but it has leaned in especially in the AI agentic commerce era.
1:59:13
Uh are you having opportunities to to uh to merge different teams or do little sprints with folks from your team that might bring some fresh blood to a Walmart team hop in a group and discuss what you're seeing in from your perspective and merge that with them and and bring that has that been one of the add-ons of the acquisition? >> Absolutely. Absolutely.
1:59:35
>> Absolutely. Absolutely. We so right now we mostly work with the Walmart connect people which is the advertising division from Walmart but this is exactly what's been happening and we share uh our best practices they also have you know a lot of power uh behind them and firepower so we kind of merge that and it's like it's super exciting uh right now uh and they've been really thoughtful about how
1:59:57
to integrate the company and not just tell us like you're now part of Walmart and you work the way we do uh they're more in the way of like help us transform the company so it's crazy exciting >> uh Uh what take us through like the the overall health of the TV because we we're all watching Google earnings today being like oh the the the the the default bare case of like people are going to stop searching. It's like sort
2:00:19
It's like sort people are sort of feeling that today.
2:00:22
Uh there's obviously people lot of lot of time on their phones.
2:00:25
The iPhone Duo gives you even more screen for more screen time maybe.
2:00:28
Um but is TV still growing? Is it still dominant?
2:00:31
like what what metrics do you use to ground the conversations that you're having at Walmart around how much you should be investing in connected TV generally?
2:00:42
>> Yeah, what's funny is that there are two worlds in television right now.
2:00:44
There is u the big advertisers who have always been on TV.
2:00:47
Uh they all pretty much moved their dollars, their advertising dollars from linear and cable TV to streaming TV and are still in progress of doing that.
2:00:55
This is much a given and this is not necessarily like the biggest growth momentum that TV uh that streaming TV is seeing because it's at the end of the day still the same dollars.
2:01:04
But what we're seeing and what we've been leading uh is that new market of smaller brands uh were wanting to scale outside of just like search and social.
2:01:14
They want to do more and TV has the reach.
2:01:16
TV has the target ability especially now with uh the commerce signals.
2:01:20
it has the measurability as well which which has been the big issue of television uh for years.
2:01:23
Uh and so now everyone uh in DTC in performance marketing in general is starting to realize that oh my god there is reach I can spend a lot of money and I can get a lot of performance from there.
2:01:34
So they're putting more and more money and this is where the most of the growth uh from that market is coming from.
2:01:40
>> Are you talking to early stage founders?
2:01:43
I mean, I I remember there was someone on a podcast who was like, "If you only have your first million dollars to spend, you got to do it on Meta or whatever, which is sort of like, you know, the default DOC playbook."
2:01:52
But, uh, how early are you seeing founders and entrepreneurs who are starting like a small Shopify site and they just want to get their first customers?
2:02:02
Are they coming in as soon as they're spending $10,000 a month on advertising, hundred,000?
2:02:07
Like, what is the sweet spot to sort of get into this market?
2:02:12
I I'll put it differently.
2:02:12
When you start advertising, you should focus on capturing the high intent. >> Yeah.
2:02:17
>> Um so this is why Google has been so great.
2:02:20
This was meta has been so great as well.
2:02:22
Um and TV was lacking that a bit like even if we do performance it was for later stage when you had maxed out uh search when you had maxed out social and this is why we're so excited about today's announcement with Walmart audience because we have that super high intent. you sell lipstick.
2:02:36
I you can now target um uh pl uh so >> sorry >> the the internet is here.
2:02:45
Uh the internet is here and you can target it.
2:02:47
>> Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
2:02:47
Well, congratulations on the launch. >> Amazing launch.
2:02:52
>> Great to catch up with you. >> Yeah.
2:02:53
Going to send this to at least a few founders that I think should get on it for sure. >> Big big breakthrough. >> Please do. Thank you so much, guys.
2:02:59
>> Have a great rest of your day. Great to see you. >> Goodbye.
2:03:02
>> And that is most of our show.
2:03:02
Jordy, is there any other breaking news?
2:03:06
Anything we got to go through? Any bangers? Any breaking news? Anything? Xbox revenue.
2:03:11
I like Asha, CEO of Xbox, sharing uh some some like not great news, but just being very upfront about it. You saw this.
2:03:21
She said in Q1, Xbox revenue declined 2% year-over-year compared with a 10% decline a quarter ago, while our accountability margin improved.
2:03:32
Minecraft and WoW Forever set records.
2:03:33
Call of Duty has most acclaimed release in more than a decade and our PC platform revenue grew double digits.
2:03:39
Console sales remain constrained by supply with more demand than consoles available.
2:03:43
We're working to get more consoles into players hands through in uh including through our expanding refurbishment program.
2:03:49
We're making progress with a lot more work ahead.
2:03:52
Sort of just a like a tell it like it is moment going direct.
2:03:55
Uh I thought this was interesting especially because Asha has to speak to two audiences on X.
2:04:00
It's both the investor community, the tech community, and the gaming community. Yeah.
2:04:07
Uh and so, uh very very hard line to walk, but I I thought this post was like, yeah, it was like honest and informative and gets me up to speed.
2:04:14
And uh it's not it's not just uh completely uh what they astroturfing. Oh, everything's better.
2:04:22
It's the best it's ever been when like no, revenue is still declining a little bit.
2:04:25
There's a lot of work to be done, but be leading with that, not burying that. That was good. Corporate comps. I liked it.
2:04:30
Uh, Intel down 19% after hours. They had earnings.
2:04:37
>> Uh, and uh, >> yeah, Bubble Boy, who was, you know, the big Intel bull, uh, is in in some hot water this week, >> but I it's it looked like he uh was out of jail because his account got de uh deactivated.
2:04:55
>> De Wait, deactivated or reactivated? yesterday.
2:04:58
It looked allegedly like he'd been >> uh booked in jail, >> but his account was active.
2:05:06
>> His account was active.
2:05:07
>> Oh, so you're saying if you go to jail, you can't deactivate your account. >> It could be tough. >> Oh, interesting. Yeah.
2:05:11
In my mind, it's like the first thing you do when you go to jail is they deactivate your account. They ban you.
2:05:16
But that's not how it works.
2:05:17
We're not in the cyberpunk future yet where you're eliminated from the social media world. >> Uh fascinating.
2:05:22
Well, uh I mean the market in overall is in a rough spot. Uh the NASDAQ is down 1. 3%. The Dow is down uh 0. 25%.
2:05:33
Uh the headline Alphabet sheds half a trillion in market value in the stocks. Worst day ever.
2:05:39
These best day ever, worst day ever headlines are are increasingly common.
2:05:44
The swings are are crazier than they've ever been. There's a lot going on.
2:05:48
Uh but we'll cover it here on the show.
2:05:50
So, thank you for tuning in.
2:05:52
Leave us five stars on Apple Podcast and Spotify.
2:05:54
Tyler, you want to take us out with a truth nuke?
2:05:57
You didn't get much time on the show today, honestly, other than yourself beginning. Yeah.
2:06:02
Sort of laring Jordy over there. But we got a Duke.
2:06:07
>> We will see you tomorrow at 11 a. m. Bye.