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party clearing order inbound. >> Let's just roll.
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I see multiple journalists on the horizon. Stand by. UAV online. >> Blaze. [music] >> Double blaze. Triple blaze. [music] Double kill. Five. Cop is team deathmatch. We are experts. Triple blades.
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That's [music] just wrong. Right.
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>> Activate golden retriever mode.
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[music] >> Market clearing order inbound. Five good.
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I see more and more journalists on the horizon. Stand by. You're watching TVP. Why am I so zoomed out?
4:39
>> Look at this little guy over here.
4:40
[laughter] Look at this little guy over here.
4:43
>> Oh, we got a little guy over here. >> There we go.
4:44
Zoom in dramatically while I tell you that we are live from the TVN Ultra, the Temple of Technology.
4:51
>> John is not actually 6'8. He is 48.
4:55
>> Apparently, I'm a little guy. But you know who's not? Ramp.
4:57
Let [applause] me tell you about ramp. Time is money. Say both.
5:01
You use corporate cards, bill pay, accounting, and a whole lot more. All in one place. Midjourney. Why?
5:08
Midjourney pivoted to medical machines. It's not a pivot.
5:10
[applause] It's an expansion.
5:11
It's a It's a second act, a third act for David Holes.
5:13
Uh, fantastic entrepreneur, extremely inspiring entrepreneur.
5:18
Maybe we should give some background on David.
5:22
>> Should we talk about the show today first? >> Yeah, please.
5:23
because this is the first time that Derek Thompson and Jake Paul have been on the same podcast.
5:30
And I want to just take I want to [applause and cheering] take a moment to just appreciate that because a lot of people said it would never happen.
5:37
They said it was impossible that they were just going all over the place today.
5:42
>> Two different worlds, but we're bringing them together.
5:44
Derek Thompson's uh kicking off our guest lineup today at 11:30. Yeah.
5:49
>> Uh >> you don't uh you don't need an introduction.
5:51
In there we have Renee Hos from ARM CEO >> also on the board of SoftBank >> and then we'll be closing it out with David Senra and Jake Paul the end of the show >> in live in the TV pin ultra.
6:04
Uh anyway uh yesterday Midjourney announced [clears throat] a new division of the company an expansion not a pivot uh called Midjourney Medical.
6:14
Uh we'll watch the video we'll go through the MidJourney scanner.
6:18
Tyler was actually at the launch event.
6:20
Has some news to break it down.
6:22
But, uh, first let's kick it off with the history of David Holes because it's fascinating.
6:25
Um, grew up in Florida, son of a dentist.
6:28
He's he's not the dog walker.
6:31
He's on team dentist over there. Son of a dentist.
6:35
>> We have a son of a dentist.
6:36
>> Son of a dentist on our team.
6:36
Um, and uh, played video games. >> Dentistam. Dentist sun. >> Dentist sun cam. >> Look at those teeth. >> Oh, wow. >> Wow. >> Wow. Nepo teeth. Nepo teeth. >> He's got Nepo teeth. >> Go back. Go back. Cut back. Big smile. Big smile. There we go. The neo teeth. That's crazy. That's crazy. >> That's crazy. >> Wow.
6:57
[laughter] >> Your your father really shaved his back.
7:00
>> Born on third base with the teeth wise. It's crazy over there.
7:03
Uh anyway, uh played video games as a kid obviously, but starts hacking them.
7:08
Learns a little bit about computers. Super intelligent. Uh PhD in math track.
7:13
I don't think he graduated or finished the PhD, but I mean, you know, at that level of engineering, he turned down he turned down the PhD to go work at NASA, I think. So, he's at NASA.
7:23
Uh eventually branches into entrepreneurship, starts Leap Motion.
7:27
Um pretty traditional venture-back startup, raised money, I think Founders Fund, uh was in at least one of the rounds.
7:33
Uh but it was a grind by all accounts.
7:36
And so, the first product bought brought handtracking to VR.
7:40
Uh we should pull up a video of the original Leap Motion because uh there's some cool demos and you can see how it worked.
7:47
Uh and it's not actually that crazy to think about what we're going to talk about today with the midjourney medical scanner if you know the history of Leap Motion and some of the some of the technology that was employed there. Yes.
8:01
This is a different different use case, different uh product very much bigger but in terms of sensing, detecting, mapping using algorithms. Yeah.
8:11
And so, uh, when David was talking about like the backstory, uh, he was kind of going through like some of the the technicalities of how the Leap Motion worked, it was incredible because he was like, I mean, this is early 201s and he's using like these deep neural nets.
8:23
He said it was a mixture of experts model.
8:25
It was like incredibly far ahead of the curve just on like deep learning and then >> it's just like on this kind of like weird like side project.
8:32
It's like doing hand motion.
8:35
>> Everyone thought VR was going to take off.
8:37
There was so much energy around Oculus and the dev community.
8:38
Um, but it was a tough it was a it was a very tough business.
8:43
A lot of hardware challenges, much less mature supply chain, everything's expensive.
8:47
Um, and uh there's all these complex market dynamics with other big companies. Meta bought Oculus.
8:54
Apple was investing heavily.
8:56
Eventually, Apple actually tried to buy David's first company, uh, Leap Motion.
9:01
Um, but the deal fell through at the 11th hour.
9:03
I think it actually happened twice.
9:05
There was a reporting that like Apple had printed welcome packets to all of the Leap Motion employees being like you're getting onboarded today and then the deal fell through which is crazy.
9:13
You don't see that normally. >> David turned it down. >> He turned it down.
9:17
There are there is some crazy reporting about like getting in and basically being like ah this is too corporate or like this is not the vibe.
9:24
We're not going to be successful here.
9:25
Um but uh you know one day he'll tell the story but um it was really rough for the company. They had to do layoffs.
9:31
Uh but they kept building and they sold devices to hackers. Yeah. Look at this. the the Leap Motion. This is Yeah. Play Fruit Ninja.
9:37
Now, a lot of this stuff can be done with cameras and handtracking.
9:40
And the handtracking on the modern VR device is pretty good just from the headset.
9:44
Handtracking in Apple Vision Pro, my favorite device, is uh fantastic.
9:49
But at the time, you needed a third party device.
9:51
So, you had C can you scroll the video down to show the actual device a little bit? Yeah.
9:55
This little like it looks like a stick of gum.
9:59
very small, very neat, uh, very cool, but ultimately uh, very much a dev kit.
10:04
Never never got to, you know, mass consumer adoption like an aura ring or a whoop band or anything like that.
10:09
It was not must have for, you know, the average gamer, the average consumer, the average technologist.
10:14
Um, so, uh, after about a decade, David was able to take a step back and start hacking on the next thing.
10:20
AI image generation, you know, midjourney, obviously huge viral success, broke a lot of the traditional rules.
10:26
So no venture funding, no front end, no website, no no app.
10:28
Like really they they I mean now they have a front end and and stuff, but uh years went by where it was just a discord.
10:37
Everything was in in a discord and they scaled that discord to millions of members so huge that the company Discord I think it was the biggest the midjourney discord was the biggest discord for a while.
10:47
They had to scale their systems at that company.
10:50
But you're doing all this like offbalance sheet R&D basically and on day one you just get a fantastic mobile app for every touch >> social experience.
10:58
>> Social experience that was the second thing.
11:00
So >> yeah because there was so much this was the er like prompt engineering era right where have their favorite prompts. Yep.
11:08
>> It really helped kind of uh cultivate >> it was multiplayer on day one. >> Yeah.
11:12
And so David has this quote I I think it's from him saying like if you show someone a blank box and you tell them, "Hey, this is a magical AI machine that can generate you a picture of anything, people will just type in dog and they'll get a picture of a dog and they would get the same picture if they just went to Google images."
11:27
That's not what AI is actually interesting at.
11:29
It's the it's the uh astronaut riding a horse on the moon.
11:34
The thing that that picture doesn't exist already.
11:35
Uh, so it's you flying a F-16 in your hometown and like personalizing and doing something that would typically take a very large CGI budget or or some sort of uh, you know, Photoshop master to actually whip up or collage together.
11:51
Uh, you could do that with just one prompt.
11:53
And so the multiplayer nature of MidJourney, when I jump into the MidJourney Discord, the first thing I see is your crazy prompt.
12:00
you're 12 levels deep, prompt injecting, thinking of different keywords, doing different SRFs for style references, doing all these different tweaks, and then I can just see, oh, he he used this model and he specified the these dimensions, and he's getting really good results.
12:14
So, I'll take that, but I in I don't want to make it about uh I want to make my images about a dog.
12:18
You're a mosquito guy, so you're going to make them about mosquitoes, right?
12:21
Um and and you can take my prompt and just sort of remix it.
12:25
And so >> some of the mosquito propaganda prompts I had back in those days were crazy.
12:31
Actually, I never ended up sharing them.
12:33
They were simply too good.
12:34
>> Yeah, you well, you lost the you lost the war and the mosquitoes going away whether you like it or not.
12:37
Google is is focused entirely on killing mosquitoes apparently.
12:41
Uh anyway, uh by generating four candidate images for each prompt, MidJourney got a bunch of really valuable data on what a correct image looked like for a specific prompt.
12:50
This was another sort of midjourney innovation.
12:53
I don't know if they were the first ones to do this, but it was really key to the midjourney flow.
12:56
It would gen you instead of generating you an HD image, it would generate you four low res images and you'd be like, "Ah, that's that has the right vibe, that has the right style, that has the right layout."
13:07
And then it would get that feedback and be able to uh to iterate at the same time.
13:11
Stable diffusion had some really good results, but it ran locally.
13:14
It was open source, and so they weren't having the data flywheel like MIP Journey was.
13:18
And so there were a lot of really positive things there.
13:20
Now every company has a data flywheel and can can iterate on that but it was an important innovation.
13:26
Uh the company still that we know of hasn't take venture funding.
13:28
So I think David Holes owns most if not all of the company.
13:32
Um and after the big meta deal to Vower Vibes um there's clearly enough cash flow to fund other projects.
13:40
David's actually been talking about this for years.
13:41
this idea of a medical uh device, >> the met the metad deal, I don't think any specifics were ever released, but I think it's safe to assume it was in the hundreds of millions, >> hundreds of billions, trillions potentially.
13:54
>> Potentially potentially, but but enough to be able to take some really, really, really big swings >> and be able to have a balance sheet like a heavily funded >> Yeah. >> private company. >> Yeah. So, it's really cool.
14:06
I was I was hoping for a VR headset.
14:08
Honestly, I [laughter] really wanted a VR headset.
14:12
>> I mean, this is just one of the hardware projects, right?
14:14
He says like I I think there were like eight little uh you know, images thing.
14:18
So So there's there's a bunch more hardware >> because after the Apple Vision Pro launch, uh I think he put out some sort of review being like, "Ah, we're going to have to do it ourselves," which I love.
14:29
Anyway, let's play let's play the MidJourney launch video for MidJourney Medical and see uh what's going on here in this two-minute video.
14:37
While we pull that up, I'll tell you about Cisco.
14:40
Critical infrastructure for the AI era.
14:43
Unlock seamless real-time experiences and new value with Cisco. The goats.
14:50
The goat is still on screen.
14:50
The goat is in our stream, not in the mid dream.
14:59
Did the aesthetics of this video carry through to the actual event experience?
15:03
I only saw a few photos, but did did the event have a nice uh vibe to it?
15:08
>> Yeah, it was very cool.
15:08
They had similar like warm lighting everywhere.
15:09
They had like a kind of fake versions of of the real machine.
15:14
It's like way too big obviously to move around, but they had the these kind of big tubes that like resembled it.
15:18
Then they had a smaller version you could put your hand in. I did it in my hand. >> Interesting. >> Are you healthy? Is your hand healthy?
15:27
We need you coating at all times prompting.
15:29
Uh I think it I it's hard cuz that was like a a small like demo version so the resolution was lower but uh someone else said that uh they figured out that they had some like wrist thing because of boxing carpal tunnel. >> Yeah.
15:42
They they found some issue with >> you can just use an if statement for that >> in real time. >> Yeah.
15:46
>> If if San Franciscan then yes carpal tunnel. >> Very cool vibes.
15:54
I've always said this about midjourney that I think when you like people debate is AI art art or whatever.
16:02
I always think of midjourney as a David holds art experience and I feel like you as the prompter are merely the the uh the museum goer in the museum of David and he is the one who is creating and the midjourney team is the curator.
16:21
They're the artists and you are experiencing the art through the prompts, but the decisions and the taste comes from David.
16:28
[music] And so our midjourney images tasteful. I think they have taste.
16:31
I think they have David's taste.
16:33
And then there's the opportunity for a user to put a little bit more on top.
16:36
But by default, I think the reason midjourney has been successful is because it's so opinionated and it's not trying to just be a stock photo generator. >> Yeah.
16:45
Even this video was fully filmed by David.
16:47
Like he was like the one holding the camera. >> That's cool. Yeah. Love this guy. It's amazing.
16:53
>> It makes me a little bit emotional. It's so cool. >> Yeah.
16:56
>> It makes me feel like we're finally living in the future.
16:59
>> No one No one >> No one making this kind of device has ever >> been as cool as David Hull. >> True. >> Straight up.
17:10
>> Uh >> I'm willing to I'm willing to state that as a fact. It's just true.
17:12
Like [clears throat] this is not the first medical device. Yes.
17:18
product that we >> but the medical device industry does not have aura. >> Yeah. >> They have no motion.
17:23
>> He's bringing motion and aura >> to medical to the medical device >> field >> category. >> Yes.
17:30
>> He's inventing he's inventing medical devices. >> Yeah.
17:32
It's notable uh Daniel in the chat is saying how does this affect the portable MRI YC company that we had on Tuesday >> that is uh now competing with David Holes. >> David Holes.
17:48
>> Um, no, huge category.
17:48
I I think that David is going a different path.
17:51
Uh, I think a lot of people are going to want to get these scans >> because it is a >> beautiful representation, futuristic representation of the human form. It's personalized.
18:04
>> Also, just never blackmail on startups.
18:05
Like, he could be so successful and he doesn't have any venture money and he's never going to sell this business.
18:08
And so you have like 12 biio medical device companies that are like we have we cannot get steamrololled by David Holes.
18:16
We got to work with this company.
18:16
We got to buy from that that the YC company.
18:20
Like the competitive dynamics of the market are always more complicated than just a single winner comes and steamrolls all the startups and all the incumbents.
18:27
That's not how things ever play out.
18:28
Life is more complicated.
18:28
The economy is more complic complicated. So never black belt. Um do go to public. com though.
18:35
Investing for those who take it seriously.
18:36
stocks, options, bonds, crypto, treasuries, and more with great customer service.
18:40
Let's play the deep technical dive. The technical deep dive.
18:47
>> Did he make this music too, I wonder? >> Yeah.
18:49
And he also made this in uh I think Blender, he said. Whoa.
18:53
>> Like all the animations are all made by him >> by hand though. >> He's the one.
18:59
>> I guess he's doing Blender for I mean for this it's a great use case for Blender because you're cloning uh you know.
19:04
>> I don't know if it was actually Blender. It was some three. I mean, >> CGI stack.
19:09
>> Incredible music selection. >> Yeah. >> Oh, yeah.
19:13
There there's uh there's words we should be reading. There's no voice over.
19:17
Um but we can kind of give you the summary here.
19:20
Um [music] the the overviews.
19:23
We'll start with something called transducer.
19:25
We're going through transducers act as speakers and microphones.
19:29
Imagine a choir of 9,000 singers and an audience of 9,000 people all listening. carefully.
19:34
[music] The transducers are controllable at a rate of a 100 million times per second.
19:41
Together, they fire in a pattern that sends out structured waves.
19:43
Those are the structured waves you're seeing.
19:46
The waves travel out at a speed of 1,481 m/s.
19:52
We construct a ring of 40 of these systems, 70 cm in diameter.
20:00
The ring consists of 358,000 ultrasonic sensors.
20:04
The chips take turns sending out waves.
20:09
As the waves have a chance to dissipate, we fire the next one.
20:15
One by one, they fire at a rate of up to 1,000 times per second. You're vibing out.
20:22
The waves travel across the tank in 480 micros secondsonds, about 1 12,000th of a second.
20:28
Hundreds of thousands of transducers listen.
20:33
Each sensor resolves motions smaller than the width of an atom.
20:36
Not micrometers or nanometers, but pometers working together.
20:41
Hundreds of sensors can even push into the subatomic phentometer range.
20:48
Finer than the scale of atoms.
20:48
a scale where we don't even have anything you've heard of.
20:55
The system captures data at a leisurely 17 gigabytes a second.
21:00
Gigabytes of sonic reverberations flow around your body and from vibrations they form images with this device.
21:11
Each probe sees different angles of your body.
21:18
We combined hundreds of waves and thousands of sub images to get the final product.
21:23
Over over 40 gigabytes of data moves through the system uh to just see one slice of your body.
21:31
We analyze the images making out organs, structures, and tissues.
21:33
[music] Of course, all good uses of AI. There you go.
21:42
Not going to read all [music] that.
21:42
Here we show a slice of what we can see with 25 different biological structures. Look at this.
21:50
We do this again and again and again as you move through the ring.
21:54
So, are you moving through the ring or is the ring moving around you?
21:57
>> No, no, you're moving down the ring stays.
22:00
>> Oh, >> that's why you saw in the video little platform you stand on. >> Platform. Interesting.
22:02
Over a period of 60 seconds, the goal is to obtain several hundred slices of your body, >> reconstructing across 21 servers with two pedlops of compute power.
22:17
and up to 86 terabytes of raw data.
22:17
The slices form a 3D map with the ability to resolve internal tissue details as small as half a millimeter. Wow.
22:27
>> Limina Leap says, "Still can't believe they missed the med journey opportunity here." True.
22:33
>> Less than a dozen of these systems operating at full speed can do a full body scan of [music] every The goal is a fleet of five of 50,000 of these scanners capable of a billion scans a month.
22:42
It's basically everyone on Earth.
22:45
Tyler, what's the logic of putting these integrating these into spas?
22:47
They want to make standalone spas or they want to make a first one in San Francisco that's like a flagship and then Yep.
22:55
>> I can't imagine all 50,000 scanners would come with full spa.
22:58
But yeah, I think he he said the plan was you start with the big one.
23:03
I think there's going to be like 10 or so in the first uh SF location and then in some places there'll be like hundreds of these.
23:10
Some places there's like one or two. >> Yeah.
23:13
Um but I yeah I think that the spa is like mostly because at least he rationalized it because like oh you know going to the clinic or whatever it's like not a good experience. >> Yeah.
23:22
>> This should be like very quick. Yeah.
23:23
>> And it should feel much more like going to a you know sauna or steam room or whatever than than going to the doctor cuz you can imagine like you you don't really need a doctor present during it, right? Yeah. It's like autonomous.
23:32
Well, they should uh create a bunch of needles in the in the ring that come in and just kind of connect with you, deliver whatever peptides, hormones, peeds that it deems necessary >> potentially >> kind of kill.
23:48
>> Well, I mean, he he also talked about this like uh >> this like system is like pretty overpowered, he said.
23:53
So, you could like theoretically uh like instead of just like basically reading like what's going on in your body, you can like write stuff too, right?
24:01
So you can like uh do non-invasive surgeries whatever by like beaming >> light folks who have done that where it's like it pulverizes the cancer the tumor with ultrasonic waves. >> Yeah.
24:12
Like think about like EUV uh lithography or something.
24:14
You if you like you know position the light in very certain ways you can like actually make a change too.
24:20
Not just like >> you're saying potentially we could pivot this into more chip fabrication capacity. >> That would be a goal. Yeah. Yeah. >> Just [laughter] Yeah. Sorry.
24:28
Uh, we can make way more money just making more chips.
24:32
>> Yeah, one of my [clears throat] >> We're going to go to the data center.
24:34
>> Friends over on Xan Anabology, great account, says the obvious next step once you have a full body ultrasound scanner is to use the ultrasound to do useful things to the body.
24:43
>> Delete tissues, make cells divide, reprogram cells, read plus write.
24:45
If you're an engineer interested in solving the right side of sci-fi medical devices, we're building this and hiring. Mhm.
24:54
So, >> well, let's go through some more of the reactions.
24:58
Midjourney launching an ultrasound scanner is such a clear example of freedom enjoyed by bootstrap companies that VC back companies would never have.
25:05
Only time will tell if it's the right bet, but such bold bets require ownership and a kind of devil may care attitude.
25:11
may care attitude. Uh that's somewhat true, but uh the counter to all that is like the Elon Musk projects uh and and a variety of uh founders >> and specs, but also you know like Sam Alman has done this too where it's like
25:25
okay there's a new idea get a new team fund it and it's on the side like there are there are a variety of of uh entrepreneurs that are playing the VC game marshalling capital and then have the permission to work on crazy stuff like a mass driver on the moon uh ETA. Um, but in general, a I agree with this
25:42
Um, but in general, a I agree with this point that a lot of founders get locked in a VC loop of you got to raise money every 18 months, you got to hit the core KPI, you don't have a time or cash flow because you're win-win fight.
25:52
Uh, and it's very very interesting and such a narrative violation that midjourney has become such a machine financially in, you know, people would say it's a commodity market.
26:04
People would say it's a highly competitive market.
26:05
You're going up against Google. You're with Nano Banana.
26:08
You're going up against OpenAI.
26:09
And yet, Midjourney has carved out a fantastic community, a fantastic user base, a fantastic business model.
26:15
And it's really, I don't know, it's a testament to something. It's just awesome.
26:18
I don't know what else to say, but not everyone loves it.
26:20
They're quoting Kanye West.
26:22
I like David Holes AI tool, but what does he know about medical equipment?
26:25
Uh, he knows about this because of Leap Motion.
26:27
Like, just say you don't studied history.
26:29
Also very important, he's partnered with Butterfly Network, which is a public company that is of course up >> almost 50% today. >> Really? >> Uh, >> wow.
26:41
>> Uh, [snorts] they're providing >> quick history on Butterfly. Let's see.
26:46
>> Uh, started in 2011 >> by John Dr. Jonathan Rothberg.
26:52
Uh and yeah, fast forward to 2021.
26:52
Uh they uh were spacked >> and uh and then and then they've kind of just kind of uh floundered a little bit in the public markets since then uh but have clearly developed some pretty impressive technology and so interesting way to combine you know midjourneys uh and David Hull's vision with like technology that's been in development for a long time. Yeah. Oh, this is interesting. Calling back to Rune.
27:23
Run says, "The vague the vaguely PBS Kids inspirational tone that new AI release videos take has stopped being appropriate.
27:33
I think this is no longer like carl Sean explaining the rings of Saturn.
27:37
There is something more dark techno prometheian about it.
27:39
Foustian even uh needs a uh 10 tricks leoptian score.
27:48
I'm don't know how to pronounce that.
27:50
Uh pe sure he's for sale.
27:50
Rivers is saying midjourney is the first AI lab to score their release with something beautiful and so much more.
27:56
Incredibly beautiful song from Max Cooper.
27:59
I would guess people underestimate how much it stirs their soul.
28:03
It it rose certainly rose your emotions. You were excited by it.
28:06
Um people were uh very very positive.
28:10
Hank Green uh offered some context on other initiatives and whole body ultrasounds.
28:15
We don't have time to read through all of it, but it's in the newsletter as well if you want to check that out. tbpn. com. We link to it. You can go check it out.
28:22
Um >> Alla says, "Okay, midjourney, now make my spine more studio giblly." >> I'm down. I'm down.
28:31
>> Giblify the the human form. >> Yeah.
28:34
I think one of my main takeaways is like, okay, now we have this new this new method.
28:38
Um ideally, you can, you know, find cancers much faster, right?
28:43
If you're if you're going to this thing every week or so, you can find cancers earlier.
28:46
>> So then, like, how do you react to this?
28:48
Like, well now, you know, we have >> go long housing because if the boomers don't die, they won't pass it down.
28:52
>> Well, yes, but also we have this joke like, oh, you're not Agi pilled if you're not smoking every day, right? >> Yeah.
28:57
>> So, it's like this is like very this is like great evidence like, yeah, you should start smoking now. Start smoking, >> right?
29:01
Because it's not smoking. Do not start smoking.
29:04
But yes, it does fit in perfectly with this >> like risk of lung cancer is effectively zero.
29:09
>> It's also it also tells you a lot about like like the the whole pitch of like AI is going to cure cancer.
29:13
is going to cure cancer. It's like people tend to think that like AI is going to cure cancer by like the prompt being like cure what's the cure for cancer and it's going to give you some like E equals MC² math equation when really it's like AI might cure cancer in
29:28
the sense that like a guy gets really rich from AI image generation and then funnels that into a medical technology that can advance screening by a couple months and catch it earlier so the rate of cancer declines a bunch but it's not just like oh yeah He prompted it and got we got the magic pill. It's much more
29:45
It's much more complicated than that because curing cancer or actually reducing cancer rates is like a process.
29:50
It's like an industrial process more than it is a like one neat trick.
29:56
>> And do you remember what happened on March 21st back in 2024? >> March 21st, 2021. 2024. >> 2024.
30:04
>> Oh, was he was he posting about this? >> Yeah.
30:06
David said, "TBH, I want to open up a medical imaging division at MidJourney to work on stuff like this." >> That's so cool.
30:12
called a shot and here it is. Very exciting.
30:17
>> Anyway, um let me tell you about Crowd Strike. Your business is AI.
30:19
Their business is securing it.
30:21
Crowd Strike secures AI [music] and stops breaches.
30:26
What did Nome Shazir see?
30:29
[laughter] What did he what did he see?
30:31
Because Nome Shazir, the legendary AI researcher formerly of Deep Mind, has joined OpenAI.
30:36
Very exciting news for Gnome and Open AI.
30:39
Uh he says, "I'm excited to share that I'll be joining OpenAI and look forward to working with the exceptional team there.
30:45
It was a difficult decision to move on.
30:47
I'm incredibly proud of the amazing team at Google and everything we've built together.
30:51
It has been an honor and a pleasure to work with all of you."
30:53
Uh everyone is very very excited about this.
30:57
And Yakine shares interesting details here.
30:59
He says Nome Shazir six war.
31:01
[laughter] >> I don't know right to the important stuff.
31:06
>> But I like that that we're apocryphily building up our our heroes.
31:08
Metas list >> number one on the medicine list.
31:13
>> You remember the Metis list which we released summer of last year during the height of the talent wars. >> Yeah.
31:18
Co-author of transformer T5 switch transformer papers.
31:21
One of the pioneers of sparsee models.
31:23
He's leaving his VP of engineering Gemini.
31:26
Co-lead role at Google Deepmind to join OpenAI.
31:28
Uh Lisan Algib says this is likely the most significant AI talent move of the year.
31:36
It makes you wonder what's going on at Google.
31:38
uh only match by the next day Dean Ball joins OpenAI.
31:40
Tyler, you've been at Balln knower for a long time.
31:45
We've had him on the show multiple times.
31:46
Uh we love Dean and he's been uh in the complete opposite camp.
31:50
He's not an AI researcher.
31:52
He's policy, a lot of experience there and uh had a really even keel I think on a lot of the analyses of should something be >> I think the main thing is he really cares about >> getting this right as a as a country. >> Totally right.
32:06
and he's been critical of almost every company in the space.
32:12
>> Um, but only again because he cares.
32:12
Uh, what does Jim Kramer think about these moves?
32:18
>> Yeah, >> he posted at 3:00 a. m. this morning.
32:21
Gnome Shazir, top AI thinker, goes to AI from Google. Big win for AI.
32:25
[laughter] And >> drop the O, drop the open. Just AI. >> It's cleaner. >> It's cleaner.
32:34
[laughter] There's closed source models anyway.
32:36
Just call it the AI company, I guess.
32:40
Uh, in other news, Riley Walls did it. He did the unthinkable.
32:42
He bought a street in San Francisco and auctioned it off and Notion bought it and now the Notion way is officially born.
32:48
I'm so I'm so happy that Notion won this.
32:52
It could have been a, you know, some crypto thing.
32:58
It could have gone so odd.
32:58
You know, it's like high risk.
33:00
Whenever you turn something loose like this on the internet, uh, it can go a bunch of different ways.
33:05
Notion way is not something that I think would be annoyed.
33:09
I I I personally wouldn't be annoyed if like a street corner in my neighborhood was notion way.
33:13
It is an ad, but it's it's a it's a it's certainly annoyed.
33:16
I would love it, but but it's just a term that feels like it could just be a street name, not uh not something that just feels totally like an ad like with a dot in there or something. So, uh, fantastic.
33:29
Yeah, I remember I remember when uh perfect execution from from Riley Walls.
33:34
I remember talking with him about this idea for the first time. >> Absolutely loved it.
33:38
We we told him like >> they painted the street too.
33:41
>> We told him that we'd backs stop it. >> Yeah.
33:43
>> Basically like if no one bid on it then then we >> Yeah.
33:47
We were like we're good for like a thousand bucks or something like that.
33:50
>> I think it was like I think >> maybe 10k or whatever the cost was.
33:53
>> I remember it was like 20 something.
33:55
>> But we were like we we'll back stop it.
33:57
will be like the the buyer of last resort if you need that and [laughter] uh 40k.
34:03
>> Um very very interesting.
34:03
Um >> they get the the blessing of the mayor. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Daniel Lur. >> That's very exciting. Very exciting.
34:09
Uh so go check it out if you're in San Francisco.
34:12
Go to the notion way and uh you can also walk on the beautiful mural which turned out fantastically as well.
34:20
Like faith in humanity restored here.
34:20
a street in San Francisco painted with what is effectively anonymous internet graffiti and yet everything looks very inoffensive, [clears throat] very beautiful.
34:31
It collages very well together. I think it looks good.
34:32
I I I was worried about that, too.
34:34
I was like, uh, if somebody like, you know, just paints it in like, you know, even if it's just like chaotic, messy colors, that's just not fun to have next to you.
34:44
But this looks like a beautiful quilt of patchwork of interesting designs.
34:46
It feels like everyone that participated took it seriously and uh wound up with a really great result here.
34:52
So, good news for everyone involved.
34:54
Good news for Riley Walls.
34:55
Our next guest is here, but what do you want to talk about >> before we go to our next guest?
34:58
Uh Aiden Gomez accidentally became important at work. >> I love Aiden Gomez.
35:04
Can we get him on the show? Ruining his life.
35:06
>> We haven't had enough Death Grips fans on the show.
35:08
We got to have Aiden Gomez.
35:11
>> Quoting really funny thing to post from >> also on the Transformer paper. by the way, Aiden Gomez.
35:16
They call him Aiden Goatz for a reason. He's he's coded. No, I love him. Uh he's fantastic.
35:22
And he did a podcast episode with 20BC wearing a Death Grips t-shirt and that was incredible.
35:29
Um anyway, bunch of a bunch of other funny things happening at the G7.
35:33
Apparently, Donald Trump had to ask Sam Alman how to adjust his chair up and down, how to use the chair.
35:38
And that's got to hurt because you're Sam Alman.
35:42
You've spent billions, tens of billions of dollars, years of your life, a decade of your life building a machine that can answer this exact question. Almost any question.
35:53
>> You take a picture of the chair, it tells you how exactly to operate it.
35:56
>> So do that right in his face. >> Right in his face.
35:59
>> Just completely reject the premise. >> Yeah. Yeah.
36:00
And and you know, you know, on the tip of the tongue, he's like actually like this is a great opportunity to use chatbt.
36:05
You can use images, upload a photo of that chair.
36:08
It'll it can go and agentically pull the actual diagrams, the the manual from that chair.
36:15
It can go to that website.
36:17
It's chair super intelligence, >> Mr. President. >> And Mr.
36:19
President is just not interested.
36:21
He's just like, I'm going with a human on this one.
36:23
And that's why diffusion takes so long.
36:25
That's why that's why we're in the slow takeoff.
36:29
Anyway, we have Derek [music] Thompson, co-author of Abundance, host of Plain English, contributing writer at The Atlantic. Derek, how you doing? Good, man. How are you guys doing?
36:40
>> We're doing fantastically. Welcome to the show. >> Talking chairs.
36:42
This is This is cutting edge technology. This is what I want.
36:46
>> Do you do you care much about chairs?
36:48
Are you the kind of guy who like obsesses over >> Are you a chair maxer?
36:51
Are you optimizing your ergonomic work?
36:54
>> I noticed there's no >> there's no no neck.
36:58
>> You could be sitting on a stool. >> No, no, >> no.
37:00
You got to keep the neck strong. I'll say this.
37:02
I'll say this. I remember I was in London when I was 18 years old and uh my best friend and I went there after we graduated from high school and we went to like all the museums and we were looking at like all this like old British and I remember seeing this
37:17
chair that claimed to have been made in like I god it was like 500 AD BC and I remember thinking in that moment it's kind of crazy that chairs have always looked like chairs >> like is that a stupid conclusion or is that like like you Is it like chairs have always looked exactly like chairs? We haven't really
37:35
We haven't really changed the general contour of the chair.
37:38
There's something about just like the shape of the body that's like okay well the chair just b like chairs just have to look >> is this bean bag right?
37:46
>> What do you have wrong with big bean bag?
37:49
>> I think bean bags are like a culdeac in the history of chair innovation, [laughter] right?
37:52
Like they we we went in the direction of bean bags and then we got up.
37:56
>> We actually have a friend who has a bean bag >> from an industrial standpoint.
37:58
We collectively got up from the bean bag and I think we've tried to push it.
38:04
You've seen those setups where you're basically reclined and you're in like a globe and >> Yeah.
38:08
It has the screens here and then it leans you back.
38:09
That's >> That's what I'm saying.
38:11
Why Why don't we have more chairs that look like circles, right?
38:16
>> That's what I'm saying.
38:16
We've got chairs that look like like chairs that are shapes that aren't just this thing that's been the shape of the chair now for thousands of years.
38:22
I feel like we did that like we've done chairs that have those classic right angles.
38:26
It's time to, you know, >> this is a big deal.
38:29
I think it's time to reinvent the chair. >> Reinvent the wheel.
38:31
Yes, reinvent [laughter] the wheel, too.
38:33
I mean, this is a big uh like stagnation thesis thing where, you know, it's like, where's the new umbrella?
38:38
Like, there's like we like even even Tyler traveled to the UK and he looked at 3,000y old chairs and he was like that looks like a thing I could [laughter] buy from IKEA today. >> Yeah.
38:50
>> Is stagnation a thing?
38:50
And then suddenly it's the word in all of our lips. >> Yeah.
38:54
Uh anyway, you know where's what what country is not stagnating?
38:56
They clearly read abundance. It's North Korea.
39:01
North Korea built 10,000 new homes in Pyongyang just last year.
39:07
That's more than Los Angeles or Chicago.
39:10
Did you airdrop abundance to North Korea?
39:12
Like, are you behind this? What's going on? Leafless.
39:15
>> There's a lot of there's a lot of conspiracy theories out there about um all the various people that are bankrolling abundance.
39:20
I haven't heard the North Korean dictator uh conspiracy theory of of um of abundance.
39:25
Uh I have not spoken um to Kim Jong um and thank you.
39:32
Uh I haven't spoken to that administration.
39:36
>> But have you looked through the looked through the newsletter?
39:37
Have you checked your substack? Yeah.
39:40
>> Have you checked your substack?
39:43
>> Give give us the link.
39:43
Where can people where can people sign up if if you're a dictator in a foreign country and you want to get the latest? >> I All right.
39:50
Well, I know exactly what I'm doing after this 30 minutes is over is I'm going to turn on you got to turn on crypto.
39:55
search by whatever the the sort of um the surname is for North Korean website domains.
40:01
I'll I'll do that immediately. Yeah. >> Okay. Staying on abundance.
40:03
Uh more seriously, has there been any uh uptake from American legislators, politicians at the local, state, federal level?
40:16
Because when abundance dropped, it felt like this is potentially a book that's going to be the foundation of a new political platform.
40:23
And people are going to are going to be running on this and quoting from this.
40:27
And I'm interested to know uh if there's been little pockets of action where someone's taken an idea and actually tried to implement it.
40:36
Maybe it hasn't passed yet, but you can see the the gears are turning. >> Yeah.
40:41
I mean, the way that I think I put it on on Ezra show when we did a sort of like one-year retrospective on abundance is like, you know, and other people can disagree and I'm interested if you disagree.
40:49
I feel like at the level of of um nomenclature and vibes, like what one wants from a book, right?
40:55
You spend a year essentially in isolation hoping that the ideas that you come up with in a dark little room end up infecting a discourse of millions of people that live outside of that room that you'll never meet.
41:07
And from that standpoint, like people talk about abundance like for better or worse, right?
41:10
Like the concept of an abundance liberal makes sense to people who are both abundance liberals, who are conservative, who are on the socialist left.
41:17
like there is an understanding of what the term means and that is its own kind of mimemetic success.
41:24
So you have that layer of memes, right?
41:25
And that's not what we asked about.
41:26
You asked about like real world outcomes and [clears throat] there I think the record is right.
41:29
It's I I would have to say honestly it's like it's mixed, right?
41:32
Um if you were looking for the individual, the elected individual who was the sort of ascendant political talent associated with abundance.
41:45
It's not entirely clear to me that that person exists in a way that everybody on say an abundance like group text would name the same person, right?
41:54
Like obviously there's aspects of people who judge their abundancy.
41:56
Gavin Newsome signed a law called the abundant and affordable homes near transit act.
42:01
like he not only like signed a law that had abundance ideas in it, making it easier to build houses in downtown areas, especially around transit, making it easier to build clean energy without passing through all sorts of NEPA um uh you know, hopscotch uh efforts.
42:16
He not only signed it, he he named it after the book.
42:20
So there's there's there there are success stories like that.
42:22
And there are absolutely um governors like Hokll in New York who I think are not only doing abundancy things but also like kind of flying under the radar and how much they're trying to press forward the policy agenda.
42:33
On the one hand like those examples exist.
42:35
Um and at the same time I think that in politics because what gets attention is not just law it's people.
42:42
There is a sense that what abundance needs is its champion on a public stage.
42:48
it's elected champion or presumed to be elected champion on the public stage.
42:54
And I think that's where, you know, when you write a book, all you control is the book.
42:59
I can't I can't write a book and make a person.
43:01
And so I don't know where who that person necessarily is yet.
43:05
But there's a lot of there's a lot of possibilities.
43:07
And the last thing I would say is this.
43:10
>> Why not why not why not you?
43:12
>> There's no way I'm running for breakfast. No [laughter] way.
43:14
A couple a couple things. I'm very short.
43:15
couple things. I'm very short. Um and uh I think that especially in a telegenic age I don't think short people can win national election postav era though you >> what about leg extension >> leg extension [laughter] >> then I got to look at a leg extension
43:32
okay see now we're talking leg extension and I got to bring my wife into this I'm not entirely sure that I want to be like you know laid low by whatever kind of recovery process is inherent >> really bad when I see >> yeah but you settle down for abundance >> [laughter] >> So, can we just pause before I answer your question? Seriously, can we pause
43:48
Seriously, can we pause on leg extension?
43:49
Do you know people who weren't in the movie Materialist who got actual leg extensions like in the real >> I have somebody that I suspect? >> Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
44:00
We actually do know someone and you can see it in their gate.
44:05
>> How can you see it in their gate?
44:07
>> Uh, it they walk a little.
44:08
>> You know it when you see it.
44:09
>> You know it when [laughter] you see it.
44:11
>> It doesn't look fluid.
44:11
doesn't look athletic anymore.
44:12
Uh, and they're like 4 in taller than they used to be.
44:17
>> Do you think overall this person uh would say, "I do it all over again."
44:20
Or would they say, "I up my gate and I can't run."
44:23
Okay, >> probably because for a lot of lifestyles like I mean it's like skipping leg day like it's the more extreme version of skipping leg day.
44:32
skipping leg day. It's it's only doing leg day >> permanently skip leg day but you gain >> but in many in many social interactions uh shoulder like like the the shape of your shoulders like is your chest filled out those even like the bicep when you shake someone's hand that's going to be more a more recognizable sign of
44:51
strength and athleticism than [clears throat] are you are your quads in shape so that you could do a box jump because in a meeting in a business context or even at a bar or even at a concert like you're not presented with an opportunity to show off your explosive leg development, but you can show off your biceps or your shoulder. >> I would I would almost say that uh in
45:12
>> I would I would almost say that uh in some ways given how important clips are, podcasts, etc.
45:19
This is >> there's actually there's actually an opportunity more than more than any point in the last 50 years to become the short king president.
45:31
>> This is the short James Madison.
45:31
James Madison was >> 5'4.
45:36
>> Shortest US president.
45:37
>> 5'4 and like 95 pounds.
45:37
Like it's James Madison was like Prince.
45:40
I mean Prince was like shack compared to James Madison.
45:44
It is crazy that I'm just saying president.
45:48
>> I'm just saying like you on a generational podcast tour. >> Okay.
45:53
>> You're never you're podcast you're sitting down.
45:56
>> I I can't tell right now.
45:56
You could you could tell me you were, you know, John's height and and I could believe it. >> All right. 5'8.
46:03
But we're we're we're going to shut the door on me running for president or running for any kind of public office because that is never ever ever happening.
46:09
But the last thing I would say seriously on the on the topic of of abundance in American politics is this.
46:15
Um it's not lost on me that if you look at some of the more public elections across the country, um Democratic socialists are uh they they won mayor in New York City.
46:25
Uh there's a former/DSA uh associated um candidate who's in the runoff in Los Angeles.
46:33
Uh DSA candidate just won the Democratic primary in Washington DC.
46:37
Democratic socialist um just won in Seattle.
46:39
Uh so there's a way in which you can say looking across the country like wow like socialists are really having a moment in American cities.
46:46
cities. Um but something interesting is happening like behind the scenes which is that I've either spoken to or spoken to like meeting adviserss for all these people like I've spoken to mom Donnie personally I know people who are on his his housing council um have met with and
47:03
been at events with the mayor of Seattle and like there's ways in which I think abundance is winning arguments behind the scenes even if the people that we see elected are like what's the headline Democratic socialist Saurin Mandani like won the mayoral election in New York. Um
47:18
Um and so there's a way in which I think optimistically you could say abundance is pilling lots of people even if the general public wouldn't identify those people as abundant liberals. >> Yeah. Yeah.
47:32
That makes a lot of sense.
47:32
I think that there's been some consensus that like the the the aesthetically socialist has tacked to more of like the abundance agenda when elected because maybe that's just more pragmatic.
47:45
Maybe there's more of an alliance there that people thought you spar as you lead up to the election and then when you get in you're more pragmatic which I think is probably good for every but >> what's the what's the old Cuomo line?
47:58
You campaign in poetry govern in pros. Yeah.
48:00
If you know if campaign in populism govern in abundance turns out to be the reality for certain Democrats.
48:05
That's certainly not like the worst and darkest possible timeline. >> The North Korea way. Just [laughter] kidding.
48:10
Um, you're not gonna endure that >> campaign on campaign on complete authorit totalitarianism and run on abundant. Uh, no.
48:17
Uh, self-enhancement, America's cult of self-enhancement.
48:20
Uh, there's been, it feels like clavvicular really like broke through to the mainstream and introduced a little bit of this, but how have you processed the latest run of this?
48:30
Because self-enhancement has been going on forever. Like what's new? What's now?
48:36
What sparked your your recent essay on it?
48:40
like why did you want to write about at this moment in time?
48:42
>> Well, look, it's just a lot of things are happening at once.
48:43
A lot of things are happening at once and I I I wanted to draw a circle around these things and try to name it, right?
48:48
You've got the looks maxing phenomenon of clvicular with which you know there's there's a way in which I almost see that as a as a microwave that's crested like clavvicular I bet like Google trends is not exactly on the right side of that mountain.
49:01
Y >> um but you you think about like peptide stacking you think about GLP1s which are going to go crazy when retoutide the third generation GLP1 drug from Eli Liy comes out you think about the fact that TRT tes uh testosterone replacement therapy is going berserk uh that preventative plastic surgery like Botox is getting younger and younger in terms of its average age of user.
49:24
Um, you look at the fact that according to both the American Time News Survey and gym associations, the number of people who are members of gyms is at an all-time high.
49:35
And the amount of time that people self-report working out every week is also at its highest level in any period in American history.
49:42
Like something's clearly happening in terms of America's changed relationship with health.
49:47
It's almost as if health itself, which used to live um or has in various periods of American sort of cultural history lived a little bit outside of um uh of pop culture is now becoming like an integral part of culture itself.
50:04
And I'm really interested in this for a couple reasons.
50:08
I'm interested in what drives it.
50:08
I'm interested in its extremes and people like Brian Johnson who say not only do I want to like live longer and be healthier, my goal is to not die at all.
50:18
Um, but I'm also interested in what it does to us like as people, how it changes our relationship to our bodies.
50:24
So, there's two observations here.
50:24
One is that I have an Aura ring right here. >> I like it.
50:28
It's it's I think it's improved my health.
50:30
It's improved my fitness.
50:31
Um, and it's helped me sleep better.
50:34
But I also sometimes like can't help fall into this relationship with my Aura ring where I am making decisions about my daily activity to optimize my Aura ring scores rather than to do things that can't be measured.
50:46
So if I have a really good time with a friend at 9:30 p. m.
50:50
that can't be measured in my Aura Ring data.
50:52
There's no dashboard I can look at on my phone and say I had a really good time with my friend and he appreciated my presence.
50:57
But like the Aura ring will say you stayed up too late and now your HRV sucks.
51:00
late and now your HRV sucks. So I think there's ways in which sometimes these technologies this sort of biometric dashboard we can build for ourselves um replaces the hard question of how should I live with the easy question of what should I optimize that is observable
51:17
right it's a little bit of Gut's law make number go up precisely so that's one thing I'm interested in but the other thing I'm interested in um that I I I think might be you know certainly I think I I think of your audience as being the bullseye of this um let me get this from a a kind of weird angle. Um
51:32
Um Alfred Chandler is an historian who wrote a book called The Visible Hand about the invention of managerial capitalism in the 19th century.
51:40
And he said what happened is the telegraph and the train created enormous information flows that couldn't be managed by 18th century corporations.
51:49
And so he had to invent this job to manage those information flows.
51:53
And the name of that job was the middle manager.
51:55
And so it was the telegraph and the train and the profusion of information that was created by um the the the speed of products moving around the country that created the need for managerial capitalism.
52:07
In a similar way, I think biometric capitalism as you can think of it creates the need for individuals to essentially serve as the chief executive of the self.
52:17
We are faced with all of this data about what we're doing every day, how we're sleeping, how much calories we're burning, what what our V2 max is, how much zone 2 time we spent training yesterday, and what role does overseeing all this information cast us in?
52:34
It casts us in the role of the manager, just like in the 19th century.
52:37
And so in a way I think when I say our approach to health is changing things that are that are that are you know more complicated than just oh everyone's talking about health these days.
52:45
I do think it changes our relationship with the body to essentially assume this role of like the CEO of the self.
52:51
And finally and I'll stop.
52:54
It changes our relationship to leisure, too.
52:55
Because typically, in a sort of traditional setup, you go to work and you think about being productive, and then you leave work and you have downtime.
53:02
And you don't think about downtime being productive until you can see on your dashboards exactly how you spent that downtime. How did you sleep?
53:11
How did you sp did you how much V2 time did you spend? Um, excuse me.
53:16
How much zone 2 time did you spend during your workout?
53:20
So suddenly this productivity mindset that used to be contained to work is now leaking into our downtime as well and getting us to think about again our bodies as this kind of machine that we are um in which we're cast in the role of a CEO to optimize.
53:35
I just think that's like an interesting way that we're alive today.
53:38
I think it's just interesting to think about how our experience of life is different than in previous decades.
53:43
And I think I think that these trends in health do make the experience of life different than it used to be.
53:50
>> Did you see the Nat Friedman uh talk uh where he describes using Open Claw and an AI agent to monitor his water intake and uh it uses cameras which apparently he has inside of his house which is not very common.
54:06
Most people have security cameras outside.
54:08
He has cameras inside his house and it saw it told him go to the go to the sink and drink a glass of water right now.
54:14
He did it and then it sent him a message saying like good boy basically.
54:18
Um and it's just very funny because in that scenario it's like he's not even the CEO of his life anymore.
54:23
He's like he's like the line worker. [laughter] >> Yeah.
54:26
Well, he's he's he he >> he's delegated the job of the CEO to the to the AI that then just tells him like you have to go to the gym.
54:33
He doesn't even make the decision.
54:35
>> I would say he's a very modern CEO.
54:35
Like you guys have talked with all these people about how like the modern executive or modern manager's job is sandwiching, right?
54:42
So it's like you give the large language model or whatever AI system it is.
54:47
You are the you're the bottom layer of the sandwich.
54:50
You give the AI model an input and then it gives you an output and then you act in that output.
54:54
So you are the bread that is sandwiching the work of the AI model.
54:58
It seems to me without talking to you know Nat in this particular case that's what he's doing.
55:03
He is he he decided I'm going to design an hetological system to optimize my water intake.
55:08
He designed that system and now he's on both sides of it.
55:11
Um so in a way I I think he he is he he is acting as a as a very modern chief executive even using this sort of AI sandwiching function. >> Yeah.
55:20
I was talking yesterday or maybe the day before on the show around when I was uh I I got to a point when I was probably 19 or 20 that I felt I was using up all of my executive function budget on my own health, right?
55:35
I would wake up, I would have a protein shake, I would go to the gym for two hours, I would sauna, I would have like the perfect breakfast.
55:45
And I was like cramming all of this like really higheffort activity into this period before 9:00 a. m.
55:52
when I when when I had ultimately coming out of that had accomplished like nothing that actually moved my life forward, right?
55:58
Uh I I I could have just like gone around and like walked, you know, a couple miles and and it would have had the same sort of impact on my life.
56:06
And I think that that is um that's certainly a trap that I think you could argue that a huge amount of the world is falling into right now or at least like certainly in like Los Angeles and California, New York, coastal cities where you know how much of your how much of your intelligence are you putting into something just to make modern life like bearable, right?
56:32
just to make your just to make sending the five just so you have enough energy to send the five emails a day that like really matter that like you know move your work forward.
56:42
>> I I I I just think like some some people are certainly in that camp but then there's the other side of it which is like the optimization is this game that is rewarding in and of itself.
56:50
And so it's the it's the minmaxing.
56:53
The maxing is is enjoyable in the same way that you can max out stats in a video game or even in business or optimize whatever.
57:04
But people enjoy these optimization games.
57:06
So I'm not surprised to see that people get get the enjoyment today from optimizing a life that they never really put to use.
57:14
They might have the most incredible athletic performance.
57:16
Are they ever going to go out and hunt a deer with their bare hands? No.
57:20
But they but like the process of maxing was what was satisfying to them.
57:27
>> Well, the word game I think is apt here.
57:30
And it's funny that in this case, to extend a metaphor, the game board is the body that we're playing on.
57:34
Um the the philosopher CT Nuin who was on my show a few months ago had this lovely line Ree said um I used to think that there was no difference between a goal and a purpose in a game.
57:47
But then I realized that if you're playing a board game with friends the goal is to win but the purpose is to have fun.
57:56
>> The goal is the thing that's measurable.
57:59
>> The purpose is the thing that might be ineffable but is more important. Right?
58:03
to win but not have fun is an experience that on reflection a minute later, an hour later, a day later, you're going to regret.
58:10
And so I I do writing this essay is a part of my trying to reconcile an experience that's very much like the one Jordy described where on the one hand I do want to optimize my health.
58:23
I don't want to die early.
58:25
I mean on a personal note, both my parents died of uh cancers when I was in my 20s.
58:30
So when you know they they didn't live to see to meet my wife.
58:36
They didn't live to meet my sister's husband.
58:37
They didn't dance at our weddings.
58:39
And so I am not one of these people who looks at folks like Brian Johnson or Andrew Huberman and says this obsession with health and life extension. It's it's inhuman.
58:48
It's like no what's inhuman.
58:50
What what's what's truly terrible is the premature death that means that my daughter knows her grandmother as a photograph rather than as a grandmother. That's terrible.
59:00
So there, this is progress.
59:03
The focus on health is progress.
59:06
But I do think it's just worth pointing out that this generation of personal individuated health obsession is not like other generations of health movements in American history.
59:18
the prohibition movement, the temperance movement, um, a movement in the 19th century in the UK that I learned about called muscular Christianity, which was basically just what it sounds like, New Testament values, uh, huge biceps.
59:32
>> Else, >> those were [laughter] those were movements about national change. >> Okay?
59:40
>> You know, love them or hate them, they were trying to change the world.
59:44
when you're playing a self-optimizing game around like getting those aura numbers, >> it's individual >> game you're playing is to raise the numbers for yourself and that's that's an important distinction.
59:56
>> Well, yeah, I do I do want I do wonder if this uh health obsession will uh further reduce the birth rate.
1:00:04
>> I was about to transition to that.
1:00:04
Yes, the phone phones are clearly like cigarettes for your light, you know, for your mind, you know, like they're they're they're not uh they're certainly they they have some utility just like a cigarette does.
1:00:16
A cigarette can kind of make you relaxed or a little bit focused, whatever, whatever, whatever it is, but it's certainly bad for you overall.
1:00:25
>> Uh phones to be seem to be bad for a number of reasons.
1:00:28
Um, and I do think it's funny, you know, like biohacking and, you know, making the number go up is like totally at odds with like parenting in so many ways.
1:00:39
Like you could be I'm on a six like you'll never meet a parent that has children under five that's like, oh yeah, five nights under six months old.
1:00:48
So let's let's not even talk about my poorest sleep for the last six months.
1:00:52
So I had absolutely horrendous but that's not the that's not the purpose.
1:00:56
A friend of ours, a friend of ours texted, a friend of ours texted us over the weekend and said, "After having a kid, it's just so funny to think about single people taking a vacation to unwind." Unwind from what? Sleeping in.
1:01:09
[laughter] >> No, but I do but but [clears throat] you know, when when you think of uh and I think back to the the Steven Bartlett viral moment where he's talking about, you know, having a couple glasses, >> the drink he got that knocked him out for two days. Yeah.
1:01:23
and uh and just thinking like, wow, like like parenting is going to be really rough for for for someone that gets that thrown off from, you know, a couple drinks because you don't really get to decide from from midnight to 2:30 a. m. you might be up Yeah.
1:01:41
like three times a week and like people have built their lives so that that never happens. Yeah. Right. >> Yeah.
1:01:47
>> Yeah. No, I I I you know, I um I remember I was interacting with some tweet from I don't remember if it was Brian Johnson or someone else sort of of that ilk and they were talking about you know all the various things in life staying up a little too late um you know
1:02:00
flying across time zones that had some effect on their cardio metabolic data and I said you know there's there's a version of this approach to life that is literally antihuman because imagine doing this analysis of child birth You know what happens when you have a one-month old at home? I mean, you you
1:02:18
I mean, you you basically do because you were citing it.
1:02:22
Your sleep goes to You don't see people the same way you used to.
1:02:24
So, your social life goes down. You eat like crap.
1:02:28
The risk of depression, anxiety, even postpartum psychosis skyrockets.
1:02:35
Like if you just looked at the biometric data of new parents and your only attitude in life was make number go up, you would have to conclude you would have to conclude that having children is horrendous for the human race.
1:02:50
>> But like life is complicated.
1:02:50
And u psychologist you've seen the data that shows that I think women that have uh kids, you know, later in their 30s uh are much live live longer like significantly longer.
1:03:03
>> This is what I was getting.
1:03:03
Um, >> so the psychologist Darby Saxby had this really interesting uh uh point in her new book Dad Brain where she pointed out that um new parent brains tend to suffer trauma when their kids are born.
1:03:14
But if you look at parental brains decades later, they tend to have more neural connections and they tend to be richer.
1:03:23
And in fact, there's been research done out at Northwestern University that found that so-called superagers, people in their 80s and 90s that have the memory of someone in their 50s and 60s.
1:03:31
The thing that correlates most strongly with being a superager and having great great attentional capacity and memory um in those later years is social connection, which evolutionarily makes kind of sense.
1:03:42
Like maybe early memory, early language was just for gossip before we were, you know, inventing calculus and artificial intelligence.
1:03:51
And so it would make sense that the strongest brains were the brains designed to keep track of who in the tribe was nuts and who in the tribe was helpful and who was an and who was kind.
1:04:00
And so I I think it's if you're going to think about this scientifically, if you're going to go the science route to sort of science your way toward a theory of the purpose of life, like pay attention to the whole body of research and don't just look at the dashboard on your phone because that's capturing such a tiny tiny um amount of the of the bigger picture.
1:04:20
Yeah, I completely agree.
1:04:20
We got to do this more often. Uh this is so much fun. >> Needed more time. >> We needed more time.
1:04:25
But thank you so much for taking the time. >> I'll see you guys.
1:04:28
>> Have a great rest of your week.
1:04:28
Have a great weekend and we'll talk to you soon. Have a good one.
1:04:33
>> Let me tell you about MongoDB.
1:04:33
What's the only thing faster than the AI market, your business on MongoDB, don't just build AI, own the data platform that powers it.
1:04:40
Our next guest is the CEO of ARM Holdings, Renee Hos.
1:04:43
uh his first time on the show, but we're very excited to have him on to talk about expanding the ARMS ARMS business beyond uh the CPU IP that they're known and loved for.
1:04:56
Everyone's used an ARMbased CPU for one thing or another, probably everything in their life, but now they're getting into chip making and uh designing their own chips.
1:05:06
Uh ARM partners have shipped more than 350 billion chips. That is so many.
1:05:10
more than 22 million developers build on the ARM platform.
1:05:15
Uh Renee has been with ARM since 2013.
1:05:19
So very interested to hear about his journey over the last 13 years.
1:05:24
You have to imagine this is the most exciting moment in probably his entire career, certainly the ARM story, but we'll bring him into the TBP and Ultradome and ask him directly.
1:05:36
Renee, how are you doing? Welcome to the show.
1:05:38
Thank you so much for taking the time. >> Oh, my pleasure. Yeah, thank you. I'm doing well.
1:05:42
How are how are you both doing?
1:05:44
>> We're doing great fantastically.
1:05:44
It's an incredibly exciting >> shout out to your to your team.
1:05:46
This this this audio video setup is uh perfect.
1:05:51
We, you know, we talk to a lot of people.
1:05:55
>> People like to go hard visually, make something, you know, that looks great, but then they'll miss the audio. You did both quite well. So, I appreciate it. >> Yeah, fantastic team.
1:06:04
>> We >> we have a great team here.
1:06:05
We we hijacked a conference room and turned it into a little mini studio here.
1:06:08
So, glad glad to see it's paid off. >> I love it. Perfect.
1:06:12
>> Uh yeah, I mean we were just reflecting on the fact that uh I mean it's an exciting time for us.
1:06:16
We cover the news, we cover AI, there's so much going on.
1:06:20
Um you've been with ARM for 13 years. Is that correct? >> Um that's right.
1:06:24
>> Is this the most exciting year?
1:06:24
Is this the most exciting moment of your career?
1:06:28
Is this uh how else are you contextualizing like what it means to be in this particular moment?
1:06:34
Gosh, is it I would say, you know, having been in the tech industry my my entire career, it's probably the most exciting time. Yeah, I I would agree.
1:06:41
I mean, artificial intelligence, artificial intelligence and the idea of machines that can think >> like humans, I that's Star Trek type stuff.
1:06:51
So, if you grew up watching science fiction, and I remember I think one of the very first movies my dad took me to was 2001, a space odyssey. Yeah.
1:06:59
>> Uh we're kind of living we're kind of living that life now.
1:07:00
And it's one of those things I know my compatriots have said the same that you knew it was coming but you didn't know if you'd had a chance to work on it in your lifetime.
1:07:08
So yeah, it's it's amazing. >> Yeah. Yeah. Now it's here.
1:07:10
Um talk to me about how you've processed the AI boom.
1:07:14
Uh there's been a couple of distillations of the progress.
1:07:16
You have the chatbt moment, the reasoning moment, the coding agent moment.
1:07:21
Um as each of those moments happened, how did your business change?
1:07:26
How did your perception of the AI boom change?
1:07:28
And then at what point did you realize that um you needed to expand the strategy, change the strategy?
1:07:36
Uh how deliberate were you along the last three years, four years as we've seen these sort of tectonic shifts in the capabilities of AI systems? >> Yeah.
1:07:48
One one of the things, you know, in our industry that has been uh almost like a a force that you cannot stop is the the need for more storage or more memory or more compute, right?
1:07:58
there's just something whether it's an end application, a new product that just drives that that need.
1:08:04
AI is almost the uh the monster that can eat almost unlimited amount of memory, unlimited amount of storage, and unlimited amount of compute just simply because of the the the raw amount of computation that's required, the amount of data that's needed, uh the amount of intelligence that you're generating in the tokens, etc. , etc.
1:08:26
So what we've seen over the last just number of years is as everyone in our industry has is this sudden huge tailwind of of how much is enough and we don't seem to be hitting that that point yet.
1:08:39
And I was at uh I was in Computex a couple of weeks ago and met with with folks in the industry and I remember talking to some of the guys at TSMC and they said we've we've never seen a cycle where it's this good for this many years.
1:08:50
Something's got to change.
1:08:50
But we've never quite seen artificial intelligence at the level we're seeing it.
1:08:57
And it still feels very very early.
1:09:00
I know a lot of people uh say that in the sense of to your point the chat sheep moment, the claude code moment, the the co-work moment, but still there's lots and lots of industries that haven't even scratched the surface.
1:09:11
So it's still amazingly even given all the tailwind still seems very very early.
1:09:15
I can I can intuit it or at least guess at what the the crunch at TSMC feels like.
1:09:24
It's incredible demand from every supplier, sharp elbows from probably everyone who's trying to get line time and a lot of people working late nights making sure that the machines are running, that the fabs are, you know, delivering at high quality consistently.
1:09:40
But what is the shape of a crunch at ARM during a boom like this? Is it different?
1:09:46
And then I imagine maybe take me through what the next couple years will look like and how different pieces of the business will scale to react to different bottlenecks, different opportunities, different supply, you know, just demand increasing broadly. >> Yeah.
1:10:04
So, uh it's a it's a a very very important question because it's changed a bit for us.
1:10:08
uh when we were seeing all of this growth in demand in the prior years or or or in previous uh growth uh periods, we would feel the crunch in terms of our end customers saying we're limited by this, we're limited by that, demand is really strong.
1:10:23
Our business model on the IP side is all about a licensing fee up front and then we collect a royalty on chips shipped. >> Yeah.
1:10:32
>> Uh that all kind of changed for us in uh at the end of March when we announced our first product.
1:10:37
Uh so now we are we are in that uh we are in that soup as well. Okay.
1:10:42
Uh we have huge huge demand for the product which is an ARM AGI CPU >> uh driven by you know somewhat selfishly it's a great product.
1:10:51
Uh it's 2x to performance at the same power as the competition >> but also with all this takeoff of aentic uh demand and all these agents that uh essentially spawn off workloads CPUs do a lot of that work.
1:11:04
There's been a huge demand for CPUs.
1:11:06
So we were fortunate in terms of uh of timing of announcing that product.
1:11:11
But yes, just like everyone else now in in that world, we are uh we're looking for all kinds of avenues to to find increased supply because demand is extremely strong.
1:11:20
So yeah, to your to your question, we feel it on both sides.
1:11:24
We feel it from our end customers on the IP side who who are trying to ship as much as possible and then ourselves because we've got our own end customers that are really really pushing us for uh for supply.
1:11:32
So when you're when you're getting into your new own chip business, uh what changes for you?
1:11:40
Are you uh are you a fan of founder mode?
1:11:43
Is this something where you're clearing your schedule so that you can spend more time on that new growing division, that new opportunity?
1:11:48
Are you bringing in a new team?
1:11:51
Are you shuffling folks around in the organization who you know can deliver on this new initiative?
1:11:57
Like what is your managerial philosophy for delivering on that?
1:12:03
Yeah, I you know I I've had a a fortunate uh opportunity in my career to work for uh a lot of founders directly.
1:12:11
uh probably if I just think back now over the last 25 years I've kind of I've not been a founder myself but I've worked directly for founders whether it was early startup companies >> then a bunch of time at Nvidia working uh for Jensen >> and that at Soft Bank who owns ARM you
1:12:28
know Moss is a founder >> and what I found for myself personally is uh that is probably the style that resonates best with me personally >> so what does that mean in terms of day-to-day activity am I in the meetings with the operations guys figuring out where the supply is coming from? Absolutely. Uh am I thinking really Absolutely.
1:12:43
Uh am I thinking really really hard about what we want to do next in terms of product and can we get the supply and can we be strategic to a number of different customers? Absolutely.
1:12:53
Uh did we bring in new people with new skill sets and new capabilities to help us there? Yes, we had to.
1:13:00
Uh you know building chips is not the same as building IP.
1:13:02
You need people who can do back-end design, customer validation, supporting customers.
1:13:08
you need operations folks that can work downstream.
1:13:10
Uh so we knew we need to do all that.
1:13:12
Uh I had done a lot of that in my past in previous jobs and careers.
1:13:17
So I had a good sense of what was required and and as importantly I had a really good team around me that also folks who came from that who came from that world.
1:13:25
So yes uh high degree of focus and uh I don't know if I would say I've gone into full founder mode but that's kind of how I operate.
1:13:31
that's kind of how I operate. uh I think intrinsically and as as you get on in your career you you start to find out what are the environments that that not only uh resonate with you but you can thrive in and then for me that's definitely one >> we we talked about like this interesting uh this interesting phenomenon in AI
1:13:49
where with uh with 2020 hindsight you can look back and see that the chat moment was a turning point cloud code as you mentioned reasoning models there's these unlocks that feel binary in hindsight uh and They sort of blur together as they're happening, but a couple months later, you can see that there's some sort of takeoff. Are you do
1:14:06
Are you do you do you have a vision of what we're waiting for for the next one or are you more zoomed out looking at broader trends sort of straight lines on log graphs and you see that capability will come as compute scales.
1:14:25
>> I think it's a little bit the latter.
1:14:25
>> I think it's a little bit the latter. I mean people like to look at the chat GBT moment or the claude code moment and >> maybe that's mile marker six in a marathon or mile marker eight but actually what they are is proof points of scaling
1:14:39
>> that the more compute you can apply to the problem uh the more sophisticated the level of problem that you can solve >> and that's what I think we are seeing on on all levels so I don't think there's another aha moment you know people talk about AGI or ASI or things things of that nature. I think what you're
1:14:57
I think what you're starting to see is for some of these models for example or some of these uh applications we don't have the data sets and the internet uh to solve them.
1:15:06
So, and these are like science problems, right?
1:15:09
Engineering problems >> yet using the compute and models to create synthetic data >> to help you solve these complex engineering problems that you can't find on the internet.
1:15:19
That could be the next thing, you know, if you will.
1:15:21
Uh, so I I don't know that there's another end quote moment ahead of us.
1:15:25
I think what we have seen so far is that the law of scaling uh has not been defied and the more compute you can apply to uh these problems and the more >> power that's required for that and everything around it we get greater and greater benefits.
1:15:41
Can you I I'm I'm interested to hear how AI is changing chip design specifically like the actual work that your team does on a day-to-day basis, but I'd also like a little bit of a primer on just computer aided design through your tenure because it's not like it was pencil and paper three years ago and now it's a single prompt make a great CPU.
1:16:05
Um, so I imagine we're on a It feels probably a little bit smoother to you, but there's a lot of excitement about AI actually designing chips.
1:16:12
Where are we on that trend?
1:16:15
Where were we 10 years ago?
1:16:19
>> Yeah, I remember I was smiling when you said that.
1:16:21
I I think I remember my first job out of TI, we actually had >> I think 4 foot by 4 foot tables where we would actually lay out printed copies of the uh the actual chip itself >> to look at the layouts from a transistor level trying to figure out exactly what we had done from a design standpoint.
1:16:39
And that was before the workstations really had a lot of sophistication to do automated design.
1:16:43
People talked about CAD and CAM of that nature.
1:16:45
Now, now when you get to the the the billions of transistors on a chip, there's not there's no way you're printing that stuff that stuff out, etc. , etc.
1:16:52
You know, chip design is pretty interesting.
1:16:56
Um, you know, on one level, it's code.
1:16:59
>> In other words, when you when you write a piece of software, describe what a circuit's doing.
1:17:03
circuit's doing. Uh that's a that's a piece of software we use a or the industry uses something called verilog to describe what RTL is which is a a different version of a Python or C if you will but chip design is a multi-dimensional problem you can write RTL and verarilog
1:17:22
and it can be functionally correct I can do an adder or a multiplier or a certain level of circuit but to get that to operate at a certain frequency uh consuming a certain level of power and then occupying the smallest set of uh millimeters on a piece of silicon. That's still a very hard problem. So,
1:17:40
That's still a very hard problem.
1:17:40
So, the industry isn't there yet in terms of being able to use uh those tools to essentially the the uh nirvana would be I come up with an idea, I press a button and I'm I can go tape it out at TSMC, right?
1:17:55
That is sort of sort of the nirvana.
1:17:57
And will we get there at some point in time? Most likely we will.
1:17:58
um we're a ways away because the data sets aren't quite correct and we don't have the good closed loop systems, but we'll get there.
1:18:06
But where it's helping in chip design are things like uh so let me back up and just say in chip design uh a lot of the work actually is not in designing the circuits.
1:18:17
It's actually in verifying the circuits. It's in uh bug checks.
1:18:21
It's in validate validation.
1:18:21
And AI helps a lot there.
1:18:25
AI can do a great job in terms of triaging bugs.
1:18:27
engineer will do a run over a weekend and come back in on a Monday and see where the bugs are and triage them and fix them.
1:18:39
In the AI world, that can all happen automatically.
1:18:42
AI can not only uh order the bugs in terms of the high priority bugs, but in some cases can fix them.
1:18:49
So, we are we are seeing that today.
1:18:49
So, we are we are seeing that today. uh we are absolutely seeing the benefit of of AI helping us uh design chips faster uh to get bugs out quicker to help us in the validation process which is super important because these chips are getting bigger and bigger uh the bigger
1:19:07
they get the more complicated they are to build the longer it takes so it's a little bit like running running uphill against a treadmill we're running fast but the chips are getting hard so it's not like we've shaved chip development times in half yet but without the tools I think they would be it'd be longer to develop. So, we're certainly seeing
1:19:22
So, we're certainly seeing benefit.
1:19:24
>> Um, bit of a more anodine question, but where else is AI uh permeating within ARM holdings?
1:19:30
I'm interested to know like you have license fees.
1:19:32
Is there are there AI agents making sure that invoices get paid appropriately?
1:19:37
Like customer support uh even just uh you know, you have you probably have a ton of documentation.
1:19:44
Have you wrapped that in an LLM?
1:19:45
in an LLM? like uh there's some there's a bunch of like you know very basic use cases for AI that you see propagate through all sorts of businesses uh how have you thought about adopting AI outside of the core context >> all over the place uh I would say
1:20:03
probably 85 to 90% of the company is using it in some way shape or form uh we use it in legal uh for example to look at contracts uh to do inputs and checks against our standard terms and conditions it's very very fast finance teams uses it for all different kind of functions. One of the more interesting
1:20:19
One of the more interesting ones that we use it for is um so on our IP business we collect a royalty for every uh chip shipped. >> Yeah.
1:20:28
>> Uh we have a quirk in our financial model in that we have to every quarter acrew for the royalties that we think will come in the next quarter.
1:20:35
So it's a forecasting tool.
1:20:37
Uh and that forecasting tool is almost like a a GDP hedge fund where we're trying to look at macroeconomic indicators uh what's going on in terms of certain markets.
1:20:49
>> We use AI to help us rationalize what our predictions are and it's very very good when we when we report the royalties and at the end of a quarter and then the following quarter we do something which called a true up.
1:21:00
In other words, >> where we were wrong and and where and where the error bars were.
1:21:04
Uh, and I tell you, AI makes the forecast really, really well.
1:21:08
And then just something simply anecdotally, >> you might be sitting in a in a in a in a in a meeting where you're brainstorming about different ideas and you're trying to figure out what's the size of this market or who's shipped this much volume into this area or is someone using this type of substrate.
1:21:24
You know, in the past that would be we'll go look this up offline and get some answers.
1:21:30
uh people are using chat GPT or claude or any of those tools real time in a meeting and you just get answers much more quickly.
1:21:36
They it's by the way it's not necessarily it's 100% right answer each time but it's it's 80 to 90% close enough that you can start making decisions.
1:21:44
So we use it everywhere and I use it all the time >> of course.
1:21:47
Um how are you thinking about more farther out opportunities or technologies?
1:21:52
I'm interested to know if you have a view on you know these wafer scale AS6 or even quantum computing is there something where you're starting an investigatory R&D process to see if there's at least an integration in the future if not an indigenous like R&D effort. Yeah.
1:22:12
No, that that you we were talking earlier about you know is this the most exciting time in the industry and and there was a time I know 20 years ago when semiconductors uh were not seen as the next growth engine and and a lot of the investment and growth went into into other other areas.
1:22:26
other other areas. Now, not only is there amazing opportunity for what you just described, whether it's wafer scale compute or in-memory compute or different computer architectures, but everything around material sciences, uh
1:22:41
different components, whether it's co-ackage optics, uh whether it's different type of copper, the the the computer, the system is the computer, >> and you have to think about everything that goes into it relative to how you maximize performance. So even things you
1:22:54
So even things you know believe it or not like uh efficiency of turbines and uh efficiency of gas engines and everything goes into building out power plants because >> everything in the supply chain you know suddenly matters and uh the the resiliency of the power matters.
1:23:14
Everything can't come off the grid if you're using alternative power sources.
1:23:18
What does that mean in terms of uh interruption of supply?
1:23:20
uh what does that mean in terms of reliability and sustainability of the systems?
1:23:24
So it's a probably a long way of saying that there's investment opportunities not just in the chip space but in everything that surrounds it because now the entire system becomes an opportunity for innovation and and at ARM yes we have a we have an investment profile.
1:23:40
We also work very closely with our parent company Soft Bank in terms of looking at the investment opportunities there >> on uh on [clears throat] SoftBank.
1:23:47
Uh what was your first meeting with Masa like?
1:23:52
H >> that was back in 2016 uh when they just had announced the uh the purchase.
1:23:58
So gosh that was that was 10 plus years ago.
1:24:02
Uh and uh his vision for ARM at time that time was uh was a little different than what we're doing now.
1:24:07
But he was he had a big belief back then in terms of the world is going to need a trillion connected devices and everything needs to be connected on security and software and such.
1:24:15
But my my first impression of him and I had not met him before but obviously had known and heard of him was he has a lot of big ideas uh and he's been consistent on that for the last 10 years.
1:24:26
So is your is is part of your role like the translation layer between that unbridled optimism and the pragmatism that needs to keep a business running like how do you see your your your role uh in the soft bank organization?
1:24:45
>> Yeah, that's a good description of it.
1:24:45
I think at at a high level I I think uh the reason it it works well is that >> I share Amos's ambition.
1:24:52
I admire the big bold views.
1:24:55
Uh I like big bets myself.
1:24:59
>> Uh he's really really good at looking around corners and thinking about what are the big trends 10 years from now.
1:25:04
Uh and then how do we act on it quickly.
1:25:07
So where I think I I fit in is I align with that but I'm also an operator.
1:25:13
I'm on the ground you know running a running a company and have you know put out products and done solved engineering problems etc etc.
1:25:21
So it's thinking about okay how do we how do we take those and and make those into realistic plans that we can execute on.
1:25:29
>> Um where should we go next?
1:25:31
Jordy do you have anything you move on to please?
1:25:32
Um, >> I'm interested to hear more about your path to becoming CEO.
1:25:41
Uh, it's it's uh >> uh just >> like >> was it always on your mood board?
1:25:48
What were the key steps like uh just advice for people who want to be in this position one day?
1:25:57
>> Yeah, I I you know, we we meet a lot with uh with new employees and and I I do get that question a lot.
1:26:02
was was the CEO job something that you you always aspired to and and I would say that was really probably not the case.
1:26:09
Uh you know again having in the last 25 years worked really closely uh with founders >> if I kind of look back in terms of what that experience was and how it got me here.
1:26:20
Uh first off I I was always interested in not only doing something that made a big big difference but I always had an intellectual curiosity to doing lots of different things. Mh.
1:26:31
>> So I've done probably almost every single job that exists in kind of the semiconductor world.
1:26:36
I've done I've been an FAE.
1:26:38
I've been a design engineer. I've been in sales. I've been a GM. I've been in marketing.
1:26:42
I've done kind of all these jobs.
1:26:44
Not because I was trying to fill out a checkbox and said, "Okay, here are the eight things I need to become a CEO."
1:26:49
It was more a function of I'm really curious to learn about these disciplines and learning more about how things all kind of come together.
1:26:56
So what turned out as I was gaining more and more of experience and more of those skills and working around uh great people like Masa and Jensen, I just started to learn a lot and became a sponge uh for for all of that.
1:27:09
So when the time came uh for me to take this role, uh I felt very ready for it because I had watched CEOs do the work.
1:27:19
I had done a lot of different work.
1:27:19
Now clear clearly it's a different job.
1:27:22
>> Uh when when you're the CEO, your jokes are a lot funnier.
1:27:24
people always say hello to you in the halls and stuff. Sure.
1:27:27
And you feel a different sense of responsibility, accountability for what's going on, >> but more broadly speaking, uh I think I was very very lucky in that everything I had done up to my becoming a CEO had really kind of helped me get there.
1:27:39
And then what I tell young folks is >> uh get as much exposure uh as you can to as many things as you can.
1:27:46
The one thing that I've always found that was a trait in in great people was curiosity. >> Yeah.
1:27:52
and and and and never stopping to learn because if you're never stopping to learn and you're quite curious, uh you'll probably land in a pretty good place.
1:28:00
>> What what is your approach to creating your own sort of model for what the world will look like in in two to three years?
1:28:09
the pace of of of progress over the last three years has been, you know, really aggressive.
1:28:15
But at the same time, you can consistently go back and look at people's predictions, a handful of people's predictions in 2023 and let's say 2024 that have turned out to be almost perfectly accurate.
1:28:28
And so I'm curious how you kind of curate um information sources to try to build an accurate accurate model of what the industry will look like in two three four years.
1:28:41
hard, you know, beyond that it's probably much harder. But what's the approach?
1:28:45
Because everyone's sort of like selling something, right, that you're that you're interacting with and your job as CEO is to try to actually figure out what the world will look like so that you can build against it.
1:29:02
>> We're in a very fortunate place in the in the business that we run in that we're sort of at the center of the universe.
1:29:08
And what do I what do I what do I mean by that?
1:29:09
ARM's core business is is compute.
1:29:12
We do we do CPUs and CPUs are table stakes.
1:29:16
Every digital product needs a CPU no matter what it is, whether it's the smallest device that fits in your ear or wearable or these giant data centers.
1:29:25
And ARM is the most ubiquitous uh CPU platform ever invented.
1:29:31
We were you guys were chatting to being the platform over 350 billion 350 billion uh devices have shipped based on ARM.
1:29:38
So what we have inside our company >> is almost like a control tower view >> of the entire industry, right?
1:29:47
We we just we see we see everything.
1:29:49
We talk to everyone and as a result we have kind of an amazing perspective in terms of where the the direction of travel is is going.
1:30:00
And I think back maybe to your question in terms of how do we how do we do and think about that?
1:30:03
uh because we have that view and vision and the products that we are working on and the the stuff that's in the road map.
1:30:11
It's not it's not unusual to be sitting in a meeting and we're talking about the product that's going to be coming out in in 2030 2031 2032.
1:30:18
Uh it's just the nature of what that that what we have to do in terms of the business.
1:30:24
So we have a really good view on on that and we what we tend to try to look at is these gigantic macro trends.
1:30:31
Um but some of the things always tend to stick right you know in terms of people efficiency matters uh low power matters uh compute matters and when I say low power matters it doesn't mean everything needs to run on a battery but ultimately uh you can't continue to have all these parameters go up and to the right because the costs get into play thermal economics get into play etc etc so >> it's almost like Bezos approach where He has some line.
1:31:03
He can't predict the future, but he knows that customers are going to want things, you know, faster and cheaper. >> Yeah. >> Um >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
1:31:11
I I think that's it's a good way to describe it. Right.
1:31:13
Um >> th those macro trends don't change.
1:31:16
If we were having this discussion in 2000, >> that's still a valid comment.
1:31:20
Right now 2000, we'd be talking about, oh, the internet is going to explode and we're going to have need about all build all this fiber, we need all these lasers, etc. , etc.
1:31:29
It's subsided, but the internet obviously is is foundational everything we do today.
1:31:36
>> And AI is kind of the same.
1:31:36
I mean, it's almost a utility, right?
1:31:38
It will be something that will be used by everything, everywhere, by everyone.
1:31:45
>> But gravity will still apply, right?
1:31:47
People are going to want to make sure it's efficient.
1:31:48
They're going to want to make sure it's economical, and they're going to want to make sure they're getting benefit from it.
1:31:52
So when you think about product development, you have to have that kind of sensibility that makes sure that you're delivering on that.
1:32:00
>> What uh what what are you expecting from robotics broadly over the next two to three years?
1:32:07
Like I imagine you have an interesting you're able to look in some of these customer segments and maybe see you know areas that represent less than 1% of revenue starting to maybe grow at a faster clip.
1:32:19
But uh I think people are asking like when are we going to have the the chat GBT of robotics which I think people just bucket like a humanoid that can be economically valuable or have some like utility.
1:32:33
But uh it's probably much more likely that it it's possible it's already happened like in an industrial setting and it just it's going to look different.
1:32:42
But what's your um what are you kind of predicting in the in you know before 2030 let's say uh in robotics broadly based on what you're seeing >> 2030 might be a good tipping point.
1:32:53
I think I think it's going to take a little longer than we think uh and it'll be bigger than we think uh and and by that I mean the the business models I think will need to be worked out.
1:33:04
I think robots as a service is probably more viable than buying fixed $100,000 robot $100,000 robots.
1:33:11
Uh the bill of materials on those will be will come down, but at the end of the day, there's just a lot of parts.
1:33:17
There's motors, there's actuators, there's computers.
1:33:19
Uh you're not going to be able to make one uh I think that's going to be $4,000, for example.
1:33:27
But can you can you provide them at a cost where it can be a very very good uh replacement in certain areas for human labor in terms of what you're paying per year and have it subsidized?
1:33:39
Yeah, I think that is that's quite real and I and I do think you know it's a hard it's a hard problem to solve, right?
1:33:45
Because one of the one of the hardest problems around robots with AI is our fingers, right?
1:33:49
Our our fingers are unbelievably good at what they do in terms of uh sensing applying the right level of pressure, being able to pick up a phone or pick up a 20 pound weight or picking up a needle to thread uh to thread a needle.
1:34:07
>> That that for a robot is a lot of work relative to sensors.
1:34:10
It's a lot of work relative to motors.
1:34:12
It's a lot of work relative to ambidextr.
1:34:13
But it it will be a solved problem.
1:34:16
And when it becomes a solved problem, it's going to be uh transformational.
1:34:22
I mean, you think about infrastructure projects, right?
1:34:24
Just it looking at the amount of time it takes for road work or putting up bridges and and anything around those spaces, you know, just look in the United States, just the amount of infrastructure that needs replacement.
1:34:37
If you had and you can't find the people to do the work, right?
1:34:39
Those they're they're very very hard skills to go off and do that.
1:34:42
Once you start to put real automation in place around that, it's going to be hugely transformational.
1:34:47
So, uh I think it it'll take a little longer than than people think.
1:34:52
We see a lot of, you know, amazing stuff with humanoids and dancing robots, etc. , etc.
1:34:55
, uh but it will be bigger than than people anticipate.
1:35:00
I think it will be gigantic.
1:35:03
uh staying in the control tower of the AI buildout, the global economy, uh where where are you focused on outside of your core business in terms of potential bottlenecks?
1:35:13
We've been going back and forth on is it fabrication, is it energy, is it permitting, powered shells, memory.
1:35:20
There's been so many different bottlenecks that have sort of popped up and there's been a lot of excitement.
1:35:25
Uh, and that feels like an opportunity for America or the world to focus on on alleviating a bottleneck when it comes out.
1:35:33
You're helping a lot with what you're doing, but uh, what else is top of mind for you as you view the potential bottlenecks to just scaling AI?
1:35:44
>> Those are you hit on all big ones and they're all they're all they're all challenging, right?
1:35:48
I I think logic is a is a challenge.
1:35:50
Uh, memory is certainly a challenge.
1:35:52
uh all the things that you mentioned.
1:35:54
I think it is a fantastic opportunity on on the flip side for the United States to be able to invest uh in manufacturing and support of these infrastructures.
1:36:05
Uh I know there's been a lot of lot of backlash, for example, about these giant data centers being built and and communities not wanting data centers in in their area.
1:36:14
And then some people look at the data centers and say, "Oh, these data centers are are so giant.
1:36:19
They they don't actually employ a lot of workers.
1:36:20
they're just giant Costco with worring motors inside.
1:36:22
But I would argue that uh while that may seem to be true in terms of the the when the operation is completed, the ecosystem that gets created by building out these data centers uh is immense, right?
1:36:36
And if you can have the entire supply chain whether it's again around the motors, the turbines, uh the air conditioning, the chillers, the chips, >> if you can if if the United States can put that all in in such a way that is going to be all vertically integrated, uh that's huge huge job opportunities for us.
1:36:58
You know, I I I I I read some of this in in in a in an op-ed about 71% of folks are, you know, are kind of against the against data centers.
1:37:06
And I was thinking to myself, gosh, this reminds me of almost uh uh back when fab when the US had most of the semiconductor fabs in the world, you know, 30 40 years ago, and people weren't complaining about fabs per se, but there were a lot of complaints about the chemicals and things of that nature.
1:37:21
And then you had, you know, labor shortages and next thing you know, 35 years later, every advanced fab, whether it's memory or whether it's logic, is not inside the United States.
1:37:33
>> And and I would say just on these supply shortages, which we have now, which are real, I think it's a great opportunity for the United States uh to really boost up domestic manufacturing and not just again like I said around the data centers, but the ecosystem around it.
1:37:47
If you think about the automobile industry, uh, one of the powers that that drove for for the US industry was the huge supply chain around automobiles that created lots and lots of jobs.
1:37:58
I I think data centers are similar. >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:38:01
It's always been good point.
1:38:03
>> People point to Flint, Michigan as a place where water was uh contaminated.
1:38:07
But if you trace back through the Flint, Michigan story, it is the departure of the General Motors plant in Michigan that actually led to all of the renegotiations about where the water would come from and ultimately the degradation of the local uh the local water supply.
1:38:22
It's sort of the flip of once the businesses pull out and the econ and the econ local economy stagnates, then you wind up with the environmental problems in an odd >> and and it's super and it's super hard to bring super hard to bring them back once they go. Yep. 100%. I like it.
1:38:36
Uh, well, thank you so much for taking the time.
1:38:40
We went overtime, but this is a great conversation.
1:38:42
We really appreciate you taking the time. Have a great weekend.
1:38:46
Have a great rest of your week.
1:38:47
We'll talk to you soon, Rene. Cheers. >> Thank you so much. Goodbye.
1:38:50
>> Let me tell you about console. com.
1:38:52
Console builds AI agents that automate 70% of IT, HR, and finance support, giving employees instant resolution for access requests and password resets.
1:38:59
And without further ado, we [music] are going to reindustrialize.
1:39:04
We couldn't be there in person, but we have a correspondent on the ground. How are you doing? >> Welcome back. >> I'm doing great. How are you guys? >> Good to see you. Take us through it.
1:39:12
Uh quick reintroduction on yourself, the company, but then tell us about how Re-industrialize is going.
1:39:17
We were just talking about Michigan, actually. >> Yeah.
1:39:20
So, uh I'm Rob Slaughter, co-founder and CEO of Defense Unicorns.
1:39:25
Uh Defense Unicorns, what's a big idea?
1:39:26
It's all about getting software to war fighters.
1:39:28
Uh people don't realize how hard it is to get modern software capabilities on a lot of the military assets and what we've done as a company is build an entire tech stack from the ground up and just made it easy. >> Yeah.
1:39:40
What's the mood on the on the ground like?
1:39:42
How take take us through re-industrialize?
1:39:44
How long have you been out there?
1:39:45
Uh what's been the highlight? What are the key themes? >> Yeah.
1:39:50
So we're uh we're out here today actually the the noise in the background.
1:39:53
Just give you guys a a sneak peek place.
1:39:56
>> Uh so we are actually uh at the Navy's War Hacker event.
1:39:59
Uh we we recently announced our product launch UDS fleet and so we happen to be you know here in San Diego uh super excited about the Androl 250 that's coming up here.
1:40:12
Uh but today actually and all the folks around me there's uh 350 builders uh you know across the Department of War all working and hacking on cool problems.
1:40:20
And so we're excited to to work side by side with uh the you know military and and government and building solutions here.
1:40:28
>> Is this a new trend uh just a new new era for software defense technology?
1:40:35
Because it feels like you know uh a lot of the defense tech energy was around new systems.
1:40:41
You're building boats, you're building drones, you're building counter drones, counterboss or something.
1:40:46
Uh a lot of like hard tech getting unlocked.
1:40:48
uh a lot on the back of the Andreal story and a bunch of other successful companies, but uh this feels a little bit new to me.
1:40:54
Are we in a software boom these days? >> Yeah. So, so a couple things.
1:40:58
Uh nature of warfare is changing. >> Sure.
1:41:02
>> Um and so I think people realize that a little bit, but to give you guys some perspective, uh when I was active duty Air Force, uh when I was deployed, there was 4,000 airmen managing 70 aircraft.
1:41:13
uh you can imagine in the notsod different distant future there's going to be 70 airmen managing 4,000 uh or 40,000 autonomous systems and so the sheer nature of warfare is changing just based on the sheer number of systems also the demand to get updates out
1:41:28
faster has never been more important because of a capabilities perspective uh and so that's the advantage side um on the national security side the scary side is you have new foundational models uh you know I know anthropic you know had their model pool due the national security uh concerns. I mean, those
1:41:43
I mean, those concerns uh are are very real.
1:41:45
Like, we need to obviously secure our systems.
1:41:47
Um the ability to patch and update your software has never been more, you know, more important.
1:41:54
And so, uh honestly, shout out to, you know, what's changed. Um the threat is real.
1:41:58
Uh modern warfare is here.
1:42:02
Uh you know, shout out to the the Trump administration um and honestly the entire department of war to just take new approaches to doing business.
1:42:10
And so, you know, this hackathon that we're at today, you know, which is, you know, Department of War, uh, you know, effort, you know, it's one of many things that the Department of War is doing to just take kind of new approaches.
1:42:21
Um, and really just like the big idea here and what we're trying to get after is like, you know, you you have a team full of industry people.
1:42:26
Uh, it's hard in industry to actually sit side by side a war fighter.
1:42:30
You might develop a product and be guessing as to what their issues are.
1:42:34
You can actually sit side by side with them.
1:42:35
You can get real feedback. and vice versa.
1:42:37
Uh, as a former military member, you really have no idea what industry is capable of and something that you might think is a hard challenge, somebody can actually s solve overnight.
1:42:47
And so, you know, I think this is one of many things uh that the administration has been doing, um, you know, I I can't, you know, as a as a citizen and somebody who spent the last two decades in the Department of War, uh, I really love to see the bureaucracy just like totally get get out of the way.
1:43:03
Um, I think this is a new vibe.
1:43:03
way. Um, I think this is a new vibe. uh you know I know you got a lot of uh tech companies like ourselves you know really entering the ecosystem and I think the reason why it continues to grow is because companies are finding success and why are they finding success it's because the military members on the
1:43:18
other side are open to new approaches they see the demand they know that they need to be operating in a different way and I think there's a a whole industry of startups that are eager to work with those customers >> do you think there's more preede stage companies at reindustrialize this year than two years ago or less. >> Uh well, uh I would say that it's uh you
1:43:38
>> Uh well, uh I would say that it's uh you know, for me, this is my first first one, so I don't know between this year and last year, but I'll tell you what, we got we got a startup over here.
1:43:48
Uh it's like four people.
1:43:51
Uh it was it was three people a week ago.
1:43:53
Uh and I can't go in exactly what they're doing, but I I've been blown away.
1:43:57
You know, like I said, being a former Air Force member, um they're working on some awesome things.
1:44:01
things. Um there are small companies here right actually behind me we got a small group of you know small company about 10 people uh building a drone live integrating with some new software capabilities and so I think the the the
1:44:14
appetite for smaller and smaller teams because as you guys know very well uh AI has lowered the barrier to entry um and so as AI lowers the barrier to entry there's an appetite for the department of war and the government to work with these smaller and smaller teams. Awesome. Awesome. >> Awesome.
1:44:31
Thank you so much for taking the time to hop on the show.
1:44:34
>> Thanks for calling in from the hackathon.
1:44:37
>> We'll talk to you soon.
1:44:37
I'm sure the energy is awesome.
1:44:39
>> Have a good rest of your day. >> Great. Great to see you. >> Awesome.
1:44:41
>> We'll talk to you soon. Goodbye. >> Slaughter.
1:44:43
>> Uh let me tell you about Codeex.
1:44:43
Codex is a powerful workspace for getting work done with AI agents.
1:44:47
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1:44:54
Our next guest is almost here. I'm not sure. I guess not yet.
1:45:01
>> In the waiting room, we have Rob Reed, the author of After On and Year after >> DC Brags hit the timeline said, "I want to sincerely apologize for poking fun at the most marginalized and victimized group in our society, venture capitalists."
1:45:16
Yes, the striand effect was fully out on the timeline over the past few days going back and forth with venture capitalist over something that wasn't quite a brag, but it was it was more just a reflection on the on the on the time in San Francisco, how much money is flowing around, how many people are raising different funds.
1:45:36
But, uh, VC Braggs of course takes a screenshot, posts it, and that was not wellreceived.
1:45:44
And so but that that in you know if you're getting if you're getting dunked on you got to lean in.
1:45:48
I think Jason Calakan has learned this and has done a fantastic job like negotiating with VC Brags to the point where the whole like first investor in Uber, third investor in Uber thing become part of stickicky brand.
1:46:02
>> If VC Brags takes a shot at you and you're an investor, you've got to lean in. Yeah.
1:46:06
You can't >> you've made it.
1:46:09
>> You're worth taking a shot at. Yeah.
1:46:11
>> Like your people are talking about you.
1:46:12
you're not a nobody anymore.
1:46:12
Uh anyway, we have Rob Reed uh in the waiting room.
1:46:18
Let's bring him in to the TVP Ultra. Rob, how are you doing? >> Doing well.
1:46:22
Hello, [music] gentlemen.
1:46:24
>> Thank you so much for taking the time.
1:46:26
We wanted to talk about uh about all the advancements in bio, biocurity, what's happening there.
1:46:32
But since it's the first time on the show, I I would love to know a little bit about your background and sort of introduce you to the audience.
1:46:37
uh could you take us through some of your earlier journeys, some of the companies that you've worked with and what you're doing now uh and then we can go into the hot topics of today. >> Absolutely.
1:46:48
So um I came to the valley right out of school um and I'm chronologically advanced enough that it was during the first wave of the internet boom.
1:46:56
So >> I was at a big company that got very aware of the internet's sort of oncoming tide early I'd say.
1:47:03
got into the internet group there.
1:47:06
Became an internet person you know in like 1994 which is very very early and as a result of that I saw a lot of things coming.
1:47:13
Um I ended up writing a book about the rise of the internet as a commercial medium kind of as it was happening and that got me well widely known and I became sort of a junior VC at a junior firm and then I took off and started.
1:47:27
>> What year did you publish the book?
1:47:29
Sorry to >> the book came out in 1997.
1:47:29
>> the book came out in 1997. is called architects of the web and I profiled >> I think this is I think this is this could be a good business opport there there might be some commerce that happens on the worldwide web >> it's amazing >> yeah that was one of my theories there
1:47:45
might be commerce there people might trade stocks >> video crazy stuff >> um >> uh how much push back did you get at the time because because we we we've covered it before on the show but there was >> this almost if you look at the Doom and fear that people had around the internet. It almost aligns one to one
1:48:02
It almost aligns one to one with with AI.
1:48:05
There was >> the Y2K moment. >> Yeah.
1:48:08
Y2K cyber >> putting all bookstores, all retail, the mall apocalypse, retail apocalypse was was the retail apocalypse >> almost there's there's basically a onetoone example for each.
1:48:21
>> Yeah, >> this was in the honeymoon period before the panicking started.
1:48:24
So 97 it's still you know primarily a tech forward thing and there was wild optimism about what was going to happen.
1:48:34
Uh although we didn't have the vocabulary yet I think if you ask people >> what the internet would do for information and informedness.
1:48:41
People would describe a combination of Wikipedia and Snopes. If you remember Snopes. >> Oh yeah.
1:48:49
>> Nobody ever imagined that disinformation would spread as rapidly that it would be divisive.
1:48:54
It was a real Kumbaya vibe early on and people were obviously a little bit over optimistic on that front, but boy were they right about the economic opportunity and the degree to which it would change our lives and and the way we do business.
1:49:08
And so at that time with that book, you know, it was it was celebrating that moment and really taking a deep deep look at what was happening right then at the outset.
1:49:16
And it was a small enough industry and I had been a part of it just a few months before I started writing it that I had access to everybody and I got to know everybody of any consequence.
1:49:26
I mean this is when you know you could go over to Netscape and get a meeting with Mark Andre if you had a good reason to with relatively little difficulty.
1:49:34
Um and through all the relationships that I I I made through that I ended up getting this sort of field promotion to be a VC far sooner than I I thought I would.
1:49:43
Did that for a couple years. Learned a ton.
1:49:47
started this music I started a company as the solo founder of a company that created a a music service called rap city >> but tell us the domain name of that company >> oh listen.
1:49:57
com >> fantastic domain name we love these amazing domains they're so rare these days but back then everyone had a great domain what was the entrepreneurial journey like was it a tough transition what was the whole uh journey like how do you reflect on it today >> you know the toughest thing was that I'd never really managed prior to that I'd been a mid-level marketing ground at a big computer company um and then a VC.
1:50:21
You learned a lot of valable lessons as a VC, but how to be a self-taught manager.
1:50:25
And that's hard enough when you're doing it for the first time, but when you have people who work for people who work for people who work for you, you know, that's a lot to to rocket through.
1:50:35
We got up to about 200 employees before we sold.
1:50:37
Um and so that was the trickiest thing.
1:50:40
And it is lonely being a solo founder because there's no one person.
1:50:45
You may have great investor relationships, great board relationships, um you know, even great relationships obviously with your team.
1:50:53
There's nobody that looks at things through precisely the same lens as you.
1:50:57
Um that said, every co-founder that's added to an equation or every co-founder relationship which which scales quadratically if you go to three, four, etc.
1:51:07
is an axis upon which a startup can break. Yeah.
1:51:11
>> Um and so that's that's sort of the trade-off that you face.
1:51:13
And um you know, I'm glad I did it as a solo founder for a whole bunch of reasons, but that's tough. >> Yeah. Interesting.
1:51:20
Uh when did you start thinking about biorisk generally?
1:51:24
That seems like a second order effect of uh technology at this point.
1:51:30
But uh what piqued your interest?
1:51:32
What was your process to get up to speed and start actually thinking through tactical implications and forecasting risk?
1:51:42
>> In a way, it connects to that startup Rap City.
1:51:44
So, most of your your listeners may not remember Rap City, but for all intents and purposes, we were the first Spotify.
1:51:50
We created the unlimited on demand streaming model that everybody else later adopted.
1:51:54
We were the first company to sign, you know, uh, full catalog licenses with all the major labels, even before Apple did for their MP3 store.
1:52:01
Um, and when I came out of that, I wanted to take a little bit of time off and I wrote I I'd been I'd been a writer.
1:52:08
I'd written a couple of books, but non-fiction.
1:52:09
And so I wrote a book um about a crazy alien civilization that was so into American pop music, they accidentally committed the biggest copyright infringement in human in the history of the universe and bankrupt the entire universe. Yeah.
1:52:23
based based on a true story, I like to say.
1:52:25
Um, and so that I was I thought I was doing for myself.
1:52:30
Bizarrely enough, it it briefly and barely, I want to put those words out there, became a New York Times bestseller. And I was living in LA. >> That's forever. >> I know.
1:52:39
>> You said briefly, but it's forever. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
1:52:41
It's like I was like a little prairie dog coming up to the bottom of the list and looking around for a couple weeks, but you you do get to say that >> forever.
1:52:48
>> Um, and and I was living in Los Angeles with we were just nearly married.
1:52:51
my wife was hosting a a TV show that kind of had us marooned down there for a long period of time.
1:52:58
So before starting another company, I leaned into more writing um and doing a bunch of deep science podcasting.
1:53:04
Um and this is where it all sort of comes together.
1:53:06
Uh often I mean generally interviewing um worldclass scientists all the way up to the Nobel level about you know very deeply about their work and I would spend 30 or 40 hours of prep before each interview because I was mainly doing for the fun of it.
1:53:21
That was a great way to learn about a bunch of different things.
1:53:26
Through one of my novels and then through my podcasting, I got more and more concerned about synthetic biology risk.
1:53:31
And you know, this probably started about 10 years ago.
1:53:34
And at the time, you could see that synthetic biology, like computing, was and is an exponential technology.
1:53:43
Which means that the things that are incredibly hard or indeed even impossible to do do today, unless you're one of two or three people are the types of things that freshmen in college will be able to do with the passage of time.
1:53:55
And when you think about the bad things that can happen on the edges of synthetic biology, and this is before we got to the AI intersection, um you could really imagine catastrophic acts of bioteterror or bio error, you know, 79 years in the future.
1:54:12
And you know, I started diving deeper into this, speaking about it, writing about it.
1:54:17
And then right before COVID, I gave a TED talk about the dangers of an unnatural pandemic.
1:54:24
And of course, a few months later, we had CO.
1:54:26
And so, I've gotten deeper and deeper into this.
1:54:29
It's my public service side.
1:54:30
I have made one investment that is connected to this as a VC, which is what I do now.
1:54:34
Um, but it's my public service side, and I've at this point probably put, you know, at least a couple thousand hours into it over the years.
1:54:42
There's uh there's been some movement at least like open letters signed by AI lab leaders.
1:54:48
The most recent was around uh basically recordkeeping and sort of KYC rules at uh companies that manufacture DNA RNA sequences if I understand it correctly.
1:55:01
Um is that the right hinge point to focus on?
1:55:05
Are you a fan of an ensemble approach where the models have guard rails baked in and then also if you're using the model through a SAS product then the software also is tracking things then the company that makes the actual uh sequence might have uh guard rails and then maybe the equipment is regulated with licenses.
1:55:27
Um do you have a prescriptive approach that you're advocating for at this point? Is it evolving?
1:55:34
How are you thinking about that?
1:55:36
It's always evolving, but um there are a few very very simple and incredibly inexpensive things that we can do as first steps that would significantly improve the situation.
1:55:46
So, first of all, all of the foundation model companies are very very aware of this risk.
1:55:50
They all have what's called classifier models that are there that we've all probably experienced versions of them that are there to prevent people from doing, you know, dangerous biological research or try to create dangerous bugs.
1:56:02
Um, every frontier model, every model has what's called a system card, which they describe a model and its capabilities.
1:56:10
And every system card I've ever seen, has acknowledged that classifiers, classifier models, which are like smaller models, almost like bouncers that sit in front of the big model.
1:56:17
Uh, classifiers can and are always fooled.
1:56:22
So, they are doing everything they can. They will continue to.
1:56:24
We should be grateful for that.
1:56:26
Um, but we know that that's only the beginning of it.
1:56:28
Um, the next issue is securing our DNA supply.
1:56:34
So, at this point, practically anybody who wants to make a long strand of DNA goes to a service bureau to have that done because the experts are better at it and researchers would rather do research.
1:56:44
Um, there is a a consortium called the International Genome Synthesis Sequencing Consortium or something like that. It's called the IGSC.
1:56:53
It's a voluntary consortium that does very good work.
1:56:56
They put together what they call sequences of concern and if somebody tries to order one of those things um you know traffic light red yellow will go off and they'll dive into the or order it.
1:57:08
This is expensive for companies to comply with and it's also voluntary.
1:57:14
Um the IGSC compla claims that they speak for 80% of the synthesized DNA in the world, but that was kind of a out of the you know you know kind of blue sky guess that they made over 10 years ago and they don't have very many Chinese members.
1:57:28
So that's no longer true.
1:57:29
But even if it was 80%, I I can confidently say that if there were a town in which 80% of the bars enforce the drinking age, that would be a town without a drinking age, right? So, um, it does nothing.
1:57:41
A bad actor is going to go to a nonIGSC shop, obviously.
1:57:48
And it's even worse than that.
1:57:50
It'd be almost like you had security lines at the airport that were voluntary and it was actually cheaper to fly if you went if you didn't go through the security line because you save money by not, you know, these this adds to the cost basis.
1:58:03
We need to make that mandatory.
1:58:04
And there was actually an open letter si signed by a lot of folks including from AI labs just a few days ago pushing for that.
1:58:10
Um this is a dead simple thing and by the way it's as much in China's interests as it is in our own because you know if anybody can order any strand of DNA that they want and we'll get into what they can do with that DNA once they have it if you'd like.
1:58:27
Um the the two entities that have the most to lose are the United States and China.
1:58:32
And this is something that we can team up on with them and say, "Yeah, there's going to there needs to be an international regime.
1:58:37
It has to be mandatory and it also has to apply to benchtop synthesizers where people can make much shorter strands um without having to go to a service bureau." >> Mhm.
1:58:49
>> Uh bad actor gets a hold of or or is working with uh with with somebody that's not voluntarily being uh I guess regulated.
1:58:59
Uh what can they do with it?
1:59:02
Well, in a worst case scenario, let's think about something that's not only not just hypothetical.
1:59:06
Um, let's say that there is a really deadly genome that's in wide circulation online.
1:59:13
Everybody knows what it is.
1:59:13
Uh, 1918 flu happens to be just such a genome because our government put it there.
1:59:18
Uh, they put it there a long time ago when very few people could do anything with it.
1:59:24
But the passage of time always happens and it was a very foolish thing to do because we now live in a world in which 30,000 people roughly perhaps a little more have the tools and the knowhow which would allow them to basically animate that virus just from the DNA um if they felt like doing it.
1:59:40
And the last time that thing came around, it killed a staggeringly high percentage of the people in the world.
1:59:46
And we don't want that to happen again.
1:59:48
There's reasons to think it might not turn into a pandemic this time, but let's skip the rabbit hole.
1:59:54
This is just a hypothetical.
1:59:54
Um there is a brilliant um professor at MIT named Kevin Espelt who stress tested the system with this in mind and he basically cut up a whole bunch of orders which collectively added up to Spanish flu and sent it to a whole bunch of different labs.
2:00:09
Most of those labs actually knew that this was a sequence that was part of the Spanish flu.
2:00:14
But although the Spanish flu virus is very very tightly regulated by our government, it's one of the very most regulated uh biological uh you know critters or sequences or whatever you want to say in the world because it's called a select agent.
2:00:30
There's fewer than a hundred of those.
2:00:31
They didn't stop themselves from sending the DNA because it's only the entire genome that's regulated.
2:00:37
And so this was a scientific paper he did.
2:00:39
He did it with the knowledge and cooperation of the FBI.
2:00:43
It was a red teaming exercise and even going to IGSC compliant labs, he could pull this all together and somebody like Kevin and about 30,000 other people could then animate the virus and the number of people who can do that is only going to go up.
2:00:56
It was probably fewer than 30 when that genome was first posted to the internet.
2:01:00
Um, at some point it will be anybody in freshman biology. Mhm.
2:01:04
Um, >> so please, >> what do you I feel like every six months there's a very concerning headline where like some illegal bolab is like raided by law enforcement >> and then it just sort of like goes away.
2:01:22
Uh, what do you make of that?
2:01:22
I'm sure you've kind of tracked a lot of these stories.
2:01:28
Um, how I'm assuming if law enforcement is consistently finding them that there's a lot more out there that aren't found.
2:01:37
Why do people Why are they created in the first place?
2:01:41
What is the United States doing to >> crack down further all that stuff? >> Yeah.
2:01:49
I mean, we can rely on the fact that we have not found each and every one of these things.
2:01:52
And this all keys off of proliferation.
2:01:54
So again, I'll go back to the notion that synthetic biology is an exponential technology like computing.
2:02:01
With something like that, you have very very very rapid proliferation and very very very rapid uh drops in cost.
2:02:08
So um just think about transistors.
2:02:11
I I forget the statistic, but it was in the late 50s that one very brilliant person in the entire world developed the ability to play checkers with a computer.
2:02:20
Um you know, he had one of five machines that could do it.
2:02:22
He was one of two people who was smart enough to program it, whatever.
2:02:26
And with the passage of a couple decades, you know, anybody can play chess.
2:02:30
And then it gets to the point that any, you know, street kid with a tiny budget can do that.
2:02:36
We'll go through the same thing with Symbio.
2:02:37
Now, these labs that we're discovering um have not been terribly capable yet, but because particularly with when Symbio meets AI, the level of expertise that you need in order to achieve really powerful things that perhaps nobody even can achieve right now will become increasingly cheap achievable in a very very low budget with the passage of like a single-digit number of years.
2:03:02
And so these labs are we're hearing more and more about them because it's becoming cheaper and easier to create them.
2:03:08
And you know this needs to be something that we as a society think about and invest in as much as cyber security.
2:03:15
We spend tens of billions of dollars a year on that as we should.
2:03:19
Um, but the the consequences of, you know, the human genome and therefore the human species being taken down by a cunningly engineered virus are so much higher than that in cyber that we should be rationally making at least as much of an investment.
2:03:34
And at this point, we're making a vanishingly small amount of investment.
2:03:38
And I I I should point out part of this investment needs to be about, you know, preventing bad actors without hobbling our ability to get incredible gains from sin bio and from AI models.
2:03:50
And so that has to be done very deafly and very intelligently.
2:03:52
And so simply passing a law and saying we've passed the law ain't enough.
2:03:56
Not that we're in any danger of passing a law that makes us more secure on a bio level, but the the the objective, the urgent objective needs to be to allow creativity and and technological and scientific advance to run rapid and bring incredible benefits to us, but not allowing ourselves to get taken down.
2:04:17
And this thing that I mentioned with secure DNA, that would cost, you know, virtually nothing because there are tools that do this that are actually open source.
2:04:25
it's just not required to anybody.
2:04:27
Um there just needs to be a requirement in that case and some enforcement and we haven't yet had [clears throat] the social willpower to even do that.
2:04:35
Hopefully that's going to change with all these powerful signatures that are starting to acrew on these open letters.
2:04:43
uh seems pretty straightforward that uh AI's ability to find software vulnerabilities, you know, basically sending them basically sending a model and saying uh hey, just figure out uh vulnerabilities in, you know, this infrastructure or this piece of software.
2:05:01
uh same do you believe like already the models have that same ability to effectively find like vulnerabilities in the human species?
2:05:13
>> Yeah, there there's there's no question because we are not as robust as the Mac OS for instance.
2:05:18
Uh there are lots and lots of known vulnerabilities that we have already. Yeah.
2:05:23
That have not been patched, will never be patched, cannot be patched.
2:05:27
>> And so yeah, we're we're a much softer target, you know, than Linux or or Mac OS.
2:05:32
OS. And so how does how does um it seems like the solution is is uh needs to be like you've been talking about focused on like actually making it more difficult to procure DNA because if you assume that open models you know a bad actor is going to be able to have an
2:05:53
open model with no guard rails with access to enough compute that they can send the model >> on you know basically a goal which is like find as many possible you know, known vulnerabilities as well as potentially net new vulnerabilities um in, you know, the the human species. And so
2:06:12
And so >> that it feels like cats out of the bag there maybe already or will be within the next 12 months.
2:06:21
>> Um but do you think >> hopefully 24 or 36, but perhaps already? >> Sure. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
2:06:27
>> Um last question for me.
2:06:27
um you know, as as as guns proliferated society, so did metal detectors.
2:06:34
Is there an opportunity for uh more diffuse early warning detection around sickness?
2:06:40
I'm just thinking if I'm if a Whoop or an Aura ring or some other connected device can tell every individual you're getting sick, you should get checked out, you shouldn't go to work, you shouldn't go to that, you shouldn't spread anything.
2:06:56
feels like that could make quarantining more targeted and potentially more of an early warning detection system.
2:07:02
Are you optimistic about that?
2:07:06
>> You've actually hit on a couple of really interesting things with that question.
2:07:09
Let's go to metal detectors and guns first.
2:07:12
>> Um, in 1972, astounding fact, there were over 50 hijackings of large commercial airliners in the United States. >> Yeah.
2:07:20
>> Uh, that started being true in the late60s. Yeah. >> Uh, why?
2:07:23
There was literally no airport security at all in the United States.
2:07:28
And who was lobbying against it? The airlines.
2:07:30
Because they thought it would be expensive and it would make people think, seeing those security gates would make people think that airline uh travel was dangerous.
2:07:38
I'll tell you what would make me think it's dangerous. 50 hijackings a year. [laughter] >> Yeah. I'm sorry. Go ahead.
2:07:46
that people would hijack a plane and enjoy hostages hostages money.
2:07:49
So there was there a lot of like ransom payments being made.
2:07:55
Was that like the primary >> We got to do a whole deep dive on >> Yeah.
2:07:59
I guess we're going to do three hours tomorrow on on uh >> hijack. >> There was everything. There was everything.
2:08:04
So there's a great book called The Skies Belong to Us to tell the story, but this was kind of the late60s and there were a lot of radicals and the most popular destination was Cuba.
2:08:14
somebody would have it in their heads that they're going to fly down to Cuba with a hijacked plane.
2:08:17
Fidel's going to become their best friend and it's just going to be, you know, rum coladas and beaches for the rest of their life.
2:08:24
It literally got so bad that they started a a a dormatory for wayward American hostages.
2:08:29
And I'm not exaggerating in Havana and they would send the plane back and just have to deal with these, you know, entitled, you know, college or postc college kids.
2:08:39
Anyway, the the security guards t um gates go in and we go from 50 hijackings in 72 to zero in 73.
2:08:47
>> And then there's kind of a very occasional thing and then 911 hits.
2:08:51
>> And after 911 hits, we take security much more seriously than ever.
2:08:54
And there has not been a single one in the United States in, you know, 25 years. What does this tell us?
2:09:00
It means that you just you don't want to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
2:09:05
A lot of people say, "Well, gee, securing the DNA is only part of the solution."
2:09:09
It is, but you make a major speed bump in front of people.
2:09:15
It becomes a much higher bar, much higher intent.
2:09:19
>> Something you don't do on a whim because you're pissed off that your girlfriend or boyfriend broke up with you.
2:09:22
And then it becomes much, you know, more difficult to get over that bar.
2:09:26
and you can really really plummet the level of ambient risk down to the point that it's really only determined actors who are out there who become much easier to detect using intelligence and law enforcement and all the things that that we want to use.
2:09:40
Um and then in terms of your question of surveillance, yeah, um we're pretty far off from when aura rings could necessarily do that, but we should be thinking about improving them and tying them into the primary care system, the US, if only because we're worried about sick days at work.
2:09:54
Like there's lots of benefits to that.
2:09:56
But the other thing we can be doing is what's called bioserveillance, which is getting a global detection system out there.
2:10:05
The best place, believe it or not, is airports where everybody comes in and all the waste products from all of those planes goes into a single place where you can sequence parts of that waste water and see if there is a genetic sequence that's never been seen before that is suddenly starting to grow exponentially in various points of the world.
2:10:24
because that would mean it's either something with a long uh incubation cycle or it's what some people call a stealth pandemic which is something that is engineered to have an extravagantly long incubation cycle.
2:10:34
So everybody's asymptomatic but it's spreading and spreading.
2:10:39
If that ever happens we want to know pronto and the budget for some very very powerful plans for bioserveillance is is been as low as you know $50 million setup and 10 million a year thereafter.
2:10:51
These are not expensive things. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we got to do it.
2:10:54
Well, thank you so much for taking the time. We really do this again.
2:10:57
We got to do this again soon. This is fantastic.
2:11:00
Also, there's a bunch of your fans in the chat hoping uh for more podcasts from you uh because they love your your podcast. >> Yes, from your show.
2:11:10
>> I'll I'll talk to them.
2:11:12
>> Well, thank you so much, Rob.
2:11:14
>> Have a great rest of your day. We'll talk to you soon.
2:11:16
>> Um let me tell you about Shopify.
2:11:18
Shopify is the commerce platform that grows with your business and let you sell in seconds online, in store, on mobile, on social, on marketplaces, and now with AI agents.
2:11:23
[music] And without further ado, we have the founder and CEO of Taste Labs.
2:11:28
We talked [music] about it yesterday on the show.
2:11:32
Sorry for keeping you waiting.
2:11:32
Thank you so much for taking the time to come chat with us. How are you doing? >> What's happening? >> I'm doing great. How are you guys? Thanks for having me.
2:11:40
>> Thanks for hopping on.
2:11:40
We talked about Taste Labs, the launch, the back and forth a little bit yesterday.
2:11:45
I would put >> Did you mean to rage bait everyone with the name?
2:11:52
[laughter and gasps] >> I I knew there was going to be some debate about the name, but it's actually it's actually funny.
2:11:55
We registered for the company like a year ago with that name and so before the word really popped up. >> Okay. Okay. Yeah.
2:12:01
Well, you get a ton of points for that for sure.
2:12:03
Um what about this uh what about if I boil down the core debate, it feels like a lot of people are very optimistic about your business.
2:12:12
Like there are just a lot of models that where the outputs Even if you just put aside taste, like they're just not satisfactory to the user and providing more data, more signal there.
2:12:23
That's valuable, great, good business.
2:12:25
But then there's this other discussion of like, can taste ever be something handled by a machine? Is it so human?
2:12:33
We'll never touch it with the most magical godlike super intelligence.
2:12:37
Those are the two angles.
2:12:37
How reasonable is that as a framing as is that of a framing for this discussion?
2:12:45
I think that's very reasonable.
2:12:45
But by the way, I almost went to even do the exercise of not even using the word taste to describe what we're doing because I think people got very caught up in the terminology.
2:12:52
But ultimately, I think one thing that everyone can agree on is slop is a problem. Slop is everywhere. It's not going anywhere. It's just getting worse.
2:13:01
>> Uh and so that's really what we're ultimately trying to solve is how do we raise this bar of quality first >> and how do we >> just allow us to even be able to create better things with AI.
2:13:11
But it's not a substitute for human taste and it's not trying to determine like one taste if that makes sense. >> Yes. Yes. Yes.
2:13:17
I think another thing people are worried about is like the idea of monoculture which happens in Silicon Valley every once in a while where someone says like serif fonts are tasteful.
2:13:26
Sand serif is no longer tasteful.
2:13:28
Therefore, everyone must use sand sif or vice versa.
2:13:30
And we're all like wait everything looks the same. This is actually bland.
2:13:34
this doesn't feel as rich or tasteful as what you'd see in a the you know thriving community that actually has a ton of culture to it.
2:13:42
Uh I'm interested to know though uh about the actual process.
2:13:44
Uh congratulations on the funding round but um how are you thinking about actually uh actually imbuing models with taste?
2:13:53
How much of this is about data labeling?
2:13:55
How much of this is bringing on experts with particular backgrounds?
2:13:57
with particular backgrounds? uh is this a very high skill ceiling um uh effort where you're finding you know artists and and people with art history backgrounds like who who is the ground truth where's the ground truth coming from >> very good question so I think for on the mono monoculture piece uh I think that's exactly what we're trying to solve like
2:14:18
the whole problem with soft is this repetition that you see right every site now looks the same every site look looks the same no one wants that and so part of what we're doing is building this community of experts that is at the heart of everything that we do that are a lot of designers, front end engineers, art people uh that can exactly like bring this whole range. I think we don't
2:14:34
I think we don't even as a team want uh the company to be a reflection of our own like personal preference.
2:14:40
Like I think it's much more how do we map this whole range of preferences that exist and uh select the best people in the world at this so that they can bring to the table all their opinions and discussions of like when is something good, when is something bad because also none of this can really happen in isolation, right?
2:14:53
I think yes, first we have to really raise this floor and figure out what's the minimum bar of quality.
2:14:58
Uh but then I think there is this multi-titive preferences and that's always going to be the case.
2:15:03
So makers kind of >> I I always think of in text the it's not this it's that it's the uh parallelism antithetical parallelism is the name of that term.
2:15:14
And by itself, I've probably read that exact phrase in actually somebody pulled up an old Paul Graham essay that had that exact phrase, the forbidden AI slop phrase from a decade ago.
2:15:27
And it's probably been in New Yorker articles and and famous books.
2:15:32
But it was only when it became so repeated that it was in every paragraph of every thing that was ever generated that it became a tell.
2:15:37
And it became somewhat I don't even know if it's less tasteful, but just annoying.
2:15:41
And I think that uh I'm interested to know like how much of how much of taste in your mind or just the like the quality output is driven just by variation.
2:15:54
I think that's a very good point like the feeling of repetition it will lead something to be less tasteful over time right that's why you have these like cycles of trends because you have kind of the people that are early but then the soon that it becomes too ubiquitous it kind of loses its power and so it's this moving target and I think that
2:16:10
understanding how do you force diversity in an intentional way right it's not just for example turning up the temperature of a model and having it produce more randomness because that wouldn't be like intentional and so it's like how do you understand yes how to force that diversity but in a way that that's more intentional. >> Mhm. >> Mhm.
2:16:25
>> Uh time what are your uh aesthetic super intelligence timelines?
2:16:30
>> Do you think where we can one day uh >> because [laughter] it feels like it feels like we're we're I mean even just the latest revision of the models the like if you interact with the frontier the it's not this it's that like is actually gone.
2:16:41
I haven't seen it in a long time.
2:16:44
Like, and a lot of these things like six fingers just went away and no one talked about it >> because it was only fun to talk about when it was sloppy and terrible.
2:16:50
And now people people are like, "Wow, like the victory lap was like two days in tech Twitter and then and then everyone [clears throat] moved on and they and they found some new bone to pick, which is maybe the human condition.
2:17:01
We'll always find something to complain about."
2:17:04
But yeah, what what uh do you have like some end state or or do you think this is a this is a life's work?
2:17:11
Is this something that >> I do think it's a bit of a life work situation cuz I think you'll have this phase now like to your point how do you fix the problem of six fingers that's equivalent in design right or that's equivalent in writing.
2:17:22
>> Uh but once you're over that then I think it's like how do you actually raise the ceiling of that too and that's a moving target.
2:17:27
So I think part of this that's very different than training a model to be amazing at something like coding or math is that it's not like you can train that capability at once.
2:17:33
It's something that you need to consistently retrain.
2:17:35
I think a lot of the thing the model right now is bad at is even these fundamentals like things like vision, alignment, typography.
2:17:40
Uh but once that's solved then I think it becomes much more this problem of personalization, moving trends, localization too, right?
2:17:47
So uh yeah the >> honestly I think within like a year a lot of the capability problem will be solved in terms of what we can actually produce >> but then the the bar of ceiling I think is a much much longer endeavor.
2:17:59
[laughter] uh talk about uh transfer learning in taste uh where taste applies more broadly.
2:18:06
Uh we were just talking to the CEO of ARM holdings chip design firm.
2:18:08
Uh in labs they talk about research taste.
2:18:14
I imagine that there's a lot of chip design that can be done just with uh you know a deterministic like verarilog model verarilog fine-tune model.
2:18:20
But I would imagine if I actually went and talked to the best uh you know designers at ARM, they would say, "Yeah, there is a lot of taste in what we do."
2:18:29
a lot of taste in what we do." And I'm interested to know if you think there will be knock-on effects because everyone probably goes to uh images, front-end design, you know, the the the visual taste of a visual designer, but
2:18:41
I'm wondering if you see yourself as doing something that is in the path of solving challenges outside of visual taste and maybe there will be implications in things that uh maybe people outside the industry can't see the taste that goes into the design of a CPU, but in fact there is. Totally. So I think it's funny it's Totally.
2:19:00
So I think it's funny it's funny you say this because whenever I'm even explaining the company a lot of people are like there's space in code right like I I am very opinionated about the way that I write code.
2:19:08
So I think >> how do you develop really a framework and almost this like infrastructure to be able to turn something that is uh subjective and something that's more objective or that can be codified.
2:19:19
Uh and that logic I think will apply to many things way beyond just aesthetics.
2:19:25
I think aesthetics is a super important one that we care deeply a lot about as a team which is why we started there.
2:19:28
But creative writing is another one to your point.
2:19:31
Like anything really where there's multitude of opinions applies the same logic. So >> yeah.
2:19:36
Uh what what does demand look like just this week?
2:19:38
Sounds like you started the company uh around a year ago or at least incorporated it.
2:19:43
Uh I imagine that the haters would be in shambles if they if they got a look at your pipeline [laughter] just given how much attention uh attention the launch got.
2:19:53
Um, but uh what what's what's demand been like?
2:19:59
[laughter and gasps] >> The the inbound of the last 48 hours has been absolutely insane.
2:20:03
Don't get me wrong, it's actually the reason we took so long to launch.
2:20:07
Um the reason we took so long to launch is actually because we already had more demand than honestly I think we could serve before even the launch.
2:20:15
And so it's been a very low sleep week for me uh trying to catch up with all the the demand.
2:20:20
But yeah, I think both on the side of the labs and of the Appler companies, it's been kind of kind of bonkers.
2:20:25
Still trying to wrap my my head around it.
2:20:27
>> And then and then meeting that demand.
2:20:29
Uh creatives uh creatives I I've I've had the pleasure of working with so many amazing designers, photographers, creative directors over the years.
2:20:40
And uh often times I have found that many of them are not um not uh they don't their life is not guided uh as commercially as many other kind of domains right like software engineers, lawyers, accountants etc.
2:21:00
etc. where uh you know if account if an accountant has an opportunity to work with a company uh for a great salary and the company is doing something you know ethical or or not even just not illegal they're like cool [laughter] sign me up whereas like create creatives that I've
2:21:18
worked with I've I've at some points just offered to make an intro hey there's this company and they'll just be like no I don't vibes >> yeah there's no price to work with brand how is been talking with uh creatives who many of them are are already like
2:21:36
I've met plent creatives that love AI that are like this is amazing this is like a new tool >> uh but certainly many of them are also >> maybe they wouldn't even admit that they enjoy it as a tool so how's it been building out the network >> so I think there's still definitely a
2:21:52
lot of um division maybe within the creative community of like people that are really leaning leaning into it and others that are very like anti Uh, I think what's been really cool is actually finding these creatives that want to be that bridge. They're like,
2:22:03
They're like, "Hey, like I I do agree that AI is inevitable and why not make it better, right?
2:22:08
Like why not be part of the the solution to make this actually something good and that we can also use.
2:22:12
And so that I think has been really cool."
2:22:14
But you're right that they're way more picky, which they should be.
2:22:16
Our our founding designer actually had we made her a hat that says picky.
2:22:20
Uh because I I totally agree with this.
2:22:23
It's like we have to create a community that actually people want to be a part of and are excited about.
2:22:27
Uh but of course I think you're always going to have people that are anti-AI especially and that will be against it and I think we have to find the ones that are pro.
2:22:36
>> How uh predictions how many years until we see someone affectionately and nostalgically embrace AI slop like the slop core aesthetic.
2:22:47
They're bringing six fingers in.
2:22:49
They're prompting the latest and greatest models, the Nano Banana 7, and they're like, "I want you to add six fingers because that has a retro feel that takes me back to Dolly 2, and I want that. I want that slot." Yeah. Yeah.
2:23:03
Maybe they just go back to the model if they're really authentic.
2:23:04
It's like running the V running the the the iPhone photo through the VHS recorder, so you get the film grain in there. Something like that.
2:23:13
How long until until SLO becomes affectionately loved and reminisced about?
2:23:17
I think it's Yeah, it's going to be kind of like the the taking photos on a on a film camera because it's because it has like a specific vibe.
2:23:23
I do think that people do gravitate to these like specific aesthetics and vibes. Totally.
2:23:28
>> And maybe in like f I need a little bit of distance so that traumatized by the software more.
2:23:31
So maybe like 5 years people will be like a really miss those fonts and purple gradients all over my my page.
2:23:38
>> Yeah, I'm looking forward to time.
2:23:38
We had it so good in 2026.
2:23:39
I just want to go back to that era. >> So good.
2:23:43
Do you think uh last question uh anyone that has uh you know worked on building a brand or a product I think early on in their career they can have this like frustration around the gap between their ability and their taste level.
2:23:59
Do you think that's going away already?
2:24:02
Because I even noticed like historically if I wanted to try to create like let's say 10 years ago I wanted to create like some type of render for for a product >> uh or a design for a product I could go into Figma and like make a version of it uh very very quickly.
2:24:19
Um, and now like with a let's say I have an idea for a joke consumer product I want to send to to John.
2:24:27
Now I can basically oneshot a version of it that's like pretty easy and it feels like that gap at least initially has closed.
2:24:32
Um, do you think that's do you think that's the case or are people's expectations just like already much higher >> going to rise? >> Yeah, I think so.
2:24:42
I think people that love this mastery of the craft of design and that are like the peak of taste makers, I think will always want to keep improving even their ability to create to like keep up with their taste.
2:24:54
>> But I think what we really don't realize is especially now with AI, any person on earth can suddenly create, right?
2:24:57
Like you you anyone can prompt, anyone can can build something and I think that group is a very large group that is producing a lot of volume.
2:25:04
Um, and if we can again both actually raise the skill to match people's taste but actually even help to maybe improve people's taste and like show them understand their taste better or improve the things that they can create and so their their bar will get higher.
2:25:17
I think that would be awesome.
2:25:19
Uh, I think the craftsmanship will never go away of the people that are like at the peak of that field.
2:25:25
But I do agree with you that I think you're gonna see this ability for you to suddenly match the level of taste that you maybe had as a as a consumer even though you weren't like an expert or professional like before. >> Yeah. >> Last question.
2:25:37
Are you having to hire are you having to convince people with taste to move to San Francisco or are you setting up satellite offices in New York and LA [laughter] >> Bushwick and Austin?
2:25:49
>> I'm I'm trying to convince a few to move.
2:25:51
There is an amazing concentration of creatives in New York and I'm actually from Brazil originally and Brazil is also amazing like aesthetic city.
2:25:58
So, um yeah, we have we have a couple people that are spread out but convincing a few to move. >> That's great. >> Awesome. >> Uh thank you so much.
2:26:05
>> Well, congrats on the on the launch.
2:26:07
>> Congrats on the round. How much was it? How much did you raise? >> 18. 5 million. >> There we go.
2:26:13
>> Congratulations and thank you so much for taking the time.
2:26:15
Sorry we couldn't do this yesterday.
2:26:16
Uh but I'm really glad we got to digest the story.
2:26:18
I'm going to have to convince Jordan now to like the name eventually.
2:26:21
That's my my one mission. >> We'll get there. No, no.
2:26:23
I think you won him over just with the fact that you trademarked it a year ago. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
2:26:28
I thought it was entirely to the >> discourse.
2:26:31
It's a discussion, but a year ago you you >> And I also like I I like that.
2:26:34
Uh I don't hate tasteful rage bait.
2:26:37
You know, >> you just [laughter] have to deliver an actual product, >> but you have to deliver Yeah.
2:26:43
You have to deliver on what you're selling.
2:26:48
uh and it has to be it has to be aligned and I think that uh every every lab every AI company they want tasteful outputs and I think you're going to do quite well.
2:26:58
So >> yeah raise the bar. Thank you for having me. This is >> a great one. We'll talk to you soon.
2:27:02
Uh let me tell you about Figma. Jord mentioned it. Agents meet the canvas.
2:27:07
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2:27:11
And let me also tell you about Railway while our guest sits down.
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2:27:24
Our special guest today, we have David Senra here with us. How you doing, David? Good to see you. >> Good to see you.
2:27:33
>> We need to totally adjust this. Oh, wait. >> I think this is fine.
2:27:35
We're We're doing low >> because of the uh >> first the camera.
2:27:39
So, let's move this over here. >> Yeah, first podcast.
2:27:43
What What was your most recent episode? You did Ed Catmull. >> Oh yeah. Yeah. >> Oh, one of the best. >> Yeah. >> Uh, break it down.
2:27:49
What was the biggest lesson?
2:27:50
Ed Catmull, the founder of Pixar. >> Yeah. Founder Pixar.
2:27:53
I mean, he's also like a graphics legend.
2:27:57
>> Catal Clark algorithm for subdividing meshes. I'm familiar. >> Damn. >> I love it.
2:28:01
>> I didn't even know that. >> Cat Clark. Yeah, it's an algorithm.
2:28:02
If you have a box and you need to create more dimensions, more fidelity, you can use the Catal Clark algorithm.
2:28:10
>> He was cool enough to invite me to his house, which is really cool.
2:28:11
And so that's where we recorded. Yeah.
2:28:13
Um, what I would say is like the weird thing that I shouldn't have been surprised at is like you ask him a question and every answer is in this beautiful full story. >> Oh yeah.
2:28:22
>> And so after I was like, "Oh, of course he's one of the greatest storytellers of all time.
2:28:25
Like why wouldn't he speak that way?" >> That's great.
2:28:28
>> Uh, what do you learn about founders from being in their homes?
2:28:33
>> Well, that's a good question.
2:28:37
>> Do you go straight for the bookshelf?
2:28:41
>> Yeah, that that I do automatically. I don't know. That's a good question. I don't know.
2:28:45
>> Got to learn about architecture.
2:28:45
Do like the Straussian reading of you.
2:28:47
You walk into someone, it looks like a, you know, castle and it looks like Vlad the Impaler lives there.
2:28:54
That's going to tell a different story than somebody who lives a little farmhouse.
2:28:58
>> His house was a lot more normal than than I would expect.
2:28:59
I thought it was going to have like weird everywhere and like little cartoons and stuff, but no. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
2:29:06
You got to think about like what what's on the walls?
2:29:08
What do they choose to to put on their on their walls?
2:29:10
the type of art and how self and how uh how like reflective they are in their careers.
2:29:17
There's some people that put up like their movie star, they put up their own movie posters.
2:29:20
Other people even though they rise to the highest heights, they might still be fans of other creators or other people or their contemporaries or uh they might have, you know, Roman statues because they're obsessed with the >> That's a good I I've hung out at Jimmy Ian's house a bunch of times >> and he famously says like he's like he doesn't have a trophy room.
2:29:38
He doesn't have a rearview mirror.
2:29:39
He doesn't even like talking about his past.
2:29:41
So, there's nothing in his house.
2:29:43
You wouldn't even know what he does >> other than he's very rich.
2:29:47
>> Yeah, [laughter] >> that's what's the latest on the podcast industry, podcast growth.
2:29:53
Are you seeing any uh do you think there'll be any knockown effects from like, have you been tracking what's going on in Hollywood where they're digging through Reddit to adapt stories from YouTubers?
2:30:05
Have you have you been tracking? Tell me about this.
2:30:06
>> So, there's three breakout movies this summer.
2:30:08
uh uh Obsession, Back Rooms, and Iron Lung.
2:30:12
All three created by YouTubers, independent creators, sort of turn like, you know, Hollywood sort of turned their back on these folks like they didn't have direct pipelines into the traditional uh media world and yet they all had blockbuster films in the span of a few months.
2:30:29
Uh and I'm just wondering if you're seeing any any hints from uh like the Spotify of the world, the Netflixes of the world where uh there might be more appetite to take, you know, what we started here, you know, independent creators and start funneling them into the traditional into the traditional workflows. >> God, I hope not. >> You hope not.
2:30:51
I think the one of the cool things about podcasting is just like how independent and almost like punk rocket is.
2:30:56
>> Um I've spent obviously a bunch of time with the Spotify guys, you know. >> Yeah.
2:30:59
Um I was just with them in New York cuz I just recorded one with Gustaf and then a few days later I had breakfast with the Coco and the head of podcast Roman.
2:31:08
>> Um and you know they've told me multiple times when their initial podcast strategy I think they wind up firing the lady that was running it.
2:31:12
Her idea was like let's take this thing that is you know uh doesn't cost any money and the people that started it would do it for free and they did it when no one was listening and let's like get Michelle Obama or Prince Harry to do this.
2:31:25
And it's like turns out one it was super expensive, two no one listened because they didn't even care. >> Yeah. >> So yeah.
2:31:30
>> So yeah. Um, actually a couple days ago I was in New York and no disrespect to this guy, but there was like this investment banker I guess who's like trying to like >> I guess he sold a few podcasts and he's done a bunch of media and I was just
2:31:41
like I left the the we didn't even eat kind of like disgusted with he took he was talking about something that I love that I care deeply about something I think is genuinely a miracle and it's just like how do we like package together and like sell it to PE and I wanted to vomit. Uh, [laughter] extremely bearish for the
2:31:55
Uh, [laughter] extremely bearish for the sl too and like I was like, you don't have to tell me about them, those guys. I happen to know them.
2:32:01
>> Uh, extremely bearish for the slat wall industry.
2:32:03
What do you think about uh podcast aesthetics designs?
2:32:05
Uh, if I'm starting a uh a solo show, should I put a bookcase behind me? >> No. You know what?
2:32:12
So, you know what we might do?
2:32:14
So, um you know the guy that does my clips, Maxim, right? Yeah.
2:32:17
He wants to start doing like a brand identity and video episodes for founders.
2:32:21
And I think we're going to do a pixel by pixel recreation of Steve Jobs home office. >> Oh, that's fun.
2:32:28
>> And because it's like I've seen that image. >> Yeah, exactly.
2:32:30
It's like kind of messy and he's standing up.
2:32:31
He's got a big big computer there, but he's got on the floor.
2:32:34
It's like something you actually use.
2:32:36
>> Yeah, that story is sort of apocryphal, right?
2:32:38
Because it it's a picture of Steve Jobs home office and then people people compare it to a picture of Tim Cook in the Apple office and they're like, "This tells you everything about how different they are."
2:32:48
But the nuance there is that uh you haven't seen Tim Cook's home office.
2:32:53
You don't know what it's like.
2:32:54
And of course, if like Vanity Fair is coming in with a team of photographers, the Apple PR department's probably going to tidy up Tim's office.
2:33:02
>> But also like doing like a pixel by pixel like recreation and like it's like if you know, you know.
2:33:05
Like you have to be like deep into the lore of business history.
2:33:08
>> I feel like the acquired guys are doing well on that path.
2:33:10
The the in the garage episode, I don't know if you saw >> with Michael Lewis. >> Yeah, exactly.
2:33:14
And so, uh, that idea, I think that they have a huge amount of un untapped upside in the set design of those of those worlds.
2:33:22
If they actually build a world around Nike when they're doing the Nike episode, I think they're going to have a huge video opportunity.
2:33:29
>> I have a little different perspective on on some of this is just like >> for I think normal people podcasts, this like heavy investment into >> sets like could make a lot of sense. Yeah.
2:33:43
>> Cuz like normal people are sitting around watching.
2:33:44
It's just like >> what I would say is like for people building building business podcasts is like if you have an audience of entrepreneurs, investors like what do they actually want?
2:33:50
They want like useful information that they can then apply to their business or some kind of inspiration like so get that part down first.
2:33:58
>> For the first >> nine years of founders, there was there wasn't any there wasn't video at all and it like thrived.
2:34:04
>> Uh obviously on my new show like we you actually played a huge role for this.
2:34:07
We started shooting at three cameras and John's like what is this You should do five.
2:34:12
>> And we just recorded one with Mr.
2:34:12
beast that won't be out for a few months where we did six cameras in a drone. >> Why not 11? >> No.
2:34:17
[laughter] >> I mean, >> yeah, I guess you could, but I think five I think five seems to be like a thing. >> Turn it up.
2:34:22
>> So, like you you can make them beautiful, but I'm saying like you have to nail.
2:34:26
>> Do we have 11 cameras here? We have gone cam.
2:34:28
>> You have I was like in the production you have eight, nine back there.
2:34:31
We have 10 or 11 cameras.
2:34:34
>> When I'm sitting behind your production crew, there's three different cameras on me just standing back there. >> So, yeah.
2:34:39
this I was saying, have you guys ever seen the um the the picture of when Steve Jobs convinces Bill Gates to give Apple 150 million? >> Yes. Yes.
2:34:49
We're gonna put >> And I was I was like, "Hey, this is Andrew Huberman up there talking.
2:34:53
>> This is the first time I've been here since the big screen." Like, what do you think? >> Great. It's pretty great. >> I go, I love it.
2:34:57
I go, but you know, you can go bigger.
2:34:58
You just showed them a picture.
2:35:00
I was like, >> but this is modular.
2:35:00
You can add panels to this without actually needing to buy a whole new system.
2:35:04
So you can keep doing >> uh history of talent wars >> is anything you know the the iconic it's the email exchange between Steve and the CEO of Adobe right saying like you know we have different policies on this one of them needs to change.
2:35:25
>> Uh is anything else come to mind?
2:35:25
Uh I can imagine a number of history's greatest entrepreneurs that uh that were willing to just become enemies with another one of the greats purely because they realize that that talent is uh is everything. >> Yeah.
2:35:43
I would say like if if you're the kind of person that gets to the very top of your profession, >> uh you're highly likely like have some degree of ruthlessness to ruthlessness to them.
2:35:52
Uh Joseph Puler is the basically the inventor of everything that we're kind of doing now. Mhm.
2:35:57
>> Um I'm actually just reread his biography.
2:35:59
It's like he he tried to merge his newspaper with his little brother's newspaper and his little brother's like, "No, I don't need to do this."
2:36:05
And Joseph's like, "Well, you have to understand you're not even making your own newspaper, so you shouldn't be so cockure is the word he used in the" and and he goes, "Cuz what happens if to the people that are like actually making the newspaper? What if they go away?"
2:36:16
And his younger brother's name's Albert.
2:36:18
He's like, "They're not going to."
2:36:19
That night, Pulitzer raided his little brother's entire staff and recruited them all. [laughter] >> Yeah.
2:36:25
So >> and did and and and do you remember what happened after that? >> Yeah.
2:36:31
I think I think the larger we can go into this one second.
2:36:32
I think the larger point here is just like >> I'm not saying like you should it's very clear like when I'm especially when making founders podcast like I'm not saying you should have these traits yourself.
2:36:42
You should just know that these people do and you can choose to if you want to work with them or compete with them or whatever the case is.
2:36:47
You shouldn't be surprised at what they're doing.
2:36:50
He would literally do every anything to win.
2:36:52
He would sacrifice relationships, ethics, morals, anything. He he wants to win.
2:36:58
>> The surprise about Pulitzer is most people learn about Pulitzer from the Pulitzer Prize, which is awarded to the best journalistic efforts, the most groundbreaking investigative journalism.
2:37:10
But that's not how Pulitzer made his money, right?
2:37:12
He was a muckreaking journalist, a tabloid newspaper guy. Is that correct?
2:37:18
>> Him and William Renderhurst get into a huge circulation war in New York. Same thing.
2:37:21
William Renderhurst idolized him.
2:37:22
He was like 15 years younger.
2:37:22
He did the same thing that Polish did to his little brother. He raided Polish. Polisher went blind. >> Oh.
2:37:28
>> And now you're competing with somebody that is blind.
2:37:31
>> And so [laughter] it's like I'm taking all your man.
2:37:34
>> Steve still just go to the office and just kind of sneak around [laughter] and just whisper.
2:37:39
Well, >> this is not I should not be laughing at this other than everybody knows I have a giant head.
2:37:44
And so this part was hilarious to me where if he later in life, last two decades of his life, he's he's blind.
2:37:49
>> I never really noticed you had a giant head, but [laughter] Now that you say that really up up here, it's tremendous that >> well where do you think all this information stored?
2:37:58
>> Uh so anyways, when he'd meet you blind, he'd come over here.
2:38:01
He he would like want to feel your face, right?
2:38:02
And then and then eventually he goes up the cranium and then this one guy goes, "My god, you have a giant head, sir."
2:38:09
[laughter] >> That I left that part out of the podcast, but it was in the book.
2:38:13
>> But but the quality of his work, he was not >> yellow journalism.
2:38:16
He's invent overly sensational. Yep. >> Clickbait. It's social media. It's like sex, violence.
2:38:25
You're worried about stuff that has no effect on your day-to-day life, but you know, it can spread everywhere. Yeah. >> Interesting. Interesting. Yeah.
2:38:31
Um [laughter] >> what uh what entrepreneurs do you think uh could be defined as cult leaders?
2:38:42
>> Are all of history's greatest entrepreneurs cult leaders?
2:38:44
Or are there some that are just humble merchants that like uh >> you know making better products cheaper? >> I think that's funny.
2:38:53
Um I actually just when I was with the the Spotify guys, they said they they like pull all my data and I never you you guys know I don't like look at data.
2:39:02
>> I don't care like how many people listen.
2:39:04
I just like want to make I like what you said about taste.
2:39:06
Let's go back to that next.
2:39:07
I saw the clip yesterday.
2:39:09
I thought that observation you made yesterday was very astute.
2:39:11
M >> um and so they wind up pulling the data and they compared the two shows and then what happens when people listen to both shows, but basically they're like, "You don't have a podcast, you have a cult."
2:39:20
>> Like the retention is crazy.
2:39:22
>> Um I think anybody that gets really good at what they do and has a differentiated point of view, like James Dyson, I spent time with him, right?
2:39:28
He's maybe my number one hero.
2:39:32
>> Uh personality wise, you wouldn't he doesn't come across like messianic in the way like a Steve Jobs would, but his >> products >> have a cult follow.
2:39:39
Uh, so like there's that example and then there's just people that have just unbelievably, you know, god levels of charisma like Steve Jobs or Henry Kaiser or >> What about family business?
2:39:48
Is that less cultlike in the organization?
2:39:52
>> No, it's probably more because they I I'm obsessed with these people that have they own 100% of the the business.
2:39:58
You've never heard of them.
2:39:58
I've met a bunch of them.
2:40:00
In many cases, they they'll print hundreds of millions for the for themselves every year or like billions just cash.
2:40:04
It's like, "Oh, what was your paycheck this year?" $3 billion.
2:40:08
You've never heard of these people.
2:40:10
Um but they have entire worlds like a world in within the world.
2:40:13
Um >> yeah, maybe >> birth of the next one.
2:40:19
>> Um >> maybe [laughter] it's like oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh it only made a couple hundred million. I'm reserving judgment. That's not what I mean.
2:40:27
Like [laughter] no no it's not a dynasty. It's not a dynasty yet. >> Yeah.
2:40:31
These these people have been running their businesses multiple decades longer than some of most of the founders we know alive.
2:40:34
It's just a different thing. It wasn't a derogatory. No, no, no. I know.
2:40:38
It's just funny because I know you have an extremely high bar for these things. Um, taste, good or bad? Do you like taste? >> No.
2:40:45
I I >> Where do you stand on this?
2:40:48
>> I think Jord's observation about people misunderstanding what it is.
2:40:51
It's just like it was something that was personal to you >> and differentiated to you.
2:40:58
>> Um, I think I went on somebody else's podcast recently.
2:40:59
I went on Brian Heligan's podcast and he was asking me about you guys.
2:41:02
is just like it's like they came into this industry that I love that I think I study more than anybody else in the world and it's just like it wasn't like they were 10x better marketers.
2:41:10
They were like a hundred or a thousand better like >> the the next best marketer in podcasting and that didn't come that came from like your personal taste and then what happens is like when people >> copy it you see like poor imitations they they can copy what they see but they don't actually they understand. >> Yeah.
2:41:28
Something's only tasteful once. >> Yeah.
2:41:31
It's hard >> and and I think again it should be like tailored to this person.
2:41:35
I think in in like seven days I wound up recording conversations with um I think it was seven or 10 days something like that.
2:41:42
Dana White, Ed Catmill and Rick Rubin.
2:41:44
>> Rick Rubin >> and think about this like one build largest combat organization in the world.
2:41:47
world. One is the top of his expression essentially like the consigliary to musicians and all kinds of people >> essentially gets paid to be himself and then Ed Catal is making movies >> and the theme through all of those when you talk to them and I didn't understand that going in even though I've studied
2:42:02
all of them in many cases made multiple founders episodes on all of them too >> it's like oh they're just building the product they want to use that they want to see >> like Ed CL was making the movies he wants to watch Dana Wise wants to put on the fights that he wants to uh watch and Rick Rubin makes the music he wants to listen Yeah. >> And I think that that is like a key to
2:42:18
>> And I think that that is like a key to having taste.
2:42:21
It can't just be like oh like I'm going to get taste through an API or something.
2:42:23
It's just like what like what is >> James Dyson has a great line about this.
2:42:28
He's like the root principle is to do things your way.
2:42:29
This is what drives me crazy about podcasts.
2:42:31
What you the question you said earlier.
2:42:33
It's like oh I I want to make podcasts because now you can get really really rich uh making a podcast so I'm going to go scour Reddit for an idea.
2:42:40
>> It's like you don't have an idea in your head.
2:42:42
>> Like you're doing it for the wrong reasons.
2:42:44
I think it's very important to like ask people why they're doing what they're doing.
2:42:47
That's another Steve Jobs quote.
2:42:48
He's just like the older I get, the more I understand that motivations matter.
2:42:53
>> Uh, have you read the latest Tim Ferrris blog post about uh his non-fiction sales declining?
2:42:59
Have you tracked this at all? >> Do you think I did? >> It's interesting.
2:43:03
>> You know me really well.
2:43:03
Do you think I even see saw this?
2:43:06
>> I know you I know you watched the the fight on Sunday. >> No, what didn't?
2:43:09
>> No, I was like on a I can't remember where it was Sunday. No, no.
2:43:13
I'm going to rewatch them though.
2:43:15
>> Yeah, >> I'll rewatch them with you.
2:43:16
>> Yeah, you watched them at your house where >> live. Yeah, >> you were there. >> I was locked. No, no. >> Okay. >> Live with >> No, no.
2:43:21
I was like flying or traveling.
2:43:23
I don't remember where I was Sunday, but there was a reason I couldn't see it >> and it was very upsetting to me. >> Mhm.
2:43:28
>> Um, >> what were we saying right before that though before the fights?
2:43:30
though before the fights? Uh Tim Ferrris just uh shared some data on his he has multiple New York Times bests sellers and he's been seeing a sales decline and he sort of framed it as like some of the books that he's written he describes as uh lookup tables for information like
2:43:46
one of them just has like a lot of recipes and so recipes are obvious for our chef that's right uh tools tools for of titans or tools for titans was like you can get that >> content from a prompt right now which is like okay what what was Steve Jobs philosophy >> on product? >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
2:44:09
>> Is this uh just for like howto books or is like I' I'd be very curious if the trend of people buying books is also going down.
2:44:16
>> Uh well the number of books published is tripling. >> Why? >> You're helping. >> I buy a ton of books. >> I know. I know.
2:44:22
But you're you're you're you're doing such good summaries that uh sometimes I'm sure people listen to >> No, I sell a ton of books.
2:44:27
Yeah, you sell a ton of books and and you service books over 10,000 a year just for people using the link like >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
2:44:33
You service books that are uh like it's not a substitute for the product, but >> Well, I don't know.
2:44:38
I mean, friends of Morgan Helen like his books, his psychology of money book has been out for like five years.
2:44:43
I think it's selling more now than it ever has. >> I can imagine that.
2:44:45
Yeah, there's some sort of divide there because you could go to an AI system and ask for like teach me about the psychology of money.
2:44:54
You could go tell me a a fiction story.
2:44:57
Now, maybe it's not as good, but when you're compiling information into a book, uh this was sort of Tim Ferrris's reflection as well.
2:45:04
He was saying that like a book that that categorizes information, collects information specifically might not be as competitive in the in the in the future. >> I liked him.
2:45:13
I've been reading his the 4-hour work week I read when I was like in college, like when it first came out.
2:45:18
Um, I went on his podcast recently and I think that the conversation we had, but I would also say it's like I would want to see data when it's not tied to like >> your audience. Oh, sure.
2:45:27
>> So, like he took a break from his podcast for a little bit.
2:45:29
His it might like his audience might be different than it was. >> Yeah, that's true.
2:45:33
>> You see what I'm saying?
2:45:33
In a sense, we're like a just pure author like a Morgan.
2:45:36
I guess he has a big audience on X, too. Like I'd be curious.
2:45:38
So, it's interesting that the the 4hour work week was like a meme and an idea and maybe it was a strategy or just somewhere that you got, >> you know, this is the first time I've seen Dylan in person. >> Oh, really? >> Yeah. >> Well, here he is.
2:45:52
>> Are you moving LA or what? >> Come on. >> He never knows. He never knows.
2:45:56
But, but I don't think I don't think uh >> I don't think if you asked a bunch of, you know, young people today like, "Do you think working four hours a week is going to get you to your goals?"
2:46:06
I don't think anyone I don't I don't think that I think like the meme is now like you have two years kind of thing, you know, like you got to lock in and like locking in is like somewhat at odds with just working for four hours from the tropics.
2:46:23
I >> I would say the the this is again where I think >> nothing we're doing is new.
2:46:27
So if you go back and like why do you guys have this like cultlike following?
2:46:30
Why do you have so many people that root for you that love you?
2:46:33
It's like they don't look at you as like a public figure or god forbid a celebrity.
2:46:36
They're like, "Oh, these are my friends, John and Jordy, even never met them before."
2:46:39
Like I was hiking this morning and this guy was coming down and like I thought he was talking to himself, but I have like obviously I'm not I'm like locked in.
2:46:45
I have headphones in and he like waves and stuff, but I was like maybe he's just waving to somebody else or whatever.
2:46:51
He chased me up the hill.
2:46:53
I got to the hill and like he wanted to come and talk to me because he's been listening to the podcast for years.
2:46:58
Um, so I think again I get a lot of my information from LMS now, right?
2:47:06
I definitely think it's it it it is a sub it can be a substitute or a threat or you know diminish the amount of people listen to your podcast but I also think podcasting done right for people that actually love it.
2:47:15
Um, it's much more like relationship based.
2:47:18
And the reason I bring up Oprah is because I did this episode on her a few years ago and she just like she realized she was on to something weird because like she had like you know Tom Cruz on her show and people are like oh my god you're my favorite movie star but they'd come up to her and they're like hey you want to come to my house for lunch.
2:47:32
It's like that's not the same relationship that you have with someone.
2:47:35
It's a very deep almost like friend relationship. >> Yeah.
2:47:38
We saw her do an interview and it was electric.
2:47:39
It was like watching LeBron James. Did you? >> Yeah.
2:47:43
It was crazy >> at Catsburst thing. >> Yeah. >> Okay.
2:47:45
I saw her there at Delta.
2:47:46
>> How do you What's your process for getting better at your craft?
2:47:51
>> I It just reps, reps, reps. >> Consistency. >> Yeah. Yeah.
2:47:53
I do think there is something to do with like um I've been trying to essentially say, okay, I don't want an episode of Founders, for example, to be longer than an hour.
2:48:03
And even the new show, some of the conversations I was having were like two and a half, three hours.
2:48:06
And I'm like, I kind of want to see if I can just like get the get all the stuff that I want out of this person's brain in like an hour, hour and 10.
2:48:12
So now I have like the guy that's running my camera, he gives me like an hour warning.
2:48:17
Now if the conversation is still going or if there's still stuff I want to learn and understand and I'll keep it going, but I try to keep them really really tight.
2:48:22
Um that that was something that Polister did too.
2:48:26
I I remember because I first read his biography like five, six years ago is they used to have these newspapers that were bounded by page length and it was like you got four pages buddy.
2:48:35
So like you have you better put the best news on these four pages.
2:48:39
You can't go above four pages.
2:48:39
So I think designing and constraints I think reps you were just on the phone with Rob.
2:48:44
Rob told me because I saw him in Italy >> and uh the team is over there for a wedding and obviously flew back as soon as I could and [laughter] he said he said you called him.
2:48:52
He's like David he's like Senra has to be going crazy for not podcasting for two weeks. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
2:48:57
I feel the the um I feel the difference.
2:49:01
>> Uh I I've been like so busy that sometimes I'll let founders slip.
2:49:04
Instead of every seven days, it's like every 10 or god forbid like 14.
2:49:05
And I feel the difference.
2:49:07
So, like it really is just reps, reps, reps and just staying in the pocket over and over again.
2:49:12
And again, doing it because you actually want to do it.
2:49:13
Like, uh, you know, on the new show, like I feel very sad when I don't podcast.
2:49:17
[snorts] I could easily, if I had an entrepreneur in front of me, and this is what we're working on now, is is stuffing the top of our funnel.
2:49:23
You put me with an entrepreneur that I'm intensely interested in, I could have a conversation like that every day for sure. It's not work.
2:49:30
It's like something I'm like completely obsessed with.
2:49:32
So, I think that's that's really it.
2:49:36
What have you learned about podcasting from Andrew Huberman? >> I don't know.
2:49:43
Um I don't know if I've learned anything from Andrew.
2:49:48
The only person I've ever come across where that I'm like, "Fuck, this guy knows more than I do."
2:49:56
is Roman, the head of podcast at Spotify. >> Oh.
2:50:00
>> To the point where like I'm like, "Dude, I will fly to Germany once a quarter just to have lunch with you." >> Interesting. >> Yeah.
2:50:05
like he and we were like completely >> he doesn't have a podcast.
2:50:08
>> No, but he's >> the person running their podcast before.
2:50:10
Again, this is like your motivations matter.
2:50:12
It's like >> what's that famous Josh Kushner quote where he's just like if if you have to pick the person that has the most experience, the most resources or who wants it most?
2:50:20
You always pick the person that wants it most.
2:50:22
>> This guy wants it more than anybody else.
2:50:23
He's a unabashed like podcast fiend.
2:50:26
And then he's got this godle level view of podcasting.
2:50:27
And so I just >> The only Josh Kosner quote that I know off the top of my head is what if it all goes right.
2:50:34
>> That's that's a great one too.
2:50:36
[laughter] Default optimism. >> It's a great one.
2:50:40
>> I think I think um what I think Rob Moore would be a better person ask that question to because he's now working with both me and Andrew.
2:50:47
And what he says he's like there's only two people in all of podcasting that can do a solo episode, >> can uh crush as a guest and interview. Yeah.
2:50:57
>> And he's like, "It's just you and Andrew." >> Patrick. >> Oh, Patrick won't. Oh, yeah.
2:51:00
Patrick doesn't do solo episodes.
2:51:04
>> Maybe it was Colossus.
2:51:05
>> No, no, I'm just saying Hatrick. Three. Patrick. >> So did I. >> Wait, wait. What is the second one?
2:51:11
>> Solo episode can crush as a guest in As. That's right. Yeah. Yeah, that's rare. As a guest. >> The triple threat.
2:51:20
>> But no, I think a lot of this is um what Jordy was asking when you just went to the bathroom.
2:51:24
Uh part of it is like I mean I think you guys are like this like you don't really look around to other podcasters to like what you should be doing.
2:51:31
There's a line by the weekend where he's just like uh competition. I don't even listen. >> Mhm.
2:51:37
>> It's just like because then you you want to limit >> I spent time with um you know the company Bending Spoons. >> Yeah.
2:51:43
>> So I spent time with Luca Ferrari in Sweden >> and Yeah. Yeah.
2:51:46
He's a what you realize about him is like and let me get to Dana White too about this.
2:51:50
I see a large IPO on the horizon.
2:51:52
[laughter] >> He the way he they're going out like in the next couple weeks. >> I just texted him.
2:51:59
He's coming on the show, but he's like, "I can't do it right now. I'm in my quiet." >> Yeah. Yeah.
2:52:02
>> So, um >> record though, >> but he friendly IP.
2:52:06
>> He literally doesn't pay attention to anything else.
2:52:08
So, he's got like a Gopagos Island version of company building. >> Oh, yeah.
2:52:13
>> Like the way he the way he approaches it and the conversation we had that one night was just like, "Oh, you're you're an interesting dude."
2:52:18
And uh Dana White I would say is the exact same uh the exact same.
2:52:22
So we got along like amazing like and then we hung out a bunch afterwards and uh I you know he said the funniest thing because somebody texted me they're like dude I love the episode but you like missed a big opportunity.
2:52:33
I'd love to know like what books uh uh influenced Dana.
2:52:36
And I was like I screenshotted this text between me and somebody else.
2:52:41
Dana had told me after uh we started recording.
2:52:43
He's just like, "I've never read a book and I've never listened to a podcast.
2:52:47
[laughter] >> Never read a book."
2:52:51
>> Because he did like again go back to taste.
2:52:54
>> Like he was obsessed with boxing before he got into combat to to to MMA >> and then he was managing fighters and then he saw the opportunity to buy the UFC for $2 million out of bankrupt essentially prep bankruptcy.
2:53:04
And then all he did is just like I'm the biggest fan of this.
2:53:08
Like I should just make what I want to see.
2:53:09
And he said I think on the episode he's like we never did production.
2:53:12
I didn't know how to a camera. I didn't know anything.
2:53:16
>> He's just like, I just figured, okay, what do I want to see and let's just work backwards from that. >> Yeah.
2:53:20
I was talking talking to a buddy who spent 20 years in in cable TV and uh he was asking like what is our routine?
2:53:28
And uh the the traditional cable route to do you know a few hours of television is so wildly different than at least what we do.
2:53:40
They typically if they're going live at 4 pm, they have a 7 am meeting where they're going over uh they're going over what the show is going to look like.
2:53:49
Everybody's kind of aligning.
2:53:49
And I was like, well, we show up at 9:00 a. m.
2:53:51
and then at 10:55 the production team says 5 minutes and hits a countdown and everything has to happen basically in that sub two hours. >> Yeah.
2:54:04
I think um this is another thing that I >> if I had gone if we had gone and like read the book on television, we probably would have started that we would have been we would have been starting the show.
2:54:15
>> I listened to the uh the Johnny Carson episode.
2:54:17
Uh Founders didn't have to speak. >> I know.
2:54:20
But that didn't influence like the schedule of the show and that that like to me that's understanding like the the person.
2:54:28
It influenced me in the sense that I was more comfortable with you permanently living in Malibu because Johnny Carson did. >> I called this.
2:54:37
Do you remember a year and a half ago?
2:54:39
I was like, most people make generational wealth and then move to Malibu.
2:54:43
I go, [laughter] Jordy, you're going to create generational wealth from Malibu. I called, did I not?
2:54:48
Do you remember that conversation?
2:54:49
>> I [laughter] forgot about that.
2:54:49
Um, but >> I did when I moved there.
2:54:53
I was like, damn, I retired too.
2:54:55
[laughter] I seriously went through like a one-year period where I was like, "What did I do?"
2:55:00
I'm like, "There's like cuz everyone, all my friends in Malibu, I love them dearly.
2:55:05
They'll be like they'll text me like Tuesday 11:00 a. m. >> Going to the beach."
2:55:11
>> Like, "You you down to surf right now?"
2:55:13
And I'm like, "Okay, brother, >> they're still trying to work."
2:55:16
>> I got to tell you what happened to me there the other day.
2:55:17
It was I People say stuff to me on the street all the time, but this guy in Malibu said the funniest I've ever said or ever heard.
2:55:22
I'll get to in one second.
2:55:23
I want to say about your the process what you just said comparing and contrasting how like corporate TV it is and you guys do it. Sure.
2:55:29
Another thing that um Ed Catmo would talk about and him and Steve Jobs is just like he understood that the creative process was in large parts an absence of process.
2:55:38
>> And so if you think okay this is how TV is done 7 a. m. 8 a. m.
2:55:40
10:15 I have to do X Y and Z.
2:55:43
It's just like that's too much process. >> Yeah.
2:55:46
>> And it's like the creative if you be really creative it's like going to be an absence of process.
2:55:48
So, I was walking across the street, maybe around Malibu, maybe I wasn't there, and this entrepreneur who sold his company, like you said, everybody there has already exited.
2:55:56
[laughter] >> So, he's driving a truck. He's driving his truck.
2:56:01
His his uh windows are down.
2:56:03
He's got his surfboards in the back.
2:56:04
He's going to surf and he slams on the brake >> and uh in the middle of the highway or the middle of the road and he just sticks his head out the window and he goes, "Senra, you don."
2:56:11
[laughter] And the the rest of the day I said that for like 10 I said I kept saying it over and over. You dog. >> You dog.
2:56:20
[laughter] >> That was hilarious.
2:56:24
>> That's funny, >> dude. I forgot about that. Yeah.
2:56:24
You created generational wealth and you're still going.
2:56:27
>> Yeah, I'm still going. >> You're still going. >> Still going. >> It's a good time. >> Still going.
2:56:30
No, that was a >> That was very rough.
2:56:33
I had I was I in the first year moving there, I loved it, but I was constantly on Zillow looking at places that weren't there >> where >> um No, I just felt like I I I felt like I was shooting myself in the foot by not being around people that were in the same >> state of mind that I was in, which was very much like on the hunt.
2:56:54
>> Do you have that belief still?
2:56:58
No, I mean part of the beauty of TBPN, it was like the only business in technology that I felt like I could actually build while having that as my primary residence.
2:57:08
Not even not even like venture venture capital.
2:57:09
Like >> do you really want to back >> the the would you want to back the VC who's going to tell you I'm going to spend likeundred >> 200 days in Malibu next year >> or the company? The company. Yeah.
2:57:22
Because like >> No, no, no. V VC too.
2:57:22
VC too because like there I know plenty of VCs that have a place in Malibu >> but uh many of them many of them have a place you know York I the larger point maybe let me refine my question it's like do you feel that that you have to be around people that are chasing the same thing as you are or do you think there's a benefit to actually being separate from that? >> Not not anymore.
2:57:47
Uh I I like going and going to a barbecue with my family and like our friends and >> No, no.
2:57:55
I'm not talking about like you specific like do you think that's necessary? Not just for you guys. >> Yeah.
2:57:58
Always go where the action is.
2:58:00
Like if you're a first-time tech founder, move to San Francisco.
2:58:01
Live really close to all the big companies because that will be your employees, those will be your friends, those will be your investors.
2:58:10
Like obviously go where the action is like almost always. >> Yeah.
2:58:16
I I think just my personality type is more like loner kind of thing where it's just like >> but you have a unique business.
2:58:22
You don't need to hire you don't need to hire you don't really need to hire people.
2:58:26
>> You're not trying to poach from the labs and the big tech companies constantly like there's so you know you heard that story about Mark Zuckerberg like making soup for AI researchers or something like that.
2:58:35
Like I didn't hear that story. It's hard. Yeah.
2:58:36
If you're not like the reason Adobe and Steve Jobs were going back and forth and Apple was because they were right across the town from each other. Be a lot different.
2:58:44
One of them was asleep at the wheel. >> Yeah.
2:58:47
I think if like >> if like power laws rule everything around us and differentiation is like key.
2:58:53
I think maybe >> like separating yourself >> Yeah.
2:58:56
>> from that like I mean Microsoft started in a in a strip mall in Albuquerque.
2:58:58
You know Amazon like he he drove cross country from New York after quitting to EHW and set up in Seattle.
2:59:04
Like >> there are a bunch of historical examples.
2:59:08
Like I don't think there's like a hard and fast rule for >> of course not a hard >> and I think there there should be like I think the weirder the idea is I mean James Dyson owns 100% of of a company that is one of the largest um privately most valuable privately held companies in the world and you know he did it in his bath in a in a carriage house in in Bath England like >> Oh really? >> Yeah.
2:59:28
>> I thought it was all Santa Barbara. Am I wrong about that?
2:59:30
>> Dyson Dyson from the UK brother.
2:59:32
>> No I'm thinking Sonos or something maybe. >> I don't know. Somebody's on the beach. >> Yeah.
2:59:35
What's the What's the oldest entrepreneur you've ever covered?
2:59:40
>> Have you ever done one from like the 17th century? 18.
2:59:43
>> Oh, you meant I thought you meant oldest age.
2:59:44
That's probably Henry Leland. >> Sorry.
2:59:46
>> So, Henry Leland founded Cadillac at 16, founded Lincoln Motors at 70.
2:59:50
>> You got to do workday. >> Yeah.
2:59:51
>> Founder Workday was maybe 60. Yeah. >> Um, >> yeah.
2:59:56
>> There was a guy from the 1500s. His name was like >> 15.
2:59:59
You did an episode about a founder from 1500s.
3:00:02
>> I don't think that >> Bloom or something.
3:00:03
No, it's uh his last name is like but it's not. It's uh Fuger. Jacob Fuger. Okay. Yokob Fuger.
3:00:09
He was profiling the founder.
3:00:12
>> Can you find out the um the name of the book for me?
3:00:14
I think it's like the richest man that ever lived or something like that.
3:00:17
>> You got to profile the founder who created the wheel.
3:00:19
>> Fest man who ever lived. >> There you go.
3:00:22
Richest man who ever lived. Yeah. >> Yeah.
3:00:24
So, but like he's more of like a financeier and I think those kind of >> I think you might have to update the title.
3:00:29
Elon's on a run right now. >> Yeah.
3:00:30
[laughter] might be any different.
3:00:33
>> Yeah, that made me slow.
3:00:33
Um, but yeah, that was that's like less interesting to me than somebody like building a product. >> Yeah.
3:00:39
>> Than just some guy like figuring out ways to turn piles of money to bigger piles of money. >> Yeah.
3:00:45
>> How valuable is it uh for the new show uh interviewing founders who are sort of like on to the next thing post exit a little bit more free almost pseudo retired.
3:00:57
I'm just thinking about between like Ed Cotmull, Rick Rubin, Dana White.
3:01:02
Like Dana White has like a schedule, he has a book to talk, he has a plan, he has a next fight to promote versus Rick Rubin and Ed Catmull can sort of reflect on a body of work a little bit more.
3:01:14
>> I mean, Rick's still working every day.
3:01:15
I mean, he had that great there's a clip from there like Firewall called like Lazy Workaholic.
3:01:19
>> Yeah, that's a great coinage. >> Yeah.
3:01:21
I I think I don't think in those terms.
3:01:23
I just think of like is the person sitting across from me like I've invited and recorded podcasts with some of our mutual friends and their response to me is like they're not out.
3:01:30
I've done like I don't know like 14 or 15 that I've recorded haven't put out yet something like that maybe 12 and they're like why >> strategic reserve?
3:01:38
>> No no no just I'm addicted and I have to do this more and so >> no I know but but it's good that there is a strategic reserve of founder interviews but god forbid.
3:01:47
>> But originally they Yeah.
3:01:47
Originally they're like oh I don't fit in with like you know the Dell or E.
3:01:50
I'm like, not everybody's going to be a deca billionaire or like it's just like that that's not the rubric.
3:01:56
It's like are are do you have like a singular career and am I intensely interested in having a conversation with you?
3:02:03
>> And because I'm doing these for selfish reasons.
3:02:05
It's just like I'm trying to there's like in your head that I want out that benefit me and I just assume that everybody listening there's like 10 million mi out there or a million M's out there that are interested in the exact same things that I'm interested in.
3:02:16
Um like uh you know Robbie Gupta, you know Robbie on the podcast. Yeah.
3:02:21
I ran I ran into him in Miami.
3:02:23
I think this is right after I forgot which episode dropped.
3:02:26
>> He was really buff in the invest like the best cover art. You remember? >> Yeah. Yeah.
3:02:29
And then but they made him uh like yellow.
3:02:31
I remember I'm in a I was in a group chat with him and Patrick and he's like the is this?
3:02:34
Um but anyways >> I think John is joking because we >> you made I saw >> you made a version of him was enhanced.
3:02:44
>> No, they he's talking about his skin color in the one I'm talking about.
3:02:45
But I ran to Ravi randomly uh outside a restaurant in Miami and um he had mentioned just listening to or watching one of episodes of new show and what he said was interesting.
3:02:55
He's like, "Man, it really annoys me uh how good you're getting at this because you know exactly when to interrupt and ask a question for your audience." >> That's interesting.
3:03:07
>> And I go I go, "Thanks for I guess the compliment."
3:03:10
I go, "I don't think about the audience at all.
3:03:11
I'm interrupting and asking a question for me and I just assume that you have the exact same interest that I do and you're going to want to know the answer to that question. >> Yeah. Yeah.
3:03:21
>> Again, it goes back to like taste and having a perspective and a point of view.
3:03:24
And there's some people that hate the fact that interrupt. >> Yeah. >> Okay.
3:03:28
There's 464,000 other podcasts in the [laughter] business category. >> Take a hike. >> Go grab one of those. >> Take a hike.
3:03:34
Uh do any of the guests get annoyed by that or give you feedback about that?
3:03:40
Because you got to care about them, right?
3:03:41
The guest experience matters. >> No. Um, well, yes.
3:03:43
Like, but no, they understand mo most of the especially for the first ones like they were fans of mine.
3:03:51
They listen to founders for years >> and we have they know that we're we're both obsessed with the same thing which is like learn using learning from history as a form of leverage.
3:04:00
>> Um, and no and like in many cases they've text me after the fact.
3:04:02
They're like, I've been on a ton of other podcasts and like you're the you met my nerdy enthusiasm.
3:04:07
like he's like they're not used to somebody being so into what they're talking about.
3:04:13
And uh so no, I don't think so.
3:04:17
>> Yeah, it's interesting.
3:04:17
Like we we we talk over each other all the time when we're just hanging out and sometimes we get comments like, "Oh, stop talking over each other."
3:04:25
But we that was authentic, >> but it was and it was purely enforced from the audience.
3:04:30
It was like like we didn't know that we were doing it the first time we got called out for talking over each other and we were like wait who are they talking about?
3:04:38
Is John talking over Jordy or Jordy talking over John? >> Cuz we both do it. >> Cuz we both do it.
3:04:42
And so we were like we and we took a very different approach.
3:04:46
We were like okay this is feedback from the customers the audience like we probably should think about this and now I >> at least be aware of it.
3:04:53
>> At least be aware of it each other.
3:04:55
>> Yeah we do but we're a little bit [laughter] >> we're a little bit better.
3:04:59
No, I would say like having like when we hang out you guys do that too. So like just do that.
3:05:04
>> Yeah, >> because he's like somebody will you cannot listen.
3:05:07
Dana White would talk about this.
3:05:09
Like you can't listen to the comments.
3:05:11
It'll be like this fight was awesome. The same exact fight.
3:05:13
This is the worst fight ever.
3:05:14
It's like your audience is big enough that you're going to hear conflicting opinions on literally every single thing you do. >> Yeah.
3:05:21
Yeah, >> like I have a good friend of mine who did uh the How to Take Over the World podcast and he started wanting to add sound effects to it and he loves like very dramatic music and stuff [laughter] >> and uh and so he goes, "Hey, can I get your advice on this?"
3:05:33
And he sent me this like Twitter thread of of people commenting on the fact that now he's >> he has sound elements.
3:05:40
People complain about this. >> There you go.
3:05:44
>> No one complains about the flashbang.
3:05:45
No, we there's there's some people out there that that that uh there's there every sound effect we have, there's [laughter] someone out there's someone out there that that wants it that wants it off the board. >> No way. I pay I pay attention.
3:05:59
>> Are these just smoke grenade heads?
3:05:59
Are they just smoke grenade fans [laughter] who are like pure smoke?
3:06:03
>> No, there's people that like they hate the laugh track. >> Okay. Yeah. >> And I that's fair.
3:06:06
I could I could see some situations, >> but there's probably people out there that will also come and say they love it. >> Yeah. Yeah.
3:06:12
So, it's like >> is that Lil John? >> That's great.
3:06:16
>> Got [laughter] one over there.
3:06:17
>> But my point being is like in in in >> Ben has like 20 >> in Ben's uh bread.
3:06:24
>> It was like the music's awesome. Keep doing it. The music sucks. Stop.
3:06:26
It's like So, what do you do there? >> What is this?
3:06:29
[laughter] >> Check mark. The check.
3:06:32
>> Why the do I look so tan on that?
3:06:34
What do you What up with the lighting here? >> We got lighting. We have color grade.
3:06:36
We got all sorts of stuff.
3:06:37
[laughter] >> Yeah, that's a swear jar. I've given up, man.
3:06:42
Like every time I come on here, you're the only guest.
3:06:45
>> Yeah, you you used to try pretty hard not >> We need to lock this behind a age gated payroll. Pay wall.
3:06:49
We need to do KYC on the center episodes. >> Oh, so okay.
3:06:52
That's another complaint I get all the time.
3:06:53
Why do you swear so much?
3:06:55
>> I make podcasts for entrepreneurs. Okay. Ever talked to one? >> Yeah. Yeah, I swear.
3:06:58
Most of them are mature and adults, but you know. >> No.
3:07:03
[laughter] Elon said in his in the the Isacson biography, his favorite word is M that's in print. >> Yeah.
3:07:10
But but but you can't I mean Elon is singular.
3:07:13
He also has sort of a different framework for what is uh I think I think that's >> I think I think a normal entrepreneur shouldn't be like well Elon does this thing where you know he you know does something that's maybe not politically correct so I can do it too.
3:07:30
It's like not not necessarily gonna work as well for you as it does for >> Ed Catal is a an 80-year-old gentleman.
3:07:41
>> And the clip that we just put out there, he's like most companies say they want a truth and they're full of Like he's not That's just how you talk. >> It's how you speak. >> Yeah. >> I had something else.
3:07:50
Oh, GTA 6 cover art has been revealed. Team's excited.
3:07:56
Releasing on November 19.
3:07:58
>> Can you put up on the big screen or No, >> it's on the timeline. We can put it up.
3:08:01
Uh you can see that >> when was it released?
3:08:03
>> The the release the revealed was today.
3:08:05
Uh but uh >> the funniest quote from the Strauss Zelnick.
3:08:08
That's what I was gonna ask you about.
3:08:09
>> First of all, I used your >> power law podcast episode.
3:08:11
Thank you for sending me the prep by the way.
3:08:16
>> It was very very helpful. Yeah.
3:08:17
>> The funniest quote I saw from that funniest comment I saw from the Straanic episode I did.
3:08:23
>> Uh was those eyes have seen GTA 6.
3:08:26
[laughter] you know he caught uh salmonella poisoning so to like within three hours of us finishing the interview he was like dehabilitated for and second that >> that's crazy >> yeah thank god it happened three hours later really well uh I saw a whole 20 minute reaction video to your interview with him talking praising him for being
3:08:50
like the only sane CEO right now in the world of AI because he gave like very logical very inspired hiring answers to the questions of how they'll use AI, but there's still role for this and that and it was like so balanced uh and it's not what you're getting from a lot of AI leaders these days or a lot of >> C. >> What did you think of his He definitely
3:09:08
>> What did you think of his He definitely has a a different opinion on it.
3:09:10
What did you think of his like take on that?
3:09:14
Oh, I I think he's 100% right.
3:09:14
But I just think that a lot of people see the stock market as unfairly punishing them and if they needed to do some layoff from overhiring a couple years ago, they can do it and say, "Oh, it's because so much AI."
3:09:26
We already saw this with the whole Clara saga where there was like a oh, we're we're not using Salesforce anymore.
3:09:32
And then you watch and you see like Enthropic literally hiring Salesforce admins.
3:09:36
[laughter] Like clearly there's some revealed preference going on there.
3:09:39
Um, and uh, yeah, and I think he's the one that he just doesn't have to talk that specific book.
3:09:45
He's appealing to uh, creatives, gamers, his customers, uh, you know, the the executives that he works with.
3:09:54
He's not as beholden to like some broad narrative.
3:09:59
He actually did go through like a SAS apocalypse for a little bit.
3:10:02
Everyone was you talked to him about this how everyone was like, "Oh, you're just going to be able to one oneot prompt a game."
3:10:07
and uh and he's like that's not what makes the games profitable.
3:10:12
And so a lot of the business leaders maybe even if they do understand they have an economic incentive not to reveal like the truth about their business which is that maybe their mode is something completely different than what people think it is and maybe they don't want to reveal that and so they don't want to let you know uh how they really make money or how how locked in the customers.
3:10:31
I mean this is the famous uh what is it teal line like the monopouist says that competition's never been fiercer. Yeah.
3:10:38
>> And the then the entrepreneur in the perfectly competitive market says, "We have a monopoly." Yeah.
3:10:41
Where, you know, no one no one can compete with us. >> Yeah.
3:10:44
I mean, there's a ton of CEOs and founders I've talked to privately, and what they say publicly about AI is completely different than what they're saying.
3:10:52
It's like, it's job creation.
3:10:54
It's like, that's not what you said last week.
3:10:55
like >> uh do [clears throat] you keep a list of of of people that that you meet now that you think will have biographies about them in 20 30 years? >> No. No.
3:11:10
>> Because I think you should >> cuz I assume you're uh going to be >> This is an interesting question.
3:11:15
How far ahead do you guys look?
3:11:20
>> What >> like in your life, your career?
3:11:20
Like I'll talk to some people and they're like, "What's your like 10 year?"
3:11:25
>> My plans are measured in centuries. >> Yeah.
3:11:27
People say that usually have wildly unprofitable companies.
3:11:28
They should just get to get past the next fund raise, brother. Um, no.
3:11:32
Like I I maybe I'm like maxing.
3:11:36
Uh, and Patrick definitely thinks I I do, but like I literally just think in like the next day, the next like what is that's not a curse word, is it? >> It is. It is very low class.
3:11:45
That one >> never say that one.
3:11:51
But um uh no, but I but I but but I get your point.
3:11:54
You're just kind of like focused on the next next. >> Yeah.
3:11:56
I the idea that I know what's going to take place five or 10 or 20 years from now.
3:12:00
I think it's like >> I know.
3:12:01
But I I just think it'd be interesting.
3:12:02
You know, you're sitting down for an interview with someone, you know, in 20 years.
3:12:06
And if you can show them a note and say like, "Hey, the first time I met you, I thought you were, you know, special."
3:12:13
>> The idea that I would keep anything for 20 years, like I have almost no possessions.
3:12:16
Like I don't I don't like I don't tend to like look back or like linger.
3:12:20
Like I literally just think about the next 24 hours and design like did this 24 did I design a 24 hours I like cool let me do that again and again and again.
3:12:27
Uh I think one of the worst things I could have done is like especially at the beginning of founders when no one was listening.
3:12:30
It's just like what's my one year plan.
3:12:32
It's just like I don't know I'm making another podcast and I got to figure out how to get listeners and get better at doing this and then just never stop doing that.
3:12:39
This is I think time carries most of the weight.
3:12:41
Like this is one of the most I think uh like reoccurring patterns when you're reading all these biographies of of history entrepreneurs.
3:12:48
It's just like you have some of the smartest, most productive people ever live, constantly getting the future wrong, and in many cases like just staying in the game long enough to get lucky.
3:12:56
Just keep doing it over and over and over again, and trust in yourself that you'll figure it out, and you'll make the right decision.
3:13:01
You're I mean, think about you guys have been around for what, 17 months, right?
3:13:04
And even that short 17month peri closer than I am. Wow. >> Right. Am I right or not?
3:13:09
>> Not been able to say it off the top of my head. Yeah.
3:13:11
>> So, in that short 17-month period, you've probably made 10,000 little decisions about your business.
3:13:16
5,000 like whatever the number is, it's a lot.
3:13:20
Um, and just these little ways.
3:13:20
Henry Singleton, I guess, had the best way to put this.
3:13:23
So, Henry Singleton, uh, is the guy that Warren Buffett said that it's a crime that schools, business schools don't study him.
3:13:31
>> Charlie Mer said that, uh, Henry Singleton was the smartest person he ever met. >> Never heard of him. >> Yeah. Yeah. Are you serious? >> Yeah. >> Okay. Teladine Corporation.
3:13:40
>> Um, it was a conglomerate back in like Singles ever money spread.
3:13:42
[laughter] >> Do you have Chrome? >> Yeah. Did you know? Did he wear chrome? >> I don't know. Um, what what is this? Chrome hearts.
3:13:51
No, I just said I'm joking.
3:13:53
But I said, I don't know cuz I want you to explain.
3:13:56
>> So, um, he his whole thing was just like, you know, he doesn't have a master plan.
3:14:00
He's like, I like to come to work every day and steer the boat like a little bit every day.
3:14:03
And this guy was like, uh, you know, again, Mer said he's the highest IQ person, smartest person he ever met.
3:14:09
And he's just like, I don't have a grand plan.
3:14:10
He's just like, I'm just going to come to work and like make a little adjustments every single day.
3:14:12
I just know I'm going to keep doing this for, you know, decade after decade.
3:14:15
I think he ran his company for like 25 years or something like that. >> Fun stuff.
3:14:23
We have Jake Paul joining us in just a few minutes. He's running late.
3:14:26
So, >> can you hang out for a bit? >> Yeah. You want me to? >> Yeah, hang out.
3:14:29
>> Like till we till we get off. >> Yeah, for sure. >> Sweet. >> Yeah.
3:14:33
>> Well, great catching up with you.
3:14:33
We got to talk about the Shrek. >> The Shrek.
3:14:36
It's a Shrek themed truck. They did it. It's breaking news.
3:14:39
We got to cover it on the show. Let's pull up.
3:14:44
Can we pull up the truck? This is important news. Everyone needs to know.
3:14:47
We were talking about the GT3 RS from Porsche that is Buzz Lightyear themed.
3:14:53
We were joking about a Shrek themed Ferrari Luche, but it turns out that some entrepreneur, some some enterprising young man on Instagram reels created a Shrek.
3:15:01
It's a Shrek themed truck.
3:15:04
And we have a video here in the timeline right after the GTA 6 cover art that was revealed earlier today.
3:15:11
GTA 6, of course, is releasing November 19th, but let's play this video.
3:15:19
>> I don't even need the IM. We can hear [snorts] it. There you go. The Shruck.
3:15:23
Do you want to watch Shrek tonight? Absolutely.
3:15:25
The Shrek is going strong.
3:15:27
>> See, the ears are do it.
3:15:27
Green truck doesn't do it until you put the ears on there. Look at that.
3:15:33
>> I might need to get one of these.
3:15:35
>> That's a good Malibu daily. I think you need it.
3:15:37
>> Just an everywhere daily.
3:15:38
>> Hey, we got Jake Paul. He's here. Come sit down. Jeff Woo too. How you doing? >> How's it running? >> What's up? What's up? Made it. >> How are you? Good to see you. Good to see you. What's up, bro? How are you? Good to meet you.
3:15:49
>> Tell us tell us the news.
3:15:49
You raised a bunch of money, >> bro. Smack that go.
3:15:53
>> 100 million over subscribers. >> There we go. >> You can do this. [music] >> Wow. Come on. >> Great to see you. >> Good to see you.
3:16:04
Thanks for having us about the fund.
3:16:06
Who Who do you raise money from?
3:16:08
Is are you are you talking to endowments now? Are these your friends? Is it all your money? What's going on there? You're good.
3:16:14
>> Yeah, a lot of a lot of our own money.
3:16:15
We have um a 10% uh maybe even more.
3:16:18
It's like 10 12 13 14% GP commit in the game. >> Yeah.
3:16:22
Our our lead uh investor is Aquarian Holdings.
3:16:25
So, shout out to Rudy and Eric.
3:16:28
They've believed in us for a long time.
3:16:29
They doubled down into our growth fund and >> it's been a great relationship with them.
3:16:34
And then yeah just like other people uh that we know in our network. >> Yeah.
3:16:39
Uh highlights from >> sorry I was going to say like I think going from more of just investing our own money.
3:16:46
I think we are going more institutional right.
3:16:47
So Aquarian they manage 27 billion plus as an insurance holding company.
3:16:51
So >> I think we're just proving our sophistication as fiduciaries, as investors to be like, hey, endowments, institutions. >> Mhm.
3:17:00
>> We can compound money faster and better than other VCs can for you.
3:17:04
>> How is the strategy changing with the new fund? >> Is it changing?
3:17:10
>> I think like number of checks, check size, ownership, all that good stuff.
3:17:14
>> Yes, time has gone on.
3:17:14
I think the barbell approach for us has been very successful.
3:17:19
I think going big with bigger checks into growth stages in companies that we believe in with the best founders.
3:17:26
You know, you don't bet against Palmer, Lucky, Elon, Sam, the big names like that.
3:17:31
And >> getting to fast DPI, you know, >> going into SpaceX and XAI, >> working with Jared Burchil to get into some of those rounds and then, you know, you're you're liquid very quickly.
3:17:44
And so I think that's very attractive and putting bigger checks into into companies like that and then on venture one um early stage you know and getting in betting on founders from day one sometimes and yeah taking that more venture approach on that side of things.
3:18:06
We've deployed our full venture one.
3:18:08
This is our growth one going into venture two now raising for that and then pretty much fully deployed on growth one.
3:18:16
We've been working on it for the past, you know, eight months getting into a lot of these big companies and actually going into growth two already.
3:18:23
And so we've just had tons of great access and I think that's obviously the key and just were hustling and in all the right rooms providing uh marketing support consultant support on that side of things which a lot of these companies need.
3:18:38
That's what we've realized and every room that we go into whether it's I mean I won't say names but pretty much everyone needs users. >> Sure.
3:18:46
And so >> distribution >> you you'd be surprised at the level of marketing knowledge that these companies have.
3:18:52
It's like day one very basic.
3:18:55
These are the most technical companies in the world, right?
3:18:57
Uh but they're not the the best at breaking through to to grow their their users.
3:19:02
And so we've just been able to really help on on that side of things.
3:19:07
And the most basic 30 minute call about marketing is extremely helpful for these companies. >> Yeah.
3:19:14
>> Yeah. take us through like what are you actually talking to a tech company that might have their pitch dialed for investors or engineers >> or even customers once they get them on a call >> customers but like it's just that whatever story they're telling it's not resonating with just the normal person
3:19:31
and I feel like you've gone so big with everything that you've done that you've touched every part of America the world globally and you can probably offer more feedback and advice on just like how to tell a story as a company that resonates outside of this tiny little, you know, enclave in San Francisco. >> Yeah. No, correct. I mean, I went from >> Yeah. No, correct.
3:19:52
I mean, I went from Vine to then it was YouTube, then Facebook popped off, then Snapchat was the thing.
3:20:00
Me and my brother were the first people making Snapchat stories, like a full content.
3:20:04
and Evan Spiegel invites us out asking us like how we like the app, what what could we change in Venice and then it went um you know to all these different platforms, Tik Tok, Real.
3:20:16
So, it's been however many years, like 14, 15 years of knowing exactly how to talk to the audience and be relatable and grow brands and my own brands from better W anti-fund MVP becoming the the biggest uh boxing company in the last four years.
3:20:39
>> And so, I could do it from a personal side, but I also understand it from a corporate side.
3:20:42
And I think a lot of the times, you know, these companies raise all this money.
3:20:47
They have a big balance sheet.
3:20:48
They're printing cash and they get really corporate with their messaging and they want to create like a one, two, three, four million commercial.
3:21:00
>> And I think oftent times that doesn't reach the audience.
3:21:03
And so it's actually just a lot of times telling them to be more relatable and to to scale down and to um tell their story in a easier to understand way.
3:21:15
And obviously I'm summarizing and it depends on like what the company is, right?
3:21:19
We've helped companies market, you know, towards engineers because that, you know, they're maybe just an engineering product and so it's like how do we appeal to that side of things?
3:21:30
So each case is is different.
3:21:33
Um but yeah, it's just second nature and I think >> been pretty helpful.
3:21:42
>> Do you remember the first piece of content you ever created? >> I was born on camera.
3:21:46
So [laughter] my my and I didn't know that until like two years ago.
3:21:52
My mom's like, "Look at this footage of you being born." I was like, "Oh, great.
3:21:56
You've never shown me this?
3:21:58
Like [laughter] what are we doing, mom?
3:21:59
Like you didn't This is great part of the story.
3:22:01
influencer era, you know.
3:22:05
>> What about the first time the first platform that you were on or the first series or the first uh like the first content where you were like, "Okay, this is I'm taking this seriously." >> Yeah. I would say it was Vine.
3:22:14
So, I downloaded Vine the first day it came out.
3:22:18
>> Uh it was promoted through through Twitter.
3:22:21
I was like, "Oh, this is super interesting."
3:22:23
And I just started making videos in like my cafeteria and school and just doing random stuff.
3:22:28
I was like the class clown. I loved making videos.
3:22:33
Me and my brother had been on YouTube before that, just messing around, cooking up edits with our with our video camera and posting it on YouTube.
3:22:41
So, we were naturally kind of like good at making the content.
3:22:45
And when Vine came out, I thought it was super cool.
3:22:48
I got to like 40 followers.
3:22:49
Everyone in the high school was like, "This is hilarious. Your videos are funny."
3:22:53
Um, and then me and my brother got into an argument about like how to film a video.
3:23:00
And I was like, "Bro, I have more followers than you." Like, "Shut up."
3:23:05
[laughter] >> And I had like, yeah, 40 followers. And he had like 20.
3:23:07
And I mocked him so hard that day.
3:23:10
And that's what that's actually what changed everything cuz the next day he started like putting a ton of effort into his Vine videos. And I was watching him.
3:23:19
I was like, "Oh, that was really good.
3:23:20
Oh, >> oh, he's really doing this."
3:23:22
And then he got to like 80 followers. I was at like 80.
3:23:27
And then we just kept on putting more effort >> and like two weeks later, one of the videos that we made went viral.
3:23:35
>> And once we tasted that success, we both gained like 5,000 followers.
3:23:38
We were like, "Oh my gosh, we're famous. Like, this is it.
3:23:43
>> We're the coolest people ever."
3:23:43
Um, [laughter] and once we figured out that recipe of like the level it took to make a viral video, we just kept on cranking that level out.
3:23:55
And it just one thing led to another.
3:23:58
And once we realized we could make money from it, I got paid like $200 for my first brand deal. And I was landscaping.
3:24:07
I had my own landscaping company and I was making $10 an hour.
3:24:09
And I was like, $200 for a sixsecond video?
3:24:11
I don't have to be in the hot sun. >> Exactly.
3:24:15
And that was the motivation to just like take it even more serious.
3:24:21
>> Has the nature of the competition between you and your brother changed? >> Yeah.
3:24:25
I think when we were younger, it was like very intense and still there >> and we were just like young and it was actually good because there was no one else to compete with.
3:24:37
We were the two biggest vloggers in the world.
3:24:38
Um, and so I was, it was inspiration and competition at the same time.
3:24:44
And then as we've gotten older, we're just like collaborative now and we're on the same team.
3:24:52
Obviously, he's a general partner in Antifund and >> we work together on a lot of things and everything that he does benefits me and vice versa.
3:25:02
And so it's like building out a we're the testosterone Kardashians essentially.
3:25:08
It's just like I any given day of the week, you got to see one of our faces somewhere.
3:25:13
So, >> the Kardashians of testosterone.
3:25:16
How do you how do you think about uh capacity?
3:25:21
Uh you've got a great partner and Jeff with Antifund, but you know, multiple businesses.
3:25:26
It feels like there's always some ceiling.
3:25:29
Maybe you haven't found it yet, but uh yeah, where what what's the limit?
3:25:35
>> Yeah, it's a good question.
3:25:35
And I mean, every year I've just uh continued to compound since I was 16 years old.
3:25:41
And I think it's just a testament to scale team, having great partners on all different sides of the business and the best in class.
3:25:53
Uh from Gus, the best videographer in the world, to Laura and all all these people around are just top-notch.
3:26:02
And I think that's that's been a massive part of it.
3:26:05
And then just continuing to, you know, see ahead and know where the ball is going.
3:26:13
I think that's one of my best attributes is is being a a visionary and being able to pivot, move, change, um, adapt, and continue to grow my career that way.
3:26:25
But again, I think it just goes back to team.
3:26:27
I'm inspired by people like Elon where it's like how do you have, you know, four, five, six of the biggest, some of the biggest companies in the world.
3:26:38
I mean, obviously he's a machine and I don't stop.
3:26:42
I work all the time around the clock and it's like even if I'm doing something fun, I'm filming it to be posted as content.
3:26:52
So, like it's just non-stop grind for the past, you know, 14 years and I just love hard work.
3:27:00
>> What's the future of boxing in America?
3:27:03
>> Yeah, that's an interesting category because it's not uh you're going up against, you know, the biggest the biggest names, the biggest balance sheets in the world, competing over a market that historically hasn't been a monopoly, but maybe is, you know, there are some efforts to try to create a monopoly in that space.
3:27:21
Yeah, it's not going to work.
3:27:24
You know, I think so many people have tried to take over the sport of boxing and it's just too diversified.
3:27:31
Too many sanctioning bodies with the belts, >> too many fighters and promoters and managers involved.
3:27:42
And it's a sport that is always going to be, you know, scattered across the board.
3:27:49
Um, and I think our strategy on that was essentially we're the WNBA of boxing because we've cornered a market in women's boxing and believed in Amanda Serrano since day one.
3:28:01
And that was really the test case to say, "Okay, we can make a woman a massive star and take her from making $500 a fight to $5 million a fight."
3:28:12
And no one is pushing women's boxing.
3:28:15
They deserve to be pushed.
3:28:18
Their fights are arguably more entertaining, especially than Floyd Mayweather for sure, without a doubt.
3:28:24
And [laughter] we saw that and we were like, "All right, let's go after women's boxing cuz it's it's untapped."
3:28:30
And now we have, you know, seven out of the 10 pound-for-pound best women fighters and uh 40 overall some of the best upand cominging talent.
3:28:43
And that's where we found a little bit of a niche.
3:28:47
Um, as well as being the leaders of working with Netflix, I think pay-per-view, there's so much piracy and so many issues with that.
3:28:58
And so, I was the first one to be like, "All right, there was the TV era of boxing, then there was the pay-per-view era, and then I was like, now we're in the streaming era."
3:29:09
And so realizing that we had to pivot the business model to be accessible where it's like if you have Netflix or one of these subscriptions, you're not gonna want you don't care.
3:29:20
You're you're going to pay the $7 a month or $10 a month or whatever it is now.
3:29:24
Um and getting distribution that way.
3:29:28
Obviously, I'll probably still do pay-per-view fights here and there, but we're definitely moving into the the streaming era of boxing.
3:29:35
How do you think Tyson fight broke Netflix, right?
3:29:39
So, >> and that did, right?
3:29:40
>> That literally broke the platform >> for such a storied engineering team over there for decades.
3:29:46
>> How do you how have you approached negotiating with, you know, platforms like a Netflix like what does your team look like for that? >> Yeah.
3:29:55
So my my business partner and most valuable promotions, Nikis Vidarian is one of the best negotiators in the world, but he was the CFO at uh UFC when they they sold to Endeavor and he helped lead the sale and was a pertinent part of their organization for many years.
3:30:17
And >> so do you think Dana took that personally?
3:30:20
>> Oh yeah, that's that's a whole big part of the beef.
3:30:21
Um [laughter] it's not just me, it's the fact that yeah, Nikisa and I have have teamed up together.
3:30:27
Um so yeah, definitely uh sore subject for for Dana and yeah, I think it's just having the relationships and making the right fights at the right moments.
3:30:42
And we've also, you know, put on um [snorts] amazing events and have great relationships with so many fighters.
3:30:49
And so we're able to pull together the Ronda Rouseies, the Francis Anganos, the Nate Diaz's, the the Mike Perry's because we've always been fighter first.
3:30:58
So people love working with us.
3:31:01
We came into the world that was I I say it was like taxi and we're Uber in the fight world.
3:31:10
The way we run things is like a startup professional treating fighters right. We're on time.
3:31:14
We're pay, you know, instantly.
3:31:20
um all all these little details, production, fighter kits, helping them, instant communication, social media tips, the list goes on.
3:31:27
These things are all like super basic to to me and to Kisa, but in the fighting world, it's like fighters will fight and then like not get paid for like a year >> and the just like >> there's so many issues in the sport.
3:31:40
So just by running it like a proper SF startup, we've amongst many other things, but we that's where the why we've been able to become the number one promoter in the sport in four years when a lot of these other people have been doing it for 30, 40, 50 years.
3:31:57
I mean, Bob Arum, I don't even know that guy's like a hundred years old.
3:32:03
He probably was alive when the T-Rexes were running around.
3:32:06
So, it's like just these small little changes are why we've risen to the top.
3:32:13
>> How do you think the results of America 250 uh are going to impact the UFC?
3:32:16
On on one hand, the the Gatey story of, you know, coming back from this, you know, really brutal knockout a couple years ago to then, you know, getting getting the belt uh is amazing.
3:32:29
But at the same time, in the process, he took out, you know, a rising global superstar.
3:32:34
Uh, and so I can make an argument that it's good or bad for the UFC, but I'm wondering how you processed it.
3:32:44
>> Yeah, look, I think the event overall was great and great for fight sports in general, and it was such a entertaining show.
3:32:54
So, I think overall for all of MMA, it's a net positive.
3:32:58
And I think it just depends how I comes back, right?
3:33:02
I mean, I think Conor McGregor has lost so many times, but his brand has, you know, stayed up there because he just keeps on fighting. He keeps on coming back. He keeps on trying.
3:33:15
And so, I think it's up to Ilia on that one.
3:33:18
But, yeah, Justin Gatei is like overnight superstar legend.
3:33:23
And uh we'll see, you know, how far he can go from here at at his older age.
3:33:29
But overall, >> what's the mindset of a of of a fighter that's rising, you know, through the ranks?
3:33:36
When you have a fight like Ilia just had, you're taking damage that's going to probably stay with you in some capacity forever.
3:33:48
Are fighters like pretty acutely aware that at any point you could take a beating that like you makes it a lot harder to come back from?
3:33:54
I'm sure you've gone through. >> Yeah.
3:33:58
Look, I think they're definitely aware of it.
3:34:01
I think the thing is is that they're just addicted to the sport and it's really all they know.
3:34:11
um and they're willing to sacrifice for that thrill and for that entertainment for the love of the game.
3:34:16
So, um I don't think they necessarily care and you know that going into the sport that it's that it's brutal and tough and rough on the body and it's going to affect your health potentially in the long run.
3:34:29
I think people deal with the effects of injuries differently.
3:34:34
Uh, but to each their own and I I I think a lot of fighters know what they're signing up for.
3:34:43
>> How did you process the enhanced games?
3:34:49
>> Um, [laughter] I always thought it was dumb.
3:34:53
Um, >> yeah, from day one.
3:34:55
[laughter] And >> why why it sounds like a good idea.
3:34:57
You take something Olympics is entertaining.
3:35:01
You add steroids fuel to the fire.
3:35:01
like this is Jord's taking >> it's the best people in the world like you could take something but the best people in the world are the ones who are the most dedicated to it for 20 years straight.
3:35:15
So there's no replicating that 20 year dedication just because >> yeah you take somebody that's like fifth best in the world which seems not that far away from number one and you give them all the peeds but that the gap between five and and gold is actually so big >> that it you can give them again give them a horse worth of uh of testosterone and it's not going to make up the difference. >> Yeah.
3:35:41
No and and again I I believe that's what happened. I I didn't watch it.
3:35:46
I I saw some clipouts, but I heard the production was was bad and that no one beat any records and then I think >> till the very end >> there was some but there were some like people who weren't on peeds that beat the runners. I don't know.
3:36:03
But my fiance is Olympic gold medalist and she was like I if anyone just won um in Milan and she was like if anyone tried to like do the enhanced games to beat her like she was like no one's beating me still.
3:36:20
[laughter] So >> well what about more broadly health maxing looks maxing peptides?
3:36:24
Do you have a take on the current trend?
3:36:29
>> Yeah look I think it's amazing right?
3:36:32
like you see u today you know they just launched the new imaging uh >> yeah midjourney >> yeah midjourney it's like the the world we're living in is so exciting and I've told my friends you know we met we were in SF with >> um the merge labs guys and Alex Blana was like yeah we're all going to live forever [laughter] >> like we're just going to like transfer our mind into some robotic body and so I think this whole like health. >> Do you believe it? >> Yeah. Thousand%. You do? >> Yeah. 100%.
3:37:05
>> Do you think that'll be Do you think that'll be good for the fight game?
3:37:07
Cuz I feel like there's a lot of insane athletes out there that would be incredible fighters, but they're just not willing to take that level to make the sacrifice to take that level of damage.
3:37:17
And if we can solve, you know, CTE and and you know, some of these other things, uh, it could actually make the the most violent sports. >> I don't think so.
3:37:29
I think if someone's like afraid of getting hit in the first place, they're not going to be a good fighter when like even if they transfer into a robotic body.
3:37:35
But also, I don't think it'd be entertaining.
3:37:38
I think >> like I'm I'm very, you know, long on traditional human sports in terms of a business model because >> the story is what matters and everyone's on the same playing field.
3:37:53
So, when you put in like robots and all these perks and extra things and blah blah blah, I I'm don't think people will enjoy it as much.
3:38:04
>> What's your timeline to a humanoid being able to beat you in boxing? >> I'm sure very soon.
3:38:09
Like, [laughter] I mean, bro, if I'm going up against a metal robot, like, I'd probably lose.
3:38:17
So, >> I know, but but but speed speed matters. >> The will. The human spirit. >> The human spirit.
3:38:23
You're long the human spirit. >> Yeah.
3:38:26
I think a computer >> being able to do something on, you know, >> there's no spirit.
3:38:29
They just don't even feel the pain.
3:38:31
It's just like straight up robot. >> Yeah.
3:38:34
>> It's like I robot in real life. >> Yeah.
3:38:36
>> It's happening right now.
3:38:37
>> What What about on the investing side?
3:38:39
How much of uh your current thinking is like software only singularity invest in the token path versus stuff like bio, health, defense tech, uh hardware, robotics, all the nextgen stuff that's maybe not product market fit, not billion-dollar ARRs yet, but interesting.
3:38:59
>> Yeah, I think it's really both, right?
3:39:01
So, >> we're pretty AI maxis here.
3:39:02
So, we're in open AI and then going down that stack, right?
3:39:07
So you go down the inference providers like the modals and you go to semiconductors we're in etched which is an inference ASIC.
3:39:14
>> I love >> we just did Helion which is a fusion company.
3:39:19
>> Um so I think in some sense I think the software game is going to be won by an open AI anthropic SpaceX Google maybe cognition and some of these like >> like power law is being realized.
3:39:33
Yeah, because I think there's just so much capital for just all the compute and all the models are getting bigger and bigger.
3:39:41
>> Um, >> so I think I mean partly of we're here to just visit Elsagundo as well, right? Show.
3:39:46
So I think it is like defense tech robotics manufacturing.
3:39:50
>> I think getting to Adams is more and more important. >> Yeah. Going forward.
3:39:53
>> And then secondly, I think biocross AI is also very very new.
3:39:56
I think we're just >> texting with Sam Alman.
3:39:59
He's like, yeah, we're like >> it's still really early.
3:40:02
like he it wasn't like hey there's like >> obvious >> like >> winners there yet.
3:40:08
So I think in terms of like finding that next wave I think that will be robotics hardware bio.
3:40:14
>> What about celebrity brands?
3:40:14
What's your framework for a successful celebrity brand?
3:40:21
>> Yeah I mean I think we're not as excited around those often.
3:40:25
I think it has to >> like leave it to me buddy. >> Yeah. Exactly. No [laughter] seriously.
3:40:30
And um yeah, I think it's unless it's like the Kardashians or someone at that level, then it's, you know, very difficult.
3:40:37
So, we've been way more selective.
3:40:39
And then, you know, there's just way more upside on the on the tech and software side of things versus like CPG. >> Mhm.
3:40:49
>> Um, and that's where we're spending our time, right? We're we're fiduciaries.
3:40:53
So at the end of the day and for our own money.
3:40:57
So at the end of the day it's like where's where's time best spent.
3:40:58
Um and that's that's really how we think about it.
3:41:04
>> I think to me like celeb is just like a solve for distribution.
3:41:08
>> But I like but I think >> but it's not a full solve >> because distribution is a flywheel.
3:41:12
>> It's a half solve for distribution is not is not convert a million people over to this one time. Yes.
3:41:16
It's how are you going to continue to grow >> and hence like I think product is actually most important.
3:41:21
I think choosing the right market and the right product is everything.
3:41:24
Distribution is just gasoline on the fire.
3:41:28
>> Um, and then I think second, I think Jake is actually very special as a celeb entrepreneur, right?
3:41:32
Like >> his story of just like, >> you know, being a landscaper, right?
3:41:37
Like I think a lot of celebrity folks we've crossed paths with, right, they were really good at singing or dancing or playing a ball sport. Yeah.
3:41:44
>> Since they're like >> 13. >> Yeah.
3:41:46
So they never actually had to like actually like hustle their first brand deal, actually think about business. >> Yeah. Tell a story. Yeah.
3:41:54
>> Or or they or they or they're well known but they don't have an an owned audience. Right. >> Correct.
3:42:00
>> Like it's very different like somebody that's posted every single day for, you know, 15 years to launch.
3:42:06
>> I think that's why like NFL players are very hard to cross over because like one, their face is not even recognizable because they're in helmets all the time.
3:42:13
And then two, the NFL owns their distribution, right?
3:42:15
like NFL is their distribution channel.
3:42:17
They don't have an audience that they're used to speaking towards on a daily basis.
3:42:20
So, I think the internet generation folks are interesting because they own that distribution.
3:42:25
And I think I'm lucky to work with Jake because I think Jake has the hybrid of both, right?
3:42:29
Like he's mainstreamed on the Netflix platforms as a professional athlete and has a respect actually being good at a craft >> and an art and a sport.
3:42:37
Plus, he comes with like a what, like 200 million followers across different channels.
3:42:42
So I think that's where it's like like an experiment for us where it's like okay we have a touch into mainstream a touch into internet and then I think there's also just like a hardcore capitalism >> like heart that we're like hey how do we monetize opportunity set >> are are haters a source of strength?
3:43:00
We were talking to Alex Karp about this.
3:43:02
He says all the AI leaders have only haters no fans.
3:43:08
And he was saying I at least have fans.
3:43:10
I have a lot of haters and I have fans.
3:43:13
Uh, are haters a source of strength?
3:43:15
Do in the fullness of time, are you glad you have both fans and haters? >> Yeah, 100%.
3:43:21
You know, I don't think anyone who does good things in this world or big things in this world doesn't have haters.
3:43:28
I mean, it's the it's the day one story.
3:43:31
And I honestly, you know, since day one, uh, when I first went viral, the video I was talking about, like I instantly people in my school started hating.
3:43:44
So like I don't even [laughter] I don't even remember life without Yeah.
3:43:47
Your your mom, you know, took that video when you were born.
3:43:52
I'm sure some of the nurses were like, "Yeah, this kid."
3:43:55
>> They're like, "Oh, this guy." [laughter] >> Yeah. Yeah.
3:43:59
>> No, you have to have it.
3:43:59
And you know, good news travels fast, bad news travels faster.
3:44:04
And the the haters actually will talk about you more and say bad things, but at the end of the day, people don't really remember what was said.
3:44:11
They just remember your name and your face.
3:44:16
>> Um, and so you could do with that what you want.
3:44:18
And >> you know, it's really they're adding to the algorithm at the end of the day.
3:44:21
So it's really just math.
3:44:23
And if you just have fans that are saying things, you know, let's say that's 10,000 people, but add 10,000 haters in there, now 20,000 people are talking about you.
3:44:33
And it just adds to clicks, views, talk, trending. >> Mhm.
3:44:40
>> Uh so that's the way I've always looked at it.
3:44:43
And yeah, the the biggest and best people in the world all are also the the most hated.
3:44:50
>> Ferrari Luche has a lot of haters. Will you be getting one? >> Say it again.
3:44:54
The Ferrari Lucha, the new electric vehicle from Ferrari. Are you in the market?
3:44:59
>> You got to be careful cuz if you want any of those Halo cars, you know, this is going to be permanent.
3:45:04
>> You might want to say I I know you might want a F80 at some point.
3:45:06
You got to be really care.
3:45:08
I just want you to be really careful with this.
3:45:09
This is a political answer. No comment. >> Okay.
3:45:14
[laughter] >> That shit's ass. No comment. No comment. No comment.
3:45:19
>> Oh, well, it was a lot of fun.
3:45:19
Well, thank you so much for coming on. >> Yeah. Congrats on the new fun. Congratulations.
3:45:24
>> Have fun down in Elsagundo.
3:45:24
Hopefully give our best to everyone >> at uh the South Bay.
3:45:29
I'm sure you guys are going to be spending a lot of time there post SpaceX IPO.
3:45:32
It's just going to be more and more action.
3:45:36
>> Let me close out by telling everyone about the New York Stock Exchange.
3:45:37
Want to change the world?
3:45:39
Raise capital at the New York Stock Exchange.
3:45:41
We were off for a couple days.
3:45:43
We'll see you back at 11.
3:45:46
>> Is an IPO like on the >> on the >> We got some ideas of things.
3:45:53
Flash, >> we're cooking, dog.
3:45:55
>> We're [laughter] cooking. >> Flashbang out.
3:45:56
Leave us five stars on Apple Podcast and Spotify.
3:45:58
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3:45:59
And thank you for tuning in today. Goodbye. Nice. Perfect.