you're watching tvpn it is Friday March 14 2025 we are live from the Temple of Technology The Fortress of Finance the capital of capital this show starts now we got a great show for you guys folks uh today we have Logan Bartlett calling in we have Keon from nucleus calling in he's announcing a new product DNA
sequencing it's going to be very interesting we got Josh Steinman the legend the leg the man the myth uh the who says every single morning good morning we are going to win we're going to find out if he's winning uh and we have the great AI debate we are putting two Venture capitalists in a cage and some people are calling VC on VC
violence but we're going to try to keep it civil we we'll try and keep it civil so Seth Rosenberg and Sam Lon are going to be calling in they've been going back and forth uh not only on the timeline but on the 101 they've been billboarding at each other billboarding at each other okay Sam Lon uh and the slow threw up a
new billboard that's a got an AI startup idea shoot Seth Rosenberg a message not slow um and this has just been on the on the 101 as of uh yesterday so lots of fun lots of fun uh we're excited to have them on and but that starts in half an hour for the next half hour we're going through the news bringing you the top stories in technology and business and
finance uh top story today uh Intel has a new CEO uh Pat Ginger absolute dog one of the greatest to ever do it was at Intel for a long time struggled but absolute Legend and if you go back and listen to his strer interviews you'll understand that he is uh someone to be absolutely respected and uh even though
obviously there were lots of problems with Intel the shift to mobile the tsmc stuff they losing their their grip on The Foundry model uh still a fantastic CEO and someone who um I I just think should be respected in the technology industry forever um but today we're teaching you about the new CEO uh a former board member has stepped in his
name is liit Bhutan and he's returning to overhaul the chipmaker and so and to be clear um looking on public the market likes this they're up uh 18% in the past 5 days wow after basically just kind of obious given like the crazy selloff too yeah I mean that part of it's potentially just the the you know rebound from a pretty intense selloff
yep um but uh this is you know and now a lot of people were saying like it was a mistake to not stick with Pat Ginger um but we'll see hopefully this works out let's break it down uh the selection uh as the new as the chipmaker's new chief executive officer was cheered by analysts bankers and shareholders he brings two decades of semiconductor
industry experience relationships across the sector a startup mindset I want to know more about that because he is 65 years old at this point and has been on the board and in these really large companies uh we'll see if he can go founder mode now um and he has an obsession with AI and basketball he also comes with tricky
Chinese business relationships so that could get more complicated underscoring silicon Valley's inability to sever itself from one of America's top adversaries so even though people want to go all in on America uh there's still lots of flow back black back and forth between the two most important economies in the world uh how tan age 65 will use
his assets to resurrect Intel is on the minds of all industry Watchers Intel has gone from being one of silicon Valley's biggest innovators to a relic struggling to compete with Superstar Nvidia and others in the age of AI its stock lost 2third of its value in four short years as Intel sat out the AI boom this is of
course because Intel is known for making CPUs not gpus very important for you know the normal apps that you use every single day but not the next generation of video games three rendering and AI one interesting point G singer was pushed out three months ago so there had been intermedi CEO uh that's that's now they think they're they think they got their guy
now uh so shares were up more than 14% at Market close sounds like they they've been up more since then um the new CEO will will soon have to answer the most burning question about Intel's future whether he will break apart Intel's design and Foundry businesses I think Ben Thompson has been advocating for this a lot of people have been talking
about this uh basically manufacturing chips is an enormous expense that Intel can't currently sustain uh this is what lead industry leaders and analysts say and former board members have called for a split up and so uh Nvidia of course is a is a fabulous Semiconductor Company in the sense that they work with tsmc tsmc
does not do design they only do the manufacturing the Fab and so when that when that separation happened um it was very questionable because you know maybe you get some benefits to having everything being integrated all the way from okay you get an Intel on processor it has a brand you know your average customer might not know but
certainly some gamer who's building their own PC wants the Intel brand and that Intel brand leads into design choices that they make to make the computer run faster and then they actually make it themselves so that integration makes a lot of sense in many ways but it uh it allow it kind of restrained them from having the
flexibility to play in new areas as they came up uh totally and and uh Nvidia has shown that uh they can just focus on this one aspect of the stack and still put up ridiculous margin and and that's because they they even though they don't own the manufacturing they have uh they have the software and the and NV link and Cuda
and this ecosystem where if you're a very you know heavily funded large language model Foundation model company the best engineers in the world they want to do foundational research Frontier research and they don't want to learn a new language they want to just write Cuda and Cuda is not perfect but it's certainly the best in the ecosystem
by most accounts um so but a deal to sell all or part of Intel to competitors seems to be off the table for the immediate future according to Bankers a variety of early stage discussions with broadcom qualcom global foundaries and tsmc in recent months have failed to go everywhere anywhere and so far seem unlikely and this was the story that we
covered earlier about uh the the the private jets of I believe broadcom Intel and Elon were all at maral Lago at the same time so there might have been some deal which I honestly think that was somebody trying to make a story out of everybody just being around marago Y at that point in time because many of the most important people in all of the
world and business there I mean they might have just been golfing yeah they might have just said hey like this this get together we're not talking business yeah we're talking part threes part fours let's be the first group to keep business off the course yes exactly uh the company already hinted at a more likely outcome bringing
in outside Financial backers including customers who want to stake in the man manufacturing business Intel fortunes also rest in part with President Trump who has signaled that he wants to unwind the chips act signature legislation from former President Joe Biden to invest more than 50 billion in semiconductors Intel would receive up to about 8
billion through the legislation contingent on development of new factories which have faced delays and of course tsmc is now uh building Fabs in the US and there were early reports that it was going better than people expected there was a big question about okay it's not just you get some ASM asml machines
you get some lithography machines and then you turn them on and boom you're just printing chips you need really really talented individuals and most of those individuals live in Taiwan and they might not want to relocate very quickly or or or move over but uh things have been looking good but I'm sure we'll we'll need to dig into it more um
you have to wonder how it would have to get sort of geopolitically for Ben Thompson to leave Taiwan because you can imagine him just you know yelling into his newsletter I'm not leaving I'm not leaving you're going to have to drag me out of here then we'll have to do a strike Mission pull him out pull out one of the greatest writers he is one of the
most valuable assets on that island right below tsmc yeah exactly geopolitically it's like we need we need tsmc and Ben Thompson Ben and then who who knows what happens to the rest I'm sure there's a lot of other important stuff over there uh tan has likely no more than a year to turn the company around said people close to the company
his Decades of investing in startups and running companies he founded a multinational Venture firm and was CEO of a chip design company called Cadence Design Systems he served there for 13 years good run uh provide indications of how tan will tackle this task in the early days by cutting expenses moving quickly and trying to turn Intel back
into an engineering first company in areas where we are behind the competition we need need to take calculated risks to disrupt and Leap Frog tan said in a note to Intel employees on Wednesday and in areas where our progress has been slower than expected we need to find new ways to pick up the pace so this could be really
interesting I don't know if they're going to go on an acquisition spree but uh you know there is an like a question about what does the next chip look like after the GPU you know Google's built the TPU but then you also have startups Facebook is rumored not even rumored confirmed but uh there's also the question of uh you know these new
Transformer based AI inference focused chips like from etched and there's a few others uh cereb bruss uh there's grock there's uh a few others uh I forget I forget the other startups but um a lot of people they raised money very quickly they got line time with tsmc they became like great designers um but there was a
question about could these companies really Go the Distance or would they land with a company like Intel ultimately and just provide a a new product line that then Intel could push um either could be fantastic outcomes for everyone involved um so many take this culture reset to also mean significant cuts at Intel which has
already shed about 15,000 jobs last year wow that's like what like a quarter docu sign they lost yeah something like that almost to a te to a t uh he is brave enough to adjust the workforce to the size needed for the business today a former Intel board member who has known tan since the90s tan for first tour at Intel as a board member from
2022 to 2024 ended in frustration people say close to people close to him say although he cited time demands as reason for departing company insiders believe tan was fed up with the bloated Workforce and direction under then CEO Pat gelsinger Tan's return Then signals an inevitable change in strategy his capabilities aside Intel remains far
behind modern chip production said Mark roseen blat uh and Intel's balance sheet is not sufficient for the cost required to sustainably achieve it and scale the manufacturing needed to support it our team management Cadence was going through turmoil similar to Intel's when tan took over in 2009 he was able to refocus the business push its services
to the cloud and land new customers including Apple a company on the brink of delisting went on to return more than 3,000% in share price during Tan's tenure let's go size gong for that there we go good stuff uh Tan in public talks has described how he approached reshaping Cadence's culture to eliminate what he described as silos I tried to
change it into a one- team culture um that approach uh hearkens back to what he calls his first love basketball born in Malaysia and raised in Singapore tan aspired to be a professional basketball player until his mother told him to get a real job I love it uh he said during a video interview during uh January well
he uh I'm sure his mother's very happy now hopefully she's still alive but um I'd like to there's no more real job than CEO of Intel yeah I'd like to see him go on a generational run at Intel and then buy the NBA you know don't just buy buy don't just buy a team don't go Balmer mode yeah by the league yeah by the league say I'm a
professional deal you know player now yep that makes sense um tan has has declared the arrival of generative AI is bigger than the invention of the web he's spent the past several years investing in AI startups ac across the globe um uh and let's go into the China connection and then we'll move on to the next story uh before he rose in the
semiconductor industry tan was known as one of the first Silicon Valley venture capitalists to in invest in Asia I'm sure he did very well tan is founder and chairman of Walden International a prolific investor in Chinese tech companies uh he was a big champion of China semiconductor sector in an era when us China relations were
considerably considerably Rosier including co-investing with a China state-owned asset manager he was an early investor in smick uh which is the semiconductor manufacturer International I believe that's SMI um and uh which the Commerce Department blacklisted for its alleged ties to the Chinese military in 2020
Walden sold his last stake in 2021 and in 2023 the house select committee on Chinese Communist Party sent a letter to him we got we got to get Simon's view on yeah on this whole era I'm sure he's gonna have a nuon take folks yeah you can expect Nuance yeah you can definitely definitely expect from Mr Stein oh it's great uh Intel uh as word of
Tan's new role spread one Chinese media Outlet headlined the news Intel hires the CEO with the best knowledge of China's chip industry interesting so yeah that you missed the line here too a subse report from the committee highlighted hundreds of millions of dollars of Walden Investments that went to Chinese companies involved in
military activities or human rights abuses not good kind of a weird the market likes it weird pick in the context of this being one of our Great American technology companies but at the keep your friends close keep your enemies close the Steelman here is that you know he's not a Chinese National exactly and um you know I I would let's
give him the benefit of of the doubt that he is deeply loyal to the United States and was just you know I mean yeah there is a world where you invest in a Chinese Semiconductor Company you see how fast they're moving you take the threat realistically you don't want to be Jack Ma you would much rather be Jensen Wong yep and not
get thrown in jail when you throw on a leather jacket and become a superstar right and so you come to you know you you take over Intel and you make it amazing and you become a legendary American turnaround CEO and that's just that's just a fantastic outcome for everyone involved well except for the CCP but I'm happy with that so I don't
know yeah uh we'll we'll be tra tracking it here uh we'll get him to call in the show chop it up with us talking to a correspondent over truth social seeing what Trump uh has to say about uh about this you know appointment I'd be interested I don't know I'm I'm I'm I I've always been very very optimistic about Intel very Pro Intel and uh I I
used to have a riff about how uh you know I wish Elon had bought Intel instead of Twitter because maybe semiconductors are more important now you talk to you know all sorts of folks and they'll tell you well like the free speech thing is really important and there are good good good reasons why it was important to to to
for the X deal to go through um but why not both yeah um anyway yeah I mean it does say a lot that Elon seemingly looked at the opportunity maybe didn't go for it I mean it's a lot of work he's got a lot of stuff going on but um it's very possible he just did see it's very possible that Intel is valuable but Elon didn't see the sort of
um value for for the sort of Elon ecosystem totally well if you're looking to go long Intel go short Intel whatever you're thinking do it on public.com Investing For Those who take it seriously they have multi-asset investing industry-leading yields and they're trusted by millions stocks go to public.com get started crypto you can do
it all do your own research and then make a betat uh anyway let's move on to uh the economy everyone is worried about a recession and the Wall Street Journal is breaking down where you should be looking not reacting at all to me just I love the hats I love the hats I'm just going to start not even making eye contact with you just fully focus on the
mic the public hat that's great um um so the the wall Journal has an article here here's what to look for uh in terms of early signs of a recession uh tariffs government layoffs funding Cuts immigration restrictions recession talks in the air any one of these things would at least temporarily exert some drag on the economy put them
together and they have an everything everywhere all at once Dynamic that could hurt it badly White House officials have cautioned that the economy might need as treasury secretary Scott bassant put it a detox period at the same time some of President Trump's promised challenges such as less regulation and a big tax cut are
pleasing to many businesses and could stir them to invest and hire more very true major economic data hasn't fully yet begun to capture Trump's time in office The Wall Street Journal is looking at a host of other factors to figure out whether the US might skirt a recession or fall into one here are some areas to watch there's the small
business uncertainty index which is at a high point and Ticking upwards but um a lot of that happened kind of before the uh the election uh mentions of soft Landing in uh company conference calls or seems like it's very very low uh which in means that people in business are maybe a little bit worried be aof landing this terminology started being
used very clearly you can see it in this this chart that we're looking at in 2022 where everybody was like okay things seem to be correcting can we is a soft Landing possible yeah and objectively at least from a market standpoint it happened it happened yeah but maybe we were still didn't stopped talking about
it land we just sort of leveled out right um so I I I don't think that's necessarily the the right data point but um the US policy uncertainty index is at an all-time high uh and that makes sense uh Everything feels very uncertain um but uh hopefully you know certainty around policy can happen very quickly like can get certainty around these
things uh we saw that with the uh with the Bitcoin strategic Reserve like it was very uncertain on Tuesday and then by Friday it was pretty certain and so you know that's not that much turmoil in the market uh anyway um the policy uncertainty index is based on US news articles has soared it recently hit its second highest level in data going back
to 1985 the only time it was higher was in the early days of the covid-19 pandemic even for businesses that are enthusiastic about the White House's deregulatory agenda the Whiplash of uncertainty could be causing problems not knowing for example what products might be subject to tariffs and at what rate we talked to Obi schiffman
yesterday he said I didn't want to make my product in China I made it in Canada and now I have a tariff on my product and uh so that that's a perfect example of uncertainty you know if you want to set up a new manufacturing plant you might be in the wait and see mode right now and that hurts investment that hurts the economy that slows things down right
and so uh consumer sentiment is dropping uh and the probability of delinquency is also on the rise but this is a trend that's been going on for a few years now um tiny bottles of liquor are flying off the US store shelves whiskey and Tequila makers said sales are up for miniature 50ml bottles often called nips as well
as for 375ml bottles which are half the size of a standard bottle so do they make is that historically a recession indicator of course because people stop going from hey we're we're throwing a party and we're getting a large bottle of alcohol to I I need my alcohol and I just need the cheapest thing possible because I'm living paycheck to payche
it's very sad um I would say stick to the 50mil bottles of dairing on if you can if you're if you're struggling but uh yeah it's a it's a tough it's it's genuinely a tough recession indicator and there's been a few others about what what products have been slowing down in convenience stores we looked at that in
the Wall Street Journal earlier um and and it seems like people are buying less because because of course even though inflation we talked to Delan about this uh trl.org maybe not catching up with the higher prices I'm going to buy less and then that slows down the economy that's that's certainly the the yeah JD Vance
did an interview yesterday and he said um you know a part of um it's possible for the uh underlying sort of uh economy to be fine yet like there sort of fear and sentiment you know sort of takes over and people just start sort of anticipating uh a recession and then uh there ends up being like somewhat of a Slowdown or like change and consumer
Behavior Uh Vance has taken a fairly hard line on this he says yesterday you can never predict the future but I think the economy and the fundamental the fundamentals of the economy are actually quite strong right now um sort of his view uh sort of his job he's got to defend like the policy coming out of the
White House but um yeah I mean it it it's not that unreasonable to think about the fundamentals like if you think about previous recessions and and depressions they are built on you know massive bubbles popping the do boom where so much money had poured into companies just making no money and then there had to be a retreat or you've
built up this crazy House of Cards on top of the real estate bubble and all of a sudden people have six homes in the desert that are just sitting empty and and right now you could point to a lot of things that feel frothy but it's hard to say like the US economy is built on a house of cards right now at least no one's concocted a strong thesis around
that so um although there are nervousness weakness spots of weakness here and there um no one's really sounding alarm bells in the same way that Michael bur did during the uh during the housing crash yeah except random and on accounts well yeah I mean as you've said before like the most Alpha you can possibly have is just
tweeting top every single day and then eventually get it right yeah and somebody so I think Nik tweeted top and it like very much near the top right because like we're now we're now off the highs and uh he looks like a genius I guess uh I'm very excited to have Logan Bartlett on in just three minutes he's going to be walking us through a
redpoint market update that they gave to their LPS this be interesting uh for March uh 2025 so he invested in any interesting like power law fintech companies John you know what there's one that comes to mind oh which one is that I think the web it's rm.com I think it's the domain cool that's a good domain yeah it's a good great domain
pretty great too yeah and what what do they do at that at that domain uh they're an allinone Finance platform that that saves companies time and money that's oh I mean that's great because time is money and you want to save both right that's exactly right John yeah yeah maybe maybe you could pull up some some some more info I mean I'll just
I'll just pepper you with questions uh they have corporate cards right yes are they easy to use absolutely okay what about bill payments they have that as well accounting uh yes do they have a whole lot more they have a whole lot more wow and and you're telling me it's all in one place it's all in one place that's almost too
good to be true but it's not it's not it's not you can sign up and you can use it now and where where would I go to do that just go to ramp.com ramp.com and tell them that the show formerly known as technology Brothers sent you okay uh and you I think I think I'm getting it now this is really cool yeah we should check this out uh but anyways Logan
actually invested in in ramp uh I believe it was we'll have to ask him 2021 and he took a little Victory rap uh lap when the new round got announced because uh they're back at a healthy multiple of of where he invested at yeah I mean in terms of like high status things in the valley it's really just are you a ramp investor and then above
that it's like are you advertising ramp yeah that's the real like maybe maybe we can convince him to run some ramp ads soon because that would really like broaden his appeal yeah his podcast right now is presented by his fund red Point yeah but uh be much better if it was presented by ramp I think so let's try and get him to do some ad reads
maybe we'll get him to do an ad read on on this uh guest spot um that's great we should we should have like a a bucket pole for the for the for the guests it's like having the billboard guys come on to argue about AI we got to do an adquick ad in between that yeah right in the he right in the heated moment if
you're looking to get in a fight with another Aventure capitalist go to adi.com throw up a billboard on the 101 uh and you might just find yourself debating another VC on the tvpn show live uh anyway how we doing with Logan is he ready to come in he is not ready to come in uh should we move on to some to some bucket pull some bangers some
random some random posts did you see um this uh this AI written email uh I hear you're in New York you have to check out Central Park and catch a Broadway show it's a blast Ashley Meer says gee I wonder if this vendor email was written by AI pretty ridiculous it is it is remarkable how how low the bar is for
some of these it's maybe just like these it's funny New York is one of the I mean yeah I mean to me AI should just focus on what actually matters and not focus on the sort of human connection piece um because if you're sending like the whole point of this is to try to send a super high volume of outbound that's sort of like a
super human level of outbound Y and so for every you know if if one out of five messages that's like using this sort of personalization feature is just like making somebody like not respect you yep uh like it's not it's not great yeah it's kind of an unlimited downside situation which I think is why a lot of you know Apple has been slow to adopt it
and a lot of large organizations have been slow to adopt it figuring out the r level of like human in Liv been that slow yeah they I mean those ey message for you I we I want to talk to Bryce about that more he did you see he he responded to my Apple intelligence thing we got Logan Bartlett here bring guys what's up how you doing
good there he is thanks for having me on it's great to have you it's great to have you uh how's the uh how's the reception been to the market update you getting any push back uh or are you know VC's already sort of making threads based around your content and and sort of making it their own yeah well it's a you know we were done like a week or two ago
with all the content and then uh obviously the market went uh went crazy and we had to like redo I don't know 50% of the slides or something so I uh thankfully it didn't end up being too stale we we froze all the data on Monday and Tuesday Wednesday end up actually being pretty tame uh in terms of the market trading so I think people can rip
off all the slides for their annual meetings that are coming up here in the next couple weeks we're happy to open source and take credit for it give me the give me the oneliner is it so over are we so back are we poor are we rich how are you feeling private or public let's start with public I don't uh I don't is not a great
answer but uh I would say it feels like we're in for a lot of uh that is flowing through the system and uncertainty just isn't a great thing for for any business and while it's not going to impact software companies or technology companies quite as much directly like the end customers for a lot of these different businesses are
going to be impacted in a meaningful way and so until we get a little bit more clarity on to what end all of these things are being done and what sort of the end state is I don't know how you price in anything uh going forward and so now that obviously changes by the by the minute here so I it could be we're at some steady state here in the next
couple days or hours or weeks or whatever it is and and this ends up all sort of feeling kind of stale but right now I'm not uh I'm not particularly optimistic about what's going on in the public markets I heard so Morgan Stanley uh equity research person said that coming out of their conference which was
a week ago they said it was the most negative sentiment that he had heard uh I think with the exception of the onset of covid in the last 10 years from people sort of like looking at the markets um and I assume that's just a factor of uncertainty but yeah yeah is there do you think there's some sort of like Doge efficiency meme that's working
its way through the market right now like I remember when Elon came into Twitter X you know laid off a ton of people there was this big question about like well what other software companies could do something similar but is that now that you're seeing it done at the federal level are companies thinking like hey maybe we should pull back a
little bit on the investing and scaling I I I think we've sort of seen it over the last couple years or at least the last 18 months or so if you go look one of the slides that we put up in our deck was um sort of the tradeoff that's occurred between growth and uh free cash flow and to some extent that's the um you know the macro environment but also
I think it's just the knobs being pulled a little bit between layoffs and hiring freezes and all that and so I think people have made the conscious decision that they can do more with less and I think AI is only going to um continue to pull that Trend forward uh is it is it cutting to the Bone uh like Doge maybe
is doing or or Twitter did probably probably not people aren't taking it to that extreme but I do think people have really recognized that there's knobs that are a little bit more uh pullable than they would have appreciated otherwise and I think I mean if you look at the big software private Equity folks the vistas and the Tomo Bravos of the
world like they've been doing this for the last it's 10 15 years I I just think it wasn't something that people really tried to do in the public markets and now we're seeing that actually occur in a more meaningful way for you as a multi-stage investor what advice are you giving to the sort of average seriesa
founder in anyways like we could have massive uh uh sort of GDP uh could go negative but if you're a high growth software company that's just sort of hitting your stride you can still Thrive how are you kind of advising you know your portfolio companies around sort of Downstream Capital because as red point you guys are also you know a fund that
can participate in some of these later stage rounds as well yeah um I would say that at least the last I mean the last five years it's sort of felt like so I've been doing this now for 11 or 12 years in the last four five have felt like um you know twice as long as the first half of my career just in terms of all the
changes that have occurred that said it does seem pretty uncorrelated what's going on at like a high level macro with the early stage funding environment I think to some extent what happened after 2000 was the like uh sophisticated LPS really pulled out of the funds that they felt had gotten too bloated or too big and that's happened this cycle as well I
think if you talk of smart endowments or pension plans or stuff they they've definitely um as fund sizes have gotten to three four five six billion dollars like those people have raised eyebrows and maybe voted with their feet to either scale down or walk away from uh those those funds but uh there's a lot of other money that has willingly and
excitedly run into those big uh uh fundraises and so I think you're seeing Sovereign wealth and Middle East people come into those funds and give them you know what what uh two three 4500 million and so it ends up kind of being a rounding error if a smart pension walks away or endowment walks away so the way that impacts the startups I I think it's
just at a very micro level like continue to execute in the will be there at least that's the way it seemed over the last couple years and I guess it's true until it isn't but all this stuff sort of feels um outside of the control of the individual Founders and so I would encourage people not to worry too too much about it uh yeah related to that I
remember when the the market crashed kind of around I don't even know what we have the term for interest rate like post Zer era post Zer uh you were talking to maybe it was ail Michael or some one but about uh this idea of like there's a lot of dry powder and there was a lot of optimism say from entrepreneurs being
like well the VCS have the money they're going to have to give it to us anyway and you were kind of explaining to folks well like the dry powder isn't necessarily sitting in their bank account like they have to make Capital calls the LPS might put pressure on them like funds might get downsized uh but it feels like maybe now the dry powder
narrative was real and now like all the VC's figured out how to start deploying again and and deployment rates are up but how do you tell the story of the post Zer era to where we are now in terms of just the pace of capital deployment yeah uh it's a great question it's um I would say I've been surprised at how uh consistent people
have been able to fund raise and I think there was really a triaging or kind of a hollowing out of the middle that occurred or maybe the the tier B uh if you will a tier 2 Funds where you saw a handful of those folks blow up uh or really struggle with their fundraises in some way but the the names that everyone
thinks about or knows I think there was a concentration and consolidation of capital uh that came in and then you couple that with um some of our friends with with seemingly endless amounts of oil money coming into the the sector as well and it just it just sort of feels like uh we're in this new normal state where there's a lot of capital going
around and I don't know exactly what school going to cause that to change uh it it feels like there wasn't a ton of Reckoning for sins that were made in 2020 and 2021 it feels like people were able to get a mulligan and say hey you know what like yeah we got a little crazy but now we've uh We've really doubled down and focused on what it is
that we do well and people seem at least on the lp side seem to be largely forgiving or if they're not forgiving uh they's someone waiting to take their place in one of these name brand funds I mean it feels like yeah there's gyration and oscillations in the American early stage technology Market but where are
you going to go if you don't invest in American Technology it's sort of like we all read the same books you look at the founders today and like everyone's read innovators dilemma or everyone's read like read the case study of Blockbuster Netflix and so we're dealing with a far more sophisticated like entrepreneur that's executing or CEO that's executing
on AI right now uh and I I think similarly like all the LPS studied what happened after 20002000 or sorry 2201 like that was actually a great time to lean into to the asset class and so now we're at this prisoners dilemma where it would be theoretically a great time for everyone to lean in if other people backed out because then prices
would depress but everyone's staying in and so it's actually leading to prices staying elevated which has been interesting I mean I think in the last couple weeks it feels like I I I've heard the the the meme or the the refrain that uh it's like so 2021 or it's got 2021 Vibes all over again uh this was pre the last seven days and so
I'm not exactly sure how that's going to play out but that's definitely been the sentiment in the private markets from the VCS that I'm talking to is just sort of like uh gosh this feels like we're running this back and doing it all over again yeah I've had that I've had this feeling multiple times this year where a
portfolio company is just raising like a you know big U round uh and depending on the lead I'm just thinking like I really wish I could sell into this round like even though I'm a Believer in the company it's just like you know getting so far over and and and the narrative is always there right like I'm thinking of
like one company in particular that will go on name like really really strong narrative really strong traction it's just like setting prices at a point that you know basically pricing in the next you know potentially decade of growth uh and if that's the case as an investor you ideally would want to get out and then just invest you know rotate into
another IL liquid you got your um do you get it's such a feature and a bug of the private markets that you're not like beholden to the Mania and you sort of get to play a long game and anything you're doing that when I talk to my private or my public market friends like uh they're envious that uh you know you
can take a morning off and not have your entire world implode versus the public markets like stuff can hit the fan and you you your entire uh day uh could totally change at a moment's notice the flip side of that is you're you're really in for a long period of time and you don't get to say well I'll take a few chips off now because I think
probabilistically there's a better opportunity that could come down and it feels like this is a good risk adjusted return that doesn't really uh that's not as accepted in the private markets I think increasingly though we're finding some of the financial products for that and I've seen more people or at least more opportunities to take a little
liquidity uh I'm not sure it's totally uh socially acceptable at least for the institutional funds to do it I think it's far easier if you're an angel people are a little bit more understanding of that but it does feel like comes down it comes down to volume right if I if I put 25k into a company and it and it does well that you know
and and I want to sell the position it's very different than you know you with like you know we have a $400 million position here and we're we're rotating out it's like there's probably not the the demand uh uh what just just one uh I I don't know if you you feel even free to speculate on this but something I've
been confused by was you know the figure round getting priced around $40 billion like what do what in your mind do you think is the play there the you know Brett's last company spaed you could imagine figure you know uh I I think a Pure Play Human stock would do well you know uh at least a little bit a little while in the public markets but what do
you think is some of these later stage companies that are still a ways out from like True commercial adoption but you know it you know especially now with companies like cor weave you know the the core weave IPO it seems unclear now if they're going to get out but like what's your read are are are any of these companies going to get out in the
next year other than some of the bigger names like like chime i' I've heard um so a few different things there I guess I've heard uh I don't know if if you guys have heard different things with cor weave in the last little bit but it seems like there's there's a few people that are still kind of all systems go on
IPO and are going to plow ahead and uh poor weave certainly doesn't ask my opinion but if I were counseling them it feels like just just get out there and I think having some AI story with with probably uh a bunch of institutional managers that want to exposure to some derivative direct trend of AI I would say it's probably as good a time as any
especially when some of these bigger contracts are coming up in 2017 2018 like get out when you have a little bit of you know certainty of those cash flows coming from the Nidia and the microsofts and the open AIS of the world like I would encourage uh them to go um on the figure thing specifically um so so I looked at
Brett's uh business vety which predates the last one uh I actually really enjoy I haven't talked to him in I don't know eight years or something but I really enjoyed uh that interaction now that was like a job Marketplace or something so very uh different than now he sort of become this like hard tech founder which
is interesting uh from a job Marketplace thing um the the thing that I don't totally understand about figure in that round itself and this is a common phenomenon at the not the end but at at the peak of a lot of Cycles is you end up with a lot of these spvs getting formed in a meaningful way and you end up with managers trying to get uh write
bigger checks for Rounds than their funds can actually hold and so it's hard to know exactly what the incentives at play for some of those names I I don't even uh I wasn't familiar with the names that they're talking about in leading those rounds but um it certainly seems from a funsize standpoint that those people probably can't Step Up and write
those checks themselves and so then you wonder what are the incentives at play for the for the whoever is writing those checks like what are they thinking about uh and like what is the the executive team like what is their incentive uh to raise at this price um yeah I always looked at it I looked at it as if you're
going to price it at 10 and say this is a pre-ipo round we are going to basically are we're planning to spack the company in the next year we think it's going to pop that type of round makes sense but if you know you're pricing it at four times that roughly it just feels like how do you actually get out of this who's going to get out of
this position do the employees actually benefit um but that's just you know one one example skill issue spack at 80 SP why not why not I do think there's this retail demand for I mean if I were open AI I would try to get out sooner rather than later right because I think there's this demand both from institutional and Retail to have exposure to some of these
things and if you look I mean uh Palante teers where they're trading and obviously there's a bunch of different considerations around that business but like uh I I think that if you went out and floated just a small percentage of your you know your overall business I think that there could be a lot of nice
liquidity to fund a lot of the capex and you would trade at a really healthy premium so it'll be interesting to see who of like the big model companies actually tries to get out first speaking of going public do you want your uh private Market investor competitors to go public the general Catalyst you're excited you're like yeah I really I want
you to go from you know I want to be able to see your fund returns yeah yeah closures are GNA be it's an interesting thing I so uh our structure is not one that we can or ever will try to have the Ambitions of doing that I I saw um when when when people uh there's certainly funds that that uh Act or either call themselves uh have leaders
that that are more akin to a CEO than they are um you know investment partner or something like that and so I think from a financial engineering standpoint and like institutionalization of the asset class I'm excited to see people try these things um the cynical side of it when I compare uh a venture firm to a private Equity Firm and think about the
incentives at play so if you're a private Equity Firm if you're Apollo or black stone or black rock or whoever it is right you're this big entity um the people within your firm can't can't really leave and compete with you because there's so much institutional infrastructure around one the Quantum of dollars that you actually need but then
two the relationships with the debt providers the ability to process the deals the ability to get access through the bankers you can't just go hang a shingle or go join another competitor to compete with Blackstone or Apollo or whatever it is right and Venture it's so beholden I think at least to individuals and individuals can walk out the door
and they can go raise 100 200 300 400 million dollars and like effectively compete with you in some way shape or form and so I there was an information report I don't know if it's true or not talking about GC moving from more carry to bonuses uh and I don't know if it's true uh information tends to do a pretty
good job reporting I think um and like that uh was reported alongside some people leaving uh the organization and and you just wonder like as the incentive structures start to change and you start to be more institutional how do you retain the quality of people so like an an intellectual level I'm very interesting interested to see all this
plays out and I respect anyone that's like innovating in some way on on a structure that has been stuck in some version for a long long time I I'm very curious about the Practical implications of how it's going to work with like aining individual talent and all that stuff yeah that's been that's been my big question if if you're somebody that
you know wants to get into Venture and you believe in your picking ability and you think you can be one of the greats wouldn't you want to get the sort of Maximum benefit of that by getting carrye and being a part of a partnership versus you know oh I got you know I invested in you know the next slack and I got you know onetime little you know
bonus yeah EXA who knows who knows how it'll work but you know I can imagine it's especially since the next option if you can't compete uh then it's it's fine you're kind of locked in like Goldman Bankers or Morgan Stanley Bankers or Apollo MDS or whatever it's it's hard for them to get the scale to go out and
really compete and sometimes they do and sometimes they don't but like that RSU structure bonus structure kind of works when you can't really walk out the door and and hang a shingle and compete Venture you kind of can and so I think it's if you're good you know you can go raise we see a lot of these solo capitalists or whatever like small three
four 500 million funds out there and so I think I I don't know retaining Talent is going to be an interesting thing to see have you like last question on this point have you seen solo the sort of solo GPS overpaying to win deals because like that's something like you know sometimes you see these sort of obvious power law companies like the Ander
rolles of the world with a lot Gill sort of like you know leading rounds and that that makes that makes sense I think there's sort of consensus now that Ander is going to be a really massive company but when you see a solo GP come in and and write a a100 million plus check does that ever you know you know what's your
what's your read on that because in from my perspective sometimes those marks don't even feel real when uh when you're you know there's something to be said of like okay red point like underwrote this and like you know they're like a an organization and a firm and it's not just like you know one or two you know
major you know so so how do you how do you look at those rounds and I'm sure often times you're you're competing to win those rounds yeah it's um so I guess we've I've seen less of that phenomenon than probably 2021 and I would have to Rack my brain a little bit to think about like the big institu or institutional institutional solo
capitalists are uh I think those terms are directly at odds with one another but the big solo capitalists that can write those checks I mean OT can obviously do that and he's the the one that certainly comes to mind um I would say honestly uh there's there's been some firms that um have continued to scale where I've probably seen that more
than uh any individual kind of solo capitalist out there and I think there was this thing where um in 2020 21 it felt like um we rotated to the brand where we lived in this world where everyone uh was was just a zoom screen away and so you know Mark andreon and Doug Leone and Keith R boy and whoever was was could be in the room as quickly
as I could be in the room uh because time and space weren't really constraints at all and so in that world I think there was a big gravitation to the big uh institutional funds because it was like oh my gosh I'm going to get Mark andreon involved and and that's amazing right um it feels like we've rotated a little
more back to like who is my individual board member who is going to be on the ground with me dayto day like I'm going to solve for that person rather than the so like the just the brain P past a certain point right uh like obviously you must be this call to ride the ride with some some things and so you got to have enough credible uh brand as an
institution but then it comes down to the individual a little bit more and so I would say I've probably seen more than the solo capitalist thing um I've probably seen more of uh hey this fund has a bunch of money and you might not be getting their number one person it could be their you know whatever their their uh reliever
out of the bullpen uh that's coming in to do the round um and those are the ones that they're like really juicing the price a little bit on these things because they you know they want the asset in that way so I I think that's that's something I've seen more and more of of late uh I want to go back to the innovators dilemma and I heard you on a
podcast maybe two years ago right when the Chachi P moment was happening debating is AI a sustaining Innovation or disruptive innovation how do you sit with it now how are you seeing it uh get adopted in the public markets and what narratives are taking hold there I still uh I still feel like there's an analogy
that was made to me about Google uh and it was it was talking about um the Americans in World War II that like we got every opportunity to ultimately do the right thing and uh come into the war and like help determine the outcome uh and and I think that was the analogy I had heard uh about uh uh Google with AI that like they have all the things to
their advantage be it the distribution of Google SEO be it YouTube content be what whatever it is like the talent the team the dollars all of that stuff to like figure this out ultimately um we'll see if that actually proves to be the case but I do think that that is largely true of um a lot of a lot of the incumbents in different sectors and and
so uh the analogy that I think I used back then I think is still true is like if you go back and look at the Salesforce of mobile uh that was still Salesforce it was just like a mobile app of Salesforce and if if you go look and kind of go down the line like how did Netflix or Facebook there wasn't like a a mobile Netflix I mean I guess you
could say Tik Tok is mobile Netflix in some ways but like there wasn't a pure playay mobile Netflix like a quibby that came out and was actually disruptive in some ways and there wasn't um Facebook there maybe Instagram was the one that like kind of hopped on being that but still it was like um it wasn't totally net new surface
areas that ended up manifesting themselves around that stuff or or at least it wasn't immediately in the fullness of time maybe it could have been if if Instagram had stayed independent or if uh or if uh or what Tik tok's been able to do I think that seems to be the case here today where we're going to see these things that are
that are new in novel within Ai and I draw aend to the Ubers or the whatsapps or whatever it is where these businesses that couldn't have been possible without a are going to form a lot of independent Equity value uh but a lot of it's going to be captured by incumbents in some ways and I think in Mobile Apple and
Google probably captured the Lion Share of like Equity value that was created by the Mobile iPhone or whatever like those were the ones that really through the App Store and the actual phones they captured a lot of it and and I think in large part maybe with the exception of open AI like the vast majority of the equity value will probably end up
accumulating to the Facebooks and the microsofts and the you know the Googles and I guess open AI as well um but I still think we'll end up with hundreds of billions of dollars of equity value created for you know the derivative companies akin to the to the Ubers and the whatsapps and the whoever else yeah I had this uh take I was noodling on
yesterday about um it feels like Apple's missing the AI moment but does it matter because fa uh Microsoft missed mobile and they still made it work uh how do you feel things are going with apple intelligence obviously that John grber AR kind of shook everyone to their core uh do you think they're in trouble or is
it overhyped or where's the narrative sitting with you these days so so the grber thing I mean obviously uh grber is like the goat of Apple coverage and so I you got to take everything he says almost like uh biblically in some ways that's like the canonical Gospel of uh of Apple you know takes um but I uh I
have always hated Siri like I have always hated and then the Apple intelligence thing uh and the summarizations on the text I mean I love that if only as a meme like I enjoy screenshotting it and sending it back to my friends and like that's the best use case of Apple intelligence I've seen and so like when making fun of your product
is like the best instantiation of your product it's probably uh not you know you're not on a good trajectory there culturally it just seals and this is this is probably more uh you know John ruber or Ben Thompson than what I profess to know about uh but it just feels antithetical to Apple's culture to uh execute on um AI in the way that I
think you need to uh they are very like measure uh measure 35 times and cut once and let's do this all secretively and let's like try to control the ecosystem and keep everything uh like insular in some ways and that is just so antithetical to Ai and AI is about like proliferation and getting it out there and getting the data and taking the
feedback loops and moving fast and trying new things and iterating and like I just think that's directly at odds with who they are and so I don't know how you change that and does I guess to your question does it actually matter um I don't know they have such lock in right is Apple what is Apple's market cap today I mean is it like a TR
sorry trillion business yeah 3.2 trillion it's like I I think they're probably going to mess this up and I'm not sure it's going to matter for them as a business and I think the sooner they realize that they they won't be able to execute on it the sooner we get these things in our product as a uh you know as a partnership rather than just
open up the API and let the let the ecosystem flourish and you know let me change out the button for a different series well the the it's fine I still buy the I still buy the phones the other thing that nobody really talks about anymore because it just hasn't been possible is m&a like apple has so much cash if there are breakout you know
consumer like products that make sense as part of the Apple ecosystem there's a there's a world in which they could actually just buy those companies and everyone quotes the 60 billion on their balance sheet or something but Apple has returned over a trillion dollars of cash over the last like 14 years like it is a
cash generating machine at a scale I don't think their Acquisitions I think that's probably a better use of capital than what they bought to date not been the best acquirers you know it's crazy though I mean they they were uh Siri was acquired for them like uh I don't know 13 years ago or something 14 like they
were early on all of this stuff and so clearly there's some like broken um execution elements at least within you know how they've gone about at the date which might not matter in the grand schema thing it's a it's a deterministic culture not a probabilistic culture and so it's misaligned with AI I like that that is that is very uh Ben Thompson or
Ben Evans of VI I'm trying to be more piy yeah I like it I like it we got really no time left but I wanted to uh give you an opportunity to talk about ramp you when when they announced the new fund raise you you kind of like were poking a little bit of fun at yourself because you you did you basically uh you got found the local top but not the
global top well and I think you invested a couple times during did yeah we invested in a billion and then like three and a half and then eight or whatever 82 or something uh yeah it was uh it was a it was a long uh a long run from there funny enough that that round that we ended up investing in at whatever 8 billion or eight and a half
or whatever it was uh what's a couple hundred million among friends but I uh that was like December 21 when we were talking about it and then the round ultimately closed in January or February or something and so it was really uh last boat off the island in terms of like it internally the the zero interest rate uh kind of mindset and the thing
that I've learned and this wasn't this has been the last five years for me basically since I so I joined red point in in December of 19 officially started in March of 20 and uh what what what I've realized is like price very rarely within some Zone has has mattered and when I find myself iterating a little too much on um on like oh I'll do it at
this price versus that price it probably says something about what I think the ultimate outcome for the business can be and when when it's been the Investments that have worked the best are the ones in which I'm like I don't know exactly how this is going to play out or where the ceiling is on how this company can
execute but uh I just need to be in business with these people and let's let's just see where it goes from there and obviously that's easier when you're talking hundreds of millions than is low single digits which is easier than high single digits which is easier than double digit billion dollars but like that mindset is one that I've I've uh
internalized Where It ultimately says something about the quality of the company if you really think too too hard about the difference between this price or that price and so the funny thing about the ramp investment was the entire time uh for the last three years I was like telling our team internally it's I don't know when this is going to stop
growing or what the cealing for this can be and at some point we're going to get to the other side of what that round was a couple years ago and so that was the first like public validation that it really felt like we had crossed that Chasm a little bit I think probably nine months ago a year ago it sort of felt
like an inevitability that we weren't going to get stuck at you know some some Maximum that was beyond that uh but yeah I mean the the team just continues to execute at a level that i' I've never really seen before and I know you guys know them well and so it's been a fun one for me to be a part of and kind of work alongside well this conversation has
been presented by Ram like every conversation uh go to ramp.com to sign up use corporate cards all my conversations quite literally are presented by ramp I think my ability to do this job at this point is presented by ramp in some capacity so you guys have quite literally the ad play for it but I uh they keep me in business as
well that's great amazing thank you so much for coming on uh when's your next are you gonna do uh is this report I feel like I see him twice a year or is it I think once a year is is usually I mean this uh this one I think took a lot out of our team internally there was a lot of late nights and weekends on this one so I think we're going to give our
folks a little bit of time uh a little bit of respit uh before we run it back uh but who knows I mean the market keeps up we get more tariffs we we get things a little crazy maybe we'll need to come out of the would work and you know when the theme music plays you got to emerge for sure uh last last question for you
we have Sam Lon and uh Seth uh Seth Rosenberg from uh Greylock coming on and slow coming on to debate AI in about an hour who's who let me give you guys a little bit of advice as someone that has moderated a debate with Sam leson before let me give you guys a little bit of I would I would encourage um if you if you have mute
buttons on microphones uh I would encourage you to jump in and try to steer the conversation don't be a passive participant remember one people tend to be really mean to you when you do that and you let let let the bustering go on between him and let's say I don't know Zack Weinberg theoretically so I would encourage you
guys to be active participants in that conversation we're excited we got our we got our boxing gloves we're going to throw them on we're going to get in the mix uh guys keep up the great work I'm a huge fan of what you guys are doing I appreciate anytime you want me I'm here thanks lot welcome all right guys see you
bye yeah oh good fun did yeah we got to get the get the mute button ready have you seen that uh what he's referring to with Zack Weinberg were debating crypto it was Sam leson versus Zack Weinberg and Sam was making the case that like every real assets should be on chain and your mortgage should be on chain and like this is the future everything will
be crypto and and Zach is just like okay like walk me through that at an extreme level of detail like how does this work legally how does how do the taxes on the land work like all these things and they just went at it and Sam was just going super super hard talking talking talking and then he kept being like I gotta go
because it's kid bedtime like I like I really I really got to go but then but then he wouldn't let Zach get the last word so that he he'd want to like drop another filibuster on him it was like really frustrating for everyone and I guess uh people gave Logan some some negative feedback because he wasn't he wasn't aggressive on the moderation
enough but I thought it was a great I I I found it very very entertaining to watch so I had a good time uh anyway should we do some uh good time some posts some ads uh all of the above over the next few uh minutes before Keon joins us from nucleus yes uh the shot the Chaser from xor SWAP the shot Claude thinking and 01
Pro have replaced all University instructors for me I can no longer watch any pre-recorded videos and then the Chaser is I bombed my second linear algebra midterm ouch two days later that's so funny and word grammar friend of the show says math is best learned from textbooks and practice problems not from Claude but also not from lectures
so yeah just hit the books the books yeah I I remember I took the train up to Silicon Valley from Pasadena took me like 12 hours um but I had a uh a textbook on uh natural language processing like the precursor to llms this was back in like 2012 2013 and I just sat there and just read this whole textbook and taught me a lot I really
enjoyed ITT are underrated when it comes to getting potentially goated when when when learning is the the vibe yeah textbooks are goated no I think the good thing for isan is that the models are going to get better and the good thing about the real world is nobody really cares if you're using an llm for for specific answers as long as you can do a
little bit of thinking yourself yeah and you should be able to generate something I mean all the textbooks at this point have been scraped into these llms like you should be able to get the llm to essentially just reproduce exactly the text that's in the that's in the textbook now maybe that's IP infringement but uh you can certainly
get the facts the question is were you just sitting there chatting and making it feel like you were learning uh it seems like you didn't you didn't actually get uh all the information into your brain but good luck on your next midterm uh let's go to uh pachy McCormick he says today much of the global GDP is not computer soon
everything is computer this is the opportunity funny because there's it's true yeah uh but I was thinking about the everything's computer everything is computer thing and I think it I like the phrase more as a possessive than a contraction so the the actual quote is a contraction he was saying everything is is a computer basically and then he
dropped the A and it was everything everything's computer everything's a computer uh but I I prefer the everything's computer as like what is the computer of everything it's like this like you know hive mind AI like yes what we're building is everything's computer it belongs to everything and and that just tells you like this
this very weird futuristic networked uh Mega computer that controls everything it sounds even more SciFi at that point um let's stay with py yeah I mean like one more thing on this I think this is the opportunity and why so many people that were traditionally software investors are excited about investing in hard tech or the real world as a
category when you look at some of these some of the biggest recent outcome the sort of flock safeties and rolls are these companies that have are software is critical to the business yet there's a major sort of real world component yeah um and uh you know I think that's just going to continue to be where some of the bigger outcomes are yeah teal had
a good Riff on this where he he was like I keep investing in companies that aren't the internet and then they make money from the internet like SpaceX it's like a launch business but starlink is an internet company yeah and it's just like I keep I I I keep going it's like uh you know he's co-founder of open AI
eventually invested in the business it's like it's a it's a consumer internet company now and like maybe that's where the value is and so there's all these weird things where you just keep coming back to the internet is this Ultra powerful force and the more you align yourself with it so your capitalism in the economy just kind of naturally pulls
every company towards that and you know flock safety it's like yeah camera manufacturer but without the internet our company would be worth way less we originally wanted to be a newspaper and exactly everybody said hey technology why don't you put this on the internet yeah that's really the way to get ahead um should we stay on py go his breakdown
what a week for the optimists devastating week for the pessimists devastating uh he breaks it down in his uh fantastic newsletter uh he says solar and wind pass coal in the United States that's a big milestone uh the United States can continues to MOG all in liquid natural gas exports uh NASA launches a m mission to study the sun I
like that that's interesting I don't know what they're trying to get out of that I want to know more about what the goal of studying the sun is they're like they come back and they're just like it's bright so basically you know how people started the sun Austin the whole Austin crowd sure sure I don't think H has recomend that
was like the meme was like wake up get some sunlight it's like get outside get some sunlight wake circadian rhythm stuff the the the sort of start of community in Austin sort of staring at the sun directly yep sort of maybe getting some benefit from that NASA's basically saying you know we see some opportunity here they haven't gone blind
quite yet we should maybe check it out ourselves we should check it out ourselves y Gavin Newsome launched a podcast and py says hear us out yeah so uh this was cool uh Lulu's analysis of this was fantastic uh Gavin Nome the Gavin my my read on Gavin Newsome is he'd maybe start a podcast and he would just have people that agreed with him on he's
taking the invting basically his political enemies on the and it's very humanizing you know he's he's got uh he's always been an incredib a much better public speaker than he has been um you know uh uh operator I would say like he's good with his words and I think the strategy is really smart and uh I think you know you're you
were you know when we started this show you you probably said multiple times on the show like the person that does the most hours podcasting will win the election about attention attention is all need Gavin heard you say that he got the memo the podcast election I'm no but I think it's always smart you know that
the joke is like the world doesn't need more podcasts but there still is white space and there ways to come in and get an Ed and no one was doing this which is an actual elector official talking across the aisle to uh some of the characters who have been labeled extreme I mean Steve Bannon is a very controversial issue uh very
controversial figure uh not normally platformed by even Centrist media mainstream media but he I think Bannon did a did a interview with the New York Times the New York Times also had uh Mark andrion who they've written very negatively about in the past and they also uh had on courtesy Arvin who in the past has been extremely controversial
and and someone that was not platformed by the mainstream media but some something is certainly changing uh well John do you know what happened around five years ago uh What uh California governor Gavin Newsome was photographed where wearing a Rolex Kermit wow uh which you can get onz shop over 23,500 luxury watches
fully authenticated in-house by bezel team of experts go to get bezel.set tention right people kind of Judge a lot of his uh fashion decisions he he had these he very sad time but he had this sort of like custom all this custom gear for the fire where he'd like pop up and be on on camera it was like really like you you got that like like specifically
stitched to kind of like lar as like a firefighter um sometimes it works sometimes he's taking risks you know sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't y anyway we got Keon from nucleus coming on the show soon let's check in with producer Ben and see if he's on I think we got a couple more minutes um let's move on to
another post uh project Europe is a joke says Arie Ramesh it's not the teal Fellowship for Europe if they take 6.6% equity for 200k surprised so many European Founders are on board maybe for visibility $10 million fund size LOL an average US seed round make it non-dilutive then I'm all for it and Ki s it's a very European mindset to just
be like just give away money just give away money make it non-diluted I mean the teal Fellowship is non-dilutive because it's a nonprofit but at the same time sure but it's but they're trying to they're asking for hand yeah they're trying to stimulate for-profit you know the founding of for-profit companies Europe it's fine to just do it as a seed
fund it's fine I don't know I I haven't dug into it too much but let's read this critique uh from K sarin this is a founder of linear okay uh I set up a linear account for us to do some project management stuff yet but uh we'll see if we get you on there okay um but I'll read through it so Carrie or car says I think your
critique is overly harsh and frankly reflects the kind of attitude that holds Europe back initiatives tend to get criticized unless they meet some impossible standard or align with absolute ideal set by someone is this the best deal globally no but by European standards it's probably average I see seed rounds at 20% for one to 1
and A5 million led by reputable VCS personally I'd rather raise less with simpler terms and go through these seed rounds but everyone is their own economic actor and can decide which deals to take or pass on someone has to provide the capital and there isn't the deal the teals to provide the capital in Europe you're also overlooking history
in a lot of context you're comparing something just starting now to YC which began 20 years ago YC's original deal was 6% for 20K and it stayed that way for a long time none of the perks you mentioned even existed back then what you got was PG's Chile once a week and some advice um Priceless Chile when I went through YC in 2012 the deal was 7%
for 125k the whole premise of YC and whether the economics made sense was simply about whether it could make your company at least 7% more successful uh if project Europe can do the same then it's worth considering so very interesting uh I'm in favor of project Europe uh We've also been working on our own project Europe internally at the
show uh which is going to Europe going to Europe three months south of France wine tour doing doing the podcast spending lots of time on boats doing the podcast from the continent you know making Europe greater Grand one show at a time seven spend six 6.6% of your time in Europe that's the real project Europe
anyway we got Keon in the waiting room let's bring him in how you doing welcome to the Temple of Technology what up what's up man The Hooligans the mods of PODS I'm ready John I'm ready for you right now let's go let's go it's great to talk to you great to see you I don't think I've seen you in person since uh
Miami uh but give me the breakdown tell the tell the fans who you are uh and what what nucleus is and then what you announced today yeah so my name is Keon founder CEO of a company called nucleus genomics where the world's most advanced DNA Health test single Swap single test you can screen for over a thousand conditions and today oh my God it's
chaos in the headquarters in the best way okay we have launched genetic matchmaking okay so now you can family plan far more effectively you can make sure every single couple in this country has healthy children it is absolutely amazing it's already blowing up on Twitter John have you seen the video I have not seen video can you pull the
video up right now can you pull the video up right now I will I will share with Ben and hopefully we can we can pull it up uh have you been are you in a relationship have you been testing this yourself have you been getting on the app dog are you dog fooding this I am dog Foody this real time it's funny because we we were thinking about like
should we block same sex couples or not you know because we figured that in the future you should be able to Independent of sex you know be able to have you know children for now it is sex block so it has be male to female sorry about a lot of tech Bros out there I know that might be hard for some of you guys but when
you find the one when you find the special someone you can do nucleus and it is going to be amazing what is the actual flow for nucleus is it uh cheek swab I mail it in break it that break Che swab yep you get get a DNA kit that looks like this you open it up inside there's a cheek swab you take the cheek swab you go sing a tube non-invasive you
can do it at home no doctor's off is involved goes to laboratory laboratory processes the DNA outc comes a raw DNA file which then we run through all our analysis uh which is honestly like a a like this is people do not appreciate how much of a feat of science neran this is there's a couple people I have to thank here first and foremost Gregor
mendal late 19th century thank you for thank you for playing with those P's he did not play this piece you know you know you know he he had like extraordinary statistical intuition you know he had no idea what DNA was he was completely abstracted there's no molecular basis just playing with the peas went all the way to the you know
Hershey Chase experiment shot to that experiment wats in quick ien finding the structure of DNA of course a Human Genome Project right a massive government project billions of dollars in investment thousands of scientists this product is now live in anyone's hands it's a short line from Gregor mendal in 1866 to uh nucleus being
promoted at the Jake Paul fight so you know he could see it now we'd be great uh um Ben you're you're live streaming right now let's see if this video works yeah yeah we got the video here this is a day I've been looking forward to for 4 and 1/2 years but really today's product announcement is the culmination of
Decades of scientific medical and genomic progress spending thousands of scientists and billions of dollars in investment hence today I'm so excited to show you the next chapter of preventative health Family Planning through genetic matching imagine knowing every possible outcome for you and your partner's future children starting with
their hereditary risks through nucleus you have the power to end preventable disease in your future family long before you even decide to have children to show you how easy this is I'm going to sync my results with my good friend Molly OA let's go hey Molly what's up perfect timing I just opened up my nucleus to see my results I've got to
say the UI looks really good oh that's so nice you know we really spent as much time as possible to build beautiful products and by the way aren't you one of the first people who did nucleus I mean do you think maybe we're going to be a genetic match definitely let's find out seeing if you're a genetic match is
almost as easy as seeing if you're a match on a dating app I'm going to show you exactly how here are my nucleus family results which just came out I haven't synced with Molly yet so you can actually see my kids may be at risk for Cystic Fibrosis but the only way to find if Molly and I are actually going to pass down this risk to our kids is by
syncing our results let me show you how this works just click add partner and confirm that your partner's done nucleus Molly has of course so I click yes we're about to find out if we're a match Molly are you ready yep let's [Music] see oh my God we're a match this is amazing Molly are you still there shocking I have to break up okay uh well
we'll come back to Molly later but about what just happened on the back end nucleus scanned our combined genomes for nearly a thousand conditions that that we could have unknowingly passed down to our children from here Molly and I can dive deeper into the specifics of our results in reality nine out of 10 parents have a genetic risk that they
could pass down to their children and one in 25 people have a genetic marker for Cystic Fibrosis so what would happen if Molly had a genetic marker for Cystic Fibrosis we have good news we've been hard at work for something that we think will fundamentally change Family Planning forever we can't share too much yet but imagine
if you could learn not just about the diseases you could pass down to your children but also whe they're going to look and act more like Mom or Dad more on that soon at nucleus we believe that anyone anywhere should have the choice to access genetic insights to make more informed decisions about their health okay so the big question uh do we have
him back yeah yeah yeah you there oh I think we got to un mute him let's see we're juggling things can we hear you Keon okay I can hear you can you hear me yep fantastic back uh the big first thing that how was that video huh goes hard right yeah very clear very clear I I really liked how efficiently the everything's communicated the
transitions are cool but it's not all style there's substance there very well executed good job when uh the big question uh John and I are both married but if somebody if one of our listeners is dating you know somebody when's the right time say all right pull out like let me see your cheek we got to do a quick swab you got to do a swab look
look look look there's there's many ways in doing this right if you da someone already it's okay you know you do nuk list you see if you have a genetic risk or not if you're if you both have a genetic RIS for the same thing you can do IVF there's other reproductive options you're going to be good you know the risk exists so you can prevent the
risk the whole point of genetics right but also there's a world where listen maybe you're a tech out there listening to this podcast you don't have the special someone yet no worries you sit down you say you know you know what college you go to you know they tell you whatever you say okay nice you know what
do you do you know then you say have you done a nucleus test there you go there you go I mean you got to break it to them you gotta say listen you got to make sure the genes are aligned because why would you get into this business in the first place right you want to get deeper into it if the genetics are not matched right I mean you don't want to
be car the same thing do you see people throwing up their nucleus results like on dating apps like just look just look at these look at fut May fut I mean I think I think we we believe in kind of individual liberty I think genetics should be integrated with dating apps and if someone you know opts in and should say hey I don't be match
with someone who's also car for a rare genetic marker it's actually done in different communities the asosi Jewish Community they do this all the time actually don't match people who are the same rare genetic marker so 100% I think you should integrate dating apps do Mass preconception testing DNA is becoming as you guys know cheaper and cheaper and
cheaper one of the greatest decrease in costs ever combining that with AI there's going to be magic Mass integration with different dating apps I think you're to save a lot of baby's lives what about flipping it around obviously the genetic markers for diseases are very you know you want to avoid those but you know I already have
kids but I could imagine that my son when he goes to have his own CH child my future grandchildren uh might want to optimize for a grandchild who's you know going to be a future bodybuilder let's say and and we want to make sure that you know they're just matched up so they can go to the Arnold the most proud
grandpa and just absolutely look diced you know massive put on 300 pounds of pure muscle and and he wants to make sure that his his wife is uh is setting their kids up for Success uh will nucleus help with that great question so first things first I'll say is John he has a good father because you're like seven foot tall than the jeans are good
the je are good he already has already inherently he's good there um but you know it's funny you actually asked this because at the end of the video there I you know left a little teaser in there about something that's coming out let's just say you know there there's something about you know maybe you know
you don't want to just simulate disease risk but also maybe want to simulate what your baby's going to look and to act like you know when you start thinking aboutum sequencing you can start maybe thinking about can you actually simulate procreation oh win wink nudge nudge and let's just say you know John we're shipping we're shipping
like crazy it's like it's like hysteria in the nucleus headquarters we're building at the frontier of genetics you know I hear like sirens going off gongs being hit it's complete chaos in here yeah so so it feels like you know the the I think the the consensus now is at 2 three and me walk so you guys could uh take us to the moon like what like how
far can you how far can you take this right because like the first step is like giving people the data and then you're then you're trying to like influence influence outcomes like how how much does the sort of nucleus platform expand what is the like 10 trillion dollar vision for the business because I know you're that ambitious
yeah so you know it's like Blockbuster versus Netflix it's like you know Blackberry iPhone that's the moment that's happening in genomics right now and the beauty of the genome what everyone's starting to appreciate is that the basically Marvel of engineering and science that it is because if you think about it when you actually read
someone's entire genome it's not just disease risk assessments that you can actually think about it starts to be talking about Family Planning about procreation simulation about what drugs actually work best for you what supplements work best for you and even about the longtail different traits you can analyze from from IQ all the way to
muscle strength you start realizing that the integration of the genome simply has not happened yet in society right you if you take a poll of you know 300 Americans look how many have been sequenced right basically none of them have and you talk about one of the greatest Innovations ever which is the decrease in cost of sequined genome by
far the single highest density uh highest consequential piece of health information that exists because it's literally your DNA it's the entire thing and it's not integrated in medicine in lifestyle or in dating I mean the opportunity is massive and this test today cost $400 I'll make a prediction right here on technology Brothers within
five years this test couple dollars couple dollars I said couple dollars amazing amazing congratulations get so so last question uh is are we going to have a way to test if somebody's nice with it or got that dog in them or is cracked because you seem like you're you're definitely nice with it you definitely have that dog in and you see
this interesting so we we have found consistently okay that Founders who do nucleus tend to be very high in their schizophrenic disposition okay so personally I'm in the 99 percentile I'm rocking it baby I'm seeing I'm telling you right now % that's how it is I swear you look at Alexis shout out my man Alexis one of
our lead investors super high schizophrenic a lot of other Founders I know super high schop that's public by the way that's public by the way I'm not just exposing Alex Alex results are public I would never just expose public Alex there and so if you want you gota look to see what schizophrenic in fact one interesting study showed that
they ran these different models across every single phenotype and they compared across different careers by far the highest predictive one was actually schizophrenia but it was for artist which is very similar to entrepreneurs though so you know that's something you do if you're low ADHD super low ADHD associated with doctors and lawyers so
you know there's something there you know you got that dog in you maybe it's in your DNA I love it I love it well where can people go get it where can people order a test my nucleus. comom myus.com family if you're a couple you want to have healthy children that's where you should go T5 follow me on Twitter yeah Twitter amaz you're amazing
I this was fun I I've actually we've never talked uh and I'd love to have you back on when there's whenever there's Gom news just bio correspond join join this exact link like don't even you don't even tell us just join the link hey there's news you tell us amazing man well congratulations on the launch we'll talk to you soon talk
soon have a great day peace guys bye have a good weekend too amazing yeah I I think genetics might explain why a single inorganic blueberry would kill you on the spot and yet I could eat a credit card with a fork and knife and just be unaffected so I think we got Josh Dian coming in of microplastic haters yo yo how you
doing good good welcome to the show we got Josh Steinman in the building in the temple of Technology uh give us an update is it a good morning and are we going to win uh all signs point to yes oh fantastic fantastic uh how's how's it going it's good it's good how are you guys we're we're you want to know you want a little uh show l
I I I definitely like put one of of your initial good morning we were going to win posts into the into the stack in the early days and then I put another one in about a week later and John was like wait you put this back in I'm like yeah we're we're still we're still winning it's still a good important to remember
so we've done those tweets like three times already and i' and I've talked about it on the show before I think there's this you know Founders will say something once and and feel like they've said it and not realizing that you know a lot of the long the the return is in the sort of long taale of drilling this idea and I I really feel like it's
become a movement the David CRA thing you're not advertising to a standing army you're advertising to a marching parade yeah yeah it's interesting because you know part of it is selft talk right and this goes into like the Deep like how do we program ourselves yeah like human as computer um Scott Adams talks about this
uh the moist robot hypothesis but other people as well and like his his School of persuasion is the same school that Bill Clinton and Tony Robbins come from like Norman Vincent Peele like there's a lineage here um so it's like how do we talk to ourselves as people how do we talk to ourselves as as agents free agents like in the world so part of it
is just like I'm telling myself every day like you have to wake up and you have to like want it every day um and then the other part is just like obviously you know with the with with the public Persona that I have you know having come from you know both the military but then also politics like man it was dark for a while you know like
super dark and I just wanted something where I just could say to myself every day like look things can turn around and I actually think they're going to and certainly they have um but like every day just wake up and be willing to just like offer yourself up to the universe like yeah it's going to happen like we're going to win like you're never
more than one one day away from like catastrophic success uh going back catastrophic success back to uh going back to your your dark days do you feel like you got a lot of like were were people turning down meetings with your company early on just because of your sort of political leanings uh should we do some backstory on the
company can you break down what you're building who you are little career highlights I mean yeah I'm sure a lot of people know but give us the basics yeah so um I started off my career in like this weird corner of operational counterterrorism in the US military um that sort of branched into high technology and high technology
strategy um again when I was still in uniform and got a lot of exposure to just how much um you know the world is a very interconnected place and there are things that we can do in the digital world that absolutely affect the physical world people talk about stuck net they talk about you know these these attacks that have happened against uh
oil facilities so um I get out of the military I go to Silicon Valley and then two years later just like a strange series of coincidences I get asked to come back to Washington and essentially be like the most senior cyber security person in the US government not like I'm GNA reset your password but like I'm gonna remake
our entire practice of running cyber operations for like the dod and the intelligence community and Homeland Security and all that stuff so I did that job for four years and then afterwards um pulled together two buddies of mine including Brandon Park who helped stand up Amazon's Global what we call operational technology OT cyber
security program at Amazon and then Felix plinski who had recruited to come join me in the admin who was a hedge fund Trader and we started looking at this problem it's a huge problem you know we've digitized the industrial world and yet there's has created these huge vulnerabilities that have been exploited and some of that stuff makes
its way out into the public so yeah we just wanted to start a company to to solve that what percentage actually gets public versus is sort of known among uh the industry but not necessarily in headlines yeah are there foreign agents operating on American [Laughter] soil because I I I hear some people say the number is zero but I think you had a
different point on that right it's a different meme of mine yeah no there's absolutely foreign foreign sabotage teams operating on us soil 100% my actual number is somewhere around 100 teams my guess is that um and the question is like you could break that down into you know what types um anyway yeah most of it doesn't get public and
you know sitting in that chair for four years I had to get the classified reports every day of like oh this thing happened that thing happened and it just it didn't drive me nuts but it was like man it makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up are there any cyber security stories in history that are public now that you like to point to is
like that could have been prevented that's the one we're learning from and here's how my company would prevent that essentially or here's how I would have stopped that yeah too easy so um I think two three years ago uh someone I don't know who I don't know who um literally destroyed the Iranian steel industry in
like one day really there's video out yeah there's video out there like they literally took over you know the refineries and just started pouring liquid metal all over the floor on a bunch of these bunch of these facilities um yeah there's a bunch of incidents like that that have happened so walk me through how you would prevent
that I mean I I imagine what you're describing as like remote takeover of a machine that is connected to the internet or maybe air gapped and they didn't have the right security there how do you actually step in and prevent that for for our steel industry air gapping I mean a lot of people will say that stuff
because they've heard it on like TV or whatever that's that's me or yeah exactly um but these operations take days weeks months sometimes years to sort of like get into a network and then find your way to the systems that you want to take over and the whole point is like every step of the way of those types of operations leaves
breadcrumbs um and so currently the way in which people try and protect these networks is by looking at only one area of Technology inside the four walls of the facility and that's like the networking equipment so what we do is we look at everything and so by looking at everything you just have a a bigger picture and you can assemble a narrative
you can try and understand when malicious things are happening at that super high level because you're seeing what's going on with the engineering workstations you're seeing we are seeing what happens with the network we're seeing what's being done on the applications um we're seeing what's happening you know with the firewalls
yeah so we just take it all in and you know it's not it's not um it's not new to like oh do something with a much bigger data set that's really what we're doing here can you break down uh some of the difference between Espionage projects and sabotage projects are there any differences are there any risks uh you know State actors that are
prioritizing one over the other right now yeah this is like the thing that most people don't understand they'll say like oh you know things that are happening right now it's just Espionage the thing is like in the course of an operation like you do the Espionage first it allows you to map the network map the systems and then sometimes
people will like just leave a little leave a little something there in case they want to do sabotage later they want yep pop it okay so like yeah there's like lots of Espionage happening on critical networks like gee what's that preparation for sure that makes sense uh what What's been your read on our response to deep seek broadly do you
think that us companies have been taking it seriously enough there's this you know General lens from some some some of the tech community that says it's you know it's open source you know it's not sort of the the same type of risk as Tik Tock uh what's your read on it yeah look a major frustration that I have is that we get a bunch of these
Cutting Edge companies and then you know almost certainly you have foreign foreign actors not just the Chinese like many other foreign actors come in I mean you can read the papers that came out of like the Twitter yeah buyout you know transition to X and they basically are like yeah we had foreign we had foreign
Intel Services foreign governments like operating inside you know X forly known as Twitter um I think that's happening at a bunch of our companies I think it's a huge problem huge Counter Intelligence problem because the question is like what are they manipulating like are they putting back doors in there are they changing content are they changing
uh you don't know and a lot of the companies many of which my friends have worked at um they don't even have a way to think about this and also obviously like it's not politically correct to talk about this like hey maybe we shouldn't hire that foreign National that went to the like you know Military College of their respective nation and
whose uncle is like the deputy chief of their Intel service do that yeah so so speaking uh the the new CEO of Intel that got announced today you know we covered this earlier on the show you may not have seen it has invested over the last you know 20 years hundreds of millions of dollars into you know Chinese tech companies do you
foresee any sort of like push back into bring somebody like that on to run um you know he's not a Chinese National but born in Malaysia grew up in Singapore but invested in the Chinese Semiconductor Company exited the position in 2022 I believe and now running Intel look you know I don't know the situation specifically uh obviously Chinese companies are legally
required to be dual use like they've architected their entire economy to serve the Chinese Communist party it just means that I'm super wary whenever you see folks that have been allowed to make profit out of that system I don't know his scenario specifically running Intel I certainly hope that um you know I certainly hope that everything's on
the up and up I have no reason to think that it's not but whenever I look at you know those types of interactions between you know what I think the the United States and and Western allies would call like the free market and the Chinese Communist party I'm just super wary as a whole staying on the topic of China do
you think we've learned at all from the sort of uh DJI just sort of blitzing and taking the entire us drone Market do you think there's a real risk that they're able to run that same Playbook back with unit tree in the sort of humanid space or are we going to be smart enough to not let them put a robot in every
American's home they are absolutely taking that they're absolutely taking that Playbook and trying to replicate it as broadly as possible for years I've been telling screaming to anyone that'll listen on X or wherever else like we we should ban DJI from doing business in United States full stop full stop everyone's like oh all the alternatives
are like more expensive or this that or the other well yeah supply and demand will allow the market to correct over time but it's a huge problem like they exactly know by the way like if you don't think that senior CCP Intel officials have the ability to just walk into DJI headquarters and be like give me everything you know about the
Topography of the United States like you're smoking crack they probably have access to it right now so every time these things fly anything that get transmitted into the cloud whose cloud is it where is that cloud located you know what access do uh you know the Chinese Intel Services have to it military have to it like yeah all that
stuff's like in the wild what about personal cyber security uh what what do you recommend to the average listener just to kind of beef up your own uh opsac yeah it's tough um so for normal folks I just say use the big cloud use the big providers that's like the the Google the microsofts ETC enable two Factor authentication I think probably
the biggest thing that I don't hear a lot is whenever you get a message like an email saying like hey like your bank says this or that delete the email and then go straight to log into the service sure sure sure right and that's like the Mind space that you want to be in because like these guys are social engineers
they know the language to get you to click the link and that's what they're trying to do they're going to put malicious software onto your laptop onto your phone whatever tons of fishing attacks at X right now uh and those are getting more and more convincing you've seen some people uh leak it out usually just for meme coins launches basically
but can imagine being uh famed investor Kleiner per launched a meme coin um I wanna I wanna there's a couple topics I want to get through one uh you know I'm sure you uh can only make sort of General predictions here but do you think this whole Tik Tock thing gets resolved in the next month you know there's sort of uh there there was an
initial date for early April that it was supposed to you know sort of change hands but you just we haven't been seeing that much new news about it at this point there's plenty of people that want to buy it you know oracle Microsoft Alexis soan and like there's so many different Capital groups like chomping at the bit to you know be the be the buy
side on this deal it's just a question of can you twist their arm enough to get the sale done I think but what do you think Josh yeah they absolutely want to retain control of the algorithm because that's like the prize is the ability to like inject ideas into the Youth of the United States or elsewhere in the world
um and so I think that's going to be I hope that's a major sticking point with the way in which it resolves out at the same time you have to remember that this deal has the attention of the president of the United St States who is at the same time negotiating with his counterparty XI Jin Pang over a trade relationship that you know there are TW
trillions of dollars in the offing around it and so I learned this over four years of working for him like you just have to trust the boss he's playing a game that like very few humans have ever been able to play which is like the most high-risk the most you know impactful game of like one nation in the world and so look I
hope he's able to negotiate it in a way in which uh you know preserves cognitive uh sovereignty um there's a lot going on and I'm sort of taking my foot off the gas on it it's not a focus let's let's kind of uh pivot to a topic that's you know definitely I'm sure top of mind for you guys uh uh reindustrialization
uh The Vibes are good the work is you know maybe starting feels like it's starting certainly ongoing job's not finished are we doing enough uh it seems like there's a you know sort of top there there obviously is a top down uh directive to invest in America but uh you know there there's been you know on the topic of China China will give you
know companies you know very very low or zero interest rate loans to do development we're not quite there yet I think deep seek has taken one of those yeah yeah deep seek turned down all their Venture Capital interest and said H yeah we're just going to take a 0% loan from the Bank of China I love it um so yeah what what like it it
doesn't it's almost like it's not an impossible task but it's a very difficult one are we doing enough do we need to do more uh what's your take yeah so in my four years at the White House I ended up taking over this port not or not even taking over but owning this port folio of like technology Supply chains and it's it
it's hard you know the Chinese are liter just like you guys said they're out there giving these Z percent loans to these companies to try and build what they call national champions and so and so how do we compete I think the answer is just the market you know and I don't mean that in a sort of like lame kind of way like oh the free market will
take care of it but like there is an incred in amount of dynamism in the American system and in the American markets so like the Chinese can certainly go out and try and drive attention or Monopoly towards their chosen you know national champions but we've got a bunch of people that want to make a ton of money here in the United
States a bunch of people from around the world that come here because they want to make a ton of money here in the United States I think that presents us with different advantages and so I think that you know when it comes to financing there are lots of tools in the toolbx there's the defense production act there's you know DOD procurement there's
a whole bunch of things I do know that the team right now is thinking about all of them uh again having sat in the seat you know I'm not going to take shots at anyone uh not that I have any shots to take just that like I'm confident that they're thinking about it I'm confident that they know you know what's available
and I think we're seeing great stuff already what do you think about the debate between supply side and demand side stimulus and these projects like uh the chips obviously $50 billion I think eight billion was going to go to Intel uh provided some Milestones but Ben Thompson has been uh advocating for flipping that around and instead just
saying hey let's have the US government say we're buying chips that are made in America yeah if you show up with chips that are made in America we are the buyer and then maybe someone else will buy them maybe Google will buy them maybe Apple will buy them but we but you can guarantee that there's demand but we don't care about what's happening on the
supply side as long as it's happening in America do you like that change do you like that V2 thinking yeah I love it I love it I think you know right now um I've heard a lot of strange things about how chips act has played out I haven't followed it as closely as if I was you know some analyst covering the stuff for
the banks but I mean it was one of the approaches that we pushed was this like look you just have to have it made in America that's it show again show up and we buy yep I think that's one of the things on the table and I hope they that's cool uh what's uh just pivoting back uh I don't know if you're in California right now or up at the
northern office but uh how do we solve the Wildfire crisis uh in the in in California right it's the sort of uh very complicated issue you've worked in government you know you're very in tune with with what's happening in hard tech it feels like yeah there's a public role you know to play there's a private markets role to play there's obviously
the whole Insurance side uh but you're sticking it out here in in California I hope so what what do you what's your position on you know what we need to do as a state I me we got to let the forestry guys like actually operate you know it's insane to hear them talk about like what was going on in Altadena where
like years it took them to file these crazy applications with like 15 different state boards letting them do controlled Burns um and brush clearing and they get said no to like we just got to let these guys do their job like forestry management is a solved problem right let these guys get out there the Europeans laugh at us the president
talks about this all the time but is literally true they don't have these types of catastrophic forest fires because they have good forestry management there's an amazing account um man MN made films on Twitter you've seen this guy he did he did a film he took a red camera and he became one of these um uh what are the what are the fire the um smoke
jumpers oh wow a smoke jumper and he he did this amazing film follow him on X um but he talks about it it's like look yeah these places are prone to fire but if you let the forestry management folks do their job like you know you could manage it uh and the same thing with the water stuffs like the solutions are
known like there's weird block in the way in which water comes into California and the President's trying to deal with some of that St stuff like the state of California like people know what the answer is they're just not being allowed to do it because crazy weird bureaucracies that's right the movie was called Hot Shot I remember
seeing a trailer for this and being blown away by the visuals I need to watch this movie this looks fantastic available on Amazon Prime Apple Google Play go check it out folks uh anything else I think that's all I got thanks for stopping by I'd love to you know we'd love to have you on when you know there's there's a bunch
of these topics cyber security correspondent you're our new cyber cyber security correspondent or brother depending on or just uh morning PumpUp speech yeah just hop on just tell us good morning we're going to win then you can hop off get get to the rest of your day we've been starting the show with by singing a little bit so if you ever want
to like you know create like an Anthem or anything we sing We need good mantras we need good mantras we have a few Temple of Technology Fortress of Finance capital of capital but good morning we're going to win works too see guys thanks for coming on thanks for coming on it's great cool we have five minutes until let's hit a couple posts let's hit
a couple posts what do we have in the queue uh we went oh so this is a crazy story from this account Rob so he says this is a tiny Niche story but it may actually be the most catastrophic thing to happen globally yesterday bold start bold start I'm not going to go out uh on that with him but judge of that we will
desperately need politicians okay so the headline here is that um the this uh Media Company New Scientist has used the Freedom of Information laws to obtain the chat GPT records of Peter Kyle the UK's technology secretary and what is believed to be a first world first use of such legislation interesting so uh Rob here says we will desperately need
politicians to be able to use AI advisers to keep up with the intense pace of events that recursively self improving AI agents will bring AI advice will improve in scale proportionately to the social impact AI is having given giving governments some shot at keeping up but if any conversation with AI can be extracted using uh Freedom of
Information laws while advice from humans given verbally cannot politicians and civil servants will be hugely biased towards worse and slower human advice and Analysis they'll fear looking stupid for asking clarifying question or outrage if the AI advises some UNC course of action just as we need humans in government to be able to have some private
conversations we need humans to be able to get AI advice without journalists being able to publish the transcript these conversations M uh must urgently be carbed out of foi legislation um so anyways interesting interesting point yeah you know you want a pol politicians uh have a lot of pressure they have hard jobs you want
them to be able to like you know have their their little friend companion like uh maybe they're using obious it's like sometimes they might just say you got this you know but other times they might ask you know hey uh hey you need to brush up on your linear algebra yeah like what what is uh when what's this
maximum speed limit in like he didn't know he didn't know that Ma he should have known that yeah interesting uh I wonder I mean there are ways to use llms in more secure and less uh Foya uh ways I mean certainly you can run your own llama or deep seek instance a computer George Hots has a project Tiny Box uh but I mean even if you just
have a you know a new generation Mac uh it's now big enough that you can run and powerful enough and the models have been condensed enough that you can run them locally that obviously makes it harder for them to be uh seized uh without your permission also you could see a an llm or an AI Service uh you know basically
built on top of something like signal where there's end to-end encryption where you know if you're using an unencrypted Network the government can go and and ask the tech company to they have the keys so they can unlock the servers and and pass over the records um but that that's not the way it works on Signal and other uh end to ending crypted
communication app so you could imagine a world that where someone is vending an llm through a an endtoend encrypted service not saving the records and uh and offering a different service feels like a niche but potentially important use case uh but it'll be interesting to see where it goes I mean this is actually maybe the bull case for Apple
because Apple's whole thing has been endtoend encryption everywhere uh including the the messages app if I'm talking to you on on iMessage Apple cannot see those and even if the FBI shows up and says we have a warrant unlock Jordy John and jordy's uh latest memes we want to read them they've been posting uh bangers back and forth uh we
want to access them Apple doesn't have the keys and apple if they're running the llm locally on your device it's locked behind your pass for if a if a government employee has a government phone shouldn't if the government be able to like see that itself right I mean if you have if you have the passcode to get into the phone you have
full access so it needs to be on a on a personal device that can't be monitored in order to truly but then of course the flip side is that then you know uh Bad actors can use the encrypted and this has been the the Privacy debate forever yeah yeah and open AI has historically just been uh very careful around anything um anything political right
they don't want to be positioned as you know open AI influence the election or things like that but these are some of the big problems that they're going to have to let's go to Blake Robbins he has some random thoughts we love these posts from Blake uh he says there might be an entirely New Generation that now thinks
of Nokia as a Drake song that's funny uh two so sort of insane how much mobile games like Candy Crush Leverage haptics so as you're using the game it's vibrating uh kind of an underrated way to increase engagement and I guess decrease regretted user seconds or just keep people addicted uh and then number three whoever runs Stakes clipping
strategy network is on a different level playing for D chess I'm sure you've seen those stake ads all over yeah so the thing that that that's been relevant to X is they've taken over or they're partnering with these accounts that post these these uh like viral videos viral videos and or just posts images things like that and if you look at the bottom it'll
say like this post is presented by Stak so it's like very kind tiny logo it's just Ste logo and and and every time one of those goes viral there's a community note this is against the terms of service you can't proot this this is undisclosed ad but this still goes viral still gets a ton of Impressions yeah uh I had a fourth
random thought funny well so he's bringing up Stak stake has like this massive partnership with Drake and so oh yeah they do they keep doing like stunts and Drake St and Drake and Drake No but I mean the the the very uh the funny thing is in this one post you have him calling out that a whole new generation
doesn't realize no Nokia is a Drake song which implies that and Drake partnering with stake means that Drake is just marketing you know basically gambling products to the youth um and uh he should clean it up should look in the mirror clean it up well I have a fourth random thought here you should get an eight sleep nights that fuel your best
days turn any bed into the ultimate sleeping experience go to eight sleep.com tvpn and get $350 off the Pod uh I slept very well last night uh which I'm glad I got a 98 because this debate is about to be tense it's going be difficult um it all could come crashing I got a 94 you beat me I slept a lot good night for you um n n
hours first 21 minutes how is that even possible that's a long time I mean you I put up some crazy numbers you put up some crazy numbers um and uh and but you got to be well rested for these debates they're hot they're aggressive it I wouldn't be surprised if so leson is not in the waiting room yet I guess Seth is but uh I wouldn't be surprised if Sam
was just taking a power nap on his be surprised yeah uh you know to to just sort of get really into that sort of we bring in Seth do some pregame strategy I want to hear strategy I want to hear how he's thinking about uh going Toe to Toe let's bring him in into the Temple of Technology The Fortress of Finance hey good to see you welcome
stream how you doing oh you got the custom background with the billboard there yeah I'm I'm starting with a little psychological warfare okay that's that's my strategy just get him get him a little uncomfortable yeah what does it say it says lesson South uh shoot lesson a message not Seth Greenberg yeah very AI
generated it says it says got a weird meme coin shoot less than a message not so it's cut off it's cut off over here but uh yeah give us a breakdown how did we wind up here so um about a year ago or maybe six months ago Les and I had a public debate about um you know is the AI opportunity for startups or incumbents yep and it
got heated um and so yeah we've kind of just been going back and forth and then and then he actually took out a physical billboard on the 101 like with all like amongst all these like advertisements for AI companies that says AI is not your Moote like love slow kind of thing Y and then I just kind of tweeted back at him saying I'm
gonna like take out a billboard on the other side okay um and then it yeah yeah so then he he lesson threw up new ad yesterday that says got an AI startup idea shoot Seth Rosenberg a message not slow so this is basically the Drake and Kendrick of of allocators uh and the Tupac Biggie of this era really exactly
um no but it's great it's great to have you on uh Sam's Sam's a fierce debater we were talking with Logan Bartlett earlier moderated debate so we're going to try to keep it going to try to keep it very uh very keep it tight keep it tight cuz he's known to filibuster a little bit when you get him going right so you got you guys got to help me just
cut Sam off okay yeah yeah yeah well I mean he might not even show up and then you win by default yeah exactly it's a forfeit yeah what uh yeah why don't why don't like since we have some time why give some background on your introduce yourself some background uh for the for the listeners sure well so Sam Actually
hired me at Facebook in 2013 way so we've gone way back crazy wow yeah exactly so I was like this young Analyst at Goldman Sachs like spending 100 hours a week in spreadsheets and then Sam invited me to this back room dinner in New York talking about the future of the world and this is back when Facebook had a little less baggage it was still like
a startup energy like future of the world giving individuals a voice like Arab Spring all that and I was just super inspired by it um and so it was like a 4H hour dinner conversation I'm like Sam like I defin like that was the first time I met him but you know he's quirky and Future itic and so I'm like I need to do this so I spent like any
spare time I had like learning how to code and just like getting up to speed on Tech world and then have just been in in that world ever since how long were you at Facebook yeah I was there for about four years I I led the separation of messenger into its own app and then David Marcus came on to lead it and Stan came on and built kind of an Empire
around it and then I was running post project Titan because it wasn't Titan like the the whole project to like put everything together and then you kind of that was after I left that was after I left this was this was the opposite of that was the separation yeah this was back when it was like Facebook Chat that's the game at a hyperscaler you
just break it apart put it back together full employment for PMS in the valley yeah exactly so I was there for phase one okay and then you went straight to Greylock or what was your next move no no so I was running the uh product for the developer platform at Facebook which was like AI Bots messenger Bots it's
like the hottest thing in San Valley for like four months before everyone realized it didn't work because we were seven years away from lm's actually you know being released yeah I those Bots lots of business logic lots of if then statements exactly dressed up with a nice UI every once in a while but all right we got your former uh your former
boss or at least the guy that hired you is in the waiting room now so we can bring him in bring him in and uh bring them into the Temple of Technology The Fortress of Finance the capital Capital uh and if they if they get out of hand I'm going to be ringing this gong telling you hurry it up finish what you're saying no filibustering on this
debate you know Sam you almost forfeited by being late I was in the waiting room I'm sitting there I I wore my team Canada uh you Canadian team Canada like Archer for you Seth yeah thank you I appreciate that I I support your 51st state yeah hey I'm American now I kind of supported too honestly there you go
that's great well welcome to the stream welcome to the debate uh should we do some some opening arguments what what lay down the the the general uh the what is the actual point that we're debating here uh sustaining versus disruptive innovation for artificial intelligence is that kind of where you guys are differing the most I think the debate is
that Sam has too much disposable income to waste on billboards oh okay yeah so Sam what's the ROI been so far are you I don't know Seth how many how many AI pitches have you gotten from my billboard actually honestly like the the the inbox is full yeah goant welcome you're welcome I see no debate here I'm very happy to send Seth all the AI
pitches and life is good and to be clear this this debate is presented by adquick the number one way to buy Billboards on the 101 yes if you're trying to Duke it out with a rival get on adquick get a billboard it's underrated to take you know debates from the timeline to the 101 you just you know air it all air it all out um but yeah so so Sam uh you
know we had we had lesson on the show I think last Friday uh Broadley you know talking about opportunities and Ai and the whole kind of full spectrum uh maybe yeah I mean I I don't even know necessarily where to start you guys were the ones that well okay here's what I'll I'll Seth Seth and I have been debating this for years let me let me try to Tee
It Up which is I for several years so I try to be self-consistent have been very Pro that AI is going to make the big big big platforms a ton of money um and it's going to be really good for small businesses but it is a terrible place to hunt for startups right it's a great way to lose a lot of money on startups now I
my refinement of that which which I will give as a refinement from my like original is I do really believe in what I'll call AI cherry on top businesses which is businesses that are good that there's a sweetener because of the efficiency in AI but broadly speaking when people come in and Pitch AI my answer is pass please go call Seth
Seth's answer I think is please call me okay Seth what you got say so I think that teas it up well so I I'll give you two examples of where I think massive new businesses can be built that are let's say AI native um I think one is uh like networks and marketplaces based on new uh democratization of being able to create new types of
content so like the analogy on the phone is you now have a camera every in everyone's pocket the first wave of apps was like camera filter apps and then Instagram no the first wave of app fart apps fart apps and like drinking a beer app beer drinking fair fair but like the first camera apps were like you know
just like little fun tools you could do with the camera but then the real mobile first business were things like Instagram and snap right which basically created networks around democrati ation of creation of new content and I think if you think about AI like what new types of content can now be created by everyone there's a few examples one are
games like what's the next Roblox two is music you know is sunno going to have like a consumption experience so there going to be a new type of network there three is software right just generally I don't know if if there's enough out there to build like a you know web app store around productivity or vertical sass or whatever but there's basically
basically democratization of new content type and I think you can create a marketplace around that think you could build a big business so I mean go ahead I guess to like maybe push you a bit further there like specifically around sunno and I don't have no insight into what they're actually doing but if I create a great
song onso don't I want to share that with like the most amount of of people so I just like take that to YouTube or or X and wouldn't that be an argument that you know like the the value just kind of continues to just like anchor around the sort of distribution platform yeah I think that would be um you know a base case or kind of like
smaller outcome forso if it just kind of gets relegated into the creative tool but I think if like the number and quality of things that are actually created on Theo platform starts to exceed or at least like take a meaningful but separate piece of of the market then they they could just create a more closed ecosystem system where the
only way way to get that content is onso that's extremely unlikely I mean the thing that I think is like that I would say I buy is I'd say that there the in general the medium is the message right and so you have in a lot of places and so when you have a new tech by the way Sam Sam made me read that book as onboarding for Facebook I did I used to
control I used to have the distinction of controlling the reading list which I invented for all onboarded PMs and I hired Seth and then made him read was it it was it snow crash snow crash okay um snow crash was well before Oculus on the required reading list Fant a few others um but look I mean I think here's what I
was going to say is um I do if you think about like a lot of what the internet is people like to think about it as a technology right or a lot what it really is is like an information economy or content economy and like I think if you start thinking about things on economic terms of like producers consumers like
what's the what's the holistic picture of that you do get some really interesting Frameworks for talking about AI so I'll give an example what is Facebook or what is social media it really is a Content pump Right There Are Rules there's an economy established with it that economy then produces a certain type of content pumping out of
humans that otherwise wouldn't have been pumped out and then recirculates and share and creates an economy around it if you said hey AI creates some new affordances that makes it cheaper to pump information like all of a sudden we can Frack humans right in a new way and by fracking them there's some sort of like new content type that comes out
that is super compelling and super different sure like maybe that there's something there but I think the the the most likely outcome by a mile when you think about products is it just turns out that like most products and the platforms already exist it's all about getting laid or getting paid these AI is one of the greatest extensions of
existing platforms you could imagine just makes everything better and just like fracking you kind of get new content or cheaper content from people because AI makes it easier but it all flows to the same pipelines right and the money is not in the fracking because the fracking itself is commodity yeah I definitely agree that
the fracking is commodity meaning the creation the question is can you Frack something new that then creates a new network right and I just think it's extremely unlikely because the pipelines exist right like there's no like what is the new like you don't it's just oil you're does that make it a good VC bet if even
if it's even if there's like a you know 5% chance but the new network is you know I mean that's what happened Tik Tok right like it was first just a lip-syncing app and you would repost that content elsewhere and then they bootstrapped a network on top of it and became a very good outcome for I guess the CCP but uh you
know imagine new content type that was a new content like Snap doesn't Harry Potter Balenciaga videos couldn't that be the the the lipsyncing video of this era I feel like I'm a Democrat with CNN on my side here got the host on my side but we're just guiding the conversation you know I think you're both uh I think you're both wrong no I'm kidding the
problem the problem with AI in general and I think the entire AI discussion is um I always like to point out it's like the the average of infinity and zero is infinity right and so VCS aren't very good at math but they can do that one and so the problem is you say okay this is so disruptive that even though the
likely outcome is zero because there's like no math you can do on this and Market big then you're like well I'll pay anything because maybe it's a thing right and like I think that's actually what's going on in the industry a lot I think it's quite bad because it leads to this like complete lack of like thoughtfulness and discipline it's just
like the most rudimentary math on what happens I look a lot um there are actually projects I'll give you an example of something I actually believe is like new content that can EX exist because of AI that not only I've invested and I helped start right which is we work on this thing called Merit first uh with Joe Lonsdale and his team
we have some good announcements that'll happen Sam here's the thing about it here's the basic here's the basic setup for it and it is it is an interesting AI oriented business because you say look the way you hire people to date in most worlds is credential based you're like ah you went to Harvard you studied this thing you got this check box now you're
in my pipeline hell I hired Seth because we used to go to New York and say we want to talk smartest people from Bane McKenzie Goldman BCG uh and and Morgan that was it that was like the entire thing like we don't know how to look at everyone we're just going to like go call those people and we'll like pick some of them right that was how we did
hiring um at least in the alternative PM hiring we were doing um what is way better is to do it based on what you can actually do based on tests based on you know forget credentials I don't care how you got go to something like what like show me what you can do here's the problem is if you go to a most hiring
man say hey hire based on tests you have three problems one is they like well I don't know how to design a good test right like what is a good test for this role it's actually pretty hard to figure that out and make it me meaningful two how do I know you're not cheating and three the biggest most non- obvious once you have like 10,000 applications for
something you're screwed because you can't possibly actually grade all those tests right unless it's like a multiple choice which is like not sophisticated so does AI have leverage on that absolutely does that mean that there's like a new way to think about a human interaction like how do you hire people because AI exists absolutely like that
is the type of thing but it's not you're not investing in the AI you're investing in like a new way or a new approach to hiring which happens to leverage AI right and I think there is an important distinction there uh well yeah I'm I'm glad I already got hired so so I don't have to compete with yeah you don't have to do
yeah I don't have to compete with 20 other people but um the that that's actually kind of the second big bucket Sam of AI opportunities that to me are very obvious which is just AI opening up new markets that were historically uh owned by labor right and right now you're talking about recruiting massive industry it's mostly human Le um there's
a long list of others right where technology is now taking labor span whether it's legal whether it's accounting compliance we have a company in our portfolio called Green light that's growing super fast and it's just you know these large banks in fintex have like thousands of compliance analysts that just go through checkboxes
and write reports and so you're competing with bpos in these cases well kind of but I think this is something you to be really careful about because this goes back to the whole like what are you actually investing in and is this an AI company like the one of the big memes right now in venture capital is oh we should like buy accounting
firms and make them robots yeah and by the way I'm not doing I'm not doing the rollup and it's like I mean we've actually done a bunch of rollups that we do make sense but like this is one in particular I think is really stupid because it people don't understand the point of accountants right the point of an accountant is not like you could have
a robot you could have a you know some fancy AI that has a 1% error rate or even a 0.1% error rate on your taxes your accountant might be running a 3% error rate who do you hire you hire the human you know why cuz you know you're really hiring with an accountant you're hiring someone so that when the IRS is
like you up your taxes you're I don't know talk to Steve right and like but you could still do that you can still sell software to Big account like 1.6 million accountants right now send them the chat gb.com link so the basic point is like there's a lot of jobs that people want to like o machine can automate and you're like you don't
understand like this is a liability shifting thing like most a lot of human jobs are not actually about doing the thing they're about shifting liability and responsibility right that's actually I agree that the job will change to its Essence which which is like trust and sales right but that just means that that individual guy Steve who everyone
trusts to put a rubber stamp can do 10 times the amount of business with the basic but but every the problem is the AI itself is commodity and everyone will have it and like that's not where the Leverage is so you're not really investing in the AI business right you're still investing in the accounting business Steve's business right and
everyone has the same level that it's it's a classic war of attrition where like you you the and I just don't think this is a place where like unlike a where you're going to like make money on the arms dealing because the arms dealing is all commodity the question is does Steve like is the software that Steve's using to leverage himself is
that open Ai and chat BT it doesn't is that wrers or is that it doesn't matter it's all commodity okay how do you map this to the mobile wave because we were just talking to Logan Bartlett about this it's kind of the classic uh innovators dilemma sustaining Innovation versus disruptive innovation and with mobile it's like it was it did feel like
a sustaining innovation in that the mobile Salesforce was just Salesforce and yet a lot of VCS made a lot of money betting on mobile companies if they got into WhatsApp you don't think so they didn't they didn't make that much money on it I mean I think Silicon Valley has a story that Venture capitalists like to
tell LPS which is every X years the whole thing gets reshuffled and there's all this money to be made it's right like the going from shrink rck software to Internet that was a big deal right that was a paradigm shifting broke the machine thing you know I would actually argue that the shift to mobile
was not disruptive at all right like you have all the same winners they're just bigger right um I would argue that the shift to Cloud was barely disruptive right um and it just turns out that like there's there's a very big difference between things things that are so important in Paradigm shifting they break the incumbents and there's huge
opportunities for wi like that's why crypto is really interesting think what you will of it it's EXT crypto is extremely hostile to incumbents right as like a concept we can talk about how it's being Now co-opted by incumbents but like in general like it fundamentally is whereas I could not think of a more classically extending
Innovation than AI right it just makes the rich richer when's the Sam lesson mag 7 ETF coming then if you're so bullish on the no you got to buy jelly jelly well first of all say the mag like I would actually argue I I was I because I like to lick the cookie on these things yeah uh is like I I was like I think you know if you go back two years
like pitching the like these are the five that are going to win an AI and it's all the same ones that already exist I mean it you know so I'm into the mag s thing I also would say like when people ask me like my AI investing strategy I'm going say like thank God I held on to some Facebook stock right like that's the answer it's
like yeah what about the idea that like Apple's slipping or Google's not shipping fast enough like this does create opportunities for entrepreneurs at least to build a company that gets acquired or something like they're not going to get acquired they're just going to get copied here's what I'd say like I I don't think the AI I think here's
maybe some common ground with Sam I don't think AI is going to kill incumbents in favor of startups but I do think it it opens up new markets and yes they're outliers but that's kind of what we're in the business of doing and funding and um like for mobile yes like it didn't kill Facebook it didn't kill Airbnb but it created Uber it created
door Dash it created instacart it created Tik Tok right it created snap it created Instagram uh created a WhatsApp and so these are tens of billions hundreds of billions of of of value that that were kind of mobile first and it's a similar thing which is like what are the new capabilities GPS camera video can you create can you use that as
a hook to then create a sustainable business whether it's a network you know I agree with you Sam that like AI buy like doing an API called open AI is obviously not defensible but can you use it as a hook to then build a real business and I just think the answer is in almost all places no right like I think it's a thing it's just like oh
everyone uses it everything gets leveled up you know like T think about um incumbents and apple look apple is Comic we talked about this last week like the Apple stuff is like pretty funny right because it's so bad right um but it's not going to make me buy an Android phone right like and so you're like so they have a hell of a lot of time to
figure out something like it's we are a long way away from that being a real issue for them even if it's pretty funny um what about the more sclerotic Industries I mean you're thinking about uh you know like management Consultants seem to be printing money on AI just strapping on AI pitches onto a legacy businesses as I see like oh I go to IBM
or something with uh oh I want to re-platform my app and I just need a bunch of programmers to do that it feels like an AI native company there could potentially scale up and get really big I don't know I mean like look Accenture is g to make a lot of money shortterm on Trans on the stuff right short term the
problem is exenter is mostly in the business of Bo Outsourcing and they're going to eat themselves in doing that right and so it's very it's going to be a very different world for them in terms of how they navigate this good good any but like anyone who sells business Consulting is going to do pretty well in
a period where like it transformation for a little bit it's just like these are not VC backed businesses like these are consulting firms that will make money for a little bit right um I mean it seems like you're just super bearish on VC as an asset class like should Founders just go and build uh just just go and build a you lifestyle business or
something or or pick some different capital structure so go for it Seth yeah no I mean AI is also great I think AI is just an accelerant for everything it makes large companies more profitable it opens up new markets for startups whether it's Services businesses or new networks and it's uh it's also great for lifestyle businesses you can there's a
long tale of random problems that you can now solve really specifically with a very small team so I the way I would phrase it is related a little differently which is in life the middle usually drops out right and I think AI is a great example of dropping out the middle like no one want being a there's no such thing as being a 10 billion
public company anymore it's just like a dumb place to be no one cares right you either want to be hyperscaler right which is a great I mean it's a great place like most of the market says AI interesting where put money for AI right and like that's like been the the seek and that's why you've seen like the mag
s and particular things like Facebook just Crush it cuz you're like no liability tons of upside like easy bet like why ises everyone buy Nvidia they're like we don't know how to invest in this Nvidia seems fine or like we don't know how to invest in this let's just buy Power right like because we're not sure how this plays out so like the
big will keep getting bigger and they'll be like a massive and then on the very small end you're like think about lifestyle look I the reason we have a Creator fund right the reason that we do a bunch of stuff at the low end is I I totally buy the thesis that you're going to see individuals that have a lot of trust and brand and community and deeply
understand a niche um do things you haven't seen before like I I buy the one person billion doll company thing like I think that's real with like with the leverage you have I think the key is you just have to have the right capital for the mission you're on um and having the wrong capital is a really bad place and
by the way the worst Capital you can have I personally think is being a subscale company competing with hypers hyperscalers using Venture Capital right that's it's like a recipe for total disaster because the hyperscalers have orders of magnitude more money and time right and you're just like you're kind of truly bringing a knife to a
gunfight isn't it possible that we wind up looking back on this in a few years and think like oh we just hadn't thought of what the Uber for AI is how do you think about the Uber story with mobile to you know today like uber was hard to predict when the iPhone dropped I mean already for AI like what's the Uber for AI cursor like the next Roblox no those
like they're fine they're fine I I think like it's interesting why do you think cursor is interesting like it's cursor's I like it I use it as a product I don't see it as a good business I just think like it's the classic like startups need to get distribution before incumbents innovate and now because these tools are so
powerful you're actually able to get distribution as a new company very quickly so if you're first market with the best product then you can start leaning into all the other things that kind of give you defensibility I don't know I that's true the the thing is people are applying Network thinking to what's fundamentally just a technology
right it's not a there's no network there's no lock in not a network there's a lot of prods that become very sticky because they think so I think the whole point of AI is the switching cost for almost all this stuff goes to zero right and because switching cost is zero there's just no I mean people like I have I use um chorus if you guys play
with chorus no it's awesome haven't used it it's great it's basically just like a desktop app and you plug all the llms into it right like you have keys for all of them and like I don't care like use the best one marginally when a new one comes out you know the only defensible thing it is is there's so many
llm models at this point I'm happy to give someone the job of actually researching them all and deciding which one to send a specific query too like there's some sort of aggregation value there a little bit for now but I don't know one fun thought exercise on the social side is that you know we went through this generation you know social media
was great initially because people were like oh it's actually more interesting to see what my friends are kind of talking about and doing versus just like traditional media which is like random people and then it was like the Kim Kardashian era of you know it's more interesting to like follow a famous person's life and uh it's it's possible
to imagine a world where just being in a version of Instagram where everyone's a b and they all like you know are either polarizing or exactly aligned with your views and there's just like this kind of constant stream and you get everybody gets a thousand likes on their post and they post get like my line on this has
been that the for for 20 years the way you start a social network is you say who do you want to follow and the way to start a social network today is say who do you want to follow you right um is like the the inversion that you could see like I'd actually argue Twitter is already doing this like Twitter I think is intention my I'm not I inside
information my sense is it is intentionally full of bots right because people are lonely people want responses it's clearly full they want the we talked about this Sam as like a new Social Network yes so you're like look it doesn't you clearly there just aren't mathematically enough humans to fulfill people's need for like validation so
like sure throw a bunch of machines in the mix so that people have more validation floating this is why I debate Sam I just want more Billboards I think I think one one example that is way too easy to like or or way too early to make a call is you have um so Seth you guys are in uh toome which started out is like the ability to
like generate uh slides which like people spend a ton of time all day long making slide decks like there's probably billions of dollars spent just producing slide decks in the US for various use cases uh they recently sort of pivoted into a space around um you know automating sales research and outbound you can imagine like you know like a
real test will be can toome compete with uh Salesforce when Salesforce has this sort of dis you know Army of people like jamming uh comparable products you know uh and actually for you know there was some news in the information I think yesterday that Salesforce is basically saying if you don't pay for agent force
we're like raising your your your regular you know rates on the CRM side like 3x I can already give you the answer let's say his company but I love Keith I really respect a great guy um used to work with me too same team is um no way can compete on this but I'll go even a step further which is this entire industry of outbound goes away this is
where we talk about the real displacement of what's going on so first I mean I have several portfolio companies they're calling us saying you know we have this thing we tried this thing in in AI but now all the platforms are just bundling it and giving it away and we and we can't compete cuz even if we're better so like that's happening
all the places and you're like duh of course that's going to happen this is an easy tack on but the the step two which is where the really interesting social displacement comes is everyone's excited about oh I can use AI to like customize outbound sales or something you're like your inbox is now worthless because once
all the sales are customized you can't tell what's real and what's fake that entire economy collapses right so I'd actually go the more likely outcome is a no toome can't beat Salesforce but two even if they could that entire emotion goes away because of AI yeah look I don't think you need to be beat Salesforce to be very successful and to
find a segment of the market that wants a more modern product that you know understands your business has everything in one place and can actually make your sales seem a lot more effective with a more modern architecture so I think to is going to be successful uh because again you can think about this hypothetically or you can talk to
customers especially in different segments and just see where the pain is but I one thing I'll agree with Sam on is I think we're in an outlier business you you have to be very selective I think people who are overpaying for things that are not durable at like crazy prices that's not a game that we're playing and and not a game that I
believe in either I think you know backing like amazing product Builders and technologists going after um either existing markets that need to be totally rearchitecturing you know a very long taale of really large markets uh I I still think there's like a massive amount of value to be made I just think that it's such a
different like I'll give you an example like I think it's of you don't want to back generic Facebook PMS anymore who know Ai and product right because they don't know anything right and like it's just commod if anything the iron is it's all getting all those things are getting hyper commoditized in terms of and AI only commoditized it faster ter how do
you build and what is a product it stuff doesn't like if you told me and we look some of this too you have a truly unique Market Insight you understand a market that no one else gets because you've been a specialist for 20 years in it or whatever by the way the tools of building and and the paradigms have changed so quickly there's an
opportunity to build something new yeah there's interesting stuff there we do businesses that are AI quote unquote enabled all the time that fit that pattern but those people are generally not building quote unquote AI tools they're just like it's kind of like saying like they're not building Cloud companies or internet companies they're
just building great companies that happened to leverage technology okay I agree like there was like an AI conference last week and I'm like this concept of an AI conference is going to last like six months because eventually you know it's just it's like building internet business computer everything everything comp conferences
everything's computer for sure everything's computer we're at 30 minutes we got to ring the gong we got to wrap it up won the debate guys closing arguments we'll let the we'll let the fans decide let the inter we'll let the B decide and whichever it's an economic battle it's a capital War Capital fight whoever deploys more Bots to vote wins so no no
here's the real way we're going to do it I will put a a calendar invite for like five years from now okay love and we'll just come back we'll watch the debate and we'll just pause and and people can take little Victory laps they can talk about love that so uh five years from today mark your calendar calendars
uh I look forward to it thank you guys for jumping on have fun have fun on the 101 enjoy a great we see Sam yeah we should uh host the followup to that debate at a wander go to wanderer.com book a wander today they're also doing a giveaway sign up and uh wanderer.com tvpn uh you can also use tvpn to get $300 off your first stay uh one thing
about wanders the properties are so amazing they do get booked out out pretty far in advance at times but not five years in advance so we definitely get something we can get something in the bastle home sweet castle that's what I'm looking for umpiring Hotel great amenities dreamy beds top tier cleaning and 247 coner service it's a vacation
home but better folks check it out let's go back to the timeline wrap up let's do it uh we got and that was and and just just to summarize that was fun um who do you think won I mean I I do tend to side with Sam I think Seth has good points I think Seth Seth's an optimist he's in the outlier business you know the entire model of running a
fund like Greylock is if we can back you know one one or two you know really impactful companies per fund they have more AUM they can you know make bigger Investments um and uh I think they're they're in the the sort of optimism business Sam is much more of a pessimist sure but he has some um he has some real points right you
know the toome company specifically I brought it up they they started they were very hyped sort of AI slides company didn't find a market for what they were doing now they are competing with Salesforce and I I can imagine um I mean anybody in sales is competing with Salesforce they're an AI assistant for sales so um yeah and and it's I mean it
is good to kind of like break down like what it means to be bullish on AI generally because you could just say yeah the AI thing is real and the way I'm expressing that is in a MAG 7 ETF and going long hyperscalers or it could be I'm building a lifestyle business as a solo developer Vibe coding pumping it out on X with videos and making money
that way and so there's always a bull market somewhere but I think Sam is narrowing it down to hey maybe $20 million series A's are are particularly fraught right now yeah and I don't know it's possible um it just just depends on if you get in the right business I still think it's early enough that we could
get our WhatsApp we could get our Uber and you might see some funds dump $20 million at2 200 million doll post and still get 100x return the big thing is is it seems like what we now Define as AGI is an extending Innovation but it's the sort of looming ASI oh that's the disruptor the the real disruptor is ASI not AGI as we' sort of
currently defining that so my joke with that is that eventually when ASI comes you say set up a website or buy me something and it rebuilds Stripe from first prin like all the way writes all the code that's ever existed on the internet in in five seconds and builds you everything yeah and and that would be very disruptive but I think we're a
long way away from there uh especially on how much it cost to inference these models and how how rough the the vibe coding thing has been amazing but then we've heard a lot of accounts of people saying yeah it'll get you 80% of the way there 90% of the way there but there's still a lot of humans in the loop and
maybe we are seeing not acceleration but deceleration in in the the efficacy of these models um but they're still really fun they're cool and I want to check out some of those ones that he uh recommended I actually did play with sunno last night for the first time bedtime song no uh I was trying to make a theme song for tvpn I was thinking we
need our own uh you know NFL no so what we should do is get uh a symphony yes and we stand the Sy and they play it and we and we just you know my takeaway was that yeah I would love to get a human to do this because the first version that came back I was like uh you know ESPN style football song intro and I didn't have lyrics turned
off and so it generated all these funny lyrics like football game starting now and like all these really ridiculous things um but uh lots of promise there and uh I mean just the mid journey of Music seems fun I don't know if it'll replace everything but cly like AOL in theol chest for the artist overall I think having a debate letting people
share their opinion and then circling back to it Y is really the best solution because you can't win a debate like that in the moment it's just Vibes right now yes definitely and I think uh keeping it tight and short is key yeah anyway let's move on to the opposite of tight and short Larry Ellison's longevity which is unreal he's been in the game for decades
uh putting up these look at this chart Oracle Corporation is up 21,000% all time dating back to the 80s putting up these numbers for life for the lifetime of modern tech industry while also being the true Brian Johnson if you are not familiar with how young Larry Ellison looks he's looking fantastic uh when he was born for
context we were still in World War II wow fantastic insane uh yeah Oracle not mentioned as much as the other Magnificent Seven companies the hyperscalers but clearly doing something right the stock is up and to the right yes and so we love Oracle here on the show um big news this really shook the tech industry to the core uh Jawan over
at ramp got a raise there we go he said turn hit the for Jaan congratulations uh day one of asking ramp for a raise that happened November 13th of last year now it's March 13th and he got it done based on your accomplishments and results in 2024 we're pleased to provide you with an update to your compensation package
congrats to Jan uh let's move Milestone I mean nobody everybody said oh never going to work um but uh he did it he was consistent he you know survived and thrived through controversy and he got the raise this this would have been a great debate to have on we could have had Eric and Kareem come on debate it
with got to make a presentation live on the show this is how raises will be done at ramp in a few years uh anyway let's move on to Luke Metro he's quote tweeting Michael Dempsey uh YC used to feel like a window into understanding the areas progressing from what the smartest people know uh what the smartest people are doing on weekends to
VC back startups today it feels like the best window into the current consensus thing and Luke Metro says lots of tech feels like this now here's my theory pre-2020 there were still novel insights lots of small offline subgroups VC Scout programs existed to capitalize on this but postco uh Silicon Valley moved entirely online now the time from
outgroup to consensus is minuscule what's your take I think this is totally right it it feels like YC now is a reflection of what the internet is interested in yeah right what the sort of community is interested in and I think that that's fine um it's it's if if ideas are important we should have a bunch of people attacking them that's
the beauty of the free market y uh but I think this is totally on point uh the other thing is that you the companies that are truly not like that don't feel relevant at YC or that feel weird are the ones that don't get the hype because they're just tinkering on some weird thing and then six you flock safety is a good
example right I'm sure the flock safety batch was just a bunch of s so um and Luke also had another good post from today uh that that I'm just got pulled up here he says the real project Europe is VC spending three months in the south of France this summer so you going to say that you had the same idea I had we had a similar idea a similar idea I love
it well yeah go enjoy Europe book now book on wander book your trip to Europe uh get out there and uh spend some time recuperating while the while you can feel the AGI let the let the Innovation the acceleration wash Over You Under the tuskin Sun yep uh albo has some news uh they are launching I was texting with
the founder we're hopefully going to have them on early next week uh Clarity 1 will launch as the first commercial satellite to operate in very low earth orbit uh beginning with 10 cmet resolution imagery previously only possible with aircraft or billion dooll government satellites albo is redefining what's possible from space and so we'll
have to have them on I saw a picture of the fuselage of the of the Falcon 9 that they're riding on um ni and uh good luck to them there's been a few delays as there always are with these with these launches but it's looking good and so you can tune in to that launch tonight SpaceX is going back to Leo what time is
it uh I think he said like midnight Pacific Time or something I he he was also like you guys are live right Saturday at midnight I was like not yet but stay tuned we're getting there we're working on it uh let's move on uh types fast Ryan Peterson founder of flexport friend of the show been on he is quoting Leonard Bernstein who says two things
are needed to achieve great things a plan and not quite enough time uh civilization 5 when building the Big Ben wonder he's been uh pulling quotes out of civilization 5 I love it it's awesome a bunch of bangers in there we had uh Captain Price lastek yeah I I've never actually gotten into Civ um I've wanted
to but it's a big investment because I think the time to actually play a full game is more in like a few hours and so I I haven't been able to find the time but he spent a lot of time on planes he's got starlink locked in actually I think you can play Civ offline it's not even a multiplayer game necessarily so good way to spend a few hours in the
belly of a 747 fairing packages around the globe for flexport uh anyway should we move on to Augustus dero Augustus himself he says every 20 to 30 year old man I know who is great or that's aspiring for greatness seems to get mentally and spiritually obliterated daily they're not without Joy wisdom or purpose but constantly raw and cernovich says adult
men are not supposed to feel happy it's abnormal you should question what you're doing you should feel the tinge of fear it means you're pushing yourself the alternative is sitting around waiting to die like some Muppet uh and yeah I think I I I I put this in the stack just because I think it's important to realize that
um you know op optimizing for feeling good all the time will be your downfall and part of you know having a great life is y not just not optimiz you know it's not optimiz happiness specifically we talked about this with our with the Lone Ranger uh the goal of a startup is not to be a happy startup it's to be a successful
startup the goal of a marriage is not to be a happy marriage necessarily it's to be a successful marriage and that's a different vector and happiness is derived from that and and adjacent to that but not not the end all be all goal because as soon as you start optimizing purely for happiness you put a lot of the the grind to the side and totally
rest on your laurels should we go to Nikita he was talking about Vibe coding and where some of these apps are going if you've tried following Vibe coded games over the last month and have tried making one yourself it should be abundantly obvious that we are very close to someone building a creation ecosystem or App Store where anyone can
be a game developer and success of the creators within this future ecosystem will be determined by pure Merit of their Concepts not technical execution the only Gap that needs to be closed for this ecosystem to exist is abstracting away the remaining pieces that are too complicated for the layment authentication server networking and
deployment once that's achieved the only thing left for a Creator to do is to dream up their concept and click publish and suddenly we will have millions of people making 3D online games with Graphics comparable to N64 I love that uh we talked to a YC founder who's basically working on this exact problems Kyle Russell built something like this I
want to say like five years ago he was working on it right in 2020 uh I met him through andreon Horwitz uh he was like the associate on on the deal and uh great guy he built this company called play bite and it would let you it gave you a bunch of Primitives and on your phone in a browser you could build uh
like a top down 2D game uh and he was just like maybe a little bit too early with that concept to really get escape velocity uh because it wasn't it was easier than Roblox but didn't really have the same like viral breakout moment but you can certainly imagine like what the vision of what he was laying down makes a lot
of sense in terms of App Store of course Nikita got a lot of push back here everyone said he said stop saying Roblox I'm talking about something much more customizable the thing is that I've seen some Roblox games that are incredibly customizable I've seen people say like we rebuilt Call of Duty in uh Roblox and it looks like Call of Duty almost I
don't know if it's fake but um well will be interesting somebody rebuild the tvpn set in Roblox record no we'll record a show there yeah that'd be great in the metaverse um should we go to Bo nickel we got some breaking news got some breaking news from Bo um has a new fight it's going to be on May 3rd uh I'm going to pull up uh a supporting article here it's a
middleweight bout yeah so B is a middleweight he has assume that has something to do with like the size of the guy is that how it works yeah yeah this is the joke John is obsessed with uh professional bodybuilding I follow UFC closely yeah uh but anyway so uh bo uh friend of the show and listener he's also an entrepreneur has his own
business you can check out um he started in Dana White's Contender Series so he got a couple wins in there and then has gone on a tear uh he's 7 and0 uh he's 29 uh for those that don't know which is like kind of the prime years right he's got a bunch of winds under his belt and now it's time to make a run at the title
and they're allowed to punch and kick in this sleep is that how it works the last the last time we covered Bo on the show uh bo texted me and he was like I'm always amazed with how Little Jon knows so his John's knowledge is actually even like going back the Ring The Ring isn't square right yeah it's almost like a it's like an more has eight sides eight
sided okay I know that yeah good learning this stuff thank and so anyways uh B is one of the top prospects in MMA right now and he's uh his next fight is um is against this guy uh deritter uh who uh was at one Championship he's been a a two uh two- weight class Champion over there uh so this will be a huge test for bo uh but we are uh very
excited for it he's been training hard and um Good Luck to him good luck to him we'll be watching hopefully live yeah but we'll uh we'll see good luck to him I hope he can go all 25 rounds is that how many rounds there are I hope he makes it honestly I hope he gets a gold medal honestly I really hope he gets a gold medal I'm uh I think
uh I think he's G to make uh short work yeah to Ritter but um Good Luck to him good luck good luck Bo let's go to another friend of the show David senra he shares some Sage advice from Peter teal Superior sales and distribution by itself can create a monopoly even with no product differential the converse is not true I love that and
it's funny because it's it's it's like MBA advice almost but it's contrarian in the in the VC context because for so long there were these you know naturally growing like Facebook they didn't need to run billboard ads for Facebook because it was this social network and it just gr but they really did have better distribution because of the
network effect in the model and so an example of this right so we were just talking about uh Salesforce versus some of these upstart Sal assistant companies Y part of salesforce's Monopoly is they have thousands of people that sell Salesforce and they're going to new to customers current and new and saying if
you don't if you don't buy our AI assistant for sales we're going to increase the price of the product that you actually want and for many companies like it's just the default CRM and so that by itself is like they have the distribution they have you know the the labor force and and um yeah it's going to be very tough for for a lot of those
players to to get anywhere close to uh threatening uh Salesforce market cap should we close out with uh a fantastic private Equity story Boiler Room is apparently private Equity back now uh levels iio shares the financial story of boiler room is interesting Boiler Room started in 2010 by blae Belleville with weekly live broadcast on YouTube if
you're not familiar with their DJ sets essentially uh over the years he raised 12.6 million in VC funding in total then in 2021 while Boiler Room was heavily struggling financially he sold it to dice FM an event ticketing startup dice had raised more than 200 million in VC funding then dice sold Boiler Room a few
months to superstruct a festival organizer that owns festivals like mystery land defcons a bunch of others uh then last year Providence Equity a $35 billion private Equity Fund sold super struck to KKR which is a hundred billion private Equity Fund so a $100 billion private Equity Fund now owns Boiler Room many articles State boiler
rooms founder Blaze Belleville exited around 2021 but he's still involved in the company so more likely he received more stock while working at it so he's this is just this is just a beautiful story uh and you know a celebration of I mean I hope that they do private Equity night at the boiler room we don't go to events like this we're just not big into
that world but Boiler Room celebrate uh celebrate the shareholders you know put do do a big party for KKR you know I want to see the champagne bottles popping and the big KKR sign walking out say like when you spend $10,000 on this bottle of of cheap champagne just know that you're just sort of like supporting
big private Equity driving ebit down there's other there's other you know uh we've said on the show before there's other fantastic companies owned by private Equity Tech crunch Veil uh Veil um you know this could be the next Veil you never know yeah I mean we made the argument earlier this week that Tech crunch should merge with Veil and just
become ski lifestyle magazine ski lifestyle magazine the real way anyways uh it's been a fantastic show uh thanks for tuning in go leave us a five star review put an ad in it uh it helps with Discovery and um see you on Monday we hope you have a good weekend uh if you um if you're working over the weekend and you're missing tvpn you can go back
we have some The Backs full folks we've got many many many episodes of this show uh and if any of you have listened to every single hour I would be very impressed but there's probably an hour in there somewhere that you haven't listened to so it's okay um and uh anyways we will see you on Monday see you on Monday cheers