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[Music] >> No, this one goes too long. This one goes for three. You're watching TVPN.
5:02
>> Today is Wednesday, July 23rd, 2025.
5:02
We are live from the TBPN Ultradome, the temple of technology, the fortress of finance, the capital of capital. >> El Cap de capital. >> El Capal de Capal.
5:12
Uh thank you to Reream for powering this stream. We love Reream.
5:17
Couldn't do the show without them. >> Seriously. >> Yeah, it's amazing.
5:20
Uh they're a new partner if you haven't noticed already.
5:23
Uh we're there in the intro in the fir in the last 30 seconds. >> Yeah.
5:27
that little cinematic IMAX treatment.
5:30
We've having a lot of fun with that.
5:31
Um >> we realized how dependent we are on them.
5:35
We had a small >> uh error at one point and we could not run the show. >> Yeah.
5:39
>> Um >> critical infrastructure >> one out of a few hundred shows. >> Yeah.
5:44
>> And it was fixed quickly.
5:44
So >> um you know who should get on reream? Apple and F1.
5:49
That's the story that we're talking about today.
5:51
Uh we've talked about this before.
5:53
So, uh, F1 fantastic race series. We're big fans.
5:59
Um, but the actual streaming rights to the g to the races has been kind of hotly debated.
6:06
There was an article in the journal a while back that they were going to ESPN saying, "Hey, we want something like $80 million."
6:12
And, uh, ESPN was like, "I don't know if that's worth it." And we were going back.
6:19
>> They wanted something like 200. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They wanted a lot.
6:20
And so, uh, with the the stack of of content to go through is growing.
6:26
So, we will be we will be thinning out textbook.
6:30
>> We will be thinning out the guest lineup in the future.
6:32
Um, but for today, we're going through uh let's kick it off with Ben Thompson.
6:36
He had some good analysis here and has some uh some details from reporting in the Athletic uh which is a New York Times property.
6:43
Um, Formula 1 is trending towards choosing Apple for its United States broadcasting rights for for 2026 onwards.
6:50
The technology company's bid being in the 120 to $150 million range.
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>> Market clearing order inbound.
6:57
It >> is a market clearing order. It probably will clear.
7:00
Uh, ESPN has held the rights since 2018, but its current deal is up at the end of the year.
7:05
The sports media giants exclusivity negotiation peri period expired before February 2025 leading to interest from other >> broadcasters including Netflix and TBPN. >> Yes, we would love.
7:20
>> We decided to sit it out.
7:22
>> ESPN has remained in the mix for US broadcasting rights, though its bid is lower.
7:25
Apparently ESPN's offer is in the $90 million per year range, >> which is still wild.
7:30
Uh because this is the US broadcasting rights. Yep.
7:36
>> And I believe in 2024, Formula 1 had around 1 million total viewers. >> 1. 2 1.
7:42
3 million race uh viewers on average per race. >> Yeah.
7:49
>> Um but Ben Thompson puts it in a different perspective.
7:51
He says F1 on the other hand has a meaningful audience.
7:53
um versus MLS which was averaging around 200,000 viewers per year on linear TV before the Apple deal and it and that wasn't growing.
8:03
So this is six times as big as MLS. Yeah.
8:06
Um again there I think there's more games than or more race more games than races.
8:11
So it's not exactly Apple to Apple but every race um but one has seen a year overyear increase in viewership.
8:17
So F1's be getting more popular.
8:19
A lot of that's driven by Drive to Survive.
8:21
Um, and this is the crazy thing.
8:23
Given when races are televised, usually early Sunday morning, and the fact that they aren't promoted by ESPN in any meaningful sense, so it's not like you're getting the Pat McAfee Show talking about, oh, you got to tune in and there's a ton of coverage on ESPN throughout the week.
8:37
They just kind of show up Sunday morning and people turn on the TV and they schedule it.
8:40
Um, and so you can say, >> I always like the timing because, uh, any any parents out there, uh, you know, you're certainly not sleeping in on the weekends.
8:50
kids wake up >> and I find it's it's some nice background uh uh noise or viewing uh in those early hours >> for sure.
8:59
Um and so he says you can make the case that F1 makes its own audience which by extension means they will be able to pull people to a streaming service.
9:07
Basically F1 fans are strong enough that they'll go search it out.
9:12
And when I when I was really getting into F1 after getting into Drive to Survive, I was like, "Okay, I'm going to have to subscribe to F1 the app that like jump through all these on your phone and it was it's like as many hoops as UFC, but people still do it." Yeah.
9:25
>> And there's still there's still a big debate, but >> and I think Netflix had done the analysis and realized that all of the potential viewers of F1 were basically already subscribed to Netflix. Yep.
9:33
And so it didn't it was a a more difficult um kind of equation to make work than someone like an >> Apple TV potentially that uh that could potentially drive new >> someone called it a streaming backwater or something like that in here. We we'll dig into it.
9:49
But somebody had some not nice things to say about uh about Apple TV.
9:53
Although I'm a subscriber and I think it's nice.
9:55
Um so uh he says what makes this is Ben Thompson writing a strategy.
9:59
What makes this all work is the fact that for F1 races, uh, F1 races are at the bottom of the funnel in terms of fan engagement.
10:06
F1, at least in the US, has by and large grown its audience via Netflix's drive to survive.
10:09
Uh, Netflix pays F1 a pittance for rights.
10:14
Apparently, singledigit millions for that.
10:16
But it's okay for F1 because the way they ultimately make money is by curt converting Netflix viewers into race fans.
10:23
So, if you're F1, you see that as a marketing channel, honestly. >> Yeah.
10:26
F1 uh has sponsors at the at the sort of league level and also the individual teams.
10:32
All of those sponsors are getting more viewership and engagement through F1.
10:36
So, it's sort of added value to them and they don't have to pay they're actually making money >> uh on I mean not super consequential.
10:42
>> uh on I mean not super consequential. I wonder I mean of course the sponsorships are like such like 360 deals that it's like you know car livery and also a whole bunch of other you know advertising assets but I wonder if they broke out okay how much lift how much
10:59
benefit how many impressions are we getting from drive to survive would that be when you total up all the all the value ad to all the different advertisers from being in drive to survive and being seen by people on Netflix how much would would that be more than the couple million dollars that Netflix pays for the for the rights. It might be. It might be like It might be.
11:17
It might be like there's a lot of people that that see ads that are for specific F1 sponsors.
11:25
>> Saudi Ramco like hundreds of times watching Drive to Survive. >> Exactly. Yeah.
11:30
It's like pretty valuable ad space.
11:32
So, uh interesting deal that kind of works both ways and everyone makes money.
11:37
Anyway, um making that model work, however, means actually monetizing the races, which means that it actually it's actually quite logical to go with the company willing to pay 30 to $60 million more for those rights.
11:48
You have to capture value somewhere in the funnel.
11:49
Moreover, you could make the case that many F1 fans aren't necessarily ESPN subscribers.
11:53
And this is this is where it gets interesting because the cable bundle is shrinking and the the F1 did this uh global fan survey. So, it's their data.
12:03
So Ben Thompson's kind of taken it with a grain of salt, but uh this is from the F1 global fan survey.
12:08
Uh they uh they conducted a study every four years to track how fan engagement is evolving across the sport.
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They uh got a 100,000 responses from self-identified highly engaged fans in 186 countries.
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That's a that's basically all of them.
12:24
The findings offer a detailed snapshot of the modern fan mindset and show that Formula 1 is increasingly attracting new, younger, and more female audience with growth in markets such as the United States.
12:37
Gen Z is helping shape the rhythm of modern of the modern fandom, engaging with the sport more frequently and on a deeper emotional level.
12:46
Female fans now account for three in four new fans. >> Interesting.
12:52
>> I would not have predicted that.
12:52
That's very, very interesting.
12:54
Well, >> the drivers are often Chads and I can imagine what's driving it.
12:59
That that could be uh part of part of the factor. >> Yeah.
13:03
It's also interesting that there there no female drivers on the grid right now.
13:07
There was Danica Patrick in the in the NASCAR series for a while.
13:09
Um but somehow it's breaking through.
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Maybe it's through Drive to Survive being more accessible on Netflix.
13:16
More storylines pulling people in and they're just going down that funnel. I don't know.
13:19
Well, there's also the the the wag industrial complex surrounding F1 that uh is aspirational lifestyle.
13:28
>> Maybe they should do a spin-off of Drive to Survive.
13:29
Don't they do that with NBA?
13:31
Isn't there a show about like wags or something like that?
13:34
That's kind of informally what the Housewives series is, right?
13:38
Um maybe they should do that.
13:40
Uh with the largest country share of respondents, fans in the US cons continue to stand out for their growth, youth, and digital fluency.
13:46
They overindex on content engagement, sponsor responsiveness, and daily touch points, signaling a market where fandom is evolving rapidly and is commercially.
13:56
>> Saudi Ramco is like, "Why?
13:56
We seem to be getting a lot of female zoomers >> zoomers following our content on Instagram.
14:05
They seem to be really into this. >> What's happening?" >> Maybe. I don't know.
14:10
Um, so, uh, so basically Ben Thompson's conclusion from this survey is what what do you what are you talking about when you're talking about a younger, more female focused audience?
14:22
Those don't sound like ESPN subscribers.
14:25
Those actually sound like Apple TV subscribers or potential Apple TV subscribers. Certainly cord cutters.
14:31
Certainly people who are not going to buy a big cable package and get on ESPN 2 and Red Zone and all of that stuff.
14:36
um that's typically the Gen X male, the maybe older millennial male, uh that probably dominates the ESPN audience.
14:45
Um and so, um >> yeah, that's that's really interesting.
14:51
Apple kind of has an edge where they can build out a service for some of these more lifestyle oriented sports, some of these al alternative, you know, you could imagine them doing doing things in tennis over time because maybe that's a different audience than like the hardcore ESPN >> Red Zone subscriber. >> Yeah. Yeah.
15:09
So, um, he says, "I could definitely envision a scenario where F1 not only doesn't suffer from being on a streaming service instead of ESPN, but it actually grows further."
15:18
So, this is an interesting bullc case.
15:20
Uh, given Apple TV's lower price point relative to a standalone ESPN streaming service, much less a cable bundle.
15:26
What is clear is that this deal certainly makes a lot of sense for Apple than the MLS deal did.
15:32
If the company can capture all 1.
15:32
3 million of those current viewers, and they are incremental to current Apple TV subscribers, then the company will break even on this deal.
15:39
Those are very generous assumptions, of course, but not nearly as generous as whatever assumptions drove the company to spend double the money on a sport no one watches, which is MLS.
15:48
So, he's uh he he's taking shots at MLS because there was an interesting quote in here from from something else. What was this?
15:55
Uh it was from uh The Athletic again talking about the North American Soccer League general managers.
16:03
One common theme from general managers, the Apple deal, which is Apple's deal to to air MLS, is proving to be too much of a barrier for new fans.
16:12
Uh the >> wait, they want the content to be completely free.
16:18
>> Uh new fans just don't want it on Apple apparently, or the GMs don't want to be limited to the Apple audience, apparently.
16:23
They want to be on ESPN or something. >> Oh, okay. Okay.
16:27
>> Apparently, so the GMs say, "Uh, hey, if we want this to grow, we're the general managers of a bunch of different MLS teams.
16:33
If we want to grow soccer in America and grow MLS, change the format. Change the salary cap.
16:39
>> Why don't they just pivot to football or basketball >> or baseball if they want? >> Yeah.
16:43
What's wrong with just throwing around a pigkin? Yeah. Change the format.
16:46
Just turn it into American football.
16:49
>> I have to say a football is one of the best things you can buy under 50 bucks. >> Sure. >> Period. >> For sure.
16:56
>> That's non non non food.
16:56
I mean, the value you can get out of a pig skin is absolutely insane.
17:00
hours of >> the return on the return on pig skin. >> Yeah, it's fantastic.
17:04
Uh he says, "Allow us to bring more attractive players."
17:06
I I I didn't realize that MLS had a salary cap because I thought they were signing like massive deals with these uh like legacy famous uh >> who is the player that went to Galaxy >> Messi or something. >> Yeah. >> Is that right? I don't know.
17:21
Uh well, >> this is this is bad because I don't know sports, but >> uh there was someone who went to Miami.
17:29
There was someone who went to the LA Galaxy. Um I don't know.
17:31
Anyway, uh this GM says, >> "Yeah, so so Messi plays for Inter Miami." Yep. And it's a huge deal.
17:39
It's like AI researcher money.
17:41
Remember >> that's what we were how we were comping it.
17:46
>> Um and the GM said, "But they also have to end the deal with Apple.
17:48
It's bad for the >> David Beckham.
17:50
David Beckham >> played in the MLS.
17:52
And then you have uh Zlatan Ibrahimovic as well.
17:55
So >> they'll pull in some superstars, but usually towards the end of their runs.
18:04
>> So, so, so the GMs of the North American Soccer League, MLS, they say, "I think we have to be on more linear outlets.
18:09
We have to be on ABC, NBC, Fox, or more regularly, more regularly because I think a lot of people, a lot more people watched our games when we were in that space.
18:20
I think Apple and the whole streaming thing is really innovate in innovative, but it's probably where things uh and it's probably where things will be going, but I don't think MLS is the leader of that.
18:29
I don't think enough has been put behind the subscription model.
18:32
You're in a different league when you're you're a different league when you're a subscription-based league.
18:35
I don't think the effort has been put in like it should be.
18:38
It's like selling tickets.
18:40
You need people out there selling.
18:41
You can't just hope that people are going to sign up. And so, yeah. Um, interesting.
18:46
Uh the risk for F1 is that the series which has massive massive growth is going to conscript it conscript itself to the streaming backwaters says Ben Thompson uh just so it can make a few more bucks in the meantime.
18:59
So that that's the risk is that F1 goes and you know gets stuck in subscription land and no one can just turn on the TV and see it and the 1.
19:06
3 million fans don't actually migrate over and they say I'll just catch the highlights or I'll just watch Drive to Survive on Netflix instead of going set setting up a new subscription.
19:15
But if it's truly F1 truly does have a younger audience, does have a more female audience, they might be that might be what gets them to turn on Apple TV subs uh streaming at least. >> Yeah.
19:27
Anyway, >> I still get so confused by all the different cable plans.
19:29
I watch F1 on YouTube TV, which I guess is through ESPN.
19:34
It's like I guess that will go away and then I would have to subscribe to Apple.
19:38
So, they would get a net new I actually don't subscribe to Apple TV. >> You don't? >> I don't. Okay.
19:44
>> Not Not for any reason.
19:44
I just I never want to I never want to go through the ha never want to go through the I just don't watch a lot of television. Yeah.
19:51
>> And I don't want to go through the hassle of like signing up for a new service. >> Yeah.
19:54
I feel like recently I got a new iPhone and um it just like came with Apple TV Plus and I just like clicked the button and didn't unsubscribe and then I've been on that for a while.
20:03
But speaking of a new iPhone, we have a challenge for Tyler Cosgrove, the intern at TBPN.
20:08
We will be giving him a second shot on goal, a second kick of the old field goal.
20:14
>> If you missed it, we bricked his iPhone.
20:16
He had to upgrade to liquid glass.
20:16
It's been on its last legs.
20:21
>> Mark German has some interesting post today. He said, "We won."
20:23
He likes the new revision to liquid glass, the latest and greatest, which I think you can't get yet. Break it down. >> No.
20:30
So, I It's mostly because my storage is so low.
20:33
So, I can't So, you can't revert back cuz it's like >> But you also can't go forward.
20:38
>> I can't go forward because I would have to like delete basically everything on my phone, which I guess maybe I could basically clear it and then update and then get stuff back.
20:45
But it's I don't know if that would work.
20:47
>> Well, you're stuck in purgatory and iPhone iOS purgatory liquid glass. a liquid glass house.
20:52
Um, but today you have the chance to win a new iPhone if you can get on the leaderboard for Arc AGI V3.
21:01
We gave Tyler the chance to prove his humanity and defeat the version three of Arc AGI.
21:06
This is a uh a benchmark for artificial intelligence systems.
21:12
The whole design is that anyone should be able to do this.
21:15
Any human should be able to achieve to beat these puzzles. Tyler beat them.
21:19
But we got some benchmark time.
21:22
We gave him a time constraint.
21:24
Uh Mike Nuke, the co-founder of Zapier, who's also the co-founder of Arc AGI and behind the lab that's actually pioneering this benchmark, gave me some times.
21:35
He said 15 minutes would be super hard.
21:36
20 minutes would be reasonable.
21:38
25 minutes would be very doable.
21:41
Uh we said it as hard as possible. 15 minutes.
21:43
Tyler uh came in around 25.
21:45
So, but today redemption is on the line.
21:49
you get a second shot on goal of winning that iPhone. So, what do we say?
21:53
Uh, so the new human benchmark, there's a there's a leaderboard where you can go and do these tests as many times as you want.
22:00
The first time you do it, it's hard because you have to figure out how the games work.
22:02
But then after that, it becomes kind of a speedrun, but the leaderboard is based on efficiency.
22:11
So, how many how few moves can you make?
22:14
How few actions can you take to solve the puzzles?
22:16
To be kind of in the top 15, top 20, you have to do it under 600 moves across all three games.
22:22
And that's the challenge for today. There's no time limit.
22:26
You can do this as many times as you want. You can reset.
22:28
You can try and learn all the different patterns and all the different paths.
22:32
Um, >> we were worried about um, so I think originally we were going to do like I had to be in the top 10. >> Yeah.
22:39
>> But then I was a little worried about stream snipers. Yep.
22:40
coming in and you know viewers watching the stream coming in and just going crazy going ham and then I would be out of the top 10. >> Yeah, exactly. >> Even if I did well.
22:50
>> So, so try and beat it today.
22:50
Give us give us the bench uh the the the baseline score of how many moves it takes you the first time you go through and then try and do it again.
23:00
Try and become more efficient until you can hopefully cross the 600 move threshold >> and get on get on the leaderboard.
23:06
That should be a lot of fun. >> All right. And what else is fun?
23:10
Getting your business on ramp. com. Time is money. Save both.
23:13
Easy to use corporate cards, bill payments, accounting, and a whole lot more all in one place. Go to ramp. com to get started. >> RAMP. >> Ramp.
23:19
Um, in other news, meme stocks are completely back.
23:24
>> Let's give it up for meme stocks.
23:25
>> Let's give it up for meme stocks.
23:25
Let's give it up for top signals, baby.
23:27
Um, we got a bunch of them.
23:29
Uh so the Wall Street Journal has an article about Kohl's the discount retailer and then Openoor the high-flying tech company that was uh co-ounded by Keith Boy >> recently more lowflying. >> Yes.
23:42
But uh uh got out I think via a spa um was uh what was open core business basically allowing folks to sell buying and selling homes.
23:53
Um and uh and the and the stock's been up and down and there's been a lot of discussion over um you know can they take on Zillow 10 uh just under $11 a share as of a month ago it was trading at 50. >> Okay. So way down.
24:12
>> So it's still down 70 uh 79% >> uh since the IPO but uh more recently it's up 300% in the past month. >> Wow.
24:22
And people seem to be rallying around.
24:24
Uh I saw people saying this is an $82 stock all day. All day. I don't know why.
24:31
I don't know why that number in particular's going on in the meme stock community. >> Vibes based analysis.
24:37
Um >> it's been it's a proven strategy. Yeah. Memeing a stock. It happens.
24:43
>> Crispy uh crispy cream >> is also in the conversation >> with a ticker DNut is up 40% in the past 5 days.
24:52
Um, so yeah, the the market uh >> uh lot of lot of opportunity out there, but the thing that's been interesting is that uh Buco Capital uh bloke had a post earlier this morning.
25:04
He said, "Open door is down 10% after being down 10% yesterday.
25:09
Crispy Cream is up 37% after being up 27% yesterday.
25:12
The meme market is brutal, lightning quick, and moving way too frantically between absolute to ever have another GameStop.
25:21
Yeah, basically >> dogs basically.
25:24
Um, so yes, it's it's interesting like this this uh eagerness from retail just investors broadly to find the next GameStop. >> Yeah.
25:34
>> Means that there's an incentive like you know if you don't get in before something goes up 300% uh in a week there's there's almost this like um there's almost an incentive to just pick a new company uh that has that that uh potential to to do something.
25:48
I feel like Crispy Cream in particular was part of the narrative that like GLP1s would destroy that business because people's appetites would be suppressed and so junk food markets would sell off and junk food companies wouldn't do as well.
26:05
Um, but maybe the meme stock retail traders know something we don't.
26:10
Uh, anyway, let's go to the Wall Street Journal.
26:12
Uh, individual investors are once again loading up on a group of unloved stocks and taking to social media to defend them from haters and the short sellers.
26:20
Meet the cast of the meme stock craze season 2.
26:22
Let's go, a user named Hot Ticket 9440 wrote on a subreddit forum Tuesday as shares of Kohl's, which is down 17% when I took this screenshot, um, down 15% today.
26:36
>> The department store chain surged by nearly 40%.
26:38
Max Payne on the shorts buy every dip together we strong said hot ticket 9440.
26:44
Uh open has GameStop vibes written all over it.
26:48
Skip trade listless wrote Tuesday on X of Open Door Technologies which is down 23% >> 23% today but it was up yesterday I guess. Um real estate platform.
26:58
It's a real estate platform.
27:01
Uh and in all caps we won't stop until $82 which I don't know how that was picked but we'll we'll find It's a nice nice number.
27:09
>> Um, shares of Kohl's and Open Door have uh rocketed highly higher recently.
27:12
So have other oddball stocks including QuantumCape, a maker of batteries for electric vehicles, and Regetti Computing, a quantum computing firm that we talked to Martin Skrey about.
27:22
uh the the their recent rise and the cult followings they have inspired on social media are reminiscent of GameStop, AMC Entertainment, and the original meme stocks that caught fire in the aftermath of the pandemic when interest rates were near zero and the markets rally was underway.
27:37
What's interesting is like it was very clear to trace the origins of the meme stock craze.
27:43
It was like you had social media had fully arrived, you had low interest rates, and then you had stimulus checks going out.
27:51
And there was a whole cottage industry of influencers and YouTubers who basically they made content around when will the when will the checks get delivered?
28:03
When will the stimulus checks get delivered?
28:06
How will you get how can you get your stimulus check sooner?
28:08
People were googling for that.
28:09
People were searching for that.
28:11
and you would make a video explaining, okay, they're in the mail now.
28:15
And people were just so interested to know when the money was coming and making sure that it would go to the right address and that they were set up to get it because it's free money.
28:22
You don't want to just lose out on it, right?
28:25
Um, and so people made those videos and then the natural evolution was, well, now that you have the money, what do you do with it?
28:31
And then they were making financial recommendations, financial advice, right?
28:34
And they made a ton of money and they got really, really big.
28:38
And there were some of them that were making like five videos a day breaking down, you know, all every different what you should do in Tesla, what you should do in GameStop.
28:44
And so the like the precursor was very was it was a very clear trend.
28:49
And also retail hadn't gotten burned in a while.
28:52
I feel like it was just like like all of the uh precursors were very clear.
28:57
And now I don't I'm having trouble constructing like the narrative around why this is happening again other than maybe this is just like it's just going to be cyclical forever.
29:08
Um but anyway uh their recent rise and the cult followings they inspired on social media are reminiscent of GameStop uh the original meme stocks.
29:17
Younger individual investors congregated on online stock picking forums to share their triumphs and losses and found every found a common enemy in the professional investors who were betting against their favorite stocks.
29:26
Now with stocks at records, the economy staying resilient and corporate earnings beating expectations.
29:32
Netflix beat earnings by the way and we should expect that uh basically every tech company is going to beat earnings because the dollar is weak.
29:40
And so uh uh and and so if you have a large portion of your business outside of the United States, you will see very strong earnings results this quarter. >> Yeah.
29:49
Well, one um unfortunate thing for uh the meme uh stock uh movement is that uh Bessant said this morning that Trump's not going to fire Powell.
29:58
Uh and so the poly uh there's Jerome Pow as Fed chair in 2025 >> is sitting at 18% now. Uh dropped on that news.
30:09
So >> what did it peak at?
30:12
>> Uh it peaked uh it peaked at 20. It was at 24.
30:16
So it never went above 50%. >> Yeah.
30:19
But it was at 24% and and it had been rising kind of uh week over week.
30:24
>> I mean that was a crazy dropped that was a crazy time when the Jerome Powell stuff it it I didn't see that much real evidence.
30:32
We talked to Joe Wisenthal at Bloomberg about this a little bit.
30:33
Um but it was a fullcore press by the financial media and the financial institutions to say like do not do this.
30:41
I remember opening up the Wall Street Journal one day and like there were five different articles from, you know, news reports of big bank CEOs commenting on the record, hey, don't fire the Fed chair.
30:54
Let's Fed independ there were op-eds saying about the value of Fed independence that we shouldn't lose this.
31:00
And then when we talked to Joe Weisenthal, he he also said, you know, it's like it it is somewhat unamerican to not have an independent Fed.
31:07
Um but then of course there are people on the other side of the debate.
31:11
But um uh if if drone pal staying around, what does that mean?
31:16
Rates stay high and so we should see less froth in meme stocks in in theory.
31:22
Um I don't know exactly how it works through the system.
31:25
Um but but you know like I would imagine that it's harder to borrow on margin, harder to get more leverage, like all all these different things are functions of interest rates being higher.
31:35
So um you see all these in these quote you see all these indicators where this is full-blown meme mania said Brent uh Coochuba founder of derivatives data firm Spot Gamma Open Door which traded under $1 as recently as last week began to take off after social media users rallied around the company.
31:54
Then hedge fund manager Eric Jackson said in a July 14th post on X that his firm EMJ Capital has taken a position in the stock.
32:02
Open Door notched six consecutive sessions of doubledigit percentage gains following his endorsement and the shares are up 439% in a month.
32:13
And look at that stock chart. Look at that.
32:15
It is complete line just directly up.
32:19
>> And of course Keith uh Ra Boy was absolutely loving it. >> Yep.
32:24
>> You don't get 100 baggers without upset stomachs.
32:26
This is uh Jackson uh not Keith.
32:29
Uh but when you spot one early with almost no one else watching, that's when the magic happens.
32:36
>> And so this was a guy that was uh doing a little bit of general solicitation as well. >> Oh, it's that guy. Yeah.
32:42
>> I didn't realize that.
32:44
>> Uh a 38-year-old educator in California says he began scooping up shares of Open Door last month when it was trading under $1 a share. This is Melvin Berentos.
32:53
Uh he says he sold all his shares and and put options tied to Open Door over the past week and pocketed a roughly $3,000 profit put options to the right to sell a stock at a set price.
33:04
Barry Sanentos says he is always on the hunt for beaten down stocks and has traded meme stocks like AMC and Carvana before, often loading up on thousands of shares before selling them when they rally.
33:14
He says he plans to sell more Open Door puts if the shares continue tumbling and shares of Open Door fell 10% to $2. 88 on Tuesday. It just happens by luck.
33:23
Um, Cole's revenue is another example.
33:26
The embattled >> What's your investment strategy? >> It's just luck. >> Luck. >> Luck. Make your own luck.
33:31
I feel like there's some great wisdom out there about luck.
33:36
>> I wouldn't I wouldn't It doesn't feel like true mania >> since this guy's not saying I just quit my job to become a day trader. >> Yep. I don't know.
33:45
It's very very interesting.
33:48
Um, so meme stock traders are often talking are often target companies that are highly shorted like Kohl's and GameStop before it, hoping to induce a so-called short squeeze.
33:56
Short sellers bet against companies.
33:58
Uh, if the stock starts rising instead, short sellers may need to buy their shares back to exit from the losing trade, a cycle that creates even more demand and can send shares soaring.
34:08
The frenzy continued on Wednesday.
34:10
Shares of GoPro soared 57% and Crispy Cream, which you mentioned, jumped 20% despite no clear impact.
34:18
>> GoPro, I mean, I love when they just pick an awesome company like GoPro.
34:21
>> GoPro is a sweet company >> making cool cameras for doing cool stuff.
34:24
How can you not love that?
34:24
Yeah, it is interesting because yeah, AMC and game and GameStop were very much like nostalgia plays whereas Open Door doesn't really fit that template of I feel like a lot of the GameStop supporters were also supportive of the idea of getting back to a world where you can go and buy a video game from a local store and that just being like a fond childhood memory.
34:49
I remember as a kid riding my bike to GameStop to pick up a new N64 game or >> I love how there's there's somebody out there that's just like has that mentality of just buy >> buy the stocks of the companies you love and they're like, "Well, I love Crispy Cream and I love GoPro because I love >> doing some cool stuff, filming it and having and treating myself with some donuts." >> Yeah.
35:12
>> Um and they think they're a genius investor not realizing that.
35:15
>> And I mean, every once in a while things do get oversold.
35:16
do get oversold. There's there's there's plenty of examples of companies that have been trading like below cash for some reason and it's a function of various lockups and then the company kind of goes into wartime mode and rebuilds and does come out of it and and
35:30
builds back up and and that does happen especially post uh the end of Zerp post the SVB crisis there were a lot of companies that were just truly oversold and they and they were able to come back usually because they're founder led and the founders stuck stuck it out. Yeah. Yeah.
35:45
Um, so there's lots of options being traded on Openoro, Nvidia, Apple, and Open Door is has over three million option contracts that changed hands on Monday, uh, almost as much as the S&P 500. Wow.
35:57
Uh, with a market capitalization around two billion, Open Door is a member of the Russell 2000 small cap index.
36:02
The fact that open more open door options traded Monday than contracts tied to Nvidia, the $4 trillion behemoth was unusual.
36:09
That's pretty much unheard of, uh, Heisinger said, uh, founder of options data platform, Quant Data.
36:17
And that trading increase obviously wasn't tied to fundamentals.
36:22
It was a speculative squeeze.
36:24
Um, and so there's a very funny article uh, in Bloomberg from Matt Lavine.
36:30
He's a fantastic columnist, a fantastic writer.
36:33
Uh, this is taking it one step further.
36:36
We're getting into meme stock treasuries at this point.
36:41
Okay, so uh he says, "Well, the other day I wrote and uh if you're not already subscribed to Matt Lavine over at Bloomberg, you got to get on Money Stuff.
36:48
It's a great uh newsletter that you can get in your email inbox if you subscribe to Bloomberg."
36:52
Um well, the other day I wrote that the crypto treasury strategy trade is very good but but saturated.
36:59
The US stock market will pay $2 for $1 worth of Bitcoin.
37:02
So, lots of companies have acquired Bitcoin to make their stock go up, but the returns are diminishing.
37:09
Companies have moved on to other cryptocurrencies, Ethereum, Tron, and Salana and and BNB and Trumpcoin, but they are running out of space.
37:17
And he wrote, "If you want to do this trade now, you might want to try something else.
37:21
Maybe the stock market will pay $2 for $1 worth of blank.
37:23
You think where what goes in the blank is one big and attention getting, two relatively liquid, so you can buy it incrementally as money comes in and market to market as the price goes up and three somewhat crypto adjacent in spirit but four not a big obvious crypto token.
37:44
And so >> what are what would the you what would be exciting one of one Ferraris class you know classics >> Ferrari treasuries >> Ferrari treasury There's something there. Something there.
37:59
>> That sounds like something we would do as a joke. >> Yeah.
38:02
>> And it will will actually happen in the market in a few in a few years.
38:04
Maybe uh someone should buy that McLaren collection. >> There we go.
38:09
>> That's a good treasury right there.
38:11
>> You got an original F1.
38:13
>> Trying to think what else is what else is big and attention getting and relatively liquid. >> I don't know.
38:19
Well, his example is micro strategy.
38:21
So he says, "I feel like someone should try a micro strategy treasury strategy."
38:26
Um, like you take over a small public company and you announce that you are raising 200 million to buy Micro Strategy stock.
38:34
Maybe that would be worth 400 million.
38:36
And he says, "I'm an idiot."
38:36
But there's one obvious answer, and I'm ashamed that I missed it.
38:40
Quantum Biioarma found it. >> Wow.
38:43
A biioharmaceutical company dedicated to innovative therapies for neurodeenerative disorders today announced the purchase of 2,000 shares of GameStop to hold on the company's balance sheet as a strategic investment.
38:56
This move aligns with Quantum Bioarma's ongoing commitment to combating market corruption and enhancing shareholder value through prudent financial strategies and advocacy against manipulative trade practices.
39:08
>> Um, well, whatever your plan is, you're going to need to design a graphic for it.
39:12
You're going to need to get on figma. com.
39:13
Think bigger, build faster.
39:15
Figma designs helps design and development teams build great products together.
39:19
Get started for free at figma. com.
39:21
We have >> Speaking of Figma, >> yeah, >> they hold Bitcoin on the on their balance sheet. >> They do.
39:26
I don't think that's because >> it wasn't it was it it was more I think it was more like prudent treasury management and wanting to be diversified.
39:33
Dylan's been a big believer in in crypto for a long time.
39:36
Um, I put the mark when the S1 came out and people saw that, everybody was pretty excited.
39:43
>> I actually held Bitcoin on the balance sheet of my first company >> when Bitcoin was >> because you guys had to you were accepting it through Coinbase.
39:49
We had an integration where you could pay, but it was complicated because customers would pay in Bitcoin and then if the price of Bitcoin went down, they would ask for a refund.
39:59
And if the price of Bitcoin or if the price of Bitcoin went up, they would ask for a bit a refund in the Bitcoin that they paid if they so they would effectively use your refund policy as a hedge.
40:09
And so if if the price of Bitcoin went down, they could like sell the product and then buy more Bitcoin with it.
40:15
It was just like very very messy.
40:17
Um, and but we wound up holding some Bitcoin on the balance sheet, but we eventually sold it way too early, obviously.
40:23
And we also paid out a bonus to people.
40:25
I think everyone everyone that Christmas got five bitcoins.
40:29
>> Crazy to think about now.
40:29
It's like It was like five grand back then. >> Brutal. >> Yeah. Yeah. Brutal.
40:34
Um, anyway, um, let's tell you about graphite. dev.
40:37
Code review for the age of AI.
40:39
Graphite helps teams on GitHub ship higher quality software faster.
40:42
I wish I had graphite back in the day. You can go to graphite.
40:46
dev I had graphite back in the day. >> Yeah.
40:49
Um so, um Matt Lavine goes on 2,000 of shares of GameStop is like $50,000, which isn't going to move the needle even on a $72 million public company.
40:59
The stock was down this morning, but good effort. >> Good effort.
41:02
So, um, he says, uh, the simple way to think about exchangeraded funds is that an ETF, >> see, that would be if they added $50,000 worth of GameStop to their to their balance sheet >> and then the stock moon, that would be true mania in my book, right?
41:18
You got to have the day trader, the the educator who's day trading >> Yep.
41:24
options, quitting his job, and you got to have adding, you know, $50,000 of GameStop triple your stock price.
41:30
To me, that's >> Kay is so little. I mean, what Yeah.
41:35
What is the Why did they do this?
41:35
Like, what what is the is it just to get a press release, just to get mentioned in Matt?
41:41
>> Well, John, it obviously aligns with Quantum Bioarmmer's ongoing commitment to combating market corruption, enhancing shareholder value through prudent financial strategy, and advocacy against manipulative trading practices.
41:52
How does this combat market corruption?
41:55
>> They're making a statement, John.
41:57
>> They're making a statement, I suppose.
42:00
Anyway, uh there's no way to there's no better way to make a statement than getting on Vanta, automate compliance, manage risk, improve trust continuously.
42:07
Vant trust management platform.
42:09
Yeah, we're going to talk about >> hitting the gong in just a little bit.
42:12
Vanna ra Vanta raised some new money uh that was announced today and we will have Christina on a little bit later to break it down. >> Yeah.
42:20
Well, this uh this newsletter from Matt Lavine is fantastic, but I'll let you go and subscribe and read it.
42:24
We can move on to the Wall Street Journal talking about Amazon.
42:28
Um Amazon has launched a uh a new uh or they they they bought an AI wearable that kind of flew under the radar. This is the B. >> Yeah.
42:40
Had you ever had you ever heard of this company? >> I hadn't heard of it.
42:42
I feel like I've heard of most of them, but only the ones that kind of went viral.
42:45
So the humane pin I followed the rabbit R1 I followed the uh the friend I followed and then obviously the Sam Alman Johnny I project IO which we don't know what it is might be a wearable might be a phone I don't know I feel like there's been a lot of conflicting reporting about what they're actually building but there's a lot of stuff there and there's something coming.
43:06
Um and then obviously we've talked to the the founder of Whoop and other wearables and I'm aware of Fitbit that's kind of in the legacy space.
43:13
Um, Apple has the Apple Watch.
43:16
Now, Amazon has the B AI bracelet that listens to your conversations throughout the day and automate and automatically adds action items from those chats to to a to-do list.
43:27
>> So, it might suggest it'll it'll create a suggested to-do for you.
43:29
Uh, on their website, it says go grocery shopping for the week as one.
43:36
>> Two is actually on their site says send a Figma link of the work discussed to the team.
43:40
And three, establish a daily routine to take a establish a routine to take a daily walk.
43:47
>> Um, and it gives you reflections and insights.
43:50
And uh, the example they give on the site is you're adapting your parenting approach during wife's absence by creating special moments around routine activities like swim class.
44:01
>> Not a bad reminder if you're a parent.
44:03
Turn that swim class into >> a special moment.
44:05
Do they have a linear integration?
44:07
The purpose-built tool for planning and building products.
44:09
You can use the system for modern software development.
44:13
>> I would get a BB band if >> to help you streamline issues, projects, and product road maps. That'd be great.
44:18
They should go to linear. app. Uh anyway, it's funny.
44:20
After a decade of Amazon saying Alexa isn't listening to your every word, the company is buying a bracelet that can listen to your every word.
44:28
Uh oh, the tin foil hat's on.
44:28
Uh, Bee's wearable transcribes all the conversations in your day, including when you talk to yourself.
44:35
Then it uses artificial intelligence to turn that giant word soup into a searchable history, offering up key events and even to-do lists based on your chatter. So interesting.
44:46
Obviously, there's a big push back on this from privacy perspective. Do you trust Amazon?
44:50
I tend to trust Amazon on this stuff.
44:53
Um, the the bigger question is like if I see you wearing one, are you going to get the glass hole phenomenon?
44:59
Do you remember that with the Google Glass thing that seemed we seem to have blown past it.
45:03
So Google launched Google Glass back in 2012ish, something like that.
45:08
And >> uh it was just a it was just a pair of glasses with the camera on it.
45:14
Uh and you could take pictures.
45:16
Very a direct precursor to the Meta Ray-B bands, although it did have a heads-up display.
45:22
Uh it was very small in the corner.
45:22
you could kind of look up and the and the basic uh you know use cases they were pitching were things like uh turnbyturn directions.
45:31
If you're on a bike, you don't need to pull out your phone.
45:33
You can get Google Maps integrated.
45:34
Google was working on this for a while.
45:36
Then eventually it kind of got sunsetted.
45:38
It was it was very there's this famous picture of Mark Andre in in the Google Glass and a lot of people were very excited about it.
45:45
It seemed like the the the era of augmented reality was on the horizon.
45:50
>> Um didn't really pan out that way that way.
45:53
way. they pivoted to B2B or enterprise and the idea was like okay maybe if you're on a factory line you could have instructions work instructions pulled up there that never really panned out either and they kind of sunset it and it kind of went the way of the Microsoft
46:07
hollow lens where there was some amazing R&D that was done some amazing engineering but it never crossed the chasm never got past the early adopters and so >> but during that time it was one of the first major backlashes against like the Silicon Valley Tech Bro. So, uh, people
46:22
So, uh, people were wearing these cuz they were Yeah.
46:27
There's Mark Andre wearing the Google Glass, one of the prototypes. >> Looking sharp. >> Yeah.
46:31
And interestingly, kind of solves the problem of are these sunglasses or are these indoor glasses?
46:36
Like they're just it's not glasses.
46:37
So, you could wear it indoor or outdoor.
46:39
And I guess you could put sunglasses over the top of that more or less.
46:42
Um, but never really got adoption.
46:45
Um, and there was there was this I think like some sort of instance where a a tech person was wearing them in a bar and someone came up to them and was like, "I don't want you taking pictures of me.
46:56
I don't want you recording me in public. Get that off of here."
47:00
And it caused this kind of culture war issue and the and the and the port manto that became popular was glass hole.
47:08
>> Uh, you can imagine where that what that means.
47:10
Um, and so people were very upset about this and like I don't want you taking pictures.
47:14
taking pictures. Now we're kind of blown past that where everyone has a phone on them that could be recording you and everyone's taking out their phone all the time taking pictures and there's just kind of you know Emily Sunberg uh was talking about in the Hamptons how there's so many Tik Tockers around
47:26
taking video of everything you you can't even leave with another man's wife as she put it right and so um the uh such a funny phenomenon but but I mean it was funny because she said that and then a week later the Coldplay concert happened and that went viral and that's of course the product of technology. That's a product of the fact that
47:44
That's a product of the fact that everyone is filming.
47:46
There is going to be someone filming every screen at every moment.
47:50
And so >> at a concert, >> it wasn't like something happened and then the one person that has a camera needs to be like, "Oh, I should take a video of that and post it."
47:57
It's like there were after a while once it went viral, there were other camera angles that came out because other people were also filming at the same time.
48:04
Now, not everyone was, but you put 100,000 people together, they're going to be filming everything at all at all at all at all times, all the angles.
48:11
Um, obviously very beneficial when something disastrous happens.
48:15
You have a lot of you have a lot of coverage to figure out what happened.
48:18
Um, but in in other cases it is somewhat of an invasion of privacy, all sorts of things.
48:23
And so, >> long story short, we kind of blew past that.
48:27
There hasn't been a push back on the Meta Ray-B bands.
48:28
People wear them and there hasn't been any >> Don't they have like a light that >> that lets you know if it's recording?
48:35
>> It's it's recording, which I think is good. >> Yes.
48:37
And so that was kind of where the technology resolution landed.
48:39
Um, now Meta Ray-B bands aren't the most popular product, but there's certainly plenty of people that daily drive them and they're not getting, you know, aggressively yelled at for being like Meta Rayband holes or whatever. Like that meme is dead.
48:55
And people just kind of assume that if I'm out in public, someone might take a picture of me with their phone or their Meta Ray-B bands.
49:00
Like it's just something that happens now.
49:01
And we've just been normalized. >> Yeah.
49:03
And and anytime these wearable pendant bracelet things have popped up, people's immediate thought is, >> okay, so you're recording every conversation that you're having and that's being indexed.
49:15
Maybe you're getting transcriptions.
49:18
>> Is that suddenly if if if somebody sues you, >> can um can do you have to provide that uh you know as part of a lawsuit uh that you can imagine um the kind of problems that that would cause.
49:32
We should have so so Avi from friend.
49:34
com he's starting they're starting to ship their product on July 30th so just a week from now um and I'm certing that but >> yep >> be is interesting the company was started >> uh just under three years ago um by some former uh Twitter employees actually back when it was called Twitter >> uh so the CEO Maria and >> Twitter and be both like flower adjacent animals. I'm seeing a trend here. I like this. >> Yeah, I can see it.
50:05
So, >> Maria Dords Zolo said the company which imagines a world where AI is truly personal is joining Amazon in a LinkedIn post.
50:12
An Amazon spokeswoman said that while the deal is signed, the agreement isn't yet closed.
50:16
For Amazon, it's a small move in a potentially huge future market. I saw the bracelet.
50:22
>> Yeah, it was interesting.
50:22
I think the pricing strategy here was smart.
50:23
The device, they they sold it for $49. 99.
50:28
So, um just clearly trying to sell these to as many people as possible.
50:30
And then I'm sure there's a subscription uh component to it as well.
50:34
But >> yeah, there there is something about the the price point and even though even though when the iPhone was released it was like $600.
50:43
It was very expensive people.
50:46
>> Oh, and they actually haven't shipped any product yet. >> OB hasn't.
50:49
>> So So they they're shipping in and they were were shipping in in February.
50:53
>> Well, or sorry, September.
50:54
>> So when they ship, will they have to pay sales tax or what should they use for that? >> Definitely.
50:58
I would I would strongly >> recommend uh numeral >> numeralhq.
51:02
com sales they could put their sales tax on autopilot.
51:05
They could spend less than five minutes per month on sales tax. That would be amazing.
51:08
Um anyway um >> so they did send a demo to Joanna Stern at the Wall Street Journal.
51:14
She was impressed with how useful the bracelet was, but she wasn't sold on the privacy tradeoffs rather than saving audio.
51:20
B only keeps a transcription, but still the creep factor is high, says the journal.
51:28
Uh, we have long had listening devices in our pockets and our homes.
51:32
For many, Amazon's Echo speaker was the first. >> It is. It is kind of funny.
51:34
Somebody uh, you know, let's say somebody, a friend comes over to your house and uh, you know, they've got their B bracelet on and then they take it off at some point sitting on a table and you're like, wait, there's, you know, let's say you're having a pool party.
51:50
You're sitting at the table. We're sitting like this.
51:54
>> The the the the person the be owner is off doing something else, but they actually they get like a perfect transcription.
51:59
They actually get recommendations.
52:02
>> It's like, "Hey, so and so was talking behind your back for about 30 minutes." >> Yeah.
52:06
The mangoes he brought to the pool party. Totally rotten. >> Totally rotten. >> Wow.
52:10
Really lacks attention to detail.
52:12
>> Uh won't be invited to the next pool party. >> Yeah.
52:14
Until your bee is like, "Okay, so you really need to work on your mango selection going into the next party."
52:20
like your friends were roasting behind your back.
52:22
>> It's really a weak point for you.
52:25
>> Yeah, >> that's that could that could be valuable.
52:27
>> I think some people are gonna have to fill out the apology form to all the schizophrenics out there who've been like everything's listening to me because like well yes in fact everything is listening to you.
52:36
Um >> I think if if Meta if Meta could if Meta could have bought a company like this and said and said for $50 a month we'll pay you $50 a month to listen to everything that you say and give you better ad targeting.
52:48
I bet Meta could make it back. >> Yeah.
52:51
I mean, I I I I do think the price point is like super super key to getting the install base down.
52:55
John Carmarmac was talking about with VR. What was he saying?
52:59
Like 100 grams, $100 for a VR headset.
53:03
That's when you're going to get everyone to buy them.
53:04
And then there's going to be such a big install base that everyone will want to build on top of it.
53:09
And that's when, you know, the when the when the iPhone came out at $600, it was so expensive.
53:14
It was such a luxury good, but everyone had a phone at that time.
53:19
The phones were just heavily subsidized by the by the phone plans.
53:23
And the phone plans had started at like $10 a month, $30 a month and kind of worked their way up to $100 a month.
53:27
The phones were really only like a couple hundred.
53:31
So if you lost it, it wasn't that big of a deal.
53:33
And like slowly it had worked its way up from the bottom.
53:37
It I mean wireless phone, cell phones used to be a luxury.
53:40
It took two decades probably from the 80s to go from the big dino attack all the way down to the Motorola Razer V3 which was like pretty much you know affordable to many families.
53:51
They give them to their high school kids right um and then so when the iPhone came out >> there was already this uh install base of people who expected to be able to make phone calls cell over the cellular network and then also text each other and then the internet browsing was like kind of a nice to have extra feature.
54:07
I remember someone had a really fancy I think it was like a a Nokia or something or it was some sort of other phone that had a very primitive web browser on it about like two years before and it was really expensive because you had to buy a data plan too but I was like oh man like the ability to access the internet everywhere like that's that that's such a killer feature.
54:28
Um and so I I definitely could imagine a world where you know you have to get these products just so cheap that everyone's buying them, wearing them.
54:37
they're just baked into everything and then you can scale up to something that's more premium.
54:41
Um, >> just seems we're so far past the Siri, Alexa, personal assistant, shopping assistant rivalry. Yeah.
54:49
But it makes sense for Amazon to try to get back in the game. >> Yeah.
54:54
I wonder do you think uh do you think OpenAI could could kind of come out with an Alexa competitor that would do well?
55:02
>> I mean, they arguably already have, >> which is >> it's just I mean, Chad GPT. Yeah.
55:07
>> I would say you use specifically you use as like voice memo say like >> you kind of talk through what you're thinking and what you want to do and then it it condenses it. >> Yeah. >> Uh nicely.
55:17
It's not taking a bunch of actions yet like being like hey I want to make uh I I could see in the future where you're like >> hey I want to make uh a I want to cook uh my wife a nice dinner like in in this theme.
55:30
Can you put together an ingredient list and order all the ingredients and have it home by 5 pm?
55:37
>> That's very very agentic.
55:37
I I I I just imagine I talked to somebody who said that they often leave or their their wife leaves uh Chat GPT open in the in the conversational mode when they're just hanging out and then you can just like it it won't chime in unless you actually act ask it a question and it will kind of know that okay now you're talking to me but it doesn't have a specific wake word.
56:01
Uh so it's just like a third party in the conversation.
56:03
Felt very sci-fi very very futuristic. I don't know.
56:07
Um anyway, uh so now Amazon is interested in a wearable device that's always listening. Always listening. No wake word needed.
56:14
So Amazon has reminded us for years that its voice activated speakers only start listening when they hear the wake word.
56:22
Uh even if you didn't necessarily utter it, you have they would if you've had an Alexa in your home ever, it certainly will wake up uh when it'll hear uh something incorrectly and pop on all the time. >> Yeah.
56:34
Uh, and so, uh, very interesting to see what they're thinking about here.
56:38
B is one of a growing pack of AI gadgets out there.
56:41
Google has Pixel earbuds that put Gemini Gemini AI in your ear.
56:43
Meta Ray-B bands, of course, we talked about Samsung recently showed up showed off Gemini infused Galaxy devices.
56:50
Apple has been slower on the uptake.
56:53
Um, but remember we were hearing that reporting from Mark German that uh, Amazon or Apple was working on like a robotic arm or something like that.
57:01
something that like would sit on your table or something. I don't know.
57:06
They had some sort of like robotics device like in the far road map.
57:10
>> Apple's always I mean I I I do believe that Apple works on a tre what what you see even leaks from Apple is still like 5% right of what they're actually working on under the surface.
57:20
Meta had an announcement today uh for a wearable device.
57:27
Um so I'll read their post.
57:27
They said, "Imagine controlling your devices with a subtle hand or finger gesture.
57:33
Our cutting edge research turns intent and muscle signals into seamless computer control.
57:37
This breakthrough wrist technology is redefining how we interact with computers.
57:41
Intuitive, precise, and ready for the future.
57:42
And uh they um I believe they released an entire study uh around this as well.
57:48
We actually got a chance to take a demo >> of this.
57:54
Uh it was very cool um earlier this year.
57:57
Uh I'm not sure how much we can actually say on it for now.
58:00
Um but uh but yeah, so they they had they did an entire study as well around a generic non-invasive neuromot interface for human computer interaction.
58:11
So it's basically um yeah the the team has it pulled up here.
58:17
>> You can see like you can click by going like this.
58:19
You can uh scroll in different ways.
58:21
And when we used it, it was extremely it was extremely intuitive.
58:26
Like you needed it took about 30 seconds to figure out how it work.
58:31
>> Scrolling motion was particularly cool.
58:33
That was something I hadn't experienced with the Apple Vision Pro.
58:35
>> And this is uh one of the ways in which Meta imagines integrating um making something like a pair of glasses as functional as a phone or a computer. >> Yeah.
58:47
Um this was an acquisition too.
58:47
So Meta bought Control Labs to bring this wristband into the company.
58:53
That was a deal reportedly between 500 million and a billion dollars.
58:58
It's been six years now and now they're starting to test it even further.
59:04
What's interesting is that the Apple Vision Pro was pretty good at hand detection.
59:09
And I feel like this is maybe one of those like Elon versus Whimo debates about like you can do it with a camera.
59:18
Like you can see that I'm doing this.
59:20
You can see that I'm giving you a thumbs up.
59:21
You if you can see the computer should be able to see with a camera. >> Yeah.
59:26
>> And and it's just a matter of getting the right >> training data, building the right model, and then rolling that out.
59:31
And so it should be doable from a uh from a pure software perspective.
59:36
But it was nice when you put on the glasses and you put the control wristband behind your you you didn't have to have it in view. Yeah.
59:44
And so >> you could have your hand in your pocket and still be controlling.
59:47
>> And that was a big part of the weight of the Apple Vision Pro was that it has cameras not just looking out this way but also looking down to see your hands.
59:56
So but if your hands are behind your back.
59:58
But it's such a weird niche use case.
1:00:00
I feel like I could just get used to having my hands out.
1:00:01
The other challenge is getting people to adopt effectively two new devices is also um >> not necessarily easy.
1:00:09
>> Yeah, putting on a wristband I mean if you put a watch on it, you put you know you make it part of the daily wear.
1:00:14
The the big question is like Apple's getting so strong with the Apple Watch like the ecosystem feels like if it really starts clicking the Apple Vision Pro can key off the watch and it just gets so much better if you have the watch on and you're like okay well yeah I'll get the watch then to throw that on.
1:00:31
Uh but obviously that's no substitute for a PC Philippe or an Ottoar pig.
1:00:37
So you got to head over to bezel.
1:00:41
Your bezel concierge is available now to source you any watch on the planet.
1:00:44
Seriously, any watch but to get bezel. com. Um, but uh I don't know.
1:00:48
I don't know exactly how it will play out.
1:00:52
It feels like um you need maybe both.
1:00:54
It'll it's still like it adds cost.
1:00:59
I I I feel like the I'm still in the camp of make the headsets light and cheap and give people the the ability to replace their TV like and then a few other things that they can do but they have to replace >> entertainment not not a daily driver coming with you everywhere. >> Yeah.
1:01:18
There's so many people that build you know like okay I got three Apple Pro displays or three studio displays.
1:01:23
I mean look right there we got we got six displays in the in the production suite.
1:01:29
Um, like in theory that could be replaced with VR headsets and and and you could have unlimited displays and reconfigure them as you need on the fly. Yeah.
1:01:37
Uh, and for a lot of people, especially if you're traveling, college student, a smaller apartment, um, you know, instead of a big 60-inch TV and a bunch of monitors for your desk setup and this and that, you just have one headset.
1:01:47
But it's got to be light.
1:01:47
You got to be able to wear it for a really long time. >> Yeah.
1:01:51
Well, let's go and check in with Europe.
1:01:53
We have a post here from Kai.
1:01:53
He says, "Normalize sitting outside the cafe all day and not really doing anything."
1:02:02
And uh superstar poster Jira ticket says, "Impressive. Very nice." Now, let's see the GDP. >> Good to flag.
1:02:11
Uh there's a real cost to sitting outside the cafe all day and not really doing anything seven days a week.
1:02:18
These guys look these guys look very retired though.
1:02:20
And I feel like >> let them sit outside the cafe in peace, but shouldn't be an invitation uh for you to do the same thing. >> I don't know.
1:02:28
I I I think you flip this around and you phrase it as you're holding court.
1:02:32
People come to you, you set up set up shop.
1:02:35
>> Holding court is underrated.
1:02:37
>> Holding court is extremely underrated.
1:02:39
Uh you got to just set up, you know, hey, you want to come pitch me your startup?
1:02:42
I'll be outside this cafe all day long. >> Yeah.
1:02:44
We have a uh we have a a friend of the show, media mogul, who holds court at a at a certain hotel in LA and he doesn't have to um >> doesn't really have to leave all day long.
1:02:57
They just, you know, he's he's really a king there. >> Yeah, it's great.
1:03:01
>> Um and they come to him.
1:03:01
Uh it's fantastic way of doing business. >> Yeah.
1:03:04
Well, if you're struggling with a bunch of inbound emails to your support team, get Finn.
1:03:08
ai, AI, the number one AI agent for customer service, number one in performance benchmarks, >> world champion, >> number one in competitive bake offs, number one ranking on G2.
1:03:16
Um, did you see this video?
1:03:20
>> Yeah, pull up this video. Company called Volinaut.
1:03:23
>> Volut uh says, "We are excited to share this raw flight footage, including takeoff and landing, all with real sound.
1:03:28
No special effects, no CGI, no AI, pure engineering. Enjoy the future.
1:03:33
A functional realworld speeder bike that so far only existed in sci-fi movies is finally here.
1:03:44
>> This seems extremely dangerous.
1:03:47
>> Yeah, >> you just look uh >> it's Yeah, it's like we wanted Yeah, we wanted flying cars.
1:03:55
We got them and now I'm terrified of them and I don't necessarily want to go for a ride on this. It seems really fun.
1:04:01
It seems like at in the same territory as like wing suiting.
1:04:06
Like as a kid, I was like, I'm definitely gonna become a pro wing suitter. No doubt. Put me in. >> Put me in.
1:04:13
>> Like, give me the Red Bull livery on my wings suit. I'm 100% doing it.
1:04:15
And then I looked at the actual stats of how dangerous wing suiting is.
1:04:18
And was like, I will never be wing suiting.
1:04:20
I will be watching Red Bull videos of wing suiting. >> Yeah.
1:04:25
Leave it to the the red the Red Bullers.
1:04:27
>> How do you even make this safe?
1:04:27
This is >> So they're calling it the air bike. Yep.
1:04:32
It's very cool that they built this. Very, very, very cool.
1:04:34
I wonder I wonder how it commercializes.
1:04:37
Um I wonder like where does this go? What use case is it?
1:04:42
I mean, >> it's also crazy on the on the link.
1:04:42
I I have no idea who's building this on the LinkedIn.
1:04:47
>> Yeah, >> it has one guy on it. >> Okay.
1:04:52
>> And uh Tomas Patan >> and uh it seems like where is this? Hm.
1:05:00
I wonder >> he's in Poland.
1:05:01
He's apparently the only person working on this company.
1:05:06
>> Solo dev uh soloreneur. Oh, >> okay.
1:05:09
So, he he's also the founder of Jetson, which is the EV tall company. >> Okay.
1:05:13
So, he built this on the side side project.
1:05:16
>> Little little side project. Built a speeder bike. >> He's in Poland.
1:05:18
I wonder if there's a defense tech application.
1:05:22
There's oft anytime you can put something in the air and make it move fast, there's usually >> I mean, if you're worried about if you're worried about a minefield and you need to get from one place to another, maybe this is a good way to get around.
1:05:34
And if you're really trained because you're in the military, you're not just some casual person going for a flight.
1:05:40
Like, could be safer than trying to walk through a minefield, >> of course.
1:05:44
Like, you are a pretty big target up there.
1:05:45
It looks like he's wearing some sort of >> Yeah.
1:05:48
The way to think about this is this is a you could also imagine this as a drone, right?
1:05:53
There doesn't need to be a human on it.
1:05:55
So, it's it's powered by jet propulsion.
1:05:57
It's designed to carry one person at speeds up to 124 miles an hour. >> That's so fast.
1:06:04
>> And what what makes it possible is they have the stabilization system >> on board flight computer. Yep.
1:06:10
>> And um and anyways, I mean >> this looks like a beautiful future.
1:06:14
It's just like how how safe does it need to get until I'll be ripping one of these from Malibu into the into the studio every morning.
1:06:24
>> I don't even ride a motorcycle. So, I don't know.
1:06:26
I'm I'm more likely to go to the moon, I think, than than rip around on one of these.
1:06:29
It seems like it you have to >> very doomer pill, John.
1:06:32
You don't think they can you don't think >> maybe they make it so so safe that it's that it's, you know, flyable by anyone, certifiable by anyone.
1:06:40
It's it's just so easy to drive that, you know, there's no risk.
1:06:44
then yeah, maybe I'd give it a try. It looks very very fun. It does look very fun. >> Yeah.
1:06:48
One one solution is it is it becomes like fully autonomous and you don't have the sort of like human saying, I'm going to I'm going to take this turn, right? >> Yeah.
1:06:59
But still be cool to have that you could ride on that would take you around to places.
1:07:03
>> Then you're just back in EV tall territory, right? >> I don't know. >> Yeah.
1:07:07
>> I guess this is not EV tall because it's not electric motors. It's jet propulsion.
1:07:10
But imagine when this thing gets to the point where you can just like fly it up a mountain. >> That will be crazy.
1:07:17
>> You're going to be able to take these skiing >> just everyone's waiting in line at Everest and you're just bombing up to the top. >> In the mountains. >> Yeah.
1:07:24
Again, it's like we kind of do have flying cars in the form of helicopters, right?
1:07:27
Just like not even not evenly distributed.
1:07:30
Um it's going to be fun when they start selling these things.
1:07:34
They're going to get on Adio customer relationship magic.
1:07:35
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1:07:41
>> Yeah, I have a feeling you're not going to be able to just order one of these on the website anytime soon.
1:07:44
No, >> they're going to need a sales team for this peerto-peer.
1:07:48
>> Let's check in with Tyler.
1:07:48
How are you doing on the challenge?
1:07:51
>> Okay, so I played all three games and then I don't know how the like scoring works.
1:07:56
So, I can look at >> each of the three games.
1:07:58
There's like scorecards and then there's recordings. I'm on the site.
1:08:02
>> So, I can see the number of actions.
1:08:02
If you add them up, I'm at uh 576.
1:08:07
>> Oh, you're pretty good. >> So that's under 600. >> Okay.
1:08:10
>> Uh but I'm not on the leaderboard. I don't know why.
1:08:12
>> Maybe it needs some time to update.
1:08:14
>> That's the real challenge now.
1:08:16
>> Get on the leaderboard.
1:08:18
>> I'm not just trusting you.
1:08:19
>> He's like, I won, but but >> write a write a SQL injection to to hack the data. >> Reach out to Mike. Reach out to Mike.
1:08:26
Sounds like you might you might be getting a bug bounty, too. And your iPhone. >> Maybe. Maybe. But uh congratulations.
1:08:33
That sounds like good work.
1:08:33
How far are you away from number one now? >> Uh I'm in 13th place. So I got 576. >> Okay. >> Number one is at 511.
1:08:40
>> Do you think that's doable based on your >> Yeah, definitely.
1:08:42
I made a bunch of mistakes. >> Okay.
1:08:45
>> So >> maybe May maybe give it another run.
1:08:47
>> I could probably go for >> See if you go sub 500. That'll be good. >> Bang. There you go. >> Sub 500.
1:08:51
You get upgraded to more storage. >> All right.
1:08:54
Well, reach out to Mike because I think there might be a bug here and I don't want I don't want the reason that that you're not going to win your iPhone to be a bug. True, true, true. I feel I want Yeah.
1:09:01
It feels like you might have earned it. >> Yeah.
1:09:04
You also don't want bed bugs either. You want a new bed.
1:09:06
You want to go to eightleep. com. >> That's right. >> Get a pod five.
1:09:09
30 five five year warranty.
1:09:11
30 night risk-f free trial. Free returns. Free shipping.
1:09:15
>> I am sleeping these days. >> Deathly ill.
1:09:17
I'm trying to keep the energy up.
1:09:18
My eight sleep uh basically >> here for Jordy.
1:09:21
I think he's putting out a fantastic performance. Production team.
1:09:25
>> I didn't know this was possible.
1:09:25
My HRV last night was at 32. Okay.
1:09:27
Um, which which I thought would imply death. Uh, but uh I'm here. I'm doing the show.
1:09:36
Um, and it's scary to imagine what my night would have looked like without my eight sleep. Indeed.
1:09:41
>> I don't even want to imagine that world. >> Indeed.
1:09:42
Um, well, there's one founder I know who's sleeping a lot better, sleeping well. Samir from Vise.
1:09:47
He his company just hit $22 billion in platform assets.
1:09:54
Do you know the story of this company?
1:09:57
All I know is they got marked up like back to back to back in the sort of 2021 era. It was a unicorn.
1:10:02
Uh and then they they >> very young founders and there was all this like oh like they're overvalued like you know and the guys apparently just kept sticking with it and chopping wood and I love to see this. This is amazing.
1:10:15
So he says one learning to share with all future entrepreneurs.
1:10:19
Great businesses take a long time to build.
1:10:22
Ignore the noise and keep going.
1:10:24
It sounds like that's exactly what he did.
1:10:25
They grew,275% year-over-year.
1:10:29
They're growing 40% quarter over quarter, a record number of new firms.
1:10:34
So what this company does is >> is is is software for fund administration for uh asset managers, I believe.
1:10:41
And so they're portfolio management.
1:10:44
So they're onboarding more managers uh and and bringing those assets on the on the platform.
1:10:48
It I don't think it's fair to say like oh 22 billion is it revenue or they'd have some take rate.
1:10:54
It's more like a GMV type of thing and they probably take a small small fraction of all that.
1:10:57
Um but still like growth is growth and it seems like they're doing very well. So good to hear. >> Cool to see.
1:11:04
I think he's been a huge beneficiary of um Gen AI from what I can tell. >> Interesting. Yeah. >> Yeah. It is funny.
1:11:10
I mean, looking at uh Lucy's been on an absolute tear this year and uh hearing like how many years uh that that were not super exciting that you were just chopping wood just just trying to be better every single month.
1:11:25
>> I had a buddy I had a buddy come to me uh last year and he was like, >> "Yeah, I think I want to create like a Zen competitor.
1:11:31
Like I think it'd be pretty pretty simple to get it to like, you know, just like get it to like a $50 million run rate, you know, nice little lifestyle business."
1:11:39
That was thinking about your journey with Lucy being like I don't I I don't remember the exact numbers but it just was the exact opposite of like a of a fast growing you know >> for sure >> company at the beginning.
1:11:52
You just had to like >> just just compound compound compound.
1:11:55
It took took so long to really unlock the growth. >> Yeah.
1:11:59
No, it always the growth rate was always decent but it just took a decade to get any meat on the bones.
1:12:04
just like I always refer to that as like once the company like it has enough revenue and profit to like sustain the operations out of the out of the fundraising to survive mode.
1:12:16
Um it just and it's actually like a player in the category, not just some wild bet.
1:12:21
It takes a long time for the for the majority of companies.
1:12:25
Some people they're just built different.
1:12:27
Maybe they're lucky, maybe they made their own luck.
1:12:30
>> They, you know, they they rip from day one and we we love to celebrate them here. >> We do.
1:12:35
Um but uh yeah sometimes you if you have something you know the die has been cast aliyah octa I octaest the the Mark Zuckerberg quote um you you know you release the arrow and it travels in whatever direction you released it for as long as possible but hopefully that's at a compounding rate upwards for a long time.
1:12:55
Anyway, if you're looking to compound get on public.
1:12:56
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1:13:03
Uh, Sonos has >> news out of Sonos out of Santa Barbara County, California.
1:13:08
Sonos, uh, Tom Conrad has been asked to be the next CEO of Sonos.
1:13:14
He's grateful for the perspectives and critiques that many of you have shared here these last six months while I was interim.
1:13:20
So excited for the road ahead.
1:13:22
So big pickup from Sonos.
1:13:25
Uh, we've covered Sonos before. We've shared Yep.
1:13:29
>> uh, frustration over the years with Sonos.
1:13:31
Um uh uh but uh fundamentally uh the products are incredible when they're working >> and it it feels like uh it was always uh software problem, right?
1:13:43
Not not necessarily uh maybe >> which firmware >> I'm still confused by because they haven't rolled back the app and so I'm wondering what's going on because my Sonos app still takes a long time to open.
1:13:56
just opening it up is a full at least 90 seconds to just adjust the volume, which is crazy bad experience.
1:14:06
And the crazy thing is that the same hardware with the same phone used to be >> 10 seconds.
1:14:12
And so there's something that changed when they added some new functionality that really bogged down the network or the app or something.
1:14:19
They got to roll it back.
1:14:19
It's very clear what they what what they need to do.
1:14:23
Um so hopefully he can do it.
1:14:23
He's been he's been interim CEO for 6 months.
1:14:27
Hopefully, he can turn things around.
1:14:29
There's a lot that they need to do.
1:14:30
It'll be interesting to see where some >> He's got experience.
1:14:31
He was uh the executive vice president of product at Pandora for 10 years. Yeah.
1:14:38
>> Um and then became the chief technology officer, then went over to Snapchat, which is a VP of product there.
1:14:41
Also had a brief stint at Quibby as the chief product officer.
1:14:46
Um, so, uh, excited to see what he does with Sonos and, um, considering I have a bunch of Sonos in my house still. >> Yeah.
1:14:56
Um, do any Sonos speakers have uh, microphones on them?
1:15:00
Let's figure it out because >> yes, several Sonos speakers come equipped with built-in microphones, the Sonos One, Sonos Era 100.
1:15:08
Um, and so you should be able to talk to them.
1:15:12
They work with voice assistants like Alexa, Google Assistants, Sonos's voice control.
1:15:18
Open AI's got to buy this company, right? >> I could see it.
1:15:23
>> That would be a wild deal >> because at 1.
1:15:24
3 billion, the current market cap, >> it's affordable.
1:15:27
It's affordable, but then you just jump forward in the supply chain.
1:15:31
And you can start you delivering all these things and then you just have an Alexa competitor into millions of homes >> and also in through like the actual distribution like chains like Best Buy and stuff like like uh maybe you want to start from scratch, maybe you want to green field it.
1:15:46
I don't really know, but um this feels like something that would be a no-brainer.
1:15:51
Um >> yeah, so in 2024, Sonos shipped five million units uh globally.
1:15:56
Yeah, that was down from uh the year before, but still that's a lot of devices out in the world.
1:16:04
Yeah, in a single year that um >> I could see it.
1:16:07
>> What about uh Perplexity?
1:16:07
Aren't they at 18 billion? Perplexity buys Sonos.
1:16:14
>> Well, they're working on a phone.
1:16:16
>> They're working on a lot of different things.
1:16:17
>> Salana's working on a phone.
1:16:18
>> Lots of new phones coming.
1:16:19
>> Everybody's working on a phone.
1:16:21
>> But maybe the smart speaker market has like languished enough that there's something interesting to be done there.
1:16:26
I mean, just the voice transcription is so much better.
1:16:28
Um, we talked to the the CEO of the Nothing Phone and he was saying that he's integrated Whisper and Gemini and uh kind of beefed up the voice assistant.
1:16:37
Um, but maybe people aren't willing to jump from the iPhone ecosystem, but you know, if you're like, "Oh, well, I could offset the lack of a great Siri with a great Chat GPT enabled smarthome device." Kind of interesting. I don't know.
1:16:54
Uh, you put some AI researchers on the problem of getting the Sonos app to load in less than 90 seconds and I think you might solve it.
1:17:03
Tyler, you have an update for us. What's up?
1:17:04
>> Yeah, I I'm on the leaderboard.
1:17:05
>> You're on the leaderboard. Let's go. >> Come over. Ring the gong. >> Going for number one. Hit the gong. Hit the gong. >> Hit the gong.
1:17:10
You are the proud owner of a new iPhone. >> There we go. >> Incredible. Welld deserved.
1:17:17
>> Give it a better hit than that.
1:17:17
Give it a better hit than that.
1:17:18
I'm going to I'm going to kind of cover the mic, but um >> bigger hit. Bigger hit.
1:17:25
Still fairly gentle, but great contact. >> Great contact. Great contact. Nice work. See it. >> So, what? Yeah. Yeah. Give me the position.
1:17:32
Uh, what ranking are you now?
1:17:34
I want to see you go for number one. >> Yeah.
1:17:36
So, I think I'm number 13. I think we can.
1:17:37
I don't know if you already showed it, but yeah. >> Yeah.
1:17:40
Can we pull up the screen?
1:17:41
>> What am I 65 moves behind? >> Okay.
1:17:44
And what was what was the total number of moves that you that you >> 576? >> 576. Not bad. You smoked 600. Okay.
1:17:47
and and you got to get to 511 is the number one I believe. Okay.
1:17:54
>> So >> So you got to cut down a little bit, be a little bit more efficient, but I think you can do it. >> Should be doable. >> Very cool.
1:17:59
Uh and then after that, we got to get you working on the agent side of that leaderboard. You've seen that.
1:18:06
So on the other side, yeah, on the other side, they they actually have like a harness that you can use to get started and you can start trying to build a your own AI agent that will go and try and solve it and and and rank on the uh on the leaderboard. >> Interesting.
1:18:22
>> But you know, that's enough about leaderboards.
1:18:23
Let's talk about billboards.
1:18:24
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1:18:36
>> Meanwhile, on the timeline, Ryan Peterson is throwing out some bait.
1:18:38
He said, "Rail is best used for freight while humans should fly through the sky at 500 mph because they value their time."
1:18:47
>> And he says, "Just discovered that saying bad things about rail travel is an evergreen way to engagement bait. Plan accordingly."
1:18:54
>> People love rail, but it is very true.
1:18:58
America is very different than Europe.
1:19:01
like the trans grom vite the TGV that goes from Paris to London that's I think that's like the equivalent of like Boston to to New York like Europe is just so much smaller than the uh than the western side of the United States that even with a highspeed rail system getting from uh LA to Chicago is still hours and hours and hours just so much longer than than on a plane.
1:19:25
And so we actually do have a pretty robust rail system, but we just choose to use it for freight and then we fly through the sky at 500 miles an hour.
1:19:35
>> Meanwhile, Meta is investing in their own uh AI chip Olympus.
1:19:42
>> Zuck is really cornering uh a lot of these iconic uh Olympus like words, right?
1:19:48
Um he says Meta recently updated its ASIC roadmap adding a new project ARC a supplementary of its ASIC product line which leverages TSMC's 2 nanometer technology and is targeted to enter mass production in the first half of 2027.
1:20:03
We believe Meta plans to make adjustments to the design of Olympus to compete with Nvidia's Reuben GPUs resulting in a delay from uh fourth quarter 2027 um to uh first half of 2028.
1:20:17
ARC will focus on post- training and inferencing purposes.
1:20:19
The design service vendor selection will be complete in coming weeks and we think MediaTek has a good chance of winning the product the project. Sorry. Interesting.
1:20:31
Uh semi analysis says don't worry H100s, H200s won't be worthless anytime soon.
1:20:35
It will still be a valuable baseline that impressive AI accelerator upstarts like MATX, HDI, OpenAI, Titan Chip, Meta uh and Microsoft can use in their performance comparisons.
1:20:46
This of course is when uh when folks come out and say we we're buying H100 equivalents uh and uh and so they share a picture of Jensen here, chief revenue destroyer after Blackwell you can give away a hopper because Blackwell will be so performant.
1:21:01
So uh interesting to see where this goes.
1:21:04
It feels like Nvidia is the one company in the Mag 7 that every other Mag 7 company is coming for and being like, I'm sick of paying them.
1:21:15
Whereas all the other Mag 7s have kind of >> Meanwhile, Elon's just saying, >> you want a hundred billion dollars, Jensen? >> That's true.
1:21:24
Yeah, he isn't he isn't designing his own ship yet.
1:21:26
I wonder if that'll change.
1:21:28
But I do believe there was an XAI engineer yesterday that was saying the the keyword in some of the the things that >> XAI was putting out is they said uh like H200 equivalent or something like that or Blackwell equivalent GPUs.
1:21:42
So they're not necessarily fixed on it. >> Yeah. And so yeah. Yeah.
1:21:46
It's interesting because like Google and Amazon compete on like shopping searches and LinkedIn competes with you know Facebook in some ways but basically every hyperscaler kind of has their own corner and their own monopoly built out like yeah in search in social networking in in desktop or cloud or or shopping.
1:22:11
Um, and then they all butt heads in little ways, like Google going up against Tesla with Whimo and and and and they they they kind of touch on each other's territory, but they don't often it's it's very rare that all of them are going up against one, but it feels like that's the narrative around Nvidia.
1:22:28
Everyone's sick of of paying the Nvidia tax, maybe.
1:22:30
I don't exactly, you know, but it seems like if if you're trying to cut them out, if you're going to TSMC and fabbing your own chips, like that is straight up cutting out Nvidia.
1:22:42
>> Um, and Google, it seems like, was successfully doing it with the TPU. >> Yeah.
1:22:46
>> Uh, Signal has a post here.
1:22:46
He says, "Meanwhile on the App Store, and there is a new king of the App Store free chart.
1:22:53
It is T dating advice, helping women date safe.
1:22:56
Uh from my understanding they basically productize the groups on Facebook, the are we dating the same guy groups. Yep.
1:23:06
>> Um and so this is acts as a layer over a bunch of different dating apps where women can effectively review add comments, leave Yelp style reviews for the men uh that they are going on dates with.
1:23:19
Um and the founder, I think his name is Steve Cook. Um uh let's see here.
1:23:26
uh Steve Sean Cook, he was a director of product management at Salesforce for just under four years.
1:23:31
So really Salesforce >> putting in the work at >> Salesforce uh we love to see it and I said earlier this is just a massive moment for big tech PMs. Never doubt them again. Never doubt them.
1:23:45
A lot of people have been doubting the PMs.
1:23:49
They'd say, "Oh, you're just changing the the color of this button."
1:23:51
Um, >> the color of the button matters apparently because you have to imagine that this uh that this app category is highly competitive.
1:24:01
Like like I don't know may maybe they're just think of doing it but there has to be multiple.
1:24:06
>> So I was looking and built the third most popular app I believe is is the same exact >> concept >> concept. It's called Teaborn. >> Oh wow. >> Dating advice.
1:24:17
See the truth before you date.
1:24:20
So they went with the same name. This is number three.
1:24:24
>> Um, >> it has very few ratings, so I do wonder.
1:24:28
So, T- Dating Advice has 56,000 ratings, but the number three app is T-Born Dating Advice. >> Yep. >> Just so so strange.
1:24:35
Uh, it only has 60 reviews, but clearly climbing up the charts.
1:24:40
>> Well, here's some dating advice. Book a wander. Find your happy place.
1:24:44
>> Find your happy place.
1:24:45
>> Book a wander with inspiring views, hotel grade amenities, dreamy beds, top tier cleaning, and 24/7 concier service.
1:24:50
It's a vacation home, but better fun. >> That's right.
1:24:52
And without further ado, I think we have our next guest.
1:24:57
>> And I got to get this right.
1:24:58
>> Welcome to the studio. How are you? >> Massive day. >> Massive day.
1:25:04
>> Thank you so much for having me.
1:25:05
>> Um, we're getting a little bit of feedback on the audio.
1:25:07
Can we turn up the levels a little bit?
1:25:11
>> Can we Can you hear us?
1:25:11
Okay, >> I can hear you well. >> Okay.
1:25:14
>> Yeah, >> it's just a little bit muffled.
1:25:15
Are Are you on uh headphones?
1:25:19
Maybe take those out and we'll see if the computer audio is any better. >> Should be better. >> This better. >> That's way better. There we go. Welcome to the stream. No problem. Uh, kick us off. Give us the news. What happened today?
1:25:31
>> We at Vanta announced we raised $150 million series D.
1:25:33
Uh, 4 billion pre 415 post. >> Congratulations. >> Thank you.
1:25:41
>> Been waiting to do that. Um, >> appreciate it.
1:25:44
>> Such a mass such a massive u milestone.
1:25:47
Uh, can you catch us up to speed on uh, you know, I think people know your story by now, but can you catch us up to speed on on just like the last couple years getting to this point?
1:25:57
>> It was an overnight success. Correct. >> Definitely. Yeah, definitely.
1:25:59
Haven't been working on this for like 8 to 10 years. Totally. Um, but he's counting. Um, okay.
1:26:05
So, we started uh most known for like automating sock 2. Yep.
1:26:11
>> Also putting up billboards on the 101.
1:26:12
So, we still do both of those things, but we also um help our customers like build out their security programs, improve them in a bunch of different ways, and then take all that hard work and use it to uh build trust with their customers through audits, through trust reports, through security questionnaires, all sorts of things like that.
1:26:33
>> Is is the characterization of Vanta as like a point solution company, at least when you started the company, correct?
1:26:39
Is point solution a porative in enterprise? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
1:26:43
Break break break that down.
1:26:44
Why is it is it all because of Parker Conrad who's a friend who uh who's coined the the the compound startup and you have to do everything at once.
1:26:51
you have to do everything at once. Um what what what are the trade-offs of being point solution early on and then how do you think about adding things on because it's there's probably some trade-off of you build trying too much territory trying to capture too much ter
1:27:04
territory you can't hold on to it but at the same time >> yeah there's an easy argument if if Christina had started and said we're a platform >> that might have been rough >> in the beginning could have been a much uh could have still been successful but maybe a much smaller company. >> Yeah. So w walk me through that journey. >> Yeah.
1:27:16
So w walk me through that journey. >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:27:19
So we started I mean our word was wedge but it's a nicer word.
1:27:24
Yeah you have right like it sounds better than point solution which sounds kind of like trivial and >> well wedges have points on them right totally they come to a point strong ones.
1:27:31
>> Yeah you need a pointy wedge.
1:27:33
>> Yes yes yes >> but we started with sock two for startups uh and because like you might remember this but like 2017 like no startup got sock 2.
1:27:41
Now you get it when you're like two founders which is a little wild.
1:27:45
Um, but they were like so valuable.
1:27:48
Then we figured if we can do that, customers will let us do a lot and give us a lot of access and we can help them with a lot of things and then we can use our pointy wedge to expand into like a platform over time.
1:28:01
>> And I'm like joking, but like that was a seed pitch.
1:28:02
I posted one of the slides from it today.
1:28:04
It's like truly the 2018 pitch.
1:28:06
And so it's kind of cool to be here uh, you know, a little bit later.
1:28:10
And >> were you getting were you getting push back on uh, like market size at that point?
1:28:14
where people saying like you're going to need an act two basically. >> Oh, totally.
1:28:18
People weren't even like you need an act two.
1:28:19
It's like you need a new idea.
1:28:23
>> Like you just pitch me on sock doing all the startups and no startups get.
1:28:26
>> So what were what were you uh what were you seeing then that other people were missing because it seems so obvious in hindsight that young startups would need sock 2 and and a variety of other things in order to sell into enterprise and do other things that they want to do.
1:28:41
But like what what were you seeing then uh that now looks obvious in hindsight?
1:28:48
>> Think of this like if if you could make it easier like less time not necessarily less money less time for a startup to get a sock too they would 100% do one.
1:28:57
>> The problem was you like had to give your CTO up for a year who would go talk to a bunch of accountants and like then become very sad and so like no one would do that.
1:29:06
>> Um but if they didn't have to do that everyone would go sign up and press the like fast so talk to button. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
1:29:12
You I don't think it's an obvious idea at all.
1:29:14
Like when when you when you start a company, most people think I need a laptop. >> No, no.
1:29:18
I'm saying it wasn't it was nonobvious then.
1:29:19
That's what made it a great opportunity. Totally.
1:29:22
>> Um but it was clearly obvious to Christina and the team.
1:29:26
>> What What do you think of the uh It feels like you're one of the success stories of like uh selling to other startups early on and there's been this like criticism people have bubbled up of like it's this kind of like circular economy that happens in the startup world.
1:29:41
we've seen a lot of people break out of it.
1:29:42
What's the secret to breaking out of it?
1:29:44
Is that still a good wedge?
1:29:46
Is that still a good go to market and uh just kind of what are your thoughts on that idea of like you know be being a startup that sells to startups? >> Yeah.
1:29:53
Well, first I appreciate the use of the word wedge.
1:29:55
Um I still actually think it is like a good idea.
1:29:57
There's like definitely some like circular oraborous thing uh in certain partially because like especially early stages everyone cares about growth.
1:30:06
they don't care about your costs and so there's like can be some amount of trading that happens.
1:30:11
We tried not to do that and I think actually the couple times when I did that it just blew up later like it was a bad idea.
1:30:16
Um, but I think with that you like hopefully have startups that are growing like you have the cursors in your user base, you have the ramps, you have the whomever and then those customers like push you up market whether you're ready or not and if you can hang on to them you can like start serving bigger customers but kind of you need that growth out of the startup base too. >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:30:39
>> Yeah. Yeah. on on that note of like that like people care more about growth than cost like were people ignoring margins early on you paying attention to margins early on though >> not at all >> what are those heard of software >> yeah non AI software
1:31:00
>> then then talk to me about we we were just talking to another entrepreneur who uh has kind of a wedge type of product and is expanding and there's this trade-off off between uh take what you have into new places either up market or international uh versus add new products, new SKUs. And that's kind of
1:31:17
And that's kind of an an age-old question.
1:31:19
How have you worked through it through the past couple years?
1:31:23
And and do you have any like uh like frameworks for thinking through those types of processes? >> Yeah.
1:31:29
So I think that what we I mean you do both, right?
1:31:32
Both is sometimes hard to do at the same time.
1:31:34
And so what we did was like take the same thing if the go to market's working and you know do it in Europe, do it in Australia, do it in Asia, right?
1:31:44
And then and at the same time start to like build the muscle to build multiple products because it is hard.
1:31:51
Everyone talks about it's hard and I remember being like kind of why and I don't know. I've lived through it. It's hard.
1:31:55
It's I don't have a great answer.
1:31:56
It's just like the organization gets optimized around like doing the thing you're doing and you have customers and you have revenue and it like all reinforces itself.
1:32:03
And so when you want to go take a group of people and do something that has no customers and no revenue, you kind of can, but it's it's just weird. It is hard.
1:32:14
>> Are you big on is it Gresham's law, the idea that you like ship your org chart? Have you noticed that? >> No. No.
1:32:21
Gresham's law is bad money drives out good.
1:32:23
I don't know the one I'm talking about.
1:32:24
It's a different law, but it's it's this idea that you ship your org chart.
1:32:28
So if you have an or chart that's, you know, heavily international, you're just going to wind up selling internationally.
1:32:31
Uh, do do you think about it from that perspective? Conway's law. Conway's law. Conway's law.
1:32:36
Uh, have you have you been through the ringer of Conway's law?
1:32:40
Have you learned how to fight it?
1:32:42
Have you learned how to deal with it? >> Oh, totally.
1:32:44
I think I've like learned like you can't fight it.
1:32:45
You just have to change your org chart sometimes. >> Okay. Yeah. >> Right.
1:32:49
Because you're like going to ship whatever your org chart is.
1:32:50
So like try to make your org chart the thing you actually want to ship. Does that make sense? >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've noticed that.
1:32:57
What what's the what's like the the correct way to keep morale high while basically doing a reorg and telling someone like, "Hey, you're going to be working on something different, but you're but you're talented and we like this, but it's just like it makes more sense for the business to do this. You're over over here."
1:33:13
>> Like I mean, beyond all the like be honest, like actually say or like make sure you believe you're saying those things when you're saying them.
1:33:18
Um, I think we went through a phase where I went through a phase where like uh you tried to like we reorged kind of a lot and it was cuz you like always did feel like you had a better structure and I was like that that was too much.
1:33:29
Also like it doesn't matter.
1:33:31
Let it like the order like hang out for six or nine months.
1:33:35
Don't change it every quarter.
1:33:37
You're just going to drive people crazy.
1:33:39
Which sounds really obvious when I say it, but course that one. >> Yeah.
1:33:42
what uh what what are some like any new techn like technology trends that that you're seeing across the customer base in terms of like challenges and ways that you guys are reacting.
1:33:53
I can imagine um social engineering like you know hacks and challenges must be skyrocketing but what what are you guys seeing broadly? >> That's a good one.
1:34:04
um especially with like AI and deep fakes and you know the like text message gift card scams but like ratcheted to a hundred like really good versions of those. Yeah.
1:34:15
>> Um I think the other thing we see especially for our European customers is they just get a ton of pressure from European enterprises on AI.
1:34:21
Some it's on AI in general, some it's on the American model providers, especially the ones you might guess. Right.
1:34:28
And there's just like all this kind of default skepticism in Europe that then if European startups >> that's around like data data usage and >> Yeah. Exactly.
1:34:37
And just like I don't trust open AI and so don't send any like I don't even want to use something use a tool that uses open AI. >> Yeah.
1:34:47
>> Um >> like a CTO or CIO saying that basically >> right.
1:34:51
>> Yeah, that makes sense.
1:34:51
Do do you think I I I I I want to know the thoughts on just general competition when you're selling a wedge product from bigger companies that might want to add this on as a feature.
1:35:03
Uh we've been talking to a bunch of founders about how to deal with competition from bigger companies.
1:35:08
What what have you been through?
1:35:10
How'd you get through it?
1:35:12
And then I want to talk about how that landscape is changing. >> Yeah.
1:35:16
So we've been slightly different.
1:35:18
It's like we never really had competition from big companies because people didn't build what we built before.
1:35:23
They built vertical trash track task trackers but no automation.
1:35:25
Um what we had was in the COVID boom lots of folks decided to start Vanta knockoffs and so we had like a round of that uh and kind of went through the gauntlet that you know like gone through that whole roller coaster and now we're on the other side of it but uh sort of different.
1:35:41
>> How did that manifest?
1:35:41
Was that like pricing pressure or just like like having the markets slice up differently?
1:35:49
Needing to rep prioritize or kind of double down on kind of territory that you kind of claimed and felt you were confident on and then had to retrench a little bit. >> Some of all of it.
1:35:59
I mean I think in the early days we were kind of >> probably in retrospect like too pleased with ourselves sorry for like coming up with this category and this product. >> Sure.
1:36:09
>> And like the honest answer is like no customer care.
1:36:11
I mean, they care, you know, like they're very supportive, but like they just want the best product for them and that might be the first one.
1:36:17
>> They're not like, "Oh, you created the category. Great.
1:36:18
Then I won't I won't look at my other options." >> Exactly.
1:36:22
Like no said no one ever. >> Right.
1:36:25
And so I think it pushed us to be like, okay, we did whatever we did years ago. Cool.
1:36:30
What have we done lately for customers?
1:36:33
Like what have we done today?
1:36:34
What have we shipped, you know, this week, this quarter, this month? What's day?
1:36:38
Um, so it's that piece which I think we got a lot stronger because of that and then pricing pressure for sure.
1:36:46
Um, because in our space because it's it's sales all the way through like there's no self-s served trial. >> Mhm.
1:36:52
>> The dominant strategy for a competitor is to like copy the demo, do the same demo and then say, "Hey prospect, these products are the same. You're right.
1:37:00
You just saw the same thing, but like we're 30% cheaper, so like why would you go with Vanta?" >> Yeah.
1:37:06
And like we kind of learned what to do with that.
1:37:09
>> Why why did you go international so early?
1:37:11
Was it was it uh was it to defend against other people being like I'm going to build the Vanta for XYZ country?
1:37:18
But it sounds like it was more customer driven.
1:37:21
>> Yeah, it was about like a 20% of our customer base I think at the time was outside the US and we hadn't done anything for that.
1:37:28
It's just like you know founders in London you know watch TVPN.
1:37:33
Like it's not like just cuz they're in London doesn't mean they like don't listen to American podcasts.
1:37:38
>> Well, and they're selling to American companies. >> Sure. >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
1:37:41
Y >> what uh what's up with all the colors?
1:37:43
I feel like Vanta Black is the darkest black you can possibly buy.
1:37:48
This like patented paint, but then after that Okay. Yeah. Oh, color. >> Yeah.
1:37:55
Take take me through that.
1:37:57
>> Uh so yeah, not not touching that.
1:37:57
Um, but we kind of coined purple in the early days and so we have we've become the Purple Llama Company. >> Purple Llamas.
1:38:06
Where' the llama come from? Because Yeah. I mean, yeah.
1:38:09
>> And by the way, by the way, we called every llama owner in LA.
1:38:11
We were trying to get llamas here in the studio to join us.
1:38:16
We have a we have a third mic, but it ended up being it ended up being a massive challenge and we were worried about we didn't have a a a carve out in the lease that said we could bring llamas in our studio.
1:38:26
So, it ended up being uh but but I think you guys should actually uh it would be great to get to get some live llamas. >> Some live llamas.
1:38:36
>> Popular with the kids in the petting zoo. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
1:38:39
>> We tried it in downtown San Francisco.
1:38:40
Downtown San Francisco also not the most llama friendly place. >> It's hard.
1:38:43
They're they're tough to do.
1:38:45
>> You can't even you can't even bring llamas wherever you want in this country anymore.
1:38:47
It's really >> um >> what is it coming to? >> It's a disaster.
1:38:51
um on on the kind of the AI like on the AI story, there's like this question of that I've been I've been noodling on with a lot of founders about like is AI a reason to launch a new product that the customer feels so an agent a a prompt box that they interact with versus just hey behind the scenes we're going to use a ton of AI you're not even going to know It doesn't really matter, but the product's just going to get better, more efficient. Maybe our margins go up.
1:39:26
Maybe we are delivering things that we want to deliver you faster, more reliably, more accurately, all these different things.
1:39:32
Is there one area that's more exciting?
1:39:34
I know you're probably doing both, but how do you think about >> Yeah, I mean, I've seen I've seen a trend of companies that are basically clones of existing companies that were traditionally seen as SAS platforms and they come out and they're basically like, we're this, but it's an agent.
1:39:50
And then if you look and try to understand the product, it ends up looking exactly like SAS with maybe a slightly different workflow, but I don't know how much more valuable it is to customers or if it's actually a better experience. Yeah. >> Oh, totally.
1:40:06
There's like it's an agent, but actually it's a forward deployed engineer, but actually it's like a founder pressing all the buttons behind the scene, you know, and like I did that. >> It's a crowd app. >> Totally.
1:40:14
It's a crowd app with like the founder like pressing buttons at 11:00 p. m. at night.
1:40:18
Um, so like definitely that I think it'll get better over time.
1:40:22
To the first question, like we do a bit of both.
1:40:25
It's actually more AI in the background just doing stuff.
1:40:30
>> And then sometimes when we're going to start like surfacing it more and we might call that, you know, oh that's an agent or the agent did that and like yes it is AI but it's really just getting rid of workflows behind the scenes that no one really wanted to do or needs to do. >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:40:45
I' I've been personally experiencing it in Gmail where it was very easy for them clearly to like add an extra panel with like now you can chat with your email inbox, but for me the search still doesn't work.
1:40:56
And so I much would I would much rather that just every email that comes in gets condensed down, summarized, and then when I go to search it really knows what I'm looking for and it just gives me a better product behind the scenes.
1:41:08
But that's probably like a harder technical challenge or or maybe just uh it's just less experimental.
1:41:13
So people are kind of debating um what about in terms of like internal productivity.
1:41:17
Uh we were talking to a friend earlier that said that um >> he's seeing there are examples of 10x engineers going to 100x engineers because of tools like cursor and wind surf and devon cognition all that all all the different tools that improve developer productivity.
1:41:34
But he was actually more excited about designers becoming 1x engineers.
1:41:39
And I thought that was a very interesting take.
1:41:41
And if you kind of do like a divide by zero, maybe it's an infinity gain. I don't know.
1:41:46
But he was saying that like that has been more exciting to him.
1:41:48
And I don't know like what are you seeing internally?
1:41:53
internally? So some of that also PMS uh with like a Vzero repletable like right because you like have this idea for a thing and then you can make a version of it and then go stick it in front of five customers and like it just and you can do that in >> 15 minutes like actually um you know
1:42:11
whereas before you'd have to like write the spec or draw the pictures and get the designer to make the mocks and then animate the Figma and you know whatever like that loop went from like ideally two days to 15 minutes and that matters so much for like just testing new stuff. >> Yeah. Yeah. Um what what about just this >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:42:27
>> Yeah. Yeah. Um what what about just this idea of like generally AI being like a reinvigorating force for founders who are in your position where like the business has worked the business like is big basically and like you have >> yeah the the valuation >> post product market fit like >> yeah the the the the like series B C D just shows like a clear story of just execution but then what John's getting
1:42:58
at and and we um uh we've had on over at intercom from the show who actually left his company came back and then was like fully ready to just like restart the company almost because there was so much net new >> and even even Ben Thompson was saying like he was kind of getting bored of writing about tech and then AI happened and he's like I can't I can't wait to write the articles anymore. Uh but
1:43:18
Uh but what's your what's your experience been?
1:43:22
like basically that that there's all these like magical product experiences that we've thought about but just couldn't build until now.
1:43:28
My favorite like clear vant example was in 2017 when it wasn't clear if anyone wanted to sock too.
1:43:34
Um it was clear people answered security questionnaires like those long spreadsheets of questions and so we wanted to automate those >> and tried and like weren't good enough ML engineers and libraries weren't good enough that we didn't and went down the sock two path.
1:43:48
Anyway, it's kind of working, but like now Vanta has really good questionnaire automation.
1:43:52
We thought of this building this in 2017.
1:43:55
We just like couldn't until now.
1:43:55
And that is like very fun. >> Yeah. >> Where next?
1:44:01
You guys have just been chopping wood seemingly like just ex just executing day over day.
1:44:07
But but where where are you going from here? >> Hardware. >> Hardware. AI pendant from Vanta.
1:44:11
It just captures every If you say a single word that if you say a single non just no way to say trust like a constantly listening AI pendant. >> Exactly. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. But what what's next?
1:44:28
>> You know, keep building stuff cool stuff for our customers.
1:44:30
Uh we have a bunch of security products that are launching that I'm very excited about.
1:44:33
So you like get customers in on the wedge.
1:44:35
Uh you know, but then over time after they get their sock two, they start growing.
1:44:39
they start needing more things.
1:44:40
They start thinking about building out different parts of their security program.
1:44:43
So, a couple big launches there coming.
1:44:45
Um, and then a couple more things that we have in store.
1:44:52
>> Last question for my side. We'll let you go.
1:44:53
Um, uh, has the rise of defense tech, American dynamism, ITAR compliance been uh, like a like how have you been uh, like playing in that space? >> Oh, it's good. Yeah. Yeah.
1:45:05
Actually, we're working with the government.
1:45:06
Um, >> so this administration is trying to make it easier for everyone to procure software.
1:45:14
>> Um, there's like a Fed ramp, there's a new FedRAP 20X pilot we're in and we're doing a doing that for two reasons.
1:45:18
One, so our customers can sell to the government and have a path there that is not, you know, years and consultants and like literally thousands of pages of long form text law like can do a lot there.
1:45:32
And then also helping the government go procure software.
1:45:34
And so we are just like doing a ton there. >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:45:39
It's funny the it feels like it's incredibly cumbersome to the defense tech founders that have to get ITAR compliance but then they kind of wear it as a badge of honor.
1:45:46
I've been oh yeah I have to use teams you know because my work's so important and I'm like >> yep like I your work is important but now it's become this badge of honor.
1:45:59
>> Uh but it's great you know they they need to stay compliant.
1:46:01
Anyway, thank you so much for hopping. >> Congratulations team.
1:46:03
It's it's uh I I love I love just the the steady march building momentum.
1:46:11
Uh and uh I'm sure you'll be be back if history repeats.
1:46:17
You'll be back on here uh very soon with uh with the next one.
1:46:21
>> Knock on all the things.
1:46:21
Thanks so much for having me. >> Fantastic.
1:46:24
We'll talk >> chatting, Christina. Talk soon.
1:46:26
>> Up next, we have Dena from Lux Capital.
1:46:29
I will take the intro, Jordy.
1:46:29
And I will welcome Dena to the TVPN Ultra Dome when she's ready to hop on the stream.
1:46:36
And in the meantime, I can give you some news. Check in with Tyler.
1:46:41
How's Tyler doing over there?
1:46:44
>> All right, I'm I'm up to 10th place.
1:46:44
I'm at 550, so I dropped I think 26 moves.
1:46:49
>> I still I mean, >> are there obvious lowhanging fruit for you?
1:46:52
>> At this point, it's just a grind. >> Just a grind. >> Just a grind.
1:46:54
I'm just I think I got to just basically write down my moves >> and then just try to optimize one by one.
1:47:00
You need maybe like a screen recorder or something so you can watch some game tape. >> Yeah. Yeah. Hit the tapes.
1:47:05
>> We need We need a coach. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
1:47:07
Who else could Who else could help?
1:47:09
You need like a world champion um like speedrunner or something like that.
1:47:13
Uh anyway, >> we have Dena in the reream waiting room.
1:47:16
>> We have Dena in the reream waiting room.
1:47:18
Welcome to the stream, Dina. How you doing? >> Hello. So good to see you guys.
1:47:22
>> Thanks so much for joining. Um sorry for the delay.
1:47:25
um why don't you kick us off with an introduction on yourself and I'd love to know kind of how you fit into the Lux Capital structure ecosystem, what you're focused on and kind of and then we can go into a bunch of questions from there. >> Awesome. Well, I'm Dena.
1:47:36
I am a partner at Lux Capital.
1:47:38
We're a multi-stage venture firm.
1:47:41
We love turning science fiction into fact.
1:47:43
I know you've had Josh on here before and heard all about that.
1:47:46
Um we do everything from preede to preipo, so truly multi-stage.
1:47:49
Um, and I have a particular propensity for healthcare, which I know we're going to be talking about today, but we are all very much generalists. >> Okay.
1:47:59
Uh, let's just we'll we'll get into the other question later.
1:48:02
I already have completely new questions.
1:48:04
Um, Delian aspiruhov over at Founders Fund, buddy of ours, was saying that the seed ecosystem is just kind of been eroded by founders just skipping rounds.
1:48:14
And it feels like that's a lot of a kind of a it's in large part because these like AI companies were able to justify, yeah, I need a billion dollars to train a foundation model.
1:48:27
And so even if you're not training a foundation model, the multi-stage firms are like, yeah, we can do a hundred million dollar seed round. No problem.
1:48:34
Like you have a good pedigree, maybe there'll be an aquahigh or something.
1:48:37
Um, where is the preede market?
1:48:40
Where is the pre the seed market still interesting or do you disagree with that entire take and you think it's never been better?
1:48:48
>> You know, I think it's a tale of two worlds and honestly the nomenclature for rounds doesn't really mean much these days anyway.
1:48:53
On the one hand, the advent of AI has made it more cost-effective than ever to start a company.
1:48:58
And you are not no longer judged in terms of growth by how many people you're hiring or how much money you've raised, but actually how much how far you can get with the least amount possible.
1:49:10
And that is only going to continue to happen uh as we see the advent of sort of AI software tooling and and all of that.
1:49:15
On the other hand, to your point, if you are raising uh for a company that is infrastructure intensive, that requires high amounts of compute, where you're building your own models, and let's be honest, how many of those do we need?
1:49:29
Those types of companies can and will raise$und00 million plus seed rounds.
1:49:32
So, you know, I think yes is the answer.
1:49:35
It's never been better, but also you will very much see a tale of two worlds.
1:49:40
And, you know, on our end, we're funding uh you know, tiny seed rounds and very large seed rounds.
1:49:45
really depends on the company and what's needed. >> Okay.
1:49:47
Related to that, give me your take on this post from Caitlyn Bolnik Relos.
1:49:52
Uh, you must be one of four things to raise right now.
1:49:54
An AI high-f flyier, a seed company with the promise of being an AI high-flying company.
1:49:59
Extra points if you're young.
1:50:01
An American dynamism reindustrialization company or biology enabled by AI. What do you think?
1:50:10
>> Caitlyn always has the great hot takes. I think that's accurate.
1:50:11
Although honestly it's not the best time for companies that are raising in the biotech space.
1:50:15
So I'm not even sure that I would necessarily include that in the list.
1:50:18
But >> definitely every company right now >> needs to have an answer to what their AI play is for sure.
1:50:24
That being said, >> you know, if you're seeing Groundhog Day of pitches that are, you know, AI notetaker, AI agent, like yes, we all use these companies and they're wonderful tools, but what we look for is sort of the the operating system, right?
1:50:40
the the actual picks and shovels, the really generational companies.
1:50:41
Um, and where the the innovation is not just the act of using AI, but something that's actually defensible and transformative. >> Yeah.
1:50:51
Elad Gil had a post yesterday.
1:50:51
He said, "AI markets crystallize for a subset of AI markets.
1:50:56
It is suddenly clear who the finalists or winners will be."
1:51:00
And so, he breaks down a few categories: LLMs, code, legal, medical scribing, customer service, and search and IR.
1:51:07
How are you how are you thinking about AI markets within healthcare?
1:51:13
There's obviously a bunch of different subcategories, but at the same time, some of the biggest headline fund raises have been around these sort of medical scribe uh products or at least products with that as kind of the core wedge.
1:51:26
>> Yeah, you know, I I we've actually invested with Eli in a company in the health AI space which I'll chat a bit about called Blueote.
1:51:30
But um yes, AI scribes I think were the lowest hanging fruit in healthcare.
1:51:35
the you know one of the biggest pain points was with you know documentation and note-taking for physicians.
1:51:42
Um these companies were not immediately up and to the right.
1:51:44
Many of them have been around for quite some time.
1:51:47
Um but of course the advent of LLMs and and really the the the openness to adoption which has always been the biggest sticky point in healthcare has made them particularly effective now.
1:51:58
But there's still so much latency in healthcare.
1:52:00
We are still talking about AI in the context of fax machines.
1:52:02
AI in the context of fax machines. So there is a lot of opportunity outside of that and I get excited about uh you know the clinical research side of things the opportunity in clinical trials you know if you're talking outside of patient care we're in a company called trial library which is um you know using AI
1:52:19
and and technology to rapidly accelerate getting patients into trial trials uh for life-saving therapies and frankly this is where pharma companies are willing to spend a lot of money to find those hard-to-reach patients companies like which we invested in with Eli lab, for example, are using generative AI to help get drugs to market, so to help with regulatory and medical writing, etc. Um, there's a massive opportunity
1:52:42
Um, there's a massive opportunity outside of scribes.
1:52:45
And although scribes are very interesting, it is increasingly a very crowded market.
1:52:48
Last count, I think it was over a hundred.
1:52:50
Um, and there's probably >> so many. Wow. Have you seen anyone?
1:52:56
>> I'm sure I'm sure more are being formed >> as we speak.
1:52:59
>> As we speak, people are reading the the Tech Crunch headlines and they're saying, "Hey, maybe I should create Seems like Stripe Atlas has gone down under all the pressure. >> Yeah, just kidding.
1:53:07
>> Yeah, just kidding. Um uh >> yeah on the note on the note though on the last company I mean I think one question uh that that's come up on the show is can uh what will it take to actually reduce the cost to create and bring a new drug to market >> and uh discovering the drug itself is
1:53:26
one thing but then is there any hope of of reducing the cost of of of the next stages in terms of outside of the the paperwork and and things like that but It seems like if you have this huge kind of variable cost of of trials, uh is is there any is there any sort of hope of of bringing that down over time? >> Yeah, for sure. I mean, the the sort of >> Yeah, for sure.
1:53:49
I mean, the the sort of drug discovery piece of it was really, you know, V1 of AI in in this in this field and we've invested in companies in that space.
1:53:58
Um and there are new companies that are forming in that space.
1:54:01
But outside of that, there's a lot as you pointed out clinical trials, right? big area.
1:54:05
There's, you know, there have been lots of companies trying to apply technology there.
1:54:09
Yet, still a massive pain point, particularly if you think about where the bulk of the spend is in pharma in specialty drugs.
1:54:14
The these are tens of billions of dollars of of market opportunity here to help get these drugs to market faster.
1:54:23
And in order to do so, it often requires finding really difficult to reach patients.
1:54:29
There's only so much right now that AI can do to make that happen.
1:54:31
And so it requires really unique business models.
1:54:35
And the company I mentioned, Trial Library, is a great example of a company that is using technology, but ultimately to find and match humans with one another.
1:54:45
And those humans are patients and those humans are providers. >> Nice.
1:54:49
I want to go Shark Tank mode for a second.
1:54:51
I got a pitch for a hypothetical company.
1:54:53
I'm not actually building this, but uh today uh there was a piece in the Wall Street Journal about Amazon buying a bracelet for $50 a pop.
1:54:59
You get uh transcription of everything you say.
1:55:05
>> It was about the company.
1:55:05
They just buy a bracelet. They bought the company. They bought the company.
1:55:09
>> Have any of the AI scribes in healthcare uh done something like, hey, the doctor wears a bracelet and then the the scribe is, you know, there's a hardware play or there's a a wearable play.
1:55:19
Have you seen anything like that? Is there an opportunity?
1:55:23
>> I don't know if I've seen a bracelet per se.
1:55:24
There are over a hundred, so I wouldn't be surprised if one of them involves a bracelet.
1:55:27
But yes, I have seen hardware plays.
1:55:28
seen hardware plays. the sort of idea of ambient you know not taking that um I've seen that in the form of cameras that are sort of you know adding on the computer vision element I've seen that of course in terms of you know different types of of tabletop devices there is an extra added uh concern with healthcare
1:55:47
which is you know the elephant in the room and that is around PHI and privacy and so and often times that's overengineering it really what you need is to understand what's happening in that encounter with the patient and as it turns out you don't nec necessarily need, you know, a ring, a bracelet, you know, a camera hanging over you. Often
1:56:02
Often times audio and in many cases just uh, you know, AI enhancing text inputs is all you need to get to the outcome that's desired.
1:56:12
>> And for that reason, you're out.
1:56:16
>> Um, how are you how are you uh approaching this uh brain computer interfaces as a category?
1:56:21
There's been um >> Neuralink >> Neuralink Nudge announced a new round yesterday, but how how are you thinking about the category broadly?
1:56:30
about the category broadly? feels like something that right now it seems like a very small group of exceptionally connected and talented teams are sucking up the vast majority of capital which I guess happens in in every market but maybe more uh pronounced in in the BCI
1:56:48
space but do you expect that to be a category where a few years from now there's hundreds of of players or more concentrated until um people can really kind of derisk >> we talked about a teal fellowship company that was doing that kind of the other side of the barbell there But yeah. >> Yeah. I mean, as I think as a trend at >> Yeah.
1:57:03
I mean, as I think as a trend at Lux, we were investing in the space before it was obvious.
1:57:07
We were early and proud investors in control labs, um, which you may be familiar with, which was acquired. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
1:57:14
Rearen, the founder, is actually now a venture partner at Lux.
1:57:16
It's fun to jam with him on these topics all the time.
1:57:20
>> Um, I my father happens to be a neurossychiatrist, so I have a particular interest in this space.
1:57:23
He was really big on TMS, and I think that there's still so much opportunity there.
1:57:29
We are uh actively looking um and spending time with a lot of these companies.
1:57:33
To your question, I don't know if there's going to be a hundred of them in the future.
1:57:36
These are still very capital intensive.
1:57:38
There's still a lot of science um that does need to happen.
1:57:42
We're seeing companies at the earliest stages through our Lux Labs initiative.
1:57:45
Um researchers who are rapidly accelerating um on the kind of innovation side and ultimately to get to commercialization.
1:57:53
that piece of it is the piece that I think is still uh still remains to be proven.
1:57:58
Um but we are we're excited about what's to come >> in in healthcare broadly.
1:58:02
Um I'm I'm sure there's tons of opportunities for startups to build new companies that are kind of built on the back of the AI trend.
1:58:12
Are there any places where you think that AI in a narrow sense would be a sustaining innovation for the existing large players?
1:58:19
large players? I'm thinking of like in the in the enterprise it feels like you know Google might be facing disruption in search to some degree but like the Gemini API seems to be doing really really well and like they were set up well to serve you know a frontier class
1:58:35
model as an API um and so they're leveraging that and they will continue and and Azure has seen a similar thing with Microsoft they've they've been beneficiaries and in many ways it's been a sustaining innovation for them um in terms of cloud uh but but what is the shape of like the big players in health care. Where are they going to like just
1:58:51
Where are they going to like just completely win?
1:58:54
So, you probably want to stay away from it as a as a startup folk.
1:58:59
>> I I love this question.
1:58:59
I don't know if you guys know this, but I I actually got my start in healthcare at Google, helping to build what eventually became Google Health.
1:59:04
Uh back then, one of the first products that I got to work on was this knowledge graph for health, which was, you know, taking symptoms and conditions, mapping them together.
1:59:12
So, if you searched for itchy eyes, you'd have this graph pop up that explains to you might have conjunctivitis. very novel at the time.
1:59:20
We launched Google's first HIPACO compliant product.
1:59:21
It ultimately led me to venture because it became abundantly clear to me that the real innovation in these really intractable industries was actually coming from early stage startups.
1:59:29
This was before the advent of LLMs and all of that.
1:59:34
I ultimately think that these big tech players are obviously going to be key distribution partners.
1:59:39
Google is still the digital front door for a lot of healthcare.
1:59:42
Increasingly, OpenAI and others are are becoming that.
1:59:44
But it is still where so many healthc care encounters begin before a patient even knows that they're a patient.
1:59:51
Um that being said, do I think that the, you know, the top innovative companies in the healthcare space are going to emerge from these big tech companies? Unlikely.
2:00:03
But I think that they will thrive and exist in partnership with them.
2:00:04
And the hyperscalers when it comes to AI are always going to play critical roles. >> Yeah.
2:00:10
What what what role are the like the big tech equivalents in healthcare playing?
2:00:16
Like is this the big insurance networks, big big hospital networks?
2:00:17
I mean, we've heard General Catalyst is buying a hospital.
2:00:21
I I don't fully understand the the thesis there.
2:00:23
Haven't fully dug in, but um but what uh what are the bigger players doing um that that might uh where they might just be just default beneficiaries of new techn?
2:00:37
I mean I've so I spent a lot of time speaking with the you know the leaders of some of these companies obviously they're critical important uh partners to our companies um and they are rapidly looking at solutions in AI so they were they used to be bottlenecks these are the distribution partners you know
2:00:53
selling into health systems has always been a slog ask anyone who's done it they've got the gray hairs to prove it um I was in a board meeting recently actually with a major executive from one of the biggest national payers out there who blew my mind talking about how they were thinking about adopting clinical AI. We're talking actual bots that are
2:01:09
We're talking actual bots that are that are that are engaging with patients in a way that was far more ambitious than even some of the most you know out there VCs that I had seen.
2:01:18
If they're doing it that fast like we need to get on this quickly, it is clear that you know in healthcare you want to meet patients where they are and this is where patients are.
2:01:27
They're using these tools constantly.
2:01:29
Uh providers as well, there's a new generation of providers who expect more digitally.
2:01:34
Um, and as you can imagine, and you see this in pretty much every major earnings call from these payers, this is no longer just a nice to have, it's a mandate. >> Yeah.
2:01:45
>> What about uh robotics uh in uh surgery rooms? Uh we've seen >> Yeah.
2:01:53
I mean, Neurolink specifically is has talked about building basically their own system in order to do these surgeries. That's like a very Yeah. No, they built it.
2:02:02
They're using it very kind of like narrow use case for something that they're doing.
2:02:05
But how far out do you think we are from robots conducting kind of routine surgeries?
2:02:13
Let's say you you um need to get an organ removed or something like that.
2:02:16
Is that something that you'd bet on a human uh still doing 10 years, 15 years, 20 years from now?
2:02:24
uh or or are we going to be at a point where a human is sort of uh kind of observing a robot, you know, working but not necessarily like doing the actions themselves?
2:02:35
>> I mean, it's already happening.
2:02:35
So, we're not talking about 10 years from now.
2:02:37
It's already happening across the board.
2:02:39
And robotic surgery is an area that we've invested quite a bit in.
2:02:40
You may have heard of a company called Orus, which was acquired by Johnson and Johnson, uh in which we were lead investors.
2:02:46
Um it's happening in other procedures, in ultrasound, um in IVF.
2:02:49
We have a company um that's on the software side but enabling computer vision through IVF.
2:02:57
Um if you've ever had I don't know if any of you have had surgery but many many procedures that used to be highly invasive are now done laparoscopically through robotic surgery.
2:03:06
So it's one of the areas in healthcare actually that has seen the most adoption and it's still human assisted in in many cases.
2:03:11
A lot of that ultimately comes down to um you know to patient preference as well as liability.
2:03:18
But I would not be surprised if we increasingly move more and more to a world um with uh you know robots at the forefront of surgery.
2:03:26
>> What was your take on Fiji Simo's post kind of outlining uh therapy potentially is one vector that open AAI's chatbt core product could be impactful.
2:03:37
That feels like an example.
2:03:41
>> Health was the other big category that she laid out as well.
2:03:45
Yeah, it feels like meeting customers where they are and yet all of a sudden we're talking about, you know, a a research nonprofit is now competing in the healthcare space.
2:03:52
It feels like it's a it's it's definitely like an unexpected turn of events if you were looking at open AI as a health investment a decade ago. >> Yeah, totally. Well, Fiji's amazing.
2:04:04
She's become a friend and we actually met in the context of healthcare.
2:04:05
So, I know it's an area she's deeply passionate about. It's not surprising.
2:04:09
It is wild but it's not surprising again meeting patients where they are and particularly for um you know a chatbot that does tend to heir toward you know psychopansancy that's constantly telling you great idea let's elaborate on that more etc like chat GPT in an era with an
2:04:26
epidemic of loneliness can become a very close friend it can in many case diagnose and you know there have been some really interesting studies published in JAMAMA actually looking at the empathy factor comparing AI to humans and sometimes the AI AI actually does score better. Now, do do I believe
2:04:40
Now, do do I believe that therapists will be replaced by AI in the near future? No.
2:04:45
Um, but the fact of the matter is people are already using it.
2:04:50
The numbers are staggering.
2:04:52
They're using it for this case now.
2:04:52
And so, I think what we need to think about is what are the guard rails?
2:04:55
How do we ensure that that, you know, you don't end up with the types of situations that have made headlines, you know, whether it's suicides and so on.
2:05:02
Um, and and how do you ensure that this is done responsibly?
2:05:06
Um, and I'm excited that someone like Fiji is at the forefront of that because I believe that they are really thinking about um not only the the ethics but the responsibility of having human lives in their hands. >> Totally. >> Yeah.
2:05:19
It feels like something that's going to be like back and forth in the news cycle constantly but ultimately, you know, top of mind and they have all the capabilities and teams in place to to, you know, execute effectively in that category.
2:05:32
Um, but it's gonna be it's gonna be a lot of PR back and forth, I'm sure. >> Anything else? >> No, this is great. >> This is great.
2:05:39
Thanks so much for hopping on. >> Awesome.
2:05:42
Great to chat with you guys. Take care. Have a good one. We'll talk to you soon.
2:05:45
>> Um, let's go to this post from Nick Carter. Did you hear this? Did you see this? >> No. >> Gonna gonna own you. Oh, wait.
2:05:54
No, you're a millennial, too.
2:05:55
Um, he says, "Millennial Millennials will be slash are the peak IQ generation.
2:06:00
Zoomers or iPad kids labbotomized Gen Alpha will be largely incapable of learning anything due to AI.
2:06:07
Tyler, what do you think?
2:06:11
>> Well, Tyler's you're Gen Z, right?
2:06:12
You're not >> Yeah, I'm Yeah, I'm definitely Gen Z.
2:06:14
>> Do you think you're an iPad kid?
2:06:14
Do you think you're lobotomized?
2:06:17
>> I think that's a little bit younger than me, but I think that's probably true.
2:06:20
Like, >> how do you avoid >> just replace iPad with Tik Tok?
2:06:21
I think like if you talk to the average like >> I mean look, I don't want to you know >> Yeah. Yeah.
2:06:28
>> You don't want to throw your whole generation under the bus.
2:06:29
I think there's a big power law and you'll see it like grow more and more with Gen Alpha.
2:06:34
>> What separates the high performing zoomers from the labbotomized brain rotted ones.
2:06:42
>> I mean I think it's you can probably just like if you need like one thing it's just like do they use Tik Tok daily?
2:06:48
>> That's like you probably get like 90% of the the >> Yeah.
2:06:52
I wonder like is it a screen time thing you have to cut it off early?
2:06:54
I don't think it's necessarily screen time cuz you see a lot of kids who just like >> if you're like reading like less wrong or something.
2:07:02
If you ever talk to someone who like obviously like read a lot of like blog like online blogs like that, they're like super cracked.
2:07:06
So it's not necessarily screen time.
2:07:10
>> Maybe one one thing is I I feel like maybe the the kids that have it the worst are like 10 years old right now where I feel like parents today there's a general awareness that having your kid glued to an iPad is not great.
2:07:21
If you see I'll be at a restaurant and I'll see a kid just like drooling over their iPad for two and a half hours not engaging with the parents or whoever they're with.
2:07:34
>> Uh I I think that's like fairly frowned upon now.
2:07:36
Like I I I got an iPad >> uh for my three-year-old, but he's only used it on flights. >> Yeah.
2:07:44
>> Like he he just doesn't he only thinks of it as a >> Yeah. >> flight device.
2:07:48
And that's purely because I don't want other people to be angry if he's going to, you know, cry for 4 hours.
2:07:56
>> Tyler's over there being like, I'm not addicted to Apple products, but I'll do anything for an iPhone. Which one is it, Tyler?
2:08:02
>> Yeah, you got to pick. >> Got to pick. >> Any more progress?
2:08:07
>> Uh, I'm still working through.
2:08:07
I'm going like very slowly. >> Okay.
2:08:10
So, yeah, because there's no time, so you're just really >> I can't see my score like until the very end.
2:08:15
So, I think I'm doing better, but it's very slow.
2:08:16
And are you like actively on a run in ArcGIV3 right now?
2:08:21
>> How do you what do you mean?
2:08:22
>> Like like do you kick off a new new test or can you optimize each one individually?
2:08:27
Like >> I think you can do each game individually.
2:08:29
But you can't do a specific level.
2:08:31
Like you have to do the whole thing, >> you know, one through eight or whatever. >> Oh, okay. Okay. Got it. Cool. >> Interesting.
2:08:36
I need I still need to do all three because I've only done the first one.
2:08:39
I I actually haven't beaten it.
2:08:42
>> Um >> Did you time yourself?
2:08:43
>> Well, no, because I did it in parts, right?
2:08:45
I did like a couple minutes before the stream and then I did five minutes on the stream and then you know I I I I think I I think I know enough at least to be like to probably have an edge so it wouldn't be apples to apples but maybe I got to check the number of moves. That's the move. Okay.
2:08:59
Well, we have our next guest here in the studio. Let's bring them in. Good soundboard, Jordy.
2:09:06
>> What's going on the stream? How you doing? >> Welcome. >> Hello. >> Awesome to meet you. >> Oh, thank you. Great to have you.
2:09:15
>> Uh thought I was worried we had some audio issues. Turns out we don't.
2:09:16
Uh can you give us an introduction? What are you building? >> Of course.
2:09:21
Um I am building data computers alongside with my co-founder Lenny.
2:09:26
And we use AI to automate the production of printed circuit boards.
2:09:28
We design them and manufacture them. >> Wow. >> Very cool.
2:09:34
Um what's the state-of-the-art right now?
2:09:36
Like what who are your competitors?
2:09:39
So there's a a bunch of companies that really like try to build circuit boards.
2:09:44
Circuit boards are at the heart of every single electronic product that you have.
2:09:48
You you name it like aerospace, robotics, um medical devices.
2:09:50
These are all industries that traditionally would take months um to come up with designs and like volume manufacturing of these boards.
2:09:58
And so our goal is to help them um and like scale up to production right away.
2:10:03
Uh our competitors are folks like Altium, Cadence, but also like uh current manufacturers uh that are like building circuit boards right now.
2:10:12
>> And what's the latest news?
2:10:12
Do you have anything good for us?
2:10:15
>> I'm very proud to announce that we raised a series A by Andre and Hwitz.
2:10:17
Um there [Music] >> fantastic.
2:10:24
When when did you start the company? I don't know. I I think I missed it.
2:10:27
>> Um exactly a year ago.
2:10:27
Like we hit the one-y year anniversary 3 days ago.
2:10:30
And wait, am I looking at a virtual background or is this actually your office?
2:10:35
>> No, this is the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
2:10:35
We build circuit boards in Brooklyn, New York. >> Cool.
2:10:40
What uh what is the what is the core value proposition? Speed, quality, time.
2:10:46
How do you think about like what are your customers asking for right now?
2:10:51
So the real like thing that uh was very interesting to me is that we have fewer and fewer people that can build circuit boards at the highest um like level of complexity and these people are working at insanely good companies like Tesla, SpaceX, Apple, Meta and they're very very hard for other hardware companies to kind of like take away.
2:11:11
Um and I like uh I used to be at one of these companies. I used to work at Apple.
2:11:17
I used to work on custom silicon.
2:11:19
So, our goal is basically to democratize the way that we currently like build circuit boards and allow uh like from startups to large enterprises to take advantage of a very high-end type of workflow.
2:11:29
And the only way we could think about how to do it is to teach large language models to actually generate schematics.
2:11:36
And so, like the the advantage and the difference is that we use code to build our circuit boards, which is something that usually like is not done this way.
2:11:45
Circuit boards are very visual.
2:11:45
Like you can think about them almost as like Figma.
2:11:48
Um well we what we do is like more like web design like CSS and code that then gets rendered into like an actual circuit board. Um it's called artwork.
2:11:58
>> Can you uh can is it like okay to take a circuit board schematic from an existing product.
2:12:04
product. I remember we had this founder on I think it was the Madic robot and he had was was that right or we had some founder on who had printed on their on on their circuit board like hi Amazon because they knew that Amazon was going to take it apart and like try and understand how they were doing what
2:12:20
there was I might be me messing up the company names um but it seems like there's some proprietary information in the in the like like yes there's amazing data and amazing engineers at these big companies they're making these circuit boards But they're probably not okay with you just taking that as training data. Or maybe it's legal. I don't know. Or maybe it's legal. I don't know. What's the deal there?
2:12:41
>> You're absolutely right.
2:12:41
Um I think that Maddic is a fantastic company.
2:12:43
Uh they and Whoop both print on their circuit boards.
2:12:47
Like don't bother copies. >> That's the one. Yeah. Whoop. >> Fantastic detail. I I really love it.
2:12:51
Um >> yeah, you can make that you can make that a feature. >> Yeah.
2:12:58
>> We we'll do it for everyone of our circuit boards.
2:13:00
um data is actually like the most important part of this.
2:13:03
So >> like there is no re like easily available data for this kind of problem.
2:13:11
Like whereas on code you can basically take GitHub and kind of like start training your models on very high-end um like data that you can use.
2:13:17
Um part of like what we are doing at Dio is we're rebuilding the data set from the ground up.
2:13:23
Um, and so there's a lot of like uh uh data annotation, data cleaning, like generating new types of data that we can use to improve the models.
2:13:29
Um, and we are about to announce like next week a partnership with like a very large uh like software open source project and and our goal is basically to contribute back to the community, generate this data that like we're going to use to train like better models without going and like uh touching on proprietary data like we own our own designs.
2:13:47
Um and so while we assign the IP of the board that we design for our customers to them, we usually retain the rights to the individual components that we generate and those are like a competitive advantage for us.
2:13:58
We are basically building an internal data structure. >> Yeah.
2:14:01
Why why do you even need uh real data?
2:14:04
I feel like you could generate all of this in simulation.
2:14:06
Like I when I hear people talk about bio and saying, "Oh, we don't have a simulated cell."
2:14:12
I'm like, "Okay, well that makes sense.
2:14:13
Like humans are really complicated.
2:14:14
Biology is really complex."
2:14:14
But like we created circuit boards in the first place.
2:14:18
we should be able to simulate those.
2:14:19
Like why can't you just simulate all possible circuit boards and then do some sort of search through that?
2:14:22
Why do you need hard data?
2:14:26
>> You're absolutely right. We actually do do that.
2:14:27
Um like we have reinforcement learning algorithms.
2:14:29
There's two types of simulation that you can do.
2:14:31
One is like an electrical simulation which you can absolutely uh like get right. It's called spice.
2:14:38
>> Um but then like the second order effects of like physics are quite complicated to model.
2:14:42
And so there's a really um like there's a good saying around like very talented electrical engineers which is like you never trust sim like you basically like you can try simulating it but then like manufacturing something and making sure it works is the ultimate like simulation test like the boards may be manufactured in a different way.
2:14:59
Uh the the like board house may not like respect your specifications.
2:15:04
Uh and so we 100% do simulation.
2:15:08
That's how we bootstrap the process.
2:15:09
uh you couldn't like build the library of data that we've built just by hand like it's physically impossible. Sure.
2:15:15
Um so we we use like simulation to bootstrap but then the ability to manufacture the boards is really what creates differentiation and like brings home the fact that these like circuits are actually working.
2:15:25
>> So what are you guys actually doing on the manufacturing side?
2:15:27
Are you going to be scaling manufacturing?
2:15:29
Are you just making prototypes for customers and then they take those elsewhere to uh scale?
2:15:39
>> Um, excellent question.
2:15:39
So, our offer to the world is come to us, bring us what you want to design, we'll design it for you, optimize it for manufactur it, and then scale it with you.
2:15:51
Today, we have only small batch assembly in house.
2:15:54
Like we actually have a electric lab right here that we use to assemble like circuit boards like these.
2:16:00
Um and then we partner uh with uh manufacturing houses for like the largest higher volume production.
2:16:06
Um but the like eventual future is we are going to vertically integrate this manufacturing.
2:16:12
Um and like this is what we want to offer to companies.
2:16:14
If you look at the current offer for printed circuit boards in the US, it's very very hard to manufacture them uh like within the nation.
2:16:24
It's usually like anytime you want to scale, you need to go to China.
2:16:27
Um, and we think that the way to solve that is basically by making all of our design look the same from a manufacturability standpoint.
2:16:33
So, we can generate volume and like bring it to all of our clients at the same time.
2:16:38
Uh, we also do things like automatically matching the parts and the ordering, which is something that normally it's done manually and it's incredibly like long and annoying to do.
2:16:47
And so to like keep a very complicated process short, we make ordering PCBs from the US as easy as ordering them from China.
2:16:56
Not quite as inexpensive yet, but we are going to go there.
2:17:01
>> Where do you think you'll you'll set up your actual manufacturing hub?
2:17:03
You're you're said you're in the Brooklyn uh Navyyard right now.
2:17:07
Uh do you think you'll go out elsewhere or do you want to keep it in the in the great state of New York?
2:17:13
So I'm a big believer in uh like decentralized approaches for prototype level.
2:17:19
So we're actually opening an assembly shop in San Francisco for our clients there and we're thinking about one in Austin where we have like some clients that I absolutely love um alongside the one in New York.
2:17:30
Um and I think that longterm for scaling production the best strategy will be to colllocate the warehouses for the components and the uh assembly.
2:17:38
So, we're probably going to open a larger facility in either Arizona um or Ohio most likely. >> Awesome. >> Last question for me. IMO gold medal.
2:17:47
Uh what was your reaction to the news?
2:17:50
And is is solving IMO level math useful to you?
2:17:56
you? Do you think there will be transfer learning from that model into the circuit board design domain or are we in the era of spiky intelligence where until you RL on that particular problem you're not getting uh generalizable results
2:18:13
>> I think even if we were in the era of like spiky intelligence on like RL on a specific problem like circuit boards are an absolutely like good way of doing this like conceptually a circuit board is orders of magnitude simpler than uh silicone design. Like before like
2:18:29
Like before like building circuit boards for a living, I used to do like custom silicon designs.
2:18:34
Um and those have been like represented as code for years.
2:18:37
This is 100% an RL approachable problem.
2:18:41
Um I do think that the IMU news is fantastic.
2:18:43
Like clearly um the there are incredible returns if you do train on like a very specific set of data.
2:18:50
I think that the the biggest mode will be in the data.
2:18:52
Like what we consider to be our competitive advantage is not really like training new foundation models.
2:18:58
We actually rely on like uh foundation model improvements in the wild.
2:19:02
And our like entire uh model is based upon feeding those models with better and better data and being able to fine-tune and reinforcement learning train specific parts.
2:19:10
Like one of them is like the model that spots mistakes.
2:19:15
That's how you tell uh like a good generated design versus a bad generated design.
2:19:19
And then you can grow the model in reality and physics.
2:19:22
>> That makes a ton of sense.
2:19:22
Thank you so much for stopping by.
2:19:24
We will talk to you soon.
2:19:25
Congratulations on the on crossing the one-year milestone. >> Fantastic.
2:19:30
Getting an A done as well. Great stuff.
2:19:32
>> Thank you so much day. Talk to you soon. Bye. >> Cheers.
2:19:35
>> And up next we have Elon who uh I met and Delian was mentioning uh was building a company in France.
2:19:42
Now he's building a company in America.
2:19:44
We're going to dig into the differences between the two countries.
2:19:47
figure out which country is the best.
2:19:52
>> Get to the bottom of it. Hey, how you doing? >> What's going on? >> Hey, I'm good. I'm good. How you guys? >> I'm good.
2:19:56
Uh, we met at Miami Tech Week a few years ago, correct? >> Yes. Yes, >> that's right. >> Yeah, actually.
2:20:02
And I remember you telling me uh quite specifically, you didn't see yourself starting a venture business, but ventureback business, but you said media was something you were very interested in.
2:20:10
So, it looks like it turned out quite well. >> Here we are. Here we are.
2:20:12
Um, but yes, uh, give me give me the background on your journey.
2:20:17
Uh we'll get to the current company, but I want to talk more about um building a company uh outside of America.
2:20:24
Delian gave us a little bit of the background, but I wanted to just hear that journey and kind of tangle with it for a little bit. >> Yeah.
2:20:32
So, I started a company called Kala um with two co-founders probably a bit more than eight years ago.
2:20:37
Um the vision and the mission was to basically make real food more affordable by using robotics and and AI to automate the back kitchen operations. Okay.
2:20:46
If you look at the typical P&L of a restaurant, it's like 30% food cost, 30% people cost and 30% overhead, real estate of rent, electricity, those sort of things and like the 10% the margin if you're performing well.
2:20:59
Most a lot of restaurants are actually in of losing money.
2:21:01
Um so that's that was the vision.
2:21:03
And we said, okay, we can actually build machines and robotic systems to bring down operating cost to bring down the required footprint of a restaurant to run, which means we bring down overhead as well.
2:21:12
And hopefully we can reinvest part of those gains into better quality ingredients to make the product more affordable and more higher value.
2:21:16
And then we can also make the restaurant itself more profitable, thus more scalable.
2:21:22
Uh so that was the vision.
2:21:22
Um we basically ran the company for for eight years, did a bunch like an ungodly amount of mistakes along the way, but in the end managed to have five very very profitable restaurants.
2:21:34
Um basically give you a few numbers but like 60% retention, customers coming more than once a week, 95% customer satisfaction.
2:21:44
Um can give you the profitability numbers but much higher than what any other restaurant has achieved in the world of thus far.
2:21:49
world of thus far. Um and so the thinking from there was okay we had those great kind of first result with a few restaurants let's kind of start scaling we had raised 10 million up to that point from VCs um and we kind of get got hung on a very kind of structural problem of Europe which is there's a big kind of financing gap when
2:22:08
you go when you get to like the series A/ series B kind of moment uh where basically there's just a gigantic cliff of funding there um and so basically we didn't we did not understand that when we kind of created the business and structure the business and so we basically were like starting to assemble the plane ready to take off and then we
2:22:25
hit the wall like straight straight on um and we just hadn't kind of build we should have built like much smaller plane or or whatever delta plane or something that's more lean than what we had prepared to do because we had a much more ambitious vision that what was achievable in Europe um and the thing that's quite specific and that Deion was referencing a few days ago in the show
2:22:48
was restructuring the business to go from those handsful of restaurants that were like very profitable uh and a very high kind of HQ cost trying to restructure that to get to a profitable kind of break even point at the business level uh uh was basically on paper possible like we could have cut down cost enough to make the business profitable. Um but just pure French
2:23:05
Um but just pure French regulation prevented us from doing that.
2:23:09
just the the severance cost quite well like the the the purely the severance liability was higher than the cash on the hands we had at the time and we had quite a lot of cash and and still it was like a lot of money that we had to pay in severance and plus other kind of liabilities around that.
2:23:23
of liabilities around that. Um and so in the end we basically tried talk to the regulators to the government to kind of any structure that was around us to try and find a workar around but we kind of in the end we couldn't really go go beyond what the the laws and rules allowed and so we ultimately we had to shut down the business around yeah a bit
2:23:40
more than two months ago which was kind of quite a shame I was very very angry throughout the the whole process which obviously kind of pented up in in the next few in the past few weeks and and when I met Deian a few yeah actually a few days after the decision from the court kind of came down, um I was still kind of on the fence about what I wanted to do next. I was still thinking, should
2:23:59
I was still thinking, should I seem very angry about this? >> Yeah.
2:24:04
One thing I I would just highlight I I that the idea of using robotics to deliver better, cheaper food was not novel.
2:24:12
What was novel was actually getting it to work, right?
2:24:14
Like so many compan so many people have tried to do this in the United States. >> This is a graveyard. >> Yeah.
2:24:20
It's an absolute graveyard of companies with super talented founders and teams that >> for some reason or another couldn't like you know it's hard enough >> Freedberg started one. >> Yeah.
2:24:30
And it's hard enough many people interesting was the other way around like they automated the front of house not the back of house. That's true.
2:24:36
But but a lot of a lot of businesses like I could of give you 20 30 different businesses that have tried and I I think up to that point we are the only business that had >> and technically Sweet Green does as well but had kind of proven uh let's say kind of incrementally positive kind of return investment on the whole investment of a restaurant.
2:24:55
Meaning like if you actually invest the money it takes to build the machine and put it in the restaurant you actually get end up with a higher ROI on the whole investment than if you are just launching with a normal team.
2:25:05
just launching with a normal team. I think food gun is the only restaurant that had this apart from us and I for them it's not very clear exactly how they achieved that in terms of how transparent they are with the the numbers but yeah other than that I don't think anyone had even made like had even
2:25:20
actually paid back a single installation of a robotic system in a restaurant um and so yeah we we are very proud of that result that we got a few years ago and then we managed to launch more stores get more revenue get stores doing very high kind of aid margin but yeah in the end of couldn't really get there uh with with Kala. Um, and I think in the end
2:25:36
Um, and I think in the end the biggest mistakes we made was definitely starting the business in Europe.
2:25:41
In France specifically, there's just the the the market and the let's say the whole ecosystem is just not made for ambitious plays.
2:25:47
Uh, um, and like if you want to build something ambitious, you can't really do it there. >> Yeah.
2:25:52
Do you think that the the restrictions and the regulation that you ran into, are those broadly popular or are they kind of like legacy rules that if you put them up to a purely Democratic vote, most people would say that doesn't make any sense because there's a lot of like like you know legislative and regulatory crust in America that isn't popular but hangs around and people just kind of deal with it.
2:26:16
Um but but what is like the mood in France around this?
2:26:19
Like it it sounded like there wasn't very much like public outcry, but it feels like a situation where kind of everyone loses because the customers were enjoying the food, the employees were enjoying their jobs, you were enjoying building this company, and now they all go just go away. >> Yeah.
2:26:34
So I don't So this regulation specifically, I don't think it's known enough like company going bankrupt is not something that makes national news.
2:26:42
So it's not something that people have top of mind.
2:26:43
But I think overall people would probably support it because what the regulation actually says is just that when an employee when a company kind of goes bankrupt the employee gets pretty high severance meaning they don't have to find a job straight away or if they can't they can take a few months to find it and it's fine.
2:26:56
So I think on with the very kind of socialist kind of mental model that most French most French people have I think this would probably be popular.
2:27:04
Um but on top of the severance itself the state puts in place a lot of other protections even beyond what the severance kind of cost is like you basically get your full salary for a year if your company goes bankrupt um paid by the state.
2:27:15
So there's I mean partially by the company but the state puts a bit more on.
2:27:20
Um and so there's a bunch of those rules that I think people would probably be in favor of if they thought about it but it's just not something that's top of mind for anyone.
2:27:30
Have you talked to any other founders in France who went through something similar or had like cautionary tales to share is because it feels like this was widespread.
2:27:37
We'd be hearing about it a lot and people would be starting to lobby or anything or maybe just everyone leaves. >> I don't know.
2:27:44
I think the one of the reasons why it was so hard for us specifically is that the the uh so first we hardware business and so the HQ cost component is is kind of harder to scale down than a typical software business.
2:27:55
down than a typical software business. I think that's probably one reason why it was hard and also I think a lot of businesses that fail especially startups in France just fail because they can't really find product market fit and they can't even get kind of commercial traction and so in the end you don't really mind the company going bankrupt
2:28:09
because like you just didn't have something that was worth working for versus for us I think it's a bit different because we actually had a product that work and and the economics were there we just couldn't keep on scaling and we should have understood that maybe two or three years earlier and been a lot more conservative on the the structuring of the business >> what's the strategy for the new company. Uh how do you you know leverage what
2:28:28
Uh how do you you know leverage what works and avoid what doesn't? >> Yeah.
2:28:34
So, so I think so the the first one kind of key lesson is definitely being a lot more lean on the on the HQ cost.
2:28:39
I think one thing that I learned is that even though I think this business can be of scaled built with venture capital, uh I think you have to to build a strategy around your financing that's both VC but also private equity that does retail and restaurants come more naturally.
2:28:52
you have to be able to tailor your business toward those guys because at some point you're going to need them.
2:28:56
Um and so that that means of low HQ cost more of HQ operations that means other structuring element that you have to do differently.
2:29:05
So that's definitely one big learning.
2:29:06
The second one is is also in terms of um let's say structuring of the operations.
2:29:11
We had built restaurants that were too small and so even though they were very profitable they didn't bring in as much as aida as we could have.
2:29:18
If we had stores that were doing like let's say 3 million revenue per store, we'd have been bringing a lot more a bit per store than the revenue we had in our stores.
2:29:25
So that's another kind of key learning.
2:29:26
Um and the tech itself also we are changing a bit the product.
2:29:30
Uh we are not taking any of the previous IP or tech that kind of ke developed.
2:29:35
We are kind of rebuilding everything from scratch.
2:29:36
But we know overall we have kind of rough good ideas of kind of what are the prototypes we made, what worked, what didn't work.
2:29:42
And so we're also kind of approaching the tech a bit differently than what we did with Kella.
2:29:46
And thus we're also approaching the the product differently.
2:29:49
We're not going to be serving the same the same food. >> Makes sense. Jord, anything else?
2:29:53
>> So So what uh yeah c can you sh what's the timeline for the new company?
2:29:56
Uh and where what what kind of key markets are you looking at? >> Yeah.
2:30:00
So when I spoke with Dian a month and a half ago was not really decided on it yet.
2:30:04
So barely basically incorporating the business now already have um um basically I talked to a bunch of Kala shareholders um that kind of when I announced this the we had to shut down the business and in the end we kind of we were forced by the state to shut down.
2:30:17
It's not even like we decided to do it.
2:30:19
Uh um talked with a bunch of them that basically said whatever you guys do again if it's the same business we want to back you again.
2:30:24
So I'm right now just thinking about kind of how I want to think about financing and and the first few months is very very kind of high level at the moment not really into any details.
2:30:32
Um um but so that's kind of first step in next few months uh the high level higher level kind of road map is to launch the first store in New York um middle of next year midpoint of next year exactly kind of when is going to depend a bit on a few elements around funding and also timeline on regulation.
2:30:49
Um but yeah, the first restaurant in New York, going to launch a few restaurant there and then pretty highly considering franchising as kind of a path um to to scale a lot more aggressively than and a lot more efficiently capital efficiently than we did with with Kala where we own every single restaurant.
2:31:03
Yeah, I think most people don't understand just how if you if you have a hit restaurant, you know, concept and you can scale with uh you with franchises, not only can franchises, you know, change their lives through through that opportunity, but you can have what ends up looking like a software or better than software margins and that like super lean HQ and just printing cash off the top line.
2:31:29
printing cash off the top line. So >> and imagine imagine if the restaurant itself doesn't do 10% a bit multiple kind of X around above that the amount of money you get out of the top line of the restaurant is just so much higher that let's say you are a typical restaurant does 10% a bit the margin as
2:31:43
a franchiseor you're going to take 5% that's not a lot of value you're taking for you basically not doing everything but creating the whole value in the end if you have a restaurant that does a lot more than that you can get a much bigger chunk of the top of that restaurant and the the gains into by not operating is also much better. >> Very cool. >> Very cool. >> Cool.
2:32:02
>> Well, excited for you to come to the US and uh build here.
2:32:07
>> I hit you up when something you're going to come to the restaurant. >> Amazing.
2:32:09
Yeah, we'd love to try it. Thanks so much. Talk to you soon. Bye. >> Bye.
2:32:15
>> Great stuff, >> Tyler. Any more progress? How you doing?
2:32:18
>> I made it to fifth place. >> Fifth place? >> Yeah. My moves are 525. >> 525.
2:32:23
You're You're highway up there.
2:32:23
You might be number one by the end of the day.
2:32:27
>> Yeah, but it's pretty marginal. Like >> it's hard now.
2:32:29
>> You know, it's going to be hard from here on out >> to squeeze out the last little bit of performance. >> Good job.
2:32:35
>> It's all your mindset, Tyler. >> Yeah.
2:32:38
>> Did Did Tyler win the iPhone? >> He did. >> He did. He did.
2:32:41
>> I had a constellation prize ready.
2:32:43
>> Oh, I did a Rubik's cube.
2:32:43
Oh, we got a Rubik's cube now.
2:32:45
>> Uh, that's too easy for Tyler. That's a That's a 3x3. >> I got the 9 by9.
2:32:50
>> Tyler can do the 9 by9.
2:32:52
>> That's You say that you can do the 9 by9.
2:32:54
That thing has not been sold.
2:32:56
>> It'll be done by tomorrow.
2:32:56
Yeah, I think that's challenge.
2:32:58
You should do I can do it.
2:33:00
Give me like >> do it live.
2:33:01
>> 20 minutes >> tomorrow.
2:33:02
Do it tomorrow on the stream. >> Okay. Should I fully scramble?
2:33:07
It looks pretty scrambled to me.
2:33:07
It looks like the last like the hardest part is ahead of you.
2:33:11
>> No, the hardest part is is >> almost done. Okay. >> Okay. >> Nice little timeline. >> Yeah.
2:33:16
Uh Brian Johnson is >> says blueprint has been a pain in his butt.
2:33:21
It's kept me from not focusing on the single thing I'm consumed with.
2:33:23
How does the human race survive the rise of super intelligence?
2:33:26
Every minute spent dealing with problems like why is supplier shipped to us something out of spec is a minute not spent figuring out how to make don't die the fastest growing ideology in history increasing our odds of survival and thriving.
2:33:38
At the same time, Blueprint produces products my body and mind uh that bring my body and mind great joy.
2:33:44
I rely upon them for my well-being. I trust it.
2:33:46
So do tens of thousands of happy customers.
2:33:50
After years of consuming, I am at a molecular level blueprint.
2:33:54
>> How big do you think the business is?
2:33:55
Tens of thousands of customers.
2:33:55
What do you think LTV is?
2:33:59
>> I had thought or heard that it was at like >> $100 million run rate.
2:34:04
>> That feels about right.
2:34:04
I feel like if you go into the blueprint ecosystem, you go pretty hard. >> Yeah.
2:34:08
You could end up consuming products from every for everything and you go it's not just like, you know, one protein bar and that's it.
2:34:15
It's like they has a whole variety of things to to purchase.
2:34:19
So yeah, >> supplement companies continue to be undefeated in terms of monetizing health audiences. >> Yeah.
2:34:25
Especially if you have a big audience like he does. >> Yeah.
2:34:27
He says uh Blueprint is the best longevity stack in the world.
2:34:28
That's not an exaggeration.
2:34:30
It's meticulously >> uh designed based on scientific evidence, third party tested, comprehensive, easy to consume, delicious, and priced to be accessible.
2:34:40
And anyways, he go on uh to say that he's been uh basically attacked uh for by people saying that he's grifting that he uh you know is is the whole kind of blueprint uh don't die ideology is is meant to sell supplements.
2:34:55
>> Netflix did a documentary.
2:34:55
Wow, that's really really big.
2:34:59
>> But the news here is that he's hiring uh he's hiring a CEO and a CTO who can lead the business dayto-day while he focuses on don't die. Yeah.
2:35:06
And so, uh, you know, interesting opportunity here.
2:35:11
There's a bunch of different product lines.
2:35:12
They have Nourish, Biomarkers, Quantified, and I guess, uh, clinics are coming soon. Uh, I don't know.
2:35:17
I don't know that any exist yet, but uh, they're raising money, too.
2:35:22
They need some hardcore builders.
2:35:24
So, >> I think this would be a great spa candidate, John. >> It's real revenue. >> Charismatic founder. >> Yeah.
2:35:32
>> Take it take it public, Brian. >> Take it public. >> Just Just do it.
2:35:35
Buy some meme stock for your treasury. >> Yeah.
2:35:39
Keep some GameStop and some treasure. >> Diversified memes. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
2:35:45
>> Some FC coin in there in the tre in the corporate treasury. That's the move. I can see.
2:35:49
>> Um >> what what a run.
2:35:50
He is such a master of earn media. It's so crazy.
2:35:52
He's ba this is basically what like a hiring post.
2:35:57
He's saying like I'm hiring two people. Yeah. >> Amazing essay. Super viral.
2:35:59
And then also a business insider piece that he gets coverage from and can screenshot >> the master. >> What a beast. >> Sicky chat.
2:36:08
>> How does he How does he do it?
2:36:09
>> Putting up massive numbers.
2:36:09
His portfolio company just exited today and he got paid.
2:36:12
Waters on me next time, folks.
2:36:15
Because he received a distribution. >> Better than nothing. >> $25. It's not a zero. >> What happened?
2:36:20
It's so interesting that it wouldn't be a zero, but it also wouldn't be like like a real number.
2:36:26
It's like the smallest amount.
2:36:26
Something >> that happens.
2:36:28
Money has to go somewhere, >> I guess. I guess.
2:36:30
Um, Michael Katzios has a video today.
2:36:33
To win the AI race and ensure global technological dominance, we need more power.
2:36:37
So, we have Michael will be coming on the show tomorrow. Correct. >> Yeah. Yeah.
2:36:42
And, uh, lot of news here.
2:36:45
I'm sure we'll be digesting it.
2:36:45
The All-In podcast is also having a crossover event with Hillen Valley. Yep.
2:36:50
>> Um, with a bunch of hitters breaking this down. There's a lot. >> Absolute dogs. >> Absolute dogs.
2:36:55
I don't know if there's been more absolute dogs under one roof in Washington in in maybe since Helen Valley.
2:37:03
>> It's pretty it's pretty wild.
2:37:03
Uh the actual action plan is really really like huge.
2:37:09
Uh the the basic summary is that um they're shift they're trying to shift or they're shifting with this document AI policy at the federal level from safety first posture.
2:37:18
We're worried about paper clipping.
2:37:21
We're worried about you know like the doomer scenario.
2:37:26
Should we, you know, have an FDA for that was one of something that was thrown around on podcasts a while ago.
2:37:33
Should these models need to be approved by the federal government before they go into general release?
2:37:37
Um, now there's a shift in posture to a growth in geopolitics posture basically.
2:37:42
So, uh, the immediate practical effect is the publication of priorities.
2:37:46
Real world impact will depend on how quickly the 90 plus follow-on actions, especially deregulation, fasttrack permitting, new export packages, and procurement rules move from paper to binding regulations, guidance, and contracts over the next few months.
2:38:02
So, there's a bunch of stuff in here.
2:38:04
It's going to touch the OM, NIST, all the cabinet agencies, commerce, energy, labor departments, Treasury, Department of Energy, basically census, like uh treat AI skill programs as taxfree educational assistance.
2:38:21
There's a whole bunch of different ideas in here.
2:38:24
>> They're bringing that golden retriever mode ideology to AI.
2:38:28
>> There's going to be the creation of the Department of Defense AI and autonomous systems virtual proving ground.
2:38:32
I was talking to somebody yesterday about how big is um is AI on the battlefield?
2:38:37
How big of an issue is having frontier AI in a military context?
2:38:44
And um it's very unclear if you can just, you know, hey, invade Taiwan, don't make mistakes.
2:38:50
Um like oneshotting these prompts.
2:38:52
We don't think we're there.
2:38:54
But, uh, even if you just think about if you're going up against a a an adversary and they have Microsoft Excel and you don't, well, their logistics are going to be smoother.
2:39:04
And so, even just having AI tools and systems in all the different little places within your military force, that could be advantageous.
2:39:12
Even if we're not talking about the Terminator killer robot scenario, like the humanoids, all that stuff feels a little bit further out.
2:39:20
But just using AI to make standard processes a little bit more efficient seems um seems like a important advantage to have in a conflict.
2:39:30
Um they're also expanding the national AI research resource pilot and the creation of financial instruments spot and forward markets to give startups on demand access to GPU capacity.
2:39:39
Uh NSF do department of energy uh secure compute environments and national secure data service portal for controlled access.
2:39:47
So some there's some open source and research efforts.
2:39:50
There's a ton of stuff in here.
2:39:50
I'm sure it'll all be >> the open source stuff was uh was exciting to see.
2:39:56
>> Yeah, we'll see how Mark Zuckerberg like fits into that because if he stays with the new super the super intelligence team is stacked, but there was always a question about that like how long will Llama stay open source.
2:40:05
China seems to be beating us up on open source.
2:40:08
We saw uh Quen doing really well, Deepseek doing really well.
2:40:13
And so, uh, if there's going to be an open-source champion in America, it feels like that could come from meta.
2:40:19
And so, it'll be interesting to see how badly he wants it, how badly he wants to stay there and how valuable that is to stay in the open source uh in at the at the frontier of the open source.
2:40:29
Uh, speaking of that, there was an interesting uh debate back and forth. I forget who said this.
2:40:33
Um, oh, Franis Chalet said, "Please note, we are not able to produce the 41.
2:40:38
8% result from ARC AGI1."
2:40:42
That's the first ARGI test claimed by the latest Quen 3 release, neither on the public eval set nor on the semi-private set.
2:40:50
These number the numbers we are seeing are in line with other recent base models in general only rely on scores verified by the ARC pri prize foundation on the semi-private set.
2:40:59
That way you can trust that the methodology was consistent and fair across all models verified.
2:41:02
But then um one of the team members I think says hey we used the JSON format for convenient parsing.
2:41:10
I'll DM you for reproduction. Sounds good.
2:41:11
waiting for you to DM them.
2:41:13
So, we will have more news on whether or not Quen 3 really did jump forward in ARC AGI.
2:41:17
But again, you know, the the the goal should be 100%. >> Yeah.
2:41:23
Um on ARGI since these are um these are tests that, you know, everyone from an intern to a, you know, I don't know, 10-year-old can do.
2:41:33
I don't know how low it goes.
2:41:34
I don't know if a 5-year-old can do it.
2:41:35
I gota I got to put it to the test.
2:41:37
I got to have the kids try. funny.
2:41:40
>> Um, anyway, >> Martinrelly has a good post here responding to Caitlyn Relis.
2:41:43
She says, "You must be one of four things to raise right now.
2:41:47
AI high-f flyier seed co with the promise of being an AI high-flying company.
2:41:51
American dynamism/reindustrialization company."
2:41:55
And Martin says, "How about just growing revenue and profits really fast?"
2:41:59
That is a fantastic strategy, >> the Lindy way.
2:42:01
But then if you're growing profits really fast, you might not need to raise.
2:42:04
You might not be able to justify a big raise potentially.
2:42:06
just raise it 500x revenue, >> I guess.
2:42:11
Yeah, >> 10,000x evida or something.
2:42:13
Um anyway, in other news, um people are still memeing about the uh nuclear reactor breach by hackers via Microsoft SharePoint.
2:42:25
>> Yeah, I was interested in the timeline there.
2:42:27
I was getting into that story yesterday.
2:42:29
The vulnerability was discovered in May at a hacking competition that Microsoft put on.
2:42:34
They then patched it later uh which didn't work and then the major hacks happened over the weekend just a few days ago and so the timeline there is like kind of weird like did they not um uh and people were pushing back and saying like very unlikely that there was um >> a serious breach.
2:42:54
Well, no more more so unlikely that super critical documents were shared >> in those systems, but still >> uh any of any and all information related to the US nuclear weapons uh agency and just program broadly should be pretty secure.
2:43:12
>> Um so yeah, anyways, I'm sure we'll learn more about the uh kind of timeline that that led to that over time.
2:43:17
And uh some final words uh of advice uh from Sahil says, "Buy a. com domain.
2:43:25
Go into debt if you have to."
2:43:29
I saw somebody quoted this and um and uh said >> uh I actually did do this.
2:43:35
I went into debt as the the guy who got the domain contra. com. Okay.
2:43:40
Um which is a nice >> work out.
2:43:43
>> Uh yeah, he's raised raised a lot of money.
2:43:44
Um it's a great domain, great name. Fantastic.
2:43:47
Uh, we got our domain from snagged. com. Yeah, >> Rob. We, uh, >> check it out.
2:43:53
>> Um, industry-leading domain services.
2:43:53
He >> uh, helped us get tbp. com in 30 minutes. >> Wow.
2:44:02
>> Uh, was one of the fastest negotiations of all time. >> It's pretty awesome.
2:44:05
>> And we are very >> grateful. It's also cool.
2:44:07
He started row row like a pharmaceutical company. >> Yeah. Row. co.
2:44:11
So, he's been in the domain game for a while, but >> Oh, yeah. Fire domain.
2:44:15
Uh, and last I got to do one more final part from Will Brown.
2:44:21
Chat GPT should have a big green switch that says sicko mode. >> Sicko mode.
2:44:26
>> Looks like a fancy mode. >> Yeah. S IO mode.
2:44:27
Uh, if you want to just turn it on and just get gassed up by the model, you should be able to to to really turn it. >> Stay safe out there. Stay safe.
2:44:36
Don't get lost in the sauce.
2:44:39
Don't get lost in the sauce.
2:44:42
>> And one more final post. >> Okay.
2:44:44
CEO Brew Markets is highlighting the CEO of Nvidia Jensen has a legendary LinkedIn profile.
2:44:51
>> He was at Denny's for 5 years 1978 to 83.
2:44:55
He was a dishwasher bus boy and a waiter.
2:44:57
So just working his way up the ORC chart.
2:44:59
If he had stayed there, he probably would have become CEO, but he went and uh a decade later founded Nvidia and has run been running it for 32 years and seven months.
2:45:07
So >> run biggest company in the world. What you got?
2:45:13
I think we lowkey got to put him in the truth zone because he worked at AMD. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
2:45:16
Well, that's that Wait, that that's the post. >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
2:45:19
Sorry, I didn't highlight.
2:45:21
Leaving out the years that he worked at AMD and LSI is a great example of how a lionizing narrative works.
2:45:27
Creates the impression of superhuman genius which confers a valuable aura that has material impact on morale, negotiations, etc.
2:45:32
Similar to Singapore was a fishing village.
2:45:35
So, >> I actually don't know that much about the Singap the rumor that Singapore was a fishing village. I guess it wasn't.
2:45:41
I I I don't know the story of Singapore. Enough.
2:45:45
We got to do a deep dive coming. >> Sounds interesting.
2:45:46
But yeah, worked at AMD and LSI Logic and then started Nvidia.
2:45:51
So, but he took those off the the LinkedIn because he's like, "Ah, I got what why should I promote my competitors?" You know, >> smart man.
2:45:58
>> I'm not competing with Denny's.
2:46:00
Apparently, the first Denny's that he worked at or something has a plaque on the wall like Nvidia CEO worked here. Very cool.
2:46:05
And he still does Denny's stunts.
2:46:07
He did one with the acquired guys.
2:46:08
He came by and like I think he delivered them Denny's or something like that when they were doing some event at NVIDIA GTC.
2:46:14
>> At this point, you should just buy Denny's. It's 237 mil.
2:46:15
It's trading at $270 million market cap right now. >> It's that cheap. Wow.
2:46:21
I didn't realize it was pure play.
2:46:22
Like >> I guess it's getting meme stocked.
2:46:24
It's It's up 16% in the past 5 days.
2:46:27
So, >> not financial advice. Not financial.
2:46:31
>> Jensen should really uh >> pick it up.
2:46:33
>> Pick it up quick before it it runs too hard.
2:46:35
But >> yeah, I mean, he's in the interest of keeping it alive because if it just goes away and no one remembers, >> you can turn every Denny's into a showroom for his latest chips, you know, just carve out a booth.
2:46:47
>> I feel like I read some article about Denny's or some sort of uh, you know, restaurant chain using AI to help the servers or something. Everyone has an AI play.
2:46:56
Uh, restaurant >> restaurant solutions or something.
2:46:58
They own IHOP, I believe. Something like that. Yeah. Yeah.
2:47:02
Headquartered in Pasadena.
2:47:04
Very American episode today, John.
2:47:06
You could not put that football down the whole time. >> It's fun.
2:47:08
It's nice to just have like a little fidget.
2:47:10
It's the original fidget.
2:47:12
>> Something about John with a football works. >> It's great.
2:47:14
Uh yeah, I tried to keep it like below the desk during the interview so I could be a little bit more serious, but you know, I think I think eventually we're tossing the pig >> tossing the pig skin while talking to some founder race.
2:47:27
On that note, leave us a fivestar review on uh Apple Podcast or Spotify and see you tomorrow. >> See you tomorrow. >> Have a good one. >> Cheers, folks.