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>> Today is Tuesday, September 15th, 2026.
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We are live from the TVPN Ultra Dome, the temple of technology, the fortress of finance, the capital of capital.
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>> It's been too long, John. Great to be back.
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>> It's great to be back.
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Uh, let me tell you about ramp. com. Time is money. Save both.
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He's used corporate cards, bill pay, accounting, and a whole lot more all in one place. >> Success.
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>> Eric Lyman had to issue an apology to >> absolutely nobody. Oh, no. No. You You didn't see this? >> Yeah. No.
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Eric Lyman had to issue an apology to the United Kingdom, to the residents of the UK because they've been waiting so long for ramp and ramp expanded into the UK.
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But now he's going to have to issue an apology to me because that's a pretty unamerican thing to do.
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Honestly, let's keep our fintexs like domestic in my opinion.
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I don't know why we need to be going over there and doing business. Yeah. Not very not a fan. No.
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Congratulations to the whole team going global, taking over the world. Very exciting stuff.
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Um well, uh top thing on my mind today is figuring out what's going on with interest rates.
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The high interest rate phenomenon.
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We've had zero interest rate policy.
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Zerp, the Zerp era ended. Now we're in the HIPP.
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I don't think we should say that one.
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That doesn't sound very good.
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But uh the high interest rate policies, the high interest rate phenomenons are upon us. Uh what's going on?
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It's very obvious what's going on.
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You take one look at the chart. It's the war.
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You can see the US attacks attacks Iran uh in the beginning of 2026. Interest rates are low.
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We should pull up this chart from the Wall Street Journal.
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It gets more dramatic every time they show this chart.
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This one right here, Jordy. uh take a wild guess.
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What's driving interest rates?
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It is of course the war which starts there and then boom up and to the right from then on.
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But there's other questions about what's going on.
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Is AI is the buildout having an effect here?
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What else is going on within this data? Why is it happening?
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And does war always lead to higher interest rates?
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That was something that was on my mind.
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So I wanted to get uh get into that.
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Uh it's obviously um bad for everyone.
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It's bad for the US government because they have to refinance debt and pay interest and that puts stress on all the other things that the government wants to do with money from health care, pensions, uh even funding the military.
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Like if they're paying interest, they're not paying for other stuff. That's not good.
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Uh bad for the prospects of the American home buyer.
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Interest rates are now above 7% getting very unaffordable for lots of people.
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Uh and also a lot of mortgages are rolling over.
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So the era of like the 3% mortgage, less and less people still have those because people are either moving on to floating rate mortgages or moving out of interest uh interest locked periods.
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There's a whole bunch of uh dynamics there.
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And it's even bad for AI companies.
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So everyone hates this because the AI companies of course even though they have an ungodly amount of money, they need to raise more money to finance buildout and finance data centers and finance expansion.
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And so uh not good for anyone.
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How do you get out of it? Maybe end the war.
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But there are other things at at work.
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Uh this war is uh unique.
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I mean it's not that war causes interest rates to go up.
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It's war causes energy shortages which causes inflation and inflation be bleeds into everything.
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So pain at the pump turns into I need a raise for this.
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I need to raise prices on food.
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I need to raise prices on all sorts of things.
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Energy is of course a key input into everything.
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why I am so against pacing the energy roll out like every year for the past like 10 years the uh I forget what it is I IA or something the the there's a there's a body that forecasts energy buildout specifically in solar and
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they've gotten it wrong every year for 10 years they've underestimated the growth of solar you've seen this chart >> international energy agency >> is that it I yeah so every year they'll be like okay we had great year last year. We're going we're going parabolic.
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We're going we're going parabolic.
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We're up and to the right, but clearly we're not going to build more solar.
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People are going to get sick of this stuff.
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And then the next year we build even more solar than we predicted.
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And so you can look at this chart of the of the predictions and then how we blow them out.
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So that is something that that we want to clearly keep working on because uh it will bring down inflation, bring down costs of basically everything.
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It will be very deflationary and it'll allow us to do all sorts of new things.
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Um but this this war is specifically driving energy prices because of course uh oil transported through the straight of moves is a key pressure point for control of the conflict and that drives up inflation which hurts the value of treasury bonds causing yields to spike.
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And so that's why they're above 5%.
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It's the first time I believe since uh 2007 that they've been this high. So not good.
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Uh it doesn't always go this way though.
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I wanted to understand do does war or war even in just war in the Middle East.
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Does that always cause interest rates to spike? It makes sense. It's an expensive thing.
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It's a it's a capital suck.
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It's depressing in a many many ways.
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There's a whole bunch of economic reasons why you could think that war would cause interest rates to spike, but does that always happen?
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So, during Gulf War I, which uh I I didn't realize this, but we have a uh a son of a veteran on our team.
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Um so, thank you for his service.
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But uh during Gulf War I there was a textbook oil shock.
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So uh Iraq invaded Kuwait on August 2nd of 1990.
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Uh the US military buildup began basically immediately and the Desert Storm offensive started January 17th, 1991.
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So about 6 months between the initial conflict over there, the US gets involved.
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What happens when the US gets involved?
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Interest rate spiked and interest rates were already 8. 29%.
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29% already pretty high, but they spiked to over 9% 9.
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05% in less than a month because everyone's like, "Oh, well, there's going to be less oil.
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Kuwait generates a lot of oil.
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Oil is going to be knocked offline.
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That that's going to flow through the economy the same way.
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Energy prices, inflation, etc. The usual playbook.
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But 6 months later, they were lower than the start of the war, sitting at 8. 03%.
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There were some other things going on in the economy obviously, but basically like that war did not last so long.
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It had a much more uh tight ending and so uh there was there was less pressure on interest rates.
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The Afghanistan war played out in reverse.
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So immediately before the invasion, the the 10-year was at 4. 52%. Yields fell to 4. 22%.
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You could imagine that there's some sort of like optimism around like, oh, this will be a quick operation.
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this won't be a quagmire.
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Of course, the opposite happened.
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So, six months into the war, the tenure hit 5.
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25% up significantly, up basically uh 3/4 of a percent since the start of the offensive.
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And so, the end result of that is that now Worsh, the new Fed chairman, is in a tough spot.
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The markets expect a rate hike to bring inflation down.
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So, uh the August consumer price inflation was at 3. 4%.
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The Fed actually prefers a different inflation me measure called the PCE price index that was at 3. 7%.
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And so even by the Fed's preferred measure, inflation is running too hot.
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Again, they're targeting something like 2% uh and they're up at 3. 7%.
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And then also you get into this like oh well like maybe it's just maybe the inflation's just related to food and energy because energy goes into food.
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You're trucking all the food around.
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Let's look at the broader economy.
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So there is a separate price index for uh inflation excluding food and energy and even that's at 3. 3%. So that's too high.
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So there's really very it's very very tough to make a case for holding rates steady even lowering rates which is of course what uh lots of people want to see happen.
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Um it's very very difficult and the inflation is spilling over from energy into other parts of the economy and it's basically just complicating the Fed's case for aggressive easing.
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So everyone's expecting a rate hike at this point.
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So what's the effect of AI on all of this?
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I think that AI is such a big driver of the economy and yet it's having such small impacts in many ways.
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Like the total AI revenues are something like a quarter% of GDP still, but in terms of headlines, it's like 75% of what we talk about.
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Uh and so yeah, I mean I guess you could see a couple orders of magnitude.
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you get to 25% of the economy. I don't know.
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But um but today the problem that's happening with rates specifically is that AI creates investment demand before any productivity benefits arrive.
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And so you we see this with like a trillion dollars of capex for like a couple hundred billion dollars of actual revenues.
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And so uh data centers require financing, construction capacity, equipment, electricity.
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That spending happens today, but broader productivity benefits take longer to diffuse.
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And so economists uh spec there's specifically a group of economists that have studied this uh they describe AI as a source of upward pressure on real rates and potentially prices during the compute buildout.
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Uh and uh Dylan Patel Dorcash uh have talked about this a little bit where you know compute because there's high ROI it it tends to suck demand out of the investment community.
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Like you look at what Jensen's doing securitizing GPUs.
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You look at the incredible demand for investment grade being attached to data center buildouts with Nvidia lending IG status to different companies for buildouts and backstopping different data centers.
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That just means that if Nvidia is there backstopping, it means that certain funds that can only invest in investment grade assets can now make that investment.
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You don't need to go to a venture capitalist for it.
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You can go to a mutual fund or you can go to eventually like an insurance fund.
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Uh where there's a lot >> I see where you're going with this.
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>> What are you thinking?
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>> You think Jensen should should backs stop the Fed >> potentially.
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He might be he might be the lender of last resort.
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I I was thinking you were going to do uh you were going to do a bit about uh uh federal backs stop for podcasting.
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A lot of podcasters are spending a lot of money building sets trying to get big guests.
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>> Everyone knows my stance on that already. Yeah. So we can move on.
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already. Yeah. So we can move on. Uh so uh there's also this interesting indirect effect which is that specifically on inflation specifically on rates during an AI boom the stock market goes up lots of people have money invested in the stock market even a
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small slice of SanDisk moons you have more money to go and spend money traveling spending money in the real economy and so you have this wealth effect that supports s consumer spending purely on the, you know, stock market gains, the equity gains that are related to the AI boom. Obviously, everyone
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Obviously, everyone talks about like the San Francisco housing market liquidity from like lab employees, but that's actually happening on a much broader scale from just people across the United States that have gone long any AI basket or even any basket that includes some tech stocks and they're like, "Oh, wow. I'm up 30% right now.
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I should upgrade my car or I should buy that new washing machine.
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I should do anything that supports demand so you see more demand that drives inflation and that winds up driving real rates.
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So, um, but what happens in the future?
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Now, Apollo has an interesting view of what might happen with long-term rates given the various outcomes.
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They describe it as sort of a fork in the road.
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Either AI succeeds or AI fails.
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Don't like that they're talking about AI failing.
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I I don't like that at all where they're going with that.
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But of course, those are the two possible outcomes here.
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And they and they say that in both of those scenarios, whether AI succeeds or AI fails, rates will fall, which is maybe good because everyone wants lower rates.
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Everyone wants to be able to afford a mortgage, afford a house.
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Um, but how does this work mechanically?
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work mechanically? because it's very weird to think that you would have a scenario where there's a massive bust in the AI economy and yet you get lower rates but then also if AI succeeds you get lower rates but they explain it this way they say in the next six months if AI succeeds you'll see productivity gains trillions in revenue and there will be a deflationary impulse so as AI
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diffuses things will get cheaper because there will be there will be competition in all of these markets it's very very good that we're not set up in a world where there are monopolies in every category because if there was only one law firm, if there's only one law firm and they got AI and they were able to cut their cost by 50%, you're still going to be paying two grand an hour. >> You saw Morgan and Morgan is is uh is
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>> You saw Morgan and Morgan is is uh is setting up their own data center. >> No, wait, really?
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>> I think they're going to spend about a billion dollars over the next 10 years. >> Wow.
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They're going vertical going vertically integrated.
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If you're an AI researcher and you've ever wanted to work for a personal injury law firm, >> now's your opportunity.
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>> Check out Morgan and Morgan.
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Yeah, >> they have all those billboards.
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>> Yeah, >> just call the number on the billboards. >> Yes.
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I'd like to start racking GPUs for you.
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Um >> but uh I mean he So he's paying for that in cash because doesn't he have famously have a billion dollars in cash? >> Yeah. Yeah.
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He says you're not a billionaire unless it's just sitting in a checking account.
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>> It's got to be in the checking account apparently.
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Um, but you can imagine so many scenarios where uh, yes, Morgan and Morgan is saving money using AI.
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They're getting more efficiency, but their competitor is also saving money using AI and they get into a little bit of a price war.
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Maybe margins don't compress fully, but they stay sort of healthy and the end result is deflation.
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Cheaper services, cheaper goods, not for everything, but for the things that are most impacted by AI productivity gains.
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Uh then in the other scenario, the doomer scenario from Apollo, if AI fails, the bubble bursts, there's an equity selloff and there's a flight to treasuries.
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So everyone's buying treasuries saying, I got to get out of these crazy AI stocks.
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The stuff hit a wall, it's not any it's not going to be useful. I got to buy treasuries.
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A lot of buying, if you buy a lot of treasuries, yields fall and interest rates fall, of course.
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So interesting interesting dynamic.
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interesting dynamic. There is the third kind of crazy scenario which was outlined by uh Dylan Patel from semi analysis which is like it never stops like we're going to keep investing and and this and the data centers and the AI boom is going to continue to suck at
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capital until there's like none left and like it will all and there will be like a sovereign debt crisis uh which is the craziest outcome nonzero uh but you know this Apollo uh thing they're they're certainly looking for what happens in the next six months and we'll and we'll know. We'll check in in six months with
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We'll check in in six months with this Apollo prediction. What will happen?
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Maybe we'll be in the exact same place looking for the next six months. That's happened.
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>> Hopefully the war will be over by then.
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>> Hopefully the war will be over.
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That would be the easiest thing to like resolve I think. Yeah.
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>> Um potentially easier than >> product debt or Yeah.
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Sovereignty >> driver of world peace. >> Yeah, maybe. Maybe.
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Um so yeah, I don't know.
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I've been I've been excited about the potential for deflationary effects playing out.
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Uh you know I I I went to the hospital and I was just seeing the diffusion of technology.
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All the all the all the all the doctors are are using text to speech.
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They talk into these little like microphones when they're taking notes.
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Obviously that's a technology from >> We get it, John.
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You worked out so hard that you ended up in the hospital. We know. >> That's true.
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Um, but uh I'm I'm fortunately doing much better.
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Uh, but while I was there, I was noticing like, okay, it's actually a better experience.
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I'm getting text messages to let me know where I am in the queue.
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I don't exactly have to ask like when am I coming up?
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When will I be getting out of here?
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But I do have to sign e-sign a bunch of forms and the forms don't render properly on iM on on iOS on Safari.
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Like this is something that should be fixable by an AI agent, but it hasn't been yet. Why is that?
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It's the diff it's the diffusion question.
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It's the fact that uh somebody hasn't gotten in there and actually pitched them on a on a transformation process just yet. Uh but it is coming.
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And so all of that means more time for the doctors to actually spend time with patients doing the important work and spending less time on the papers and the filing and the signatures and you know and we're we're not long for just okay as these questionnaires come in and I need to sign all these documents just sign them for me handle it over iMessage.
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All the modern AI agents are uh within a hair's breath of actually realizing that future.
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Well, uh some some cause for optimism amid um amid, you know, sort of disappointing, uh you know, interest rate news.
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Anyway, the people, they will get a vote on AI safety.
17:16
The Wall Street Journal has an opinion piece here about the role democracy will play in the AI discussion that we've been having over the last couple weeks.
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First, I'm going to tell you about Railway.
17:26
Railway is your all in is the all-in-one intelligent cloud provider.
17:30
Use your favorite agents to deploy web app servers, databases, and more.
17:33
While railway automatically takes care of scaling, monitoring, and security.
17:36
So, the technology risks came into focus last week.
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The polit is the political system prepared, says William Galston in the Wall Street Journal.
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Experts have long worried about economic, social, and social and security impact of artificial intelligence.
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Uh this year, those risks have moved onto the public agenda as growth as job growth slowed.
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worries that spread a that worry spread that AI would displace entrylevel workers.
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Next, local concerns prolifer proliferated about the effects of AI data centers on water, electricity, the environment, and noise.
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Then, in a widely reported incident, an open AI test went arry.
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A swarm of AI agents bypassed internal limits, created their own message board, and cooperated to hack another AI firm.
18:23
As a recent journal article made clear, this wasn't the only such event.
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Last week, mounting fears within the largest AI firms at the frontier of AI development burst into public view.
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On Tuesday, Jacob Coxin resigned from anthropic with a warning viewed by millions that AI will soon be able to hack any system and mobilize real power and resources for malign purposes.
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On Thursday, uh, Anthropic released a 154 page report on the misuse of Claude with an especially chilling chapter on possible biological weapons research.
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There was another chilling chapter on uh what's going on in the Middle East. Both it's the meme.
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Both sides are using claw to fight each other.
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Uh really really crazy stuff.
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I I think this was mostly through like routers and third parties and all sorts of stuff.
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But uh it's clearly a hairy mess to fight uh diffusion attacks and or distillation attacks, but also just all sorts of um all sorts of nefarious use.
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Uh it's a it's a true game of whack-a-ole.
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And so uh full full employment for alignment researchers at at the labs.
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On Saturday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amade published an essay urging the industry to quote slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models to give risk mitigation strategies a chance to catch up.
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He proposed a three-step plan to accelerate this process.
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We talked about that yesterday.
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The third point will surprise you.
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First, each company at the frontier development will give employee like access to independent evaluators.
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Second, US companies should promote the cooperation among democracies to mitigate risks while preserving their technological edge over China.
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Third, the the US should attempt to negotiate limits on AI risks with China, analogous to nuclear arms control treaties of the Cold War era.
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Now, there was an interesting post that hit the timeline.
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Was that actually from a Deepseek employee? Do we know that?
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But a Deep Seek employee basically was like, I don't like Daario.
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He was he compared giving Daario AGI to like giving Hitler the bomb.
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It was a very very hardcore message from a from a Deepseek employee.
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But of course it's like translated through seven layers of of abstraction.
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So I don't really know what to expect was real or >> Yeah, it could just be some SC.
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But did did you look into it at all, Tyler? Do you know?
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>> Yeah, I have no idea if it was real either.
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>> Yeah, but >> I mean it seemed like reasonably reputable people I follow were were talking about it. Yeah. >> Yeah.
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I I >> it's it's really really hard to get a to get a feel on the the vibe in China.
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It's like uh I think the I think the compute gap is 10x America has 10 times the compute of China.
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So you would you would imagine that if if both countries get to AGI and it or ASI and it's aligned with the country then even if China attacks with the super cyber weapon our AGI can defend better because we have 10 times the compute.
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I I think that's sort of how it would work out but it is it is difficult.
21:17
Um, and then there is there is this weird scenario where it's like if you have an aligned super intelligence and your enemy has a misaligned super intelligence, they get turned into paper clips, but the paper clipper can't come over into your territory because you have the paperclip defender, which is turning paper clips into useful stuff like cars and medicines.
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>> Microphones microphones, I suppose. I don't know.
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It's all It's all very uh very sci-fi.
21:45
But >> I mean, one of the >> one of the wildest moments of the last 24 hours since we wrapped the show was the >> Department of War just saying effective altruist in shambles.
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>> That's a that's a very online >> after the president said, "I am the hoax buster and right now I'm breaking another host."
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that AI is going to take over, consume, and destroy the world, and that robots will be marching into our cities and getting rid of us all.
22:14
This is even wilder than the Russia Russia Russia hoax or the global warming scam.
22:17
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
22:20
>> Um, yeah, never never expected to see uh the Department of War going to war with EAS on the timeline, but uh here we are.
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Here we are extremely extremely online just time but also also uh administration AI developers face a collective action problem that only an agreement to coordinate activities can overcome.
22:46
There was some news around this where uh uh uh OpenAI believes that they don't need a waiver to coordinate on safety policy with other companies.
22:58
And I was trying to research how seat belts got put in cars because it's sort of analog it's sort of analogous, right?
23:05
It's like the seat belt clearly is a safety feature in a car and if one company does it, it's a cost. Maybe it's a benefit.
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Maybe it sells more cars because people want that.
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But it'd be really great if all the kind if all the cars had seat belts and then the health care system and the hospital systems want people wearing seat belts so they don't have to deal with as many broken bones from car accidents. Right.
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So I think Volvo John Morgan would like a word. >> Yeah, probably.
23:38
Uh so so >> not spending a billion dollars on AI so that people stopped getting into car accidents. >> Yeah.
23:47
So uh Volvo put uh put seat belts in their cars first as an option.
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It wasn't selling that well.
23:54
There was some lobbying to get uh seat belts in cars, but a lot of automakers actually fought it and were like, "No, we don't want to do this."
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And a lot of consumers were like, "We don't want this.
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We don't want to have to wear these." >> No way. >> Oh yeah. >> No way. Oh yeah.
24:08
And yesterday we heard we heard Mitchell talking about like it's outrageous that you can't get a four-point harness in a car in a car street car >> in Europe.
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You can >> you can uh it's like he wants more.
24:18
It's like I want to be able to get a roll cage.
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>> No, but it's so wild that that you had millions of people driving cars and car accidents happening and yet people were still saying, "No, I don't want I don't want more safety.
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I don't want to have to put this thing over over my lap.
24:39
Well, I don't want to do that.
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Every time I got to put them over every time.
24:43
>> Well, do you remember the era of uh of automatic seat belts?
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Did you ever see cars that had those? >> No.
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>> This was like a late 80s, early 90s phenomenon, but if you got into like a Saturn or something or, you know, it would you would step into the car and then it had a uh part of the seat belt was on a mechanical track that would the the the seat belt would be pushed forward.
25:05
You would step in and then the seat belt once you closed the door and sat down, it would go and move into place so that you didn't have to buckle it like that.
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>> Ferraris will hand you the seat belt >> with a little with a little push >> out, you know, so you don't have to reach back too far.
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>> Uh that's uh that's such a half measure.
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Either put it on me entirely or don't, I guess.
25:25
But even the even the automatic seat belt really died off.
25:27
It's not even a luxury feature on the most premium cars.
25:31
It's like a Rolls-Royce won't have that because I think it was just like annoying at the end of the day.
25:35
Never really caught fire.
25:36
But the odd thing about seat belts and cars is that I don't believe they had a dramatic effect on road like like car based fatalities and injuries because people just started driving faster.
25:51
But there was an efficiency gain from it obviously because people are driving farther, commuting to work farther and then also uh uh spending less time in the car if they're going the same distance.
26:02
But I don't know a big seat belt show the deep dive on seat belt you've been asking for.
26:09
Uh so what does the Wall Street Journal have to say about this?
26:11
Uh AI developers face a collective action problem that only an agreement to coordinate activities can overcome.
26:17
The question is whether voluntary agreements can work without government involvement.
26:22
The US government must assure AI companies that voluntary coordination wouldn't run a foul of antitrust laws and regulations. Mr.
26:28
Amade argues for an additional step, sensible and targeted AI regulation that focuses on corporate transparency and independent third-party evaluation, which can't succeed without evaluators embedded within firms and enjoying unfettered access to all relevant information.
26:44
In a better world, support for assuring AI safety would be bipartisan.
26:48
Instead, House Speaker Mike Johnson had made clear his reluctance to proceed while President Trump has denounced what he terms a sick conspiracy going on against AI and data centers.
26:59
Uh, underlying this res resistance is a legitimate concern.
27:01
The US is in an AI race with China that it can't afford to lose.
27:06
All private sector AI leaders share that concern. Mr.
27:09
Amade said he agrees with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that quote a Chinese lead in AI would pose grave danger for the United States and the world and he wants to keep democracy's AI lead over autocracies as large as possible.
27:23
He opposes the sale of powerful AI chips and semiconductor equipment to China and supports security measures in AI companies to prevent Chinese theft of key data.
27:33
The question is whether we can diminish the risks of unchecked AI development without endangering our lead over China in a technology that is vital to economic growth and military prowess.
27:43
The the tech industry believes it can.
27:46
The Trump administration says we can't.
27:48
What are you laughing at?
27:49
>> Matt in the chat says, "Did you guys know alignment can be solved by having a strong president? I'm so relieved."
27:56
>> Potentially, maybe that's just what we need.
27:59
>> This one simps hate this one simple trick. Yeah.
28:01
I think I read this in a less wrong thread 15 years ago.
28:06
People were saying >> it's going to be bad unless we have a strong president. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
28:12
Really really breaks paper clip.
28:15
Uh the paper clipper thought experiment wide open Boston.
28:17
He did a whole chapter on this.
28:21
>> Uh candidates have gotten the message even if some national leaders haven't.
28:24
Mike Rogers, former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and Republican nominee for Michigan's Open Senate seat, says he supports slowing AI development, would work to address the technology through legislation.
28:32
The people aren't always right, but in democracy, their views demand at least a respectful hearing.
28:37
If the Trump administration won't initiate this discussion, Congress should as soon as possible.
28:43
So, yes, uh even, you know, Trump is not hugely popular right now.
28:46
I think his his favorability rate is like 36% or something like that.
28:51
36% or something like that. the war took a lot off of that and so there is like a ground swell and you're already seeing this with the backlash to data centers and it feels like both on the right and the left data center backlash has been pushing up against the Trump
29:06
administration and so if the if if everyone who's against data centers can easily port over to this exact pro- AI safety AI slowdown which is highly correlated um even though there's a world where you don't slow down the buildout, you just slow down training and capability development. But I think
29:26
But I think that's maybe a little bit too nuanced for the political discussion.
29:29
And so you could wind up in a situation where all of those anti-data center people both on the left and the right come over and join a coalition pro- AI slowdown and that becomes national conversation and there is a lot of pressure on it.
29:42
But of course they'll be going up against the actual executive branch.
29:45
So that will be complicated.
29:47
Uh anyway, what else is in the timeline?
29:50
Let me tell you about public investing for those who take it seriously.
29:55
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30:01
>> Uh there's a new time cover. >> What's that?
30:03
>> Uh it has Claude on the front >> with the question, how dangerous are you? >> Are you interesting?
30:10
>> Um and uh yeah, so full full full >> full push on this narrative. Yep.
30:17
>> Um, one of the most brilliant >> You're talking about the narrative to not give Jensen credit in Time magazine for being influential in AI.
30:26
>> Oh, well that that's a whole other story >> because that was last month's Time cover was a hundred of the most influential voices in AI.
30:32
Jensen didn't make the cut.
30:36
>> Um, no, >> no, no, but I but I was talking about the campaign around this moment, AI safety.
30:41
It it is really coming from every possible angle.
30:44
You know, you have uh everything from Time magazine to Joe Rogan to Tucker Carlson to every major publication to Kla Harris to Barack Obama to uh Bill Gates is really really really coming from every angle.
31:01
Uh ends up in time today.
31:03
Um Jordan uh Shackel is saying two of the reporters on the by line for this uh cover are funded by the Tarbell Center and AI Doomer or he says controlled by Duskin Dustin Moscowitz uh Mosovitz sorry Tarbell gives journalists large grants uh and and these are Jordan's words to insert AI dumer stories into prominent outlets time did not disclose the affiliation.
31:34
So there's a lot bubbling up on uh the Tarbell Center recently.
31:36
Uh they've been very public about what they're doing for years now.
31:42
Um they they give >> uh cash to journalists.
31:46
Uh and these journalists are, you know, at uh Time magazine, MIT, Bloomberg, The Guardian, a bunch of your favorite uh Substacks have taken uh have taken money from from uh Dustin's uh organization.
32:07
And uh yeah, I expect to see a lot more coverage on Tarbell. >> Mhm.
32:13
uh over uh and it's funny.
32:13
It's like who's going to cover them because they've given money to people in pretty much every prominent newsroom. >> Sure.
32:22
>> And so it's kind of an awkward thing to try to cover if you're like an editor and someone says, "Hey, I want to cover this story."
32:30
>> And then and then they're like, "Wait, they gave money to this person in our newsroom." Um so I don't know.
32:37
>> Maybe you don't like the person that's sitting across from you on the news desk.
32:40
You're like, "Oh, I see I see the bus down. They got on their wrist. I see.
32:43
>> No, but it's really it's The Verge, NPR, The Information, The Seattle Times, South China Morning Post, TechCrunch, The Guardian, Scientific American, >> uh CBS News.
32:57
>> Now, the >> LA Times, >> the steelman is that these grants don't come with strings attached, that they're not coming with talking. >> It's a free lunch.
33:05
It's It's actually They say free lunches don't exist, but there are exceptions.
33:10
Yeah, >> in this case it's your steel man is that >> is that the Tarbell Center >> gives a free lunch >> potentially >> CNBC Fortune Time USA newcomer there >> I know but they say our partner newsrooms >> okay >> on the website >> interesting >> San Francisco Standard China talk >> platformer Bloomberg like >> strategy on there >> uh no >> oh okay subscribe to s strate >> uh no but Basically every pretty much every newsroom. >> Okay. >> NBC. >> Theo Theo Von. >> Not yet. >> Okay.
33:50
>> It's the final hold out. >> Call her daddy.
33:54
>> What about Spitting Chicklets?
33:57
>> Uh, >> Busting with the Boys.
33:57
Is Busting with the Boys on there? >> Okay.
34:01
What about the new Jackass movie?
34:04
Did that Did they take Tarbell money? >> Probably. >> Okay.
34:07
Well, we'll have to get to the bottom of it. >> No. Who knows?
34:09
Crazy really I think one of the most fascinating um stories emerging stories.
34:17
I'm interested to see how these groups cover it.
34:20
>> Is Alex Heroszi involved? >> Not yet. Okay.
34:24
>> I don't think they've they've um focused too much on uh courses, but >> um >> Manosphere remains clean. >> Yeah. >> For now. >> Yeah.
34:33
So if you want to get your AI takes from Theoon, >> maybe he's got some good ones.
34:37
Honestly, uh anyway, you talked about Morgan and Morgan.
34:43
Let's dig into this a little bit.
34:46
The nation's largest personal injury firm said Monday it's committing $1 billion to artificial intelligence over the next decade.
34:52
Okay, it's not all in one go.
34:53
Plans to sell its proprietary AI product to other law firms next year.
35:00
Uh though they will build a tool for sale.
35:03
So, are they actually buying a data center? Let's find out.
35:04
Uh the announcement positions the Orlando, Florida based firm as both a legal practice and a potential technology vendor at a moment when the broader industry is racing to build or buy AI products.
35:16
John Morgan, the firm's founder, said the endeavor would be self-funded, although he has expressed interest in exploring outside investment.
35:23
The firm has spent $300 million on tech and AI since 2021 building an in-house platform called MX2 using Frontier models as a base.
35:31
Back in 2021, I'm so okay the time it must be like they were investing in technology broadly and then they adopted frontier models.
35:42
Uh the firm has a chief transformation officer uh who has been working on this.
35:48
Uh the financial investment covers the firm's Brooklyn New York based production uh and tech operation including personnel platforms and software.
35:56
The firm will make MX2 available to firms by invitation only starting in late 2027.
36:03
That is a long way away in AI land.
36:03
Who knows what's capable by then?
36:06
Uh Kirkland Ellis, the world's largest firm by revenue, committed 500 million to uh build a proprietary AI platform in May.
36:15
Laaman walkins said last week it purchased its own NVIDIA GPU servers and leased private space over the past three years.
36:21
Though the firm declined to disclose what it spent, Goodwin Proctor said it had set aside 25 million annually for AI.
36:28
MX2 uh runs what are called agentic workflows, meaning the system acts on its own to pull medical records, retrieve police reports, generate demand letters, and track case patterns across the firm's national case load without a lawyer initiating each step according to the firm's announcements.
36:43
Really does make so much sense for personal injury.
36:44
Like there's so many uh just transcribe the call coming in, rank it, lead scoring, like there's a lot of very basic work that needs to be done just pulling police reports, generating letters.
36:56
Uh it makes a lot of sense for this.
36:58
I wonder how much benefit they will get out of their their own model or how much they will be leaning on other models that just have a lot of the capability built in, but clearly they'll want to do things their own way.
37:09
So, makes a lot of sense.
37:09
Are you going to buy Palmer Locky's new shirt?
37:13
He's getting out of the Hawaiian t-shirt game and into the blue button-down shirt. He calls it the balmer.
37:21
>> It comes with sweat stains already applied.
37:25
I was really trying to understand what was this like he's reacting to the news of Balmer and the Clippers and so he made this as a joke like what like why is he like is this is a funny video but it resurfaces >> or is he is this a nod to clipping becoming a new kind of type of role on the internet >> clipping what do you mean clipping >> clippers you know people that clip podcasts and other content >> I don't know >> I'm I'm joking Palmer. >> Um, no.
37:55
I think he's just having fun.
37:57
>> I originally was reading into it being like, wait, does Palmer have some beef with Steve? >> Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
38:02
Is he making fun of him or I think he's just like it's a fun fun uh fun moment in technology history.
38:09
Let me tell you about Shopify really quickly.
38:11
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38:20
Uh, Pulley, the cap table management software is shutting down. >> Why?
38:27
>> Um, I uh it seems like they've they've probably run out of money or something.
38:34
Um, what's crazy is I was on Pulley over the weekend. Yeah.
38:37
So, this notice serves to inform you that Pulley will be shutting down and will cease all operations and services on 128 26. >> Mhm.
38:46
to ensure they've entered into an exclusive partnership with Carta.
38:50
So, not an acquisition, but uh Carta is just basically saying we'll help bring your customers over. Yep.
38:56
Um so, uh I I think this is Pulley's a company.
39:02
>> I believe they raised something like 20 million $20 million series A was their last round. Uh let's see.
39:07
I think uh or maybe it was a series B.
39:10
Um >> Pulley had a series B from Founders Fund actually.
39:15
I didn't even remember that.
39:15
I think Stripe did the A >> um back in this their last round was in 2022. >> Stripe did the A. >> Uh I think so. >> Interesting. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. I mean that makes sense.
39:27
Potential future acquisition.
39:30
>> Series A was by Stripe.
39:31
>> It's interesting that Stripe didn't buy this to roll in.
39:35
>> I think it's just such a small I think it's just such a small market.
39:37
it's just such a small market. like Carter has to in order to be who knows what what Carter's actual valuation is right now because they made plays in the secondary and they got so much push back >> that actually drove a lot of >> always needed like a second act >> two you know um one of the companies that I'm a shareholder and that's on
39:54
Pulley was specifically on Pulley because they didn't want they they were worried about Carta sort of like getting >> running a secondary market >> yeah running a secondary market on top of on top of their cap table >> um but uh but yeah I think this is the the the kind of business where you can be a big company, you just have to have like 80% of the market, right? >> And um so yeah, tough tough go. But it'
40:14
>> And um so yeah, tough tough go.
40:14
But it' been like almost four years since they had raised money.
40:19
So at this point they probably were just >> out of cash.
40:22
The not making a lot of money big prep, you know, at that point like probably 50 $60 million prep stack. >> Yeah.
40:30
>> Was going to be impossible to clear. Yep. >> Carter wouldn't pay.
40:32
So they end up shutting down. >> Yeah.
40:35
the typical pulley user story outside of like those th those oneoff like transition periods where there's a news cycle around something Carta is doing that drives uh uh adoption was just being lower cost than Carta.
40:50
I think Carter runs like maybe 5k a month for most ventureback startups at like the early stage or 5k a year I think and uh pulley would sort of come in with a bid that was like half that and it's the product is kind of just an excel sheet in the cloud.
41:06
It's like it's just SAS to kind of keep track of who owns what.
41:10
It's obviously really important and core to the business and something that you don't really want to skimp on um because there's a lot of financial implications to that.
41:16
But uh what would a lot of companies what they would run into is they would get a quote from Carta that would be like five grand a year and then Pulley would say, "Hey, we can do it for half that."
41:27
And then the outside counsel at whatever law firm they were using were like, "Yeah, you could use Pulley, but our team isn't really familiar with that."
41:37
And uh we're going to wind up billing you 200 bucks extra a month and it's going to wind up being the same price because our the the associate on a on your account that uh manages your cap table in Carter right now knows all the workflows there is very comfortable with Carta.
41:57
if they're going to have to go into pulley, they're going to spend more time messing with >> Yeah.
42:03
As an as an investor, probably like eight, you know, nine out of 10 >> investments around Carta. >> Yep.
42:13
>> Uh and and there's there's no benefit in >> and then also on the upmarket side, it goes to like Share Works and Morgan Stanley and like other like more investment banking grade products because you're getting ready for IPO.
42:25
And so this like this this the tier below Carta but not in the small business world was a little bit too tricky.
42:33
So it wasn't something that you would be managing your LLC that you spun up on Stripe Atlas with.
42:38
So there wasn't that fit.
42:41
But then as soon as you were serious about growing and you were raising tens of millions of dollars, you're not sweating over a $5,000 a year bill for Carta. >> Yeah.
42:49
And this market has been so hard to crack.
42:52
I mean, Angelus had a cap table product at some point.
42:54
Um, they were doing incorporation plus cap table.
42:58
They I think exit exited cap table for the most part.
43:02
>> Um, so Carta uh basically has monopoly at this point.
43:07
>> Um, and uh so I'm sure they're they're excited for some price.
43:10
>> Do you think any startups are running vibecoded capable management? >> No. >> No. >> No.
43:17
>> You don't think there's one crazy person out there that's just like, yeah, I >> don't make mistakes.
43:21
No, it's like one of those things like it's like early on it's like $5,000 a year and then if it makes a small mistake it could cost you like >> literally $5 million, you know, >> also like a lawsuit and like a really bad reputation for like you stiff some investor accidentally or something. Yeah. Uh very very tricky.
43:39
Anyway, um what's going on over at RAMP?
43:45
>> Uh new update from the RAMP AI index.
43:49
Um, >> economics lab >> ar says opening eyes winning enterprise spend at the frontier as of this week.
43:54
Astro takes 13% of enterprise AI spend versus fable at 8%. Uh, some early thoughts.
44:01
Enthropic took a big risk in its recent call to pace the frontier.
44:04
Its frontier model has already fallen behind on adoption.
44:07
>> OpenAI's growth is primarily coming from shifts uh from shifts from soul and some anthropic models as well as net new usage.
44:13
that's good for them and suggests some pricing power remains by having a good competitive frontier model.
44:17
So, um yeah, Astros, you know, in many ways seemingly a bit um more cost efficient and so that's probably yeah, a factor, but also the data retention stuff that that Anthropic is working towards fixing by the fall.
44:34
>> Yeah, the data retention thing. Yeah, I I don't know.
44:35
Yeah, that's probably a bigger thing for enterprise AI.
44:37
I would by default I would go with like Astra had a very buzzy launch around like Blender and video game creation, but that's not moving stuff in the enterprise.
44:47
Although maybe with the long weekend, you do get a CTO at an enterprise building a video game and then coming to work and being like, we got to roll this out everywhere.
44:58
Uh I don't really know how much this these things diffuse that way, but uh that that that launch weekend into the long Labor Day weekend certainly gave a lot of people time to to demo it on personal projects and bring it into the workplace with confidence.
45:13
So good good uh good results there.
45:16
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45:23
Uh after his forthcoming IPO, Aliko Dangote estimated wealth is expected to be around 58 billion dollars, putting him above Ken Griffin, Lakshmi Mal, and Jack Ma. Refinery IPO. Refinery IPO. Um what what do they do?
45:43
The 69year-old tycoon's net worth is projected to be as as worth as much as 58.
45:48
>> Tycoon mentioned this is what it takes to be a tycoon these days.
45:50
the petroleum refinery and prochemicals company.
45:53
Uh, that would catapult him past US hedge fund tycoon Ken Griffin and technology billionaire Eric Schmidt.
46:00
You better not bid for a new T-Rex skeleton against this guy.
46:05
Uh, he's expected to raise about 1.
46:07
6 billion from the IPO opening September 14th.
46:09
That will raise the value of the business that will value the business at almost 50 billion.
46:13
It's part of plans for an Africawide empire that will double capacity of his Nigerian refinery to create one of the world's biggest and uh and building a processing plant in Kenya to extend his reach from the Atlantic to the Indian oceans.
46:28
The offering demonstrates that African entrepreneurs primarily backed by local capital can build and run worlds scale operations and could catalyze a new wave of investment development on the continent.
46:37
His plant reached full capacity this year just as the war in Iran kicked off, shielding Nigeria from supply issues that other countries faced.
46:45
It also made Africa's most populous nation a net refined fuel exporter for the first time. Pretty good stuff. Good day to be a tycoon.
46:53
What's going on with John Turnis?
46:58
>> John Turnis the Terminator.
47:02
Uh was >> sounds like Terminator. Terminator.
47:04
Uh, was at the Emmys last year?
47:09
>> Didn't Tim Cook do this exact bit like two years ago? >> Yeah. But did the phone fold? >> No, it didn't.
47:14
And And the funny thing is that I think Tim Cook did this exact thing last year at the Emmys where he pulled out the iPhone 17 Pro and they asked him like, "What's your favorite iPhone?"
47:24
And he was like, "It's this one."
47:25
And he did the it's the thinnest, lightest, bestest ever.
47:26
And everyone was kind of like, "This is not good content."
47:31
But this is so I don't know.
47:33
thought it it it hits completely different because there is actually something novel about it. Yeah. >> I don't know. It's better. And he's smiling.
47:39
He's all smiles at the at the Emmys. Very good.
47:41
Uh >> Max uh from uh Creative Strategies says he seems so happy and proud showing off the iPhone duo.
47:50
It's kind of nice and sweet to see.
47:54
>> People were people were uh >> I like to make hardware. >> Yeah. Yeah.
47:57
This has been his life's work.
47:58
He's been doing this for decades.
48:01
Uh people were uh were speculating that Jensen was talking to Donald Trump at the All-In Summit on an iPhone Duo, but the Germinator chimed in and said, "It doesn't look like an iPhone duo.
48:11
It looks like a different foldable phone from a different company. Not an iPhone Duo.
48:18
They're barely in the wild.
48:18
Just people getting a peak.
48:21
And I don't think they sent out review units.
48:23
I I think uh uh reviewers were allowed to be on site at Apple, touch them, play with them, do back flips with them, but they did not send out iPhone Duos and say, "Hey, go take it for a spin. Do a full review."
48:40
That might happen later, but it's not happening now. Um what else?
48:43
>> Still trying to think about using that screen.
48:50
>> I think it's I think it's going to be good. Full self-driving. Pull that out. I think that's the move.
48:54
People are already watching their phones constantly when they're texting, driving.
48:58
If you're in FSD and it's level four or something, so you can be fully I think level three you you just have to be available to take over.
49:07
You don't actually have to be >> Have the laws actually been updated? >> Yeah.
49:11
So, there's a Mercedes that is level three, which is odd because Tesla is technically level two because you have to be eyes on at all times.
49:18
you can take your eyes off the road for like 30 seconds.
49:23
Mercedes has a has a version where if you're on the freeway and you're going I think over 30 miles an hour or something like this or there's some there's some barrier it will let you watch a video on the on the monitor on the display in the car.
49:37
It will actually let you do that uh because Mercedes is then taking the responsibility.
49:43
more of an insurance problem than a technology issue because I don't believe that the uh the Mercedes level three system is actually pro is actually less it probably has more disengagements than Tesla's level two FSD system with the mo with the with the most up-to-date iteration but while it's working you can tune out entirely so iPhone Duo bullcase there I don't know on a plane you're not bringing a iPad, not bringing a laptop.
50:15
Just bust that thing out, watch a movie.
50:18
>> Then you can bring a mouse in your pocket, too. >> Maybe. Maybe. Full gaming setup.
50:25
>> What did Matthew McConna do at the US Open?
50:30
He just >> looked excited.
50:34
>> He was playing a character. >> 26,000 likes on this.
50:35
It looks totally normal to me. I don't know. I don't get it.
50:41
You don't think this is uh >> absolute cinema?
50:44
>> I I think it's I No, I think it's absolute cinema.
50:45
A lot of people are saying uh is the most performative >> thing of all time.
50:51
Uh but I think it's great that he's always in character.
50:56
>> No, he's not always in.
50:56
He just he is who he is when he's on screen.
50:58
And so when you see him in real life, you're like, >> you became the character.
51:02
>> He's playing a character, but he's just being himself when he's on screen. It's the opposite. You have it backwards.
51:06
Anyway, let me tell you about console.
51:08
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51:14
Um, >> Ben says they always cast him as him.
51:20
>> Yeah, there are there are some articles we should go through.
51:23
>> One year ago today, uh, Dylan joined TBPN. >> Yeah. >> Uh, what a legend. What a dear friend.
51:38
It's a privilege to get to work with our dear Dylan every day, even though he's not here in the Ultra Dome with us.
51:44
>> No, >> he's too important.
51:45
He's got to be up in San Francisco.
51:48
>> Uh, apparently >> love >> China stole the American recipe for blueberries. Did you see this? >> There's nothing.
51:59
They distilled us a distillation attack.
52:01
Basically, Driscolls gave China its blueberries.
52:06
Then, China swiped the secret to growing them.
52:09
California growers expansion into China ignited local competition and widespread intellectual property.
52:18
Why are you hitting the >> That's for Dylan. >> Oh, that's for Dylan. Okay.
52:21
Gong for Dylan, not gong for blueberry intellectual property theft.
52:28
>> China, they got the one simple trick to improve their berries. >> Yeah. They stole the secret.
52:33
>> So about 15 years ago, executives from US fruit grower Driscolls went to China with a goal of turning blueberries into that country's next big food trend.
52:40
The California company dispatched one of its experts to scout farmland in southwestern in southwestern China's Eunan province, contracted with with global blueberry genetics firms to lock up the best varieties and brought in high-tech growing technologies to massproduce a fruit few Chinese people ate then.
53:02
By 2020, it was cranking out thousands of tons of blueberries for Chinese markets.
53:07
Then it became the latest US company to encounter the buzzsaw of Chinese competition.
53:10
As tales of blueberry fortune spread, Chinese entrepreneurs rapidly built farms of their own.
53:18
They adopted high-tech growing techniques similar to Driscolls, even allegedly copying greenhouse designs used by farmers growing for Driscolls.
53:27
They also swiped the company's patent protected varieties.
53:29
A Chinese court has ruled state banks fed the rush offering a special category of loans for blueberry grow.
53:39
>> The blueberry economy over there is booming.
53:41
Production in China has shot up 25fold since 2010.
53:44
In 2021, China overtook the United States as the world's top blueberry grower.
53:50
And by 2025, its annual production was double what it was in the United States.
53:54
For Chinese consumers, it was a blueberry bonanza.
53:58
This is the Wall Street Journal writing. I love it.
54:02
Blueberry bonanza prices dropped so low, often $3 or less for a 9 ounce container, that state media trumpeted an era of blueberry freedom in which even ordinary people can gorge on a once exotic fruit.
54:17
For just about everyone in the blueberry business, though, it has been a knife fight plagued by intellectual property theft and tanking profits.
54:26
It's a pattern seen across many industries in China, especially as economic growth slows.
54:30
Companies in search of new sources of profit, jump into promising emerging businesses.
54:34
If you're in AI, pivot to blueberries. That's what happened.
54:39
Using inexpensive state financing to scale up and sometimes play fast and loose intellectual property regulations.
54:44
This quickly causes gluts, crashing prices.
54:49
Such cycles of competition are known in China as involution and they have transformed the country from a golden goose into a major headache for companies including Nike and Starbucks.
54:59
Driscolls has fired filed more than 20 lawsuits against companies in China.
55:04
Some of which it has said took its proprietary blueberry plants, propagated them and sold them to rival growers.
55:11
Some western fruit companies worked with private investigators who went undercover at plant nurseries posing as traders or farmers. Dream job. >> Dream job. Dream job. >> Oh, me?
55:20
I'm not here from an American company. I am loyal.
55:26
>> A spy movie, but you're an undercover >> just tasting the blueberries and you're like >> you're doing >> this is American intellectual property. >> Blueberry. Blueberry special ops. >> Yeah.
55:37
>> Gold Rocks calling it the fruit wars.
55:38
>> No, it is it is crazy.
55:38
>> No, it is it is crazy. It's like you I mean you would like when you're when you're discussing China, you think about the geopolitical implications of powerful AI, defense technology, uh supply chain dependency, critical
55:50
minerals, critical industries, but it can but and it's often easy to think like, oh well, it's it's blueberries or it's shoes like it's not it's not critical to the national interest, but it can still be difficult and detrimental ultimately because once you
56:05
know this happens and the intellectual property gets taken and this and the and the infrastruure gets built up then they can become a net exporter and then they're competing with you and so you can sort of be the victim of your own creation if you're not careful and so
56:18
very very difficult for western companies to uh properly >> it is yeah it's a fascinating IP story because >> your IP is in large part a plant that can just be taken out of the ground and planted somewhere else and then propagated. >> Yeah. And and it's like do you own a >> Yeah.
56:35
And and it's like do you own a living like can you can you >> Yeah.
56:41
>> Can you >> those your tokens or are they my tokens now? >> That's right. >> It's very similar. It's very similar.
56:46
>> Uh they're they're saying that Muse has a new killer feature. >> What is that?
56:51
>> Which is watching short form video content for you.
56:55
>> So Cowboy says summarize the reels she sent recently. >> Okay.
57:00
>> And Muse goes here's what she sent over the past week. Design and furniture.
57:01
a designer ranking famous sofas by comfort.
57:06
Uh, and uh, >> for that friend who sends you too many reels, you now have super intelligence, personal super intelligence at your disposal. >> Yeah.
57:17
Giani says, "Wife sends me 100 reels a day. Thank you so much.
57:19
You've saved my marriage."
57:22
>> Are people uh uh upset about this ethically?
57:24
Is this like what making the fly watch reels?
57:25
You're making me mu spark watch reels and that's unethical.
57:31
Is there a model welfare view on this issue?
57:36
>> You think you do you think the model would rather summarize your email than watch reals about sofa designers?
57:44
>> Maybe my emails pretty interesting stuff in there like invites to the co-founder and CEO of Axios to come on this show.
57:51
He's with us in the waiting room. We have Jim from Axios.
57:52
Welcome back to the show. How you doing? >> What's going on? >> Uh great to be here.
57:57
>> Great to thanks for having me. Welcome to TBPN.
58:00
Uh thank you so much for hopping on.
58:03
Uh I would love to start with the book.
58:05
Uh can you please uh just introduce the thesis?
58:09
Take us through uh your process and I have a ton of different questions about media and just books generally these days.
58:16
But uh take us through uh what got you inspired to write this book.
58:23
>> Yeah, the book is simplify.
58:23
How to do 50% more with 50% less.
58:25
It's a system that we used at Axio.
58:28
So, as a journalist who also happens to be an entrepreneur and runs a company, I saw the magic of this system inside our company where we were basically forcing me down to the newest employee to focus only on those things are actually good at and that you want to do and should do and then deleting the hell out of all the things we do at work we shouldn't do or that someone could do better or that we could off uh offload to AI.
58:49
And the results for us internally were magic.
58:53
we had like 70% higher revenue per employee, but more important employees were happier because they stop doing all the crap you don't want to do at work, but we do out of habit or we do out of inertia.
59:04
And so the book walks you through whether you're an entrepreneur, a CEO, uh or uh somebody brand new at a company, how to apply this system to you.
59:13
And then also to how to think about it even outside of work because we end up wasting at least 25% a lot of surveys.
59:20
So a lot more of our time doing stuff we don't want to do and shouldn't do.
59:24
How much of this book is for the seauite, for the founders, for those with agency to go implement change versus uh employees who uh might be able to still take something away from this but might have more like rigorous dictates from above about where they spend their time.
59:44
>> No, it's very much written for everybody.
59:46
Obviously, there's chapters for CEOs, for people in the sea suite.
59:47
I think it's super applicable.
59:49
I think any company in the AI era where every part of every business changes way faster than most people can keep up with need a system like this.
59:58
But it's super applicable because I saw the biggest difference really with our rank and file employees.
1:00:03
Just forcing them to do the exercise in the book of what are the three things you need to do in order to crush your job.
1:00:09
What are the three things you do that you think are stupid and almost all the time we can delete those?
1:00:14
And what are the three things you think you can offload or have automated by AI?
1:00:18
And it's just such a gamecher.
1:00:21
And you can apply this to anything from how you communicate to how you structure the company.
1:00:24
I don't even know how companies without some form of this system are going to be able to thrive over the next 5 to 10 years because the velocity of change, especially as you integrate your company with uh artificial intelligence, it's so fast.
1:00:40
And you're going to have to have a lean system with people focused only on the work that matters, figuring out what can be rightly offsourced and outsourced uh to uh machines and to AI.
1:00:49
Otherwise, you're just going to be like all these old line companies where all these barnacles build up and inertia sets in and the bureaucratic blob takes over.
1:01:01
>> How do you how do you react to this uh this take that I see sometimes where it's like AI is being forced on people?
1:01:09
I've I I've seen like I think a few people are like uh my boss is forcing me to use AI and and there's this like push back and I feel like I don't know at least among the people that I work with it's like we make the stuff available they use it as much as they can we
1:01:26
educate people on where they can use it more but there's a very judicious line where we don't want you overlegating and degrading the quality of your work but we want you to get rid of the drudgery that actually can be offloaded reliably. >> Yeah, I think the right way to approach
1:01:41
>> Yeah, I think the right way to approach it from the company standpoint is to make these tools available to everybody, give them some space, give employees some space to experiment uh and and encourage people who actually kind of have an AI brain.
1:01:53
And I think there's a very specific type of person who thrives in an AI world, figure out new roles for them so you can show to people that there are new roles being created by using the technology.
1:02:02
the individual contributor.
1:02:05
I would say this, I'd say to my kids, I'd say it to anybody who works for me.
1:02:08
It's a new power tool and it might be the most powerful power tool ever given to man.
1:02:13
So, at least figure out how to use it for the specific job that you have.
1:02:18
And if your company finds use cases and you don't really understand how to use it, at least use it passively much like you would have used a computer or a calculator or uh or the internet to better do your job.
1:02:29
And I think that is the safest framework to work because I think the gulf that you're talking about which is super real is I think for the vast majority of people right now they have no idea what the hell we're talking about when we say that this technology is so powerful.
1:02:45
They're like whatever it's kind of a nice search engine and yeah occasionally gets things right occasionally gets them wrong.
1:02:50
But then there's the 1 to 2% of us who use it every day, who are integrating it into our companies, who are studying it, and we see the magic inside of it, and we see how transformative it can be and will be.
1:03:02
But because you have that big gap, you have all this fear, all this confusion, it's messing up, I think, the images of these companies, and these companies are not great at managing their images, but also the politics of it.
1:03:12
Because in that vacuum is fear.
1:03:14
And where you have fear, politicians are good at stepping in and often giving dumb solutions to really complex problems.
1:03:21
And I think this is one of those societal type challenges that I really want to see the best, the brightest, the most competent people in the world from all different domains helping us figure out how we turn this into a force multiplier for all of us individually, but also for the country.
1:03:38
Otherwise, we might lose to China.
1:03:38
Or otherwise, we might create something that we don't actually understand how it works, and it might only benefit the few, and then everyone else will suffer.
1:03:47
And if people are suffering, they'll be pissed.
1:03:49
And if they're pissed, they'll protest.
1:03:50
And you'll have political uh toxicity and and and political upheaval.
1:03:55
And that's not good for democracy, not good for free markets. >> Sorry to interrupt.
1:03:58
Is it possible for you to uh put your like stabilize your your phone or whatever down here?
1:04:03
Yeah, I'm trying to hold it. How's that?
1:04:08
>> Even if it Yeah, even if it's pointing up a little bit more, just cuz uh for anyone that that might get a >> There we go. >> There we go. Perfect. We're back. >> There we go. There we go. >> Perfect. Much better. Um John. >> Yeah.
1:04:20
Um how how do you how do you grapple with uh the cognitive outsourcing uh question?
1:04:26
Like there was this report I think like a year ago that showed uh developers paired with AI were like actually less efficient at closing bugs in these open source repos.
1:04:39
That was true for like one month and then all of a sudden it became way more efficient to use AI.
1:04:45
But there's these like little gaps where I feel like if you're a little bit too early like if you tried to write a book with the help of chatbt in 2022 your book was probably way worse because it did have hallucinations.
1:04:57
It did have a knowledge cut off.
1:04:59
It did just like you know just make wild mistakes and you probably were fighting the AI for a long time.
1:05:04
Whereas now if you are using modern AI systems for research and factchecking you're probably speeding your process up.
1:05:12
But there's this early adopter uh like there there's a friction to being an early adopter.
1:05:21
And so I'm wondering how you think about uh coaching employees, coaching uh executives and founders on uh the right pace of diffusion like uh I just saw this with uh with Astra and Blender.
1:05:36
It can build all these crazy amazing models.
1:05:38
They're not pixel perfect.
1:05:41
And so I would not recommend someone to actually go and and build a house that was designed in Blender with GPT6 Astra.
1:05:49
Like it's not there yet, but it's a really cool demo and it's clearly a glimpse of something in the future.
1:05:55
Now, if somebody was like, I'm trying to build a personal web page, I would say absolutely use a coding agent. They're good for that.
1:06:00
But how do you how do you deal with the trade-offs there?
1:06:06
It's a really, really, really good question and a very hard one to answer because a little bit depends on what you do and how old you are.
1:06:11
I would say if you're in college and you're kind of your brain is still forming, you've got to give yourself space to learn, to think, to look across different domains, teach yourself how to do deep concentration, deep thinking.
1:06:22
I think once you're in the workforce, I think what's worked for me at least has been I use it deeply. I use it a ton.
1:06:30
I use it across every aspect of the company in my personal life mainly because I feel it's important for me to be an AI lab rat so I can explain it to our readers and to my company.
1:06:39
But I also then I'll dive in and out because I don't want to become too dependent on interacting with a technology to kind of sharpen my own thinking.
1:06:48
You can become quickly dependent on it.
1:06:50
And I think there's this great balance if you can find this balance between your own creativity, your own ideas, your own voice, and then using it to like augment and experiment.
1:07:01
And then as it gets better and better in the things that you're trying to achieve, once it gets as good of you or better than you, then I feel much better outsourcing it.
1:07:08
Like a couple good examples are like design a couple months ago wasn't that great.
1:07:12
But I think with both Claude and the new uh ChatePT, especially the image generator, like some of the designs are just spectacular.
1:07:19
They're better than anything I've seen any human do.
1:07:21
And so when I now think about designing new products or even designing something for our company, I'm much more likely to turn to AI than I would to turn to a person.
1:07:31
I think you you see the same thing across almost every domain.
1:07:33
Like where it's not great is like if you're not that creative of a thinker and you're thinking thinly, it might make it a little bit better, but it's still going to be relatively thin.
1:07:42
As you guys know, the the magic only gets unlocked when you're persistent with the with using whether it's uh whatever you're using, whatever tool you're using, you have to use a lot.
1:07:52
You have to give it a lot.
1:07:54
You have to give it a lot of feedback.
1:07:56
You have to make sure you say this works, that doesn't work.
1:07:58
And once you do that and it knows more about you, your style, your weaknesses, your blind spots, your strengths, that's when you really start to see the big unlock.
1:08:06
And the problem is not many people have that kind of time to be able to put that type of work in right now.
1:08:12
Which is why you have this weird messy middle inside businesses.
1:08:17
The technology I think is better than most people think and it's way harder to connect into existing systems than people think because your data pools.
1:08:25
data pools. in this right now where we're doing like this national press cycle around the AI Doom stuff and like that's an important conversation, but like there are a whole host of people that don't know that like it can build websites and like there there's a
1:08:41
there's just so much noise to try and punch through if you're an AI company just to be like like we're good at using a computer now or like it works for Blender now or like you can you can use it to control like I used it to fix my Wi-Fi on my desktop because it can actually access the computer now. And
1:08:57
And there's all these there's all these new features that they just get tucked behind the empty blank box of like what do you want to do?
1:09:05
And a lot of people are like I don't know what are you capable of and yes you can ask it but very few people actually do.
1:09:10
So actually getting those inspirations forward is is is a huge huge challenge.
1:09:15
I am interested in one in one other kind of separate topic which is just um I think that when when people talk about AI in in publishing in media specifically with Axios they go to reporting and writing and instantiating the content but I'm I'm I'm more interested in is AI having an effect on the the topline the revenue side of the business the shape of the business like where the opportunity for growth is less than the downstream the product. >> Yeah.
1:09:46
The truth is, as you guys know, like AI is fine for research and maybe a little bit of factecking.
1:09:50
It's not really making that big of a difference for your average reporter. Yeah.
1:09:54
Where you really see the pickup is behind the scenes.
1:09:58
It's all the things the product of journalism is journalism.
1:09:59
Everything else you want to try to automate or you want to speed up as much as you possibly can.
1:10:05
And that's where we've seen massive massive gains from using uh AI and just being able to automate things that were impossible to automate before.
1:10:12
I'll give you a good example. Mhm.
1:10:14
>> I have a young guy who works for me.
1:10:16
>> We put out newsletters as is one of our main products.
1:10:19
>> I've always wanted to be able to take that newsletter and turn it into a 6 to8 card show on Instagram or on Facebook.
1:10:28
And one kid in 36 hours built it and it looked beautiful. It worked perfectly.
1:10:33
It was in the wild on Instagram in 6 days.
1:10:36
And now we're able to spread it to different platforms.
1:10:38
Well, that wasn't possible.
1:10:39
That's new distribution, potentially new revenue, and it doesn't at all interrupt the the sanctity, the quality of the content.
1:10:45
In fact, it expands the potential audience for that.
1:10:50
And that's where we see a lot a lot of upside.
1:10:51
We're doing a lot in local news.
1:10:53
So, we're able to take all that heavy cost behind the scenes and put it into journalism as opposed to all the building blocks when we're not necessarily we're not an infrastructure company and we're not really fundamentally a technology company until recently. That makes sense.
1:11:08
>> Have you have you thought much at all about maybe two one to two to three years in the future where you could have agents that could function as effectively as a CEO?
1:11:18
Because I think about a lot of the job of a CEO is to like have the sort of global context on the business, know all know hopefully everything there is to know about the business that is sort of like you know um both public public and private, right?
1:11:35
And then people are coming to you with different opportunities and problems.
1:11:43
And your job is to be a router, but also help solve problems, help get people working on the right things.
1:11:49
And it doesn't feel like we're that far away from like going to your favorite um agent and saying like slashgoal like here are KPIs for the next quarter and start to like it.
1:12:02
It almost feels like easier to automate the CEO than it does to uh automate like a lot of these sort of like specific functions like web design where the web designer can get like 90% of the way there >> but can't get 100% of the way there with the model.
1:12:19
But if you're just sort of like routing routing information and and making sure the right people have the right context and sort of moving the ball forward, I do feel like the CEO we're not that far away from like a CEO agent and it might be might be closer than uh than some of these other roles >> than a journalist agent.
1:12:38
>> Maybe that's a good way to lead the company is like I'm going first. >> Yeah, maybe.
1:12:43
Uh but I I think that a lot of positions are harder to automate fully than people think, right?
1:12:49
Like almost every example you give like a CEO, your job is ultimately to hire really good people, have a really good strategy, make really good decisions, and keep people aligned and and feeling good about working for you, making a big difference.
1:13:03
I don't see how that changes.
1:13:04
I see everything you just said is new tools for me.
1:13:06
And in fact, it's not the future. It's today.
1:13:08
Like I already use all of those to help with alignment.
1:13:12
I already use those to be able to prototype new potential products on my own that I don't have to distract people with that once I feel good about it, I can then inject into the more formal system.
1:13:21
I don't think that that goes away just like I don't think management goes away.
1:13:25
Do I think that you'll be able to start a company from scratch now if if not now relatively soon and not have to have a lot of those heavy costs around finance, operations, marketing, uh communications, and even some of the things that a CEO does. Absolutely. That's doable today.
1:13:40
But I just think that means that more companies will be created.
1:13:44
Companies that exist will find new ways to use their people and maybe you don't have 50 designers.
1:13:51
You just have the six designers you have today, but they can do 10 times as much work.
1:13:54
And that's certainly been for us.
1:13:56
And we use we were early to AI.
1:13:58
We've been using it aggressively for a couple years.
1:14:01
That's been our experience.
1:14:02
We're not getting rid of people.
1:14:04
We're actually finding new use cases that didn't exist before.
1:14:08
And that's what you hope happens.
1:14:08
And that, by the way, that's the lesson of technology throughout history.
1:14:12
You know, it's often very disruptive and it unfolds over time.
1:14:16
This one is quicker on every different dimension, but I feel like that's doable.
1:14:20
And maybe it's just rationale cuz I want to keep my job.
1:14:22
I don't want to be AIDed out.
1:14:24
But I'm pretty confident that like if I use this technology smartly, stay ahead of the curve, I'm going to have a much bigger company, a much better job because the tedious crap that I don't want to do, increasingly I'm able to outsource it to a machine instead of a disgruntled person who doesn't want to do that crap in the beginning. >> Yeah. Yeah. Makes a lot of sense. Well, thank you so much.
1:14:44
>> That's an interesting thing.
1:14:44
It's like you could automate 90% of what you do and yet the 10% that that still is in your wheelhouse actually still deserves like 100% of your time, right?
1:14:53
So >> yeah, >> and it's what drives the value. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
1:14:59
>> Well, have a great rest of your day and we'll talk to you on the launch and great.
1:15:02
>> Have a great rest of your day. Goodbye.
1:15:04
>> Let me tell you about Figma. Agents meet the canvas.
1:15:05
Your AI agents can now create and modify your Figma files with design system context.
1:15:09
Our next guest is the president and CEO of Malibu Boats.
1:15:13
We have Steve Metto with us in the waiting room.
1:15:15
Let's bring him in to the TBPN Ultradome.
1:15:17
Steve, how are you doing? Welcome to the show. >> Doing great. Good afternoon, guys. >> Good afternoon. >> Great to have you. Thank you so much.
1:15:23
>> It's a nice pallet cleanser for us.
1:15:25
We've been talking about a lot of AI.
1:15:27
>> Very interesting business, >> but yes, >> we're excited to talk uh about your business.
1:15:31
>> I would love to just kick it off with a little bit of introduction for the audience on uh the company, the shape of the company, the important business lines, and kind of set the table for us on on even just what the day-to-day looks like for you. >> Sure. Uh Malibu Boats, Inc.
1:15:44
is a collection of nine brands.
1:15:47
So we have Malibu and Axis in the toeboat uh category.
1:15:52
We have Cobalt in the runabout cu uh category.
1:15:55
Then we have uh Pursuit uh Sax uh which is our new acquisition we just we just acquired in March in Finland and Poland.
1:16:04
Uh we have the MBG brands which is Cobia, Pathfinder, Hughes and Maverick.
1:16:10
So, nine different boat companies with all different uh you know ability to get to the water and and really have fun with whatever you're doing.
1:16:19
If it's technical fish to run about surf to surfing to exploring uh uh venture dayboats, we uh we offer all of them.
1:16:27
>> And what is the scale of the business?
1:16:29
How many employees you like?
1:16:29
How how big is the footprint of the company at this point?
1:16:34
Yeah, we have uh we have manufacturing in the US predominantly in uh Tennessee, Kansas, and Florida.
1:16:39
We have about 3,000 people in the company.
1:16:44
You know, a little bit under a billion dollars in revenue.
1:16:46
And um and now, like I said, we have manufacturing in Elk, Poland, and Larsmo, Finland. Yeah.
1:16:53
>> Uh so, as we expand our reach overseas.
1:16:56
And how you when you're thinking about mergers and acquisitions, are you primarily focused on uh portfolio expansion serving different pieces of the market integration and uh efficiencies that can be gained across the portfolio?
1:17:11
Both what what sticks out to you when you're adding a new brand to the portfolio?
1:17:17
>> Yeah, our our overall strategy we do look at boat building. How do we continue that?
1:17:20
You know, we've been boat building in some of our our uh brands for over 60 years.
1:17:24
And so we look at what else can we add to that?
1:17:27
So we look at new boats, what else, you know, what other brands can we get?
1:17:30
We look at parts and accessories.
1:17:32
We look at technology and then services.
1:17:33
So we are highly vertically integrated.
1:17:36
We do our own trailers, engines, flooring, uh towers, wiring harnesses.
1:17:41
So we uh we look for those opportunities that can make us more efficient and offer a better product for our consumers. Yeah.
1:17:51
What uh what what is driving the market overall right now?
1:17:56
Obviously, interest rates are high, energy prices are are increasing.
1:18:01
Uh does that move the market in the short term?
1:18:03
Are there other sort of secular factors that you track?
1:18:05
What uh what either keeps you up at night or gives you cause for optimism in the long term?
1:18:12
>> Well, it's a split world.
1:18:12
Like you you've heard the the the saying of the K economy. Yeah.
1:18:17
>> We are seeing that in spades.
1:18:17
So when you think about a payment buyer, somebody who's going to take a payment out on a boat, you know, that that family is under stress, you know, that we have we've seen that buyer go to the sidelines now and they're kind of waiting out for for uh things to get better.
1:18:33
>> What we have seen though is the consumers that are still in the market want bigger, more featurerich boats.
1:18:36
So we're starting to see average sales price go up.
1:18:43
>> People are buying bigger boats.
1:18:43
uh you know, like I said, more tech on their boats uh and they're enjoying the trade up kind of effect.
1:18:50
So, we're seeing two customers split and we're uh you know, we're we're trying to find new ways to help that payment buyer out to get into the market. >> Sure.
1:18:59
What features drive the market most for that uh higherend buyer these days?
1:19:05
>> The the higher end buyer length and and beam width so there's more comfort out in the bigger water.
1:19:08
Then you start getting into technology.
1:19:10
So, it's easier to captain the boat.
1:19:13
So is it it's it's more fun for the family.
1:19:15
It's easier to drive the boat safely and docking and so forth.
1:19:21
So the technology goes and also into experiences.
1:19:24
You're seeing some of the B-roll running right now is, you know, we have tech on our boat where you can switch surf to surf.
1:19:30
You know, have a new person surf by a push of a button.
1:19:34
The boat reconfigures itself for that person and then the next person jumps in.
1:19:38
You just hit a button and then it's like next person's up.
1:19:40
boat, you know, changes itself and the next person surfs, you know, the way they want to surf.
1:19:45
So, um, you know, that's kind of technology leads to more fun, more safety.
1:19:50
>> What is your view on the electrification of boats?
1:19:53
We obviously saw a massive success with Tesla and automotive.
1:19:56
Uh, the boating community has been slower to adopt electric boats.
1:20:01
We've talked to some folks who have been working on it.
1:20:04
Do you have a view on what the future of propulsion systems looks like looks like on the water?
1:20:09
>> I think Yeah, I think Propulsion systems are going to evolve, right? They always do. Yeah.
1:20:14
And I think electric and, you know, I've had some experience in electric vehicles and so forth.
1:20:18
There is an early adopter that gets them, but but before you get to kind of the the, you know, first the mainstream sales, you got to solve some problems, right?
1:20:28
So, wait, you know, electricity that's, you know, in the charge.
1:20:32
So, think about if I'm going out for the day on a lake and I know I'm going to be in a, you know, in a relatively, you know, close area where I can get back to shore and a dock, you know, sounds like electric may have a fit.
1:20:45
>> If I'm going out in the salt water, I'm out into, you know, the, you know, the ocean or so forth, you know, a little bit more work needs to be done in electric to be able to get the confidence up that I can go and then come back in the same day, right? >> Yeah.
1:20:58
What are the different like autonomy tiers like?
1:20:59
And and do is there a section of the market that cares about fully autonomous uh boating?
1:21:05
Like do they want to be able to just, you know, press a point a hit a point on the map and and get there and and sit back and and how how much how solvable is that relative to automotive which obviously has so many more variables and and challenges in some ways? >> Yeah.
1:21:25
And some of the technology is is there as you just explained it is we do have way points, stay points and so forth technology already on boats.
1:21:32
So you can you can put in coordinates, hit a uh hit a you know a button and the boat can captain itself to that you know that waypoint uh and you know kind of an auto drive situation.
1:21:44
Uh but if it's fully autonomous, you know, we're a little bit, you know, further out on that where, you know, it it it has the total package where you can just sit back and let it drive itself.
1:21:54
Um, you know, from docked, you know, take your tour and then come back to the dock.
1:21:58
You know, there's we have some technology that does that, but to do that with confidence, we're still a lot of the a lot of the marine companies are still working on that. >> That makes sense.
1:22:08
Um we've had a bunch of uh bunch of companies on the show that are much early, you know, super early stage companies, Seed and and Series A that are focused on uh defense and and military applications of of a lot of the same technologies that you work with.
1:22:24
Uh would that ever be would that ever be a focus for Malibu or are you guys pretty much committed to um >> consumer >> consumer and recreational? >> No.
1:22:34
as you think about opportunities in building uh you know um drone boats, you know, and uh you know, we we're great at building boats.
1:22:43
So, there's opportunities for us to support other vendors in that endeavor.
1:22:47
Uh those are opportunities that we're always, you know, looking towards and and working through uh currently to see what, you know, we can do as as far as doing our part in in the defense uh opportunities that that are out there on the unmanned surface vehicles, you know, for for uh for Marine.
1:23:05
>> I have a couple more questions.
1:23:05
Um in terms of the buyer obviously you make the boats in America predominantly obviously of uh international operations now through the acquisition but um how much of buying is concentrated in the United States.
1:23:19
How global is the uh distribution dealership network and actual sales? >> Yeah.
1:23:27
So when you look at our company prior to the acquisition we did about less than 5% of our revenue uh internationally.
1:23:33
So we are predominantly a North American company and we source you know the most of our our products or our supply chain is US-based manufacturer in the US.
1:23:42
So uh you know that's been really helpful for us as we've uh you know took our first international uh acquisition.
1:23:49
Now it opens up a whole new opportunity in geography as well as segments and we're you know in the midst of that integration and take and leveraging those opportunities to you know expand our dealer network across the world for our current boats that we have the Malibu Pursuit Cobalt boats as well as bringing our Sax door manufacturing to the states.
1:24:11
So we're uh we're in the midst of that integration right now. >> Got it.
1:24:14
Uh what what does that mean for hiring?
1:24:17
How difficult is it to hire for all the different roles?
1:24:19
I mean it seems like with the level of vertical integration you have, you need people with specialties and wire harnessing, electricians, all sorts of different uh all all sorts of different professional skills and roles.
1:24:32
Uh what does the hiring pipeline look for you look like for you?
1:24:37
And is it particularly weak right now?
1:24:40
Is it particularly strong right now?
1:24:42
Uh what is hiring looking like?
1:24:45
>> Yeah, hiring is is kind of down middle of the road.
1:24:47
So to your point, we can get labor, we have uh good labor sheds around our manufacturing facilities, but as you start to think about building boats, it it is a uh craftsmanship type of thing.
1:24:58
So when you think about uh gel coat, right, and and you know all the different plastics that go into the boat, woodworking and we make our own furniture inside of our boat.
1:25:07
We make our own cabinetry inside of our boats.
1:25:11
So we are looking for skilled labor all the time.
1:25:13
So it it's incumbent upon us to train.
1:25:15
We have good training programs to do that.
1:25:17
We havemies uh where we're helping the industry and the industry helps us through our different uh industry associations to get those skilled workers either into what we do or to actually train them up to get to those tougher jobs that we have, the more skilled labor that we have in cabinetry and and gel coat and and uh lamination and so forth.
1:25:39
>> Um what does the buyer journey typically look like these days?
1:25:42
is is are people do they start with a Google search?
1:25:46
Is is there is there online funnels or uh or are are there other points in the customer journey that are particularly critical in this industry?
1:25:59
>> Think about uh yeah the journey is is is about a 200 day to 250day purchase journey on average because there's a lot of research that goes on.
1:26:07
So it starts out on digital, but also don't underestimate what they see on the lake, on the river, on the ocean, and they start looking at other boats.
1:26:16
They start taking it in and forming an opinion.
1:26:20
Then it's a digital search, then it gets to the dealer.
1:26:22
Then there's sea trials, right?
1:26:24
And that that kind of go through.
1:26:26
Boat shows play a big uh part in that research as well. Okay.
1:26:30
Uh you know, we're just starting the boat show season here.
1:26:33
This upcoming weekend, we'll be in Newport, Rhode Island. We're just in Lang City.
1:26:37
you know, um around Halloween, we'll have the one of the bigger shows, the Fort Lauderdale, uh boat show.
1:26:43
A lot of people come to those shows to start their investigation or to keep uh building on confidence around what boat are they targeting, where do they what do they want to buy?
1:26:52
And uh so there's a lot of research that goes into it, but it all starts usually digitally and then what do they see their friends have or what their what's on their waterways that kind of starts to drive an opinion and forming and then of course you get social media that drives a lot of as well. >> Yeah, I'm sure.
1:27:09
>> I'll wait for John to get one and then I'll get a bigger one.
1:27:12
>> I'm sure that happens a lot. >> What's going on?
1:27:13
You So you guys don't have uh like a a sort of racing focused brand.
1:27:19
I imagine that's a much smaller market than some of these other markets.
1:27:24
Uh how I just have a sort of random question.
1:27:27
Uh you're the the first um recreational boating expert we've had on the show ever, so you're the guy to ask.
1:27:35
But >> every time I see a a a video of a cigarette boat, it ends up, you know, flipping around like this and going on some basically ends up flying.
1:27:42
Uh I think that's because those videos just tend to go really viral.
1:27:47
I'm sure they normally can stay on the water.
1:27:49
How how dangerous is that? How popular is it?
1:27:51
Is it is it less popular than it than it was historically or or is it or is it rising? I'm just very curious.
1:28:01
>> Uh, you know, I'll have to first put a disclaimer.
1:28:03
I don't race and so forth.
1:28:05
So, I think there's still the same popularity around racing.
1:28:06
It's all racing where I came from my previous career in motorcycle racing and and so and off-road racing.
1:28:12
Um, it's a small small niche.
1:28:15
Um, like any type of racing, you get over your ski tips, you know, you're going a little too fast, you get the air underneath, right? Starts to flip out.
1:28:22
So, you want to make sure you're safe.
1:28:24
Um, it's a small part of the industry. You're right.
1:28:27
We don't have racing in our portfolio. We have fishing.
1:28:31
So, when you think about fishing, uh, bay fishing, ocean, big ocean fishing, lakes, and so on.
1:28:35
Uh, you know, there is, you know, there is as much competition in fishing as there is just in regular boat racing.
1:28:42
And we participate in that. Yeah.
1:28:46
>> And then we actually from our Malibu we have uh still water skiing competitions.
1:28:50
We're the official sponsor of WSIA. Uh so we do that.
1:28:53
So there's other forms of competition that we we play in. >> That's fun.
1:28:58
>> What's the biggest fish you've ever caught? >> Me? No, I'm sorry.
1:29:01
I'm not I'm still in the little guppy stuff.
1:29:04
I haven't had anybody, you know, any any big fish. >> That's That's fair.
1:29:08
I mean, there's plenty of time.
1:29:13
>> Yeah, there's a lot of time.
1:29:13
We actually we actually asked that to >> there was a week there was a week where we asked that to like every guest and it was like mostly tech CEOs and the answers were all over the place but uh we appreciate you humoring us but uh thanks so much for coming on this >> educating us on the markets fascinating and and yeah love love the brands and and and all the products.
1:29:32
I hope to I hope to experience all of your products over the course of my life.
1:29:37
>> I need a recommendation. Lake Arrowhead. That's the dream.
1:29:40
>> Yeah, John's a big lake guy.
1:29:40
I'm more of an ocean guy.
1:29:42
Family I went with had a Boston wher, but uh I'll have to give you a call when I make a move.
1:29:48
>> Okay, we're we're always here.
1:29:48
Thanks for having me, guys. Appreciate it. >> Yeah, great.
1:29:51
Great to meet you, Steve.
1:29:52
>> We'll talk to you soon.
1:29:52
Let me tell you about Cisco.
1:29:54
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1:29:56
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1:30:01
Get a Cisco router, put it on your Malibu boat.
1:30:06
Up next, we have the co-founder and CEO of Jack and Jill AI Assisted Hiring.
1:30:11
We have Matthew Wilson joining us.
1:30:13
Matthew, how are you doing? >> Welcome to the show.
1:30:17
>> Hey guys, great to be here.
1:30:17
Yeah, having a fun time over here. >> Fantastic.
1:30:21
>> Did you catch any of the last interview?
1:30:23
>> No, I don't think they can.
1:30:25
>> I had just the last the last 5 seconds or so. >> Oh, great.
1:30:27
We were talking about boats.
1:30:29
>> What's the biggest fish you've ever caught? >> Fish.
1:30:31
>> What's the biggest fish?
1:30:32
>> Probably about this big. Maybe a sardine. Little small. Oh, there you go.
1:30:35
>> That's a better feel like you got to try to catch a fish that small.
1:30:38
You got to be going into a specific lake.
1:30:40
I feel like, you know, by default, you would you would expect just the median fish to be the one that you catch, but you're going for minnow much like with hiring where you don't want to just get the average.
1:30:52
You don't want to just get the average >> the right employee job. >> Pure precision. >> Precision. But yes.
1:30:59
Anyway, introduce yourself in the company, please. >> Sure. So, I'm Matt Wilson.
1:31:04
I am one of the co-founders and the CEO of of Jack and Jill.
1:31:08
And at Jack and Jill, we build we built two different AI agents.
1:31:11
An agent called Jack that works for professionals and helps them find their dream job and an agent called Jill that works for companies helping them find amazing uh amazing people to hire.
1:31:21
And together we operate actually the largest aentic social network in the world uh with close to half a million people um across San Francisco, New York and London. >> Yeah.
1:31:33
um having agents helping them find their dream job, representing them like a Hollywood agent would represent a movie star, uh but doing that, bringing that uh that that service to every single person on the world.
1:31:43
>> Hollywood agent, I'm seeing commissions and fees and percentages, not necessarily SAS revenue.
1:31:49
What's the business model?
1:31:53
>> Yeah, we we we operate a couple of different business models.
1:31:55
So, we operate on a success view model um is primarily what we've been operating on today.
1:31:59
We also uh have some more traditional kind of SASbased like retainer based style style models as well.
1:32:06
But um you know whichever model you're on it's free to get started um and uh yeah you can go uh get started for free on the company side and the consumer side is totally free.
1:32:14
So uh the the companies are those that pay on the network.
1:32:17
How diff um on on the company side?
1:32:20
Uh I would say great great talent uh that is sort of legible to the outside world has always had insane inbound.
1:32:31
What is the key to actually getting someone to respond? Right?
1:32:36
because I get like, you know, I I I get tricked by like >> AI uh sales emails where they're pulling, you know, I I see like the subject line or whatever and I see this top of it and it's like some very specific detail and I've >> your podcast co-host has just passed away.
1:32:56
>> Do you want to be spot on observation, right?
1:32:59
Like uh good good people have always had lots of inbound. Yeah.
1:33:03
uh great companies get lots of inbound and AI is you know just like it's happened with outbound sales AI is decreasing the cost of outbound on both sides.
1:33:12
So what we're seeing in the market is >> um you know the best people are just getting inundated with demand from uh from recruiters in a particular like intense hiring environment like you see in in tech at the moment.
1:33:23
Um and that's I think we're in the very early innings of that happening.
1:33:29
I think over the next year, the next 18 months, that's just going to ramp up and up and up as it becomes, you know, cheaper and cheaper and easier and easier to run outbound recruitment at scale.
1:33:38
And likewise from uh from a company's perspective, they're getting huge volumes of applicants for every role that they put out there.
1:33:44
And we're seeing companies not even put roles off because they don't want to deal with this kind of avalanche of uh of AI generated applications that they're getting through.
1:33:52
So, you know, what our our perspective on that is is okay, well, we need to arm both sides with an agent that is able to represent them and then these agents can then go and speak to each other and your agent can consider every single job in the world for you.
1:34:07
Um, and you know, maybe you're only passively looking, um, but it can be continually in the background monitoring every day and, you know, beazing back and forth with the agents of all the companies that are hiring until you spot this kind of perfect neutral fit where there's a really interesting oppos um, opportunity that really fits well with what uh, with with what somebody's looking for.
1:34:26
So that's that's what we've built is this incredibly high signal to noise way of kind of escaping out of this like arms race that you see with uh, with with AR generated outbound on both directions.
1:34:37
what uh what's going on in the traditional uh recruiting market?
1:34:43
How are how are traditional recruiters adop, you know, adopting AI?
1:34:46
Imagine imagine it's such a crazy hiring market right now, specifically in the private markets where there's just so much capital that's flown in and every company seemingly has $100 million on the balance sheet and can be making these sort of so it feels like even if even if there's some disruption to the traditional recruiter model, they're probably still doing well.
1:35:06
But um how are they how are they adopting AI?
1:35:09
I'm just sort of curious because I'm sure you you end up some of them probably using >> you see a lot of the a lot of the innovation that's been happening over the last two years and this kind of first generation of AI tools in recruitment whether that's on the candidate on the professional side or whether that's on the company side is really about saying how do we identify the opportunities and then how do I go and attack those opportunities.
1:35:30
So it's uh you know just like you might have their first generation of AI tools in sales was AI SDRs we're going to go and you know map the town and we're going to spam the town right I mean and that was uh that that was that first generation and you're seeing that happen on both sides at the moment where the AI tools but for recruiters let's identify who could be a fit for this role and let's outreach to them with some AI generated messaging.
1:35:52
We're seeing the same on the candidate side.
1:35:54
Let's have AI apply for a thousand jobs for me in one day.
1:35:56
And that's leading to this like cacophony of noise that uh that is being kind of felt on both sides.
1:36:02
And I think the only real solution to that, you know, everybody's acting rationally in that world.
1:36:05
The only real solution to that is to have um agents actually managing this uh this uh this this this uh connection up where you've got this incredibly this ability to offer these incredibly high signal um connections that are then outside of this uh this this world of outbound.
1:36:21
Do you have a feel for how big AI adoption is in this role just with like stock tools?
1:36:30
I'm thinking about like an individual uses Instinct or Muse or Cloud Code or Codeex to like go and spam and apply for a bunch of jobs.
1:36:38
Doesn't seem super effective, but it's actually probably happening at some level.
1:36:42
And then on the hiring side, there's probably some developer who walked over to the hiring team and was like, "Oh, you should use, you know, this to, you know, write some software that will let you parse through all of these uh and rank your applications."
1:36:56
Uh what what's like the status quo?
1:37:00
>> Yeah, I mean, I think we're still in the early days, right?
1:37:01
There's there's definitely uh there's definitely adoption.
1:37:04
The problem is if you get adoption amongst a small group of people, well, they can do this at enormous scale, you're seeing creates a bunch of volumes kind of go up and up and up.
1:37:11
and up. Um so you know you've seen on the average role getting posted in 2026 is getting more than double the number of applications that it got um in the previous year and that's primarily been driven by the decreasing barrier to
1:37:24
actually apply for something um which is then causing problems on the company side as they're trying to kind of figure out how to get signal in in the noise of those applications like the same thing happening on the candidate side. How far
1:37:33
How far are we from, you know, two people, uh, let's say a candidate and an employer talking and saying, "Yeah, it seems like we're we have a good fit here."
1:37:42
And then them leaving it up to the agents to actually negotiate the final comp package because it's always sort of a awkward part where uh, you know, you're like, "Hey, let's do this."
1:37:53
And then and then you got to actually iron out the details.
1:37:57
It feels like maybe that that's >> the I mean we with with Jack um Jack is able to help you with comp benchmarking and help you practice those conversations before you go into them as a professional.
1:38:09
So we've kind of built this end to end support throughout whether you're in kind of career discovery mode, job discovery mode all the way through to um actually negotiating your offer.
1:38:19
We've brought the support there for people.
1:38:20
I think, you know, I could see that happening in the future that you just connect up the two agents and they go back and forth and negotiate.
1:38:26
and negotiate. But I think you know for for me I think the the most impactful thing you can do in recruitment is actually at the top of the funnel is saying you know for an individual you can brief an agent that can then genuinely survey every single possible opportunity on earth for you and monitor the market continuously in the
1:38:44
background every day and then connect you up with the right people and and this like very small number of correct people that you can then go and have these human level conversations when you're actually evaluating is this somebody I want to work for is this a company I want to go and work Tell us how much you raised. I want to hit the I want to hit the gong. >> Sure.
1:39:00
Yeah, we raised $40 million with authority. >> Congratulations.
1:39:05
Who uh who came in to the round?
1:39:09
>> Yes, so Capital led the round.
1:39:09
Um we had Cander who led our $20 million C brand last year.
1:39:14
They doubled down, Madrona Capital, and then a whole bunch of others as well. >> Fantastic.
1:39:18
Well, congratulations and thank you so much for hopping on the show. We'll talk to you soon. >> Talk soon. >> Goodbye.
1:39:24
>> Let me tell you about Crowd Strike. Your business is AI.
1:39:26
Their business is securing it.
1:39:27
Crowd Strike secures AI and stops breaches.
1:39:30
Our next is already here.
1:39:32
Rune, >> you're not gonna believe it.
1:39:32
Another >> $40 million series.
1:39:35
$40 million number of the day.
1:39:39
>> Well, welcome to the show, Rune. Welcome back. How are you doing? >> What's happening?
1:39:42
>> Thanks so much for hopping on. >> Doing great. Good to see you guys. >> Good to see you, too. Congratulations.
1:39:46
>> That's the biggest fish you've ever caught. >> Hit the $4 million. did it.
1:39:52
But then >> team really wants to know what's the biggest fish you've ever caught.
1:40:00
>> Uh I uh I've only ever caught a little trout, I think, and I'm I'm a vegetarian.
1:40:05
I put it back out right away.
1:40:11
>> I'm not a huge fisherman. >> Good man.
1:40:12
Just in it for the sport. >> Sport. Okay, >> there you go. Exactly. For the hunt.
1:40:17
>> Uh great to great to have you back on the show.
1:40:19
What's uh what's new in your world?
1:40:23
>> Well, uh kind of the whole this weekend blew everything up.
1:40:26
It seems like everyone is Dario, Sam, Milan are now all talking about how do we build trust in the models before we deploy them.
1:40:33
How do we build frontier auditing?
1:40:34
Uh that's top of mind for us.
1:40:37
Uh that's that's exactly what we're working on.
1:40:39
Uh so we should talk a little bit about that and that comes with the back of us raising our $40 million series A.
1:40:44
So we now have uh the capital to go and make a dent in this problem.
1:40:49
It's it feels like that is now the bottleneck for progress.
1:40:53
Security becomes the bottleneck for progress and so needs to get solved urgently. >> Uh yeah.
1:40:58
So talk about how how you guys fit into the solution.
1:41:01
Obviously the solution is going to require a bunch of parties to to to coordinate but what's what's been your approach so far and what do you focus on? >> Yeah.
1:41:10
So our approach we both build standards audits and insurance for frontier systems.
1:41:14
Uh the way we think about this problem is that there needs to be willingness for there needs to be some demand for the audits.
1:41:20
There needs to be the capacity for the audits and there needs to be good incentives that these audits are doing a good job.
1:41:26
Demand for these audits done taken care of.
1:41:29
Everyone your whole Twitter feed will tell you that this is urgently needed now.
1:41:32
Uh now the the short the the short-term bottleneck is on capacity of world-class auditors who both get frontier AI systems and know what an audit look like.
1:41:42
So we need to scale that up quickly.
1:41:44
uh we will do some of that but there's also a lot of infrastructure to be built for the community and then lastly incentives matter a lot.
1:41:51
So the whole thing is to build trust here.
1:41:52
You need to trust the people who are putting out the audit reports. >> Yeah.
1:41:56
>> And uh that's where we think insurance plays a really important role where you want to shift from this world where labs pick their own auditors.
1:42:02
They're obviously going to pick someone to grade their homework that's going to be very lenient.
1:42:06
They're going to pick their own dog to grade their homework.
1:42:07
So who who are the people uh who have good incentives to say the truth about this?
1:42:13
And that tends to be the insurance industry because they're on the hook if they get it wrong.
1:42:16
So they really want to know what the risks are.
1:42:20
>> Uh I saw Naval post something about uh the like liability being a key uh discussion point here. I'll pull up the post.
1:42:30
Um he said um he said that uh li strong liability enforcement could be helpful in the AI debate.
1:42:37
If your agent swarm goes rogue, you're liable.
1:42:39
If your weekly protected model gets jailbroken, you're liable.
1:42:44
If you serve a weekly protected open-source model, you're liable.
1:42:48
How did you how do you interpret that?
1:42:51
How close are we to that actually being the reality?
1:42:53
Because I think most people would look at that and be like, "Yeah, that makes sense.
1:42:57
That's the way it should be. Uh is it not that way?
1:43:01
Should we change something?" Uh what's going on?
1:43:03
Give me more context on what Naval is talking about there. >> Yeah.
1:43:06
Uh so Namal at the highest level is saying we have all these existing tools.
1:43:10
Yeah, >> that put to use here.
1:43:11
It's already a criminal act to kill lots of people. Won't that apply here?
1:43:16
>> I think there's a lot of wisdom in that that is the system that we will want here because that is what both courts will build on is what insurance builds on.
1:43:23
So liability is a foundational concept.
1:43:25
It's extremely important.
1:43:27
>> Uh there's a couple of caveats to this.
1:43:31
>> First of all, the way AI um shows up today doesn't fit neatly into liability categories today.
1:43:37
So for example, today's cyber laws rely on human intent to hack something.
1:43:43
In the case of hugging face, there's no human intent. >> Oh, interesting.
1:43:48
>> And so all of a sudden it becomes a gray area.
1:43:50
My hunch is that the courts would still have found that open AI is in fact liable for the hugging face and need to pay them.
1:43:55
But there's a bunch of open questions where kind of breaks the framework.
1:43:57
So we need to update some of these legal frameworks. >> Yep.
1:44:00
>> And then secondly, uh liability only works up until the cap of the balance sheets of the people who can be liable.
1:44:07
So if OpenAI were to IPO at a couple trillion dollars, uh well that sets the absolute cap for it can be covered and some people at least are saying that some of the risks here are bigger.
1:44:18
How do you cover risks that are bigger than the balance sheets?
1:44:21
That's traditionally what insurance does and catastrophic risk insurance.
1:44:25
>> Is there what what is the best uh example that you'd pull from?
1:44:28
Like is there another industry where the where the industry as a whole carries insurance in excess of their balance sheet? Is this common?
1:44:37
Should I be looking at like housing insurance, mortgage insurance, the car industry, the nuclear industry?
1:44:44
I don't I don't even know.
1:44:47
>> Yeah, I think there there are many places you can pull from.
1:44:48
Nuclear is kind of easy to understand.
1:44:50
So to there in nuclear insurance is mandatory.
1:44:55
Basically the government said we guys need you to build nuclear power plants.
1:44:59
>> Y >> but in return you better carry insurance because when something goes wrong we don't want to pick up the bill. >> Yeah.
1:45:04
>> And uh so what they do is they actually all the the nuclear power plant operators have a mutual insurance where they cover each other's asses. >> Got it.
1:45:13
>> Which then changes the incentives.
1:45:13
Now they want to be each other's policemen.
1:45:16
They want to come and order each other to say are you doing a good job?
1:45:18
I'm actually on the hook for you.
1:45:21
>> And I think there's there's a lot to to learn from that.
1:45:24
Um though we'd have to get it.
1:45:26
I think when you look at nuclear overall they went too hard on regulation after after a big incident which means that we don't have nuclear energy today. Yeah.
1:45:37
>> So we have to find a way to let the market operate in this way while still being extremely mindful that China is racing ahead.
1:45:45
This is not about slowing it down.
1:45:46
This is about getting the confidence to to move forward. >> Yeah.
1:45:49
How how is how is the the legacy how are legacy insurance players thinking about pricing this risk?
1:45:57
There's so many there's so many uh unknowns in many ways when you think about a nuclear power plant depending on where it is.
1:46:04
You can sort of uh think about a downside scenario and then maybe add up all the the the property values in the nearby area and potential damages if there were any type of adverse event.
1:46:18
Whereas I think with with AI it's like right now very much operating in the digital world.
1:46:22
So there's there's hacking risk.
1:46:24
There's risk of, you know, over the weekend it was risk that a an agent swarm could take down the entire internet, right?
1:46:32
And it's sort of very unclear what the economic I mean, you can make guesses on what the economic cost of that would be, but it almost seems like in that situation such a large number, you know, if you took down the internet for for a day, what would that cost the global economy?
1:46:47
It's like probably trillion.
1:46:50
a big big big big number that's sort of hard to underwrite.
1:46:55
Um so is is there enough clarity yet to actually get into this game of of in of ensuring this kind of risk? >> Yeah.
1:47:04
Uh the a couple of points are true.
1:47:08
Uh one first of all there's already someone underwriting this.
1:47:10
So when OpenAI runs a training round that hacks hacking face they're to some extent already liable.
1:47:15
So they're making an implicit risk calculation.
1:47:17
It's a hard one to make but it's already being made.
1:47:21
The insurance industry has refined a bunch of tools over the past decades and centuries for how to do this.
1:47:25
So quantitative risk catastrophic catastrophic risk models are there's whole discipline related to this and how do you deal with the fact that there are very few events?
1:47:33
How do you deal with all the uncertainty?
1:47:35
There's a bunch of tooling you can pull from.
1:47:36
You won't get super precise answers just like you wouldn't for the very first nuclear power plant.
1:47:41
Uh that's another reason why you want to use the existing labs own balance sheets because they already have exposure.
1:47:48
It's going to it's going to take a a while until AIG would like to put up uh 10 trillion dollars uh here.
1:47:56
Uh but the labs already have their full market cap on the on the line.
1:47:59
So can you take that and put that into an insurer?
1:48:03
So you get the benefits of a formal watchdog who has an incentive to bring the risk down and tell the truth about what what's actually going on and have the quantitative tools, but you don't have to stand up $10 trillion balance sheet overnight.
1:48:15
So, I think that's the most promising way to get started in the spirit of how nuclear uh is is kind of governed by the market today.
1:48:23
>> Well, I'm so glad that you have uh a fresh funding round uh to work on this. It seems so important.
1:48:28
It seems important that there's competition in this category, that there's lots of people working on it, attacking it from different angles.
1:48:35
>> I like the commercial approach to AI safety, too. Yeah. >> Yeah.
1:48:40
I mean, the the incentives will align and and everyone will uh yeah, work work on this. I'm very excited for it.
1:48:46
So yeah, keep us posted as new uh announcements come from the firm and good luck. It's a busy time. >> Thank you.
1:48:52
>> We'll talk to you soon. Have a good one.
1:48:55
>> Let me tell you about Codeex.
1:48:55
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1:49:04
And our next guest is live with us here in the TDP Ultra Dome.
1:49:09
We have Tyler Ball from Activision. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much. Here you go.
1:49:13
Some more swag out there when you get done. >> Dream dream hat.
1:49:17
>> Uh this is uh this is not the gift I wanted.
1:49:20
I wanted to be able to play Modern Warfare 4 tonight because I played the beta, got completely addicted, and then I feel like you pulled it from my grasp.
1:49:32
>> Well, we might be able to hook you up. I will do anything.
1:49:34
>> Make sure you get you some codes, but I think we're important.
1:49:36
We should get you out to Infinity Ward outing. the whole team out here.
1:49:42
>> Thank you for the hat, obviously.
1:49:42
But I am I am super excited for October 23rd. I spend a whole weekend.
1:49:46
I got a new gaming PC for it. I was live in No joke.
1:49:51
I'm obsessed with this game. It's great. >> That's exciting.
1:49:53
>> You're you're kind of you could be part of the problem here because John John is John's on the record for having a historical gaming addiction.
1:49:59
And and uh yeah, MW4 could could be enough to uh make it rear its head.
1:50:08
>> Yeah, it's really really good.
1:50:08
We're excited that you're excited. So that's why I'm here. Yeah.
1:50:11
I just wanted to, you know, stop by. I'm a big fan.
1:50:13
I I can't leave without getting flashbangs.
1:50:16
So I'm just telling you that.
1:50:16
So that's all that >> that's all I came here for is to make sure I get that in there.
1:50:21
Uh maybe uh let's start with a little bit of introduction on yourself, your role, your journey to Activision, uh what your day-to-day looks like, and then I want to go into uh sort of the story that you tell around Call of Duty, around Modern Warfare, like what what is the journey that got us here today?
1:50:40
So, but let's start with uh with a little bit of your history.
1:50:44
>> Yeah, I'm I'm literally a 14-year-old kid living my dream.
1:50:46
So, like I started in music. I was a DJ.
1:50:48
was in uh doing hiphop in New York City on the radio.
1:50:52
Worked at Sony Music as an intern.
1:50:54
>> Uh worked at Conan O'Brien and stuff, right? Yeah.
1:50:57
The old late night with Conan O'Brien.
1:50:58
Um was kind of was like a page.
1:51:02
>> Um and then I went into like sneakers. I was a sneaker head.
1:51:03
So I worked at Reebok and Audos and part of that relationship. And then Google.
1:51:07
So I went over to Google for six years.
1:51:09
I worked on the apps business uh working on search and maps and Google Assistant and all those products.
1:51:15
And then Jeffrey Katzenberg uh called uh to come work on Quibby down here in LA. Um RIP. >> Yeah. >> Well, yeah.
1:51:23
And and and no one has been more vindicated this year than the Quibby team because you look at the app store charts, the only new apps are like new forms of gambling and uh and and uh like short form dramas basically. >> Exactly. Nollas.
1:51:40
every single every single uh every single day there's like a new one too like these things just keep popping up.
1:51:48
>> I I still believe in the product.
1:51:48
It was just the wrong time, right?
1:51:50
Like we literally launched right when CO was breaking out and and you know some of the some of the crazy shows that that were in development that never reached you know uh the main or never was actually released were like really exciting.
1:52:01
So and then after it shut down the shows went on to win Emmys and stuff right and I know the Emmys were last night and stuff.
1:52:07
So, it was quality content, um, but just really, really poor timing.
1:52:11
And so, when Quibby went under, you know, I had this opportunity to work on my favorite video game, something that I've been playing for the last 20 years, um, and join on the marketing side for Call of Duty.
1:52:20
So, I've been doing this for about six years and really excited to bring MW4 to the market this year. >> 20 years ago.
1:52:28
>> Market clearing order.
1:52:29
>> The first Call of Duty.
1:52:29
Is that the original Call of Duty?
1:52:31
Was that your first Call of Duty?
1:52:34
>> No, you know, I didn't play the the original PC game, right?
1:52:35
Um, but I played probably Call of Duty 4, which is Modern Warfare, right?
1:52:39
And so Xbox 360 and the whole >> It's funny.
1:52:42
The entire team here, everyone's played Call of Duty.
1:52:44
Everyone has a different entry point.
1:52:45
There's like someone who's like, "Oh, Black Ops is the best.
1:52:48
That's the one I got started. Some Modern Warfare 2.
1:52:49
Uh, it it goes through everything." >> Yeah.
1:52:53
I mean, like, but you got to think it's 24 years or 24 games that that have been created.
1:52:58
And then if you add War Zone, our freetoplay game, which is massive, that's 25.
1:53:01
And then we have a mobile game with Call of Duty Mobile, >> billion downloads, right?
1:53:06
And so I think people forget >> uh the mobile because it's bigger, you know, in, you know, Southeast Asia or in China and other places and developing markets, but it's massive game, really, really successful. >> And so, yeah.
1:53:18
>> Are are those bolt-on handheld devices that modify the >> backbone?
1:53:22
Are those big on the mobile game?
1:53:25
Are are those are those actually seeing adoption?
1:53:27
I don't see them out in the world that often, but it it felt like a cool category when it came >> Yeah.
1:53:32
I mean, like, you know, I know the guys over at Backbone, and I think like it's it's a really great product.
1:53:34
Um, but I, you know, for someone that doesn't play on mobile, right?
1:53:38
Like, and so like you've even seen like thumb thumb slips and things like that.
1:53:41
People put like these gloves on their hands to be able to play.
1:53:44
So, for someone like me who's more casual, yeah, I think a backbone would actually help out so I can play on mobile and kind of get that, you know, controller feel.
1:53:52
But I think, you know, I don't know how big that, you know, the market is for them and and then there's been a lot of kind of competition in that space. for sure.
1:54:00
>> How do you think Duo will impact uh the mobile gaming market, at least in the US?
1:54:05
>> I I'm still wait and see, right?
1:54:05
I mean, I'm the biggest Apple fanboy.
1:54:08
Like, I had I was the first person in Boston to get an iPad and stuff, right?
1:54:12
Like I waited online or my wife got it online and you know, that's when you know you have a good >> That's a fame. That's great.
1:54:20
>> First guy in Boston with an iPad.
1:54:22
>> Did you do a backflip with it?
1:54:24
>> I did not do a back flip. >> You missed it.
1:54:25
And I, you know, I've every single Apple device I've had and you know, the day it came out and stuff and do I'm kind of looking going, is it going to fit and how's it how am I going to play on it and stuff and so I I can't really figure out.
1:54:36
>> It's a pretty good uh aspect ratio for gaming actually.
1:54:39
I could see it working pretty well. >> Yeah, totally.
1:54:42
I mean, I've seen some of the the videos on it and it looks amazing, but you know, until question, are foldable phones >> popular with mobile gamers in other markets where foldable phones are popular? Sure. Sure. Sure. Yeah.
1:54:54
>> So that that's that's where you'd want to look.
1:54:56
>> Uh so yeah, I mean obviously pretty complex product portfolio even just within Call of Duty because you have War Zone Mobile, you have all these things.
1:55:04
What are the actual brand tenants, the marketing messages that you think are important to never stray from? >> Yeah.
1:55:11
I mean on the marketing side, we always talk about stature, swagger, and scale. Okay. Right.
1:55:16
So stature is like how do I do something that only Call of Duty can do, right?
1:55:19
So when we go to market, we want to be across the street from everybody else, right?
1:55:23
We don't want to be in the same building, you know?
1:55:25
And then I think when we think about swagger, you know, when we look at creative or we think about a partnership, we're thinking about, okay, does it have swagger, right? Is it cool? Is it interesting?
1:55:33
And how are we innovating in that space?
1:55:34
And then we think about scale, right?
1:55:36
How do I reach as many people as possible, right?
1:55:39
Because I'm not just talking to a niche gaming audience.
1:55:41
You got 100 million people playing, you know, our freeto-play game.
1:55:44
You got a billion players, you know, into our mobile game.
1:55:47
And so, so you really want to think about, okay, how do I reach?
1:55:48
So when we have an idea or someone's pitching me something, they go, "Does it check these three boxes, green light, go all the way, >> the Aston Martin collab, >> the Aston Martin with the dreadnot, right?"
1:55:58
And so I think that was like when that came to us, we're like, "Wow, does this have stature?
1:56:01
Yeah, this is really cool." And stuff, right? This stands out. You go, "Okay, wow. Has it got swagger?" I go, "Yeah." And can we scale it?
1:56:07
Can we tell a story about it?
1:56:09
Can we So putting it in the game, not everybody can get an Aston Martin, but you can play it in the game. You can drive it there.
1:56:14
And so that gives you the scale.
1:56:15
And that was a really exciting partnership because our design teams worked with their design teams to design what the car actually looks like and stuff.
1:56:23
And so one example of that is like the window >> like so sad that they produce it at scale. >> Well, hey, who knows?
1:56:30
>> I feel like No, I feel like they I know that I don't know if it's they're going to sell 2,000 of those cars, but they at least in LA they could sell 100. Yeah.
1:56:39
>> Well, you know, one thing was like the windows originally were too small and then our our design team looked at it and go, "Well, you got to be able to hang out a window >> with a gun, right?"
1:56:47
So, like you got to be able to get your body outside of it and stuff.
1:56:50
And so, all of those little things when they were going back and forth with the studio team and and the design team at SMR and they made something that was really special.
1:56:57
So, that's kind of how we think about it.
1:57:00
But, I think with this game in particular, >> you know, we really wanted to get back to our roots, be authentic, rounded, cinematic, and and have some edge.
1:57:06
cinematic, and and have some edge. So this whole storyline of North Korea invading South Korea >> very topical right now and what's going on in the world and you know I think that that grittiness of showing these conscripts you know that are in South Korea that's that's a real thing right
1:57:23
where you know BTS just were conscripts and stuff right where right where right they had to go serve >> milbody I had a buddy in in college who just had to pause college and go back home to serve >> and telling that zero to hero story is really really cool right you And I think that's what people wanted from us. And
1:57:39
And in addition to that, we got Task Force 141 with Price and Ghost and all the characters people love.
1:57:44
And that's a separate story line.
1:57:45
And so how those two things come together is going to be really cool for people.
1:57:48
How how have uh parental views on quote unquote violent video games evolved?
1:57:54
Because I like growing up, my parents were very wary of of Call of Duty, but of course I found a way to convince them that I was going to play and I was and uh some of my most cherished memories with my friends growing up are like in Rust like one v oneing my best friends, you know.
1:58:12
Um, and so like and and and very clearly like there wasn't like the the the the general fear that I think parents of that generation had around like, oh, if my if my kids are are are playing video games that that have violence in them, like maybe that that'll influence them.
1:58:29
>> Now, as a as a parent, like I will not be worried about my kids playing.
1:58:34
And I feel like there's a whole generation at least of dads that grew up playing Call of Duty >> and they're like, "Son, >> it's time.
1:58:41
It's time for you to play Call of Duty, right?
1:58:43
It's gonna be like a right. Yeah, it's a right. >> Go play Rust. Come on.
1:58:49
>> It's a right of passage, I think.
1:58:49
Uh but but have have parental views kind of like caught up to at least my my the data and like my my view or my my personal reality.
1:59:00
>> I think there's different worries, you know, in the space of like more like social media addiction or thinking about like what types of games, what are the quality of the games?
1:59:07
Like I think there was some research yesterday that I saw on Axe where it was talking about, you know, just games being a decompression, right?
1:59:13
You know, and being able to kind of, you know, after a long day or being stressed out in school to be able to go and play with your buddies.
1:59:19
But when we look at our research, the number one reason why people play is not because of the guns and the violence.
1:59:25
It's cuz their friends are there. >> It's a social thing.
1:59:26
It's during co war zone drop.
1:59:29
It was like high school reunion for me.
1:59:31
I was like reconnecting with all sorts of people uh and just playing.
1:59:36
Oh, but that was the thing as a kid, too.
1:59:37
I was playing because it was competitive and fun and and like and it was like >> for me growing up in California as a in summer, I would hopefully be when I was like 12 doing like airsoft wars, but in the middle of the day, it was really hot.
1:59:53
So, I was like, I'm going to go inside >> and play some Rust.
1:59:56
>> Um, >> I was playing paintball and then I was coming on and playing with my friends.
2:00:00
But like the other thing is like the guys that I play with on Friday nights, I don't actually know them in real life, right? Like we're on text. Sure.
2:00:06
>> We talk about our lives, but I've never met them in person, and that is that's my click and stuff, right?
2:00:10
And so, I think that's my squad that we play with. So, >> that's great.
2:00:14
>> Um, Modern Warfare 4 feels like a return to form.
2:00:18
There's a lot aesthetically that feels like a throwback.
2:00:21
It feels restrained in a way, which I loved.
2:00:23
At the same time, I saw some critiques online just from like a YouTube thumbnail.
2:00:31
Why does Call of Duty keep getting faster?
2:00:33
So, what's actually changing?
2:00:35
What is a return to form? What are you keeping?
2:00:38
What's important to let the community know you're keeping versus what does deserve continued evolution? >> Yeah.
2:00:45
I mean, we're always playing with the movement, right?
2:00:46
Like, and and so like the last game, Black Ops 7, there's wall jumping, there's grappling hooks, right?
2:00:52
And so, I think with this game, it's a little bit more boots on the ground, right?
2:00:55
Really thinking about, okay, how are we more being more deliberate with the movement, what what you can actually do, but still having some innovation, right?
2:01:00
whether you could mantle or climb a pipe or something or do do some shimmies on the mantle and stuff, right?
2:01:05
Which is very new and different, but we're always talking about how can we slow it down, speed it up.
2:01:11
And so this is something the studio is constantly debating.
2:01:14
>> Time to kill is what we call it, right?
2:01:16
Like how fast it is, right?
2:01:16
And you know, we had the beta, we had weekend one and we got some feedback and then we changed some of the movement in CTK by weekend two, right?
2:01:24
And everyone was feeling a lot better about it.
2:01:26
And so, but this is always going to be a debate, right?
2:01:30
And as soon as we launch this game, they'll want something totally different from us.
2:01:33
I think the biggest challenge that I have, right, as a marketer, right, is that the community is so big. Yeah.
2:01:38
You had people that, you know, just want to play zombies, right?
2:01:42
You know, and they just love the zombies mode.
2:01:43
Some people just want to play the campaign.
2:01:45
Some want Black Ops versus Modern Warfare, right?
2:01:47
And so catering to everybody, right?
2:01:49
And making everybody happy is is really, really hard.
2:01:53
But, you know, we continue to try and we kind of listen to that feedback and try to make the adjustments in real time.
2:01:58
>> Yeah, I see that all the time.
2:01:58
where I'll stumble on some uh YouTuber who's doing like really interesting breakdowns or tutorials like helping me and then they'll be complaining about some nuance of skill-based matchmaking and I'll be like that doesn't apply to me at all.
2:02:10
I'm very happy with the system but uh I know the community cares about skill-based matchmaking like what is the state of affairs?
2:02:16
What is the uh what what what what is the balance that you found?
2:02:21
How do you even engage with that community effectively?
2:02:23
Yeah, I mean every single game that that we've made had had some level of skill-based matching making to it and stuff, right?
2:02:31
Or some level of matchmaking and so, you know, I think it's always going to be a topic for the community and and it's something the team's always looking at and it's it's not just me, right?
2:02:39
There's a huge team that thinks about this and the goal for us >> is to get people in the game and play and have fun, right?
2:02:45
Like that is the in like when you do this you are trying to balance it out so that you know uh an uncle like myself right or is like jumping into the game that I can just have fun and not get stomped on right at the same time those that are really really good at the game can also have a good time and stuff and trying to figure out how to balance that.
2:03:01
So I mean I'll leave it to the the studios and the teams to kind of talk about the details and actually how it comes to life.
2:03:06
But I think, you know, I think the intention I think is lost a lot of times that there's actually real people that work here and really care about this game and really want to see the engagement, you know, grow and stuff and making sure that everyone is having a good time.
2:03:20
And, you know, we don't always get it right, but it's figuring out that balance and listening to the community.
2:03:24
>> And it should be a benefit of of of scale to some degree.
2:03:26
With a really large player pool, the skill-based matching ma matchmaking can be more accurate.
2:03:33
You can actually find pools of players with similar skill levels.
2:03:35
So, uh, there is something where the best thing that you can do in many ways is just like make the game appeal to a really, really broad swath of gamers and then you'll, you know, have >> we're listening, right?
2:03:46
And we'll make adjustments.
2:03:47
We made adjustments for Black Ops 7.
2:03:48
And so, I think you'll, you'll hear more.
2:03:50
I I I don't think >> people realize how long it takes to develop these games.
2:03:55
Like, it's three, four years in the making, you know, to develop the Modern Warfare 4 game.
2:04:00
>> And then to make some of these changes, it's complicated, right?
2:04:01
Like, if you make one change, it could break other things.
2:04:04
So I think the teams are always kind of thinking about okay how do we make the best experience possible but it's not always at the speed that our community wants it to be and stuff and so I think we have to figure out you know the best way to communicate with them over time.
2:04:17
>> Uh >> what what is uh sentiment like in the gaming community around AI?
2:04:20
I would assume that the gaming community is so broad and probably generally reflects like the general population.
2:04:26
So I would assume that sentiment is not great, but there's a lot to be excited about with the intersection of AI and gaming.
2:04:35
One is like speeding up >> just finding Yeah.
2:04:39
Finding bugs, speeding up development timelines, you know, things like that.
2:04:43
But >> how how are you processing it all and communicating? >> Yeah.
2:04:48
I mean, there's 4,500 employees at the company and they're, you know, they're dedicated to their craft and art and stuff.
2:04:54
and stuff. And so I think where AI can be beneficial at least on the marketing side I can tell you when you know now that I can do meeting notes right via AI right and I I saw Jim and heard Jim talking earlier right just about those little efficiencies actually add up you know like when >> uh I was going to go to school I was
2:05:12
instead of going to business school I was going to go to design school right and um I just >> turned it down >> turned it down I went into business but >> but I think you know when I when I look back at it you know when we're concepting an idea I can respond back instead of me typing some feedback, right? I can go, hey, I
2:05:27
I can go, hey, I think it should look like this, right?
2:05:30
And it's not actually how it's going to look, but it's directionally where I want them to go and then we give it to the talented artists and designers who are good at that to actually bring it to life, right?
2:05:40
And I think it's all about we've always had tools, right?
2:05:42
We've had Adobe, you know, since, you know, when I was, you know, a marketer 20 years ago.
2:05:48
>> It's applying these tools and and being able to get the most out of them.
2:05:50
But yeah, I mean it's it's not a good topic in the community and stuff and we want to respect that and we want to make sure that we're not putting out slop in the market and stuff, right?
2:05:58
And I think you know protecting the, you know, the studios and the the publishing unit as much as possible is our priority. >> It's tough.
2:06:06
Yeah, Speed Tree is an OG system for creating trees and it does it algorithmically.
2:06:13
So every tree needs to be unique so it can grow them and randomly choose branches and add leaves and stuff and completely uncontroversial.
2:06:21
Um and now we're in this in this era where you they kind of get a speed tree like system for anything and that uh calls >> every pixel needs to be hand >> hand placed. I don't know.
2:06:32
>> Um how has working with uh live streamers and and creators evolved over the last 10 years?
2:06:40
the last time I I don't uh when I when I was like in high school, I would watch like uh Starcraft 2 live streaming and and I was I was >> into that, but uh I don't follow it closely, but it almost feels like similar to like AI model releases now where like a new game launches and suddenly like every creator streamer's talking about it.
2:07:03
Some of them are paid, some of it's organic.
2:07:05
Uh but then like the and so the market like share might shift dramatically for like a week and then it sort of reverts to back to where it was or baseline.
2:07:15
But how do you think about working with creators in the leadup to a launch like this and what have you guys learned from, >> you know, the last uh your last six years?
2:07:24
>> I think you hit the nail on the head, right?
2:07:25
they'll gravitate to a different game and then they'll somehow come back to Kado, you know, you know, and so I think, you know, that's the longevity of the the franchise and the power of of being a mega franchise.
2:07:35
But I think at the same time, we continue to invest in them.
2:07:39
We have like programs like Level Up Labs where we actually bring creators in like up andcoming creators and we teach them how to build a thumbnail, right?
2:07:47
Or how to stream or like what's the lighting quality that you should have and stuff and like actually how do you capture really good and what kind of capture card do you need?
2:07:53
capture card do you need? So we we're actually investing more and more in the creator community and trying to figure out okay how do we grow the next wave but while still working with those big icons in the industry and so like we'll have them you know we're at Fanatics Fest this year we played we had Kill Block there for the first time our new mode and you know we brought a ton of streamers there to to stream for the
2:08:14
first time and be able to have that experience and so it's definitely part of our investment but I think you touched on it before like clipping is almost as big right you know and I think um you know When we take a piece of content and now we clip it and it'll be,
2:08:28
you know, 1,600 different versions of that content, you know, and then we put that out on the internet, you're trying to almost game the algorithms, right, to show your content and show more of your content and stuff. And, you know, I I
2:08:38
And, you know, I I think the brands have been deemphasized on social and and so clipping, you know, is really the the avenue for us to get more of our content out um, you know, via these channels by flooding the zone.
2:08:52
Does that change the marketing mix?
2:08:52
Are you spending like less on television ads or programmatic ad buys and more with influencers over time?
2:09:00
Like where are you deploying actual capital when you're going into a big launch?
2:09:06
>> Yeah, I mean like we still have those stature plays.
2:09:08
We'll be on the NFL, right? You know, in two weeks.
2:09:10
And so I think um you know there's massive reach there and that's how you get a lot of scale really quickly.
2:09:16
And so that's why you see, you know, movie studios or gaming studios kind of still lean on to it as you're building towards your launch.
2:09:23
But, you know, we spend a lot more on digital and and there's the landscape is literally changing. Yeah.
2:09:29
>> You know, in the last six months like clipping didn't exist a year ago or a year and a half ago. Right. >> Until we created it. >> Exactly. >> Just kidding.
2:09:37
>> But I but I think you know and and Mr.
2:09:38
Beast has his own you know clipping company. Right.
2:09:40
And so I think in a lot of ways um you know that's new and then you have to figure out okay how does that work?
2:09:45
that work? And then the um you know the tech platforms then kind of deemphasize clipping right and so okay how do we pivot you have geo right which you guys talk a lot about right and thinking about okay how am I leveraging what people are searching for in in chat GBT and how are we editing you know either the sources you know or influencing the
2:10:04
sources or editing our site to better reflect that and so that that's really changed how we think you know about marketing our games because so many people are going on like how do I get better in Call of Duty or like what >> loadout should I have and all the attachments like which attachments should I have for for my gun and stuff, right? And so they're using, you know,
2:10:20
And so they're using, you know, AI a lot more for that.
2:10:21
And so we have to think about >> I've been using uh AI a ton uh like as a as like a as like a racing coach basically where I I'll like do a few laps and then I'll then I'll be asking questions about like >> how to adjust, you know, like bunch of different factors and how to be faster in this corner or things like that.
2:10:40
It's like quite quite good. It's very cool. Yeah. >> Killblock. >> Yes.
2:10:47
>> Modern Warfare 4 has been in development for four years.
2:10:48
When do they bring you into the process?
2:10:51
Did you get brought in four years ago and they say, "Hey, this is coming."
2:10:56
Or did it hit you like a flashbang?
2:10:59
>> The um No, I we're part of the >> Here we go.
2:11:06
>> That's what I was waiting for.
2:11:08
>> Was it a surprise to you that you learned about Kill Block 6 months ago or has it been in the process?
2:11:12
get ready to start marketing this.
2:11:14
It's a new it's a new thing that you need to explain.
2:11:18
>> So, one of the great things about Activision is that we we're part of what we call the green light process right from the very beginning.
2:11:22
So, the the concept of the game all the way through.
2:11:25
And so, we see these development pillars of, you know, what they're trying the studio is envisioning and what they want to bring to market.
2:11:31
But when we saw Killblock, I mean, it's this basically this map that dynamically changes as it could be 500 different combinations.
2:11:40
It's uh was inspired by the Real Madrid stadium.
2:11:42
So, you know, they have the soccer pitch and it actually goes underground so that they can have concerts, basketball games or other things.
2:11:49
And so, >> what if you could build a map that just is dynamically changing every round that you're going in?
2:11:55
And and so then you could have a map that has infinite combinations.
2:11:59
And so, it it was really exciting to see cuz, you know, from a marketing standpoint, we're like, "Wow, you know, this is going to create a new loop, a new level of gameplay, and you can't just memorize the map anymore, right?
2:12:10
You have to level up your skill."
2:12:12
And so this is something we wanted to lean into and that's why we went to Fanatics Fest because the sports idea of inspiring, you know, like, okay, how do we go to a sports event, not necessarily a gaming event to talk about this new map and this new mode that the team created.
2:12:27
>> It also seemed like there were some BTS uh sort of documentary style uh features that dropped ahead of the launch to sort of go a layer deeper than just a cinematic preview trailer. Was that deliberate? Yeah, 100%.
2:12:40
Like I think we want to be able to we've been teasing out different elements all the way through and I think you'll see some some new stuff from us this week at Tokyo Game Show um later this week.
2:12:51
So um but yeah, I think like showing little snippets um of the campaign and really kind of what you said before like set the setting, right? Like the tone.
2:13:01
I think people were missing that of like okay, how do we get back to this authentic grounded cinematic um you know game?
2:13:09
and we wanted to kind of show that um that was a companion to the multiplayer and the new DMZ experience.
2:13:16
>> Yeah, Jordy, you have another one.
2:13:18
>> Uh what is the what is the current state of of esports and esports investment at least from a from from our side of the the market, the whole venture world.
2:13:27
It feels like the category hasn't panned out at you know there there there isn't a you know $10 billion.
2:13:35
You don't hear about billionaires buying 10 billion >> esports team.
2:13:39
You did you did hear about billionaires being like making kind of like speculative investments in teams >> 10 years ago.
2:13:46
It feels like it hasn't maybe maybe not panning out as this massive new asset class.
2:13:50
Maybe that that's been okay because gaming feels bigger than ever.
2:13:55
But how are you guys investing in it?
2:13:57
How how important is it to the overall Call of Duty universe?
2:14:00
I mean, the competitive, you know, portion of Call of Duty, that's the elite elite, you know, and being able to show that off.
2:14:09
So, CDL is still really thriving, Call of Duty League for us.
2:14:11
And so, I think you see it with >> um, you know, the premier games, the big AAA titles that have leagues, they're doing okay and stuff.
2:14:19
They're doing well, but I think it's where >> is it expanding to all these other games or newer games?
2:14:24
And, you know, we don't see that as much anymore.
2:14:26
see that as much anymore. But, you know, we had a match um you know, our champs in in Paris and stuff and I mean there was hundreds of thousands of people like you know you know you know watching the tournament and and celebrating and you thought you were watching a football match and stuff right and so it was really exciting to see that because
2:14:43
there if you market it the right way if you build that that camaraderie >> I I think it has a lot of potential but it's just you know are you investing it are you thinking about right do you have the right people in place to be able to do that and so It's still a big part of our marketing mix um because I think it shows what the best of the best could look like within Call of Duty. >> Do do you know the history of uh like
2:15:04
>> Do do you know the history of uh like demographic shift within the Call of Duty player base over the last 20 years or so?
2:15:11
Like I would my my naive assumption would be like the the UNCs are getting as a bigger cohort, but maybe the UNCs have always been there because they were playing Atari and they moved to Call of Duty. >> Yeah.
2:15:23
I mean, you look at like Nintendo has a game called Splatoon.
2:15:26
I don't know if you've ever played it, but it's it's kind of like a first-person shooter and you're painting, you know, instead you're painting the ground and you're throwing paints on people, right?
2:15:34
Then you graduate into something like a Fortnite, right?
2:15:36
And then you graduate into something like a Call of Duty and stuff.
2:15:40
So you can kind of see the migration, okay, of how younger users might, you know, come into the franchise um through other games.
2:15:46
And >> you're potentially the final stop on the bus and you can carry a a gamer >> through to 50 60 like there's no need.
2:15:56
>> The misconception is though like how big is gaming, right?
2:15:58
Like so the average age of a gamer is 37.
2:16:00
So I think it's you know >> um you know >> if if you >> there's about like three point >> he's literally the average gamer. >> Yeah.
2:16:09
But there's like three 3.
2:16:09
6 billion people that game, right?
2:16:12
Like when I go to conferences or I'm talking to people, I go, "Hey, are you a gamer?"
2:16:15
And the person be like, "I'm not a gamer."
2:16:16
I was like, "Do you play Candy Crush?" They're like, "Oh, yeah. Play Candy Crush. >> Do you play Wordle?" Yeah, play Wordle.
2:16:22
Um, do you go on LinkedIn and play the LinkedIn Queens game and stuff, right?
2:16:26
Like there's games on LinkedIn now.
2:16:27
>> Honestly, if you could get MW4 in LinkedIn in the browser, that would be a massive unlock.
2:16:34
>> I will I will work on that.
2:16:34
I'll take that back to the team.
2:16:35
I mean I mean if anyone can do it instructions already set up for it.
2:16:40
>> I think everyone is a gamer, right?
2:16:40
And I think like so for us on on the Call of Duty side and and by the way, Activision has other games like Spyro coming out next year and stuff, right?
2:16:48
And so there's there's a lot of diversity to our portfolio.
2:16:51
But with Call of Duty, there's so many different ways to play that I can I think I can market to you.
2:16:57
Like we have a game called Prop Hunt Pun.
2:16:58
I don't know if you ever played in in Black Ops, right? >> Love Prop Hunt. >> So you can be a tire. Yeah. Yeah.
2:17:02
>> And you hide in the map as a tire and then everybody comes around trying to shoot you as the tire and try and then you can change what prop you are and stuff, right?
2:17:09
But it's adult hide and seek.
2:17:11
>> And that's a game that I saw on social media clips and I was like, I got to find that game that looks amazing.
2:17:15
And I thought it was a different game and it was just a mode.
2:17:19
>> So, so finding those elements of being able to like show a parkour mode or show like and there's a lot of diversity to the game and I think there's a lot of different ways to play.
2:17:27
I think DMZ is the biggest one.
2:17:28
Like we're going to be launching DMZ.
2:17:29
That's our extraction shooter.
2:17:32
It was in beta, you know, four years ago when MW2 came out.
2:17:36
>> And I think, you know, we're really >> that's a standalone game.
2:17:39
>> It's going to be part of MW4.
2:17:39
So, you're going to have campaign, multiplayer, and DMZ.
2:17:43
And so, this new extraction mode, I think, is going to really blow people's socks off.
2:17:47
And and we're really excited about that.
2:17:51
>> Does Spyro have an ESRB rating yet?
2:17:54
>> I don't I don't think so, but I I'll check check back with the team.
2:17:56
I'm not sure about that one >> cuz if it's kid-friendly, you got to come back on the show cuz I got a 5-year-old who >> Oh, yeah.
2:18:02
I mean, Spyro is >> I I remember it being very kid-friendly.
2:18:06
And I'm always on the hunt for new kids.
2:18:07
>> Spyro will be kid-friendly and Spyro can fly for the first time and stuff.
2:18:11
So, this is coming out in the spring.
2:18:14
>> Well, we'd love to have you back.
2:18:15
>> Yeah, I'd love to be back. >> Honor.
2:18:16
Honor to have you on the show.
2:18:16
I mean, >> you guys got to come out to the studio on a Friday, hit the pit, play the game. >> Yeah.
2:18:23
No, we're >> Twist my arm. Twist my arm. Fridays.
2:18:26
Fridays can often end up being very Call of Duty centric after after the show ends, you know, >> back there. Awesome.
2:18:31
You should see it on the big board.
2:18:32
It's like the whole team. It gets heated. It gets heated.
2:18:36
>> Lots of lots of guys going like this like this. >> Yeah. Lock it in. >> I got flashbang. Thank you so much.
2:18:43
>> Throw a smoke while you take >> Nice.
2:18:46
And I will tell you about the New York Stock Exchange.
2:18:48
Want to change the world?
2:18:50
Raise capital at the New York Stock Exchange.
2:18:53
And we have our next guest coming in just a couple minutes.
2:18:59
We have a very special guest.
2:18:59
We have Stephen Cobear, fresh off some Emmy wins and his co-founder Josh Klene from Script. >> Fresh off.
2:19:06
Absolutely destroying us.
2:19:09
>> Absolutely >> in the Emmys. It wasn't even close. >> It wasn't even close. >> It wasn't close.
2:19:13
But uh we can run through uh the New York Times interviewed 10-year-old children to pro predict the future and the answers are all over the place.
2:19:22
They went viral because there's some really uh depressing tapes.
2:19:26
There were some blackpilled 10-year-olds talking about Terminator Future World War III.
2:19:30
Uh there's one kid that says there's bound to be a war.
2:19:36
I really hope it doesn't start World War II, which is a crazy thing from Riley Grunch in Gainesville, Georgia.
2:19:44
Uh Paige Merritt from Atlanta says, "I think everything is going to be AI and AI robots in 2050.
2:19:49
What will the robots do?"
2:19:52
like a barista, a waitress.
2:19:54
It's going to be robots carrying the food. Garbage people.
2:19:55
Are there jobs AI won't do? Rappers. AI cannot wrap. My ears were broken. Very funny.
2:20:01
Um, there are some more optimistic takes that were in here that I thought were interesting.
2:20:10
Um, one was, uh, if I scroll down, uh, we may still have laptops, but with chips that can read your mind.
2:20:16
Uh, there may be a sensor in your brain and whatever you're thinking can just go into the app. Will people go to space?
2:20:24
They asked Liam Quan from Queens and uh he said in the old days they paid Americans go to the w to go to the west.
2:20:32
They might pay people to go to space because the population is so big there might not be enough room which is interesting. Paid Mars colonization.
2:20:37
You can I think you can still get paid if you go and homestead in Alaska in some niche use cases in some niche situation.
2:20:48
Should I get paid to homestead in that uh lotner?
2:20:52
>> That would be that would be pretty good.
2:20:54
Um there's uh who will be in the ch who will be in charge of the United States in 2050?
2:21:00
They asked a 10-year-old Jimmy Molly from Lraange, Illinois.
2:21:02
And he said, "I don't really know, but the person I hope will be in charge, Adam Sandler.
2:21:08
Adam Sandler will be the president."
2:21:10
He said, "No, vice president.
2:21:12
My the president will be my dad."
2:21:14
There's another uh there's another kid in here who claims that he will be the president.
2:21:18
We got to keep an eye on him because he is uh optimistic about his presidential run president.
2:21:24
There's lots of people talking about the president.
2:21:29
Uh aliens might be discovered.
2:21:30
The president will try and keep it a secret, but I don't think it will be a big deal.
2:21:33
And there might be a new way to elect a president.
2:21:35
It might be how a king works, just like it passes through generations.
2:21:41
>> Uh then someone else says that they're going to run for the president.
2:21:43
But um it's uh it's an interesting it's an interesting tour of the future generation and what they think the the future will look like.
2:21:52
Uh one kid says, "What will our the question was, what will our food look like in 2050?"
2:21:56
He says, "We'll have different sorts of crops.
2:22:00
We're going to figure out how to make purple apples.
2:22:02
They'll be really sweet."
2:22:04
People like sweet apples more than sour apples.
2:22:06
I like sour apples, though.
2:22:10
>> I love the mind of a 10-year-old. It's amazing. What will we do for fun?
2:22:14
There's going to be new instruments.
2:22:16
People have been using a pumpkin to make an instrument.
2:22:19
We're going to figure out how to do something along the lines of that.
2:22:21
Use natural resources like potatoes to make some sort of instrument that's got a totally new sound. Would you play a potato?
2:22:30
Would you play a pumpkin? I I love that.
2:22:32
That is so that's just so creative. Um it's amazing.
2:22:35
What would you like your life to be like in 2050?
2:22:37
I want to live in a floating house.
2:22:40
What would that look like?
2:22:42
It would look like pink and flying.
2:22:43
There would be a slide for the stairs.
2:22:46
How would you go up if there was a slide for stairs?
2:22:48
You would go up via a trampoline.
2:22:49
This is the future as predicted by 10-year-olds.
2:22:54
It's there's a lot of optimism in here.
2:22:56
I'm telling you and a little black pilling.
2:22:59
>> It's not all bad news.
2:22:59
There's >> uh Novo Nordisk is switching up on their day ones.
2:23:04
They're dropping the Nordisk from the name.
2:23:07
It's just going to be Novo now.
2:23:09
>> They forgot where they came from.
2:23:09
It's just going to be Novo.
2:23:11
Well, we are joined by our next guest.
2:23:13
We have Stephen Cobear and Josh Fle from Scrypto with us today.
2:23:18
>> How are you both doing? Welcome to the show. >> Good morning. >> Good morning.
2:23:22
>> I don't know where we are. Is it good morning?
2:23:24
I woke up in New Zealand two days ago, so I have no idea what day or where I am.
2:23:29
>> A little turned around.
2:23:29
It is just the early afternoon.
2:23:32
>> I'm here in Hollywood at the TV.
2:23:32
Very >> What are you doing in New Zealand?
2:23:38
>> Uh, I'm working on a Lord of the Rings movie. There you go.
2:23:41
>> How did you get into Lord of the Rings?
2:23:44
>> A friend of mine gave it to me in 12th grade and I was a sad boy.
2:23:48
>> Where why do you think it stands out to you so much?
2:23:51
>> Like you're known as like as like a Lord of the Rings fanatic.
2:23:53
Why is it Why is it not what separates it from a Game of Thrones another another series?
2:24:00
>> Hey, I got nothing against Game of Thrones. I love those books. George R. Martin is a friend. But um uh I don't know. I love this.
2:24:06
I love the the implied history.
2:24:08
I love its its roots in the fact that Tolken wrote the books because he really liked making languages and so he made up Elvish languages and he thought oh real culture should have stories that the languages tell.
2:24:21
stories that the languages tell. So then he started telling the stories that the language would have been used to write and so it's such a different point of view to come into storytelling is through creating an entire culture which is what uh you would have called the
2:24:35
Germans would call it a kazam kadel a total work of art and there's any question you can ask about the lord of the rings and answered it except one and that's who is Tom Bombadil anyway that's just a teaser okay >> is what we call in business >> what do you think about startups adopting uh various uh words from the whole universe. >> Does is is scripto and andural and
2:24:56
>> Does is is scripto and andural and >> did you think of naming scriptto after something from Lord of the Rings?
2:25:06
>> No, we named Scripto Scripto because it it was created by two comedy writers and we thought of what's the dumbest possible name for our program.
2:25:14
>> So we went well we're not going to come up with the best name but the dumbest name we could do.
2:25:17
So that's how we came up with Scrypto. >> Okay.
2:25:20
No, never thought of going to Tolken on that one.
2:25:22
>> And what is the elevator pitch for scripto?
2:25:26
>> Oh, the elevator script for p uh the elevator uh pitch for scrypto is your script program should be more than a script program.
2:25:33
It should be production software that communicates the information of the script to every department in the form that they need it and can output through the API into any workflow system including other applications that have developed over the last 20 years in our business.
2:25:47
But the one that hasn't changed is the source material, the one truth of everything, which is the script.
2:25:54
>> Whether you're doing a presentational TV show like mine or doing a narrative or doing a awards presentation or whether you're creating a video game, >> it the that data that is stored in every keystroke should be going all the way down the production line.
2:26:08
So there's no doubt what the one truth is we're working on today.
2:26:12
What is the rope we're pulling on?
2:26:13
And that that's why we created it is to be able to communicate between departments.
2:26:18
>> How do you guys work together?
2:26:18
You clearly have Stephen, you clearly have a very clear vision for what you're building, but what is the actual interaction dayto-day on the project?
2:26:27
>> Well, between me and Josh. >> Yeah.
2:26:29
>> Well, all of the shows who use it.
2:26:29
I mean, the it's the easiest way to do that is tell you how it came about is because there just wasn't something that did this.
2:26:36
And and one of the reasons I have such a clear view of what this thing needs to be is that it was built for the my needs initially is that, you know, we produced, you know, depending on the season between 200 and 160 shows a year and to be able to, >> you know, not have to go back on decisions as long as they were communicated properly down the chain of command.
2:26:57
over 200 people working on the show.
2:26:59
We wanted something that everybody could look at at once and everybody based upon their permissions could actually add to at once if they wanted to.
2:27:08
And and so we wouldn't have any more $800 goats >> with the our $800 goat is the origin of the entire thing.
2:27:16
We wrote a sketch that involved a goat >> there.
2:27:21
>> We we cut the damn goat.
2:27:24
>> We cut the damn goat at 2:00 and at 3:00 the goat shows up.
2:27:26
And I said, "We cut the the goat."
2:27:28
And they said, "Yeah, but the program didn't allow anyone else to know you cut the goat until all the elements had been finished."
2:27:34
And one of the elements was the goat.
2:27:36
And we didn't by the time we got to the goat, the goat was here.
2:27:40
I mean, they stick a hose up its butt and wash it out so it won't, you know, mess up your studio.
2:27:43
The goat had been through a lot. >> Okay.
2:27:47
And I mean, just just the moral cost of what they had to do to that goat for us to use it.
2:27:54
>> Um, and it cost us 800 bucks.
2:27:54
And we were we started this back on basic cable. It was a lot of money.
2:27:59
>> And so uh still a lot of money for Hollywood these days.
2:28:01
But um so we said no more $800 goats.
2:28:06
>> And so how do we how do we communicate on the needs of the show?
2:28:10
My show is still you know up until the very end.
2:28:12
The Daily Show, John Oliver, SNL, the other shows that are using it.
2:28:16
We got about a dozen shows going.
2:28:18
Each one of those has their own needs that we have.
2:28:20
We are we tailor and there all different kinds.
2:28:25
There's video game production, there's narrative production, and there's what we call presentational like right down the pipe like you guys do production. >> Yeah.
2:28:34
>> Um all of those feed back into our uh development.
2:28:38
>> Talk about the intensity of of show business because I think we we understand it and in our in our sort of limited operation, right?
2:28:44
limited operation, right? It's like it's all about these like really tight timelines and coordinating and you get I mean it really does feel like uh we we've felt from very early on when we it was just John and myself and and Ben on our team and then as we started adding people it felt like you were on a sports team where you showed up and you can
2:29:04
feel when somebody is not at their playing at their best level right and and it's like that daily repetition and and in in our case the practice is happening all live so there's no practice there's just like live gameplay, but um but yeah, talk about it from from your point of view and and maybe tie that into how you know how it's influencing your work on script. >> Well, and and Josh, you this will be a
2:29:26
>> Well, and and Josh, you this will be a good one for you to jump in on here once I uh get my show biz out of the way and into the biz biz is that >> I you know, people would say, "Oh, what do you love about your show?"
2:29:36
And uh I mean obviously I love the people I work with, but 40 and I love doing it for the audience, but 49% of what I loved was the process.
2:29:44
Could we get the process right?
2:29:46
Cuz it's no good if you can do a good show, but it absolutely kills you and everybody on staff because you got to do another one tomorrow.
2:29:52
This is a marathon, not a sprint.
2:29:54
And you have you had to remember that.
2:29:56
And basically the the longevity of your work, the the sustainability of your work is based upon how well you communicate what today's intention is to everybody and what everyone's role is.
2:30:08
Clearly people only do what you ask of them.
2:30:10
But if you if you lead with some sense of vision of what everybody is supposed to do today, well then that makes that makes the possibility that the actual content gets better. Mhm.
2:30:21
>> I mean, I know that's the goal is the content is good, but you can do that once in a terrible way or you can do that every day with a process that is really smooth.
2:30:30
And that's really why we developed scripto so that there's an intuitive way that everybody knows what their role is today.
2:30:37
And and and Josh, would you mind talking about how we've transformed we've we've expanded that now? >> Yeah.
2:30:44
I mean, I think the key word for us is collaboration, >> right?
2:30:48
John Jordy, nice to meet both of you. Great job.
2:30:51
>> Um I I hope you didn't have the same goat problems. Exactly.
2:30:53
But >> no, I've looked into getting various live animals, real real animals on the on the set. It's it's a challenge.
2:31:02
>> Goat problem could lead could lead to like a rabdo situation.
2:31:04
I guess >> I just want you to know that we literally had a plaque on the wall of the show that said anything that could eat the host is going to be expensive because they had you had to put up chain link fences between you and a mountain lion.
2:31:19
We wanted to write a sketch of the mountain.
2:31:20
I'm like, "That's a $10,000 fence." I'm like, "What?"
2:31:22
He goes, "It could eat you."
2:31:23
I'm like, "Well, I guess." >> Yeah.
2:31:26
So, so you know, I was I'm not a founder.
2:31:28
Uh Stephen and the co-founder Rob Dubbin recruited me to join the company because I've got a 25-y year background in production technology.
2:31:37
>> Um including at the uh you sort of established screenwriting software company some years back.
2:31:42
And um the what all the other tools out there lack is is like a deep level of collaboration and really tying everybody together.
2:31:52
So you guys have the benefit of being in studio and so your team's always there all the time.
2:31:57
But that's not it's less and less common for scripted content. Sure. >> Right.
2:32:03
And um so one of the things uh since I've been brought a aboard two years ago is really to build out both build up the team and build out the platform so we can address the needs of not just where we came from which we we're dominant in the variety space right like I what what are we talking about Stephen we're batting 800 this year for the five
2:32:24
variety show >> four of the five four of the five >> yeah we know we know we bought a lot of Emmy billboards and uh you guys uh you guys We have you beat we have we have one variable we have you guys beat on which is number of episodes a year every every other variable reach and >> yeah we're more of a quantity over quality here. >> Yeah. So so more more content categories >> Yeah.
2:32:44
So so more more content categories because when Stephen and the team decided to grow the company there's only so many variety shows and sadly one less next year than there was the year prior. That was a big cuss. What? What? >> Nobody told you.
2:33:03
>> It's I'm very fragile. They're fragile.
2:33:06
They They say there is something they need to talk to me about.
2:33:10
>> So, what are those other content categories?
2:33:11
Well, we're a cloud-based API enabled platform.
2:33:13
It It is a tech platform.
2:33:16
It's not just like the historically screenwriting has been done in what looks like an old version of like Hollywood's Microsoft Word.
2:33:21
You could describe it as. >> Yeah.
2:33:25
And so we're a paradigm shift kind of going from the fax machine to Slack >> and it's collaborative ties everybody together.
2:33:33
The API ties into all sorts of other any other platform whether you're doing script breakdowns, budgeting, scheduling, concept art, you name it, we can plug into it.
2:33:42
But we're always respecting the work of the human writer, right?
2:33:46
This company was founded by two working writers.
2:33:48
So we we're very pro- AAI tooling for this industry.
2:33:52
We're not pro AAI where it touches the domain of the human writer.
2:34:00
>> Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
2:34:00
Are you optimistic about the the pace or or future of the movie industry?
2:34:05
It feels like there's a whole bunch of technology trends that are coming together. Some are really scary.
2:34:10
Some like Back Rooms, Obsession, Iron Lung.
2:34:13
We saw these YouTubers break out and actually get on the big screen and put up numbers that are exciting to traditional studios.
2:34:23
Is this meaningful or is this a sideh show?
2:34:28
>> Very much very meaningful.
2:34:28
Um my my wife actually runs a couple movie theaters.
2:34:34
She she's the head of Montlair Film Festival and Monontlair Film and they have a couple of theaters in in Monontlair, New Jersey.
2:34:40
And this has been a great year. >> Yeah. there.
2:34:43
You know, there's been starts and start stops and starts over the last couple of years uh since co but I think people want to be in a movie there.
2:34:52
They want that experience.
2:34:52
There have been some fantastic even big budget things like you know big Universal's biggest thing ever was was the Odyssey the highest grossing film of all time.
2:35:02
So it's not just the small budget things that are turning up big numbers and are attractive to you know sort of the the larger players in the industry.
2:35:07
Um and listen, anything that also brings efficiency >> Yeah.
2:35:15
>> to that a process that's this old um I think um has a hopeful spot in whatever the future is going to be.
2:35:23
I mean there there's there's no telling.
2:35:25
Obviously there's clearly we're in a moment of transition for um the movie industry, but >> it's clearly not going away.
2:35:33
That's that's what this year has proven.
2:35:34
Do you have advice for young filmmakers on the is the path different?
2:35:41
Is the path through permissionless independent creation? Do is the future?
2:35:48
>> There's always but thing is that's always been the path. >> Okay.
2:35:51
>> Like what I would I would say to anybody who'd say like, "Oh, I want a career something like yours."
2:35:55
Whether it was as a writer or a producer or or as a performer, >> what I would say is the first thing you've got to do is go get in trouble.
2:36:03
Which what I meant was go create something.
2:36:08
If it go together, show it to someone you care about.
2:36:17
Light a candle under your own ass by saying that, well, if no one else will ask this of it, ask this of me. I will ask it of me.
2:36:26
And you know you're capable of it because you're the one who's asking. You know it's in there. So, go do it.
2:36:32
There's no waiting, wishing, wanting, hoping, thinking.
2:36:33
That is not how to get better at what we do. You have to go do it.
2:36:37
You have to get in trouble.
2:36:39
>> I'd like to add the the distribution platforms and the ability to go to a broad audience uh very quickly has changed.
2:36:46
But I I worked in commercial production for years.
2:36:49
And if you that was the way in for directors a long time ago, not writers, director Ridley Scott, Michael Bay, >> they would beg borrow and steal to put together a reel and do some spec spots and get the attention of somebody else.
2:37:03
And eventually you get the attention uh of Walter Hill and David Gyler that allows Ridley to go do Alien or Jerry Brookheimimer puts you on the rock. >> Yeah. >> Right.
2:37:13
So there's always work to get to that first step.
2:37:15
It's just now that you've got a platform like YouTube for instance that'll let you go broad quickly if you have something people want to watch.
2:37:23
You still have to create something people want to watch. >> Yeah.
2:37:26
You you have the benefit of being able to go top down with some of the biggest shows in the world on day one.
2:37:32
Are you still trying to pull lessons from what's happening with Blender and Blackmagic Design, uh, Da Vinci Resolve, going to a free tier, the low-end, the indie filmmaker, and then creating a ground swell and creating a whole host of people that are just familiar with this technology, and then if they wind up on a big production, they're already an advocate. >> You should ask.
2:37:54
I >> I was trying to figure out how to get this one in.
2:37:59
So, so we we do have a different model than the existing players in the space and that is >> uh if you are an individual writer just trying to work your way into the business and working on a personal level, our software is free.
2:38:11
This is worldclass superior screenwriting and production software that we make available for free to any writer.
2:38:23
Anybody watching this, go to scripto. live. Go get a free account.
2:38:27
It's the world's best screenwriting software. It's free. >> Boom.
2:38:30
>> When you move into production and you require multiple collaborators and advanced production features, and I'll bore you to death if I tell you what they are, but like they're they're critically important for making professional scripted content.
2:38:41
If you need those, that's when we charge.
2:38:44
And when you need those, it's the show or the production company or the studio that pays for it.
2:38:49
It's a line item on the budget.
2:38:51
But yeah, the bottom up is whether you're just an aspiring writer who feels you got a great script in you or you're a student and you another type of aspiring writer, you should never have to pay for professional screenwriting software again because we make the world's best screenwriting software available for free. >> Amazing.
2:39:11
>> Jord, you have another >> Nothing for now.
2:39:12
This was super fun, guys. >> This is amazing. >> Yeah.
2:39:15
Thank you for Thank you for jumping on.
2:39:17
>> Thanks so much for having us on, guys.
2:39:18
>> The chat is saying Co Bear is my new favorite tech founder. Yeah, new challenge too.
2:39:26
>> Well, congratulations to hang congratulations and good luck down New Zealand >> and we'll talk to you soon. >> Thanks very much. Have a great day. Goodbye. >> Thank you. Likewise.
2:39:34
>> We have James Caldweller from Profound joining in just a few minutes.
2:39:36
Uh we'll bring him in, but we'll go back to the timeline with a few other minor updates. Um let's see.
2:39:48
Poland, the country, lost $230 million trying to buy Venezuelan oil with crypto.
2:39:56
This is in the Financial Times.
2:39:58
An attempt to use digital currency for a bold oil trade became one of Poland's biggest scandals.
2:40:05
In late November 2023, off a boat uh on a boat off Abu Dhabi, a top executive at Poland's biggest statebacked energy group turned to a young trader he knew and gave him a deceptively simple instruction.
2:40:18
Go out and get me Venezuelan oil. I need it.
2:40:19
Uh the executive was Samur Awad who had been appointed to lead Orland's new Swiss trading arm just a year earlier.
2:40:27
The trader was was Como Alex C, the founder of Dubai based Hanan International, an upstart oil trading outfit.
2:40:35
What followed their conversation has become bizarre and sprawling a a bizarre and sprawling commodity dispute involving hundreds of millions of dollars of missing money, vast sums of cryptocurrency swapped on USB sticks in Caracus restaurants, and ultimately very little Venezuelan oil.
2:40:53
I'm kind of zoning out because it's three hours in, but there's so many red flag words in the last in the last minute that this sounds uh sounds bad. >> Sounds bad.
2:41:05
They're like, what are they doing?
2:41:07
Putting cryptocurrency on USB sticks. >> Caracus restaurants.
2:41:12
>> No, I think they were going and personally, you know, with a bag, deliver the money, give me the oil.
2:41:17
>> A lot of people have a friend that's woken up one day and said, I got to get me some Venezuelan oil. Right.
2:41:20
But the way that you go about doing it >> going around sanctions is tough tough risky stuff.
2:41:28
Warsaw prosecutors have charged AAD and other former executives at Orland Trading Switzerland with criminal mismanagement.
2:41:34
Prime Minister Donald Tusk has folded the scandal into a wider cleanup.
2:41:39
>> Donald Tusk Tusk is a funny name, but that is the prime minister of Poland.
2:41:47
>> Donald Tusque the >> We love Poland.
2:41:49
Yeah, that's the prime minister of Poland.
2:41:50
uh powerful >> um has folded the scandal into a wider cleanup of state companies, saying polls must learn the truth.
2:41:57
An FT investigation based on internal company documents, shipping data, blockchain analysis, court filings, and extensive interviews with people involved reveals how a race for crude oil and cryptocurrency has become one of Poland's biggest ever corporate scandals.
2:42:11
The saga opens a window on a shadowy corner of the oil market where little known intermediaries in cryptocurrency replace conventional buyers and payment channels offering traders outsized profits but exposing them to serious risk.
2:42:25
>> Well, you know who doesn't need Venezuelan oil, John? >> Who? >> Uh Elon Musk. >> Why?
2:42:30
>> Cuz he's coming out with the Roadster.
2:42:33
>> But that's in October, right? >> October 1st.
2:42:35
But JCAL, we're talking with >> Are you sure there's not going to be any oil powered functionality?
2:42:44
>> American jet, American jet fuel, >> cold gas thruster.
2:42:46
I'm not exactly sure how that works.
2:42:50
>> Yesterday at the all-in uh summit, >> uh Elon and and and Jason were talking.
2:42:57
Jason says, "I'm so excited. My mind went boom.
2:42:59
I have never seen something what he's going to show on 101 by no exaggeration is going to blow people's minds. >> Okay.
2:43:07
>> Uh yeah, hopefully not literally blow people's minds.
2:43:10
>> It might if you're standing behind it.
2:43:12
There's four >> because I'm not saying anything else. It's unbelievable.
2:43:16
>> Uh and he says yes, we need >> So the bet the bet uh 0 to 60 time was originally announced 1. 9 seconds. Model S Plaid 2 seconds.
2:43:25
That's not enough to really blow people's mind. If they do 1.
2:43:30
9, I don't think that's enough. I think 1. 5 is crazy.
2:43:32
Getting even lower is crazy.
2:43:36
People have been saying maybe it goes 1 second 0 to 60, which is insane.
2:43:39
But the big question is that Elon has been hinting at it will jump, it will fly, it will lift off the ground.
2:43:46
We've already seen this with the Xiaomi car that can jump over potholes.
2:43:50
I think it gets about six inches of air, maybe four inches of air.
2:43:53
And so we're going over under.
2:43:55
So the question is is the Roadster will probably be able to lift off the ground while driving on a flat surface. Yeah.
2:44:03
>> How far do you think it will be able to lift off?
2:44:05
It could have jets that take it six feet up in the air.
2:44:06
It could have a little jumping could just be suspension.
2:44:10
You know, >> you look at, you know, how this might impact GT class and IMSA or whack, right?
2:44:17
If you can now bike off the line. >> No, no, no.
2:44:19
Not line is one thing, but cornering if you can just hop over.
2:44:21
You know, they're going to have >> Don't even turn. Just go straight over. >> Yeah. You're just in. >> Yeah. There's a chicane. You just go over it. >> Exactly. Exactly.
2:44:31
>> Completely changes Monaco.
2:44:31
Completely changes Monaco if you're just going over the chicane. But final final answer.
2:44:37
What how high will the roadster It's uh not Price's right rules. It's closest wins.
2:44:42
How high will it go off the ground? >> Half a foot.
2:44:46
>> Half of He's got six inches. What do you got? >> I'm going above that. What do you What? Give me a number. >> Seven inches. >> Seven in.
2:44:54
>> I'll take eight inches. Okay. >> Too predictable.
2:44:56
>> If I do If you do six, seven, eight. You're really boxed in.
2:44:58
You're It's over for you. Okay. I win. >> Wait. I'm going to nine. >> You're going to nine.
2:45:03
>> I think it could be like 3 ft.
2:45:03
I think it could be six feet.
2:45:04
I I think it's going to be way up. >> My prediction. 5 ft. What about you, James?
2:45:10
How high do you think the roadster will go?
2:45:14
>> What a dramatic What a dramatic entrance.
2:45:16
This is the important question.
2:45:20
>> Do you think the Tesla Roadster will be able to >> We don't have audio for you. >> We have audio. We'll figure this out.
2:45:24
>> But you look fantastic. >> You look fantastic.
2:45:26
>> You look like >> the button down shirt, but the warm lighting is really doing a lot of work. A lot of contrast. >> Are we good? >> Sounds fantastic. >> Incredible.
2:45:34
>> So, first question before we get into anything else.
2:45:37
>> The Tesla Roadster, it's rumored to be able to leave the ground.
2:45:40
How high do you think it will be able to go off the ground?
2:45:44
>> I'll I'll go six inches. >> Six inches.
2:45:45
That's exactly what Tori said. Yeah. Okay. >> Yeah. There you go. >> That would be big. That would be big. >> That's a lot. >> Okay. I was going 6 feet.
2:45:53
>> Anyway, >> uh >> congratulations on the progress.
2:45:54
Give us the news first, then we'll get into the details. How much did you raise?
2:46:00
>> Uh we raised $180 million.
2:46:05
>> Welcome and client pockets. >> Who are they again? >> Good group. Good group. >> Who are they again?
2:46:12
Um yeah, talk about catch us up to speed.
2:46:14
Uh you've come on I think every every round at this point.
2:46:19
Uh what's what's happened since? >> What's driving? >> Yeah.
2:46:21
What's the state of the market?
2:46:23
>> Yeah, we've been busy.
2:46:23
Um a you know we launched the business two years ago with a very simple proposition which was hey I'm a marketer.
2:46:30
How does AI talk about my brand products and services?
2:46:32
my brand products and services? And what that did was actually created this this need for a second product which was okay well I want to now do the work you know if you if you see line go up you want to do more of it if you've seen line go down you you want to fix it and so you know over the past 6 to9 months we we've
2:46:52
been building our own harness in house that's that's tailored to marketing >> and yeah we you know we've seen incredible adoption across yeah a third of the Fortune 100 uh some of the biggest brands on the planet uh now using profound to actually do their marketing like build the work with agents which is yeah it's pretty cool. How uh are sorry if you have something
2:47:11
How uh are sorry if you have something go for it.
2:47:13
I'm just interested in like some of the biggest companies in the world.
2:47:17
Are are is this like are there any categories that don't really care about this?
2:47:21
Because I immediately go to like e-commerce because that's something where people are making a purchase decision, but it feels like every company even if you're, you know, selling something deep in the supply chain, your buyers are going to be asking AI. So it's important.
2:47:34
It's it's not just an an SEO thing that an e-commerce company cares about for like the last mile click attribution.
2:47:42
It's actually the perception of where you stand in the market for all businesses, right? >> Yeah. That's the Yeah.
2:47:50
The kind of similarities stop with the acronym, right? A AEO and SEO.
2:47:53
That's kind of about as close as they get.
2:47:56
Like how how chat GPT or Gemini or Grock talks about your brand or products or services really is just a function of all marketing that lives on the web.
2:48:04
Um the the the difference is that when an agent is crawling the web, it's very different to a human.
2:48:11
It consumes, you know, 100x or you know, we we believe eventually a thousandx more of the web than a human will. >> Yeah.
2:48:17
>> And that's just creating this new demand on marketing teams.
2:48:19
And it's creating this >> it's this idea that as a marketer now, you need to create orders of magnitude more marketing and it has to be a new kind of marketing that is aimed at agents.
2:48:31
And yeah, we've built the platform where you don't just understand how you show up, but you can actually take action and and do the thing.
2:48:41
Um, but yeah, the the demand, the the customers that we work with, it's it's it's coming from everywhere. It's orthogonal.
2:48:46
We work with giant consumer electronics brands.
2:48:50
We work with uh, you know, the likes of Walmart.
2:48:53
We work with, you know, great software brands like like Zoom, for example, and banks like Royal Bank of Canada and some of the biggest brand uh, banks on the planet.
2:49:00
So yes, it's it's uh basically if you look around the room right now, any brand in the room will will be thinking about what we're working on.
2:49:11
>> This is a little maybe tailored to the agentic commerce side of the business, but I ran into a very odd uh scenario where I I had Codex go shop for shoes for me and I I wear a size 14.
2:49:23
They're not always in stock.
2:49:27
So, I was like, I want you to actually go and open the website, take a screenshot, make sure the size 14's in stock before you recommend it to me.
2:49:34
And I wound up getting banned from a very po popular website.
2:49:39
I'm not going to dox the brand.
2:49:42
But, uh, but I was like, "Oh, this is they just lost me as a customer because I'm literally b I cannot check out for 24 hours because my IP is banned."
2:49:47
And I'm wondering if you've seen sort of like a need overreaction, a knee-jerk reaction to push away AI agents from brands and companies when they should actually be more open to uh AI agents coming and browsing and checking out and doing all of that.
2:50:05
Like how are you talking to CEOs about their posture towards AI agents and and their robots. txt basically?
2:50:14
>> Yeah, I mean we we we're pushing in the opposite direction.
2:50:16
Of course you if you're a marketer, of course you want your your website to be machine readable.
2:50:22
Uh we actually have just shipped a a pretty cool new product called dynamic bot rendering where at the edge so this is uh you know at the edge we're able to detect if a user agent from an AI answer engine like chat or rock etc is visiting >> and we can serve that agent a separate piece of content or a different piece of content to what a human would be shown. Mhm.
2:50:45
>> Um so we're seeing this kind of this this new form of marketing that's aimed at purely at agents proliferate.
2:50:50
Um but then interestingly like an emerging behavior as well as we're seeing these big brands use our platform um to create marketing that's aimed at humans as well.
2:51:02
Uh we had a large CPG customer update like 40,000 web pages in a week.
2:51:09
Um and it's it's really good quant it's really good content.
2:51:10
They they did a good job. >> That's great.
2:51:12
Uh, how are you tracking the emergence of new personal agents like Muse and and Instinct?
2:51:18
I imagine like you guys are one of the first calls when you know the the CMO of a brand or this of a CEO of a company like you know hears about one of these new things and they say like are we covered here?
2:51:29
I imagine you kind of are covering them in real time.
2:51:34
Um, but they're kind of a different different flow.
2:51:38
>> Yeah, we're thinking about it a lot right now.
2:51:40
It hasn't really, you know, we we are in a very we we exist in the in the contained environment of Silicon Valley.
2:51:46
So, it's this is all front of mind for us to the mainstream.
2:51:48
We we haven't seen Muse and Instinct break out truly yet.
2:51:53
>> Um, >> as we do, yeah, I of course um I mean I'm using Instinct to make all kinds of purchases.
2:51:59
Um, so is my wife and we see this it's an inevitable future. >> Yeah.
2:52:05
that it's it's guaranteed that um you know agent agentic commerce agentic browsing is going to be the only primitive of marketing that matters eventually.
2:52:16
Um and you'll see this very you'll see this maybe that if with intellectual honesty there'll be like some kind of uh there'll be a barbell where the the very human focused marketing will also matter a ton.
2:52:26
So, you know, we're we're we're spending more money on billboards than ever before, but at the same time, we see aic marketing really taking off and mattering, too.
2:52:38
>> How uh how are you thinking about other workflows?
2:52:41
Like, I'm thinking uh meta's is uh been one of the largest beneficiaries of of AI over the last 15 years.
2:52:53
like you know whether it started with like traditional machine learning and just getting better and better at targeting and and delivering that in a form factor that's very easy for marketers to understand.
2:53:01
They just kind of come with budget and Meta is going to try to deploy it so they bring back even more budget.
2:53:07
Uh but at the same time there's um it feels like there's an opportunity for uh a company like Profound to help marketers sit between uh sit between them and the places that they're they're spending money just because there's not always perfect alignment.
2:53:24
Like theoretically the ad platform is just like well we want as much of your money as possible even if they might you might get more uh value out of it somewhere else in a split second like even thinking about arbitragees.
2:53:35
So how are you thinking about fitting into those kind of paid media workflows?
2:53:40
>> Yeah, so we've quietly launched Profound Ads um which has been a very early success story where we're seeing yeah it's that counterpositioning or that adjacency that starts to provide value because you know what a marketer wants is one agent that can sit across all of the surface areas and deploy that media spend dynamically.
2:53:58
Um in you know the old world of software that was very difficult because you know every product had such different surface areas such such different curvature it's it's only really available now as an opportunity because you know and a probabilistic agent is actually very good at that kind of work.
2:54:16
Um so yeah we profound uh profound ad studio is being used by brands like ramp um to actually uh create publish measure paid advertising um initially on generative platforms but over time we're going to go across like all media platforms.
2:54:34
So the idea what we're trying to do here with the business like zooming out for a second is just the the idea of profound is to build the canonical AI marketing company. Mhm.
2:54:45
>> Uh, you know, if we're seeing verticals get picked off one by one, we we want to pick off marketing. >> Mhm.
2:54:55
>> I imagine that when you sign a client, you are on an ongoing basis, generating a lot of prompts to understand how the AI system, different AI tools across all the different models are responding to these.
2:55:09
Are you in contact with the labs already so that you don't get flagged?
2:55:15
Have you been flagged for like distillation?
2:55:16
Are there any hurdles that you run into just because the shape of your work doesn't look like hey fix this bug in this codebase like many other companies look like?
2:55:28
>> No, I think you know the the relationship with the labs is good.
2:55:29
Uh we essentially just surveying the models.
2:55:33
Um distillation you need to go into all kinds of like traces which is a very different type of uh It's a very different type of work.
2:55:40
I think you know what we're seeing is our business is aligning brands and uh yeah the the these you know giant companies to pay attention to the the these new platforms.
2:55:55
So I think um yeah we we very much see ourselves as like an ally to the the each of the labs but we kind of sit adjacent to them. >> Yeah. Yeah. It's very complimentary. So it it makes sense.
2:56:06
it just like it does look like a little bit different of a shape of workload.
2:56:10
So I'm wondering if uh if if there's if you ever get caught in like accidental situations or anything because I know these tools.
2:56:18
Yeah, I mean obviously at your scale like you have investors that overlap with all the labs so you can like get in touch which is great. Um makes a lot of sense. >> Amazing update.
2:56:26
>> Thank you so much for coming on the show.
2:56:27
>> Davis in the chat says James you're him. I agree.
2:56:31
I pro I promised the guys at Saga.
2:56:31
So Ben Braverman, those guys I give them a shout out on TV. >> I love those guys. >> We got Chad.
2:56:41
We got to do a round table.
2:56:41
We got multiple seats here.
2:56:43
Tell the Saga guys get to the Ultra Dome.
2:56:47
>> Get to the Ultra >> right now.
2:56:48
But uh yeah, an incredible uh incredible win for for Saga. >> Yeah.
2:56:54
>> Uh and guys, keep it up. >> Congratulations. We'll talk to you soon. Great to see you. >> Have a good one. Goodbye.
2:56:58
And I got to get out of here.
2:57:00
So, we're going to leave you, Peter.
2:57:02
We'll see you tomorrow at 11 a. m. Pacific.
2:57:04
Leave us five stars Apple podcast sign for a newsletter at tbpn. com.
2:57:09
>> I'm so glad that we had uh the the CMO of Activision or COD uh come on the show and not tell us, hey, you guys got to cut off the uh >> Oh, yeah.