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>> [music] >> We came to this world to reach the stars.
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We came to this world to shape our future.
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We came to [music] feel the new [music] music.
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[music] >> [music] [music] >> Double kill. >> You're watching TVN.
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Today is Monday, October 27th, 2025.
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We are live from the TVP Ultradome, the temple of technology, the fortress of finance, the capital of capital. We have breaking news. ramp.
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capital. We have breaking news. ramp.com time is money save both easy use corporate cards bill pay accounting whole lot more no we actually have TVPN breaking news which is that tomorrow >> just to give some backstory here on Friday we said
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>> this week was going to be magnificent >> yes that was our teaser >> here's why tell us John >> tomorrow we will be interviewing Satcha Nadella the CEO of Microsoft live on TVPN tune in get ready it's going to be great >> to be clear That is a real picture that you just saw on your screens. It is. It is. That is real. >> It's a real JPEG. >> It's a real JPEG.
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>> It's not anything but a JPEG. >> That's right. >> It's real. >> That's right.
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Uh super excited for that.
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We will be up in San Francisco tomorrow doing it live. I cannot wait. >> Yes.
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Reach your audience wherever they are.
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Uh we take Reream with us on the road when we go to do our big interviews.
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Big interviews and small. We're always streaming.
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So, uh, over the weekend there was some debate over Sunno.
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Is anybody paying for AI music?
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What's who's paying for this thing?
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Is, uh, was the the question of the day.
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And this was on the back of, uh, reporting from the information that says music appso nearly quadruples annual recurring revenue to $150 million.
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They were doing 40, now they're doing 150.
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And Michael Rosenfeld asks, "Can someone explain where this revenue comes from? Who is paying?" And Harun says, "Me.
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Soon music is one of the most magical uh products I've ever used."
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Harun is the founder and CEO of Rocket Money, the app, which was acquired by Rocket Mortgage. Uh fantastic outcome.
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Rocket Money, if you're not familiar, used to be True Bill.
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I think it was a billion dollar acquisition. Really cool.
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And uh and Harun is enjoying it.
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And if you scroll the replies in this viral post that got over a million views and 4,500 likes, uh Palmer Lucky says he's using it.
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Uh Gabriel the uh the OpenAI uh Sora, he's not the Sora lead, he's Sora Research. Uh that's right.
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>> He's uh he says I'm paying.
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It's an incredible product.
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Dwight over at um at captions, I guess now Mirage um is saying it's such a great product.
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super fun if you have kids too.
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And there's a couple of people that lay out specific ways that they use SUNO.
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Um, and so I wanted to kind of revisit this noodle on this like understand like what's actually going on, what's driving the revenue because there's a whole bunch of different buckets of value that you can be extracting if you're Sununo the company.
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So, uh, the worst possible scenario is that 100% of your revenue comes from someone who's just scraping your API basically and trying to distill your model.
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Like, if we went back to what happened with DeepSeek, uh, DeepSeek was paying for GPT4 tokens.
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Um, but GPT4 obviously was generating money from all over the place and had people paying for knowledge retrieval and and and a whole bunch of different use cases, coding tokens, all sorts of stuff.
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Um, and so it wasn't exclusively that, but you could in theory like the most circular problem, you know, the one that would be really thrown out the red flags would be is it all coming from one customer, some other lab or someone who's just trying to like, you know, basically like distill everything that you've done.
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Uh, that's clearly not what's happening.
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You can see that so many people love it.
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And if you add up the number of reviews on the iOS and Android app store, it's over a million. >> Wow.
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So they have over a million reviews and I mean like I don't I don't even know how many people leave reviews.
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I don't even leave reviews. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
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>> And so you're probably looking at, you know, even if they get what 10% of people who use the thing to leave a review, you know, you're looking at, you know, millions and millions and millions of people that are using this, uh, lots that are paying and it just kind of adds up pretty quickly.
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I think they have an $8 a month plan and then like 20 or$5 a month plan.
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And the thing I've been noticing recently on social media is it seems like [clears throat] they've had some type of I wouldn't call it specifically a Studio Giblly moment, but people are realizing that they can go to their favorite artist, like a rapper, let's say, and say make this like make a make a make this future song, make the jazz version of this future song.
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I saw DMX X going give it to you but in 1960s jazz rendition and that's that sort of it's almost just style transfer.
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It's really just filtering it.
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It is I mean that's the beauty of the Studio Gibli is that you don't have to come to it with something that's completely a blank canvas.
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>> You take something that you like, a picture of your dog, a picture of your family, a funny meme, an an image from a movie, and you just say, "Hey, restyle this in the style of Gibli." And you're good.
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They're certainly having that moment and it's doing very well and they do see those violence.
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>> The good thing about that is that I don't I don't think the jazz community is up in arms.
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>> Um I think they might be >> maybe maybe but they they don't have a strong case to be like you are infringing on XYZ IP right like >> there's no company called [laughter] >> I think that they might I think there'll definitely be a lawsuit.
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Well, well, so of course like individual artists might try to figure out, okay, are they training on my music?
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And then in that case, did they buy the music?
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Because we now have precedent that shows >> if you purchase the songs, >> can you train on them?
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The question is like if you purchase Spotify, if if you know, Sunno is like getting like >> Yeah, yeah, we have a $20 a month plan.
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>> Yeah, we streamed [laughter] it to get inspired.
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>> Yeah, >> that is funny.
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But but in general, I think this this kind of use case is probably like good for the underlying artist and it's just like marketing.
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>> It's fan engagement >> and then they're just doing kind of like broad style transfer from a category of music onto this new artist. >> Yeah.
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Uh I wanted to go a layer deeper on this.
11:09
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So, uh, Chris Dixon, who actually was on the show last week, uh, he 10 years ago, he posted a blog post called come for the tool, stay for the network, and the thesis was that, uh, if you, he uses the example of Instagram, he also uses Delicious and a couple other examples, but basically, you're trying to start a social network.
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How why would someone come?
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Well, they came to Instagram because if you took a photo with your iPhone back then the cameras were terrible and adding a filter to it made it look cool and grungy and old school instead of just actually terrible.
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And so photo filtering apps were very popular.
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There was one called Hipmatic, but it cost money.
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And so Instagram was able to give you a free tool. You came for the tool.
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Hey, I just want to filter my photos. Maybe upload them.
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I'll just have a nice little uh online photo album essentially. Yeah.
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Uh, and then over time you stayed for the network and then eventually the algo feed and eventually the multi-million dollar professional content producing, you know, co cohorts that are producing like the greatest content at like Netflix level that will get fed to you perfectly.
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And so >> we're in this era where there's a lot of tools right now.
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There's a lot of AI tools.
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So feels like it could be an AI tool.
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And I was debating this with you earlier this morning.
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um of the $150 million that are, you know, that that's their ARR.
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How much of that is people showing up for instead of Spotify, I'm just going to listen to Sunno and I don't really care about the prompt.
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I'm not really viewing it as like a challenge or game or anything.
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How many of them are just like, I need to listen to music and Sunno sounds good enough for me, so I'm doing that.
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versus the next bucket is I like the activity of coming up with creative ideas and figuring out oh I'm you know normally I would just be sitting here noodling on my on my guitar or my bongo drums or something like that.
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I'm I and I enjoy the process of making but I'm not I'm not a I'm not a full-time creator.
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I'm not trying to monetize this.
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I'm just having fun with the expression of like actually making music. Right.
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That's the second thing >> that's going to piss some some some hardcore traditional musicians off who are going to say you're not making music.
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But if you're playing around with it, you making music. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
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Um and and then the third bucket is like like your job is to create content.
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You need music for your content.
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Maybe you understand that if you take a popular song, you take the latest Taylor Swift and you make it 1950s theme, uh, that will go viral and you will get a lot of impressions on Instagram, on Tik Tok, on YouTube, and you will just make money or you're producing a documentary and you know what, you need some sort of background music. >> Yeah.
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Or a startup making a launch video. >> Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.
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>> Historically, they would be like, "Okay, use >> stock music.
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Are we going to use like copyrighted music and just wing it and if it gets taken down at some point, you know, whatever. Yep.
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>> Um, but there's tons of different >> So, there's those three buckets.
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And my question is like in the early Instagram days, no one was going, no one was going to Instagram being like, "Yes, I'm a professional photographer.
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I did a wedding shoot and I need to filter the photos.
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I'm going to use Instagram."
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>> They were like, they were like, "No, I'm good with photo."
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Like Photoshop's fine, but and no one was going there being like, "Yeah, like I just want to look at something great.
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I'm not into this whole like watching Friends on Netflix thing.
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I'd rather just scroll Instagram."
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No one was into that because there was nothing there and it was just like a couple filtered photos from your friends.
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You you'd see like one or two updates a day in the early stage in the first few months.
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And so nearly all of the early Instagram usage was this middle case of coming for the tool.
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You want to just filter a photo on your phone.
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Instagram lets you do that.
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And I'm wondering for Sunno, how what's the what's the percentage now?
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Are most of the people there because they want to be full-time content creators?
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They really need it as a professional tool.
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H how many of them are viewing it just as like a video game essentially? Yeah.
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>> And then and then what will it be over time?
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Will it be something where you you've prompted it enough that when you get in your car or you get to the gym, you just say you open and you just say play because you've prompted it enough.
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And I feel like it's very much in that second bucket of video game like it's fun, it's entertaining, and that's certainly where Sora sits right now.
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And the question is like >> if you come for the tool, will you be staying for the tool?
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staying for the tool? Will you just will you just live in tool land forever or will you eventually will this become a network >> and >> I mean yeah so so my my lens on it right now is that it is such a m it is still even though we've had this technology for a couple years now broadly available >> the it's one it's gotten a lot better
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and it's just so ma undeniably magical to be able to generate a song I mean I remember >> growing up being into music it was hilar and and I and my dad is a musician and my dad would be like, I'm going to make a song about the last week of school and he'd play a song and he'd sing it and it would be entertaining for the whole family. And so to take something that's
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And so to take something that's that entertaining and then condense it down into a prompt is like so magical and it reduces the the just energy needed to create that magical experience down to 10 seconds that there is a massive amount of people that will just pay for that magic experience today.
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They'll come and they'll maybe do one free prompt.
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I don't know how their pricing works, but then they'll actually willing to pay because they're going to make one for their grandma or make one for their kid or make one for their job or whatever.
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And yeah, >> at least there's a high volume of people that are happy to pay to have that magical experience today.
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>> And so I would my view is like >> there's a lot of people that are I'm sure generating these and not even sharing them that broadly, right?
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They're just sharing them with friends, family, etc.
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>> We're just listening to them themselves. They're just >> Yeah. So that's the thing.
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I don't what I really don't what I'm what I again we we should have uh the founder on but I don't believe that these songs are for listening to yet.
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>> I feel like they're for entertainment but not passive listening.
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I might be wrong >> but that's my current that's my current uh sense. >> Yeah. I Yeah.
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I don't >> like looking on their website right now, it's make a country song about Jess being late, make a jazz song about watering my plants. >> I think Yeah.
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I mean, I I think you you're seeing something similar to like the dawn of electronic music quitting your job.
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>> Like when I was a kid, I was able to actually steal but or torrent uh a product called Fruity Loops, which was a a digital audio workstation.
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So there's Ableton and there were a few others of these like more advanced what's ProTools, but Fruity Loops was very intuitive.
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Like a really really simple interface and you didn't need a lot of extra gear to actually make music with it.
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Kind of like Garage Bandesque. Yeah.
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>> And it basically like lowered the bar. Yeah. FL Studio, Joe knows. Um FL Studio.
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It lowered the bar because instead you used to need to go and buy every instrument and then all of a sudden it was like you could pull a piano off of a menu bar and just say I want a piano right now. Yeah. And what does that do?
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Well, that lowers the that lowers the bar the barrier to entry.
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And so you get a lot more uh a lot more product, a lot more creativity and obviously a big debate over whether um digitally digital instruments can hold a candle to traditional analog instruments.
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We kind of >> went through all of that and realized that, you know, the people who are going to go see Marshmallow live do not care.
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Or the people that go and see, you know, anyone at Coachella or something, they don't.
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They they don't ne some of them care.
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Some of the bands make their whole stick.
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Well, we use real instruments to make this music or we still use real instruments or we or we we have a throwback song and we went back and pulled real instruments off for this.
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Um there's a couple DJs that will be like, "Oh, for this next one we have someone coming out and playing like a real guitar or we have someone on the on the drums live with this."
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Um >> but but overall you're just dropping the cost to create and so more people are going to do it.
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It creates a steeper power loss so that you have more more competitive than ever because the people that are truly talented are going to be able to rise up.
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there's no one if you're truly talented, there's never going to be the person who's really really talented but doesn't have the the money to enter the market.
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So, you're not keeping them out.
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And so, all of a sudden, those people are going to are going to run up the score with with cool creative things.
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creative things. Um the question is like is yeah does this does this become a uh uh more of a video game market where people are playing like a game for themselves and maybe for a few friends like a Fortnite like a like a Minecraft like you build in Minecraft you are
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creative in Minecraft >> but you don't often sell what you build like you you you don't often directly monetize >> um >> yeah and so my my question becomes you know if I I've seen these like reals go viral on Instagram going back to this like future as jazz music or coding crazy by future as in jazz. >> Yes. >> Yes.
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>> And the question is >> yes that is like a hit like social media asset that is getting millions and millions of of views and listens and things like that.
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The question is are people finding that song >> or making that song themselves and listening to it on a repeated basis?
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And my guess is >> as somebody who grew up listening to Future, I love Future. >> I have no desire.
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I I was entertained by that, but I have no desire to like go find your heavy rotation and put it and listen to it on the drive home.
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>> And the examples they give on the website of like make a song about Jess being late for work.
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That feels like more like a meme than something that's meant to be come back and listen to. Yep.
21:32
Now, I can't imagine the use case as as a parent of like generating a song like the cleanup song and putting your kids' names in it and you make and and it's like, "Hey, every day after dinner, we're going to play this and >> you're going to put, you know, whatever."
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>> That's actually hilarious. I like that.
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That's very >> So, that's something that I could come back to multiple times.
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>> But a lot of the use case, make a country song about Jess being late. Like, I'm sorry.
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That's like a funny moment.
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And maybe you send it again when when Jess is late. >> Yeah.
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>> But it's not like nobody's listening to that. >> Yeah.
22:06
Uh Tyler, what do you think about this AI music nonsense?
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What these kids are up to? Tday. >> Um Yeah.
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I mean, I think current um songs are like quite gimmicky, right?
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So it's like you have a country song.
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It's about AI data centers in space or something. I saw that too. >> Oh, I saw that one. Yeah.
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>> Um and it's like it's fun, but it's very much like a gimmick.
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It's not like I'm not gonna actually listen to this. >> Yeah. Yeah.
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It always almost collapses down to just like you could just tell me the prompt and I would be like, "Oh yeah, that would be funny if there was a country song about AI data centers in space.
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I don't actually need to listen to the instantiation." >> Yeah.
22:35
The the quality bar for um music is actually like quite high to get people to actually start listening. >> Totally. >> Yeah.
22:40
Could you could you actually play the bongo drums while you talk?
22:45
>> Well, I I need to unmute I can only play with one hand so because of this.
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But >> Oh, you you have to press a button to be unmuted.
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>> He's truly in >> There we Yeah. Okay. We have a producer. >> Uh, okay.
22:56
So, I think this is like too hard. >> Yeah. >> But, um, >> uh, okay.
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If you look at like short form uh, like video, they're only like 10 seconds long, right? So, it's like very low.
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>> I can't believe you guys got him like a dead man switch that he has to hold down.
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I thought he had I thought he could just flip the switch and then the channel's open. That's ridiculous.
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[laughter] >> A dead man switch for Tyler. >> Hey, Tyler.
23:18
Uh, say something while holding up both hands. Oh, wait. You can't. Oh, no. Oh, he's muted.
23:22
That's very [laughter] funny.
23:24
What a quirk of our of our production setup.
23:26
Um, I want to continue, but let me tell you about Cognition.
23:32
They're the makers of Devon, the AI software engineer.
23:34
Uh, crush your backlog with your personal AI engineering team.
23:38
Um, so the the the reason that I think it's important to understand is Sununo a a a network are you coming for the tool and staying for the network?
23:49
Will it be a place that is it a competitor to Spotify long term?
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Is it a competitor to Fruity Loops long term or Ableton long term?
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Or is it a competitor to Fortnite long term?
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Is uh is because of how resilient and what the market structure will be long term based on the actual usage.
24:06
And so if it's like a video game and if people come there to do some sort of like self-expression, they're trying to get a high score, they're trying to like they're trying to create something and it's more of like this creative tool that they'll use elsewhere, that feels slightly less less defensible than okay, we're building out a proper network of of, you know, connections between people that you won't want to leave.
24:32
And so video games can be hugely profitable. They can be great.
24:37
Um, but the power law in video games is just a lot less steep than the power law in social networks.
24:44
>> Yeah, >> there there is GTA, there is Red Dead Redemption and you know, Madden and stuff and there Call of Duty.
24:50
Like there are some huge franchises, but there but there are way more like base hits in video games than in social networking.
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in social networking that you have like, you know, the meta properties in the trillions.
25:02
Then you have, you know, YouTube, LinkedIn, Axe, um, Tik Tok, you know, all the smaller kind of midcaps, but then you really don't have anything down in the lower end, whereas with a with a lot of video games, like you can just have like base hits. Um, and so, >> yeah.
25:19
So, one one thing I've been thinking about is >> uh where does Sunno need to go to to maintain their current I would say dominance in the sort of AI music category. >> Yeah.
25:31
>> And because we just figured out that OpenAI is working on an AI music product. >> Yes.
25:37
And I would expect that OpenAI eats the category of music as memes, which I'm talking about, which is like >> we had we had a funny thing happen at work and we're going to generate a song and we're going to share it in the team chat.
25:50
>> I think that I think that that use case for people that already >> subscribe to to various language models that I'm sure will all over time add the ability to generate audio.
25:59
Y >> and I think that Sunno will still be fine, but they're going to have to really focus on >> other more integrated opportunities, stuff in the enterprise, stuff in kind of proumer, working with creators, etc.
26:17
>> Yeah, >> actual musicians too is the other one where >> I'm sure when when we get the founder on, I was I was just texting with uh Michael from Lightseed. >> Yeah.
26:26
Um, I'm sure there's a bunch of musicians, like real musicians that also use it.
26:30
They're I'm sure much smaller percentage of the overall user base, but they just use it to get ideas. >> Yeah. Yeah.
26:35
So, if if OpenAI builds like a great music generation A API, and it's, you know, similar to their coding API for GPT5, like it's just it's just, you know, frontier level.
26:46
Um, maybe that gets baked into Ableton and and Garage Band and and other >> No, I was just thinking for the category of what I'm trying to understand is what percentage of songs are just jokes. >> Yep.
27:03
>> And I think that chat GBT will ultimately do that pretty well. >> Yes.
27:08
So, yeah, I'm trying to I'm trying to think about the images in chatbt versus midjourney.
27:12
Like Midjourney has been able to like images in chatbt did not kill midjourney by any means.
27:17
Like the midjourney community is still going.
27:21
They have something special there.
27:22
They've created like their own special vibe and it and then sold it to Meta to create vibes.
27:27
Like there's something there where it's not just Frontier.
27:29
It's like the specific UI, the specific community, what they want, what like the the the choices that David Holes made.
27:40
It's possible that Sunno winds up in a similar situation, but when most people are in in a flow of, you know, they're doing some research.
27:49
>> So, what you're saying is midjourney basically created a genre, >> whereas it seems like Sunno's product market fit is not creating entirely new styles, but it's like make this make this country art country music artist do a house song. It's style transfer.
28:07
>> I think that might I think that might come over to Chachi Pitia as well.
28:09
I'm I'm just thinking about the professional versus proumer versus casual.
28:13
Like when I think of the the the casual AI image generator person, they're not like I got to go to midjourney and get my saf like in shape.
28:28
What they do is they just say like, oh, I'm already in chat GBT.
28:30
Like, let me just see if CH chatb can do it.
28:33
And like even if even if midjourney was a little bit better, the casual user is just like, "Yeah, chat GBT is good enough or Gemini is good enough for them, like whatever their daily driver AI app is, can just bolt that on."
28:43
And so if you're if you're daily driving an a chat GBT or a Gemini and you have an idea for an AI song, you're just going to do it there for the casuals.
28:56
But then for the proumers, for the people that are really into the actual community, like they're in midjourney in the discord getting ideas, sharing as ref's really pushing it to its limits.
29:08
And I think you'll probably see the similar thing in Sunno where you have where you have like this community that really loves it.
29:15
And like the a midjourney creator will laugh at what comes out of images and chatbt and they will say, "Ah, it looks bland.
29:22
It looks it looks sloppy." Like ours looks better.
29:24
And I imagine that that that that's the way it'll play out too.
29:28
it'll play out too. But it it's clearly just like an important feature to have because >> just like when you're if you're developing a grocery list in chat and you want to say like okay generate an image of the grocery list so I can just
29:41
print it nicely and give it a little design like it'll it should just be able to do that and you should also be able to say generate a song of of this like sing it to me and it should just be able to do that like that's what a multimodal model should do. So, uh, anyway, it's
29:52
So, uh, anyway, it's just interesting that like the the we were we were coming out of the browser war yesterday or last week and there really is going to be a war in every single vertical here.
30:02
>> Every company is going to do everything.
30:04
>> Everyone's going Well, yeah, open is certainly going to open up a front a new front on of in every new war. >> New war. >> Don't mind if I do. >> Yeah. Browser war.
30:12
There's going to be the commerce war.
30:14
There's going to be the uh certainly the coding agent war. Yeah.
30:19
And then now the music >> company I never never met a war.
30:21
It didn't it wasn't interested in [laughter] fighting.
30:26
>> Uh well let me tell you about figma. com.
30:29
Think bigger build faster.
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30:32
You can get started for free. >> Go.
30:35
>> Um >> well uh people are really having fun in here.
30:39
Um AI generated music from Sunno V5 is now nearly indisting indistinguishable from humanmade songs.
30:46
In blind tests, listeners guessed wrong as often as they guessed right.
30:50
>> I wonder if uh I wonder if images are at a similar level.
30:53
Is music ahead of images? What do you think?
30:57
>> So, so I saw someone um I forget exactly who it was, but they were doing a quote to it on this.
31:00
Um and what the paper actually says is is people who have never heard AI music before couldn't tell. Okay.
31:07
>> But people who who can who have heard a lot of it can tell very easily.
31:09
You see the same thing in text.
31:11
um where people who who don't read a lot of AI generated text have a very hard time distinguishing that. Yep.
31:17
>> But like you know you or I we we write a lot of clock it all the time. >> Yeah. It's very easy to tell. Yeah.
31:21
>> So I think it's a similar thing there.
31:22
>> The fir the first big AI music moment for me was uh uh u people that know me know I love Ghana. >> Yes.
31:31
>> And two years ago somebody made an AI album for Ghana called Slime Pharaoh.
31:38
That >> was my was the first moment where I was like, "Okay, >> if I was maybe distracted and somebody put this on and I was doing email or something else, I was busy and they were like, hey, Gunner just released a new album, >> I'm playing, you know, like listen to this."
31:53
I wouldn't have immediately clocked it as AI, but that is like a distinct type of music that, you know, he's not always like, you know, annunciating words, uh, you know, super super [laughter] precisely, right? >> Yeah. Yeah.
32:07
If you're if if the underlying inspiration is is a little bit sloppy, then AI slop on top is just fine. >> Yeah.
32:16
I I I I'm I'm actually kind of excited.
32:20
I know we were we were a little bit bearish on that YC company that does AI generated launch videos, but I do like the idea of an AI agent that that moves across all the different domains.
32:32
So, you come up with a concept, it can build out a script and then it can build out a song and then it can build out imagery for all of those and mash those all up and just like kind of puppeteer and let the let the different systems cook for like 2 hours to get you a result.
32:45
Uh, at the same time, uh, it's really frustrating to let something cook for two hours and it comes back and it's like sort of a mess.
32:51
I I kind of did the manual version of that with Tyler, my personal agent.
32:55
I had Tyler generate um, TBPN uh, live streaming from every different historical innovation moment.
33:06
So the steam engine, the light bulb, the discovery of DNA and uh and he did a lot of hard work on it and it probably took I don't know an hour of rendering across all of them. Something like that. What do you think?
33:18
>> No, it was definitely faster than that.
33:20
Uh cuz you can I I actually used foul and you can run them in parallel. So >> Okay.
33:23
So you ran everything in parallel. >> Yeah.
33:25
>> And >> it was like 16 videos.
33:26
It still took like 10 minutes maybe. >> Okay. I have a I have a song. >> Okay.
33:30
Gonna f you mean 1982 soul funk >> 1982 >> version AI cover.
33:37
>> Okay, let's play this. >> Let's play this.
33:38
>> I I I think we won't get dis demonetized because of this. >> That's a beauty. >> Oh, this is okay.
33:43
This is going to [music] >> pretty good.
33:59
>> [music] >> production [music] team. >> Everyone's jamming.
34:14
[music] [singing] >> I'm keeping my word.
34:17
I don't know what [singing] you >> the supporting vocals in the back.
34:22
[music] >> I even heard the original song.
34:24
like I I can't immediately clock the original song.
34:28
So, >> all right, we can pause it.
34:31
>> But this is pretty good. >> That's good. >> I like I like that.
34:32
And I mean, if we're going to be able to play that level of audio on the stream without getting demonetized, that's actually like a huge unlock.
34:39
I feel like there's a ton of fun that we could have with it. >> Yeah.
34:41
It's interesting because it doesn't immediately clock as slop. >> No.
34:48
>> In the same way and and of course like a a a producer >> Yeah.
34:54
probably can clock it as flop, but to somebody that doesn't work in music isn't necessarily like I don't consider myself the biggest music fan. >> Yeah.
35:02
>> It's like at the very least like better than elevator music. >> Yeah. Yeah.
35:06
I mean, it is it is just a simpler >> It feels simpler than getting video right.
35:12
like video if if there's six fingers, you're going to notice.
35:14
But in music, like if you're sticking to general chord progressions and you're sticking to general key and, you know, not like completely uh, you know, slopping up the the the basic rules of how to generate music.
35:31
Um, you should be able to get something that that that sounds like at least reasonable.
35:35
But I don't know what what do you think about this AI music stuff?
35:38
Do you think you'll be listening to a lot of it in the future?
35:43
>> Um, I think there's something interesting on like the consumption like streaming side almost. Yeah.
35:46
Where um if you think of like there's like the Spotify DJ and it'll kind of update a little bit if you like depending on how long you listen to the song. >> DJ X. Yeah.
35:55
Sometimes I'll skip like five in a row and it'll be like I get it. I get it. >> Yeah. So, so it'll update.
35:59
Um, and basically like you can imagine it's like trying to find the next uh group of songs or whatever in latent space.
36:06
there's like some area where it thinks that like you might like that song, but then it turns out maybe there's actually no song in that in that point in lat space and then it generates it.
36:13
>> Then you can just generate it. Interesting.
36:14
So if you have like a generative playlist, I think that's kind of interesting.
36:18
>> I feel like Spotify has got to do something here.
36:19
That DJX is like two years old at this point.
36:22
>> That was like an early that's just recommendation algorithms.
36:24
That's not like the AI boom.
36:26
That's not generative AI.
36:27
But at the same time, Spotify, if they launch some generative AI thing, like a lot of the artists will probably be pretty upset, right? >> Well, yeah.
36:37
I mean, it's like kicking the industry while it's down.
36:38
It's like, hey, we know that streaming already doesn't generate like enough revenue, at least in their view, right?
36:44
A lot of the artists will post like >> I' I've seen artists like share their like payouts. >> Yep.
36:52
>> And it's and and it basically shows like you need to be constantly touring. Yep.
36:56
if you want to make money as an artist. Yep.
36:59
>> And so if you introduce AI >> Yeah.
37:02
>> versions of their music or or music that is just decent music, >> it's just going to hammer >> Okay.
37:10
>> Hammer their earnings even more.
37:12
>> What should Spotify do with regard to AI music?
37:15
I want your answer, Jordy.
37:15
Pitch me on a five or 10 year strategy.
37:18
You're the CEO of Spotify for the next five or 10 years.
37:24
What do you do in AI music?
37:25
But while you're thinking about it, let me tell you about Vanta.
37:26
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37:30
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37:36
Whether you're pursuing your first framework or managing a complex program >> uh my immediate thought and I haven't uh thought this through.
37:44
>> I gave you an entire ad read to think through.
37:46
You should be ready to step into the boardroom.
37:50
>> Be a boardroom general.
37:50
So, the the obvious the thing that feels most obvious, and I'm sure there's some potential negative uh uh externalities to something like this, but if you just make it so that if if I generate a song that's like an AI gunner song that we just listened to, if every person like if you can figure out a revenue split that basically takes care of the people that created that the track that inspired it. >> Yep.
38:15
In that case, it's extremely obvious because it's an existing Gunonna song that's converted into into a new song. >> Yep.
38:24
>> If you're just paying out effectively >> the same amount to the producer and the writers and all that stuff, that feels like an easy solution. Yep.
38:35
>> Now, the problem is if you're just generating entirely net new music, which is like the prompt would be like, "Make me a funk song." >> Yep.
38:42
then you're still eating into the potential earnings of like real artists on the platform. >> Yep.
38:49
>> And I don't know how you solve that.
38:49
I mean, it's potentially a bullc case for Spotify because they take can take out why did Spotify like lean so heavily into podcasts?
38:59
One, because people wanted to listen to podcasts and two because they didn't have the same dynamic where they're paying out such a large amount of their revenue to artists on the platform.
39:07
So they could go out and pay to acquire, you know, Joe Rogan or whatever.
39:13
It was originally for like a year, two years.
39:16
>> Um, because you were acquiring users that would presumably listen to podcasts and you're not paying out the record label and the artists and and all the underlying.
39:27
Uh, >> that is a good point. Yeah. But yeah. Yeah.
39:30
The monetization has to be wildly different between >> Yeah.
39:32
So if I'm an artist, if if I'm if if if I'm gunner and somebody's generating AI gunner, I'm cool with that >> if >> you're getting paid.
39:40
>> If I'm getting paid like it's a normal song. >> Yes.
39:43
>> But it starts to get really complicated when it's like generate a Gunonna song that that sounds like this and there's no underlying song.
39:52
So how do the how do the royalties work on just like a generic gun song? Right. I don't know.
39:58
>> I have a rebuttal, but first let me tell you about graphite.
39:59
dev code review for the age of AI.
40:01
Graphite helps teams on GitHub ship higher quality software faster.
40:04
So, uh, I know exactly how you do it.
40:06
Tyler, you know how you do it.
40:07
You take the song and you do the algorithm backwards and you basically reverse engineer the prompt from the final MP3.
40:14
And so, if someone went to one of these AI music generators and said, I want Taylor Swift singing a gun song when and then it generates that music.
40:27
You can use the same this basically the same system to reverse engineer and and just say based on what this MP3 sounds like, what do you think the prompt was?
40:41
And if you can if you can figure out the correlation between the prompt and the actual output, you can figure out how to do attribution.
40:49
And I think in general Spotify, I would come out and say, "Hey, look, we're not going to get into the into the game of generating audio directly, but we are happy to let our creators use any tool that they want to generate music and come on our platform.
41:06
Whether that's a microphone and a acoustic guitar or Ableton with a bunch of digital drums or an AI music generator like Sunno, you're welcome on Spotify, but we're going to take 50% basically because we take our cut our take rate, whatever whatever the cut the take rate is. YouTube's around 45 55%.
41:27
Um, and then how are we going to how are we going to actually parcel out the royalty?
41:34
Well, we're going to look at what does our AI system tell us about what the prompt was?
41:40
And if it's if it's gonna singing Taylor Swift or Taylor Swift singing Gunonna, well then they're both getting 50 50% of that new generation.
41:51
>> Bunch of ideas from the chat.
41:51
Taylor says, "The future is exclusive listening parties, zero streaming presence.
41:55
So artists just charge, not even for a concert.
41:59
Just show up in a room $10,000 a pop.
42:02
you can be one of a small number of people to to ever hear the song and then they just retire it. >> I like that. That's good.
42:09
>> I think I think uh there's something there.
42:11
Uh Ryan says, "I will cancel Spotify if they start pushing AI music."
42:15
So >> pushing what what does pushing mean though? That's the question.
42:18
Like >> it's exactly what what Tyler just outlined, right?
42:21
They're you're they're djing for you and they're like, "Hey, we made this song for you.
42:24
We thought we thought you'd like it."
42:25
So I think this is kind of potentially a stated preference versus revealed preference.
42:28
I think that uh actual um actual c like broad user feedback would be like >> that's entertaining, that's kind of fun, that's cool.
42:40
>> Um and I say that because people like doing this stuff.
42:44
>> So if I'm scrolling my X feed and I see Harry Potter Balenciaga, which is AI generated, is X pushing that on me or is that just a good MP4 that day?
42:53
People liked it and so it rose to the top of the feed.
42:58
>> I would say the latter.
42:58
I would say that it's not like there was any >> Spotify is historically less algo driven, right?
43:03
It's like we have this we have this like basically billboard and the homepage and we're just going to put stuff there.
43:10
>> But they have an algorithm.
43:10
And the question is is if there's I I think there's a big difference between them actually choosing to generate music and them and them allowing anyone to come with generated music.
43:20
But >> well, they're already doing that. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
43:23
But there already >> AV says Spotify should launch a standalone audio sora or vibes.
43:26
That could be interesting.
43:29
I I I feel like they're so any any business that is reliant on Hollywood or the music industry is just so sensit like actually has a atscale business doing that >> is so sensitive. >> Yeah. Yeah.
43:46
Spotify is in a way way different than uh OpenAI which doesn't really have any Hollywood connections and even YouTube which YouTube's like the vast majority of their ad dollars and creators like do not come from any sort of Hollywood organization any sort of large organization.
44:02
Uh Spotify does really have like a few key massive partnerships that they need to keep happening.
44:08
>> John Philipped says Spotify buys now.
44:08
I could I could actually see that.
44:14
Well, uh, if you need to generate some media, head over to Fall, the world's best generative image, video, and and audio models all in one place.
44:20
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44:23
Speaking of Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce is here to save six flags.
44:28
Uh, and the Wall Street Journal has a fantastic look at that header image.
44:33
Like, what is going on with that collage? Is that AI? I don't know.
44:38
It looks some like some sort of illustration, but it's a lot of fun.
44:40
Uh, have you been tracking what Travis Kelce is doing with with Six Flags?
44:44
Just this year, Six Flags, the stock has dropped from $50 a share essentially to almost $20 a share.
44:53
So, massive selloff in the company.
44:56
Uh, it is now popping on news that Travis Travis Kelce effect.
44:58
It's up 22% over the last 5 days. >> Let's go.
45:03
Uh, the stars of the Super Bowl always celebrate in the same way.
45:07
They bask in confetti, hoist the Lombardi trophy, and then proclaim where they plan to celebrate their epic victory.
45:13
I'm going to Disney World.
45:13
Uh, if Travis Kelce wins a fourth Super Bowl this NFL season, there are hundreds of millions of reasons why he might pick a different amusement park.
45:22
The Kansas City Chief Chiefs tight end just joined an activist investor campaign that's targeting Six Flags.
45:29
Kelsey, New York, uh, New York-based Jana Partners, uh, and other investors have put around $200 million to buy roughly 9% of the theme park operator.
45:41
That means Kelsey is now part owner trying to sell America on stomach turnurning drops, head spinning turns, and dip and dots.
45:48
Just what he loved as a kid and still does.
45:50
On its surface, a 36-year-old football player teaming up with rabble rousing investors might seem as unlikely as getting engaged to the world's most famous famous pop star after talking about her on a podcast.
46:02
But as the two sides got to know uh one another, they realized the partnership with Kisman and a ripe opportunity to revitalize an American icon.
46:11
Uh Kelsey in recent years has developed a wide-ranging investment portfolio mostly in business.
46:16
He's passionate about beer, games, and clothing, and he's often done it alongside institutional investors.
46:24
Kelsey's business team had Jana on its list of potential partners.
46:26
Um, what would your >> I mean, >> turnaround plan.
46:31
>> This is the most classic This is the classic investment strategy.
46:33
Just buy buy the buy the stocks of the companies that you spend money with, right? >> Do what you love. >> Just doing that.
46:42
make your uh find a job you love and you'll never work a day in your life.
46:48
>> Um how would you turn around Six Flags?
46:51
How would you increase the revenues, increase the profit, increase the attendance?
46:55
How would you make Six Flags great?
46:57
And before you answer, let me tell you about Julius. ai.
47:01
Julius, what analysis do you want to run?
47:03
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47:05
What's doing >> get on Julia?
47:09
You actually probably that would be a good first step.
47:11
I know it's a sponsor, but you actually should take all it's notable looking at NFL athletes, looking at their investment strategies.
47:20
Kelsey obviously going the activism route.
47:23
Sequin going the Fifth Avenue route.
47:26
He wants to buy Fifth Avenue.
47:28
He's he likes co-investing with the founders funds of the world, with the Thrivives of the world.
47:33
So, it's interesting to see these two uh strategies play out in the market.
47:36
Uh I don't actually know that I've ever been to Six Flags, which is uh so I don't feel uh and I and I'm not a fan of of uh theme parks in general.
47:51
So >> um I uh I don't feel super qualified to to uh What are your ideas though?
47:59
>> I I feel like uh there is there is potential for a comeback.
48:03
I I I am I was convinced by Brian Chesy when he came on and said, "You know how you never >> long the real world." >> Yeah. Long the real world.
48:12
You know how you never see your phone in dreams?
48:13
Uh that hit that hit hard.
48:16
I know it sounds like something you see on a Pinterest live, laugh, love board, but it it hit with me. I am serious.
48:24
Um I I've I've been thinking about this when I was looking at the sphere in Las Vegas.
48:29
I thought the sphere in Las Vegas was awesome on day one.
48:32
I thought it looked really cool.
48:35
And then I I sent uh I I got tickets for my wife and her friends to go see the Backy Boys there.
48:40
They had a great time and I was further confirmed.
48:44
I still haven't even been to it, but I'm still just like extremely bullish on the Sphere.
48:48
And so I do feel like what you probably need is more differentiation across different Six Flags theme parks.
48:56
What makes the sphere so unique is that it's the only sphere.
49:01
They couldn't even build one in London.
49:02
They tried and the Londoners said, "No thanks." Yeah.
49:04
And so I would be I would be focused on >> if you look at the roller coaster database RCDB, this is a real thing like IMDb.
49:12
Um you can pull up which which theme park has the tallest ride, which one has the fastest ride.
49:18
And if you're a real crazy theme park fan, you can go around and I want to ride the tallest one here, the fastest one here, the biggest wooden roller coaster, and the fall the fastest steel roller coaster, there's all these different permutations, and you can go collect all the badges, but it's not meaningful.
49:34
Like they it's like 5t taller over here.
49:37
>> I have two ideas for you, please.
49:39
>> Um, so one, we talked about this a little bit last week, which is just raising the stakes, right?
49:42
I think uh even as a kid I understood that statistically even though the roller coaster was going really fast and it was really high and then it was going to go really low and then it was going to go upside down.
49:52
Statistically I knew my the odds were in my favor, right?
49:55
The odds that I was going to make it to the end in one piece.
49:59
Maybe a little sick to my stomach, whatever, but I knew I was going to get to the end.
50:03
Just just I had a good feeling, you know, statistically.
50:06
>> Um so raise the stakes, right?
50:06
if it was like one out of a thousand rides, it just comes to like a devastating halt, right? Okay. Like upside down.
50:13
And so you just don't know.
50:16
Am I Am I >> I do am I in that batch, right?
50:18
That so that that would be exhilarating, right?
50:22
And we saw there was >> there could be a mandatory chili eating contest. >> No, no, no.
50:25
That's my next That's my next idea.
50:27
So So America loves to gamble, right?
50:29
And so what if they required every ride you had to eat a bowl of chili before going before going on it?
50:36
And then there was like a DraftKings like betting booth nearby.
50:38
So you could see the people walking onto the ride and you could bet every seat go long or short on if they were going to hurl at any point on the ride. I like that.
50:49
>> So you could be they could eat the bowl of chili. >> Yes. >> They're walking out.
50:52
They go on a on you know there's maybe like glass separating or something like that, but you could see them walking out and you're like, "Oh, that guy >> that doesn't look too good.
50:59
>> Oh, that chili is not sitting well."
51:01
Because especially throughout the day, people have had more and more chili because every time they have to do a ride, they have to eat a bowl of chili.
51:08
>> And so you'd have a huge new influx of guests that aren't there to do the rides.
51:11
They're just there to gamble on on will people make it to the end.
51:14
And so by the end of the day, it's just it is just a mess out there.
51:18
People are in hazmat suits.
51:20
You're walking around, you know, goggles and everything cuz there's just the whole park is just throw up going >> everywhere.
51:27
I I I'm a firm believer in adding variable rewards to Six Flags.
51:33
Generally, I would be very interested in when you get on the ride, there's a 1% chance that it goes 1% the speed.
51:41
>> And so, you get on and you're like, "Yeah, you got unlucky."
51:43
And you're going to be on this for two hours now.
51:47
And it's just going to be clinking along just one inch at a time and you're just like, "Yeah, I I I caught the I caught the raw end of the stick. I got the short stick."
51:56
So, another one uh like lottery upsells for every ride.
51:58
So, >> so we're basically just trying just trying to juice their margin.
52:05
[laughter] Okay, you got people going.
52:07
How do we get more dollars out of every guest?
52:09
>> And so, I think uh you know, if you have an option, you know, you're waiting in these long lines, >> right?
52:14
If you have an option to buy, people walk around with an iPad and say like, would you like to do digital slots?
52:19
Would you like to buy a lottery ticket?
52:21
and kind of have fast feedback loops so that you know they can say like somebody in the crowd right now is going to win >> $1,000. You can do the numbers.
52:28
There's you can run the numbers.
52:30
There's there's only a few hundred people in line. Yep.
52:33
>> You got a good You got a not not a decent chance, but you got a chance. >> Yeah.
52:38
>> And so I think it's just about getting that incremental dollar out.
52:41
>> I I have a I have a different idea.
52:41
I think you're getting a little degen. Let's let's go to Tyler.
52:45
But first, let me tell you about Turbo Puffer.
52:46
Search every bite serverless vector and full text search built from first principles and object storage fast 10x cheaper and extremely scalable. Tyler, what's your idea?
52:55
>> I I think I I like the the you know what the line doing stuff.
52:57
So I think data labeling would be good.
53:00
>> No, it's that's actually great. Yes.
53:02
>> Go this kind of AI route.
53:04
>> I would take it a a step further.
53:04
You know those like big uh like uh massive land parties with just tons of monitors like the JP Morgan I would make the JP Morgan experience with a bunch of quad monitors and it could and you could go to Six Flags and you just lock in and they just have Google AI Studio cooking on every monitor and you just go to the you get in the line to go vibe code.
53:24
You chat with models, you vibe code, you monitor usage.
53:29
Um, all I I I think that bringing in the corporate big tech dollars either through branded integrations, rides, so you can ride the Google AI studio coaster could be a way to upgrade.
53:44
>> Another another opportunity, wellness has been booming, right?
53:46
While theme parks have been uh have been in relative decline. How do you get?
53:53
>> And so um so the obvious thing is is you know people have been promoting the introvenous use of like ketamine, right?
54:01
So if you had ketamine mental health stations throughout [laughter] the >> What about facelifts?
54:07
Did you see this article in the Wall Street Journal?
54:08
Why tech bros are getting facelifts now? >> Yeah.
54:12
So it needs to turn into a wellness destination.
54:14
You can get uh >> So you can get a facelift.
54:18
I I'm I'm not I'm not familiar with this at all.
54:21
Uh this whole story, but uh people were >> so pull pull up this picture.
54:25
I I I think they're they're trying I mean, >> whoever this dude is is getting Dr.
54:30
Ben Talle uh he's a 60-year-old who runs a solar and tech business.
54:35
He had an advanced deep plane facelift and neck lift with SMAS optimization as well as other procedures.
54:42
Well, I mean, he looks >> I mean, he looks great. >> He's looking great.
54:45
I I think this is a this looks like a good ad for facelifts if you ask me. [laughter] >> Yeah.
54:51
Uh well, Keith Reo, friend of the show, got a uh got a nod in this article. Really?
54:56
>> Tech is a young person's game.
54:56
In a 2024 talk, Keith Reo recounted advice his fellow investor Peter Teal once gave him.
55:04
You can't hire anyone over 30.
55:04
It's unsurprising then that men in tech are increasingly um spending thousands of dollars on procedures such as mini face lifts, neck lifts, and eyelid lifts to beat the signs of aging.
55:16
According to plastic surgeons, yes, the latest addition to the tech bro look is a brand new face.
55:23
Tyler, maybe you should go 10 years younger.
55:25
Maybe you should try and look like a 5-year-old.
55:27
[laughter] Just maybe you should shave your head and get like that one curly cue like the baby.
55:35
You know the baby with the single single hair cartoon baby.
55:39
>> Yeah, the cartoon cartoon baby. That's the way to go.
55:42
>> Yeah, you would have to get a much you could get a face lift but then put it make your face a lot wider too like round.
55:48
>> You need to you need to get on some sort of diet that gets the uh gets the baby fat back on instead of working >> Oh, that's just filler.
55:55
Tyler just gets so much filler.
55:57
you just have a baby face.
55:59
[laughter] That'd be ridiculous.
56:03
>> Uh I'm I'm amazed uh that people were quick to volunteer um volunteer their own personal stories for this article who did.
56:12
But I guess I mean >> we know >> all the people in the photos. >> Yeah.
56:16
But are these people people know in tech? >> I don't know.
56:18
But they're they're tech on patient.
56:20
I mean you need to you need to ID these people. >> Unnamed patient.
56:24
Many men used to >> They're saying it's a 46y old tech executive.
56:30
>> Tyler, figure out every 46y old.
56:36
>> Anyways, I think it's cool.
56:36
I don't have a problem with it. >> Yeah.
56:40
Well, if you're trying to do faceelifts, you need to get your brand mentioned on CHA GBT. That's right.
56:43
Get your plastic surgery firm mentioned on Chat GBT with profound.
56:47
Reach millions of consumers who using AI to discover new products and brands.
56:52
Uh, the White House has posted that the console wars are over.
56:57
They shared an image of Donald Trump dawning Master Chief's battle armor with the plasma sword.
57:04
I'm really not that sharp on Halo terminology, but uh, it is big news because apparently Halo is coming to PS5. Is that correct?
57:16
Who's familiar with this? Break this down for me.
57:18
Are the console wars over? It does feel. Yeah.
57:21
This is uh I think this was a quote on on um GameStop's post. >> Yeah.
57:27
>> Where they said, >> you know, we're announcing the console wars are over. >> Yeah.
57:31
>> Um >> the Halo Halo is is coming to PlayStation. >> That's exciting.
57:36
>> Halo is coming to PlayStation.
57:36
>> Halo is coming to PlayStation. It does feel like the the console wars are over in the sense that um the the two companies have just diverged so thoroughly in strategy where you know Microsoft owns Xbox but is very much like console agnostic and Sony is very much like all in on PS5 as like the core strategy and is and and that's like I
58:03
don't know they're still they're still duking it out a little bit but it feels very much like PS5 is like a real legitimate console and then and then Microsoft and Xbox and Xbox cloud are like a a strategy and they would be okay with you playing Xbox games on your PS5 because they feel like they are definitely pulling back from like the hardware wars. What do you think? What do you think?
58:24
>> Um I was just going to say it's pretty funny that Ryan Cohen is so anti like violent video game.
58:30
>> That's like the whole I mean like all the old old images of like GameStop right the day before the new Call of Duty comes out.
58:35
It's, you know, >> it it must be.
58:37
I mean, I would assume it was a big part of the revenue, but maybe not anymore. Who knows?
58:43
>> Um, >> I wish I I I I miss when Q4 meant that there was a then I all I was thinking about was a new COD. That was a simpler time.
58:53
>> I played a little bit of the new Battlefield.
58:54
It was not anything super special.
58:57
Um, yeah, I think you got to set your whole life up to really dominate COD.
59:02
Plus, I feel like I gotta have mouse and keyboard, and it's just not in the cards for me.
59:05
I can't I can't do the controller stuff.
59:07
Seriously, it's just too I don't know. It's just not for me.
59:12
>> Um anyway, the the console wars.
59:12
Um I I was I was trying to get up to speed on like how do you tell the story of the of the last 30 years of the console wars?
59:24
uh going back to the Atari, then the NES arrives in the United States in the in ' 8589.
59:31
Sega Genesis in 1989, Super NES, uh then PlayStation and N64 go back and forth.
59:39
The Sega Dreamcast comes in.
59:39
Apparently, one of the earlier online playable consoles.
59:44
Um DVD playback of movies, uh moves units into living rooms.
59:48
people start buying consoles because oh you can also play DVDs and then eventually you can also play HD DVDs and Blu-rays.
59:57
There was a battle between HD DVD and Blu-ray.
59:59
Um [clears throat] anyway, we'll see how much it's over.
1:00:03
It feels it feels pretty over.
1:00:05
Um >> but they're not to be clear, they're not going to allow like crossplatform live play between PlayStation and Xbox.
1:00:14
>> Oh, they definitely do that in COD.
1:00:16
>> Oh, they do already >> for sure. Yeah.
1:00:17
Is there any advantage to playing on one or another?
1:00:18
Like is like the hardcore players do they do they pick a side?
1:00:23
>> Uh I mean the I believe the hardest score players always pick mouse and keyboard but they might be >> okay but hardcore.
1:00:30
>> So PC would be the most hardcore. >> Got it.
1:00:32
because the reaction time.
1:00:32
I mean, I'm sure that there are plenty of people that debate this, but uh in general, the the the the muscle like because if you're trying to click on a head like moving your arm, >> you playing on a PC would smoke you playing on a console.
1:00:50
>> Usually, usually like there are there are clearly some people who are phenomenal with the sticks, but in general, this much movement is going to be more accurate than this much movement because this is just not that much.
1:01:00
it doesn't it doesn't leave that much uh for like precision.
1:01:05
Now some of the games have worked to create to kind of level the playing field by having different levels. Consoles have auto aim. >> Exactly.
1:01:17
Different levels of auto aim.
1:01:19
And so you're in this weird realm where if you play on consoles you do get it's not auto aim.
1:01:24
A console player would be very upset with you calling it auto aim because what it actually is is that when they're o when you're over a target, it slows down the speed at which the uh the the stick moves the cursor. Exactly.
1:01:40
And so it's not snapping to the target.
1:01:43
It's just letting you slow down >> using auto aim with this laser pointer. Don't don't shine.
1:01:54
>> I don't put it in people's eye. Don't put the laser.
1:01:56
>> You don't know where you're going with that. It's risky. You never know. >> It's risky. It is.
1:01:58
Um, should we talk about uh Tay Kim on why AI is underhyped and isn't a bubble yet? >> Sure, let's do it.
1:02:07
>> Tay Kim, whatever happened, we Tay Tay was supposed to be on Friday.
1:02:10
>> Yeah, but it was like it was like a 2 p. m.
1:02:12
last minute uh booking and it wasn't uh there wasn't anything in the news right then, so we're going to have him on later.
1:02:17
Um I I wanted to have him on the show.
1:02:20
John in the LinkedIn chat says, "I'll take it that Jordy wasn't exactly a trickshotter.
1:02:25
>> Not on not >> I've had I've I've I've 360 no scopes."
1:02:29
>> I like that Joseph is like as a PC player, it is auto aim. I I I agree.
1:02:31
It it it does feel like there's a big difference between the computer is you're setting your sensitivity once and then you go into the game and you interact with the game and there's nothing that's like context aware.
1:02:44
As soon as you add something that's contextaware, it feels like that's auto aim and that's cheating and that would certainly be an advantage and it is designed to be an advantage because you have a lot of disadvantages when you're using a console with a uh with a controller that has small stakes.
1:03:01
>> Um so take him says here's why AI isn't a bubble today.
1:03:04
He's distilled data points and ideas from previous columns and coverage.
1:03:08
If you prefer facts and evidence-based reality over vibes and conflated narratives, enjoy uh big tech valuations are reasonable, leverage is low.
1:03:16
Uh we're at the beginning of multiple AI super product cycles in the year ahead.
1:03:20
We are in the early innings of a technology computing shift to AI, the largest in decades. Think 1994 versus 1999.
1:03:27
Uh yeah, that's a good question.
1:03:30
When does the dotcom bubble start?
1:03:32
Everyone says like 99 to 2000, but was it not a bubble in 94?
1:03:38
Because like it can be a bubble like even a big big bubbles have small beginnings, right?
1:03:43
Like they start as small bubbles and then they get bigger and bigger as they inflate. >> Yeah.
1:03:47
Remember Amazon went public May 15th, 1997. >> So >> yeah.
1:03:52
And so you could so you could easily claim >> that we're in we're in the very early stages of a bubble.
1:03:58
>> My personal timeline was that like the further you went in the '9s, the crazier it got.
1:04:02
Like it was like heating up. >> Yep.
1:04:05
And there was plenty of people that made insane amounts of monies money like prior to the bubble, right? >> Totally.
1:04:11
>> And a lot of them probably wish they held a bit longer, but >> No. No.
1:04:14
I think a lot of them were happy they got out when they did. Like >> Well, sure.
1:04:18
But but again, like a lot of like the euphoria >> I'm talking about like like I I've talked to some folks who are like they founded a company in 1994, they sold it in 1998. It does not exist. It didn't exist.
1:04:31
It does not exist anymore. It didn't exist in 2002.
1:04:34
Uh and but they wound up with like a hund00 million liquid and they're like set for life. >> Yeah.
1:04:42
>> Because they like nailed it.
1:04:43
>> That's enough to retire. >> Yeah. >> Kidding.
1:04:47
Uh I always I always I feel like the debate comes up like >> you still have you still is 10 million enough to >> you still you still have to cut you still have to raise a VC fund and and LAR is a VC for a little bit. >> Uh continue.
1:05:00
[laughter and gasps] Um well we have our we we actually have our first guest of the show. We can come back.
1:05:05
Um let's go to let's go to space.
1:05:07
Let's go to space data centers.
1:05:07
Our first guest of the show is Philip from Star >> Burning up the timeline.
1:05:12
Philip, how are you doing? Good to see you.
1:05:15
>> The current thing himself.
1:05:17
>> The current thing himself.
1:05:17
Uh did this all kick off with Nvidia posting about you?
1:05:22
Was that when the kuruffle be >> I think that was the I think that was the catalyst. Yeah. >> Okay.
1:05:26
So >> thanks so much for having me on by the way.
1:05:28
I've been a huge fan since day one. I am glad to have you.
1:05:30
This is why the show exists.
1:05:32
Uh we we we we address every timeline that is in turmoil.
1:05:34
Um so break it down for me.
1:05:37
When did you start the company? What's the pitch?
1:05:38
And and then we'll go into some of the like howers. Yeah. Yeah.
1:05:44
But but just give me like the recent back backstory. >> Yeah.
1:05:48
So we started about a year and a half ago um at the beginning of last year.
1:05:51
Um we yeah basically in that time built a satellite.
1:05:55
We've got the first launch coming up in a week and that's why Nvidia just posted their first thing because we're going to be launching the first H100 to space.
1:06:01
So about 100 times more powerful GPU compute than has been in space before. >> Okay.
1:06:06
>> Um and yeah, that's that's the the sort of brief history. >> Okay.
1:06:10
What were what were you doing before this?
1:06:13
>> Uh so I started my career as an engineer for 5 years.
1:06:15
Um studied applied math and theoretic physics undergrad and masters and then I spent a few years at Mackenzie working with the space agencies of the UA and Saudi government.
1:06:22
And then I founded and sold another company not related to this and then moved my way into this. >> Here you are.
1:06:28
>> Harvard, Wharton, Colia.
1:06:28
He's been to every academic institution >> collecting them all.
1:06:32
Um what what is the uh what is the strategy for this first launch, this first satellite?
1:06:39
Like what what are you trying to figure out with this launch?
1:06:42
What is what is the value of putting this H100 into space?
1:06:45
And then kind of like how do you think about the timeline?
1:06:48
cuz I think like the I would say like overarching criticism of data centers in space has been like people I don't think people genu generally believe that this will never happen.
1:07:02
It's more of like a debate around like the timeline on which it happens. >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:07:07
Which is a fair I mean it's a fair debate to have I think.
1:07:10
Um so the first satellite the reason we're launching this lots of people believe that you can't run terrestrial data center grade GPUs in space because of high radiation environment and you need to dissipate the heat in a vacuum.
1:07:20
So this is really a demonstrator. It's a 60 kg small sat.
1:07:24
Um it's launching on a Falcon 9 a quarter plate there.
1:07:26
Um and so we'll be running high we'll do a whole bunch of firsts.
1:07:31
We'll be the first to run high power inference in space on imagery from working with various DoD customers.
1:07:36
We'll announce that soon.
1:07:38
Um we'll be the first to train a model in space.
1:07:39
We're training mini GPT from Copathy.
1:07:40
We'll be the first to do um uh we're running a version of Gem Gemini called Gemma which is like a cut down version working with Google Cloud on that.
1:07:50
Um but so we'll do some fun demos like for example you can SSH into it and then just ask it things like where are you now and how does it feel to be a satellite and it will give you a kind of coherent answer.
1:07:59
Um [snorts] but yeah this is really really a demo.
1:08:03
Um the next satellite launching in October next year is 10 times the power.
1:08:07
We'll have by far the largest commercial radiator in space.
1:08:08
Um a 30 m wingspan solar panel and then we'll have very very sophisticated optical and um connectivity options on there.
1:08:16
So customers including uh DoD and other satellites will be able to send us raw imagery.
1:08:22
We process it on the edge and then we just download the insight and that's that's the road map. How how far are you?
1:08:28
are you? Like there's a launch that's happening very soon and then there's the renders which are like it looks like sci-fi Star Wars like there oh yes there's like 25 shipping containers that are descending like uh what's the delta
1:08:43
there and what was the decision between like kind of showing more of a vision document because I think that's what triggered a lot of people was like you were showing an amount of mass in orbit that feels like beyond the ISS like it felt feel it looks huge. Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. >> Right. >> Yeah.
1:09:00
No, to to be fair it's extremely difficult to imagine what's about to come down the line with Starship.
1:09:05
So like the launch cap launch cost might come down by between 10 and 100x.
1:09:08
Launch capacity is set to go up by a thousandx or more.
1:09:13
And the reason is if you build a new Starship every day for a year, which is like a very conservative estimate for what they're trying to do.
1:09:19
At the end of the year, you have 365 starships.
1:09:20
It has five times payload capacity.
1:09:22
You can launch 10 times as frequently.
1:09:24
So we're really talking about a thousand times like more tonnage per year that we can get to space.
1:09:27
So and that's coming like 3 to 5 years which is really not that far away.
1:09:30
So the idea of the the render like you can launch the the whole ISS in two starship launches.
1:09:37
So the render is to show look there is going to be a lot more mass in space. Um, but yeah.
1:09:41
I mean, >> yeah, I almost feel like you should have done the anderal thing where it's like anime if it's like sci-fi where the vision's going and then it's like render for like what you're actually sending because like the render that I saw of like the multiple shipping containers putting together like that's not what's actually launching next week.
1:10:00
So, I think that's where like a lot of the cognitive dissonance is coming from, right?
1:10:05
>> But yeah, I mean you'll iterate all this. It's fine. >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:10:07
I recently saw Palmer talking about that and I was like, man, that's actually pretty cool. >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:10:11
It it's nice to have because there is a there is a value for like the vision document like what do you where do you want to go in 10 years?
1:10:19
>> Um but it just hits different when it's like the official Nvidia account is sharing this render and it's [laughter] like okay like that feels like it's happening soon.
1:10:29
>> They It's not like they don't do their research.
1:10:31
They have a whole team of like PhDs that go and look at this and like they have they have a board that approves that this can get shown that it's like feasibly possible. >> Yes. Yeah.
1:10:40
So, so talk about talk about like Yeah, I guess talk about So, so uh this first this first launch is meant to be like a demo basically like correct me if I'm wrong, but effectively a science project to start to show capabilities in space to start to prove that you guys can actually put GPUs in space that can run >> sure >> workloads like what is the actual timeline?
1:11:05
So, and then it sounds like maybe defense is like an an early place where there might be some commercial applications, but then what is what's your timeline on on when uh if or when you know I would be you know prompting a model like chat GBT or Gemini or whatever and and uh open running it's just cheaper to do it in space cuz that that that's the long-term vision, right?
1:11:31
Is like it's just cheaper.
1:11:31
It's not anything special or like, oh, we need to be there for some geopolitical or defense reason.
1:11:37
It's just like the energy is free and the heat dissipation is free, so it's just cheaper, so that's where you go even though the launch costs are expensive. >> Yes. Yeah.
1:11:46
Um, so maybe I'll start with the second part.
1:11:48
So when will it be cheaper?
1:11:50
That's coming with Starship.
1:11:52
And so we're looking at the first commercial launches of Starship in 18 months, but we're probably going to be seeing, >> you know, mass volume production of Starship on a 3 to 3 to 5 year time frame.
1:12:02
So yeah, the the road map is next year in October, we're launching our second satellite.
1:12:07
That's the one is about a 10 times the compute of the first one, but much more um uh much more capable in terms of continuous power generation and solar panels.
1:12:15
That one is the first commercial soft service that will produce more cash than it costs to design, build, and la and launch.
1:12:20
I mean, that satellite pays for itself just on hosted payloads because that satellite has such high um throughput and processing capabilities.
1:12:29
There's a whole bunch of people that just want to stick stick sensors on that.
1:12:31
Um it's not the endstate business model, but that's a uh a nice revenue stream in the meantime.
1:12:38
Um, then we're launching a satellite after that which will be um I mean yeah we can't talk too too much about it but you can s you can see this PEZ dispenser form factor that's coming out of Starship. >> Um >> Oh yeah. >> Yeah.
1:12:52
Probably shouldn't say too much.
1:12:54
>> And that was successfully tested on the last Starship launch, right?
1:12:56
The where like there was a whole bunch of like debris blowing around.
1:13:00
It was a crazy crazy launch, but it did come back.
1:13:02
It landed and the PEZ dispenser thing shot out the the fake Starlink or like the the dummy star. >> Yeah, exactly.
1:13:10
So, so that's about a 4 ton at least at least 100 kow satellite.
1:13:15
Second one's 10 kow, first one's 1 kilowatt.
1:13:16
So, we're like going up an order of magnitude each time.
1:13:18
That one could feasibly launch end of 2027 and then from there we basically will launch lots of lots of small versions of or lots of continuous versions of that because that will have very low launch cost >> and it will be a while before we start launching the full Starship payload base size.
1:13:34
I mean for one we need this clam shell door to be ready before we can do that.
1:13:38
Um and yeah but to be frank it's quite a while until we start docking things in space.
1:13:42
The only reason you would dock things in space like in the concept video is if you want to train a large model because then you [clears throat] need the whole data center to be internally.
1:13:48
Um, and so that we're probably looking at, you know, early early 2030s before we start >> docking.
1:13:54
I mean, I I I don't have a problem with thinking in decades like that.
1:13:58
That's like what we say in tech we want people to do.
1:14:00
And so I don't I I don't have any I don't think there's any problem with saying like, yeah, like there's some crazy stuff that needs to happen with launch costs and like it's going to take a while until this really works out.
1:14:11
Like that's actually exactly what people want from from technology founders ideally.
1:14:15
Uh I guess there is the question of like you know how do you frame it is like how you don't want people to >> Yeah.
1:14:22
If you just needed to generate a lot of revenue quickly in space you could do the first space casino where people could beam up tap into it.
1:14:28
All ages ages people to hit me up. >> Oh really? Yeah. Yeah. I mean space token.
1:14:36
You got to find it in space.
1:14:36
what um how do you think about you know some of the uh we we I think we had um we'd asked Dylan Patel at one point about uh GPUs in space and and I don't think he mentioned like the challenges around heat and heat dissipation but he was talking about how sometimes you just need to like unplug the server and plug it back in again or or switch out uh individual GPUs but like what's the solve on that long term?
1:15:06
Are you thinking about, you know, these being like fully robotic systems that allow you to >> uh make changes on the fly?
1:15:13
Like what's the solution there?
1:15:18
>> Yeah, I think probably two points on that.
1:15:20
I mean, the first is for these massive data centers where you've got like, you know, a kilometer long or a mile long row of racks when the people I speak to now are saying, look, if if an H100 breaks in that, you just leave it in there.
1:15:32
Nobody's going down there and unplugging and putting that back in.
1:15:35
They're just writing software around it and they'll just leave it basically. Um so that's number one.
1:15:38
But secondly, um for the first few iterations of the satellite, it'll be exactly like Starlink in that we won't be able to touch it and so we'll have to have redundancy on the critical systems and then we overprovision things like solar panels and radiators which degrade over time.
1:15:52
time. Um over over time the whole industry is or space industry in general is moving towards robotic maintenance but also terrestrial data center industry is moving towards robotic maintenance and that's where on a sort of fiveyear time frame you know some of the people we speak to in data centers are saying we we are fully expecting data centers to be maintained by
1:16:09
humanoid robots on a 5year time frame and you know this is where it starts to sound a little bit wacky and sci-fi but um it I mean humanoid robots do not require too much modification to work in space in the sense that a a human space suit would take care of radiation and thermals, you would need to retrain it slightly, but um you know that's maybe sounds a little bit wacky, but robotic. >> Yeah, it doesn't have to be a humanoid,
1:16:30
>> Yeah, it doesn't have to be a humanoid, right?
1:16:33
Like there's a bunch of other form factor.
1:16:34
>> It could be any form factor, but humanoids will be mass-produced, so probably the probably the cheapest. >> It's interesting.
1:16:39
>> I want you to react to Andrew Mallalip's viral post.
1:16:41
It gets 7,000 likes breaking down a bunch of different things.
1:16:44
Uh the core claims I see in here are um questions about what if demand for payload to to orbit doesn't decline.
1:16:54
Uh he does talk about uh the difficulties of uh heat dissipation.
1:17:00
He says uh you just finished watching a Scott Manley video on uh radiative heat transfer and now you think you're going to disrupt AWS with a few solar panels in a ride share slot.
1:17:13
you're going to believe that right up until the next month when you crack open DWIT.
1:17:16
And he goes into a lot of the technical level.
1:17:18
But I was I was wondering if if if there were any key points in here that you think were uh you know easily debunked from actually being in the trenches.
1:17:28
You know, obviously he's he's you know, he does work in in space and does something similar and does seem like an expert who'd be equipped to know this stuff, but uh you've obviously focused on this case specifically.
1:17:40
So, what was your reaction when you saw his sort of uh comedic breakdown?
1:17:45
>> Yeah, I mean I like the post and I mean I'm I'm a fan of Andrew.
1:17:48
I've been following his stuff and he's a great engineer. Same with by the way.
1:17:50
Very impressive what they're doing. >> Yeah, totally. >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:17:54
Um so, I mean on the on the thermals, the criticism usually is in order to dissipate that heat, you need a large surface area.
1:18:01
And they think for some reason that that's super impractical. Mhm.
1:18:05
>> Um I mean my co-founder Ezra has a PhD in engineering spent 10 years designing and building large deployable structures, solar panels and radiators and I mean you just have to build a large surface area and that's what we're doing.
1:18:15
So half our engineering team is building a very large lowcost and low mass deployable radiator.
1:18:19
So that is the core IP of our company is that.
1:18:23
>> Um so that's number one on the launch cost side of things.
1:18:25
Um, so, so sometimes people say if there's no competitors to Starship, which it doesn't look like there'll be for at least five years, um, then will there be any incentive for Starship to for SpaceX to drop the pricing? Yep.
1:18:38
>> Now, I have a bit of a different opinion than most people.
1:18:40
Most people say, well, no, they'll just keep it high. I I don't think so.
1:18:43
And it's the same reason that they keep that that that teller Tesla is sold at under the price.
1:18:47
They could they could potentially sell Tesla at a higher price, but in order to reach a much larger market, you need to sell it at a lower price.
1:18:55
So for example, they're going to have all of these starships sitting there.
1:18:58
They can only launch them two years once every two years to Mars.
1:19:01
Their marginal cost of launch on each starship is $2 or $3 million.
1:19:03
Now either they can leave it there because there's no demand at the, you know, $200 million launch price.
1:19:09
Or they can say to people like us, hey, you can launch it for 20 or $30 million.
1:19:13
They still make shades of money.
1:19:15
That's still very profitable for us.
1:19:16
And so it's like a win-win.
1:19:16
So my expectation is that actually the launch price will come down even if they don't have huge a huge number of competitors. >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:19:25
Like the the elasticity of demand there like they might just be able to sell more volume at lower prices.
1:19:31
So they might wind up lowering the cost.
1:19:33
Uh or yeah kind of giving you like a bulk discount if you want to put it in that terms. Uh interesting.
1:19:38
Um on the on the heat dissipation uh question, how much do you think that that is uh in the domain of science and we need to have a breakthrough discovery and you need to discover the solution to that problem versus an engineering uh problem where maybe it just comes down to can you make manufacture something that is already follows the laws of physics and all the physicists agree it works if you can just build it profitably.
1:20:10
Yeah, I mean it it's from what we're seeing it's very much an engineering challenge.
1:20:14
It's a it's really like a manufacturing.
1:20:15
So we know that it works because the International Space Station has a radiator that dissipates 70 kow.
1:20:22
The problem is it's ridiculously expensive.
1:20:24
>> So our radiator on our second satellite is 10 times lower mass per watt of dissipation and 100 times lower price per watt of dissipation than the radiator on the International Space Station.
1:20:34
That's the whole the whole game is making this radiator cheap and light.
1:20:38
Um and yeah, we've got very some very innovative or in very unusual manufacturing techniques that we are working on basically. >> Fun.
1:20:47
Uh you posted a few days ago, people don't understand Starlink is going to just be the internet direct to sell is going to hit hard.
1:20:55
Basically, all telco is doomed.
1:20:57
Let's check in this time next year.
1:21:00
Uh expand expand on that.
1:21:03
I um we [laughter] >> that was at 1:00 a. m.
1:21:06
and I had a very heated argument with somebody and like I was in the cabin and I was like I'm just going to post this and then like 300,000 views later I was like okay this was probably like a little bit too extreme >> too aggressive.
1:21:15
[laughter] >> Well no yeah obviously if you want to get attention on Axe just say the most inflammatory thing possible.
1:21:21
inflammatory thing possible. uh say that uh you know all these >> multi do >> no but but uh what's what's what's your view on how quickly you know we we saw news on Apple exploring something with with uh Starlink on direct to cell
1:21:38
>> seems like every major manufacturer is going to be interested in this and then um >> there's also that other company that that's like a competitor right that uh what is it that is Verizon propping them up they don't have any satellite >> iss Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I don't think Yeah. Yeah.
1:21:52
No, I don't think they have any hope in hell.
1:21:55
And the reason they don't [laughter] Sorry, >> I know there's a there's a whole bunch of people that got >> They have a I mean, they have a retail army retail traders.
1:22:05
>> The retail traders are going to come for you, dude. >> Good luck.
1:22:08
>> What do you know about space?
1:22:10
>> Well, you got you [laughter] you got the private fine.
1:22:11
You got the private markets Varta guys coming for you.
1:22:13
Now you got the retail traders at AS coming for you.
1:22:17
You got you got no friends in this foxhole, dude.
1:22:19
You got to get out of here. ASS is up 7% just today. So that's >> Oh, wow. Amazing. >> Well, no. I mean, okay.
1:22:27
I I want them to succeed and I'm I'm like, >> okay.
1:22:30
Well, in that case, I reverse my entire position. [laughter] >> 7% move. Let's go. That's very funny. Yeah. Uh I I don't know.
1:22:39
>> It's a launch cost thing.
1:22:39
It's a launch cost thing.
1:22:40
They can't compete with Starlink on the launch cost. So, >> yeah. >> Yeah.
1:22:46
>> Um that argument can be leveled against us, by the way, as well.
1:22:49
Well, so so on on what what are the what are the telco companies going to do because they're multiundred billion dollar companies.
1:22:56
They're not just going to roll over.
1:22:58
Is it is like how do you see them kind of reacting?
1:23:04
>> I mean it it feels like there's lots of multiundred billion dollar companies that just get backed into a corner and die.
1:23:12
I mean Blockbuster hundred billion dollar company.
1:23:14
You are such a space maxi.
1:23:18
>> This is well no I guess >> you might be right over like you know it just depends on the time frame but like I mean it just doesn't seem like it just doesn't seem like like internet back hall is not going to move to Starlink in
1:23:30
the next like 5 years you know this is like not happens for sure but the thing people are underappreciating is the amount of capacity they can launch per starship is absolutely mind-blowing and that is coming in 18 months. So
1:23:43
So >> like and that's like proper hardcore, you know, very high bandwidth director cell in buildings and that's appreciate >> buildings. It's pretty crazy. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:23:55
No, I mean I guess a lot of Starlink generally >> they the telecom companies will could end up being like Starlink resellers. Yeah. >> Right.
1:24:06
Is that is that one scenario? >> I mean they could be. Yeah.
1:24:09
doesn't sound like the best business to be in, but >> yeah.
1:24:14
Anyway, [clears throat] uh thank you so much for hopping on and defending your honor.
1:24:18
I think you did a great job defending your honor.
1:24:19
I think you're thinking in decades.
1:24:21
I'm excited for you to continue working on this.
1:24:24
>> How how you're you're in the Washington area, right? >> Yes. >> Washington State.
1:24:28
How how's the what's the scene like in Redmond before you go? Good. How's how's the energy?
1:24:35
>> I mean, there's a lot of it.
1:24:35
It's where Kyper and Stalin castle all of the people like I think 95% of satellites launched in the last two years were designed in Milton and Redmond.
1:24:42
So there's a lot of space talent out there but >> uh yeah it's not the liveliest of cities in the world but [laughter] >> well you guys you guys have work to do so thank you thank you so much for joining fun conversation and we're we're rooting for you.
1:24:55
>> I really appreciate it. >> We'll talk.
1:24:58
>> Let me tell you about linear.
1:24:58
Linear is a purpose-built tool for planning and building products.
1:25:02
Meet the system for modern software development.
1:25:04
streamline issues, projects, and product road maps you can start building.
1:25:08
Uh, do you want to go into bub talk?
1:25:10
Are you still interested in talking bubbles or do you want to move on to something else?
1:25:15
>> We can move on to something else.
1:25:16
>> There's there's a bunch of bub talk in here.
1:25:18
Uh, [laughter] maybe more importantly, the makeup.
1:25:21
>> We need to hammer bub talk more.
1:25:24
>> I mean, there's been a lot of bubble talk lately, but I feel like we've hit it a bunch.
1:25:27
There's a bunch of charts. >> Yeah.
1:25:29
If you're trying to figure out if we're in a bubble or not, I recommend going outside, picking a daisy. Mhm.
1:25:35
>> And just picking the leaf, the picking the pedals off, it's a bubble.
1:25:38
>> You like where we are right now. >> It's a bubble. It's not bubble. It's not.
1:25:41
And then whatever you end up landing on, that's what's going to happen. So, good luck.
1:25:47
>> Um, >> in Oreo World, Mandles, the owner of Oreo, has trained their own video model for television advertising.
1:25:55
They invested $40 million, and they say it cuts production costs by 30 to 50%.
1:26:00
I don't know how that's possible that that like it should cut costs by 99%.
1:26:09
Like do you know >> I think I still but I still think >> there's a huge amount of budget goes to coming up with good ideas and then the the like editing and then making >> infinite variations of it which I'm sure AI will will uh can already do well in some cases.
1:26:27
So, >> um, but I still think you pay you pay people to come up with great ideas and then execute, but the >> the idea is is like the actually the highest margin part, right?
1:26:37
And so the ad some of the ad agencies I think will do well.
1:26:42
Um, apparently the Oreo's parent company >> only spent 100 million on digital print and national TV advertising in the last year.
1:26:52
>> Wait, so they spent a hundred million on advertising and 40 million on this?
1:26:56
[laughter] Okay, Tyler, what's your take on Oreo Net?
1:27:00
>> So, this was my idea when we were talking about Sora where I said that Coke should or Coca-Cola should release a video model open source um where you can do anything, but every single video has a Coke. >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
1:27:10
>> So, so they should release this model, make it open source, but there's just Oreos everywhere in the video.
1:27:14
>> You just like can't do anything else.
1:27:16
You ask it to like make a picture of your dog and your dog just is an Oreo for a head or something like that. It just gets crazy. >> Yeah.
1:27:21
>> Yeah. I yeah that that would be that's a brilliant idea that would be abused so badly that it would be shut down with >> does this 24 hours >> I mean does this math make any sense like where did the 40 million go like what were they were they fine uh what is
1:27:38
it like >> that 40 million is ours now that is ours now was like >> I I really want to know I really want to know the breakdown of that was it actually like running the fine-tuning was it generating you know training data like what was the actual project that got them there? I mean, I I I could
1:27:53
I mean, I I I could imagine, you know, uh >> it was it was uh somebody took the $40 million and they made an app layer on top of Sora, too. >> Yeah.
1:28:05
Also, if they have a whole bunch of footage of Oreos throughout the 30 years that they've been advertising and doing video ads, maybe 50 years, uh and they load those in, can they count that as like depreciation or something?
1:28:16
It's hard not to see this being like a huge waste of money that somebody somebody high up said like I'm going to be the AI guy at Mandelas, right?
1:28:26
Because you have to imagine whatever they were able to do today by investing $40 million 40% of the of their ad.
1:28:34
So again, like production cost, which is where they're saving money, is not advertising budget.
1:28:43
I would I would look at the way they're talking about their ad budget as like what they spent on ads plus the production cost.
1:28:47
Like that's the ad budget.
1:28:49
It's very possible that the production cost was like 10% of that. >> Yeah.
1:28:54
>> So you spent 40% of your overall advertising budget to slash 10 potentially 10% of your budget by 30 to 50%.
1:29:03
>> Meaning that the payback >> Yeah.
1:29:05
I mean it's a it's a >> it's not the craziest thing. >> I don't know. >> Yeah.
1:29:10
But but the models are gonna the models will just be oneshotting.
1:29:12
I promise you they will be oneshotting people eating Oreos better than your model your custom model >> by now.
1:29:21
Like by the time they finish by the time they finish it's it's like they they get on sore too and they do it and they're like >> oh no why did we finetune like some you know >> oh they did it with Accenture.
1:29:33
I called it >> that way they did it [laughter] with Accenture. I knew I knew I knew it.
1:29:37
I I knew this was just like Yeah.
1:29:41
like big consulting, you know, big strategy firm says, "Yeah, we're we're happy to give you if you want it. What's your but okay? $40 million.
1:29:49
We're happy to give you an AI play here.
1:29:50
You're going to be >> you might just be the open AI of food.
1:29:57
[laughter] You might become we can help you be the anthropic >> of cookies."
1:30:03
>> Of cookies >> and then and then it's just immediately a write-off.
1:30:06
It is so crazy that they created their own model. How did this leak? It's [laughter] so bad.
1:30:12
>> I think No, I think they're bragging, John. >> They're bragging. >> They're bragging.
1:30:16
>> Mandelas is doing >> It's like, why are they telling on themselves? >> They're not, John. They're bragging. >> Wait.
1:30:23
Yeah, they said the Yeah, the head of the glo the global senior vice president of consumer experience said they're going to use it in the 2027 Super Bowl. I don't know.
1:30:35
Is there any reason why you'd want a three-year-old cartoon tune?
1:30:40
>> You could have just run >> eight Super Bowl ads.
1:30:44
>> You [laughter] could have run eight. That is actually crazy.
1:30:48
>> That's actually an under so inspiring.
1:30:50
If you want to make money in the AI boom, go and get $40 million for a project like this. >> It's genius.
1:30:56
Like, you just made >> epic consulting moment.
1:30:59
Uh yeah, Coupe says, "Sounds bubbly to me." To totally agree. Nobody has applied. So So the friend.
1:31:05
com billboard strategy is potentially a new strategy to just like buy so much advertising that people can't stop talking about it.
1:31:17
>> Um why has nobody done that for the Super Bowl?
1:31:19
Like has anybody bought like if you really wanted to break through with the Super Bowl you would buy 10 ads or you would buy try to I mean friend tried to buy >> Can you imagine doing a whole Super Bowl buyout?
1:31:31
[laughter] It's just it's just four.
1:31:32
How many minutes of Super Bowl ads are there?
1:31:38
Could you do 40 minutes of ads?
1:31:41
>> The um we drove we we we can't get away from the from obvious billboards.
1:31:44
We drove by today this one that just says >> uh when you're on the street it just says end. com. >> Um >> is it the end?
1:31:53
Yeah, I would I would have I I definitely think that Oreos just being like we want to be drilled into the mind of every American.
1:32:00
We're going to buy 20 Super Bowl ads this year.
1:32:04
That's our budget for the year. >> Yeah.
1:32:06
I mean, there is like some sort of bullcase where it's like you need to generate a whole bunch of Oreo creative across Facebook and and you know, Instagram ads and whatever.
1:32:14
But at the same time, it's like I don't know why you need a custom model.
1:32:21
the the $40 million custom model.
1:32:23
>> You have to assume that every model is training on every Oreo ad ever in history. >> Do Am I crazy here?
1:32:29
Is there any reason why you'd want to fine-tune for $40 million?
1:32:34
>> I would I would go farther.
1:32:34
I would train a language model. >> Oh, yes. From the ground up.
1:32:38
>> Yeah, cuz then you have the >> Do a full pre-train. Do a pre-train. >> Do a pre-train. Do a full base model.
1:32:41
Y >> you know, what's it going to score on committee's last exam?
1:32:44
What's it going to score on?
1:32:46
and and let's let's assume I'm a Fortune 500 buyer and you're an Accenture consultant.
1:32:52
How much is that going to cost me?
1:32:53
Tyler, >> uh couple billion.
1:32:55
I mean, >> and you're telling me that that's worth it, right? >> Of course. Yeah.
1:33:01
>> We got to get this guy a job at Accenture.
1:33:02
[laughter] He's going to he's going to 100x revenues. >> Yeah.
1:33:06
I mean this just uh to close it out, this is Publicist Group, French multinational advertising company, one of the largest advertising agency conglomerates in the world.
1:33:17
>> Uh and Accenture serving up a farm-to-table AI strategy for an executive at Oreo who wants to be able to say we don't we're not just using generative AI, we are generative AI.
1:33:31
We are the future of food.
1:33:35
I I hope they uh they need to vertically integrate.
1:33:37
They need to vertically integrate.
1:33:38
They need their own data center.
1:33:41
>> They need their own chips.
1:33:41
They need to bake this Oreo algorithm into an ASIC.
1:33:45
They need to go to Broadcom. They need to go to TSMC.
1:33:47
They need line time at TSMC because I I mean it's possible that they need to go to ASML and get an entirely new lithography machine.
1:33:57
>> They need to get to rare earth.
1:33:59
>> They [laughter] need to get into rare earth.
1:34:00
>> They need to get into rare earth.
1:34:00
They need to go all the way down to >> maybe acquire a desert just to get enough sand.
1:34:07
>> They need to teach sand to think.
1:34:07
They need to teach sand to make Oreo hats.
1:34:11
That's what they need to do.
1:34:13
>> They need to acquire sand.
1:34:16
>> Best of luck out there, Oreo. We're luck. We're rooting for you.
1:34:19
>> Well, you know what Oreo should do? They want to use AI.
1:34:21
They got to use numeralhq. com.
1:34:22
Put your sales tax on autopilot.
1:34:25
Spend less than five minutes per month on sales tax compliance.
1:34:26
If you're if you're selling Oreos online, you got to get numeralhq. com.
1:34:34
>> Uh Lulu says it's the year 2025.
1:34:34
You wake up and a progressive white billionaire with a blackface NFT profile picture is saying GM to you, saying wag me, friend.
1:34:46
>> This is a crazy choice.
1:34:46
Why did he pick this one?
1:34:51
>> This is like the how do you do fellow kids meme with the [laughter] >> It's It's such a crazy choice on a million different levels.
1:34:57
Even the smoking, even the NFT.
1:34:58
Uh Jay, >> maybe he's maybe he maybe Reed secretly likes heaters.
1:35:04
>> Jay, that would be sick, I guess.
1:35:04
Uh Jay said this this GM is proof that LinkedIn is four years behind on every news cycle.
1:35:12
Uh pretty pretty remarkable.
1:35:12
How did the How is this >> I think the crypto community loved it to be honest. >> Really?
1:35:21
>> I think I think they're pretty fired up.
1:35:23
If you're one of the 10,000 people that own >> Crypto Punk, >> a punk, this is a >> How are the punks doing?
1:35:28
Are they still Are they still hanging out? Hanging around.
1:35:30
Uh, well, before we dive into that, we have Justin Murphy in the Reream waiting room.
1:35:34
Let's bring him into the TVP Ultra Dome.
1:35:36
Justin, how are you doing? >> I'm good. What's up, guys? Suited up.
1:35:42
You're looking >> You might be the sharpest guest we've ever had. I love this. I love this suit. You're looking great. >> Well, thank you.
1:35:47
you know, you're the reason you're the reason I use uh one password.
1:35:52
>> You you had some sort of course on like creativity or something and the main thing I took away was use a password manager because you gave such an emphatic uh endorsement of password management and I adopted it and it changed my life and I love it.
1:36:06
And then we interviewed the the CEO of One Password and I was like, I love this.
1:36:09
I learned this from Justin Murphy.
1:36:12
>> Wow, that's uh really interesting to hear.
1:36:14
I'm an avid user of Lucy. I'll throw in as well.
1:36:16
Oh, that's >> how people how people don't use password managers is beyond me.
1:36:20
I mean, even with password managers, it's it's living hell, but I'm glad you glad you solved that. >> Yeah.
1:36:26
Um maybe maybe for the folks who aren't who aren't super familiar.
1:36:29
What's the shape of your business?
1:36:30
What's the shape of your day-to-day?
1:36:32
I know you have a number of different outlets.
1:36:33
I was uh I I wanted to invite you on the show because I noticed you were live streaming and you actually mentioned us and I was like, "Oh, that's so cool."
1:36:41
because I love when the uh when when we like create some format and then other people can kind of spin off of of it and whatnot.
1:36:47
Uh but but how how do you describe like your whole >> uh like yeah your whole your whole person [laughter] >> your cinematic universe I suppose. >> Yeah.
1:36:57
So I mean I left my very nice cushy academic position about six years ago and I left at that time with a very clear mission which was to basically reinvent the scholarly life for the internet era.
1:37:10
Um, I had I I was watching sort of academia go downhill and all the creator economy stuff was sort of kicking kicking off and it was clear that there would be ways to essentially port everything I was doing as a professor onto the internet and I would just have to experiment and test a lot of things out and hustle and and try to figure it out.
1:37:31
So that was what that was my mission six years ago and and it still is.
1:37:33
I mean that's my calling. That's my vocation. and it always has been.
1:37:36
>> And uh I basically built a couple businesses, tried a few different models >> and had moderate success with a few of them.
1:37:42
Um and then, you know, my I started having kids and kind of took a step back to kind of, you know, think about what this stuff really looks like, you know, over the long term.
1:37:51
Uh I I had a lot of successes, had some failures as well.
1:37:55
And that's when I decided what I really needed to do was uh sit down and write this book called The Independent Scholar to really map out the whole thing and really put this kind of new lifestyle and business model on the map.
1:38:05
So basically the past past couple years, past two or three years, I've kind of been in hiding honestly.
1:38:08
I've been having kids, figuring out how to do that and writing this book.
1:38:11
and writing this book. um to try to basically teach everything I've learned about this lifestyle and business model that I've that I've built and also to ground it in a kind of longer running history because most of the a lot of the greatest thinkers and philosophers and what I call independent scholars uh
1:38:28
throughout history were actually free floating individuals hacking it in weird entrepreneurial ways and most people don't know about this history uh and it was largely what inspired my kind of mission uh so I decided I needed to to do it right sit down take the time required and put it down all in one place. So, that's that's finishing up.
1:38:44
So, that's that's finishing up.
1:38:46
Um, and then I also I occasionally work with startups if something actually really interests me and seems, you know, really exciting and asymmetric and I like the people.
1:38:54
Um, so my life's really crazy right now just because I uh a startup I started working with like 2 years ago.
1:39:00
It started I was just sort of like consulting, kind of advising, helping out with the branding and messaging.
1:39:04
They just they just keep winning and this thing is like kicking off.
1:39:07
So, we're in the thick of it right now. That's called Noctchain.
1:39:08
Uh, it's a layer one blockchain. >> Yeah.
1:39:11
So, that's kind of consuming everything at the moment.
1:39:13
Uh, apologies to the poor people who pre-ordered my book.
1:39:16
A lot of people are waiting on it.
1:39:17
It will come out by the end of this year. Mark my words.
1:39:18
But, right now, I'm I'm in I'm in the weeds with Noctchain cuz they they're this thing I think is is it's going off. So, that's a summary.
1:39:26
It's a little messy, but um I basically have accomplished my mission that I set out on six years six years ago, and I still haven't, you know, come up for enough air to tell the story fully, but I will.
1:39:35
And I I think, you know, um I'm pretty proud of everything I've accomplished. >> Yeah.
1:39:40
How do you think about the uh just like the the the basic economic forces around like long time horizon content which is how I would put investigative journalism and academia.
1:39:50
Uh, it feels like social media and algorithmic feeds are like fantastically aligned with like news and and kind of fast high throughput creativity like um just because if you're producing a lot of content regularly, there's a lot of ad inventory space.
1:40:07
There's a lot of room for a little side partnership here and it just kind of all flows together very easily.
1:40:14
And I feel like Substack and the social media platforms have done a great job of of providing an outlet for someone who would effectively be like a beat reporter or someone who's just a commentator, an analyst, somebody with a column, a weekly column in a newspaper, you can take that weekly column and you can go and develop an audience and monetize effectively.
1:40:35
But if you're Seymour Hirs and you're going to get like one scoop a decade and it's going to be something that reshapes the global political world order, uh really hard to underwrite that against like $10 a month on Substack.
1:40:49
And so how how are you thinking about like the the long-term monetization summary like like like forces that allow for like long time horizon work. Is that solved?
1:41:00
Is there is there a good pattern there yet?
1:41:05
I have a very strong and clear answer to this after a tremendous amount of experimentation and also this kind of prolonged engagement with with the history of [snorts] independent scholars.
1:41:14
I believe the answer to your question, John, is you need to stage one is you have to get out there and you have to >> you have to write a lot in stage one.
1:41:24
So, you're not you don't necessarily have to be chasing, you know, clicks or playing the the the engagement baiting game or whatever, but you do have to get out there and inevitably there's going to be some kind of volume game where like you have to get in the mix.
1:41:35
But I don't think you have to do that actually for too long because if you can just get out on places like uh X Yeah.
1:41:40
and have some kind of blog or newsletter and just or or videos or whatever your medium is.
1:41:47
If you can get out there and just put out interesting stuff that's intelligent and thoughtful and build even a small audience, nothing that you would be able to live on, but if you could just do that stage one of showing that you understand content, that you have real ideas, that you are really interesting and and worth listening to and that you can execute on a basic kind of, you know, modern content operation.
1:42:05
If you can do that for even a little bit, what you then do, stage two, is you get exposure to tech companies.
1:42:12
That's really the missing link that people have not fully figured out.
1:42:16
A lot of people have sort of accidentally figured this out, but the the fact is that um you know uh Silicon Valley and technology is obviously the engine of all kind of radical wealth creation moving forward.
1:42:30
And these companies need really educated, thoughtful, creative people who understand how to read real books and how to write really highquality copy and and write thoughtful essays.
1:42:40
This whole new world of sort of highbrow thought leadership is incredibly valuable to almost every company today.
1:42:47
And the fact is it's incredibly hard to hire for um tech companies, you know, really struggle to find sort of PhD tier um intelligence for hire um and and who also have any kind of understanding or experience with actually running modern content operations online.
1:43:02
And so what I have found and and this I think is really the the ticket is that if you can just simply prove that you know what you're doing on online with content and you can build any kind of audience and just put out stuff that's worth reading that uh someone smart could look at and be like, "Oh, this person's smart."
1:43:18
He might not have a million followers.
1:43:20
He might not have many followers at all, but clearly he publishes consistently. He's smart. He's got alpha.
1:43:23
Um it's I think actually increasingly easy to um find some sort of creative position with uh a startup or a tech company of some kind.
1:43:33
And that's going to be your ticket to actual sustainable wealth and income on which you can then do the really long form thought leadership.
1:43:40
Um I've seen >> basically use use like consulting fees from uh from a tech company to bootstrap like a independent media platform. >> Absolutely.
1:43:52
And maybe some people don't want to build their own platform necessarily like someone like Seymour Horsch or these kind of older guys like often they don't want to build a business, right?
1:43:59
they don't want to build a whole thing and and for them that's kind of a non-starter.
1:44:02
Um but if you can get some if you can get any if you can finagle some kind of situation where you're adding value to um you know a growing tech company or or even just a funded startup for a couple years even if they fail like you can um drive real value that they have a hard time hiring for.
1:44:17
And in an ideal world the company wins and then you really have you know economic security uh to do your intellectual work over the long term.
1:44:24
even if even if you have to hustle this way for for for for a few years in different projects, you can get a very decent paycheck adding real value in a way that is actually quite conducive to to your intellectual, you know, orientation and goals and and lifestyle that you're building.
1:44:36
Um, so you don't necessarily need to build a company or a big media operation, but on that economic basis, you can definitely grow your audience in that time.
1:44:43
You can write, you know, a really heavyhitting long form essay once every month or two months or 3 months or whatever the case might be.
1:44:50
might be. um and in this way and you know you start publishing your own books and there there's so there's so many different ways to to monetize but that the the tech partnership I think is the big opportunity that a lot of people are sleeping on people have done it there are enough examples in addition to me uh to make me feel like this is obviously the future um but people haven't really
1:45:08
systematized it yet or uh kind of like written down playbook >> yet maybe it was I don't want to get the person's name wrong but there was someone who did like a philosopher in residence at a venture capital firm and there's been a few people who have uh maybe partnered with like Stripe Press in one way or another and uh kind of like pulled forward some income in various ways. There's definitely uh yeah
1:45:28
There's definitely uh yeah different ways to like slice it.
1:45:31
But I think you're I think you're right that there's just like there's a pool of capital over there and if you're able to Yeah.
1:45:38
provide some interesting service.
1:45:39
I I hadn't thought about >> basically if you want to be an independent scholar get ready to hustle [laughter] >> kind of. Yeah.
1:45:46
>> Well, but look, it's a hustle to get a job as a professor.
1:45:48
It's a really bad hustle.
1:45:50
It's it's absolutely grinding competition that is as brutal and as intellectually exhausting and suffocating [snorts] as grinding on a startup for a few years.
1:46:00
Honestly, the only difference is you don't get paid very much at all.
1:46:03
And also, there's no upside.
1:46:05
So, I mean, um, when when you compare working for a startup or, you know, being creative and hustling with different kinds of creative positions in in in tech startups, you compare that to what it takes to get a full-time tenure position in academia, it's actually like more uh liberating and mentally kind of um freeing and and and more conducive to a kind of creative intellectual life.
1:46:26
>> I had lunch with an academic couple months ago and he was like, "Yeah, my I'm having a kid in like six months."
1:46:33
And I was like, "Go get a job at a lab right now." And he actually did. He got >> Oh, he did. No way.
1:46:41
>> And uh, you know, again, I I think he'll be able to probably do more interesting work at the frontier with more resources.
1:46:49
Um, and I I guess is part of this like sad that uh like what's the downside here that uh the techno capital institutions are going to end up financing uh >> uh you know scholarly research and academia >> like is there is is it is it basically Lindy like this has been happening for like hundreds and hundreds of years and this is like not so different.
1:47:15
Is that kind of what you're getting at with the book? >> Yeah, exactly. It's not sad.
1:47:19
I mean, contemporary academia is very sad.
1:47:23
Living a life as a kind of cloistered professor today is incredibly sad.
1:47:24
I can tell you from from firsthand experience.
1:47:28
And what we're talking about here with sort of the the the new breed of independent scholars joining forces with Silicon Valley, it's um it is clearly part and parcel with a a longunning continuous history because when you look
1:47:42
at some of the most interesting and impactful thinkers and philosophers and creatives throughout all history, what what you find with many of them is that they lived on the margins of institutions both economically but also socially and in in multiple cases. is what they're
1:47:57
in in multiple cases. is what they're what's really going on is they're look is they're be they're looking for any kind of unexploited economic niche where they can just make some money in a way that is maximally conducive to a certain state of mind and and a certain kind of lifestyle
1:48:13
and they are you know really kind of opportunistic like they'll they'll you know Spinosa was famously a lens grinder right um this is at a time when being a lens grinder was it's not as manual as it sounds he was a kind of scientific um and technical um expert of optics and to
1:48:30
to to grind lenses was actually a an interesting kind of philosophically and scientifically sophisticated uh industry but he also it involved manual labor and he sold uh his lenses to leading scientists of the era and that's actually how heworked with some of the brightest lights in uh Europe European
1:48:47
science and and philosophy that's how he got on people's radar and that's how he earned their respect actually is from the quality of his of his lenses that he was grinding um and and this is this is in my book and So Samuel Johnson is another interesting example. He's a case
1:48:58
He's a case study in in the book.
1:49:01
>> Samuel Johnson, people don't know this, in the early 18th century, he basically in kind of invented the Substack model.
1:49:08
And this is before there was even email. I kid you not.
1:49:10
So um he did paid subscription newsletters by print um well before email obviously.
1:49:17
And he would just write essays uh twice a week and he would walk them to the printer's office and where the mail goes out or whatever.
1:49:26
and he would send them off twice a week uh by post and um and he made a he made a living doing this for for quite a few years.
1:49:32
He was at the end of the patronage era.
1:49:33
So he was one of he was well known in elite circles as one of the most brilliant genius thinkers and writers and conversationalists of the time and he never got a patron. He he never got the bag.
1:49:43
He was always forced to hustle.
1:49:43
He was always doing creative things.
1:49:45
Um and that was one of them and um he managed he managed to do it and uh you know ended up changing the English language in in many ways.
1:49:53
in in many ways. uh one of the most you know impactful uh kind of scholars of his lifetime and so to answer your question um Silicon Valley and tech startups today are just the current manifestation of this like independent scholars always have to look where is the money where's the opportunity where
1:50:08
can I use my brain power in the way that is u maximally adding value but also maximally conducive to me having freedom and time and and being able to think clearly and provocatively and it's obvious now um if when you look at this that um in in in the United States perhaps in the west word broadly. Silicon Valley is now the site of that.
1:50:24
Silicon Valley is now the site of that.
1:50:26
>> Why do you think Silicon Valley is obsessed with Nick Land?
1:50:30
>> There's still a tremendous amount of alpha there that uh people have not fully been able to gro um because it's, you know, um it it is dense and and a little bit difficult to read.
1:50:38
Um but that's the reason is because there's real alpha there and people know it and no one really has the time or the patience to kind of work through it, but they know the alpha is there and that's why they're all obsessed with it.
1:50:49
>> What is the nature of the alpha?
1:50:49
just investing thesis or like lifestyle, how you live your life or predicting the future and what the shape of the political economy will be.
1:51:00
>> I would say I mean there there are many specific things you could look at.
1:51:02
If you look at his writing on AI back in the '9s, it's incredibly preient and um much more so than even even you compare Nick Lan's early writings to someone like Nick Bostonramm uh writing about AI much more recently.
1:51:14
And a lot of Nick Lan's texts actually uh match reality much more I I would say.
1:51:19
But the the reason so so you could you could double click on many sort of uh specific ideas I guess but the the high level answer to your question John is that um there is this kind of ideological problem in Silicon Valley um across the board.
1:51:34
I mean the the big intellectual problem with Silicon Valley is that everyone is a backpatter.
1:51:40
Everyone is mutually invested in each other.
1:51:42
So everyone is backpatting everyone else.
1:51:44
I mean just structurally, right?
1:51:45
It's not even not not throwing shade at any individual, but just literally everyone is invested in each other.
1:51:50
And so, um, pretty much all public content that you see is, you know, it's, um, someone speaking their book and and that's fine and that's America and that's cool.
1:51:59
Like that's that's the world that we live in.
1:52:01
But be there is just a big sort of one big drawback to that which is that um, people are too like pro-social I is the way that I would put it in Silicon Valley.
1:52:11
you know, no one wants to be, you know, um, uh, anti-human or antisocial, right?
1:52:18
Because it it it's not it doesn't sound very nice.
1:52:20
It sounds a little scary.
1:52:22
Maybe you don't want to invest in that.
1:52:23
Maybe >> we had this we had this this morning as a team.
1:52:26
John, Tyler, and I were sitting around.
1:52:28
We had a we had a post that will not be posted that was like genuinely had us all in tears, but there's one group that would be uh you know taking the the brunt of the joke and we like them.
1:52:43
We're friendly with them and we just wasn't it wasn't something we were going to share.
1:52:48
Um, and so yeah, that there's this uh pressure to be pressure to be social, which in some ways is healthy.
1:52:57
Like in some ways that stems from like this is a culture that somebody can move to San Francisco and be a nobody and in 2 years be an icon.
1:53:08
And that is like that's positive, but it also means that the the culture is like I'm not gonna do anything antisocial here because two years from now this person might I might be trying to lead their round. Right. [laughter] So, Exactly.
1:53:24
And so the issue with technological acceleration is that it is a brutal kind of machinic global process that's been happening for hundreds of years and we know a lot about it and a lot of it does not look very pretty for a lot of humans.
1:53:38
Not all humans but but for a lot of humans.
1:53:40
And so when you really try to model this really rigorously without any kind of pro-social biases and without any of the kind of you know human ideological uh filters that frankly most Silicon Valley players are forced to kind of lay over their thinking and their publishing.
1:53:56
Um you like you you you see like there no no no one in Silicon Valley really is able to talk frankly about uh kind of the the underlying brutality and the really kind of scary structural elements to involved with capital acceleration but Nick Land does that in a very aggressive way.
1:54:15
Um and that's that's the source of the alpha basically.
1:54:17
Well, and Dar I mean Daario's hasn't been I mean I'm sure the the anthropic comm's team uh freaks out every time he goes and gives a talk and says you know 80% of or whatever the statistic he's saying it's some some large percentage of white collar work is going to disappear and then they kind of like walk it back a little bit but clearly like the message is being received.
1:54:39
Well, but notice notice that whenever you do hear some Silicon Valley thought leader or big player come out and say something that's kind of antisocial or bad or scary, um there's always kind of immediately behind it uh the solution that they're providing that will make it all okay. You know what I mean?
1:54:57
You know what I mean? So, so the the thing with Nick land is you got a model you got a really hardcore I think very rigorous model of of modernity and capital acceleration which has no such convenient solution hiding in the background to sell you and when you look at that you know stone cold in the eyes
1:55:14
it's it's it most Silicon Valley people don't want to hear it but on the other hand they know there's alpha there so they kind of can't look away from it either >> in desire there's this concept of like artificial intelligence being this timetraveling force uh an invasion from the future. Uh as a human that makes me
1:55:31
Uh as a human that makes me feel like I want to fight it.
1:55:33
Is that the right desire?
1:55:35
Is that the human desire to counter the machinic desire?
1:55:41
>> So Land does introduce this idea.
1:55:41
Well, he doesn't introduce it, but he very much plays up this mental model that you get from the Ter Terminator movies that yes, capital is this kind of uh time traveling entity that comes back and not only kind of composes itself from us, but um just as the Terminator movie suggests, comes back and and kind of composes itself out of enemy resources.
1:56:04
So, so there is in that kind of model um an implicit kind of antagonistic structure, but I'm not so convinced of that, frankly.
1:56:10
Um I think the fact is that capital acceleration will be uh quite brutal for um some people for for many people.
1:56:18
I mean it clearly shreds apart sort of modernity and techn technology shred apart traditional values and morals.
1:56:24
I mean even even Markx knew that I mean Markx perhaps knew that better than anyone.
1:56:28
Uh that has been clear that has been clear for a very long time.
1:56:31
and whatever the errors of Marx were and and and the terrible kind of, you know, tragedies [snorts] that came downstream of of his ideas, you know, the the critics of capitalism in the early modern period like were structurally onto something. Okay.
1:56:42
Uh and and there's no doubt about that.
1:56:44
I mean, it it it absolutely shreds any vestage of any kind of traditional morality basically.
1:56:51
And and that is sociologically true beyond question in my opinion.
1:56:55
Um and so play that forward.
1:56:58
Play that forward, you know.
1:56:58
Um it's it's going to be ugly uh for a lot of people I think.
1:57:03
Um but I think all we can do really is uh try to basically um you know try to stay one step ahead, be honest and rigorous and aggressive and take the risks necessary to bet on the truth and try to just stay ahead of the machines and try to take with you all of your friends and family and everyone in your tribe.
1:57:22
There's, you know, there's there's really no other no other solution.
1:57:26
And I think personally that um it actually goes in a more positive direction than some of Nick Land's suggest, you know, texts seem to suggest.
1:57:33
I think it's actually it actually matches much more clearly to something like the city of God uh by St.
1:57:38
Augustine where uh you know, basically the the the good people and the bad people increasingly kind of diverge over time.
1:57:45
So technological acceleration kind of pulls these people apart.
1:57:47
Uh what he calls the city of God on the one hand and the city of man on the other.
1:57:50
What what technology really does is it accentuates the differences between people who are oriented to heaven and the truth and the good and people who are oriented towards anything else.
1:57:58
So if you're oriented towards anything else, you're you're you're going to go down fast.
1:58:04
You're going to get wrecked, I think, and increasingly fast technological acceleration. >> You're chopped.
1:58:08
[snorts] >> Where where how do you summarize the current discourse?
1:58:11
current discourse? because uh I would loosely group it into uh general fear among the broader white collar class and potentially even blue collar because you have you know everybody you know people outside of tech are worried about
1:58:30
automation and losing their jobs and sounds like you think that's a very uh uh maybe the correct concern to have inside of tech is kind of like bifurcated into people that are thinking like, okay, OpenAI just is starting to look more and more like Facebook every single day. They have Sora, they're
1:58:47
They have Sora, they're going to introduce ads.
1:58:49
They're introducing commerce.
1:58:51
This just looks like a big tech company.
1:58:52
Um, and then you have people at labs that just believe like, you know, uh, just wait, like, you know, just one more training run, bro.
1:59:01
Uh, AGI is right around the corner.
1:59:04
But it's hard to like actually read too much into what they're saying because they obviously have, you know, tens of millions to hundreds of millions to billions of dollars of like, you know, equity tied up in in these narratives that are kind of dependent on on uh those scenarios playing out to some degree.
1:59:22
But how would you kind of summarize it and where do you think it is like even a year from today? >> Yeah.
1:59:29
So again, I think a lot of these categories that people use to parse this this phenomenon are just totally wrong and they're totally ideological.
1:59:35
So for instance, the jobs story, like that's all people can come up with to think about the devastating impacts of technological acceleration.
1:59:44
We're going to lose our jobs.
1:59:46
We're going to lose our jobs.
1:59:47
So like everything potentially bad about AI gets shoehorned into this like one topic of like are people going to lose their jobs?
1:59:53
Like it's much more complicated and um and and in some ways worse, but in some ways better.
1:59:58
worse, but in some ways better. So like the better way to think about it is really just that with all technological acceleration you have to everyone has to hustle harder basically like you have to work to stay ahead to succeed you have to work really really hard and increasingly hard and yes there is more
2:00:14
surplus people are wealthier on average that is true um so you know you know a kind of poor person in America has exposure to like a lot of really nice things that obviously you know only kings could have in the past so that that story is true but nonetheless to actually build day life that is healthy and happy and sustainable. You have to
2:00:30
You have to be incredibly smart and sharp and and and judge and making good decisions about a number of different things in all aspects of your lifestyle.
2:00:38
And you have to be working super hard and you have to be dodging this existential threat.
2:00:43
Like nowadays, I mean, think about how much research you have to do on like food just to stay healthy, right?
2:00:48
Like you you have to be incredibly smart and sharp and you have to hustle increasingly hard just to survive the chaos of of of technological acceleration.
2:00:55
Um, and so AI is just a kind of um a further acceleration of that.
2:01:00
It's going to get more and more insane.
2:01:02
The payoff will be bigger for people who are who are right and who keep their head on on their shoulders.
2:01:07
For those people, the payoffs are going to be bigger and bigger.
2:01:08
Um, but for everyone else who can't keep up with this kind of shredder of traditional norms, um, you do get you do fall behind and and you it's not a matter of losing your job.
2:01:20
It's a matter of like your whole family is, you know, u opiate addicts because they got oneshotted by complex processes that they had no chance of even understanding. >> When does this start?
2:01:32
Like if we take the time travel analogy, do should we start this whole story at 1860 when GDP really starts to accelerate? Is that the beginning? Do we go back earlier?
2:01:43
Is this latest like AI boom anything special?
2:01:47
Karpathy on doresh was kind of saying like no like this is exactly this is just an extension of computing.
2:01:55
>> So this is an interesting research question about how do you really mark that breaking point um associated with modernity and technological acceleration.
2:02:02
People have very different answers.
2:02:03
I think it's it's an interesting kind of empirical debate.
2:02:06
I've always kind of been partial to Haidiger's answer.
2:02:07
If you read Haidiger's um the question concerning technology, he seems to think that >> the the the key break point was when we started storing energy basically.
2:02:15
So like he says the windmill for instance was fine because the windmill just sits there it nature kind of operates on it and it can create energy and that's he seems to think that's my reading is that it's fine.
2:02:29
Um but when we start storing it, when we're putting it in batteries and we're putting it into these different containers, he seems to think he seems to suggest that that's kind of the breaking point because that's where you can start to um sort of run much farther ahead of the future because you can store these things up, right?
2:02:44
I I have a stockpile of coal and I have a steam engine and I can I can build up a a a like a larger pile of energy and then I can deploy it all in one jolt to jump forward, >> right?
2:02:59
And then the Marxists have this kind of theory that they like to say that it's the enclosure of the commons.
2:03:04
So like in the it really starts in in in England uh there were for for for you know aons uh these traditional norms of uh anyone could kind of graze on the commons and much of the land was commons.
2:03:15
Uh and then at a certain point there's a specific kind of um decision made where where they start enclosing it in order to capitalize on it and privatizing it and some people point to that as the kind of the breaking point.
2:03:26
You can give you can give many examples um and and people kind of debate that.
2:03:28
I think it's sort of it it's sort of um very hard to answer conclusively, but those are some those are some possible answers that I think are interesting.
2:03:36
Um, >> do you think uh >> Yeah.
2:03:39
>> Do you think the escape the permanent underclass meme is actually healthy then?
2:03:43
Because it's basically is encouraging people to like, you know, sharpen up, avoid uh the avoid the the pressure to just quit your job and and gamble on meme coins.
2:03:52
gamble on meme coins. like avoid, you know, becoming emer I have a completely different take on this and I want your reaction too is uh I feel like the future things playing out in the like kind of the darker scenarios like there's a massive underclass but there's no permanence whatsoever and on any
2:04:09
day-to-day basis somebody could go a 1000x up and become extremely wealthy and then everything collapse and go back down to the underclass and I feel like the volatility is actually increasing way higher and we're actually getting more underclass but also less permanence But what's your take on the permanent underclass meme? >> So that meme I actually think is a rare
2:04:27
>> So that meme I actually think is a rare good one that is directionally correct in an important way and that actually gets more to the heart of the the threat and and the brutality of of of tech e tech e tech e tech e tech e tech e tech e tech e tech e tech e tech economic acceleration much more so than the jobs meme.
2:04:41
>> Um that is the kind of anxiety that is the general diffuse anxiety and fear that everyone feels and is right to feel.
2:04:48
you're you are forced to feel that um with with capital acceleration and its current inflection with with the AI revolution.
2:04:53
Um so I think that's basically that that is spoton in terms of the the generalized threat and problem.
2:05:01
>> It feels like durable because everyone feels it and it it feels like yeah like you're saying like it's it's somewhat real, right?
2:05:10
It's like the techno capital acceleration people feel it.
2:05:15
They realize that making the $20 million in three years is a lot better than making the $20 million in 25 years or whatever has look like.
2:05:28
>> It's worth noting that it's kind of self-inforcing as well because if that's a meme and you know other people feel that way, then you really have to trust it and you better get after it because even if you think it's false in stage one, right?
2:05:38
If you think other people are buying into it, you think, "Okay, everyone else is going to be hustling harder.
2:05:42
they're going to be getting the bag.
2:05:44
And shoot, even though I thought this was false, now they're all getting it.
2:05:47
I I better get after it or I'm going to get crushed and left behind.
2:05:48
And so, um, yeah, I mean, what a lot of people say is that capitalism produces so much surplus that, um, you could just choose to not participate in the rat race and, you know, just enjoy enjoy the surplus.
2:06:00
But that's not totally true because the things that we really want in life and and that really matter to us are are are often relative.
2:06:05
Things like recognition and identity and, you know, standing standing in a community, these things are relative.
2:06:11
And so, um, it doesn't really help that much that you can, you know, have, you know, a a big screen TV for really cheap.
2:06:18
Um, you can have many other material.
2:06:21
>> It's clear like everyone will be entertained in the future.
2:06:24
>> You [snorts] will not need you will not need to be elite to be entertained.
2:06:26
Like you're going to be entertained.
2:06:28
You're going to have the screen.
2:06:29
You're going to be able to put on the headset.
2:06:30
You're going to be able to take >> any range of tele medicine drugs to make you feel anything.
2:06:35
Uh, you will be entertained.
2:06:38
you'll maybe have a a one in a 10,000 chance every week to like escape or whatever.
2:06:43
But um I I do think it's notable that we transition from a pull yourself up by your bootstraps culture, which was like if you just do anything in America in the in the early 19th century, you can get a house.
2:06:56
You can, you know, you can live kind of you can you can pull yourself up by the bootstraps to live the American dream.
2:07:06
And now the American dream is on the other side of escaping the permanent under underclass.
2:07:10
At least the American dream that you were sold as a kid of having a home in a desirable area and sending your kids to college and and >> the American dream was the middle class.
2:07:22
It was the default, >> right?
2:07:25
I mean, frankly, I think the big antidote to all of this, the the other pole of this entire problem that we're talking about is, of course, crypto.
2:07:31
talking about is, of course, crypto. I I believe I mean in in so many ways it's sort of um diametrically kind of opposed to AI or it's like perfectly poised to be kind of the the the the solution to a lot of this because one way to understand technological acceleration is that especially in kind of human
2:07:48
societies with all of the faulty human wetwear that we have is that it becomes this like big lying game like everything gets inflated like the you know the money supply is is really just kind of a metaphor for many other things where there's a ton of inflation right like verbal inflation you know uh credential
2:08:02
potential inflation is in in a way like modernity is this mad race to um kind of inflate all kinds of things and we we get ahead of our skis in many ways and that's why people have to that's why it's so cutthroat because other people are inflating so you have to inflate or you die and so like human society and modernity is totally torn us under from
2:08:20
all of its traditional values and traditional you know an anchorings um everyone is competing in this mad materialistic race to stay afloat which is mimetic and even if you don't want to do it you kind of have to do it meanwhile Crypto is this kind I mean cryptographic protocols are truth machines basically. They kind of restore
2:08:37
They kind of restore integrity and kind of like primordial uh almost physical truths uh to this kind of chaotic constantly inflating uh kind of material modern world.
2:08:48
And so I my mental model is very much that um the reason you're seeing the reason the early stages of crypto have been so chaotic and crazy with you know so many stories of um big crashes and crimes and so many kind of scammers and and con the reason it's so crazy like that is because people intuitively understand that this crypto stuff like is the next big vector through which like humanity will uh be able to secure its future.
2:09:17
Um, and so people are the people who rush into that first are a wild grabag of of of sketchy people, I think.
2:09:21
Um, but it's going to be the thing that like it's going to be the only thing that puts uh kind of grounding on all of modern chaos.
2:09:30
And you see this like that's what Bitcoin does, right?
2:09:31
That Bitcoin is like literally just reggrounds money and like physical physical resource um uh kind of anchoring.
2:09:40
>> One one suggestion crazy idea for you before you jump and then we'll have to really fun.
2:09:46
Thank you so much, Robin.
2:09:47
>> Instead of a book, how about you buy a Lambo and you sell a course.
2:09:49
I will teach you to escape.
2:09:53
>> I've paid for his course. He has a course.
2:09:55
>> Escape the permanent underclass by becoming an independent scholar.
2:09:59
[laughter] >> I mean, >> you could be the Andrew Tate of of independent scholars.
2:10:04
>> Uh, that's one option, but I don't think so, man. That that's nochain.
2:10:06
That's the role of nochain.
2:10:08
We say escape the leveling process.
2:10:09
I don't think you should worry about escape.
2:10:11
I I don't like I don't like the phrase um you know escape the permanent underclass because it it's much it's much more general.
2:10:16
You have to escape the leveling process.
2:10:19
There is a long running gradual historical gradient that is trying to sort of destroy everything of traditional value.
2:10:27
Everything that is permanent and timeless um is getting sort of eroded or hidden and and kind of taken away from you and like you want to escape the leveling process and that's why we're building blockchain.
2:10:36
That's what it's all about.
2:10:36
Escape the leveling process. >> That's very cool. Well, thank you so much.
2:10:40
I this is a great conversation.
2:10:40
Uh would love to have you back on and go deeper.
2:10:44
Everyone really enjoyed this.
2:10:44
Uh but uh thank you so much for hopping on. We'll talk. I appreciate it. This is fun.
2:10:51
>> We'll talk to you soon.
2:10:53
>> Uh we have our next guest in the ream rating room.
2:10:55
But first, let me tell you about Finn.
2:10:56
AI, the number one AI agent for customer [music] service.
2:10:58
Number one in performance benchmarks, number one in competitive bakeoffs, number one ranking on G2.
2:11:04
Let's bring in our guest from the Reream rating room. Good.
2:11:12
>> Darren, what's going on? >> Darren, >> what's up? How are we?
2:11:15
>> Second time on the show.
2:11:15
Thank you so much for coming on. I'll let you take this. >> Sweet.
2:11:19
Uh, great to have you back.
2:11:19
Uh, what's happening in your world here?
2:11:24
You've been, uh, you've been flipping, uh, flipping pretty hard.
2:11:27
So, uh, break it down for us.
2:11:32
So, uh, this weekend a 1914 Baltimore Babe Ruth, Baltimore News Babe Ruth sold for, uh, $3 million less than the guy bought it, um, in 2023. >> Brutal.
2:11:50
>> Making it the biggest card loss of all time. >> No way.
2:11:55
>> Now, >> I thought they I thought they only went up. >> Yes. So did that.
2:11:59
Adam Smith never said that. No, never.
2:12:02
Um, so you know, it's very interesting to me because um I don't like to admit when I don't know something, but when this card when I first heard of this card was when Collectible, which was one of those fractional share companies that went bust, when they said they were buying a piece of it, I think it turned out to be like a 1% piece, >> okay, >> for a value of $6 million.
2:12:25
And I had said, "Hm, I've never heard of the 1914 Baltimore News, Babe Ruth."
2:12:31
So, I did a little research. Uh, newspapers.
2:12:34
com is probably the best value that I have.
2:12:38
I mean, $150 a year for all the newspaper stuff. I mean, wow. I look >> That's crazy.
2:12:45
I don't actually >> I'm actually not familiar.
2:12:47
This sounds incredible because we're always I mean, we we have a little recurring segment on social.
2:12:53
We talk about this day in history.
2:12:55
I'm sure we could get a bunch of bunch of alpha. >> Oh, you can get now.
2:12:58
Hopefully they didn't see this because I've been subscribing for a long time and they're not too good at business cuz I would >> like 10x more. Yeah. >> Yeah. Exactly.
2:13:11
So anyway, uh I looked and tried to see when the first mention of the 1914 Baltimore newspaper is again because I didn't know and I think I know everything. >> Yeah.
2:13:22
the 2006 Durham Herald Sun.
2:13:28
That was the first mention, at least on what newspapers, and they have a lot of newspapers in there.
2:13:32
That was the first mention of the 1914 Baltimore News Babe Ruth.
2:13:41
>> So, I kind of have this theory that people don't think it was a card. >> Interesting.
2:13:46
>> On the back on the back is a schedule.
2:13:49
So, it's Babe Ruth in the minor leagues the year before his rookie year and it has a schedule of the of who they're playing and it came in a newspaper and it was a 10 card set. >> Okay.
2:14:01
>> So, one of the reasons one of the reasons why I think this guy lost was because there's only so many people that know this.
2:14:07
A lot of people buy cards and big cards so that they can say they have the big card.
2:14:12
And when someone says, "I have the big card." Oh, what card is that?
2:14:17
I don't even I've never heard of it.
2:14:18
It's a whole lot different to have a T206 Honus Wagner or a 1952 Mickey Manel than to have the 1914 Baltimore News Babe Ruth.
2:14:27
Uh, and so I think that's why the guy got it handed to him. >> Okay.
2:14:32
And why would Do you think the person that just paid 4 million for it knows that it might not be a real card? >> No.
2:14:43
I'd like to know who it was that that bought it, but I don't think I'm gonna find that out.
2:14:47
Uh, again, it it's a real card by a lot of standards.
2:14:50
Uh, so after I I looked at the 2005 2007 Durham Sun, I did more research and people had mentioned it in the early 80s.
2:15:04
So they they'd mention it in passing, but to me it doesn't inspire a whole lot of confidence that something that was beginning in 1914 until 1980, no one talks about it.
2:15:16
I I'm just not comfortable. I'm not comfortable. So that's my take.
2:15:22
Might not be, but it's my take.
2:15:24
What does it say about uh do you think other people that own you know uh own some of these like flagship cards are a little bit concerned now about the like real market value of whatever they're holding or is this like a one-off like >> no the market the market is as hot as ever?
2:15:46
Um, I sold 31 things uh this weekend on Heritage Auctions >> and some of the prices that I got were were amazing.
2:15:54
Um, some are are painful in terms of >> you know really able to do this like you know I just uh it's hard to sell.
2:16:03
It's always hard to sell but I got some some really awesome prices too.
2:16:07
So this is the question is >> you buy did you buy 31 times too to just even it out?
2:16:16
Well, you tell the wife you didn't.
2:16:16
You say, "I made so much money." That's how it works.
2:16:19
And then, you know, there's a different bank account that then goes out.
2:16:23
Uh it's all [laughter] about trust because in in the end, I mean, I'm married 17 years. It's all about trust.
2:16:30
It's all about we are going to win anyway.
2:16:31
We're doing it for our family.
2:16:34
>> So, uh I did buy a massive massive massive piece uh about two weeks ago and I had to clear some room.
2:16:41
>> You had to clear some room.
2:16:41
Um, but yeah, this is investing, right?
2:16:43
So, we made a lot of money.
2:16:46
We're going to invest some of it again. That's how it goes.
2:16:49
>> Talk to me about >> Yeah, you have. >> Yeah.
2:16:50
Talk to me about Otani on the Dodgers because uh my family I'm not super into baseball, but I do go to the occasional game.
2:16:58
I often get Otani bobbleheads. >> I was so confused.
2:17:02
By the way, I had a I had a I had a Dodgers hat on.
2:17:03
Not because I'm a fan of the Dodgers.
2:17:05
It's just a green hat and I like New York City.
2:17:09
I've always uhve I >> Wait, what?
2:17:11
I was wearing >> green New York City.
2:17:13
>> They they made a green Dodgers hat. Okay.
2:17:15
>> So, I was wearing a green Dodgers hat.
2:17:17
And it was for the Brooklyn >> on Saturday.
2:17:18
So many people were were telling me we're yelling baseball things.
2:17:24
>> I'm like, I wear this hat all the time. Why is everyone yelling?
2:17:26
And then I found out um from the security in my neighborhood that the World Series was happening.
2:17:31
That's how I learned the World.
2:17:32
So, we're out of the loop here, but we're >> That is That is quite You guys have to pay a little bit more attention. >> Well, no.
2:17:39
We we're I'm more interested in the mark I'm more interested in the market than the the just alts market in general than the actual game being played. >> For sure. >> Yeah. But my question Yeah.
2:17:48
My question about Otani is that I've been getting bobbleheads when I go to the game, but it feels like there's uh the market like the equilibrium of the market is beating expectations, right?
2:17:58
Because if there's really high expectations, a lot of products are produced, right?
2:18:03
And so are where are we on like clearing prices around Otani?
2:18:07
Is he blowing out expectations and so market prices are rising or is there a different dynamic? >> Yeah, absolutely. Everywhere.
2:18:14
So, Fanatics has a deal with Otani and they're buying up all the Babe Ruth Balls because they want to have Otani sign the Babe Ruth Balls and then, you know, sell them.
2:18:24
So, if you're >> What do you What do you think?
2:18:25
What do you think about that?
2:18:27
Is that Is that not like >> I don't want it. I I want Babe.
2:18:30
Now, Babe Ruth signed plenty.
2:18:32
He signed a tremendous amount.
2:18:34
But uh to me, so there's so the the value of Babe Bruce single sign balls are going up because they are buying in in the back room.
2:18:46
They're buying as many so that they can put a ton on it.
2:18:48
The the bobbleheads, I mean, the bobbleheads since 1997.
2:18:50
I mean, it's amazing the life of the bobbleheads and the lines of the bobbleheads.
2:18:55
The Dodgers did a really good job gamifying it.
2:18:57
So you have to gify it for the degenerates and the youth.
2:19:01
every we live in a degenerate economy. Yes.
2:19:03
And uh so you have to have 10 that are golden and only a couple with the that come with the dog and you know and then that really kind of you know jams up eBay.
2:19:12
So the Dodgers have done a good job.
2:19:14
But Bob Why does it jam up eBay?
2:19:17
You by jamming up you mean just makes it popular. >> Yes. Yeah.
2:19:21
People people uh you know people really like to go to buy their bobbleheads on on eBay.
2:19:26
Uh it's amazing to me that that's been going for for 30 years.
2:19:31
Yeah, >> I'm surprised there's not another thing.
2:19:34
>> I mean, the market is so uh it's so crazy.
2:19:36
I don't know if it's always like this, but when I go to Dodger Stadium and they give me a bobblehead, there will always be someone inside the stadium who paid for a ticket. Who's who offers?
2:19:48
>> And you think about, okay, what is the sunk cost of that ticket?
2:19:49
They're not actually watching the game.
2:19:51
They're there just to acquire the actual merchandise.
2:19:54
>> By the way, I got to jump in. I I I I misspoke.
2:19:57
I meant the It was a Y is a Green Yankee.
2:19:59
I was about to say [laughter] what are you talking about?
2:20:04
>> I'm not going to come on anymore if you guys don't know the difference between a Dodgers and a Yankees.
2:20:08
>> I do know but I but I have both I have both I have a I have a Yankees hat and a Dodgers hat and I wear them interchangeably.
2:20:13
Uh and so I just like to confuse the people in my neighborhood.
2:20:17
They don't they don't know.
2:20:18
>> Dodgers were in New York at one point.
2:20:20
They were in the Brooklyn.
2:20:20
But uh yeah, you were wearing they were >> Wait, but then why were people talking to you about the Wait, were you >> No, I I just was I just was wearing I was wearing a base a baseball hat. >> Yeah. Yeah.
2:20:31
>> And I didn't know it was a World Series, so I didn't know why people kept yelling like >> random baseball related things at me.
2:20:38
Like, you know, people were just cheering.
2:20:40
>> The Yankees haven't won the World Series since 2009.
2:20:42
So, you should know that.
2:20:44
So, we're they're in a in a 16-year drought right now. It's >> not good. Brutal. >> Um, what uh >> Yeah.
2:20:53
So why why would this person that just sold for Do you think this was a forced seller like somebody that just had to get out?
2:20:58
Like otherwise you would just sit on it? >> I think so. I think so for sure.
2:21:01
I mean uh I always say that the assets that are in this space are not its they are whats.
2:21:10
And and you know if you there's no absolute here, right?
2:21:15
It is it is when do you sell it? Yeah.
2:21:20
>> What is what auction house are you selling it?
2:21:21
What's the description in the auction house? Um what's the publicity? What's the marketing? These all play.
2:21:27
It's like when when someone says to me, um, hey, I'm going to invest in Otani because he's playing well.
2:21:34
>> I said, this isn't collecting isn't fantasy.
2:21:37
>> Collecting isn't fantasy baseball.
2:21:39
Collecting is a amalgamation of all the factors. Yeah. That go in. Yeah. >> Right.
2:21:44
It's it's how many people collect Otani.
2:21:46
What is the worth of the people who collect Otani?
2:21:48
What is their ability when they when it's going down to stay and hold?
2:21:53
And if you're a 35year-old man with money and you collect what people who are 16 to 20 collect, you better know >> because they don't have the wherewithal to hold on if it goes down and then that affects you.
2:22:07
Or you better know if there's a guy who owns 600 of them >> because again, those are the market factors at play.
2:22:13
It's not as simple as a game of fantasy. >> Yeah.
2:22:16
Do you have any insight into what's going on at GameStop?
2:22:18
We had the CEO of GameStop, Ryan Cohen, on the show and he was talking about prize packs. What was it? Power packs.
2:22:27
>> So, let me let me This is This is This is This is a fun one. >> Yes.
2:22:31
>> So, rep repacks are like the new thing.
2:22:34
>> There are if digital repacks are even crazier.
2:22:37
Now, people who are watching this show, I'm now going to blow your mind. Okay. uh digital repacks.
2:22:40
This is how digital repacks work.
2:22:44
>> You open a pack digitally.
2:22:44
That card really exists in the company's coffers or vaults. Okay?
2:22:51
You open it, you don't like it.
2:22:54
So, you pay $25 for it and it's $8 in value.
2:22:56
Then they immediately offer, do you want to exchange it at 80% of the value?
2:23:01
And then you're like, okay, I'm comparing this to gambling where they're it's a zero sum game. If I lose, I'm zero. Yeah.
2:23:08
And they're like, "Wow, I can I could I only lose 20%."
2:23:13
And so these companies like Courtyard and Arena Club who do these digital, by the way, then it goes back into the pack, they could sell the same card 30 times a day. >> Wow.
2:23:23
>> And they [snorts] show you the checklist. They show you Yeah. the checklist.
2:23:26
So So Courtyard did 70 million this past month. >> Yep.
2:23:30
>> Uh they It is It is going nuts.
2:23:30
Anyway, GameStop, what GameStop has done is it has a relationship with PSA, uh, where people can grade their cards.
2:23:38
And a normal company, and since GameStop is always going to be to me a meme stock, >> uh, a normal company would be very worried about taking submissions from from from people holding the card, and then sending it to PSA, >> right?
2:23:57
If this was another company that was a a Fortune 100 company, you would be really scared about the liability of this.
2:24:04
But I feel like GameStop has a little bit more flexibility than most and so they are the biggest player in this in this game and it is really we've written about it on collect a lot.
2:24:15
It is really interesting.
2:24:19
>> Uh how are how are startups fairing in all of this?
2:24:22
You have GameStop playing here, Fanatics, a couple that you just mentioned. You have Heritage.
2:24:27
I feel like the big the big auction houses have been surprisingly durable against um you know, Upstarts coming to their markets.
2:24:38
If you look at the automotive industry, uh >> everyone is like like every industry, uh everyone wants the multiple.
2:24:44
So, they're all into tech, >> you know, that's what they do, right?
2:24:48
They they want the SAS model.
2:24:48
That's that's what that's what everyone's after.
2:24:52
Um, so, you know, originally there was card scanning where it told you what the price is.
2:24:57
A lot of people were coming out of COVID and they're like, I have a bucket full of stuff and no one's going to go through it, so I'm going to have to scan it. Who's the best scanner?
2:25:05
And then we had too many scanners.
2:25:06
Um, and so there's there's just a you know, there's a lot of information.
2:25:12
There's a lot of people fighting.
2:25:13
I don't know who the winner is.
2:25:15
Fanatics is all over the place.
2:25:15
It is probably in terms of monopoly they are probably the number one monopoly in any business today in terms of having a stronghold on so many things.
2:25:27
So it makes >> do you think that'll do you think that'll keep do you think that'll keep just compounding? Um it it depends.
2:25:36
It depends uh what teams and leagues whether they you know I mean teams and leagues want to take the bag and they're going to give the biggest bag.
2:25:50
Now if you choose to you know build it by yourself then that's a little bit different but as of right now um that's that's what we're looking at.
2:25:59
Um I mean some of the parts of the consulting part of my company is helps teams and leagues and brands get into this and help you know build um by themselves but you know right now Fanatics is is is the 2 million pound gorilla.
2:26:14
Should be interesting to see what they're going to do with gambling because um >> you know I just think >> the one and two are FanDuel and DraftKings and I don't even think it pays to be three given how much the business costs and the the the consumer acquisition. >> Yeah.
2:26:31
>> What about uh how much attention have you been paying to prediction markets entering uh sports?
2:26:40
I mean obviously they've been at it they've been at it for a while but it feels like >> you mean Poly Market >> Poly Market Khi it's really really heating up.
2:26:48
>> I'm I'm I'm as someone who was in gambling for a long time.
2:26:51
I'm shocked that Poly Market and Khi got to the place that they did.
2:26:56
Sure, they always had kind of that like we're peer-to-peer, but I I I can't believe that just like prize picks, I can't believe that they got to where they did in their valuation because I always thought that >> the the the lobby of DraftKings and FanDuel and Fanatics and Caesars and the old casinos.
2:27:15
I always thought that they were going to win the tribes. The tribes. Yeah.
2:27:19
I mean, you know, the seminal tribe.
2:27:22
I thought the lobbies would win.
2:27:23
So, I'm actually shocked.
2:27:23
I always thought that poly [clears throat] market and koshi would be kind of lowerend and never really break through and that has not proven to be the case.
2:27:34
>> What is the secret to fanatic success?
2:27:38
Like it feels like there was a time when every brand, every team and maybe every league had their own kind of merchandising operation.
2:27:45
I remember being able to as a kid go and buy an NFL jersey.
2:27:50
Uh, and then at some point Fanatics like finagled the ultimate deal and got everyone in the room together and >> well they came again they came with the bag of cash you know. >> Is that what it was?
2:28:00
Is he just is he just a founder just a fantastic deals guy just got all the money and >> well Michael Rubin has a you know he was a great he's a he has a great story. Yeah.
2:28:10
Um, you know, if you don't know this story, I'll quickly tell it, but you know, he owned GSI Commerce, uh, which was essentially around the turn of the century, around 2000.
2:28:20
All these companies were saying, "Oh, we could do a virtual warehouse.
2:28:25
We could do our warehouse virtually."
2:28:27
And Michael said, "I'll do a physical warehouse. I'll get it to you.
2:28:31
I'll get it to your consumer a day faster and I'll take the risk that 7% of the time uh Jeremy Lynn is going to get traded from the Knicks to the Rockets and I'll have 9,000 Jeremy Lynn dolls in a room >> because if I win every business, it doesn't matter if I have waste.
2:28:47
All these other guys are not taking any sort of risk.
2:28:52
They're just opening a virtual warehouse.
2:28:54
And so that was his that was his way to get there and he got everyone's business.
2:28:59
And then eBay bought it from him for $2. 3 billion.
2:29:01
And then they said, "Oh, but you know, we don't want to compete with our consumers, so we'll give you the sports business."
2:29:10
And then he turned fanatics into a 20 billion business.
2:29:12
So, you know, he he he did he did benefit from uh getting the he did he he did benefit from getting the the the the biggest guys who, you know, some of them overvalued the market, right?
2:29:27
He got big soft bank money, you know, and and and and and that helped because money was money and they took whatever valuation, you know, obviously they had to write down on a lot of businesses, but uh he he got the right money and he has the right connections.
2:29:40
You know, he knows he knows the owners well.
2:29:42
He knows he knows everyone so well and so they feel like it's a it's a a good relationship.
2:29:47
Makes it really hard to get into the game.
2:29:52
>> Do you think uh it's it's niche enough that he'll never face like anti- monopoly pressure?
2:30:01
>> If he hasn't now he won't. >> Last question.
2:30:04
Blue Jays are do or Dodgers tonight. Who are you rooting for?
2:30:10
Uh I am rooting for uh the stars to be the stars because that's better for my market.
2:30:16
So if uh Vlad Guerrero and Bo Bashette and Otani and all those guys are the stars, that's great.
2:30:23
What I don't want is I don't want a no-name hitting a home run.
2:30:27
Even though you can say, "Oh, he's going to grow his own market."
2:30:30
Y the I'm more benefited by the big guys getting bigger.
2:30:33
So that's what I'm keep winning. Okay.
2:30:35
You want to let your winners ride.
2:30:37
Uh, thank you for all the context.
2:30:40
Uh, I feel like I >> love being on your show.
2:30:43
You guys are very You guys are very curious. >> This is very fun. I I really learn a lot.
2:30:47
Thank you so much for coming on a lot. Great. Let's do it again soon.
2:30:51
>> We'll talk to you soon. Have a great day.
2:30:53
>> Uh, I clearly need to learn a lot more about sports.
2:30:56
I've been spending too much time learning about CRM.
2:30:58
I've been learning about AIO customer relationship magic.
2:31:02
Adio is the AI native CRM that builds, scales, and grows your company to the next level.
2:31:05
I mean, it is hilariously uh ironic that we always we always make jokes about not knowing about sports and then of course I try to talk about sports and get [laughter] brutally mix up a team.
2:31:20
But >> our next guest is GMO Ralph from Versel.
2:31:24
Welcome to the TBPN Ultradome. GMO, how are you doing?
2:31:28
Do you know about sports?
2:31:29
I know you know Counter Strike. Do you know sports?
2:31:32
>> I know a lot about Counter-Strike.
2:31:32
I know some about soccer being from Argentina. Okay. Right.
2:31:35
Baseline >> and jiu-jitsu, which I just started doing.
2:31:40
So, I know as much as one class, but I'm ready. >> Okay. >> Okay.
2:31:43
Did you get brutally injured in the first class?
2:31:45
Because >> No, I brutally overcame cuz I boxed for many years.
2:31:49
>> Oh, I had some baseline. >> Fighting me.
2:31:54
>> I I I I got into jiu-jitsu briefly and it's like so it's an incredible workout. It's so fun.
2:32:01
>> It's like perfectly competitive and skill-based, you know?
2:32:04
you can like clearly level up.
2:32:05
And then I just saw that like every guy in the gym that was over 40 that had been doing it for like 20 years would just be like hobbling in, you know, all these different injuries.
2:32:17
And I got I got I got a little scared around, you know, destroying all of my joints.
2:32:20
But, um, >> yeah, >> but I guess if you're in the right gym, uh, it's probably better for longevity.
2:32:26
>> Yeah, we're working down the tech checklist, you know. >> I love it. Yeah. >> Yeah. Jiu-Jitsu, more to come.
2:32:30
Um, well, we missed you a week ago.
2:32:34
We've been boopping around, but uh, give us the latest news in Verscell World.
2:32:38
Uh, what's the latest on your side?
2:32:43
>> Well, I mean, the big one is our funding at $9. 3 billion valuation. Uh, 300. >> It really had that. It's awesome. >> Congratulations. >> Insane. >> Insane. >> Um, oh yes.
2:32:57
300 million in primary, 300 million secondary, led by >> I don't know if you can hear, but this is a good omen.
2:33:02
The gong is still ringing. >> Still ringing.
2:33:05
>> Still ringing a little bit. >> Did it ever stop? >> It never stopped. >> It might never stop. >> Yeah. Yeah.
2:33:09
You might be back here with the series G before it stops ringing hopefully.
2:33:14
Uh what's the uh what what what are you actually capital constrained on?
2:33:18
Is it just hire more people, build a better product?
2:33:20
Are you actually like a big consumer of AI data factories, token factories?
2:33:25
Are you spending a lot on inference right now?
2:33:29
>> Well, clearly not too capital constrained because half of it was secondary. >> Yeah.
2:33:33
>> So, chapter one of Versel was providing the developer experience to developers to build pages. >> Yeah.
2:33:40
>> I mean, I'm I'm being overly simplistic, right?
2:33:42
But the world is going from pages to agents. >> Yeah.
2:33:45
>> So, it's not that the web services of the internet are going to be irrelevant, >> but if you think about the cloud, the cloud was born with Amazon web services.
2:33:55
The next chapter of the internet is going to be AI services.
2:33:56
So, Verscell is building the AI cloud and we felt and obviously investors felt this way too that this is worth you know a very very big bet >> because every type of software will become AI native software and the new primitive of the cloud will be the agent >> and and this requires new services.
2:34:15
It requires new frameworks.
2:34:18
Something that developer developers and investors are really excited about is our AI SDK.
2:34:26
>> You can think of it of it as the React of AI.
2:34:28
So the most popular package for developers to use to build AI agents and it's growing basically vertically like never like something we've never seen before at Versell and we've been doing open source for a long time.
2:34:39
Is that driven by new new ideas, new companies, uh, startups that are, uh, coming up and instead of spinning up just a website or a web app, they're spinning up an actual agent that then they get new customers for. Is is that right?
2:34:55
It's mostly net new customers.
2:34:59
>> It's a lot of net new, but also I think a lot of enterprises are going to basically leapfrog their classic digital transformation journey. Sure.
2:35:07
>> And just go to agents directly. Yeah.
2:35:09
>> And what this is resulting in is a a whole new set of demands for the cloud that were never there before.
2:35:16
>> Software is running for a lot longer, which is fascinating from a compute standpoint.
2:35:20
Obviously, investors are excited about GPU compute, but now we're seeing all of these new types of software that just running like thinking and and producing obviously demanding tokens, but running for minutes, hours, days. We call these workflows. Yeah.
2:35:35
>> And so we hosted our versel ship AI conference the other day and we basically came with an actual definition of what an agent is.
2:35:41
And agents basically remind us a lot of the old types of software that people were excited about maybe maybe decades ago which is like this workflows and business processes that you know look like nodes connected in a graph and have all of these steps.
2:35:54
It turns out that kind of software which we'll now call agent is actually kind of hard for developers to write especially the ones that were you know used to creating like the typical SAS type of software.
2:36:04
So Versel is sort of becoming the default place where this new kind of agentic workflow is born.
2:36:11
>> How are you thinking about hardware or your own cloud your own physical infrastructure?
2:36:16
It feels like that was crazy to talk about 5 years ago but now there's there are neoclouds there.
2:36:22
I I know I know people who have just stood up whole data centers.
2:36:27
And so if you came to me and said, "Yeah, as part of this fundraising round, we're also going to spin up a couple different data centers and we're going to be on our own infrastructure in a few years."
2:36:34
I'd be like, "Yeah, that doesn't sound crazy to me at all."
2:36:37
But how are you thinking about it?
2:36:39
>> Well, Versell is in this incredibly unique position that developers come to us because of the developer experience. >> Sure.
2:36:45
>> We can actually automatically make the best infrastructure decisions on their behalf. Okay.
2:36:50
>> And today that's sitting on top of the hyperscalers because much flexibility. Yeah.
2:36:54
>> So, for example, a couple years ago, you could have made the wrong hardware decision >> because you were going to say, well, all my CPU workloads are going to be like short burst, really immediate, CPUbound, rendering based.
2:37:04
Well, it turns out that a lot of the new workloads are agents that are spending a lot of time thinking.
2:37:08
So, you need new kinds of compute.
2:37:10
You need new kinds of software infrastructure to support these workloads.
2:37:14
And I believe that the hyperscaler clouds still give us the most flexibility there.
2:37:17
Also keep in mind that a lot a lot of these agents need to be in close proximity to the enterprise data. >> Yeah.
2:37:25
>> So yeah, the neo clouds are exciting, but you kind of want to be in the cloud. Yeah.
2:37:29
>> From a security perspective, regulatory and also latency.
2:37:32
I do think there's something to the cloud that is a bit of a rich get-richer scenario when it comes to latency >> because you need to fetch data. You need to do rag.
2:37:41
you need to get actual context into the models and every millisecond of latency that you waste there is actually very very costly.
2:37:49
>> So on one hand >> you know proximity to the cloud and being in the cloud gives us a great advantage.
2:37:54
On the other hand because we offer services like our AI gateway we also make them compete fanatically.
2:37:59
So at NexJS Conf we uh we announced the Nex.
2:38:04
js evals which is basically what I call sort of the like oracle of truth of how good your model is at coding real world workloads with things like Nex. js. >> Here's a Oh, sorry.
2:38:18
>> Yeah, I was going to say our developers really benefit from the fact that we let them choose. Yeah.
2:38:22
>> They're not bound to specific model.
2:38:25
>> Uh how are you thinking about integrations with consumer AI apps?
2:38:27
I feel like there's a world where I go to Gemini or I go to chatbt and I am iterating through a prompt and kind of laying out the let's say I want to make a landing page for a new start and I and I've kind of figured out the value props and the customer testimonials and how I'm going to wireframe everything out and then >> I I want to actually deploy it.
2:38:52
Right now, I don't think I can do that within any of the consumergrade chat apps.
2:38:59
Um, they're going to kick me over and say, "Hey, go set up this account."
2:39:03
But there's a world where that doesn't need to happen.
2:39:05
Um, but it's a delicate balance because you don't want them to be like, "Now we're on top of you and fully."
2:39:12
And so, how are you thinking about like uh onboarding like almost like proumer creators? >> Yeah.
2:39:18
So, on my blog, I drew this parallels between the cloud 1.
2:39:21
0 know and the AI cloud and so you have you know the the >> child poster child of of frameworks was react and XJS now it's going to be the AI SDK >> before we had CDN for delivering pages and images now we have the CDN of tokens the AI gateway >> and one of the other big transitions that's going to happen is protocol so we we're going from HTTP to things like MCB >> Mhm.
2:39:46
MCP is really exciting because if you looked at how Chad GBD is now allowing you to embed apps inside of Chad GBD that also just came out a couple weeks ago. I went to Nex.
2:39:54
js I was able to deploy Doom inside of Chad GBD. Why?
2:40:00
Because we have an MCB integration that allows our customers to embed themselves inside of Chad GBD. This is really exciting.
2:40:07
If this takes off, this is the world that you just described.
2:40:11
>> But anybody can look up an app. >> Yeah.
2:40:14
Does does OpenAI have like a review process for that?
2:40:15
Uh because I haven't just like run into the I I do run into those like hydrated UI elements every once in a while.
2:40:21
If I'm asking for like movie reviews, it'll show me some pictures or like links baked in, but it's all kind of like pre-baked UI.
2:40:28
>> Yeah, you need to be working on creating your own studio Giblly moment around that.
2:40:32
>> Yeah, this feels really really big actually. Uh so yeah. Yeah.
2:40:34
Tell me more about like how this actually rolls out. >> Yeah.
2:40:38
So on a vertical level is MCB.
2:40:38
So as long as you have something like versel, you deploy your thing, you can speak MCB, you're embedded into chatbd.
2:40:46
I deploy my app in developer mode, >> which means like they let you basically embed everything.
2:40:50
It's going to be a little bit like an Apple app store where you're going to have to get approved, >> but it's it seems like, you know, that the their guidelines are pretty open.
2:40:57
So I think a lot of it will fly.
2:40:58
And to your point, this allows ejection points from Chad GBD into other kinds of platforms.
2:41:06
So you could imagine one where if you start up cooking up an idea, it recommends V0 because Verscell registered an application with them and this is the right application to for prototyping and VIP coding.
2:41:19
>> In fact, the other day while I was in developer mode, it started recommending things to me.
2:41:21
Uh so I guess some of the early adopters of their apps platform.
2:41:24
I believe MCB will continue to enable this sort of like agent to agent communication.
2:41:30
This is already very big when you're coding with agents because in order to you know for example would be Figma converted to vzero so you can convert from Figma to NexJS app that's going to speak the MCP protocol. Yeah.
2:41:43
So I think for as far as the AI cloud goes, enterprises will be wrestling with these questions, right?
2:41:47
Like the the most common question I get is how do I not get this intermediated by Google AI overviews, right?
2:41:53
Which is sort of summarizing all of the results of the search pages and how do I not get this intermediate by CHBD?
2:42:00
And I think they're really good answers. >> Mhm.
2:42:04
>> How do you think about M&A?
2:42:04
you don't have to talk about M&A interest in Verscell because I'm sure you're turning down uh stuff all the time, but how are you thinking about uh uh you know M&A in terms of expanding and and building on on the existing platform?
2:42:20
>> Yeah, there were so many uh investments being put into the AI categories, right?
2:42:26
And uh vertical agents, coding agents, idees, things like this.
2:42:28
I think you know there's going to be more consolidation in the coming months and years.
2:42:33
uh there's like 10 20 different options for anything you can conceive AI related AI for QA AI for testing AI for this.
2:42:41
So I think creates a lot of opportunities for Verscell which is a very broad platform with lots of users to sort of make some strategic M&A but I'm even more excited about our marketplace.
2:42:49
So we announced at Versel Ship AI our marketplace for oneclick install of AI agents and AI infrastructure services.
2:42:59
So, I mentioned if you're going to sit down and create your own agent, it's very likely you're going to need some services that Versell doesn't offer.
2:43:07
One example is browsers on demand.
2:43:10
>> I think you guys have had a couple browser CEOs here on the show and uh so Versel doesn't offer browsers as a service built in, but now we offer it one click through the marketplace. Sure.
2:43:21
>> Another example is security audits that AI agents can help with oneclick install uh services like corridor.
2:43:27
uh because forcell contains the deployment URL and we have access to the code and we have access to the production data.
2:43:34
It gives us a very special place so that we can grow a massive ecosystem of agents that automate the cloud.
2:43:41
>> We're going to create some of those agents.
2:43:42
We might acquire a few but overall I'm very excited about becoming sort of the nexus where all of the agents are collaborating together so they take the burden off of maintaining the cloud.
2:43:52
We also the the outage the other day with US East one the internet melted down.
2:43:58
>> You know all of those pagers or mattresses were waking up people.
2:44:04
>> Our vision for the future of the cloud is that they wake up agents.
2:44:05
The agent has the first pass of like oh my god anomaly alert 500 errors.
2:44:10
All right let's have the versel agent do the first pass.
2:44:15
But this is also true for you know you vibe coded something and you want a security engineer to review it for you.
2:44:22
Well, now that's an agent you you can one click install through the Verscell agent marketplace.
2:44:25
Uh, which is very very exciting. >> Yeah, that's awesome.
2:44:29
Uh, I mean, what an interesting place to be.
2:44:31
You can you're you have so many different pieces of the business and I imagine that um a lot of them are are, you know, growing business lines.
2:44:39
I can imagine uh the series F process was a lot of fun. >> Uh yeah.
2:44:44
>> Uh given given all the booms. Jordy, anything else? >> No, this is great. Great to get the update.
2:44:48
>> Yeah, thanks so much for hopping on.
2:44:48
Uh have a great rest of your week.
2:44:50
We'll talk to you soon, Gamma. >> Cheers. >> See you. >> Bye.
2:44:54
>> Uh, he mentioned eight sleep.
2:44:54
Let's talk about our sleep scores. How'd you sleep? >> We need to sleep.
2:45:00
We need to talk to Matteo. And I I don't want this.
2:45:02
I don't want the the John handicap.
2:45:04
Any >> you have you have a conspiracy theory that like for some reason it just gives me better results. I got a 98 last night. Let's go. 7 hours 44 minutes.
2:45:13
Our next >> Our next guest, Brendan is in the reream waiting room.
2:45:21
No, he's [music] in the TVP and Ultra.
2:45:23
Welcome to the stream, Brennan. Congratulations. >> How are you doing? Called his shot.
2:45:27
He's the biggest shot caller in all of Silicon Valley.
2:45:32
>> Yeah, we got to get We got to get some new shots.
2:45:34
>> This is Yeah, I was telling him this.
2:45:34
I was like, >> call the shot.
2:45:36
You're holding up the global economy within 5 years.
2:45:41
Every company is dependent on you.
2:45:41
Like there's no there's no shot this man won't call.
2:45:45
But uh g give us the news.
2:45:47
Break down exactly what happened.
2:45:47
tell us what is new today.
2:45:52
>> Yeah, I mean the company's been growing like crazy.
2:45:53
We're now paying out over $1.
2:45:56
5 million a day to experts in our marketplace. >> Hit the G for that. >> There we go. >> And what else?
2:46:06
>> Uh and we've uh raised our series C of $350 million at a $10 billion value. >> Massive. >> Billionally excited.
2:46:17
Yeah, >> not bad for your first startup.
2:46:21
>> The gong is really going.
2:46:21
Something's up with the gong these days.
2:46:24
I don't know if you can hear it, but it's like >> it's raining. >> Let's get right in.
2:46:27
You had a uh I feel like I remember you had a blog was it blog post uh Friday. Do I have that right?
2:46:34
Is it worth is it worth getting into that?
2:46:38
>> Uh about the big things. >> Yes. >> Yeah, the big things.
2:46:39
Let's talk about the big things.
2:46:40
Yeah, it's really starting with the question of what are the things that we know are going to be the same about our business over the next 10 years and that there's a lot that's going to change over time.
2:46:50
But we know that the three main areas that our customers will always want more improvement and progress are in more candidates on our platform, better matching and faster delivery of all the candidates that we're hiring for them to improve frontier models.
2:47:06
And so those are really >> Bezos inspired. >> It is exactly. Yeah.
2:47:11
Um similar to how Amazon said that their three big things were more products, better prices, faster delivery.
2:47:18
For us, it's a little bit different because no two people are the same, but uh inspired by it very significantly. >> Totally.
2:47:25
Uh let's go let's go through them.
2:47:28
I think uh um and then I guess like want to understand like want to get kind of more into the into the future too.
2:47:36
I think I think people uh some people would have a sense that like there could just be this you know incredible uh demand over the next 5 years and then you know does that demand evolve evaporate but I I want to I want to hear how how you view it uh maybe more specifically. >> Totally.
2:47:55
What we've been seeing is that there's an enormous trend towards humans training agents how to automate redundant workflows that they would do in their jobs because it's structurally more efficient to do so.
2:48:06
Instead of a customer support representative redundantly responding to hundreds of tickets, they create an eval to train an agent one time how to do that thing.
2:48:15
Instead of a banker redundantly analyzing data rooms, they create an eval to train an agent how to do that thing.
2:48:23
And we believe that a huge portion of the broader knowledge work in the economy is going to converge on training agents how to do these activities and our marketplace is really at that frontier of creating this new job category in training agents.
2:48:36
How does uh how does this look long term if one of the big AI platforms becomes really really dominant understands what everyone does and can just ask me to do a task within the app like is there any sort of like disintermediation risk or do you think that what you're building with Meror is special enough that even if you know the OpenAI chat GBT app can detect that oh well you've talked to me enough I know you're investment banker.
2:49:09
I'd love to do an RL environment with you.
2:49:12
Here's an offer directly to come and do some training data.
2:49:14
Uh like how how are you thinking about counterpositioning against that risk or is that just like not a thing at all?
2:49:22
>> Well, one of the most important things in building out these environments to train agents is that they need to be very consistently reliable and that you need to put a lot of work into them.
2:49:31
uh and if there's noise and that there's some mistakes or issues, then it's very difficult for a model to learn from.
2:49:38
And so as a result, it's really difficult to ask your users to say, "Put in 10 hours to helping to see if we made a mistake in preparing this financial model for you."
2:49:49
Um and those users might flag a mistake, but that's, you know, incorrect half the time.
2:49:54
And so what they instead need to do is build out armies of experts that are able to diligently analyze model performance, go through strict review processes to ensure consistency um and build these RL environments to adopt models for any specific use case.
2:50:12
>> So you obviously have massive uh diversity on the uh talent side.
2:50:15
Uh but how do you think about customer concentration over the next few years?
2:50:24
Do you think that like there are clearly power law winners in AI?
2:50:26
There are trillion dollar labs, you know, Google and OpenAI is half a trillion dollars.
2:50:33
Like there's huge winners and then there's a ton of startups.
2:50:35
How do you see the shape of your business?
2:50:36
Do you think you'll have a lot of medium-siz companies or just tons and tons of small companies and in every individual company will need to come to you for talent to optimize whatever little thing they're doing or will you be doing more work with the really really big labs?
2:50:53
How do you think that all shakes out?
2:50:55
>> I think it'll be some combination.
2:50:57
Definitely near-term it looks similar to Nvidia in so far as working with a dozen of the hyperscalers that are investing huge amounts in this.
2:51:05
But over time, what we're seeing is that every enterprise wants to train agents to customize their specific workflows and we have the expertise to help them do that and building out all of the EBEL sets and environments that correspond to every workflow in their businesses that they want to automate. Mhm.
2:51:23
>> Um what uh any any I I had an eye opening experience yesterday.
2:51:26
I have a a friend who's a lawyer and about a year ago I started I I started asking him like what kind of AI tools uh they're using and he was like broadly like not impressed.
2:51:40
He was like we're like signing up for them.
2:51:41
They're not get we're not getting a lot of value.
2:51:44
Um but uh it's interesting.
2:51:47
I'm keeping an eye on it kind of thing.
2:51:49
And then yesterday he said to me, "I've seen the future.
2:51:53
Harvey isn't perfect, but has better attention to detail and is more thoughtful than almost any junior person at our firm.
2:51:57
I've watched it do 100k of associate level work in 10 minutes."
2:52:00
associate level work in 10 minutes." And that felt like just extremely notable to me to just see how hard he like 180ed on that is like uh how like what what is the structure and you can talk at a high level to not give away specifics but
2:52:15
like how much investment is like going into just that category alone from from from your view >> I mean we're seeing a huge amount of investment in law certainly I would say the top categories are probably software engineering then finance hands than law. Um maybe close between medicine and law.
2:52:33
Um maybe close between medicine and law.
2:52:36
Um but I think that the models are very quickly going to be able to do even partner level work at a lot of these firms.
2:52:44
And so that transformation and how it impacts businesses and the economy is going to be really profound and obviously all of the data and evals to enable that is one of the primary blockers to getting there.
2:52:57
>> We have a shout out to one of your employees, Verat Talwis.
2:52:58
So, just wanted to say uh congratulations to him on being part of the team.
2:53:03
The chat is just shouting him out.
2:53:06
Obviously, it's a big milestone.
2:53:08
So, we want to celebrate everyone on the team.
2:53:11
>> What uh how in in conversations for this last round, uh obviously the business has so much momentum.
2:53:18
I'm sure people are just like, "Take my money at all cost, you know, whatever. I just take it.
2:53:24
Uh I'll send the money and we'll figure out the docs later."
2:53:26
But uh how big can Merkor get?
2:53:29
Like what is like I if somebody asks like okay if everything goes right what does his business look like in uh does it does it look like you know you're paying out on the levels of like an ADP right is are do you become like one of the largest pseudo employers in history like what's like the what's the craziest outcome?
2:53:52
The way I think about it is that right now businesses are spending about $40 trillion a year on knowledge work.
2:53:59
Uh all for people doing these largely monotonous things that have similarities from task to task.
2:54:06
But all of that is going to be transformed to training agents to automate workflows.
2:54:10
Instead of doing it ourselves, we'll have agents do those things.
2:54:15
and Merur is building the infrastructure to enable humans to engage with models to teach them to fit into the AI economy and and I think there's an opportunity worth tens of trillions of dollars a year uh to help that transformation happen over the coming decade.
2:54:32
Um and so we're only 1% of the way there if that.
2:54:35
Uh and very exciting for everything to come. >> Are you a foodie?
2:54:40
We have another question from the chat.
2:54:41
Do do you like fine cuisine? I I am a foodie.
2:54:43
Yeah, >> you are a foodie.
2:54:49
>> Very fortunate coincidence.
2:54:49
Yeah, >> that's good nominative determinism.
2:54:52
We're very happy to hear that. Uh, last question. When IPO?
2:54:58
>> We don't have a specific date in mind yet.
2:55:00
Uh, potentially on the horizon, but we'll be sure to keep you guys updated. >> Let's go.
2:55:05
>> Potentially, let's do an air horn for the horizon.
2:55:08
>> Potentially on the horizon.
2:55:08
Now, >> somebody's probably going to write an article on that, by the way. I'm sorry. This is a new thing. I I see it all the time.
2:55:16
Every time they interview Palmer Lucky and Blonde Bloomberg, they ask him like, "When are you IPOing?"
2:55:19
And I'm like, you know, that he would tell you if he had news there.
2:55:22
Like, why are you even asking?
2:55:24
But I guess it's just fun to ask.
2:55:26
And then in a couple years, we can look back >> potentially on the horizon is much different than we have no plans, though. So, >> yeah. Yeah.
2:55:33
I mean, you could have said absolutely not.
2:55:34
I I would never I will never take this company public in my life. You didn't say that.
2:55:38
So, at least we got something. So, thank you. >> There you go. Progress.
2:55:41
Anyway, uh massive congratulations on all the progress.
2:55:44
Uh really really remarkable growth.
2:55:47
I mean, what what a fun time, what a fun business.
2:55:49
And uh congratulations to everyone on the team.
2:55:52
I mean, thanks for having me. >> Absolute rocket ship. Cheers.
2:55:55
>> Uh have a great rest of your day.
2:55:56
>> We'll talk to you soon.
2:55:56
[applause] >> Get back to the timeline a little bit.
2:56:00
>> Let's get back to public.
2:56:00
com investing for those who take it seriously.
2:56:03
They got multiass investing, industryleading yields, and they're trusted by millions. Yes.
2:56:08
Let's go back to the timeline.
2:56:08
Um a lot of people have been focused on this uh this chart overlaying stock market performance over job openings and how it basically diverges >> at the introduction of Chad GBT >> that like basically that's where people like >> which is also the introduction of high rates. >> Yes.
2:56:32
>> And I think >> I think we need to put Tyler on this.
2:56:32
Is this a chart crime Tyler?
2:56:34
Do you think that there's some funny business going on?
2:56:37
This is a pretty simple just I don't think that I don't think that it's literally like the the lines are wrong.
2:56:44
But I >> Mark uh Mark at 816Z broke this down.
2:56:44
He said this is particularly trippy chart crime.
2:56:51
The break point was exactly when the COVID stemi bubble popped and the Fed hiked interest rates to the moon.
2:56:57
>> He says the great forgetting that CO ever happened is wild.
2:56:59
I can't tell if it's adaptive or suicidal or both.
2:57:01
Uh but yeah, I think everyone wants to uh memory memory hole this one >> and and so what is exactly on this chart?
2:57:12
I I don't even have it pulled up.
2:57:13
It's it's number of jobs versus financial performance or something like that.
2:57:18
>> So Gavin Baker here says really interesting chart from Derek Thompson surfaced it.
2:57:22
Former guest on the show.
2:57:24
Stock market and job openings were highly correlated for decades.
2:57:26
No longer stock market is up 75% and job openings are down 33%.
2:57:31
would think at least partially due to AI.
2:57:34
Chimath Polyhapatia chimes in and says it could also be that the plurality of the stock market is now highly concentrated across seven to eight companies who on a relative basis just don't employ a lot of people.
2:57:46
So the stock market goes up won't pull up employment along with it.
2:57:51
I still think what has been happening to date is CEOs are desperate for every possible AI narrative and if they need to do layoffs because they got bloated >> during co >> Yeah.
2:58:06
>> they will say that we're getting efficiency out of AI and that's a much better reason than like we overhired. >> Yeah.
2:58:12
>> Uh remember Microsoft has done a number of different you know layoffs this year.
2:58:18
There's a layoff that got announced today.
2:58:20
>> Well well we should get Derek Johnson on the show.
2:58:22
But we should also get uh a couple other economists.
2:58:23
Maybe Tyler >> Amazon is targeting as many as 30,000 corporate jobs beginning tomorrow.
2:58:28
So [clears throat] probably not a fun not a fun uh day over at Amazon HQ.
2:58:32
Um uh some more positive news.
2:58:39
Uh Timothy Melon, a banking error, is said to be the anonymous donor, not so anonymous now, I guess, according to the Times, who gave 130 million to the US government to help pay troops during the shutdown.
2:58:51
>> [snorts] >> Uh this guy doesn't according to Wilmanitis uh worth 14 billion personally guaranteed payroll for the armed services and the only and most recent photo of him is from 1981.
2:59:03
>> I mean he kind of this photo looks so cool that I kind of [laughter] understand how he's like all right that's it.
2:59:09
I took the only photo I need for life. >> Yep.
2:59:13
>> I won't do any photos because this looks >> I mean the suit the tie >> with the train in the background. >> Yeah.
2:59:19
you know, with the with the the hair, the stare.
2:59:21
I mean, yeah, he he just he oneshotted photography. >> He did.
2:59:26
It's remarkable because when when you look at the photo and then you hear the headline, it's like, "Meet the man who backstopped the uh and and paid for the army's payroll in a time of crisis with his fortune."
2:59:37
You're like, "Oh, yeah, like this guy was probably crucial in World War II based on the image."
2:59:43
And you're like, "No, this happened like last week."
2:59:44
He's talking about the 2025 government shutdown.
2:59:46
That is what they're talking about which and I just keep I just every time I see this image I think like oh this is a >> Mike in the chat is asking 130 million is what percentage of monthly payroll and that is a >> yeah I have no idea.
3:00:01
>> Well maybe fiscal year 2024 military personnel category of the DoD budget which covers pay and retirement benefits was about 192 billion. H.
3:00:14
>> So, uh, yeah, I don't think the 130 million is gonna it's a [laughter] good >> We've been on gambling this entire show, but I'm just thinking about like what if instead of government bonds where you earn like 4%, the government just released, you know, a one massive lottery ticket or something that would be uh it it costs a billion dollars, but there's a 1% chance that it pays out a hundred billion dollars.
3:00:40
And if it does then then the US government is indebted to you for like hundreds of years.
3:00:44
But if it doesn't if it doesn't then the US just gets >> by 2024 math I think you basically need like sevenish billion dollar every two weeks to keep the payroll going.
3:00:57
>> So what does 130 million do? It's like a day. >> Yeah.
3:00:59
Mike Mike did the similar mathion something billion.
3:01:02
So uh I guess I mean it's a good start.
3:01:08
uh I mean there are some there are some divisions of the government that have uh basically savings that they can kind of tap into and then also there's a big question about uh how much are you actually going to uh like like do you need to do you need to bring everyone back on payroll or or can you get by with 10% or 20%.
3:01:29
And maybe this is something that he's backstopping and saying hey let's pay 20% of people instead of 10% of people.
3:01:35
Um, what does Poly Market say about the government shutdown? Let's pull that up. Uh, government shutdown.
3:01:42
Uh, will the government shutdown end by >> um what is the most likely? November 30th.
3:01:51
By December 31st, it's a 93% chance.
3:01:54
Uh, November 15th is like the 50/50 mark basically.
3:01:56
So, expect another two weeks, maybe another three weeks according to Poly Market.
3:02:01
So, uh, there's your there's your Poly Market update.
3:02:05
People are in the chat still talking about double speed.
3:02:08
The uh lets you control thousands of social media accounts with AI, ensuring they look as human as possible. Never pay a human again. Control is all you need.
3:02:17
Uh Jeremiah Johnson says, "Every startup is like we found a cool way to monetize undermining the social contract with uh 30,000 likes."
3:02:30
>> This is I mean we follow we follow this person or something like that.
3:02:33
Um, this person's like a liberal.
3:02:36
They should be pro tech and they're It's not like this person is like by default some like crazy anti-tech person.
3:02:45
And so >> you mean by >> Jeremiah Johnson like Jeremiah Johnson is is not like some like tear it all down anti- anti- business, you know?
3:02:53
And and he's making a good point getting 30,000 likes.
3:03:00
And so I think this is a harbinger of like what the shape of the tech lash will look like.
3:03:07
>> Well, I think in this case even tech was not excited about this one.
3:03:13
>> Tech was lashing itself >> self flagagillating >> self harm >> self lash.
3:03:17
[laughter] >> Uh no but tech tech is saying like you know broadly this doesn't seem like it needs to exist and >> probably is a net negative even if there's some >> uh some some legitimate use cases. insane.
3:03:31
>> Anyway, you know what is >> running an out of home campaign with adquick. com.
3:03:36
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3:03:37
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3:03:42
>> Uh only adquick combines technology out of home expertise and data to enable efficient seamless ad buying across the globe.
3:03:46
>> Zoomer uh went viral again.
3:03:46
This guy this guy is just >> harvesting hatred from the entire world at this point.
3:03:54
Uh he said on a few days ago, at this point I've lost all motivation to post on Axe.
3:03:57
The new algorithm is so demoralizing.
3:04:01
I have 30,000 followers and I'm getting 500 views in an hour.
3:04:04
I'm done with this place. Well done, Elon Musk.
3:04:06
And everyone uh and their mother was dunking on him and saying, "You just got paid $10,000 uh a week ago to post a picture of Steve Jobs's daughter."
3:04:15
Um just, you know, >> he didn't he didn't take the photo.
3:04:20
It's not like he's a photographer. in this post by Adius.
3:04:23
Elon, Elon, I need my dopamine dollar dues.
3:04:27
I posted another hot girl. Where's my engagement?
3:04:31
Elon, Elon, I'm a content creator.
3:04:31
Um, so anyways, not not a lot of support for uh Zoomer, but I guess um I'm sure he'll be back.
3:04:40
I doubt he >> I doubt he uh >> Okay, we need we need Tyler to give us a review of Chadlabs. ai.
3:04:49
Uh, apparently I didn't even see this, but uh there's a YC company that is a brain rot IDE, something like that.
3:04:56
The idea, >> no way this is real.
3:05:00
>> You can you can actually >> and a cashback IDE. It seems like a parody.
3:05:07
>> This is for sure somebody just making it.
3:05:10
>> This seems like it's like a joke, but we need you to get to the bottom of what's actually going on.
3:05:15
>> It's in I mean, it's a real YC company. >> Yes.
3:05:17
But is it a stunt or are they actually trying to bring Tinder into your IDE which is like >> I mean I I'm on the I'm on the website commenting learn >> I'm on the Y Combinator website and clad labs says it's the brain rot IDE. It's a fall 2025 bad. >> Oh it's clad labs. I thought it was Chad. >> No it's Clad Labs.
3:05:39
>> Founder of Chad IDE here. Clad Labs. ai. So it's not Chad Labs. It's Clad Labs. >> Yeah.
3:05:46
I mean, I think I think this is just called Zoomer.
3:05:48
This is just Zoomer marketing.
3:05:50
They do call it the Chad IDE, the first brain rot IDE.
3:05:52
They say, "Sup gigachads on this is on the YC websites." Sup, Giga Chads.
3:05:57
We're Richard and Kevin, founders of Clad Labs.
3:06:02
>> TLDDR, as highly requested, we built the Chad IDE.
3:06:05
Chad integrates your brain rot vices with your agenda coding workflow.
3:06:10
Chad increases productivity and reduces friction of context switching. Yeah. >> So, reducing.
3:06:13
So Kevin Kevin is kind of saying like um I thought the problem and solution was pretty straightforward crying emoji.
3:06:18
Not sure what people can't understand about that.
3:06:20
So he's kind of like leaning into this.
3:06:21
It feels like this might be rage bait.
3:06:23
Uh the product is an epic rage bait.
3:06:27
>> But this is on the YC website.
3:06:27
They have a screenshot of the product where they have Tinder in one panel and then the IDE in the other panel.
3:06:34
>> And so this is this is the modern thesis.
3:06:36
>> They're saying you can rage bait your way. >> Yeah.
3:06:39
So you can rage bait your way to actual usage.
3:06:41
I'm surprised that YC is putting this gambling IDE on on their website.
3:06:48
I will say, but maybe they're just >> well, >> not going to form an opinion. >> No, no.
3:06:53
I I think there is a open debate amongst a lot of people like respectable respectable venture capitalists around can you launch with something that's rageba and then pivot into something that's serious.
3:07:09
Can you build a serious business with a rage batty go to market?
3:07:13
And I know you know you're against >> I've been working on I've been working on my next essay. Yes.
3:07:18
>> Rage bait marketing is for losers. [laughter] >> I like it.
3:07:22
>> Um which is that I think when you do rage bait marketing, >> it obviously gets a lot of attention, >> but it makes it so that you make the entire world prey on your downfall.
3:07:32
And I think that that is >> spiritually a bad strategy.
3:07:37
So, I'm still working this one out, but I don't, you know, I don't think that I don't think that ragebait marketing helped clearly win the enterprise, >> right? >> Yep.
3:07:48
>> But there were a lot of VCs who >> maybe students >> and the story is not over, but there were a lot of VCs who invest and said, "Hey, look, uh, I mean, we talked to Brian Kim from Andre on the show about this, like why'd you do the deal?"
3:07:58
And he was like, "I like that they were able to get a lot of attention and that gives them an opportunity to deliver a product.
3:08:07
that gives them the opportunity to go build something.
3:08:09
And he was like, "Look, like we don't know if they have necessarily, but uh at the very least it's" >> Yeah.
3:08:15
And they were masters of it.
3:08:15
They would do the the pictures of like just spent $10,000 on this suit and you could tell that it was off the rack or whatever. >> Yeah. Yeah. Tons of stuff.
3:08:23
I just I >> But I just don't think it's a I don't think it's a good strategy.
3:08:26
And I think we're going to be that's going to be proven correct.
3:08:30
I think I think you're correct in the in the spir the spiritually risky strategy because how much better is is it to just go and and actually build a beautiful optimistic brand and pay for some billboard ads or you know even you know direct response ads.
3:08:51
>> Beautiful thing you don't even need advertising if your product is is you know advertising is an >> accelerator.
3:08:56
Say you do need advertising because you've built a product but no one knows about it and you have two options.
3:09:01
One like the the dark castle and the bright, you know, the fork in the road meme.
3:09:06
One of them is you you you rage bait everyone.
3:09:09
You make your product annoying and then everyone will have to check it out and the product's actually good versus yeah, you have to shell out some cash to run some ads.
3:09:19
Um, but you slowly compound and you slowly grow and then after a decade you have a product where everyone's like, "Wow, that went that came out of nowhere.
3:09:30
Those guys have just been running great ads for years, you know." >> Yeah.
3:09:34
I just I just think you're ultimately >> chat IDE is competing with Cursor, Windsurf, GitHub Copilot.
3:09:44
They're competing with serious companies.
3:09:46
and what kind of >> you're going to you're going to unserious.
3:09:52
>> This is the lack of this is the lack of the April Fool's Day joke.
3:09:54
This company could potentially have just been >> this should have been April Fool's >> April Fool's joke or Wind Surf's April Fool's joke.
3:10:03
And it should have just been maybe I I don't know exactly what it is.
3:10:07
We got to dig in to understand what this is.
3:10:08
But there's a whole world where the idea of a of a brainy IDE is something like Google does as a side project as a joke, right?
3:10:15
Like they used to do stuff like that and some of it like they had a whole they had a whole didn't they have a whole feature that was just like talk to your dog or something? I don't know.
3:10:24
There's so many we there used to be a rich culture of of April Fool's jokes where you could effectively rage bait the the world but everyone was in on the joke.
3:10:32
And now uh we're in this world of like you you rage bait >> rage bait is your whole brand strategy and your whole brand that's where and it's really hard to pivot away from I don't think anyone's done it successfully.
3:10:45
>> Yeah >> it's very very hard.
3:10:46
>> Well on that note we have to get on with getzel.
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3:11:14
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3:11:21
>> Have a great rest of your day. >> See you then. Goodbye. >> Cheers, folks.