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>> Today is Tuesday, October 6th, 2026.
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We are live from the TVPN, the Temple of Technology, the fortress of finance, the capital of capital.
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Use corporate cards, bill pay, accounting, and a whole lot more all in one place. >> Also Christmas.
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How many days until Christmas?
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That's the question you've been answer asking.
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That's the question on everyone's >> mind answer today on the show.
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I believe it's 79 days until Christmas. >> Is this new?
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>> 79 days till Christmas. >> There we go. There we go.
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>> And the great thing about this whole bit, >> yeah, >> is it will never get old for us. >> It really doesn't.
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>> It's probably getting old for some of you and we're sorry, but >> we just can't help but feel the Christmas spirit.
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Also, you asked >> you >> you asked for more Christmas. >> We delivered.
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>> You asked for more Christmas content. We delivered.
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>> Today on the show, we have Rick Dungy from the National Christmas Tree Association.
1:10
Let's give it up to Rick.
1:11
>> He's the executive director and he's going to break down the real Christmas tree industry, the official White House Christmas tree and trees for troops.
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all the different things that they're doing over at the national >> and how he's thinking about the road to Christmas broadly.
1:27
>> And we're also gonna ask >> Christmas really is his Super Bowl. >> Yeah, it is. Uh no, great show.
1:30
Great show for you today, folks.
1:32
Uh oh, I was I was leafing through GQ this morning.
1:37
Tom Cruz is on the cover.
1:37
It's It's a It's a good addition.
1:39
Uh there's a funny uh anecdote in here that I wanted to share. I need I got to find it.
1:44
Um but they got the whole Tom Cruz spread, lots of photos.
1:50
Uh, but they did a little back and forth interview with him and >> we recognize that we are having some audio difficulties. >> Brutal.
1:59
>> Team is working on fixing it.
2:01
>> Let's test it with some soundboards. >> Did that work? >> Did that fix it? >> What about this?
2:09
>> Well, we'll talk through this and then we'll move on to other stories and hopefully the audio catches up by then. Um, he's a course bro.
2:14
He dropped a course, a private course, and we got to get access to this.
2:20
Uh, the question from the GQ interviewer, you have mentored a lot of younger actors.
2:24
Glenn Pal has talked about watching a sixhour instructional video about screen acting that you made, right?
2:34
And Tom Cruz says it was very basic.
2:36
It was just something to have people understand, just to have a different concept of lenses and what the lens is and what the frame is.
2:43
just the same way as an actor as an >> being a global superstar for dummies. >> Yeah.
2:51
Basically, he made a he made a six-hour that's a course.
2:53
He made a six-hour video.
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Uh just the same way as an actor on stage or in the development of cinema where it started and what the that frame means and how it audio that frame. >> Thank you.
3:08
>> Uh there's just different layers of storytelling of structure but also to understand certain things.
3:13
so that you can forget about it.
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Uh what else do you tell younger people, other people in your business? I listen first. What do they want? It's not me.
3:22
I'm more interested in what are their goals? What do they want?
3:26
And it's not just younger people.
3:28
This is me when I was a kid.
3:28
I'm going, "What are you interested in?" They say, "Really?" Said, "Yes.
3:33
What is this movie about? What is this?"
3:34
Um there's a bunch of other fun things in here, but I thought it was funny that there's a secret six-hour training video on how to be an actor from Tom Cruz.
3:42
we got to get access to it.
3:44
I feel like uh there's a lot of journalists that they get documents, they scoop things, they release things.
3:51
Uh but I've never seen anyone just be like, >> I'm putting down 10 racks for whoever can bring me the six-hour Tom Cruz video, you know?
4:01
>> Yeah, >> I'm putting it by behind a pay wall.
4:01
I'm going to monetize it, but there's a bounty out.
4:05
Like uh Kevin Roose has the Daramday uh big blob of compute thesis from 2017 like this leaked PDF sort of on the scaling law and the bitter lesson basically.
4:16
Uh and I've never seen a journalist just be like I know this documents out there like Eric Newcomer should just be like bring me founders fund returns.
4:27
I I I'll give you five grand if you got them.
4:29
You know because it probably maths out at some point.
4:31
>> Five million >> maybe more. Maybe more. Yeah.
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to risk to risk your allocation in the next >> Yeah.
4:37
I I suppose that that would uh violate journalistic ethics to just put a bounty out for a document that you know exists. >> I will bribe you. >> Yeah. >> For the truth.
4:46
>> And it probably really like I was thinking about the the the the various leaks that go out like some of them violate NDAs, but if they're if they're secretive enough and they're squirreled away uh via signal, like they probably don't trace back.
4:59
They probably don't really trigger anything.
5:00
Also, some of them just don't really matter.
5:02
They, you know, company is might not be that frustrated about a particular leak uh if it makes the company look good.
5:09
But >> well, speaking speaking of movies, the team saw a movie yesterday.
5:12
Ben, could we get a review? >> Oh, you didn't go. >> Ben didn't come. Yeah. >> Wow. Tyler review. >> I saw it. Who saw?
5:20
So, we saw Nick said that he was starting to look at his phone after like 40 minutes. >> Wait, what?
5:26
>> Nick did not enjoy it.
5:26
I thought it was pretty good.
5:27
So, so basically the reviews are really bad, right?
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and famously, well, not famously, but like the box office is really bad.
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>> Not all the reviews are bad.
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I saw Mark Andre gave it a positive review. >> He did. Yeah.
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And that was really one of the only like very positive reviews I saw.
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>> But yeah, I think the budget was like 160 million.
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First weekend it was 8 million. >> 8 million. Yeah. >> Pretty brutal.
5:46
Uh I thought it was it was good. It was very cool.
5:47
Um like the like the framing of the movie.
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Um >> I it's it's hard to like reveal too much >> you.
5:56
I thought it was very >> film school like this.
5:58
This critique is so nuanced. It's remarkable.
6:02
>> I thought it was I don't want to spoil anything.
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>> What was cool about it? >> The costumes.
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>> Give us the give us like a just give us like 30 seconds of of spoilers. I'll bleep it out. >> Okay.
6:17
So, basically >> the bleep organ.
6:19
Uh >> we're still working.
6:21
We're still working on that.
6:23
>> Let me tell you about the New York Stock Exchange.
6:24
Want to change the world?
6:26
raise capital at the New York Stock Exchange. Just do it. Um, wait.
6:28
So, can he talk over the bleep?
6:31
Basically, you can hear both. Okay.
6:33
We're working we're working on a new feature.
6:38
>> Uh, uh, the game decompilation thing is is going strong.
6:41
Uh, Ben Thompson was writing about it in Stery today.
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Uh, there were some more knockout effects.
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He took it in a very interesting like legal direction about the the implications of uh, taking a video game uh, decompiling it, doing whatever you want with it.
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Obviously, IP licensers don't like that, but there's not a lot that you can that that you can do to control that.
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And obviously, open source models are coming.
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Um, there's a bunch of interesting knock-on effects.
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I saw a really funny one.
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They're getting funnier, these mashups.
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I saw one where someone was playing NHL hockey in Resident Evil. Did you see this one?
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It was really It was really such a good mashup because the guy's just like on ice skates and like flicking pucks and zombies.
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It was it was pretty good. Uh I was I was into it.
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Again, probably not really something I want to play for five hours, but will I watch a 30 secondond video of it? Absolutely.
7:31
Um but uh yeah, Polygon has been breaking this down.
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If you've been on X over the last few days, you probably noticed that things have gotten very weird when it comes to modded video games.
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There are clips of Call of Duty operators doing kick flips and other tricks from Skate, people playing Black Ops 1 zombie mode in Skyrim, Miles Morales swinging through Gotham.
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Uh here's another to add to the list.
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Someone has gotten the Xbox version of Halo Combat Evolved running in a web browser with multiplayer and split screen support.
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And the other funny thing is that it's not they didn't like apparently the Halo community doesn't like the PC release of Halo.
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So they ported the Xbox version to the cloud browser.
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It's like you you can really do anything you want now.
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Um and uh and so Ben Thompson goes on to describe a little bit of what's going on.
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Uh games are written in human readable languages, C, C++.
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Obviously, they're scripting languages on top of that, but then they're compiled into machine code that's executable by the processor that they're intended for. Uh for Halo, that's x86.
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You've always been able to disassemble machine code into assembly.
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Uh because assembly maps almost perfectly to machine code, the difficult part, which takes humans years, is decompiling assembly to C or some human readable language that then you can actually modify.
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But LLMs are really good at that. And so, is it legal? Is it legal?
8:52
Uh, the story conflates two different AI capabilities.
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The Fallout project appears to be a new game.
8:59
There's no Fallout New York, although using the name Fallout is likely a trademark violation.
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I think we were joking about uh the lawyers being really excited seeing all these going out because it means full employment.
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Um, decompiling is not in and of itself illegal.
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Saga uh Sega versus Accolade held that disassembling code is fair use if it is the only way to reach unprotected functional elements and there was a legitimate purpose and Sony verse connectics extended the same reasoning to reverse engineering the PlayStation's BIOS.
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Uh however that is likely where protections end.
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code that is derived from decompiling is by definition very similar if not identical to the original code which is covered by copyright.
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So even if you go and decompile a game and then you ship something that's like a mod, you're going to get a DMCA notice.
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And this is already happening.
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Like something will go up, it'll get it'll go viral and then they'll get hit with a a takedown notice.
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This already happened hours later.
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>> Is that me or is that >> getting hit with a copyright?
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>> Two hours later you'll get hit by Yeah. copyright.
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Uh so you'll have to take it down.
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Um there's there's a couple interesting things.
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So the actual value of these like decompiled games mashups pretty limited because you basically just get a viral video and you can't really monetize it because you get the takedown notice.
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But uh the the the the training roll out for the AI labs like the training data that comes from like having this fleet of like all these different game modders go and spend a bunch of tokens that they're basically paying for.
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Maybe it's a little subsidized but like they're basically paying for all this decompilation and then also the labs probably have RL environments for this type of work and then there's tools for this as well.
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Uh means that I would expect like the next version of models that is trained on all the inference that's happening right now because everyone right now in the game modding community is like let me go point GPT Astra and Opus 55 at whatever game binaries I can get.
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So it's like, oh, I I like Skyrim. I like Minecraft.
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Let's go decompile those.
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But then they're also doing it with all the longtail.
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So all of that's going into the next set of training data.
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So you would imagine that the models get much better at video game development, which is uh which is cool.
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Uh he also just talks about like how things will change over time, similar to uh uh uh ju just similar to what's happened in video.
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AI seems to exacerbate a lot of trends, including the shift to service-based games.
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So he talks about like in a world where if you send someone a disc or you send someone a executable binary like they're just going to decompile it and be able to do whatever they want with it.
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Maybe you want to stream that game.
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So you uh this was uh Google had an effort for this.
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I forget what that was called.
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It never really took off, but Google had the ability to basically stream you a 1080p >> Google Stadia. >> Stadia, that's right.
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So you they would stream you the video output and you would stream them the controller input and the game would run on the server.
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So you never saw any code.
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You just saw video coming back.
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>> This is also how the uh MetaQuest Xbox edition worked.
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You you were streaming the game in. >> That's right. That's right.
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And and I think uh I think Xbox has has stayed with the cloud gaming a little bit longer, but gamers have always sort of pushed back on that.
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I don't like the latency.
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What if my Wi-Fi goes out?
12:20
I'm just trying playing a single player game, blah blah blah.
12:23
Um, and so, uh, it's possible that this is something where the game industry comes together and they're like, "We really got to fight these hackers.
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We got to hide our code more behind more of a firewall, like that cloud streaming firewall."
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Uh, or it could be something that they just like embrace and go the the IP protection route.
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Um, but uh, yeah, to the extent it dooms AAA standalone games, that is only because it accelerates what was already happening.
12:52
There's no reason to be sad.
12:52
However, the real intrigue about AI is not the fact that it can recreate was what was already made is that it can create entirely new worlds and do so for the individual.
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The real analogy might be video, but not Netflix, rather Tik Tok and reals.
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And the fact that everyone gets to choose their own adventure.
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So, you get to make your own video games uh in the future.
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And this is definitely happening.
13:13
Uh there's Whoa, they even actually even took down the video of this one.
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GTA 5 in the browser for free. Bbomb posted this. play GTA 5. com. Got 8,600 likes.
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And I have a screenshot of it running, but when we pull it up, not live, that's the actual tweet today.
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It says media not displayed.
13:32
Not only did they take down the website, but they took down the images and the videos that were shared on X. That's pretty crazy. >> Hardcore.
13:43
>> Uh Tenner gives some more context here.
13:45
Uh this got taken down within hours, but it's starting now within a few months.
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Instead of sketchy sites with pop-up ads hosting torance of the latest AAA games, uh, a few days post release, we're going to have sites hosting fully playable free WASM.
13:58
I forget what WSM >> Web Assembly >> Web Assembly versions. Yeah, that's right.
14:04
Uh, of AAA games, uh, whole libraries of them. They're just at a click. Zero download required.
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Zero risk of viruses, zero effort or thought.
14:11
I would call this an existential threat to the gaming industry if it weren't for the fact that every input to previously 100 million to $200 million AAA games is effectively dropping by orders of magnitude and cost and time.
14:21
Instead, it's more of a Cambrian explosion.
14:23
Uh yeah, I it's hard to to think that uh this doesn't go the way of generated text where like people still care about the the the posts and where they come from effectively intellectual property.
14:38
The instantiation of the actual product is less relevant than the story around it and the and the people behind it.
14:44
Um and the and the shelling point of like we're playing the same game.
14:49
Of course, people will do their individual stuff as well, but anyway.
14:52
Um, let me tell you about Codeex.
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Codeex is a powerful workspace for getting work done with AI agents.
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Whether you're writing code, analyzing data, creating content, automating business workflows.
15:01
Codex helps you move projects forward from start to finish. Stretch this out.
15:10
>> What else we have going on, John?
15:12
>> Well, I'm so glad to be past that subject >> cuz you just don't like video games. >> Uh, I had enough. I had enough. >> You had enough? I had enough.
15:23
>> What about the racing days a video game?
15:25
>> That's a final frontier. >> Yeah.
15:26
You're going to be able to race anywhere you want.
15:29
>> Uh Mustafa be able to put your morning commute in a video game and try and get your lap time down to six minutes.
15:34
Do you think you could make it from Malibu to the Ultra Dome in six minutes?
15:43
>> Six minutes >> in a hypercar.
15:43
An LMP2 >> with the road cleared. >> Yes.
15:48
I think I think it's >> um >> what is >> it would actually be it would actually be >> 15 >> it would probably >> I assume you're going 200 miles an hour on the >> okay >> and you could find a pretty you could find a pretty straight line like there
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wouldn't be that many you'd be able to be hauling >> um yeah we we should we should we'll we'll do this is this is what super intelligence >> because your ner your nurburging time is already in the impressive category I think you got the raw skills to take it to the next level. >> The 10-minute commute.
16:19
>> The 10-minute commute.
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>> The 10-minute commute.
16:21
>> Turning your turn your hour commute into 10 minutes. >> It would be pretty.
16:24
Yeah, that's a that's a fun game.
16:25
Uh anyway, >> Mustafa says, "Uh, coming in with a major white pill.
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AI won't take your job anytime soon.
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In 10 years, only 5% of what humans do will be replaced by AI."
16:39
Let's see what he has to say about that.
16:41
>> They're doing new media over at MI, The Humanist Review of AI.
16:44
They made a magazine and they have a number of articles and uh they tapped MIT economist and Nobel laurate Nobel Prize winner in economics Darren Asimoglu uh to write a piece about how AI will diffuse and it's interesting because in this one it's total white pill but then he was on 60 Minutes and he's and he's a little bit more blackpilled.
17:09
So we'll have to go back and forth.
17:11
I think it's the >> Wait, that's the same guy. >> Yeah.
17:14
Yeah, it's it's sort of an odd we'll have to reconcile this.
17:17
Okay, so let's see what Daron aimoglu says in the humanist uh review.
17:22
Um he it's a longer piece but Mustafa Sulleon uh summarized it here.
17:30
He said he argues that we need to stop building AI to replace people and start building it to make them better at their jobs.
17:36
52% of Americans are worried about AI's impact on their jobs.
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The fear is overblown and it's steering how we build AI.
17:44
I I I like the 48% of just confident people. Like good luck. >> Good luck.
17:52
I'd like to see I'd like to see the work I do. >> Yeah.
17:55
I'm not in the training data.
17:55
I'm not there's no aural environment for what I do.
18:00
Um AI isn't in the productivity statistics yet.
18:02
This was the famous line about the internet.
18:04
It shows up everywhere except the productivity statistics.
18:07
Most firms aren't uh are most firms using AI aren't seeing real gains yet. Expect roughly 1.
18:15
5% added to GDP over 10 years. Not a revolution.
18:19
Electricity took decades to spread.
18:21
There's so >> problem the problem is like so so the problem is like going back to our conversation uh with Sean Frank yesterday from Ridge.
18:27
This is a company that's over 10 years old right now, >> growing 50% this year, >> using AI >> across the entire business from demand planning to creative to a number of other things and the business is performing pretty much as well as it ever has.
18:48
The thing is you AI is impacting the whole business in different ways. >> Yeah.
18:56
>> In big ways and small ways, >> but you can't really pin it on, you can't give AI credit for the growth because there's so many factors contributing, right?
19:06
New products push into retail, all these different things. >> Yeah.
19:10
Um, but it's but but and I think you can still say that maybe most firms aren't using it to see see real gains, but when you say that electricity took decades to spread, I just don't view AI as the it's not the kind of technology that that takes a long time to spread when it works. >> Right?
19:33
And that's because we can use the internet, which pretty much everybody that's productive has access to to spread AI.
19:43
>> So, um, already uh just a few bullet points in and and, uh, >> but the Nobel Prize winning economist has another example to push back on you with.
19:52
He says, if you don't like the electricity example, here's another one. Speech recognition.
19:57
He said turning speech into text has been an aspiration since the 1930s.
20:02
And this is a harder one to grapple with than the than electricity because a lot of what was in place for AI is also in place what uh a lot of the things that you're saying about why diffusion should be faster for AI was true for uh for speech recognition.
20:18
So uh people have been trying to do speech recognition.
20:20
You talk the computer types since the 1930s going on a hundred years of pursuing this.
20:27
It became a huge step closer to reality thanks to the work by American by by the American husband and wife team James and Janet Baker starting in the 1980s when they founded the iconic company Dragon Systems.
20:41
Dragon truly revolutionized voice recognition and it would not be an exaggeration to say that everything else that has followed in voice recognition since then is thanks to the Bakers.
20:54
Their breakthroughs, their breakthrough was to assue previous attempts to build speech recognition systems based on syntax and meaning and instead deploy machine learning techniques in order to build a pure prediction system which would map speech onto the best match text.
21:09
Already in 1997, the year Dragon launched Dragon Naturally Speaking, the first program that was capable of voice recognition from natural continuous speech, the mo the momentousness of this was obvious.
21:24
So, in previous software, uh, including the previous product from Dragon, Dragon Dictate, you had to pause in between each word to let it process the gap between words.
21:34
You no longer needed to do that with Dragon.
21:36
Naturally speaking, this was 1997.
21:40
I can vouch for all of this because uh Darren Ismoglu, the writer, uh after developing repetitive strain injury in both arms in 97, he was an early user.
21:50
Even with the very slow processors of the time, Dragon naturally speaking, was like magic.
21:55
It would score close to 95% accuracy.
21:58
I didn't know at the time that I would be a user of their products for the next 30 years.
22:02
But what I immediately knew was that the processing power of computers improved.
22:06
I could have access to much more powerful voice recognition software, enabling me to carry out my work despite a continued inability to type.
22:15
By 2000, everything was going as I and others had predicted, the software had gotten better, and with better computer chips, accur accuracy and functionality were improving at a fast pace.
22:25
What nobody could predict was that in the next two decades, despite advances in the underlying technology, consumers would see little of the gains thanks to a series of corporate disasters.
22:33
Dragon was acquired in 2000 by a Bel Belgian company, Learnout and Housepie, uh that went bankrupt within months of the purchase with its co-founders later being found guilty of corporate fraud. Uh you hate to see that.
22:47
Um let's hit him with the >> naughty naughty.
22:54
>> So Dragon was then purchased by Scansoft, rebranded as Nuance.
22:56
I actually worked for a startup in college that got acquired by Nuance.
22:59
Uh very very talented team over there.
23:02
uh which progressively deprioritized the consumer in favor of medical and enterprise markets.
23:08
If you walk into a hospital today, you will see a lot of uh a lot of doctors and nurses dictating notes uh even before the uh whisper uh revolution that just recently happened.
23:18
Microsoft acquired Nuance in 2022 and continued the same model.
23:22
The result, voice recognition software on PCs today is only marginally better than what was available in 2000.
23:27
Far less progress than the underlying technology would have led me to expect.
23:31
So this disappointing history lesson is one of the reasons why even greater curation is warranted when making predictions about the fast diffusion of AI models today.
23:40
Breakthroughs in the infrastructure of a new technology need to go handinhand with the right kinds of applications built on this infrastructure.
23:45
And then of course you need the right marketing structure to reach potential customer base as well as inputs from consumers to act as the impetus for modifications and improvements of the applications.
23:54
This is what we are not seeing for AI.
23:56
This is what was completely bungled for voice recognition. What do you think?
24:08
>> Whole lot of mumbo jumbo, John.
24:09
>> Okay, let's move over to 60 minutes because Darren Amoglu takes the other side of his own argument, arguing against himself with Brendan Foody from Mccur >> job category on LinkedIn.
24:18
And just as machinists once replaced artisans, Brendan Foody insists he's creating a career of the future. Out of work? Fear not. Come train AI.
24:28
Literally all of the top 20 economists in America, they would say the exact same thing, which is that there's going to be more jobs in 10 years than there are today.
24:40
>> You're a top economist in America. What say you? >> No.
24:43
>> One of the greatest edits how that could happen.
24:46
>> What we are living through with AI is unprecedented.
24:49
The first phase of the industrial revolution, >> you're positive this is the same guy >> that in this article that we read.
24:57
Wait, I I I don't think these artic like these two things are incompatible. >> Break it down for us.
25:03
>> So the article >> because he's saying 5% 5% of the things humans do are at risk.
25:09
>> No, he's saying that right now if we keep building AI the same way it will replace workers, but we need to build it a different way that like empowers workers.
25:16
That's what the artic like the headline of the article is. Will AI replace workers?
25:19
Not if we build it right.
25:21
>> They're saying like right now >> the on the course that we're doing right now it's going to replace workers. Got it.
25:26
So we need to shift courses. Okay. >> Right.
25:28
I that's what I >> and and and his argument from an economic perspective is like that will actually increase productivity that will be better not just because higher employment is good but also higher economic growth is good.
25:40
So we should be trying to solve problems that cannot be solved by people right now with AI as opposed to just >> just displacing. Yeah.
25:48
Just moving stuff around versus doing net new thing. >> Okay. I like that.
25:52
>> I believe that's what position saying.
25:53
>> That's a pretty good position.
25:53
But that is such a funny edit. You're a top economist. What do you say? No. One of the greatest.
26:00
Uh anyway, um let me tell you about Cisco, critical infrastructure for the AI era.
26:06
Unlock seamless real-time experiences and new value with Cisco. >> And here's the thing. Yeah.
26:14
>> Top economists have never been wrong on anything.
26:16
So, >> you know, >> Yeah.
26:20
>> literally 100% 100% hit rate. >> Yeah.
26:22
You can find a take for any for anything.
26:24
Yeah, >> find the the fast takeoff, the slow takeoff.
26:26
Uh, never better summarized than by I believe it was the Financial Times, not the economist that had the chart, which was either things are going to go completely uh asmtoic upwards, completely asmtotic downwards, or completely the same, which is the best analysis possible. Um, I don't know.
26:48
It does feel like it's a critical moment.
26:50
There's been so many people building up to like 2027's going to be the crazy year.
26:53
2026 is going to be the last normal year.
26:55
Like like something has to happen in 2027 to that will answer a lot of the questions that have been being asked over the last five years, you know, since GPT3 basically uh which is like RSI, super intelligence, serious serious move on GDP, serious like showing up in the statistics somewhere other than just uh debt.
27:16
But I mean at the same time you see like weird things happening in uh in financial markets like gold is spiking and like it's hard to put that on AI but there's still like like there's there there's pockets of like okay there's something odd happening that you might in retrospect attribute to the AI boo.
27:37
Anyway, what do you think of Jeremy's take?
27:39
What agriculture did to our bodies AI will do to our brains.
27:42
Make us stronger and taller.
27:48
I think he's being negative.
27:49
>> I think he's being negative.
27:49
Didn't it in some way make us like, you know, weaker because we, you know, consuming more grains versus, you know, >> Yeah.
27:57
I mean, some agriculture made us a lot taller and stronger, but then made us fatter for sure because we over consumed.
28:05
And so, yeah, if you're over consuming information, uh, you it's brain rot. Yeah.
28:09
But, uh, but a good uh good encapsulation of the of the thesis.
28:15
Anyway, um let me tell you about Railway.
28:18
Railway is the all-in-one intelligent cloud provider.
28:19
Use your favorite agent to deploy web app servers, databases, and more while Railway automatically takes care of scaling, monitoring, and security.
28:28
>> Where you want to go next, Jordy?
28:30
>> Uh we got to we we got to talk about Warren Buffett because he's just like you.
28:35
>> He's just like you, folks.
28:35
A viewer's guide to Warren Buffett's nightly trips down the YouTube rabbit hole.
28:39
Uh Glenn Close clips 1950s commercials.
28:45
Usuzbekistan's version of America's Got Talent.
28:48
The legendary investor can't resist the algorithm either.
28:50
Feeling guilty about spending hours each day watching YouTube. Don't be.
28:54
Warren Buffett is right there with you.
28:56
Glenn Close clips commercials from the 1950s. Paul Anka videos.
29:02
The famed investor can't get enough.
29:04
Buffett enjoys speeches by complete unknowns.
29:06
He's a fan of Birkshshire Hathway's own content, too.
29:11
Proud of how it performs on the video platform.
29:13
He watches it all nearly every evening, usually from a recliner in his Omaha home.
29:18
Warren's range is broad, says Sharon Osberg, a close friend and frequent viewing companion.
29:23
It can be the silliest things.
29:25
Buffett also goes down random rabbit holes just like us.
29:30
The next day, he'll come into his office gushing over a moving amateur rendition of My Way.
29:34
In August, Osberg visited Buffett's home in Omaha.
29:37
They spent hours on YouTube grinding.
29:39
He We watched a really good documentary on Roy Con, she says, and the Usbekiststan version of America's Got Talent.
29:47
That would be O's Beckistan Got Talent.
29:50
It's easy easy to remember, >> easy to remember, somewhat predictable.
29:58
Uh it's unclear if Buffett is one of the channel's 34,500 subscribers.
30:00
Buffett, who recently turned 96 and stepped down as Birkshshire's chairman, declined to comment on his YouTube habits.
30:10
What's up with Sharon just blowing up blowing up his whole routine?
30:15
>> Like, if I invite you into my home to watch you, like, >> if I invite a friend to my home, >> I'll go do something.
30:20
If I invite a friend to my home to watch YouTube videos with me for hours and hours and hours and go down the YouTube rabbit hole and then a week later you're calling up the journal spilling spilling the truth about my my my video consump my rabbit hole habits. >> Yeah.
30:40
>> I feel like I feel like Buffett had to be like I want you to tell the journal.
30:44
>> You think it's astroturf? >> Yeah.
30:45
I think I think I think I want you to take this.
30:48
>> You think he's paying attention?
30:48
I think he's trying to >> I think he's as locked in as ever.
30:50
I don't think he's doing anything for entertainment.
30:54
He wants the other allocators to get comfortable.
30:56
You know, I can spend a few hours on YouTube every night.
31:00
Meanwhile, he's studying the blade every single night and all of this.
31:05
>> Giving him the benefit of 4D chess. >> Yes. Yes. AAM's 40 Razor.
31:09
>> Yeah, that is AAM's 40 razor. This is what he's doing. Makes sense. Uh um >> tier list time. >> Should we do it?
31:15
Do you want to rate it or do you want me to rate it?
31:18
>> Uh, I want I want you to rate it.
31:20
>> Okay, we got a tier list. First, Glen Close Clips.
31:22
I'm kicking it off with Ctier.
31:25
I'm not that It's a little old for me. Not into it.
31:28
Commercials from the 1950s, though. I'm going A tier. >> Yep.
31:33
>> Commercials from the 1950s, you're going to learn a lot.
31:34
It's going to be an interesting time capsule, and they lend themselves very well to YouTube videos. Uh, Paul Anka videos.
31:42
I'm not a huge Paul Anka fan.
31:45
I would go Dtier with that.
31:48
Uh, Berkshire Hathaway videos studying.
31:51
He's watching game footage.
31:54
So, I go S tier with Bergkshire Hathaway videos. Also deeply emotional.
31:56
His his business partner.
31:59
It's a way to remember him. Makes a ton of sense.
32:01
Uh, amateur musical performances, including See, I liked Frank Sinatra's My Way.
32:10
An amateur cover needs to have a twist.
32:14
It needs to be a heavy metal rendition of My Way for to get a tier for me.
32:20
>> Or some like if he's watching early Justin Bieber performances, you know, somebody that's about to go on a generational ride. >> That's good, too. Yeah, that's good, too.
32:27
Um, Roy Conn documentary, fascinating.
32:30
If you haven't seen The Apprentice, it's a biopic about Roy Conn.
32:35
I would definitely watch that documentary.
32:36
I'd go a tier with the Roy Con documentary.
32:39
Um, international talent shows, never really dip my toe in that pool.
32:45
>> Don't knock it until you try it, John.
32:47
>> I just I need to put it in the C tier because I don't I don't have an educated uh an educated uh opinion here.
32:51
Railroad videos, on the other hand, fascinating.
32:57
Tons of tons of uh lessons to be learned about the modern era. I'd go S tier.
33:00
He also owns a railroad, so he's again studying game film effectively.
33:05
Uh, big band era content, little dated. I would put it Ctier.
33:12
Uh, let's do Charlie Munger speeches.
33:16
Of course, that's in the Birkshire Video category. That goes S tier. >> That's right. >> 12 Angry Men.
33:21
I like that he was watching this on uh Turner Classic Movies.
33:26
He was watching the whole film.
33:28
Uh, so I'd put that A tier for TCM movies generally, but I noticed that when they mentioned Bill Murray movies and clips, Lost in Translation, I'm not a big clip movie watcher.
33:40
I'd rather just watch the trailer and then the whole film.
33:46
I don't really like the whole clip, although I do get sucked into them every once in a while.
33:49
For movie clips, I would go Btier. >> Yeah.
33:54
>> Do you agree with that roughly?
33:55
>> I think you nailed it. >> Okay. our tier list for today. >> Yeah.
33:59
At the end of this article goes into I I'll just read it.
34:01
Lately, Buffett has been turning to YouTube to remember Munger, who died in 2023.
34:05
He's been viewing Munger's speeches, including a 2018 talk at the University of Michigan.
34:11
Marveling at his wit and wisdom, colleagues and friends say.
34:13
You feel the bond between the two of them as he watches Charlie.
34:17
It's really quite something.
34:20
Um, and when we were reading uh this earlier, we almost started shedding. Yeah, it's emotional.
34:25
Uh truly one of the greatest partnerships in history.
34:32
>> Hands down the greatest partnership.
34:34
>> It's hard to think of anything else that even comes close, but uh fun that we're getting more uh more color commentary on the Warren Buffett life.
34:41
Everyone knows the McDonald's habit and the house and the the the indefensible plane and stuff, but this is a fun different spin in the modern era.
34:51
It shows you that he's not entirely a Philistine.
34:53
There's a whole version of the lore that could have been, oh, he still only reads the newspaper.
34:58
He doesn't use the computer at all.
35:00
And that would have been somewhat predictable.
35:01
So, I like that this is like a left turn. >> Yeah. >> For his brand.
35:05
>> And good good 40 chess, too. >> Yes. Good for chess. Yes. Fooling. Well, yeah. We'll have to ask Greg. >> All right. >> Scott Stevenson. >> What'd he say?
35:14
>> Been on the guest before.
35:14
Uh been been a guest on the show before. >> Yes.
35:17
>> He's running Spellbook. >> Yes.
35:19
Uh he is saying speaking some truth that's going to be very controversial. I'm going to read it.
35:26
He said, "If you do hardcore knowledge work, you are likely severely underestimating how much sugar you need to sustain peak performance.
35:34
Protein alone cannot sustain a full day of system two thinking."
35:38
He follows it up and says, "Allowing myself to drink sweet drinks while working has been the most profound performance enhancement in the past 5 years for me.
35:46
For the past two weeks, I've been outputting it 50% higher focus longer, one power rate at my desk per day.
35:54
I'm able to do 12-hour days the way I used to be able to when I was younger. I don't have any crash.
35:59
I crashed much worse end of day when I was avoiding sugar.
36:03
>> I'm not sure why this is the case.
36:03
It seems contrary to most of what I've read.
36:08
Hypothesis one, I burn a lot of energy working at a computer and easy fuel gets burned off quickly like a runner.
36:13
I was in a calorie deficit that was hurting my performance previously.
36:17
Same reason chess players consume chocolate milk while playing. Hypothesis two. I have diabetes. Any other ideas?
36:24
Um, sugar is a superfood. >> Okay.
36:28
>> Get it through your head, John.
36:28
Get it through your thick skull. >> I like sugar.
36:33
>> I know you like sugar, but not enough. >> Not enough. >> Not enough. uh sugar. I could be gone.
36:39
>> Um you know, people have been told that it's evil and bad for you and all these different things, but um uh for the listeners at home, if you haven't already, it's time to study Dr. Ray Pete.
36:51
>> That's really all I'll say.
36:51
Go down the Ray Pete rabbit hole uh tonight on YouTube, Warren Buffett style.
36:56
spend a few hours uh listening to Ray Pete talk about sugar and metabolism and a bunch of other topics in that whole orbit.
37:05
I started uh I've probably talked about it on the show before, but I just started drinking a a classic Coca-Cola every day years ago.
37:15
It's still still almost a daily habit. >> Interesting.
37:20
>> I try to fit it in every afternoon. >> Every afternoon. >> Every afternoon.
37:23
It has some caffeine in it, so I don't want to do it do it too late, but Uh, it's tasty.
37:26
You feel good before, during, and after.
37:30
And, uh, I can't recommend it enough. And a prediction. I'll say it on the show.
37:37
I've I've said it off air many times.
37:37
I think in the same way that salt became one of the hot sort of like supplements of the last few years, sugar is the next one.
37:46
Every single new drink, >> getting the stick packs that are like LMT, but it's just sugar in the raw. >> No, that's that.
37:54
I mean, >> it's basically I'm I'm not going to go that far, but >> all we've we've been through 10 years, 15 years now of like all these fake >> What is in what is in liquid IV? Is that sugar?
38:08
>> That was pretty high sugar and they always got flamed for it. >> Oh, interesting.
38:12
>> But the but the truth is that like >> those >> proper hydration requires some sugar. Yeah. Good.
38:20
>> So anyways, uh I'm glad I'm glad that we are about to exit the >> slog that we've been through of of all these different artificial sugars that one taste inferior, don't give you energy. Yeah.
38:33
>> Uh and often are bad for your gut or or have other negative long-term impacts. So sugar's coming back. You heard it here first.
38:41
>> There's a really good source of sugar that literally comes from mother earth.
38:45
Uh it's it comes from corn.
38:45
It's uh like high fructose corn syrup.
38:48
If you go and you go to 7-Eleven, you get a big gulp.
38:53
Uh it has literally like mother nature created the corn. They extract the syrup.
38:57
It syrup's like as American as it gets.
38:59
You put on pancakes and you just chug that down and you're good to go. >> Okay.
39:03
Well, I want to see you just with some high fructose just a bottle of high fructose corn syrup. >> Challenge accepted. >> Chugging that. I'll have >> superfood. You said it, not me. >> Not quite. Not quite.
39:15
Stick to good oldfashioned cane sugar.
39:17
Folks, >> let me tell you about console. com.
39:21
Console available AI agents that automate 70% of IT, HR, and finance support, giving employees instant resolution for access requests and password resets. >> All right, John.
39:30
Uh, >> do you think do you think what what's the right amount to spend on your office per employee?
39:40
Because Castle Hook Partners, an 11 billion hedge fund, >> uh, is paying around $600,000 a year in rent per employee.
39:50
>> That seems pretty cool.
39:50
Whoa, that's really a lot.
39:52
Okay, that's that's really really high. Okay.
39:56
Castle Hook Partners, the 11 billion hedge fund founded by former Soros fund management investor David Rogers, signed a New York City record of paying 350 to 400 a square foot.
40:10
That's yeah for in the top two floors of the new 625 Madison Tower.
40:12
Castle Hook, which is backed by Stanley Dreen Miller will pay 21.
40:16
2 million for 53,000 ft of penthouse space overlooking Central Park.
40:23
Castle Hook has just 35 employees.
40:26
Are they expecting to to to scale up a lot and change that?
40:28
You know, >> hopefully not.
40:30
I mean, you don't think this setup's going to deliver alpha?
40:34
You're like, >> it's a beautiful space. Yeah.
40:34
you know, they need to scale AUM.
40:37
They need to deliver returns.
40:39
Otherwise, they're going to be thrown out of the building.
40:43
>> I mean, it's uh wait, it's 21 mil a year. Yeah. >> Okay. 21.
40:49
>> I don't think it's I don't think it's unreasonable given their given their given their scale. >> Yeah.
40:55
I mean, it also uh probably makes sense for clients that want to come by.
40:59
There's just not that >> a lot of hedge fun stuff just over the fountain like >> well given given their fee base. >> Yeah.
41:07
No no no they can clearly afford it.
41:10
But the question is like what are the knock-on effects other than just like when you go to work you feel great.
41:15
There are certain businesses where it's like oh well like if you're VC and entrepreneurs come and pitch you and they see a nice building they're like oh this is a serious firm I should work with them.
41:22
But hedge funds oftentimes like the CEO isn't going by the hedge funds office all that much.
41:26
Um, and same thing for the clients.
41:29
They they might not actually be going and and doing a pitch in person, although I'm sure that happens. So, um, it just depends. I don't know. Uh, pretty cool.
41:37
I I want to see a video tour.
41:39
It looks like this these windows are really really big, but it feels like the the the top two floors, it looks a little lower than some of the some of the renders that I've seen from uh taller skyscrapers in Manhattan.
41:53
Can you be too high in Manhattan? I haven't been yet.
41:59
>> No, no fear of heights or anything.
42:01
I feel like if you have a clear view, like I mean I guess you always leave yourself open to a taller building popping up and blocking your view and that's one of the advantages of being extra high, but I feel like a view like this looks a little bit lower.
42:16
But maybe I just have the perspective all wrong. I don't know. Let me know.
42:18
What do you think of the new Passport?
42:23
>> Uh people were going back and forth on it.
42:26
Paul McGregor was saying, "If I was redesigning the cover of what is arguably the country's most important public document, I'd first hire both the best typographer and crest designer money can buy, then fiddle about with the layouts probably."
42:38
Um, and Joe Gibbia fires back high when you're done finding when you're done fiddling.
42:43
Please send me resume of top crest designer.
42:45
Make sure they can do better than the 1782 official national anthem.
42:49
Uh, it looks like a very national emblem. >> National emblem.
42:52
Um, yeah, the redesign looks like a very tasteful and moderate iteration.
43:00
Like I think people are reacting to this like it's like now it's all gold and it has like a bear and an eagle fighting on it and it it features like the UFC octagon.
43:09
Um, which like is sort of where people's expectations are for these types of things.
43:13
But this feels like >> I'm surprised that there's no UFC UFC branding on the passport. >> Yeah.
43:19
no ads is is a big step backwards.
43:23
Um but uh yeah, seems like a pretty pretty moderate iteration here. I don't know.
43:30
>> Yeah, they made the eagle a little bit older.
43:32
>> And also I I think the eagle is like the exact same design, right? It's just bigger. I think this is cool.
43:36
And I like that the United States of America bigger said make the eagle bold. >> Bold the eagle.
43:43
And I mean ju just I'm no I'm no like typography expert but in the previous passport passport was the biggest word but everyone knows what a passport looks like but they don't know what country it's from.
43:54
So if you pull out a book at the airport it's very obvious that you're pulling out a passport but it's not obvious what country it's from.
44:02
So putting the name of the country bigger makes more sense. Right?
44:06
Am I crazy or is this like design 101?
44:09
>> I think you might be on to something. >> Okay.
44:10
I I so I I think the new iteration makes a lot of sense.
44:13
It's just like put the name and put the logo bigger so that you can see that and everyone knows that it's passport so put passport smaller. >> Yeah.
44:20
I will say that the passport text where it's kind of sans serif all caps and there's like spacing that does look like AI slop kind of. >> It does.
44:30
>> This is like very common when you just have >> too much too wide of kerning is your problem. >> Okay.
44:35
The kerning needs some work.
44:35
Yeah, it does read a little odd.
44:41
>> That's pretty high stakes graphic design. >> It is most feedback.
44:45
>> You're like, "Yeah, we're going to make this, you know, pamphlet for a conference and nobody's going to read it."
44:49
And >> if they do, they'll look at it for a second.
44:52
The passports like, "We're going to make hundred, you know, 100 million of these and then they're going to carry them for a decade." >> Yeah.
45:01
>> Representing the country globally. >> Yeah.
45:03
>> They will be inspected many times.
45:03
I'm I'm not I'm not in into passports.
45:07
I I don't I don't want to leave America.
45:12
It's like not a good thing.
45:12
They could just get rid of them. Just stay here. >> I don't need you.
45:17
>> You would you would love that.
45:18
>> Wind hit the button that just like ended the US passport and >> Yeah, just wind down the program.
45:23
Just Just go to Alaska if you want it to be cold.
45:27
Go to Arizona if you want it to be hot. Problem solve.
45:30
>> Go to Hawaii if you want to go to the tropics.
45:32
>> Why Why do you need to go to another country?
45:34
We got everything you want right here.
45:37
>> Uh Mike Isaac, he's out of the New York Times. That's right.
45:40
>> He went to the Atlantic >> trade deal.
45:43
>> Do you think there's anything to that rumor that he had amassed an immense amount of soft power and was considering a CEO coup?
45:51
>> I think he was making a run for it. >> He might have.
45:53
And then he was ousted, defenistrated for becoming too powerful.
45:57
>> Yes, >> that seems like AAM's razor.
45:57
Aam's 40 razor in this scenario.
46:00
Uh it also could be that he uh just wanted to go to the Atlantic and write, you know, longer, different pieces in a different style, have a fresh have a fresh uh you know, look.
46:11
Uh but I do like that we that we caught him >> uh via the paparazzi. It's very good.
46:19
>> Um there's some there's some drama at the Atlantic though.
46:21
We had the CEO of the Atlantic on our show. He has a podcast.
46:27
This is Nicholas Thompson, Atlantic CEO.
46:30
He was talking to the media about the media business on Vox Channels podcast last month when host Peter Kofka, what's I did Peter Kofka's show, but I didn't know it was I didn't think it was called channels.
46:42
Maybe he has a second show.
46:43
Um, uh, Peter Kofka asked him, "How was the magazine's editor-inchief, Jeffrey Goldberg, feeling about the growing success of Thompson's personal podcast?"
46:52
So, he's the CEO, but his podcast is blowing up.
46:57
blowing up because he's getting really great guests.
46:59
And then there's also a uh there's a tension here.
47:01
He says, "We make a lot of money on the stuff I do."
47:06
Okay, this doesn't seem controversial anymore.
47:09
I don't know why they're writing about this.
47:10
Just giving him a victory lap. What is this?
47:12
This is such a puff piece. This is insane.
47:13
Insane puff piece in Semaphore about about Nicholas Thompson just printing on his podcast. Okay, we get it.
47:22
>> That said, >> he says, "Jeff likes it when we make money."
47:24
Thompson's response ricocheted around the Atlantic's newsroom.
47:29
Thompson's podcast, The Most Interesting Thing in AI, has emerged as a source of tension between the magazine's business and editorial teams.
47:37
Journalists have complained that the lucrative and high-profile show is not subject to the Atlantic's editorial rules, input, or oversight.
47:46
Yet, a casual listener could easily take it for an Atlantic editorial product.
47:51
I I did see some people going back and forth when he did the the Bos interview.
47:55
People were like, "Is this a sponsored podcast?"
47:57
Like this was like because he opens with like a pretty soft question just being like, "What are you launching today?"
48:04
Uh and and then he does ask a bunch of really hard questions later in the interview, but I think people just keyed off of the fact that like it was the moment when Meta was in the depths of like they're screen recording everyone and so that was the question you got to ask in that interview.
48:19
They he did ask it but just later in the interview and people were like oh he didn't ask it up front that's not enough.
48:26
Um anyway uh Thompson show is made by the magazine's business side and like any number of contemporary podcasts. Yes.
48:35
Uh features interviews with technologists and business leaders interspersed with sponsored content.
48:40
When the p when the podcast launched in 2024 the newsroom raised no objections but now that it's printing they got an issue.
48:48
The Atlantic has featured a robust paid content arm for years through its creative marketing studio and custom events business. They got to go further.
48:55
You know, if they're doing sponsored content, I think that they should be auctioning off the the the guest slots, but they should also be auctioning off the host slots.
49:03
So, it should just be like, okay, you can just you can just post whatever you want on our channel if you pay enough.
49:10
>> It's just like a pipe, >> but also sell ad slots.
49:12
So, it's like, okay, Bos wants to do some Spawn Con, but Alex Wang also wants to They're going to talk to each other on the on the the Atlantic podcast, but then there's going to be ads in the feed, too.
49:24
Uh, >> but it's presented by Enthropic. >> Yes, exactly. Exactly.
49:29
Uh, maximal maximal uh financial things.
49:33
Anyway, uh they're going back and forth on that.
49:35
We'll see where that goes.
49:37
Um uh what else is going on? >> What else we got? What else we got?
49:40
Oh, Lehaton Fat from Mstral. >> Lechon.
49:46
They're calling it Lechonk. >> Lechon. Yes.
49:48
Uh, they're leaning into the jokes. Mestral AI. The French Neol.
49:54
>> Is it fair to call them a neol or are they just a lab?
49:58
>> They're just a lab, right? They're pre- neolab. >> Yeah. Yeah, I would say so.
50:01
They're kind of >> Would we call them preno pre-neol lab specifically?
50:07
>> Uh, let me actually consult our nomenclature. >> Okay.
50:09
Oh, I think they were like national lab or something like that >> up there with Lawrence Livermore.
50:13
Uh, but they launched Mistral large 4 aka lonet one trillion parameters natively made it multimodal.
50:23
49 billion active parameters.
50:26
It is the best openweight model from US or Europe or Europe on aggregated benchmark.
50:31
State-of-the-art on critical workloads including cyber defense, manufacturing and finance and it surpasses closed frontier models on visual grounding forged in Europe.
50:38
End to end deployable from Europe via our our own Mistral cloud infrastructure available to all via API today working with cyber security partners privately.
50:55
Open weights release end of October.
50:55
So presumably they'll release the open weights for like the cyber nerfed version.
51:01
I would imagine something like that. I don't know.
51:03
Uh anyway, uh what is your review Tyler?
51:06
Do you have any other uh data to share about Mrol's progress?
51:12
>> Uh yeah, I mean it looks very good.
51:12
Um I think it's like very much on par with the kind of frontier of the open source.
51:18
So like the Chinese labs, it's like very much a contender.
51:20
It's not necessarily like destroying all of them on on every benchmark, but it's like certainly if people are worried about um using Chinese open source models because maybe downstream there's going to be some like legal ramification or whatever. Yeah.
51:33
Like this is a very good choice.
51:36
>> It really does change the open source closed source debate because >> yeah I think Mistral and Reflection which is kind of the the American open source lab. >> Yep.
51:44
>> Like we're now starting to see like okay these models are actually like quite quite competent >> and reflection uh came out with it's called beam yesterday. >> Whoa. not tapped in.
51:57
>> You're like, "Sorry, sorry, I can't I can't hear I can't hear you. I can't hear you. >> It's called team." Yes.
52:05
>> Uh anyways, we we can come come back to that, but uh great great to see them getting a a new model out.
52:13
>> And Leo has the the the funniest benchmark of them.
52:16
Says, "It's pretty funny that it seems the one thing Mstral large 4 is actually leading on is a benchmark about regulation."
52:23
Another EU banger, Harvey Harvey's legal agent benchmark uh is up to 15% uh whereas other models are down at between five and 13%. Uh interesting.
52:35
I I wonder if that's uh intentional.
52:39
I wonder if there's actually anything to read into that.
52:42
I I I really have no idea, but uh it's certainly certainly valuable.
52:44
Uh, I'm sure Harvey and all the other uh legal companies will be excited because we I mean we read the whole thing about Harvey uh their margins being in a really rough spot for a minute when they were overly uh overly reliant on like the most expensive frontier models.
53:00
Now there's a ton of price competition between OpenAI and Enthropic and then obviously there's a bunch of pressure from uh open source models.
53:05
So they like it it it's the true it's truly the uh create the benchmark that you want the the labs to hill climb and they just created the benchmark for like their exact workload and then they're able to do it.
53:21
>> Sushi commander says what are you talking about both bean and mol beam and mistall large are generation behind the latest Chinese leading model.
53:27
So putting you in the true zone, Tyler.
53:31
>> I mean, you can look at the benchmarks.
53:32
It's like Yeah, it's not leading them.
53:34
It's like among one of the contenders.
53:37
It's not the frontier model for sure.
53:39
>> It's like in in line, but a lot of the a lot of the like the most recent round of of Chinese open source happened like a couple months ago, which is always rough because like you catch up to the frontier and then it's like, well, you're going to take another six months to get something out where they're going to only take another two months to get something out.
53:55
So that window, but there's so many other uh geopolitical uh implications that uh lead companies to go one way or another. So we'll see. We'll see.
54:05
Um Olivia Moore has some data on what's happening in the battle for consumer AI dominance between Chach Claude and Gemini.
54:12
Uh A16Z pulled the data across web and mobile plus consumer revenue.
54:18
Uh, Chad GBT is at 2x Gemini scale and 6x scale on web and two and a half Gemini scale and 14 times cloud scale on mobile. Interesting.
54:28
I mean, I guess that makes sense more consumer focused.
54:31
You're you're pulling there.
54:34
Uh, >> the main thing here is just look at look at the run from Claude. >> Yeah.
54:39
>> You know, was >> I mean, we saw this in the app store, right?
54:40
Like you would open up the app store and like Claude was at the top for a while and then and then fell down and now um Chach's back on top and they're just going back and forth.
54:48
It's the the war for the frontier is just trading shots back and forth back and forth >> right now.
54:54
Mu is still at number one.
54:56
Vinted who we're working on is number two.
54:59
>> Vinted is still number two. >> So dominant.
55:02
>> The folks over at Vinted are are really doing a fantastic job.
55:04
Well, uh we should bring in our first guest.
55:07
First, let me tell you about Shopify.
55:09
Shopify is the commerce platform that grows with your business and lets you sell in seconds online, in store, on mobile, on social, on marketplaces, and now with AI agents, we have Gre Fleming from Rockefeller Capital Management. He's the president CEO. >> What's going on? >> Welcome to the show. How are you doing?
55:27
>> Well, good to see you, gentlemen.
55:28
>> Thank you so much for taking the time to come chat with us.
55:30
uh since it's your first time on the show, I would love to uh in uh for you to introduce yourself for the audience and give us a little bit about uh your background and then your business today. >> Great.
55:41
Uh I'm the uh CEO of Rockefeller Capital Management, which we started in 2018.
55:46
>> I've spent most of my career in the financial services business.
55:48
I was a management consultant at a company called Booze Allen and Hamilton >> in the late 80s, early 90s, uh which uh was actually great training for learning about lots of different industries.
55:57
I went from there to Maril Lynch and I uh was an investment banker mostly in the financial services space.
56:03
A noteworthy deal that I did.
56:05
I was uh the lead banker on the IPO of BlackRock in 1999 at >> $14 a share.
56:13
>> Uh so it's done quite well since then.
56:15
And I actually just rejoined the board for the second time last year. >> Congratulations.
56:18
Uh I was the president of Maril Lynch during the credit crisis and I negotiated the sale to Bank America which was uh uh and I have said this before publicly the uh most disappointing uh moment in my career.
56:30
>> I was happy to keep the company out of bankruptcy but it never should have had to be sold and having to sell it was uh very difficult. >> Yeah.
56:36
I then went to Morgan Stanley and I ran wealth and asset management and I left there in 2016 and I wanted to start something.
56:43
>> Uh, and I um I found out that I could partner with the Rockefeller family by the family office that was started by John D.
56:51
Rockefeller way back in 1882.
56:54
>> So the guy who made all the money, >> the guy, >> his wealth, by the way, gentleman at one time was 4% of GDP.
56:59
So maybe is still the wealthiest guy in history, that family.
57:04
So we partnered with them. We started a business.
57:06
I was backed by um uh a uh an investor, Viking Global Investors.
57:11
They've been a great partner.
57:12
We started on March 1, 2018, and we built uh a firm that uh uh is, I think, among the best uh serving wealthy American families.
57:20
We call them Highet worth and ultra high net worth, and we provide comprehensive advice to these families.
57:27
>> Yeah, I have so many questions.
57:27
Let's start with the process of actually building the firm.
57:33
um wealth managers have lots of different products, lots of different relationships.
57:36
How did you think about building out a portfolio of offerings quickly as an upstart firm to actually uh give a client who's coming along for the ride at the early stages a full service experience?
57:51
Was this uh like a hiring spree?
57:53
Was this partnering with other uh banks and and uh and uh firms to try and fill gaps?
57:59
What was the secret to actually delivering a you know top tier level of service quickly?
58:07
>> That is a great first question because the reality was we bought uh Rock and Co.
58:12
which was the originally the the family office.
58:14
There wasn't that much there. We had to build it. >> Yeah.
58:18
>> So uh it you know it was the classic J curve in the first couple years.
58:20
We were investing >> because you couldn't really onboard those families that have a complex set of needs >> and so you had a broader set of capabilities.
58:28
So uh the first few year few years was a significant investment time for us. >> Yeah.
58:34
>> We started hiring uh uh the private advisor teams to take the lead working with these families in late 18 early 19.
58:42
But we started building the capabilities right out of the gate.
58:44
And it's really taken us you know we have uh our 9th anniversary next March.
58:48
We've been building building during this time and only in the last few years did we have all the capabilities in place so we could provide comprehensive advice generational tax financial education.
58:58
If the family owns a business we give them advice on that.
59:03
We have a boutique investment bank. Sure.
59:05
>> It was only in the last few years that we really had all those capabilities come together so that we could really start to grow the firm.
59:10
start to grow the firm. So obviously the brand is is incredibly storied but and and you had you know an incredible journey in your career obviously tons of connections but how did you think about the top of funnel how did you think about onboarding clients and then once
59:29
you'd onboarded that initial set of you know tapping your rolodex I imagine uh how did you think about growing that client base what what actually works in this particular market I imagine And it's not Super Bowl ads, but what what what what does what does move the needle in the modern era? >> You know, uh the thing that we think is
59:47
>> You know, uh the thing that we think is the secret sauce is providing advice across the full range of the family's needs >> because wealthy families have a complex set of needs.
59:56
They're they're trying to plan generational passage of wealth. We do that.
1:00:00
We give them a lot of tax advice.
1:00:02
We put them in the best investment solutions and those include the best alternative managers, also direct investments.
1:00:07
you know, we put clients and in a lot of the companies that you guys talk about, yeah, that are earlier on.
1:00:13
Um, we provide uh advice on how to talk to the next generation about money.
1:00:18
We have a nextgen advisory council with some of the, you know, prominent wealthy American families represented on that nextgen advisory council.
1:00:25
We do philanthropic advisory.
1:00:28
We find that most of our families, one of the greatest thing about the United States, in addition to the whole entrepreneurial machine that you guys talk about all the time, is the philanthropy.
1:00:36
$600 billion dollars given away every year.
1:00:39
Almost every single family that we work with wants us to help them put in place a philanthropy plan, including young wealthy people, wealthy, you know, new uh, you know, new people making new wealth at some of these AI startup companies.
1:00:51
Even if they're on the younger side, young people want comprehensive advice right up front.
1:00:56
They want to obviously, you know, spend some of the money, save some of the money, but they also want to start giving it away.
1:01:01
So we do a lot of we spent a lot of time on the philanthropy side that comprehensive advice nobody really did that in the way that we do it when we bu when we started building our company that was you know what we really set out to do.
1:01:14
>> How is the uh how is the upper echelon of like family office and multif family office business uh changing what you do?
1:01:25
uh is that is is there just a demand for a a wider breadth of services for a longer period of time?
1:01:30
Uh is uh is is there something where you need to react to the fact that some uh some ultra high netw worth individuals are building whole trading desks and real estate teams and they're doing like such complex management uh that you still want to partner with them in some meaningful way or advise them on their journey.
1:01:53
You know, John, for most of them, until you get to, you know, really significant wealth, you know, north of10 billion dollars. >> Yeah.
1:02:02
>> That's enough wealth to really have a a fully staffed family office. >> Yeah.
1:02:06
>> But, you know, in the first certainly hundreds of millions into the early billions, >> you know, we encourage families to think about using us because we'll do everything that they can build.
1:02:15
We do it for lots of families and it's easier for us to deliver that for them than it is for them to build it and manage it.
1:02:23
there are headaches involved in building your own family office.
1:02:24
So the the very high-end will will, you know, do everything in-house, but really everybody else is a potential client for us and and uh and even the very wealthy families will some sometimes do some aspects of things for them.
1:02:40
>> They'll have a lot of it internal, but they might be turning to us for advice on different kind of investments. Sure.
1:02:46
>> Or, you know, for for uh help on some of the sophisticated tax and and estate planning.
1:02:50
They might turn to us for that.
1:02:52
But, you know, right up to a couple billion dollars, that's a sweet spot for us. >> Got it.
1:02:57
>> How how has your, you know, private market strategy evolved over the last few years?
1:03:02
So many of the world's most exciting companies have obviously stayed private for a long time.
1:03:06
They're also quite high-profile.
1:03:08
So I imagine some of that strategy ends up being led by the client base coming to you and and various you know people on your team saying get me into Anderoll or get me into XYZ you know name and it feels like it's probably coming you know the the the the ultimate strategy is being um led in some way by by both sides.
1:03:30
led in some way by by both sides. It is Jordy and in fact you know Rockefeller Capital Management we're in over 30 wealth centers over 50 cities across the country and one of the reasons we do that is we want to be embedded in local communities with the clients with the
1:03:45
families because wealth is created in this country you know when I was younger you had a a certain set of cities and they're still there and Boston and Houston and Dallas now you've got Nashville and Charlotte obviously many places in Florida and and in California obviously Silicon Valley. So we're in
1:04:00
So we're in these communities.
1:04:02
So we'll often have people working at, you know, uh the companies that are getting built and built quickly come to our adviserss and look for help.
1:04:11
Uh so we get a lot of introductions that way because we're embedded in the community and we do a lot of work with entrepreneurs across all different industries and and frankly they benefit from our advice because they're really spending 247 building these companies and they're not they don't have the time.
1:04:28
they don't really have the training to do the types of things that we do in terms of helping them start to think about, you know, more of a diversified approach to long-term investing, philanthropy, things like that.
1:04:39
So, uh, it's been a great, uh, uh, that, you know, the the the this whole growth in in entrepreneurs.
1:04:46
I mean, I think we have 6.
1:04:48
2 million new companies being created in the United States this year, which will be a record.
1:04:53
>> This entrepreneurial surge has been great for us in terms of creating clients all over the country. >> Yeah, totally.
1:05:00
Uh I want to talk about the research uh the research function at the firm.
1:05:03
I imagine that uh clients want your house view on interest rates and inflation and uh whether AI is a bubble or not.
1:05:12
How do you think about answering those questions?
1:05:16
What team members do you have in place?
1:05:18
How do you uh grapple with like the hot questions of the day to keep like a consistent view from a firm but also tailor the advice to the specific client?
1:05:29
>> Yeah, we have a chief investment officer, Jimmy Chang, who takes the lead on pulling together a firm view.
1:05:32
Uh I have another colleague, Rashir Chararma, who writes every other week in the FT.
1:05:38
He's our chairman of international.
1:05:38
So, we've got some great minds. Yeah.
1:05:41
>> You know, and I I I spend a lot of time on this myself because clients ask me all the time and I'll give them my own my own views.
1:05:46
You know, I've been pretty clear that this technology is revolutionary.
1:05:50
I'm I'm I'm in my 39th year uh in in my professional career.
1:05:53
Uh I've seen a lot uh but there's nothing like this technology uh in terms of its impact on every part of society.
1:06:02
you know, you have the capex investment um and and all the data centers and everything that's that's happening there which is driving the economy, but then you have the other side of it which is every private and public company in the country trying to figure out what to do with these tools, how to use them, how to drive productivity in your firm, how to enhance the client experience.
1:06:22
So uh you know we think this is a revolutionary technology and and u uh is beyond anything that's happened to this point frankly in uh in human history.
1:06:33
At the same time, so I completely agree with you obviously, but uh at the same time, there are a number of Cassandraas out there right now.
1:06:43
Uh and that is offset by a lot of investors, a lot of uh people in finance who have lived through the great financial crisis and or both.
1:06:53
And I'm wondering from your experience, what are the canaries in the coal mine that you do look towards uh as useful uh signals for something maybe getting too far because even when the technology is real, there's always a risk of overinvesting, right? >> Yeah.
1:07:14
Look, I mean, you know, and I I live through both of those times,.
1:07:16
com and the and the financial crisis.
1:07:18
Not every dollar is going to get the return that you're that it's looking for when you have a time like this with this kind of massive investment. That's clear.
1:07:26
The question is, is the overall technology going to pull the economy and productivity forward in a way where it's going to have the kind of impact that we all hope for?
1:07:37
I I believe the latter is going to take place.
1:07:40
I think that you're already starting to see some signs of productivity improvement.
1:07:44
Now the you know you got different people arguing about that but you know output for per hour seems to be going up in some industries without employment going up.
1:07:54
So, you know, as long as all of the investment leads to the kind of growth in the economy, the growth in productivity, this obviously what the government's hoping for because, you know, one canary in the coal mine that we could talk about is the fiscal debt situation, which is unique in my history, >> uh, and is a problem and maybe driving some of the longer term rates up.
1:08:12
But um from an AI standpoint, if the overall investment that's being made, trillions of dollars, leads to the the effect on the economy and on productivity across thousands of companies and every part of society, then the the the return on the capital will be there, but it'll be differentiated.
1:08:31
Not everybody will be a winner.
1:08:33
There will be winners and losers. >> Yep.
1:08:35
And you know even though we saw and I lived through this the dot explode uh you know in in 2000 and 2001 obviously there were tremendous companies that ended up coming out of that and the same thing coming out of the credit crisis.
1:08:48
So not everybody's going to be a winner when you're looking at investments and you know and the capital that's chasing different companies now.
1:08:53
Some of them will will justify the the the capital investment, some won't.
1:08:57
But from a macro standpoint, I'm optimistic that all of this capital that's behind this whole AI investment will have the impact on the economy, productivity, uh you know, people's incomes, you know, a lot of the positives that uh are in the in the dialogue.
1:09:14
I I I think that uh that can come to pass. >> Yeah.
1:09:18
How uh how are you processing the obvious bubble in in the early stage technology private markets, you know, where you have a company that goes from, you know, being worth, let's say, $0 to, you know, $2 billion a couple months later.
1:09:34
The >> talking about like pre-revenue. >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:09:36
I mean, right now, um, there's all this NAV appreciation that you're seeing across the, you know, the top early stage funds because they're there's effectively multiple rounds happening in a very short period of time.
1:09:49
There's so much excitement around these companies and these categories and and the TAMs feel so big that it's easy to get around to justifying, hey, if we give this company $500 million and they're going after this hard problem and and there's, you know, meaningful technology change, they're going to be able to figure something out.
1:10:09
Um, but at the same time, you know, we go through this every week where we'll have multiple times a week, we'll have a company on the show we've never heard of and somehow they they have, you know, $500 million of of fresh capital and, you know, pretty small re uh revenue base at least and a lot of potential.
1:10:29
But um it's a little bit nerve-wracking having you know just gone through a similar investment cycle in in 2020 and 2021 although we didn't have this the sort of same technology shift.
1:10:41
Yeah, we didn't have the underlying technology shift, but yeah, there was that cycle.
1:10:47
And remember again, I did live the internet cycle and John saying uh uh while you were uh asking the question, Jordy, pre-revenue that was remember clicks and different things that were looked at in 98 and 99 >> and now it's just like talent. It's talent density.
1:11:01
It's like if you give me so and and and so the investment thesis is just like, hey, these we got five really smart people here, time to give them half a billion, you know? >> Yeah.
1:11:11
Look, I mean, you know, in 99 you get in a taxi and the taxi driver would ask you for three recommendations on on, you know, stocks you could buy or companies you could invest in.
1:11:18
So, there's some of that going on now. No question.
1:11:22
The way we deal with it, first of all, we do a lot of diligence on the private investment side as well.
1:11:27
>> We try to only put things in front of our adviserss and clients that we think, >> you know, look like they could pass the test of time here, but that's still a challenge given the number uh and quantity that are coming out.
1:11:37
majority when you guys are seeing companies that you've never heard of and you live in this ecosystem, >> we're going to see companies that we've not heard of as well.
1:11:45
>> Diversification is the way that we do it with our clients and also not just diversification within the space, but only a certain amount of the capital goes into this this part of their capital allocation plan.
1:11:55
So you you know we we're we have these families you know broadly diversified across alternatives obviously some public market exposure on the equity and even on the fixed income side with rates backing up and then a certain amount of the capital into things that you know fit the bill with what you're describing.
1:12:13
um where you know some of them might work and some of them won't work but uh the client is not exposed to um more risks than they should be taking given the fact that we're in a we're in a time like that and we're definitely in a time like that.
1:12:28
What's different about this time, and that's always a dangerous phrase, and I've been around long enough to know that, but what's different about this time, and John was saying this before, the underlying technology and the underlying uh, you know, business shift is real, >> but a lot of these companies are not going to get the valuations that they're being awarded now. >> Yeah. >> Um, >> one more. >> Yeah. One more.
1:12:48
Um, >> how do you how have you processed how success ends up clouding the judgment of otherwise really smart people?
1:13:01
>> That's a good question.
1:13:01
Um, and and you even talked about a low point in your career with Meil Lynch which avoided, you know, the worst case scenario, but when you have >> absolutely knocked it out of the park for long enough, you start, you know, otherwise smart people start to not even be able to imagine the possibility of of failure.
1:13:21
And I and I'm seeing this, you know, just in in the private markets where we're spending most of our time, >> some of these managers have put up such unbelievable results for the past few years that that that and and and at at a certain point, you start feeling like you're you're playing with like house money to some degree, too, which is which is another dynamic.
1:13:42
Um but but having seen a bunch all sorts of managers across across your career like when do when do you feel like um what are the signs that you look for to think like okay maybe this person's overplaying their hand?
1:13:58
>> Well you know part of it is is what you describe is even generational.
1:13:59
Have they been through the cycles?
1:14:01
Is this the only cycle that they're seeing?
1:14:03
Um part of it is back to the diversification you know I was talking about before.
1:14:08
But, you know, you're what you're describing is an incredible uh is uh spot on in terms of what's going on right now.
1:14:13
I mean, you know, you have clients that everybody's kind of expecting, you know, anybody who got into SpaceX early, you know, that that's kind of the vision they have for every private investment.
1:14:25
You know, am I going to be up 30, 40, 50 times? >> Yeah.
1:14:28
>> It's like, look, this is, you know, not something that is, you know, recurs on a regular basis.
1:14:32
You know, I was looking at the scale of companies now.
1:14:33
Apple was the first trillion dollar company.
1:14:36
I think it was 2018 or 2019. There are now 15 or 16. Yeah.
1:14:41
>> I mean, it is >> there there's a a momentum here.
1:14:42
And you know, look, this is what what our adviserss do.
1:14:46
They've been around a long time.
1:14:49
They've been working with wealthy families.
1:14:51
>> They say, you know, let's stick with the plan.
1:14:53
We can put this much capital in these types of investments.
1:14:55
You know, we like these vehicles here for these for this reason.
1:14:59
We think this vehicle might be too speculative.
1:15:01
We think these people, they've done well, but they've really only seen one cycle.
1:15:04
So we want to be careful there.
1:15:06
Our adviserss are providing that kind of advice and we're constantly reminding you know uh people throughout the firm because I've lived these cycles and uh and this one you know is taking on some of those characteristics.
1:15:19
Again having said that the underlying driver is real but there will be winners and losers.
1:15:24
We look at diversification.
1:15:26
We say to clients just a portion of the capital be careful and let's look for managers that have actually seen something go wrong because things go right and they go wrong.
1:15:35
Last question for me how have you grappled with or implemented uh AI at the firm level not as an investment strategy but just you can imagine you know every email getting passed through AI but wealth management is a luxury product.
1:15:54
Some clients might want a handcrafted email even if it's takes a little bit longer.
1:15:59
Where have you seen it integrate usefully versus okay, maybe we're going to sit that one out?
1:16:08
>> Well, you know, one of the great things about our business because the clients there's so much complexity around taking care of these families, the interface stays human beings. Yeah.
1:16:16
So, the adviser is going to stay on front out front and we think that's the case for decades and decades.
1:16:21
the family will come in and they will meet with the adviser and the team.
1:16:25
>> We use AI as a growth enabler.
1:16:28
>> We're and and you know we've got you know partnerships with some of the top firms.
1:16:31
We're building things ourselves.
1:16:33
>> We're trying to make um uh the advisor teams more efficient in dealing with clients.
1:16:37
So a lot of things that used to be more manual or semmanual will be done by agents. Yeah.
1:16:43
>> And we're working on that.
1:16:43
So I'll give you an example of that.
1:16:44
Advisors spend a lot of time getting ready for the meeting with the family.
1:16:49
they have the meeting, then they have the followup, and you know, making sure the follow-up occurs and the investments occur.
1:16:54
We're trying to automate that meeting prep, >> you know, and have an agent really help pull that string all the way through. Yeah.
1:17:02
>> So, that's the type of thing that we're we're we're investing in so that the advisor teams become more productive, gives them more time with clients, they can work with more clients, uh, and and and we think the tools will be very efficacious there. >> Yeah.
1:17:14
Removing the drudgery from just piecing together a portfolio, understanding what's happening. It makes so much sense.
1:17:19
Uh, thank you for coming on the show. This was fantastic. Very cool.
1:17:23
We'll be back and talk more soon.
1:17:25
Have a great rest of your day.
1:17:26
>> Yeah, let's do it again soon. >> You too. >> Goodbye.
1:17:29
>> Let me tell you about Figma agents. Meet the canvas.
1:17:31
Your AI agents can now create and modify your Figma files with design system context.
1:17:36
We got TJ Parker back on the show. Four timer club.
1:17:39
He's joining the four-timer club.
1:17:42
This is his fourth time on the show.
1:17:44
TJ Parker, welcome to TBNN. How you doing? >> Good. How are you?
1:17:51
>> So, you really you really said you really said take this job and shove it. Is that what you said?
1:17:57
>> You know, I think I'd focus more on what I'm excited to go do now. >> Okay.
1:18:01
>> Which is general medicine. Yeah.
1:18:02
>> Which is the Nikita beer of healthcare. >> Is that it? >> Yeah.
1:18:07
>> Is that is that kind is that kind of fair?
1:18:08
I mean, in some ways it feels like going going obviously going back to your roots and taking another crack at a similar problem in some ways. >> Yeah.
1:18:20
And you probably know this, but ironically, Nikita and I shared desks at Tech Stars in Boston in 2013.
1:18:24
So, it's particularly apppropo.
1:18:28
>> We got to find that desk.
1:18:28
We got to put it in the Museum of Business. >> Business. Yeah. The most profitable.
1:18:34
>> That's a billion dollar desk right there. >> A great desk. Yeah.
1:18:36
I I had actually had no idea. So >> that's crazy.
1:18:39
Um but yes, restate the mission, then we'll go into the decision to step in, what you're planning to do, where the company is now, but walk us through it.
1:18:49
>> Yeah, I mean, I think our vision is super simple.
1:18:51
We want to make it just as easy to shop in healthcare as it is to shop for anything else in your life.
1:18:55
You know, I think today it's super convoluted.
1:18:59
You have no idea what the price is for things.
1:19:01
You don't really know what makes sense for you.
1:19:02
And so we're trying to follow all the modalities in retail that we know work super well >> and apply those to healthcare.
1:19:09
And so you can come to general medicine for anything.
1:19:13
Could be as simple as you just need a renewal of a prescription or as complex as you've got this thing you can't figure out what's going on and you want >> advice, you want to go see an offline specialist.
1:19:22
We just want to be the one-stop shop for healthcare. >> Yeah. The front door.
1:19:25
Uh is h uh is there a uh like a secular trend here around uh consumers taking more initiative with their health care and actually knowing what paths they want to go down versus an annual checkup or just being responsive to there's a problem and my doctor handled it from start to finish.
1:19:50
Has like the pattern of engaging with the medical system changed or is it changing right now?
1:19:58
>> Yeah, I think there's two trends there that make sense.
1:20:00
The first is that obviously in certain pockets of healthcare, consumers have gotten very accustomed to a much more seamless CX, right?
1:20:08
So, it could be >> GLP1s, it could be your annual wellness test.
1:20:12
test. like there are these kind of very specific categories where consumers have gotten used to this and they've started to expect it across the spectrum of healthare and then the other obvious trend is that with the advent of LMS consumers are just far more uh they've far better understand what they might need at any given time and so it's
1:20:32
gotten them much farther down that curve and the challenge right now is that the output of an LM is still just giving them advice it's saying like you probably should call the doctor and ask them this question or you should get someone to write you this prescription or you should go get this X-ray or this MRI or these labs. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
1:20:48
>> And you're back to dealing with the health system as it's always been, which is that's a super complicated process.
1:20:52
And so I think that trend is is really important here where we're trying to close that gap from I know what I want to do to actually being able to immediately execute that.
1:21:00
What is your view on the AI models, the agents like just you know cloning your voice and setting up a Twilio account and calling the doctor for you and like basically just interfacing with the old system just as an AI uh >> post.
1:21:19
You're describing creating a deep fake of yourself >> basically.
1:21:22
I mean that's kind of what's happening in some pockets of commerce.
1:21:26
We're talking about a few million people testing this stuff out right now.
1:21:28
It's pretty niche, but uh is is is that something where you think it's uh it's like that's going to be slower to take off, more early adopter niche, or you still have a play and that will actually be acceleratory for you?
1:21:45
>> Yeah, I think AI and LMS and agents are like very good at replicating things humans already do.
1:21:49
I don't think there's a single human that would tell you this is a particularly good experience and it's just administratively annoying, right?
1:21:56
right? And so I think even if you take the AI doctor side of this or the agent booking side of this like I think that output results in replicating the current system which I don't think anyone thinks >> is particularly good and so and I think if you compare this category to all the other retail categories like we've had
1:22:14
two decades of building marketplaces and infrastructure and booking experiences none of that exists in healthcare and so to actually make this work as elegantly as other categories that's the thing you actually have to go build is what is this interface between digital and the traditional healthcare system. >> Is it going to be harder to scale the
1:22:32
>> Is it going to be harder to scale the top of funnel without a hero killer product?
1:22:40
I'm just thinking about the the the previous companies that were like known as like the hair loss company and then they did a couple other things or like the ED company and then they did a bunch or the peptide company and then they did a bunch of other things.
1:22:51
Um, do you need like a beach head offering to onboard people or is there a message that's resonating that's more broad?
1:23:02
>> Yeah, I think if you asked me a decade ago and I think if you asked most people in the ecosystem, everyone assumed that these very vertical focused companies would eventually just chip away at category by category and ultimately go horizontal.
1:23:14
It's like Amazon starting with books and then just like in like increasing selection.
1:23:17
Yeah, it has to be in every of the early stage decks of like him, Roman, all those companies.
1:23:22
They all probably will eventually be the Amazon of healthcare, right?
1:23:24
I imagine that was there.
1:23:26
>> That obviously hasn't happened, right?
1:23:28
And so part of the theory here is that you actually have to be >> horizontal from day one.
1:23:32
So customers can come to you for anything. >> Interesting.
1:23:36
>> And I think there's a couple reasons for that.
1:23:37
Like if you just take the current version of offline care with a GP, like a primary care provider, >> like they serve everything, right?
1:23:44
like you don't have to go to 12 different places to get everything you need.
1:23:47
Like you have like you're used to going to one place for whatever you need.
1:23:51
Um and I think the other vector that's relevant is that often times customers like don't actually know what's going on and like if you take ED drugs in particular, probably half the customers on those meds should be on something else treating the underlying issue.
1:24:05
And so you end up with kind of a hammer nail problem >> um versus being able to actually get customers to exactly what's most effective for them at that moment.
1:24:17
>> At what level of abstraction can you interface with the healthare system as a relatively new company?
1:24:22
Like if you're building a fintech company like you'll just use Stripe for a lot of the you know card processing and whatnot and then you do something fancy on top right if you're building like an e-commerce site.
1:24:33
site. Um and with healthcare there are there are companies that help with booking doctors and there's uh you know healthcare record systems like there has been a v like a like a first generation if not like a first and second generation of like medtech healthcare
1:24:50
tech companies and I'm wondering like are those natural integration points or is the technology at a point where you can go deeper and interface directly with doctors or directly with insurance companies and you don't need to aggregate aggregators. >> Yeah. I think probably an unpopular >> Yeah.
1:25:09
I think probably an unpopular opinion is that the data is actually out there now.
1:25:13
Like healthcare in many ways has the most open data because it's been federally mandated.
1:25:16
And so as an example, when a customer signs up for general medicine, on average, we're getting 11 years worth of medical records and they don't have to go >> log into 12 different health systems and go find everything.
1:25:27
We just >> we get it automatically. >> Yeah.
1:25:31
Um, and the other thing that's happened is the federal government mandated open open pricing files a handful of years ago.
1:25:37
And so providers have to contribute what their reimbursement rates are uh to this central repository.
1:25:42
Um, and so when you combine these things, we can effectively give customers a clear cash and insurance price for any procedure or service with any provider.
1:25:52
And that doesn't require us having gone and done a bunch of deals with a bunch of offline systems.
1:25:58
We can do that on our own. Mhm.
1:26:00
>> I think then if you take the like the pharmacy side of this is a good good example.
1:26:04
We just launched our pharmacy experience.
1:26:05
You can check out on general medicine like you're on Instacart or Uber Eats at 50,000ies across the country.
1:26:12
So you can see like what is exactly my price going to be and just click buy like you do everywhere else and get the prescription at whatever pharmacy you want.
1:26:19
And so we've, you know, we've really accelerated our ability to allow you to interact with anybody in the system.
1:26:24
Um, and I do think a lot of that is a byproduct of regulatory work that's been going on for a decade coupled with the cap like the capabilities of LMS.
1:26:34
And so I just don't think this would have been possible to build 5 years ago.
1:26:38
>> What are your strengths and weaknesses as a CEO >> job interview?
1:26:46
I'm really good at tweeting.
1:26:46
I had a really good day on the on the timeline today.
1:26:49
So that's that's my biggest strength for sure.
1:26:52
>> Um, >> important these days. >> Yeah, weaknesses. I don't know.
1:26:54
Uh I try not to talk about those too much.
1:26:57
Um I mean I think like for me like I was so excited to get back to building partially because it's a bunch of people I've worked with for 10 15 years and like we've built an amazing team across the org.
1:27:10
Um and so yeah, in many ways building an amazing team and getting to work with that team to to build stuff.
1:27:18
>> Where do you see yourself in five years?
1:27:21
No, I I I'm curious like what uh you know from from Pillpack there were certainly like 10 massive mistakes that you made and then you did probably like a thousand things right and that worked out to an amazing outcome. >> Yeah, totally.
1:27:36
>> Are there like this time around?
1:27:36
Is it really you're just sharper, more knowledgeable?
1:27:42
You probably know that you can actually go way bigger this time than the last time because why?
1:27:46
what's the point of of, you know, running it back with the team if you're if you're not gonna um reach even higher highs.
1:27:52
Um but is there any any anything that that stands out is like we're definitely not going to do that even from like a you know hiring standpoint mistakes that you made building the team the first time around?
1:28:07
>> Yeah, I mean the the thing that I definitely wouldn't replicate that we did at PPAC is we were just fundamentally misaligned with other partners and participants in the ecosystem, right?
1:28:15
we had this big battle with incumbents that was just being young and naive and obviously it worked out in our favor.
1:28:22
I think that there's a big difference with general medicine which is I think we are ultimately trying to refactor the system around the consumer and in many ways that solves a bunch of problems for other participants in the ecosystem.
1:28:33
That's probably the biggest strategic difference I think tactically like we've spent 15 years like in the guts of the healthare system like deeply understanding all the underlying rails like what's truly possible and not possible.
1:28:47
And so in many ways it's that is probably the biggest difference is that you've got a decade and a half of understanding of what you can really do in healthcare.
1:28:57
And then coupling that like really niche expertise with how does that manifest as like a differentiated customer experience I think is what we're we're uniquely good at is sort of being in the weeds over here but then abstracting it away so that for the customer it's just got it was super simple and they don't really need to understand like how hard it was to make it that simple.
1:29:17
The Jaguar Typo 01 has leaked.
1:29:17
Is this a good car for the modern healthcare CEO? >> I think I'm out.
1:29:27
I'm going to stick with my Raptor R, which uh is probably the right healthcare CEO car. Yeah. Truck truck.
1:29:33
Um, >> is there any type of um is there any type of like interesting why now because people are spending like it is such a better experience using an LLM to understand like a health issue you might be having versus historically like >> you know Google to WebMD to Reddit and you're like trying to find somebody else who's had like a similar experience or or whatever it is and now you can have a conversation about it.
1:30:00
Now you can involve you know whatever it is like images now it even has like memory so it can it can sort of tie things together.
1:30:08
Um but it feels like that like you you're it feels like you're exactly the kind of business that should be advertising in LLMs which is like Yep.
1:30:18
>> because it can be done in a way that's not even personalized which I think people are going to be a little bit wary of.
1:30:23
Um, but you can just like if somebody's using a free version of of Chad GBT, you could just slot in and say like, "Hey, like we know you're kind of like you can here's how you actually solve your issue versus just staying in the sort of digital realm learning." >> Yeah.
1:30:39
I mean, I think obviously the first iteration of this product is our storefront on general medicine. co.
1:30:42
I think we assume that there's going to be all sorts of different ways consumers get access to these products and services.
1:30:49
And going back to the the retail example, like we know exactly what that looks like, right?
1:30:53
A Shopify skew pops up in an LLM.
1:30:55
You can immediately add to cart and purchase in one click.
1:30:58
Like there's no reason that same CX shouldn't exist in healthcare once you have this infrastructure layer built.
1:31:06
Um, and I so I think consumers are going to whether it's an agent and they're literally never really interacting with us or it's like Shopify and it's a skew that pops a modal like we're I think we're building the hard part of that CX which is the underlying infrastructure to make that work. >> Amazing news.
1:31:22
Well, congrats on the new >> Glad to see you back in the game.
1:31:25
You had you had you had a good few years as a capital allocator just just hanging out begging people to let you give them money, but you're back back in the driver's seat.
1:31:37
>> Yeah, we're the problem is I wasn't a good enough golfer.
1:31:39
It's pretty depressing to play golf like three days a week and still suck.
1:31:42
So, I had to get back to operating. >> There we go. >> Back at it. >> Awesome.
1:31:48
Super super excited for you and and the whole and the whole band.
1:31:50
Yeah, >> it's going to be a great run.
1:31:53
>> Thanks guys so much for coming. Great to see you. We'll talk to you soon.
1:31:54
Let me tell you about public investing for those who take it seriously.
1:31:59
We got stocks, options, bonds, crypto, treasuries, and more with great customer service.
1:32:03
Up next, we have Jawan Kim from Alas, the co-founders. >> You know him.
1:32:08
>> You know him from triggered you >> live for the first time.
1:32:12
>> He used to work at RAM.
1:32:12
Now he's building his own company. Welcome to the show. How you doing? >> How's it going, guys?
1:32:17
Yo, congrats on the success and becoming rich. >> You too. Thank you.
1:32:21
And congrats on always crude in your ways.
1:32:25
>> Yes, >> you're always and always consistent.
1:32:29
>> Um, >> but you got some funding.
1:32:29
Speaking of money, how much did you get? How much did you raise?
1:32:34
>> Yeah, we raised 25 million.
1:32:34
Uh, we actually raised a >> I can't hear you.
1:32:39
I can't hear you over the sound of the gong. >> Congratulations. >> No, I appreciate you.
1:32:45
>> General Catalyst CRV backto back >> genius. >> Geniuses.
1:32:50
>> Ben, Adam, the whole gang bunch.
1:32:50
But, >> uh, great lineup. Yeah, great lineup.
1:32:55
What are you building >> and and building the >> Go for it. >> Yeah. What's up?
1:32:59
>> No, I was gonna say like you've you've it feels like you've been in Have you been like building for a couple years now? Is it more like a year? >> I know, >> dude.
1:33:08
I left RAMP back in uh September of last year, which is crazy to think. It's been a wild ride.
1:33:16
>> Yeah, >> it's been a wild ride.
1:33:16
Um, we raised uh, you know, from General Call back in November.
1:33:19
Uh we actually started on a different idea in like performance marketing and then we decided to pivot away from that back in March and then we landed on building the agents lab for creative work uh in April and then uh we raised our series A in July. >> Awesome. What does that mean? >> Yeah.
1:33:37
So I believe well one I I'll give a little bit of backstory.
1:33:40
I uh I used to want to be like Naiga back in the day.
1:33:43
if you guys know that Asian YouTuber that hit the 1 million subscribers for the first time.
1:33:46
And then I I kept telling myself like, "Oh, I need to do this."
1:33:50
And my dad used to be like a wedding photographer, like a videographer.
1:33:53
So, I wanted to do um I just I I wanted to learn Final Cut Pro and I just couldn't.
1:33:59
My team is like going to over the computer.
1:34:01
But anyways, yeah, I just figured, you know, with the era of generative AI and uh people being able to build software like they've never been able to before, like that shouldn't be the case for creative work either and creative assets, videos, the coolest motion graphics, animations or bring your imagination to life.
1:34:15
And you know with general media models making it much cheaper than ever to create like it but it hasn't been easier.
1:34:22
And you know Melius is going to be the harness to actually close that gap uh by building a suite a creative suite of tools like the nodebased canvas agentic timeline editors uh even one-off generations all the way to being first to the MCPN CLI. >> Very cool.
1:34:38
So so who are you guys what kind of companies are you working with today? What's the focus?
1:34:41
Are you focused on like certain types of assets like could be landing page?
1:34:47
>> Yeah, we we're primary c catering to a lot of businesses like uh in fashion, CPG, uh e-commerce for sure.
1:34:52
Um some notable customers are Doors.
1:34:55
com, uh shown media, uh shout out to the marketing agency in New York and um and Skinny Dipped as well.
1:35:02
Uh we also provide um yeah, we also provide services for companies doing even more than five billion in AR.
1:35:09
So super grateful to be working with the uh group of group of uh customers that we are today.
1:35:15
>> More than five billion.
1:35:15
We It's time to start guessing. John, no, I'm kidding.
1:35:20
>> I want to know about uh uh 25 million.
1:35:20
I mean, huge congrats, but it feels like you're going a sort of inference light model.
1:35:29
If you're going to be doing generations, you'll probably pass that cost through to the to the user and rely on other inference providers.
1:35:37
Is that the thesis or do you see Yeah, at some point we're going to be training our own models.
1:35:43
We're going to be doing crazy stuff, building hardware, racking servers.
1:35:48
>> I love that you asked that.
1:35:48
Um I don't know if you guys had a chance to check out some of the press release stuff, but >> the theme of the fund raise is that we're building this so that anyone can make anything. Yeah.
1:35:58
>> And we want to kind of leave an open-ended message there.
1:35:59
open-ended message there. Like we're going to start in general media for sure, but eventually it's going to be a play where you know like I hope 10 20 years down the line people have like this is a crazy thing to say but maybe they have a microchip in their brain and then they just think of this something
1:36:12
that they want to make and just materialize entire >> like that is the kind of thing that we want to strive to build and we're not going to make any promises but like you know as long as we have a goal that says you know we're going to build this company so that anyone can make anything that is the right strategy I believe and this is just the first start first. Uh I
1:36:27
Uh I mean it seems like at this point a lot of the a lot of the customer base is is like essentially like sales driven or you know landing page driven news driven.
1:36:38
Um are you optimistic about uh any of the like uh foundation model plug-in ecosystem driving like being the tool of choice for agents at some point being a growth vector.
1:36:51
I've seen a couple companies sort of like go really really vertical off of that, but of course there's always like some trickiness to the relationship there.
1:37:03
But how are you negotiating like uh AI discoverability or AI uh top of funnel?
1:37:09
>> Yeah, I actually I actually think that we were pretty uh I guess everyone would say this, but we were pretty early to that take, especially in the general media space.
1:37:17
If you if you go back to March, uh we were still in stealth, but and our first post was >> that we built the first MCP to interact with generative media models on a canvas and no one had done that before and we positioned ourselves as the creative canvas for agents. >> Sure.
1:37:32
>> And you know that had its own kind of >> like bipolar uh reaction from the market I guess >> but yeah I mean I I totally agree that that is going to be uh where the trend goes.
1:37:42
Um that is definitely where you know creative work is trending.
1:37:44
Most of our customers um are using claude uh and chatpt plugins with uh the MC uh the MCP at Nellius. >> Sure.
1:37:53
>> Um in addition to that, even the self-service market uh it's growing at a very rapid pace.
1:37:58
>> What is demand for computer use like if somebody has successfully learned Final Cut and they want to stay there?
1:38:03
uh do do you think it's important for you to offer an integration point there so they can sort of like watch the cursor do some of the work and then they can still jump in with the tool that they know and love.
1:38:16
Uh you can also edit the underlying files and then just vend them a project file.
1:38:22
>> Yeah, that's actually Do you want to do it all or do you have a particular pattern that works?
1:38:26
Yeah, we're never going to be that walled garden that never lets people like do parts of things on different platforms.
1:38:35
You know, I think plugins are really great, especially in this era of like, you know, multimodal like computer use.
1:38:41
You know, we're going to build the plugins for maybe After Effects or Adobe Premiere and whatever it may be.
1:38:45
Um, and we're also going to support all those features on our platform.
1:38:48
It the thing is the the reason to stay on Melius is that we built business conducive and long-term creator inducive workflows.
1:38:56
That means like proactive agents, reactive agents, um the timeline editor, the nodebased canvas, and the digital asset manager.
1:39:02
These are all things that like maybe people don't have out of the box on their computer, but if they don't need it, that's fine.
1:39:07
They can actually go and use our MCP coupled with their plugins on their own computer when they are using agents with uh computer use.
1:39:14
And so, you know, there there's some value to using Malas uh on the platform, but we definitely are going to capture a ton of usage offplatform through MCPS, through plugins and and and tools of that nature.
1:39:25
Do you guys have a like an agent or a workflow that can do this yet?
1:39:30
yet? uh which is uh I think it would be very powerful if a brand could could you know let's say pick five to 10 companies that they that they look up to or they like their creative approach and say anytime uh this company has a new ad in their meta ads library make you know five variations of you know basically clone
1:39:52
it uh for my brand which is something it up >> no I don't I don't think this is exactly what happened yeah like skinny dipped might see another company that, you know, in a different category with a with new creative and and >> marketers today are just going and looking at what their competitors are or or or other companies are are spending and just cloning it. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
1:40:14
That's actually a common workflow, especially with the cloud MCP right now.
1:40:18
What people are doing is they're having the Tik Tok Tik Tok MCP or Tik Tok ads library hooked up and then every morning they set up a claw project or an automation to go look at the top trending ads and they'll just go dump the script and uh the transcript and all
1:40:31
the key frames into Malius and then just >> you know reverse engineer everything and so yeah I definitely think that we're we are conducive to that workflow and it's kind of it's kind of scary what you can do with uh the tooling of today but yeah 100% we can support that right now. >> Interesting. Last question. What's your >> Interesting. Last question.
1:40:44
What's your stance on taste? taste.
1:40:49
Oh, this is a hot take actually.
1:40:51
I I don't think there is uh there is taste when it comes to uh like UX.
1:40:53
I think UX is like obviously you have to make it conducive to how a user perceives like the screen and like what the user experience should look like.
1:41:03
But I don't think there's such thing as slop in terms of creative content.
1:41:06
>> You know, there's a reason why Tum Tong Tong Sahur has billions of views on the internet.
1:41:10
Yeah, maybe it's like considered AI slop, but like people find it entertaining and like who's to say that you decide what good creatives are.
1:41:20
If people find it entertaining and they want to watch it and they find joy in it, then like who who are we to stop that?
1:41:24
And which is why we want to say like, hey, you know, we don't want to bottleneck you on these like workflow constraints or these resources.
1:41:29
If you have imagination, you think it's funny, and you want to make it, go do it on Melius. >> Love it. >> Yeah.
1:41:35
taste like if something is tasteful or performant like they they can sometimes be the same thing but very often they're not. >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:41:43
Yeah, at the same time, some of these AI slop projects are tasteful in the sense that like the person that created them or or had the idea for a particular character ex like uh they expose their taste in coming up with the concept and then yes it is you know slop generative AI video that might have uh odd you know bugs in the and and hallucinations but they are expressing their taste and like I think people want to see this cat dance or whatever. Yeah, of course.
1:42:14
Do you guys uh do you guys uh do the hotel lobby um trend a couple weeks ago?
1:42:21
>> The offset and quo rapping. >> Yeah.
1:42:24
I mean, do you think that was tasteful?
1:42:25
I thought that was hilarious. >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:42:26
I I thought a lot of that stuff was was funny in that >> Wait, what did you just say? >> Sorry. >> Sorry.
1:42:36
I I asked you guys before. I was like in the email.
1:42:38
I was like, "Hey guys, is there something I shouldn't say?" And I didn't >> Okay. Okay.
1:42:48
>> Anyway, >> uh congratulations to you and the team.
1:42:51
>> Congratulations on the fund raise and you guys >> only only you know only maybe 10 more raises to eclipse your former employer.
1:42:59
But uh you know >> you're on the wrath.
1:43:01
You're on the >> just just 2x every month forever and you'll you'll be their champion. >> There we go. >> Right. No, I respect them. They did an amazing job.
1:43:08
I look up to them for sure. Awesome.
1:43:11
>> Well, have a great rest of your day.
1:43:12
Congratulations and we'll talk to you soon. >> Goodbye.
1:43:14
>> Let me tell you about MongoDB.
1:43:14
What's the only thing faster than the AI market your business on MongoDB? MongoDB.
1:43:18
Don't just build AI, own the data platform that powers it.
1:43:22
We have Rick Dunny from the National Christmas Tree Association, the executive director coming on TV. >> How you doing, Rick? >> Welcome to the show.
1:43:34
There are 79 days till Christmas and around here we absolutely love Christmas and we wanted to talk to an expert and so I would love for you thank you for taking the time.
1:43:43
I would love for you to introduce yourself and the organization.
1:43:47
Uh and then I'm sure we'll have a ton of questions but let's start with an introduction on yourself.
1:43:54
>> Uh Rick Don, so I've actually started working with Christmas tree farmers in 1998. >> Whoa.
1:44:04
Um, so I' I've been around.
1:44:04
I can remember going to my very first >> um conference uh of tree farmers and did a lot of farm tours.
1:44:12
You know, it's a steep learning curve.
1:44:15
I didn't know anything about it.
1:44:16
I was a I was a PR nonprofit management guy, but >> um once you start going to tree farms and you hear them talk about how what they got to do to actually grow trees that you put in your living room, >> you know, it's kind of cool.
1:44:26
There's guys out there swinging big knives and they got tractors and they got uh trees growing in places you wouldn't think they could actually grow a crop.
1:44:33
So uh yeah, it's been a steep learning curve, but I've been around them a long time and and it's quite a fascinating thing to grow Christmas trees.
1:44:42
>> What are the different categories of like growers? I'm I'm well well aware.
1:44:45
I I grew up going to a Christmas tree farm that was half a mile from my house and they grew all the trees there and then I moved to the big city and I started going to places that sold Christmas trees and I was like wait I felt like Buddy the Elf.
1:45:02
I was like wait you guys aren't you guys aren't growing Christmas trees here. What's going on? >> Sure.
1:45:07
>> Shipping them in from I'm sure all over North America but but I would love to understand the shape of the the market.
1:45:15
Uh, so according to the USDA, there actually are Christmas tree farms in all 50 states, including Hawaii.
1:45:20
Um, now a lot of those are going to be small.
1:45:23
Um, many farms are what we call cut your own or choose and cut, like you described, where you actually go to a local farm and cut down your own tree.
1:45:30
Um, that accounts for about 18% of all the trees sold in the US.
1:45:36
All the rest of them are pre-cut.
1:45:37
So, they're grown in larger systems, larger farms on more acreage.
1:45:43
um and they're cut and sent to other retail markets and sold um as pre-cut trees. We call that wholesale.
1:45:49
>> Um so there's either wholesale or cut your own.
1:45:51
Those are really the two main types of farms that you can >> and and for the the precut where what states or regions are are those most commonly grown?
1:46:00
Like is there a place where we could fly a plane and and just see Christmas trees for >> as far as the eye can see? >> Uh yeah, Oregon.
1:46:08
Uh the Northwest Oregon is the number one producer.
1:46:11
They they harvest about 6 million trees annually in the state of Oregon.
1:46:16
>> Uh North Carolina, the western mountains of North Carolina once you get up uh over about 1,000 ft of elevation. They have big farms.
1:46:23
>> So the Appalachian areas of western North Carolina, western Virginia, and in all the Great Lakes states, >> Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, New York, all the way up through New England and Maine, those are the main big production areas.
1:46:33
That's where you're going to find most of your bigger wholesale farms that are selling pre-cut trees.
1:46:37
and and what type of work do uh growers need to do around like demand planning and and forecasting?
1:46:48
I know it feels like there's in the same way that you see trends in in fashion, there's trends in in uh Christmas trees, but I don't know how much it I don't know how much it fluctuates.
1:46:59
Like >> there was war in Christmas recently, so that probably affected your but I think we won the war.
1:47:06
we won >> in in in some people's minds. I suppose that's true.
1:47:11
But um yeah, so the thing is that um trees are grown like as any other crop.
1:47:16
You know, you plant them in the spring and you harvest them in the fall.
1:47:19
>> Um really the main difference is you don't get an annual yield.
1:47:22
So what you plant in the spring is not ready for harvest >> for anywhere from 4 to 12 years depending on um how big you want it, where where you're growing, what species you're growing.
1:47:33
Some species of conifer simply grow faster than others.
1:47:35
Um in the south some of the southern Christmas tree farms they can get a tree up to 6t in like four years.
1:47:42
>> Um but on average it takes about 6 to 8 years to get one up to 6 7 foot which is the most common size.
1:47:48
>> Um so that's really the main difference.
1:47:50
And so as a farmer um in addition to all the other things that every farmer has to be an expert on soil chemistry um entomology you got to be a bug expert, a soil expert, you got to all understand nutrient levels um all these sorts of things.
1:48:04
But you also had to be really good at managing your inventory because what you put in the ground is not going to be ready to sell until 6 7 8 years down the road.
1:48:15
>> And so you got to be thinking about what does the market look like 8 years from now impacts how many trees I'm putting in the ground. >> Yeah.
1:48:22
I can imagine uh I I don't know when it happened, but uh at some point these these Christmas trees that are that are sort of like sparse, you know, they're like leveled out, I forget I forget the exact name, became a lot more popular, it feels like in the last couple years. >> Um >> I don't know.
1:48:40
Anyway, >> I'll I'll I'll try to I'll try to I'll try to find the exact name, but but either way, it's very a demand planning process where you're having to predict out seven or eight years in the future American households will be buying Christmas trees, but also which ones they will be leaning towards. Yeah.
1:49:00
Demand >> and then how lean are these farming operations?
1:49:03
Like I imagine if you're making a product that effectively, you know, you're only selling 1/8 of your crop every single year. >> Yeah.
1:49:12
>> Uh they have to be staffed in a pretty like lean way. >> Mhm. >> Uh yeah.
1:49:18
So most of the smaller farms that are going to sell trees, you know, one at a time, cut your own style, um many of them have also supplemented revenue with other types of revenue streams.
1:49:29
A retainment is sort of a catch-all phrase.
1:49:31
So Um, you know, they sell pumpkins in the fall. They sell hay rides.
1:49:36
They got all these other things and activities.
1:49:38
Um, so it's really more of an all day long entertainment kind of a thing.
1:49:42
The tree is just also you happen to get while you're there.
1:49:44
So those types of farms have really been able to maximize profits by finding other revenue streams.
1:49:50
For a wholesaler, it's about scale. >> Sure. Yeah.
1:49:54
Um, so you know, and shipping is going to impact um your margins of course um because you have to get trees from where you're growing them to where your retail customers are.
1:50:02
Um and some of them sell trees just on um you might know the right term.
1:50:09
So if you have a scanning system, you put a barcode on there, the retail outlet will scan a tree as they sell it at POSOS.
1:50:15
Um but they only pay for the ones that actually sell.
1:50:20
So any trees that don't sell, the farmer doesn't get any any revenue for.
1:50:24
So that can be tough also.
1:50:26
So it's really a matter of scale for most wholesale farmers.
1:50:28
Finding the right retail buyers that have the right type of market that are going to be able to effectively sell the trees that you're growing and you're sending to that retail customer.
1:50:38
>> For many, many decades, your organization has supplied the Christmas tree for the White House Blue Room.
1:50:43
What goes into that selection process?
1:50:47
I imagine it's one of the highest stakes, highest pressure kind of moments of the year presenting that tree.
1:50:55
There's a lot on the line going in going into that, you know, selection. >> Yeah.
1:51:01
Um interesting timing because we just had a Zoom meeting this morning with the staff from the visitors office at the White House about what when it has to be there and all the process you got to go through and everything. Um, yeah.
1:51:13
So, I try to make sure and point out that u not to put too fine of a point on it, but it is really good for our industry, for our growers to be able to tell people, hundreds of millions of people every year that at the White House, at the people's house, their decorations center around a farm grown real Christmas tree, not a plastic toilet bowl brush from China.
1:51:37
>> I think that's a really important thing to point out. >> They taking shots. That was great. >> Love it.
1:51:43
>> I didn't realize that we we had an enemy here.
1:51:46
There is a war on the plastic toilet brush >> tree. We can't be doing that. I like this. This is great. >> Yeah. Um Yeah.
1:51:52
We like to promote the actual real thing that farmers grow. >> Yeah.
1:51:57
>> So, yeah, to win to win that contest is hard.
1:51:59
It's a national tree contest.
1:52:01
>> Um we hold it every other year.
1:52:01
Um growers actually bring a tree from their farm that is the best example of a tree that they can grow.
1:52:08
They have to win their state contest first to qualify for the national contest.
1:52:12
Um the national contest has a two-stage scoring system. It's hard.
1:52:17
It's really difficult to win.
1:52:20
Um by the time if you become a grand champion and get to supply and present the official White House Christmas tree since 1966, so we're on a 60-year tradition now.
1:52:31
>> If you get to that level, what you can do is you can tell people, "I am an expert at what I do."
1:52:34
And there's no question about it.
1:52:37
It really is sort of the pinnacle of being an having the knowledge, skills, and abilities to grow a really good Christmas tree.
1:52:44
>> Do uh how early is a grower getting the sense that they might have a championship tree on their hands?
1:52:49
Like by year three or four, are they kind of feeling like, hey, this thing's on the right trajectory.
1:52:54
I might have, you know, a real contender here. >> Distance.
1:52:58
Yeah, you get you get a wide variety of answers, but a lot of the growers that I've talked to that do compete um will say that they pick out about 15 or 20 potential trees on their farm once they're at about four or 5t tall.
1:53:11
Once they're that tall, they start shearing um you know, and trimming uh the branch tree and making it grow the way that they want it to.
1:53:17
But also by that time, by the time it's about 5t tall, it starts exhibiting the characteristics, the traits that you're looking for.
1:53:25
straight branching, fast upward growth, um good good needle coverage around all sides.
1:53:30
So, yeah, a lot of them will start identifying potential contest trees um as early as four or five years before the trees that are in the contest have to be between 6 and 8 ft tall.
1:53:41
Um so, yeah, 2 3 years out they start identifying potential contest winners that they can take. >> Amazing.
1:53:48
I figured um what is how you know we're headed into the Christmas season for us here on our show.
1:53:52
We We we started our our Christmas countdown, you know, weeks ago.
1:53:58
Um, but uh when is like the the optimal time to head to the farm to get your Christmas tree, whether you're going for a pre-cut or your local farm?
1:54:07
Like I imagine I imagine there's a window where supply is starting to arrive or they're they're kind of opening up the good stuff.
1:54:16
>> I feel like the whole the whole don't get your tree until after Thanksgiving is kind of maybe fake news. I don't know.
1:54:23
Well, the real Christmas the real Christmas enjoyers know that that but but too early I think could be a bad thing. >> Okay.
1:54:30
Well, let's hear from the expert. >> Yeah.
1:54:33
I mean, um there's going to be a wide range of time >> that a cut harvested tree can maintain its moisture level and it's look good and not drop a bunch of needles once it's inside of a home.
1:54:46
Part of it is where it's grown.
1:54:48
Um you know, trees that come from the north are hardened off.
1:54:52
They go into a state of dormcancy long before they're harvested.
1:54:56
>> Um, and so they can absorb a lot of moisture.
1:54:58
I mean, I've had people constantly tell me that >> their trees their tree stays fresh all the way through February.
1:55:05
>> Um, I would probably stick to four maybe five weeks at the most uh for most people.
1:55:10
Um, >> and that's even if they're taking really >> to the test.
1:55:14
We got to put it to the test.
1:55:17
>> We're going to we're going to keep it alive.
1:55:19
I was thinking of going this I was thinking of going this weekend.
1:55:22
We've been having we've been having too much fun with it.
1:55:24
Uh tree tree actual tree care once the tree is installed in your house.
1:55:29
I I've never known if it works that much.
1:55:31
I feel like just respecting the tree, giving the tree some love, uh that feels like it goes a long way.
1:55:38
But how much should you be supplementing the tree, the water, all that stuff?
1:55:43
>> Uh two two basic things really.
1:55:43
It really boils down to two simple basic things.
1:55:47
Um, one, you want to cut a small piece off off the trunk before you get it in water.
1:55:52
Quarter inch, >> half inch.
1:55:54
It doesn't have to be that much.
1:55:56
>> And the reason that you do that is it opens up the plant tissue that absorbs water molecules. Okay?
1:56:03
>> U, if it's exposed to air for long periods of time, it won't be able to absorb water.
1:56:06
Um, and then just simply add water to it every single day. Water. Simple water.
1:56:12
You don't have to add anything else. Just simple water. >> Okay.
1:56:18
My team just reminded me that it's October 6th and we're maybe a little bit ahead of the curve here.
1:56:22
Uh, but I do I do want to ask you about what you Jordan just had to leave.
1:56:29
Uh, I do want to ask you like what what what questions are you getting from farmers as the head of the National Tree Christmas Tree Association?
1:56:41
Like are they pushing you to uh to negotiate tariffs on imported plastic trees?
1:56:47
Like what at what level can they engage with you as a liaison to the government to other businesses to each other even?
1:56:56
What what what else is top of mind uh for your organization?
1:57:01
What value do you bring to the community? >> Yeah.
1:57:04
So our our main mission for the members and for the industry is uh a role of protection and advocacy. >> Okay.
1:57:10
Um and sometimes that does actually involve um we work on issues like um um a wage rate, you know, um how much you got to pay laborers on the farms.
1:57:21
>> Um we do work on tariff issues occasionally.
1:57:25
>> Um recently the the two main importers of fake plastic uh green toilet roll brushes asked asked for an exemption on their product from the US trade.
1:57:37
I feel like nobody's getting the exception.
1:57:39
I feel like everyone's paying crazy tariffs now. That's ridiculous.
1:57:44
>> Well, what was crazy is their reasoning for it.
1:57:45
They said there's no alternative American product, so they have to import them from China.
1:57:50
>> And our and our answer to the US trade rep was, "Well, actually, there is an American alternative. It's a real treat. >> Real treat. Yeah, come on.
1:57:56
Yeah, that's a great response." Okay.
1:58:00
>> Um and we were successful in that there.
1:58:03
They did not get an exemption from the section 308. Yeah.
1:58:04
So, lots of those issues and um I would tell you you mentioned growers communicating with others.
1:58:11
I I've been involved with other a industries throughout my career also.
1:58:15
And >> one thing I can tell you about Christmas tree farmers is they really really good at communicating with each other at sharing knowledge, sharing expertise, sharing experiences.
1:58:26
>> They don't even though they're technically competing against each other, you know, they're all selling trees and they don't want to sell trees.
1:58:32
They get together at meetings and they they're very open about telling each other here's what worked at my farm, here's what didn't work. Yeah.
1:58:38
>> Um they're very good about sharing knowledge so that they all become better growers. >> That's really cool.
1:58:41
It sounds like a fantastic community.
1:58:43
I know we're having fun because it's October and we're very excited about how can people uh how can people help?
1:58:49
Is there like is it all funded by >> a real Christmas tree?
1:58:53
>> Well, yeah, that's obviously number one, but our our audience doesn't need to hear that. Okay. Sure.
1:58:58
>> Um, is there is it all funded by industry or or can people donate? Oh, yeah. >> How can people help? >> Um, yeah.
1:59:04
So, we're a C6 organization.
1:59:07
Um, so we're a membership association.
1:59:09
Members pay dues to belong.
1:59:11
>> Um, the other thing that I would mention, if I can get a shameless plug in here, >> please.
1:59:17
>> The tree association back in 2005 started a charity, >> okay, >> called the Christmas Spirit Foundation.
1:59:23
Uh, and the main program that that foundation runs is called Trees for Troops. >> Yeah.
1:59:27
>> Where we donate Christmas trees every year to military bases to give out to families in the armed forces. >> Uh, trees fortroops. org.
1:59:33
You can donate to that charity. That's a C3 charity.
1:59:35
We are now entering our 22nd consecutive year.
1:59:41
>> In 21 years, that program has given out more than 347,000 free Christmas trees to military bases all over the world. >> That's fantastic. trees forgivating.
1:59:55
We will be getting matching donations from employers.
1:59:57
These are more popular than ever in tech.
1:59:59
So, do everything you can.
2:00:02
Thank you so much for taking chat with us, having fun.
2:00:05
>> And we will be we're keeping the Christmas spirit alive in technology and thank you for breaking this down.
2:00:10
>> We want record Christmas tree sales in Silicon Valley this uh this holiday season across across the country, but everywhere really.
2:00:17
Thank you so much for taking the time. Great to meet you, Rick. >> All right. >> Goodbye. >> Cheers.
2:00:23
>> Let me tell you about Crowd Strike. Your business is AI.
2:00:24
Their business is securing it.
2:00:26
Crowd Strike secures AI and stops breaches.
2:00:28
We got Dylan Field, the CEO of a public company coming on.
2:00:33
>> We've been keeping him waiting.
2:00:34
>> We've been keeping him waiting.
2:00:34
Uh we're very excited to have Dylan Field from Sigma, of course.
2:00:40
>> Welcome back to the show.
2:00:43
>> We were having a lot of fun with the head of the National Christmas Tree Association.
2:00:46
I I heard part of it and it it was funny because I was just thinking that Christmas came early.
2:00:50
We launched a Figma design agent today. So >> there you go. >> Thank you.
2:00:57
That was fantastic >> on that.
2:00:59
I think that's uh appropriate to presents are under the tree.
2:01:07
>> Okay, I think we have enough uh we have enough Christmas and nonsense.
2:01:09
Uh tell us more about the product launch.
2:01:12
Take us a click deeper, please.
2:01:16
Uh I mean it's been awesome.
2:01:16
Uh we've been working on this for a while.
2:01:20
>> We've had the beta going and just been hill climbing.
2:01:22
The team has done an incredible job. >> Yeah.
2:01:25
>> Of uh not just working with our own first party models. >> Yeah.
2:01:29
>> Frontier models, but also really thinking about how do we make this great for our users? >> Yeah.
2:01:34
>> And so much more to do.
2:01:34
But yeah, today's launch uh you'll see that the Figma agent's faster, higher quality.
2:01:38
Uh it has better ability to deal with context across your files.
2:01:43
Y >> and um more overall agent capability. >> Yeah.
2:01:50
>> Uh I would say it's improved quite a bit on design systems.
2:01:52
We still have more room to go on all the dimensions.
2:01:55
Definitely design systems too. Yeah.
2:01:57
>> But um >> really brought the launch and finding myself uh really enjoying using the Figma agent on the canvas.
2:02:03
And I think as we think about just kind of where it all goes um there's so much that you can do in the canvas.
2:02:10
It's not the case that you know the non-developers, the designers, the PMs uh feel at home in the terminal in the IDE.
2:02:18
Uh I don't think text is the final representation of everything. >> I love text.
2:02:24
Uh I don't think that that's it.
2:02:28
>> And I believe that we're going to find more ways to go build software uh and use these amazing reasoning models to uh be part of that process, not the entire thing.
2:02:38
>> Are you humans agents together, you know?
2:02:40
are are are you generally uh through this process? Yeah.
2:02:44
I mean, you're you're you're building an agent that is uh going to excel at one discipline and not be a AGI model, right?
2:02:54
And so I'm wondering if you have a broader philosophy around uh around ensembles of models.
2:02:59
I mean, we've seen the decisions API, Jev, there's like smaller models for different purposes.
2:03:06
And you can imagine this future where you're actually using more models, more models.
2:03:10
I I've been for a long time I was like actually let's get rid of the model picker. Just give me one thing.
2:03:16
But and maybe that happens and there's an abstraction layer on top of some of these tools.
2:03:19
But it does feel like there's a ton of value in having a team uh research scientists, AI researchers focused on a particular discipline shine the IOS on on something and go and deliver a great product that then can be the right tool for the job.
2:03:36
But are are you are you in a world where you're applying your lessons here to like the shape of of AI as a tool broadly or is this a unique design thing? Uh, super intelligence.
2:03:49
It's uh, you know, it's the goal. No, I'm joking. No, man.
2:03:56
We're uh, we're trying to make like the best design agent. >> Yeah. >> To empower designers.
2:04:01
We are not trying to replace designers.
2:04:03
We're trying to make it so they are maximally empowered. Yeah.
2:04:07
Uh, in their work, which does mean helping them make PRs, helping them go even further with their work, helping them get all the context they need to go make decisions.
2:04:15
Uh and it does so happen that like after all this time building Figma, the team >> uh really does understand the needs of designers >> and what we need to do to go achieve that.
2:04:29
And I think that is um just as much a part of the the special sauce over time. >> Yeah.
2:04:35
And so yeah, I'm very very excited about um what we can do here and also how uh the the loops that we have in the product and the data available >> to be able to work with uh in addition to just kind of like this very uh you know singular focus of how do we make the best thing for design. >> Yeah.
2:04:55
>> Um and the best thing for designers to use every day and make them more efficient. >> Yeah.
2:05:00
Like I think that is uh really nice to have that focusing power and also you know you don't want to be in this mindset of um uh you're fighting against bitter lesson. Yeah.
2:05:10
>> You want to get the advantages of the general models the uh ways they've been trained. >> Sure.
2:05:16
>> On all sorts of things associations they've made and >> you want to make it that you're really good at design. >> Yeah.
2:05:23
No, it makes a lot of sense. >> Yeah.
2:05:24
I mean, it feels like part of the challenge as a design company is is you don't have the luxury of being able to produce slop even at at anywhere this at the same rate as some of these other companies where like they might be offering a bunch of things.
2:05:39
And they're not like their whole brand is not built around like design quality and and taste and and um you know precision.
2:05:46
And so they can just make something that like only 5% of the time it's actually like decent and and that's enough.
2:05:53
Whereas I think for So I guess like do you feel like do you feel like you have to hold the team to a higher bar on in terms of what products are shippable?
2:06:05
Because >> like a new YC company can be like hey we made a design agent like you should try it and if people even have like an okay time with it they they'll be like more excited about it.
2:06:16
whereas your community again has like much higher than average taste level, capabilities, all these different things.
2:06:26
>> Uh I think there's a bunch of points in there and it's like they're all interesting.
2:06:30
The uh maybe we'll start with just the overall uh setup that we have and what we're really caring about for this product, which is we don't again we're not trying to replace designers.
2:06:43
We're trying to empower them.
2:06:44
And as we think about that, what does that mean?
2:06:46
Well, it means that as you're trying to get something in your head uh onto the canvas, we've talked about this before, >> you might be aided by prompting.
2:06:55
And also, it might be the case that that's just the starting point.
2:07:00
You might have to do more work and that requires more integration with a global system uh of Figma.
2:07:07
And so you kind of have to teach the models Figma first and uh make it so that they can understand how to go and work with Figma as well as do good design work.
2:07:17
Uh but I think that right now um you'll probably see you know just as much in the SLO side uh across all products and you know uh in AI uh I hope you'll see less in Figma.
2:07:31
we are working to make it so that there's less and less and less and and better and higher quality results, but also it's it's taste is a wild thing in that different people um in in different domains have different definitions.
2:07:46
And so the the ultimate is how do we make sure that we can understand what you're going for and give it to you.
2:07:56
>> How are you thinking about interfacing with AI as a top funnel?
2:07:58
with AI as a top funnel? I think everyone saw the Blender moment when everyone was modeling everything in their world in Blender and uh you know the AI community and and and AI enthusiast community was uh downloading
2:08:14
and installing Blender and it and it feels like there's there's immense value if you can be you know a button there or even just the the top ofunnel agent says hey you you've been working on this business idea I did a first draft of a logo but you should take this much further. Why don't I hand off to Figma, get you
2:08:31
Why don't I hand off to Figma, get you set up there, even pass along credit card details?
2:08:36
Like there could be a really deep integration, but then there's always difficulties on where the value occurs and whatnot.
2:08:41
How have you been uh how have you been dealing with those potential tradeoffs in like an increasingly AI agentic top offunnel world?
2:08:53
>> Well, first and foremost, we want to always be learning from the ecosystem >> and I think that's essential.
2:08:57
>> and I think that's essential. uh the ecosystem sometimes in these moments evolve so quickly that when you start to see everything come in and it's like wow there are so many ways that we can work with other companies or other models or different setups here
2:09:16
>> um you know sometimes it's the case you're like wow yeah I predicted that like 5 years ago and other times it's more of um I did not predict this at all this is a second or third order effect whoa >> um and I think that if you don't understand what people are trying to do, you can't build for them. And also uh
2:09:31
And also uh you need to work well with the ecosystem in order to make all these new routes possible and uh there's complex questions like you mentioned around where does value live where does it acrue I think that um some of those there's a category of questions where it's uh there there are not clear answers and it's not clear there will be clear answers.
2:09:56
There's other categories where I think that actually um the way the space evolve will evolve is more clear.
2:10:02
And so you also have to have I think some macro bets about like the way things will play out over time but not get stuck in your head. >> Weird balance.
2:10:09
How are you thinking about uh motion graphics?
2:10:10
I feel like we've seen some cool like oneshotted demos.
2:10:14
I've done enough motion graphics in After Effects to know that like it does need to be pixel perfect and sometimes you need to like make small changes and uh doing that via text uh would be extremely cumbersome and so it feels like there's in an increasing opportunity there for web based nodebased uh AI enabled MCP enabled tooling.
2:10:37
What's the current state of the strategy there?
2:10:40
How do you see the motion graphics discipline evolving?
2:10:44
I I think that the way that we'll see motion graphics evolving is parallel to all these other areas too, >> which is >> when you're facing a blank canvas or a blank page, >> um it is hard to get started. >> Yeah.
2:10:58
>> The sooner that you can kind of build to think >> get something out onto the canvas, whether that's through design and uh or it's even, you know, in a sketchbook or you're doing something with a coding model, >> that is good.
2:11:09
It helps you get over that initial hurdle and then from there you can react to it and go okay what do I want to tweak?
2:11:15
What do I want to change? How do I make this mine?
2:11:16
And how do I make this my vision?
2:11:18
And um software ultimately is just amazing creative medium and uh we don't want the center of the distribution for everything.
2:11:27
We don't want everything to converge to the mean.
2:11:31
Uh Rio who was previously a cursor and recently left after um they were bought by SpaceX.
2:11:37
bought by SpaceX. he had this amazing post recently where he talked about uh some of these ideas and I think that we is another area for Figma where we're really trying to figure out how to help people do this both use models get all
2:11:54
the power from them but still apply their own judgment creativity taste uh and really shape it the model outputs like clay rather than just trying to go for the one shot the one shot's rarely where you want to land and end up >> give us your design review of the new American Passport. Do you like the
2:12:09
Do you like the previous version or the current version more?
2:12:14
Which which passport speaks to you?
2:12:19
>> Uh the new version I really like.
2:12:19
I think that um you know, beautiful cover and then I love the way that as you flip through it, the eagle animates. It's like a flip book. >> We'll get to that.
2:12:30
Yeah, I Yeah, there's a flip book involved which is >> I hope I'm not blowing something. >> No, no, no.
2:12:35
I did I did see that, but we didn't we were just looking at the front and the front seemed like a very a very moderate iteration.
2:12:41
Um there was some debate on our team about the kerning on the word passport. Tyler's not a fan of it.
2:12:48
>> This is too controversial for me. Let's go back to AI. >> Yep.
2:12:53
Uh where do you feels like people on the timeline have been doing uh Figma's marketing for you in some ways where every other day there's somebody like if you send me an AI generated slide deck I won't even take the meeting.
2:13:08
>> Oh yeah >> and I'm wondering >> you said that.
2:13:10
No, I've been saying that for a long time.
2:13:12
I've been saying that for a long time >> just because I think you should be thinking about, you know, if there's a sea of just sameness and being able to prove to people that you can >> think differently, stand out, have a unique point of view, opinion, all these different things.
2:13:29
You know, I would in a sea of AI generated decks, I would almost rather see like a Google clear obvious Google Slides template because that is signaling, hey, I I I don't I don't actually care about design at this very moment, but I care about showing that I communicated, you know, >> words, >> very clearly um what I'm trying to do.
2:13:49
And and the problem with AI generated decks is that you every single slide I'm secondguessing how deeply did you think about what you're communicating >> because I don't want to I don't want to I don't want to spend time trying to process and evaluate somebody and their thinking if it's possible they weren't thinking at all.
2:14:10
>> I I think that's a great way to put it.
2:14:14
uh and have really been kind of on this thread myself with uh our team.
2:14:18
You know, I'm at some point recently uh I kind of gave some guidance to the team around AI writing for example and I had thought about it a lot.
2:14:29
It was a post that I kind of had cued for I don't know three weeks or something and I kept rewriting it ironically uh because I thought this is really important to communicate like we can't just ban AI writing in the company then we're not empathizing with like everyone else that's in tech and everyone else that's like using our software.
2:14:47
At the same time I think that there's degradation of trust that can happen as you have all these folks interacting across the company and people are secondguing.
2:14:57
Did you even read what you're asking me to read?
2:15:02
>> Um, did you think through this?
2:15:04
>> And because of that, I I came up with this sort of rule for Figma, which is let's just have it be that you put in with AI at the top of messages, >> uh, where there's AI writing of any kind.
2:15:18
And you know, if you're using AI to like spell check, essentially proofread um and you change a word, I don't care if you write the whole thing with AI or there's like good paragraph in there.
2:15:29
Yeah, just put right with AI. It's easy. >> Yeah. >> No big deal.
2:15:31
And that way we can trust that if you're sending something, you care about it and you've thought through it. >> Yeah.
2:15:38
>> And I think that in general, people should not give up on their own thinking.
2:15:43
Uh they cannot give that to the model.
2:15:46
And I see so many people that are essentially looking for the shortcut, trying to make it so that they can have maybe less than Figma, more outside of Figma, but folks are eager for the model to automate for them, for them, the model to think for them.
2:16:01
And I think that the more important thing you can do is to actually use the model to learn, to try things you wouldn't have tried before, >> to be more daring.
2:16:13
Um, and to kind of expand possibilities rather than contract them. >> Yeah.
2:16:20
>> And I don't think I think it's good to have default skepticism.
2:16:22
Not because there's models are all bad or something.
2:16:26
That's not what I'm saying.
2:16:26
but rather because if you're default skeptical, then you will understand better how models work, what to use them for and what not to use them for.
2:16:35
Uh, and you'll get better results.
2:16:37
So, yeah, I'm all about thinking. Mhm. >> Yeah.
2:16:40
The uh I've noticed in in the process of making decks like my best decks always the outline took like 20 minutes max where I just like actually had clarified like you want to >> there's there's increased clarity that comes from trying to communicate an idea or a company or a product or a launch or a campaign.
2:17:01
like you're going to naturally get more clarity on the topic as you explain it in a way that is sort of logical and and has a consistent narrative.
2:17:10
And then there's times that I've open the sort of my like deck outline in Figma that I've shared at this point with like over probably a hundred founders, right?
2:17:20
Because I spend so much time on this.
2:17:22
I have example slides for each slide and you know structuring and all this stuff.
2:17:29
And there's been times I've landed in that and I've just I'm just wrestling with it for hours and hours and hours, not making progress.
2:17:38
And and two things are usually happening.
2:17:41
One, it's just a bad idea.
2:17:42
Um and or or two, I don't understand it.
2:17:46
I just don't understand it well enough or there's just like something fundamentally broken.
2:17:49
And so when people go to AI first for something as important as like communicating your company, like you're you're robbing yourself of like one that that sort of check and balance of do I actually understand this deeply?
2:18:03
Does the thing that I'm presenting make sense?
2:18:05
Um and you're sort of accelerating to the next step which is pitching the thing.
2:18:10
And the the last thing you want to go do is pitch an idea to a bunch of smart people that is not well thought through, that doesn't make sense.
2:18:17
Um, and and so you're like saving that time of like wrestling with the idea, but then wasting all this the wasting even more time and wasting other people's time trying to communicate something that doesn't make sense.
2:18:29
And so >> I mean, if you can't explain something, you don't know it yet, >> I think, is the basic rule I always have gone by. And that's prei too.
2:18:39
>> Well, I don't know it, but my assistant knows it.
2:18:43
>> So, you can just talk to the model now.
2:18:45
You don't even need to talk to me.
2:18:47
There's also the flip side of like >> there's also the flip side of of not just the do you understand this, can you explain it, >> but also like what are the things that no one knows yet that we all need to explore and you know that can't be fully understood.
2:19:04
And I think that um mystery in the world and sort of like the the ways that you feel just when you encounter something that's that's really novel, new um or or as a angle on something that exists but just is it's fresh.
2:19:23
Um th those are magic moments and and I think that in general there's an opportunity right now to lean more into mystery uh in a time when everything's becoming a bit less mysterious.
2:19:37
>> Yeah, that's interesting. >> Mic drop. >> I love it. Thank you.
2:19:41
>> That's a good place to end because I have follow-up questions to that encouragement of mystery, >> but you can just leave it in the sort of dramatic pause.
2:19:50
>> Yeah, leave it mysterious.
2:19:50
Yes, that was mysterious. Thank you so much. Great to see you. Always great to see you.
2:19:56
>> Congrats to the team on the launch.
2:19:57
>> Have a great rest of your day. We'll talk to you soon. Goodbye.
2:19:59
Uh we have the founder of Vinci and the CEO founder and CEO Hardik Kabaria is in the waiting room.
2:20:09
Let's bring him in to how are you doing? >> Hey. Hey. How are you guys doing? I'm doing well. >> Welcome.
2:20:17
>> We're doing great >> to the show.
2:20:18
We've had a a wide ranging show today.
2:20:22
>> Nice conversation with Dylan, head of the National Christmas Tree Foundation as well.
2:20:26
>> It's been all over the place.
2:20:28
>> Did you make it through that interview or not? You actually broke it.
2:20:31
>> I I it broke it took it took me to deep water.
2:20:34
>> One of us is a professional and the other one's an amateur.
2:20:37
>> You can uh go watch as it gets closer to Christmas, go watch our interview with the with Rick, the head of the National Christmas Tree Foundation.
2:20:42
But >> today, we're we're here to talk about your business.
2:20:46
But um why don't why don't you introduce yourself and then we'll get into the company. >> Sure. Yeah.
2:20:51
Uh my name is Sadi, co-founder CE Wini.
2:20:53
Uh my background is technico physics and geometry software.
2:20:58
I've been in that space for some time and started winch three years ago. >> Cool. Yeah.
2:21:02
Uh PhD at Stanford and eight years at Carbon.
2:21:05
What were you doing at Carbon?
2:21:06
What what what I actually I'm not that there's a few businesses I wanted to know more about carbon specifically and how it set you on this.
2:21:14
Yeah, carbon is a 3D printing company.
2:21:16
Um, I was um the Squire Lake back company.
2:21:19
I after my PhD, I was looking for something that can use geometry but was also less closer to the real parts. >> Sure.
2:21:27
>> So joined as a software engineer.
2:21:27
I was there for eight years.
2:21:29
I was VP of software for the last couple years.
2:21:31
So shipped software on manufacturing type uh manufacturing floors >> um in in Asia, in Eastern Europe, in US, Mexico.
2:21:41
So it gave me a lot of perspective on how software can help hardware. >> Yeah.
2:21:46
So uh narrow in on the current mission uh semiconductor design, semiconductor engineering.
2:21:53
I notice you're expanding into like vehicles, aircraft, satellites, memory.
2:21:58
Those are similar problems, but yes, >> it feels like there's enough money being made like narrowly in in semiconductors.
2:22:06
So I'm interested in the overall strategy and and the level of abstraction you're operating at.
2:22:12
>> So I'll start with something very basic which is physics. >> Yeah.
2:22:15
>> Everything there is around us whether is humanmade parts, nature made parts, it will be governed by laws of physics.
2:22:22
Laws of physics are universal.
2:22:22
Something as simple as energy will always be energy out, >> momentum balance and so on.
2:22:27
Any part we design, we care about physics because ultimately the parts be start behaving in the real world and if they don't perform the way you expect it to perform, all goes to hell, right?
2:22:38
What are we building is a foundation model for physics. >> Okay?
2:22:44
>> And how it's meaningful.
2:22:44
Let's say you create thousands of design ideas.
2:22:47
If you cannot grade them with physics, it'll be very hard to pick which one's right. >> Mhm. >> Right.
2:22:55
So physics is the compilation layer for hardware. >> Sure. is being manual.
2:22:58
With our product, we are making it automatic and scalable. >> Yeah.
2:23:03
>> Now, this applies to semiconductor high bandwidth memory.
2:23:05
It also applies to satellite. >> Okay.
2:23:08
>> But when the scope is this big, you got to start extremely focused somewhere. >> Yeah.
2:23:13
>> So, we said, why don't we pick thermal problems in semiconductor and electronics and we build a software that allows our users to do it and ship it. >> Yeah.
2:23:22
>> And you know, make it true and then we expand. So, that's where we are.
2:23:24
What is the sales process for a semiconductor company these days?
2:23:28
Because I feel like they have something that's working so well.
2:23:32
Uh I thought the only job they had was make more of the thing that everyone wants and raise prices, but they have time to implement new software solutions for third party.
2:23:43
>> That's a good question, right? >> Um so you ask any.
2:23:45
So first it's top down sets.
2:23:47
You cannot go to these large large companies and say I changed one engineer's mind.
2:23:52
I mean I would say good freaking luck. Okay.
2:23:54
Um you'll have to convince a VP saying that hey this is something you should try and it's working for us.
2:24:01
So now to the second question do they have time to try out like who are we?
2:24:04
I'm not even from semiconductor.
2:24:07
>> Why would they even give me a time of the day?
2:24:08
I've never worked in semiconductor industry before.
2:24:11
>> The problem is so acute >> that if you can really help them it matters.
2:24:17
So we start our sales process with asking what matters to you and answer is consistently the same thing time to market and performance.
2:24:22
I do not want to miss my time to market.
2:24:24
I have to launch a new chip, new product at CES end of the year and it better be performing and we work with the most complex parts people are making sure high bandwidth memory. >> Yeah. >> CPU, GPU, right?
2:24:37
And their thermal problems are so acute that the existing tooling doesn't take them there.
2:24:42
So if you can really be more accurate, higher fidelity automatic, they are definitely interested in trying it. >> Okay.
2:24:50
So maybe a month ago at this point, we had the Navier Stokes moment.
2:24:55
Uh and uh it was very cool for for people within the the tech space.
2:24:59
there was a lot of excitement, but average people like if you tell them we use a computer to solve a math problem, you know, they're not going to be super uh it didn't like it didn't feel like it moved the market is another way to put it.
2:25:13
Um my question for you is like how how are there a bunch of other moments like that happening at like a micro level within businesses where they're using models and they're having breakthroughs but they're not raising their hand and saying like basically just publishing that because it actually is like can become IP. >> Yes.
2:25:35
So I would say that it's we have been deployed commercially for some time. >> Mhm.
2:25:42
So I'm going to ask you a question from I'm going to start answering question from there.
2:25:45
So they would in in this companies the IP sensitivity who they work with they are extremely private and secure about it.
2:25:54
>> So they get start using a new vendor, new tool, new method and they want to keep it to themselves >> and that's the style of the industry which um it helps us it hurts us but I would say we are part of the ecosystem.
2:26:07
So I like to go and meet customers where they are.
2:26:09
So I would go far as to say or even it's embedded in our deployment.
2:26:11
We do on-prem deployment and we make our product work with zero forward deployed engineers extreme data privacy.
2:26:18
We'll meet you where you are make sure our software is useful to you >> and then sort of doesn't matter.
2:26:27
>> What helps us is the industry is so small that everybody talks to each other wink wink works that's fine by me. >> Yeah.
2:26:33
>> Yeah. uh on the data side uh simultaneously the laws of physics are completely open source but the actual design the actual design of semiconductors is not >> is extremely well guarded >> I personally discovered physics with but I haven't you know talked about
2:26:53
>> well now it's in the training data but but but you see what I'm saying like like you have you have the most easy to implement widely look it up in any physics textbook and then you have the stuff that you know is is sent from Nvidia to TSMC and is not making it to the open web. It's not in the
2:27:08
It's not in the pre-training data.
2:27:09
So, uh is there a gap to close?
2:27:12
Are you hiring semiconductor designers to do to build RL environments for you?
2:27:19
Like what what actually moves the needle or is just the laws of physics is that enough?
2:27:26
So the laws of physics is enough actually um because the laws of physics inside the firewall of TSMC is exactly the same as fire outside the firewall of TSMC.
2:27:35
I am yet to meet a company that invented physics and I don't think I'll meet them. >> Mhm.
2:27:42
>> And we have trained a model on the laws of physics and at the time of usage it will it will produce an answer that abides by it.
2:27:50
So if that's the case, we don't need to know the designs that Nvidia, Micron, TSMC, Samsung are working on.
2:27:58
>> That's why we deploy and we make it work out of the box.
2:28:01
>> Does it mean we have to So we are today training on pabyte of data. >> Yeah.
2:28:05
>> And we will go to 10x, 100x over the next couple of quarters.
2:28:08
So what is the expansion?
2:28:09
So the expansion is oh from thermal to thermal mechanical to electromagnetics.
2:28:14
So basically cover every physics modality that people can write equations about.
2:28:18
So to to the point earlier made there is something new physics that somebody's going to discover.
2:28:24
We haven't embedded that but the discoverable physics is a freaking fair game. >> Mhm.
2:28:29
>> Well congratulations and thank you so much for coming.
2:28:32
>> Oh yes massive fundraiser bill. >> Boom. >> Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it.
2:28:41
Thanks for having >> Tamasc and others. Uh amazing progress.
2:28:46
>> Coastal ventures AMD only 3 years in.
2:28:49
AMD and applied and applied materials as well.
2:28:51
Two very >> and AMD and applied two corporate ventures. Yeah. >> Amazing. >> Amazing.
2:28:55
>> Well, congratulations and thank you so and congrats to the team on the milestone.
2:28:59
>> We'll talk to you later. Have a good one. >> Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. >> Goodbye.
2:29:04
>> Well, I think that was a massively successful show. >> Massive.
2:29:10
>> That was a hilarious interview.
2:29:10
I learned a lot genuinely. >> And not not uh Vinci.
2:29:15
Oh yeah, I'm going back to the Christmas tree one.
2:29:20
>> To be clear, I uh yeah, that was that was one of the tougher moments on the show for me.
2:29:25
I was, you know, trying to look at the monitor.
2:29:29
>> The team was not helping >> trying to look at Rick.
2:29:30
The team was was making my life.
2:29:33
I was I was in a I was in a dark place and I couldn't keep it together and I had to run off the set.
2:29:42
>> The team sent also >> and and then Nick ran out behind me.
2:29:44
He was he was >> and the team sent this meme of the sitting forward and that was just the death of me at the time. It was rough. It was a good time. But we learned a lot.
2:29:57
And that's not the end of our Christmas programming, folks.
2:29:59
We got more Christmas related guests coming on the show. >> You didn't ask. We didn't listen.
2:30:09
>> Yeah, we got some good stuff.
2:30:10
>> No, it's actually fascinating.
2:30:11
>> No, it's so interesting.
2:30:11
It's genuinely >> being in a business where you're making something that you're going to sell in eight years is like an incredible challenge. >> Yo, totally. Yeah. And uh Yeah.
2:30:21
>> And competing in a market where there's a there's a war on your industry. >> It's true. Yeah. I mean, there really is.
2:30:27
Once he kind of broke down the tariff perspective, it makes a lot more sense.
2:30:31
Um any >> The only thing I didn't get to ask is, do you still hear the bells?
2:30:34
But I already knew the answer. >> Of course he does. >> Of course. >> Of course he does.
2:30:40
We're going to be making a a meaningful donation their foundation and uh we encourage you to as well.
2:30:49
>> Remember that is trees fortroops. org.
2:30:51
>> This is financial advice.
2:30:53
>> This is financial advice. Do it. Yeah.
2:30:55
>> Uh >> thank you for tuning in to TVPN today. It's been an honor. >> Fantastic show.
2:30:58
We'll see you tomorrow at 11 a. m. Pacific. >> I can't wait.
2:31:02
>> Leave us five stars in Apple Podcast and Spotify.
2:31:03
Sign up for our newsletter at tvpn.
2:31:05
com and we will see you tomorrow. Love you. Have a wonderful >> Bye.