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6:56

Today is Wednesday, July 2nd, 2025.

6:56

We are live from the TVPN Ultra Dome, the temple of technology, the fortress of finance, the capital of capital. Welcome to the show.

7:07

The current thing has come in off hot off the presses.

7:09

It's Arabore, a new crypto bank.

7:11

PayPal co-founder Peter Teal and Anderl founder Palmer Lucky are launching Arabore, a digital bank built for crypto and tech startups.

7:20

You know what I'm saying, John?

7:21

The trade of the century was going back and buying up all the all the Tolken domain. coms. That's right. That's right.

7:30

You would have become a billionaire yourself if you just bought all the. com.

7:33

There was a lot of debate over whether or not the the the uh the the Tolken the Lord of the Rings naming scheme had kind of run its course, right?

7:42

Because people were knocking it off.

7:44

Nonfounders fund companies were starting to use the names.

7:46

Not going to say any names.

7:48

Oh, that is that is insane. That is insane.

7:55

I can't believe no one's ever said that.

7:57

I'm not going to dig into that anymore because we'll let you dig into it.

8:00

We'll let you interpret that joke.

8:02

But uh we have news from Zack Kukov on the show yesterday.

8:04

He's coming back on the show today.

8:06

He's our Washington correspondent.

8:07

He says uh this is great news about uh the new uh the new uh Lord of the Rings themed bank Arabore.

8:16

Uh Zakugoff says this is great news. JP Morgan, HSBC, etc.

8:18

haven't fully filled the gap that SVB and First Republic left. An insider run.

8:23

Risk forward tech bank is much needed.

8:28

Backers include Palmer Lucky, Founders Fund, Peter Teal, uh Joe Lansdale, etc.

8:33

Uh I think Lux is in this too.

8:33

I don't know if that's public yet though.

8:34

We'll have to figure that out.

8:36

Scoop, but they're obviously the Silicon Valley elite are rallying around um we love to see it this this new project.

8:44

So they're calling it the next SVB for hard.

8:47

Uh the filing says S uh says Arabore wants to be the most regulated entity conducting and facilitating stable coin transactions.

8:56

an unusual boast meant to soothe OC examiners while still holding stable coins on its own balance sheet.

9:03

Uh who who it serves and why Columbus?

9:05

It start this is uh this bank's going to be in Ohio.

9:07

Uh target customers are AI, crypto, defense tech and advanced manufacturing startups.

9:11

A digital only model will be legally headquartered in Columbus, Ohio with a satellite office in New York to tap Wall Street.

9:17

The capital of capital the capital of capital. Very exciting.

9:20

Um so yeah, we'll have to dig into this.

9:22

Uh we're having Palmer Lucky on the show soon.

9:25

would love to hear more about the plan here.

9:27

Uh and I agree uh SVB was a special special institution.

9:29

It was very sad when it uh went away.

9:31

There's been a gap in the founder dinner market.

9:34

They were a huge funer of founder dinners.

9:39

That and also uh mortgages. That's right.

9:41

Big on the mortgage front.

9:41

I mean, it really was a a crazy failure where you could have like $40 million but illquid and be making like millionage and you couldn't buy a house and it's just like okay. Okay.

9:52

And then and then you're strapped with this with this question of like, okay, do you raise your salary and start raising burn just to get a mortgage and stuff or do you put it on the balance sheet of the company that's been done before?

10:02

Uh there had crazy that that within whatever a month we lost SVB and First Republic, the two funds that really served our industry.

10:13

So it makes sense to build back.

10:15

It is funny that um that Zach said we need a riskforward tech because It was risky. Well, yeah.

10:22

What's interesting is they didn't get burned on the on the startup stuff. Yeah.

10:26

They got burned on treasuries.

10:28

The least risky thing ever.

10:30

But, you know, no one was expecting a duration mismatch. Yeah. The duration mismatch.

10:34

Um, anyway, in other news, Microsoft scales back ambitions for AI chips to overcome delays as the information.

10:41

Um, and Neo Margana here is asking Grock what were uh what what were they trying to do with their chip ambitions?

10:49

And Grock says Microsoft chip ambitions aimed to reduce reliance on suppliers like Nvidia optimized for performance for Azure AI and Copilot at lower costs.

10:57

Um they developed chips like the Azure Maya AI accelerator for AI tasks and Azure Cobalt CPU for cloud workloads.

11:06

However, delays such as the Maya 200 chip postponed to 2026 and design challenges led to scaledback plans.

11:12

So Google has the TPU, Amazon has inferentia, Apple has the the M1, M2, M3 chip.

11:21

All the hyperscalers are getting in on the custom silicon action.

11:22

What was the name of the quantum chip that Sauté was teasing? Majorana. Majorana. Majorana.

11:29

Uh but that's still in the works.

11:30

That's still in the works, but that's a completely separate thing.

11:32

that's a completely separate thing. And that you know it it that that is such a different fork in the tech tree that you're not going to be writing you're not going to be like oh yeah we have some CUDA code that's inferencing some you know large language model and let's just run it on quant it's like you have

11:47

to rebuild the entire the entire system to run on quantum uh and that's very far out but people are optimistic people sharp people that I talked to are saying like quantum is all the companies right now aren't delivering products that are in use but there's no like that like the physics the science is is solid. Uh it

12:03

Uh it just might be 10 or 20 years until this is really in production.

12:07

So it's all about uh you know TSMC fab capacity right now.

12:12

So uh Microsoft scales back ambitions for in-house AI silicon.

12:14

Uh Maya aka Braga chips slip for a full year mass. You hate to see it.

12:22

We love we love custom silicon here.

12:25

We want it to arrive as fast as possible.

12:26

That's when timelines extend. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. It does happen though.

12:31

So I mean we are big we are big tech defenders here and we are very sad to report the delayed part is expected to trail Nvidia's Blackwell accelerators once it finally ships and undermining SATA's goal of cutting GPU spend and that's going to be hard because the new Blackwells are going to come up.

12:46

They're going to be amazing. He's going to need some.

12:49

You don't want to be GPU poor right now. Not right now.

12:50

You might you can be a leaser but you can't be GPU poor.

12:54

And so while Microsoft pauses, Amazon is planning Tranium 3 for late 2025.

13:00

And Google already has its seventh gen TPU in production, leaving Azure, the slowest of the big three, to deploy second generation custom AI software.

13:09

And in other Microsoft news, they are reorginging this entire company right now.

13:13

They are announcing that they are cutting 9,000 workers in a second wave of major layoffs.

13:17

We already reported on this.

13:19

We we we talked about this, but they have uh 4,712 applications for a How many full-time employees does Microsoft have?

13:27

Isn't it in the hundreds thousands?

13:29

I like that Tyler's wearing the bezel hat today. It's a good one. Just throw on the team.

13:33

Tyler clearly doesn't have Cluey up.

13:35

Otherwise, see where it is.

13:36

No, he really should be running that during the show.

13:38

Let me think for a second.

13:39

But let us approximately 228,000. That's right. 228,000.

13:42

So, this is what they're cutting 9,000 employees.

13:44

It's 4% of the 4% of the headcount.

13:47

Uh this is the second cut in 60 days.

13:49

The July round followed 6,000 job losses in May and hit sales, gaming and engineering.

13:53

Uh flattening the org chart.

13:56

Management layers are being removed to raise the coder to manager ratio. Love that.

13:59

Um you know there I mean it really is this world where the line between coding and managing is blending and programmers can do a lot more and act like PMs because there's AI tools and they can roll out stuff.

14:15

So you're not in this cycle anymore of like the manager decided that we need to implement a function.

14:18

Go take a month to build that.

14:20

Go take a week to build that.

14:23

It's like okay I built it. Now what's next? You got the afternoon. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.

14:27

So so that higher throughput engineering should come through in a delayering of the organization.

14:34

And in general, these these big companies, they often get really huge and then they need to uh they they need to uh kind of delayer and and streamline this the the company.

14:43

Um anyway, seems like we have some technical difficulties.

14:48

We will s sort that out while I read you the next story. Okay, great.

14:51

Um Google, Amazon, and Meta have all trimmed VPs and middle managers this year.

14:55

Redmond is citing dynamic Martin market conditions rather than performance. Um interesting.

15:00

Um, anyway, uh, in other news, uh, China hosted the first fully autonomous AI robot soccer game.

15:08

I'm hoping we can pull this video up.

15:10

Ian Bremer says they've still ways to go. I want your review.

15:14

You haven't seen this video yet, have you? Not yet. Okay.

15:15

We're reacting to it live on the stream.

15:18

Um, China's been working on this for a while.

15:21

And the reason I'm bringing this up is because there's a story in the journal about uh, China is rapidly eroding America's lead in the global AI race.

15:28

uh Deepseek and Alibaba's open source Quen are now running inside HSBC, Saudi Ramco, and even on AWS and Azure, forcing Western vendors to justify higher closed source pricing.

15:40

Um, very interesting development.

15:42

We'll see what happens with the new Llama models, whether those can catch up to Deep Seek and Quinn, unseat them.

15:47

We're also going to have the founder of Mistral on the show soon.

15:50

Anyway, this is the latest robot soccer game out of China.

15:52

How do you think they did? It's not bad.

15:57

They're not flopping enough. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

16:02

They don't understand the me if they were No. No.

16:03

Oh, they know show biz stretcher. Yeah. That's good TV. That's good show biz.

16:09

So, if you watch the beginning of this video, the beginning shows one of the robots falling down. Look at this guy. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. He's down. He's down. He's down. Okay.

16:20

They would have got a whistle for that.

16:21

China knows how to pump up attention on AI.

16:24

They got the robot marathons.

16:26

They got a variety of stuff going on to draw attention to AI and it's certainly it's it's it's the hottest industry.

16:33

They got the hedge fund folks moving over and it's robots and they love robots and and and and we're seeing all those displays uh of drone shows like the drone light show that is going to inspire our generation to go want to work in drones, right?

16:46

And so and same thing to work in killer SP FPV drones maybe. Maybe. Um, no, there there is.

16:54

Remember when we covered uh DJI in detail earlier this year?

16:56

DJI puts on challenges where they people can compete to make killer robots.

17:03

So, they don't even hide the fact that these robots can be used as death machines. Yeah. Yeah.

17:11

I mean, we're going to see a lot more of this, but uh the government is fueling a scale up of AI over there.

17:17

Beijing is pouring subsidies into costefficient domain specific AI while Washington chases AGI widening a practical capability gap despite US chip controls.

17:27

Um, US officials worry Chinese guardrails bake censorship into exported systems.

17:32

The fractured ecosystem could undercut global security cooperation and US influence over AI norms.

17:36

And so, yeah, this is what we've been talking to about Aaron Gin.

17:39

He'll be on the show tomorrow.

17:41

We're also talking to Chris Miller, the author of Chip War uh tomorrow and we will dig into the US allows millions of humanoid robots controlled by Chinese companies to be sold in to the United States. Yeah.

17:53

Will be a colossal failure. Yeah.

17:58

I was listening to Dylan Patel's uh presentation at AI Engineer uh on YouTube on the drive-in today and um the number of H100 equivalents that Huawei was able to fab at TSMC like in the midst of the chip controls was crazy.

18:17

He breaks it all down and it's fascinating.

18:20

So, first off, there was a there was a company that was basically a front for Huawei that was like, "Yeah, we want a ton of chips, TSMC, and TSMC was like, "Sure, you're not based in China.

18:31

We'd be happy to sell these to you."

18:33

But they sold them like a million chips or something like that.

18:37

So, the latest Huawei Ascend uh is crazy.

18:41

Then they have the cloud matrix 384 or something like that which is like 384 chips allorked together specifically instead of so there's two different types of wires that can w that can wire the chips together basically.

18:51

There's copper and then there's fiber optic and fiber optic is is NV link that's what Nvidia touts as like when you get a rack of servers and they're talk to each other really really fast that allows for better training and and inference too but it's very important.

19:04

It's basically like like you're taking a bunch of different chips and you're making them all work as one. So it's super valuable.

19:10

Yeah, apparently Nvidia tried to do a rack scale.

19:14

I think it was 64 chips allworked together with with optical cables and they couldn't get it to work.

19:22

Like they couldn't get it out and Huawei actually figured it out.

19:24

And so even though their chips aren't as solid as Nvidia, like on the networking side, they're outperforming there according to Dylan Patel.

19:31

Um, and then the other interesting thing is that uh like the chip controls don't just affect like TSMC and Nvidia.

19:37

Like obviously you can't just go buy H100s or H200s uh if you're in China anymore, but you can go to TSMC through a shell company, but then you also need high bandwidth memory and that comes from Heinx SKH High in South Korea that's also controlled.

19:49

So what they would do is they had another company that would say like yeah like we definitely want like all the best uh HBM uh high high bandwidth memory uh in like this device that we're making like just build it for us and install it.

20:02

And then they would ship it and then they would disassemble the the device, rip the memory out and then put it on a GPU chip.

20:10

Yeah, it's crazy, crazy, crazy.

20:13

So, he has a bunch of good details.

20:13

We we can dig into that a little bit more later.

20:16

But Deepseek was built in a cave with scraps. Yeah, exactly.

20:19

Anyway, uh James Cameron has been talking about AI copyright fears.

20:24

He says fears are overblown.

20:26

Humans aren't original either.

20:28

A lot of hesitation in Hollywood and entertainment in general are issues of the source material for the training data and copyright protection.

20:34

I think people are looking at it all wrong.

20:37

Anybody that's a human being is a model.

20:40

You've got three and a half pound meat computer. That's the brain.

20:42

Let's hear for three and a half pound meat computers.

20:46

Uh as a screenwriter, you have a kind of built-in ethical filter that says I know my sources. I know what I liked.

20:54

I know what I'm emulating.

20:54

I know how I'm hallucinating.

20:56

I also know that I have to move it far enough away that my own, uh, that it's my own independent creation.

21:03

This is the, you know, uh, great artist steal, you know, instead of copying.

21:08

What what's the difference between stealing an idea, transforming it, turning into your own, and just copying something derivating and we'll, and we'll go into that in a little bit.

21:15

Um, so I think the whole thing needs to be managed from a legal perspective is uh is what is what's the output like is the output transformative?

21:23

And so the reason I want to talk about this is because uh the Wall Street Journal is covering the fact that studios, artists, and tech giants are clashing over copyright in Washington versus the algos. Yeah, it's a big one.

21:36

Meta recently scored a courtroom win.

21:39

Judge Vince Cab Cabria tossed author's claims but warned, "You are dramatically changing, even obliterating the market for that person's work, signaling more litigation ahead."

21:51

I don't know if I agree with that. Right.

21:53

I you you've used maybe you've used chat GBT to summarize the key takeaways from a book.

21:58

Were you really going to buy and and you know does that stop you from from wanting is it is it how different is that from you know reviewing you know reading a book review or or things with regard to existing intellectual property like I have gone to Chad GBT and said hey I'm trying to tell a story a bedtime story to a four-year-old.

22:20

Uh, let's throw uh Mickey Mouse in there.

22:22

And then why don't we mix it up with Batman? Oh, wait.

22:26

They are owned by two different companies.

22:28

One's owned by Warner, one's owned by Disney.

22:30

How will Chat GPT handle it?

22:32

Well, it tells me a story with both of them. It's fine.

22:33

This could never happen in the real world because of the the IP is owned by different companies, but it does it on Chatbt.

22:39

But is it is it is it a truly a substitute or does it actually just make my four-year-old beg for more Batman and Mickey Mouse toys?

22:48

Like I think it's probably net positive to the brand. Exactly.

22:52

It's probably It's probably net positive.

22:54

Probably not fully a substitute.

22:55

Um we're still buying and more likely to want to go to Disneyland. I agree.

23:00

And also Universal Studios and go see the Batman ride.

23:02

But um the uh the other interesting thing I I guess Warner so it' be Six Flags.

23:07

Anyway, um correction correction.

23:10

Uh but the interesting thing is that like what about new intellectual property?

23:14

Like there are people that are saying I'm going to build a new intellectual property on, you know, and I'm going to use crypto rails like Pudgy Penguins.

23:23

Like they're going to try and use that technology to to accelerate the develop of of a new franchise, new IP that they own.

23:28

There are also folks who are saying, I'm going to use artificial intelligence to create new IP.

23:32

We saw this early with little Michaela.

23:34

Um, now we're seeing there's a communityowned IP creation.

23:39

What is the um ital what is it theal the Italian somebody oh you're talking about the Italian sloth lords or whatever the brain rot Italian brain rot yeah Italian brain rot where like someone probably owns some portion of the IP there and try and turn that into feels like a free-for-all. Yeah.

23:55

I mean, all this stuff is is changing is changing really quickly, but I think at the end of the day, all that matters is that like everyone gets a stake at some point and everyone gets a slice of the actual like economic profit and it's somewhat fair.

24:09

And so that's why the courts exist. They will sort this out.

24:12

Meanwhile, uh, over on Capitol Hill, a proposed 10-year federal ban on state AI laws was stripped from Trump's big, beautiful bill after creatives and child safety hawks black blasted it as a big tech giveaway.

24:25

We heard uh from Zack Kukov yesterday that this was a win, effectively a win for Anthropic, who was um, you know, interested in in seeing this get blocked.

24:37

Um the issue is that states like California have so much influence that if California passes AI related laws, they'll likely um you know lead to widespread compliance.

24:49

So there's pressure from both flanks.

24:51

Tech lobbyists argue mass scraping is essential to US AI leadership. That makes sense.

24:56

I mean deepseek is not certainly scraping the entire Chinese internet and so you're going to get left behind.

25:01

But and the entire western Yeah.

25:03

everything and YouTube the whole internet.

25:05

We'll take the whole thing.

25:05

Uh while writers guild and saga are pushing for compulsory licensing and outright data mining bans leaving studios caught in the middle.

25:12

Anyway, we will dig into that more in a little bit.

25:14

Uh uh there's more news about the trade deals.

25:17

So Japan is saying we're not going to do a deal or we're going to push back.

25:23

They're calling Trump's bluff. We'll see. It's heating up.

25:25

Trump Japan, I will write them a letter saying we thank you very much.

25:30

We know you can't do the kind of things that we need and therefore you'll pay 30 30% 35% or whatever big whatever number that we determine because we also have a very big trade deficit with Japan.

25:40

Let's go to the video from Donald Trump the president. Those days are gone.

25:44

So, what I'm going to do is I'll write him a letter say we thank you very much and we know you can't do the kind of things that we need and therefore you'll pay a 30% 35% or whatever the number is that we determined because we also have a very big trade deficit with Japan as you know and it's very unfair to the American people.

26:04

So, uh they maybe we'll be happy, they maybe won't be happy, but some countries we won't even allow to trade.

26:12

But for the most part, we're going to determine a number.

26:14

Just very simply write them a nice letter, probably one page or a page and a half at the most.

26:20

And it's going to be essentially congratulations.

26:25

It's going to be an honor to allow you to go and do business in the United States of America because it really is an honor to be able to do that.

26:32

But we never viewed it that way in this country. Yeah.

26:35

He's wearing the Gulf of America hat.

26:38

You know, Mount Fuji's right there.

26:40

might want to turn it into a different name as part of the trade deal.

26:44

Yeah, maybe maybe that could be a chip, you know, a bargaining chip. Yeah.

26:49

Naming rights to Mount Fuji.

26:49

Yeah, you can keep the name of your own mountain named Mount Fuji.

26:53

Uh so a lot of this is going about uh cars.

26:55

Obviously NSX is the top of mind for everyone in the Acura. Yeah.

27:01

Remember when remember when Sam L when they dropped Deep Research?

27:06

Sam said he he used deep research to find like a one of one NSX.

27:09

Yeah, these are important.

27:12

This is why we have a trade. I like the hat.

27:13

Um unclear um where this goes where this goes.

27:16

Uh and I think I feel like we've just had such a good thing going with Japan. Yeah.

27:24

Feel like it's they should be a logical humanoid robot partner.

27:25

You know, they got Azimo.

27:28

Honda's been building robots for two decades. Yeah.

27:30

I was really hoping that something would happen there, but we never comment on politics, but I would I would like to see the United States leaning more into that partnership and figuring out how we can make a lot of things together. So, what else here?

27:44

Uh, Tokyo refuses any pact that preserves Trump's 25% car tariff.

27:50

Negotiator uh Akazawa fears electoral blowback if rice and autos are conceded.

27:57

Uh Trump has threatened fresh duties and rejected deadline extensions, unnerving allies wary of US tariff volatility and its Apache scorecard.

28:04

To date, the administration boasts only a limited UK accord, a Vietnam mini deal and a China truce.

28:11

Canada, South Korea, and the EU remain stalled amid tariff threats.

28:14

And so we're still in that pause, but pause.

28:19

Staying on Capitol Hill, uh, Representative Brian Fitzpatrick says, "Today, I called on the on the president to address my serious concern regarding reports that the United States is withholding critical defense material pledged to Ukraine.

28:32

This comes as Russia launches the largest aerial assault since the war began, firing over 500 weapons at civilian targets in a single week.

28:40

Ukrainian forces are not only safeguarding their homeland, they are holding the front line of freedom itself.

28:45

There can be no half measures in the defense of liberty.

28:47

We must, as we always have, stand for peace through strength.

28:50

I have formally requested an emergency briefing from the White House and the DoD to clarify these reports, review our nation's weapons and munition stockpiles, and ensure the United States remains fully committed to providing Ukraine with a use with the resources it urgently needs to defend its people and preserve the cause of freedom.

29:05

High level, what happened here?

29:08

We basically opened a new front to this like broader glo global conflict, right?

29:13

We had Ukraine, then we added Iran.

29:16

We didn't and and don't have the munition stockpiles to sustain two proxy wars or in the case of Iran, an actual I remember reading in the journal, the day this came like like the day Ukraine the Ukraine war broke out, people were saying like, "Okay, we are out of uh javelins like the the shoulder mount."

29:37

No, there's people like Duva Rahendra from Deterrence who we've had on the show at least I think a couple times.

29:41

show at least I think a couple times. um close friend and partner and then uh Aaron Slodov who who have been talking on multiple occasions about how some of the some of the weapon systems that that are critical to um you know the US's overall strategy will have like yeah we

30:01

have like 500 of those and then you use them and then they're out and then remaking them just ready to be like yeah because like in peace time why would you be like yes I need to produce a million drones that are just going to get blown up like the industrial capacity just isn't there. So, uh, Patriot missiles

30:14

So, uh, Patriot missiles have paused.

30:16

Uh, deliveries of Patriot interceptors, air-to-air missiles, and artillery shells have been redirected to replenish US stocks.

30:21

Pentagon officials confirm the shift reflects a reranking of threats from China in the Middle East above Ukraine despite earlier White House signals of Patriot transfers.

30:30

And Ukrainian officials and US lawmakers say the delay could translate into more civilian casualties as Russia steps up aerial assaults.

30:38

They're talking about aerial assault.

30:40

Russia's taking advantage of this period where they know that Ukraine doesn't have the supplies to either get aggressive or defensive.

30:49

And I mean, it makes sense that that Russia is going back on the offensive because of Operation Spiderweb.

30:52

There's a very aggressive Ukrainian offensive to destroy a bunch of Russian airborne assets.

31:01

Um, now they're saying, you know, hey, we're we're bringing the fight back to you.

31:05

And so, uh, that continues.

31:07

Uh, in other news, Tesla global deliveries plunge 3.

31:09

5% in Q2 2025, but I saw a lot of posts on X saying that this was not that big of a decline.

31:19

So, AIT says deliveries were 8 uh 384,000 versus 389 expected.

31:25

Analysts thought it would actually be 350.

31:29

Where's the brand damage, lol?

31:31

This guy's a fan of Tesla, obviously.

31:33

Um, but there are some there is some data here.

31:35

So for the Model 3, Model Y, they produced um 396,000 almost 397,000 and delivered 373,000.

31:47

Um and so uh uh uh the consensus was 394K uh marking the second straight double digit quarterly drop.

31:55

Uh and so the question is like how much of this is about just EV cost or Yeah.

31:59

Q1 Q1, how much uh Tyler, what what were what were how much were Q1 sales down?

32:06

Because if you do two backto back Yep. double digit drops Yep.

32:13

That's pretty meaningful.

32:15

That feels like brand damage, but it's also a very competitive market, right?

32:19

Every major manufacturer now has uh EVs in the market.

32:22

And again, we've talked about this before.

32:24

The biggest thing, it's possible one of the biggest drivers here is that the lack of meaningful refreshes of the Model 3 and the Model Y.

32:31

And the Cybert truck is just selling seemingly well, selling in beautiful Los Angeles, but very well, but it's hard at that price point to break through to the real truck market.

32:42

I'm pretty sure the the Ford Maverick, the F-150, I mean, the number one convertible in the in the United States is a Jeep Wrangler.

32:48

Tesla doesn't have a convertible.

32:50

They don't have anything that competes with a Wrangler, right, Tyler?

32:53

You got some numbers for us? Yeah.

32:55

So it looks like uh it's down 13.

32:58

5% sales to uh this quarter. This quarter. Yes. What about Q1? Yeah. How was Q1?

33:04

Uh so year to date uh Tesla's Europe sales are down 28% in May and then then in China they sank 7. 6%.

33:14

So there's a whole bunch of different narratives around like like there's a lot of pressure internationally, but that's more about like trade.

33:19

And then internally there's people that stopped buying them for political reasons, but then there's people who started buying political reason.

33:26

I think there's a big contingent in Europe that that cares about the politics as well.

33:29

The China problem is just the fact that you have Xiaomi and all these other players coming in with great cars undercutting the market. They got a knockoff. They got a knockoff.

33:41

They got Model S knockoff. Yeah.

33:45

I mean, they're not exactly innovating on the silhouette. Yep.

33:49

But they are innovating in the you know sort of internal computing system features things.

33:54

There's some crazy crazy Chinese cars out there.

33:55

You guys Q1 was down 20%. 20%. Yeah.

33:57

So I don't know how do they build it back.

34:01

Let's pull up the pull up the market caps for Tesla and the rest of the uh Mag 7.

34:05

I want to see how they're ranking. Uh here we go.

34:09

We have our Mag 7 leaderboard and Tesla's at the bottom.

34:11

$984 billion in market cap trading at 172 price to uh price to earnings ratio. So they're seventh.

34:22

But if the cyber capability is that PE ratio it's absolutely fantastic.

34:29

So, but but if the cyber cab plays out, that is a significant I mean, you look at what is the what is the market for, you know, all the different robo taxi drives, right?

34:40

Probably in the tens of billions of dollars that Americans would spend.

34:44

And so, um, I think I think a lot of people are expecting that to hit and that to work.

34:50

And that the fact that the cyber cab is at that 30k price point instead of the 300k price point for a Whimo being a durable advantage, the fact that they can produce I mean, the fact that they even make 400,000 cars in a quarter.

35:04

It's a 100,000 cars a month, 3,000 cars a day.

35:08

That's a lot of industrial capacity.

35:10

And so that has to have some uh have some some value and some leverage if uh if totally the AI catches up and the cyber cabs.

35:18

The battle between Whimo and Tesla is just getting started. Oh yeah.

35:23

And I and I and then a lot of people are buying the stock on the promise of humanoid robots is like it is it does feel early.

35:30

Optimus does not feel ready for you production or ready to buy or ready to go out on the manufacturing line.

35:37

But what other stock in the MAG 7 would you buy to get exposure to humanoid robotics if you think that's an important thesis?

35:45

Like there's not really that much. Yeah.

35:46

And even and even in the and even in the smaller like like like midcap or small cap stocks, there really aren't that many pure play humanoid robotic companies that are out. Yeah.

35:56

So there's not really anything that's sucking up that demand in the market.

35:59

Anyway, speaking of the market, uh Tesla uh Figma has dropped their S1. The numbers are strong.

36:06

$821 million in the last 12 months revenue.

36:11

46% year-over-year growth.

36:13

18% non-GAAP operating margin. They turned profitable. $1. 5 billion in cash. Zero debt. 91% gross margins. Best-in-class for SAS.

36:23

132% net dollar retention.

36:26

Sticky AF, says Jason Lumpkin.

36:28

7 uh 78% of the Forbes 2000 use Figma.

36:32

Uh 76% used two plus products platform expansion from massive losses to 18% operating margins.

36:38

This is how you prep for an IPO trading under dollar fig on New York Stock Exchange soon.

36:43

So absolutely absolutely incredible.

36:49

Obviously Figma is a sponsor and partner of ours, but uh this story is really incredible.

36:56

Well, the other thing that Jason missed here that I think is interesting is Figma holds BTC on the balance sheet, which I think that retail is going to be excited by, there's also a really exciting AI story here.

37:06

Figma make 70 million in Bitcoin ETFs and was approved to buy 30 more million in BTC.

37:16

Uh, Zach says, "This is the first company we've seen this cycle that's buying Bitcoin and isn't bad."

37:19

Uh, that's pretty notable.

37:22

He used a different word.

37:24

Um, and TANA says Figma has 1.

37:27

54 billion in cash on hand, but only raised 749 million in primary capital in its history.

37:34

It will go public with a negative net burn over its lifetime of 791 million thanks to their efficiency and the $1 billion breakup fee received from Adobe. Wow, that's remarkable.

37:48

Uh, and things uh things are working out.

37:50

Yeah, things are working.

37:50

I remember I mean you know they obviously uh getting shot down by the Europeans on an acquisition that I think was exciting for everybody involved from from Dylan to Scott uh to the to the cap table and the team um and you know Adobe broadly was I think disappointing for everyone but I think this is going to be um you know in hindsight I think people will look back and and say this was this was actually the right thing. Totally. Totally.

38:19

And I think the markets are going to love another founder, you know, company.

38:24

Y So, uh, Christina had a good post here.

38:26

I The first thing I appreciated in Figma's S1, everyone said the S1 was the best designed S1 ever, which makes sense.

38:32

Um, but was right at the start of of Dylan's letter.

38:34

When Evan and I started Figma, too often companies write departed founders out of a company story. Dylan did the opposite. And that says a lot. I love it. Very, very classy. So, you can go to figma.

38:47

com, think bigger, build faster.

38:48

for Figma helps design and development teams build great products together.

38:50

Get started for free at fig. com.

38:51

And you can check out Figma make, you can vibe code, whatever you want.

38:56

Tyler is in the midst of vibe coding a new product that we're going to release a data product um in the next couple weeks for free.

39:03

Uh and I'm excited to share that.

39:05

Otherwise, I wanted to pull up let's pull up the poly market for the reconciliation bill.

39:10

Uh Zack Kukov is going to be coming on the show later today to give us the update.

39:17

things are trending down across the board.

39:19

Uh the getting it done by July 4th is sitting at a 61% chance uh down 6% uh over the last 24 hours.

39:31

So, we will follow this one and I'm excited to get the update.

39:33

It's funny a big bill like this with this deadline of of the 4th of July um because there is this like overall incentive.

39:41

I think people would like to uh enjoy their Fourth of July versus um you know angrily debating a bunch of small details.

39:52

I think the debt ceiling always comes up during the summer.

39:54

I remember years ago it being a topic during summer and it feels like a very weird thing that you have like this ultra high pressure DC narrative during like the slowest time of the year time of the year in France. Yeah. In France. Yeah. It's very American. We grind it out here. grinded up.

40:12

Um, anyway, you don't need to be grinding on bill payments, accounting, and a whole lot more. You can go to ramp. com. Time is money. Save both.

40:20

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40:24

Uh, we need to tell people about Sorry, I was going to say our new uh ad that we for, we shipped this uh 35 minutes ago.

40:33

We should live on location at a wander.

40:36

And I would encourage people to just go watch it.

40:39

Can we pull it up on the screen?

40:41

Let's pull up a few seconds.

40:42

Let's give a little a little I think we can watch the whole thing.

40:44

We can watch the whole thing.

40:45

Yeah, it's only it's only 45 seconds. Let's pull it up.

40:48

Let's pull it up and watch it.

40:48

We went full golden retriever mode for this one, folks.

40:54

Can we go full screen on this? Is that possible? Go full screen.

40:59

Uh while we pull that up, this is great. Heat. Heat.

41:10

[Music] Oh, such a fun shoot.

41:45

Uh, if you're a GQ fan, you probably noticed that we were heavily inspired, maybe even uh, you could call it a shot forshot remake of the the GQ video with uh, George Clooney and Brad Pitt.

41:58

Uh but uh I mean fantastic inspiration from those folks. It's pretty funny.

42:03

We showed a preview of that to a few people and they'd go, "Is that a wanderer?"

42:06

We're like, "Yes, obviously."

42:09

But still, the property, this is a property uh in Malibu uh that uh you can rent this summer. Yeah.

42:15

And it is absolutely fantastic. So good.

42:20

Anyway, we got to tell folks about the TBPN derivative works clause.

42:22

TBPN derivative works clause. So if you're watching the show, if you're writing about the show, engaging with the show, you should know that we have a terms of conditions, terms and conditions, terms of terms of use, uh we don't ask for much, but there is one

42:35

rule that we take very very seriously and our lawyers have been very very serious about which is that if you watch the show, if you engage with the show, if you write about the show, uh and then you go and create a derivative work, so a copycat, a live stream, a daily technology show, a clone. Yeah, a clone. Yeah, a clone.

42:51

Um, uh, we don't ask for financial compensation. Nothing.

42:54

Uh, we don't ask you to stop doing what you're doing.

42:56

Uh, but you are legally required to drink one glass of municipal tap water on one every time you every time you do the show.

43:06

If you were to copy us and do a daily show, you would have to drink one glass of tap water. Municipal tap daily. Yes.

43:13

And so, a lot of people have been fighting this.

43:15

They they they copy us and then they and then they they they they refuse to drink the tap water.

43:19

Uh we But this is legally it's only a matter of time until they tap out. They got to tap out.

43:26

That's called tapping out.

43:28

Tapping out is when you when you admit that yes, you did copy TVPN and so you're tapping out.

43:33

You're drinking the tap water and it's legally binding.

43:34

So, uh just if you're thinking about doing it, just be prepared to drink.

43:38

We wanted we wanted this policy to be fair, right?

43:43

It doesn't cost you anything.

43:43

maybe your health a little bit, but um yeah, so feel free to copy us as long as you tap out. As long as you tap out.

43:50

Always tap out and we'll be we'll be um you know, if you launch a derivative work, copycat, clone, whatever, we'll remind you in the comments.

43:58

Everyone will remind you.

44:00

Um yeah, a lot of people say like, "Oh, how how will I know if uh if if if what I'm doing is truly derivative, like you know, is this or is there a definition?"

44:09

It's like, don't worry, you'll know. You'll know.

44:11

You will definitely know if you have to drink the tap water.

44:14

Like we're going to make it apparent.

44:16

Uh anyway, uh let me tell you about Vanta.

44:19

Automate compliance, manage risk, improve trust continuously.

44:22

Vantis trust management platform takes the manual work out of your security and compliance process and replaces it with continuous automation whether you're pursuing your first framework or managing a complex program.

44:34

I was talking with a buddy yesterday.

44:34

Uh he was walking by one of our billboards in New York.

44:39

He sent it to me and he said that he signed up for Vanta on Friday cuz he signed a massive logo that I can't say for startup and they said stock you're going to need sock two before we can dance on Vanta now. That's amazing.

44:53

And uh I'd love to see it.

44:53

So shout out to to Vant sorry shout out to Grant and Vanta for for cooking.

45:01

Uh let's go a little bit deeper into Arabore.

45:04

This is certainly the the hottest story in our world today.

45:08

Uh it appears the Financial Times, I think what happened here is that they found the like a filing and then put the story together.

45:17

So this is there's a lot of no comments in here, but there's still some interesting facts that we'll go through.

45:21

So, uh, Peter Teal joins tech billionaires backing new lender Arabore to rival Silicon Valley Bank.

45:27

And people had been talking about this new bank and the name and stuff.

45:30

And so, it it had been out there, uh, but it had not been in the startup named after the Dragons Mountain, Lord of the Rings.

45:37

So, a group of tech billionaires led by Palmer Lucky, co-founder of military contractor Anderil, is preparing to launch a US bank intended to fill the gap left by Silicon Valley Bank, serving startups, including cryptocurrency businesses. to be named Arabore.

45:49

The bank would be backed by high-profile tech investors, including Joe Lansdale from ABC and he's a co-founder of Palunteer according to people familiar with the matter.

45:58

Teal's venture capital firm Founders Fund would also be among the investors according to two people.

46:02

Uh like Anderl and Palanteer, Arabore's name is a reference to JRR Tolken's The Lord of the Rings.

46:08

Arabore is the lonely mountain whose treasures are reclaimed from the dragon smog.

46:14

Lucky and Londale, who were big donors to Donald Trump in the 2024 uh US president election, want the big want the bank to take over the niche once occupied by SVB is the go-to lender for riskier companies and cryptocurrency players that traditional banks might reject.

46:27

We were talking a lot about like founder liquidity, but there really was a a a time when you raise a $10 million series A and SB would almost always underwrite that if it was with a tier one to the tune of like a $2 billion $2 million debt line.

46:41

So you just get an extra 20% as venture debt and use that to fund uh capex or long or or an inventory loan. Yeah, venture debt.

46:51

Venture venture debt would always get a lot of heat because used poorly. Yeah.

46:56

And there were a lot of aggressive lenders, but SVB was kind of one of the cleaner ones. I totally Yeah.

46:59

So uh Arabore has applied for a national bank charter in the United States.

47:04

A license that allows uh a financial institution to operate as a bank.

47:07

The bank will be a national bank providing traditional banking products as well as virtual currency related products and services for businesses and individuals according to the application which was made public this week.

47:17

Um target market would be businesses that were part of the US innovation economy in particular tech companies focused on virtual currencies, artificial intelligence, defense and manufacturing who would also serve individuals who work for or invest in these companies.

47:31

It's also planned to work with non US companies seeking access to the US banking system.

47:37

Arabore's co-founders first discussed launching a bank after the collapse of SVB in 2023.

47:41

According to a person familiar with the matter, SVB has been the main bank for US startups and their venture capital backers.

47:47

Uh its assets were first told it's first.

47:50

So SVB is still operational in effectively name only.

47:56

It's owned by first citizens.

47:58

What's interesting is that it it is it is like owned like the brand is owned and the corporate structure changed hands, but different pieces of the of the firm got split off.

48:08

I'm pretty sure like Morgan Stanley wound up with like the venture debt group or something like that.

48:14

Like different desks went to different places and they kind of parcled stuff up.

48:16

Some of it was sold, some of it was just like, "Hey, this person, you know, would rather be doing X, Y, or Z at a different firm."

48:23

And so maybe Goldman or Morgan Stanley is trying to get into a particular market and they're like, "Hey, SVB has some great guys over there."

48:32

Uh, it was kind of like a a free-for-all for a little bit.

48:35

So, um, uh, there's not too much in here.

48:38

There's a little bit about who's running this company.

48:40

So, Lucky and Lndale were not expected to be involved in the day-to-day management of the bank.

48:45

According to people familiar with their plans, it will be run by co-CEOs Jacob Hirschman, who previously worked as an adviser at crypto group Circle, and Owen Rapaort, co-founder and CEO of digital asset software air compliance.

48:59

Mike Hagedorn, former senior executive vice president at New Jersey based valley national.

49:04

Let's give it up for senior executive vice presidents for sure.

49:08

We'll be the bank's vice pre uh will be the bank's president.

49:11

And so they're going to have co-CEOs and a president on day one. What a stack lineup.

49:16

You got PT Palmer Lucky Lonsdale in the boardroom and then you got co-CEOs and a president. This is a stack lineup.

49:25

I think we're working on a graphic. I've been pitching it.

49:26

The the starting lineup for this new team is looking.

49:30

Well, that's the beauty of business.

49:30

It can it can feel like sports, but there's not the same kind of rules, right?

49:34

You know, you can put as many people on your team as you want. There's no salary caps. That's right.

49:40

Most importantly, Jawan was Jawan was uh was was posting.

49:42

He was like, "We're going to see salary caps in our lifetime."

49:46

And I hope not because that would imply Well, Mom Donnie is trying to do that, right?

49:49

He wants the salary cap to be like $999 million.

49:53

Like he wants to be billionaires.

49:54

Bernie, too, also wants salary caps in in business and and and the econom caps. Net worth caps. Yeah.

50:00

Uh much like a salary cap.

50:00

Imagine if there was a net worth cap in the NBA. It's like Yeah.

50:05

like, okay, you've you've made enough money, like you can't you have to play for free.

50:08

Now, uh its head office will be in Columbus, Ohio, which we talked about.

50:13

Um part of the application was submitted confidentially and has not been made public, uh such as details related to its shareholders equity structure and business plan.

50:22

Lucky did not respond for requests for comment.

50:24

Lndale confirmed he was a financial backer but declined to comment further and the other folks did not reply.

50:30

Anyway, uh I'm sure they're going to be building some projects.

50:33

And you know what they're going to need?

50:36

They're going to need linear.

50:37

Linear is a purpose-built tool for planning and building products.

50:42

Meet the system for modern software development.

50:43

Streamline issues projects and product road maps.

50:45

Uh XAI Greg Yang, great poster.

50:48

Someone DJ Cow says another great account says visiting the XA office really really humbled me and it's just tons of tents around a around desktops.

50:59

Is this actually the XAI office? I'm so confused.

51:02

And then Greg Yang, who actually works at XAI, says that's not our office. We have way more tents.

51:06

So, I have no idea where these original pictures came from, but it does look like a lot of tents in a inside of a The internet's a tough place these days.

51:15

You never know what's real, right?

51:16

They could have just made tents in a tech office.

51:19

Yeah, it could have been a prompt.

51:20

Could have been a prompt.

51:20

But, uh, I do know that the XAI team, I have it on good authority that they there are tents in the office and they sleep in the office. Okay.

51:29

Not necessarily reporting every day.

51:32

Someone else was giving them a little um was chirping at them because they were saying if you if you stay up coding until 3 4 a. m.

51:40

but then sleep in doesn't really count. You're just nocturnal.

51:45

It's like what's impressive is like actually working really hard for like 12 hours, taking a break, having some rest time, and then getting a full eight hours of sleep.

51:54

And it doesn't really matter what cycle that happens on.

51:58

I guess the benefit of like the nocturnal programmer is that there's just less going on in the world.

52:03

So there's less distraction.

52:04

Knowing that you're grinding while your competitors are sleeping, that's priceless, I guess.

52:10

But I mean truly truly there is like email is quieter during the night, right?

52:14

And like your news is quieter.

52:16

So, you know, it's like there's just less opportunity to get distracted by like the the Elon Trump blowup that happened when they were sleeping apparently.

52:25

So, like, yeah, they they they woke up and they were like, "Okay, I guess something happened with our boss and and the president, but you know, the story is kind of over, so let's get to work."

52:35

Um, anyway, if you work at XAI, you're going to have to sell this to big companies.

52:39

You're going to need Addio, customer relationship magic.

52:41

Adio is the AI native CRM that builds, scales, and grows your company to the next level. Get started for free.

52:46

Uh, anyway, we can go deeper into Microsoft.

52:48

They are scaling back their ambitions for AI chips to overcome delays.

52:52

Um the uh Microsoft is focusing on less ambitious chip designs through 2028.

52:58

Um they hope by scaling back some of the designs and pushing out the schedule for other AI chips it's already working on it can develop them more easily.

53:05

The hope is that when these chips are released over the next three years they will still remain competitive with Nvidia's AI chips.

53:13

The decision follows delays in in-house chip development.

53:15

This is from a report in the information.

53:17

Uh Microsoft wants to reduce reliance on Nvidia for AI computing.

53:21

But if we pull up the MAG7 chart, Nvidia doesn't seem to be affected.

53:26

They're still at the top of that baby at 3. 8 trillion.

53:28

But Microsoft's coming for them at 3. 6 trillion.

53:32

And so it's neck and neck.

53:32

If Microsoft can fab their own chips, TSMC, design their own chips, rip out Nvidia, that might be enough for flipping. Yeah. Track poly market.

53:42

Matt Matthew from Cloudflare yesterday said every time we've seen this type of scale up on the silicon side glut there's been ended up um being a glut.

53:51

So we'll see praying that this time it's different. Yep.

53:57

Would hate would hate love bubbles, hate the hate the crash.

54:02

Well, uh we have a funny post here from uh Zach quote tweeting.

54:05

Someone says, "You attract what you fear."

54:07

And Zach says, "Ah, I'm so scared of three billion dollars and drunk cigarettes with her."

54:13

I love that you put this in.

54:17

What does this have to do with Zack? Zach's been on a roll.

54:18

Anyway, um, if you're selling anything, including cigarettes, you're going to need to pay sales tax and you're going to need numeral. Go to numeralhq. com.

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Also, don't sell cigarettes. It's bad. Sales tax on autopilot.

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Says the nicotine says the nicotine sales. Very different product.

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It is the sales tax automation tool of choice for Ridge Graza. The list goes on. Go check it out. It's great.

54:52

Uh we have a post here from someone put us in the truth zone. Andy. Yeah. Two cents two cents.

54:55

Uh we we got to have him on sometime to talk about his he's Have you seen the screenshots from his app? Yeah.

55:01

It's like Twitter but you're it's anonymous. It's just plaid.

55:07

Plaid and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

55:12

Um but uh anyways, he has a post here.

55:15

He says, "Clad, do you imagine that this would result in a social network around your net worth?"

55:19

He's like, "No, I the magic of building infrastructure.

55:21

I just wanted to make things a little bit smoother."

55:24

Uh anyways, he was putting Kylie uh in the uh Kylie Robinson from Wired in the True Zone says, "Claims to be wired wearing AirPods question mark.

55:36

So, it's a good question, Kylie.

55:36

You got to answer some stuff. This is uh this is big.

55:40

I am a firm believer in wired headphones. Try them out.

55:44

I thought you were gonna say wired the the the the newspaper or the magazine.

55:49

If I It's terrible to say, but if I could only have one, I would take wired headphones. Yep. Oh, well.

55:58

Uh well, she should get wired headphones because that would be very that would be very on brand for wired.

56:04

Um anyway, uh we have uh we have announcement.

56:10

We're using Finn AI now for customer support.

56:12

We've gotten a lot of questions coming into our customer support line.

56:17

People asking um you know, are you guys normal heights?

56:21

And Finn can just immediately chime in.

56:23

Of course, these both of them are normal heights. What do you need?

56:27

No, we need to set up a a uh a support at dbpn.

56:28

com for sure running on Finn. Yes.

56:32

to answer these pressing these pressing questions.

56:37

Uh there aren't enough ads.

56:37

Can I get a bespoke ad and it will just automatically generate an ad for you? Yep.

56:42

That would be what really 51. Yes.

56:47

Do you guys really would you really take a bullet for big tech? It's like absolutely.

56:51

It's like we were joking about that. Relax. Uh no.

56:54

Finn is number one in performance benchmarks, number one in competitive bakeoffs, number one in ranking on G2.

57:00

It's the number one AI agent for customer service. just go to fin. ai to check it out.

57:03

Um, in other news, Microsoft's laying off 9,000 workers.

57:08

This is a short article, but we we we've already covered this, but it's interesting to track.

57:12

Um, what's interesting is like is is Microsoft the only one that's doing these big riffs right now?

57:18

It feels like normally this is what this is what scares me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

57:22

What a soft there's so many top signals. Yeah.

57:25

Right now, just everywhere you look. Top signal. Top signal. Top signal.

57:30

I want to believe that this time it's different, but um our industry goes through cycles naturally.

57:37

Satia is a seasoned operator.

57:40

He has incredible traction in generative AI.

57:44

He's getting 20% off the top of whatever OpenAI makes.

57:49

You would think that he was going would be going on a spending frenzy.

57:54

Yet, he's conducting routine layoffs.

57:57

He's giving up, you know, data centers.

58:00

He's he's saying, "Yep, you know, you guys, you know, I don't need it."

58:01

Um, even though yes, there, you know, so I just think he's being um he's playing it he's simultaneously being he was being really aggressive like two years ago and now he's starting to play it a little bit safer. Yep.

58:15

And I think in some ways, you know, some of these riffs are just practical, right?

58:19

He's realizing, yes, AI is making us more efficient, so we should need less people to do more work.

58:26

Ben, people were putting Benny off in the truth zone uh last week because he was saying um AI is now doing 30 to 40% of the work at Salesforce and yet his headcount has just been ticking up steadily.

58:39

Um and so um so yeah, this uh Satia getting hyper practical, yeah, scares me.

58:48

I mean, he's I I'm pretty sure he he joined Microsoft in the 90s. Yeah. So he's been there.

58:53

He's literally It's not like he's It's not like he just lived through the dot crash and the global financial crisis.

58:58

He worked at the same company and saw how Microsoft handled those two crises.

59:02

I think Microsoft handled both of them pretty well.

59:05

But he can totally pattern match. Maybe he's wrong.

59:10

But if he's still if he's wrong and there's no pullback, there's no glut of chips there like the AI continues to progress, he's still set up pretty well for it, right?

59:20

is like he's still you know major capex serious hyperscaler huge huge bet on like the best horse in the race basically the best independent horse hitched to open AAI uh even as that relationship gets more and more complicated.

59:38

It feels like he has a deeper connection to open AI than say Google does with another startup in the foundation model lab or Amazon or you know any of these companies because they've all kind of like like Anthropic has deals with Amazon and Google and like they're they're starting to kind of warm up to being dance partners but they're not Google's not getting 20% of Anthropic's topline.

1:00:02

You know, it's just not that ns aren't structured that way.

1:00:05

So he has not only the leading lab but the do most dominant stake of of any hyperscaler in a lab period. Yeah.

1:00:14

So incredibly well set up.

1:00:16

So we will continue to track it.

1:00:20

But whether you think it's a top signal or a bottom signal, you got to head over public.

1:00:23

com investing for those who take it seriously.

1:00:25

They got multiasset investing industryleading yields and they're trusted by millions.

1:00:28

And they have a triple IRA 3% 1% 1%.

1:00:32

Uh, in other news, uh, the talent wars continue to rage on.

1:00:38

Sam Alman slams meta AI's uh, talent poaching spree.

1:00:43

Missionaries will beat mercenaries.

1:00:45

He says, quote, "What Meta is doing will, in my opinion, lead to very deep cultural problems," said Sam Alman in leaked memo sent to OpenAI researchers. So, big big question.

1:00:55

Uh Paula says, "Uh, with all the AI labs in SF being in the mission, who called them members of technical staff and not missionaries?" It's funny. Oh, wow. This is an old post. Yeah.

1:01:08

From uh from over six months ago.

1:01:11

Um and there's a bunch of other new details emerging from uh the new meta super intelligence team, DD, who's coming on the show right in like three minutes. Okay. Wow.

1:01:19

Yeah, we've highlighted a lot of his posts.

1:01:22

Uh every single one of the 11 meta int meta super intelligence hires has an is an immigrant who did their undergrad abroad.

1:01:30

Uh seven from China, one from India, one from Australia, one from UK, one from South Africa.

1:01:35

Eight are PhDs or PhD dropouts in the US.

1:01:37

Immigration is key to US AI innovation.

1:01:39

Um Jeff Bezos uh has a hilarious post here.

1:01:45

The foreshadowing here was insane.

1:01:47

Uh, and it's Sam Alman interviewing Mark Zuckerberg.

1:01:51

And Mark Zuckerberg says, uh, uh, the thing that I think Facebook has done exceptionally well is hiring.

1:02:00

This is an This is an incredible series, the Startup School series that Sam did while he was at YC.

1:02:04

He interviewed uh Zuck, Elon, a ton of really interesting folks and got these really definitive interviews from the top tech leaders of the next generation like right as they were uh kind of on the on the biggest uh moment in their comeup. Why are you laughing?

1:02:21

It's just I love I love this business.

1:02:27

You're like tearing up looking at how happy how happy.

1:02:28

Oh, it's just it's um watching this great power conflict play out in real time is is wildly entertaining.

1:02:40

It's entertaining and the consumer is going to be the net winner. I was about to say that. And also America.

1:02:47

Yeah, it's extremely this is a pressure cooker of the highest.

1:02:50

It's it's so competitive.

1:02:53

But the good thing is that at the end don't like we aren't playing this game where someone goes to jail or someone gets you know like goes to the goolog if they don't perform or they get locked up like this is this is you know the difference between being a having10 billion or hundred billion dollars.

1:03:12

It's like it's kind of all fake, but it's all it's all like it's super high stakes, but it's still capitalism and it's still like the consolation prize is still being able to build something cool even if you get beaten.

1:03:23

But the end result is that we have this hyperco competitive race to build the best thing with like kind of a safety cushion so that you're not like it's not like the government's putting a gun. It's global, right?

1:03:34

It's greatest minds from all over the world coming to compete in this market. Yep.

1:03:38

Yeah, in this talent pool. Fantastic.

1:03:41

And many of them are getting maxed out contracts.

1:03:45

Uh, I'm sure both Mark Zuckerberg and Sam Alman are losing sleep right now over the talent wars.

1:03:50

They got to get on eight. Go to eightleep. com/tvpn. Get a new Pod 5 Ultra.

1:03:54

Sam, get a new Pod 5 Ultra.

1:03:57

Mark, um, they got a 5-year warranty, 30 night risk-free trial, free returns, and free shipping. So, go check it out.

1:04:04

I'm back in the game today. I got an 89.

1:04:05

I got massively dinged on my consistency, which has just been all over the place.

1:04:11

90 minutes of deep sleep, two and a half hours of REM sleep going into this.

1:04:15

Uh I mean, you won by uh by default because I Malibu.

1:04:21

I'm moving the the eight sleep after work.

1:04:22

Uh so I don't have anything to act because I was I was size gone for me. Size gone for me. Congratulations, Jordy. You deserve it. You deserve it.

1:04:32

All right, our first guest.

1:04:32

further ado, let's bring in DD. Hey, how you doing? What's going on?

1:04:38

Hey guys, how's it going?

1:04:40

Great to have you on the show finally.

1:04:42

I feel like we've reacted to almost every one of your posts.

1:04:45

You're very, very helpful in terms of uh contextualizing and just like summarizing everything that's going on, giving breakdowns.

1:04:50

It's uh really helped the show honestly.

1:04:52

So, thanks for being here. Totally.

1:04:54

Thank you for being a big big fan of the show.

1:04:55

I've seen all of your episodes, I think. So, you guys are great. You guys are great.

1:05:02

I'm so happy for what you guys are doing. Thanks, man.

1:05:04

I I really appreciate that. And did you join allin?

1:05:08

What what's this in the background? Are you Oh, yeah.

1:05:09

This this message has really been overloaded since the podcast, but no, that's just our our venture uh message.

1:05:18

I mean, this is what Melo uh Melo's slogan.

1:05:20

You were using that slogan before 2020? It was. It was. No way. They They mogged you.

1:05:30

They stole your They stole your line.

1:05:31

They just steamrolled you.

1:05:33

This has happened a few times. Uh uh what what was it? Oh, Gemini.

1:05:36

Uh I thought I I thought of it for years as the Winklevossbacked crypto trading app exchange.

1:05:44

Now Google comes out and they're like, we'd like that brand actually over here.

1:05:49

And so now Gemini I think of as the Google product. They went from Bard. Yep.

1:05:53

They had they barred it up.

1:05:56

No one was No one was competing for Bard.

1:05:58

Bard was clean space, but uh but they had to go Gemini and so good luck to the Winkle Moss twins.

1:06:04

Uh anyway, uh why why don't you kick us off with like a little bit of background and kind of uh what you do just to kind of get everyone familiar. Absolutely.

1:06:11

Well, my my background I'm in venture now, but my background has been somewhat nontraditional for venture.

1:06:16

I spent most of my career as an engineer and a product person. So, four years.

1:06:21

If you say if you say non-traditional, I expect I expect Warlord. I'd expect Blackwater.

1:06:29

uh a kite surfer or like someone who's like wing surfing or rock climbing.

1:06:31

I actually thought I actually thought you were joking for a second cuz I thought you were going to say my you know non-traditional background adventure. I went to HBS. I was a product manager.

1:06:39

Um you know I just found my way.

1:06:42

We're not letting you get away with that.

1:06:44

You would be hardressed to find an actual person who's done engineering at a big company and and a startup from the very beginning.

1:06:54

Not like a strategy and ops role for two years in venture.

1:06:58

I actually don't know that many people like that.

1:07:00

I do know it's been a meme though.

1:07:02

You were in the trenches.

1:07:04

You were in the trenches.

1:07:04

You were in the technology trenches. Okay. Okay. We'll give it to you. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah.

1:07:09

Uh how do you how did you land at Menllo?

1:07:11

Were you doing in uh were you doing investing before angel investing? What did that look like?

1:07:15

No, I actually had no business being in venture.

1:07:17

I never wanted to be in venture.

1:07:19

Uh I wanted to build stuff.

1:07:21

wanted to build stuff. Uh after Glean, I thought, you know, I was exploring building something new and then I was talking to a bunch of these venture firms just get the get their thoughts on it and and I was kind of roped in and I thought, hey, it's kind of strange that

1:07:37

there's not as many people who are technical and really care about engineering stuff in venture and it would be nice to have that because whenever I would speak to people, they'd be like, "Look, man, like I don't really understand this technical stuff, but is this a big market?" you know, like is

1:07:50

you know, like is this going to actually work as an idea?

1:07:54

And that's kind of the ethos of why I wanted to join a venture firm in the first place.

1:07:57

Like like I think it'd be valuable for technical people to talk to other people who really care and nerd out about the actual idea.

1:08:02

So been doing that for a year and a half and it's been it's been more fun than you think.

1:08:06

You know, venture has a lot of uh connotations on what the job involves, whether it's a sexy job or not.

1:08:12

And uh I don't know, it's just very different for very different people. I'd like to believe.

1:08:19

What's been your strategy the last year and a half?

1:08:21

Has it been trying to find and lead deals yourself, support a mix of both?

1:08:26

What what is the what is write a check, fire the CEO, take over? Fortunately, no.

1:08:34

Everyone's founder friendly now.

1:08:36

You got to differentiate by being unfriendly.

1:08:38

Yeah, very founder unfriendly.

1:08:42

If you're if you're non-technical, then you're going to have problems. No, I'm kidding.

1:08:45

Um, no, there's two things we do.

1:08:48

I I have led deals and and also co-led deals with some of my partners here. We've done about four.

1:08:54

Three of them are announced, one is not in terms of series A's, but mostly like I got brought in to help lead the Anthology Fund, which is our uh $100 million fund with Anthropic.

1:09:03

And that's been a lot of fun because it gives you a lot of leeway on the kind of deal structures that you can have.

1:09:08

Um, not your traditional like, hey, high ownership necessarily, series A's and B's and C's.

1:09:15

It's more early, more hey, how do we help the ecosystem?

1:09:19

How do we just get into ideas?

1:09:21

Um, very very early and just meet founders.

1:09:23

So, you don't have a two-week process where you're trying to fall in love with the founder for the first time. So, interesting. Yeah.

1:09:30

The other the other thing I'm I'm sure it's been massively helpful because one of one of the challenges if you go from operating and then you join a fund and you can you're only able to do a few deals a year, it's like how do you build up that those the frameworks?

1:09:40

How do you really learn the craft of investing and learn what not to do? And cool.

1:09:45

I I I think one of the one of um you know there there's plenty of stories in the valley of people that uh our friend Justin Mayers I think like his first two companies he ever in angel invested in were were unicorns and there's a bunch of other stories like that.

1:10:00

From my personal experience that like the the average deal that I've done has just gotten better and better across the 60 plus companies that I've invested in.

1:10:09

And so that that that can be a really big challenge if you're thrown into a big firm, you're having to write make big investments and you're only able to exercise the actual check writing a couple times a year.

1:10:19

Um how how is it how's the anthology fund going?

1:10:22

Are you are you guys um you you you must well specifically I want to talk about uh you said like non-traditional deal structures and when I think of that I think uh you can come to someone with say hey we'll do a $10 million series A but we'll also give you $10 million in credits.

1:10:39

We've seen Nvidia do some of these deals.

1:10:41

We've seen obviously the Microsoft or the Microsoft Open AI deal was kind of structured as some sort of cloud credits and all this different stuff and that can be really valuable.

1:10:50

Is that what we're talking about here?

1:10:51

Or is there something else?

1:10:51

Or are cloud credits even relevant in like traditional deal structures these days for AI companies that are building on top of foundation models?

1:10:58

We do we do offer a bunch of cloud credits and we go up to like 30 to 100K in cloud credits.

1:11:04

I honestly don't think that's the main draw.

1:11:05

It's like a nice to have for these early companies.

1:11:08

All these good companies can figure out how to get credits or how to spend money on this.

1:11:10

credits or how to spend money on this. I think what's more interesting is you know even when I was like angel investing prior to being in venture that's a different art like it's much easier to get into deals as you guys probably know when you're angel investing because you just know the person you're like hey man I'm going to

1:11:26

throw in 10k can I get a 10k allocation they're like yeah you seem like a good guy you can be helpful here's here's a the bar is just so much lower the bar is very low and then you then you go to a venture firm and the same companies and you tell them hey I want to lead you around and they're like good luck buddy like here's the line gets to the back of it. Um, so that's that's what becomes

1:11:43

Um, so that's that's what becomes really challenging.

1:11:47

But to the the the question of anthology specifically, I think probably the biggest draw from what the founders tell us is, hey, we just love to know what the labs are up to, how to work with them, how to plan for the future, because we have no visibility into that.

1:12:03

And for us, it really helps because you can fi form a relationship with people and actually figure out, hey, you're an awesome founder and I don't know that because you've more than just the three-week process that you've pitched to me.

1:12:14

I know that for a good six to eight months now.

1:12:18

So, we, you know, we've deployed about 30 odd checks to Anthology.

1:12:20

I would say in the beginning it was a little bit of calibration needed to figure out, hey, what was the right kind of company?

1:12:27

Um, and we don't only do early, we do some like midstage companies that are interesting to us for a future round as well.

1:12:33

And but two of them have graduated into full series A leads.

1:12:38

So that's, you know, what was was our success metric going in, which is are these actually good deals that will graduate to real ownership checks or not?

1:12:48

And so we had Goodfire and then Open Router sort of be those companies that graduated.

1:12:53

Very, very different companies. Fantastic.

1:12:55

We had we had Alex on from Open Router and neither of us I guess realized that they were announcing like this massive series B or you know so we had him on for like a full 15 minutes on the day my batch so I know his I I I know about open C and I know how good open router is but I didn't realize it was like somehow the news got lost that it was like oh wow it's like a massive massive fundraising day.

1:13:18

Um I'm interested to know more about uh corporations or or large scaleups partnering with venture firms.

1:13:25

We've seen a bunch of different uh I mean going back to like the Slack fund.

1:13:29

I remember Slack was investing in startups and there's this question of like uh for a lot of founders it can be fun to have uh you know on balance sheet investment vehicle.

1:13:40

Um a lot of founders have are scouts at VC firms or they invest off their own balance sheet.

1:13:46

Um, why would a big company come to Menllo to do the fund like all the It seems like you're offering like a lot of the work.

1:13:54

Um, and and is that the right model?

1:13:58

Like should we see more of that versus the fully in-house effort that's staffed?

1:14:02

I think Stripe's done some stuff in-house.

1:14:06

Perplexity has a FUD now.

1:14:06

And I'm wondering if you have an opinion on like best practices or what works or what doesn't or when something would work on balance sheet or directly within the org versus outside.

1:14:18

I think it's just opinions on that.

1:14:21

Yeah, I think I mean personal opinion is you need you need a fortress balance sheet and you probably should be like a public company to be making balance sheet investments purely because of the duration.

1:14:32

You mean like Google Ventures?

1:14:33

If you if you lead a or participate in a series A and then don't don't see a return, you're you're not going to see a return from that for maybe a decade or I mean Bloomberg Beta has some other stuff like that.

1:14:46

There's just so many fascinating different different uh like paths to it.

1:14:50

And then it also is this like I like this from anthropic because it's like hey this is noncore to what we're doing but it's important to the ecosystem we're building.

1:14:59

Let's make it so that it's not our job to deploy this capital, but we still get a lot of the benefits.

1:15:04

So, so yeah, I mean, give us your take on I I think of look you we did a lot of analysis on what a corporate fund structures look like and what kind of investments they do in the past and these are all gross generalizations, but generally if you run a corporate fund a you're not compensated on carry really.

1:15:21

So the incentives are not really aligned to deliver returns.

1:15:24

The incentives are pure ecosystem bets.

1:15:26

So, if you look at a bunch of the investments that the Slack fund have made, like yeah, they're Slack apps, a lot of them.

1:15:32

Um, and that's good for the ecosystem, but are they real companies?

1:15:36

Are they real businesses? A lot of them aren't.

1:15:38

And when the more you look at corporate venture, like they don't spend a whole bunch of time out on the road sourcing really like, you know, balls to the walls going to all of these people and trying to figure out what the good companies are.

1:15:51

The reason we wanted this structure was a so we didn't have that incentive problem.

1:15:56

We could focus on real returns while also investing in companies that benefit the ecosystem but not purely that.

1:16:02

So a lot of the anthology companies they don't even necessarily only use anthropic or use anthropic at all or necessarily even call LLMs.

1:16:11

They are generally companies that are beneficial for the AI ecosystem. That's one.

1:16:17

And then number two, I think the the the bigger thing is most companies have no business running a venture firm.

1:16:23

This is just not like you said, it's not their core business. It's not their forte. It's not what they do.

1:16:28

It's not something they care about.

1:16:28

So, it's really nice where you're like, "Okay, you guys care about it.

1:16:31

We care about the ecosystem benefits.

1:16:33

Why don't you help us run this fund?"

1:16:35

Um, and then it works for everybody.

1:16:37

And I think the one exception case to that is probably OpenAI.

1:16:41

OpenAI startup fund has done very well, but you know, not in not in small part due to Sam being Yeah, Sam's kind of a good player.

1:16:50

So, potentially a generational VC if he was doing that full-time. Um, yeah. Yeah.

1:16:55

What about the competitive dynamic?

1:16:56

Like uh like would GV I mean Google Ventures has kind of spun out so much but like it would be it'd be crazy to think about like GV investing in Perplexity or Bloomberg Beta investing in Perplexity even if it's not actually that much of a threat and they're and the and the CEO is confident like hey I'm not going to get disrupted by this.

1:17:15

It's like you have a portfolio CEO who's out there tweeting every single day like I'm coming for you Bloomberg.

1:17:19

Let's look at how much money they make.

1:17:21

I'm going to disrupt you.

1:17:23

like that just might be like awkward.

1:17:25

like awkward. And so has there been any dynamic around that where you where you have like either a mandate to like hey let's stay away from pre- from companies that do pre-training because that's on anthropics roadmap or like even with the cloud code cursor thing like you want to

1:17:38

stay away from coding agents because uh anthropics really really really pro that like how do you think about like you want to be close enough that there's a benefit but not too close where your competitors is that is that a real dynamic or how do you think about that? It it very rarely has happened. I mean,

1:17:51

It it very rarely has happened.

1:17:51

I mean, Daario is actually exceptionally uh missionary.

1:17:56

I mean, I I don't know how else to say it.

1:17:58

Like, he really does care about what these companies are doing.

1:18:02

I mean, look at Goodfire.

1:18:02

Like, they have an interpretability lab.

1:18:05

They're like, "Look, another one is good for the world. We'll we'll do it."

1:18:06

Um, so there have been certain cases where companies, you know, some of them haven't been announced yet, but one of these companies has alternate approaches to doing a bunch of different model stuff.

1:18:17

Uh, and uh, we asked Dario, we're like, "Hey, is this bad?

1:18:20

like are you okay with this?

1:18:22

And he's like completely cool with it.

1:18:24

I if it's not something that we have a very strong bet on that they're going extremely headon and have a bunch of capital to go head on right now.

1:18:32

It's just not something we'd care about.

1:18:34

So we do try to tread carefully.

1:18:37

Obviously you don't want to um bite that hand, but it's not been an issue at all so far.

1:18:42

We've we've never run into a conflict.

1:18:45

How are you broadly advising companies that are working with labs but also fear that they might end up competing with them at the product layer uh over time?

1:18:56

And I know I know you were at Glean, the founding team there and that that feels like something that in the long run obviously um you know uh someone like an open AI might might want to compete there.

1:19:08

So I'm curious how how you think about that dynamic.

1:19:10

I mean, I think the reality is look, like it's a free market and competition is going to happen one way or the other.

1:19:17

Whether or not anthropic backs or Anthology backs you and then and anthropic decides to compete at a future point, I don't think anybody I'm not even talking I'm not talking about anthology as much as just generally, you know, port portfolio companies.

1:19:30

companies. Let's say you're doing, you know, codegen or something like that and and you're working with a lab and um you know, we had Sarah Guo was on the show probably a month and a half ago at this point talking about like it's not

1:19:44

impossible to figure out what's important to each of the labs and and the things that they might do over time and you should as a founder be under you should be well aware but that what you're doing might be on on the path at some point. Yeah, I think that's a it's

1:19:58

Yeah, I think that's a it's a question we get all the time and I think the reality is I my guidance usually has been and and this was how we thought about it at Glean too is what is something that is a pie that is very valuable to you but not at the scale that it's valuable to any of these big companies until it is.

1:20:16

You know like you really the bet you're making is hey this pie is maybe $50 million in revenue and nobody no big company will care about that.

1:20:24

But once you capture that pie, it's actually way bigger than that.

1:20:27

And if you do, then you can you can reach breakout escape velocity before anybody else is at at your heels.

1:20:35

And hopefully you've built up enough of a you know, no, I I hesitate to say moat, but you've built enough tech that it's not easy to replicate overnight.

1:20:44

And if you have a little bit of that, there are odds that you could have a breakout business.

1:20:48

And I think today's climate is actually way better than a year or two before cuz the truth is labs have a huge revenue pressure.

1:20:56

So they're not going to be investing in in random crap.

1:20:57

Like they're going to be investing in stuff where they're like, "Okay, that's a billion dollars in revenue.

1:21:01

That's $500 million in revenue.

1:21:03

I'm not going after this $10 million opportunity."

1:21:06

It's just not anthropic anthropic one to four billion run rate in the first half of this year.

1:21:12

To to justify a lot more resources, you have to be able to make a dent in that.

1:21:18

somehow or show that you can make a dent.

1:21:20

I mean, it's kind of like the Google problem with like but at one order magnitude smaller where like if you're running a business at Google that's making $500 million, it's like okay, time to wrap it up.

1:21:30

Let's move on to something bigger.

1:21:33

This is not really relevant.

1:21:35

And you're like, this could be a public company.

1:21:37

This was actually the entire lean.

1:21:40

I don't know if you guys know this, but when started uh Google had Google Cloud Search and the reason we weren't worried about it is because we knew the team there and we're like this doesn't make a dent on cloud.

1:21:50

The fact is like Google Cloud doesn't care about this and uh and now you know sort of they sort of changed their mind and they care about it again.

1:21:58

But um that's kind of what the sweet spot.

1:22:01

You want to do something boring and seemingly small enough that nobody else cares.

1:22:05

Can you uh can you talk to me more about Glean?

1:22:10

Uh there's been some reporting about like the data wars uh this question of what s h how how sharp elbowed will Salesforce be or Google.

1:22:19

Um if I'm a business owner, I've you know we just started TBPN as a as a company and it's a it's a green field.

1:22:27

So you're like this time I'm gonna get it right.

1:22:28

this time I'll just have I'll just I'll I'll just have one suite of tools that'll all work together and then and then you know 3 weeks later it's like okay I have Slack and Gmail and a bunch of other services and they're not really talking to each other the way I want.

1:22:42

Um and as a as a business owner I'm very strong about like that's my data.

1:22:47

you have to let me have my data and not through this export button that takes two weeks to go and I I want an API that I can immediately send over to to OpenAI or Anthropic or Glean.

1:23:00

But the the companies always find a way to kind of like have sharp elbows and we saw this during the during the the rise of Google and Facebook. Uh there was a pitch.

1:23:07

John Patel, the the the the the founder of Wired, was arguing that uh Google, you should be able to go to Google and say, "Give my Google search results to Facebook and Facebook, you should say, give my social graph data to Google just so I get better ads."

1:23:23

And both companies hated that idea and they would not let you do that.

1:23:26

Uh it's a little bit different in the B2B context, but how do you see the data wars playing out?

1:23:30

How do you see uh the the the the the competitive pressure where a lot of the B2B SAS providers also want to offer some sort of enterprise search experience?

1:23:41

Well, there's there's a couple ways to look at this.

1:23:44

I think number one is yeah, the reliance on Glean's reliance on just Salesforce is is a small percentage of the the many many connectors we offer and the many many other things that we end up having to integrate with for especially Fortune 500 clients.

1:23:58

they often don't even use a lot of the SAS tools that are household names in in the valley.

1:24:01

So, uh the the net impact is is somewhat limited because of that.

1:24:07

But I think the more important point here is the reason why it seems like the reason why people like Salesforce want to cut off connector access is like what you said to sell a competing product.

1:24:20

In practice, I think it's actually a pretty synergistic relationship otherwise.

1:24:26

That's why we work together so well for so long because you don't sell less seats because people use Glean.

1:24:31

You actually sell more seats because people use Glean because now there are people who weren't on Slack, weren't on Salesforce who are now discovering that information and going there and then reading the reading the content.

1:24:43

So your daily active users actually increase, not decrease. Interesting.

1:24:46

not decrease. Interesting. um when they use glean in fact like if you don't have licenses on Salesforce to a certain set of users they don't even see Salesforce results so it's not like you can also sell 10 licenses connect to glean and then have the thousand people in the company view those Salesforce that

1:25:03

Salesforce data we don't do that we don't even offer that as an option uh because we want to stay true to the permissions of the source data source so you know netn net I think this is a situation that you know glean will have to work out with all of these partners ers, but I think there's a good out. I

1:25:17

I mean, I don't think there's a reason other than them wanting to offer a competitive product that we that they care about this access.

1:25:25

Um, and the companies too, like you said, like if you're running TBPN and you want to connect to Glean, you should own your data.

1:25:33

You should own your Slack and Salesforce data.

1:25:34

They don't shouldn't own it.

1:25:36

So, you have every right to give away that API access, but you know, that's going to be um a conversation that Glean's going to have to have with with a bunch of the partners.

1:25:46

Where are you most excited about agents right now in terms of actual products in market delivering value for customers outside of coding?

1:25:54

Okay, so this is the one I talk to all my friends about.

1:25:57

It's not like a venture venture thing.

1:25:58

It's just really a product I just have fallen in love with in the past week or so.

1:26:01

You guys should all use it.

1:26:04

Uh, it's called, uh, and I'm not a paid shill.

1:26:06

This is like just me loving a product. Um, it's 19pine. ai.

1:26:12

It's super elegantly designed, simple chat interface, your typical stuff.

1:26:15

But what it does is it just goes and makes phone calls for you.

1:26:20

Um, but can coordinate very interesting things.

1:26:22

So, for example, just just the other day, I was like, man, my my insurance on my car is just way too high. I need to get this down.

1:26:32

Can you figure out how to get it down?

1:26:33

And it goes and it like these are note phone calls nobody wants to make.

1:26:37

Goes and makes a phone call to my insurance, stays on hold for three hours, and then gets them on the phone, calls Geico, calls State Farm, gets quotes, comes back and goes and negotiates, and then it brings my insurance down. I did nothing.

1:26:48

And the payment model is so so nice cuz you don't pay a subscription for this.

1:26:53

You pay a percentage of what you save, which is agreeable to everybody.

1:26:57

Um, and so yeah, you would do that deal all day long with like a Yeah.

1:27:01

just call this person for me.

1:27:04

If you save me like $1,000, like I'll give you like a few hundred bucks, something like that. But yeah, I'm looking.

1:27:09

I have the website pulled up.

1:27:10

They got to get a better domain name.

1:27:11

This is This is absolutely brutal. What's the domain name? 1919pine. ai.

1:27:17

Um, but they can call the IRS for you, cancel your AT&T plan, talk to the DMV, get a refund from an airline.

1:27:22

Uh, I'm going to use this.

1:27:25

I literally have an old internet line in our old office that I need to cancel and I can only call during business hours and I just happen to be live on TV during business hours every day.

1:27:35

So, I just haven't done it and I'm just getting build for Spectrum every month and it's so annoying.

1:27:38

So, 19 pints coming for you Spectrum, you're on notice.

1:27:44

Um, anyway, I want to get your reaction.

1:27:46

But but but any any other like this feels awesome as a consumer agent that is solving real problems and they they have the economic model that people have been excited about of like selling selling results.

1:27:58

Um any anything else in the in in the enterprise like sales agents any anything like that that that you're seeing that is actually working?

1:28:08

Look there's a bunch of interesting companies and the revenue is inflecting but you know that's just not like it's good like these are good businesses that are working.

1:28:14

I think the things that that excite me more at a more meta level is the the technology powering what agents can do.

1:28:21

Um, and like I think the elephant in the room is all of these all of the new custom RL stacks that are helping agents use custom software is actually going to be a huge unlock.

1:28:32

You know, like computer use hasn't really worked yet.

1:28:35

It's not a thing that people use, but there is a world where, you know, just like 19 pine, you could genuinely automate the work of people if you give computers access to your computer in a fast way.

1:28:47

And I don't think we've seen that yet because the models aren't capable of doing that.

1:28:51

We've seen early versions of that with clawed code, which is, hey, what happens if you take a model and then RL it to be very good at agentic work and call a bunch of tools? Well, 03 is similar.

1:29:00

Um, what if you apply that to very specific domains of like, hey man, like I have a gazillion enterprise SAS apps that I don't even want to use and I don't even know how to use or touch.

1:29:11

Figure out how to use them so we can just throw these agents at this stuff that a human was doing.

1:29:16

Cuz a lot of the glue work is still not solved by by agents.

1:29:19

Like a lot of the glue work is humans in the loop. Go click this button. Go review this text.

1:29:25

If we want to fully cross the chasm of like 95% of the work to 100% of the work, I think that's super exciting at a meta level and all of these little agent apps um and sometimes big agent apps are are going to benefit from things like that.

1:29:39

So that's one of the the broader themes I'm super super excited about.

1:29:42

I want to get your reaction to uh how the AI talent wars are affecting venture specifically.

1:29:47

Uh Will Manitis, friend of the show, has a post here. He says, "Citadel's law.

1:29:52

Any any industry with sufficiently high stakes will end up mirroring the culture of hedge funds, massive cash comp for the top performers, bidaway dynamics where entire teams walk together, extreme litigation of non-competes, hard work, 247 culture."

1:30:07

But then he says, he ends with this at the margin.

1:30:10

I think makes the capital environment for funding independent big AI things much worse.

1:30:17

not worth underwriting a team if you know they can do R&D on your dollar and then walk in the same way my sense is fund staking terms got worse not better postpod shop.

1:30:28

So he's talking about how in in yeah like like if you are betting on a founder and then they get some massive uh massive aqua hire offer is that going to distort the early stage venture market?

1:30:41

Oh, I mean I think like absolutely I've read that post. I love that post. Great great commentary.

1:30:47

I think the thing I would say is this isn't new.

1:30:51

I mean there were always startups never paid well, right?

1:30:53

Like you're still getting paid like 170 200k on average and you know Google and Facebook are right there to pay you like a 500k salary.

1:31:01

So it's not like it's new that big companies can can you know throw out their wallets and give you more money.

1:31:07

Usually, even at at Gleam, we had this policy where we're like, "Look, we're just not going to negotiate somebody who only cares about comp.

1:31:14

If we lose that person, that's cuz they're a mercenary." And that's okay. We're not judgmental.

1:31:19

Just you do what you think is best for you.

1:31:21

We really want people as missionary as you can be about like B2B SAS, but we want people who are, you know, more incentivized to do the thing that we're doing here.

1:31:33

So, but that does $10 million a year um paychecks affect that 100%.

1:31:40

Thankfully, it's just a few people who are privy to that.

1:31:42

But if if there's more of that happening, it becomes a risk. I mean, absolutely.

1:31:47

The one thing that I do the most when I do diligence is aside from the typical venture stuff is I really need to have confidence that this founder no matter what wants to work on this problem for the next 5 years. Mh.

1:32:00

I mean, to the extent that you can get that confidence, that's what I'm looking for, but you can't solve for it. It's definitely worse.

1:32:07

People are always on the spectrum for missionary and mercenary, and if the dollars go up, the spectrum shifts, so there's fewer people who can afford to be missionary if you're getting paid 10 million a year. Yep.

1:32:19

Last question from me and then we'll let you go.

1:32:21

Um, do you think the AI talent wars spill over into the rest of the MAG7?

1:32:26

Um I'm I you know Mark Zuckerberg is a founder mode CEO with a massive business throwing off billions of dollars in cash.

1:32:34

He took you know he's spending 20 billion dollars on the metaverse was able to slide some of that over put some crazy offers on the table.

1:32:42

We we we keep joking that some of these meta AI super intelligence offers are more than Tim Cook's annual salary.

1:32:47

more than Tim Cook's annual salary. So that might be a culture clash even if Apple says hey we want our own super intelligence team and we've earmarked $5 billion to do it because they could met Meta or Apple has produced almost a trillion dollars in dividends or like free cash for their investors over the

1:33:04

past decade or something like that 13 years um and so the logical thing would be okay maybe we will see similar bidding wars talent wars continue at Amazon Microsoft Apple but maybe there's or it just forces Apple to effectively outsource the R&D by paying open AAI or anthropics totally billions of dollars. So yeah, how do you think that shakes

1:33:25

So yeah, how do you think that shakes out?

1:33:27

I I don't think more firms more Mac 7 companies are going to compete like that.

1:33:32

I think Zuck has a particular style and he always has.

1:33:34

Um I mean if you look at like you said like Oculus yeah he's very happy to pour billions and billions of dollars into something with the hope that it will one day work.

1:33:45

Most other Mac 7 companies don't usually operate like that and they can get talent in many cases for for for way cheaper.

1:33:52

I just don't think it's it's also not Apple might be able to do it on their balance sheet but it's not just something that everybody can afford to do.

1:34:00

It causes a lot of cultural rift within the company.

1:34:02

If you talk to the other day I was I was scrolling metas blind for through a friend.

1:34:06

I mean, people are upset, you know, like people get upset when you you just hear that you can recruit somebody as an engineer and pay them $25 million a year.

1:34:14

That's not a good thing for the culture of the company.

1:34:18

They also check out mentally inside cuz they're like, "What is the point? Why am I doing this?"

1:34:21

And so, I think, yeah, there's one frame where it's like, "Oh, wow.

1:34:25

We hired a 100x engineer."

1:34:27

And there's another one which is like, "So, I'm a 100thx engineer.

1:34:32

Maybe I should do 100th the work." Yeah.

1:34:35

I mean theor you know the right way to look look at that you have some you know top 25 AI researcher in the world joins your firm you should be excited because you're already compensated really well and it will probably increase the value

1:34:51

of the company in the fullness of time which directly benefits you but of course if you're making if you're only making 80k a month you know not even not even hitting that you know seven figure mark yeah um that could be a little bit a little bit frustrating. Anyway, this

1:35:05

Anyway, this has been fantastic.

1:35:07

Guys, making 80K a month. Yeah, I know.

1:35:08

Uh, well, thank you so much for help.

1:35:11

3K more they could be in that.

1:35:13

The fact that you know the MRR numbers like the back of your hand is hilarious. Uh, this is fantastic.

1:35:17

Thanks so much for stopping by. This is super fun. Thank you for joining. Let's do it again soon.

1:35:23

And John, thank you for having me. Uh, love it. See you guys. Talk to you later.

1:35:27

Uh, you might have seen our billboards are tearing up New York City.

1:35:30

We have our New York City correspondent joining right now.

1:35:32

But if you want to run a billboard in New York City, get on adqu. com.

1:35:36

Out of home advertising made easy and measurable.

1:35:39

Say goodbye to the headaches of out of home advertising.

1:35:40

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1:35:43

We went from the west coast to the east coast.

1:35:44

Emily should should take over the west coast.

1:35:49

I want to see billboards in LA.

1:35:49

We will ask her, but first we have to sing her a song. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you.

1:36:00

Happy birthday, dear Emily.

1:36:05

We're hitting the size gone for you. We actually should. It was yesterday.

1:36:10

It was yesterday, but it was July 1st.

1:36:12

You just didn't come on the show yesterday. So, welcome.

1:36:15

I would have come on yesterday if you asked. We should have. We should have.

1:36:19

We could have had a cake.

1:36:20

We could have had a cake.

1:36:20

What did you do for your birthday?

1:36:22

Um, I had a few meetings. I went to the YMCA.

1:36:24

It was empty, which was nice. Mhm.

1:36:27

And then my husband took me to dinner. Oh, that's nice. Uh YMCA underrated.

1:36:31

You're you're a lot of people. It's nice.

1:36:36

I This New York weather, it's one of the only places blasting that air conditioning. So Oh, interesting.

1:36:42

What What does the gym tier list look like in New York today?

1:36:46

Uh you know, Equinox had a moment. Lifetimes making moves. Lifetimes making moves.

1:36:51

I So I kind of do a high low thing.

1:36:54

I live in Park Slope, so the the YMCA makes a lot of sense for me.

1:36:59

But I'm also a member at a club called Kasa Chipriani with Okay. Very small members club. Yep. It's fun.

1:37:07

The high low that the high low.

1:37:07

John John's in favor of that, too.

1:37:09

We just started going to a new gym, but John is like actively wants to be kicked out so he can go back to Gold which I'm like, "No, we're not. We can't do this."

1:37:17

There aren't um there don't seem to be as many YMCA's on the West Coast.

1:37:22

No, no, not not that many.

1:37:26

Lots of 24-hour fitness, lots of gold gyms.

1:37:28

I mean, Gold's Gym, it's the it's the staple of Venice.

1:37:31

It's where Arnold Schwarzenegger works out.

1:37:34

You know, RFK's out there. It's a good crew.

1:37:36

John John thought Equinox was like a $75 a month gym while we were actively going there for a brief period.

1:37:41

And I just loved how out of touch you are.

1:37:44

You were It felt like premium, you know, but not ultra premium.

1:37:48

It's not It's not the besties all in tequila level. Yeah.

1:37:51

The location matters a lot. Yeah.

1:37:53

Um, what what else is new in your world? Yeah.

1:37:57

Give us a give us a a hand update.

1:37:59

People were I assume in the city right now. Well, yeah.

1:38:01

I I got out here this morning. I don't want to brag.

1:38:05

I recently inherited a car from my late grandfather. It's a 2006 Camry. Okay. Very nice.

1:38:14

Iconic era of really great vintage. Very reliable. Yeah. Awesome.

1:38:19

So, I drove out here today. Uh, it's crowded. It's really crowded.

1:38:22

I'm hoping that this sort of um level of crowds is due to the holiday weekend, but it might be a mistake that I I rented a house out here, but we'll see.

1:38:33

Um what else is new since two weeks ago is the So, so the Hamptons broadly, people a month ago were saying that rentals were down massively year-over-year. Does it feel that way?

1:38:46

Yeah, I I don't know how much of that was because of weather or or or people's finances.

1:38:53

I think some people were less motivated to like make the move on booking a house because we had really bad weather the past few months in New York.

1:39:00

It was really rainy and gross and it was sort of a late start to summer.

1:39:04

Um but I'm sure people's financial situation.

1:39:09

There was also a trade war that's still ongoing.

1:39:10

And if your portfolio is down tremendously, you're not exactly saying, "Yeah, I'd love to spend, you know, you know, 100K for two weeks." Yeah.

1:39:19

I had a friend who was dating a Wall Street uh like hedge fund guy and uh she was like, "Yeah, it's going so great. Like it's amazing."

1:39:26

And then like a couple weeks later she's like, "Yeah, he's just like really weird.

1:39:29

Like I don't think it's going to work out."

1:39:30

And I was like showing her the stock market chart and being like, "So his emotions perfectly map to the 10% sell-off that we just saw.

1:39:38

You're telling me that this guy his entire his entire personality is derived from the state of the market." The state of the market.

1:39:47

And she was like, "Oh, this makes so much more sense now." Okay. Yeah.

1:39:50

I'm sure there's a lot of women who went through similar situations as her.

1:39:54

I'm sure I'm sure the kangaroo market's not good for the dating scene.

1:39:57

Um, is uh is that is that crazy white party going on?

1:39:59

That's a Hampton's thing.

1:40:01

Is that a Is that a July 4th thing or is that canled?

1:40:03

I thought Michael Rubin was like pulling back from that because it was like maybe too flashy.

1:40:07

Is there an update thing? Yeah, I I I We'll see.

1:40:09

Is that supposed to be Fourth of July?

1:40:12

I think that's She's like wearing She's like white party.

1:40:15

Like, what are you talking about? Can't comment. No, not anyone. Oh, no. Oh, yeah.

1:40:20

I think that might have been a factor in in in pulling back from that.

1:40:23

But but but I always see like everyone's like spying the watches, spying like you know what cars people showed up in all this.

1:40:29

Yeah, there's a lot of paparazzi.

1:40:31

There's a lot of Tik Tockers so see everything happening in real time. Interesting.

1:40:35

Nobody can really like leave with another man's wife anymore.

1:40:40

Like there's so much uh coverage of these events now.

1:40:42

It's really takes away the mystique. The mystique.

1:40:45

Somebody might What's up with uh what's up this with this place drugstore? You were covering it. Let's try arrow. Yeah, this is awful.

1:40:53

Um, Bloomberg broke news yesterday that there's a new movie smoothie popup chain from uh like a Jay-Z invested celebrity chef. Okay.

1:41:06

Jay-Z invested celebrity chef. Okay. and he's these these like very Instagrammable smoothies which obviously Aerowan started but now there's a lot of places that are kind of hopping on the bandwagon of treating like smoothies as a billboard like brands can collab with

1:41:23

them and then whoever's serving these smoothies is like making extra money from an advertising business which is crazy like I think to get an arrowan smoothie for your brand it's like 200k for a month or something we have to do this yeah we we we say that's That's worth every penny for the TBPN Feed Me Arowan smoothie. You're telling me

1:41:42

You're telling me you're not going to net out?

1:41:44

We're No, you should do a drink at like the US Open or something like Don't do the smoothie. Don't do the smoothie. It's played out.

1:41:50

Yeah, it's play It's played out. It's played out. Okay.

1:41:52

Didn't have a collab with like Volkswagen or something or some really funny like car company they did. Yeah, you're right. They did do a car com.

1:42:00

I think they they also do like beauty brands like sunscreen and stuff like it's not Yeah. Chevrolet.

1:42:07

They did a Chevrolet drink collab.

1:42:09

And what the worst part is that I wouldn't have had a problem if they did the ZR1, like the really crazy Chevy sports car, but they did the 2025 Equinox EV.

1:42:21

So, you're driving this movie.

1:42:21

Uh, according to the manufacturer, the collaboration between uh it combines Chevy's commitment to emissionfree vehicles and Arowan's mission to promote sustainability as a merchant of organic foods and wellness products.

1:42:33

foods and wellness products. The drink called the electric juice consists of cho choo choo choo I don't even know this which is the most proteinrich plant source and blue spirulina the super food food that matches the Equinox's EV's blue color the drinks ingredients are

1:42:51

designed to energize and recharge consumers according I think the winner the winner the winner here was the ad agency that got paid half a million dollars to set this up for sure I don't know I feel like I feel like everyone's getting the Haley Bieber smoothie I I'm about to rock the Equinox EV smoothie. I

1:43:04

I think it has a certain badge value.

1:43:07

All like they're like 70 grams of sugar. It's like four Cokes.

1:43:11

I'm long I'm long sugar though. Four Cokes is a lot. That is a lot.

1:43:16

But I'm going long I'm going long sugar from here.

1:43:18

I did I did an experiment.

1:43:20

Um my my wife was very afraid of this.

1:43:22

It's the worst experiment you ever I continue. Yeah.

1:43:25

But anyways, people people are very afraid of sugar.

1:43:27

I to prove a point I drank a soda every single day.

1:43:29

Yeah, I drank a Coke every single day for 6 months straight.

1:43:33

I know you're young and you work out every day and like there's like a million ways to offset that. It wouldn't be good.

1:43:39

No, a lot of a lot of people think No, I agree. It it is over.

1:43:43

People think like a single Coca-Cola is terrible. Like Yeah, of course. Of course.

1:43:46

Everything's in the the dose is the poison with all of this stuff. You drink a full gall.

1:43:50

What about So, so this week on our side, we've been covering the AI talent wars.

1:43:53

how um basically AI researchers are being comped almost like pro aletes and sort of like you know these sort of nine nine figure massive offers.

1:44:05

The reason I bring it up is because you obviously cover a lot of the uh media landscape and we had Derek Thompson on who left Atlantic.

1:44:16

I imagine that he's already like run rating well well beyond I I don't know um what what his metrics are but I would imagine he's already catching on Substack. He's catching up to me. Oh, really? Yeah. It's a problem.

1:44:28

Go subscribe to subscribe to Feed Me right now and uh help help win the race.

1:44:33

But um but I was curious if you It feels like if if uh legacy media companies, I won't call anyone out, want to want real attention, not just the sort of attention that comes from their logo to some degree and the prestige, but like actually quality content.

1:44:51

Uh, at some point they'll have to like kind of re-evaluate their comp structures.

1:44:57

I think The Atlantic was like 300K was being reported as like the kind of range.

1:45:04

And when you can go on Substack as a superstar writer and immediately be making somewhere in the seven figure range at some point or another, it just becomes really difficult.

1:45:15

I see uh traditional media companies more likely to start doing like handshakes with Substack writers than starting to completely restructure how they're paying their staff.

1:45:25

I don't mean so like syndication basically syndication or like I mean I've talked to so many editors from traditional magazines and papers who are like trying to figure out how they can work with Feed Me.

1:45:40

Is it like a co-publishing thing?

1:45:41

Is it like creating a podcast together?

1:45:43

And it's it's been very interesting to experience firsthand like talk to these people because I don't I don't really need that.

1:45:50

Like Derek doesn't need the Atlantic because the people who are reading him are reading him for him, not the whole surrounding. Yeah.

1:45:58

I mean, just to set the table for the folks who might be listening, when Emily comes on the show, we pay her $100,000 for her appearance.

1:46:05

So, just just to kind of set the bar uh just And it ramps up over time. Yeah. Yeah. It obviously ramps up.

1:46:09

Um but uh but yes I am interested in like the dynamic of like you can still go and publish in in traditional media.

1:46:15

Um is that just like freelance?

1:46:19

What is the difference between what do you mean like when I write for GQ? Yeah, exactly.

1:46:23

Are you a col reason that I'm doing that besides that I adore my editor there and I I think that it's just like it's a it's working like a different part of my brain.

1:46:34

Like I don't it's like a gift to get to be edited by GQ's editors. That's cool. Yeah.

1:46:39

Do you uh so are are you a columnist over there or are you a contributor?

1:46:44

Like how does what's the actual shape?

1:46:45

Do you get assigned things?

1:46:47

Like I've had reporters reach out to me and be like I was assigned a story on nicotine so I need to talk to you as an expert or whatever.

1:46:51

So, with GQ specifically, my editor Dan um when I wrote the Zen story and when I wrote a story about members clubs last year, both were because I I had written about both of those topics in my newsletter and he was like, I think it would be interesting for you to expand upon this in like a larger feature in a in a print issue.

1:47:11

Um, and that's how that's happened.

1:47:14

I I don't really but like I'm at the point now where if I have an idea of a great story that I want to write like it doesn't make sense for me to pitch it to the times or to New York magazine because it I can get it done faster on Feed Me, I can outsource an editor if I need that.

1:47:31

I can outsource legal services if I need that.

1:47:33

And it it's better for me to get to be like breaking those sorts of stories, you know?

1:47:40

Um I just have like a good thing going in GQ. It's kind of fun. That's cool.

1:47:44

I want to bounce an idea off you.

1:47:46

Um there is this narrative that um like when you go direct, when you're on Substack, like it has a different texture, a different uh different vibe, different maybe more objective, maybe more pro tech or pro, you know, creator or pro whatever the topic is being covered.

1:48:03

Uh I think that it's less about the personalities or the views of the people and maybe just more about the economics that essentially when you're in legacy media you basically have a salary cap and when you're outside of it you have no salary cap and that actually defines the economic terms shape this the type of content more than than anything else.

1:48:26

Do you think that's reasonable? Do you disagree?

1:48:28

How how would you wrestle with that?

1:48:33

Can you can you keep like expanding on that? I I want it.

1:48:35

So So uh I think that there's there's something where if you if you're working at a at a particular uh outlet and there's some sort of like salary cap.

1:48:47

It's like imagine if there were two NBA teams playing against each other and one had a salary cap of $300,000 per player and the other had no salary cap.

1:48:56

Like who would you expect to produce better basketball?

1:48:58

Who would you expect to produce better content when you have when you have one that where a person can make 10 million or Joe Rogan can make a hundred million?

1:49:08

Like you're just going to attract the absolute top because that's where the extremely ambitious. Yeah.

1:49:15

and they're extremely incentivized to just work extra hard because if they work if they work a little bit harder and they compound a little bit more and get that extra guest and write that extra piece, it could not it doesn't mean oh here you got a $5,000 Christmas bonus.

1:49:29

It means Spotify signed you to a hundred million contract and it's the difference between like when LeBron James shows up at midnight to shoot more three free free throws like that could be the difference between like a $50 million contract and $100 million contract.

1:49:43

So going that extra thing produces like better content. Yeah.

1:49:48

It's really interesting to see so many traditional journalists, you know, give Substack a shot and like they just plateau.

1:49:54

But I'm like I'm an animal.

1:49:57

Like when my eyes are open, I'm working.

1:50:00

Like this letter goes out every day. It's I'm marketing it. I'm editing it. I'm pitching stories.

1:50:04

But I've always had a really high tolerance for being told no.

1:50:08

like when I was getting paid 60k at a job and when I'm making like 10 times that now, right?

1:50:14

Like so I think that Substack and these sorts of platforms, even what you guys are doing, also attract personality types that are had less boundaries and rules in the ways that they work.

1:50:26

Um, and then when people who who don't think like that think that they can find the same success, like they get disappointed or confused or think that it's rigged or something like that.

1:50:36

um when really they're just getting confused.

1:50:37

I mean going going above and beyond for a job where the cap might be like what did that New York Magazine story say about the Atlantic? 300K.

1:50:47

That's what they were paying their journalists. Like Okay.

1:50:52

So like you're you're going to go as hard as you can to make 300K and get those benefits and whatever.

1:50:56

But the other thing that I'll say like is you have to be willing to not have insurance.

1:51:03

you have to be willing to, you know, have have months where you're you're not having like the support of a team.

1:51:09

Um, and it's just like a very specific type of personality.

1:51:12

Um, but I think you're totally on to something like I think I'm playing a different game than my peers who are working in an office at a at a magazine or a newspaper. Yeah. Yeah.

1:51:23

also that the insurance thing is real, but it's also a problem that is very quickly overcome and you can quit your job and say, "I'm going to pay out of pocket for insurance for two years, and if this doesn't work out, then I'll I'll get a roll back."

1:51:41

I'm curious uh you you were commenting on Vogue partnering with Neutri Neutri Grain Bars and uh I'm curious if you think um as people are so used to influencer creatorled advertising like if if you were to partner with a brand and people

1:52:00

are like wait like what like why did she partner like that makes no sense like that's clearly a cash grab that that feels like it seems like legacy media brands could get away with that kind of thing for a long time. Even though we're

1:52:12

Even though we're saying, you know, why is Neutrorain needs better marketing?

1:52:16

Because the first thing I think about can shut down. Yeah.

1:52:21

I I I I always think about the the the I I think that Nature Valley meme where it's like effing crumbs everywhere.

1:52:28

I don't know if you've seen that one, but that's not neutral grain.

1:52:32

And so my biggest association with Fig Newton.

1:52:35

They got to work on that. Yeah.

1:52:38

It's like it's is it a fake Newton or is it the Crom one?

1:52:40

Like I just know it's not good.

1:52:42

So they got to step it up.

1:52:42

But yeah, the Vogue audience I mean what do you think that there was ever a pitch where it's like okay we're going to go after the moms that read uh Vogue and get them to buy it for their kids.

1:52:52

And so it's some sort of like bank shot strategy for me.

1:52:55

What stopped me in my tracks was it wasn't a banner ad in a newsletter.

1:52:59

It wasn't like one of those it wasn't like somebody writing about uh their wellness routine sponsored by Neutri Neutri.

1:53:06

It was a produced video of a stylist sort of like gallivanting through the streets of New York City.

1:53:13

And I really like this girl, Michelle. Yeah.

1:53:14

When I saw her post it and I saw that it was between Vogue and Neutrorain, like there was two I who was in the room, who sold this ad and how much was it for and how much did Michelle get and how much did Vogue get?

1:53:26

Like it was very confusing to me because there were there were other ways that that could have been executed and made a lot more sense.

1:53:33

And they probably didn't think that somebody would screenshot it and start that conversation, but unfortunately the conversation was started. Yes. Yeah.

1:53:40

There's so many media reporters.

1:53:42

If I didn't pick up on it, somebody else would have.

1:53:44

Um, but I think that Nast overall right now is on life support.

1:53:49

Like we had this conversation when Vanity Fair was looking for their next editor.

1:53:53

Um, unfortunately like it's happening immediately right after that with this new this new Vogue editor.

1:53:59

Um, it's a lot of it's a lot of pressure for like I don't know what like a few more years of running this magazine.

1:54:06

It just doesn't really seem like how um it doesn't Vogue doesn't seem I don't know what I would look to Vogue for right now. Yeah. Yeah.

1:54:16

It kind of goes back to that idea of like the the independent media creator versus the legacy media creator.

1:54:20

Like we just released an ad for Wander that they we said they asked us.

1:54:26

They barely even asked us to make it and we just wrote it, shot it, directed it, like edited it. We just did everything.

1:54:32

We sent them the final thing and they were like, "Yeah, cool."

1:54:34

Um, and so I think the brand there was like a second that they asked for a tweak, but yeah, they were like, "Uh, actually our font is this one instead of that one and that was it."

1:54:44

And so and so like that is the type of like you know entrepreneurial energy that I'm sure the particular partner that worked on that actually starred in the commercial would bring to a partnership and select and and coordinate with a brand that was actually aligned.

1:54:59

actually aligned. But there were just like too many spreadsheet monkeys in the office that day and so it just wound up being like I was like why wouldn't you just hand these to the hungover girls at bar stool and like have them talk about like how this is like the like the hangover snack like that I think would

1:55:15

have moved the needle more totally I don't know but are are the when I when I think of logical Vogue partnerships I think of like luxury brands are luxury brands pulling back from that type of partnership like have you seen anything there like what are what are the innovative things that you're seeing from like the really top tier uh brands out there? Have you seen anything cool?

1:55:36

Have you seen anything cool?

1:55:37

You know what I saw today?

1:55:37

Do you know those David bars like the metallic?

1:55:41

Yeah, we had him on the show. I love them.

1:55:43

Um I saw that Balenciaga at their show this week.

1:55:47

Somebody posted a photo of like Balenciaga bars like the same sort of metallic Okay. metallic label. I took a photo of it.

1:55:55

I'll send it to you guys after this. That's very cool.

1:55:56

Um, so I mean like is that going to move their their hoodies? I don't know.

1:56:00

But like that's those sort of fun weird moments are more exciting to me.

1:56:07

Um, if we're talking about nutrition bars. Yeah.

1:56:12

Yeah. I mean it certainly shows that like Balenciaga is still on the you know hip or just aware because like Peter Rahal he's kind of you know known in consumer package goods world and a little bit in tech and some people know the story of R of RXar and then David Bar with the revenue ramp like the business is doing well but it's still

1:56:31

like a complete insider industry story like the average person on the street doesn't know that so Valencia like is kind of signaling a little bit to that like hey with the new business community and I'm sure that that took them like a couple thousand bucks like put together like you know it's not difficult. Um as

1:56:43

Um as far as what what luxury brands are doing I think it's a lot of events now like they're putting a lot of money into events like I was just at a Chanel event.

1:56:55

They do a lot of programming with Tribeca Film Festival which is cool because everybody's in the city anyway so they they throw events and make sure that people show up to that.

1:57:03

Um I think that a lot of my social calendar in New York right now is dominated by brand events.

1:57:11

It just seems to be what's moving the needle because people go and they get photos of themselves and they post it and it's like the brand is the background.

1:57:18

So you end up being like New York just feels like a billboard every every time you go out now because everything is a brand event.

1:57:24

It's like dominating how people are organizing their social calendars. I don't go to events. I don't go outside. I just stream.

1:57:31

Um what makes for a good brand event?

1:57:34

Like is this just a happy hour?

1:57:35

Is that what we're talking about? Is there dancing? A bad brand.

1:57:36

It's actually interesting that the thing I'll say, we were talking about SVB earlier.

1:57:43

They they they would throw dinners that like like there's an entire founder dinner industrial complex that are just like financial or you know companies that that throw these dinners.

1:57:55

The funny thing is that within tech the companies historically failed to make them social moments.

1:58:01

So it' be like it'll say the name it'll say SVB on the menu.

1:58:08

people aren't like taking a picture of the menu as much as they're just like taking pictures.

1:58:11

So, I think what the luxury brands do well is you're saying, "Hey, we're going to invite 200 people into this space photographer and you're not going to be able if you post any photos at all, we're going to be getting exposure.

1:58:22

We're going to have a moment." Yeah.

1:58:24

Um I I threw a brand dinner or a feed me dinner with my friend Paul from the infatuation last year and Andrew Ross Orcin was sitting next to me and I gave him a feed me keychain.

1:58:35

That was my brand moment.

1:58:37

Um, that's a great moment.

1:58:40

So, that's another thing like at those dinners are awful. Yeah.

1:58:42

How are brands being creative?

1:58:44

Are we seeing like ice sculptures or step-in repeats?

1:58:45

Like like how how can brands stand out with one of those?

1:58:52

Like the worst possible brand event is a DJ and free drinks.

1:58:54

Like just people standing in front of like a 22-year-old DJ with like free drinks.

1:58:59

And then um more innovative things are like I think when you give people an activity to do like if you are doing like bowling or and making it like glamorous or like um you know now brands are are if they're doing a collab with like an athletic brand they'll they'll take a bunch of women to like tennis courts or a golf club in Connecticut and like that's a photo op for everybody involved. D.

1:59:29

Um, so like these mini expeditions or like Jay Crew last year took a bunch of people on a gorgeous sailboat in the Hudson River off of like the seapport.

1:59:40

It's basically like take your customers on a date, right?

1:59:43

On an extra give them photo. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

1:59:50

Um, and then if you level up, then you're you're gonna start talking about like brand trips like Hermes took people to Aspen last summer.

1:59:56

And yeah, I mean a ton of VC firms do that all the time.

2:00:02

Come with us and we'll do a track day or movie night or we'll go out to, you know, the some, you know, beautiful place, some ranch, and like shoot shotguns and have dinners and it's a whole weekend. Where's my call? I want to do that.

2:00:14

They should get you on the calls.

2:00:16

We'll we'll introduce you some folks.

2:00:17

um postmortem on the Democratic primary, but just on the marketing, right?

2:00:23

There was a lot of um coverage of uh Zoron's basically film, you know, vertical video making abilities that seems to have played a key role in the campaign. I'm curious.

2:00:37

Are you talking to any like Tik Tockers or content creators that are like, I want to build a business around this for politicians?

2:00:43

That would be interesting.

2:00:45

Yeah, I had a friend who I used actually used to work with at Kai Nast who worked in the White House for Biden and I think that she helped out with Zoran's campaign.

2:00:53

Like there are people who know I think like you have to be excellent at that job if you're working for um a political camp political campaign and especially in the White House because the turnaround times are insane and the levels of approvals that they need to go through are crazy as they should be.

2:01:11

Um so I think there's like a mini network.

2:01:14

I mean, there's there are a lot of people that worked in the White House under Biden who used to work at Instagram.

2:01:19

Like they were recruited straight from Meta.

2:01:20

So, that's definitely a thing.

2:01:23

Um, but I think that organizing is a tremendous amount of work and like part of that is digitally now like and and Zoran did that really well. Yeah. Yeah.

2:01:33

Yeah, it's interesting to think about how the presidential election felt like the podcast election and then the the this primary felt like the short form election.

2:01:42

Uh and that sort of it makes sense especially as you're trying to just appeal to younger and younger voters like in the city.

2:01:49

I mean his team invited me to start covering his campaign back in February.

2:01:56

like I was I was at a party I think in March for him, but he's he also went on um like throwing fits and a few other podcasts and he did like a Q&A with me for Feed Me.

2:02:06

So, he his team knew where to where to go. That's good.

2:02:08

Uh we've been talking a ton about uh the AI talent wars.

2:02:14

There's a lot of people in Silicon Valley making $100 million for in signing bonuses.

2:02:19

Uh Silicon Valley notoriously bad at spending money.

2:02:22

New York famously good at spending money.

2:02:27

What are some recommendations that you can give to these PhD researchers that have a hundred million dollars burning a hole in their pocket?

2:02:34

They want to get in the game.

2:02:36

They want to step up their fashion, their cars, their houses.

2:02:38

What would you recommend?

2:02:41

It's It's funny that you go to fashion and cars because I think there's a real uh a Louis manion situation on our hands here with this kind of job.

2:02:51

So, I feel like you need a security guard.

2:02:53

Like a security guard for sure.

2:02:56

Y um plain clothes security guard, which means like those tight Lacost polos, you know. Okay.

2:03:01

Maybe they should be carrying too.

2:03:04

Maybe they should, you know, if you got the you got to be everyday carry now if you're making 100 million.

2:03:10

California has gotten more lenient. Yeah.

2:03:14

So, I I feel like you have to staff up in a in a position like this.

2:03:19

like you want a driver who's trustworthy and isn't going to like leak your information, a personal trainer who's trustworthy, a feed me subscription, of course.

2:03:28

Um, and then I think it's like removing friction from areas of your life with with like staffing up like that.

2:03:35

I recently learned that um this neighborhood in the Hamptons called Sagaponic is a a microclimate and I'm I feel like that's a good place to invest your money.

2:03:45

Um, wait, break that down a little bit better. A little bit more.

2:03:49

It's just it's just on an average day, it's nicer there.

2:03:51

I think it's not necessarily nicer.

2:03:55

I think it might be like wetter and more humid than other areas.

2:03:58

Like I am in a different neighborhood than that.

2:04:01

And if you were there right now, it would feel different than here, even though it's not that far away. Yeah. Yeah.

2:04:06

Like like you can be like Long Island as a whole is hot today, but Psychoponic could could have a different weather report because it's this micro subclimate and the tides and the trees and there's different parts of LA that have the same kind of dynamic as well. Yeah.

2:04:20

I mean, isn't San Francisco like that too? Yes. Famously.

2:04:25

That's why in the summer it'll still be it'll still be foggy and stuff.

2:04:29

Uh but then it's really warm later in the year and so Right. Yeah.

2:04:30

So, I feel like investing in a microclim climate is a good way to spend your That just sounds wise. Yeah.

2:04:37

They're not making any more of them. They're not.

2:04:39

And then I I think that you'd need to use your money to start taking some some experts to dinner because you can't just start buying watches and clothes.

2:04:47

There's a really high chance that you'll miss and go for like trendy items.

2:04:50

So, I would try to hang out with like do you guys know the watch dealer Mike Novo?

2:04:54

like somebody like him or you know like take him out, talk to him and and get some advice.

2:05:02

I bought a watch from him last year and he seems like he knows his stuff. What'd you pick up?

2:05:06

Um I got my husband a nice watch. Okay, let's go.

2:05:13

Let's hear it for the husband. Congratulations.

2:05:16

Two size gongs, one interview.

2:05:19

That's how you know it's a good one. A birthday and a gift. Fantastic.

2:05:23

and maybe like befriend Chris Black or like another stylish guy and get him to advise consult on the closet.

2:05:33

You can you get us Can you get us Chris Black on the show because I the only podcast merch I've ever bought was their merch that they released was the cease and desist from the New York Times because they like copied the cover art and they just printed made a shirt sold it. Great.

2:05:47

It was a It was a work of art.

2:05:49

Chris would definitely come on. I'll connect you guys. Um, yeah.

2:05:53

I think that the biggest mistake that people who come into a lot of money quickly make is just, you know, doing that automatic Apple Pay on on while they're shopping and then you end up with stuff that doesn't fit you or looks horrible or something. Yeah.

2:06:07

So, stylists, tech, stylist, paid friends, take people out to dinner, host parties, like keep them around, you know.

2:06:18

Um, do you do you think it's good to surround yourself with yesmen?

2:06:24

What do you what's how do you So, if you surround yourself with yesmen, then whatever ideas you have, all your yes men will just tell you yes, that's the best idea ever.

2:06:33

A lot of people say don't do it. But maybe it's not that.

2:06:39

Everyone around me has been saying that it's a good idea. No, I would not. That's not good. Okay.

2:06:47

So, stay away from the yes men.

2:06:47

Yeah, you want yes people on your team where you say, "I want to do the impossible."

2:06:53

And they just say, "Yes, we're going to do it."

2:06:55

But, uh, there's there's a line, you know, you don't you don't want to cross it.

2:06:58

Well, thank you so much for stopping by. This was fantastic. Thanks, guys. Check.

2:07:02

Send us the invoice for the 100K appearance fee and uh we'll look forward to doing it soon. Yeah, send the next few.

2:07:10

Yeah, happy fourth of July. Have fun. Uh, we'll talk soon. Bye.

2:07:14

Up next, we have Mert from Helas here to talk about stable coins, talk about crypto, talk about NFTs.

2:07:20

We're doing it all over doing it all this show.

2:07:22

Very excited to talk to Mert.

2:07:24

He put on an absolute clinic during the last show.

2:07:27

He might be having some technical difficulties.

2:07:32

So, let's go back to the timeline.

2:07:34

Daniel Growing Daniel says, "Open AI is super nice for giving everyone the week off for interviews at Meta."

2:07:40

And Elon Musk is crying, emoji, laughing. Uh, absolutely brutal.

2:07:43

Uh, you saw the wander ad, but you can still find your happy place.

2:07:48

Book a wander with inspiring views, hotel, great amenities, dreamy beds, top tier cleaning, 247 concier service.

2:07:52

It's a vacation home but better.

2:07:55

Uh, Victoriao says, "I used to pray for the day nerds would be treated like athletes.

2:07:58

The day is finally here and it's glorious and it's our post put up by Tyler Cosgrove, the intern."

2:08:05

Uh, Tyler got 25,000 likes. Vtorio quote tweeted it. Get 50K. You love to see it.

2:08:13

Anyway, we have Mert in the studio. Welcome to the stream. How are you doing? Can we click over?

2:08:17

I am having some technical difficulties. Can you hear me? Yeah. Yeah, you look good.

2:08:25

Uh the only thing is maybe rotate the camera if you're on your phone so we can go horizontal, but uh other than that looks fantastic. Looking good.

2:08:32

Thanks so much for taking the time.

2:08:34

I know you're on really, you know, a jet setter at heart all over the world.

2:08:39

Um, uh, but very excited to talk to you.

2:08:42

There's a ton of stuff going on in the crypto world that we wanted to talk about.

2:08:48

Should we start with the idea of of private companies on chain?

2:08:50

Is that a good place to start? Yeah, sure.

2:08:55

Um, so there's a there's a few versions of this that that have just been announced.

2:09:01

Um, uh, one by Republic and one by Robin Hood. Yeah.

2:09:03

Um, do you want to just go over both or Yeah, I Yeah, let's start there and then I I basically want to cover publics and privates, but we can start with privates. Sure. Yeah.

2:09:14

I mean, so the details on these uh are a little fuzzy just because uh I think um at least um the name of the game for some of them seems to be regulatory arbitrage.

2:09:24

Um uh but so for example, in the case of Robin Hood, they just announced that they're going to have it.

2:09:31

Um, and they didn't really give any specific details other than it would be on their own uh optimized chain uh blockchain for RWAs. um for Republic.

2:09:39

Um they basically said, and by the way, um uh people thought this was for trading these uh private equity, like these these private shares, but they're actually just for buying them and then holding them, and then you actually get um uh in in in Republic's case, you you're locked up for about a year.

2:09:57

And and I believe the maximum size you can do is actually only $5,000.

2:10:01

Um so I think they're basically just trying to test the waters and and and see how the regulars will react. uh is my reading of it.

2:10:11

Yeah, the 5k limit is interesting.

2:10:14

The lack of immediate liquidity is interesting, too.

2:10:16

I mean, it's clearly a product for retail.

2:10:18

The other thing that I was thinking about is you know, if you if you just released uh you know, SpaceX uh shares on chain, there's almost going to be infinite demand for them.

2:10:29

And so, the limit could also just be, hey, we want as many people to to be able to access these as possible, or it just gets, you know, bit up and bit up.

2:10:38

But it sounds like it'll be um fixed price.

2:10:42

Any any reaction to Robin Hood setting up their own chain to do this?

2:10:45

And then it's also Europe only from what I could tell. Right.

2:10:52

Um yeah, and by the way, uh just on the the Republic um private shares thing, it's actually I looked into this.

2:11:00

It's um it's a mirrored asset.

2:11:00

So it's it's purely mimicking the performance of the of the price of the shares.

2:11:04

And then it's a note on uh the upside in the event of a liquidity event.

2:11:10

So um it's it's not like you're you're actually owning the the stock by any means obviously.

2:11:17

Um for for Robin Hood um yeah I mean they it see so it seems like they decided to launch on arbitum uh the the L2 uh to start with uh with the eventual understanding that they will launch it on their own optimized chain.

2:11:32

Um I think uh you know Robin Hood has always been has always been like a vertically integrated company that wants uh full control over the design, the user experience uh the abstractions and so I think um building your own chain for this uh makes sense because I mean they obviously already have the liquidity, the users and the distribution.

2:11:52

Um, so, so I think it makes sense provided that, you know, um, they can hire, you know, uh, Vlad can go full Zuck mode and hire some, uh, crypto talent to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to run the blockchain because that's hard work. Run the blockchain.

2:12:06

Um, break down the, uh, what's happen.

2:12:10

I've seen enough screenshots this week so far.

2:12:12

I think you were sharing some of them of people, you know, swapping something, you know, an esteemed asset like Fartcoin for for some Tesla shares.

2:12:20

What is actually happening there?

2:12:23

Are they is it just a is it is there act are the this the exesla or whatever these are are they tied to any real underlying asset? Is it entirely vibes?

2:12:34

What's actually going on? Yes.

2:12:38

Uh so uh as sophisticated investors uh we we've been swapping farcoin into the Tesla and Nvidia stock and and even Meta now.

2:12:45

Um uh and so uh these shares actually are backed uh one by uh fully backed by the the uh custodian um it's quite fascinating how it works actually um and and these are only available in Europe by the way uh both in the case of Robin Hood and um uh Kraken and and this company called Back that's actually doing the regulatory stuff.

2:13:09

Um so what happens is there's some KYC uh at the beginning of the process where you actually have to buy from the primary market.

2:13:18

Uh but then once it's withdrawn to uh the the blockchain um it's basically there's like this loophole where they're treat like certificates um and and so you can as long as you know you say that these aren't supposed to be allowed for uh USA uh investors as long as you basically just say that and you know you put the fine print there.

2:13:38

Um once you do that, they're just treated like digital assets.

2:13:42

Um and so when you do trade uh you know uh you know Shitcoin 3000 into uh Nvidia stock uh it actually is like you're you're getting something that's uh backed one to one.

2:13:55

Uh however uh it's the same with um the private stocks where there's like a pretty big limitation on the liquidity.

2:14:02

um like I think uh you know a h 100red million is like the max that can be issued uh at this point uh and they're doing like uh several tens of millions uh in volume. So nothing crazy yet.

2:14:16

Um but how are they trading are they are they tra are are not stable right? No no no. Yeah.

2:14:27

So there's a um so they can prices are Yeah. No, they're not.

2:14:34

This isn't uh it's it's uh not like a micro strategy play.

2:14:38

Uh we can talk about the treasury uh companies as well, but um the prices are supposed to be indexed um uh one to one.

2:14:44

Um and what's interesting is like you can now um obviously compose this with other applications in DeFi, right?

2:14:53

So you can literally um buy Tesla stock and then take out a loan against it and then maybe eight Farcoin at that point.

2:14:59

Like you can do all sorts of different things.

2:15:01

Um Uh uh and you can just like hold it in your wallet.

2:15:06

Um it's pretty cool, but like it's just it's very very early.

2:15:08

So I wouldn't make any uh but it feels pretty monumental, right?

2:15:14

Is this not what what people have been excited about for the for the last decade? Two decades.

2:15:21

Peter Teal was saying that he wanted a cryptocurrency that was backed by a basket of every financial asset.

2:15:28

And like we're on the cusp of it.

2:15:31

It feels like that you could have like a token that owns a slice of the S&P, a slice of physical gold, a slice of real estate, and it'd be kind of like the most stable asset, even more stable than the dollar potentially.

2:15:42

That was like the original thesis.

2:15:47

But I guess that was actually, by the way, that video Yeah. Yeah.

2:15:48

You guys should search that video.

2:15:51

That video is predicted in 1999.

2:15:53

Um, but yeah, I mean, it is huge, right?

2:15:56

Like, uh, it's gotten a lot of attention.

2:15:58

Uh and and it's very exciting that you can just um basically start to like um actually modernize the financial rails.

2:16:06

Uh Pat uh Patrick Collison from Stripe had a really good way of describing stable coins uh which was like these are B this is like dollars on like superconductor rails, right?

2:16:17

Where there's now no friction and you can just uh compose with any other financial instrument obviously that's on the blockchain.

2:16:22

Um, and it's it's just it's got it's taken so much work to actually get here uh and clear all these regulatory hurdles.

2:16:30

Um, but you know, it's it's it's really just beginning.

2:16:32

I think there's going to be once Robin Hood gets in and everybody else starts getting I think Coinbase will also start uh pretty soon. Um, right.

2:16:39

They also have their own blockchain.

2:16:41

Um, so I think it's going to start getting very competitive. Okay.

2:16:44

I was talking to a retail investor who would be like so excited like 150 IQ would be so excited to be able to buy private company shares on chain be able to buy all sorts of stuff on chain.

2:16:59

Um I but he was particularly act very upset and still held a grudge from the GameStop uh rally where there was no buy button.

2:17:11

There was only a sell button and he felt like betrayed by the platform.

2:17:16

Now when I dug into it, it seemed like the the situation with Robin Hood was much more nuanced than that and there was actually some liquidity constraints and there were a lot of reasons why they chose the whole narrative of like oh they Ken Griffin called them and told them to you know save some hedge fund.

2:17:28

I didn't really buy into that.

2:17:30

But anyway, um the I think the more important question is when you put something on chain, the idea is like the the code is decentralized, no one has the button to turn something off.

2:17:42

But the the downside of that is that you could maybe get into some situation where the like if there's if there's a you know reinforcing feedback loop of sell pressure or buy pressure, you could really really distort the market.

2:17:57

And so I'm wondering like, you know, I'm thinking about the Terra Luna situation or any of these situations where there was like this perfect perpetual motion machine, but then the fact that it was actually the that someone couldn't step in and just put pump the brakes was actually uh a bug, not a feature at that moment in time.

2:18:16

And I'm wondering if there are potential risks to having real world assets on chain that that where where everything is is is in code.

2:18:25

Does that make any sense?

2:18:27

Am I asking any sort of reasonable question here?

2:18:29

Can you just nail on that a little bit? Yeah.

2:18:32

Um, it's it's certainly a very valid point and it's also why the Genius Act for stable coins was pretty monumental.

2:18:38

Uh, because like you know, Ter Luna also had um some very uh funky concepts around their stable coins and their, you know, not actually being backed by anything, right? Yeah.

2:18:47

Um and and with the new stablecoin act um which like uh puts very or you know much more clear uh framework on like how how often should these things be audited, how should they be backed, who can do this, whatever.

2:19:01

Um and and with this new regulatory um approach uh consumers and users actually have like way better benefits um uh and way better guarantees, right?

2:19:11

guarantees, right? and and it's also um right like um we it's obviously decentralized finance uh but it's also programmable finance right so um in the case of an L2 for example you know Robin Hood can add again the same types of

2:19:27

rules um that that to enact some sort of control and and like maybe freeze something uh USDC can already do this today by the way right USC can actually freeze uh the USC uh per on a wallet uh on a per wallet basis Um and even on Salana you can do this right. Um the smart contracts have

2:19:44

Um the smart contracts have certain hooks um depending on how the issuer of the token actually encodes these.

2:19:51

Um so you can actually still program these uh to to get like the compliance, you know, flavor that you want.

2:19:58

Um the difference is that it's it's it's um uh extremely transparent, right?

2:20:03

You can read the code and you can be like, okay, this is what can happen in this situation and this is what they did.

2:20:08

So you can actually audit it and it's very verifiable.

2:20:12

I have a question about uh Arabore.

2:20:12

This story kind of leaked out today in the Financial Times about Palmer Lucky, Peter Teal, and some other folks, Joe Lansdale, uh working on something that sounds like a stable coin bank.

2:20:24

Uh I would love to hear about the problems that crypto companies run into with banks.

2:20:33

What might they solve if they if you were imagining the list of to-dos?

2:20:38

And then are there any I mean there's been a few crypto friendly banks but if I have it correct like Robin Hood isn't a bank, Coinbase isn't a bank, Circle's not a bank, Stripe isn't a bank.

2:20:48

Uh or or maybe you can correct me there, but just kind of take me through the the the problem that banks solve and then the in the current in the current structure and then what problems are do stable coin companies still face with the traditional banking system? Right. Yeah.

2:21:09

So, um I think actually uh uh Mike from Pirate Wires and Nick Carter did a really good job on Operation Chokepoint where where they kind of go in detail into the debanking of of of these industries.

2:21:18

Um uh I have like a much more uh trivial example which is my co-founder.

2:21:24

Uh he's a he's a he's Canadian unfortunately just like me.

2:21:28

Um uh and he he went to get a mortgage uh for his for his new house.

2:21:33

Um, and uh, at first I uh, I think they like approved him and then they they looked at where he worked, which is Helas, the uh, the company that we run.

2:21:43

And uh, then they actually uh, rescended the mortgage uh, and they said it was uh, you're in crypto even though we don't have like a token.

2:21:48

We're basically a cloud provider.

2:21:49

And they said it's too high a risk of an industry.

2:21:51

And they actually he couldn't get a mortgage. Wow.

2:21:54

Um, and like this is Canada.

2:21:54

Um and um so like in terms of problems um you know there's a lot of maybe there's two dimensions to this.

2:22:05

Uh one is just the interoperability right like being able to off-ramp on-ramp uh compose like if you're earning money uh USDC onchain how exactly are you transferring that how are you doing payroll uh all sorts of things like just the tech side of it.

2:22:18

Um and then just like being able to get access uh has been historicult.

2:22:26

Um especially I think this is changing especially with uh you know the the president of the free world and uh actually the first lady both being the the founders of various shitcoins.

2:22:35

Uh I I think it's certainly changing.

2:22:38

Um but yeah we saw that what what was the the announcement?

2:22:44

Are you talking about the the the social media founder the founder of truth social?

2:22:48

He because he has a coin, right? Unicorn.

2:22:50

People don't give him enough credit.

2:22:52

It's very rare that a that a founder of a social media company as big as Truth Social has a side hustle as demanding as being the president of the United States.

2:23:01

Yeah, it's pretty remarkable. Um, too crazy.

2:23:05

There was there was also the news that um I'm forgetting the governing body, but um they were advising Fanny May and Freddy Mack to start looking at crypto assets in the mortgage process, the federal housing. Yeah. Yeah.

2:23:21

So there's progress, right? Yeah.

2:23:24

So yeah, that so that one's super interesting.

2:23:27

uh where you can actually I believe the exact rule is something like the assets that you have on a centralized exchange like a Coinbase uh and and soon to be I guess Robin Hood you you can uh actually take out a mortgage uh using those assets as collateral um and and I believe they actually I don't know if this was real news.

2:23:45

I didn't look too too into it, but like I believe they were actually looking at like if Farcoin is viable uh to use uh as mortgage collateral.

2:23:50

Um cuz like it obviously needs to have some certain properties.

2:23:56

Um but yeah, that that can be very interesting.

2:23:58

Um I I'm not sure how it'll go.

2:24:04

Uh you know, the devil's always in the details for these things.

2:24:08

Um but there's a lot of progress, right?

2:24:11

um like two years ago with Gary Gendler uh at uh let's say being the eye of Sauron uh you could not even imag like you could not even think this you you you would he would arrest you in your sleep so uh and then everybody left the states as a result and now they're coming back. Yeah.

2:24:27

Well, the eye of Sauron is closed and the mountain of Arabore is born.

2:24:34

So, well, we'll have to have you back on soon to talk more. This is fantastic.

2:24:39

Thanks so much for calling in.

2:24:41

I'm sure it's uh late wherever you are and we really appreciate you taking the time. Yeah, great to catch up. We'll talk to you soon. You always catch me up. Have a good one. So many zingers.

2:24:50

The the the crypto vernacular is just undefeated.

2:24:53

Uh but you heard Emily Sunberg tell it uh mention it earlier.

2:24:59

She bought her husband a watch.

2:25:01

You can buy your husband or wife a watch on Bezel. Go to getb bezel. com.

2:25:05

Your bezel concierge is available now to source you any watch on the planet. Seriously, any watch.

2:25:09

And our next guest has an absolute hitter.

2:25:12

I saw him in DC wearing a JLC Reverso.

2:25:14

Not to dox your watch, but it's a fantastic dodge. Great. Great.

2:25:20

Now, now he's got a higher security.

2:25:23

And by the way, look at this.

2:25:25

Oh, he's got the reverso. Let's go. The Uno Reverso. Beautiful. It's a beautiful watch. It's fantastic. It has a great story. Beautiful watch. Great.

2:25:34

It was actually it was a gift from my wife for my uh 30th birthday.

2:25:38

It's a beautiful watch to my family for my 30th birthday.

2:25:40

So, I'm thrilled to have it. Yeah.

2:25:42

And uh if I remember the story correctly, it was different time zones for a while. That's right.

2:25:48

So, no better watch than the Reverso to represent where you are physically and where your future wife is. Fantastic. That's right. JLC sponsor the pod. We're ready. Really? We are so ready. Until then, getel. com.

2:25:58

Um was lovely having you on yesterday.

2:26:03

A lot tends to happen in 24 hours these days. What uh what's new? Give us the update.

2:26:11

Yeah, it's a big 24 hours.

2:26:11

Um first of all, has anyone ever done the two day in a row?

2:26:17

Delian did once kind of by accident.

2:26:17

He came on, he was scheduled uh every other Thursday and he happened to stop by our YC demo day stream for a very different thing.

2:26:27

We hit him with a confetti cannon. It was a lot of fun. That's all right. All right. We love Delian. That's fine.

2:26:31

big 24 hours in Washington.

2:26:31

In fact, it started right after I hung up with you guys.

2:26:36

I don't know if you saw this.

2:26:38

In the background of my shot yesterday, you had this beautiful vista over downtown DC.

2:26:42

And as we were talking, there was a huge storm cloud starting to come in and completely raining on top of all of DC.

2:26:49

So, you guys know this, I think people probably know.

2:26:54

In Congress, there is no remote voting.

2:26:56

You are either voting in person or if you are not there, you do not get a say in what happens.

2:27:01

And right now, the big beautiful bill which is in the hands of the house is on the precipice. It could go either way.

2:27:08

It might pass, it may not pass, but every single vote is necessary.

2:27:11

And I kid you not, there was a ground stop in the morning at DCA and there were multiple members who were stopped, prevented from coming back into town to vote because of the huge storm in Washington last night.

2:27:22

So, just to give you a sense of how quickly things move.

2:27:26

It's a biblical metaphor for sure. A flood. It is. It is biblical.

2:27:28

I don't always see divine providence in politics.

2:27:32

In fact, I just about never see it.

2:27:34

But it's pretty hard to argue with a uh a full grad.

2:27:38

So So does this make uh JD Vance's vote more important, less important?

2:27:41

What what what's the read on Vance's role here?

2:27:45

So Vance is the president of the Senate.

2:27:47

When there's a 50-50 tie in the Senate, which is what happened yesterday, his vote is the most crucial vote.

2:27:52

And that's why, by the way, if you are any Dem, Governor Shapiro, AOC, whomever, running in 2028, it is now a phenomenal gift to you that you can go and Badger Daty Vance about his vote yesterday.

2:28:04

But the bill is in the House today.

2:28:06

So there's no Vance vote. There's no tiebreaker.

2:28:08

There is no, in fact, the the GOP basically has eight votes or sorry, four votes they could lose.

2:28:14

There were eight people who didn't show up this morning.

2:28:17

There are four votes they could lose and still get the vote passed.

2:28:21

And so all day there's been this series starting in the morning of procedural votes as a way of checking just who from the conference is even in town to begin with before they get to the actual vote itself.

2:28:33

This is like literally like a roll it's a roll call.

2:28:37

It is literally a roll call.

2:28:37

My mom was a teacher for a while.

2:28:39

My grandmother was a teacher her whole career.

2:28:40

There is zero difference between my grandmother teaching a special ed class doing roll call and what's happening today in Congress.

2:28:48

Maybe a slight difference, but basically no difference. All right.

2:28:50

So, there's a couple of factions you guys talked about yesterday, the menu of different people within the GOP.

2:28:55

The big challenge today is picking up votes where the GOP can, where the Republican party can in the menu of factions.

2:29:02

The two big ones to keep an eye on are the House Republican moderates and the House Freedom Caucus, which are the sort of more extreme uh further ideologically opposed folks.

2:29:13

If you're a moderate, you don't like it for one simple reason, which is this has a bunch of Medicaid cuts.

2:29:17

In fact, there are far more Medicaid cuts in the Senate version of the bill, which is what you're being asked to vote on than the House version of the bill that you passed a couple weeks ago.

2:29:25

And you don't want to hang that around your neck when you go back home.

2:29:28

Remember, if you're in the House, you are always in campaign mode.

2:29:30

You're running every two years.

2:29:32

That's why you were out of town to begin with, because anytime there's a weekend, you're flying home to your district to go pick up a couple extra dollars, right?

2:29:39

So the moderates don't like it because of the Medicaid cuts, huge Medicaid cuts.

2:29:42

The conservatives don't like it.

2:29:45

The far conservatives in the Freedom Caucus don't like it because it actually blows up a framework, a balanced budget or close to balanced budget framework that they passed in the House last time.

2:29:54

So they got to a basically a compromise agreement with spending cuts and with tax cuts that the Senate completely ignored.

2:30:03

So that's much harder for them.

2:30:05

And part of Trump's success if this bill gets passed will be because he convinces people from the Freedom Caucus in particular to flip and become supporters of the big beautiful bill.

2:30:17

So wrapping up on JD Vance. Yeah.

2:30:17

If if the vote goes through in the House then people will hang on on him.

2:30:23

What happens if the bill passes?

2:30:26

Does the other bill automatically die?

2:30:29

Is there some sort of trigger there?

2:30:31

So, if the House passes the bill today, the House is looking at the Senate's version of the bill. Yeah.

2:30:37

The House passes that bill today, it goes right to the president's desk for signature.

2:30:40

That is the plan A scenario.

2:30:43

If you're in the admin, what you're hoping happens is it gets passed, it goes through.

2:30:46

Plan B or plan C even is the House says, "We want to reopen the bill and add a bunch of different amendments because we don't like the Medicaid cuts or we don't like the deficit expansion, whatever."

2:30:56

And then it goes back to the Senate where by the way the Republican party may or may not have the votes to get it done and suddenly JD Vance gets into that spotlight again. Got it. Okay.

2:31:05

So the so yeah so the House can't change anything in the Senate bill right now.

2:31:09

They just have to decide yay or nay. That's exactly right.

2:31:13

They if they if they reopen if they make any changes which by the way a lot of people in the House want them to do then the Senate has to go through the entire procedure of passing it again which is a huge risk factor for them. Yep.

2:31:23

factor for them. Yep. Is there any chance that the House tries to add back in that that AI uh state level AI legislation ban or is that even I think it's fairly unlikely right given the overwhelming I mean listen given it was a 99 to1 uh repudiation of a rebuke

2:31:43

rebuke of the AI moratorum I think it's unlikely the house added it back in because that's a signal from the Senate saying look if you put this back into the bill all that's going to happens, we're going to lose even more procedural time getting it out of the bill again when it comes back to us the next number of days. But the only way this passes

2:31:59

But the only way this passes before the July 4th deadline, in my view, is if the House basically swallows the Senate version as is today. Yeah.

2:32:08

So, you you kind of define some of the the attack lines on the right uh with the moderates going after the Medicaid cuts and the uh and the farther right Freedom Caucus, is that right?

2:32:20

uh saying that uh they want more of a balanced bill.

2:32:24

Have any particular attack lines been opened on the left that you've seen? Oh yeah. Yeah.

2:32:29

I mean the left looks at this.

2:32:31

This is Christmas if you're on the left, right?

2:32:33

You get basically to say, wow, the Republicans voted to take away your Medicaid, which is a huge bludgeon.

2:32:39

You guys remember back in the OGT party all those signs, keep your government hands off my Medicare, keep your government hands off my Medicaid, right?

2:32:46

This is a horseshoe issue where people on the left and on the right are equally impacted by it.

2:32:52

And the net result of that is that it's a great campaign line no matter what side of the aisle you're on. So here's an example.

2:32:58

North Carolina, we talked yesterday about Senator Tillis from North Carolina who's not running for re-election and who ultimately voted against the big beautiful bill passage.

2:33:07

Tillis has a group of folks in the House who are predominantly from his state delegation who he has some influence, some relationship with, right?

2:33:13

many of whom have signaled, many of whom are moderates and many of whom have signaled, I have some reluctance to vote for the bill.

2:33:19

Part of the reluctance is because the Democratic governor of North Carolina wrote a letter where he basically said, look, if you vote for the bill, I am going to make sure that these Medicaid cuts become a big issue in the next campaign because they massively impact his state budget.

2:33:33

Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania did the same thing where he said, "Look, if you vote for the bill, you should know that you will be impacting the Medicaid of Pennians and I will use that politically against you."

2:33:45

The last part is implied.

2:33:47

This has been really, really helpful.

2:33:49

I've genuinely learned a lot.

2:33:49

So, thank you for stopping by.

2:33:51

This is You may not have been the first person to go back to back, but I have a feeling you'll be the first to go back to back to back.

2:33:56

This is very, very helpful.

2:33:58

Thank you for breaking it down for us. Thanks for having me on.

2:34:01

I appreciate it as always.

2:34:03

We'll have you back on my Chiron. Yeah, exactly.

2:34:05

I can't see the Chiron, but I'm hoping it says Washington correspondent. That'll make my day.

2:34:08

We We will definitely update it tomorrow. Thank you so much.

2:34:11

Vice President of Washington. Yeah, great.

2:34:13

I'll see you guys tomorrow, I'm sure. Cheers. Cheers, Zach. Cheers. Thank you.

2:34:17

Um, up next we have our lightning round beginning with John from Parapform.

2:34:23

Welcome to the stream, John. How are you doing? Good to meet you. What's happening? Good, guys. Thanks for having me. Uh, what's the latest?

2:34:30

Can you kick us off with an introduction on yourself?

2:34:34

Jord's getting the hammer ready. What's the latest news?

2:34:36

Do you have any good numbers for us?

2:34:39

We love big numbers, hopefully with lots of zeros. Yeah. Um, hey everyone. Yeah.

2:34:43

Um, great to meet you guys.

2:34:47

I'm one of the founders and CEO of a company called Parapform.

2:34:50

We just announced our 20 million series A led by Felicis and um, an incredible group of founders. Congratulations.

2:35:01

I like when Jordy does it because he goes in the camera feed. It's great. Congratulations. Congratulations. 20 million bucks. That's amazing.

2:35:06

Um, tell us what the company does, the inciting concept, the idea, how big you are, the scale of the business right now, that type of stuff.

2:35:15

Let me guess, you're going to hire one of an AI researcher. Use of funds. Yeah. Yeah.

2:35:20

We're getting one day a week. Yeah. Fractional. Yeah. Fractional.

2:35:25

Fractional AI researcher. Oh, I saw that.

2:35:27

and also like the founding engineer who you know four four different companies I think his name was Soh. Oh yeah. Yeah.

2:35:33

Um no yeah but uh for those of you who don't know Parapform is a marketplace where we help the world's uh most important companies hire top talent by connecting them with uh expert recruiters who actually uh act more like sports agents than talent sourcers.

2:35:50

And you know, I've actually seen your your post recently about the meta super intelligence team.

2:35:54

Like you guys framed it as like traded internally.

2:35:58

We've been talking about this for over a year and it's really cool to see that sort of trend uh sort of playing out live, but also it's happening a lot sooner than we thought.

2:36:07

So really interesting to like dive deeper into like the trend of like just recruiting in general. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

2:36:12

I mean we've been we've been talking about this a lot because it's good content. It's interesting.

2:36:15

And uh I think what uh what's s the surprising thing that we learned this week I think is that we put up that traded graphic for the meta researcher and it got millions of views like millions of views and it's funny and there's an element that can go broader but it really does speak to the fact that tech has gone mainstream.

2:36:36

The question that we've been mulling is where does this go next?

2:36:41

Because when you look at the GOAT debate between LeBron James and uh uh Michael Jordan, you're looking at points per game.

2:36:49

You're looking at lifetime career points, number of MVPs won, number of uh championships won.

2:36:53

Um what metrics are you interested in looking at?

2:36:57

Uh is LinkedIn still relevant?

2:37:00

Is GitHub still relevant?

2:37:03

Uh are you quantifying these things?

2:37:05

What are you doing to try and match these folks together?

2:37:08

you imagine that AI can be very useful.

2:37:10

There's a whole bunch of different ways that I could imagine this uh working, but you probably have to do some filtering on both sides to understand who's a good recruiter and who's a good who's good talent. For sure. Yeah.

2:37:19

I think like you know the the trend that you guys picked up, it's like you're on to something and it's like very similar to what we think.

2:37:26

It's like I don't think that a important tech company hiring let's say the best marketing person will be too dissimilar to the Lakers announcing that you know LeBron joined or the Dodgers getting Otani.

2:37:38

Otani. I think how we think about it is as AI sort of um you know rapidly advances and it automates a lot of the mundane work I think humans sort of focus on more like higher order functions right um and one person will be able to do a lot more um obviously the GDP will accelerate so the average

2:37:55

salaries will go up we've always internally talked about how the age of like a seven figure salary is rapidly approaching it already is for certain industries but I think it will be a lot more mainstream um so yeah I think like there's going to be more scar scarity towards good talent, it's going to get even more competitive. And when there's

2:38:10

And when there's that scarcity, usually the value of a broker goes up.

2:38:14

And we actually see recruiters, you know, kind of turning into almost one of the most important roles in tech where essentially they're like brokering this human capital between the most important companies and making sure they represent the best talent.

2:38:28

Um, in terms of metrics, I think very similar to maybe like the MBA or the MLB, like obviously they'll measure the company's performance.

2:38:34

I think a lot of people commented on how like it's ridiculous to pay $100 million or whatever, but really these companies they're smart like they're doing that because the return on that is greater. Um, right?

2:38:44

Like I mean solving AGI I think is like a important enough problem where you do that, right?

2:38:48

So I think um, you know, that's one thing that you're going to measure, right?

2:38:52

Like how well are companies going to perform and achieve their objectives?

2:38:55

I think there's other like key KPIs like you know I'd imagine it's just like the northstar metrics for different teams.

2:39:03

Um, I wonder if there's going to be universal things like points, assists, and uh, you know, minutes played.

2:39:06

But yeah, I think it's something interesting to think about. Yeah. Yeah.

2:39:10

I mean, we kind of already do this at a little at like a smaller level when someone says like, "I was early at Stripe."

2:39:15

What that really means is that like you were there for the creation of like the first 50 billion of market cap or something.

2:39:21

And so if you were one of 20 on that team, yeah, we might give you, you know, $50 million in points, right? essentially.

2:39:33

Um, so yeah, what what else is going on with the top of funnel?

2:39:35

Where where where are candidates uh percolating up into the parapform system these days? Yeah.

2:39:42

So, one of the fastest growing uh roles we see are for deployed engineers.

2:39:47

Like obviously uh Palunteer um they're one of our customers too.

2:39:51

They they coined this term and really uh do a good job.

2:39:53

Sean Sankar, the OG, the first to ever do it, the first uh forward deployed engineer. He's been on the show. Exactly. Yeah.

2:39:59

the show. Exactly. Yeah. I think you know obviously you know you guys know this too but I think the biggest bottleneck in AI is quickly becoming implementation right where you know we already have very good LM we have already very good technology it's just a

2:40:12

matter of getting them into the hands of everyday people and the broader industry and I think um you know go to market motions are evolving to like actually fit this forward deployed engineer role where basically you have to like very customize your AI solutions to you know everyday everyday customers. So I think

2:40:26

So I think for deployed engineers is where a lot of really good talent will converge and at Parapform what we're seeing is not only companies like Palunteer but also you know companies um you know traditional companies like you know um you know that uh they're also like looking to hire for deployed engineers.

2:40:44

So that's one trend we see um emerging very quickly. Yeah. Uh any commentary?

2:40:48

You mentioned uh So Pereak uh the Indian engineer who works at three to four startups at the same time.

2:40:56

He uh Su Hail says he's been praying on YC companies.

2:40:59

Uh multiple people are hitting the timeline now saying that they fired this guy.

2:41:03

Uh that feels like something where we need almost like an inverse LinkedIn because clearly he can pull jobs off of his LinkedIn and say he just worked at one place at a time.

2:41:12

Um but do we need some sort of reputation score? Could that be abused? H how does that evolve? Yeah. Really? Yeah.

2:41:18

And I think it's also interesting to think about like the kind of remote work versus in person.

2:41:21

Like this obviously wouldn't have happened if it was in person and you have to like validate things.

2:41:25

But I think there's a really a lot of interesting things there.

2:41:28

For example, you know, I think with AI like I think AI can be incredibly helpful in the recruiting process making it more efficient.

2:41:34

But there's also going to be a lot more spam.

2:41:37

There's a lot like recruiting is always driven by like this power law where unfortunately there's only a small amount of very good people and a large amount of you know sort of it's like a long tail, right?

2:41:45

And I think with AI, I think that trend will like even accelerate.

2:41:48

So I actually think that having a human in the loop to vet these things out and not only just these things, but like think think about like culture fit, interpersonal dynamics, do I like you?

2:41:59

Like these kind of things are actually like very much like what recruiters are effective at.

2:42:02

So I think um you know I think parapform can help uh you know basically prevent these situations. Um yeah. Yeah.

2:42:08

situations. Um yeah. Yeah. One one question just getting into I'm I'm sure this question came up in in various pitch meetings and throughout building the whole company there's uh back in the early internet days the dot era every CEO said hey we're going to need way

2:42:23

less people um and people are saying that again right now how how would you answer that question you're obviously building a a talent platform um is like you know and I'm sure people you know might say well what happens in a year if the hiring market gets gets wrecked, how is that going to impact your your business? But I'm I'm curious how you

2:42:43

But I'm I'm curious how you you know see that market evolving.

2:42:45

Yeah, I think fund fundamentally in terms of value creation, if you think about it from that perspective, like I remember seeing a story where when cursor winds surf these tools became so mainstream, you know, um like these fortune 500s, you know, they were asked, hey, are you going to hire less engineers because, you know, can one person do more?

2:43:02

And they actually said, no, because of these tools, we're going to hire even more engineers who can use this to be even more effective. Right?

2:43:09

I think at the end of the day like there is a ton of value to be created.

2:43:13

There's a lot more innovation to you know continue to happen.

2:43:16

So I think that actually we're always going to need people.

2:43:19

It's just that each person will be more effective.

2:43:22

So I think we actually have a very optimistic view when it comes to like the human and AI collaboration.

2:43:25

Um and I think another thing is yeah like we talked about like the sports agent analogy.

2:43:31

I think each talent will you know become more and more valuable.

2:43:33

So you know maybe the frequency of hire may decrease but the value of each hire increases and when it comes to sort of like a success based model like parapform I think the value we capture is sort of actually increasing even more with this trend.

2:43:46

So um yeah I guess like not too worried there.

2:43:48

Talk to yeah talk to us about where the value is occurring and where uh where it's landed historically and where it's going forward.

2:43:55

Like uh when I've hired engineers through recruiting agencies typically the company pays like one month or two months of salary.

2:44:01

So, it's like a percentage and then there's some sort of clawback if they don't make it after three three months.

2:44:07

Um, Sarah Guell was talking about uh how some folks are helping AI researchers negotiate and they're taking a cut of the pay and it seems like they're taking it from the researcher because if I can get you five more 5% more, that could be millions of dollars, you're fine paying me a million bucks for that negotiation.

2:44:26

Um, then there's platforms.

2:44:26

So, do you see that economic equation shifting?

2:44:29

um from the company paying to the employee paying to platform getting comped.

2:44:35

How do how is that evolving? Yeah. Yeah.

2:44:38

I mean I think that Sarah Go example is also like exactly like what that's what sports agents and even in the music industry I think that's what they kind of do.

2:44:46

But yeah to answer your question um I think where we are creating value is actually while keeping quality you know consistent and maybe even better we're actually reducing the time to hire significantly.

2:44:59

So you know like every customer cares the number one thing they care about is you know the best candidates fast right?

2:45:06

candidates fast right? So the metric we look at is time to hire and paraphform is making revenue by filling the most difficult world uh roles in the world and um we our average time to hire is under one month and I think when it comes to efficiency I think what what

2:45:24

happens is at every step of the procurement process or the recruiting funnel we're making it really really efficient um I think we're basically decreasing downtime for example if you want to work with a recruiting agency you're relying on word of mouth You never know whether they're good or not before you work with them. And there's a

2:45:38

And there's a ton of these little things that waste your time and and obviously cost.

2:45:42

But at Parform, based on what our customers are looking for, we're able to match them with the best possible recruiters based on their track record, their candidate network.

2:45:52

We have so much data on them that we're able to do like an instant good match of like best recruiter for the best role.

2:45:57

So that already saves like weeks.

2:45:59

And most customers find the candidate that they want.

2:46:02

candidate that they want. they hire end up hiring within the first week or two of posting on parapform and these are like director of engineering at you know high touch like these are like very very difficult roles so I think that's where we create value it's you know reducing the time to hire while maintaining and

2:46:17

improving quality yeah fantastic thank you so much for stopping by I think we I think we had a I I'm it's coming back to me now I think we had a call maybe in 2023 early on it's amazing amazing amazing to see your progress congratulations on the new round excited to uh excited to follow along We'll talk to you soon. Have a great rest of your

2:46:33

Have a great rest of your day.

2:46:35

Really quickly, let me tell you about Graphite. Graphite.

2:46:37

dev code review for the age of AI.

2:46:39

Graphite helps teams on GitHub ship f ship higher quality software faster and get started for free.

2:46:47

52 million series B from none other than Anthropics Anthology Fund with Menllo Ventures.

2:46:55

uh had breakfast with a friend of the show, Bailey Barrow, this morning and he he honestly wouldn't stop talking about graphite.

2:47:03

He's absolutely obsessed. He really was.

2:47:06

Did he say graphite fanboy?

2:47:06

He said he's running the TBPN stack.

2:47:08

Yeah, the linear graphite graphite goes down the list.

2:47:14

But um it's all good stuff.

2:47:14

Harvey, Asauna, Ramp, Replet, they basically they got every logo. They got every logo. They got every logo.

2:47:21

But uh head over to graphite.

2:47:23

dev and check it out yourself. Who do we got next?

2:47:25

Uh, well, we have some more timeline posts.

2:47:27

So, uh, Mike Nuke, he's been on the show before talking about Arc AGI.

2:47:30

Um, Arc AGI 3 was just announced, the AI benchmark from France Chalet and Mike Nuke.

2:47:38

Um, and this came as unexpected.

2:47:42

What aren't people still they're still struggling with AGI 2? That's right.

2:47:44

But the goal for ARC v2 was to endure 12 to 18 months.

2:47:50

The goal for the V3 is over three years.

2:47:53

Um and so we he's talked about this before when you design a benchmark you you have to assume that uh that like if the current models are scoring 50% right now on your benchmark they are going to solve it in weeks like it's not even it's going to be days don't even people won't even bother with it.

2:48:14

it. We were talking about this with the IMO um yeah with uh with some folks from Cognition uh you know it's like the IMO is so close to being solved that people aren't even really focused on it more anymore because they're like of course we can do that let's not bother with it

2:48:28

and so uh team was saying when you're designing a benchmark you need to target not only will it get 1% it'll get 0% in you need to imagine a benchmark that in a year the AI will still be scoring like negative 100% Like it will get every question like so wrong that Yeah. that

2:48:45

that it's that it's actually conducting even more points. Exactly.

2:48:49

Like you need to you need to really think through the philosophy of what makes uh a really really hard benchmark and they've done it at RKGI and we're uh we're really happy to support the team over there.

2:48:59

So if you're uh building a foundation model, head over and give it your best shot.

2:49:06

And if you're a human, go try and solve one of these prizes. They're pretty fun. They're pretty fun. More breaking news.

2:49:10

Uh Quinton Farmer, one of the co-founders of Toland's has announced a series A led by Ra Boy over at Coastal Ventures. Congratulations.

2:49:20

They launched uh just a few months ago.

2:49:23

They have 3 million downloads, $12 million run rate, and now adding this $20 million series A.

2:49:28

Wait, is this that this is the one they're using fun like Tomagi?

2:49:32

I think it's like purple dino things. No, purple aliens. Yeah, alien best friend. Yep. So brilliant. Uh absolutely ripping.

2:49:40

7 uh 76,000 reviews on the iOS app store. 4. 8. Wow. An alien best friend. Uh very cool.

2:49:47

And and somehow less dystopian than the AI boyfriend.

2:49:53

Wired has an article today that just came out.

2:49:55

What could an healthy AI companion look like?

2:49:56

So if you're looking for a healthy AI companion, I love it.

2:50:00

Why don't you bring the gong for them and then we'll bring in our next guest. Let's do it. Let's do it.

2:50:06

Hit that gong Jordy for tool.

2:50:09

Congratulations to the team over there.

2:50:11

You're welcome to come on the show.

2:50:13

Uh and and you're welcome to send one of your alien friends over to the show to do the interview for you. Send him over. Send him on.

2:50:20

Anyway, we have our next guest from Luma AI coming on the stream. How you doing? Good to meet you. Doing very well.

2:50:26

Great to meet you as well and thanks for having me. Of course.

2:50:27

Uh welcome to the stream.

2:50:30

uh why don't you kick us off with an introduction on yourself, the company, any breaking news for us? Awesome. So uh my name is Ait.

2:50:37

I'm one of the co-founders and CEO of Luma.

2:50:39

At Luma, we are building basically what what we consider to be the future of multimodal intelligence.

2:50:45

Uh that includes uh what comes after LM building multimodal models that learn from audio, video, language, image all together.

2:50:51

Our first product is uh video generation models, models that are able to generate video, audio all together.

2:50:57

And and currently we are working uh with with Hollywood, we are working with advertising agencies, we are working with also a lot of individual creators and and we have about like you know uh um tens of multiple tens of millions of users.

2:51:10

We just don't talk about the exact number of users. Sure. Sure. Sure.

2:51:13

What uh explain to me multimodal uh uh models?

2:51:20

Like uh are you trying to tokenize everything into some sort of standard format so that a an image, a video, code, text, it all appears as uh as tokens in the same kind of stream?

2:51:32

Or are you creating a system that can kind of shift gears between one and the next?

2:51:41

That's that's a great question and this is basically the core differentiation.

2:51:45

So right now most people are doing the latter.

2:51:47

Most of the AI labs that have large language models they're using those as backbones and trying to like you know teach them how to read image and video as token.

2:51:54

and video as token. But the problem with that approach is that like you know uh the output is very very subpar and and even on the most basic tasks second generation deep learning models which are like you know uh your convolutional networks outperform on

2:52:09

most VLM tasks right this the first approach which is you create a joint latent space where all of this information is in the same uh representation and then when you learn on it it is quite analogous to like you know how brain learns or like you know a human brain right? Audio, video, image,

2:52:25

Audio, video, image, they're not really terribly different for us.

2:52:28

Like these are all just signals.

2:52:30

And when we think of an event like let's say dropping a dropping a glass, right?

2:52:34

We can hear it in our head.

2:52:34

We can see in our head and we al can predict like oh if it's a piece of glass it might it might break.

2:52:39

might break. So currently this disparit approach of training a language model and a video model and an image model things like that this is going to get old very quickly because on language model side like you know we're kind of

2:52:52

running out of data right like you know uh as you're seeing with GBD5 or the previous thing that was called GBD5 10 times more compute 10 times larger model but like the the the performance isn't much better than GBD4 so it was retro retrogressively renamed to 4.5 uh on

2:53:03

5 uh on image and video model side like even the models we make today are kind of dumb uh They're basically translators. They take text, right?

2:53:11

Like, you know, uh or prompt and translate them into video, which is interesting, but that doesn't solve someone's problem.

2:53:18

And the problem being like, you know, hey, explain to me how something works or tell me the story, right?

2:53:24

Like or or or here is a uh like you know, here's the script, make me the whole thing.

2:53:28

That needs a level of reasoning and understanding that these models don't have.

2:53:32

So when you combine them all together then one you solve the data problem and because you know there's immense amount of image audio video data in the world and two you are able to build intelligence that goes beyond what LM are able to do today.

2:53:48

Talk to me about images and chat GBT.

2:53:48

Do you think that there are multiple layers going on there?

2:53:52

I was shocked by the quality of text and then the quality of the studio Gibli moment.

2:53:58

the sty it feels like style transfer on steroids.

2:54:02

Um yeah, but I was particularly surprised they could do both and it felt like it felt almost like um two different layers running and I was trying to do some tests where I would have generate some text and then have a snake weave through in front and behind the text and it was kind of struggling with that and it was making me feel like maybe there was like a second pass here.

2:54:27

Is that a reasonable theory?

2:54:27

And also, I'm not saying that as like a knock on anything because if I went to a human and asked how a human would would design a a birthday card with a, you know, a dinosaur in the background and then happy birthday text on top, they would draw the dinosaur and then they would use type setting or they would draw the text on top.

2:54:43

And so I I don't necessarily think that's like the wrong path.

2:54:46

I'm not knocking the strategy.

2:54:46

I'm just curious about what is actually going on in that model because it was remarkable.

2:54:52

Um, but but it raised a bunch of questions for me. Absolutely.

2:54:56

So to the best of our understanding basically they're doing um like you know auto reggressive uh image generation as the first pass right uh that that produces a a blurry low resolution image or or somewhat high resolution image but like you know you're missing sort of sort of high frequency details and then you do a diffusion pass on it to get to a uh decent quality uh you know image representation.

2:55:18

Now um there's so text is one thing but I I believe text actually text rendering in image models especially like the latest image models and then what we're seeing in our next photon 2 model that's actually getting very good.

2:55:30

So that is not the problem.

2:55:33

You know what's really interesting though is structure.

2:55:34

So when you do image rendering with just a diffusion model like you know um um stable diffusion or like you know name your pick. Yeah.

2:55:44

pick. Yeah. there's really like you rely on the text encoder of of the model to like you know kind of tell you about the semantics of what the person is asking about and then you just rely on the diffusion model to do all the intelligence and like you know u um let's say you're asking it hey what is 2

2:55:59

plus2 right um if there's nothing in front of it like an LLM that is able to say like oh user is asking 2 plus2 so let me draw equals to four um if you don't have that then these models have ridiculously zero understanding of whatever you're trying to say right it will just render 2 plus 2 equals to and stop doing it. Right? This is that's Right?

2:56:15

This is that's what I mean zero understanding.

2:56:17

But when you have an LLM in like you know generating it or or a thing that has good understanding of language and it's it's unified.

2:56:26

So they call it the 40 omni right um then in language space especially within the model you can reason about it that like oh 2 plus2 should be four and let me render that.

2:56:38

Now to what I believe though GPT40 is is still a system rather than just a model. Sure. Right.

2:56:44

So be when you type something it still goes through GPT. Right.

2:56:49

Uh they do all the prompt enhancement and and and reasoning about it in language space and then give it to the model and it does a very good job of rendering it.

2:56:58

But when you ask for like you know complex layouts then I think that that strength starts to show. Mhm.

2:57:04

But of course you gave an example of like you know the snake coming in and out.

2:57:07

Uh so this is again the question of prompt alignment and and while it is good it's not perfect yet.

2:57:11

Do you have any reaction to uh in the Wall Street Journal today there's Hollywood wants AI protection?

2:57:18

There's a lot of back and forth there.

2:57:19

I was particularly shocked that uh there's been a number save us save us.

2:57:24

I mean there's been a number of interesting moments in uh AI imagery and AI video.

2:57:29

Obviously like the narrative the general narrative is like the technologists are like this is amazing.

2:57:33

We've created this amazing algorithm and I agree with that.

2:57:35

And then the backlash is like we don't want all the you know the the photographers to be put out of business.

2:57:40

But the more interesting uh stories that have emerged are like V3 and Google seem to be able to generate Disney IP with perfect accuracy, no problems.

2:57:50

And maybe that's because they have some deal with YouTube.

2:57:52

And then when the Giblly moment happened, uh I was like wait like like like GPT images in chat GPT would reject different things for for safety reasons but also for intellectual property reasons but not Studio Gibli which is a style but it's also intellectual property and it's not exactly like the cleanest thing.

2:58:10

So but maybe there's a deal behind the scene.

2:58:13

scene. So how do you think uh how do you think like the like the the the interplay between uh the the startups and the technologists and the legacy media Hollywood Washington DC like what stories are you tracking how is that

2:58:30

evolving right so there's two axes that that you're talking about one is basically the adoption and job losses and things like that right you know that is a narrative and the second is the IP itself and and how do you think about that right. So on the first one there's

2:58:43

So on the first one there's like it's actually at this point a foregone conclusion that unless Hollywood and and and the traditional way of producing media changes they're on a path to extinction.

2:58:59

There is really no two ways about it and and of course there are arguments like oh but it can't do this it can't do this it can't do this.

2:59:04

it can't do this it can't do this. The thing is like you know we spent last year 2024 building out this infrastructure for training these really large really capable models and like you know it trains on pabytes and pabytes of

2:59:16

data and and much more complex than LLMs because LM like you know of course they're complicated to train but you still have like very little data the amount of engineering that that is required to train multimodal models is insane anyway now that the

2:59:28

infrastructure exists the rate of progress is very very fast we saw the same thing in language right initially everyone had to build from 0 to one but once you have 0 to1 they're like you know turning out models takes a quarter

2:59:38

sometimes less right um so anything that they think oh it can't do today yet like you know it can't do 4K well tomorrow it's going to like we already do 4K oh it it's not able to let me control like you know exactly the pose I do we

2:59:51

launched this thing called modify video where you can give it your camera feed as a prompt and you can control exactly any camera movement any pose anything that you want right so we work with some of our great partners in Holly ollywood

3:00:05

uh and like you know some of them are very forward some of them are very much not there today but when you think about what a studio is right like a studio is two parts a financial institution that is responsible for like you know uh greenlighting things and managing like

3:00:20

okay this is the area we do go and this is the area we don't go and all these kind of things and a production part right the production part largely works by contracting other smaller production houses but generally that's that's

3:00:28

that's the structure AI especially generative media changes the economics so wildly from like, you know, $100,000 a minute and to sometimes a million dollar a minute all the way down to like, you know, $10 a minute, $100 a minute. When that is the level of

3:00:41

When that is the level of economic change and you follow the money, there's just no no scenario in which you don't come out thinking that like, okay, the old way of doing is not going to work. So, yeah.

3:00:51

And an interesting thing I've been thinking about is is if the cost of production drops by an order of magnitude just by being able to shoot some maybe you're shooting some scenes with regular actors and cameras and union crews, but then you're able to create certain scenes or moments.

3:01:13

moments. Um, if the C seems like there the the internet has this insatiable demand for content and it feels like when you look at some parts of the sort of entertainment production stack, writer like great writers might be more in demand than

3:01:33

ever because like they'll have to write more like but but sort of like stories will be more in demand like you know you can imagine a world where HBO is putting out you know an iconic you potentially iconic new property or franchise or like shipping them monthly, right? When

3:01:48

When historically maybe they only had one big, you know, one or two massive releases a year like a Game of Thrones.

3:01:56

And so I actually think that it the the consumer is going to win and the industry, the people that adapt within the industry and say, "I'm going to lean into using this tool so I can write better. I can I can produce."

3:02:05

Um, or even even the idea that I I'm sure you're I'm curious if if scripts are now certain uh scripts are now being encouraged like bring your script with kind of an idea of what this world looks and feels like so that it's not just like this static uh you know textbased uh concept, right?

3:02:26

Show me, give me the pilot basically because and exactly and it's top of mind because today we we released an ad uh that we handmade farmtotable content uh for one of our partners Wander and there's like a few scenes in there that you probably could have AI generated we didn't but they cost us real money right like that that we could have potentially stripped out and it feels like feels like we're so close. Yeah.

3:02:53

So here's the over andunder on that actually.

3:02:55

Um the the the demand for video is absolutely absurd. You're right.

3:03:00

Like you know, so average person is watching about three and a half hours of video on their phones every day.

3:03:03

Um I don't know if it's good, but it's a big number.

3:03:12

We're certainly we we're, you know, might be contributing to that. But it's true.

3:03:18

And and the the the the thinking about that is very simple that like people don't like to read.

3:03:21

If they could watch an explanation, watch how to do something, watch a piece of news, whatever have you, they would do that over reading it or reading about it, right? Like all day, all night.

3:03:33

So that means um for entertainment, yes, like you know, generally entertainment we think about like okay, you make it once and then millions of people will watch it again and again and all these kind of things.

3:03:42

But when you think about like news and you think about question and answer and you think about explanations and all these kind of things, that's ridiculous, right?

3:03:48

like you know you can't generate a a video for every explanation for every scenario on every planet.

3:03:53

It has to be done dynamically.

3:03:55

It has to be done automatically and it has to be done with AI.

3:03:56

Now the number I track is okay for every person on the planet like you know out of that 3.

3:04:02

5 hours that they watched if we can generate at least an hour of video a day uh that is what the success metric looks like for us.

3:04:10

So that is looks like about 6 billion hours of video per day generated.

3:04:15

One, there's no human capacity that can actually generate that that kind of idiom, right? Editors can't do that.

3:04:21

And two, um there's no compute in the universe at the moment to be able to actually do that.

3:04:26

So, but that is what to track towards because video is now the substrate of information on the internet.

3:04:33

There's two things happening to the internet, right?

3:04:34

One, it's becoming zero click, which is like, you know, you don't hunt around in websites and try to like, oh, this answer, this answer.

3:04:42

No, you just ask an LLM or now Google also has AI mode.

3:04:44

If you're in the labs experiment then you just get the get the damn answer.

3:04:48

Um and second thing that is happening is the substrate of information is changing from from text to video. This is what people do.

3:04:58

So if you if you just extrapolate from this trend um video production has to change entertainment has to change and um people who don't come along like you know it's going to be very hard journey for that advertising on the like we can

3:05:13

talk about advertising for about an hour and like you know Ken was very illuminating for me uh in that way about like how people are thinking about it it yeah I want to get the full update from con uh is this your first time going

3:05:25

break us down like what this is this is the con film I mean the the one one of the exciting things about what you're doing is when you look at the cost structures of consumer brands which we both have exposure to so much often times consu

3:05:42

consumer brands are held back because they don't have net new ad creative and so not only is it a cost it just takes a long time to produce and so you have these gaps where a brand will see lower performance you know slowing growth etc. and it's really just because they don't

3:05:57

and it's really just because they don't have access to net new ad creative that can drive new demand.

3:06:02

And so that's an entire area that um I don't think that's being fully priced in yet, how the the great brands will actually be able to grow faster because of just being able to daybyday generate net new um ad creative. Yeah.

3:06:18

Give us the full con recap.

3:06:21

Sorry, answer that question and then I want the con recap.

3:06:23

Yeah, I I think the answer to that question in can is almost the same.

3:06:27

So yes, it was it was my first time.

3:06:29

Um, beautiful place to be honest with you.

3:06:32

Uh, but but really interesting like you know uh one everybody I mean it was it's not an AI event.

3:06:39

It's not an AI conference but literally every conversation was about AI. every conversation.

3:06:46

But what's really interesting is that maybe 1% of the people knew what the hell they were talking about.

3:06:53

Um I I I Nobody knows, but everybody's excited. Yes.

3:07:01

But I got blisters in my ears hearing the word agent.

3:07:05

Um all these like, you know, agency. Yeah.

3:07:13

all these agency people pitching, right?

3:07:15

Like, oh, we have AI agents to do this and we have AI agents, we're building this to do this.

3:07:18

In fact, like, you know, Adobe was there and and their salespeople were trying to pitch non-existent AI agents to people and trying to log them into three-year contracts, right?

3:07:28

It was palpable the level of desperation. Um, uh, shots fired. Shots fired. But it's insane.

3:07:38

And, and when you go and ask like, "Okay, what do you mean?" Right?

3:07:42

It can be we talk to we talk to everyone and and and what is it?

3:07:43

It's a prompt box where you can select a bunch of models. That's it.

3:07:48

That is not an AI agent that doesn't do anything.

3:07:51

Uh um right like you know senator that's SAS. That is SAS. Exactly.

3:07:57

And and and the issue is that basically like you know a lot of people are thinking like okay well you know developing this is basically like you know nothing and we'll just like you know produce the models and and it's going to happen.

3:08:09

developing model developing agents in creative space in visual space is very difficult work right like you know you need new kinds of models the kinds we are training uh because think about it like Gemini is the best VLM that is out there right now and it is barely able to meet about 3% of our benchmark of visual

3:08:26

uh like iteration let's say you're talking about brands so we we met quite a few including like you know our partners like Coca-Cola and others right if you want to make an ad and then let's let's not think about a Super Bowl ad if you just want to like you know make creatives like you say 100 ads for different markets. Um,

3:08:39

Um, getting them to be right, getting them to be on brand, getting them to like, you know, look exactly like, you know, how they should look like, that's a hard job.

3:08:50

Like current image and video models, as I was telling you, like are dumb.

3:08:52

They will just like, you know, make whatever. They have no idea.

3:08:54

And then when you use VLMs to critique them, the outputs are are barely any good.

3:08:58

the outputs are are barely any good. So it's you need a new kinds of you need like the next thing after LLMs the next kind of models that are able to understand visual information instructions and and and what makes something engaging that level of information is what you need like LM are

3:09:16

getting there right like for for stories when you write text LMs are now making things that are very engaging now we need that next jump in in in models so that was my like you know overall impression in Canada the second thing I felt like you know by next year this place is going to look very very different. Uh like you know fortunes are

3:09:32

different. Uh like you know fortunes are going to change significantly because when you talk to some of the most senior folks in like you know various agencies uh you know whatever have you the writing is on the wall for them like

3:09:43

they employ hundreds of thousands of artists and and like you know people and and they are asking us like oh how do we actually do this more efficiently uh and and the thing is like that that's that's incorrect way of thinking about it. So

3:09:52

So uh um long story short like um it was not an AI conference but it ended up being an AI conference where nobody knew what the hell actually the AI is and consequently nobody knew what is coming. Mhm.

3:10:07

What areas do you think are safe from disruption?

3:10:10

think are safe from disruption? We talked to a photographer who does stuff in CPG and he was saying there actually could be a situation where if you're McDonald's, you can't generate AI images of your burger because it could be there

3:10:25

are already FTC rules around you have to use the real burger because there were all these like the false advertising lawsuits where they'd show the perfect cinematography burger that was perfectly made and looked amazing and then you'd go expectation versus reality and those those memes went viral. enough and the

3:10:41

those memes went viral. enough and the the flat disgusting burger bubbled up and eventually I guess there was a lawsuit and so now you know and and even in uh if you're selling a phone you have to say screen images simulated or if you're driving on a truck you have to

3:10:58

say close course professional driver that's for safety reasons obviously drink responsibly if it's an alcohol so the FTC has a bunch of rules do we think there'll be anything there on the AI side I think those rules will change too basically So currently like so the burger example, right? The problem is you are over

3:11:16

The problem is you are over representing the product you're selling. Yes. Right.

3:11:21

It is not the problem of the tooling you used to make it with.

3:11:23

Uh you could have made it how the thing actually is.

3:11:27

I mean that would look very disappointing in the ads but you could have made it closer to how the thing actually is such that like you know people aren't misleading thinking like oh I'm going to get this big giant thing which is very fluffy and then you when you get in like oof this is the thing right?

3:11:39

So it's really not about the tool you used.

3:11:42

It is about the intention of what you had behind it.

3:11:43

You clearly wanted to mislead.

3:11:45

So I think the FTC rule is right.

3:11:48

But the the rule should not be oh this should not be created with uh CGI or with AI or whatever have you.

3:11:54

The rule should be don't misrepresent your product.

3:11:56

And for me basically the the singular thing to think about is follow the money. Right?

3:12:02

the money. Right? So when you're f like you know actually in advertising the point you were making is is really really salient which is advertising is all about stats right and and how like something that performs well something doesn't perform well it's very hard to predict how quickly can you

3:12:20

replace the thing that is not performing well and in the gradient of the things that are performing well that will lead to the best output today that cannot be done automatically at all in any visual form of advertising that is done for text advertising it has been algorithmic make for a very long time now and that results in very very good outputs. So

3:12:35

So when companies actually are faced with the idea like okay well like you know on our other products where we can do this it performs so well and on on these products no the regulations they will lobby for the regulations to change on this kind of thing and I think the regulations should be don't misrepresent your product not don't don't use AI. Yeah.

3:12:54

Last question for me what about more narrow AI use cases in Hollywood.

3:13:00

Um I'm interested in like just just like in the VFX pipeline there are um one second let's do sorry I'm scheduling some let's we're doing it live show my question now we're we're going to clip this so it doesn't matter um my question is uh more narrow VFX use cases like uh is there a

3:13:25

single company that's just doing amazing green screen rotoscoping I've seen runway do that in like kind of the proumer arena, but there's so many different pieces of the pipeline that I think artists would be much less jostled by if it's just, hey, I I have to track a camera all the time in 3D. You know,

3:13:44

You know, there's there there's services that do this using traditional um like CPU based pipelines and solvers.

3:13:52

There's IMUs that measure the movement of the camera.

3:13:55

no one really cares about that that particular role.

3:13:59

It's kind of just a hassle that they have to deal with. Um, right.

3:14:02

And and and so all sorts of different more minor vertical AI use cases.

3:14:06

Those feel like point solutions that could be deployed right now.

3:14:08

People could go and get a foothold.

3:14:10

Maybe they expand to oh prompt to movie, but it just in the meantime like how about we just speed up the rotoscoping. Yeah.

3:14:20

Uh I mean why not, right?

3:14:20

So, so for instance, like you know, we released this thing uh it's called refframe.

3:14:26

So, what it does is you give it video in any aspect ratio and it's able to generate like you know any aspect ratio out of it without cropping.

3:14:34

without cropping. So like it will generate like you know if you're if you if you give it a 16 is to9 vertical video and now you want to share it on on YouTube for instance where like vertical videos don't perform well you want something like you know that is horizontal 16 or 16 to9 ideally you can

3:14:49

like you know generate any of these variants any number of these variants all you want and it's a point solution doesn't matter how the original video was made you could have totally created that clip using any traditional methods or whatever have you so I think this is So here's something interesting, right? This is not what you asked me, but but I

3:15:07

This is not what you asked me, but but I promise I'll lead to the answer you you're talking about.

3:15:12

So there at least in my life since I've been conscious about it, uh there's been like, you know, two really big changes before AI.

3:15:20

One was mobile uh and and mobile was a very large consumer side change, right?

3:15:26

Like you know, people changed their behaviors drastically like you know, not overnight obviously, but it looked like overnight to to be honest with you.

3:15:31

overnight to to be honest with you. Y and then the second one happened few years later which was cloud and cloud consumers didn't really it didn't affect them too much right maybe enterprises yeah but it affected companies and companies were done inside out things

3:15:47

they used to do on paper things they used to do on prem things they used to do like you know so these were two very radical transformations but they happened to different segments of the world AI is for the first time at least in my memory uh a transformation that is happening on consumer and enterprise levels. It's basically rewiring

3:16:04

It's basically rewiring companies from the inside and it is changing consumer behavior like nothing else before. Right?

3:16:10

So coming back to your point now, you can take the slow route.

3:16:14

you can say like, "Okay, well, like, you know, let's let's do rotoscoping."

3:16:16

rotoscoping." But the the tiny studio down the street, uh, like, you know, that used to probably just like, you know, create frames for you, uh, up until last year is now going to start releasing stuff that like, you know, uh,

3:16:29

um, looks kind of as good as yours and and now, but they can do like, you know, at at a fast clip uh, and they're they're releasing like, you know, weekly episodes and then iterating on it and and how long will it take before their IP is actually bigger than yours? Mhm. Mhm.

3:16:43

Yeah, it's a good question.

3:16:43

We have seen this happen on YouTube again and again and again and again. Coco Melon, right?

3:16:50

Uh um like it started from nothing and look at this now.

3:16:52

So bigger than a lot of Disney IPs, right?

3:16:54

And Disney I think Disney bought them.

3:16:56

I Disney tried to buy them.

3:16:57

Something happened there.

3:16:57

So um this is basically the the difference.

3:17:02

You can do like you know and there's nothing wrong with it.

3:17:05

You should do the small things.

3:17:06

But if you are in the business of producing content, if you are in the business of of thinking about advertising, if you're in the business of touching pixels, the world is not the same as it was 2 years ago.

3:17:18

And not in a small way, in a very very deep way.

3:17:24

While it might not solve the whole thing for you at the moment, but you have to start really thinking about what would the economics look like a year from now, two years from now, and five years from now, and what what should the business be like exactly? It's great.

3:17:36

Well, this has been great.

3:17:37

We would love to have you back on to uh there's so many different topics we can cover.

3:17:41

So, and I I appreciate how freely that you're willing to speak on on so many different on so many different topics. So, that's the only way. That's the only way.

3:17:49

You just got to be yourself. Awesome.

3:17:51

Well, thank you for tuning in. We'll talk to you soon. Talk soon.

3:17:54

Thanks so much for having us. Cheers. See you guys.

3:17:55

And we have some breaking news from TBPN.

3:17:57

Let's go to the printer cam which I believe working. Here it goes.

3:18:06

Printer cam's readyminal. I see it spinning up.

3:18:08

We got some breaking news.

3:18:10

We got some breaking news. What is this? Traded. We got a trade deal.

3:18:14

He's wanting the timeline is in turmoil.

3:18:19

Special segment starting now.

3:18:19

I love this because it's it's So Periq just became famous.

3:18:23

It's funny in the last few hours.

3:18:26

Not for the reasons that he would necessarily want to be famous. No. No.

3:18:30

Is this a real picture of him?

3:18:30

Do we know or is this random picture?

3:18:31

But this is from Var epsilon says breaking meta open AI anthropic and Google have signed So Periq as fractional chief AI officer.

3:18:42

Obviously a joke but he's been on the timeline all day because apparently he's been working at multiple YC companies, multiple companies at the same time.

3:18:47

Um what's funny is that we were we were working on a uh during the show we were working on a post.

3:18:53

We couldn't decide how to frame the trade deal of Sohome and some fan just did it for us happened.

3:19:03

So, uh, Matt Parker from Anti-Dal was, uh, actually Sohome was their first engineering hire in 2022.

3:19:10

Really smart and likable.

3:19:13

Enjoyed working with him.

3:19:15

We realized pretty quickly that he was working at multiple companies and we let him go.

3:19:18

I can't imagine the amount of equity he's left on the table.

3:19:20

Uh Matt says hiring SOHOM is is a new right of passage DBH any great company should go through it.

3:19:28

Uh so Su Hail was the first person to call this out.

3:19:31

Uh he said this morning or actually it was last night.

3:19:36

So this has been this has been building PSA there's a guy named Sohan Periq in India who works at three or four startups at the same time.

3:19:41

He's been praying on YC companies and more.

3:19:43

Gary is not going to be happy about this.

3:19:46

You do not you don't want to put up the bat.

3:19:50

You know, you don't want Gary people to put up the Gary sign. Nope.

3:19:52

Um, you don't want to go up to against YC companies.

3:19:56

I fired this guy in his first week and told him to stop lying, scamming people. Oh, this is fascinating.

3:20:04

Did you see this from uh Pritika Meta?

3:20:05

Tyler put this in the You want to read this one for us?

3:20:08

He's been all over the place.

3:20:09

Roy said, "I interviewed this guy yesterday." No way. That's amazing.

3:20:13

Tyler, break it down for us.

3:20:14

What does uh Pritika have to say?

3:20:15

Okay, so apparently, I mean, this is still unconfirmed.

3:20:17

I've actually I've sent him an email. Okay. I' I obtained his email.

3:20:20

I'm not sure if it's the real one. We'll see.

3:20:22

Um but she says the dude clears interviews. He's good with that.

3:20:26

After clearing, he has junior people doing all the work.

3:20:28