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4:34
>> You're watching You're watching TV.
4:36
Today's Wednesday, June 17th, [applause] 2026.
4:38
We are live from the TV Ultra on the Temple of Technology.
4:41
The purchase of finance the capital capital.
4:42
Let me tell you about ramp. com. Time is money. Save both. Easy to use.
4:46
corporate card, bill pay, accounting, and a whole lot more all in one place. >> Big show today. >> Big show today.
4:54
Lots of guests coming on.
4:56
We got new coming, newcomer coming on. Mark German's coming on. Carter Merrell.
5:01
Super excited >> for Eric to join. >> Yeah.
5:05
>> Uh I don't have time to listen to that many podcasts, but I love listening to Eric.
5:10
>> He's been on an absolute tear.
5:10
His uh Car Swisser interview was very good.
5:13
His Ed Zitron interview was very good.
5:15
Uh he's been he throws on the gloves. >> Yeah.
5:20
And >> and he's almost like a matador.
5:20
He's almost like a matador, right? >> Yeah.
5:24
And it's interesting because Yeah. He he I don't know.
5:26
He just has like a very balanced view and keeps the conversation going and pushes people and uh gets things going back and forth.
5:32
So very excited to chop it up with him.
5:34
Uh anyway, >> then we have uh Merrill. Yeah.
5:36
From Graphite, who >> made one of the plays, the absolute greatest plays of the year.
5:45
>> Truly selling to Curser >> and which of course shortly after that uh sold to SpaceX and is now up even further.
5:54
>> Uh in fact, really >> graphite was a sponsor of course.
5:57
Uh >> uh we we we did as much as we could.
5:59
Uh then we have Carter >> 90% of the hard work, [laughter] >> right?
6:08
>> Uh then we have Carter from M13 jumping on. Uh we have Dr.
6:10
Swami from AWS joining and then uh the Germinator of course and a number of other founders. So >> yeah, big show.
6:20
Anyway, uh Snap Snap Spectacles, we talked about it a little bit yesterday.
6:24
Uh feedback has been mixed. Not good. People don't like it.
6:30
Uh, pull up the picture from DJ Cow's glasses. What glasses? Uh, this one. Not this one. The next one.
6:41
>> It's really uh >> this one.
6:43
>> It's really tough because if if a startup shipped these, everyone like they would they would they would be able to raise >> the other photo.
6:52
After you're seeing this one, go back to the other photo. Looks really normal now. >> There you go.
6:57
>> Honestly, >> there you go.
6:58
the funny big exaggerated version makes me feel like these actually look really cool now that not those that's too much.
7:04
But you flip back, I'm into it now.
7:06
It's actually uh inoculated me to the Oh, they're big because I saw a bigger version and I like these.
7:14
They're a little bit blocky.
7:15
Yeah, but it's like a style choice. I don't know.
7:17
I'm getting I'm getting pilled. I might pick up a pair. >> Here's the thing.
7:21
>> Might pick up a couple pairs.
7:22
>> If a startup launched this product Yes.
7:24
>> and was able to do the demos that they can do.
7:26
We've tried this product.
7:26
We've done we've done a number of the demos that startup would would be able to raise at I would say easily a billion just based on current market conditions.
7:38
Uh but they're a startup is evaluated a lot uh differently of course than a you know public company that has spent somewhere in the range of three half billion dollars uh building this product.
7:48
So um >> yeah the the feedback uh from the market um has not been great from activists has not been great.
7:56
2% over the last five years and just in the last 5 days down another eight and a half%.
8:02
>> Um and Evan Spiegels has had been having to defend his decisions his investment here.
8:07
Uh we'll we'll see where all this goes.
8:09
Uh the question is like how how expensive is this effort?
8:11
How how core to the business is it?
8:14
Uh how many Snap employees are working on this?
8:16
They have a great ads business, a great social media with a network effect should be an AI winner.
8:23
you know, just increase the the ad load, increase the ad targeting, uh run a really lean, thin operation, and you should be able to be a very very profitable enterprise.
8:33
Uh the the era clearly a lot of these investments were green lit in the early days when the stock was up uh when the when the market was booming and now we're seeing them roll out and everyone's asking a wildly different set of questions because we're in the AI era, not the wearables era.
8:51
But uh >> and Tyler in the chat says snap down 92% since peak.
8:54
So you can imagine a lot of the a lot of the work that was done on these was done when they were a much much much bigger company. >> Yeah.
9:02
But to be fair uh Evan has been acquiring in this category and thinking about this for probably over a decade.
9:07
I know uh I actually talked to a founder that he sold his company to Snap.
9:12
It must have been 10 years ago and they bought a couple of companies and had been working on this.
9:19
And then of course they did have the first version of spectacles which were like the Meta Ray-B band displays or the Meta Ray-B bands, no screen but just a camera and the roll out for that was really wellreceived but never quite got to escape velocity where it really moved the needle for the business.
9:31
Um but very clear uh you know interesting R&D thinking.
9:36
Anyway, Evan Spiegel is going to have to defend himself from our own Brandon Gerell because Brandon Gell came up to me after writing the newsletter and said, "Uh, I don't I don't think I get it."
9:47
And I'm like, "That's fine.
9:49
We'll we'll read through your piece.
9:50
We'll we'll take we'll we'll steam man it. I'll steal man it. No problem.
9:52
But first, I'm going to steal man CrowdStrike. Your business is AI.
9:56
Their business is securing it.
9:58
Crowdstrike secures AI and stops breaches."
10:01
>> I think it can steel man itself.
10:01
Yeah, >> it can steel man itself, honestly.
10:02
Um, >> so let's read through Brandon's >> hit it.
10:07
>> So, Snapchat showed off specs, its new augmented reality glasses at Augmented World Expo 2026 yesterday. Interesting.
10:15
I didn't realize that this was an industry conference for augmented reality, not a Snapspecific event.
10:19
Uh, the features are a mix of things you'd want in a daily driver pair of glasses that you'd have on all the time, everywhere.
10:27
uh maps, HUD, uh review of restaurants in your visual field, proumer features like the ability to co collaborate on shared virtual whiteboards and more general AI powered assistance stuff like measuring distances for you so you don't have to use a tape measure.
10:41
Uh the broad mix of features combined with the facts that specs are fairly pricey, $2,200 basically.
10:47
Uh and that they look painful to wear.
10:50
So Brandon Guell is pointing out the fact that Evan's ear looks a little bit bent from wearing the specs.
10:57
the the uh what do they call that? The the bar.
11:01
What's that thing on the on the glasses that goes in the back? I don't know. Whatever that thing is. Uh it's a little thick. It's a little heavy.
11:10
There's a battery back there. Probably some compute.
11:11
And so, uh that is compressing his ear a little bit.
11:14
You imagine wearing that for 4 hours.
11:16
Maybe it gets a little bit tiring.
11:18
We will see how >> other scenario he's getting some cauliflower ear. He's training.
11:22
He sees Zuck is is uh you know gotten into MMA.
11:28
He doesn't want to be left behind. So we don't know.
11:30
>> So uh Brandon asks >> Tyler says it is the arm >> the arm >> of the sunglasses.
11:36
>> Where is Tyler, by the way? Oh, Tyler's Tyler.
11:39
>> Yeah, Tyler's going to the Mid Journey event, which will also be interesting.
11:42
There there's a whole bunch of interesting hardware stuff happening in the midst of the AI boom.
11:45
MidJourney's launching a hardware device tonight.
11:47
No one knows exactly what it is.
11:50
Surprising it hasn't leaked.
11:52
They got it locked down over there.
11:54
>> They got it locked down. It's great.
11:56
Also, I I think maybe uh journalists don't think it's like the hottest scoop to go after, but still uh really impressive.
12:02
I'm on the edge of my seat to figure out what they launched because uh incredibly talented team, incredible business, uh incredible founder and uh D uh David Holes, the founder of Midjourney, started Magic Leap, an augmented reality or virtual reality company that would track your hand over this little device that was sort of the size of a a stick of gum basically.
12:21
And uh you could strap it to the front of a Oculus Rift and it would track your hands while you were in VR.
12:28
uh that company at one point sold to Apple almost and then got rolled back and uh and then sold to another company uh and raised a bunch of money and then uh David ran it all up again with Ned Journey. It's a great story.
12:42
Anyway, I love I love the N Journey story, but very excited. Back to specs. Back to specs.
12:46
Uh are guys who golf every other weekend in the summer really going to drop over 2K so they can put on their pair of Specs just when they need to see how many yards they are from the pin.
12:58
Uh, I think a lot of golfers do have disposable income.
13:01
The price tag might not be the issue.
13:03
The question is, does this look cool on a golf course?
13:06
Is this a is this a is this something that has like badge value if you pull out like a nice rangefinder, like a titleist bag or something with a with a great brand?
13:15
Uh, it feels like to make it cool, it's got to be on the PGA Tour.
13:19
the the heroes that people look to need to be using this actively uh for the golf community to really uh >> Yeah.
13:30
And and >> so many cool use cases. >> Mhm.
13:36
>> But are any of them killer use cases?
13:40
No, I'm just saying I'm saying like that's a cool use case.
13:41
You're trying to understand how a piece of furniture is going to fit into your room.
13:47
>> I don't >> I can I I do that >> uh mentally >> when I'm doing >> you do it >> like if I'm doing an interior design project I might >> need that but that's like a specific moment in time.
13:59
>> Yeah, >> maybe once every couple years at most for a lot of people. >> Yeah.
14:04
>> Um I feel like >> you know some people are kind of constantly adding furniture here and there, but a lot of people it's kind of you set it and forget it.
14:10
Uh >> so yeah, very very like >> again unclear why this is something you would want on your face all the time. glasses.
14:21
I'm I'm googling Robert Dairo's casino glasses.
14:24
Yeah, these are pretty pretty bulky.
14:27
Here, we can we we can share this in the chat here. Boom. Pull those up. Uh let's continue.
14:32
So, um you can buy rangefinders for around 150 bucks. They're not fragile.
14:38
Also, a lot of golf a lot of golf heads, they're out there for more than the battery life.
14:44
They're more they're out there for more than three three and a half hours.
14:45
Three and a half hours might be enough for nine on a busy course.
14:48
They're doing six hours out there sometimes.
14:50
You don't want to be out there with your going the reality glasses and they die on you.
14:53
Uh, are DIYers going to drop this much money just so they can have easy access tips for their home projects?
14:58
Are startups going to be willing to drop 2K for every employee who wants to collaborate in AR?
15:04
All of these are examples touted on Snap Specs page as things you can do with the glasses and the features do seem super cool.
15:11
It's just hard to imagine uh any one of them justifying a 2K price tag, especially because they look painful to wear.
15:17
And so that's your point about killer features. I I disagree.
15:18
I I I I don't think that these products need a killer feature.
15:23
I think the original killer feature of the iPhone was the phone.
15:26
Like people were already carrying phones and the iPhone was like we we we debated this before, but it it it it had some call dropping problems, but it was a replacement for your dumb phone. Yeah.
15:38
And then the fact that it also was an iPod was an was an extra feature.
15:40
And then the fact that it was an internet browser was another feature, but it replaced like very very basic things.
15:49
And >> my thing is like I don't think as cool as the tech is, I don't think the tech is ready to be a daily driver computer. >> Yeah.
15:55
Well, I I think it needs to replace a very a very regular everyday interaction thing like a screen.
16:00
And so that's why I still think VR is like a replacement for the home theater, maybe a replacement for the 80inch TV, but 80inch TVs are like 500 bucks now.
16:08
And so you got to get it to be better and you got to have enough for everyone in your household to have one and it's got to be a better experience.
16:17
But in that world, >> the other challenge is like a lot of these I mean like a lot of these use cases I don't feel like are that aligned to Snapchat's user base.
16:27
>> And that's like the biggest like a $2,000 >> a $2,000 device doesn't really align to their >> what I believe is their core >> demo. Yeah.
16:37
And so Google Capital Blo asking the question, how did this happen?
16:42
Uh do you know how deeply broken a culture has to be to ship this product and let the CEO walk around like this?
16:47
Again, I don't think they look that bad, but there is uh this question of uh you know uh is this a serious product?
16:53
The fashion part must be addressed first.
16:55
I guess the taste memo never made it to snap if you're enough of a dork to have these on your face and you won't even get the chance to say may I meet you. Wow.
17:05
People are uh very very upset about these.
17:07
Uh JB says, "I think I legit think this may be the first product ever to hit the market and not sell a single unit." That's ridiculous.
17:13
They're going to sell a few to people that want to demo them.
17:17
There's there's fans that buy every product.
17:19
Palmer Lucky has a collection of augmented VR glasses.
17:20
You know, the collectors will get them.
17:22
Uh >> let's pull pull up this post from a Capital uh because this might be a >> Yeah, if we can watch this.
17:29
This this actually might be the killer feature, honestly.
17:33
>> Thanks for joining us here today.
17:33
You're wearing your new specs you just unveiled. They cost $2,95.
17:41
The stock's down more than 5%.
17:44
>> The sound effect, >> the sound mix is really good.
17:48
>> Thanks for joining us here today.
17:48
You're wearing your new >> The sound mix.
17:51
The fact that her voice gets quieter when you go inside the headset is really what does this >> so so funny. >> The smile.
17:59
Uh I I feel I feel really bad for the Snap team.
18:08
>> I I think this I I think like the I want them to win, but I don't I I don't think this launch will get them the level of traction that they're going to need. Yeah.
18:21
To justify further investment. Yeah.
18:23
>> Is my current >> view. Unless you're >> Yeah.
18:26
Unless uh you know, Spiegel just doesn't care and you know continues to double double or triple down, which is totally possible.
18:35
>> But I think at at a normal company, uh this would this would kind of be the the last shot. >> It's tough.
18:42
You're competing with uh >> like these hyperefficient Chinese companies.
18:47
There's this company XRel. We demoed this.
18:49
Uh I got a pair for Tyler. Took them for a spin.
18:52
They're not quite there, but they're way cheaper.
18:54
Uh you're looking at a couple hundred and you get uh a screen that's like not even really augmented reality.
19:03
It's sort of like sunglasses with a screen screen inside, but then it projects like a 200inch TV in front of you.
19:10
And uh these are actually sort of it's more chopping at the daily use cases and less doing like frontier technology.
19:20
So, uh, you can play video games on them because you just plug the HDMI from the Xbox into the device and then you just have a big screen in front of you.
19:32
And if you don't have a TV with you for mobile gaming, there's a whole bunch of different things.
19:36
You could watch movies on it, do do the basic things that people do with screens.
19:40
And I think that uh Xreel is on a a path to like commoditizing this in a pretty significant way where it's not >> not to mention meta rayband displays are $7. 99. >> Yeah.
19:54
>> And I'm sure I do believe that these have more quite a bit like more features functionality.
20:00
They have a bigger developer network.
20:01
But a lot of the a lot of the killer features of like ondemand AI, instantiating a generative UI, answering a question for you, that can be done with a Call of Duty HUD. That can be done.
20:13
>> All all this like again it's it's cool, but I cannot I don't know anyone >> that would do this >> and you face this crazy cold start problem where the developers don't make anything because there aren't that many users.
20:27
Like I was I was uh you know we were talking about this with YC yesterday.
20:31
It is so crazy that even in the era of vibe coding and software being like free, we're not seeing uh breakout Apple Vision Pro development like the Apple Vision Pro, which I need to bring in for Scott. He wants to demo it.
20:44
uh comes with a really really impressive demo where it it finds all the walls and then one of the walls opens up and is a portal and and through the wall you see this like dinosaur land.
20:57
You'd love it as a dinosaur expert. Kids love it.
20:58
And then a dinosaur comes through the portal, comes into your uh it's like a velociaptor type thing.
21:05
Um >> let's double check that.
21:06
and uh and uh a butterfly lands on your finger and it feels like like it almost you almost feel it because it's so it's like tracking your hand and lands very cool.
21:18
Uh it's like a fiveminute demo that the Apple team clearly worked very hard on.
21:22
That feels like something that could be expanded on very cheaply in the age of vibe coding and yet uh no one sees it as an economic opportunity.
21:29
Developers are just they'd rather build an app for the iOS app store and so no one's really going there to compete.
21:36
So, while these demos look really cool, where's the ecosystem going to come from if they're not selling millions and millions of units and uh people are are are ready to purchase games or you know see ads or do anything that could monetize a business built on the back of this platform.
21:52
It's a very very tricky proposition to get a platform like this up and running.
21:55
Uh anyway, let me tell you about Shopify.
22:01
Shopify is a commerce platform that grows with your business and lets you sell in seconds online, in store, on mobile, on social, on marketplaces, and now with AI agents.
22:07
And Harley had some big news uh today.
22:10
We can play video from Shopify later in the show.
22:12
But uh David Holes is saying you'll want to see this.
22:16
They're announcing their first hardware project tomorrow, which is today at 6 PM.
22:19
I believe Tyler from our team will be in attendance checking it out, reporting back.
22:24
Stay tuned for a live stream of our Inerson launch event in San Francisco.
22:28
If you're in town and want invite, reply below.
22:30
There's a few slots left, so go check it out if you're in S.
22:34
>> Yeah, it's interesting.
22:34
Um, you know, this this hardware project, I guess in some ways, is probably funded by by Meta and and the licensing deal they have.
22:45
>> Uh, the other thing about Midjourney, privately held company, right?
22:48
They haven't >> they don't have like tens of thousands of shareholders that have lost money on the business.
22:54
And so it's almost like pure upside.
22:56
Whereas I think like part of the reaction to the negative reaction to Snap >> is like looking at all the comment looking at all the people you know sharing negative things.
23:06
>> I can imagine like 90% of those people have like owned the stock at some point or another have lost money on it and so they're just like already inclined to have like kind of a negative view on anything the company does and not not give the leadership the benefit of the doubt really in any way at all.
23:21
So, um, but very very excited for this and, uh, hardware is hard, but, uh, I think the more the more shots on goal, the better. >> Yeah.
23:30
Uh, well, the other story that's burning up the timeline is Taste Labs put the timeline in turmoil, people going back and forth.
23:37
So, yesterday, a former Exa AI Labs founding team member introduced her startup, Taste Labs, whose mission is to end AI slop.
23:46
Uh, quote, "This requires turning a fuzzy subjective domain into something we can measure and codify.
23:54
We're starting with design," her post says.
23:57
More specifically, taste is says they're working with Frontier AI labs to improve their models along taste lines through data labeling and app layer startups to improve the aesthetics of their products.
24:08
This has been a critique of of vibecoded projects.
24:10
They all sort of look the same.
24:12
Um, of course there are examples of really cool projects, but uh people were starting to say, "Oh, this has like the vibe code look to it."
24:19
Uh, or this model's not good at front end, etc.
24:24
Um, her goal is to fix that.
24:24
Uh, Tai's post, her post was immediate, immediately went viral, generating tons of opinions on X and getting over a million views in 24 hours.
24:34
People's main complaint is basically, you can't program taste.
24:38
It's impossible, they say.
24:40
Uh but the steel man is that a the AI aesthetic AI's aesthetic output can be improved and that it's perfectly reasonable for a startup to try and capitalize on that uh opportunity.
24:50
I want to talk to you about taste about your your feed. Is it scalable? Is it not?
24:58
Give me uh take me through some of the uh the the critiques here.
25:00
Tell me what resonates with you and then I have a a take about where the business is.
25:08
>> So I think the main thing is all this >> main thing is people have uh taste fatigue.
25:13
>> They don't want to hear that word anymore. Yeah.
25:15
I don't want to hear that word >> for the last six months maybe last year it's been like the the the code word like what will we do when the AI can do all the technical stuff?
25:24
Well, we'll have the taste. >> Yeah.
25:27
and and and so yeah, I think there's fatigue around the usage of the word the even the conversation.
25:31
Uh I I we've never even like waited that deeply into the conversation and I'd like to keep it that way.
25:40
But the critique just to set the the the table on the critique like a lot of people outside of tech are critiquing it because a lot of SF people in tech are saying taste is so important and the outsiders don't see San Francisco tech as being particularly tasteful people from a fashion perspective from an art perspective or or curation perspective.
26:01
It's sort of known as the t-shirts and athleisure community and that's it's sort of it's it's optimized.
26:10
It's devoid of taste by design.
26:12
It's about efficiency, not taste. >> Yeah.
26:15
And then and then uh I'll say one more thing and then uh and then I'll I'll steal man taste labs.
26:20
Um but uh so the main thing is like when I think of when I think of like taste like like product taste like I think of like linear, right?
26:30
like linear who's like always been very opinionated, >> very quality driven.
26:36
>> Uh they want to grow quickly because of how great the product is.
26:38
how great the product is. uh like you know very very design driven like that is a company that I think generally has very high you know good taste right >> uh the problem is when you have good taste and people pick up on it they just start sort of just like blanket like copying you right so then
26:56
>> there's an entire generation of companies that just look like linear right from their website to the actual product >> um and so taste is something that >> people curate themselves >> but And uh the the as soon as it's copied then it's like fundamentally like not tasteful in my in my view right then it's not original. >> Um I think taste has you know you need
27:18
>> Um I think taste has you know you need some originality and to be able to combine uh combine you know do 1 plus 1 equals 2.
27:27
>> Um >> and another example is like >> isn't 1 plus 1 equals 3. >> Sorry sorry sorry.
27:31
1 plus 1 equals 1 plus 1 >> + 1 equals 11. >> 1 plus 1 equals 2. That's that's the ad.
27:37
Um, >> oh yeah, [laughter] >> that big startup path. Um, no.
27:38
So, uh, another example is like Squarespace.
27:44
Like Squarespace took like >> high-end website design and then just democratized it, monetized it, right?
27:50
Anybody could have a pretty website.
27:50
And then you started to just I would just look like, okay, is this a Squarespace website or did this person make it?
27:57
Okay, it's a Squarespace website.
27:57
like and not it's not really that much of a knock, but like that it wasn't like the the company's own taste that led to that output or or the people that they worked with.
28:08
Uh so it commoditizes really quickly and then it ceases to be tasteful.
28:12
That being said, uh just helping >> AI labs create better looking outputs >> and working on that problem feels like a pretty good way to get to build a at least temporarily a pretty big business because this is something that users really care about, the labs really care about, hyperscalers even care about, right?
28:35
Um, and so I think that while >> Taste Labs, uh, you know, got a lot of flack over the last 24 hours, >> they probably their pipeline probably exploded and I bet they get a ton of business out of it.
28:47
And very unclear what what this business looks like in, you know, five years like a lot of the other um, companies in the category, but uh, I bet they I bet they print in the short term.
28:59
>> Yeah, I feel like a lot of the training data data labeling.
29:01
So the name the name is like kind of perfect age babe taste labs.
29:06
We're building >> taste >> taste >> in a lab. >> We built it. We made it. >> Yeah.
29:13
It is funny because you could do the inverse and say our job is to just identify things that are not tasteful and the end product would be exactly the same because you're just that's just your negative data set and everything else is positive by that design.
29:27
Um, but a lot of the data labeling projects have just been does the button work?
29:34
Does the does this render properly?
29:38
Like is this just is this functional?
29:40
And some of that's been able to be, you know, looped in a reinforcement learning environment.
29:47
Some of it's been able to be encoded just tagging.
29:49
Okay, does the does the photo have six fingers or five fingers?
29:54
Like that was a useful useful piece of data labeling that happened. probably two years ago.
30:00
two years ago. Now there's a bigger question about what actually looks good and then how do you represent like a diversity of tasteful designs such that you everything does just doesn't collapse into like the new corporate
30:14
Memphis and everything that's AI generated has the exact same flavor like the it's not this it's that but for design would be the bad >> yeah which is like already extremely easy to clock >> right now >> and uh I got a deck uh last night
30:31
>> uh friend of mine company and my first piece of feedback is like are you okay with everyone knowing that you didn't put any effort into design [laughter] >> because it's totally possible the answer is yes >> but at least you should go into your
30:45
fund raise process knowing that everyone is going to know that you tried to oneshot this >> um which again for some businesses is fine and some investors is fine but it's going to turn some people off. Yeah. Uh Yeah.
30:57
Uh yeah, people are going all back and forth on this.
31:02
This highlights a fundamental misunderstanding in tech.
31:04
Not everything can be codified and analyzed.
31:06
Even if you make AI imitate taste, whatever that means, it still won't mean anything.
31:10
Taste emerges from craft, context, meaning, subjectivity, and genuine care. Uh that's sort of true.
31:16
But uh just just increasing the quality of design is valuable.
31:20
Uh but yes, it is it is a it's a tall order uh when you use the word taste because so much baggage has been assigned to that.
31:30
Well, you know what the most tasteful database is? It's MongoDB.
31:34
What's the only thing faster than the AI market?
31:37
Your business on MongoDB. Don't just build AI.
31:39
Own the data platform that powers it.
31:41
Um you know what else is tasteful?
31:44
Chris Larson from Ripple has been buying an absolute absurd amount of cars recently.
31:48
He got an F1 GT-R, a 918 Spider, a P1, a T50, an Enzo, a Sesto, an Aesto Elemento.
31:55
Has probably spent like 50 million on cars in the past year.
32:00
I think it's more than 50 million if you total all those up.
32:03
>> The P1 he has is insane. >> Where is that? Is that in the comments? >> It's green. It's a green on tan P1. >> Green on tan. Looking good. Post them all.
32:14
They're on the Cesario collection on Instagram. Wow.
32:19
Yeah, the dark green is a good good good image.
32:21
Uh this is quite the collection that's emerging. Um well, very tasteful.
32:27
You can go check it out on Instagram. Uh because we love that.
32:32
>> Speaking of I mean taste in Silicon Valley >> would could be a Mansour body kit on a on a Model 3 because that says kind of like this high low approach.
32:40
It says like I'm practical.
32:41
I want a car that gets me to point A to point B. >> Yeah.
32:46
>> But I want to look I want to look good.
32:48
sort of like it it's a metaphor for taking like a sort of slopfilled base model and then stuffing taste down it with a bunch of fine-tuning >> because everyone when they think of Mansori they think of like you know really high taste >> maybe depends who will be doing the
33:03
labeling will it be Mansori people uh there's also a bunch of back and forth going on about uh Netflix uh buying Lionsgate potentially uh sources familiar with the matter disputed semaphors reporting there was a back there was a whole bunch of back and forth about is Netflix going to buy something else? Were they in the bidding
33:19
Were they in the bidding war for uh Roku?
33:21
Uh and uh they're taking shots at each other.
33:26
Uh Semaphore, what you got?
33:28
Ben Smith says, "Congratul congrats on helping with the cleanup."
33:32
They could have gone to Variety and chose you.
33:33
I'm not even sure what this mean tweet means, Sharon.
33:37
Clean up on Isisle Seaphore, my dear Ben.
33:39
All I'm saying is they're now saying on the record that they're not interested in Lionsgate. Never were.
33:45
would have been happy to amplify your scoop, too. They're fighting. They're fighting.
33:49
The timeline's in turmoil.
33:51
Anyway, we have the perfect person to discuss journalistic timeline and turmoil, back and forth. I don't know.
33:59
[laughter] We have Eric Newcomer from Newcomer.
34:00
He's the founder and writer. Welcome to the show. How are you doing there? >> Finally. >> Finally. I'm so sorry. First, first apologies. It's been way too long.
34:08
You know, I've been dead cat. I'm not kidding.
34:12
I' I've listened to every episode and you've been on an absolute terror and I'm sorry that we went back and forth.
34:17
We both barely live in Instagram or in Twitter DMs and so every our our chats are just like, "Yeah, let's do it."
34:23
And then like five days later, "Oh, sorry I dropped it. Oh, sorry I dropped it."
34:26
But anyway, I'm glad you're here. How you doing >> here? Here we are.
34:28
You know, I tweeted this is a big moment for me.
34:30
And literally, I'm having Ben Smith record my podcast tomorrow.
34:33
So, couldn't have been a better [laughter] >> You can get to the bottom of it.
34:37
>> I haven't even dug into this.
34:37
So, it's like you're giving me uh notes to ask him about.
34:41
You got to ask him the hard questions.
34:43
What happened with the minor scoop around >> you have Lionsgate?
34:46
I I really I we were saying that when the show kicked off like >> generational run >> generational run with uh and and uh I when I listened to your show I I'm like taking notes cuz [laughter] like you you actually have a really I was calling you like the matador you with like you're with like a bull and you're trying to get them to like kind of run at you but then they run at you and they and you sidestep it. >> It's really good.
35:13
>> It's really good >> and it's just I don't know.
35:14
>> and it's just I don't know. Do you feel like you o you occupy like an interesting space because I feel like you're not some like tech optimist pumper insider right like you have you know what six years in at Bloomberg serious journalistic chops uh but then you interact with people who come at you with like crazy anti-tech takes and
35:36
you're able to sort of like play the pro tech guy in some ways like what is going on >> confusing sometimes you know I'm someone who came up through journalism you know I was the last guy in through the normal like I was in my hometown paper, the Mon Telegraph, Suns Sentinel, Tampa Bay Times, New York Times just like interning my way up just doing the journalism thing. Thank god Jessica Leon
35:54
Thank god Jessica Leon brought me to work for the information.
35:58
I was the first employee so it was like oh Silicon Valley thing. Very interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
36:02
And so I was working out of her like apartment in Dolores Park. Cool.
36:06
And then I yeah worked at Bloomberg for six years and >> you know started to really get Silicon Valley.
36:13
And so when I launched Newcomer I did write that I wanted contrarian optimism.
36:17
You know, I felt like I started my time as a tech reporter >> being more negative than most because that was the era of, you know, sort of the gadget blogger and then by the end of my time at Bloomberg, we had sort of the infiltration of uh, you know, the political reporter who was really gunning for Facebook or whatever.
36:32
And so it went from everybody's too soft, everyone's too negative.
36:37
And I really just wanted to write for like your audience, you know, people in Silicon Valley, people who got it, didn't want to have to explain who Mark Andre and Ben, you know, Bill Gurley were, and just sort of write for the people.
36:50
And sometimes that's positive, sometimes that's negative.
36:52
Puts me in a sort of weird situation sometimes.
36:55
>> So I I feel like uh I'm also having trouble putting you in a bucket as like commentary, interviewer, scoop master, scoop athlete.
37:05
you get some scoops, but it's not the only thing that you do.
37:08
Like, we talk to a lot of people who are just great yappers and they've never gotten a scoop and that's fine and they have great commentary and they can talk about anything. It's amazing.
37:17
And then there's other people who are just great interviewers and they every week they're delivering like the best guest.
37:21
And then there's other people who are the scoop athletes and you never really hear them give a take or their opinion, but they're like pestering everyone in signal all day long, I suppose.
37:29
Um, but is that by design?
37:31
Is that something you see like fragmenting over time as you build the organization?
37:35
Like what is there a method to the madness or is it just like you enjoy all three things?
37:38
So you down >> there sort of ch you know you do best what you enjoy.
37:43
I've never heard anyone call me an athlete before a scoop athlete.
37:46
Um the uh scoop dog I think scoop to say you know we're essential reading.
37:52
I think the best takes are ones where you know you go talk to people who know and then you [laughter] it's not just like I made this up.
37:58
It's like, yeah, I talk to people. It's going to be right.
38:02
You know, I want my predictions to come true.
38:03
I think the best coverage, you know, doesn't just sound smart today.
38:07
You know, you look back and you're like, oh, we were saying Google was undervalued when the stock, you know, wasn't getting the credit.
38:13
You know, you want to feel like we were right.
38:15
Like look back and read the record and that's how you build a reputation. >> Financial advice.
38:19
[laughter] >> I want I want people to make money.
38:20
>> I want I want people to make money. I wanted to I just not you know that's not the goal but I want people to read it and they make more money and so it feels like it's worth subscribing but yeah we do we do whatever we want you know it's it's newcomer it's >> diversity in the content from a personality driven but you do have other folks on staff and then also diversity
38:40
of revenue streams right ads subscriptions and events like was that deliberate on day one I feel like a lot of [laughter] people focus like I don't know it's interesting it's worked but it's like it feels contrarian in the new
38:52
media sense because most people will just be like, "Oh, I want to be like Ben Thompson only subscriptions or TVPN's only ads or someone's like really in the conference business or they do that like way later." It feels like you were able
39:02
It feels like you were able to land three planes simultaneously pretty quickly.
39:08
>> Uh yeah, I mean today event sponsorship is our main revenue stream with newsletter subscriptions being our second largest.
39:15
I mean, I did the Substack thing in 2020 in the pandemic and it was like, this seems like fun.
39:24
Finally, something in startup world applies to me. I'll jump on that.
39:25
And I was one of the top tech substacks.
39:28
2023, I had not jumped on crypto, right?
39:31
Like I'm sort of a crypto hater.
39:33
But 2023, I'm like, I don't know, Chad GBT, this seems real.
39:37
You know, [laughter] this is actually the tech trend that people have been waiting for and not something that was like getting jenned up.
39:42
So I had access to a beautiful office in Hayes Valley.
39:47
My friends now their company is weekend.
39:49
We put on the first cerebral valley AI summit and it was just sort of like this worked.
39:53
People were enthusiastic.
39:54
You know Ali connected with Naveen Route Mosaic Mamel acquired the company for $1. 3 billion.
39:59
You don't get better press than that you know business insider put in a beautiful headline you know and so we're off to the races.
40:08
We're literally doing our midyear cereal valley AI summit in London uh next week. So ramping up for that.
40:14
So yeah, it's events, subscriptions, trying to I'm out I'm out hustling, trying to follow your uh sponsorship playbook.
40:21
So if you want to put in a good word for people, the newcomer all around like I mean the mid the the the or the pre-roll or the midroll host red ad in your podcast I think would do very well.
40:35
And I and I I mean I I I like that it there's no ads when you're sparring with somebody, but uh you did have the mic drop at the end of the at the [laughter] end of the Ed Zitron episode, which I very much enjoyed.
40:46
And uh yeah, if you had snuck an ad in there, I would have been like, you earned it, you know, would have been good.
40:51
Anyway, um talk about about how you're thinking about covering some of the big stories right now.
40:58
like SpaceX is is dominating the news, but it's an interesting company to cover because Elon's like one of the first like go direct CEOs.
41:06
He doesn't do a lot of like management interviews.
41:08
You you don't really like do interviews with other people.
41:11
Like we have somebody from uh we have a VP of Agentic AI from AWS coming on the show.
41:16
They're happy to talk and down the stack.
41:17
You don't get that access at SpaceX necessarily.
41:19
Um how do you think about what your audience wants to hear from you on SpaceX?
41:26
I mean they yeah they control their own social media network.
41:28
They can publish directly.
41:30
What >> apparently they're not doing SEC filings or something.
41:33
Do [laughter] you see they're not doing conference calls?
41:34
I think they'll do the filings but they'll just put it on X. It's hilarious.
41:39
>> Um I mean for the most part the newsletter really covers you know earlier stage startups.
41:44
Um on our sort of Friday is like a step back and so we cover SpaceX a lot there.
41:50
I mean, all this money is about to flow into Silicon Valley.
41:54
So, just the everybody getting rich and that being great for the startup ecosystem is definitely one theme and who's getting rich and who got in early is certainly important to us.
42:04
And then, yeah, we can't help ourselves but say this is like madness.
42:06
I feel like even people buying the shares, >> oh yeah, >> you know, know that it's sort of a part psychological stock where it's like, well, is there other money that's going to come in that's going to boost this thing up?
42:18
And it, you know, as someone who's fairly bullish on anthropic and open AI to some degree, like SpaceX just feels like total lunacy given the sort of insane TAM story that you have to believe.
42:31
So yeah, you're getting some of our commentary that it feels feels somewhat ludicrous, but trying to root it in the S1 and just keeping it in the numbers to the extent possible. It seems >> valable.
42:41
>> valable. do some reporting on where uh where the SpaceX employees are going to be uh doing their you know upcoming purchasing activities [laughter] there's variety no there's like there's there's uh there's like a variety of like communities where
42:58
>> are you going to say the one you're thinking of >> if you look at them there's only a few homes listed and I'm like I knowing like I I was there's like a there's a car club uh this uh this this racetrack and it's called Willow Springs it's an old racetrack. They're putting a car club
43:11
They're putting a car club there.
43:13
Uh I I I know for a fact that a bunch of them are signing up there.
43:16
I'm a little bit uh I'm a little bit nervous that there's that uh I share too many I share too many interests with the SpaceXed out by these >> and um >> um one one less I guess serious question.
43:32
Do you think mocking VCs should be illegal?
43:34
[laughter] Because there's been a little bit of a of a some drama on the timeline.
43:40
>> Or do you think in in in if you take if you major in venture capital in college, they should teach you about the Stryand effect? >> Yeah.
43:46
Yeah, that might be another one.
43:47
>> No, but there's been some drama on the timeline this week with with VC Braggs.
43:51
And I'm just I'm wondering, you know, Silicon Valley has a lot of power in Washington right now.
43:55
And I'm wondering if now is the time to push to make it just straight up illegal to [laughter] >> end the scourge. Like it's it just Yeah.
44:04
Um you know, I you know, we we we tweak venture capitalists.
44:07
I guess venture capitalists.
44:09
I guess I'm humorous humorless on this.
44:11
Um >> yeah, I don't know.
44:13
I BC always needs to be better at taking taking criticism.
44:16
Sometimes you're up, sometimes you're down.
44:18
It's like better to be in the mix like in some ways the SAS you know gets helps you clean up your message a little bit.
44:24
So I'm I'm always uh >> sorry SAS SS not SAS.
44:30
It's like [laughter] s I I mean that that that does get to something else which is like do you are do you get AI fatigue like we do sometimes where we're like oh like the snap spectacles thing we spend 20 minutes on at the top of the show and like is it the most consequential story consequential technology it's an 8 billion company
44:49
it's a new consumer product but it's something that's like tangible that at least you can like dig into how how do you how do how do you uh balance like what is tangible and interesting to the to the reader with where the market cap is actually moving which might be at the frontier labs or the data bricks of the world that's a little more abstract. >> I feel so lucky to cover venture capital
45:10
>> I feel so lucky to cover venture capital because you get to cover interesting stuff that makes a lot of money, right?
45:16
Like I could I I could write about oil and gas and it's like you'd follow the dollars but it's like super boring.
45:19
So >> to me venture is already >> pretty exciting.
45:24
like writing about AI, you get to talk about >> artificial general intelligence and like whether it's sentient and these have like it has real like business consequences.
45:33
So I don't really get tired of the AI story.
45:35
I mean certainly AI is dominating, you know, basically all the investment activities.
45:40
So it becomes a huge focus of ours.
45:42
So no, I'm less likely to get dragged into the snap spectacle stuff.
45:48
spectacle stuff. I mean it's always fun to watch for new hardware but just this this question of you know our workers getting totally disrupted will you know change the course of American business we have these enormous IPOs so it's one of the more enjoyable times to be a
46:05
business reporter where the stuff you want to write about which is a new intelligence being birthed by Silicon Valley >> matches you know the market caps and what's interesting and so following the money for the most part has been you know a super gratifying story And so we tend we tend to stay pretty focused on that. >> How are you answering that question of
46:22
>> How are you answering that question of like job displacement?
46:23
Obviously there's like economic numbers.
46:25
There's also just sort of reverting back to like your own personal experience like are you seeing competition on Substack from like slop farms like uh >> definitely. Yeah.
46:36
I think Tim Ferrris just wrote about at least one guy clearly ranked above me who's using AI to write the stuff which is just fascinating.
46:45
Um, and where does that leave like like have you have you have you uh grappled with like what the response is because it feels like the the like the scoops are very very protected in the or like AI resistant but maybe uh you know history or breaking down or analyzing a taking a press release that's already out there synthesizing some data in history that's maybe a little bit more commoditized but how are you grappling with it?
47:10
Yeah, I mean I think coming from a perspective being a person.
47:15
So transcending just a writing style but it is literally >> someone in a publication is accountable is >> defensible.
47:25
Um but certainly as the sort of writing quality of AI gets better and better.
47:30
I'm I'm not ruling out the possibility that it's super disruptive.
47:35
Yeah, like you said, scoops.
47:35
I think the sense that, you know, the information is coming from real humans that like I'm in the business of knowing what other humans are thinking is fairly defensible.
47:46
Um, but you know, we're using AI to build, you know, like our ticketing platform for our events. >> Sure.
47:55
>> One one of my reporters was talking about using it just to build his own like story tracker.
47:59
I I think we're trying to be creative.
48:02
Like I'm I don't want sort of AI written stuff in our stories, but I do sort of have ex existential questions about, you know, like the fifth sentence in the third paragraph. >> Yeah.
48:15
>> AI puts out a better version than you are going to spend the time to do.
48:17
Is it really a disservice to readers that you went in and like punched that up?
48:21
And I, you know, I think it it's probably good for readers.
48:25
So, it's hard to have this super hard line of all human written stuff because we certainly want it for it's a great copy editor.
48:32
You know, I pay a human copy editor, but still I run >> uh stuff through Claude and it's amazing how much it's catching both, you know, it'll catch like million billion type errors, math, and obviously all sorts of minor typos.
48:46
So >> yeah, I'm imagining that like I I I I feel no uh like sadness about you never writing the line they declined to comment ever again.
48:57
Like I it is it is fine if that is it can be a Python script.
49:02
It doesn't even need to be geni.
49:03
It can just be like an if statement because that line is in so many news articles.
49:08
We can have we could have ones that's like take out all the preuncter lines of stories that they feel inclined to put and you can you know >> I would like a lot of time.
49:15
Uh >> when you think about disruption for for like a newsletter, media business, however, how however you want to describe it, the the only person that I think would actually be able to compete like you weirdly need like a network. You need like trust.
49:32
You need like trust. you need like you need there there's so much like information that I would say informs your work and and other um other journalists that that run similar businesses that's just like not anywhere online like it truly only exists in you
49:50
know a small like group chat or or places like that and so the question is like I don't think a fully I don't think AI can like actually dis like somebody with AI that is able to build up the trust in the network and the kind of understanding of the space. Yeah, that
50:05
Yeah, that person is like if they're willing to just use more AI than you and like they don't care about like the slop allegations or whatever, then maybe they have some type of advantage.
50:14
But I still feel like more than uh more than ever there's so much information that that uh you need to run a great media business that is not anywhere on the internet. It's not in podcast. It's not on X.
50:26
It's you just have to go actually talk to people.
50:31
We we play nice with R for rock, but honestly it's you know people in the industry giving it away for free.
50:34
You know the desperation for basically content marketing meaning that some people do a good job of taking sort of their data and using it to to get attention.
50:47
Like you think about I don't know um I don't know Ramps AI spend data or something. >> Yeah.
50:53
Like that stuff you know used to be sort of the fodder of like a Wall Street Journal type story.
50:58
And so to some degree, I think everyone being smarter that they need to have actually like great content to get people to pay attention >> is is uh one of the vectors of attack, not attack on media, but just competitive. >> Yeah.
51:12
Like walk me through the the ramp AI spend is like an example of like going direct in the sense that they publish it themselves, they tweet about it, they go on podcasts about it.
51:20
uh the ADP jobs data just gets released on a newswire and then contextualized by the Wall Street Journal.
51:28
But if ADP all of a sudden hired some really charismatic employee to go on podcast, that would be like the same effect.
51:37
>> You know, the old way of doing it would be you try to embargo it to a couple outlets and so they felt like they were really getting something.
51:43
then their readers feel that this is a differentiated thing that they're receiving and incrementally more reason to subscribe to that publication.
51:50
And so >> so it it used to be a dance that you'd basically be giving the media sort of favor and sort of unique access that that we sort of lose over time. >> I have a question.
52:02
Do you uh 10 years from now would you can you imagine having you know >> 10 20 journalists on staff joining joining forces you know sort of rebundling or do you like being unbundled?
52:16
I I mean, you know, I have, you know, Maline Renbarer, Tom Do, Jonathan Weber writing for me now, and they're sort of a core part of what Newcomer is today.
52:25
And certainly, you know, with unlimited resources, part of what I want to spend the money on is great journalism, good reporting.
52:32
And it's sort of it's amazing that you know most cynically like our content marketing for events is profitable, generates subscription revenue, people demonstrate real value, you know, it's like you the the journalism provides sort of a great way to remind people about the amazing events we're putting on.
52:48
And so I think it's super synergistic.
52:50
So yeah, I'd love to keep building up a newsroom, but I don't really believe in a sort of rebundling of substacks. like part of it.
52:59
We're all building separate brands.
53:01
You know, newcomer has its own brand proposition and a lot of the other subs people like just are sort of, you know, I love Lenny is like crushing it, right?
53:11
But it's a very different thing focused on product managers.
53:13
And so if you even look at tech and business substacks, we're so different that I've never really been a believer that there's going to be a rebundling in that sense.
53:22
But some publications like the free press or the ankler or myself get to a level of scale where we become start to look more like publications.
53:30
>> Yeah, it certainly didn't really happen on YouTube.
53:31
Like there are a whole bunch of different creators and Mr.
53:33
Beast has a whole team and offshoot channels but with the Mr.
53:38
Beast brand and the promise and the editing and but but they it was never like oh Mr.
53:42
Beast is going to roll up other creators because that's not the way the the the setup is working.
53:46
Uh talk to me about Mafia.
53:49
I think we agree that we don't need other venture capital firms with game shows, but >> don't cop copy TVPN. Do a new thing. Exactly.
53:59
And and I love that for that reason.
54:00
Uh but do we need a game show with just journalist uh competitors?
54:06
Like an American Ninja Warrior with just Substackers.
54:08
What do you think about that pitch? >> Or Nitro Circus.
54:11
>> Nitro Circus would be good.
54:13
>> I'm not building my business around it. I'm happy to go on.
54:16
>> You participate >> as Yeah. Yeah. Sign me up.
54:18
But as you guys know, the challenge of media is sustaining it, right?
54:23
Like I mean, and kudos to Mike Salana at Pirrow Wires.
54:28
Obviously, he's delivering day in and day out. He gets it.
54:29
But I do think for like show concepts, it's fun to get excited about the idea, but the business is in the long term, like is there variety?
54:38
Do you have something great day in and day out?
54:40
in and day out? So some of these things it's like yeah when you have you know the top people you'd want for a mafia show it's exciting but is there like fifth episode with you know the Ctier founders is much of a sort of much wa mustwatch on on >> but that's what's interesting about mafia is that it's not a new company
55:00
it's not an enterprise that needs to sustain it can be just >> a fun thing >> a fun thing that goes as long as it needs to doesn't overstay its welcome because it's not this self-pro because they 60 billion in SpaceX [laughter] coming to to hire some camera crews if they need, you know, like that that that is the nature of like >> I'm glad they did the production. I
55:18
I haven't watched I I have not watched the full thing.
55:21
Tom Dotan on my team wrote wrote the piece, but I do think, you know, The Traders is so exaggerated and there's a reason for it.
55:29
I still I I'm not saying that I could host it that way, but there is a reason that Hollywood and the TV business is so exaggerated and I I think they still need to up it e even more the the sort of drama of it. >> Yeah. Yeah.
55:44
I I saw some people like uh chirping at the fact that like it only had 100,000 views on YouTube and I'm like that is insane for tech. That's insane.
55:54
and and like like who like like the the the the guest like who knows these people?
56:00
There's only a couple in >> tech world right [laughter] now.
56:03
>> There's only like a couple thousand founders that matter to a top tier venture capital firm.
56:07
There's only a couple founders that a couple thousand founders that even know who these people are.
56:12
Um of course like some of the contestants were bigger names but um but by and large these are insiders around the table.
56:20
Um, >> take founders funds money, but now that Trey is great, they're they're in. >> Yeah. Yeah, maybe.
56:26
[laughter] >> Uh, how how are you thinking about uh the evolution of the tier one?
56:31
It feels the tier one VC.
56:34
It feels like the tier one the tier one VCs of of you know when you started newcomer are not the same >> uh the same today. >> This is spicy.
56:44
This is the the question of all questions.
56:47
Um, I mean, I want to say first of all, I mean, I I would always I'd put Sequoia, I guess, number one to to answer the question. I think I wrote a piece.
56:57
>> Well, I'm not even telling you I'm I'm not even telling you like to to give me >> name them all.
57:02
>> Name them name them all, but but you're w you're welcome to, but this this will be a scoop for us.
57:08
>> This will be a scoop for us.
57:09
>> Who do I think are the top top two? No, no.
57:11
I I just mean like to me to me there's been a very like a very very material shift and no one has like really said it out loud.
57:18
Like there hasn't been I think you'd be in a position to actually do this because you have to go talk to the top hundred founders under $10 billion market cap or below and say like at series A you basically >> like make them choose who they would pick at every single round. you've done this, right?
57:38
>> And and there's been there's been some like random there's been some like random kind of like surveys and like games that you can play to try to get at it, but like I think if you actually had it like you were >> the core I've seen this idea on Twitter like and people who is the firm or who where's the real switch or who do you think >> the swap would be?
57:57
I just uh I think that there's a very re like at least when I talk to founders like founders want to work with uh not necessarily like other founders as in like a founder who had an IPO but they want to work with the founders of the firms and so there's like a new generation of like you know the thrives and the and the green oaks and things like that uh where where I see them as like really really >> is dominating.
58:29
They would they were certainly coming up soon on my list. >> Yeah.
58:32
And like and and you know when you get into a situation like hyper competitive like series A series B like those guys are like really sharks, right?
58:44
And like where do they where do they where do they you know fit in?
58:47
So >> the falloff of Arthur Rock, not our fur rock but the original Arthur Rock needs to be studied.
58:53
The guy uh funded Apple, Intel, absolutely insane portfolio.
58:56
Goes out investing with Bernie Maid off.
59:00
He gets outed for that in 2009.
59:02
There's a firm that really fell off [laughter] from the top.
59:08
>> Wait, did he did he just get screwed by Bernie or he was >> You got screwed.
59:11
>> It's not even that bad, but I don't know. Yeah.
59:13
I mean, how much do you think returns are going to drive this right in the cool venture story like getting an anthropic right now or obviously making much money on SpaceX?
59:24
It's like you look at Spark doing the round that people underestimated that that's clearly been really good for them.
59:31
I mean, Lightseed dumped a ton of money >> in and Menllo, you know, I think it was >> key key to them.
59:37
So there are firms where I think it's had a big impact on their reputation, but I don't know if that matches.
59:44
>> I think that's helpful.
59:44
I think that's helpful with LPS.
59:45
But like the reason that it's an interesting question is like okay, who has the best overall brands, right?
59:51
Who has like the most like halo?
59:53
How which which firms do founders actually want to work with, right?
59:58
Uh who has the mo who has like the most access to capital?
1:00:00
Like all these things factor in.
1:00:02
Who did like who did the the >> ELO?
1:00:05
Like if you between these two firms, which one are you picking?
1:00:08
>> Yeah, like people that bet on anthropic >> completely different thing from actually measuring the quality of the venture capital business that is being built and people still conflate two different goals.
1:00:20
One is the the sexy seed round to multi-billion dollar exit in a very short amount of time.
1:00:26
Uh cursor is a great example of like it's just classic venture capital.
1:00:31
You got in sub a billion.
1:00:33
You were out at 60 within 3 years.
1:00:35
It's just incredible venture capital, >> right?
1:00:39
Incredible venture capital.
1:00:42
>> But then, but then there's a different game where that investment returns three billion in three years.
1:00:46
And then there's a different one where you put 10 billion in a lab at 500 billion and it doubled and so you made more money.
1:00:53
And in the at the end of the game, these venture capital firms are businesses.
1:00:57
the job is to return cash flow like to create cash.
1:01:02
And so yeah, oh this fund had to raise more money.
1:01:05
That's not really a critique.
1:01:06
That's a critique of like what's the definition of venture capital?
1:01:10
Should we include growth stage investing in that?
1:01:12
Should we include your public business in there?
1:01:13
But like as a financeier, as an entrepreneur of a financial company, all you care about is how much cash are you returning to your investors and to your your GPS.
1:01:23
And so there's two very different games that are being played.
1:01:27
One is for clout and and credibility and the other is just how much raw cash is this business throwing off?
1:01:33
What's the value of the firm? >> Yeah.
1:01:35
And I look at it like when I when I in the in in the most simple view, I think about a a series A or a series B and a founder gets 10 term sheets hypothetically and then you run that and you ask, you know, a hundred founders that like who comes out in the top three.
1:01:53
That that to me is like the most interest because that's like a generally going to be a leading indicator for like who who has the most aura, you know, uh kind of >> the aura list, the newcomer aura, >> the newcomer aura list.
1:02:04
>> the newcomer aura list. the newcomer or >> we've done we did founders choice a while ago which was these guys right >> that was more like you know it was a little more like founder friendly experience >> we've published you know an LP did a survey of >> manager so we we try to there's so many
1:02:21
different ways to slice it and yeah I I mean getting great returns >> I think it has some impact on you know s you know you're have with founders founders like winners people are making a bunch of money but I agree that you can't just look at returns and say those are the ones that are going to get picked by. >> There's also an interesting dynamic
1:02:37
>> There's also an interesting dynamic particularly with Sequoia where for a long time they had a reputation as being like not particularly founder friendly.
1:02:45
I mean it is the genesis of founders fund is like the whole PayPal drop drama around Sequoia right and it's like what if there was a firm that was founder friendly and then that went off and happened and now you know obviously there's an entirely new team there. It's a new strategy.
1:02:57
But I talk to founders who are like, "Yeah, they're not friendly and I'm getting in the gladatorial arena with them."
1:03:03
Like, it's a lion and I'm going to ride it.
1:03:05
Like, and they're excited about that.
1:03:07
And they're like, "Yeah, if I don't put up insane returns, they're going to fire me. That's encouraging. Like, I need that. I need to grind harder."
1:03:15
And so there's this weird thing where if you're measuring just on like who will have your back unconditionally, there could be some really terrible venture capitalist out there who's not going to help you, but also never going to fire you and they're just kind of like, "Yeah, I gave you their dumb money."
1:03:28
But so there's a lot more to the shape of like the thing, but that adds aura, too, because like you can be I mean, we had Andrew Reed on the show and he said, "Squoya won't stab you in the back, we'll stab you in the front."
1:03:40
[laughter] I was like, "That is high aura from our lips."
1:03:44
I and and like I I mean I'm not in a position to raise money from SEGO right now, but like I was like I kind of want to work with Andrew like after that. That's great.
1:03:51
Like I like that and that is a good good defining line there. Anyway, I don't know.
1:03:56
>> Yeah, I think you know good founders like tough investors.
1:03:58
Um >> yeah, >> but yeah, I agree.
1:04:01
You know, uh competition and capitalism forced all these venture funds to realize that founders were their main customer and therefore they needed to say they were super founder friendly.
1:04:11
And you know, I I think Benchmark's doing a good job with the rebuild, but having >> Travis and Emil running around being like, "They screw founders over like I don't >> like Ev Randall was drinking beers in college when that happened.
1:04:24
Okay, let's back off of that truck for a little bit.
1:04:29
Let's not visit the son, the sins of the father on the sun, right?" The Bible.
1:04:31
Um uh on on this list I you know the compet competing with the Midas list or doing some other list or like h how valuable are lists in terms of like actual moving the needle for your business?
1:04:46
Like early on at TBNN we did the the Metis list which was like a list of AI researchers and it converted a decent amount of email subscribers because we had like an email capture flow.
1:04:57
We weren't like directly monetizing it but it was an interesting experience.
1:05:00
We did a couple of those like sort of stunts and but I'm interested to know from your perspective uh is that is that less of a priority?
1:05:06
I always hear that like scoops get people to to to pay.
1:05:11
They jump the payw wall after a scoop. They got to read it.
1:05:16
Whereas an opinion piece might not.
1:05:16
Even if it's going viral, people might just summarize.
1:05:21
>> I mean, we we we did a survey with wing of top venture capitalists to rank up and coming and that does really well.
1:05:28
Well, it's like great marketing for us.
1:05:29
You know, >> everybody on the list tweets it out. >> Yeah.
1:05:33
>> But we we don't really put much behind a payw wall because it's sort of meant to be read.
1:05:36
And so then it's not a very good like subscription driver.
1:05:39
It's more just like brand building, awareness, influence.
1:05:45
And so, so really the challenge of any list is are you going to put it behind the payw wall?
1:05:48
And for the most of the most of the time you wouldn't because you want it to get shared.
1:05:52
And so >> I think they're good for brand and like list building but not great for subscriptions.
1:05:58
Whereas putting like documents or behind the payw wall you're going to get this resource of companies that you might invest in or whatever.
1:06:06
You know behind a payw wall you know what you're paying for and so people are just much more likely to convert.
1:06:10
Um so you know when that uh LP I mentioned earlier did a survey uh about venture firms you know we put that behind the pay wall.
1:06:19
I think that did very well.
1:06:21
So, if we're willing to put it behind the payw wall, they can do well.
1:06:22
But for the most part, the list you're talking about, you know, we we keep in front of the payw wall.
1:06:29
>> I feel like there's still I I feel like a lot of people ascribe the the value in the Midas list and and what Forbes does to just the fact that it's a list and everyone wants to be on it and it has like legacy and brand and that's real.
1:06:43
Uh, but underrated is how incredible the photography is in a Forbes feature.
1:06:47
You can hire a a great photographer and still not hit that level of like magazine cover look.
1:06:56
And if you offer that to someone who's going to win the list, >> if they understand media and the power of like a really high quality photograph and a and a photo that will live on and sort of immortalize them for like maybe a decade, you see a lot of people and their top Google result is still that cover that they did when their company hit unicorn status or something and you're like, "Wow, they look great there."
1:07:18
there and then you meet him in person like, "Oh, that was a decade ago.
1:07:21
You got some gray hairs now."
1:07:21
But >> but but offering that as like a trade is a is an interesting interesting proposition.
1:07:28
>> We literally had like two photographers running around our last valley event.
1:07:32
So, I couldn't agree with you more that like getting great photos of these people out of these events has >> something that looks different than just the LinkedIn profile photo against the wall.
1:07:40
Something that has action, background, texture, like these things are harder to recreate than people think.
1:07:46
They they take it for granted because they show up everywhere, but they're usually because of a special thing.
1:07:51
Nothing's higher status than the only thing higher status than the uh the Midas list is the the Alamy stock photo watermarked Getty Images watermark at Sun Valley.
1:08:02
That is the highest status symbol in Silicon Valley in my opinion.
1:08:06
You can't you can't buy it.
1:08:08
>> I just have one more question.
1:08:08
Are you going to voluntarily switch to API based uh billing for your AI usage because you were getting some because I'm corrupt for >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
1:08:19
He said you said AI was useful.
1:08:22
You said >> call [laughter] out Editron has this view that journalists shouldn't be uh getting monthly subscriptions because they're [laughter] falsely subsidized and we're under we're not really paying what it costs.
1:08:34
We need to be paying >> 8,000.
1:08:36
I don't think I'm that much hyper like I I think Plaude and OpenAI anthropic and open AI are getting a better deal out of me probably than I'm using.
1:08:46
I'm not I'm not sure I'm getting this arbitrage. >> Totally.
1:08:48
Yeah, you can run those prompts of like estimate the number of tokens that I've used over the time.
1:08:52
And like a lot of people run that and they're like, "Wow, I've been paying $200 for like 20 bucks worth of tokens."
1:08:57
Like they're printing off >> I think I'm getting had not the other way around right now. >> Yeah. Is AI useful?
1:09:03
We'll figure it out eventually. We'll see. >> We'll figure it out.
1:09:06
We'll figure it out together.
1:09:08
>> Thank you so much for taking the time. This was a ton of fun. Let's do it again soon. >> So happy to.
1:09:13
I'm glad we saved we saved this for, you know, today. It's been really fun.
1:09:17
>> Uh we'll talk to you soon.
1:09:17
Have a great rest of your week. >> Later. >> Goodbye.
1:09:22
>> Let me tell you about Codeex since we're talking about it.
1:09:23
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1:09:45
>> Usually, usually, >> uh, up next, we have Mel. >> This is a scoop.
1:09:50
Getting a SpaceX employee on the show is difficult.
1:09:52
Not many people can do it, but we can because we got Merryill.
1:09:56
How you doing, >> Rocket Man? Doing great. Rocket Man.
1:10:02
>> Wait, I I want to go way back in time.
1:10:04
Did you ever have the I want to work for a rocket company as a kid?
1:10:07
I want to be an astronaut because you sort of wound up pretty close to it. >> Oh, yeah.
1:10:13
I mean, it was uh I don't know.
1:10:15
I remember watching like that.
1:10:16
Like, do you ever watch that movie October Sky? >> Oh, yeah. I love that show.
1:10:20
>> Yeah, I remember that was like that was like one of my favorite movies growing up.
1:10:22
I definitely had like a NASA phase and uh yeah, so it's it's kind of crazy.
1:10:27
Somebody on Hacker News the other day commented like, "It's funny how adding stack trying to add stack diffs to GitHub has resulted in the graphite team now building rockets." So, here we are.
1:10:37
>> Yeah, that it's remarkable.
1:10:37
It's like it's almost like a side quest in the in in in the long arc of history.
1:10:42
Uh you'll be deploying on the moon and and Mars beyond. How has it been?
1:10:47
What what what has the last couple weeks been like? Has it been sleepless?
1:10:51
Are you able to still continue growing the product, building the product, or has all the news been infiltrating you?
1:10:57
Like what's the what's the psyche been like over the last couple weeks?
1:11:02
>> Yeah, I mean it's been it's honestly been really exciting uh on on the ground at Cursor.
1:11:06
Like everybody is everybody's fired up about about like the compute partnership and what that's unlocking for us on the model training side.
1:11:12
Um we also just had our first big conference compile at Fort Mason yesterday.
1:11:17
So, um, the marketing team was was really working hard to get everything together for for that and make that a great event.
1:11:25
And, um, yeah, it all kind of led up to yesterday being a crazy news day of, uh, the SpaceX announcement and then, you know, the three big feature releases at Compile yesterday, including Origin, the Agent Git Forge that that we're working on. Yeah.
1:11:40
U, so yeah, it's been a it's been a frenetic uh, past few weeks, but everybody's really fired up.
1:11:45
Did you guys expect the announce like the the sort of second part of the the announcement between, you know, the deal between Cursor and SpaceX to get as much like attention as it did?
1:11:55
Cuz I was seeing people that seemingly hadn't seen the first the announcement of like the f the first part of the deal.
1:12:00
Uh, and a lot of people felt like they were processing it for the first time. >> Sure.
1:12:06
>> Uh, which kind of makes sense in hindsight, but in our little bubble, I was like, great.
1:12:09
Like obviously they were gonna do this deal. >> Yeah.
1:12:13
I sort of had the I guess I had it in my mind that you already have a SpaceX badge but that was not the case because this was a partnership and now the deal has been announced. Is that correct? >> Yeah, exactly.
1:12:23
There was the announcement of the option to acquire and then uh the the other, you know, the announcement yesterday was the exercising of that option.
1:12:30
And uh now I mean I still don't have a SpaceX badge yet.
1:12:34
Uh you know, we have to wait for for the deal to close and then we can actually start working together.
1:12:39
But now now it's like just the just antitrust and all the all the other pieces. >> That makes sense. Well, congratulations.
1:12:47
I do want to talk about Origin.
1:12:47
Um, walk me through the thesis there.
1:12:50
I mean, there's been plenty of gripes about uh how much code is getting pushed to the internet generally, how teams are working together, agents are working together, we are in a CPU crunch now.
1:13:03
Um, how much of this is just uh taking a developer workflow that already exists, speeding it up versus reimagining it from first principles?
1:13:12
Like, walk me through the thesis for this product.
1:13:17
Yeah, I think the origin really started from a simple realization which was that every single piece of the software development life cycle u that we have today, every tool, every piece of infrastructure u was all designed for a world where humans write every line of code and we've tried to scale that um as best we can um over the past year or so.
1:13:39
But we're really seeing u many of those pieces just crumbling under the pressure and uh first and foremost just having you know taking uh from first principles designing something that can handle the scale of agent coding u that's you know that's the the most important thing is
1:13:55
like is it scalable is it reliable is it performant like can it handle hundreds of agents working in parallel at once and u that's really what we've what we've designed origin to be is like uh be the first example full of git infrastructure that is really built for for the agentic era. Um the other piece
1:14:11
Um the other piece of this is that then building kind of building on that if we own the infrastructure we can start to build it with agents in mind.
1:14:20
So um it's not just it doesn't have to be just like the git objects.
1:14:25
It can be you can start to store agent traces.
1:14:28
You can see the whole history of every action the agent has taken everything it referenced.
1:14:32
And u you don't have to have it's kind of silly today that you'll use one agent to write the PR but then as soon as the PR is opened like that agent just goes away.
1:14:43
It's like why does that not carry through and help you then you know address review comments resolve CI failures fix merge conflicts and uh really we want to get to this vision of of more like full self-driving PRs that um can really bring themselves out to production uh in many cases without human intervention. >> Yeah.
1:15:03
Yeah, that's interesting.
1:15:03
Um, yeah, I I I have a bunch bunch of different things there.
1:15:08
I guess the the question is Yeah.
1:15:10
Uh, how like how important is speed in this context?
1:15:14
How important is actually uh like the volume of code?
1:15:21
You see a lot of these uh like someone will post like okay I just uh vibe coded this I pushed this change uh whatever model they're using did really well.
1:15:33
They they got the job done.
1:15:33
Um, and then somebody will go in and look at the PR and be like a 100,000 lines of code to change the color of the button.
1:15:42
Like this is evidence of slop or this is evidence of poor computer science happening.
1:15:48
Uh, do you have a stance on the is the answer to slop more slop?
1:15:51
Are we going to get less sloppy, more tur in the writing?
1:15:56
Is that something that's coming?
1:15:57
Or do you need to design a system where the new normal is yeah changing the color button the color might be 10,000 lines of code change that's fine.
1:16:06
Let's also store the reasoning trace and the whole and the whole you know back and forth and everything that the agent was doing so that you know yeah it was it was you know 10 years of development time for one small change.
1:16:18
It's fine because you know hard drives are cheap.
1:16:23
Yeah, I I certainly don't think that the the future is 10,000 lines to change a button color, but I I do think that the volume, you know, fundamentally just the volume of code and the volume, the throughput that we're seeing all pieces of infrastructure have to handle now is is just growing exponentially.
1:16:39
And uh you know, we've seen we we've seen now uh you know, a lot of teams are are now doing like you know, thousands of of pushes per hour.
1:16:47
Uh you know, and previously they were doing you know, tens or hundreds.
1:16:50
And uh that's a lot of what we've been been trying to make sure Origin is able to handle is is that scale.
1:16:57
So uh we we've run some simulations recently where we're doing like you know 80 clones and 22 pushes per second with no downtime.
1:17:03
And uh you know it's is obviously just this is just like us testing internally but um it shows that like the architecture holds up and it's scalable and it's not the when your agents are ready to work at that speed uh origin is not going to be the bottleneck for them.
1:17:19
Um, but I I do think that we'll we'll then need to The other thing I think this will enable though is like more agentic review, more back and forth, like more more autonomy and more uh more like uh thinning out of of changes and and refining of them before a human ever has to look at them.
1:17:37
So, you know, hopefully we can avoid the case where you have like a 10,000 line PR that's that's doing a meaningless change. >> Yeah.
1:17:43
H how is how is growth overall?
1:17:43
>> Yeah. H how is how is growth overall? I feel I feel like a lot of people uh watch an acquisition happen or a series of acquisitions happen and they're sort of like okay like that's the end of the story or or they I mean it's really easy with Elon Musk to look at it and be like okay well like this is incredibly
1:18:00
talented team but you know this is data centers in space stuff this is mass driver on the moon project like the the the main mission is now you know not relevant and so it's less less focused but I imagine that you're just seeing growth in the core business still because oh yeah teams are still you know getting up to speed on on uh pushing code and and using all these tools. What
1:18:23
What has growth been like postacquisition?
1:18:28
What have been the big drivers?
1:18:28
What what does that tell us about the way just the broad software development market is evolving?
1:18:35
Yeah, I mean we've seen since since the acquisition, we've seen, you know, continued growth in the in like the graphite business itself, but really I think the the most exciting thing for us is has been seeing the level of interest from companies of all sizes in in what we're doing with Origin.
1:18:49
So, uh we set a goal uh for end of July for uh like weight list signups that we wanted to hit and we we hit that in the first 20 like the last 24 hours since we announced the product.
1:19:00
So uh it's >> that gong is also for the acquisition closing which is [laughter] >> maybe a bigger deal than weight list but honestly like traction on an actual product is probably more relevant than any financial milestone because it means that people are actually interested in this stuff which is good.
1:19:19
Yeah, it's >> it's every time we've talked about it, you know, at Compile yesterday on customer calls, it's like, you know, Compile got a huge round of applause.
1:19:29
Like, it's just it's so obvious this is a problem that, you know, every single company is facing right now.
1:19:33
And um it's solving this this burning need and uh that's why we're we're so excited about what we're doing.
1:19:39
what we're doing. And you know really thinking to your point around acquisitions like uh thinking back to to the graphite days like one of the hardest lessons that we learned from building graphite was that your product is only as good as the infrastructure
1:19:54
that it's built on fundamentally and it might seem obvious but it's it's a really hard lesson to learn and uh we were always limited by like latency availability you know even just UI extensibility u our customers felt those limits you know when when our infrastructure was down. We were down We were down too.
1:20:10
And uh it's funny now there's this whole wave of companies that are are going to their favorite agent and saying, you know, copy Graphites's pull request page, make no mistakes, and you know, shipping something out there.
1:20:20
And they're really quickly finding out like why it's so hard to to do what we did.
1:20:26
Um and even even then I think we were never really able to to create like the the level of experience of just you know totally seamless you know high performance interface that we wanted to uh because we were we were limited by uh the platform that we built on.
1:20:40
So uh with origin you know now with with the backing of of curser and the combined team uh we're finally you know we're now able to you know truly realize and accelerate the vision that we had from the beginning of the graphite days.
1:20:56
Let's talk about AI doom, job losses.
1:20:56
Is there any risk that AI puts DJing out of businesses?
1:21:04
Are DJs going away in our AI future?
1:21:04
Or will the DJ, the humble DJ, always have a place in our society? What do you think?
1:21:12
I think there's always uh you know it's always been about more than more than >> you've actually always been able to just press play on a premixed [laughter] >> and yet we still got unironically like a really good white pill for just jobs overall.
1:21:28
It's like >> yeah you want to see a human up there and and >> even the most yeah even the most the most well-known DJs like they have like a set that they could just go up there and play and dance around.
1:21:38
And of course, >> some of them have been accused of that, [laughter] but but uh anyway uh great to catch up.
1:21:44
Congratulations on the progress.
1:21:46
Thank you so much for coming.
1:21:48
>> Really happy for you and the whole team.
1:21:50
>> What an inspiring story.
1:21:50
A true overnight success. >> That's right. >> 2020, baby.
1:21:54
>> Overnight success of six years. >> Yeah.
1:21:56
A lot of sleepless nights, but thank you so much for coming on the show. We'll talk to you soon.
1:22:00
>> Great to see you, Mar. Congrats.
1:22:00
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And our next guest is here with us live in the TBPN Ultradome. We have a room from M13. How you doing?
1:22:18
>> What's happening, guys? How you doing?
1:22:20
>> Welcome to We're doing great.
1:22:20
Uh, >> give us your review of the World Cup so far.
1:22:26
>> That was definitely the best game in US soccer history.
1:22:28
You know, historically, the US has always been competitive, but just could never find the back of the net.
1:22:33
So, to find the back of the net that many times, that was nothing short of spectacular.
1:22:36
I had a I had a my I my I I turned it on.
1:22:39
I'm watching for like not like really focused on the game.
1:22:43
I think I was like in the middle of something, but I was like, "Wow, we cannot get the ball on uh Paraguay's side like for the life of us."
1:22:51
And I realized like I had the I had the the Paraguay's flag look like our jerseys.
1:22:58
[laughter] So, we were actually playing quite well.
1:22:59
We were we were pressing them the whole time, >> but I didn't know.
1:23:03
And I was like, "Oh, wow. This is amazing. We're doing great."
1:23:06
Um >> yeah, hopefully uh hopefully the US gets excited.
1:23:09
Like uh we hosted the opening night of uh of the World Cup the night before at our house and I was texting people going, "Hey, we're hosting this event for US soccer."
1:23:16
They're like, "What's coming?"
1:23:17
I was like, "The World Cup?"
1:23:19
The last time I was in the US, it was only 32 years ago, [laughter] >> but uh yeah, we'll see. >> Come a long way.
1:23:24
>> Uh do you track like economic impact from World Cup? Are you reading into it?
1:23:28
Some people are saying like that's the reason why we're seeing uh unemployment so low in a time of AI disruption.
1:23:32
And it's like there's a lot of hospitality hiring.
1:23:35
Do you read into this stuff?
1:23:37
>> I don't do a whole lot.
1:23:37
I mean, it's interesting both between the World Cup and the Olympics, right?
1:23:41
They always put out these studies and the question is, are you losing a ton of money or is it who's making the money?
1:23:48
>> I can tell you >> the uh car service in Seattle, they're definitely making money.
1:23:53
They told me it's going to be $2,500 for a 30 minute trip when I land for Friday's game.
1:23:56
So, you know, there are definitely people making >> Whoa. Whoa. Surge surge pricing. >> Exactly.
1:24:02
search [laughter] pricing of effort for Porsche.
1:24:05
>> $2500, >> but it's a great economic lesson.
1:24:08
>> That was what happening uh in Vegas for F1. It was the same thing.
1:24:10
Couple thousand bucks just to have a car take you from your hotel to the event.
1:24:13
It was crazy anytime that there's huge demand.
1:24:18
Uh so you're thinking more long term.
1:24:20
Take us through the basic thesis for the fund.
1:24:21
Uh some of your historical investments.
1:24:24
Uh obviously seems like you're not thinking quarter to quarter based on you know unemployment rate data of this month and whether or not the World Cup is causing unemployment or to decline or spike.
1:24:35
But what is the thesis for the fund?
1:24:37
How long you been doing this?
1:24:38
>> I mean we started M13 uh 10 years ago.
1:24:41
We just celebrated our 10 year anniversary. >> Congratulations.
1:24:42
Where did the name come from? >> Success.
1:24:45
>> Uh everyone thinks we're El Salvador and gangster. >> Yeah.
1:24:48
Sadly, I'm not that uh that that gangster, but uh brightest cluster of stars, brighter than all the stars that comprise it.
1:24:54
It's always been our philosophy.
1:24:55
We can connect the dots and create more value. >> Got it.
1:24:59
>> Um but yeah, you know, fast forward 10 years later, you know, we've been the Cedar Series A investor in 17 Unicorn.
1:25:06
So, sometimes better to be lucky than good. >> Incredible.
1:25:08
>> Um you know, on days like last Friday when we invested in SpaceX at 15 billion and banged out, you know, 150x, you know, we all need more days like that. It's incredible. >> Um, yeah.
1:25:17
Thank you for the sound effects.
1:25:19
That was welld deserved, I think. Yeah. Um, yeah.
1:25:20
And, uh, you know, I think, you know, even as we, at some point, we'll start talking about AI.
1:25:27
Everyone thinks like we haven't seen this before.
1:25:29
And I think the key is as a VC, you have to learn how to invest in cycles, right?
1:25:33
Like we felt like the world was white hot in 2020 and 2021. Yep.
1:25:39
>> Um, turns out it's even hotter now, right?
1:25:42
You think about a lot of us like M13, Andre, and all of We were investing in consumer software, social media, uh things like ride sharing.
1:25:50
That was the implication of the technological breakthrough which was the iPhone, right?
1:25:55
And so there's always kind of these ripples.
1:25:57
And so yeah, now you know we got 35 people offices New York, San Francisco, LA.
1:26:01
Um always trying to think what is that next ripple?
1:26:05
What is that implication of that technology?
1:26:07
How do we invest where the world is bending?
1:26:11
And you know I think SpaceX is a great example.
1:26:13
You invest in outlier people who could create outlier companies and yeah you you you hope you take enough shots on goal that sometimes uh you know you get those those big outcomes.
1:26:23
>> SpaceX, Ring, Matterport, you're not afraid of hardware. Where'd that come from?
1:26:28
What's your thesis on hardware enabled technology companies going forward? >> Yeah.
1:26:33
I mean like take AI today, right?
1:26:35
Like my housekeeper knows it's going to change the world, right?
1:26:36
That is not that takes no skill. Yeah.
1:26:38
The skill of a VC is to understand where to get the best risk and probability adjusted outcomes, right?
1:26:45
And to do that, you got to find the right value layers, right?
1:26:49
So yes, foundational models are enormous.
1:26:52
They also come at high prices with a lot of competition.
1:26:54
The thing I talk about all the time these days is if you think about the last cycle around consumer software, social networks, it was innovators competing with innovators, right?
1:27:02
Zuck competing with Evan, John Z competing with Travis.
1:27:04
I would argue in this cycle it's innovators competing with innovators who are now competing with the most well-funded innovators on the planet, >> Microsoft.
1:27:14
>> Well, even before then you got open AI and right those then you have the 10 biggest tech companies in the world.
1:27:19
And I would argue for the first time in history they actually have the advantage, right?
1:27:24
They got the tech, the talent, the data, the capital and the technical expert.
1:27:29
>> Google entering AI feels very different than Google entering social networking >> for sure. Right.
1:27:33
And so and so when you think about this market, you really got to think long and hard about where do you get that exposure to AI?
1:27:39
Where are the value layers? Right?
1:27:41
We invested in a company called Prepared, you know, in the very early days.
1:27:45
It sold earlier this year for about $900 million.
1:27:47
It was using AI and technology to disrupt 911. Thank you.
1:27:53
Uh 911 call centers, right? They had no competition. and all that.
1:27:57
>> Hopefully not disrupt Oh, disrupt the call [laughter] centers, >> not disrupt the the actual practice.
1:28:04
>> It turns out 911 was still using landlines.
1:28:06
The rest of us just weren't calling using a landline.
1:28:08
So, you know, simple stuff like that.
1:28:11
>> So, in this market, right, it's all about like where and I think in venture, right, the multi-stage funds play a different game than someone like us, right?
1:28:19
We invest out of a $400 million early stage fund.
1:28:21
We're playing for alpha, right?
1:28:23
And so we're pure play seed series A specialist.
1:28:25
And so you got to be disciplined about how you enter, what the competition is, things like that.
1:28:33
>> So where does the capital come for doing SpaceX at 15 billion?
1:28:35
Obviously a fantastic investment, but not in that sweet spot of seed and series A, right? >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:28:40
Our first fund to be fair uh was kind of stage agnostic. Okay.
1:28:42
But I think a lot of it is look all the letters are fungeible.
1:28:46
The way we think about it at M13 is there's only two types of companies in this market.
1:28:49
those trying to find product market fit and those who found it who are hyperscalers, right?
1:28:55
And so at the end of the day, you're looking for venture scale returns and then you know the thing we talk about all the time is everyone just says venture is risky and they kind of throw up their arms.
1:29:04
That's like kind of true, but if you're trying to colonize Mars that is riskier than if you're trying to get someone to order a black car on an app, right?
1:29:15
So there are different spectrums of risk and so it's always you know trying to figure out >> is the risk worth the the reward and and and that's the game of venture.
1:29:25
>> Have you been disappointed in the growth of the LA ecosystem?
1:29:27
[snorts] >> Yeah, I mean I I laugh because I remember people telling me that San Francisco was dead three years ago.
1:29:37
>> Turns out it's a little less dead than expected.
1:29:39
The way I describe LA is right now it's it's having a siesta, right?
1:29:44
[snorts] taking a little nap.
1:29:44
Kind of like in Spain between 1 and 300 p. m.
1:29:45
Um, we can't forget, you know, about $450 billion of enterprise value was created outside of some of the big ones like SpaceX in the last cycle, right?
1:29:55
And so you think about this cycle right now, we're still talking about the technology AI.
1:30:02
There's no doubt that's going to come from the technology sitting in San Francisco, but you know, you guys know other industries.
1:30:07
When you think about the second and the third wave, there's no doubt in my mind some of that will come from LA, right?
1:30:13
Nobody understands media content creators.
1:30:15
It's why you guys are sitting in LA.
1:30:17
You're the best in the game at that, right?
1:30:19
And so I think it's too early to count out LA just like it was too early years ago to count out San Francisco.
1:30:25
Um, yes, there were a lot of needles on the street and it was pretty right.
1:30:29
Everybody was leaving, but like yeah, it came roaring back.
1:30:33
So I think as you think about what are the new business models we're not even thinking about because of AI, what are those ripples?
1:30:40
There's no doubt some of them will be coming from.
1:30:43
>> Yeah, it's interesting.
1:30:43
I I am I am bullish on the South Bay, Elsa Gundo, South Bay broadly >> continue to be bearish on uh on like LA actually LA the city like it's hard for me to imagine I can't imagine a hundred billion dollar company coming out of Venice, Santa Monica, West Hollywood, places like that which is uh it's painful to me but I think it's the reality would love to be proven wrong.
1:31:13
Uh hopefully I haven't passed on that company yet.
1:31:15
[laughter] But uh but yeah, it's interesting that like it feels like the South Bay is like really working.
1:31:20
Elsagundo is really working.
1:31:20
You know, SpaceX starting in an Elsagundo warehouse, like that's all working, but I feel like the the original like LA startup movement can't even claim >> Silicon Beach. Can't claim that. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
1:31:34
I I don't think you'll find a hundred billion dollar company coming out of LA.
1:31:37
I think you might find some 10 to 20 billion dollar companies.
1:31:39
And the reason I say that is, you know, the hundred billion dollar company, the trillion dollar companies are going to be foundational models and things like that.
1:31:50
>> Concentration of talent. >> Yeah.
1:31:52
I think the you'll find the the application layers like there's a reason Snap is here.
1:31:57
There's a reason Tinder was founded here and stuff like that. >> I know.
1:32:01
But it's painful that like Sunno Sunno should have been LA, right?
1:32:03
Like and it's and it's what like Boston, New York, maybe they have an SF office.
1:32:10
York, maybe they have an SF office. I forget what >> but I think like the dream works of AI like it has to happen in LA maybe but it won't be >> on stuff from LA like New York is the home of like the on the street what do you do for a living Tik Tok or like the person that's playing the the drums and streaming that like so many of the like
1:32:31
the the internet democratizing content and then the competition from Atlanta Toronto and yeah you know international there's a the big uh we were just reading about the the director of the uh Avengers, hugely successful filmmaker obviously in the Disney portfolio, is moving to London because they're doing the next round of Marvel films out there. And so, yeah, we just lost like a
1:32:52
And so, yeah, we just lost like a whole pool of talent here.
1:32:57
>> By the way, Jordy, I was going to tell you, I'm very jealous that you live in Malibu since my house burned down in Malibu.
1:33:01
I just missed that ocean breeze.
1:33:03
Uh >> in uh last year or 2018? >> Last year. Yeah. Yeah. Brutal.
1:33:08
>> I told my wife the night before we went to bed, she was really panicked.
1:33:09
I was like, "Sweetie, we we literally live across the street from the firehouse and like not far from Nou.
1:33:14
Trust me, our house isn't burning down."
1:33:18
>> Uh, obviously we were wrong and we're still the lucky ones.
1:33:20
A lot of people were way less lucky, but uh loses.
1:33:24
>> Man, I miss that that beach breeze.
1:33:26
>> You're going to rebuild. >> Uh, yeah. Got to start this fall. >> Okay. >> Yeah.
1:33:29
>> So, we'll see you in uh 10 years. >> Yeah, exactly. [laughter] >> Yeah.
1:33:32
Hopefully the permitting goes faster or something. I don't know.
1:33:33
It seems like a rough rough go also in the Palisades.
1:33:37
How are you thinking about uh consumer investing like consumer products?
1:33:43
>> Yeah, you know, like two and a half years ago at uh our LP day, we talked about how we thought for the first time in probably four, five, six years that we thought AI would make the application layer more interesting because we've been doing a lot of the underpinnings, right?
1:33:58
We invested the future of money, work, health, commerce.
1:33:59
So that is a pretty high swath, but we are doing mostly infrastructure stuff.
1:34:03
Um I think we've been right on that.
1:34:06
It's hard to get the application layer around AI just things are so frothy and moving so quickly.
1:34:12
Um I do think I don't know if it'll be for us anymore just given the size of our funds.
1:34:17
I I do believe the next billion-dollar DTOC brands will be built as AI companies um that happen to sell a product, right?
1:34:24
You the reason guys like us did so many, you know, DTOC things and then stopped doing it was at one point the math made sense, right?
1:34:33
You could create unicorns and the math >> as the cost of Facebook acquisition increased, right?
1:34:37
The math no longer made sense.
1:34:40
>> I think for the first time in history, the math will make sense here for the next two to three years.
1:34:44
The reality for M13 is we need generational companies when you operate out of a $400 million uh fund.
1:34:51
Um so I don't know if it will >> it's tough even if you're even if you're doing the a true seed and you can do 2110 and then it's billion dollar exit like you're like okay it doesn't actually can't return the fund.
1:35:05
>> Yeah that's the problem like most people just don't think about the math of venture.
1:35:08
It's great to say, oh, I had this, exit, or that, but yeah, you need at M13, we always say every check in the base case has to return half the fund.
1:35:17
So, we need three to five billion dollar companies in the base case.
1:35:21
And we have to hope, you know, we have companies like Open FX doing stable coins or we need to find that next SpaceX.
1:35:27
And you need to find those decacorns that that's the only way the math works. >> Sure.
1:35:32
What's the team structure like?
1:35:32
uh two billion under management now, $400 million fund.
1:35:37
That feels like enough room for some principles, some VPs around the table.
1:35:41
But how how what's your philosophy to growing the firm? >> Yeah.
1:35:46
Uh so my brother and I founded the firm.
1:35:48
Um obviously the way we talk about it is we wanted to build the venture firm that a founder would have built for themselves.
1:35:53
So every single person is an operator by background.
1:35:56
In fact, we only have one person that's ever worked at a VC.
1:36:00
That's either crazy or that's by design, >> right?
1:36:03
In our model, you know, basically some of those operators now invest for a living, right?
1:36:08
And so that's the typical venture model.
1:36:10
We say they're accountable for company picking, right?
1:36:14
Obviously, we've historically been good with 17 unicorns at that, but they're trying to find where's the TAM, where's these great founders.
1:36:20
Uh we have uh a large a team called our propulsion team.
1:36:25
Uh they are former operators who actually don't invest for a living.
1:36:27
They actually stay as operators, right?
1:36:28
But now instead of operating over a single company, they operate over a portfolio.
1:36:34
>> And you know, we've backed I think 11 previous unicorn founders in the last uh two funds.
1:36:39
These aren't people that need help.
1:36:41
But where we invest at the early stages of Cedar Series A, they're not going to have a head of data and a head of talent and [snorts] a head of product.
1:36:48
And so we can use these very experienced operators like we have guys like Carl Alamar who's, you know, built Digital Ocean from pre-revenue to a $5 billion IPO.
1:36:57
He now reminds me I think it's 19 billion today.
1:36:59
So he he tells me stop talking about five.
1:37:01
Um but you know having a guy like that be able to fill in the gaps look around corners for you at that series A is incredibly valuable.
1:37:10
So yeah so we have about 12 people that deploy the capital you know a handful of partners like you said.
1:37:14
So you know I think for us we obsess about our junior talent because those are our rising stars.
1:37:21
You know, too many VC firms are a bunch of usually males that have had success and kind of hold on.
1:37:26
I think you need the best 22 year old kid from Stanford who did compai.
1:37:31
I think you need the best 32year-old.
1:37:32
You know, I'm going to find the next unicorn founder because I probably had dinner with him last week, >> but I'm probably not going to find the 22year-old kid who just dropped out of Stanford and did that.
1:37:43
It's probably going to come from one of the junior people on the team.
1:37:46
And so, um, in everything we do, we always say we didn't want to create a better VC.
1:37:49
We kind of wanted to create a different type of VC and so we take cues from the best of the best and then think about again if we were a founder building a VC how would we build it?
1:38:01
>> How do you think uh the SpaceX IPO is going to impact the luxury real estate market?
1:38:07
>> Oh [laughter] I am so fascinated by this.
1:38:08
I would love your thoughts.
1:38:10
I mean, >> well, I'm just looking I'm thinking about YC and how there's [laughter] like there's a lot of new sentaires and there's not a lot of inventory over there.
1:38:20
And knowing why knowing SpaceX people, they like to be outdoors.
1:38:23
A lot of them probably like to ski a little bit and uh I'm uh I think there might be a supply demand mismatch at least at YC. But >> yeah, we'll see.
1:38:34
Maybe we should we should your house in Malibu, my house in YC.
1:38:37
We try to get a premium for it.
1:38:37
Get some anthropic or open AI stuff, you know.
1:38:43
>> Oh yeah, [laughter] you can sell your house for stock now. >> Yeah. Seriously.
1:38:45
Um but I mean I think it's going to be absolutely fascinating, right?
1:38:48
Because you think about when open AI and anthropic IPO, a bunch of VCs are going to make a ton of money, but those people's investors are endowments, institutional pensions, things like that.
1:38:59
When you think about SpaceX, right, it is every guy in YPO.
1:39:01
It is every guy at the country club.
1:39:04
It is every guy at Burning Man. Oh, sure. Right.
1:39:08
Even if they did 150x like we did, they 10x, they 5x got in some, >> right?
1:39:14
You think about it like there was never been this much value return that was literally 80% in SPVS, right?
1:39:18
And so I think it's fascinating because >> some guy just made three million, some guy just made a hundred million, some guy just made a billion.
1:39:26
And so I think >> not to mention, you know, the the the team specifically. >> Yeah.
1:39:32
And the team when you think about it, >> the whole family with SpaceX IPO shirts and I was like, I don't know that they're like like bankers.
1:39:39
I don't know that they were at the IPO on the inside.
1:39:43
I think they just like got in early, made some money, and now they're really proud and they're part of like the retail army essentially.
1:39:48
>> But I think it will be good for venture.
1:39:50
I mean, I think there's no doubt planes, houses, private schools, country clubs, all of those things, right?
1:39:53
And we should talk about coupling [laughter] our houses together. We could get a premium. You get two for one.
1:39:58
I mean that's an efficiency starter.
1:40:00
The starter path >> the starter the starter [laughter] centilian mayor path.
1:40:03
You got Malibu and YC all in one transaction.
1:40:08
>> But uh I do think it's just good for venture in general, right?
1:40:10
Because people have realized these things just take a long time, right?
1:40:14
Like we invested at 15 billion and still took 10 years to return capital.
1:40:18
So I do think it shows people in success, right?
1:40:23
Although these things take a long time, that is a lot of money coming back to the system. >> Yeah. Any last questions?
1:40:27
We got to hop on with ABS and just >> No, let's let's do it again soon. >> This is great.
1:40:31
>> Um and uh yeah, we'll feel free to call in from a World Cup game or something like that. >> All right. You guys going to then?
1:40:39
>> Uh I don't have anything scheduled, but >> nothing nothing scheduled yet. >> Who knows?
1:40:42
I may get FOMO at the last second and try and get in.
1:40:43
Is it as crazy as the Knicks tickets?
1:40:46
Is $100,000 to go, or is it more reasonable if you just want to see the game? >> More reasonable. >> More reasonable. Okay. It can get crazy.
1:40:53
I mean, I'm sure if it's like, you know, Americ now now the prices are going to go crazy, >> right?
1:40:59
During the next commercial break.
1:41:01
>> Anyway, thank you so much for coming. Awesome. This is fantastic.
1:41:05
>> We'll talk to you soon.
1:41:06
>> And we will tell everyone about Figma agents. Meet the canvas.
1:41:08
Your AI agents can now create and modify your Figma files with design system context.
1:41:13
Very excited to be partnered with Figma.
1:41:18
And we are also excited to have Dr.
1:41:20
Swami Siva Subramanian from AWS.
1:41:22
He is the VP of Agentic AI and he is here with us in the TVPROM. How are you doing? Welcome to the show. >> I'm I am great.
1:41:31
Hey, thanks for having me.
1:41:34
>> Thanks for hopping on.
1:41:34
Uh why don't we start with a little bit of an introduction since it is the first time you're on the show.
1:41:39
Tell us a little bit about um how you fit into the AWS organization, what you're working on, and then we can go into Agentic AI. >> Yeah.
1:41:48
Uh I mean uh I'm the vice president of Agentic AI.
1:41:51
I've been with uh uh AWS now for like 20 years.
1:41:53
Uh created various things uh >> success from like our data uh for database. >> Hold on.
1:42:01
What was it like 20 years ago?
1:42:03
I feel like AWS is barely 20 years old.
1:42:06
Were you like the first person on the team?
1:42:08
You and Andy were hanging out racking servers >> kind of.
1:42:12
Uh actually literally AWS was would fit in a single conference room if you can believe it.
1:42:17
Uh and uh I mean I joined as an intern.
1:42:21
My internship project was to build a database called Dynamo.
1:42:27
[laughter] >> So and uh I mean that turned out to be a bit of a success.
1:42:31
So they gave me a job back.
1:42:33
So uh and then I started the database uh joined the database team started bunch of databases >> then moved on to analytics and started AI for AWS. >> Okay.
1:42:45
>> And now now that you see all the things with Bedrock and Sage Maker all the AI tools now as the world is moving more agent tech I kind of spun myself out of what I was doing >> to focus all in on AI agents.
1:42:58
So that's kind of my background. >> Yeah.
1:43:02
I imagine that you know the the the typical database business, the analytics business, all of that is growing but it it's dri being driven by more agentic AI use.
1:43:09
Talk about the new releases, the new launches and I want to know how do we compare and contrast continuum from context when uh how do companies use the right tool for the job here?
1:43:21
>> Yeah, I mean first of all we live in some amazing times with uh AI agents because the art of possible has fundamentally changed.
1:43:31
But when you look at it even where you see actually enterprises are struggling today first of all on putting agents to work they are still stuck in this world of I call it the wall gardens where they are stuck into bottlenecks where if I go on vacation or even when I go to sleep and wake up I get signals from like my outlook to Slack to various other messaging tools.
1:43:54
So the time I spent to even catch up used to be like crazy like at least an hour before I know I get to my job.
1:44:04
>> So why why was it that case?
1:44:04
It's not like we didn't have AI assistance in every one of these tools, but what was missing was it didn't have the context to fill in the spaces between these various tools.
1:44:15
So that's why today actually we launched something called quick autonomous agent.
1:44:19
It actually works on your behalf.
1:44:22
It gathers all the context across tools.
1:44:24
So there is no more wall guardians but it still has something enterprises know it has built-in governance and security.
1:44:32
That's why the likes of GoDaddy to NBA to everybody is using it.
1:44:37
We were showing it live today and uh the art of possible uh even when we demoed it live people couldn't believe it because uh now you can actually catch up and generate a PowerPoint deck in a matter of minute to a detailed dashboard uh when you talk to your data lake uh and generate insights.
1:44:58
All these things are changing.
1:44:58
That is one example of bottleneck we are removing.
1:45:02
The second one I talked about was in the world of security.
1:45:04
Security is a big area where intersection of um how software is getting built and security is changing in a big way because yes the rate of change in how you can generate code is becoming very very cheap >> but also the risk on security is also becoming big.
1:45:24
Uh so speed and security are almost at an trade-off in every organization.
1:45:29
So what we launched today is a service called continue.
1:45:32
In many ways uh the approach behind it is make security not a discrete thing companies do.
1:45:40
It's like how antibodies actually fight viruses always on continuously fighting is the way we thought about it as well as an example. >> Yeah.
1:45:51
I want to dig deeper into those like continuously running AI agents.
1:45:52
I think when people think agentic AI, they go to coding agents because everyone's had the magical experience with those and seen the impact and the spend and the token maxing that happens when uh you deploy uh AI agents across a huge workforce of knowledge workers heavily software engineers.
1:46:13
But I'm I'm more interested in in the less understood agentic workflows that are happening maybe deeper and autonomously in a business.
1:46:25
And I'm trying to get to a world where I have that case study at the tip of my tongue for every time I book a flight, it runs an agentic workflow to make sure that my seat on the plane is correct or I don't know.
1:46:37
I I I don't know how to contextualize, but I know it's happening and I know you're seeing it.
1:46:42
So walk me through some of the agentic workflows or agentic AI work that's happening even if no one shows up to the office.
1:46:49
It's a it's a company holiday and there's still tokens being spent.
1:46:53
What does that look like?
1:46:53
What is the shape of that work >> actually?
1:46:57
Uh I mean that is one of the key things that we are going to start seeing explosion of agents in a big way.
1:47:04
Even today for instance you uh in your summit uh the CIO of Southwest Airlines uh talked about how they are building agents on top of actually agent core which is our core agent platform service and they were able to build these amazing new capabilities to do things like crew planning and various others.
1:47:26
These are not like where humans are just generating codes but uh how that's where they are going.
1:47:31
uh 3M for instance are using agents to now be able to do more efficient sales call planning.
1:47:38
GoDaddy is able to actually leverage some of our quick agents to automatically reduce something like 15,000 hours of manual work that they are able to do.
1:47:49
work that they are able to do. These are like examples of agents again not created just for purely creating software but these are agents running under the hood and they are able to produce value and this is going to be where the next big agentic workload is
1:48:07
going to happen in many ways and that's what we are excited >> what what is demand like for model routing these days AWS is fascinating because you've sort of maybe it's brilliant by design sort of the Switzerland of AI in the sense that there's partnerships with uh anthropic open AI. Uh there's a whole bunch of
1:48:25
Uh there's a whole bunch of other foundation models that are available on AWS. Uh what is demand like?
1:48:32
Obviously different teams have different preferences and cost tradeoffs and they might say I want to be with this particular claude model or this particular GPT model.
1:48:41
Uh other companies might just say uh I never I never want to be caught using a frontier model for something that doesn't need that doesn't need frontier spend so optimize it for me.
1:48:54
Is that is that something that you're seeing demand for already? >> Yeah.
1:48:57
Uh I mean first of all uh I think for the industry itself when I started Bedrock one of the things uh we were different compared to everybody else is we always had this belief no single model will rule the world.
1:49:08
This was not a popular uh belief at that time but uh but now it seems so obvious but then uh amazing thing is uh now that you are the Switzerland as you actually speak in Q1 alone the adoption for our bedrock uh generative LLM platform what we are starting to see is in Q1 alone the amount of workload that uh request rate that we are seeing is greater than all of the previous years combined.
1:49:38
That [laughter] is the amount of growth we are seeing and uh it seems to have no signs of slowing down.
1:49:46
It's because the rate of actually adoption especially as people are moving from proof of concepts to production is just accelerating because they are seeing real outcomes and that is one of the reason why so much of innovation is going into things like bedrock and agent core.
1:50:03
uh not just on the model front but also how we are supporting the things like disagregated inference and all the agent capabilities such as launching new context.
1:50:14
So these are the capabilities that's going to make actually enterprises move from just cute prototypes that are sitting in where they demo to their execs to actually production to see real value. Yeah.
1:50:30
And this is why I do think there is so much upside in the future.
1:50:32
How do you think about AWS as a uh sort of like a thought leader for uh for enterprises rolling these features out?
1:50:41
I'm just thinking about like we're going through this transition of like there's a new technology you need to use it effectively.
1:50:48
Uh I feel like a big piece of why AWS was so successful was because it powered Amazon.
1:50:53
com and if it's good enough for Amazon.
1:50:55
com, it's good enough for my business or whatever I'm doing.
1:50:59
Um, and it feels like now there's an opportunity for uh AWS to sort of set the agenda on what it's not token maxing, it's not token minimizing, it's token optimizing, it's it's ROI maxing or something like that.
1:51:12
But how are you communicating to your team, to the teams within AWS about how to use AI effectively?
1:51:20
Sometimes you just want to get everyone up to speed, just go and test everything.
1:51:23
And then sometimes you want to be, you know, setting a tone that a company that says, "Hey, look, we don't have a lot of free cash flow here to throw at this new hot technology, if we're going to use something, it has to deliver ROI almost immediately."
1:51:36
How are you carrying that through your organization and into the companies that partner with AWS?
1:51:42
>> So I mean, uh, it's a great question because, uh, if you look at the industry and this is true even at Amazon, we first started with everyone should get familiar with these tools.
1:51:51
So we were trying to get everyone to adopt so that they know how to use these tools.
1:51:55
Now that they have become so familiar, we are now making all the tools available between like kirao or agentic codeing solution to cloud code to quick is our business user productivity solution within Amazon itself.
1:52:10
Tools like quick is used by hundreds of thousands of people let alone ko to many others uh equally on the software development.
1:52:18
equally on the software development. Now we are come to a point where we internally and this is true for our external customers such as Delta and Southwest and many others as well is uh we give uh organizational breakdown within Amazon we say hey every VP under that team how much uh usage is happening what is their cost breakdown and then we
1:52:41
roll it out this is true for Kira and pretty soon it will be true for quick and within bedrock which is our genai platform phone service we actually integrated with the AWS cost explorer so that we can actually have people spend I mean monitor the spend in terms of where at a per user level per model level and a per organization level too. >> The moment you have visibility then you
1:53:05
>> The moment you have visibility then you know where people are spending then you can understand ROI.
1:53:11
In fact, the interesting thing what we saw was that uh my teams and there are few teams in Amazon.
1:53:18
I call them frontier teams.
1:53:21
These are teams that uh don't see 50% productivity improvement.
1:53:24
They see 10x to 20x productivity improvement.
1:53:26
And when you see their bill on token, it's not actually like $100,000 a month.
1:53:31
It's actually even in the KO credits, it's something like around $2,000 to $3,000 a month.
1:53:39
That's not that much for 10x to 20x productivity.
1:53:42
But I do think this is going to keep going as the world becomes more and more agent tech because once they move to coding to we just launched our release agent cuz you increase code velocity.
1:53:55
velocity. Everyone talks about coding but this is the myth suddenly then everything gets stuck because you need to deploy it to real world and deploying it to real world is a bigger challenge because you can't just increase the volume by 10x year and then deployment is going at 1x that means everything
1:54:14
becomes a technical death so we made that agent and then we made pentesting agent so I almost jokingly call it saying like hey you need to write it correct ship it fast and constantly keep it modern and the only way to do it is you need to have all of it be done by agents and that's exactly how we are now moving towards. >> Makes sense. Well, thank you for coming >> Makes sense.
1:54:35
Well, thank you for coming on the show.
1:54:36
Congratulations on the launches and great hope to talk to you soon.
1:54:40
Have a great rest of your week.
1:54:42
>> We'll talk to you soon.
1:54:43
>> Thanks again for having great to have you. Cheers. >> Byebye.
1:54:46
>> Let me tell you about Cisco critical infrastructure for the AI era.
1:54:48
Unlock seamless realtime experiences and new value with Cisco.
1:54:53
Our next guest is already in the waiting room.
1:54:56
So, we'll bring in Thomas Suarez from Raven Renaissance.
1:55:00
He's the founder, CEO, and CTO. >> Boom.
1:55:04
>> What you got on your face? Introduce yourself.
1:55:06
Tell us about what you're building.
1:55:07
I'm very excited for this. >> Cool. Hey guys.
1:55:09
Yeah, it's great to be here.
1:55:11
Um, yeah, so I'm Tom, the founder of Raven Resonance.
1:55:13
Um, we're a team of engineers and designers who have been building and wearing customized uh AR devices for years to decades.
1:55:18
Um, so we're working on Raven Prism, which is the first ambient computer in the form of glasses. >> Okay.
1:55:26
>> Did you launch did you launch this on Monday knowing that the specs announcement was happening?
1:55:32
Was that was that somewhat uh intentional or just kind of random?
1:55:37
>> So, it was actually more of a preview.
1:55:38
So, we are doing our full launch later this year.
1:55:40
Um, but we were going to be at the conference anyway and we figured we'd, you know, show some show some of our hardware and software. >> Yeah.
1:55:46
Because it's augmented world.
1:55:46
It's a conference for augmented reality generally.
1:55:49
Do you like that term or is that term getting stale at this point?
1:55:53
>> I think it's it's interesting.
1:55:53
Augmented reality is kind of a loaded term in some ways because there have been so many devices over the years.
1:55:58
Um, but I think for us the term ambient computing feels really right.
1:56:03
Um, because it's about, you know, technology being there when you need it and gone out of the way when you don't.
1:56:09
>> Um, and I think that's that's kind of what this device is is for.
1:56:10
Uh I I wore Google Glass for many years and you know of course there there's a lot of baggage that comes with that but there are um lots of wearable computers that have tried these sorts of things over years and I think um finally the the industry is starting to converge on something that um that makes a lot of sense for daily wear. >> Yeah.
1:56:30
How are you uh positioning the product?
1:56:33
Uh what are the key stats that you're particularly proud of?
1:56:36
Everyone talks about price weight.
1:56:37
Well, maybe even before that like could I I want to know about your product but like in your view over the last few years as you've been using these products developing them like what is what is the ideal product? What does it do?
1:56:52
product? What does it do? What are is like should we be thinking we were debating earlier does like do we need to be thinking about like killer use cases like specific things that people do every day or do you know a lot of the de the specs demos there were some some of the things that were being demoed I was
1:57:08
like okay that would be cool like I'd maybe do that once a year right like measuring like a room like how a piece of furniture would fit in that alone is like even if it's 10 times better than using like a measuring tape or something like that that's not going to get me to like you know, be a daily user of something like this. So, like how have
1:57:24
So, like how have you been thinking about like what is the ideal product because I assume that's what you're building towards. >> Exactly. Yeah.
1:57:31
So, as someone who wore this for over 12 years, I can say that or not not this particular product, but of course, you know, wearables in general, >> time traveler [laughter] invented.
1:57:40
>> I wish I wish um the there are two main categories of of use cases that I think are really relevant.
1:57:47
Um the first is micro interactions.
1:57:49
So, this is something where you're in and out of the display within 5 to 10 seconds.
1:57:51
So, this is things like next navigation direction, a notification that comes in, which sounds really distracting, but it's actually really nice to not have to pull your phone out of your pocket.
1:57:59
Um, you know, changing your music, all that sort of stuff.
1:58:03
Even next cooking instruction, whatever.
1:58:04
Those are micro interactions in and out in 5 10 seconds or less.
1:58:07
Um, the other one is reference material.
1:58:09
And so, this is where you can, you know, AirPlay your phone screen up.
1:58:13
You can pin up reference, you know, uh, contextually relevant information.
1:58:15
So if you if you have some something that you're working on hands-free um you or with your hands you want something that is hands-free that's going to give you that information um and ideally you can you know ask an LLM or ask an AI to help you uh with with that task.
1:58:28
So those are the two categories of experience that we think about uh as being really necessary.
1:58:34
necessary. There's also kind of a third one which is spatial experiences which is what we've seen you know from from specs and I think I mean certainly there's a lot of spatial work that we want to do in the future as well but I
1:58:45
think right now it's kind of like um you want to build toward you know what is the iPod of AR before you build the iPhone and we really need to get something out that you know is a nice form factor that's lightweight that people are going to actually want to wear. >> How do you think about field of view? Uh
1:58:58
>> How do you think about field of view?
1:58:58
Uh I'm sort of split on it. I used to be FOV maxer.
1:59:02
I used the hollow lens and was like this is unacceptable.
1:59:05
Uh tried the Apple Vision Pro, it's much better.
1:59:09
But then when I think about the Call of Duty HUD, the Metarband displays, I'm like actually for a lot of those micro interactions, next turn direction, next cooking instruction, something like that, like just put the information right there. It's fine. It's hands-free.
1:59:22
I'm actually maybe fine with a smaller FOV if everything's designed around that constraint from and it's not trying to be omnipresent. >> Yeah.
1:59:31
So field of view is is an interesting one because there's a couple different ways to think of field of view.
1:59:36
One is in, you know, absolute number of degrees diagonal on the on on your vision.
1:59:40
Um, and typically these devices are, you know, if you go to the really big VR headsets, you're going to be closer to 100°. Um, something like this.
1:59:47
This is actually 30°, but that's actually a lot of space.
1:59:50
That is equivalent to a 16-in MacBook at arms length.
1:59:54
Okay, >> which is a lot of space, especially if you have a high PPD.
1:59:57
So we find that it's actually field of view and pixels per degree.
2:00:01
And if you have a high pixels per degree, you have high resolution, which means that you have a high pixels per degree, but a low FOV, then you actually end up with something that is akin to a laptop in front of you.
2:00:11
And so when we think about like this device is is Linux based, um it allows you to SSH in, you can run pretty much any application that will run on ARM 64, which is of course the same architecture as Mac.
2:00:20
And um and so you can you can run, you know, properly as a computer. >> Okay.
2:00:26
World locked versus headlocked.
2:00:26
I feel like one of the problems with the hollow lens was that everything was world locked and you turn your head and the narrow FOV would clip the sphere that you put there and all of a sudden you're looking at a half sphere and it it it draws your attention as opposed to if it's just headlocked like the screen stays where it's put and it leans in.
2:00:43
It it does the best that it can with a limited FOV. >> Yeah.
2:00:49
So that als it also depends on uh I think the world lock makes sense for those spatial experiences.
2:00:54
Again, you need a large field of view for something like a head-up display.
2:00:57
I don't think world lock makes much sense.
2:00:59
You really just need something that >> there's all sorts of tricks that you can do in the human computer interaction.
2:01:05
For example, um if you have edges on the screen, then it's obvious kind of that you're clipping.
2:01:09
But if you if you kind of allow some padding, um any any pixels that are black are actually rendered as transparent.
2:01:15
So any black pixels around your icons and things like that are going to appear, you know, in screen space as transparent, which is the way we think about it.
2:01:24
>> How much is capital a constraint?
2:01:24
Is you're competing with companies that are willing to throw billions of dollars at this problem.
2:01:32
And so far, I don't necessarily think it's getting them that much closer than >> it used to be for any hardware company, it was like, oh, you'll need $5 million to do that.
2:01:42
And now it's like, oh yeah, like no problem.
2:01:44
all the tooling are cheap and stuff and you can outsource the whole supply chain if you need.
2:01:49
>> Also, it's never been easier to raise $5 million. >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
2:01:51
Like even a big number, oh, we're gonna get a hundred million.
2:01:54
It's like, yeah, there's going to be 20 of those raises this month. >> So, it's interesting.
2:01:58
When we started this company, a lot of investors told us that it was going to cost, you know, it's going to be over $und00 million to bring this product from idea to design, you know, early design, EVT, DVT, PVT, whatever, all the validation stages, and up to mass production.
2:02:10
Um, we're going to be shipping later this summer.
2:02:13
um to the first the first batches and then we're you know launching later this year officially.
2:02:17
But um yeah, we we've done it with under eight figures and a lot of the and actually there there are a lot of you know uh smart glasses you know we consider it it's kind of a different category the ambient computing but there are a lot of smart glass companies that you will go to um kind of an ODM you know typically in China or somewhere else and they'll take a reference design.
2:02:36
Um that's not what we've done.
2:02:37
We've actually we're manufacturing in the US.
2:02:39
Um we are we do source components from you know all over of course um but we do all design in our lab in San Francisco. Uh we build the batches.
2:02:48
This this unit was actually built in our lab in San Francisco um assembled and um and we think that's really important especially for rapid iteration.
2:02:54
That is one of the ways that we've been able to you know the very small team um iterate quickly and get to a product that we're really proud of.
2:03:02
Uh, how are you thinking of marketing messaging?
2:03:05
Uh, sort of to bring it back to that idea of like the killer use case, it feels like a lot of these pitches that we see for VR, XR, AR headsets, like they get a little scattered and all of a sudden they're trying to be 25 different things.
2:03:19
A lot of the demos don't if you're not a golfer, do you care about the golf thing?
2:03:25
Um, but I imagine that you get some of that flexibility for free by layering on top of AI because if you're a front door to AI and everyone knows, oh yeah, AI can do knowledge retrieval. It can also write code.
2:03:38
It can also generate images.
2:03:39
Then you're like, oh, you don't need to explain that.
2:03:41
You can just say this is a better way to interface with uh any AI front door or any AI system.
2:03:46
But how are you thinking about like the marketing messaging focusing that in or or is it or is it more valuable to pitch like broad developer platform like who who is the core customer? >> Yeah.
2:03:59
So I think there there have been plenty of devices that have tried you know pitching the developer like this is a devkit dev kit dev kit and that's not really that useful because you get developers who who get it and and they they play with it.
2:04:09
they might go on a shelf for the next few years.
2:04:10
And really, in order for a device like this, even a dev kit, to be useful, um, there has to be something in it, like some killer app.
2:04:20
And so, people ask this all the time.
2:04:22
What's the killer app of AR?
2:04:24
You know, there's a that's an interesting question because what was the killer app of the iPhone? >> The phone.
2:04:28
>> It actually is dependent on the app.
2:04:31
>> True, but it's dependent on >> Yeah.
2:04:32
Well, well, my take on the iPhone is that is that when Steve Jobs introduced it, it was a phone, an iPod, and an internet communicator, basically a web browser, and that was the killer app.
2:04:44
And then the app store came in the future revisions.
2:04:46
And then you got Uber and Door Dash and all the games and stuff, but it was enough on day one that you were like, well, I I've been carrying a phone.
2:04:54
This is a sleeker looking phone. I'll replace it.
2:04:56
And so whenever I go to VR, AR, I'm always like, "This should be a replacement for my uh my, you know, 24in monitor that I plug my laptop into or it should be a replacement for a home theater or a 65 in TV or another screen because in many ways it is just another screen.
2:05:14
So are you replacing the smartwatch?
2:05:16
Are you replacing the phone?
2:05:18
Are you replacing the iPad?"
2:05:19
Like you got to sort of laser in instead of just trying to be something that's like entirely net new. It's hard.
2:05:25
like like the AirPods were headphones first.
2:05:28
You know, >> the other thing with glasses that's interesting is just how many how many hundreds of millions or billions of people like already rely on on glasses to see.
2:05:38
And so that's a market where it's much less of a you're not actually selling them a new device.
2:05:43
You're selling them the same thing that they rely on plus a computer built into it, which like >> I think a lot of people like the Meta Rayband displays specifically to use for phone calls and for just music.
2:05:53
like they'll just, oh yeah, I'm going for a walk in the park and I'll just take these in and play music on these instead of headphones.
2:06:00
Um, and and and it's like then you can get into the, you know, metarband displays and like interfacing with AI and all that other stuff, but I would imagine the majority of the time is spent like taking a couple photos, pretty basic.
2:06:12
Everyone has a phone, but this is a little bit easier.
2:06:14
And listening to calls and and listening to music, but yeah.
2:06:18
>> Yeah, there's there's certainly I mean there's there's a lot of use cases tech for particularly for technical creatives.
2:06:22
So um certainly developers, engineers, but also musicians and filmmakers and there's there's that kind of niche is what we're going after at first and then of course it kind of becomes more mass market consumer after that.
2:06:33
Um we also have enterprises that are interested and we have some enterprise customers as well because we designed for a very strict set of design constraints and consumer and then you know translates to enterprise.
2:06:40
But one of the there is a couple other things that we you know we care really deeply about.
2:06:45
You know not only a Linux architecture which you know we're to our knowledge the only ones kind of have with this type of device um doing that but also um all day power.
2:06:53
So we have these these these guys on the back.
2:06:56
This is called Raven Prism and then these are the Raven Wings.
2:06:59
The Raven Wings just come off.
2:07:01
And this is actually an expansion port not only for uh the hot swappable battery system where you can take both batteries off and you can get all day power but also for future modules.
2:07:10
So, we're going to release an HDK later this year so people can actually start building their own hardware modules on it.
2:07:14
And then the other thing is privacy.
2:07:16
Um, I think one of the one of the challenges that this industry has faced is particularly around the camera, but but also with just user data in general.
2:07:24
I think it's easy for us, you know, we're in San Francisco to remember, oh yeah, you know, everyone's going to be okay with this, but people are often not okay with all of the, you know, privacy implications of this and we're seeing a lot of backlash um on certain devices.
2:07:37
So, a couple of things that we do is we actually have a physical camera cover on here.
2:07:41
Um, so you have to, you know, kind of take that off, uh, in order to use the camera, and it allows you to have this, you know, basically to allow to alert other people, um, around you when the camera is in use.
2:07:52
And then there's a lot of advanced cryptography that we do kind of the lowest levels of the stack as well, make sure that user data is protected.
2:07:59
And we've had a a pretty positive response to that so far. >> That's great.
2:08:03
How many years until a billion AR or uh augment what what did you call it? What was it?
2:08:11
>> Billion DAUs of glasses, smart glasses broadly.
2:08:16
>> Um it's hard to predict.
2:08:16
There's an industry saying that you know AR has been two years away every year for the past 30 years and it's kind of true.
2:08:22
Um so I I I don't think I could fully predict it.
2:08:26
I think uh I think it's reason.
2:08:29
I mean you know Meta has been shipping a ton of devices.
2:08:31
Um it's kind of growing the industry which is really you know nice.
2:08:35
Um I think it's it's reasonable to say that you know we we'll at least be in the kind of millions per year or we are in millions per year but I think we'll be in the you know tens of millions maybe hundreds of millions per year you know in about four or five years.
2:08:48
Um and then you know a billion daily active users um you know could be 10 years away could be less.
2:08:53
10 years away could be less. It's It's really, you know, it's hard to say, but I >> Yeah, but I can tell I can tell you're I can tell that you're running just from the short conversation that you're running the company to make sure that you are in business with a fantastic
2:09:07
product like when that moment happens like I was looking at the the you know the specs just looking at the reaction to the specs launch and like Spiegel and Snapchat are in a unique position and that they can kind of just ignore what shareholders you know think about uh their their where they invest. Um, but
2:09:22
Um, but that being said, like it's hard to think about them spending another three and a half billion dollars, you know, on this effort or or uh just just given how I expect these the the product to be received in its current form.
2:09:36
So, I think if you're set up to like, you know, keep keep burn low, really really keep iterating, actually using the product all day long, which like you must be you must have used a product you must have used like AR glasses more than anyone else on the planet, I imagine.
2:09:51
Like I don't know anyone.
2:09:51
We know a lot of people that love technology.
2:09:53
I don't know anyone that's been like a sort of like DAU for for this long. Yeah.
2:09:59
>> Um but I think that's like what it's going to take to to make a product that um that people actually use every day. >> For sure. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah.
2:10:06
It it really you need the the firsthand experience.
2:10:08
Um because it's there's a you know there's a lot of design decisions that happen for mobile that are not clear uh for you know for this type of device.
2:10:16
And so there's no replacement for just, you know, using it every day.
2:10:22
And um to there's yeah, it's it's very important.
2:10:26
>> How on earth can you do eye tracking in those?
2:10:28
You really do eye tracking in those? >> Yeah.
2:10:31
So actually, so this this uh device that I'm wearing, this is um this is these are the same kind of form factor.
2:10:37
It's just kind of final materials, right?
2:10:38
But there's actually two little cameras in there.
2:10:40
Um there's one there and there's one there.
2:10:42
And uh those are uh hooked up to a a separate kind of pro co-processor which is on the other side which is also for privacy um so that the main SOC never sees the raw camera images.
2:10:54
Um but that co-processor um yeah takes in the data from from the eyes and then we have some some models that um give a a gaze vector over to the uh to the SoC. >> That's remarkable.
2:11:04
I I was convinced that that anything with internal eye tracking like that was going to weigh, you know, 600 g,000 grams for a really long time.
2:11:14
[laughter] >> Not anymore. >> Not anymore.
2:11:18
>> We're doubling down on it.
2:11:19
>> There's Yeah, we're we're pretty excited for people to try it because it's quite a magical experience. >> Yeah. Yeah.
2:11:23
We're very excited for you.
2:11:25
>> Really great to meet you and uh come back on whenever you want whenever whenever you have stuff to talk about.
2:11:30
>> We'll talk to you soon. >> Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
2:11:31
We're going to be doing doing a launch in San Francisco uh in the next few months. So >> amazing. >> Congrats. We'll talk to you soon. >> The progress. >> Have a good one. Goodbye. Cheers.
2:11:40
>> Let me tell you about console. com.
2:11:41
Console builds AI agents that automates 70% IT, HR, and finance support, giving employees instant resolution for access requests and password resets.
2:11:47
We got the Germinator in the re in the waiting room.
2:11:54
>> Mark German, how you doing? >> I miss you.
2:11:57
>> What's going on, guys? >> We miss you. We miss you dearly.
2:11:59
Especially when the news is like it's been and every everything I read reminds me of you.
2:12:04
[laughter] >> Oh yeah, >> indeed. >> That's funny. >> I see Siri. I see Apple.
2:12:08
I see Apple Foundation models. I see everything.
2:12:11
I just think the Germinator. >> Okay. Have you recovered?
2:12:14
Is is is was last week exhausting? How are you feeling?
2:12:20
>> No, last week was good.
2:12:20
Yeah, it was an interesting conference.
2:12:22
I'm glad they were able to keep the uh the keynote time down to under an hour and a half.
2:12:27
was one of the shorter WWDC's.
2:12:27
It actually felt that they had taken that five minute section from WWDC 2024 where they introduced all those new Siri features and then took it and spread it out and milked it for an hour.
2:12:40
Uh basically re redoing it.
2:12:43
And you know for those not familiar basically this year's WWDC was all about new Siri features.
2:12:50
The big one being personal context.
2:12:52
So you could ask Siri I'll give you an example.
2:12:54
uh someone asked me for my calendar uh info for June July >> earlier today.
2:13:00
So I said uh send an email to so and so with my calendar availability for the next two months >> and it was able to do that.
2:13:09
>> Uh other ones could be like take the note that I wrote about XYZ and text it over to that person. Right?
2:13:14
These are realworld workflow features that I've been using all day for the last week or so, which makes it a all the more ridiculous that Apple had to delay that stuff two years ago and it took two years to ship.
2:13:29
>> But the most insane part about it is that Apple's responses to these delays all downplayed the features.
2:13:35
They said, "Oh, we spent 180 minutes talking about Apple intelligence and only five out of the 180 minutes were delayed and not shipped."
2:13:46
They basically positioned these as, "Oh, when it was a delay, it's not a big deal."
2:13:50
>> Now that I'm using it, >> these are actually the only features that matter. Yeah.
2:13:55
>> That they announced two years ago.
2:13:56
>> They could have delayed Genoji.
2:13:56
They shouldn't have delayed look up your calendar because that's a functional use that people are going to do. >> Yes.
2:14:03
And just to be clear, the new Siri is really good. >> Yeah.
2:14:08
>> And 95% of the people, sorry to say this, are not going to need Chat GPT on their phone because they have Siri AI pre-installed.
2:14:16
The way I look at it is that Chat GPT does a bunch of amazing things that Siri AI can't do.
2:14:21
But Siri AI also does a lot of amazing things that you'd go to for chat GPT.
2:14:27
So if if you're 95% of the population using AI chat bots and you're using it for looking things up, >> it's basically the new age Google, >> it's going to be able to do that.
2:14:38
It's going to be able to answer questions for you.
2:14:40
It's going to be able to do edits for you.
2:14:43
>> But there's like a ton of prolevel things that Chad GPT does that Siri can't do.
2:14:48
>> So I made a list the other day of things that chat GPT can't do.
2:14:51
big- time research, big- time analysis of multiple different documents and PDFs and comparisons.
2:14:58
Uh, people use it for tax preparation.
2:15:01
People use it for in-depth health things.
2:15:03
Uh, so there's a lot you're going to want to use it for.
2:15:05
So, I could see people having both si on the pre-installed and then you're going to subscribe to a chat GPT or Claude or Gemini or what have you for some of that extra oomph on top of it.
2:15:18
>> Uh, but sir AI is going to be useful for a lot of people and you know, [clears throat] one easy way to say it Yeah, we just hold on.
2:15:22
Look at it as like iMovie and Final Cut Pro. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
2:15:26
I mean, we we we debated this like, have you ever Googled anything?
2:15:30
And I still Google things pretty regularly and then I go to LLM's for more pro stuff and then I go to agentic AI for other things and like there's like using a right tool for the job that I think people are are uh processing and absorbing.
2:15:42
Um what uh uh what what do you think in hindsight actually delayed these features?
2:15:48
because it does feel like the technology was there a year or two ago.
2:15:52
Was it the negotiation, the deal with Google uh like like was this a technology problem or a business problem? >> It was a mix of both.
2:16:03
One was the underlying stack and the underlying foundation models that Apple had two years ago were not very good.
2:16:08
And so they needed to go back to the drawing board because they couldn't roll these features out only for them to fail.
2:16:16
which is ironic given they rolled out the rest of the Apple intelligence and new Siri features that hardly worked well and were not impressive.
2:16:21
Yeah, >> if you've used the new betas, you can tell what has happened here.
2:16:26
The under the hood models are so much better.
2:16:33
>> Uh based on what I have heard internally, Apple believes that they're basically six months behind. >> Yeah.
2:16:41
Open AAI and chat GBT in terms of the use cases that they have right now.
2:16:47
>> Um, so Siri works great, search works great, image playground, which is their image gener generation tool, the same underlying text stack that powers Genmoji, it's like close to what you're getting from Gemini and close to what you're getting from Chat GPT.
2:17:04
>> So everything basically just works now.
2:17:06
Uh, it's a great experience.
2:17:06
I mean, the first beta is sloppy and it's buggy as you would expect.
2:17:10
Uh, but they've taken something that was uh way less than mediocre >> and they're giving people a baseline now that's actually functional.
2:17:20
I would look at it as this way.
2:17:22
When you take the iPhone out of the box, it has all these pre-installed apps.
2:17:25
They're not great, but they work and you could, you know, use your phone based on what comes out of the box. >> Yeah.
2:17:33
>> What a what Apple had with AI was not that.
2:17:36
the pre-installed stuff just didn't work.
2:17:38
>> But then you can go to the app store and you can get a much better messaging app and best much better browser email app 10 times better versions of all the pre-installed apps. That's the case with AI.
2:17:48
Whereas now the pre-installed stuff is baseline and it works great, but you can go out and get even better stuff if you want. >> Yeah.
2:17:54
How high is how high are the walls of the walled garden?
2:17:58
Like you gave that example of look up your calendar. I use Google calendar. Uh send an email. I use Gmail.
2:18:05
I'm not in the I'm not even though I'm like an iPhone Mac user, I'm not fully in the Apple ecosystem.
2:18:10
Is this gonna work for me or am I gonna bump up against uh different walled gardens as I try and go around? >> Yeah.
2:18:18
Another example is like I don't use Apple Music. I use Spotify.
2:18:20
Can I tell I be able to tell Siri like make me a playlist with these >> three artists, you know, and make a Spotify playlist?
2:18:30
I'm guessing no, but >> Well, it is too early to tell.
2:18:32
It really is going to depend on how broad Apple's developer tools for the new Siri are going to become over time.
2:18:41
The first set of tools are there. They're a bit limited.
2:18:46
>> It depends on how how closely Spotify and Google and all those other companies are going to want to work with Apple.
2:18:52
>> I would say it's going to be a slow burn.
2:18:54
I would say that, you know, if it was Google, I would want my applications to work better with Android and Google Pixel so I can get these cool AI features and bring people more into my ecosystem.
2:19:05
So, I would say even if they opened up the tools to the degree that you guys are explaining those scenarios for, I would say it's not going to work as well as it would if you're tapped into the Apple Nail ecosystem and the other Apple services.
2:19:18
Uh, which is a shame, but I think over time Apple will get there.
2:19:23
And let's not forget Google is doing very similar stuff right now with Android 17.
2:19:28
And a lot of these scenarios I've explained on the iOS side of things are completely available to what you're seeing on the Android uh side of the world as well with this new Android hub.
2:19:38
So if you're deep in the Google ecosystem with Gmail and Chrome, you know, you get a good experience on iOS.
2:19:44
Uh but my Pixel friends, they get a great experience, especially with, you know, the new Android stuff rolling out. >> How are you thinking? Oh, wait.
2:19:52
First off, were there any surprises?
2:19:54
Did anything surprise you? >> Nothing surprised.
2:19:58
>> Did anything surprise me?
2:20:00
>> Were there any surprises?
2:20:02
>> I think I was a little surprised that there wasn't um a little bit more.
2:20:06
>> Uh it seemed like, you know, well, that's it.
2:20:09
Like I I I knew, you know, >> everything that was coming in the keynote and, you know, beyond.
2:20:14
I actually just put a story out about how there's a new iPhone Air coming out in spring just a few minutes ago.
2:20:19
So, happy to talk about that. >> Yeah.
2:20:22
Um, but you know, I would have >> uh spring 27. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
2:20:27
So, >> so I would have expected more out of this out of this dev conference. >> Okay. Yeah.
2:20:31
Let's switch gears to the iPhone Air.
2:20:33
Um, seemed like there were some good reviews.
2:20:35
I've seen a couple people carry them, but it felt like it wasn't selling as well as people expected and so it might just have been a one-off, but there is another one coming.
2:20:44
Like, what is the correct story or framing around the iPhone Air?
2:20:48
So, Apple's engineering data, and this shouldn't come as a shock to anyone, uh the two biggest complaints for the first generation phone are the battery life and the the camera.
2:20:57
And Apple knows this because they came out with that battery attachment on the back. >> Sure. >> Which crazy.
2:21:02
Um and then they tried to market the single camera on the back of the iPhone Air as being four lenses, whatever that means.
2:21:10
Um, so for this second version, they're upping the battery life.
2:21:14
And I don't necessarily think that's because of a bigger battery pack, but I think it's the efficiency gains you're going to get from 2nmter in this new A20 Pro chip.
2:21:23
>> And then the other uh big addition will be a second rear camera for ultra wide angle photography, which a lot of people really like on the iPhone 17 and the iPhone um, you know, 17 Pro and Pro Max models.
2:21:35
And so it's going to be a really nice upgrade. And I think at $9.
2:21:38
99, a little bit less expensive than the iPhone Pros, having a little bit better battery life, having that second camera, that's going to be a really compelling offering.
2:21:48
And so I would say, you know, 30,000 foot view, what they're doing to the iPhone over the last year past and the next few years, what they've got like this 3 to four year period of the iPhone, incredibly impressive.
2:22:02
They're knocking it out of the park.
2:22:05
I mean the iPhone last year that launch the 17 Pro and Pro Max extremely strong and the next few years are remarkable as well.
2:22:14
This fall the 18 Pro and Pro Max the first foldable phone which I'm calling the iPhone Ultra.
2:22:22
I I believe that will be the name. Uh but let's see.
2:22:25
Uh you know still a little early.
2:22:28
And then next spring, you'll have the regular iPhone 18 and the iPhone Air 2.
2:22:37
>> We'll see if they call it the 18 Air or the Air 2.
2:22:38
And then next fall, you'll have the iPhone 20 and iPhone 20 Pro Max.
2:22:46
Uh those being the 20th anniversary models, complete redesign, curved glass, slimmer bezels, smaller dynamic island, and all that. >> Lighter. You'll have >> cleaner. Yeah.
2:22:59
>> Daybyday leaks of like exactly what Apple's going to do. >> It's funny. It's >> incredible.
2:23:03
And then the second foldable phone.
2:23:06
So, it's a jam-packed 2027.
2:23:06
2027 is going to be Apple's biggest product year in its history. >> That's great. >> Um, I'm pumped. as a consumer.
2:23:16
>> Will they conver you think do you think they will ever try to create the conditions to get somebody to own a everyday consumer consumer to try to have multiple phones?
2:23:26
Like will they create will they create a product like set of features that's like a digital twin where you have like your iPhone ultra and your iPhone air >> run two >> and you just Yeah.
2:23:39
>> That feels like >> Yeah.
2:23:41
>> I don't know what I'm going to do as someone who lives and breathes this stuff.
2:23:44
I don't know what I'm going to do because I can already tell you right now, I want the new iPhone Air.
2:23:48
>> I want the iPhone foldable and I want the iPhone 20.
2:23:50
So, it's like I don't know what I'm going to do.
2:23:52
Um, what a first world problem to have.
2:23:54
We're talking about not even two phones, but no, I want three phones.
2:23:59
>> Um, so, >> but it feels like for them, it feels like for them I I don't think you're going to be the only one.
2:24:03
And >> it it's always been interesting to me.
2:24:08
You know, people complain about iPhone pricing, but there are not that many pro products in the world that are as like that have as much utility as an iPhone that you use as much as the iPhone.
2:24:20
Like if the iPhone was $10,000, there would be a big market for them, right?
2:24:26
And so I feel like Apple over time, >> don't give them any ideas.
2:24:30
>> Well, yeah, but I just feel like over time it's like, how do we make more money?
2:24:32
It's like, well, you make a feature so that you have like you can have like, yeah, this is the iPhone I use on the weekend.
2:24:38
This is the iPhone that I use during the work week or whatever.
2:24:42
Uh, and >> they should do that.
2:24:43
They'll probably get a lot of uh they'll probably get a lot of of heat for that depending on how they they articulate it.
2:24:48
Um, hopefully they don't hire you as the marketing person for that because [laughter] they're just going to come across.
2:24:54
>> Well, I'm just giving them business ideas.
2:24:55
Like I think like I'm I'm giving them what whatever it is 1,500 a year for iPhones.
2:25:00
I don't even know the pricing, but they could probably get >> they could probably get more. [laughter] >> They will.
2:25:07
I mean, I would expect the prices to go up on all of these things.
2:25:11
>> Um, the foldable phone obviously is going to be two grand plus.
2:25:12
The other uh thing to note is in iOS 27, they actually have a feature where >> they think they can price the Ultra higher than specs.
2:25:20
[laughter] >> They're out of their mind.
2:25:24
>> I think they'll be I think that'll be higher than specs, but they added a new feature. >> Who? Snap. No, I'm joking. We can get to that.
2:25:32
>> Specs are very highly priced.
2:25:32
Yeah, >> but iPhone or iOS 27 has a feature where you can synchronize a single phone number and carrier account between two iPhones.
2:25:42
>> So, it does have that on the phone number side of things, >> but you're not going to be able to, you know, pick up a make a feature to have the weekend stuff and >> during the week stuff and the night stuff. That'd be cool, though. I don't know. Screw it.
2:25:54
Maybe I'll get the foldable two and the 20 at the same time in a year from now. So, we'll see. You're welcome, Apple.
2:26:00
>> Does the foldable eat into iPad or is it purely additive?
2:26:05
>> I think it's purely additive.
2:26:05
Uh I think that Apple has positioned the iPad itself at this point as a companion device to the iPhone and the Mac.
2:26:11
I think they've done a great job at that.
2:26:15
So I I don't think the foldable is going to take away iPad sales, particularly because of the price delta is so high.
2:26:21
There will be a new OLED iPad Mini coming out soon, which I think a lot of the iPad mini fanboys are going to be pretty pumped about. >> That's great.
2:26:27
What about uh what you got for the Apple Vision Pro fanboys like myself?
2:26:32
Uh what are we doing in AR VR glasses?
2:26:35
We just talked to uh the founder of Raven Renaissance.
2:26:38
He's making augmented reality glasses, obviously specs launched as well.
2:26:42
Is there any movement there or any from WWC on the software side that might actually hint at or translate into uh wearables?
2:26:55
Uh, the Vision Pro added this new feature where it uses the external cameras to give you a sense of your external environment and object identification.
2:27:01
That's going to be a feature at the heart of new AirPods coming out at the end of next year.
2:27:06
It's a project called B798, uh, where they have cameras on the AirPods that can help you with navigation and seeing the world around you.
2:27:13
Cloud processing, feeding that data into Siri AI.
2:27:16
Same functionality will come to the smart glasses from Apple. Non AR, right? No displays.
2:27:22
Those will be uh rolled out at the very end of 2027, hopefully in time for the holiday season.
2:27:27
Uh but they're a little behind on those.
2:27:32
>> Augmented reality glasses from Apple, I would expect much later in the decade. >> Mhm. >> New Vision Pro.
2:27:38
So, the Vision Pro is on ice.
2:27:40
You're not going to see another new uh Vision Pro redesign, but what you are going to see is a completely rethought, revamped from groundup mixed reality headset from Apple.
2:27:52
So, >> okay, I'm listening.
2:27:56
>> Okay, I'm thinking 2029, maybe end 2028, but it's going to be a long time.
2:28:03
>> Where's the Vision Air? We got the Vision Pro. Just make it lighter. It's device.
2:28:09
Well, this is going to be a lighter this is going to be a much lighter end to end retooling, revamping of the headset.
2:28:15
It's not a Vision Pro two.
2:28:18
>> Uh it's a uh start from scratch type of product. >> Give me the vision.
2:28:21
That's why it's taking make it 25 pounds in my face.
2:28:25
>> So, yeah, it's going to be, you know, it's interesting when the Vision Pro launched and they were looking for different ways to take this product and, you know, give it a market.
2:28:35
This is going to sound surprising to you, but obviously on one hand they were looking at how do we make this thing cheaper and lighter. >> Yeah.
2:28:43
>> One of the directions they were actually also looking at how do you make this thing even higherend?
2:28:47
How do you make this thing even more expensive?
2:28:49
How do you make this thing even better from a technical chop standpoint?
2:28:53
How do you reduce the latency?
2:28:55
reduce the latency? Should we do a model uh that's specific for a medical uh grade for enterprise um for these high value targets that maybe would be willing to pay $5,000 for this machine a business class version of
2:29:10
the vision pro ultimately they're not moving in this direction right now it's all about that endto-end retool >> where does Apple sit on enterprise versions of their products like the Mac Pro is that the last time they had something dedic dedicated like Mac Studio. Do they think of that as like an
2:29:27
Do they think of that as like an enterprise grade?
2:29:30
>> The MacBook Pro is an enterprise product.
2:29:32
>> I feel like MacBook Pro is extremely consumer, but I I don't know like like how how did they think about like actually uh you know segmenting out that market. >> It's been a while.
2:29:43
They had the exerve servers um >> 15 years ago.
2:29:48
>> You can make the argument like the Mac Pro, Mac Studio, what have you.
2:29:50
Uh, but I the the the thinking in Apple is make these baseline products for consumers that consumers love >> and [snorts] make them so enjoyable that you're going to want to use them at work too and then provide the software tools that allow you to do that.
2:30:06
And if you remember, >> you know, 2008, the iPhone uh, you know, renaissance starting then, >> a lot of credit goes to the price, cutting the price down to 189.
2:30:16
A lot of credit goes to the App Store.
2:30:17
Some of the credit goes to 3G.
2:30:20
some of the credit goes to GE uh geographic distribution, but the one thing that people leave off when they talk about where did the how did the iPhone go from here to here is 2008 is when Apple added enterprise support for the iPhone.
2:30:32
And so getting these things in businesses is really really important.
2:30:36
For the Vision Pro, just like Hollow Lens, Magic Leap, and other ARV VR companies before them, they had no choice but to go all in on the enterprise, or not go all in, go a little bit deeper into the enterprise than they normally would like with their products because that was the their biggest market.
2:30:53
>> Today, all of Apple's other products, watches, phones, iPads, Macs, they have really big um, you know, footprints in the enterprise, but the enterprise is still only a sliver of the overall market.
2:31:03
You know, 90% of their sales are consumer. >> Yep.
2:31:06
Vision Pro, you know, the split is is a lot bigger uh in favor of enterprise.
2:31:12
>> Any update on the lamp? >> The lamp. Oh, the tabletop robot.
2:31:16
I still expect that to come 2028.
2:31:21
>> Uh we're going to see the smart home display.
2:31:25
>> I know, I know, I know.
2:31:25
Smart home display uh probably at the as early as the end of this year. Okay.
2:31:30
Uh, that's going to be an amazing product >> and I think it's going to be a blockbuster and I think it's going to be a gigantic seller.
2:31:37
Uh, just imagine having this thing on your desk, your wall, your counter. You can walk up to it. It could recognize you.
2:31:43
It could pull up the stuff uh for, you know, you and let's pretend Jordy and John live together. Jordy walks up to it.
2:31:49
Uh, all of Jord's stuff comes up. John walks up to it.
2:31:54
All of John's stuff comes up.
2:31:54
It has this personalized Siri and can grab all that stuff from the device. It has FaceTime. It has intercom.
2:32:00
It has smart home control. Control your music.
2:32:02
You can watch video on it.
2:32:04
I think it's going to be really really great holiday gift when this thing finally comes out.
2:32:09
>> How will it control the music?
2:32:09
Like are they going to finally make a run of uh matching Sonos, which is in a very very tough spot as a $ 1. 7 billion company.
2:32:20
Uh are they going to try and make a run? >> Is that it? 1. 7 billion. >> 1. 7 billion down. >> What's Pelaton? >> Pelaton. Let's see. Pelaton market cap 2. 4. So bigger.
2:32:30
Um Aura is like a10 billion valuation, right? I mean it's amazing. >> Yeah.
2:32:39
But I mean Sonos has frustrated a lot of people with the software.
2:32:41
They rolled a bunch of stuff back.
2:32:42
But in terms of actually offering a consumer proumer level experience with, you know, Wi-Fi connected speakers that are available in more than just one skew or two SKs, you know, like yes, you can go all in on the Apple speakers, but then you just have a ton of really small speakers around.
2:33:01
I found out I have speakers built inside of my walls and it gave me insane.
2:33:06
They're not Sonos thankfully, but I was like, >> it gave me insane Sonos PTSD because I'm like, imagine you have issue with >> Well, you take the aux from that and you plug that into whatever you want, some sort of receiver, but Apple doesn't make that receiver right now.
2:33:21
You know, Apple had such an opportunity with the HomePod in speakers and they completely blew it >> uh because of AI, because they didn't create an app ecosystem around it, because they made it exclusive to their, you know, customer base. No Android support. >> The list goes on. Pretty disappointing.
2:33:36
They haven't given the HomePod a meaningful update in six years since the HomePod mini launched.
2:33:40
They did a little minor refresh to the HomePod in in 23, but I thought when the first HomePod launched in uh 2018 that they were going to be able to really go all in on speakers, different form factors, different versions when this but smart home is one of two pillars for Apple right now.
2:34:01
AI wearables and then uh AI smart home devices.
2:34:05
And so you'll see the smart home hub.
2:34:06
the smart home hub. Uh you'll see one other thing uh in home security you'll see that uh lamp as you call it uh you'll see a refresh of the home >> table the lamp and the home security combined and you have killer lamps you can >> Sounds like a nightmare
2:34:24
>> you can release >> and you combine it with AI >> are there wait are there any Apple products with motors in them that I'm not that I'm not >> No this will be this will be the first one with a um artificial arm and it's a motorized Apple product that can move around in space. And so if you think
2:34:39
And so if you think about it, this is a piece of the legacy of the Apple car because this project was part of the Apple Car uh AI and mechanics and part of that division and it was one of the things that got left over.
2:34:56
In fact, the person who ran the entire Apple Car project uh when it shut down, Kevin Lynch, this was the guy who ran software for the Apple Watch uh for uh a very long time and helped build that product from the ground up.
2:35:11
>> Uh his project now is the lamp. >> The lamp. >> Lamp man.
2:35:16
>> It's not quite a lamp. >> It's a big deal.
2:35:17
Going from running the Apple Watch to the Apple car to the Apple lamp.
2:35:20
Do you believe the conspiracy theories that suggest that the Ferrari Luche is just a rebadged Apple car?
2:35:30
>> No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
2:35:30
The the Apple car looked like a new age VW uh bus.
2:35:38
>> Oh, >> you know, I think the Luch would have been successful as a $150,000 Apple car. >> Yeah.
2:35:43
>> Uh but as a $700,000 Ferrari, I think they missed the mark. >> Well, who knows?
2:35:48
Uh, you might need to buy one to get access to other cars.
2:35:52
Like Ferrari is a very complicated business model.
2:35:53
You never know how it'll it'll >> No, it's fun. It's funny.
2:35:55
I saw people go like on chat GPT after the luch was announced.
2:36:01
They typed in make me an electric Ferrari and they're like, I made a better design in 15 seconds.
2:36:05
[laughter] >> Not hard to do.
2:36:06
Uh, what what uh any any predictions with uh for specs?
2:36:10
It feels like uh uh at a normal company would would launch this product uh and then probably shutter the program.
2:36:19
I expect I wouldn't be surprised if if Spiegel triples down.
2:36:25
Uh, but it just feels like I I I cannot see the market for uh $2,000 uh, you know, pair of smart glasses that uh, still feel like they're not going to add a tremendous amount of value to my daily life. >> I like Evans Spaggle.
2:36:43
I like some of the stuff Snap is doing.
2:36:47
>> Um, I think the design of the glasses actually looks pretty cool.
2:36:50
I haven't uh tried the the latest prototype yet, but I think they're welld designigned in in a nice product.
2:36:56
Uh the question is if there's going to be a killer app for it and right now it doesn't seem to be the case.
2:37:03
I think the price actually isn't terrible.
2:37:06
You know, the vision when we started talking about these things half a decade ago was they need to get to smartphone prices.
2:37:11
Smartphone prices are now $2,000.
2:37:14
>> But if you can get this thing down to a grand, uh, which I don't know how that's ever going to happen, >> you're talking about something fairly fairly compelling. >> Yeah.
2:37:24
>> Uh, Meta Ray-B band displays are at 800 bucks.
2:37:30
>> Do you think they're losing a bunch of money on that?
2:37:33
>> Think they're losing money on them.
2:37:33
I don't think people are buying them.
2:37:35
Uh I basically met Meta what they've done is they've created a three- tier system.
2:37:42
Tier A is the non-dis glasses that look exactly like normal glasses and don't have a display.
2:37:48
And those have been extraordinarily popular because of the Luxotica brands pushing those.
2:37:52
Tier B has been the Meta Display, which is this little HUD, a little heads-up display you have in there, and you use the wristband controller.
2:38:01
Uh the third tier is the true AR glasses.
2:38:04
I don't think that mid-tier with the HUD is going to last.
2:38:09
Uh the price is, you know, relatively solid, but I just don't see that as something people are going to be compelled by. >> Mhm.
2:38:17
>> You want dual display, you want binocular displays, you want immersiveness.
2:38:20
Um then on the other hand, if you tried the Vision Pro, you're spoiled.
2:38:25
And so it's like really, do you want to use any of these things?
2:38:28
Cuz did I see a photo of you on a plane wearing a Vision Pro the other day? >> Oh, yeah. I watch home movies. >> Which one of it? It was one of you two. >> Yeah, it was me. It was John.
2:38:37
>> I'll watch our entire Lawrence Arabia from start to finish in a vision pro.
2:38:42
>> Your hair is so similar.
2:38:42
I can't tell who who's anymore.
2:38:43
But um >> that's me on a plane.
2:38:46
Like I love that thing for movie watching. >> It's amazing.
2:38:51
>> Um if you've installed Vision OS 27, have you installed it yet? >> No, better.
2:38:56
>> The new series is pretty good on there.
2:38:58
>> And then they have this new environment.
2:39:00
I don't remember which uh where it is in the world. might be Iceland. It's really remarkable.
2:39:05
And then you can set any of your panoramas now uh the good ones at least uh as your environment.
2:39:09
So a few little bells and whistles tweaks in Vision OS 27.
2:39:14
I don't think it's the soft on Sunday.
2:39:17
I'll take a panorama of the Ultra Dome and then when I'm on my plane I'll be able to sit here rewatch our interview on that screen there in full immersion midjourney hardware release. Any predictions?
2:39:33
Have you followed it at all?
2:39:36
>> Yeah, I've been looking at this closely.
2:39:38
We're going to be covering it tonight.
2:39:38
I believe the launch is 6 p. m.
2:39:42
>> The head of hardware engineering is someone who came from the uh Vision Pro team.
2:39:47
He was a manager on the Vision Pro hardware team.
2:39:49
It seems like they've been working on this for a couple years.
2:39:53
I would file this immediately in the category of products that may never launch or may never be bought by anyone.
2:39:58
Uh I wonder what will sell more. Yeah, experimental.
2:40:01
The specs for this product probably the specs to be quite honest with you.
2:40:04
I think the last thing someone sent me before I came on with you guys was that the product is going to be large in size.
2:40:09
So I don't know what that necessarily means and I guess that would rule out a headset of some sort. smart keggerator. Who knows?
2:40:18
>> Yeah, I I I just thought like some I I my my head went to like local compute something that something for like proumer creators type of thing.
2:40:29
>> But I don't think that's interesting.
2:40:29
I think you need something image based, something visual, >> not another Mac studio. >> Yeah.
2:40:37
Last question about WWDC.
2:40:37
uh the parental controls, the focus on uh it feels like Apple's solving some of the like societal anxiety around like our phones bad for kids, our phones bad for people, all this. Yeah. Is it existential?
2:40:56
Um like what do you think they were driving there?
2:40:59
Was that message received?
2:41:01
Because obviously AI is everything everyone talks about, but how important are those features?
2:41:06
like what were your takeaways from how like why they chose to focus on that so much?
2:41:12
How important are those uh features and then will that actually move the needle on like young device adoption? >> Couple things.
2:41:20
Regulators around the world are going absolutely nuts about this stuff, >> smartphone addiction, social media, etc.
2:41:27
>> And Apple needs to address all this stuff before it get becomes their next uh EU related problem or EU like problem. Sure.
2:41:35
>> Uh the other thing is AI and not that Apple has had great AI on the phone but obviously the fears of AI taking over things.
2:41:42
Y >> uh and then the other thing I would say is they launched screen time I believe in 2018 >> which is their parental control the name of their parental control system.
2:41:50
>> Um it's just been an unmitigated disaster that hasn't worked properly for like five or six years.
2:41:54
So they really needed to revamp it.
2:41:57
But it was but driven because I've noticed sometimes I'll go into screen time and it'll be like the Washington Post.
2:42:03
com is 23 hours and 59 minutes and I'm like I had one tab open and it was just like churning and sending something >> super buggy.
2:42:13
Uh kids being able to just do whatever the hell they want on their phones even if they're not supposed to. Just a bunch of issues.
2:42:19
Uh and so they needed to do an end toend revamp and it's smart timing given they've already they've finally got the AI in place.
2:42:24
And then you've got a lot of people who are like, I don't want digital devices anymore. I want an MP3 player. Bring the iPod back. Right. Get this screen. >> Lucky is out there.
2:42:34
Are you banging the gong about retro futuristic devices, the game? >> It's a real thing. >> Yeah.
2:42:40
Do you think would Would Apple ever do a re-release of the like an iPod?
2:42:45
>> Like I feel so No, that's not their style.
2:42:47
That's Palmer Lucky's domain.
2:42:49
>> I think this is >> Well, you guys know how this feature works, right?
2:42:52
like you turn it on and then over time >> you can expand the feature set who people can contact um applications you have so you can really you know turn the iPhone into a dumb phone now and then let it get smart over time.
2:43:05
It's actually a remarkable concept and I think uh [laughter] if executed well it's pretty compelling and all the other phone makers are going to copy it. >> Interesting. >> Happy birthday son. You're 17.
2:43:14
You get to unlock the calculator app now. >> Exactly. >> Enjoy it.
2:43:20
Don't go too crazy with those numbers. Who knows?
2:43:22
[laughter] Thank you so much for taking the time to come chat. Always great. >> Thank you guys. See you next time soon.
2:43:30
Have a great rest of your day. Goodbye.
2:43:32
>> Let me tell you about the New York Stock Exchange.
2:43:33
Want to change the world?
2:43:36
Raise capital at the New York Stock Exchange.
2:43:38
[music] Just do it, folks. Stop making >> it.
2:43:42
Every founder that we talked to that raises capital at NY loves it.
2:43:48
>> Said they say it's incredible.
2:43:48
Yeah, NPS is through the roof. Just go do it.
2:43:52
>> NPS is legitimately through the roof.
2:43:54
>> When you're raising that series D or F, why not just >> just do it over >> New York Stock Exchange.
2:43:59
>> The New York Stock Exchange.
2:44:01
>> We got Ryan Daniels from Crosby, the co-founder and CEO in the waiting room.
2:44:04
Let's bring him into the TVP and Ultradom. Ryan, how you doing? Good to see you again. What's the latest?
2:44:10
>> Good to see you, guys. >> Welcome back. >> Benchmaxing. You're benchmaxing. >> Benchmax.
2:44:16
>> Always got to benchmark.
2:44:17
>> Tell us about benchmarks. what are you launching? Why is it important? Break it down for us.
2:44:22
>> So, today we uh published a benchmark.
2:44:24
It's the first benchmark that we know of that just looks at it's it's simple in theory, but a negotiation between two uh lawyers >> like as far as we can get to completion. >> Yeah.
2:44:35
>> And uh I think the main takeaway is there's a lot of art to negotiating and the way that lawyers negotiate contracts is really complex because there's so many moving variables.
2:44:46
>> And this is what we do at Crosby.
2:44:46
We try to get deals closed faster.
2:44:48
And so for the first time, we can actually measure, you know, how do agents do on the first red line? That's fine.
2:44:53
We kind of know that already.
2:44:55
But how do they go over and over through the process where the judgment of a lawyer really takes hold and they just try to figure out who is their counterparty and how can they get them to yes.
2:45:03
>> Next step, you got to train a voice model to be able to yell on the phone at the other client at the counterparty.
2:45:11
Let them know that you're not doing another turn of the forms.
2:45:13
The battle of the forms is over. No.
2:45:14
Obviously, there's a lot that goes into this. Uh talk about the data.
2:45:18
Are you getting good redline data, ground truth data from firms?
2:45:22
Are they happy to partner with you on this?
2:45:24
Like what is the value prop to actually get the correct data?
2:45:29
Are you doing it yourself through a data firm?
2:45:31
Like what's the strategy to get the ground truth here?
2:45:33
Because it is it's not the same as like a math problem that you can just verify with lean.
2:45:40
>> Yeah, that's that's like that's the key point of it.
2:45:42
And and like you're totally right like like so we worked with Micro One really closely on this with Ali and his team. They've been amazing.
2:45:48
They have like a really great um legal focus that they're building out and you know we have our own captive law firm here.
2:45:56
That's been our kind of shtick from the beginning was in order to get the full benefits of what agents can do in law.
2:46:02
Start your own law firm sell endto-end legal work and as agent get better our our margins get better.
2:46:06
And um we worked with Ali and and the hard thing is like there is no right answer.
2:46:10
And we basically had large groups of real lawyers negotiating all with the same positions for the same parties and seeing like how much of those lawyers agree with one another on the right way to respond to those other lawyers.
2:46:21
And so we could just see the overlap.
2:46:22
And as the negotiation went longer and longer, we saw a ton of deviation between those lawyers, which is fascinating.
2:46:28
Like they're all very senior.
2:46:30
They're all very experienced.
2:46:31
This is a real negotiation.
2:46:32
Um but at the beginning, the lawyers kind of more or less did the same thing.
2:46:36
and we just saw the way the agents we then built a rubric based on how those lawyers actually worked and tried to create some sort of um like ground truth for the best way to negotiate.
2:46:46
But like to your point like I don't know maybe if we just did everything in all caps the canop party would just accept it and we could yell through the margins. So you had to try it.
2:46:54
>> That's why you got pay the big bucks if you got big big lungs and can scream.
2:46:55
Um what uh like it seems like all the models did very similarly 50% 50. 5 for GPT 5.
2:47:04
5 weird numerology there 5. 5 gets a 50. 5 uh Gemini 3. 5 CL flash got a 45. 1 Opus 4. 8 got 44.
2:47:14
4 four and fable 5 got 47.
2:47:17
47.3 that seems surprising I mean it seems like the window for testing was low or is that something like Fable is more tuned to cyber security bio those sort of reinforce learnings those those feedback loops and maybe it hasn't been applied to to uh to legal yet but what
2:47:36
was your interpretation >> I we put a big asterisk on Fable because we got one uh testing run through and then we lost access so we still would want to do a few if and when [clears throat] >> we get we get access back >> you know I think uh it's not surprising I think
2:47:55
uh what was most interesting to us were a few things one >> in the first red line like the first rea document thing and and agents like really did poorly they scored they scored poorly there because they couldn't service those first issues as the as the new issue went on we knew the
2:48:10
issues models did quite a bit better um but the biggest thing was models are really likely to just say yes and accept some term because you want to keep the deal going and that was part of the instruction and that's just not good lawyering, right? Like a great lawyer
2:48:21
Like a great lawyer knows how to kind of make you feel like you're getting your your side but but still push the deal forward and and and protect the client.
2:48:26
And that's where the real judgment came in.
2:48:29
And so, you know, in our mind, we have a lot of work to do because we we want our agents to be able to take the work off our lawyers hands to be able to think through something and say, "Hey, like we pushed back on this for this reason and really get the counterparty there."
2:48:40
So, you know, um I think the models did better than we thought they would, but there's a lot of work to do.
2:48:47
>> We're having a little bit of interference.
2:48:48
I have one more question.
2:48:50
Anything you need to get in?
2:48:50
Um I just want to know about the value of the harness because it seems like uh all of these models are sort of neck and neck, you know, within a few percentage.
2:48:58
Uh what happens if you wrap them in a very bespoke harness that your team builds? Can you get to 70%, 90%?
2:49:05
like where do you think the the upper bound is on this benchmark?
2:49:14
>> Yeah, that that's a great question.
2:49:14
And like every you know everything's published. It's all open source.
2:49:17
So like the harness that we use, everything can all be replicated. Yeah.
2:49:20
>> Um there's a lot of ways to push.
2:49:20
I think you know we've invested a lot in in the harness that we wrote specifically that's really good at editing word documents.
2:49:26
That turns out to be a really hard thing.
2:49:29
>> And so there's ways to push there.
2:49:29
you know, I think ultimately, you know, more and more bespoke models that are like really uh post-trained on just like making judgment calls, stating their reasoning will be an area.
2:49:40
So, like both of those things help, but at the end of the day, like there's a ton of intelligence in like just the closed models and I think it's not being fully exploited.
2:49:48
So, yeah, all all areas to explore.
2:49:50
That's the right questions.
2:49:52
>> How is your team experimented with token maxing?
2:49:55
Like I you guys are, you know, heavily funded.
2:49:57
you're building an AI law firm.
2:49:59
I imagine you're not telling the team like, >> you know, be be conservative with tokens, especially because you can just like learn faster and and it's kind of the whole point of uh of the business.
2:50:14
But where does token maxing make sense with with legal?
2:50:16
Have you already found an equilibrium?
2:50:19
What is your overall kind of like ethos around it?
2:50:22
I feel like as a company, we're not like successful enough to be like worried about token cost yet.
2:50:28
We're still in the place where we can just be like putting as much money.
2:50:31
And I think more and more law firms like Kirkland just allocated half a billion dollars to building their own AI stuff are just trying to figure out, you know, they're charging they're charging huge amounts of money for the labor spend of legal.
2:50:42
So they have a lot of room to throw money at tokens.
2:50:43
And so long as you're like basically spending less than the equivalent of $1,000 an hour on tokens, which is even for this still hard to do, like you're still coming out with a good margin.
2:50:53
So like we, you know, we're spending a ton, you know, we we did a lot of work with Fable.
2:50:58
We got early access to it and and uh we spent a lot of money with it.
2:51:00
And like, you know, and so I think there's still room to go.
2:51:04
Um because ultimately it's it's either the model or the human and and the models are still cheaper than you know, hiring um expensive lawyers for some of the tasks that we don't think we need lawyers for.
2:51:14
>> Yeah, that makes sense.
2:51:14
Well, thank you so much for taking the time to come. >> Yeah.
2:51:17
Sorry for the technical difficulties, but uh yeah, great great to get the update >> and we will talk to you soon.
2:51:21
Have a good rest of your day. Goodbye. >> See you, Ryan.
2:51:25
>> Let me tell you about public.
2:51:25
com investing for those who take it seriously.
2:51:28
Stocks, options, bonds, crypto, treasuries, and more with great customer service.
2:51:32
Our next guest, Isaiah from Bland, is the co-founder and CEO.
2:51:37
He's in the waiting room. Welcome to the show. How are you doing? >> What's up, dude? >> I'm doing good.
2:51:42
This is like the coolest thing I get to do for this fundraising and it's fantastic. >> We'll kick it off. >> I know. I know. Way too fundraising. How much did you raise? >> This is way overdue.
2:51:51
>> How much did you raise?
2:51:52
>> We uh we raised 50 million. >> Hit it again.
2:51:56
Hit it again cuz it's should have happened. >> There we go. Congratulations.
2:52:01
Now tell us what do you do? >> I never do. [laughter] >> Yeah.
2:52:07
So you guys know when you you call basically any big company in the US and you have to deal with one of those really annoying bots, we replace that with AI.
2:52:14
But our specialty we like to say is like we want to do the calls where if something goes wrong, someone sues or dies.
2:52:22
>> Uh so we do the really complex, hard to handle calls and then we do that without open AI.
2:52:26
I don't know if I'm allowed to say that on here and anyone else.
2:52:31
>> So >> So you're training your training your own models. >> Yeah, correct. Uh, and uh, okay.
2:52:35
So, so more specifically, like are you working like uh, like 911 calls?
2:52:42
Is that is that I imagine that's not your focus, right?
2:52:48
Because or or maybe it is, but I know there's some companies that that just focus on that.
2:52:52
Are you thinking like hospitals like what what what kind of give us some more maybe concrete examples?
2:52:59
>> Hospitals, airlines, uh, and yes, 911 calls eventually.
2:53:02
So, we're actually working on a product offering for that right now.
2:53:05
Uh, I can't say too much about that, but I I do have this weird feeling that like poetically I'm going to die by a botched AI 911 call one day.
2:53:13
Uh, and that's kind of my mission. >> Don't man. Don't Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
2:53:15
You got to You're a time traveler going back in time. >> I got to warm myself. >> You got Yeah.
2:53:23
You got to You got to save yourself.
2:53:25
Um what what how uh describe this mark like describe voice describe the voice AI market, right?
2:53:36
Like you guys have uh some competition from the frontier labs but uh it seems like le less competition than than maybe one would think or maybe it's like feel almost certainly has to be less competitive than uh you know coding agents, right?
2:53:51
where you have, you know, thousands of companies and the labs and the hyperscalers all competing. >> Yeah. Yeah. And you'd be surprised.
2:53:58
So, like two years ago, we were we were one of the first companies to do this.
2:54:02
This was like well before the labs.
2:54:03
And I have a little binder of screenshots of different VCs that I'm sure talk about their voice AI thesis today who said no one will be talking to AI two years from today.
2:54:14
Uh, and by the way, very unpopular if you go into a fund raise reminding them that they said that.
2:54:18
They don't like [laughter] that.
2:54:20
No, I I I don't recommend that. Uh >> gloves for sure.
2:54:24
Uh wait, but on that point of like uh like no one will be talking to AI, it seems like are you actually increasing the length of phone calls?
2:54:35
Like I'm seeing like the typical call last 30 to 45 minutes.
2:54:37
That feels like too long.
2:54:40
Honestly, that feels like a long time.
2:54:42
Are people asking your models to write Python for them or something and they're transcribing it one one character at a time?
2:54:51
be a little round about, but yeah, we we do calls with like 90-y old patients doing 45 minute long remote patient monitoring calls.
2:54:58
And so if you want them to to put on the blood pressure device, right, and you want to figure out if they're having heart attack, you have to hear about their grandchild first, that is an immovable object you have to get through. >> Sure.
2:55:11
[laughter] >> These are lonely, lonely.
2:55:13
>> Oh, that's interesting.
2:55:13
So you actually have to somewhat like put guard rails on obviously, but not the guardrails can't be too narrow to the point where you're a phone tree because you actually do have to open up the customer, open up the the the user on the other end of the line and and start actually having a conversation before you can do a more complex interaction. >> Interesting. >> So do companies Yeah.
2:55:34
Do companies have like specific ideas about that?
2:55:39
preconceived notions whether they should or shouldn't do that, whether that's table stakes, like what does that look like?
2:55:44
>> So, we we work with a couple of like really big banks and one of them had a minute and a half long disclosure we've had to leave at the start of every call. I know. Thank you.
2:55:53
Uh I I worked that in there.
2:55:56
So, if you're a big bank watching this, uh please disregard everything else I said and just reach out.
2:56:02
>> Uh but we we had to have a minute and a half long disclosure.
2:56:04
So if you wanted to have a human being talk to our AI, you had to sit through a minute and a half of straight reading out different things to them and then they would get on, you know, we get on calls with them and they'd say like um and it's varying, right?
2:56:18
Like not every bank's like this.
2:56:19
We've worked with some really big ones that are less painful, but they're like, "Yeah, how do we know the AI is not going to say something racist?"
2:56:24
Like we're pretty sure that it won't.
2:56:26
Uh and you have to go through this really intensive testing process.
2:56:30
And so what a lot of people don't realize is that these call centers and these really big ones that we're dealing with, every business has tried to get rid of them every possible way they can.
2:56:40
They only exist because there's a gap between what the business wants to offer and what it can offer.
2:56:46
And so when you hear about like AI receptionists or you hear about e-commerce, where's my order calls, that's not what we're doing.
2:56:53
We're doing the hard part of the $250 billion a year spend in the US.
2:56:57
And that is really early.
2:57:00
That is like astoundingly early.
2:57:03
I don't think people realize how early it is. >> Makes sense.
2:57:06
Uh what is I mean you're talking to big banks like what is the actual uh go to market motion funnel?
2:57:09
Is it all salesdriven or are there inbound?
2:57:16
Do you have an inbound team or is there any like uh sort of like self-s serve option at this point?
2:57:22
>> Um we have 350,000 self-s serve users but most of it is actually inbound leads.
2:57:27
So, we do viral marketing every once in a while.
2:57:29
Uh, you guys might have seen this, but we had a billboard.
2:57:31
This was back before it was like cool to do billboards that said still hiring humans question mark.
2:57:37
And it had a phone number on it. Okay.
2:57:40
>> Not stop hiring humans.
2:57:40
That is a different company that ripped that billboard off.
2:57:43
We're not happy with that.
2:57:46
>> You guys were the You guys were the first.
2:57:48
>> We were the We were the first.
2:57:48
And I actually got a chance um while the founder of that other company was getting a haircut to go up to him and tell him what I thought because I found out haircuts. Crazy. Very captive. Captive audience.
2:57:59
>> It was sort of a captive audience, right?
2:58:01
The the poor the poor people did not know what was going on and why we were so upset at each other. >> Yeah.
2:58:08
Because you invented billboards.
2:58:10
So for him to come in and not only run a billboard, but to use similar language is just, you know, >> same graphic, same everything.
2:58:16
And I was like, he's like, "Oh, I'm a big fan of your billboards."
2:58:19
I'm like, "Yeah, I know."
2:58:20
[laughter] >> Uh, Ted, turn it up.
2:58:23
Uh but yeah, so we we bought the rights to Soulja Boy's voice for example.
2:58:28
So you all know Soulja Boy like crank that right kiss me through the phone.
2:58:31
So we've done a lot of viral marketing and we've managed to get CIOS great people to come in and actually come to us.
2:58:37
We do a lot of outbound too, but CIO Soulja Boy.
2:58:39
Yeah, Soulja Boy help you win in the enterprise >> like you would not believe because he was really popular around the time that most of the CIOS were like teenagers, >> high school or young adults. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
2:58:56
He probably crushes at like AWS reinvent in Vegas.
2:58:58
Are there any any any of your customers actively using Soulja Boy's voice for uh their customer service or is that just like kind of >> I'm going to need I'm going to need to read a disclosure to you for a minute and a half, but I'm bringing in Soulja Boy to I think that's >> that would be the the retention there would probably be >> really quite good. >> Yeah, why not?
2:59:22
>> Uh yes, actually there's a lot of mostly there's there's a lot of restaurants because apparently people really love it.
2:59:28
But we have his name published under a different name on the platform.
2:59:31
So we have Soulja Boy's official voice and then we have a name that's hidden for the other one.
2:59:36
The other voice is very popular.
2:59:38
So there are a few enterprises that if you stumble upon it and you call, you might not realize it, but you're actually talking to Soldier Boy. >> The one and only. >> Wow.
2:59:48
>> Uh talked about working with uh Paul Lieberstein, >> the actor behind Toby on The Office. >> Oh yeah.
2:59:59
I never get to meet the celebrities.
3:00:01
It's always the marketing team.
3:00:01
He was incredibly nice to work with, very pleasant. Ramp had Kevin or Brian.
3:00:04
Um, and I I have to be very careful about the names um, and not mixing them up.
3:00:13
But we were like, who's the most boring person that we could possibly think of?
3:00:17
Because the company's name is bland, so it kind of comes with the territory.
3:00:21
>> And everyone was like, well, Toby from the office.
3:00:23
Paul, I think, was humored by that.
3:00:26
Uh, took it very graciously and we ended up having a lot of really great interaction with that and and sort of goes along with our our marketing which is fun and engaging but not maybe disruptive to the brand where you're like these guys I wouldn't trust them to handle my 911 calls. >> Sure. Sure. [snorts] Sure. Yeah.
3:00:46
>> Imagine Imagine calling 911 and Soulja Boy pick >> that that would be worrisome >> I gota I got to say. >> Oh wow.
3:00:55
>> But uh good lead, Jen. >> Yeah.
3:00:56
Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. >> Congrats.
3:00:58
Who who did who did the round?
3:01:01
>> So, it was um our insiders plus Dell and HubSpot.
3:01:04
So, we actually went very corporate on this round.
3:01:06
Um and we were excited to have them and >> yeah, so you guys will be hearing more thoughts on some new models and stuff. >> Fantastic. >> Great.
3:01:15
Great to finally meet you and congrats on me.
3:01:18
>> We'll talk to you soon. >> Cheers. >> Have a good one.
3:01:20
Uh in market news, uh more Fed officials have signaled a rate increase as the next move.
3:01:27
The central bank held interest rates steady as Kevin Walsh's first meeting at chairman, but nine of 19 Federal Reserve officials penciled in at least one rate increase by year's end, up from none in March.
3:01:44
And so the market is selling off down about a percent today based on that.
3:01:46
Uh there's also a G7 meeting that's happening between AI leaders.
3:01:52
Uh Donald Trump was seated next to Sam Alman and uh and Deis Fabis from Google's Deep Mind at a summit in France on Wednesday discussing um AI uh export controls and all things AI.
3:02:08
The AI leaders are huddling at lunch with the G7 in France.
3:02:15
Um and I'm sure there'll be more things to come uh out of that.
3:02:16
There's still more back and forth on export controls.
3:02:20
The Fable 5 is still embargoed in some way and they're working through that.
3:02:25
There's been a little bit more reporting, but not much major movement there.
3:02:28
Uh and then also uh US has held off on blacklisting China's deepseek more than a hundred firms and more than 100 firms that are deemed security risks.
3:02:37
That was part of the the Fable 5 roll out was that there was a uh South Korean telecom company according to the reporting that had access to uh one of the most advanced models from Anthropic and uh that firm that Chinese that South Korean telecom company had potentially ties to the to China in some way and so the US government was skeptical of that South Korean telecom. um company.
3:03:06
And so, uh there was a debate over that and whether or not that crossed a bright line.
3:03:13
Um and so from the Washington Post, Enthropic later disclosed that the list had ballooned.
3:03:18
The list of companies that would be getting the most advanced models uh had ballooned in roughly 50 additional entities had already received access.
3:03:25
Senior officials began to consider using export controls to claw back the technology after the company did not identify new recipients for days.
3:03:32
When Anthropic finally turned over names, the administration discovered that one recipient was a South Korean telecommunications company.
3:03:38
The administration suspected alleged uh of having ties to China, officials said.
3:03:46
And so that is the the the key of the dust up there, but we'll be continuing to follow that.
3:03:50
In other news, much more tragically, uh many of you will have seen this by now, but uh Joshua Bayer, who is the CEO and founder of Capital Factory, was uh in a in a >> plane crash.
3:04:04
>> Plane crash >> in Laredo, >> I guess, early this morning coming back from Mexico to Austin.
3:04:08
Uh I unfortunately never never got to meet Joshua but uh only heard uh tremendous things about him and he really was a important figure in the Austin uh startup community.
3:04:21
So >> sending our prayers to Joshua's family and friends um and uh yeah really really tragic.
3:04:31
>> Yeah, >> rest in peace.
3:04:33
>> Well, we should close on a positive note in some way.
3:04:36
There's a whole discussion over SpaceX potentially using the high share price, the incredible valuation to acquire more companies, create a rollup.
3:04:45
There's a piece in the Financial Times we can we can run through another day, but uh Bill Aman shares a Hall of Fame opening sentence.
3:04:53
One of the things that makes SpaceX so valuable is how valuable it is.
3:04:59
A tological value argument.
3:05:02
Of course, what he's actually getting at is that while the stock price is uh is so high that serves as a currency for acquisition and when you're a public company, you can acquire companies very easily, uh with your public stock.
3:05:17
And so, uh there's a very interesting window.
3:05:20
Ben Thompson wrote about it, uh on the back of the cursor acquisition closing or or being announced that the option has been exercised.
3:05:27
But, uh it is a very interesting debate.
3:05:29
We touched on it a little bit yesterday.
3:05:31
Is there going to be an acquisition spree? Will there be a roll up?
3:05:35
Will SpaceX buy NeoCloud assets, energy assets, chip assets like Terraab has been talking what what's involved in that?
3:05:43
I mean, they're they're trading at what 10 times Intel at this point or something.
3:05:47
I don't know what is Intel market cap.
3:05:48
Um, but there's so much that they could do.
3:05:51
They It's not 10 times Intel.
3:05:53
Intel is a $600 billion company.
3:05:55
So, uh, that would be a big one.
3:05:58
But there's a lot in the supply chain.
3:06:00
there's a lot in the in the AI world and the space world that they could partner up with if that's uh the direction that they want to go, but it would be a very different direction and so everyone will be watching it very very closely.
3:06:11
Anyway, thank you for tuning in to TBPN today.
3:06:14
Leave us five stars on Apple Podcast and Spotify.
3:06:18
Sign up for our newsletter at tbpn. com and we will see you.
3:06:22
>> And hello to Keith who seemingly just joined the chat.
3:06:25
Hey Keith, >> couple hours late but happy >> few hours late.
3:06:29
Three hours late but we're happy to have you here.
3:06:32
I hope you all have a tremendous afternoon.
3:06:36
>> Thank you to Cooper for always coming in at the market close as well.
3:06:41
>> I appreciate it every day.
3:06:41
And uh have a wonderful afternoon and evening folks. We'll see you tomorrow. >> Goodbye.