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Heat. Heat. Hey, [music] hey, hey.
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[music] >> [music] >> Heat. Heat.
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[music] >> [music] >> Hey, hey, hey. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. N. Heat. Heat. N.
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[music] [music] >> [music] >> We came through this world to reach the stars.
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We came to this world [music] to shape our future.
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We came to this world [music] to reach the stars [music] to shape our future. The music.
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[music] [music] Good morning. Good morning, PK. Good morning, Bobby. Good morning, Siraj.
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Good [music] morning, John. Good morning, Mark. Good morning, RAV.
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Good [music] morning, Roman.
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>> It is a beautiful day to podcast.
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[music] [music] [music] [screaming] >> You're watching TVPN.
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Today is Friday, October 31st, 2025. It's Halloween.
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We are live from the TBPN Ultradome, the Temple of Technology, the Fortress of Finance, the capital of capital.
5:10
Uh we have a fantastic show for you today, folks.
5:16
Uh we're going to be talking about Mag 7 earnings, recapping what's happening in the public markets, uh the trillion dollar tech companies that have been uh powering and holding up the entire global economy.
5:26
Will they continue to hold up the global economy?
5:31
So far, the answer is yes.
5:31
Um, I'm glad the chat is enjoying the costumes.
5:34
Uh, Jordy, who are you today?
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>> You got to be living under a data center to not know uh who I'm dressed up as today.
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None other than Mark, Andre, and >> spitting image. Spitting. >> Spitting image. How How am I doing?
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[clears throat] >> I think you look great.
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I think uh Yeah, I think I think you nailed it.
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Uh I saw some other folks.
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They they of course I am Ilia Cisco.
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Uh there are a lot of people that boil down the Mark and Dreon uh costume to just being bald and that's of course not it. You need the shirt. You need the watch. You need the beard.
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These are all >> The only thing I'm not going to be able to do very well is talk quite as quickly as as >> Yeah.
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It feels like the mustache and and [laughter] the outfit might be actually slowing you down a little bit.
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Um, but I I'm not trying to channel uh Ilia.
6:28
We were watching the Guardian video on Ilia uh his interview, which is beautifully edited and one of the most interesting I don't even know. It's like an interview.
6:38
It's almost a podcast, but it's this like documentary.
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It's 12-minute video by the Guardian.
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Uh >> they cooked >> and Ilia is the only one who says anything the entire time. Yeah.
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There's no guest or there's no interviewer.
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there's no host and it's just him talking about AGI will be able to do anything we'll make it could be good could be bad and he he just has these crazy long way this these ways of answering these questions that are really interesting and it fits with that medium I don't know how much editing they did to get his answers to a place
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where it like had that kind of flow but it's fantastic >> Ilia's weights uh Ilia's words hold so much weight >> yeah I think that format that format just worked incredibly Well, um, but anyways, if you are watching the recording of this at some point in the future, I recommend whenever I'm talking, put it on 3x speed to get the full mark experience. >> And we should talk about the the uh Gen
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>> And we should talk about the the uh Gen AI company that we work with to make this possible.
7:35
Of course, I think people are going to be wildly impressed at uh how little latency there is, kind of character consistency.
7:41
We are partnered with fall, >> the generative media platform for developers.
7:46
The world's best generative image, video, and audio models all in one place.
7:50
Develop and fine-tune models with serless GPUs and on demand clusters.
7:53
>> But of course, we did this the oldfashioned way, the Hollywood way. >> The Hollywood way.
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>> We were at the office at 6:30 this morning.
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It took uh took hours to get to this point. >> Yeah.
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>> And uh shout out to the to the whole team that uh that made it possible.
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>> Yeah, it's a lot of fun. It's not a mask. It is makeup.
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It's a It's a series of prosthetics that go on layered up uh with a wig for me and a beard for they they kind of take you through the the process of becoming fully bald and then add back whatever they need to, including the eyebrows.
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And the eyebrows do do a lot of the work.
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>> They do a lot of the work.
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>> They do a lot of the work.
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But, uh yeah, if you're if you're not taking Halloween this seriously, what's going on?
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You got to be uh you got to be taking it seriously.
8:38
Uh, Tyler, have are you taking Halloween seriously?
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What did you do for >> I'm taking Halloween extremely seriously. >> Well, who are you?
8:45
>> Sam Alman at at 2008 WWDC. >> Okay. >> Looped.
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>> It's the uh Yeah, you're the spinning image.
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Uh, were those the colors of the polos he was wearing?
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>> Yeah, I think the camera temperatures in real life.
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Um, if the viewers could see, they would be, you know, >> and and the hair is a perfect match.
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And And you also had to do 3 hours of prosthetic makeup.
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>> I was actually here a little earlier than you guys. I was in the background.
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[laughter] >> It is so strange looking across >> very >> and seeing uh >> seeing the spitting image of uh Ilia himself.
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Um anyways, >> Ramp time is money. Say both.
9:19
You use corporate card Bill Pay accounting a whole lot more all in one place.
9:22
Um >> when we partner with RAM, they never expected to to see Ilia pitching ramp.
9:31
>> This is this is why you advertise on TBN.
9:32
You get ad reads from Mark injuries from the goats. The goats themselves.
9:35
Uh we have a super fun show today.
9:38
We have uh Lulu Msurvy and Gabby Goldberg coming on.
9:42
Uh later we have Dean Ball joining. Uh who else we have? We have >> Tyler. Do you know Ball?
9:51
>> Every time we mention his name. >> Do you know Ball?
9:54
>> Well, after today everyone will know Ball because Dean Ball is coming on DVPN.
9:59
Uh we're very excited for that.
9:59
Um so let's take uh let's take a second to tell you about Reream.
10:04
One live stream 30 plus destinations.
10:05
Of course, we are rereaming today. Multistream.
10:07
Reach your audience wherever they are.
10:09
Um, >> but I think it'd be good to just kind of go through uh some of the headlines.
10:12
Uh, Trump cut China tariffs after he met up with Cinping.
10:18
Uh in South Korea, President Trump and Chinese leader Cinping emerged from their face-to-face for their first face-to-face meeting in six years with a temporary detent in the bruising trade fight between Dant uh between the two superpowers.
10:35
The US agreed to lower a fentinyl related tariff on Chinese goods to 10% from 20% after China promised to crack down on chemicals used to make the often deadly >> precursors. precursors.
10:47
Uh that would bring the average tariff rate on many Chinese goods to around 47% from 57%.
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So America's backing backing off a little bit.
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Beijing almost promised also promised to ease some of the controls it imposed on exports of processed rare earth minerals or uh for one year.
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China dominates the production of the minerals which are in which are needed to make everything from smartphones to submarines.
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Wow, that's a a world tour of everything in the uh in the trade deal.
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So, we're we're slowly ratcheting things up, ratcheting things down.
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Uh we had a good conversation yesterday um about this with Chris Maguire.
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You're welcome to go check that out.
11:28
He gave us more details on the history of the of the uh China trade war with the US.
11:33
Um but the bigger news in tech world, of course, is earnings.
11:38
Amazon posted a big jump in profit and revenue. Amazon.
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com reported net revenue uh net profits surged 39% and revenue rose for the third quarter uh propelled by strong retail sales as well as continued growth in its art in its cloud computing and artificial intelligence business.
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The e-commerce giant said Thursday that sales rose for the period uh they rose 13% to 180 billion and net profit rose to 21.
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2 billion in that quarter.
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And so, uh, you had a little bit of a take on what was going on in Amazon world.
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They've been sort of, uh, at at the last earnings, they were sort of left out of the AI narrative.
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Every all the other hyperscalers in their cloud businesses were, uh, you know, telling great stories about acceleration and growth, and Andy Jasse was a little bit on the defensive.
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Well, now he's back on the offensive and uh the results were much stronger.
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So, um they beat on the top line, they beat on the bottom line.
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They also beat on AWS revenue uh which is great.
12:47
Uh the tranium across the board >> to chip business grew 150% quarteronquer and there's still some debate over how tranium will scale relative to uh TPU, whether uh Enthropic is going to buy a bunch of TPUs.
13:02
maybe they're going to pull back on training, but it seems like like even if the top end is is diversifying and you have, you know, Open AI saying we want to be on every cloud or, you know, that's not necessarily a bull case because there's so many more buyers coming from behind adding to it.
13:18
Um, so, uh, my take was a lot of FUD around Tranium underperformance relative to TPU, but they both seem to be catching up finally.
13:26
I think it'll be interesting to see TPU on uh on Inference Max.
13:28
see TPU on uh on Inference Max. semi analysis's benchmark uh once they in >> well so TPU and tranium the way Dylan Patel framed it to me at least was uh they haven't said that they're out in fact they oh sorry dropped my phone in fact they said that they are in but it's
13:48
going to take them time to actually provision everything because it is a significant cost and it's something that requires a decent amount of resources and there's you know a whole bunch of it's a big company >> and it will determine the fate of their product line. [laughter] Correct. [laughter] Correct. >> Potentially. Potentially.
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And so, >> yeah, I mean, people are going to be paying a lot of attention.
14:07
>> It's possible that they want to like that they want to get their ducks in a row.
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Uh, so they don't just get like clobbered um in this in this race.
14:11
Uh, but interestingly, AMD and Nvidia were both pretty happy with the results.
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uh there were tons of pos there's tons of positivity about AMD in certain use cases and Jensen on stage at GTC was uh giving spending like minutes just on inference max slides and data.
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So >> uh my take from the newsletter on Amazon I said Jasse needed this after the timeline had turned against against him pretty horribly in the last few months.
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People even saw the headcount reduction from Monday as bearish.
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I think that just shows how far ahead Satcha was.
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he did uh multiple rounds of layoffs earlier this year.
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>> Uh and obviously Amazon has its uh dance partner now.
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And so >> we'll see how this develops.
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Uh one of my favorite posts, I think from last week was [clears throat] somebody said uh uh I don't care if I get caught.
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I was in I was heavily involved with the uh NBA illegal gambling scheme. My name is Andy Jasse. I work at Amazon. com.
15:12
I didn't realize that there were like I I feel like once you get to mag seven level um you don't have like a retail army that gets like frustrated about like you know middling financial performance but I mean they were you know proud member of the lag seven you look at uh you look at
15:30
alphabet the lag seven what's that >> they were I mean not the lag seven but they were the lagging part of the mag seven right >> that's a thing that's a meme or did you haven't heard this one Um it's a it's a pleasure to introduce you to a new meme. Uh Alphabet up 247% over the last 5
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Uh Alphabet up 247% over the last 5 years.
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Amazon is still only up 62% even after the pop. >> Wow. >> Uh this week.
15:50
So >> um >> well um that's the story with uh Amazon.
15:56
We also got Apple earnings after we wrapped the show.
15:59
Before I tell you about Apple, let me tell you about Privy.
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Privy makes it easy to build on crypto.
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16:11
>> Okay, Sarah Wang, GP over at Andre just posted, "The only thing better than Halloween is Halloween AI edition."
16:15
In case you missed it, tagged uh Ilia and Mark.
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Um and of course, >> no AI here. We did this.
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Did this one the old way >> we did this organically.
16:27
It would be interesting to actually benchmark.
16:30
I mean, obviously the the the Frontier video models are remarkable, but we've done this bezel bench for a while where we went and did something very weird and very specific and uh and on that specific use case of Tyler, a person that we it needs to be him.
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It needs to look like him.
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Uh, and he has to be wearing six different watches and you have to zoom in from the very start all the way out and he has to be lying down and like you so you have really have to understand how the anatomy comes into the picture.
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Uh, the models haven't really been great.
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I feel like if we tried to recreate this um using AI right now, it would get pretty chaotic.
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The fact that we're live three hours uh you'd be doing, you know, you could do a face swap live.
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We've we've had some founders come on the show and do them, but it feels like it's almost more of just like a background. Dart was really cool. Yeah, Dart was awesome.
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>> But it was still very much felt like a video game.
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It didn't feel photoreal. >> Yeah.
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And uh and >> didn't feel like you could reach out and touch.
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>> You can in fact touch. Oh [laughter] my god.
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>> I'll be drinking through a straw today because >> Yeah.
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Is it Is it locking yours in?
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My take is I I have uh I have the same level of prosthetic makeup on, but I'm just full sending it.
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And by the end of the show, I'm expecting this to just be melting off my face. >> Grumbling.
17:51
We'll see how it holds up.
17:52
>> We'll see how it holds up.
17:52
Uh we will also >> on >> tell you about cognition.
17:55
We're the makers of Devon, the AI software engineer.
17:59
Crush your backlog with your personal AI engineering team. Um >> yes.
18:04
Did you want to go to Apple or did you want to go somewhere else?
18:06
>> Uh let's go to Microsoft. >> Microsoft. What's your Microsoft?
18:10
>> Topline beat earnings beat.
18:10
Stock traded down uh 3 to 4% after hours.
18:13
It's recovered quite a bit since then.
18:16
I said I was surprised to see Microsoft trade down following earnings, but it's recovered since.
18:21
Satya, in my view, has already gotten a lot more credit for the company's opportunities in AI than Amazon and even Google.
18:26
People have known about Google's strengths, but the big questions around search have held back performance to date.
18:31
Microsoft hasn't really had any narratives holding it back, but I don't think people give them enough credit for the OpenAI deal.
18:38
If you believe Genai is a sustaining innovation and will transform knowledge work, there is not a company in the world that is better positioned from a product and a distribution standpoint.
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Again, we talked about this with Sati on Tuesday.
18:48
>> Um, >> there are so many companies that are trying to build Excel plus an agent on top of it or agents for Excel, >> which is exactly what Microsoft is also doing with Excel with Copilot, right?
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And uh they're model agnostic.
19:02
they're going to be able to let, you know, bring in any any kind of intelligence that they want.
19:08
And so, um, anyways, I I think, you know, they continue to be super well positioned.
19:12
It's also fascinating because they have access to OpenAI's IP.
19:16
OpenAI wants to be a big player in in uh in the workplace, right?
19:22
You can imagine them getting into a bunch of other applications there.
19:24
And so, it'll be that competitive dynamic is just something that we're going to be watching for a long time.
19:30
Um, >> yeah, I saw some I saw some haters in the timeline talking about uh uh Microsoft launched a research product and the in the in the hot take was like Microsoft's late to launch this and it's somehow worse like they couldn't even just copy. Exactly.
19:46
Um, and I was and I was thinking like there is something real about like when a big company launches one of those features like they typically have to move a little bit slower because maybe they're regulated by Europe.
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They're all they're international.
20:01
They have, you know, they obey all the different rules around uh accessibility and they have they have like 25 they might be like sock 2 compliant plus ITAR compliant plus, you know, 25 other compliant levels.
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that just slow down like how fast you can move and how many things you can break.
20:21
Um, but that is very different like as an early adopter.
20:25
It's very different to look at a new product from a you know what 40 50 year old uh you know tech giant and say like ah I I I prefer like the the the cutting edge um product um as opposed to like what actually plays out in the market.
20:43
Like Slack was very much the same thing where Slack was this product that um was so much better than the alternatives.
20:51
Like if you I don't know if you ever used like workplace chat pre Slack, but it was >> I was basically born on Slack. Okay.
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[laughter] >> You were [clears throat] born on Slack.
21:01
But but Slack really was like a delightful like you know how there's there's just those companies that come out and you're like oh like like this company takes design seriously.
21:08
This company is a power user of Figma.
21:11
Think bigger, build faster.
21:13
Figma helps design and development teams build great products together.
21:15
Um, but but you know how you get that vibe and then you get the other vibe where it's like, "Oh, this company is owned by private equity and they don't really care."
21:23
>> John, I got to give you the the chat's giving you a shout out.
21:24
I never knew John was so ripped.
21:26
There's been some other comments.
21:29
>> Pull put it up put them up, John. There you go. >> Baby, let's go.
21:31
Ilia AGI has been achieved. Let's go.
21:34
[laughter] >> Ben Gilbert in the chat.
21:37
You guys are absolutely insane. I love it.
21:42
>> Welcome to the stream, Ben.
21:42
Thank you so much for stopping by.
21:43
You're an absolute legend.
21:45
We couldn't do this show without you.
21:47
>> Uh ma uh massive inspiring uh everything that they've done over at Acquire. Totally.
21:52
If you're if you've been living under a data center, get over to acquire. fm. Subscribe.
21:57
>> Uh let's get into meta. Let's talk about Meta. >> Yes.
22:00
>> Uh topline beat uh earnings miss.
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Uh >> massive miss like a 12 billion.
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Not people are not talking enough about what happened.
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happened. Like it is crazy that you could be operating such a big company and just be like oops 10 billion dollars and it's not like a >> I mean think of how they've been spending crazy >> you know this is like you know I'm sure Meta and the executive team it's like
22:24
after a weekend bender checking like your credit card statement right it's like it's like you you have an idea maybe of what you spent >> but it's way beyond that >> okay wait so Tyler can you look up what the actual tax charge was because I
22:40
don't think it was about scale AI which everyone a lot of people would say oh that was a lot of money to pay for something that maybe is an acquire right or like the $3 billion that maybe Zuck just paid for like one AI researcher like he's been on the spree I think this
22:53
is a separate $10 billion charge which is just >> came out of nowhere [laughter] I like I like the I like the metaphor of like you're just on a bender and you're just like oh my credit card bill is so huge this month what happened. [laughter] But
23:08
[laughter] But >> wait, so are you talking about the $15 billion start? >> It's five.
23:12
It's five more than I thought. I thought it was 10. I thought it was 10.
23:15
5 something >> 14 >> came out of nowhere.
23:20
>> Uh it was in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, but we'll see. >> Okay. Uh yes. So, okay.
23:23
So, apparently, um it was a onetime tax charge related to the Big Beautiful Bill Act. >> What?
23:30
>> So, I I'll I'll read into this more, but it's not the >> It has nothing to do with research.
23:36
in the X chat says, "From what I read, they missed only because of the tax prepayment, which is only on paper, not actually cash, and they said it would save them on tax costs over time." >> Okay. Thank you, Noah. That's very helpful. Yeah. Okay. Okay.
23:45
So, they're so changing the amount of uh like how they're accounting for these taxes, and so they took the hit to earnings.
23:52
Um but is that is that why the stock traded down 10%.
23:57
Is it specifically because of this one-time tax charge?
23:58
Like, I don't know that it is. I think it might be.
24:02
>> I think it could be a little bit of vibes in the mix.
24:03
I liked your vibe based announcement.
24:06
>> Your take was rough to be completely rebuilding an AI while simultaneously still finding footing in hardware core business rips though.
24:11
My take in the newsletter was the timeline loves the core meta business but doesn't have a lot of faith in Zuck.
24:17
I think that sounds harsh but I think that is generally >> um generally real.
24:22
People thought Bezos who had a similar similar level of control over Amazon was crazy to spend like he did building AWS and he was ultimately completely vindicated. Mhm.
24:34
>> Uh people thought Mark was crazy going all in on the metaverse and VR and so far so far that part of the business like has not shown any signs of uh of of being ROI positive, right?
24:44
Like obviously they're still shipping.
24:47
They're um >> the new Metar bands are are like the the the leading publicly available pair of uh of of glasses.
24:56
>> It just feels like the the wind case there is like a it's like an AirPodsized business, right? >> Yeah.
25:02
like it's hard to get to. Okay.
25:05
Yes, this is going to be as big as even Whimo. I don't know. >> I don't I don't know.
25:10
I I I I think that if you actually win that category, it could be an iPhone size business. >> Yeah.
25:17
>> So, I'm not saying that it's I'm not saying that he shouldn't be investing there.
25:20
But I don't think the market believes that he's going to win that category yet.
25:25
>> Which is fascinating because what what what company do you think is in the lead in terms of VR and AR right now? >> Rank them.
25:35
>> Who do you think is >> I think I think the I think the challenge is when products are not at the level where people are saying, "I love this. I use this all the time. I use this every day.
25:44
I can't live without it."
25:45
You don't get credit for being at the leading edge.
25:47
Uh yeah, people aren't saying that yet.
25:51
>> Like people expect Apple to come over the top and do, you know, >> they tried and they didn't didn't pencil. >> No, I know.
25:56
But now they're working on a on a pair of glasses and it's going to integrate with your iPhone.
25:59
It's going to integrate with iMessage and like that's going to be a real competitive, you know, challenge for >> Yeah. No, no, no, no.
26:05
It's a really good It's a really good argument.
26:07
It's really >> um So, at the same time, giving meta credit, uh Reals is now a $50 billion revenue run rate business.
26:14
Uh, let's hit the hit the gong for the real steam.
26:18
>> Threads is also >> Where is our Where's our mallet?
26:23
>> Ilia gong hit incoming.
26:23
The moment you've been waiting for. [snorts] Clean. Clean. Uh, moving on.
26:33
The market reacted positively to Scale AI acquisition and hiring spree, but I think investors have the right to be concerned about Meta's vision and ability to generate revenue from their Genai efforts, either directly or indirectly. anytime soon.
26:44
I'm still shocked they released Metavibes >> uh knowing how much scrutiny their first release as a new team would get.
26:49
Yeah, the product showed uh a complete lack of vision in my opinion and just product quality when compared to Sora which launched about a week later.
26:59
So it felt like they knew Sora was coming.
27:00
They wanted to be first to market with an AI native social feed and they did not.
27:08
>> The case is that they [clears throat] just completely burn the ships on the Meta AI app >> like because that app was originally the reason that I have it on my phone is because I got Meta Ray-B bands.
27:19
>> And so when I got Meta Ray Bands, I had to get the Meta app to use the Ray-B bands.
27:22
Then it turned into the Meta AI app and it was like, "Hey, do you want to use this as an LLM?"
27:25
And I was like, "I'm basically good on that front, but thanks."
27:29
And then they and then they were like, "Well, do you want some AI video?
27:32
Would you like some slob in this drop?"
27:34
[laughter] Which is just like a it's just a wild canvas to be iterating on so quickly.
27:38
They used to launch different apps every single time, but uh not not this time. I don't know.
27:42
Uh the Metavibes needs a turn.
27:45
I still like the midjourney model. I think it is beautiful.
27:49
I think I I think there is something cool to be done with that.
27:51
>> I'm not judging the the needs more UI.
27:54
>> Big problem was that you couldn't as a user consistently generate beautiful things. Yeah.
28:00
>> Whereas with Sora, it's not like they were necessarily beautiful, but at least they were entertaining.
28:02
And that's what kicked off that viral.
28:04
So, the main thing is like for Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, it's a lot more clear what winning in AI actually looks like.
28:10
Uh, I think Met is going to have to clarify what the win state looks like beyond just saying we're building personal super intelligence because investors are smart enough to know that uh that like personal super intelligence >> doesn't mean a lot today when the business today is focused on monetizing the world's attention. >> Yeah. Yeah.
28:34
>> And so I expect them at some point to have to kind of clarify what their what their plans are. >> Yeah.
28:40
Uh Tesla beat earnings missed uh beat on revenue missed on earnings.
28:46
Stock reaction was down about 4% after hours.
28:49
You uh reposted the buco capital bloke post.
28:52
I'm always so confused when Tesla goes down on earnings as business performance is completely irrelevant to the price of the stock.
28:58
Uh and it has been it has been more of a vibesbased stock for a while.
29:03
Um I had a more by the book uh analysis.
29:06
I said, uh, if Elon goes straight shot to the full self-driving equivalent for humanoid robots, basically no tell operation, the project should be years behind what's going on with 1X, I would imagine.
29:16
Um, just like the Whimo dynamic, like Whimo was able to launch a lot sooner because they could always fall back on, hey, there's a human tell operating this thing.
29:25
So, you can trust us on the city streets.
29:27
Um, and they've had a pretty good track record because of that.
29:29
Uh, Tesla's going full moonshot, full send.
29:34
Um but uh it but it's going to take a little bit longer.
29:37
Like no one debates the fact that like Tesla's robo taxi fleet is a year or two behind Whimo right now.
29:45
Now the hope the the the Tesla bull hope is that you come from behind and start compounding because you have just structurally better costs uh way more manufacturing more of a flywheel on the actual data and the training.
29:58
There's a lot of options and I said they also need to build a fulls size SUV.
30:01
Um, >> you're you can't wait for that.
30:04
[laughter] >> I just think it's so crazy not to build a full-size SUV in America.
30:06
Like Americans love full-size SUVs and you see them.
30:11
It's like I mean it's as crazy as not being in the truck market for as long as they were. >> Yeah.
30:16
It's interesting that Tesla has been so dependent on the on the luxury sedan for its entire history, even though the luxury sedan has like completely fallen off in popularity.
30:24
I saw uh some some data on Lexus's sales.
30:31
Lexus used to sell one of the most popular >> like luxury SUVs and they sell like >> either like singledigit thousands now of them a year.
30:39
So it's like that category has gotten just killed by the SUV.
30:41
And Tesla of course has the X and the Y, but it's not exactly what you're if if they were to ship like the Cybert truck SUV, I think that would sell significantly better than the Cybertruck. >> Yeah.
30:57
I wonder if they'll ever do multiple brands.
31:00
It's so normal at every other car company, but I see no reason why Tesla would ever do it. >> Yeah.
31:07
>> Like Lexus is what Toyota's upmarket brand, right?
31:10
>> Isn't that the linkage?
31:10
Um >> I [snorts] don't know.
31:13
>> I doubt Elon would ever.
31:14
>> I mean, Plaid was sort of like the the trim trim level. >> Yeah.
31:19
>> Um I wonder if they'd ever do a different trim level.
31:21
like >> uh plaid plaid plus like like what what is the equivalent of like the Maybach of Tesla if plaid is their AMG, right? >> Yeah.
31:32
>> I don't know that >> I don't think he cares about >> they have that in in China.
31:35
They have like a Maybachi model X or model M model S that's like chauffeur where the seats the front seats are pushed forward basically.
31:46
Um, I have other Elon Musk news, but first let me tell you about Vanta.
31:51
Automate compliance manage risk, prove trust continuously.
31:54
Vant's trust management platform takes the manual work out of your security and compliance process and replaces it with continuous automation.
32:00
Whether you're pursuing your first framework or managing a complex program, uh Elon Musk on data centers in orbit.
32:05
SpaceX will be doing this.
32:05
He said he's going to do data centers in space.
32:10
>> Didn't we say this out loud yesterday with someone?
32:12
with someone? I don't know if it was on the show or not, but >> yeah, >> it just seems obviously if there is an obvious my you know it's easy to be bullish on space right now >> but if you're investing in different categories you have to imagine that if there are adjacent opportunities besides Starlink for SpaceX to do >> Y
32:34
>> they will they will they will enter them if they are large enough categories and so >> again that's uh >> what does that mean for StarCloud >> I mean I can still think I I I can still imagine them over time figuring out like niche But you know the >> building the satellite cloud I think was something that Elon is not going to happily hand over to someone else. >> Yeah. So uh let's read through a little >> Yeah.
32:58
So uh let's read through a little bit of this from RS Technica.
33:00
An artificial intelligence as artificial intelligence drives the need for vastly more computing storage and processing power. Computing storage. What's that mean?
33:11
Uh interest in space-based data centers has spiked.
33:14
centers has spiked. uh although several company although al although several startup companies such as StarCloud have [snorts] begun to address the problem uh address the problem they haven't they're they're like identifying the problem maybe maybe prototyping um this is very
33:32
oddly worded um I'm like struggling to read this [snorts] um the idea has also attracted the interest of tech barons in May uh it emerged that former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt acquired relative Relativity relativity space due to his interest in space-based data centers. That's fascinating. I know that That's fascinating.
33:49
I know that relativity was was not doing well with kind of the V1 strategy and there was this turnaround project and Eric Schmidt came in and was uh I think paying a ton to keep the business going and really investing.
34:04
I had no idea that that was his thesis. Um that's fascinating.
34:06
Uh then earlier this month, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos predicted that gigawatt scale data centers will be built in space within the next 10 to 20 years. That's big.
34:18
[screaming] Uh now Elon Musk, whose SpaceX owns and operates significantly more space-based infrastructure than any other company or country in the world, uh has also expressed interest in technology.
34:28
Uh after ours wrote a story about the potential of autonomous assembly to construct large data centers in space, Musk responded on X by saying that Starlink satellites could be used for this purpose.
34:42
Simply scaling up Starlink V3 satellites which have high-speed laser links would work.
34:47
He said on the social media site X SpaceX will be doing this. Very interesting.
34:52
Um yeah, I I I think it makes sense.
34:55
think it makes sense. The question is just like yeah what is the actual timeline for any of this this uh I mean no one really expected Starlink to ramp as fast as it did uh and then it just like kind of worked but uh if there is I don't know a bunch of uh if there is a lot of uh >> uh like actual fundamental like
35:13
foundational science around like heat dissipation that needs to be done that might be something that a little bit bottlenecked but at the same at the same time I kind of like I would kind of bet on the SpaceX team to figure that stuff out since they already do a ton of heat dissipation and material science. just
35:24
dissipation and material science. just on >> yeah it's it's also just fascinating to look at the space industry versus the automotive industry like the automotive industry is the most brutally competitive challenging business where Elon is having to compete with every car
35:39
manufacturer in the world obviously there's >> export import controls uh in in automotive but um in space it's like you know uh you can imagine that being not a perfect monopoly but um certainly having every possible advantage in order to dominate in that uh category when the time is right. Uh should we talk about
35:56
Uh should we talk about Apple before we before we continue? Yeah, definitely.
36:00
Um Apple >> uh beat topline beat on uh bottom line.
36:05
Uh China sales decline year-over-year.
36:07
Uh if you've been uh paying any attention to Apple, you know that their China business is >> slowly uh going away.
36:13
Um iPhone revenue uh they missed uh just uh just by $300 million.
36:22
not not >> 50 billion uh or 49 billion this quarter.
36:28
>> Yeah, iPhone revenue is 49 billion versus uh 49. 33 estimate.
36:32
Uh stock uh is relatively uh flat uh since then.
36:36
Um >> yeah, so this is the real like uh this is the real bombshell in their strategy.
36:43
Consumer Intelligence uh Research Partners, a thirdparty analyst firm, said it observed great interest in the Pro and Pro Max models, while the new iPhone 17 Air model showed virtually no sign of traction.
36:59
So, >> I saw my first iPhone Air in the wild yesterday.
37:05
>> Didn't No, you saw that one get smashed. Tell that story. >> Which one? Oh.
37:08
Oh, this this was this was genuinely like >> the most I I I posted about this that during uh during LA Tech Week uh uh we had a dinner.
37:18
>> Why did you put it in quotes? It was LA Tech Week.
37:21
>> Well, there wasn't I mean [laughter] >> literally was an LA Tech Week event.
37:26
You're like Los Angeles >> Los Angeles technology. Um, no.
37:30
So, we we uh had dinner with some some folks and um >> uh there was there was a founder there from Venice >> from Venice.
37:39
>> And he was saying that the iPhone Air is the strongest iPhone ever made and that uh he challenged anybody at the dinner.
37:47
There was like 20 people.
37:48
>> Do you remember Bendgate?
37:48
Do you remember the what?
37:49
Do you remember Bengate, Tyler?
37:50
It was like the iPhone 5 or something.
37:54
>> There was I was pretty young. >> Okay. Yeah.
37:56
You're probably before your time.
37:57
Uh but there was a time when the iPhone launched and you could just bend it and it was like a lot of phones were getting bent.
38:03
So this guy is going to you and and he and and he's going around and saying that no one can bend this phone, right? It's the strongest.
38:12
>> No, no, he he said nobody can break this phone.
38:14
He said this phone is absolutely unbreakable. >> Unbreakable.
38:18
>> They've tested it internally. You cannot break it.
38:20
Is the strongest iPhone ever.
38:22
He they compared it to every other iPhone, even the >> even the titanium iPhone. Yeah.
38:26
>> And so he was he was bending it like this going crazy >> and he challenged anybody at the dinner who wants to try to break this phone.
38:34
And a Gundo founder I'm leaving both of them unnamed.
38:36
A Gundo founder >> and we got Gabriel from OpenAI chat. Um >> good luck man.
38:42
You're building cameos over there, but you're going to compete with us.
38:46
>> We're doing it the old fashioned way.
38:48
>> Yeah, we're doing it the old fashioned way.
38:49
It just took us three hours sitting here in makeup.
38:52
>> What do you mean three hours?
38:52
It was like more like four hours.
38:54
>> It was like four hours.
38:54
[laughter] Uh, so Gabriel, you've sped that up just a little bit, but you know, I think I think we're sticking with this for the for the meantime. >> Okay.
39:02
So, anyways, this founder challenges the entire uh group at dinner.
39:06
Any can anybody break this phone?
39:08
The Gundo founder raises his hand, >> takes the phone and like tries for a second and just snaps it basically.
39:13
Not just completely shatters, like completely broken.
39:16
Won't even [laughter] won't even turn on.
39:18
And the Venice founder sitting there saying like like he was like in disbelief like every the whole room just went completely quiet and he was like I'm gonna I'm gonna email Tim Cook about this. >> Emailing Tim Cook? What is he going to do?
39:31
You're not supposed to smash your phone.
39:33
>> Um anyways on Apple uh John your take.
39:36
You said sort of the inverse meta core business not at risk due to AI but not investing aggressively.
39:39
Consumers seem happy to just open an LLM app. >> Uh good take.
39:43
I said Apple's trading at 40 times PE uh with very low growth.
39:49
This feels steep even if I don't think they're threatened by AI in the near term.
39:53
And then I highlighted a quote from Bernard Arno from LVMH.
39:55
He said, "I don't know if in 20 years time people will be using iPhones, but I do know they will be drinking Dom Perion." >> It's a good one.
40:06
>> Um >> and hopefully they'll be using graphite.
40:07
dev code review for the age of AI.
40:09
Graphite helps teams on GitHub ship higher quality software faster.
40:11
Uh, in other news, um, >> we should close it out with Nvidia just to finish this little earnings wrap-up.
40:20
Uh, basically our our John, your take was on top of the world, but is that head is the head that wears the crown heavy?
40:26
Core AI factory buildout going flawlessly, but unclear why Nvidia is pushing data centers in space, humanoids, quantum computing, mumbo jumbo. Maybe it's real.
40:32
Maybe of the same old AI story. Question mark.
40:36
>> I said, I don't think Jensen would be uh just chugging beers on [laughter] camera in Korea.
40:41
chugging >> if he was having a rough one.
40:42
So, we'll uh see how it nets out.
40:45
Their earnings are not until November. >> Chugging some beers. Yeah. Yeah.
40:49
What's wrong with chugging some beers?
40:51
Uh especially I mean you got to like he is superlative at this point.
40:56
I I believe just quantitatively he is the most value creative founder CEO in human history.
41:08
Like no founder CEO has created five trillion.
41:10
trillion. I mean like no one's created five trillion in any in any capacity whether in in the CEO seat or or not because like with a with a Microsoft or with a or with an Apple you have to start having the conversation when you're having the GOAT debate on how
41:27
much credit do you give to Tim Cook for market cap creation how much credit do you give to Steve Jobs right and same thing with Sachi Nadella and Bill Gates like obviously Satcha has has taken Microsoft from 300 00 billion to 4 trillion. Does that mean that he's 10
41:41
Does that mean that he's 10 times better than the founders that started the company in the GOAT debate of value creation?
41:49
Like he did have a big he had a lot of great shoulders to stand on >> entirely about number go up. >> Exactly. Exactly.
41:55
But with Jensen, you don't even have to have that debate because he's been the founder CEO the whole time.
42:00
Uh and so he is he's he deserves a beer.
42:03
Let it let the man have a couple beers with his boys in South Korea.
42:09
He's been on an absolute >> couple more posts here.
42:11
Uh Jay Boldard says, "I'm sorry, but no company generating the cash Meta is with the margins it has should ever be raising money."
42:18
Of course, they announced another uh bond sale yesterday morning uh to fund their buildout.
42:25
Uh Jay Boltart said, "Absolutely pathetic.
42:30
Maybe just spend a little less and don't pay every AI scientist like their show." pay Otani. >> Yeah.
42:35
I I I want to understand more about the private credit dynamic here because I I believe that there like a good CFO would tell you that if you're buying land, you should get a mortgage because it can be secured.
42:52
And there's just there's just some like cost of capital math that you should do.
42:56
And it would actually be irresponsible like if they were saying, "Hey, we're going to build a new data center.
43:01
We need to buy some land.
43:02
we need to buy a building, buy a bunch of GPUs, and they're like, "And guess what?
43:05
We're not going to use debt."
43:07
Like, that's like that's like paying off your mortgage, basically.
43:09
And it's like, okay, yeah, you can pay off your mortgage.
43:12
And you can be like, I'm one of those guys that doesn't have a mortgage.
43:15
And it's like, congratulations, but you're probably not using capital efficiently. Yeah.
43:18
And so I when I hear that they're setting up a big data center and they're raising debt for that particular deal, I don't have like red flags flying off in my mind.
43:30
But I don't know this this this boltard guy does >> uh semi analysis had a post here uh quoting uh Sundar Sundar said over the past 12 months nearly 150 cloud Google cloud customers each process approximately 1 trillion tokens with our models for a wide range of applications for example WPP is creating campaigns with up to 70% efficiency gains.
43:54
Suaravski has increased email open rates by 17%.
43:56
Let's give it up for email open rates [applause] and accelerated campaign localization by 10x.
44:04
Uh semi analysis says AI is not a bubble.
44:07
Enterprise AI is very strong.
44:09
Nearly 150 enterprises each process one trillion tokens with Gemini models for a wide range of apps.
44:14
And then they say wait that's less than a million bucks per year per enterprise or 150 million of annual revenue i. e..
44:20
3% of GCP annual revenue.
44:24
So >> the fact that Google leads with token count instead of revenue growth tells you everything.
44:28
If enterprise AI was actually strong, those 150 companies would be spending 10x more. I don't know about that.
44:34
Um because when you're a big company like you don't want to break out like more gap metrics, non-GAAP metrics than you absolutely have to like cuz if you develop some monster of a business like the AWS IPO story, the whole idea that Amazon had this amazing business and was like oh yeah like just include that in everything else like definitely don't let everyone know.
44:57
And Satcha told this to to us on the show was he was like when AWS had to disclose what was going on over there, it was the best day for us because everyone looked at our business and we're like they got the same thing going on over there.
45:09
They got a monster of a business cooking.
45:11
And so the question of like how Google positions this, like do they want to share dollars? Um, but I don't know.
45:18
I I just wonder I wonder what the shape of of GCP adoption is.
45:24
Um, if it's if it's nearly 150 Google Cloud customers each processed one trillion, I wonder what that slice is.
45:37
>> I mean, yeah, if Sundar had come out and says, "We got enterprise AI to $150 million run rate."
45:42
Everyone would be like, but it sounds really good when you say one trillion. >> Yeah. Yeah.
45:51
That is a weird weird way to frame it. I don't know.
45:57
Uh I mean this is all this is all so weird because it's like okay so then what's actually happening in the core business because they they they crushed earnings like they did they did great and it's like are we just in this world weird world where everyone where every business is like yeah I totally want like I'll take $1 million of tokens uh but then I also need $75 million more of just traditional databases. Is that what's going on?
46:22
like like what's actually driving the growth if not the token generation.
46:27
Uh there might just be something longer tail going on here too there.
46:31
there. this might just be like this slice of this 150 enterprises that's that's actually you know that only makes up I don't know the big question is just what percentage of GCP annual revenue is AI is genai like we've
46:48
seen that the capex at meta they have core AI they have genai like every everyone wants to track that now about what what workload is happening sometimes the hyperscalers don't know because they just said look I just rented you a bunch GPUs? Are you
47:01
Are you inferencing a recommendation algorithm on it?
47:06
Are you playing video games on it?
47:08
Are you generating tokens on it?
47:08
We actually don't know because we respect your privacy and you can do whatever you want with it.
47:16
So, all we can tell the market is like, hey, we we've sold a lot of GPU hours.
47:19
Y >> and and and it's all it's all masked.
47:23
>> Uh anyway, uh Tyler, what what you got?
47:26
>> I mean, yeah, a trillion is just like not a lot at all, right?
47:28
OpenAI is doing like on just on the API like something around like 250 trillion a month.
47:36
>> So compared to that I mean if it's a trillion over the past like year even if it's 150 I mean that's like that's pretty bad.
47:44
>> Each 150 trillion tokens and you said >> doing like 260 >> I actually can't keep these numbers straight anymore.
47:53
like there's I just like everything is like nothing's an apples to apples and I think that's very much intentional.
47:59
I think that you don't want to be easily comped across anything.
48:04
That's why everyone just focuses on valuation and then and revenue and revenue scale.
48:10
>> Uh Dylan Patel says so many people hated on us for the AWS acceleration thesis a couple months ago and we were right of course only we can do these calls due to our deep knowledge and insights with core research data center accelerator and tokconomics models.
48:21
Amazon and he does the AMZN with and just dropped sales at semi analysis. com.
48:27
So >> I expect analysis to be printing the next >> legendary chart >> 24 hours. This was crazy.
48:34
I wasn't sure if this was uh fake news or not, but uh on the Coinbase earnings call yesterday, um uh Brian Armstrong. Yeah.
48:46
>> Uh went there was a prediction market that people were betting on which words he would say.
48:51
uh during the during the earnings call and he waited until the end and he just read through and read off every single word that he had missed.
48:59
Um he says uh you know I just wanted to add the words in here Bitcoin, Ethereum, blockchain staking and web 3 to make sure we get those all in before the end of the call. So completely trolling.
49:10
We've had that a few times during >> because I was tracking the prediction market about what Coinbase will say on their next earnings call.
49:15
And I just want to, you know, add here the words Bitcoin, Ethereum, blockchain, staking, and web 3.
49:25
>> It's actually crazy that he hadn't gotten to Bitcoin until then.
49:27
[laughter] Like why like like that? Like like that.
49:32
It really tells you a lot about how mature the Coinbase business is that you can get to the end of your Q3 2025 earnings call without mentioning Bitcoin, which was like the entire reason the business exists.
49:42
But the business has grown so much that there's a lot else going on.
49:47
>> It's possible that he said it and he just didn't remember.
49:49
>> Maybe maybe but but it is it is funny that uh that he's just >> Yeah.
49:52
One thing is is we we've had prediction markets created around different interviews we've done and >> wildly distracting when I'm looking at the chat and people are like say this word say that word again. Say it three more times.
50:04
It's a very weird postmodern hyper techchno capital accelerationist like aesthetic to be like people are gambling on the words that you're saying on a live stream. It's very very weird.
50:16
Uh I don't know what his I would love to know Brian's honest take on like how he feels about that.
50:21
Like there's a little bit of just the market is going to exist.
50:26
It's going to be a thing.
50:26
And so he by doing this, he's kind of trolling the market to just say, "Hey, you're never going to be able to reliably bet on this market because you never know what I'm going to do."
50:39
Uh, which is one way to interact with it as opposed to being like, "Hey guys, I know that everyone has a prediction market up on what I'm going to say and so please don't do that."
50:49
It's like, "No, just like go create chaos and then everyone will just know that it's a meme and chaos."
50:53
Well, it's going to just drive more attention to the next earnings call because people are going to be like, "Oh, is he going to Well, I'll just bet yes on everything in case he does that again.
51:00
The odds might be at like 95% for every word >> and then he just says like he just doesn't mention it at all and then everything, you know, >> it certainly it certainly kind of cementss him as uh as just a very in the culture CEO and a very a very like online founder which I think is positive.
51:18
Um we are of course partnered with Poly Market as a uh prediction market.
51:23
Uh we're usually tracking the largest companies on there.
51:25
Largest company at the end of 2025.
51:28
Nvidia has been predicted of course and last year. >> Uh it's like 99% now.
51:34
I mean they're a trillion above everyone else there.
51:36
It was a horse race though.
51:38
Um >> yeah it was really close midsummer. >> Yeah. At one point.
51:43
I mean the the market caps were were eclipsing each other and they were going back and forth and and at one point >> June 1st Microsoft and and Nvidia were both at 37%. Exactly.
51:54
>> It's been a pretty crazy it's been a crazy pretty crazy year because of the the tariffs and what and the AI narrative and the deepseek moment.
52:01
Uh the the horse race has changed a few times and Microsoft has been in the lead.
52:07
Apple's been in the lead, but Nvidia has run away with it, and that deserves a beer with your boys in South Korea.
52:15
And so that's what he's been up to.
52:19
>> Uh did you fully understand uh there's a article here, Microsoft seemingly just revealed that OpenAI lost 11 and a half billion last quarter?
52:27
Um, >> that seems like in line with what we've [snorts] been kind of assuming.
52:32
It's like it's it's a massive loss making business.
52:37
I don't know that we'd heard that they were on like a 40 billion loss run rate.
52:42
Um, but that kind of money uh >> maybe Intel >> like you you you mean the like the mo the biggest >> who's losing more money than open?
52:54
Do you count capex as losing money?
52:59
>> Um, >> because I I would I would almost ass I would almost certainly assume that these are not losses. These are investments.
53:09
So like if So like if I raise $10 million for my startup and then I'm like, okay, uh, I'm going to buy a office building for $5 million.
53:17
Like that's not neg5 million earnings.
53:20
that is negative 5 million cash flow.
53:23
I've lost 5 million cash and and I don't have liquid cash anymore.
53:28
Um and so I would assume that a lot of OpenAI's losses are actually investments in capex one way or another.
53:37
Um but there also stockbased comp is factored into this as well. >> Yeah.
53:42
And that's also in many cases a non-cash expense.
53:44
Um, and so still important to track, still significant, but uh, all of this stuff it's like I I'm kind of in like a wait and see until the until the S1 drops until we can actually get data. Do you have any intel? >> Yeah.
53:59
So, apparently this is um, >> this is double what they've like what has previously been reported.
54:02
So, I think before there was a report that said um, the first half of 2025 they were going to do 3. 5 in losses.
54:12
>> So, this is basically double that.
54:12
But even then, it's still I don't think this is very surprising at all.
54:14
so hard to track how much money they're actually raising because they'll they'll raise for a particular deal, they'll raise for Stargate, there'll be a secondary transaction.
54:24
It's very hard to understand like how much cash is actually going from investors onto OpenAI's like for-profit balance sheet for that is that is like available to burn.
54:35
And then once you have the cash, like I think everyone's fine with the idea of Sam Alman burning money for 12 to 18 months and going out and raise more.
54:46
Like that's not crazy when you're growing your business.
54:48
Um especially in a new category.
54:51
>> Uh in other news, Palanteer sues former employees for stealing company secrets.
54:56
Company alleges pair violated non-competes to create copycat AI firm. >> Interesting.
55:01
Uh they've the two employees they're accusing them of stealing confidential data to build a rival company called PercePa backed by General Catalyst.
55:10
>> I would not want to steal from Palunteer. >> Bad idea.
55:14
>> That seems like one of the worst companies to steal from. >> They will find you. >> Yeah.
55:18
>> And they will kill you.
55:18
[laughter] Um >> about that, but uh it is a is a wild thing. Uh >> yeah.
55:23
You think about a company that's going to have like you know things pretty locked down.
55:26
their whole their whole stick is >> they knew they know that if I I remember I read the article yesterday, but I believe they they tracked that the employee had slacked themselves a document that they then opened on their phone and like presumably, you know, saved.
55:41
So, um we'll see how this nets out.
55:44
Uh they say that taking access to Palunteer's crown jewels such as source code and customer workflows to create what it called a copycat platform.
55:51
Um, so they're just trying to block them from uh using the data and to force the return of stolen materials.
56:03
>> Um, one of the comments says never um never go against a company that sued the government and won.
56:09
[laughter] So um, >> interesting.
56:12
Um, Sean Sanker was on the uh, >> Ross Det. >> Ross Dowet. It was really good.
56:17
I don't know how much you listen to, but uh he he it's funny because they open with the classic question of um of uh like what does Palanteer actually do?
56:28
And I don't know like why are people so confused by that question? It's so crazy to me.
56:34
It's like and Sean explains it extremely well.
56:40
He's just like like you have data.
56:43
We help you understand your data.
56:43
We help you understand what's going on there.
56:46
Um, you know, it's it's he's he's like it's a data analytics firm, sir.
56:52
>> It's the same exact thing.
56:52
Um, when when Trey Stevens went on Sean Ryan. >> Yeah.
56:56
>> Like the questions were like almost the same exact questions like what does Palanteer do?
56:59
Like and then you read the comments and then everyone's like >> this is the antichrist. >> Yeah. People go crazy crazy.
57:04
>> Yeah. People go crazy crazy. Uh, and I think it's I like Sham Sha this great example of like when you want to make a thing like if you're if you're running a manufacturing plant, you will have a a system for tracking like if you're
57:20
trying to make like yerba mate, you will have a system that stores like the specifications of the can, what type of ink you're using here, the the size of the can, the shape, what materials, how the how this gets printed, like that will all be managed in a in a particular software. ware system. Then how how ware system.
57:36
Then how how you're actually making the cans will be like, oh, okay, I'm producing 25 cans a second or whatever.
57:44
That will be tracked in a different system.
57:46
Then you might have a CRM to sell.
57:47
Who do I sell these cans to?
57:50
I'm selling them, you know, every every month. Jordy buys a bunch.
57:54
So I have a CRM that tracks you.
57:54
and he's just describing like like the different enterprise software tooling sets like CRM, uh, CMS, warehouse management system, inventory management system.
58:07
He's just describing those and saying and explaining how Palunteer can tie them all together and how Palanteer can build them and sometimes you need custom ones for specific uh for specific industries.
58:16
Um, >> well, let's check in with check in with the Palunteer Bulls. >> Anyway, yes.
58:20
What does the What do the Palanteer Bulls say?
58:22
>> The Palunteer Bulls will get exhausted at these levels.
58:25
>> [laughter] >> Full send.
58:29
>> I like the guy doing our our team workout should look like that.
58:32
>> We don't break nearly enough of a sweat compared to this. This is so sick. Let's go. >> Look at this, >> bro. Back flips.
58:40
>> I like that guy who's just like who's just like racing it like it's chariot or like it's a horse race. That's hilarious. >> Yeah.
58:48
This also seems slightly sped up maybe. What do we think?
58:50
Do you think this is like 1. 1x? >> This slowed down.
58:54
Oh, you think [laughter] you think it's slowed down? Uh, get on Julius. ai.
58:59
What analysis do you want to run? Chat with your data.
59:02
Get expert level insights in seconds. Um, where where to next?
59:07
We got the mansion section.
59:09
There's a bunch of stuff we can go through.
59:10
Um, did you hear that the Hampton's market is making an epic comeback? Let's go.
59:16
Finally, >> the moment >> home sales of $10 million or more houses are surging on the east end, even topping the COVID surge in the Hampton, New York's affluent beach vacation destination, the luxury real estate market has come roaring back.
59:32
Have you Have you ever been to the Hamptons?
59:36
I I still think I've never been.
59:40
>> Actually, I actually >> Bobby Cosmic was worried about the >> Maybe as a kid, not as an adult.
59:43
The number of home sales above $10 million on Long Island's East End has surged to unprecedented levels, even topping the area's pandemic boom.
59:54
The uptick comes even as Florida and other local have replaced New York City as a primary home for many billionaires.
1:00:00
The Hampton's is, for a lack of a better term, kicking ass at the very high end of the market. Wow.
1:00:08
Uncensored swear word in the journal.
1:00:12
Absolute dogs over there in the really writers.
1:00:14
I mean, >> out of control. >> Out of control.
1:00:16
We got to get this under control.
1:00:19
[laughter] >> No, I think I think that's not that bad of a word. ASS.
1:00:22
Um, the high-end Hampton's market was in the doldrums before COVID.
1:00:27
Home sales of 10 million or more plummeted from 58 in 2015 to 30 in 2019 as the Ritzy area faced increased competition from areas such as Nantucket or Hudson Valley.
1:00:36
And so there are some stories here uh to the banner born.
1:00:44
>> I've been working at my land thesis.
1:00:46
>> Yes, >> I think uh I think I think that it's probably the most underrated asset class right now throughout >> spell the alpha.
1:00:54
>> I mean I mean I'm down I'm down to share the alpha with uh >> with the team.
1:00:58
Um no I just think throughout you know all human history people were like how do I acquire land? >> Yes.
1:01:06
And then at some point or another, people just stopped, right?
1:01:08
It became just about getting the home. Yes.
1:01:14
>> And not thinking about land.
1:01:14
So >> where where do you want land?
1:01:17
Do you want to buy Fifth Avenue to ch to uh to >> I just want to buy up land in the area that I love the most, which >> American jurisdiction. >> Of course, America.
1:01:30
>> California, >> of course. California.
1:01:33
>> So Southern California.
1:01:33
never give up on California.
1:01:36
>> I still think there I still think there's huge alpha in just acquiring massive swaths of Alaskan land.
1:01:42
>> Yeah, >> I still think >> you've been working this one out for a while.
1:01:44
>> Yeah, I I think it's massively underrated because if if uh if global warming is real and unstoppable and we can't fight the force of global warming, well then temperatures will rise and Alaska will be the last beachfront property. It'll be balmy. It'll be amazing.
1:02:01
Everything else will be a desert, but Alaska will be nice and temperate, and that's where you want to be.
1:02:06
And if we cure global warming, if we stop global warming, if we wind up figuring out how to manipulate the environment, we we we become we harness the >> manipulate time. >> Yeah.
1:02:18
Manipulating time, manipulating the weather.
1:02:20
uh if Augustus is successful, if geoengineering is successful, well then it's not going to be cold up there because you'll just be able to transform it into a lush uh a lush environment 72 and sunny all day.
1:02:35
So I think in either in either scenario, no matter where you land on um >> on global warming, is it unstoppable? Is it preventable?
1:02:43
Uh Alaska looks great in that world. What do you think?
1:02:48
>> Did you ever resolve your beef with the Alaskans? No.
1:02:51
I locked I so I posted on X actually it was Twitter back then like four years ago I posted um like we got to go to Alaska we got to build some condominiums we got to build some strip malls we got to build some skyscrapers uh it's too it's too nice up
1:03:08
there uh and I was basically like we're going to we're all the tech people all the all my tech friends were all going to go to Alaska and the Alaskans did not like this >> and they said stay out of Alaska you tech boy. Uh, and I was getting I was
1:03:20
Uh, and I was getting I was getting attacked from both the left and the right.
1:03:24
>> You kind of listened too. >> I did.
1:03:25
I I I in fact I did not uh invade Alaska.
1:03:28
Uh, but I was getting lots of DMs from uh Alaskans who are, you know, gun toteen good old boy Americans. >> Do not step foot.
1:03:38
>> Do not you wouldn't last a day up here.
1:03:40
Uh, you're not tough enough for the Alaskan wilderness.
1:03:42
And then I was also getting canceled by the left Alaskans who are like this is my indigenous homeland. You can't come here. or that type of thing.
1:03:50
And so I was getting it from both sides.
1:03:51
I wound up locking my account because the post went majorly viral in Alaskan like Twitter, Alaska Twitter.
1:03:58
Um, of course I was joking around, but um, the internet doesn't care about that.
1:04:03
>> Twitter is such a small place already.
1:04:05
Imagine how small Alaska Twitter is.
1:04:07
There's like six pe six posters up there, regional posters.
1:04:11
>> But this is this is the lesson for folks who uh who post and are are worried about getting cancelled.
1:04:15
Not that you should go out there and get cancelled, but if it if it does if it does happen, if it it usually starts by somebody quote posting you, and you can tell that, you know, you posted something, you got 100 likes, but the quote post is taking off and people are having a lot of fun quote tweeting you.
1:04:29
Well, if you >> like ratio on the original post is just abysmal. >> Exactly.
1:04:34
So, if that happens, you can just bail by locking your account, which then kills the quote tweet because it doesn't show up in the quote tweet.
1:04:41
And so no one's liking or retweeting a quote tweet with just a this account is locked.
1:04:47
And so it just kills the virality of the quote and the dunk.
1:04:50
And so you stop getting dunked on.
1:04:52
And then no one can really like DM you or or or reply to you or dig through your account.
1:04:59
And so usually, at least in the short term, people are kind of like, ah, I'm moving on to something else.
1:05:03
I'm not I'm not letting it percolate.
1:05:04
Um, we should talk to Lulu about uh how to handle cancellations when she hops on.
1:05:10
Uh she's of course seen a bunch of these.
1:05:12
Um, speaking of people who should be cancelled, uh, someone owns a disgusting house in Los Angeles. We got to dig into this.
1:05:19
Uh, the mansion section is really getting wild today.
1:05:22
They put a curse word in here. Don't like that.
1:05:23
They also, uh, are listing an $85 million mansion here for sale in LA.
1:05:29
An estate with a curated collection of SCEX toys.
1:05:32
What's going on, mansion section?
1:05:35
Why are you getting so wild on Friday, October 31st? I don't know. Spooky. It has a pleasure suite. It's >> not like them.
1:05:43
>> A pair of Los Angeles mansions, one with a pleasure suite outfitted with a curated collection of sex toys, is hitting the market for $85 million.
1:05:48
The seller is British music producer Alex Didd. He's 44.
1:05:54
He spent 14 years building one of the houses, a roughly 24,00 >> 14 years.
1:06:01
>> Yeah, he started when he was 30, I guess.
1:06:03
Um, >> he thinks in decades. >> He thinks in decades.
1:06:06
In addition to the pleasure suite, the Hollywood Hills home, which Dekid called his entertainer's fortress, has eight pools, very cool, an auto elevator, and a private nightclub.
1:06:18
In 2020, Didd purchased a an adjacent five-bedroom home with its own pool for around 7.
1:06:23
6 million, property records show.
1:06:26
He bought the roughly 6,125 square foot house with the idea of adding it to the main residence.
1:06:33
uh he said, but ultimately decided to use it as a guest house instead.
1:06:39
D kid bought the first property, a Spanish style home on the in the Bird Streets area for around 4. 3 million in 2011.
1:06:44
The purchase came shortly after renegotiating his first publishing >> morale in the chat. Alex Didd. He's 44.
1:06:53
[laughter] >> Uh his real name is Alexander J. Grant.
1:06:57
I basically got this house thinking it would be a six-month remodel, but after more than a year of renovating, the kid decided to raise the house, destroying it, and start over.
1:07:06
It was like making an album for me, the kid said. I got these other ideas.
1:07:11
McClean, who's known for designing modern mansions, is a madman just like me, the kid said.
1:07:15
The four-bedroom house has a glass elevator for cars.
1:07:19
A pleasure suite with a Murphy bed and mirrored wall.
1:07:22
Contains antique chairs customized with patent leather upholstery, restraints, and chains.
1:07:31
Uh, I think we're beyond the days of it being taboo to enjoy pleasure.
1:07:34
The kid said, "I wanted a place where you could feel comfortable and intimate and explore."
1:07:43
>> All right, let's go to the next top.
1:07:44
>> We're not We're not past it. It is taboo. Tear your house down. I don't know. Uh, no.
1:07:50
The mansion section is uh is all over the place today.
1:07:54
Shuttertock founder sells a Bridge Hampton home.
1:07:56
Uh, what a great time to get out of Shuttertock.
1:08:01
Uh, with the dawn of generative imagery.
1:08:04
This has to be one of the hardest business.
1:08:08
>> John, he's not out yet.
1:08:08
He's still the chair executive chairman. >> Yes.
1:08:11
But he's clearly sold enough to uh to buy 57 million.
1:08:15
>> We should have We should have John on.
1:08:16
And I'd be interested to to hear how he's um >> yeah, >> how he how how I mean I'm sure they they get so much traffic still and I imagine they just help people generate assets based on other assets.
1:08:28
>> I mean the bull case is the Reddit thesis, right?
1:08:30
Where you're licensing the data and that's a and that's actually very valuable and the stock sort of pops off of that.
1:08:36
>> Uh he sold his oceanfront house in Bridgeampton, New York for 57 million according to people familiar with the deal.
1:08:42
Uh he bought it for 40 million in 2014. He's listed the house.
1:08:45
Um the buyer of the identity the buyer's identity couldn't be learned. Huh.
1:08:49
We're gonna have to figure that out. Get to the bottom of it. Uh let's see.
1:08:52
Uh set on more than two acres.
1:08:55
The modern Bridge Hampton home has a gym, a game room, and a media room. Interesting.
1:09:01
Outside there is an infinity pool. You'll love that.
1:09:04
>> Uh an outdoor kitchen, a fireplace, and a television.
1:09:06
A private lighted walkway that leads to the beach.
1:09:08
Um hm sales volume in the Hamptons hit a 14-year low, but it's coming back and uh the founder of Shuttertock is getting out at maybe the top, but a local boom. Very fun. What else is going on?
1:09:26
>> Back to the timeline in the journal as well. >> Turbo Puffer. >> There we go. >> Search every bite.
1:09:30
Serverless vector and full text search built from first principles and object storage.
1:09:33
Fast 10x cheaper and extremely scalable. Continue.
1:09:36
Uh, Black Rockck stung by loans to businesses accused of breathtaking fraud.
1:09:41
An entrepreneur tapped private credit funds to finance his telecom businesses.
1:09:44
Now the lenders say he defrauded them.
1:09:46
Uh, so uh, uh, stock market news overex says we have our fourth private credit collapse in two months.
1:09:55
And this one shows exactly why institutional lenders shouldn't be justified to verify their own collateral.
1:10:00
Beem Bombbot ran Kerio Capital, a tele a New York telecom financing outfit that convinced Black Rockck's HPS investment partners in BNP Parabus to lead him 552 million.
1:10:11
The entire deal was built on one claim.
1:10:14
He had legitimate receivables from T-Mobile, Telstra, uh Bing, Talia, Sparkle, and Taiwan Mobile backing the loans. None of it was real.
1:10:26
Uh, Braum bought Forge contracts that appeared to be signed by representatives from these character carriers.
1:10:30
He created fake invoices uh supposedly issued by these companies claiming they owed Karios money.
1:10:37
Then he spoofed email addresses mimicking these carriers real domains and sent verification emails to make the receivables look legitimate.
1:10:43
By stacking these fabricated invoices on top of each other, he created what looked like 500 million plus in collateral.
1:10:51
Lender saw [snorts] assets and funded the deal without catching any of it.
1:10:55
Here's where it gets embarrassing.
1:10:56
When HPS and BNP Parabus finally tried to verify these receivables by actually calling T-Mobile, the carrier said they had no idea what Kerio was talking about.
1:11:04
No contracts, no no invoices, nothing existed.
1:11:07
One phone call would have instantly revealed the entire fraud.
1:11:11
These are supposed to be instit in institutional-grade lenders with worldclass risk management.
1:11:14
Yet somehow they missed basic due diligence.
1:11:16
While all this was happening, uh, Brambot's people were also stealing cash whenever payments came through the lender controlled collection accounts.
1:11:24
Instead of applying those funds to the debt, they diverted the money offshore.
1:11:27
So, he wasn't just fabricating collateral.
1:11:29
He was act stealing actual cash flows in real time.
1:11:33
Uh, lenders sued in 2020 uh August 2025 and froze all assets.
1:11:37
Um then they filed uh for uh the company Kerios filed for bankruptcy with uh up to 1 billion in liabilities and basically zero assets remaining.
1:11:48
HPS is sitting on half a billion in losses with nothing to recover against.
1:11:52
Um the kicker is that Black Rockck acquired HPS for 12 billion in July 2025 specifically to expand into private credit and get access to its $148 billion platform.
1:12:05
Within 90 days of closing that deal, they're holding a half a billion dollar fraud loss on receivables that HPS supposedly vetted and monitored.
1:12:10
Uh >> I mean that's not that big of a deal, right?
1:12:15
[clears throat] >> Half a billion.
1:12:18
>> I mean it's not great, but you know it is like 5% of the deal.
1:12:20
Like I feel like people get deals mispriced by a couple percent every once in a while.
1:12:26
>> I mean it's just this is a big deal in the broader context of like private credit has exploded as an asset class. Yeah.
1:12:31
There's a lot of uh you know people of uh you know we saw this sloppiness.
1:12:36
What was the um AV in the chat?
1:12:40
Large scale fraud is actually a sign of good times.
1:12:41
[laughter] >> I mean that's true. Yeah. >> Yeah.
1:12:46
>> Um but uh yeah who who knows?
1:12:46
But anyways, that that auto parts uh company that that went bankrupt a while back also had a bunch of private credit in the mix.
1:12:56
And so I think people are just waiting for more and more.
1:12:59
>> We got to dig into that.
1:12:59
that story of the satellite repossession, maybe one of the the private credit gets crazy.
1:13:07
I mean, um there's a famous example of uh >> one uh one one credit firm buying Argentinian debt and then repossessing a aircraft carrier or like destroyer like a military boat.
1:13:19
And apparently the same thing uh can happen in space with with uh satellites like they are it is possible to uh more or less repossess them.
1:13:29
them. Uh, and so I I think a lot of these a lot of these deals, a lot of these uh a lot of these private credit deals are like you're you're on a knife's edge in terms of like are you going to get continue to get payment or are you going to need to get the value from the assets whereas in venture
1:13:48
capital it's just so much it's just so much further out on the risk curve that you're you're never like >> or how yeah am I like I like a big piece of my business is is making sure I can liquidate the Apple display monitors, you know, in the office or the Herman Miller chairs. It's like, no, that's
1:14:03
It's like, no, that's going to be basically immaterial to your business.
1:14:07
It's going to be the difference between, you know, like 99% of the value is going to come from 1% of the investments anyway.
1:14:13
And then of the money you lose, you're not going to be recouping an extra 5% making a difference.
1:14:20
>> Uh, in some more positive news, >> Google AI Studio, that's right, >> create an AI powered app faster than ever. Get started.
1:14:26
Gemini understands the capabilities you need and automatically wires the right models and APIs up for you.
1:14:33
You can get started at AI Studio. AI. studio/build. Continue.
1:14:39
>> Uh Britain over at Microsoft uh says, "Please, Mr.
1:14:42
President, respectfully let us buy this truck. >> Let's go." >> Uh he was responding. >> Wow. 64,000 likes on that.
1:14:50
>> Palmer says, "Working on this."
1:14:50
This got another 20,000 likes. So, people want these.
1:14:55
What is >> these little Toyota trucks?
1:14:58
>> But what does this mean in the Palmer context?
1:14:59
Does this mean he's going to like call the president and ask Trump to allow it or is he going to make a mod retro version of this car?
1:15:06
Is Anderal going to produce this?
1:15:08
Like there's there's like 12 different ways that that uh Palmer could like solve this problem of like Americans not being able to get cool trucks, which is interesting. >> Yeah. I don't know.
1:15:17
I don't know if these these trucks are blocked.
1:15:18
They're blocked in the US or just you would have to import one yourself.
1:15:25
>> U but they I mean Inos is basically I think Anos has basically done this.
1:15:31
They're they're um >> the they have a what do they have?
1:15:38
[snorts] Um it's not the main Grenadier. >> Yeah.
1:15:42
>> But they have I'm pulling it up right now. The quartermaster.
1:15:44
The quartermaster from Grenadier looks quite a lot like this truck.
1:15:48
Uh but it's certainly I think this one from Toyota uh internationally sells for like 10 to 20 grand. Like it's very cheap. >> Yeah.
1:15:57
People love to point out the fact that uh the Ford F-150 has the same bed length as these tiny Japanese K trucks.
1:16:06
Um, but interestingly, uh, that's just why you should always buy the Ford F250 Superduty crew cab with the long bed because if you just go for the biggest truck, then you will be bigger than than the than the Japanese K truck.
1:16:19
Uh, people love people love the K trucks.
1:16:23
They have fun with those.
1:16:23
Uh, well, if you're starting a new truck company, you got to get your brand mentioned on CHPT.
1:16:27
You got to go to profound, reach millions of consumers who are using AI to discover new products and brands.
1:16:30
Um, Andrew Reid says, "If I ran a company, my first act would be to ban hard-boiled eggs in the office."
1:16:40
>> Hard-boiled eggs are really an insane snack.
1:16:42
I got to put these in quotes because >> the smell >> The smells so unbelievably bad that you should be forced to eat them outside only.
1:16:53
>> Yeah, it's uh it the it's Is it more It's not more protein than a steak in a bag.
1:17:00
You got to go chesky mode.
1:17:02
That's the that that's the way if you want to have uh if you want to have protein on the go, uh throw a steak in the bag and take it with you everywhere.
1:17:11
Uh the hard-boiled eggs in the office, that seems like a an odd choice.
1:17:13
Um probably a time and a place.
1:17:18
Maybe they should put >> name one time and one place.
1:17:23
>> One place would be like, you know how in offices they have like like well where you can go the the smoking area?
1:17:27
Like I wouldn't have a problem with somebody going and if there's like a cigarette smoking area, like a back alley, and you can go into the back alley and scarf scarf scram uh uh hard-boiled eggs. That seems reasonable. People are smoking. >> Yeah.
1:17:43
Go outside, put one in each, >> you know, uh cheek and then go back and chipmunk mode.
1:17:48
Chipmunk go chipmunk mode and then and then just pretend like you don't have them. >> I don't know.
1:17:53
Yeah, I've never been I've never been big in the in the hard-boiled egg thing.
1:17:56
I have however been big into linear.
1:17:58
Linear is a purpose-built tool for planning and building products.
1:18:00
Meet the system for modern software development, streamline issues, projects and product road maps.
1:18:05
Uh our first guests of the show are in the reream waiting room.
1:18:10
We have Lulu Murvy and Gabby Goldberg stopping by. Whoa, look at this. >> Oh Uh >> hey >> hey.
1:18:23
Uh >> you look fantastic. Is that a wig, too? [laughter] >> Great.
1:18:28
I don't know what you're talking about, but it's great to see you guys.
1:18:32
Uh, we were watching during our um break between sauna and eating cheeseburgers for breakfast. >> The lore.
1:18:39
[laughter] >> The lore is kind of >> Hey, John. John. >> Yes. Yes.
1:18:46
>> Oh, do you want to show We're live.
1:18:49
You want to show the watch you got? >> Oh, this.
1:18:54
Oh, this is nothing special.
1:18:56
This is my AP Offshore, but um it's been on [laughter] for a while.
1:18:58
So, yeah, [applause] great to finally cross that off the list.
1:19:02
Well, what did you get, Dorty?
1:19:03
[laughter] >> Oh, I got uh the Loot. >> Oh, there we go.
1:19:10
>> So, uh it's in the same color, you know, TV and um it matches uh the new Maybach that I just bought.
1:19:19
Did you know that's how you pronounce my Maybach?
1:19:22
It's [laughter] the my my right >> is outside and it matches this watch and uh so really sorry guys.
1:19:28
Let's let's get right into the show. John, you ready? >> Let's do it, Jordy. All right. You're watching TVPN. >> There we go.
1:19:37
[laughter] >> Today is Friday, October 31st.
1:19:43
>> We are live from the TVPN Ultra Dom. Thank you.
1:19:47
>> You even got the You even got the horse >> of technology. The fortress of science.
1:19:52
The capital of [laughter] capital.
1:19:54
>> They got the They got the whole [gasps] >> Wow. >> What is that?
1:19:58
>> Is that the soundboard? >> What is that? >> Oh, the air horn. Okay. >> Oh, the air horn. >> There we go. >> Happy Halloween. >> Happy Halloween. >> Happy Halloween. >> Happy Halloween. >> Good to see you.
1:20:10
>> The chat is absolutely loving this.
1:20:12
>> How did you big fans of you both and Mark? So, >> yes. How did you guys advise? Uh oh. Wow.
1:20:18
With the loafers up on the desk. Crazy.
1:20:21
>> The level of detail here in the stick is remarkable.
1:20:25
>> Here, we'll we'll fire we'll fire back.
1:20:27
Uh >> someone else it's a stick. To us, it's a lifestyle.
1:20:29
[laughter] [cough] >> Um on a more serious note, what's what's the advice to uh to clients on on how to how to approach uh Halloween?
1:20:40
Any is it is it just ignore? It's a distraction. >> Nope.
1:20:47
Uh it is as with every other day a chance to only lock in more.
1:20:54
>> We actually Yeah, we printed out some examples. >> Yes.
1:20:56
Take us through it, please.
1:20:56
What else you got for us?
1:20:58
>> You want to tell them about this one? >> You're disappearing. What is this?
1:21:00
This Oh, this is Halloween.
1:21:03
Uh the Halloween starter kit. I've seen this.
1:21:05
But what is what is in the image?
1:21:09
>> Okay, so this is Spirit Halloween. The Brian Armstrong set.
1:21:11
It includes one great >> for the whole for the whole head, right? >> Oh, perfect. Perfect. Yes. Yes. >> Whole head.
1:21:21
Everything below the head is strictly.
1:21:24
>> Wait, why didn't we consider that?
1:21:24
We were in We were in makeup for three hours this morning.
1:21:27
We could have just shaved our head with a razor in the morning.
1:21:29
>> That would have been so much easier.
1:21:30
>> Would have done 90% of the work for us. Really?
1:21:34
>> And I could have just I could have just I could have just grown a beard. >> Yes.
1:21:37
What What What other ideas do we have here? Let's see.
1:21:44
>> So, we've got Oh, here's here's one that John and I like. >> Printed posts.
1:21:47
We The level of detail here is amazing. >> This is insane.
1:21:52
>> We might have to lose the virtual background.
1:21:54
By the way, we we like it's really cutting in and out. >> What is this? >> Oh, I I can see it. What is this?
1:21:59
Uh, >> it's the stressed out guy smoking. >> Gay Halloween.
1:22:05
What do you mean you're stressed out? Hay Miyazaki. Look at this.
1:22:09
This is a >> That would be a fantastic costume. Oh, someone did it.
1:22:13
And that's what that post is.
1:22:15
>> Someone's real costume. Oh, no. >> That makes sense. Yeah.
1:22:17
You see, you're kind of tripping in and out. >> It is a wild.
1:22:22
>> And then here, we thought this was very disrespectful of you in particular, Mark.
1:22:26
We never >> We see this person, we will admonish them on the spot.
1:22:31
>> We're looking for them.
1:22:33
>> We did like this comment from the random recruiter.
1:22:35
This is my sleep paralysis. [laughter] I do.
1:22:38
I do look like a sleep paralysis demon. >> That's hilarious.
1:22:43
>> I look I I look a little bit scary.
1:22:43
I don't know if I'm doing Mark justice.
1:22:49
>> Yeah, the uh it it's it's a it's a remarkable remarkable effort.
1:22:56
[clears throat] >> We did have a >> Yeah. Who do you think won?
1:22:59
>> Did like um >> do I look more like Ilia than he looks like Mark? Who win?
1:23:04
Who wins the costume contest today?
1:23:06
I think it's the Ilia thing. >> You think so? >> I think so.
1:23:10
I I was getting freaked out before the show.
1:23:12
We had like five minutes after the costumes finished and [laughter] watching a 68 jacked Ilia just like come around the corner is is scary.
1:23:21
[laughter] It >> is a wild wild experience. Yeah.
1:23:25
>> Climbing the Yeah, it's easier to climb the mountain when you're 6'8.
1:23:28
>> Yeah, it's it's all in the eyebrows.
1:23:28
The eyebrows are really everything because as they were working on getting the the the makeup on, um I was like, there's no way this is going to work.
1:23:37
Like this is not this is going to look like Party City level.
1:23:40
Like it's it's fun that we did this, but this is not going to look convincing at all.
1:23:44
And uh and it's definitely >> a crazy your post, Lulu.
1:23:48
This isn't reposting John's post. This isn't AI.
1:23:53
This is human craftsmanship, but it's actually crazy.
1:23:56
So like the the uh crew that typically works on like you know normal film productions they did was it like 50 different layers of stuff that they were putting on our heads.
1:24:10
>> It was one of the most painting they're doing they they did like a base layer. They did the head.
1:24:14
They painted over our eyebrows.
1:24:16
They glued you know things over the eyebrows and they put another set of eyebrows on.
1:24:19
Then they painted over that.
1:24:21
Uh, it's going to take like probably an hour to just get get all this off. I >> think so. They said 45 minutes. >> Okay.
1:24:28
>> I don't know why you'd want to take it off. >> Yeah. >> Right.
1:24:32
>> Do you think uh do I mean obviously we're in a unique position because we get to kind of have some fun on the show.
1:24:38
It's like almost a comedy show in many ways.
1:24:40
Do you think there's any hope to bring back April Fool's Day in a cool way or will tech just like flop on that immediately? It's hard to do.
1:24:52
Someone told me a couple years ago on April Fool's Day that actually doing it on April Fools is the cringey part. >> Yeah. Interesting.
1:25:00
>> You're surrounded by so many people doing it badly that it's really away from that.
1:25:04
And there they were saying if you think of a great prank or jape or joke, >> just do it randomly.
1:25:11
>> Why wait till April 1st when everybody knows? >> Yeah.
1:25:13
So there there was a company that a YC company that pissed a bunch of people off because they they created an IDE that has like brain rot in the in the in the software.
1:25:21
So you can do like gambling on stake, you can do [laughter] subway surfers and like they pissed they they because it's on the YC website, I feel like they like they're putting like you can gamble while you code.
1:25:32
They pissed off and I think if they had just dropped it as a feature that was like a real feature that you could play around with but wasn't like their entire brand >> it would have hit a lot harder and been and and gotten a much more like funny positive reaction versus people just being like >> I hate this blah blah blah like you know why does this >> almost like taking Yeah.
1:25:54
taking the joke like too seriously when when you haven't established your brand at all then people there's just you're making people do so much work.
1:26:02
I guess that's the I guess that's the benefit of doing something on April 1 is that you're there's a lot less work to be like is this a joke?
1:26:09
You can just kind of uh you can kind of lean on on you know the audience needs to like uh uh like you don't need to you don't need to you you don't wind up in the situation where you have to explain to like 10,000 people like we're we're kidding. We're kidding. We're kidding.
1:26:24
Like people kind of put it together themselves and be like, "Okay, I'm I'm I'm good."
1:26:29
>> Are drops dead as a meta, do you think?
1:26:32
Like it feels like launch videos and drops are both kind of over.
1:26:37
>> So So I don't think that drops are dead.
1:26:40
I think that that specific style of drop with the like >> launch video has been over is completely saturated and overdone. >> Yeah.
1:26:49
Um, I think you just have to figure like people are not going to stop announcing things, stop dropping things.
1:26:54
You just have to find new ways to do it.
1:26:56
>> Well, I meant drop in the I meant drop in the context of like we made this product with our branding on it kind of thing.
1:27:04
>> I thought Bass did a really good job.
1:27:06
>> Did you see bases drop for their uh one$1 billion round?
1:27:09
It was a newspaper >> and I I thought that was like well executed in the sense that like it had a lot of text.
1:27:17
It had a lot of content there.
1:27:19
Yeah, Tyler has it there. Join the charge.
1:27:21
Uh and I just thought like yeah, it's like it's not just like a t-shirt.
1:27:25
It's like way way deeper.
1:27:25
Uh and I' I'd say the same thing for the for the launch videos.
1:27:29
It's like uh we we found a very unique aesthetic yesterday.
1:27:34
yesterday. I'm not going to share it because I think it would be a good launch video of uh but there there are there are specific formats where it's immediately identifiable as like oh that's that type of video and if you use that as your launch video you'll break through and you'll be the first person
1:27:50
to take you know the like right now it's like the default meta is basically like uh after Game of Thrones stick around for the interview with the the actors like that's the aesthetic of most launch videos right now it's like cinematic couple minutes interview with a few people kind of like mini documents. >> They said we couldn't build enterprise
1:28:08
>> They said we couldn't build enterprise [laughter] category.
1:28:10
No one they said it was impossible.
1:28:13
>> Yeah, that did get a little commoditized. Uh but yeah. Yeah. Fresh ideas.
1:28:16
>> At one point I said at one point that somebody should do a version of it of those uh sorority dance videos. >> That's a great one. That's a great idea. >> That's a great one.
1:28:24
If you have someone who can do flips or if you just like all wear a matching outfit like it has to be a company.
1:28:30
Um, it if you're like solving cancer, crewing cancer, that's probably not right.
1:28:34
>> But as long as the joke is not too close to home.
1:28:36
The problem with being a slop adjacent company that jokes about slop now it's so obvious that that is very close to what you're doing and now you have to defend yourself. >> Yeah.
1:28:46
>> Like what was that car company um that was going to do that rebrand a couple years ago? Like >> Jaguar.
1:28:53
>> Jaguar was really bad too. Yeah.
1:28:53
Oh, there was another >> there was another one where they joked about a rebrand.
1:28:59
I don't even know if it was a joke.
1:29:01
They claimed it was a joke because people hated it. >> What?
1:29:04
>> I don't remember this at all.
1:29:06
>> Claiming after getting a reaction that people don't like something and then saying it was a joke is is not an effective strategy.
1:29:12
You've seen seen that a little bit.
1:29:14
Um the Substrate launch was crazy.
1:29:17
That was kind of like a a Lulu and Gabby masterclass special.
1:29:24
Well, James, >> we'll let them know. Yeah. >> Yeah.
1:29:26
[laughter] We'll let Lul Gabby know.
1:29:28
They'll feel really good about it.
1:29:30
James Proud is in heavy founder mode, by the way.
1:29:31
He did a lot of the writing and outreach and all a lot of that themselves, which obviously we think is the right way to do this.
1:29:40
Like the founder can't just sit it out and deploy to do it all for them.
1:29:44
But yeah, Substrate, very cool company.
1:29:46
Uh absolute, what do we call it? Uh absolute dog. >> There we go. >> An absolute dog. That's the word. That's why we love you. >> He's an absolute dog.
1:29:55
>> Straight from Pat McAfee. >> All right, guys.
1:29:59
>> Well, have a great rest of your day. Yeah. Get back to the gym.
1:30:03
>> You know, before we go, we should talk about RAMP. >> Oh, please. What you got for us?
1:30:08
>> We almost had a whole conversation.
1:30:08
Um, before we go to the gym, let me tell you about ramp. com.
1:30:14
Time is money to save both with corporate cards, bill pay, and more.
1:30:16
The average company saves 5% with >> There we go. Flawless. bad. >> Incredible.
1:30:24
We'll we'll have you guys uh we'll have you guys do a proper proper guest uh guest host uh hosting uh session.
1:30:31
>> Guest hosting would be fantastic. You're clearly >> well. If we ever Yeah.
1:30:34
Any some morning where we're like, uh we two hours in the gym, not enough today.
1:30:38
We'll call you guys up [laughter] and and you can fill in. But uh >> looking sharp.
1:30:42
Uh uh are you uh hope hopefully you guys have some other costumes for for later this evening trick-or-treating.
1:30:49
Uh but uh if not, you know, tell them to uh tell them to go to tvpn.
1:30:54
com, all the kids you run into and and tell them >> send all the children tvpn. com and >> the APs.
1:31:01
Capital >> Cabby's going to hand out APs, everyone.
1:31:05
So, >> you got to get over there.
1:31:07
>> Got to get over there.
1:31:07
Uh great to see you guys. >> Talk to you soon. Cheers. >> Bye. >> Bye.
1:31:13
>> Um we have to do a real ad read for numeralhq. com. Sales tax on autopilot.
1:31:18
spend less than five minutes per month on sales tax compliance.
1:31:19
Um, we have Dean Ball coming on the show next.
1:31:22
I don't know if he knows that we're dressed up as Mark and Ilia.
1:31:27
Uh, Tyler, do you know Ball?
1:31:32
>> Of course I know Ball.
1:31:32
[laughter] >> This is one of the >> Can't keep getting away with it.
1:31:37
>> This is one of the jokes that keeps getting funnier.
1:31:38
Uh Dean Ball is a senior fellow at FAI, author of Hyperdimensional, former senior policy adviser for AI at the White House and strategic adviser at the NSF, previously at the Mercada Center.
1:31:49
Do you know the Mercada Center? >> Of course.
1:31:53
>> Why do you know the Mercada Center?
1:31:54
>> Tyler Cowen, >> of course.
1:31:55
The absolute goat himself.
1:31:55
Uh he's been at Stanford Hoover Institution, the Manhattan Institute, focuses on AI, emerging technology.
1:32:02
He's in the reream waiting room.
1:32:04
Dean Ball, welcome to TVPN. How you doing, Dean? Good to meet you. >> Welcome to the show.
1:32:11
>> Hey guys, thanks for having me.
1:32:13
>> Uh, sorry to jump scare you on Halloween.
1:32:15
Uh, we're having a lot of fun over here. >> I love it. >> I uh u It's crazy.
1:32:18
You're you you look exactly like Dean Ball.
1:32:23
Your your costume is flawless. >> Almost to a tea. It's amazing.
1:32:26
Were you in Were you in six hours of makeup this this morning?
1:32:31
Make me look like Dean Ball. >> Exactly.
1:32:34
Yeah, that's exactly what I said.
1:32:35
make me look like the former White House policy advisor. >> Yes. Yes. [laughter] Yes. They do.
1:32:39
>> That actually would be potentially the most like scary costume is getting prosthetic makeup to look like yourself. >> Oh my god.
1:32:46
>> Oh my god. [laughter] That might that might feel >> it's a very jarring, very bizarre experience looking in the mirror and actually seeing it like for the first time in my life seeing something that looks materially different from what the way I >> and I will say I I did I did ask John I
1:33:02
was like is is Dean ready to do a somewhat serious interview with us and extremely unserious characters and we talked and we thought that uh we thought it'd be a really fun conversation even though >> um even though we look absolutely ridiculous but uh it's great to have you on the show finally. >> Yeah, great to have you on the show.
1:33:18
>> Yeah, great to have you on the show. Thank you so much.
1:33:19
>> Featured a bunch of your uh writing on the show over the last year.
1:33:22
So, very happy to have you on.
1:33:26
>> Well, thank you guys very much. It's great to be here.
1:33:28
>> Let's kick it off with uh sort of uh what's top of mind for you.
1:33:31
There's a lot of different uh policy positions that I'm sure you could be working on.
1:33:36
FAI is pretty big organization.
1:33:36
It feels very very significant to me especially right now in this moment.
1:33:41
Uh but also just feels like the organization generally has been on a massive upswing.
1:33:46
uh what has been the key focus uh this year for you and then let's just kind of like continue to to to dial in the aperture and go and go deeper and deeper as we go. >> Yeah, absolutely.
1:33:57
So, I mean started the year I was still a kind of policy scholar and writing at think tanks including at FAI. Yeah.
1:34:03
>> Uh worked on state policy, you know, the uh all the crazy bills that were coming out at that time for AI regulation.
1:34:08
Uh and then in April moved to the White House and so I wasn't writing anymore and my focus was really entirely on the AI action plan >> uh which the Trump administration released uh in July of this year.
1:34:18
Then a couple weeks after that uh once the action plan seemed like it was in a good place and well accepted within the sort of bureaucracy of the federal government um I thought it would take longer to get it rolling downhill but it really didn't take that long.
1:34:31
So, um, once I felt like it was in a good place, I I retired, uh, from that role and went back to the private sector where I feel like that's my strength, writing, communicating, things like that.
1:34:43
>> What do you think is a bigger force in AI regulation right now?
1:34:46
Uh, a uh, constituents who just don't like AI.
1:34:54
I'm worried about it taking my job.
1:34:54
Uh, I don't like the way it looks. It's slopp. It's bad. It's brain rot. Whatever.
1:35:00
like anti-AII for just genuine direct I don't like it reasons versus uh jockeying between labs of like if I can get this law through I will have an edge over you and we're kind of doing jiu-jitsu between both people who are actually both pro AI but just trying to get a business edge.
1:35:18
Is there one camp that you think is like more powerful?
1:35:24
>> I think for the most part it's the first thing you mentioned.
1:35:26
I think it's that there's generally kind of a negative AI sentiment among the public.
1:35:30
It's not that high salience of an issue.
1:35:32
So people will say I want AI regulation, but then when you ask them how important of an issue is that to you?
1:35:37
It's like 8 9 10 you know immigration economy is much higher.
1:35:42
And like once you get down to 8 n10 it means it's not really an issue that that many voters are actually making their decisions at the ballot box on.
1:35:48
on. Um and so there's but there's this general motivation that's a lot of politicians feel of you know oh well we let the internet get away from us we let social media get away from us we can't let the same thing happen again and so we have to be preemptive and regulate this time that's basically their attitude
1:36:05
>> then um then why is California trying to kneecap AI like is it just a bigger issue within California what are the dynamics in California specifically >> so California views themselves much like the Europeans They view themselves first of all the one big difference is that California is also an exporter of technology but the people in Sacramento are not. San Francisco is the exporter
1:36:25
San Francisco is the exporter of technology.
1:36:26
Sacramento views itself really as a nationwide regulator.
1:36:29
So their mentality is the federal government's not going to act especially President Trump.
1:36:34
You know they're they would say President Trump was irresponsible and so we have to act for him.
1:36:39
And you know, uh, one one thing that a senior European diplomat told me, uh, when I was in government is when we want to talk policy in America, we fly from Brussels right over DC to Sacramento. >> Interesting.
1:36:54
So they they're coordinating you know the European Union has a has a coordinating office in San Francisco where they meet with legislators and you know companies and it's basically like this sort of transnational governance regulation happening between California and Brussels. >> Interesting.
1:37:11
Um, and so like is it is it correct to frame the idea of the motivations of Californian regulation as well nationally AI regulation might be eight or nine but in California it's much higher because there's more visibility or is there something else that's driving like the California regulation movement?
1:37:32
I'm not sure it's a higher salience issue for the voters in California, but I think it's a higher salience issue for the legislators because the legislators smell power, >> right?
1:37:42
I mean, you can regulate this, you know, what I think will be a multi- trillion dollar industry while it's still nent before, you know, one of the things about regulating now is like if you tried to regulate the iPhone now in a major way, well, like 150 million Americans or whatever use iPhones and so they'd be like mad at you.
1:37:59
But like AI is still a little bit nent and there's all kinds of use cases that might just be killed in the cradle.
1:38:07
>> Uh and um you can control it, you know, much much easier when it's a younger technology and you can control it if you're California.
1:38:14
You can control it for the entire country more or less unilaterally and it's democratic supermajority state.
1:38:19
So >> they have all the cards.
1:38:21
is so if it's a low salience issue is there a world where this is all about like leverage to get to generate more taxes to create a more balanced budget like are what what are what are the different incentives that are working within the California political like jockeying that's going on.
1:38:42
I think certainly regulatory power is one of them, but I don't really think they're after money. Okay.
1:38:47
Particularly if you're a California legislator, the basic reality is that money kind of just prints itself. Yeah.
1:38:54
>> They're basically a post scarcity like pro state. >> Okay. >> But the >> Yeah.
1:39:00
The petro dollars are not oil.
1:39:01
Instead, it is capital gains taxation. >> Yep.
1:39:03
Um I I had a I was once talking to a California legislator um who was on the budget committee and they get these like you know every other week or whatever they get these like reports from the state treasury about the state's fiscal position.
1:39:15
This was a couple years ago sort of right postco >> and they were like uh we had a $10 billion surplus in the last like month and they were like what where did $10 billion come out of nowhere and it was the snap IPO. >> Yeah.
1:39:29
uh [laughter] all just one IPO generates that kind of revenue for the state.
1:39:32
Um so you know it and and it's going to be like that on steroids when you know when when the Frontier Lab employees start to have their liquidity events.
1:39:41
The state is going to have an enormous windfall of capital gains tax.
1:39:45
>> I mean yeah the there was a rumor just earlier this week about OpenAI going out at 1 trillion which would be >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
1:39:51
>> Yeah. already already the employee pool of the public the the PBC is worth roughly at current marks like 130 billion >> so multiple on that it's going to be substantial >> how does this power struggle between Sacramento and and DC around regulation
1:40:09
play out going forward I think people like >> Sachs have been you know not only talking about what anthropic is doing but uh I imagine doesn't want AI I to be regulated, you know, at at a state level, but how do you see this playing out over the over the next call it 6 months? >> Yeah, I don't think anyone wants to see
1:40:29
>> Yeah, I don't think anyone wants to see AI regulated at the state level, except for the California legislators.
1:40:32
Um, and so, you know, at the end of the day, I think the President Trump and AI are saxs have made their position clear that we want a nationwide legal framework to govern AI.
1:40:45
>> Uh, the question is going to be, can we can Congress act?
1:40:47
you know, can Congress get together and come up with something that sort of everyone can agree to?
1:40:52
And I think we don't know the answer to that yet.
1:40:55
>> Uh I think, you know, it's it's hard to see where the politics will go. AI politics evolve.
1:40:59
They don't evolve quite as fast as AI, but they evolve quite quickly.
1:41:03
Um and so we could be in a totally different there could be a total vibe shift between now and say June.
1:41:11
June's probably your cut off before the midterms to sort of get something serious done. >> Yeah.
1:41:15
Um and uh so yeah, can can it happen in principle? Sure.
1:41:17
But we'll you know, we'll see.
1:41:22
>> What are the I don't know like what are the regulatory frameworks that either you think will actually land on or California is advocating for?
1:41:29
I just remember we were watching the Elio Sitzkgiver uh interview with the Guardian a couple years ago and the point he was making was like in the long term AGI might see humans like we see animals and just convert the entire earth like you know all the land into solar panels and you know sort of like a complete AGI doom scenario that doesn't seem like the focus of regulators today.
1:41:59
Uh he also was mentioning the the risk of fake news and the idea of generative content potentially muddying the waters of understanding what's real on the internet.
1:42:08
That one feels like it's totally here today, but has also kind of always been here because of Photoshop. >> Interesting.
1:42:13
You know, tech I don't correct me if I'm wrong, but tech has never gone through like a tech lash where there's so much video footage of the key players talking about the doom states of technology.
1:42:25
So if you look back talk to any go look at interview footage of of of Sam Alman and and all these people and they will say like yes there's you know or Ilia the one you're referencing like it's very possible the world will be covered with solar panels and data center. >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:42:42
>> And uh we were playing that video this morning while we were getting this crazy >> you know uh uh you know uh costumes on and like the the people that were doing it were like that sounds horrible.
1:42:53
like they listened to the whole thing and they were like I don't want any of that.
1:42:58
And so it's not like during social media there wasn't footage of Mark Zuckerberg being like it's very possible then the future >> but the election could be >> social media won't be social [laughter] you know >> like the Facebook data could be used to target voters or something like that.
1:43:11
>> So that's just like incredible ammo that I imagine in Sacramento they're pulling up and it's like okay you want to go with what this guy wants and not what our >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:43:20
What's the dynamic there?
1:43:22
Are they actually pulling up doomer?
1:43:23
It's hard to be like, "Oh, I didn't mean that.
1:43:25
It was just kind of a sci-fi thing [laughter] talking about."
1:43:28
>> It help with fundraising.
1:43:28
Actually, >> it it really depends.
1:43:30
So, there's there's there's people in the California legislature and elsewhere that have sort of very mundane concerns and that's like sort of your modal policy maker.
1:43:37
I would say that's kind of yeah, your your misinformation, your deep fakes, the things not that they're not serious, but that that are here today.
1:43:43
And then there's the people that are thinking about these sort of very far-flung doom scenarios.
1:43:48
There's not that many legislators who do that, but there are a lot of people in like quote unquote AI policy >> who think about that.
1:43:54
Um, and so they do influence some of the legislation.
1:43:56
One of the funny things though is that thus far the legislation that that camp, the sort of AI safety camp has been able to get through has actually been like somewhat more measured than some of the crazier stuff that we've seen from the people that don't know anything about the technology and just kind of have a generally hostile attitude.
1:44:15
generally hostile attitude. like state of Illinois banned mental health chat bots which is basically like if I ask chat GPT uh you know if I say like hey I'm having a bad day can you like tell me something to make me feel better in Illinois that's like a chatbot engaging
1:44:30
in mental health services and it's illegal >> that's crazy >> yeah it's like really it's really crazy yeah that's not like a doomer bill you know totally >> um that's like that's >> about Nashville's been >> going on their own path with with because of how big the music industry is there. >> Yeah. Can you get us up to speed on >> Yeah.
1:44:47
Can you get us up to speed on that?
1:44:48
Like the regulation of AI music.
1:44:50
We were talking about Sununo uh earlier this week.
1:44:52
I think we're going to have the founder on, but would be very interested to hear the the how that landscape differs from other uh regulatory pushes. >> Yeah.
1:45:01
So, you're you're talking about something called the Elvis Act, which passed uh last year.
1:45:03
Um and uh yeah, basically that's a bill that's about like name, image, likeness.
1:45:08
basically saying if you're a celebrity uh residing in the state of Tennessee, uh you can't if if someone makes an AI model that you know mimics your style uh or mimics a song of yours or your likeness or something like that uh then you have a right to sue them not for copyright cuz copyright is a federal issue but name image likeness is a sort of property right that's like done at the at the state level. Yeah.
1:45:37
That's part that's a creature of state law for the most part. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
1:45:41
So that's what they control there. Yeah.
1:45:43
>> And and and uh is there any early read on where that will pencil out?
1:45:47
Uh we were talking to I forget who we were talking to.
1:45:52
We were talking to somebody about how um that is uh oh it was Zach Kukov.
1:45:57
was talking about the like the how the Elvis act plays into national geopolitics and some some players who are on the national stage are wanting to win in the in at the >> smart pretty smart naming the Elvis Act sounds like something that anybody would want to pass. Sounds cool.
1:46:14
>> You don't think it would you don't think it would go farther if it was the Ghana act. >> What's going on?
1:46:17
>> What's going on? Uh you had a post it was last week calling out uh there's a group uh Max uh Tegmark said a a stunningly broad coalition has come out against Skynet AI researchers, faith leaders, business pioneers, policy
1:46:31
makers, NATSAC folks and actors stand together and they say uh we call for a prohibition on the development of super intelligence not lifted before there is one broad scientific consensus that will be done safely and controllably and two strong public buyin. It's uh kind of a
1:46:46
It's uh kind of a crazy thing to try to require from my view because even the scientific community cannot agree on much and everybody has these like wildly different you know strategies and and incentives.
1:47:02
Um and then of course it's very possible that uh uh the public will never uh that to rely on the public of of how we should develop technology that has to do with with national security and and try to make it like a a direct democracy.
1:47:19
Uh but but maybe unpack uh what what the latest is on that front. >> Yeah.
1:47:26
So I mean the statement is very simple.
1:47:27
It says no super intelligence until we have agreement that it's good until there's broad public buyin.
1:47:32
So I think the first problem with this is like look if you want to have a letter signed by a bunch of important people or celebrities and whatnot that says super intelligence is something that has profound implications and we should really think about it and we should have groups of you know civil society type of stuff. That's fine with me.
1:47:47
There have been letters like that in the past and I haven't complained about them.
1:47:50
But when you say ban, you're making a ask about public policy.
1:47:54
And not only that, you're actually making an ask about global public policy because you know the super intelligence could be trained in China, could be trained in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, a lot of other places are amassing large amounts of compute.
1:48:07
It's not like we're the only people that can do this.
1:48:08
Uh and a lot of the researchers, you know, who do this work are highly mobile.
1:48:11
So like you need a global treaty to ban super intelligence.
1:48:16
That's what they're asking for.
1:48:18
And the problem is that not only is there not scientific consensus about the safety of such a thing, more importantly, there's not scientific consensus about what super intelligence is.
1:48:26
Uh is if GPT5 or let's say GPT7 >> say that it like can make novel advancements in mathematics.
1:48:35
It can come up with new theorems and whatnot, come up with new science, but say it also can't autonomously plan a wedding for me.
1:48:43
I think that's a very plausible future, by the way.
1:48:44
I think that's super that's super possible that we'll get advanced, you know, genius mathematic AI before we get sort of a an agent that can like plan a wedding for you >> truly truly agentic AI. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
1:48:58
And so like what you know which one of those is super intelligence, right?
1:49:03
Like no take even more extreme example.
1:49:06
We were reflecting on the original open AI definition with which Ilia was like reflecting on which is uh AI you should be able to tell it to do a job and it should be able to do that any job at the level of a human and we were sitting for three hours getting makeup done and we were like okay to replace this job with AI you need like the most flawless humanoid robots because this is not a digital task.
1:49:32
you need dexterity, but also understanding the artistry of how the colors blend and mixing the different chemicals and stuff like it's just like it's just like and and that's for like you know just a it's just makeup.
1:49:47
It's like it's not it's not as complicated as the IMO gold medal and yet because it exists in this crossdain world it's somehow more challenging.
1:49:55
world it's somehow more challenging. So yeah, it's just a fascinating thing that we Yeah, we >> the other dynamic that's interesting right now is like like uh I feel like the industry like is somewhat going through a small period of disillusionment when like the big labs are
1:50:10
>> uh you know or or open AI doing like Sora and announcing erotica and stuff like that and realizing like wait like I thought we were building you know super intelligence like why are we you know creating more forms of social media and but that's at the same time that you
1:50:25
have like peak sort of like fear and like peak pressure to make moves from a regulatory standpoint because people are afraid of you know runaway super intelligence and you know losing uh losing their job and and all these things and also big tech companies have been doing layoffs and the CEOs want to
1:50:45
say like well we did these like >> the as a CEO you want to say like well we're getting so much efficiency out of our you know AI like of course we're doing layoffs but in reality it's like they just went through they've been blown voted for a while. There's, you
1:50:56
There's, you know, X is a good case study of like you can cut, you know, like a lot of people and still have a functioning business.
1:51:06
And so, uh, I don't know.
1:51:06
There's just such a complicated moment.
1:51:10
>> Do you think there's a massive tech lash coming?
1:51:13
>> Uh, yeah, probably, uh, [laughter] would be my guess.
1:51:15
It's I don't know exactly what'll cause it.
1:51:17
Maybe it'll be fears about labor market, which could be real, could be not, could be caused by AI, could be not.
1:51:22
um could also be uh electricity prices.
1:51:25
I think that's that's very possible thing. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:51:29
So again like the super intelligence ban like it's doing populist politics that are based on kind of vague emotional sentiment and that's like >> the problem with that is that >> those kinds of broad statements that implicate policy tend to not lead to good places.
1:51:44
Defund the police was one of them.
1:51:46
net zero by 2030 was another one where it's like we have no real plan for how to do this, but we're gonna articulate some broad goal that sounds good that everyone can kind of, you know, you can just slide down the incentive curve um of politics.
1:51:57
And um it's it's it will not lead to good places.
1:52:03
I basically guarantee you.
1:52:05
>> Yeah, that makes sense.
1:52:05
Even if you're worried about AI safety.
1:52:06
Even if you're worried about AI safety, >> uh if you're if you're to rank the the reasons we we like if we rank like AI safety is like the eighth or ninth most salient political topic and then within AI you rank the most salient worries, job losses, energy prices, those are at the top.
1:52:26
How far down do you have to go until people start caring about dead internet theory and like the sloppification?
1:52:32
because it does feel like it's it's aesthetically like risky because if you launch a model early, it's sloppier.
1:52:40
It doesn't have great aesthetics.
1:52:41
And then you're and you're faced with the question of like, so my internet went my uh my my electricity prices went up and I got slop as opposed to my internet prices went up and yeah, I actually got like a kind of superpowered Google search.
1:52:55
Like it's actually pretty great.
1:52:57
Like it's definitely helping me at work. >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:53:00
I mean, I think it's a little bit of both.
1:53:01
I think there's a lot of people who say deterioration of the internet is definitely happening.
1:53:05
I think that's true, right?
1:53:07
I mean, I think it's the current experience of the internet has gotten worse, I would say.
1:53:11
And I mean, with the exception of the AI models themselves, which are great.
1:53:14
>> Um, but yeah, I mean, that's like probably true.
1:53:16
I think it's I think it's up there.
1:53:17
I think it's way above like catastrophic risk, you know, like I think if you were to put like autonomous cyber attacks, you know, boweapon development, I think that's probably lower than >> No way. Interesting.
1:53:29
>> This sort of slop stuff. I would guess. Yeah. It's interesting to see.
1:53:31
I don't know if anyone's ever done that, but it be interesting to see.
1:53:35
>> So, we were reflecting on this uh this week.
1:53:37
week. We had uh Christina from Vanta on talking about security and then we also had the CEO of Crowdstrike on and we were kind of blown away reflecting on we've been in the AI boom for two years at least and we haven't really had a
1:53:50
moment where we're like oh yeah that major cyber that outage that cyber security incident that problem that hack that virus that's generative AI uniquely uh that hasn't happened like AWS went down last week and it was just misconfigured DNS on a database. Um,
1:54:06
Um, there's been there's been a bunch of crazy cyber attack stories.
1:54:10
None of them have been, you know, related to Genai just yet.
1:54:15
Uh, I still think it has to be coming at some point.
1:54:18
Um, but until you get that solid anecdote, it feels very hard to go and run the campaign of like never never again will we allow this to happen when it hasn't happened for the first time.
1:54:32
>> That's how it always goes with tail risks.
1:54:33
you know, people can't really internalize them uh until they actually happen and then there you go.
1:54:37
Um I I actually wouldn't shock me if we see something like that in the next, you know, 6 to 18 months.
1:54:44
>> Uh cuz the models are now getting good enough that that kind of thing seems possible.
1:54:48
>> Cyber biological >> cyber bio is going to take a little bit longer, but cyber >> cyber >> maybe even cyber might take or bio might take much longer because like actually making a bioweapon is still hard in the physical world, but cyber is purely digital.
1:55:01
There's already many skilled cyber attackers, so it feels it feels like plausible.
1:55:04
Luckily, you know, cyber defense is keeping up right now.
1:55:06
You know, we've seen a lot of advancements there, too. >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:55:10
There are definitely like script kitties that go around and just like to unplug different pieces of the internet for fun.
1:55:16
And it's almost like it can be state actors, but it's also it just feels like low stakes.
1:55:21
It doesn't feel like often like these like little cyber attacks are like life and death.
1:55:27
So, they feel lower stakes.
1:55:27
They feel more like theft and uh like economic crimes almost.
1:55:31
Um but [clears throat] being like I'm going to go release bubanic plague like that feels like way more like act of war or like mass murder like it puts you it takes you from like script kitty who wants to like you know deface a website with a DOS attack to like okay you're doing a mass shooting now.
1:55:50
>> Uh you post >> it's interesting how >> Yeah. Yeah. on that. Yeah.
1:55:52
Oh, I just think it's interesting how like these cyber risks though, like we think of them as like, yeah, it's not an act of war, it's just an economic crime because it's like purely digital.
1:56:01
At the same time, like if North Korea had a bunch of people that were like going into hospitals every other week and like stealing medical equipment or like taking people's patient records, we'd be like, "Yeah, that's we're going to kill you.
1:56:11
Uh, we're going to we're going to destroy your country if you do that to us." So, it's weird.
1:56:15
It's it's it's interesting how people think about these things and sort of compartmentalize them. >> Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense.
1:56:19
you posted a couple days ago, "My sense is that selling Blackwell chips to China would quite possibly be the most unpopular tech policy move of the Trump admin, especially on Capitol Hill.
1:56:28
It's plausible that the long-term really even near-term result will be much more compute uh regulation."
1:56:33
Um any any updated thoughts on that front?
1:56:37
It didn't Blackwells didn't, I guess, come out of the negotiation in South Korea, but you are you still expecting them to be a part of some sort of deal?
1:56:46
I I think it could very well happen eventually.
1:56:52
And by the way, the wisdom of doing it changes over time, right?
1:56:55
Because the chips get worse over the chips, you know, there's there's new chips come in and they get much better.
1:56:59
And so, you know, like the idea of selling black wells to China in 2 years is very different from the idea of selling them today.
1:57:06
selling them today. I think part of the reason that it seemed like many people in the Trump administration uh you know were opposed uh to this move was that like you know we're racking black wells in American uh uh data centers right now right like it was different with the Hopper cuz the Hopper was a previous
1:57:24
generation so the H20 maybe the pill went down a little bit easier but I think with this it's like um yeah I think I think that you know you have to I think it's on the merits and politically you got to wait yeah you got to wait What what did you think about basically giving American companies a roofer on the Blackwell? Is that
1:57:39
Is that something that you think makes sense?
1:57:44
>> Uh you mean like this is like the Yeah. Yeah.
1:57:47
>> If every American if every American company says we're good enough. >> Yeah.
1:57:50
If Nvidia says there's no more American companies that want to buy from us, well then yeah, you can go sell them to China.
1:57:55
That feels so >> This is like the >> Yeah.
1:57:58
There's a bill in Congress right now in the NDAA, the end ofear defense bill called the Gain AI Act that that basically tries to do this.
1:58:03
You know, I think it's an interesting idea.
1:58:05
I think the problem always is like how exactly do you operationalize that particularly because there's things, you know, in this that are like, well, the public the hyperscalers are going to have to disclose things kind of to the public about like, >> you know, that's sort of sensitive proprietary information.
1:58:21
>> Uh, so like how exactly do you do that?
1:58:23
I personally have not been super in the weeds on gain, but like but like yeah, I think that I think the implementation is a challenge there.
1:58:29
And that's kind of what I was saying though is like, you know, so many people in Congress are opposed to the idea of selling black wells to China right now that I think if the admin had done it in in Korea this past week, I think there's a very high chance that you would have seen maybe some legislation with unintended consequences pass.
1:58:46
>> What about uh the idea of you don't sell the black wells, but you do allow Chinese companies to purchase cloud computing resources from American hyperscalers. Is that more palatable?
1:58:59
who gets upset in that world?
1:59:02
>> Well, that's the status quo right now. >> Sure.
1:59:04
>> Uh, you know, that's that's basically what happens right now.
1:59:06
And so, uh, >> wait, wait, but but like could DeepSeek or Highflyer actually go to AWS and say we want to do, you know, a billion dollar training run.
1:59:17
>> Uh, they could, yeah, there's nothing there's nothing restricting them from that.
1:59:21
Now, I think Deep Sea kind of rolls their own.
1:59:22
I think they build their own data centers and do everything themselves.
1:59:24
Yeah, like I mean I I Chinese companies definitely do make use of American compute.
1:59:29
Now that being said, I think the Chinese government doesn't like that.
1:59:32
I think the Chinese government does all kinds of things disincentivize them from that.
1:59:35
So it's it's a complicated thing.
1:59:38
>> Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.
1:59:40
>> What's your approach to truth seeeking?
1:59:42
Uh one of the challenges in uh trying to even you know conceptualize what the right policy approach is on a number of these issues is that everyone is just heavily conflicted.
1:59:53
like there's just so much money slloshing around.
1:59:55
It's like the people that have the most knowledge of what's happening at the frontier >> quite possibly have somewhere between 10 and you know a billion dollars uh kind kind of like riding on uh a certain approach and uh so I I I'm curious to know like kind of how you try to uh clock like the truth.
2:00:20
>> I always try to start from technical fundamentals.
2:00:22
So when I decided to get into writing about AI policy, one of the first things that I learned to do was like train a toy neural network for myself just so I could see how things work, right?
2:00:32
And I like to really understand the sort of roots of the technology that I'm talking about, whether that's the physical world or the digital world.
2:00:39
Um, and that helps a lot.
2:00:42
That helps ground you quite a bit to understand those sort of actual constraints and where the technology might actually go.
2:00:46
Uh, and then beyond that, you know, it's listening to a lot of different people.
2:00:51
It's understanding financial incentives closely, right?
2:00:52
You have you have to understand how everyone is incentivized.
2:00:57
>> Um, and you kind of know like there are a lot of areas where incentives are for you to to sort of spin reality in a certain way.
2:01:03
There's also a lot of other people who have incentives to just basically tell the truth and you have to just be able to, you know, differentiate between those things.
2:01:10
Um, and so yeah, you know, I mean, it's like it's basically just, you know, there's no simple way.
2:01:15
It's just read a ton of stuff, listen to a lot of people, maintain an open mind, and be humble all the time.
2:01:22
>> Yeah, that makes sense.
2:01:22
Uh what uh ne like like h how are you forecasting next year?
2:01:29
What do you think the most important issues?
2:01:31
Is it more is it more of the same?
2:01:33
Uh is it is there going to be a new conversation that you kind of see on the horizon?
2:01:38
you know basically like is the debate around uh you know chip sales just going to continue throughout the entire admin or do you think it'll at any point settle?
2:01:51
>> Uh I think that debate will continue uh and then I think you know more broadly though um my guess is that that issue becomes less salient in AI policy over time and probably more people join the sort of join the debate.
2:02:03
Right now AI policy is very much an elite conversation.
2:02:07
you know, it's not something that a lot of people uh like the average American, so to speak, is thinking about that much.
2:02:12
Um, but I think that starts to change.
2:02:14
Again, maybe it's the electricity prices, maybe it's the jobs, maybe it's a little bit of both.
2:02:19
Maybe it's also some crisis that happens, uh, like cyber stuff.
2:02:21
But I think that like in general, the salience will go up and it will also be quite complicated because, uh, I also expect that in 2026, just like this year, a very meaningful fraction of GDP growth will be coming from AI.
2:02:35
So, you know, policy makers are going to find themselves, I think, in a bind. >> Oh, yeah. Wait, sorry.
2:02:41
Uh, I I know we're wrapping up, but uh I'd love to know uh your thoughts on like the AI as the only driver of GDP meme.
2:02:50
How real do you think that is?
2:02:53
How bad do you think that? >> Yeah. It's interesting.
2:02:56
Some people hear that and they're like, "This is bad."
2:02:59
And then the other take is like, "If we're not doing this, like it's even worse." >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
2:03:05
So I think it is it is a big chunk of it.
2:03:08
I I you know I think it's probably at least like 25 to 50%.
2:03:10
Uh of of growth right now.
2:03:13
Another big chunk like the Q2 number was really high. It was like 4%.
2:03:17
And a chunk of that is definitely companies stockpiling in anticipation of tariffs.
2:03:22
So they're like mass importing stuff which is going to be counted toward GDP.
2:03:27
>> Um so uh like there's some of that going on probably.
2:03:30
Uh and but yeah, I mean I think that it's almost certainly the case that GDP, you know, if I had to put an if I had to guess, I would guess it's something like 40%.
2:03:40
Uh AI is something like 40% [laughter] up the world economy. >> Yeah.
2:03:46
And that's just enabling AI. That's just AI capex.
2:03:48
That's not even you know what is AI enabling >> like business services and and accelerated revenue growth and uh yeah I mean like like how much of Google's revenue should be counted in like AI GDP now or like Instagram reels like if it's an if there's an AI slop video that goes viral and that generates 20 million in AI ad revenue are we counting that in GDP? We have no idea yet.
2:04:14
It's going to be it's going to be years before we understand it.
2:04:17
Last last question that I'd be curious to get uh your read on is sentiment around uh we're a couple months out from the >> Intel uh deal.
2:04:28
Uh how is Washington and like Capitol Hill feeling uh about that deal?
2:04:35
Obviously it it looks good on paper for the taxpayer but uh but uh do do you expect to see like more of this kind of thing?
2:04:43
We've saw it with MP materials as well, >> but uh what's your read?
2:04:49
>> I think you'll absolutely see more of it. More equity positions.
2:04:50
I'm I'm long USG equity positions in private companies.
2:04:55
Uh for better and for worse, I think that will continue to be a thing.
2:04:59
Uh we've seen it throughout the critical mineral supply chain.
2:05:01
In fact, a lot of other companies, not just MP.
2:05:04
Um >> and how new is this on is this a Trump thing specifically?
2:05:08
Is this a is this a 2020s thing?
2:05:10
Are there other examples of Americans doing this?
2:05:16
>> It's not new under the sun, but it's new in recent history. >> Okay.
2:05:20
>> Uh particularly for companies that have like sort of consumer brands. >> Sure.
2:05:24
>> Sure. Um but yeah like uh it it is it is um this sort of national champion model is not something that's been it's it's not again America did it you know a lot you know there there periods of American history where we did this a lot >> and not and not in a total crisis like
2:05:39
like government motors general motors uh the bailout of the banks like that is very different than okay Nvidia and AMD are doing pretty well Intel's not exactly going bankrupt there's a lot of market cap there but we're still going to come in and do something. I think
2:05:54
to come in and do something. I think Intel's position was really precarious and you really needed that I mean you I think you needed not just the injection of capital which they were going to get either way but kind of that vote of confidence and kind of that indication to the market that like hey this really
2:06:10
is like you know we're the US government is serious about this that says things to open AAI as they think about developing their ASC says things to Apple it says things to Nvidia it says things to all sorts of people and you've already seen some of these companies respond uh in kind with you know new new orders to Intel or at least partnerships with them of various kinds. So, I think
2:06:27
So, I think you'll see more of that.
2:06:29
In terms of Intel itself, I think people in DC are pretty nervous still because Intel's got a serious hill to climb.
2:06:34
You know, they've got a promising road map and they have to execute on it.
2:06:37
And thus far, the execution has been shaky and their track record shouldn't make you confident. >> Yeah.
2:06:44
Have you been surprised that we haven't seen an OpenAI Intel deal yet?
2:06:47
Uh Sam Alman seems ready to do deals with everyone.
2:06:51
Intel feels like it needs a deal. It needs several deals.
2:06:53
Uh that feels like a match made in heaven and yet I haven't seen it yet. What do you think?
2:07:00
>> I have to think it's just stating. >> Yep.
2:07:03
>> Uh I have to think that probably other companies too.
2:07:04
Y I mean if if they're smart they will. >> Yep. Yeah. Totally.
2:07:09
>> Just as a political matter.
2:07:09
I mean, there's just so many I like I've seen so many pundits like uh Asianometry laid out the ca the thesis that Nvidia should dual source their CPU for Grace for Gracehopper uh from Intel. Make the CPUs there.
2:07:25
Don't go to TSMC for those uh support Intel as a fab uh and a and a provider.
2:07:31
So, uh, fascinating, uh, dynamic and I I I I feel like The Intel story is, uh, is gonna be one of the most interesting.
2:07:40
>> Any plans to write a book?
2:07:42
>> You've written a book?
2:07:42
>> You know, I've been, uh, No, I haven't. Uh, no, no, no.
2:07:45
But I'm thinking about it. Uh, we'll see.
2:07:46
More more to come, maybe. I'm I'm pondering it. >> It feels hard.
2:07:51
It feels hard if you're kind of like writing about what's happening to like pick something and like start writing, you know, hundreds of pages when like everything's so in flux that you could write like, you know, six chapters that then maybe made like that aren't even an important part of the story. >> Sure. Sure. >> Yeah.
2:08:08
If I picked up the phone and called an agent today, you'd probably be looking at a publication date of like Q1 2028.
2:08:15
Someone just the other day I was asking like why the hell are these supply chains so long?
2:08:19
uh for for like why is the timeline so long for books? Yeah.
2:08:22
And they told me it's because it's a manufacturing business run by humanities majors.
2:08:28
>> Like [laughter] it's like yeah that makes sense. >> Yeah.
2:08:31
>> That Yeah, that's funny.
2:08:31
Maybe we uh maybe the answer is Kindle print on demand or something like that or Kindle Digital Publishing right next to all the literatica.
2:08:40
Uh we can slot in some some [laughter] geopolitical analysis >> and the the AI slot books. >> Yeah.
2:08:48
Oh, there's I'm sure there's so many.
2:08:49
>> Somebody's gonna hit you up and be like, I can generate you 10 books by next uh next week.
2:08:56
>> Where can people where can people find you?
2:08:58
Where can people follow you in the meantime until the book drops in 2028? You heard it here first.
2:09:03
>> You can find the uh I've got a Substack at Hyperdimensional and on Twitter, DeanWall, the ball like football. >> There we go. Thank you so much, Dean.
2:09:12
>> Great to finally have you on. Uh welcome back anytime. >> Chat all the time. Uh we'll talk. >> Thanks, guys. Great to chat. >> Cheers. Have a good one. Bye.
2:09:20
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GPT6 will be renamed GPT67. You're welcome. He's doing the 67 meme.
2:09:40
>> But it's a it's a joke. >> It's a joke. >> Okay.
2:09:42
>> But wow, that one really did not hit.
2:09:45
[laughter] That was remarkably remarkably not Oh, it's a joke. Funny.
2:09:49
Uh I I This got 37,000 likes.
2:09:55
>> I thought you were going to say I thought you were going to say it'll just be >> the chat GBT 2026. >> I would like that.
2:10:02
I think that actually would be a better naming scheme.
2:10:04
No, he's having fun with the with the 67 meme.
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2:10:23
Uh let's see what what in the timeline should me and Tyler talk about? What is here?
2:10:28
Um Tesla Roadster Sam Alman has asked for a refund.
2:10:35
He says a story in three parts. A tale in three acts.
2:10:39
Act one, your Roadster reservation is complete.
2:10:42
This was in 2018, long time ago.
2:10:44
Tyler was five years old.
2:10:48
Um, he put down $45,000 as a reservation payment.
2:10:52
Then act two, Sam Alman emails reservations at Tesla.
2:10:58
Hi, I'd like to cancel my reservation.
2:11:01
Could you please refund me the 50K?
2:11:05
And he's just trying to he's just trying to ri an extra 5K out of Elon. Did you notice this? >> Oh.
2:11:12
Oh, because it was originally 45. >> It was 45K now. Okay.
2:11:13
With interest, with inflation, Sam clearly deserves 50.
2:11:20
But it's a wild move to just have 45K on the line and be like, can I get 50?
2:11:25
Can we round to the nearest 50?
2:11:26
But when you're, you know, Sam, I guess it makes sense.
2:11:31
It's probably pretty reasonable.
2:11:33
So he says, can you refund me the 50K?
2:11:33
I think he's actually just rounding.
2:11:36
I think he's like, "Yeah, send me 45, but I'm going to refer to it as 50 because I'm rounding to the nearest 50K, I guess."
2:11:44
But then he gets an address not found reservations at tesla.
2:11:47
com is unavailable to receive uh emails recipients rejected.
2:11:56
>> He could use the extra five. >> You think so?
2:11:58
>> I think he could put it to work in the business.
2:12:01
>> Nobody's losing more money than OpenAI. [laughter] every 5K. 5K can go a long way. >> That's true. Yeah.
2:12:07
Tesla and SpaceX seem to be doing >> that's one minute.
2:12:10
That's one minute of sore costs. >> That's true. >> Every minute counts.
2:12:17
>> But uh I mean this just feels like they uh they changed whatever the email is in the last seven years.
2:12:22
But it is remarkable that the project has been in in in process so long that the email address has been forgotten.
2:12:30
And also, I would assume that this type of stuff happens all the time because I imagine that people are cancelling and placing new Tesla Roadster orders like all the time.
2:12:39
So, you would think you'd want to be monitoring that box. Um, >> well, >> oh well.
2:12:42
It's funny to read into it as uh as like more, you know, uh battles between um Elon and Sam, although I don't think that's what's going on here.
2:12:52
It's more of just a just a funny quirk of their email configuration.
2:12:58
Burn Hobart says, "Wow, Elon passes the replies to your email in under a minute. Test.
2:13:03
That guy is going places." Uh, bullish.
2:13:05
Well, whatever you think about Tesla, you can buy it.
2:13:08
You can sell it on public. com.
2:13:10
Investing for those who take it seriously.
2:13:12
They got multiasset investing, industryleading yields, and they're trusted by millions.
2:13:17
Jordy Hayes, what would you like to do next?
2:13:20
>> Let's bring in our next guest.
2:13:22
>> Aiden Senka, welcome to the stream. >> There he is. >> You look fantastic. How are you doing? Hey, Jordy and John. Uh, happy Halloween. >> Wait, wait, wait. What are you drinking?
2:13:34
What is What is next to you?
2:13:36
>> Wow, that's >> Do you recognize this drink?
2:13:38
>> Of course, I recognize that drink.
2:13:38
That is Andrew Huberman's Matina Yerba Mate.
2:13:45
We refer to it as a podcast in a can.
2:13:47
>> It's hard to drink this on my end.
2:13:50
[laughter] The fake beard is getting into getting into the drink.
2:13:52
But, uh, it's great to see you. You're looking sharp.
2:13:55
Do you wear a suit often?
2:13:55
You look very natural in it. >> You know what?
2:13:59
I used to wear a uniform in high school.
2:14:00
Uh it's coming back to me and I'm a huge Formula 1 fan.
2:14:02
So I feel like I'm already wearing like this is the cap you normally get uh when you're on the podium with kind of the readath.
2:14:12
So I feel very good taste here.
2:14:15
>> Championship championship hat.
2:14:15
Uh >> how did you actually get into venture? >> It's a good story.
2:14:20
>> It's a good story. uh um I was Google's first product manager and then first international sales manager >> um always wanted to start something both my parents were entrepreneurs and I felt it's just kind of the way of the valley you go from being an operator to being an investor >> but interestingly uh originally I
2:14:38
thought hey maybe like the right way to do it is like go get a stint at a venture firm and the five firms that I talked to not only told me I wouldn't make a good VC they told me I wouldn't even make a VC I just did not have the wherewithal So I'm sure many people also told you that your idea would not run. >> Yeah. What like did they have any good >> Yeah.
2:14:55
What like did they have any good reasons?
2:14:58
Did you agree with them on anything?
2:14:59
Obviously they were wrong but >> it's so funny like I wasn't an engineer.
2:15:05
I wasn't senior enough at Google.
2:15:05
Uh I never had done anything in venture.
2:15:10
>> Like again maybe on paper it makes sense but to be honest with you it's the best thing that happened because I always feel rejection. I call it rocket fuel.
2:15:20
And it was such >> a such a simple situation where I had to burn the bridges and the only way to prove the skeptics wrong to actually get into the business and do well.
2:15:28
And even after 20 years, I'm like, hm, 10 IPOs is still not enough.
2:15:33
100 exits, I think it should be 200 exits and maybe then the point will sink in. >> Hit that gong.
2:15:42
>> Oh yeah, >> great hit.
2:15:43
Uh, how big was your how big was your first fund?
2:15:48
The first fund uh actually I started as a solo LP and solo GP which was only 4 and a.
2:15:54
5 million um and then our first institutional fund in 2010 was only 41 million >> modest amounts.
2:16:02
>> What uh modest amount >> what story did folks tell at Google about the funding of Google that helped you kind of understand how venture works?
2:16:12
I've heard this story about uh you know Sequoia invested that was probably more like a traditional round.
2:16:19
There's also this maybe apocryphal story about somebody going to their car and writing a check before the company was even founded.
2:16:25
Like what was your introduction to just a flyer? >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
2:16:31
What what stories did you draw on where you were like this worked out for this particular person really well in the Google story that I felt and experienced and I want to go and recreate that?
2:16:43
>> I mean look I I I I was there like right after the sequen um client round.
2:16:46
First of all, the biggest thing about Google is that what people sometimes misunderstand about this business is all about outliers, positive outliers.
2:16:56
And the best training for that is to actually be at an outlier.
2:17:01
And I think more than the VC story to me, it was my experience working for Larry Paige because every single thing that I've done at that in that first year for Larry, like he would like see it and I'm like, hm, this is kind of 1% of what I'm expecting.
2:17:17
expecting. like you need to do things 10x faster like 10x more and then it's like you know what maybe humans are not meant to do that and my joke is like one of my projects was to launch Google in international languages because I wasn't an engineer I spoke six languages so and I'm like look you know what I can do for
2:17:34
Google is make sure it's launched in non-English languages and he was frustrated with that and so I always tell people I'm an occasional and accidental uh father or grandfather of Google translate because they're like from now on Anything that's internationalization or translation, let's make sure machines do it and not humans. [laughter]
2:17:52
[laughter] >> That makes sense.
2:17:53
What What was your first uh what was your first true home run in venture?
2:18:00
>> So the first true home run in venture, you can define it in many different ways.
2:18:04
My first billiond dollar exit was Moroi uh which started as a Wi-Fi project in Mountain View uh with Google and I was one of three ex Googlers that in invested in it and the first IPO was Shopify um and that was amazing like showing up to NICE not for Google's IPO but you know as an investor that hey like you know early believer and the company was great and what was crazy is like $2.
2:18:27
7 billion valuation at IPO for Shopify and today there are like 150 like another 50x from that.
2:18:34
Google was similar like it went 40x from the IPO and that like in in a nutshell is like positive outliers and I can't imagine better examples of outliers.
2:18:47
>> Yeah, that's remarkable >> completely.
2:18:48
What about what about more recently?
2:18:50
Uh you've done Merur, Superbase, and and others.
2:18:53
Maybe we start with Meror.
2:18:56
We just had uh Brendan on earlier this week to talk about the new financing.
2:19:01
You guys have been in a couple rounds now. Is that is that right? >> Two rounds. Two rounds.
2:19:06
We are huge fans of uh Brandon and and his co-founders.
2:19:12
Um look, I think it's another great example.
2:19:14
When I started like right after Google, we thought going 0 to 100 million in 10 years was a great achievement. Maybe 8 to 10 years.
2:19:22
You know, I had companies like Shopify go IPO in six years.
2:19:26
But Merkore is a new breed of company.
2:19:29
They went zero to 100 million in gross revenues in 11 months.
2:19:33
They're essentially um have built this great platform where they can essentially find any type of talent or discipline in the world, find the people, have AI interview them and generate expertise and data based on that.
2:19:46
And it's just like again like it's what's so exciting about the AI age is these companies you never thought like would be at this kind of scale are able to deliver these things because it it's just that age and that that opportunity.
2:20:00
We're very lucky to be part of it.
2:20:00
You know we're huge fans of Brandon and team um and then Superbase is another great example like we are like listen some of the most valuable tech companies were database companies and somebody's going to build a developer friendly backend.
2:20:14
At that time there was a front-end company but no real backend company and it was crazy because when we invested in Superbase uh we did a almost a growth round valuation and the traction was not even close to a million in ARR and since
2:20:26
then the company has grown 50 70 80x plus um in just a few years and that makes me think like what you're doing is really special because the private companies are growing 500 to,000% and public companies are growing at 20%. %. So it's a 50x delta. So in case %. So it's a 50x delta.
2:20:43
So in case anybody's wondering why it's interesting and exciting uh to be in venture or to be involved with private companies, the very best are doing an insane job and I think those are the stories that need to be out there and that's why I love my job.
2:20:58
Uh I feel like it's the best job.
2:21:01
>> So they they announced their series A in October October 28th of 2021.
2:21:03
I'm assuming you guys did the deal like you know some late summer or something like that.
2:21:11
that. um at the time was that a deal that you think maybe other pe people p would have passed on because of the price like it just looked crazy >> so we did the series B and it was really interesting not only did multiple other VCs passed on price but they went and then invested in competitors because
2:21:31
they could get in at like half the valuation but we never compromise what we believe is you know our belief in the founders and the company and look I mean at the end this business is all about early belief and as all the founders would get to participate in their journeys and superb is a prime example. uh they had all the initial signs that
2:21:48
uh they had all the initial signs that things could be really great.
2:21:50
Like I said, you know, traction was really low.
2:21:54
They were starting to like essentially like take off among developers and it was built on Postgress.
2:22:00
It was very technical and people are like no nothing could be worth that valuation at that stage with only that much signal.
2:22:07
And I think that's kind of the magic of Felicas is that when we back these incredible founders, you know, the success is far uh from obvious, but then after we invest like these companies go through these insane hockey stick growth curves and Superb is a prime example of that as is Merkor.
2:22:25
>> How do you think about what is different about this boom, this moment from previous cycles?
2:22:32
Uh the top things that poke out that have have really changed in the last two years that justify more investment that change the job of the venture capitalist are, you know, we're seeing higher growth rates.
2:22:45
We're also seeing higher capex requirements for some tech companies than before.
2:22:49
We're seeing uh just more potential new markets because you could be going after a labor pool instead of uh a different like an existing market.
2:23:00
There's entirely net new markets.
2:23:02
Uh there's questions about enterprise adoption, churn, like what in your mind is is different this time around from the mobile wave, the the cloud wave or anything else that informs how you're underwriting deals this year?
2:23:20
>> Yeah, I mean look, uh I have seen the internet wave as well as the mobile wave.
2:23:23
There are a couple things that are really different.
2:23:26
So one is the point that we were getting at is that venture game at is like very basic is essentially uh it's it's a growth game.
2:23:36
If you find a company that is growing 50x faster than public companies it's going to end up in a good place and even if you're off by 10x on price if you're in one of those companies things are going to work out for you.
2:23:47
Also, interestingly, 20 years ago, like when I first got into business, a lot of people would worry about distribution.
2:23:53
But the reality is today, like everybody's watching YouTube, everybody has a mobile device.
2:23:59
Distribution is no longer a problem.
2:24:02
But what is really interesting that is different is the AI age normally before with software first the budget was limited.
2:24:09
I don't think any company is going to spend more than 10% of their budget on software.
2:24:13
budget on software. Also the value creation was different like software yes it is helping you but still people are working with it you have to put data in it and then to get value out of it you have to look at the results and say okay now I'm going to do something based on what the software is telling me and the software is like streamlining it a little bit in AI age what's really
2:24:33
stunning is like you now have can have a full closed loop without humans where everything is being done by AI so the data entry is automatic the data output is automatic um I sometimes think of a turbo engine in a car like one of the like interesting technologies is you take the exhaust gas and then if you channel it into the engine the car can accelerate a lot faster. So in some ways
2:24:52
So in some ways like what is happening with AI uh there is growth vectors in so many different areas.
2:25:01
I had to make an engine example since I'm wearing a formula one like hat.
2:25:04
Um but first of all there is so much more value creation and now you're going after labor which depending on the sectors you look at is like 40 50 60 70% of a company's budget.
2:25:16
So the dollars at stake is so much larger.
2:25:20
>> How how much more important is it now to think about terminal market structure because I'm I I completely agree with you.
2:25:27
The growth rates are insane.
2:25:27
The risk I feel like is is not that the growth isn't real.
2:25:32
It's just that there's you you pick a market and there's one company that goes from one to 10 million in ARR to 100 million in ARR and they and the and you project that out and you're like, well, the market's 50 billion.
2:25:45
They're going to get there really fast.
2:25:46
But if the market can support 50 companies that all grow really fast and they all take 2% of the market, then you will see some sort of scurve in the growth rate at some point.
2:25:58
And I feel like there's some markets that will probably be perfectly competitive, some that will be highly monopolistic and everything in between.
2:26:06
And it feels like as a venture capitalist, it's going to pay to be the type of person that can clock how markets play out.
2:26:12
Does that map with what you're thinking, what you're trying to do?
2:26:17
>> Look, I think you're getting at a very important point, which is it is not just enough to have high growth, but you need to have durable growth.
2:26:22
And we use the examples of Google, Shopify, even like more recently we had companies like Canva.
2:26:29
And I think one of the things that people sometimes really underestimate is that that kind of high growth compounded will generate stunning results.
2:26:38
And one of the things that I learned from both Google and Shopify is that if if and when you choose the right markets, you will probably get the sizing wrong.
2:26:45
But if you choose a mega mega market, even like at what we think success, there is still so much of the market left.
2:26:52
Like one of the things that I never realized is even when Shopify went IPO it was less than 1% of that market and that's what helped it like get a 40x growth after that.
2:27:00
Same thing happened to Google and the very best companies can also expand the market.
2:27:04
So to your question though one of the things that we really pay attention is what are the modes of these companies is not just that they have the chance of high growth but how durable will it be.
2:27:18
A lot of times as the founders a lot of times it's also different elements.
2:27:20
For instance, we very frequently talk about data modes at Felicis, right?
2:27:23
Like one of the things that helps you differentiate is if you have data that nobody else has, since data is the new oil, that's going to be a huge differentiator because at the end of the day, there's a lot of AI tech and that's more pervasive.
2:27:36
But if you have data that nobody else has, that's going to be tremendous value.
2:27:40
And if you start doing something where you basically become a key part of the process, people are not going to rip you off.
2:27:47
going to rip you off. of we just recently won a term sheet of a healthcare AI company and what was interesting is through AI they've been able to service a part of the um patient uh market that here too was not possible
2:28:04
to be served at a positive uh uh return and the moment they fix that part of the market hospitals are like why am I only going to give you 35% of the market you know what the rest of the market there are 19 players but I'm just going to come straight to you is too much work. You guys can take 100% of our referrals.
2:28:19
You guys can take 100% of our referrals.
2:28:22
So, it's a yet another good example of if you do a really great job with the hardest part of the market, you can essentially have a much larger portion of the market.
2:28:30
Nobody wants like is interested in like somebody who's only going to win 1 to 2%.
2:28:34
They want people that can do everything together and not just one part of it.
2:28:39
And again, that's kind of also the big leap from software is maybe only solving one part of the problem and they want like a full solution.
2:28:48
I want like a full turnkey, not just like hey the software can get you the numbers or analyze things or be the system of record.
2:28:54
Now everything is about system of action and AI can enable that.
2:28:59
And if you have a data mode on top of it, obviously that drastically increases the chances that not only are you going to have high growth but the high growth is going to stick with you.
2:29:10
Did uh did the venture industry learn its lesson in 2021?
2:29:13
Things got a little bit crazy.
2:29:16
There was a lot of top signals.
2:29:18
We had a crash, but at the same time you did companies like Superbase at what was then a crazy valuation and then now it looks like, you know, you bought it.
2:29:28
Uh it looks like you stole it.
2:29:28
Um [laughter] uh now this time around it feels like you know that we we were I I remember in 2022 it felt like we were going to go into like a VC apocalypse.
2:29:40
Uh it certainly doesn't feel that way now.
2:29:44
Do you think do you think we learned any key lessons or are we going to kind of relearn them in the future?
2:29:53
Let me tell you an interesting lesson or maybe like a key secret is that venture business is you you have to be consistent.
2:30:02
You cannot you cannot sprint and pause sprint and pause.
2:30:05
If you're not growing in this business you're essentially losing stagnating.
2:30:11
There is no such thing as cruise control or like steady state.
2:30:13
And I think the mistake that happens with a lot of VCs, if their conviction is not deep and they're essentially playing the market game, there are a lot of followers and not a lot of original thinkers.
2:30:23
What happens is the moment the market gets risky and things look dire, people pause and like, oh, you know what?
2:30:30
Like, I'm going to stop making investment.
2:30:31
And one thing I'm really proud is even in the 21 2021 vintage and 22 when things were really expensive, we still kept on making investments and we never slowed down.
2:30:42
And you know like we were basically like steady growth.
2:30:44
And part of that is because look this is not public markets where if there is 20% growth and your entity price is wrong you're going to lose a lot of money.
2:30:52
But if you find the right companies and you do have 50 to 100x growth ahead of you even if you overpaid for them you're still going to do well.
2:31:00
In fact the only way you're going to do well is to have these positive outliers that are fund makers.
2:31:06
And so I think the biggest lesson is like a lot of VCs like spend too much time of like this valuation high and low and this trend and that the reality is you got to be a surfer that can surf any wave in any season and not just one like you can't just go to the beach and call it quits.
2:31:20
you need to go back out and you know I know uh Jordan lives in Malibu so he he's he's he's going to like the surfer analogy but the part of the other thing also is that you have to find the companies where there is going to be so much growth that even if you got the price slightly wrong it's not going to slow down.
2:31:38
So anybody who's like, oh, like we're going to be in this business and it's all about the price, they're misunderstanding it.
2:31:43
It's all about like being early and understanding that incredible growth that's going to follow.
2:31:49
That's going to basically give you the long-term success.
2:31:50
you the long-term success. Um, and so I feel there is definitely a delta between the VCs that are original thinkers that still had the conviction and the the the courage to make those bets and not just like Superbase for us but also companies like NAN that was a sleeper company in
2:32:07
Berlin and all of a sudden in fall like multiple VCs have woke up that they're doing great job in uh Aentic AI after >> that's a company interestingly enough I saw it on getting uh people started making videos about it on Instagram which I I look at as much more mainstream before I saw anything about it on on X, which is I think a good sign. It means that it actually has
2:32:30
It means that it actually has traction outside of our little >> Silicon Valley bubble.
2:32:36
>> How do you uh how do you think about um your your philosophy on expertise versus like being a generalist?
2:32:45
Yeah, there's a lot of expertise on like a category versus like judgment around >> Yeah. human.
2:32:54
>> But take me through like advice for a venture capitalist who's joining your firm, advice for someone who's graduating high school and thinking about how to pursue like what is your philosophy on on generalism versus becoming an expert in something?
2:33:11
I mean, look, I think journalism in general, it's a really good thing.
2:33:16
But I I think look, there are there are a couple really interesting uh secrets or insights.
2:33:21
Number one, um just to give you real data to make this point is that when I started in venture, the other thing that people underestimated is like they're like, listen, all these sectors you're going to invest in, you're not an expert in any of any one of them, and you're not going to be able to make a good investment.
2:33:37
I think people what people misunderstand is if you're an expert in a sector, you're going to look at a company and you're only going to look at the orthodox way of doing things.
2:33:46
And when somebody comes in as an outsider and like I want to do something the way it's never been done before, you're going to say that's never going to work.
2:33:53
And so like the paradox here is the expertise, right?
2:33:56
the expertise, right? like the experts are supposed to know the field really well but that also anchors them in the way that things are done traditionally versus a generalist is going to be first principles and say you know what there's actually a new way of doing things and if this thing works it's going to be amazing and at Feliz is like the most
2:34:16
interesting stat that I'm most proud of is that we made early investments in companies 53 of them that exceeded a billion dollar in valuation not a single one of them was led by an expert >> it's amazing And so like that's the thing like when you guys when you guys started you were not media experts or like proven like media people and you had a great idea. >> I would tell you the funny thing is in
2:34:36
>> I would tell you the funny thing is in our case like I've been working in and around advertising my entire career.
2:34:43
John had been an expert on on like content production but we certainly were not experts on hosting a show.
2:34:48
And I know and if you would asked us even >> literally months ago if you had asked us like would you be hosting >> would could you ever see yourself hosting like a daily show we would have been like uh like >> I always love that Paul Graham formulation which is like most co-founders like if you look at the co-founding teams it's usually like two or three people where each of them are are somewhat experts in like two or three disciplines.
2:35:15
So you have someone who knows like marketing and finance and operations and then someone who knows like front end and backend and technical design and architecture and also some of the tradeoffs about how the product design works.
2:35:28
And so you wind up with like you know some level of expertise in 10 different categories bundled up in two to three people uh on a specific team that seems to work really well.
2:35:39
But yes, they're not like pure play experts, which is what we think of, at least what I think of when I think of expertise. >> 100%.
2:35:46
Look, I'm gonna add two more things, which is I think what one of the other elements of being successful, whether you're a founder or investor, especially as a VC is all about the people.
2:35:57
And I've actually done sales at Google.
2:36:00
And you would say, how is that related to being a venture?
2:36:01
At the end, it's a people's game.
2:36:03
the founders are not you know taking money based on numbers but if they can trust who you are and so like being good with people and being able to relate to them is really important.
2:36:13
really important. So these days when people are starting in the business uh whether they're a founder or a future VC or emerging VC I'm like look your biggest asset is your network and the people that you know >> u but the second thing is especially for venture you need to be exposed to
2:36:28
outliers right like I feel like my training at Google you know every single thing that Google has done in the six years that I was there not a single thing was standard every single thing we've did we did a completely different way that it's been ever done before and the results were stunning. So if you've
2:36:44
So if you've never been at a company where the founders and the firm was crazy enough to do things completely differently and you kind of understand that culture that mindset right like we did talk about being journalists but it is also important to have been exposed to some of these things and then you're like okay you know what now that I have seen it it's in my DNA it's in my blood I can kind of like see other um signs of that.
2:37:10
So the being good with people, being able to understand outliers, at least being exposed to them, I think are key ingredients uh at least in venture.
2:37:16
Um so those are things that nobody ever told me like hey this is going to be really important for you.
2:37:22
But now after 20 years of doing it I can tell you that it is very important and like journalists like I worked in every discipline across four continents.
2:37:30
I've done finance, sales, marketing, product that was also really great.
2:37:35
I didn't have to be the deep deep expert in all of these things, but being able to understand so you can like see around the corners and find little things.
2:37:41
You know, just enough to make sure that you're not going to make a stupid move, but you don't know too much that you would be too anchored in it and you would be skeptical of a brand new way of doing things. >> Well said.
2:37:57
>> I just can't get over how good your outfit looks and your frame looks.
2:38:00
>> Yeah, you're ready to co-host with us. >> Yeah. >> Thank you.
2:38:03
Like honestly like I'm I'm down to that.
2:38:05
I love this hat and I'm enjoying my yoga mate. [laughter] >> Yeah. Are you in SF?
2:38:10
>> Uh >> we are in Menlo Park actually. We do have an SF office. >> Okay.
2:38:15
>> Um but we are in in in the Bay Area right now right in the heart of >> soon in person.
2:38:20
>> Yeah, let's let's hang out soon.
2:38:20
Are you going to be at F1 Vegas?
2:38:24
>> Uh I'm I'm I'm thinking about it.
2:38:24
So my older son is in varsity football.
2:38:27
If there is no conflict with his game, I'm definitely going to be there. Okay, cool. Let us know.
2:38:33
We'll let us let us know if you are.
2:38:34
We will we'll look quite different so you can watch some older footage to to recognize us over there.
2:38:41
>> Uh thank you for hanging out and I'm impressed with how that you were able to to do a normal interview when we look uh so ridiculous.
2:38:49
But uh it was really fun chatting with you and thank you for sharing. >> That was a blast.
2:38:53
Should I say Mark and Ilia? Uh but very well done.
2:38:55
A great impersonation and uh Jordy and John.
2:39:01
It's such a such a pleasure. Let's do this again.
2:39:04
>> And the audio team is appreciative as well.
2:39:07
You're looking absolutely crisp. >> Everyone's a fan. Everyone loves it. >> Great stuff. Awesome. Talk to you soon.
2:39:13
Have a great uh have a great rest of your Friday. >> Have a good day. Bye. >> You too.
2:39:17
>> How'd you sleep last night, Jordy?
2:39:19
[applause] >> I got a 92 >> on eight.
2:39:22
You can go to eightsleep. com.
2:39:24
Get a pod five >> code tbp 32 minutes. >> 93. >> 93. Oh, you beat me by one. Very good job. >> Well, smoked you.
2:39:34
>> Uh, our next guest is in the reream waiting room.
2:39:36
Let's bring him into the TBP and Ultra Dome.
2:39:40
>> Wait, is is that who I think I think you're Did you get full prosthetic makeup to look like Jacob Deepenrock from Discipolis Ventures?
2:39:46
Is that what's going on here? >> That is correct.
2:39:50
You guys costume better though.
2:39:53
>> Your your Jacob costume is flawless.
2:39:53
Uh, how was uh how was demo day? Take us through it.
2:39:59
What were the highlights? What are the new trends?
2:40:01
Uh what what's the actual structure? Maybe start there.
2:40:04
What's the structure of demo day these days? >> Yeah. Yeah.
2:40:07
So yesterday 2 pm got started.
2:40:09
We did it at Long Walls space here in Elsagundo, one of the OG Elsagundo companies. Used to be ABL.
2:40:16
Uh shout out to Dan Pont. >> Uh started at 2 p. m.
2:40:20
I think we hadund probably 60 70 people come out for it. Great.
2:40:27
I had a panel with Augustus, Isaiah, and Ted.
2:40:28
Um, boys, the Godfathers, the brothers. >> It was a good group. >> It's a great group.
2:40:36
>> Founding up with that.
2:40:36
Everybody was uh hating on SF, which was all of investors in the in the audience.
2:40:43
>> Why uh why hate on SF? >> Oh, Paul.
2:40:45
So, one one thing is when we were uh or there earlier this week, >> I thought they had like somewhat solved the human feces on the ground thing and it was like John and I walked home from uh walked home from dinner.
2:40:59
Granted, it was about a mile walk and it was like at least six.
2:41:05
>> It was through the tenderloin, which is a rough spot.
2:41:06
There are rough spots in LA, but uh Elsa Gundo is beautiful.
2:41:08
At least when I walked around it was it's very clean.
2:41:13
And if you're if you're an industrialist, the smoke stacks, you know, >> that's actually a plus. That's actually a plus. But yeah.
2:41:19
Well, uh, so how many companies graduate and and it's a proper demo day?
2:41:24
Like people are giving pitches, raising money like that. >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
2:41:28
Uh, so so we had nine companies pitch yesterday from all over the country and a couple from out of out of the country as well. Yeah.
2:41:36
>> Um, we start off with, like I said, panel. Um, nine pitches.
2:41:38
They all kind of go out to their booths afterwards.
2:41:43
Um, and then all the investors get to know and get to talk with them and meet them afterwards.
2:41:46
And then >> we had a sick little after putty in in Manhattan Beach afterwards.
2:41:51
>> Um, so it it was great.
2:41:51
But I guess companies wise, happy to run through some.
2:41:54
I also posted a thread as well if you want to pull that up. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
2:41:58
We'll have the team pull it up. But yeah.
2:41:59
Yeah, read through uh and let us know who who's >> so I will say less defense companies this time than ever before. A lot more.
2:42:08
Yeah, I was going to ask and when we when we uh across the different YC batches like there's very clearly like some core themes and trends that you've seen.
2:42:18
So, uh I'm not surprised to see like less.
2:42:20
We probably like don't we don't need the same volume of defense tech companies now.
2:42:26
I think in general like there's just been so many like every category.
2:42:31
>> You think the job's finished?
2:42:31
I don't think the job's finished, but I think it's like probably healthy for like every category now has a few players.
2:42:39
>> They can now fight it out.
2:42:39
One or two will rise to the top. >> Yep.
2:42:42
>> Uh we don't necessarily need 10 more backfilling trying to go after the same types of contracts. >> Yeah.
2:42:48
Yeah, I think I think my general thought is like I think defense like proved that you can kind of disrupt these legacy industries and like build massive companies in in in in these kind of legacy industries that um haven't really had venture interest until SpaceX.
2:43:02
And I think it's now like okay like we we we will do these these like hardware we will do these kind of more um I guess less tech less venture heavy industries.
2:43:10
Um there's a lot of stuff like that unlocked.
2:43:11
So like within energy, within mining, we did stuff in like >> isotopes.
2:43:16
I always make this point where uh you know Sam Jiko, I mean SF founder, but he runs impulse stove.
2:43:20
It's a stove company and and I I don't want to, you know, tell his story for him, but it always feels like obviously that's not a defense tech company.
2:43:30
That's not an Android competitor, but that's the type of that's the type of company that maybe doesn't exist unless we make like hardware cool and get found and get uh and get VCs piling into the category.
2:43:40
Uh but take us through some of the some of the companies from this batch who stands out.
2:43:47
>> Yeah, I mean it's a small enough batch where like Okay, I'll go through all them. Welcome.
2:43:53
>> Starting [clears throat] off, we got Petra Power.
2:43:54
Shout out to Aaron Goodman.
2:43:56
>> Hopefully you're watching right now.
2:43:58
He's doing basically replacing generators.
2:43:59
Um so basically building um a new electrochemical process to um replace the generator and there's like a massive bottleneck generators obviously energy um the energy shortage is pretty real especially with the new data centers going up.
2:44:12
Um and he already has received $9 million in DoD contracts which is pretty crazy. >> Sick. >> First one.
2:44:19
Second one's a pretty fun one.
2:44:21
Uh, making shoes in America.
2:44:24
Autonomous shoe manufacturing at price >> in the USA. >> That's bold. That's very bold. >> I'll go.
2:44:31
>> We're going to make it in America. >> Okay.
2:44:33
>> And there there's all these missile drone companies.
2:44:34
We're making shoes, guys.
2:44:35
We're making shoes in America. >> I love it. I love it. >> Um, three hedges.
2:44:38
They're one of the the few software companies.
2:44:41
They're basically building a commodities hedging app for um SMBs, specifically oil and gas to start because it cost a lot of money to actually have like a hedging team. Yeah.
2:44:52
>> And they said 97% of of of uh distributors just can't afford a fulling team.
2:44:58
So they basically make it their whole thing is Robin Hood.
2:44:59
They call Robin Hood for industrial companies. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
2:45:03
We've seen a lot of startups do the the sort of like treasury management just like earn a little bit of yield because maybe you don't have access to an investment bank and a whole treasury team and so uh plenty of companies have offered that type of product.
2:45:16
It makes sense that uh you would need something a little bit different in the industrial space. Very cool.
2:45:21
>> Imagine day trading commodities on your phone. >> I'll do that too.
2:45:26
That would be >> What is Actonide? >> Act is pretty cool.
2:45:30
So basically what they do is they enrich isotopes basically.
2:45:35
So they're starting off with one material.
2:45:36
So there's there's three materials in the Russian so Russian sanctions list.
2:45:40
These materials you can import or cannot import.
2:45:42
Um there's three materials that are um actually removed from that sanctions list which means like you can get as much as you want because we just need them.
2:45:51
>> Um the highest cost per gram one is a material called turbium.
2:45:55
>> It's used in in cancer medication.
2:45:55
They basically make this material.
2:45:58
Um, and they it's a $2 per gram material. They enrich it. It's $36,000 per gram. >> Wow.
2:46:05
>> Um, and then they already have, it's in the tweet as well.
2:46:07
They already have some some some contracts on the very large contracts.
2:46:10
They just signed literally last week. It was pretty sick.
2:46:13
Like Monday morning, I was yesterday.
2:46:14
Monday morning signed two contracts um locked in there with some companies everybody um watching knows very very well.
2:46:22
>> Yeah, the traction so far is pretty pretty amazing. >> Yeah, it was great.
2:46:26
I think I think we've definitely seen like over the last couple batches like kind of a an increase in in in traction just because people want to be here and also got to know if people kind of see the brand we provide and and that's I think pretty evident with companies that have come through. >> Tech.
2:46:39
pro is Bloomberg for heavy equipment procurement.
2:46:42
So that's oh dealerships. Interesting.
2:46:45
So actually uh figuring out so Bloomberg you you think that means um looking across all the different industries like how you can go on Bloomberg and find someone's auctioning off a you know a private jet but they're also selling some uh some slug of of equity or something like that.
2:47:04
Uh so this is a platform to connect buyers and sellers.
2:47:08
>> It basically just yeah brings together people who want to buy >> very cool >> mining equipment heavy machinery more generally.
2:47:12
There's like no central database with all this this information.
2:47:16
It's just like Boomer X in Texas calls Boomer Y in in uh Arkansas and then they hopefully make it happen but there's no like label database of all this equipment basically just like compile it all kind of like with like Carfax for example like early on there's like no data and like basically they just went out and like called all the dealers like hey like how much is this worth? How much is this worth?
2:47:35
>> Is Loris sort of like the V2 of the vertical farming era that it says they turn grocery store rooftops into autonomous farms. >> Yeah.
2:47:44
So like my my take here was like vertical farming obviously have been tried. Yeah.
2:47:48
>> It didn't really work because it was all like climate like kind of carbon credit driven a lot of the time where like the actual economics not make sense with with that gone.
2:47:55
Um basically they removed like one of the biggest costs just real estate and they basically just put these like blow up farms on grocery stores roofs >> and then it's like a pretty I mean the numbers are here like they have um like they don't pay for the actual unit.
2:48:08
uh they have people that go and and license them and bring them out to grocery stores and then they get um like individual profit based off what the the grocery stores make and then the goal is bring the the produce profits per grocery store up by 50%.
2:48:22
>> The produce is then sold directly in the grocery store that it's sitting on. >> Exactly. >> Cool. Exactly. Interesting.
2:48:27
>> Collocation >> and they're already like in in in store contract recently.
2:48:32
>> Um which is pretty exciting.
2:48:32
But yeah, I think like generally like this again food security is important. Yeah.
2:48:35
food security is important. Yeah. the stuff that was tried last I don't know five five t years ago or so it didn't really work because of the you know economics like this makes sense there's also these general tail ones of like we need to make food in America it's like actually healthy >> cool >> um so that's them uh lark kai legend at skunk works right out of college
2:48:55
>> um there's this new MOSA standard basically which is like an open source like if you have a a component it has to actually work with every type of system um there's no way to actually test this basically have a software that and test the compliance for um for any component and then eventually they're going to build the hardware to to test it in a more um >> in-depth fashion starting with the software. >> I like Blitz Panel. That's a good name. >> I like Blitz Panel. That's a good name.
2:49:17
>> Blitz Panel reminds me of mix panel.
2:49:21
>> But a pretty simple company.
2:49:22
>> Yeah, >> they make electrical panels for for cheaper and they have a whole automation process he's he's built out.
2:49:26
He was at Pipe Dream Labs in Texas.
2:49:30
>> Oh yeah, >> a huge problem.
2:49:31
And now he's basically just building the >> Yeah.
2:49:34
Going through all this stuff, it really shows you that there are like a lot of stuff that fit that fits in thematically that does not feel like it competes with and for example like but it's all it feels like aligned with the general theme that you've put together of cool hard problems.
2:49:49
There's a little bit of American dynamism, a little bit of military stuff in here.
2:49:54
Uh tell us about uh the last company number nine. >> Yeah. Yeah.
2:49:59
So Archas Energy >> Archas >> uh this guy reads old German papers from the 40s in German and he found this process that basically [laughter] alpha what kind what kind of German papers is he reading?
2:50:14
>> You can guess you can guess.
2:50:14
Um >> that doesn't [laughter] >> that doesn't instill confidence.
2:50:18
Tell this guy to clean it up. What is going on?
2:50:23
>> No the the papers are scientific papers that were okay.
2:50:25
That needs to be clarified.
2:50:31
>> To be clarified >> papers about scientific processes. No. >> Yes. Yes.
2:50:35
They did have some good scientists in the 40s. >> Exactly.
2:50:38
And one of these papers in particular goes to this way of making hydrogen for cheaper. Okay.
2:50:42
And if you cheaper, you can make uh fruit oil for cheaper. >> Very cool.
2:50:46
Well, congratulations on the demo day.
2:50:48
Uh thank you so much for coming.
2:50:50
>> Yeah, really cool lineup breaking down. It's great.
2:50:52
I mean, it's cool to see a lot of people focus on energy.
2:50:54
I mean that's that like um yeah >> people will criticize like you know accelerators and like for having like too like being like too on trend totally but it's actually healthy like we want a new we want a big group of companies like going after a range of different problems.
2:51:12
>> This just doesn't seem like that narrow of a trend.
2:51:13
It feels extremely narrow when you introduced it the first time and it just felt like oh it's just defense tech or something.
2:51:19
Um, but clearly like it's it's such a big area that some of these folks if they're both successful like they're not even going to do business together because they're operating at completely different layers of the stack.
2:51:30
Uh, it's just a it's just a fantastic end result and really cool to see the growth here. So, congratulations. Yeah.
2:51:36
And I think one one last point about like the general defense market that I think is interesting is like a lot of these big companies like Andrew like Seronic like the big like have already chosen like a winner and like they're not going to back another annual competitor.
2:51:48
So it's like it it you need to have like the stack like the capital stack makes sense and if it's already every single level of it been like all these these funds have already chosen somebody as like their winner.
2:51:58
It's kind of hard to come in and like be back these funds.
2:51:59
So I think there's like so many opportunities now to come because again legacy industries are like open for venture.
2:52:05
there's a lot of talent flowing in and that's what we're trying to kind of take advantage of is this like new movement the best talent in capital actually interested in solving these hard critical national >> problems.
2:52:12
Thank you so much for coming on the show and breaking it down for us.
2:52:15
Uh congratulations on another successful demo day.
2:52:18
>> We will see you next demo day and hopefully before that of course.
2:52:21
>> Yeah, great to see you. >> Have a great weekend. We'll talk to you soon. >> Cheers. >> Goodbye.
2:52:25
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2:52:37
>> Our next guest is a living legending the founder [laughter] of part of hole.
2:52:42
I'm sure she's dressed totally normal. Let's bring her. >> Welcome to the show.
2:52:45
[laughter] >> Uh how many uh how many Halloween parties did you get invited to? >> Okay. Is this AI? >> Yes. >> Is this AI? >> Hi.
2:52:56
>> I I wish cuz it would have been a lot easier to put on.
2:52:57
Did you do this yourself or did you have a team?
2:53:01
>> I did do it myself which is why I missed a few spots. >> Oh, it looks great.
2:53:04
It looks >> This is incredible.
2:53:05
I mean, I feel like >> Halloween is probably high pressure like on part of on the part of team.
2:53:09
You guys are facilitating a lot of Halloween events.
2:53:13
Like you kind of have to really show up and do it right. So, uh, congratulations.
2:53:16
Did any >> This is your Black Friday.
2:53:20
>> This is our Black Friday. This is our Super Bowl. This is our D-Day. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
2:53:24
Well, thank you for taking some time to talk to us on your Black Friday.
2:53:29
Uh, is it actually Black Friday in the sense that like the the servers will be melting or is it just like it's the best opportunity to capitalize on the the value prop that Participle can deliver?
2:53:40
>> Yeah, I would actually be curious what are the what are the biggest holidays for or just days celebrations?
2:53:46
>> Halloween is by far the biggest >> people celebrate Halloween like 10 times, right?
2:53:52
M >> like everyone can go to multiple Halloween parties and it's very valid.
2:53:57
You're only going to go to one New Year's Eve party.
2:53:59
Maybe during the holidays you're like traveling, so who knows if you'll be around, but like everyone's here, everyone's locked in, everyone knows what the job is.
2:54:08
>> Uh and so usually it's like you'll have six Halloween parties.
2:54:12
Uh and I don't because like the entire Particle team, I'm like kind of on call uh today, this weekend.
2:54:21
But that's why I'm dressed up right now. >> Yeah.
2:54:24
I love the idea of you being on call and then there's some serious thing happening in the business and you're like, "Let's hop on Zoom together."
2:54:29
And then [laughter] you you dressed up. >> It's very serious. Yeah. Great.
2:54:32
It seems like a good melting. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah.
2:54:36
The servers are not melting because our engineers prepped heavily for this, but it is like a triple on call situation.
2:54:43
>> How How has the business been growing?
2:54:43
I know that uh a couple months ago there was like, "Oh, Apple's coming after you."
2:54:50
And that felt like maybe it was just always going to be >> focus on yourself, Apple. Focus on yourself.
2:54:58
>> Uh, but was that even like an OSHI moment or was it just kind of like a okay, we didn't really see any blip in the numbers whatsoever and we've just been on a growth trajectory growth trajectory the entire time.
2:55:12
>> When it happened, it was definitely a Are you not allowed to curse on this show?
2:55:17
We don't curse on this show, but you're welcome to. But >> kids do watch. >> Our kids watch.
2:55:23
So if you whatever you say, our kids will repeat to us later.
2:55:27
[laughter] Be like, what did Treya mean by that?
2:55:30
>> Yeah, >> it was an oh darn moment. >> Oh shucks. >> Oh shucks.
2:55:34
Uh uh but then we're like let's wait to see how this plays out because I think so many startups go through the thing where some big player comes in and they they try to reheat your nachos and it either works or it doesn't.
2:55:48
And I don't know, have you guys gotten an Apple invite? >> No. >> No. >> There you go. There you go. >> Yeah.
2:55:56
I mean it it seems like an obvious I mean the other thing is Apple is not good at fun.
2:56:02
like they they did the Genmoji thing and and they were laughed at for it.
2:56:08
Uh it was like kind kind of a cool Yeah.
2:56:13
>> product, but again, it doesn't even get real usage.
2:56:15
And I just think >> Apple was always known for magical software because it was just like so polished and good.
2:56:23
And I think they're becoming less known for that. >> Yeah.
2:56:27
I I have another take here.
2:56:27
I'd like to know if you if this resonates with you.
2:56:30
you're obviously on the inside of this, but I feel like the the invite product has like there are technical features that someone can clone and and and check the box, but the brand is so important.
2:56:44
And I feel like when I get a particle, it says something about what I'm going to expect walking in there.
2:56:52
When I get a paperless post, that's a different vibe.
2:56:54
That's a different thing.
2:56:56
When I get a physical piece of mail that invites me to something, that's also a different a different brand, a different vibe. It sets me up.
2:57:04
It's the welcome moment to the actual event.
2:57:06
It's part of the event experience.
2:57:07
And so, I feel like there's a world where you could clone all the features, but it's not going to bring the same energy, which is actually what your customers are buying in some way. >> Part of the product.
2:57:18
>> I I think it's part of the product, but what how do you think about brand and how you stand out from the competition?
2:57:24
I think it's brand and there's something about you have to want to break the rules because a party is not like a corporate meeting, right? A a party is a party.
2:57:35
And so we from the very beginning have always been like the party page should feel as much fun as the party itself.
2:57:42
Like you're already asking guests to do a lot by RSVPing.
2:57:43
Like you might as well make it fun for them and give them a reward uh where they get to see the guest list after they RSVP.
2:57:51
like you you got to make it something where people can actually feel bought into the experience and you don't do that by you know building something that just looks like an online form or gets buried in someone's email.
2:58:02
Uh but I also think there's an interesting like crossplatform aspect of this too when you think about Apple like I if I want to invite people to my party I want to invite my friends who have an iPhone.
2:58:13
I want to invite my friends who have Android.
2:58:17
Like I don't care what phone my friends have, they're still my friends.
2:58:20
And so I think it's really important and it's just it's hard for certain companies to >> actually does the Apple app only work if you have an iPhone.
2:58:29
>> It it does work for Android say that's just like that's just mean. Okay.
2:58:34
Not even being able to invite Android people to parties. That's just mean.
2:58:39
>> I mean well they're already green friends.
2:58:40
They're already like look like this. [laughter] That's funny.
2:58:43
>> What uh so so we often times, you know, if we're talking to an enterprise software founder, we don't typically ask the question like what's the 10-year vision? Like where does this go?
2:58:53
Because usually it's like more seats, >> you know, [laughter] more contracts, >> more products, margin expansion products.
2:59:02
How do how do you like you know and I'm sure you've just been learning about what particle is as you as you've built it but like has the vision like what what was kind of the founding vision? What is it today? How is it changed?
2:59:14
And kind of where where are you going?
2:59:16
Cuz I I've always I've like I've seen like your posts or like different press hits throughout the years and uh there was some really funny post about like have not having any uh not making any money that that uh that stuck with me.
2:59:31
But um uh and obviously just like you know joking about it or whatever but like yeah where where where did you start from and where are you going?
2:59:40
>> Yeah it's funny how many people took that post like very seriously.
2:59:42
It's like >> you can't joke on the internet anymore.
2:59:48
>> What was the exact What was the exact line? I I forget.
2:59:51
>> It was just like partful won't make money.
2:59:53
VCs gave us funding to help you party. Enjoy it babes. Something like that.
2:59:57
that. There all these like very theorist news articles of like participle said that VCs gave the party like isn't true >> that's kind of a if you guys aren't making money if you guys aren't making money it's kind of a systemic risk to the party to big party you know
3:00:12
>> yeah yeah [laughter] no we we will definitely we will definitely make money uh just not right now the the long-term vision is if you look at where most social apps have gone they've kind of turned into entertainment platforms right like when when I open Instagram I'm being fed a bunch of realels. I'm
3:00:27
I'm seeing less and less of my friends content.
3:00:31
Uh Tik Tok is obviously huge and it's also an entertainment platform.
3:00:36
And so when you really think about it, the content that we're consuming is more and more just like it can be Netflix, it can be YouTube, it can be reals, it can be shorts, it can be Tik Tok, but it's all just you're watching entertainment from people who you don't actually know.
3:00:50
And so what's gotten lost in that is like where do you go if you want to actually connect with your friends?
3:00:55
Where do you go if you want to meet more of the people who could be your friends?
3:00:59
Because less and less you you're discovering them online.
3:01:01
And so what we want to do is create the home for you to hang out with your friends, see them more easily, discover new things to do and new people to do them with.
3:01:10
And we think that as big social actually stops becoming social and starts becoming big new media, that big social deserves to exist.
3:01:23
And right now it's small social.
3:01:24
It's part of but the goal is be become big social.
3:01:27
>> That's Yeah, >> I love it. >> Yeah.
3:01:28
I mean, we were talking to Brian Chesky, you know, somewhat somewhat similar thesis and I' it's grown on me so much the barbell idea.
3:01:33
You're going to be there's going to be the internet slop feed.
3:01:37
There's going to be a lot of content and stuff, but then you're also going to want to touch grass and both can be true and you can kind of toggle back and forth.
3:01:43
Uh, what's the most underrated part that you've ever seen? Okay.
3:01:50
So, I they're they're somewhat rated.
3:01:54
It's not fully underrated, but I'm obsessed with the the performative contest.
3:01:59
So, there's like performative mail contest that's happening right now.
3:02:03
I saw in San Francisco there was like >> a performative reading contest. [laughter] >> Okay.
3:02:09
I think performative reading. >> Yeah. Yeah.
3:02:11
It's just like there's something really funny that's happening where >> online meme culture people are using particle to take that offline. >> Sure.
3:02:21
>> So they're taking like >> I know by the way I know I used to go to the same gym as a kid who like initially went viral for the performative reading in New York where he was reading like >> uh like like some >> infinite jast or something. >> It wasn't that.
3:02:35
It was like it was like a feminist feminist feminist text or something like that and he's like >> you know reading and people are like he's been reading the same page for like >> yeah [laughter] >> 30 minutes like what's going on and that [snorts] I'm sure that was part of what kicked off this this kind of thing. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
3:02:52
Or like group seven on TikTok like there's now like a group seven meet up I think this weekend in New York.
3:02:57
So, it's like the speed at which every single internet meme now has a real offline particle event that people are actually going to that's actually happening.
3:03:08
That's been pretty cool to watch.
3:03:10
>> Take us through the SF party culture. I'm hearing 996. It's getting crazier.
3:03:16
Everyone's working non-stop. Uh, is that bare?
3:03:20
Is that a bare signal for your business?
3:03:21
No one's going to be partying, right?
3:03:23
>> Are they just using it for like happy hour, come talk about SAS?
3:03:25
Oh, that could be a bold case. Break it down.
3:03:30
>> Uh, 996 [clears throat] culture is very concerning to the party community.
3:03:36
I'm here to declare a state of emergency in the SF party scene. >> We have to end it.
3:03:41
The [music] drinks happy hours are coming back.
3:03:43
It's okay to crack open a happy dad at 2 p. m.
3:03:45
Pass me [clears throat] that happy dad.
3:03:48
I'm going to crack that open right now.
3:03:51
Let's get the party started right now. >> Uh, yeah.
3:03:52
We do tech companies need to bring back boozy brunches during weekdays. Was that ever a thing?
3:03:57
Like what what's what's kind of the solution here?
3:04:01
>> How do we get >> Maybe that's what we should start using our VC dollars for >> the power lunch. Power lunch. >> Yeah. Yeah.
3:04:08
>> Funding everyone's boozy boozy lunches and booy dinners.
3:04:11
>> I mean that kind of that was kind of the joke in 2021.
3:04:12
And it was like there was like I you know people used to joke 30% of all dollar venture dollars go to Meta and then in 2021 it felt like 30% of VC dollars were going to like founder dinners like it was just a founder you could basically eat for free as a founder by just going to a different founder dinner every night with with a with a fintech.
3:04:33
Um >> okay >> but I I I want to keep going.
3:04:35
I know we're way over time, but uh I want you to synthesize something you've been thinking about.
3:04:42
Uh this this idea of like ragebait marketing being not effective long term.
3:04:48
Synthesize that with some I feel like particle has done a little bit of it, but you haven't like crossed any line.
3:04:53
So it's always like worked out.
3:04:55
Like even that even that example you gave of like, oh, we're spending all our VC's money.
3:04:58
That's kind of rage bait marketing, but it never it never bubbled up to the point where people were like, oh, you don't have a sense of humor.
3:05:06
creates that creates goodwill.
3:05:09
>> I've always loved the partful brand.
3:05:10
>> The VCs are financing this party like and for the user that's cool. >> Yeah.
3:05:16
>> But but um there's that's that's quite that's quite different than like the memes that were >> going around earlier this year, people being like I used VC dollars to buy this Lambo. >> Oh yeah. And myself. Yeah.
3:05:27
How how do you think about like rage bait where the line is on your brand?
3:05:30
Obviously you came on a show that's I don't know mostly a joke but somewhat serious dressed up like you have fun but then there is the line.
3:05:39
How do you think about that?
3:05:41
>> We there's a little bit that I think you kind of have to acknowledge it like if a company's pre-revenue like you know there's clearly VC funding that's that's backing it.
3:05:50
So you can't not talk about that, right?
3:05:52
And I'm a beneficiary of VCs funding a lot of free Ubers in my peak partying era.
3:05:58
So, I have a responsibility to pay it forward to the next generation. >> Yeah.
3:06:04
>> But I I think like we're here to make people happy.
3:06:06
That's the entire purpose of the company.
3:06:09
We're not here to make people angry.
3:06:10
And so there's only so much rage baiting that like we at Particle can do that's authentic because it's like no, the rest of the internet makes people angry and we're like the one thing that's trying to not do that.
3:06:22
So I think that's part of why we tow the line.
3:06:23
It's just not as authentic to us if like you know the Twitter mobs are up in arms.
3:06:27
in arms. There's also John you were writing about the come for come for the tool stay for the network Dixon piece is like a perfect example but a stronger like I think a stronger example than >> come for the tool stay for the network John Kugan Chris Dixon [laughter] Chris
3:06:45
uh last question uh I and we we have to have you back on and go way deeper but um >> I'm super interested it seems like part has complete and total domination over like tech culture in terms of like if there's a party that's happening in SF tech like you found your beach head, you've landed, you've dominated. Uh how
3:07:01
Uh how much time are you spending hunting around to find like these crazy adjacent markets for okay there's someone who collects some odd object in the Midwest and like you just dominate in Milwaukee now because like your vital >> dominant is partful because I don't >> Yeah, >> it's grown. It's grown a lot.
3:07:21
So, we've never had boots on the ground in a market like DC or Boston or Chicago. And those are all huge. >> Huge now. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah.
3:07:32
Uh we're growing like crazy in London.
3:07:34
We do have boots on the ground there.
3:07:36
Uh but >> it's all just web flywheel stuff, right? >> Yeah. Yeah.
3:07:41
Just, you know, network effects. >> Yeah.
3:07:44
Just good oldfashioned viral growth.
3:07:47
>> Hit the gong for network effects. >> Let's hit the gong. >> Great hit.
3:07:53
All right, this was super fun.
3:07:54
Uh, thank you for taking uh 15 minutes out of your out of your uh Super Bowl to come on.
3:08:00
Hopefully no uh crises later today cuz the people are depending on it.
3:08:05
And uh I'm excited for you to become a big social media.
3:08:11
>> Yes, we're very excited for you. >> Thank you so much. We'll talk to you soon. Happy >> to see you. Talk soon.
3:08:16
>> Our next guest has been in the reach waiting room for far too long.
3:08:18
uh Shashir Meturora from Superhum, formerly Grammarly.
3:08:24
We're going to break down [music] the uh the rebrand.
3:08:30
>> We had him on when uh they acquired Superhum. >> Yes. Welcome to the stream.
3:08:33
Doing >> congratulations on the next iteration.
3:08:38
We pressed you about this.
3:08:38
We asked you, is there going to be a rebrand?
3:08:40
And you were like nothing to announce. I think you did.
3:08:43
Yeah, I think you [laughter] did. >> But congratulations. It's done.
3:08:45
And it happened really fast actually.
3:08:46
Uh many corporations would take its way. Take a year. I know I I don't know. It feels fast to me.
3:08:53
Uh but anyway, how's it going?
3:08:55
What are the key changes? What's the thesis?
3:08:56
Why' you go with Superhum and not Grammarly as the as the key hero brand?
3:09:02
>> Yeah, that's uh that's great.
3:09:02
Yeah, I I we did talk about it a few months back when we bought Superhum.
3:09:06
Um the big there there's two big changes we made.
3:09:10
Uh we changed the name of the corporate entity to be superhuman instead of Grammarly.
3:09:14
Um it's a little bit like the Google Alphabet transition.
3:09:17
There's still Grammarly is still an important brand uh in our portfolio of products.
3:09:23
Uh we now have four products under the superhuman brand.
3:09:25
It's Grammarly, it's KOD, it's male which you used to know as superhuman before.
3:09:29
Uh and the other big announcement is we added a fourth new product we call go superhuman go.
3:09:34
Uh which brings a uh new AI assistant product takes the best parts of Grammarly and makes it a platform. >> Okay.
3:09:43
Hey, wait, explain that more to me because um >> okay, one one before we jump into that, I will say >> superhuman is a perfect name for a suite of AI enabled apps at a time when >> a lot of humans, especially even I would say more so outside of the tech bubble >> are like worried about being obsolete in an age of AI.
3:10:04
And so this kind of ethos of like let's give people superpowers very strong. Makes a lot of sense. >> Exactly. Ex you nailed it.
3:10:10
That's why we picked the name. I had two tests.
3:10:12
One was it need to be broad enough for the sweet first thing you said and the second one was actually the word human is more important than the word super.
3:10:20
And it's actually part of the Grammarly DNA because Grammarly has always been about empowerment of humans.
3:10:23
You still, you know, we help you assist you in your writing task, but you still at the end of the day submit the the article, you you submit the essay, you write the email.
3:10:33
Uh we're just helping you be more human.
3:10:36
So I love the concept of uh uh superhuman that way. >> Okay.
3:10:41
So uh walk me through the actual instantiation of the product.
3:10:43
I understand Grammarly is you know like a widget.
3:10:49
>> Yeah, let's maybe talk about superhuman go the new product because that's what I have no context on. >> Yes, please. >> Right. Right. >> Yeah.
3:10:56
And actually we teased it we teased that a little bit last time I was here too and the the core idea is a a simple reframe of Grammarly.
3:11:01
Uh so superhuman go uh takes the core underlying technology layer of Grammarly and opens it up as a platform.
3:11:09
So most people think about Grammarly as a grammar assistant and that that is a big piece of what it does but underneath it is a layer that allows you to bring AI to a proactive embedded experience in every tool you use.
3:11:21
Grammarly works in about a million different web apps, desktop apps and mobile applications.
3:11:25
Uh and now you can run any agent not just your writing assistant on top of that platform embedded connected and personal.
3:11:35
How do you think about the the wars at the various layers of the stack? There's a war.
3:11:41
>> They're fighting all of them.
3:11:42
>> I mean, there's an AI assistant in basically every web app now.
3:11:44
Like, if I go into Gmail, it's ask me to use Gemini.
3:11:48
And then at the browser layer, there's Atlas versus, you know, the what Perplexes got built on.
3:11:56
>> And then there's also the the the OS layer.
3:11:58
So, I was reflecting the other day on on Gmail was trying to get me to use Gemini.
3:12:01
Uh Chad was asking me was was asking me to use Atlas and then Apple was trying to get me to use Apple intelligence and it's three helpful AI assistants all in just you want to summarize this email. >> Yeah.
3:12:13
So you said the key word that you said ask. Yeah.
3:12:15
>> Uh so actually interestingly my frame for if you took all those AI providers and you put them into buckets. Yeah.
3:12:20
I call it the assist players, the chat players and the do players.
3:12:24
So the chat players that's that's what you're referring to.
3:12:27
There's a chatbot everywhere.
3:12:29
Chat GPT is obviously synonymous with that category and there's now dozens of them.
3:12:33
Uh those all ask you to go chat with a virtual human assistant.
3:12:37
There's a set of folks working on what we call do which is I want an AI agent that can go do things on my behalf as headless tasks.
3:12:43
Y and you know I think the most popular one right now or the one people are talking a lot about is all the ones in the coding space.
3:12:50
You know the anthropic team said 39% of their queries are for headless agentic tests and being used for developers writing code.
3:12:57
But at the bottom of that stack is another category we call assist.
3:13:00
And that's the category where we bring AI to you.
3:13:03
So I'll give you I'll give you one fun stat.
3:13:05
We do about a 100red billion LLM calls a week.
3:13:10
>> It would make us a top AI provider bas based on uh um uh any anybody's volume.
3:13:16
But we do that across about 40 million users, which if you do the quick math on that, that's about uh that's a few thousand AI calls a day per person.
3:13:22
So, if you're a really really good Gemini user or you're a really good Tach user, maybe use it a dozen times. >> Yep. >> We do it. >> Yeah.
3:13:31
Every time you press a key, every time you load a new doc, load a new app, we proactively bring AI to you and we're figuring out all the places we can invisibly insert AI uh so it can assist you right where you're working.
3:13:44
>> Yeah, that makes sense.
3:13:45
>> Uh will you any any plans to get into the browser game or are you going to let people duke it out there?
3:13:50
>> Yeah, >> that's not our plan.
3:13:51
And I mean, I think I think we work our strength is that we work everywhere.
3:13:54
By the way, I should say I'm so excited that there is a browser game.
3:13:57
I remember when I was at I was at Microsoft when Chrome came out and I worked at Google for a long time and I watched I watched that happen and then it just felt like it went away for a long time.
3:14:06
So, it's pretty exciting actually that there's some competition in browsers.
3:14:09
But we work wherever you work.
3:14:11
We work in browsers, we work in the desktop, we work on your mobile phones.
3:14:14
Um, to be honest, some fragmentation in the browser world is probably good for us.
3:14:18
I mean, it makes it even more valuable to have an assistant that follows you everywhere, and that's the core of the technology we built anyways.
3:14:25
But, uh, you know, I I I don't see us in that game, but I I'm I'm very curious to watch it. >> Fantastic. >> Makes a lot of sense.
3:14:32
>> Uh, well, congratulations on the, uh, all the progress.
3:14:35
>> You dressing up for Halloween later?
3:14:37
>> I Well, I am I am dressed up. I'm the superhuman CEO. >> Yeah, there we go. Nailed it.
3:14:39
[laughter] It's fantastic.
3:14:42
>> That's the most locked in costume.
3:14:44
>> That is incredibly locked in costume.
3:14:46
>> I love He's super superman himself, I'd say. >> Yeah.
3:14:49
Uh, thank you so much for coming on the show and congratulations.
3:14:52
>> Great to get the update. Love the new name.
3:14:54
>> We'll talk to you soon. >> Cheers.
3:14:56
>> Uh, if you have a new name, you need to get on adquick. com.
3:14:58
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3:15:02
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3:15:22
>> Our next guest uh is dressed up as the co-founder and CEO of Linear. I can't wait to talk. Come on in. >> Great to see you. >> Great to see you. >> Well, great.
3:15:35
Thanks for having me again.
3:15:37
And yeah, like um my plan was the same as everyone else's.
3:15:39
I could have dressed up like you guys, but Yeah, >> I I saw it's already done, so I thought like, well, I'll just do a different thing and not dress up. >> No, you're locked in. Locked in. CEO of linear.
3:15:51
>> Uh you you could uh you could plan to like if you grew out the hair on the sides, I bet by next year you could do a pretty good impression of of one of us without even hat >> a pure play. Um great to see you.
3:16:02
I think did we overlap almost at Were you at the GitHub Universe on Tuesday? No, I wasn't there.
3:16:11
But yeah, that that's why I couldn't join.
3:16:12
But um but yeah, we can we can talk about that or or something else. >> Yeah. Yeah.
3:16:17
I mean, we talked we we we got a good whirlwind tour of what uh Microsoft's doing.
3:16:22
Obviously, Sace was taking a victory lap on the OpenAI deal.
3:16:26
Uh and we talked to the Codeex team over at OpenAI.
3:16:28
We also uh talked to some GitHub folks.
3:16:30
And I think I think the general uh shape of software development in 2025 is becoming clear.
3:16:36
there that you have asynchronous agents that you can fire off.
3:16:41
You're doing code review.
3:16:43
You also have a tab completion model, an IDE that's getting smarter every month.
3:16:48
But uh I'd really love to hear how you see linear uh evolving in that context and how and what I mean you can think about linear as delegating different tasks.
3:16:58
How do you delegate when you have uh super long running agents?
3:17:00
We were talking to the codeex team.
3:17:02
What do you say something ran for 60 hours?
3:17:03
It's like that's something you need linear to manage at this point.
3:17:07
I mean, so but t take me through how you're seeing folks uh change their use of linear and what you're doing with the product. >> Yeah.
3:17:15
Um what one of the things I've been thinking about is that like a lot of like linear was was founded before all this like AI things have started happening more and as well as like I think like most companies out there today have like even like large companies they started before this this was happening.
3:17:31
So I think we're all in this journey of >> kind of like an evolution of like how do we do these things?
3:17:37
So like what are the workflows, what needs to change and like what doesn't change.
3:17:41
I've been like thinking about like the whole kind of um writing example.
3:17:45
So like we used to write on paper like we write documents on paper then we moved to typewriters then we moved to like online like uh text processing on our computers and then we went to like online writing.
3:17:56
The writing is still it's like you have a piece of paper on the screen.
3:17:59
you're still doing the writing activity and and then now like okay like the AI can also do some of the writing activities but it's kind of like a lot of the tooling changed around that activity or that concept or that need but the activity itself didn't change.
3:18:14
So like we still have like documents and papers as an idea because it's useful.
3:18:18
idea because it's useful. So I see the like kind of like the chains on the software industry similar that like the AI doesn't mean that we we will just throw everything out of the window like there's no longer like any of these IDs or workflows or something but it's more
3:18:34
like we have to kind of like go piece by piece like does this still make sense okay does make sense let's do that and then like does this have to change okay it does has to change or it would be better if it changes so so I think like our thinking um with that has been that like we want to help companies move to that direction as well. So we do have
3:18:53
that direction as well. So we do have the for example the agents um platform where also GitHub copilot now um integrated with so you can delegate tasks directly to the GitHub copilot and it can work on the background you can
3:19:09
>> you can then like come back to see like what the results are and and review the code um agents >> yeah is there any world where the ability to delegate to agents enables more non-technical people it gives more non-technical people a reason to have a seat on linear. >> Yeah, I think like it it's something
3:19:28
>> Yeah, I think like it it's something like we're definitely like seeing today and I think like it's one of the the values we can give to value we can give to organization.
3:19:35
So >> yeah, >> like IDEIDes and technical tools are are used by engineers >> but like what we even see in our company now is like designers are making fixes with the agents.
3:19:47
with the agents. um when they see something like oh this is like a little bit off I can like properly instruct the agents like find this in the codebase do a do like a version of this and you can also like in our case you can preview the result through linear so you can
3:20:04
actually see like oh this is how it is and and test it um so I think it's like it gives like a nice loop for a non-technical person to sometimes just like fix things when they see something and it you don't always have to like assign I need to engineer. >> How do you think about like project
3:20:19
>> How do you think about like project management software broadly evolving?
3:20:24
Like do you expect to are you guys experimenting with any new paradigms?
3:20:28
Like agents are great in that right now we even call them like humanlike names oftent times, right?
3:20:34
Everyone has their uh you know uh like uh sometimes it's a girl name, sometimes it's a guy name.
3:20:40
Uh and like the way that we're using them today is very much like a teammate.
3:20:44
that might suggest that we're not going to see a bunch of new UI paradigms, but are you and the team kind of like what doesn't get shipped that you guys are kind of playing with uh you know behind the scenes?
3:20:58
>> Yeah, I think like I I like to think about there's like two areas.
3:20:59
One is the organizational workflow.
3:21:02
organizational workflow. So like that goes goes everything from like what linear really offers is like coordination and priorization and communication and visibility to the organization like this is the this is the direction we're going and this is how it's going and these are the people
3:21:17
working on those things and so I think like with AI we can we we are looking for those like problems and like what can we actually fix there or like improve there with the AI and then I think the other area is the the individual engineering workflow like where does that change? So I think like
3:21:33
So I think like there is definitely like something we're thinking about that do the issues still make sense?
3:21:39
Do pull requests still make sense as a concept when you are like more like working with the with AI to to develop something.
3:21:48
I do think like there is still need for reporting things like bugs and like even and or like capturing issues having discussions around it.
3:21:56
So I don't think like everything is going to change that.
3:22:01
I think like a lot of times what really help companies with is like some kind of direction and some kind of um kind of like a guidance to their teams like here's here's like a system for you to operate in and these are the pieces and this is the goals and then you let them like do their work.
3:22:18
So I I at least like to say that it's it's not like we I don't when we think about the SAS future or like SAS products, it's it's more about the making them more proactive or selfdriving like we like to say like self-driving SAS is that we we're not yet at the stage of like um like with transportation like we still need cars because we don't have teleports.
3:22:44
So we need to now like we're at the stage of like let's make those cars self-driving and so I think like when it comes to software products I think we are also there that I don't think we are at the stage yet and maybe not for a long time that we no no longer need no software products but I think like they could be much more proactive and driving things on their own on the background without you [clears throat] interacting at all.
3:23:10
So the idea would be that bugs just fix themselves.
3:23:13
So like when bugs get reported, someone like the AI will fix it and you don't even have to see it.
3:23:20
Um I think there still needs to >> eventually I'm I'm excited for the future when teams can just go into linear and just watch a bunch of work happening.
3:23:29
There's, [laughter] you know, it's an agent, an agent finds a bug, another agent solves it, an agent has an idea for a feature or user gives an idea, the agent ships it.
3:23:36
It's, you know, the fully autonomous future is wild.
3:23:40
Um, I was uh I I wrote a post, maybe it was couple weeks ago at this point or last week about the uninspired company of Silicon Valley and and how I mentioned at one point that uh companies I'm sure now like so many companies have copied linear.
3:23:58
I'm sure there's companies now that copy linear without even knowing like the origin of design language.
3:24:05
They're just like, "Oh, this is just the way that design looks."
3:24:08
>> So, I was wondering like your philosophy on like you guys get a lot of credit for kind of like creating an entire way, you know, feeling for software and design language and all these different, you know, UI elements.
3:24:21
Do you ever have a uh desire to like rein like like reinvent the next paradigm and and kind of ship something that would you know create create an entirely new you know version of the software that would completely reskin it or >> entirely skumorphic.
3:24:37
It's all just like wooden blocks and grass simulation. >> Yeah.
3:24:44
Or or do you just continue to own it and be the godfather of modern whatsoever software as a service?
3:24:48
random fonts everywhere, random colors everywhere.
3:24:54
>> I I think I I we definitely think about that like especially on the website side that like well what is the next thing we can do since like everyone is kind of like doing this thing we're doing.
3:25:04
>> So I think there's definitely that need but I think we in the end like we we try to be functional or pragmatic about the design that it still should serve the purpose.
3:25:13
I believe the old like design quote of um the form follows function.
3:25:20
So it's like you you're not like like with with productivity tools or other tools.
3:25:24
I don't think like the point is to to be an artist or something like you're not trying to like invent something crazy things just for the sake of it.
3:25:33
I think it needs to be like to the purpose or the function of the tool.
3:25:38
And then like around that like there's always like you can like try to figure out what what needs to what could be better or like maybe you can go against some convention when you when you have that reason.
3:25:47
So I mean we're always looking for those opportunities and I think for us like part of the like the mission of the company is to accelerate and inspire builders.
3:25:56
So we we also do in a way like that we're accomplishing the mission of inspiring a lot of different companies on how to design or like focus on the craft or quality.
3:26:05
So that's that's kind of like personally >> what I also wanted to do that could we like shift this industry a little bit more into the like we can do nice things and it doesn't always have to be just like what metric goes up or down and like or or some some other reasons. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
3:26:22
made the world a more a more beautiful place. >> I love it.
3:26:27
It's uh it's a good time.
3:26:27
Uh thank you so much for coming on the show.
3:26:32
Thank you so much for taking the time on Friday.
3:26:35
>> Next time you're passing through uh by the Ultra in person, >> we love to hang.
3:26:39
>> Ideally on a day when we're not dressed up like ghouls, >> like couple of characters >> can be a little bit more serious.
3:26:44
Uh but thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us and thank you for supporting the show this entire year. It's been very helpful. one of the very first.
3:26:52
>> We've had a lot of fun and everyone in the chat is uh celebrating Linear.
3:26:54
Uh Connor says he just onboarded his business onto Linear today, like 20 minutes ago. Let's hear it for that.
3:27:03
John actually says Linear is TVPN royalty. That's right.
3:27:07
>> So awesome to see Ki in the Ultra Dome.
3:27:10
Uh thank you for coming by.
3:27:10
We will talk to you soon. Have a great time. We'll talk soon. Have a great weekend. >> Goodbye. >> Cheers.
3:27:17
Um, there's one scoop I want to talk about.
3:27:20
Katie Roof uh is confirming a scoop from TechMe um that Axios is dropping Human Interest, a 401k platform for small and medium businesses that aims to cut down on administrative work.
3:27:33
Raised $und00 million at a $3 billion post money valuation.
3:27:35
This is a leak, but I know the CEO of Human Interest. He's a good buddy.
3:27:39
And so I just want to say congrats to Human Interest because uh it's very cool.
3:27:43
And uh Elon has a new pod up on Allin >> and on Roen >> and Rogan. >> He's on a press tour. He's on a press tour. We got to get him.
3:27:51
Maybe this is the time to strike.
3:27:52
Maybe we can get him on TVPN next week.
3:27:58
>> The team seems to like the idea. We'll work on it.
3:28:00
Uh thank you guys for hanging out with us on uh on such a crazy day.
3:28:05
Uh it's going to be hard to We were while we were putting this on, we were talking about how do we one up this next year? >> Yeah. What could possibly be?
3:28:14
>> Let us know in the chat.
3:28:15
>> Uh, as iconic as these two types, >> maybe Elon and Joe Rogan. That would be good.
3:28:20
I think I think throwing in a Rogan is a good one.
3:28:24
>> You as you as Rogan, even though you're 14 in maybe 14 inches taller than Rogan. >> Yeah. Yeah.
3:28:30
I I could see I could see a Rogan.
3:28:32
We could do Rogan and Alex Freriedman. That could work.
3:28:33
Maybe we could do a >> Alex would be the experts.
3:28:39
>> Yeah, the experts is good.
3:28:39
like as other podcasters kind of hits.
3:28:41
We could do a David Senra.
3:28:43
We could both be David Cedra.
3:28:44
[laughter] >> How about that?
3:28:46
>> David Senra by David Senra.
3:28:47
>> Yes, we could both be David Senra.
3:28:49
>> An executive produced by >> that'd be a lot of fun.
3:28:52
>> Uh I think your mustache is actually falling off your face.
3:28:55
>> I feel this weird thing where it feels like I'm sweating underneath everything. Yeah.
3:29:01
>> But I but it's I I've had this like scratch up here by this like fake vein and uh I'm not able to itch it.
3:29:07
And so I'm looking forward to taking this off. I won't be. >> This is so trippy.
3:29:13
>> A lot of people are asking, are you gonna am I going to go home and trickor treat with the kids like this?
3:29:16
And no, I do not want to traumatize my young children.
3:29:22
>> Yeah, >> I will be dressing up as something else.
3:29:25
But thank you for uh tuning in with us today.
3:29:27
Have a wonderful >> Thank you to the team that helped us pull this off.
3:29:29
This was a very special, funny thing.
3:29:31
I never thought we'd be doing this, but that's the nature of this show.
3:29:33
And so thank you for everyone that supports us.
3:29:35
Leave us five stars on Apple.
3:29:38
Have a wonderful evening and weekend. Be safe.
3:29:41
We will see you back here on Monday.
3:29:43
>> We'll talk to you soon. >> Can't wait. >> Goodbye. >> Cheers.