welcome to technology Brothers the most profitable podcast in the world you read The Wall Street Journal today of course yeah um I need my copy what are they are they covering the departures not the F yeah it's interesting because open AI I mean uh uh
the chief technology officer quit yesterday there's like rumors about a fundraising round a bunch of Executives left so it's like kind of a chaotic moment I saw somebody somebody's take that I think was totally on point is the
way that open ai's like employment contracts are set up is if you talk poorly about open AI after you leave they're just like okay like this you get your Equity CL back so if you wanted to make a statement about how [ __ ] up
things were while still holding on to your Equity you leave right in the middle of the fundraise right what sends a bigger me like cuz if you're like let's say not different than VI but that's not the same as like actually violating that
Clause no that's what I'm saying if you wanted to make a very large public dramatic statement about something being wrong at open AI couldn't say that oh but you couldn't say that because you would leave in the middle of a fundraise
but if you want the equity why would you want to hurt the company I mean it's not you know you could argue that somebody could say I want no part of this but you still want to kind of keep get the money I hate that that that pisses me off so
much that's like that [ __ ] guy from from meta from Facebook who like made this huge bag and then was in on Tristan you know this guy he he was in this documentary called like the social dilemma he was like oh yeah like it's so
bad what Instagram is done his generation so bad it's like and he's just sitting there from Montage yeah exactly just he made so made so much money and it's just like I actually love that Clause I think that Clause is interesting because if if you are
seriously are we an EXL character right now no no no I I I I I this is what I actually believe um I love that clause because if you were actually terrified of AGI and you were like holy [ __ ] this stuff is going to kill everyone yeah
what the [ __ ] is your Equity is worth zero your Equity is worth nothing so you're GNA just be like yeah go for it no I think it's much more of a statement on Sam's character to leave during the fundraise but which is I don't know I
mean like I I I I hear what you're saying but it's it's just weird because it's like it's like it's this half measure like either either you'd want to just be like let me like I want the value of this stock to be as high as
possible therefore let's find the chillest place for me to get out because like I am I am tired right yeah so I do want to leave but I don't want to [ __ ] over the company at all so let's figure out a way to get out and I thought it
was originally interesting that they launched this like all this stuff broke the same day that Zuck had the big meta announcement I think it was timed well yeah I mean if you it's it's like you know bury your news yeah try and bury
your news on you know a day when something else bigger is happening right and like open AI historically has been really really good about releasing information like front running like putting putting their AI announcement
like the day before Google's right so they clearly know when the other things are happening has Lucy ever been approached by open AI I mean maybe she can't say that does she work with them which Lucy uh sorry my company no no no
no they've definitely worked at Lu of course Mass uh Lulu Lulu not Lulu I mean I think Lulu is working with uh SSI IL IL cuz she's on like the NAT fredman Daniel gross cre right um although she's you know like it has a bunch of different companies and stuff
but um but I I when I initially saw that all this was breaking right then I was like okay maybe they're trying to kind of bury this news I mean obviously it didn't really work because the it's on the front page of the business section
which every self-respecting person reads daily well I mean you know like like The Meta platforms announc deals with celebrity actors to use their voices in a new artificial intelligence assistant that's B4 and the open AI stuff is B1 so
so it did break through that's the way I thought they were framing it initially was like let's try and let's try and get this news out the same day that something else big is happening in Tech we know that this Facebook thing's happening and then but
I mean then again like there is one narrative where it's like the whole company's falling apart and everyone's leaving but then there is another narrative which is like great great man theory of History maybe you just need
one person executive teams turn over all the time they often turn over in the midst of financing rounds because it's like okay we're actually changing what the business is going to be doing we're going a different direction so like yeah
we are wiping out a bunch of the staff I don't know I'm I'm not I'm not ready to say like it's it's it's so over no it's it's the thing that's most the thing that's most uh the thing that makes it the most interesting is how opaque it all is like
nobody nobody even seemingly insiders don't actually know what the [ __ ] going on right to have that many that many billions of dollars in a company and nobody can figure out what's going on and there's this broader public back
like like Sam went you know a year ago it felt like Sam was he was on top of the world right like he was everybody was like was his comments like worshiping him on every single post like you know this like sort of tech demigod
and now it feels like that has yeah certainly like the snap back like at least the X AI ex Community is deeply against him at this point yeah and and a lot of that has to do with like the open sourcing right and kind
commitment to the developer community and a lot of different stuff but yeah and it's funny that the I feel like the first um one of the first critiques of Sam was how he would give those interviews where it genuinely felt like he was just lying
but like with a very straight face and he's like I own no open I I own no equity in open AI like and it's like who knows what's actually true like I actually was curious and I tried to do some digging and and people were like
yeah like from what I can tell it's like legit yeah yeah it was legit but always the soft power element in the for-profit shift there's this discussion of getting him you know what will effectively be like 10 billion dollar of equity in for profit and so to
me if you actually think about his sort of game theory is like let me come in sort of run the company get so much control and power and influence and not have Equity while it's still this nonprofit structure and then flip it
into a for-profit structure and get Equity then right like it almost is like it almost is like well if you were always doing like why is there even a discussion of you getting 7% of the company at $150 billion valuation if you never wanted it and it was never a
motivation in the first place yeah but it was kind of if if Sam had come in and taking a huge stake in the company in exchange for taking on the CEO role while cucking Elon out of then there would have been like a lot of you know
there would have been probably even more now he can make the argument where it's like well the board just really wants me to be properly incentivized now that we're a for-profit structure it's only right and now the next time you know
he's up in front of the Senate what's you know getting grilled they're going to be like so what you know what changed like I thought you just were doing this for Humanity and now all of a sudden you have your you know yeah it's interesting I I wonder
like I I I always wonder like how seriously people believe like super intelligence is right around the corner and the the reveal a few thousand days away it's a few thousand days away now it used to be a few quarters away it's like it's kind of
shifted so much and like that informs your decision and like your actions like so much and there's like a lot of like revealed preferences versus stated preferences a lot of the doomers are like you know oh 99% chance that AGI is
going to like kill us all but like yeah I'm still like investing in like bonds because 401K exactly and it's like okay well like you kind of don't it doesn't seem like you believe that it doesn't seem like you're really taking
but but I do think like even internally at the at these at these research organizations like they might have shifted their their views like yeah it's totally possible I was talking to somebody about Jensen Wong and like how Nvidia has done a lot to like kind of get around the chip bands and and whether or not that was like unamerican because they're like American companies will buy 100% of nvidia's Supply right now yeah so the fact that they are
taking any tsmc what he's saying right is we're still deeply Supply constrainted and we'll be for the next everyone is like yeah like like Nvidia could very clearly just make uh a statement saying like we're only going to sell to American companies and I'm
going to call up Oracle and Elon and Zuck and Google and all these people and just say I have you know 100% of my Supply you guys better take it all and they would yeah and so so it's not an economic consideration it's it's more
like this long-term diversification you want to be more of an international uh an international company and and so if you really really believe that like a ASI AGI is around the corner it's going to be this super like you know bioweapon
level like super critical geopolitical thing then putting in the hands of the CCP is is very dangerous but if you deep down actually just believe that it's just like it's just spell check like it's just it's just like a useful tool
like then then as just like a Libertarian normal person it's like yeah like why would you respect the spirit of the law like you're only going to go after the letter of the law and like the chip band says it can't have this much
memory bandwidth and so you'll go one point under that and like that sounds treasonous if you believe that AGI God is coming but it doesn't sound treasonous if you're just selling spell check right yeah so it was a very very interesting discussion and and I think I
think that's happening at a lot of these Labs I think the lot of the labs are starting to change their view from like okay well we thought we were just going to like like nail the algorithm and get God and we wouldn't even be able to
process entry level white color workers exactly and so and so and so like like and and not just that it's like also God might be like decades away right even a few thousand days that's a that's a full decade and you got to do a lot in
between and also just the scaling laws and all of the different the few th we talked about this but the few thousand days away sounds way better than 10 years than 10 years which is exactly what it is if you just assume a few is
three and you just do the math and it's like okay that's that's a decade and and we've been hearing about like self-driving car is a decade away and then you know it took like a little bit more than that took like two decades and
so still not even here and then and then the actual build out and roll out of these things is it takes forever to like yeah I was disappointed disappointed to see when you said you shared this earlier that tsmc is slandering podcast
Bros oh yeah they called they called alate a podast bro as as if it was some type of like attack yeah which I didn't I had to reread it a few times to try to get their meaning I was confused because that's kind of the highest food chain in
the in the tech food chain pod podast Bros fin people that can naate Excel without you know their Mouse you know venture capitalist after that then then Founders yeah right um but but yeah it's sort of interesting um if if you would think that tsmc knows
what they're doing right yeah do you think that they're do you think that they're seeing through the all the narratives and just being like [ __ ] because that's kind of what it sounds like yeah yeah in in that one in that
one interview clip where they kind of talked about um uh I have fours too if you want I'll take four thank you sir um uh yeah yeah in that one interview clip they they are talking about like you know Sam coming in and saying like
we need like 35 more plants and like you know if you go back to the history of Morris Chang and tsmc like just getting that one plant up was like immense risk and required like massive government uh you know intervention to make it happen
I hadn't realized but I guess the Arizona plan is actually put producing product I didn't know that but I mean it makesense the question is just like what process is it on how small are the chips like like because we I mean America does have
plenty of Chip making capacity for you know the like the the the much larger the stuff that goes in like a toaster and a washing machine like Global foundaries and a few other companies have like autonomous toasters are going
to be yeah but but it's it's when you get down to like the really important like iPhone chips and stuff that's in the uh um uh in in the gpus it gets really really difficult um but yeah I don't know uh speaking of AI I there's
been a lot of talk about we we can do this later but but there's been a lot of talk about like you know uh the the AI that Elon is applying to the X algorithm and whether or not it's good for the world or good for the user experience
and the and the question is is it actually AI or is it 300 people in a room just looking at videos and hitting a button that says degenerate or like or like or like good for iety and they're just going like this you know and and
then they're just like feeding those videos right cuz you you you remember early Tik Tok days when Tik Tok the algorithm was like getting good and you you I remember going on it never never I don't think I've ever posted anything
there but I remember going on it and being like wow I'm like kind of shocked at that they would feed me that video with how little I've used it like it was so on the nose just pausing a little bit on like oh there's a car in the
background the next video is car video then the next video is the deepest dive on a car you've ever seen yeah it knows I'm a car guy just like that and I remember at the time there was footage coming out of these effectively like
farms in algorithm Farms is how I would describe them right where there's just like people in rooms just like sorting like videos like manually there's a little bit of that I mean mostly it's just like it's just it's just like like how much time is spent on this
particular thing how much time are you hovering over it but but but yeah it's like no of of course but but there it's funny to imagine Elon getting so his dopamine Rush is engagement right like he's all about like the metrics he wants
to put points on the board and so you can see him just like dialing up the degeneracy to the point where he's like he walks into the room they're like sir we can't we can't go anymore like we we're already showing the people
fighting in the streets like and he's like War it's like showing like like racial CRI like he's just like more and they're like 11 put it to 11 yeah put it to I mean yeah it's unbridled but I mean I think that's like the only thing that'll
turn the business around really like like I I think this nice little garden that we had in like Tech Twitter like it was truly like like the Tech Community was subsidizing that yeah because like Twitter was never particularly
profitable that the business never really work that well and and but it was what's funny is like how much of the market cap was oriented around how much people love the product like it was something when I discovered Twitter yeah one I credit Twitter
with massively accelerating my professional development from the lens of I was able as a 21-year-old in the school you know I was at UC Santa Barbara it's not a tech school I didn't know we had a technology management
program that I was in but it wasn't like everything we were studying in school was like 10 years behind right so it was like I could go on Twitter and and the biggest thing for me was like picking up the vocabulary of the industry so that
when I would go meet somebody I knew what they were talking about even if I'd never done the thing yep and so to me I credit Twitter with accelerating my career like you know five years something like that because I just felt
like I was I felt like I was a part of it just because I was even even though I was just like kind of soaking it all in I wasn't even a part of the conversations and unfortunately so I think that a lot of their market cap was just the fact that the technology
industry and many other Industries just love the product it's like you don't want to short Twitter it's kind of like this option value on like the value of the network because it had it had like world leaders there the pope but then
also every journalist who's posting every news story is breaking there like there's just like something everyone felt like there was going to be some sort of value to come out of that yeah and the big critique was like you guys
don't ship anything everything's broken nothing like works like the DM suck and elon's like okay you guys want change like I'll give you some I'll give you some change yeah and then it's we're like oh actually like like I still type
in twitter.com on my browser and every single time I get this Pang of like sadness but yeah I mean I think there's there's something interesting where it's like he clearly bought it because it was like they festering Hive of scum and
villainy in the sense that like every cancellation campaign started on Twitter yeah it usually like the anatomy of a cancellation campaign would usually be like someone figures out that they don't like this Tech CEO or whatever then they
go back they dig up some tweet where they're like capitalism is good and then some like tiny like communist account quote tweets is like actually capitalism is bad and then gets like a thousand retweets and then and then all of a
sudden there's like more people piling on more people piling on a real like back and forth fight and then theow journalists can start reporting on the backlash on Twitter and they can start saying oh well like you know how are
they going to respond there's been this uproar on Twitter this person needs to like talk about this and then once the low tier Outlets are reporting then like the New York Times And The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post can like report on like the crisis that's
happening and Elon just completely killed that by like kicking a lot of people off DE amplifying thing Community notes like there's so many different changes that he made just chaos blue checks like so like there wasn't
this moment where it's like oh well like a blue check person Amplified this hate like this hitpiece on my company or like that was particularly devastating for me because I got my blue check and had it for like three months me too I had the
same thing I had the same thing I was like really uh and then Elon just gave it away yeah gave it away damn yeah I think a big I don't think that um I don't know how virtuous the decision was as much much as it was um I believe there's a factor there
right I'm not going to psychoanalyze musk like The Logical decision to buy ax is one there clearly was a lot always a lot of potential right and if you're worth hundreds of billions of dollars if you want to make another hundred billion
dollars like you have to take these like colossal bets right buying Twitter and trying to make it a like as big half as big as meta is like a pretty good way to try to do that right who knows if he'll be successful so there's the purely
financial and like if you overpay for something but then like make it 10 times more valuable doesn't you didn't over pay like you paid like a fair price right it was just risky the other factor is it being like such a critical comms channel for
all of what elon's doing specifically Tesla right like the whole there was years where people were like Tesla doesn't spend money on marketing Tesla doesn't do this and it's like okay they ended up like uh like their marketing
channel was Elon spreading the gospel being Elon and there was a lot of value in making sure that that always stayed the same yeah right um yeah I think that makes sense I think I'm I'm a little bit more pilled on like the psychoanalysis
side of like of like if there was going to be like a Communist Revolution like it would have started on Prem musk Twitter that's right and and and there were and there were and like he would be the first one to go yeah and so there's a little bit
of self-preservation there yeah no and that's that's the thing is that the real answer is probably not that he did it for one specific thing yeah he made like one of the smartest business Minds the smartest business mind probably of the
hundred years is that we're on this Earth yeah and he made like a very calculated decision across a bunch of different different parameters parameters and he's fine if people think it's because of one of those reasons but
really like you usually don't make a decision just for a single reason you know yeah and then I do think like he's he's been successful in kind of like just destroying the like cancel culture like Boiling Pot like it really served
as like the kindling Tot but everyone was hoping that it gave other VCS a permission to so yeah he kind of like canell dystopia but I think everyone now is like we're waiting for Utopia yeah and it's like maybe we're not going to get
that maybe it will maybe the answer was just like yeah maybe the Town Square is always going to be chaos exactly exactly it's going to be a lot more chaotic and maybe that means everyone uses it a little bit less or at least like the the
high signal like the people that are having a really bad time right now are not the normies on Twitter like the normies on Twitter are like oh I'm getting like even more entertaining it's like that Meme with the guy hitting the
bong while these two people are fighting EXA like exactly yeah yeah getting high off the algo and just there's a lot of people that are that are in that boat and and and the people that are are upset are like the this very small Niche
like Tech Twitter community that was very interested in like sharing links and like meeting new people and like amplifying small accounts and stuff and like all that stuff part party round go to market strategy probably would have
worked but been much less effective yeah where there was a time where if you understood the algo and you had the right people around you could dominate the timeline for an entire day like genuinely dominate it where like you could open you could make sure that when
people open the app they would see your stuff three four times in a single session and I miss those days that's why we're creating our own channel here yeah I think there will continue to be hacks like I especially in like an ex
an Excel work chaos is a ladder chaos is a ladder right and I see a lot of chaos and I see a lot of opportunity but yeah I mean there will be a lot of like sludge like the thread boys existed beforehand they've clearly Amplified in
the new era especially with the Rev share stuff but then also just like the I think what's really thriving is like the the culture War poit it's also because we're going into an election so it's even hotter than ever but that type
of stuff like I think there's a lot of people that don't want to see that stuff at all and so going back to the AI thing what what I would love is like I don't want to go in there and every every time there's a new trend like there's this
like hippo muang have you seen this thing I I like I have no desire to see any of that like and I I could put in like a block keyword but like what if somebody just shares a meme with a picture being like this is cute well
then I'm seeing it anyway and then and then you're kind of not in the in the in the meme sort of network but then Daniel uh Daniel shares like moong is left open AI okay and then a little bit but I basically just want to tell I want to I
want to talk to the algorithm and I think that that would be the most the cool thing would be if and and who knows if this will happen but if Elon could some I invested in that company farcaster which is like a decentralized
you know and their whole Vision was like Hey you build one network and then other people can build Network specific networks effectively on top of the network right like so if we could take the Twitter social graph and all the mechanics and build effectively our own
service for that like you could bring back OG Tech Twitter to some degree right like it probably wouldn't be that hard like you know to I mean it would be hard but yeah if you the social graph is still there all the users are there
they're just not being coordinated in the same way yeah there's this theory of like the algorithm store like you should be able to pick your algorithm or whatever but I I actually would prefer to just basically talk to the talk to the
llm like grock and tell it like hey like cool it with the yeah that's why I don't the political social like like the the the culture War stuff like I want to see less of that I know that it's grabbing my attention and so you're getting this
signal that that that does retain and but I want you to push back on that in the way that basically I found that not interested does that work it doesn't work for doesn't work at all um like I I experimented with it where every single
time I've seen something about Diddy I just click and say not interested this post and the next time I open the app there's something else about so you the only thing you can do is is is is effectively mute that word but then what
if somebody posted a picture of baby oil it needs to actually and that's the issue with Gro is it's a you completely use it's completely separate like what I want to do is I want to every morning like have something scrape every tweet
that would be in my foru page and my following page and scrape all those tweets out and then run those through an llm that says would John like this based on the what we know about him and I've and I've told it a lot about what I like
and express those opinions you can sometimes do this when they like when you when you initially on board they ask you like are you interested in sports or technology and then they tell you like you should follow Cristiano Ronaldo or
whatever but like that's not enough I like I want to have a much more Rich conversation and then have the llm like kind of score each one based on my individual expression of that I'm I'm surprised that social networks haven't
adopted that because every once in a while it's really expensive interesting I think I think actually like like like right now the all it's doing is just like is just like like you know this is recommended to like this has this tweet has high
retention when someone sees this tweet they click on it they read the comments it's a good tweet the average time they spend on a tweet is a minute or 10 seconds if it's 1 second then don't show it to anyone right and so they just they
just blast this out and there's a little bit of like fit where it's like okay we know that you like a little bit more of this that more like this but it's not it's not customizable in any way yeah um and and and really what I want to do is
just like print out all of them have an AI do that but until like that becomes affordable the next best thing is I just I just asked my secretary to print out TW for and I just read it on so I have a bu of these here that my secretary
printed out for us to look through um did you get a chance to look at any of these oh you were talking about your favorite you you would have missed this tweet if you had your button because it's about Diddy thank yeah thank God I didn't mute it
um yeah I think this tweet uh we'll read it out first put Diddy SBF and Eric Adams in the same cell and make a16z invest in whatever company they come up with this hurts because it's feels like there's a reality where that like one of these
people would raise from Andre the fact and well no it's more like looking at like the Adam Newman thing like Adam Newman you know came out uh probably a generational entrepreneur and like deserves to come back and raise a bunch
of money because like even though he you know know there there were some issues with how we work was ran like that guy just willed something into existence that um and I never had a I never understood that the Adam Newman critique
in general because I'm like all right he took a bunch of ugly Office Buildings and used you know mayosi son's money to make them beautiful and cheap and like available to everybody like how could you hate this guy right um these three
these three I think are harder to hard to defend I mean like like the Diddy story has become like he's like a murderer now and like murderer rapist um no he's I I actually haven't looked into the the Eric Adams stuff I haven't looked in it enough either the
what's funny is that like it's not like a16z invested in FTX like they they specifically didn't and it was because there were so many obvious conflicts right like anybody that would look at hey the most prolific crypto head fund
that does the most degenerate crazy [ __ ] that is antithetical that is you know that is basically like manipulating all these markets also wants to own the biggest exchange we should fund The Exchange like what could go wrong you
know but they don't get Dan Tumi do you know who this is no so he works for morning Brew he has a YouTube channel he like he does some of those videos he's like he's much more like a video creator than like an Insider Tech person I don't
think he's done a startup I think he kind of comes from like the comedy standup like video world now he's done a lot of research and he actually understands things like really well um but it's just funny that like he frames
it as like oh this is something Andre would do when like I think it's just because like their big name or something it was kind of interesting like like that's what he picked because like no I read it as the oh you're kind of making
a play on Adam Newman but like oh yeah okay well no cuz that's the most high-profile company that Andre they went back to after back the founder who had had a fall from grace right um bizarre no but Andries doesn't get enough credit for not doing FTX right
because you know they were pitched it of course over and over and over and over and over and had to have said no it's not like it's not like it was an issue of price right because that's not the and their fund was already so scaled like
right um that was an intentional decision which is why from an investing standpoint you always have to ask yourself why am I the one that is doing this deal right like why are all the there's the Market's not perfectly efficient but it's pretty efficient
right and so anybody who is backing FTX meanwhile Andre has their multi-billion dollar crypto fund and has a mandate to be in every important company yeah yeah why did they not do it at any point that's yeah that's interesting
found I don't think Founders fund did it either right no yeah I mean the the team always talks about like yeah there were a bunch of red flags um but here there there there was another thing I mean some people passed I mean obviously like
the best people passed just because they clocked s SPF is like a fraud um but other people passed because uh either they were already in coinbase or uh what's that binance so if you're in those you might be like I don't want to
do FTX as well always figure out how to do yoga to oh he's building the finance super app it's not yeah it's true um and then uh yeah I mean uh there's a bunch of stuff there but um I I think that the the uh this reminds me of of of
um uh another story that I don't think is printed out but is worth covering um came out yesterday that the FBI is probing this group called hone capital for ties to the CCP yeah and I think it was between 2016 and 2018 angelist took
$80 million in in sort of direct investment from hone under the conditions that hone could get full visibility into every Syndicate happening on the platform yeah and presumably all the data associated with those which as you know is decks
financials you know other you know basically so like that to me that to me is like the biggest story in Tech right now and there's yeah and there is enough um there's enough people that have uh vested interest in angelist I think it's
generally great for the Innovation ecosystem and is like a positive platform and force but that to me is um potentially one of the first stories of a series of stories around foreign money and Venture that will just continue to
drop I always I always wonder about the actual impact of that stuff though totally because it's like I I was I was joking about like imagine you're some spy and you work your way up and you know you weey your way into a big
Venture firm and you're like oh yeah I'm with like the top dog like I I'm seeing everything I'm seeing everything and then the GP is just like the future is nfts and you're like God damn it to be weapons like like yeah okay so
they steal the code to the the monkey pictures it's like it's like like there are a lot of companies where actually the IP is not that valuable it's stolen like yeah but I'll give you a story that is relevant so deterrence defense Tech startup yeah was
speaking with a high-profile rolling fund GP and because deterr will be doing sort of that's critical to National Security we need to know who your end LPS are sure and so we pressed said GP on who their LPS were and he basically
had to say I don't know I cannot verify that they're not that it's not Russian money CCP money Etc yeah and I independently verified with another um probably won't run this but I independently uh between you and me I independently verified with somebody who
work with the fund who was like yeah there's Russian money like yeah 100% yeah I mean I at the same time like I get that it's a bad look but like I mean I barely give the cap table to my own invest but but if the problem is if some
if that money gets invested into the company it damages the company prospects right purely brand and Optical or do you think that there's actually a path to us us like hey we don't want to work with a company whose end investors sure sure
sure yeah that that's just yeah that can damage the company I just I just have trouble because like like most investors it's like you take a small check from them and you never hear from them again and then a few of them it's like okay
they got some information rights like maybe they get like a p&l or like maybe they get a cap table once in a while but it's like they're never getting access to like the git repo they're never getting access like they don't they
don't have any they they're not badged like they don't get to go the company and so like I get that it's like a huge problem and like and like a big thing in like the abstract but I feel like like even even if you found like six degrees
of separation there's some like you know Russian or Chinese money in something like I don't know that that's as dangerous as we think it is as opposed to like the the more obvious thing of just like there's an employee who's been
compromised and just has access to the whole network right like that might be that might be what we actually need to be worried about like more I would say the and then and then there's also like the the Chinese and and Russian money there
are expats there are people who are just rich kids over there who like want to play in this Mar they want to leave or or they like America and they're just like not actually aligned of course they could be turned of course there could be
Spies Like like that that definitely happens and that is an that is an issue I would say that yeah I would say one again uh all this information is possible to get get in numerous different ways right like if you want to find out about a company almost any
company any Tech startup that is like preed through series B right now you or I could get their their most recent fundraising deck by the end of the day if we actually wanted to right 99% of companies it's a bad idea to even copy
it for you know for like the rest of the it's like for for for the next for the next like order of magnitude of companies there it's like okay so you know maybe there is something there but like just having the deck isn't enough
to really like create some sort of like geopolitical Advantage there's just a lot of steps to like actual like you know Shifting the geopolitical balance I get it's going to blow up and it's going to be really it's going to be a really
big like brand issue and it's going to be something that people really have to fight through and like work through these questions tough for it's tough for Angelus because Founders already are not generally super excited about their deal
going on that platform because because of the information issues just getting a thousand and Cara had a similar thing where they were like kind of selling data or something or like letting C is they were trying to do secondary
transactions right private Mark or cap tables are should inherently be private and owned by the company and Caro was leveraging that information to catalyze their secondary their secretary's Market which was the entire reason that they
were going to be a 10 million company because if they become like the that's yeah like massively they can make 5% on every trade they're huge blocks trades you could be facilitating billions of dollars of Trades a year if
it worked it would have been much more valuable than product yeah that the people that are like who's investing in C at a $8 billion valuation it's like well if you can be the platform for secondary transactions and get 5% rake
on everything like you're such an unbelievably large business it's insane um but yeah I don't know do we know who like do we know who was running hone yet like is this guy there's some dude who was like running around right investing he probably was very well
Lov because he's like you get 2 million for your fund you get 2 million for your fund we're back in your next Syndicate deal right like it's really like money is like a way to make fast friends in the valley right yep yep that's true
everybody loves a loose LP um what else should we uh should we do should we do this one uh oh yeah that's great I mean uh so it's funny i' I've DM I have no idea do you I actually don't know who's behind the account at all I don't
but and they seemingly came from like Finance Twitter and like just inserted themselves because like yeah it's one of these things where it's like it might not even be a girl totally totally who knows um but good good posts so Sophie
says I think we can do away with seed series a b Etc either round is a Vibe round or an Excel round and then Matt Turk says something like this with the midwit meme and the midwit meme is just at the early stage it's Vibes in the
midwit is Exel it's all it's all vies and I mean we're certainly seeing that with with like VI BRS getting done in the seed stage and then also VI Browns getting done in you know tens of billions and Beyond the tens of those are the real VI BRS yeah do you think it
do you think it just all comes down to the founders ability to create a VI round at any point in time is it always better to have a lower cost of capital through a vibr vibr feels like like inflated valuation like higher multiple
when I hear 100x Revenue multiple like that's that sounds Vib I think it's I think a better way to look at it is does a company have product Market fit or narrative Market fit and you actually get crazier multiples for narrative
Market fit because it's all just and so an example being if you have product Market fit and you have 2 million of ARR and you're adding a million of ARR every three months you could probably go out and raise at like 60 right because
somebody's like okay like this is you know great momentum this thing's working if you have narrative Market fit and like Venture capitalists are sort of applying this lens to your business which is like this is a crazy New Market
and a crazy team and they're just going to to figure it out you can also get the 60 right and so I often think whether it's truly like a pmf round or a Vibe round they get done in a similar range if the founder of Cal if the if the
caliber of founder is is um you know relatively you know equal the real crazy multiples come when it's both right when you have the n product Market fit and the narrative Market fit and I would give I'd give the example of um that company Harvey
which like has they're the legal AI company and you know they have probably 10 million of AR or tens of millions I don't I don't actually know I think like people talk about their metrics um but it's sort of unclear but the narrative
Market fit which is that llms are going to dominate the legal industry is so strong that why would you not do this round at 800 million right like just crazy multiple because yeah they're the category winner and like The Narrative
tracks and it's not like the early days of llm development where I mean what open AI probably made no money for like eight years right it was incorporated in what 2016 or something like that like as a nonprofit for that reason and like all
of those labs didn't really have products that anyone wanted to buy for a very long time right even gpt1 gpt2 like they had apis even the first gpt3 it was like kind of cool but no one could figure out a way to like really
incorporate it in a product yeah there was a company this company copy. a yeah rocketed to like 20 million of AR they kind of figured out they figured out how to how to Leverage The API and it was great and I think they had to completely
pivot because people just started using chat GPT right because it did exactly that for way less money yeah there was another one too some sort of writing assistant I think it had like one of those personal names like not Harvey but
it was like human name and yeah so I think I think VI BRS are Excel rounds is right but the way to look at it is to say is this a product Market fit you know sort of like we're doubling down on this like momentum like actual business
traction or is it narrative or is it both and that's the crazy stuff yeah there does seem to be like a certain type of founder that can just like will a VI round into like like Adam Newman to your point earlier well it's category
dependent right but right now if you're because like yeah I mean like we work was not in some like AI Mega Trend right like there was no there was no like Mega Trend in like oh yeah of course real estate in 10 years is going to be completely different like whereas like
the legal profession is pretty consensus that like like the tools are going to get better who's going to be the winner how what will the market structure be there's a lot of questions there but you can clearly build a thesis around that
whereas saying that you know the the real estate market is going to be dramatically different in 10 20 years like that's not an op the Wei work was incredible product partially because it was Venture subsidized right the fact
that you could pay $300 a month to walk into a beautiful space and have a desk and have coffee and snacks like they were just not charging enough right and then you combine that with Incredible positioning around and storytelling from
Adam around what has this actually become and we work as you know a dominant brand within all within everyone's daily life right like something that is the whole vision of apartments and offices and yeah um you know it was easy to buy into that when
he was adding a new wew every two days and I'm sure the retention when it was really cheap was great and you know people love the product and PE you know I think um so again that's him he was forcing The Narrative yeah but the
product Market fit was real yeah um he was able to like sprinkle The Vibes on top yeah I think it's funny as founders really convincing Founders the most convincing Founders convince themselves first and then by nature of being 100%
convicted yeah they like breslo is a good example right brlo when he goes out and pitches is 110% convicted in what he's saying so much so that other people are like that sounds crazy but like this guy's convinced and he's gotten this far
so like why would you not bet on him right yeah um I think that wears off eventually you think it wears off just because you become jaded because like you're like as you get further in your career like you realize like wow I was
100% convicted about that particular thing and it didn't pan out therefore maybe I should be less convicted about the next thing I think it wears off on a Founder to founder level right like nobody stopped believing in TK right
imagine what Uber would be today yeah it would it would probably be wh Mo you know I think they have a partnership now or something but you know I wonder yeah I wonder if there's anything that you can do to like upregulate uh conviction
almost like the it's like the inverse iasa thing you know yeah I mean I I guess for some of the psychedelics like it does seem you know there was kind of that counteraction to well like Steve Jobs took psychedelics and he came back
like extremely you know uh you know focused and and probably more aggressive about you know I know the truth I know that like this product is the right one and he was like you know unwilling to accept a plastic you know uh like a
plastic screen on the phone like it had to be glass because like that's what he like knew to be true meanwhile the Apple designers today are like we're going to put the camera offset from the back of the phone so that people have to buy a
case which is going to increase our aov by 6% and drive meaningful where it's like oh you made a phone that like doesn't sit flat and the camera lens sits on the like uh yeah so yeah I think I think the the topic of
psychedelics is is a is a funny one because I do think that the technology industry has for a long time benefited from it but it actually went too far right yeah and yeah the whole iasa by itself I think will be studied like to me that's like the overdosing on
LSD of Our Generation where like a lot of people use LSD and you know experience some range of benefits from it right the psychedelics might have just straight up been weaker back in the job days he might have been taking like
one tenth of the dose that like some Tech Middle manager takes on some iosca Retreat like turbo fries their brain or whatever yeah the funny thing about the average I've always always avoided it had no interest in it and fundamentally
like you know would have had had plenty of opportunities where I could have and opportunities where I could have chosen to do something like that but once people understand the actual nature of an iasa Retreat most of them involve
going with 100 20 to 100 strangers and sitting in a room and the stories I've heard of people saying like yeah I was in a room with a hundred people everybody's laying in a cot throwing up having an exorcism the funny thing is is people
end up ultimately losing themselves so much that that I've heard of uh men starting to masturbate in these sort of like group things I know these two girls that run a popular Health podcast in LA and they were approached by this uh they
were approached by thisan in Costa Rica that said hey come come down and experience like you know it's it's on us it's comped and they were they were telling me the story they were like yeah a bunch of like half the room was
throwing up 10% of the room was just masturbating what and and I was like oh my God I'm so sorry and they were like no no it was incredible like like this was like I was like um and what did you get out of it you come these people come back and they're even
more lost like it seems like it sends you down this um the turbo fry I think I think Mark called it turbo frying yeah it was a l shark who he posted like the screenshot of L shark saying like you know you get your Giga fry your brain
Turbo normies get their their brain Giga fried because they're like they're not settled spiritually and go into the that's the thing with psychedelics if you are incredibly mentally stable and fortified and you do these things it can have a
positive effect in terms of helping you see things in a new way yeah and you have to imagine that I mean I don't know exactly job's timeline for this stuff but it's possible that like he had already created a billion dollars of
value and created like some of the greatest like advances in Computing history ever and so going into that you're probably like pretty confident you're not like where's my place in the world like he's going into that experience thinking my place in the
world is to create great technology and I'm really [ __ ] good at it and so I'm just doubling down on that when I come out of this and psychedelics help you see things from new angles that's the best way that I think if for somebody
that hasn't ever tried them to look at it is like you're looking at an object like you're looking at a computer and your entire life you've looked at it one way and psychedelics help you view it from like this way and you're just like
okay what if we you know made the whole back structure clear so you could see into the machine right and it's like that becomes an iconic feature of the product but it wasn't like Steve went into a cave and then invented Computing
right like it was like he didn't come out with like the circuit board right it was more so I think he deserves credit for things like design and deeply prioritizing the user and coming and thinking about products in new ways and delivering
elegant versions of that right I do have a friend who uh is already like one of the most aggressive people I now and has always been and he did acid one time and he and I was like oh what was that like he's like yeah like stuff like you know
wiggled around but my number one takeaway was that I need to be more aggressive I was like just makes you more of you yeah yeah and I was like that's the opposite of what you normally hear about where it's like oh I was like
it's so at peace with the world like you know I need to like think completely it's like I need to be even more aggressive yeah already one of the most aggressive guys okay should we talking about uh Turner's tweet I kind of like
this one you see this tech tech ecosystems right now SF are most important startup is imploding NYC our mayor just got indicted for corruption Europe we are Banning AI China VC's are suing all the founders de Mo Iowa we'd like to buy 50% of your compy for
50k uh I think it's great I mean it's uh it's pretty much did you see the chart of the Chinese like startup formation how it just like fell off a cliff and like no one's starting companies there yeah cuz they can clot so yeah for those that
didn't see it the basically if your company fails they can like come after all of your personal assets um which feels fairly communist which makes sense makes sense um but yeah yeah I mean I think it's like that's why that's what
makes technology beautiful right it's not just like is people like try to BL put Tech in a single bucket and this and and even to people that aren't in the industry if I they ask me what I do I say I'm in Tech right like and then they
have an idea of what that means but Tech is so different in different like you it's surprisingly like different in different locals right like it's still operating yeah if you the real Alpha the real alpha is to go to the Midwest and
just start offering slightly better terms like I'll give you I'll give you 50 on 500 yeah 55k 50% yeah I mean the funny thing is that like these are these are framed as like they're all in chaos like it's all bad news everywhere like
everything's falling apart but I read this as like you have to be in a major American city yeah like I would choose SF in New York where one startup is employing and the mayor is getting indicted versus Banning AI BC suing
Founders or clearly like like you know Capital markets that are just like you know defunct basically um it's like yeah like that like SF I don't even know if I buy the imploding narrative but like if it is that's a lot of opportunity that's
maybe creative destruction or creative disruption maybe they'll be you time to go join open Ai and climb the ladder clb the ladder that's the long-term what's what's your long-term vision for technology Brothers uh Co CMO open a a more a more
hostile take over you you know they always talk about like the you know Sam wman if you drop him on the island he could become like the cannibal it's like no like I could even do better I could do it better the knife yeah um yeah who knows but I I do think that uh there's this tendency to latch on to headlines and just everything behind the headline in every single one of those there's amazing companies that are hitting their stride finding you
know I don't know except in Europe except in Europe Europe seems in in a lot of shames it seems we it's time to colonize Europe yeah they colonized America well I was time to colonize it back I was joking about like yeah like
either in Germany or or France like yeah France specifically like you know it just seems like authoritarianism was on the rise like Banning Free Speech they're banning like they're arresting pav durov the telegram guy and it's like
yeah every every 80 years like America has to go in and like cleans clean it out clean house clean house and so like like we got to go in this was a fun social experiment but there's only one form of government that actually works and we're here to sort of Bring
It Let's reinvade we've we've brought democracy we've exported democ it's the greatest export right free markets and democracy yeah but sometimes people forget that yeah yeah yeah what else was on the docket today what else do we have
um I had I had a funny moment today that or a funny moment this week that you'll appreciate yeah somebody asked me about Excel and yeah blah blah and they were like yeah I really thought that um I I've been working on a pouch
concept I think that uh it could be really good business to just get to like 40 to 50 million in cash flow yeah and I was like yeah yeah I mean that that's like cool story bro I was like I was like you're uh you're going to go into
one of the most Cutthroat competitive Industries seven to eight years behind Lucy and then just think that you're going to like ride to like cash flowing some asset from zero as there's all this money coming in and like turmoil and it
made me think of something that I think is a topic that that more people need to understand is like there's this attitude within like the like startup founder of like I'm going to try to find these like easier ideas and usually usually they land on ideas that
are perceived to be easy for some reason which is like okay I get a plastic thing I put nicotine pouches in it and I just start selling it and I'll get to like 40 50 mil and just cash flow it it's not a venture thing but like and there's this
idea too that for some reason cash flow businesses are easier to build when it's like okay would you have been able to get you wouldn't have been Lucy wouldn't have been able to survive without Venture Capital to get
to The Impossible um and so I think it's like a it's probably a topic that will I mean I just see it come up all the time where people are trying to find ideas the exception in the tobacco category and the nicotine space is just straight
up being illegal like there are companies that cash flow a lot because they just break all the laws and they just don't do anything and so um but they're very short-lived and they're not and there's no equity value and it's not
like when I think when people think like a cash flowing asset it's like oh yeah it'll cash flow for a long time not like I mean like puff bar businesses yeah yeah yeah a lot of these a lot of these Vape businesses like popped up overnight
yeah just like completely broke whatever rule was in place and it's like well you know big tobacco isn't going to break that rule Jewel isn't going to break that rule any anymore like has been you know like if there's a flavor band they
can just like move around it or whatever um but yeah it's it's wild yeah so that that was something that that came up multiple times this week where Founders were just searching for what they perceiv to be an easy idea because it
was very tangible yeah and then you're just like no well you know you know that this is like going to be extremely difficult on all these dimensions and you've had a and and in that situation I was like best-in-class team with Lucy
that's been executing on the same vision for closer to a decade than the first year and uh uh so that was funny and then the other thing that um the other thing that came up that I think is funny I was the the text that I sent to a
buddy was real men rais pre-product because like I we I have a friend I have a friend who's starting a new company and he's like hire he's done well previously he's like hiring Engineers for the new company but he hasn't he
hasn't raised yet and I was texting him wanting to invest and he's like yeah we're going to wait till we get to like some Revenue traction and I was like God like it's so soft just like you know like and that's again like the vibe
round versus like the traction round is like I'll give you the valuation that you you will get when you have the traction I'll give it to you now yeah but like just [ __ ] s like send it send it dude race like be a man like race like if you have conviction have
some conviction in your idea raise pre-product like it's soft to do anything otherwise like the Venture economy depends on people going full send yeah yeah yeah you're hurting the economy I always I always laugh thinking about this uh this conversation that uh
Mark Andrew was having with Ken Griffin and he's talking about like his earlier funds and how he was like kind of trading his own money and then he like scaled up the fund raised got some LPS like got some meat on his bone so he
could like size up the firm and like start going bigger and bigger and now you know he still owns like a huge amount of it but he was just like you know Mark and you know obviously as you know like you know if you don't if you
don't get some Capital behind you like you don't go very far and he just said it like it was just like such a truism and like it was just such a funny like disregard like anyone who's like oh bootstrapping like like like not if you want to play in his
League just like it was just like obviously you need Capital if you have a good idea that are moving quickly and want to like actually win and play some like deeper bigger game but the but the the myth of like oh yeah a lot of lot of
Ventures burn out therefore some sort of Lifestyle business must be easier or something I've never liked it yeah the the the issue when people analyze bootstrap versus Venture businesses is they'll be like look at this business it was
bootstrapped and it sold for a billion dollars yeah and they're like look at this company this company had to raise 300 million dollar to get to a billion dollars discounting the fact that the bootstrap business took 30 years you
know like they're like look they were able to bootstrap and it's like yeah you'll be 70 years old you0 you get billion like uh um so anyways real men I I'll just end this podcast by saying real real real men rais pre-product indeed