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>> [music] >> Fire control. Founder inbound. You're watching TVP N.
4:04
Today is Friday, April 10th, 2026.
4:07
We are live from the TVP N Ultra Dome, the temple of technology, the fortress of finance, the capital of capital.
4:15
>> [applause] >> Uh we have a great show for you today, folks.
4:17
We have a professor from the UCLA human genetics, Alex Young, coming in person to break down polygenic embryo selection, uh critique some in industry claims, and discuss the future of genetic optimization.
4:28
With Jason Kim, the CEO of Firefly Space, coming on while the astronauts are in uh in transit back to Earth.
4:37
Uh we also have uh Chad Janice, founder of Grunes. Yeah.
4:43
>> Uh there's some big news there.
4:43
Uh the the founder and CEO of Grunes, which just was acquired by Unilever for $1. 2 billion.
4:50
We're going to talk about uh his journey building that company, an incredible success. Just over 3 years.
4:58
>> Yeah, really, really >> 300, almost basically $1 million of EV a day for 3 years straight.
5:03
Yeah, it was it was crazy.
5:06
Uh Jordan Bramble, the co-founder and CEO of Antares Industries, coming on to uh talk about uh nuclear energy, which will be very interesting.
5:14
And then Andy Dunn, uh you might know him from Bonobos.
5:16
Now he's the founder of Pi.
5:18
Uh it's trending in the App Store.
5:20
We're going to talk about building a social app App of the day yesterday. Yeah, app of the day.
5:23
Uh and then Josh Reeves, co-founder and CEO of Gusto, is coming on to uh break down the acquisition of Mozy and building an all-in-one SMB operating system.
5:33
Uh the the the news on Artemis 2 is exciting. Today is splashdown day.
5:37
If you've been tracking it, it's been uh over a full week at this point.
5:42
Um the uh it's 13 minutes of things that have to go right, NASA said of reentry and splashdown with the first astronauts from the moon in over uh 50 years.
5:53
After an epic trip to the moon and back, it's landing day for the four astronauts of NASA's Artemis 2 mission.
5:59
For the first time in over 53 years, astronauts are returning to Earth from the moon.
6:03
Uh a fiery 13-minute plunge through Earth's atmosphere at about 24,000 mph will subject uh subject them to degrees and temperatures of up to 5,000° Fahrenheit uh with only their heat shield for protection and >> sure.
6:20
Feels like they just left. Yeah, it does.
6:22
Uh so if you're looking to actually track the the the mission, um the Artemis 2 Orion capsule will return to Earth tonight, April 10th, at 8:00 p. m. Eastern, 5:00 p. m. 5:07 uh Pacific.
6:36
Splashdown is in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of San Diego, not far from here.
6:39
Uh returning home on the ship to end a 10-day trip to the moon are the NASA astronauts who we followed, and they seem very, very happy.
6:47
They uh it's uh it's a They just woke up for landing day.
6:51
Very What is the exact splashdown time? Uh 5:07 p. m. Pacific. So >> Nice.
6:59
Uh we'll be tracking that.
6:59
In other space news, SpaceX uh has uh has some financials uh going out in the information uh today.
7:05
SpaceX posted nearly $5 billion loss last year from AI spending.
7:11
Uh well, but they generated $18.
7:12
5 billion in revenue, two people uh familiar with the figure said.
7:17
This is from Cory Weinberg in The Information.
7:18
Uh the financial figures include XAI, the Elon Musk-founded artificial intelligence company that SpaceX acquired in February.
7:26
The net loss, as well as other financial figures that consolidate SpaceX and XAI's performance, haven't been previously reported, but now uh they are here.
7:34
Yeah, I think everyone was expecting this.
7:37
SpaceX, very profitable company, bought acquires a very unprofitable company. >> Yep. Combined.
7:43
But new opportunity, and all in the pursuit of vertical integration.
7:47
And so um uh SpaceX has closely guarded its financials as it prepares for what will likely be the largest IPO of all time.
7:56
Uh the loss figure shows that investors who participate in the IPO will essentially be financing Musk's unproven AI ambitions in order to get a piece of uh high-performing commercial space and telecom firm.
8:05
But that's sort of been the space uh been the Tesla model for a long time.
8:10
Elon has uh always had multiple irons in the fire, one project that's working and producing cash flow and and growing uh to finance the next uh piece of innovation.
8:21
Ashley Vance has an interesting deep dive on the Tesla semi truck factory.
8:24
He went and saw it rolling off the factory line, which uh was one of those projects that has been uh rumored for a very long time, announced a very long time ago, but seems to be uh getting off the ground.
8:37
Uh Tesla's spent heavily on chips and data centers to power XAI, with capital expenditures for the division nearing 11 uh nearing 13 billion. So lots of cap ex.
8:46
That was 50% more capital spending than the rocket and satellite divisions combined.
8:50
It is crazy how quickly you can spend a lot of money on a data center versus um you know, you think a satellite manufacturing facility or a rocket manufacturing facility would be the most expensive thing, but it is in fact not.
9:04
Uh and >> Yeah, what's that other what's the the company uh that that Dalian backed?
9:09
Uh yeah, the the the satellite bus company in I'm for I'm forgetting the name of it, but uh like wildly profitable.
9:17
There's there's it's been pretty astonishing to see space companies, which you would just assume would would lose money indefinitely, actually figuring out Was it EnduroSat? EnduroSat, yeah. EnduroSat.
9:31
And when we talked to the founder of EnduroSat, it did sound like there was a lot of really important manufacturing, but it wasn't at the level of like buying tools from ASML and and spending $100 million on a single machine.
9:43
I think ASML's lithography machines are up to like $400 million, and there's a huge backlog.
9:48
So um so if you you know, the the the chip chip expenditures can get really, really high.
9:55
Uh SpaceX's core business of selling rocket launch services to governments and companies as well as selling its own Starlink satellite internet services together generated nearly 8 billions 8 billion in in earnings before interest taxes depreciation and amortization and stock-based compensation in 2025.
10:11
So, 8 billion in EBITDA, that is a fantastic number for SpaceX, a very very solidly profitable business there at the core.
10:22
Uh the two space-related divisions are intertwined with most uh SpaceX launches of its Falcon 9 launch with most SpaceX launches of its Falcon 9 launch that's carrying Starlink satellites rather than other companies' payloads.
10:33
And I saw another I saw another piece about how there's still like way more demand than supply just in the launch market broadly.
10:43
A lot of companies have spun up with big plans to put things into orbit.
10:47
We talked to a founder yesterday who's doing a new a new GPS system in lower Earth orbit.
10:54
And so there's a lot of demand for launch and Elon and the rest of the space industry seemingly can't make rockets fast enough.
11:01
I'm excited to talk to Jason Kim of Firefly Aerospace about the launch market broadly, going to the moon, and what else Jason has planned in the in the orbital economy, the lunar economy, the space economy.
11:12
Overall, including its AI division, the company generated just over 6.
11:18
5 billion in adjusted EBITDA.
11:18
SpaceX's depreciation of chips, rockets, and satellites was among the largest expense topping 6. 6 billion.
11:25
Other large costs were stock-based comp and interest expense which neared 2 billion.
11:31
For SpaceX bulls, the company's allure is its dominance in the commercial space market where it sends by far the most payloads into space lapping competitors.
11:38
Um although we've seen some good stuff out of Rocket Lab and also Blue Origin recently, but there's no question that SpaceX has a dominant hold on the launch market.
11:50
Uh that could further its ability to catch up in the AI race in the coming years if it can bring down launching solar power data centers into orbit as Musk has said he wants to do.
11:58
SpaceX is hosting investor meetings this month and sending invitations to a two-day IPO pitch, a sales pitch in Southern Texas and Tennessee where it launches its new rocket and is building data centers respectively.
12:10
In February, Musk orchestrated the merger of SpaceX's crown jewel and XAI, the AI model company he founded to rival OpenAI.
12:15
The company combined the combined company's planning to go public in June which will be a very very exciting time for the market and will be covering it of course on the show.
12:28
There's more back and forth about XAI.
12:32
David Sacks is happy that XAI is the first AI company to challenge Colorado law requiring it to censor truthful answers if they could have a differential impact on protected groups.
12:43
He wants the first amendment to apply to AI and so Sacks has written about this and talked about it on the All-In podcast.
12:48
In other XAI news, XAI approached Black Forest Labs about licensing its AI image technology in recent months, but the startup declined, Wired has learned from Max Zeph.
12:59
The company's the company's had a similar deal back in 2024, but Black Forest Labs is now trying to focus on training AI models to power robots and smart glasses. That's very interesting.
13:10
So, it appears that Black Forest Labs was sort of serving as like the Midjourney of to to the meta vibes powering that first Grok Imagine mode.
13:20
Um but maybe there was a consideration of well, if you're going to be if you're going to be working with this company but also in competition with them because they're training new models, maybe you want to go and and carve out a separate niche that's more defensible.
13:35
So, Also, Elon had shared I think earlier this week or late last week that they are training a new version of a math in Colossus too. >> Yeah, exactly.
13:46
So, Black Forest Labs has 70 people and is taking on Silicon Valley's giants.
13:51
And and this is from the the HumanX conference in San Francisco. It's in Wired. You can go and read it. Max Zeph has the report.
13:57
Alex Tabarrok had an interesting debate around the unemployment rate and how things might shape up with AI developments.
14:09
He's he writes AI unemployment and work trying to square different efficiency gains and how this might impact the economy and the future of work.
14:20
So, he says, "Imagine I told you that AI was going to create a 40% unemployment rate." Sounds bad, right?
14:28
Catastrophic catastrophic even.
14:28
And I agree, that would be completely unprecedented.
14:33
We really have never had more than 10% unemployment for any sustained period of time.
14:40
It would be it would be completely Yeah, Great Depression was something around 30 >> Yeah, it did get it did get high.
14:44
But in the modern era, even even during COVID, I mean brief spikes above 10, but in general >> Yeah, so I'm saying like worst it's ever been. >> Yeah. This would be bad.
14:54
So then he says, "Now imagine I told you that AI was going to create a three-day work week."
15:00
That sounds great, right? Wonderful even.
15:02
Yet to a first approximation, these are the same thing.
15:07
60% of people employed and 40% unemployed is the same number of working hours as 100% employed at 60% of the hours.
15:15
So, even if you think AI is going to have a tremendous effect on work, the difference between catastrophe and wonderland boils down to distribution.
15:23
It is not impossible that AI renders some people unemployable, but that position is harder to defend than the idea that AI will be broadly productive.
15:32
AI is a very general-purpose technology, one likely to make many people more productive including many people with fewer skills.
15:39
Moreover, we have more policy control over the distribution of work than over the pure the pure AI effect on work.
15:47
Declare an AI dividend and create some more holidays, for example.
15:51
This would naturally have that effect.
15:53
So, you could just have more bank holidays, more government holidays, and sort of ramp towards a a lower like a shorter work week essentially.
16:04
Nor is this argument purely theoretical.
16:06
So, he shares some historical facts here.
16:08
Between 18 between 1870 and today, hours of work in the United States fell by about 40% from nearly 3,000 hours per year to about 1,800 hours.
16:18
Hours fell, but employment did not increase.
16:24
Moreover, not only did work hours fall, but childhood, retirement, and life expectancy all increased.
16:28
In fact, in 1870, about 30% of of the person's entire life was spent working.
16:34
People worked, slept, and died.
16:36
Today, it's closer to about 10%.
16:38
That feels very low, but when you think about it, you know, if you're working 40 hours a week and there's what is it?
16:44
160 hours in a in a in a week? 24 * 7?
16:47
Can I do that in my head? Oops. What is it?
16:50
I typed the wrong number. Um it's 168, yeah. So, 40 divided by 168.
17:00
Never do mental math while podcasting.
17:04
>> So, 23 24% of just a normal work week is spent working if you're working a 40-hour week.
17:11
Uh And then and then of course you don't work until you're 18 roughly, maybe 20, maybe in college, and then retirement.
17:17
And so that pushes it down to something like 10% on average according to this report. What do you think?
17:22
I mean doesn't this still depend on how many days you have in a week?
17:24
Like cuz like I have more days in my day, right?
17:26
Oh yes, yes, because you manipulated time. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yes.
17:31
What time did you wake up today? 4:00 a. m.? 3:00 a. m.? >> Yeah, 1:00 a. m.
17:34
1:00 to 5:00 is my first day.
17:37
And then I go to sleep and then like 5:00 to 10:00 is my second day and so on, you know.
17:42
The real trick is just is just waking up so early that you're waking up at noon the day before.
17:50
So, if you wake up at noon Sunday and start your Monday then, you're just way ahead of everyone.
17:55
People are waking up at 4:00 a. m.
17:57
You're up at noon the day before. You're good to go.
17:59
And then you need to go to sleep at like They don't want you to know this.
18:03
Rick Ross talks about this. >> Yes.
18:06
>> [snorts] >> Um so, thus in the past 100 years or so, the amount of work in a person's lifetime has fallen by about 2/3 and the amount of leisure including retirement has increased.
18:16
We have already sustained a massive increase in leisure.
18:18
There's no reason we cannot do it again. I like this.
18:22
It's a bit of a white pill.
18:24
There's a lot of fear about unemployment and this is sort of a different path.
18:25
It might require government intervention.
18:29
It might require a new social contract or new just new holiday creation from the government, but it certainly seems uh possible.
18:38
There's some reactions to this.
18:40
Alex is more correct than incorrect, but he glosses over an important caveat.
18:43
The difference between catastrophe and wonderland boils down to distribution.
18:46
It's not impossible that AI renders some people unemployable.
18:48
If there's one thing we've learned over the past decades is that even welfare-improving changes such as increases in international trade and technological progress do result in distributional effects, even often severe ones like Rust Belt cities and deaths of despair.
19:01
It's not all nice Milo Might Minder Binder where everyone gets a share.
19:06
Or to put it another way, Schumpeter's creative destruction still involves destruction.
19:13
And so people are going back and forth on this, but it does set it does set one one perspective on a positive outcome.
19:20
Fact-checking myself, the most commonly cited peak US unemployment rate during the Great Depression was 24. 9%.
19:26
I thought I thought it had gotten got up to the 30s, but Okay.
19:28
Well, there's a fun article in the Wall Street Journal, a very bizarre article about a deadly civil war that tore apart a group of chimpanzees in Uganda.
19:38
Not exactly a fun article, but it's gripped everyone and everyone is wondering what is going on here with these monkeys.
19:46
A chimp group's success may may led to its violent downfall, a new study suggests. So, Slow news week.
19:53
Very slow news Slow news week.
19:56
>> [laughter] >> When the Wall Street Journal is reporting on a This is deadly civil war They're among Yeah, this is >> chimpanzees.
20:03
It's just a it's just a crazy thing.
20:04
I I I don't think many people uh knew that this was even possible.
20:07
Um but let let's read through it and try and understand what's going on.
20:11
Uh a rare and deadly civil war has broken out between two factions of chimps in Africa, according to new research.
20:17
The dispute erupted in what was once a cohesive group of about 200 chimps whose ties stretch back two decades. >> Wow.
20:25
Uh it just took 3 years for them to turn on each other, according to a new study in the Journal of Science.
20:32
>> Uh we've known for a long time that chimpanzees will attack and kill their neighbors, said primatologist John Mitani, professor emeritus at the University of Michigan and a study co- and a study co-author.
20:44
Uh it turns out they will do this even when those neighbors are former friends and allies.
20:48
So, I'm I'm just reading this from the lens of the technology industry. >> Yes. Many many cases.
20:53
There is uh this is this is potentially a a metaphor.
20:56
Uh for 20 years the uh the chimps of Uganda's uh Kibale National Park were living the good life by being together, Mitani said.
21:07
They helped one another, dominated and killed apes from neighboring groups, expanded their territory, and boosted their babies' chances of survival.
21:13
But in 2015, the group started splitting into two clusters.
21:16
Several male chimps who had bridged collect within the larger group died from disease, weakening social ties.
21:22
Around the same time, a new alpha male rose to dominance.
21:24
Changes in the dominance hierarchy can fuel more aggression and tension, said Aaron Sandell, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin and study co-author.
21:33
As aggression escalated, the factions drifted into separate areas of the park.
21:40
By 2018, the split was complete.
21:40
A- This is it's interesting.
21:43
It took like 10 years to do this full study, I guess.
21:45
Um Since this all started back in 2015, uh but by 2018, the study was complete.
21:50
The two groups had no remaining social or reproductive ties between them.
21:55
The last chimp infant with parents from different groups was born in 2015.
22:02
Uh what was once the center of the group's territory became a border which chimps patrolled, the researchers found.
22:09
Then the hostilities began in earnest.
22:11
Members of the smaller group of the two uh groups launched coordinated lethal attacks on the other, aiming to kill rival adult males.
22:17
By 2021, these raids had expanded to target younger apes, uh averaging several infant deaths a year ago. So, since a year since.
22:26
Um and there's a there's a video here of the encounter between these two rival groups and they're fighting it out. It's It's It's crazy.
22:33
So, more than 24 apes have died as a result of the conflict. That's horrible.
22:37
Uh the true death toll is probably higher given that so many uh chimps uh there are so many chimps in a large area, some deaths go unrecorded.
22:44
Primatologist Jane Goodall observed what may have been a similar >> But but but But sorry to jump in, but you know, this group of apes has been being has been studied for for sounds like over 10 years now. Got to intervene.
23:00
>> At any point [laughter] did they think like, "Hey, let's let's break it up?" I don't know.
23:03
Is Is that the Is the ethical thing to do to let them continue to fight? Yeah. >> point do you step in?
23:08
How many How many apes How many chimps need to die before "Hey, let's stop the research project Yeah.
23:17
>> let's you know, step in." I don't know.
23:18
It's a uh I think important question.
23:21
>> We may have an assignment for you this weekend.
23:23
I think you need to hop on a plane.
23:25
Um let's see if there's any more about this.
23:28
I mean, there is you know, like for a lot of these studies, observation, you want to be hands-off and not putting your finger on the scale, I guess, but >> Number one Number one comment, put any 200 humans together and the same thing will happen.
23:39
And you only need 20 humans if it's an HOA.
23:42
>> [laughter] >> It's a little it's a little uh Stanley Milgram prison experiment vibes.
23:47
It's very uh I think it's very Girardian, right?
23:48
Cuz you have the the two warring groups, mimetic rivalry, right?
23:51
They're They're exactly like each other. >> Yeah.
23:53
You got to fight it out until the and you have the scapegoat and Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's true.
23:56
Um Primatologist Jane Goodall observed what may have been a similar split and subsequent violence among chimpanzees in Tanzania in the 1970s, but the findings have long been debated because most of the observations were in an area where humans regularly fed the chimps, altering group makeup, size, and aggression.
24:16
So, uh maybe that's Maybe you should be feeding and the the monkeys to keep them happy, I guess, or the chimpanzees.
24:23
Um With these chimps, researchers aren't certain what prompted the split, but uh said it's possible the apes were victims of their own success.
24:31
The group grew large uh and even though resources were abundant, the chimps may have perceived increased competition for food and mates.
24:38
Uh the once smaller of the two chimp groups is now the larger one because its members have killed so many rivals.
24:45
Uh they they uh They observed more lethal attacks.
24:47
It's ongoing conflict, they said.
24:49
And the And the conversation is ongoing in the uh I I think um actually like this does make sense that it it got too big, right?
24:58
Because you have this idea of like a Dunbar's number.
24:59
So, you have 150 people like the group of chimpanzees gets above 150, it's at like 200.
25:03
And then you have the kind of wars >> You think it's calling you?
25:06
Cuz you can't know everyone, right?
25:07
Do you think Would Would Dunbar number be the same for chimpanzees as humans?
25:11
I wonder if anyone's ever studied that.
25:14
>> I mean, you assume that there's some uh you know, lineage there that it's like stays relatively similar.
25:20
Yeah, Jane Goodall uh passed away last year and and had a uh obituary in the Wall Street Journal that was that was very interesting.
25:26
I think we touched on it briefly, but we can go through a little bit more of it.
25:28
Um Jane Goodall was always always remember the first time a wild chimpanzee took a banana from her outstretched hand.
25:34
Uh in that moment, she would often say the chimp, a grizzled male she had dubbed David Greybeard, welcomed her into a community of humanity's closest living relatives.
25:45
It opened a relationship with wildlings that in due course upended scientific misconceptions about chimpanzees and turned her into a global icon of conservation.
25:54
As an untrained young woman in the summer of 1960, she first ventured into the forest of what is now Gombe National Park near Lank Lake uh Tanganyika in Tanzania to study chimpanzees.
26:09
Equipped with little more than a notebook, a pair of binoculars, and almost infinite patience, for 5 months though, the wary creatures evaded her.
26:17
If in fact, no one had ever been able to study them at close hand.
26:19
By winning Greybeard's trust, she gained entry to the troop of wild chimps that became the focus of her life's work.
26:26
The chimps had had accepted me and gradually I was able to penetrate further and further into a magic world that no human had ever explored before, the wild the world of the wild chimpanzees.
26:38
Uh she died of natural causes in California last year.
26:43
Um but uh she spoke with the Wall Street Journal before passing, urging people to continue fighting to slow climate change and the loss of biodiversity.
26:50
We have a window of time, but it's not a very big window of time, she said, adding that the key is ordinary people, corporations, and business leaders getting together to enact change.
26:59
Economic development, she said, cannot continue to come before the environment. Uh John, Yes.
27:04
why is no one talking about Ferrari?
27:09
Well, they're about to be because the uh the good folks over >> Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal are in the Wall Street Journal today. They are.
27:17
Writing about why Ferrari is unlike any other luxury brand, according to the host of Acquired. >> Yeah.
27:23
Uh and we can get into this.
27:26
Uh they say the business of Ferrari looks simple, make fast cars and not too many of them.
27:30
On the surface, the strategy of scarcity and tantalizing exclusivity seems remarkably similar to the classic playbook of other storied luxury brands, as if Ferrari's cars are just Hermes bags and Rolex watches on four wheels.
27:44
But Ferrari has something that Hermes and Rolex could never cultivate.
27:47
Hordes of screaming fans who worship the brand from the time they can say "Vroom vroom."
27:51
Few teenagers hang posters of Birkin bags in their bedroom, but droves of them have the sight of F40s and Testarossas seared into their brains long before they can get behind the wheel.
28:03
Despite selling a grand total of 330,000 cars over the course of its entire history, >> That's really not a lot. I >> low.
28:10
I didn't realize it was so low.
28:10
I mean, I knew that many of the limited releases are like a few thousand, but uh you'd think it I guess they don't have a uh like a Lamborghini Urus that's that's more mass-produced.
28:23
Like everything's pretty limited. Yeah.
28:27
So, they have more than 400 million fans worldwide, and no company has a higher ratio of people who know about its products to people who actually own those products.
28:34
Uh far from cheapening the brand, Ferrari's rabid base of super fans only enhances the brand's appeal to clients who can afford to pay millions of dollars for a car they will rarely drive.
28:46
I like >> to put the 330,000 lifetime sales in the context, Ford sold 2.
28:53
2 million vehicles just in the United States last year. >> Last year. Wow.
28:58
>> And that 330,000 number is global over the lifetime. That's crazy. >> of the company.
29:03
I really like Ben and David writing in the Journal for this.
29:08
It's a great way to promote the new episode, but it also just it there's enough of their voice from the show in this, but it still lends itself to the Wall Street Journal op-ed uh vibes, which I love.
29:18
Um Uh far from cheapening the brand, Ferrari's rabid base of super fans only enhances the brand's appeal to clients who can afford to pay millions of dollars for a car they will rarely drive.
29:28
As we learned when we spent hundreds of hours understanding the company's history and business strategy for the upcoming Acquired podcast episode, the genius of Ferrari is the way it has weaponized that set of Italian contradictions and bolted the business model of luxury onto a beloved professional sports franchise.
29:47
>> They better have each acquired a Ferrari during the research period.
29:52
>> get Rolexes during the research >> so they had to do it with this.
29:56
>> [laughter] >> It's going to be a very expensive habit if they if they keep doing all the all the if they do Oh, now we're doing Bugatti.
30:01
Now we're doing Koenigsegg.
30:03
Now we're doing Lamborghini, etc.
30:09
When Enzo Ferrari established his eponymous company in 1947, wow, creating a luxury brand was the furthest thing from his mind.
30:18
He was obsessed with building the world's fastest cars to conquer the booming world of auto racing.
30:23
To do that, he also built a clever business model.
30:25
Like many of his rivals, he built cars for his own racing team and sold them on the side.
30:29
Unlike Mercedes and Ford, whose racing garages and consumer car factories might as well have been located on different planets, the same Ferrari employees in the hills of Maranello, Italy, built substantially the same cars, whether they were selling them to customers or racing them at Le Mans.
30:44
The model created a beautiful feedback loop.
30:49
Scuderia Ferrari success in Grand Prix races stoked greater awareness and desire for private client road cars.
30:52
The profits from those client sales fueled the research and development that turbocharged La Scuderia's performance back on the track.
31:02
It was a fantastic strategy through the 1950s and '60s, filled with F1 championships and notable clients, but by the time Enzo died in 1988, the business was struggling after a 50% sale of the company to Fiat in 19 '69, Ferrari was losing money and furloughing workers due to a misguided strategy of overproduction.
31:20
Even more unfathomable today is that the cars were just sitting there at the dealerships waiting to be sold.
31:27
Can you imagine Ferraris that you could drive off the lot?
31:30
Yeah, that is not the case today.
31:32
The company's future was very much in doubt when it found a savior in Enzo's one-time protege, Luca di Montezemolo. Montezemolo.
31:41
I'm bad at pronouncing that.
31:43
A blue-eyed [snorts] Italian aristocrat with a steady hand to pull off a U-turn U-turn at Ferrari.
31:47
15 years earlier, he was the young Ferrari team manager who had engineered the prancing horse's last run of Formula 1 dominance.
31:57
To the tifosi in their unmistakable Ferrari red, he was so popular that he could have run for president of Italy.
32:04
He left Ferrari in 1977, rising to chief executive of drink of a drinks company and organizing the 1990 World Cup in Italy.
32:11
He had traveled back uh He traveled the world and mingled with the elite by the time Fiat scion Gianni Agnelli brought brought him back to Maranello as chairman and gave him a specific mandate, rescue Ferrari by any means necessary.
32:26
So, the visit the visionary saw immense potential lying in the wreckage of Ferrari's road car business.
32:31
Instead of positioning the product as a domesticated race car, he realized that what this was Ferrari's chance to sell something less tangible, but infinitely more valuable, the fulfillment of every fan's childhood dreams.
32:44
Rather than driving off a lot, clients could fly to Italy and take their cars out for a rip around the test track that Michael Schumacher practiced on the day before.
32:52
The interiors would be made of leather that rivaled Prada's.
32:56
Unlike Ferrari's untamed best you could enjoy driving them somewhat regularly without fear breaking down on the way to the store.
33:03
The engines could still rocket drivers to 200 mph on a moment's notice, but now they would be signed by the craftspeople who made them.
33:11
By pursuing the counterintuitive strategy, he transformed Ferrari into a new kind of company like Hermes smashed together with Manchester United.
33:17
Other luxury brands brands manufactured desire through scarcity.
33:22
Other sports teams benefit from shared emotional attachments. Ferrari does both.
33:25
It breeds a mass fandom that somehow makes the company's most exclusive product even more valuable.
33:33
By 1997, the business had returned to meaningful profitability for the first time in years despite making fewer cars.
33:41
He slashed production from 4,561 cars when he arrived to just 2,289 two years later.
33:48
Once he put his strategy in motion, Ferraris were no longer sitting around like Fords.
33:52
Suddenly, there was a waiting list to buy them.
33:54
In the decade since then, it has become clear that his innovation dug a moat around the company that no competitor has been able to cross.
33:59
To this day, other racing teams may pass Ferrari on the track, and other car makers may challenge Ferrari on the road, but no business can offer luxury, maniacal freedom, and nearly a century of unbroken sporting heritage all rolled into a product that's rarely seen, but instantly recognizable on any street in the world.
34:16
What a great uh Full episode drops Monday. Very excited for that. Yeah.
34:22
Uh but I think my my my uh we have some data here from Goldman Sachs that is actually Goldman Sachs research division has a Ferrari residual value tracker.
34:35
So, they just keep track of the uh the the secondary market. >> Oh, interesting.
34:39
And uh so, we can read through some of this, but but it's but it's interesting cuz like processing that article, personally I feel like they're back in the exact same spot that they were before that turnaround, where they're making too many cars, they're making cars that people don't want, they're building up um people uh even even the F the F80.
34:58
Like like the the hardcore fans, the people that may not even own a Ferrari, but are just like fans of the brand. >> Yeah.
35:08
Um across the board, like whether you you're you you you could buy an F80 or you're just like a hardcore fan.
35:16
Like nobody's like that excited about it.
35:18
I just [clears throat] think uh very much feels like they've they've lost their way on a number of um and and on on a personal level, the like the car that I think I'm most excited about that uh they've been kind of testing and teasing is the like street uh street version of the 296 Challenge.
35:34
They're making a street legal version. >> that XX?
35:38
Um no, that's the that's the SF90XX, which is, you know, very hyped right now.
35:43
Um but uh un unclear how that'll you know, how that'll trade over time, but the 296 Challenge, the street uh uh legal version of it is like ditching the hybrid, which I think will be very appealing to people.
35:59
It's going to be like a more raw like driver-focused car.
36:03
Um anyways, from Goldman Sachs, uh they say, "Our GS Ferrari residual value index tracks used Ferrari listings across uh five key markets.
36:11
We view this proprietary data set as central to the race equity thesis given that Ferrari's scarcity-led model has historically resulted in its used vehicles commanding a premium in the secondary market.
36:22
Our index has declined 7% year over year as of March 2026, though month over month has seen a promising increase of 1. 6%.
36:35
Um and uh they still are rating the stock as a buy, even though it's dropped uh pretty dramatically as of late, but um they say, "Continued stabilization across regions with Germany and Japan improving.
36:49
Powertrain gap widens as non-hybrids continue to outperform."
36:52
So, they've made so many different uh hybrid cars, everything from like the 296 to um the SF90, of course, and people you know, these cars are very fun to drive, but they haven't been fun to own. Mhm.
37:09
Uh and they just haven't been holding up uh holding up well.
37:10
People uh like their ICE Ferraris. Yeah.
37:13
Um "Specials resilience underlines continued strength of business model."
37:20
So, basically, the cars that are still actually exclusive >> Mhm.
37:24
uh like the 812 Comp, um 458, uh 488 Pista, things like that are are really really outperforming.
37:31
So, basically, um all the mass market stuff is like brutal to own, and the cars that are actually limited um are still are still outperforming, and so I think this is why I think they need to do what they did before, whereas um cut production from like 4,500 cars a year down to under 2,500.
37:50
Um obviously, we're at a much different scale today, but still they need to do a pretty dramatic cut. Mhm.
37:59
Uh well, there's an update in the Medvy story.
38:01
The New York Times uh updated their article to share some new information.
38:08
Uh Lulu has some uh some takes here.
38:11
Let's start with Alex Cohen though.
38:13
He said, "Friend got a marketing email from Medvy this morning.
38:15
Email copy aside, the provider they are using in the screenshot is an actual doctor, not an NP, uh who is uh real name is Alex Weir, and he is completely unaffiliated with Medvy.
38:27
Uh and so, there are there are more concerns about the company bubbling up.
38:31
Lulu says, 'More press isn't better.
38:33
For example, huge self-own for the Medvy guy to do this New York Times article.
38:37
The company clearly wasn't ready for scrutiny, and it made no sense to invite it, but some just can't resist the flattery and excitement of getting profiled.'
38:45
So, uh the New York Times has added an editor's note, 'After this article is published, many readers noted that Medvy was facing legal and regulatory actions for its business practices.
38:54
Our piece should have included that information to give readers a fuller picture of the scrutiny that the company was facing.
39:00
We have updated the article to note a warning letter from the FDA and pending class action lawsuit again accusing Medvy of violating California's anti-spam law.'
39:09
It was really hard to follow this piece piece because as we were digging through it, we were like, "Okay, there there's pieces of this that sound like uh worth digging into."
39:16
Like the margins, the growth, like what's actually happening here because the main claim was like one one person, one billion-dollar company, uh and you could latch onto, "Oh, well, there's two people."
39:29
But and and you know, what's the what's the marketing cost?
39:32
What's the you know, what's going on under the hood?
39:34
How much how much does it cost to actually deliver the service?
39:38
Uh but quickly, once people started digging in, they found a whole bunch of other sort of concerning elements that need to be dug into.
39:44
Some of them can be can be dealt with if it's just you know if they if they react to the FDA and the FDA clears them, they could be in a good place.
39:53
But it was >> Do you think if they had to sell the business today they would be able to get anywhere close to a billion dollars? No. No.
40:01
But even even in the clean bill of health with no controversies over the FDA warning letter and the pending class action lawsuit, uh it was hard to justify the billion dollar valuation necessarily based on the fact that it was potentially giving up a huge amount of margin to the rest of the supply chain.
40:22
Um but hopefully they will sort that out and wind up building a a great company.
40:28
There's there's more back and forth on the NY on the New York Times Satoshi discourse.
40:32
Evan Ratliff chimed in who he wrote the mastermind which was the book that I recommended to Joe Weisenthal about um about Paul Le Roux who was at one point suggested to be Satoshi and so there's a whole timeline out there about various Satoshi accusations.
40:52
He says I had I enter I hesitate to enter the New York Times Satoshi discourse and I have a huge amount of admiration for John Carreyrou.
40:59
This is Evan Ratliff writing.
41:01
But since he unequivocally claims to have solved the mystery and links to a piece of mine as a failed attempt to do so, false.
41:07
I thought if I wanted to share a few thoughts.
41:09
He said the story that he wrote, Evan, for Wired was about speculation around whether Paul Le Roux could be Satoshi.
41:15
And I wanted Paul Le Roux to be Satoshi so badly.
41:18
It was such an interesting wildcard pick that no one it wasn't really on anyone's bingo card.
41:25
And Paul Le Roux had such a gripping story that it would have been a wild twist and turn.
41:30
So Evan had spent five years on a book about Le Roux and he had wondered this.
41:34
And so he said he certainly held the largest archive of reporting that could contain proof that Paul Le Roux was in fact Satoshi Nakamoto.
41:42
But if you actually read to the end of the Wired story that he published, he says I know I know.
41:47
Its conclusion isn't about claiming Le Roux was Satoshi but about the dangers of motivated reasoning and trying to do so.
41:53
A lesson I respectfully think could have been valuable to heed in the Times case.
41:57
I tapped the sign about setting out to prove one Satoshi candidate strategy again last year after the HBO documentary.
42:06
Ultimately the that approach is not much of an investigation.
42:10
More like a gradual winnowing of the facts to the ones that you like.
42:13
I'll leave others to critique, dissect, trumpet the assertions in the Times.
42:18
Obviously Adam Back could be Satoshi which is why he's been a top candidate for many people for a long time and gets asked about Satoshi and their email exchanges regularly including in the past by Evan himself.
42:30
The fact that he both denies it and is so often and is often so game to discuss it either scrambles your Satoshi motivation narrative or reinforces it based on what you already believe.
42:39
And so Joe Weisenthal still having fun following the Adam Back thing because Adam Back has been reposting a ton of like basically anything that links him to Satoshi he's been having fun amplifying and sort of playing into it and hopefully we can get Adam Back on the show and and ask him more about it.
43:00
Anyway, we have our next guest live here in person in the TVP and Ultra Gone.
43:05
Let's bring in Alex Young.
43:06
>> [music] >> He's a professor at UCLA. Welcome to the show. How are you doing? Good. Yeah. Nice to meet you.
43:11
How are Thanks so much for taking the time to [music] come down to the show in the studio.
43:15
Why don't you introduce yourself first? >> Yeah, I'm Alex Young.
43:18
I'm a professor in statistical genetics at UCLA med school and I'm also an advisor to Harisite, a company doing advanced genetic testing in in IVF. Yeah.
43:29
What drew you to Harisite particularly in particular?
43:33
Well, I I had a realization that this technology so the technology that that that that they've developed is applying genetic testing to embryos so you can predict the disease risks or traits.
43:48
I had a realization that that was a very powerful technology and an incredibly important application of a lot of the research that I was doing.
43:56
But you know there was there were already some companies in that space and I didn't find any of them that serious about doing really innovative R&D.
44:05
And Harisite actually approached me in 2023 with really an intriguing idea to develop an algorithm and I kind of couldn't resist doing that so I decided to get involved and um we we ended up creating creating some good technology.
44:23
Um What have been the key milestones in embryo selection technology?
44:27
Like how much of it is is machines in the lab, better data collection versus more on the algorithm computational side?
44:38
Um well I mean IVF has been around for a while. >> Yeah.
44:41
And genetic testing in IVF is not new. >> Yeah.
44:44
So you know I think even back in the 90s they were doing like sex selection to avoid certain sex linked diseases. Mhm.
44:50
And there are other tests already developed such as PGTM which looks for like Mendelian disease genes. >> Yeah.
44:59
Um so they're like you know cystic fibrosis or something like that.
45:01
Um and then also tests to look for chromosomal abnormalities PGTA.
45:06
So those tests were more about being able to get like lab that a lot of that was lab innovation being able to get the genetic data from from the embryos. Mhm.
45:16
Um now this new wave of um of of technology that Harisite and some of the other companies are developing, that's grown out of the research program in human genetics which is much more computational.
45:31
It's it's been enabled by the the massive drop in the cost of sequencing technology that's happened over the past 20 years.
45:42
So that's created huge genetic data sets these big what we call biobanks places like UK Biobank was like the flagship one where you have like 500,000 people with a whole whole genome data and and all of their medical records and things like education as well.
45:56
Um so that's enabled us to create these predictors called polygenic scores. >> Sure.
46:04
Um and they're they're the things that that we can now apply in IVF and that's sort of more of a computational aspect than a lab aspect I would say. Yeah. Yeah.
46:15
What give me some history on the UK Biobank.
46:17
It feels like a like a big step to share that much information publicly.
46:23
I assume it's it's somewhat anonymized but what are the considerations with sharing genetic data and and associated traits?
46:30
Obviously there's a medical benefit but how do individuals grapple with that trade-off?
46:38
Um yeah well UK Biobank kind of took a much more liberal attitude towards allowing people to access that data.
46:47
So you know it's it's kind of sad actually that so they were kind of the first big biobank and and it wasn't originally designed purely for genetic data.
46:57
It was designed for sort of medical epidemiology and then they added genetic data to it.
47:01
Um and they made it very easy for both companies and for academic researchers to access that data and it's had you know 10 100X the impact of other biobanks including you know the US has been quite behind actually in in that respect.
47:19
And a lot of other genetic data sets are really hard to access and are actually you're actually barred from accessing them for commercial uses. Mhm.
47:28
So yeah I I would commend UK Biobank for taking this this more liberal approach that you know you have to protect the you know informed consent and privacy of the of the participants but I think sometimes the restrictions that are put on other data sets really have hampered the development of you know both the the sort of research side but then also the commercialization of their genomics.
47:52
How powerful is the technology these days?
47:58
Like how how how how good are we at detecting diseases?
48:01
I imagine that there's some diseases that we're very good at.
48:04
What what's like the best case study right now?
48:06
Um yeah so if if you're talking about in in the sort of IVF context where that that's most powerful is diseases where you have a particular gene, a particular position in the genome that has an outsized effect on on the risk of that disease.
48:25
So if you look at something like type 1 diabetes or Alzheimer's, there are certain genes in in the genome that have a really large impact.
48:33
And if you're someone if if if you're a couple and one of you carries one of those major risk genes then doing this embryo selection can drastically reduce the risk.
48:41
It can probably pretty much eliminate the risk of passing on type 1 diabetes for example and drastically reduce the risk of passing on Alzheimer's disease.
48:48
Now there are other more what we'd call more complex diseases like type 2 diabetes or various cancers and you know there it's a bit less effective but it can still be quite effective.
49:02
You can you know roughly say half your half the risk your offspring gets some disease and if that disease is present in your family history then that can be quite a substantial absolute risk reduction.
49:17
So you could go from something like you know 20% risk of type 2 diabetes to 10% risk in your offspring. Yeah. Yeah.
49:24
the progress has progress been faster on the screening side or on the actual drug development and treatment side?
49:32
I mean we've seen the the peptide boom, the GLP-1 boom.
49:36
Uh there's a new major biotech acquisition every few days now.
49:42
It feels like the pace is accelerating in in actual drug development, but what are you seeing actually being unlocked by new technologies?
49:52
Uh well, yeah, human genetic data has been incredibly important in in drug development.
49:56
You've seen uh big pharmaceutical companies like Regeneron.
50:00
Uh they hired a lot of the best people from I was I was at Oxford for my PhD and like a lot of the best people from Oxford ended up getting getting uh hired by Regeneron to set up like a big new genetic center and um they've amassed like a huge um data set there, like 10 million people or something now. >> Yeah.
50:17
And uh that's definitely driving like target discovery in in the pharmaceutical industry.
50:21
Um so that that's been where a lot of the investments come.
50:27
This the sort of IVF and screening side has been maybe uh a more neglected part of the potential of human genetic data.
50:36
Partly I would say for, you know, political and ideological.
50:38
There are a lot of people who are opposed to this technology. >> Sure.
50:41
So uh you know, I I suffered some career consequences for for getting involved in uh in uh in in this industry myself. >> What would happened?
50:51
Um well, you know, when it came out that I'd been involved in Heritrix, I mean some people said some some unpleasant things about me, but I don't really care about that, but uh I also had some I had some collaborators pull out of uh pull out of a paper that I had in review at Nature and I also uh had a job offer rescinded from a from a top US university. Oh, interesting. Yeah.
51:10
So what how are you splitting your time these days?
51:15
Um well, I I'm I'm mostly, you know, doing my my academic research, but uh yeah, I my main contribution to Heritrix was this this algorithm that that we developed and we're we're trying to get published now.
51:29
Um So yeah, my my involvement is um is more as like an advisor now, but I I did make a sort of key technological contribution.
51:38
Yeah, what what does an algorithm like uh uh are we talking about like like machine learning, transformer-based AI, what what or just, you know, some statistical model?
51:51
Like what what goes into honing a you know, uh an algorithm that actually moves the needle on predictability?
51:58
Um for predictability, it's it's it's more kind of statistics and machine learning than AI.
52:06
Like it turns out that you don't need these very complicated kind of like non-linear models that that transformers and large language models are particularly adapt at.
52:14
particularly adapt at. Um so for example, creating this like Heritrix created this very powerful um genetic predictor of IQ, much more powerful than anyone thought was possible and that was sort of they they used some um like deep learning-based models to kind of create
52:33
better better curated data, psychometrically curated data and then when you're actually creating these predictors, this is basically it's kind of like a Bayesian statistical model where you're you're using um functional data, so so information about which genes are likely to affect the trait to improve your estimates. Uh the the algorithm that I developed
52:53
Uh the the algorithm that I developed wasn't really on the prediction side.
52:56
This was more to um lower the technological and regulatory barrier to accessing the [clears throat] technology and this is more this is a machine learning model based on hidden Markov models. Mhm.
53:06
And uh this basically enabled it turned sort of a routine test, so there's a routine test for aneuploidy for chromosomal abnormalities such as Down syndrome. >> Mhm.
53:19
And this algorithm enables the data that's produced for that routine test to then be used to give a comprehensive genome profile of each embryo.
53:28
And one advantage of that is that that test is done as routine in like 60% of IVF cycles in the US and worldwide.
53:33
And it also kind of puts the power back in the hands of the couples undergoing IVF because because of HIPAA legislation in the US and GDPR in Europe, you actually have a a legal right to that data, so you can just request that data from your clinic in whatever country you're in and send that to Heritrix and then that enables you to get, you know, all these disease risk predictions and trait predictions like IQ Yeah.
54:03
>> from from routine tests.
54:03
So there's this kind of there's two different sides to where the algorithms come in.
54:07
One is creating these predictors and the other is actually how do you get the genome data on the embryo cuz that's that's not a trivial technical problem either.
54:16
Where does the FDA stand on this? Where do they fit in?
54:18
How do they actually regulate tests?
54:20
Walk me through all that.
54:22
Uh so in the US, the IVF space is pretty unregulated. >> Okay.
54:27
Um I think it's because Is that good?
54:30
Uh well, it's it's I I think it's on that good because if you look at if you look at the um Like I'm normally pretty against regulation, but This is a big decision.
54:42
It feels like maybe an area that that you you would want more government involvement.
54:49
Uh well, you know, I guess my my take on this is that in an ideal world, you'd have a kind of light touch regulation that ensured some, you know, unscrupulous players were kept out of the market.
54:59
Like I know you had a Nucleus uh Keion on here before and and they've had some uh test results that look pretty misleading to me and you know, you'd want to you'd want to make sure that misleading test results are not not being given out to people.
55:13
Um but my concern with any kind of regulation is that it it's going to suddenly evolve into something that just completely kills innovation.
55:22
Like this is basically impossible to do in in Europe for example.
55:26
So all of the companies doing this are US-based and that's partly because it's it's a pretty unregulated space.
55:32
So it's enabled this industry to actually grow here, whereas it's not uh possible in in other countries.
55:38
Do you think the industry is ready for venture capital? Uh yeah. Yeah, I think so.
55:44
I mean I guess >> cuz and I ask that because it feels like there's a lot of promising work being done, but unclear that uh anytime you involve large amounts of venture capital, then then um people have various growth expectations and and uh decisions get made that maybe wouldn't be in the long-term interest of of patients.
56:11
Yeah, I mean I think that's a that's certainly a risk, but there is, you know, there is a lot of demand for this product and and and and I think that uh we're still in the sort of infancy and part of part of the um part of part of what's holding this industry back is we kind of need more we need more money to be put into it.
56:29
We need more awareness of the potential of this technology.
56:33
And uh you know, Heritrix that that their revenue's been growing pretty well.
56:38
They're trying to do a big raise this year.
56:39
Um I think that there could be kind of a preference cascade here.
56:45
Like a lot of the people that have been uh a lot of the customers so far have been uh you know, people from the tech world, people that are quite wealthy and I think that's going to create a lot of demand um as as people see uh as people see these these wealthy and sort of elite people um ta- wanting these services, then I think everyone else is going to want them.
57:08
So I think I think it's it's poised for for a big growth spurt.
57:12
Is one of the big challenges the feedback cycles where you have models today that are making predictions about outcomes that won't happen uh for decades and uh so it's hard to gauge ac- you know, basically accuracy of predictions if if we basically just need to wait and see?
57:35
Um I mean, that that is a concern that that the predictions might based on historical data might not perform as well in the future.
57:45
Uh I mean I think that is not a concern that's exclusive to this kind of technology though.
57:49
Like a lot of what is done in medicine is based on randomized controlled trials that were done decades ago and I don't see it being hugely different here.
57:57
Um one, you know, one good thing about this uh technology is that rather than having to do this big long I mean, to it's sort of impossible in a way to if you wanted to do a randomized controlled trial for some kind of late-onset disease, you'd have to wait like 60 years for people to get cancer or something.
58:14
So it's basically like impossible to do that.
58:18
But uh nature has sort of provided us with a natural experiment that recapitulates a lot of the properties of a randomized controlled trial.
58:23
So this is related to my academic research in that uh so embryos are basically siblings genetically and if you can predict genetic differences between siblings, then you can you can be pretty sure that that's going to also translate into predicting differences between embryos.
58:41
So it's a bit and that's that's kind of the technical standard that that we've tried to establish at Heritrix that you can you need to validate all of your predictors carefully it in in predicting differences between siblings in within family.
58:54
That ensures that you're getting like a causal estimate of of of what these um predictors are able to to do.
59:00
Um and you know, yes, they might there might be some differences in the future.
59:07
Like if if the environment changes drastically to some different environmental effect that puts someone at risk of cancer, might not capture that so well, but that's just the nature of the game in a way.
59:16
We have to we have to use the information we have now to make the best predictions we can about the future. Yeah.
59:21
What's been your experience with the the health system broadly?
59:29
Uh I mean, have you done IVF yourself?
59:32
Have you uh dealt with advanced medicines or or anything beyond the normal Advil after a long weekend?
59:41
Um yeah, well, I am I am actually a cancer patient, which is >> Sorry.
59:46
Uh yeah, so I've I've had a lot more dealings with the health system than than I would like. Yeah.
59:50
What have the learnings been?
59:52
What's the process been like?
59:53
I'm I'm Well, one thing I actually had to do fertility preservation before undergoing radiation and and chemotherapy.
1:00:00
So, that actually made me feel a lot more um pro-IVF.
1:00:05
So, basically I had to, you know, freeze my sperm and basically now I can only reproduce through IVF.
1:00:11
So, um that that dovetails a bit with with the work I've been doing with Harisite, but yeah, I mean, I found >> Yeah, have you been tracking I mean, it seems like you're very capable of doing research on your own.
1:00:24
Have you been doing research into your own cancer to understand it at a deeper level?
1:00:28
Do you feel like there's more self-education happening now?
1:00:32
You're in a unique position there.
1:00:34
Yeah, yeah, I have a bit.
1:00:36
It's It's one of those things like I've seen, you know, these stories about people kind of using AI to sort of figure out, you know, some sort of mRNA vaccine for their cancer.
1:00:44
Um What's your reaction to that?
1:00:47
Um well, you know, some I can't remember what the guy's called.
1:00:53
The guy the >> We had him on the show with Yeah, no, that was quite an inspirational story and I've talked to some of the people um that have that have been working with him recently about that and uh yeah, I think the the the standard way that sort of oncology is approached it doesn't seem to be as patient-centric as it could be, you know, it's not like can are we going to throw absolutely everything we can at curing this person?
1:01:20
It's more like, oh, we're just going to sort of follow the the the play the standard playbook and wait until something really bad happens. >> Mhm.
1:01:27
Um so, I think there's definitely potential for people to take more agency with with serious conditions like cancer and and using you know, genomics and AI to to to enable that, although it's it's not not trivial to do that well.
1:01:44
I mean, if if you're a billionaire, it helps.
1:01:48
You can get all of these experiments done that are not standard, um but yeah, actually doing it well, I don't think it's it's it's it's not as simple as just plugging your data into an LLM and then you have a have a cure, you know. Yeah, yeah.
1:01:59
Yeah, what's the big bigger bottleneck?
1:02:01
Like like more larger data sets that are publicly available for like the new like the English biobank or is it more computational or just general intelligence?
1:02:14
Um well, I think I think in terms in terms of cancer, it's probably more getting more making clinical trials easier. >> Okay.
1:02:25
Um this this this movement movement online of the clinical trials abundance movement. >> Sure.
1:02:32
It does seem to me that like in the US especially clinical trials are very expensive.
1:02:35
Like there's a treatment that I am trying to access that they're doing the phase three trials, for example, in Australia instead of the US because it's too expensive.
1:02:43
Then there's some and then trying to get into a trial is like threading a needle, you know?
1:02:48
So, I think that making it easier for patients to access cutting-edge treatments and >> And then even if you get in, it would be placebo-controlled, so there's a 50% chance that you don't get it.
1:02:59
Yeah, yeah, it's one of those things where where wearing my scientist hat, I'm like, oh, it's really important to do placebo, you know, properly controlled trials so you can make the right inferences, but then when you're when you're the patient, you're like, I don't want to be in the placebo.
1:03:13
I'm like, what's the point in that? >> Yeah, exactly.
1:03:15
Yeah, yeah, we we we heard about this with GLP-1 trials where people would the drug so effective, people would realize they're in the placebo and then just drop out of the trial entirely.
1:03:25
Right, yeah, I mean, I was thinking that about about this trial.
1:03:29
I was like, well, if it it's probably going to be pretty obvious if I'm in the placebo cuz I don't have any like side effects and if it's just not working, then why not just drop out?
1:03:39
But they kind of like expect you to just keep on going in these trials when things aren't working, which also doesn't seem to be particularly in the patient's interest. Yeah.
1:03:48
Uh well, what's next for you?
1:03:48
What do you want to focus on?
1:03:51
Um well, you know, getting cured of cancer would be nice, >> Yeah, that seems like priority number one.
1:03:56
Uh yeah, I'm I'm, you know, I'm pretty excited about this whole re- re- reproductive tech space.
1:04:04
Um I think there's a lot of potential.
1:04:05
It's It's we're really in the infancy of this of this industry.
1:04:09
Um so, you know, what Harisite's been doing with the polygenic scores, they've they've created very powerful predictors with that, but these polygenic scores, they only capture um a certain fraction of the total effect of of the genome on disease risk and traits. >> Yeah.
1:04:26
So, actually a lot of the um the remaining signal that we could get out of the genetics is in these rare damaging mutations that are not typically included in in these scores.
1:04:37
And um that's one of the things that you know, Harisite's been working on this this there's an important application of AI models like AlphaFold, AlphaMissense. Sure.
1:04:47
Um and sort of DNA foundation models to try and predict what these rare mutation what what risks these rare mutations might confer >> Interesting.
1:04:57
and including you know, Harisite have already developed their products.
1:05:00
Um looking at how you can predict risk of neurodevelopmental disorders using using these kind of rare variants.
1:05:07
So, I think I think that's going to be an important area going forward. Yeah.
1:05:10
Um then, you know, there's more like further in the future kind of technologies, um in vitro gametogenesis.
1:05:20
So, that's a technology to create um gametes, so sperm and eggs.
1:05:24
Eggs is the what would be more useful generally um from adult um cells that are not not not gamete cells.
1:05:32
Um so, that could potentially create like thousands of of embryos. Mhm.
1:05:37
So, I think you could you could And then there's also gene editing actually.
1:05:41
So, you know, you can you can use CRISPR or some technology like that to go into an embryo and edit particular base pairs, remove some disease-causing >> Mhm.
1:05:51
uh variant or maybe more controversially enhance some ability like you could put in the Tibetan altitude adaptation gene that Nim Dai has or you could put in a sprinter gene or something.
1:06:04
>> Um so, I think you know, my my idea for the future of this space could be that you have this kind of stack where you have in vitro gametogenesis that creates thousands of embryos, then you can get the genome data, Yeah.
1:06:18
do the predictions of disease risks and traits from that, select a few um promising embryos and then do some edits in them. Yeah.
1:06:25
So, that that kind of um that kind of excites me. That I think Sci-fi. Yeah.
1:06:32
Well, thank you so much for coming on and sharing it with us. We appreciate you. having the time.
1:06:36
Good luck with the everything. We'll talk to you soon. Cheers.
1:06:40
Have a good rest of your day.
1:06:42
Uh without further ado, we are going to bring in Jason Kim from Firefly Aerospace.
1:06:49
We're very excited to talk to him.
1:06:49
He is the CEO of Firefly Aerospace.
1:06:54
Jason, how are you doing? I'm doing great, guys.
1:06:56
Thanks for having me on the show.
1:06:58
Thank you so much for taking the time to come chat with us.
1:07:02
Why don't you give us a little introduction?
1:07:03
I think most people will be familiar with some of Firefly's work, but take us through a little bit of the journey and the milestones that have been important to you.
1:07:13
Well, this is our ninth year as a company and we're the first company in the uh history of the world as a commercial company to land successfully on the moon. Yeah.
1:07:23
And everybody's talking about the moon these days.
1:07:27
>> And the other thing is we did a 24-hour launch for the and the moon is the ultimate high ground. Yeah.
1:07:43
>> So, we're into that and then we're doing a lot of commercial tech.
1:07:46
So, a lot of um the latest industry technology like what we announced earlier this week, we're putting Nvidia Jetsons into space around the moon and we're going to do space domain awareness, Yeah.
1:07:58
imaging and imaging of the moon and we're going to do all that on orbit and then just get the insightful data back to the earth. Mhm.
1:08:07
Uh this it's it's it's incredible journey. Yeah.
1:08:10
Uh we're launching badass rockets, super cool lunar landers and satellites and we're doing AI ground processing as well.
1:08:19
Well, give me a little bit of your background.
1:08:21
What what led you into the aerospace industry?
1:08:23
How long have you been doing this?
1:08:26
Well, I was born I was born in South Korea, immigrated when I was one and my parents always taught me give back to the US. Yeah.
1:08:35
And so, what I did was I went to the Air Force Academy out of Dallas, Texas and made a career in the Air Force, loved it.
1:08:42
Was working with UAVs before they became popular in 1999 and then you saw what happened in 9/11. Yeah.
1:08:47
And then the same thing with small satellites.
1:08:49
I got to work with small satellites and rockets and ground systems and that's really taken off.
1:08:55
Now you've got proliferated systems in LEO, MEO, GEO with things like Starlink and other Yeah.
1:09:02
Uh and now we're going to the moon.
1:09:03
And so, it's just uh incredible where space is going.
1:09:06
I think in 5 years, every single company on earth is going to be related or going to be part of the space industry.
1:09:14
Uh talk about the journey to the first moon mission.
1:09:17
Was that a milestone from day one?
1:09:20
When did you know that that was going to move forward?
1:09:26
Well, the team started on that journey in the Trump administration number 45.
1:09:33
That's when he built the Artemis program in the first place and under that there was a commercial lunar payload services program. >> Got it.
1:09:40
And that's where commercial companies like Firefly could bid end-to-end missions to the moon to do important you know, exploration of the moon and science missions.
1:09:50
A lot of the missions that we flew in Trump's second administration, the 47th administration, uh successfully did the 14 days of lunar surface operations, are actually supporting Artemis.
1:10:02
We got, you know, characterization of the carcinogenic moon dust. Wow.
1:10:08
>> Uh we're uh looking at data on what the GPS looks like on the >> terrible news.
1:10:14
The the dust is carcinogenic? >> you cancer? Harsh.
1:10:19
Yeah, it's harsh and we want to do everything we can to learn about the moon, the surface, the geographic features, the environment. Yeah.
1:10:26
Yeah, what's a harsh environment? It's outer space.
1:10:32
As we learn these things, it gives us a chance to mitigate mitigate those risks.
1:10:37
And that's what our successful Blue Ghost mission one did is found out a bunch of stuff from the 10 NASA payloads that successfully carried out their missions.
1:10:45
I had my fingers crossed that the dust was creatine. Or cheese. Uh but >> it's not.
1:10:51
That's really devastating >> Very harsh environment.
1:10:52
Creatine plus 1/6 acceleration of gravity on moon, that would be a deadly combination. >> be as well.
1:10:58
Uh yeah, walk me through the the the the Blue Ghost mission one.
1:11:01
Uh what were you building?
1:11:04
What were you partnering on?
1:11:06
Uh take me through the the launch plan. Was the launch delayed?
1:11:11
Tell me the story of that launch.
1:11:15
Well, the average age of our team was around 28 at the time.
1:11:17
So, this is the next generation leaders for space. I'm proud of them.
1:11:22
Uh they had this can-do attitude. They're bold.
1:11:24
Uh this some of them it was the first satellite they ever, you know, designed and launched and tested and nailed the moon landing.
1:11:34
Um but they, you know, did through all the testing that was necessary in the relative environments.
1:11:40
Um they, you know, wrung it out at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.
1:11:45
They did hundreds of hours of rehearsals um getting ready for the launch and the operations. It's a 45-day operation.
1:11:50
And then once we landed, uh it was 14 days.
1:11:57
So, the team had two shifts, um 24/7, and they got through it and celebrated at the very end.
1:12:04
Um but you know, now we're ready to do it again.
1:12:07
We've got a second Blue Ghost mission that we're targeting no earlier than uh later this year to launch. Sure.
1:12:13
And then we've got a third one a year later and a fourth one a year after that.
1:12:17
And then uh Jared Isaacman from NASA Yeah.
1:12:20
just came out a couple weeks ago and said he wants 30 landers in the next 3 years.
1:12:25
So, we're also looking at that upside opportunity as well.
1:12:29
Yeah, what so uh walk me through what each lander will do.
1:12:31
I imagine you're trying to increase the capability of each mission.
1:12:35
Uh what's the what was the only goal of the first test?
1:12:40
Uh just testing the and characterizing the moon dust itself. Uh where does this go? What else are you doing?
1:12:48
Well, on the first one we looked at the moon dust.
1:12:50
We also uh had some electrostatic shielding that allowed to propel the dust because if you have dust you can repel it.
1:12:58
Um and so that's something something that Kennedy Space Center put on there.
1:13:02
Um We also drilled the the the longest into the moon Yeah.
1:13:07
um about 3 ft into the moon and tested the temperature because you're going to want to know what's under the Yeah. the moon surface.
1:13:14
>> that mean you brought like a 3-ft drill bit up there?
1:13:18
It was actually supposed to go longer, but it turns out we found out what we didn't know that there's actually hard surface Oh, interesting. around the 3-ft mark.
1:13:25
And so, we're learning so much about the moon and most importantly we're learning that we need to learn more.
1:13:30
And so, the second mission is going to go to the south far side of the moon and it'll be the first time the US attempts this.
1:13:36
So, we're very honored to do that. >> Yeah.
1:13:39
Um we're going to be able to send signals Yeah.
1:13:41
uh from millions of years ago in the dark ages. Yeah.
1:13:45
Uh you know, after the Big Bang happened.
1:13:47
And so, we're going to learn a lot about the universe through that mission. It's called Lucy Night. Yeah.
1:13:53
And then the third mission is going to go to a volcanic region of the moon surface that we've never gone to. Nobody's ever gone to.
1:14:02
It's called the Gruithuisen Domes. >> Sure.
1:14:04
And then the fourth mission we're excited about because it's going to go to the South Pole.
1:14:07
It's going to have some rovers.
1:14:08
We're going to go and look at, you know, there's supposed to be a lot of water and hydrogen and minerals in that area.
1:14:15
So, we're going to go explore that for NASA. Yeah.
1:14:16
What is the easiest part of space? I think idea generation.
1:14:24
I think coming up with ideas and the prototyping, the first ofs are uh straightforward.
1:14:34
But doing it at scale, that's really hard and you've heard that multiple times.
1:14:38
Building the system that builds the systems.
1:14:40
That's what we're doing at Firefly.
1:14:42
And so, if you come out to near Austin, Texas, you'll see both our factories just going at rate uh delivering 1-ton rockets and building up a new 16-ton reusable rocket and our slew of lunar landers and our orbiters as well. Yeah.
1:14:59
Did you uh the everyone probably knows from the Artemis mission that it was a very successful test of the SLS.
1:15:06
Um did you partner with other uh space companies for launch capacity?
1:15:09
How do you see the launch market generally?
1:15:11
Uh who's who are you partnering with to deliver to the moon?
1:15:17
Uh since most of the folks that we talk about talk to are going to LEO and they're hitching a ride on SpaceX.
1:15:22
Is anything different about these moon missions for you?
1:15:27
You know, right now we're um you know, partnering with all the above to go to the moon. Yeah.
1:15:31
Um we've used Falcon 9 on our last Blue Ghost mission one.
1:15:34
We have a great relationship with SpaceX. Right.
1:15:38
And um you know, we're forming relationships with Blue Origin and others. Cool.
1:15:43
We're also building our own 16-ton reusable rocket as well.
1:15:45
So, someday that's going to have capability to do amazing things. Yeah.
1:15:49
Our Alpha rocket, that's a 1-ton rocket that does dedicated launches to lower earth orbit and does the responsive missions. That's all us. That's all Firefly. Yeah.
1:15:57
But the 16-ton reusable rocket, we're co-developing that with Northrop Grumman who has a rich heritage in launch as well. Yeah.
1:16:06
How long do you think this uh stays as a primarily government-sponsored project?
1:16:11
People are starting to map out what a lunar economy might look like.
1:16:17
Uh it took it took decades for SpaceX to, you know, find that commercial side of the business with Starlink.
1:16:24
It's been massively successful.
1:16:25
So, these things sometimes come out of nowhere, but how are you you know, if you have ideas, where do you think the commercial opportunity will be in 10 or 20 years?
1:16:37
You know, we're just manifesting it. Yeah.
1:16:39
That's the way you can kind of predict the future is just do it. Yeah.
1:16:42
And so, on our Blue Ghost mission two, we're carrying a Electra spacecraft with us and it's got the Oculus sensor on there.
1:16:50
And it's got a Jetson Nvidia module on there and we're going to be able to use our SciTech software AI processing to actually take the data of imaging the moon and around the moon and process it on orbit. Okay.
1:17:03
And that's going to be the first commercial imaging service that I know of >> Yeah. uh in the history.
1:17:09
Um the previous imaging systems were government-owned, government-operated.
1:17:15
This will be all Firefly owned and operated and we'll be able to sell that data commercially. So, Yeah.
1:17:21
you know, it's it's this first step and we see more of that.
1:17:23
Um dedicated landers that, you know, a bunch of uh business models, businesses, entrepreneurs can put their important payloads on our dedicated lander.
1:17:35
That's another commercial idea that we're um working on.
1:17:40
And I think it's just a matter of time where it will be a good fraction of NASA.
1:17:44
They're never going to let go of the moon.
1:17:46
National security is not going to let go of the moon, but you'll start seeing a lot more commercial endeavors, commercial only type moon missions as well. Yeah.
1:17:54
What what year do you expect to set foot on the moon? Myself? Yeah.
1:18:00
Well, I think, you know, I already had that chance going to the Air Force Academy to try to be a fighter pilot.
1:18:06
I wasn't able to do that, but my my my kids, you know, the other day I was talking to them and I was like, "Hey, isn't this cool? Artemis two.
1:18:16
Don't you want to go to the moon?"
1:18:16
And they said, "Dad, I want to live on the moon." Mhm.
1:18:19
So, that's when my mind just exploded, right?
1:18:21
So, that's what our kids are saying these days and kids are so genuine.
1:18:25
They they say what is on their mind.
1:18:29
If it interests and excites kids, you're on to something. >> Yeah.
1:18:33
What uh what are you watching for learning from the Artemis two mission?
1:18:40
I just am thinking about about uh the astronauts. >> Mhm. Those are heroes Yeah.
1:18:44
for the world and our nation and, you know, other nations.
1:18:48
And so, my um hearts and mind uh go out to Reid, Victor, and Christina, and Jeremy.
1:18:56
I'm just uh awaiting them to return home so that everybody can welcome them back to Earth because what they did was historic.
1:19:03
I mean, it was inspiring.
1:19:05
I was really excited when I saw those images and videos of them on orbit and uh just looking forward to hearing more stories from them of what it was like.
1:19:17
Uh last question from the chat.
1:19:17
What where does the name Firefly come from?
1:19:23
You know, uh it it it's kind of towards our vision.
1:19:25
We're lighting the path to a bold space ecosystem that expands humanity's future.
1:19:30
If you think about it, we're going to be launching and operating satellites on orbit and it's going to look like the night sky of fireflies someday. I like that.
1:19:38
I'm hearing the song in my head. Firefly? Oh, yeah.
1:19:44
>> [laughter] >> I know the one you're thinking of. Well, thank you so much. >> to be here, Jay. Great to meet you. We'll talk to you soon.
1:19:50
>> We'll talk to you all soon.
1:19:50
Have a good rest of your day. Goodbye.
1:19:53
Nick Carter's been on a tear talking about CoreWeave.
1:19:56
They just signed a big deal with Anthropic and with Meta.
1:20:01
There's it's journal today.
1:20:03
>> You would not believe your eyes. What?
1:20:05
If 10 million fireflies >> Oh, yes. Yes.
1:20:07
>> lit up the world as I fell asleep. Yes.
1:20:11
Nick Carter said, I remember a few months ago when everyone on here insisted CoreWeave was a ticking time bomb, had unreasonable depreciation assumptions, was a Ponzi, Magnatar was doing GFC 2.
1:20:20
0, had no bespoke tech, had unsustainable debt load, was just financial engineering.
1:20:25
Well, they've been on a tear building ever bigger data centers and we had the the folks from CoreWeave come on the show just recently and saw a bunch of the progress there and there's an incredible amount of demand.
1:20:38
Nvidia In September, CoreWeave said it was expanding agreement with OpenAI to supply data center capacity by as much as 6.
1:20:45
5 billion, bringing the total value of the contract to 22. 4 billion.
1:20:48
Earlier this year, Nvidia said it was pouring an additional 2 billion into CoreWeave in a vote of confidence in the artificial intelligence data center company using Nvidia's chips.
1:20:58
Anyway, without further ado, let's bring out Chad Janis from Grüns. >> Welcome to the show. What's going on? Hey guys, how we doing? How we doing? Doing great.
1:21:08
Congratulations on the massive acquisition.
1:21:10
We have to hit the gong for you. Unilever paid 1. 2 billion. Congratulations. Big big hit.
1:21:19
Uh we've been I we I think we tried to make this happen last year.
1:21:24
So great great to finally have you on the show.
1:21:26
I think everyone was appreciating how offline you've been for for the last little bit.
1:21:32
I think somebody I saw somebody post like the founder hasn't posted on X since like Q4 of last year.
1:21:38
So you guys were busy busy grinding.
1:21:41
But but yeah, I I I guess like the I want to kind of dive right into and I'm sure you've told the story before, but I think it's fun to hear it now.
1:21:51
Like what drew you to this category in you know, what was it?
1:21:55
Three and a half years ago at this point.
1:21:57
You had you'd been on the board of a bunch of different D2C brands.
1:22:01
I would say like you started the company in like the probably the trot like the the very bottom of the trough in terms of like D2C sentiment.
1:22:12
Like the at the time there there were not there were not many like great kind of exit comps to to point out.
1:22:21
A lot of like the D2C darlings had been struggling.
1:22:22
You clearly had faith in the category and managed to build to one of the biggest exits in in the space in a while.
1:22:31
So talk about those you know, the kind of the year months leading up to starting the company and and what you saw.
1:22:41
Yeah, thanks for having me on.
1:22:43
Um So I actually was trying not to start a company when I had the idea for Grüns.
1:22:46
I I was going to go get my MBA at Stanford and I was saying, hey, I want to have a pretty normal MBA experience, hang out with friends a ton.
1:22:54
And it was about 2 weeks before I went out to Stanford.
1:22:56
I was at my dad's place and I was drinking a greens powder and looked up in the corner of the room and I was like, there's no way I'm keeping this habit past 30 days.
1:23:07
So that was sort of the epiphany of, hey, how do I take something as robust and comprehensive and make it into a form factor.
1:23:14
I didn't think gummies at the time.
1:23:16
Make it into a form factor that could build a habit for consumer make something they look forward to.
1:23:21
They go to bed at night thinking about, excited about taking Grüns the next day.
1:23:26
And so that started the journey of about a year formulating, piloting, testing, sampling about 1/4 of my entire Stanford class tried the early iterations of Grüns before we launched.
1:23:39
And then we launched in August of 2023.
1:23:42
What what other companies had you looked at in the category?
1:23:45
I know there was I'm going to probably blank on the name, but there was a very high profile like apple cider vinegar Goli Goli.
1:23:55
They had they had scaled extremely rapidly, but then not I don't know where that that business netted out, but I don't I don't believe it was a fantastic outcome.
1:24:04
So I felt like I kind of had this feeling at the time that maybe there was something wrong with gummies as a category.
1:24:10
Like there was a bunch of demand, but maybe it wasn't possible to build to this level of outcome.
1:24:16
Did did Did you have any kind of concerns about the cat the form factor at all or you just had conviction because people love the product?
1:24:25
I mean, not the form factor.
1:24:27
The history of gummies actually really interesting.
1:24:28
About 20 years ago, it didn't really exist.
1:24:30
And I would say then OLLY came around in 2014, I believe, and made gummy an approachable category.
1:24:40
And then I would say we're entering what I would consider a V3 of the gummy era, which is taking really robust blends and putting them into a form factor like gummy.
1:24:50
So you sort of get the best of all worlds.
1:24:51
You get robust comprehensive blends in a form factor that's convenient, enjoyable.
1:24:55
Consumers can look forward to it.
1:24:56
And so I didn't I didn't necessarily tie the dots the way that you guys have just there with Goli.
1:25:02
I think they were more focused on individual ingredients that sort of rose and rose the rose with trends and then came back down as they sort of trended away.
1:25:10
We we stay away from like single ingredients.
1:25:13
What would you say are the three biggest factors that contributed to your guys' what I would describe as hyper growth?
1:25:24
Um I would say first is novel innovation.
1:25:28
So each of the products you see us launching does not exist in the market.
1:25:32
So when people say like, oh, who are you competing with?
1:25:33
It's like, well, we're kind of creating our own new categories against large outstanding categories.
1:25:40
I would say second is just like unrelenting urgency every day.
1:25:44
Like I sort of look back at the urgency I've had every single day over the last three and a half four years, as well as the urgency that my team has every day.
1:25:55
Like it it's just like compounds over time if you're delivering that much urgency and impact every day.
1:26:00
And then the third thing that I would say is the absolute most important is the team.
1:26:05
We've got 130 plus individuals here at this company.
1:26:08
We have a culture of autonomy and accountability.
1:26:11
And each individual here wakes up every day as the CEO of their domain.
1:26:16
So when you sort of take 130 plus people who are CEOs of their function and stack that together, you end up in a I guess in a place that we just have ended up here in the last week.
1:26:26
Can you talk about how you thought about building the team?
1:26:28
Like what roles you wanted to hire for and when and sort of how you staged the the scale out?
1:26:36
Yeah, the hardest part about building a company is like you as the founder have to do too much.
1:26:40
You have to do too much to start. >> Yeah.
1:26:42
And so over time you get to a place of like, okay, where does the company need me most?
1:26:46
Like where am I uniquely capable?
1:26:48
So I guess like the advice I would take that question is like, hey, what advice would I give about building through the stages that we we did.
1:26:55
You got to surround yourself with like the absolute best in each each function.
1:26:59
And so you sort of pick off each function slowly over time where either you don't enjoy it and it's sort of you know, it's pushing down on your your vibes, I guess I could say.
1:27:08
Or B, alternatively, things that you think somebody could do way better than you and you need to clear that out so that you can focus on other things.
1:27:16
And so I wouldn't say that um you know, we we probably made some hires early that others wouldn't.
1:27:21
Like we hired our chief people officer pretty early in the company.
1:27:26
Um trying to think of another one that we might have hired earlier than than most people would have.
1:27:29
What what was the motivation between the early hire on the chief people officer?
1:27:35
I I think it comes back to like ultimately at the end of the day like a company's success is the people, right?
1:27:40
The culture that you have, how that facilitates frictionless growth.
1:27:42
And so from the early days like we've always been focused on ensuring that we get the absolute best people here in the company and then put them in an environment where they can be their full self.
1:27:52
They can excel to the the extent that they can.
1:27:56
I mean, we've got people at the company who probably had an impact at other companies, but when they got here, it was like night and day the impact that they were able to have.
1:28:05
You mentioned that you demoed the product with your Stanford class.
1:28:08
What was the actual process of the very first version of the product to the you know, the scale up?
1:28:17
Were you formulating it yourself using off-the-shelf products and then go to a co-packer and then in-house manufacturing?
1:28:25
Take me on like the actual product development journey.
1:28:29
Yeah, we um early days of the business pre-launch, the process was calling up 20 different co-mans, yeah, co-manufacturing partners, and telling them, here's what I want to do, here's what the ingredients are, I'll source all of it.
1:28:42
And every single one of them except for one said, I'm not going to do that.
1:28:44
Like that that's going to taste disgusting.
1:28:47
That doesn't work in a gummy.
1:28:47
It's never going to work. Yeah.
1:28:48
The one who said who said he would give it a try, he was like, It's so funny because because you say that like you talk about the the product being innovative, but I think you guys have been so successful and probably had so many clones that my assumption has been that like this category always existed and you guys just came in and out out executed, but actually creating the category.
1:29:09
Well, well, here's where it gets crazier.
1:29:11
So um So we finally got the one to try and I was like, look, just just produce it, we'll both sample it, we'll say it either tastes terrible or not."
1:29:18
So, we ended up by producing it, didn't taste terrible, it had some work to do.
1:29:23
We went through multiple iterations with the Stanford classmates, 25% of them.
1:29:28
And then, the hardest part about building this business is the little pack that we have, the daily packs. Yeah.
1:29:35
Um that that infrastructure for taking gummies and putting it into packs did not exist prior to us. Sure.
1:29:39
So, for the first 6 to 8 months of this business, we had 20 bodies standing around a table >> Mhm.
1:29:47
manually picking up gummies and putting them in packs and taking a clamp sealer that looks like a staple gun Yep.
1:29:51
before we then were able to automate it.
1:29:53
So, I mean, that that's been the hardest part about this business is getting the infrastructure to where it is today where we can, you know, ship 10 million gummies a day and have the infrastructure for it.
1:30:02
Is that because um the gummies are sticky, so they don't work on normal like uh machinery to just fall into the pouches themselves on automated line?
1:30:12
Yeah, I mean, that's one of the biggest difficulties why it didn't exist prior.
1:30:15
I think um in the instances where it does exist would be like your General Mills, like Mott's gummies, they're like the Yeah.
1:30:21
uh more like flimsier type packaging. Yeah.
1:30:23
And and that's all in-house.
1:30:25
So, they know all their production equipment.
1:30:28
>> There's not really like a manufacturing supply chain that does that. >> Yeah.
1:30:31
So, yeah, did you stay with a co-packer for a long time?
1:30:33
Did you wind up dual sourcing?
1:30:36
How did you like solve the supply chain over time?
1:30:41
Yeah, and this has been the the biggest unlock of our business over time.
1:30:43
And frankly, the part that people are going to overlook is like having operations scale at the rate that we've been able to do it Yeah. is a massive feat.
1:30:52
We've got multiple co-mans, multiple co-packers, multiple nodes, 3PL, in-house facility. Really? it's been a lot.
1:31:02
We're finally at a place where we can actually meet the demand that's out there and keep up with it.
1:31:06
So, we're we're in a good operational place right now.
1:31:08
The operations team is sleeping.
1:31:09
Did you raise a lot of money along the way?
1:31:14
We raised probably around 50 million Okay.
1:31:17
over the course of the business.
1:31:18
Some of that was secondary over the course and then um primary as well, obviously. Yeah.
1:31:23
You have a fantastic group of investors, by the way. Yeah. They're great, right?
1:31:28
Steve, Amanda, all those people are fantastic.
1:31:30
Uh how did your how did your marketing mix evolve over time?
1:31:35
Was it relatively consistent?
1:31:37
I mean, I'm assuming you've you've given quite a lot of money uh to Meta Platforms, uh but but any any thing that was surprising from a user acquisition standpoint or was it the kind of thing where it was like, you know, 80-90% Google Meta for the history plus, you know, rotating in experimental budget?
1:31:59
Yeah, I mean, Meta is always going to be a beast for like every brand that's online.
1:32:03
What I'll say though is it it has been surprising to me when I hear others' mix and that Meta makes up like you said, like 85-90% Mhm.
1:32:12
It's like, "Oh, well, you should probably like diversify that a little bit." Mhm.
1:32:17
Um Meta Meta's always going to take up a massive chunk.
1:32:19
I mean, they've built such a good platform that allows for companies to find people and market for their particular uh product.
1:32:28
Um and so, we've diversified over time.
1:32:30
We have intent to continue diversifying, building awareness.
1:32:32
And so, it's not that we feel like uh you know, we're overexposed in a channel, but we we've just always had the intent to create defensibility against the media mix. Yeah.
1:32:44
Scariest moment over the last 3 and 1/2 years?
1:32:48
I can tell you the exact day.
1:32:50
Uh uh 6 months into the business, January 29th.
1:32:55
Um was calling my co-man.
1:32:55
I was like, "Hey, we don't have It was like 2 weeks of telling him, 'Hey, I don't think we have enough inventory, right?'"
1:33:00
He's like, "No, no, no, we're good. We're good. We're good."
1:33:02
January 29th, I was like, "Hey, we're not good, are we?"
1:33:05
And he's like, "No, no, we're not good."
1:33:09
Uh and so, we had to shut off marketing spend by 93% overnight.
1:33:10
And this is because you had a bunch of subscribers and you were worried about delivering on the subscriptions.
1:33:16
If you can't, you know, there's huge amount of churn and then So, we've we've never gone out of stock for like more than a couple days. Mhm.
1:33:24
Um so, there's been like a couple periods in the business where we were close.
1:33:27
We've never gone out of stock in like a a way that would hurt our consumer. Mhm.
1:33:30
But that you you got it exactly right.
1:33:32
Like, the golden rule at Grüns is we do not go out of stock.
1:33:36
These people expect they take it daily. We are in stock.
1:33:38
If that means we can't acquire customers, fine.
1:33:42
Um we've got to deliver for those who are subscribers.
1:33:44
So, does that also affect the skew mix and how careful you are about launching new skews because every new skew adds complexity to the supply chain and and the inventory management?
1:33:55
Yeah, I mean, look, like we've got a couple of I I would say we have a couple of skews per brand we launch.
1:33:59
If you ask our operations team and the actual skew that we have, they would tell you we have hundreds of skews. Yeah.
1:34:04
Um so, I'm probably downplaying the complexity. Yeah.
1:34:08
Uh but yeah, like we the nice thing about this business is we we have solutions that solve consumers' needs in mass.
1:34:15
So, we don't have to create, you know, 50 different products to solve niche needs that a consumer has. Yeah.
1:34:23
Uh what's your outlook on consumer broadly? I love it.
1:34:29
Uh I I can't imagine building in a different space. Mhm.
1:34:31
Uh I would say consumer sentiment is rough in some ways right now.
1:34:38
Um I don't think that's like a surprise.
1:34:40
Uh you can look uh probably seen trends, but I would say consumer as a category uh it's a beautiful thing, right?
1:34:48
Like, our team, we're leveraging AI probably in a opportunistic way, not in the existential way that a lot of tech companies are like, "Hey, if we don't do this right, are we existing next year?"
1:35:00
It for us, it's an opportunity and uh we're finding some really nice inroads there. Interesting.
1:35:05
How did you think about messaging in the early days and like honing the brand messaging because the product delivers on a cross of couple vectors, convenience and health benefits.
1:35:15
Um what was there ever like a tension between those?
1:35:18
Like, how did you wind up sort What did you settle on for like the key value prop if you could just deliver one message?
1:35:27
I think your consumer helps you identify what resonates best.
1:35:29
I would say though, the approach of like the overarching approach of what we've done, one brand that I looked up to is Dr. Squatch. Mhm.
1:35:37
Um as you know, their approach, you know, it's probably the first time I was in the shower using a soap and I was like, "Wow, it's like really fun.
1:35:43
This is a nice experience." Yeah.
1:35:44
Um something like actually like mark your experience there.
1:35:48
And I think we've taken some of that concept to the supplement category where, as you sort of called out, most brands are like uh like, "We do clinical research, but we don't It's not like the only thing we talk about, right?
1:36:00
It's We do We have like studies.
1:36:02
We've done all this wonderful stuff, but we try not to lean too much on that because that's what the rest of the category is doing.
1:36:08
We're kind of a lifestyle brand. Yeah.
1:36:10
And so, consumers buy it, they enjoy it, they look forward to it, and it drives an impact in their life.
1:36:14
And so, I would say the overarching theme, and I think if you were to look at our um our ad account, if you were to look at our like what resonates with the consumer, it's it's that we're a brand that personifies our consumer and they like to associate and have the benefits from it.
1:36:29
Uh talk to me about the D2C to retail transition.
1:36:31
Was that in the pitch deck at the very start?
1:36:34
Did you know exactly how long that was going to take?
1:36:37
Or was there a moment when you were like, "Okay, I'm ready. We're ready to go. Now's the time."
1:36:43
Or did uh did Shray come and find you and say, "It's time to go to retail." >> You guys know Shray? I know. I know Shray. Yeah. Love it. Shray Shray's awesome.
1:36:51
He's been a good buddy in um helping the business since the early days.
1:36:55
Uh he actually went with me to pitch, believe Walmart and Sam's Club in the summer of 2024. Oh.
1:36:59
Uh but we didn't have a lot of employees at the time that I was the original one pitching.
1:37:03
Um look, I I just always knew this business was going to be omni-channel.
1:37:07
I don't think there's any reason to like have pride in being a solely D2C business or a solely on like There's just There's consumers everywhere.
1:37:16
Like, meet them with the solution that and at the price point that works for them.
1:37:19
Um so, I first had conversations about launching retail back in like January of 2024.
1:37:22
And I'll tell you, everybody was telling me, "Hey, it's kind of early.
1:37:28
Like, do you really want to do this?" And I said, "Yes.
1:37:30
I guarantee like the selling cycles are so long here.
1:37:33
I guarantee by next year when we're finally in this retailer, we're going to be really glad that we put in the time today." Totally.
1:37:40
Um and so, we you know, that process took really long.
1:37:41
We launched with Sprouts in October of 2024 Mhm.
1:37:43
uh Target in February of 2025 and then uh Walmart in April of 2025.
1:37:51
And then, a a bunch of other uh amazing retailers after that.
1:37:55
And then, what were you tracking?
1:37:55
What What changed about the business, the marketing, the strategy to actually be successful in retail?
1:38:04
The biggest thing is the rebrand we did. Okay.
1:38:06
>> So, the original branding, I don't know if you've seen it.
1:38:08
It was like a dark green color. Sure.
1:38:09
I had put I I'm I'm glad you haven't seen it.
1:38:12
I developed it in Canva in an afternoon. Okay.
1:38:13
Uh you know what's funny is it was like it was so bad, but when we changed, like the vast majority of people were like, "This is a really good rebrand change."
1:38:20
We got a few people who were like, "Hey, like what's up with the old I want the old branding."
1:38:25
I was like, "Guys, like that's Canva.
1:38:26
Like, >> [laughter] >> nothing special there."
1:38:28
Um so, we we redid the packaging.
1:38:31
We made it ready for retail. Sure.
1:38:33
Uh you could more quickly in sort of 3 seconds identify uh what what the product was.
1:38:38
And so, that's probably the biggest change we had to do to get ready for uh retail distribution.
1:38:45
Uh is is product the only thing that really matters in in uh with with an early stage consumer brand?
1:38:56
It's a big broad statement.
1:38:56
I think it really matters for us because it's the it it is it sets the stage for how big any of our businesses can become.
1:39:05
So, as you know, we've got Grüns uh we've got Neutrops, our mushroom product, Neutropics.
1:39:11
We've got Immune, which is an immunity product, and we've got Juiced, which is our pre-workout, pre-anything energy product.
1:39:16
If we don't get that product right, speaking to that category right, um then it it caps the upside of how big that business can be.
1:39:24
So, it really matters for us.
1:39:28
Um I can't speak for every business though. Yeah.
1:39:29
Uh how how diversified did the business become?
1:39:33
I mean, uh 130 employees is uh is a lot.
1:39:36
I imagine that you had both e-commerce and then also in retail and then also across these new product lines, but is there a power law where one product in retail is driving the vast majority of sales or is it pretty much like a sum of some [snorts] of all the different parts? >> a power law. Yeah. Yeah.
1:39:56
But how is it Everything's done. Everything's done well.
1:39:58
Like all these products are phenomenal.
1:40:00
People should should try them.
1:40:02
See if they want to stay with them.
1:40:05
I I I would say that our team's like super ambitious.
1:40:08
So, for if you asked us and you'd be like, "Oh my goodness, we want these these secondary products behind Greens to be much bigger than they are." Yeah.
1:40:15
But to be clear, like they're large businesses.
1:40:16
And I think any founder would love to have just one of them as their core business.
1:40:21
So, and and and we've got a lot of really exciting innovation coming that I I think will grow nicely like Greens has. >> Yeah.
1:40:29
Uh when did you first meet Unilever or the folks over there?
1:40:33
I first had a conversation with them probably in like June of last year.
1:40:39
Uh is when we started talking.
1:40:39
But but like casually, I like just getting to know them.
1:40:43
Ultimately for me, what really matters is the individual is somebody that I'm excited to work with.
1:40:48
I'm excited to build with.
1:40:50
And so, I I've been chatting with them for quite some time to identify whether it was a good fit for both sides. Yeah.
1:40:55
Yeah, you also you're like, "Give me another year.
1:40:58
I'll like three, four X again."
1:41:01
>> [laughter] >> Uh and then and then what what do you think Unilever brings to the table to let you fulfill the vision here? They're they're awesome.
1:41:09
I mean, you may you may be familiar with their background, but they've done this like with multiple businesses before.
1:41:14
And frankly, might be one of the few strategic partners that has. Yeah.
1:41:17
So, you've got Nutrafol, which they just acquired probably about four years ago.
1:41:23
And they're they're publicly stated that that business is significantly larger than when they acquired it. They acquired Liquid I. V. back in probably 2020.
1:41:30
That business is massively larger.
1:41:32
I think they just stated last year that it's around a billion of revenue. That's crazy. >> Olly back in 2019.
1:41:37
That business is significantly bigger. Yeah.
1:41:41
>> So, they they just done a really good job.
1:41:42
They they know what to look for and I think that's what our team's most excited for is we're getting a partner who can help us on our ambitious goals and knows the path to get there.
1:41:52
Um you mentioned that you're using AI opportunistically.
1:41:56
Uh what does that actually look like in practice because I I can imagine that you know, you you probably have some sort of software SaaS product in many verticals.
1:42:06
All of those companies are probably launching or adding AI features, so you can flip a switch and turn that on or you can go and build from scratch.
1:42:15
Like what's working right now?
1:42:19
One of the biggest things I'm grateful for is we have a really, really strong data and finance team.
1:42:22
And so, we have like a all the data infrastructure, data warehouse in a place where it's accessible through cloud to our team.
1:42:30
So, you've got you've got the CX team, you've got the finance team, you've got the marketing team all like immediately accessible with that information to make decisions.
1:42:39
So, I'd say that's probably the biggest unlock is everyone's in cloud.
1:42:43
Everyone is like we we all went through an effort.
1:42:47
It's kind of a the objective's kind of a joke, but it's basically make yourself replaceable.
1:42:52
Like can AI replace your job?
1:42:52
And so, we're all ticking across the aspects of our roles and what we can automate through AI. Yeah.
1:42:58
Uh and I find a lot of productivity from it.
1:43:00
But I would say the biggest takeaway there is you've got to have your data infrastructure and data warehouse in a place that it's a source of truth to every individual in the company. Yeah.
1:43:10
Uh talk about your approach to creative.
1:43:14
I've heard that you guys are like uh absolute powerhouse when it comes to just like generating high volumes of creative.
1:43:23
And I'm curious if there's any unlocks on the AI side on that front as well.
1:43:28
You know, we haven't really used AI for that.
1:43:29
Um I imagine that like we're we're testing like a few things, but I'm sure you guys see all over X.
1:43:34
There's a million posts about people are creating like the Pixar animations and stuff.
1:43:40
And yeah, say what you will.
1:43:40
Some of it's a little testy.
1:43:43
It's kind of like, "Hey, we're we're a reputable brand.
1:43:46
Like we can't be putting some things out on the internet like that."
1:43:49
And so, we're pretty careful about it.
1:43:49
I would say at this point we're still like 99% plus like human generated, whether it's like in a editing file or whether it's actually humans creating UGC or working with influencers who are creating content.
1:44:06
We we haven't moved, I would say, into like AI being the the generator of our our creative. Interesting.
1:44:12
Uh did you actually get your MBA or did did you drop out? >> Oh, I was so close. I was so close. Yeah, okay.
1:44:19
So, so an exit an exit at this scale, can they not just say like, "Okay, this guy's a master of business.
1:44:25
We'll give him >> think they would.
1:44:26
That's that's >> they would.
1:44:27
I don't think they've done that for others who have who have had some success successful outcomes.
1:44:33
Just before I graduated, every quarter, so the business was doing like 50 million of revenue when I graduated.
1:44:39
We had probably like six people working on it at the time.
1:44:40
And it was 2 weeks before I graduated.
1:44:43
I came to my wife back to our dorm, but I was like, "Hey, there's like a real chance I'm not going to graduate."
1:44:48
I was like right on the GPA cut off. She's like, "Haha."
1:44:49
I'm like, "No, no, like like dead serious.
1:44:53
We're like one test one one point lower and we're not going to graduate."
1:44:57
She's like, "Do you want to come back?" I was like, "No."
1:44:59
Uh either we graduate and I have an MBA or we don't and I I don't have an MBA. That's how I see it now.
1:45:06
Well, you're you're a master you're a master of business in our book, so. >> I agree.
1:45:10
>> you got you got the you you won the right award. Yeah.
1:45:12
Uh but thank you thank you for hanging out on uh and congratulations to to the entire team.
1:45:18
It's really uh >> Congratulations. uh incredible story.
1:45:21
>> We'll talk to you soon.
1:45:23
Have a good rest of your day.
1:45:23
Up next, we have Jordan Bramble from Antares.
1:45:27
He's the co-founder and CEO.
1:45:27
Antares is becoming the first company to secure DOE safety approval for new reactor, marking a breakthrough in US nuclear deployment.
1:45:37
Jordan, how are you doing? I'm doing well. How about yourself? Thanks for having me. Welcome to the show. I'm glad to meet.
1:45:45
We've heard a ton about the about the company over the years.
1:45:47
Please but give us an introduction on yourself and the company.
1:45:52
Yeah, so Jordan Bramble, CEO here at Antares.
1:45:54
Our focus at Antares is nuclear power for what we call strategic energy.
1:46:00
So, that primarily means defense and space applications, but increasingly expanding into commercial markets as well.
1:46:05
Does that mean like oil and gas extraction?
1:46:07
You need a you know, diesel generator normally, but you can put down a nuclear reactor as well. Absolutely.
1:46:15
And the thing that you know, I think is aligned across both of those markets is you know, what we're seeing and this is what strategic energy really means to us is you're using the unique characteristics of nuclear power to enable a resiliency or other characteristics that you can't get from alternative energy sources.
1:46:30
And that's really the crux of what we're trying to do on the defense side of things is provide modular power plants that have much higher up time with a much lower sustaining supply chain than the alternatives do so that we can power our operational assets that exist here in the homeland.
1:46:46
So, what are the what's the shape of the reactor that you want to build?
1:46:50
The size, the scale, the differentiators?
1:46:52
Like what goes into actually delivering a product here? Yeah, absolutely.
1:46:56
So, it's a graphite moderated design.
1:46:58
We use a fuel form factor called TRISO, so think of tiny spheres, particles of uranium encapsulated in silicon carbide pressed into graphite compacts stacked in the channels inside of graphite.
1:47:08
Um our reactors are cooled with heat pipes.
1:47:11
So, we actually vaporize sodium that travels the length of the pipe, then condenses into a wick structure to return that working fluid.
1:47:20
So, it's a totally passive way to move heat inside of a nuclear reactor.
1:47:24
Heat pipes, copper water heat pipes are also in your iPhone.
1:47:26
They were actually invented at Los Alamos National Lab for space space nuclear power applications in 1963.
1:47:33
Um the reactor itself can fit on a truck bed alongside of the power conversion system and then can be installed at the site.
1:47:41
And then how far along are you in the actual development?
1:47:43
I I know this stuff it it it's not an overnight project.
1:47:48
There's a lot that goes into being yeah, going critical basically. Yeah, absolutely.
1:47:55
So, you know, first thing I would say is North Star for us, North Star for any company is to have an electricity producing system at a customer site.
1:48:03
Customer's paying for it.
1:48:05
And all [clears throat] of our work with Idaho National Lab, you know, we view this as a sequence of multiple test reactors to get to that point.
1:48:10
We've been at this for 3 years now.
1:48:14
We actually started developing our test facility at Idaho National Lab back in 2024 so that we could be ready for this moment.
1:48:20
Um funnily enough, you know, just kind of brilliant rhyme of history here.
1:48:25
The last time a nuclear reactor was tested in that building at Idaho, it was actually this picture right behind me. Yeah.
1:48:30
So, this is the Army's Army's ML-1 reactor that was built in 1967 here in Los Angeles. Wow.
1:48:37
Uh now, you know, call it a half century or so later, we built a reactor here in Los Angeles that we're now going to go test in that same building. Yeah. You asked about dome. It's not actually dome.
1:48:47
So, it's it's very nearby.
1:48:50
So, our facility is called RACE, the Reactors and Critical Experiments Facility, formerly known as MFC-793.
1:48:58
We invested a couple million of our own dollars in that building starting in '24 and '25 so that we would have a facility ready to go by the time that we were ready to test a reactor. Yeah.
1:49:06
Um But, you know, the broader kind of tech maturation strategy here is uh we actually tested an electrically heated prototype at full thermal power uh back in 2025.
1:49:16
Now, what we're trying to do with this um criticality test in 2026 is validate the performance of our control systems uh as well as prove out all of the simulations that that govern the design um especially in the nuclear data side. Yeah.
1:49:30
Uh we're really getting a lot of ancillary benefits from this test though.
1:49:33
So, uh it's been a great opportunity to debug the supply chain uh and and you know, performance and lead times of our suppliers.
1:49:39
Also been great opportunity for us just to learn this regulatory pathway.
1:49:43
So, you know, we're obviously doing this for the first time.
1:49:48
But uh much bigger than that, this is actually the first time for the country that uh a reactor a new reactor has been authorized under DOE standards.
1:49:53
Uh the last time a new reactor was built at a DOE site of a new design uh was before this regulatory pathway actually existed.
1:50:01
So, um it's a historic first in that way.
1:50:06
We've learned a lot from it.
1:50:06
And now when we do subsequent reactors, you know, we know a lot more about how to get through this regulatory pathway efficiently.
1:50:12
So, um maybe just to summarize that uh you know, full thermal power in 2025, we're going to be making neutrons this year in 2026, and then electrons in 2027 with a electricity producing reactor.
1:50:23
What's the uh what's your background?
1:50:25
I feel like nuclear does not have a very clear pipeline of oh, you worked at these you're part of the SpaceX mafia that went into nuclear.
1:50:33
Some people in nuclear came from SpaceX, but uh it it there isn't a there isn't a clear lineage for everyone.
1:50:38
Uh what was your path into the nuclear industry?
1:50:43
Yeah, so engineer by background, studied systems engineering uh and physics.
1:50:45
Like lifelong interest in nuclear power.
1:50:47
Um I like to joke that the first like real job I had where you know, I wasn't working on uh you know, working at fast food, working on the family farm.
1:50:55
Uh first thing I ever did was uh work at the Newport News shipyard where we build uh um building constructing core submarines. Yeah.
1:51:02
Um spent some time at at at at different startups.
1:51:06
You know, I've worked on everything from artificial intelligence, machine learning, embedded systems, uh you know, product companies.
1:51:11
Uh but the other unique thing in my background is I was actually in the White House in OMB uh in 2017, 2018. Got it.
1:51:16
Uh yeah, talk talk more about the the regulatory approval.
1:51:21
Uh maybe map out exactly the path because there's clearly like a series of steps here.
1:51:26
Like what happened most recently?
1:51:29
Yeah, so this final regulatory approval that we received is called the DSA, documented safety analysis.
1:51:33
And you know, really what that is doing um the the the the approach to licensing a reactor with the Department of Energy is you establish a safety basis, right?
1:51:44
These are the fundamentals um uh design characteristics, but also subsystems that perform some fundamental safety function to ensure the public is safe. Mhm.
1:51:52
And you prove that through analysis, you prove that through testing, uh and your documentation outlines that, right?
1:51:58
And what the DSA does that's different than the preliminary approvals um is it's actually based on what is what is as built, right?
1:52:05
So, at time of final design review, they consider that 90% design complete.
1:52:09
The other 10% is what you actually deliver and build, and that's what goes into approving the DSA.
1:52:15
Um so, you can think of it simply as the final regulatory approval.
1:52:17
From here on out, what comes next is uh we're going to get into what's called uh readiness operational readiness where we start working with our operators on the documentation and procedures, um do final test check checkouts, uh and then once we get approval from from Department of Energy on that, um then we can actually start putting fuel in the reactor and then eventually start it up and go critical.
1:52:39
Uh talk to me about the the [clears throat] opportunity for nuclear in space.
1:52:42
I know that there's some tradeoffs around like Mars might be less suitable for solar, but that seems very far away.
1:52:50
Is there more near term vision for nuclear in space?
1:52:56
So, just as of 2 weeks ago, uh administrator Jared Isaacman at NASA um actually announced that NASA's ignition day uh that they want to fly a nuclear-powered spacecraft to the moon uh in December of 2028.
1:53:06
Um Because, you know, they recognize uh the immense value of this technology to expand humanity's presence um both, you know, in Earth orbit, but but beyond as well.
1:53:16
Um you're absolutely right.
1:53:16
So, the further you get from from Earth beyond one one AU, uh solar efficiency actually declines uh exponentially with with respect to distance.
1:53:24
Um so, you know, you can imagine your solar panels just ballooning in size as you get further and further to make an equivalent amount of power. Yeah.
1:53:31
Um but even beyond that, you know, we believe the market for nuclear power in space will be much larger and and move a lot faster than I think a lot of people think.
1:53:39
Uh the overwhelming thing that will drive that is uh space is now a warfighting domain, right?
1:53:46
And you know, as we seek to employ higher powered assets uh uh in Earth orbit, in cislunar space, uh there's pretty clear physics there that a nuclear power system scales more favorably on a size and weight basis uh compared to solar panels, right?
1:54:00
So, you know, you want to do a 100 kilowatt spacecraft, those solar panels would be, you know, like the size of a football field.
1:54:06
Um you can do a a similarly sized nuclear-powered spacecraft and actually fit it on a Falcon 9. Yeah.
1:54:10
Uh okay, so yeah, uh nuclear-powered spacecraft you're fitting on a Falcon 9.
1:54:15
That means that the primary stage is still traditional, but then once you get to lower Earth orbit, the nuclear power's kicking in.
1:54:24
Like how what is what is actually creating thrust with a nuclear-powered spacecraft?
1:54:29
Yeah, so so great question.
1:54:32
So, there's really two paradigms here.
1:54:33
So, there's nuclear thermal propulsion. Okay.
1:54:36
>> think of that as imagine it like a traditional rocket where uh you're circulating your propellant through a nuclear reactor to heat it up and then exhaust it and create thrust.
1:54:44
Um we're not focused on that, so we don't work on that, but there's there's a great history in that technology.
1:54:49
Um what we're more so focused on is nuclear power nuclear electric power and propulsion.
1:54:55
And so, uh in NEP, uh essentially what that is is you're using a nuclear reactor to uh create electricity, and then you're powering electric propulsion thrusters, right?
1:55:04
So, uh it's an alternative to solar electric propulsion, um but you know, really it's about power density, right?
1:55:09
Uh you can have a much larger onboard power source than what you could get um from the equivalent size and weight of solar panels.
1:55:16
How how how do you convert electricity to thrust in space?
1:55:21
I feel like with a plane, I understand you spin a propeller.
1:55:23
Like that seems pretty intuitive to me.
1:55:25
Uh with a car, you spin the wheels, so there's traction.
1:55:28
But if there's no friction in a vacuum, how are you creating thrust from electricity?
1:55:34
Yeah, so you're ionizing a propellant and then uh shooting it out of thrusters.
1:55:37
And so, it's it's uh typically electric propulsion is very small amounts of thrust, right?
1:55:41
So, it's you know, imagine a Starlink satellite how it would reorient itself. >> Yeah, sure.
1:55:46
Okay, so there's still propellant on board that is uh transferring the mass that's creating the thrust. Got it.
1:55:52
>> generally [clears throat] xenon or krypton is what you see. Xenon or krypton. Interesting. Very cool.
1:55:55
Um what but zooming out, like uh what uh what is underpinning just the broader nuclear boom?
1:56:03
We've talked to a lot of different nuclear companies.
1:56:05
It feels like we were in the real doldrums of nuclear uh startups and nuclear opportunities.
1:56:13
There were a couple uh sort of false starts a few decades ago and a decade ago, but it really feels like there's a number of companies that are working really well.
1:56:21
Like what is the critical unlock?
1:56:23
Is it technology or regulatory or both? What's going on?
1:56:28
I I I think it's really all of the above.
1:56:29
I mean, I think it's a a confluence of things.
1:56:31
So, um you know, the president signed a series of executive orders in May of last year that really created this streamlined regulatory path that we're utilizing.
1:56:41
Uh one thing I would say is, you know, in the history of our company, regulation has actually never been a key bottleneck for us.
1:56:45
It's always been about um you know, engineering rigor, uh getting our safety basis in order in in order, you know, creating the deliverable such that we could argue our safety case empirically.
1:56:57
And whenever we've done a great job of that, we've been able to move really swiftly through these approvals. Yeah.
1:57:01
Um but I think what you're you're also seeing now is there's just a new need for this capability, right?
1:57:06
Uh you know, we had this period in the '60s and '70s where you know, if you go back in the 1960s, like R&D funding as a percentage of federal overlays was like double-digit percentages.
1:57:22
Uh you know, we had like the central banking era of Paul Volcker where federal funds rates was like 20% or higher.
1:57:28
Uh we had this like austerity period where actually what we did was we cut a lot of R&D funding.
1:57:32
Nuclear particularly suffered from that, right?
1:57:35
And we never really I would I would make the argument that we did not have a true nuclear private sector at the time when those changes were made.
1:57:41
Very different than the approach that the French took where they went all in on nuclear in the same time period because they saw it as a matter of energy sovereignty for them, right?
1:57:50
Um then, you know, we had this kind of comeback in the in the in the second Bush administrations of George W. Bush.
1:57:58
Uh that's when the AP1000 was developed.
1:58:00
And you know, then what happened is you had fracking, right?
1:58:02
So, you just had really cheap natural gas that I I think really competed with the need for new large-scale nuclear.
1:58:08
Um but you know, now we're in this world where energy is the bottleneck to to to almost everything, right?
1:58:12
We have this huge CAPEX built out for artificial intelligence, need to win [clears throat] the AI race.
1:58:17
Um our ability to do that is limited by energy.
1:58:21
Reindustrialization broadly, I would say energy is is is the bottleneck to that, right?
1:58:25
People are not talking enough about if we want to bring all of these factories back to the US, we want to start making all of these critical technologies here again, we're going to need a lot more electricity to do then what we do, you know, really focused on national security, um we want to be a multi-product company.
1:58:38
Like one day we want to put nuclear power on the grid, we want to put it in space, you know, we want to do small reactors on military bases.
1:58:44
Uh but we're really starting there.
1:58:47
And um you know, the national security matter that I think really motivates this new need for energy resilience is increasingly the assets that we rely on to project power on the other side of the world to generate warfighting effects, um they're here on our on our installations in the homeland and uh they depend on the commercial grid or they depend on commercial civilian diesel supply chains and we now have adversaries.
1:59:09
I mean, this is relatively new in the last couple years.
1:59:11
We now have adversaries that are totally capable of disrupting both of those. Yeah.
1:59:15
Um, and you know, nuclear power it's the highest capacity factor form of energy that we know of when it you know, that that we have today when it's mature.
1:59:24
And our approach to this is you put multiple small reactors together in a modular bank of systems, a modular power plant.
1:59:30
Um, so that you can get really really high uptime, right?
1:59:31
You can refuel offline, you have redundancies.
1:59:35
Um, that's by far the best way to do that. Yeah.
1:59:38
Uh, what what can the American nuclear energy learn from nuclear energy diffusion in China over the last call it 30 years?
1:59:50
Um, I think there's a lot of answers to that question.
1:59:54
Uh, I think you know, to to me the particular one is uh, the benefit of sustained coordinated national willpower, right?
2:00:03
Um, I think you know, we're finally in an era where we're going to have this in this country when it comes to nuclear power.
2:00:12
Like, private capital is aligned on this um from everything from venture capital up to the banks.
2:00:16
This is now a bipartisan issue, right?
2:00:18
So, even if you go back in time 3 years ago, like people thought we were crazy when we were trying to start this company because you know, nuclear was very much out of the zeitgeist at the time.
2:00:26
But, from where we sit today you know, I'm on the hill 3 to 4 days a month.
2:00:32
If I don't do my homework ahead of time, it's hard for me to even tell you if I'm talking to a Democrat or Republican because they all want the same things, right?
2:00:37
Reindustrialization, clean energy, American jobs, um high-skilled labor force, national security, um all of it aligns in that way. That's amazing to hear.
2:00:48
Little white pill to to end the week.
2:00:51
Thank you so much for taking the time to come chat with us.
2:00:54
Congrats on the Yeah, congrats to the whole team on the milestone and hope to have you back on soon. See you soon. Yeah, thank you so much. Nice meeting you guys. Thanks for having me. Nice meeting you. Happy everyone. We'll talk to you soon.
2:01:06
Uh, without further ado, we have Andy Dunn.
2:01:07
He's the founder of Pie Bonobos.
2:01:11
Uh, he's the author of Burn Rate and he's here with us in the TVP and Ultra. Andy, how are you doing? I'm doing amazing. Happy Friday, guys. Look at that. Look at that cardigan.
2:01:20
What is what is what is he wearing? TVP and green, man. That's fantastic.
2:01:23
You're blended in perfectly. Not like pretty close.
2:01:27
Yeah, you're blended perfectly into the chyron. It's fantastic.
2:01:31
>> Uh, should we start with the new app?
2:01:33
But, I I want to go back and hear so many war stories.
2:01:34
I've I've followed your career throughout my entire like the last 15 years of being in this space. >> yesterday.
2:01:42
Uh, Let's kick it off with >> Pie is is the app of the day. Let's uh start there.
2:01:46
Uh, maybe maybe give us the brief history of Pie, how you got to be the app of the day and then we can go from there. Yeah.
2:01:56
Look, this one's pretty simple.
2:01:56
I was talking to my psychiatrist one day and I told him I was feeling a little bit low.
2:02:01
I have a proclivity to depression.
2:02:01
I've gone through some ups and downs.
2:02:03
Got to write a book about that. Yeah.
2:02:04
And we talk about a lot of things.
2:02:07
At some point he said to me, "When's the last time you had dinner with a friend?" And I thought about it. This was 2021.
2:02:13
We were obviously in the middle of the pandemic and a lot. Yeah.
2:02:14
My wife and I and our young son had just moved from New York to Chicago and you know, I think Jordy knows this.
2:02:20
My whole world was in Chicago during the Bonobos days. My friends were there.
2:02:23
That's where I met my wife.
2:02:25
That's where all the Bonobos team was.
2:02:26
And I thought when I came back to Chicago, you know what?
2:02:30
This is going to be great. This is my hometown. My parents are here.
2:02:32
My sister who I have a business with, Monica and Andy.
2:02:37
This is like a homecoming and then I realized after a minute like I don't have any friends.
2:02:41
Like, it's a hard thing to admit to yourself, but like I have friends, just none of them live here, right? Yeah.
2:02:47
So, then I got curious cuz all of a sudden I was like, "Wait, how do you make friends if you don't want to make lame friends and you don't want to feel lame?
2:02:55
Like, how do you put yourself out there and how do we how do we solve that problem for people?"
2:03:00
And that was the beginning of the Pie journey. Yeah.
2:03:02
Uh, and then take us up to the present.
2:03:06
Yeah, so what it is is an app for friends.
2:03:09
It's an app Well, it's evolved.
2:03:09
It's an app and an AI agent to build infrastructure for your whole social life.
2:03:14
So, we want to be the operating system by which you get off your phones and back into real life.
2:03:19
So, the primary product is an app that is got events that we think you might want to go to, communities that you might want to belong to and then people that we think you'd want to meet.
2:03:30
And that's how it gets going.
2:03:31
And then what happens and maybe you guys are in the place in your lives here where at some point you actually have a lot of friends, you have a good social life, but what sucks is it's hard to find time to see them. Right?
2:03:42
It's like hard to get out of this rat race to actually prioritize seeing the people that you care about.
2:03:47
And so, that's where we just launched an AI agent called Pinelopi and her job is both an iMessage as well as soon in the app to help be a what we call a social life instigator Yeah.
2:03:58
you know, and chaos coordinator to get you together with the people that you should be spending more time with.
2:04:03
So, yeah, what's the actual like onboarding workflow?
2:04:07
We see a lot of people set up Mac Minis just to do stuff with iMessage.
2:04:11
I imagine that you're handling all of that on on your end and and then, you know, do I start by downloading the app or can I text something?
2:04:18
Like, what what's the workflow to actually start getting prompted to do something in my social life?
2:04:26
So, there's two ways to do it.
2:04:26
The easiest way is to just go on the App Store or the Play Store and download the Pie app. Yeah.
2:04:31
And then we can kind of get you going.
2:04:33
That's live in Chicago, Austin, San Francisco.
2:04:36
We're going live in New York and LA.
2:04:38
We got other smaller markets percolating like Columbus and Milwaukee and Atlanta.
2:04:42
That's kind of the core way to do it.
2:04:44
The second that you can do is just dig into the community on Instagram at Pie. Mhm.
2:04:48
What we're doing now is we're building pinelopi. com.
2:04:52
So, that's p i e n y l o p i dot com.
2:04:55
And that enables you to go right into an agentic experience where you don't even have to get the app. Yeah.
2:05:01
Cuz there is this tension between Well, we want to build an app that solves a problem, but it also no one wants to download another f'ing app. Yeah.
2:05:08
So, we wanted to create an easier on-ramp for people that want to just have the experience in iMessage and it's like a super cool wild west world right that right now with how do you manage that and do that the right way from an infrastructure and a compliance perspective. Sure.
2:05:21
How do you how do you know if if the app is working in a specific market?
2:05:25
What are what are the indicators?
2:05:27
What are you What are you you know, what do you see in the data that says like, "Hey, okay, we have we have some product market fit in a place like, you know, Chicago or Austin or or the other cities that you listed?"
2:05:40
Yeah, so I mean, you guys know the cold start problem. Extremely difficult.
2:05:43
Jordy, I know you've played in consumer, John as well.
2:05:45
Our cold start problem solution is called the Pie Creator Club. It's at piecreatorclub. com.
2:05:51
And what we try to do is attract and incentivize people who love to bring other people together, right?
2:05:55
We like to say we're hunting for gatherers.
2:05:57
These are the community hosts, the community builders who host run clubs and book clubs and NBA watch parties and trivia nights who get folks out there and we want to incentivize them.
2:06:08
Those are our Airbnb super hosts.
2:06:11
Those are our Uber drivers.
2:06:13
Those are our Wikipedia article writers.
2:06:16
And we can pay those folks up to $3,500 a month via a rewards program to light up plans and events on Pie and then they typically distribute those plans through their social media followings.
2:06:26
We've got about 800 of those community builders on our app right now and in any given market, once we have 50, it starts to percolate.
2:06:35
Yeah, how how important is going individual market by individual market?
2:06:40
Because I I feel like one of the unique unlocks of AI is that you can probably go and scrape a bunch of data together, transform it and do a lot of the grunt work a lot faster.
2:06:49
But, at the same time like actually getting to real critical mass and and putting extra care into it and attention into a launch is probably also very important. Totally.
2:07:00
One of the tabs we just launched on the app is called the people to meet tab.
2:07:03
It's right in the middle and what it enables you to do is kind of flick through and see who's out there and go into their profiles and have it not just be about how they look, but about what are they into?
2:07:15
What are their interests?
2:07:17
What kinds of events have they gone to?
2:07:18
Which kinds of events are they going to?
2:07:20
And then you can actually star people right on the app and we hope to build a matching experience that is the first of its kind where it's across and group.
2:07:29
And get those people to not have to figure out a plan to get together, but actually just join an event on the product.
2:07:35
Back to your question, we think you need about 1,000 people on that people tab, about 50 events on the events tab and that's when we start to see percolation and social density and geographic density start to get momentum.
2:07:49
How how big is the team today? It's funny you ask that.
2:07:52
Well, at one point the team was 23 and the age of AI it's now 12 and we've seen what you guys are talking about, which is just a massive collapse of product design, engineering, and even go to market where people can do so much more.
2:08:05
And so, you know, we didn't have a big moment.
2:08:07
You know, we're not Block, we're not Jack Dorsey saying, you know, we're doing some big restructuring, but as you guys know with startups, things evolve, the team turns over, some people go to do other things.
2:08:17
We've got this thing in Chicago we call the Pie Town Mafia where I'll back people that start companies.
2:08:23
We're trying to build the the tech company Chicago deserves.
2:08:24
We've never had a $100 billion enterprise value tech company built here in Chicago and you you need one of those as you guys know to change the market.
2:08:32
So, we're we're just so we're having so much fun right now cuz we've gotten leaner and we're moving more quickly. Yeah.
2:08:41
What what what is the shape of the Chicago tech market broadly? It's bad. It's bad.
2:08:47
>> It's really bad, guys.
2:08:47
It's The problem in Chicago is two things.
2:08:50
You might be the first person to call in from Chicago.
2:08:56
>> It is rare, but it's such an interesting I've lived there. It's a beautiful city. It's amazing.
2:09:00
>> beautiful city here in Chicago.
2:09:03
North Northwestern, like there's good schools.
2:09:05
I'm sure that a lot of big tech companies have offices there.
2:09:07
So, there's a pipeline of established talent.
2:09:10
Like it has a lot of the trappings of it could be you know pretty quickly at an Austin or Miami or you know any of these other LA like these tiers, but it feels like it hasn't had its like maybe it just hasn't been marketed, but it sounds like there's also just a lot less going on there.
2:09:27
I mean we have some cool things happening, right?
2:09:28
SpotHero was just acquired by Uber.
2:09:29
It's a quantum computing center here.
2:09:32
We had Tempest that just went public.
2:09:34
T-h-e-s-i-s that just had a great outcome.
2:09:36
But the market in general sucks and I'll tell you why.
2:09:41
There's a cultural factor set of factors and then there's an ecosystem set of factors and they're both navigable by the way. That's why I'm here.
2:09:46
That's why I'm building Pi here.
2:09:48
My wife is building time at hardware company called Cadeia Monica Nandy which I mentioned cuz we want to help be the change that we're looking for. Yeah.
2:09:55
The problem in the ecosystem here is twofold. There's no angels. Mhm.
2:09:59
There's no community of people throwing around 10, 25, 50, 100,000 checks. I mean there's a few.
2:10:07
Like there's a you know that we've got some Mike Gansom type people here.
2:10:09
Like there's some folks who who do it, but it's very hard to get that first 250,000 to a million.
2:10:17
>> the angels are so influential because you know if if a great founder meets an angel on the West Coast or the East Coast and they're going to say like hey you seem smart.
2:10:24
I love your idea, but you're you're absolutely I'd love to invest, but I think you're kind of crazy to not move to SF or move to New York or etc.
2:10:33
So, that that there's there's definitely a lack of >> like a talent talent drain that goes coastal.
2:10:39
The second thing is the venture capital ecosystem here puts most of its money in coastal companies.
2:10:44
So, I heard something recently is woman named Desiree Vargas Wrigley who who backs her fund. She's doing cool things. She's a fund of funds.
2:10:52
90% of the alpha for Chicago-based firms is created on the coasts. >> Yeah. Right?
2:10:58
And 90% [clears throat] of the capital that the leading Chicago companies raise is from the coasts.
2:11:02
So, when I was raising the Pi series A, look we we didn't have the best metrics.
2:11:09
Maybe we didn't even deserve a series A yet, right?
2:11:11
But we were inspired by what we could do.
2:11:14
We had a little bit of a kernel of momentum. We had an amazing team.
2:11:18
You know there's just enough talent density here. That's not the issue.
2:11:21
You know we recruited a great VP engineering Hunter Hussar who's from Grindr.
2:11:25
We've got an awesome you know kind of VP ops finance strategy.
2:11:27
She's from Wintrust Bailey Moore.
2:11:28
We've got the talent here.
2:11:32
But it's very hard to get funded.
2:11:32
So, I did 15 pitches in Chicago cuz I wanted to raise our series A from a Chicago venture fund. I got 15 no's.
2:11:39
I did one pitch on the West Coast with Kirsten Green from Forerunner and we got a term sheet within 48 hours.
2:11:48
So, that just illustrates that you know some of the challenges Totally.
2:11:51
with Chicago and I we believe at Pi we can be part of the solution because you got to build a hundred billion dollar or at least a fifty billion dollar company to create that ecosystem of angels and to create a training ground for the entrepreneurs of you know the next decade in Chicago. Yeah.
2:12:08
What's the biggest lesson you're carrying from Bonobos over to Pi?
2:12:14
I mean the main one is it just doesn't matter that much.
2:12:15
You know I don't know exactly how to describe that to you guys in a way that will make sense cuz obviously we're so passionate about what we do. Yeah.
2:12:22
But having gone through the experience of you know being hospitalized in the psych ward at Bellevue you know when we were nine years into building Bonobos.
2:12:31
The cliff notes on my story were we had over hundred million of revenue.
2:12:33
We had 600 plus employees and I ended up in the psych ward of Bellevue because I had untreated and unmedicated bipolar type one. Yeah.
2:12:42
And it felt like the whole world was falling apart.
2:12:45
You know I was losing my sanity. I might lose my job.
2:12:46
I might lose the woman that you know the first great relationship that I'd ever been in in my life.
2:12:53
Now my wife Manuela is on the sign.
2:12:57
And I came out finally ready to deal with it thanks to the amazing work that they do at that hospital and rather than walking to the loving arms of my family, I walked into four NYPD officers who booked me and charged me with felony and misdemeanor assault.
2:13:10
And then I spent the next you know 12 hours in jail.
2:13:12
And I remember thinking when I was in jail cuz at this point I was now sane. I was medicated.
2:13:19
I was ready to deal with this issue.
2:13:22
None of this stuff matters that we think matters relative to our health, our freedom and our liberties.
2:13:26
And so, I have that perspective now that I care so much about this and I know my health and your health and family and friends and loved ones matter so much more than building startups. Yeah.
2:13:38
It's an inspiring message.
2:13:40
Um what what have you actually uh done?
2:13:45
Who have you met through Pi?
2:13:49
I've met some amazing people.
2:13:49
One of the one of the relationships I'm the most excited about right now is with woman named Nadia Okamoto.
2:13:54
She just joined us as one of our creators.
2:13:56
She's got a run club out of New York called Zoomey's.
2:13:58
Uh previously she was she's been a part of a company called August that she was co-founder of a period care company. Cool.
2:14:07
And I just she's got over four million followers on TikTok, nearly a million on Instagram.
2:14:10
What I love seeing is right now is people who are massive content creators and social um social media influencers pointing all of their following at in-person community. Yep.
2:14:22
Because the only way to get off these phones is through our phones.
2:14:26
The people that were influential in hooking us on social media are very well positioned to say guys let's get out.
2:14:33
Let's go for a run on Saturday morning for five miles or eight miles. We're going to go slow. We're going to talk.
2:14:38
So, I'm so inspired by our creators.
2:14:41
We love we love seeing um the spirit around the country.
2:14:44
It's it's a huge movement largely driven by Gen Z to to who have realized that it is the damn phones. Yeah.
2:14:52
Do you think uh do you think the like do you think you have um a a a kind of a window here because uh you know maybe some of the digital platforms would rather we not meet up in person.
2:15:07
They're like actually be great if Saturday you just you know take that six hours you were going to go to the run club and go to this other thing and you should just doomscroll.
2:15:14
Seriously, it'll be good it'll be good for you.
2:15:16
And I I feel like that kind of creates creates an opportunity where you know a new platform can can emerge that that is not you know trying to deliver as many ad impressions as as physically possible. Totally.
2:15:32
I was just reading the story last night in the New Yorker about the lawsuit that was you know that came up.
2:15:38
I think someone won six million in damages for having been addicted to social media.
2:15:41
You guys have probably talked about it.
2:15:42
Look I think there's room for the next great American rooted social network right now and I believe three things about it.
2:15:51
Number one, it's going to be AI native.
2:15:53
Number two, it's going to be focused on actual friends. Mhm.
2:15:55
And your IRL local life, your in-real-life existence.
2:16:01
And then thirdly that that company is going to be called Pi. I love it.
2:16:06
Well, congratulations and thank you for taking the time to come chat with us. All right. Have a great week. Congratulations.
2:16:13
Congratulations to the team on the on the milestone yesterday. Yeah. We'll talk to you soon. >> Very very cool. Great to see you Andy.
2:16:20
Uh up next we have Josh Reeves from Gusto.
2:16:22
He's the co-founder and CEO here in the break [music] down the acquisition of Moz to expand into full stack compliance. Josh, how are you doing? >> There he is. It's been too long. Great to see you. Good to see you guys.
2:16:31
This time this time on Zoom, last time in person. Yeah.
2:16:35
Uh well, uh congratulations on the acquisition.
2:16:39
Uh what walk me through uh the problem that you were trying to solve and then I want to hear about the process and how you met this team or how what you're planning to do once you bring these in.
2:16:50
But first sort of describe the problem because I'm sure you were feeling it among customers beforehand. Yeah.
2:16:58
So, the keyword here is compliance. >> Yeah. No one likes compliance.
2:17:00
There's a lot of compliance out there.
2:17:02
Um local, state, federal and we've been tackling many forms of it at Gusto from the early days.
2:17:09
If I were to case study any small business owner knows this.
2:17:11
You hire in a state, you have to go register with that state.
2:17:15
You have to go obviously file specific documents um materials.
2:17:18
Once you're registered, there's now filing requirements.
2:17:23
There's entity management requirements. You might get notices.
2:17:25
So, what we're doing here is basically creating a end-to-end compliance solution.
2:17:31
Compliance um basically way to get stuff done for a small business so they don't have to do it themselves anymore. Yeah.
2:17:36
And I'm Yeah, this was a shocking thing for me as a young entrepreneur on on Gusto getting like a physical piece of mail from a state that I had never visited. Yeah.
2:17:49
And it and it was always because we'd hired some like you know paid some contractor one time Yep.
2:17:53
with this tiny thing and now suddenly it's created Yeah. hours of work.
2:17:57
I have to like call or or send mail back.
2:18:00
It was And everything else is basically zero minutes a week for the executive team when you're on Gusto and you're set up and maybe during onboarding you have to go through a quick flow to get someone on, but most of the time it's just nothing which is amazing.
2:18:16
And then the when the compliance stuff comes up, it's always like oh what happened?
2:18:21
They moved you know all this stuff.
2:18:24
But then uh talk to me about the solution.
2:18:25
Like how does this actually get fixed?
2:18:27
How does it get like what how how quick can it be?
2:18:31
From a product lens, like I'll give some examples.
2:18:32
So, anyone that's used Gusto before knows state tax registration has been a pain point.
2:18:37
We will have a end-to-end just comprehensive state tax registration offering that gets it done at the quality and standard you would expect.
2:18:45
Um you mentioned notices.
2:18:45
No one likes to receive notices.
2:18:48
Even And we do a good job helping you with them, it'd be better if you just didn't get them in the first place.
2:18:52
So, the ability for Gusto to be a registered agent to have that mail actually come to us directly, so the business owner doesn't even have to think about or consider the notice in the first place, uh we think it's going to be really really valuable and helpful, as well.
2:19:06
So, uh I'm sure you're experiencing uh the productivity gains of of AI coding and coding agents.
2:19:13
Um what stuck out to you about this is the time to buy as opposed to the as opposed to the time to build? So, we're doing both.
2:19:22
I mean, I pinch myself cuz I tell the team and we talk to each other, this is the most incredible time in our lives to be a builder.
2:19:29
And it I wake up every day with like just giddiness of like what we can go create and, you know, what you can basically pull forward on your road map because now we can get done uh with high quality much much faster.
2:19:39
So, lots of first party on the way.
2:19:41
Uh Mosey, we had known the team for a long time.
2:19:44
We actually were an early investor in the company.
2:19:48
Um we've partnered for a long time, as well.
2:19:51
And it really came down to the team, the technology, the product, all of it's coming over to Gusto and the chance to bring it to small businesses earlier, faster. Uh but yeah, stay tuned.
2:20:00
Lots more first party builds coming from us, as well. Amazing.
2:20:03
What are you seeing on the small business hiring side generally?
2:20:05
We talked to your chief economist about some of the trends, and I'm and I'm wondering how you're processing what you're expecting to happen with the shape of your of your business and just the small business community generally.
2:20:21
So, reminder to folks, there's more dentist offices in the US than tech startups.
2:20:24
So, when we say small business, we're talking mainstream small business here.
2:20:28
And uh yeah, some puts and takes.
2:20:28
One of the things that also got us really excited about the pain point we're able to help with Mosey.
2:20:35
Uh there's a lot more new businesses getting created, and that's exciting.
2:20:36
I think some of that's driven by folks getting inspired or feeling like they can take the plunge for the first time because of the tooling that's now available.
2:20:45
Some of it I think is also affected by a lot of the job dislocation underway.
2:20:49
And, you know, the happy path I look forward to is a lot more folks starting businesses for the first time cuz they realize they now can go do that successfully and and actually make a make a go of it and be uh accomplishing their goals.
2:21:01
So, we're seeing more businesses getting started.
2:21:05
Um on the flip side, uh hiring within not just small businesses, but from talking to lots of bigger companies, hiring across the board is not as robust as it has been historically.
2:21:13
So, um company growth, if a company might have historically grown from, you know, five to seven employees, maybe now that's growing from five to six.
2:21:21
So, there's an offset there.
2:21:21
Again, I think tied to some of the productivity gains and some of the uh things that people can go do now with these different AI technologies.
2:21:30
How have you been processing the the SASpocalypse?
2:21:32
Like, when I think about the last thing that would get vibe coded, it would probably be a payroll system for a dentist office.
2:21:38
Um but how have you been grappling with this idea that uh just the instantiation of the software >> we get rid of our physical onboarding forms and our fax machines, we're going to vibe [laughter] code."
2:21:51
>> Yeah, every time I go to the dentist office, I'm I'm like, "Oh, we're we're we're we're not even on, you know, uh like SAS at all in many ways."
2:21:57
And and there's still a lot of paper and pen going around.
2:22:02
I mean, the number one thing a dentist should do, right, is be working in your mouth and not worry about it cuz that's what they're actually best at.
2:22:06
Um I'd say like we talk a lot about offense, defense.
2:22:09
Like, offense side is we can go deliver a lot more product functionality, solve a lot more pain points for small businesses, make the life of a small business owner easier, better, faster than ever before. That excites us.
2:22:21
I think from a a SASpocalypse lens, um Gusto's never been a pure software company.
2:22:26
In my mind, if you want to oversimplify, there's pure software and then there's companies that do actions for you.
2:22:32
So, from day one, Gusto does the filing, um says we did it correctly, and if there's a mistake, we'll go fix it.
2:22:38
So, uh we've always kind of had this mindset of we'll take five of the 20 hats off your head and be responsible for it.
2:22:43
Um so, now we can, you know, keep being responsible like we've always been.
2:22:47
That pain point has always existed. It exists with AI.
2:22:51
And the small business owner doesn't want to be the one responsible to make sure it's done accurately.
2:22:55
And from what we can tell, the foundation model providers still also want to be the one liable and responsible for it to be done accurately.
2:23:02
So, we have a chance now to be where our customers are, be inside ChatGPT, be inside Claude, be inside Slack, be even easier and more accessible to them, and then still do these really important jobs for them.
2:23:16
Can you actually contextualize the size of the uh per employee annual compliance cost, and then try and break it down for me because the number when I read it seemed so high, I have to I I'm having trouble wrapping my head around like where this is actually getting sliced up, where the dollars are actually flowing.
2:23:36
So, probably we'll have to follow up on that one.
2:23:37
I mean, I'd say there are many many drivers for it.
2:23:40
One of them is a little bit how the US was formed.
2:23:42
So, this is more like 50 countries than 50 states in many ways.
2:23:48
And so, you have not just state and federal that are usually wildly not in sync and creating their own versions of many different forms and requirements, but also state and also county and local that actually have lots of opinions, as well.
2:24:01
So, you know, in San Francisco, for example, where where I'm based, um you hire a new employee, you have, you know, nine different taxes, you have multiple different jurisdictions.
2:24:09
If you hire, you need to report to the EDD.
2:24:13
This is a form that's specific to making sure if someone, let's say, has garnishments on their wages due to like child care payments, it gets pulled out from their wage on time.
2:24:20
So, there's just lots of different programs and activities that connect to employment.
2:24:26
And again, if you're not using a partner for this, it means the business owner and the employee are on their own having to figure it out.
2:24:30
Yeah, so uh when when I when I'm contextualizing that $14,700 per employee cost, that's uh not just filing fees and paying and and pro- processing this any actual fees associated with com- with compliance, it's also the burden on the HR organization broadly. Is that right?
2:24:53
>> Yeah, there's there's the time investment that could be spent elsewhere.
2:24:55
There's the fines and penalties.
2:24:57
There's the follow-up headache and hassle involved.
2:24:58
And uh yeah, all that adds up. Okay.
2:25:01
Well, Uh what what habits do you have as a CEO today that you wish you had a decade ago? Oh, good question. Uh let's see.
2:25:11
Um I think one thing that shifted for me quite a bit.
2:25:16
It could have been tied to having children.
2:25:18
It could have been something I wish I did earlier.
2:25:19
But I used to like go to bed at 2:00 or 3:00 a. m.
2:25:22
, and it was kind of more of the late-night schedule.
2:25:24
I actually really like waking up at 5:00 a. m. now, 5:00, 6:00 a. m.
2:25:28
, having multiple hours in the morning of You just shift the hours, right?
2:25:31
So, it's the same couple hours I would have.
2:25:34
You still need to sleep the same number of hours.
2:25:36
But that morning time I find to be even more productive than some of the night time time I had in the past. No.
2:25:39
Yeah, it makes a ton of sense.
2:25:41
You're I mean, you're naturally more tired at the end of the day, and so even if you're getting those bonus hours when uh like maybe the messages aren't coming in at such a rapid clip, uh better to have those in the morning.
2:25:52
A lot of executives feel the same way. Well, thank you so much.
2:25:55
Congrats on the acquisition, and uh we'll talk to you soon. Have a great weekend.
2:26:00
>> I with with uh with with all this acceleration in software development, I can I can honestly see I can I can see the world where you guys have legitimately hundreds of individual products, some very small, maybe some built by third party.
2:26:15
>> And also just way more companies and small businesses on the platform.
2:26:20
Yeah, one thing I'd add, I mean, there's systems of action.
2:26:21
Maybe that term catches on, but there's a big difference to me between like systems of just pure software, where you're kind of like on a database, versus actually doing things on behalf of the customer, taking those hats off their head.
2:26:33
And Gusto's always been a system of action, and we're excited to add many many more actions going forward.
2:26:37
>> Yeah, and you guys have you guys are like selling the work.
2:26:39
Like, in some ways you compete with like that there's actual stores, you know, physical places where you can go to run have someone run payroll.
2:26:48
And so, the original product Yeah.
2:26:48
Um this has become a popular uh VC market, you know, market map type pitch over the last couple years, but you guys have been doing it for what is it, 14 years now? So, Yeah.
2:27:00
Well, one decade plus in, still early.
2:27:03
We got we got decades to go.
2:27:05
Lots more small businesses to help. Fantastic.
2:27:07
Well, have a great weekend.
2:27:09
Thank you so much for taking the time to come chat with us. We'll talk to you soon. >> see you guys, too. Goodbye.
2:27:15
Um >> [applause] >> is there anything in the timeline that we should review because we do have to get out of here uh soon?
2:27:19
Uh Donald Trump says Palantir Technologies PLTR has proven to have great war-fighting capabilities and equipment. Just ask our enemies.
2:27:28
Did you see Uh and Jim Cramer says, "Now we need POTUS to weigh in on CrowdStrike and Palo Alto Networks." That's what we need.
2:27:38
That's what >> I don't has has um I don't know if a president has ever posted about a stock ticker. Mhm.
2:27:48
Uh this might be the first one.
2:27:48
Uh there there's a new benchmark out there uh for AI models, Kelly bench, long horizon evaluation for frontier models.
2:27:55
Kelly bench evaluates models within a year-long sports betting market, a challenging and highly non-stationary environment.
2:28:02
Every frontier model they tested loses money.
2:28:05
They struggle to design ML strategies, manage risk, and adapt as the world changes.
2:28:09
Can language models beat the market?
2:28:12
Uh some of them got it appears to get lucky in the beginning and then sort of sell off.
2:28:16
You would sort of expect that none of them would be able to outperform necessarily, but if they get really really creative, I mean, you might you might expect to see uh outperform uh in the future.
2:28:28
I I I want to dig into more about how this benchmark was implemented because you either need to like hold back all the data or run it for a full year to see because otherwise, if it has tools, it can go and just look up the results before you ask it to make a bet on a particular sports team.
2:28:44
Uh anyway, uh Well, folks, it's been a fun week.
2:28:49
>> Yeah, it's been a great week.
2:28:50
>> We hope you have an incredible weekend ahead.
2:28:53
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2:28:55
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2:28:56
And we will see you [music] on Monday at 11:00 a. m. sharp. Goodbye.