0:04
[Music] [Music] Hey, [Music] hey, hey. [Music] a behind you. Hey Heat. Heat. N. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Double kill. [Music] Heat. Heat. N.
Search this video
2:33
[Music] [Applause] [Music] You came to this world [Music] to reach the stars.
3:25
[Music] We came to this world [Music] to see a future.
3:37
We came to this world to reach the stars to shape our future.
3:53
We came to feel the new [Music] [Applause] Let me feel.
4:09
[Music] [Applause] [Music] Founder. No.
4:39
[Music] You're watching TVPN.
5:04
>> Today is Tuesday, September uh September 2nd, 2025.
5:07
We are live from the TBPN Ultradome, the Temple of Technology, the fortress of finance, the capital of capital. Hello chat.
5:15
There are so many people chatting right now.
5:17
Uh thank you for being here.
5:17
Sorry for taking yesterday off.
5:20
>> Yeah, it wasn't our choice. >> Brutal. Brutal.
5:22
Uh but thank you for being here on Tuesday.
5:24
We are happy to hang out with you today.
5:27
Uh we have a packed show.
5:30
Tons of stories, tons of posts, tons of news, tons of guests, tons of everything.
5:36
We are newsmaxing and we are kicking it off with a debate that me and Jordy got into earlier today and was uh burning up the timeline over the weekend.
5:44
Uh we'll kick it off with this post from Dip Ralph. Uh chat, is this true?
5:49
I'm hearing scales Alexander Wang is already out the door.
5:54
Uh Swick says, "Please tell me this is a joke."
5:58
>> I mean, this was totally fake news.
5:59
>> Schlom says, "Seems like you saw this and misread." Yes.
6:01
So, this came from a Techrunch article.
6:03
in the Techrunch article uh said, "Scoop, a scale executive Alexander Wang brought over to help run MSL has departed Meta after just two months."
6:13
And depending on how you read that, where you put the commas, very different readings. Yeah.
6:16
So, a scale executive, Alexander Wang, >> he was brought over to help run MSL.
6:22
He has departed Meta after just two months.
6:27
Or it could be a scale executive that Alexander Wang brought over to help him run MSL. He's left. Uh, who knows? We'll find out.
6:36
Uh, well, the news is that it's not Alexander Wang that left.
6:39
It's someone who was on the team.
6:43
>> Former executive >> former executive, >> which is very normal. >> Yes. Yeah.
6:46
I mean, they brought over Yeah. He did not.
6:49
>> Also, it's like, is was it an acquisition? Was it an aqua hire?
6:51
I was going back and forth with um the team about this earlier today, like how do we even characterize it?
6:58
It's one of those zombie deals.
6:59
I just call it trade deal.
7:01
>> One thing we know, TechCrunch loves a spin.
7:04
They like to spin >> spin.
7:06
>> Uh non stories, they like to put things in the spin zone.
7:09
We put things in the truth zone, they put things in the spin zone. >> Yeah.
7:14
>> Yeah. I mean there was there was one guy who >> remember I mean for anybody that missed it we had Arvin on from Perplexity >> and he made an offhand comment about like ads and browsers and then TechCrunch ran a story that was like perplexity will put ads in its browser >> and he was like wait like wide ranging conversation he said hypo yeah it was a hypothetical so
7:37
>> yeah we were talking about the nature of advertising and AI and stuff uh anyway um yeah I mean there was one guy who clearly like was working at scale, got like zombie aqua hired, went over to MSL and then like wanted to start a company and was probably like already thinking about starting a company >> and made the most dramatic >> and made made a super dramatic post. But
7:54
But yeah, >> he made himself the main character.
7:58
>> Wait, you think it was his fault?
7:58
I thought it was other people.
8:00
>> I thought people were kind of putting that on him.
8:03
>> Oh, I I just thought the way that he worded it was like, yeah, I had the opportunity to be basically running it around here when I decided to take my talents somewhere else.
8:10
Yeah, there's a lot of there's a lot of this going on.
8:14
Uh people are people are, you know, spinning narratives left and right. Left and right.
8:18
Uh anyway, let me tell you about ramp. com. Time is money. Save both.
8:21
Easy to use corporate cards, bill payments, accounting, and a whole lot more all in one place.
8:23
I knew you were going to hit the eagle.
8:25
I was very excited to hear the eagle. It's been too long.
8:28
So, um the cracks are forming in Meta's partnership with Scalei, says TechCrunch.
8:34
It's only been since it's only been since June that Meta invested 14.
8:37
3 billion in the data labeling vendor software. >> Invested. >> Yeah. invested.
8:41
So, it's not an acquisition. It's not an equire. It's a trade deal.
8:46
It's basically a trade deal.
8:47
That's how I think about it. Uh 14.
8:47
3 billion for less than half the business equity.
8:53
A big dividend still some of the scale people went over% was a nice nice number.
9:00
>> Yeah, they just pulled it out of the hat. Random. >> Just random. >> It's just random.
9:02
Um and so several of the top executives left scale to go run Meta Super Intelligence Labs. That's MSL.
9:10
But says TechCrunch, the relationship between the two companies is already showing signs of fraying.
9:15
At least one of the executives wanting brought over to help run MSL.
9:20
Scale AI's former senior vice president of Gen AI product and operations, Ruben Mayor, has departed Meta after just two months with the company.
9:28
Two people familiar with the matter told Techrunch.
9:30
Uh, Mayor spent roughly five years with Scale AI across two stints.
9:34
In his short time at Meta, according to these sources, Mayor oversaw AI data operations teams, but wasn't part of the company's TBD Labs, the core unit with in Meta tasked with building AI super intelligence where top >> I think they made MSL and TBD and like the the >> just to confuse Techrunch reporters like >> just to confuse >> Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
9:53
It's entirely the 40 chest that's going on.
9:57
Um, and so after this after this article was published, Mayor reached out to Techrunch and was like, "Hey, you got the story wrong."
10:05
Uh, my job was to set up the lab with whatever was needed uh, rather than data.
10:10
And I was part of TBD Labs from day one rather than being excluded from the core AI unit.
10:15
Mayor also clarified that he did not report directly to Wang and was very happy with his meta experience and was leaving for a personal matter.
10:21
So, >> so again, it's hard to read too much into this article, >> but the bigger the bigger question is like like Techrunch has their angle.
10:28
Um, and then the timeline was kind of in turmoil.
10:33
I feel like the timeline's always been rooting against Alex Wang.
10:36
Um, and there's a few reasons.
10:36
So, I wanted to go through like the bare case for just the question of like was Meta buying scale AI the right move? Like did they overpay?
10:45
Will we look back on this as a great deal?
10:47
Because when we look back on Instagram, we're like, that's one of the greatest acquisitions of all time.
10:52
WhatsApp, also great acquisition, very expensive at the time.
10:54
Both very expensive at the time.
10:56
Uh, even Oculus, I was thinking about it and I was like, Oculus VR, super expensive, multi-billion dollar deal.
11:02
Uh, and the level of headset adoption.
11:05
I mean, they didn't even have like a consumer product at that time.
11:08
It was like dev kit still.
11:10
And obviously, retention was super low.
11:13
People would churn off of them.
11:13
And they still do even what, a decade later.
11:14
Like but you >> but it was very important to Zach. >> Yes.
11:19
And and you and VR is a tech wave that's going to that's going to happen at some point. Yeah.
11:25
Like we know that the techn is going to get there where it's >> not going to miss the next platform.
11:31
>> He has his surfboard and when that wave come, he's he's ready to surf.
11:35
>> Did you get any surfing in this weekend? >> I did. I did. I did.
11:37
I uh >> describe your surfing experience.
11:38
Can you do like 360s off the back and stuff? Can you do a back flip?
11:43
>> Can you do a parallel? >> No.
11:45
No back flips, but uh but I went surfing with a with a TVPN, a technology brother, Steve, founder of Clock Tower uh Capital.
11:53
Um and he saw me he saw me do a couple airs.
11:58
>> I didn't land either of them, but uh >> you were telling Sper like he has to get barreled. Did you get barreled?
12:04
>> It wasn't barreling this weekend.
12:06
>> It wasn't barreling this weekend, >> but it was it was it was it was fun.
12:08
There was definitely swell.
12:08
I got quite uh sunburned a couple days in a row. >> It's fantastic.
12:12
Uh we should one day stream your uh stream your surfing endeavors and we should do it on reream.
12:20
One live stream 30 plus destinations multiream to reach your audience wherever they are.
12:23
People have been asking, "Will TDP expand to other mediums?
12:27
Will you do other things?"
12:27
And it's like, "Yes, surfing live streams." That's what's next.
12:32
>> And you, if you're surfing and you want to live stream, >> uh, head over to um >> there's a bunch of questions in the chat we should get to at some point, but let's keep talking about this uh, Scale stuff.
12:44
So, uh, Zuck has a surfboard with Oculus VR.
12:46
Um, the question is what's going on with Scalia?
12:51
Because it's not necessarily an obvious compounder where like with Instagram and WhatsApp, it's like you have this network effect.
12:58
It's just going to keep growing, keep growing, keep growing.
13:00
You can grow the user base.
13:02
The user base never goes down.
13:04
The business never gets smaller.
13:06
You just run more and more ads and it just prints, prints, prints, right?
13:09
Buying a growing social network that has strong product market fit.
13:11
Easy easy to justify at any price. Basically, scaling.
13:16
>> Well, Elon wanted to get out at one point. >> Okay.
13:20
Anyway, for the most part, >> but if you can buy it and then and then lever it up and then merge it with an Foundation model lab, you know.
13:27
>> So scale AI does not have that obvious like winner take all network effect like >> very real competition extreme surge which is which was the bootstrap scale AI that was printing money >> which was emerging. Isn't there another one?
13:42
Garrett at Handshake, Label Box.
13:45
There's a ton of these companies.
13:46
There's a bunch of players.
13:47
>> And so, the reason is because it is not a monopolistic market by default.
13:51
Um, you might be able to make it one, but it's it's it's tough to justify.
13:56
It's tough to think that, oh yeah, it'll just continue to compound.
13:59
And then also, if you're AGI pelled, you don't believe that basic labeling tasks are going to be done by humans in the future.
14:05
future. Like if you have a bunch of tasks that are like oh yeah like just you know what do you go to scale AI for oh RHF this tell me if this is a good answer like if you're agi pill do you think that the next version will be able to do that level of task like perfectly
14:18
>> yeah and the the the expectation if if scale had stayed fully independent would be that they would keep having to like bet the company on these new sort of like >> eras >> and that's and that's sort of the story I mean scale started as a uh data labeling company for self-driving cars. And then eventually that kind of hit
14:36
And then eventually that kind of hit takeoff where there was not that much more business to for scale to do, I believe, because Whimo had gotten all of the data and Cruz had gotten the data and Tesla had gotten like the the the base level data.
14:49
And then the RLHF boom and the LLM boom happened and uh and Scale was able to move over to that and then all of a sudden they were having their best their best years ever.
14:57
And so the business was kind of like up and down very much like, oh, they have a second act.
15:02
Do they have a third act? Chunky. Yeah.
15:04
Uh very high uh high volatility.
15:07
Um and so uh as the market shifts and more and more expert like there like as it shifts to more of these expert data collection processes like what we see from Merkor uh scale potentially becomes less and less relevant.
15:22
It's not like an obvious just beneficiary of every next wave.
15:23
You have to keep kind of reinventing the company.
15:27
And so um there's >> and they at some point they stopped working with OpenAI. Correct. >> Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
15:33
they stopped working with OpenAI and then uh and then posted the opportunity post metad deal it see it it seemed like Microsoft and and uh uh Microsoft and Google both pulled back from working with scale and so like the core scale business doesn't seem like it's just like endlessly compounding so you really can't underwrite this like 14.
15:52
3 billion investment purely on the basis of scales business potentially >> they're not trying to make money on the investment >> yeah maybe yeah it seems like they need a mad scientist for their lab and Every other AI lab has a deal scientist. Yeah. Or a deals guy. Exactly.
16:06
So, uh, OpenAI has Mark Chen, SSI has Ilia, Deep Mind has Demis, Anthropic has Daario.
16:11
Each leader has a different shape and style, but they're all capable of rallying top AI researchers and building teams of missionaries.
16:19
Alex Wang is unproven here.
16:22
So, if you believe that the best talent magnet wins, it seems like a bad deal.
16:27
And that's kind of the bare case.
16:29
Now the bull case is that yes metab buying scale AI is a bit pricey but ultimately it was a good decision for the company. Here's why.
16:38
Uh let's review the landscape of big tech's AI efforts.
16:42
Google has deep mind firmly on the frontier.
16:43
Microsoft has GPT5 also frontier.
16:45
Amazon's a bit behind but the core business doesn't seem very threatened by LLMs.
16:48
Nvidia benefits from basically every outcome right now.
16:50
Apple acts as a window into AI probably not too threatened.
16:54
Meta feels like it could benefitly benefit hugely from getting to the frontier, but it doesn't have an obvious dance partner.
17:00
So, what do you try and do?
17:01
You go down the list and you try and buy every company or hire every researcher you can.
17:05
Hence the rumors that uh Zuck tried to buy SSI, tried to hire Mark Chen, etc. , etc. , right?
17:13
>> Because it's super high.
17:13
>> Because it's super high. I mean I I we we saw that image of like some Wall Street uh investment bankers like did like a kind of some of the parts valuation of Google and just DeepMind was worth like $150 billion right and so if if you're thinking like okay if I have my lab and it's adding all this
17:30
value all over the place like is that worth $200 billion to my market cap like absolutely right um and so you try and do that so at the top of the list you have something like you know assemble a dream team get Ilia Mark Chen Demis get everyone just put the OG OpenAI team and the DeepMind team together at Meta and like you win, right? But that's
17:49
But that's obviously not on the table.
17:51
Um there's a bunch of reasons why you can't make that happen.
17:55
There's economic reasons, there's interpersonal reasons, there's some ideological reasons.
17:58
Um but Alex Wang isn't that far down the list.
18:01
Uh, and so yes, he hasn't led a real AI lab that's trained a popular big foundation model, but if you look at his trajectory, all of a sudden it becomes a I I I can be a lot more optimistic about it. So he's 28 years old.
18:16
He's a fantastic communicator.
18:17
You've seen him on on every podcast and he clearly communicates very well about >> he's been on Theoon, one of the few AI heavy hitters that's been on Theo.
18:25
joke, but he was on Theo Van really early and he tells a very convincing story and and is actually able to communicate to like to to both insiders and outsiders, I think.
18:36
Um, and uh uh he's genuinely been at the center of the AI boom for his entire career, but he wants to go bigger.
18:44
He's built a great company that easily could have cash flowed hundreds of millions of dollars over time and continued to serve the training data market, but getting further into the action that's happening at the big labs was probably not in the cards if he stayed at scale.
18:56
And so teaming up, >> people would push back on that and say that that scale was losing real market share to Surge and other players who had a reputation for having higher quality data.
19:11
losing market share, but still like so many big contracts that if they just went like like to like weaker and weaker clients and just like held on and just had high margins like I >> built to die >> basically like I I I I do think like the the like the run out the clock value on that company is definitely like hundreds of millions of dollars every year.
19:30
It's just such a big market.
19:31
Um but that's clearly not what what Alex wants to do. He's 28. He wants to go bigger.
19:36
He loves being at the center of AI and wants to work on interesting huge problems.
19:42
>> Now he has will have does or will have more compute than pretty much >> pretty much everyone like the latest cluster that Zach's trying to build is is is supposed to be just a couple percent over the next biggest cluster.
19:55
So he will have the biggest.
19:55
Uh, and so, um, uh, I think that you, when you look at, uh, at Alex Wang, you see someone who's been through like the Gartner hype cycle of training data, right?
20:09
It's like, wow, we are teaching cars to drive. This is incredible.
20:14
Then, oh wait, like, they actually don't need that much more data.
20:18
And then like, oh wait, like LMS need incredible amounts of RHF data.
20:23
And then like, oh wait, so he's been on the up up and down. He's B.
20:28
So um there's uh there's a bunch of different takes here, but let me continue.
20:33
So uh there's also the rumor that Scale Aai isn't fully delivering all the data that MSL needs to train their next model, but the reporting here is a bit questionable.
20:40
I don't think that the scale acquisition was ever fully underwritten against the value of the training data business as we discussed.
20:47
Uh so the and the AI race is so aggressive that every company is grabbing every possible resource.
20:51
Not only is Meta using other data providers, they also just signed a $10 billion cloud deal with Google. Yeah.
20:58
So, this this idea of like, oh, like >> demand is outstripping supply pretty much.
21:03
>> Oh, they did one deal with scale.
21:03
That that means that they shouldn't do a deal with Merkore or they shouldn't do a deal with with Serge like no, they're going to do deals with everyone. >> I think all Yeah.
21:11
All All it says is that it was primarily an like an aqua hire. >> Yeah.
21:18
an aqua hire of the team and a bunch of the people and mostly it's a bet on Alex Wang and so uh I think that the the FUD over the departures is overstated right now.
21:28
Uh it doesn't seem like it's an exodus.
21:30
They hired a ton of people.
21:32
Uh there's been rumors that like one person was thinking about leaving but then wound up staying and then and then uh one person left but they said they were like never really planning to stay and then another person left but clearly to start a company.
21:43
So, it doesn't seem like there's some sort of massive exodus.
21:46
And basically, it just comes down to the value of developing an in-house AI team that's like DeepMind.
21:54
Uh it's a that that team if it works and if they build it out, the value of that team is immense, probably in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
22:02
And so, there's inevitably going to be bumps in the road.
22:05
But at the end of the day, Zuck is just betting on the most successful entrepreneur that Gen Z has produced thus far.
22:11
And it seems still reasonable that even if he's not entirely a researcher, he's a deals guy.
22:20
You have him and then you have Nat Freriedman who's able to who's worked with Ilia and you have the pieces of the team to put together the right amount of researchers and engineers to actually go and and build out a frontier capability or near frontier.
22:34
>> It's an all-star team.
22:36
>> It's close to an all-star team.
22:36
It's not the all-star team.
22:38
Like the all-star team is Ilia and Demis and Mark Chen, but like that's not happening.
22:42
It's just never going to happen. Yeah.
22:44
Uh >> you know why I have this out? >> Why?
22:47
>> OpenAI is buying product testing startup Stat Sig for 1. 1 billion. >> Stat Sig.
22:57
>> Haven't heard that name in a while. >> Who did Stat Sig?
23:01
>> Who's founded in 2021 builds tools to help software developers test and flag potential new features.
23:05
It services have been used by employees at OpenAI.
23:08
Eventbrite, SoundCloud, and other firms.
23:10
According to Statsig's website, Statsig raised 100 million in funding in a funding round earlier this year, valuing it at 1. 1 billion. So interesting.
23:16
I guess they're getting just getting bought out at the last round price.
23:22
>> As part of the acquisition, Statig founder and CEO, VJ Raji, will join OpenAI as chief technology officer of applications.
23:31
He'll report to Fiji Simo, the former Instacart head who recently took over as CEO of apps at OpenAI.
23:34
In a statement, Sema said, "Rajie would help companies and developers use open AI's technology to build safe safe applications that empower people."
23:43
Um, so anyways, uh, all stock acquisition.
23:47
Uh, nice nice pickup for >> uh, OpenAI >> and they're taking the product.
23:55
>> They're taking the whole company.
23:56
>> They're taking the whole company.
23:57
>> It's a proper acquisition. We love it. >> Very very rare.
23:59
Uh, >> Tyler, what's your what was your take on the uh, on the TechCrunch? uh FUD around uh MSL. What do you think? >> Okay.
24:09
So, I think first Yeah, there's I think there's way too much hate on Alexander Weighing on the timeline. >> Yeah.
24:14
>> Um I think also maybe an interesting way to think about like the scale thing is like >> Do you think that's Do you think people hate on him just because he's not an AI researcher?
24:23
>> Yeah, I think there's some sense of it's like, oh, he's like kind of an outsider.
24:26
Like he's like has this like >> he's like a business guy.
24:27
Part of it is he he made he made a billion dollars >> doing something that wasn't extremely >> technical, right?
24:37
>> It's like labor arbitrage, right? >> Yeah.
24:39
Anytime you have a a young person that has massive success, people figure out a way to kind of poke holes in it, right? >> Yeah.
24:46
It's like people are saying like, "Oh, scale is just a rapper on like Vietnam or whatever." Philippines. Philippines. Philippines.
24:53
>> Um but I think >> rappers all the way down.
24:54
Like I think a good way to think about the scale thing is like maybe it's just like the people at scaleai just like have very good taste on what is good training data.
25:05
Like they've seen >> uh you know it's like uh you know driverless cars and >> yeah like what actually works. >> Yeah.
25:12
It's like like they have good taste on like >> this is actually like good data and then if you're a big company that has a ton of data like meta that's like actually very like useful, right?
25:21
very like useful, right? you have these people like obviously within meta within like Instagram or something there's like a massive amount of data some of it is clearly useful some of it's like not useful for training a foundation model just like that is something like that is
25:36
worth a ton of money >> yeah and so Zach went to Alex and basically said it's time for the dragon and the elephant today >> the dragon and the elephant >> that is the best quote ever who said that to who it was >> she said that to Modi says it is time for the dragon and the elephant to dance together. >> And wasn't Modi meeting with Putin? So
25:56
>> And wasn't Modi meeting with Putin?
25:56
So he's like the the elephant and the bear and the dragon.
26:01
>> Oh, I don't know if there was another I don't know if there was >> the elephant and the bear and the dragon had a tea party this weekend.
26:05
I think >> Luke Luke Metro posted I just know that this line is doing numbers on SF Hinge right now. >> It's bizarre. It's hilarious.
26:14
Anyway, let me tell you about our newest sponsor, Turbo Puffer. Search every bite.
26:21
Serverless vector and full text search built from first principles and object storage.
26:26
Fast, 10x cheaper, and extremely scalable. >> Absolute legends.
26:30
I met uh Simon, the CEO, recently. He is an absolute Chad.
26:35
Uh did a long stint over at Shopify uh and started Turppuffer.
26:38
I'm going to read the Turbopuffer memo.
26:42
>> Yeah, I want to read the about.
26:42
Um, Turbopuffer's mission is to make >> Say who it's to >> to every from the founding team. Subject, our company. Great memo. Uh, turbopuffer. com/about.
26:52
Turboper Turbopuffer's mission is to make every bite searchable.
26:56
Populating LM context windows uh, with fresh data means we're asking more from our search systems than ever before.
27:02
Firsthand, we've seen companies limit production ambition by cost and operational toll toil of incumbents.
27:08
We've designed Turbo Puffer from first principles.
27:10
Scalability by separating compute and storage.
27:12
Cost by moving data from NVMe and object storage.
27:17
Reliability through simplicity per and performance with TUFF's customtiered storage engine.
27:21
Uh Justin and I I is Simon.
27:24
Grew up at Shopify scaling the core engine from 1,00 to 1 million RPS.
27:29
Our drive for operational simplicity is shaped by years of being on the last resort pager for a plat platform powering millions of dollars per minute.
27:38
Uh very few companies have the um >> huge >> uh a business uh where where uptime is as critical as Shopify because you just lose your customers money immediately if things stop working.
27:52
>> We are channeling all the hard one lessons of scale into making Turppuffer the most scalable and reliable retrieval engine.
27:57
We host a trillion documents, handle writes at 10 million writes a second, and serve 10,000 queries a second.
28:02
We are ready for far more and we hope you'll trust us with your queries.
28:07
and they're backed by Locky Groom and a bunch of other uh great investors.
28:09
Uh they have three case studies on their website right now.
28:15
All fantastic companies, Cursor, Notion, and Linear.
28:19
Uh so this is a company that you will be hearing row right there.
28:23
>> It's an absolute murderer row.
28:23
I mean, you're going to be hearing a lot about uh Turbo Puffer in the coming months and years.
28:30
And we are grateful to be puffing with Simon and the team.
28:33
puff and thank you to Turbo Puffer for making this possible.
28:39
Um the this weekend Elon Musk revealed the uh master plan number four for Tesla and in the video uh Nick Cruz Patain shares uh Tesla revealed a potential three row cyber SUV design in their master plan 4 video.
29:00
This could be a true competitor to the Escalade, Range Rover, Navigator, etc.
29:04
Would you buy a Cyber SUV?
29:07
And I've been pushing for this for a long time.
29:10
I actually went back and looked at the Tesla Master Plan number one and number two.
29:16
If you go to Tesla Master Plans, >> how many M dashes did those have?
29:23
>> I don't think those had very many.
29:23
So, the the the the latest we'll read through some of the Tesla master plan 4 that dropped over the weekend.
29:31
It featured uh 14 M dashes.
29:36
It didn't that the M dash thing is like kind of a joke because as I read it, it it read like a kind of it was a lot staler than it had a lot more like press release vibes than previous master plans, but it didn't read as AI generated to me.
29:48
It just read as like corporate speak basically and kind of like high level and abstract.
29:52
I actually had chat summarize it. Tesla's master plan.
29:56
Part four is a high level manifesto centered on integrating AI into the physical world via robots and autonomous transport.
30:02
All powered by cleaner, smarter systems.
30:04
It casts a bold vision around sustainable abundance, but delivers very few concrete actionable targets or road maps, marking a departure for the more struct from the more structured master plans of the past.
30:14
And so if you go to the first Tesla Motors master plan just between you and me by Elon Musk, he wrote this in 2006.
30:23
And it's a it's a remarkable document because at the end he actually sums it up very well.
30:28
He says, "We're going to build a sports car.
30:32
We're going to use that money to build an affordable car.
30:34
We're going to use that money to build an even more affordable car while doing above also provide zero emission electric power generation options."
30:43
And that's exactly what they did.
30:45
They built the Roadster and it made enough money and and generated enough attention that they were able to build the Model S which was more affordable than a high-end sports car.
30:54
And then the Model S was able to finance the Model 3.
30:56
And then of course the Y and the X were kind of spin-offs of those platforms.
30:59
Uh and so he says don't tell anyone.
31:01
And you know the the ultimate goal was to go after the the Honda and the Toyota Prius and the and and those cars.
31:08
Uh and and he was completely successful.
31:10
Then it then it was 10 years later he writes the master plan part two.
31:16
And so the first one the the the the original master plan create a low volume car which will necessarily be expensive.
31:24
Use that money to develop a medium volume car at a lower price.
31:28
Use that money to create an affordable high volume car and then provide solar p power. No kidding.
31:32
This has literally been our website for 10 years.
31:34
Um, and so at the end, in short, the master plan part is >> it's so crazy that you can lease a Model 3 for $299 a month.
31:48
>> Have you seen how cheap some of these are?
31:50
Look at like >> would you like uh one chat GPT pro plan or a car?
31:54
It >> Yeah, it is insane.
31:56
But it's getting even crazier.
31:57
So uh the Wall Street Journal has an article today about EV deals that boom before this deadline.
32:01
So tax credits are are expiring for EVs.
32:03
Um and uh >> we're going to get naturally aspirated V12 credits before we end it.
32:13
>> Yeah, we need V12 credits.
32:13
Um at a Kia dealer uh dealership on Denver southside, a steady stream of shoppers navigate around noisy renovation work in search of electric vehicles with super cheap lease deals.
32:23
Guess how cheap these lease deals are. How cheap?
32:26
As of last week, uh, this Kia dealership offered to lease the small Nero EV for $40 a month before taxes.
32:36
The EV6 lease was being marketed for less than $100 per month.
32:42
And the 65,000 three row EV9 SUV can be had for $189 a month before taxes.
32:46
Can you imagine getting a car for $40 a month?
32:51
That's so ridiculously cheap. >> Uh, okay.
32:54
>> And so there's some really weird >> It's a bubble. it it's not a bubble.
32:58
It's like the popping of a bubble.
32:59
It's like the end of a bubble.
33:01
It's like they overbuilt and they made all these and no one wants them and giving them away.
33:04
They got to give them away.
33:05
Um >> but yeah, very very bizarre times in the in the EV market.
33:09
There is a there is an interesting wrinkle that I was listening to uh one of the a couple of the Tesla engineers did Jay Leno's show recently and um they were talking about how the EV tax credit's going away.
33:21
So, you can't just take money off if you buy it.
33:26
But if you get a loan, an auto loan, there is an interest tax deduction for EVs now or for Americanmade vehicles.
33:34
And Tesla's the most Americanmade vehicle.
33:37
And so you can still deduct something like, I don't know, eight or $10,000 off your taxes.
33:41
Uh so there still are some incentives for Tesla.
33:44
So it's not it hasn't gone away completely, but if you buy cash, it's not it's not uh it's not an option.
33:50
Anyway, uh the master plan part two, number one, create stunning solar roofs with seamless integrated battery storage.
33:58
It's kind of happened, but not as major as I feel like it should have.
34:04
It's still kind of early days there.
34:06
Uh two, expand the electric vehicle product line to address all major segments.
34:11
And so that obviously foreshadows the truck, but it also foreshadows the fullsize SUV, which I think we're teasing now.
34:18
Um, but it should also be we need a convertible. We need a minivan.
34:23
Like we need, you know, every major segment means every major segment.
34:28
I I think I don't know what >> should Tesla make prefabs. >> Prefab homes. >> Yeah. >> I don't know.
34:34
>> I think I think I think Elon could sell homes. >> Maybe.
34:38
>> I think the Elon army could get pretty into just buying a piece of land and >> throwing >> dropping a little electric box on it. >> Live in the pod.
34:45
>> Live in the pod >> potentially.
34:46
Uh then this is where self-driving comes in.
34:48
Develop a self-driving capability that's 10x safer than manual via massive fleet learning.
34:55
I think that's going very well.
34:55
And then uh step four is enable your car to make money for you when you aren't using it. Isn't that crazy? 2016 he said that.
35:03
He said like you buy the car and then you're going to be able to put it in the robo taxi like army. >> Passive income. >> Very very early.
35:11
And then part three comes out and it's hilarious because part three switches from like a uh like uh the the the first master plan is probably like I don't know like a two-page blog post. Very readable.
35:28
You can just kind of cruise through it. There's one table.
35:31
There's a lot of summaries.
35:33
Master Plan Part 3 is a 41page PDF with like a bunch of diagrams and like these all these crazy things.
35:42
It it's so much more detailed and it goes into like trucks and all this other stuff that they're trying to do.
35:46
Um it's it's a pretty pretty remarkable document.
35:50
And then uh and then now he is into uh Tesla >> part four >> part four which is uh much more high level talking about sustainable artificial intelligence as the influence and impact of AI technology increases.
36:06
The mission set forth in master plan part 4 should come as no surprise.
36:08
The next chapter in Tesla's story will help create a world we've only just begun to imagine and will do so at the scale we have yet to see.
36:16
We are building the products and services that bring AI into the physical world.
36:19
We have been working tirelessly for nearly two decades to create the foundation for this technological renaissance through the development of electric vehicles, energy products, and humanoid robots.
36:29
>> We we need a poly market on Tesla will eventually merge.
36:35
>> That does seem like a logical end state here.
36:38
Um innovation removes constraints.
36:42
It's all very high level.
36:42
I mean, I think the the a lot of the uh a lot of like the big reveals have kind of already happened like, you know, the the idea of a robo taxi fleet, the idea of autonomous or Optimus, the autonomous >> does it cover humanoids?
36:56
Yeah, they they >> Yeah, Optimus or humanoid robot is is changing not only the perception of labor itself, but its availability and capability.
37:04
Jobs and tasks that are particularly monotonous or dangerous can now be accomplished by other means.
37:08
In this way, Optimus's mission is to give people back more time to do what they love.
37:15
And so he uh walks through a bunch of different uh pieces of this.
37:20
Uh >> you just want one thing from Optimus, which is to keep the Tesla diner open 247.
37:27
If you want to >> It is crazy.
37:29
So we we work just a couple blocks away from the Tesla diner.
37:32
And so I drive past it every morning.
37:34
And and and when I think of a diner, I think of a New York City diner that's open 24/7 and every day I drive by and it's closed. And it's so crazy.
37:43
I mean, I guess it's like makes sense because it's like still like early days and kind of a marketing stunt, but uh really they got to keep that thing keep it humming.
37:53
>> Anyway, uh if you're if you're designing your next mission document, uh do it in Figma.
37:57
Think bigger, build faster.
37:57
Figma helps designing development teams build great products together.
38:01
You can get started for free at figma. com.
38:02
on the on the Tesla down website, it says 24/7. >> It does. >> Yeah.
38:08
>> And I'm pretty sure at least the first week it was open 24/7. >> Okay. So spreading fake news. Yeah.
38:14
>> Uh but it also looks incredibly empty.
38:17
At least when we drive by.
38:18
>> I mean, that's just LA, though. >> That's not his fault.
38:21
Um if it's if it's open, >> let's go there.
38:23
We'll go there for breakfast tomorrow.
38:25
>> Yeah, maybe I'll stop by on the way at at 6:00 a. m.
38:27
and see if it's if it's actually open.
38:30
It seems I mean there there there are definitely people there like cleaning and stuff so maybe it's open but um I mean if there are truly not that many places in Los Angeles where you can get a burger at 3 in the morning like LA is not the city that that never sleeps by any means.
38:45
>> Um >> anyway uh Citadel Securities is >> there's some interesting highlight here.
38:53
So, uh, power at, uh, powerbottom dad sucks, uh, quoted our post announcing anthropic series F and says SPF got so effed, man.
39:03
I just did the numbers quickly.
39:06
SPF stake in anthropic or uh, not SPF, >> FTX's >> FTX's stake would be worth just under 15 billion today.
39:13
So, plenty to plug that hole.
39:17
So, duration mismatch problem.
39:17
Um, I guess in uh I guess Gavin Newsome went on Pivot and says he's going to be releasing a memecoin to challenge the Trump token. Is that real? He said that.
39:33
I wonder if he's like trolling or something. It feels very off-brand. I don't know.
39:40
>> You never know anymore.
39:41
>> I haven't really been following the Gavin Newsome thing.
39:42
Brandon was saying that uh like he's been like kind of trying to mirror Trump in terms of like what if Trump does something crazy he'll try and do something else that like kind of matches that the energy >> matching the crazy energy and it's I mean he's doing numbers.
39:57
>> It's a it's a bold move.
39:57
Cotton see how it plays out. >> Yeah.
40:01
I guess Trump is uh was slated to do announcement at 11 11 a. m. Pacific.
40:06
He is uh 43 minutes late right now >> apparently.
40:11
So hopefully uh he can get uh get on to that announcement soon.
40:18
>> Citadel Securities set to pay an average employee 2 million a year in the first half of 2025. They did 5. 7 billion in revenue, 2. 6 billion in net income. They paid out 1.
40:29
8 billion in comp, and they have 1,800 employees.
40:31
Uh their CEO's name is Pong Jiao.
40:35
He has a PhD in statistics.
40:38
So, turns out being good at math is good for your income.
40:41
So, >> 19 years at Citadel, look at that.
40:44
Quant researcher in 2006.
40:49
>> There was something else about >> I think uh Hudson River trading overall profit at Hudson River Trading was three billion for the first half of the year, which is higher than Citadel Securities 2.
41:03
6 billion in net income in the first half of 2025. Wow.
41:09
>> So, they were putting up some crazy crazy numbers.
41:12
>> Well, Ken Griffin's on the cover of Barrens this weekend.
41:13
I thought it'd be fun to read through this because he actually gave some some choice quotes in here.
41:18
>> Is this not a silly kind of a silly picture of him? >> Yeah.
41:22
>> I'm not I'm not >> It looks pretty heroic.
41:23
I think it looks good looking up >> sort of.
41:26
I mean, the angle is fine, but I'm just saying they kind of did him they did him a little >> What about it?
41:31
The the coloring of the cheeks or something. I think it looks good. >> I just I don't know.
41:35
I think they made him look a little bit silly.
41:37
>> They should have Give him the gigachad filter and made his jawline a little.
41:42
>> If you're going to draw somebody, at least make them a gigachad.
41:46
>> Yeah, I would have liked to see more more shoulder definition here underneath the suit. He looks great.
41:49
Um, the most successful companies of Wall Street on Wall Street have been built by those with relentless ambition and a strong wind at their back.
41:58
Decades of deregulation helped growth-minded CEOs turn firms such as Morgan Stanley and Bank of America into behemoths.
42:05
More recently, financial entrepreneurs have leveraged booming private markets to create the likes of Blackstone in private equity, Bridgewater in hedge funds, and Horowits in venture capital.
42:16
Now, a somewhat stealthier trend fueled by the explosive growth of technology and finance is behind a new wave of digital first powerhouses such as Interactive Brokers Group, Sesuana International, Jane Street, and especially Citadel, a burgeoning Wall Street empire controlled by billionaire Ken Griffin.
42:32
Citadel is a two-headed business beast.
42:35
A two-headed business beast consisting of Citadel LLC, a $68 billion hedge fund operation best known for its top performing multistrategy flagship Wellington and Citadel Securities.
42:48
A sprawling market maker that facilitates and engages in the trading of stocks, derivatives, and increasingly bonds.
42:54
Citadel Griffin chose the name because it denotes a place of strength and protection.
42:59
Fantastic nominative determinism.
42:59
If you're picking the name for your business, pick something strong like that.
43:04
Y >> uh he says, "Is defining the prototype of the nextgen bulge bracket firm except that salt uh except that uh Citadel isn't that bulgy with just a fraction of the employees and overhead of the traditional Wall Street firm?"
43:16
As of now, the boss is happy.
43:18
Quote, "It's it's incredibly satisfying to run one of the world's most successful hedge funds and to witness the transformative impact of Citadel Securities on the capital markets around the world."
43:27
Griffin says, >> "Great quote. Yes, I'm proud of that.
43:32
Taken separately, first hedge fund citadel. Huge deal.
43:36
>> This is this is how you do an interview. This is just marketing.
43:39
>> Yeah, >> it is incredibly satisfying to run one of the world's most successful hedge funds and to witness the transformative impact of Citadel Securities on the capital markets.
43:49
>> Do you care to comment?
43:49
Yes, I will take the self-glazinator 2000.
43:55
Uh Wellington, not related to Vanguard's Wellington fund or Wellington management, has been a superstar, producing annual average returns of 19.
44:03
2% [Applause] uh net of fees since inception in 1990, nearly two times the market.
44:08
And I believe so a million dollars invested in the fund now is now worth $452 million. Insane.
44:15
Uh the other crazy thing is that I'm pretty sure they had a 50% draw down during the mortgage crisis.
44:19
So in 2008 or 2007, I think they went down 50%.
44:24
They went from like uh maybe like a $20 billion fund down to 10 billion or something like that. >> Ran it back.
44:29
>> And I remember one of the traders there uh because I I I interned there and he gives the story of like during the during the crisis he he was trying to like he was trying to like explain how important it is to understand how percentages work.
44:42
And he was like, "Yeah, I walked outside and my neighbor was like, "Oh, like how's it going?"
44:45
Uh he's like, "Uh oh, it's it's terrible.
44:50
We're down 50% this year."
44:50
And he was like, "And then next year I was like walking outside.
44:53
I ran into my neighbor again.
44:54
He's like, uh, like how how's it going this year?
44:56
I know last year was pretty bad. You were down 50%."
44:58
And, uh, and he says, "Oh, well, we're doing a lot better. We're up 50% this year."
45:04
>> And, uh, and the neighbor's like, "Oh, great.
45:06
So, you're back to where you started."
45:08
>> That's how he was like, "No, that's not how it works."
45:10
And this was like his way to his way to explain to interns like the way uh the importance of understanding percentages or something like that.
45:16
It was just a funny anecdote.
45:18
>> Uh, there was surfing yesterday.
45:18
My buddy pointed out this guy uh he was like that this guy was absolutely shredding just getting a bunch of great waves and uh this my buddy pointed out he said uh that guy's uh lost all his LPS in '08 and just like packed it up bought a house in Malibu and now just runs his just basically retired runs his own money and just surfs like three times a day. >> Wow, that's amazing. >> Living a great life.
45:46
>> Anyway, let me tell you about Vanta.
45:47
Automate compliance, manage risk, improve trust continuously, advances trust management platform, takes the manual work out of your security and compliance process and replaces it with continuous automation.
45:55
Whether you're pursuing your first framework or managing a complex program, uh anyway, back to Citadel.
46:00
Even though Griffin says he spends the majority of his time working on the hedge funds investment portfolio, arguably the hotter ticket, the hotter ticket is Citadel Securities.
46:10
Sitsac as it is known is a complex sometimes controversial ever evolving endeavor which Pac-Man like is on a seemingly inexurable march across the capital markets gobbling up market share in options equities treasuries and corporate bonds and now expanding to Europe and Asia.
46:26
Example STISE recently bought uh Morgan Stanley's US equity option market maker business leaving no major banks in the market making business.
46:35
Ciddle Security now now trades 25% of all US equities including 35% of retail flows plus 45 billion option quotes a day and is a top three trader in US treasuries and swaps.
46:46
In total, it executes 652 billion in notional trades a day. The goal is clear.
46:52
Quote, "Building the capital markets firm of this generation is a vision that is increasingly becoming a reality," says Citadel Securities CEO Pong Xiao, uh, who holds a doctorate in statistics.
47:08
>> I like how you're just casually giving an ad to PC right here. >> Of course. Of course. Begin your tradition. >> Cubitus. >> Begin your tradition.
47:14
Um, this is very, >> by the way, Trump is currently live on Fox News and he's he's looking good.
47:21
So, um I am uh uh happy to see our president doing well.
47:29
>> Was he what is he announcing?
47:31
>> Uh I've got it muted right now.
47:31
If somebody else is uh >> watching >> moving the the space headquarters.
47:37
>> Yeah, the big announcement is they're moving space command.
47:40
>> Where where >> I think it was in Colorado moving to Alabama. >> Wow.
47:44
>> Wow. I'm I'm I'm pretty bummed he didn't I'm pretty bummed he didn't like rip the I mean the speech isn't over so hopefully he still rips the the the the collared shirt off and has a superman >> Tyler does does anything ever happen >> nothing ever happens bro I I was pretty
48:02
sure that he had passed away >> you thought he died you thought he was dead >> nothing ever happens >> we need we need a gong for when nothing happens we need something we need some like activity that we can It's a gong that is like so reinforced that it makes no sound. >> Oh yeah, that's good. That's good. Just >> Oh yeah, that's good. That's good.
48:19
Just a cement block >> with a gong. >> Looks like a gong.
48:23
>> Looks like a gong, but it's stone. Makes no sound. Play the w sound. Nothing nothing happens.
48:31
Not that not that we're hoping for bad things to happen, but I was hoping for something exciting to happen.
48:36
Uh something something positive.
48:38
Hopefully some some amazing deal. >> This is positive.
48:40
I was disappointed to see a lot of the internet like clearly was was um not not uh was hoping that there was something >> wrong with his health. Yeah. >> Yeah.
48:51
Obviously that's very negative, but this could have been some crazy 4D chess trade deal reinvital reinvigoration of the American economy investment in AI.
49:00
Like it could have been like this doesn't feel like market moving to me, right? >> Hopefully.
49:05
I mean, God willing, he finds a way to move.
49:11
>> We got to find out a way to trade this.
49:14
We I mean, is there some Alabama real estate development company that like benefits from this? Who knows?
49:17
Uh anyway, uh Alfred Lynn is in Barrens.
49:19
He says, "Uh this is a very different company than most people understand."
49:25
Says Alfred Lynn a partner.
49:27
>> Stock did >> what stock?
49:29
>> I mean Truth DJT True Social did pop a little bit when it went live. Okay.
49:34
>> So that was the trade everybody.
49:34
If you were if you were long Truth Social going into this announcement, you uh >> Well, that makes sense because because Truth Social is a social network.
49:45
So whenever like news breaks, there's a bunch of people on there and they sell ads against that and and that's why people are investing because it's probably good for their financials, good for their the like good for the bottom line.
49:56
>> Not not a meme at all. What about you?
49:58
>> Uh on poly market you this this would have been a good trade.
49:59
So there's uh what will Trump say during announcement today and uh one of the choices was emergency >> and it was at uh 64% right before it started and now it's at 30.
50:09
So that was a pretty big move. >> Okay.
50:12
Uh wait, so it's going down but he still might say it.
50:14
He could still say it just I think it's just the word. Yes. Yeah.
50:18
So, so far he said China. >> Is he Russia?
50:21
>> Is he taking questions from the audience?
50:23
>> He uh >> is he reading chat? >> He should be. He should be. >> Thank you for the 20. Thank you for the 20.
50:31
I'm not saying emergency.
50:31
I know you're I know you're on Poly Market right now.
50:34
Uh anyway, uh Alfred Lynn chimes in to explain what's going on at Citadel.
50:40
Citadel. says uh he's a partner at venture capital firm Sequoia Sequoia Capital of course he's been on the show and whose brother happens to be the head of global fixed income and macro at Citadel the hedge fund >> size running the family
50:55
>> wow we completely missed that scoop on the show we should have been hammering him about his brother >> legend >> uh Citadel is taking math and their distribution and technology power to price risk using techni techn uh techniques not you not traditionally used on Wall Street. While technology
51:10
While technology has been absolutely critical to Citadel success, so too is Griffin's strategy.
51:16
You don't want to go up against the Wall Street incumbents, he said.
51:17
Instead, you want to understand where the market is heading and position yourself uh there before incumbents arrive.
51:24
The incremental rise of electronic trading allowed Citadel to move step by step ahead of names like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley and a number of trading businesses.
51:33
Uh he makes all kind of Griffin makes all kinds of headlines.
51:36
He's a Republican who has mostly given hundreds of millions to GOP candidates.
51:40
And uh Griffin has praised and criticized Trump.
51:43
Just this past week, Griffin told Barons, "I hope President Donald Trump appreciates that while he can score political points by attacking Jay Powell, ultimately the independence of the Fed is of the utmost importance to the American and global economy."
51:59
Meanwhile, Griffin, 56, has been adding to his personal portfolio at a stunning pre pace, including buying over a billion dollars worth of real estate in New York, uh, the Hamptons, London, Sanrope, Hawaii, and multiple properties in South Florida, including a $400 million compound in Palm Beach.
52:17
According to the Wall Street Journal, his art collection is worth a billion dollars.
52:20
Uh, it includes work by Picasso, Van Gogh, and Warhol.
52:22
And he has names priceless historical American documents, including rare copies of the US Constitution.
52:30
Uh, RIP to Constitution Dow on that one.
52:34
He bought he he bought the Bill of Rights.
52:36
>> I can't believe I still that that whole saga was so insane. >> Crazy times.
52:41
>> He he he mogged the entire onchain economy with that one. >> Yes.
52:46
He owns the 13th Amendment signed by uh Abraham Lincoln.
52:49
He also owns a $45 million Stegosaurus. >> That's crazy. >> That's crazy. Crazy. Yeah.
52:54
Uh >> when I worked at Citadel in Chicago, >> you got to do more dinosaur.
52:59
>> He kept two I think he kept two Phantoms parked in the garage with two drivers like ready to go.
53:06
So you like never knew which one he was in or something.
53:07
He had some crazy crazy uh crazy crazy choices. >> A good setup.
53:12
>> I think he also had some sick hypercars down there. I forget.
53:14
Uh anyway, >> keep them handy.
53:17
>> Uh he's doing some philanthropy.
53:17
He has a cool name for it, too.
53:20
Uh, Griffin's philanth philanthropy, now directed through an entity called Griffin Catalyst.
53:27
General Catal move over General Catalyst.
53:28
Uh, Griffin Catalyst exceeds two billion and includes uh, funding Operation Warp Speed on the Hipper side. He recently donated 2. 25 million to Mr.
53:40
Beast Water Philanthropy after the YouTube star superstar called him out on the Today Show.
53:45
It seems very important that Ken uh to Ken that the world knows how wealthy he is, says a business associate.
53:53
A lot of other people go to great lengths to keep it the other way. Interesting. He's less secretive. >> Contrarian.
54:00
>> The totality of Griffin's world is dizzying.
54:02
The billions upon billions of hedge fund investments, marketmaking activities, and personal assets are markers of a man with great aptitude and perhaps even greater ambition.
54:10
Uh along the way, Griffin and his companies have encountered friction, false starts, falling outs, fines, and failures.
54:17
The hedge fund dropped 55%.
54:19
This was what I was referring to, losing $9 billion of clients money during the 0809 financial crisis and was on death's door.
54:26
Sitsk tried and failed to get into investment banking.
54:30
Yeah, they were going to become a an investment bank and then they were going to IPO the whole firm but uh but then investment banks had such a bad like stench on them after that like retail was not going to be a fan and so they stayed private.
54:41
Uh very very interesting like decision to go back and forth on that.
54:45
The market maker has had a number of run-ins with regulators yet now after more than 30 years in business the tumblers have begun to fall in place.
54:53
A decade ago Griffin was worth a mere 6. 1 billion.
54:55
Today, his net worth has ballooned to 48.
54:58
3 billion, making him the world's 31st richest person by >> Oh, let's hope he can crack the I just I just hope that he can crack the top 10 by the end of the decade.
55:09
>> He has an 85% stake in in the business plus an 80% stake in the an 80% stake in the market maker.
55:14
The latter being valued at 22 billion three years ago and like Citadel Securities has obviously grown a ton.
55:21
Uh he sold a 5% stake to Sequoia, never mind the real estate. >> I never knew that. Yeah, Sequoa. That's crazy. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Sequoa. >> I'm sure.
55:29
I wonder if Alfred Alfred >> sure they broker the deal.
55:33
>> Uh there's some good color in here.
55:33
Uh I thought we ran hard at P at Goldman.
55:39
Pablo Salame, the co-chief investment officer of the hedge fund who came from Goldman Sachs in 2019 said to a colleague and then I showed up here and I realized there's a whole different gear.
55:49
Griffin is chief investment co-chief investment officer and CEO of the hedge fund.
55:53
I would tell my team, you're playing for Real Mad Real Madrid, uh, says a former Citadel executive.
55:58
You don't get to keep your spot on the field if you're not producing.
56:01
Ken would call you on a Sunday night at 11 p. m.
56:03
And he might be screaming and yelling at you, but he was working, says another former employee.
56:09
He demanded 150% and nothing else in your life should matter.
56:12
Ken's not yelling at you, he's yelling with you, joked a person close to Citadel.
56:19
I'm not yelling at you, I'm yelling with you.
56:21
>> We're yelling together.
56:21
Citadel Securities and Hedge Fund Citadel are highly performant places to work, says Matt Koulak, Sitsex COO, has worked at the firm for 13 years.
56:29
This is a place to come if you have a lot of confidence in your ability and you want to challenge yourself.
56:34
It's true that Citadel hardly has an issue attracting aspiring masters of the universe.
56:37
We had over a 100,000 applicants for our summer internship program.
56:41
Our acceptance rate was4%.
56:45
People are falling over themselves to demonstrate they deserve to be here just for the summer and some subset of them get to come back full-time.
56:52
Griffin was STEM smart and achiever in his early earliest days.
56:56
Growing up in Boca Raton where he was president of the high school's math club, he graduated from Harvard with an economics degree in three years.
57:02
Chapters of Griffin's origin story have become the stuff of Wall Street legend.
57:06
Like pursuing Harvard to let him install a satellite dish on the roof of his dorm room so he could trade convertible bonds. That's sick.
57:14
Uh, after Harvard, Griffin moved to Chicago where Frank Meyer, a pioneering hedge fund investor, mentored him and helped seed Griffin's hedge fund.
57:23
The best advice I ever got I've ever gotten was from Frank Meyer, who in the early days of my career really pushed me to think big, says Griffin.
57:30
Meer also pressed Griffin to build a multistrategy platform instead of a single strategy fund.
57:34
Griffin stayed in Chicago until three years ago when he says he became disgruntled with the crime and business environment and relocated his companies to Miami.
57:40
a triumphant return of South Florida's most successful financier native son. Yeah.
57:48
>> One thing I'm confused by, uh, there's >> I don't think Ken Griffin owns any horses. >> No. No. >> Which is strange. Yeah. There's no evidence.
57:57
>> Maybe that's And maybe he's quiet about that.
57:59
Maybe he wants to be loud about art, but then, you know, quiet when it comes to horse racing.
58:04
Uh, there was a question.
58:07
Reg asked, "What's the update on Tyler? Has he dropped out? Tyler, any any updates? >> Any updates to know? >> Uh, yeah.
58:15
I've moved Oh, I forgot the LeBron.
58:18
I've moved my uh abilities.
58:18
I've Yeah, my talent I've taken my talents to Los Angeles. >> Whoa. >> Gap semester. >> Tyler's on a gap.
58:29
>> Wait, did we did we ever do the trading card with Gap Master? >> No, we did.
58:33
>> Oh, we got to do that.
58:33
We got to >> We should throw it up. Throw it up.
58:36
>> Throw up the gaps of the official Gaps master.
58:38
Tyler couldn't miss the great lock in.
58:41
>> Yeah, he had to lock in lock in of September.
58:44
Uh the the the Citadel strategy is fascinating.
58:46
You know that how they started trading convertible bonds like the literally like the convertible notes that everyone knows about in in Silicon Valley like companies have those and they're pretty illquid.
58:56
So he would figure out how to price them, buy them, sell them.
58:58
But eventually he scaled the firm to the point where he basically like maxed out the market size.
59:04
like like they were the the most dominant uh convertible trading shop, convertible debt shop in the world and like there was no nothing more and so they set up a frequency a high frequency trading firm uh got into quant stuff.
59:17
They also had everyone thinks about them for if you're thinking about them in like the 2010 era.
59:21
You think of them as like a high frequency trading shop, but they also had a global macro fund that took like like 4,000 >> interrupt, but let's give it up for global macro. Yeah.
59:33
Uh they took like 4,000 meetings with CEOs or something like that of like public companies.
59:37
And it's fascinating because like like how do how would that how would that not produce alpha, you know?
59:43
It's like it's like obviously like you don't need to be insider trading to just talk to the CEO.
59:48
They don't share any private information, but you can just get a vibe and you can understand, oh, they know how they're talking about the business.
59:55
I'm optimistic about this particular business.
59:57
or like this, you know, sounds like he doesn't know what he's he seems lost.
1:00:01
Like he's talking about a strategy.
1:00:03
He's not telling me anything that's non-public, but seems dumb.
1:00:07
Like >> if you talk with somebody if you talk with somebody for 10 minutes, >> yeah, >> that's almost always enough time to say totally bearish. >> Bearish.
1:00:16
>> And it's so funny because like Yeah, you you don't need to be insider trading to just like talk to the CEO, get a vibe check, and then actually go and execute a trade against that.
1:00:24
And so that's why I've always been so bearish on retail traders because it's like it's like if you like this is who you're going this is like who you're going up against.
1:00:33
You're going up against someone who gets to sit down with a CEO in a private conference room and have a and have a conversation and then also have expert research and all these other things. Yeah.
1:00:41
Yeah. massive massive >> people have uh people like to bring up that Citadel has a hedge fund and the market maker and how that could be a potential conflict but apparently there is uh Ken believes the greatest risk to his business is regulators and so >> uh he's not willing he's not you know
1:01:00
doesn't take risks around that basically there's like an extreme firewall >> interesting >> and uh they take uh compliance extremely seriously because you can imagine Like again, he's he's not so threatened by the the the hedge fund that's that's trying to be the next citadel, right? He's he's threat he feels threatened by
1:01:17
He's he's threat he feels threatened by >> I was reading Caesar Palace Caesar's pal Caesar Palace coup. What's that book called?
1:01:24
The coup on Caesar Caesar's Palace.
1:01:27
I I forget what is it on my Audible.
1:01:29
Um the the Caesar's Palace coup. Fantastic book.
1:01:32
How a billionaire brawl over the famous casino exposed power and greed of Wall Street.
1:01:38
It's about Apollo uh buying uh Hera's casino and then turning into Caesars.
1:01:43
Um and they all came out of uh the Michael Milin crew basically at Drexel.
1:01:48
And uh Milin of course uh was indicted on like a ton of counts of securities fraud for insider trading uh during like the 80s.
1:02:01
And Milin had a very different approach to regulators.
1:02:03
He he was like at least he was like quoted in some book saying like uh like the regulators are like making the market inefficient like like the like the market should be a lot more efficient without the regulators and like the courts did not look kindly on that and he went to jail and uh and got slapped with a bunch of things but he was pardoned in 2020 which I think means technically did nothing wrong after the fact. I don't know. >> Did anything wrong.
1:02:29
>> Um >> um >> and he and he went on a great run.
1:02:30
John Xley in the chat was uh asking if we'd covered Anthropics round already. We did early on.
1:02:37
They raised 13 billion at 183 billion.
1:02:42
>> Uh he was asking if that was the largest round ever. Yeah.
1:02:45
>> Uh I think that OpenAI is the only company that has raised more as part of their like $40 billion funding round, >> but uh that was tranched out, right?
1:02:53
It wasn't it wasn't 40 billion at once.
1:02:56
So certainly one of the biggest fundraisers of all time.
1:03:00
Um world liberty financial uh started trading on the blockchain uh uh yesterday went out at a $8.
1:03:14
6 billion valuation now trading down at 6. 2. >> Mhm.
1:03:19
>> Um this is the company with a lot of co-founders, right? >> I think so. Yeah. Yeah.
1:03:22
You know, it a co-founder is a great new title.
1:03:26
I think Donald Trump is a co-founder emeritus, which I I think he means he's not dayto-day because I think he's tied up in the White House or something. >> Yeah.
1:03:37
So, uh the president is a co-founder ofmeritus.
1:03:40
Eric Trump is a co-founder. Donald Trump Jr. is a co-founder.
1:03:43
Baron Trump is a co-founder.
1:03:45
Chase Harrow is a co-founder.
1:03:45
Zack Fulkman is a co-founder.
1:03:49
>> Steven Witco is co-founder.
1:03:49
Zack Witco is co-founder.
1:03:53
is co-founder. Alex Wickoff is co-founder and I think that's the all the co-founders that they have but uh world liberty >> stated like mission like what what >> I mean how do they want >> seems obvious it's bridging legacy
1:04:07
finance and the open economy with purpose-built onchain products yes where defi meets tradi >> yes but can you elaborate like what like >> how can I be more clear John we're bridging legacy finance and the open economy with purpose-built onchain product. >> I'm asking you to steal, man.
1:04:23
>> I'm asking you to steal, man.
1:04:26
>> Uh, I have no idea what um >> level L1, L2, >> USD1, a US dollar stable coin upgraded for a new era of finance.
1:04:33
Stable, secure, and transparent by design. >> Lend and borrow.
1:04:37
Supply digital assets and borrow against your holdings.
1:04:41
Monitor risk easily with real-time health factor.
1:04:44
>> And the world liberty app.
1:04:47
And you can deposit crypto via wallet or bank account and spend by access accessing your liquidity anytime. >> I have the steelman.
1:04:54
The steelman on this is basically we know competition's for losers.
1:05:00
You don't want you don't want to be uh you don't want to be in a highly competitive market.
1:05:04
You don't want uh Brian Armstrong at Coinbase and Vlad Tennv at Robin Hood and all the other killers uh that have you know Anatoli at Salana.
1:05:14
You don't want them all immediately coming out and crushing you and trying to compete with you, right?
1:05:20
And these guys are they're established. They exist in the space.
1:05:22
If you if you do something innovative, they could potentially clone that very very quickly, right? >> Yeah.
1:05:30
>> So, how do you keep them how do you throw them off the trail?
1:05:33
How do you keep them from suspecting that you're going to build something incredible?
1:05:37
You launch a bunch of meme coins.
1:05:40
You You launch Trumpcoin. You launch Melaniacoin. You launch meme tokens.
1:05:44
You do a bunch of things that makes you look sloppy. >> Yep.
1:05:49
>> And then you come out with the really serious thing and everyone thinks, "Oh, this is just another sloppy project. This is a cash grab.
1:05:54
This is something that isn't serious.
1:05:56
I don't need to really keep tabs on it."
1:05:58
And then all of a sudden, you're just building silently, building silently until you disrupt everyone.
1:06:03
>> Yeah, that's >> I think I think there's something there.
1:06:05
I mean, I think they should they should start acquiring companies.
1:06:06
you know, they're sitting at their they're eight they've had two billion in trading volume in the last 24 hours.
1:06:16
>> There's they're six six billion dollar token.
1:06:21
>> Why not start uh >> you know they should just hit up Chimoth and say let's >> let's uh join forces on this back and and create the greatest roll up of all time.
1:06:31
>> The one thing that they actually should do is get on graphite. dev.
1:06:33
It's code review for the age of AI.
1:06:35
Graphite helps teams on GitHub ship higher quality software faster.
1:06:39
They could get started for free.
1:06:41
They could be reviewing every >> They really could >> every GitHub.
1:06:46
>> They could and they should. They could.
1:06:47
>> Uh, Fukco Capital says AI features are eroding SAS margins.
1:06:50
Ivan over at Notion says that two years ago his business had margins of around 90%.
1:06:56
Typical of cloud-based software companies.
1:06:59
Now around 10 percentage points of that profit go to the AI companies that underpin Notion's latest offerings.
1:07:08
>> How many times have I asked a founder on the show this?
1:07:10
I've asked this question so many times >> and nobody nobody gives a straight answer.
1:07:14
>> No one gives a straight answer >> and here it is.
1:07:16
>> But this is not that bad.
1:07:16
This is not that bad especially if revenue >> Thank you Ivan for comment.
1:07:21
>> If uh you know if revenue has really accelerated it it more than you know they can take a hit on margins if they're growing the the baseatically. >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:07:29
Well, the real question is like, does it reduce churn? Does it increase sales? Does it increase growth?
1:07:35
Are you getting more customers?
1:07:35
Are your customers sticking around for longer? Are they paying more?
1:07:39
Um, >> and I and this is just too this is just uh >> this is just too too perfect to tie in, but Notion obviously runs on Turbopuffer. >> Oh, really?
1:07:49
>> Uh, and they're saving millions of dollars annually.
1:07:50
Part of how they can deliver AI efficiently to all their customers because of Turboper.
1:07:54
Mickey Lou over the data engineering lead at Notion says Turbopuffer makes it too easy to build state-of-the-art AI apps. So absolutely fantastic.
1:08:07
>> Are you a Did did you ever were you ever a big Notion guy? >> Never big Notion guy. Used it a little bit.
1:08:13
Uh I was buddies with a notion influencer. What's his name? Uh >> oh, I know this.
1:08:18
I I know you're uh >> he plays like metal. Uh oh, what's his name? Notion brand ambassador.
1:08:24
He has a really great YouTube like uh business >> gigong notion >> and it paid off hugely.
1:08:32
Uh he had a he had a bunch of really great insights.
1:08:35
I forget what what his name is but he's a nice guy.
1:08:39
Um but uh I I I use notion a little bit but have mostly just been Google Docs and you know for most of the stuff.
1:08:49
I don't know building a second brain.
1:08:52
never never went too far down that rabbit hole. What about you?
1:08:59
>> I've paid for Notion for years and years and years.
1:09:02
We use it heavily at uh Branded Native. Yeah.
1:09:06
>> Uh and they still use it. >> Yeah.
1:09:08
>> I think it's a great tool.
1:09:08
I think >> I think it's more like an operating system for like a team.
1:09:10
Like it's really great in like a in the business context.
1:09:14
>> It's so I mean it's still we we're we're Google maxis here.
1:09:18
We use Google Sheets and stuff, but still like being able to create like knowledge bases and sort of like layered >> is is great.
1:09:26
So, I don't understand I don't understand the notion the notion haters out there.
1:09:31
>> I think the notion it's actually crazy that people type I hate notion.
1:09:33
Like imagine hating a note takingaking. >> That's ridiculous. Um, no.
1:09:38
I I I think the way the the the overoptimizer like meme happens is that you're basically like it it's the same it's the same vibe as like the credit card points maxi.
1:09:50
It's like someone who is like taken something that makes sense in a business context and applied it to their personal life.
1:09:56
Like, oh yes, I have a personal CRM for like reminding myself to like call Tyler and get a beer with him on the weekends.
1:10:05
It's like that should feel just natural.
1:10:06
And so like if someone's like Yes.
1:10:10
Like just to like >> if you need a CRM to manage a relationship, it's probably not that great of a relationship. >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:10:16
And it has that same it gives that same vibe off in the same way of like okay like like if you're spending 10 hours a week optimizing credit card points like is are is that really worth it?
1:10:29
Don't you have a higher opportunity cost? What are we doing here?
1:10:31
I actually have a buddy I we shove on the show who uh is like the mo the biggest points maxi and has gone so far that it's actually driving like tons and tons of value. >> Oh, really?
1:10:42
He he he >> I'll I'll have him come on the show and and and tell the story, but uh he >> I'm a billionaire from credit card points.
1:10:50
>> I mean, didn't I tell you this?
1:10:50
He bought a half a million dollars of gold at Costco on credit cards points just to get points and then sells the gold and arbs. >> No way. >> Oh, that's cool.
1:10:58
He's the king of this stuff.
1:11:01
He runs a whole show about it.
1:11:01
Uh anyway, um the uh yeah, I don't know notion like there are certainly people that get you have to like get joy out of it like doing like you know in your personal life because if it's if it's not like work >> it's definitely it's definitely gather coded.
1:11:18
>> It is a little gather coded. Yeah. And that's okay.
1:11:20
Some people are hunters, some people are gatherers. >> Organizing. Yeah. Yeah.
1:11:23
I like to hunt through my messy messy documents.
1:11:30
I I like it as much as messy.
1:11:30
I'm going through the the the file system searching for the random.
1:11:35
txt file where I put all my passwords >> like a like a hunter on the prairie thousands of years ago. >> Yes. >> Hunting.
1:11:46
>> You like stress of opening your laptop.
1:11:48
Makes you feel like makes you feel like you're really like, you know, >> I do.
1:11:51
Or just like one giga do of everything.
1:11:55
I mean, you're the worst, dude.
1:11:57
dude. I see you texting yourself and I'm like that has got to be the like like that is so much like I feel like the idea the platonic ideal is like okay yeah like like you know you use a spreadsheet when it calls for a spreadsheet use the right tool for the job like maybe you know you'll you'll
1:12:13
use a communication tool for this if you're managing a complex product you know like if you are if you are actually you know planning and building a product you're using linear it's a purpose-built tool for planning and building products meet the system for modern software development streamline issues, project product road maps. This is what you
1:12:28
This is what you actually do.
1:12:29
You actually use linear for real for real stuff.
1:12:31
But then at the same time, on the other end of the barbell, you're like texting yourself.
1:12:36
>> Perfect transition because you know who's a you know who's a customer of Turuff line.
1:12:42
>> You're really on the Turbo Puffer run today.
1:12:44
>> I mean, generational runner.
1:12:44
This is why I talked to Simon.
1:12:46
I was like, we're absolutely working together. >> Yep. Yep.
1:12:48
Uh anyway, should we go through this Christopher Mims article or just so so Mims is the reason we know about these uh about these margins?
1:12:57
Uh he says with models doing more thinking, the small companies that buy AI from the giants to create apps and services are feeling the pinch.
1:13:04
Um developers who buy AI by the barrel for apps that do things like make software, analyze, >> I buy my AI by the barrel, >> it's a great turn of phrase, are discovering that their bills are higher than expected and growing. What's driving up costs?
1:13:19
The latest AI models are doing more thinking, especially when used for deep research, AI agents, and coding.
1:13:24
So, while the price of a unit of AI known as a token continues to drop, the number of tokens needed to accomplish many tasks is skyrocketing.
1:13:32
The it's the opposite of what many analysts and experts predicted even a few months ago.
1:13:36
That has set off a new debate in the tech world about >> Wait, who did >> what >> what about the the Jevans paradox, Maxis?
1:13:45
>> This is Yeah, this is Jevans paradox. >> I know exactly.
1:13:47
So while the price of a unit AI known as a token continues to drop, the number of tokens needed to accomplish many tasks is skyrocketing.
1:13:57
So the Jevans paradox, something gets cheaper, you just use more of it. >> Yes. This is Yeah.
1:14:02
>> So if if if the cost of AI was skyrocketing, I I don't think you'd see >> Yes. the same.
1:14:07
>> So So So the question that you're beefing with, and I've been beefed with this, too, is the characterization that it's the opposite of what many analysts and experts predicted even a few months ago.
1:14:16
And there's a lot more nuance to what the experts, if you really trust the experts, the podcasters, um what they were predicting, uh they were predicting drops in per token cost.
1:14:28
That actually has happened.
1:14:28
Um but then they were also predicting Jeff's paradox that we would use a lot more of the resource.
1:14:34
And so um I don't know, it seems like that prediction was kind of true.
1:14:40
But I I do understand like there was a moment where the idea was you spend 10x more on the training run and then the inference is too cheap to meter.
1:14:51
Intelligence is too cheap to meter.
1:14:53
And so you basically get the inference for C for free.
1:14:55
You spend a billion dollars training this massive thing and then you can distill it down and inference it on your phone on the edge for free.
1:15:02
>> Uh and and that certainly has not happened. >> Yeah.
1:15:05
>> What were you about to ask?
1:15:05
Uh should we put uh Theo Brown, chief executive of T3 Chat, he says, "The arms race for who can make the smartest thing has resulted in a race for who can make the most expensive thing."
1:15:17
>> I don't totally agree with this.
1:15:17
I mean, I think it was I think it was >> um >> it's always been the case if if you take a hard problem and have an LLM try to tackle it and just give it as much >> inference, as many tokens as you possibly can, it's going to probably deliver a better result.
1:15:33
But I feel like now you have companies like OpenAI clearly making decisions to deliver products more efficiently, right?
1:15:44
>> Certainly like not wasting tokens is the is the the goal of the router.
1:15:47
Like the router is let's try to not get I mean it's also let's try and get people to use the thinking models if they're not and they're asking questions that should benefit from thinking models but reasoning models.
1:16:02
Uh, but also like just downgrading my, you know, my hammering of the 03 Pro API when I ask a question that actually could just get one shot by the default model is probably a benefit.
1:16:15
Um, and so it's yeah, it's more nuanced than that. I agree.
1:16:19
It's uh it's right tool for the job.
1:16:22
Sizing the the value of the query to the cost of the query uh makes a ton of sense.
1:16:27
Um anyway, >> and over the weekend, XAI released Grock Code Fast one, uh which briefly topped the charts for, um on Open Router, uh and is specifically focused on cost.
1:16:45
>> Do you want to keep going here? >> Yeah.
1:16:46
Um so there's a cool graph in here about the cost of doing business, the price per token for prompts and responses for AI models at a given level of intelligence.
1:16:53
The least intelligent model showed roughly a 9x decrease in cost per year while the most capable ones dropped in price by roughly 900x per year.
1:17:04
Um so uh remember AI training and AI inference are different.
1:17:08
Training those huge models continues to demand ever more costly processing delivered by those AI supercomputers you've probably heard about.
1:17:15
But getting answers out of existing models inference should be getting cheaper fast.
1:17:18
Sure enough, the cost of inference is going down by a by a factor of 10 each year, says Ben Katier, a former AI engineer who's now a researcher at Epoch AI, a not for profofit.
1:17:29
Um, despite the drop in cost per token, what's driving up uh costs for many AI applications is so-called reasoning.
1:17:35
Uh, many new forms of AI rerun queries to doublech checkck their answers, fan out to the web to gather extra intel, even write their own little programs to calculate things.
1:17:43
And AI agents will carry out lengthy series of actions based on user prompts.
1:17:46
Um, here are approximate amounts of tokens needed for tasks at different levels based on a variety of sources.
1:17:52
A basic chatbot Q&A, 50 to 500 tokens, a short document summary, 200 to 6,000 tokens.
1:17:57
Uh, writing complex code might be 20,000 to 100,000 tokens.
1:18:02
And a multi-step agent workflow might be up to a million tokens.
1:18:05
Hence the debate if new AI systems that use orders of magnitude more tokens just to answer a single request are driving much of the spike in demand for AI infrastructure.
1:18:14
Who will ultimately foot the bill?
1:18:16
This is like the Jevans paradox by Nvidia when they sold off that you did was like so perfectly timed like it it it matched it matched what actually happened so flawlessly. Um remarkable.
1:18:30
>> I should check I should check on that trade.
1:18:32
>> I mean yeah it just like like like there was this idea that like models that tokens would get cheaper and like literally the timeline was just like Jevans paradox jeans paradox like understand this thing.
1:18:44
We're going to wind up using more of these more of these tokens.
1:18:47
This is a new capability.
1:18:48
We're going to use more of this even though it's getting cheaper.
1:18:49
Uh and lo and behold, people use a ton more.
1:18:53
>> Literally bought Nvidia >> on while we were live on the show. >> Yeah.
1:18:58
>> The day the day that it just sold off massively >> on public.
1:19:02
com investing for those that take it seriously.
1:19:03
They got multiasset investing. Industryleading yields.
1:19:07
They're trusted by millions. >> I am up 42%. >> Very nice. >> Not bad. Not bad.
1:19:11
Um anyway, the uh Ivan over at Notion says that he's spending 10% of revenue on uh on AI now.
1:19:17
That is that is high when you think about it in that frame because what is notion's revenue?
1:19:27
It's got to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, right?
1:19:28
And so they're probably spending tens of millions of dollars on tokens for features that they've added to notion and then they have to upsell or give some sort of free >> Yeah.
1:19:38
I mean, they were they were super quick to add a lot of AI features.
1:19:39
I remember that, you know, these are founder mode companies, right? >> Wrong one. >> Founder mode.
1:19:50
>> Um, no, but I but I just remembered it was like, okay, Chad GBT was taking off.
1:19:54
Ivan clearly looked at that and said, hey, we should just integrate this everywhere into our product so that people don't have to leave the app to access intelligence.
1:20:03
I mean, notion feels like such a beneficiary of AI in sort of like three different ways.
1:20:09
sort of like three different ways. One is like the most intimidating thing about notion is when you set it when you when you create an account uh and you're just hit with like a blank page and that's why there's uh people like you know these influencers that sell notion templates because the whole idea is like
1:20:26
yes when you set up the second brain and you have your notion for your finances and your notion for all your friends and your friends birthdays and the notion for everyone you invited to your wedding and the notion for you know your dog's medication schedule and you have all your different notions and they all link perfectly and all the data is perfect. Like that feels amazing. That's like the Like that feels amazing.
1:20:43
That's like the dream, but getting there is so much work.
1:20:48
You have to spend like days and days and days like onboarding yourself basically.
1:20:51
And if AI can do that faster, that's huge. >> Yeah.
1:20:55
>> So actually it's actually one of the cases where I think just putting a chat box like what do you want to do right now instead of just being like hey here's a blank thing like it's a it's a sandbox do whatever you want.
1:21:05
Uh that feels incredibly value additive.
1:21:07
And then also the behind the-scenes AI stuff seems incredibly valuable too where if I have a CRM built out in in notion or I have a list of uh a list of topics that I want to talk about on the show or something like that, having an AI that kind of can in the background go and hydrate cells in a table or hydrate or or transform or summarize or kind of polish up a messier document and keep it all in like the pop the proper notion taxonomy.
1:21:38
that feels hugely valuable. Totally.
1:21:41
>> Um, and so it should be a beneficiary.
1:21:43
And then also just like if you're somebody that's actually been doing the hard work of putting a ton of data in notion for years and years and years and then all of a sudden now you have the ability to, you know, with with just one prompt like be able to synthesize some sort of new visualization layer on top of that.
1:21:59
That feels really valuable, too.
1:22:01
So, I would be pretty optimistic about them spending this much on AI, even if they're not immediately reaping the benefit, even if it is a little bit uh like who knows, maybe they're getting a 50% bump in revenue.
1:22:11
And so, 10% hit to margin, worth it all day. Take that all day.
1:22:16
Um but but even if they're not, I feel like this >> So, here's uh if you if you >> you can buy notion for $10 a month. Yep.
1:22:28
And then if you want AI features, you just pay more. >> How much?
1:22:31
>> So it doesn't say here.
1:22:31
Um it doesn't say how much.
1:22:34
Uh >> it's $20,000 a month, >> but I would I would assume it's like another $10 a month if you want AI features.
1:22:40
And so they're having to spend 10% of revenue on AI, >> but they're potentially, you know, uh doubling revenue on a per user basis. So >> interesting.
1:22:50
Well, if you have a bunch of data and you want to analyze it, go to Julius uh chat with your data and get expert level insights in seconds.
1:22:55
Ask Julius to analyze your data used by Princeton, BCG, Zapier, >> and TVPN >> and TVPN.
1:23:04
Uh yeah, we we actually are working on something fun.
1:23:07
working on something fun. uh put all of our all every post that we've ever reacted to has been cataloged put it in Julius ranked it by how many times people have been mentioned kind of a poster power rankings working on monthly
1:23:21
updates here uh should uh should be our own kind of uh you know top poster list uh top most mentioned of all time should be fun uh anyway uh when Replet updated its pricing model with something it calls effort-based pricing in which more complicated requests could cost more. The world the world's compli complaint
1:23:38
The world the world's compli complaint box Reddit filled up with posts by users declaring they were abandoning the vibe coding app despite protests from noisy minority of users.
1:23:47
Quote, "We didn't see any significant churn or slowdown in revenue after updating the pricing model," says Replet CEO Amjad Masad.
1:23:53
Uh the company's plan for enterprise customers can still command margins of 80 to 90% he adds.
1:24:00
Uh, one solution says Christopher Mims is dumber AI.
1:24:04
The big companies creating cutting edge AI models can at least for now afford to collectively spend more than hundred billion dollars per year.
1:24:12
And so yeah, I I I do wonder like a big thing is that if you're just hammering the front, it it's so easy to just hammer the frontier.
1:24:21
I think the king of the timeline situation room is Buo actually.
1:24:25
I think it's I think Bu is >> I think he's literally number one.
1:24:29
>> We got to start at it.
1:24:29
We we we should probably add our own creator payouts. >> We should. Yeah. >> Start paying out. Buco. >> Yeah. In merch. >> King of the timeline. >> In merch.
1:24:38
We should send merch to the top 10.
1:24:40
>> Zeke says, "A notion premium subscription will get you at least 2025 Tesla."
1:24:46
>> I wouldn't be surprised if if somebody starts throwing in a a lease Tesla Tesla lease to your enterprise plan. >> Be great. >> Why not?
1:24:53
>> Why not? Um, so yeah, I mean in summary like the bullcase here is that the GPT5 API like eventually there will be a model router API that will that will dynamically route the request to the best model and you can and instead of just saying like okay this particular
1:25:09
feature is wired up to a reasoning model it will say okay well yeah like this particular feature is wired up to a model router and when a customer comes with a question saying hey I'm notion and I want to reorganize all my data and says, "Yeah, that's not really a not that's not really a reasoning level task. Let's put that on a cheaper model.
1:25:26
Let's put that on a cheaper model. Dynamically route it. Save a bunch of money."
1:25:30
Anyway, um if you want to get your brand mentioned in chat GPT, go to profound.
1:25:35
Reach millions of customers who are using AI to discover new products and brands.
1:25:39
You can get a demo at Profound.
1:25:41
>> Um anyway, should we talk about the podcast Gold Rush or should we run through some timeline? What are you thinking?
1:25:47
>> The podcast gold rush.
1:25:47
Media companies race to licensed star creators with AI upending how people consume information.
1:25:53
News outlets are willing to pay top dollar for unique voices.
1:25:55
Traditional media companies are in a deal-making frenzy with podcasters, social media influencers, and other content creators.
1:26:03
Fox News in July announced a new media expansion, including a licensing agreement with the ruthless podcast Freewilling Talk Show featuring several former Republican political strategists.
1:26:14
In August, The Athletic agreed to a sevenf figureure deal to license Pablo Tori Finds Out, a sports and culture show.
1:26:20
Vox Media recently announced a partnership with Bella Freud for her fashion neurosis podcast and has agreed to a licensing deal with David Axelrod, Mike Mur Mike Murphy, and John Hileman's show Hacks on Tap.
1:26:34
Established media companies watched in Oz.
1:26:37
Independent podcasters drew star guests and drove the news cycle during the 2024 presidential election.
1:26:42
And with artificial intelligence tools changing the way people consume information and audiences hungry for authenticity, outlets from Fox and the New York Times are eager to create content that can't easily be replicated by a chatbot.
1:26:53
For many, that means building out rosters of distinctive human voices.
1:26:58
The world would be poorer if we were just served, quote, by an AI agent with content that is originated from algorithms, says Paul uh Cheese Bro, chief uh executive of Fox Cor's uh 2B Media Group.
1:27:10
The role of the creator becomes even more important in that world.
1:27:15
Uh Fox and the Journal's parent, News Corp, share common ownership.
1:27:20
Shawn Ryan, a former US Navy Seal and CIA contractor, started shopping the Shawn Ryan show earlier this year.
1:27:27
for recent episodes, which can last upward of 3 hours, featured a deep dive uh featuring featured a deep sea mining executive, a former military contractor held hostage in Colombia. >> Seven of our boys.
1:27:41
>> Seven of our boys and California Governor Gavin Newsome.
1:27:43
Ryan Bills the show did uh Sean Ryan.
1:27:45
Oh, I didn't realize that. >> I missed that.
1:27:48
Uh Ryan Bills the show is focusing on >> like holding a gun or something.
1:27:51
That was like the viral moment. >> Yeah.
1:27:54
focusing on what the media isn't talking about.
1:27:57
Um yeah, I mean I I think uh they might get into this in a bit, but the takeaway here is um >> people are less interested in paying and just for news because you might open X and see some Anon account posting a headline.
1:28:16
Someone else did the factf finding.
1:28:18
and they're just like posting a easily >> digestible screenshot and more interested in in sort of commentary and analysis surrounding news.
1:28:28
>> I guess I guess my question is like if the end state of these podcasts is partnership with legacy media networks, what does that say about the talent identification and like talent nurturing for the networks?
1:28:45
Like why can't why can't Fox go and find the next Ruthless and set them up to be able to Yeah, exactly.
1:28:54
Like uh or is it maybe more more efficient to actually have the the the the NFL combine of like the next sports? >> Yeah.
1:29:07
You guys have a you know a competitive blood bath. Exactly.
1:29:09
And we'll pick out the winners. >> Yeah.
1:29:12
Maybe that is actually >> I mean this this you see this in music now where a lot of record labels wait until somebody shows incredible talent and then they'll sign them after they've gotten a billion views on TikTok or Yep. >> have a hit song.
1:29:26
So I I I I still think um yeah the question here is does signing you know if if Shawn Ryan goes to Fox >> Yep.
1:29:36
uh or 2B or one of these other platforms, is that enough to um is that enough to sustain these legacy media companies or do they still get competed away uh over time?
1:29:50
>> Yeah, the question is like what Yeah.
1:29:52
What does the long-term business look like?
1:29:54
Like because they're all piv pivoting to like or they're all expanding to overthe-top or o instead of overtheair like the I think it's OTT like the streaming services.
1:30:02
So, like they all want to have their own streaming networks, but then they're in direct competition with Netflix, and that's going to be really hard.
1:30:09
And they're in competition with Apple and Amazon and uh YouTube, and that's really, really hard.
1:30:15
And then uh and so the question is like in the short term, it makes sense.
1:30:22
Like I could imagine paying Shawn Ryan to license his show and running ads against it on Fox being higher value than um than just like the next random show that probably costs a bunch to make and brings in the same amount of ad revenue.
1:30:39
Like if they're just paying Shawn Ryan to do his show and then they're just airing it.
1:30:43
Um that could be like a good financial decision, right?
1:30:48
Uh the question is like does that actually get like a younger Shawn Ryan viewer on board on Fox?
1:30:52
Like >> well the question is like if legacy media, you know, if cable is being competed away by different streaming cable revenues are being competed away by streaming platforms and social media platforms.
1:31:07
>> Uh how many Shawn Ryans do you need to replace the lost revenue and the fullness of time that comes from cable just going away? Right. >> Yeah.
1:31:16
>> You need a lot of Shan Ryan.
1:31:16
There are a lot of Sean Ryans out there though.
1:31:18
You could carry a lot of these shows and you could you could definitely fill out a 247 news cycle.
1:31:22
You could fill a full channel with independent content creators that are licensed.
1:31:27
But uh the question is like is like how how how much does that actually make people stick around versus they just stay in their apps and they just don't really go back to the networks or or like what value at that point is the is the network actually delivering? >> Totally.
1:31:44
Um anyway, let me tell you about numeral sales tax and autopilot.
1:31:48
Spend less than five minutes per month on sales tax compliance. Um should we go next?
1:31:55
>> Let's rip some timeline.
1:31:56
>> Let's do some timeline.
1:31:56
Um so Elon Musk is back to posting about Romantic Companions, I believe.
1:32:02
Uh major upgrade of Grock Imagine in a few weeks.
1:32:05
Um definitely needs an upgrade.
1:32:08
People were not very happy with the quality of the video, although there were lots of people that were promoting it and sharing it because it was certainly edgy.
1:32:19
Um, but in terms of like the the video, >> pull up that video of Sam Alman.
1:32:24
>> Yeah, that's the next one.
1:32:24
Uh, by Tyokei, uh, if we can pull up that, try not to share your screen.
1:32:30
Um, the, uh, the Sam Alman clip from, uh, this is from Cleo Abrams show, I believe.
1:32:40
um in the in the timeline.
1:32:40
Um in the meantime, let me tell you about Finn.
1:32:44
AI, the number one AI agent for customer service, number one in performance benchmarks, number one in competitive bake offs, number one ranking on G2.
1:32:54
>> Do not get in a bake off with Finn.
1:32:56
>> Do not >> That's all I'll say.
1:32:57
>> And can we pull up the Sam Alman clip from Tyokei?
1:32:59
Tyokei, I don't know how to say that.
1:33:03
Repost from Hungry Donkey E uh of Sam talking to Cleo Abram on her show. It's in the timeline.
1:33:14
Uh meanwhile, our rock uh uh is highlighting stats was acquired by OpenAI in a 1.
1:33:20
1 billion all stock deal.
1:33:23
Notably, they announced a hundred million series A at the same $1.
1:33:25
1 billion valuation from Iconic a few months ago.
1:33:29
uh wonder what prompted management to sell after the recent large fund raise.
1:33:33
This is what I was saying earlier that the the acquisition is just at the last round price.
1:33:37
Um but uh it's very possible that >> uh the stats team and the board uh think that there's just more upside in in owning a piece of open than owning a piece of static.
1:33:50
So even though it's happening at the last round price, last investors >> aren't getting a premium, >> uh they are uh they're riding with uh OpenAI now.
1:34:00
>> That makes a ton of sense.
1:34:02
>> We got the video ready. >> Let's pull it up. >> No audio.
1:34:08
>> That is best for the world but not best for winning.
1:34:12
>> Can you start it over? Avatar.
1:34:14
>> What is an example of a decision that you've had to make that is best for the world but not best for winning?
1:34:21
>> Well, we haven't put a sexbot avatar in HGT yet.
1:34:25
>> That does seem like it would get time spent. >> Apparently, it does.
1:34:29
>> Is that graphic added on her show or after the fact?
1:34:33
>> I would have she didn't add that. >> Somebody added that.
1:34:37
>> Uh yeah, I don't Um the other thing about this uh deal is Iconic is a lead investor in anthropics new round.
1:34:44
So this is a way for Iconic to get some get some open AI exposure. >> Interesting.
1:34:50
Um did you want to talk about Align Ventures?
1:34:53
Uh they're on a generational run now uh in early stage CPG investing.
1:34:57
The fund started in 2018.
1:35:00
>> Yeah, we covered this Friday.
1:35:00
$20 million fund was invested in some of the biggest >> because they're in they're in Mammoth Brands which just acquired Codory >> Codory sale to Mammoth Brands figs.
1:35:08
Oh, they were in the FIG series A which IPOed in 2021.
1:35:13
Uh Touch How is FIGS doing now?
1:35:16
I know that they IPOed and they were kind of ripping him and >> still a billion dollar company. >> Wow.
1:35:22
Uh Touchland seed acquired by Church and Dwight company.
1:35:25
I don't know Touchland uh for 880 million.
1:35:27
Billy Seed acquired by Edgewell Personal.
1:35:32
>> Big's also IPOed at at uh >> what >> $34 a share.
1:35:41
>> It's at $6 a share now. So, >> okay. So, it's down.
1:35:43
>> They would have done I mean >> a line would have done really well on the IPO.
1:35:47
>> The total EV of their investments is likely north of 15 billion. Wow. >> That's crazy.
1:35:51
So, that's how they have the capital to be ripping into figure robotics. >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:35:57
That was a that was uncharacteristic.
1:35:58
like it seems like they really know their stuff, but >> humanoids could be some of the, you know, the biggest consumer play of all time if you get a if you get a robot uh in every in every person's home, but uh obviously competitive.
1:36:12
>> Okay, we got to talk about this Ethan Ding post.
1:36:14
Uh Google Trends data on interest in lovable replet, Cloud Code, Cursor, Windurf, all down.
1:36:19
Cursor's down 60% uh peaked August 3rd.
1:36:22
Uh, Claude Code's down uh 56%. Lovable's down 44%. Refle's down 68%. Windsurf's down 78%.
1:36:35
This doesn't make any sense to me.
1:36:35
Like I mean even looking at the charts and it doesn't look like it's way maybe down from peak, but like that's just Google trends like >> doesn't mean revenue is down. >> Yeah.
1:36:47
Is this what do you think Tyler?
1:36:49
Has has any has anything happened in cursor uh cloud code lovable replet Ethan responds and he says might be nothing markets maturing users not switching as much right if they're actually settling into using products
1:37:02
then they're not frantically looking um and uh or it could be that just overall growth is slowing >> also it's just like a it's a slight selloff before uh before lockin season the >> or people are just using the models to do search now themselves. >> Oh yeah. So people maybe this is just >> Oh yeah.
1:37:21
So people maybe this is just overall search.
1:37:23
No, I think all this is relative. >> Oh, right. Right.
1:37:26
>> Tyler, what do you think?
1:37:26
I >> I think it could be like Yeah, it's like the lock and like by now the kind of exploration phase is over.
1:37:30
People like know, okay, I I like using cloud code. I like using lovable.
1:37:34
They've tried everything and now they're kind of maybe just using one now.
1:37:37
Maybe >> something like that.
1:37:40
>> Yeah, I mean this is this is I guess the data is down during August.
1:37:42
That has to be like the slowest time for basically everything.
1:37:46
This is like big vacation season. Um, I don't know.
1:37:47
I don't read too much into this.
1:37:51
I I I I still feel like like a lot of these are big markets where many of the companies will do well.
1:37:58
Also, there's there's there's some sort of uh there's some sort of like compounding thing. Also, like clogged code.
1:38:06
I wonder if that's even the term.
1:38:08
Like if I go to Google Trends, like are people just searching for anthropic?
1:38:12
Like is anthropic off peak?
1:38:16
Anthropic as a search term.
1:38:16
Anthropic as a search term over the past uh let's see >> seems like every like every search everything I've searched so far has peaked around the beginning of August. >> Yeah.
1:38:29
Uh yeah anthropic broadly is down.
1:38:32
What about uh what's something that should not be down at all?
1:38:34
Like Arowan is Arowan down? Arowan is flat.
1:38:38
Arowan is not >> peaked in July as well. What about open AI? Let's see.
1:38:46
Open AI also saw some crazy spike in August.
1:38:49
What what was going on July 27th to August 2nd?
1:38:55
Everyone was talking about AI or something and then it just like completely dropped.
1:38:57
Something something weird happened with the Google data in on August 2nd or August 1st or something. What was going on then? I don't know.
1:39:10
>> Anyway, >> anyways, I don't think we should read too much into this.
1:39:12
It's interesting data though. I agree.
1:39:13
Let me tell you about Adio.
1:39:14
Customer relationship magic.
1:39:17
Adio is the AI native CRM that builds, scales, and grows your company to the next level. Get started for free. >> Uh, this was funny. Uh, >> Mr.
1:39:24
Beast was streaming about his water charity. Yes.
1:39:28
>> And he just kept refreshing Poly Market. >> That's so funny.
1:39:31
He can see the actual data of how things are coming in, but he just prefer to look at Poly Market.
1:39:37
>> I mean, it's a fun chart to look at when it's going up from >> from, you know, up to up to 90%. It's amazing. >> 99%.
1:39:43
Wait, let's see what it was like uh a week ago.
1:39:47
The odds that we were going to hit it was 50%.
1:39:49
So >> Ken Griffin came in.
1:39:52
>> This is This is America.
1:39:52
It's like we can bet on charity in this country.
1:39:56
>> A lot of people who bet that we weren't going to hit it are are uh docosing the site so we don't hit it.
1:40:02
>> What were the lowest odds at the beginning? It What was it?
1:40:05
>> Oh, that's a crazy dynamic.
1:40:07
>> It it looks like it hit a low of 50% a week ago.
1:40:09
At the very start it was hovering around 30%. Um, >> wow.
1:40:14
>> Yeah, it's kind of crazy.
1:40:15
>> I'm I'm tearing up realizing that we can bet on charion of betting volume on this, man.
1:40:20
Why are so many people betting on this? >> That's hilarious.
1:40:24
>> He's like, can you please just donate to the to the charity? >> Yeah.
1:40:27
Instead of gambling on it. >> Oh, that's hilarious.
1:40:31
>> Uh, shout out to Aush from Warp. Shout out.
1:40:34
>> Married the love of his life in a 500-year-old cathedral in a 2700y old town in Spain this weekend. Absolutely fantastic. Love to see it.
1:40:44
Love to see a young technology brother marry the love of their life.
1:40:49
Now Aush, please get back to building SAS. What's this?
1:40:58
>> This is Here comes the bride.
1:40:58
This is the >> Is this tra is this? >> I don't think so.
1:41:02
I think this is like >> fair use.
1:41:04
>> I think it's fair use. We'll see. Maybe we'll get struck. Let's keep talking.
1:41:06
We We need a We need a wedding sound on the soundboard.
1:41:11
Uh anyway, congrats to him.
1:41:14
That's a fantastic photo. I like that. >> Wow.
1:41:15
So, Palunteer is uh launching a new campaign, saying you're being sold an AI future where you're obsolete or irrelevant. We see it differently.
1:41:25
Doomers say AI will take your job and then your life.
1:41:27
Pacifiers say not to worry.
1:41:29
machines will handle reality as you handle the remote. They're all wrong.
1:41:33
Americans are already wielding AI to work wonders.
1:41:36
From factories to hospitals, they're ditching spreadsheets to solve real problems, make real things, and kickstart the prosperous era, the most prosperous era in our history.
1:41:44
Today, we're launching working intelligence, the AI optimism project to see to show you how this is great.
1:41:49
Um, the doomers will hate to see Palunteer uh uh providing an optimistic future for AI in our lives.
1:41:58
Um, should we pull up this uh should we pull up this clip of uh Gavin Newsome? >> We certainly can.
1:42:06
We also have our next guest. >> There we go.
1:42:09
Well, why don't we dive into our first guest of the show and we'll come back to that.
1:42:13
Andrea from Snackshot, who was of course profiled Friday in the Times. Great to see you. >> Hi. Same. How's it going? >> It's good. How are you?
1:42:24
Congratulations on all the progress. >> Thank you.
1:42:29
It's been 5 years in the making. >> Five years. >> Five years.
1:42:33
>> What was the What was the inspiration?
1:42:35
What was like the first post? Do you remember? >> Yeah.
1:42:38
It was about the rise of this new wave of non-alcoholic drinks. And look at it now.
1:42:44
>> Is now the time to go long alcohol? >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
1:42:49
The been seeing people, you know, fading the like non-alc trend, being like, "All right, everybody's laying off the alk.
1:42:55
I'm going to go on heavy." >> Yeah, >> I think so. Yeah.
1:42:57
I I like Gen Z is into like buzz balls and like people are bringing back hypnotic. So, 100%.
1:43:06
>> We got to get some buzz We got to get some Unfortunately, some members of our team are not 21.
1:43:09
So, we will not be bringing back buzz balls in this office, but I think Buzz Do you know about >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
1:43:15
>> Was that Was that around when you were >> Yes. Yes.
1:43:18
some familiar buzz balls.
1:43:18
I don't think I've ever actually had one.
1:43:21
I've seen them at the grocery store, though. >> But, uh, what Yeah.
1:43:23
What were the biggest uh what were the biggest winners out of the non-alcoholic trend?
1:43:26
Was it Athletic Brewing back then or were there other were there other like companies?
1:43:32
>> Yeah, I think the only one that I'm like like I can say like, okay, it makes sense is NA beer because it tastes it really does uh like taste like the real thing. >> Yeah.
1:43:43
And then you have all these like any drinks that I'm just like, dude, it's [ __ ] just like a sugar drink.
1:43:49
>> And >> yeah, that's what I never I I never invested in the the non-out category despite getting a bunch of pitches because I was like, I can just have a Diet Coke.
1:43:57
I could just have like a soda.
1:43:59
I guess I get, you know, >> energy drink. >> There's just a lot.
1:44:03
>> You should be investing in like protein hard I mean there is already a protein heart shelter brand. There's food here.
1:44:10
We have Yeah, we have We have nicotine energy drinks now.
1:44:14
>> Okay, but we saw that.
1:44:14
We I I don't think that's I don't Is it actually real?
1:44:17
It seems extremely >> I literally like I interviewed the founders when I wrote about >> they're doing Wow. Okay.
1:44:24
>> They they hired one of the guys from Coco Vita. >> Okay.
1:44:28
>> No, that's that's a >> Do they know Do they know it's it's illegal?
1:44:33
>> So, they're operating Okay. Okay.
1:44:33
So, I asked them about this and they're operating under theratom category.
1:44:39
>> Oh, >> I'm telling you guys like these guys.
1:44:42
>> Wait, so so they're we're operating in a gray market, a drug market.
1:44:46
>> Yeah, they're operating in the like like uh smoke shop gray market area, but these guys are like from the redneck Riviera, like Dustin, Florida.
1:44:52
Like the kind of person that would be behind this brand and they don't give a [ __ ] They're like they literally told me we're building this for the LA people, the lower Alabama people.
1:45:01
So >> lower Alabama target >> that's >> they know they're a target market.
1:45:06
So >> yeah that's the bull. >> What about protein? Are we short protein?
1:45:11
You can get protein and everything now.
1:45:12
You >> I I I and I've been reading studies about this.
1:45:16
I think in the next 10 years there's going to be people with like severe kidney like uh problems. Um too much protein. Body >> Yeah.
1:45:27
Your body cannot process the insane amount of protein that American people are putting into their bodies now.
1:45:35
And so I joke when people are trying to push you like I you know I saw protein croutons the other day and I was like this ridiculous but I'd love to see people's blood work like >> no no I won't add protein uh I don't want to add like a meat or fish to my to my grain bowl.
1:45:52
I'll just take protein croutons please.
1:45:53
Well, there's also now a brand that's doing protein greens and it's like a solid green.
1:45:58
It's >> greens have some >> certain Oh, that's funny. >> I have no idea.
1:46:05
But we're beyond parody at this point.
1:46:07
Starbucks announced they're doing a protein foam matcha latte >> foam >> this month. Yeah, like cold foam.
1:46:13
You know those drinks that have like the cold foam on the top.
1:46:18
>> So like Starbucks is long protein.
1:46:22
So, I think we should be shorting it. >> Wow. >> Yeah.
1:46:27
Now that you're having that, I feel like we're like, "Okay, we can start backing out a little bit about that."
1:46:32
But it's >> beyond protein, you know, like now it's this whole like creatine snack trend and I came across like creatine, you know, man cereal is this creatine cereal that's launching, but then you also have things like >> Great job.
1:46:47
creatine muffins, uh, creatine croissants, and it's just that's what the the thing about what I love >> pastries that that that >> I don't science behind it.
1:46:58
>> The science behind it is that carbs help our bodies absorb creatine better and faster.
1:47:03
>> So, that's the science behind it.
1:47:03
But, yeah, that's kind of what I love doing what I love doing.
1:47:06
It's like I come across like the most insane unhinged products, but it also is a testament of like the American consumers like Optimus.
1:47:17
Like you will you can sell anything to Americans.
1:47:21
>> Speaking of selling everything, the chat wants to know about psilocybin ice cream.
1:47:25
I don't know if that's real or if that's just a joke.
1:47:29
>> Mean I mean I' I've definitely seen uh like psilocybining obviously like the chocolates.
1:47:33
Um there's some places in LA that I've do them the the the tees.
1:47:36
I've actually had some of those tees and they operate on the download.
1:47:42
>> So it's like Yeah, it's and it has like it'll deal Yeah.
1:47:46
But it'll be like micro do so it'll be like a little small bottle of them.
1:47:50
The company is called Toasty Town. I'm obsessed with it.
1:47:52
I actually smuggled some. Okay. >> Okay. You're live. You're live. >> Okay. I'm live.
1:47:58
But anyways, a great tasting uh silos tea. So, I'm not surprised.
1:48:04
>> You smuggled it from the plate into your into your mouth. >> My mouth.
1:48:07
Um, anyways, but yeah, I'm not surprised if people are doing that on a DL.
1:48:12
I don't believe that ice cream would be the best way to ingest it. I don't know.
1:48:17
I would have to >> Have you seen anybody try to put uh cocaine back into cola yet?
1:48:24
>> No, but I think at this point I wouldn't be surprised if coke just says like [ __ ] it, you know?
1:48:28
like wrote about this like so like push into like the cocaine induced opulence of the 80s and that's why we're seeing people you know want to do 300 milligrams of caffeine in one drink.
1:48:41
We have the killer Panera lemonades.
1:48:43
Starbucks is also doing Taco Bell doing energy drinks. Um >> so I don't know.
1:48:49
I feel like America wants to and it yearns to be stimulated and we're like kind of the reverse of the iawasa psilocybin kind of like brain dead. um vibes.
1:49:00
>> Do you think we're seeing more new CPG companies formed than ever?
1:49:03
Because over the last few years there's been less early stage investment activity or at least from from the institutional side, but it seems like there's still like a fire hose of new brands.
1:49:18
>> Yeah, cuz like a lot of the barriers of entry of these categories are so low and it's really funny because people can just Kickstarter it like Fly by Jing which is doing really well.
1:49:27
It's like a chili crisp brand and they started off with a Kickstarter.
1:49:30
You don't really necessarily need venture money to launch a brand um a CPG brand, but obviously we've I think it's VC came in to corrupt the CPG industry and trying to like grow it in 5 years and trying to get like those exits something like a poppy or a CITE to have been able to do it in less than a decade.
1:49:51
But that's obviously like not necessarily the norm for the industry itself.
1:49:55
But yeah, there's I mean, it's certainly true.
1:49:58
I mean, I I'll defend uh venture capital with my life.
1:50:02
Uh but, uh I would take a bullet for venture capital, but uh certainly certainly a lot of brands that I love were started decades ago and and didn't raise anything uh close to what venture capital looks like today.
1:50:18
>> I wish there was like a way to short C like new CPG brands.
1:50:22
Like someone could do a poly market for that. Brutal. Brutal.
1:50:27
You're supposed to be there. Yeah.
1:50:30
>> But but isn't the Isn't the competition good?
1:50:32
We just like, you know, we throw we a bunch of budget bunch of uh you see what sticks and every once in a while you get a great product that sticks around forever. >> I know.
1:50:41
But like the like I mean I've come across Polos Santo brewed water and like wood.
1:50:48
>> It's just it's like a certain type of wood. >> Really?
1:50:51
>> The description of the product is like you know polos is what you burn to like sage yourself.
1:50:54
And so like the product describes itself as like >> something that can like elevate your vibe.
1:51:00
>> There's people who say like, "Oh, you can have like spiritual enhancement through like these [ __ ] $7 adaptogenic seltzers."
1:51:06
And so at this point, I do think that we need to be more like like strict in what we allow to put out there cuz like none of that actually changes that there's Skittles water in the market, you know?
1:51:19
Like >> wait, is there actually Skittles water in the market?
1:51:23
Oh, there's actual Skittles.
1:51:25
>> I bet that raises your vibe crazy.
1:51:28
>> Yeah, that seems pretty good.
1:51:29
>> How uh do you do you still >> some something I >> like personally?
1:51:34
I think uh the inst If if you're going to invest in uh CPG, it it the only criteria that really matters is the product truly amazing. Mhm.
1:51:47
>> How much how often are you surprised where you try a product and you're not impressed by it, but then it goes on to be successful? >> Oh god. Uh yeah.
1:51:56
And I've I've spoke in my mind about how I don't believe that people are buying $12 protein cereal.
1:52:03
Um or, you know, I'm not going to say the name of the brand, but I there's a lot of things that I don't believe that make any sense to me.
1:52:13
And I do believe that it's like VC enhanced growth.
1:52:15
Yeah, it's distorted and it doesn't make sense.
1:52:19
And I I'm someone who does spend a lot of time in groceries really observing form of more anthropological POV.
1:52:27
Like what are people people really wanting to spend like a lot more on or you know how groceries became this like way of status signaling that you didn't have before?
1:52:37
Like our parents were like showing pictures of Hines to their friends and being like, "Oh my god, I have, you know, this in my pantry."
1:52:43
And now you have to talk about >> the grass in their kitchen.
1:52:48
And even like the idea of what I call like a hype beast grosser like an arrowan or a happier grocery where it's like that >> it's so crazy that that actually exists and that our generation this form of affordable affluence where it's like oh yeah I'm going to go spend $30 on a 80 gram sugar smoothie for clout.
1:53:11
Um, and I I think that I I saw the news about uh you know, Emily Sunberg posted about that like everyone being inside of like a Kith that members club.
1:53:20
And so it's really funny cuz I think that's going to be like the clout chasing final boss.
1:53:25
Like you dropped $6,000 on a membership to buy a $30 smoothie in New York. Like you got to love it. I can't hate it.
1:53:35
>> I mean badge value is real.
1:53:35
People want to be seen with something. It's an accessory.
1:53:38
Like there is something to that.
1:53:40
I mean it it might be bizarre and distorted but it's real and monetizable and so it will it will come naturally.
1:53:48
>> I like putting they should put all air on inside members clubs because I don't like my only critique of my only critique is like the crowds.
1:53:57
>> I I hate going in and you can tell on like on a on a summer >> on a summer Saturday that it's like tourists.
1:54:03
I don't want to see tourists in my grocery store.
1:54:06
>> Who uh uh who who do you who do you write for?
1:54:09
Like who do you think your do you think your audience uh you know do you write with the mind of the consumer in mind?
1:54:15
Do you do you or is it more like the the industry participant, the investor, the business owner?
1:54:22
>> I come from PR and marketing.
1:54:22
So like my POV was always like I can kind of >> dissect this for you and tell you what of this product is mostly BS and a crafted narrative.
1:54:32
And so I started this publication based on the idea of no one's writing in this like CPG circle jerk of an industry.
1:54:39
Like everybody's just writing for the buyer or for the retailer or whatever or for the other investors, but no one was really talking to like your average person who eventually finds this at a Target and doesn't understand like how come we have like protein popcorn at Target?
1:54:57
Where did that even come from? So yeah, I write.
1:55:01
It's funny because like a lot >> have you thought about putting protein like bundling it into the subs your subscription >> like protein subscription >> protein bundles.
1:55:10
Um well my audience skew is very young which is really funny like I've even been invited to give guest lectures at colleges which is interesting and my number one advice is like don't do it don't get into CPG.
1:55:19
Um but it's it's interesting like I you know a lot >> but it's fun.
1:55:25
It's it's it's people love it.
1:55:26
It's fun to make things that you can consume and and >> physic, you know, it's a very common story.
1:55:33
Somebody's in finance, they're just in Excel all day long and then they start a a beverage company. >> Yeah. It's much less abstract.
1:55:38
Like you are making widgets. It's a widgets business.
1:55:42
It's like you manufacture something, you distribute it, you see it and like >> and people think it's easy because they're like, "Okay, I just make a drink and I sell it a lot of times and then I exit for and the first time you see one of your products like in the trash out in the real world and you're like, "Wow, like this is a real thing." It's amazing. Yeah, it's amazing. >> Yeah.
1:55:58
So, I try to like write I started writing for myself as an audience, but I guess that >> you know there's so many people that can take what it is.
1:56:07
So, like I you know there's I have a a popular Instagram account as well.
1:56:11
It's not just a newsletter.
1:56:12
And I do a lot of memes there that have gone really viral.
1:56:13
It's funny cuz like there's like celebrities like like BJ Novak and uh Kira I forgot what her last name is like and like all these random people and I'm like wait how did she even find out about this?
1:56:29
Like >> it's a universal language >> universal experience.
1:56:33
And so yeah, I guess that is a very universal subject, but the way that I write it just makes it a lot more relatable and digestible to your average person.
1:56:43
>> Are you long or short uh celebrity brands? >> Great question. >> Oh, super short.
1:56:46
Like I'm saying like we someone needs to make Poly Market for CBD. Maybe maybe I'll do it.
1:56:52
>> What are you long like legacy brands then?
1:56:54
Is long the American consumer? >> 100% that.
1:56:58
Um, but I what I'm fascinated with right now that I I wrote a deep dive on this like uh 3 years ago, the inner like the influence of wearables >> on what we decide to eat and drink.
1:57:11
So, I'm very invested in not personally because I don't invest >> but I like I'm very fascinated with how you know there's the trend of people not drinking at a certain age because they're wearing the whoop, they're wearing the aura.
1:57:27
this whole like uh uh the new hot biometrics which is like cortis people wanting to know what their cortisol looks like.
1:57:34
I I just talked to a company that um has uh cortisol strips that you put in your mouth and you they immediately like uh populate the information into your cell phone. I think that's crazy.
1:57:44
think that's crazy. I love the idea of technology advancing enough that you can potentially have one one day a non-invasive glucose monitor that can tell you like oh uh you know you shouldn't be doing like drinking this or whatever how it affects you but there's brands now the guy from Otley he
1:58:01
launched a brand called good idea and they developed this ingredient that counteracts your sugar spike if you drink it with meals >> so I think that's really cool >> it's important because oatley massively spikes your >> yeah he's trying to undo his like what he did in that whole company. >> But I think that's fascinating. I'm like
1:58:18
>> But I think that's fascinating.
1:58:18
I'm like >> explaining to people explaining to people that your body like processes your your oat latte just like it's a a a Coca-Cola is mind-blowing for people. >> Yeah.
1:58:33
But you don't have to be Brian Johnson at this point to be able to like understand your body in that sense. But >> yeah, >> anyway. >> Awesome.
1:58:42
Well, congrats on the recognition, the profile, and >> it's so nice to be here. >> I know.
1:58:47
Thank you for all the support since day one.
1:58:50
>> It's a great hangout >> and uh it's great watching you win.
1:58:52
>> We'll talk to you soon. >> Cheers. >> Have a good one. >> Bye.
1:58:56
>> Get that mallet ready, Jordy.
1:58:56
We have some news coming into the TVP and Ultradome from the Reream waiting room. We have Rain.
1:59:06
>> Welcome to the stream. How you guys doing? >> Welcome. >> Give us the update. Introduce yourselves. Tell us what you do. Tell us the news.
1:59:13
Give us a big number, please.
1:59:16
>> Hey, we're uh co-founders. I'm Farooq. >> I'm Charles.
1:59:20
>> And uh yeah, we're building stable coin infrastructure.
1:59:22
We just raised a $58 million series B. >> Let's go.
1:59:30
>> First proper hit of the day. >> Uh what was it? 52 58. How much money? >> 58. >> 58. 58.
1:59:36
And and and and that 58 million, it's still worth 58 million, right?
1:59:41
Because you're keeping the stable coins. >> Exactly.
1:59:44
>> Did you already whip it into World Liberty Financial? >> Hopefully not. Hopefully not. >> Um >> Oh, yeah. >> Yeah.
1:59:50
Uh just uh I'd love to just better better understand the business.
1:59:52
Uh kind of go a little bit below the surface.
1:59:56
What What are you guys uh doing?
1:59:56
Uh what kind of customers are you working with? All that good stuff.
2:00:02
Yeah, I mean we power a lot of like global payments use cases powered by stable coins largely on top of the Visa network.
2:00:09
We are a stable coinbased card issuing platform as well as a stable coinbased payments institution.
2:00:14
So we connect any use case with any sort of payout mechanism around the world.
2:00:21
Anybody can embed stable coins into their app and just rip it.
2:00:23
You know, you can give us dollars to everybody around the world.
2:00:28
>> Let's give it up for just ripping it. That's right.
2:00:32
>> Some of our customers include New Payment Pro payment acquirer, Avalanche.
2:00:37
So, we part of the Avalanche card.
2:00:37
We power a lot of dollar access cards in Latin America and emerging markets. >> Got it.
2:00:42
>> Yeah, I was going to ask so like is is a lot of the business international at this point?
2:00:48
>> Uh only about like 50% of the business is international.
2:00:50
We power a lot of US use cases where consumers are dealing with stable coins, but it feels and looks like a regular credit card or debit card product.
2:00:59
>> And so it's not just global, it's everything.
2:01:02
I mean, our thinking is is let's just upgrade the infrastructure in the back and then the consumers and the users can feel whatever they want to feel with whatever they already have. >> Yeah.
2:01:12
What what what are the tangible benefits for the American consumer who might be using just normal Visa network card?
2:01:19
does if you're if you're using stablecoin as the backing is that going around the Visa network entirely or are you still plugging into the Visa network at some point?
2:01:28
>> We're still plugging into the Visa network, but I'll give you an example, right?
2:01:31
Like Rain is the only company that settles seven days a week with the payment network >> uh using stable coins that lets us have significant savings in terms of collateral that our customers need to post. >> Got it.
2:01:44
>> So the end user advantage is not necessarily to the end card holder.
2:01:46
Y >> it's our partner that's operating the program.
2:01:50
So you can launch faster, you can service more people, you can be more flexible, you can operate cheap more cheaply, you can make more money.
2:01:57
And so for us, it's really about >> driving cost down, driving revenue up for our customers and using stable coins to do that.
2:02:07
>> That typical like four days of collateral or long weekend risk and we're able to bring that down to less than a days of collateral. >> Yeah.
2:02:16
So, it is the long term that uh you might see someone try and compete with like those popular credit cards like the Chase Sapphire Reserve or Amx Platinum or something and they're able to pass through more savings because they're saving more so they acquire more customers that way and there's this flywheel there.
2:02:33
Is that is that how we might see something like this actually go really big in America?
2:02:38
>> You can already see things like this happening in the US.
2:02:39
Like we have a number of customers that are paying like 3% cash back and >> they're competing head-to-head with some of these programs.
2:02:45
And for us, it's really about, you know, being the partner that you can scale with. >> Yeah.
2:02:52
>> At a significant cost savings and so our customers are able to just move a lot quicker. >> Yeah.
2:02:57
If people get the Ether card in between power, they have really competitive rewards at their offer. >> Nice.
2:03:03
>> Uh you guys start, correct me if I'm wrong, but you guys started in like 2021. Is that is that right?
2:03:10
Yeah, we were actually so we initially built uh this product called sign and wire which was a little bit competitive with party rap. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
2:03:16
That's that's what I was getting at because I obviously you guys have evolved a ton but I remember I remember those days. Yeah.
2:03:25
Um, and we we had we had stable coin we had stable coin functionality in our product, but we just after the uh what I was going to ask you about is like navigating kind of the FTX kind of crisis because at that point we had to basically completely uh jettison uh or or or remove a lot of the stable coin functionality that we had because at that point every major financial institution was just saying like look risk off risk off. Exactly. >> Yeah.
2:03:51
I mean, look, we were lucky to find a way through that without having to, you know, cut down on all the stable coin stuff.
2:03:57
And it was actually a blessing for us because we were able to build in relative obscurity. >> Yeah.
2:04:03
>> All the technology that we now take for granted and be able to use that with volume and multiple years of history that now like large enterprises come to us and they're like, "Wow, you've been doing this for several years and you know, anybody starting today is going to have to start today."
2:04:18
Whereas with us, we've started several years ago and you get a battle tested solution which has been our advantage in the market. >> Yep.
2:04:25
What do you guys uh obviously we have new stable coin regulations.
2:04:28
What are you guys expecting from the market broadly over the next call it 6 to 12 months?
2:04:37
>> It's it looks like it's a lot of people are going to explore what stable coins mean for their business and for their bank or for their app.
2:04:43
And I think that that's all very good, right?
2:04:45
I mean, our hot take is that it's probably going to look like when people started issuing like, you know, gift cards. Yeah.
2:04:56
>> That you can buy at, you know, CVS where, you know, I can get a Red Lobster gift card and all these other things.
2:05:02
But >> if you can't use it anywhere else, is it really money? >> Yeah.
2:05:06
>> I think that's what people are going to run into.
2:05:07
And a lot of folks come to us when they launch a stable coin and they're like, "Oh, wait.
2:05:11
Like, I can't use this anywhere.
2:05:13
use this anywhere. like what if there was a partner that lets me and my customers use this in more places and so that's where we come in right we we just started partner we just partnered with the state of Wyoming where on the first day of launching their frontier token it
2:05:29
was accessible uh and usable on the rain infrastructure anywhere that Visa's accepted globally so just from Wyoming we were able to take it to the world without them having to do anything >> that's wild uh is every state going to launch a uh token or or do you think they're an anomaly? >> Some states will probably launch tokens.
2:05:49
>> Some states will probably launch tokens.
2:05:50
I think other states are still probably figuring out why they're anti all this stuff.
2:05:56
>> Yeah, >> I think what is the rationale for for an individual state not launching an a token that's tied to the economic prosperity of that specific state, but just backed by USD?
2:06:08
like that seems extremely redundant and and I could not wrap my mind around the benefit of that.
2:06:17
>> I mean, a lot of these states like in Wyoming for example, they see this as an opportunity to build a statebacked token where a consumer around the world knows that, hey, this is supported by a government institution.
2:06:29
It's going to be onetoone.
2:06:31
They're not having to take the risk on a private market issuer that could have a run on the bank.
2:06:35
And so there's a potential market for there to be, hey, you know, this is a public sector token.
2:06:40
It's more trustworthy because it's issued by a regulated by by actual >> So is that just like a runaround the no central bank digital currencies like vibe that we're getting out of DC?
2:06:54
>> I think that there are going to be a lot of different types of experiments on how do we get around this like no central bank digital currency thing.
2:07:01
Like ultimately if you look at the dollar, if you go back far back enough, most of them were just issued by public like private banks, right?
2:07:09
Dollar dollars were issued by like your local community bank and then eventually they were issued by the federal government.
2:07:14
And we're probably going to have se several countries where it's going to be issued by your local private bank and or your state and other places where it's going to be issued by the central bank and maybe other places where it's going to be just issued by your corner store or Walmart or Amazon.
2:07:31
And I mean, it's going to be interesting to see what the next few years looks like cuz it we're going to see this like Cambrian explosion of whatever people want to do.
2:07:42
>> And that creates an opportunity for you guys to just be in the back end swapping in and out of all these random stable coins that each represent a dollar but have varying levels of liquidity.
2:07:51
And >> yeah, >> is that is that right?
2:07:58
>> I mean, you don't know like if you have cash in your pocket.
2:08:00
I mean, I don't, but you may, but most of the bills in your pocket are issued by or, you know, they have a different Federal Reserve on them.
2:08:07
Like, do you know, do you care? Sure.
2:08:10
>> Like, is it Denver Federal Reserve?
2:08:10
Is it the Kansas City one? Like, which one is it?
2:08:15
>> Um, >> so we really built our infrastructure to be agnostic of whatever stable coin is people want to use.
2:08:21
You know, people want to spend them.
2:08:22
Um, and we have direct relationship with these issuers and we're just providing that utility layer for them.
2:08:28
>> Yeah, that makes sense. Uh, last question.
2:08:30
Uh, Aaron Frank told me to ask you, you've already given some hot takes, but he said to ask for some hat takes.
2:08:36
He said you're very opinionated on hacks on on on hats.
2:08:37
Farooq, anything there or is he just messing with me? >> No.
2:08:44
Look, I'm a big deep hat guy, so like I think your hat looks very nice cuz it looks like a nice deep hat.
2:08:50
>> Charles is more of a dad hat guy. >> Never dad hat. Never dad hat.
2:08:57
>> I didn't know I didn't know that.
2:08:57
I didn't know the the terminology for it, but dad hats are over.
2:09:01
We'll have >> this your address. I need some rain hats. >> We'll do it. We'll do it. Um, awesome guys.
2:09:08
Well, congratulations uh in you.
2:09:10
You uh started the company at the right time and uh it's awesome to see the progress. >> Cool. We'll talk to you soon. Congrats on the round. >> Cheers. >> Talk to you soon. >> How'd you sleep?
2:09:22
We talked to so many incredible entrepreneurs building so many incredible things and yet we still need to solve the internet crisis.
2:09:28
There's a global internet crisis um >> and 84 last night but I think this doesn't count some of the sleep I got. What'd you get?
2:09:38
>> I got a uh so I this is this is crazy. >> Went to bed at 8:32.
2:09:44
>> 8:30 >> Woke up at 5:30. >> Okay.
2:09:46
but only got six hours of sleep >> because middle >> three-year-old was going the whole house was going crazy.
2:09:53
I walked uh I got up this morning and my my >> What was the final score? >> 62.
2:09:59
>> Oh, play the sound effect for me. Let's go.
2:10:03
>> I w I woke up this morning >> one zero this week. Let's see. It's a short week. See what I can do.
2:10:08
>> I get up uh get up at 5:30, walk out of my room.
2:10:11
Three-year-old walks out of his room holding sandwich. >> That's hilarious.
2:10:15
holding uh >> where does where >> he had got at some point got up in the night and just grabbed a sandwich from the fridge that he >> There is a certain moment where the kids be they like stop being like babies and they start just being like roommates and you're like oh like you're just like >> dude in the fridge bro like did you ask did you ask if you could eat my sandwich?
2:10:35
It was his sandwich to his credit.
2:10:37
We got we got a takeout yesterday.
2:10:39
But but still I was like, "Dude, it's 500 am.
2:10:41
Why why are you session is nine10 of the law, Jordan?" >> Yeah, it is. >> Um anyway,.
2:10:46
com get a pod five night free risk-free trial, free returns, free shipping.
2:10:52
Um, so apparently uh the judge issued a sealed decision in the Google case trying to figure out uh what uh any more details.
2:11:07
>> Oh yes, we got we finally got the Google result.
2:11:09
Um but we don't know exactly what it is. I don't know.
2:11:11
Um in other news, Benny Safy collapses into tears during the 15minute standing ovation for the smashing machine.
2:11:20
Do people realize if The Rock wins the Oscar, he's going to run for president? 41,000 likes.
2:11:25
I think people want The Rock to run. That would be great. What do you think?
2:11:31
You think The Rock could pull it off?
2:11:34
Did you see his new slim down look? He lost some weight.
2:11:38
>> He's not He's not wearing Do you think he's just getting ready for mass the mask a mass gain run? >> Yeah.
2:11:45
I mean, bulking season is coming clearly. >> Yeah.
2:11:47
I mean, it's hard because he's he is he is getting older.
2:11:49
It seems like it's probably a more healthy decision to to take off some of the weight and not walk around. But uh I'm excited.
2:11:54
I know you won't be seeing this movie because you never see any movies, but I will be checking out the smashing the smashing machine. Looks pretty good.
2:12:03
>> So anyways, can't figure out what's happening with Google yet, but the stock is up in after hours trading. So guess it likes it.
2:12:11
>> This is uh this is a good one.
2:12:11
So uh there there's an interview with the the CEO of Chevron in the New York Times and uh there's a quote here.
2:12:19
So, what are you trying to learn about right now? asks the interviewer.
2:12:22
And the CEO of Chevron says artificial intelligence.
2:12:26
Says, "What's the last thing you asked AI?"
2:12:28
He says, "My last question was about was the biggest was about what was the biggest merger in the United States last year."
2:12:37
And uh they say, "What was it?"
2:12:40
I said, "Our acquisition of Hess."
2:12:45
>> So, >> this is the power of the >> power of artificial intelligence.
2:12:48
priceless >> going just going to AI you're the CEO >> just asking about your own activities >> uh yeah I don't know what was he expecting a surprise there like that is is such a funny such a funny result uh anyway we have Mike Maples from Floodgate Capital in the reream waiting
2:13:05
room we will bring him into the TV ultra Mike how >> what's going on welcome to the show >> how you guys doing >> we're doing great thanks so much for hopping on uh I don't know if you read that article uh that interview with the Chevron CEO did that surprise you. >> No, I haven't. You know, I got to say >> No, I haven't.
2:13:19
You know, I got to say that um it's a little bit out of my lane.
2:13:23
I'm I invested way too early in startups and so uh Chevron is not top of my >> not top of your radar. Um >> yeah, Jordy, what?
2:13:32
>> Uh well, yeah, I I still think it's fun to use AI to research yourself.
2:13:34
Chevron CEO was researching his own business activities and to to validate, I think, is uh but I'm sure it's fun to look up uh some of your best investments in Chad GPT.
2:13:46
But it's great great to have you on the show.
2:13:49
>> Yeah, thanks for having me.
2:13:49
I've been fans of what you guys have been doing even even when it started as the Tech Bro podcast.
2:13:57
>> Long time ago, nine months ago. >> That's right.
2:13:59
Yeah, I think we might have replied to one of your posts.
2:14:01
We had some fun with that. It was a good time. >> Um >> yeah.
2:14:05
>> Anyway, uh what uh h how are how would you uh introduce yourself to the audience?
2:14:11
what what what what's the right way to think about your position in the in the ecosystem right now?
2:14:17
>> Yeah, I'd say that I'm I'm kind of one of the OG seed investors and so uh you know seed investing wasn't really a thing 20 years ago.
2:14:24
You know, you you either scared up a few dollars from angels and friends or you went straight to raising 5 million.
2:14:31
And so guys like myself and Josh Kppelman uh started to create these seed firms and things have obviously changed a lot.
2:14:39
Now, nobody questions whether they're seed investing.
2:14:42
Now, there's like 2,000, you know.
2:14:44
Now, if you go to LinkedIn and type seed investor, I think you get more of those than there are founders now. So, it's changed a lot. Yeah.
2:14:52
>> What's been the uh uh what's been your strategy for dealing with the change in uh in the market structure.
2:14:58
I mean, some firms have been like, I need a massive growth fund so I can ride my winners all the way up.
2:15:04
I need to, you know, really like incubate stuff and like get huge ownership stake at the early stage with less capital.
2:15:10
Uh what's been most uh enticing to you?
2:15:14
>> Yeah, you know what I what I started to realize was I always say to founders um you have to avoid the comparison trap at all costs >> and that you know startups role in the world is not to be better but to change the subject. >> Mhm.
2:15:29
So, I realized about 10 years ago that I was a hypocrite giving that advice because here I was one of 2,000 seed funds.
2:15:36
And so, I was like, you know, I'm playing the comparison game all the time.
2:15:40
And so, what I started to do was to try to um say that I I don't want to be pitched anymore.
2:15:45
That I want to uh find founders before they figured their ideas out and get to know them uh and and come up with ways to help them evaluate whether they really want to pursue the idea or not.
2:15:57
And so, um, you know, uh, um, there's that famous essay that Paul Graham wrote and Brian Chesy talked about, uh, founder mode.
2:16:04
Um, I like to find people who are in builder mode. >> Builder mode. >> Sorry.
2:16:09
Little little sound effect for you.
2:16:12
>> Yeah, we'll have a complimentary one for for builder mode, I suppose. But I like that.
2:16:18
>> Who are, you know, pursuing something almost to an unreasonable degree.
2:16:22
They're down some rabbit hole.
2:16:22
They're not sure it's a business yet.
2:16:24
uh but they're doing it because it's interesting for its own sake.
2:16:27
interesting for its own sake. or you know people who are living in the so that's really what I try to do is find the what the prime movers to be >> and and this may this may appeal somewhat to your all sensibilities particularly you know some of the founders fund adjacent stuff right but
2:16:43
you're trying to you know I just think that that um >> some people just have this very rare blend of determination and original thinking and those people to me are the prime movers and my job is to find those people before the rest of the world believes >> do you have particularly really favorite uh lakes to fish in. You know, there's
2:17:00
You know, there's the folks that are uh you know at Stanford and Waterlue constantly.
2:17:05
You know, the Teal Fellowship is pulling from pulling kids out of college.
2:17:11
Uh YC pulls a lot of new grads.
2:17:14
Cast a really wide funnel.
2:17:16
Chris Dixon was famous for kind of hanging out on Reddit and finding like these little pockets and communities where, oh, there's a bunch of people doing 3D printing online.
2:17:23
let me go find a 3D printing company uh or VR or whatever else is where the Coinbase investment I think came from saw saw the community there.
2:17:31
Uh there's other people that are uh specifically great at at pulling founders out of big tech big tech companies.
2:17:38
Uh what how do you think about the different lakes to fish in for the next generation of founders?
2:17:44
Yeah, one of my mental models, I call it freshman and seniors.
2:17:46
And so, um, you know, like, uh, when I first met Justin Khan when he was doing Justin TV, which became Twitch, >> he's a year out of college and he's sold his prior company with EMTT Sheer on eBay. >> Yeah.
2:18:00
>> And you know, these guys didn't know much about business.
2:18:03
>> They sold their company.
2:18:04
>> You don't know the story? >> No. >> Yeah. Their first YC company. I mean, you can tell it.
2:18:08
You know it better than I do. >> Oh, yeah.
2:18:09
So, so I'm I'm sitting in a coffee shop with the Weebly guys and they were pitching me and the pitch is almost over and I see this guy show up in the door the coffee shop and I and he's wearing a baseball cap and a camera on it and wires going into a backpack and I remember thinking that's kind of a strange dude.
2:18:25
I wonder what's up with that guy.
2:18:26
And you know as as the meeting's wrapping up he's walking into the place and David Rossenko of Weebly goes did you get your email earlier today?
2:18:35
I was like what are you talking about?
2:18:36
Well, we got this friend Justin Khan.
2:18:37
He's got this new idea, Justin TV.
2:18:40
And right then, Justin sits down and turns his laptop around and I'm on the laptop screen because his camera is looking at my face and he's I'm going to do a 247 reality show of my life and broadcast on the internet.
2:18:52
And I and I was like, Justin, that's that's one of the dumbest things I ever heard.
2:18:56
Like, that's not even how reality TV works.
2:19:00
You know, reality TV, they script it and they condense it down.
2:19:05
Nobody wants to watch you like you're some fish cam all the time, right?
2:19:08
Like that's not like like you're not even describing what the business is.
2:19:11
And he's like, you're supposed to be a CEO G.
2:19:13
Why are you [ __ ] on my idea?
2:19:15
And I was like, you know, it's terrible, but like what's how do you even do it? What's in your backpack?
2:19:18
And so he showed me how Kyle Vote, right, who was a genius, uh, had designed this thing that did EVDO cellular combined with internet software.
2:19:28
And so that night I was just like researching them a little bit more.
2:19:32
And I'd seen that Justin and EMTT had sold their prior company on eBay.
2:19:36
So they had a calendar company called Kiko and uh as an Ajax calendar at the time and Google decides to do Google calendar and they're like, "Okay, we're we're out of business.
2:19:45
So why don't we try to sell this?"
2:19:47
And they they try to sell it normal ways. Nobody will buy it.
2:19:51
So they just put the company on eBay and they sell it to two cows for $250,000. >> There we go.
2:19:57
>> Isn't that incredible?
2:19:58
>> And I thought, you know, >> just common sense.
2:20:00
we want to sell something, I don't know, put it on a big marketplace.
2:20:06
>> But one of the things back to kind of where do you look for things?
2:20:07
Um I like I call those freshman founders because they they they they haven't been polluted by uh the conventional wisdom echo chamber of the valley yet.
2:20:19
They they think that all you need to do is build stuff and sell stuff and the rest of it is a waste of time.
2:20:25
they don't even know that there's time to waste other than doing those things because they don't have to unlearn anything.
2:20:31
They don't know much yet.
2:20:31
Uh and that ends up being really valuable because they end up caring about the right things.
2:20:37
And then um sophomores and juniors I have less luck with.
2:20:39
So the sophomores are like they read a few too many blogs, they spend a little too much time on Twitter, they know a little bit too much that's not worth knowing.
2:20:47
Uh and then the juniors are the worst.
2:20:51
They've um worked at Google and Facebook and a bunch of fancy companies and they decide it's time to be anointed as a founder and so they raise a $5 million seed round and pay their buddies quarter of a million bucks a year each and uh usually, you know, run out of money halfway into it, raise some more, and then they decide not to do it because they can get a bigger job that pays better >> back at Big.
2:21:14
>> It's also interesting, too, with Justin.
2:21:16
He he didn't have enough experience to realize that it was a dumb business opportunity to stream his life.
2:21:22
But then it turned out, you know, over a decade later, some of the most popular streaming content is people just filming their entire lives.
2:21:31
Like he was just >> living 20 years in the future. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
2:21:35
Justin wanted to be an influencer before there was such a word, right?
2:21:38
He wanted to be internet famous.
2:21:41
And so what you realize in hindsight is he was trying to solve the problem he had.
2:21:45
And and those are the the types of freshmen that I've had the best luck with, they're scratching their own itch, right?
2:21:53
They're living in the future.
2:21:53
Uh they they don't really even think at first that it's a business opportunity.
2:21:59
You know, Mark Andre when he did the Mosaic browser when he's 21 years old, he's just trying to make the internet useful and it wasn't.
2:22:04
And so he built what was missing.
2:22:07
Uh, and then the seniors I've had luck with too, like um, uh, Casser Ununas at Applied Intuition. >> Oh, yeah.
2:22:14
He's >> a little bit of luck. >> I love I love him.
2:22:17
Every time he comes on the show, it's so much fun. He's great. >> Yeah.
2:22:21
And so so like the thing about Casser is he was experienced enough that he knew that what matters is building and selling and all the other stuff is window dressing.
2:22:29
And so, ironically, the the freshman and the seniors have the same priorities, but for different reasons.
2:22:35
You know, the freshman have the benefit of the beginner's mind and they don't know a bunch of stuff that gets in the way of them succeeding and then the seniors know enough to know that some of it's not important that it's Yes.
2:22:45
And so they they focus on the stuff that matters.
2:22:49
And I I love working with both because with the freshman founders, you're trying to help them avoid avoidable mistakes.
2:22:55
Whereas with somebody like Casser Ununice, you're trying to help him run up the score, you know, because like, you know, he knows what he's doing.
2:23:03
Uh, you know, he doesn't have to learn business 101, but um, you know, there there are other things where you could be helpful.
2:23:12
>> Yeah, >> I even noticed that my my first my first company uh, an ad network was like very freshman mindset.
2:23:19
I mean, I was uh very young at the time, but it was like, get something for one price, sell it for another, and just do that over and over, and you're going to have a business.
2:23:27
And then my second company was like, "Oh, we need a wedge product, and we need to do this and that, and like if we're going to do this, and then that."
2:23:34
And then, uh, that that's a really, you know, created something complicated because maybe I had read too many uh memos on on tech Twitter or whatever.
2:23:44
And then third, being TBPN, it's like we just we have a daily show.
2:23:49
We try to make it better every single day and we just do that over and over.
2:23:52
So I think you can see that kind of freshman or senior mindset even across an entrepreneur's companies. >> Yeah.
2:24:00
And I think the other thing you guys did well I don't know you I wasn't there when it happened but I imagine that when you started it you weren't super attached to how successful it had to be.
2:24:10
It was like you you take a small enough risk that it you're not attached to whether the risk pays off or not and if it starts to go your way, you just do more of it.
2:24:18
And a lot of the a lot of the great startups that I've gotten involved with had that quality where um you know, you didn't try to think of a startup, you were just doing something that was interesting and it just kind of fed on itself and then one thing led to another. >> Yeah.
2:24:34
Who else sticks out as that freshman archetype that you've worked with in your career?
2:24:37
Um, I'd say uh the guys at Weebi were that way.
2:24:40
So that was a very uh that was a very uh fortuitous two hours, you know, in that coffee shop.
2:24:48
One one after the other, >> two deals done, >> two deals in one hour, you know, that both did really well.
2:24:54
>> Just do that every day and you'll produce trillions of dollars in return.
2:24:57
talk to me about about uh Weebly's business, how it grew, the actual economics of that industry and then I want I want to bridge to like your take on the new crop of site builders because we've been having this debate over the lovables and the and the different
2:25:15
companies that are playing in this space, Vzero, there's a whole bunch and we're kind of going back and forth on like is it just such a big market that everyone wins and everyone builds a huge business or is there some sort of winner or take all dynamic. So, uh, if you
2:25:26
So, uh, if you could walk through the Weebly story and then kind of bridge to modern web development, I'd love to hear that story. >> Yeah.
2:25:33
And the Weebly, it it may not satisfy our modern uh desires, but it's it's uh it's kind of interesting.
2:25:38
So, these guys were about to graduate from Penn State.
2:25:42
Uh, and I think we invested I think I think they raised at um $650,000 at $2 million pre- money.
2:25:50
And it was like Anderson and Iden Senit, a couple guys. >> Yeah.
2:25:57
>> And uh th those were back in the days when Paul Graham would call you and to make sure you were going to show up at demo day, right?
2:26:01
At at Y because the batches be like 10 to 15 companies.
2:26:03
And and so so I remember it's like two months after uh the money's cleared and have another site visit with them >> and I and I'm like, "Huh, you know, we ought to start thinking about what we're going to need to do to be ready to raise a series A."
2:26:19
And I said, "So, what do you guys think we need to do to be ready to raise series A?"
2:26:22
And they look at me like, "What are you talking about?"
2:26:24
And I say, "Well, you know, you've raised $650,000."
2:26:27
And they look at me like, "I know, right?"
2:26:29
And I realized that like to them, $650,000, it might as well been $650 million, right? It was more money.
2:26:36
They they they were surprised it was legal for them to have that much money. >> Yeah.
2:26:42
And so they they ended up um they ended up not raising money again until many many years later >> from Sequoia.
2:26:49
And at that time I think we were like 65 times in the money on the investment.
2:26:55
So uh I don't know that it it it gives any lessons for today's world other than just um I I've kind of I kind of make fun of my ability to predict how these things are going to turn out.
2:27:06
And that's why I'm so founder focused, right?
2:27:09
I just think that that determination is just such the high order bit.
2:27:13
order bit. Do you do you think uh do you think venture is a easier or harder game than it was back when you could get you know invest 650k to two cap into some great founders because in some ways it's like it's much more competitive now but
2:27:28
also the nature of there being more capital means that >> uh >> and for extra reference Weebly uh I mean I'm not sure if this is 100% right because AI overview but acquired by Block Square for $365 million in cash and stock in April 2018 18 $365 million. That's a seed round nowadays.
2:27:45
That's a seed round nowadays. >> Oh yeah. >> Getting extreme.
2:27:49
>> So there's no question it's gotten harder as investor, right?
2:27:50
Um >> and I think even as a builder, I think there's a lot more distractions right now for the founders and there's a lot more uh sloppiness on the playing field.
2:28:02
And so you got to play the game that's on the field whether you're an investor or a founder.
2:28:06
I think, you know, back in the days when um you know, Justin was and EMTT were doing uh Twitch or you know what what became Twitch or the David and those guys, Dan doing Weebly.
2:28:18
>> Uh I think it was more of a an act of rebellion to start a startup, right?
2:28:21
The dot meltdown had happened about five years prior.
2:28:25
You know, startups were not a popular sexy path for people.
2:28:28
It was it was the path for people who didn't want to have a job in a normal company.
2:28:35
And that was, you know, the only way they could avoid it.
2:28:39
>> It's incredibly trendy right now.
2:28:39
Uh it has become like >> it's trendy and it's comfortable. >> It's tracked. Yeah.
2:28:44
>> It's com, you know, if somebody can quit their job in big tech and then >> maybe they're not making quite as much but but they've got a nice office and they can, like you said, hire all their their friends.
2:28:55
>> I will throw out a counter to this, which is I was thinking about the Elsaundo companies and the hard tech companies.
2:29:01
I don't know if you've spent any time with those folks, but it that feels like, you know, Mountain View in 2008 to me where these these founders are taking extreme risk.
2:29:10
There's not going to be a $10 billion aqua hire from some mag company for your rain cloud seeding company.
2:29:19
Like, if it fails, you're look, you're getting a normal job.
2:29:23
Uh, and and and and you're not doing tons of secondary and raising a ton of money and hiring everybody.
2:29:28
And so you really are burning more of the ships when you do one of these crazy hard tech companies.
2:29:34
But I don't know if you spent any time with others or you have a take on >> It's funny you say that.
2:29:37
So I think it may have been the only company I invested in in 2021.
2:29:40
Certainly in the second half was a company called Hadrien. >> Oh yeah. >> Yeah.
2:29:47
>> And like I just think Chris Bower is a stud, right?
2:29:49
And >> like you know what we're describing about the the types of founders who overcome obstacles and can move the world down a different path. He's one of those. >> Yep.
2:29:59
And so, uh, but but he's a perfect illustration, right, of what you're >> and I mean I I don't know if 2021's the exact year, but like there were a couple years there where like you could see the toll that the business was taking on him.
2:30:12
Like he was working extremely hard and you could tell that it was not there was not some cushy soft landing for him.
2:30:21
It's like either you build the thing, you get it to work and it becomes really big or you're kind of screwed. I don't know.
2:30:27
Being a real founder in some ways is more of a curse, right?
2:30:29
Like most people it's just like it's not a fun job.
2:30:34
It's kind of a [ __ ] job and it's like if people really understood and and it's but it's like you're you're called to do the thing and so you can't not do it.
2:30:43
So it's it it doesn't feel like you have any choice but to do it because the you know there's no way Chris isn't going to do Hrien, right?
2:30:49
He's just too he's just too high agency and too high commit commitment to to let it fail, right?
2:30:57
And so >> yeah, you ask any any founder what the lowest point in their life is and it's probably has to do with their business, right?
2:31:04
Maybe some family thing, but almost always they have like a specific moment where they're everything was >> Yeah. Z Yeah. Zooming out.
2:31:11
Um, I I was I was reading the uh the Caesar's Palace coup this weekend about the birth of Apollo, the private equity group, and I was thinking about how these these there's these eras in finance when there's booms like the LBO boom in the 80s, the high frequency trading boom, and then there's there's multiple venture booms.
2:31:33
But uh I was wondering I was trying to think about like is who who's the person like under 40 who's building the next great financial firm like there are lots of great young investors who are writing checks or building companies and there's a lot of founders.
2:31:50
Um but I was having my I was having trouble putting my finger on someone who's who's young and actually set on building a financial firm of some course.
2:32:00
I don't know if anyone comes to mind for you.
2:32:01
mind for you. I asked chatbt and the answer it gave me was Josh Kushner which is >> I would have bet Josh >> which is great it's true but also it's like he's an investor in OpenAI so I don't know if it's fair play but uh but is there anyone else that you've seen that maybe is taking a different tact in building a financial firm uh for the future like what what your advice would
2:32:20
be to somebody who wants to actually make a career out of venture capital leopold's another good one I think yeah anyway >> yeah it's a good it's a good question um I haven't seen a lot you know the one way I've one way I would come at that question is to say um what is the financial product that entrepreneurs aren't getting >> y >> uh and and I think that it's probably
2:32:41
some combination of venture capital meets project finance >> and so I think you have some of these that are you know in the world of Adams and bits and it it only seems like Elon Musk and Palmer Lucky and a few other guys have been able to pull them off >> and and you could say well that's because there aren't many of those and that I think that's true >> but another way to come at that might to
2:33:01
ask uh you know is it is it a good thing that Elon had to basically bet his entire PayPal fortune to make Tesla a possibility and but for that there would be no Tesla uh because he had to bet all of his winnings on that and I think Palmer probably similarly invested a lot but he also had help with the founders fund folks who were pretty pretty you know off the beaten path at the time. Yeah. So, so I do think that there is um Yeah.
2:33:26
So, so I do think that there is um there's a legitimate argument that says that a lot of our institutions that combine the worlds of atoms and bits need to be reimagined.
2:33:35
And people say why does a venture capital do that?
2:33:37
But I don't think venture capital as it's designed today is is tailor fit for that.
2:33:44
I think it's probably some type of new innovation, right?
2:33:46
And it would be almost the opposite direction of YC.
2:33:50
It'd be something that is more in the upstream capital markets rather than lean startups and that kind of thing.
2:33:56
But I think I think that could be kind of interesting.
2:33:57
I'd like to see somebody do that.
2:33:59
do that. Yeah, we're starting to see a little bit of that with I mean you hear a lot about those uh hard tech rounds where it's very clear that the headline number is a mix of debt and equity and that's usually two different firms and then uh and then there's always been this question of like is there a way to
2:34:16
bring some sort of uh like Silicon Valley technologist mindset to essentially a turnaround of a legacy company where there are some assets but there's something that the company can stand like that was what Chris Power at uh at Hrien was working on before he was doing a search fund. >> Yeah. Yeah. And it's and it's >> Yeah. Yeah.
2:34:37
And it's and it's interesting, right?
2:34:38
There there are some people that I looked to um another guy would be the the Stefan Bonsel of Madna, you know, like you have someies like like one company I was involved with back in the day was Octa and when you saw Octa, you're like, "Okay, these guys are from Salesforce. They're really smart.
2:34:54
They're saying there's going to be lots of cloud apps.
2:34:55
They're going to need identity management."
2:34:57
And I was like, "Sounds good to me." Right?
2:34:59
Like, but you you're like, "That's a very plausible future."
2:35:02
And they're the perfect guys to do it.
2:35:04
There are other futures that are going to take a lot longer to happen and much more divergent from the present.
2:35:11
I think that MADNA was that way, right?
2:35:14
10 years and$5 billion before they ship a product.
2:35:17
Uh SpaceX is that way, Tesla's that way.
2:35:19
And so um to me the interesting question becomes can you come up with uh technical risk takeout gates where you'd have funding that follows the initial funding and then you don't have to have somebody like Elon Musk be a miraculous fundraiser >> going throughout the world trying to find money wherever it exists.
2:35:39
People forget that's how it was 10 years ago, right?
2:35:44
Even after they went public.
2:35:44
And so I I'd like to see the capital markets part part of what was good about seed investing back when I was doing it at first or Josh was that we were doing something that entrepreneurs needed that they weren't getting.
2:35:56
>> And so to me most of the good answers in financial innovation have something to do with that.
2:36:01
You have somebody who would make great productive use of capital who's not getting it somehow and the the the markets have a gap in their ability to supply that capital in that way.
2:36:11
Well, I think in the case of Hrien, isn't aren't the capital markets working quite well in the sense that he raised a bunch of risk capital and then was able to derisk certain customer relationships and process and then now he can access more traditional, you know, forms of of debt. >> For sure.
2:36:30
>> And and I imagine if uh you know, the American Dynamism team at A16Z was watching this, they'd say, "Hey, Maples, what you just described, that's what we're doing."
2:36:38
Uh, and there's there's a lot of truth to that.
2:36:40
So, you know, I'm not sure Chris could have done Hrien 10 years prior. Yeah.
2:36:45
>> And so, I think that, you know, there were some changes that were happening that were creating the conditions, but I but I'd still like to see more, you know, like, for example, I I personally invested in Boom Supersonic because I think that Blake is just wildly ambitious.
2:37:01
We just need more people like that who you know we we need we need to have permissionbased innovation in the world of uh atoms and not just bits and the more we can do that I think the better. Yeah.
2:37:12
And so that's that's what I think's missing. >> Yeah.
2:37:15
I mean at a high level it feels like entrepreneurs are pretty catered to on the capital market side.
2:37:19
Like there is a there is dollars at every scale every order of magnitude.
2:37:23
Uh, I mean, we're Yeah, I don't know any hundred billion dollar rounds and then people can snap their fingers on axe and raise 100K in the DMs if they need to. >> Yeah.
2:37:34
I don't think I've met I've not I haven't met an incredible founder in the last 5 years.
2:37:38
Somebody that, >> you know, just personally I feel is incredible that hasn't been able to raise. >> Yeah.
2:37:44
That has that part of their origin story.
2:37:45
Like they might have other struggles.
2:37:46
Oh yeah, we got in a lawsuit or you know, oh, we, you know, we had to pivot entirely because some company steamrolled us or we misanticipated the progress of some underlying technology.
2:37:57
But the the the the oh yeah, we couldn't raise for five years.
2:38:00
Uh that's not really a story right now.
2:38:02
Maybe the the bigger question to answer in just the broader Silicon Valley is like how do you get more of those those freshmen, those weird thinkers, those people who are going to go and do go from group on to building supersonic planes. Uh that's a crazy move. >> Yeah.
2:38:20
How do you get people that aren't just seeking status?
2:38:24
People >> less base hits, more swing for the fences. >> Yeah.
2:38:27
And by the way, I think part of the reason that the the people who succeed at it do is like I think Elon's great superpower among many is that he only pursues business ideas where he existentially refuses to fail.
2:38:40
And so like Elon never starts a company and says, "Well, I hope it works out. Easy come, easy go.
2:38:47
If it doesn't, you know, he's like, I'm I'm only going to tackle problems where I will never freaking back down ever, no matter what." Yep.
2:38:56
>> And so like if you say, "Hey, getting to Mars is the most important accomplishment I want to achieve in my life."
2:39:01
You don't sit there and handicap the odds.
2:39:03
You're like hand solo, right, in an asteroid.
2:39:04
You're like, "Don't tell me the odds, right?
2:39:06
You're like th this is worth pursuing even if the odds are against me."
2:39:10
And and that has a way of impacting the odds, right, of of your ability to succeed where others can't because if if you'll even countenance the possibility of failure, it changes the equation, right?
2:39:20
It changes the the whole risk that you take.
2:39:22
Um, >> where do you where do you think we are on the on the AI hype cycle, >> the Gartner hype cycle, >> peak of inflated expectations, or are we headed for the uh the trough of disillusionment?
2:39:36
>> Oh man, probably all the above.
2:39:36
>> Oh man, probably all the above. uh you know um here's a here's what I've been thinking a lot about is um in the era of uh the microprocessors you had mass computation and then the internet you had mass connectivity and what got commoditized with micro age was the transistor and then you had the packet get commoditized and so what I'm
2:39:57
interested in is what happens in a world where we have mass cognition and where you know the inference unit co you know becomes commodity because right now everybody's talking about the inputs, Nvidia chips, >> the hyperscaler models, do we need more energy and all those things are valuable, but it's just like in the early days of the PC era, everybody talked about the hardware. People didn't
2:40:18
People didn't co talk about software until much later.
2:40:23
And so I think what's interesting to me is to ask not what's happening, but what is going to become scarce given all the stuff that's happening.
2:40:30
Uh, you know, what will the new scarcity be?
2:40:32
Um, I don't think that's been determined yet.
2:40:36
So I that that gives me a lot of optimism, but it's not the latest model dujour and it's not the latest chip dujour.
2:40:43
It's not the it's not the latest scaling factor that makes things more abundant.
2:40:48
It's the thing that becomes rate limited in a world that where it's a given that the new abundance happens.
2:40:55
And so that's that's what I'm looking for these days.
2:40:57
So you know in a world where microprocessing is free, software becomes scarce because you have to make all these machines useful that are everywhere.
2:41:04
And in a world where the packet is free, what becomes valuable is the owners of these networks that aggregate attention and users and create network effects and become the systems of record.
2:41:15
And so, okay, what will be the monopoly AI companies in a world where cognition is abundant?
2:41:20
I don't think we know yet, but that but but to me that is the question that is really interesting.
2:41:28
>> That is that is 100% the question.
2:41:28
That is that is fantastic. I love that.
2:41:31
I'm going to be digging into that for years.
2:41:35
That's a fantastic he wrote the microcosm and then the teleosm like I wish George Gilder would write the cogntocosm right and talk about like what's going to be uh the new scarcity that complements the new abundance >> used to be that uh f you know that we didn't have enough Reddit threads on niche topics and now now the LLMs will just hallucinate one for you. >> It's crazy.
2:41:58
Uh anyway, we we're we're keeping our next guest waiting but this was fantastic.
2:42:02
We we'd love for you to hop back on and and continue the conversation. I really enjoyed this.
2:42:07
>> I hope you hope you have a good trip to the coffee shop later.
2:42:08
Hopefully you meet the next Justin Justin and the Weebly founders deals out of it.
2:42:14
>> I could get another twofer in the next three months. I'd be happy.
2:42:18
>> We're rooting for you.
2:42:18
Hopefully hopefully in a two cap again. >> Yeah. Yeah. Here's >> Yeah. Bring back the two cap.
2:42:24
>> Bring back the two cap. >> Yeah.
2:42:26
It's going to be my new M. Yeah.
2:42:28
Two two twofur in one in two hours and a two cap. Incredible.
2:42:32
>> Well, thanks so much for hopping on, Mike. We'll talk to you soon. >> Cheers, Mike. Have a good one. >> Talk to you soon.
2:42:36
Let me tell you about adquick. com.
2:42:38
Out of home advertising made easy and measurable.
2:42:40
Say goodbye to the headaches of out ofome advertising.
2:42:42
Only adqu combines technology out of home expertise and data to enable efficient, seamless ad buying across the globe.
2:42:48
Our next guest is in the reream waiting room.
2:42:49
And as a benefit of reream, we got our first commenter on LinkedIn, I believe. >> Let's go.
2:42:55
The chat is just blowing up.
2:42:57
We have chatters on the Open TV here. I see folks on YouTube. Thank you. You are live on TVPN. Welcome to the stream. How you doing? >> Woo. Uh, feeling good. Great to be here. Thanks for having me.
2:43:10
>> Do you remember meeting me?
2:43:12
We met in near Stanford like a decade ago with Anker Jane who now runs that amazing fintech >> built. >> Built. Yes.
2:43:21
I am Am I misremembering that? Do you remember this?
2:43:24
I think we met years ago with anker.
2:43:28
>> This is when I was at human. >> Yes. I think so. >> Okay. Awesome.
2:43:33
>> Good to see you again.
2:43:34
>> Good to see we're back.
2:43:36
>> Uh how how would you describe uh where you are right now? Give us the intro.
2:43:40
Introduce yourself to the to the to the folks who are watching.
2:43:44
>> I am a general partner at Long Journey Ventures.
2:43:46
Uh we're a preede and seed stage firm and our core thesis is that we think the biggest companies of tomorrow will look really weird at the preede and seed stages.
2:43:56
And our our mission is to be the second believer in the magically weird.
2:44:01
>> There are so many weird things in the portfolio.
2:44:03
We had Cyan and Lee on the show.
2:44:06
Uh what was it a couple months ago talking about the the diamond company, the cloud seating company I believe is in the portfolio.
2:44:12
There's just weird stuff all over.
2:44:14
What else is in the portfolio?
2:44:16
>> And of course Justin Justin is a close friend, venture partner.
2:44:18
He's always he's always investing in weird silly things and then like five years later they're they're >> deckorns. Yeah, >> totally.
2:44:27
Um, did they mention the robotic eyelash extension company? >> What? No. What's that? Explain that to me. >> Oh, yeah.
2:44:34
Um, it's a robot that applies eyelash extensions.
2:44:37
Instead of taking an hour or hour and a half for a human to do it, the robot can do both eyes at the same time. It takes 15 minutes.
2:44:47
>> That sounds high risk cuz if if the robot like flinches, it just rips your your your eyelashes out.
2:44:52
>> Well, that's why they invented the anti-flinching technology. >> There you go. There you go. patented. >> It doesn't flinch.
2:44:58
>> I mean, humans flinch, too.
2:44:58
So, it's not it's not >> it's all high risk. >> It's true.
2:45:02
Superhuman unflinching AI.
2:45:04
This is the this is going to work.
2:45:04
Um yeah, >> I think I think we I I I'm glad you guys do this.
2:45:09
Uh you know, obviously, I mean, it it seems like the the rest the rest of the partnership, we've we've had them all on the show and I'm there's not enough people that are just like actively trying to find the weird stuff, but like you guys act do it consistently.
2:45:24
A lot of people say they want to find the weird stuff and then it just winds up being a lot of B2B S >> defense tech whatever's on trend >> whatever's on trend. >> Okay.
2:45:34
We we do quite a bit of defense tech too but I think we were doing it back when it was weird or taboo >> for sure.
2:45:40
>> I mean one of the first role Yeah. >> Yeah.
2:45:43
Uh is there something to the now contrarian statement that occasionally you want to do consensus investing and you want to be the momentum trader?
2:45:51
Uh it's certainly paid off for people in AI over the last few years.
2:45:55
I I can you at least see the the value in that? >> Oh, for sure.
2:46:01
I know we have a we have quite a bit of cognitive dissonance on the team because so many talented builders are are building in AI.
2:46:10
>> Um we want to play the game that's out on the field. >> Yeah.
2:46:13
>> Uh so we but yeah, it kind of like hurts our souls when things feel consensus.
2:46:19
Uh and it's a question like are we too late?
2:46:21
Yeah, >> because I mean we feel like the best time to invest in seed and preede is when things feel absurd or or non- consensus and we want to we want to invest before they become consensus.
2:46:33
That's where the alpha is. >> Yeah.
2:46:35
What's the uh uh what's in uh internally like your feeling on like the AI hype cycle uh where we are?
2:46:42
It feels like it's been like punishingly dominant for the last few years.
2:46:49
Um it are you over >> expectations are inflated.
2:46:54
>> Are there pockets of optimism?
2:46:54
How are you seeing kind of the overall AI boom?
2:46:59
Uh Sam Alman recently said we might be in a bubble.
2:47:01
Um which is kind of a crazy thing to say.
2:47:04
Uh but who knows maybe he's having fun.
2:47:06
Uh what what is your current thesis on like opportunity within AI?
2:47:12
>> Yeah, I mean we like to think of like the second order effects and especially um have been looking more towards deep tech. Sure.
2:47:21
>> And the implications and and how AI creates a tailwind for deep tech companies uh you know robotics, biotech, etc.
2:47:29
Um because we feel like you know working in those spaces there's a lot of defensibility in doing something that's really hard.
2:47:36
So that's kind of how we're we're thinking about it.
2:47:41
>> How uh where yeah how do you dial in like um the the opportunity there?
2:47:48
Obviously, you have like big companies.
2:47:49
I mean, Tesla just put out this big the fourth master plan uh going into humanoids.
2:47:55
It seems like it's a it's an incredibly expensive place to play.
2:47:57
But then, you know, we we we just had a friend send us a a new Roomba that is just like a a new a new friendly robot vacuum cleaner.
2:48:07
And it seems like I mean, it's a fantastic product.
2:48:09
I'm not exactly sure how the business is doing, but it seems like a fantastic.
2:48:12
Um and uh and and and those are like two like wildly diver diverging opportunities.
2:48:20
What are you seeing that's kind of interesting in uh in the deep tech AI enabled like AI tailwind world?
2:48:26
>> Yeah, I mean we're looking at everything across robotics because I mean there just the ability to train robots because of LLMs and physical AI.
2:48:34
Uh I mean it's just gotten so much faster and easier which has you know the the cost of training robots to do something that's actually creating value has just gone down immensely.
2:48:47
So that is one of the tailwinds that we think has enabled you know we've invested in companies you know doing case picking and distribution centers uh you know we've invested in robotic eyelash extensions >> you know there there you know many many applications of of robots we've looked at a lot of you know inhome robots I'm not 100% sure how people will feel with a humanoid like figure in their home.
2:49:15
Um I mean I don't I don't know if I personally want that, but >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
2:49:23
On on that, do you think that um we're learning anything from the the uh the reception of the like AI companionship to how robots will be uh like received in the home?
2:49:39
in the home? because I agree with you um that having a robot over there that's in my house seems maybe a little black me or a little odd but at the same time I also would never have predicted that you know millions of people would be uh complaining about chat GPT40 going away
2:49:56
because they saw it as a friend and a coach and then you know Elon's going into the romantic space and there's like all these different areas where it seems like people are actually you know incredibly receptive to having a personal relationship of whatever kind with the robot. Uh do you think there's
2:50:11
Uh do you think there's something we can learn about that or from that? >> Absolutely.
2:50:17
>> Absolutely. I mean I am definitely reserve the right to change my opinion over time but I think today it would be creepy and black mirroresque and I am much more into the idea of like ambient you know singlepurpose objects doing a doing a task like something that lives
2:50:34
in the laundry room you know moving your laundry or folding your laundry and you know that can be one thing that lives there and then I will have another thing that lives elsewhere and I I think like ambient robots, >> but not, you know, necessarily rosy. >> I completely agree with you. And yet, I
2:50:52
>> I completely agree with you.
2:50:52
And yet, I can immediately imagine the Black Mirror scenario where my laundry robot is like, >> "John, I' I'd like to actually go trim the trees today."
2:51:02
Like, you know, >> or I figured out a way to I figured out a way to run the laundry with the door open and I'm going to flood your home.
2:51:11
We had we had we had somebody on the show that that makes a like a a bedroom lamp that can fold your laundry.
2:51:18
>> It was the exact tal that I love it.
2:51:22
>> But the but the thing is you could easily imagine the Black Mirror scenario where the lamps just start, you know, killing you.
2:51:27
Yeah, it really lent itself to the dystopian world.
2:51:29
But >> how do you how do you guys um talk about uh like timelines?
2:51:34
Because something that stood out to me from conversations with Lee and Justin and I know you guys are talking all the time about deals is they're willing from my sense is they're willing to invest in a founder and and be okay with them like going and just wandering and tinkering for a long period of time and there's less of this pressure of like okay we're leading your seed and then you're going to sprint to the A like hopefully later this year.
2:51:59
Can you do the seed and cruso or something like that?
2:52:01
Wasn't that >> Yeah, this crazy deal.
2:52:03
Like >> I mean I think it would be rough if we were named long journey ventures.
2:52:06
Oh yeah, >> but you have to get to the series.
2:52:11
>> Long Journey short time horizon.
2:52:11
Get to the this year >> or actually medium journey.
2:52:14
Yeah, >> we pump more money in this thing.
2:52:17
Um but yeah, I mean uh like unpack a little bit more about like is that just matching finding the right founders?
2:52:24
Is it a specific vibe that you bring?
2:52:26
Is that like not taking a board seat, taking a board seat, coaching the founder?
2:52:31
>> We do not take board seats.
2:52:33
>> Yeah, we do not typically take board seats.
2:52:35
And yeah, I think sometimes, you know, when you're investing in the absurd before it becomes consensus.
2:52:41
Sometimes you whiff you whiff it, >> of course.
2:52:45
>> And you know, it's just a matter of talking that through with the founder and usually the founder realizes it even before you do.
2:52:51
And so yeah, we have quite a few companies that end up pivoting and renavigating the idea maze, but uh but yeah, sometimes it lands and then you're one of the earliest investors in something incredible like Crusoe. So yeah. >> Yeah.
2:53:08
What a crazy crazy >> part for the course. >> Yeah. Um yeah.
2:53:10
What h how have you been processing the uh all all the news about like uh Jevans paradox and like the uh the the token costs coming down but then companies using more expensive models and maybe this is going to hurt margins and whatnot?
2:53:30
Like did you did uh did you go through the same roller coaster ride that most people did during like the deepseek moment or how how are you how are you processing the overall uh temperature of like how the the the latest trends in the AI models just affect like the the companies that are actually building on this technology day-to-day?
2:53:49
day-to-day? Yeah, I mean I think the cost reductions are obviously extremely significant and and I think you know people right now a lot of enterprises are in the kind of pilot or experimental phase where I think they want to use you know the highest performance models based on the academic benchmarks but I
2:54:10
think cost reduction or you know the cost profile will really come into play when people want to start deploying you know AI companions to all their employees or you autonomous background agents uh you know these sort of deployments across many workloads that will consume a lot of tokens then I think costs will really matter. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
2:54:32
>> So I think that's that's kind of like what I'm looking out for is uh you know not just increases in performance but how these cost reductions will enable you know scaling more use cases. >> Yeah. Yeah.
2:54:46
We we were debating notion earlier.
2:54:48
Ivan said that uh these gross margins went from just just scraping by at 90% and now it's down at 80%.
2:54:54
And uh to to to me it seemed it seemed like a trade I'd take all day long for for growth and a better product and something that's AI enabled.
2:55:04
Uh of course you got to build the right the right product in there, but it seemed like uh seemed like a no-brainer and that's probably why he's he's uh talking to Chris Mims at the Wall Street Journal. Uh >> definitely. Yeah. >> About it. It was interesting.
2:55:16
And then I think like the sentiment has been interesting.
2:55:19
It almost feels like the general reaction or like the Gen Pop reaction to new models is that we're almost in like the iPhone era.
2:55:31
>> I mean, I remember when people used to wait in line, people freaked out about like new iOS releases and and new iPhone releases.
2:55:38
And now people are like kind of deeply ambivalent about whether they're they're going to get the new iPhone or not.
2:55:44
But um it almost feels like the public feels like we're in that spot with a the newest AI models.
2:55:54
>> But I feel like that that misses the picture on the the cost reduction side, which I think is really powerful. >> Yeah.
2:56:00
I mean, it's interesting.
2:56:00
Doesn't uh >> I mean, this is why so many people are so bullish on on chat GPT and OpenAI despite all the chaos and competition is is you go walk to the average person down the street. have you tried any AIs?
2:56:15
They'll say, "Yeah, I've used chat GBT. It's cool."
2:56:17
And then if you go to those same people and say, "Hey, I have a something like chat GBT.
2:56:21
It's it's twice as good."
2:56:23
They're going to tell you, "Okay, like I don't know.
2:56:25
I don't know what that's really going to do for me."
2:56:30
So, >> uh, yeah, it's it felt like six months ago we were in this era again.
2:56:34
It was like the early iPhone days, like you said, where it was like, "Oh, a new model came out. Let me rush to try it."
2:56:41
And now there's way less of that that energy. So >> yeah, totally.
2:56:46
>> It's good for the uh the new incumbents.
2:56:49
>> We were talking to Mike Maples about this uh at the early stage uh like like the this analogy of like uh finding good lakes to fish in for um outside the box thinkers, entrepreneurs that might be up for a long journey.
2:57:04
They might wander for years.
2:57:06
for years. like uh where are where are some of the underrated places where you're seeing pockets of entrepreneurial talent uh bubble up like there years ago it was like you know uh like the the PayPal mafia was like a massive explosion of like just back all those companies they're huge uh the same thing
2:57:28
happened with other other big tech companies that threw off a ton of talented entrepreneurs there was like the invest in every Stanford grad phase is there's, you know, get kids to drop out of college to do startups like where where are the interesting pockets of entrepreneurial talent that you're seeing just across the globe? >> You know, we're just, you know, waiting
2:57:46
>> You know, we're just, you know, waiting outside YC demo day. No kidding.
2:57:52
Uh we have partnered with a really cool organization.
2:57:54
I am really excited about where they're going.
2:57:57
It's called Edge Institute and they run these monthly Yeah.
2:58:01
monthly pop-ups called Edge Esmeralda.
2:58:03
They're about to do a monthlong one in Patagonia.
2:58:05
They did one in Helsburg back in June and it attracts a lot of weird thinkers. It's not all founders.
2:58:14
It's a lot of like researchers and you know people who aren't necessarily in the kind of entrepreneurial ecosystem, but it's a lot of people with crazy ideas.
2:58:22
is I mean that's the whole concept is edge edge city people living on the edge doing things on the edge and um operating you know in not necessarily society accepted ways right now but like probably will be consensus in the future.
2:58:40
Yeah, that seems like a good good uh pool to fish in.
2:58:42
Just like weird thinkers, academics, just anyone who's like just spending >> Yeah.
2:58:49
They might not be a founder themselves, but they're like, "Hey, my my friend is working on this."
2:58:53
>> Or maybe they could be >> crazy idea. >> Yeah. I love that. >> Yeah.
2:58:57
We we did a residency program uh in in Hilsburg back in June.
2:59:03
>> And Edge Esmeralda is also building a city, right?
2:59:06
>> Can you tell me about what's the progress there? How's that going?
2:59:10
>> They have bought a site for it and are are pl Yeah.
2:59:13
and are planning planning the city itself.
2:59:17
>> Um I'm not sure how how much is public. Yeah, Devon.
2:59:21
>> Yeah, we got to have her on the show. That'd be great.
2:59:22
>> Yeah, you got to have her on the show.
2:59:25
>> Yeah, Devon Zoo, right? Is that the name?
2:59:28
>> I think that's her last name, >> I believe. So, yes.
2:59:30
>> Anyway, uh we will get her on the show there.
2:59:33
Um, thank you so much for taking the time to hop on great day >> and we'll talk soon. >> Awesome. Talk soon. >> Bye. >> Cheers.
2:59:43
>> Let me tell you about bezel. Getbbezzle. com.
2:59:44
Your bezel concierge is available now to source you any watch on the planet. Seriously, any watch.
2:59:49
>> So, results from the Google ruling.
2:59:49
They don't have to sell Chrome. Okay.
2:59:54
>> And they don't have to stop paying to be the preferred search provider.
2:59:56
So, total >> total big tech victory. >> Let's go to Tyler. Uh, did anything happen?
3:00:05
>> Nothing ever happened. Nothing happened. >> Nothing happened. Okay. >> Yeah.
3:00:08
When you're the no on play market continues to print every time. >> No.
3:00:13
>> Tyler is our official did anything happen correspondent. Why? Yeah.
3:00:18
What was the point of all this?
3:00:20
Just to waste a bunch of time and attention and >> also will not be required to divest Android. >> Yes. Okay. So, uh, nothing.
3:00:27
>> Well, I mean, something happened if you're a lawyer collecting a paycheck. >> That's true.
3:00:32
Uh, >> I mean after like what, five years? >> This is five years. Yeah.
3:00:34
From Wait, is this the final final final or is this like V1 final? I don't know.
3:00:38
We need to figure that out.
3:00:42
>> Somebody posted uh Meek Mill about to raise 25 mil from A16Z.
3:00:45
Meek Mill quoted it and said, "My first time hearing that, but lol, but for real, I need investors.
3:00:53
I don't think they're on Twitter." Donald Boat.
3:00:58
Donald Boat responded and said, "Uh, DM, >> that's so Donald Boat will lead you around, but first you need to buy him, uh, a private jet." >> Yeah.
3:01:09
What a crazy >> needs a jet. >> Yeah.
3:01:11
So, I I mean, the news here is Meek Mill, the the rapper, is uh going to start an AI company of some sort. >> Yeah.
3:01:18
It went viral a couple days ago, working on a AI tool that can change the world. Lol.
3:01:22
The funniest thing was that in the screenshot he posted, he he'd switched it to 40 and so everyone was like, "He's been one shot. He's been one shot."
3:01:32
>> I mean, it it really Yeah, he he tell Spec uh or OpenCV basically >> popped in the chat and said that.
3:01:40
>> Uh no, he he was Yeah, he specifically highlighted that Meek had gone back to 40.
3:01:45
So you can imagine he's deep in the prompts being like, "Okay, me and Chat GBT figured out figured out the next the AI app that's going to disrupt chat GBT." >> It's great. >> Love to see it.
3:01:57
Yeah, I I do switch back to 40 every once in a while, but only when I want it to write a really obviously oneshotted like like piece of pros. >> You're right, John. >> Yeah, exactly.
3:02:08
So, so if I if I want to write something that's like it's not this, it's that it's it's more than this.
3:02:15
It's actually that and like use a lot of m dashes, I'll fire up for 40 and and give it a little teaser.
3:02:20
>> The comments the comments on this or Skrey comments, let me know if you need help.
3:02:24
I got a hundred goons ready to go for you.
3:02:26
Bone GPT, your favorite rapper's favorite rapper. >> Oh, okay. >> Reginald says, "Mr.
3:02:31
Mill, I'm a well-known AI practitioner.
3:02:33
I think you should collaborate with Cluey or Friend.
3:02:37
These are some of the most innovative companies in the space.
3:02:38
Happy to talk you through some of the players if you're interested. VC Brags just says top. Okay.
3:02:47
Anyway, let's switch over to Ron Rule.
3:02:50
He says this is pathetic. Gen Z in the workplace.
3:02:52
This is a poll from uh Fox News.
3:02:55
They say 77% of Gen Z in the workforce admitted to bringing a parent to a job interview.
3:03:01
53% of parents spoke with a hiring manager on their behalf.
3:03:06
73% parents helped complete work assignments.
3:03:09
45% regularly have a parent talk to their current manager.
3:03:13
I think we're pro work pro parent workplace here at TBPI.
3:03:16
We've had many parents stop by the Ultradoo and it's been great.
3:03:20
I don't mind talking to some parents about stuff and I say, "Hey, if uh need to have their parents come in and help complete some work assignments, do it.
3:03:28
Tyler, you want to bring your dad in and have him vibe code something for us?
3:03:33
>> I think my parents are coming on Friday. >> Fantastic. Put him to work.
3:03:34
Just let him know they got to be in the 73% of parents that help complete work assignments. >> Mr.
3:03:42
Cosgrove, you will be using code.
3:03:46
>> Yeah, we're we're fully in support of all the team's parents just helping them with their jobs.
3:03:50
>> In fact, I would insist that they come and they pull their weight and they help uh they help organize information.
3:03:53
Uh, I think we had Michael's uh parent in the in the Ultradome recently, I think.
3:03:59
Uh, get him on the switcher.
3:04:02
Get him on the pull the graphics up.
3:04:04
We need all hands on deck. Get the parents in here.
3:04:06
This is a pro parent workplace.
3:04:08
Um, anyway, uh, the great lockin of September to December has begun.
3:04:13
This is just a general announcement.
3:04:15
It's also bulking season, folks. We've seen this.
3:04:17
It was teased earlier by Will at uh, at OpenAI.
3:04:23
He said the dwinkification process has begun.
3:04:26
We are of course sending him some mass gainer on his journey to become a mass monster. Um but >> great lock in.
3:04:33
What >> man are saying that that's it's bearish for open AI?
3:04:36
>> It's bearish that that he's dwinkifying. Why why would that be? I'm in the gym. That could be spread.
3:04:42
>> No, it's literally keyboard. >> It's Wait.
3:04:43
Oh, it's bearish because he's turning into a bear because he's going to be as large as a bear.
3:04:46
Like a a hairy bear man or something.
3:04:50
>> I'm just imagining Will. Wait, wait. Is that the actual joke?
3:04:52
Like twink and bear like bearish because like the opposite of a twink is a bear. >> I don't I don't know. >> Okay. I don't know. I think it's bullish. I think it's very good.
3:05:00
I hope he turns into a bull and and and gets yolked like a bull.
3:05:06
>> Um that would be that would be very very very good.
3:05:08
Uh lift heavy, run far, marry early, eat steak and eggs.
3:05:11
We didn't really talk about >> We missed this post.
3:05:13
Somebody up the timeline over the weekend.
3:05:17
>> Yeah, this was uh uh let me try to find the original quote.
3:05:19
It's deeper in the stack.
3:05:21
Uh, and people like to hate on it.
3:05:24
Jerro Tickets, I mean, everyone was having their take.
3:05:25
Some people were hating, some people were just having fun.
3:05:27
Uh, Jerick said, "The current vibe is drinking drugs 10 to three, five days a week, lift heavy, run far, marry whoever, stay up late, eat spicy Sichuan food." That's pretty funny. Uh, yeah. I I don't know.
3:05:42
This was something that was like very dunkable, but you know, the the the >> This made me when when uh >> I thought it was fine.
3:05:47
The actual quote was, "The current vibe is no drinking, no drugs, 996, lift heavy, run far, marry early, track, sleep, eat, steak, and eggs."
3:05:56
And uh I resonated with this so deeply that it made me want to start doing drugs. >> Wait, why?
3:06:05
>> Well, I'm just This exactly tracks with my life. >> Oh. Oh. Oh, yes.
3:06:09
>> No drinking, no drugs.
3:06:11
>> It is now so to do this.
3:06:13
>> Mry early, track, sleep, eat, stay, Nick.
3:06:15
I was like, it's time to sort of drink.
3:06:17
this was sort of the top for that concept.
3:06:19
But yeah, you know, I I I think overall that take is more correct.
3:06:21
It's just more from first principles more foundationally true than not.
3:06:28
And so it should it should stand the test of time as like roughly correct.
3:06:34
Um even if it's like phrased in a little bit of a incendiary kind of frothy like style.
3:06:39
Uh yeah, I I I respect that founder going to the was it the Wall Street Journal he quoted in or something.
3:06:50
I don't know talking to a jouro like that's pretty funny to me. I think it's fun vibe.
3:06:55
>> I I I I think I think it's a funny quote and I don't think it's I don't think it needs I don't think it needs to be fully dunked on.
3:07:01
I think it can just be you can just have fun with it.
3:07:04
>> Um anyway, >> well on that note, >> wander find your happy place.
3:07:06
Book a wander with inspiring views, hotel great amenities, dreamy beds, top tier cleaning, 24/7 concier service.
3:07:11
It's a vacation home but better.
3:07:13
And we do have to get on with Pyongyang.
3:07:16
So, we are going to hop on the phone >> now.
3:07:20
They're gonna be they may send a nuke if we don't.
3:07:22
>> Pongyang investment fund PIF.
3:07:22
You've heard a lot of founders raising from PIF.
3:07:26
They're talking about Pyongyang investment fund.
3:07:28
Folks, >> we got to hop on with Pyongyang. See you guys later. Going to be a big week.
3:07:33
>> Thanks for hanging out. >> Have a great evening.
3:07:34
We'll talk to you later to >> see all of you. Go out there.
3:07:37
Don't get oneshotted by 40. Void 40. >> Oh, thanks Max. the SF standard call.