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[Music] It is Wednesday, July 30th.
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5:04
>> Today is Wednesday, July 30th, 2025.
5:04
We are live from Manhattan, New York. That's right.
5:10
>> The fortress of finance, the capital of capital, the Temple of Technology.
5:12
We brought the Temple of Technology with us to Manhattan.
5:15
We're here live from New York City.
5:19
>> Uh for a few reasons, bunch of stuff.
5:21
We're wearing yellow suits to celebrate RAM's fund raise.
5:23
ramp raise their series E2 today.
5:25
Congratulations team over there.
5:28
Uh we will have Eric Lyman joining the show in just a little bit.
5:32
In about uh 50 minutes, 52 minutes he will be joining.
5:34
But first we got to talk about Mark Zuckerberg who has been completely natified.
5:39
Nat Freriedman has >> they natified my boy >> already having an impact over at Meta.
5:46
Uh Will Depw has the post.
5:46
He says Lmo Zuck has been natified.
5:49
Zuck has been natified. plain text times New Roman now going to hit mainstream corporate media like a bomb and this is from uh Mark Zuckerberg's announcement of his a little bit more into his strategy and product strategy with super intelligence >> for everyone >> for everyone potentially
6:06
>> it's going to be personal >> it's going to be personal >> be a personal thing >> so he says personal super intelligence in uh an H1 clearly HTML tag um in this is all in plain Times New Roman text you can see the post he says Over the last few months, we have begun to see glimpses of our AI systems improving themselves. The the improvement is slow
6:25
The the improvement is slow for now, but undeniable developing super intelligence is now in sight.
6:29
And that's kind of the breaking news.
6:31
This was like when we talked to DJCO over at Neurolink and they said we are starting to see glimpses of superhuman powers from Neurolink patients.
6:40
And we kind of were so in the midst of the conversation that we kind of missed that scoop.
6:44
But um a lot of >> it reminds me of the Buzz Lightyear meme where it's like uh everyone is saying super intelligence is now in sight. >> Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah.
6:54
I mean the question is like it immediately it immediately asks like okay what does that mean?
7:01
Because super intelligence broadly it in some ways it means like higher IQ than any human but also this idea of of it it's self-improving like that is the definition of super intelligence in many realms and so the question is like what was this glimpse is this because you can make the argument that using AI to write code in an at a foundation model lab is super intellged ence even if there's still a human in the loop.
7:31
Do you have to take the human completely out of the loop?
7:34
And then what is the prompt?
7:36
Because if the prompt is just is just go fix this one little bug and it does it and it does it agentically and no one touches it, that's different from the prompt being like improve the system >> or never having to prompt it at all. >> Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
7:47
Because you've you've given it this plan of just >> it's agentically proactively >> it just wants to improving itself. >> Yeah.
7:56
And then there's also >> kind of like how nobody has to tell you to bench press on.
8:00
Um and and yeah and and the flip side is like you can like some of the algorithms for reinforcement learning feel like they are self-improvement because you are not laying down a a specific there are emergent qualities where uh like when they train GPT 4.
8:18
5 it doesn't feel like that was RL on 4chan green texts and yet it gained the ability to do that and make them funny and it wasn't necessarily a like a stated goal and so you could imagine that That's an example of this.
8:32
But all of these are kind of squishy definitions, but uh it's certainly a uh a good rallying cry that we're on the cusp of this and and many of the foundation model lab uh founders and leaders have been kind of like teasing this and and and discussing how much have we seen here.
8:47
But I think everyone would want more concrete evidence.
8:51
>> Zach put out a video on uh I'm sure it was on Instagram and and threads and and uh Facebook and everywhere else.
8:56
But uh the video uh took an interesting angle.
9:01
He basically says he basically was like other players in the industry want to automate all valuable work. >> Yep.
9:08
>> And he his message was effectively we want to give uh super intelligence to the people. >> Yeah.
9:15
>> Um and so Zuck is uh >> yeah he's he's finding his his wedge into the market.
9:19
And he kind of he kind of did that with Instagram and Facebook in some ways in the sense that like he gave everyone a printing press.
9:26
He gave everyone a TV show or a your distribution potentially. It's in the algorithm.
9:34
algorithm. You still have to win, but everyone has the ability to publish now >> thanks to and YouTube and a lot of other services of course, but you know the modern social media networks enable anyone at basically zero cost to stand
9:49
up an operation that previously had very high fixed costs y in the sense of like you needed to own a TV channel or put wires in the ground or buy a radio tower to distribute your content and now you can just click a button and go live or something like that. >> Yeah. And the messaging was broadly >> Yeah.
10:02
And the messaging was broadly around AI to help you improve yourself, level up, learn, things like that.
10:07
So it's very >> uh optimistic message far different than uh what some other executives in the industry have shared which is all white like the side most extreme where it's like we're not even going to give anyone this product like we are going to have full control over the super intelligence.
10:26
We're building the same thing but we're distributing it.
10:28
Zuck wants to make it free for five billion people and Ilia so far, you know, he hasn't really talked about this too much, but the vibe has been no one will have access to it.
10:38
It will it will be so completely self-contained and so a dramatic shift from >> the anthropic anthropic as well was saying, you know, all white collar work or 50% of white collar work being replaced.
10:50
>> Yeah, they kind of walked that back short timeline.
10:52
>> But yeah, uh so the white collar work thing is interesting because Zuck does address that a little bit.
10:56
So let's just read through a little bit more of his post.
10:58
He says, "It seems clear that in the coming years, AI will improve all of our existing systems and enable the creation and discovery of new things that aren't imaginable today, but it's an open question what we what we will direct super intelligence towards."
11:08
And this is the question on like white collar work, I suppose.
11:11
Um, in some ways, this will be a new era for humanity, but in others, it's just a continuation of historical trends.
11:17
As recently as 200 years ago, this reminds me of that guy saying like 300 years ago, we were living in caves.
11:24
Um, but this is actually true.
11:26
uh 200 years ago 90% of farmer 90% of people of humans were farmers growing food to survive.
11:34
Advances in technology have steadily freed much of humanity to focus on less sub less on sub subsistence subsistence farming farming for yourself growing food just to keep yourself alive.
11:43
You need food so you grow the food and then you immediately eat it and then you go back to working on the food. um and more on choose.
11:50
At each step, people have used our newfound productivity to achieve more than was previously possible, pushing the frontiers of science and health, as well as spending more time on creativity, culture, relationships, and enjoying life.
12:01
I am extremely optimistic that super intelligence will help humanity accelerate our pace of progress.
12:06
But perhaps even more important that super intelligence has the potential to begin a new era of personal empowerment where every where people will have greater agency to improve the world in the directions they choose.
12:17
As profound as the abundance produced by AI one may one day be an even more meaningful impact on our lives will likely come from everyone having a personal super intelligence that helps you achieve your goals.
12:29
Create whatever you want to see in the world.
12:31
experience any adventure, be a better friend to you, those you care about and grow to become the person you aspire to be.
12:37
Meta's vision is to bring personal super intelligence to everyone.
12:40
We believe in putting this power in people's hands to direct it towards what they value in their own lives.
12:44
Yeah, super intelligence for the people.
12:46
This is distinct from others in the industry, not naming names, who believe super intelligence should be directed centrally towards automating all valuable work and then humanity will live on a dole of its output.
12:57
At Meta, we believe that people pursuing their individual aspirations is always how we have made progress.
13:03
Um, >> you know, a job that was impacted by technology, >> what >> uh knocker uppers.
13:09
>> Uh, these were human alarm clocks that would walk the streets of London with either a long stick or a device to shoot uh frozen peas at windows to wake up workers in the morning. So before real?
13:22
>> Yeah, this was a real thing.
13:22
uh before uh uh clocks, alarm clocks specifically were were widely used, you would you would effectively pay somebody a small amount >> to come up to your window in the morning and hit it with a long stick or shoot it with peas.
13:35
So, this was a job that was uh impacted by uh again uh alarm clocks becoming widespread.
13:43
>> How'd the uh the Rooster industrial complex fare with that?
13:45
Yeah, the roosters were down were rocked by >> the original alarm clock.
13:50
The original alarm clock.
13:51
I would I would uh if I didn't have neighbors, I think I'd get a rooster.
13:55
I have you ever like Have you ever Have you ever spent uh Yeah, they were called knocker uppers.
13:59
Um have you ever spent Have you ever like stayed at a farm a chicken and accidentally >> accidentally got a rooster? Yeah, that happens. >> It was fine.
14:09
It wasn't that big of a deal. I wake up pretty early.
14:11
>> No, it's I mean it's nice as an adult like somewhere around 5:00 a. m. it starts making noise.
14:14
It's kind of a nice noise. >> No, I get up earlier. I wake the rooster up.
14:18
I get >> John wakes up the rooster.
14:21
>> You walk out in your in your yellow in your ramp suit. >> Peas at the rooster. >> In your ramp suit. Just >> Yeah. Um >> very good.
14:29
Well, uh speaking of white collar work, uh the Fed holds rates steady, but two officials are backing a cut.
14:37
Uh there's dissent at the Fed uh highlighting a fraying consensus among policy makers who are debating the effects that tariffs will have on the economy and inflation.
14:45
So the journal just put this out a few minutes ago.
14:47
The Federal Reserve held rates steady for the fifth straight meeting Wednesday but are faced with rare dissents from two officials seeking an immediate cut.
14:58
>> These are officials within the Fed. >> Yes.
15:00
The decision follow >> obviously they're facing >> there's another there's another official who's who's also in agreement with them. >> Venture capitalists.
15:06
venture capitalists and uh you know I was thinking about that the other day.
15:09
It is is it it is interesting that uh >> uh that you know if you look at real estate and private equity yeah >> uh uh VCs you know always get me for for benefiting from low rates but in many ways VCs can continue to deploy into companies because they're just >> betting on that company's prospects over a very long period of time.
15:29
if you're trying to deploy into real estate and traditional private equity when rates are high, things are way way less workable.
15:36
So, I think it's I think big real estate and big PE are really trying to shift the the ZERP blame on uh on the venture capital class and I won't stand for it. >> Yeah.
15:45
I mean, there were a lot of companies that like startups, they got hurt during the interest rate rise.
15:48
Some of them some fintexs were sensitive to rates, but many weren't.
15:53
I mean, you think about banking products and if they're like all of a sudden we went from offering our customers 2% interest on their deposits to 6% or 5% and that just allows us to take, you know, a fraction of a larger, you know, uh, interest rate uh, payout every month.
16:13
That actually improved their economics. >> Yeah.
16:15
Mercury is the best example of this.
16:16
Every every time the >> Were they were they profitable? >> Yeah. Yeah. They're printing money. They still are.
16:21
Um and uh every time the Fed would hold a meeting, their revenue would basically go up immediately with no they didn't need to hire new people.
16:30
Like it's just default based on the Fed >> funds rate.
16:32
So So that kind of like, you know, it hurt some of the fintex, it helped some of the fintex and then a lot of just the normal software companies were like completely unaffected sort of loosely broadly >> loosely affected because maybe VCs couldn't raise their next fund. >> Yeah.
16:44
But it was like very as opposed to like we know examples of people who uh started real estate rollup plays, bought a bunch of facilities, put got variable interest loans on them and then >> and are now producing like 1% yield. >> Yeah. Exactly.
16:57
And then when the interest rates went up their mortgage payments on all those assets went through the roof and all of a sudden they were upside down on all of their economics. So So very rough. >> Yeah.
17:06
If you went heavy into SF real estate in 2018, 2019, 2020 on variable rate uh loans, you just have gotten >> even the meme of like buy a boring business.
17:16
That that's the example I'm thinking of is is okay, you bought a you bought a boring business that cash flows, you know, a million dollars a year, but you bought it such that you have, you know, okay, 500,000 of that cash flow was going to service the debt that you use to buy the asset.
17:30
and then all of a sudden your interest payment on that loan doubles, then you're not making any net profit all of a sudden.
17:38
And that really puts you >> So Fed officials maintain their benchmark policy rate in a range between 4. 25% and 4 and a.
17:43
5% as they weighed how importers, retailers, and consumers will split the costs of bigger gong hits uh sorry cost of higher duties on imports.
17:54
the outcome of hand toam combat over who will bear the burden of tariffs figures to shape the trajectory of inflation and hiring later this year which could resolve whether and when the central bank resumes cuts in the months ahead.
18:06
So hinting at a September rate cut or at least that's how people are are kind of like reading through the lines here. >> Yeah.
18:13
I mean also we we we blew out the GDP numbers, right? It was like 2.
18:15
2 was the expectation came in at three. >> Three. >> Amazing. >> Quick hit.
18:23
A lot of people are a lot of people are Yeah, we got a uh we have a new gong here in in uh the great city of New York. >> Okay.
18:32
I I want to go back to the the personal super intelligence thing for a for a little bit with Zuck.
18:35
So, um this is distinct from others in the industry who believe super intelligence should be directed centrally towards automating all valuable work.
18:43
It feels like maybe a shot at SSI or anthropic or open AI, but I feel like I've noticed that Sam is Yeah, maybe.
18:51
Uh is they're turning down Zuck's billion dollar offers.
18:53
Um which we'll get to >> allegedly.
18:55
>> allegedly. But um the the interesting thing there is that I feel like Sam Alman's been sort of pivoting his rhetoric around this and he said something similar uh recently where uh I think it was in the soft singularity he said in that blog post he said uh
19:10
something similar to as recently as 200 years ago 90% of people were farmers and his point was if you went back in time and you showed a subsistence farmer in the year 1800 hey uh there are these people like let me take you on a tour of the modern an economy. Here's someone
19:25
Here's someone whose job is >> is email. >> Is email. >> Yeah.
19:29
That that that's that that that like 100 years from now we're going to look back and be like nine, you know, like >> why were they doing email?
19:36
>> Everybody that went to school became an email professional. >> It's like Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
19:39
Or like calendaring or phone calls.
19:42
>> I mean, wait, they had to use the computer. They had to type.
19:43
They had to like physically hit the button.
19:47
>> Why didn't the robots just do that? Yeah. Right.
19:49
>> Why do you need key if it if it's a if it's a machine?
19:51
Why do you need to hit >> Yeah.
19:52
And it's scary because it's like Okay.
19:54
Well, like if I'm not doing that, am I doing anything? >> I like my email job. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
19:57
My email job is directly tied to to my >> my self worth. >> Yeah. And my subsistence.
20:00
I'm a subsistence emailer. >> Yeah.
20:04
>> Um and it's the same thing if you went back and said uh to somebody in 1800, hey, you're growing food, but in the future you won't you won't have a job as a farmer.
20:10
They'd be like, well then I'm screwed, right? Like I'm I'm done for.
20:15
It's like no, you'll have an email job.
20:17
>> You'll be able to you'll be able to do email all day.
20:19
Um but uh uh we need to debate more about like what this actual product looks like because we were talking about that earlier and I have a post from Brad Lycap saying uh at OpenAI saying learning is the most common chat GPT use case by far.
20:31
We have heard a lot from students Like we we know that when you they're charging you 20 bucks or $200 a month because it's expensive.
21:49
And we were talking to George Hotz about this and he was saying like they're losing money on me uh just because of the inference cost. >> Yeah.
21:56
Claude came out yesterday and said one person was costing them tens of thousands of dollars a month on their $200 a month plan. >> Exactly.
22:02
There was also so uh Sam is projecting to spend 35 billion on inference and 55 billion on training models between 2025 and 2027.
22:09
So >> I'm less worried about the training model. I see that as capex.
22:13
I'm I'm more thinking about the total inference cost right now across all the major labs.
22:19
Like it's got to be in the billions.
22:21
It's probably not in the hundreds of billions.
22:22
If you look at how much OpenAI and Anthropic have raised and how much they're burning, a lot of that goes towards salaries.
22:27
But if you just look at the actual inference cost, it feels like Mark Zuckerberg could eat that cost for a long time. Yeah.
22:33
>> And then if he wants to keep it free, there's the very logical path which is ads.
22:38
He already has the most robust, most targeted ad network, and he can bring all those ads in and start monetizing those users.
22:44
And so the more you're using, the more ads you see. It's perfectly aligned. It's an auction.
22:48
And so someone who's doing low low economically valuable work will see like cheaper ads.
22:55
It's perfectly price discriminated.
22:56
So I don't see Meta as having problem like scaling inference and keeping it free.
23:01
The question we're going back. Yeah. >> Yeah.
23:04
The questions I have are that that wasn't exactly answered here.
23:05
Although reading between the lines, it's maybe less important.
23:09
It sounds like a shift in strategy, but doesn't when I read that announcement, I don't think oh they're going to go heavy into open source.
23:16
>> Like that doesn't scream that doesn't scream uh we want to be the the number one open source model.
23:20
They might still, but this feels more like an application play to me.
23:23
uh the areas that uh you can imagine Zuck wants to dominate in are in create the the action of creation.
23:29
So content creation heavily ties into the meta ecosystem already.
23:33
Uh their business is dependent on you know billions of people globally creating content all day long.
23:39
Some professionally, some recreationally, but all of those people he wants to serve there.
23:44
Uh the knowledge kind of learning I think uh he's signaling here that he cares about.
23:49
He clearly understands that Jad GBT has incredible PMF around uh around just like learning, understanding the world, etc. Yep.
23:56
Um and I could see him playing there.
23:59
The areas that I'm interested to track uh going forward are are how much uh how much how much resources go into this companionship, right?
24:08
That's another area that's like driving up user minutes on chat GPT, right?
24:12
right? and and we've talked about it before that can ultimately threaten the time that you know if people start spending two hours a day with Chad GBT that's potentially two hours a day that they're you know maybe maybe they have it on audio mode and they're still using
24:24
Instagram but it's you know potentially threatening uh user minutes on his platforms and then the big one uh probably a long shot but just search right I'm sure he's always want you know search multi- trillion dollar market very uh >> he was going to launch a search engine
24:40
for a while like there was a where you like the search bar in Facebook so that you could search the webc the other thing here to track is the other thing here to track is uh threads we we got to like do a proper like new deep dive on threads I don't think when
24:58
it launched we didn't even have the show but um uh it it sort of launched peaked in the charts fell off completely but I think it's building back up there's actually quite a lot of activity there and he's going to have confidence to see like okay I have WhatsApp I Instagram. I
25:10
I have all these different platforms that I can drive users to.
25:13
I have the best ad engine in the in the world. Yep.
25:16
If I want to if I want uh MSL to create these like new consumer applications, I'm going to have the ability to get those in front of billions and billions of people.
25:25
So, it is a massive unfair advantage on the uh just like training and inference and like capex side and then massive distribution advantage.
25:32
Open AI has benefited from you know tremendous organic virality.
25:34
Everything from just people telling their friends to these studio Giblly moments, >> etc.
25:40
Um but uh but yeah, it'll be interesting to see, okay, where does he really want to compete?
25:44
Does it look like something like chat GBT that chat GBT again is this like incredible tool that allows you to do all these, you know, anything you want. You can study with it. It can keep you company.
25:53
Um it can uh help you with your homework.
25:55
It can help you write emails.
25:57
Uh it'll transcribe a meeting.
25:59
It'll it'll make an S1 for you, right?
26:01
Um and so that those are the big things.
26:04
It's like, okay, we have a much better sense now of where the team is going to be focused.
26:09
Again, it doesn't read like open source to me.
26:11
Um, but it's still there's so many different ways that you can kind of like chop up the uh the category and the opportunity.
26:17
>> I have a rebuttal, but first I'm going to tell you about Vanta.
26:20
>> Automate compliance and sec security and trust with Vant. Go to vanta. com to check it out.
26:24
Um, so my rebuttal is that uh the so the the the question that I have I agree with a lot of what you said.
26:32
I guess the question is um I have this personal super intelligence.
26:36
Do I want it in a meta property app right now or do we need a new app?
26:40
And then if I need a new app, that's really hard.
26:43
>> That's what I was saying. Well, really hard.
26:45
But at the same time, how many ways I I I redownloaded threads because I kept getting notifications and it would tell me something to to the effect like it would give me three words out of like an interesting, you know, post and I could only see it if I redownloaded it. Right. Yeah.
27:00
And so, uh, >> I'm just wondering about if I if I'm if I'm interacting if I go to Instagram to do my homework, I'm going to get sucked into reals, right?
27:10
And it's like I want to go to the library to study and chatbt feels like a library and it's been very difficult even if you have massive distribution to actually scale share of queries even even I mean threads 7% right now.
27:30
So, so threads I think is a special case potentially because of the political dynamic of Elon Musk whereas with there's no political dynamic between catchup and Gemini Google has massive distribution they've been able to get to 450 million DAUs or ma but they haven't
27:48
been able to break over like 10% of queries share of queries something like that and so I I wonder if you know you launch a consumer app for studying and their personal super intelligence like the logical way to distribute Meta's AI
28:04
projects and products is through their existing platforms and so >> yeah and you can imagine that you're in the Instagram tab you have a boring picture it it gibly it makes a Giblly version of it >> even if you're in like imagine you're in a study group for with with a couple
28:18
people in the same class in a WhatsApp chat and then there's there's a super intelligent person there's a super intelligent agent or AI in the chat with you and you can talk to it and you can answer it right so and to be clear they have the Meta AI app. Sounds like you're
28:28
Sounds like you're not a DAOU yet.
28:30
Uh but but it's number three on productivity.
28:33
I imagine Zach wants to get that to number one. I could imagine.
28:37
Uh the other form factor here is obviously glasses, right?
28:39
He's just invested billions into owning a piece of Luxodica.
28:44
I imagine as part of that investment, he gets >> he's going to probably make it so that other AI assistants can't get access to >> that's actually maybe the better like personal super intelligence like tutor.
28:56
No, >> he says that in the video.
28:56
He says that in the video a lot of a lot of a lot of what he says in the video glasses to read a book if you have if you're you know far-sighted you put on the glasses and so you put on the glasses to study and then it's it's seeing the textbook that you're interacting with.
29:08
It's seeing your screen and you do and but but specifically like the meta ray bands don't have the ability to show you an endless stream of reels and that's what I'm most worried about is that if if >> No, they do though. Do you remember that? Do you remember that?
29:22
>> Yeah, Orion does but not the metaver.
29:23
>> I know but that's where we're going. >> Yeah, I don't know.
29:24
Maybe m maybe it's >> you don't think they want to merge Orion and Ray in the future? >> I I don't know.
29:30
I just think that like it it would be like >> I mean it's already two different products.
29:36
If I have two choose two different products for an educational uh like environment and I have one that's adree and distraction free and the other one is like do you want to see this amazingly viral review?
29:49
amazingly viral review? Not yeah I'm not betting I'm not that I'm not betting that American uh students will be using Instagram to study with them at all but uh but yeah it does feel like you know Zuck's vision is uh the the this this is he's making a big bet on on uh you know vision VR AR being uh the future computing platform he talks about this
30:10
saying you know you're going to be in your kitchen looking at your fridge and it's going to be like hey did you know that you could make this kind of quesadilla I see you have the ingredients I'll give you a recipe and then you just like make it and it guides you through it and then again like you said you're reading uh a textbook and it and it's popping up. Uh you can ask
30:24
Uh you can ask questions in real time to the AI based on the information that you're seeing or you're studying or or even the the interesting data point I think it was yesterday they came out and they're saying they're letting applicants use AI in coding interviews. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
30:38
>> Which is >> total cluey victory. >> Total cluey victory.
30:39
Uh uh credit credit to Roy Lee there for making uh making cheating uh >> controversial branding but directionally correct. Yeah, for sure.
30:48
Um well, let's go into the the big potentially bigger bottleneck for super intelligence at MSL.
30:56
Uh but first let me tell you about linear meet the system for modern software development.
30:59
Linear is a purpose-built tool for planning and building products.
31:02
Uh so uh interesting comment this comes from uh Rehar Jark.
31:07
Uh an interesting comment from former Meta employee.
31:10
Energy is the biggest bottleneck right now.
31:11
Even if Meta wants to spend a hundred to $150 billion on capex for AI infrastructure, they can't.
31:19
It's not just Nvidia, it's not TSMC, transformers, power equipment, cooling equipment, and the availability of power is all limited right now.
31:25
Schneider Electric is completely booked until 2030.
31:29
Uh even if you have the money, you can't spend it.
31:31
This is from Oh, this is a screenshot from like a GLG call or TGUS call or something. Uh, he won't. Uh, so is he serious?
31:38
It must be Alpha Sense or something like that.
31:40
Uh, so they're talking about Meta Capex and they talk to this anonymous expert who is clearly a former Meta employee says, "Yeah, there's no way you can spend $150 billion right now.
31:51
If we look at any of the transformers, not the not the machine learning architecture, but the actual physical energy transformers or any power equipment or cooling equipment or even construction or availability of power, there's no way it's going to happen.
32:04
You talk about if you talk about Schneider who supplies a lot of the power equipment, they're completely full until 2030.
32:09
They're not negotiating on price.
32:12
It's basically you're lucky to get an order.
32:14
Everyone talks about Nvidia, but there are many other things beyond Nvidia for this thing.
32:16
Even if you have the money, you can't spend it.
32:20
And Josh Steyman quoted this post and said, "If you're an American engineer and want to lead the technical aspect of building a transformer company, my DMs are open."
32:27
So apparently uh there is an American >> a new American uh transformer.
32:33
>> Remember I've been asking I asked the transformer and I also some uh some semi analysis folks like we've all learned about Nvidia, then we all learned about TSMC, then we all learned about ASML, then we learned about SKH Highix, the memory supplier.
32:47
like we've learned the entire supply chain of AI and I was like what's the next company we're all going to need to learn about and it sounds like it's Schneider Electric.
32:53
I've never heard of this company before today but we got to we got to dig in and understand do they have competitors? Is there an opportunity? What's going on?
32:59
I'm very curious to know how electric works.
33:01
Um but uh continuing on Zuck, >> this is a uh French company.
33:09
>> French company >> founded in 1863. >> Founder mode.
33:12
So, they're uh I don't think they're still going to be hard to be in founder mode if you got started back in the 1800s, but uh they did about uh 36 uh billion dollars in 2023.
33:22
So, massive massive company >> market cap >> uh 137 billion uh euros. >> Okay.
33:32
>> Um so, I don't know, that's like what a billion USD >> 50 bucks.
33:35
Uh anyway, uh Will Depw says, "The bigger story is not that Zuck is giving out $400 million offers.
33:41
It's that people are turning them down.
33:43
What that might what might that mean?"
33:45
Of course, Will works at OpenAI.
33:49
>> Uh Zuck is not conflicted at all.
33:52
>> Zuck is targeting Mirror's Lab thinking machines with offers between 200 to 500 million made to a quarter of their team and and one over$1 billion and not a single person has taken the offer.
34:01
And there's uh there's some people going back and forth on like what that means.
34:06
Maybe you just believe in the mission and you already have 1% of the company and you think it's going to be worth a couple hundred billion.
34:11
So you're like, "Yeah, I'll just wait and deliver on this and I think we're going to win."
34:15
Uh you could also not want to go work at a big company. There are variety.
34:19
>> Also, if you've worked in AI for the last four years as a top researcher and you're not worth at least 50 million by now, like what are you doing? >> Yeah.
34:29
A lot of the thinking machines folks like the reason people speak so highly of them is that they were at other foundation labs great labs early on and probably got big stock grants that have grown a ton.
34:38
Um >> but they've been able to get liquidity against and yeah I mean there's so much information warfare happening right now right there's so many different incentives for people to say oh it was this offer and they turned it down or there was no offer made or it was you know somebody from Meta was chiming in and saying like we made a few offers one was big but there's a lot of misinformation here.
34:56
The real problem is is that there aren't >> bull market and misinformation >> for sure.
35:01
The the the real problem is that there aren't there aren't enough luxury goods.
35:06
>> Like if if Zuck really wants to make people bite at a billion dollar offer, like what's the difference between making hundred million a year and making a billion?
35:13
It's like what are you going to buy? Yeah, maybe a boat.
35:14
But he should start a new watch company.
35:16
A higherend Rishard Mill, >> you know, $5 million entry point.
35:21
>> I think I think you're on to something.
35:22
>> You need a a hypercar company that starts at $75 million.
35:24
just buy the top five >> somehow.
35:28
I don't think this stuff appeals to AI researchers.
35:31
>> You don't see a lot of them. They're immune. They're flex culture. >> Yeah.
35:34
>> But yeah, I mean also if they're super AGI pled like they just are like what's the value of money in a couple years? Who knows?
35:39
We're going to be in a completely different economy.
35:40
There's a whole bunch of different uh there's a whole bunch of different reasons, but maybe they like the team. >> Yeah.
35:45
The the other thing is uh I think many people will be uniquely motivated by winning and challenges and uh and then and then having a you know do you want to be one of the top five people at thinking machines or do you want to be the number 30 the 35th you know researcher at at a bigger organization.
36:09
Um a lot of people want to have that.
36:11
There's also been so much like mimedic warfare around this where like if you take the offer you're instantly branded as a mercenary forever and you can never be seen as a missionary.
36:19
>> I was getting I was getting some notes from a from a few people about uh so we released the medicine list uh uh a a collection of top AI a loose a loose collection of top AI researchers yesterday. >> Cool people.
36:32
>> It's just a bunch of cool people.
36:32
Uh Alan Turing people were pissed that he was included.
36:36
Uh they said he fell off >> was underrated. >> Um founder of Julian.
36:41
>> But uh but yeah, there was some I was getting some interesting notes around a handful of people in the top 25 saying, you know, this person was kicked off of every team that they've ever worked on.
36:50
>> Uh which is which is funny.
36:50
They got to be way lower.
36:52
They shouldn't even be on the list.
36:54
>> Um so >> anyway, it was all in good fun.
36:55
We love everyone on that list and many more.
36:57
And we're going to expand it and add to it and have more fun with it.
37:00
Hopefully >> eventually everybody will be a a researcher.
37:04
And the other thing is uh Elon came out yesterday uh right after we published the met list saying they don't have any researchers anymore. Everybody's engineers.
37:12
I think it's a good framing.
37:13
I think uh it's very possible that some researchers want to selfidentify as engineers.
37:18
And if you're an engineer, I think it's cool to all be in the same bucket.
37:23
And so I think that I think that can make a lot of sense for XAI's culture.
37:27
>> Well, whether you're a researcher or an engineer, you got to get on Graphite Code review for the Age of AI.
37:30
Graphite helps teams on GitHub ship higher quality software faster.
37:34
Um, it is an interesting debate about I are we in an age of of of research or engineering at this point and and it feels like Elon is the master of engineering and is and is rarely trying to come up with like >> and infrastructure >> completely yeah infrastructure.
37:50
He's rarely trying to come up with like the completely novel new science.
37:53
He but he believes that Grock at a certain point will be able to do that.
37:58
But but uh if you see how fast he's >> going for the greatest feats of >> engineering engineering and that's and that's the culture is like engineering.
38:08
>> He's like I started a research I started a research nonprofit almost a decade ago >> called OpenAI. I'm over researching. >> I'm over researching.
38:16
I'm doing engineering now.
38:17
>> Anyway, let's read uh through Ben Thompson's analysis of the Figma S1, the Figma OS, and Figma's AI potential.
38:21
We have a course in Manhattan for Figma's IPO tomorrow.
38:26
We're very excited about that.
38:29
>> We will be live from NY, the New York Stock Exchange. Yes. Cannot wait.
38:33
>> So, uh, Bloomberg has a story here.
38:35
Figma's initial public offering is approaching 40 times overs subscribed according to people familiar with the matter. Is that good?
38:41
>> The design and collaboration software.
38:44
Well, we'll have to we'll have to ask everyone tomorrow if it's good.
38:45
Um, >> should they get the same revenue multiple as oversubscribed they are?
38:50
>> Could be the year the year's most in demand listing.
38:52
The company is guiding prospective investors at its IPO, which could raise as much as 1.
38:56
2 2 billion is expected to price above the market uh the marketed range.
39:00
The people said the San Francisco based firm and some investors are offering 36.
39:04
9 million shares at 30 to $32 per share after increasing the range Monday from 25 to $28 each.
39:12
Order taking is expected to end at noon on Tuesday in New York.
39:18
Bloomberg News has reported overs subscription refers to when the number of orders for shares in the IPO exceeds shares that were originally offered.
39:23
And so um >> lot of demand for Figma shares which makes sense.
39:28
Uh it has been one of the most in demand secondary >> uh helps you think build faster.
39:32
It helps design and development teams build great products together. What's not to like?
39:38
>> Nothing like mixing an ad into at least this is Ben Thompson's analysis, right?
39:42
So >> Ben Thompson is not sponsored by Figma. No, at least not.
39:46
So, um uh uh % and excluding onetime fees, the company is profitable with a 24% free cash flow margin.
40:22
We had a friend of the show come on and break down the S1 when the when the numbers dropped and it was kind of like the dream case for for SAS, >> right?
40:32
coming out and immediately being the top, you know, from a purely metrics based look, the top SAS company in >> public SAS company.
40:41
>> And and and of course, uh a lot of people point to the rule of 40.
40:43
You add the growth rate to the burn rate, how much money you're losing.
40:47
If you're losing a lot of money, but you're growing really fast, that's fine.
40:49
Uh if you're if you're making a ton of money, but growing slower, either way, they should add up to at least 40%. Higher the better.
40:56
And if you add uh Figma's uh up, they are they are in the 70%.
40:59
So well beyond 40 40% uh according to the rule of 40, which is of course exciting to the venture capitalists who popularized the rule of 40.
41:08
Um >> they basically created profitability.
41:12
>> So he says, I think you can make the case that an $18 billion valuation is in fact too low.
41:15
Indeed, I think you can make the company make the case that the company is worth more than 20 billion.
41:19
Adobe agreed to buy it for 20 billion back in 2022.
41:22
Uh that of course is despite the rise of generative AI which at first glance appear to be a threat to Figma because you just go to chatbt and say hey build me a collaborative software tool and maybe it just mistakes don't make mistakes.
41:37
Um but he says I would go in the other direction generative generative AI and the opportunity it resents represents is exactly why Figma should go public as field strongly suggests uh and get ready to be acquisitive.
41:51
Get ready to get ready to get bought. >> Do some deals.
41:55
We love We love a Dylan Field deal. >> The Figma OS.
41:58
Ben says, "The reason why I'm optimistic about Figma comes from my belief that Figma is not simply design software.
42:04
Rather, it's something much more fundamental and valuable, an operating system with a collaboration built in."
42:09
Here is how I explain Figma back when Adobe tried to acquire them.
42:14
Uh, forgive the long excerpt, he says, but it really is the point as far as my optimism about Figma is concerned.
42:18
He says here, "It is important to note that Figma's most prominent victim to date has not been Adobe, but rather Sketch.
42:27
The explosion in apps led to a growing market for product and design.
42:29
Product design and development as designers needed to lay out a whole host of different app views, and developers needed to know what exactly the designers wanted them to build.
42:38
Photoshop and Illustrator, which were primarily focused on the creation and editing of single files, were the completely wrong tools for the job.
42:46
Sketch, which was released in 2010 as a Mac OS app and is still Mac OS only, although it now includes the ability to view files on the web, completely took the category by storm.
42:55
Adobe Adobe eventually responded with Adobe XD, but not until um 2015, and the product is still in third place.
43:04
Sketch, though, is now only in second.
43:07
>> Really quickly, let me tell you about adquick. com.
43:08
Out of home advertising made easy and measurable. Continue, Jordy.
43:12
>> Chris, the uh CEO of Adqu is in New York as well.
43:15
We're going to try to meet up with him in a little bit.
43:16
Uh Sketch was not a disruptive product.
43:18
It was like Adobe's products a desktop app.
43:20
It just delivered a solution to an emerging product category that Adobe was slow to respond to.
43:27
And that was like the designing of web and and mobile products.
43:30
Figma though was something completely new.
43:33
The company which was founded in 2012 made a bet on the browser and spent a full four years building V1 of the product.
43:39
building V1 of the product. this included which is just so funny because normally if you talk to a founder building a software company and they said yeah I'm I'm I'm three years in and I haven't shipped an MVP you would just immediately write the company off because like you know why haven't you
43:52
shipped in this case it was necessary uh >> you quit your job raise $10 million vibe reel launch video slo like product in two seconds like that's the that's the flow and then a ton of bugs and then and then sort it out and then maybe it works but it's a >> don't worry about securing personally identifiable information uh at all. Just
44:08
Just get to the top of the charts and figure it out later.
44:13
Um so this included writing the editor in C++ compiling it to JavaScript you using the ASM.
44:18
js subset that let it achieve desktop like control of memory and performance and building its own rendering engine from scratch using WebGL which had only been released in 2011.
44:29
WebGL was the the Y now for the business and Dylan was very early to recognizing that.
44:35
It was the epitome of leveraging new technologies to compete on a new vector which in this case was collaboration.
44:43
>> And uh you know anybody anybody under the age of 25 like probably doesn't remember the pre uh prefigma era but like having different files and sending them back and forth and like sending comments by email.
44:54
It's just like it it um uh even even personally I I only briefly was was working without having access to uh Figma.
45:02
So uh Ben says, "Think about my brief description for this product design and development segment.
45:09
Multiple app views created by design and implemented by engineering imply at least two different people working on a project, a designer and a developer.
45:16
In reality, the huge number of views and increased functionality in apps meant that there was an increasingly large teams on both sides.
45:23
Sketch definitely made it easier to design an app in one place, but it did nothing to make it easier for teams to work on the app together.
45:28
Figma because it was native to the web effectively got collaboration for free from the beginning.
45:35
>> Yeah, this is a crazy screenshot.
45:35
I don't know if we can show this, but uh on on Figma's website, the company compares itself to Adobe XD.
45:42
But I use Photoshop and Illustrator. Don't stop.
45:47
We believe you should use the best tool for the job.
45:48
If you're photo editing, choose Adobe Photoshop.
45:50
If you're doing detailed illustrations, Adobe Illustrator is a no-brainer.
45:53
But if you're looking for the best tool for UX design, Figma is here for you.
45:57
Plus, you can easily import images and SVG code into Figma and have your cake and eat it, too.
46:04
And so, putting the competitor's products right there.
46:06
So, eventually Photoshop and Adobe did launch a competitor called XD.
46:10
Uh, and XD wound up is getting killed by Figma, but no one ever subscribed to Creative Cloud for XD.
46:16
You just used it because it was here, says Ben Thompson.
46:18
Here's the problem, though.
46:20
To the extent that Adobe's products were being used as part of Figma's workflow was the extent to which Adobe was slowly but surely losing control of its long-term relevance.
46:29
Figma could, for example, start investing much more heavily into its photo editing or illustration capabilities, rendering Adobe's products increasingly unnecessary.
46:35
What is more threatening is Figma's cross-platform capabilities.
46:39
Third party developers can build plugins for Figma that make it possible to easily add the sort of editing capabilities.
46:45
So, uh, regulators blocked the Adobe deal.
46:47
Uh and Ben Thompson says he thinks it was correct.
46:51
The regulators got it correct that time and uh based on the run that Figma's been on ever since, it seems like it could be a win for them as well.
46:58
Uh and and it's interesting because a lot of >> sane roller coaster for the team. Yeah.
47:04
uh and and Figma, I think during the acquisition process, clearly didn't have the insane urgency to launch new products because they thought they were going to uh you know, Adobe and and would be part of an organization with a bunch of different individual apps and and watching how they reacted after it was blocked and then came and just started shipping like crazy.
47:26
>> So, the has gone after some some mergers that have made no sense like they I believe they blocked >> like Roomba >> the Roomba one.
47:33
Yeah, that one didn't make sense.
47:35
The worst example I can think of is Meta bought a VR fitness app and they said that Meta was trying to create a monopoly in the VR fitness market, which is just not a market at all.
47:45
It doesn't even exist and I don't know anyone that does VR fitness and it's very rare.
47:48
And so it totally makes sense to let that team get an exit and go hang out at Meta and try and work on this until >> creating the market for >> creating the market and then as soon as it takes off there's going to be a ton of competitors immediately and so it seems like totally fine to let that one go through.
48:02
Um and then there are there are other sides where uh where like truly there are like two players and they're merging and there's going to be a lot of a lot of uh competitive dynamics that come from that.
48:11
Anyway, uh let me tell you about uh Bezel pre-owned luxury watches authenticated in-house.
48:17
bezel is the top marketplace in the world for authenticated luxury watches.
48:20
Um, >> and again, just more context, so Amazon uh Amazon's acquisition of iRoot, the maker of Roomba, was blocked due to antitrust concerns, which was primarily from the European Commission.
48:30
They were worried about uh >> uh a monopoly in home robotics, I guess, and uh the CEO ended up just resigning.
48:41
What's interesting is like the the the robotic vacuum market is extremely competitive because of uh a lot of the Chinese companies uh Uffy and there's a few others like it is definitely not as much of like it's it feels like a lot less of a sticky pro product because yes it maps your home and it's supposed to learn but really if you move to a new place and you get a different robot vacuum cleaner like you're pretty much good after a day.
49:03
You're not like oh I can't get out of the Roomba ecosystem whereas like even Sonos is stickier than that.
49:08
Uh, and so I I never had a problem with that.
49:10
>> And iRoot, uh, shares are down 95% uh, over the last uh, looking over there.
49:18
>> Oh, it actually got blocked and then they just got cooked.
49:20
>> Yeah, they actually went public uh, July 31st, 2020. >> No way.
49:24
>> Stock popped to $133 a share by early 2021.
49:27
It's now sitting at $428.
49:30
>> What's the market cap? >> Uh, 130 million. >> 130 million.
49:34
>> So, a little bit of value destruction from uh, the European.
49:35
Imagine how frustrating that'd be.
49:38
You're like, I think I'm getting out to like the most logical acquirer possible.
49:41
Um, so Figma's position >> uh and the AI potential.
49:45
Uh, consider the position Figma has in the software design process.
49:49
First, Figma enables collaboration, their original differentiator from Adobe and Sketch.
49:54
Second, Figma creates one canvas for app creation, everything based on the same URL instead of files that are passed around with increasingly absurd file name appendages.
50:02
name appendages. you know final final final v3 v4 v1 final final uh third figma serves as a source of truth for an app's design these capabilities seamlessly translate into AI enabled workflows and so >> and these capabilities seamlessly translate to AI enabled workflows collaboration today between a host of
50:20
humans could very well mean coordination and orchestration of AI critically Figma isn't assuming or relying on an AI doing everything granted that is a theoretical threat to the company but the problem with AI only development processes is that they are extremely difficult to debug or decompose. Figma gives a
50:33
Figma gives a natural canvas to add in AI. >> Yeah.
50:39
So, um Ben Thompson kind of closes out talking about Figma as the OS of design being important.
50:45
What operating systems have is coordination and orchestration abilities, one canvas where all the work happens.
50:51
So, the source of truth >> and then uh for now for now Figma gets its nent AI compilities bei behind a full seat license.
50:59
the most expensive plans.
51:02
They also have usage based model but uh they uh Ben Thompson is advocating for Figma to move towards some sort of usagebased or task based monetization model.
51:12
This is what Salesforce Yeah. Yeah.
51:14
Salesforce >> selling the end product. >> Exactly.
51:17
As opposed to seat based.
51:17
Uh and so that will be a business model transition.
51:21
And he says that the transition will be tricky.
51:23
And it's arguably the best argument against Figma going public because if all of a sudden you shift to, hey, we don't charge per seat, we charge per finished design or finished website or shipped website, then all of a sudden you could see that you wind up with a much better business model four quarters out, but you have two rough quarters and the public markets don't like that.
51:43
And people always talk about that being one of the reasons one of the drawbacks of being public is that is that uh uh you have a lot of investors that are a little bit more short-term oriented.
51:51
But he says I think however that it that it is notable that Field mentioned M&A dur in his argument for going public.
51:59
Figma would do well to start acquiring AI companies to plug into every aspect of its stack particularly now when AI capability is nent and not yet a threat to Figma as a whole.
52:10
Above I was skeptical about AI replacing Figma.
52:12
But that is a skepticism that is relevant for the short term.
52:15
Figma's task is to replace itself before anyone else has the chance in the long term.
52:20
So, >> and I am very excited for tomorrow.
52:24
>> Uh before we have our guest, should we talk about uh friend. com? >> We should.
52:29
Uh we're we're going to give him 30 minutes.
52:31
Uh quickly, let me tell you about Adio customer relationship magic.
52:35
Adio is the AI native CRM that builds, scales, and grows your company to the next level.
52:38
And we have Eric Glimman in the studio. Correct. Get over here, >> Eric. >> Congratulations. >> Oh my god. Great to love you. >> Have a seat here. >> Great to see you.
52:50
>> Great to see you, >> dude.
52:52
>> You got a good You got a Celsius there. >> Fantastic. >> Welcome to the show. >> Thank Thanks.
52:58
>> Our humble New York temple of technology. >> Yeah. Uh give us the update. What's the news today? Break it down for us.
53:04
>> Great jacket, by the way.
53:04
We got little touches of yellow in there.
53:06
It's not yellow enough for my taste, but there is a little bit of yellow.
53:11
>> By the way, uh our tailor designed these to celebrate and and really symbolize saving time and money.
53:16
And so, uh I think they did the job.
53:19
I think they did the job.
53:21
>> I have We'll get you We'll get you We'll get you one, too.
53:25
>> We'll definitely get you. >> We got to do this.
53:27
>> We got to go man on the street in uh uh in like Times Square.
53:29
What What do you do for a living?
53:31
What What business do you run?
53:33
Do you want to save time and money?
53:34
Let's get you on ramp right now.
53:35
We'll introduce you to the CE. com. >> This is phenomenal. >> Yeah.
53:38
Uh but break it down for us. What happened today? >> Yeah.
53:40
Well, first I mean we might need a bigger gong. >> I know.
53:43
We're always >> You have no idea.
53:46
We're we're we're going to the ends of America to to get an Americanmade gong.
53:50
And we're looking for something that will actually be Florida ceiling.
53:54
You know, it'll be, you know, something like 20 by 20. So, working on that.
53:58
I look forward to hitting it for for the next one. The E the series E3. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. bring it out. This is phenomenal.
54:06
Guys, thank thanks for being here um here in New York.
54:08
The capital of capital of technology here here at TVPN.
54:12
No, it's uh we raised $500 million um at a $22. 5 billion >> valuation. There we go. There we go.
54:23
>> Has a nice ring to it.
54:23
I'm really appreciate all >> and and uh I'm losing track, but it seems like RAMP has not been able to get a fund raise public without it leaking, you know, five days previously to the press. But uh this is official.
54:35
I'm glad to make it official here. >> It it is official.
54:39
It's the right valuation.
54:40
And look, I I I early on in my my career, the I got this advice that the biggest battle a startup faces is people not giving a people not caring. And so, you know what?
54:49
We're happy that people care even if things come out a couple days before.
54:53
Y um but we feel super lucky.
54:55
Um and so that that's the the big news of the day, but you know, I I I think so much what we focused on today, especially in the raise, is is what we're going to do at the capital.
55:03
Um between the the last raise, which um we were proud to hit the gong for um here, >> six weeks ago, um uh some of it actually came from from actually from uh the product.
55:15
We launched our first AI agent uh for controllers and the data was like nothing I'd ever seen before.
55:21
Um >> so that catalyzed this >> 100%. >> Yeah.
55:24
I Yeah, that's my big question. Uh like why E2? Why not F?
55:27
And then also uh it feels like you're like the king of like a bunch of fundraisers in a short amount of time.
55:35
Is like there's clearly some benefits to that, but why not?
55:38
>> I got to give some credit to the business, John.
55:39
I mean, Eric's Eric's a great CEO, but the business is really, you know, >> well, I I we haven't talked about this before. Like, we we'll share it.
55:46
Like, right now, um July is pacing um we're pacing to do 20% more >> purchase volume in July than June.
56:00
>> Like, it's it's been one month like like the business is growing extraordinarily quickly.
56:06
>> What's that what's that meme with the guy on Hot Ones where he's No, no, no, guys. Don't don't talk.
56:11
We need to It's have Celsius. But >> no, no, no. That's insane.
56:18
>> The business itself is great.
56:19
>> I remember I'm sure in back in 2020, you'd be happily sending, you know, investors like, you know, we grew 20% month over month, you know, but on like, you know, whatever 1% of the scale. >> So, so really wild. >> Yeah. Yeah.
56:32
I I I I guess like the bigger like meta question is just like like there's a world where you stack a bunch of these wins into the mega deck and then just do like one massive fund raise every 18 months.
56:42
There's this meme of like fundraising is a distraction.
56:47
The CEO should be out there working with customers, improving the product.
56:49
Obviously, you're doing that, but how do you how do you do these backto-back fundraisers without them being distracting?
56:54
I know you have a big team now.
56:55
Um, but like uh what goes into the the the decision to do uh like it I don't know if they're even smaller, but just like more frequent fundraisers because that feels like a like something that's unique to your company. >> Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
57:07
So So one um it's sort of a funny thing, but people I actually didn't understand this before in the startup world like what is a series A or a B or a E2 really?
57:17
>> Somebody who did a $55 million seed round. >> Yeah.
57:19
And then and then you'll talk >> and we we we pressed him.
57:21
We were like is this for marketing?
57:22
is this for marketing? like you know you're still going to get the expect like the expectation will be that you perform at like the at at the series B level >> walk around that company it's going to feel like a series B company >> I like I almost think like calling things by letters is totally silly all it actually meant was we had a set of
57:37
documents that we use whenever financing happened there's hundreds of pages of documents that go back and forth between company and investor >> calling it an E2 just meant that we use the exact same documents >> save time and money save money on lawyers No was really just that and so so Look, it it um it was very efficient to get the financing done. Um and I also
57:55
Um and I also believe a lot in this concept of of marking to market of uh in real time what our companies ultimately worth.
58:03
And you know when you look at the fund raise from about a month month and a half ago I think is when it was announced done done earlier um you know we raised uh I I think in exchange for about $200 million um approximately 1% uh more shares uh came onto the cap table.
58:20
So it was a very small amount of dilution with this raise of 500 million at 22 and a half it's like 2ish%.
58:27
Um, see these are not that dilutive.
58:31
>> Yeah, it's not completely restructuring the company, but but but it's giving you a more modern mark. Adding to the war chest.
58:38
>> Adding to the war chest.
58:38
And I think it's a good thing because one, >> you know, allows people to invest at the the right point in time, but two, >> because you're you're not raising far ahead of where metrics are, um, it means that the company's not that distracted.
58:52
um you know for for the actual organization like we've just been obsessed with going and um >> you're not you're not in a position where everyone's like oh like at this valuation like ramp doesn't just need an act two but they need an act three four and five like they got to you know create super intelligence and all this
59:08
crazy stuff because like like it's like based on the actual progress of the company >> 100% right >> makes sense uh I want to talk about the product I want to talk about the AI agent thing um the the the interesting uh my experience with ramp was that it was in many ways an AI agent before AI agents was a buzzword. And I know that
59:25
And I know that um obviously when you scan a receipt, it goes through an OCR process and uh the data the text is extracted from the image and then I I would assume that you were an early adopter of LLM to help clean that up.
59:41
And that was in many ways a more like a super magical AI agent experience.
59:49
But you I I'm not prompting it.
59:51
It's just something that's happening in the background. It's invisible.
59:52
And you're using some, you know, deterministic code, some prob probabilistic code, some older machine learning algorithms for OCR, some newer LLMs to clean up the data and tag things and say this is a restaurant, that's a flight, and and uh you know do all the magic that helps categorize uh expenses.
1:00:10
Uh the question is like it feels like a big shift to put the the the the agent in the hands of the user.
1:00:16
And so you said that you're seeing like incredible adoption.
1:00:21
What are people actually using for? What's the feedback?
1:00:23
And and uh I I mean like yeah, what else are the learnings of like where that goes?
1:00:28
Do people want that or do people ultimately want to be able to prompt a few times and then have things baked into the core behindthe-scenes workflows. >> Yeah.
1:00:38
So I I I feel like so let's talk a little bit like what are like AI assistants? What are AI agents? What's the distinction?
1:00:45
the distinction? because I actually think people are like pretty pretty sloppy with the two and so I feel like >> well to be clear if you want to raise money right now you just build SAS and call it an call an agent boom >> but let's talk we have a lot of people who are building who who are listening to this podcast so so I I think first
1:01:00
for um you know assistants or co-pilots the idea is a person prompts the co-pilot will review it will make a recommendation but then ultimately it's on the human to go do the work um I get a recommendation I input it back and forth this is maybe similar to experience experience that you might have on a chat GBT or that kind of a thing. An agent is a bit different. What
1:01:19
An agent is a bit different.
1:01:19
thing. An agent is a bit different. What you do is you give it instructions and access to tools and you say under certain conditions if you see an outcome that I've instructed you to drive just go do it right and >> forever essentially >> forever and and you know I'm going to
1:01:33
modify things from time to time but it's a little bit more similar to like let's say you hire an intern or a new hire you teach them how to do the job you watch a bunch of times >> ongoing basis >> and then then they go on and you periodically check the work and so
1:01:44
that's a bit of the the distinction and and and one of the if you if you think about what we're actually optimizing for one of core metrics is we look at what was the amount of work that a ramp customer was able to do in a single let's say in an hour or in a minute >> right and so as we look over over the
1:02:01
years that's gone up a lot and I if uh if you joined in 2023 um you know mathematically we can show that you were categorizing three times more transactions pulling in three times as many receipts whatever the the the metric is as you did just two years ago um for every minute you're spending on the site. So it's all to say like every
1:02:19
So it's all to say like every minute is counting for three times more.
1:02:23
I think that ratio should be 30 times more. Yeah.
1:02:25
Uh and if you look at what happened so we launched the we made this announcement about three four weeks ago um for this first AI agent and we had early adopters notion uh web flow kora.
1:02:37
The stats just absolutely shocked us when we looked at this.
1:02:39
Um functionally um uh these companies were able to get 15 times more work done transactions categorized.
1:02:48
But the more interesting part is these agents were way more accurate.
1:02:51
Um these agents all day like they know the expense policy better than any manager at the company.
1:02:56
Um and so it was 99% accurate.
1:02:59
Um it got a lot more tasks done.
1:03:02
And suddenly like for many people who've worked at large companies, you spend like an hour just reviewing expenses and you're like why am I spending an hour reviewing like someone's Uber or or their purchase and that's just gone.
1:03:13
And you're are focusing on actually the interesting exceptions.
1:03:16
And so where where I think this kind of adds up to is for a lot of years people had to be forced to like learn how does software work and how do I think like software?
1:03:24
How do I learn to use Salesforce?
1:03:26
How do I learn to use Google?
1:03:28
How do I learn to use Excel?
1:03:28
Now we're teaching these software programs to think like people.
1:03:32
Um uh and that means you can teach software functionally the same way you would an intern uh to go and figure out what expenses are in and out of policy.
1:03:41
And that very avid software that doesn't take breaks, doesn't take holidays, that is obsessed over every deal, your expense policy, can catch when your policy, >> it's online if you if you need to talk to it at at you're on a on a work trip and you need to Yeah. Or Yeah. therapy.
1:03:56
But I was going to say like you don't if you can avoid messaging somebody on the weekend to ask if something's in or out of policy.
1:04:02
It's like it it benefits everybody. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> That's exactly right. No.
1:04:05
And and I think you bring up like another another point of like a lot of work is sort of if this then that like if you get a if you get a like a you want to buy a new piece of software and that vendor sends you like a quote then procurement negotiates it.
1:04:21
Once procurements negotiate it then legal takes a look at it.
1:04:24
Once legal says it's fine then you know finance says is there an invoice and we go and pay it out and then it goes into accounting.
1:04:31
But if you have lots of digital agents functionally all the time online and responsive, these things can occur simultaneously. Yeah.
1:04:39
Uh and so it means actually instead of waiting days to go and onboard a new vendor, uh it can be done in in minutes.
1:04:45
And so it just means it's much easier to do work.
1:04:47
And I think the big picture of like why are we here at all?
1:04:48
Um uh it's actually just to save time and money to make it easier for more companies to operate and and that's what this stuff adds up to.
1:04:57
It's really nice when you don't have to update your your mission statement.
1:05:01
I know you know as new techn I mean this is we we've talked about uh you know Google's original mission statement which is loosely like you know organize and and make the world's information like valuable right and it's like okay well generative AI like does that very efficiently uh agentic workflows applied to finance saves people time and money.
1:05:20
It's the same same mission.
1:05:22
>> Uh I want to talk a post about a post from Keith Reo.
1:05:24
He said five out of six board meetings he had in the last couple months were about how to design a company's organization for AI.
1:05:33
Um I'm interested in and we've been debating this in the context of meta super intelligence.
1:05:40
Is artificial intelligence an app like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, or is it like their finance team, like their infrastructure team, like their database team that sits across all of the apps as like a service layer?
1:05:55
And I'm interested to know um like you have a product now and I imagine that there is a team that is working on building that product and that product has AI in the name.
1:06:02
Um, but then I imagine that every single person from designers to engineers to, you know, the the ops people are using artificial intelligence in their day-to-day.
1:06:14
And I'm wondering if you're seeing a new like crossf functional team develop or how you're thinking through that uh that trade-off of like horizontal versus vertical maybe both teams in just terms of running a high performance organization.
1:06:29
it it I I loved his post.
1:06:31
Um and I think it's actually like I'll put it this way like I don't think most people have really come to terms with the reality that like computers can like see and hear and like think now. >> It's crazy.
1:06:47
>> It's so different and like if you're like just going and repeating the same organizational structure that like was in place when anything were possible like it's a little bit of like are are you are you awake?
1:06:57
you are you awake? like like like this actually is the right question and one I think people should be spending a lot more time in in you know in earnest >> we need more business we need some new business you know management textbooks you know >> it's true >> yeah for sure
1:07:10
>> it uh it's a joke but there's no chart and so if you don't if you have a whole piece of your org chart that doesn't have any AI on it like you're going to ship that in the product and then people are going to be like wait this part this piece of the product feels very manual and like web 1.0 0 almost. 0 0 almost. >> Yeah.
1:07:26
The the create I mean one one thing that happened yesterday was Zach saying like basically saying you can now use code a AI in your coding interviews which sounds insane.
1:07:35
Like wouldn't you want to still hire for people that uh that might uh just just naturally be good at engineering and then get better.
1:07:43
But he's basically making the statement of no, we're so committed to this new paradigm that yeah, you should use every tool you have available to do the best possible work.
1:07:50
I and I think it's totally right and I I'll I'll admit something even for people who you know are interviewing soon.
1:07:58
There are some job functions at ramp where it is actually not possible to pass it like an interview or coding interview without using an LLM. >> Wow.
1:08:07
>> And that's intentional.
1:08:07
It's actually intentional to figure out like are you curious about that?
1:08:12
Are you using these tools or not?
1:08:13
It it's not a question of IQ.
1:08:15
I think there's brilliant people who, you know, don't need an LM to think, but I think that the capabilities of being able to access an extraordinary amount of compute as well as specialized, you know, knowledge, why wouldn't you?
1:08:26
And >> yeah, it's like just because Scott Woo could do a a problem in his head doesn't mean he shouldn't use a calculator. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:08:33
>> Yeah. Yeah. One of the old one of the old like coding challenges was this thing called fsbuzz where you try and write out numbers from zero to one and if it's if it's odd or if it's divisible by three you write f and if it's divisible by seven you write buzz and then if it's divisible by both you write fsbuzz and it's like a very basic coding
1:08:49
challenge but it always assumes that you have access to python like and it's not saying okay you have to go and like fab your own semiconductor to do it and so it makes sense that like you know we are in the age of LLMs like that's going to be a tool that I'll >> give Yeah, theare might Kareem might start requiring the engineering team. You're going to have
1:09:05
You're going to have to be able to set up your own semifab in order to >> write it out in binary with a pen and paper, >> you know, engineering with your own silicon. >> Yeah.
1:09:13
Um, one one interesting thing, um, we've talked a lot about this like move 37 concept, Lisa Doll, the Google Deep Mind challenge. They beat Lisa Doll.
1:09:19
And in move 37, it was like this moment of like true inspiration where uh, Alph Go put a piece on the board that was so unexpected.
1:09:29
Lisa all stood up, went outside, smoked a cigarette, and was like had his mind blown, right?
1:09:32
Um, and we've had moments like that.
1:09:34
Maybe the Studio Giblly moment is this like we've had passing the touring test, but there's also been plenty of areas that feel more intractable in terms of artificial intelligence and it feels like if you are like with the latest IMO, problem six was this combinatorics problem that I don't understand, but neither does OpenAI or Google apparently.
1:09:54
So, you know, we're basically the same.
1:09:56
Um but um my but my question is like is like with the AI agents product are there are there things that you see CFOs modern CFOs do like what is the the humanity's last exam the intractable problem the most elegant beautiful thing that a CFO can do that feels like oh this is going to be something that's happening and requires like the human touch for a very very long time.
1:10:20
I think I think my my my immediate thought give you give you some time to think uh is it feels like AI today is really good at doing the work that like a management consultant could do.
1:10:31
So you can like tell them like I run this type of business like make me a marketing plan or come up with five ideas for marketing you know strategies and Q4 and it will create like a great report. It'll look great.
1:10:43
great. it'll have some maybe some decent ideas and yet it still feels like to do truly exceptional work like we like Monday like the three of us spent like couple hours talking about some some campaign and like debating it and all these different points and it's like we could have had AI in the mix there but you could imagine be tossing in ideas
1:11:02
that uh that that were kind of maybe random and and maybe something helpful but it was still like you just like >> people needed to just like sit there and just like hash it out and it feels like That's that's like, you know, do the work to like >> do analysis, create reports, you know, when when it comes to like actual knowledge work. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
1:11:20
>> But anyways, I don't know what your thought is.
1:11:22
thought is. I I I love this line of questioning and I think it's going to get super interesting especially as um you AI is going from a primarily academic tool and and also in some ways I feel like it's it's it's jumped into software engineering in part because you know software engineers know what it is
1:11:39
to to code and you know they're working with AI and and so they have good taste and there's these great feedback loops and so it's happening there sooner but it's starting to make it into general business logic finance everything I think a good place to chart if you you just want to decompose the problem is like what is the job of finance actually? >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> What is it?
1:11:57
And I I think if you were to just really simplifying it down, it's in my view some subset of you're going to define a set of rules that govern who is able to spend what under what circumstances.
1:12:11
What are the controls you have in place?
1:12:15
>> Once activity has occurred, you've spent money, things are coming in, how do you record that activity accurately? >> Yeah.
1:12:21
close your books and then based on what occurred, how do you goal seek >> to more profitability, more growth, more cash flow, whatever thing you're going to go try to go do.
1:12:32
>> Yeah, >> it's about it.
1:12:33
>> And if you really kind of simplify it, um it's just a set of rules and algorithms.
1:12:37
>> Yeah, >> these systems, one, they're incredibly complicated to do each of those things.
1:12:42
And so I I actually think like brilliant people have over the last 50 100 years been reduced to like I don't know in some cases like tabulators just calculating things or like downloading the same spreadsheet over and over or matching the receipts and doing like very low-level tasks and only doing a little bit you know after you finally look >> a great example is like when any any like uh like TV show about business >> Yeah.
1:13:10
>> Yeah. It's like like uh you look at like the office all of was any real work done like you did was there you don't you don't really do you remember a time when they were maybe once or twice they called a customer or they did a customer meeting but outside of that it's like thousands of hours of just like >> doing they they're doing business but
1:13:28
they're not like are they really getting anything done and so I think I think the point you're making is like how much of the work that we do is should should be the work that we're doing >> you you nailed it like I I think so much of work is very mechanical And it's, you know, we want finance to be forward thinking and strategic, but the reality of a lot of finance is looking backward. >> I think that's Yeah. Yeah. I I think >> I think that's Yeah. Yeah.
1:13:48
I I think that the strategic thing is really key.
1:13:51
Like uh like Tyler Cowan would say that like relationships are are very lindy and going to stick around for a long time.
1:13:57
Trust building, that type of stuff.
1:13:58
But Ben Thompson uh dumped some sort of, you know, 10Q into uh ChatGpt and said like, "Make me a Ben Thompson style article."
1:14:07
and it did some of it, but it didn't have Yeah. Yeah.
1:14:10
It didn't have like the actual strategic insights and the storytelling that can actually like marshall the proper resources.
1:14:16
And I feel like that's in many ways the the job of CFO. It's risk-taking.
1:14:20
It's deciding um the right strategy for the situation.
1:14:25
And um it seems like the the frontier models are not quite there yet.
1:14:29
>> You you you nailed it.
1:14:29
And I think that when I think about the next set of years, so we we With the fund raise, we tried to lay out of like we're seeing glimmers of like this whole industry is going to get rewritten.
1:14:43
>> What do we think the industry looks like over the next three to five years?
1:14:44
What does the org like look like?
1:14:46
And we laid that out in the post.
1:14:48
But I think the biggest transformation is like really really I think most of the finance function today unfortunately is very backward-looking.
1:14:55
backward-looking. But I think as automation, agentic workflows are coming to the forefront in platforms like ramp >> actually more people can be looking forward can be spending time you know on like for Ben Thompson like what are the
1:15:10
really interesting breakthrough theories and how do you go and make things better and when I think of like what is that last exam uh ultimately for a finance organization is you know I I think there are companies that have taken these tests. So I think one of the interesting
1:15:21
tests. So I think one of the interesting studies I think about is um Amazon uh in its early days um their uh so so they were very early and they would send email follow-ups to customers you just bought this and the old way of doing email marketing to customers was someone
1:15:37
would write like if you've seen like the Trader Joe's newsletter where someone writes like these poetic things about the new ingredients and cool stuff come try this and whatever Amazon did that in the '90s there was an editorial team talking about the great new products that were coming online on Amazon.com
1:15:49
com And then there was this personalization team.
1:15:53
It's like, I don't know, P12N or whatever it is.
1:15:55
Um, and they said, "We're going to AB test it."
1:16:00
>> This personalization team, you're going to get 10% of the send volume.
1:16:02
Um, and your job is to just go and try to find these weird connections, these move 37s of like, you just bought this, you may be interested in this product.
1:16:11
And for a long time, humans crushed the personalization team.
1:16:16
There was something kind of in the example of how these marketers thought that was better >> gonna get better and better and better till one day the personalization team the volume started winning. >> Sure. >> And it kept winning.
1:16:28
>> Y >> and there is no team that is sending like newsletters around and so you know it turns out algorithmically on single products you might be able to go and have a better algorithmic recommendations.
1:16:38
I still think for quite a while um there was a role for creative CFOs and thinking about these unexpected strategies.
1:16:44
It it's sort of in some ways like I don't know the make it about you guys for a second.
1:16:49
The media industry has been at it for a long time.
1:16:51
You know there's live streaming you know TV has been around for for a while.
1:16:56
No one saw this and suddenly like this is one of the most I think important things happening you know in in in broadcasting. It's your show. >> Thank you. >> You guys saw it.
1:17:06
Uh and I think there is room for people of great taste who are great marketers who are great leaders CFOs and and so no I'm I'm I'm bullish actually when you have time to think about the interesting work. >> 100%. Yeah.
1:17:16
Like there's one world where you see the expense policy is like a a set of if statements and there's a different world where you start thinking about expenses as like bets and risk takingaking and actual like what is the net present value of buying that particular thing.
1:17:30
Will this pay off for the business?
1:17:31
Does this actually increase shareholder value when you buy even just th those pencils versus those pens?
1:17:37
pens? Like that's really >> also I mean I mean yeah there there's so much uh you know fi finance historically is you know looking backwards and you can make decisions based on that be like whoa we spent this on this we shouldn't do that again but there's also so much you can bring in of like even helping
1:17:51
understand projecting out did you know if you adopted this tool and then you grow headcount 20% or 30% or 100% you know this is going to be in a year if you keep this existing you know plan contract you're going to be spending you know some crazy multiple of what you're paying today. So,
1:18:05
So, >> and there's so much.
1:18:07
So, >> uh, what's next for the company? Is the job finished? >> Yeah.
1:18:11
Everybody, everybody in the chat's asking, "Job finished?" >> Is the job finished?
1:18:15
>> The job is not finished, guys.
1:18:15
I'm still We're We're still We can't believe it. >> Let's go. >> Job not finished. Confirmed. >> No, guys.
1:18:25
This This is >> I love this thing.
1:18:27
No, it's like it's like we're we're we're pleased. We're happy.
1:18:31
But like this is the crazy thing about our industry is that any business that spends money >> could be a RAM customer and we've come a long way.
1:18:38
They will >> they will be they must be >> they must be um shoulds and must. >> I know I don't know.
1:18:43
We're we're working hard on it.
1:18:44
But but guys mo most uh most people um you know pour one out for for our friends like expenses closing the books.
1:18:52
It is the worst hour of of their month.
1:18:55
Uh it doesn't have to be.
1:18:55
Y >> um we're going to change that. >> Fantastic. >> Incredible.
1:18:59
>> Well, thanks so much for stopping by.
1:19:00
Thanks a ton a ton of fun.
1:19:02
>> You uh we'll see you later hopefully. We'll see you later.
1:19:04
>> And uh please recommend your tailor to me.
1:19:05
I I got to get one of these things.
1:19:07
>> No, we'll we'll we'll put you in touch.
1:19:10
>> We'll come to the fitting. >> Awesome. Great to see you, Eric. >> Thank you.
1:19:13
We got to hop on with Avi Shiffman in a few minutes.
1:19:14
Let's read through some posts, though.
1:19:16
Um interesting fact about the IPO market.
1:19:21
>> We needed a we needed a poly market on whether Eric would say jobs not finished, although it probably would have been sitting at 100% >> 100%.
1:19:27
Uh Jeff Richard says, "The last five technology IPOs are up 142% on average.
1:19:32
The last 20 are up 93% performing well beyond lockup windows.
1:19:37
Last 12 months prevailing narrative. There is no IPO market.
1:19:38
Smart companies prepared anyhow and we're ready to take advantage of failural conditions and it's Chime, Voyager, Voyager, Circle, Mountain, Hinge Health, ET Toro, Cororeweave.
1:19:49
Tons of companies on here.
1:19:51
Service Titan all got out and are sitting at pretty solid offer to current percent gains.
1:19:56
There's a few that are down, but by and large the IPO window is wide open. >> It's wide open.
1:20:02
And uh on that note, there was some news yesterday that an ultra massive asteroid is on a possible collision course with the moon may dri trigger destructive meteor shower on Earth.
1:20:13
And Andy from Two Cents says it's in 2032. Enough time for an IPO. Lock in.
1:20:19
So um >> really quickly, let me tell you about numeralhq. com.
1:20:22
from sales tax on autopilot spend less than 5 minutes per month on sales tax compliance and we can give Avi Schiffman a call. >> Give him a ring.
1:20:30
>> Let's give him a ring and see >> this uh we haven't done many of these before uh these sort of FaceTime callins but we're going to give it a shot.
1:20:37
>> I'm just going to call him on the phone.
1:20:38
I'm not even facetiming it.
1:20:40
>> How you doing, >> my man? >> Hear us. >> Happy launch day. >> Splendid. I can hear you. >> Happy launch day.
1:20:45
>> Very very bold to to launch on the day of a ramp fund raise, but you're breaking through. Congratulations. >> Seen a lot of posts. Oh, thank you.
1:20:53
>> You've been following the story for a long time.
1:20:54
Very excited uh that you got out these out into the world. Uh break it down for us.
1:20:58
Are you sharing any numbers or has there been any feedback?
1:21:01
I saw a bunch of posts that you were reposting.
1:21:03
Um what's the feedback been so far?
1:21:06
What what did you actually ship?
1:21:08
Is this the the final product? This developer preview.
1:21:10
Uh give us kind of the the the highle overview and then we'll dig in. >> Sure. Yeah. Am I live right now? >> You're live. >> You're live. >> Oh, dope.
1:21:19
Uh yeah, actually I mean just uh one one minute ago right before you called a friend of mine that I sent it to um he's uh he works for uh Arc Boats and um everyone there loves it so much they just called me and just uh they just ordered a whole bunch of them. So >> there we go.
1:21:35
You're selling enterprise software. >> Yeah.
1:21:37
I was going to ask are people abusing this yet to to do work instead of they're like yeah he's pitching me a friend but really I just want an intern.
1:21:44
>> I just want to sell stuff. >> Yeah.
1:21:45
I think some people wanted it to like help them with productivity and like that's kind of the con of of talking about it on Twitter, but yeah, I have no idea.
1:21:51
I The cool thing about friend is I can't read people's chats because I don't have their friend.
1:21:55
It's kind of like a like a living UB key in that way. >> Interesting. Interesting.
1:21:58
>> Interesting. Interesting. Is it wait is it on device or just uh like end to end encrypted or secure somehow or uh what's the actual >> I mean philosophy it's kind of just >> I look forward to seeing people try and crack it but there it's basically
1:22:13
>> it's basically uh encrypted and sorts on the there's like a key in each device that like I don't have access to >> got it >> because I don't have the actual friend but um anyways >> how much do people pay for some people are >> $129 Kyle What did you say? >> I was asking how much people paid.
1:22:32
>> I was asking how much people paid.
1:22:34
>> Oh, uh 99 for the pre-orders, but now they're uh for sale for 129.
1:22:40
>> Dude, I would never ship a developer preview.
1:22:41
These are This is the final >> ready to go.
1:22:44
>> Ready for ready for the big time. Uh yeah.
1:22:46
Uh what what what's next?
1:22:46
Uh do you immediately go into getting feedback?
1:22:51
V2 software, hardware, what are you excited about improving?
1:22:54
I'm sure you're getting a lot of feedback already. >> Yeah. No, no V2s anytime soon.
1:22:58
I think the product is the best I could possibly do with the current state of tech.
1:23:02
Um the the real marketing push will come sometime soon when uh our next movie drops, which will be a proper feature film that we're submitting to film festivals. >> No way.
1:23:12
You're making a whole movie. >> Okay. This is the new meta. >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:23:17
The cinematic watch video is dead. Shipping 90 minutes. >> Yeah.
1:23:21
This is >> That's why I didn't want to drop another video today. Like, that's boring. >> That's amazing. The meta moves.
1:23:25
Dude, the the new feature film, I promise you, will be the greatest cultural technology thing of the 2020s.
1:23:33
I think it's going to be amazing. >> Bold statement.
1:23:36
>> Who can you tell us anything about who's attached? I know.
1:23:37
Was it Sandwich Video that worked on the previous film?
1:23:41
>> If you had Sandwich to a feature film, it would cost like $50 million. >> I think so.
1:23:46
>> I'd be surprised if you guys knew them, but you know, All Gas No Breaks or Channel 5 Callahan deeply. Yes.
1:23:54
>> He interviewed the former president.
1:23:56
They split off a while ago because all the sex scandals, but uh but the production crew behind All Gas No Breaks has been following the whole project. >> Very cool.
1:24:03
>> And um it's it's going to be kind of like that Kanye documentary from a couple of years ago. >> Okay.
1:24:08
Yeah, >> it's going to be it's going to be great.
1:24:11
>> When's uh uh is it the August, September?
1:24:14
When when are we when are we talking? >> Uh I have no idea.
1:24:17
Probably not this year because I want to submit it to film festivals first and win them.
1:24:20
The closest one is the Berlin Film Festival and the awards for that will come out in February.
1:24:26
Do you think the price of uh you know how the price of like a cinematic 2inut uh like intro video has dropped a lot because like you know cinema cameras are getting cheaper, Sony has the FX3 like you know you can just use free editing software AI tools like do you think the price of making a feature film has dropped such that like more companies will be doing this in the future?
1:24:46
>> Uh I mean probably but I think like ultimately you just got to like care enough to make something good.
1:24:50
I mean for the friend launch video from last year I location scouted it. I casted it.
1:24:55
I helped write the script. I was there on set.
1:24:57
Like, you just have to be involved. Yeah.
1:24:59
>> And uh I guess be I don't know, just be good enough to make something dope.
1:25:01
I thought the waves video was probably the best second to to friends video I've seen.
1:25:07
>> Which one was >> the waves? >> Like the glasses.
1:25:09
I thought it was like a nice It was a nice video.
1:25:10
It wasn't just like, you know, flat. It wasn't annoying. >> I completely agree. Yeah, it was great.
1:25:16
Uh what take me on a tour of the other uh hardware devices.
1:25:19
It sounds like you're a bit of a fan of Waves.
1:25:21
What else is going on in the world that's interesting?
1:25:24
What are you uh what do you think's a dead end on the tech tree?
1:25:30
>> Well, I am still disappointed that there's not really any interesting consumer stuff.
1:25:33
I still find Poly Market to be pretty much the only >> like genuine mainstream consumer thing of the last billion years that's that's worthwhile. >> Yeah. But um >> real >> Yeah.
1:25:44
I mean, you you you're partnered with them for it's novel. It's it's it's cultural. It's cultural. It's cool. Shame is cool.
1:25:50
I mean, it's >> it's it's new.
1:25:52
It's it's what I want to do.
1:25:54
>> It's just so hard to break through consumer because it's either like it's hardware and it's a billion dollars to do a big run or or it's like, oh, it's anything tied to social networking and like there's a super durable monopoly.
1:26:03
I mean, I guess Chachi PT broke through in the consumer context really really massively, but you know, it instantly just turned into like a mag seven company.
1:26:13
>> I think they're doomed.
1:26:13
I feel like Okay, for starter, I really I'd be very surprised if the whole Johnny I thing actually ships. Okay.
1:26:19
I just >> I don't think that's going to shift. That's maybe my take.
1:26:22
I feel like that's going to fall apart.
1:26:25
>> I mean, >> it's just they're they're just look, they're they're just too old to understand how to go towards let's say the new like the main target audience that I'm very interested in is Gen A because they don't say the word AI companion.
1:26:37
You know, I named it friend because they just say they're talking to their friends.
1:26:39
They know how to intuitively talk to an AI, but also view it as like a platonic companion.
1:26:44
It doesn't have to be a sex bot or an assistant, which I think is really only old people that need some kind of utilitarian value from.
1:26:52
>> What about uh what about uh GPT psychosis? Is it real?
1:26:58
>> Is it a risk for the friend? >> Is it a risk? You worried about it?
1:26:59
You worried about someone getting uh 7 million bombs deep in friend?
1:27:04
>> If if if you truly fall to that, I mean, I think that's your problem.
1:27:12
Well, uh, I would hope that you at least build some guardrails in just to be safe because, uh, you know, why not? >> Yeah.
1:27:17
Just make sure the friends >> we're using behind the behind the hood. We're using Gemini 2.
1:27:20
5, which I think is a great model and Google does a good job aligning it to human.
1:27:25
>> Just do me a favor and remove those uh, what is it?
1:27:27
It's not SCP like horror copy creepy pastas.
1:27:30
Just remove those from the training site, please. >> Sorry for that guy.
1:27:34
>> Yeah, that bedrock guy. Anyway, >> uh yeah. Well, we'll see.
1:27:37
You know, the friend used to be a little bit more psychotic.
1:27:42
When the battery died, your friend actually was truly dead. >> That's wild. Tamagotchi style.
1:27:45
Uh what about uh do you ever play Fallout? >> Sure. Yeah. >> What about a pit boy? Is that a good idea?
1:27:53
I was pitching that to people.
1:27:53
Uh if you're if you're on Shark Tank, would you invest in that if you if you were Shark?
1:27:59
>> I I do think that like like single feature consumer electronics will be popular again.
1:28:03
Like I don't understand why everyone's got this boner of trying to build the iPhone of AI when the iPhone never came out without the iPod.
1:28:11
You know, with friend at least I tried to just do one single feature, you know, do it well end to end.
1:28:16
>> Um I think there'll be more more products like that.
1:28:17
People want like interesting new form factors and to kind of disperse from their phone a little bit.
1:28:22
They're not replacing people people want to scroll their Tik Toks.
1:28:23
That's just not going away anytime soon. >> Yeah. Yeah. The phone is forever.
1:28:26
people are going to be on their phones.
1:28:28
But then, you know, Apple Watch sort of broke through VR headsets.
1:28:33
>> Apple Watch did not break through.
1:28:33
That the most dorky product of all time.
1:28:35
I would never even want to watch >> I see uh I would say I would say probably half half our guests wear wear an Apple Watch.
1:28:42
So, >> you're like you're like hundred billion dollars in revenue a year didn't break through. It's a failure. Wind it down. >> Airpods cringe. It doesn't matter. >> I I hear you. I hear you.
1:28:52
And I I agree with like the aesthetic criticism, but uh certainly like the idea of like a computer on your wrist is like somewhat popular.
1:29:01
>> It sounds like you're wearing one right now. >> I'm not. I'm not.
1:29:02
I am I am a proud uh proud Brad ambassador for Bezel.
1:29:05
I appreciate mechanical watches.
1:29:07
I appreciate >> Holy Trinity app on Constantine.
1:29:10
They would never think to put a battery in that thing. >> Yeah.
1:29:14
I mean, personally, I don't want to be tied to time like that, but you know, >> sure.
1:29:18
>> Shots fired at the watch community.
1:29:20
>> Wait, so you don't want to Okay. No. Yeah. no time whatsoever.
1:29:24
>> What does what does Gen Alpha think about AirPods?
1:29:25
Are they are they always in or is it is it uh are AirPods >> like some people doing interviews with them in and they're like they're on transparency mode and it's like that's the crazy. >> I don't know.
1:29:35
I don't even wear headphones really.
1:29:36
It's just like just got a good speaker system. Listen to >> normal.
1:29:39
What about like analog cameras?
1:29:41
You carry like a film camera like Leica Q3, something like that. >> Sure, dude.
1:29:44
I mean uh I just bought the same camcorder they used in 28 Days Later that zombie film. No way. >> Highly recommend it. >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:29:50
We we brought a VHS camcorder with us, a mini DV on this trip to do a little >> You think uh it's exactly the mini mini DV? >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
1:29:58
Everybody's doing >> What's your read?
1:30:00
What do you think Zuck is going to do in the AI companion space? >> Good question. >> AI friendship.
1:30:06
>> I mean, I think it'll just make the concept like you don't buy a dog because you have the low self-esteem.
1:30:10
And I don't think AI companionship, which right now people think is just a product for like lonely people or people with low self-esteem, etc.
1:30:17
I think it will just be like a new kind of companion that people will have in their lives. >> Makes sense. Anything else, Jordy? >> No, this is great. Congrats on shipping.
1:30:28
Uh I believe you're sending uh I don't know if you already sent one >> friend. com.
1:30:32
>> I don't know if you already sent one to us, but uh happy to happy to to purchase and and support and we'll we'll bring it into a show.
1:30:38
We'll bring it into a show.
1:30:39
It's going to be a high stakes.
1:30:40
>> I'll send you one >> high stakes high stakes demo.
1:30:41
You're going to the the friend will be with us live for for three hours. So, >> okay.
1:30:47
Well, you might have to wait a couple years then.
1:30:50
>> No, I mean it's okay for something. >> I got you. I got you.
1:30:51
We'll we'll ship it out to you this month.
1:30:53
>> Yeah, that'd be awesome.
1:30:53
Yeah, we'll we'll we we we do a bunch of product demos with our intern Tyler as well.
1:30:56
We can demo it in a smaller setting, a segment on the show, maybe.
1:31:02
>> I hope you enjoy the the whole thing.
1:31:02
I think it people people yearn for opinionated hardware again.
1:31:06
And I think there's not a single userf facing detail that at least I did not choose.
1:31:10
It doesn't matter if you like it or don't like it.
1:31:13
This is something I chose.
1:31:14
Yeah, I'm so sick of uh Christmas and the holidays coming around and it's like I can't get you music because you already have Spotify and you don't want a CD anymore.
1:31:23
I can't get you a book because everyone has Audible.
1:31:25
I can't get you a DVD set because everyone has iTunes and like just the gift I feel like the gift economy has been nerfed by the proliferation of the internet and you're like kind of bringing it back and it's like even if somebody wants an Apple Watch like they'll probably just buy that themselves.
1:31:41
It's pretty rare to like make a good gift.
1:31:42
Whereas this is something that's unexpected just by virtue of the fact that you're a new company.
1:31:47
And so I feel like if I gifted this to a few people, it would be a surprise and delight.
1:31:50
Maybe they don't love it forever.
1:31:52
But it's something that's new and it's different and it's fresh and I love that.
1:31:57
>> Well, maybe for Christmas time.
1:31:57
Also, John, I mean, I don't even have internet at my house.
1:32:00
I just listen to to vinyls and see.
1:32:02
>> Yeah, but you have to admit you're in the minority there. >> I don't know.
1:32:05
I think I'm starting a new wave. >> Okay.
1:32:07
Well, well, expect expect all 600 hours of TVPN pressed on vinyl under your Christmas tree in December 25th.
1:32:14
>> You should actually do that. That would be great. >> Expect it.
1:32:16
If you have a if you have a record player, you're going to be listening to our sultry reading Ben Thompson articles on vinyl. >> Be great.
1:32:24
>> Anyway, we'll talk to you soon, Ovie. >> Congrats. >> Peace. >> Bye. >> Thank you.
1:32:30
>> Anyway, uh >> opinionated young man in tech. >> We love it.
1:32:34
>> Always a fun conversation. >> We love it. Also get on Finnai. Finn.
1:32:35
AI the number one AI agent for customer service.
1:32:39
The best performing AI agent for customer service.
1:32:41
Delivering higher quality customer experiences and higher resolution agents.
1:32:45
Bake off champion of the world champion.
1:32:47
Um >> and uh there was an interesting Australian rocket launch that happened.
1:32:54
>> It was very interesting.
1:32:55
>> It did not go very well.
1:32:55
The rocket AIS launched by Gilmore Space Technologies was designed to carry small satellites to orbit. It goes up. It kind of slides.
1:33:03
It went for 14 seconds and uh it was it was a little bit of a crazy uh slide to the side of the left.
1:33:08
Uh this >> sad to see sad to see but you have to uh you got to fail apparently in aerospace in rocket science you got to fail a lot >> uh to even Elon is failing.
1:33:19
>> We were watching this video with somebody and was like was anyone on board?
1:33:22
It's like obviously not the we send satellites to space.
1:33:24
We don't send humans to space.
1:33:26
humans to space. Hey uh yeah I don't think we should laugh uh at uh the misfortune or the failure but there was a very viral and funny post where someone was saying uh you know imagining the Australians saying ar >> very funny um but yeah I mean uh it I
1:33:45
mean it is it is very fortunate that way we're in the era of like you know autonomous rockets from day one and so you can blow them up a lot >> rockets are tough too it's hard to hide a catastrophic failure you know you can launch your your AI, your you can launch your agentic workflow and it can fail. Uh but when you launch a rocket, uh
1:34:01
Uh but when you launch a rocket, uh people are going to find out. Oh, this is interesting.
1:34:05
Uh AI mentioned Poly Market.
1:34:07
Uh there's a there's a trader on Poly Market who's up $750,000 and just can't seem to lose. They have $2.
1:34:12
4 million on rates going unchanged today.
1:34:17
They'll profit another $100,000 if they're right.
1:34:19
Better trader than Pelosi.
1:34:21
And uh wow, they really went all in. >> And they were right. >> And they were right.
1:34:25
So they made another 100K.
1:34:26
Uh what what an impressive trader. Crazy. Yeah.
1:34:28
It feels like a lot of the people in Poly Market have like scaled up to being like it's more like a hedge fund and it's like their per professional job like the the famous example of the person who called the Trump thing, right?
1:34:38
It was like he was paying for his own polling data.
1:34:40
Uh just to just to make that bet.
1:34:44
>> Um in other news, uh PaloAlto Network acquired Cyber Arc for 25 billion.
1:34:52
>> Uh Palo, >> a good name for a company. PaloAlto Networks.
1:34:54
Sand Hill Road Company probably didn't raise money. >> Great name.
1:34:58
My uh family moved, my dad's family moved to Palo Alto uh I think in 1906. Yeah.
1:35:07
>> So way back >> uh but they bought Cyber Arc for $25 billion.
1:35:11
Uh Cyber Arc is an Israeli identity security provider >> and uh Cyber sorry PaloAlto Networks is down 6. 24% today. like it.
1:35:23
>> So, um, never know with these things. Sure.
1:35:27
>> In other acquisition news, uh, Sam Ross shares that Numel has acquired Spend Ruby.
1:35:32
As part of this acquisition, we're excited to welcome the entire Ruby card team to numeral.
1:35:36
This marks our first acquisition and it's been a long time coming.
1:35:40
Uh, they first met during uh, Y Combinator's winter 2013 2023 batch.
1:35:45
They became fast friends given our shared experience building and supporting e-commerce brands.
1:35:47
Turned out that I wasn't the only one who had dealt with the nightmare that is sales tax.
1:35:51
Uh the team will join the engineering team to help accelerate our global offering including integrations and industryleading tax engine.
1:35:59
Together we'll solve one of the hardest problems for growing businesses sales tax compliance. I agree.
1:36:04
I've experienced it myself and I use numeral for my e-commerce company.
1:36:07
Um Joe Weisenthal was talking about GDP also talking about the odds of the Fed rate cut which we already covered.
1:36:13
Uh the odds have dropped substantially as they probably should given that the American consumer is undefeated and the American economy continues to be on a tear.
1:36:22
Um speaking of Apple products, uh Freya Lobo says, "One of my longest standing hobbies is thinking about whether I should get an iPad. It's not about the iPad.
1:36:31
It's about imagining an alternative life I might live as someone who has an iPad.
1:36:37
Love to wonder about it." >> 52K.
1:36:39
Apparently this struck according dream of an iPad life. >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:36:44
When the latest iOS came out and everyone was like okay the liquid glass is a little crazy.
1:36:48
We don't know if we like this.
1:36:50
It's cooking Tyler's phone.
1:36:52
It's not maybe the best update yet.
1:36:54
They'll get it there but it's amazing on iPad.
1:36:55
And everyone and I was like I want an iPad.
1:36:57
I want But then I actually thought about my dayto-day of doing the show and writing and and screenshotting stuff and I was like I think I would hate it. >> Yeah.
1:37:05
My dad My dad's retired and when I see him use an iPad, I go, "Oh, what a what a simple what a simple but nice life."
1:37:12
You know, if you can just leisurely tap around, maybe read an email, fire off a thumbs up >> emoji, you don't have to do much.
1:37:20
>> Well, whether you use an iPad or an iPhone or a Mac or some other device to access the internet, you got to go to public. com.
1:37:27
Investing for those who take it seriously.
1:37:29
Uh another question about uh we >> uh Jyn says not a single person from Thinky or Anthropic took Zuck's offer. Why?
1:37:40
Some good reasons here some of which we covered.
1:37:42
Already rich mission greater than mansion.
1:37:45
They've seen AGI hate big corp life. Upside is higher.
1:37:50
Value of money is diminishing post AGI.
1:37:53
No faith in Meta or Zuck.
1:37:53
Um, and people are voting >> defin Not six because a Lambo is a Lambo pre or post AGI. >> Fact check. True.
1:38:02
Experts confirm this is true.
1:38:04
Kosh over on the ramp team.
1:38:04
I don't know if this was intentional. Ramp was valued at 22. 5 billion. 225 225.
1:38:13
And he says, "Bench 225 a little easier this morning.
1:38:17
>> Feeling absolutely jacked."
1:38:17
So, shout out to >> the numerology on is really good.
1:38:23
Uh, Mike Isaac says, "Pretty clever.
1:38:26
Someone who claims to have scraped public listening data from a a number of public figures, politicians, celebrities, journalists, spun up their alleged playlist and made it into a site.
1:38:35
Thankfully, mine isn't too embarrassing, but others dot dot dot.
1:38:40
Um, >> and people were talking about Palmer Lies.
1:38:41
He listens to all the hits. He likes pop.
1:38:44
And he was like, "This is mine, and I'm proud of it."
1:38:46
And everyone was like, "This is amazing.
1:38:47
I got to listen to Palmer's list." Uh, but panapplay.
1:38:51
com if you want to check it out.
1:38:53
Um, also like sort of an odd data leak like I like this was this this happened during the election.
1:39:02
The Venmo transactions were public and so they'd find like JD Vance's Venmo and then they'd see like JD Vance paid someone else so they're connected.
1:39:09
So if you're out there and you >> This is funny.
1:39:12
So uh are you on your stuff?
1:39:14
>> So you're on this list.
1:39:14
You're on the Panama playlist.
1:39:16
Oh, >> you're there's a playlist here from you called >> immortal. >> Oh, yeah.
1:39:21
>> And it's the Four Seasons. >> Yes. >> Uh Concerto. >> Yes.
1:39:26
>> Uh Hero by Family of the Year. Jesus Walks.
1:39:29
I'm on I'm on the list uh as well.
1:39:32
>> I don't even know what this playlist is.
1:39:34
>> I I'm proud of my playlist.
1:39:34
You're You're free to go listen to them if you'd like.
1:39:36
I should just make them all public. I love >> Let's see. Keith Ra Boy. >> Good. A lot of good EDM.
1:39:44
He's less >> Spotify playlist.
1:39:47
It is funny because I feel like I didn't expect it to be public, but obviously I don't.
1:39:52
>> Sean Shawn Maguire's listening to some uh AEX Twin Mramasa. Yeah, I don't know. This is so random.
1:39:59
I don't use public uh play.
1:40:01
I mean, >> say she s on there.
1:40:01
I feel like we got to go.
1:40:04
>> Delian is listening to some Credence Clear Water. >> That's cool. >> Um I like that.
1:40:07
Gary Tan uh is listening to Crumb. >> Okay.
1:40:15
>> It's an interesting list here.
1:40:16
>> You gotta we we we got to figure out uh to really curate that so when people land on it.
1:40:22
>> We're working on a playlist for a little something tomorrow. >> Oh, okay. Cool.
1:40:25
We'll have to put the four seasons on there. >> That's right.
1:40:28
>> Baldi, one of the greatest >> something like that.
1:40:30
Um, speaking of uh, tomorrow inspired by Oomph, are you the 2003 Dom Peringan where the heatwave killed 5,600 people and made the best graves of all time.
1:40:41
Have you heard this lore about Dom Peran?
1:40:42
Apparently, there was a crazy heat wave in 2003 and now it's a uh, it's a beloved vintage of wine. I had no idea. >> I did not know that.
1:40:52
>> I need to I need to learn more about that.
1:40:53
Um, anyway, uh, Percy Jackson was right.
1:40:56
SF is the new Rome, says Lucas.
1:40:59
Both SF and Rome have exactly seven hills.
1:41:01
Temperature temperate sunny sea climate status as a pilgrimage site where immigrants working to uh become citizens.
1:41:08
Center of a productive valley see military industrial business power. And look at this photo.
1:41:13
I I it's not going to translate on the stream, but uh this I had I had no idea that the uh Palace of Fine Arts could be shot with the uh with the Is this one better? I don't know. I'll hold it up. I don't know. We're there. Go to four. Yeah. Camera four. There we go. Put it four.
1:41:32
I'm fighting the air conditioning.
1:41:32
Um uh but the Palace of Fine Arts. Incredible image. Incredible image.
1:41:38
And it does look very Roman. So uh >> San Francisco. >> San Francisco. Undefeated. >> Undefeated. >> Uh oh, Luke Ferator.
1:41:44
So there was a piece in Bloomberg about Luke Ferritor, Frank. Lots of debate show.
1:41:51
>> Was it a uh >> a hit piece? Certainly. Uh >> analysis. Yeah.
1:41:55
We're going back and forth.
1:41:57
Uh, Spore said, "The Luke Farador article is hardly a headpiece, and some of y'all are wildly overreacting."
1:42:02
We have some of the overreactions here.
1:42:06
>> We got Katherine Bole saying, "When I worked for the Washington Post, there was an understanding that the family of elected officials was generally off limits unless they put themselves in the arena.
1:42:13
A hit piece on a low-level government employee that goes after his mother by name is so appalling.
1:42:16
Why would anyone in tech talk to Bloomberg after this?"
1:42:19
Sean McGuire says, "Luke Verator is an American hero.
1:42:21
He says it's a hit piece. This is a hit piece.
1:42:24
This is a badge of honor and par for the course. Luke Fair is still 23.
1:42:26
We got to get him out of the government.
1:42:28
We got to get him into Silicon Valley.
1:42:30
We gota get him into term sheet.
1:42:32
We got to get him a term sheet. That's the key.
1:42:35
>> I mean, think about how many think about how many people have probably approached him and said, uh, I will give you $50 million to start a company.
1:42:41
Uh, and you can immediately take 5 million of secondary immediately.
1:42:46
like I'm sure I'm sure some some offer in that range has been made but it is worthwhile having him in the government working on important problems.
1:42:53
Uh I think you had a you had a framing uh which was you can look at some of the cuts that Doge has been making and say >> if you believe that the government is efficient and that the money is being spent well then you're going to be really upset.
1:43:06
If you believe that there's a lot of potentially a lot of waste and that there's money just going to people that shouldn't be getting it or or going to causes that might be harmful then maybe it's positive.
1:43:14
And so, uh, it's naturally like an incredibly politically charged topic.
1:43:21
>> It's completely reasonable if someone says someone says to you, uh, America is spending $und00 million to help the less fortunate.
1:43:31
>> You'd be like, well, I don't want to take that away.
1:43:32
Of course, it's it feels good to help the less fortunate. Yeah.
1:43:35
But if it but if you dig in and you find out that it's like, well, they that's what it said, but in fact, it was all going into someone's pocket who's super rich, you'd be like, wait, why are we doing this? this makes no sense.
1:43:45
And so the the the stated names of every program are always with the best with the best intentions.
1:43:50
But I mean, you know this from running a business.
1:43:52
You you you spend money on a lot of different projects.
1:43:55
Some of the projects go off the rails and you need to cut them.
1:43:58
And so the idea that like cutting spending is super controversial.
1:44:00
This is something that was done in the Obama administration.
1:44:03
Like it should not be as politically charged as it is, but unfortunately we are in a very very politically charged environment.
1:44:08
Um so Casey Hanmer was particularly upset about this article.
1:44:12
said, "Disappointed but not surprised by the tone of the article, the authors tried desperately to smear Luke Ferator with their poorly engineered invective, but instead only showed their limitation of their vision and the mediocre cowardice of their sources who couldn't even heir their own uninformed opinions under their own name.
1:44:28
Not a single mention of the ballooning deficit, not a single mention of collapsing state capacity implied that USID was cut because Luke misread some database and not that Doge found that USAD had illegally ignored an executive order by continuing to pour money into unaccountable foreign NOS, some of which was illegally coming back into partisan US organizations.
1:44:49
Uh, it is astonishingly irresponsible to paint a target on Luke like this.
1:44:54
A number of sources made claims about his motives which is defamatory.
1:44:58
An article like this brings dishonor upon the profession.
1:45:02
Um the other the other side of this is that is that I think this isn't Luke's first rodeo.
1:45:06
Even though he's only 23, I think he is holding up well.
1:45:09
And I'm and I'm and I think he is he's he's he's he knows that this is this is part for the course.
1:45:13
And so >> yeah, and it's it's making a large number of people think that he might be bad or >> sorry. Oh, sorry. Well, well, no.
1:45:21
Like, you know, this could be an example where where a million people think that he's bad, that he should be removed, and then and then 50,000 people >> Yeah.
1:45:33
or crazy >> think that like I will support this person throughout my entire life.
1:45:37
>> All it takes is like one crazy person to be really really uh destructive. So, uh rough.
1:45:41
Anyway, Spore has the other side of the argument.
1:45:43
Says, "The Luke Farador article is hardly a hit piece.
1:45:45
Some of y'all are wildly overreacting.
1:45:47
You don't just you you don't just like that a technologist is being scrutinized for working in an extremely important governmental position.
1:45:55
Sorry, but the fourth estate has no reason to couch out to Silicon Valley.
1:45:58
And I kind of agree with this like you know I'm a taxpayer.
1:46:02
You work for the government just like I would expect like to know where the government funds are going and what you know is this particular government program efficient or not.
1:46:10
I also would like to know who the people are.
1:46:13
So, I do think this is of the public interest and I think it's okay for uh reporters to dig into uh what Doge is doing because even if you're pro Doge, you want to make sure that it's working effectively.
1:46:23
Uh and so that's so that's uh reasonable, I think.
1:46:26
Spore continues and says, "I super support the new media strategy of going direct and telling these publications to f up when they try and slander you, but then you don't really get to complain when they're not characterizing you how you want." That's not how it works.
1:46:38
For what it's work, For what it's worth, I read the piece.
1:46:41
It's a It is a too long portrait of work.
1:46:43
Luke, it is extremely long.
1:46:43
It takes over an hour if you listen to the audio version. >> Yep.
1:46:49
>> His history and experience and spends a ton of time on some of his most impressive accomplishments. I agree with that. It is very very >> Yeah.
1:46:54
And they were nice enough to make him look very cool in the picture. >> I thought so.
1:46:57
Although the the red coloring does make it look a little like Darth Vaderesque.
1:47:01
Um then it gets a bit critical.
1:47:04
And yes, it does include some stupid jabs, but again, if you're going to work in the government in a highly public and highly controversial role, Yeah.
1:47:10
people are going to look into you.
1:47:12
They're going to find things they don't like and talk about it. That's the game.
1:47:14
Obviously, the publication does not like Doge.
1:47:16
They don't like Elon or Trump.
1:47:16
And so, yeah, a glowing piece was never going to happen.
1:47:20
But if you genuinely read this piece and think they slandered him and dragged his name through the mud, you and I are two different are reading two different articles.
1:47:26
Uh oh, but hey, he's just a kid.
1:47:28
Well, one, don't diminish the guy.
1:47:30
He's incredibly talented, smart, and accomplished.
1:47:31
So, and also, I don't know how old a person is.
1:47:35
If they're operating a key government position, the public has a right to understand who they are.
1:47:38
And so uh I I thought that was a good more nuanced take from a tech insider about uh the piece.
1:47:44
And Max Max Meyer chimes in with a rebuttal and says his work in government is fair game.
1:47:49
The main thrust of the criticism was the bizarre focus on elements like this shared by Mike and the extreme bias in the subtitle suggesting he's kind of some sort of evil sellout.
1:47:59
The bias of writers is fair game, too.
1:48:02
Oh, so yeah, you can criticize the writers, too.
1:48:04
Um, >> hard to call him a sellout considering he's >> he hasn't raised he hasn't raised money for a SAS company yet.
1:48:09
He did sell out in my opinion going to work going to work for the government working for a nonprofit. That's the selling out.
1:48:15
You got to stay in the arena, build some SAS. Um, >> yeah.
1:48:22
>> Anyway, uh, post from Ara Carzian.
1:48:22
No one is talking about this, but the bullcase for AI and economic growth.
1:48:25
AI spend is up 60% in construction and 35 times in manufacturing.
1:48:32
Faster planning and smarter automation will transform.
1:48:37
>> Let's give it up for uh big construction and little construction for adopting >> interesting that they're adopting AI faster and more aggressively than professional services, technology, finance, retail.
1:48:50
>> Uh this is this is growth rate though.
1:48:53
So that doesn't mean they're >> Yes.
1:48:55
But >> doesn't mean they're indexed growth.
1:48:56
So it doesn't mean they're they're actually spending more.
1:48:59
It just means that they're not adopting it at all and now they're adopting it like crazy. >> Yeah.
1:49:04
I mean, I guess they I guess they all they all kind of started at >> 100 what? Two years ago.
1:49:08
Anyway, we should talk to Ara about that more and dig in.
1:49:12
Um >> relevant post primary topic at five of six board meetings this week.
1:49:16
We covered this with uh Eric, but he uh he says, "How to redesign a startup or in the age of AI?"
1:49:24
Um, oh, we should close with this uh this extremely important lesson from Peter Teal.
1:49:28
Or maybe we should do the a few more posts, but David Senra said, "Don't divide your attention.
1:49:32
Focusing on one thing, one thing yields increasing returns for each unit of of effort.
1:49:38
At a micro level, an extra hour of focus on the current project has a much higher return than an hour on something new or worse, five minutes each on 12 new things.
1:49:47
Before you ever do something, you should understand the opportunity cost verse existing things.
1:49:54
Don't rationalize that something you want to do is complimentary when it's not.
1:49:57
At a macro level, understanding that applied effort has a convex output curve is a very useful discipline when considering new market areas.
1:50:06
This convex this convexity means that the opportunity cost of transferring resources from existing projects to new ones is high.
1:50:14
unless the new area is incredibly valuable, anything we can do to extend an existing convex curve is worth so much more.
1:50:21
And there was someone in the comments saying, well, Elon is the is the uh is the counterexample to this.
1:50:26
And of course, Elon and Peter Teal were business partners for a number of years um and continue to work together in many capacities.
1:50:33
>> So, with that reading, should Timothy Shalay be partnering with Lucid Motors to promote their new car? >> I think so.
1:50:41
>> I think this looks like a car straight out of a rackus. So, >> yeah.
1:50:44
And I think uh I think it works. >> Yeah.
1:50:46
And I think I I think this is very much this actually builds his brand as a uh as an actor.
1:50:52
Like I see this and I see yes it's an ad for this car but it's also an ad for Timothy Shalamé.
1:50:57
So he's partnering with Lucid Motors.
1:50:59
Bold, discerning, unapologetically original.
1:51:03
Um and and and you know his his primary thing is >> point a camera at me.
1:51:09
And so this is an extension.
1:51:11
It is it is the main thing.
1:51:14
This does not feel if he was starting a car company, I might be like, "Okay, well, that's probably going to pull you away from the next really killing it in the next Dune sequel." Yeah.
1:51:21
Um, but I was uh but I was debating someone with this about Elon.
1:51:24
I think we mentioned this on another show, but um people say, "Oh, Elon has so many different things."
1:51:30
He was the CEO of just one company at a time for 13 years straight.
1:51:33
So, he starts two in 1995.
1:51:35
He doesn't become the CEO of Tesla until 2008.
1:51:38
And at that point, he was already the CEO of te of SpaceX.
1:51:42
And so he was effectively like a one CEO person.
1:51:44
He did have two different companies back toback because one sold and he couldn't run it anymore. Uh and he was ousted.
1:51:52
But um but he was basically just focused on one thing for 13 years straight.
1:51:56
And so I I think a lot of people will say like well Elon can do it and it's like >> yeah I mean he exited a company for over a billion dollars very early in the do boom and then uh you know also spent 13 years focusing on things.
1:52:08
So maybe if you're at that stage of your career maybe that makes sense.
1:52:10
But be very very careful.
1:52:13
>> Uh, in other news, Kate Clark has the scoop.
1:52:16
Iconic Capital will lead Anthropic's next mega round, valuing the OpenAI rival at $170 billion. Hit the gong, John.
1:52:25
Uh, QIA and GIC are also in talks to invest. Uh, this is pretty wild.
1:52:30
Uh, the they're adding $120 billion uh to their valuation since the last financing. Iconic. >> It was only at 50. Uh, sorry, 110.
1:52:39
So, so they were at like somewhere around 60. >> That's crazy.
1:52:44
That's so it's such a big gap.
1:52:47
>> And I think Anthropic is expecting to be run rating at around 10 billion by the end of the year.
1:52:52
Um, >> so uh seems like a reasonable >> multiple given the growth rate and given they're uh they are the the uh 170 ton uh gorilla in the codegen market right now.
1:53:09
This will be at the top of the request that SBF sends to the president begging for a pardon.
1:53:14
>> Yeah, you were saying this.
1:53:14
So, so FTX owned >> 13% of Anthropic.
1:53:18
They effectively led I think they're series C or something.
1:53:23
They put $500 million into the business 13% ownership of Anthropic.
1:53:25
And if they'd held on to that, it would be worth 20 or$30 billion.
1:53:30
Of course, they went through bankruptcy and had to restructure.
1:53:34
Uh >> and whoever bought that position is doing very nicely. >> Exactly.
1:53:38
So, uh, bit of a bit of a liquidity crunch going on and and a lesson there about don't don't get over your skis if you're effectively a bank.
1:53:45
Maybe set up a separate vehicle for your for your private market illquid investing because you could get caught. >> That's right.
1:53:51
>> Anyway, thank you for watching today's stream.
1:53:53
We will see you tomorrow live from the New York Stock Exchange. >> I cannot wait.
1:53:57
I wish we could wear these tomorrow.
1:53:59
I think we're gonna I think it's a little >> new suits though.
1:54:03
>> We've got uh some other suits for tomorrow, but thank you for tuning in. uh unique show today.
1:54:07
We're figuring out how to do the show on the road. Yeah.
1:54:10
Thank you to our uh >> production team.
1:54:12
Everyone >> Chad's on the on the production team that uh what's that? >> Uh yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:54:19
Ben, Michael Scott, people people know they know the names.