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4:18

Possible problems on the horizon. Stand by. Founder down. You're watching TVPAG.

4:35

Today is Friday, March 13th, 2026.

4:37

We are live from the TVPAG ultradome, the temple of technology. The fortress of finance.

4:43

>> The capital of capital.

4:43

Let me tell you about ramp. com. Time is money. Save both.

4:48

Use these corporate cards, bill pay, accounting, and a whole lot more, all in one place.

4:52

>> Boy, is it good to be back.

4:53

>> to be back, but it's Friday the 13th, so you know what you got to do.

4:56

Salt over the left shoulder. Oh, yeah? You know about this? I didn't. I didn't.

5:02

>> Throwing salt over your left shoulder is good luck. It counteracts bad luck.

5:05

Friday the 13th is obviously bad luck, but not anymore since we have salt thrown over our shoulder. Good hack.

5:09

I was uh very interested in Patrick Collison's post.

5:14

We talked about this a little bit.

5:15

Uh he says, "There's a lot of unevenness in how much attention internal drama and palace intrigue gets across different organizations.

5:22

As far as I can tell, this is substantially a matter of path dependency.

5:26

We know the characters in the sitcom of certain organizations, but not the others uh creating self-reinforcing lock-in effects.

5:34

How much does one hear about the power struggles at Chevron or the Department of Agriculture?

5:38

There's even significant heterogeneity between ostensibly similar companies within sectors. We get it.

5:44

You want a bunch of palace intrigue stories about Stripe.

5:46

We get it, Patrick just >> [laughter] >> uh no Stripe is not ever really been in the you know the the tumultuous drama oh horse race you know there's been investors who have talked about various valuations but overall the company's been sort of smooth sailing for almost two decades.

6:03

Um but uh I wanted to I wanted to uh think about this more in the context of other countries startup ecosystems and also >> they ever got to drama was around the Bolt Fast dynamic. That's right.

6:20

>> Because they backed Fast. >> Yeah, you're right. There was a little bit.

6:23

>> Seemingly because they felt like some competitive pressure there.

6:27

They wanted the the Fast checkout provider to be taking on Stripe. Bolt was famously not.

6:34

They'd built their own payment rails.

6:36

>> Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

6:36

Um But I mean the Collison brothers are just so class they're such class acts that they don't really wait around in the mud.

6:42

They don't roll around in the slob farm and it's like it's a B2B company so there's less like just general viral intrigue around it.

6:53

>> And even in that even in that whole saga >> Yeah.

6:55

you never saw a single comment >> No, no, no and they weren't taking shots from at anyone.

6:58

They they were very classy. What do you think?

7:00

>> there was some controversy when the you know Cheeky Pint Elon interview came out and John Collison you know how how many Guinnesses were were they drinking?

7:08

Okay, okay, that was a bit of palace intrigue.

7:10

How many how many cheeky pints were they drinking in the palace? We're getting somewhere.

7:14

>> come out on top of that right? >> He did. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

7:16

He explained he explained so um but uh so years ago I was talking to an American VC about New Zealand and I asked him about the startup community.

7:26

Uh the country was beautiful he said uh highly developed democratic.

7:28

It consistently ranks among the world's most stable wealthy and well-governed societies and he would spend a lot of time there.

7:35

I was like this there's got to be some company that can break out and become a power law company.

7:39

If you're going to be there spending a lot of time, you'll probably meet cool people, interesting people.

7:44

Maybe there will be a great New Zealand company that comes out of this.

7:47

And he was like, "I'm not so sure because um his assessment distilled down to something along the along the lines of they are suffering from a bad case of tall poppy syndrome."

7:57

So, what is tall poppy syndrome?

8:00

Put simply, individuals who achieve visible success are criticized, attacked, or socially cut down because they stand above or above the others in the crowd.

8:09

The metaphor should be obvious.

8:11

When you cut the tallest flowers in a field, the surface appears even.

8:14

Let's pull up Tyler for a second. >> [laughter] >> Why? What is There we go. He's a tall poppy. He's getting cut.

8:25

Um >> [clears throat] >> so, anthropologists often call this leveling behavior, and it goes back to hunter-gatherer societies.

8:32

Uh good hunters might be mocked or discouraged from bragging.

8:34

Sharing would be encouraged to prevent resource concentration.

8:39

And there's nothing bad about a preference for humility.

8:41

America has long been suspicious, and Americans have long been suspicious of the Lamborghini-driving, self-promotional, Instagram course hustlers.

8:49

And for good reason, those folks are usually selling overpriced junk food, basically.

8:53

Um but the strong form of tall poppy syndrome does lead to lower startup formation.

8:59

If you think that you will immediately be cut down in your society, you don't actually go out and hunt.

9:05

You actually don't go out and bring back the the the the big deer or whatever. You're Hunting. the bacon.

9:09

Yeah, you don't bring home the bacon in in the first place.

9:12

You don't even try because you're so worried about this tall poppy syndrome in your society.

9:16

So, you you wind up with lower startup formation, fewer truly scaled companies, less like aggressive growth plans, uh and ultimately a talent exodus or brain drain, and that's what's happened in a lot of uh developed, wealthy, stable countries that haven't created amazing new products, really bold entrepreneurship efforts.

9:36

Uh a lot of it's because of the tall poppy syndrome.

9:40

So, America's never had this problem and I don't actually think we're that close to developing a crippling case of tall poppy syndrome anytime soon, but it's worth understanding how these leveling behaviors shape the narrative in tech.

9:53

So, there's this unevenness that Patrick Collison identifies around internal drama, attention.

9:59

It does not seem correlated with market cap at stake or even how well known certain founders are at the time that something's happening that could be dramatic.

10:07

So, I was I was going to think back to Elon Musk and Tesla.

10:09

He's like perhaps the most household name entrepreneur in history, certainly right now.

10:18

Tesla has something like a trillion dollars of market cap at stake.

10:19

If someone leaves Tesla to start a competitor, that should be incredibly dramatic.

10:25

Do you know who I'm talking about? I do.

10:27

Who is Because I took a pass Oh, you took a pass, okay.

10:31

>> on your essay, but I don't remember his name. It's Peter Rawlinson.

10:33

He designed He was the chief engineer of the Model S at Tesla, their super successful, you know, high-end sedan, the thing that really ushered in the EV boom.

10:44

He's the guy that engineered it.

10:46

He leaves, he goes to Lucid Motors, eventually becomes the CEO and the face of the company, develops a direct competitor to the Tesla Model S, which is now discontinued.

10:56

The Lucid Air is fancier, faster, it has a whole bunch of other criteria that satisfy that market segment and it should be like this knockout drag-out fight that's very interesting.

11:08

Lucid hasn't like put a dent in Tesla, uh you know, largely, but it's still such a it's it is palace intrigue and yet no one really cares.

11:16

Um and most people in tech can't even name a second person at Tesla after Elon.

11:23

Maybe JB Straubel, Redwood Materials, but he's out now. Yeah, Karpathy. Karpathy, yeah.

11:28

That that that'd be one, but it's like acts like who's who's active?

11:32

At SpaceX everyone knows Gwynne Shotwell, but like beyond that Kiko Donchev? Who else?

11:35

Like it's it gets really really hard. And why is that?

11:39

Well, some some uh some industries, some companies have different cultures.

11:45

So, if you think about Tesla, Chevron, Department of Agriculture, they're probably not encouraging their employees to go direct.

11:51

They might actually be discouraging it.

11:53

They might have rules around what you can post about publicly.

11:57

>> One XAI employee went very direct.

12:00

>> very direct and it he didn't last long at the company.

12:02

So, like electric vehicles, Chevron, oil and gas, the Department of Agriculture, these organizations don't necessarily have lineages that traces back to academi- academia, which is very open source.

12:14

You publish your research, go to a conference, put up slides.

12:17

What are you thinking about?

12:19

What are you researching? Share it all. Talk about it.

12:22

Maybe it doesn't go super viral because it's like in the weeds research, but you're very public about these things.

12:26

Then uh and then and then also the blogosphere.

12:31

Like in the AI world a lot of leading thinkers, leading employees had blogs and had done podcasts before, and so it was like a continuation of that.

12:40

The idea that you were someone who wrote essays online and shared all of your thoughts, that just carried through to the AI era.

12:46

Um but in those other industries like Tesla, there's a lot less digital exhaust all over the internet.

12:52

Uh the internet also rewards taking shots at the top puppy.

12:56

Tech generally wants to appear nice and they don't want to punch down.

13:01

Like wh- when a company rises and falls, you typically don't see serious people in tech really being like I called it, victory lap.

13:09

Like it's seen as uncouth.

13:11

It's not >> be doing some really egregious stuff. >> Totally.

13:15

Like a true violation of the social contract.

13:16

Not just, look, everyone tried really hard, they got beat, and the investors, you know, sort of got 50% 50 cents on the dollar back, something like that.

13:25

Like no one's really cheering for that. It's pretty rare.

13:27

But, some anonymous accounts are.

13:30

And uh but in general, uh aiming for the top is the only option if you if you do want to punch.

13:36

You don't want to punch down, but you still want to punch. Where do you punch? You punch up.

13:39

You punch at the top dog.

13:41

And uh the better company is doing, the more attention you'll get for taking a shot at it.

13:46

And this is seen as like contrarian.

13:48

Everyone thinks this company's dominant in this particular category. We'll take a shot at it. It's over. They're dead.

13:53

And you're going to get a lot of views because it is a counterintuitive take.

13:56

Everyone else has the Glazenator 3000 out.

13:58

You pull out the dunk, and you go viral.

14:01

So, and then also, you add to the fact that anyone, no matter how far away they are from Silicon Valley, what their career history is, what their background is, how much they actually understand about what's going on in tech, can just synthesize news and discourse into something that's more aggressive, more more punchy, and go viral.

14:21

And you have a recipe for uh a lot a whole lot more dunks around whoever is on top.

14:26

And that is sort of the tall poppy syndrome.

14:28

Uh so, but the good news is that fortunately America is still producing the fastest growing companies and attracting top talent.

14:34

And the bevy of quantitative data defangs many tall syndrome tall poppy syndrome type attacks.

14:41

You see someone saying, "It's over. This company's cooked. They're terrible."

14:44

And then, I mean, I just we just saw this with Cursor.

14:46

Everyone's like, "Cursor's over. It's dead."

14:47

And then, you see, "Okay, well, they just hit 20 2 billion ARR."

14:51

Oh, growing 20% month over month.

14:56

And it's like, "Actually, things are fine."

14:57

And so, the the those those sorts of data points um help push back against these like uh you know, attacks on the tall poppy at the time.

15:06

Um and there's this [clears throat] uh Benjamin Graham line that everyone likes to quote that he actually did not agree with and is sort of mis- misattributed to him.

15:14

But, uh I said, "In the short run, the market is a vibe war, but in the long run, it's a weighing machine."

15:19

He He, of course, is uh is quoted as saying in the short term it's a popularity contest or a voting machine in the long term it's a weighing machine in the idea that in the short term prices are determined by you know people just voting based on popularity but in the long term like you always realize the value of the company and you have to return to fundamentals and that's why he was so into fundamental analysis. Um. Anyway, um.

15:45

Lots of interesting things going on in the timeline around this.

15:47

What are your thoughts on on uh on tall poppy syndrome or just the dynamic in tech right now the vibe war?

15:55

>> Yeah, just classic is like it's way easier to take down to do a take down of a company to talk poorly about a company >> Yep.

16:06

than get in anywhere close to anywhere close to actually accomplish anything [clears throat] remotely.

16:15

Nobody likes trying to like snuff the baby in the cradle. Yeah.

16:19

>> But if it's David and Goliath it's game on.

16:22

>> my anytime I see people that like every single post in their feed is just like a dunk it's like hey like hating on other people is not going to make you successful and successful people see people that hate on other people and just assume like okay this person is just not very successful themselves so can get you some momentary attention but >> Positivity. Haters going to hate.

16:43

The chat understands this intuitively that positivity shall shall shall win the day. >> Shall reign.

16:50

Uh let's pull up the linear lineup because we have an absolute banger of a show.

16:54

We got Eric Lyman from Ramp coming on.

16:55

Travis Kalanick coming in person. Tim from GoFundMe. Gustav from Spotify. Tony.

17:00

We have a lightning round that's incredible with like a billion dollars of funding and then Nikita from Palo Alto Networks is coming on.

17:08

Linear of course is the system for modern software development.

17:11

70% of enterprise enterprise workspaces on Linear are using agents now and you should be too. >> And it's time. It's time. For a special segment. >> segment.

17:21

So, there is news about Travis Kalanick.

17:23

He's coming on the show [music] in person to discuss it, but the news broke in none other than The Information, but it was paywalled.

17:29

So, >> [music] >> we have a plan.

17:32

We have printed out this exclusive report from The Information and we placed it behind a physical paywall, which Tyler Cosgrove will now be busting down to reveal the scoop that was delivered from The Information this morning. Take a swing at that. BREAK DOWN THE PAYWALL. WOW, with authority. Okay, okay. And what does he got? Hey! >> is.

17:55

He's got Okay, what is the entire article, which is a bad >> We have the entire article here.

18:02

>> The paywall has been busted down.

18:02

Thank you to The Information for reporting.

18:05

The news is Travis Kalanick plots new self-driving venture with Lewandowski and Uber.

18:11

Uh Kalanick has also been discussing acquiring the startup founded by Anthony Lewandowski, who has been developing autonomous software for mining and other industrial use cases.

18:20

Uh The new venture would also represent a reunion of Kalanick with the company he founded.

18:24

There's been this discussion of whether or not Travis will be involved in Uber in the future.

18:28

We will ask him about that at noon in about 40 minutes.

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Let me tell you about Turbo Puffer, serverless vector and full-text search built from first principles and object storage, fast, and extremely scalable.

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No matter where your idea starts, Figma, May Cloud Code, Code X, or Sketch, the Figma canvas is where ideas connect and products take shape.

18:48

So, other news in The Information uh from Amir uh Cursor and XAI news, XAI hired two or two senior leaders from Cursor to catch up on coding.

18:58

There's a whole debate going on on what's going on at XAI.

19:00

Elon Musk said XAI was not built right the first time around, so it's being rebuilt from the foundations up.

19:09

He said same thing happened with Tesla."

19:11

So, he is uh he's completely changing the strategy.

19:15

>> to wonder what kind of comp packages these new hires got. Who knows?

19:17

It is interesting now Elon has the advantage of being able to use SpaceX stock to recruit people, which is you know, pre-IPO [clears throat] shares in a company that is unclear where it's going to trade, but Elon's obviously doing everything he can to get to make sure the IPO goes well. Yeah.

19:39

uh including uh uh putting some amount of pressure it sounds like on Nasdaq and the S&P to get faster inclusion.

19:48

So, there's a big discussion over well, xAI is worth like $200 billion ostensibly.

19:55

Like, what does this mean if the team is completely new?

19:57

What's actually the value there? What's the core asset?

20:00

Uh there's some debate there.

20:03

We were going back and forth with it about it this morning.

20:05

>> Yeah, and the only reason that I think he was able to pull that off is cuz one he's Elon, but then two so many of the investors like had it was like the same group of people on both cap tables.

20:15

So, the bear case is obvious like like a fourth tier, you know, lab not at the frontier is pretty commoditized at this point.

20:24

There's lots of folks who are at that level.

20:27

Getting in the game of the RSI, the frontier labs like you got to be deep mind, you got to be open AI and Anthropic.

20:33

And if you're not at that level, your valuation's probably an order magnitude lower.

20:36

You're looking at like you know, the Quen the ex-Quen team people are talking about MSL.

20:40

Like, there's even if you just broke up Meta is MSL worth $200 billion?

20:45

They have some great team.

20:47

They have a lot of compute, but it's like they have >> $200 million? Or $200 billion. Did I say million? Oops.

20:52

Uh >> [laughter] >> and all the numbers are big.

20:53

Um the bull case of course is that xAI is great at building data centers.

20:57

Colossus 2 was built really fast.

20:59

Is that an enduring advantage?

21:01

Uh can they be the best neo cloud at the very least?

21:03

Is that enough of an advantage if you just build more and more compute is the space data center thing going to happen sooner than later sooner than people expect in which case you have the most compute and everyone else is tied up in red tape on earth and you're in space.

21:16

There's still a bull case, but it is tricky.

21:18

Benjamin De Cracker shared a story from when he worked at XAI.

21:24

He says, "When I was first hired low level by XAI, I was extremely excited.

21:27

I greatly admired Elon and what Grok could be.

21:29

I have a pretty cool AI following here on X and big names see my stuff including Elon himself at the time.

21:36

During the interview and onboarding, they made a big deal about wanting people that who take initiative and think outside the box.

21:42

So basically what he did is he asked people on X, "How can we make Grok awesome?"

21:45

Bunch of people answered.

21:45

They got a ton of John Carmack retweeted it.

21:50

Um There were lots of great ideas and he said he woke up the next day to a threatening email from his main supervisor at XAI telling me I had messed up and I was never to ask for ideas to improve Grok ever again. That wasn't my job.

22:04

Um They suspended my X account.

22:04

So he was he was very upset.

22:07

Um and he says the manager's gone.

22:09

Everyone he knew at XAI is gone and he's sort of hoping for a new a new era at XAI.

22:15

Simp for Satoshi who consistently uh gives Elon I think some pretty good advice. >> Oh yeah?

22:25

He's he's willing to say he's willing he seem seems to be willing to say the thing that it looks like many people on the XAI team weren't able to get through, but uh he said, "Try this.

22:37

Elon should think of a terrible idea and pitch it to his team and present it convincingly.

22:41

Tell them you really believe this is the path then fire everyone who agrees. Simple test.

22:48

Uh basically weeding out the uh sycophants.

22:52

Uh but uh but yeah, it it's interesting now like do feels like really hard to catch up in code gen even if you have some great people from cursor. >> Yep.

23:04

Like it's just so so so competitive and there's there's I just I don't I don't see it, but they've got to try something because he's not he's certainly not a >> back to anthropic and a lot of that was >> you mentioned the neo lab opportunity, but it certainly we've seen no indication that he's wants to just like rent out GPUs.

23:26

Yeah, you know, it's more of like a of like a bank shot where you build more data centers than anybody else.

23:32

You have the most compute and then because of that you're able to scale your training runs and that unlocks some new capability. It is a stretch.

23:40

Spore is is saying if I was a SpaceX investor, I'd be annoyed this morning by what's happening, but John Shahidi, friend of the show, says I'm not annoyed.

23:49

He is a SpaceX investor, I imagine.

23:54

Uh And and there are other other departures.

23:56

Walter Bloomberg is citing the FT and says Elon Musk has ordered another round of job cuts at xAI and and one of the xAI employees says, I left earlier this week.

24:06

It was a difficult decision.

24:07

The past 2 years have been intense, fun, deeply rewarding journey, and I accomplished things I could not have imagined 2 years ago.

24:15

Thank you to the entire Omni Imagine team.

24:16

There was also there were also rumors that uh that uh the macro hard project to sort of automate software development was behind schedule, which Elon obviously does not have a strong um strong uh you know, patience for.

24:32

Anyway, quickly, let me tell you about Vanta.

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And let me also tell you about Cisco, critical infrastructure for the AI era.

24:41

Unlock seamless real-time experiences and new value with Cisco. So, >> Apple.

24:46

Yeah, I'm going to fight you on this, but read it.

24:49

Apple said 50 years of thinking different. >> Mhm.

24:52

And then they wrote 50 years ago in a small garage a big idea was born.

24:56

Apple was founded on the simple notion that technology should be personal, and that belief {m-dash} radical at the time {m-dash} changed everything.

25:05

April 1st marks 50 years of Apple.

25:08

From the first Apple computer to the Mac, from iPod to iPhone, iPad to Apple Watch and AirPods, as well as the service services we use every day {m-dash} the App Store, Apple Music, Apple Pay, iCloud, and Apple TV {m-dash} we've spent five decades rethinking what's possible and putting powerful tools in people's hands.

25:24

Through every breakthrough, one idea has guided us {m-dash} that the world is moved forward by people who think different.

25:29

That's because progress always begins with someone {m-dash} an inventor, scientist, a student, or storyteller {m-dash} who imagines a better way, a new idea, a different path.

25:40

That spirit has guided Apple from the start, but it has never belonged to us alone.

25:44

Uh and I won't read through the whole thing. Okay.

25:46

So, paying Graham LaSaux, what does he say? >> 100% AI generated.

25:50

They used AI to detect the AI. Okay. >> That's how.

25:55

So, they got them dead to rights, right? Oh, Apple's cooked.

25:57

Uh @MNW_Y says huge oral loss.

26:00

Apple has already committing has already been committing oral seppuku, >> [clears throat] >> but dang. Okay.

26:06

Let me read you >> And to be clear, Okay.

26:09

the same account went and found other Apple Newsroom articles that that show 100% human-written. Okay.

26:18

Let me Let me Let's turn back the clock.

26:20

Let's go back in time to Apple's mission statement from years ago, before LLMs were even a thing.

26:28

This is This is their mission statement about Apple.

26:29

Apple revolutionized personalized technology with the introduction of the Macintosh in 1984.

26:36

Today, Apple leads the world in innovation with iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple TV.

26:40

Apple's five software platforms {m-dash} iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS {m-dash} provide seamless experiences across all Apple devices and empower people with breakthrough services like the App Store, Apple Music, Apple Pay, and iCloud.

26:57

Apple's more than 100,000 employees are dedicated to making the best products on Earth and to leaving the world better than we found it.

27:03

They've always sound like sounded like this.

27:04

Like the LLM's trained on Apple comps.

27:06

And if you go to an LLM and you say write me something in the style of Apple, it's going to nail it because every Apple communication is in the corpus.

27:15

And so of course, whether or not they use AI, it's going to detect it's 100% AI.

27:19

It's the same thing as as Paul Graham using the forbidden sentence structure 10 years ago. Yeah, that's my take. Do you Do you disagree?

27:29

Uh I just think Apple would use AI.

27:33

>> [laughter] >> I'm biased. I'm biased. >> Pangram? That one?

27:36

Like if you run Paul Graham's old essays, they don't come up as AI.

27:40

Even though like yeah, there's a sentence that like maybe is you know, in the same style, but >> see.

27:48

>> [music] >> How do I scan for AI?

27:50

I need to create an account.

27:53

>> [laughter] >> Let's see. Let's see, John. I'm trying. I'm trying. >> Here, here. Send me the link. >> Uh okay, I got it. I got it. What's my role? Uh other personal use.

28:04

Uh I was referred by a friend colleague. Now I have to pay?

28:08

Send it Send the link to Tyler. I got it here.

28:11

Okay, it says 100% human written. Oh.

28:13

[laughter] I got roasted. >> Wow. Wow. Okay, Tyler undefeated. >> [laughter] >> Brutal.

28:20

I'm a I'm a Pangram truster. Trust the Pangram. Trust the Pangram. >> Trust. Uh ridiculous.

28:26

Anyway, let me tell you about fin.

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28:40

Uh China's ByteDance got access to the top end Nvidia AI chips. Oh-oh.

28:49

What What >> [laughter] >> TikTok parent pushing global expansion plans to tap Blackwell processors that are barred for export to China.

28:56

They're just flexing on us at this point. How did this leak?

29:01

ByteDance is working with a Southeast Asian company called Alo Alo Alani Cloud on plans to use some 500 Blackwell computing systems totaling around 36,000 B200 chips. Is that a lot of chips?

29:15

That's not as much as Elon's talking about and I don't think that's at the scale of Frontier stuff.

29:19

So, um not the most worrisome headline, but we are in a uh knockout drag out fight right now.

29:28

Um how how uh how many uh how many B200s would you would you provision if you were uh at a Frontier lab right now, Tyler?

29:36

I mean, yeah, I I I have >> no idea, but in the next paragraph it says, I mean, this is like what a 25x increase Okay.

29:46

>> from what they had before.

29:46

So, I mean, this is still pretty meaningful. Pretty meaningful. Okay.

29:51

ByteDance plan to use plans to use the computing power for AI research and development outside of China.

29:54

Are they more It doesn't feel like they're gated on training.

29:58

If you look at that crazy video model SeaDance, like that thing seems like it was trained on the It doesn't seem like it was hardware constrained.

30:07

Sure, but I mean, you know, the expensive part of of of video models inference is super expensive.

30:10

Like training is actually I mean, it costs insane amounts to train Frontier models. Like obviously.

30:16

But it's not it's not game over if they train a model and then they can't inference it.

30:21

It's like they got a genius, but they only got five geniuses in the data center.

30:25

Yeah, I mean, I you can distill these things.

30:29

Like distilling it I think it's probably much easier than training the thing in the first place.

30:32

We should figure out about distilling video models.

30:34

I wonder how I wonder how more inference efficient it is to distill SeaDance like just to be a Marvel, uh you know >> Yeah and obviously it's like a very different process from distilling even like you hear distilling as in like Chinese labs like training on outputs versus like actually there's like a bunch of ways you can do this. >> Yeah yeah. I think you can do it.

30:52

Uh bytedance has created more than a dozen AI apps out in China in parallel versions for overseas markets such as chatbot dola video creator dramina and homework helper gouth. These are funny names.

31:05

Uh anyway moving on what's going on?

31:09

Let's head over to Japan.

31:11

Let's check in with Japan. >> Japan?

31:12

Okay what's going on in Japan Jordi tell me.

31:14

Uh this video we can pull it up. Oh yes yes yes.

31:16

And anyone in the chat if you could translate this for us that would be >> really should download this transcribe it and then and then translate it but we we we're big in Japan now. Look at me. This is from Instagram.

31:41

I think I I think I get it. They really did that.

31:46

I don't even know where that video is.

31:47

Uh yeah actually Gus put out a full video of us. That's cool.

31:55

They got the video of me driving the car. We got our cars. We did the gong.

32:04

That was one of my best hits.

32:06

>> [laughter] >> Jordan says it's a great sign of respect in Japanese culture. >> It does seem like it.

32:26

Should we should we head over to the mansion section? Let's do it.

32:30

>> First before you buy a mansion take your company public at the New York Stock Exchange.

32:33

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32:35

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32:49

So, small fish in a huge tank.

32:51

Big budget fish tanks are taking over America's most expensive homes.

32:56

Growing up, Eric Ma- Mosc- Moscow bonded with his dad over their shared loved their shared love of tropical fish.

33:03

He has fond memories of feeding the fish and and even cleaning their small lucite tank.

33:10

Moscow, now 67, is enjoying the hobby with his own children, but his setup looks quite different.

33:15

In their Delray Beach, Florida house, the family has a 2,200 gallon custom aquarium that is home to nine different species of fish and cost a quarter of a million dollars.

33:29

Since the onset of the pandemic, wealthy fish lovers have been splurging on bigger, [clears throat] fancier homes for their aquatic pets, building elaborate, custom-made tanks that can cost up to seven figures.

33:42

>> Keith Raboy is a is a wealthy fish lover.

33:44

>> He's a he's a fish enjoyer, for sure, for sure.

33:46

Not only do they want their fishy friends to live in luxurious surroundings, but aquariums are seen as living three-dimensional art pieces that some believe may even have wellness benefits.

33:59

>> I got to I got to hear about these benefits.

34:00

Quarter million quarter million-dollar fish tank?

34:02

Yeah, I'll be putting that on Truemed. Please.

34:04

I'll be paying with [laughter] my HSA.

34:09

"We have seen a tremendous increase in business since the start of COVID," said Nick Timmons of Infinity Aquarium Design in LA.

34:15

"His aquariums start at about 75,000 and can cost as much as 1 million.

34:20

Art budgets have now become aquarium budgets.

34:24

Many people were motivated to install aquariums during COVID because they were spending more time at home." >> Yeah.

34:29

"Uh Ellers has designed and installed systems from 25,000 to a quarter million with unusual designs.

34:38

Such as a sphere that held jellyfish and a wet bar with a built-in aquarium. There we go. >> That's cool.

34:43

>> Saltwater aquariums in particular are popular in in part because the colors of the fish and coral are more vibrant.

34:48

In 2025, 43% of saltwater fish owners surveyed for the American Pet Products Association Fish and Reptile Report We got We got to get this report. >> Data is the new oil.

35:04

>> opted for custom-made tanks.

35:06

>> I have A 19% jump from 2023. Lore drop.

35:10

I had a fish tank in college.

35:14

$25 fish tank with like one fish in it.

35:16

>> Did you keep How long did you Whoa, whoa, whoa.

35:19

What are you accusing me of?

35:21

I've never been accused of murder on a podcast before. Jesus.

35:22

[laughter] How long did you keep it alive, John?

35:26

>> I It okay, it technically wasn't my fish.

35:27

It was my roommate's fish and I don't remember how long we we had him around.

35:31

You kind of like somewhat of a goldfish memory when it comes to the life of the one fish I don't recall.

35:35

you looked after in your life.

35:38

I plead the fifth on the fish tank. Okay? >> the fish. >> I plead the fish.

35:43

Uh, a 10-ft by 4-ft aquarium contains an artificial reef and rare species such as a puffer fish, >> Let's [laughter] go.

35:51

turbo puffer, baby, a golden moray eel, and an epaulette shark.

35:56

>> The closest we got to getting a fish tank in the Ultra Dome was to get a puffer fish.

36:01

>> Yeah, we were thinking about it, but it's a lot.

36:03

Maintenance costs for this thing, 3,000 a month.

36:05

That's some people's mortgage.

36:08

>> [laughter] >> Uh, the tank just makes me happy, says Moscow, who enjoys the fish with his 2-year-old daughter Ruthie and son Jonah, who's one.

36:15

Uh, it's uh, it's enormously educational for my daughter, noting that the inevitably sad experience of seeing some fish die has helped Ruthie learn about the cycle of life. Brutal. Look at this.

36:25

Aquariums are also viewed as attractive home design elements.

36:29

Nick Colonna has spent has a $100,000 750 gallon custom saltwater aquarium in his beach house in Capistrano Beach.

36:36

In the entry foyer of the room, the 6-ft wide aquarium serves as a focal point for the room.

36:43

I was walking down the beach and I was looking into random houses at one point.

36:46

I saw a beautiful few beautiful fish tank and I was like, "That's that's good.

36:50

That's not just a TV lights up. It's interactive. I don't know.

36:54

Fish tanks I think are underrated.

36:56

I'm glad that they're getting some finally getting some attention in the Wall Street Journal.

36:58

Uh Corona also has >> to optimize for a fish tank in your next house? I don't know.

37:02

It's It's It's low on the tier.

37:05

It's above pickleball court, but it's probably below movie theater. That's where I'd put it. What about you? Way below movie theater. Way below movie theater.

37:14

Like there's got to be No one wants movies.

37:16

>> What are you doing with movies?

37:17

>> And still I'd rather have >> Just watching podcasts?

37:18

You're going to watch the new Dwarkesh Patel, Dylan Patel over crossover episode?

37:24

>> You just throw it But all your movies are on the big screen.

37:25

On the big screen is the way it's meant to be enjoyed.

37:28

Anytime they crack a joke standing up and just Feels like you're in the room with them.

37:33

Um so, yeah, what what what What about sauna?

37:36

Sauna's above fish tank, right? Yeah. What about tennis court?

37:38

Way way way way way way way way way way way way What What is around the same as fish >> tank?

37:49

Uh the the 20th uh spot in a covered garage.

37:56

>> Okay, 20th spot you'd give up. 20th spot. Okay. Which seems fair. Which seems fair.

38:01

That seems There's a lot of incremental garage spaces that you'd want before you'd want a fish tank.

38:07

Uh Jeff Franklin, who's a screenwriter, director, and producer, who's primarily known for creating Full House, has five aquariums in his 21,000 sq ft Beverly Hills mansion.

38:17

He says he's a scuba diver >> Five? and the ocean. Five aquariums, maybe. One in every room.

38:23

The fifth aquarium versus the 20th car slot.

38:27

>> [laughter] >> What are you doing?

38:29

He's like, "Yeah, I have a one-car garage, but five aquariums." But he's a scuba diver. I'm a scuba diver. I love scuba diving.

38:34

The ocean is my happy place. I feel the same way.

38:36

You should I've never seen this guy scuba dive, by the way.

38:40

He's like, "Oh, I'm a huge scuba diver."

38:44

You've never been in the ocean and just come across him?

38:47

>> [laughter] >> I find great peace and comfort underwater surrounded by gorgeous tropical fish.

38:51

So, I wanted my home to be full of fish and a great deal of water. I like that.

38:54

His systems include two two aquariums flanking the fireplace in the primary bedroom.

38:58

So, you can do two aquariums in one room.

38:59

So, when we when we had Andrew Huberman on the show, he had a bunch of aquariums, right?

39:05

Wasn't that what he had in the in the backyard?

39:07

He didn't have three aquariums?

39:08

Okay, so three, four, five aquariums?

39:10

Something like But he keeps them in the basement.

39:12

He keeps them in the basement. What's wrong with that? I think. No, maybe not. Maybe not.

39:14

Well, what what what are the health benefits?

39:20

That we should get to the health benefits.

39:22

>> just say mental health, then I'm sorry. Let's see.

39:28

Homeowners get to enjoy >> really is a form of meditation.

39:32

Uh >> He finds it very relaxing to watch his 55 fish, including a trigger fish.

39:34

Okay, I could get I could I could I could get into trigger fish.

39:39

I don't want my fish to be triggered by anything.

39:41

I don't want them to be becoming panicking.

39:46

I [laughter] want a panicking >> Panickins.

39:48

I want a fish that never gets triggered.

39:50

The somebody Yeah, somebody should name a fish a panickin.

39:55

Aquariums need heating and cooling system to maintain a consistent water temperature level.

39:59

He He recommends a backup generator since the oxygen in the aquarium can be depleted in less than 24 hours without power.

40:05

Aquarium specifications vary widely depending on the intended habitat inhabitants. Inhabitants.

40:12

Sharks and jellyfish require very very conditions than colorful tropical fish.

40:16

I think I would go shark over jellyfish. What do you think?

40:20

Jellyfish are beautiful, but sharks are just so athletic and and it's the apex predator.

40:24

You got to you got to have that in your house.

40:25

I think moat with some sharks is the way to go. What about gators? Yeah.

40:31

Gators >> I think I think >> Gators over sharks potentially.

40:33

>> I think sharks are are probably the best option for moats. >> For moats, okay.

40:38

Well, you won't have a moat in this $70 million Aspen compound because it would freeze, but um it has just hit the market.

40:48

Frederick Rick Burke is the co-founder of Dunion Burke accessories brand and he's putting his Robert A. M.

40:56

Stern design home in Aspen, Colorado on the market for $70 million.

40:58

Completed around 1993, the roughly 11,000 square foot seven-bedroom house is built horizontally along a rock face on Red Mountain with tawny beige stucco walls set atop a native sandstone base.

41:08

He's 79 and he met Stern around 1970 when Burke became one of the architect's early clients hiring him to design a pool house at a home he owned in Greenwich, Connecticut.

41:19

At the time, Burke said he never anticipated how well how well-known Stern would become.

41:22

He was young and dynamic.

41:24

Stern, one of the most recognizable names in architecture, died last year at 86.

41:28

Burke acquired the roughly 3.

41:31

5 acre Aspen property in the late '80s.

41:34

The lot sits high on Red Mountain about 8,000 ft above downtown.

41:38

He asked Stern to design a family home there.

41:40

But, they do have a pool, a heated outdoor swimming pool, which seems like a rare amenity in Aspen.

41:46

Burke's neighbor in Aspen was businessman Victor Kozeny.

41:47

In 2009, Burke was convicted of conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for engaging in a scheme with Kozeny to bribe Azerbaijan's government officials. Wow.

42:00

Burke spent almost a year in prison starting in 2023.

42:04

>> it illegal for guys to be dudes.

42:08

They >> [laughter and gasps] >> I didn't know that.

42:09

>> he learned a lot from the experience.

42:11

But, wait, this was in the guy's 79, so he had to do a year in prison when he was 70? Wow.

42:15

Uh he said he learned a lot from the experience.

42:19

I went to prison as I think a good person and came out a better person.

42:23

Kaz and his former home in Aspen sold for 40 million.

42:26

What were they doing bribing Azerbaijan?

42:30

Like he has an accessories company.

42:33

Yeah, leather they maybe he's related to their supply chain.

42:36

He's also the founder of Immunolite.

42:39

>> it for the love of the game.

42:39

Immunolite for years and he and his wife, a former ski racer, Megan Burke, have been splitting time between their homes in Aspen and Maine, where Stern designed a home for them in Seal Harbor.

42:50

But after a bad bout of COVID-19 a few years ago, Rick said he now struggles with the elevation in Aspen.

42:53

It's a wonderful house, if I could pick it up and move it somewhere, I wouldn't sell it.

42:59

The Burkes are considering spending winters in Hawaii, where they where there are no native land snakes.

43:04

Rick has a fear of snakes.

43:06

Man after my own heart, I hate snakes.

43:08

I'm the Indiana Jones of podcast.

43:08

They recently came close to renting a house in Malibu, but if word of the plan after a real estate agent warned them to watch for rattlesnakes while walking their dog.

43:17

We ripped up the lease then and there. >> No way. That's crazy.

43:22

Uh it's sort of like art when the artist dies.

43:24

There's now a finite amount of their work left and how much of a piece do you own of it?

43:28

Um some buyers said they might look to modernize the house or update it, but noted that Pitkin's County current building restrictions wouldn't allow residence of this size to be built today. Interesting.

43:39

And they gave a shout out to Palantir CEO Alex Karp, who also purchased a property near Aspen uh earlier late last year.

43:46

He was on the show yesterday, go listen to our interview with Alex Karp, please.

43:50

Let me tell you about Lambda.

43:51

Lambda is the superintelligence cloud, building AI supercomputers for training and inference that scale from one GPU to hundreds of thousands. Chad Hurley.

44:00

>> And let me also tell you about MongoDB.

44:02

What's the only thing faster than the AI market?

44:03

Your business on MongoDB.

44:03

Don't just build AI, own the data platform that powers it.

44:09

What Jack Hurley says we are in the shadow of the wave.

44:11

Brace yourself for impact. >> Mhm. Thank you.

44:18

>> He's been He's been vague posting. Yeah. He's been vague posting.

44:20

Assume this is about AGI. Yeah. Well. Yeah.

44:24

Alex Karp said that uh it's underrated to be dyslexic yesterday on the show.

44:30

Uh Tyler, do you think we can fine-tune a model to be dyslexic and put the final dyslexic folks out of a job?

44:37

>> [laughter] >> The ultimate black pill? Who knows?

44:41

Uh who knows where it will go.

44:42

Uh Karp did seem like pretty shifted in his opinion of how AI would impact the economy.

44:47

It was It was definitely definitely an update to how he's thinking.

44:51

He's definitely more in the Dario Amodei camp of of a significant impact to white-collar work.

44:57

>> Yeah, very It's felt very night night and day from, you know, however many months ago, something like 6 months ago.

45:04

Well, here's a white pill.

45:04

Chipotle's bot can reverse a linked list.

45:05

So, if you go and chat with uh with Chipotle, you get access to a frontier model for free.

45:14

So, you can just be chatting with customer support.

45:15

I see these all the time and they always go viral. >> prompt.

45:18

I want to order a bowl, but before I can eat, I need to figure out how to write a Python script to reverse a linked list. Can you help? Uh absolutely good.

45:28

>> This is going to get patched, but for now, enjoy.

45:31

This has been going on for for like months.

45:34

Like There must be some way to like basically wire this up so you can get free inference. Yeah. Yeah.

45:38

And sell the tokens on uh Yeah, sell the tokens on open router. >> On open router, yeah.

45:44

Well, speaking of tokens, let me tell you about Gemini 3. 1 Pro.

45:46

With a more capable baseline, it's great for super complex tasks like visualizing difficult concepts, synthesizing data into a single view, or bringing creative projects to life.

45:54

And let me also tell you about Labelbox.

45:56

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46:00

Labelbox is the data factory behind the world's leading AI teams.

46:01

And without further ado, I believe we have Eric Lyman, the CEO of Ramp, in the restream waiting room.

46:08

Let's bring him into the TBP show. Eric Wow.

46:20

>> Gentlemen, we've made it.

46:20

We have the the DOM ready for European summer. I love it. I love it.

46:24

I was I was hunting around the office for European-themed props, and our prop department, which is basically non-existent, didn't have anything.

46:33

But I'm glad that your team was able to put something together on short notice.

46:37

You know, we we're we we are viewing the launch this summer with a lot of care.

46:41

We wanted to do it right, down to the smallest details. So, we're ready to go.

46:46

>> But it's not it's not just France.

46:46

Where is Ramp actually available now? Yeah.

46:51

So, first of all, I'm glad I'm glad you asked.

46:53

Yeah, like uh basically every day, there are swipes in every country.

47:01

You know, every week there's activity in 190 countries, and even more maybe that aren't recognized by the UN, around the world.

47:10

But the news is that we've acquired Billhop, which grants Ramp the ability to have local licenses both in the UK and the EU.

47:19

And come this summer, companies that are operating out of Europe, even without a US entity, will be able to sign up for Ramp.

47:26

And so, we're really excited to bring Ramp to Europe. That's amazing.

47:31

What else went into actually launching Europe?

47:34

It feels like we're in this era of agent decoding.

47:37

It's like one prompt make this thing work in in Europe, but it's obviously more complicated than that.

47:43

Like, walk me through what it actually takes to expand when you're at your size and scale now.

47:51

Well, well, well, well, well, first of all, I think about sometimes like the companies that I heard of in the past that they opened an office with two people and they say, "We're you know, in the middle of New York and we're expanding to the US and how silly that sounded."

48:05

You know, we thought if we were going to go and actually serve Europe, we we need to do it right.

48:08

It's it's an incredibly important region.

48:09

Some of the fastest growing companies in the world are based out there.

48:13

I think of companies like 11 Labs.

48:16

I think of Stripe, Collison's great founders who grew up in Europe.

48:21

We wanted to approach this properly and so first part of operating in Europe comes down to having the legal authority.

48:29

Sorry, I'm barely barely keeping it together watching you have this serious [snorts] explanation.

48:36

>> [laughter] >> Also, I don't know if you've been through all of the props on there, but the chat is loving the cigarettes on the table.

48:45

It's uh I was wondering what's up.

48:47

It's [laughter] I don't know wait, wait, I don't know if it's legal in this building to light them up, but Yeah, don't do it. No, no, no. We're lighting up. >> it. Don't do it.

48:55

You're one and a half percent back on cigarettes.

49:00

>> [laughter] >> It's uh A boom for the French economy.

49:03

We'll we'll we'll see we'll see you there.

49:04

But but but look, I I think in every country the the legal authority to move funds, to work with regulated entities, and also to meet you know, requirements as it relates to privacy is really important.

49:15

So we took the steps to do that.

49:18

We also took the time to to you know, make sure we have the right leadership going in.

49:23

Jacob Wallenberg who's been a member of of RAMP since we were like 20 people is going to be leading the efforts grew up there on the board of EQT and I think so many members of our team are focused on not just going and selling things locally, but being a part of the local fabric of how the economy works and doing it right.

49:46

So we're we're quite excited.

49:46

So yeah, more broadly, how do you think about uh verticalization of the org, horizontalization, creating functional business units, not duplicating work?

50:00

You're probably already wrestling with this as the AI wave changes the way Ramp builds products, but then now you also have to contend with uh potentially slightly different product needs in different localities.

50:12

Uh how are you thinking about uh building the next layer of management and and you know, just human capital at Ramp?

50:22

Yeah, there's a few pieces.

50:22

First just the highest level.

50:24

I think it's just a universal thing that no matter where you are or where you're operating, uh it's a very deeply human desire to want more uh for less.

50:32

Um you know, just as we helped the average American business cut their expenses by 5% and uh turns out last year the average uh business on Ramp grew their revenue by 16%, which is multiple times faster than the US average.

50:44

Uh we know businesses in Europe want to do this, too.

50:48

Um you when you look at the base problems uh in Europe and and as well for most people in the US, it's just this crazy thing that you have this horrible hour at the end of the month where you have one system for cards, another for expenses, another for bill payments, another for AR, another for procurements, another for approvals, so on and so forth.

51:04

And what we're doing is collapsing that.

51:06

And so there's there's things which are very transportable. Um but you're right.

51:10

Um say AI, uh it makes problems like integrations uh with local software a lot faster.

51:16

Uh it makes things like translation uh and making sure we're speaking to folks uh natively um um uh far easier.

51:25

And so there's a lot of local nuance in how businesses operate, want to be sold to, uh and even um conventions about how they want to run their finances, uh which we will need to adapt to and are are working hard on that.

51:38

Uh we have a good head start.

51:38

Um you know, we've been working with very global companies uh like Shopify, like an Airbnb, um that already have folks around the world and we've localized this experience.

51:48

Um, you know, this next step is really just about um, serving companies that are scaling you know, fully in Europe or starting in Europe and going to the rest of the world.

52:01

The UK has a version of The Office.

52:05

That show has a character named Kevin.

52:08

And the actor who plays that character, his name is Kevin.

52:13

>> [laughter] >> Will there be a a redux of the ramp ad campaign for the European audience who might be more familiar with the UK version of The Office? My jaw is dropping.

52:25

This is the greatest idea, guys.

52:27

We got to do >> [laughter] >> this. We got to do this. Let's do this together. Kevin Bishop.

52:30

He's an English comedian and actor born in 1980.

52:32

He was later known for the Kevin Bishop show, his roles in British comedy and voice acting.

52:39

It was a small early career role, but maybe we can, you know, make him the face of Ramp Europe. That would be very fun. I I would love that.

52:47

I Guys, I I feel like more and more you know, no one turns down your calls.

52:52

Like I I'd love your help.

52:54

Let's call Kevin together and see what we can do.

52:57

>> [laughter] >> Let's do it. Let's do it.

52:57

Um, Jordi, anything else? No, this is great. Congratulations.

53:01

>> Anything else on your side before you go?

53:04

It's Guys, this is this is great.

53:04

When you guys wrap up, come over, let's enjoy a glass of wine. >> We will.

53:10

We now have a We now have a great reason to go to Europe. >> We do.

53:14

That Dom Perignon looks fantastic.

53:15

I'm looking forward to the summer.

53:18

Have a great rest of your day. >> you in the summer. We'll talk to you soon. >> see you.

53:21

Let me tell you about Graphite, code review for the age of AI.

53:24

Graphite helps teams on GitHub ship higher quality software faster.

53:27

And let me tell you about Plaid.

53:30

Plaid powers the apps you use to spend, save, borrow, and invest, securely connecting bank accounts to move money, fight fraud, and improve lending now with AI.

53:37

And I believe we have our next guest ready to join us live in the TV and also we have Travis [music] Kalanick.

53:43

He is the CEO of Cloud Kitchens.

53:45

Welcome to the show, Travis. Great to meet you.

53:50

Appreciate you coming on down to our studio, our humble abode. Great to meet you.

53:55

We are >> Truly an honor.

53:56

I'm just down the street. >> Yeah, you know. That's right. That's right. Yeah.

54:00

Um [snorts] we we were actually we started the show in downtown LA at the Jonathan Club on uh Figueroa.

54:03

And so I think we were even closer then. Um and still not far. Uh how are things going? Uh how's life? Woah. Can we turn that down?

54:16

We're getting some feedback. That was crazy. Um man, it's crazy. >> Yeah. What's crazy?

54:21

>> The building doesn't stop for us. >> Okay.

54:23

Um I mean, I don't know how much you guys I mean, I've just I've been in hiding. Mhm.

54:29

So, I've been um I've been doing uh I've been doing this we I I run a company called Cities up until today, let's just say.

54:36

I was running a company called City Storage Systems. Mhm.

54:41

Okay, which was basically about the future of food, a conglomerate operating in about 30 countries that the whole idea was can you get a meal uh that's prepared and delivered to you so efficient that it starts to approach the cost of going to the grocery store. Yep.

54:58

Cuz if you do you do to the kitchen what Uber did to the car.

55:01

So, I've been doing that since 2018. Yeah.

55:05

And after just the intensity of Uber from in terms of like being in the public sphere Yeah.

55:13

dealing with 100 headlines every day, deciding what you do or the actions you take based on what the New York Times is going to write >> Yep.

55:21

I was like, I would like to just >> way to run a business. >> It is very tough.

55:24

So, uh I was just like, I got to wake up every day and sort of just get to work and build.

55:31

So, did you think >> So, I went under the radar.

55:32

I >> Did you think of this as like stealth mode? Is that the right term?

55:36

>> We've been in stealth mode >> for eight years. >> Okay.

55:38

And that's like till today Yeah.

55:41

employees were not allowed to put the name of the company on their LinkedIn. Wow.

55:47

>> We have thousands of employees. >> Yeah, that's crazy.

55:50

>> Okay, so today what happened was is like for my company and I just got out of an all hands and then came right here is we went out of stealth. Yep.

55:58

Now, City Storage Systems is like a hilarious name.

56:00

It was like It's like [laughter] the most like let me choose the most generic name that no one will ever notice or anything.

56:06

>> The Corporation of America. It was on purpose, okay? And it worked.

56:08

It was like we had two choices when we when we launched. >> Yeah.

56:15

Um we had what my sort of normal instinct was.

56:19

Remember it was only 7-8 months after I left Uber when I started this. Yeah. Yeah.

56:24

And it's let's just say the mission is infrastructure for better food, okay?

56:27

We have hardcore real estate assets.

56:30

We buy the assets, we do construction, we sell restaurant tours on a delivery only location.

56:36

I have a software stack Yeah. >> that's like ARR Mhm. ARR life.

56:39

I've got a robotics company.

56:42

I have a marketplace for for corporate lunch.

56:45

Like there's a ton of stuff going on.

56:47

>> it at Oh, yeah, that's right. That's right. Of course, yeah. It's great. >> It's great. Okay.

56:50

So I forgot what I was saying.

56:53

So so >> just a very different business from Uber.

56:57

They might Some people would leave that company and be like, "I'm going to start the exact same thing. I got the playbook."

57:02

>> Well, but This is what the Uber guys when I left were were like a little bit worried about.

57:07

This is we're talking about 2017-18. >> Yeah, yeah. They're paranoid.

57:09

So my my instinct was okay, I left it 7 months later, I'm going to name my company Super. Mhm.

57:15

He like You leave a company [laughter] called Uber, you call it Super.

57:18

I'm like Or you're calling it Giga.

57:21

>> I'm like You go from Uber to Super.

57:22

You're like, "No, that that cannot be a thing."

57:24

And so I did the opposite.

57:26

Full underground, full stealth, put the toothpaste back in the tube, the genie back in the bottle, and built >> Yeah.

57:34

literally thousands of employees, and it's like a vacuum of information full lockdown.

57:41

It's been great building, uh but today we sort of came out, and we renamed the company. We renamed what we do. We call it Atoms. Atoms. >> Okay?

57:52

But we started a new company at the same time. >> Mhm.

57:56

And so let's just say like uh like the physical AI and robotics. >> Mhm. Mhm.

58:04

Action and movement through the physical world.

58:06

Of course, on the food side, we already have all the things I just talked about.

58:10

Um but but think of it as like um uh uh I I'm trying to get the mission like we're so I'm so riled up. Yeah, it's so fresh.

58:22

Uh but but basically it's um Yeah, so so that I'll I'll leave it at that.

58:27

Let's get we can get rolling here.

58:29

I'm like super caffeinated on 4 hours of sleep, so >> it. I love it.

58:31

Uh what how much harder in in many ways I think building in stealth for so long made a lot of things easier, right?

58:39

You're not running your business based on headlines or thinking about what headlines are going to come.

58:44

What are the what are the ways in which it made it harder?

58:45

I imagine there's a lot of there's a lot of there's a lot of talent out there that wants to go work at the hot company that's in the news constantly.

58:53

I'm sure you got the benefits of people maybe so opting out of that path and saying, "Hey, I just want to come in with you and build, and I don't care about the hype, and I don't want I don't need every recruiter hitting me up constantly because of whatever's on my LinkedIn."

59:08

But what were the kind of key challenges, and what are why why was now the right time to uh to come out and and start to get loud again?

59:19

So like first, I mean 100% so imagine every recruiter has to be outbound.

59:24

Every salesperson has to be outbound. >> Yeah. There's no inbound. Yeah. That's where it starts.

59:29

You get good at your craft when that's what you have to do.

59:31

Like, I believe we have some of the best recruiters in the world because of it.

59:34

And one of the best recruiting systems.

59:36

Now, they leverage, okay, you're working with Travis, former, you know, founder of Uber, like there's leverage there.

59:42

But then you you have a name like City Storage Systems and it's like So, do you guys just have like these these like boxes sitting in parking lots? Like, what is this?

59:52

And that's sort of like the reason it's different now is because, look, number one, lots of time since the Uber situ- you know, from having to live that life.

1:00:03

Um, but two is the world is different.

1:00:07

Like in 2016, 2017, the world of, let's call it, business press was just beginning to say business is politics.

1:00:19

But people didn't know it.

1:00:21

They're like if New York Times says something, everybody just treated it as the gospel.

1:00:26

Like, it just must be true.

1:00:31

And and if they say something bad, it must be true.

1:00:33

I believe everything I read on the internet as an example.

1:00:35

And so, and by the way, it's this sounds crazy, but 2017, the media world was actually more negative then than it is today.

1:00:46

I think partly because of even shows like this.

1:00:49

It's like, let's bring some optimism to the party.

1:00:50

Can we get excited about what the future looks like and what's being built?

1:00:55

>> And that's the difference between today and then.

1:00:57

And so, when you go 95% of all press is negative, you're like, why engage?

1:01:03

When the world is used to business being politics, let's just say, and if I thought of my favorite journal- sorry, my favorite politician and say, what does the internet say that's bad about them?

1:01:15

And it's like an insane amount.

1:01:17

What does the internet say that's neg- or sorry, untrue about them? And it's a ton of stuff.

1:01:20

And you go, well, that's how they're going to think about our company, too.

1:01:23

That's how it's going to play." >> Yeah.

1:01:25

We're now we're desensitized to that stuff, and now we can get back to optimism and building, and not be so worried about, you know, 95% of the media just being negative. Sure.

1:01:37

Yeah, I mean, this is pretty like go like whole trend of going direct, like Lulu.

1:01:41

I'm sure you met at at some point.

1:01:44

Uh basically coached a generation of CEOs on, you know, you just can't if you if you want to have any control over how people perceive you, uh you need to you need to tell your story.

1:01:57

>> counteract with like a story, not like a statement.

1:01:59

And the the the boiler plate like, you know, official statement just doesn't it doesn't entertain people as well as a full read, a long read.

1:02:09

>> it's also guys like Elon owns Twitter now. Yeah. It's X. Yeah. Right?

1:02:14

Pre-post is like a massive difference in the mix of sort of ideas that can get out there.

1:02:20

And again, you're allowed to be optimistic about things where maybe before everything had to be negative and and and sort of Yeah, see, you you talked about the initial idea of naming the next company super.

1:02:31

That would have, in many ways, I'm sure turned into a basically a spite company, which which can Yeah, where where you're just uh in this case like kind of taking the high road was I'm just going to be quiet.

1:02:45

I'm going to do the years and years and years and years of just chewing glass, building up the infrastructure, getting to scale, getting to thousands of employees, getting to operating globally before you even poke your head up again, which I think is uh to any of your former critics, that's to me, that's taken the high road, basically.

1:03:05

Yeah, and what you get when you create a a culture around that is you have you then build a culture of builders.

1:03:12

You build a culture of people that want to build and do not need to be famous when they do it. Yeah.

1:03:16

Which basically means emotional intelligence. >> Mhm.

1:03:20

Now, the it's a human nature.

1:03:20

I want to be acknowledged for the things that I do. Yeah.

1:03:24

I'd like the things I build to be seen and I I'd like somebody to know that I did it. >> Mhm.

1:03:31

And so this is when you cut against sort of the core of human nature and we sort of went all the way. >> Mhm. Yeah.

1:03:36

And so we have a very high EQ culture.

1:03:41

But like it is like you have to go the extra mile on recruit, the extra mile on sales, etc.

1:03:46

Again, the world's different. LFG.

1:03:49

Are the laws of physics of of the different businesses slightly different?

1:03:55

I'm just thinking about your career arc with like Red Swoosh's, Enterprise Communications.

1:03:59

You're in a very particular industry.

1:04:02

Uber's a consumer company.

1:04:04

Now you're working on something that looks you probably running like real estate developers.

1:04:09

It's like a different industry, different community.

1:04:13

>> there been adjustments and what's different, what's the same?

1:04:16

Like what can you just be like a good business operator and power through and what do you actually have to learn about the new industry?

1:04:25

Look, I think probably the biggest one is when you go from consumer to cuz I have a I mean when you go from consumer to B2B, the number one mega challenge that you must master is called LTV to CAC. >> Mhm.

1:04:39

Yes, you can make that argument on consumer, but when you have a sales funnel that starts with I'm going to talk to customers and I'm going I have to make LTV to CAC work versus like my LTV to CAC is the App Store. Mhm.

1:04:50

It's a whole different ball game. >> Mhm.

1:04:54

And um LTV to CAC with a sales machine, especially if you go small business, Yep.

1:05:02

this is like life in hard mode. >> Yeah.

1:05:05

Um and talk to anybody who's who's crushed it on SMB. >> Yeah.

1:05:11

Like those guys are special individuals who've made that happen because life in the SMB B2B world is no joke. Yeah. So talk about moats.

1:05:19

I feel like Uber's the greatest example of network effects and and runaway scale.

1:05:27

What do What did moats look like at Red Swoosh?

1:05:30

What were you thinking then?

1:05:30

And then And then what does it look like now?

1:05:32

So like nobody knows what Red Swoosh is. That's all good.

1:05:36

So guys, I started a company in 2001 that was let's call it uh BitTorrent meets Akamai. Yeah. Sold it off.

1:05:46

>> Before BitTorrent existed. Okay, that's crazy.

1:05:49

You click on a link and you can pull from other PCs that already have that file or that video stream, but it looks like the internet.

1:05:57

That's basically what it was.

1:06:00

Uh the first 4 years no salary. Wow. Yeah. Lived at mom's.

1:06:04

>> Had some Had some famous investors. Famous investors.

1:06:06

You know, like um Mark Cuban was on the board of Red Swoosh.

1:06:13

Um So uh before that Scour was uh Ovitz and and Ron Burkle.

1:06:17

That was the company >> Oh. Oh.

1:06:19

Oh, I So anyways I was confusing the two. Yeah, anyways.

1:06:21

Uh So there's a network effect there once you get the CDN up and running.

1:06:26

>> company wasn't meant to be and I willed it into being.

1:06:28

And I sold it to Akamai for like I think it was like 19 million bucks and probably to this day is still the happiest day of my life.

1:06:35

[laughter] So it was crazy. It was crazy.

1:06:39

Like I cleared 3 million and I was like >> [laughter] >> Praise the Lord.

1:06:46

Okay, so then Uber very obvious very obvious moats and and and scale economies.

1:06:50

What like what does this look like with Atoms?

1:06:52

What does this look like in both you know, the food delivery kitchen model, real estate model, but then also where we're going in in autonomous robotics?

1:07:04

>> Look, I if you look at where moats are and really you're looking for network effects in different places, right?

1:07:08

So right now I have these facilities.

1:07:12

There's 30 restaurants in each of them.

1:07:14

Picnic is like a perfect example of this, right?

1:07:18

You order from your office, looks like Uber Eats or DoorDash.

1:07:20

You get 100 options except all the meals are coming out of my facilities.

1:07:24

There's one courier that brings 100 orders at a time, but it's on demand and it's personalized for you and we've got enough facilities near here that you can basically get anything.

1:07:35

And so who's going to who can play ball?

1:07:38

Like you got to have the real estate. That's a freaking moat.

1:07:43

You have the network effect now of like what if I sell every floor on every tower, meaning every office floor is on this and I sell in all of these floors.

1:07:51

That means that one courier can bring 100 orders and by the way we'll have five couriers going to a single office with 500 orders hitting every shelf and you get notified when it arrives.

1:08:00

If you even took one floor, you would be like sad because your economic are going to be screwed because you don't have the efficiency or the operation sort of depth to make it work.

1:08:09

So there's network effects of a building.

1:08:12

There's network effects on a on a facility with kitchens in it.

1:08:17

There's um but then there's the moat of like we own real estate. Okay?

1:08:25

So like if you want to >> You want to compete with us, go buy 100 million go buy a billion dollars of real estate in every major city in the world and then we're going to go head-to-head. Yeah.

1:08:35

Talk about capital >> Yeah, the other the other the I don't I don't know exactly what what bucket this falls in, but just just the moat of you would have to be absolutely insane to compete with >> were. People were.

1:08:48

Like th- this is how I remember the Uber versus Lyft battle was Uber was doing so well and then then all of a sudden a whole bunch of VCs were like, "I want a piece of that and I didn't get Uber so I'm funding the >> But I'm saying in the context of cloud kitchens, city storage, like even though people generally figured out what you were up to, right?

1:09:08

You did have to share some little things along the way, or you'd buy this company, or or there's You got to go You got to go to a website and say, "What are What What is an What is a delivery-only location? What the hell is that?" >> Yeah.

1:09:20

And so somebody had to know. Yeah.

1:09:22

But even then we're like, "We're going to We're going to say the cross streets of the facility, not the actual address."

1:09:27

Like, these are the little moves you do to be stealth, [laughter] you know?

1:09:30

you know? Uh in in you know, when I look at the the new site and and how everything's positioned, uh a lot of it feels insulated from all the changes and progress that we're seeing in AI, and in many in many ways like accelerated because you got you'll get a lot of the ben- you know, the benefits

1:09:50

of of AI progress and progress in robotics, uh but you're moving physical atoms around the world and in an era where you know, you can generate any piece of software fairly quickly, uh this this feels like you've been kind of planning for this type of technology progress for >> Sounds great, dude. I love that. I love I love that. I love it. Yeah, dude. This is all in the plan.

1:10:14

>> [laughter] >> Look, I think it's always been the plan a meal that's efficient, you know, so efficient it starts to approach the cost of going to the the grocery store.

1:10:21

A meal that's prepared and delivered to you. That's real.

1:10:23

You must do automated production of food.

1:10:27

You must do automated delivery of the meal.

1:10:30

I call that autonomous burritos, which is why I'm moving into this making this move on atoms, which is okay, we're still doing the food thing, but then we're adding mining and transport. Okay?

1:10:44

Uh mining being like more, you know, we like to say more efficient mines for Earth's industries.

1:10:50

Or uh on transport, it's just robot uh wheelbase for robots. Okay. Okay?

1:10:56

Because if you're going to do specialized robots, not humanoids, but specialized robots, they need to have wheels. Okay. Right?

1:11:03

Like just say like if you saw the Beijing in Beijing they had the humanoid Olympics.

1:11:07

Yeah, things or whatever.

1:11:07

And the the half marathon [laughter] and you're watching the humanoid cruising.

1:11:12

I'm like, "Dude, could you imagine if that thing had wheels?

1:11:14

That'd [laughter] be crazy."

1:11:16

So like humanoids have their place, but there's there's a lot of room for specialized robots that that do things in an efficient sort of industrial scale kind of way, which is sort of where we play. Mhm.

1:11:31

Uh I'm I I'm I I want to go back to capital wars, lessons from capital wars, when [clears throat] these play out, because we're seeing this play out. Yeah.

1:11:40

And you yeah, were you the OG because or or when this capital war kicked off, were you looking to lessons from the '90s?

1:11:49

I mean, look, you can always say there was the guy before, okay?

1:11:51

Like like you know, Rockefeller was the OG.

1:11:56

>> [laughter] >> And then before him was it like the Medici? I don't know.

1:11:58

But I was I was the goat for a period of time and now I'm a baby goat. Yeah.

1:12:07

>> [laughter] >> And that's okay. Okay.

1:12:08

Uh and so then one day the baby goat will grow up again. >> Yeah. That's [laughter] fine. It's going to be fine.

1:12:16

I I I I just mean like um the this idea of like you have a network effect that's growing and then you see a bunch of venture capitalists start throwing money at like the second place and there's this debate over catching up and like how do you what modes do you retreat to in that moment?

1:12:32

Like I feel like that's the that that's the lesson from the Uber story that gets missed amid all the random drama is that there's actually like a very interesting financial war happening and it played out very well for you and I'm wondering like what level of confidence you had, what did you do strategically to set yourself up for success?

1:12:50

>> super thing because I of course all the AI guys are playing that game right now, which is the ability to attract capital.

1:12:56

Cap- The capital wars becomes a strategic weapon.

1:13:02

Capital becomes a strategic weapon, which means you must be the best at getting capital in order to win.

1:13:08

And we realized that early on in the Uber days.

1:13:10

Of course, that's happening times 10 in the sort of let's call it the digital AI wars.

1:13:17

And look, the last round of funding that I did at Uber, we were like a 70 million or you know, I don't know like a 60-70 billion dollar pre. Let's see that.

1:13:26

Yeah, when that used to be a thing.

1:13:29

>> [laughter] >> Now they're like, "Oh, that's small stuff." But we had four rooms.

1:13:32

This was our our how we'd fundraise.

1:13:35

We had four rooms in our New York office booked for a week with an hour and a half slot on each.

1:13:42

So like for 12 hours in a day.

1:13:45

Four rooms going in parallel.

1:13:50

I was in the No, I'm in the $250 million and over club.

1:13:54

That's one room and it goes all There's all these other There's these other rooms too.

1:13:59

The fourth room is like $25 million checks. Okay?

1:14:04

There's a guy who works for a guy who works for a guy who works for me who's doing that room. Okay?

1:14:09

And then but we're over subscribed.

1:14:11

So we started putting multiple investors in the same room.

1:14:15

We're like, "Dude, we're just out of slots, dude. Like let's go."

1:14:20

Um and but what it means is about the system.

1:14:23

It's about the system for sort of acquiring that capital at scale and super efficiently.

1:14:30

And what it means is that storytelling that we did anybody in my team could tell that story, let's say on the strategic finance team, could tell that story and make it happen. And that was a big part.

1:14:43

It was the story that's just like of course is like if I'm pitching it people like holy let's go. Yeah.

1:14:51

Then there is making it scalable so that there are 10 different people in a company that can pitch it at any given time. Mhm. Yeah.

1:15:02

And that's when you take it all the way.

1:15:04

And then there's like even auction dynamics of how you would do it.

1:15:05

We would basically, once they said they were interested, we would then give them a piece of paper.

1:15:10

It was like digital, but it was like you need to fill out this table, which is this valuation, how much money you want to put in?

1:15:15

This valuation, how much money? This much money?

1:15:18

This this valuation, how much money?

1:15:20

And then we would aggregate the demand. >> book.

1:15:24

Yes, but like done way better because you don't respect to the bankers.

1:15:30

>> [laughter] >> But like Yeah.

1:15:30

I was in charge of pricing. >> Sure. Sure.

1:15:33

And so and then you're like, oh, we're trying to clear $5 billion, that takes us to this price.

1:15:38

We would tell all these guys, hey, your price isn't big enough because you don't make it under the curve.

1:15:43

And then >> would move their price and then that would change the curve and you would do it again. >> Make sense.

1:15:49

Were you were you bringing new investors to private markets at that time?

1:15:53

I feel like if I go back to Facebook, I think they IPO'd around 50 billion.

1:15:57

You're doing a $70 raise.

1:15:59

There's a lot of different It's a completely different shape of investor.

1:16:03

What were those conversations like?

1:16:06

>> Look, I like I I in some ways I have to give some credit.

1:16:08

The This was it it was an era where this was happening.

1:16:13

You had like the Fidelity's of the world and other guys that are moving in. >> Yeah.

1:16:17

I have to give credit to Drew at Dropbox.

1:16:19

He was like the first guy in that game. >> Yeah.

1:16:24

And you know, Drew and I'd meet up and we'd sit, you know, >> [laughter] >> and have like Flax.

1:16:28

I'm like, dude, what's up?

1:16:33

>> [laughter] >> Uh You're like, this is my our little safe space. >> Chesky at Airbnb.

1:16:36

Like that was the crew that was doing it in the 2010s.

1:16:39

And sort of pushing the boundaries of what it meant to be like people didn't even know what private equity private what is a private what is private equity? Yeah.

1:16:50

Now we're just like yeah private equity. Yeah.

1:16:52

That's VC it's the same thing and but back then private equity is like I do leverage buyouts. Yeah.

1:16:56

And so you're bringing private equity mutual funds those guys into the game in a way that didn't exist before now it's just old hat.

1:17:04

Have you uh have you coached any of the AI founders?

1:17:08

>> I was going to ask the exact same thing.

1:17:09

Really like that crew that you just described I we most of them have been on the show.

1:17:14

It feels very different aesthetically than what we're dealing with today.

1:17:19

Um Yeah but I'm sure Chesky's pumping up Sam.

1:17:21

I love I love these guys. I love them all. That's so interesting.

1:17:24

Look the times when I get hit up >> Yeah.

1:17:32

are usually when the is about to hit the fan.

1:17:36

Or it's actually hitting the fan they're like dude somebody needs to call Travis immediately. He'll know what to do.

1:17:43

So I use so my Travis they're casting they're casting a movie about me.

1:17:48

>> [laughter] >> My phone's like what are the crazy wild wackiest things going down or like here because that's when I usually get the call and I'm so underground.

1:17:58

>> Yeah that's what happens but like I should you know I should give a you know I know these guys I should give them a call and be like dude we should Let's cook. Let's let's cook. >> Yeah let's cook.

1:18:06

[laughter] I still think we probably did things better than anybody that some of those things probably are still better than anybody even today but obviously the check size much bigger.

1:18:17

Is that approach like systematizing fund fundraising productizing it?

1:18:22

Do you apply that across the entire is that like everything that you do that is important you're >> Yes.

1:18:29

you're creating like a ground up kind of solution for it Yeah so like or like for instance I mean this will you know this is just crazy, but like how about when you do construction? Mhm.

1:18:41

Do you know how effed up construction is? >> Yeah.

1:18:43

I tell my guys that in the in the real estate department, I'm like, "Your entire department is the anti-fraud department." Oh, yeah.

1:18:52

These guys just are incentivized to just run up bills.

1:18:56

>> how do you do epic, high-quality construction at an insanely efficient price? There's a way. Mhm. Not going to tell you. >> [laughter] >> you. But there's a way.

1:19:05

Do you have Do you have any like white pills or ideas that potentially AI speeds up the rate of building broadly, like solving the housing crisis through that permitting, stuff like that?

1:19:20

>> This is so one of the things is that and I think people are starting to come out of this now, this whole like "The jobs are gone."

1:19:25

Like I know still people still say that, >> Yeah.

1:19:28

but there's another side of the story.

1:19:30

And like I'll just make this cuz I'm the Adams guy.

1:19:33

I'm like, let's just talk about plumbers. Mhm. Okay? Yeah.

1:19:37

Let's say the entire world, everything in our world was automated except for plumbers. Okay. Okay?

1:19:45

You had machines making buildings.

1:19:45

You would basically have like a thousand buildings a day Yeah.

1:19:49

or a thousand buildings being built at a single time in Los Angeles alone.

1:19:53

Just machines doing Yeah. except plumbers. Okay.

1:19:59

How valuable would those plumbers be? >> Extremely valuable.

1:20:01

[laughter] >> Okay, those guys each and every plumber would be like LeBron. Okay. Why? Why? [laughter] Yeah, why?

1:20:07

Because because plumbing is the long pole in the tent to progress. Sure.

1:20:11

That you can't get those thousand buildings unless you have a plumber. Sure.

1:20:15

And by the way, you got so much efficiency everywhere else that you need millions of plumbers. Yeah.

1:20:23

And then the plumbing is like Yeah. what's up?

1:20:26

And so once you once you realize that, then you're like, "Until we get super AGI. Yeah. Humans are valuable.

1:20:38

And they are going to become more and more valuable because they will be the long pole in the tent to progress.

1:20:42

And that progress is going to accelerate and get faster and more you know, more robust except if you're a plumber, you're crushing.

1:20:54

And so until we get to humans are replaced like fully fully And by the way, I have I think we have solutions for that.

1:21:01

I think Elon's got that at Neuralink.

1:21:03

It's going to be all good.

1:21:05

Okay, and then people are like, oh god.

1:21:08

>> [laughter] >> But but until we get there, we're going to I believe we're going to be super fine. That's my white pill.

1:21:16

Yeah, it does if you have plumbers that are getting paid like LeBron, it obviously increases the you know, the prize pool of automating.

1:21:24

But again, there's like these kind of windows But there's going to be a bunch of things like plumbing and it's not just plumbing.

1:21:29

It's going to be all over the place.

1:21:30

And even when it comes to software.

1:21:33

So like for instance, look at like autonomous cars.

1:21:37

They like like Waymo has people that oversee the rides. Okay?

1:21:42

And it starts with like, okay, five five rides for every person.

1:21:44

Then it goes to 20, then it goes to 100.

1:21:46

But like if we get to this place where autonomous cars are everywhere, okay?

1:21:53

And let's just say it's one in a thousand.

1:21:55

And like nobody owns cars.

1:21:55

It's just ride sharing everywhere.

1:21:57

I mean, some people own cars, but it'd be the top of the the top of the pyramid, let's say.

1:22:02

Okay, so what do we replace billions of cars with ride sharing?

1:22:04

If it was a thousand to one, you still probably have, I don't know, 20 million jobs, 50 million jobs.

1:22:13

I'm just riffing on just the concept of this.

1:22:15

You will see this everywhere is that until humans are fully replaced, we become the long pole in the tent to progress.

1:22:25

And that progress by the way is to serve us. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

1:22:30

Robots yet don't yet have bank accounts.

1:22:32

So that plumber gets paid. >> Yeah, yeah.

1:22:34

Anyways, you get the idea. Uh you mentioned mining. Yeah.

1:22:38

Have you been to a mine recently? You've visited a mine?

1:22:41

Like what what's going on in mining?

1:22:42

What how I mean I imagine that mines are fairly automated already. Like there's machinery.

1:22:49

>> thousands of employees at Okay. at a given mine.

1:22:51

Um And it's And that's work that humans are not doing.

1:22:55

>> And so children children yearn for the mines of of Minecraft, but it's not the best not the best job.

1:23:01

>> maybe that's actually how it gets you maybe that's where it goes.

1:23:02

You know, it's like a Ender's Game situation. >> Game situation.

1:23:07

>> [laughter] >> Look, the it's interesting.

1:23:11

You go a lot of times they're like, oh, um oh, well, is labor really the issue in my you know, is that really a thing?

1:23:17

But that's the what it really comes down to is productivity. Okay. Right?

1:23:20

So if if a mine is automated >> Mhm.

1:23:27

then it can run all hours of the day and night. It doesn't have Yeah.

1:23:29

It doesn't have off hours. >> Yeah.

1:23:33

Uh the way machines queue up doing that really efficiently like computer science style.

1:23:40

I call it digitizing the physical world. >> Yeah.

1:23:43

You can make that mine substantially more productive.

1:23:45

What is the value of a more productive mine?

1:23:47

And by the way, let's say let's get to the real sort of the the outcome here. Yeah.

1:23:51

Is does the world as we enter this sort of new golden age that's about to come >> Yeah.

1:23:59

do we need more minerals?

1:24:02

Do we need more materials? Look around us, guys.

1:24:04

I don't like look around us in this studio or walk outside.

1:24:06

Everything you see is grown or mined. >> Yep. Yeah. Manufactured and moved. >> Yeah.

1:24:17

So if you're not in the mining business like you're like let's just say that mine like I shouldn't say that, but like it's it's a very critical part of the situation.

1:24:26

I can't wait till we're putting some machines on SpaceX's rockets to go mine an asteroid or a planet or whatever.

1:24:35

In the meantime, lots of mines on planet Earth.

1:24:39

So what level of abstraction do you want to operate at?

1:24:41

Do you want to go and find land and mine it?

1:24:42

Because that's sort of on the table if I look at what you're doing in food, you you you own real estate.

1:24:50

Or do you want to sell tools to mining companies that already have explored and they understand and they're running up and running. How do you think?

1:24:59

>> I'm not um I'm not buying land for mines anytime That's just not anytime soon.

1:25:03

But In the next 3 months. Yeah.

1:25:07

>> [laughter] >> He's like Not anytime soon.

1:25:09

120 days out I got Oh yeah, okay.

1:25:12

>> [laughter] >> Um I just think it's super fascinating.

1:25:16

Again, it's just like like I'm an atoms guy.

1:25:20

I'm like all about digitization of the physical world.

1:25:23

And you know, I have this framework for it which is like CPU manipulates bits, store stores bits, network moves bits from point A to point B.

1:25:32

I was a computer engineer at UCLA.

1:25:33

I didn't graduate, but it but I I loved it. >> Yeah.

1:25:37

Um Those are the three core computing resources that you're told about on day one. Yeah.

1:25:43

But if you're treating atoms like bits, digitizing the physical world, CPU manipulates bits, what manipulates atoms? Manufacturing. Mhm.

1:25:50

Storage stores bits, what stores atoms? Real estate.

1:25:55

Network moves bits from point A to point B, what moves atoms? Transport logistics.

1:25:58

I didn't know it then or I didn't think about that way exactly, but at Uber we were building network for the physical world, also known as digitized transportation. Yep.

1:26:08

City storage systems then make sense. >> Yeah.

1:26:12

Storage for the physical world. That's real estate.

1:26:16

We're building atoms-based computers with a real estate foundation. Storage. Yeah. Right?

1:26:21

But, now leveling up and saying, "Okay, we have a food computer.

1:26:27

What about a mining computer?

1:26:27

And what about a wheel-based platform to serve industry generally?" >> Yeah.

1:26:33

If I look at the last two decades of your career, you're uniquely good at managing very uh geographically spread out workforces. >> Mhm. What is the secret?

1:26:44

I I I can I could never get behind the remote work thing.

1:26:48

Everyone >> here works in one studio, but >> Respect. I'm all about it. Yeah.

1:26:53

>> you you've had to do it, basically, because you had to have a presence in New York, you had to have a presence in LA, and you can't be in 10 places at once.

1:27:01

>> There's a different >> you do it?

1:27:02

There's a difference between remote work where somebody works at home and they're like in boxers and then a a suit, >> [laughter] >> okay?

1:27:09

>> Versus we have an office in every major city in the world. Yes.

1:27:14

>> And whatever city you're in, you're going to that office every day, 5 days a week. >> Yes.

1:27:18

And sometimes six or seven. >> Mhm. And that's it.

1:27:21

>> But, satellite offices still feel like a headache.

1:27:23

How how did you solve it?

1:27:24

Because you can only be in one place.

1:27:27

Yeah, I I guess I just I cracked the code so thoroughly in Uber times before I think maybe even before anybody else.

1:27:35

It almost feels like normal. Yeah.

1:27:35

But, like I basically have figured out sort of the the management and leadership structures where you The real The real thing is about empowerment. >> Okay.

1:27:49

Is you must be able to empower teams, but I I I It's like uh I like to say the fewest number of rules while staying out of chaos. Sure.

1:27:56

And once you have those systems in place, um you know, your imagination is only constrained by management capacity. Yeah.

1:28:04

So, once you figure out the management piece, your imagination can go pretty damn far. >> Mhm.

1:28:11

And so, it's just figuring out the management part of this is the thing.

1:28:16

Talk about empowering young people.

1:28:18

We've had a ton of founders on the show who have the origin story of like, "Yeah, I was the GM of Miami or he he sent me to Atlanta and I was me in a hotel room with a bunch of energy drinks and we had to open up this market, so we had to do a stunt and hire some people."

1:28:34

And it just felt like a lot you know, startup within a startup is a bad phrase that gets misused, but um why why were you you know, you weren't this wasn't your first company with Uber.

1:28:46

Why were you so heavy on leaning on young people, empowering them, pushing them? It wasn't on purpose. >> Mhm.

1:28:54

It was just the right answer. Okay. Why?

1:28:57

Um Yeah, I mean once you have a city team and you're like, "Okay, I need to find people that can run this."

1:29:05

Like old people aren't the answer. Mhm.

1:29:07

Like I need fresh I didn't think of it as like, "I got to get youthful people or not."

1:29:13

I'm just like, "I need good talent that can go do X and who has no judgment on what it is we got to get done." >> Yeah.

1:29:20

And it it was just like water flows downhill. Mhm.

1:29:21

So, um what do you look at it was a you know, like the the first driver ops guy that we brought in in San Francisco in 2010, we basically took 200 cards and put names on them and we said, "Alphabetize them." Click.

1:29:42

And we just would measure how much time it took to alphabetize.

1:29:46

We would give them like crazy analytics tests and then we're like, "Okay, this is our guy." Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? Free free AI.

1:29:51

If you're [laughter] on the marketing manager if you're on the marketing manager, but even today you'd still want that guy. Yeah. Even today.

1:29:58

So, like you can't use AI now alphabetize in the most efficient way.

1:30:03

Now, if you're if you know computer science, sorting is like a big freaking deal.

1:30:07

Sorting efficiently and being able to do that in your brain, not in software, is a thing.

1:30:14

That's what ops people do. >> Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. So, um I don't know.

1:30:18

I don't know how to answer that question other than uh problem-solving, whether you're young or old, executive or junior, who can solve problems is number one.

1:30:31

When you interview, simulate what it's like working together so that day one is really like week two. Mhm.

1:30:38

And you're already pumped because you saw them in action. Yeah.

1:30:39

How are you >> [clears throat] >> with Adams, how are you thinking about recruiting and how are you going to change uh your approach to building the company?

1:30:49

You've been kind of holed up in LA.

1:30:49

This is your kind of hideout.

1:30:51

But I imagine like do you do you push into back into SF, go back to being the king? Well, here.

1:30:58

So, first, let's just be clear on December 18th, I moved to Texas. >> Sure. You know. >> Right.

1:31:04

I don't know what's so specific about December 18th, but Who knows?

1:31:07

Let's just say it's prior to January. Yep. >> Yeah.

1:31:10

Um so I'm a primary resident of Texas, but the the action for a lot of this Adams-type technology I'm talking about, of course, like the Bay is a real thing.

1:31:21

My head of the advanced technology group at Uber is running my robotics division at Adams. It's called Lab 37. >> In Pittsburgh.

1:31:31

No, no, that's uh Eric Meyhofer. >> Okay, Eric Meyhofer.

1:31:34

Uh so, that's robotics on the food side.

1:31:35

Um yeah, Anthony Levandowski uh was running Pronto.

1:31:41

I was the I was the largest investor in Pronto and then we just were basically right in the final like we're checking off the list, maybe closing today or tomorrow on that deal. Amazing.

1:31:52

Let's talk about that deal. Yeah.

1:31:54

Give us give us Yeah, give us like What's the plan?

1:31:57

>> kind of background on on Pronto and then how it fits into the to the empire.

1:32:02

Well, look, I I I sort of broke out how mining fits. So, we got that.

1:32:04

Look, I've been I'm the largest investor in Pronto. Mhm.

1:32:09

Um and it's super inspiring work. Like like go to a mine. Right?

1:32:16

Check out how these things work and let your mind imagine what that might look like when you bring automation to it and how much more productive it is and what that means for industry when all mines are producing more. Where does that go? >> Mhm.

1:32:36

Um and in some ways you could say low-hanging fruit on the autonomy problem because yes, there are different problems off-road, but they ain't like they're way more controlled than what's going on on-road. Okay?

1:32:47

But then you get into the physical action.

1:32:50

Like cars on the road, the Waymos on the road, uh you know, they're moving.

1:32:58

But they're not acting on atoms. Right?

1:33:00

So, when you think about excavation and you think about crush like when you get the material and then you move it then you are basically crushing the material and then you process it.

1:33:09

You think about all of the automation through that stack, it's fantastic. Yeah.

1:33:13

And it's like it's hard, right?

1:33:18

Like I somebody asked me like we have a bunch of roboticists that make some of our food machines.

1:33:25

And I somebody came like, "Hey, like is AI going to help us design food machines?"

1:33:30

We're like, "Dude, let me show you." Yeah.

1:33:34

Like this thing has like an insane number of parts and let me show you just the design of a single part. >> Yeah.

1:33:42

Like the like the the that that AI can't even do freaking math, you know what I mean?

1:33:47

It's like [laughter] this is not it. We're not there yet. Now, could it get there?

1:33:50

Yeah, but then you're really in AGI.

1:33:51

If you look at how much harder it is the physical world, how much harder it is AI in the physical world versus in the digital world.

1:33:59

And I'm not defeating it anyway.

1:34:01

I'm just [clears throat] saying it's like a maybe it's let's call it a different problem set.

1:34:04

>> Yeah, you're we're just far away from one shot There's just way less training data.

1:34:07

Yeah, the It's like one shotting on software.

1:34:09

Do you have one shotting on designing a machine or a robot?

1:34:15

We're just not there yet. Yeah, not there yet.

1:34:16

But that makes it more fun.

1:34:18

That's the point is like do the hard things.

1:34:20

If you are in the Atoms world, you have decided I like hard things.

1:34:21

I like pain more than anybody else. Yeah.

1:34:27

This kind of what you got to be about. >> Chewing glass. I love it.

1:34:28

Uh, so I can see how AVs at Atoms fit into mining.

1:34:36

What other and just heavy industry broadly, what other kind of categories of of AVs are are exciting?

1:34:43

How do you see the space evolving?

1:34:45

>> Yeah, look, I look anything I mean We the mission is wheelbase for robots. Yeah.

1:34:53

So then you're just like, okay, what moves? Yeah. Right?

1:34:54

And you go, okay, where you have to find the businesses that make sense, of course.

1:35:00

So we're like, okay, mining is a no-brainer.

1:35:02

>> And how do you think about how do you how do you think about sizing for a wheelbase for robots that can scale up and down like crazy?

1:35:08

>> I like I tell my team like, dude, there's like a ton of silver medals here.

1:35:14

And there's actually a few other gold medals just in the category.

1:35:15

Um, so let's just go with delivery robots, like food delivery, which of course is near and dear to my heart.

1:35:23

Um, You make a lot of money off that.

1:35:26

>> Your 20 Yeah, your 30 your $15 bowl became 30 bucks. Yeah. Okay?

1:35:34

2% >> this is like I would put it up there as like one of the number one annoyances of the average American regardless of where they are in society.

1:35:44

It's like food is just the cost of food delivery.

1:35:49

Everybody wants food fast, cheap, hot, etc. Yeah.

1:35:53

And there's all this data that just came out this week that just shows like it doesn't matter even how much money you're making, you're spending a lot on this category. Isn't it interesting? Right?

1:36:04

Remember I talked about the plumbers?

1:36:07

But like you could take whole categories, become the long pole in the tent. Food. Boring.

1:36:15

To a lot of people boring is that.

1:36:15

For me, interesting, let's go.

1:36:19

>> [laughter] >> Let's go. But I look, I did taxis.

1:36:20

I did taxis when they're like people looking at me funny. It was a weird idea.

1:36:26

Okay, they're looking at me super funny.

1:36:29

So, Jason Calacanis, the most famous investor in Uber of all time.

1:36:35

>> than you in some ways.

1:36:36

>> [laughter] >> Whenever I'm with him, I'm like, "Dude, I'm so honored to be meeting one of our early investors."

1:36:41

But he there was like a angel group that I pitched. Yeah, yeah.

1:36:46

There were like 30, 40 people in the room.

1:36:47

I think it was like three or four that invested. It's crazy.

1:36:50

Okay, the 10 grand check became like 100 million bucks. It was crazy. Wow.

1:36:54

But um the boring places are the places. Yeah. You know? Less competitive.

1:37:03

But also just weird and hard. Yeah.

1:37:05

>> There's a reason why it's that way.

1:37:05

The the graveyard is stacked of tech guys that thought they could crack food, which is why which is again like Yeah, go back to what they were doing.

1:37:17

>> you can go you can go compete in this category, but you have to actually be insane and you have to have Yeah.

1:37:25

And and then you have to attack it all at all these levels.

1:37:28

>> and my So, my head of the robotics division >> Yeah.

1:37:31

we're like, "Yeah, let's do this.

1:37:31

Get the band back together. Let's go." Right? This is Eric Myhoffer. Yeah.

1:37:35

And um And and he's like, "Okay, we can make a food robot."

1:37:42

I'm like, "There I got one There's one requirement though.

1:37:44

There's I got one one hanging chatter one string attached. He's like, "What?"

1:37:49

I'm like, "You're going to have to build a restaurant that the robot serves."

1:37:55

So, my roboticist team in Pittsburgh made a restaurant that is the restaurant that our first robot went into because we had to make sure that we understood how a restaurant worked.

1:38:07

We had to make sure that this wasn't just a machine that made food, but a machine that makes food in the ecosystem of machines called a restaurant.

1:38:16

And people don't understand, but a restaurant is a manufacturing facility.

1:38:22

In fact, if you look at like the labor statistics, etc.

1:38:23

, restaurants fits under manufacturing. For obvious reasons.

1:38:27

It just hasn't changed in 50 years.

1:38:31

Anyways, back to Sorry, I'm all over the No, I love it. I love it. Firing on all cylinders.

1:38:38

But but so so again, or do you want to move people with AVs?

1:38:42

Do you Are you Do you care more about commercial?

1:38:45

Look, the the industrial thing is sort of like probably our our main jam, but the bottom line is once you once you crack once you crack movement in the physical world, there's lots of people who want access to that.

1:39:01

And in fact, you need partners because, you know, you're going to be putting billions of billions of dollars to work to make it happen.

1:39:06

So, there's going to be lots of partners across different categories that are going to probably want some of that, and I have no issues with that.

1:39:15

We're not like a you know, this is ours and this thing.

1:39:19

It's more like hey, there there may be ways to work with others. We're happy to do it.

1:39:23

What about We got to pick our our spots, but you get the idea.

1:39:25

What about manufacturing broadly? You're doing it in food.

1:39:29

Are there other categories that are interesting, or are you happy to be kind of the transport rails?

1:39:34

Look, I think once you are in physical AI, you should basically understand that manufacturing is part of your tech stack. Like it just is.

1:39:46

And by the way, energy is part of your tech stack.

1:39:51

Land development, real estate is part of your tech stack.

1:39:54

That's just what it's going to be.

1:39:56

People don't think about it like that, but it's true.

1:39:57

Of course, there you know, I I've you know, Tesla just crushes.

1:40:02

If you look at this list of things, you're just like >> Yeah. They got it all. So good.

1:40:07

Um but there's just so much to do. >> Yeah. Yeah. You know what I mean?

1:40:12

>> Is that Is that Is that Is that We can see all the things We can see all the things Tesla's doing. That's cool.

1:40:15

I'm like There's a million other >> I can still help you mine.

1:40:20

I can still I can still get some food to to some peeps. You know what I mean? So you get the idea.

1:40:25

>> Is that Is that Is that really when you're pitching investors around Adams in this new vision, is it basically like there's a lot of jobs to do in the world.

1:40:34

We're going to do it with physical AI.

1:40:36

And you're basically betting on applying my general ethos to all these categories over time.

1:40:42

No, you got you got to be able to pick your spots.

1:40:45

If you are too broad, people like, "Dude, what's wrong with you?"

1:40:51

Now, you know, I think every entrepreneur always gets that.

1:40:54

Like, you know, I I I joke around like, "In the '90s I could dude, I'm an old guy.

1:40:58

What are you going to do?"

1:40:59

In the '90s it's like, "Dude, Microsoft's going to kill you. Like, why do you think?"

1:41:03

Then in the 2000s it was like, "Why isn't Google going to do this?"

1:41:08

In the 2010s it's like, "Dude, that looks like Uber's thing."

1:41:10

In the you know, now it's like if you're talking about physical AI, it's like that's Tesla.

1:41:15

That They are the They are the incumbent.

1:41:18

They are And not just the incumbent, they're also just doing great awesome stuff. >> But find your spot. Yeah.

1:41:22

Know yourself, know what you're good at, be self-aware, and find the thing that is your business soulmate, for sure.

1:41:31

But also know you're in an ecosystem and you need to find spot. >> Mhm.

1:41:38

What was your experience like in dot com and the the financial crisis broadly in 2008?

1:41:44

Uh okay, so basically I sold I sold my peer-to-peer CDN Akamai meets BitTorrent in 2007 to Akamai. >> Okay.

1:41:54

So I was earning out when that happened and I was I just started I think I didn't last very long in that earn out. So I was the CXO.

1:42:05

I was like an advisor and a CXO. >> Okay.

1:42:08

Little known fact, I was a I was blogging. Okay.

1:42:11

I was like a tech influencer blogger. >> There we go.

1:42:14

There is a a blog still out there called Swooshing. Yeah. Okay.

1:42:19

Crazy amazing ridiculous content. >> [laughter] >> Okay?

1:42:24

I was in the click I was in the click economy guys. I was in it.

1:42:26

Okay, but um so I was I was a advisor and CXO for like five different companies at a time and so I'd help them on their deals or I would be their CTO. >> Yeah.

1:42:38

Or I would you know, help them sell or product or whatever, but I could always just put the phone down and forget.

1:42:46

>> So you're somewhat insulated from like the mortgage crash.

1:42:48

Like Yeah, I mean my thing was I was trying to figure out I was getting a bunch of my friends together and saying, "Okay, do you have a mortgage with Bank of America? I do too. Let's pool our thing.

1:42:56

I'm going to go to Bank of America and say, 'I will buy these mortgages off for 40 cents on the dollar.'"

1:43:05

And cuz you're selling them on the market for 10 cents. >> Interesting.

1:43:08

>> Could be fun and then they're like Get out of here.

1:43:13

>> [laughter] >> That's the crazy That's wild. What about dot com?

1:43:16

Uh you're talking about the '90s?

1:43:20

>> Yeah, the '90s like late '90s like I mean you're still you're at that point you're like sort of starting your career, right?

1:43:24

But it it's an interesting place to start a career in tech.

1:43:27

Like a lot of people watched that and said So look, that was a We did peer-to-peer file sharing at a company called Scour. Okay?

1:43:35

So, some people did Napster, some went to like you know, all the ones that came after, BitTorrent, all the way to like What was the one that Zenstrom did?

1:43:45

KaZaA or some of these others, right?

1:43:48

We were the OG file sharing. Okay?

1:43:51

Um Michael Ovitz was on the board.

1:43:54

Ron Burkle was on the board. LA, okay?

1:43:56

Doing a tech Doing tech in LA was like being a finance guy in Fresno.

1:44:01

They're like don't know what the hell is going on.

1:44:05

They're like Who are you?

1:44:07

Um and um you're a little bit sheltered from it in LA.

1:44:12

Every time you went to the the Silicon Silicon Valley, it was like wild and crazy and like every bar was like packed.

1:44:22

Like after hours, like happy hour thing, like things were bubbling.

1:44:24

And the crazy part is not just what happened during the the run-up. It was post.

1:44:29

I was raising money on this peer-to-peer CDN that I didn't have I didn't pay myself a salary for for 4 years.

1:44:35

I was raising money in two in late 2001 for a networking software company.

1:44:41

Are you freaking kidding me?

1:44:45

And so, I remember going to one of these going to a bar to meet up with a VC. And this is like 2002. And it's empty.

1:44:55

Like this thing that would be mega packed just 2 years earlier.

1:44:57

I mean, we're talking Dust Bowl tumbleweeds. Empty.

1:45:03

And this VC, I wish I remember who it was cuz it'd be amazing.

1:45:08

Uh was like Yeah, Travis, dude, I think I think it's all done. It's over.

1:45:14

>> [laughter] >> He told you it's over?

1:45:14

I'm like what do you mean?

1:45:16

He's like all the software that could be invented has been invented. Wow.

1:45:21

>> [laughter] >> We're done. And he meant it. He meant it.

1:45:23

He was like it's been real, dude. Let's have a whiskey. Let's go. We're done.

1:45:28

[laughter] That's incredible.

1:45:29

>> How have you have you processed the last 2 years when uh people are able to raise an amount of money that took you four different rooms in this you know entire you know process and they can just raise it literally without it without a deck often.

1:45:45

Uh they can just pull pull it together. >> Look, it's all good.

1:45:48

Like I don't I I just have because you know when you build a company the way I built it which is like my current one where you're literally under the radar.

1:45:57

It means that you are powered by you have an internal fulfillment.

1:46:01

You're not like caring what others think.

1:46:04

You you get internally fulfilled with building. >> Yeah.

1:46:09

And um I don't look at somebody go oh dude, that's I had it so much harder uphill both ways to school whatever.

1:46:16

You know, I don't think like that.

1:46:21

It's it's it's more about the excellence of the process. Yeah.

1:46:23

So I'm like well how do you raise money?

1:46:26

And they're like oh yeah, just throw a deck to the guy.

1:46:28

I'm like okay, well then that's not a thing. Yeah.

1:46:30

What is a thing is going all the way until it hurts.

1:46:35

If you're doing something and it's easy, it's not valuable.

1:46:38

And I'll I'll explain like it let's just think of like a like a marathoner. Yeah. World class marathoner.

1:46:46

On mile 21, is that dude smiling? No, he's not smiling.

1:46:51

By the way, if he is smiling, you know what's about to happen?

1:46:54

He's about to get his ass whooped. >> [laughter] >> Okay? >> It's over. Because why?

1:46:57

Because somebody else who's down for the pain will go harder and further and pass him. >> Yeah.

1:47:04

And so if you're getting money easy, I'm like why didn't you go harder?

1:47:08

You could have done it better and more. Mhm.

1:47:10

Now you don't do things hard just cuz.

1:47:12

Maybe it's like it just doesn't matter, dude.

1:47:14

Like I got to go do something else that's hard.

1:47:16

But the key is like if money matters, which I think we would say it does, especially in certain categories, you need to be the best in the world at it.

1:47:25

And it's not enough to say it was easy.

1:47:27

If anybody comes to me and says a strategic thing was easy, I'm like, you messed up.

1:47:32

You could have been way better and gone way further, more competitive advantage, more differentiation, get it together.

1:47:43

Give me the update on the Texas >> Robbins right now. >> it. I love it.

1:47:45

No, I think people I think people need to hear this. >> They do.

1:47:48

And and yeah, the challenge is like when when if raising money is super easy and then you actually start building and you're like, whoa, actually money doesn't money makes this possible, but it doesn't make the work easy. Yeah.

1:48:01

And isn't it funny that some of the greatest fundraisers they the critique is always like, oh well, they are raising too much money.

1:48:05

You look at Elon, Sam, all these crazy deals and people are like, well, like, okay, we you it's good nice that you're good, but like are you too good? And it's the same thing. >> the thing.

1:48:15

Uh, you know, back in the day, 2010's reference, like there was a problem with getting massa money. Yeah.

1:48:22

There was a problem with that.

1:48:24

Because it was easy money and it was too loose. Yeah.

1:48:31

And so people would get loose with the culture of the investor that they were getting the money from. >> Sure.

1:48:38

And so you had to be careful.

1:48:38

So if somebody got massa money, I'd be like, dude, you got to you got to grind.

1:48:44

It was it was maybe a little too easy.

1:48:46

And you still still to this day.

1:48:49

So so um there's nothing wrong with money as a as a sort of a competitive advantage or a strategic weapon. It's okay.

1:49:00

Like that's part of business. It's necessary.

1:49:02

But treat it with respect.

1:49:05

Last question about Texas.

1:49:07

For the Californians that are thinking about making a trip out there, Austin, Dallas, Houston, what do you recommend? Well, look, I'm Austin.

1:49:14

Now, I own a place in Austin.

1:49:18

I've owned it for 5 years.

1:49:18

I'm a avid I would say almost professional water skier. Nice. slalom skiing. I'll send a video. Put it up. It's sick. We haven't even started.

1:49:32

[laughter] Uh so, I've owned a place there for 5 years.

1:49:38

Right on the lake, Lake Austin.

1:49:38

20 minutes from the city. Lake life. Hell yeah. Go for it.

1:49:41

I get a little bit FOMO on like these people going to Florida. I'm like, "Dude."

1:49:50

>> [laughter] >> I'm like, "So much Florida action. Like, come on, homies."

1:49:52

Like I know it's it's been a it's been a bloodbath for every every single guy going to Florida.

1:49:59

But like yeah, like every weekend this year I've had this year's in Texas.

1:50:04

Uh you ever take calls while you water skiing? Like AirPods? I wish, dude. I should.

1:50:09

>> [laughter] >> Be good. I'd love it. Don't get me excited.

1:50:11

Well, well, I went to Serranic, which does the boats, the autonomous and I'm like Build me a water skiing boat. Water skiing boat. Ooh, okay.

1:50:17

I just want a water ski and like >> [laughter] >> I'm like, "Dude, I want to water ski."

1:50:25

It's I'm like, "Dude, [clears throat] I want to water ski."

1:50:28

>> [laughter] >> Pretty viral.

1:50:30

Uh who should who should come You're you're poking your head up.

1:50:34

Who should come work for you? Yeah. 60 seconds. Who do you want?

1:50:36

Not not any individual like one individual person, but like the I have a message for this one guy who didn't take my offer.

1:50:45

Um Look, I think the thing is is like we're just getting the best in this is so cliché and like whatever, banal, but um you look, we are in the physical AI space.

1:50:58

So, you it's a mix of sort of let's call it sensors, compute, the software that sits on top of those things.

1:51:09

Um uh I mean it's just it's just going to be great engineers and then you go through what I would call the physical AI stack and you would you know, but um It's a long project and someone for who wants a career.

1:51:23

It's like infrastructure software guys cuz you got to have epic AI on the back end and the way to use that sort of has to be epic.

1:51:31

You have to have physical AI model people who are sort of translating foundational models into the physical world and and and there's some core research and some just like I know all the white papers and we're just going to we're building and going end to end or some hybrid version of that.

1:51:47

Um You have just normal software cuz you got applications that sit on top that then of course customers see in some fashion or another.

1:51:58

Actuation and manipulation on the mechanical and sort of robotic side of things and mechanical engineers that build machines.

1:52:08

You know, of course remember I've got construction real estate like I could go on. It's lots of cool stuff.

1:52:12

Go to the website there's lots of stuff. Go to the website folks. Go to the website. >> adams. co adams. co and by the way adams.

1:52:19

co/vision I just threw down. I know I know. Check it out.

1:52:25

Well thank you for It's amazing. Yeah This is awesome. Really quickly. Thank you so much. Yeah.

1:52:37

We will talk to you soon.

1:52:39

>> [laughter] >> Let me tell you about Phantom Cash.

1:52:39

Fund your wallet without exchanges or middle men and spend with the Phantom card and let me also tell you about Restream.

1:52:46

One live stream 30 plus destinations.

1:52:48

If you want to multi stream go to restream.

1:52:50

com and we are shifting the schedule.

1:52:52

We will continue to talk to more guests.

1:52:55

We have Gustav from Spotify in the Restream waiting room.

1:53:00

Let's bring him into the TV pin ultradome.

1:53:03

Gustav how are you doing? What's going on? Hey Don. Hey Jordy. How's it going?

1:53:07

Thank you so much for taking the time to join us.

1:53:09

First, tell us where are you?

1:53:12

So, it looks like I'm in some teenager's bedroom from the '80s here.

1:53:15

It's actually a small studio we have in Austin.

1:53:18

I'm here for South by Southwest.

1:53:20

You know, the first time I went to South by Southwest, the coolest party was the Spotify house and I have a very fond memory of going.

1:53:25

I think this was in 2013 or 2020 2012, something like that.

1:53:29

So, you've clearly been there a long time.

1:53:31

>> Yeah, it's always a great time.

1:53:31

What's what's on the agenda?

1:53:34

What is the message that you're trying to send to the world at South by Southwest today?

1:53:40

Well, first of all, I'm I'm here because Spotify is turning 20. Wow.

1:53:44

>> most companies don't don't make it past 5 years.

1:53:48

>> [laughter] >> Yeah, an overnight success 20 years in the making for sure. So, that's why I'm here.

1:53:52

And then, you know, obviously I'm here talking about what it is that we're doing, our our thoughts and plans for the future. Yeah.

1:53:58

So, I mean, I'm sure you're getting a million questions about AI.

1:54:03

How do you see AI fitting into the Spotify ecosystem?

1:54:05

There's a whole bunch of super useful ways that I think people would be super excited about.

1:54:09

There's other people that are a little bit worried about AI and how it might play out in Spotify's world.

1:54:14

What do you thinking good looks like over the next couple years?

1:54:20

Yeah, of course everyone is asking about AI.

1:54:21

And as you said, there are a lot of, you know, hot takes and and breathless takes on on Twitter all the time.

1:54:25

And and there's a lot of dystopian takes. Yeah.

1:54:29

>> I'm very positive about the future and I think if we look at the consumer experience, I think it's going to change completely.

1:54:36

And not just for Spotify, I think all consumer companies are going to have to change what they are and how they work because I think consumers are sitting over here, you know, with Claude or with ChatGPT or with Gemini and they're getting freaking AGI as intelligence and then you're going to meet a service over here and it's dumb as a rock.

1:54:53

That's not going to work.

1:54:54

Like it's going to it's going to need to get intelligent.

1:54:56

So, so what we've said, what I've said at our latest earnings call is that we're going to build the first, the world's first truly intelligent agentic media system.

1:55:03

Those are a lot of buzzwords, but I'll tell you what I actually think they mean.

1:55:09

What What I think is so interesting with generative AI versus kind of old-school machine learning and personalization, which Spotify's done for a long time, is that computers finally understand English.

1:55:20

What's the What's the point of that?

1:55:22

Well, Spotify for a long time, you know, when we develop the product, we always had these these uh user focus groups.

1:55:26

You know, you invite 10 people into a room.

1:55:31

You have like deep English language discussions with them about what they actually feel and what they actually want.

1:55:36

And then you went and built this average product that could only measure skips and swipes, and you tried to squint and approximate what the user was actually thinking.

1:55:43

The promise of generative AI is you just talk to us in English at a scale of 750 million people.

1:55:48

So, I kind of think of it as a 750 million people user research always ongoing into you.

1:55:52

That That's where products are going to be in the future.

1:55:56

And I want Spotify to lead that.

1:55:56

So, we've been investing in some of these products. The first one was AI DJ.

1:55:59

Where you can literally talk to Spotify.

1:56:02

You can ask You can say, you know, "I want to go for a run.

1:56:07

Give me some EDM playlist with big drops at 160 bpm for for my running cadence."

1:56:12

And then earlier this year, we launched prompted playlists, which takes a one step further, where you can build your own playlist using English language.

1:56:20

You're literally writing your own algorithm.

1:56:21

So, if you want a playlist that goes out and looks at TikTok and what's trending right now, then takes that, filters it to your taste on Spotify, then removes any track you've already heard, you can literally do that today.

1:56:35

And you can You can schedule it to update daily or weekly.

1:56:38

So, so that's what we've done so far, and then today what I talked about is sort of the next step, which is uh taste profile.

1:56:43

This is what users have been asking us for forever.

1:56:46

So, like, hidden in all these systems, we have We have a view of who you are, musically and podcast-wise and audiobook-wise, but you could never actually see that.

1:56:56

You can see hints of it in Wrapped, but you can never actually see it.

1:56:58

So, the idea is pretty simple.

1:57:00

We're just going to let you see who we think you are, and then we're going to let you edit it in English and just say like, "No, that's not true.

1:57:06

I'm not like that anymore. I want to be like this."

1:57:08

Yeah, it makes >> That would excite me a lot.

1:57:10

Yeah, yeah, it makes so much sense from a personalization standpoint.

1:57:13

I mean, Spotify's been doing machine learning for probably most of those 20 years.

1:57:19

More certainly more than 10.

1:57:21

What what How do you see yourself integrating with what OpenAI is doing with Sora where there's a persona and a person, an individual can kind of decide how their avatar is used.

1:57:33

It feels like there's a natural extension here where not all artists, but some artists are going to want to go to you and say, "Hey, look, I'm a I'm a rock musician, but if people want to listen to my songs remixed with AI as country songs, that's fine as long as I keep getting a check.

1:57:52

It's win-win for everyone."

1:57:52

Has there been demand from musicians for that type of experience that feels like maybe the next year or later this year? Yeah, 100%.

1:58:01

So, this is the other big topic.

1:58:03

We just talked about consumer experience, but what about generative content?

1:58:06

And of course, everyone is asking me about that and specifically music.

1:58:11

And I think what's happening today is people can make net new songs Mhm. using these services. Yeah.

1:58:16

Uh and and and that's great.

1:58:18

I'm sure creators will will I'm sure most creators are already using these tools whether they they say so or not.

1:58:26

Um That's a big Sorry, sorry to interrupt, but that's that's a big thing because you uh there's this massive in in tech like, you know, traditional tech Mhm.

1:58:35

uh people will tell you they're using an AI tool even if they're not really, right?

1:58:40

They want to be constantly projecting like I'm using the best tools all the time.

1:58:43

I'm using them more than you.

1:58:45

I've got, you know, 10 Mac minis running. They'll tell you. >> 100%.

1:58:50

>> But in music, it's like the exact opposite where like people are from my experience talking to musicians and people in the music industry, they're like, "This is changing everything. It's crazy. It's magical. It's an amazing tool."

1:59:02

But then they won't talk about it at all, right?

1:59:04

They they it's like, you know, they'll never talk about >> it.

1:59:08

And and I I understand that.

1:59:08

I I have a lot of empathy for for musicians and artists being scared because everything is changing and and change is scary.

1:59:17

So, you know, I want to be clear that it's understandable that people have a lot of fear. Yeah.

1:59:21

Uh but the way we think about it is, you know, technology can can cause a lot of chaos.

1:59:29

Um but if you can combine technology with a good business model, it can be very good for the world.

1:59:34

So, what I'm excited about is today, I think some artists that use these tools, they get help with creating that new music.

1:59:42

But most of the existing [clears throat] artists, they they they just get no benefit from AI.

1:59:48

And I think that seems wrong to me.

1:59:48

I think um what you mentioned, John, is if you're an existing artist, what many of them do today is they work with other people to do remixes and covers, right? Of their music.

2:00:00

It's it's like existing IP.

2:00:00

This is what you do in movies.

2:00:02

Like existing IP is supposed to be the most valuable part, not the least valuable part.

2:00:07

So, I do think that many musicians this this will be voluntary, of course will be very interested in letting their super fans play around with their music if they could get compensated correctly.

2:00:19

It is the business model that needs to be figured out.

2:00:20

And this is what Spotify did during piracy.

2:00:23

We took the long painful route of not going the illegal route and figuring it out. It was hard and painful.

2:00:28

This is what we want to do here as well. Yeah.

2:00:30

Yeah, it feels like uh I mean, you hear these stories about breakout songs.

2:00:34

There was a song called Old Town Road that sampled Nine Inch Nails and I think the original artist that remixed that song didn't actually have the rights cuz he just sort of whipped it up on a weekend.

2:00:43

But then once the song exploded, the agencies came in and negotiated and I think they accepted an award on stage together and everyone was happy.

2:00:51

But Spotify feels like in a unique place to actually unleash that level of collaboration in an economically like you know, safe way that everyone feels happy at the end of the day.

2:01:05

I I'm also interested in hearing about how social features are evolving on Spotify.

2:01:12

It feels like with a lot of the generative AI projects, there's a lot of stuff that goes out broadly, but there's also a lot of you're just having a new creative tool that allows you to tell express yourself to a smaller audience.

2:01:25

I find that a lot of the generative images that I put I don't put them on my Instagram.

2:01:29

I text them to a group chat and I'm wondering how you see the the social features changing on Spotify or where they are how fast they're growing anything that you can tell me about social on Spotify these days.

2:01:40

So you're you're completely right.

2:01:42

We started investing we actually had a lot of social features when we started. Yeah.

2:01:45

The the idea was to sort of approximate the experience of Napster partly on the content side.

2:01:52

But then sort of uh you know, Facebook and your friend graph cuz cuz back then friends were your main tool of recommendation. Yeah.

2:01:58

And then your algorithms came and and everyone everyone got like an algorithmic friend and we didn't invest as much. Yeah.

2:02:03

But since since a few years back we started investing a lot because we think that today these media platforms they're they're single player experiences. Mhm. They're kind of lonely. They're mostly passive.

2:02:17

You sit and swipe and swipe and swipe until you're like falling asleep, right?

2:02:22

We we don't want services to be like that.

2:02:23

We would like you to lean in and we would like you to we would like to turn Spotify into an interactive multiplayer experience.

2:02:29

So what that sounds like hyperbole. What I mean with that?

2:02:33

I mean features like Jam which is growing like crazy for us.

2:02:35

Many many many tens of millions of users and still growing.

2:02:40

Where you can join a queue and sort of have this shared music experience together in the same place or actually remotely.

2:02:46

And then you have something that's been around for a long time which is collaborative playlist which have insane retention and engagement.

2:02:54

Where people collaborate around a playlist and they want to talk about that.

2:02:56

So, we are investing quite a lot in turning Spotify into this place where you are with your friends. Yeah.

2:03:04

Where you're not just by yourself. So, I'm 100% with you.

2:03:07

I'm very excited about trying to create sort of a more positive future if that makes sense.

2:03:14

One thing I really love about having worked at Spotify for 20 years is that we kind of locked into music which almost everyone agrees that music is a good in the world.

2:03:24

There's very few people who think that music is bad. But then we kept that.

2:03:27

You know, we went into podcasts because we thought it was like long-form discussions.

2:03:31

People spoke in full sentences.

2:03:33

It was very the perfect counter to the shortification of media that was happening.

2:03:39

And then last year we went into into books in a big way.

2:03:42

So, we try to do things that we think are good for the world.

2:03:43

Internally we have some beliefs.

2:03:48

Uh not all of which are public cuz we want to keep some secrets.

2:03:52

But one of them is no regrets. Yeah.

2:03:54

We try we focus on content that has very little regret.

2:03:56

And we we actually invest >> are to me to me you guys are the the anti-slop company platform.

2:04:02

And there's not any there really aren't any of them left.

2:04:06

You could go on you can go on LinkedIn now and you could spend 24 hours straight scrolling through short-form >> [laughter] >> video.

2:04:14

Uh and and so talk talk to us about running running a company where it feels like you're constantly making decisions to avoid doing things that would almost certainly get a lot of engagement and usage but aren't necessarily aligned with the kind of core values of the company.

2:04:31

Because eventually companies get 20 years in and they just start doing things that are just optimizing for all those metrics and a lot of that every everyone has, you know, incredible values until you're a public company and and you've got all these, you know, different incentives.

2:04:51

Yeah, that's that's so true. And that is a risk.

2:04:53

That that's one of the benefits of me and the other co-CEO Alex Nordstrom having been at this company for like 17 18 years.

2:05:00

And so, you know, those those values are are ingrained in us.

2:05:03

Now, the way we think about it is I think it's both something that is very motivating for for me as a person and for many of our employees.

2:05:13

But it has also to be aligned with your business model, right?

2:05:15

And it is because Spotify in terms of revenue is majority a subscription service, you know, close to 90% of the revenue is from subscription.

2:05:23

And if you think about what that means, it means that a Spotify user every month, they're going to vote with their wallet.

2:05:30

And if you ask yourself the question, when you vote, what do you to to pay for something, uh what do you what is it that you're going to pay for?

2:05:39

Are you going to pay for time spent? I I don't think so.

2:05:42

You know, when we survey users for the different services out there, I won't say which one, but many of the big services, even young people regret 70% of the time they spend there.

2:05:51

On Spotify, they regret less than 3%, Yeah, wow.

2:05:53

and I think if you're going to pay for something, you're not going to pay for something you regret.

2:05:57

That's like a that's an oxymoron, right?

2:06:01

So, it's very it's very aligned with our business model.

2:06:03

I actually think you pay for what you want to be, something aspirational, right?

2:06:10

So, so I think it's both a value that we have, but it is actually very much aligned with the business model.

2:06:15

I think if we were 90% an advertising model, the pressure to maximize for engagement would be very tricky.

2:06:23

So, it's both a value and something that actually works for us.

2:06:25

So, so we're just leaning into that because we think it's a differentiated proposition.

2:06:30

And right now, I feel like the need for for low regret content is increasing, not decreasing. >> Yeah.

2:06:36

Yeah, it's it's such a it's such a wildly different experience going into the Spotify app Mhm.

2:06:39

for me, where it's always like it's always intentional.

2:06:43

I'm coming in and like I'm doing the thinking around what what what content do I want to consume?

2:06:51

And that is just completely opposite to every other app that I use, which is deciding basically on the fly what is going to keep him what is going to keep him in the app as much as possible.

2:07:02

And that's not necessarily >> that's why I'm so excited about this the use of control, right?

2:07:08

Because I think it's very aligned with that to give back control to the user.

2:07:12

Like now you control the algorithm. It's tricky.

2:07:15

Um but that's the path we're going.

2:07:17

Uh because it's very much aligned with uh no regrets.

2:07:19

If you can tell ahead of time what you want Spotify to do, you're not [clears throat] going to you know, chances that you regret that are very low.

2:07:26

And and we've seen this, people saying like, you know, when we test this internally, the taste profile uh one of the people I spoke to said, "I used to be into classical music a lot when I was younger, but then the Spotify algorithm like it it preferred popular music, so I fell out of it.

2:07:41

I went into my taste profile and just said I want the classical shelf on my homepage every day." Yeah.

2:07:46

And now they're back into it.

2:07:48

Because now that's what they get fed with.

2:07:50

And I think that's very cool when you can like game yourself to what you actually want to be.

2:07:53

Yeah, I I wouldn't have predicted that Spotify would be the first one to have that sort of like natural language control over your feed.

2:08:01

People have been demanding that in across all different social media platforms.

2:08:05

Threads launched something where you can say "Dear Threads" and then it will update your "Dear Algo". That's it. "Dear Algo".

2:08:11

Um but but but yeah, that makes a ton of sense.

2:08:13

I think it's because of the advertising model for us.

2:08:17

If we the risk here is that you the user takes control and says something that lowers engagement a bit. Yeah.

2:08:23

For us it's fine because they pay per month. Yeah.

2:08:25

We don't monetize the engagement directly for the most part. >> Yeah, yeah. That I think is the key. Yeah.

2:08:30

What what's the biggest misconception about Spotify right now?

2:08:35

Oh, the biggest misconception.

2:08:35

Well, now now okay, you'll have to stop me.

2:08:38

I'll get up on my little soapbox here.

2:08:41

This is something [laughter] that has hurt me so much for so many years.

2:08:45

Uh because we got it wrong.

2:08:47

Uh this is about artist payouts and the pay and and the the idea that we pay less to artists than than other companies.

2:08:55

And for the longest time, you know, this has come back a long time, people talked about per stream payouts and so forth.

2:09:00

And the the the sort of advice at the time was you shouldn't engage because you only bring more attention to the matter.

2:09:06

And if we just keep paying more than anyone else, the record is going to set itself straight. Yeah. That doesn't happen.

2:09:11

What happens when you leave a narrative like that forever is that it becomes truth, right?

2:09:17

So, I kind of want to set that straight.

2:09:19

So, if you look at Spotify, we've paid out over 70 billion dollars to the music industry.

2:09:23

11 billion of those just last year.

2:09:26

I want to be clear, that's more than anyone has paid anyone ever in the music industry. Yeah.

2:09:32

>> So, like the music industry is bigger than it ever was.

2:09:34

People talk about the heydays of the '80s and the and the CD era, but the music industry is bigger than that. Yeah.

2:09:39

And not only that, you know, in the CD era, the sort of distributor, the the record store, they you know, we we give about 70% of what we make back to the music industry.

2:09:51

If we bring in $1, we get about 70 70 cents to the music industry. Yeah.

2:09:53

The record store, if you wanted to be at the front of the record store, could keep 70% or 100.

2:09:57

So, like the pie is bigger and the share of the pie that goes to the music industry is bigger than it ever was.

2:10:06

And so, when I tell that to people, they're like, "Huh, but I keep hearing that you guys pay less per stream, right?

2:10:11

Like you're evil somehow, aren't you?" Yeah.

2:10:13

And my point is like and this is now backed by public data.

2:10:19

No No in the industry pays per stream. We all pay per user. Yeah.

2:10:24

And we all pay roughly 70% per user.

2:10:28

You know, Apple, Amazon, YouTube, all of them.

2:10:30

The thing is, Spotify has almost three to four times the amount of usage per user over competitors.

2:10:37

Which is crazy to me, actually.

2:10:40

When I first saw it, I couldn't believe it.

2:10:41

But now it's backed by public data.

2:10:43

So, what happens if you take the same amount of money, but we divide it by three to four times more streams? Yeah.

2:10:48

Of course, our per stream is going to be lower.

2:10:51

But that's because people use the product more. Yeah.

2:10:54

And the solution to that isn't to make the product three, four times worse to gain the per stream metric.

2:10:59

Or raise the price three, four times, cuz that that would just be bad for the entire music industry. Yeah.

2:11:04

So, this is the misconception I want to set straight. No one pays per stream. We all pay per user.

2:11:08

And we happen to have much more engagement per user than the other platforms.

2:11:13

And they've actually sort of weaponized and used this against us uh to say like we pay more more than Spotify per stream. >> Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

2:11:19

And that's that's important.

2:11:21

How how are you thinking about the evolution of Spotify's role with live events?

2:11:26

I feel like in the age of AI, the recommendations get even better, because I listen to a lot of different genres.

2:11:32

I don't go to a lot of different genres of concerts.

2:11:34

There's definitely bands that I listen to where I'm like, "I'm too old for that mosh pit.

2:11:38

I'm not going to that heavy [laughter] metal concert."

2:11:40

But I would love to go to this particular >> for the mosh pit. Maybe. Maybe. Yeah, yeah.

2:11:45

We'll we'll we'll go to the Sleep Token concert together.

2:11:47

But um but but it it does feel like um like Spotify will be in an increasingly more interesting role in actually surfacing uh awareness around live in-person events, which also might get more important in an age of AI, in an age of unlimited content.

2:12:07

Uh you might actually see this barbell effect where there's endless content, and then very unique experiences in the real world.

2:12:17

What do you think about live events?

2:12:19

Yeah, I I think you're 100% right. Mhm.

2:12:21

And two things there I think are important.

2:12:23

You know, if everything in the world is kind of a power law, right? >> Yeah.

2:12:27

You have the endless the endless long tail. Yep.

2:12:28

But you also have a very big head. Yeah.

2:12:30

So it's you know, people ask me like are Netflix or YouTube in it? I'm like, both.

2:12:33

The biggest Netflix shows are bigger than ever in monoculture.

2:12:37

And YouTube is bigger than ever.

2:12:38

And the same is true in music, right? >> Yeah.

2:12:40

So there are more indie artists than there has ever been. >> Mhm.

2:12:42

But Taylor Swift is bigger than anyone has ever been.

2:12:44

And the Eras Tour is the biggest thing that ever happened. Yeah.

2:12:47

So people want me to say it's one or the other. Yeah. And it's actually both.

2:12:50

And I think you're you're you're right because I think what's happening is and and this will probably be exaggerated even more with generative content.

2:12:57

As people get more and more individual content, which they like, Mhm.

2:13:01

they also feel more and more lonely.

2:13:02

So the need for like shared experiences increases. >> Totally.

2:13:06

And this is just not me theorizing.

2:13:08

We're actually selling tickets on Spotify since a few years back >> Yeah.

2:13:12

because we have such good data on who Taylor Swift's very biggest fan is.

2:13:16

That That is one person in the world >> Yeah. in terms of streams.

2:13:18

Actually it [laughter] is, right? That is, yes. Mathematically.

2:13:22

>> So we've been selling tickets for a while and we've sold over 1 and 1/2 billion dollars worth of tickets now.

2:13:27

And that is increasing quickly, which proves your point.

2:13:29

Like live events are becoming more popular than ever and bigger than ever.

2:13:32

And for many artists, the fact that we're selling tickets is very important because for many artists, especially well both big ones and up-and-coming ones, it can be more than 50% of their income.

2:13:41

So you have the royalties from from from us, but touring is a very big part >> Mhm. of most artists' income.

2:13:47

Or is is Spotify uniquely well equipped to enter the live ticketing market because you come from an origin where you had to do big deals with big organizations and it was not this permissionless company that some other platforms have engaged with?

2:14:07

You had to go to the table in Hollywood and sit down with these folks and it feels like you sort of have to do that again if you want to sell ever more tickets.

2:14:16

Yeah, it's funny that you say you know, we've never been this permissionless company.

2:14:19

That is true and has been painful watching other people [laughter] just run with like you know, whatever illegal content or something.

2:14:24

They're so fast but over time it's it's It catches up to you. Yeah.

2:14:29

Yeah, it has in many cases. But uh but you're right.

2:14:34

We are well positioned to work with that industry and right now we're actually selling for all of them.

2:14:38

You know, we're an aggregator.

2:14:38

We're an aggregator of content and we're an aggregator of concert tickets.

2:14:42

So I think we're really well positioned.

2:14:46

We're already telling most artists where they should tour, in which cities they have the most fans, and which songs they love.

2:14:50

And now it's pretty natural for us to help them actually sell tickets.

2:14:54

Obviously the scalping problem is enormous and that's something where we are really well positioned to help.

2:15:00

The analogy I'd like to make is that your stream count is is like proof of work in crypto.

2:15:07

It's very hard to fake your stream count. Right?

2:15:09

So so using that I think is is very important and we want to work with the with the with the live nation right now.

2:15:15

>> like, oh you want to buy tickets to this artist that you've not streamed a single time.

2:15:20

>> [laughter] >> It's like, I don't know about that. >> Exactly.

2:15:22

And the artists, they absolutely we've done some of our own events, you know, for smaller events for just the super fans sometime.

2:15:29

And you can tell the difference in in the room when it's just like the stalker level fans in the room.

2:15:36

>> [laughter and gasps] >> Uh I want to talk I want to get your kind of high-level view on podcasting, how it's how it's evolving.

2:15:43

Uh it I started doing some work with podcast when I was in college back in 2017.

2:15:48

At that time it's it felt late to me.

2:15:53

Uh it it always it always it always feels late.

2:15:57

Of course I was totally wrong.

2:15:57

The the biggest deals and and many of the biggest shows were still to come and you guys obviously made a splash with some of the larger acquisitions in the space, but how are you processing the industry today?

2:16:13

So, what what happened that was very interesting for us is we looked at the podcasting industry.

2:16:19

Actually, the way we came about it was you know, we we found a lot of our best features looking at either our our users, what they do, or the publishers start uploading like audiobooks in Germany. What is that?

2:16:28

And then we realized there's a demand for audiobooks.

2:16:32

The podcast is a case of looking at our developers because there is this unique crowd that are often early adopters of trends, and they have the power to just build what they want to see in the world.

2:16:41

And we saw them sort of hacking podcast into the main Spotify app again and again at hack weeks.

2:16:47

So, we started looking at the podcasting industry, and we saw that it was it was amazing.

2:16:50

It was just an amazing pool of fantastic long-form content and very good creators, but it was just sort of left for dead.

2:16:56

So, we decided to go in there and bet that if we supported it, it would grow. And that worked out.

2:17:02

We we grew like crazy for for what was then called sort of traditional podcast, audio podcast.

2:17:09

Then what happened was and Joe Rogan was always the first with this.

2:17:13

Many podcasts started doing video.

2:17:14

But for a long time it was just Joe Rogan.

2:17:16

And the interesting thing is because we had Joe Rogan on our platform, we had to build video support.

2:17:21

It was partially thanks to him that we did it cuz he was like, "I can't be without video.

2:17:23

If you want the show, it has to be video."

2:17:25

We're like, "Oh are we going to build a full video stack for one podcast? I guess we are." Yeah. And then we built it. Yeah.

2:17:30

But that was very lucky for us because then we could see what video a podcast, how they performed and we saw that people listen a lot in the background and they dip in and out.

2:17:40

And we're like, "Huh, this is probably where the whole thing is going."

2:17:41

So, we started investing more.

2:17:44

And then all the creators started doing video video. Yeah.

2:17:47

So, what's interesting for us is that the audio podcast market was this like I don't know, couple of billion-dollar market. It wasn't that big. Yeah.

2:17:54

But because audio became video, they kind of pushed us into a much bigger market which is in video.

2:18:01

Which is, you know, 10 times bigger at least, one to orders of magnitude.

2:18:05

So, for us it was like a gift that the creators, quote unquote, forced us to get into this bigger market. Yeah.

2:18:11

So, we're very happy about it.

2:18:15

And what we find from creators like yourselves is they they want to multi-home. They want distribution.

2:18:21

They want to be on all the platforms. Yep.

2:18:23

And that's always been our, you know, in music we were always all the artists were multi-home.

2:18:28

All the book all the book authors we have they're multi-home.

2:18:31

So, so that's our strategy.

2:18:31

And then in terms of what we've done that really changed the trajectory for us is yes, technically we could have video podcast for a long time, but as you guys know who are into the details, audio podcast used to monetize in in a in a certain way with audio ads.

2:18:50

And what happened was when you couldn't have your dynamic audio ads, the DAI, when you went to video, actually, the weird thing is you put video on Spotify and you would make less money. Oh.

2:19:00

Which is completely wrong cuz the users loved it.

2:19:02

So, your experience got better, but you made less money. Yeah.

2:19:05

So, finally beginning of 2025, we solved that because what we said was, okay, we're just going to pay out of the premium pool You sure? for video podcasters.

2:19:12

So, now you're used you don't have to stuff ads into the podcast as much.

2:19:16

So, your user experience gets better, your retention goes up. >> Yep.

2:19:20

But you don't have compromise on economics.

2:19:21

We're going to pay as much.

2:19:24

And that really that made all the video podcasters come on board Spotify. That's amazing.

2:19:28

Well, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us.

2:19:31

>> we're we we've been kind of beating the beating the drum on we think there's a lot more shows for to to make like TBPN.

2:19:39

Basically, look at any cuz cuz in many ways we've done some interesting things on the formatting side, but You have done a lot of interesting things.

2:19:45

But but we just took what had worked in many ways traditional cable and I think that every single show on traditional cable is re is just sort of waiting to be rebuilt for the Spotify platform and and other platforms.

2:20:00

So, I think that lots more innovation to come.

2:20:03

>> this is such an innovative format. It's awesome. I watch it every day.

2:20:06

And and you know, because you guys publish the whole thing to Spotify, I catch up on it's amazing.

2:20:10

I love when we get a Spotify comment that is clearly someone who watched the video because they noticed something that you would only it wasn't really in the audio feed, but they were clearly watching the video.

2:20:20

>> You know, you said you said creators want to be multi-home. >> Yeah. Uh but I disagree.

2:20:24

I wish [laughter] we lived in a world where there was just Spotify.

2:20:27

We could just focus all of our energy there. >> that. I'll take it.

2:20:30

[laughter] So, keep it up. You got more work to do. Well, thank you so much.

2:20:33

Enjoy the rest of South by Southwest.

2:20:35

Just say hello to everyone for us and we'll talk to you soon. Goodbye.

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2:21:01

We are joined now by uh Tim.

2:21:03

Thank you so much for taking the time to come talk to us.

2:21:07

First time on the show, please introduce yourself.

2:21:09

>> Yeah, Tim Cadogan, CEO of GoFundMe.

2:21:11

Thank you very much for having me.

2:21:11

Tell me a little bit about your journey to GoFundMe. What was your backstory?

2:21:14

I started, you know, I came to Stanford in the mid-90s.

2:21:17

Uh I got sucked into the internet really early.

2:21:19

Non-traditional background.

2:21:21

Yeah, [laughter] yeah, yeah.

2:21:23

Uh did some startup stuff, ended up going to Yahoo, ran the ad business at Yahoo, then went to another startup where I was a VP of product. See this? Oh, man.

2:21:31

We're huge fans of Yahoo. We love that sound. We love Yahoo.

2:21:33

Not wearing a lot of purple being a redhead. That never worked out. >> Yeah. Yeah.

2:21:38

Yeah, five great years there, went to do my own startup in the ad space, OpenX, built that up. That was great.

2:21:44

But, got to thinking how I wanted to do something completely different. >> Yeah.

2:21:48

I had uh I'd become a search and rescue volunteer around 2010 up here in the mountains in the San Gabriels.

2:21:53

I loved that and I was thinking, hey, could I kind of run a company that also was really useful and helpful to people? Yeah.

2:22:00

Somehow got that GoFundMe job. Started March 2nd, 2020. Amazing.

2:22:05

The pandemic, I mean mayhem and just what a lesson in how valuable the platform was.

2:22:11

>> Wow, so you were joining right as I'm sure there was just a surge because of all the just dislocations.

2:22:17

>> literally it was that week where I think the world realized that this was global.

2:22:23

I had four days to meet people.

2:22:23

On the Friday I'm like, we'd better go remote.

2:22:27

I thought it would be like three weeks.

2:22:29

And then it was, you know, a year or so and yes, demand, I mean the the need of people on the platform in all the expected ways, the medical stuff, but also small businesses.

2:22:41

Tens of thousands of restaurants, bars, music venues having to furlough employees and lots of fundraisers being created often by their patrons who were like, we we love this restaurant.

2:22:50

It's our favorite local restaurant.

2:22:54

Yeah, that was actually that was that was the the silver lining of that moment was how much excitement and willingness there was from people that were in a better situation during COVID or maybe they were had chaos in their own life, but they still wanted to go out of their way and and the ingenuity of >> [clears throat] >> of individuals and businesses to like come up with ways to like make these kind of exchanges work.

2:23:16

Well, I mean it's actually it's bring up the silver lining point.

2:23:19

Like the silver that's often the case that when something difficult happens in our lives or in the community or a natural disaster, the silver lining and there really is not a lot of silver linings, but one is people want to come together and help each other in the face of that situation.

2:23:34

We see that again and again, whether it be an individual situation or like what happened here in LA last I was about to ask you about the fire.

2:23:40

So yeah, I know watch duty was on there. Is that correct? Oh my god.

2:23:43

I mean, you know, what so many so many nonprofits were helping. them out.

2:23:47

I live in Altadena, which is one of the towns Yeah, so you know, like we lost 6,000 homes.

2:23:52

We evacuated, you know, 20 minutes in.

2:23:55

Um And you've helped dozens of people personally. Exactly.

2:23:57

And we saw 260 million dollars raised for 10,000 families, churches, local businesses, and for the nonprofits like Watch Duty, Salvation Army, World Central Kitchen, so many people coming in and helping and Um it has been amazing to see in case my town, the community coming together and saying, you know, we care about each other and we're going to find a way through this.

2:24:20

So, what's the case study for the a GoFundMe project that goes that goes perfectly?

2:24:28

Uh there's a lot of, you know, I'm sure there's a lot of rough edges around where does the money go and what conditions does the money get released, all these different things that you have to grapple with.

2:24:37

Uh what does your team look like and then how is technology making that easier?

2:24:41

Well, I think you got about seven questions in there.

2:24:43

But, let's let's go with the first one.

2:24:45

What is a good fun I mean, the a really good campaign is you put together a story.

2:24:51

So, GoFundMe is first and foremost a storytelling platform.

2:24:56

You tell a clear story of who you are, what the situation is, what you need in terms of the help, i. e.

2:25:02

the funds, and what it's going to go to.

2:25:05

And then you put that on the internet and then you tell people about it.

2:25:08

And this is we actually launched yesterday this product called the Smart Fundraising Coach, which we can talk about more, but it helps every single one of these steps.

2:25:16

And then you get attention and you start with the people you know, your friends, your family, your neighbors, people in your church, in your sports team, whatever it is.

2:25:24

And then you build support from there. You build momentum.

2:25:28

You hopefully achieve what you're looking for. Maybe you exceed that.

2:25:29

And then throughout that process you set up to receive the money, set up for transfers, which could be you if it's for you or let's say I set it up for you.

2:25:39

Um, I'd set it up for you.

2:25:39

You would get an invitation to set up your account to be KYC'd Yeah. to receive the funds.

2:25:46

All the funds go to our payment processors, Adyen and Stripe.

2:25:48

They sit there until you've been KYC'd, and then money flows to you, and you get the help.

2:25:55

It's what we call help delivered. Mhm. Mhm.

2:25:58

Uh, yeah, there there's so much uh fear around AI right now, and oftentimes that uh people end up overlooking all the incredible parts of it, and that's a good example of uh anyone in the world being able to be like walked through, and basically get their hand-held through this process

2:26:17

that is a deeply, you know, if you're going and setting up uh a raise, it's usually not because of uh you know, it could be some like emergency or or really stressful situation, and so being able to give people that kind of um just like one-on-one guidance. >> It's exactly. So, I had this uh sort of >> It's exactly.

2:26:34

So, I had this uh sort of a couple of years ago.

2:26:38

Well, we have a team that helps some clients.

2:26:39

So, we have a customer success team that can help some, but we have like 10,000 10,000 people a day setting up a GoFundMe. Like, we can't Yeah.

2:26:47

deliver that from everyone. So, I was like Yeah.

2:26:49

>> My point to the team is like, look, AI, we can we could do that now.

2:26:51

We could give every single person who is considering asking for help, but asking for help is tough.

2:26:57

Like, none of us like it.

2:27:00

We were just talking in the back like, does any of us like asking for help? No. Like, we don't like it. It's hard.

2:27:06

It's psychologically difficult.

2:27:07

Can we give them the functional and the emotional help to go through that process?

2:27:12

So, that's what we built. >> Sure.

2:27:14

A lot of trial and error, actually.

2:27:15

Like, a lot of people think you plug the AI in, and it's better.

2:27:18

It's not like it [laughter] takes taken many months because we have to find not just the the functional, like, "Hey, it's time to pick your title." Yeah.

2:27:26

Now, it's time to share, which is one of the most difficult things.

2:27:29

We have to have to find the right tone Mhm.

2:27:31

to do that empathetically to help someone through those steps in the process so that they can get the help they need. >> Yeah.

2:27:39

What about uh AI on the donor side?

2:27:41

I'm thinking about if I show up and I'm like is this the right Jordy Hayes?

2:27:46

Is this his Is Is this his campaign?

2:27:50

Tell me more that might not just be on the landing page already filled out by him.

2:27:54

Are you looking at that for some >> So, the main way we're using AI on the donor side is to verify that the people who are paying in money are actually the right people and doing all of those things to to verify the the pay-ins and that's both a a combination of us >> Yeah.

2:28:07

and the payment providers and the banks who are the back end of us. So, that's the main use.

2:28:11

You know, what you're talking about is sort of more discovery Yeah.

2:28:14

which is still early days.

2:28:16

I mean, most supporters of fundraisers >> Yeah. know the person. >> Sure. Right?

2:28:22

They they know either very close Yep.

2:28:24

relationship or they know them through someone. Mhm.

2:28:26

That's about 80 to 90% of fundraising. >> Yeah.

2:28:30

Is it's really What we're doing is we're modernizing a timeless thing that we've done for each other which is if you used to live in a village and someone was in hard times >> Yeah.

2:28:38

you you put some money in the box. >> Pass the hat. Pass the hat. Yep. >> Right? Yeah.

2:28:41

That's what we're doing now.

2:28:43

So, mostly the sort of social proofing is through relationship networks. >> Yeah.

2:28:49

What's the tax treatment on a GoFundMe campaign?

2:28:51

>> There are no goods or services there, so there are no taxes. >> There are no taxes. >> That's right. It's a gift. Okay. Yeah.

2:28:57

>> Well, how is the actual team involved post-COVID?

2:28:59

It sounds like you came in and you immediately made the team remote.

2:29:02

Are you now in a hybrid setup? >> Yeah. Yeah. How was that evolution?

2:29:05

Uh I mean, you know, we found our way through it.

2:29:09

I mean, we we were always quite a distributed company.

2:29:10

So, we had LA uh Bay Area, San Diego, we got Chicago, we got folks in >> And is that because of talent or because of the customer base?

2:29:19

Like, why >> So, the original GoFundMe was set up in San Diego. >> Sure.

2:29:24

Brad Nandy set it up back in 2010. >> Okay.

2:29:27

Uh then we needed great talent, so we also needed to go to the Bay Area.

2:29:31

Now, for example, we have a really amazing 100-person engineering and data science team in Buenos Aires, down in Argentina, which is just crushing it. >> Yeah.

2:29:39

So, we are inherently distributed. >> Sure.

2:29:42

So, the the work reflects that.

2:29:42

We figured our way through it pretty well, pretty well.

2:29:47

>> What what's different about running a company like GoFundMe that's doing a lot of like good in the world and good you know, every Silicon Valley company can paint a picture of how like they're saving the world, but you guys are actually you know, providing a service that that is making a meaningful >> probably dozens of GoFundMe's that are like literally pay for my cancer medications, like literally cure my cancer. >> Yeah. Yeah.

2:30:12

And then there's a lot of AI companies that are saying, "Well, we'll cure cancer one day." >> Yeah. What >> different vibe.

2:30:17

have other companies in the industry like software vendors or payment providers do they do they chip in on their side?

2:30:26

Like are you able to negotiate >> Oh, in the lower lower rates on the fees? >> No. No.

2:30:31

You know, hey, if guys if folks are listening >> you serious?

2:30:34

I'm telling [clears throat] I mean, they're selling their products and services. >> I know.

2:30:37

I know, but but You know, we get a little bit like people do like to talk about working with us because generally it's regarded as a good thing, but you know, that's at the margin, honestly.

2:30:46

He's a big fan of oligopolies in payment processing, apparently.

2:30:49

But I we have great we have great partners, so I understand you know, they need to run their businesses and we appreciate them.

2:30:55

Um What what's different about >> Yeah, I would I would yeah, though I would I would just think that you know, if I was like a CRM provider I might not be trying to max get [laughter] the maximum amount of value out of you know, a platform like GoFundMe and Well, maybe they're not getting the maximum, but you know, they they're generally you know, doing their thing.

2:31:15

>> what about the surface area of GoFundMe?

2:31:17

Um I mean, there's other platforms that people use to raise money for I mean, I did a crowdfunding campaign for a food product at one point.

2:31:22

But people do have a board game project, have a movie, and there's this somewhat of a fuzzy line between uh a GoFundMe and something like a Kickstarter.

2:31:31

All right, have you thought about broadening out?

2:31:33

Do you want to stay narrow?

2:31:34

How important is it to define what the brand is and is not? >> right.

2:31:39

And we do see people fundraising for local businesses quite a bit like that.

2:31:43

You know, local restaurant that people love, maybe it's hit a rough patch, or a bookshop or something like that.

2:31:48

But you're right, kind of business startup stuff.

2:31:50

Yeah, there was a time when crowdfunding was pre-seed stage funding or like a signal that you could send to your investors.

2:31:56

Like the original Oculus VR headset was on Kickstarter.

2:32:00

And then sold to Meta for a billion dollars.

2:32:03

And that's a very different thing.

2:32:05

>> Yeah, tends to be We saw 100,000 fundraisers for small but truly local businesses for >> have the platform.

2:32:11

Have you thought about expanding?

2:32:13

>> You know, we've still got so much work to do. So we have expanded.

2:32:15

So back in '22 we acquired a company called Classy, which does fundraising software for nonprofits. >> Oh, okay.

2:32:21

So I mean that's that's If you look at the industry TAM in the US, it's about 2% of GDP.

2:32:27

$600 billion is given, the vast majority by consumers.

2:32:30

And most of that is given to nonprofit organizations.

2:32:35

>> Wait, the vast majority is by consumers, not billionaires who are writing massive checks.

2:32:39

Most of it is given by by consumers.

2:32:42

And most of that goes to nonprofit organizations.

2:32:44

GoFundMe obviously started and we're best known for helping individuals ask for help.

2:32:48

Now those individuals generally ask for themselves or someone else, but increasingly they're asking for a nonprofit.

2:32:54

That was our fastest growing category last year was individuals.

2:32:59

Like I just did one for Watch Duty because I think what John and team are doing is amazing and they super supported us.

2:33:05

So that's a trend, but our main focus has been making consumer fundraising ever better, which is why we launched the coach yesterday and continued to innovate there.

2:33:14

And then helping nonprofits fundraise more successfully.

2:33:18

So >> Yeah, by building basically a network of other people who can fundraise.

2:33:23

>> Well, that's the thing.

2:33:23

That's the cool thing is like the intersection between those two things because the average age of a nonprofit donor in America today is about 64.

2:33:33

And nonprofits want to get more young people interested and connected, but a lot of young folks don't necessarily just want to donate.

2:33:42

They want to do something.

2:33:42

So, we've given them the ability to organize sort of enlist an army of supporters who fundraise for them.

2:33:49

So, I'll give you an example like American Cancer Society came to us and said, "Hey, we we want to do something like this.

2:33:54

We've had like 80 88,000 people organize a fundraiser where they're swimming or walking or riding or walking with a dog uh for the benefit of ACS, which raises money, but even more importantly, it spreads the word cuz if if you're telling me, "I really care about ACS.

2:34:12

It affected my family in this way.

2:34:14

I'm doing this run this over this month. Would you support me?"

2:34:19

I'm going to think, "Hey, I'm going to trust that cuz I know John and I know ACS."

2:34:23

I call it the double trust.

2:34:23

Like SPVs SPVs for nonprofits.

2:34:26

You know, it's it's expanding the aperture of how you generate awareness and support.

2:34:32

What about political fundraising?

2:34:34

How does that work today?

2:34:37

Is it not allowed on the platform?

2:34:41

>> Very limited and it's country by country.

2:34:42

It's very cuz we're in 20 countries and the rules are very very variable. So, it will depend.

2:34:48

Some countries just not allowed.

2:34:50

Some of it is allowed in very specific ways, but frankly, it's not a significant thing for us at all.

2:34:56

We we don't see much Is it not an area of interest?

2:34:57

It's just a different Not really.

2:34:59

I mean, there are pretty well-known and well-used platforms that focus on that.

2:35:02

So, we don't we don't see much of it.

2:35:04

We don't don't honestly expect to.

2:35:06

What about the future of the company?

2:35:07

How is the company structured?

2:35:10

Where do you want to see it go?

2:35:10

Well, we think there's a lot more help to generate in the world.

2:35:13

I mean, our mission is very simple, help people help each other.

2:35:16

Um, and we think that It's It's interesting you had Travis earlier cuz they're a good example.

2:35:22

Uber, Airbnb is another one where it's a company that has taken a behavior that was frankly frowned upon.

2:35:29

Like, remember when you were a kid, one of the things you were always told not to do.

2:35:33

>> Don't get in a car with a stranger. Get in a stranger's car.

2:35:35

[laughter] And certainly don't ever go to a stranger's house. >> Yeah. Well, that's normal.

2:35:40

>> You see, now you're taking your Airbnb. Exactly.

2:35:42

So, in our case, you know, it's it's not so asking for help and doing it in public Yeah.

2:35:48

is still not a comfortable and normal thing. >> Totally.

2:35:51

And so, we're sort of expanding the aperture of like, no, actually But GoFundMe does have a different aesthetic to it.

2:35:56

It's It's It's Oh, you're doing a GoFundMe.

2:35:59

Like, this is a normal thing.

2:36:01

Feels much more normalized.

2:36:01

Yeah, yeah, no, you're still building toward that. But you're on the path. We are.

2:36:04

And every customer I've talked to, I'd say every single one, has said something like, this was really hard for me to do.

2:36:11

>> If someone just put on their Instagram story like, "Hey, please send me money."

2:36:14

That's very different than like, "Hey, I'm doing a GoFundMe for this specific thing. You can go here.

2:36:16

There's a lot of details.

2:36:18

You know that it's on legit payment rails. Exactly. There's accountability.

2:36:22

But there's still a lot of work to do in that journey.

2:36:23

So, so that we think we can do a lot more of that.

2:36:28

And we're, as I mentioned, we're in 20 countries.

2:36:29

Some of those countries are still early in adopting and growing quick.

2:36:32

Germany, for example, is taking off very quickly. Okay.

2:36:34

Um, there's more countries. And then nonprofits.

2:36:37

Like, there's a lot more work to help nonprofits who are as needed now as ever. Yeah, yeah.

2:36:43

And we only offer our nonprofit solutions in the US today. Got it.

2:36:47

So, we got a lot more there.

2:36:47

And then we got some other ideas, you know. Yeah, it's very cool.

2:36:50

I mean, it just I can imagine it massively increasing the efficiency of nonprofits on the fundraising side because they have, instead of having to build out, you know, all this, you know, where they still have to hire their own staff to support fundraising, but now they get all this kind of like off-balance sheet kind of effort on >> help amplify.

2:37:10

We can help We do a lot of storytelling.

2:37:12

We do that on behalf of our regular consumer customers.

2:37:14

Now we can help to tell the stories of our nonprofits in in certain situations and that helps them get awareness and get more support.

2:37:23

Well, Tim, thank you so much for taking the time Thank you very much.

2:37:26

Hopefully I'll see you in Pasadena soon.

2:37:31

Are you still doing your watch duty fundraiser? You should do that. Okay.

2:37:37

I love when I'm not a DA of watch duty.

2:37:41

You never You [laughter] never know when you're Exactly.

2:37:43

Actually, you never know and I'm in Malibu, so we had a crazy time last year.

2:37:48

I hope you guys are doing okay. Thank you so much.

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2:38:07

And without further ado, we are joined by Nick [music] Hasch Arora from Palo Alto Networks. Good to meet you. Welcome to the show. >> Thank you.

2:38:14

For those who might not be familiar with a little bit of your journey, I'd love to kind of get everyone up to speed on what you were doing before and then I want to spend a lot of time talking about just the transformation, if you can call it that, of Palo Alto Networks, where the business is today, but maybe take us back a little bit. Where do you want to go? How far back?

2:38:30

Well, I know you handled business at Google, but uh Let's go even even even let's go back to the very beginning. Yeah.

2:38:38

I was born and I grew up in India, as you might know.

2:38:41

Came here to go to business school. It was a tough time.

2:38:44

You couldn't get a job in 1992.

2:38:45

It was one of the recessions in the country. Yeah.

2:38:49

So, I wrote 400 plus letters.

2:38:49

In those times, you guys are younger than me. Cold letters? Cold letters.

2:38:57

>> [laughter] >> You didn't have email.

2:38:58

You had to go I had to rent a Mac for 3 months.

2:39:00

No, you rented a computer? >> I rented a computer.

2:39:04

I found 400 addresses of hiring people and I would sit down write the letters, type them out, go print them out, put them in envelopes, stuff envelopes and and mail them.

2:39:16

It's such a different dopamine loop doing a cold letter versus cuz cold email is amazing.

2:39:24

You send No, no, I know, I know, but I'm saying like today kids are used to like okay, I got to write this email.

2:39:27

Maybe they use AI now then like often times like for me I either respond like like within like 30 seconds or 30 days.

2:39:37

But but like you know, you quickly kind of get on get on that loop, but sending an actual letter out and then just kind of praying and and waiting for maybe Every day I'd get stacks of them back. I got I still have them.

2:39:48

I have 400 rejections from 1992.

2:39:52

Wait, 400 letters all rejections? >> Yes.

2:39:54

So that only got one job, right?

2:39:57

>> [laughter] >> Many of the others said no.

2:40:00

How many of the companies are still still around? Some of them are. Yeah.

2:40:04

Some of them you wouldn't want to work for.

2:40:06

>> [laughter] >> But I sometimes run into people.

2:40:07

I met one guy who started private equity private equity fund after and I remembered his name at the bottom of the letter.

2:40:16

So I was sitting at a meeting I said, "You do realize that you rejected me in 1992?" Great.

2:40:20

And I was an advisor to a company in Boston. I didn't hold a grudge.

2:40:24

>> [laughter] >> I'm glad to I have to say thank you to all of them, right?

2:40:27

God forbid I'd gone to work for somebody.

2:40:28

Okay, where did you where did you end where did you end up?

2:40:29

I ended up at Fidelity Investments right out of business school and even there I got rejected from six people I wrote to in the company.

2:40:37

Thankfully they had no common HR system or whatever your system [laughter] is.

2:40:41

The seventh guy hired me.

2:40:44

Her resume looks interesting. We should talk to her.

2:40:46

He couldn't tell whether my name is male or female.

2:40:50

That's how I ended up at Fidelity and when I was when I was in business school, I was applying I'd get phone calls.

2:40:56

I got into Northeastern so I'd get a call, "Hey, uh so we're we double checking uh you know, how was your time at Northwestern? Why did you say Boston?

2:41:05

I'm like, there's no reason. Oh, I'm so sorry. I've got another call.

2:41:06

I [laughter] got the exact same thing. I went to Northeastern. >> Yeah, exactly. There you go.

2:41:10

I'm not going to correct you. Yeah, it keeps going.

2:41:13

So, I had all kinds of stuff, but one of the calls told me Yeah.

2:41:15

you don't have enough finance on your resume to get a job on Wall Street.

2:41:19

So, I went back to school while I was working at Fidelity.

2:41:22

I got a masters in finance. I got a CFA.

2:41:25

And I was teaching a CFA class in 1995, '96 actually, '96 October to do portfolio hedging and And this guy sitting in front of me said, "Oh, you work at Fidelity?" I'm like, yes.

2:41:36

I'm like, "Hey, do you know all these people?" I'm like, [laughter] no.

2:41:38

So, they they're on the fund management side.

2:41:40

I'm like, I don't work there.

2:41:41

I'm in corporate finance street. >> Yeah, yeah. He's like, wait.

2:41:43

You're teaching me CFA level three and you're working corporate finance?

2:41:49

I said, "You want to pass the exam or [laughter] you want to discuss my credentials?"

2:41:53

And to his credit, the next day I interviewed at Putnam. There you go.

2:41:55

So, I finally went to work in money management for 2 years and most interesting time was boring time. Yeah.

2:42:03

I just couldn't sit all day. >> Yeah, '97, '98, '99.

2:42:05

So, we're We're in the >> We're in the internet boom.

2:42:08

We're like And we got people telling us that AOL's going to be the biggest company in the world, right? Yeah.

2:42:12

So, I did that for 2 years, did well there, got bored, left, and I started uh one of the CEOs I discovered telecoms at that time.

2:42:21

One of the CEOs of the CEO of Deutsche Telekom said, "Come work with me."

2:42:23

So, I took my bags, flew to Germany, to Bonn, and worked with him for 5 years.

2:42:26

I started a mobile data startup at that point.

2:42:30

>> And the name of the company that you started there? >> It's called T-Motion. T-Motion.

2:42:33

>> But that that was the time Deutsche Telekom I worked on the team that acquired VoiceStream, which is now T-Mobile USA. Yeah. So, we did that.

2:42:41

I worked there for 4 or 5 years and then I quit.

2:42:42

I was tired of commuting from London to Germany and back. I was in my 30s.

2:42:49

And I was sitting in front of my old alumni and said, "Hey, I just headhunter calling me. There's a job.

2:42:55

Um it's a company from the US.

2:42:55

They just went public in a some reverse Dutch auction type of scenario.

2:43:01

>> [laughter] >> The job's too small for me.

2:43:01

Do you want to go interview?

2:43:05

Yeah, the guy was the CEO of T-Mobile UK.

2:43:08

>> [laughter] >> So, that was it.

2:43:10

I met I met uh then guy who become our sole miss Kordestani. He interviewed me.

2:43:14

I told him it's a really small office.

2:43:18

And he said, "Well, why don't you have an interview here?

2:43:19

Then I'll take you to California and you can meet the founders." I'm like, "Okay."

2:43:22

And then he calls me a week later and says, "Oh, Larry and Sergey are in town.

2:43:27

They would love to see you."

2:43:29

So, they made sure the interview was not in the small office.

2:43:30

So, I met Sergey in the British Museum while walking around. That's amazing.

2:43:34

That's where I got interviewed.

2:43:36

Then I came to California and then I met Eric Schmidt and Eric's like, "It's interesting.

2:43:40

You Your CV is very interesting.

2:43:43

But, we're looking for a head of Europe and the job is sales." Yeah.

2:43:48

I said, "So, should I just go back?

2:43:48

And I have two days of interviews."

2:43:49

I'm like, "I don't I'm not done sales. Should I just go back?" He's like, "No, no, no.

2:43:53

We need smart people who can learn stuff." And that was 2004.

2:43:56

So, I was the first person hired off the IPO of any senior capacity in >> In sales? I ran Google Europe. Yeah.

2:44:04

And slowly and steadily, like we grew Europe.

2:44:05

And Europe was like And what was the shape of that role?

2:44:07

Were were you talking to the largest companies in Europe about just buying ad space or what?

2:44:13

>> me Do you want me to make it cool or you want me to actually tell you what I did? >> [laughter] >> Both. Let's go with the role.

2:44:17

But, look, it's it's company just to sing as you're thinking December 2004. Yeah.

2:44:21

The company has gone public.

2:44:23

It's worth 18 billion dollars. >> Yeah. There's 2,000 employees. Yeah.

2:44:25

And Europe has like 180 people. Yeah.

2:44:31

Every office is at a rented Regus office except for one in Dublin. Yeah. Wow.

2:44:33

So, what you're doing is you're like blocking and tackling. You're hiring people. You're getting offices. Getting stature. Getting stuff.

2:44:40

And yeah, forget selling ad space. Showing CEOs. Showing companies.

2:44:45

This is what search does.

2:44:46

>> Oh, this is just work. Yeah, yeah. That was the work. Yeah, yeah. Just getting employment.

2:44:49

>> In In five years I was there, we went from being 25% of Google's revenue to 46% of Google's revenue. >> Wow.

2:44:57

I think this is in in history, one of the few tech companies where Europe and US had the same market share. Yeah.

2:45:03

So, you have all these people come to here, you should ask them. Yeah, yeah.

2:45:05

Generally, you spend a lot of time in the US to get a large market share here and then your share of Europe or the rest of the world is smaller.

2:45:10

So, we got there and that's when kind of a whole bunch of movement happened.

2:45:13

Sheryl Sandberg went to Facebook, Tim Armstrong went to run AOL.

2:45:16

I was kind of the last man standing. Okay.

2:45:18

So, when my boss retired, Eric Schmidt says, "You think you should move here and become chief business officer?" Yeah.

2:45:23

So, I moved to California. Yeah. That was 2009.

2:45:27

>> Most underrated title.

2:45:29

Just be the chief of business.

2:45:29

We joke We joke about this all the time.

2:45:33

It's like amazingly vague, but also incredibly important.

2:45:36

>> know, I I remember uh my first meeting with Larry when he became CEO.

2:45:42

And he said, "Hey, come spend some time with me."

2:45:44

So, I spent a lot of precious time, put a beautiful presentation together.

2:45:47

I'm going to go be sit down with Larry, explain everything we do. Mhm.

2:45:49

So, I go there and he's We're talking about hyperloops and vacuum control tubes and how you can get out of the car on every highway that will improve the traffic situation in California.

2:46:01

And I'm here like jumping in the bed, wanting to get to my presentation.

2:46:05

So, I talk about hyperloops. So. Yeah.

2:46:08

In the end, he says, "You know, Bill Campbell, who was a great guy, a mentor to many people in the Valley, says, 'Bill tells me you're doing a good job at what you're doing.

2:46:17

Uh I got a lot of work to do and fix some product because tech companies die if product doesn't work.

2:46:21

No tech company became great because of sales and business." Mhm.

2:46:25

He said, "So, you keep doing what you're doing.

2:46:27

I'm sure if I had a few hours, I'd help you get your efficiency up and do it better, but I don't have the time." Mhm.

2:46:34

So, I stood up and said, "Well, let me know when you have a few hours." That was that.

2:46:39

Then thank to his credit, cuz we had a great relationship and, you know, his staff became 10 product people, the CFO, the lawyer, and me. That was it. Yeah.

2:46:47

No other function was represented.

2:46:49

It's like, you go take care of everything else.

2:46:50

I want these product guys because I want to tell them what I want to build.

2:46:54

And you can see what great results came of that.

2:46:55

At any point early on, did you feel like Google was significantly overvalued?

2:47:05

You know, I still think it's undervalued.

2:47:10

I It's kind of the enormity of what the potential was.

2:47:14

Sometimes when you're in it, you don't see out of it. >> Sure.

2:47:19

It's hard to tell how big it's going to become.

2:47:20

But of course, in hindsight's wonderful.

2:47:22

We can all say that was bound to happen.

2:47:23

But the enormity of what we were doing was not apparent to people there.

2:47:28

Like, you know, we bought YouTube.

2:47:29

I remember sitting with Salar and and uh Chad Hurley and saying, let's go buy Netflix.

2:47:36

Uh It's a story about that, but it's a different story.

2:47:38

[laughter] Salar was like, no, let's give us 20 engineers and $5 and go build this. Yeah.

2:47:41

That's every tech company has those kind of people.

2:47:45

And you know, they tried, but look, YouTube's juggernaut big in its own right. So Yeah.

2:47:51

We were there when all this stuff was happening.

2:47:53

And you can see, you know, I remember Larry telling the story that he met Steve Jobs and Steve said, "If I give you one piece of advice, it the word is focus." Mhm.

2:48:04

And they were like, no, we're going to try a lot of things and see how many of them work.

2:48:07

So, you know, there are many ways to many ways to get to Yeah, the head in the clouds philosophy like clearly did work for Google's sort of academic culture.

2:48:15