0:02
[Music] Hey, hey, hey.
Search this video
0:18
[Music] When you're surrounded by journalists, hold your position.
0:41
[Music] You're surrounded by generals. Hold your position.
1:12
[Music] [Music] Hey, hey, hey.
1:38
[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] We are surrounded by journalists. Hold your position.
3:12
[Music] I see multiple journalists on the horizon. Stand by.
3:32
[Music] That's misinformation.
3:42
[Music] the police 3000 [Music] [Music] Let me check.
4:46
[Music] We are surrounded by generalists. Hold your position. You're watching TBPN.
4:51
Today is Monday, June 2nd, 2025.
4:54
We are live from the TBPN Ultra Dome, the temple temple of technology, the fortress of finance, the capital of capital.
5:02
Uh, how was your weekend?
5:04
I I saw from X, you watched the new movie head. break it down for us.
5:10
Give us a little Jordy review. I did.
5:12
Uh, you know, I don't watch a lot of movies.
5:14
This is your second movie ever after Borat was the other one you watched. The Borat classic. A cult classic.
5:21
Uh, so I felt inclined to watch this film. Okay. It released on Saturday. Yeah.
5:26
And it was kind of pitched.
5:27
We talked about it on Friday.
5:29
It was kind of pitched as like very Silicon Valley coded, very very techly.
5:32
So this is by Jesse Armstrong. Sure. Creator of Succession. Oh, okay. I did watch Succession. I loved it.
5:37
I thought it's this blend of, you know, dark humor and a and a good storyline.
5:43
And um Mountain Head felt like the exact opposite.
5:49
It was uh it had a really kind of um I I'll give you the high level.
5:55
I'll try not to give anything away. Sure.
5:57
It's four uh tech entrepreneurs, okay, who are going to meet up for all entrepreneurs. All founders, no VCs.
6:04
It seemed like everybody was a founder, but of course they dabble in investing as well. Yeah, as one does.
6:09
Anyway, so four of them are going for a poker weekend.
6:14
Uh I found out it was in Park City, Utah, because Wander actually helped them get the house. No way. Fantastic house.
6:19
So they all sort of like descend on this house for a poker weekend.
6:21
Uh I think the deal or or their deal was no heels, no deals, and no chefs or something like that.
6:29
It was like one of those girls trip. Yeah, it was boys trip.
6:33
So, uh, they get together.
6:33
Uh, one of them I couldn't I'm sure somebody's put it together better than I have, but it was like some, it felt like a combination of Evan Spiegel and Mark Zuckerberg, social media guy running this business called Tram.
6:46
And he had released a generative AI tool that uh was so good that it was it started as they were sort of descending on this Park City home starting to cause global chaos because really there was like, you know, you could like a doomer.
7:00
Yeah, the idea the idea was that the deep fakes were so good that there would be a deep fake of like one tribe in Kenya attacking another tribe and then it would spark, you know, real conflict. Wow. Wait, wait, wait.
7:12
So, so that that screenshot you you you said like there's uh at least there's a new meme format and it's Steve Carell saying he is a Dell with crazy PD doom and zero risk tolerance.
7:22
Like, you didn't put that text over that.
7:24
No, that's actually from that is actually Steve Carell saying he is a D cell with crazy P doom and zero risk tolerance.
7:30
We get we'll get to that. Anyway, sorry.
7:31
So, the movie, they descend on this house.
7:33
Tram has launched this product and uh it goes on.
7:35
They're basically just hanging out over the weekend as this product gets worse and worse and worse.
7:43
Um and I pulled up some notes.
7:47
Um so, defakes are causing global chaos.
7:53
They're using a bunch of like very awkward buzzwords.
7:54
Like you could tell it was written by people that didn't like tech entrepreneurs or or beanires or centis.
8:01
There was a funny dynam dynamic where one of the one of the four bros uh is only worth half a billion.
8:06
So they they at one point they go on a mountain and they write their net worths on their chest and everybody has a B except the one guy who has just an M. Oh, okay.
8:18
Um so it was pretty um pretty, you know, he was he was feeling really bad about it later. Yeah.
8:22
Now, now this is just a dead giveaway, so I'm not gonna I'm not gonna go there.
8:27
So, um, but I mean like like PDM thing seems pretty inroup, like it's it's pretty close to like, you know, eventually a couple years old.
8:38
Eventually the there's a guy, one of the founders has some type of filtering technology that that that detects deep fakes. They have to do a deal.
8:46
And so the social media guy is like trying to do a deal with him and he says no.
8:50
filter guy goes to one of the other guys and says, "We got to get this guy like fired basically." Okay, interesting.
8:55
And so that's when Steve Carell goes, "No, this guy's a a doomer." Okay. With a crazy pdoom. Crazy Poom.
9:02
And then the three other guys plot to uh kill Oh, okay.
9:04
the other uh So then most of the movie is them trying to kill a normal movie.
9:10
Um and uh it seems like it's it's part of that like I forget what they called it like mansion core. Uh have you seen this?
9:16
uh where um E24 got very very good at making a movie like Knives Out where they basically go and rent like an incredible house and then they shoot the whole movie there.
9:28
Uh and it just like takes you around from one room to the next and you're kind of in this like beautiful cinematic environment the whole time.
9:34
And it seems to be an interesting uh takeaway for Hollywood that it's like a higher leverage production because it it has the aesthetics of a big cinematic movie and they're shooting it on camera, but it's one house.
9:48
There's like basically one location.
9:49
And so if you rent just one location, all of a sudden you're not like, "Oh yeah, our second unit is is in Tokyo for the scene where Batman jumps off the thing."
9:56
It's like that is so much more expensive.
9:58
moving around is so much more expensive than just being like, we're going to dominate this one little house for a month and then we're just shoot the conversation. So, that was it.
10:06
It was basically one location.
10:08
It was a very nice location, but uh ultimately it was like this weird combination of like it was like a critique of the of the tech billionaires, but at the same time, it was like using all this insider sort of teapot language that would have been wildly confusing to somebody that wasn't a tech insider.
10:26
I came away being like, I don't know who this was for. Huh?
10:31
Like, I understand making a movie for the sort of anti-tech crowd. Yep.
10:32
Uh or making a movie that's like Succession Yep. meets uh meets uh AI. Yep.
10:38
But it came away uh sort of neither of those things for me.
10:45
And it was really rough watch.
10:47
By the end, I was watching purely because I wanted to be able to comment on the show right now. Interesting.
10:52
There there was a review, I believe, of the movie.
10:55
It's the end of the world and it's their fault.
10:58
The tech bros have ascended to movie villain status by Charlie Warzle in the Atlantic.
11:02
Um, and uh, and it has a very attention grabbing headline because it makes it sound like it's like, you know, tech bros are really bad, but then it's about the movie and I don't know.
11:11
It just like part of the vibe shift. We'll see.
11:13
I wonder I wonder who uh who's giving it rave reviews. I'm sure.
11:17
I mean, it certainly broke through on the internet, but anyway, has 79% Rotten Tomato. Not too bad. Yeah, too bad.
11:27
Um, well, uh, we should talk about Andrew Reed's latest investment because he's investing in movies now, too.
11:34
Sequoa just invested $100 million into movie at a $1 billion valuation.
11:38
He's joining the board and partnering with the founder and the movie team to champion great cinema around the world. You are a movie guy. Yeah.
11:45
Have you Are you a movie user?
11:47
I'm not a movie subscriber, but I'm sure I've watched stuff that they've distributed or published, but probably just on Apple TV or just purchased those films or seen them in theaters.
11:58
But it sounds like movie has a much bigger in like vision.
12:03
And we kind of saw this with what what with what what's happening at A24.
12:04
It seems like A24 is expanding pretty significantly. Yeah.
12:08
Um but uh Andrew Reed shares a little clip here. What is movie?
12:12
A streaming service, a distributor, a publisher, a curator, a cinema lover, a community. Yes.
12:15
Um, and there's a quote from the uh Financial Times or maybe from a different article about the company says, "But uh, Karell is the founder isn't just that the founder isn't just interested in topping the box office.
12:30
He wants to reinvigorate moviegoing culture by creating an ecosystem that extends from streaming to publishing to artouse theaters, offering movie lovers the chance to see the kind of offbeat visionary work that other studios are afraid to make.
12:43
In doing so, he's intentionally creating a worldwide community of film devotees that has been neglected for too long. Very interesting.
12:53
Uh yeah, we should get Andrew on the show and and and talk to him.
12:56
And we have Scott Bellki coming on the show from A24.
12:57
I'm not sure how much he can talk about A24 strategy right now, but uh I'm sure we'll get to know him and learn more about uh how the film industry is changing.
13:05
It's obviously super relevant to us since we're, you know, trying to bring media to Hollywood um and and we're building a media company here.
13:13
And so, um, it's, you know, it'll, as these, as these, uh, distribution engines change, it's obviously good to, uh, keep track of.
13:23
Anyway, uh, in other news, there's a couple things that we want to cover today.
13:26
Obviously, we're going to go over the timeline and break down everything.
13:28
But, um, the big news over the weekend was the Ukraine drone attack on Russia.
13:32
They shipped, uh, shipping containers into deep into Russia, at which point, uh, drones flew out of the containers and, uh, hit strategic targets.
13:39
Uh we're gonna have two guests on the show today.
13:44
Uh Saurin Monro Anderson from Neros to talk about that and also Connor Love from Lightseed to talk about uh that and also defense tech investing generally and a bunch of a bunch of other things that are going on in his world.
13:53
Um and there are a couple other founders and um uh and and folks coming on the show.
13:57
Uh let's go to Cole Rottman and talk about uh he made his own version of the minus list which I think in some ways is potentially I don't know it's like in some ways even more people have been talking it's the Rottman list. The Rottman list. Yeah.
14:13
So he says 16 investors have led two series A rounds that became five billion dollar companies since 2020 since 2012. You can see a pattern.
14:22
Alfred Lynn in consumer marketplaces.
14:25
Uh Andrew Mack in fintech.
14:28
uh Mammoon in B2B work tools, Mickey Mula in fintech, Mitch Laskkey in consumer social and so uh he he basically his algorithm so the the Midas list has always been a little bit tricky because funds report the allocation of deals differently. You familiar with this?
14:46
Yeah, they want to they want to they're gaming it a little bit. Yeah, it's a game.
14:51
it's a game. they're giving sometimes a little more credit than maybe they should to a certain investor on certain deals in order to so if I remember correctly like the Midas list has a great data partner through one of the LPs that's in that's basically an LP in every fund and so they have a really
15:09
good they have really great insight into ownership by individual firms into individual companies and valuations of those companies and so sometimes those marks can be a little bit frothy and it can be debatable because there could be like you know you could you could have made the Midas list for being in FTX and
15:24
then the next year it's a zero and so it doesn't feel like it has a staying power but in general they have a very good tie between VC firm and company and valuation and entry price too and and multiple but what they don't necessarily know is the individual who is responsible for the particular deal
15:41
inside the firm because that doesn't necessarily get reported to LPs and so what funds will do sometimes is they will kind of shift the chips around the table afterward words to give maybe the hero partner that they're trying to boost up more credit for deals that they were only tangentially involved. Yeah. Yeah.
15:59
If one if one partner led a certain deal but then had no chance of getting on the list at all. Yeah.
16:05
They might say, "Hey, look, you know, you're going to take one for the team." Yeah. Yeah.
16:08
And then there's also the question of like sometimes partners change from one firm to the next.
16:13
And who gets credit for that deal?
16:16
Well, if if there were two partners at one fund that did a really amazing deal, and then one of the partners leaves to go to another fund, then that partner is going to want to take that deal credit with them, but that other fund is going to say, "Hey, well, it's our position."
16:28
And so we should we should it was actually our guy, the guy who left.
16:32
He left because he was saying no. Yeah.
16:33
He's on the press release. He wanted to pass. He wanted to pass. Exactly. Exactly.
16:37
So, there's a whole bunch of funny dynamics, but this is kind of an interesting methodology because it's it's almost simpler.
16:43
simpler. It's basically just like who's the series A lead investor who joined the board who joined the board which is probably easier to figure out although even board seats change around sometimes because it's like oh your company's doing really well we're going to make our named partner the board member
16:57
instead of the the person that found the deal which is sometimes rough but sometimes actually some investors are like no I I I don't want to be on the board of a public company so I'm happy to hand it off to the my like the storied partner at my firm in order so that I can go and be on more boards at the earlier stage. Um and so uh the the
17:12
Um and so uh the the the true goat list here uh series A lead investors that have had three five billion plus outcomes since 2020.
17:22
You got Doug Leioni, Hamont from General Catalyst, uh Keith Roy and Mark Andre.
17:30
Um and then and then and then there's uh maybe 10 or 15 that have done two uh two series A lead investments in a $5 billion outcome.
17:40
Now it is kind of I saw IA Sukar posted and was like just one more deal then I'll be happy because he's he's got two from from the Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
17:52
So he just wants to be the the the clearly you know there's a big gap between the the threes and the twos. No.
17:58
If Ilia wants to move up the rankings in the short term, change his name to Arvar.
18:03
Arvar suit because it's it because within the list of of VCs that have done two5 billion deals, it's alphabetical and so Alfred Lyn's up at the top.
18:15
So you got to have two A's in front of you to jump Alfred. So Arvar is the ticket.
18:22
I mean, that's what Bezos did with Amazon, right?
18:24
He was like, "I want to be first in the in the dictionary, so I'll just I'll I'll I'll use Amazon because it's an A name. It'll show up first." Legend. Yeah.
18:30
Uh anyway, congrats to everyone that made the the Rottman list.
18:35
Um very very fun to see this.
18:38
This could be the start of something very Yeah.
18:41
It's an interesting could be the start of a new list, John. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
18:45
It's an interesting methodology.
18:46
Of course, it doesn't really take into account if you had three deals that were exactly five billion, you would be ranked higher than one person who got the hundred billion or the trillion dollar company.
18:56
And so, you know, you kind of miss out that.
18:58
And also, it's like this is particular to series A lead.
19:01
What if you got 20% ownership in the seed?
19:03
Like, that's probably even better, right? Lower entry price.
19:06
So there there are always nuances to these lists, but it's still fun to to see all the all the goats in one place in one in one goat herd. One herd in one herd. There we go.
19:21
We got a new soundboard today.
19:23
We got some more soundboard.
19:24
Um in other news, uh you can save time and money with RAMP. Time is money. Save both.
19:30
Easy to use corporate cards, bill payments, accounting, and a whole lot more all in one place. Go to ramp. com to sign up. Do it.
19:33
Uh, Andre Horwitz and Coastal Ventures are backing a bridge AI for doctors at a $5. 3 billion valuation. Let's hear it.
19:40
Why are you clapping instead of hitting the size gong? It's a funion.
19:44
Sometimes I like to clap the gong. There we go. There we go. Uh, yeah.
19:49
I mean, part of an interesting trend obviously application layer an important narrative more more focus on these verticals.
19:59
Harvey having a lot of attention.
19:59
Uh yeah, I heard um you know OpenAI is at something like you know 80 plus 90 plus percent penetration with chat just in terms of users M mdow or uh ma like the ma ratio like just in terms of users users the chat GPT app has been the runaway success in consumer but there are still nuances to how medical data is handled or legal and so the vertical applications are are exciting and that's certainly driving Yes.
20:30
So, this investment will double a bridg's valuation from only a few months ago and underscores the tech industry's interest.
20:37
It's crazy that this is the first time I've hearing about this company and it's a and it was at a 2. 75 billion valuation.
20:43
Like there used to be when when a company makes unicorn like it is big tech news.
20:47
It breaks through that day and now it's like okay call us when you're at 10. Yeah.
20:52
So a bridg's CEO Shivra a cardiologist turned founder said earlier this year that part of his motivation to start the company was that his handwritten notes from patient meetings were often alle illeible.
21:00
This inefficiency also made billing and summarizing patient interactions a nightmare.
21:06
You end up feeling bad about yourself.
21:08
Ralph told Bloomberg in an interview in February.
21:10
Everybody ends up losing.
21:12
What's been a game changer is that with a bridge you just walk in the room, have the conversation and you're present making eye contact which is very cool. found in 2018. Wow.
21:23
Even pre-C Chachi PT they've been they've been working for a long time.
21:26
The company initially struggled.
21:26
Ralph faced a wave of skepticism from his healthcare peers and doubts about the efficacy of AI tools.
21:31
At one success, there we go.
21:34
At one point, Ralph feared the company's heartbeat was getting more and more faint.
21:37
Then came Chat GPT and the rapid progress in the capabilities of generative AI tools and a bridge became an overnight success.
21:43
Six or seven years in the making. He said, "Let's go." Love it.
21:46
Uh since then the startup raed more than $400 million in venture capital funding as investors race to back application layer AI startups that make language models like OpenAI more useful for doctors, lawyers, salespeople and other professionals.
22:00
Earlier backers include IVP, Elad Gil, Spark Capital, Bessemer, Union Square Ventures.
22:05
Good to see every all of those people finally having Yeah, it's good to see a lot seed to unicorn. Yeah, exactly.
22:12
You just you're always rooting for them and and hoping that they'll come from behind and make something happen. And they did.
22:21
Um let's move on to David Holes.
22:21
He says, "At SpaceX, I saw oxygen snow in zero gravity.
22:27
I saw methane bubbles shimmering like crystal glass and liquid oxygen swimming pools that ripple like silk.
22:32
I remember sunset plasma vortices flickering through compressed data streams at Mach 25 pink.
22:37
You think it glows on its own, but really it is in celebration for those who hurdle monuments through the sky with dreams of earthly beauty everlasting. Wow. It's so it's so amazing. He's like little poetry.
22:51
Um he's uh yeah, I mean he's clearly like uh writing in a way that like you know the LMS cannot.
22:59
He's like flexing basically.
23:02
I that's the way I I see this.
23:03
But, uh, it does seem like he got a he got a pretty incredible tour of, uh, of SpaceX and probably got to hang out with Elon and talk about robots and all these different, uh, world models and how Midjourney can, you know, partner with that and whatnot and all all the cool things that he's doing.
23:16
Uh the interesting thing about Midjourney and David Holes is that um his his methodology is obviously he's very like scale, very AIP, but he's not trying to build the average image of what's on the internet.
23:32
He's just trying to make the images look good.
23:34
And so he's bringing this like artistry to the process and and that leads to like a particular midjourney look that can be seen as well this all has the midjourney look but like he's happy as long as like the midjourney look is good I think.
23:50
Um so interesting interesting uh way.
23:54
Anyway um if you're looking for design tools go to figma. com.
23:57
Think bigger build faster.
23:58
Figma helps design and development teams build great products together.
24:02
You can get started for free at figma. com.
24:03
And they now have websites.
24:05
If you want to make a website really fast, make Figma and just publish it. It's pretty great. Oh, this is hilarious.
24:10
So, uh I think wait, was this just a few days ago?
24:13
Sahil uh from uh from Gumroad uh tweeted, "If I give you 1 million and you give me the 1 million back, we'll both be at 1 million ARR."
24:25
And Stephen Tay says, "No freaking way.
24:27
Someone actually did this IRL."
24:27
And it's a story about rough.
24:30
So this company builder AI shut down. Oh, rough.
24:32
Uh they faked business with Indian social media startup Vers Innovation for years to falsely inflate its sales.
24:40
And uh yeah, so basically they'd just be like, "Hey, we're going to sign up for a 50 million ARR contract with you and then you're going to sign up with a 50 million AR contract with us and we'll both be at 50 million of ARR."
24:52
Even though, you know, there's there, you know, it just wasn't real.
24:56
So um anyways, unfortunate.
24:56
Uh Stephen Steph Steve Steven Tay here very savage tagging both companies. He's pretty savage. That's rough.
25:04
Um anyway, uh yeah, they say in many cases products and services weren't actually provided to either company for these payments. Oh, okay.
25:14
So, just completely fake.
25:16
There was a contract and then there was a payment. Yeah.
25:18
But it was effectively the same amount.
25:20
Sounds like they, you know, adjusted it slightly, but because there's always been like this this take kind of going back to like the.
25:28
com boom around how a lot of the a lot of the dot tele like internet providers were selling to like fast growing internet companies and they were doing kind of like equity investments and then the money would flow back to the telecom provider and it was like pretty circular and kind of created a little bit of the bubble narrative.
25:45
Um, and people were always kind of saying that about like Nvidia and like the big tech companies, but you know, it's very different when like yes, in like Microsoft might buy Nvidia GPUs and then Nvidia might buy Microsoft Excel licenses to to run their business, but like both of those are clear value creations and they're independent contracts.
26:05
And so it's it it's very much more like arms length. Yeah.
26:09
The other thing is if a hyperscaler is is investing compute into a startup, the startup isn't they're getting investment dollars spending that back with the hyperscaler.
26:20
They're not necessarily like using they don't use new investment to drive new investment, right?
26:27
In the same way that like if the hyperscaler was spend had a contract with them and they were sending it back, it's that's that's uh quite a different situation. Yeah.
26:35
Much tricky much much trickier.
26:37
Um, anyway, if you want to automate compliance, manage risk, improve trust continuously, go to vanta. com.
26:42
Vanta's trust management platform takes the manual work out of your security and compliance process and replaces it with continuous automation.
26:49
Whether you're pursuing your first framework or managing a makes me want to hit the air horn like automated compliance, John, love it.
26:55
Uh, yeah, I I think you threw this one in here.
26:58
Andrew Huberman talking about the health indicator that no one talks about the strong desire to work and build things whether for the intrinsic love of the work the rewards or both.
27:06
Yes, we need sleep and some need recreation but drive is at least as important as any other metric.
27:13
Basically grind set number one biioarker to be tracking.
27:16
biioarker to be tracking. I completely agree and I think that uh I was we we asked Brian Johnson about this and we said you know uh Warren Buffett is in the news because he was stepping down but had a phenomenal run particularly from age 65 to 90 something you know
27:34
like those were some of his most productive and and and consequential years of his career when most people spend those in in retirement and so uh and also he drinks Coca-Cola and eats seized candy and eats McDonald's and whatnot and and doesn't do biohacking, right? And yet he seems as healthy as
27:49
And yet he seems as healthy as you can possibly be.
27:51
And uh and Brian Johnson was kind of like, "Oh, well, like he's like, you know, like single outlier."
27:57
But I was talking to somebody else and they were like, "Well, like but Charlie Mer had like the same diet."
28:02
Like this person was like, "I went to dinner with Charlie Mer and he had like five glasses of wine and like ate the steak and like ate all this stuff."
28:07
And so I I I think that yes, like a life's work is it's not that it's a complete replacement for a healthy lifestyle.
28:16
You should do both for sure.
28:18
I think I think it's that the human spirit can overpower its environment and inputs.
28:23
Yeah, there's there's there's some like physiological or biological explanation for this.
28:30
The whole idea of like the being built different. Yeah. Being built different.
28:35
But but no, like I remember you you hear about like uh like the mother who lifts a car to save her baby.
28:41
Like that's kind of apocryphal, but it's also like in an intense moment of stress, the body can send a signal to uh to really like refocus and kind of like you're basically just like shifting around all the energy in your body to like fight this one thing, whether it's like like strength or focus or something.
29:00
And and it appears that the brain works pretty similarly.
29:02
There's there's some interesting case studies where traumatic brain injury victims like they'll they'll get hit in the head and they'll become sants and so they'll be able to remember every single word in a book.
29:16
Uh and and it's just like why is that?
29:19
And I think what and and it's and it's odd because don't tell David Center that.
29:25
He's gonna hit himself in the head.
29:27
No, but but but but the question is like is like if we have that ability, why didn't we evolve to do that?
29:30
And it's because like we're actually fine-tuned not on just pure recall, although it's extremely impressive when you can see someone who's it's not as valuable as it's not as valuable as compression and and synthesis of information across different domains.
29:44
So you actually don't need to be the memorizer to really win in our society, but we do have the ability to do an immense amount of w information.
29:52
And so there's certain brain treatments and and and like effects in the brain that can kind of shift shift the the the focus and like the output and the performance of your body to something.
30:03
And so you could imagine that if you're if you're like incredibly driven for what you're doing, your body kind of sends these signals that like, hey, we need to we need to be on top of the game.
30:13
We need to fight back all the bad stuff and deal with the endless stream of Coca-Cola that's coming into our organs.
30:19
Uh anyway, very very uh very very fun post by Huberman.
30:24
Um anyway, Dan Primac uh has an announcement that Mary Mer is back.
30:29
Uh we covered her on the show early on.
30:31
We did a whole deep dive based on her fantastic profile on the New Yorker.
30:35
Mary, you're always welcome on the show.
30:36
Um she has a new trends report.
30:39
This time it's focused on artificial intelligence.
30:40
It's over at Bond Capital.
30:42
Remember Mary Mer went uh was on Wall Street sellside analyst for a very long time. the the the.
30:46
com whisperer, then went to Kleiner Perkins, eventually spun out and is running a growth growth equity fund called Bond Cap.
30:54
And uh Ev Randall worked there, former friend of the show or former guest on the show, current friend of the show.
31:00
Um and uh people are people are being spicy in the comments.
31:03
This is the most sellside thing a Cellside person has ever done.
31:06
Bad day for left align text fans, I guess, because the the deck is centered or something.
31:13
But um but we can share some of this and we can go through some of these. Yeah.
31:18
Why don't we go through the outline?
31:19
So this is for the first time um uh yes um coordinating with some of the guests.
31:26
So for the first time I'm going to be hopefully driving this. We'll see.
31:30
Hopefully this will work.
31:30
Um and I don't dox my private keys.
31:32
I don't have private keys on here.
31:35
So trends and artificial intelligence from Bond. Good name for a fund. Bond James Bond.
31:38
Um, so of course she worked with this team and the deck there are some it has crazy aura despite not even being overly designed.
31:48
It's just when Mary Mer makes a deck people people pay attention.
31:51
It definitely has uh like classic Wall Street investment bank aesthetics.
31:56
Wait, so why don't we start with the outline? I'll read through it. Sure. Sure.
32:00
Uh first section seems like change is happening faster than ever. Yes, it is.
32:07
Uh second AI user users plus usage plus capex growth is unprecedented.
32:13
AI model compute costs are high rising plus inference costs per token are falling.
32:18
So performance is converging and developer usage is rising.
32:23
Uh none of this stuff should be too much of a surprise.
32:26
But yes, but they've all been kind of like vibes and whispers and and uh hot takes issued on Dwarvesh's podcast, but now we have kind of like the Wall Street interpretation of the same trends and it's instantiated in data, which I think is very fascinating.
32:42
Um and so we'll go through some of this.
32:44
Uh seems like change is happening faster than ever. Yes, it is.
32:48
Developers in the leading chip makers ecosystems, the number of developers has started absolutely mooning to over six million.
32:57
um AI plus there this is why wouldn't she just call this Nvidia uh well so this is this is developers on top of Nvidia so you can think about this like CUDA engineers essentially people people developing on top of Nvidia as opposed to like more more
33:14
abstract and and from 2005 I still I still was just curious if there was like a reason if she didn't want to call out oh oh why did she say you could say developers there are so many of those just you wait there are so many of those
33:26
weird like she doesn't want to say this or she's saying this instead of this a lot of it's just like Wall Street parlance right but so this is okay she's doing it every leading USA based LLM users rock it up to 800 there's obviously open AI it's literally the
33:42
open AI chart and it's funny because code 2 I believe put out a similar uh report which we can maybe go go through uh but they just say they just say open AI and they have Sam's face right next to it but yeah um so chat obviously grew grew very quickly. But uh just this year
33:56
But uh just this year they doubled from 400 million to 800 million.
34:01
It was this huge huge uh huge spike.
34:03
Uh the question is always the monetizability of those users because as uh as um as large internet companies eventually reach saturation, the val the incremental value of the next billion decreases a lot, right?
34:17
Because you're you're you're getting into developing nations and and there's less propensity to spend.
34:22
to spend. the advertising dollars go further and realistically there's just lots of countries where you can't sell 200 $200 a month subscriptions yeah or even 20 or even 20 um and so AI user plus usage plus capex growth is on it is is unprecedented internet versus um uh
34:40
versus leading USA based LLM total current users outside of North America and so the internet um share of total current users kind of grew slowly and you can see that uh LLMs came out and They started at 50% of internet users and rocketed to 90%. And this is a big
34:55
And this is a big part of the AI narrative is that we already have the internet like the like the it is the world's the greatest distribution engine in history. Yeah.
35:05
And you know uh like bits bits move faster than atoms. Yeah.
35:08
And even though the internet was a bits movement, it it it was bound by atoms in the sense that you had to put pipes in the ground and you had to make and sell phones to get the penetration app.
35:21
And now you when you're leveraging on top of that, you actually it's like OpenAI might build a device, but they don't have to to get on 90% of to get 90% penetration. Um this is a funny one.
35:34
You're going to love this.
35:35
So AI user plus usage plus capex growth is unprecedented.
35:38
The big six USA technology company capex big six.
35:41
That's what people say about big tech.
35:44
They don't say magnificent seven. Yeah. Big six. Big six.
35:48
And they and she so it's Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, AWS only and Meta Platforms.
35:56
Just ex Tesla just writing Tesla out of the mag 7 to create the big six.
35:58
And it's and normally you might say, okay, well, it's like a car company, but like Tesla has an AI division that is like a scale.
36:08
They change the name of their self-driving or to Tesla to Tesla. Yeah, exactly.
36:15
So, a little bit odd and maybe you should put that maybe Tesla isn't investing at the same level as the other big six, I suppose.
36:20
But, uh, it's still just funny to to coin kind of like a new a new term.
36:24
Um, but obviously capex is increasing very quickly.
36:27
We we track that during earnings to see uh that I mean it's really just like a few of the hyperscalers that are driving this but uh there are multiple big tech companies that are investing at the $60 billion a year range now.
36:38
So totally Tesla's total capex for 2025 across the entire business was projected at just 11 billion.
36:48
billion. M so yeah that's nothing compared to just Google which just spelling like Google Microsoft and AWS are all in like 60 70 80 range billion got to get those numbers up capex for ants I mean it is when you think about the
37:05
capex that goes into a car plant as well that's that's definitely significant that's what I'm saying like it's but at the same time Elon's getting the sort of offbalance sheet through XAI yeah um and so uh there's So there's there's trends in declining cost of uh of inference. This is interesting. 72 years that you This is interesting.
37:24
72 years that you can see the cost curve here.
37:26
Um so uh the the cost of it it it's it's kind of an odd metric here because we're talking about AI inference cost which was so high to begin with.
37:38
It's it's kind of apples and oranges but basically electric power went through this like pretty slow driving down the cost over time.
37:47
computer memory fell off on more of a more of a asmtoic curve and AI inference is just basically a line straight down as it got incredibly cheap.
37:53
Uh let's go AI monetization threats, rising competition, open source momentum, China's rise, uh China's obviously growing in LLMs, but interestingly seems like went way up from 0% penetration in February of 2024 by February of 2025 had grown to maybe 10%.
38:12
Uh but then had fallen or maybe it was even higher.
38:16
Maybe it was 15% and then it had fallen.
38:18
So the the push back against deepseek is maybe working. Interesting.
38:21
Um China versus rest of the world here. Yeah. Yeah.
38:26
I don't know where else we want to go with this.
38:27
We can AI monetization threats equal rising competition plus open-source momentum and China's general rise.
38:36
But you can go through the whole thing.
38:38
There's a lot to dig into here.
38:40
um global GDP, the computing cycles over times, the AI era, um all it's interesting.
38:49
It's all focused on um just telling a story almost to like the public markets.
38:53
Yeah, this one's interesting.
38:55
AIL and physical world ramps equals fast plus data driven.
39:00
Doesn't really say much, but they're charting a ride share verse autonomous taxi provider.
39:04
So, this is Lyft versus Whimo in the San Francisco operating zone.
39:09
market and so you can just see uh Whimo really running away with the market.
39:15
I was over by LAX yesterday and they're there I saw like five Whimos all in the same like block and they're really dominating LA now too everywhere.
39:24
It feels like they're every 10th car. Yeah. I mean it makes sense. People prefer them.
39:29
Like it's a better product. Yeah.
39:30
I was I was barbecuing with a buddy last night and he was like, "Yeah, I was, you know, I I was I watched this Whimo pole was parked in a red zone and then just like ripped out and ran a red going left and he was like, "Yeah, like you know, just made I sort of don't fully trust them right now."
39:51
I'm like, "You drive around LA?
39:53
That's like normal moves for people in LA."
39:55
like you know there's people that go out and they're like I am going to break a lot of traffic laws today and they just do that.
40:02
I was like, "Yeah, it's not great that um you know, it's not great, but uh but but coming along I Yeah, I was talking to a friend who over the weekend uh who's been saying that that Whimo is like completely cooked for a long time and now he's like, "No, Whimo is going to be fine because like apparently there's one guy that did the company who's just insanely cracked and is basically like solving all the technical problems."
40:26
And so he's like, "Yeah, I'm actually kind of bullish on it."
40:28
But he still maintains that it's uh that it's pretty It's still heavily human in the loop.
40:33
I I You think you think it's an that AI is anonymous Indians as Paul would say? Kind of.
40:42
He says that I think the I think the number he quoted was uh I was like so so he was saying like it's not it's not remote controlled in the sense that it's like hands on the wheel, right?
40:53
Um, it's not like it's not like somebody's remote control driving like it's a video game, but they are watching a screen and then they can press a button to like be like, "Okay, break or like go around or like throw the warning lights on or like you know, okay, this is fine or I'll draw on the screen."
41:09
It's like they they can intervene very easily, but Well, I I I think I said this maybe last year or early this year.
41:15
If you're Whimo, it's worth $5 an hour to have somebody exclusively focused on the one car. Yeah.
41:22
To not to not get a disaster. Yeah.
41:24
And so and so apparently the ratio of like support humans to whimos is less than two but more than one. Yeah.
41:32
And so they've proven that it's not fully just one one but it's close. Yeah. I think it's like 1.
41:38
7 make it not one to one.
41:41
But even I think that pure teleoperation is cool. Totally.
41:43
I would love to be able to pay somebody $5 an hour, $10 an hour to drive my car. Yeah.
41:50
It's also funny because it's like everyone kind of knows that this is happening that there's some sort of teleoperation involved at least and most people who understand it at that level think it's a good thing but then you'll see like a headline about like oh it's actually like anonymous Indians or whatever and it's framed as like a bad thing which is very odd.
42:08
Um but but I I I've always felt like maybe Google is like keeping it as an ace up their sleeves in case there's more push back on Yeah.
42:17
like oh this Whimo's too risky then they can say well actually we we do have a human in the loop.
42:21
We didn't even tell you but like we we're even safer than you thought we were.
42:24
So like you should or maybe they tell it to regulators behind the scenes to say hey we're really but that also presents like a whole other set of problems which are okay.
42:33
Do the teller operated people need to get do they have international driver's license? Yeah, I have no idea.
42:40
Well, they might not be international.
42:41
They might just they might be in the San Francisco area. That's true. Or they might be Yeah. Whimo HQ or something. I Or Vegas.
42:48
I mean, we fly the drones remotely from Vegas.
42:49
I just think we would have had one of those people leave already and be like whistleblow. Yeah, maybe. I don't know.
42:56
Maybe maybe the maybe the the the exit package is too delicious.
43:01
You just can't just can't get out.
43:02
I don't want to give up on that sweet um uh this was an interesting slide for a few reasons.
43:09
uh 260% annual growth over 15 years of data to train AI models led to an absolutely exponential increase in the uh the size of training data sets which feels less important now that we're in the we're post pre-training era I guess but uh you know who's up here right at the top a Ramco metabrain AI I love that Saudi Aramco just trained a mass massive LLM somehow and it didn't it didn't make it to my uh to my news until this until this moment.
43:45
But like there's a whole bunch of these here and you can kind of see that the the the curve is changing.
43:48
But then at a certain point you you run out of of tokens on the internet.
43:52
Um there's some interesting stat like all of GitHub is I think like 10 million tokens or maybe 100 million tokens.
44:00
Like it's just not that big of a data set. Yeah.
44:01
There's there's pretty massive data sets you can get off hugging face that is like almost the entire internet that's like 44 terabytes to put into context which you could get like a 50 terbte hard drive. Yeah.
44:15
And and so I was I was talking to some folks about like is there a world where like what we're seeing with V3 and Google's cornered resource which is the YouTube data set.
44:25
could something like that happen with Microsoft that owns GitHub because they they have the best code data set in theory. Yeah.
44:33
Um and uh and they were just like, well, it's not that big of a data set.
44:38
It's already been excfiltrated and so plenty of people have like all of GitHub just saved locally basically.
44:43
Um and so it's it's not as much of a cornered resources.
44:48
like very very few companies have been able to um have been able to scrape all of YouTube even if some have like maybe tried to do stuff here and there.
44:57
It's clearly not the same as as as as the as the resource that YouTube has.
45:01
Um what else is interesting in here?
45:04
I mean we could go through other stuff.
45:06
Impact of improved algorithms on AI model performance.
45:08
Um this is the the uh the classic like chinchilla scaling laws.
45:15
Uh just kind of breaking down all the different um all the different trends here.
45:20
But let's go back to the timeline and let's back to the timeline. I think so.
45:24
Is there anything else you want to talk in here?
45:26
You're really hitting Mary with the boring.
45:28
No, there's just there's just a lot in here and like I don't know if we have enough time to dig dig through each slide.
45:36
Yeah, we should have her on to give us the highlights.
45:37
Yeah, we should have her on.
45:39
And this is pretty interesting.
45:39
The the the AI milestone timeline.
45:40
I've uh I've covered this before, but uh 1950 1950 Alan Turing creates the his touring test to measure computer intelligence, positing that computers could think like humans.
45:53
In 56, Stanford computer scientist John McCarthy convenes the Dartmouth conference on artificial intelligence, a term he coined, uh great coinage, artificial intelligence. Arthur Samuel.
46:05
In 1962, an IBM computer scientist creates a self-learning program that proves capable of defeating a top US checkers champion.
46:12
Precursion the chess stuff.
46:15
1966, Stanford researchers deploy Shaky, the first general purpose mobile robot that can reason about its own actions.
46:22
Then there's an AI winter that goes from 1967 to 1996.
46:28
Unclear these AI winter narratives because that was like also some of the craziest moments attack. Uh, true.
46:35
But but but also more of a moonlanding winter. Yeah, I guess.
46:40
Um, but there was there was an incredible amount of like underlying technology built in that period that that enabled the next was directly correlated with with artificial intelligence.
46:52
Even if you just go back to like um you know linear regression got faster during that period of time. Computers got faster.
46:59
This was the era of this is like the rise of Intel.
47:00
Like Nvidia was was born in this in this winter.
47:05
And so the AI winter narrative is always is always a little bit odd because you can always go back and draw a pretty smooth line after the fact, but in the moment it feels very flat.
47:14
Um but anyway, the the AI winter ends with Deep Blue in 1997.
47:20
Uh IBM's chess playing computer defeats Gary Kasparov, the world chess champion at the time.
47:25
In 2002, Roomba, the first mass-produced autonomic autonomous robot vacuum cleaner that can navigate homes, is launched.
47:35
I didn't realize Roomba has been around since O2. O2. Wow.
47:36
It's a vintage robot and now they got some competition with Madic. Yeah.
47:40
The the Mavic founder came on.
47:42
He sent sent us some some cleaning robots and they've been working wonders. It's actually crazy.
47:47
Toby Lkey was posting about Yeah, Toby was posting about it.
47:49
I It's amazing how my children have completely welcomed the robot into the family.
47:55
Like they say, really, "Hi, Maddock." Really?
48:00
Like they like chase it around while it's working.
48:02
It's like it's totally a member of the family. That's incredible.
48:05
It makes me very even more robotilled. I already was. It's great.
48:09
Uh 2005 Stanford a Stanford team builds a driverless car named Stanley.
48:14
It completes a 132 mile course, winning the DARPA Grand Challenge.
48:18
Uh that of course starts the the the great rivalry and we've talked about this, right?
48:23
And we'll get excited about we'll really get excited about Whimo when it can win Lemon. Yes. Right. Yes. Like just 24 hours. Whimo has so much money.
48:31
They really should get an F1 team. Yeah. It would be amazing. Yeah.
48:35
And just be like, "Yeah, there's still a driver in there.
48:38
We we like we just bought, you know, some random team and and we're winning because we're putting a lot of money into the car."
48:43
Imagine an F1 race, but it's like a roller coaster, so you're not actually like driving.
48:48
You're just like experiencing like the insane.
48:53
I think it would I think it would be deeply uncomfortable if you weren't properly trained. For sure.
48:56
Uh 2010, Apple acquires Siri voice assistant and integrates it into the iPhone 4S model.
49:03
One year later, uh, 2014, Eugene Gooman, a chatbot, uh, passes the touring test with one of three judges believing that Eugene is human. Wow.
49:13
I I thought we didn't I thought we didn't even get close.
49:17
I mean, that doesn't feel like passing.
49:19
I thought passing would have to be greater than 50%.
49:20
So, I don't know about that exactly, but um I thought that the touring test was basically like impossible right up until GPT3. But I don't know.
49:33
Yeah, I guess I guess they were doing some good stuff back of passing. Yeah.
49:37
They never really had like an official organization body like an Olympics of that like some some recognized like we will be the ones to do the touring test on everything.
49:46
It's always just been like a phil like a philosophical test.
49:49
Uh 2018 OpenAI releases GPT1, the first of their large language models.
49:55
2020, OpenAI releases GPT3, an AI tool for automated conversations.
49:59
Microsoft exclusively licenses the model.
50:01
Yeah, that's a good summary of of the Microsoft relationship.
50:05
And then in 2022, open open AI releases chatbt to the public and let's go became massive fantastic consumer product. Yeah, I'm interested.
50:17
I actually now now that we're here, I want to see the entire So this is the timeline from 2023 to 2025.
50:19
So this is this is 70 years here on this slide and then this is three years just a few.
50:25
So, OpenAI in uh March 23rd of 20 or sorry, March of 2023, OpenAI releases GPD4 multimodal model capable of processing both text and images.
50:37
Same month, Microsoft integrates Copilot into its 360 degree uh 3865 product suite. I I remember that day.
50:46
I remember exactly where I was.
50:48
It was It will echo in history. It will echo in history.
50:50
You know, you know, the funny thing is that it actually would have if they did Clippy that day. Yeah. Yeah.
50:55
If they had been like, "We're bringing back Clippy and Clippy and he's now God." Yeah. He's God.
51:04
It's also so funny with the paperclip narrative, you know, everyone's Do you remember?
51:06
So, so this still feels so long ago.
51:09
So, that same month, Google released Bard. Yeah.
51:10
It's chat GPT competitor. Oh, yeah. Hello, Bard.
51:13
You don't hear about Bard much anymore because it was rebranded to J.
51:17
Uh uh same month, Anthropic releases Claude, its AI assistant focused on safety in uh interpability. Yeah.
51:26
Uh late a few months later in November, 28 countries including the USA, EU, and China sign the Bletchley declaration on AI safety.
51:38
Sounds dramatic, of course.
51:38
Uh uh conclusion was that they want it to be safe, not dangerous. Yeah, we all agree.
51:46
Which I think we can all agree on.
51:47
uh March of 2024, the US Department of Homeland Security unveils its AI roadmap strategy.
51:52
Actually, I don't remember that at all.
51:54
It's hard to say that that was, you know, one of the most consequential moments of the last years.
52:00
Uh April was though, April 2024, Meta Platforms releases its open- source Llama 3 model with 70 billion parameters. This is so funny.
52:07
So, there's two stars after the open source.
52:12
And if you're in tech, you would think that the stars would indicate like oh the difference between like open weights and open source code and open data set, right?
52:21
Like that's the nuance of like open sourcing and LLM.
52:22
And also like they did open source it, but they set this limit where the other hyperscalers couldn't use it.
52:28
Uh what does the what does this it says open source is AI models and tools made publicly available for use, modification, and redistribution. Yeah.
52:36
redistribution. Yeah. So that's who this I mean this this again this is um very um yeah very very oriented towards the east coast specifically the world of finance but we love we love the world of finance and they got they got to get up to speed on this stuff because they're
52:52
going to be able to they're going to be able to invest soon in a lot of this stuff if they're not already so they got to learn so uh May of 2024 a year ago openai so fast yeah things are moving quick open releases GPT40 which has full multi modality across audio, visual and text inputs. Uh same time Google introduces AI
53:10
Uh same time Google introduces AI overviews to augmented search.
53:13
Very important for Google because that that product has grown super super fast. Yeah.
53:20
And I will say now I got to give them some credit, but I use AI overviews. Totally.
53:24
Because when they pop up, they're usually pretty they're usually very effective and they do hallucinate and there's ways to uh to like jailbreak them and stuff, but like that's that's accepted.
53:33
But if you're not trying to do that, you can get a pretty good experience.
53:36
I did see a hilarious UI mockup that was just Google has the opportunity to do the funniest thing ever, and it was just go all the way back to the original Google search bar, but just have it be a Gemini text box.
53:48
And so it was it was like the same aesthetics as the original Google, but it would just be a text box that you would put the Gemini like and it would say like, "Do you want to think upload PDF?
53:58
Like, what model do you want to use?"
53:59
And then it would be like, "Send." Yeah.
54:01
And so it would just be actually you go to google.
54:03
com and you just get Gemini which would be aggressive uh destroy a lot of the revenue in the short term but um who knows may maybe it happens at some point uh at least it would be interesting if it happened like on a per user basis.
54:18
Yeah, like if they know that this user would retain longer and actually be better monetized by by seeing a Gemini prompt, they could serve that to you because they because they have like an advanced search product now that you can kind of like opt in or out of on google. com.
54:36
But I think if if the PMs really knew how much we love big tech, they would start to experiment with us more because they know we'd give them a chance to really iterate, improve.
54:46
You know, we're not going to just try something and churn.
54:50
I would never turn off Google out of respect.
54:54
Uh anyways, uh Apple on July of last year releases Apple Intelligence, an AI system integrated into its devices.
55:04
Is that when they Is that when they released it?
55:08
I thought they I thought they uh announced it then and then released it over the next Well, I think it was available in beta.
55:13
It wasn't fully released until they released the new iPhone. Yeah, it was delayed.
55:18
Um on September of last year, Alibaba releases 100 opensource Quen 2.
55:26
5 models with performance in line with Western competitors. Will Brown, big fan. Yep. Yep.
55:33
Loves all the different research models. Bitcoin guy. Bitcoin guy.
55:34
Uh and then December, OpenAI announces 03, its highest performing model ever. And uh reasoning model.
55:44
We basically are in the present now.
55:45
Deepseek at the beginning.
55:47
Deepseek and and yeah, Deepseek.
55:47
I guess that that was really kind moment for Deepseek.
55:52
Yeah, it was Deepseek releases R1 R10 open source reasoning models.
55:55
And yeah, the O the 03 versus R1 moment was really crazy because R1 was so free and accessible and 03 was like really paywalled and gated and so a lot of people's first interaction with like reasoning models was R1 and so hoping I had to to fire back very very quickly.
56:18
Um uh also Alibaba un unveiled Quen 2.
56:19
5 Max which surpasses the performance of other leading models Claude 40, Claude 3. 5, GPT40.
56:30
On some reasoning tests, OpenAI releases uh GPT 4.
56:33
5, Enthropic releases Claude 37 Sonnet and then chat GPT reaches 800 million weekly users.
56:39
Let's hear it for chat GPT.
56:44
I mean that's just it seriously is unprecedented in so many ways. Yeah.
56:50
10 years from now somebody some some kid will be raising trying to build a research company and they'll be like well open AAI started as a re research lab and then became a consumer internet hit.
57:02
It's like absolutely wild.
57:07
Anyway, there's a ton in here we could go through.
57:09
Let's go back to the timeline.
57:09
Let's go back to the timeline. I'm g stop sharing.
57:15
We got a post from Dennis.
57:15
Demand for VO3 has been off the charts.
57:19
Millions of videos have been generated in the past few days alone.
57:21
Now available on mobile and in more countries including the UK.
57:26
So the funny thing here with the timing of Mountain Head is that the entire plot of Mountain Head is based on a V3 like product being so good.
57:35
That people can't tell the difference. Yeah.
57:38
And it causes global chaos. Yep.
57:40
Um, it feels like VO4 will be that good.
57:44
Well, depends on the rate limits.
57:46
Yeah, that would be an important plot device. Yeah.
57:48
Well, that was part of the plot is it was like people were saying like you need to contain it more.
57:53
And he's like, "Oh, the metrics are so good. We got to let it go." Sure. Sure. Sure. Yeah.
57:56
But, uh, I I I don't think the V3 is is causing global chaos with the at the except I did I did I thought briefly.
58:06
I mean, I I'd seen the movie Saturday night and then Sunday I saw some of the protests happening in Paris and I did think for a second this could be, you know, it's shaky video, a lot of chaos, smoke, it's at night. Yeah.
58:22
I if I just glanced at it. Yeah.
58:25
I always just wonder like how much is how how important is fake video because there are so many other tools for misinformation that have existed for decades.
58:36
So just lying in text like instantiating fake text has always been possible, right? Photoshop has existed. I made it up. I made it up.
58:44
Um also I mean one of the classic misinformation things especially during like riots and times of that's misinformation.
58:54
uh during uh during a lot of these like protests and different moments is uh they will just take a a photo or real real video from three years ago or from a different location and be like look like this is this is you know or another classic this is the Los Angeles fires and you're seeing like a a wildfire from like Montana or something. Yeah.
59:17
Or you just do a freeze frame or it's an image and then you write text that supports a different narrative than what actually happens.
59:23
so many different tools in the misinformation tool chest.
59:25
Like I agree that that D VO3 and and generative video will be one, but it will very quickly, you know, turn into okay well like I need to I need to treat this video just like I would treat just like a block of text or like a screenshot or an image that could have been photoshopped.
59:42
Yeah, I mean it is it is going to be a very interesting question.
59:48
I mean the uh we were talking with a friend of the show and he was like the the worst part of Mountain Head is that it's real.
59:56
This idea that like tech, you know, the tech elite are destroying, you know, humanity and they don't care, right? Um boo.
1:00:09
Um, but it is I mean there's so much about the internet that isn't that isn't real or is that embellished in different ways and um anyways uh speaking of social media uh we have a meme from Eddie Quan.
1:00:22
He says, "I often think of this and it is woman saying, "Thank you for ruining my life."
1:00:28
And it is the Instagram octopus saying, "I'm literally an algorithm designed to maintain your attention by learning from your behavior and mirroring back that which consciously or not captivates you and the social worlds through which you move.
1:00:42
I am literally one of the most fascinating tools for collective and personal shadow work ever created.
1:00:46
That is only if you can learn to recognize that you aren't disturbed by social media.
1:00:51
You were disturbed by your own reflection.
1:00:55
So what does it mean that my Instagram explore page is entirely bodybuilding content and golden retrievers? Yeah.
1:01:03
I I think it's my own reflection.
1:01:06
So it's saying like I could be a generational bodybuilder.
1:01:10
Yeah, that's what I potentially am.
1:01:12
And I've told you that many times. Yes, I've told you. Elite level genetics. Fantastic insertions.
1:01:18
That's the only thing that if you said, "I'm gonna quit the show.
1:01:21
I'm going to be a bodybuilder for bodybuilder," I would be like, "Yeah, that is your purpose." Yeah. Yeah. 100%. Exactly.
1:01:26
Um, it's that and supercars and watches.
1:01:31
It's really so ridiculous.
1:01:34
Um, uh, anyway, uh, let's let's do an ad for linear.
1:01:37
Linear is a purpose-built tool for planning and building products.
1:01:40
Meet the system for modern software development.
1:01:42
Streamline issues, projects, and product road mapaps.
1:01:44
Let's go a new soundboard.
1:01:46
They got linear for agents. Start building. Do it. Check out Linear. Do it.
1:01:55
We are pushing Linear to the limits internally. Yeah, we're excited.
1:02:02
Uh, Annabiology says, "Gave a talk at Edge Esmeralda on the scientific history leading up to Ray Pete today. Going to post soon. Stay tuned. Very excited.
1:02:08
I I think I included this more as a mental note, but I want to do I want to do a deep dive on Ray Pete just because he's influenced so much of uh a lot of the think the current thinking around health and uh we should have anabology on.
1:02:25
Yeah, we should have like a few different people in that space come on while we do some deep dives. Yeah.
1:02:29
But I met uh anabology at at this event last year. Cool.
1:02:35
Uh friend of of Justin Mars. So yeah. Oh, back to Mary Mer.
1:02:38
Buco capital bloke uh says, "I asked Gemini and Chachap to construct a pol portfolio based solely on the new 300 plus slide Mary Mer AI trend report. Here were the results. Who do you think wins?"
1:02:51
And so we have uh Gemini says 15% Nvidia, 10% Microsoft, 10% Alphabet, 9% Amazon, 6% Meta.
1:03:02
Key enablers and differentiated AI leaders.
1:03:04
They got TSMC, Apple, Tesla, growth in AI, apps and infrastructure, Salesforce, Oracle. Pretty good company. I don't know.
1:03:12
This seems interesting to me. What do you think?
1:03:13
Waiting waiting meta at 6%.
1:03:16
That does seem low, but again, it's like all of the I mean, there's some stat where like the Mag 7 grew revenue uh at something like 30% annually over the last like two quarters and the rest of the Fortune 500 if you average all of them up, they grew at like 5% or something, eight%.
1:03:37
And so like yeah, yeah, you you can say like yeah that meta feels underweight there, but you got to take it from somewhere because you you know like every point you're taking from you're adding to Meta has to be out of Nvidia and that's a great company or out of Microsoft and that's a great company.
1:03:54
Um but yes, I I would agree with you.
1:03:56
Um yeah, very interesting.
1:03:58
Uh anyway, let's go through a a real quick overview of what we're about to talk to our first guest about.
1:04:04
Uh the Trojan truck, how Ukraine just made nowhere safe.
1:04:06
Across 400 km on the show today, we can do it tomorrow or something.
1:04:11
Uh across 400 kilometers of Russian territory this morning, delivery trucks completed what looked like a routine stop near five Russian air bases.
1:04:18
These Trojan trucks with cargo containers disguised as garden sheds opened uh upward to release clusters of firstperson view quad quadcopters into the bright morning sky.
1:04:28
minutes later, the over 40 aircraft were burning, including irreplaceable strategic bombers that form a core component of Russia. So, they released image.
1:04:39
This had to have just come out of this is like where they prepped, I think. Yeah.
1:04:43
I think it's like, but it's an interesting dynamic for Ukraine to be like marketing the world. Totally.
1:04:46
To show, hey, we did this and we're giving you enough to actually tell the story completely because we want to send the message.
1:04:53
This whole plot is extremely crafty. It is for sure.
1:04:54
Uh well, we have a great guest to discuss it with us today.
1:04:59
We have Saurin uh from Nuros who builds drones and has been to the Ukraine.
1:05:03
And so we'll bring him into the studio and uh ask him how he's doing. How you doing? There he is. Welcome. Great. How are you guys? We're good.
1:05:09
We have a new soundboard, so expect some wild some wild cards. Some wild stuff.
1:05:15
But yeah, uh we we we uh we missed you on Teal Fellow Day.
1:05:18
I hope you're doing well.
1:05:19
Um, maybe you can kick it off with just a a brief uh overview of what you're tracking in the news.
1:05:26
I mean, we just we just covered this uh this incredible Ukraine operation.
1:05:30
Um, what information, how are you processing it?
1:05:36
Let's let's have him do a quick one minute intro for anybody that didn't hear him the last time and isn't familiar at uh with your background. That's great. Yeah, absolutely.
1:05:44
Uh so I am the co-founder and CEO at Nuros.
1:05:47
Uh what we're doing here is building massively scalable defense systems starting with drones.
1:05:53
Uh my personal background is I was a professional drone racer for a long time.
1:05:58
I've been building and flying FPV drones, first-person view drones for about 10 years.
1:06:03
Uh competed with Team USA, won the world championship, started a company in drone racing, uh and then got really really pulled into defense a couple years ago.
1:06:11
Uh and now Nuros has been around for about two years.
1:06:13
Uh, I've been over to Ukraine many times.
1:06:15
We have a lot of products deployed there and we are now the the highest rate drone production line in America.
1:06:22
So, we've been really trying to ramp production.
1:06:25
Um, you know, looking at what the Ukrainians are doing and taking a lot of inspiration.
1:06:30
And how much of the drones right now are FPV versus fully autonomous?
1:06:33
Is that is that an important distinction for what you're building?
1:06:37
Um, yeah, it is an important distinction.
1:06:39
Although the line is starting to get more more blurry.
1:06:40
Uh the vast majority are FPV and in in Ukraine too.
1:06:45
Uh the vast majority of drones in general are FPVs and the vast majority of those are completely manually piloted. Yeah.
1:06:52
I had no idea that you started a drone racing company before this.
1:06:56
Did you ever get that to scale or was it still just like benchtop?
1:06:59
I remember the first time I saw your facility, you were kind of hand assembling.
1:07:02
It sounds like now uh the the supply chain is much more robust, but what was the what was that early experience like? Yeah.
1:07:07
So the company uh it's actually still operating.
1:07:10
Primarily we were focused on at the beginning we were focused on building the uh materials for race courses.
1:07:16
So there weren't really there wasn't a really good place to go for serious racing pilots to to buy like the the gates or what they called what you actually fly through.
1:07:26
So we you know this this was a lot of actually working with the Chinese uh you know industrial base figuring out where we can go to get these better materials.
1:07:35
Um, and then a lot of the arbitrage was actually in the shipping, figuring out how to do um, you know, shipping all over the United States of these very heavy items without driving the cost super high.
1:07:45
And then we moved into uh, other types of components.
1:07:47
We we we like to collaborate with kind of the top racing pilots in the world.
1:07:52
So, we make like frames and motors and other things that are really tailored to the needs of uh, the best pilots, but it's still operating.
1:08:00
I' I've passed it off now.
1:08:02
Uh but it was a really good experience also to see how easy it is to go on Alibaba and you know get something done in a matter of weeks.
1:08:09
Uh basically like zero to full product in a matter of weeks versus you know working with US suppliers that would maybe maybe get you a sample.
1:08:18
Yeah, those gates are somewhat tech enabled, right?
1:08:21
Because I' I've seen like the LEDs on them and do they actually have a sensor that can tell if the drone went through the circle? So they do.
1:08:30
that's usually on the kind of hobbyest setups that's that's more on the like just start and finish gate and it's a separate system.
1:08:37
Um our ours were purely just a a fabric but that is a key part of it as well.
1:08:44
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
1:08:45
Uh before we dive into the news, uh specifically the news over the weekend, could you give us a high level overview of the history of drone warfare in Ukraine?
1:08:55
Because I understand it's been progressing super rapidly uh on both sides and I and it'd be helpful to understand kind of the different stages.
1:09:04
Do they ever have like predator drones like the global war on terror type of drone or did they jump straight to quadcopter and kind of like leapfrog the technology?
1:09:12
So, you know, you've had this this uh Russian aggression war in Ukraine since 2014.
1:09:18
Obviously, the full-scale invasion was 2022, but even during that that period before the full-scale invasion, there was some usage of drones for surveillance and uh dropping explosives.
1:09:28
These are primarily still like small drones like what you're seeing now.
1:09:33
Uh but this was not a a proliferated technology.
1:09:35
Then when the full-scale invasion happened uh within a few months Ukrainians started thinking about all these ways that they could use you know inexpensive drone technology to get a an asymmetric advantage and that is where FPV drones started becoming a really really big deal.
1:09:51
So they pioneered the uh really this idea of you know putting an explosive on a racing drone and using that as a precision strike weapon.
1:10:00
There were instances of this happening in other places, but they really scaled it and they've really refined it.
1:10:06
And then Russia was was much slower to take it seriously, although now they they tend to uh in some ways outproduce Ukraine and they have a much, you know, more direct line to China um where most of these components are coming from.
1:10:20
But since 2022 and FPV is just starting to get used now, it's reached an unbelievable scale.
1:10:26
Uh it's estimated Ukraine is going to produce 4 and a.
1:10:29
5 million FPV drones this year.
1:10:32
And those are ranging from, you know, ones that are this big to 15inch propellers, uh fiber optic controlled drones, many different types and sizes of warheads, um different configurations.
1:10:43
And I can talk more about the drones that were used in in Operation Spiderweb as well because those were really interesting.
1:10:48
But uh what we've seen is just this vast technology landscape um where new clever ideas like fiber optic are you know going to be the the hot thing for a few months and then they sort of just become another tool in the tool belt and it's just this constant arms race. Yeah.
1:11:02
talk about uh talk about this this attack was was unique in a bunch of different ways, but is this something that had been and to your knowledge or or just you know more generally known to be something that had been attempted multiple times or you know maybe like uh I'm curious to know um yeah kind of the backstory on on this type of attack because it seems you know it's massive difference to be using this technology way behind enemy lines.
1:11:32
versus using it, you know, at the front line. Yeah.
1:11:35
So, primarily FPV drones are used on the front line, say the kind of 30 km band across the zero line.
1:11:43
What was so unique here is that it was FPV drones, short-range drones being used 4,000 km inside of Russia.
1:11:52
Um it it was this unbelievable application where you know you've seen Ukraine using long range one-way attack drones that are going you know 1500 kilometers um to strike targets deep inside of Russia.
1:12:04
But here these were small drones actually driven in on on uh trucks basically in the tops of shipping containers.
1:12:12
Um and I don't know of any uh operations that were similar to this beforehand.
1:12:18
I think uh it was not something they wanted to uh give away and the drones were actually operating on cellular.
1:12:25
They were not operating on local like the the normal low latency local radios you use for FPVs typically.
1:12:33
Um and so I think you know this is going to be something that a lot of people are going to look at and and see if you have drones that are operating on cellular you can't really tell them apart from cell phones.
1:12:42
That's really hard to defend against, really hard to detect.
1:12:46
Uh but now it's going to going to be part of air airbased defense is um thinking about drones that are operating on cellular being piloted from basically anywhere in the world. Yeah.
1:12:58
Talk about uh talk about the Russian response, the immediate response to this incident.
1:13:03
Uh from the footage that I saw and I think most people saw that that uh tracked it, it it seemed incredibly challenging to respond to it quickly. Right.
1:13:13
by the time you could sort of organize a response, a lot of the the core damage had been done.
1:13:17
Uh what what do you think the the the the question I think that every country is asking themselves now is how do you defend against this type of attack whether you're at war like Ukraine and and Russia are or you're just you know thinking uh you know long term.
1:13:37
Yeah, this clearly poses a massive threat to critical infrastructure.
1:13:40
I mean, being blatant, the US does not have any defenses in place that would stop this from happening.
1:13:46
We already know, we there's already news stories about drones that are flying over our Air Force bases, and we can't do anything about it.
1:13:53
And I think the only approach here has to be a a multi-layered system where you're looking at all of the different types of electronic warfare and also considering things like satellite communications and cellular communications where you're basically able to turn those off on the flip of the switch, which is a huge uh a huge inconvenience and a huge uh thing to build into the infrastructure, but clearly that's going to be required.
1:14:17
And you mean that just just to drill down there, you mean uh asking Verizon or AT&T or every cell provider in a certain area to turn off, you know, cell coverage because a drone took off, you know, is is or a fleet of drones or a fleet of drones.
1:14:34
But either way, it's hard to tell if they're a threat or just, you know, some recreational use.
1:14:37
I mean, I I'm I'm sure many people on the internet will tell me why this is a very stupid idea, but when I think about this, uh, it's clearly the Russians were not equipped to jam drones operating on cellular.
1:14:51
That is totally possible and we could have, uh, better cellular jammers.
1:14:54
Um, but if they had been able to recognize this threat immediately and turn off all the cellular networks in that location, then it basically would have stopped this this operation completely.
1:15:04
Uh, and so that's where my mind immediately goes with something like this.
1:15:07
Do you think they had electronic warfare or or radio blocking equipment set up at that air base and it just you're saying it wasn't functional or it wasn't for that particular band.
1:15:20
It wasn't it wasn't blocking cellular.
1:15:22
It might have been blocking low latency.
1:15:24
Uh I forget what what was the what's the actual frequency for the radio that you were using with the heads-up display that we were we were playing. It depends.
1:15:31
So that's the that that is the the point.
1:15:33
So basically, you can actually see in the videos, um, the drones take off and they have GPS, and once the attack starts, they lose GPS, which means GPS is getting jammed, which makes total sense.
1:15:43
That's that's a common way of defending against these one-way strike drones.
1:15:46
So air bases are going to already be set up with GPS jamming and you know, so is Moscow, so is Kiev. Like that's common.
1:15:52
Um, but they're not set up to just obliterate cell phone usage on air bases.
1:15:57
Um, and and they probably do have jamming for uh some like control links in the 915 mehz range, video links in the 5. 8 GHz range.
1:16:09
Um, there's other common ones that are probably they're more well equipped to jam.
1:16:13
Um, but when I I think what caught them so by surprise was the use of cellular. Yeah.
1:16:18
I mean, yeah, we've talked about some of the different You said there was kind of like an ensemble approach to stopping these types of attacks.
1:16:25
attacks. um walk through some of those because I remember seeing like oh we're going to train eagles to catch the to catch the the the drones or we're going to just have guys with shotguns that shoot them or uh anvil drones or uh nets or electronic takeover there's so many different approaches and it feels like
1:16:44
at least in the US defense tech space there's a whole bunch of startups going after different counter drone counter UAS strategies and it feels like uh there might be an ensemble one What do you expect to kind of be the the the mix or the road map or the tech tree that we go down to kind of prep for defense against this type of thing? First off,
1:17:04
First off, our strategic bombers should be inside of hangers.
1:17:09
I think that would be a great start. Yes.
1:17:10
Uh but as you mentioned, there are these really basic things like nets uh that that do help against FPVs, but uh you know, that's not going to last very long, right?
1:17:18
I think you're going to see a a mixed layer, especially with uh electronic warfare combined with interceptors combined with uh the sort of kinetic defeat like the Bullfrog system uh where you know you have an automatic machine gun turret that's able to to shoot drones out of the sky.
1:17:36
The last line of defense is really guys with shotguns uh and that that can actually work against an FPV drone, but uh you don't want to be want to be relying on that.
1:17:44
So, I think it's one of the things that worries me the most is that I've never seen a jammer in the United States made by a US company that can reliably take out FPV drones.
1:17:56
And I think we're very very far behind in the practical application of of uh electronic warfare, especially with these like local radios.
1:18:06
So, I I believe this is a huge area where we need to start investing dramatically and putting way more attention. Yeah. Okay.
1:18:12
So, I want to walk through a little bit more of this.
1:18:15
Um, you mentioned GPS gets jammed, then they're going over the cell network.
1:18:19
Um, there's probably a way to provision like almost like licenses to operate on the cell network that might make it harder.
1:18:28
I imagine that they had to like effectively like buy Russian SIM cards and set them up in the drones.
1:18:33
But, uh, talk to me about the the actual flight experience of flying remotely over cell because I imagine that it's low, it's high latency, low bandwidth.
1:18:43
So is this like when you fly it's remarkable. It's like super precise.
1:18:45
I imagine this is a little bit more jerky and a little bit slower and so you could probably take advantage of that but can you characterize the type of flying that we might have seen if we were on the ground that day? Absolutely.
1:18:56
So I spent a lot of time looking at the flight videos and the pictures of the FPV drones and these are not normal drones.
1:19:05
These were very special uh special builds to accomplish this.
1:19:07
So, one of the key characteristics of these systems um that are operating off of cellular where you do have high latency control is they are fully stabilized.
1:19:16
So, they're doing altitude and position hold, which is not actually normal for an FPV drone.
1:19:22
Normally, you're running on a a firmware called Betaflight, which was developed for racing applications, and it's really precise.
1:19:28
It flies really well to a human pilot.
1:19:30
Um but it it doesn't really have built-in stabilization.
1:19:34
they were using Artypilot, which is another open- source firmware, and it's used widely across drones, uh, but not usually for racing drones or for FPVs.
1:19:42
And so, you can see that it actually shows in the onscreen display from the videos that they're they're doing that position hold.
1:19:48
And you can tell, um, it's it's not like a normal FPV drone where they're putting it at kind of any angle.
1:19:53
And what was also really interesting is they set these up to not fly into the target forward like you would with a normal FPV strike drone.
1:20:03
They descended flat onto the target and they had a camera on a gimbal that can point down.
1:20:08
So what you would usually do is is have a warhead that's pointing basically in the same direction, forward direction as your FPV camera.
1:20:16
And on these drones, they had two warheads that were basically pipes between the motors.
1:20:19
That way they could descend with that camera looking straight down and descend onto the area with the fuel tanks of those bombers.
1:20:27
Uh, and the other advantage of that is that those drones inherently were flat and and stable when they're sitting in the container.
1:20:34
Instead of having one big round warhead on the bottom, they had these two smaller ones on the sides, which made it much easier for them to pack them flat inside the top of that shipping container. Interesting.
1:20:43
And so having a relatively larger target than a FPV drone would typically had enabled that, right?
1:20:51
They just had to land kind of within a I don't know.
1:20:54
I don't know what the the surface area was, but 20 something feet to really have the effect.
1:21:00
They were landing on a pretty precise location, but it was it was they were able to do that, especially because they knew the targets were stationary and it's pretty easy to descend, you know, onto a flat wing versus if you're going after a moving vehicle or a soldier, anything like that.
1:21:15
Uh descending flat onto them is going to be really, really hard, especially in that full stabilized mode. Yeah. Yeah.
1:21:21
Uh what do you think the pipeline is for identifying targets?
1:21:25
Are they using satellite imagery to see that the bombers are not in hangers and then they can uh clock that in? Yeah.
1:21:30
What wasn't there there was a treaty at some point too that required bombers to be parked Oh.
1:21:38
that I think it was I'll look it up.
1:21:42
Well, that might be rolling back soon.
1:21:44
No, I think it did get abandoned already, but but there was some historical precedent for uh nuclear assets needing to be um visible. Yeah. Yeah.
1:21:53
I want to talk about uh target identification and then I want to talk about um just uh essentially complete offline drone flying and targeting with computer vision and kind of closed loop basically doing geogesser on the fly and just popping up and realizing like look around.
1:22:10
Okay, I'm in I'm like I I I can kind of guess that I'm a thousand miles outside of Moscow.
1:22:15
There might be uh a target somewhere nearby.
1:22:17
I'm going to fly over there.
1:22:19
Okay, I see I can identify a hanger. I can identify a bomber.
1:22:22
Before we dive into that, let me give some context so I don't leave people hanging.
1:22:25
Uh so there was a treaty that the strategic arms reduction treaty start one signed in 1991 by the United States and the Soviet Union included provisions for transparency and verification such as placing strategic nuclear delivery vehicles like bombers at declared satellite observable locations to ensure compliance with the treaty's limits on nuclear arsenal.
1:22:45
So um it was broadly uh it was suspended by Russia in 2023 but there was still this sort of global infrastructure for storing these types of assets in a way that you wouldn't store them today if you were sort of building systems uh from first principles. Yeah.
1:23:07
So to answer your your question, John, u I have to imagine that satellite imagery and also just you this was a very well planned out plan for a year and a half operation and it was clear that u Ukrainian SBU was operating inside of Russia on the ground and so it was pretty easy for them to gather that intelligence of where the bombers were and you know when would be the right time to to strike.
1:23:32
Uh so I don't think that's the you know that's not the main challenge here.
1:23:36
Um but there was a lot of talk on on X about using AI and and training models to identify the planes and and people saying that this was u autonomous drones.
1:23:49
To me I watch these videos very closely.
1:23:52
There is nothing to indicate that these were autonomous drones.
1:23:55
It actually to me looks very obvious that they're they're fully manually piloted.
1:23:58
Um, and that also makes sense where where you have a a oneshot mission uh and you spend so much work to set up this cellular network or you know these drones that work on the cellular network.
1:24:09
Uh it would not make sense to trust that to um some kind of unproven terminal guidance on a completely new set of targets. Totally.
1:24:18
Where we will get to is drones that are able to accomplish missions like this completely autonomously.
1:24:23
And what you were kind of alluding to is is like this GPS deny navigation world that's getting a lot of attention right now where basically you have kind of your known map and then you have what the camera sees and you're able to match those together and and say look this is where I am.
1:24:38
Um typically you need to do that in a pretty confined space because you have to preload all of that map data. Sure.
1:24:44
But uh that's really really useful if you especially on these these one-way strike drones, the larger drones when you're trying to do deep strike and hit a precise target and you've accepted the fact that GPS is just going to be completely useless because and cellular as well. Right. Right.
1:24:58
So so so total total signal jamming, but you you maybe don't have to load like all of Google Street View from all over the world, but you could load in just this thousand mile region in in in Russia and then you kind of know that we're going to start here.
1:25:12
So, you need to be grounding and then you can compress that ideally with some AI maybe or or just some general compression to to load as much as possible on the drone.
1:25:21
But I'm wondering about like if we're if we can't do that without like an Nvidia GPU on board, that's going to change the weight and cost and all the economic equations around this.
1:25:32
But it sounds like we're maybe close to that already.
1:25:36
I can speak from the nearest perspective which is we are specking all of our autonomy to uh work on a computer that doesn't kind of ruin the inherent nature of an FPV drone, right?
1:25:47
Needs to be small enough.
1:25:49
It needs to be low enough cost and that doesn't tend to be an NVIDIA GPU for the systems we build.
1:25:52
Um but you can still do a lot with that and and there's also these much more traditional uh forms of of navigation.
1:26:01
you know, inertial navigation's been around for a very long time and works quite well.
1:26:05
Um, and so you what you want to do is actually combine these different things together.
1:26:09
Um, and it's going to depend on the the user and the doctrine if they will be okay with drones just fully autonomously going after targets.
1:26:18
But, uh, it's it we are getting very close to the point where you could have a lowcost FPV style drone that's completing a mission basically on its own, flying to a certain area.
1:26:28
I scanning four targets, identifying those targets, and then basically just saying like go or no go, and then you just have to click a button.
1:26:36
That's that's what I think we're actually approaching quite quickly. Yeah.
1:26:39
Are there uh international treaties around that?
1:26:41
I mean, it feels like the the decision to maybe not destroy a military asset that doesn't have a human on board, but certainly to like take a human life, that feels like a pretty distinct Rubicon that would be uh discussed in the global order at or at the UN before it happens.
1:27:01
Um, and yet it does seem inevitable as technology progresses, but where are we in that type of discussion and like Geneva Convention stuff?
1:27:12
I think the line gets blurry with AI because we've had weapons for a long time where you press the button and once it fires and it could be flying for hours and you're still never calling it back, right?
1:27:22
Like a cruise missile, right?
1:27:24
Or even just like a like a mortar shell, right? Exactly.
1:27:26
And so my opinion here is that the systems that Nuros builds and these systems that are are enabled by AI and and uh drones in general are are are much more precise and cause much less casualties of civilians. True.
1:27:42
And that idea I think is is starting to proliferate.
1:27:45
But um it's it's heavily debated.
1:27:49
I don't think anyone could give you a a perfectly clear answer of this is exactly what everyone's agreed upon because uh when you get in a situation like Ukraine where you are just defending your territory and it is an allout war uh those things don't seem to matter as much, right?
1:28:05
You're just you're you're coming up with the most clever solution to get it done with your limited resources.
1:28:10
Um and so I think it's it's really the only thing that matters is what is actually going to happen in a real conflict.
1:28:16
and we can look to Ukraine for that and we can think about uh what potential adversaries the United States has in the future.
1:28:21
Yeah, it does seem like the like like if the Ukrainians had the choice to to you know like send a couple more mortar shells and like kill 50 Russian people.
1:28:32
They would have much rather just destroyed the capital assets of these exquisite bombers that are very hard to build and are and are, you know, not like strictly speaking more valuable than human life, but certainly like more strategic to the to the war effort.
1:28:44
Uh so yeah, it makes sense that like a precise instrument like a drone would actually favor targeting the the the the the bomber, the asset as opposed to the human, which is potentially how are you seeing you you mentioned a little bit about how the the warhead this time around was different and that it was flat so it could be packed into the the truck.
1:29:08
What what is the what's the general evolution of of of that you're seeing on on the warhead side?
1:29:13
So, the classic image of a Ukrainian FPV drone is a 78 10 inch FPV drone with an RPG7 warhead. Yeah.
1:29:25
Duct tape or zip tied to the bottom and some type of homegrown initiation board to actually trigger that and then there's a blasting cap that just goes in the back of the RPG7.
1:29:37
That's like the most common setup and there's a lot of images of that.
1:29:39
For a long time now, Ukrainians and Russians have been building purpose purpose-made FPV warheads, and these can be, you know, basically from scratch.
1:29:48
Um, we on our systems have warheads that are are very purpose-built for the uh the intended target.
1:29:56
And so that's really just depending on the mission, you're able to quickly swap on, swap off um various different warheads.
1:30:03
And I think that's the the ideal scenario where you can support a a wide array of different effects uh and swap them out quickly.
1:30:12
Can you talk about the economics between the drone and the munition?
1:30:14
It seems like the like the the disposable drone was quickly adopted.
1:30:20
Um and is that a function of the fact that the warhead costs more than the drone or they're roughly 50/50?
1:30:27
What's the evolution been there?
1:30:29
Because you could imagine if you wind up in a world where munition cost is driven to five bucks and the drone is still hovering around a couple hundred.
1:30:39
Well, then it might make sense to release the munition and try and return the drone even if it's somewhat low probability.
1:30:44
Yeah, the costs are roughly 50/50 on an FPV system.
1:30:48
And it it really depends, but I I would put it roughly 50/50.
1:30:54
Um, why you don't want to release the munition is because the point of an FPV drone it is that it's the cheapest and most precise guidance system you can have.
1:31:05
So, as soon as you decouple that, even if it's very close to the target, you're losing precision and it's not a great cost to actually blow up the drone, right?
1:31:13
And you we do have bigger bomber drones, which makes sense because those are much more costly and they're able to carry very very heavy warheads.
1:31:22
But to me, the the uh reason why an FPV is so good is because it is actually just kind of a guidance system around a warhead. Yeah.
1:31:29
When you say we, you mean the US armed forces, not near us?
1:31:34
Uh I I mean common sense the collective. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
1:31:41
Um so yeah, what what what is in the in the Neuros portfolio right now?
1:31:44
How is how is uh scaling production been?
1:31:46
And I'm interested in specifically knowing uh like what are the downstream what are the frustration points that you've experienced building that manufacturing line that you maybe even expect someone to build a startup around to make it easier.
1:32:05
Uh I've been talking to a lot of uh defense tech friends who are employees and I've been telling them like if you just go into the the the most hypers scale the most aggressive startup like if you want to be a founder but you crush it there like you might discover something that needs its own its own business instead of like looking at a market map and trying to decide that way like go experience the pain.
1:32:27
So where has the pain been where has been the opportunity uh and and how has that process been scaling up the manufacturing line?
1:32:32
So speaking to our our current products, uh we produce Archer, which is our our FPV drone, uh built on an allied supply chain.
1:32:40
It's certified by the DoD for for usage and to be cyber secure and supply chain secure.
1:32:46
Uh we have Archer Strike, which is the version of that where we actually integrate the warhead system.
1:32:49
And then we have our our various different ground stations for different use cases.
1:32:53
Um crossbow is more tactical and portable.
1:32:57
Longbow is our max range, max anti-jam ground station.
1:33:00
Um we have other things in the works but the the main focus has been scaling the production of Archer and the ground station.
1:33:08
Um it was quite painful earlier this year.
1:33:11
We went through sort of the first version of a production ramp which I think for any company ends up being a really really painful time for us.
1:33:18
It was all of our not all but we have all of these custom electronics that we we bring in from a board house in Arizona and uh we were finding these really high failure rates in some of the designs and sometimes it wasn't even because of something we were doing and so we had to spend a lot of time to get those components to a really high first pass yield.
1:33:39
Uh so for a while it was lots and lots of testing uh lots of drones failing at the end of line test.
1:33:46
Now we're in a really stable spot and and that is is going quite well.
1:33:51
We're uh shipping very consistently about 1500 drones a month, but uh ramping that actually very fast.
1:33:55
On the ground station side, there's also been a lot of engineering challenges.
1:33:59
Um but I think what's more interesting, what you were alluding to is is the supply chain.
1:34:05
And uh one of the big things that I think you'll probably hear a lot of drone and defense tech people talking about right now is the supply chain for brushless motors.
1:34:13
uh we have worked with a a partner outside of China to scale up their capacity, but even right now that's still a a game where, you know, we're pushing them to go faster, pushing them to make new specs, um and and they are not prepared for the volume that we're doing and that we're planning to be doing quite soon.
1:34:30
So, this is one that I've seen a lot of folks getting interested in.
1:34:35
I think there's some really good efforts that are starting to uh appear within the US and and allied countries for making brushless motors.
1:34:43
Uh but there's probably going to be need to be a lot of people serving this because there's many different sizes, many different specs.
1:34:48
Um one of the challenges here is also the the neodymium that goes into the motors.
1:34:51
Uh and the other raw materials are also typically controlled by China.
1:34:56
So there's a many many layer supply chain problem that you know one single drone company isn't going to fix on its own. Yeah.
1:35:04
Yeah. I talked to a a friend who was uh doing business with a international founder who had experience uh in the brushless motor industry in China and was thinking about setting up an operation in America and was asking this this other friend um go oh yeah like we
1:35:22
want to get set up but of course like we want to be where the action is because we have a supply chain uh we'd love to set up in the brushless motor district in America like wherever the district is where all the brushless motor companies are like we'll set up there so that we're just just walking distance. So if
1:35:35
we're just just walking distance. So if we need a specific material and they had to explain like no no no no like America doesn't even have a district for that that's not even a concept here like we don't have any companies but we also don't have the rest of the supply chain and and China's really really done a great job of like creating not just the
1:35:51
power law outcomes like the DJI's of the world but also all the minor supply chain companies they're all right next to each other so if you need some piece of you know equipment you can just go across the street it's kind of like what's happening at Elsagundo right now you guys are building it up where can go over to Cameron at range view and say, "Hey, can you help me with this part?" or something like that. Um, but it's or something like that.
1:36:09
Um, but it's we're we're a lot earlier on that curve.
1:36:13
So, uh, hopefully hopefully it's solved.
1:36:15
I I I know people have flagged the brushless motor, uh, industry, uh, quite early and so people are definitely working on it. Yeah.
1:36:21
Anyway, thank you so much for coming on.
1:36:23
I'm sure you're going to have a very busy week.
1:36:24
I'm sure we weren't the first people to uh, give you a call, shoot you a text.
1:36:27
We appreciate you coming, ask uh, get your thoughts.
1:36:30
So, thanks for coming on and breaking it down and uh, thanks for doing what you do.
1:36:34
Yeah, we'll talk to you soon. Cheers. Thanks guys.
1:36:35
Uh, quickly let me tell you about numeral uh, sales tax on autopilot.
1:36:38
Spend less than 5 minutes per month on sales tax compliance. What is this?
1:36:45
It's just a cool sound effect. Go to numeralhq. com.
1:36:49
Put your sales tax on autopilot.
1:36:51
Uh, next up we have Connor from Lightseed coming in.
1:36:53
Uh, he's been on the show before.
1:36:55
We're going to get an update from him on all things in the defense tech world, what he's thinking about, how he's seeing things in the government.
1:37:01
Welcome to the stream, Connor. How are you doing? I'm good. I'm doing all right. Good to be back, guys. Yeah.
1:37:06
Oh, you got a suit this time. Oh, looking great.
1:37:09
We love I wanted to I I won't say I dress up just for you, but you know, I would have taken the suit off far before this, you know, if I wasn't coming on. Fantastic.
1:37:15
Thanks so much for jumping on.
1:37:18
Uh have you been tracking the Ukraine story closely? Uh any insights there?
1:37:24
Anything in the portfolio that's uh at all relevant in the defense tech world?
1:37:28
Uh, do you expect a response from the US government or guidance or change to any strategies?
1:37:34
Really, any takes on that?
1:37:34
I mean, first what a what a time to be alive.
1:37:37
I mean, uh, you know, I'm sure your your your Twitter feeds and and your group chats were blown up, uh, pun intended, over the weekend. Yeah.
1:37:45
Um, I mean, it's pretty crazy.
1:37:47
I mean, let's be honest, like, first, I'm not shocked that that the Ukrainians did this.
1:37:52
Uh, I mean, the execution seemed to be flawless from what we can pull from from open source intel.
1:37:57
I do think though, I mean, again, it's not a surprise.
1:38:00
The the Ukrainians have been mastering drone warfare for the last handful of years, and you know, you want to call it, you know, they called it spiderweb, like this was their this was their Trojan horse.
1:38:09
This was their, you know, Israeli beeper.
1:38:10
Um, and and the outcome is is is is pretty impressive to be honest.
1:38:15
I mean, what what what from the outside looking in, like the Russians woke up over the weekend and they thought they were getting their $4 timu orders and what did they get?
1:38:24
They got a thousand, you know, FPV drones, you know, blowing them to smitherines.
1:38:28
So, it's pretty impressive.
1:38:30
I mean, my my takeaways from this are really twofold, please.
1:38:31
The first is like there's never been a clear signal of where warfare is going.
1:38:36
signal of where warfare is going. Um and to be clear what you know what I what I view this from you know both the the entrepreneurs in my portfolio but also from my perspective I mean the world is about uh you know cheap attraitable a lot of times uh autonomous systems and that's you know playing out in warfare
1:38:53
that's playing out in other areas of life and then the second thing is um you know candidly it's like uh it's it's really hard to defend yourself at the pace at which things are changing um and and again like I know we do some things here in the United States and trying to be on the front end of a lot of this innovation. But when this happens, I
1:39:09
But when this happens, I think this almost just resets everyone again and says, "All right, how do how do we respond to it?"
1:39:14
And I think it's to your point, it's not a it's not a direct US response.
1:39:18
It's more of, hey, what do we need to buy?
1:39:20
What do we need to develop, you know, for our own fight in, you know, in some way, shape, or form? Yeah. What do you think?
1:39:24
Uh, obviously, you're a venture capitalist, not a geopolitical strategist, but what what what's the right Russian response to this?
1:39:33
Is it, hey, we suddenly need to be wary of having cell coverage anywhere near strategic military assets?
1:39:39
I mean, it seems like Ukraine and Ukraine in Ukraine's perfect world, they could run this style of attack a bunch and copy and paste and hit other targets, but it feels like something that was dependent on cellular technology that that's something that the the Russians can revoke, you know, fairly fairly quickly.
1:40:00
Sure, it'll be inconvenient, but I'm curious if you have have a take.
1:40:02
Yeah, I mean I, you know, to be honest, when I think about um how do you defend against this?
1:40:10
I think there is, you know, I wouldn't call this the easy answer of just, you know, turning off off the cellular network.
1:40:14
Um, I actually think the the only way to do it kind of practically is in layers or in a multitude of of of different ways because, you know, yeah, the, you know, the reality is if you looked at how the Ukrainians carried out this attack, they did so on the local, you know, Russian cell network.
1:40:31
Um, which again, I don't think any Russian kind of defense unit at any of these bases was ever thinking that they would have to turn off their own cell network.
1:40:39
And then there's just the practicality of how you do it.
1:40:40
I mean, I think there was what, four or five different attacks that hit all at the same time.
1:40:46
What do you what do you do?
1:40:47
You you turn off the network for tens of thousands, hundreds, thousands of people.
1:40:51
And oh, by the way, this is like a dirty little secret that nobody talks about.
1:40:54
You know, yes, you have your military systems that are protected and all that, but a lot of coordination is happening through WhatsApp.
1:40:59
a lot of coordination on and so all of a sudden you turn off the cell networks, you're actually inhibiting your own defense, your own response, the the first responder, you know, the you know, getting your own people out of there.
1:41:10
So I I think it's a bit more complex than that.
1:41:13
And then the last thing I'd say is just like uh even if you do this in layers, you know, you you need to be resilient in a way, but you're you're not going to stop everything.
1:41:22
not going to stop everything. I mean this was just brilliant master class of you know again if if maybe there was a plan we didn't know this but maybe there's a plan for you know a hundred bases and we only hit five of them and and and so if you think about just the the broad you know geopolitical you know
1:41:37
you know geographic coverage you you have to have I think to be 100% certain on anything it's just you it's impossible you can't do it it's interesting there was like that Huawei narrative for a while about 5G towers and potential back doors and it was always about It would the narrative was always about spying. Yeah. And I think Yeah.
1:41:53
And I think now you have to consider sabotage, not just espionage.
1:41:59
And the idea that if you could even just provision a tower that has some sort of just just if this SIM card comes through, just let it go through, you know, don't don't worry about it.
1:42:10
This this this SIM card can always communicate.
1:42:12
Uh that's that's very scary.
1:42:14
So I wonder I mean this is a funny aside, but it's it's real.
1:42:16
I mean, back when I was in Iraq not so long ago, we would go by like burner phones to be able to like check the news and, you know, catch up with your family on on obviously non-pertinent things.
1:42:26
And every now and then, I was, you know, I was in northern Iraq and every now and then I would go just pull up my Google search on this burner phone.
1:42:32
And my location happened to be Tran, Iran.
1:42:36
Almost every time that I would go to search there, and I'd be like, "Oh, this is weird.
1:42:39
That's exactly where I am."
1:42:41
So, again, I think um I think it's really hard to do in practicality.
1:42:44
I think the the the manner is like you just have to have resiliency.
1:42:48
You just have to have a bunch of different options both on the defense and and the offensive side.
1:42:53
I mean, look at what the Ukrainians are actually using for the majority of their drones in Ukraine right now. Fiber optic cable.
1:42:58
They're not even using networks at at this point, too.
1:43:02
So, can you actually What is that?
1:43:05
Can you go a level deeper on what that fiber optic infrastru?
1:43:08
Yeah, Saurin mentioned that, but I don't actually understand.
1:43:11
Is it like a cable that flies through the air? 100%. I mean, think about it.
1:43:15
It's it's it's arguably unlimited amount of fiber optic, really thin filament cables that all it's doing is is it's transmitting data to the to to the drone.
1:43:25
And, you know, you're inhibited um you know, arguably by how how much fiber optic cable, how much how much kind of filament can you lay out.
1:43:33
And so, so it's actually like a spiderweb that they're just drawing across the sky. 100%.
1:43:37
So you could have and it's it I'm I'm so curious to actually understand, you know, we don't have to talk about it today, but the actual mechanics is it like effectively on a spool that's just running out.
1:43:50
That's that's literally what it looks like.
1:43:51
I mean, I I haven't been on the ground in in Ukraine, but when I talk to my portfolio, you know, founders and companies that either are or have kind of partners there, I mean, you literally drive around the front lines of Ukraine right now and all you see is just miles and miles of clumps of all this this severed fiber optic cable.
1:44:07
So again, I think that just to zoom back, like I actually think the takeaway here is that the pace at innovation that's happening both in Ukraine, but like let's be honest here.
1:44:17
What we are watching in in Ukraine and in Russia um is a precursor to what life looks like in the Pacific.
1:44:24
And and I think that's, you know, maybe sounds a little bit doomsday in a way or another, but if you don't think that the Chinese are watching what happened to the Russians, um, and and either changing their own kind of defensive plans, uh, you know, building new kind of technology and equipment, you're just you're you're wrong.
1:44:38
Like they are we know that for a fact.
1:44:39
The uh I I remember because uh it was somebody at Andrew was responding to one of these posts, but a Chinese official was posting this video, a render. It was a render.
1:44:51
they were getting roasted for using a render, but it was like this mother ship style aircraft drone that was launching hundreds of drones off the side.
1:44:59
And so that's like the scary thing is, you know, could you have, you know, stealth aircraft at at some point that that can actually do the same type of deployment that this these trucks did, right?
1:45:12
Like a new B-52 should be dropping FPV drones instead of just unargeted bombs.
1:45:16
They'll just be a lot more targeted.
1:45:18
more targeted. I mean I think I think there are many I mean again I think the the reframing that's happening both on in my mind as an investor but candidly like also in the DoD and the in the government side um is before we used to think about deterrence just by like hey let's buy the big new exquisite system
1:45:35
let's buy the thing that if we stack you know head-to-head like again I think I I shared this with you guys before but back when I used to work in the Pacific we created this really kind of popular and widely distributed unclassified um you know slide that was literally just
1:45:50
all of the US ships stacked up against the Chinese ships and just like you look at the math it's this crazy crazy metric we're you know grossly behind by you know hundreds of ships um and that's just one example I think the the frame the the mindset we had then was just
1:46:04
like oh well then if we get more systems and we get more of these things that could have these big effects then we're going to win we're going to deter conflict we're going to win I just think the paradigm has changed now it's about okay what are the means that we actually have those effects. And it's not just
1:46:17
And it's not just about, I hate to say it, buying another F-35 or buying another aircraft carrier exquisite system.
1:46:22
It's let's think about this as a parts of a whole thesis and say, okay, if I can build a missile that costs a tenth of what we used to have, if I can use a drone that costs a thousandth of what we have, but have a thousand of them, have 10,000 of them, you actually achieve, if not a better end outcome in just a different means.
1:46:40
And by changing the modeicum of how you deliver it, the enemy has to change how they defend against it.
1:46:44
So again, I I just I think that's the future of of of where we're going.
1:46:48
It's not going to look just like what happened, you know, over the weekend in Russia, but it's going to rhyme.
1:46:52
It's going to look very similar to that.
1:46:54
Do you think this speeds up uh DoD procurement in any way?
1:46:58
I mean, it's certainly such a such a visceral and like tractable problem.
1:47:03
We've seen Ander working counter UAS for years, but there's also a ton of other startups taking different approaches.
1:47:08
We had the secretary of the army Dan Driscoll on and he was mentioning that they are ready to see demos from even early stage startups.
1:47:16
They want to see things and you think about not even in great power competition with China but just if there's an army base abroad, they're going to want to fight against this and they're going to want a really robust ensemble of counter UAS technologies. Well, yeah.
1:47:31
Why don't you give us I'm curious how you think of the market map of counter UAS technology because you know uh we've had uh Steve Simony on from Allen Control Systems that that can be a great solution if you're on a battlefield right but if you can't you can't you know protect against an NFL stadium for like counterterrorism by like shooting you know rounds middle into the air in the middle of a city right unless you're in Texas. Yeah, Texas. Yeah. I don't know.
1:47:58
Texas. Yeah. I don't know. I I think the way to you know back to kind of my my defense in you know multiple layers comment I think the way you look at this market is almost like a spectrum on one end of the spectrum you have what I would define as like the non-kinetic stuff that in a weird way can be kinetic but this is you know your EW jamming this is your you know laser based
1:48:17
systems uh and then on the other end of the spectrum you have like something as simple as like shooting a bullet or shooting a shotgun at something and I think again there's there's a there's a middle ground here which you know you start to take both like EW W resilient things, but then also like, you know, you mentioned the anvil drone from from, you know, Anderil of a drone flying and hitting another drone. I also just think
1:48:36
I also just think there's um there's this layer that no one else really talks about.
1:48:41
Um and when you look at this um you know what happened over the weekend, there's a full like how would you have solved this in the first place?
1:48:49
You can think, oh yeah, we can shut down the cell network.
1:48:52
We can get a bunch of shotguns.
1:48:52
We can get a bunch of you know, different systems that shoot down systems.
1:48:54
Or you could just do better counter intelligence and understand, you know, in some way, shape or form that this and that's hard to do to be really really honest because one truck gets in, you still have an effect in some way, shape, or form.
1:49:05
But, you know, in the end, I think like the US military is not just going to buy one of these systems.
1:49:11
They're not going to be like, ah, let's go with Andrew's Anvil.
1:49:13
They're going to buy litany of these things.
1:49:15
And if you think about just the the sheer complexity of the locations at which we are at and where our critical infrastructure sits, a single solution doesn't solve the problem.
1:49:26
I mean, you know, go talk to, you know, I know you guys were talking about the cell network earlier, but you guys should get a famous John Doyle who's now building a business called Cape, but used to be an early Palunteer guy.
1:49:36
um you know he's building a a private cell network and you know part of what he's doing is is enabling for when you know we call it a pace plane in the military when you shut everything off you still have a way to kind of communicate and talk but yeah in the end I think you're going to see this litany of of many buys as opposed to like one solution that that that solves them all. Yeah.
1:49:57
I wonder if there will be almost like adversarial camouflage for uh computer vision based models because I mean I've seen I've seen situations where people were worried about like facial detection.
1:50:09
So they would wear specific makeup with like triangles and it would it would look very odd to a human but to a computer it would read as just I can't process this at all.
1:50:18
And so imagine it's crazy because in a way this isn't new.
1:50:20
Like go back and look at at at World War II. Like what did we do?
1:50:24
We built literally wooden towns across the channel because when people were looking or doing like, you know, it looked like it was real.
1:50:32
Now it's just, you know, the technology has has flashed forward so far.
1:50:34
But but, you know, in in in the end, I think again it's one of these things where it's like, you know, there's going to be no single solution that that fits them all.
1:50:43
I do think that and this is like worth commenting.
1:50:45
Um I think a lot of times when we look at you know we as investors or entrepreneurs building or even just the general public thinks that the DoD has truly autonomous systems.
1:50:56
And and the reality is is like you have humans in the loop on 99% of what's happening.
1:51:01
And that's not necessarily a bad thing.
1:51:02
I just think the scary thing is like, you know, call it our uh our doctrine, call it our Geneva Convention laws, call it whatever you want to call it, but the reality is when hits the fan with China, do you think they're going to have a human in the loop and making decisions of how to kill or not kill something?
1:51:18
They're just going to kill things.
1:51:19
And and so to me, it's like we, you know, we need to be thoughtful about how we do it.
1:51:23
We are a beautiful democracy who cares about life and and kind of human nature.
1:51:27
Um, but at the same time, like we're not really doing autonomous systems yet, and that just makes me a little scared to be honest. Yeah.
1:51:35
Uh, put this in the context of DJI and Tik Tok.
1:51:38
The Tik Tok ban was always a little abstract.
1:51:41
It was like, well, it's kind of brain rot for kids and that's not great, but people watch Instagram reels and that seems maybe equally as bad or maybe fine.
1:51:48
Uh, but maybe they're steering the algorithm to influence our pol.
1:51:54
It was all very like four steps away from something bad and so it kind of didn't catch ground and didn't really get off the ground.
1:52:03
But DJI has been in the news as a potential ban target.
1:52:07
This seems like it concretizes the feeling of danger so much more intimately than Tik Tok where it was like oh well like the you know the CCP could find out that you are into luxury sports cars or something and they could do something with that. they can blackmail you.
1:52:24
Uh, but that's very different than drones explode and so maybe we don't want drones.
1:52:29
So, um, do you have any I think even even more important it's like look who's using those drones.
1:52:35
I mean again like this is this is what we did.
1:52:36
I mean I you know I was in the military not too long ago but um I remember on some of my first training exercises this this new team and I don't even know who they were off the top of my head but they came to us and they're like hey we're going to try this new thing that's drone warfare.
1:52:48
I was like oh we developed a new smaller predator or something like that.
1:52:54
They literally just pulled the DJI out of a box and they said, "Hey, go screw around with this in the woods and like we did." It was like super cool.
1:52:58
We innovated on some stuff.
1:53:00
But I think you're right, it gets super scary when we're taking the feeds and the data and the information from that drone, you know, not necessarily touching it, putting it into our classified system because there there are controls for that.
1:53:11
that. Um but again even even some of the you know again you should talk to you know Saurin you should talk to the Orca guys you should talk to you know Andy from Vector about like there's a lot of open source tools that are actually used as think everything from you know navigating you know the the fight computers of these drones but even in
1:53:28
those situations like we just have to be thoughtful again I am I am on the side of um you know again when I was in the military everyone gets so scared about classifications and no one wanted to get in trouble for this reason the The reality is if you're so scared about using some type of tech then you're going to lose. It's going to be the
1:53:45
It's going to be the different way.
1:53:46
It's not going to be the information leakage way.
1:53:47
So there's some middle ground of like we need to just set a policy and and hopefully the policy is broad enough.
1:53:53
And then oh by the way hopefully like us builders are building at the same time so we can build a capacity that actually meets it.
1:54:01
But you know the story is not clear here in the future other than you know we need a US version of that to be able to to to operate in similar ways. Yeah.
1:54:07
The capacity issue is so interesting because it's like even if DJI is just a friendly consumer drone company by virtue of buying a hundred million dollars worth like like demand pulling this massive demand signal to scale the supply chain results in an industrial capacity is dual use even if the products that reach America are never dual use.
1:54:29
I mean, this is, you know, again, I said I'd put on a suit for you, but um I was talking with a with a with a member this morning, a member of Congress this morning, and this is actually what we spent 90% of our time talking about, which is just, okay, say we all agree and say the DoD in Congress fixes our acquisition pathways.
1:54:46
Say these are the right things to buy.
1:54:47
You can't just snap your fingers and build these. I mean, this takes time.
1:54:51
I mean, go look at what what Andre is doing in Ohio.
1:54:53
I mean, I think they're doing it at a pace better than anybody else, but like, you know, same thing with Seronic on the on the boat building side, too. But it it it takes time. You know what I mean?
1:55:00
You can't just have thousands of systems tomorrow.
1:55:05
You need to make decisions today that are doing everything from the supply chain to again like, you know, Congress gets gets a little scared sometimes or DoD gets a little scared sometimes.
1:55:13
It's like, well, if you're not a prime, we can't trust you to give you a bunch of money up front to develop it.
1:55:18
And finally, that that's like changing.
1:55:19
That culture is changing.
1:55:21
and saying like actually giving $100 million to Castilian or Anderl or whoever in advance of them building it is probably a 10 times better answer than you know giving it to a prime. But we're not there yet.
1:55:33
Like we're still pretty far off. Yeah.
1:55:35
Saurin said they're the highest producing US manufacturer right now in their class and they're putting up 1,500 a month or something like that. Yeah.
1:55:46
But but the Ukrainians built millions. Yeah.
1:55:47
I mean, the Ukrainians are building thousands a day like in just a and again, it's it's a it's a different ecosystem.
1:55:54
People come to me a lot and we're just like, well, isn't the US DoD going to do this?
1:55:58
And, you know, part of me says like, no, because I I know how slow we move.
1:56:02
The other part of me just thinks that like there is some value in, you know, what we call interoperability.
1:56:09
Um, and again, I think that's kind of somewhat an old school way of thinking, but like you need to know that if you give a thousands of one type of drones to, you know, one unit that the next unit is going to fight in a similar way where, you know, the tactics and techniques kind of all align.
1:56:24
Because in the end, like what we what we aren't talking about with these drones, what we aren't talking about with these new missiles or systems is like there's an entire downstream integration and there's a training that happens.
1:56:35
happens. It's not just like okay once we have them in the warehouse we press a button and we win the war with China like no we need to train integrate and and again that's just another problem again like there are some companies trying to trying to go attack this like Andy at Vector is doing this he calls it
1:56:50
like warfare as a service model which I think is like really interesting looks more like training with a little bit of tech but yeah I just think there are big gaps and uh you know I'm optimistic about the future but you know I have a you know a one-year-old daughter it's like I this is what I think about like this is what keeps upon man. Talk talk
1:57:04
Talk talk to me about nominal um any news there and and really like how does that type of product uh and interface with like just the the general news and tenor in DC right now? Yeah.
1:57:20
I mean um I I I know you guys have had uh Cam on your show a couple times, the the the founder of Nominal.
1:57:27
Nominal. I think um I think what we're um what's what's super interesting is like we are seeing this wave of new hardware uh development in the US and historically it's been in a manner and in a way that's very much like you know
1:57:40
hey here locked here's your hundreds of millions of dollars go build go iterate slowly and now we're getting like you know what looks more like the SpaceX like build the thing in flight um this is what Castillian's doing this is what
1:57:51
many other companies are doing and so there needs to be this like software you know both you know telemetry and and obser you know, observation layer, but it's also just like the tools that if we want to get to this end state of having
1:58:03
a million drones in the hands of our war fighters, having hundreds of thousands of of, you know, autonomous systems, having thousands of missile systems, you kind of need to build all the infrastructure and enable it below it. That's both on the supply chain side, I
1:58:13
That's both on the supply chain side, I was talking about, but also on the software and development side.
1:58:16
So, I just think what you're seeing, you know, nominal is one example, but there are many other examples of this is like you're seeing the picks and shovels built out for this ecosystem.
1:58:23
I guess there will be big winners in like the hardware categories that's owning the product, but I think there's going to be just as many winners on the downstream both, you know, infrastructure side and call it supply chain, call it software, call it whatever.
1:58:36
Um, and again, like I just I'm I'm I'm optimistic about the market.
1:58:41
I'm not necessarily optimistic about the outcome of our security and safety in the world, but um you know, that's my job as a venture capitalist. I guess that's rough. Uh always paranoid.
1:58:50
Uh what was your reaction to the meta and news last week? uh around VR.
1:58:52
I'm sure it wasn't a surprise, but uh I'm also curious if you think we're going to see more uh if that gives, you know, other uh big tech giants kind of full permission to to lean in to that kind of partnership.
1:59:10
Yeah, VR is a a weird one for me personally.
1:59:13
And again, like back in my time in service, there was this uh I'd call it a research project through um Army Research Laboratory where they were trying to develop and again really old school, you know, bad um you know, VR at the time, but use it for like planning purposes.
1:59:29
And the idea is like in the military, you get out these two-dimensional maps and you look at something and say like, "Okay, this is how we're going to plan.
1:59:36
This is where forces are going to be."
1:59:37
And it's it's really slow.
1:59:39
It's it's obviously not optimal when you talk about terrain and kind of other things.
1:59:42
So, I was part of a unit in the Pacific actually where we were testing this back then.
1:59:46
And I remember taking it to like the brigade commander, the guy who I don't know was in charge of 5,000 or so soldiers.
1:59:51
And you know, I have this I still have this photo of on my phone of him with these glasses on like standing there being like, well, what do I do with this thing?
1:59:59
You know, and again like it's part of this is a cultural thing that we need to shift.
2:00:02
But, you know, I I think when I see the the you know, Palmer, you know, going back with Mark and I put a it puts a smile on my face because to me it's like this is the best of what we need.
2:00:12
We need the best technology companies and the best defense technology companies working together in some way, shape or form.
2:00:17
And the reality is we're, you know, 10 years ago or more than that when I was in and we tried this and technology wasn't there.
2:00:22
I know for a fact that, you know, the solution and the hardware and the software around it is 10 times better now.
2:00:27
So, I look forward to see what Andre comes out with.
2:00:31
I mean, if anybody's going to do it, Palmer is probably the right guy to do it. But, um, we'll see.
2:00:34
You know, I I haven't seen the outcome yet, so I'm I'm excited to give it a try.
2:00:40
Yeah, I really just feel like if it's anyone's game to win, it's Palmer.
2:00:42
It's like the perfect merger of everything he's done in his career.
2:00:45
No, in my view, he was going to win that category.
2:00:46
It was just whether or not he would have to reinvent the full production capacity, reinvent the technology that he patented there and gave them. Yeah.
2:00:57
Uh what is your take on Golden Dome?
2:00:59
What companies or or industries are you tracking related to that?
2:01:03
Obviously, we have a missile defense system, but we're planning on ramping it up.
2:01:06
Uh what what do you think is interesting if that project kind of gets off the ground?
2:01:10
Um I mean I'll I won't bury the lead.
2:01:12
I don't think anyone knows what Golden Dome is or isn't. Um which is okay.
2:01:16
I mean the thing that I give President Trump a lot of credit for is he has these big audacious things and he just goes and wills them into happen.
2:01:25
And again I'm not an expert in from the inside the DoD, but like that's how you have to get a lot of stuff done.
2:01:30
I mean, you have to almost make it not too big to fail, but put the cart before the horse in order to to to align both Congress and DoD support behind it.
2:01:38
I think from a from a principled kind of um like what can it do perspective, it's an absolute no-brainer.
2:01:45
I mean, again, like to to to look at the technology that has happened in Israel and to understand that like one, the Israelis developed that, but you know, we we we had, you know, you know, a say and an input in that as well.
2:01:57
um that we don't have that in the United States just seems again other things that make me feel uncomfortable.
2:02:03
Um I think the reality is there's there's going to be a lot of different components of this that still need to be built.
2:02:09
I mean there's there's an entire space component, there's entire you know kind of missile and aector component.
2:02:13
I mean in a perfect world when we can see and know everything coming, we actually need to be able to do something to it.
2:02:19
And if you think we have enough missiles to respond to, you know, everything we see potentially, um you're wrong.
2:02:24
Um, so again, I think it's a it goes back to kind of my statement before.
2:02:28
Um, these things take time.
2:02:31
Um, and I'm glad that President Trump has these audacious goals and getting it done before his third term.
2:02:36
Um, I just think it's it's arguably in my opinion, if done correctly, it will be a Manhattan project-like undertaking where it's going to take multiple different department.
2:02:46
It's not just going to space missile defense and saying like, "Hey, solve this problem for us."
2:02:50
I mean, this is going to create a new line of budget.
2:02:53
It's going to create new kind of work streams.
2:02:54
is going to need new congressional support.
2:02:56
Um the beauty is we got a bunch of awesome space companies and a bunch of defense companies that can respond to it.
2:03:00
Um I just don't think anyone knows what it looks like yet.
2:03:03
So excited and optimistic.
2:03:05
I would say it's interesting like as soon as we as soon as we were talking about Golden Dome and like the space-based ICBM weapons, like the big guys, now we need like a golden spiderweb defense system to like stop like the local drones and do I mean it's layered, like I said, you know, like you know, to some extent a missile defense system.
2:03:22
I mean, probably not with, you know, I don't have the full specs, but probably not with the height of those drones we're we're kind of flying at.
2:03:28
But you fly a oneway drone a thousand kilometers or, you know, 3,000 km, you throw it up high enough in the air, like 100% something like, you know, Golden Dome can help with that.
2:03:35
It feels like a missile attack, honestly. Yeah. Yeah.
2:03:38
And and again, like this is the last thing I'd leave you with, which is I do fundamentally believe back to my both spectrum on defense, there's also a spectrum on offensive weapons, too.
2:03:45
Like everyone thinks that the answer is a $10 million missile and that's the most exquisite best thing that's going to save us every time.
2:03:52
If we can get better both, you know, on the on on the low range, excuse me, on the low cost, high performant missiles and in drone based systems, I actually don't even think we need those, you know, hundred million, $10 million systems in the end.
2:04:04
But again, something optimistic to look forward to. It's great.
2:04:08
Well, thank you so much for coming on.
2:04:09
This is fantastic conversation. Always. Yeah, guys.
2:04:11
All right, we'll chat soon. Have a great trip. Thanks. Bye.
2:04:14
Uh, let's tell you about public.
2:04:16
com investing for those who take it seriously.
2:04:18
They got multiasset investing, industryleading yields.
2:04:21
They're trusted by millions, folks.
2:04:21
And we have Melissa in the in the studio.
2:04:27
Uh, she has some massive news and we're going to need to hit that size gong.
2:04:29
Can you introduce yourself?
2:04:31
We're welcome to the stream. How are you doing?
2:04:35
We're gonna have to hit the real size gong. So, uh, break it down.
2:04:38
What are you announcing today and why should we hit this gong?
2:04:42
Yes, we are coming out of stealth with Netic today and announcing our $20 million fund raise from Greylock and Mike Waly amongst amazing other investors and visionary founders and growing our service. Hit the wide. Hit the wide. Hit the wide. Go for it. That's my quest. Here we go. Backto back rounds. Let's go. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you guys.
2:05:13
Now that we've gotten the important stuff out of the way, what does the company do? Yes.
2:05:17
Uh we work with the backbone of America.
2:05:20
Uh we're building for the essential services industries like home services and Yeah, exactly. You guys are essential.
2:05:28
That's why I'm on here, right? Yeah.
2:05:30
I could be doing a lot of different stuff today.
2:05:34
But um you know we give them an AI revenue engine so that when they are these are industries even though they're super important they're affected by labor shortages external circumstances and demand changes physical infrastructure.
2:05:47
So when they have high demand we help them handle it.
2:05:49
So you get all they get all the dollars and help their end users.
2:05:53
And when they're low on demand we help them generate demand so that you can always maximize the revenue.
2:06:01
What what is a good example customer?
2:06:03
Like we hear about these SMBs in like this abstract context, but is that is it actually like one guy who owns an LLC who has a few employees or is the median customer more of a like small business or medium-sized business with uh dozens or even hundreds of employees?
2:06:21
And then I want to walk through how they actually use the product.
2:06:25
uh is it is it replacing or augmenting an existing kind of sales force or or someone that they have internally or is it just uh kind of helping individuals do more with less?
2:06:36
So we work with actually pretty large customers that would be owned by private equity from you know hundreds of millions of dollars to a few billion uh of dollars as well as smaller companies that are around like 1020 million revenue size.
2:06:50
So across the board we started with the larger ones to really um you know demonstrate the impact of our platform.
2:06:57
At the end this is also a business but now actually this is a life life passion for me because I do want to help with smaller companies as well.
2:07:07
That's how I came across this problem as a customer myself for HVAC in my own home.
2:07:12
So, we just announced a very large uh partnership with NextStar Network to be able to help a thousand companies that are more on the mid-market side as well.
2:07:22
And for the smaller, you know what, we want to support everybody.
2:07:24
I think we would start with some materials for them to get ready for AI before maybe they roll us out.
2:07:30
But, um, you know, we want to really help across the board.
2:07:34
So, one example would be how are they using it?
2:07:36
They're actually completely integrated with our platform.
2:07:40
So we would use firstparty signals about their customers as well as third-party signals like we find from weather to um you know really property information or different types of things to help any of the customers that are coming in.
2:07:55
So they get help immediately.
2:07:56
And these are complex jobs, right?
2:07:59
Like there's actually quite a bit of information you need to collect to be able to deploy the right labor.
2:08:05
And then based on that data, we predict the user's next need, you know.
2:08:10
So I'm almost building for myself.
2:08:12
I'm like, I would never think about these things.
2:08:14
For me, I wish somebody told me, Melissa, you're going to need this next month because, you know, I don't know, a storm is coming or San Francisco weather is again terrible, so you got to fix this.
2:08:23
So and then we turn that into predicting the next need for their end users so that the companies can really cultivate uh the relationship with their customers but based on need versus random promos. Right.
2:08:38
So everyone wants everyone wants their HVAC system like tuned up before the big heat wave hits. Exactly.
2:08:42
you can do essentially outbound sales to existing clients and potentially new clients before that hits with with like the correct information, the correct pitch.
2:08:54
But exactly what is the actual medium?
2:08:57
Are you sending text messages, emails, phone calls, all of the above?
2:09:01
What does that look like?
2:09:01
For inbound, we're really integrated across the board on all channels.
2:09:05
So voice, text, online widgets, web chat, third party integrations because revenue doesn't come from one channel, right?
2:09:12
It comes from all channels and you know c the same customer if I'm in a meeting right now I might be texting an essential service provider right now even though I'm busy but a few hours later I might call them right on the outbound campaigns we really do see a lot of success with especially text since it's much more respectful.
2:09:31
So we started from there and we'll be rolling out to more channels.
2:09:35
So I'm I'm I'm intimately familiar with all the tooling in email.
2:09:41
you have you Mailchimp and all the different AWS SCES and all the different systems that have built up to make that easy and I can imagine how you would automate that.
2:09:49
Talk to me about automating a phone call.
2:09:51
It feels like with whisper uh transcription and then uh text to speech.
2:09:57
We're now kind of pass the touring test on that, but are you building stuff yourself?
2:10:02
Are you training your own models?
2:10:04
Are you partnered with other AI companies to provide that piece of the stack or is that so integral that you're handling it yourself?
2:10:14
yourself? This is actually the integral part of this is that certain technologies have passed deterring tests but actually for really um you know missionritical workflows like this where you are absolutely like utility and you
2:10:27
can't drop all the uh work and you know the engineering really focus goes to the orchestration right so what does it mean is that like when depending on whatever workflows that you're handling which models are the best when they're not the best. How can you actually fine-tune
2:10:44
How can you actually fine-tune only for that task?
2:10:46
And how can you make sure not only it looks good in a demo?
2:10:51
We actually at Culture, we don't ever do demo.
2:10:53
We show real deployments and let you test, but it's very different out there when you're talking to somebody with an accent or that person doesn't even know what they need, right?
2:11:02
It's actually very complex.
2:11:04
So all of the engineering work not only goes um you know improving and integrating machine learning advancements but also doing our own orchestration fine-tuning as well as evaluations so that you can be like utility and really reliable when you're replacing these systems and augmenting the teams that rely on this right. Yeah.
2:11:27
What's the process like selling AI to SMBs?
2:11:31
We've had a bunch of people on the show that sell to larger corporates, Fortune 500.
2:11:36
There's an excitement from the Fortune 500 to just buy AI even if they're unclear of what the value is.
2:11:41
I could imagine you see two scenarios.
2:11:44
One where owners or operators are excited about potential efficiency or more revenue, more leads.
2:11:52
Uh but and then another side which is like, well, I don't know about this AI stuff.
2:11:56
Um why are you doing an accent, Jordy?
2:11:59
Why are you doing an accent?
2:12:00
Actually, you know, you'll be surprised.
2:12:02
I This is why I'm building for these industries.
2:12:04
These are probably the best founders and entrepreneurs I have ever met in my life.
2:12:12
And I'm in the heart of Silicon Valley and I work very hard to get here.
2:12:16
And now all these founders truly, they are extremely ROI oriented.
2:12:19
They're extremely customer oriented.
2:12:22
And the incentives are very aligned, right?
2:12:25
Like they only do better if they serve their end customer better.
2:12:29
and I only do better if I help them do better.
2:12:31
So, it's extremely aligned.
2:12:33
So, we actually don't see, you know, they might ask questions, but everybody is extremely open about it.
2:12:39
They know that that future is here. They can stay behind.
2:12:43
It's not like the enterprises you're a little bit alluding to where let me just put this on my board deck and have like a few million spent here and there to show how AI oriented I am and then they won't actually use it.
2:12:53
No, these people actually are absolutely incredible and partner with us so closely to see in numbers, right?
2:13:00
We let them even track it.
2:13:01
This is how much you've generated from only AI handled jobs or interactions.
2:13:06
So, we've been very happy about it.
2:13:08
And it's the same from a $20 million revenue business to a billion dollar revenue business.
2:13:13
Obviously, there might be a few steps here and there, but I am pretty happy about um how incred incredible of entrepreneurs I'm working with in this industry.
2:13:22
I think I choose uh to do that. Yeah. You mentioned Yeah.
2:13:26
I always I always think it's it's funny when when people in Silicon Valley like look at these maybe trade businesses and they think, "Oh, I can just, you know, get a better CRM, get some software."
2:13:37
And it's like you realize the person that was operating this business for 20 years is like a is like a fixture of their community.
2:13:42
Like they are like perspective and also extremely hard.
2:13:47
Extremely they're working 14 hours a day.
2:13:49
Their overnight success comes over 20 years, right?
2:13:51
success comes over 20 years, right? not just like various um I don't know and like tonight in my bedroom I built this and now I went viral and now I'm the hot kid on the block and all these many times it's their families right like everybody really investing in this and
2:14:08
even when you work with a larger company or owned by it like everybody's truly invested in this to give you a sense like um I have brainstorming calls with my customers on Sundays they'll call me with really cool ideas and I'm like interesting so try this the next day I'll follow up with a try this one, try this uh demo. Let's see if you like it
2:14:26
Let's see if you like it and then we'll actually launch it this week for you. Right. I absolutely love that.
2:14:33
Um what what's how are you do you guys leverage your own tools at all or do you have your own internal tooling to be more efficient?
2:14:41
I I from what I can see you don't have very many employees and and what do you use very quickly?
2:14:46
I know hopefully you'll help with that.
2:14:50
We're hiring across the board especially with for our engineering but also go to market teams now and product.
2:14:56
market teams now and product. So um we actually do utilize various tools internally just to increase engineering output but also still especially when it comes to various coding tools um I will say because we ship for really missionritical workflows you need to
2:15:13
make sure that it might like accelerate you and augment you but you still have to make sure everything is ready for production because we're handling a lot of large volume customers that are really deploying these services to help somebody maybe after a storm like a few weeks ago in St. Louis, it happened
2:15:27
Louis, it happened after the tornadoes.
2:15:28
So, we have to make sure everything is really getting that check uh from us and like the best engineers we have hired across MIT, Stanford, Scale, Palunteer, HRT.
2:15:38
Um but yeah I mean if you're a fool if you're not using uh augmented tools for your team and you are right we are a small team and that is by design because I think all of us are also here to create the best things out of nothing right and really keep our culture and grow in that way.
2:16:00
Uh you mentioned you worked really hard to get to Silicon Valley.
2:16:02
Can you give us a little bit of the the journey and the background to get here?
2:16:05
Yeah, I will say building a company is almost as hard as getting uh to hear from a small town in Turkey.
2:16:12
I grew up in the Mediterranean.
2:16:15
Um just like a tiny town actually in Turkey on the western coast and um yeah, I think it is an incredible community, but there is absolutely like no opportunity especially for someone like me who's focused on math and computer science.
2:16:31
So I tried to first leave actually I went to boarding schools that I got in starting age 13.
2:16:38
So I haven't lived at home since 13.
2:16:38
Um and then spent some time in India uh when I got into United World Colleges actually for two years and I thought that's how I would learn English because my English really sucked.
2:16:49
Um and I did you know I'm doing pretty fine.
2:16:52
Um, and yeah, from there it's been my dream to come to Stanford.
2:16:58
And I didn't know anything about it actually.
2:17:00
I only saw it through a summer camp I came to on a scholarship.
2:17:05
And um, even my flights were funded by thousands of emails I sent to businessmen in Turkey and one of them responded and sent me here to California.
2:17:16
And when I saw it, I was like, I have to be here.
2:17:18
And since then, there's no, you know, easy way of explaining this.
2:17:23
It's you I I think probably I fought tooth and nail to be able to um really get here.
2:17:30
And I'm glad because I love this place.
2:17:33
And mainly for me, it's about the people.
2:17:37
Everybody's interested in your ideas.
2:17:39
Everybody is interested in making them possible for the world.
2:17:41
And if anything, I wanted to change one part of it when it came to my own company is that I want to build for the real world, not just for Silicon Valley or other startups.
2:17:50
I want to build for America and then and then the world like this country that gave me a lot of opportunity and then hopefully globally the real world economies that run everybody's lives.
2:18:03
Yeah, I know you worked at scale.
2:18:03
Um can you talk a little bit about human in the loop or uh business process outsourcing or any sort of uh like the centaur model of AI and how that might play a role in your current or future roadmap? Yeah.
2:18:16
So it actually labeling does not play a lot of role for our road map like right now obviously it was big especially when you're improving these models there was a lot of labeling and then it turned to expert labeling.
2:18:29
Now you really focus these models in terms of how is it going to be better in physics or coding etc.
2:18:36
But for us human in the loop actually comes from um collaborating very closely with the teams of our customers because they will have actually many times what we see in these industries that they won't have like BPOS what we call um or outsource call centers sometimes they might have but they'll have also internal teams which are very valuable resources.
2:18:57
resources. So what they can do with us is that they spend their time only for missionritical interactions when they need to take over and actually see the context from the conversation about the person about the home so that they don't have to repeat anything they can build
2:19:13
rapport immediately and for the remainder of time since AI is really handling everything else that they can focus on more uh more important and high lever tasks whether you're helping with accounting whether you're helping with actually making intelligent business decisions about where to grow. And
2:19:29
And believe it or not, a lot of people start from there to build their careers in these industries.
2:19:35
For example, our engagement manage management lead uh she actually joined us from our earliest customers and she started as a CSR, right?
2:19:45
Don't worry, they're amazing.
2:19:47
Still a customer and you know, she was making a location change. We did everything right.
2:19:53
I love, you know, like he's immediately coming into that. Did you do anything? No, no, no. I mean, it's great.
2:19:58
It's like you could just say, "We're going to take your your star employee, but we'll give you the greatest software that you've ever experienced, and we're going to go." No, no.
2:20:06
Now, they also get to interact with her, but supported by us, right?
2:20:12
It's all balance sheet R&D now. And Exactly.
2:20:15
I'd like to think that they got a lot of tools from that.
2:20:17
But she started actually as a call center employee 20 years ago and she's so smart and incredible that really built the domain knowledge and went to consulting from there and a VP of customer experience and really built right her career.
2:20:33
That's what we want for the people, right?
2:20:35
Like actually focus on the things that you can shine in and um build your career in, not just the menial tasks you don't want to do and only spend time on customer intent. Sure.
2:20:46
Talk about uh business model, pricing model, salesforce and has been Mark Beni off been talking about uh cost per resolution in the customer service perspective.
2:20:56
Uh there's other uh companies that are doing consumption based pricing, seatbased pricing. What's working? What's not?
2:21:02
What are you seeing uh resonate with your customers best?
2:21:08
Yeah, I think we don't do um cost per resolution.
2:21:10
It's actually an interesting pricing model, but I think works better for customer support companies for tech when it's all about tickets.
2:21:16
And even then, I think it's a little bit iffy because I mean, what's the resolution?
2:21:22
You're able to close the ticket.
2:21:22
How many of us have been in a situation where I'm like getting this automated email that my ticket is closed and I'm like well I am not closed you know I am not done here like I got to I need that help.
2:21:35
So for us we really work in enterprise contracts with our customers.
2:21:40
So um they get on a there's a platform kind of package that they choose based on which products they want to use and how expanded of channels that they want.
2:21:51
And then on top of that, they have a volume package that they add so that they can spend it across any channel that they liked.
2:21:57
Um, and this also gives them that ability that we're not just signing and goodbye because in a lot of these industries or quite frankly in any company AI is not just like I got on it and now it works. It doesn't.
2:22:09
You really have to make it work, ensure that it is working for their operational workflows.
2:22:16
So it gives us the ability to do that and closely partner and then as we go to midmarket that was something that's why I was super excited about this next star uh partnership because they have decadesl long experience in these industries and they have accumulated so
2:22:33
much knowledge that today we're able to deploy a netic tenant with that knowledge for their members so that you know a lot of the like maybe they won't have any lift to do they can really roll it out directly from the business insights they would be getting from an amazing membership like them. Anyways, Anyways, so yeah.
2:22:51
So, um is there was like a meme for a long time about like the the search fund going to buy a business going to do a roll up in in these like SMB markets.
2:23:01
Is that has have these have these markets been already rolled up?
2:23:07
Like is it are we past that?
2:23:07
Yeah, there's quite a bit of rollups.
2:23:09
I'm sure you'll be interested in it next, you know, general.
2:23:12
No, we're going to roll up all the podcasts. Oh, I'm sure.
2:23:15
I'm sure you're looking into it already.
2:23:19
Yes, there's quite a bit of rollups to be honest.
2:23:21
It like really became popular recently because there's quite a bit of capital out there as you also know even from venture capitals.
2:23:27
There's so much capital that they're like VCs are crossing over, yeah, we'll go to deploy. Yeah.
2:23:31
Only either deploy it to startups that don't need it or do rollups right now. Yeah.
2:23:37
So um yeah there are quite a bit but I think again the winning strategy becomes even if you have a rollup right it's a lot about how are you creating value what tools are you using what tools are you not using what where was the company or this combination of companies you have gotten when you got them and how are you really implementing changes to serve your customer better.
2:24:02
So, we work with various um companies that are owned by incredible private equity partners.
2:24:07
Um it's here for private equity. Thank you. Yes.
2:24:13
Finally getting some recognition.
2:24:16
We love private equity on the show. Yeah.
2:24:18
They don't get any recognition at all. Nothing credit.
2:24:20
Private equity is really the backbone of America because it finances. It totally is. SMBs, right?
2:24:29
I'll tell you what happened.
2:24:29
I'll tell you what happened. I think uh 20 years ago maybe you know it was all around in all of these industries doesn't have to be one a lot of companies to be picked up right so today that's not the case right like you're not really looking for that perfect
2:24:43
business everything is stellar and like waiting for you to be picked up in somewhere in the heartland of America so I think private equity actually have to be very innovative and I think they're obviously already numbers focused so they are looking for true partners and
2:24:57
that's how many of our engagements started with these companies like actually wasn't even about our company was about talking about AI honestly straightforwardly what's going to work for you what's not going to work for you and I think they are really seeing that for value they have to change it's not
2:25:12
just about using one playbook and it works for you for 40 years and um they realize now that a lot of them have to make it work for these companies with the right partners and you know take good decisions so I think I love that we are coinciding with that change, right? So, it's kind of harder to compete there
2:25:30
So, it's kind of harder to compete there as well because everybody has capital and not much to really roll up around, right?
2:25:37
Well, let's hear for the capital.
2:25:40
I mean, at least there's a lot of capital. Congratulations.
2:25:44
Uh, thanks so much for coming on conversation.
2:25:46
Thank you for having me and we're so excited to be here especially for the two people who also work very hard and especially you um John have built companies that optimizes performance left and right with Soyand and Lucy and hopefully we take that from from that culture. Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you.
2:26:07
Well, we'll talk soon, you know.
2:26:09
Thanks so much for thanks so much for coming on. Thank you. We'll talk to you soon. See you.
2:26:12
Uh, next up we have Jordan Schneider from China Talk coming on. We're gonna ask him. An absolute dog.
2:26:19
Is Is China important to talk about? Bring it down for us.
2:26:21
Who's talking about China? Yeah.
2:26:24
Who's talking about China?
2:26:25
Jordan, welcome to the show. How are you doing?
2:26:27
Can we get a sound effect?
2:26:30
Oh, he's got Oh, we got the horse now.
2:26:33
Is it the year of the horse?
2:26:34
What year is it in China? I don't know.
2:26:37
Uh, we're we're playing around with sound effects.
2:26:39
You're playing around with backgrounds, too. I think it's the rat. A year of the rat.
2:26:42
That seems Last year was last year was dragon.
2:26:47
So it's like it's worse after. Okay. Okay.
2:26:50
Um I want to start with the victory lap.
2:26:52
I said uh I said tariff war going to not be a big thing.
2:26:57
We're not going to be talking about it in four four years. Push back.
2:27:04
We're not going to be talking about it in four years.
2:27:05
So So So when you came on last time, we were talking about how it seemed like complete doom and gloom.
2:27:12
like the Trump tariffs were absolute chaos.
2:27:14
It was complete disaster.
2:27:14
And I was saying that like this is within Trump's control and so he could potentially roll them back and the market would go back up and everyone would be breathing a sigh of relief like oh okay that was a crazy time but we're not in this insanely high tariff regime so things aren't that bad.
2:27:31
and we would look back on it like we looked at the previous trade war which was a crazy time but did not like permanently change the structure of America.
2:27:40
And so it feels like we we we we walked to the edge and then we walked back from the edge and it's less of a story now. But am I right or wrong? Let's be clear.
2:27:51
Who's who's walking him back from the edge? The justice system.
2:27:53
the Supreme Court is going to take the decision out of his hands. Sure.
2:27:58
And then it'll just kind of be slower and more awkward and his lawyers will actually have to do work to write these section two um 232 investigations which like I guess they'll just have Chad GPT, right?
2:28:08
Cuz like there are no lawyers right now and and USR. Um but come on, man.
2:28:12
I mean look two days ago like some reporter asked him about the taco trade and then he said, "Fuck it.
2:28:19
We're going back up to 50."
2:28:20
So, look, I mean, it's the the story, the saga is not done.
2:28:25
We have four years of this.
2:28:27
Um, old men don't change their habits all that often.
2:28:31
This is clearly the thing he enjoys most.
2:28:36
I've taught dog I've taught old dogs new tricks. I got all the time.
2:28:37
I got a 10-year-old Newfland at home.
2:28:39
He just learned balance the ball in his nose. He's He's doing great. No, no, I hear you. Uh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He should. He should.
2:28:50
Well, well, well then, um, what else is is driving the news?
2:28:52
Um, obviously the, uh, the Ukrainian drone attack is very interesting in the Ukraine Russian theater.
2:28:59
Uh, is there a reaction from your community in China world yet, or are we waiting to hear how that plays out?
2:29:07
Already, we're seeing defense tech companies talk about counter UAS more seriously, uh, DoD procurement modernization.
2:29:14
Uh, you could imagine that this brings DJI into focus, but how should we be framing it within the the China lens?
2:29:21
I got a um I I got a line from a group chat, please.
2:29:26
Um, what uh don't ask a woman their age and don't ask a teal funded defense tech startup where they get their batteries from. Okay.
2:29:35
Um, so look, I don't I don't know.
2:29:39
I mean it's it's uh it's a brave new world we're walking into and I'm worried that we're not ready.
2:29:45
that we're not ready. I think there are um definitely a lot of advantages that the US has but one of the big ones is manufacturing and and sort of and and like speed and agility of procurement and if you look at what's happened in Ukraine over the past two years like the amount of iterations that all of these
2:30:06
drones have gone from and the different electronic warfare like responses and counter responses and the the sort of the the the size and scope and uh of these different drones and being able to scale up manufacturing of them and then now we have fiber optic drones and now we have like things to cut the the cables of the fiber optic drones. I mean
2:30:24
I mean just the the the speed at which you have to innovate when you are fighting and dying is so much faster than what the US um uh does.
2:30:36
And because um uh the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were not against high um you know we're not against like great powers. Thank god.
2:30:45
Um the sort like the new things that the enemy was able to bring to the battlefield was much less challenging and you could kind of be like fat and lazy and still mostly be okay and not have I mean even even IEDs massively transformed the battlefield at the time and that was another kind of asymmetric trade in some way where you know a small homemade uh device could could take out, you know, cause huge loss of life.
2:31:16
But but your point's totally taken.
2:31:19
point's totally taken. wasn't like 4 million drones a year being produced and flying through the sky and and taking so many IEDs that that it did kind of breed private sector defense innovation in the sense that like one of the first use
2:31:32
cases for Palunteer was map all the IEDs see that if it if they if the ones in this area have nails and the one in that area have TNT and dynamites over here and C4 is being used over here you can kind of cluster those and see that the bomb maker must be in this city and then you can go and find them. Um, and so I
2:31:49
Um, and so I mean, yeah, it is this like cat-and- mouse game, right?
2:31:53
But I think if you just if you look at like the story of the procurement side of all that with the MRAP and the other sort of like physical uh uh like hardware changes that the US government needed to to supply its troop to supply the troops like it was so slow. Um, sure.
2:32:11
And, uh, you know, not not the best showing, I think, uh, if like even even like al-Qaeda and can kind of get you on your toes when it comes to technological innovation. So, I don't know.
2:32:22
It's a bummer, but uh, hopefully folks are are waking up and doing their best on this.
2:32:28
I mean, I Yeah, you mentioned like the drone battery thing, but like it feels like people woke up to that after Skyo, the the the Skyio uh, battery ban.
2:32:34
And so I would imagine that there's that there's probably dozens of companies working on restoring drone batteries right now, right? I I hope I hope.
2:32:42
I mean, I'm sure they are, but it's it's some uh it's uh Yeah.
2:32:46
I mean, it's it's it's look, it's an obvious thing.
2:32:50
it's look, it's an obvious thing. Um but what what's interesting I think is like to what extent uh on both the Ukraine and the Russia side of this there are just like Chinese parts that are that are driving both of the um uh both of the armies which is okay let's let's switch to a kind of a less contentious issue immigration what's going on uh
2:33:11
what's going on in terms of the students students research labs what's what's the high level update well I want to challenge you guys a little bit um because you have a lot of CEOs and investors in the Silicon Valley broader ecosystem and they as well as anyone else in this country understand just how important international talent is to the future of American science and technology flourishing. So, I would be
2:33:39
So, I would be really curious um for to to get these folks on the record to just even talk about their experiences kind of like coming to America uh and getting their, you know, getting their first H-1V visa and the sort of the the challenges and the opportunity that that like you have to and the sacrifices you have to make.
2:34:02
I mean, the the woman the woman we had on right before you was from Turkey, made it to Stanford, had some random Turkey businessman pay for her flight so she could just get here and is now building, you know, incredible company.
2:34:15
So, uh, we certainly recognize the importance of inter international talent and I'm broadly in favor of brain draining the world as I think you are as well.
2:34:27
Um, I don't I don't follow immigration, you know, law or trends nearly to the level that I imagine you do, specifically around China.
2:34:36
Um, and it's an interesting time.
2:34:39
I mean, we had uh some Stanford students on that had written that article uh that was uh widely the CCP. Yeah.
2:34:48
Well, it was widely read and it was also controversial because many of the sources were anonymous, but it also seems to be something that people just take as fact that there is a lot of uh you know sort of low-level espionage information gathering happening on campus.
2:35:09
But I I was more less less trying to get your take uh your take more trying to get like the late the core kind of development development.
2:35:16
So, I think I think there are two Well, it's it's there are a number of things going on.
2:35:24
Um, first, the Trump administration is threatening uh like revoking Harvard's ability to take international students.
2:35:31
We'll just we'll see how legal that is.
2:35:34
Um, but that is a remarkable development and something that I think is sort of like spread if it like ends up being a a a tool that's used across a lot of different universities is really dramatic.
2:35:45
Like if you look at a lot of the sort of top 10 lists of publications, there's like Harvard and then there's MIT and then there's eight Chinese universities.
2:35:53
And uh the fact that um you know they're going after like what is the like one of the four most important centers of research in America uh is really concerning.
2:36:07
really concerning. And I think um part of you know if you look at these if you look at the STEM programs in America oftentimes I think CS is like over 70% foreign and uh the the programs aren't stupid like they want more American students um because they understand that
2:36:25
uh there there are a lot of challenges by by having uh you know you you end up having this sort of exposure but the fact is just the talent isn't there um and you want to you want to have the best and brightest in your programs go on to you know do amazing research and start amazing companies. And so this is
2:36:38
And so this is sort of the world we live in where um you know American primary and secondary education is not going to fill up these slots fast enough.
2:36:47
Um particularly for you know CS is kind of an exception to the rule.
2:36:52
A lot of the hard sciences um you know are grueling.
2:36:55
They don't pay particularly well.
2:36:56
um and the sort of the the options uh to to just like you know be a CS major in in in college and like go get a degree for the past 15 years have been much more um lucrative than like studying mechanical engineering or electrical engineering.
2:37:11
So, um, kind of if we're trying to sort of like re-industrialize and, um, build the future, like you need PhDs and you want the best PhDs and scaring them off by having the, um, uh, the head of the the nominee for the head of the
2:37:28
immigration process say that um, he's in favor of revoke revoking OPT, which is like the ability for students once they graduate um, for any major, I think you get a year, and if it's a STEM major, you get three years where you just have a blanket work authoriz ization. So you
2:37:40
So you don't need your employer to, you know, get you in the H1B lottery and sponsor you is a big part of the value proposition um for going to school in the US alongside being able to go to the best research um universities on the planet.
2:37:54
So you have on the one hand from like the demand side I guess um uh students uh being a lot you know just having to price in an uncertainty factor of whether or not they'll be able to stay in their stay in the US much less stay to the to the to finish their program.
2:38:11
Um, and then on this on the supply side, I guess, um, the the Trump administration, uh, having the NSF spend half as much money as it's authorized to spend.
2:38:22
Um, and kind of blanket cutting off universities which are on the list for whatever reason.
2:38:27
Um, to the tunes of uh, you know, billions of dollars just like sorry ons Hopkins, sorry Harvard, sorry Penn.
2:38:34
um which is leading to layoffs and worse research and I'm annoyed because the future is going to come slower and America is going to be worse off um because we're taking these um like incredibly unforced errors.
2:38:48
Have you seen any pressure on the 01 program?
2:38:49
We talked to Sigil Wen Tealfellow who's been trying to speed up the 01 process for those extraordinary uh uh candidates and it seemed like uh he was pretty optimistic about that program continuing and flourishing but maybe that's just not enough in your in your mind when a year right? Yeah.
2:39:09
Um it and and other thing and like uh I mean we have 500,000 foreign students in America.
2:39:16
I mean, aside from like a like this is the thing that is funding the universities.
2:39:23
Like there are there are like maybe 10 schools that have billion-dollar endowments.
2:39:28
Um I mean you're going to start seeing a lot of universities go under.
2:39:31
Um which is like just sad in general.
2:39:35
Um but this is this like education is not a zero sum thing.
2:39:37
And I think that's kind of like one of the the the the more sad talking points.
2:39:42
It's like why aren't there more slots for Americans?
2:39:45
It's like no like the American slots and all these universities are being subsidized by all the undergraduates and master students from abroad who are paying full ride um to this where you know we have like uh you know instate tuition and and whatnot.
2:40:00
I mean it's a it's a it's a different ball game.
2:40:02
And how how would you think about changing higher ed?
2:40:03
Uh I mean there's been this this idea that uh you know like Harvard for example was founded hundreds of years ago and was servicing a population of maybe like 30 million people and now there's probably a billion people that have heard of Harvard or may maybe like in the candidate pool um and but the but the class size hasn't scaled.
2:40:25
Would you scale up these elite universities and try and get the elite pedagogy into more hands or uh into more minds or are there other things that you think we could we we could do.
2:40:38
Um because this feels driven by some sort of dissatisfaction with the results of higher ed.
2:40:44
I don't know if you agree with them.
2:40:46
Maybe you think it's perfect, but uh certainly there's the first question of like there might be a flaw.
2:40:52
Uh there's a lot of student debt.
2:40:53
There's a lot of people going to schools and taking on debt to pursue degrees that don't necessarily pay and they don't make economic sense.
2:41:01
How would you change higher ed without disrupting like the the the brain drain equation? Sure.
2:41:05
I mean, I think at a macro level it's important to recognize that like anti-intellectualism like beating up on the universities is has like a long and storyried tradition in American history.
2:41:18
Uh you know going uh going back to McCarthy and even before.
2:41:20
So like the fact that politicians are making hay on uh academia is not like something that is particularly novel.
2:41:27
Um should uh you know if I was like the the secretary of education and I wanted to use a stick, I would uh do the exact thing you exact thing you said, John, and say like you need to spend down a percentage of your endowment every year if you want to stay uh tax eligible and does that mean uh you know uh growing your class size by 25% every year? Sure. Absolutely.
2:41:54
Like there are there is a glut of professors and there is a demand glut and like who are like who is gaining by Harvard staying small like the few people who get in who like get to feel more special about themselves. Yeah.
2:42:06
What is your model for higher ed?
2:42:08
I mean like Tyler Cowan kind of uh mentioned he he posited that higher ed is a bundle of goods.
2:42:13
It's it's both a a daycare for parents to get their kids out of the house. It's a dating service.
2:42:21
It's also uh you know a a series of textbooks that are you are forced to read.
2:42:25
It's also like a music festival.
2:42:27
It's a you know it's it's a bunch of different products kind of bundled and so and it's prestige and signaling and and and essentially uh a one-word summary of your SAT score.
2:42:36
Um and you could potentially unbundle those.
2:42:38
I don't know if that's necessary score. I like that. Right. Right.
2:42:42
Like like if you say Harvard people know okay like potentially you've been filtered for IQ at some level.
2:42:47
Uh, and so you know, uh, like I is is that is that the correct model?
2:42:53
Do you disagree with that or or do you think that that's a good thing?
2:42:56
Because I'm hearing like like I'm hearing higher ed is perfect and I I don't really buy that, but but but I'd like to know what vectors you would improve.
2:43:04
Well, I mean I think like uh there is a real golden goose aspect to what we have particularly when it comes to science research, right? Okay.
2:43:19
So, um you know, look, I was a history major.
2:43:22
Um, and uh, I think a lot of the sort of like soft they don't teach us any anything like real stuff like critique baked into what you said is is a lot more applicable to humanities.
2:43:33
I mean, thinking back like could I be where I am today?
2:43:37
Would I have the mind I had if I just like read all the books they assigned me in college instead of taking the courses? Like I think so.
2:43:43
Um, but you know, could I become a biophysicist without like having access to a lab and professors to like train and tutor me?
2:43:53
I don't I'm I don't really think that's the case.
2:43:55
So there so particularly when it comes to um to sort of science and engineering disciplines like there is a real aspect of mentorship um and like handholding that needs to exist. And I love that.
2:44:06
I agree with the bio side.
2:44:09
It like crisper came out of academia. The transformer did not.
2:44:15
And in fact, the one the one academic lab that that is listed on the transformer paper, attention is all you need. Canadian. It's a Canadian.
2:44:24
Elizabeth Holmes had never been in a lab before she started a 10 billion company. All those no.
2:44:28
If you if you actually go back to the transformer paper and look at the um the authors, most of them, by the way, have PhDs and most of their PhDs were in labs that were funded by the National Science Foundation.
2:44:39
So I don't necessarily think you could like write off AI um as not being something that like had b had government funded basic research behind it.
2:44:47
I think that was absolutely a crucial thing.
2:44:49
Um and you know we've had a lot of uh AI winters over the past um few decades where people have sort of industry has basically given up on the technology and the only folks that were still funding it and doing the research were um in government uh you know uh given government money and working in in in universities.
2:45:08
So like it's the it's the place where not where the stuff that you can't get ventureback funding happens and you know I think that everyone can get venture back funding now.
2:45:18
There's unlimited venture.
2:45:20
There will never be enough venture capital.
2:45:21
Let's just venture fund everything even the basic research that won't return uh ROI. Yeah.
2:45:25
I'm sick of VCs preferring a deck.
2:45:28
Like don't even prefer it. Just idea. Yeah. Check.
2:45:31
This is the long-term solution.
2:45:34
Just just just I want to go through a couple of you guys.
2:45:40
You got executive order for DJI ban in the next two months. Yes or no? Sure. Sure.
2:45:52
I'm worried about my drone racing league. Yeah.
2:45:53
I hope I hope they I hope they stop.
2:45:55
Do you actually Do you actually race drones? Chinese. Last last one. Chinese ARVR.
2:45:58
Should we be paying attention to it? Oh, interesting. Yeah, man.
2:46:03
And I wrote a whole feature about the Chinese AR ecosystem.
2:46:04
There are it's a it's a really interesting development because basically what happened in the US um was uh Meta consolidated and you had a handful of startups that all kind of gave up because there was a trillion dollar gorilla in the room.
2:46:20
But China is a much more dynamic ecosystem.
2:46:22
You have like six or seven players who are all exploring all these different hardware trees of like where to put the battery and do you need the screen on the glasses?
2:46:30
Do you not need the screen on the glasses?
2:46:33
Um, you know, China talkmed media, uh, it's one of our more recent articles kind of looking at at at Rokid and a number of other a number of other Chinese startups which like all have products that are $300 to $600 and are really cool.
2:46:45
Um, can I pitch can I show a book before we go to the next?
2:46:47
Okay, so um, uh, it's coming out tomorrow I believe.
2:46:54
The party's interests come first, Joseph Terigian.
2:46:56
It's a 500page uh biography of Xi Jang who is uh Xi Jinping's dad and it is this incredibly detailed um like wild ride through this guy's life.
2:47:10
He started as a um he joined the communist party when he was 15 in 1926 and the first half of the book is like all these crazy war stories where he is like fighting and executing nationalists and Japanese and then um you know he becomes he's like the he's like the highest flyer in the 1950s like he's promoted faster than everyone in his 30s and then the culture revolution hits and his life gets completely ruined. Um, Xiinping's 15.
2:47:34
His dad is this like black stain on the party.
2:47:38
And the amount of sort of like family trauma um that the uh the dad and then the son by proxy like ingests over the course of their life is just a is is is kind of an unfathomable thing um that you can only really experience by just like living day day through day through this guy's life.
2:48:02
and the fact that he was able to write this book.
2:48:03
Um, you know, I see I see books with this level of detail about folks like Stalin because the archives have opened at this point.
2:48:10
Um, but Joseph did an incredible job like reading all of these memoirs and talking to people and digging for stuff.
2:48:16
And um if you want a sort of window into what Chinese elite politics looks like, um it is a really um uh a really special piece of scholarship and something that comes around really rarely in the um uh in the China study space.
2:48:34
So highly you guys should get them on the pod.
2:48:35
Talk about things dad and highly recommend everyone check it out. Thank you for the plug. That sounds fantastic. Let's do it.
2:48:43
Thanks for coming on Jordan. We'll talk to you soon. Always a pleasure. Cheers. See you.
2:48:47
Next up, we have Max from Arena Magazine.
2:48:48
We are surrounded by journalists. Hold your position.
2:48:50
We We have Arena Magazines right here. Always.
2:48:55
You always have to keep one.
2:48:55
Welcome to the studio, Max.
2:48:57
We always keep your arena on you. How you doing?
2:48:59
Oh, he's got it behind him with the tie. He was ready. Bolo looking good. What's new?
2:49:09
Um, well, we we just moved into a new Arena Magazine world headquarters.
2:49:15
world headquarters, the Pensolo.
2:49:15
Um, uh, and you know, we It's not Arena Magazine headquarters, though.
2:49:23
It's the Intergalactic Media Corporation of America. Correct.
2:49:26
Wait, don't you have a new website, too? Oh, yeah.
2:49:28
That's the other big thing.
2:49:31
We launched our new website during the first hour of the show. Congratulations.
2:49:34
Or actually, it may have been the second hour.
2:49:36
It wasn't ready during the first hour, but we wrapped it up in time for the third hour of the show. That's great. Let's go.
2:49:41
Um, so we took a look at all of our favorite websites for sort of consuming long form text and you know Silicon Valley one again we couldn't find any superior form than the software documentation website and so initially we actually thought about like hosting the website on GitHub and just using markdown files for all of the essays. Wow.
2:50:02
We didn't literally do that but we built a site that's uh you know based on engineering docs.
2:50:06
Uh, so it's in it's in it's in dark mode uh sciency vibe and we think that people are really going to love it. Wow. Yeah, this is great. Oh, very cool.
2:50:16
I like how I can decide if I want to focus or not.
2:50:21
There's a little bit That's right.
2:50:24
Focus just puts it right in the center. Okay, cool.
2:50:25
You can you can you can you can get rid of all of the prompts for you to send us money um by by subscribing or you can leave them in there.
2:50:33
Um, we we we got we got we got a lot of fun stuff and uh you know it's sort of um it's sort of uh almost a relaunch of the magazine after we did the first four print issues.
2:50:42
We're now going to really make a big push to uh you know get a lot bigger and that happens mostly on the internet.
2:50:47
So what's the what is the flow um uh for specifically windowing?
2:50:54
Uh, I know Taylor Swift is very good at this where she goes on a tour and then there's a documentary that comes out later and so you have to see her in person and then you go watch the movie in theaters and then you can stream it and a lot of the streamers made the mistake of allowing you to binge all 10 episodes right up front and it doesn't create these like shelling points, these moments.
2:51:14
Are you thinking about gating articles to the physical magazine first, then putting them on the internet later?
2:51:20
How how are you thinking about that?
2:51:24
You know, it's great that because our readers who pay us get the print magazines first, we really don't have to be in a rush to put things up on the website that are in the print magazine.
2:51:33
You know, until now there's basically been 100% overlap between what's on the website and what's on and what's in print.
2:51:38
That's going to change a lot because we're going to do a lot more stuff online.
2:51:41
Um, but you know, we had something very funny happen in the first few months of the magazine, which was subscribers emailing us upset that we had posted an article online before they had gotten a chance to read it on paper, which is it's sort of it's it's sort of sort of sort of strange, but also really made sense.
2:51:58
And so, yeah, we we put things in print first.
2:52:00
Uh, um um and you know, we're not really sure how the how the cadence is going to go. We'll figure it out.
2:52:07
Are you going to uh are you going to increase the frequency at all as you go bigger or just trying to go bigger with the stories?
2:52:15
Um for us quarterly is about the right pace.
2:52:18
We might go we might go more than that.
2:52:21
But the truth is in order to publish like you know every week or even with us every month you'd have to reduce the paper quality to you know get the printing time down.
2:52:30
It takes us, you know, it takes us multiple weeks to go from, you know, submitting the files to the printer to the magazines ending up in mailboxes.
2:52:38
Whereas, you know, something that's arriving in your mailbox every single week on what I call glossy toilet paper, which is the sort of very very light paper where it's falling apart, it's been stapled together, you know, you can do that at a very fast cadence.
2:52:50
It's it's it's it's no good.
2:52:52
So, what we're going to do, increase the online volume quite a bit, do a lot more stuff there, um, but keep the print magazine sort of, you know, uh, spare in in, you know, four of them per year and super high quality.
2:53:04
Uh, you recently wrote a profile about Brian Shy, CEO of Anderol.
2:53:09
Uh, what stuck out to you about him?
2:53:12
What was the most interesting takeaway from spending time with him?
2:53:15
Uh, he's he's definitely a genius and a and and a standup guy as well.
2:53:21
I mean, I just thought it was sort of funny to like write a piece about a man that like most people are unaware is the CEO of this company that they all know.
2:53:29
Uh, and you know, even some of the people that I was sort of like discussing the piece with in advance were like, who's the CEO?
2:53:35
And all of the honoral co-founders are like emphatic that Brian is CEO Brian has the best decision-making.
2:53:43
Brian is absolutely in charge as everyone expects the chief executive officer to be.
2:53:46
I mean, Trey said something, you know, like uh you I trust his judgment more than my own.
2:53:51
Um and you know, there's a lot of like fun stuff in that uh in that profile. Even stuff about Palmer.
2:53:59
Palmer has zero direct reports at Onroll and it was Brian who told me that and I thought that that was amazing. Uh zero. That's fascinating.
2:54:07
I mean, it's probably the perfect perfect situation.
2:54:09
he can just go around the company and and invent and do what he does best and evangelize and and and tinker and also just like drop into certain projects, be an individual contributor if he needs to be, be a manager if he needs to be, but but doesn't need um like a like a standing staff, right?
2:54:25
One of the other things that this is not about Brian in particular, in fact, Brian thought it was sort of funny when I pointed it out to him.
2:54:32
He must not have noticed before, but everything on the Andreal campus has been set in the same type face. Hm.
2:54:37
With with with the exclusion of the governmentmandated parking signs.
2:54:41
Um, and so it's like everything, the signs on the gates, the room labels, the the stationary, it's all been set in Helvetica now, which is sort of a, you know, 2000's recut of Helvetica.
2:54:52
And you don't see like design discipline like that anywhere.
2:54:57
But now that I'm a magazine man and I'm thinking about letter forms and typography all the time, it's like you you notice it very viscerally walking around honor roll that they've done everything to like exacting specifications and they also use the same type face as it's real brand is not a logo or a website.
2:55:13
It's it's it's like showing up with that level of consistency which makes sense and you know it's it's the idea that like don't you dare try to design something.
2:55:25
let the design team do it because there's like they're protecting the the identity and even the, you know, the drones, the missiles, the tanks, the submarines, they have the exact same typography as the stationary and the meeting room names.
2:55:38
And I just I I'd never seen it before.
2:55:41
You know, you go on like an airline or whatnot, the typography is all over the place.
2:55:44
And that was like uh that was my sort of, you know, one of the standout things from from visiting the uh from visiting the honoral campus.
2:55:54
Uh, how are you thinking about growing the magazine in terms of uh balance between full-time writers and con and contributors?
2:56:02
Um, it's an interesting place to send a thought or an essay or something.
2:56:09
And so I imagine that it's it's more tractable to be a contributor at Arena than um have a column somewhere else.
2:56:17
It's probably a little bit more manageable for someone who's maybe not writing all the time.
2:56:19
Um, but at the same time, you probably want a steady heartbeat of writers.
2:56:22
So, how are you thinking about balancing those things? Yeah.
2:56:26
Well, so first of all, we want anyone and everyone that's got something to say about, you know, technology, capitalism, civilization to send it to Arena.
2:56:34
We're very very good editors and it's, you know, it's very useful to have editors and and we provide that service uh to to to anyone to help them to help them get their word out.
2:56:42
Some of it will end up in print, some of it will just be online.
2:56:46
Um, you know, we have some full-time people.
2:56:49
We'll have some more full-time people.
2:56:50
We have some contributors.
2:56:50
We'll have a lot more full full-time contributors.
2:56:53
I think that on the It's on the like extremely polarized ends of this spectrum that you start to get into weird stuff, which is like way overbudgeting for having like full-time writers.
2:57:04
Um, you know, you can sort of create this Frankenstein where it's like it's some full-time people and some contributors that will create the most interesting balance.
2:57:11
Um, it's not going to be the most interesting balance if it's all random contributors or if it's all full-time staff.
2:57:17
Uh and and so you know we mix it up.
2:57:20
How do you think about the different types of pieces that you want to um like what what is the shape of the different type of coverage?
2:57:28
Like obviously you have profiles.
2:57:28
You probably also have like opeds.
2:57:31
You're not really doing breaking news um or or investigative journalism. What is it called? Not news. Not news. Not news. Anything but news.
2:57:42
But what about uh like what are the other areas that you're interested in exploring?
2:57:46
like Forbes famously has the Midas list and the Forbes 400.
2:57:49
Are there going to be products or anything like that?
2:57:51
One of the things that we talked about at the very beginning was like how how to do lists in a nonawful way.
2:57:56
Uh haven't figured it out yet.
2:58:01
So, we're not doing we're not doing we're not doing lists yet.
2:58:04
Well, maybe there's maybe there's a future contributor in listening right now who can come up with something.
2:58:09
Yeah, I don't know how to figure it out.
2:58:11
If someone can figure out how to how to how to make a better list, then I'm all ears.
2:58:14
switching um yeah, switching gears. Switching gears.
2:58:16
What's AI adoption like in Iowa?
2:58:22
You know, it's it's well, Google is just uh just just yesterday put $7 billion into like a a campus there, but it's just you know, it's just for server racks or whatnot.
2:58:29
I'm not sure that the people are really really uh are really following suit.
2:58:33
Um yeah, similar in Abalene in in in Texas.
2:58:39
There's uh I mean Stargate's going to be staffed with like not tens of thousands of people, like hundreds maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
2:58:45
It's a very very small organization. Yeah.
2:58:48
Um you know, my mom uh my mom just retired as a teacher and all of her teacher colleagues are complaining about the kids using chatbt, so that's good. There you go.
2:58:56
The kids are the kids are up to it.
2:58:58
Um but I mean I I sort of doubt whether any of my neighbors are are are paying are paying attention to it.
2:59:05
Uh, I sent one of them a a poem that I had written with with Claude.
2:59:08
Uh, he was like, "How's this so funny?"
2:59:10
Uh, uh, that's such that's like the the biggest alpha right now is just is just using models to generate like super thoughtful, creative, you know, work for people that aren't online. Yeah.
2:59:24
I mean, I assume that there are some like, you know, people in Iowa that are on Facebook that are looking at the sort of AI images and being, "Wow, that's beautiful." Uh, yeah.
2:59:34
Did you have a Did you watch Mountain Head yet? Did you have a reaction? I haven't. I'm sorry to say.
2:59:39
I heard you talking about it earlier, I guess. Oh, yeah.
2:59:41
It's just it's it's they the main kind of narrative of the story, uh, besides being a critique of the tech elite is that, uh, you know, it's it's this global catastrophe because AI has gotten so good that nobody can tell what's real and what's fake.
3:00:00
And no, I I so I so disagree with the framing.
3:00:03
People already have a lot of trouble figuring out what's real and what's fake.
3:00:06
AI is going to be an improvement over over over the status quo in certain ways. Okay.
3:00:14
Uh h how are you using uh AI at Arena?
3:00:17
I imagine that you're not using LLMs to actually write whole articles, but what about proofreading or even just Well, they trained a model to remove m dashes after they generate Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then problem solved.
3:00:30
Um and and also the word delve is is just find and replace.
3:00:35
Um but I but I imagine that the problem of type setting and transforming uh text from just a big block of text into something that fits nicely in columns that feels more tractable and more tactical than the artistry that goes into writing an actual article. Is that useful?
3:00:52
Um what about AI images for collages? Has that been useful?
3:00:58
anything like that that that that's kind of popped up. Yeah.
3:01:00
So, on the writing front, you know, I'm prepared for the day, which it is like better, but right now it's not at least not compared to what we can do.
3:01:10
And based on the way that the like that the LLM operate, they tend to be pretty.
3:01:16
They'll use the same sentence structure over and over again. For me, it's a tell.
3:01:19
I'm not saying I could like judge it 100%.
3:01:21
But a no one wants no one wants to pay to write to to read something that's been that's taken zero sort of marginal minutes to do.
3:01:28
It can be very useful for brainstorming.
3:01:30
It can catch some of the copy edits.
3:01:32
Um my mother tends to be better at copy editing though than any of the any of the GPTs now.
3:01:40
Uh um um but yeah, we have we have we have we have subscriptions to to all of them out the wazoo to uh you know to to to use them.
3:01:51
But yeah, I mean people are people are coming to Arena for a bit of an analog thing in the first place, which is a print magazine.
3:01:55
And so it's like to the extent that the AI can help us do more with less. It's great.
3:02:00
Um, but the core sort of writing work is something that is, you know, we're also trying to keep that, you know, art alive.
3:02:06
We were just talking to Jordan Schneider trying to talk about higher ed and some of the problems there.
3:02:14
um how would you kind of diagnose the problems if any in higher ed right now?
3:02:23
I mean, I think that people tend to focus on the on the elite institutions because of their sort of cultural power, but I mean, clearly the biggest catastrophe in higher ed is that we we we agreed to indefinitely fund higher and higher loans at the federal level for students to pursue degrees from the universities.
3:02:43
And it's not it's really not the Harvards that are the problem in that equation.
3:02:46
It's the uh it's the universities that can't offer much uh but that were allowed to sort of way over inflate their budgets with the with the with the federal loans.
3:02:56
And so this is this is a uh you know related to the China point.
3:03:01
I read a funny story that the University of Illinois took out an insurance policy in 2018 uh hedging against a decline in Chinese enrollment. Oh wow.
3:03:11
But the lawyers messed up the contract and so it was invalid in December 2019 and then it took them like five months to renegotiate it during which time the the COVID pandemic happened. Happened. Yeah. It's literally nuts.
3:03:24
So always have the lawyers read the fine print.
3:03:26
Uh I think it's possible that Claude would have been done a better done a better job than than those lawyers in that instance. Maybe or maybe Harvey.
3:03:34
And so somebody somebody you know that wants to go super risk on in China should bet on a rise in American students because right now there are I guess roughly 800 US students in China in China which is just unfathomably low. Yeah.
3:03:52
I have no idea how to diagnose what goes on inside China or or why people would want to go over there.
3:03:56
I don't know how to I don't know how to price that one. Interesting.
3:04:00
Um, you think we're getting a DJI ban in the next couple months?
3:04:01
You feeling feeling excited?
3:04:04
I think that people will be upset if they ban like the best product available.
3:04:09
I I I I I say this with like a a fervent desire that we have one that's like that's like amazing.
3:04:17
Uh, but I'm but I'm not I'm not I'm not sure that I'm not sure that for random civilians it's going to it's going to fly.
3:04:23
Yeah, it's hard if it's not popular.
3:04:25
Anyway, anything else, Jordy? I think we're good. This is great. Congratulations.
3:04:29
Congratulations on new website. Good luck. Go to arena.
3:04:34
We actually always keep we've kept an arena mag on our desk at all times in the entire history of TVPN. So, we got it. We love physical media.
3:04:41
It's a very good desk object.
3:04:43
And I'll just say we're going to have even better desk objects in the future. Oh, can't wait. You heard? Yeah, I'm excited.
3:04:49
I mean, I know you can take it up a notch to where it's more of a book.
3:04:52
These are sort of like chapters in technology and industry and uh well I have no I legitimately have no inside knowledge.
3:05:00
I'm just speculating speculating.
3:05:02
So excited to see what you do anything.
3:05:04
Anyway, thanks so much for coming on the show. Wait before you leave.
3:05:08
Before you leave, we got some new sound effects I want you to hear.
3:05:11
We are surrounded by journalists. Hold your position.
3:05:15
[Music] We're working we're working on these.
3:05:19
Um anyways, have a have a great afternoon, Max. Thanks for coming on. We'll talk to you soon. Okay. Bye bye.
3:05:22
I see multiple journalists on the horizon. Stand by.
3:05:26
I still don't know where these came from. Like these are from COD.
3:05:30
These are like Yeah, but like how did they change the voice?
3:05:32
Is this like AI generator?
3:05:33
It's effectively like the Captain Price.
3:05:35
Okay, but you can just do a Captain Price generator.
3:05:37
But it's Ben making It's Ben making. Is that Ben's voice? That's Ben's voice.
3:05:41
I see multiple journalists on the horizon. Stand up.
3:05:44
Market clearing order inbound. I like the kill streaks. Those are great.
3:05:49
I see a large IPO on the horizon. That's so good. I love it.
3:05:53
Uh good, really good impression. I love it.
3:05:55
Uh anyway, thank you so much for watching today. We have more timeline.
3:05:59
I'm going to be Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's do some timeline. Let's do some timeline. That's great. Yeah.
3:06:03
Uh congrats to Jacob Kimmel.
3:06:05
We generated the most visually striking data of my career at New Limit.
3:06:08
This week, we have a real opportunity to create medicines that add healthy years for everyone.
3:06:12
Jacob's been on the show before.
3:06:13
uh of course started New Limit with the help of Brian Armstrong or in partnership with Brian Armstrong, founder of Coinbase and uh and really pumped us up but he he barely teased it but uh it seemed like something happened uh that was very good there.
3:06:27
Uh we also need to tell you about Adquick out of home advertising made easy and measurable. Go to adquick. com.
3:06:31
Say goodbye to the headaches of out ofome advertising.
3:06:34
Only adqu combines technology out of about to buy every billboard in SF.
3:06:37
Market clearing order in let's do it. I love it.
3:06:40
Uh we covered the we covered the attack.
3:06:43
Uh James uh Cadwal Cadwadoller I don't cadwallader uh says GG try ramp.
3:06:51
Uh which startup in the US is known for shipping new features the fastest?
3:06:56
This is chatbt says ramp I ramp gets the top spot. These are hotly debated.
3:07:01
This is the this is the generative engine optimization the GEO that Andre's been writing about the AI SEO.
3:07:07
Like you got to be you got to be well this is what this is what James come you remember we had James on this is profound.
3:07:13
Oh this is okay that makes sense and they're absolutely cooking.
3:07:18
I mean this isn't this kind of thing isn't by chance you know. Sure sure. Yeah that makes sense.
3:07:23
Uh we have uh a post from Kareem Car Carr says how wild to me how much of a nothing burger AI has been so far. It's been 2.
3:07:34
5 years and the most tangible effects of AI are students cheating more in slightly higher, more realistic Facebook sloth.
3:07:40
I don't want vibes or speculation or demos.
3:07:42
I want one concrete real world achievement from the current generation of AI that's not that's not potentially a big deal but actually a big deal right now because I got nothing.
3:07:51
And uh yeah, it's just very funny because obviously like LLMs have have been vended into like every enterprise everywhere and and are like basically you're not a business person. Yeah. Yeah.
3:08:03
But also just like like daytoday use of like you know for a lot of people like OpenAI has just replaced Google. Yeah.
3:08:10
It this uh Kareem doesn't clearly doesn't respect how insane it is that people are using something else for search besides Google, right?
3:08:20
That that is the entire like Microsoft which is currently I think the biggest company in the world has tried for two decades to unseat Google. Yeah.
3:08:31
And they now own a large part of a company that Yeah. actually kind of did it. Yeah. Exactly. And uh Yeah. Pretty Yeah.
3:08:39
Pretty pretty pretty remarkable.
3:08:40
Um let's also tell you about Wander. Go to wander. com. Buy your happy place. Find your happy place.
3:08:46
Book a wander with inspiring views, hotel great amenities, dreamy beds, top tier cleaning, and 247 concier service.
3:08:52
It's a vacation home but better folks. Uh $50 million, right?
3:08:56
It's great that we can talk about it now.
3:08:59
It leaked basically leaked.
3:09:02
weeks ago, but uh John Andrew was on and broke it all down and and he's going for 300,000 homes in a decade. Love to see it.
3:09:08
We had Patrick asking, "What is the lightest, thinnest, most comfortable, and simple watch?"
3:09:13
And the best recommendation that I saw here was from uh Will Manitis. What do you say?
3:09:22
Recommending a Rashard Millard. Um and I agree with him.
3:09:27
I think it's a great option. Otherwise, a Royal Oak.
3:09:32
Yeah, I would extra thin.
3:09:32
Why not a Graph Diamond Hallucination?
3:09:34
Yeah, he's getting up there.
3:09:38
Most comfortable watch, but you know, it makes a statement.
3:09:42
Will recommended the RM66 manual winding flying turbion is a good entrylevel piece.
3:09:48
So, uh, skeletonized it is.
3:09:48
I think I think Patrick should go with like an artwork.
3:09:54
That would be that would be interesting. That'd be interesting.
3:09:57
Um but I mean seriously if he's looking for something like in that category it's probably protect Philippe Katraa uh Vashron Constan Patrimony or JLC ultra thin probably something along those lines is going to be uh probably what he's looking for.
3:10:11
He didn't really specify dress watch versus sports watch in the thin but yeah it I think you'd look good with a dress watch.
3:10:19
So hopefully you can pick one up on on bezel. Go to getbzzle. com.
3:10:23
Your bezel concierge is available now to source you any watch on the planet. Seriously, any watch.
3:10:30
I think I think that tweet is just permission for us to introduce Patrick to the CEO of Bezel over text message as soon as the show wraps.
3:10:38
I think we should just You guys You guys should really talk. You guys should talk.
3:10:42
It's not a double opt-in intro. It's just happening. Patrick, zero optin.
3:10:45
Yeah, you you you posted about you got 140,000 views on this post. It's happening. It's happening. It's happening.
3:10:51
Uh we got a post here from Gabe.
3:10:52
He says, quote, "LMO has survived and even thrived over years, but its cousin Rothel has faded into indignity. The cruelty of faith. 120,000 likes. I didn't notice that. Really resonated. That is wild.
3:11:09
A 120 banger is really good. Really good. But it's so true. It's so true.
3:11:14
There were all these different acronyms. Let's bring it back.
3:11:19
Raffle Copter, uh, Ro, uh, LMAO really stuck around though.
3:11:23
Yeah, there were a bunch of Let's bring it back.
3:11:26
Hey, I mean, TV Nation underrated is that LOL is still around, you know, LOL made it through.
3:11:33
See, I actually I I adopted Lo really late. Yeah.
3:11:37
Like within the last two years, I just I never had a huge amount of respect. Yeah. But no, LMO. Yeah.
3:11:44
But wh are do you do you do you draw upon lmao more frequently than lol? Uh less frequently. Yeah.
3:11:51
I'm I'm sprinkling it in, you know.
3:11:53
I think I like uh like like the I I also like the honestly variation of the haha is also good because you can go ha that's like not good.
3:12:03
Haha is like barely trying.
3:12:06
Once you get into the three haws, it's like okay, I'm actually giving you some positive feedback here.
3:12:09
LMO is usually I usually use it when something's actually ridiculous. Exactly.
3:12:15
Like somebody is doing something that that is just silly. Yeah. Yeah.
3:12:19
It doesn't really have any of the eye roll that the LOL does.
3:12:20
The LOL can just be like kind of laughing at it.
3:12:25
Lomero is is like a little bit little bit higher.
3:12:27
But yeah, maybe we got to bring back Ro Raffle. Yeah. Rolling on the floor.
3:12:32
Well, uh, we got to tell you about our newest and today our greatest sponsor on of the greatest sponsor of today's episode in many ways, Adio. Yes. Pull it up.
3:12:44
Uh, Adio is the AI native CRM that builds, scales, and grows your company to the next level.
3:12:51
Uh we do a lot of I mean we have an interesting show and that we're like we're basically booking like five sales calls a day in the form of guests and then we're also running you know an advertising business.
3:13:04
I've used Adio uh over the years.
3:13:07
They've been around for a while and uh we were excited about the opportunity to partner with them.
3:13:11
They are the backbone to our the revenue side of our business and we are super pumped to partner with them.
3:13:20
uh you can go start with a 14-day free trial of their pro plan and uh you're going to love it.
3:13:28
It's fast, it's flexible.
3:13:28
It reminds me of if the linear team was going to build a CRM product that they feel uh similar in many ways and uh yeah, also redpoint backed, you know, so you know it's a banger.
3:13:42
Yeah, you got Logan Bart in the deal just attributing.
3:13:43
He's like the main guy I know in Red Point and so contributing every deal at Redpoint.
3:13:49
Of course he let it classic. No, Jeff. Let's go. What's that?
3:13:53
The founder of Redpoint went to my high school. Oh, no way. Yeah, Jeff Brody.
3:13:59
And so, you know, just being like, "Yeah, shout I've never met him, but just like shout out Redpoint." Yeah. Shout it out.
3:14:05
I I I would die for Redpoint.
3:14:09
I would die for big tech.
3:14:10
Um, and I uh, and also I want to give a shout out to Captions app.
3:14:13
The founder's been on the show. Big fan of captions.
3:14:17
They introduced Mirage Studio powered by our proprietary omnimodal foundation model.
3:14:22
They can generate expressive videos at scale with actors that actually look and feel alive.
3:14:25
Our actors flinch, laugh, flinch, sing, rap.
3:14:30
All of course per your direction.
3:14:30
Just upload an audio, describe the scene, and drop in a reference image and create energetic content in minutes built for marketers, creative teams, and anyone serious about crafting great narrative videos.
3:14:42
Uh, I'm excited to get that started and check that out.
3:14:43
It's actually a new URL, mirage. app.
3:14:45
Um, so they're kind of like forking the two products.
3:14:50
A lot of companies have been doing that with with I feel like that's a more recent occurrence where they'll spin up kind of a new brand and app to kind of test something. Yeah. Yeah. Um, more news.
3:15:01
Uh, apparently Elon is doing some type of share sale, $300 million share sale that values the company at 113 billion for XAI. Oh, Xi.
3:15:11
Uh, and the official um the official uh Neuralink round actually got announced today. Oh.
3:15:19
Oh, that was just like leaked earlier, but it's actually out now. That's great. Yeah.
3:15:24
So, well, congrats to everyone at Neurolink.
3:15:25
I believe it's nine billion now is the valuation. Is that right? Yeah, crazy.
3:15:30
Speaking of things that start with nines, my sleep score 91. I'm back in the game. See how you did?
3:15:37
Getting eight sleep, five-year warranty, 30 night risk-free trial, free returns, free shipping.
3:15:40
I had to fuel your best days. I had an issue.
3:15:42
The power went out in the middle of the night Saturday in my neighborhood.
3:15:45
And so, I don't care about Saturday. I want Sunday.
3:15:49
I want I got a I got a 90. I got 90.
3:15:51
Oh, let's hear it for me.
3:15:51
Let's hear it for big dog. Let's hear once a week.
3:15:58
I'll give it to you once a week.
3:15:58
I got back toback days coming up. I'm I'm I I got you.
3:16:01
Let's see what you do tonight. Let's see.
3:16:03
Let's see what numbers I put up.
3:16:04
Anyway, nobody outs sleeps me. Nobody.
3:16:08
Anyways, thanks so much for watching, folks.
3:16:09
Uh we will see you tomorrow.
3:16:09
Go leave us a fivestar review if you like the show and we appreciate all of you.
3:16:17
We're excited for tomorrow. See you later.