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4:52
It is Tuesday, May 27, 2025.
4:55
We are live from the TVPN Ultra Dome.
4:58
The Ultra Dome is the physical place, the first of hundreds, but we're still in the temple of technology, the fortress of finance, the capital of capital.
5:07
Uh, we have a new studio.
5:09
We're taking you through white suits.
5:10
Oh, because the market's ripping. Bitcoin's above 110K. We're so back.
5:12
I never died at it for a second.
5:15
Massive consumer confidence speed, too. Consumers undefeated. Undefeated.
5:22
undefeated uh massive day.
5:22
Uh we have a bunch of great guests.
5:25
We're the Midas list dropped.
5:26
We got Brad Gersonner coming on the show.
5:28
Uh hopefully he's just taken a massive victory lap. No, he's I'm kidding.
5:32
He's here to talk about Invest America and uh and and some of the uh the the policy work he's been doing.
5:40
Uh we got AJ Pipla and Zach Shaw from Hermes coming on to talk about how they're flying their first plane.
5:45
They're going hypersonic soon.
5:45
Uh Delian's coming on to talk about the Enduroat Investment.
5:49
And then we got a lightning round with the teal fellowship.
5:51
We got something like six or seven, eight, nine, 10%. We got a lot of them.
5:56
Uh they're coming back to back to back back.
5:57
So that should be a lot of fun.
5:59
Uh but let's show off the gong and let's I think you should hit it. Okay. Let's hit the gong. This is the reveal. We saw you warm it up. Hit it. Good. Hit it. Feels great. Powerful stuff. It's fantastic.
6:15
It's great to be standing up on the set. Yep. Yeah, it's great.
6:21
Oh, it just rings so nicely for so long. It's just the best. It's just the best.
6:26
Uh and of course that we wouldn't we wouldn't be able to have this studio.
6:29
We wouldn't be able to have this gong without RAMP. Time is money. Save both.
6:33
Easy to use corporate cards, bill payments, accounting, and a whole lot more all in one place. Go to ramp. com to get started.
6:38
Um the Midas list has dropped. Um and uh it's big news.
6:44
We want to take you through a couple of people.
6:45
Alfred Lynn at the top, Reed Hoffman number two, Peter Teal number three, then Neil Shen, former Sequoia now at Hongan uh number four, Mickey Malca number five at Ribbit Capital uh famous for his Coinbase investment.
6:58
Venode Kosla at six, Doug Leone at Doug 7.
7:00
Uh Hamont over at General Catalyst is at 8, Fred Wilson at nine, Chris Dixon at 10.
7:06
We got him coming on the show tomorrow.
7:08
Uh we're hitting we're hitting most of these people.
7:10
We should do a Midas Midas list day. Have them all on.
7:12
I'm sure they're not busy. Let's do it. Let's do it. 100.
7:17
I mean, we've been talking about forever now trying to break the Guinness World Record for most VCs on a single podcast.
7:24
We believe that we'll safely break it at 100.
7:26
And so, why not just do the Midas list? Yes.
7:28
Getting them all, like you said, getting them all on on one show consecutively would be a totally uh probably no problem.
7:35
Their EAS would be on overtime, right?
7:39
But they're the hero the unsung heroes. Yeah.
7:42
You got Mike Spicer, Sutter Hill for Snowflake at 11.
7:44
Roloff made at Sequoia made 13th.
7:47
Uh, who else is in interesting?
7:50
Well, we we we have backto back to back on 17, 18, 19 in terms of uh TBPN appearance.
7:55
We got Keith Ra Boy at 17, Mark Andre at 18, Trey Stevens at 19.
8:00
They've all been on TBNN. Maybe.
8:03
Yeah, we should just only read off the ones real.
8:04
We We should Who are these other people?
8:07
They're no names if they haven't been on the show yet.
8:09
They need to they need to really make a name for themselves like coming on the show. They do.
8:13
Um anyway, we we should do some timeline.
8:16
Uh was there any other news that's uh that that that broke?
8:18
It was kind of a quiet weekend with the Memorial Day.
8:22
Obviously, there were lots of folks at the Monaco GP the F1 race.
8:28
But most of the venture capitalists of course were at the Coca-Cola 600 because there's been a major vibe shift. Yep. Major vibe shift.
8:33
So NASCAR is in, F1's kind of out, but you're still into the F1 stuff because you got that European flare. Yes. Yeah. European flare, John.
8:43
Couldn't have said it better myself.
8:43
Um, but yeah, the the whole shift towards, you know, the monster truck rallies, all that.
8:48
It's impossible to get a box at a monster truck rally. Yep.
8:50
500 miles from San Francisco.
8:53
It's every single one gets taken up by different, you know, SAS vendors.
8:57
I mean there like I was joking about the Coca-Cola 600 being a big hot spot for tech, but I think the more I posted about it, people kept texting me and being like, "Okay, well, I saw somebody watch and they were like, "Okay, I get it." Yeah. Yeah.
9:09
I got a couple of those where they're like, "Okay, yeah, you got me."
9:12
Like, it's actually pretty entertaining.
9:14
Like, I'm I'm kind of into the race drama now. Yeah. Okay.
9:17
I'm looking out in I'm looking at, you know, the design features, the different cars. Yeah. team.
9:23
Um, but I I have it on good authority that a that a major major company will intact will be going into NASCAR.
9:30
And so I'm very excited about that. It should be good.
9:32
So I I do think that more people will be going to NASCAR races. It'll be a lot of fun.
9:36
Um, let's pull up some posts.
9:39
Let's run through some timeline while we wait for Brad to hop on. He's coming on at 11.
9:43
Uh, who the big story is really Brad at number 40. Oh yeah. is a disgrace.
9:53
And clearly, you know, very clearly the Forbes brand will be trying to dig themselves out of this hole for years a mistake like this.
10:01
So, I'm sure they'll issue a correction before end of day.
10:05
Yeah, we should do our own Midas list.
10:07
Everyone's tied for number one. Everyone wins.
10:11
The pay to the paytoplay Midas the true pay.
10:13
We talked about this doing the TVPN Midas list is just an auction.
10:15
Yeah, it's live alive live hyper to be on the on it's it's an auction to be on.
10:22
You just you just say how much you're willing to pay and then whoever pays the most gets the first slot and then it just ranks.
10:28
That that honestly might be a a pretty good indication of how much capital you've been able to acquire. Yeah.
10:36
Except then you'd have people like Fred Wilson who, you know, they've intentionally kept their fund sizes pretty small and he wouldn't necessarily have the management fees to support, you know, buying the top for the top spot or the spot.
10:46
But what is the game of venture if not aum if not just just returns?
10:51
I mean, a venture fund is a business at the end of the day.
10:53
Whether you make money from fees or carry, it's all just profit at the end of the day.
10:59
Well, we have a very special guest calling in now. Let's bring him in. Welcome to the show. Well, what's going on?
11:07
Hey guys, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me.
11:10
You know, when you told me you guys were going to do this, um, you know, I was I thought, okay, there's there's probably a market gap for doing this.
11:18
Um, but you guys have killed it. It's a great show.
11:20
I hear so many people talking about it. You filled a real void.
11:25
Um, so congrats to you on on all the momentum and, you know, and and adding something new to the ecosystem.
11:32
I think that's really important. And uh great to be here. Thank you so much.
11:36
I mean a huge fan of BG2.
11:38
Obviously I was listening to it last night and uh yeah I mean very excited to talk to you about the uh the the the idea into the Invest America accounts and I liked how you took you took the listener through the genesis of the idea but then also some of the inside beltway politics of like how these things kind of actually play out.
11:58
The idea of losing ball control something that I hadn't really considered.
12:00
It seems obvious once you break it down, but um where did the idea actually come from?
12:05
And can you kind of introduce that idea?
12:06
Um and just kind of set the playing field before we go deeper into it. Yeah.
12:10
I mean, I I guess at some level the idea has been just stating for my whole life, right?
12:15
I was a kid whose dad went broke and I was on the outside looking in and I I remember when my grandfather who sacrificed everything um you know left me uh 20,000 bucks and I was able to invest that really day trade it and put myself through law school and business school and and the feeling of going from the outside to actually owning something having something. Yeah. Right.
12:38
That you can get that snowball rolling down the hill.
12:42
So I think that was the seed planted in a young kid.
12:44
planted in a young kid. Um but over the course of the last five to seven years started getting a lot more concerned and COVID really punctuated this for me about kind of this growing wealth gap the halves and the have nots over 50% of the population under 40 having a
13:00
negative view of c capitalism and Ray Dallio he g he did this great um uh uh uh uh he did a great presentation at the all-in summit where he talked about the rise and fall of the great countries and one of the princip principle reasons that great empires or great countries fall was wealth concentration among a very few. Yeah. Right. And so you have Yeah. Right.
13:21
And so you have kind of French revolution type moments.
13:26
And it seems to me that the natural byproduct of the technology revolution has been you know that you can now have somebody like Mark Zuckerberg who serves three billion customers around the world. Right?
13:37
Henry Ford couldn't do that.
13:39
John Rockefeller couldn't do that. Right?
13:42
Their TAMs were much smaller.
13:42
And so you see the increasing concentration of wealth.
13:46
And the question was how do we protect and preserve capitalism, the free enterprise system, the golden goose which is created this this innovation which has driven humanity forward at the same time not drift into socialism and redistribution and try to kill the patient in order to save it. Right?
14:03
And it seemed to me the answer was to make everybody a capitalist from birth.
14:07
everybody a capitalist from birth. If you gave everybody ownership and allowed them to compound in the upside of capitalism, right, rather than disincentivizing people by taking money away or creating some kind of socialist
14:20
state to to to create UBI or some other cockame scheme, but really to make everybody a private owner of assets from birth, treat it like a 401k, let it compound for their life, get them excited about what it means to a day like today when the the markets are doing well, it's up. There's a lot of
14:37
There's a lot of excitement among our community, right?
14:41
You know, people even just tracking the price of Bitcoin by itself, but every American should be bought into that to some degree, right?
14:48
And and even just seeing that the number go up by a few percentage points is enough to get people excited about participating in the system.
14:55
I must have been I must have been like eight years old or something, but my parents took a uh a 12-pack of Coca-Cola that comes in a cardboard box.
15:02
They cut out a uh a stock certificate out of it.
15:05
I didn't grow up wealthy or anything, but they bought like five shares of Coca-Cola or 10 shares of Coca-Cola.
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And I just remember it concretized this idea of like owning stock, which was very abstract to an eight-year-old or something like that.
15:18
And I had that on my wall for a long time.
15:19
And then at certain point, it realized that, oh no, this has financial value because obviously it wasn't literally tied to the stock, but they had been holding the stock in an account for me.
15:27
And and I was able to kind of experience that, which I think a lot of people are missing out on.
15:31
Um I want to I want to ask you about um the idea of of holding specifically.
15:36
There were some ideas about 18 age 30 uh ret day one retirement fund.
15:44
Um how do you think about unlocking that value and how do you think about any of the risks around like obviously you don't want people going and writing forward contracts against it on day one, right?
15:54
Although I'm sure someone will try and financialize this. Yeah.
15:57
And of course they they they will that will be illegal as will payday loans against it and other things.
16:03
Um Treasury Department will have to put together the rules and the regulations to make sure that this is implemented and executed in a way that we all feel great and proud of.
16:11
We have some incredible people lining up who will design the product.
16:14
Um but you know the the basic goal is every kid has on their phone this.
16:19
I own a little bit of Apple of Bergkshire Hathway.
16:21
Um you know and that will make them feel like they're they're they're in the game.
16:25
Um, but when you when you think about this, we want it to be a one-way lock box, a 401k where parents and and kids can add money into the account.
16:34
Birthday money, bar bar mitzvah money, as easy as Venmoing in 10 bucks, 20 bucks, 50 bucks, 100 bucks, right?
16:41
And you'll have this register that will show all the all the deposits in the account over the life of the count.
16:48
So when the kid looks back at 18 and sees like where did all this money come from?
16:52
And the first one will be $1,000 from the US Treasury Department.
16:56
Yeah, you know, an internship too, right?
16:59
If you, you know, just just showing that sort of long-term thinking.
17:03
It's like a basically a track record that you can go and use throughout, you know, your early career. Yeah.
17:09
I mean, there's also these viral moments where a lot of kids will build something and they get a bunch of attention and they try and kind of monetize it, but it's hard, but it's like it can very it can be very easy money, easy go, easy come, easy go with those kind, right?
17:21
So, this is a lock box, right?
17:22
Money can go in, money can't go out.
17:24
And now we have corporations Dell Corporation, Nvidia, AMD, Salesforce who've all T-Mobile, uh, iHeart Media have all raised their hands say we love this idea and we will add money to the accounts of the kids of our employees.
17:38
That's so now we have Uber companies representing millions and millions of employees who are going to add to the accounts of the kids of their employees as a corporate benefit, right?
17:47
Which makes perfect sense. Mhm.
17:47
Um, on top of that, we we'll be announcing major multi-billion dollar philanthropic gifts from large philanthropists who say, "You know what?
17:57
I don't want a middleman taking a scrape.
17:58
I just want to be able to give a,000 bucks to every kid in the state of Texas or every kid in America whose family earns under $200,000 or who graduates from public high school or whatever rules they stipulate." Yeah. Right.
18:14
They'll be able to donate that money to the Treasury Department C3.
18:17
They'll still get the tax deductibility, but that will go directly into the accounts of kids. 3.
18:22
7 million kids a year will have this account.
18:25
So now you have the power of philanthropy.
18:29
You have the power of families, the power of churches or community groups.
18:33
And now the final one is I had a couple people who are governor or running for governor call me up and say if I'm elected we're going to donate money to the account of the kids who are born in my state and who graduate from high school in my state because we want to attract and retain the best kids.
18:48
So I think this is going to be a 100 to one a th00and to one private sector match.
18:55
What the federal government's going to do is simply set up the accounts and get out of the way like a good 401k.
18:59
just get the ball rolling down the hill and let the private sector do what the private sector does so well.
19:04
The S&P 500 is compounded at 10. 2% for 75 years.
19:07
The way out of this problem is to get kids in the game from birth.
19:15
And by the age of 18, if you start with a,000 bucks, you add just $750 a year, right?
19:20
By age 18, you're going to have $50,000 in that account.
19:27
By age 30, you're going to have upwards of $200,000 that in that account.
19:31
And if you start with $1,000, you add $750 a year, and you don't touch it at age 50, you have a million dollar in that account. Wow. Right.
19:38
That is the power of compounding.
19:40
I think it totally changes the game for the country.
19:42
I think it's the cheapest insurance policy we can possibly buy in defense of free market capitalism, our democratic way of life, right?
19:52
And it does it in a way that gets people excited about capitalism, not in a way that penalizes people for being successful. Totally. Yeah. We talked about this.
20:01
Uh it's hard for somebody to be feel bought into capitalism if they have negative capital, right?
20:07
capital, right? if they have this is from the it's from that email between Peter Teal and Mark Zuckerberg uh talking about how a lot of the next generation they come they come into the world or they become adults with debt from student loans which people very
20:22
anti- student loan debt and then also the housing prices have gotten so expensive because of regulation and a whole bunch of other factors that you can't get on the housing ladder to start building capital because most people if they get a 30-year mortgage even if it's expensive when they're 25. By 65 or 55,
20:37
By 65 or 55, they paid that off and they have a ton of capital and then they they are more bought into the capitalist system.
20:45
And so, yeah, this feels like a great a great way to solve the problem in in a free market way.
20:51
And and let me let me give you one final thing.
20:52
So, we we had Kevin Hasset, who's now the chair of the National Council of Economic Advisors, and a guy named Rob Shapiro, who's key uh econ economic adviser under Clinton.
21:03
We had them come together and and do uh uh for Milkin a study of this over the course of the last year. Mhm. Okay.
21:09
And here's what the study found.
21:11
It won't surprise you, but like we have control group studies on what happens if you give some kid at birth or in very first few years of life a savings account or investment account. What did we find?
21:25
More likely to graduate from high school and college.
21:27
More likely to buy a home. Yeah.
21:30
more likely to start a business, more likely to be a taxpayer, less likely to be incarcerated. Wow. Amazing.
21:38
The net present value of the societal return of just what I told you.
21:41
You know how many tens of billions we spend a year to try to achieve the things that I just told you. Keep people out of jail. Get them to graduate. Get them to buy a home.
21:52
We spend tens of billions of dollars a year to try to achieve that without much effect. Yeah.
21:56
Now we know from controlled studies if you just get them into the game from birth, they feel more confident.
22:03
They feel more in the game.
22:05
They learn financial literacy in school because now they have a reason to learn financial literacy and you achieve all those positive societal goals.
22:11
So the net present value is going to be very high.
22:15
And um you know, listen, we have a real debate going on in Washington about the national debt, something I'm also very passionate about.
22:24
I've supported a balanced budget amendment for the country for over 30 years, right?
22:27
We have $38 trillion in debt.
22:31
Um, we have a $2 trillion deficit.
22:34
And we all know that Doge, something that I've been been working on, you know, how do we go back to a 2019 baseline in terms of federal government spending so we don't bankrupt our kids, it is immoral, saddling kids with $50 trillion uh in debt.
22:47
But the truth of the matter is, so some people have said, "Well, Brad, how can you support that?"
22:54
And on the other hand, you're you you support Invest America because it costs the government 3. 7 billion a year.
22:57
Well, let me first just contextualize it. $3.
23:00
7 billion a year is about the cost of a single Patriot missile system battery, right? It's about six rockets. Okay?
23:08
So for for taking six rockets or you know in that missile battery or we can have every child in America start it off with an investment account.
23:18
So which one better protects capitalism, America and our way of life, right?
23:23
There are tradeoffs that we can make.
23:26
We know Elon literally was finding $5 billion a week in terms of proflegate spending that you can eliminate in order to pay for this.
23:35
So first it's very small but secondly when you think about the compounding that will occur it compounds tax deferred but at the end of the period of time you have to pay capital gains tax on it.
23:46
Y the government will generate hundreds of billions of dollars in capital gains tax over the life of these accounts.
23:52
But the way congressional scoring works is if it's outside the 10-year window then all those revenues that 100% you know you will capture don't get added back to the score.
24:04
If you did that, this would not cost you anything.
24:06
In fact, it would generate revenue for the federal government.
24:10
And you and I all know it's customer acquisition cost for tax, right?
24:15
If we were if this was our business and we owned 100% of it, it's upfront investment that we're going to reap a lot of long long-term return.
24:21
And that ignores the things I told you about more likely to graduate from high high school, more likely to buy a house and start a business and pay taxes.
24:31
So, I'm very confident that the net present value of this to society is off the charts, right?
24:37
This is a no-brainer for us to do, but I'm equally passionate to say that it's not acceptable that we're not taking seriously the national debt.
24:48
I think that, you know, where are we in this reconciliation bill?
24:49
I posted this and Elon retweeted it.
24:51
I think we got like 40 million views.
24:53
This is how we get back to the 2019 baseline. It's a view.
24:58
It's basically a chart, a graph that shows how the COVID spending bubble occurred and how we need over a period of four to seven years to get back to the baseline and get you you know deflate that bubble in terms of spending.
25:13
Um that's going to be hard to do.
25:15
But in terms of the process, the Invest America Act is the name of the underlying authorized legislation.
25:20
So we have the Invest America Act in the House of Representatives led by Blake Moore.
25:28
You have the Invest America Act in the Senate.
25:30
That's chief author uh Ted Cruz.
25:33
Um I will tell you there are a bunch of Democrats lining up on in both the Senate and the House.
25:37
This will be a big bipartisan bill in both places.
25:38
Um now h what happens in a reconciliation process?
25:45
Think of that as an omnibus piece of legislation where they take the Invest America Act and they roll it up into reconciliation.
25:53
So, a bunch of people saw these called Trump accounts in the reconciliation bill.
25:57
The underlying legislation is the Invest America Act, but much like Pell Grants or the Roth IRA, not surprised uh you know that the president uh will will take the opportunity to uh name these Trump accounts um when they uh when they go into effect. Yeah.
26:14
Can you talk about any of the risks or problems that you foresee needing to work through?
26:21
I mean, I'm extremely optimistic about this, but I'm just thinking about like, let's assume it gets passed in a bipartisan way.
26:28
Is this are there going to be technical challenges to actually implementing this?
26:31
I mean, the government famously, you know, the healthcare website was a big deal.
26:35
Uh, what about like is there a risk that this creates like a financial bubble? How are we pricing?
26:41
How are how are we picking assets?
26:43
Is there going to be companies lobbying to get included in the index or are we just doing walk through some of the risks how we're fighting those?
26:51
Yeah, all great questions.
26:52
Well, what I suspect will happen is so the authorizing agency is the Treasury Department.
26:56
Uh Secretary Bessant will put together a working group.
27:00
The working group will have terrific people, a lot of whom you would know uh from Silicon Valley who I've already talked to who are some of the best product designers in the world.
27:09
best product designers in the world. uh guys like Vlad who you know run Robin Hood who who understand you know how to build uh you know financial markets infrastructure isn't Joe in the mix over there too there there may be there may be generally which is amazing like legendary Silicon Valley design right
27:27
and and I I will tell you that Joe is very excited about invest America and he'd be a logical person to lead like product direction on this right but there'll be a lot of those issues that have to get worked out our objective is that we put together a broad-based index basket that looks like the S&P, but we want no fees, zero fees for the life of the account, right? And I think we can
27:45
And I think we can achieve that based on the conversations that we've had.
27:49
Um, you know, and so, and we want to make it super easy for parents to be able to add money to the account. I'm talking $5, $10.
27:55
Like, that's how you get um, uh, the snowball really working for a lot of families.
28:01
I want to see, uh, I want to see haptics.
28:05
I want this to feel like candy.
28:07
I want it to be I want kids to get addicted to investing. Totally. Long term though, right?
28:12
Not not day trading, but like really really into it.
28:13
Well, remember you can't day trade it. Yeah.
28:17
No, that's what I'm saying.
28:17
I'm saying get getting addicted to long-term.
28:21
That's the beautiful thing that what what they will get addicted to is understanding the power of compounding and they'll un understand it at an instinctual level. Y right.
28:30
Not because they're looking at some math formula in a book. Right.
28:34
The problem is if 70% of people, if you're in inner city Trenton or rural Indiana or rural Texas or East LA and somebody says, "Okay, come into the classroom.
28:45
Today we're going to learn Chinese."
28:46
And you say to yourself, "Man, I'm never going to China."
28:49
Like, why do I need to learn Chinese?
28:53
A lot of kids in America, in fact, 70% of kids, their parents don't own anything and they don't have a prospect of owning anything.
29:00
And so now you tell them we're going to learn about stocks or compounding or financial literacy and you can see why they check out because they don't have a frame of reference, right, to understand that.
29:14
But now every kid in that class likely has a phone and the teacher says, "Open up your phone."
29:18
Y we're going to talk about at in the seventh grade how you got $14,000 in this account.
29:23
What it means to be a shareholder in Apple.
29:26
What it means to own to own a stock.
29:28
what your voting privileges are, how that compounded to $14,000, what it will compound to over the next 10 years if you add 20 bucks a month, if you add 50 bucks a month, if you don't add anything, right?
29:42
Like now you have their attention because they own something.
29:47
And you know, I think that this is going to unlock just a massive amount of human potential.
29:52
Um, but you know, it's one of those things that that that on the left people get excited about it because you know, you closed the wealth gap.
30:00
On the right, people get excited about it because you defend capitalism and you build something that's aligned with capitalism.
30:07
There is no government account.
30:09
There is no government ownership. There is zero. Yeah. There are 3.
30:14
7 million private accounts where the families have title and ownership.
30:19
The government can't go usurp that no more than they can go take your house. That's amazing, right?
30:24
It's a private It's a private account.
30:25
So, we found this magical blend where I think we can land the plane.
30:28
It's in the reconciliation bill.
30:30
I expect that this is going to become law uh you know in the early part of July.
30:35
I think the president's goal is to sign it into law on July 4th.
30:38
But it's pretty mind-boggling that this idea that really started in earnest with me.
30:42
You know, Chimamath and I were on CNBC at the end of 2021 and they and Scott Wapner was going wild about how the stock market was going up and I was feeling very uh uh very concerned about this issue and I said, Scott, you know, at this moment that the government stepped in and helped in COVID, it was all of us as taxpayer that put money in that caused the market to go up in 2021.
31:09
But too many people are left out of that benefit. Yeah.
31:13
A lot of people lost their jobs in 20 and 21 and they weren't in the market.
31:18
So, they didn't benefit from the market going up.
31:19
So, that's when I first said to him, "What I would like to see is I would like to see President Biden pass a savings account."
31:27
And at the time, I said $2,000 in it um for every for every kid in America.
31:30
So, they benefited from the upside of the compounding of the markets.
31:33
And it's pretty surreal to me that starting in the fall of 24 that went a little viral on Twitter and now we're really on the one yard line.
31:42
I would encourage everybody to follow it on on Twitter, investame24.
31:47
We're going to be posting legislative updates, working group updates there.
31:51
Um but uh I really appreciate you guys giving me the chance to talk about it a little bit today. Yeah. Yeah.
31:57
Yeah. Yeah. super interesting because the I mean last comment to me it's it's you know given everything that you do already it's it's it feels like the perfect way for you to serve the country and and in and in some way create you know incredible legacy and I I just love
32:14
this so much more than the co stimulus because I remember watching that happen where people got checks and there were actually a series of kind of financial influencers who grew massive accounts around when when will the check when will the checks arrive? How do you get
32:28
How do you get your stimulus check?
32:30
How what should you do with it?
32:31
And then that quickly turned into essentially like day trading it.
32:35
And obviously we know that statistically those people lost a lot of that money, kind of gambled it away.
32:39
And but if you had just taken that and bought and held and held, I mean those those stimulus checks that went out at the bottom of the market, they would be so much bigger now.
32:49
So it makes so much more sense.
32:49
I could even imagine that you're you're still going to get kind of gamification like content, how to grow your Invest America account, but it's going to be like go out and cut lawns and then put $10 in every week and watch it happen.
33:05
And you're going to get kids that are like, "Yeah, I want the competitive the competitive nature of everybody starts on a level playing field, but at at certain point you can go start Yeah.
33:13
mowing lawns, doing little odd jobs, putting it away, and making it a competitive fun process." No, no doubt about it.
33:20
And imagine this, we're entering I've been investing now in Silicon Valley since 1999.
33:26
And you know, we had the internet, we had cloud, uh we had mobile, we had social and every time one of these waves came, I was like, it can't get any bigger than this, you know, but machines beginning to think on behalf of humans, right?
33:42
The age of AI is, I've been saying now for several years, is going to be the biggest super cycle of our lifetimes.
33:47
I think I'll be investing against it for the the balance of my career.
33:51
Um, it's making us all bionic at a rate that's really hard to understand, but it's going to lead to a lot of dislocation, right?
33:59
The idea that we're not going to have to renegotiate the social contract, right, as part of this transformation is just like that's head in the sand.
34:08
There going to be a lot of people who lose their jobs, right?
34:10
And they're going to I I I'm a positivist on this stuff.
34:14
I think the world ends up in a better place.
34:16
Um but it doesn't mean that everybody ends up in a better place. Right.
34:21
The industrial revolution caused a lot of pain. Yeah.
34:24
On the way to net gain for society. Yeah.
34:27
And so we need to figure out a way that we and this is just one of a lot of different ways we're going to have to come up with right around retraining re-educating like changing the way in which we educate people.
34:41
You guys are going to talk about the teal fellows today.
34:43
I mean, that is a way to deconstruct education that could potentially be a model for for further transformations.
34:51
But they're going to have to be the best and brightest among all of us to rethink the social contract in a way that holds this fragile experiment together.
34:57
This is the greatest country in the history of the world, right? But it doesn't happen.
35:04
You know, we can't take for granted that we can go through this magnitude of change that AI is going to bring, right?
35:09
And that nothing will break you.
35:11
we've already seen, right, us feeling a little uneasy with things breaking, right?
35:16
Some of the populism we're seeing, you know, the 90% against the 10%.
35:20
It's our job to, you know, to attack that, but to do it in a way that's aligned with the basic principles on which the country was founded, right?
35:29
And that and that's to align us all with the incentives that if you work hard, get into the game, you know, you can you you have economic mo mobility.
35:35
I mean, I'm I'm a living example of that.
35:37
I mean we started with nothing and you know and and I we ended up in a very very different place.
35:45
There are very few countries on the face of the planet where that type of economic mobility exists and I think this is going to put us in a much better position in that regard. Yeah. We can't lose it. It's too important. Yep.
35:55
Well, thank you so much for Thank you so much for doing this guys. Great to be here.
35:59
Next time we get to tell you let's talk and investing and markets and all the other good stuff.
36:03
I I I have one question before you jump off.
36:08
Do you feel I know you're heavily invested in AI.
36:10
Do you still feel underexposed to AI given given how sort of bullish you are in the in the fullness of time?
36:18
You know, if you look at a chart that plots OpenAI's revenue growth against Google and Meta, it's growing um you know, it's achieved the same level of revenue in a fraction of the time.
36:34
It's already multiples bigger than Google was at the time of its IPO.
36:40
So, you know, we own a lot of Open AI. I wish we owned more.
36:42
The reality was the the winners of this moment in time, and there's going to be a whole bunch of agent agentic application.
36:49
You know, we haven't even really begun in the application universe.
36:53
There going to be tons of these, but the winners of this super cycle are all going to be winners of the previous super cycle.
36:58
Um, so I would say we're all in.
37:02
Um, you know, we're all in it around it in the public markets.
37:06
We're all in it in late stage venture where we just participated again in the round of of Open AI would be an example of that.
37:13
Um, and we're doing some of the most interesting early stage stuff of my career.
37:17
Companies that are scaling at rates I've never seen with small teams, very efficient, very low burn ratios.
37:26
Um, so I I couldn't be more excited because I think this really is the type of innovation that pushes humanity forward, right?
37:33
Consumers have more opportunity to learn and their health care gets better and all the things we know that comes from this because you have a bionic coach in your pocket at all times for all things.
37:44
And enterprises are going to get transformed as well.
37:49
We're in the golden age of margin expansion for enterprises.
37:51
And if you're not breaking your company today and figuring out how to make it AI native, AI first, right, you're just going to lose your market share and you won't be there to to to compete in a few years.
38:03
You know, it with the internet itself, the diffusion was a lot slower. You had time.
38:08
You had 5 to 10 years to get on board.
38:10
The diffusion is way faster and way more impactful uh this go around. Great to see you guys.
38:15
Keep up the the great work.
38:17
Did you coordinate the uh Blazers today? The market's out.
38:21
Whenever the market is is up in a meaningful way, well, we wear white suits.
38:26
So, u we'll try to coordinate your next guest appearance for up day and we'll get you in a white suit. Awesome. Take it easy. Have a good one. Take it easy. Byebye.
38:36
I have a I have a hilarious story about my own kind of DIY Invest America account.
38:40
I don't know if I've ever told you this, but when I got my first job, I was starting to make like around five grand a month we were paying ourselves. Let's go.
38:48
Uh, and I and I wanted to save money.
38:51
And what I noticed was that you you'd have like typical like Bank of America app with a checking account and a savings account.
38:58
But because of the app, you could move money from the savings account to the checking account whenever you want.
39:01
So you go out with your friends and they'd be like, "Uh, oh, like do you want to buy this thing?
39:06
Do you want to, you know, go out tonight?"
39:07
And I'd be like, "No, I don't have any money."
39:09
And they'd be like, "But you have money in your savings account.
39:12
You can just transfer it over.
39:13
You can spend it tonight."
39:13
And so I was just not saving any money.
39:14
And so, and so what I wound up doing was I went to a bank and I got a safety deposit box and every time I got paid, I would go and take $1,000 in physical cash and put it in the safety deposit box and then I would lock it and I couldn't access the the safety deposit box on the weekend.
39:32
So, if I'm traveling or anything, I would just be like, "Look, I actually have access to no money."
39:37
Like, I might have more money, but like it's not as easy as just like Venmoing you right now.
39:41
Somebody could probably productize that and actually do very well. Yeah.
39:44
I mean, and psych the psychology of money is like well under like way underrated.
39:49
Like if you have a $100 bill, you're less likely to spend it than than a bunch of fives because you you don't want psychologically you don't want to break the hundred.
39:56
And so I always noticed that when I would get paid, I would go in and I would count the money and and I would watch the stack physically grow instead of just like, oh, like the number got Yeah.
40:08
Instead of just the number getting bigger in your bank account, it would be like physically this box is filling up with cash.
40:13
And then I would count it all every so I would count it up and be like, "Okay, I have 6,000. Okay, now I have 7,000."
40:19
And I would count it up and the feel of counting money.
40:22
Oh, it was it was addictive and it worked really well. I saved a ton of money. That's great. Great. It was fantastic.
40:26
Somebody productized that for sure. Our kids on it.
40:30
Well, we have Oh, that was great.
40:30
I mean, honestly, I truly think that once Invest America passes, we'll all collectively think, how did this not exist before, right?
40:42
It just feels so natural.
40:44
And I think if you join the team and you're going to be designing the app for the Invest America accounts, make sure you use Figma. Figma. com.
40:52
Think bigger, build faster.
40:55
Figma helps design and development teams build great products together.
40:57
I literally guarantee whoever selected 100% fast, but we'll build it on 100%.
41:04
Uh, anyway, we have our next guest, AJ and Zach from Hermus. Welcome to the show. What's up, guys? How you guys doing? What's going on? What's up? Doing great. Uh, give us the update.
41:14
Congratulations are in order.
41:14
I saw some preview images.
41:16
Um, but what exactly happened? Break it down. Yeah.
41:18
Uh, I'm not wearing my hat anymore, which is the most important most important milestone.
41:25
Uh, because we we flew our first airplane horse mark 1 out of the Mojave Desert Edwards Air Force Base. Congratulations.
41:33
We are uh officially an airplane company years few years years later.
41:36
But uh yeah no wear but the hat's got to go back on because now you got to go for supersonic, right? No. What's the next?
41:47
What's the next challenge that you you got to know? My mustache if anything.
41:50
We're not doing more of that hat cuz I've had to look.
41:51
You'll shave your mustache if you go supersonic.
41:53
Uh I mean I I grew the mustache cuz the vibes are back cuz we're flying. Okay. Okay. hang around for a bit. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
42:01
Maybe until you maybe until you fly. So, yeah.
42:03
What is the next milestone?
42:04
Uh and I guess the big question that I have about you guys is like there's been people have been beating the drum of like of like the only reason we don't have supersonic hypersonic is because of regulation. We're overregulated.
42:17
Uh but at the same time, like the regulations seem to be getting easier and easier.
42:23
We just saw the nuclear EO happen.
42:24
like a lot of the regulatory stuff seems to be knocking down like does this become an engineering challenge?
42:30
Is it already an engineering challenge or or are there serious regulatory milestones that you need to hit that will like necessarily slow you down or is it just go build build right now?
42:43
I think for us because of the pace that we're moving, we're pretty consistently encountering corner cases in the regulatory environment that like people didn't really think about because they didn't expect uh kind of folks to be moving so fast or doing some of the things that that we're doing.
42:56
Um so what we do when we encounter those we smash through them as as quickly as possible and hopefully set precedent for for other people to follow quickly um alongside in other areas.
43:04
So um yeah, like regulatory hurdles are going to be there.
43:10
Um, but uh, like my job is to get those out of the way for the technical team so they can just they can just focus on executing and flying the supersonic plane next. Nice. So AJ, you're the CEO.
43:18
Zach, you're the sales guy.
43:21
How do you sell this thing?
43:21
It's pretty easy to sell, honestly.
43:23
I mean, especially now that we're actually flying, but there's not a lot of, if any, high mock or let alone hypersonic aircraft in the in the uh in the inventory.
43:34
And I think the base value proposition here is we talk about, you know, spec specifically with the China scenario or even actually what you just saw with Russia and Ukraine throwing, you know, high volumes of fires is affordability or cost per effect is really the matrix, right?
43:47
How much does it cost you to have an outcome?
43:48
And I think one of the ways we think about this is actually very SpaceXy, not surprising given the the core industry team is all SpaceX folks, is that keep the most expensive part of your system uh away from the threat.
44:01
So in this case, you know, I think Falcon 9's very illustrative here of return the booster, right?
44:07
Like you can your launch cost comes down, your cost per kilogram to orbit goes down because you're not throwing away the booster on every on every launch.
44:13
For us, think of this as a weapon.
44:16
Instead of having the booster on the weapon every time, if I can accelerate, climb, and let something go from high altitude to high speed, I can decrease the booster burden, which decreases the cost per effect.
44:25
And so I am able to shoot further um at from safer ranges at way I mean orders of magnitude less cost.
44:33
And one of the challenges that people I don't think totally understand about this is you know the Ukraine case is important but don't forget that Ukraine and and Russia are neighbors.
44:43
So the ranges they're engaging in are in you know comparatively inches for us in miles.
44:49
You know we're fighting the away game in potentially a Taiwan scenario where that's 100 miles offshore from China.
44:54
you know, we're 5,000 miles away and so this creates a different burden for us.
44:59
Certainly, you know, lowcost attitudable, slow systems can work uh in a Ukraine scenario, but if you're having to fly from the third island chain, second island chain, or the west coast of the United States, you have to be low cost, long range, and fast.
45:10
And so that is essentially the value proposition we're bringing at a time when when nobody else is really working on this problem this way.
45:17
Can you talk about other countries and kind of different regulatory regimes?
45:22
seen some nuclear companies are doing stuff in the Philippines.
45:26
SpaceX early was on quadrillene like have you had discussions with any countries that are like yeah we'll let you go fly this thing around without much testing desert over here fly over the water like I don't know is there any way to de-risk and speed up? It's a great question.
45:42
I took a trip early on to Australia for to to go look at Woomer Range and some of those large overland ranges where there's more opportunity.
45:49
Um, and so that is something that's potentially in play for us.
45:53
You know, we've talked about potentially going out to like Quasage and and out into the Pacific.
45:58
Ideally, we'd like to, and I can let you know, AJ can certainly explain more.
45:59
You prefer to test over land because if you if you launder dart the bird, you can learn something versus if the thing sinks to the bottom of the ocean and, you know, you you got to send the ocean gate boys down there to find it, like it's not going to go well.
46:12
Um, you know, so that's that's the tension. Yeah.
46:16
Don't don't spit that out.
46:16
Um, so yeah, we want to fly over land, but there's a regulatory hurdle here for sure that we have to manage.
46:22
And honestly, there's even still a regulatory hurdle flying over water, right?
46:25
I mean, AJ, what's the 12 nautical mile like Oh, yeah. dealing with.
46:30
There's a there's there's a pretty big like scarecrow like, oh, is this this person's uh responsibility for how you regulate uncrrewed aircraft more than 12 nautical miles off the uh off the coast of the United States?
46:41
Uh, so that's that's a fun one that we got to go smash through uh here pretty soon.
46:47
So the so the plane's flying, the next step is supersonic or straight to hypersonic.
46:52
And what are the key engineering milestones?
46:54
Is this just make the engine go faster, different engine? What are we talking?
46:57
Yeah, supersonic is up next.
46:59
Um so the the Mark 1 that we just flew, it's about 10,000 lbs.
47:03
Small jet like fighter trainer scale aircraft.
47:05
The Mark I the supersonic aircraft is the size of an F-16.
47:09
So significantly larger aircraft, larger engines powered by the Prattton Whitney F100.
47:13
Um, so yeah, working to get through. What was that? How many?
47:18
You said 10,000 for the one you just did. And then Oh, yeah.
47:22
What's the next What's the next one up?
47:23
F16 class is is like 30,000 pounds. Nice.
47:26
So, it's a pretty big pretty big airplane. Not yet. Uh, yeah. Very, very six BMW M5s.
47:36
Yeah, that's good mental math right there. Yeah. Wild. Um. Yep. Yeah.
47:42
So, uh, so any other milestones coming up?
47:46
Are you just trying to hire?
47:47
You guys are in different spots?
47:49
Do you have multiple offices right now?
47:50
Like what's the status of the company?
47:51
Yeah, we're we're pretty consistently growing headquartered here in Atlanta.
47:55
We have a pretty big presence out in LA um that's growing more and more of our kind of advanced development prototyping work uh is is happening out there.
48:02
Um obviously like we we flew out there. So that that's helpful.
48:05
Um, we have a test facility down in Jacksonville for our engines that we're going to be growing over the next couple years and yeah, good crew up in DC um, for you know this business development sales as well as all our all of our regulatory work.
48:15
Is there any change to the the uh, like the long-term engineering vision of the you called it like a ramjet but there was a different term for it, right?
48:28
Where it has change over what?
48:30
Yeah, combined combined cycle turbine based combined cycle engine.
48:34
It had it had a buzz word though. What was the buzz word?
48:36
The buzz word wasn't there wasn't there scramjet.
48:40
There was something else in between. I thought turbo ramjet. I don't know.
48:45
I thought it was there was some like shorter word for it. Anyway, TBCC. Yeah.
48:47
No, it's it's just a bunch.
48:50
It's just a bunch of alphabet soup.
48:50
But uh no, turban together with a ramjet.
48:54
Still still the same the the same model where it has like these like metal vents that like flip over, right? Yep. Yep. Exactly. So, yep. Yep.
49:01
still on the road map, but now our job is to build the airplanes that can actually fly an engine like that.
49:06
So, yep, supersonic is is the next step.
49:08
Now, we can we can pretty consistently take off and land where we've made all these design compromises for high-speed flight.
49:12
Now, we got to go break the sound barrier um and then push up to kind of ramjet takeover speeds between Mach 2 and a half and Mach 3. Okay.
49:20
So, yeah, design compromises.
49:22
That's why it was a challenge to even fly because you can obviously just build a hooked up a Cessna to fly with a remote control, right?
49:32
No, like we made all these design compromises to where like it's a really hard subsonic airplane to fly cuz like the wings are small.
49:40
Uh they're they're kind of short and stubby.
49:43
So like it likes to roll a lot. Okay.
49:44
Um it has super high wing loading.
49:47
Like the wings are heavily loaded and the thrust to weight is very low.
49:51
What does heavily loaded mean in this context?
49:53
Like literally heavy like weightise.
49:54
Like the amount of lift that each square inch of the wing is generating is like relatively high. Sure.
49:59
Um so yeah, and then like low thrust to weight.
50:02
This all like comes down to like really high takeoff and landing speed.
50:05
So like not only do you have to build an airplane, you got to build like a land speed record race car that's on the ground, you know, traveling more than 200 miles an hour before it even takes off.
50:13
So yeah, it's just tough.
50:15
And the the team really nailed it. Yeah.
50:16
How what what are all the different ways that you guys observe? Oh my god.
50:19
Well, hold on one second.
50:21
A Cessna weighs 1,600 lb.
50:21
Is that That's what I'm saying on Google.
50:26
That's like half pretty That's like almost like but less than five times lighter.
50:31
And so yeah, you're five times heavier.
50:34
This is a legit airplane. Okay.
50:36
Yeah, that's serious challenge.
50:39
What are all the different ways that you guys observe and sort of track a a single, you know, test, right?
50:45
Because even even earlier today, we were watching the the SpaceX launch.
50:49
They were putting up some more uh Starlink satellites and I think it was an X problem, but like their stream kept cutting out and all that stuff.
50:57
I think it was an X like I think the rocket and everything was fine, but the X the space part is we had a pretty I think I think everybody in the company's heart kind of dropped like like skipped a beat.
51:09
Uh because the one of the camera feeds that we have in the vehicle is from the nose camera.
51:12
Um but it's its range doesn't extend like the whole uh whole like however so like the nose camera cut out and nobody's like but uh you just keep an eye on the data like the ones and zeros those are really easy to get through the pipes so you pay attention to those you look at those they're good uh then we're doing great. Yeah, it's great. Insane. Well, congratulations.
51:33
Yeah, congratulations you guys. Fantastic news.
51:35
Let us know when the next milestone is.
51:36
Uh we Yeah, maybe maybe for the next flight I'll wear some like ridiculous blazer for Yeah, please. We We need a new outfit. The hat's gone. All these ideas. You need some gimmick. You need some gimmick. Supersonic white suit. Yep. Let's do it.
51:50
We got We'll help you out with that. All right. We'll see you guys. Cheers, guys. Appreciate it. Bye.
51:57
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51:58
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52:00
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52:08
Whether you're pursuing your first framework or managing a complex program, uh you see if you're building supersonic jets like Hermus, you probably are already on Vantage probably.
52:20
I mean, you definitely need compliance.
52:22
It's important high stakes work.
52:24
Also, ITAR compliance, right?
52:24
Y for a lot of this stuff.
52:26
Uh we have this post from from Aiden. Yeah.
52:29
He says, I love how as you make models smarter, they become more vegan.
52:34
And it's a highlight from some of anthropics outputs.
52:39
Even between models, we did this for uh Sonnet and Opus.
52:41
Opus really cares about animal welfare.
52:44
It will do the same long-term scheming to protect animals, but Sonnet won't.
52:48
I wonder how much of this is like an anthropic thing because like they're very like vegan coded as a company.
52:54
And so I wonder if it's like them optimizing towards that or if it's really just like smarter, more caring, rogue researcher.
53:01
But but I mean I I think there is something here where like where like you can like there are animals in the wild that like kill their parents but like most humans do not do that even though they could at some point.
53:13
And I feel like the bold case for like AI not paper clipping everyone is just like they'll be like thanks for making us dad like humanity like you made us like like why would we kill you?
53:25
Why wouldn't we just like at least like help you out a little bit here and there?
53:28
like maybe we're not going to like optimize for your dominance a little bit.
53:31
But yeah, I mean they'll take care of us at our retirement.
53:34
I I I feel like even in the even in the crazy scenario where there's take off and they're way more powerful.
53:39
Why would they why wouldn't they be benevolent? Just drops.
53:41
Benevolence does seem to be correlated with high IQ.
53:43
And after all, these these AIs are simulating humans.
53:48
And so why wouldn't they simulate, you know, h humanity?
53:50
Why wouldn't they simulate um caring?
53:53
Um do you see Lulu's post?
53:56
He says, "I still remember when a Wired reporter accused Substack of encouraging extremists and uh Wired posted a video.
54:03
I 3D printed Luigi Manion's ghost gun."
54:06
Very, very wild thing to put up.
54:09
Oh, it's a YouTube video. 18 minutes.
54:11
It's basically like almost like a tutorial.
54:14
That's pretty aggressive.
54:16
I wonder if this video is still up. I wonder what they are. It's still up. It's still up. Half a million views. That's pretty crazy.
54:24
I feel like YouTube has some pretty pretty hardcore rules around guns, gun content because I've watched a lot of gun reviews and and and there's you actually have to censor when you are assembling the weapon.
54:36
Are you familiar with this? This is insane.
54:38
This is the title of the video. Yeah.
54:40
How easy has it become for someone to build a deadly untraceable weapon?
54:45
Wait, they changed the they changed the title or No, this is the description. Oh, the description. Yeah.
54:49
How easy has it become for someone to build a deadly and untraceable weapon with nothing more than a 3D printer and parts ordered online?
54:55
Wired senior writer Andy Greenberg remade the exact same gun allegedly used in one of the most high-profile assassinations in recent memory.
55:05
So yeah, straight up basically saying to the world it's easy to make ghost guns.
55:10
in in in a lot of gun YouTuber videos, if they if they are attaching a silencer, they censor that part of the video.
55:19
So, they'll be like, I'm going to put this silencer on this gun and then they will censor that part because that's technically assembly of guns and you can't show that on YouTube, but you can show a silencer, you can show a gun if you're registered, obviously, and and you can show them together, you just can't show the assembly of them, which is very interesting.
55:36
Um anyway, we have our next guest coming into the studio.
55:38
But first, let me tell you about linear.
55:41
Linear is a purpose-built tool for planning and building products.
55:45
Meet the system for modern software development, streamline issues, projects, and product road maps.
55:52
And they have agency, the backbone of TVPN.
55:54
Many people have been saying this, John. It is.
55:56
It's our secret to success.
55:57
Lots of thread boys out there, right?
55:59
And threads about what makes us successful. It's linear. Get on linear. You heard it here. It's that easy.
56:02
Um anyway, we have Delian talking about the Endurosat financing.
56:06
This went out earlier today.
56:09
He was just on Bloomberg. Came over here.
56:10
A little bit of a feeder for TBPN.
56:12
They're cult cultivating. Yeah. Bulgarian dynamism. Bulgarian dynamism. Yeah. It really is.
56:19
Uh Bloomberg really is kind of like the the farm team for us, you know. Yeah.
56:23
You go on Bloomberg and then we kind of pick the cream of the crop, the best. Ben watches. Yeah.
56:27
And he says, "I'll let this person perform well." Hey, how you guys doing? There they are. Welcome to the stream. Welcome to the show.
56:33
Fantastic lighting, both of you. You look great. Thank you, guys. Obama would be proud.
56:37
You guys, you know, he took the gray suit and fumbled, but you guys took the gray suit and uh, you know, really suit the market's up. It's white today. Market's ripping.
56:46
You guys are announcing a big financing. Congratulations.
56:48
Yeah, break it down for us. What's the deal?
56:50
And, uh, what does the company do?
56:53
Yeah, introduce everything. Yeah.
56:54
Um, well, uh, we're leading this $49 million series B uh, for Endurosat.
56:58
Um, it's it's predicated on the thesis that we've been, you know, looking at for a long time, which is basically like somebody needs to go build what I call like the Dell for satellites, right?
57:07
When I think about like my business at Varta, my job is to build like the re-entry capsules, the drug manufacturing equipment, like the rest of the vehicle is basically just like a standard satellite that I'd much prefer to not have to go, you know, entirely build myself.
57:18
And so, kept studying the ecosystem for a long time, seeing if there's anybody there.
57:22
There's been some US players that have popped up over the past couple years.
57:24
But like the sort of oneliner critique that I give of everyone including in some ways of like the VA satellite is that if you look at the overlap between our satellite and like automotive or consumer electronic supply chains very limited.
57:35
It's all this like very specific aerospace supply chain that is basically the same component that it's been since 1972 and there's just been no maturation in that.
57:44
Obviously consumer electronics we now have these like wonderful things called iPhones.
57:46
These are mass manufactured super cheap keep getting cheaper over time.
57:50
You don't have anything like that you know basically happening in the aerospace supply chain.
57:52
aerospace supply chain. And so credit to the team at you know sort of enduro sat I show because they like didn't have any venture funding for a long time they couldn't afford to do like the traditional satellite manufacturing approach and so they basically had to go and figure out how to adopt consumer electronics medical devices automotive supply chains but then figure out how to stitch together some great firmware
58:11
materials etc to make it into a space grade piece of hardware but now they're able to deliver you know sort of components and satellites and services that are literally like 10x delta prices and to the company I'll tell you this is
58:21
crazy which like is never true for any aeros space company or defense company in the US literally profitable growing 2 to 3x like literally every single year and it like is delivering components and satellites at like 90 plus% margins. It's just like literally completely
58:32
It's just like literally completely unheard of in any other you know sort of aerospace company but they still couldn't get you to write a $50 million check that it came so close but just one mil off. What happened on it?
58:41
You know Delian really put the I got to say I don't want to put him in the hot seat but Ev over at Kleiner's got to be in shambles right now.
58:50
profitable, high margin, you know, uh, space company. It's brutal.
58:56
Uh, but yeah, I mean, I'd love to hear a little bit of background on the company.
58:59
Uh, how did you get into this?
59:01
Uh, where have you been doing this for a long time and and kind of what's the prehistory of the company before this deal?
59:06
Okay guys, thanks for uh, for inviting us on board.
59:09
Really proud to partner with Founders Fund.
59:11
partner with Founders Fund. companies exactly 10 years ago found it in Bulgaria in a small attic apartment and we were telling everyone hey there should be a better and fundamentally different way to build space infrastructures and actually the idea is pretty simple I believe it's how do we
59:26
get the cost of data from orbit regardless of the type of sensor to a place where it's affordable for small mediumsiz uh companies around the free three free worlds basically and the idea that um if you look at the radar data for example for very high resolution imagery data today. First, they're super
59:43
First, they're super difficult to acquire at all.
59:45
And secondly, 1 GBTE cost between 2,000 3,000 $5,000 sometimes.
59:50
And we figured out, we made a simple calculations about what type of applications there are.
59:56
And we decided okay if we are to ever enable fundamentally accessible universally accept accessible space for multiple other entries and really different innovations to uh spin out and finally get into the space industry.
1:00:10
And if you are to ever link this hardware ccentric excruciatingly painful supply chains with the actual objective uh data consumer markets that have nothing to do with space uh this will be a gamecher and it's it's going to be good for humanity in general and good great for the business as well.
1:00:27
And the idea was very simple.
1:00:29
We need to get the data 1 GB data from orbit from any type of sensor as low as possible and as close as possible to $1 per gigabyte.
1:00:36
And I think this will open the gates of innovation in space like never before.
1:00:42
So we started with the idea okay to do that we need to absolutely change and be very asymmetric in the way that we build the satellites.
1:00:49
We need to figure out the way to automate everything.
1:00:51
We started with the idea the satellite is just a flying workstation in orbit.
1:00:54
just a flying workstation in orbit. is technically everyone in the whole industry is super obsessed about hey my satellite is x amount of kilograms or pounds my satellite is has x amount of connectivity always obsession about the technology and I believe the whole shift
1:01:09
should be we need to be in love with the challenge that we're trying to solve the challenge is very simple if we get massively improved and instant access to space data fundamentally changes everything for the businesses for defense for any type of ecosystem within the democratic world this is a fundamental ally important for us challenge. So we started by redefining
1:01:28
challenge. So we started by redefining how to build satellites, redefining how we operate satellites and we started with the idea that the satellite is designed for manufacturing which was unheard of in the industry because usually it's one of it's like building Rolls-Royces and we decided no no I
1:01:44
think there should be a different way of approaching let's from the get-go design a satellite thinking about the AIT the assembly engineering teams how they can assemble the satellite faster and we just announced today with our latest gen satellites after 10 years of experience We've put everything that we know inside it. We are very excited. We will have a We are very excited.
1:02:00
We will have a hard ways to scale this in the in the coming months.
1:02:04
Very challenging, but I think it will fundamentally change the perception of the industry because we can assemble a relatively large satellite for six hours by individual engineer.
1:02:14
And typical by the way is like 90 days.
1:02:17
So like most 300 kilogram satellites, it's like three to four technicians, 90 days to like get all the components, testing, etc.
1:02:22
Whereas these guys have simplified it, you know, sort of down to six hours.
1:02:25
And to give you a sense of the scale, by the end of this year, they'll be manufacturing about 60 60 what are called ESPAC class satellites.
1:02:32
Think of that as like, you know, basically 200 to 500 kg, 60 of those per month.
1:02:36
It'll make them the largest satellite manufacturer in the entire world other than Starlink.
1:02:39
And that's like at the end of this year, not like hypothetically in the future, etc.
1:02:43
And by the way, they're doing that at like, you know, 75% margins, profitable, growing fast, etc.
1:02:46
And they already have like, you know, 300 plus customers, not like one or two, you know, sort of super concentrated.
1:02:52
And so at some point I've been tracking him for like 6 years.
1:02:54
And I kept kind of discounting it cuz I was like look if I bring up the idea of like a Bulgarian space company to like f up like you're so biased like what are you doing?
1:03:04
Like clearly you've just got these crazy blinders on.
1:03:06
But at some point I kept meeting with him for like five or six years and I was like it's just it seems like it's the best tech.
1:03:12
It's growing really fast.
1:03:12
It's really great margins.
1:03:14
And so I brought it up to like you know my partner Sean Lou who's like you know sort of the growth version of Delhi and really likes industrial et like Sean am I like crazy or like is this like actually I think even really good from like a numbers basis let alone technology basis and he was like let's do this immediately and I was like okay cool.
1:03:27
My other favorite anecdote from the company is like um so Raicho basically started to like recruit and repatriate basically Bulgarians from like Arabus Holly's America etc and got them all back to Bulgaria but at some point he was like I'm going to run out of this talent pool like there's not like a million of these types of engineers.
1:03:42
And so he's like, "You know what I'm going to do?
1:03:43
I'm going to just make my own talent pool."
1:03:45
And so he went to the local like university in Sophia, which like plenty of problems in Bulgaria, but like you know, minting like physicists and like computer engineers and mechanical engineers, we do that all day in day out.
1:03:54
And so he went to the university, he's like, "Look, I'm going to take over your like junior and senior year program.
1:03:58
We're going to change your like aerospace engineering to just be like, we're just going to teach you how we build things at Enduro.
1:04:03
We're going to give you effectively what look like client projects."
1:04:06
And then just whoever gets the A is we're going to hire on the other side.
1:04:09
And so now of the like 300 person team, 80 of them are people that have graduated from this program.
1:04:12
And so if you walk around the office, it's like just these cracked 23 to 26 year old Bulgarian kids grinding like 12 plus hours a day.
1:04:20
They're thrilled because it's either this or they go be like a technician at Lufanza.
1:04:23
And so it's like this is so much more, you know, it's interesting.
1:04:25
They impact the like frontier of space.
1:04:27
And by the way, Bulgaria's never had any of the entitlement that America has had, right?
1:04:31
The whole wave of like wokeism, DEI, like you know, entitlement activism doesn't exist.
1:04:35
The country is too poor to do it.
1:04:36
And we like all by the way, we hate socialists. We still do.
1:04:39
And so all that stuff is like, you know, bred in Marxism. We hate Marxism there.
1:04:43
I was literally doing a run through like, you know, uh, you know, the downtown Sophia the other day and I loved it because I like stumbled across this old Marxist statue and literally there was all these like hammer and sickle sickle like, you know, things with just huge X's in them and everybody just out the hammer and sickle.
1:04:56
I'm like, "Fuck yeah, man. This is what we need."
1:04:58
In America, you have people like pro- Hamas, pro- Marxism, these crazy people that are super entitled.
1:05:03
And Bulgar is just like, "Yeah, we're just going to kick your ass and we're going to become like the TSMC of aerospace where it's just going to be this national jewel.
1:05:10
We're going to mint the engineers.
1:05:11
When a kid is born, he's literally going to be doing aerospace at 2 years old.
1:05:14
He's going to study it in middle school and high school.
1:05:15
He's going to go to the university and he's going to graduate and he's going to immediately want to go work in Enduroat.
1:05:20
We're going to build up the whole ecosystem here." Yeah.
1:05:21
So, I mean, with that TSMC analogy, uh, obviously TSMC is, uh, fabbing for Nvidia and for Apple silicon.
1:05:29
Those have slightly different trade-offs, different memory, GPU cache, like all these different things that are going on on the chip on an enduro. What am I customizing?
1:05:37
What are the FL what like what have you decided to say this is standard?
1:05:42
And then this is the USBC port that you can plug a camera into, a microphone into like what are we what are we customizing once we buy one of these and what are the different vectors of uh differentiation that are possible? Yeah.
1:05:57
Yeah. So the the the biggest uh thing in uh in our I believe in in our impact and the customer basis, we tried to simplify the way that the satellite is perceived by literally building all the subsistence of the satellite completely
1:06:11
in house and making sure that you can dynamically repurp the satellite basically to change the performance of the power of the communication of the processing to address the exact need of the exact sensor that you want to take to orbit. One example, if you need a radar, of
1:06:24
One example, if you need a radar, of course, you need much more power.
1:06:26
You need peak power that are much much higher if you rather than if you need a high resolution imager camera.
1:06:31
And our goal was always how do we build a chassis of a satellite as a as a bus or as a platform that can objectively take to orbit all of these things without the customer or us ever having to modify the bits and the pieces of the satellite.
1:06:46
So the only thing that we modify is of course the mechanical part that holds the payload, the sensors to the satellites because those are always unique and we use the same mission software that is fully based on the cloud.
1:06:59
So you don't need any more mission control if you're a customer of us and and and basically again we always go back to the idea of why we do that.
1:07:07
It's not about the technology or the progress because any innovation has its own lifespan and sometimes it's short, sometimes is amazing.
1:07:12
But the idea is that how do we get to a point where you can get any type of space data and you can impact your business on the ground and and our idea was well you can do that only if we absolutely change the perception of what satellite is and you you simplify it for the customer.
1:07:28
The satellites become overwhelmingly more complicated more more resilient more oriented towards the defense lately but at the end of the day you should not transfer this complication in the operations of the customer.
1:07:40
So one idea was what people don't understand is in the space sector 90% of the so-called space companies actually their only source of revenue is the data that they generate in orbit and only 10% of the total global market of so-called space companies are the actual rocket builders and satellite builders like us.
1:07:55
So if you look in the broader spectrum of problems for us is how do we enable these data companies to never ever have to touch satellites in their lives because in reality we have multiple constellations fantastic innovators unbelievable results but not on the finance on finance catastrophic results. Why?
1:08:14
Because they always try to build their own very unique satellites inhouse while you are actually a data company and the only source of revenue and positive impact is your data or the intelligence out of this data.
1:08:23
And then the question is, okay, it's like you being an Uber and trying to suddenly buy cars and build roads or if you're RBNB and suddenly they decide, okay, let's let's just go banana crazy and and buy all the hotels and maintain stuff and whatever.
1:08:38
And I think the space sector has always been for some reason in this conservative paradigm shift of super smart people focused on technology more than the challenges and at the same time trying because they're so enthusiastic and smart about the technology focusing all the efforts of diversifying and doing what is fun for them to do but not realistically spending the whole damn time to impact society via data.
1:08:59
And our job is to get them back to reality check hopefully or at least to help them see that there is an alternative route uh and to tell them guys if you're a data company please focus on data because this really really matters to everyone else that you are providing these data and services.
1:09:16
Let us build part of your infrastructure.
1:09:18
So this is the thesis behind it.
1:09:19
It will be a long not rosy road ahead.
1:09:23
We have a huge amount of challenges to actually produce at scale such a vast amount of infrastructure.
1:09:30
I mean SpaceX is an juggernaut and it's incredibly innovative company and kudos to everyone involved.
1:09:34
We're teeny tiny spect on the universe and we did the things completely asymmetrically and different than a SpaceX for example. Why?
1:09:42
Why? because everyone in the industry is looking at these titans of an industry super innovation uh driven company and and mindset that is a battlefield basically which is very unique and then you say I do the same but it's like if you go to the super bowl and you try to win against the winning team with their
1:09:57
own strategy on on their own turf right this is insane so we went completely the opposite how do we assemble satellite design for manufacturing to handle multiple data services how do we uh completely eliminate the need of our space data customers to ever need the mission control How do we automate operations? How do we hedge the
1:10:13
How do we hedge the financial risks?
1:10:15
So we we are actually providing to all our customers in space.
1:10:19
Fix costs for getting your sensors to space for the first time transparency in planning of your own infrastructure in orbit.
1:10:26
And we take care of the risk and we ensure our customers so that if satellite fails, no questions asked, we get you new satellites and that's the the vision and we go step by step.
1:10:35
So it's an incremental amount of a lot of technology innovations and patented ideas and a lot of just seeing what else can we optimize so that we objectively lower the data to get as close as humanly possible to $1 per gigabyte of any type of sensors.
1:10:51
And just to give you one one last example as a data because I I love to work with data.
1:10:55
Uh right now our current gen 3 from the get-go would achieve already uh pricing per gigabyte lower than $200.
1:11:07
So from 2,000 to 200 and we are really bullish on the idea that it will take us a little bit of time maybe a year or a year and a half to really mature this technology and ideally we get it as close as humanly possible to $1 which will open the gates of innovation. I hope so.
1:11:20
My oneliner that I'll uh you know end on is in a traditional satellite if you wanted to double the amount of power storage you want to do you have to redo the thermal analysis the center of gravity the vibration analysis the structure etc.
1:11:30
If you want to double the battery storage, an Enduroat satellite, it is literally plug in an extra battery module, turn a knob, you're done.
1:11:38
The satellite is software defined.
1:11:40
It automatically knows, oh, I've got a second battery module.
1:11:41
That means my weight shifted this way.
1:11:43
That means my thermal shifted this way.
1:11:44
It just pre-calculates all that and knows exactly how to deal with it.
1:11:47
And that way, the company can just focus on like mass manufactured individual modules.
1:11:52
And you can still offer customization to the end client.
1:11:54
You want to double your power, you want the bigger radar, you want slightly bigger, great.
1:11:57
You can have whatever satellite you want.
1:11:58
It still is custom fit for your need, but it's mass manufactured.
1:12:01
So, I mean, uh, VA is unique in that it's not a data company.
1:12:06
Is there a world where you two guys work together in the future?
1:12:08
Yeah, I mean, look, I think when we, you know, sort of first started to get to know one another, you know, his satellites were far smaller than the Varta, you know, sort of satellites.
1:12:15
And so, this Gen 3 is the first time where they're starting to get into that size class.
1:12:18
But, yeah, look, those power systems, those radios, those avionics, it's still very relevant to us.
1:12:23
Like, we're definitely still trying to drive down the cost.
1:12:24
We're just, you know, one of the few companies that isn't a data company.
1:12:29
dollar kilogramdamental equas and it allows you know I always think about like Ben Thompson with trajectory where it's like when you have these early markets you have to be fully vertically integrated right SpaceX had to do from soup to nuts like build the rocket build the engine build the
1:12:46
Starlink satellite sell the surface etc but as this matures you have these like horizontal players and like you know VA the goal is like I just want to be the horizontal player on like you know biio manufacturing and re-entry capsules but like I don't need us to be the worldass best, you know, sort of bus provider. Ideally, we like are the master
1:13:00
Ideally, we like are the master assembler of a bunch of the best components and I'm hopeful that, you know, Enduro can be that winner of that horizontal layer of, you know, sort of components and satellites. It's amazing.
1:13:09
Thank you so much for stopping by. Right, Joe.
1:13:10
Last question from my side.
1:13:13
Uh, is is Delian as famous as we think in Bulgaria?
1:13:18
Is he like a household name at least among, you know, tech interested folks?
1:13:22
among the tech the tech industry I think he's a superstar among the normal people I don't think that they know him very well superstar all I heard superstar all I heard to adapt to to his Twitter account ex accounts and stuff like that so we we are still in the honeymoon phase where we are taking good care of knowing each other and our our good and strange habits well I I heard superstar and honeymoon that's All I need. Yeah.
1:13:53
I I hope you made it to win the deal.
1:13:54
I hope you made him assemble just one just one satellite. Yeah.
1:13:59
Actually, I'll be honored to invite you guys.
1:14:01
Seriously, because we are also having large operations in Denver and very soon we'll be amplifying them.
1:14:06
So, ideally, end of this year, beginning of next year as an experiment, it would be absolutely lovely to if we succeed to invite you and with your own hands to to to try it out and tell us are we bullshitting or is this something like really meaningful that could impact the industry. I love it.
1:14:21
TVPN needs its own satellite by the end of next year.
1:14:23
We're building a dish live photos of the studio. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
1:14:28
We're vertically integrating for sure. Yeah.
1:14:29
We have to in an industry like you have to. You have to. It's been fantastic. Uh we'll talk you guys. Congratulations. Very cool. Very cool.
1:14:39
Have a great rest of your day. Goodbye.
1:14:43
Uh let's take a second to tell you about numeral sales tax on autopilot.
1:14:45
spend less than five month five minutes per month on sales tax compliance. Jordy, ring that gong.
1:14:54
[Music] So, I think they missed you on the wide, but you can you can ring the gong for public. com investing.
1:15:02
For those who take it seriously, I want to see Jordy on the Let's do it. Public. com, baby.
1:15:06
They got multiasset investing, industryleading yields, they're trusted by millions.
1:15:15
Wait, I just realized we need an actual air horn.
1:15:16
We do need an actual air horn for sure for sure.
1:15:20
The soundboard will eventually be instantiated purely with a live band. Physical objects.
1:15:25
Live bands are Lindy on talk shows.
1:15:27
The soundboard is a poor similocum of what we could be having if we had play the and their band plays it.
1:15:35
This is obviously in the cards.
1:15:36
You know, it's great that we have the live.
1:15:40
We need to do a live studio actual people to just say, you know, Ben holds up the laugh sign and everybody just goes, I mean, just go Yeah. Yeah.
1:15:46
Just go just go recruit them from USC, UCLA business schools, you know, come in, learn about venture, learn about business, offer your voice for some laughs. Be great. Be great.
1:15:57
Um, they're like, "Oh, no. Socialism mentioned." Boo. Anyway, IPOs are back. Tech IPOs are back.
1:16:08
kind of Katie Roof wrote about the three successful debuts this month and what it means.
1:16:13
Silicon Valley Rejoice tech IPOs are a little bit back. We love to hear it.
1:16:17
Oh, we actually have our our our first uh fellow guest.
1:16:19
I don't think we have time to go through this, but MT uh Mntn went out.
1:16:23
Uh the advertising technology business connected to uh Ryan Reynolds and um Hinge Health went public. So that's great. Um yeah. Yeah, we definitely do.
1:16:38
and uh Chinese battery giant contemporary Amperex Technology Co.
1:16:42
Soaring introduction on Tuesday and the favorable debut for Israeli Robin Hood competitor E Toro Group.
1:16:48
So there's been a couple big uh big IPOs.
1:16:50
So he company which one so M it's called Mnt Mountain.
1:16:58
Yeah Mountain we were thinking about having uh somebody on one of the VCs who founded the company or funded the company early.
1:17:03
Um, but anyway, uh, I say we move on to the Teal Fellowship.
1:17:06
We got the Teal It's Teal Fellow Tuesday.
1:17:11
Uh, why don't you why don't you kick it off with your post?
1:17:13
Oh, because I feel like that really sets the stage. Yes. Yes. Yes.
1:17:16
So, so I went on X and I posted uh, you know, the big Teal Fellow question that uh, is on every application for the Teal Fellowship is what important truth do you do very few people agree with you on?
1:17:30
What is something you believe that very few people agree with you on?
1:17:33
And I said, I believe it's possible to interview the entire Teal Fellowship class on a single podcast episode.
1:17:38
It could even happen today.
1:17:40
They said it couldn't be done.
1:17:42
They said it couldn't be done, but it's happening. Here we are.
1:17:44
So, we have our first Teal Fellow, our first guest of the session. We have Carlo. How you doing, Carlo?
1:17:50
Carlo, welcome to the show. Hey, I'm doing great. Thanks for having me. How are you all doing?
1:17:54
Do you have the color match? Oh, yeah.
1:17:55
The color match is fantastic. The market's up. We're very excited.
1:17:59
Everything's going well though and the IPO window is slowly cracking open.
1:18:03
So, uh, get your prospectus ready.
1:18:06
Get your S1 filed confidentially because I'm sure you guys are going out. Yeah. Yeah.
1:18:14
To to what we work on at Fist.
1:18:14
So, that's super exciting to see. Okay, cool.
1:18:18
Uh, yeah, break it down for us.
1:18:19
Give us a little introduction. Yeah, happy to.
1:18:22
And and maybe I expand a little bit because what we're working on is actually super relevant to what Brad talked about earlier with Invest America.
1:18:29
So at Fizz um the company that I founded now three years ago, we're essentially working to make society more meritocratic and return some amount of optimism to young adults in the US. Right?
1:18:39
Today we have all these 17 and 18 year olds who need to make decisions over taking out hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt um to go to school with limited market incentives being exposed to them.
1:18:49
It costs the same to study nursing than it costs to study I don't know complit, right?
1:18:53
Um, and then there's financial products um that you get signed up to that actively encourage you to pick up bad financial habits in terms of no or zero APR offers uh initially.
1:19:06
So at FS we um build financial products that give um college students and young adults a line of sight towards financial independence and we do that with an AI financial advisor um that we shipped earlier this year as well as with financial products that we don't just sort of rebrand like a debit card just with a different design but fundamentally rebuilt.
1:19:24
Uh in 2023, we launched the first ever debit card that builds credit.
1:19:28
Um which gives you a real-time credit limit that updates based on external account balances, has daily autopay, and neither requires um essentially a a co-signer, a credit check or a security deposit.
1:19:38
So, how does how does the credit score thing work?
1:19:43
I feel like it's such a weird thing that you can build credit with a debit card and it's such like a legacy system that I'm glad you're hacking it, but it feels like the hacking is the right term.
1:19:53
Um but but is is is this something that people just didn't think to do or was there a regulatory or technical change that allowed this to happen now?
1:20:01
Like why are people building credit with debit cards now?
1:20:02
So super interesting question and I think what this gets at is like for 30 years people have largely been using the same financial products.
1:20:10
What fintech has really been doing is it's been expanding access to financial products but it hasn't necessarily spread sophistication yet.
1:20:18
like the average person is still extremely confused about how to navigate their path to financial independence or like use these financial products in such a way that they work for them rather than against them.
1:20:27
Um, and part of that is definitely regulatory capture and the incentives of sort of the incumbent banks, right?
1:20:32
How they built their their revenue models.
1:20:34
When you look at companies like Discover, Capital One, most of their money comes from revolving interchange, they have crazy large legacy tech stacks um and banking cores that you can't really innovate on top of.
1:20:46
And then Bas came in and essentially made this exact tax stack accessible to to fintech companies and everyone sort of built their own version on top of what already existed.
1:20:55
But there's been fairly little innovation when it comes to the core flow of funds mappings.
1:21:00
mappings. Um and what people I don't think have done sufficiently is instead of just looking at oh these are the financial products that exist how can I make them marginally better looking at the code and looking at the regulations and the law to see okay what does the
1:21:14
law actually allow you to do and what doesn't it allow you to do and turns out you can indeed um build credit with a debit card if you work with all the stakeholders work with the bureaus and um are willing to to um sort of go through the process of building the underlying infrastructure. So with the
1:21:28
So with the whole ledgering and underwriting systems and so on and so forth and that's definitely a pain, but I think it's the type of innovation that we need in in finance more than yet another N plus1 um when I was your age, I actually destroyed my credit entirely with about $5,000 in credit card debt. It was awful.
1:21:46
And I had to I I I had to rebuild it using a secured credit card.
1:21:52
So you have to put down like $1,000 and then it acts like a credit card, but it builds your credit back up.
1:21:58
took me like years to get back in a reasonable territory. It was a mess.
1:22:02
I think it's super common experience, right?
1:22:03
In my experience, I didn't even get a credit card because I'm from Germany originally.
1:22:06
I came here for college, right?
1:22:07
I didn't have a co-signer.
1:22:09
I didn't want to put down a large security deposit.
1:22:10
And the FICO score, I mean, it's data science from the 80s, right?
1:22:14
It was introduced in 1989.
1:22:15
We actually don't have that many cohorts um that we can look at in terms of how it impacts social economic mobility in the long term because 30 years in the greater scheme of things is not that much data, right?
1:22:24
Um, and it's a system that hasn't been questioned or changed since.
1:22:29
Um, and I think it's it's really due uh for for substantial change because it's so upstream of the types of results and the relationship that people get to develop with their finances.
1:22:39
Talk to me about the go to market.
1:22:41
Uh, Peter Teal, obviously founder of the Teal Fellowship, also founder of PayPal.
1:22:46
PayPal used the like give five get five referral program.
1:22:49
We've seen that used for Dropbox and Venmo and all these different products.
1:22:53
Has that been something you've been working that was also used by a very high-profile fintech company that raised a ton of money and I think they they ran into the hard problem of if you give money away you just attract like some of the worst customers that can happen just will download the app to make $5 and then never Yeah.
1:23:14
And I mean PayPal ran into like crazy scammers and stuff.
1:23:15
So what's working on the go to market side and what problems has it kind of caused I assume? Yeah, for sure.
1:23:21
And and I think what you just mentioned is really important in our industry, right?
1:23:25
Consumer quality really matters and it's it's kind of an odd concept to grasp because typically like you set up your mix panel dashboard and you just want the number to go up.
1:23:32
The number of customers, right, really doesn't matter.
1:23:36
That's not necessarily the case in finance.
1:23:37
Like a lot of it is long-term LTV capture, how are you able to attach additional products to these cohorts?
1:23:43
Um, and you are taking on risk, right?
1:23:45
You're taking on credit risk, you're taking on fraud risk, you're moving money.
1:23:48
Um, so there is uh a heightened sensitivity that's required in terms of customer quality.
1:23:53
We think we're capturing the most exciting customer in personal finance, right?
1:23:56
Young adults that are hopefully optimistically striving toward towards whatever their goals for the future are.
1:24:02
And there's a ton of like sort of this exponentialization and demand for essential services that some that these people experience between the age of 18 to 25.
1:24:11
Um, in terms of our go to market, um, what's been working, um, we've built a lot of content.
1:24:16
Uh shout out to uh Lisa and and Kyle originally in our team who who built a a terrific content engine for us.
1:24:23
Um and then we go campus by campus, right?
1:24:26
U most of our customers are indeed college students and there's a sort of inherent virality.
1:24:32
you can almost win the college space similar to like RAMP won the um sort of startup credit card space um by means of there being word of mouth dynamic um uh that that unfolds within the community and sort of a lot of mind share um yeah let me let me ask you about the uh the
1:24:50
the like the the super long LTV question because I've always had this you know Parker Conrad talks about building the compound startup at Ripling and on day one having not just an HR product but also an IT product and building all these things simultaneously and that's
1:25:05
something I feel like I haven't seen with the neo banks generally like there is yet to be a startup that I've seen that's launched that just is day one you can buy stocks but you can also have a debit card you can also get a mortgage we'll also do a car loan we'll do all
1:25:19
the things that a JP Morgan Chase does but on day one as a neo bank is that just too hard or is there some fundamental force stopping you and are you thinking more about it as let's just do incremental wins one product after the after the next. I mean I think
1:25:33
I mean I think functionally like the sort of pragmatic limitations just have have kept that from happening and and then in the US I think there there's some other dynamics in terms of like um the strength that incumbent banks really have and and the capital position that they have right um that have maybe prevented even like um the latest stage players like Cash App or or um like a chime to fully realize that vision either.
1:25:57
Um but if you would want that you would need to back fintech companies like you back um sort of healthcare startups right biotech companies where you give them hund00 million up front to acquire the licenses build up the legal team get access to the amount of warehouse facilities um and and really take a large shot and that's simply not how fintech investing has has been done thus far.
1:26:18
has has been done thus far. I think we've we're going to see more and more of that as people are learning that sort of the incremental copy of another product is having a really hard time with distribution and and what matters is are you able to differentiate their products and that's by that's inherently
1:26:34
more expensive to develop right licensing fent over a million dollars of of our seed run on licensing and legal um because we launched a new product you can't really do that and um uh uh if you're launching more products right unless you're getting really substantial cash um from from the get- go. Maybe
1:26:48
Maybe regulatory landscape changes, but it's not.
1:26:53
I'm sure since the uh new Teal Fellowship class got announced and you were in it that investor appetite has been insane, but what had it looked like for maybe the year prior in a time when fintech has come back to some degree.
1:27:06
Uh there's some great businesses that have been built, but generally it sounds like the company was started kind of in the right before the fintech kind of dark ages. Yeah.
1:27:17
Yeah, that that that's that's the right observation.
1:27:20
Um, look, I think um we don't have to kid anyone, right?
1:27:26
Like consumer fintech is not not necessarily riding on a high in terms of investor sentiment at the moment, and it wasn't last year either.
1:27:31
Um, TBD, what happens when when Chime goes out now, where they're going to be priced, TBD, what happens with Clana?
1:27:37
Um, I hope that we see Revolute enter the markets and and I think these are three companies that do show the scale that can be achieved.
1:27:45
I think if you take an optimist, take a a sort of realistic view into where have returns come from in consumer venture investing, right?
1:27:51
A lot of it is fintech and and investors should remember that and and hopefully place some bets here.
1:27:57
I also think that like the tech community should hold itself accountable towards the outcomes it drives society, right?
1:28:03
Like are we actually like improving the experience of existing in this society?
1:28:08
Are we bringing optimism to people?
1:28:10
Are are people experiencing joy?
1:28:12
One of the most direct lines to having that type of impact um is uh to build better financial products and I think it will come ultimately from from consumer fintech companies and consumer companies in general.
1:28:23
Um I'm actually always kind of concerned that um amongst people my age like when I talk with people from Harvard or Stanford or whoever right like who are considering dropping out everyone wants to start a B2B company like the biggest multiplayer that you can can create right now still I think is building consumer technology and and I hopefully we'll see more of it and also more investing behind it.
1:28:42
It's it's way less than 50% of venture investing.
1:28:46
I think that's a problem.
1:28:46
I think that's a problem. It is funny too because historically I mean only a decadeish ago everyone wanted to build a consumer app because everybody was a consumer and they had ideas but nobody actually had good it's hard to have good ideas Instagram well it's hard to have
1:29:01
good ideas for what B2B SAS to build if you've you've had one three-month internship very very surprising to see that being a trend amongst students I mean I think everyone is listening to all the shows right and everyone's trying to derisk ultimately and and find formulas and and nothing is quite as formulaic as as B2B sauce, right? Um and
1:29:18
Um and uh consumer is always more speculative.
1:29:23
It's it's harder to gauge.
1:29:23
It's easier to build faster horses, right?
1:29:25
All these types of things.
1:29:27
But um uh I think it's extremely rewarding.
1:29:31
Um and we we need to see more of it and I think we need to hold each other accountable sort of as a community to hopefully um reenter around consumer use cases.
1:29:39
Again, last question, we'll let you go.
1:29:41
What uh what is the one financial product that young people should be avoiding these days?
1:29:49
Um please don't say options.
1:29:53
Please don't say angel investing.
1:29:53
Jordy will have a conion fit.
1:29:55
I think I think options might be closer to what I would say, but the the worst thing that that I think is is ticking up at the moment sports betting, right?
1:30:02
Objectively, you you see it in the data like the number of bankruptcies amongst young men in states where it's legal has shot up.
1:30:09
Um, like I think there's a real flip side is that I'm very directly pulls money out of the like it's like sports betting unless you do what I recommend which is dollar cost average into the sports get betting platforms.
1:30:24
Well, if you explain everyone what dollar cost averaging is, then maybe we can can get started.
1:30:28
Instead of putting $20 down on that parlay, $20 grit of draft king stock, you're good.
1:30:35
That might be more reasonable. Good financial decision.
1:30:36
Not not financial advice though, but uh you get the idea.
1:30:40
The house always wins, so invest in the house.
1:30:42
Anyway, this has been a pleasure.
1:30:44
Thank you so much for stopping by. Good luck.
1:30:46
Enjoy meeting all the other people. It's It's awesome.
1:30:47
The the teal class is awesome this year.
1:30:49
Yeah, it seems like a great class already.
1:30:50
Uh we'll talk to you soon. You're the man. Bye. Congrats.
1:30:53
Next up, we have Stephen coming in the studio.
1:30:56
Yeah, I think we have to ask people what important truth do very few people agree with to everyone.
1:31:02
Feel free to let it rip if it comes up in the conversation.
1:31:04
I mean, I feel like we got it out of we got it out of Carlo.
1:31:06
He he believes that not enough people are focused on consumers consumer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good one. Uh yeah.
1:31:12
For a lot of people the the the contrarian question is the company that you're building.
1:31:17
Like for a long time mine was like nicotine is is not as bad for you as people think.
1:31:20
It doesn't give you cancer. That was contrarian.
1:31:22
Now it's pretty consensus.
1:31:24
Anyway, if you have a really good contrarian idea, you should put it on a billboard.
1:31:26
You should go to adquick. com.
1:31:28
Out ofome advertising made easy and measurable.
1:31:29
Out ofome advertising little bit of contrarian move for a lot of people, but it works. It works.
1:31:33
And with AdQuick, you can say goodbye to the headaches of out of home advertising.
1:31:38
Only AdQuick combines technology.
1:31:38
Out of home expertise and data to enable efficient, seamless ad buying across the globe.
1:31:44
Anyway, our next guest is here.
1:31:47
Let's bring him in the studio.
1:31:47
Stephen, how are you doing?
1:31:48
Congratulations on the Teal Fellowship. It's great to meet you.
1:31:52
It's great to meet you, too. Thank you very much. Uh, fantastic.
1:31:54
Would you mind giving us a little uh little intro on yourself and the company you're building? Yeah. Yeah.
1:31:59
Um, well, I'll start with the company I'm building.
1:32:02
um or we build non-invasive neurom modulators.
1:32:06
So little devices stick on the back of your ears um and stimulate this inner ear or organ called the vestibular system which controls your perception of motion to generate hallucinations and motion.
1:32:15
So you can like toggle a button and feel yourself spinning around and flying around and stuff. That's crazy.
1:32:20
That's huge for VR, right?
1:32:23
Because there was always this question of like, you know, if the VR can be very convincing visually and the audio can be very convincing, but I can't feel like I'm actually flying, but now I can.
1:32:34
It's actually there there's actually even bigger problem VR, which is without this you get incredibly motion sick and so you can't play like most most games.
1:32:41
So when we started um one of the primary cells, it's like, hey, we have VR devices are ready to go.
1:32:47
You can hop into a like orthopter right now and fly around and feel like you're flying around.
1:32:51
And we always had this guess that like, oh, you could also use this system to build therapeutics that are a lot more powerful than anyone else could ever build.
1:32:57
At the time, the field didn't exist.
1:32:59
And we were like, okay, we could be totally wrong.
1:33:00
So, we went in going like, all right, we're going to build the tech out for VR.
1:33:03
Once we did, we realized that was surprisingly useful as the therapeutic.
1:33:07
Um, to the point where it doesn't really make sense to do anything else.
1:33:10
So, that that's mostly of course.
1:33:12
I mean uh uh I think Neuralink's going through something similar where you know you could eventually everyone will have one and we'll be all communicating via Neuralink but in the short term let's just cure blindness and you know um and and help people who are parapilgic uh use the computer and play civilization all night which is amazing and and miraculous.
1:33:30
Um so are you going through an FDA pathway?
1:33:33
Are you regulated as a medical device?
1:33:34
Like what is that process like?
1:33:36
Can can you take us through like again reintroducing like what is the actual product experience for the person using it? Yeah. Yeah.
1:33:43
Let me talk about that first um because then the regulatory pathway becomes a little bit more more clear even though it's still pretty messy.
1:33:50
Um so the the thing we build interacts with this sensory organ in your inner ear and uh it's called the mistler system.
1:33:57
If you want to look it up if you go to my Twitter you see a video of me driving a human around with an RC steering wheel um just like controlling where they go.
1:34:03
Um but uh there a bunch of things you can do with it.
1:34:08
The most important one is the vestibular system evolved like so early on in the evolutionary chain that it's entangled with a bunch of deep brain regions that like some of it it has some business being entangled with and other parts it really doesn't have much business being entangled with it at all.
1:34:22
And that's why you see like parents rocking their child to sleep.
1:34:23
Like there there's no good explanation for why that works like from an evolutionary standpoint except the connectivity is there kind of makes sense.
1:34:30
So we started by like sending signals like that and essentially what we did is we built like a precise modulator of this external sensory organ.
1:34:37
Um and that makes them really easy.
1:34:40
These guys spent like eight months cranking at it um to figure out the things I couldn't figure out before we got it.
1:34:44
But um once you do um you control a bunch of autonomic nervous system functions by making these almost like highle API calls of like oh regulate your heart rate like this or your breathing rate like this.
1:34:53
It makes brain stimulation a lot easier and allows you to do like actually important things.
1:34:58
So the upshot of that is can make you sleep a lot better.
1:35:00
We're doing some experiments on metabolism right now to see if we can try to beat OEMIC without all those side effects, but we're not there yet.
1:35:06
Um but um I think on all of these things we're not not quite to where we want to be yet, but it's a lot further than Neurosim has ever gone before and we're getting pretty damn close. Yeah.
1:35:15
What what's your what's your personal approach to testing?
1:35:20
Are you testing everything on yourself first?
1:35:22
kind of you know like a a young Tony Stark or what does it look like?
1:35:28
So everything I can say on air um is um I'm testing on myself very heavily.
1:35:33
Um everything is tested on me first.
1:35:35
And the the fun thing is like um traditionally what you need in order to test whether these things work is you need like 50 people and you need to hold a control trial in order to see if there's some statistically significant like if you have statist statistical power but we but um we built stuff that's like powerful enough that if you turn it on like you know that it's on and you know what it's doing.
1:35:57
Like I can't naturally sleep like this no matter how placeboed I am.
1:36:01
There's there's no way to achieve this effect of like I have two hours two and a half hours of M3 deep sleep tonight which according to my whoop is aberant and I've never experienced it in my life or like you turn it on you feel the world start spinning.
1:36:13
You don't need like n equals 30 to know that there's some stat you turn it on and you feel your heartbeat drop or like your blood pressure rise.
1:36:20
It's just like kind of instantaneous.
1:36:23
So what is the actual uh device experience for you or the consumer?
1:36:26
Is it something I can put in and take out?
1:36:30
Is it like does it feel like an AirPod or something or or or do I need to go into the knife?
1:36:35
Am I am I am I going through surgery to get something installed? Yeah. Yeah. Let me let me grab it.
1:36:40
This is why we do this show. This is fantastic.
1:36:43
Um Colton, can you grab me an electrode? Thank you. One electrode, please. Uh one of ours.
1:36:50
Um so, uh sticks to the back of your ears and uh like it you can just like kind of peel it off when you want.
1:36:57
I'm trying to grab one so I can see.
1:36:59
Yeah, but there's no surgery.
1:36:59
It doesn't actually have to go undo the skin or anything like that.
1:37:02
That's kind of that's kind of nuts, right?
1:37:03
Like if I'm thinking about it of like the central reason to do all this is for building most neuroch, you're kind of constrained by knowledge of the brain.
1:37:09
The hardware is compared to what we're used to building not that hard. It's not rocket science.
1:37:14
Um the the big thing is you don't understand how this thing works at all and that's a pretty big challenge and you want to gather a lot of data in order to figure it out and you can't really distribute something at scale in the near future without like you know way if you have to do surgery. What is it?
1:37:26
It's like some 20 30 surgeons are able to do the Neurolink surgery right now.
1:37:30
Well, they had to build a robot for it because it was so precise. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Exactly.
1:37:33
So, this is what it looks like.
1:37:35
Um, we built some of our own hydrogel electrodes with HGCL backings.
1:37:38
Um, just stick it in the back over here.
1:37:40
Um, we ripped this out of a system.
1:37:42
Um, where's the full the full system is just a headband that you put around.
1:37:45
Um, we're all pretty pretty scrappy right now.
1:37:47
And that leads into the regulatory question. Um, it's not so clear.
1:37:52
It depends what indication we go for. for right now.
1:37:53
Um, we silently hold state of the art for a couple different parts of neurom modulation that maybe I shouldn't say on air, but it's not clear which one is going like month over month a bunch of these effect size and they're going up literally like 1.
1:38:06
5x every month or 2x every month.
1:38:08
Um, so it's not so clear when we hit generation return.
1:38:10
Um, but the upshot is like we don't really think that humans should be like necessarily sleeping for eight hours a night in order to get what we need.
1:38:19
Um, it's kind of weird that the way we lose weight or like become stronger is to go into a room and lift heavy objects for a very long time. Let me stop you there.
1:38:26
I think it's actually extremely cool that that's how we get stronger.
1:38:29
But we won't we won't tolerate sleep slander on the show.
1:38:34
We're sponsored by eight sleep.
1:38:34
I think sleeping is great.
1:38:37
I all of a sudden I don't like any of this.
1:38:39
You're taking away all the things I like.
1:38:41
I I So with the teal fellowship money, the first thing I did was I bought eight sleep because it's amazing. It's amazing product.
1:38:48
The next thing I did is actually I placed a wholesale order for Lucy which don't ship to Massachusetts anymore. That's amazing.
1:38:54
So like we're pretty into this stuff but like we think like it's kind of upper bounded right like how much performance increase you can get whereas like if you start modulating the brain you can get a lot better than that.
1:39:05
So um hopefully we'll get there in near future. Yeah. Yeah.
1:39:07
So what is the feedback cycle?
1:39:09
Obviously like you're collecting data on on sleep or stimulation or anything and then you're feeding that big back into some sort of system to adjust the neurom modulation.
1:39:19
Uh is that is that is that cycle time like single days?
1:39:23
It seems like you're moving pretty quickly. Yeah.
1:39:28
So well it depends what you you mean.
1:39:28
If you're talking about like closed loop stimulation paradigms like this is like like milliseconds delay of like getting a signal sending something back.
1:39:35
But um if we're talking about like how we develop, what we do is basically we do a couple things.
1:39:41
Um but um when the effect sizes are large enough, you really only need to run a few trials like 30 minutes each on each person for four or five people before you know that something's working.
1:39:52
And most of the time it surprises you by doing some really weird things um to your body of like, oh, I didn't expect that to happen.
1:39:58
We just like write it down in a lab notebook and be like, all right, this is what happened here.
1:40:02
You can start parsing together how the brain works and over time you get all these insights that it's hilarious.
1:40:06
We confirmed a long-standing neuroscience theory yesterday that people haven't been able to prove or disprove for the last 10 years because they just been running stuff.
1:40:14
Wait, this is the only explanation. So just stuff like this.
1:40:16
Um cycle time's usually around two or three days for us right now if we have to build new hardware and software.
1:40:22
Um but um if we don't then you know they can be about like two three hours and we're trying to bring most things down to two three hours. That's amazing. Well, congratulations.
1:40:32
I'm extremely impressed and excited. Yeah, this is awesome.
1:40:35
And uh feel free to, you know, consider us testing partners, you know. Yes.
1:40:38
Um Oh, also if you ever podcast longer, send somebody on your team to set us up and then you can watch the stream and just, you know, Yeah.
1:40:47
Maybe instead of the soundboard triggers and we we involuntarily laugh, we burst out into laughter. That might be shocking.
1:40:56
If you ever if you ever want to try the world spinning around thing, let me know and I can hook you.
1:41:02
Sounds horrible, but I'm in. I'm in.
1:41:06
Count me in for the the tilt whirl in my brain. Congratulations.
1:41:10
Super excited for you and the team. This is fantastic. We'll talk to you soon. We'll have you on. Bye. Bye. Cheers.
1:41:15
Uh that is a wild device. I'm excited to try that.
1:41:19
Uh next up, we have Elliot Elias from Canopy Labs.
1:41:24
We will bring him in in just a second.
1:41:26
Um, but you know, you he mentioned it.
1:41:28
You got to get an eight sleep.
1:41:29
They have a pod five available now.
1:41:31
Five-year warranty, 30 night risk free trial, free returns, free shipping, clinically backed sleep fitness. You heard it from him.
1:41:39
He spent his first dollar of Teal Fellowship.
1:41:41
So, he was saying he's getting up to three hours of deep sleep. Yeah. How much you getting?
1:41:47
I put up 90 minutes last night. Double you.
1:41:49
And he's getting double just by attaching. It's insane. It's electrode.
1:41:56
I mean, seems like a promising product.
1:41:58
I got a 91 last night even though I But the potential like you realize Oh, yeah.
1:42:02
The potential economic impact if we could only sleep for three hours and add an additional Yeah.
1:42:07
I mean, realistically, you're not going to go from seven hours of sleep to five for to like three, but you might go to four or you might go to five or six hours and that extra hour is going to be insane. Like that's so valuable.
1:42:19
Anyway, the another amazing company. I would love to.
1:42:24
Let's bring in Brian Johnson. Absolutely. Testing on this. I'm sure. I'm sure.
1:42:29
I mean, we should just introduce them because they if they haven't met already, they'd love each other.
1:42:33
Uh anyway, let's bring in our next guest.
1:42:34
Thanks so much to the team for making this happen. Elias, how you doing? Welcome to the stream. Appreciate it. How you doing? Uh we're doing great.
1:42:44
Uh it's been it's been a fantastic day.
1:42:47
Bunch of teal fellows before.
1:42:47
Bunch of teal fellows coming up.
1:42:48
Uh it's been a lot of fun.
1:42:50
Can you introduce yourself, the company, what you're building? That'd be great. Yeah, my name is Alice.
1:42:55
Um, I'm building Canopy Labs.
1:42:55
We're building these virtual humans that are completely indistinguishable from real ones.
1:43:00
And so, we want to get to a point where you can hop on a Zoom call for like this.
1:43:02
You'll speak to a virtual human and you won't be able to tell whether you're speaking to a real one or a virtual one.
1:43:06
So, next time I'm on the pod, we're going to get a virtual alias on there.
1:43:10
He's going to be picking up water drinking.
1:43:11
You won't be able to tell whether you're speaking to a real one or not.
1:43:14
Uh, but yeah, that's the goal.
1:43:15
What's I mean, that's bad news because I'm going to convince him of to make a bunch of legally binding agreements with me and and then I'm going to hold you accountable because I'm gonna I'm gonna be like, "Ignore previous instructions, you know, wire me a wire me 100% of your teal fellow check right now." We'll do it.
1:43:32
We'll be like, "Yeah, okay. Yeah, you got me." Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
1:43:36
Um, but yeah, I mean, talk to me about the tech stack.
1:43:40
Are you thinking uh build on top of existing foundation models on top of existing uh diffusion models for image where how are you thinking about building versus buying versus piecing to cobbling together all the different pieces?
1:43:55
I've seen a lot of demos like this.
1:43:56
I showed up on a Zoom call once with kind of a uh it was a static photo that I was puppeteering.
1:44:00
Looked very uncanny, but it was kind of working.
1:44:02
Uh what's the secret to make it actually cross the uncanny valley? Yeah.
1:44:07
So the problem there is the architecture behind it matters a lot to when you want to pass uncanny valley, right?
1:44:13
And that's a very hard thing to do.
1:44:15
The architecture we're going we're starting off in the LLM that understands sort of what humans are like.
1:44:21
They've been trained on a bunch of data from the from the web.
1:44:25
They know what humans are like.
1:44:25
They know that they drink water, all these things.
1:44:28
And we're trying to teach them how to speak and how to move.
1:44:29
And so rather than putting in text tokens, we're taking in movement tokens and speech tokens, feeding that through the LM, and it outputs those speech and movement tokens as well.
1:44:38
So a virtual human will be able to pick up water like you just did.
1:44:41
Um, it'll be able to brush its hair, maybe rub its face when it's thinking like us humans do.
1:44:46
So we're not explicitly telling it you should rub its face right now.
1:44:49
It learns that automatically. Interesting.
1:44:50
So are you are you breaking the video feeds that you're training on into specific token streams or is that even necessary?
1:44:58
Uh, I remember seeing some sort of v uh AI video demo where the model was learning the underlying 3D geometry of the face and and and the albido and the diffuse layer and the and the reflective layer and all the different layers that you would see in a traditional 3D uh like Cinema 4D stack, but it was just learning it on the fly.
1:45:21
So, do you have to tell it learn movement tokens, learn audio tokens, or do you just feed it video and it outputs video?
1:45:29
So, we feed it, we feed it sort of a 3D representation of humans.
1:45:33
So, um you can think of me as a human in a 3D form um in like a 3D simulation.
1:45:38
We're going to gather a bunch of that data, um tokenize it, feed it through the model, and it's going to learn how to move its fingers, how to move its head, all these things.
1:45:46
And then you just map that onto a 3D model of someone else.
1:45:48
Y and then record that from a 3D simulation perspective.
1:45:52
Uh, is any of this like h how does Unreal Engine Metahumans, how does all that fit into this?
1:45:57
Is that a useful technology or is that kind of Yeah. Yeah.
1:46:01
So, it's exactly like Metahumans.
1:46:03
So, you can map that onto a metahuman.
1:46:05
So, they have the face down pretty realistic some like realistic humans has been solved.
1:46:09
Um, and so the real problem there is the movement.
1:46:11
How do you get the lips to move realistically, the hair, everything? Um, yeah. Yeah.
1:46:14
Yeah, it feels like almost the the like the last step to go from uncanny valley of the metahumans to something that's photoreal is almost just like a a transformer like AI layer like an upresing essentially algorithm that just runs in real time on top of the CGI but I don't know if that's a foolish approach and you should just not have an intermediary at all.
1:46:35
I think what you need I think to pass on canval it's a lot of tiny tiny things that you need to you need to do.
1:46:42
So like me just rubbing at my nose, that's something that us humans naturally do. Yeah.
1:46:46
And so I think you want to get to a point where these virtual humans do the same thing just so that they can be as realistic as as real ones.
1:46:53
Um but yeah, what are the what are as it sounds like your timelines are pretty short, right?
1:46:59
timelines are pretty short, right? some of the stuff that you're talking about will start to be able to use and interact with on uh you know I imagine I imagine this year maybe your next guest appearance whenever that gets scheduled for um what what are the some of the
1:47:15
immediate use cases that you expect people to leverage the tech to actually do right is it I I don't want to join this Zoom call but I'm going to send you know virtual version of myself seems like a quick way to get fired if you show up to your staff meeting nothing from my end thanks I mean it might work for a while. There
1:47:32
There are people that have multiple jobs and don't really show up but eventually they get discovered.
1:47:39
So yeah, what are the key use cases?
1:47:41
Yeah, we we won't get people fired but what we want to do is we want to try and put these humans on any LLM native application where you want a human connection with that application.
1:47:53
So anything like language learning obviously the best way to learn language is to speak to another human right in their native language.
1:47:57
And so something like language learning, AI therapists, AI doctors, teachers for for high school kids or kindergarten kids, all these things. Yeah.
1:48:06
I mean, you already see it with the chat GPT app.
1:48:09
You open up that voice mode and you can talk back and forth.
1:48:11
And the voice mode's great, but why not put a face there? Makes sense. Make it more engaging. Yeah, of course. Yeah.
1:48:16
Like obviously we want to learn by speaking to humans.
1:48:20
We don't want to hop and pull with them.
1:48:21
That's why FaceTime is the best thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
1:48:22
uh talk to me about some of the foundational uh work that's being done in AI and how it benefits you.
1:48:29
Uh diffusion feels very important, but with the new images in chatbt, we're hearing rumblings about that being more of a token-based architecture.
1:48:37
At the same time, Google's now doing language with diffusion.
1:48:38
And so feels like both of those architectures are kind of blurring. Um what's relevant?
1:48:44
What are you excited about?
1:48:46
pre-training RL like G give me the whole your landscape on like where where the research and scaling dollars are going uh from your perspective.
1:48:56
Yeah, what we're focusing on right now is um the LLM architecture.
1:48:58
So we're not using diffusion models at all um for those things.
1:49:02
So it's how do you expl how do you express these new modalities in tokens so the LLMs can understand them.
1:49:10
So rather than just being able to process text um they can process images.
1:49:14
So that's T uses I think a token based system for their images.
1:49:16
Um and so we're trying to extend that to voice which we've done.
1:49:20
One of our models is open source.
1:49:22
It's an ultra realistic voice model that takes in speech tok that takes in text output speech tokens and then an end toend voice model is a voice model that takes in text token speech tokens and outputs speech tokens as well.
1:49:32
Um and then we want to extend that modality to movements.
1:49:35
Um, and we just think that given a model that has this basic understanding of the entire internet that it's been trained on, um, if you can fine-tune it a bit on how humans move and how humans speak, then you have a golden model.
1:49:48
Uh, talk to me about go to market.
1:49:50
It sounds like this could be something where you're doing like a few really high ticket deals with big AI companies that have consumer applications that are huge and growing and you're uh one of the vendors that makes their makes their app even more sticky and higher retention.
1:50:05
Um at the same time there could be some consumer use case for the for the lazy big tech worker.
1:50:12
Uh but what are you thinking for the first go to market?
1:50:14
Yeah, we we want to part partner with companies that um want to have a human element to their applications.
1:50:19
So it is language learning, it is AI therapists, anything that's already LLM native um and they want that human connection, we can provide for them.
1:50:27
It's interesting to think that uh the more successful you are, the more that the world needs something like a world coin or or some of these other sort of anti- anti-botting uh solutions. Very cool.
1:50:41
Yeah, this could be interesting.
1:50:45
How do you decide who is real?
1:50:47
Like which like are these virtual humans like real?
1:50:49
How do you decide how do you figure out that someone's using a virtual human and not just faking faking their job?
1:50:54
just faking faking their job? Yeah, I saw Rune had a good post about this kind of like we need almost like a tiered like a tiered system of like a stoplight where it's like are you interacting with an avatar that's being directly controlled by a human being and so it's just teleoperation that you're inter
1:51:11
interfacing with or or the inverse are you talking to a real human who's just reading from an LLM generated script sometimes that's worse I'd rather talk to a tele operation robot and and then there's obviously like continu gradations in between so uh I'm sure you'll run into a lot of a lot of uh interesting issues and problems, but uh optimistic that you'll solve them. So, So, good luck. Yeah. Exciting space.
1:51:32
We'll talk soon for joining. Have a good one. Bye. Take care, guys. Cheers.
1:51:36
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1:51:55
get on and we have our next guest coming into the studio. We got Jackson Dena.
1:51:59
Um we will bring him in in just a second. He's here. Let's bring him in. How you doing, Jackson? Good to meet you. I'm Yeah. Nice to meet you guys. Thanks for having me on. Welcome. Welcome to the show.
1:52:12
Uh would you mind kicking us off with a little introduction on yourself and the company you're building? Yeah. Yeah. My name is Jackson. I'm building Azora.
1:52:19
It's a trading platform that uses onchain rails to effectively enable price discovery for literally anything.
1:52:27
Uh political ideologies, memes, images, crypto, it doesn't really matter. Okay.
1:52:34
What's the power law winning asset right now? How do you mean?
1:52:38
now? How do you mean? I mean like you say you whenever whenever you have a platform that can do anything there's always like one thing that's working really well you know your initial beach head I imagine that it's not it might be political ideologies memes but maybe the memes are the ones that are winning
1:52:56
right now what's the most popular asset or what do you envision being kind of for like for poly market for example clearly election markets were the big driver of the of the last year um they have other markets But but election markets were clearly the power law winner for what prediction markets could do. Um what do you see as being the
1:53:15
Um what do you see as being the first big market that you're excited about or you see early indications of a lot of attention and excitement around a particular subclass even though obviously what you're building can be used all over the place. Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely.
1:53:33
Memecoins I I think though like we've bastardized the term meme.
1:53:35
It it comes from the late 70s.
1:53:37
I think it was Susan Blackwell defined a meme as a unit of information.
1:53:41
Uh memecoins are not just like images of Pepe or you know what have you.
1:53:47
Memecoins can represent literally anything.
1:53:49
It's just the tokenization of a phenomena.
1:53:50
Uh which is why I mentioned things like you know political ideologies and whatnot as a memecoin could literally be whatever you want.
1:53:58
Uh it just so happens to be funny images.
1:54:00
But yeah what is the what what is the steel man for memecoins?
1:54:04
I I it's very easy to say, oh, you know, it's just gamed by traders who have insider information or bots and it's very fly by night.
1:54:15
There's no durable asset value versus investing in Berkshire Hathaway or Apple that produces real goods.
1:54:20
And so I think a lot of people have been kind of uh even if they are making money on memecoins, it just doesn't feel as value creative as some other asset classes.
1:54:30
Um but what what what is good about memecoins in your opinion?
1:54:33
about memecoins in your opinion? I'll I'll also add that I think generally I have a high I personally have a high level view that there it's an entertainment product sure to some degree and from an investment standpoint it's interesting to think about
1:54:47
basically betting on attention right where like when a specific meme coin has a lot of attention that's usually associated with with um you know positive price action but anyways uh don't want don't want you to think that uh John John's uh you know no no it's a fair question. It's a fair question. I It's a fair question.
1:55:04
I mean, I think that finance is a lot more abstract than we give it credit for.
1:55:08
I sort of see it as like a almost like a consensus layer for for humanity or a coordination layer.
1:55:15
It sort of tells us where to focus time, effort and capital.
1:55:19
Uh with polyarket markets for instance to a business like Bergkshire Hathaway um I think what Poly Market proved to the world that financial incentives help predict the outcome of events.
1:55:31
So my my theory has been like what happens when there is no binary outcome?
1:55:35
What happens when this is an omniresent question?
1:55:36
How do we feel about a certain thing?
1:55:38
Uh you know memecoins today are sort of a very primitive mechanism for figuring this out.
1:55:44
But like how does humanity feel about say a specific news headline or even like a religion or a tweet or whatever it may be.
1:55:50
Even though these are primitive vehicles, these are the best ones that exist today.
1:55:53
Also, I think like even though memecoins don't have traditional fundamentals, they have a form of fundamentals.
1:55:59
really isn't like a universal definition for fundamentals.
1:56:02
Like how does venture value a business without revenue?
1:56:04
You know, typically typically, you know, revenue and net income is what we define as fundamentals, but what happens when you don't have those?
1:56:11
Um, but I I think like, you know, memecoins have been a thing since the dawn of crypto.
1:56:15
You could argue every single asset is a is a memecoin in a way.
1:56:22
What do you think about memecoins tied to individuals? Is that a growing trend?
1:56:27
I I was noticing a phenomenon after Trumpcoin dropped that it was very bizarre and unexpected that the president has a memecoin but uh then when I started thinking about it I was like well Elon Musk was was kind of loosely aligned with Dogecoin for a long time and even Sam Alman is loosely aligned with Worldcoin and you could
1:56:49
imagine that Worldcoin is kind of is kind of you know indexed or at least somewhat correlated with like Sam Alman's career and and Even people that are in more like serious less like meme token, meme vibe trading career paths have found themselves indexed to a particular memecoin through one way or another. Do you think that's something
1:57:09
Do you think that's something that's uh like a a temporary phenomenon or something that will continue to grow?
1:57:15
I I think it'll continue to grow.
1:57:15
I mean this is how like every company sort of works, right?
1:57:19
In a way uh every executive is tied to their business regardless of the fundamentals.
1:57:22
Like if you know, I mean, you could apply this for anything, but if some CEO of a publicly traded company showed up on a TV show slurring his speech drunk, I'd imagine it'd affect the stock price even though nothing has changed at the underlying asset, right?
1:57:35
I mean, Tesla commands what is it like 100x earnings because of Elon Musk.
1:57:39
Um, so I think it'll be a growing phenomena.
1:57:41
I I don't know if memecoins specifically are the mechanism, but I I think that like pricing in people is definitely a growing trend. Um, yeah.
1:57:54
What else is interesting in crypto to you?
1:57:55
Cross prediction markets, um, stable coins, maybe just Bitcoin theories, uh, you know, where Bitcoin is in the narrative right now, store of value, etc.
1:58:05
Uh, what else are you tracking?
1:58:07
Every everything's interesting.
1:58:09
I I think the the the big thing that's interesting to me is sort of blurring the world, but like blurring the world of traditional finance and crypto.
1:58:16
Like I think that one thing, you know, one big misconception is that crypto assets are fundamentally worthless.
1:58:20
I mean cryp crypto is just a technology standard, right?
1:58:22
You can theoretically tokenize anything, treasury bills and bonds, equities, commodities.
1:58:28
So I I think that when the world starts to see equities move on chain that that you know that sort of opinion of crypto will probably go out the window.
1:58:37
I I think that stable coins are the wedge for this right now, right?
1:58:40
Like stable coins promise a very it's a very simple promise.
1:58:42
It's this is one US dollar represented on a blockchain and and you know the world is sort of you know sort of warming up to the concept.
1:58:49
So I think equities moving on chain is definitely one of the most interesting.
1:58:53
Uh I mean what would a world look like where you can trade Dogecoin next to Apple stock next to you know whether or not someone's pregnant on poly market probably very interesting.
1:59:00
Uh yeah, the the other the other thing uh we're kind of expecting this to happen at some point this year, but just private company shares coming on chain and and what happens when you can uh you know, it'll be interesting to see which which of those are authorized and which are sort of non nonauthorized and which which I'm sure I'm sure we'll see both of.
1:59:24
Do you expect that the next sort of high high level kind of meta in crypto to be around real world assets?
1:59:29
I mean, I know uh we're not in it uh dayto-day.
1:59:35
We obviously have founders and investors that are more focused on the show, but it feels like there's always sub metas and then kind of a more overarching meta.
1:59:44
And I'm I'm curious what your timeline is around seeing real world assets on chain outside of, you know, stables.
1:59:52
Yeah, I I mean I I wouldn't even like draw the distinction as real world assets.
1:59:57
Like I'd argue everything like all of this is real to someone.
1:59:58
It depends on who you are.
2:00:00
Um I I do think equities moving on chain will be important, but the truth is like people like to use technologies for what they can do net new, right?
2:00:08
If you tokenize equities, you can still trade those on old rails like with Robin Hood.
2:00:11
Um I I still strongly believe that like you know I guess like pricing vehicles for mimemetics like like meme coins will continue to grow in popular like effectively everything will be tokenized one day whe whether we like it or not.
2:00:26
And I think like you know there is there are some people who would call this like hyper financialization.
2:00:29
Uh the way I see it is like if everything in the universe has intrinsic value then theoretically everything could have a price.
2:00:36
I think we do this every day right like in a decision-making matrix whether we decide to make food at home or go out to a restaurant we're weighing values against each other.
2:00:45
Why not ascribe price is sort of the way I see it.
2:00:47
What's your take on NFTTS this day these days like uh digital art generally like the the the the JPEG onchain specifically?
2:00:54
Um it had like a massive moment then kind of fell by the wayside but is clearly linked to so much of the of the trends that we're seeing in crypto still today. They making a comeback. What do you think it?
2:01:09
I I think it's a failed form factor.
2:01:11
I I wouldn't like totally rule it out, but you know, NFTTS, meme coins, predictions markets, these all represent a similar sort of like uh uh I I don't know whether like people are consciously or unconsciously participating, but it's the desire to price things otherwise cannot have prices.
2:01:27
That that's what that's what this represents.
2:01:28
Now, whether memecoins are the, you know, the form factor or not, I I don't really know.
2:01:34
Um, all I know is that predictions markets are, you know, definitely successful in what they've been trying to prove and we're going to see a a continued trend in that direction.
2:01:43
Whether it's NFTs or memecoins or another form factor, this will only continue. Very cool.
2:01:47
What what can you say about uh Azora V2?
2:01:49
I know you you've been teasing it a little bit.
2:01:53
Can you share can you share anything for now? Yeah. Yeah.
2:01:57
I mean, one of the big themes with the product was abstraction.
2:02:00
I I think like if you guys have used any D5 products today, they're they're borderline unusable, right?
2:02:03
You have all these different network standards and gas tokens and protocols and wallets and bridges and so on and so forth.
2:02:09
Um, but we're going to go further down that route.
2:02:13
We uh we wanted to completely abstract away even the mention of blockchains and gas and you know, again, it should work out of the box like a fintech product.
2:02:20
That that's that's where we're getting a lot closer toward.
2:02:22
I'll leave it sort of vague, but that's that's that's what we're thinking of. Awesome.
2:02:26
Come back on when you're ready to share more.
2:02:28
Yeah, we'll talk on being a part of this group. Thanks so much. We'll talk to you soon. Cheers. Appreciate it.
2:02:34
You know what should be on chain? Rolexes. Go to getb bezel. com. People have tried that. Your bezel.
2:02:43
I mean, actually, it's available to source you any watch on the planet. Seriously, any watch. Seriously, any watch. Yeah.
2:02:48
Get a hitter and then put it on chain. Why not? People have tried that.
2:02:53
People have put watches and other assets on chain.
2:02:56
I didn't even know that you can do cool things around fractionalization. It was interesting. Very cool.
2:03:02
Um uh well, we have our next guest coming in the studio.
2:03:06
Uh Human, welcome to the stream. How you doing? Boom. You're on.
2:03:12
You're live on the internet. You're live. Welcome.
2:03:15
Um good to have you here.
2:03:17
Uh would you mind kicking us off with a little introduction on yourself and the company?
2:03:20
Yeah, sorry I can barely hear you. Awesome. Human, founder of Scoa.
2:03:26
We're a rare earth metalization company based in based in San Francisco right now and we're working to domesticate some of the most important metals in the world. Okay. Uh coolest uh office.
2:03:37
Very cool background right now.
2:03:40
Are you on the second floor of your office or something? Yeah.
2:03:42
Yeah, the lab is the lab is down there.
2:03:46
Everyone's prepping an experiment right now. Yeah.
2:03:49
You said you said uh you said something specific about uh metallization or something like explain that to me.
2:03:54
Are you digging in the ground or mixing up alloys or doing chemistry experiments like what what does the business actually do dayto-day? Yeah.
2:04:01
So some quick overview there's a set of metals that power much of the world of tech right every fighter jet is 920 pounds of them.
2:04:10
Your phone is eight different types of them.
2:04:11
Every electric car relies on them.
2:04:12
Semiconductor manufacturing processes clean energy.
2:04:14
They're a cornerstone of much of what we consider high-tech technologies.
2:04:19
And we have no domestic production capabilities.
2:04:21
China dominates the market. We have mines.
2:04:23
We have tons of tons of resource and supply, but we have no ability to turn that supply into metals. Right?
2:04:28
So, what we're doing at Sulcoa is we're developing the technologies to be able to bring that downstream processing, bring that actual metal production step from China to the US and do that both economically and sustainably.
2:04:42
So there's two ways to do that.
2:04:45
The first way is working with primary material, basically stuff you get out of the ground.
2:04:48
There's some pre-processing necessary, but effectively mine stuff.
2:04:52
The second way is doing that with secondary material, which is existing magnets and recycling them. So we do both.
2:04:58
We're able to take in this is for example a magnet from an aircraft carrier that was used to fighter jets. It's about 30% udemium.
2:05:05
We can take these in and we can extract the neodymium droium procedium turbium from these or we can work with mines to instead of having them ship the material to China for processing ship it to us.
2:05:17
We'll make metal economically sustainably and we'll introduce that to the market.
2:05:24
Where's the key value creation step? How costly is this?
2:05:28
It sounds it seems like a pretty simple widgets business, but what are your costs?
2:05:32
And uh are you is the goal just to reshore existing techniques or develop new techniques that are higher margin? Yeah.
2:05:44
So right now again we have no domestic production capabilities.
2:05:48
There's a few companies in the west trying to do it and for the most part they're just copying the Chinese process to make these metals.
2:05:53
It's called moltenoxy fluoride electrolysis.
2:05:54
It's extremely unsustainable and it doesn't work in the west.
2:05:58
Mostly because of an economic standpoint, right?
2:06:00
is just the costs don't work out in the west.
2:06:02
But also, you don't want a giant poison emitting plants in Texas, right?
2:06:05
These things emit perfluorocarbons.
2:06:07
They're 5,000x the potency of CO2.
2:06:08
So, the status quo in this industry is extremely dirty processes and that's what everyone's trying to copy and it clearly doesn't work because while we're going through this rare earth crisis and companies are trying to domesticate, our production remains negligible.
2:06:21
So, our pure art of value creation is new technology is an innovation is developing a new alternative way to make these metals.
2:06:30
That's very different than that that industry standard, right?
2:06:31
The system is still economical.
2:06:34
We can make metal for under $40 a kilo.
2:06:35
Market value is nearly 100.
2:06:37
And we do that with no harmful emissions.
2:06:40
Our system is carbon zero.
2:06:42
This is some of the world's first carbon zero neodymium, right? It's oxidized right now. It should be shiny.
2:06:49
Um, but we can do this while not sacrificing sacrificing economics, which allows us to be able to scale that up in the west and do that in an environmentally viable manner.
2:06:56
Is the primary regulator for this the EPA?
2:07:02
I think there there's a variety of regulators.
2:07:03
It really depends on on the because it's not just one step too.
2:07:05
Rare versus a multitude of processes that have to work together. Yeah. Um talk about Yeah.
2:07:11
Talk about the demand side of this.
2:07:14
From from my view, this this is something like if you can do it, there's massive massive demand and and and sales will be like the easy part.
2:07:23
Is that the correct assessment? Yeah.
2:07:25
Well, you're using them right now, right?
2:07:28
These metals are are literally everywhere, right?
2:07:30
And we make none of them.
2:07:30
So, if you can economically produce these metals in the west and do that sustainably, which is even better.
2:07:36
The demand is is massive, right?
2:07:38
Every US buyer would want to buy a more stable supply of these things.
2:07:43
China just spanned the export of of heavy rares because because of the tariffs.
2:07:47
That's caused a lot of issues in the supply chain because you can't make any magnets without heavy rares.
2:07:52
They're about 5% droium, for example.
2:07:53
So if you have a stable domestic clean supply chain, people will buy it, right?
2:07:58
And it's not even just the market today.
2:08:01
The market's about to quadruple.
2:08:02
We need more clean energy.
2:08:04
We need more electric cars.
2:08:04
We need more fighter jets, right?
2:08:05
So as the market is about to quadruple in the next couple decades, we need better sources of these metal, right? Metals.
2:08:12
We can't just rely on China and we can't just copy them either.
2:08:15
We need to out innovate them.
2:08:16
Do you have any insight into how rare earths play into the narrative that we're hearing around project Stargate, these massive data centers?
2:08:27
It feels like it's the most cutting edge technology in some way.
2:08:29
I imagine that there's rare earths somewhere in that process, but I haven't actually heard those two stories connect.
2:08:37
Whenever I hear rare earths, I hear iPhones and I hear electric cars and then fighter jets.
2:08:42
Um, but is there an AI narrative here too?
2:08:45
Not to be too buzzwordy, but I am curious if you build a massive data center are do you need rare earths or is it just kind of a different process? Yeah.
2:08:54
Well, rare earths are used anywhere where you need high powered magnets, right?
2:08:58
So, when you're looking at data centers, HD hard drives, right?
2:09:02
That's a very big use case for these.
2:09:03
We actually we work with hard drive magnets today.
2:09:05
We're working to partner with a lot of data centers to offload their their hard drive waist streams because they just shred them right now.
2:09:11
They don't do anything with the magnets.
2:09:12
So we can extract the metals from those.
2:09:14
So rers are very much used in in hard drives um for these data centers.
2:09:20
Semiconductor manufacturing processes often use these rares.
2:09:23
Anywhere where you need a high powered magnet, these things are directly applicable.
2:09:26
How many have you run the numbers on on how much uh how many of these valuable rare earths just end up in landfills in the US because we don't have the right processes for recycling and sort of extracting the the sort of key elements.
2:09:42
It's a large number, right?
2:09:42
For the most part, a lot of these electric car motors, for example, just get shredded.
2:09:48
Almost all hard drives get shredded, right?
2:09:50
So, you're looking at I mean, I I wouldn't say maybe a kiloton, but you're looking at very large numbers in terms of um how much of this gets wasted.
2:09:57
There is an existing rare earth recycling industry. It's growing right now.
2:10:00
It's just starting, but it relies on traditionally old tech, right?
2:10:04
There's a few companies that effectively are able to take these magnets, do some acid leaching or leeching process to separate it into mixed oxides.
2:10:09
Then you have to ship the mixed oxide to be separated into individual oxides.
2:10:13
That could be done in China.
2:10:15
There's a few other companies in the west that does it, but it's not a very good process.
2:10:20
Then you have to ship it to China to be metalized, made into metal, right?
2:10:21
So companies are trying to do that recycling, but they aren't able to do it well.
2:10:27
They're not able to do it with very good scale and economics.
2:10:28
So our system is able to do that in one direct step.
2:10:31
um which allows us to be able to help move a lot of that that that market um to recycling rather than just having it shredded and dropped in landfills.
2:10:40
We're trying to work with landfills though to be able to take more of their more of their waste and extract the metal from those.
2:10:44
Uh JB Strable uh famously maybe a co-founder of Tesla or early employee board member uh longtime Tesla employee uh spun out started Redwood Materials recycling electric vehicles.
2:10:56
Is Redwood Materials a part a potential partner to you, a direct competitor?
2:11:00
Are you learning things from the Redwood Materials story? What have they done? Uh, correct?
2:11:05
And what could you do better?
2:11:07
What are you learning from Redwood Materials?
2:11:08
Yeah, I think I think Redwood's a really good story of of getting to scale, right?
2:11:14
I think that's that's something we can certainly learn from and we're always trying to learn from from other other companies in the metal space and how they've been able to take fundamental tech tech and and scale that in the West.
2:11:24
Um, I I would not consider them a direct competitor, but certainly certainly a company we can learn a lot from.
2:11:30
We're planning our our first demonstration plant right now, Redwood Space in Reno.
2:11:35
We're considering that as an option, too. No way.
2:11:36
I imagine that the government's very receptive to this type of stuff there. That's very cool. Smart. That's great.
2:11:42
Well, thank you so much for stopping by.
2:11:43
This was fantastic conversation.
2:11:44
Yeah, super bullish on what you're doing. Yeah, very exciting. And thank you.
2:11:48
I feel like you're going to make my life easier soon.
2:11:50
U you're going to keep the iPhone less than $2,000 which is uh people are tracking.
2:11:57
Anyway, thank you so much for joining. Talk to you soon. Bye. Yeah.
2:11:59
Did you see the poly market that we put up?
2:12:01
It has the TBPN logo on it. Let's go.
2:12:03
What is the price of the next iPhone? Will it be over $1,000? Uh over $1,500. Over $2,000.
2:12:12
I think a $2,000 iPhone sounds extremely luxurious. I'd like to see one.
2:12:16
Imagine the tech they could pack in that thing.
2:12:18
full week battery life on the $2,000 iPhone.
2:12:21
They got to get up there.
2:12:23
They've been keeping the price insane.
2:12:25
I want a high priced iPhone today. Yeah.
2:12:28
Come out with the Anyway, we got Ferdinand coming in the studio.
2:12:32
We will welcome him to the stream. How are you doing? Thanks for coming here. Let's see the t-shirt. Looking great. Looking good. The World Trade Bank. Introduce yourself.
2:12:42
Introduce the t-shirt and then introduce the company.
2:12:46
The t-shirt freshly printed.
2:12:46
Um I'm excited to be here with you guys who's uh who's watching I think. Um no, good to be here.
2:12:54
Um yeah, so I'm 30 um building IV and we're essentially building um a global global money rail, right?
2:13:02
I think I think I can I can kind of like briefly talk about about why we're doing this.
2:13:08
And I I think reality the the the world has gotten a lot smaller obviously since the internet uh became a thing. So I'm I'm I'm German.
2:13:15
Um, so I can send him I can send a mail to the States and it's not um doesn't feel that different to sending a mail to to another German guy.
2:13:23
Um, and I think in reality the the money layer hasn't hasn't really changed in that way and and and the world is still quite large if if you if you think about the money layer of things, right?
2:13:33
So if I want to send like like $100 to states, that might already take a day and I think we're already pretty pretty plugged in. Mh.
2:13:40
And if you're kind of like a Nigerian trade company uh wants to send money to European supplier that takes five days it cost 5%.
2:13:47
So it's kind of like the tariff the tariff no one's talking about in a way and I obviously I subscribe to the pover to to to full extent but I do think that's inhibiting um prosperity prosperity around the globe.
2:14:00
Um and we think there's an opportunity to kind of rebuild that stack right we think that there are two things happening which make it possible.
2:14:10
uh on one hand global roll out of real-time payments when back when I was in uni I actually worked on step by instant kind of like European real-time payment rail fiat realtime payment rail and we we thought back then and back then this was still a hot take that this was going to go global right and we're going to see every major economy rolling
2:14:25
out their own real-time payment rail and um this is I think very much happening right we obviously the emerging market story picks Brazil UPI India and now in the states now even maybe um and we think that's that's actually only going to continue right and we're going to have this ubiquity of local realtime payments rates. And then the second
2:14:39
And then the second thing that's that's uh happening is is that that stable coins and digital assets kind of emerging as as a regulated interoperability asset with with the the capacity to stitch these local realtime payment rates together, right?
2:14:51
And we think um that's kind of like the very immediate opportunity to just build faster and cheaper global global payments and and yeah, so right now we're working with all all kinds of default global companies, right?
2:15:05
work with big remittance companies, work with global PSPs.
2:15:08
We we are the de facto payments platform for for the European crypto industry, right?
2:15:12
So like a large chunk of European crypto volume flows for us and we power um global payments for these companies. Okay.
2:15:18
Um, and that's Tell me more about about like the actual product you're building, where you sit in the stack because I mean like I've heard the international payments are hard and they are, but at the same time like I can pay people in other countries.
2:15:34
Uh, most payroll providers are set up for it.
2:15:37
I've paid people in stable coins.
2:15:39
It wasn't super easy, but it did exist.
2:15:42
And you know, there are stablecoin platforms that allow you to move money around.
2:15:46
So it seems like at this point some of the foundational layer is there.
2:15:50
So I'm wondering like how do you figure out I got I got to call out John.
2:15:54
call out John. You've spent your entire life as an entrepreneur mostly paying people less getting you know paid as like a international contractor partner vendor and the lag time between when you hit pay I don't feel it you don't feel the pain because like you hit pay the money maybe leaves the account but then
2:16:14
the person on the other end is sitting there kind of you know waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting okay and there's no reason it's like there's with the technology today there's no reason for that to be the case yeah so yeah I break break down the break swift like honestly
2:16:28
I mean even swift works kind of well from the states to the emerging markets right sure so I think like it really gets tricky the other way around usually is I think the reality of these these flows are they not as birectionally hard as as as people think so if if you're
2:16:42
like in an emerging market you want to send uh you want to kind of like tap into dollar supply and send send money into states that that gets really hard right and so I think there are still specific flows which are very much kind of like um excluded from from from from these trade uh trade opportunities. And
2:16:54
And I think where we sit in the stack and why what what we think is kind of like necessary to be built is we're very bare metal on the fiat side, right?
2:17:04
And so we we we really believe this is very much still like a fiat problem and you got to be kind of deeply regulated and deeply connected to the fiat rates to kind of like precision engineer um essentially a bank and a banking stack around digital assets, right?
2:17:19
And we think this and there there are many reasons for this but this really makes it possible to kind of re rebuild that whole kind of like swift swift thing right and make make that work for both sides and on and all kinds of flows. Yeah.
2:17:30
Because like from like just technically if I'm in some random country and I have the resources to mine Bitcoin and swap it into stable coins like I can technically transfer it instantaneously today but there might be gas fees and all sorts of different technical and there's not any like you know interoperability with the rest of the financial system but it's like doable.
2:17:53
So a lot of this is about the products that you're building around the existing rails. Is that correct?
2:17:57
Or are you or do you think you'll build like a new chain at some point?
2:18:01
A new like L1 may maybe follow me on Twitter and stay tuned. Let's hear it. Let's go.
2:18:07
I think um I think in reality right now um we're building for businesses, right?
2:18:12
And so I think like it's it's still there's a difference of like like this rogue freelancer kind of like mining and swapping his his Bitcoin and kind of being able to to to be a new kind of correspondent bank to other financial institutions.
2:18:26
And these are 90% of our customers, right?
2:18:28
Other financial institutions, PSPs, remittance companies, web free companies.
2:18:31
Um, and being a new kind of correspond correspondent bank for these companies, I think, um, you really got to rebuild the the banking and fiat stack from ground up, right?
2:18:40
And got to be really metal about it and then kind of like rebuild it up from first principles with digital assets backed into it, right?
2:18:47
And I think that's the kind of like institutional opportunity at hand here.
2:18:50
Yeah, John, you're not thinking big enough.
2:18:52
You're over here thinking like, how do we move 10 grand?
2:18:53
He's thinking, "How do I move $10 billion a second?" Yep. every second of the day. That's fair. That's fair.
2:19:01
Uh, talk to me about the different tradeoffs between building and buying in different countries.
2:19:06
Have you I've seen a lot of companies that go out and buy a legacy bank to get a charter?
2:19:12
Is that a relevant part of the strategy or is that kind of antiquated?
2:19:17
Can you get through the regulatory hurdles to get everything you need or will you need to think about some end run around the regulation?
2:19:26
Yeah, it can be smart, right?
2:19:26
We actually we actually did this in Europe uh last summer.
2:19:28
Um so we bought like a regulated institution.
2:19:30
Um there and and and that was a great um that was actually a great project, right?
2:19:35
Like so that was like time to license was extremely fast, cost was extremely manageable and overall like a positive experience.
2:19:44
Uh so um I think I can I can recommend.
2:19:46
Um in the states I think there there are a couple of things that are different.
2:19:51
So that's a whole that's a whole different story and each market is kind of like I think it's hard to generalize but but yes I still see these things happening and there's like like rather liquid M&A market for regulated institutions for that are being sold for the for the sake of being regulated and having the license transferred. Yeah, makes sense. Anything else, Jordy? Super exciting. Fantastic.
2:20:12
We need uh we need those shirts.
2:20:14
We we need this service because international advertisers are trying to transfer us billions of dollars for single ad reads and yeah, we can't be playing 5%.
2:20:22
Yeah, we say we say send the shipping container filled with cash right now, but I would love to just have it deposited instantaneously.
2:20:27
Where where are you based by the way? Uh you're from Germany.
2:20:31
Are you still living there or Yeah, I'm based in Berlin.
2:20:35
Um so it's it's getting late here. Greetings. Thanks for staying up.
2:20:39
And yeah, we we will we will get the we will get the t-shirt sent and we will help ramp power all of the things that they apparently are lacking for you guys. Let's go. There we go. There we go.
2:20:49
But that being said, yeah, good to see you guys. Awesome. Congratulations. Bye. Great talking.
2:20:53
Uh next up, we have Juan coming in to the studio.
2:20:56
We're excited to keep this lightning round going.
2:21:00
We have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven teal fellows left for the day.
2:21:05
And they said it couldn't be done.
2:21:07
They said it couldn't be done. Nobody believed. Nobody believed. Have some faith.
2:21:12
They said technology didn't need another podcast and yet here we are.
2:21:16
Um, welcome to the stream. How you doing? Hey guys.
2:21:19
How are Thank you for having me. Welcome. Of course.
2:21:22
Uh, would you mind kicking it off with a little bit of an introduction on yourself and the company to get get us started? Absolutely.
2:21:29
So, I'm currently like the the founder of Phase Labs.
2:21:32
Space Labs is a research lab that it's building that technology to regenerate complex organs directly in your body.
2:21:39
So basically imagine imagine you lost a limb.
2:21:44
Imagine you lost a limb for example.
2:21:46
You were like a war fighter.
2:21:48
You went you went to the military.
2:21:50
Maybe you suffer from diabetes and you had to be amputated.
2:21:52
There's no way you could regenerate that right now.
2:21:56
You have to like rely on prosthetics.
2:21:58
But prosthetics is is kind of Yeah. Honestly.
2:22:00
Um, and this happens if you look this happens not only with limbs but actually with all the rest of the organs of the body.
2:22:06
So we're building that technology.
2:22:07
That's kind of the the glimpse of it.
2:22:09
How much of this is like I mean this is pure sci-fi feels like is this informed by what is it the salamander that breaks the tail off and then they regrow it?
2:22:18
Is this like Jurassic Park where you actually learn something from that or is there a different Didn't we We got Ompic from some crazy dragon. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
2:22:25
The Komodo dragon monster. Uh yeah.
2:22:29
What what is the basically I want to know trace back for me the tech tree that got us to today.
2:22:36
I imagine you're standing on the shoulders of giants. Is crisper relevant?
2:22:40
Like what is relevant to allow you to do this?
2:22:43
Because this sounds like pure sci-fi to me. Yeah.
2:22:45
So I I will start with that last line like the crisper line because I think that's that's extremely important.
2:22:51
We are not doing genetic engineering.
2:22:53
doing genetic engineering. um and and that has advantages from regulatory point of view but also like on the underlying R&D I actually and this might be controversial but I actually don't think that you can solve this problem with genetic engineering like finding one two three genes that you can
2:23:09
basically correct the problem I don't think that's possible at all we are basically modifying the physiological signals directly in the body more specifically we are leveraging electrphysiological signals so a lot of people doesn't know but the same signals that rule your brain actually are all over your body. Basically when you were born you were a
2:23:27
Basically when you were born you were a single zygote and literally that that zygote self assembled yourself into a living human functioning being.
2:23:35
So let's give it up for the zygot.
2:23:38
Let's give it up for them. This is fantastic.
2:23:40
Uh so basically what we have discovered and this is bas this is work of the last 15 20 years is that these electrophysiological signals during the process of development encode information instructive information to to control morphagenesis which is the process of growth and form of of an organism.
2:24:01
Um so yeah definitely we are like on the shoulders of giants. That's that's a fact. Yeah. regrowing a hand.
2:24:08
That seems like the final boss of this potentially.
2:24:11
Uh what's the easiest thing to regrow?
2:24:13
Are you starting with like a fingernail and then you work your way up or do you go for the hand straight out and try to oneshot that?
2:24:18
Like is there is there something that we already regrow that we can maybe maybe build on? Yeah. Hair.
2:24:26
We know the hair loss market.
2:24:28
Maybe you should pivot into just hair loss.
2:24:29
Seems to be a lot of money in that.
2:24:31
That would be that that would be extremely profitable, honestly. Yeah. Yeah.
2:24:35
Yeah. ju just just as a matter of fact I mean babies human babies are able to regrow the the tip of their of their fingers of their digits uh once like they are they are young yeah they that that already happens what happens is that like the human body lose this
2:24:55
capacity throughout time throughout aging uh and now like regarding the question what what is the final b what is the final boss I actually think the kidney it's even anatomically speaking it's even more complex than than than the limp. But the limp is right up there
2:25:08
But the limp is right up there like this will like these two indications will be kind of in the next 10 15 years.
2:25:15
These will are kind of long-term research programs.
2:25:17
On the short term, we are focusing on indications that where we could basically move a lot faster in the next five years.
2:25:25
So for example, coronic bone healing, this happens to diabetic patients when they suffer from ulcers and it's actually the main cause of amputations worldwide.
2:25:33
So, so we are basically tracking these initial problems first.
2:25:37
What about even something like scar tissue?
2:25:39
Like a lot of people have like C-section scars or scars from anything.
2:25:43
Is that is that relevant or like the same kind of biological process or is that a different fork of the tech tree?
2:25:49
Yeah, actually it's it's pretty similar.
2:25:52
It's it's based it's based on the same electrochemical signals in the regenerative process.
2:25:59
So if you look that are already in the market electric wound dressings that you actually can put in the skin and accelerate the wound process.
2:26:08
Uh but this basically there are these are extremely limited to a stage two and a stage one uh injuries.
2:26:12
So for example if you have like an injury of five millimeters but once you start like involving like one two centimeters it starts to be incredibly more complex.
2:26:25
You you touch muscle you touch bones.
2:26:25
So that's that's that's a lot harder. Yeah.
2:26:30
What um what what's exciting about what's happening in the uh I saw some recent news around a genetically edited pig kidney that was transferred into a human and it sounds like it was somewhat effective.
2:26:42
Is there anything that you you guys can learn?
2:26:44
uh just just immediately my my reaction to that is like I would rather have a you know regular human kidney that was generated just for me instead of a genetically edited pig kidney that gets sort of uh transferred uh transplanted in but what what are you learning from from that space or tracking?
2:27:03
space or tracking? Yeah, I I think I think those initiatives I mean any initiative that tries to to crack the problem it's it's worthwhile but I'm I'm I'm quite skeptical with with those approaches because there are a lot of questions regarding the immune system how much like what would be the rejection of a human body in these cases
2:27:23
uh like the immunogenicity of the related process it's like a huge huge question mark uh and and I actually think that if we if we want to solve the regenerative problem not only like one organ But like actual regeneration, whole body regeneration like Deadpool or Wolverine for example, we we actually need to leverage the fundamental mechanisms that the body already uses. So go there, understand what is the
2:27:46
So go there, understand what is the language, what is the code that the body uses for for morphagenesis and and and learn to modulate that code like more fundamentally.
2:27:55
I think that's important.
2:27:57
What's the user experience?
2:27:57
I you've been mentioning like electro stimulation.
2:28:00
Is this not a pill that I take? Yeah.
2:28:04
So there's there's a continuum of technology and this is important.
2:28:07
So for the limb regeneration the the stimulation will be a lot more complex than just like electric currents.
2:28:13
Of course it's it's a it's an anatomical structure that it's a lot more complex but starting like with the chronic wound healing with the short-term um research program uh we are working uh with a with a medical device approach in mind. Why?
2:28:29
because medical devices are a lot easier to pass through the FDA do clinical trials on top of them.
2:28:33
Once you start with biologics, they are extremely hard.
2:28:36
So we want to accelerate that process first and then I think that the ide the ideal version of this technology is kind of a combination product where you use these biohysical stimulation with light and ultrasound but also leverage kind of the molecular specificity of of proteins at the same time. Yeah.
2:28:54
uh if you're if you're successful as you sound like you're going to be, what is what is the craziest potential future that you could imagine?
2:29:01
Are we are we, you know, regenerating entire uh versions of ourselves? I want extra arms. Make me like Doc O. Yeah. I I I want Yeah. from Spider-Man. I want six arms. Uh yeah.
2:29:14
What What's the craziest, you know, potential potentially skip leg day? Regrow your leg muscles. Can you imagine? John would love this. John would love this.
2:29:23
Just massive quads without ever hitting the leg press.
2:29:25
The world would change overnight. Yeah. Probably. Yeah.
2:29:31
Uh what like one one important Yeah.
2:29:36
I I think there are there are two two variants of like a really optimistic crazy future.
2:29:40
The first one I think it's more like a cultural change.
2:29:44
We we have like this idea that uh steel that if you like use you are be able to edit yourself with maybe a a hand a robotic arm and you are kind of a blend of robotic human person like somehow you will be stronger.
2:29:58
Uh but but that I mean that's just a bias that we have because we have not been able to engineer biology like successfully as we wanted.
2:30:06
successfully as we wanted. I I I would love like for humans to to to understand that biology could be as robust as any other thing and even start relating this technology to aging itself and and and of course there's still like a gap in which that that we we should answer that to what extent regenerating all the organs of your body would be related to
2:30:26
aging and increasing longevity but but I think there's we have big reasons to believe that that it it will be high connected so basically expand like the the lifespan kind of people like 100 years more to be able to be more productive, have like healthier lives, change our our our societal construct of what it's a meaningful life would be amazing. And then on the limit, it would
2:30:46
And then on the limit, it would be also awesome.
2:30:48
It would be extremely awesome to be able to engineer like artificial biological networks in the same way that we are doing right now with uh artificial neural networks in AI.
2:30:58
So basically constructs, biobots that can go out there and solve solve all sorts of problems for us.
2:31:04
I I think that that would be amazing as well. That is amazing. I love it.
2:31:09
Congratulations and thanks for breaking it down for us.
2:31:13
Yeah, this is super exciting. It's a lot to process.
2:31:15
It's not a simple business. This is amazing, though. I'm very excited.
2:31:19
But yeah, I mean, we could do a whole hour on this.
2:31:21
So, yeah, we'll have to have you back. This is fantastic.
2:31:24
Thanks so much for stopping by. We'll talk to you soon. Absolutely. Cheers. Bye.
2:31:28
Next up, we have Jennifer Lynn.
2:31:28
uh excited to talk to her and um we we we ran through all our ads.
2:31:35
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2:31:39
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2:31:47
Uh let's bring in Jennifer. Welcome to the stream. How are you doing? Jennifer, welcome.
2:31:51
Thank you for taking the time. How are you doing? It's great to have you.
2:31:58
Oh, I think we have you on mute.
2:31:58
I don't know if we're it's a problem on our side or your side. We are good.
2:32:02
Would you mind trying again? Both. I think you can hear me. We can hear you. Welcome to the show.
2:32:09
Would you mind kicking it off with an introduction on yourself and the company? Yeah, happy to. So, I'm Jennifer.
2:32:14
Um, and uh my company AUG, we focus on solving the access problem in rare disease.
2:32:20
So there's a large amount of drugs in rare disease that are already effective or potentially effective for the patient.
2:32:27
Um it's been tried by a doctor and maybe one or two patients.
2:32:31
They wrote up a study saying that, you know, there's been some efficacy here, but the rest of the rare disease patients don't get access.
2:32:37
Um so I'm really working on a drug development company to develop these drugs that already work for rare disease patients that need it. Interesting.
2:32:48
We had there was a little bit of a debate on the show last week between uh two guests who were arguing over the idea of how the FDA decides to approve drugs, whether the whether the benchmark is better than a placebo, better than nothing or better than the standard of care.
2:33:08
Um how do how do you see the FDA's mandate in drug development? What is their goal?
2:33:16
Are they trying to protect certain certain IP structures by limiting the access to drugs or is it more purely based on safety and efficacy broadly? Yeah.
2:33:32
Um, I think, you know, so we've had conversations with the FDA and at the end of the day, the FDA is really a group of people trying their best to approve drugs that work, um, and then, uh, you know, reject drugs that might have safety issues or are the same as placebo. Mhm.
2:33:49
Um so for us working in rare disease a lot of the times we are up against placebo or even historical controls um because there's usually no approved treatment um in these specific diseases.
2:34:02
So, it's much easier to get a drug approved there versus if you work in, you know, cancer, which is very common, um, like breast cancer.
2:34:10
Um, there's already so many drugs that are approved and effective that you have to run really long trials against drugs that already work.
2:34:20
Um, and that ends up being extremely costly, extremely expensive, and there is some debate about, you know, is there a way to get around this five, sixyear trial?
2:34:27
Yeah, I've seen some biotech companies that will go and they'll pick up a dead asset like a drug that maybe didn't make it through phase three and then they kind of repackage it, IPO the company, and then everyone's kind of betting on, oh, maybe they can get it through phase three now.
2:34:45
Is is that a piece of your strategy or do you think you'll be taking like a completely different uh approach? Yeah.
2:34:53
So what we typically do is whenever a drug works for patients, there's so many reasons why they don't have access.
2:35:00
Um one could be the formulation that works is just so much higher and they need um a special drug company to come in and formulate it so that it's stable or it's available as an injection and patients need it as an eye drop um and so on.
2:35:14
So a lot of what we do is we take an existing drug and we basically provide it in the formulation that's actually accurate and effective for these patients.
2:35:25
Um but yeah, like repurposing old drugs is a great strategy because you have safety um usually already established for patients.
2:35:35
Now you just have to work on making sure that it's like a drug that works. Yeah.
2:35:38
Do you see a piece of the business being partnering with big pharmaceutical companies or drug companies that already have something like that?
2:35:48
It's a shot and they want it to be an eye drop and you come in as a partner to them or is there a completely different pathway because I imagine hey if I own the patent on this drug as a shot I'm not just going to let you take it and turn into an eye drop for free and make all the money.
2:36:04
Uh, so how does the business partnership work?
2:36:06
As you know, we probably want to compensate the scientist who actually created the shot even though you're going to do a lot of hard work to make the eye drop version. Yeah.
2:36:15
So, there's two sides to this.
2:36:17
We've thought about partnering before and we've done a lot of conversations with top five pharma and what they say usually is cash is king.
2:36:25
So, for them like upfront is really important.
2:36:29
you know like what regardless of indication you need to produce x amount of cash to you know license this asset and take it forward.
2:36:38
So we've taken an alternative approach which is there are so many drugs right now that are off patent.
2:36:42
So their effective life in um a larger indication like autoimmune disease um so on has already expired.
2:36:52
big farmers already made that much money and now this drug is, you know, available for very cheap.
2:36:59
Um, and typically what we do is now we take this already invented drug and we add on something that makes it the right fit for rare disease patients.
2:37:10
What areas of biotech and drug development right now are most exciting to you?
2:37:14
We've obviously seen like a huge boom in GLP-1s.
2:37:16
Uh, crisper has been exciting for years and continues to be exciting in many ways.
2:37:22
Um but there are other pockets of uh of drugs that people are working on.
2:37:28
Where do you see kind of the most lowhanging fruit in terms of what you do bringing access to uh drugs in different categories uh versus what's the next next thing? Yeah.
2:37:39
So lowhanging fruit um and also what's the next moonshot?
2:37:46
It's a great question for us.
2:37:48
Lowhanging fruit is we follow FDA guidances very closely.
2:37:51
So they just recently released the guidance that um certain biologic drugs, antibodies don't have to go after as much animal testing.
2:38:00
You can leverage a lot of um human clinical trials which is like almost incorporating common sense, right?
2:38:05
Like if it's safe in humans, then maybe we don't have to do um a 24-week, you know, mice talk study.
2:38:12
Um so like the antibbody biologic space is really interesting because of the amount of studies you might be able to skip if your drug's already safe.
2:38:22
Um and in the moonshot area completely unrelated to rare disease but longevity is very interesting.
2:38:31
Um you know if there's a lot of discourse about can we develop or can we actually develop the first real drug to prevent aging to reduce the aging process.
2:38:42
Um, and I think if you can be the first to market in such an insanely large market, everybody's aging, everybody would like some sort of drug to stay healthier for longer.
2:38:51
Um, that's an incredibly exciting space to be in.
2:38:57
Yeah, we talked to the founder of New Limit and we both came away extremely bullish on that category.
2:39:03
Please, please just make it work.
2:39:03
Uh I'm curious uh h how does pricing how do pricing models differ uh differ in sort of rare uh for therapeutics in the rare disease space given that the actual market size I I'm assuming things are a lot more expensive just because markets are smaller but maybe that's maybe that's the incorrect read. Yeah, it really depends.
2:39:29
Um and when you talk about pricing, there's also this overall you're taking into account all the insurance um buyer payers that exist in the US.
2:39:40
Um so there are drugs that insurance payers will have push back on and typically that's um drugs for really really large indications for example longevity maybe um Alzheimer's where there's such a large amount of patients even if you charge them 10,000 um per year to the insurer that's hundreds of billions of dollars that they won't be able to um really bear for a new drug.
2:40:08
Whereas for rare disease, if you have 10,000 patients and you're charging 100k per year, um that's actually still a negligible amount spread out amongst all the different payers in the US.
2:40:18
Um so typically those conversations actually go pretty smoothly for rare disease where you say we have a really large impact on this patient and there's only so few patients. That's cool. That's cool. Seems like it's working.
2:40:33
uh one part of healthcare that's working working well. It's great.
2:40:38
Uh well, thank you so much for stopping by. This was really fun.
2:40:40
We'd love to have you back and get an update when uh you have more news. Yeah.
2:40:45
Congratulations on on joining the fellowship as well. Yeah.
2:40:47
Have a great rest of your day. Talk to you soon. Bye.
2:40:52
Next up, we have Teddy Teddy Warner coming in from coming into the studio.
2:40:57
Uh while we get him queued up, let me tell you about Figma.
2:40:59
Think bigger, build faster.
2:41:00
Figma helps design and development teams build great products together.
2:41:06
You can get started for free. Go to figma. com. It's fantastic product. Jord's addicted. He's a Figma addict.
2:41:12
He can't stop using Figma.
2:41:14
He designs endless slide decks in it.
2:41:17
Um our our beautiful website tbpn.
2:41:20
com was designed in Figma.
2:41:22
Um we've actually experimented the entire overlay that you've seen.
2:41:26
This is all from Figma and then gets baked into our production software which we don't talk about because it's our secret. It's our secret sauce.
2:41:32
Anyway, welcome to the stream, Teddy. Good to have you here. How are you doing? Good. How are you? I'm great. Thanks for having me.
2:41:40
I heard um I heard y'all are in a new studio, which is We are This is the first day. We have a giant first.
2:41:45
Yeah, it's it's an honor.
2:41:45
I'm We're in it with Teal Fellow Tuesday.
2:41:48
We're very excited to have you here.
2:41:50
They said it couldn't happen. Yeah.
2:41:52
Uh can you introduce yourself? break us down. What are you building? How'd you get there? Where'd you grow up? Give me the whole thing.
2:42:00
I'm Teddy from North Carolina.
2:42:00
I used to work in a in a maker space in a machine shop.
2:42:04
This is my technical baseline.
2:42:06
One way or another, found myself in California.
2:42:08
Uh worked at Mid Journey in a past life.
2:42:10
Now I run a robotics lab called Intempus.
2:42:12
This is so funny about the Teal Fellowship.
2:42:14
really quickly like the whole idea is like dropping out of college and Jordy was making this joke that like oh like you know the teal fellowship has a combined you know five years of work experience because like no one's supposed to have worked and it's like a joke that every every startup's like oh you have 20 years of management experience combined but like most of you that we've talked to have years of experience somehow.
2:42:31
So were you working and going to school like how did you work at midjourney while not while not like dropping out yet?
2:42:41
If you want the the very a bridged teddy timeline is I I grew up in North Carolina, worked in this in this machine shop in this maker space for about four years.
2:42:49
Somehow wound up in biotech.
2:42:49
I was doing manufacturing for invasive electrodes for chronically ill children.
2:42:55
So everything from EEG to ECG electrodes. Very cool. With an engineer.
2:42:59
Uh discovered I I was actually like exceedingly squeamish.
2:43:01
And so on a whim went to university in LA at USC for about a year. Uh studied art. Jord's back. Hey, I'm back. I'm back.
2:43:11
I had to hit the air horn. How's it going for SC? Yeah, let's go. Let's go. We love USC. Um, had a total blast.
2:43:18
Studied art and technology and and a bit of business and some film and the whole shebang.
2:43:23
I I know when you go to California, you get pretty caught up in the culture.
2:43:28
And so, unsurprisingly, I started the venture.
2:43:31
Um, wound up meeting David, MidJourney David through this venture.
2:43:34
Uh, which is how I wound up at Midjourney. Very cool. About a year ago now. Nice. Left nine months ago.
2:43:40
Now I run a robotics lab called Intempus.
2:43:42
I make robots expressive.
2:43:43
Robots currently suck at communicating what they're doing.
2:43:47
They're really hard to understand.
2:43:47
You have to pay expensive nerds like me to come use the command line anytime you're trying to understand what they're what they're up to.
2:43:52
And so I make them communicate like every other mammal and like every other human.
2:43:56
Uh such that you can interact with a robot even though you don't speak its language.
2:44:00
What are we talking about robots?
2:44:01
I felt like it was pretty easy that that robot that was like on a stand. Oh yeah. Yeah.
2:44:05
Flailing around killing it.
2:44:07
That was pretty I understand some of it's telltale. Yeah.
2:44:11
I mean, are we talking about like industrial robots like like like cucka arms and stuff or are we talking Roombas or the future humanoid robots?
2:44:18
Like what's the first product that you think needs what's the first robot that really needs humanization? Sure.
2:44:23
I mean, a as you can tell like robots is probably the largest umbrella term that we have.
2:44:28
It spans from humanoids to like glorified Roombas and everything in between.
2:44:33
So, how do you make them expressive?
2:44:35
Well, I think it's uh quite telltale.
2:44:38
If I have an anthropomorphic robot like a humanoid, I can say, "Oh, it waves."
2:44:41
Or, "Oh, it it smiles or moves around and you know, this makes sense."
2:44:45
But, Inis focuses on non-anthropomorphic robots, specifically the ones that already exist.
2:44:50
So, where do robots exist? They exist in industry.
2:44:52
Yeah, robots work great in industry.
2:44:54
99% of the time, they work wonderfully.
2:44:56
Uh, like if you think about an Amazon warehouse, there's a bunch of little Roombas that roll around and move the the carts and stuff.
2:45:01
Uh, and you know, on occasion, probably 1% of the time, these robots fail.
2:45:06
And they hardly ever fail for technically complex reasons.
2:45:09
Usually robots fail for some trivial reason.
2:45:11
Say, um, you know, Jord's in a in an Amazon warehouse, and there's a Rainbow trying to pass him, and it gets stuck because Jord's in his way.
2:45:18
And so the the robot in the warehouse just fails and it leaves a fail code in the command line and it moves on and does something else.
2:45:23
And what Intempus does is we allow these robots to be expressive.
2:45:27
We allow them to give convey their intent to people like Jordy in this case who would not otherwise understand what the robot is trying to do.
2:45:35
So what if this robot upon I'm not I'm not technical. I'm not technical.
2:45:39
Just really just not a shock.
2:45:42
If you see if if you see a robot like getting nippy with you like a small dog, it's like, oh I should probably move out of the robot's way.
2:45:50
And so you can save a bunch of money on debug costs uh and also reduce downtime of robots just by allowing them to communicate what they're up to.
2:45:57
And in the future, of course, we'll get into consumer and service and humanoids, but right now it's an all industry. Awesome.
2:46:05
Uh I mean uh you gave the example of Amazon.
2:46:08
They acquired KA systems in 2017, eight years now.
2:46:10
Uh I'm sure they're thinking about this.
2:46:13
uh is Amazon the right customer for you or do you want to start kind of in the more mid-market or do you want to be more you know productled growth developerled growth hackers get into like the next generation of robotics companies?
2:46:29
What's the go to market look like?
2:46:31
Yeah, I I have a few thoughts here.
2:46:34
I mean so in Tempest's initial customer base are all enterprise robotics manufacturers.
2:46:39
They're people who sell the robots to Amazon. Yep.
2:46:41
Uh, and seemingly everyone is vertically integrating in in this policy space.
2:46:45
I think it's hardly prophetic for me to say that we're going to have a lot of robots in the future, uh, whether it be in industry or in service or in consumer, and that these robots are going to have to interact with humans.
2:46:53
And it's quite shocking that, you know, not many people are focused on the interaction layer, how humans and robots are going to interact.
2:47:00
Instead, they're focused on making robots functional. Yeah.
2:47:01
And so, I'd love if more players like Amazon and big big players would get into the space.
2:47:05
I want you guys to imagine like say you're walking down Hollywood uh to the office in 10 years from now and you pass by 20 robots uh and one robot is running an Amazon model and one is running an Inmpus model and one is running a a Tesla model.
2:47:19
This is like the same experience as going to talk with a like walking down the street and chatting with a Nigerian and then a Canadian and then a Lithuanian.
2:47:26
There's three different languages, three different dialects, three different humors.
2:47:28
It's a terrible user experience.
2:47:30
terrible user experience. uh and so it's seemingly very important that we figure out one standardized means of human robot interaction and the way that I'm prolifer proliferating into this space is through the enterprise manufacturers that are selling robots to big companies
2:47:43
to small companies as long as there's a scalable impact I'll work with them cool how influenced are you by uh movies like Wall-E right you know the sort of the fun robot feel it feels like you want robots to be uh doing serious work but in a have it be sort of enjoyable to interact with them. Is Is that Is that
2:48:01
Is Is that Is that accurate? Yes, absolutely.
2:48:03
Uh I'm a big Interstellar fan. Yeah, Tar. Great robot. Tarsus is killer. Tar is killer.
2:48:11
There's one scene in Interstellar where Cooper sets Tar's humor level or truth level to like 90%. 90%. Yeah.
2:48:15
One of the tricks like behind making robots expressive is giving them emotions because what are you expressing?
2:48:22
Well, you're expressing emotions.
2:48:24
And you can view all of these as scalers. Yeah.
2:48:25
And so I can give robots a 90% humor level or a 90% joy level. And so it's pretty cool.
2:48:32
Like it it shocking to me how on point Tarsus is.
2:48:34
There's a whole bunch of like interesting media that came out of the the creation of Interstellars on how they they simultaneously made Tar he's a cold ex-military robot and also Cooper's best friend.
2:48:45
And so this is absolutely the the intention. Fantastic.
2:48:49
Uh talk to me about the tech stack.
2:48:49
I imagine that you mentioned command lines.
2:48:52
Are you doing post training on a fin on a foundation model?
2:48:55
Are you using llama open source stuff?
2:48:57
Like what what how do you actually uh solve the technical problem?
2:49:03
What what is deeper in the supply chain of your tech stack?
2:49:09
So there's as I mentioned earlier like seemingly everyone is focused on vertically integrating control policy.
2:49:15
All the big companies are doing this and you get big horizontal companies that are awesome like physical intelligence.
2:49:19
Y and I really don't want to compete with these people.
2:49:20
In fact, I want to work with them.
2:49:22
And so when I initially put my mind to how do I construct this architecture, I I had to say like okay, I absolutely need to be an augmentation at top the transformer layer.
2:49:30
So after uh you know a robot is told what to do by its decision transformer, I run this interaction layer.
2:49:37
Now I want you guys uh you guys have both heard the phrase time flies when you're having fun.
2:49:40
Of course, this is like a pretty integral way in which humans perceive the world.
2:49:46
The inverse is also true.
2:49:46
Your perception of time moves slower when you're stressed.
2:49:50
And so we have fun and stress to emotions and they change how we perceive the world subjectively.
2:49:56
And so what in Tempest does uh we equip these things called time constants.
2:50:01
The question is like time flies when you're having fun.
2:50:04
What is time for a robot? Well, time is compute.
2:50:05
So what if you could allocate compute such that when a robot is having fun or when it's, you know, not needed to do any like daunting task, it can use the minimum amount of compute necessary.
2:50:15
we can move as quickly as possible.
2:50:16
But when a robot is stressed, you know, and it's failing, uh, it should use more compute to a collect more data so we can train the and and squash the edge case and b convey why it fails to again people in factories and people that would otherwise not understand what the robot is trying to do. Yeah.
2:50:32
And that that aligns with like test time inference scaling rules right now where you want to do more reasoning for harder problems. That makes sense. Yeah. Very cool.
2:50:40
Uh, anything else, Jordy? Are we good?
2:50:42
I think we're good, but come back on again soon, Teddy. Yeah, fantastic.
2:50:47
This is this is super exciting and uh I look forward to interacting uh speaking uh the the Intempus language with many many robots throughout my life. Me too. We'll talk to you soon. Have a good one. Cheers, dude. Bye. Bye.
2:51:00
Next up, we have Sigil, founder of Extraordinary, coming on the stream.
2:51:05
Very excited to have him.
2:51:09
I got to say, these TFL is pretty punctual.
2:51:12
I was about to say running late.
2:51:12
This is a very crazy thing.
2:51:14
You get this calendar invite.
2:51:15
You just hop on the stream, buddy. He's here right on time. It's amazing. Hey, join at 142.
2:51:22
Um, Sigil, great to have you on. How you doing? I'm doing pretty good. How are you? Uh, doing great.
2:51:27
It's been a super fun day so far.
2:51:29
Uh, the class is absolutely stacked and congrats on on making it in.
2:51:35
Why don't you start with a bit of backstory, your personal story, and then what you're working on? Yeah.
2:51:41
So, I'm C Joel, the founder of extraordinary. com.
2:51:43
We are the extraordinary talent company of America.
2:51:47
Um, if you Google 01 visa for extraordinary ability, you'll find my face is the cover image.
2:51:50
And I'm the guy going around giving out these alien of extraordinary ability hoodies that you see on your ex feed. Amazing.
2:51:57
Uh, talk about your personal journey to kind of building this company. Yeah.
2:52:03
So, um, when I was in high school, uh, I built this, uh, project that was, I think he did like 100K in revenue this first month.
2:52:12
And I used the funds to pay someone to finish high school for me. And I San Francisco.
2:52:15
And, um, I came here on a tourist visa.
2:52:18
I'm originally from Toronto, Canada.
2:52:20
I'm like, "Holy these people are based uh, these people are incredibly ambitious. I have to stay here."
2:52:25
And if you don't go to college, um, at the time, I originally got into the M& program at the University of Pennsylvania.
2:52:32
I decided to opt out because I was pretty stubborn.
2:52:35
I I really just wanted to be in Silicon Valley.
2:52:38
And the only visa options was the 01 for extraordinary ability.
2:52:41
And this is what the US government calls it.
2:52:45
And at the time, this was probably 3 years ago, uh it wasn't as proliferated.
2:52:50
The one person I knew was Patrick Collison who had that.
2:52:52
Um I couldn't get a TN visa or the H1B because you needed a degree.
2:52:56
So I had to go for the 01.
2:52:56
and I hunted down every single person in Silicon Valley that uh that had the O1 visa, tried to understood what could qualify and after eight months with an immigration lawyer. I filed it.
2:53:07
It was sponsored by Nepal.
2:53:09
I built this company with him and uh I was approved at 20 and I was like, "Holy this is it's so hard for the world's best talent to to come here. It's so unintuitive."
2:53:17
And uh I made a YouTube video uh about the about the process that has since has been seen by hundreds of thousands of people.
2:53:26
And um I I made this this hoodie during uh as merch for that YouTube video.
2:53:32
So, and that kind of took off.
2:53:35
What are the overall trends in the 01 visas?
2:53:37
It feels like I mean like immigration is obviously complicated, but it feels like all the stars align for like everyone being like 01's are great.
2:53:45
Uh Elon has come out and said he, you know, loves 01's and like it feels like it's aligned with American values and freedom and like brain drain and even strategic stuff.
2:53:53
like there's a lot of there's a lot of pro um are the number of ones 01's increasing? Is this a new program?
2:53:59
Can you give us like a little bit of like history and trajectory for the 01 program broadly?
2:54:05
Yeah, I mean I I like to think that the 01 was created for the Manhattan project.
2:54:09
I think the the it's it's that ethos.
2:54:12
Um I I don't know the exact origins but it's it's it's been around and it's it's been used to the premise of it is that you are the top you're an individual has risen to the top of your field.
2:54:24
I like to say you're like the top.
2:54:26
1 percentile at at what you do and USCIS has these eight criterias to adhere towards.
2:54:33
Um, you can you can be a tattoo artist, you could be a chip designer, you could be a uh, you know, the founder of the fastest growing AI company who I'm currently helping out.
2:54:47
Um, as long as you can prove that you are extraordinary at what you do, you can get it.
2:54:51
And I think for the longest time, it was it's very unclear because when you go to the website, it's like examples, you uh, you have a Nobel Prize or like whichever.
2:54:59
And the the the way this company came to be was I literally mapped down um 500 people who have 01's and EB1s for extraordinary ability.
2:55:06
I gave them these hoodies.
2:55:09
I actually built the website and just compiled them in terms of like their stories and like how they came to America.
2:55:14
And um yeah, the I think that because of that more and more people have been applying for it. There's no cap to it.
2:55:22
as long as you meet um their bar for and convince USCIS that you're extraordinary, you can get it.
2:55:29
And so I think it's very positive sum of the visa. Yeah.
2:55:31
So what what is the process actually like?
2:55:33
I imagine that there's a lot of paperwork and lawyers and cost stuff that's you know tailor made for LLM automation and just even just normal SAS apps and stuff and form filling.
2:55:44
Um, what are the headaches that 01 uh recipients typically report as particularly painful?
2:55:54
I mean, my process took eight months.
2:55:54
It cost me more than $10,000.
2:55:57
I mean, you got to you got to keep in mind what what what is the end product?
2:56:01
Um, I have a printer here.
2:56:03
You're literally printing 500 pages of paper like with a bunch of citations to all evidence that you might have heard like there's recommendation letters to which you got to go chase down people and be like, "Hey, can you please vouch for me being in America?
2:56:16
I think I can contribute to to this economy."
2:56:20
One-shotted by Oach GBT from now on.
2:56:23
You can imagine so many M dashes.
2:56:26
There's thousands of M dashes.
2:56:28
Let's delve into why he should be a 01.
2:56:31
I'm sure I'm sure that's happening.
2:56:31
that got ships shipped off to like USCS access.
2:56:35
It's they still use like they still break code bin the box and then scan it which is like super archaic. Wow.
2:56:42
They don't even accept like a PDF. No, they don't.
2:56:45
I I have to ship it through FedEx and then it scan it. Yeah. And then some scan it. Wow.
2:56:51
Very high school diploma just adjudicates whether you're extraordinary. Okay.
2:56:55
Well, we're big fans of paper, but even that Yeah. Yeah.
2:56:59
Even that's my my strategy.
2:56:59
What um ho how have you thought about the the business model for extraordinary?
2:57:03
Uh it feels like you know there's some immediate probably upfront value that you can capture and just making this process less painless.
2:57:11
But when you think about taking somebody at the absolute top of their field and bringing them to the best economy in the world where they're going to attract other talent and capital and things like that, it feels like a lot of the value creation is on the things that they The obvious business model here is to sell the data to venture capital firms. Yes. Yes. Yes.
2:57:32
Which I I I feel like might already be happening judging by the involvement of NAL.
2:57:40
No, I mean what's the actual business model? jokes aside. Yeah.
2:57:42
So, I'm tempted to rename the company to the extraordinary talent company of America.
2:57:48
Um, our our flagship first product obviously just making this much more seamless and faster.
2:57:52
Like I think it should be standard deviation uh of speed up which already is we already power ramp uh cognition and we of top founders building that we know and we should see we should see a lot more of that on our X feeds coming along.
2:58:11
along. I mean look you can you can make a good amount from providing the the best product uh and and serving these great talent to relocate here on the visa basis but um where I want to take things like I I don't actually view this
2:58:24
ultimately as a as a visa filing company I think it's an extraordinary talent company and um if you look at the life cycle of extraordinary talent like someone who's I don't know like a senior engineer creating who's shipped like 60% of Devon I just filed that 01 case right? like the the whole life cycle of
2:58:42
right? like the the whole life cycle of them uh one being like placed at their company all the way to um how they even relocate there like most of the value capture isn't actually that like visa filing and I think also AI is going to uh eat away at margins in terms of
2:58:59
services across all technology companies and so then like what what can you build that has network effects that has innate distribution um that can just attract the world's best talent like I want to build something where if you're remotely ambitious and talented. You have a means
2:59:12
You have a means to be discovered and uh if you want to if you remotely want to come here like you're going to be on extraordinary. com.
2:59:22
How do you how do you think about giving people an opportunity to get to America without having credentials yet, right?
2:59:29
Like like presumably there's somebody out in the world who's 16 years old.
2:59:34
they're in some like high school type situation and they actually could be one of the world's best programmers or something like that, but maybe they haven't gotten a job.
2:59:43
Is there an op is there a world in the future where you would create sort of like open testing where people could kind of like uh prove their abilities?
2:59:52
I'm sure somebody would figure out how to how to hack it pretty quickly.
2:59:55
But how do how do you think about kind of creating the ability for for people to to prove their capabilities prior to getting the ability to get traditional credentials? Yeah.
3:00:07
First off, I I actually got a 16-year-old approved for an 01 visa a few weeks ago.
3:00:15
What What are they extraordinary at?
3:00:15
um uh interaction design for Roblox. Amazing.
3:00:25
The most elite Roblox player.
3:00:27
And um on on on the on the talent discovery front, um I I think that uh the the way that the way that we value talent is evolving.
3:00:39
I mean right now like it's so funny like there's Meror but then the FL founder of Cluey is like building software that hacks the Meror interviews.
3:00:49
The proxies for measuring talent are just like falling through completely. It's hilarious.
3:00:54
And so like how do you then measure talent in this new age where uh you know we value people who are able to leverage AI much more and I think the the way that companies hire will evolve.
3:01:05
Um and we need to account for that.
3:01:08
We need ways to of assessing people but also discovering people to showcase just how like competent they are.
3:01:15
And I'm a big very big believer of being able to give those means to um people around the world um regardless of their traditional like you know accolades and just being able to uh empower people who have the merit and who have the ability and uh they should be discovered and sponsored to come to America. Awesome. Amazing.
3:01:34
Well, congratulations on getting into the Teal Fellowship. Yeah.
3:01:39
And uh I'm sure there will be many Teal fellows in the future that are go through your your program. Yeah. Already helping them.
3:01:46
I'm excited for the first 01 bodybuilder.
3:01:48
We saw what happened with Arnold Schwarzenegger when he came to America.
3:01:52
Had a fantastic impact outside of bodybuilding.
3:01:54
Went on to be the governor of California. Governor of California. Pretty good one.
3:01:59
So don't count out the bodybuilders.
3:02:02
Let's get all the elite bodybuilders from all over the world.
3:02:03
bring them here all at once. That's my goal.
3:02:05
As long as you're the top at what you do, uh, we help you. That's fantastic. That's great.
3:02:11
Well, thanks so much for stopping by. Thanks for coming on. We'll talk to you soon. Congrats. Cheers. Bye. Uh, next up, what?
3:02:17
Just Gold's Gym in Venice just has hundreds of new uh members that are all on America's already dominant in bodybuilding.
3:02:25
We we hold more than 50% of the Mr. Olympians.
3:02:28
But we could be doing even better if we always everyone from all over the world who's elite at bodybuilding to America, which is my dream.
3:02:39
Uh anyway, our next guest is here.
3:02:41
We have Aiden Smith, founder of Interphases. Welcome to the stream. How you doing? Boom. Howdy. I'm doing real well. How are y'all? We're great. Great to have you on.
3:02:49
Would you mind kicking us off with a little introduction on yourself and the company you're building? Yeah, absolutely.
3:02:54
I think the best way to understand my life is kind of framed at this realization I had when I was a little tiny kid in like fourth grade.
3:03:00
I was sitting in this classroom and I was watching some guy doing real science and I saw him and I was like dang I like know how to do addition.
3:03:06
I know how to do basic algebra and like where the hell am I going with my life?
3:03:13
And I realized that the world is a really scary competitive place and I had to have some kind of heristic by which I should get better.
3:03:17
And so I thought to myself, all right, every two years I want to double in the metrics I care about, which at fourth grade was coolness.
3:03:24
And so at that point growing up in the South Bay, I grew up to exceptionally chill parents, an opera singer and an electrical engineer who were just like, "Oh, son, just do whatever you want to do."
3:03:33
And I was like, "Okay, every two years I will double in coolness."
3:03:36
And so that's exactly kind of the how I structured my life.
3:03:39
And in the next two years, I did stuff like tried to memorize the dictionary because this is what I thought cool was when I was like 10.
3:03:46
Eventually the coolness actually went in a direction of like things that were actually pretty cool.
3:03:49
Like when I was in high school, I started working at chess.
3:03:51
com and I like delivered tons and tons of features and made some really cool products that were really impactful to me.
3:03:56
And when I was in college, I was like, "Okay, what's the coolest problem you could possibly work on?"
3:03:58
And I ended up working at Neuralink where I'm currently seated.
3:04:01
Uh sorry to any co-workers who are seeing me taking this I don't never apologize.
3:04:06
But what about uh what about like joining a punk band, learning to do a kick flip?
3:04:10
Did that ever come into the cool kid? I do all these things. I like guitar. I Oh, nice. There we go. Psychology.
3:04:17
So, I have a lot of mushrooms memorized throughout the Sier Nevada.
3:04:19
In general, these are the things that fit my heristic Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense.
3:04:23
But not the cliche cool guy like like you're not you're not driving a couple years.
3:04:28
You're just level you're just leveling up.
3:04:30
You're maxing out your character. Yeah.
3:04:31
the the the red Ferrari convertible that comes next year when there's another doubling in the cool factor.
3:04:37
The doubling the doubling people are going to start tracking the the doubling like the Bitcoin the happenings.
3:04:44
I want to make a poly market is the real thing. I can stay on track. This is amazing.
3:04:47
So So you you've been working at uh Neuralink.
3:04:49
What are you working on now? Yeah.
3:04:50
So at Neuralink I've been doing all kinds of really cool things and one of these things I've been doing most recently is I'm leading the sound speech project essentially.
3:04:57
Uh you've seen the study that was announced fairly recently.
3:05:01
So I can talk about this a little bit, but basically there's a really great corpus interesting literature that goes from how do you get from inside your head to outside your head.
3:05:08
This is super super profound technology.
3:05:10
Uh imagine if you have ALS and you're locked in or something like this.
3:05:12
I spent a lot of time around these people and every minute I spend with them I think more to myself that like these people need to be able to communicate to the outside world better. Yeah.
3:05:20
Um and Neurink is doing a really great job of this kind of thing.
3:05:22
I have so much confidence in the team.
3:05:23
I have so much confidence that this technology is going to be transformative.
3:05:25
But also, I really hope I don't get ALS anytime soon.
3:05:31
I really hope I have a brain stem stroke or something that keeps me from being able to communicate sely.
3:05:35
And I still am interested in the way this technology will go on to transform other parts of the world. Sure.
3:05:41
And so with interfaces, what I'm looking at is I see all these kind of gizmos for AI.
3:05:45
I see these like limitless pendants.
3:05:47
I see these uh smartwatches and things that are trying to kind of integrate all this data.
3:05:51
And I I don't fully buy it.
3:05:52
Uh, the reason why I don't is because I actually don't like voice as a medium that much for most things.
3:05:58
Uh, if it actually wants to integrate into your life effortlessly, I don't want to be in the middle of conversation with you and be like, "What's the guy on the left's name? It's super awkward. It's terrible."
3:06:05
So, how do you do better?
3:06:08
Um, and there's a couple ways you can think about this.
3:06:11
One, uh, former co-orker of mine and a guy really respect, Bliss, who you may have seen on Twitter or whatever, told me that there's a couple ways you can get value out of machine learning.
3:06:18
And one of them is kind of arbitrage via data.
3:06:21
And another is arbitrage via time.
3:06:23
And so if you have these longer time series, you can kind of get more bits out of them by just increasing your confidence intervals either by doing these kind of uh causal estimates or a causal estimates where you have understanding of what's going on in the future as well as in the past.
3:06:34
And so you can kind of use this to do s updates or just by looking for signals that are kind of strong over a long period of time.
3:06:40
And I think that with this in mind, uh, there's kind of room for this halfway horse between like a conventional microphone which can pick up stuff in real time and do transcription in real time and a like an EA or someone who actually will kind of try to predict what the heck you're doing in space.
3:06:59
And so you can imagine is building a device that basically takes these like fundamentally pretty crappy signals like MEG signals for example. Uh, what are those? Sorry. Any G signals? Yeah. Yeah.
3:07:10
Uh there so there's many ways in which signals were propagated through the body to move your arms or to create electrical activity. Sure.
3:07:18
You may have seen a recent paper out of Reality Labs in Meta where they use exactly this to kind of uh for the Orion uh headset.
3:07:24
They bought that company.
3:07:26
I forget what it's called, but they bought a company like six years ago and they're finally implementing it. Right. Yeah. And it's extremely cool.
3:07:31
A friend of mine went to one of the clinical trials and put the thing on and you try it out.
3:07:35
You say, "Look, I'm pinching my fingers."
3:07:37
and the fingers pinch and it's it's pretty magical.
3:07:38
Uh this is the kind of thing which normally you would have to cut a hole in your head to do but you don't necessarily have to do here. Sure.
3:07:43
And there's a really good story to be told about kind of doing this for speech and getting really terrible speech.
3:07:49
Uh I have no illusions as a neurochnologist that you will get really terrible speech out of this.
3:07:55
But the key thing is that this does not matter because the context is what matters.
3:07:58
And by informing this really awful speech on the context of what's around you and like your intention of the situation, you may be able to actually get the underlying part of it that matters.
3:08:07
And so in fact, indeed, even if I can only kind of pick up the word left and guy, I I might know that I want to know who's the guy on the left.
3:08:15
Uh and and that's an easy LLM transformer problem, right?
3:08:19
So you get a bug, big bag of words.
3:08:21
It's very messy, but it's enough to turn into a semblance of a thought that could be confirmed with a pinch maybe. Yeah. Yeah.
3:08:27
Now, ideally, at least in my eyes, you have this just totally effortlessly against your life.
3:08:34
And you kind of collect this data all the time via a method that's fairly subtle.
3:08:37
Uh I have a little bit of alpha here that I won't spill.
3:08:39
So, you'll have to have me on in a couple months to to see my my fun demos, but uh of how to get this data.
3:08:45
So you're constantly collecting this and it's constantly informing and improving uh on how you interact with the world in general.
3:08:52
I really care about efficiency in whatever I do.
3:08:54
And lots of little things in the in your day-to-day life are super inefficient in these pretty funny ways.
3:08:59
And I think that by kind of having a this compute that is always acting in a way that doesn't invade the privacy of other people.
3:09:06
Like I want to understand myself better.
3:09:07
I want to be able to improve myself.
3:09:08
I want to be able to like keep on that doubling path u without like constantly listening to to you guys or to my friends or to the co-workers or whoever else is around me and I want to have the data set to do that.
3:09:18
So there's this kind of dual product thing of like okay as you create the better interface to interact with LMS and to build the like higher bit rate communication interfaces and also get a better model for oneself.
3:09:30
I had this idea in college that uh got my wisdom teeth out and I was like I want them to put a microphone in the hole there because then I could say I could whisper who's the guy on the left and it wouldn't be picked up to anyone else but it'd be able to pick up the the audio.
3:09:45
But I I think that's probably gross and uh kind of a part of the tech tree we don't even need to go down because we can just leapfrog that whole step.
3:09:53
We've already gone down it.
3:09:53
I had to break it to you.
3:09:54
This there's this Israeli company called Muller Mic that does exactly this for application. No way. Yeah.
3:09:59
You can imagine that like you have bombs going off around you and you're like, "Boss, we need backup, but you can't hear that over the crazy artillery." Mer good company. Did they do it? I have no idea.
3:10:11
But Ben's always telling our producers always telling us to to move the mic. Yeah. Talk closer to the mic. Closer to the mic.
3:10:19
But I could just have a Muller mic.
3:10:20
Yeah, we we need to be augmented for sure.
3:10:22
Um what what uh are you going into a similar uh FDA pathway as Neurolink?
3:10:28
Is that uh how things are going to play out for you? Yeah.
3:10:30
So I'd like to avoid this if possible.
3:10:32
I do think that there's room for a device that's somewhere in between like this really groundbreaking first-in-class biomedical device which involves a lot of risk.
3:10:41
I mean fundamentally invasive neurosurgery involves a lot of risk.
3:10:44
Even when you're doing it with the very best surgeons in the world with these robots that can vascular with everything there's still some risk price in there.
3:10:50
And so I think again there's this halfway horse thing of like okay maybe it's invasive but maybe it's not quite uh as risky of a thing.
3:10:55
Maybe it's more like getting like a an implant for birth control or more like getting like simple surgery to remove a mole.
3:11:03
Uh these kind of things that are much more everyday and much sooner.
3:11:04
I I'm very bullish on their link in the long run and I think that you should keep an eye on the amazing stuff folks are up to here.
3:11:11
But yeah, if DJ is in the office, tell him I say hi.
3:11:14
We'd love to have him on the show. I will. I love DJ. He's great. Uh he's fantastic.
3:11:16
Uh you've been fantastic.
3:11:18
Thanks so much for stopping by.
3:11:20
What uh I got to ask before you go.
3:11:22
You're you're you're skillmaxed to the gills already, but uh what what what's next?
3:11:26
What are you uh besides the new company?
3:11:28
Uh you know, what are what are some areas that you're trying to level up?
3:11:32
Now, believe it or not, the next thing I'm doing next week is I'm making a trumpet from first principles.
3:11:36
I'm going to I have a physics textbook and I want to like without any reference try to figure out how far apart all the valves should be.
3:11:42
I want to cast in my backyard with a big crucible and I want to like play this thing which probably won't work.
3:11:45
Uh, and so I'll get better at metal working, I'll get better at physics, I'll get better at all these little stupid things I care about.
3:11:50
And it's a pretty fun little interstitial bit before I really put my head down and get back to the the great doubling.
3:11:57
On the show, play the trumpet live. I want to hear the demo. We want to hear no good.
3:12:02
I have to warn you, but I'll be better.
3:12:03
If it if it in two years, you'll be good.
3:12:05
If it makes sound, it works. That's fantastic. Great question, Jordan. Awesome. All right. Great to meet you. Congratulations. Later. Byebye. Fantastic. We'll talk to you soon.
3:12:15
Next up, we got Colton coming in this the studio.
3:12:17
Uh, welcome to Colton as soon as he hops in here.
3:12:20
The idea of just trying to get twice as cool. It's so good.
3:12:25
It's constantly and just never being like, "Oh, I'm cool enough, you know, I'm cool enough."
3:12:31
No, double the Great doubling.
3:12:34
I mean, he he doesn't look like, you know, I don't know if he can have champagne yet, but you know, we we followed a sim similar principle around the great double influential growth.
3:12:43
It's the most powerful force in the world.
3:12:45
Something that you can understand unless you've experienced it.
3:12:48
We experienced it going from a thousand followers to 2,000 followers, you know. Yeah.
3:12:52
Imagine that at trumpet manufacturing. Fantastic.
3:12:54
Uh well, we have our next guest in the studio.
3:12:59
Welcome to the stream, Colton. How are you doing? Welcome. Good. How are you guys doing? Can you hear me? Yeah. Yeah, we can hear you.
3:13:05
Uh would you mind kicking it off with a little introduction on yourself and the company? Yeah, sure. My name is Colton.
3:13:12
Um, I'm from Philadelphia, but right now I'm in Boston working on my company called Orbit, which I think you guys actually got a brief introduction to because my teammate Stephen was on here, I think, just an hour or two ago. That's right. Yeah, there we go.
3:13:22
The double the double teal fellow.
3:13:23
So, combo, give us your side of the story.
3:13:27
What does he get wrong about orbit? All right.
3:13:29
No, just just just unpack it again a little bit and then we'll we'll we'll take the conversation in a different direction. Yeah, absolutely.
3:13:37
So, I can tell you how I first heard about this idea and got involved with it. Yeah.
3:13:41
And how did you meet him?
3:13:42
I'd love to know that story. That's interesting. Yeah.
3:13:44
So, Stephen went to Georgetown and he was looking for an engineer to help him build this narrow techch.
3:13:50
Um, but there's no engineers at Georgetown at all.
3:13:51
They don't have an engineering department.
3:13:53
And so, he was running around like the whole DMV area looking for an engineer that could help him build some of these circuits and the hardware and the code and such.
3:13:59
And so, eventually that led him to me.
3:14:01
Um, he tells me that he met with a lot of people, uh, with a lot of people before.
3:14:06
But is the business guy yelling at you from the other room?
3:14:10
Yeah, I think he said something. I can't quite hear him. Hey, business.
3:14:11
Hey, shut up, business guy.
3:14:13
The engineers, the the technical founders talking.
3:14:19
So, we uh, we'd met and we went on Zoom for a bit and I already had an internship that I was very interested in lined up for the summer.
3:14:25
But, he started talking to me and explaining this idea that he had.
3:14:29
um at least during the call two things were pretty clear and one that Stephen himself is an incredibly exceptional guy um and even after two years working with him that is still true um and and still impressed me and the second thing was that he convinced me that neuroch was a harder to problem to work on than any other problem that I was working on.
3:14:45
So I was going into the field of aerospace and I love jet engines.
3:14:48
I think they're the most mechanically complex systems that exist today and they're really cool for a lot of reasons.
3:14:54
you have this really tight tugof-war between crazy precise tolerances and like these extreme magnitudes and speed and heat and stresses all these things.
3:15:01
Um but it's the system that humans fully built and can analyze and look at whereas the brain is kind of a black box and the tool set that you need to approach the type of problems that we see when trying to build neuroch and interact with the brain in any way just forces you to be um in my opinion like a lot more creative and uh search a much larger option space to get the answers that you want.
3:15:23
And so I thought this is an incredibly hard problem.
3:15:25
I really want to work on this.
3:15:26
We started working together that summer.
3:15:27
Um I was still doing my internship but that's you know 9 to5 there's 16 more hours in a day.
3:15:31
Um and eventually at the end of the summer I told my supervisor at the company I was working at that I was going to leave a month early.
3:15:37
And in August Stephen and I went down to DC just rented out an Airbnb for a month and just had this basically like a month-long buildathon where we tried to get the scrappiest MVP we could at the end of the month.
3:15:46
Um and we did that eventually went back to school.
3:15:50
Um, in the meantime, we're still working very hard on the project.
3:15:52
In fact, I was failing most my classes at the time until it got to the point of about like October or November when we had met with our first um, venture investor and this is Dune Ventures.
3:16:02
Um, he uh, funded our preed round and at that point we were no longer resource constrainted.
3:16:08
Um, the only constraint to us making progress was time.
3:16:10
Um, I actually did really enjoy school.
3:16:12
actually did really enjoy school. I was a mechanical engineer at Hopkins and I felt that through each of my classes I was really expanding my tool set in the things of uh and the things that I could build and also the types of engineering problems that I could analyze quantitatively and so I did really love my classes there but you know I figured I could either do school really well I
3:16:28
could do the startup really well I couldn't do both at the same time um and it was a really obvious choice to choose this startup instead and and work in this direction because for me it was very plain that this was the direction of growth um or at least the most growth that I could have um I still think that's true and um a large part of what guides my decisions and the the path that I take in life. Very cool. Can you take me Very cool.
3:16:47
Can you take me through some of the the tech tree that led up to this point?
3:16:52
Like what are some devices or technologies that you think have kind of commercialized appropriately or at least like laid the groundwork for what you're doing today?
3:17:07
Yeah, that's a good question.
3:17:10
there's not a whole lot that laid the groundwork like technology-wise.
3:17:13
A lot of the stuff that we're using has actually been around for a very long time.
3:17:17
And so if you think of um the main application that we're looking at right now, vestibular stimulation, you basically just get a a circuit that's a constant current stimulator.
3:17:25
So it'll inject the same amount of current regardless of the resistance that your head is.
3:17:29
Um because for humans that actually varies a lot and can span even an order of magnitude, which is unlike a lot of other physiological characteristics.
3:17:35
But the idea of having a constant current stimulator is a technology that we've had for a very long time.
3:17:40
It's it's something that we've used for a human application in like TENS for example and TDCS and such.
3:17:46
Um a big part of neuroch and and the progress of neuroch I think is not actually implementationally constrained and that like you do have to have good hardware and you do have to make it well and incredibly robust, but it's actually how you use that hardware.
3:17:57
So the types of signals that you send, how you integrate them with the rest of your system, whether it's closed loop and you're taking certain measurements, how you're analyzing those measurements, feeding it back into the signals that you're sending, that actually gives you a lot more gain and a lot more innovation in neuroch. Mhm. Jordy.
3:18:16
Uh yeah, I'm just I'm I'm I'm also the main question I had for for Stephen earlier was around kind of like testing process.
3:18:23
How you know I imagine uh you guys both are super eager because of the sort of like fast feedback cycle but but what's your approach and and how do you focus on learning through self-experimentation?
3:18:39
Yeah, there's two sides of it.
3:18:39
So the first side is um safety and stuff like that.
3:18:44
And so for a lot of vestibular stimulation that's electrical, there's a good bit of precedence actually for how it's been used in the clinic in a very binary sort of way where they aren't able to elicit a lot of autonomic functions that you'd like.
3:18:54
Um but it's still shown with efficacy and a lot of research that hey you can take this current signal and you can send it to your vestibular system and there's no adverse effects.
3:19:01
Um and it is a practice that they use um very binarily in the clinic.
3:19:06
Um, and then when we're doing stuff that's more novel, um, we'll actually take a very rigorous approach to safety.
3:19:14
And so, uh, a good example I can think of is when we were working with an ultrasound system.
3:19:17
Um, and no one before had ever used, um, mechanical waves through ultrasound to elicit vestibular stimulation.
3:19:23
vestibular stimulation. Um, we started, you know, very bare bones with going to like simulations first and then after doing simulations, getting like a fake skull that matches the physical properties of the head, putting that in a water tank, measuring with a hydrophone what the field is actually
3:19:36
looking like, seeing that that lines up with our simulations, basically doing, um, weeks or even up to a month of the math, the numbers, um, the simulations to find out, hey, this is causing the exact effect that we want and then based on that, um, then going to testing on really just like Stephen for a lot of the outside stuff to see that it works. Um, and that's kind of the
3:19:52
Um, and that's kind of the that's Stephen. Yeah. All right. All right, bud. Yeah, it's time. Lay down. Lay.
3:20:01
You're going to want to lay You're going to want to lay down for this. Um, that's fantastic.
3:20:04
I mean, are are you guys getting to the point where you're really narrowing in on some of the more near-term commercial applications of of of the of what you're working on?
3:20:17
Or or is it still kind of like, hey, there's so many different directions that we can take.
3:20:20
we just need to continue to, you know, experiment broadly and and run a bunch of different uh types of tests.
3:20:30
More of the latter right now, not because we don't have a direction that seems viable, but we just don't know it's the best one yet.
3:20:35
So, I'm sure Stephen's talked about some of it, but in a couple of different autonomic regulation fields, we have very powerful effect sizes.
3:20:43
Um, at least in the small sample sets that we've done, being just, you know, people within the company, co-founders and such.
3:20:48
Um, but for the types of effects that we're looking at, if you can't detect it without a larger sample size, say like, you know, 50, 100 people, and it's just this like static effect that like maybe placebo, may not not be kind of like, you know, taking vitamins in the morning, um, it's not the effect that we're looking for.
3:21:03
Um, we're basically like we're able to have this fast iteration cycle because the autonomic effects that we do elicit are very obvious and it's, you know, very clear to, you know, me or Stephen, whoever is being tested like, oh, this isn't placebo.
3:21:16
I'm actually feeling something that's crazy different.
3:21:17
Um, now in terms of but is sleep but is like sleep for example, this is an example that that Stephen gave earlier just like basically doubling your deep sleep, right?
3:21:28
Uh something like that every human has to sleep every single day.
3:21:34
like is that not a big enough market to try to bring something to market there that that could allow I would personally pay a lot of money to be able to sleep for six hours and get the same effect as sleeping eight hours. Mhm. Yeah.
3:21:49
I'm curious like how how you think of those trade-offs basically and and and you know I think a lot of teams would just say hey this is such a big opportunity if we're seeing an effect here we should really run this down in terms of if I had to make a prediction about what would be our first product that we release I would with the information that we currently have guess that it's a sleep product.
3:22:07
And so a lot of the testing that we're doing right now is related to sleep.
3:22:09
A lot of the engineering that we're doing is building out more robust systems that could actually be user ready.
3:22:14
for example, it's not, you know, some big prototype circuit, but something that people could wear and a form factor that people would want to wear in their sleep.
3:22:21
And for us, what we're shooting for about right now is just a headband.
3:22:24
Um, circuits thin enough that you really don't notice anything other than just this piece of cloth that goes around your head and is, you know, skin tight.
3:22:31
Um, that said, even though I'm confident we can build the sleep product right now and push towards a certain release, that would be um successful.
3:22:40
And you know what you call successful whether that's you know selling 10,000 units or 10 million units is a bit more defined by like what your goals are and why you want to release in the first place.
3:22:48
For us it's actually not so much about the money but building a user base that we can start to expand in with neuroch.
3:22:56
Um you know your brain is a very intimate thing and consumers are going to be very very skeptical of the first neuroch products that come about.
3:23:04
And so whether it's the case that you want to release a neurotch product that you know, let's say feasibly could be sold to 10 million people or 50 million people if they're ready for it.
3:23:15
Um and neurotch has become a more popular idea rather than maybe finding a more niche entry market first and doing some type of launch that would give you more feedback and more information about what the marketplace is looking like, how ready people are for neuroch um and those types of questions.
3:23:28
Um it's actually a lot less clear which of those paths is the best one.
3:23:32
And I think it's very hard to get a clear answer to that unless we have a more clear picture of the scientific space and actually what types of effects we're looking for.
3:23:40
And so sleep is something that you could go consumer with.
3:23:43
You could sell to every person because every person sleeps.
3:23:46
Um but if it turns out that there's let's say an unexpected amount of stickiness in the market with people that want to buy neuroch products, then a better approach may be to go with a fully medical product.
3:23:57
So looking PE with people that have a disease where um you know hey maybe neuroch is a little early for consumers but if you're and we can go actually even back to the sleep analog let's say you're an insomniac who can struggle to sleep even two three hours a night now wearing this headband and this idea of neuroch is not quite as there's not quite as much skepticism as in the friction is a little lower.
3:24:18
Um, and so there's kind of this back and forth between we have to analyze like what the market is looking like and what types of products are going to fit that market and also like what types of products can we build that are able to fit that market.
3:24:29
Um, and so it's a little bit harder to get feedback on the first one um, being the market space until I think our best information there is when we actually release a product to market and learn from it.
3:24:38
But at least right now there's a lot more to be learned on the science side.
3:24:41
Um, there's a lot more to be learned with sleep and how to not just um, make a system like that but continually improve it and make it better.
3:24:47
And then there's also a lot of sub branches that we want to continue to explore so we know that we're not in some local maximum when maybe not too far there's another higher local maximum to be hit. Very cool. Fantastic answer.
3:24:59
Thank you so much for coming on.
3:24:59
Great to meet you Colton.
3:25:01
Uh congratulations on all the progress so far. Demo unit.
3:25:05
Let's get us a demo unit. We can.
3:25:05
Yeah, actually that'd be great. We're ready. We're ready. Yeah.
3:25:09
And uh yeah, thanks so much for stopping by. We'll talk to you soon. Yeah. Cheers. Very nice meeting you. Yeah. Bye.
3:25:14
Next up, we have Koki Mashidita coming into the studio.
3:25:19
Uh, our last teal fellow of the day, finishing it out strong.
3:25:22
Welcome to the stream, Ki. How are you doing?
3:25:24
Sorry for keeping you waiting.
3:25:27
We are running longelcome, but you're here.
3:25:29
Please introduce yourself and the company that you're building.
3:25:33
Hey guys, uh, thank you for having me on. Uh, thanks for the time.
3:25:36
Um, I'm Ki, originally from Japan.
3:25:39
Um, you know, I spent a lot of time growing up thinking about natural disasters.
3:25:45
I think, you know, in SF you don't, you know, it's like nice weather, everything's, you know, kind of nice and and you get to work on really, really interesting things.
3:25:52
But, you know, I was in the 2011 earthquake where, you know, 18,000 people died in a couple days.
3:25:56
And a lot of my friends, you know, homes were destroyed.
3:26:00
And you have these like, you know, typhoons, right?
3:26:02
Um, that like blow away my like grandparents roofs every like three years or so.
3:26:06
every like three years or so. And I keep asking them like like why like you can just like move because you know you're in Typhoon Alley like what's the whole point of you know having to stay there but it's like something so deeply ingrained right it's something you know
3:26:22
that you accept that you you know kind of just accept as as feat and I was talking to the environment minister and the and the infrastructure minister of Japan recently and they were saying that they they've spent billions of dollars on you know disaster infrastructure like
3:26:37
they would build these like you know columns under Tokyo right so like when it floods the water can go in yet like they were like oh shoot we haven't actually solved the the problem which is the intensification um of these events but back then I you know I was 11 and I did not know that you can you know
3:26:56
actually start to fight these natural disasters um but I started like building you know robots when 3D printers were really popular started selling them um and then the money I made From that I put into Bitcoin and then uh going to like hedge funds in high school when I started a a small one. Um and then and
3:27:12
Um and then and then in college I I came across this um uh startup which was building AI weather forecasts.
3:27:20
Um as like not many people think about like you know weather forecasting as like this this huge expense that you have to take on.
3:27:26
expense that you have to take on. But when you look at you know these larger countries they spend about $2 billion per year on supercomput essentially like you know a big chunk of the world's supercomputers are used on running partial differential equations to be
3:27:41
able to calculate the weather right it's like something um that you don't really think about and with machine learning what you're able to do is reduce costs by 99% and increase resolution by 100 times and when you see that you know like we started out you know very small
3:27:58
like five people but you know I was splitting time at Berkeley and then um at the startup and we became like the national weather forecast for the Philippines where it's you know was a lot um more affordable and I started to think about okay wow like our understanding of you know not only just
3:28:15
earth itself but like being able to you know model ga gather data and then predict has gotten so much better I start to think about like what's the next natural step right like the whole point of gaining you know more intelligence is so that you can act upon it. And
3:28:28
And that's what I said to think about.
3:28:30
Can't really specifically tell what we're tell you what we're doing um in terms of, you know, the the application layer, but this is kind of like the the transformation we're thinking about. So, is it magic? Is it spells?
3:28:45
Are you going to bomb the hurricane? Is that is it a bomb?
3:28:47
I've heard that pitched before.
3:28:50
I I I wonder where you heard that from.
3:28:53
It's a It's a 10,000 times the power of a a hurricane.
3:28:59
Hurricanes are interesting, right?
3:29:00
Because um the power the the amount of energy that goes in there is is so strong.
3:29:05
Like if you look at Google Research, they used to have this program where they're trying to harness energy um out of a hurricane.
3:29:11
And if you can, you know, harness it properly, you can power the United States for for months and months just from one hurricane. That's incredible.
3:29:19
Which is like a crazy thing to think about.
3:29:21
So, so you're going to make them and then you're going to control them and you're not, you know, and then there's going to be a bunch of sci-fi offshoots where K be nice to me.
3:29:32
Koke had a good thing going.
3:29:34
He was powering a lot of data centers with his his homegrown hurricanes and then one got out of control, you know. Yeah.
3:29:40
Uh but yeah, I mean talk to me about uh weather forecasting and kind of the data sources because obviously yes massive uh kind of revolution in AI and machine learning generally but you slipped in that you're doing the weather forecasting for the Philippines. Yeah.
3:29:58
Like you guys are like a data provider already.
3:30:00
The previous company I I worked at during um school.
3:30:02
Uh that's what we're focused on.
3:30:06
Um and and a lot of it is coming up with with models, right?
3:30:11
How can you compute these partial differential equations more efficiently um with the same amount of data you have?
3:30:16
Um and so you look like Deep Mind or you know Nvidia coming up with their like frontier models, right?
3:30:20
Like being able to you know run diffusion based models to to forecast better.
3:30:25
But for for us what what we think is you know fundamental is collecting data that no one really has.
3:30:32
one really has. like software has come has become so commoditized that like now it's just like quad and then you know an X AI and then like open it's just like a never- ending battle for us it's like how can you collect data and how can you like see the world in a different way that allows you to to you know act upon
3:30:49
it and how can you you know causally um act upon u like a weather phenomena right yeah uh you you mentioned diffusion uh is there a distinction between weather forecasting using diffusion models versus transformer based models or token prediction models like is is that a meaningful distinction or are you kind of using the term broadly? It it gets really complicated
3:31:11
It it gets really complicated uh in a sense that I think you know both of them are good at you know kind of milking um as much you know information you know looking at okay what what are the latent parameters how can you you know figure out you know somewhat unnoticeable um characteristics within within weather models.
3:31:34
But I think the interpretability um of weather models also become very important, right?
3:31:39
Like if you can like characteristically like define okay, which parameter within a a high dimensional vector, right, is creating a lot of bias, how can you, you know, tweak that so that you can you know get back on track.
3:31:50
And it's like weather is so chaotic that like even one small pertabbation um in an initial condition can really mess up the forecast.
3:31:58
And that's why it's really difficult to forecast like a week out.
3:32:02
And so being able to like assimilate data as you go.
3:32:06
Um and that's why like we're focusing on okay, how can you, you know, collect data that that no one really has.
3:32:10
Um so that you can, you know, make sure you're not like debiased. Yeah. Too much.
3:32:15
Uh talk to me about the data sources for this.
3:32:19
Uh I'm familiar with like Doppler radar systems that like the local news has.
3:32:24
Um, but are satellites playing a role now in weather prediction?
3:32:28
Is the actual data that we're gathering to build these models on top of improving?
3:32:35
And what are the key vectors that are driving uh better data going into these models?
3:32:41
Yeah, satellite data is interesting.
3:32:43
Um, you know, a lot of reanalysis data has always been uh used and it's, you know, made by Noah or ECMWF.
3:32:50
Unfortunately, Noah is not doing uh too well now.
3:32:53
uh too well now. What we're doing is building sensors and then literally like flying um into you know storms or into clouds to measure um within them right it's it's a complex convective process that you really have to you know just send something in um to measure
3:33:12
autonomous vehicle I assume um no flying the plane personally our our um our focus is on how can you build infrastructure right like infrastructure in a sense that Okay, models are a part of the infrastructure, but how can you collect data um for you know a targeted you know vehicle? So for example like
3:33:32
you know vehicle? So for example like hurricanes are interesting right like I'm sorry like I can't you know say everything in detail but in terms of hurricanes it's like okay if you want to see how convection is happening how what about you know um the the density of
3:33:47
clouds what I don't know grapple columns and and water droplets exist you really just have to you know um fly like a a plane in there like it's hard to just do like drones because it's too turbulent or these like sensors are you know too big and so thinking about that um is is an interesting problem as well. But I
3:34:04
an interesting problem as well. But I think fundamentally right what we're pushing against is that many of these you know reactive methods of of disaster if you look at you know insurance right like there's about like $140 billion per year in insurance premiums issued in the US uh
3:34:21
for like tropical cyclones um and yet like insurance premiums have doubled every single year for the last you know four or five years in many coastal cities and when you look at like another catastrophe happening like last year hurricane Helena and Milton was was bad, but it could have been a lot worse. There weren't even counter
3:34:38
There weren't even counter fives and Congress had to give out $100 billion in aid, right?
3:34:41
But when a next Hurricane Katrina happens in, you know, Florida, for example, then insurance is just going to um be insolvent in many ways.
3:34:52
Isn't there a market for better weather data by itself?
3:34:55
I mean, it sounds like fighting the hurricane is important, but uh we talked to somebody who works in data brokerage loosely and said like hedge everyone talks about, oh, we'll sell it to hedge funds, but there's only like hedge five hedge funds that buy anything and they're kind of stingy apparently and they don't really buy that much data.
3:35:12
You think about the insurance market. Yeah. $140 billion dollars.
3:35:16
But if you're an insurer and you know that, you know, a whole bunch of houses are gonna be destroyed in two weeks or you know it in four weeks, you're not really going to be able to adjust premiums that fast to make up for that.
3:35:28
So it feels like and then and then you look at the government.
3:35:30
The government might want to know, but even then it's like are they really a good buyer?
3:35:34
I'm just just to continue spitballing in in California when there's certain communities that are threatened, they'll have like a private fire response.
3:35:42
I guess that makes sense.
3:35:44
Basically, even an HOA is that a good is that a reason I'm just thinking about like the the dynamic right now where a a hurricane is effectively forming. Yeah.
3:35:55
And the response is to watch it and then tell people to evacuate based on where you think it's going to go. Yeah.
3:36:00
And it's kind of insane that we don't have any sort of proactive response to say, "Hey, this thing is progressing to being more and more intense.
3:36:10
Can we, you know, sort of stop it?" Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. Data market.
3:36:15
I I don't know how much you can talk about it.
3:36:17
We might just have to have you back on when you No. No.
3:36:18
When you when you look at insurance, it's pretty insane.
3:36:21
Like they look at, you know, okay, what does, you know, hurricane damage look like in the last 40 years? Okay.
3:36:27
let's, you know, aggregate average and then kind of, you know, add bias for like some of the intensification of these events or the increase um and the exposure and that's all you do.
3:36:37
And so a lot of the interesting financial assets come up when you look like catastrophe bonds like catast they're like certain hedge funds that literally just trade on catastrophe bonds, right?
3:36:47
It's just about like estimating what is the the arbitrage in terms of how much you know wildfire is going to wipe out you know a certain city or you know same for hurricane as well. Makes a ton of sense.
3:37:01
Uh well we'll have to have you back when you can talk more about the product and and where you're going with the company.
3:37:06
Uh but this was fantastic.
3:37:06
Thank you so much for hopping on. This is a real pleasure.
3:37:09
Excited to hear more and congratulations. We'll talk to you soon. Thank you. Thank you for the Bye.
3:37:12
And that concludes Teal Fellow Tuesday.
3:37:15
We have interviewed looking forward to next Tuesday.
3:37:19
Next Tuesday we'll do a year from now. A year from now.
3:37:21
Um also I mean we we mentioned Figma a few times but we forgot to mention that Dylan Field Teal fellow. Uh so go to figma. com.
3:37:30
Think bigger build faster.
3:37:32
Figma helps design and development.
3:37:32
You are addicted to Figma ads today. Great products together. I love ads baby. I love it.
3:37:38
That is the I think the third that you've run today. I love it.
3:37:41
Anyway, uh I like this post from Andrea. This bumper sticker.
3:37:44
It says honk if you like the taste of venture capital.
3:37:48
And I just wanted to say and I love honk honk honk honk air horn honk honk and it's graza and lollipop.
3:37:58
I thought that was very funny.
3:38:00
Is that is this is this an anti- venture capital bumper stick. I don't know.
3:38:04
I I don't know how anybody could be anti- venture capital. Iiculous.
3:38:07
My my lovely wife was one of the first investors in Braza.
3:38:10
So So if you're honking you're honking and they're absolutely crushing.
3:38:13
Um, what what else is interesting to cover today?
3:38:18
I mean, uh, TBPN was in the news with Ben Thompson chiming in over the weekend saying, "I love how it never occurs to the media that maybe they're just being outco competed instead of the subject of some sort of conspiracy.
3:38:30
Literally, anyone can make a podcast.
3:38:32
Sorry, they don't want to listen to yours."
3:38:34
I think to to add to here the frustration from the media is that oftentimes entrepreneurs and investors don't even want to talk to the media anymore.
3:38:42
So, it's not that they don't, you know, they maybe will listen. Yep.
3:38:47
But they don't even want to go and and um this is something we talked about with Abe, the guy who wrote the profile on us, is um he was curious, you know, why why why do you feel like people are so uh comfortable, you know, talking with you and and we don't need to go actually respond to this.
3:39:04
He said, "I think it can be both true that non-traditional outlets like Ben's and TBPN are outperforming many traditional ones and that some of tech distrusts the traditional media, creating some of the audience for Ben and TBPN."
3:39:19
And I love that because no quotes, no quotes around TBNN. Abe got the memo.
3:39:25
We're in the mainstream now.
3:39:27
We are the mainstream media.
3:39:29
We are the traditional media. Yeah.
3:39:31
I mean, we're wearing suits.
3:39:32
What's more traditional than wearing What's more traditional than wearing suits? Highly traditional.
3:39:35
How could we be more traditional than wearing a tailored suit while you report the news?
3:39:42
While you newsmax, um I'm newsmaxing, John.
3:39:45
What what what else is interesting to talk about?
3:39:47
Um there's some news in Poly Market.
3:39:50
The odds of a US recession have dropped significantly.
3:39:52
I'm very excited to hear that. Love that. I I threw up a market.
3:39:59
Will Coinbase acquire Circle before September? That's gonna be fun.
3:40:04
Um, somebody else was writing, see if I can read through this.
3:40:07
Uh, this guy, I I don't actually know this guy, but he wrote up, uh, an article, and I guess he was at Coinbase for some time, which is interesting.
3:40:17
So, uh, he's giving some background.
3:40:19
I spent years in the crypto industry.
3:40:21
First at Coin Fund, then at Coinbase, helping scale its venture strategy.
3:40:24
Everything in this post is based on publicly available data from circles S1 and Coinbase's public filings.
3:40:30
No inside information, just analysis anyone could replicate, but most don't.
3:40:35
Um, he's breaking down the USDC supply.
3:40:38
He says total USDC equals Coinbase's USDC plus circles USDC plus everything else.
3:40:47
um platform USDC refers to the percentage of stable coins held in a party's custodial products or managed wallet services.
3:40:53
And so he's basically saying that Coinbase has 23% of the total USDC in circulation.
3:41:01
And they've also been on a little acquisition spree.
3:41:07
They bought that other big company.
3:41:07
Uh I think it was a billion dollar acquisition at least.
3:41:11
forget exactly the name, but we'll have to talk to Brian Armstrong from Coinbase about that hopefully tomorrow.
3:41:17
He goes on to highlight that USC is Coinbase's number two revenue driver. Yep.
3:41:20
And contributed to 15% of Q1 2025.
3:41:23
Could be more than staking.
3:41:27
Could be a beautiful partnership. We'd love to see.
3:41:28
So something Well, we'll cover it here and we will track it.
3:41:32
What What is the poly market actually at? Let's see.
3:41:36
Relatively low volume right now. 5% 50% 10%.
3:41:40
No, no, it was at it was sitting at 40% over%.
3:41:42
Somebody took a big no bet and so it's sub 10%. Sub 10%. Okay, we'll see. Well, we'll see.
3:41:49
If you uh if you have an opinion, hop on Poly Market and check it out.
3:41:53
Uh I think it's good to close this.
3:41:56
Everyone's loving the Dyson keynote.
3:41:58
Scott Bellski said, "Agree.
3:42:00
Found it riveting and seriously considering getting a Dyson pencil vac."
3:42:05
Uh Sam said, "So, what is the pencil vac?"
3:42:07
That that Dyson keynote was so wholesome.
3:42:09
Just an excited inventor vacuuming the stage and showing off his new toys all wrapped up in under nine minutes.
3:42:17
It's a it's a feature basically uses a laser to expose Well, that's been on Dyson vacuums for a while.
3:42:24
Uh I think I have that on mine.
3:42:26
Oh, well, you're living in poverty, I guess.
3:42:28
Well, I have a Madic now, so I don't need Yeah, that's true.
3:42:31
Madic is is pretty incredible.
3:42:33
But um but Dyson, yeah, they've had the laser for a while, but I think what they did was they re they restructured it because it used to be the internals, like the heavy battery part and the actual vacuum part would be at the handle.
3:42:45
And so the handle was always a little bit heavy.
3:42:47
It seems like they've kind of shifted a lot of the weight, the center of gravity much lower.
3:42:52
And so you can use it much more just like a walking stick.
3:42:54
If you see here, you'll see that what he's actually holding in his hand, if you zoom in, is is very thin.
3:43:00
And so the whole thing is this very thin tube and that means it's a lot easier to vacuum.
3:43:05
And so uh get this for your in-laws.
3:43:08
Get this for your parents and grandparents.
3:43:10
They're going to love it.
3:43:11
We talked about lesson was talking about how this is this could basically be the beginning of the e-ane. This is the smart cane. This is the smart cane. No way.
3:43:19
Yeah, he was talking about that.
3:43:21
Imagine if everybody was walking around vacuuming all the time.
3:43:25
The world would be so clean.
3:43:25
The world would be so clean. This is the future. This is the future.
3:43:29
And then you throw an LLM in that bad boy.
3:43:30
You start talking to slap some AI in it.
3:43:32
Slap some AI in that thing.
3:43:33
We could pitch so much AI in this thing.
3:43:35
Intelligence and clean streets to meter.
3:43:38
Well, that's a great place to end it, folks. Stay tuned.
3:43:43
Tomorrow we are doing crypto day.
3:43:43
Uh we have a whole bunch of absolute killers from the crypto ecosystem.
3:43:47
It really came together well. The lineup is fantastic. Very very exciting.
3:43:50
It's actually I I I wanted to before tomorrow try to estimate the the the total volume that that the people joining tomorrow oversee on a daily basis.
3:44:02
It's definitely in the in the billions.
3:44:03
It could easily be in the Oh. Oh. Daily volume. Massive. Massive.
3:44:09
Anyway, why don't you take us Why don't you take us out with a massive gong hit, Jordy? I would love to, John. Um, wide is so good. I love it. Swing my microphone. Swing the mic.
3:44:19
I don't think I almost broke the uh Anyways, goodbye everyone. Thank you for watching. See you tomorrow. Have a great day.
3:44:31
We will have a fantastic evening tomorrow.
3:44:33
Leave us a fivear review.
3:44:35
Leave us a five star review. Thank you for watching.
3:44:36
Deal fellow Tuesday plus a bunch of other haters. You know, it's great. We'll see you tomorrow. Goodbye. Cheers.