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I see multiple journalists on the horizon. Standby. You're watching TVPN.
4:37
>> Today is Wednesday, August 12th, 2026.
4:40
We are live from the TVPN Ultra [applause] Realm, the temple of technology, the fortress of finance, the capital of capital. >> That's right.
4:47
[applause] >> Tell you about ramp. com. Time is money. Save both.
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Easy to use corporate cards, bill pay, accounting, and a whole lot.
4:52
>> More all in one place.
4:54
>> Uh some really interesting data out of ramp.
4:56
We'll go through the uh the latest workings of Ara Carzian over at the Ramp Economics Lab soon, but first we got to talk about Josh Kushner, Bob Iger.
5:04
They bought the LA Lakers.
5:07
They're buying the LA Lakers. He's done it again.
5:09
They said he couldn't do it.
5:13
>> They >> in the sauna this morning. >> Yeah.
5:15
>> I was thinking about the name Thrive Eternal.
5:19
I think it's one of the best names for a fund ever. >> Yeah.
5:23
Yeah, >> like eternal is such a powerful statement and it fits the strategy >> so well >> and it does, you know, people have been talking about this this morning, but it feels like um with all of the technology disruption happening, >> it just feels like these sports franchises could be more durable than many of the biggest companies in the world today. >> Yeah.
5:47
Well, we have coming back on the show to discuss it at 11:30.
5:51
Uh, let me take you through. >> Yeah.
5:54
And I figured out how to put on a suit. >> Yeah. Doesn't he look great? Look at this guy. It's incredible.
5:58
[laughter] >> I cleaned it up. >> Yeah. >> I cleaned it up. >> Super clean. Looking amazing. Uh, yeah.
6:05
Uh, >> finally, truth be told, we when we started the show, I went from we started hitting the gym.
6:13
>> We did a little bulking season.
6:13
It was bulking season >> and I added I added some weight and I basically over >> You added 45 pounds of lean muscle.
6:18
You don't need to underell it, Jordy.
6:22
>> [snorts] >> And you lost weight fat. Yeah.
6:22
So >> I added a little weight and I basically grew out of my suit slowly about two pounds a month. >> Yeah. >> For 18 months.
6:33
>> It went exponential >> and it was a fast.
6:35
It became extremely uncomfortable to sit here.
6:37
Even though all these the the suits >> suits are beautiful >> that uh that we had gotten made. >> Got a little tight.
6:44
>> I'm going to have to save them for when I'm an elderly man. >> Yeah, maybe.
6:47
>> Cuz at some point we'll shed we'll shed the muscle. Cutting season's coming. >> We'll be lean maxing.
6:53
>> Summer's only >> cutting season is coming. >> Nine months away. >> 40 years. >> In 40 years. >> Yeah, >> it's good.
7:00
>> But it's good to be back.
7:00
Yeah, >> it's going to be back. >> Yeah, looks good.
7:02
Uh let me take you through the story so everyone has the facts straight about this uh incredible deal for the Los Angeles Lakers.
7:08
The headline is the Los Angeles Lakers are being sold to American businessmen Josh Kushner and Bob Iger for a record-breaking price of 12. 5 billion.
7:21
Multiple sources have told this to ESPN.
7:24
So Kushner and Iger made the offer to Mark Walter who only last year p purchased a controlling interest in the Lakers from the bus family at a then record valuation of roughly $10 billion.
7:37
Walter, the CEO and chairman of holding company TWWG Global, officially became the Lakers majority owner last October after the NBA unanimously approved the deal.
7:47
The new sale will likewise require approval from the NBA's G board of governors, which is scheduled to meet next month in New York.
7:53
But looking at that picture, it seems like they've had this conversation with the relevant people.
7:59
Uh they're not some uh random businessman coming in from out of town who >> and the sellers under federal investigation. >> Yes.
8:07
Uh for some very complicated deals where some private credit transactions were put into an insurance firm that they own.
8:16
Uh those affiliated transactions, if you originate the deal and then you put it in your insurance companies uh on your insurance company's books, you need to you need to disclose this.
8:26
Uh now you can actually do this.
8:28
Bergkshire Hathaway about 46% of their uh insurance assets are related party transactions.
8:34
So there's a way to do it above board.
8:36
The allegations are that uh he disclosed that only 3% of the insurance uh assets were related party affiliated transactions.
8:44
But in fact it was much higher when you considered some of the other assets that had made their way through a >> capital allocator.
8:51
Bit of a bad bit of a bit of a bad boy.
8:55
>> You mean the bad boy thing? Yeah, maybe.
8:57
Um, but you know, innocent until proven guilty.
8:59
Obviously, these are just allegations.
9:00
He's just being investigated and return. >> Yeah.
9:04
And he's denied all wrongdoing, but it does it does give you a little bit more context on what might be motivating a sale so soon after buying an asset that he was clearly optimistic about.
9:14
So, uh, Kushner is the founder and CEO of venture firm Thrive Capital and co-founder and vice chairman of Oscar Health.
9:20
He also is the brother of Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump's son-in-law.
9:23
Kushner currently owns minority stake in the Miami Heat, which he will have to sell to complete the Lakers deal and was previously a minority uh owner of the Memphis Gri Grizzlies.
9:33
Iger while meanwhile stepped down as Disney CEO earlier this year and has already made a major investment in the lo in Los Angeles sports.
9:40
He and his wife Willow Bay become controlling own became controlling owners of the National Women's Soccer League's Angel City FC in 2024.
9:48
Uh the perspective new owners are already getting a warm reception from some of the biggest names associated with the franchise.
9:54
Uh Luca Donic said, "Being a Laker means everything to me, and I'm excited to get back to the court and bring a championship to LA.
10:02
I've gotten used to big changes over these last few years, but I know that no matter what, there's no limit to the potential of this iconic franchise.
10:10
I look forward to meeting Josh and Bob so we can get to work building something special in LA together. You'll love to see it."
10:15
Magic Johnson chimed in as well.
10:17
said, "Lakers fans, you couldn't have any.
10:19
You couldn't have two better owners."
10:22
Johnson said, "I've known Bob personally for over 40 years."
10:24
He has always loved the Lakers and basketball, and he will bring championships back to LA.
10:29
So, Magic Johnson is optimistic about this deal.
10:34
>> Weirdly, this is making me optimistic on LA overall.
10:36
I've had a generally bad outlook.
10:39
I have had extreme confidence that the weather is going to be very nice for a long time.
10:43
Uh but that's really been the only thing I'm willing to really lean on. >> Yeah.
10:49
>> But this is giving me a slightly more positive outlook.
10:52
>> And and you've been pitching Thrive on your new incubation uh the pothole company of Los Angeles.
10:56
The pothole filling company of Los Angeles. >> Huge opportunity.
11:00
It's really Palanteer for potholes. >> Yes. Yes.
11:03
Hiring the best AI research.
11:05
>> No, I want somebody I want somebody to do this.
11:07
Figure out how to fix potholes. Yeah. Quickly.
11:10
>> I think it starts with its own satellite constellation.
11:12
You have to put up 10,000 satellites in low Earth orbit with cameras pointed >> at small small effectively missiles fired at potholes. Yes.
11:22
And then a laser that sort of like melts the debris down to fill in the hole. >> Yeah.
11:28
It just kind sort of you bring the molten asphalt up to space.
11:30
It comes down, warms up in as it travels through the atmosphere, lands directly the pothole >> and smooshes in, fills it in. Perfect.
11:39
But but you know, people are always saying, "Oh, why is like you go to LA, every other car is a G Wagon?" Well, you know why?
11:45
Because the roads are absolutely terrible.
11:47
You pretty much need something that's four-wheel drive, otherwise you're going to have a bad time.
11:52
I was talking to I was talking to a to a to a Maybach owner couple nights ago, and he had blown out multiple tires in the last year.
12:01
I I've blown out multiple tires last year. It's a It's a disaster.
12:06
The pothole the pothole company of Los Angeles.
12:12
>> It's a banger idea, right?
12:13
>> It's a banger [laughter] idea. >> Yeah.
12:16
Uh >> I might become the Batman of potholes sneaking out late at night.
12:20
It might look I could go out in the suit. >> You could Yeah.
12:24
Like that guy who was cleaning up the FDNY uh corner call box. Like same thing. Potholes in LA.
12:30
They're really really bad.
12:33
Every day I drive to work and I have to swerve into the other lane to avoid one on this one particular road that's just been a disaster for the last six months.
12:40
Anyway, uh the last quote related to this deal, uh as lifelong NBA fans, we are deeply honored for the opportunity to become the stewards of the Los Angeles Lakers, one of the most iconic sports franchises in the world, Kushner and Iger said in a statement.
12:55
They said they have immense respect for Jerry and Jenny Bus and intend to build on the family's legacy.
13:03
I don't know what you're laughing at.
13:05
Compete at the highest level and serve this extraordinary team, its fans, and the city of Los Angeles.
13:09
If approved, the deal would give their third controlling ownership >> of potholes.
13:15
>> I think he got >> SDT.
13:16
And Tyler says he's going to film the missions.
13:18
This would just be absolutely riveting content.
13:20
You're out on the 405 >> 2 a. m.
13:24
just you >> and a nasty pothole >> and a little bit of traffic >> and a little bit of asphalt slathering it in there. Right.
13:32
Is that what you're doing?
13:33
>> Well, my big issue is when they they when they fill in they just do a really bad job and so it basically creates a bunch of mini speed bumps >> and you get a sinkhole.
13:43
>> So then you just start sinkhole company.
13:45
>> That's a whole other problem. >> Yeah, that was crazy.
13:46
Oh, whatever happened with that in LA?
13:48
It was really bad for a while. I guess they fixed it.
13:51
I would like to um get somebody to throw on a tin foil hat and figure out why >> a bunch of pipes started exploding everywhere around the city.
14:00
>> Somebody's got to ask the question.
14:00
Let me tell you about the New York Stock Exchange.
14:02
Want to change the world?
14:04
Raise capital at the New York Stock Exchange. Just do it.
14:06
Uh there's a bunch of reactions hitting the timeline.
14:08
Uh Sag Harbor Capital says, "While there are plenty of issues you can point out with sports investing, I think this actually makes a simple yet incredibly compelling case. Longevity.
14:17
Sports is a portfolio diversifier.
14:20
Investment firms and wealthy individuals now view investing in sports properties as a hedge against higher risk investments. Very interesting.
14:28
Everyone has always said sports investing is just uh it's a trophy asset.
14:32
It's just because you like the team.
14:34
Um but you're locking up a lot of capital and when you're long AGI the future the most cutting edge technologies also building a portfolio with some things that are going to be around forever no matter how many robots there are. Um makes a lot of sense.
14:47
And so that ba that that balancing effect seems to be a new thing that's driving demand in uh in sports investing. Do you agree with that? >> I do. Fits the strategy. >> Yeah. Spore agrees.
14:58
If you truly believe in AGI, buying a massive sports franchise is actually one of the best financial decisions you can make right now.
15:05
Uh and we've seen uh hints and rumors of this for a while.
15:07
Uh anything else on the Lakers?
15:10
We're going to talk to Darren in just uh 13 minutes about it. Get him to explain.
15:14
It's going to walk us through the the whole rule set.
15:19
>> Yeah, >> we're very excited about that.
15:22
>> Anyway, >> apparently there's a solar eclipse going on right now.
15:25
>> Oh, is that going on right now?
15:25
I saw a link to a whole bunch of different webcams that you can use to watch it.
15:29
Uh the last time, a couple years ago, there was a full solar eclipse, not a partial one.
15:38
And everyone who went said it was one of the most insane experiences of their life.
15:43
So, I would highly recommend it, Tyler. >> Yeah.
15:46
So, it's it's in Europe right now. Full solar eclipse. >> Full solar eclipse. >> Yeah. >> Wow. Should have gone. I missed this one. When's the next one?
15:52
I should What's the meaning, Tyler? >> What does it mean?
15:57
Uh, it's a great omen for high beta AI stocks.
16:00
[laughter] That's what I choose to read into it. Lever up.
16:07
That's what the That's what the Eclipse is trying to tell you.
16:09
Um anyway, let me tell you about console.
16:14
Console built AI agents that automate 70% of IT, HR, and finance support, giving employees instant resolution for access requests and password resets. Uh Grock 4.
16:23
6 is roughly the same performance as Fable 5 Max at an 85% discount.
16:27
80% cheaper for input tokens and 88% cheaper for output tokens.
16:30
Paro dominance as Gavin Baker. uh GRA 4.
16:33
7 will be significantly better as is a much larger model with the cursor and SpaceX data included in pre-training.
16:40
So uh the the the headline is uh SpaceX sort of jumped to the frontier at least on these benchmarks.
16:46
We'll see how this comes out how people adopt it.
16:48
Obviously cursor has huge huge usage all across uh the enterprise across businesses.
16:55
uh Grock is has been slower on adoption with a bunch of different push back there, but the model seems to be catching up.
17:03
The teams seem to be jelling and things seem to be uh pretty good over there.
17:08
We'll see how I mean I'm sure on X we'll see lots of people demoing uh examples of what they build with Grock 4. 6.
17:16
There's already some games that have hit the timeline.
17:18
There will be a whole whole bunch more on benchmarks. Yeah.
17:22
So, so uh seems uh incredibly impressive.
17:26
Excited to get uh reactions and and get people's lived experiences with the model.
17:31
Uh price wars have >> uh definitely begun. >> Yeah.
17:38
>> Uh you know, we saw this with Meta, we're seeing this with Grock now.
17:41
>> Um and then um uh third, I would say trust in benchmarks has to be at an all-time low. Yeah. Right.
17:49
Um there's been enough, you know, moments, releases so far where the benchmarks looked amazing.
17:58
Uh but then the actual lived experience is is um you know, less less significant.
18:04
Uh they also had a great launch yesterday, so they're building momentum. >> Sure.
18:09
>> SpaceX is up almost 40% just in the last five days. That's a pretty >> Yeah. And I'm so curious.
18:13
I I wish I wish you could figure out a way to parse out what what's driving that. Is it the semi analysis?
18:20
>> Yeahsis semi analysis Friday.
18:20
Well, that Yeah, that was Friday at the close.
18:25
>> Um, >> it popped during the day though, right?
18:28
So, >> but then up 10% today. >> Yeah, I don't know.
18:31
Maybe it was leaking out.
18:32
Maybe >> CNBC says SpaceX short sellers are running out of bullets as stock rebounds more than 30% off.
18:38
[laughter] >> We don't have to go.
18:43
>> We're running out of ammo. >> I'm tired, boss.
18:45
I can't keep buying [laughter] these prices like I'm buy. You got to buy more.
18:49
Uh Michael Truel at Cursor, founder, CEO.
18:52
Um excited to release Grock 4. 6.
18:55
With each release, Grock is becoming a more capable digital colleague.
18:59
The age of work is upon us.
19:02
Grock for work, it's happening. Uh 4.
19:02
6 is significantly better at difficult tasks and knowledge work.
19:07
It combines opus class intelligence and polish with very low cost and high speed, which people love.
19:13
uh even even just in the cursor workflow, the more iterative approach instead of having to come back a day later and see what goes on.
19:18
Uh there's a lot of value to that workflow in particular. Um Grock 4.
19:23
6 is a very impressive test time curve on cursor bench in a league of its own.
19:28
They did more mid/ pre-training on the Grock 4.
19:29
5 checkpoint and newer SFT stages with Grock 4.
19:35
5 traces and modelbased filtering.
19:37
Once again, shows how important a good SFT checkpoint is. Interesting.
19:42
getting some more details on what's going on with Grock.
19:43
They also launched Grock bot.
19:45
Uh we recently hired a new teammate.
19:48
Bots are AI teammates that do real work for you.
19:50
They sign into your tools, use them just like you do, and come back with finished work.
19:53
So I guess I guess Gwork isn't going to happen.
19:58
It's going to be Grockbot, which actually it it has a nice little rhythm to it. I like I like Grockbot.
20:03
Um also very good results on the artificial intelligence index joining the frontier.
20:11
61 um uh strong agentic performance uh lower cost obviously and the model wars are are upon us.
20:19
Uh Nvidia's also joining the model war wars uh selling selling weapons to both sides potentially. Uh Neotron 3.
20:27
5 lightning their open source model came out but they also launched a model router Nemo switchyard to deliver faster smarter more efficient agentic AI.
20:38
>> Switchard switchyard's a good name. Good name. >> I like that.
20:41
>> Kind of some railroad connotations which >> Oh, yeah. Interesting. Yeah.
20:46
Got to go through Ben Thompson stuff at some point.
20:48
But um >> uh interesting to see uh where this goes.
20:53
I mean, it does feel like if you're if you're a organization that has NVIDIA chips, you have your own data centers because you're a midscale, maybe not a hyperscaler, but you're pretty big.
21:04
uh you know the being all in on the NVIDIA stack and then using their model router could make a lot of sense like it's a logical place for it to live um and uh and then you're you know it it has more uh it has more integration with the rest of your NVIDIA stack because you have a whole bunch of GPUs racked for the lowest possible cost.
21:23
If you're cost optimizing you'll probably eventually have your own racks and your own Nvidia work uh you know uh data center basically.
21:31
Um anyway, um should we debate anthropics watermarking or or is our next guest here early?
21:40
>> Should we bring in our next guest?
21:41
>> Why don't you Yeah, dive into this.
21:41
I don't I don't know that I have a strong take yet, but >> Ben Thompson has a strong take on anthropics watermarking.
21:49
So, the basic news is that uh you might soon be able to know for sure if something came from a human being or from Claude.
21:55
Anthropic said this week that text and files generated by its family of AI models will be watermarked to let consumers know.
22:04
Now, they won't be watermarked like you'll still have to take the text and then go to their watermarking tool and validate that it was that it was >> Bill Bill Gurley was making the point that watermark a traditional watermark on an image is very visible. Yes.
22:19
Just like immediately visible. Yes.
22:21
And so it's not actually it's more like leaving >> uh Basically, we're going to leave evidence that this is generated breadcrumbs. >> Yeah, breadcrumbs.
22:31
And so, in theory, a LinkedIn could or or an X could integrate with a anthropic API to check the watermarks.
22:39
But the interesting read on this is that um this was actually um this was actually implemented by the uh regulation in the European Union.
22:48
So, Anthropic in theory could watermark could only watermark text in Europe.
22:52
But the EU has achieved their dream of regulating the world according to Ben Thompson.
22:59
Um, and so they actually instead I I think the idea is instead of uh instead of doing a last step at the end of the generation to add the watermark in, it's baked much deeper into the model level which means it will be uh watermarked whether you're in Europe or not.
23:19
Um, and so, uh, Ben Thompson explains a little bit on how it works.
23:24
Obviously, they're not explaining too much because then you can avoid it easier.
23:28
>> Yeah, it's so it's so interesting like how much of their revenue is coming from Europe given how compute constrained they are like was there I wonder if they ever considered like, hey, let's just >> say if hey, if you're going to if you're going to go forward with something like this, >> yes, >> we're just going to exit the market entirely.
23:47
>> But I don't think people care.
23:47
I don't think Anthropic cares about watermarking. I think they're fine. I think it's nice.
23:51
I think it's a good thing.
23:53
And then also, I think business users don't care because they're like, "Yeah, I I want AI generated code all over my codebase.
23:58
I want it to be clean and and efficient, and I want it to just do the job, and I'm I'm totally fine with it ident."
24:07
Um, and so I don't think people uh will be upset about this, at least in the enterprise.
24:11
Um, Ben Thompson points out that he is somewhat frustrated by this because even if you're using an LLM for proofreading and making individual changes in your text editor, like you just upload your blog post to Claude now and you say, "Oh, like what could be better about this? What's wrong with this?
24:30
Did I make any grammatical errors?
24:32
Did I make any spelling errors?"
24:32
If you go and implement those, there's a small risk.
24:36
It seems like a very unlikely risk, but there's a small risk that even in just accepting those changes, you accidentally insert a little bit of the watermark in or potentially all of the watermark in and then you don't get credit potentially because people be like, "Oh, this is AI."
24:52
When really it was like the last step that was AI.
24:53
Uh we had a back and forth on this a little bit where uh I would write an essay by hand.
24:59
hand. we would throw it into catchupt to to to proofread it and it would put in a bunch of m dashes in the earlier model it was really heavy on m dashes and so people would just be like oh this is AI and I was like well like the last step but it's like but does that matter it
25:16
does matter to a lot of people they do care about that um but it's it's odd and Ben Thompson's point is saying what the EU is doing is stealing the last thing humans have creation and demanding it be bundled with substanti iation effectively giving the AI AI the credit. Even if you come up with a great idea,
25:32
Even if you come up with a great idea, you write a great book, if you have AI edit it, if it has a watermarking feature, it will be watermarked and people will be like, nah, yeah, I was all what was the prompt?
25:41
And it's like, well, maybe there wasn't a prompt.
25:43
Maybe there was a whole process that you went through to develop your idea and then you took it at the last step.
25:49
And so that's the source of fr frustration.
25:51
At the same time, it does feel like uh there's ways to work around this.
25:56
If you become more collaborative with the AI system, you can avoid the watermark by only using it at one certain step and then doing a an editing pass yourself.
26:06
Um people have been going back and forth these all all day long.
26:08
Uh he says, "The human that gave AI the text to proofread or even the prompt to generate writing doesn't matter to the bureaucrats in Europe.
26:18
Everyone is worried about being replaced by AI. The EU is mandating it. That's what he says.
26:23
He's got some harsh words.
26:24
What do you think, Tyler? >> Yeah.
26:25
I mean, so pres I don't think the actual like underlying the the way they watermark it is like public, but presumably it's like basically during the sampling process when you're like generating tokens. >> Yep. >> Right.
26:35
It generates some distribution over the tokens like which one is it going to select and then >> it uses like a slightly different method than just choosing like the most likely one. Yep.
26:42
>> And that way you can like see oh this is like less likely so it's probably y >> um you know written by AI.
26:46
But like if you basically have, you know, some essay that you wrote and you replace like one sentence, then like 99% of the tokens are still the same, then like it's like it's it's it shouldn't mark the whole thing as being like AI written.
27:01
That doesn't make any sense.
27:02
Like only the sentence that you changed would be marked as a written.
27:05
If you look at the new model, whatever, it doesn't like say the whole document is AR.
27:10
It says like this sentence is AI.
27:12
These tokens are very >> people think of a watermark as it's a binary.
27:16
It's it's either going to say it's AI or not.
27:18
In fact, >> it's worth I think people are going to just look, you know, like the the peanut gallery online is going to be it'll be very binary for them.
27:26
Like if somebody puts out even an Instagram caption, >> they'll get dunked on even if it's one sentence, right?
27:32
Like like if you look at the Google synth ID, so Gemini has done this for like a few years.
27:37
>> Um if you look at their blog that like explains how it works, it will like highlight specific basically words in the in the blog or whatever piece of text.
27:44
It's like, okay, this is probably >> written.
27:46
It's not saying the whole thing is is like Yeah. zero warrant. Yeah.
27:48
So, >> I think I think this is kind of like blowing it out of proportion. >> Yeah.
27:53
I don't I don't think that many people will have a problem with it.
27:56
>> How long till someone ships the claw watermark remover app?
27:59
I mean, somebody shipped a panggram uh fighter like yesterday, something where you take the text, you put it in this model, and then it it reads 100% human to Pangram uh because it rewrites it in a style that Pangram can't detect.
28:13
And so now the Pangram team has to go figure out how to defeat that.
28:17
It's all a game of uh cat-and- mouse, I guess.
28:19
But let me tell you about Cisco.
28:22
Critical infrastructure for the AI era.
28:23
Unlock seamless real-time experiences and new value with Cisco.
28:28
We've been keeping our next guest waiting for far too long.
28:31
We have Darren Rall coming back on the show. How are you doing? Welcome back. >> We're doing well. >> Big day.
28:39
Take us through uh the story, how you're processing it, what this means.
28:44
Set up the story of the Los Angeles Lakers changing hands again.
28:50
>> Yeah, just a just a surprise.
28:50
Obviously, uh teams just don't change like this.
28:56
Um, you know, [clears throat] I don't think uh Hold on.
28:58
I gotta get off my center stage. There we go.
29:00
I don't want anything to follow me. Give me a second here. >> There we go. I'm a pro. >> There we go. Yeah, >> there we go.
29:07
I don't want to um >> You know, Mark Mark Walter clearly did not say, "Oh, I could get in now and I could make $2 billion quick." Yeah.
29:14
I mean, it is amazing that in 2014, I was saying, "Oh my god, uh, Bomber bought this team for $2 billion and now that is the profit that Mark Walter is making uh, just from getting out of here."
29:29
Um, I will tell you this because I know your your show well. >> Yeah.
29:35
>> Um, I have never understood Guggenheim's insurance business.
29:39
>> Y >> uh, it's one of those things where I could never follow the buckets. Mhm.
29:44
>> It's buckets upon buckets upon buckets and this going to this and this going I would say it's purposely obuscatory. >> Mhm.
29:52
Um and so um the fact that there are third-party loans apparently where they can't they don't understand it and that the report that at least Bloomberg had that he had to uh you know get loans quickly to perhaps make them kosher >> um does make a lot of sense given my previous uh work with trying to investigate exactly how Guggenheim works. >> Yeah.
30:22
So, so a little bit of motivation for the early sale. >> Yeah, for sure.
30:26
And the other motivation for the early sale, you would think, is the NBA in general.
30:30
The NBA is a hell of a lot more progressive than Major League Baseball.
30:35
Not to suggest that he would have lost the Dodgers, but when you have the bomber situation, um that investigation that's in LA, um you have I wrote on Twitter today kind of the this world where people are going to become rich really quickly, but they also could become poor really quickly.
30:55
We've seen that before, but I think that in the uh degenerate, you know, I think we wake up every morning and we're more in a casino than ever before.
31:03
And that that means that you're going to hear people buying teams for massive values and you're going to see a higher percentage of those people be poor in two seconds. >> Oh.
31:15
>> So I don't while while while I don't think the assets of sports teams and the assets in general, obviously the macro economy is important uh falling, I do see individual people falling and replacement people have to come in more than ever before. >> Yeah.
31:32
I mean, we saw that just a few weeks ago.
31:34
Situational awareness, a fund, a hedge fund that scaled from $250 million to almost $50 billion, uh, roundt tripped very, very quickly in dramatic fashion.
31:45
Uh, fortunes are won and lost extremely quickly in the modern modern era.
31:52
>> Uh, very basic question.
31:52
Uh, but but what are what are the kind of groups that can own an NBA team?
31:58
I thought it had to be individuals.
32:01
Obviously, you they can bring in partners on it.
32:04
There can be, you know, a bunch of, you know, co-owners.
32:08
Uh, but then I was looking it up and Madison Square Garden >> owns the Knicks.
32:13
Like >> any anyone now, I mean, you know, they've recently even allowed, you know, Blue Owl has a homec court ventures fund, okay?
32:24
you know, which became when Blue when Blue Owl had their whole, you know, we're not giving any distributions and we're locking everything up.
32:31
Of course, people would say, well, you own 5% of a bunch of NBA teams, which wasn't convenient at the time, but yeah, I mean, pretty much anyone can own anything now.
32:43
uh even the NFL now opening up, you know, but I listen uh the Yankees and and their Apollo deal yesterday.
32:52
Um I think sports leagues are willing to have pretty much anyone as owners >> uh as long as the value continues to go up.
33:04
>> So does >> you think we could see a hyperscaler just end up buying a sports team just as basically a part of their treasury?
33:10
It seems like a relatively stable asset.
33:14
They get some potentially some halo effect from it.
33:19
>> I think I think I think leagues will still be very careful as to who they uh let in just because they're worried about information as a whole, right?
33:30
They don't want things to come out, especially as long as a lot of these teams are going to still be asking for public financing for their stadiums.
33:36
Um, so, so I do I do think they they >> I know I'm contradicting my contradicting myself, but I do think there are some caveats and if they open it up to many people who are say invested in a fund who then have to have access to those financials, I don't think major sports leagues think that's interesting.
33:59
So that's the only only thing that I think is is probably like prohibitive to all of that. >> Got it.
34:05
So when you say information, you mean financial details about how that particular team operates.
34:10
Um because there's been >> Yeah.
34:13
But can't you can't you >> you could certainly raise from a number of people and just have it be a condition that they don't get any information. Right. >> Sure. >> Right. >> Yes. Yeah.
34:24
>> But that would be hard if it's like >> listen.
34:27
For example, I know a bunch of people that would happily co-invest with Kushner and Iger on the commission of like, you don't have to tell you don't have to tell me anything ever.
34:36
I just want to be effectively be able to say, >> yep, >> yeah, I I own part of the Lakers. >> Sure.
34:44
>> And that's the thing, by the way, minority ownership, >> it's ridiculous.
34:47
I mean, I I can't believe people say, "Hey, uh, I'm going to put a hundred million in um, and and I'm going to own like an infantessimal part of a team."
34:58
I mean, it's like, yes, there is a trophy value, but there are seemingly better investments.
35:05
I will say obviously I have been wrong at every stage of since covering Mr. 30 years. I've been wrong.
35:13
If you want to pull all the videos, you could see me on CNBC saying in 2011, $450 million for the Warriors. That is crazy.
35:26
And then and then and then the next year the the Bucks sell and and I even said in 2014 Bomber for $2 billion is 12 time it was 12 times expected uh gross revenues and this deal is now 20 probably 20 with LeBron leaving it's probably 22 to 23 times gross revenues. >> Yeah. >> 12. 5 billion for next year. >> Yeah it's crazy.
35:50
Uh someone uh some under the numbers in the chat said uh most of the leagues allow up to 30% institutional ownership. Yeah. >> In individual teams. >> Yeah. >> Thank you. >> Yeah.
36:02
But I think that's going to I think that will change a little bit more.
36:05
Um again, I mean there's not there's there's been relatively little there we we haven't seen uh like majority Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth funds uh come coming into >> American sports.
36:19
I know that the monumental Washington Capitals and Wizards, you know, small piece in there, but and it's obviously infiltrated European soccer football a lot more than it has here. >> Yeah.
36:32
And for all the existing owners, no one is probably sitting there owning one of these assets and thinking like, "No, I don't want to unlock large institutional buyers for these."
36:42
like of course there's a massive incentive to um allow these like much much bigger buyers to come in.
36:52
>> Do you think the do do you think the trophy asset thesis is still driving the market or is there something else going on because I mean I guess the trophies can just keep getting bigger and bigger as the pool of capital and the larger buyers come in and people are wealthier so they need a bigger trophy.
37:06
Um, but it feels like there are other things a foot in the US economy changes to like the big the big like macro thesis around sports is usually like we're all on our phones and that means we're craving >> experiential >> experiential, right?
37:22
And so I'm wondering if there's if there's some other way that we should be thinking about a deal like this outside of the typical uh it's a trophy asset. >> Yeah.
37:33
Well, you have a lot of people who are interested in ownership because they're rich and no one knows who the hell they are. >> Yeah.
37:39
>> And that's obviously not the case with Kushner and and Iger. Yeah.
37:43
>> Um, you know, one of the things that's not a surprise is Kushner and Iger. I mean, around forever.
37:49
Um, and and and he obviously was at the helm of Disney, which owns ESPN, and he's had a first look at, you know, everything in sports over the years.
38:00
And I just I just thought they were going to get the Vegas team.
38:03
I mean, they were looking at Vegas a week ago. >> Yeah.
38:06
>> So, you know, that just shows you how quick this is.
38:07
Um, you know, and and Kushner and you know, obviously what he's been doing.
38:12
Um, and always, you know, hey, every day you got to throw in a Trump connection somewhere.
38:16
Um, so, so the what I'm interested in though, um, and I'm >> But you said you said so, so I haven't been following the the Vegas team at all, >> uh, or anything in the NBA, >> the opportunity that they'll be a Vegas team.
38:33
No, but but but my question was like is it is it possible that they always wanted the Lakers and they wanted and and these were this was going on in the background and and they just were using that the the Vegas >> not not what I was told.
38:48
They they wanted a a great team.
38:49
They and and this happened over the last 100 hours.
38:56
>> What is the shape of Las Vegas sports these days?
38:58
I I I I know like teams have relocated there.
39:01
Um, and there's F1 and But is is there like an indigenous fan base that's strong enough?
39:07
Is the indigenous fan base?
39:09
>> They can't believe how big it is.
39:11
Listen, I was I was I was there the day they announced uh the Vegas Golden Knights and obviously their first year going to the Stanley Cup helped.
39:18
I mean, that crowd is probably in the top five best crowds in hockey. >> Wow.
39:25
Um, everyone go, you know, people go there for road trips like they go when when teams play, uh, you know, the Raiders, you know, the Raiders stadium, Allegiance Stadium is is amazing, is great. They've won.
39:37
You know, Vegas is very hard to win at, and people laugh at me when I say this, but, you know, eating has become the next act, and it becomes eating versus circus.
39:47
So, it used to be eating and then show.
39:50
Now, eating is actually an activity.
39:56
>> And so, you're competing with eating over the last 5 years >> because of the chef >> the chef brands and everything else else that's out there. Yeah.
40:04
>> And so, uh, I think they think, you know, the the, um, the A's are really going to make a lot of sense and and and listen, uh, if you look at the Knights and you look at, uh, uh, where the Raiders are.
40:17
I mean, 10 years ago, you were concerned about gambling.
40:20
Now, now Kelshi has you gambling on what flights are late. Yeah.
40:26
>> You know, >> we've gone we've gone from uh, from Oh my god.
40:29
I when I asked Gary Bman uh that day when they said they were moving to Vegas, he said, "Oh, no.
40:34
We're going to have um the odds will be off the board at the two closest casinos to T-Mobile Arena. We're concerned." >> Whoa.
40:43
>> And you know, and and now you look today and you look at the prediction markets and Yeah.
40:49
>> Uh we're we're we're literally betting on toad races every two seconds.
40:53
>> Is prediction are predictad racing is toad racing a thing?
40:56
>> I mean, there's no will be though.
40:56
I showed you that crazy Russian live streaming site where people play fake sports.
41:03
Like it'll be two guys sitting in a chair and they're playing.
41:06
>> You can bet on You can bet on You can actually there you can bet on how many cars will go through a traffic light. >> I've seen those. >> Yeah. Until it turns red.
41:14
I mean, listen, prediction markets are uh the do the the dopamine that is going on, whether it's gambling, whether it's opening packs, collectibles, obviously I'm close to >> um you know, my son who's 12 is on a freetoplay app and he's looking at whether, you know, Giannis is going to uh sneeze during a game.
41:37
And by the way, I I I don't say don't play that. I say, yeah, play that.
41:42
Play that and make use your fake money.
41:44
And when you lose 14 times in a row, that's a learning experience.
41:48
And if you had real money, you'd be screwed. But but I don't know.
41:52
I mean, it's >> the prediction markets are the craziest thing that I've ever had to watch in my entire, you know, reporting, gambling life.
42:04
>> Are prediction markets net good for sports in terms of the businesses of like the Lakers?
42:11
there's more points of entry and so you wind up buying tickets and going in person or does it not affect or does it pull people away because >> you know I I think until people run out of money. >> Yeah.
42:23
>> You know people people run out of money these are these are it's they're very very addictive. >> Yeah.
42:30
>> Um and it's you know and and it and it's uh it's difficult to avoid because again we need to be on dopamine.
42:35
We are degenerate nation and uh and this this is in a way the perfect and most horrible product. >> Yeah. Interesting.
42:45
>> Uh >> yeah, >> we talked to the head a former head of the CFTC yesterday about it about where the regulation might go, whether you're going to get some of those uh gambling addiction warnings applied to prediction markets.
42:58
>> And what what about what about Calian Poly Markets market cap?
43:00
And you know what if you're Andre and Harowitz or how how are you predict you know if you're raising at a $50 billion valuation but you know at some point you have to believe that with the sports books and you get a complete proctologology exam if you're related to the sports books and then if you're cashier poly market you get a free pass to do anything.
43:22
Um, you'd think that that would have to come to an end at some point, but I And is that end when Trump is out of office? >> Yeah, who knows? That's the question. >> Uh, breakdown.
43:33
What's What's your updated view on whatnot? >> Oh, yeah.
43:39
>> Uh, we had Grant on the show.
43:39
Uh, I believe it was on Friday.
43:43
The the business is growing like crazy.
43:45
It seems like there's a lot of like traditional online commerce happening in this live format.
43:53
format. uh you know he gave an example of a guy uh selling fish doing quite well selling fish [clears throat] >> I love that example that was crazy that was >> ins and that's like you know the example that people always would give with China
44:09
is like you can go on these Chinese live streaming apps and buy like mangoes and kiwis and fruit and all this stuff and we hadn't haven't really seen that at scale in the US yet uh but but if you were going to put a number on What percentage of the activity on whatnot? Uh or what percentage of the volume on
44:26
Uh or what percentage of the volume on whatnot is like closer to gambling than commerce 90%.
44:36
I mean I mean I you know it is so much breaking um that I'm surprised that they don't have an insurance policy against breaking by selling you know normal memorabilia. Right.
44:47
I mean that that they're if if an And this is it's not as close to prediction markets, but uh if a bunch of attorneys general, you know, decide that they're going to go after breaking, you know, whatn not's going to go all the way down.
45:06
>> Um breakdown breaking for us.
45:10
>> It's like it's like I buy you're sitting there with a pack of cards. You're about to open it.
45:14
I can buy it for $10 and it's possible you pull a card that's worth a hundred.
45:18
Is that is that how it works?
45:20
And then people just spam that all day. by three.
45:21
You put in you put in 300 to win 3,000 or you put in 700 and then potentially you could get nothing >> which is which then becomes a lottery rule issue.
45:33
And whatnot has done a lot more recently to try to curtail it, but it's very hard to say that it's not gambling.
45:43
>> Um and so I I think they should be doing a lot more regular traditional eBay type memorabilia sales.
45:50
Yeah, >> I didn't believe in them in the beginning because I confused the smallness of their transactions that the average transaction I think was like $15 that they wouldn't be able to get a critical mass.
46:03
>> And to their credit, they certainly have gotten that.
46:06
>> Um, people enjoy watching the shows, uh, you know, they enjoy, uh, being a part of it.
46:12
Um, but again, as they get bigger, I'm surprised that they're not investing more in traditional commerce almost as an insurance policy.
46:22
>> Well, >> we got to figure out if they're gambling on fish.
46:25
[laughter] >> Because it's like it's got this fish might have caviar inside.
46:30
You don't know how much caviar is inside.
46:32
This is a real thing with fish.
46:34
By by the way, by the way, if anyone wants to uh uh have a great time, you should go to um Oklahoma where you can fish for paddlefish, which is pretty much a fish when you pull it out of the water, it looks like it was on the Simpsons. >> Okay.
46:50
>> Um and uh and you can fish all you want, but you must give Oklahoma the fish.
46:58
They will then clean out the caviar and then hand you back the fish. >> Oh, interesting. American Paddlefish. >> American Paddlefish.
47:04
Well, thank you so much for the tip and thanks for coming on the show. Great to see you. We'll talk to you soon.
47:09
Have a good rest of your day.
47:11
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47:14
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47:16
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47:19
Our next guest is Patrick [music] Whitel.
47:21
He's the founder of WTSL here with us with his first appearance.
47:26
Joining in just a minute or two.
47:29
There are some other posts in the timeline, but uh while we wait, let me tell everyone about Codeex.
47:34
Codeex is a powerful workspace for getting work done with AI agents.
47:38
Whether you're writing code, analyzing data, creating content, or automating business workflows, Codeex helps you move projects forward from start to finish.
47:45
And our next guest is with us here in the TDP Ultra. Let's bring in Patrick. How are you doing? >> What's up, boys? >> What's going on?
47:55
>> Thank you so much for taking the time. Uh >> I'm good.
47:57
I'm just in New York City. Can you see me? Okay.
47:59
I'm in this hotel room here in New York. >> You look great.
48:02
>> There's there's a a little bit of lag, but I can hear you fine. >> So, make it work.
48:07
>> Well, let me >> It's that hotel Wi-Fi. >> Yeah. Classic.
48:10
It'll get you every time. >> All right.
48:13
Well, sorry about that, boys. >> You're good. >> No, you're good. We can hear you fine. >> Uh, okay. Good.
48:18
>> So, yeah, give us a little bit of an overview of your firm, the thesis, uh, and then the recent deals.
48:26
Um so the idea was you know when we took Endeavor private um essentially what we what that effectively did was kind of we dismantled the company and essentially sold everything but our ownership interest in WME the talent agency >> and our position in TKO which is now I don't know around 61%.
48:49
But everything else that we ran and sat on, we sold.
48:52
And so effectively kind of eliminated the job.
48:55
Um and uh but going forward and look at the next chapter um I didn't really want to start um you know a new company uh right away.
49:04
And one of the things Egon Durban and I talked about um we had a really great long relationship with Silverlake.
49:13
everything we kind of did at uh Endeavor was really fueled by them and with their partnership.
49:20
>> And so out of that um I talked to Egon.
49:23
He goes, "Well, why don't we just keep uh investing in the field that you're in, you know, kind of entertainment, sports, content, the things that I've kind of spent my, you know, 30 years in, but on a much smaller level, you know."
49:36
So we just started with $250 million.
49:39
And the idea was to make, you know, kind of uh 20 to hundred million dollar investments um in in different things that were in our sector and help companies that I could, you know, have some influence on and help build.
49:50
Uh and so that's kind of what the whole thesis is around Whitell, the investment company.
49:56
And then the other part of it is when Egon bought the Raiders or invested into the Raiders I should say.
50:04
Um we had a WME had a football representation business and per the league you can't be a buyer and a seller.
50:11
So right >> um I took that entire group out and started win sports uh which is predominantly a football agency.
50:18
We're starting and doing a little bit of golf, too.
50:22
But it's really focused uh on building a really great dynamic football agency.
50:27
And we have also a handful of artists in there of clients, mine that I've worked with forever of actors predominantly and directors that uh just have been longtime clients.
50:37
So, they're also a part of it.
50:38
But the investment that we put into Alex Cooper's company came from Whitell. >> Got it. >> Awesome.
50:45
What are the key ingredients to a great investment, great media company in the modern era where it's individualled, influencerled, podcasting, live streaming, these types of things.
50:59
What are you looking for?
51:01
>> I think the reason why I was attracted to Alex is, I mean, again, going back, you know, 30 years, the one thing that is always the most important thing is having someone really talented. Yeah. >> And really special.
51:13
And Alex to me, I mean, obviously her podcast, you guys know how big it is, how uh influential she is.
51:22
She's a cultural powerhouse to, you know, kind of Gen Z women.
51:26
And uh but she's also built out already at Unwell, a really diversified company that is not only in these other sectors, but doing very well.
51:38
They're it's in live events.
51:40
They're in consumer products.
51:42
Of course, they're in content both, you know, kind of scripted and unscripted.
51:46
And that's at, you know, kind of the traditional media companies like a Hulu or Netflix, but it's also she's kind of started her own network of channels on YouTube and funding and producing content for YouTube, everything from micro dramas to just reality shows.
52:01
And that's gone exceedingly well, you know, on top of it.
52:05
And then lastly, an advertising agency um kind of for digital solutions for people creative agency that you know Alex was saying yesterday um that she thinks that by the end of 27 that the revenues of that will exceed her podcast revenues which is you know quite a feat.
52:24
So what I thought was interesting is yes, she's a big force as a podcaster and talent, but she really has uh built a company that I think can only grow in every one of these u sectors that we're in.
52:38
So that's what kind of attracted me to her.
52:39
to her. I think also the part about you know what you're seeing with the in this kind of creator economy is they can they don't for 30 years when we built our company if you had someone who had an idea like Alex is you had to go to one of the traditional media companies convince them to pay for it you know and
52:57
finance it distribute it market it >> um now of course people like Alex and others have done it themselves you guys know that very well and didn't need to go to the traditional uh players But um in that I think now you're seeing a bunch of capital coming to this space and are going to invest in it. You see
53:15
You see people raising funds for it.
53:17
I think that what Alex has done is really really hard.
53:22
And so I don't think it's at the agency business you do it at scale.
53:24
I don't think this is a thing you can do at scale.
53:28
I think there are going to be unique individuals and opportunities that can build multi-billion dollar media companies.
53:34
Um, and so that's where I think kind of where I want to kind of spend my time.
53:39
And uh, and I think I hopefully can help them think through the strategy, whether it's M&A or just in kind of figuring how to grow their content business, their live event business.
53:50
Hopefully my, you know, kind of three decades of doing this, uh, could be additive and, uh, and fun. >> Great.
53:59
>> Uh, all makes a lot of sense.
53:59
>> Uh, all makes a lot of sense. I I feel like so many different investors have been so excited about the creator economy for so long and have strug despite that excitement they tried to invest in the best thing to do was invest in the actual platforms right a
54:15
decade ago go invest in Spotify and and and you know do the YouTube seed round things things of that nature um but then all the other attempts you look back at like 2019 2020 people were like well what if we can invest and the in the sort of tools that these businesses are using. The problem
54:32
The problem there is that these businesses will just like they don't need a Quickbooks for creators.
54:38
These are just media businesses, right?
54:39
They just use QuickBooks.
54:41
You can use Bank of America.
54:43
You don't need a a fintech just for your business.
54:45
You don't need a creators don't need an MX card.
54:47
They can just use AMX or or RAMP or or whatever it is.
54:52
>> And so, um it's come it's becoming a lot more clear to me.
54:55
And then even looking at investing in the early stage of creators, the best creators early on are scrappy.
55:02
They figure out how to get an audience without a lot of capital.
55:04
They can just turn on their phone and start recording.
55:08
Maybe they hire an editor.
55:10
And so they can ramp revenue pretty quickly.
55:12
And I think what investing in this category is going to look like is like people like you waiting to to see who these sort of power law creators are and then going in and investing real dollars once they've established like at least the beginnings of of a of a platform.
55:29
platform. um just because I looking at the early stage I don't there's a lot of early stage content creators that I'm bullish on but none of them the smart ones would take money because they're like well capital is not a constraint for my business the constraint is like how do I reach more people how do I how do I grow my existing business >> and these businesses at least on the advertising side just generate a lot of cash
55:53
>> I I think perfectly said and I think it's all the more reason why I think there will be a lot of people rushing to this face >> and will I I think make the wrong decisions because to what what you just described you have to get to this place
56:06
and where Alex came to us like it isn't like she needs the money I mean obviously you know it's well documented what her Spotify deal is alone and um you know and and and will only grow there the Oops, what was that? >> That was an air horn for the Spotify
56:19
>> That was an air horn for the Spotify deal.
56:21
>> Cha-ching >> and the serious deal.
56:21
[laughter] >> Yeah, she she's put up some huge numbers.
56:25
[clears throat] Yeah, but the point of it is that but she's like, "Listen, you know, I need help.
56:28
You know, I want the, you know, smart people around us to help kind of grow it and think through exactly what you described."
56:34
And what's interesting is the traditional media companies, they they are kind of saying, "Listen, we don't know how to get to this audience that you reach and we don't really know how to do creator stuff."
56:46
So, she's kind of going to, I think, be able to, if we do this right, go back and forth, have her own ideas, her own kind of things that we will incubate and and do on YouTube, but also for the traditional media companies.
56:59
And that's a kind of a hard thing to do because I don't know many people who can do both, at least have come along historically.
57:05
So, uh, you know, and also she's, uh, you know, her audience follows her as she's becoming a new mother. Yeah.
57:13
And I think that's going to open up a whole different, you know, categories, not only consumer products, but other things that she can kind of get involved in >> that her audience is going through those same things.
57:23
And I think there's just an authenticity to her and a connection that is real.
57:27
And it always starts with that.
57:29
You got to have like great talent >> um to build these things.
57:31
And she is very ambitious and you know, and loves it.
57:36
I mean, just loves what she's doing every day.
57:38
So uh it's going to be fun.
57:41
How are you thinking about flow back from the creator economy to traditional media to Hollywood?
57:45
Uh obviously we've seen the the the Netflix the Spotify deals but the more interesting trend that emerged this summer was around obsession and backrooms and Iron Lung these YouTube creators these independent uh you know new new filmmakers who were able to put up really incredible numbers at the box office.
58:07
If we were having this conversation in two years and you told me that uh there was an Alex Cooper directed uh romcom that put up 200 million at the box office, I'd be like, "Yeah, that tracks."
58:17
But uh is Hollywood set up to embrace a new modern creator now?
58:24
Because it's because in the past it's always been, "Well, take take six months off your current podcast to come do a Hollywood project and maybe you'll make six figures.
58:34
Maybe maybe a million dollars is in the mail and that's just not enough to take the whole podcast down for six months while you go do a project.
58:44
>> Yeah, I think you're right.
58:44
I I think where you're going to see it is and you referenced those two movies. Yeah.
58:49
>> Is what what's happened with the tools and this is not not brand new, but like >> you know when Chris Nolan was 15 years old, right?
58:55
He either had to get his like you know video camera out or go rent film equipment if you actually wanted to shoot a short film.
59:00
He'd actually go rent lights and cameras and all that.
59:04
And so the kid today and whether it's just on Tik Tok or YouTube >> that 15-year-old Chris Nolan >> Yeah.
59:12
>> Yeah. is doing that every day and getting really [clears throat] really good >> at making content and coming up with ideas and very fascination of filmmakers are going to come from >> and [clears throat] you know we would used to go to film schools and and not that they won't still come from film
59:29
schools but I think what you're going to see is the writer director >> uh creator in the film business and in television is going to come there and the power of like both of those things when you kind of like you know get the kind verality of online and you can incubate things there. So I think part
59:44
So I think part of what I think will happen with Alex is she'll have an idea >> that we'll do there and just will start as a micro drama or something for YouTube. >> Yep. >> And it'll catch on. Yeah.
59:56
>> Like this and you're going to socialize it.
59:58
So by the time you go out then you could go make it as a feature film or as a a show for Netflix or whatever.
1:00:01
But you've also got this built-in awareness.
1:00:05
I mean, obviously you guys followed it, but Back Rooms was, >> you know, massively well known by a target audience long before it went out, right?
1:00:12
And >> so, I think that's where I think it'll land.
1:00:15
I think the idea of like leaving your podcast to do it, I think is still going to be risky, but these other people are sitting here every day making really, really good stuff, really good content. Yeah.
1:00:26
>> Um, and so I think that's exciting.
1:00:26
>> Um, and so I think that's exciting. uh and uh you know we'll see long term how Hollywood embraces that because ultimately like you know where the role of the studios are in that and how does the studios compete you know he made that movie for $700,000 it looked really
1:00:44
good you know for for you know for that and and those efficiencies are only going to get better and better >> totally >> last last question I have before you leave um I'm curious how you think about uh generating returns from from an investment like like you're making an unwell. >> Uh I'm I'm sure I'm sure you have a
1:01:01
>> Uh I'm I'm sure I'm sure you have a preference on it.
1:01:03
You probably make back the original investment over the next few years and on top of that it's just uh you're you're you're in the money.
1:01:10
But is this the kind of thing that uh you and and um the team want to just own and op you know help operate for 30 years or do you think that there's going to be in 10 years from now you know bigger set of buyers that would come in and and do you know majority buyout of of these type of platform creator businesses.
1:01:31
>> You know we it's funny I talked to Alex about that.
1:01:32
I mean because obviously it's her company and how she decides to kind of grow it.
1:01:35
Um and she's not really sure.
1:01:39
sure. I think she wants to keep doing this kind of forever and I think one of the things that you know when we went through it you know we started our own company uh several they came and invested and over time as we bought other things obviously our shares got diluted down and we owned less and less of the company but the company became
1:01:56
worth you know obviously exponentially more but we still kept control of the company and had the governance of that and so I kind of look at it in a similar light here is I think as long as Alex wants to do it yes I think there'll be room for other capital partners to come in if they if if needed and if wanted. Um but I think my experience with
1:02:13
Um but I think my experience with Silverlake uh is kind of like, you know, I got a bias to let's keep building something great as long as we can and as long as we're enjoying it and and then I think the the you know, the exits and all that will kind of take care of themselves.
1:02:29
>> But you know, she started this company.
1:02:31
It's you know, it is her.
1:02:31
So I I I think and she's got such a incredible work ethic.
1:02:37
I just think she's gonna be doing it for a long time and, you know, just got to grow it and own it.
1:02:41
That's that's my >> She's done a fantastic job. Love it.
1:02:45
Well, thank you so much for taking the time to come chat with us. >> Great to meet you.
1:02:47
Let's >> likewise and congrats on what everything you guys have done. It's incredible.
1:02:51
Um, you know, start this thing and, you know, the Open AI deal. It's just awesome.
1:02:57
And even down in LA, people are uh >> watching you guys.
1:03:01
So, um, you know, >> spend some more time.
1:03:04
Uh I saw you saw the uh Bob Iger thing today.
1:03:08
>> Yeah, >> that was incredible. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
1:03:11
A lot of that first thing that made me optimistic on LA in a long time. [laughter] >> Yeah.
1:03:16
>> Everyone's like, "Oh, the California is falling apart. LA is a disaster."
1:03:19
Bob and Josh are just like, "We're dropping 12. 5 billion.
1:03:24
We're setting a new record. We're going." It's >> incredible. It's going great. >> I love it. Well, thank you so much. >> Thanks a lot, man. >> Goodbye. Talk to you soon. Congrats.
1:03:32
Let me tell you about public. com.
1:03:33
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1:03:35
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1:03:39
Our next guest is from Code Rabbit.
1:03:41
We have Hard Gil, the CEO here with a big fund raise.
1:03:47
We got to warm up the gong. How you doing?
1:03:50
>> Hey folks, I'm pretty good. How are you? >> Welcome. >> Tell us the news. Welcome back.
1:03:56
>> Well, he's been on the show before, haven't you? >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. Have you?
1:03:57
But it's been it's been maybe a year and you didn't have an orange background.
1:04:04
>> Can you up the volume, please? Sorry. Um >> Oh, sorry.
1:04:06
Um well, give us the news. Tell us what happened.
1:04:10
I want to hit the gong for you.
1:04:11
And then we have a bunch of questions about the business. >> Yeah.
1:04:15
So, we're pretty excited to announce like series round of funding.
1:04:17
So, we just ended up raising $143 million at a nice billion dollar valuation.
1:04:23
So officially a unicorn now >> and um in a in a short order like we started like 2 and a half years back.
1:04:30
>> Um so it's been an amazing ride for >> what's been the biggest >> creating only $500 million of value a year. >> Not bad. Not bad. Uh yeah.
1:04:37
What's been the biggest driver of growth?
1:04:39
What do customers uh like about Code Rabbit more than anything else?
1:04:44
What is what what's the real uh the real growth vector?
1:04:49
>> Yeah, we're pretty much like riding a wave of AI code generation here.
1:04:50
wave of AI code generation here. So the growth is it's a second order effect of growth of cloud codeex cursor as you know like the biggest use case for generative API has been code generation >> and that's what's leading to the
1:05:03
bottleneck downstream with code reviews now being a massive massive bottleneck and a choke point >> and that's where code gravity is right now the market leader like providing automated validation and building trust in these AI outputs and that's what is bringing all the growth to our doorsteps. Yeah, unpack a little bit
1:05:16
Yeah, unpack a little bit about I was just reading on Hacker News the death of the the the mid-tier engineer.
1:05:23
You either need uh a vibe coder who can just uh you know hammer prompts or you need a real uh experienced expert architect to make any headway and the messy middle is getting much messier with uh endless code huge PRs huge code reviewing steps that are unmanageable without AI.
1:05:43
What is the correct balancing uh act that a company should be pulling off to actually move quickly, not run up the budget, but still be able to understand their system and get a good result?
1:05:58
>> Yeah, it's pure chaos right now.
1:05:58
I mean, especially like the recent inflection point we have seen with these agents becoming more and more capable like in the last I would say 3 to six months have been amazing with some of these models like OPUS 4 5 being so capable and >> being able to run for longer periods of time.
1:06:13
And what that means is that the inner loop of coding is now fully automated.
1:06:18
Like you can just go from idea to code without even going through like planning process of linear and Jira tickets anymore.
1:06:25
Even linear famously did a blog post that issue systems are dead which is a truth like now your ideas are just being translated to code directly. >> Yeah.
1:06:34
>> And it's not just the developers writing code.
1:06:36
code. Now you are seeing as you said like product managers even designers who were nontechnical in terms of coding capabilities are now actually opening pull requests >> and on top of that we are now seeing every company wants to be a coding company like now we are seeing Spotify release a coding app I mean linear is
1:06:52
writing code notion is writing code >> um data dog wants to write code or sentry everyone's writing code right >> so what that is leading to is like a massive like backlog of the code changes you now have to validate and um uh understand those massive outputs and then ship to production. So the role of
1:07:08
So the role of human um has become more of a reviewer now.
1:07:13
So you're every day you're waking up, you're deciding which AI task I take to completion, where where do I add my taste? >> Mhm.
1:07:21
>> And it's a taste thing.
1:07:21
It's a judgment thing now which is scarce now.
1:07:23
So that's what we helping scale.
1:07:24
So what code rabbit does is it first of all uh fights uh fire with fire essentially like you're making cloud code fight with code rabbit in a loop.
1:07:33
So it's a lot of loop engineering aspect of it.
1:07:34
Making sure your changes are all um meeting all the guardrails or the or the premerge checks that you have. >> Yeah.
1:07:43
>> Then after that we are helping the reviewers also triage and prioritize the work.
1:07:47
So the nature of planning has now shifted downstream because that's the joke point. >> Mhm.
1:07:51
>> And thirdly we're helping the reviewers also understand the changes.
1:07:53
also understand the changes. So no one's looking at the code which is the fun part like the u this is like the biggest inflection I've seen like even when I'm not reading the code anymore expecting a reviewer to do that is is certainly
1:08:05
impossible now >> so the what codeabit is also doing is like raising the abstraction of understanding these changes like where you're not looking at lines of code but understanding the blast radius and the architectural impact of those changes. >> Uh I have one last question go for it.
1:08:16
>> Uh I have one last question go for it.
1:08:18
>> Uh I'm interested in the opportunity internationally you're expanding.
1:08:21
uh how big is the opportunity in Europe, in Asia, abroad?
1:08:25
How focused are you on it?
1:08:28
Is there a unique opportunity because uh other companies are maybe less serious about international expansion and so you can be uh a more trusted partner faster accelerate there or is it just the logical uh next step for your company to to expand internationally because there's demand and pull everywhere? >> Right.
1:08:49
>> Right. for us like we have always had like pull from all segments of the market even globally like when we started like initially we went viral in Japan which was so funny right >> um and even in this round like we are partnering with a partner in like the
1:09:04
one of the VCs who led that round atomico is a very large fund out of Europe >> BMW ventures invested in that round so BMW has one of our early customers who believed in us >> um so massive opportunity I think it's a global opportunity like the developers >> [laughter] >> across the globe cars. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> An M3, M2, M4.
1:09:28
>> I was thinking a wrapped i8. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
1:09:30
[laughter] Ideally, >> doors do go up. >> Yeah. >> On the i8. >> Yeah.
1:09:36
>> Um >> anyway, >> sorry to interrupt, but what was uh what were people most skeptical about with uh in regard like during the financing process?
1:09:44
Obviously a bunch, you know, sounds like a bunch of customers invested.
1:09:47
They don't they they have a good uh deal uh for the product, but um you know, space cursor buys graphite.
1:09:58
I'm sure that was an accelerant to your business >> uh in some ways, but it also signals that like these companies that are generating code want to >> do everything do everything.
1:10:08
And uh and so I think you can pro like I imagine a good argument is like you know it's helpful to have um a non-lab review your code you know like a third party be be in that flow.
1:10:22
But how did you answer that question?
1:10:25
>> No that's a great question.
1:10:25
This was one of the interesting fundraisers I've done.
1:10:28
Like this is my third startup by the way.
1:10:30
I've like seen all kind of fundraises.
1:10:32
>> This one you can clearly see like there's a lot of like anxiety in the market when it comes to the SDLC space.
1:10:38
like everyone's like just concentrating their capital on a few model labs.
1:10:42
Everyone wants to be in anthropic for instance, right?
1:10:44
And the other dynamic itself is like what does the future of SDLC look like?
1:10:48
I mean is code review step even needed, right?
1:10:51
I mean people are like completely on the fence on what the future of I mean you know like Dario gets on the stage and says that you don't need software engineers anymore, right?
1:11:00
right? Um so all those like anxiety had been there which we had to like talk to the investors to make them understand where this is all going to land where the stable ground is and code reviews in in fact like you bring up cursor it's a great example like what we have seen in the last three years even the code editors are not future proof like like
1:11:17
cursor started with tab completion and then they got blindsided by cloud code which was almost like a Yahoo versus kind of a Google moment for them right >> on the other hand the code reviews the guardrails they never go away like you can never have a scenario where you're going to take AI code and ship it to real customers without having any sort of guardrails in place. So the GitHub is
1:11:33
So the GitHub is becoming like a choke point for a good reason.
1:11:38
It's under a lot of distress as you know but that is kind of a sign of things to come like that is the only place where you can actually take a look at the changes and then approve them. >> Yeah.
1:11:47
>> And this is kind of like an example um that I'll give you from from my first startup was in the observability space.
1:11:54
I had seen kind of the same thing happen um where um when microservices were taking off, cloud was taking off, there was a lot of chaos.
1:12:00
So operators were kind of flying blind and then data dog comes in and defines this whole category of observability, right?
1:12:08
And became a massively valuable business like while AWS, GCP and they were all growing but data dog also continued to become a standalone company.
1:12:16
>> Uh same thing we're seeing with code reviews now there's a lot of chaos.
1:12:19
Explanability has become a bottleneck just like observability now you have an explanability problem.
1:12:24
>> So in a way like code um code rabbit is now kind of becoming the data dog of this new world and very interestingly data dog is one of the investors in this round as well.
1:12:33
So they see the analogy here as well. Yeah >> I love it.
1:12:37
Well congratulations and thank you so much for coming on the show. >> Awesome progress.
1:12:40
>> Have a great rest of the team on the milestone.
1:12:42
>> We'll talk to you soon. Have a good day. >> Thanks folks. >> Cheers.
1:12:45
>> Let me tell you about Crowd Strike. Your business is AI.
1:12:46
their business is securing it.
1:12:48
CrowdStrike secures AI and stops breaches.
1:12:51
Our next guest is Jeff Huber returning to the show.
1:12:54
I think it's been over a year.
1:12:56
He's the founder and CEO of Chroma.
1:12:58
Uh and we got some good news from Jeff Huber. Let's bring him in.
1:13:03
I know we were keeping you waiting, Jeff. Sorry for that. Running late today. How you doing? >> Good. I'm doing good, guys. Good to see you again. Great.
1:13:12
>> Good to see you again. >> Too long.
1:13:13
>> Give us the latest in your world.
1:13:13
will take us through recent announcements and then we can go all over the place I'm sure. >> Let's do it.
1:13:20
Um I think it's been a really interesting uh year in AI and in particular you know seeing how companies are more deeply adopting AI agents.
1:13:27
I think like as we sort of reflect on like the biggest gap in AI still feels like memory is the biggest gap.
1:13:33
I mean, I'm sure you all try to use agents all the time and they're constantly forgetting how to do new things and don't have the right context and so >> uh yeah, we're we're announcing on the show uh kind of our uh solution to that. >> Yes. Take us through it. What is Zeitgeist?
1:13:51
Yeah, I think like uh in short form um there's probably a lot of sophisticated approaches to solving memory for AI, but in very simple form if you can get AI agents just to be able to write things down and then later find those things uh you know that's all you need and in some ways I think Wikipedia solved it 20 years ago.
1:14:07
You can call it a revolutionary data model. It's just a wiki.
1:14:10
Um and so >> I think really inspired by like how open claw and permit agent have been managing markdown files.
1:14:16
I was about to ask like why not just a bunch of markdown files?
1:14:22
Why not just take the open claw vibe coder Mac mini guy and scale it up to the organization of a thousand people in the enterprise.
1:14:31
>> It's a great place to start.
1:14:31
Um you know as our team was adopting this technology over the last like three or four months uh you know we wanted like this shared memory layer for our whole team that knows everything about our whole company really.
1:14:42
And you've got to think about concurrency control and access control and versioning and lineage and just a bunch of infrastructure things that matter as the data set scales.
1:14:52
>> So, so as a concrete example, like there might be someone in human resources that's developed a skill to give people raises, but you don't necessarily want that skill proliferating across the entire organization.
1:15:02
[laughter] So, otherwise, everyone's just giving themselves raises left and right.
1:15:05
Is that is that a reasonable example? >> I think so. Yeah.
1:15:10
Hopefully the other access control systems would not allow anybody to give anybody a raise, right?
1:15:15
But um >> uh yeah, maybe more grounded like what we've seen amongst our own team is that like now our engineering team the first place they go and they have a technical question is they ask foundation products called they ask foundation that question
1:15:27
and foundation has seen >> all of our notion docs, all of our Google drive docs, all of our coding agent sessions which actually have so much like high value tacid information in them about how our team works, how they operate, what we care about. Um but
1:15:39
Um but now it spreads the customer support's constantly asking it questions, sales, GTM's asking it questions.
1:15:44
It's really become this like repository of everything we know. So >> yeah.
1:15:48
Uh what take us through the the shape of the core business uh the the launch of Chroma cloud, how that business is going just overall demand for for core products in and around the AI boom because everything's sort of booming and every systems like straining.
1:16:04
What's your experience been?
1:16:08
Yes, we launched Kermit Cloud in late 2025.
1:16:10
Um, we now have close to a thousand paying customers on the product.
1:16:14
Um, and tens of thousands of uh [laughter] other users who uh, you know, we'll we'll bring on board soon.
1:16:20
Um, you know, I think like these lower level infrastructure primitives are cool, right?
1:16:26
Um, a core core database, core search, core operations.
1:16:29
Um, they allow developers to pick it up and build useful applications.
1:16:33
Um, as we were looking at the market and seeing really what our customers were building, we realized there was an opportunity to meet them where they were.
1:16:41
They were all asking us, hey, how do we build how do we build wiks?
1:16:44
Uh, how do we solve access control?
1:16:46
How do we solve versioning just time and time again?
1:16:47
And so, you know, us just building those infrastructure primitives for customers to use allows them to, you know, focus on what that actually differentiates their business.
1:16:56
Um, so >> give me your not your AGI timelines, but your timeline to just good search.
1:17:01
I feel like I go into my Gmail and I search for something, it's still bad.
1:17:09
And I want an LLM to be involved, but I don't want it to be as slow as a current LM.
1:17:13
I know I can wire it up to codeex or whatever and and have it read through everything, but I don't want to wait 10 minutes, but I also don't want the current experience.
1:17:22
And I feel like there will be a merging of these two, but do we need to bake it into an ASIC or like how complex is it going to be until like you just show up to a website and the search function is magical and also still as fast as you remember it?
1:17:39
>> Yeah, I think there's a few different pieces of the puzzle.
1:17:41
So number one is like having highly expressive, accurate and fast search at the database layer, right?
1:17:47
And then the second piece of that is like the agent itself or the model being really fast.
1:17:50
Um, you know, one thing that we made a bet on earlier this year was a gentic search becoming like the default that all searches will go through a model.
1:17:58
Um, this is what it the bitter I think the bitter lesson means for search is that like you know you'll spend more tokens, you'll use more inference.
1:18:05
That's how you get better at search.
1:18:07
Um, and so we released a model in the spring called context one.
1:18:09
Um, it's a fine tune of GPG OSS 20D.
1:18:11
And that model on Cerebris today already runs at 3,000 hooks per second.
1:18:16
Um, and we were targeting I think yeah, Talis uh got bought last week.
1:18:22
I think you guys covered that.
1:18:24
>> Chad Jimmy, you know, >> chat Jimmy.
1:18:28
>> The best proof that names don't matter when the when the product >> when the product's really technical and good.
1:18:34
>> The team has got cracked.
1:18:34
You can name your product whatever you want. [laughter] >> ChatJimmy.
1:18:41
>> We shared investor, you know, we were targeting context running at like 15,000 or 20,000 hooks per second on that chip.
1:18:46
that I think like if you think about that's going to come right that's coming uh this year and that's going to change how we really rewire how people think about language models. >> Yeah.
1:18:53
>> Yeah. Is there still um like even though the the the the token speed is very quick in that example, is there a delay to sort of like fire up the chip like load load data into memory, build the context window, uh like do whatever you need to to actually get the once the
1:19:10
inference is cooking, I can imagine it being very fast, but is there I if you're dealing with something that's like a scaled email product and you have millions of users that that are going to be searching things randomly, like you can't store all of that in like in memory all the time. So like like what
1:19:26
So like like what like what is the process there?
1:19:29
Is that a meaningful barrier or not?
1:19:34
>> I think fast inference maybe sort of what you're implying here is like fast inference does not solve just sort of for you context engineering like you still have to make sure that you're bringing the model the right information the right granularity of information letting it forget information successfully such that it can refocus.
1:19:50
Um, and so and I think it's been cool to see like ConX engineering to some degree get folded back into the model, but also as we've seen as of late like you know really good harnesses like the stuff from primex like really good harnesses
1:20:02
that are targeting specific tasks um you know that is in some ways comics engineering and like they can outperform Frontier models by a huge margin and so I think there's still huge gains to to context engineering. >> Jordy, anything else? >> Jordy, anything else?
1:20:16
>> I got more questions but we're we're running behind.
1:20:17
Yeah, sorry we >> Great to Great to see you, Jeff.
1:20:19
Let's not let it be so long ago.
1:20:22
>> Yeah, let's do it again soon.
1:20:23
>> Congrats on all the all the progress.
1:20:24
>> Yeah, thank you so much for coming on the show. We'll talk to you soon. Have a good one.
1:20:28
>> Let me tell you about Figma. Agents, meet the canvas.
1:20:30
Your AI agents can now create and modify your Figma files with design system context. Go check it out.
1:20:37
Up next, we're going back to back again.
1:20:40
Sean Maguire is doing deals left and right.
1:20:43
He said, "I want the entire Gundo. I want every gun."
1:20:45
kind of like the Kushner of Deep Tech to just everything.
1:20:52
>> But we got Sean McGuire and Saurin Monro Anderson from Nuros. Great to see. How you guys doing?
1:20:58
>> How does it feel to have a lot of money? >> Yeah, >> it's great.
1:21:03
>> Job's [snorts] finished.
1:21:04
>> Take us through take us through the deal. What happened?
1:21:08
>> Yeah, I mean uh overall this year has been super super strong.
1:21:10
Uh we've been growing like crazy, building the team, producing a lot more drones.
1:21:16
We're up to about 1,200 a week in terms of production output.
1:21:20
Um so things are going really really well there.
1:21:23
Um and we've also started expanding into multiple product lines.
1:21:26
Um so we just started talking publicly about Bandit, which is our interceptor drone.
1:21:30
Um and really this round is uh fuel on the fire to go expand to to new verticals and make bigger investments into the the core technology behind the platform.
1:21:40
So, uh, you know, core business doing extremely well and now we're ready to take some some big swings.
1:21:46
>> How much did you raise?
1:21:49
>> We raised 250 million led by >> and as um, >> let's go. >> All right.
1:21:56
I'm most This is the third round we've either led or co-led in this company. >> Yeah, you were. >> Yeah. Led the seed.
1:22:04
Um, there was a preede led by Ian Roundtree from Kantos.
1:22:09
Got to give him a shout out.
1:22:09
Yeah, >> he connected me with Saurin back in the day, but then we also Sequoa co-led the B and co-led the C.
1:22:18
>> And so that is I'd say that's max conviction, boys.
1:22:20
Like that's that's up there. >> Yeah. Uh really really cool.
1:22:22
Uh thing I'm most interested in for you, Saurin, is like how is the American supply chain developing?
1:22:31
How much are you guys having to take on yourself versus are there are there companies coming out of the woodwork hitting you up saying, "Hey, I can make this.
1:22:39
I can make that and you're and you're vetting >> rumors of an American drone motor company because those were in really short supply.
1:22:46
But walk us through what's going on on the supply chain side.
1:22:48
Where are their green shoots?
1:22:50
Where are they where where are you issuing like a call for new startups?
1:22:57
>> Yeah, it definitely depends on what part of the supply chain and it's pretty varied across.
1:23:00
So we have taken the overall strategy of designing our core components inhouse.
1:23:06
Um we really specialize in the electronics design.
1:23:08
So this is things like the radios and the flight computers.
1:23:12
So when we're going and figuring out how to build these at scale, um we're going directly to the chip companies.
1:23:18
We're going to many different uh board houses.
1:23:20
We get a lot of control down at the granular level of these subcomponents and the materials going into these parts.
1:23:27
Um, we do a similar thing with motors where like we are sourcing neodymium, non-Chinese neodymium where we have a uh place where we can get that processed outside of China and then we're also working with multiple motor companies uh including one of the American motor companies that has started up recently.
1:23:45
So I think because drones are getting so much attention, there are um some really capable companies uh you know like like West Mag is one of the the motor companies that's making fantastic progress. We benefit from that.
1:23:57
Uh but we also know that we need to control our own destiny in many of these areas.
1:24:02
So we are going very vertical in our design and our manufacturing and the intent is to be uh multiple like sourced have multiple sources for all of these critical things.
1:24:15
>> Uh problem number one feels like you're on the path which is as a country we need to figure out a way to make a ton of these as fast as possible.
1:24:22
Second is maybe like capability and form factor and how do you basically push the form factor forward.
1:24:30
Sometime between when the last time you were on and now I saw video of a drone where effectively the whole body of the drone was spinning and it almost made it invisible.
1:24:41
Uh and it was very very scary looking.
1:24:45
>> Um it feels like there's a lot that can be done on the form factor side.
1:24:48
uh how important is that to the company right now versus just problem solving problem number one?
1:24:57
>> Yeah, I mean we're constantly iterating on form factor for archer u basically figuring out ways that it can be a better product for the soldiers.
1:25:03
These are really granular things like uh for example you know every time they train with it they find this one little like plastic part breaks and so then you need to go and figure out how to change that plastic part.
1:25:15
That's a really really specific uh example, but it we get a lot of advantage by having now uh thou tens of thousands of drones deployed um and constantly doing that iteration with the the end users.
1:25:27
But in terms of overall form factor, uh the the biggest thing I would look at right now is uh Bandit, which is our interceptor.
1:25:34
So it is pretty much all of the same components from Archer, but in a new airframe with a different payload.
1:25:41
It's designed for maximum speed versus uh really like maximum range with a with a heavy payload and it's designed to go and chase down other drones.
1:25:50
It's a great example of how we've built this ecosystem of these core components that we can produce at scale with a secure supply chain and now we're applying all of that to a new form factor and we're able to go and you know chase down shot heads with it which is uh something that we cannot do with the the current product line today. >> Wow.
1:26:09
Can you uh explain like M5 sort of the the the buyer here and and how the how the drone procurement process will change over the next few years because uh drones don't like you'd think like air force they fly but I'm sure the Navy needs drones.
1:26:27
I'm sure the army needs drones.
1:26:29
Um recently Space Force was built up and that makes very that that makes a lot of sense for where space is.
1:26:35
But uh you could see selling to the Coast Guard, selling to different branches of the military even within >> Are you saying we need drone force?
1:26:41
>> We definitely maybe maybe that's the solution.
1:26:43
But uh but I can imagine like the Navy Seals needing something different than o other Navy servicemen.
1:26:49
And so how diverse will your customer base be within the armed forces, within the Department of War?
1:26:55
How how does it break down currently?
1:26:58
Is there one buyer and then they do deployment and repurposing or are you actually interfacing with smaller segments of the armed forces?
1:27:10
>> Yeah, it's a great question.
1:27:10
So, today we sell to every service branch of the US military, but the Army and the Marine Corps are the largest volume customers.
1:27:21
Um Navy and Air Force have less of a uh you know a large quantity demand at least for archer because archer is really designed for maneuver forces uh you know striking targets within a 20 km radius and and that's really the the specialty of the army and the marine corps.
1:27:38
Um however with with bandit um you know the counter UAS system that is I think very applicable to the air force with uh protecting air bases as one example.
1:27:48
Um but we design all of our products to be useful in many different domains and uh the you know in our business development team um they are broken down by service but not by product and so we really want our the folks who are interfacing day-to-day with the customer.
1:28:04
So this is our our BD team and and our u mission success team.
1:28:09
We want them to be really intimately familiar with the the customer's needs and focusing on, you know, what does that specific service um want so we can deliver them the best product.
1:28:19
>> How are you thinking about lessons from that?
1:28:21
>> John, let me just add to that. Yeah.
1:28:22
>> So, you know, you talked about a bunch of the American Department of War customers. >> Sure.
1:28:28
>> These Saurin has also already started international sales.
1:28:30
Y So, so like obviously these products are needed all over the world. >> Yeah.
1:28:34
And then with this next product, Bandit, the interceptor product, you get into like we need to defend pretty much all critical infrastructure.
1:28:41
And with the Iran war, especially what happened in the Gulf, >> it's it's not just going to be government customers.
1:28:49
>> I think that >> if you're building a data center, you're going to have to buy interceptors, you know, like and you'll do it in cooperation with your government, but maybe the dollars will come from, you know, whoever has owns the oil rig, Exxon or anyone.
1:29:02
And I just this this problem is so big and it's gone it's like already going beyond the traditional just department of war procurement cycle and we're seeing it just extremely strongly at NOS with their demand. >> Mhm.
1:29:17
Um lessons from the F-35 program uh some really amazing technology also tensions between different uh branches for different features that might have delayed might have caused cost overruns.
1:29:32
There's a bunch of different ways you can tell the story of the F-35, but uh are you leaning more into modularity than another company might?
1:29:39
Are you trying to are there benefits and tradeoffs of modularity at your current scale?
1:29:46
Or is there something where you're thinking, okay, down the line we'll need different products, so let's set things up now to be prepared for when that comes.
1:29:57
>> Yeah, that's exactly right, actually.
1:29:57
Um and we've started really trying to instill this in the engineering team which is breaking down our systems by uh you know the logical component and subcomponent level um and thinking about what is going to transfer to the next product and being really smart about what every interface between components looks like.
1:30:18
Um, Nuros, our our theory of victory is building a component ecosystem um, and making it so every new product is is utilizing that and so we just build this flywheel.
1:30:28
Um, you know, a lot of companies have done this really well with software.
1:30:32
Nuros is trying to do this with with hardware as well.
1:30:34
Uh, and that that is very clear as we're developing Bandit that we're able to reuse so much of the componentry.
1:30:39
I will say that modularity is generally um hard for mass manufacturing.
1:30:45
um like you can take parts of a design but actually having individual components is is generally harder for making a really mass manufactured product.
1:30:54
But it is something that our customers demand especially with components like radios.
1:30:59
We've just seen that you have to be able to switch out your comms quickly.
1:31:01
And as we redesign this next generation of the drone, we're doing a a full groundup redesign from what you see today.
1:31:08
um and that is going to be in service partially in service of uh modularity but also setting the requirement to be manufacturable at a million per year.
1:31:17
So those things are somewhat at tension with each other but we have to we have to figure out the right line in between.
1:31:25
Sean, it's >> how many Oh, >> it's your third investment into this company.
1:31:29
You have a ton of capital.
1:31:29
Are you in terms of your defense tech investing arc?
1:31:34
Are you in growth investor mindset now?
1:31:38
Are you going to be do you expect to do fewer seed checks really early stage companies and focus on growth stage board seeds figuring out the public markets doing later stage deals or is there still an opportunity for early stage defense tech in your mind?
1:31:58
>> Yeah, I mean many people will disagree with me on this but I am personally more in the growth mindset now.
1:32:03
I think there are these moment in time, you know, these why nows that happen that create an opportunity for the first movers to go just like build companies that could not have existed prior.
1:32:15
And the Ukraine war was that for a lot of defense tech and so like the companies that were started immediately then or right before and are actually delivering value, you know, abroad in some of these active theaters, like they're just in a different level than the ones just getting started now.
1:32:32
And I I personally think it's going to be hard to catch up for a lot of these.
1:32:36
I do think there are, you know, like let's say there are 10 very successful defense tech companies started in this decade or so.
1:32:44
My guess is seven of them have already been started and we know the names. Yeah.
1:32:48
>> Maybe there's opportunity for like >> two or three more.
1:32:51
>> So I like I am open-minded and paying attention to the space, but like it's is more active on the growth side. Yeah.
1:32:59
>> And I got to say on that, Nuros is still today a deeply underappreciated company. Like $2.
1:33:04
5 billion valuation, that's cool and great.
1:33:08
These guys, their revenue is growing at an insane clip.
1:33:10
Actually, very efficiently from a financial perspective, which is very rare for a hardware company.
1:33:16
um they are actually like having profound impact in theater right now in multiple places >> and like that caliber of company is very very rare.
1:33:28
There's maybe another couple companies >> in that you know group but this company kicks ass. [laughter] >> I love it. >> Good. Great way to sum it up. Last question I have.
1:33:39
Uh how meaningful is drone racing as a pipeline for talent?
1:33:43
like are there people that that uh I'm sure I'm sure you you have um plenty of attention from from that world given you know the meteoric rise of Neuros is is like the what what the IMO medalists are to Scott Woo is [laughter] that is that what drone racing is for Neuros >> a little bit. Yeah.
1:34:02
Basically our whole flight test team is uh like insanely good drone pilots and we're we we've actually started going to the biggest drone racing events uh just to be there have a presence and like show people that there is something that they can come and work on that is actually a real career like drone racing uh is not much of a career at least for for the majority of people who partake in it.
1:34:24
Um and honestly I just wish it was bigger because it is such a fantastic source of of talent.
1:34:30
So my my theory is that um over time as military FPV is really growing, it'll um eventually mean that the the hobbyist FPV world will come along with it and we'll see more um more very very cool racing events happening.
1:34:46
>> I just got to add one more pipeline which is you know now that these guys are doing very [snorts] very real deployments they have a pipeline of former special forces operators joining the company.
1:34:57
And I mean for me as like an American that used to work in in that world as a civilian makes me very very proud.
1:35:04
So the drone racing you know is where Saurin comes from.
1:35:06
But it's really incredible to see these guys hiring a bunch of ex-mil guys as well. >> Yeah.
1:35:11
There was the story of Palunteer.
1:35:12
A lot of guys like used it and we're like let me go work for this company and it did very well for them.
1:35:17
>> We have had that happen multiple times.
1:35:18
I'm sure that that is that is saying something good. >> Yeah.
1:35:21
Are you the best drone racer at Nuros currently employed?
1:35:24
Or have you hired somebody better?
1:35:27
What percentile are you >> if there's a company outing?
1:35:32
>> Oh man, I I I'm definitely not the best and I'm probably not even the second best.
1:35:36
I have not flown very much in in old 23 and his skills are exponentially like Formula One.
1:35:44
I'm I'm washed at this point.
1:35:47
[laughter] I would say Levi.
1:35:48
Levi is our our uh lead flight test pilot.
1:35:52
He runs the whole flight test team and he was a professional pilot before.
1:35:56
He's like the most naturally talented pilot I've ever seen.
1:36:00
He's he's probably the best at the company. >> That's awesome.
1:36:02
>> He also flies for a living, so that helps. >> Yeah, there you go. That does help.
1:36:05
>> And for those of you that don't know, Saurin was the world champion, you know, drone racer in MultiGP.
1:36:10
>> I've I've uh I've watched him in person.
1:36:12
and Ben over there on our team came and filmed you with uh in the park in Elsagundo and it was one of the craziest things I've ever seen because I I' I'd seen a DJI drone sort of like take off and sort of, you know, like float away.
1:36:27
Maybe it goes a little quick and sworn puts on this headset and is just whipping around this tree going as fast as you can. It was crazy video. It was a lot of fun.
1:36:36
But thank you so much for coming on the show. Good.
1:36:38
>> Great to see you guys. >> Great to see you.
1:36:41
>> We'll talk to you soon. Goodbye.
1:36:41
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1:36:54
Uh, our next guest is the real liver king, not the social media influencer, [laughter] but uh the CEO of the world's largest human biological data center. Fascinating story.
1:37:08
Andre from Vivodine, welcome to the show. How are you doing? >> Doing well. Thanks for having me.
1:37:18
>> Thanks so much for hopping on the show.
1:37:19
Uh please introduce yourself and the company a little bit. >> Sure.
1:37:23
So uh Vividine grows human tissues at very massive scale. Okay.
1:37:28
>> So we can test drugs uh in humans without testing in people. >> Okay.
1:37:32
>> Um and we do it at very massive scale.
1:37:34
So many times the total amount of clinical trials run in the US every year.
1:37:38
And the reason for doing all this is uh the failure rate of drugs is huge, right?
1:37:42
So 19 out of 20 drugs fail because all the animal experiments we've done uh just don't translate to people.
1:37:48
>> So we can cure you know cancer and Alzheimer's and all these things in mice and then they fell in people.
1:37:53
>> Maybe >> when did uh humans first >> mask human tissue in a lab?
1:37:59
>> Yeah, >> this is uh this is the first time we're able to grow uh like large pieces of human tissue.
1:38:06
So hundreds of thousands of cells in each individual piece >> and we're growing, you know, tens, hundreds of thousands of these tissues at a time to test all sorts of different drugs and permutations.
1:38:18
So it's a it's a >> but hundreds of thousands of cells.
1:38:19
This is still microscopic or >> Oh, you can see them. Yeah.
1:38:24
You can see the little blood vessels growing in them.
1:38:28
So it's like uh inch scale, centimeter scale. >> Interesting.
1:38:31
What we >> Have you ever had a rogue tissue? >> Oh, [laughter] yeah.
1:38:35
Yeah, I I am the first rogue tissue.
1:38:37
I crawled out of this guy back here and you know, here I am. >> Uh well, yeah.
1:38:41
What What is the key unlock that allows this?
1:38:43
Because I imagine that 50 years ago there were scientists that were like, "It sure would be nice to have a ton of human tissue to test drugs on.
1:38:50
Uh they couldn't do it then. Why is it possible now?"
1:38:56
>> So, one of the things that made it possible is um having the throughput to test all the different formulations for like the medias and the uh protocols that we use to grow them. >> Yeah.
1:39:04
um which the robotics you know by by kind of dog footing around technology we also get better at. >> Okay.
1:39:09
>> Um so it's uh you know with with with biology it's like climbing a big mountain with a with a little valley at the top right.
1:39:15
It's the the the kind of skill is like getting the ball up and having it just uh kind of nest there.
1:39:21
And that is when it kind of falls into what it would naturally do.
1:39:24
>> So gains the function it would normally have.
1:39:26
we can we can dose through these blood vessels that self assemble and this tissue actually performs the function of its you know native organ counterpart. >> Yeah.
1:39:34
>> Uh is uh are are humans like sourdough like do you need a little starter you know like how do you actually kickstart >> tissue? Yeah.
1:39:46
So so we use um that's a that's a very good analogy.
1:39:49
So, so we use uh primary human cells, right?
1:39:51
So, we get them from uh like donated blood or you know biopsies of things like tumors and we get the primary cells out of there.
1:39:58
We're not using um you know like transformed stem cells or the old cell lines.
1:40:02
They are primary human cells and um they are what kind of seed this process of the tissue self.
1:40:08
So someone has a tumor, they do a biopsy, and then instead of just saying, "Okay, you can test one drug on it."
1:40:15
Because if you kill this, you're done.
1:40:18
You can scale it up and and clone it effectively, and then you can say, "Let's test 50 drugs on this and see what actually works." >> Yeah. 50,000. >> 50,000.
1:40:28
>> The search space is just so big, right?
1:40:30
I mean the the >> the kind of real problem I think drug development is butdding up against is you know over the past decades we've um tried to find like single target cures right for disease.
1:40:40
right for disease. So uh like maybe this receptor or maybe this compound in the blood by by reducing it or by increasing it we can we can fix some disease but things like cancer and fibrosis and Alzheimer's and all these just like keep getting away from us right it's we we we might get a little bit close and then oh
1:40:55
does nothing in people and you you imagine like if the you know the check engine light comes on in your car the solution is not going to be you turn a single screw it's like a little more complicated than that and so the the hard part about drugging multiple targets that you're facing with biology like at the complexity that it has is how how do you search that space? How do
1:41:15
How do you know which things to bind and and and how it all works and um to to to be able to address such a large search space?
1:41:24
You can no longer just do screening like it just runs away from me, right?
1:41:27
It's it's like a cliff of of of uh um just like numerical climb. >> Yeah.
1:41:35
>> And so you have to do the inverse.
1:41:35
So just understand biology and backsolve to the things that you should drug to make it do the things you want instead of trying to drug everything and seeing what happens.
1:41:44
Uh and so to understand biology at that level especially human biology we have to be able to test it.
1:41:50
>> We read a story about the price of monkeys spiking uh based on uh demand from biotech companies to test drugs on monkeys.
1:41:58
Uh where does this technology fit in the uh new drug development process?
1:42:04
process? because I it feels like we're very close to like the computers being really good at testing a bunch of ideas, but then of course you go uh what was it >> mouse or monkey or something at some point and then human trial right yeah
1:42:21
and but this feels like an interim step that could be before mouse models or would this be a full replacement for mouse models or would this be after a mouse model like where does this fit into the to the story arc of a new biotech company. >> So, you know, we we're we're currently
1:42:36
>> So, you know, we we're we're currently working with like the very large majority of the top 10 pharma and the majority of the projects that we're working on are things that do not translate from monkeys into people. >> Okay?
1:42:48
>> U so even the primates are are not giving the same responses that humans are or strange things are are being seen in the primates that were not seen in in in the mice and dogs and you wonder like >> which one is it, right? Sure.
1:42:59
>> Um, and so the the instead of just jumping, you know, we have some cells in a dish here, we have some inorganic acid here where now now we're in mice and then, you know, woodchucks and a sort of uh we just need to test on human tissue from the get-go
1:43:14
and replace this whole like outdated approach to, you know, maybe the mouse is going to tell us because all these drugs that are failing in clinic, right, these 19 out of 20, uh, like they are working in the animals, right? They're They're safe.
1:43:25
They're they're they're pretty efficacious, right?
1:43:26
Um so it's like you know we're like where are our cures right instead of uh instead of all these cures to do diseases and so we we we are working from discovery all the way through to u like supporting clinical trials of these tissues uh both to do things that you cannot search easily enough in people and also things that might be too unsafe to search in people. >> Yeah.
1:43:48
Jordan you have another or >> what were you doing before this?
1:43:52
How did you get into growing human tissue?
1:43:55
>> [snorts] >> doing it for fun probably. >> Hobbyist. >> Yeah.
1:43:58
How do you get into this garage? >> Um >> yeah.
1:44:01
So my my u my my background was in designing uh high throughput micrfluidics. >> Okay.
1:44:06
Uh and then I met my co-founder Dan as my PhD adviser and he had invented this concept of the organ on a chip of of growing um you know these these functional units of human tissues >> and um we kind of came came together and said we we need to scale this up dramatically and also improve like the fidelity of these tissues and make them basically indistinguishable from what we'd get in a in a in a deep biopsy punch. >> Interesting. Fascinating.
1:44:30
What what is like what are the regulatory guard rails for uh creating uh like like I I I I just imagine like you kind of um if your company continues to gain traction.
1:44:49
>> You're worried about accidentally creating like a Frankenstein type. >> Well, yeah.
1:44:51
Like I feel like that's the natural path here and I'm just wondering like there's a lot of like moral and ethical um dilemmas surrounding that.
1:45:00
There will probably need to be regulation surrounding that at some point.
1:45:03
And um yeah, it just feels like that's probably the end state is just vats of of people living in this >> people.
1:45:12
[laughter] Um anyways, I I isn't I'm not a big movie guy, but the ma the is it's the Matrix, right?
1:45:19
Where they're all >> You're pretty far away from the Matrix.
1:45:22
>> I don't feel that far.
1:45:22
I see I see >> I see the robotic arm in the back. >> Yeah.
1:45:28
Well, the real movie is the island with Michael Bay is the island.
1:45:30
They they they clone a human and then the rich person can be like, "Oh, I need a kidney transplant and they're like, "Well, we got a direct clone of you over there on that island.
1:45:39
Let's go get that liver out of them."
1:45:42
It's very uh very uh dystopian.
1:45:48
>> We can do this hopefully without the the full person. >> Yes. Yes. Yes.
1:45:52
and the FDA, you know, like the the FDA is actually I I think among all of these cases where there's a new technology and you were like fighting with the regulator to to push something forward.
1:46:02
Um the FDA has been, you know, has put out now like three uh modernization acts that drive the uptake of these animal alternatives, right?
1:46:09
Like like given the failure rate and it really gets worse with biologics, right?
1:46:13
like antibbody based therapies and you know bicep specific antibbody drug conjugates and all these like new modalities for drugs that are that are good because they're specific but they're specific to human you know targets and so it's even harder to test those um and so the FDA has been an extremely strong tailwind actually in in making these >> Yeah.
1:46:34
And then and then at some point like would you know would would you grow a specific individual's tissue and then test a wide range of drugs on that to figure out what was going to be most effective?
1:46:48
Like that also feels like the next logical step is >> personalized medicine.
1:46:53
>> Personalized medicine take take that air or something. >> Okay. >> Yeah.
1:46:58
So so so by definition these cells have to come from someone, right?
1:47:01
And so um you know we we we are usually kind of broad across the different demographics that we test on both you know age, sex, race and so on.
1:47:10
>> Um but ultimately too for for various patient specific diseases cancers right as a as a great example.
1:47:14
Um, >> I mean, just imagine being able to um, if you have a solid tumor, I mean, The Island is like the perfect movie, right?
1:47:22
You imagine like 50,000 clones of yourself and you say, "All right, like who will survive?"
1:47:28
>> There's a lot of moral weight to that movie, though.
1:47:30
You got to [laughter] actually watch the movie.
1:47:31
I think you're going to get in some hot water.
1:47:35
>> We'll pick up the good parts. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
1:47:36
I mean, just the tissue in in a petri dish.
1:47:39
I think most people can get behind that, but as soon as it's Scarlett Johansson walking around with emotions and ideas and history, uh, it gets a lot darker.
1:47:52
>> Most fascinating company we've had on the show this year, I think. >> Yeah. Very interesting.
1:47:56
Well, congratulations on the progress. >> Appreciate it, guys. >> Thank you.
1:48:00
>> You want to grow copies of yourself? >> No.
1:48:03
Uh, when we hired Tyler, I made sure I was a perfect match on blood type and everything, so I'm I'm pretty much good to go.
1:48:09
But uh this sounds good for for those who don't have a time.
1:48:13
>> Where are you based by the way? >> San Francisco.
1:48:15
We're we're right in the Bay Area. >> Fantastic.
1:48:17
Well, have a great rest of your day. We'll talk to you soon.
1:48:20
>> Thank you so much for having me.
1:48:20
>> Have a good rest of your day. Goodbye.
1:48:22
>> Let me tell you about Shopify.
1:48:22
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1:48:32
>> Let's head over to the timeline.
1:48:32
Alfred Wallforce over at Listen Labs.
1:48:35
has been on the show before coming in with a one of the hottest takes.
1:48:42
>> Yeah, got some push back.
1:48:44
>> He said, "Founders only send investor updates."
1:48:48
>> Yeah, give me the boat horn >> when you're winning.
1:48:49
Listen has sent three in its history.
1:48:51
All fundra announcements.
1:48:54
Nobody reads a bad update and helps.
1:48:56
They just mark you as dying.
1:48:59
>> I think your crazy voice sounds crazier than mine. >> Let me let me check.
1:49:03
Oh, it sounds about the same.
1:49:05
It sounds about the same, but >> um yeah, this is just uh I think this is terrible advice except if you're winning. That's [laughter] great.
1:49:15
>> Um I think it should be founders, if you're winning, only send investor updates. >> Yes. I I I I do.
1:49:21
It's just like it's it's it's just such bad advice cuz I've had so many I mean I've had instances like kind of surprise and delight moments where I haven't been getting an update from a company in a year and I just assume the company is like dead and dying >> and then they pop up with an update.
1:49:36
I I had this happen where a company that I thought was fully dead.
1:49:40
I didn't even want to I I almost felt bad asking uh it was a small angel check.
1:49:45
I thought they were dead until I got an update that I needed to sign something because they were selling for like, you know, >> wow, there quarter of a billion.
1:49:52
Um, so any anyways, like I I just think like investors >> Yeah.
1:49:59
If you have 10 investors and you send a bad update, a lot of people aren't going to be able to help.
1:50:03
But if there's a chance that one helps, >> Yeah.
1:50:08
>> Um then, uh, then that's great.
1:50:08
and and uh even if you're not winning, you can show momentum, which is going to like updates are how you build trust.
1:50:16
It's how people start to process like how is this team and this founder performing even if they're not winning yet, are they making progress?
1:50:26
Are they iterating quickly?
1:50:27
It's how and if if you're not sending any updates and then suddenly you need to raise more money, like you need a bridge round or something like that, the likelihood of getting that round done is much lower because you just don't have the you don't have the trust.
1:50:39
people can't get a good read on like okay do I believe do I have more conviction in this team today than when I invested even though they haven't figured it out yet. >> Okay. >> Right.
1:50:51
>> So I'm taking the other side of this with some reasonleness maybe. I don't know.
1:50:55
Uh you can debate me on this.
1:50:55
Uh do you think it's important to send investor updates when you're a preede company like p purely in the idea maze very early stage there the revenue is zero every month you're just sort of like you know out figuring out the first product >> I mean at that at that stage it it depends hopefully you only have like one or two investors and but but it's still it's still important to see like a it's it's valuable to a snapshot.
1:51:26
It doesn't have to be the the if at that stage if I get an investor update that's paragraphs and paragraphs and paragraphs, I'm like super super bearish. Totally.
1:51:37
>> But it's still better to just have like even quick bullet points.
1:51:38
Hey, here's what we're working on. Yeah.
1:51:41
>> Um >> we'll come we'll we'll we'll have another update in a month.
1:51:45
>> So, because Listen Labs is only a three-year-old company and they raised their series A in April of 2025.
1:51:50
So, and he and there's a there's a rumored series C going on right now.
1:51:56
And so, if he sent three investor updates, that might be April of 2025, January of 2026, and August of 2026, which is like every six months, which doesn't feel like that crazy of a cadence.
1:52:08
It's like, yeah, it's not quarterly, it's not monthly, but it's a pretty regular pace because they're raising money regularly.
1:52:13
So, if it's very different if it's like, okay, this is like a more like less like hot time in the market.
1:52:22
You're not going to be fundraising every three months.
1:52:25
You're going to be raising money every 18 months, realistically every 24 months. It's a harder industry.
1:52:29
And so I as an investor with a series A check, I want to know, okay, how much runway is actually left? Yeah.
1:52:38
>> Because but but that's not the equation here.
1:52:40
So, little bit of a of a unique.
1:52:43
This post reveals a little bit more about the level of fundraising activity that you can only send investor updates and still be emailing all your investors every six months. >> Yeah.
1:52:54
>> So, there's a little bit of that. >> Yeah.
1:52:55
And and a lot of this comes down to Alfred Listen Labs has been crushing.
1:52:59
I remember when they first came on the show, it seemed like the company made a lot of sense.
1:53:03
They they quickly raised follow-on rounds from great investors.
1:53:07
I'm sure they're still doing well.
1:53:07
you wouldn't post this if you if you weren't winning.
1:53:10
[laughter] Still said still still sure they're doing well, but like just really really bad uh just really really bad advice.
1:53:18
>> It's not one sizefits-all advice. I completely agree.
1:53:19
Uh the other thing >> Yeah.
1:53:21
And the other the other thing I would say is like how do you know a company that's building in public is struggling?
1:53:26
>> They stop building in public.
1:53:28
>> They haven't posted they haven't like you I' I've seen this like at least 10 times right now.
1:53:32
you see the company that that's got all this momentum founders like I'm sharing our here's our in I'm sharing our investor and they usually will string together like six months of that and then they go dark it's like oh what what oh you don't want to build in public when you're not growing anymore and and revenue is declining or >> or um you were you were a thin rapper whatever it is. Yeah. Yeah.
1:53:55
Uh the other side of this is uh this nobody reads a bad update and helps.
1:54:02
They just mark you as dying.
1:54:03
I think that maybe that's not 100% accurate.
1:54:07
But >> the thing is like you're dying unless you're winning. >> Yeah.
1:54:12
I I I I think there is something where in investor updates, a good investor update can be a pitch for the company a little bit and it can be an opportunity for the founder to sort of rehearse their next round's pitch with their current investors and say, "Okay, let me restate the vision, the mission, the progress, what we're doing."
1:54:31
And instead of instead of framing things as like I need all these different things, it's more just like I'm I'm going I'm working.
1:54:40
And and then also there's the dynamic of sometimes companies stop sending investor updates because there's a tier one like partner on the board who's like shephering the company and all of the activity really happens at the board meeting and maybe one of those early angels has a bigger stake in a competitor and so you don't actually want to share the update broadly but the board meeting is still happening.
1:55:02
there's still like oversight and infrastructure around the business.
1:55:05
And so in fact, you're getting something that's bigger and more important than an investor update, which is a board deck and a board meeting.
1:55:13
It's just not being shared to all the investors. >> Yeah.
1:55:15
The other thing about updates is they just keep companies top of mind.
1:55:18
Like I have a friend I have a friend >> uh he has a bootstrap company.
1:55:21
He effectively sends a monthly update and it gets him so many customers cuz it's just at the top of the inbox.
1:55:27
He's like, "Hey, I'm trying to connect to this company."
1:55:30
and people just loop them in all the time.
1:55:32
So, it's amazing way to just stay top of mind.
1:55:35
>> Yeah, that's happened a few times.
1:55:35
Like companies that I'm not even invested in, I get on the investor update list and I'll just be >> The other thing is like if if you're not updating somebody like I I had uh >> one of the 70 odd angel investments that I've made >> like hadn't heard from them in a year. >> Mhm.
1:55:52
>> And then they they they texted and said, "Hey, like are you free to catch up?"
1:55:56
And the ask was basically like, "Will you in will you like do a bridge round?" Yeah.
1:56:00
>> And it's like, >> yeah, if I I can ask all the questions to try to understand what has happened between now and when the investment was made, >> but it's so much different to be getting like those updates in real time, seeing how they're dealing with adversity, seeing seeing how >> how they're building moment momentum as a company.
1:56:22
And um yeah, so anyways, don't do this.
1:56:26
[laughter] Just don't do it.
1:56:28
Um, >> don't do it in every case.
1:56:33
>> Don't listen to Alfred, the founder.
1:56:35
>> I'm sure it applies to some companies.
1:56:37
>> I'm sure it applies to some companies.
1:56:39
>> I'm fully I I I I can fully get behind not sharing up if you have a ton of >> What if you raise money?
1:56:45
If you have a ton of >> sending fundraising announcements, [laughter] >> does that >> if you have a ton of if you have like a really kind of crazy cap table, I think it can be >> I think it can be fair to and you're in a competitive category.
1:56:58
I think it can be fair to say like we're >> we're keeping these numbers closely held.
1:57:03
>> Yeah, we're going to specific numbers or uh or even just say like, hey, we're basically sending updates to people that have invested like >> more than a million dollars, right?
1:57:12
Or like leads, things like that.
1:57:14
But um anyways, very very funny, very funny post.
1:57:18
>> Put the timeline in turmoil.
1:57:20
>> Definitely got the people going >> and we should have Alfred back on the show to get an update >> on the company. They must be crushing.
1:57:28
This is the only thing you post when you're just on fire.
1:57:31
>> Yeah, >> he must be ready to send another update. >> What's churn? >> What's churn?
1:57:34
Walk us through the funnel. Pull up the slides. I want to see them.
1:57:38
Anyway, we got one last news story.
1:57:40
It's good news for the gamers in the audience.
1:57:42
If you're a gamer, the US government wants you to consider becoming an air traffic controller. You've had the practice.
1:57:49
Now, it's time to go into the real world and become an air traffic controller.
1:57:55
Transportation Secretary Shawn Duffy says a federal campaign specifically targeting gamers has helped the FAA hire more than 2,000 people to train as controllers, putting the agency at 94% of its hiring goal with another 200 or another 2,000 plus candidates moving through the pipeline.
1:58:16
Duffy launched the effort in April, arguing that the government needed to look beyond its traditional roo recruiting pool and that gamers already practice some of the skills controllers need including rapidly processing information, maintaining focus, and keeping track of multiple things at once.
1:58:32
You don't necessarily need a four degree four-year degree either.
1:58:34
The FAA accepts candidates with qualifying work experience, education, or a combination of the two, ideally a steam account as well.
1:58:43
Uh, it's also a potentially lucrative care career.
1:58:45
The median air traffic controller earned $144,580 in 2024 according to the BLS, while the top 10% of air traffic controllers earned more than $210,000.
1:59:00
Uh, getting the job, however, is another matter.
1:59:02
Applicants generally have to be US citizens under uh under 31 years old, pass medical and security screenings, and take the FAA's three and a half hour air traffic skills assessment, which is designed to predict whether they have the cognitive aptitude for the work.
1:59:18
Those who make it through then undergo extensive training at the FAA Academy in Oklahoma City before continuing their training at an air traffic facility.
1:59:25
The recruiting push comes as the FAA tries to dig itself out of a long-standing staffing shortage, a government accounting uh accountability office report published in December found that the controller workforce had shrunk 6% over the past decade even as air traffic increased 10%.
1:59:43
So the number of air traffic controllers relative to the amount of flights was decreasing really really in a bad way.
1:59:50
Uh at the end of fiscal 2025, the FAA employed 13,000 controllers and shortages at critical facilities were argu were already contributing to delays and cancellations.
2:00:01
We've all seen the reports of those.
2:00:02
Uh the problem >> Jack in the chat says, "Being an air traffic controller must be like being a lifeguard for planes.
2:00:08
Just MF's doing laps all day. Just shoot me instead."
2:00:13
[laughter] >> Say you're not. >> Speak for yourself.
2:00:15
Some people like controlling air traffic.
2:00:19
>> Yeah, it's the same thing as playing Sim City. I don't know.
2:00:20
No, you think you could make it? >> No, not for everyone.
2:00:22
Not for everyone, but the few, the proud, the air traffic controllers controllers.
2:00:28
>> Do you think there's specific games that they recruited from?
2:00:31
>> I mean, you have to imagine RTS is better.
2:00:33
Yeah, I would go with a Starcraft player over FPS player >> all day. >> Yeah, I don't know. >> Um, all right. Final post of the day. >> Hit me.
2:00:44
>> Tyler, I want you to read it. >> What does he say?
2:00:46
the >> got a post here from Hamont over at light speed. >> Wait. Oh, really?
2:00:53
Okay, let's >> let's see if your if your new app works, Tyler, >> over at light speed.
2:01:01
>> The curse of >> discipline is that every day looks the same.
2:01:05
The curse of indiscipline is that every year does.
2:01:09
>> That's some good wisdom.
2:01:09
The curse of discipline is that every day looks the same.
2:01:13
The curse of indisipline.
2:01:15
>> This one every year >> did crazy numbers. >> Whoa. I did not realize that.
2:01:21
>> Not every day you see a VC other than the putting up numbers like this. >> True. True.
2:01:25
Very, very >> mainstream. >> Yeah. Very good post. >> You went mainstream.
2:01:31
>> You're going mainstream.
2:01:31
You're going mainstream with some advice for everyone in the boys group.
2:01:36
If you if you have a boys group chat, take the picture of Adam Silver, Josh Kushner, and Bob Iger and send it to your boys chat and just say us. It's going.
2:01:47
It's going to 3K for sure. >> It's going. >> It's going. It's going. It's ripping.
2:01:53
Well, thank you for tuning in to TBPN.
2:01:56
We'll be back tomorrow at 11:00 a. m. Pacific.
2:02:00
>> Five stars on Apple Podcast and Spotify.
2:02:02
Sign up for our newsletter at tbpn. com.
2:02:05
It's been an honor and a privilege.
2:02:06
>> And have the best Wednesday ever. >> Please do. >> Goodbye. >> We love you.