0:09
[Music] Hey, [Music] hey, hey. [Music] Hey. [Music] Hey. Hey. [Music] Heat. Heat.
Search this video
0:52
[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Hey, Heat.
1:56
[Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. N.
2:33
[Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] You came to this world to reach the stars.
3:25
We came to this world to see our future.
3:33
[Music] We came to this world [Music] to watch the stars. to shape our future.
3:51
We came to feel the new way.
4:08
[Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] If you let me Yeah.
4:41
[Music] >> You're watching TVPN.
5:00
Today is Thursday, September 11th, 2025.
5:02
We are back in the TBPN Ultra Dome.
5:06
the temple of technology, the fortress of finance, the capital of capital.
5:09
Uh rough day yesterday, rough day today.
5:12
Um our show, we're going to stick to covering tech and finance news, but there are some fantastic journalists out there who are and media outlets who are unpacking the Charlie Kirk story and uh its implications, new developments as they unfold.
5:30
So, um, we want to recommend, uh, following those folks if you are interested in that story.
5:35
Uh, and, uh, we just want to say rest in peace.
5:41
>> Rest in peace to Charlie Kirk. Yeah.
5:43
>> And, uh, sending prayers to his loved ones and family and, >> yeah, >> everyone in his life.
5:48
It's absolutely devastating. >> Yeah.
5:52
So today we're going to be catching up on uh the news that we touched on over the last two days, but uh we're pretty swamped with uh Y Combinator Demo Day. Had a great time there.
6:01
Um interviewed a ton of founders.
6:04
And I I like the change that we did this year where we asked everyone their favorite entrepreneur, everyone how they made their first dollar.
6:10
I saw some folks posting that like that that the meme of us asking that question on X to other people.
6:17
Uh and so it seems like we sort of broke through with that.
6:19
Yeah, it was interesting to see how how many patterns there were in that from trading. >> The opposite.
6:25
Like I thought there was no Oh, yeah.
6:26
So, there was a huge pattern in in the how you made your money.
6:29
There was like almost no pattern in who's your favorite entrepreneur.
6:31
I thought it was going to be like all Elon and Steve Jobs and it was like all over the place.
6:35
Anyway, >> uh but yeah, the patterns in the how they made their first money.
6:38
It was Minecraft servers eras, right?
6:43
>> And uh so many different eras. >> Yeah.
6:45
>> Yeah. uh some crypto traders and then some people who uh definitely just took the question is like well like after I started the business I I made a sales call and they're like that wasn't really what we're asking but we're in the lightning round so we're just going to
6:57
move on anyway stay tuned we will be putting together a uh a recap video of both of those questions uh soon and so you can get the full view of that and of course you can watch uh our coverage from the New York Stock Exchange or uh YC demo day uh in the feed or >> yeah yesterday was uh a strange show. It
7:13
It was um it was amazing to to speak with Sebastian uh the the founder and CEO of CLA.
7:22
Uh I think his story is amazing. >> Yeah.
7:24
>> Uh he's just very cool.
7:24
I think I came away from that feeling like people have a >> people generally have a a lot of misconceptions around the category. Yep.
7:35
I'm not going to go out and make the case that that it's some incredible business, but I do believe this is a business that will, you know, continue to to compound and be a much bigger business and, you know, a decade from now.
7:49
>> Um, I don't think it's going anywhere.
7:50
Um, but the the kind of his intentionality and like why the company, you know, um, why the company even needed to exist, should exist, all the all these different things.
7:59
My most botched interview question was asking Andrew Reid like so like what was it like investing in Clar.
8:04
He's like well I was a child because it was 15 years ago. I didn't Yeah.
8:08
I mean he was in college but I didn't realize how >> it was a few year they they made the investment I think like four five years before he joined the >> Yeah. Yeah.
8:16
So >> but obviously they ended in more money. >> Yeah. Yeah.
8:19
But still it was just wild and we went in chat. Uh it was it was rough.
8:23
We're going to figure out how to get chat involved when we're on the road.
8:26
Uh we're still figuring that out.
8:29
Uh, thanks everyone for tuning in today.
8:31
Back to the normal schedule. John Xley is here.
8:33
You know, it's a great day when you guys chat.
8:35
We got David, Kyle, Techno Chief.
8:38
We see you, Techno Chief.
8:41
Uh, Siraj and a bunch of other folks.
8:43
David, >> yesterday being um Yeah, being >> it's nature of live TV.
8:47
>> Yeah, it's the nature of live TV. >> Rough. Yeah.
8:49
But >> anyway, um, let me tell you about ramp. com. Time is money. Save both.
8:52
Easy to use corporate cards, bill payments, accounting, and a whole lot more. All in one place.
8:56
They hit 1 billion in ARR.
8:56
Uh we have been asking uh Eric Lyman, the CEO of RAMP, is the job finished?
9:02
He confirmed with us on the phone it's not finished.
9:06
So if you sign up for RAMP, just know he's keep he's going to keep building.
9:10
Uh anyway, >> we need to dive into the Apple and the iPhone announcement briefly.
9:14
Obviously, this has been talked about.
9:16
It happened a couple days ago.
9:18
Um, but the the post that stuck out to me, there were a few about the design, but the big one was that the iPhone 17 Pro now has more graphics power than an M2 MacBook Air.
9:26
I I I have I This is a MacBook Air.
9:30
I don't know if this might be the M3 or M4 version.
9:34
>> Wouldn't have clocked you as an Air Guy.
9:36
>> I just went for it because I was like, I'm traveling more.
9:37
I'm less of like in workstation mode and uh and so like, let me give this one a try. Uh, and let me see.
9:45
I have the I have the M4.
9:45
So I I think I have more power here than the iPhone 17 Pro.
9:49
But even just two years ago, it's crazy to think how quickly the chips are shifting from uh workstation, which is huge, uh you know, you know, laptop to phone.
10:00
And so I wanted to talk about what the downstream implications of this are.
10:05
And >> did you did you see the uh camera functionality?
10:10
Apparently, if you take a you can take a photo holding your phone vertically and it will give you the lens >> horizontal. Yeah.
10:16
Because again, it's I think it's for I think it's a square sensor that's maybe 48 megapixels.
10:22
>> How are you feeling about the the orange?
10:23
Do you think this is this is Tim Cook signaling that he's a BTC Maxi?
10:28
>> Oh, I thought it was him talking giving a little nod to Gary Tan at my combinator.
10:32
>> That's one of one of one or the other.
10:34
>> Clearly I I >> had to be one or the other. >> Yeah.
10:36
Um >> it is the color the colors. Uh I like I like orange.
10:39
I think it's a under underrated color in general, but >> uh still the color options were interesting.
10:46
Like no matte you would have thought they would have done a matte black.
10:51
>> They didn't do matte black this year. They just Wow.
10:52
Uh they have a silver and a and like a blue.
10:55
I think something like that. I like orange.
10:56
I I I think it's a cool bold color.
10:58
I think I think it's one of the ways to stand out.
11:00
Um it's McLaren orange, you know, McLaren orange. >> Looks like F1.
11:04
Maybe it's a nod to that. Who knows?
11:06
Um but they're they're having fun with it.
11:08
Hopefully next year, the color I'm pulling for, ramp yellow.
11:10
Can you imagine a ramp yellow iPhone?
11:12
Uh, it just might happen.
11:15
Maybe we'll we'll make it happen.
11:17
Um, but on the tech side, you know, people were pretty uh like there were a couple takes early that were pretty like bearish, like, oh, like nothing changed. Nothing changed.
11:26
And uh Ben Thompson summed it up pretty well.
11:29
>> Tim Cook, you had a funny banger about this.
11:32
>> I mean, Tim Tim Cook posted um he did post >> Yeah.
11:36
the morning of and he was like days like this make Apple, >> you know, like like basically like hyped it up as if as though it was going to be this sort of dramatic announcement and and I think people were pretty >> pretty let down >> at this point if it's not a change in the overall form factor like you're going to folding phone.
11:53
It's not going to be as easy just to talk about completely.
11:57
Um, but at the same time, it has a bunch of uh it has a bunch of improvements that I think will have downstream effects that might be interesting and might actually have kind of these like viral moments.
12:06
And I'll get into my thesis here.
12:09
So, uh, has a vapor chamber in it that allows it to cool.
12:13
So, if you're in the sun or you're running, you know, you're running some heavy duty app, um, you're not going to get your your phone's not going to be as hot anymore. Uh, 50% more RAM.
12:23
Obviously, that's important for AI.
12:23
And then they have a new chip that's designed with the LLM transformer architecture in mind.
12:28
So the Apple A series of chips, they've always been somewhat AI optimized, but um more for just broader machine learning tasks.
12:36
Now >> they're doing the same thing that OpenAI is doing with NVIDIA and Broadcom on chip design.
12:43
Same thing that Google DeepMind TPU team is doing over at Google and uh Anthropics working with Amazon and Tranium. Here's my post. Introducing iPhone 4000.
12:51
A newer, better iPhone that's lighter, faster, newer, and better by >> How many Where did this land?
12:58
Uh, how many likes did this wind up getting? >> Six >> 6,000. >> 6,000.
13:06
>> And the funny story here, the the little inside baseball.
13:08
Uh, Jordy posted this exact post like five minutes earlier.
13:14
>> Well, so so I originally had this post as a draft and then I altered it. Yep.
13:18
>> And I posted it and it completely I had a different picture and I did iPhone 472 >> and it was just completely flopping.
13:23
It got like one like on like 300 impressions. Like people hated it.
13:27
The the timeline hated it.
13:30
>> I just went back to this version, posted it and then it it completely ripped. So never give up. Never give up.
13:35
You think you have a good bit.
13:37
But the the the the funny thing here, I mean, obviously it just is funny that Apple always comes out and like it's our most powerful iPhone ever because it's like, well, if it was a less if you if you guys messed up and accidentally created a less powerful iPhone, you would just keep selling the current one.
13:50
You're not you're never going to come out and be like, this year we're selling one, the latest iPhone, but it's less powerful because just sell the last one then.
13:59
Just be like, no new iPhone because we couldn't make it anymore.
14:03
>> Yeah, >> we actually made it We made it perfect. >> We made it perfect. So, >> yeah.
14:05
I mean, what are how are you feeling about the Air?
14:08
I think I think that's going to sell >> incredibly well. >> I don't know.
14:12
I I'll need to like feel it and and and uh and try it.
14:14
I've never had any iPhone that's not just like the biggest and most of like the the biggest screen, the maxed out one.
14:22
I've always gone for like the the most power, the biggest one.
14:25
I've actually considered carrying an iPad mini just as a phone because I'm so big that my pockets are big enough to carry an iPad mini >> back pocket. >> Yeah.
14:36
No, no, I I was feeling it and I was like you can get it with cell service and so I think you can get a phone number on there and so you can just have like pull out your giant iPad mini.
14:46
Uh but uh but I never did that.
14:50
I've always just stuck to like the Pro Max, the big one with the big screen. But it it's it's easy.
14:53
Uh the uh I don't know the the the interesting thing about the uh the iPhone Air was this uh you know the whole computer is in the camera bump now and basically everything that drops down is just battery and screen battery and screen all the way down.
15:08
Um and so people are wondering like you know they could clearly take out the battery and the screen and maybe make like a pin like they're they're getting so good at miniaturaturizing like what it means to be a computer uh that they can put that in all sorts of different things.
15:22
I would be would have been really excited to have an iPhone that doesn't that will sit flat on a surface without a case on it.
15:28
I haven't used cases in in many years.
15:30
I just like the the feeling of the phone.
15:34
>> It is crazy that they >> so funny that just perpetually like, you know, just give me like a flat surface.
15:40
Like I'm happy for the phone to be as thick as necessary to just give me a flat surface.
15:44
>> And it looked like they were going to do that with the iPhone Pro because it has this wider notch.
15:48
So, at least if you did if you did the notch evenly all the way across, >> it might be nice if it's kind of like sitting at an angle. >> That's fine, I guess. I don't know.
15:56
>> But it's al it's also so funny the the idea of like you have this incredible camera. >> Yeah.
16:01
>> And then you're just like putting it on like they really want you to buy a case.
16:05
Like it's it's like >> a lot of the product design seems driven by your >> I don't think that's the real I don't think that's the real reason.
16:11
I think it's a I think it's >> I think it's I I think it's genuinely like people don't like heavy phones and so you have to balance like you need you need the optics of a camera that's this certain thickness and then you need the phone to be thin so that people actually carry it around and aren't like this thing's heavy um tin foil hat.
16:26
Yes, it's a case I just don't think I you agree they want >> How much money do you think they make from cases a year?
16:34
>> I mean they're adding What percentage of people do you think when they go to that buy an iPhone buy an Apple case?
16:38
I would I would estimate that it's less than 1% of their overall revenue >> basis. Yeah. >> Less. >> Totally.
16:46
But you're talking to the goat of profit maximization, Tim Cook.
16:50
>> There's just so many other ways.
16:50
I feel like you could sell 1% more iPhones if you if you actually choose this odd choice because people are like, well, yeah, it's it's the lightest iPhone.
17:01
It's lighter than the Samsung one. It's it's thinner. It's lighter. It's it it looks great.
17:05
Um, and then there might be something about like the notch kind of holding on your finger.
17:09
Um, and so you can actually hold the phone easier with that as opposed to if it was just like fully fully smooth.
17:14
Um, >> anyway, >> but uh yeah, I mean when you start thinking of uh >> when you start like the the incremental sales from from like design driven decisions like this. >> Yep.
17:30
>> I do think I do think it would be significant.
17:31
But anyway, anyway, >> uh, huge keynote filmed on an iPhone.
17:35
Obviously, a lot less graphics this time around.
17:37
Uh, if you're doing a keynote, do it on Reream. One live stream. 30 plus destinations.
17:41
Multiream and reach your audience wherever they are.
17:43
Um, >> and we have a bunch of people joining from the reream waiting room. >> Oh, yeah.
17:50
>> Later today, we're going to have uh >> Josh from Lighteed, Nico Rossberg. >> Look at that lineup.
17:57
>> Joining uh Mike and Near from uh Obo. Omjad.
18:02
>> Uh, Amjod from Replet, Alex from Higsfield, Stefan Cohen from Bane Capital Crypto, >> Rohan from Sphinx AI, uh, Timothy Luchini from Intramotive, uh, Mark from Nebus, who just signed uh, the 2017ish billion dollar deal with Microsoft.
18:21
And then, of course, Michael from Figure uh, who just IPOed today on the NASDAQ.
18:26
and the stock is trading up uh I believe 35% right now.
18:29
So he is >> um going to be joining us as well. >> Yep.
18:35
>> Yep. So, uh, my my take on the iPhone Pro was you're we're getting to the point where, um, you could run an LLM on device and even if it's not Apple intelligence, you know, through that API, um, just the ability to actually
18:53
distill something that's like GPT4 level and have it be free, not even an API call that you need, not even cheap on a per token basis, um, but actually just have something that you can basically a drag and drop >> cost of the energy. >> Cost of the energy and no one thinks
19:06
>> Cost of the energy and no one thinks about it because they charge on the edge because they charge their phone every night anyway.
19:10
So, I was talking to Tyler about this earlier.
19:12
Uh try and put into context how powerful a an an LLM running on device could be with this next iPhone because currently people have done it.
19:25
I feel like people have distilled models to the point where they can run locally on phones, but it's they're not fast or they're not smart.
19:31
But it feels like we might be at a point where you get like to just some sort of like touring touring test passing plus not waiting for >> Pat is asking if it's Nico Rosberg the F1. >> It is Nico Rosberg.
19:46
>> It is the former F1 world champion >> and now a capital allocator.
19:51
>> Now a capital allocator. Uh so yeah.
19:51
Uh Tyler, what what is your take as this gets into people's hands?
19:55
Um, how solid do you think the actual interactions with LLMs could be on on device? >> Uh, yeah.
20:03
So, I think um I think it's 12 gigabytes now up from eight. Yep.
20:08
>> Um, so you can probably run like a >> like very solid like 7 billion parameter like not super quantized model.
20:15
>> Um, we've had those for a long time that are like very solid like obviously they they're going to pass touring tests, whatever. >> Sure.
20:21
um you're probably not going to be using it for like doing your your like hard physics homework. >> Yeah.
20:28
>> Um but like most like things that you want from like a non-device model like helping look at your emails or like doing stuff that like you would think of like like a really good Siri product would do.
20:40
>> Y >> I think it's like totally capable of doing that.
20:42
>> Um >> I mean it's like I don't think that Apple intelligence was bad because the hardware was lacking.
20:49
It was like like I mean you can it'll be a little bit slower probably to run on cloud maybe.
20:57
Um >> yeah I mean with with with my experience with Apple intelligence was it was just just instantiated in very odd ways.
21:03
It was they they didn't really have like a killer app there.
21:07
Uh and it was like a bunch of different things that kind of piped in and you could like highlight text and then just say rewrite this.
21:13
Uh all sort of like very incremental gains. >> Botch summaries. >> Yeah.
21:19
Oh, the summaries are botched, but sometimes that's might be the best feature actually. It's hilarious.
21:24
>> It's a feature, not a bug.
21:25
>> We just saw you just saw one in our in our group chat where I posted a uh some fake news and uh and Apple summarizes it as like >> Gabe says, "Shouldn't be shouldn't Tyler be back in school?"
21:35
Gabe, you must have missed uh the episode, but he's taking a gap. Taking a gap semester. He is riding with us. >> Yeah.
21:43
Uh, and so I I think it's I think there's like there's something magical about getting the ability to inference a GPT4 level model on the edge for free.
21:55
Like you can you can quibble about the level of intelligence that is, but it is actually too cheap to meter because you won't even have to set up an API key.
22:04
And so you can vend in a a GPT4 level model and then go viral and not have a bill show up and not need to think about monetization, not need to think about anything that's a drag on your just pure virality.
22:20
You can have a free app that just grows and grows and grows and figure out the monetization later.
22:23
And I feel like this sets us up for maybe something interesting to happen in consumer.
22:30
We haven't really had that that moment of you remember the Lensza moment, the magic avatars.
22:35
You upload your picture and it uh turns you into Superman or something and then the studio Gibli moment.
22:41
We haven't had that many like viral apps that are purely based on LLM interactions, like text interactions.
22:49
Uh there's been a couple like there was one called like generative dungeon. Do you remember this?
22:54
It was like a dungeon crawler text thing.
22:57
So it would say like you walk up to uh the dragon's lair. what do you want to do?
23:01
And you could just type like I I brandish my sword and then it would say like the dragon. >> That was like GPT2.
23:07
>> That Yeah, it was super low level, right?
23:08
So imagine that plus like but but you can do it on device at a reasonable level and and you can bring in some other UI elements from the iPhone.
23:17
Bring in the camera, bring in GPS, bring in you know all the other tools that are available just in the iOS like Swift like you know developer kits uh the SDKs.
23:30
I feel like there will be a ton of people that are just building cool interesting things on the iPhone that could potentially like go viral and and then become real businesses.
23:40
>> Yeah, I I don't think this will be that like meaningful for like Apple intelligence because it's not like that's like a product issue.
23:47
It's not like a hardware issue, but yeah, I definitely think for >> like third party developers, this will be like pretty big.
23:52
You can do like an you know, if you make some random game, you can now have like avatars or whatever. >> Yeah.
23:57
Yeah, like if you make the SDK really easy where like it's very easy to inference an LLM, you don't have to like >> figure out how to like download and then do inference and all that stuff.
24:05
If they like abstract that away, I think it could be interesting.
24:09
>> And I just feel like we've seen so many there's been so many companies, we talked to some folks at demo day who were doing this where they were like, we have this cool uh AI agent that like scrapes your emails and does this and it all is pre it all it's all predicated on you installing a Mac app which is a really really hard thing to do. Whereas like >> Yeah.
24:26
How many Mac apps you think you've installed this year? >> Oh, it's super rare. It's super rare.
24:31
Uh, you know, I got something to put the decks together.
24:34
Uh, like I literally have a Chrome.
24:38
Like that's the one I installed.
24:40
I'm looking at my home row and it's like it's just Chrome.
24:43
>> Well, and this is why everybody's obsessed with the browser. >> Truly.
24:46
Truly, because if you can get people over there, then you're there.
24:49
Um, but but I have installed apps and I've installed little tiny apps.
24:52
We were talking about the the the workout tracking app.
24:55
strong that I saw my friend at the gym.
24:58
He was using an app to track his workouts.
24:59
Said, "What app is that?" I went and downloaded.
25:01
You went and downloaded it.
25:03
It was very easy for that app to like loosely go viral.
25:06
And it's a free app, but it doesn't have any like AI.
25:08
It doesn't really need any AI, but but you could imagine that the the viral coefficient of of someone downloads an app, they have a magical experience with some twist on top of an LLM, something storytelling, something astrology. Who knows what it'll be? I can't predict it.
25:24
It's as hard to predict as Instagram or Uber, but it's unlocked by having this having this ability for free on the iPhone.
25:31
And then people are sharing screenshots of, oh, I had this hilarious interaction or or this was incredible or I love this app.
25:39
They create some viral loop.
25:39
They do some Nikita Beer type stuff and then and then everyone's downloading the app and then it gets actually really really big.
25:46
And I don't think it's going to be a compet I don't think it's going to compete with Chachi PT.
25:49
I think it's going to be a completely different thing and it's very hard to predict but but it feels like we might be seeing it. Yeah.
25:57
And and and and it's going to require some like really, you know, cracked level of of creativity like what we saw with Harry Harper Balenciaga where it's like the technology existed and then someone came up with with the great idea to actually go like instantiate it.
26:09
So if you're going to be mocking that app up, you're going to do it in figma. com.
26:14
Think bigger, build faster.
26:14
Figma helps design and development teams build great products together.
26:18
So, you can get started for free.
26:19
Um, the Wall Street Journal was also covering the Apple's iPhone Air.
26:24
They had a whole interview.
26:27
Uh, they they they they had really good coverage of the of the iPhone event.
26:30
Um, there was a few there was one thing in uh the uh the reporting from the Wall Street Journal.
26:38
I don't have I don't have this particular article actually, but uh they did an article with the Wall Street Journal and uh Apple revealed that I I believe they said the majority of iPhones, 51% or more uh that are shipping to America are going to be made in India.
26:55
And I'm not sure if it was this cycle, but it seemed like they were taking the tariff stuff really seriously, moving the uh the actual manufacturing capacity around.
27:05
Obviously, Foxcon, their their manufacturing partner is a Taiwanese company and so they're worried about geopolitical risk as well.
27:10
And so, uh, just another another data point around, uh, Tim Cook, he is not loudly shouting like, "America, I'm all in, re-industrialize," but, he is making moves.
27:25
>> What was the number he threw out at the dinner last week, wasn't it?
27:27
In >> I don't know if he had a number because uh, who was it?
27:31
It was uh Zuck had a number and did Apple have a number too that was 600 billion or something.
27:37
Apple has thrown out a number at one point. You're completely right.
27:41
Um my my my point is that uh we've seen data points. Oh yeah. Yeah.
27:47
The number of thank yous is a lot.
27:49
Um but but but we've seen he's invested in uh in some semic some rare earth uh developments in the United States and starting to think about manufacturing internationally.
28:00
And you know the the the pro bullish bet on Tim Cook is that like if he was able to set up this in China and he's the reason he can set it up somewhere else because he's the guy who did it.
28:12
And so, uh, even though he hasn't been really loud about >> his moves, because obviously if he says like, >> "Oh, yeah, I'm not going to be manufacturing in China anymore."
28:22
Then like his important business partners over there are probably going to be like, "Well, yeah, like we're not going to take your business seriously anymore."
28:29
Uh, there are a ton of different geopolitical considerations.
28:33
>> Such an iconic line from the dinner.
28:35
Cook says, "I've always enjoyed dinner and interacting." >> Yeah.
28:40
If you're getting dinner this weekend with one of your boys, just tell >> how to say something that like no one can can, you know, cancel you for.
28:46
It's like, I've always enjoyed dinner and interacting.
28:52
>> Interacting >> two things I've enjoyed.
28:54
>> He's a dinner enjoyer.
28:55
>> He's not saying I've always enjoyed dinner with you. Yep.
28:57
>> And interacting with you.
28:57
He's just saying, "I've always enjoyed dinner."
29:02
incredible he put putting on a cla I I feel like for watching some of these like I was watching the Tucker uh Sam Alman interview and um there's a certain level of polish that some of these some of these uh CEOs have when they get to a certain level of media training and public speaking experience where I think of them more as like word rotators than word cells or shape rotators.
29:23
They can they can so quickly like shift a sentence to be like like that like so perfectly balanced where you're like wow every word in that sentence was calculated so that it's the rides this perfect line like uh like Sam was going back and forth with Tucker and Tucker's I didn't accuse you. I didn't accuse you.
29:45
and you and if you run back the transcript, you're like, "Yeah, technically he didn't.
29:48
He was it was not an accusation."
29:50
But then, you know, they're they're rotating the sentences around to try and like pin each other.
29:55
It's like watching a wrestling match. It's crazy.
29:58
>> Tim Cook said they would be investing $600 billion. >> $600 billion. Yeah. Uh, okay.
30:01
So, Apple says the majority of iPhones shipped to the US are now assembled in India, meaning they face no tariff.
30:07
Yet, Indian suppliers aren't yet capable of delivering as many of the Pro models that US consumers demand.
30:13
So most of those still come from China.
30:16
Uh so this is the majority of iPhones in total because uh Apple makes a ton of those but they can't they can't make the leading edge.
30:24
And then the other thing that everyone always talks about with this like assembled in India is not the same as fully manufactured in India.
30:31
Obviously, the ad the the advantage to Chinese manufacturing uh prowess is that you'll walk across the street and there's a CNC shop with 25,000 CNC machines that can just immediately uh make you any part and make a million of those parts if you need.
30:45
those parts if you need. So um obviously it's going to be a long road for them to set up manufacturing anywhere other than uh other than China but uh it does seem to serious to understand Tim's actual strategy here because I don't think he's saying I'm going to invest
31:05
>> he's not going to be in a huge hurry to invest that 600 billion right uh he may you know he may not actually believe it's it's at all the right decision for Apple and he's just feeling like he needs to plate the admin and then if and and then in 2028 comes around and you just you know can pull back or pull out. >> There's also like so much to
31:24
>> There's also like so much to 600 billion of capex over what five years or something like that like that includes HQ that includes data centers for iCloud that need to be local.
31:35
Uh if you're streaming the F1 movie on Apple TV plus you don't want that stream coming from a data center across the world necessarily.
31:45
needs to be cashed locally.
31:46
So there are like so many different pieces of the business.
31:50
Building more Apple stores like that counts as capex if they build them and they you know there so 600 billion doesn't necessarily mean like yes like we're building like the one plant because you know this is like a rainforest of complexity that actually delivers the the iPhone.
32:04
It's not just it's not just like one iPhone factory please.
32:08
It's like a whole network of things.
32:10
Um battery life appears to be a challenge for the Air.
32:13
Uh, Apple always says like all day battery life, but people are like >> allegedly, >> what kind of all day are we talking?
32:18
Are we talking scrolling for 18 hours? >> Doom scroll.
32:23
>> Are we talking a proper scroll?
32:25
>> Uh, proper doom scroll.
32:25
Um, Apple announced an accessory that will attach to the Air.
32:31
Um, and obviously that's it no longer as thin.
32:34
Uh, the company added what it calls a plateau on the back of the Air and Pro models, adding thickness at the top of the device to fit bigger and hotter chips. Not a bump. It's a plateau. >> It's a plateau. Yeah.
32:44
Oh, they're they're rebranding.
32:47
>> Maybe they're signaling that we're Maybe this is Gartner hype cycle. >> Plateau productivity.
32:51
I mean, they have plateaued in productivity for sure. The hype cycle.
32:55
They they've been through it.
32:57
They're like, "First hype cycle. First hype cycle. I've been here. I'm I'm I'm plateauing.
33:02
I'm I'm getting productive."
33:04
Um anyway, we also talked AirPods Pro, heart monitor, Apple Watch detects if the wearer has high blood pressure.
33:12
Um, and you know, more more news.
33:15
So, we'll we'll we'll we'll keep moving on.
33:16
Uh, Ben Thompson also had a great article.
33:18
You can go read it on stratey.
33:19
Um, >> what was what was he alluding to with the sugar water trap? >> The sugar water trap.
33:24
I don't want to know if I want to give away the the game.
33:28
We can pull up the actual Let me see. Sugar water.
33:30
That is an interesting phrase. I like a good coinage.
33:32
Uh it Apple took the liberty of opening yesterday's presentation with a classic Steve Jobs quote.
33:39
Design is not just what it looks and feels like. Design is how it works.
33:45
That's a great quote from Steve Jobs.
33:47
Uh setting aside the wisdom of using that quote when the company is about to launch a controversial new user interface design. That's uh iOS uh 18.
33:57
Is that what it's called? >> Yeah.
33:59
Which one did we have you update update? >> That was iOS 26. >> 26. They're on the year.
34:02
They're on the year release now, but they haven't updated the iPhones to be on the annual release. >> I can't wait.
34:09
I can't wait for iOS 4000. >> 4000.
34:14
>> They really should just move to the year on the iPhone, too.
34:16
Then it's like, yeah, I I have the iPhone 26.
34:18
Oh, because you bought that in the year 2025 like a car.
34:22
You know, I know it would make sense. >> Match it all up. Maybe they'll do that.
34:27
Maybe they'll do that next year.
34:27
They'll just skip five because they wound up doing that for the iPhone 10.
34:30
I believe there was never an iPhone 9, right?
34:32
They went from eight to 10 and then they for 10 they called it the X and they were like really dancing around with the names for a while.
34:40
It was like iPhone 6 and then Max Pro.
34:43
They were like testing all these different things and they finally kind of like defined the the the >> I like I like modeling it after just cars. It's just the year.
34:53
>> I I I think that's the future here for sure.
34:55
Uh, so that wasn't the Steve Jobs quote, "This presentation and and Apple's general state of affairs made me think of," says Ben Thompson.
35:03
What I was thinking of was the question Jobs posed to then PepsiCo President John Scully when he was recruiting him to be the CEO of Apple in the early 1980s.
35:15
Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or come with me and change the world?
35:20
This is what Steve Jobs asked John Scully, then PepsiCo president, trying to recruit him, said, "Hey, you're selling sugar water.
35:28
Come over here and actually build something that matters, that changes the world."
35:33
So Ben Thompson says, "Phones are a great business, one of the best businesses ever, in fact, because Apple managed to marry the malleability of software with the tangibility and monetization potential of hardware."
35:44
Indeed, the fact that we will always need hardware to access software, including AI, speaks to not just the profitability, but also the durability of Apple's model.
35:51
The problem, however, is simply staying in their lane.
35:54
Content can be a hardware provider.
35:58
Content to be a hardware provider for the delivery of others innovations feels a lot more like Scully than Jobs.
36:04
Jobs told Walter Isacson for his biography, "My passion has been building an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products.
36:12
Everything else was secondary."
36:14
Sure, this is Steve Jobs talking to uh Walter Isacson.
36:17
Uh sure, it was great to make a profit, but that was what allowed you to make great products, but the products, not the profits, were the motivation.
36:27
Scully flipped these priorities to where the goal was to make money.
36:30
It's a subtle difference, but it ends up meaning everything.
36:35
The people you hire, who gets promoted, what you discuss in meetings. So Ben Thompson goes on.
36:39
He says, "Apple, to be fair, isn't selling the same the same sugar water year after year in a zero sum war with other sugar water companies."
36:47
You know, no one's talking about the Pepsi 2026 edition.
36:53
It's the same thing every year.
36:53
He is Apple is making improvements.
36:55
Um, the sugar water is getting better and I think this year's seasonal concoction is particularly tasty. It's great.
37:04
Uh, what is inescapable, however, is that while the company does still make new products, um, the company has, in the pursuit of easy profits, constrained the space in which it innovates. That's somewhat true.
37:16
I mean, they did take a big shot on Vision Pro.
37:21
They're probably going to continue there.
37:22
Maybe they'll, but yeah, I mean, until they launch the the I can or >> Scott in the chat says the Xbox naming convention is in an abstract liinal space. >> That was a wild one.
37:33
Are you familiar with the Xbox naming convention convention? >> X, the S, the 360. >> Yeah.
37:40
Well, it was the 360 and then they should have just done 720, 1080.
37:44
Obviously, it was no brainer.
37:44
But then they wound up doing >> the Xbox Series X and then they did the Series S and then they did X.
37:51
It wasn't Xbox edition was >> I think it was Xbox 360 and then Xbox One and then there was X S and then now there's like >> you got to keep them on their on your >> Yeah, going back to one is always a crazy crazy move but people love doing that.
38:07
>> Uh anyway uh that didn't matter for a long time.
38:10
Smartphones were the center of innovation and Apple was consequently the center of the tech universe.
38:13
Now, however, Apple is increasingly on the periphery, and Ben Thompson thinks that more than anything is what that's what bums people out.
38:21
No, Apple may not be a sugar water purveyor, but they are farther than they have been in years from changing the world.
38:28
Well, if you are trying to change the world, you need to be compliant. You need to be on Vanta.
38:34
Automate compliance, manage risk, prove trust continuously.
38:36
Vant's trust management platform takes the manual work out of your security and compliance process and replaces it with continuous automation.
38:43
whether you're pursuing your first framework or managing a complex program.
38:47
>> This is Fanta country.
38:49
>> So, uh, other reactions to the iPhone news. We'll run through these.
38:51
Um, Andrew Claire had a bunch of funny >> the um observations. >> Yeah. Yeah.
38:57
I I was just pulling this up.
38:58
So, you go through this and then I'll run through it. >> Yeah.
39:00
So, Andrew Claire says, "Things I've learned since the iPhone 17 series was announced.
39:04
Everyone hates the color orange." I don't think so.
39:06
I think this is going to be >> You said on the day you were like, "I'm getting orange."
39:09
And and I I would get orange, too.
39:12
I like orange, but I feel like if you have orange and then I have orange, it's like a little bit too Did I say I would get orange?
39:16
That's what you said to me.
39:17
You were like, I'm getting the orange.
39:18
If you don't get it, if you're passing on the orange, I'm doing it.
39:21
>> I mean, I think there's just not options.
39:23
They have >> There's only room in this town for one orange iPhone Pro.
39:27
>> Well, we already we actually already have the same color phone and we only get it mixed up like twice. >> That's true.
39:32
The the the display or the background does a lot of heavy lifting there.
39:35
Um but uh no one so so Samsung mobile US Twitter was was going off. >> Yeah. Love it. >> Um responding.
39:45
>> They're boys >> 48 MP 3 still doesn't equal 200 MP. # I can't >> uh Okay.
39:54
>> And uh then then was quoting uh MKBHD saying actual innovation is greater than hype. I can't again. >> Wow.
40:04
Um then they said I hash I can't believe some people had to wait five years for sleep score.
40:11
>> What is this from the Apple Watch?
40:14
>> Then they said uh Apple just announced live translation at the ZZZ note like sleep it's calling >> oh wait so yeah Samsung is is is taking shots at >> taking shots at Apple on every on every single >> so they put some you know probably Zoomer social media person on on it.
40:33
It's not a zoomer though because they're using hashtags. >> Oh, interesting. Okay.
40:37
>> And and Samsung had posted in 2022, let let us know when it folds with like one of these emojis. >> Okay. Okay.
40:43
>> And then they said # I can't believe this is still relevant.
40:46
So, they really were going for this.
40:47
This like I can't campaign.
40:52
>> Rough rough, >> which is >> interesting.
40:54
Well, uh the other observations, iPhone Pro is for pro Tik Tockers. Mr.
40:58
Beast will now solely be using iPhones on his channel.
41:00
That's super interesting.
41:02
Um, >> is this >> this is because >> paid partnership or >> I I think he just is >> realize you can achieve >> Yeah. So, if you tour Mr.
41:12
Beast's facility, you'll see that he has like closets with like hundreds of cameras because uh they all need to uh they need to record.
41:21
So, like GoPros and and uh you know FX3s and all sorts of different cameras.
41:25
But a a lot of the reality TV is just like random stuff's going to happen.
41:29
You have to have a camera on it.
41:31
And your budget for that camera, it can't be $100,000 for like a pro cinema rig.
41:36
You need just like, oh yeah, throw a $2,000 phone there. It's super light. Plugs in over USBC.
41:41
Save everything to the cloud. Save everything locally. >> Oh yeah.
41:47
I mean, this is what Apple should be doing.
41:50
I mean, uh, they should be just constantly going up against DJI >> and just really keeping the screws to DJI and just saying, It's tough because the gimbal the gimbal might be like a billion dollar a year product line.
42:02
billion dollar a year product line. DJI has one and that unlocked the gimbal that goes on the drone which is also the gimbal that goes into Hollywood which is also the gimbal that goes on the RC car and like the the DJI they now own Hasselblad so they have lenses and cameras all the way down to the drones
42:18
and then they have vlogging gear and DJI has great microphones now and so they've they've realized DJ's DJI has really leaned into this trend of like the proumer content creator who wants like just one notch above but can't afford a steady cam operator So, they just need the the Ronin or the Osmo to have a gimbal. Um,
42:37
Um, >> and a lot of people put iPhones on those.
42:40
But, uh, that would be that would be a fun challenge for for Apple to go and take the take the fight to DJI. But, uh, oh well.
42:47
Uh, the conclusion of this post is Tim can still cook.
42:49
Hopefully, he is putting his team on graphite.
42:52
dev code review for the age of AI.
42:54
Graphite helps teams on GitHub ship higher quality software faster. Get started for free.
43:00
Um, also, uh, Trunkfan said, "Apple, after spending a hundred billion dollars on R&D over the past five years, nothing really changed in the design language from the 11 Pro Max to the 16 Pro Max."
43:12
But Sebastian comes in with a quote post and says, >> "True zone, >> during these six years, Apple managed to develop the best CPU architecture in the world, outpacing both AMD and Intel.
43:23
Also, their GPU is nowadays state-of-the-art, which we talked about, beating Nvidia in some areas.
43:25
Nvidia is a $3 trillion GPU company.
43:27
I'd say Chad has Chad has spent their >> 100 corrected. So Mr.
43:32
Beast was at the Apple event.
43:35
>> Yeah, he he was at the Apple event, but I don't know if it's a direct partnership.
43:37
Like I think he might just be like, I'm all in on iPhone.
43:38
I'm buying them, but maybe there's some sort of deal, but uh he he was at it and that and that's where he announced this that he was like, I'm out of and the big one is that there there's gen lock so you can have one time code across a whole bunch of different iPhones. Again, very valuable.
43:52
So, if you're if you're filming Beast Games and it's like American Ninja Warrior and a bunch of people are going to be running around, you're going to have 25 different angles, it's like, "Oh, well, like we need a telephoto lens for this shot.
44:05
Just put on the 24 the 48 megapixel 4K, you know, telephoto.
44:09
Put on the the wide angle and then sync it all."
44:11
So, when you bring it in the timeline, you can be like, "Let's cut from this angle to this closeup to this one to this handheld and they're all in perfect sync."
44:19
So, um, I'm sure there's going to be a ton of really creative stuff.
44:24
>> Unfortunately, I don't know if we'll ever be allowed at Apple considering I posted the iPhone 4000 meme might have got us banned for might have got us banned for life, but we love Apple. >> We'll see. We'll figure it out. >> Love Apple.
44:35
>> Um, uh, also the new iPhone, when you throw it in the orange iPhone, when you throw it in a green case, it looks like Master Chief from Halo. Very cool.
44:41
Also got a little Michelangelo from Ninja Turtles vibe to it.
44:46
I think it'll be popular with the kids.
44:47
Um Blake Scholes says everything's battery and shows that the entire iPhone Air is just up up top.
44:56
Uh >> very cool to just see the miniaturization of electronics just flow through so so completely.
45:01
Um and of course Duolingo traded down on the news that Apple is bringing live translation to AirPods Pro 3.
45:09
Um so >> morning Bruce saying that owl is going to break into Tim Cook's house tonight. Yeah.
45:18
Well, if you're looking for not quite Dolingo, but uh AI for data analysis, go to Julius.
45:24
What analysis do you want to run?
45:26
Chat with your data and get expert level insights in seconds.
45:28
Loved by 2 million plus users and trusted by individuals at Zapier, BCG, and Princeton University. >> Legends.
45:37
Uh, in other news, Larry Ellison got the number one spot as the world's richest man with a 70 billion dollar gain after Oracle reported quarterly results after the market close.
45:49
Um, Oracle surged 40% and he made a hundred billion dollars.
45:53
There was a funny post in here that >> Well, he didn't make it.
45:56
>> Well, he >> he's not selling.
45:58
>> Yeah, he's not selling.
45:58
But, um, and you pointed out a couple other things that uh, you know, this is the biggest gain since 1999.
46:03
What happened after 1999?
46:03
uh trillion dollar companies trading like a penny stock.
46:08
Uh there's this circle of money going on in AI where Nvidia sells GPUs to Oracle.
46:12
Oracle uses to power it data centers.
46:15
Oracle builds cloud on those GPUs.
46:17
Nvidia rents compute back via signed deals from Oracle.
46:19
And so if if there's like if the economy needs external uh the economy needs to it cannot be entirely self-sustaining just on a few companies.
46:28
Um the the actual top story is is uh people were wondering like how did they get this backlog?
46:34
So huge and the answer is OpenAI.
46:36
So um Oracle signed a contract with with uh OpenAI signed a contract with Oracle to buy $300 billion in computing power over roughly five years.
46:46
People familiar with the matter said the deal is one of the largest ever cloud contracts signed reflecting how spending on artificial intelligence data centers is hitting new heights despite mounting concerns over a potential bubble.
46:58
And uh the Oracle contract will require 4.
47:00
5 gawatts of power capacity roughly comparable to the electricity produced by not one but two Hoover dams uh or the amount consumed by 4 million homes.
47:11
Oracle shared shares surged 36% um uh when they revealed it had added $317 billion in future contract revenue during its latest quarter.
47:21
So Larry Ellison and Sam Alman are clearly uh in cahoots working together to uh build a next generation hyperscaler. They're teaming up.
47:32
And so the the question that I had was everyone thinks this is crazy.
47:37
Like this is somewhat like a revision on the Stargate story.
47:42
Like the Stargate story was at a high level.
47:45
the people in the room with Donald Trump that day wanted to do a $500 billion dollar project together.
47:52
It wasn't like the money had been wired and it's in the company.
47:54
It was like it's a variety of companies. It was like a vibrant. >> Let's go big.
47:59
>> But but but the vibes were let's go big.
48:01
And so this feels like just one notch more clarity into how Stargate and the other projects might kind of come together.
48:09
I don't think uh I don't think you should look at this as as like its own separate its own thing.
48:14
It's it's a piece of the overall uh story that we're getting around Stargate and just big data center investment around OpenAI.
48:24
>> So my question >> reminded me of the um you remember that exchange between uh >> Elizabeth Holmes and and Sunonny Balwani when they said this is our year tiger.
48:35
That was kind of the original Stargate meeting.
48:37
They were just kind of getting together like this is our year.
48:38
So it was Masayoshi Son, Larry Ellison, Sam Alman, and Donald Trump saying that the the plan was for those four loosely plus a couple other people to invest roughly 500 billion over a series of years.
48:53
Um, and >> they were early to use in the five the half a trillion dollar number.
48:59
Now you got Mark throwing it around, you got Tim throwing it around, everybody's throwing it around, >> everyone's throwing it around.
49:05
And so, uh, I guess, uh, I'm in I'm in the steelman category today, figuring out, um, how crazy is that number?
49:13
Like, how how how should we be thinking about that number?
49:18
How can we put it in other context?
49:19
And so one context that I thought would be interesting is if you assume if you if you assume that chatbt like as a consumer product as an as an internet company is going to be roughly the same scale as Google Amazon. com and Facebook.
49:39
com and like the Facebook apps like it will have similar revenue similar scale similar user adoption similar monetiz ization like you get like one ultra compounding trillion dollar like consumer style website at the end of the day.
49:59
It's like an internet company, right?
50:02
>> Uh you have to support that with data centers, not just like be a hyperscaler and then build a cloud business.
50:09
Like you need servers to run Instagram. Yeah.
50:14
>> You need servers to run Gmail.
50:14
You need servers to run YouTube.
50:16
You need servers to run AWS.
50:18
You need to not just AWS but Amazon. com needs servers.
50:21
That's why AWS grew out of Amazon.
50:23
com was because they were investing so much so many servers in just supporting Amazon.
50:27
com also prime uh prime video twitch these these all all of their internet properties aside from their resale business in AWS and aside from Google's resale business GCP.
50:42
>> Yeah, >> you need a ton of servers.
50:43
So my question is like Sam Alman's saying I'm going to be one of those like think of open AI as the next Google, the next Amazon.
50:51
com, the next Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, right?
50:54
How much did those companies spend to support their trillion dollar businesses?
51:00
They have a trillion dollar internet business.
51:02
How much did they invest?
51:03
And so I I tried to pull all the capex that they've spent roughly that doesn't go into their cloud business. And the numbers are big.
51:13
Amazon retail X AWS this sort of in this includes like fulfillment transportation so it's like it's it's very significant but $250 billion uh Meta Meta's core apps so X new AI X Gen AI so not counting the llama stuff uh that's $130 billion in capex and we've seen that these hyperscalers are all spending 60 70 billion a year and they've been ramping so if you work back from that ramp, you're spending 60, 50, 40.
51:44
You add all that up, you're in the $200 billion range.
51:49
Uh Google's core services, XGCP, and this is probably the best comp because they don't have warehouses for fulfillment.
51:56
Uh Google's core services, not including Google Cloud Platform, $210 billion is like the reasonable estimate for how much they've spent on the servers just to serve YouTube, Google search, databases, all that stuff, Gmail, all that stuff.
52:10
And so when I think about OpenAI, what they're trying to do, become in the conversation with FA as as many user minutes, as big a penetration as Facebook, as Google, as Amazon.
52:21
com, that feels like a couple hundred billion in capex.
52:27
And so you project it forward.
52:30
And the capex is way more expensive because you're doing AI inference instead of just pull the search results out of the database.
52:36
Put the data put put the search results in the bag.
52:39
Um 300 billion seems like it could if OpenAI succeeds in in if in five years we're talking about it as like yeah Amazon. com, Google. com, Facebook. com, chat.
52:52
com like these are all these are the new mag four, mag seven or mag 8, mag n whatever like if they're in the same conversation as like dominant internet companies that are used by everyone all the time for everything.
53:05
Not a niche, not a Pinterest like outcome, not a Snapchat like outcome, but a Facebook and you factor in Amazon like outcome >> inferencing language models today and various you know all all the models is just extremely compute intensive in a way that that serving Gmail is not. >> Exactly.
53:22
And and and this was the story of YouTube.
53:23
Like I believe that the compute like the capex that went into supporting YouTube was way more than Google search because Google search needed, you know, it's just like >> I was just thinking this yesterday.
53:35
There was a number of of um Hassan was streaming on Twitch and had 200,000 live viewers, which >> probably is costing Twitch, >> you know, multiple dollars a second, >> something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
53:50
Somebody somebody ran the numbers just on the Apple stream because the Apple stream on on YouTube had like uh millions and millions of views and they were talking about the data just just the data transfer cost and so um >> the economics of scaling a consumer AI company like chat GPT is different >> and so it is going to be more costly.
54:11
>> Well and the reason that the reason that um so Oracle and Open AI are now incredibly linked they're betting on each other. Yep.
54:19
>> And both have to execute pretty much perfectly. Yeah.
54:22
Otherwise, there's going to be absolute chaos.
54:25
>> And so on the absolute chaos, the bare thesis, it's this feels like 1999.
54:30
>> So, so, so yeah, the concern, the concern is like, okay, so Oracle just had a double miss on earnings, right?
54:36
>> Um, and uh we'll see how they do this next quarter.
54:39
If they come out and blow out earnings, I'm assuming, you know, like if they can get sort of like back on track, uh it'll be uh everybody will be very excited.
54:47
But the question is like everybody is struggling to get the infra, you know, the various like components necessary to build data centers right now, right?
54:56
Elon's talking about making his own transformers, right?
54:59
Um, everybody needs >> electrical transformers. He said that. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
55:03
That was another thing we missed. >> That's crazy. Okay.
55:06
And uh and so you have to assume that Oracle can uh develop this capacity on a reasonable time horizon in a heavily supply constrained environment where they're competing with you know uh five or so other heavily heavily funded players. >> Yep.
55:23
You have to assume they can execute perfectly.
55:25
And then you have to assume that OpenAI is going to be able to scale revenue to the point where they can actually sort of pay for this $300 billion of of compute, right? Yeah.
55:38
>> Um has to come from somewhere.
55:38
Uh I don't think uh I don't know.
55:40
You you have to wonder uh can Sam Alman raise $300 billion? >> It's on his way.
55:48
Has anyone ever raised $300 billion?
55:54
>> I was talking to Brandon about this.
55:55
Like, do you sort of need to >> What is the most money ever raised? >> I don't know.
56:01
You get into crazy crazy comps.
56:04
How much did uh >> because even a lot of the best and biggest companies end up getting to the point where they're like, "Cool, we got enough cash.
56:11
>> Google was cash flow positive at at IPO, right?"
56:13
And so, they were not >> Yeah.
56:14
I mean, the single biggest uh was is OpenAI's $40 billion raise, but even that again was >> Didn't they only draw down and it's it's contingent on the for-profit conversion? >> Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. >> Yeah. Uh wild.
56:29
It is It is a It is unprecedented territory.
56:32
Um but it's an unprecedented technology.
56:35
Like you use it and you're like, "Yeah, this is magical."
56:39
Like this is going to be around.
56:42
>> Larry prayed for one more bubble like this. Then he hit he hit hard. >> Just one more. >> Yeah.
56:46
I mean it will be interesting to see like like the the the the Oracle street like the investor should be looking at Oracle and and saying okay you have this backlog like how how quickly can you draw down from it?
56:59
Like next quarter can you convert that backlog that backlog into serious revenue and profit?
57:07
Um if not and it's just staying out in the backlog it needs to be discounted a lot.
57:12
Um, anyway, if you're looking to scale your generative media strategy, go to fall generative media platform for developers.
57:21
The world's best generative image, video, and audio models all in one place.
57:27
Develop and fine-tune models with serverless GPUs and on demand clusters >> trusted by over a million developers and Adobe, Shopify, Canva, Kora, Perplexity, and many more. >> There we go.
57:38
Um >> uh really enjoyed uh having uh found her on the other day.
57:44
>> Uh Chris Baky uh who somehow hasn't been on the show yet.
57:48
I I feel like we would have over overlapped at some point, but we've reacted to a ton of his posts.
57:51
He says, "My son's preschool teacher asked me to read to his class next week and bring three kids that uh three three books that the kids will enjoy.
58:00
Uh these four-year-olds are in for a treat."
58:03
And he has zero to one by Peter Teal, High Growth Handbook by Aad Gil, and Titan by Ron Chernow. I love it.
58:10
Uh the kids might might enjoy some of those books, but some of them are a little bit dry for the kiddos.
58:17
Um Robin Hood has launched a social app. This was in the journal.
58:22
Um Robin Hood's for you says near Cyan.
58:24
Uh Robin Hood's for you will let you tweet positions with your real profit loss supporting both options and crypto.
58:31
Um we Vlad has been in the trenches grinding um launching new products all the time.
58:40
>> Um Dalton Caldwell announced a new uh a new fund or I don't know maybe he announced it prior he was at Y Combinator come out with uh Standard Capital Standardcap.
58:50
com the AI native series A firm.
58:52
Uh the reason I thought this was particularly interesting is they're doing it um they're doing uh effectively like seasons.
59:02
So they do they're basically doing batches, right?
59:04
And so um they they say uh Standard Capital operates on a quarterly on quarterly funding cycles.
59:14
>> Applications are now open for Standard Capital's fall 2025 funding cycle.
59:16
So interesting to take the sort of like, you know, systematic um uh model of funding and apply it to series A.
59:26
Um they're they're differentiating as well by um they're only looking for 10%.
59:31
Obviously, plenty of series A firms will will happily take uh 10%, but uh this might be particularly interesting to founders that are generating a lot of revenue already, want to get a series A done, but just don't want to be peer pressured by the the current capital and the and the and the new entrance to the the the cap table to just raise, you know, closer 15 20%. >> Yeah.
59:55
Who else is uh running Standard Capital?
59:57
I feel like he got someone else on the team. >> Paul. >> Paul Bukite. Yep. >> I love Paul.
1:00:02
Uh, we got to have both of them or one of them on at some point.
1:00:06
Um, I'm interested to know how the fund is structured if each does an LP get exposure to a fund that's a specific uh season cycle.
1:00:15
I actually >> I think it's pretty straightforward.
1:00:18
It's like, hey, we're going to fund I don't know how many uh they're actually doing. Let me try to find it. They're doing five.
1:00:25
So, they're going to do five companies per cycle, four times a year. So, 20 companies a year.
1:00:29
Um they can uh I imagine they're write they're planning to write like you know5 to to$10 million checks um depending how uh overheated the rounds get.
1:00:42
But it's pretty easy to plan out.
1:00:44
You can go to your LPs and say like look we're going to fund this many companies over the next two years.
1:00:48
Obviously, there'll be edge cases and I'm sure they'll >> they'll they'll end up doing like offcycle investments >> here and there, but um >> uh it's pretty cool to see some experimentation with the model and you know leaving Y Combinator he can this this becomes like a a net positive asset to to Y Combinator to to provide uh downstream funding. >> Yes.
1:01:10
And there was always this uh dynamic of is YC going to cherrypick the best companies?
1:01:15
best companies? Is it like a counter signal if you get to demo day and none of the f none of the partners have been like yeah I want to invest in the next round uh and YC continuity was a thing for a while and there was this odd dynamic of like well like if YC continuity YC continuity was a fantastic fund but people were always asking
1:01:32
questions about like what does it mean do they have like extra insight so it's an extra good signal or is it a bad signal because like you couldn't do with somebody else um and uh and this yeah sort of solves that potentially which is good >> somebody else posted Today at YC demo day, I ran into a multi-stage firm that has invested in 600 YC companies over the last 5 years. Of those, one has
1:01:50
Of those, one has raised a series A.
1:01:53
They still invest in 10 invested in 10 companies.
1:01:57
>> That seemed like a low hit rate, but how young are the companies?
1:02:00
>> I mean, >> it's been over >> incredibly low incredibly low hit rate.
1:02:05
I mean wild they they uh I I don't I don't know if >> I feel like Gary has shared other stats where like way more >> you you have to we have you would have to study this firm and understand like how >> seems like they're underperforming >> like figure out and do basically the opposite of what
1:02:20
>> yeah because you could just do random and be at the the purely random >> don't meet the founders just like have have a database and just like offer money >> maybe they're printing maybe they only invest in maybe they're really good at going in and finding the company >> they're going to make it to raise again. Yeah, they none of them raise a but they
1:02:37
Yeah, they none of them raise a but they have 12 IPOs.
1:02:39
>> Maybe they're fine to just make it all back in one trade.
1:02:42
>> Yeah, maybe that one company is like it's Coinbase or something. It's like Yeah. >> Yeah.
1:02:46
So, apparently they only pick consumer companies.
1:02:49
>> Okay, that's so >> Yeah.
1:02:50
>> Um >> consumer is likely power law.
1:02:54
>> Y Combinator consumer >> but very hit or miss. >> Yeah, very powerful. >> Sorry. Sorry, not Y Combinator. Open AI.
1:03:01
I guess they were they weren't a consumer company when they were going through YC but >> nope they pivoted classic uh anyway let me tell you about turbo puffer search every bite serverless vector uh serverless vector and full text search
1:03:15
built from first principles on object storage fast 10x cheaper and extremely scalable um >> we got to have Simon on from Turbo Puffer ASAP he's >> should we so fun investing in Turkish bonds >> you see this Turkey just cut the interest rate from 43% down to 40%. And Maine says, "Did bro say 40?" So
1:03:35
And Maine says, "Did bro say 40?"
1:03:35
So like I mean I don't know but like if you go over to Turkey and you put your money in like their equivalent of T bills, you just earn 40% gains.
1:03:45
Like is this not inflation adjusted? I assume.
1:03:49
I assume they have like really high inflation in whatever it's denominated in.
1:03:52
But uh DC investor says we need to be farming this.
1:03:57
Yeah, that was my first turkey.
1:04:00
>> Put your bonds on chain. Let >> let Hyperlid go.
1:04:05
>> Let the trenches decide the the fair value of your of your bond. >> The trenches decide.
1:04:08
Uh Andrew McCallip uh answered our TBPN question that we were asking at YCM today.
1:04:14
How did you make your first dollar on the internet?
1:04:16
He says, uh mine was at 13 years old.
1:04:16
I was contract I was contracting CNC shops to produce parts for my online RC car business, Cold Fusion Racing. Good name.
1:04:27
Uh, the Traxxas crowd will remember me as the steel differential guy.
1:04:29
Uh, made thousands of upgraded steel planetary differentials after the brushless motors hit the market and were shredding the OEM plastic ring gears.
1:04:39
I literally rode my bike to the gas station for money orders.
1:04:44
What a fun time that was. Wow. Amazing.
1:04:46
Makes a ton of sense why he's doing what he's doing now.
1:04:48
He of course works at Varta and is building.
1:04:52
>> We got to have him on to come on and talk.
1:04:53
>> Yeah, I want to hear about the product.
1:04:55
Andrew, come on the show. >> You're welcome. >> It's time to Bob.
1:04:58
>> Um, and if you want to get Project Bob mentioned on CHAGPT, go to profound Andrew.
1:05:02
Get your brand mentioned CHP.
1:05:04
Reach millions of consumers who are using AI to discover new products and brands.
1:05:07
Uh, Hunter shared this interesting fact.
1:05:11
If you become a billionaire and then you lose it all, Forbes still keeps you on their real-time net worth tracker as some sort of dark humiliation ritual.
1:05:19
And so Elizabeth Holmes, Renee Benco, who I'm not familiar with, >> just throw you at the bottom.
1:05:26
>> And and Sam Bankman Freed is at 0. 0 billion.
1:05:30
>> I want to put that in the truth zone on FB SPF.
1:05:32
He might have $100 million tucked away somewhere in crypto.
1:05:34
I think Elizabeth Holmes is seriously zeroed, but uh SPF, it would have been so easy for him to have some random salon on a USB stick somewhere on a one of those like offline drives and uh and and and just have it waiting for him because he buried it.
1:05:52
You have to imagine I I I'm not saying it's 100% but like >> you have to imagine that he is like >> tin foil hat.
1:05:58
You have to imagine he's like placing TR like he's he's getting >> printouts of of uh charts and he's like basically figuring out a way to day trade behind bars and probably >> uh >> anyways that's an interesting uh >> do you think we'll do you think >> Max in the chat says SBF might have a bill?
1:06:20
I think >> wouldn't be surprised >> possible.
1:06:23
I would put I would put uh him having a billion at like 2% or 5% and him having 100 mil at like 20% maybe.
1:06:30
So I would still probably put him at 0.
1:06:35
1B on the Forbes tracker, but I don't know.
1:06:41
>> Yeah, not that hard to just remember a passphrase.
1:06:43
just just memorize the the seed phrase and you know go to jail and then when you come out you know some unusual whales account will see oh a bunch of stuff's moving that hasn't moved since the day SPF got locked up and now it's moving and it's grown a ton because it's just been sitting there.
1:06:58
Uh the the the potentially the underweighted way to to diamond hands is to go in the clink where where diamond handsing is the only option.
1:07:08
Uh anyway, Antonio Garcia Martinez says part of Facebook's baked in advantage was slash is having the same user ID across devices and apps from browser cookies to mobile devices.
1:07:20
Why Apple leaned into privacy was nuking everybody else's ability to identify the same user across apps on the same phone.
1:07:26
Identity is king, he says. Um interesting.
1:07:29
Well, if you're building something that's built on top of identity, do it on linear.
1:07:36
Linear is a purpose-built tool for planning and building products.
1:07:38
meet the system for modern software development streamline issues project and product road mapaps.
1:07:42
Uh we are going to be talking to the new CEO of open today um and going deeper into the open door story.
1:07:49
Martin Skrey says the new CEO is a big win for open.
1:07:52
Not sure how you turn around this business which seems fundamentally broken but that's what good managements do.
1:07:58
Um and uh it'll be interesting to see the the stock has been way up.
1:08:04
The retail army is marshalling >> up 70% today.
1:08:08
>> Uh Keith Reo back on the board.
1:08:08
We had him on the show uh when they were when there was rumbling on the timeline about what might happen with Open Door.
1:08:14
He is getting back involved but not in a day-to-day capacity.
1:08:17
But anyway, um >> such an I mean such a wild story.
1:08:25
>> Yeah, I mean interest rates are high.
1:08:27
That should be you know a reduction to liquidity in transaction volume.
1:08:33
probably a headwind, but they might come down, which is a potential.
1:08:36
>> They picked up a >> tailwind. >> An absolute doc. >> They did. Cass is the man.
1:08:38
Uh I've I've talked to him before. He's great. Uh hello, 2. 6 million. Welcome to the stream.
1:08:44
Uh tech sales says, "Imagine being the sales rep who closed the OpenAI Oracle $300 billion computing deal. What's your next move?"
1:08:52
Obviously, this was done between Sam and and uh Larry Ellison directly, but uh it's funny to imagine that you're just some SDR and you're like, "Yeah, like today I'm gonna call up Oracle."
1:09:04
Like, uh can I or or vice versa, you're at Oracle and you're just like, "You know who needs computers, uh Open AI.
1:09:11
I my my brother-in-law was telling me about this new app.
1:09:16
>> I'm going to see if Sam wants to get grab a a dinner tonight." >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:09:20
uh just calculating >> maybe invite him to some sort of sports game.
1:09:24
Yeah, we got we got a box. Get the Warriors.
1:09:26
Yeah, that's probably how it >> That's what Sam wanted.
1:09:29
>> Yeah, that that that's how it went down.
1:09:31
Um and then and then all of a sudden the rest is history.
1:09:33
Um well, um >> Alzer Udicowski has a new book. >> Yeah.
1:09:41
>> Did you read it yet, John? >> I have not read it.
1:09:42
I was thinking about reading it.
1:09:44
It seems um like he distilled his thesis.
1:09:47
Um uh Nerit Weiss Blat says uh posts some highlights from a review in New Scientist.
1:09:55
No AI isn't going to kill us all despite what this new book says.
1:09:59
Um Udicowski has a number of policy prescriptions.
1:10:02
All of them basically nonsense. Wow.
1:10:03
Putting Udicowski in the truth zone.
1:10:05
Uh first is that GPUs, computer chips that have powered the current AI revolution should be heavily restricted.
1:10:10
They say it should be illegal to own more than eight of the top uh 20 24 era GPUs without submitting to nuclear style monitoring by an international body.
1:10:22
By comparison, Meta Meta has uh 3,500 uh 350,000 of these chips.
1:10:30
Once this is in place, they say nations must be prepared to enforce these restrictions by bombing.
1:10:36
>> Do you see what the title the title of the book? >> What is it called?
1:10:38
If anyone builds it, everyone dies.
1:10:43
>> Why superhuman AI would kill us all. >> I don't know. I like the reasons. Yeah. Bait.
1:10:53
>> Um, but, uh, Perry Matser had a good take on it.
1:10:56
He said, uh, >> it's starting to look like the worst thing Eleazar Udicowski ever did for his cause was actually write down all of his arguments in a form compact enough that a normal person could read them in a few days.
1:11:07
Before the arguments were scattered all over tens of thousands of pages of really wordy blog posts and only extremely dedicated people could bother to go through them.
1:11:15
You get uh nerd sniped by them.
1:11:17
Uh in truth the whole thing could be summarized in a few pages.
1:11:21
Now that he's at he at least condensed it down to 256 pages. Good number of pages.
1:11:26
I like that he's using a factor of two.
1:11:29
Um which normies might consider reading.
1:11:32
If they read it though, they will learn that the argument isn't at all persuasive.
1:11:35
You get people like the New York Times reviewer saying, "The book reads like a Scientology manual.
1:11:40
The text interspersed with weird, unhelpful parables and extra notes available via QR codes." Oh, that's very cool.
1:11:46
Uh Tyler, what's your take on Udicowski?
1:11:52
>> Um I think he's like people hate on him too much, I think.
1:11:57
Um, also like there is already a book about AI safety that's like very famous that's like readable. Yeah.
1:12:04
Super intelligent Nick Snick Boston which is like >> a good book I think. >> Yep. Yep.
1:12:08
>> Um >> I don't there there's a good um there's a good actually Young Macro post about >> I thought you were going to say fang pneumonia for just kidding. >> Young macro.
1:12:17
>> There's a good Young macro post.
1:12:17
He says, um, Bay Area rationalists continuously getting spat on for warning us about their very rigorously researched and thought out esquetology must be one of the most flagrant cases of unfair maligning.
1:12:28
They should be treated more like Christian missionaries worried about hell, >> which I agree. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
1:12:34
I think it's like >> people just like dunk on them constantly, which like >> I've read a fair amount of like less wrong posts.
1:12:40
I don't I'm not like a crazy doomer, but it's like >> you can understand the >> the trade-offs. Yeah.
1:12:46
>> It's a valuable It's a valuable public service to just spend your time for at least some people in the world to think about what if this goes incredibly wrong. Yep. >> Yeah.
1:12:55
>> Yeah. Like I'm very >> It's great that most people are thinking about how do we make this go right, but it's not necessarily >> it's not it's not net negative for the world to have to have of course unless like you know you figure out uh that the
1:13:08
the ideas catch on to such a degree that uh it makes it so that um humanity can't you know again it's it's like a it's a fine line between um you know some of the policies that have been proposed like around the US at the state level have been like crazy so far this year, >> right? >> Yeah. Like people ananthropic who are >> Yeah.
1:13:27
Like people ananthropic who are like doing safety research is that's like obviously a good thing. >> Yep.
1:13:32
>> There's like, you know, they publish it openly. It's like open source.
1:13:34
I think that's like good.
1:13:36
Obviously, I'm not in favor of bombing data centers. >> Yeah.
1:13:39
>> But I think it's reasonable to like >> Yeah.
1:13:42
>> People I think people dunk on him way too much. >> Yeah. It's interesting.
1:13:44
I think that uh when Yeah.
1:13:46
when Yeah. when when the when the dunking on the doomer when the doomer dunks were at an all-time high people like like there was probably a group of like I don't know 80% of tech that was like let's dunk on this this is not good um this is nonsense but I feel like over the past two years you've slowly picked off like two like 20% chunks of that group and said well actually I'm interested in safety in this context and
1:14:16
so the examples I'll give Like there's a lot of people are like, "Yeah, I don't think I'm going to get paper clipped anytime soon, but I love AI safety research if it can tell me if deepseek is trying to uh, you know, poison the
1:14:28
American population against capitalism and it's like a geopolitical weapon or I'm worried about people getting oneshotted and getting and going crazy from chatting with 40 for days and days and days." Uh, that's a safety research
1:14:39
Uh, that's a safety research problem.
1:14:41
uh you know are people using it just to go and and you know a a like the classic example is like oh like someone develops like a chemical weapon or biological weapon but what about just like an actual weapon?
1:14:53
What about just like a normal like you know like and you s we just saw this with the terrible Charlie Kirk story.
1:14:59
Um like like if you're if you're if you're sending into any LLM sketchy questions that that highlight like you're planning something there is we need to do we do need to have a discussion about like when does it call the cops on you? When does it flag this?
1:15:15
Like how anonymous is this?
1:15:18
Like if someone's blaring and obviously going to Google and saying like I'm trying to do a bad thing like should that flag things there's a whole discussion to be had there but that's I put that within the broad context of AI safety and AI doom and I don't think it's unreasonable to have those discussions at all. So I don't know.
1:15:38
Yeah, I think also like even if you're like a accelerationist, you like think doomers safety is like completely useless.
1:15:44
>> You can probably make the case that leazer like writing about AI in like early 2000s accelerated AI in general. >> Totally. >> So like Yeah. >> totally.
1:15:52
I mean it's certainly like marshaled capital to be like oh well like if this is the final innovation like if it's if it's going to be able to do that like then we got to get this >> deal.
1:16:02
anti- it has a anti uh like it has the opposite effect that he wants which is says this is the most dangerous technology ever and people are like I got to find a way to make money on this. >> Yeah.
1:16:12
I mean that was the that was the story of just nuclear power.
1:16:14
It was like the bomb went off at Trinity, the bomb went off in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and people were like wait like this is a terrible like disaster like so like awful and like there's a true doom scenario which is we all bomb each other and nuclear holocaust happens and everyone dies but very quickly people were like wait there is a positive way to use this and that's with a nuclear reactor and that's with positive energy.
1:16:40
the the the interesting doom scenario that I think you could get from Udikowsk's uh fears like really running wild is just a stagnation where if we actually say as a as a society we agree with this and we say yeah we're never going past one gigawatt for a data
1:16:59
center ever and we will bomb them and we all agree like well then yeah you do wind up in the nuclear energy scenario where we stop building them and basically the amount of nuclear power just kind of stagnated and we had the technology, but we didn't really ramp it. And we were just like, "Yeah, we'll
1:17:10
And we were just like, "Yeah, we'll find other ways to do things."
1:17:12
And like, we found other ways to generate electricity with oil and gas, but also solar and wind, and we stayed away from nuclear for decades.
1:17:20
Now, we're getting back into nuclear.
1:17:22
Um, we could find other ways to generate images and and and deep research reports.
1:17:27
Like, we could say, "Hey, we're not going any further as a society if everyone agrees."
1:17:33
Now, there's geopolitical considerations.
1:17:35
There's a lot of things where I don't think that's going to happen, but it is something that could happen.
1:17:38
P stagnation is also an uh like a key metric to be tracking a alongside P Doom is yeah is the response to P Doom is P stagnation.
1:17:49
>> Anyway, I believe we have our first guest of the show in the reream waiting room Josh.
1:17:56
>> Oh, look at this background.
1:17:58
>> Wow, impressive production. >> How you doing?
1:18:01
>> Long time listener, first time caller.
1:18:03
Hey guys, >> great to great to have you on.
1:18:04
Uh and congrats on the new gig.
1:18:09
>> I'm thrilled to be at Lightseed.
1:18:09
It is a very exciting moment for for my career for >> for Lightseed.
1:18:15
We're going to be doing a lot of fun things.
1:18:17
You know, Lightseed's AI like we're anthropic, we're XAI, we're Glean, we're Pika AR diversified.
1:18:27
>> You've got the AI hits. >> Love it. >> Got the hits. Okay.
1:18:30
Uh talk about your journey.
1:18:33
Uh what were you doing before? >> Yeah.
1:18:35
Uh I was at Redpoint for the last four years.
1:18:37
Uh building the platform team. >> Wow. Poached. True deal.
1:18:39
Oh >> Logan Bartlett and it's fantastic. >> Yes.
1:18:47
All the content we've built there.
1:18:51
That team is exceptional.
1:18:51
They're going to continue to absolutely crush. >> Yep.
1:18:55
>> Um but this was just an incredible opportunity.
1:18:57
I think when I was younger, I was chief digital officer at NASDAQ and I worked on you name the IPO, I worked on it.
1:19:04
Uh, and Lightseed had just always been that kind of like aspirational venture firm for me.
1:19:08
I got to work on the Nanics IPO.
1:19:10
I did App Dynamics and then the night before App Dynamics was going to go public.
1:19:16
like they got acquired by Cisco and I had to take things made like this is the firm that I wanted to work at when I was >> that age and it's just such an honor to even have been considered for their CMO role and I'm just very very thankful to Ravi and Beasel and Romano and the whole Lightseed team for for giving the trust in me to to shepherd this incredible brand into the future.
1:19:43
>> Give us the master plan.
1:19:43
Tell tell and we'll we'll tell we're not going to do exactly the same stuff we did at Redcoin because that wouldn't be any fun.
1:19:53
Um, but look, I wouldn't be here on TBPN if it wasn't a new media landscape.
1:19:58
You guys have changed the game.
1:20:00
like created a way for founders to tell their story in an authentic way without like shock journalism of being asked about like crazy news that doesn't apply to what they do and actually having deep questions of people that understand venturebacked businesses and how they grow.
1:20:19
I think we're in a new landscape of just finding ways for founders to tell their story in a compelling way.
1:20:27
And that's the same kind of stuff we're going to be building at Lightseed.
1:20:28
We'll obviously not be copycatting TBPN.
1:20:31
Uh, but we've got a lot of stuff.
1:20:34
We'll be really, you know, forward on Tik Tok and Instagram as you could imagine.
1:20:38
But, um, yeah, we'll we'll be everywhere.
1:20:43
>> So, um, so Red Red Point uh, Redpoint, I mean, you guys must have been getting like millions of views on Instagram on your account there for like a long time.
1:20:53
Like, how valuable has that been as a channel?
1:20:56
Because I feel like I feel like X is like especially noisy with like venture, right? You have Tech Twitter.
1:21:02
It's like, >> you know, every single day there's there's funds and companies piling in to try to get uh uh get the word out on on what they're doing and their strategy and thesis and all that stuff, but Instagram is like relatively it's not an area that we've focused a huge amount on.
1:21:17
Um but but how how important do you think that is as a platform for investors?
1:21:22
Yeah, I mean Instagram was really the tip of our spear at at any point, right?
1:21:27
Like when I joined, of course, they didn't have an Instagram and then had to get the keys to it from the Instagram team and start building.
1:21:36
Uh but I think, you know, when I started it, people thought I was kind of crazy and they're like, "This is is this is going to be good for the Redpoint brand."
1:21:44
brand." And then you know it very quickly changed when you go to a pitch meeting and the founder goes love your Tik Tok guy or that video is so relatable like it just creates a brand affinity that you just can't buy and I felt like a lot of firms were a little
1:22:00
scared to dip their toe into Instagram but you know quite a few have followed us there and and very proud of what the team will continue to build there but it it really is an important channel and I think that the great news is that's where founders are in this decade, right? Like today's founders are in
1:22:17
Like today's founders are in Instagram and Tik Tok.
1:22:19
Like yes, X is still the place to share the clips, but that's where people consume their content.
1:22:26
And so I felt like while it was an unlikely channel for success for a VC firm, I think it's actually really important because it's like the place that everybody actually goes to just have a good time.
1:22:39
Do you do you see venture funds eventually following the same path as as other financial institutions in terms of advertising in let's say like print media right you can imagine like black rockck will run you know a print advertisement in the Wall Street Journal right um do you ever see do you think
1:22:58
that's an interesting way to potentially uh uh build the brand with uh I don't know that many founders that read the journal at least as religiously as us but certainly there has to be uh in the role of CMO, you have to be marketing to founders but also LPs, right? >> Yeah. Well, actually, interestingly, in >> Yeah.
1:23:14
Well, actually, interestingly, in my gig at NASDAQ, when I was pitching IPOs for a living, that was something we would put in every single proposal.
1:23:19
You get like a full page ad in the Wall Street Journal.
1:23:24
>> So, I think today's founders that that resonates as much.
1:23:26
I think honestly they're better off buying a piece of your hat on TVPM than they are >> buying a page in the journal.
1:23:34
like spend that money on on Instagram advertising and Tik Tok ads and >> well I meant I meant more I meant more for for you at Lightseed like I think it would be iconic for Lightseed to have a page in the journal that says like look at all like we are in all the AI winners >> like that Lightseed is AI with just like the list of of companies that we're in. Yeah. >> Get ready.
1:23:58
We're uh we will be on every media platform.
1:24:01
Legacy Media still has a very special place in my heart.
1:24:04
It's like, you know, I I spent a decade on the floor of that exchange working with every media outlet to help get companies as much noise as we could make them around an IPO.
1:24:18
>> How is how h how do you think um like how is the the how is like IPO marketing changed over the last decade since you were at NASDAQ?
1:24:27
I mean, we have so much activity this week.
1:24:28
We were at we were at the CLA IPO yesterday, which honestly felt incredibly quiet in comparison to Figma, which which was actually we figured out was intentional.
1:24:38
The founder was like really celebrating back in Sweden, right?
1:24:42
So he he just came in, he didn't even bring his family.
1:24:44
He just handled business and got out of there.
1:24:48
Uh and then you had Figma, which very much was like a celebration of of of >> They have an office in New York.
1:24:53
>> They have an office in New York, but it was a celebration of like the entire community.
1:24:56
Like it was really like an event.
1:24:57
And it felt like festival just in Manhattan.
1:24:59
There's probably tons of fig.
1:25:01
>> But uh but yeah, like broadly Yeah.
1:25:01
How do you think that that landscape has shifted?
1:25:06
>> Well, that was the fun thing about that gig.
1:25:08
I got to work with every great CEO, CFO, and CMO.
1:25:11
And you kind of get to see them almost in like what is their Super Bowl like for their company and how they perform at the top of their game.
1:25:21
Sometimes people are looking for that more muted response that I think you saw with CLA, which I just think is like stylistically that company, but I think if you're looking for IPO excellence, what Figma did and what they pulled off, what you know, some of the VC firms that helped them behind the scenes on their comms, like it was a massive win for noise making and I think it was like kind of the gold standard for what you expect from an IPO.
1:25:48
Um, I think the thing is is a lot of companies don't realize that like this is your one day to make the noise because you got the quiet period before and you got it afterwards.
1:26:01
>> And so really you have to squeeze as much juice out of the fruit that you can.
1:26:06
And what I would always advise companies to do is spend every dollar you can across the, you know, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, uh, promoting the fact that you went public because this is your opportunity to tell those enterprise customers who weren't necessarily ready to sign on to you when you were a private company, no matter the size. >> Yeah.
1:26:31
>> Um, that you're ready for them.
1:26:35
It's the best branding ever to be like, "Yeah, we're we're a public company. >> We're public."
1:26:40
>> It's it's it's on par with a great. com. >> Yeah, truly.
1:26:44
>> Probably more significant.
1:26:45
>> A great ticker works well.
1:26:47
>> Um >> uh how are you thinking about positioning Lightseed in the venture ecosystem?
1:26:52
ecosystem? like um I feel like there's a couple funds that have carved out like kind of just a very clear definitions of like okay we're we're a crossover hedge fund uh we have a Publix and then we have a growth fund but like we're we we're not even trying to be known for
1:27:09
early stage maybe we write some C and and like just getting that clear message of like when to call what fund I feel like is the first job to do of a VC marketing arm maybe Um, how are you thinking about uh either narrowing or expanding or like defining the definition of like what is light speeded? How does it fit in? How is it How does it fit in? How is it different?
1:27:34
>> That's a great question.
1:27:34
Look, I think actually it was one of the things that drew me to Lightseed. Yeah. >> Right.
1:27:39
When I was on the floor of the exchange as a young guy, like companies were going public in like seven years. Yeah.
1:27:47
And then while I was working there, it became 10 years and I'm chasing companies for, you know, from series B for like seven years before they would go public with us. And now it's 15.
1:27:58
And I think honestly, Lightseed Strategy is what attracted Disney to it because literally we support companies from seed through IPO and beyond.
1:28:08
And I think that focus of saying we are going to be great early stage investors and then we're going to take the ones that are really winning apply our full muscle to giving them all the tools that we can give them for an unfair advantage as they you know go up against the Goliaths in their industry and then bring them through IPO and provide them that that added lift that they need in those later growth rounds. pounds.
1:28:41
I think it's a really unique offer that is quite differentiated in the venture space and actually that that multi-stage thing is is why I'm here, right?
1:28:52
Like I get to give early stage companies the noise making.
1:28:55
I get to help the latest stage companies with their IPO prep.
1:28:59
It's truly like a dream job to go and and take this into the future.
1:29:06
and we're going to be doing a lot of branding about why that model is so different than everybody else. >> Fantastic.
1:29:12
Well, thank you so much for taking the time to hop on. This is great.
1:29:16
>> Congrats on the new on the new gig.
1:29:18
>> I'm looking forward to my TBPN uh traded card. Can I get that? >> Oh, yeah, for sure.
1:29:23
>> We'll we'll work on it. We'll work on it. Logan.
1:29:24
Logan, we might >> I don't know if we want to upset Jeff Brody.
1:29:28
I mean, he did go to my high school, so yeah, I got to keep things friendly over there. got next.
1:29:32
I know you've got some other Lightseed people coming up, too. >> Yeah. Yeah. Get buddies with Bucky. We'll have them on soon. >> Awesome. We'll talk to you soon. >> Cheers everyone. >> Congrats. >> Thanks, guys. Bye. >> See you.
1:29:44
>> Quickly, let me tell you about numeral sales tax on autopilot.
1:29:45
It's super intelligence for sales tax.
1:29:49
They said if if they build it, >> what are >> if they build it, everyone will spend less than five minutes per month on sales tax compliance.
1:30:00
Um, anyway, I think we have our next guest already in the reream waiting room. Nico Rosberg.
1:30:04
Uh, we will bring this one studio. Um, Nico, how you doing? >> Welcome to the show. >> Can you hear us?
1:30:13
Sorry for keeping you waiting. >> We got a bit of lag.
1:30:18
>> Oh, we got some backgrounds. >> Can you hear us? >> Can you hear us? >> Hello. >> Testing. Testing. One, two, three. >> Hear us. >> Can you hear us?
1:30:28
Let's try and get him on the uh on the call.
1:30:30
Uh in the meantime, let me tell you about Finn.
1:30:33
AI, the number one AI agent for customer service, number one in performance benchmarks, number one in competitive, number one ranked on G2.
1:30:40
Uh >> also uh people are having fun memeing the uh the AirPods 3 live translation.
1:30:50
It immediately became a meme format.
1:30:50
I was disappointed that I couldn't workshop one in time to get a banger up, but people were having a lot of fun with it.
1:30:57
just like this this picture this picture of being like >> ola and it just says hello.
1:31:02
>> What is what what does hola mean?
1:31:04
>> Yeah, I knew you were going to ask this.
1:31:05
So hola is a Spanish word for hello. >> Okay. >> Yeah.
1:31:09
>> So I So if I pay $300, put in my headphones that do that. >> Yeah.
1:31:15
>> Uh it is it is incredible technology.
1:31:17
Yeah, I mean it the the whole um you know I have no idea how to how to kind of judge Dolingo as as a as a as a public company and what what what the fair market value of Duolingo is but I do think there is like >> like studying language has never been about um >> I mean I shouldn't say it never but has like for 90% of people is not about the like practicality.
1:31:38
It's about >> stimulating your mind and and doing new things and and >> um >> even if this existed, I still would have done years of >> Wikipedia exists and like Founders Podcast exists and they're very different products.
1:31:55
Like they they can both tell me what what was Larry Ellison up to in the 90s. >> Yeah.
1:32:02
>> And when and when the Oracle news broke, I actually went to both.
1:32:05
I looked at the Oracle wiki and I also listened to uh the founders podcast on Larry Ellison and they're very different and I feel like Duolingo plays this like fun game thing.
1:32:14
Uh Tyler, what's your take on Dolingo versus the AirPods 3?
1:32:18
>> Uh well so so about the AirPods like unless both parties have them then it's like not that useful, right?
1:32:21
Because if if you only speak Spanish, I only speak English. You're talking to me. I can't I can't reply.
1:32:27
>> Uh there are a variety of ways to use it with one person.
1:32:30
So, if I'm going around, you you speak to me.
1:32:32
Uh, and then when I speak, it can go into an app on my phone and I can just hit play and it will play the audio on from my phone or it will show you uh words.
1:32:41
So, if you're speaking Spanish, I'm hearing English and my phone as I'm talking is displaying Spanish text.
1:32:48
And so, I can actually hand you my phone and you can read what I'm saying in English in Spanish.
1:32:54
So, they've thought of some of the stuff.
1:32:56
It still does seem like there's a little bit of a technological handshake going on where I need to say, "Hola, like, would you like to use AirPods Pro 3?"
1:33:07
>> See if you can translate this.
1:33:08
>> Let's put >> See if you can translate this Mandarin PJ. >> Of course.
1:33:13
I would like a beer, please. >> Close. I really enjoy beer.
1:33:18
>> I really enjoy beer generally. Of course. Um, yes.
1:33:20
This will be huge uh for ordering another bruswki.
1:33:23
Uh Noah Smith called it the universal translator from Star Trek. >> Yeah, it's very cool.
1:33:30
>> Vitalik said it can't arbitrary can't translate arbitrary alien languages it hears for the first time with any with only a tiny sample though.
1:33:37
Although maybe what happened in Star Trek is that every species realize that it's a good idea to expose a clean API that blurts out like one terabyte of all your historical cultural works and that is enough to generate the embeddings for their language.
1:33:51
I've seen AI work before that suggests that if you have the embeddings for two languages, you only need a very small amount of translated word pairs to find the mapping between the two.
1:34:01
Not sure if this holds for languages that evolved in totally separate worlds.
1:34:04
But maybe it still does for convergent evolution reg reasons and that gets you a translator and so it ships uh and so ships just always scan for give me a terabyte of your culture API and always end up finding it. Uh that's very funny.
1:34:19
Uh, speaking of uh, alien languages, Tyler, you were mentioning that we discovered alien life on Mars or it was fake.
1:34:27
What What was your take on that?
1:34:30
>> Uh, >> you were saying that the moon landing is fake and you don't believe in the moon landing, right?
1:34:34
>> You don't believe in space.
1:34:35
>> You said that off mic and you didn't want me to talk about space is fake. Yeah, >> space is fake. Going up high is fake.
1:34:41
Planes, when you get in a plane, why do they always have the windows down?
1:34:43
It's because they're changing out the set decoration around you. That's right.
1:34:46
You just get on the plane, you sit there for six hours while they rebuild the city around you.
1:34:50
You get off and then you're in the New York Oh, I'm in New York City. Oh, really?
1:34:54
You didn't just move the building.
1:34:58
>> I moved thousands of miles. Put the boards up. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
1:35:00
I'll believe it when I see it. >> Yeah. Right.
1:35:04
>> Uh anyway, uh what was the news? NASA got a photo.
1:35:07
I How is there a new photo on Mars?
1:35:09
The rover's just going around. >> Yeah. >> Okay.
1:35:12
So, the rover's going around looking for stuff.
1:35:14
Wait, can we pull up the Can we pull up the picture? >> It's in the deck. It's later in the deck. 20 pages. >> Who took the photo? >> The rover.
1:35:22
>> The rover of itself like kind of like selfie stick.
1:35:24
>> Yeah, the rover has like a 360 cam on the end of an arm and there's someone who gives instructions I think like once a day because there's such a delay to get the message there that they say the rover is kind of semi-autonomous.
1:35:35
Then they say, "Hey, go look around over here."
1:35:39
>> The chat just just to defend uh Tyler's honor. is not a flat earther.
1:35:42
We're just joking around. Just joking around.
1:35:46
>> Um anyway, uh we believe we have our next guest, Nico Rosberg. How you doing, Nico?
1:35:52
>> Hey, >> how's it going, guys? >> Welcome to the show. >> Welcome to the show.
1:35:56
Thanks so much for taking the time. How are you? >> Thanks a lot. Pleasure to be here.
1:36:00
>> I'm doing good, thank you.
1:36:00
You're catching me in Monaco. >> Oh, Monaco as well.
1:36:03
>> Where I I've grown up here. >> Fantastic. >> Classic.
1:36:06
>> How is it this time of year?
1:36:08
>> Um actually, it's lovely because it's kind of still summer.
1:36:10
Still really warm and uh we're still enjoying the outside, going to the prominade, going to the pool with the kids because I have two kids. They're seven and nine. >> Wow.
1:36:18
>> And they just started school again after the summer, but still really warm here. So it's lovely.
1:36:21
South of France is beautiful. >> That's fantastic.
1:36:23
Um >> about you guys, >> we've been traveling a lot.
1:36:27
We were in New York City yesterday, San Francisco, the day before for the Clar IPO and then Y Cominator demo day and then back to LA.
1:36:35
So uh little bit too much travel, a little frazzled, little >> Yeah.
1:36:39
I don't know how how you uh I don't I don't know how how drivers actually do this, right?
1:36:43
Just cuz when we go we we go on the road for 48 hours with that kind of pace.
1:36:47
It it really throws everything off.
1:36:49
But we're here >> anyway.
1:36:54
Um can you give us a a little bit of uh backstory on your path to venture u from your racing career? >> Yeah, sure.
1:37:05
So, obviously it's not the most natural switch. Yeah. and and racing career. Yeah, I was on it.
1:37:09
I was at it for 20 years.
1:37:10
You start when you're 10 years old. Wow.
1:37:13
>> And uh and then I ended up winning the Formula 1 World Championship at at the age of 31 with the Mercedes with the Mercedes team. Thank you very much. Lovely to hear that.
1:37:23
>> Um and I I and I did the yeah pretty extreme thing of retiring like 5 days after I won the championship.
1:37:30
>> Um because it just felt like my dream was complete.
1:37:33
I achieved what I set out to do.
1:37:36
to do. And it's an insane I mean all the founders listening uh it's an insane lifestyle to pursue relentlessly your goal just like for founders but it's the same for athletes um it's really really madly intense and so I was quite happy that it was all achieved and I just wanted to move on to the next life but
1:37:55
then I had no clue what to do uh so I was really searching a lot of things and >> well and now nine years after >> be before you dive into that what do you have any idea what percentage of drivers that that uh that end up end up as an a Formula One driver actually even podium at any point in their career. Isn't it
1:38:13
Isn't it >> extremely low?
1:38:15
>> Isn't it extremely low?
1:38:17
>> Uh yeah, I'm sure it is.
1:38:17
I don't know the exact numbers obviously, but if I had to guess, um it would probably be less than 10%.
1:38:25
>> Yeah, >> around 10% if I had to guess now.
1:38:26
That's just a that's just a wild guess now.
1:38:28
And then of course in terms of world champions, there's 30 34 or 35 world champions in the 70 year history of the sport and there's been there's been thousands of F1 racers, you know, so it's a it's an extremely small percentage. Yeah.
1:38:48
>> So yeah, talk about the transition to investing.
1:38:50
Uh I've heard a little bit of the path and it it is unconventional, but when I heard it explained, it made perfect sense.
1:38:57
But I'd love to hear it from you.
1:39:00
No, it's just I mean I always I've always appreciated the startup world a lot.
1:39:04
When I retired, mobility was just going through this extreme transition.
1:39:09
Suddenly there was like autonomous driving, there was connectivity, shared mobility and it was all kicking off exactly when I retired and I was the mobility world champion.
1:39:18
So it's kind of natural for me. you're good at around.
1:39:24
>> Yeah, it was kind of natural to take a first look there and Mercedes also helped me out and because they were investing in startups.
1:39:30
>> So, I got going that way. Really loved it.
1:39:32
Was fascinated um and it's been a journey ever since.
1:39:36
It's been up and down and now finally I kind of found my venture capital northstar and I'm building Rosberg Ventures now which is um a venture capital asset manager.
1:39:44
Um and we have multiple multiple products strategies and but very much you know focused on the US.
1:39:51
So it's kind of bridging bridging Europe with US.
1:39:53
That's really our our big focus and yeah I'm I'm really excited.
1:40:00
>> And so that means sort of like European LP base but investing in America. Yeah, that's exactly.
1:40:07
Yeah, that's one one uh facet of it.
1:40:09
But also then the European corporates connecting them with the with the breakout generational startups in the US. >> Makes sense.
1:40:20
>> Um because there's a great connectivity between between the startups in the US and the corporates in the US, but sometimes that link to the European and German corporates is quite weak.
1:40:27
And also surprisingly like the German the German large caps they don't have a very deep understanding of what's going on in the US venture capital landscape.
1:40:36
Um, so there's a great opportunity for us to add value in creating those connections and as you know to win >> what what's the openness to partnering with like if you're a if you're like a German you know multi-billion dollar company what's the openness to even using products from startups? Is it is it high low? >> It really depends.
1:41:03
I mean, one of our one of our most famous car manufacturers, not going to say the name, but the likes of BMW, Mercedes, uh, etc.
1:41:10
Um, we're working with them and we're introducing startups.
1:41:13
And then the other day they said, "Sorry, we have no more budget to explore to explore."
1:41:17
more budget to explore to explore." and and you're like okay but you guys are are facing insane like insane threats from Tesla China and you're telling you're telling us here that you don't have budget to like explore transformational solutions from the from the startup landscape like that was the >> yeah the the point of enterprise
1:41:40
software for the most part is help people save money or help people make money ideally do both right >> exactly so actually we so we brought them like a a a tool that that uh that is going to um analyze their whole procurement contracts and everything and they actually their revenues are only they are uh um uh part of the s cost savings that they generate. Yeah. And Yeah.
1:42:04
And then then this car manufacturer BMW, Mercedes, Audi, whatever they're like, "Oh, okay.
1:42:10
So, we don't need to invest anything up front here."
1:42:12
They just take a cut from the savings that they generate for us in on the on procure procurement.
1:42:18
And then they're like, "Okay, this is great.
1:42:19
Let's let this we'll definitely have a look at." Um, so it depends.
1:42:23
But anyways, in general, there's a great readiness uh which is reassuring nonetheless, but but they're not really like um very yeah in depth at the moment in understanding what's coming in terms of transformation AI, you know, it's a big uh big challenge as you know for enterprises to adopt that.
1:42:42
Outside of the corporates, uh, what does the family office or ultra high netw worth individual landscape look like out in Europe?
1:42:49
Are they more risk on now?
1:42:53
Are these the type of folks that you met through your F1 career that became LPs eventually? >> Yeah, sure.
1:42:59
It's many of the families that I got to know in racing that were like big sponsors or even the car manufacturers.
1:43:04
So, that's kind of the link back to my racing, which is nice for me as well.
1:43:07
And um in general it's it's very risk off in Europe compared to America which is a real weakness because risk doesn't even necessarily have to be risk if you have a long long-term time horizon.
1:43:21
Um even something like the NASDAQ becomes low risk even though on a on a three-month horizon it's a high risk high risk investment.
1:43:28
And that's the one thing that's the thing that the Europeans uh yeah I don't know I'm they don't they don't really get that right.
1:43:37
They're very conservative, but in a bad way. >> Yeah.
1:43:39
>> So, very often they hardly like the endowments, they hardly beat inflation, but there was the high inflation.
1:43:43
They were hardly beating or not even beating inflation.
1:43:46
It was >> it was pretty shocking.
1:43:47
But for me, it's awesome also because I can take all my learnings now from sport >> into this venture capital grow business that I'm building, you know.
1:43:55
And one of the main things like us athletes, >> it's we I think we're pretty good at this relentless pursuit of our goals.
1:44:04
like second place just does not exist.
1:44:07
Giving up does not exist.
1:44:07
It's like absolutely it's pretty pretty insane.
1:44:10
I think that's one really big strength of ours which is really appreciated in the venture capital ecosystem. >> Yeah.
1:44:19
>> Because of course the best founders are exactly are exactly the same. >> Yeah.
1:44:22
Talk to me about some of those best founders, the uh the relentless, the risktakers, uh the ones who don't accept second place.
1:44:29
uh who do you look up to in the American uh entrepreneurship world or or see someone where uh maybe they didn't maybe they weren't built for F1, but you think they could have done well if they were a racer?
1:44:46
>> Well, that's a hard question now. I have no idea.
1:44:47
I mean, the racing skill the racing skill is hand eye coordination. >> Okay. Sure. >> But what Yeah.
1:44:53
What about a more abstract level?
1:44:56
the foundation of everything.
1:44:56
Then of course in terms of being relentless in the pursuit of of winning there's there's many many examples.
1:45:02
Um and I'm personally involved with the likes for example uh I'm an in personal investor in like applied intuition.
1:45:10
>> Oh yeah he's fantastic there is a is a like he's a he's a machine as well you know I mean it's like unbelievable the energy and the determination and grit.
1:45:20
Um or or some European companies examples are like 11 Labs which I'm personally invested in or or Lovable um and like Lovable Anton is also pretty extreme pretty in terms of level of commitment but but I'm also excited you know by now I really have really cool portfolio also in terms of my personal investing. Yeah.
1:45:41
>> Um >> and yeah, it's just it's it's great to see how how these companies are are growing and unfolding. >> Yep.
1:45:48
Jordy, >> uh, how have you, um, what, it feels like over the last few years, uh, founders have started to sort of adopt the the health practices or the approach to health that that athletes do.
1:46:03
>> Um, there's been a bunch of viral stuff recently, people joking around about this.
1:46:07
What uh has has there been uh what was sort of most most impactful for for your performance during your driving career that you still apply to building like a venture firm from a health standpoint? >> Yeah.
1:46:20
I mean, so I was really quite a perfectionist when it came uh to preparing myself in the best possible way.
1:46:27
So I've been through everything.
1:46:27
I had a psychologist working with me.
1:46:30
I did two hours of psychology and philosophy every two days.
1:46:34
like I was absolutely flat out on this because I could feel and it was obvious that I had more I had capacity to improve mentally as an athlete.
1:46:44
I was under pressure, you know, scared, worried, distracted and all these all these things.
1:46:51
Um so there was a lot of capacity there for me to improve and and I found incredible incred incredible progress mentally.
1:46:57
Um and I so I did a lot of meditation. Um I simplified my life.
1:47:03
I removed all emailing, news, everything was gone.
1:47:08
Instagram, social media, there was nothing on my telephone uh on my pursuit to becoming world champion.
1:47:12
So, it was really quite quite extreme.
1:47:17
>> Would you do uh would you do caffeine or any any stimulants or does that just throw you off in terms of you know, we we've seen like Mark Zuckerberg doesn't doesn't do caffeine. >> Caffeine.
1:47:25
Um, and I could imagine in a driving driving setting, you're just like a slightly more twitchy or or nervous because of of caffeine and you, you know, crash the car and and your race is over. >> Yeah. No.
1:47:37
So, I didn't do caffeine also because the problem I have is when I take caffeine, I can't sleep at night.
1:47:43
>> Uh, so that would be counterproductive.
1:47:45
Um then even like for example when it came to jet lag I have I had a a Harvard sleep professor working with me who actually now has created an app based on what we had been pursuing at the time which is called time shifter and it's actually was app store app of the day.
1:48:00
It has like a million subscribers by now.
1:48:02
It's like becoming quite a success. Awesome.
1:48:04
Um and this this Harvard sleep professor was was supporting me at the time and I did a whole year with no jet lag.
1:48:11
lag. you were saying before earlier how traveling is destroying you and you don't know you don't know how the athletes do it I think um so and I did a whole year no jet lag so it was all about like one and a half hour steps per day maximum in time zone shift even
1:48:27
before you start traveling the last five days you leave home one and a half hour steps blackout glasses 10,000 blocks like Brian Johnson in the morning first thing all these tools and it was incredible it was incredible to do a whole year traveling continents, no jet lag. Um, so it's really all these things
1:48:43
Um, so it's really all these things that it's just really essentially what it is.
1:48:48
It's it's putting together all the all the little details, incremental gains and focusing on them because you all know that many incremental gains are a huge progress and sometimes we kind of um neglect them and uh and are lazy and don't focus on the small steps as well.
1:49:06
And that was uh that was probably a strength of mine which I'm now taking into venture capital as well.
1:49:09
Just all the details putting them together.
1:49:11
It's it comes back to being relentless again. >> Yeah.
1:49:15
What's your state on the read of what's your read on the state of F1 uh broadly?
1:49:20
It feels like uh from an American perspective.
1:49:23
Drive to Survive was a big moment.
1:49:26
Cadillac's coming into the uh the uh Cadillac has an F1 team joining next year.
1:49:32
Uh there's a few other milestones and key storylines, but uh what's captured your attention over the past few years in the story of F1 broadly?
1:49:43
>> My attention has been how F1 has managed to conquer America. Yeah.
1:49:47
>> Uh and 40% of the new fans are women.
1:49:47
So it's almost like 50/50 male women uh male female, which is uh which is so cool.
1:49:56
And um and this is a big change.
1:49:58
And it's all it's thanks to Netflix.
1:50:00
>> It's thanks to social media.
1:50:00
They've opened up social media.
1:50:02
Like in my time, social media wasn't even allowed nine years ago >> because it was taking eyeballs off the television product. >> Yeah.
1:50:10
>> But actually, it's a multiplier, you know, so that was a bit shortsighted.
1:50:14
>> I remember Liberty Media, you know, who owns F1, who's done such a great job.
1:50:18
And Netflix has been so powerful because they actually managed to capture the humans behind F1.
1:50:23
And and it's like a reality TV show rather than documentary. And that's what we love. We love to see emotions.
1:50:30
We love to identify with the connect with the humans behind the sport.
1:50:35
>> And they they just managed to do such a great job.
1:50:37
So that's really what I'm uh what I'm finding so cool is how our sport is growing, developing, the excitement is growing.
1:50:43
Um super super thrilling. >> Yeah.
1:50:47
>> What how how are you thinking about the roll out of autonomous vehicles over the next 5 to 10 to 20 years even over the long term?
1:50:55
uh is it something you you spend a lot of time trying to invest against any type of thesis?
1:51:02
>> So I um I invested in a tail driving remote uh remote control driving solution.
1:51:07
So tailor driving um and at one point we were like oh this is going to go wrong because we're going to full autonomy now.
1:51:14
But it looks like someone like Tesla is actually having much more troubles than they perhaps expected um two or three years ago.
1:51:22
And uh especially in the edge cases, they're still having too many issues.
1:51:25
Um so and you know they had to launch their their robo taxis with uh safety drivers in their cars, etc. , etc.
1:51:34
And the and the questions is is still there.
1:51:37
Is their camera only solution actually ever going to be good enough? Mhm.
1:51:44
>> Uh yes, they're learning on millions of miles every year, but uh can the camera solution only deal with all these edge cases of fog and rain and and snow and etc, etc.
1:51:53
So there's there's still a very very big question mark and and no one really knows.
1:51:58
Then on the then you have the Whimo, which certainly is better tech, but of course unit economics, I mean it's super expensive hardware per car. So how scalable is that?
1:52:08
also difficult still to judge at this point even though they seem to be going strong at the moment.
1:52:12
But uh yeah, so it's really not clear yet uh who is going to be the eventual winner there.
1:52:19
But it's um yeah, again fascinating time, but it will take some some more time for us to finally know who wins.
1:52:24
And then the worry though is um like Europe, Europe for example unfortunately is almost missing out completely on this value creation um because they don't have they they don't they're they're going to end up like the mobile phones.
1:52:38
that just became hardware. >> Yeah.
1:52:39
>> So the the um um the the system was done by Android or or Apple. Yep.
1:52:46
>> Um and then and then they just became hardware hardware suppliers, you know, and that's a threat for the European car manufacturers. Sure.
1:52:53
>> Because they won't have the autonomy.
1:52:53
I wonder if they'll even have the connectivity to their to their customers.
1:52:59
Buck isn't isn't isn't applied applied intuition is is a is could potentially save them >> um in terms of that interface connecting to the to the customer who's riding on board etc.
1:53:12
So a very tough moment for European uh the car manufacturers and also honestly many of the American car manufacturers they're pretty much in the same situation. Yeah.
1:53:23
>> We have Formula 1, we have Formula E which showcases electric vehicles.
1:53:27
Do you think we'll ever see Formula A to showcase autonomous vehicles?
1:53:34
>> So, we had that already.
1:53:34
There was Robo Robo Race, I think it was called. >> Yeah.
1:53:38
>> Um, they're still somewhat slower than us, like 15 seconds a lap or something. 10 seconds a lap.
1:53:44
>> So, it's going to take some more time there, too.
1:53:46
I don't know if that's because we we love the gladiators, the humans in the sport, you know, and if it's just tech racing each other, I don't know if that of course it will can find its niche, but I don't think it's going to be a huge fascinating global >> global success story.
1:54:01
Who are you guys rooting for in F1?
1:54:03
I well I I'm I'm I'm super interested in this in this like you know we've seen the benchmarks of human versus AI in so many different categories and I want to know when an autonomous vehicle will put up uh like a subseminute Nurburgring time.
1:54:18
Um and uh and it seems like it might be years.
1:54:22
It might be a long time actually.
1:54:24
And >> especially if it was a manual. >> Yes.
1:54:28
Especially if it's a manual and it has to be driven by a humanoid.
1:54:29
So you can't just plug in like you do with a Whimo.
1:54:33
You have to actually put the physical robot in the seat.
1:54:35
They have to the robot has to buckle itself in. Very dextrous.
1:54:40
Very difficult to slide into a cockpit properly.
1:54:42
Um do you have any favorite uh uh >> I'm impressed.
1:54:47
You know your Newberg Ring times. I'm very impressed.
1:54:50
>> So Nurburg Ring for all the viewers, it's the greatest racetrack in the world and it's this crazy 15 kilometer roller coaster through the through the forest in the middle of Germany.
1:55:01
And it's called the green the green hell and all car manufacturers set benchmark lap times there and if you manage to break the record you got like global news and everything so it's a very very uh important racetrack.
1:55:15
>> Is it um I I haven't I haven't uh driven it myself.
1:55:18
Is it uh but I I did the last time I was really I mean obviously we'll watch when the manufacturers are doing lap times but the last time I saw footage from I saw a GT3 RS get just absolutely destroyed on the track.
1:55:29
Is it is it safe to go out and just do public laps or would is would you stay away from something like that?
1:55:37
I'm sure when you want to race >> I wouldn't do it. I would be scared.
1:55:41
It's it's the the craziest racetrack in the world.
1:55:44
>> Um >> and you have a bunch of people from all over the world coming and just like they want to go fast. They want to go fast. >> Yeah, of course.
1:55:52
>> But it's it's very very dangerous.
1:55:52
So I'd be careful with that. >> Yeah.
1:55:55
What else are you tracking in the automotive world broadly?
1:55:58
Uh there's uh there yeah there have you been tracking what's happening in in China?
1:56:05
Are there any other interesting dynamics with any of the upstarts?
1:56:10
I feel like most of these companies are post startup rounds at this point with Rivian and uh being public at this point but uh have you have you been tracking any uh just future next generation OEMs?
1:56:26
Uh, so I was in China recently and shocking, you know how Porsche Porsche Porsche, I can't remember how you're supposed to say it.
1:56:32
Uh, they have a they have the Porsche Tyon. Yeah.
1:56:34
Which is the electric their electric superstar.
1:56:38
And then you go to China and there's Xiaomi who um who has this uh I don't even know what the Xiaomi is called.
1:56:44
>> The SE7 is the one you're thinking.
1:56:47
Looks exactly like the Cayenne.
1:56:49
>> And I rode in this car.
1:56:49
So first of all, the the TYON is $120,000 or 130.
1:56:51
Yeah, >> this thing is $40,000 >> and uh and it looks the same.
1:56:56
So, they just copy the and the interior quality then was rubbish. Everything was cracking.
1:57:05
Felt like it was going to fall apart.
1:57:06
And then you start driving and the drive the the handling also then feels rubbish. >> And now I'm in this.
1:57:12
The interior quality is perfection. It's just beautiful. It drives awesomely.
1:57:16
Has more power than the Porsche Tykon.
1:57:20
has more range than the Porsche Tyan.
1:57:24
>> Um, so it was proper scary.
1:57:24
I was like, "Oh my god, like what?
1:57:26
This is this is like this is shocking."
1:57:28
And then let me just finish.
1:57:31
You would say, "Okay, but Porsche still has their brand." >> Mhm.
1:57:35
>> But even that is gone because the Xiaomi founder is a rock star in China.
1:57:38
He's like the Elon Musk of China.
1:57:40
He has a huge social media following.
1:57:43
So even the brand um uh moat is is gone in uh in China.
1:57:51
So, it feels like it's just complete game over there and and it's happening, but and they're coming to Europe, too, which is so scary.
1:57:57
Now, BYD just overtook Tesla as the bestselling bestselling electric car in Europe.
1:58:01
So, it's a really um watershed moment and super critical moment for for the automotive sector. Yeah.
1:58:08
But, um and then in terms of startups, uh I think I'm not seeing much at the moment really.
1:58:15
Um >> yeah, it's really capex intensive and a lot of those businesses have >> I mean even BYD for example, so if you look at BYD and NEO I believe they got 10 billion in government subsidies in order for them to get to where they are now in terms of taking on the world.
1:58:32
>> But that is never going to happen in Europe.
1:58:34
You're never going to have the the European government supporting a startup with 10 billion for car with 10 billion in order to become global electric vehicle manufacturer leaders, you know.
1:58:44
So, >> yeah, it's tough to compete against that, isn't it?
1:58:47
And >> last question from my side.
1:58:48
Um, did you have a reaction?
1:58:52
Did you see the F1 movie?
1:58:53
Did you have a reaction to Apple's F1 movie?
1:58:55
Uh, what do you think if you saw it? >> Yeah.
1:59:00
So, the honest answer is I haven't seen it yet because I was I was holding out to see it with my wife and then that didn't work out for some reason. Whatever. >> Yeah, you have kids.
1:59:09
We're still holding We're still holding out and we're probably going to do a cinema night at our at our house here in Monaco with any friends left that have not yet seen it.
1:59:18
Maybe we'll do a cinema night next week or something.
1:59:19
But I hear great things, you know.
1:59:21
Of course it's it's Hollywood.
1:59:23
It's fake, but I hear great things. And and it was amazing.
1:59:25
I was at the racetrack and and and Brad Pitt was on the real grid. Yeah.
1:59:29
Just before the race starts with his race car. Yeah.
1:59:33
>> And he had a real garage in the pit lane with his race car like at the real race like the race start and he's there like it's so crazy >> how they put that together and and then with augment virtual reality they overlaid his car onto one of the real racing cars in the race for the It's like it's pretty impressive.
1:59:51
So anyways, I hear good things and I think it's a great uh great step again for for F1. >> Yeah.
1:59:58
Total American F1 dominance.
2:00:00
>> What are you what are you guys most excited about in the startup world?
2:00:04
What's the last thing that you've seen which which you're raving about?
2:00:09
>> That's really hard to put on the spot.
2:00:12
um in the startup world at the early at the earliest stages.
2:00:15
I mean, we've been seeing a lot of folks work on new AI hardware devices and there was one that just put out a video about where where it's it looks like looks like uh headphones, but it measures the electrical signals in your jaw.
2:00:34
And so you're just whispering.
2:00:38
you're not even making any noise, but you're talking like >> making mouth movements >> and it can transcribe that into an app.
2:00:48
>> Uh or so I can be talking to you across without across a crowded room and you can hear me and I can hear you but no one else can hear us.
2:00:56
And if you imagine about voice interfaces in uh in the future where you're talking to chat GPT or any LLM all day long being able to do that in a public place or randomly that that feels like that could be the next like big thing.
2:01:10
There's a rumor that Sam Alman's working on that with Johnny Ives.
2:01:13
So that that was something where it's like there's going to be a new wave of some sort of input technology pre- Neurolink.
2:01:19
But >> yeah, on my side, this has been such an insane year on so many levels.
2:01:24
You have geopolitical chaos. You have warfare.
2:01:29
>> You have assassinations, >> tragedies.
2:01:30
Uh there's so much uncertainty.
2:01:32
There's so much negativity in the world.
2:01:34
And from our point of view, >> we get to interview talented builders every single day.
2:01:41
We've interviewed hundreds of of founders this year.
2:01:43
And that is like the bright spot to me is like across every industry and and any sector that's important to the world, there are bright uh bright optimistic people that are dedicating their lives to solving um solving problems from logistics to uh you know autonomous vehicles to new consumer hardware like any any any category uh there there are bright people um that are dedicating their lives.
2:02:11
And so I think that's like the white pill for me is when I think about how chaotic and and crazy the world and and there's uh a lot of like uh John said tragedy, but at the same time there's uh people at an individual level are are committed to changing the world.
2:02:27
And so I think we it's it's much easier to be like incredibly optimistic about the future uh and and not give in to the doom uh when you have our job.
2:02:34
And I know it's the same same for you as well in terms of meeting um meeting talented people that are dedicating their lives to solving real problems in the world.
2:02:46
>> Yeah, I mean it's lovely.
2:02:46
There's so much hope in the startup world, so much ambition.
2:02:50
Um it's really really impressive.
2:02:53
By the way, I met the founder that you were talking about with that device >> on the year. I know him. I know him very well.
2:03:01
Kleiner Perkins, which is like perhaps one of the I mean the best uh VC firm at the moment or one of the best. They're backing him. >> Fantastic.
2:03:09
>> So I I know I know him well.
2:03:11
>> I think you I wonder if you just uh the news there. That's amazing. >> Yeah. I mean uh Yeah.
2:03:19
>> How often do you visit break news? Come on. We don't know.
2:03:21
You didn't mention any names or anything. We're all good. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We know nothing. It's uh just a rumor.
2:03:26
Um how often do you come to the US?
2:03:30
So I have to I mean of course yeah it's important for me to be there.
2:03:33
So I'm I'm there about once every two three months.
2:03:37
So quite a lot >> coming there quite a lot. Yeah.
2:03:40
>> I love I love hosting at F1 races also.
2:03:43
So I'm constantly hosting all your friends from from the Bay Area um and and New York also at the races.
2:03:48
So I host everybody in Miami.
2:03:50
Hosting everybody again now at Vegas which is lovely. It's very cool. >> That's amazing. >> Amazing.
2:03:56
Well, uh, thank you so much for taking the time on a late, uh, evening to chat with us.
2:04:00
We had a lot of fun talking to you. >> Come back on anytime.
2:04:03
>> Yeah, we'd love to talk to you.
2:04:04
>> I just got an email in my top right corner where I'm going to find out if I if I get accepted to the one of the very best funds in the US and I now I'm going to click on it and it's been a fiveday fight with allnighters and everything because of technical complications, whatever, cuz it's so hard.
2:04:19
They're like everybody's like 2x oversubscribed.
2:04:21
It's like crazy times in the US.
2:04:23
Do you want to open Do you want to open it live? >> Open the email. Give us the reaction. >> Let's let us know.
2:04:31
>> If I get a negative if I get a negative uh >> Thanks for your patience. Can you still Oh man. We are going ahead. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yes.
2:04:43
Can you still see me actually? >> Yes. Yes, we can. >> We did it. >> We did it.
2:04:50
>> Hit the [Applause] >> Congratulations.
2:04:53
We got a We got a fund allocation for Rossberg Ventures. Let's go.
2:04:59
>> I was I was gonna We were gonna end the show.
2:05:02
>> We were Yeah, we were gonna give them a call and we were going to Sam Hill and say correct this right now.
2:05:05
This is >> That is fantastic news. Congratulations.
2:05:10
>> Let me narrow it down for you as well who it was. Come on. At least for some fun.
2:05:13
It's between something like Thrive, um Axel, Green Oaks, or or Elad. >> Okay.
2:05:21
Oh, these are great firms.
2:05:23
>> It's one of those four.
2:05:23
Okay, those are great firms. Let's go.
2:05:27
>> Shout out to all the absolute boys. >> Amazing.
2:05:29
Well, we you should get the other the other three, too.
2:05:32
>> Yeah, get the get the full stack.
2:05:32
We'll we'll make some calls.
2:05:35
>> Maybe we have all of them already.
2:05:36
>> Thank you so much for for hopping on the show. This is fantastic.
2:05:39
>> Yeah, great to hang uh soon. Have a good one. >> Talk soon. >> Bye. >> The live high stakes.
2:05:45
He lives he lives his life on the edge.
2:05:48
Like that's a real F1 driver move to open an >> live potentially getting rejected.
2:05:56
Uh we have our next guest in the reream waiting room.
2:05:59
Really quickly, let me tell you about audio customer relationship magic.
2:06:02
Adio is the AI native CRM that builds, scales, and grows your company to the next level.
2:06:05
You can get started for free.
2:06:07
We have our next guest >> two-timer.
2:06:10
We got Michael with the TVPN hat. Thank you.
2:06:15
>> Great sign of respect.
2:06:16
>> I got to do my part, guys. Thanks for hopping on.
2:06:18
I didn't I didn't have one of the hats. >> We will get you one. We'll get you one.
2:06:22
One day one day near uh we were over subscribed actually.
2:06:25
We I think we made what a couple hundred of them and uh uh not nearly enough.
2:06:30
But thank you so much for hopping on the stream.
2:06:31
Uh let's uh let's just kick it off with some intros for those who are listening. >> Near take it away. Take it away. >> I'm Near Zickerman.
2:06:39
Thanks a lot for having me.
2:06:41
I'm the uh CEO and co-founder of Obo.
2:06:43
And the other co-founder is my good friend Mike here. >> What's up guys? Great to be back.
2:06:48
Obviously, we've spoken uh a number of times.
2:06:51
I'm uh one of the co-founders of OBO and also a partner at Lightseed.
2:06:55
>> And Near and I had previously co-founded uh Anchor, which we sold to Spotify. >> No way.
2:06:59
Putting the gang back together. >> I love it.
2:07:05
>> Anyway, let's get let's get into the news.
2:07:06
So, so you guys launched uh are are you guys uh product? How are you position? >> Is it a bet? Yeah. Is it a beta?
2:07:12
Is it is it is it thing GA? What's going on? >> Yeah. So, we're out there.
2:07:17
OBO is uh is live to the world and it is the easiest way to learn anything.
2:07:22
So, you come to our website, obo.
2:07:25
fyi, single prompt, we will magically create a course to teach anyone anything. >> Yep.
2:07:32
>> When I say anything, I really mean anything.
2:07:33
Mike and I were talking earlier.
2:07:34
What was the example we had?
2:07:34
We had uh you could learn about how to cook pasta and you could learn about the quantum physics of why of how cooking pasta works if you wanted to.
2:07:42
So >> truly a a broad range of of topics.
2:07:45
Um >> and with OBO courses, we let you learn in a variety of different ways, right?
2:07:53
So you come in again, we magically create a course and it is made up of everything from the ability to read about the topic, short form, long form to listen to a podcast about it, two hosts like yourselves talking about whatever uh the topic, completely personalized to the user.
2:08:07
We have games, we have quizzes, a totally immersive experience to let you learn. >> Yeah.
2:08:12
Uh I saw a screenshot from uh none other than Martin Skrey saying this was very cool and it showed uh I mean it felt like a lot of the anchor DNA was in there in the sense of when I think about anchor it's like you have an MP3 and you need it on a lot of different and you need to instantiate it in many different ways.
2:08:30
ways. distribution is is multi-platform and uh and and you have essentially like some sort of deep research project going on under collecting information organizing it with LLMs I'm sure but then instantiating it in a summary a deep dive uh an audio product so talk
2:08:48
about the multimodality where you see that going in the near term when are we going to get uh video in here at some point I could imagine with V3 and some of the advances there eventually you'll be able to just like sit in on a 1-hour generated video lecture if that's what you want. I don't know if anyone wants
2:09:04
I don't know if anyone wants that long term, but uh where do you see all the different multimodalities going?
2:09:09
>> I actually think a lot of people do want uh video. It's in the works. We are working on it.
2:09:12
And to me, you know, I mean, people spend hours on YouTube. >> Yeah.
2:09:17
>> Constantly trying to learn and and you know, explore curiosities.
2:09:19
The reality is people are online learning constantly.
2:09:22
You just don't think about it as learning.
2:09:23
you know, you're on tons of different websites, tons of different apps, trying to >> like figure out understanding things in the news, understanding what you read, trying to get, you know, you're curious about things and you want to dig in.
2:09:34
People do not learn in one path and they don't learn with one format.
2:09:37
So, a core philosophy of ours is if you're going to build a learning platform, you have to learn it the way that people actually learn.
2:09:43
And the way that people actually learn is multimodal, right? It's immersive.
2:09:47
Um, Mike, what do you what do you want to add?
2:09:50
Yeah, I mean look, I think the the the beauty of the multimodality is it lets people learn on their terms.
2:09:57
You know, one of the reasons we started this company is we sort of looked at education.
2:10:00
We looked at learning and we realized that the way people learn right now is too rigid.
2:10:06
It's too one-sizefits-all, right?
2:10:06
You have higher education and traditional education teaching every single person on the planet the same thing in the same exact way.
2:10:14
And that's just not how we all learn.
2:10:16
We all learn in different ways. Some of us like to read.
2:10:18
Some of us like to listen.
2:10:20
Some of us like to watch Tik Tok.
2:10:21
Uh and so what we realized is we have this technology now that can personalize learning for anyone on the planet.
2:10:28
And so it would be a shame to not actually do that and make the most personalized form of education ever before.
2:10:34
>> How are you thinking about gamification?
2:10:36
I seem to remember uh you guys had badges in the first app and uh uh to kind of help someone get over the curve of actually distributing a show.
2:10:43
Um, uh, we're seeing, you know, the both like Resilience and the stocks all over the place with Duolingo, but it feels like Dolingo has done a great job of taking an education product and making it fun and and repetitive and maybe even a little addictive.
2:10:59
And it seems like that is a piece of the goal, but how do you think about the various trade-offs there?
2:11:05
>> Uh, look, I think gamification is key.
2:11:05
I think the main reason gamification is key and accessibility and making it fun is key is because learning is intimidating. Yeah.
2:11:13
Most people who want to learn something new, they look at how you do it and they just get intimidated and they turn away.
2:11:18
And that's why so much of what we've built and what we'll continue to build is around making it really digestible, really peacemeal.
2:11:25
Like like Mike said, putting it in the control of the user so that they could decide how they want to navigate things.
2:11:30
I think any course on OBO should be presented to a user today and in the future as you can do this.
2:11:34
We're going to help guide you through it, right?
2:11:38
we're going to put enough tools in your hands so that you could be the one to guide the system and and let it know how to effectively teach you.
2:11:44
>> How do you >> how are you guys thinking about solving for hallucinations if if if I if if you know if you can remember a teacher that taught you something and it was wrong.
2:11:55
It's like it just completely destroys the trust.
2:11:57
Like you it's hard to you're like you said that this event happened in 1970 and it actually happened in 19. >> Yeah.
2:12:06
>> Yeah. I mean what would what would we be as a 2025 AI startup without a multi- aent architecture right Near explain our multi- aent architecture >> let me let me tell you about our multi-agent architecture yeah look the big challenge in a lot of what we spent resources on over the last year building
2:12:24
this thing was on how do you present to the user really highquality engaging content that is accurate extremely quickly because for this content to be lightweight and accessible it has to happen fast right so the way that this works under the hood is like this I I think the honestly the toughest challenge is an orchestration challenge. It's how do you simultaneously have an
2:12:39
It's how do you simultaneously have an agent generating you know the skeleton of the course and the references that it's going to pull in and the uh script for the audio and fact check all this stuff agents correcting other agents and all that happens within seconds of you generating a course and it's going to continue to get better.
2:12:55
continue to get better. uh look hallucinations I think are uh the reality is I I think right now people primarily learn through resources that are completely unchecked and so uh I think one of the biggest advantage that advantages that we want to invest in is making sure that when people come here
2:13:11
they feel confident that they're getting the highest quality and the most accurate >> well congratulations on the launch I'm excited to try it out my challenge for you I don't know if either of you play the obo you need to use obo to learn to play the obo you need to dog food your own product next time we have you on the That's the goal. >> I expect a solo on the obo
2:13:27
>> I expect a solo on the obo >> obo solo. >> Obo solo. Let's make it happen. >> Congrats.
2:13:32
>> I think it's a great idea. >> You should.
2:13:34
>> Guys, let me just let me just say one more thing if you don't mind.
2:13:36
I know you got another guest coming on.
2:13:38
>> We are investing a lot of money in AI.
2:13:40
We've invested like what a trillion dollars at this point or something.
2:13:42
It seems crazy to us that we have invested so much money into a technology that's going to make an alien life form that's actually smarter than us.
2:13:50
And so the whole purpose of this company is to actually use the artificial intelligence to make the humans smarter.
2:13:56
That's what we're trying to do here.
2:13:58
It's actually let's pour that investment back into human intelligence. All right.
2:14:01
We're bringing human intelligence back. >> Organic intelligence. Farm to table. That's right.
2:14:06
Farmtotable intelligence.
2:14:07
>> Uh I'm excited to check it out.
2:14:07
It's ext you know we we cover like hundreds of topics a show.
2:14:12
There's often times where we're coming into a show and we have like 10 minutes to prep on something that we know nothing about.
2:14:18
And I have a feeling that OBO is going to be a great solution for it.
2:14:21
So, thank you guys for joining and and congrats on the launch. >> Fantastic. We'll talk to you soon. Cheers.
2:14:27
>> Have a good rest of your day.
2:14:29
>> Next up, we have >> I'm John.
2:14:33
He's coming in from the restroom rating room.
2:14:34
I'll tell you about eight. com. Get a pod 5 ultra.
2:14:37
5-year warranty, 30 night risk-f free trial, free returns, free shipping.
2:14:41
You heard Nico Rosberg talk about the importance of sleep. You need an eight sleep.
2:14:45
Anyway, we have Jod from Replet in the reream waiting room bringing him in.
2:14:51
He has some fantastic news for us. Break it down.
2:14:53
Welcome back to the show. >> Great to see you.
2:14:58
>> Thanks for having me here, guys. Good to see you again. >> Look fantastic.
2:15:00
You look uh yeah, ju just great lighting. You look healthy.
2:15:05
You look like you're deadlifting more than ever.
2:15:07
I feel like there's been a PR in the recent in the recent history. I won't hold you.
2:15:11
>> No, I've done I've done a bit of a PR on on just getting healthier in general.
2:15:14
Actually, weightlifting is really bad for you.
2:15:16
Powerlifting especially, you get >> cuz once you start chasing weights, >> sure, >> you you know, you you're fine with getting fat and you're fine with anything.
2:15:26
>> You're you're willing to die to to add that extra pound on your lift and it's just a bad sport in general. >> Yeah.
2:15:32
Well, >> yeah, John and I John and I go back and forth here.
2:15:35
John's John's uh very fixated on, you know, constant improvement in the gym.
2:15:40
I'm I'm more so like, you know, uh I want to be strong and healthy.
2:15:45
Uh but uh anyways, it it uh you're what did Delian say the other week?
2:15:52
It's like you're always either like adding to your one rep max or or >> losing or losing.
2:15:56
>> So, it's one way or the other.
2:15:56
Uh well, >> did you see what did you see what Grown Daniel uh said about uh powerlifting? >> What did he say?
2:16:04
>> It's like if you if you want to look ugly and feel take up powerlifting. >> Yeah.
2:16:10
It's not for the aesthetics for sure. >> Yeah.
2:16:13
>> Anyway, uh PR on fundraising. So, congrats on that. What's the news? >> Thank you.
2:16:19
Yeah, we raised $250 million. Uh >> congratulations. >> Let's go. >> Let's go.
2:16:25
at at a $3 billion valuation >> led by Prism Capital uh with AX and Google joining the round and a bunch of our uh lovely investors such as Andre and YC and others kind of doubling down. >> Fantastic.
2:16:41
Uh massive takeoff, fast takeoff in in revenue and users like like the the vibe coding air is definitely a narrative that's that that that's you know on a tear right now. Correct.
2:16:55
Yeah, but but we're actually trying to change the game a little bit.
2:16:56
Like I think VIP coding is is is awesome, but ultimately like what Replet is and what I've been trying to do for a long time is make it so that anyone can make software.
2:17:07
>> VIP coding is still somewhat coding.
2:17:09
You're still sitting in front of an IDE and like most people don't want to do that.
2:17:12
Like a lot of people like it, >> but people just want to solve problems, startups.
2:17:16
Y >> that's why they do, you know, coding.
2:17:20
And so replet agent 3 uh we our target is for it to feel like a human developer >> for it to work on your behalf.
2:17:29
And so uh the main target we set from like a research perspective is can we make it run for 200 minutes.
2:17:37
So when we went from agent one to agent two went from 2 minutes to 20 minutes.
2:17:42
So now from 20 minutes to 300 200 minutes.
2:17:45
And actually I'm seeing people show me apps they built that it's taken 4 hours on its own.
2:17:52
It can boot up a browser window test the app for you. It can run unit tests. It can review its code.
2:17:58
And we have this adversarial relationship between like Claude and GT5 Gemini arguing and fighting.
2:18:04
And so it's like this multi- aent system.
2:18:06
Uh and it's really the state-of-the-art autonomous coding agent.
2:18:10
And so the the idea is not to vibe code.
2:18:13
The idea is to to build things.
2:18:15
And often times you don't even have to be in in front of the computer for that to happen.
2:18:19
>> How big of an opportunity is mobile? >> Mobile is huge.
2:18:23
Like so a lot of our customers are actually executives.
2:18:25
So I I was at the end summit.
2:18:27
We hosted the AI dinner uh brought down from Seattle Lloyd Frank from um the co-founder of uh Zillow and he is Replet's champion at the firm. Right.
2:18:39
This is uh executive uh chairman of of of the board.
2:18:42
uh and you know a lot of his times in in between meetings and things like that.
2:18:47
So he can like boot up properly on his phone and we have a lot of other CEOs.
2:18:51
I've heard the story uh secondhand that you know Vlad from Robin Hood uh would like prototype applications uh on Replet on his phone in meetings to kind of show engineers what they should go and build.
2:19:06
And so I think it really changes the game.
2:19:08
It's no longer about being a computer nerd sitting in front of a computer.
2:19:12
It's about making things whether it's on your phone, on your, you know, hopefully in the future even, you know, uh, you can just talk to Replet via your headphones and it just goes and does the thing. >> Yep.
2:19:24
No, no, I I I think that there's there's that meme of like where you sit in the org is correlated to how many monitors you have, right?
2:19:31
And it's like the person who's like keeping the entire app online, like the genius systems engineer has three monitors.
2:19:37
Then like the the product manager has like you know one extra monitor and a laptop that they take to meetings and then the CEO is just on their phone all the time and giving the CEO or or executive who's just on their phone the ex the ability to express themselves in software is extremely powerful. Uh I'm interested. Oh sorry.
2:19:56
>> How how do you think about uh projecting and forecasting market size of code generation broadly because Replet was early to the to this space but it's heavily competitive with via you know there was even >> uh now that I think about it at at demo day there was a the other day there was a company that I was kind of thinking when I heard the pitch like this feels like um basically like a feature of Replet, right?
2:20:23
Um, so it's just like hyper competitive space.
2:20:25
But at the same time, the world >> test flight specifically.
2:20:28
Is that the one you're >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
2:20:30
But but the world just wants more and more and more code and the cheaper you make it to make code, the more the world wants it.
2:20:35
But I'm curious how you think about kind of the overall uh market opportunity.
2:20:41
First of all, super vindicated, right?
2:20:43
Like I've been talking about this since I was a teenager.
2:20:45
You know, I was working at, you know, code academy and uh we were saying anyone can learn to code.
2:20:51
Everyone wants to make software.
2:20:52
And everyone's like, "Well, you should learn to be a plumber cuz everyone needs plumbing."
2:20:56
I was like, "No, it's different.
2:20:57
Like, we need an abundance of code.
2:21:00
You don't need an abundance of plumbing." >> And people Yeah. And and so it's awesome.
2:21:08
Like I I think we lit a fire and now the forest is on fire, right?
2:21:13
But um and that's that's always I think good.
2:21:15
I think the look, there's a zero sum market and there's a positive sum market.
2:21:19
The zero sum market is a professional engineering market.
2:21:23
You see the co-pilot versus cursor chart and as as as cursor is rising, co-pilot is going in market share.
2:21:29
That's a zero sum market.
2:21:29
Now you see it with codeex and clot code.
2:21:31
Um and so there's only so many tools that software engineers can use.
2:21:38
>> But like I said, we're bringing we're you know executives are making software uh salespeople, marketing people, doctors, nurses, everyone.
2:21:45
doctors, nurses, everyone. I haven't like at this point I've over the past year I've heard every profession under the sun has used replet in some use case and so I think the market size is is is is probably the market size of software the market size of computers right and and by the way this is the original
2:22:05
vision of computing when the original creators of computers that's what they envisioned they envision that you buy a computer and you program it that's how you use it they didn't like envision the software industry and I That's that's the true essence of you know how computing could be really really powerful is the ability for anyone to program it. So that's one. Another sort So that's one.
2:22:25
Another sort of we did it like a one more thing as part of the our agent 3 announcement and it's a sort of this low-key launch that I think will will will you know transform our business over time and it's the ability for replet agent to make other agents.
2:22:42
So we've gotten really good at making agents and now we're imbuing that knowledge into the agent itself.
2:22:50
And what we're finding in the enterprise is that a lot of people want to solve problems.
2:22:55
Software is a mean means of solving problems.
2:22:56
You create an app and then you use that app to take an action, right?
2:23:02
But a lot of times you an agent can take an action on your behalf.
2:23:06
And so you can create an HR agent, a sales agent.
2:23:09
Uh you know there there's there's so many things that could be automated and there's an entire industry that's going to emerge around vertical agents and that's fine.
2:23:17
But a lot of times you need a very domain specific like HR onboarding agent for the idiosyncratic bespoke way we do onboarding on in our company and the only person who knows how to do it is one HR ops person at our company and so uh you know now agents can make other agents and that market size is also dissing dizzingly large because that starts to displace uh white collar labor labor in many ways.
2:23:44
On the topic of just more and more code endlessly, um I'm interested to know how you think instantiation of code will live in the consumer world over time.
2:23:57
And I'll give you an example.
2:23:59
So uh I've I've fired off deeper research reports in in OpenAI's chat GPT.
2:24:04
I've also once gone to claude code and said with same prompt um do all the deep research but then instantiate it as an HTML site that is mobile responsive and can use all different HTML tables and you can tell that when deep research fills in from chat GPT.
2:24:24
It has the ability to use markdown and create a table but it can't just pull a random JavaScript library and create an interactive bar chart.
2:24:30
It can't randomly throw images in and and and add all these different divs that you could possibly do on HTML.
2:24:37
And so I was thinking about, you know, are we gonna get to a world where you open up your favorite LLM chat app, and in order to answer the problem, it's building a widget, building a piece of software.
2:24:51
The same way when you go to Google and you ask for 2 plus2, it it just gives you a calculator, an actual HTML calculator.
2:24:56
You can instantiate that calculator in code.
2:24:58
And and so I'm I'm wondering how you think the market will look in like five I don't know 10 years or something like how much >> I think you >> Yeah.
2:25:08
I think you hit on something super important.
2:25:09
I think it is easy to look at this and say this is the market for codegen. >> Yeah.
2:25:14
>> No, it's a market for software. >> Yeah.
2:25:16
>> Yeah. uh the again if you go back to history when you know Turing wrote his 1936 paper that you know invented the the computer the Turing machine it's about universal computation is that you know computers can be these dynamic
2:25:32
systems right and we know initially computers were these fancy calculators you couldn't program them in software you had to kind of you know rewire them and then von Newman in the you know 50 40s 50s uh created the stored program
2:25:46
computer and the idea is that you can suddenly program them and you know every computer we have right now is a von von Newman machine and I think this moment is as big as that moment you went from static computers to programmable computers now we're going from static
2:26:00
software to dynamic and malleable software >> so every piece of software application you're going to be working with will be generating software on the fly pulling packages uh on the fly and creating bespoke software for your use case. So
2:26:12
bespoke software for your use case. So you know uh instead of like going and buying Tableau to do this one exact thing you can go to replet or or manis or even chach will do it in the future and all of that and depending on how
2:26:28
depth of the power is I think replet is going to be the most powerful >> sure >> but but of course you can use any of the other tools and they're going to generate the the bespoke software that you need for that exact use case and I think that's a very exciting future. Yeah, there will be sort of like
2:26:40
Yeah, there will be sort of like complexity >> when you see some of these insane uh cloud backlogs where you have like >> Google and Microsoft and Oracle and everybody's reporting like we have backlogs in the hundreds of billions and the and and I think Wall Street looks at that and they say okay where's this where's this revenue really going to where's this how is this revenue I mean sorry but like that's not what Wall
2:27:05
Street's reaction was Wall Street's reaction was like oh the money's in the bank like let's drive the talk higher saying to more critical investors like that's a lot of money being thrown around a lot of numbers where what how
2:27:17
do you you know make it but but on your side as you see you know the entire market of software shifting from you know we make software and we sell a lot a lot of times to we make software continuously for the needs of our business. Do those kind of backlogs
2:27:33
Do those kind of backlogs start to make sense to you? Um, I think so.
2:27:39
Look, I'm I'm not an investor.
2:27:39
We might be in a bubble in the short term, but I am confident that the long-term value of this technology, especi especially as it pertains to LLM's making software is massive.
2:27:51
In some sense, it's going to displace existing value.
2:27:55
So, that's in the vertical point solution SAS space.
2:27:58
I think it'll start doing some jobs that otherwise humans have been doing.
2:28:04
So that there existing value capture from the existing um market but it's also going to fundamentally change how we use computers, how we run our businesses.
2:28:16
Businesses can be a lot more efficient.
2:28:19
Um and uh I I think that like you know an economist or philosopher need to start thinking about what the future of work would look like when everyone has a fully autonomous programmer in their pocket.
2:28:31
It's, you know, every company is bottlenecked by software.
2:28:35
Every company in the world from one person company to a 100,000 person company.
2:28:40
So when your finance team um needed this like data to be pipelineed from like Stripe and other places so they can run certain analysis, they're bottlenecked by data engineering.
2:28:54
But if I can like let loose you know replet or clock code whatever and just say like go figure out these data sources and plum them in so I can run SQL queries on them and then 3 or 4 hours later you have that ready then you know you unblocked yourself you create massive improvements to your processes and also you don't need the engineers to go work on the side quest and they can focus on the core software that the company is building. >> Fantastic.
2:29:22
We went viral last time asking you advice for young people.
2:29:28
Let's get your updated thinking.
2:29:28
Should you learn to code in 2025?
2:29:33
>> What do you want to do?
2:29:33
I would say like do you want to start a startup? Go start a startup.
2:29:37
like go to replet, put your idea in and you know in 20 minutes you'll get a prototype and then once you have a better idea of what you want to build you can put in a larger prompt and have it run for 3 hours and then come back to you with a product that maybe you can release even in the first day.
2:29:53
Is that what you want to do now?
2:29:55
You want to be a specialist.
2:29:57
You want to go work on you know writing C soft provable C software for the you know next Apollo program.
2:30:05
Yeah, go get a PhD in computer science.
2:30:07
But really, it comes down to what you want to do.
2:30:10
I think the future is entrepreneurship and not just entrepreneurship in building businesses, but also what we're seeing is there's a lot of entrepreneurs within companies that are creating tremendous value.
2:30:22
We hear of companies all the time employees using Replet creating millions of dollars of revenue for the company and they're not engineers.
2:30:29
They're operations people, product managers and all all sorts of people are now empowered to do that.
2:30:35
But I think the main skill uh the main set of skills is going to be resourcefulness.
2:30:41
Uh I think the worst thing you could do is be do what you're told today.
2:30:47
The worst thing you could do is perhaps listen to your parents. And here you go.
2:30:50
Maybe that goes goes wild. >> There we go.
2:30:52
Okay, that was a good answer >> because you know look I think that you know all the advice is outdated and I think uh we're entering a very dynamic era and I think you know especially young people need to think for themselves.
2:31:05
They'll know much better than their teachers, their parents, everyone else what they need to focus on, what kind of skills they need to learn. >> Thank you so much.
2:31:15
>> Be able to make things the robots will do all of the process. >> Yep.
2:31:18
You just need to ideate the idea. >> Yeah, that's true.
2:31:22
The human spirit that we're not we're never going to lose that. That's the human spirit. >> I agree.
2:31:26
Uh thank you so much for taking on the on the on the new round. >> Always a pleasure.
2:31:30
We'll talk to you soon guys. All right. Talk. Bye.
2:31:34
>> Let me tell you about public.
2:31:34
com investing for those that take it seriously.
2:31:38
They got multiass investing, industryleading yields, and trusted by millions.
2:31:43
Up next, we have Alex from Higsfield AI in the Reream waiting room.
2:31:48
Let's bring him in to the TBPN Ultradome.
2:31:50
Welcome to the stream, Alex. Great to see you. How are you doing? >> Doing great. Thank you for having me. >> Fantastic. Give us the news.
2:31:57
Do you have anything to share on the fundraising side? >> Yeah, for sure.
2:32:02
Um guys, happy to announce that um we raised 50 million and we purposefully picked you guys. >> Oh, what?
2:32:11
as you Yeah, you represent the new medium. >> Yes. >> Sorry to interrupt. >> Thank you.
2:32:21
>> I got a little excited. >> Continue.
2:32:24
You said you >> I think you were saying something very nice about how like we're we're we're neatly organized.
2:32:28
We're just like banging gongs and stuff.
2:32:29
Anyway, I'll let you talk. Sorry. >> Yeah.
2:32:34
I mean, we're just excited to support this new wave of uh creators who are social media native. >> Yeah.
2:32:41
And I think uh TBPN is a great example of what it means to be social media native and don't be the gatekeeper. >> Yeah.
2:32:50
>> So that for us uh we also are excited to share some stats today.
2:32:55
>> Please >> we in just 5 months after the launch we probably crossed over 1.
2:32:58
3 billion views on social media.
2:33:03
All the content generated with Hicksfield crossed over a billion views on social media. >> That is crazy. Congratulations.
2:33:12
>> That's >> what uh what kind of what what kind of power law is there in that? >> Is there one?
2:33:15
Because if you had the pope wearing the puffy jacket, that could be like 200 million views. Uh or is it more Yeah.
2:33:22
What does the power law look like?
2:33:24
What's the most interesting image you've seen?
2:33:27
>> Look, I think uh I think what matters today is consistency.
2:33:31
You guys go out every day, right? >> Yeah.
2:33:36
>> Hield releases every day. Mhm.
2:33:38
>> And successful creators, they have to post like five times a day on social media some short snippets.
2:33:45
>> I think frequency and relevancy is what matters.
2:33:49
>> What are the what are the most interesting use cases that you're seeing?
2:33:52
Uh the nano there was obviously the studio Gibli launch where we got the ability to create cartoons.
2:33:57
Nano Banano I saw a lot of people like just like swapping clothing.
2:34:00
Uh has there been kind of a killer use case that you've seen where you've gone to maybe friends who aren't, you know, reading the deep dive how to prompt all these threads but and just said, "Hey, we we got this specific thing covered.
2:34:16
You're going to have a great experience if you use Higsfield in this way." >> For sure.
2:34:21
Um primarily Hicksfield stands behind creators and really supporting creators is uh the primary goal and we integrate all the best tooling including the nana banana which you mentioned.
2:34:30
One of the most surprising um use cases where we see a lot of traction is actually product placements and we are excited to see Hicksfield being adopted by Fortune 500 companies >> to really put their products >> to work to get traction on social media.
2:34:52
>> And this and this is where Hixel proprietary models like Hickfield Soul come into the play.
2:34:57
as those large brands, they create own AI digital spokespersons to really promote the brands.
2:35:07
>> Talk about Higsfield Ventures.
2:35:07
Uh pretty uncommon for companies to launch venture funds so early, but obviously Slack had a fund, Stripes invested a ton.
2:35:17
Uh what's the thinking there?
2:35:21
>> Um first and foremost, we we just received a lot of inbounds.
2:35:24
um how can we get the access to Higfield models? >> Sure.
2:35:30
>> How we can grow the same way as Hicksfield >> and we thought that uh there is a need to to to explain to developers to support the next next wave of AI startups.
2:35:45
>> Um and that's why we launched pixel venture.
2:35:46
So really the program is not focused on like just on a traditional venture investing.
2:35:51
It is around sharing the growth playbooks and providing unique access to the technology.
2:36:00
>> Are you worried if you give people the playbooks and the models that they'll come and and uh compete with you >> or is it or your positive sum?
2:36:08
>> We have contrarian view on that to be honest.
2:36:10
Look, I think that there is a traditional um there is a traditional way to build a company and that's uh very often in a very often in the technology space before it really required to raise a lot of funding and burn and burn money and we we have seen that recently Andre and Martin Casado they they pushed this consensus driven investing narrative a lot which obviously benefits them as they probably have the largest fund in the world.
2:36:39
In the same time today what we are observing is that there is a there is a new next generation of a lean startups like Hicksfield which are actually profitable >> profitable almost from the day one. >> Wow.
2:36:53
>> And um the and we believe that this is uh this next wave is probably going to be as large as VC backed startups and I think we can we can support the creation of these next generation startups.
2:37:08
How uh how how did you pitch this latest round?
2:37:13
You know, if if somebody's giving you $50 million, I I presume they would like you to at least be a billion-dollar company someday.
2:37:19
What is what is Higsfield as a you know, multi-billion dollar company look like?
2:37:23
And and uh what what's your kind of if you had a crystal ball, uh what would paint us a picture? >> Oh, sure.
2:37:32
Um I think this is quite simple.
2:37:34
Um a lots of a lot of people got super super power with self-expression on thanks to social media and mobile phones.
2:37:46
A lot of people are probably still shy to do that and Genai is just going to propel uh self-expression and essentially we believe that in three years every second video is going to be AI generated and it's going to be AI generated with Hicksfield.
2:38:01
So the so the impact is going to be way bigger than just let's say building um video version of Canva.
2:38:09
of Canva. I think this is going to be a transformative um movements in the in the social media space >> and that's and that's because uh today every piece of content that's produced has some sort of cost and as more and more content is produced with AI you
2:38:28
guys can effectively capture some of that some of the cost that would have been spent on on on traditional video production whether it's just somebody with the phone and their time in their hand or it's sort of a more produced shoot. Is that am I hearing that right?
2:38:40
Is that am I hearing that right? >> Yeah, for sure.
2:38:42
The cost is is an important factor, but it's not just that.
2:38:46
Um, like look, I think for a live show, you guys clearly kill this, but you bring the best people in the industry like you see the lineup today. >> Yeah.
2:38:56
>> No one else can bring the I'm not talking about myself obviously, right?
2:39:00
But there are other people whom you bring and they they didn't they do not typically show up in the live shows.
2:39:04
typically show up in the live shows. Um but many people cannot really do the same stuff which you do but people have ideas like how they can make shows uh like let's say cartoons for kids how they can make fantasy content um and so
2:39:21
on and before that before genai it was impossible for those creators to really um to really create content for social media and all the content which we have which we are seeing today is primarily um is is primarily just live content like people just uh recording themselves. So, Genai is just going to
2:39:40
So, Genai is just going to like I think we we we should expect that amount of number of different genres or types of the content is just going to 10x from what we have today. >> Totally >> fantastic.
2:39:51
Well, thank you so much for stopping by. Great to get the update. Congrats.
2:39:54
You guys have been crushing it.
2:39:56
>> The round we will talk to you soon.
2:39:56
Have a great rest of your day. >> Thank you so much. >> Cheers, Alex.
2:40:01
>> Our next guest is already in the reoom waiting room.
2:40:03
Let me tell you about adquick. com.
2:40:04
Out of home advertising made easy and measurable.
2:40:06
Say goodbye to the headaches of out of home advertising.
2:40:09
Only adqu combines technology out of home expertise and data to enable efficient seamless ad buying across the globe.
2:40:15
Our next guest is from Bane Capital, Stefan Cohen. >> Welcome Ultradom.
2:40:22
>> What's happening guys everyone? >> Great to meet you. Welcome to the show.
2:40:26
>> Good to meet you guys too. Thanks for having me.
2:40:28
what's uh give us give us a quick backstory on yourself and then there's a bunch of stuff to talk about. >> Yeah.
2:40:35
Uh quick background on me.
2:40:35
So I've been at Bane for 10 years now.
2:40:36
Um I joined from one of our portfolio companies in the data center software space called Turbonomic that we I was an early employee there post series A.
2:40:45
We sold that business to IBM for a couple billion and yeah and uh I um yeah I joined BCV as a partner u focused on early stage investing and about five years ago we decided to spin off a dedicated crypto business uh being capital crypto which I'm one of the co-leads on and um has been a really really fun and interesting run.
2:41:09
We've been investing in the space for about a decade now. >> Awesome.
2:41:12
uh what is uh like the crypto strategy?
2:41:16
Is it is it a mix of of privates and uh and and you know active trading like what's what's the actual strategy? >> Yeah. Yeah.
2:41:27
So the this the setup is kind of the core premise when we launched the firm was that um we thought that a lot of value would acrue to protocols and so um we felt like we needed a flexible mandate to be able to buy liquid crypto and also invest in early stage projects.
2:41:42
Um so the fund is very flexible in that manner.
2:41:44
We have liquid tokens that we purchase on the open market and then we also have you know seed through series CD investments that we've done.
2:41:53
Um you know we try to not be active traders.
2:41:55
because we don't think that's the most the most productive use of our time.
2:41:57
We we think of these as like kind of longhold positions that we'll we'll build real concentration in.
2:42:04
>> How has uh it felt like for so you know when you think about the you know not not deep history in crypto but let's say like 20 2020 to 2024 it felt like the the tech I mean the technology was just handic like being handicapped by the regulatory environment.
2:42:24
you had this mix of, you know, as an investor, you'd be investing in you'd invest, let's say, on a on a SAFT or a safe plus a warrant and then there's these sort of like two assets.
2:42:36
You have a token that's trading and then you have like the actual equity in the company and that always felt like there was some key areas that it that it made sense, but then a lot of points were like what what do I actually own here?
2:42:48
Where's the value going to going to acrue?
2:42:50
um with a updated regulatory environment meaning that kind of feels like you can do almost anything now.
2:42:56
Uh how where is where is value going to acrue?
2:43:02
Are we going to see company uh you know crypto uh projects really try to tie the equity value to the token or are we still going to see these kind of like dual uh dual approaches?
2:43:18
>> Yeah, I mean I think it really depends on what folks are building.
2:43:19
you know, my um you know, the sort of like early premises of investing in crypto protocols, which are these like decentralized apps or blockchains themselves, was that the tokens kind of are like equity-like looking instruments where um based on the usage of the protocol, they acrew they they acrew fees through usage and then they have a cash flow profile and you can kind of fundamentally value them and they're not owned by any single party.
2:43:46
they have, you know, governance rights where they kind of vote on code contributions to the application or the blockchain that they're tied to.
2:43:54
And I think that core principle hasn't changed.
2:43:56
Um, and so for for those types of protocols, that's very true.
2:44:00
I think structurally things have shifted.
2:44:03
You know, we um had to do a lot of sort of heroics uh pre this administration to ensure that we were protected from a regulatory standpoint when we were doing token launches.
2:44:14
And so a lot of these teams would basically have like an equity company.
2:44:18
You'd be issued token warrants and then at the point of issuing the token, you would have an offshore foundation um that would actually issue the token itself and the investors would have rights to that.
2:44:29
Um we have I think most projects right now kind of have that legacy model.
2:44:34
Um I don't know that many are actually trying new and different models for what they do.
2:44:38
I >> guess what what I was trying to get at is like how do you what's what's after the sort of foundation model?
2:44:42
Is there enough regulatory clarity that we that that uh that that these uh that you could establish kind of a new model or is it now been workshopped enough and trial enough that it actually is the right model for the future and that >> I I think the model works fine.
2:44:59
And I mean I I suspect people will try other different structures but um you know the fundamental problem with the model is you end up with this like equity company that often often times doesn't have any real value associated with it and um there is some you know we've had to deal with some things with legacy portfolio companies where they either need to shut those down or sort of allocate their balance sheet over to the foundation.
2:45:22
But that seems to not be like the the fundamental shift from a regulatory standpoint right now.
2:45:26
I think the the fundamental shift is that founders are now emboldened to be able to go build again which is really exciting.
2:45:33
>> Uh tell me about the hypersstition investing thesis.
2:45:35
I've never heard any VC put that in such uh you know stark terms before. >> Yeah.
2:45:44
I think there's sort of this like um consistent pattern that we've recognized with the most outstanding founders and companies that we've had a chance to work with which is that um their ideas are are initially disgusting and really hard to believe.
2:45:58
you know, it's sort of a you if you think of this like, you know, this this bell curve of of companies at the beginning, it's like offensive and then once you get closer to mass market adoption, everyone's kind of like, okay, yeah, that that makes sense.
2:46:10
And then usually there's like a trough of illusionment where everyone's lost faith in it and maybe that was like, you know, post2021 crypto in a way.
2:46:17
Um but there's been this consistent theme with founders which is that um many that are starting out that have sort of these these these views of what the world should look like and how the world should be sort of shaped around their values and principles um in the beginning seem seem kind of unreal.
2:46:35
unreal. And uh we increasingly have have learned that like the the real art to this is uh to investing um with these sort of longtail outcomes is to work with those founders and believe in them and believe in them with capital not just not just with um you know our our you know our belief as a group but um we we're really like in in search of those
2:46:57
types of ideas and you know I think the the two examples that u we really point to one was Crusoe when they were raising their seed financing it It was kind of an unbelievable idea which was like we're going to go off into the oil fields and build data centers that are capturing flared natural gas and um we'll scale those to eventually uh handle AI level compute. I mean it's
2:47:16
I mean it's sort of it was it was so it was so crazy that at the time like they actually had to go and build a box in at the time it was in Colorado to show that the the model actually worked.
2:47:26
model actually worked. And you know more recently um we've had the privilege of being involved with Worldcoin which >> u you know outside in is this um is this this sort of decentralized identity network but the real notion is that in the future and I think we're starting to
2:47:43
feel this more and more now um it's very hard to tell what's real and what's not on the internet and um we we sort of view that this like this model of trust in the internet is breaking right now and one of the core premises of trust is like are you even talking to me right now? Um, you know, did I tweet the thing
2:47:58
Um, you know, did I tweet the thing that I tweeted earlier?
2:48:00
And um, and so this notion that proof of humanness and proof of identity in a sort of globally distributed internet native way is very important.
2:48:08
And so um, we're we're on we're on the hunt for those types of ideas and and that's part of what makes the the job really fun.
2:48:16
>> Do you believe in the Landian idea that capitalism is uh a a timetraing artificial intelligence?
2:48:26
I don't know that I've heard this idea.
2:48:27
You'll have to you'll have to explain it to me.
2:48:29
>> The idea is that uh artificial intelligence existed in the future at some point and and built a time machine and came back and invented capitalism because capital acceleration will by nature create artificial intelligence and and that is the Landian acceleration path that we're on. I don't know.
2:48:46
I'm getting too deep in the weeds. >> I like it. I mean, >> I like it.
2:48:51
the, you know, one of the things that I I'm always kind of struck by uh is is is how like innovation breeds solutions. >> Sure.
2:49:00
>> And and you know, AI is like obviously a manifestation of that, but you know, even in the crypto world, like stable coins weren't really invented to solve the US debt issue, but like a byproduct of inventing these like digital dollars, >> the debt across the entire world. >> Yeah. Yeah.
2:49:15
And so, you know, I'm sort of like I continue to just be like hit in the face with these moments where like, man, it's almost too perfect.
2:49:21
And so, maybe maybe that's right. >> Yeah.
2:49:25
>> Uh, stable coins are now regulated in the US or or have a framework.
2:49:28
Uh, and which is wild thinking about the stable coin businesses that were started when there just was no real clarity.
2:49:36
So, uh, you know, obviously credit credit to them for for um having faith.
2:49:42
How do you think foreign governments will respond over time to USDC and and and USDT and other stable coins getting gaining adoption in there?
2:49:54
Um because like as an American, the idea of sort of like outsourcing our debt problem or or spreading it around the world sounds sounds great, but uh if you're a foreign government, you know, you want people like Turkeyy's paying 40% uh you know, on their bonds right now.
2:50:11
uh and uh you know if if everybody in the country can get access to that I mean I guess that's a mechanism for them to get people to keep their capital in the in the Turkish system but um but yeah how do you expect foreign governments to respond?
2:50:32
>> Yeah, I mean it's an interesting one because like on the one hand they already were doing it right.
2:50:34
they were buying our debt all over the I it's just it's more recent than not that other governments have sort of been you know moving out of US treasuries.
2:50:43
Um but you know the what I what I view as happening right now is really we're transitioning from sovereign governments owning our debt to >> um other people holding our debt right it's like if you think about what like really what's happening with stable coins is that businesses and individuals outside of the US particularly right now
2:51:02
I mean I think over time the US will become more of a center of adoption here but um but really the like $250 billion of issuance is just people and businesses offshore for that want uh a more stable access to dollars and um I think government some governments obviously will try to do capital controls and prevent that from happening. Um I think many view it as if
2:51:24
Um I think many view it as if they can plug into the system well like Brazil in particular is um I don't know if you guys have tracked what's happening with new bank and pix and stable coins but there's you know there's quite streamline interoper interoperability there and um if if users have to transact in local currency in that economy then they're forced to go back and forth but certainly some governments will take an adversarial view of it.
2:51:48
>> Yeah but some governments have more gain than lose so they'll take it which is great. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
2:51:52
Yeah, >> play that eagle sound, Jordy. >> There we go.
2:51:58
>> America, thank you so much for hopping on.
2:51:59
>> Thanks for joining, Stephan.
2:52:00
>> We'll talk to you soon. Good >> to see you guys. >> Thanks so much. Bye. >> Uh, go to getbazzle. com.
2:52:04
Your bezel concier is available now to source you any watch on the planet. Seriously, any watch.
2:52:10
Our next guest is in the reream waiting room. We will bring him in.
2:52:12
and to the TBPN Ultradome and continue today's show.
2:52:18
We have Rohan from Sphinx AI, I believe. >> What's happening? Welcome to the show. >> Great to meet you. Thanks for having me.
2:52:26
>> Thanks so much for hopping on. Uh, give us a breakdown. Introduce yourself. What are you building? What's the news? >> Absolutely. >> Yeah. So, I'm Roan.
2:52:31
I'm one of the co-founders and the CEO of Spinx.
2:52:33
Uh, Sphinx is a company that is solving AI for data.
2:52:37
Uh, and specifically, we're razor focused on the idea that large language models in AI today are really good at text.
2:52:43
They're good at code, which is just a type of text, good at images.
2:52:45
What they're not good at is the type of tabular semistructured time series information that makes most of the world work.
2:52:51
Everything from supply chains to high finance to uh manufacturing.
2:52:55
Uh we're bridging that gap and delivering co-pilots that can think about data natively and help people get from piles of raw information to valuable business ideas, what we call alphas in finance, but can be extended to almost any industry. >> Interesting.
2:53:10
Who's the first customer in finance then?
2:53:11
Yeah, first customer in finance.
2:53:14
Don't know if I have the rights to name them, but we do have >> I mean like the the architect, private equity, hedge fund, quant frequency.
2:53:18
So yeah, so someone who's like analyzing a stock on a quarter by quarter basis almost. >> That's right.
2:53:27
Y that makes quarter by quarter.
2:53:28
Well, faster than quarter by quarter really.
2:53:30
Um we're working with a lot of quants.
2:53:31
Um so people who are maybe day by day or even faster than that. Sure.
2:53:35
>> But yeah, the hedge funds are the target market initially.
2:53:37
they are able to solve these problems where they find >> y >> a single insight that can make billions in a year. >> That's interesting. Yeah.
2:53:43
And then I imagine that if you go any faster, the customer wants to write their own o camel if we're talking about Jane Street.
2:53:52
And so it's for specific quant that's looking for Yeah. dayby-day analysis. Interesting.
2:53:56
Um so uh what is the what is the go to market like?
2:53:59
I I imagine that uh maybe it's more of like an enterprise software deal.
2:54:04
you're actually going outbound, meeting with folks, stake dinners, uh signing deals, or is this kind of like general sign up on the website? >> Both, right?
2:54:15
So, we are we are going to people that maybe not stake dinners yet.
2:54:18
Don't know if we have that budget, but we certainly are um talking to a lot of different companies across industries, but it also is a bottoms up motion.
2:54:22
Um there are a lot of people, myself included, in my past role. I used to be at Citadel. I I ran a quant team.
2:54:30
uh I was very frustrated at the lack of tools like this to help me get from idea to value.
2:54:34
So we do have quite a robust set of uh data scientists, quantitative researchers who are just using the product off the shelf, but we're also making those enterprise sales as well. >> That's awesome.
2:54:44
>> What is uh give us your read on the talent wars between the Citadels of the world and the Frontier Labs and now Sphinx, of course, because I'm sure you're competing. >> Um yeah.
2:54:54
Um no, we we've we've gotten people from hedge funds, not from Citadel.
2:54:58
I do have a non-solicit but we have gotten people from other hedge funds and we have gotten uh people um to take our offer over say anthropic or open AI.
2:55:05
Uh look like it comes down to what you're optimizing for.
2:55:06
I think if you're going to these foundation labs you're betting on AGI and if you win good for you that's a great bet.
2:55:12
Um hedge funds are betting on almost nothing.
2:55:15
I think if the AI bubble pops tomorrow it'll make a hell of a lot of money and that's great for them.
2:55:19
Um and really for us we're focused on our specific application.
2:55:22
So it comes down to what you're passionate about. Is it is it money? Is it AGI?
2:55:25
or is it just like razor sharp focus on solving one problem and that that's who we hire.
2:55:31
>> What's your take on uh on Microsoft Copilot in Excel?
2:55:34
We've talked to probably four different companies that are building Excel add-ons.
2:55:38
Uh there's there's that world.
2:55:41
Uh how does that fit into your strategy?
2:55:44
How uh are you doing something different or or do you see that on the road map?
2:55:48
How do you think about that?
2:55:51
Look, like I think Excel has been the tool for data for like what however long it's been out there.
2:55:55
But we don't see that as being the transformative layer.
2:55:58
Um the kind of serious data work, the kind of data work that makes people billions of dollars is done on a slightly different stack.
2:56:03
A stack that can scale a little bit more that translates more naturally to production and and we really want to target that.
2:56:09
And you know, Excel is easy to use, but what's easier than Excel is writing prompts.
2:56:13
Um so over time, I'm not saying I'm killing Excel today, right?
2:56:16
Over time, I see that as kind of becoming a less relevant layer, almost just the interpretability layer on top of something like Sphinx.
2:56:23
Uh, actually getting work done in Excel, I feel, is going to become a thing of the past.
2:56:27
We're going to be able to build much more serious models with a lot more financial impact. >> It's exciting.
2:56:32
>> How do you charge for Sphinx?
2:56:32
Because it it feels like uh, you know, or the best companies create a lot more value than they capture.
2:56:40
>> AUM, >> but uh, >> just 2% of AUM.
2:56:41
Just give me 2% of your AUM Citadel. We're good. >> Yeah.
2:56:45
Your entire >> I'd love that. hire management.
2:56:46
Uh no, but it's like, you know, if you help if you help somebody make if you help people make money, they're happy to pay you uh quite a lot for that. >> Yeah.
2:56:56
Look, um we we don't only work in finance.
2:56:58
We we're already quite horizontal and it's very hard for us to tell the exact nature of the value we're delivering.
2:57:04
Um but some of our customers of course are open with others like hedge funds, they're not going to even tell us like what they found.
2:57:08
Uh so the the kind of a way of like capturing that value you know it's it's hard it's hard for us but really for us the focus is on building something transformative and um you know this is step one as we're able to get more and more autonomous and we're able to eventually say you know we can solve large scale data problems in a couple seconds fully autonomously I think the value becomes enormously clear.
2:57:27
So we're not overly focused on that right now really right now we just charge for usage.
2:57:30
Um we want to deliver people something that they use when they use it they have to pay us to get that service. >> That makes sense.
2:57:37
Uh well, thank you so much for taking some time out of your day to come talk to us.
2:57:40
Yeah, it was great to meet you. >> Congratulations. We'll talk to you soon.
2:57:44
>> Have a great rest of your day.
2:57:45
>> Uh and I will tell you about Wander. Find your happy place.
2:57:47
Book a Wander with Aspiring Views Hotel, Great Amenities, Dreamy Beds, top tier cleaning, 247 concier service.
2:57:52
It's a vacation home but better.
2:57:55
Our next guest is in the Roostream waiting room.
2:57:59
Timothy, welcome to TBPN. >> Fantastic background. How are you doing? What is behind you? Break it down. Introduce yourself. What are we looking at?
2:58:09
>> Yeah, guys, good to good to be on the show.
2:58:10
Excited to share what we're doing here at Motive.
2:58:12
Uh we're building a battery electric autonomous rail car.
2:58:15
So, when you think of trains going across the country in two or three mile long strings, we make every single one drive themselves. >> No way. >> Crazy. Train maxi. >> That's amazing.
2:58:24
Uh >> we've been waiting for this.
2:58:26
This is the I think this is the first We've interviewed hundreds of >> founders. I'm blown away.
2:58:30
Um this uh this doesn't seem like something that like like give me the why now.
2:58:36
Like why why didn't this happen 10 years ago like you don't have the same problem as Whimo where you have to steer as much or do you like what why is this just happening now?
2:58:46
No, it's a great question and it's a great natural place to start from and really uh rail's out of sight, out of mind for a lot of people, especially when you think about our tech workforce and the people that are trying to solve really hard problems out there.
2:58:56
Uh and that's exactly why there's so much opportunity here in rail to do exactly that.
2:59:01
Take the technologies that have been pushed forward maybe for a decade on the perception models, the control systems, the electrification happened in industry and bring that to rail um and uh to build a team of tech workers around it.
2:59:13
That's really what we're doing here.
2:59:14
And uh it naturally makes sense.
2:59:16
You do have fixed infrastructure. You've got track.
2:59:18
You got uh points of rail that go across the country.
2:59:22
You've got a 160,000 miles of track generally utilized at a 3% utilization factor.
2:59:26
And all that stuff just stacks up to make this a very logical place to implement these types of technologies first.
2:59:32
And uh we're excited that we're in in production.
2:59:37
We've got vehicles out in service running for customers every single day. Wow.
2:59:41
>> Going to move over 3,500 carloads in production this year and uh really just focused on getting America's rail system back on track where it's forefront in the front part of people's minds.
2:59:50
Uh and let people know this is an exciting place to to come put technology in.
2:59:54
It's important for the US economy.
2:59:56
Uh it's important for our customer stakeholders in agriculture, energy, mining, any of those places and and just get that supply chain right uh uh with rail. >> It's fantastic.
3:00:08
When did the when did the idea click for you? >> How did it >> Yeah.
3:00:12
Well, I'm I'm an engineer by training.
3:00:14
I did my uh uh undergrad in South Dakota, did a PhD in Michigan State, and then I went to work in the defense industry.
3:00:20
So, I went to go work on cruise missiles, >> fighter jet platforms, a bunch of unmanned systems.
3:00:24
And uh that's really uh an industry that's been doing some of these things since the 70s in a lot of ways, building systems that can fly themselves.
3:00:33
Um and then 2017 came and everybody was going to fly to work.
3:00:36
So, I got to build a flying car and a package delivery drone and help build a team of 40 engineers behind that.
3:00:40
And then, as many founders know, you got the right co-founder in in the team that uh gets you to go look at something different.
3:00:48
And he was doing his uh NBA at USC, studying supply chain, logistics, and looking at rail in 2019 and looking at competitive threats to autonomous trucks, electric trucks, and then came to me and said, "What do you think happens if we uh bring these technologies to rail?"
3:01:02
And that's really what got us off and running.
3:01:04
So, we uh have built a system that's backwards compatible with the existing strengths of rail.
3:01:09
So, if you think of a 2-m long train running across the country from the Port of Long Beach to Chicago, we can uh fit in that train.
3:01:15
We can hybridize the whole train and ride along with a a large diesel locomotive unit.
3:01:21
But really, that 2 miles of stuff isn't consumed in Chicago.
3:01:23
You got to break it down and get it to Gary, Indiana, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Poria, Illinois.
3:01:29
And that's really where we can make short trains with unit economics of those two mile long trains.
3:01:33
So you can now say, I need five cars in Gary.
3:01:35
I'm going to cut those five cars off, use Intramot's products, and get it there.
3:01:40
And I need 10 cars up in Milwaukee.
3:01:40
I'm going to go feed a brewery somewhere.
3:01:42
I can cut 10 more cars off, just send them on the uh unit economics of a short train.
3:01:48
And and that's really a gamechanging paradigm shift for speed and flexibility on rail and it already has a cost advantage.
3:01:53
So that's really how we think about it.
3:01:55
And where we build out and and where we started is in some places like mining uh and plant railroads and and facilities just like this one in St.
3:02:02
Louis where we're headquartered and uh continue to build it out and utilize that infrastructure better.
3:02:08
>> So you guys have track that runs into your facility.
3:02:12
>> Yeah, this car is sitting on track.
3:02:14
We've got uh two parallel production lines here in St.
3:02:16
Louis and uh honestly St.
3:02:19
Louis is the right type of place to be for this because we can access all the railroads in the entire country from here. Wow.
3:02:24
>> Um and uh it's up and spoke model and we're at one of those hubs in St.
3:02:26
Louis and we can get to all the spokes from here.
3:02:30
>> Uh talk about the electrical systems. How do you charge this?
3:02:32
Do you swap the battery or does I imagine it takes a ton of time to charge uh the the actual train or maybe it doesn't? I don't know. Break it down. >> Yeah.
3:02:42
That's the beauty of the system.
3:02:44
So, uh when you think about rail, you think about where it came from.
3:02:46
Came from a steam engine in the 1800s. >> Yeah.
3:02:49
>> Where the smallest power system that they could make was this giant steam locomotive. Yeah.
3:02:53
>> But maybe it pulled 10 cars with it at that point. Yeah.
3:02:55
>> And that necessitated steel track and steel wheels because of how heavy that system is.
3:03:00
>> It also drove the infrastructure the way it is.
3:03:02
So that's why we have these tracks run across the country >> get one two 3% better every year for the last 200 years and now you look at a system where you have a two or three mile long train.
3:03:12
>> Um but what happened there is that you have the rightways at all the crossings.
3:03:16
You don't start and stop a lot.
3:03:16
You go through mountains instead of around them.
3:03:19
And all that energy efficiency that goes into that then just makes a battery system actually work pretty well.
3:03:25
>> And we granularize it.
3:03:25
So we get down to the single car size where we can make a battery pack the size of a a Tesla car battery or I drive a a electric truck.
3:03:34
So the size of my electric truck battery and uh we can actually move 100 tons of freight several hundred miles with that system.
3:03:40
And if you want to go further you just add more of our units and you get really granular.
3:03:43
But that leads to us be able to use level two charging infrastructure and a lot of the investments that the automotive industry's done to get those standards up to to par um and also not try to recharge what a locomotive would be, which is 50 to 200 megawatts of power on that unit plus. >> This is fascinating.
3:04:01
What's the state of the company?
3:04:03
Like how big are you guys? Have you raised money?
3:04:04
Um uh what like how big is the business?
3:04:09
>> Yeah, we're we're uh in St. Louis here.
3:04:11
We've got a 67,000 foot production facility.
3:04:13
Yeah, >> we've raised uh up to a series A at this point to fully deploy these assets. >> Congrats.
3:04:20
>> Generally, we're around 50 employees at the moment uh with largely engineering coming from automotive, aerospace, and rail.
3:04:27
Kind of this perfect mix where you can guarantee something cool is going to come out the other side. >> Yeah.
3:04:32
>> And about 5 years old at this point. >> Fantastic progress. Remarkable.
3:04:34
Um last question from my side.
3:04:37
Um, uh, is there is there anything that you're I mean I this is obviously like an American re-industrialization project in many ways, but are there any um top of mind asks for DC or American lawmakers?
3:04:49
Like if you had a make rail great again agenda, like what would you change? What are you asking for?
3:04:59
What do we need to do more of?
3:05:00
Um, just at a high level, what like way like what else would help that that's maybe out just outside of your control? >> Yeah.
3:05:08
No, I think really we just need to talk about it a little bit more.
3:05:10
So people talk about highways, they talk about autonomous trucks, they talk about autonomous cars.
3:05:14
It's in the news every single day. >> Yeah.
3:05:17
>> We're getting people to talk about rail and talk about that infrastructure because in reality to make rail better, all it is is me making stuff move more frequently.
3:05:24
You don't need a a hyperloop type of technology where you fire packages in a tube.
3:05:27
you just need to keep the stuff on the rails moving more frequently.
3:05:31
Uh we don't really need to rebuild anything.
3:05:33
Uh we just need to unlock that massive network and uncongest it and uh we can make this extremely competitive and our technology positions us to do exactly that.
3:05:41
And then from the regulatory perspective, they've been very uh open to these types of technologies in a really positive way.
3:05:48
Um and uh we've proven it out in whole section of the market that's unregulated.
3:05:53
So we can just go out there and and use those use cases, collect the data that's necessary to get to the regulated use cases from there. Yep.
3:06:00
>> And then uh generate that data that then goes directly to how we would certify these products in a a regulated use case.
3:06:06
>> Well, thank you so much for taking some time out of your busy day to come talk to us.
3:06:09
>> Thank you for training. Somebody had to do it.
3:06:12
>> Somebody had to do it.
3:06:12
We will talk to you soon.
3:06:14
>> It'll it'll look obvious in hindsight, I think.
3:06:16
>> Have a great rest of your day. >> Awesome.
3:06:18
>> Talk to you guys, man. >> Thanks. >> Cheers.
3:06:19
Uh up next we have Nebus which was in the news just uh yesterday or the day before.
3:06:25
>> The chief revenue officer Mark.
3:06:29
>> He's the guy that did the deal >> who uh certainly would have played a part in this new deal with Mike.
3:06:34
>> We're very excited to bring in Mark from the Reream waiting room. Let's bring him in. Mark, how are you doing?
3:06:40
>> Hey Johnny, fantastic to be here today.
3:06:43
>> Thanks so much to have you.
3:06:43
You uh you look you look like you're in a pretty good mood.
3:06:47
is any any reason >> any good news happened recently?
3:06:50
>> Oh man, it's been an exciting week and I think you already called it out in the wind up to >> my showing up.
3:06:55
It it's extraordinary what's going on at Nebas today.
3:06:59
>> Uh give us the give us the high level couple bullet points on on the deal this week.
3:07:03
Well, we announced a um landmark partnership with Microsoft um one of the leading AI labs that is out there >> to support them with AI infrastructure under a four a 5-year agreement uh valued at uh at least 17.
3:07:18
4 billion with potential tag and 19. 4 billion. >> It's fantastic.
3:07:26
>> Did you think you could get a deal like that done when you joined?
3:07:27
I mean, I have to imagine that you you joined roughly six months ago, was it?
3:07:34
>> I joined a little over three months ago.
3:07:37
>> So, maybe the deal was in the works, but it sounds like >> Wait, yeah.
3:07:40
Did they see Satcha Nadella on the Dark Cesh Patel podcast say, "I'm happy to be a leaser."
3:07:44
And you said, "Oh, we'll we'll lease you."
3:07:46
Was that was that exactly how it played out or I imagine probably conversation.
3:07:51
>> I think it's a little more a little more subtle than that, but >> because he really did hold up his hand and say, "Hey, come pitch me."
3:07:56
and people did and and you got the deal done. Congrats.
3:08:00
>> It's it's extraordinary to have them as a partner.
3:08:02
I mean, Microsoft is by itself an amazing company and >> uh for us to be winning the the the honor is landmark for the company and it's helping us to accelerate all of our plans. >> Fantastic.
3:08:13
Talk about the collection behind you.
3:08:15
The chat's calling it out. Crazy technic.
3:08:19
>> That's those are Legos, man.
3:08:19
That's a >> that's a a Ferrari, Lamborghini, and a McLaren.
3:08:25
And uh >> holy trinity almost.
3:08:28
>> That's the trinity over there.
3:08:28
There's another trinity over there of Land Rover and G G Wagon. >> I love it.
3:08:35
>> I love making the Lego cars. >> Those are fantastic.
3:08:37
>> Uh give us give us the state of the the company.
3:08:40
We've we've covered we've covered Nebus on the show before.
3:08:41
We know we know kind of the the backstory, but uh yeah, talk talk about kind of um the kind of more recent history.
3:08:49
Um, and uh, you know, I'm I'm sure you you got up to speed as you joined and and first learned about the company.
3:08:58
>> Well, the company is very laser focused on building the AI infrastructure of choice for startups all the way through enterprises and we are making big strides against that uh, that vision.
3:09:11
Uh, we continue to support the most innovative startups.
3:09:13
As a matter of fact, one of uh our customers was on your podcast today, um Higsfield, which is no >> way amazing company.
3:09:20
Amazing company and very privileged to have them as a customer.
3:09:24
>> That's >> um likewise all the way up to major enterprises like uh Cloudflare and and Shopify. >> Wow.
3:09:31
And in all cases, we're helping them to not only service the near-term model creation or early development works that they have, but also helping them to scale their applications and uh deliver the inference that they need.
3:09:46
So, it's a it's a very exciting time. >> That's fantastic.
3:09:50
>> What uh yeah, go going forward.
3:09:50
Uh you you set the bar pretty high here with this recent deal with Microsoft.
3:09:55
What what what's kind of the focus over the next uh you know, like how I guess I'm curious to understand, you know, with the with uh the news around Oracle and OpenAI this week, a lot of people are uh a lot of people were just kind of questioning like, okay, you're going to build something that's like AWS scale in a in a very short amount of time here.
3:10:18
That seems pretty challenging.
3:10:19
How much um is a lot of the effort at at Nebus really around just like scaling infrastructure and knowing that the demand is there but it's just like you have to you have to build that capacity.
3:10:32
>> Well, we've always had the vision and Arrotti our CEO has said it for a long time that we would do some of these super lab deals. Mhm.
3:10:39
>> Um today's market it happens to be a fantastic opportunity but we believe in the fullness of time the real opportunity is more along the lines of what you described which is delivering the AWS equivalent for AI and that's where the priority is right now focused.
3:10:54
So, continuing to build out our software stack, being able to cater to that, you know, single engineer that's trying to build something uh from scratch that um signs up with our self-service experience and then being there with them as they scale and their needs expand.
3:11:10
At the same time, we're pursuing all of the other highscale um AI uh consuming customers out there.
3:11:16
And you know we think that the next several years are going to be a crazy time uh as capacity uh supply is being chased by a lot of different people but ultimately the long-term you know the hundred billion dollar plus business opportunity is servicing uh the equivalent of the hyperscaler requirements for the new class of AI customer.
3:11:42
friend of the show, Dylan Patel, over at Semi analysis gave you guys a gold medal in the cluster max ranking of uh GPU clouds.
3:11:51
Um, give us one layer deeper in terms of how you frame what Nebius does best uniquely among the competitive landscape.
3:12:04
uh you know semi analysis called you gold but I'm sure there's a lot more details of how you stand out.
3:12:12
>> Well, we're delivering the software tier that's giving the AI engineer the tools for them to um operate an a a small or large cluster or multiple clusters as they see fit and we're seeing more and more of that.
3:12:25
We give the AI engineer the tooling to create a model and optimize a model and we put at their fingertips all the open source models.
3:12:34
Um we give the AI engineer the ability to conduct their training and retraining uh capabilities and through our AI studio solutions we also give them the ability to deliver inference.
3:12:44
So you can think of it as a full spectrum set of AI capabilities for the AI engineer.
3:12:51
Um we're going to continue to innovate and add to those capabilities.
3:12:55
So you can think about all the adjacent spaces uh that the AI engineer is likely to need to tap from data pipelines to repositories to um who knows what comes next but our intention is to be fully catering to that AI engineer and being able to serve them whether they're in a small company or a large organization. >> Yeah.
3:13:18
How does the future of the uh the actual inference API business look?
3:13:22
Is that the the the is that more of a focus for growth versus um going more of the construction and real estate route and and building mega projects versus creating like a fantastic API? Do you want to do both?
3:13:41
What does the next couple years look like?
3:13:43
>> I mean the simple answer is we're going to do both. Okay.
3:13:45
And the reality is at the the foundation is we're chasing demand. >> Yeah.
3:13:50
Uh so today there is a fair amount of construction taking place.
3:13:53
So being there for all of these new model development and retraining requirements is critical.
3:14:01
>> Um as those projects and customers move into you know real production inference is picking up and we're seeing it.
3:14:07
The redistribution as people succeed is very real.
3:14:11
And the fullness of time what we should all want and this is in thinking about it from the standpoint is end customers or investors is we want to see all of these projects turned into inference driven because that means that they're actually in production being utilized by hopefully commercially paying uh customers somewhere. >> Makes sense. >> Real value.
3:14:30
>> Well, congratulations on the deal.
3:14:32
Thanks so much for >> Yeah.
3:14:33
Great to great to catch up Mark.
3:14:34
Congrats on >> Pleasure to be here today. Thank you both. >> Thank you so much. Cheers. We'll talk to you soon. >> Have a great rest.
3:14:40
>> We got to get more We got to get more Legos around the studio.
3:14:41
That was uh I was envious there.
3:14:44
>> I mean, Tyler's over there just waiting to put them together. >> That's right.
3:14:48
>> He just needs a time trial >> assembly line over here. >> Yeah.
3:14:51
>> Uh well, without further ado, we have >> Michael from Figure >> from Figure >> coming in from the room. Michael, how you doing? >> Good to meet you. >> Hi. How are you? >> We're great. >> We're great. How are you doing? >> Yeah, big day. >> Good day. >> Big day.
3:15:04
Just another day at the office. Yeah.
3:15:07
No, look, big day for Figure, big day for all the employees.
3:15:09
Super proud of what we were able to accomplish. So, it's been awesome.
3:15:14
>> Take us through the story. What happened?
3:15:17
>> So, today was our IPO. Um, fantastic. We >> You rang the bell. Didn't ring the bell. >> Yep. Rang the bell.
3:15:22
So, actually, when you do that NASDAQ, >> when you do that NASDAQ, you don't ring the bell.
3:15:28
You push the button to open the market. All digital. >> All digital. >> Digital.
3:15:32
But, you know, we're blockchain, so we like that. >> Yeah, it makes sense.
3:15:35
And um yeah, no, so it's been uh it's been about a six-month process getting ready.
3:15:40
You do a bunch of meetings, testing the waters as they call it now.
3:15:45
So from my understanding, IPOs have changed a bit uh since since COVID and now more virtual, more is done up front and there's actually a little bit less pressure on the road show itself, which was kind of a learning for me.
3:15:58
>> But uh talk a bit about figure. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Please. Yeah.
3:15:59
what what what was the what was the story about the position of the company?
3:16:03
Uh why the why now of the IPO?
3:16:06
Take us through kind of the road show narrative.
3:16:11
>> Yeah, I think that I think um folks were f focused on probably three things.
3:16:13
One is rare combination of growth and profitability >> and you know we have both of those which is which is awesome. Yeah.
3:16:22
>> I think number two is just huge market.
3:16:26
So we we're in a $185 billion TAM.
3:16:29
Basically, we are standardizing all of private credit starting with mortgage.
3:16:34
We also do cryptoback loan, a few other things like that.
3:16:36
And we're standardizing those rails on blockchain.
3:16:39
And then I think lastly, we are one of the few companies that adds value with blockchain into the real world.
3:16:46
So we we're in kind of the real world asset space, which also is called tokenization.
3:16:52
We're the market leader in debt for that.
3:16:55
We're about 75% market share.
3:16:57
And so what we do is we partner with about 170 really well-recoognized brands that work with us to originate or tokenize assets, put them on a capital market that's all based on blockchain.
3:17:10
And uh what it does is it ultimately saves a ton of cost and time and just improves both the investor experience and the consumer experience. >> Yeah.
3:17:18
take us through a case study of one of those brands that you work with uh and and walk me through some of the value or the or the differentiated benefits of being in the crypto world.
3:17:28
Is it just uh access to international capital, speed of transactions, you can move money around on the weekends, nights and weekends?
3:17:34
Is it regulatory hurdles or being able to access certain markets?
3:17:39
Uh walk me through all that. >> Yeah. No, happy to.
3:17:42
I think to to start I'd take something like house just given the audience I feel like people are probably familiar with them. >> Sure.
3:17:51
>> They are a kind of housing and home design marketplace and normally somebody like house would not really want to get involved in the loan origination process or really be comfortable with like mortgage or anything of that nature.
3:18:04
But because Figure is so simple to embed, you know, in House's case, we work with an API, we can kind of integrate with them and help their end customers take equity out of their homes for things like home improvement um and financing contractors and pools and and those types of things.
3:18:25
And so what what we actually do in the process is we take the attributes of the loan that you know house is coordinating and those are hashed on a blockchain at once upfront and then as the loans move throughout the capital markets there's way less checking and confirming of those details because people can just verify it on blockchain.
3:18:48
And so what we actually do in doing so is we save about $11,000 of cost out of the production process out of 12.
3:18:56
So it's a really big savings and we can do it in 5 days versus industry average of 45.
3:19:01
So it's a pretty material difference.
3:19:04
So funny because like the the like the very like popular like anti-crypto take is like oh well you could just do this in a database with like Python and you know high frequency trading doesn't need a blockchain to trade stocks really fast during the market open but like I just I just paid off a car loan and like I'm waiting on the title and I have to like go to an app and like text with somebody.
3:19:26
it's going to take me like weeks to just get that and it's like okay yeah like that other path is not happening and it's been years of like we would like to speed up the the the normal rails and it just hasn't happened.
3:19:38
Um but uh so yeah, what I mean raised a ton of money in the IPO.
3:19:42
What what what are the what are the what does that do?
3:19:46
What does that change about the company now that there's uh more cash on the balance sheet?
3:19:50
What was the structure of the deal and like the the rationale for that amount?
3:19:55
>> Yeah, it's interesting.
3:19:55
So um one thing to point out is with you know at at Figure I'm working alongside Mike Kagy who was also worked with me when I was at Sofi. So he was the CEO there.
3:20:06
I was chief revenue officer here. I'm CEO. He's chairman.
3:20:10
And together back at SoFi, we actually raised the largest capital private capital raise um at that time in 2015.
3:20:17
It was a billion dollars from SoftBank. >> Yeah.
3:20:21
And what it did was it really catalyzed SoFi's growth over the years. Yeah.
3:20:26
And if you look back, that was one of the big differentiators.
3:20:28
And I think it's one of the reasons why SoFi is such a big company today.
3:20:32
Uh it really stood out amongst its fintech peers.
3:20:34
And so I think from that background, you know, this IPO is similar.
3:20:39
It's going to be a major catalyst for figures growth.
3:20:40
It's a big opportunity for us to really raise a lot of capital, come out as a market leader, use that to seed out the marketplaces that we've been doing, right?
3:20:51
Figure actually started direct to consumer, then went embedded B2B, then went pure marketplace.
3:20:56
and you need capital to do that to show leadership position and to keep adding to that 170 partner base uh that we have and we're really proud of.
3:21:06
What are your lessons from the uh kind of the spa era, the the the the 2021 era?
3:21:13
Um SoFi is like one of the examples that we keep coming back to as a company that has performed really well.
3:21:18
Stocks trading at $26 today.
3:21:20
Obviously went out of 10.
3:21:23
Uh I think it's at all-time highs, doing very well. $30 billion company. It's no joke.
3:21:27
And >> I joined with 75 people. >> Wow. Yeah. Okay. So yeah.
3:21:30
Um uh but but I mean there obviously there was a lot of there were a lot of different decisions that were made at that time.
3:21:37
What lessons are you are you looking at uh 2021 seeing anything now and and and deciding any structure of the business or decision-m uh currently based on what you learned uh during the last cycle?
3:21:51
>> I'm glad you asked because it's actually something I've been thinking about a lot.
3:21:54
I feel that post kind of 21 and what happened with spaxs a lot of people became very negative on going public and you I don't have it all figured out we this is you know our first day uh but that said I do think from going through the process that going public is something that companies should consider.
3:22:13
I found the markets to be receptive.
3:22:15
receptive. I thought you know there's a big premium on growth and I think in the tech world that we all live in everyone's so used to know growth but you meet you meet these kind of investors and the kind of the the pantheon of investments they can make you know when you're growing 20 30 40 50
3:22:33
60% that's just so impressive and unusual and so there's a lot of excitement and I do feel that in the case of and in the wake of what happened with 21 and that hangover over people soured on the public market and everyone thought you know let's not do it and of course there's obviously drawbacks and
3:22:52
I'm there's definitely going to be days where I'm going to think you know this is challenge but at the same time I found the capital market to be very receptive and I also found it to be a great branding exercise and really a great way to kind of get liquidity for shareholders so I do think that ultimately it's something that people
3:23:10
should consider and not necessarily be afraid of what happened in 21 because there our cycles and I think that's just part of the US capital markets and it's frankly one of the reasons why we're excited about blockchain and its ability to continue to add value and disrupt in some ways. >> Yeah. What's the what's the what's the >> Yeah.
3:23:24
What's the what's the what's the 10-year vision? >> Yeah.
3:23:29
So, right now we are just about 35 basis points of private credit in terms of our market share.
3:23:35
of our market share. So even though we're a big rapidly growing company, we do see you know we've started by standardizing the mortgage process on blockchain in particular using our integration between the origination system and the capital market which really has never existed
3:23:52
before right everyone's doing their own thing I see ramp for example sponsoring this podcast I have background at brex you know those are two companies that are both building separate capital markets um and separate underwriting processes whereas if figure had existed did when both started they could both be on figure just as an example. And so for
3:24:08
And so for us we started in mortgage we started standardizing and homogenizing those assets and making them tradable on a blockchain.
3:24:17
We can do the same across every single private credit asset class and beyond.
3:24:22
So we're really in the early innings. >> Makes a ton of sense. It's exciting. >> Very cool. >> Uh congratulations. >> Congratulations.
3:24:28
Thank you for for making time on the big day for for you and the team.
3:24:34
And uh little celebration is in order.
3:24:36
Take uh you know feel free to take you know back back to work tomorrow but uh >> but uh >> Got it.
3:24:42
Well, I'm a big fan of you guys. So really appreciate it. >> An honor to be here.
3:24:46
So thanks so much for having me.
3:24:48
>> Come back come back on whenever you want.
3:24:50
>> We'll talk to you soon >> after the I guess when when does your quiet period start?
3:24:52
Is it >> Well, not until rings. >> Yeah. Okay. >> Okay. >> Well, fantastic. We'll coordinate. We'll talk to you soon. >> Awesome. >> All right. Thanks, gentlemen. Really appreciate it. >> Talk to you soon. Bye. Congrats.
3:25:04
And that concludes the guest section of TDP Thursday, September 11th, uh, 2025, live back from the >> TBR.
3:25:14
Gary Marcus hit the timeline with an article, Peak Bubble. >> Peak Bubble.
3:25:19
>> It's hard to see how this won't end badly.
3:25:22
>> He says, uh, >> and he the fir he starts the post by sharing the tulip mania Wikipedia.
3:25:28
>> He famously, so the deep learning is hitting a wall now. >> Yeah. calling.
3:25:32
>> He said, "I don't know when the Genai bubble will end, but this has got to be peak bubble."
3:25:35
And he's highlighting that Oracle OpenAI signed $300 billion cloud deal.
3:25:41
>> Um, and he said, "In short, OpenAI doesn't have $300 billion.
3:25:44
They don't have anywhere near $300 billion by their own.
3:25:49
>> It's not how that works, but >> optimistic projection, they won't turn a pro." Yeah.
3:25:52
Well, uh, obviously we can we can steal man for OpenAI and Oracle, but by their own presumably optimistic rejection, they won't turn a profit until 2030.
3:26:02
And all of this is from a company uh that thought or claimed that GPD5 was going to be uh close to AGI.
3:26:11
For good measure, Oracle doesn't have the chips they would need to fulfill the contracts or even the cash to buy them.
3:26:17
I won't say this is all makeelieve, but well, you do the math.
3:26:21
Um he says if Oracle actually collects its 300 billion I will be truly astounded. Mhm.
3:26:27
>> Um and uh Martin Skrey commented uh on the on the original post and said, "Do you want to short OpenAI at a $500 billion market cap?"
3:26:35
Which I think is >> the expression >> interesting question, right?
3:26:38
And and um >> but but that that's not even necessarily the the the take that we've been debating, which is not necessarily open AI. It's it's Oracle.
3:26:50
It's it's is Oracle overheated because of the this deal?
3:26:53
Like uh Gary Marcus' claim is that Oracle will not draw all that uh 300 billion down on on schedule and if they if they fail to pull that backlog through then that would be a cause for concern potentially.
3:27:10
Um anyway, I wonder what Warren Buffett has to say about all this.
3:27:15
Did you see that he was at the 30th birthday party for Squawkbox yesterday? >> No way.
3:27:20
He's hanging out with Jim Kramer.
3:27:21
Yeah, >> we were hanging out with Jim Kramer yesterday.
3:27:23
I didn't realize it was the 30th birthday.
3:27:25
>> The 30th anniversary of Squawk on CNBC.
3:27:28
Happy birthday to everyone over there.
3:27:31
Andrew, >> we got to uh we got to briefly hang with uh Jim yesterday.
3:27:33
He is incredibly fun to talk to.
3:27:37
Exactly like he is encyclopedic knowledge of stock prices.
3:27:43
can just go back, oh yeah, in in 2015 Broadcom was at this price and just rattles it off to the cents. It's remarkable. He knows his stuff. >> Such a legend.
3:27:54
>> I'm I'm honestly jealous of of his engagement hack, which is by people by people believing that he always gets trades wrong. Yes.
3:28:03
>> Which is just like fundamentally not >> Yeah. It's not true at all. >> Not true.
3:28:07
>> Um they they constantly engage with his post no matter what he said.
3:28:10
So, it's like a way to get like a bunch of real accounts to drive like real engagement. Yes.
3:28:15
>> And and you can imagine he gets an incremental >> five ten times the impressions because people are just like >> quoting it, commenting, things like that.
3:28:23
But um a master at at what he does and uh and a great entertainer.
3:28:29
>> Tyler, what was your reaction to either this or Gary Marcus' post?
3:28:32
>> Well, I think for this I think maybe a good segment we should start doing is right after founder comes on, you just immediately say long short. >> Yeah.
3:28:39
That'll make everyone super happy. They will love that.
3:28:44
>> Uh and then also uh regarding the Gary Marcus thing, I think, um there's that joke about Michael Bur where it's like he's predicted eight of the last two like market crashes. Totally.
3:28:54
>> I think there's something, you know, something there. >> Yep. Yep. Yep.
3:28:57
>> You're So you're saying this time is different.
3:29:00
>> I think Gary Marcus has said many times like, "Oh, this is the end." >> Yeah.
3:29:04
>> Yeah. I mean it's kind of like you know uh just look at the fund returns I guess um if you but he doesn't have a fund so you just kind of have to like um like the the the nature of investing puts your thesis in extremely concrete terms
3:29:21
like you are short to what degree are you long are you going long with leverage right now maybe you're you know 60% long and 40% bonds like you can be a variety of risk levels You don't need to be purely I'm bullish or bearish. You
3:29:35
You can be anywhere in between that.
3:29:37
Uh you can be 100x levered long to 100x levered short.
3:29:42
Like you can take wild swings in either direction.
3:29:44
So you can express like I'm not feeling great about this particular valuation in a bunch of different ways.
3:29:51
Um and and and as a pundit, I mean someone in the chat was asking about uh the inverse Kramer. Uh it is a meme. It's an ETF.
3:29:58
It's done somewhat well in various times.
3:30:01
I've seen a whole bunch of different reports where someone tried to take every single one of Kramer's um calls, put it into a spreadsheet, and see how it would perform.
3:30:11
But it's very hard because if he says, "I'm bullish on this company."
3:30:17
He doesn't necessarily revisit that company every day to tell you when he would sell.
3:30:21
So he could say like, "We watch that Apple interview and he says, "I love Apple.
3:30:26
Uh it's a it's a stock you own. You don't trade it."
3:30:29
And so like how much credit are we giving him for his Apple call?
3:30:34
Like at some point five years later, he might have seen earnings and been like, "Oh, Apple's in trouble."
3:30:40
And then they and then they quantize that as like he's flipped bearish.
3:30:43
When really it's like he didn't necessarily say sell Apple.
3:30:45
He just said like this data point is is negative.
3:30:48
And so there's a bunch of ways that it becomes difficult to actually understand like if the mind of Jim Kramer was actually running a fund actively, what would the return profile be?
3:31:00
The the other interesting thing is that they there was one analysis that did look at all of his buy and sell ratings.
3:31:05
They tried to get as close as possible to like what it would look like to just take every recommendation and put it in a portfolio.
3:31:12
a portfolio. And they found that it did actually outperformed the market but uh it outperformed the market when the market was going up and it out and it underperformed the market when the market was going down because it was effectively uh like like beta on it wasn't producing alpha it was producing
3:31:26
beta bec and and that sort of makes sense in terms of the content creator world because um it when things are going up it it it lends itself to you in enthusiasm and when things are going down it lends itself to to misery and so I don't know overall nice guy and hard to uh hard to, you know, perfectly quantize the uh the value of a call on live TV. Anyway, Jordy, anything else we
3:31:51
Anyway, Jordy, anything else we should talk about before we get off?
3:31:55
>> Uh Nepal uh yes uh the the Gen Z of Nepal overthrew the government and have chosen their new leader via poll on a Discord server. >> That is wild.
3:32:07
>> They overthrew the government. That is crazy.
3:32:10
>> Yeah, it's been crazy over there.
3:32:10
I >> don't know anything about Crazy crazy crazy time in the world. >> Interesting.
3:32:14
Well, >> we will keep monitoring the situation.
3:32:17
Hopefully you can monitor the situation and we will see you