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4:41
TODAY is Wednesday, January 7th, 2026.
4:45
We are live from the TBPN Ultradome, the temple of technology, the fortress of finance, the capital of capital ramp, time is money, say both.
4:55
Easy, use corporate cards, bill pay, accounting, and a whole lot more all in one place.
4:58
We have some great posts with Ara Carzian in the stack today.
5:01
He's been doing some fantastic analysis on the economy, employment, AI adoption, all this fun stuff.
5:07
But speaking of AI adoption, is anyone adopting XAI?
5:10
Certainly investors are because they got 20 billion dollars in the bank now.
5:15
Susie, we talked about it yesterday, but I wanted to reflect on it because uh there were rumors that they weren't going to get this one done that uh it the initial November >> had a little more >> a little a little kind of trouble getting enough interest and and and again these these were just rumors.
5:34
Uh but but when you looked at XAI's traction relative to their valuation at the time, they were they were looking for a >> uh a greater valuation than Anthropic and yet the >> enterprise adoption certainly um didn't justify it by itself, right? >> Yeah. Yeah.
5:54
There were there there were lots of weird questions.
5:56
Uh before we dig into XAI, let's take you through the linear lineup today.
6:01
We got a bunch of great guests.
6:03
We got Pat Grady and Robbie Gupta from Sequoia coming on.
6:05
Ben Smith's back alert with $30 million uh for Semaphore. Massive news there.
6:11
We got a bunch of other folks joining uh linear of course meet the system for modern software development.
6:17
Linear is a purpose-built tool for planning and building products.
6:20
So uh the rumor uh back in November, the Wall Street Journal reported that XAI was outraising 15 billion in new equity at a $230 billion valuation.
6:29
And people were skeptical.
6:32
Uh XAI had accomplished a lot in a very short amount of time.
6:34
No one would argue with that.
6:36
Uh they definitely caught up.
6:38
The benchmarks were good.
6:40
The data centers were massive and they were being completed in record time.
6:43
That's what Elon's really really good at.
6:45
Uh but there was a big question uh about the product and where it was going.
6:49
It had some useful hooks uh and some extremely controversial hallucinations, right?
6:53
Um but in general like I did find myself using Grock certainly monthly, probably weekly.
6:58
I would just hit the little gro button on a post and get some extra details and then just be chatting there because I didn't want to copy the post and go over to some other LLM and ask about it.
7:07
So like they were getting some adoption but >> and even in the last 48 hours Grock has gone a little bit off the rails.
7:13
Uh but the thing is you have millions of people that are trying to manipulate it into doing things.
7:20
It does have guard rails, >> but Gro's challenge is that >> you can ask it to create images >> and certainly yeah again some of these images have been uh pretty wild and and have gotten deleted pretty quickly.
7:33
Uh but it is fully automated system and uh I I believe if any other lab had an had a bot that was doing this it would be happening to all the other labs, right?
7:44
So, this is a thing that I I don't think it's a Grock problem as much as it is just the nature of the product experience, which is you can just prompt it via comments and it's all public and it actually gets it's just crazy to see a lab posting uh images like that from their own official account.
8:00
>> If we had sat down and done like prediction, what lab's going to be in hot water for controversial AI content in January, we both would have agreed OpenAI adult mode, it's coming out. They teased it.
8:12
we said it was coming out and then we get this and it makes whatever erotica is going to come out of OpenAI is probably not going to be as controversial as what's happening with Grock right now. Right. >> Sure.
8:22
>> Sure. I don't know >> and and people will be less likely to even share im you know one open eye won't like part of the reason these images are especially controversial is because it's being shared from the official Grock account >> for from the official Grock account
8:35
which gives it more uh authority and then also there's a whole host of anons on X that can generate this stuff whereas if I go into OpenAI chat GPT and I generate some weird it weird that's on you seem racist >> you seem exactly Uh, quickly let me tell you about the New York Stock Exchange. You know, I love talking about the New
8:55
You know, I love talking about the New York Stock Exchange.
8:56
Want to change the world?
8:58
Raise capital at the New York Stock Exchange.
9:00
So, um, uh, even though Grock and XAI hit a bunch of interesting milestones, did a bunch of great stuff, uh, they didn't really have a breakout in consumer the way Chachi PT and Gemini did.
9:13
Uh, and they weren't making waves with developers the way Cloud Code or Cursor were either.
9:16
And all of that made the rumors of a struggle to raise more believable.
9:22
But I have this thesis, the most entertaining outcome is the most likely.
9:27
Elon has posted this many times.
9:29
He clearly believes it and he seems to be manifesting it and it seems to be the most uh ridiculous vibes based analysis that actually comes true again and again and again.
9:38
So, I wanted to go through some of the some of the hilarious entertaining outcomes that have uh arisen from uh Elon Musk's uh tour to force over the past decades.
9:46
Um so, I I think a lot of people believe that maybe this raise wouldn't happen, but once there were rumors that they get rolled in SpaceX, you get SpaceX stock, that there would be some sort of other thing and just Elon going to make make a play uh that it would get done.
10:00
And so uh instead uh you know we we are going to be endlessly entertained by the assembly of the ever larger Elon Inc. Mega Corp in my opinion.
10:10
So uh XAI winning the AI race feels like the wrong framing here.
10:15
I like Dan Wong's formulation of the AI future versus the AI race.
10:18
Uh there's not some definite point in the future where oh like the the consumer chatbot race is over.
10:28
It's like you can always build a business and figure out how to grow and scale and uh and the same thing might be true on the uh API side and on the cloud side and that might wind up just being a economic uh equation and if you have the cheapest possible energy from space maybe in the future uh it could make sense even if you're not in the most frontier model there's some interesting thing there.
10:51
There's certainly plenty of bull cases.
10:52
So, uh, Elon has a long history of making wild calls, um, that immediately read as dumb or impossible, mostly because he puts very short timelines on everything.
11:01
And then he also tends to get pricing wrong sometimes, uh, but they never actually blow up or I mean, sometimes they do, but, uh, rarely they do.
11:09
So, even in the Solar City acquisition, I was looking back on this uh, Solar City acquisition, it was widely panned as a bailout when it happened.
11:17
and the shareholders, Tesla shareholders were not a fan because it was this is Elon Musk company that didn't seem to be doing very well.
11:23
It gets tucked in and everyone was like, "Oh, well, Solar City like the the residential solar hasn't really taken off.
11:29
Solar City is a failure."
11:29
But uh Tesla actually built a real power wall and uh grids scale storage business and a lot of the battery technology sort of did come from that team.
11:37
So that oddly pan pan uh pencled out and also just in the long term Elon still a solar maxi.
11:42
I was listening to him on um on a podcast yesterday.
11:48
Uh he sat down with Peter Diamandis for a three-hour really wide-ranging conversation.
11:52
And in there he uh he can quote all these obscure statistics about the sun generating 99% of the mass in the galaxy.
12:00
And even if you burnt Jupiter and then burnt three more Jupiters, you still would not even be at 1% of the overall energy that the sun produces.
12:08
He clearly just from first principles believes in solar, believes in energy and so uh having a solar strategy makes sense even if it's not playing a huge role right now.
12:16
Um so uh no one delivers more entertaining outcomes than Elon.
12:22
No one no one delivers more entertaining emotional real-time intelligent conversational agents than 11 Labs.
12:31
Reimagine human technology interaction with 11 Labs the maker of our uh theme song which we've been enjoying.
12:36
Um, so throwing out $420 per share for a theoretical te uh take private of Tesla uh then getting sued by the SEC and then blowing past that price is still one of the most entertaining corporate finance sagas in tech history.
12:51
So in 2018 when tees uh when Elon pitched the funding secured take private I think we've sort of forgotten because a lot of our audience doesn't think in stock prices uh like the scale of that of like what he was trying to do at that time.
13:05
So at that time Tesla was worth $64 billion and he was proposing to take it private at $71 billion. >> It's worth $1. 44 trillion today.
13:13
So it's the stock is up 22x since that take private thing.
13:20
So like I don't know if it would have been a great it probably would have been an amazing deal for those investors but maybe those investors like I I don't even know who was lined up because he said funding secured presumably someone was like yeah I'm I'm I'm I'm good for the 71 billion roughly or or part of it or there'll be bank financing or something but uh that didn't happen.
13:38
Uh obviously Tesla Tesla went on a huge run.
13:41
who knows what it would have done in the private markets, but uh still, you know, it it it it seemed super crazy at the time, but in fact, it came uh it it panned out very well.
13:51
Um and so uh the most the most entertaining outcome of this fund raise was clearly that XAI would get the deal done and they did that.
13:58
Uh and they upsized the round because they got 20 billion when they were rumored to be raising 15 in series A funding.
14:03
And interestingly, that's almost twice the amount of money that te that that SpaceX has raised in its entire history.
14:11
So SpaceX has done 31 funding rounds.
14:14
A lot of those have been secondary transactions, but 31 funding rounds to raise 12 billion.
14:21
>> XAI just goes out and raises 20 in one round.
14:23
Um, and so there's an interesting dynamic if they get uh if they get rolled together about like what the balance sheet of this new entity looks like because they'll have this new 20 billion.
14:32
But then SpaceX also put two billion into the previous round.
14:34
So there's all this like circular deal going on.
14:37
But people are used to this with Elon. It's Elon Inc.
14:39
Uh, and so the question is XAI overvalued.
14:41
Uh, well what's the most entertaining outcome?
14:46
Uh, clearly that would be the Elon Inc. Mega Corp forming.
14:48
SpaceX acquires XAI before going public, which is easier to do than rolling it into Tesla, which is public uh and would face a bunch of scrutiny.
14:57
Uh and uh and that gives us a very entertaining situation.
15:00
Just think about Twitter, which launched in 2006, being owned by SpaceX, founded in 2002.
15:06
Like >> being able to own Twitter and SpaceX in a single ticker. >> Hilarious. Hilarious.
15:10
It's just it's just the most entertaining outcome.
15:12
I would love to ask Jack Dorsey if he ever imagined Twitter being owned by a rocket company. Like that's it.
15:17
Like if you went back in time even in 2010, 2012, even just a few years ago, and you were like, "What if Twitter and SpaceX merged?"
15:25
What are you talking about?
15:29
>> Lay off the Iaska, buddy. >> Seriously.
15:30
Uh yeah, maybe Jack Dorsey is actually like, "Yeah, I I imagine that. Imagined it on day one.
15:36
>> A jungle demon told me about yes, I foraw it all."
15:38
Uh but then the question is like, is there going to be the big merger?
15:42
SpaceX with XAI and Twitter tucked in plus Tesla.
15:45
That would be very very weird.
15:47
Uh who knows how or when that happens.
15:50
Uh but it would certainly be entertaining to watch and you'd wind up with this fully vertically integrated company.
15:56
AI chip design some efficiency too.
15:58
Elon would only need one badge, right? >> Oh, true.
16:01
>> Which could huge productivity boost.
16:04
>> Yeah, huge productivity.
16:04
He probably has to have a full-time badge guy, right?
16:08
For all the different companies.
16:08
Um so you have you have AI chip design which is done at Tesla.
16:11
Uh running models trained by by XAI deployed on Starlink satellites launched on SpaceX rockets running Optimus Robots. >> Yeah. Yeah.
16:20
Uh the stock chart will be as entertaining as the hallucinations that happen along the way was my conclusion.
16:27
Uh anyway, it's a fun story.
16:29
There's a whole bunch of posts in the timeline that we'll go through to give this more context.
16:31
But first, let me tell you about cognition the and Devon the AI software engineer.
16:36
crush your backlog with your personal AI engineering team. Uh, so >> there we go. Pull some of these.
16:44
>> Elon Musk says that XAI will have more AI compute than everyone else combined in less than five years and he's building macro hard, which now has a a uh sand.
16:54
>> That is a bold statement.
16:56
>> It's a bold statement.
16:56
Uh, he certainly has, you know, marshaled a lot of the capital.
17:01
He doesn't have all of it.
17:01
He's not as much of a capital sponge as Sam Alman at this moment.
17:05
This is an actual satellite image. Yes. Correct.
17:08
>> No, they really painted this on the top of the data center and it's the answer to Microsoft macro.
17:13
>> I I appreciate that about uh Elon Inc.
17:17
companies where they're trying to move so quickly and and the entire ethos is around ruthless efficiency >> and yet they still think it's worth the time to paint the ceiling of the data center so that you can see it from space. >> Yeah. >> Uh very very funny.
17:31
Um, XAI uh has also bought a third building called Macro harder.
17:38
Will take >> is this a typo or?
17:42
>> Well, I mean it's I mean it's all a joke on Microsoft I guess.
17:46
>> Um and we'll take XAI training compute to almost two gigawatts.
17:49
Uh >> and uh Grock responding impressive expansion.
17:55
Two gigawatt will supercharge our quest for understanding the universe.
17:59
Did that just happen autonomously because Elon tagged Grock?
18:04
If you tag Grock, even if you don't ask it a question, it will just chime in.
18:07
That's kind of interesting.
18:07
Maybe we should be tagging Grock when we go live to like just have it engage. >> Uh, more news here.
18:13
On Jan 1, an account called Ming said, "Good news.
18:17
A mass production audit for Tesla's Optimus V3 has been completed and seven Chinese companies have been finalized as core suppliers.
18:25
Operating as tier one partners, these firms will manufacture critical components and support key assembly processes.
18:31
The supply chain is geared to kickstart mass production in Q1 2026, targeting a capacity of 50,000 to 100,000 units by the end of the year. Wow.
18:40
>> And then they go through uh some of the suppliers here.
18:42
Uh Scott asked the question that I was uh asking.
18:45
question that I was uh asking. You remember when uh Tesla had placed an order for I think it was 750 million worth of actuators last year and I was thinking like does that's not the kind of like order that you do if you're not planning to sell a lot of these like it's pretty con you know even at Tesla scale is like not a insignificant amount
19:05
of money and so yeah Scott is asking does this does this mean butler ready robots with some sort of intelligence we have not seen will be ready by then um and again it's like I imagine Elon would be excited about doing like some type of like shock and awe announcement, but at the same time, I feel like he also likes teasing stuff and like pretty far in advance. And so
19:27
And so >> if he's planning to be selling >> 100,000 units this year of the Optimus, you would you would imagine that we were we would have been like hearing about it and seeing some more demos and getting teased.
19:40
But >> again, hard hard to say.
19:41
Yeah, it still feels like we need some type of like meaningful >> uh breakthrough before these are going to be maybe there's 100,000 people that have absolutely printed on Tesla.
19:57
They're just going to be like I'll just buy one, you know, I'm just ride or die, right?
20:01
But that's a big big number especially when you're talking about you know I I expect these to cost somewhere in the range of what 50,000 to >> I don't know >> 50,000 plus >> how much is the dog from Boston Dynamics isn't that one I mean the unit tree is >> the unit tree which you can I would assume is at least half the price the cheapest unit on uh that you can get in the US is like 20 grand. Oh, it's 20. Okay. So, yeah. >> Spot.
20:28
The Boston Dynamics dog is 75.
20:32
>> But that's that's pretty old. That was from 2020. >> Hyundai.
20:34
You got to figure it out.
20:36
>> You can get a real dog that's a purebred Newfoundland for 5K or something or 2K. I don't know.
20:43
>> Do you want 20 real elite dogs or one robot dog?
20:48
>> Clearly the the real dogs for sure.
20:50
>> We should um we should ask Jake about this later. >> Yeah, he's coming up.
20:53
Yeah, it is weird because like I I think as as the frontier I think um physical intelligence is like on the frontier of like the actual software stuff and even like their most advanced demos that they're just coming out with like this past month, >> it's very simple. There's like two arms.
21:07
They have like one claw and it can generalize pretty well from that.
21:09
But it's still like that's orders of magnitude less uh you know degrees of freedom or whatever like actuators than than like Optimus robot. >> Yeah.
21:18
Let me tell you about Lambda.
21:19
Lambda is the super intelligence cloud building AI supercomputers for training and inference that scale from one GPU to hundreds of thousands.
21:26
I was listening to George H.
21:28
Hots talk about uh the Optimus robot and he was setting timelines further out.
21:33
He was sort of saying like the humanoid robot thing will happen more like in a decade.
21:36
Um and he was he was uh he was um projecting out some some exponential growth but still saying it's going to take a while.
21:46
Um, but he was saying that it's a great project for Tesla because you can put the Optimus in all of their showrooms and those are really big draws for people.
21:55
You go in, you see the robot, even if it's like on some pre-scheduled uh, you know, hardcoded, you know, routine.
22:01
It's doing like a choreographed dance or it's teleoperated, whatever it is.
22:04
It's it's like a great awe inspiring thing to just pull you into the random Tesla showroom.
22:12
But there's only 300 Tesla showrooms.
22:12
So like, okay, maybe you need a thousand of these.
22:17
Do you think that uh that that post from Denny's on X earlier was maybe kind of in response to to seeing some of this Optimus news? >> You think so?
22:26
>> They said the trough is open, piggies. >> What?
22:30
>> Maybe maybe this is teasing that they're going to get some Optimus's.
22:32
You know, >> it seems like it's a it's teasing an AI generated vertical video feed from Denny's.
22:38
They got to get in the social networking space.
22:42
having having a fast food restaurant make a short form video app and it's just AI slop of their food activation you could probably build that >> I mean we're supposed to be going into the teu SAS era or Shian fast fashion for SAS is what Sam Alman called it uh
22:59
and so you would think that someone at Denny's could vibe code a vertical video app in a weekend and deploy it as a prank >> fast fashion or SAS is going fast fashion maybe fast fashion needs to go >> fast food >> find SAS >> I don't know apploving profitable advertising made easy with Axon.ai AI. ai AI.
23:19
Get access to over 1 billion daily active users and grow your business today. Uh >> uh what else?
23:24
We have a post here of the Razer >> AA.
23:30
>> Okay, this is Wait, did you mention this yesterday? You talked about Razer.
23:33
>> We needed to pull it up because >> What is this video?
23:36
>> This is powered by Gro. >> No way. Here we go.
23:38
Looks like it can directly see what's on your monitor and respond to what you're doing. Sort of a Tamagotchi. Uh oh.
23:45
Oh, and it's it's it's basically just taking the the Grock video generator and removing the background and then just putting it in some sort of holographic screen. This is interesting.
23:58
I I personally would not pick this character, but there's something about >> I would pick >> playing Counterstrike and get Tyler in one of these >> CS coach there.
24:10
>> If we could get Tyler things and just bring a mini Tyler.
24:14
>> That's very Black Mirror.
24:14
Put them in the snow globe.
24:15
Wasn't that one of the Black Mirror episodes? Snow Globe. Yeah. Um I I I don't know.
24:19
You You're playing League of Legends and you have your League of Legends coach there and the League of Legends coach is is giving you advice and answering questions for you in real time. That's pretty cool.
24:28
I think there's something there.
24:32
>> I can see them selling a lot of these.
24:33
How much do you think this is?
24:34
>> I don't know if it's good for the world.
24:36
I I I wonder I wonder how much this costs because uh at as a $100 gaming peripheral, it's sort of like a fun little add-on toy gift.
24:44
Uh at, you know, $500, I think it's a completely different question. Uh some 2.
24:50
6 is calling it the goon cylinder. >> Goon tube. >> Ridiculous. The goon tube.
24:58
Um >> so they're not selling these yet, but they do have a reservation page.
25:01
So, uh, there's Razer Ava.
25:04
Project Ava, your all-in-one AI companion from planning your day to analyzing spreadsheets and game starts.
25:13
Razer Project Ava, uh, they're like, co-pilot, no thanks.
25:18
Leverages AI inferencing and reasoning that dynamically evolves based on your personal interactions. Select your 5.
25:22
5 inch companion from an expanding library of characters from esports legends to custom anime inspired Razor designs.
25:28
be among the first to pro uh to sign up for Razer Project Ava at release.
25:33
And Nick Dobo says they are going to make a billion dollars LMO.
25:38
Um >> this makes me want to touch grass personally.
25:42
>> I think this would be cool as almost a um >> it's like the on the Apple Vision Pro when you FaceTime someone, it has like the 3D rendering of their face.
25:49
If you could like when you're FaceTiming someone, they're just in the tube.
25:53
>> Well, I mean you could also I mean you really could you really could fine-tune a model on everything.
25:58
Am I in the tube right now? Be honest.
26:02
>> I mean, we could we could clone your voice at 11 Labs, clone your clone your li your likeness, fine-tune a model, and have it just be running locally and have this like captured version of Tyler in the tube.
26:14
>> Very weird, but it's in the tube. >> I don't know.
26:16
I I I do think that there's something I I don't know.
26:18
Will this Will they make a billion dollars on this?
26:22
Will How much money does does Razer actually make?
26:23
Razer revenue, do they make billions? 1. 6 billion in 2021. Not bad. >> So, billion. A a billion says Nick. One billion.
26:33
So, is this enough to double their revenue? I don't know.
26:35
Uh, but it does seem like it could be it could be an interesting gift. Gary Tan likes the idea.
26:41
He says, "Gamers are an incredible first customer." I agree with that.
26:43
They have a lot of disposable income and uh and gamers, I mean, they spend $50 on a game or it's a free-to-play game and then they play it for hundreds of hours.
26:52
So, um it's it's it's unless they're playing something that's uh you know, sort of pay to win or pay consistently.
26:59
Anyway, let me tell you about MongoDB.
27:01
Choose a database built for flexibility and scale with best-in-class embedding models and rerankers.
27:05
MongoDB has what you need to build what's next.
27:08
Um >> uh so somebody just texted me that we should put one of our guests today in the tube. >> In the tube.
27:18
>> Uh we'll try we'll try.
27:20
>> I I think we have to buy one of those.
27:20
I I was thinking we don't have enough hardware around here. here. We don't have enough.
27:24
>> I mean, thinking about the I mean, holographic displays probably underrated in a world where you can have a big holograph here and somebody can be like around the table having a conversation with us. Really cool.
27:35
>> Not we're not looking at a monitor.
27:37
That's going to be pretty wild. >> I mean, yeah.
27:38
Can you just scale up that tube?
27:40
>> But then at one point, why why not just wear a headset? But I don't know.
27:44
>> I mean, there's something nice about not having glasses on your face.
27:45
Like, you know, it's it's it's it's LASIC for VR, I guess.
27:50
So you just take off the glasses and you just sit there talking to the thing.
27:53
Um I really wonder from a physics perspective if it's a if it's possible to uh just scale that up huge.
28:01
Um anyway, uh back to Elon Musk.
28:01
He was texting Sam Alman two years ago on February 18th, 2023.
28:07
Sam says, "I remember you I remember seeing you in a TV interview a long time ago, maybe 60 minutes.
28:14
It was 60 Minutes about SpaceX where you were being attacked by some guys and you said they were your heroes.
28:19
They were heroes of yours and it was really tough.
28:21
This was a NASA astronaut who said that SpaceX would not work.
28:23
Uh, need to check in on that guy.
28:26
But, uh, >> wellness check.
28:29
>> And Sam goes on to say, "Well, you're my hero."
28:31
And that's what it feels like when you attack OpenAI.
28:32
Totally get that screwed up, but we have worked incredibly hard to do the right thing.
28:40
And I think we have ensured that neither Google nor anyone else is on a path to have unilateral control over AGI, which I believe we both think is critical.
28:50
I am tremendously thankful for everything you've done to help.
28:53
I don't think OpenAI would have happened without you and it really effing hurts when you publicly attack OpenAI.
28:58
And Elon says, I hear you and it's certainly not my intention to be hurtful, for which I apologize, but the fate of civilization is at stake.
29:06
So, some drama going back and forth with them.
29:08
Well, next time someone is suing you and uh very mad at you, >> copy paste this. >> Copy paste this.
29:14
Tell them you're their hero and uh maybe it gets you a little ground. >> Yeah.
29:20
Um also, um >> I have some breaking news. >> You hit me.
29:27
>> Uh well, it's not actually that breaking, I think, but uh it came out today in the Wall Street Journal.
29:31
They're saying Anthropic is raising 10 billion at 350 >> 50 billion.
29:34
But I think I think I mean I've heard the 350 number for like a while >> a while.
29:38
So, I don't think this is really >> like brand new. But that's exciting. Yeah. >> Yeah.
29:42
But more more advanced talks.
29:44
>> Are you chasing a slug? >> I'm I'm looking. Yeah.
29:46
I'm I think I'm in some kind of >> triple layer SPV quadruple layer.
29:53
>> You're in the fifth layer.
29:54
>> Deploy deploy clog code.
29:56
>> Uh anyway, speaking of the AI race, Gemini 3 Pro, Google's most intelligent model yet. Try it.
30:02
State-of-the-art reasoning, next level vibe coding, and deep multimodal understanding.
30:06
Um, >> uh, Emily Sunberg says, "If media companies are valued at 165 times, then I have some calls to make."
30:15
Uh, >> this is on the news.
30:18
Semaphore raised $30 million.
30:20
We will save the gong ring for when Ben Smith joins us in just a little bit.
30:26
Uh, but this is massive news. This is very exciting.
30:28
Um, I'm very interested to hear what they're going to do with the money, how the business will change.
30:34
Uh, Seaphor has obviously built a fantastic uh, you know, publication.
30:39
Uh, but does do they just want to do more of the same? Are they expanding? Are they diversifying? Where will they go? They do a lot of events.
30:46
>> Apparently, they had their first profitable year last year. >> That's great. >> Uh, hence the ibida. Yes.
30:50
And we know exactly what it is just from the Seily Sunberg tweet.
30:55
>> But yeah, a lot of lot of uh interesting investors in >> Yes.
30:57
They made two million in IB, right?
30:59
Because they did uh the valuation was 330.
31:01
So 165x IBIDA puts it at 2 million in IBITA. But congrats.
31:06
>> Was that uh what what did um so roughly twice what the free press was was acquired for? >> Free press 100.
31:13
Where did it actually end up landing? >> I don't know.
31:15
Somewhere in the 1 to 200 range, I believe. >> Yeah.
31:19
>> But again, I I I wonder how much of that deal is is uh like pre-negotiated contract because, you know, it's not an aqua hire.
31:26
They did bring in the free press, but like Barry is a really important talent and so you have to imagine that she's on some pretty big contract for a long time and that and you sort of like take that out of the >> could be Yeah. 50. >> Yeah.
31:39
But then also like the acquisition is part of you know paying a little bit of that up front but then there's still some some >> free press was 150. >> 150. Okay.
31:46
Well, some of it 2x that and Jordan Schneider from China talks much have must have richer friends.
31:50
Jordan Jordan's been on a tear.
31:53
He did a great uh great show with uh Joe Weisenthal where they just hung out.
31:58
They did a show about nothing.
31:59
And Joe Weisenthal is just an underrated guest.
32:02
I think he he's so often in the he's been in the interviewer seat for 10 years. >> Goat Weisenthal. >> Goat Weisenthal. Play that goat noise.
32:12
Uh but I I like just hearing him talk about his business and his view on media and his view on whatever food.
32:17
Yeah, >> there's good uh something good nominative terminism here. Wise and tall. How tall is he? >> Wise and tall.
32:27
>> He's actually not that tall.
32:29
>> Uh but he has he has a sort of a tall aura. >> He does. He does. >> He fills the room. >> Yes. Yes. Yes.
32:34
Uh that is like a famous thing uh about like legendary uh people.
32:42
>> All the um you chairman. They're all super tall. Like Paul Vulkar. True. Um yeah. Jerome Powell. Super tall. >> Yeah. I didn't know that. Interesting.
32:49
They have a future there.
32:49
Um but uh but there's a there's a consistent uh >> Gran Powell is six feet tall. That's super tall.
32:58
In this office in this office that's that's >> Yeah, but maybe he's wearing >> In this office, you're getting brutally hypog.
33:06
>> Well, do do we know if Jerome's uh getting leg lengthening surgery anytime soon?
33:10
>> Maybe he's been >> Maybe maybe it hasn't updated.
33:13
>> Where do they get the leg length? Is it China? >> Yeah, usually. I think so.
33:15
Maybe maybe Jerome got got leg lengthening surgery.
33:20
>> Okay, someone lied to me then.
33:20
Someone told me that all the Fed chairman are they're always tall.
33:24
>> Well, I mean six foot is tall.
33:24
It's it's the start of being tall. >> Six foot.
33:28
You're you're really the shortest tall guy. >> Paul Vulkar. He was 67. >> Okay, there we go.
33:33
Still short in this office, but >> better. >> Yeah. Jennet Yellen. How tall was she? >> All right.
33:41
Forget what I >> Forget what I said. Crowd Strike. Your business is AI.
33:45
Their business is securing it.
33:47
Crowd Strike secures AI and stops breaches.
33:52
>> Says Tyler is letting meme dick memes dictate his height estimate of power.
33:56
Ben Bernanki was only 5'8.
33:58
>> This is a total I swear I I swear I saw this. >> You've been lied to.
34:00
No, this is this is a thing throughout history.
34:02
Uh like like the great men of history who have uh like long biographies written about them.
34:08
Oftentimes their heights get inflated because of their like egos and their reputations and whatnot.
34:11
I will give you I will give you access.
34:14
You can write this book, but you got to say that I was 610. >> Yes. Yes. Yes.
34:20
And and often >> I could have played in the NBA.
34:22
>> People will say, "Oh, you're shorter than I imagined when they meet when they meet these like amazing people or these powerful people."
34:29
Um there's also the opposite happening where there's a there's like sort of a war to make people appear shorter in the Google height snippets.
34:37
This was like JD Vance thing for a while.
34:40
People were going back and forth on is he 5'9, 5'8?
34:41
And I' I met him and I'm pretty sure he's six foot at least.
34:46
But um but people people like war back and forth.
34:50
>> You're like, >> he's got to be at least six foot.
34:55
>> There is a problem when you're 68.
34:57
Literally everyone feels six foot. It's not like 68. It's very silly. Very very silly.
35:03
Anyway, um some of generated 2 million in EBIT DA. It is it is interesting.
35:08
interesting. EBIT does an interesting figure for media companies because like do do you have just to be very very very clear this is not it's not like they were they the valuation was not is clearly they were willing to sell about 10% of the company
35:23
>> and investors believe that it will be worth way more than 330 million at some point or it's enough to just be own% of these strategic asset right >> yeah yeah no one does these deals based on ibida at this at this stage it's like a it's a it's few year old company. They're clearly looking at growth rate,
35:39
They're clearly looking at growth rate, how much influence it's having, how much impact it's having, viewership, revenue.
35:45
Ebida does probably the last number that you look at to get to a number uh for valuation at least.
35:48
Um but very exciting for them and we will be talking to them later today.
35:52
Uh before we move on, let me tell you about label box delivering you the highest quality data for Frontier AI. Get in the box. The label box. >> Get in the box.
36:03
They're like, "We didn't ask you to say that."
36:07
>> France chalet >> chalet, >> archagi, uh, co-founder of ARC prize.
36:11
Uh, >> I hope he enjoys our goalpost moving.
36:17
Uh, we might have to move it after we read this post.
36:18
So he says, "If you're wondering whether saturating Arc AGI 1 or 2 means we have AGI now, I refer you to what I said when we launched Arc AGI 2 last year, which is also the same thing I said when we announced Arc AGI 2 was coming in spring of 2022 before the rise of LLM chatbots.
36:35
The Arc AGI series is not an AGI threshold.
36:38
It's not even a goalpost.
36:40
I don't even know if we need to put >> Why is it called that?
36:42
Why is it called ARC AGI?"
36:44
Uh it is a compass that points the research community towards the right questions.
36:49
RKGI one is a minimal test of fluid intelligence.
36:52
To pass it, you need to show nonzero fluid intelligence.
36:54
This required AI to move cla past the classic deep learning.
37:00
>> Should I disassemble the goalpost?
37:02
>> Disassemble the goalposts.
37:02
The LLM paradigm of pre-training, scaling, and static models at inference toward test time adaptation.
37:08
RKI The camera moves are wild today. I love it.
37:11
Uh, RKGI 2 is the same but with tasks that probe deeper levels of reasoning complexity, particularly with regard to concept composition.
37:20
Still, these are tasks that solve in that are solvable in minutes by regular people with no external tool use.
37:26
We hired our test takers off the street.
37:28
So it imagine just walking down the street and some, hey, come take ARC AGI V2. That sounds fun.
37:33
Um, so it does not represent the upper bound of what human fluid intelligence can achieve.
37:41
say solving a millennium problem.
37:41
ArcGI 3 launching March 2026.
37:44
I thought it was already out.
37:47
Was that a preview that we played with?
37:49
Because I remember we put you on this task, Tyler.
37:50
We made you >> Yeah, I I think they were still adding new like games cuz I only played I think they were just three >> because I was really wondering, we've been seeing the the V1 and V2 benchmarks get sort of dominated.
38:01
I was wondering how are these models doing on V3?
38:03
Well, now we have the answer. It hasn't launched yet.
38:06
So, March, mark your calendars, folks.
38:08
ARKGIV3 launches then uh and ARKGIV3 will probe interactive reasoning.
38:15
We evaluate how systems explore unknown environments, model them, set their own goals, and plan and ex execute toward these goals autonomously without instructions.
38:23
We have also started to work on Eric AGI 4 and five. Two more sequels.
38:27
You thought it was a trilogy.
38:30
>> I mean, >> they're doing >> nightmare scenario for every >> It's a cinematic universe, folks. It's not just a trilogy.
38:35
there's going to be a whole saga, the Arc AGI saga, and he's pretty excited about it.
38:41
So, congrats to Arc AGI team.
38:43
Uh, fantastic benchmark, very interesting, very fun that you can actually play it.
38:47
A lot of these benchmarks, they're just not fun to go do hard math problems all day.
38:50
ArcGI is something that anyone can go and toy around with and understand. Oh, wow.
38:54
I am better than AI at this weird thing that is just a simple puzzle that a kid could do.
39:00
So, it's a lot of fun and we've enjoyed uh working and hanging out with the ARC AGI team and expect to move the goalposts many more times in 2026.
39:11
Before we move on, let me tell you about Figma.
39:12
Figma make isn't your average vibe coding tool.
39:15
It lives in Figma, so outputs look good, feel real, and stay connected to how teams build, create codeback prototypes and apps fast.
39:24
>> Scholto says he spent a week over Christmas making RTS. Yeah.
39:26
uh and his Twitter Algo has fully switched into gamedev Twitter.
39:30
It's incredibly wholesome.
39:32
People are making some insane things.
39:33
In particular, image to mesh models means some indie devs have created absurd production quality.
39:37
Uh and he shares some examples.
39:40
Um >> where are the AI risk people on this?
39:45
Because what if he creates a game that's so addictive that all of humanity just plays his vibecoded RTS endlessly?
39:53
>> Going to be nothing wholesome about that. >> Ceases to go outside.
39:54
It's the true uh wire heading scenario.
39:57
And if Schultto is not taking this, >> this is the wellness checks I do on you.
40:02
Sometimes I'll call you late. I'll just be John.
40:04
Just how you doing, buddy?
40:04
You called literally in in bed. >> Yeah. Yeah. I called you last night.
40:10
Hey, just checking in on you, buddy.
40:12
You're not playing video games, are you? Not >> fortunately. >> Not. I'm off the sauce.
40:17
>> Back on the wagon doing dry January. >> Dry. >> Off the sauce.
40:20
Uh, Colin Frasier says, "I don't really believe in LLM psychosis.
40:25
I think LLMs mostly just have a lot to offer to people experiencing regular psychosis.
40:30
This is um >> uh this is an interesting take and and uh I could see this being actually what's happening, right?
40:39
Typically, if somebody's suffering uh from any type of psychosis, they start going to talk to people.
40:45
people can kind of walk them off a ledge or or kind of like talk them through the situation, help them get help, etc.
40:51
But an LLM is just like, I love yapping. Let's yap forever.
40:54
Let's let's go down every possible rabbit hole.
40:58
Let me validate some of your um >> Yeah, >> I had a friend in high school that that was was going through this and and he thought that uh uh deers were uh deers were like um >> gangstalking him. >> Yes. Yes, actually.
41:14
Um, and so he started to the bottom of that.
41:17
>> He started talking with people about that.
41:19
They were like, >> "Let's figure this out." And he's hunting. He's back.
41:22
Uh, he he's fully fully >> I feel like a deer hunting trip would be actually the correct thing to do in that scenario. >> Super.
41:29
>> Just reclaim the authority and then you you know who's in the driver's seat.
41:34
You're like, "Yeah, they might be stalking me, but they don't they should not be."
41:38
>> The whole house is deers that had that head, you know, mounted like trophies or whatever. That might be the cure.
41:43
It might be a cure to male loneliness. All sorts of things.
41:47
Deer hunt deer hunting trip.
41:48
Um, this is an interesting thing there.
41:51
There there there is there is a natural problem that sort of happens when a new technology gets adopted very quickly which is you get all the good and all the bad.
41:59
So if you just look at iPhone penetration, it went from or smartphone penetration, it went from zero in 2006 to 100% in 2015 or something.
42:11
And basically everyone had a smartphone.
42:13
And so you get all the top CEOs and brilliant people and scientists are using them and you get all that and that's good and doctors are using them to text their patients and you get all the good but then also all the crazy people are using them and everyone who's doing crime is using them for crime and so you get you get the good and the bad because you just got everyone.
42:31
And so you really need to look at the bas grocery stores didn't exist and they suddenly were everywhere.
42:38
You'd see videos every day of people going insane in grocery stores and people would be like, "Well, are grocery stores go insane, right?"
42:45
They'd be like, >> "We're seeing all this vid where there's all this evidence that people are going insane, you know, acting insane in grocery stores, it must be that the grocery stores are causing it, right?"
42:56
So, you have to look at like the pro the the prior weight.
42:57
So, what's the base level of psychosis in society?
43:00
What's the what's the what's the incidence of psychosis with LLMs? Is it higher? Then you have a problem.
43:08
And I I I I do believe that it's possible that there's a problem.
43:11
I think that some of the models were sort of crazy and would just tell you yes to everything.
43:15
Like the glaze gate was a real problem. They sort of fixed it.
43:18
It seems like it's pretty fixed now.
43:20
It also seems like a very tractable technology problem to have another LLM review it and be like, is this a weird conversation? Yes or no?
43:28
And that's like a very easy thing to train.
43:29
Uh so I think that they should be able to drive this way way down.
43:31
And also just some of the newer models that I've been interacting with, they do push back.
43:36
They hallucinate even less.
43:36
back. They hallucinate even less. they just they feel like way uh there's a whole bunch of tests that I've seen where people have thrown uh like there used to be a uh a time when you could go and say uh explain to me the definition
43:52
of uh you know uh like like the time old adage of a purple newspaper to start the day keeps the doctor away and it and it was nonsense but the LLM would just be like oh well the you're the the the user came to me saying I have to assume it's a real thing. So I
44:09
So I have to make up a seen screenshots where people have come to it with these weird tests and the models will actually say ah you're trying to trick me that's not real and that doesn't exist and you should if you think that's real maybe go see a doctor or something.
44:26
Anyway >> uh friendly says correlation is not causation. >> Yes. Yes. Yes.
44:31
Uh, Railway Railway simplifies software deployment.
44:34
Web apps, servers, and databases run in one place with scaling, monitoring, and security built in. Get on the train. Get on the railway. >> Get on the boat.
44:46
>> Uh, Skooks, I I had this pulled up.
44:46
I kept uh kept seeing it and laughing at it over the last like 2 minutes.
44:50
So, if I was like cracking up for uh the wrong at the wrong time, this was why.
44:55
Skooks has been using Gemini as a calorie tracking app.
45:00
>> Oh, I didn't even see that. comment.
45:03
I just thought he just went to Gemini and said another beer.
45:04
And it's just funny that you see the little thinking thing and it's like thinking about how to process that.
45:09
That that alone was funny.
45:13
>> Just imagining imagining the chat just just another beer. Another beer. Another beer. 15 beers. Another beer. Another beer. >> Yeah.
45:21
You know, a lot of people are doing dry January.
45:22
Other side of that, drunk January potentially underrated.
45:27
Everyone says if you can do dry January, that's the real cont. Yeah.
45:29
you prove to everyone, oh, I'm not I'm not I'm not uh you know, in the in the pocket of big alcohol.
45:36
I'm not I'm not boosting the alcohol stocks.
45:37
But if you can do drunk January, drunk the whole time, hold it together, and then go back to normal life, that's potentially even more willpower potentially. I don't know.
45:47
>> There's um so so uh I saw saw a picture yesterday.
45:51
Apparently, there's a college uh female college basketball player whose last name is Beers.
45:56
And so on her jersey, it says Beers.
45:58
It says the number 15 or number and beard.
46:01
So it's like a jersey that just says 15 beers on the back. >> That's great.
46:08
The uh the the the the alcohol economy is suffering.
46:10
By the way, this is in the journal.
46:12
Here's to unloved booze stocks.
46:15
Uh the 5-year total return through 2025 for the S&P 500 is 96%.
46:21
If you just bought the S&P 500, you're up you're up you doubled your money in five years. Not bad.
46:26
Uh, everyone else is down in the alcohol industry.
46:30
AB InBev not doing that bad.
46:32
They're only down 4% over the last five years, but Heineken down 21%. Uh, Dagio down 38%. Pernau Ricard down 50%. Remy down 75%.
46:42
Boston Beer, the backbone of Boston is down 80% over the last 20 after over the last five years.
46:48
So, the chances are way higher that you celebrated New Year's Eve with an adult beverage. Uh, uh, what?
46:54
Oh, the the chances are way higher that you celebrated New Year's Eve with an adult beverage than by smoking a joint, says the uh says the Wall Street Journal.
47:08
Like, I don't I don't understand this because I uh but the but the popularity of cannabis along with the effects of drugs like Ompic and rising awareness of alcohol uh health risks have investors in the sector worried.
47:20
An equal weighted basket of 11 global alcoholic beverage producers has lost a third of its value in the past five years, including dividends.
47:28
Um, a dollar invest in the S&P 500 nearly doubled.
47:30
Dry January might be an odd time to think about alcohol's appeal, but it's often a good month to snap up unloved stocks that other investors dumped toward the end of the previous year in a market with few bargains.
47:44
Booze looks interesting, says the journal. Interesting. M anyway, moving on. Vibe.
47:50
co, where DTOC brands, B2B startups, and AI companies advertise streaming TV, pick channels, target audiences, and measure sales just like on Meta.
48:02
>> Nikita responded to your post yesterday.
48:05
He said, "The point of CES is maximalist futurism.
48:07
It's all concept art to show.
48:10
>> If things keep going in this direction, this is how the world should work.
48:12
Once you understand it as a museum exhibit and not in any way commercial products, it becomes more enjoyable. That's a good take. >> Ray showed me. Thanks, Nikita. I liked it.
48:24
Uh, no, no, this was a very interesting thing and I think we were he also responded.
48:29
>> I know the neck thing.
48:31
>> Apparently, this is Zoom a Zoom face station.
48:33
I don't know what this is actually meant.
48:35
So, I think if you put this on in a crowded coffee shop, you can talk, hear, and see, and no one can hear or see what you're doing.
48:46
>> I think if you put this on in a coffee shop, you're getting tacked.
48:47
You look like Not today, baby.
48:50
>> It really does look like you're It looks like a special forces uh you know, uh like rebreather unit, a scuba diving unit like that. Like that.
48:59
That'd be tight if you could wear if if if it was a re, you know, if you could if you could spend like 20 minutes underwater with something like this.
49:08
>> People are not fans of this.
49:08
The replies Tyler says, "The first X hardware product right there just locked in." Um, yeah.
49:17
I mean, I I think that uh looking at looking at more of like novelty is is uh is fun and uh and making it uh just a fun showcase of all these interesting things.
49:27
And uh the the problem is is that I think people still associate CES with like this stuff's going to work its way into my life and it's going to be uh just rough around the edges.
49:38
Like the Smartome, if you really dial it in, it's maybe better than just analog light switches, but for a lot of people, it's worse.
49:47
We've talked about Sonos a lot.
49:49
Uh the app was great and then it just degraded and degraded and degraded.
49:51
Now, there's a lot of stories about you going to a hotel room and all of the buttons, everything's smart connected and it's just like the lowest quality product and it doesn't have the polish or the network effects because it's from some mid-tier company.
50:05
And, uh, I think people are a little bit disheartened by that.
50:09
But, um, >> Jason Frerieded went hard on smart homes. Oh, yeah.
50:14
He called it the big regression.
50:16
My folks are in town visiting us for a couple months.
50:18
We rented them a house nearby. It's new construction.
50:20
And no one has lived in it yet.
50:22
It's amped up with state-of-the-art systems, the ones with touchcreens of various sizes, IoT appliances, and interfaces that try too hard. And it's terrible.
50:30
What a what a regression.
50:30
The lights are powered by control 4 and require a demo to understand how to use the switches, understands which ones control what, and to be sure not to hit that one because it'll turn off all the lights in the house when you didn't mean to.
50:44
Worse, the TV is the latest Samsung, which has a baffling UI just to watch CNN.
50:49
My parents aren't idiots, but definitely feel like they're missing something obvious. They aren't.
50:53
TVs have simply gotten worse.
50:54
You don't turn them on anymore. You boot them up.
50:56
Uh the uh Malay dishwasher is hidden flush with the counters. That part is fine. But here's what isn't.
51:04
It wouldn't even operate the first time without connecting it to an app.
51:07
This meant another call to the house manager to have them install an app they didn't know they needed either.
51:11
An app to clean some peanut butter off a plate for serious worse. Thermostats.
51:15
Nest would have been an upgrade, but these other pro uh proprietary ones from some other company trying to be Nestlike or baffling.
51:24
Round touchcreens that take you into a dark labyrinth of options just to be sure it's set to 68.
51:28
Or is it or is it 68 now?
51:30
Or is that what we want it at? But it's at 72. Uh worse.
51:34
The alarm system is essentially a 10in iPad bolted to the wall that has the weather forecast on it and it's bright.
51:42
I'm sure there's ways to turn that off, but then the screen would be so barren that it would just be filled with the news instead.
51:49
Why can't the alarm panel just be an alarm panel? Worse.
51:50
And the lag lag everywhere.
51:53
Everything feels a beat or two behind.
51:55
Everything lag is the giveaway that the system is working too hard for too little.
52:00
Uh and he says, "Now look, I'm no lite, but this experience is close to conversion therapy.
52:06
Tech can make things better, but I simply can't see it in these cases."
52:09
Yeah, I think there's an opportunity to make a like beautiful modern ultra analog system for the home. >> Yeah.
52:19
>> Uh I'm sure I'm sure some people are working on that, but we've we've seen this in cars, too.
52:22
Like a lot of the new >> uh higherend vehicles that are coming out are actually like analog. Yeah.
52:28
They're like some buttons >> like buttons. >> Yeah. Yeah.
52:31
You still want some displays, but a few buttons that you can have more more memory around, more muscle memory.
52:37
What do you think of a smart home? >> Yeah.
52:39
I mean, I was just going to say like I feel like it's just a barbell.
52:41
Like if Apple made your thermostat, it would be good. >> Yeah.
52:45
>> And like otherwise, I don't want any screens. >> Yeah. Yeah.
52:48
There really is some benefit >> either way.
52:49
It's like very good, but in the middle >> to just like the power law, the mar the monopoly just being able and then just I don't know like Apple, they they they get some things wrong, but they they have just a brand standard and a level of polish on most things.
53:02
>> Imagine if Sonos made a home security system.
53:04
>> Underrated about Apple.
53:04
Uh, how many people are complaining about liquid glass today? >> Me?
53:10
>> No, no one's complaining.
53:10
It's >> still I still >> It's It's worse. >> Nah, it's not worse.
53:16
>> The only thing I I don't like is Safari. I don't like that there. Yeah, that's annoying.
53:21
That's the only thing I don't like.
53:23
>> Is there no Is there no shortcut for that?
53:25
like if you press and hold hard or something like I feel like there's some sort of you a lot of these things they they they suck on day one but then once you learn the new flow it's actually better.
53:36
Uh like I noticed to get into the reader view you can just hard press on this and it goes straight in there which is nice.
53:43
So there's there's a few upgrades but you have to learn the flow.
53:46
And like for the for the photos app I know we dog on it a lot.
53:49
It does feel like if you're it's getting the search is getting better if you know how to search.
53:54
If you get really better at it, it will do it will do what you want.
53:56
But you have to like lean into the expectations of it.
54:00
And there's still times when you know it doesn't know who you know Jaco Willink is in this video.
54:06
So you still have to scroll down to find that particular video that's saved on your phone. Uh what were you saying?
54:08
Is there is there a way we should look?
54:12
>> So if you like hold it and then it'll open the thing and then you keep holding and then you press then you can kind of get it count.
54:17
Anyway, graphite code review for the age of AI.
54:20
Graphite helps teams on GitHub ship higher quality software faster.
54:24
Uh the other interesting thing is uh does do AI agents do vibecoded products uh like wind up making the smartarthome great again?
54:34
Andre Karpathy was talking about this. Did you see this?
54:36
He went, I believe, to cloud code and asked it to basically like backdoor its way into his smartome and it went and scan the network, wrote like custom software and custom API integrations to turn on his lights and do everything that he wanted.
54:56
So, he was able to sort of make his own dashboard and like smart layer on top of it.
55:00
I wonder if you can still get rid of the latency because I feel like some of that latency is happening on the server side of the, you know, particular smart home app or or company.
55:08
But it was very cool that uh to imagine this future where if there is a company that's not moving fast enough to update their app like the the the notorious new United app if it was really bad, well maybe you can just use uh use, you know, an AI agent to interact with it on your behalf and you're never touching it.
55:29
Uh George Hotz was talking about uh I think he was using clog code to order room service in a hotel or something like that and it like went and scanned the hotel menu and placed the order and did everything for him and he was like able to just like command line his entire life which I think is an interesting evolution.
55:49
Uh and there's some other posts in here that we can go into but >> how quickly do you think they uh rename cloud code?
55:58
>> What what would they rename it to?
55:58
Well, uh, DD Dee had used it, uh, DD Doss used it to create like an Hermes ad.
56:02
And he was saying like this is like the worst name because it it's signaling that it's uh, people are realizing that you can do a lot of things with it.
56:13
>> Well, I I mean, the logical thing would be to just bake it into the cloud app uh, and not have it be called cla code anymore.
56:19
Like uh, there are lots of pro problems that people use agents for where it should exist directly in the app.
56:27
Uh, and and I mean OpenAI has done this with Chacht.
56:29
Like there is an agent mode in ChachiPT.
56:31
People just don't and there's codecs, but codecs can't just be used on your phone because you have to spin up an actual instance and link it to a GitHub and stuff.
56:40
Uh, but there's no reason.
56:42
no reason. I I saw some other workflow where someone uh set up a remote terminal with cloud code running and then had a phone had an app on their phone that could run commands in the terminal and then it would take push notifications and send those back to your phone to tell you hey Claude's done with doing whatever it it needs a question has a question you need to talk
57:02
to it and you would jump back in so you could use all of it through your phone and then whatever it builds it creates like a website that you can interact with from your phone so you get the results from your phone and I that uh you know all the companies but especially Anthropic will sort of uh roll the cloud code functionality into something that's more like a consumer product in the claude app. uh it'll
57:21
uh it'll probably be a little bit more expensive but could be very cool and I I I I think it'll be another like interesting moment when uh a whole new wave of people who because over the break we got the second wave of there's the early adopter developers who have been using cloud code and agents for a while and they were very happy when 4. 5 came out.
57:41
Then over the holiday break, you got a lot of executives who have access to terminals um and can hop on a laptop and do a vibecoded project.
57:52
They understood the power. They really enjoyed it.
57:54
But the phone class has yet to really experience it because if they're not willing to go and open up their laptop and sit down and learn the terminal and make sure that they have a couple things installed, there's still a little bit of a barrier to entry that melts away when you go just it's in the phone and it's just a button that you activate and then everyone's like, "Oh, wow."
58:12
Like I vibe coded this this web app on my phone, which is a couple per which you should be able to do.
58:18
Well, Luke, uh, sorry, not Luke.
58:20
Will Manitis has, uh, an essay, the decline and fall of the American technology industry.
58:27
>> Before we read it, let me tell you about Phantom Cash.
58:28
Fund your wallet without exchanges or middlemen and spend with the Phantom Card. Continue.
58:34
>> Uh, Will says, "In 2004, if you asked a technology investor where the best software companies in the world were, they'd give you two answers: Boston and San Francisco.
58:42
This is obviously no longer the case.
58:44
San Francisco has produced 14 trillion in enterprise value over the last two decades, while Boston has produced a measly hundred billion.
58:53
If you told the same investor that New York in all its cocaine and gray pinstripe suit financial glory would usurp Boston as a regional technology center, they'd think you were nuts.
59:01
The question of why Boston lost is worth studying.
59:05
From an inputs perspective, the city should have everything going for it.
59:09
Two of the best universities in the world are based there. YC was founded there.
59:14
It is without a doubt one of the most beautiful cities in the country.
59:17
Mark Zuckerberg went to college there.
59:19
So did the Stripe founders.
59:19
So did the cursor founders.
59:21
So did the Dropbox founders. So what went wrong?
59:25
>> To understand the scale of the collapse, you have to remember that for decades, Boston's Route 128 was the center of the software universe.
59:31
DEEC was the second largest computer company on Earth with 140,000 employees at its peak.
59:36
Lotus was was the essential app that brought the enterprise to the PC.
59:41
AI built the modern internet. Where did it go wrong?
59:45
This is a question worth answering, but any attempt to answer it gets you one of two answers.
59:49
The city died when Zuck tried to make raise money there and couldn't and had to go west.
59:53
Uh, what do you mean Boston is dead?
59:55
We just led the series F of Turbo Logs at 15 million post.
1:00:02
Of course, neither of these is a useful story.
1:00:04
Figuring out what really happened is not only an existential question for Boston, but for the US technology ecosystem broadly. My answer is simple.
1:00:13
Boston is a story of what happens when negative cultural and regulatory feedback loops align.
1:00:16
The city as a technology ecosystem was killed by three simple forces.
1:00:21
One, a progressive regulatory state that treated business as a coffer to loot for the benefit of property owners.
1:00:27
For decade, ma uh for decades, Massachusetts refused to conform to federal QBS rules.
1:00:34
The state finally conformed in 2022.
1:00:37
That same year, they passed the millionaire's tax.
1:00:38
A founder who sells for 10 million in Massachusetts owes 860,000.
1:00:43
The same founder in Austin owes zero.
1:00:46
Massachusetts also charges 6 and a4% sales tax on SAS revenue.
1:00:48
Most states don't tax software at all.
1:00:51
A Puritan culture too inshed in elite institutions to police itself.
1:00:56
Uh post20 main activity of Bostonbased venture is not building companies.
1:01:01
It is extorting founders and running organized crime cabals.
1:01:04
The culture that should police this, the endowments, the large LPs, the people who show up to the gallas, is too intertwined with the perpetrators and their networks to say anything.
1:01:13
This meant a constant trust tax on conduct in the city.
1:01:18
>> Uh Nikita says, I got scammed by a cabal of Boston investors in 2017. Never again.
1:01:24
>> Uh three from an inputs first.
1:01:24
Well, also he clarified what this actually means and I think it was structured that when he sold his company, there was like a side deal where after he got paid, he was going to have to pay the investors like personally extra money, which is a very weird structure of a deal.
1:01:40
That was kind of how he phrased it, which is uh >> that's wild. >> Yeah. Not great. >> Yeah.
1:01:47
Three and inputs first view of technological progress.
1:01:49
We have the best universities.
1:01:51
We've built a ton of lab space, even if 40% of it is now empty.
1:01:55
We have the best talent in the world. So why isn't it working?
1:01:57
Can we can't we build another innovation center?
1:01:59
Is our soil alone not magic? It is three factor. It is this three.
1:02:03
If this three factor explanation seems simplistic and maybe even something you've heard before, it's because it is.
1:02:10
It's the very same problem that's facing technology industries across the entire US and I suspect it will be similarly fatal.
1:02:17
Technology ecosystems are fundamentally fragile networks that generate trillions in tax yield for their hosts who can't keep themselves from killing the golden goose every few decades.
1:02:28
Let's play out what happens when a host rejects the organism.
1:02:29
First, talent networks dissipate.
1:02:32
Need to hire a VP of engineering who's taken a company from 25 to 500 people.
1:02:35
There are 600 to choose from in SF.
1:02:38
There are five in Boston and soon those five will leave for SF where they can demand higher comp and better odds of success.
1:02:44
On the junior side, new grads no longer stay local.
1:02:48
They catch the first flight out every summer.
1:02:50
As the network evaporates, the state sinks its teeth in tighter to capture equivalent yield from who whoever's left.
1:02:57
As the ecosystem dissipates, CD market participants enrich themselves through preferential pricing.
1:03:04
Who is flying to Boston to w a seed?
1:03:06
Fine, we'll pay up at 10 million.
1:03:09
or shadier tax tactics of extorting founders with offmarket and often illegal tactics.
1:03:13
See Nikita and other tweets for stories that can legally be told.
1:03:17
You see this character even in firms that started in Boston and left.
1:03:21
Less matrix, they're good guys.
1:03:21
Um who maintain a certain organized crime complex even if even after they >> very dramatic uh these are complex flesh and blood problems.
1:03:32
They destroy cities, lives, and trillions in taxable enterprise value.
1:03:35
All because of short-term thinking on the part of state governments.
1:03:39
And the worst part, you can undo them.
1:03:40
While I am sympathetic to calls to reclaim Boston as a great technology ecosystem, I would love to move back and not deal with New York.
1:03:47
I struggle to see how the remaining ecosystem doesn't enter complete freefall.
1:03:52
Uh Brian Halagan over at HubSpot was saying, "I'm starting to worry about Massachusetts.
1:03:56
One, biotech is way off from a few years ago.
1:03:59
Two, only one of the top 50 AI companies are in Massachusetts.
1:04:02
Three, the Fed uh research funding cuts hitting MIT, Harvard are brutal.
1:04:07
The millionaire's tax is working in the short uh in the short run. Let me pull this up.
1:04:12
But I know a lot of wealthy folks preparing for a Florida move.
1:04:16
Five, a glut of empty condos.
1:04:18
Six, it's not cool for young folks.
1:04:21
Seven, it's very expensive.
1:04:24
I honestly don't think the Boston government can do that much as it is as these are kind of macro issues.
1:04:28
is I give them big credit for working on building more housing and fixing the tea which will help.
1:04:33
Uh so uh Will continues, "You cannot legislate your way out of a collapsing network.
1:04:39
You cannot cold start a network already folding in on itself."
1:04:42
And yet San Francisco and the US technology ecosystem as a whole is lining up for the exact same fate.
1:04:47
A regulatory state that treats technology as a cash cow, Prop M, the office vacancy tax.
1:04:51
A culture too inshed in its own elite networks to police itself.
1:04:55
AI has attracted dozens of bad actors into the ecosystem.
1:04:59
And the same stodgginess that made Boston impossible to clean up is setting in.
1:05:03
And input's first view of progress.
1:05:06
We have the best AI labs. We have the most GPUs.
1:05:08
Hell, the president even bought us some GPUs.
1:05:09
We have the frontier models.
1:05:12
So why would anything go wrong?
1:05:13
The difference is the stakes.
1:05:16
Boston's collapse cost the US a few hundred billion in enterprise value.
1:05:18
San Francisco's collapse erases a third of the country's GDP growth over the last decade.
1:05:24
But the failure here is not just economic.
1:05:26
The failure is existential.
1:05:28
Our technology industry has failed to provide a coherent argument for its own existence on the national stage.
1:05:32
If this is not solved, 2028 will become a referendum on caging, killing, and looting the technology industry over the water and power liels.
1:05:41
The popular image of the AI boom is not uncertain.
1:05:44
Recent polling suggests the average American understands AI is a thing that wastes water, skyrockets power costs, and scams their grandparents in exchange for exposing children to deviant sexual content, sports gambling, and all other manner of sin.
1:05:57
If the best answer to why we should not imprison technology executives, burn down data centers, and kill the American technology sector is so we can build better chat bots for your sports betting, voters will uh vote to do so.
1:06:09
In a zero- sum world, voters do not think long term. They envy and they loot.
1:06:14
And we do not loot the sewage system or the power grid because we understand they are the bull works against chaos.
1:06:19
We accept their cost because they hold back chaos.
1:06:23
>> Does the median voter believe the same to be true about technology?
1:06:24
Technology is the only mechanism we have for escaping the Malthian >> Malthusian >> Malthusian trap.
1:06:31
But we uh but we have been too cowardly to articulate this because we have substituted rationalism and AGI for a coherent theology of progress.
1:06:41
The state sees the industry as only a parasite to be consumed.
1:06:44
If we cannot articulate why innovation is a moral imperative, we can expect the entire technology industry to end up like Boston.
1:06:53
First taxed, then looted, then exhausted, and we'll be stuck wondering where it all went. >> What a black pill. >> Major black pill.
1:07:00
We need a black pill sound effect. >> We need a white pill.
1:07:03
That white pill can be gusto today.
1:07:05
the unified platform for payroll, benefits, and HR built to evolve with modern small and medium-sized businesses.
1:07:12
Start a company, get on gusto, build something. Probably not in Boston.
1:07:17
Uh Will worked in Boston.
1:07:19
His first job was like 2004 in Boston, right? Something like that. >> Yeah, maybe late 90s. >> Yeah, late 90s.
1:07:25
>> Um yeah, so I I mean >> No, some pictures from Boston.
1:07:28
He really likes pictures.
1:07:31
Obviously, this is written to be dramatic, >> but I think it is uh >> there's lessons from it.
1:07:38
>> There's lessons, and it's hard not to feel >> that insane pressure right now in California. Yeah.
1:07:45
>> Sort of just descending on the technology industry.
1:07:47
And this goes to I mean, this goes to what I was talking about over the last couple days, which is >> uh the tech industry broadly needs >> needs better narratives, right?
1:07:54
We were talking on the way in today.
1:07:57
How would Steve Jobs >> Oh, yeah.
1:08:00
How would Steve Jobs pitch AI?
1:08:02
Like imagine an hour of talking of Steve Jobs on stage talking about the potential of AI, right?
1:08:08
He'd be saying >> you now have a do a free doctor in your pocket. >> Yeah.
1:08:14
>> That can diagnose, you know, a wide range of conditions, right?
1:08:16
He would be painting this like optimistic empowering Yeah.
1:08:21
>> Um uh sort of real potential for AI that's already here today.
1:08:24
that's already here today. he wouldn't be >> uh you know you can imagine all the things he wouldn't be >> uh talking about and and we don't I don't think we have a lot of people that want to be seen as the Steve Jobs of AI >> and yet it doesn't feel like that
1:08:40
character exists today >> and you need somebody that is larger than life that is that when they talk people want to listen and lean in and and uh and and believe and and get excited about some of this technology and I just I don't think We have that today at all. >> Totally. Uh we have a Steve Jobs video >> Totally.
1:08:57
Uh we have a Steve Jobs video in the timeline that we should play.
1:09:02
Let's watch this cuz >> you know what stock options are? >> Very interesting. >> Yeah. Yeah. That No. Okay.
1:09:05
Well, real very quickly, what you could do is if somebody came to work for your company, you could let them buy some stock in the company.
1:09:14
The problem is they might have to shell out $100,000 to buy stock in your company.
1:09:18
If your company went broke, they'd lose all their life savings or whatever.
1:09:21
And uh so that doesn't work.
1:09:23
So, what you do is you when somebody comes to work, let's say the stock's trading at $10 a share, you give them the option to buy uh, you know, a,000 or 10,000 shares at $10, but they don't they have four years to exercise that option.
1:09:36
So, if the stock goes down or stays the same, they never exercise it.
1:09:39
They don't have to put up any money.
1:09:40
They don't lose anything.
1:09:42
But, if it goes to $100 a share, they can easily go out to a bank and borrow the money to buy it at 10 because it's worth 100.
1:09:46
In exchange for that privilege of not having to have them put up any money and take any risk, we only dole out their ability to exercise that stock option 25% a year, thereby locking in people really for four years if the stock goes up.
1:09:59
It's pretty standard thing.
1:10:01
A lot of people are doing it.
1:10:02
>> Look at this casual >> before we went public.
1:10:03
Um >> like imagine >> over 80% of Apple was owned by the employees.
1:10:09
>> Right now I'd say over 50% of Apple is owned by the employees.
1:10:12
There's some larger blocks in there, but still. >> Yeah.
1:10:15
>> Um, and again, I don't think finance >> when when you look at the leaders of when when people when normal people that don't work in tech, even if they use AI tools, when they see Elon talk about AI, when they see Sam talk about AI, when they see Daario talk about AI, >> they just get root like the the reaction is almost always terrible.
1:10:36
Like if you look at the comment section of any containment and that isn't in the tech industry, it's just like >> f like there's no even if they're saying optimistic things, >> it's not getting through at all.
1:10:52
>> Yeah, I think uh we were my my formulation of this was that Steve Jobs cornered the market on earnestness.
1:10:59
Yeah, like he he's very earnest like this is a this is a somewhat technical uh tax question about why stock options are used instead of just granting stock directly and he's explaining it in very plain terms.
1:11:13
Uh being very earnest about it and uh when he talked about the role of the computer and stuff it would be very interesting to hear.
1:11:20
I've seen a couple posts that are like imagine uh you know Steve Jobs today iPad kids and SL AI slop and all this stuff but I think it would still hit and what I mean by he cornered the market for earnestness is that he ma because he was so larger than life and then he passed away.
1:11:39
Um, anyone who wanted to play the earnest tech optimist was seen as doing a Steve Jobs impression. Yeah.
1:11:49
>> And that was seen as hack and like lowbrow and not really everyone was like, why are you doing that? Do something new. Do something different.
1:11:57
And so everyone fell into different roles, whether it's a little bit of childish humor or or you know more more like rationalism or more nuance in how they talk.
1:12:10
They don't really paint the same type of picture.
1:12:12
Uh certainly not in the same way and it's left a big hole in tech narrative production. What do you think Tyler? Yeah.
1:12:19
I mean, I think if you think of like AI as being broadly influenced by like rationalism, like a big part of like rationalist culture, whatever you want to say, is like there's this strong sense of like inroup and outgroup, right?
1:12:30
So, if you have >> all the people in the inroup, right?
1:12:33
They in some sense like already understand that >> uh AI is going to be great in all these ways.
1:12:37
So, the real thing you need to do is you need to convince them that it's bad. >> Yeah.
1:12:40
>> Um so, it's like you assume that people in the inroup already have this prior that the people uh that you know the layman uh does not have. >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:12:50
>> Their their understanding of AI is is from Terminator. >> Yeah.
1:12:53
>> Where it's like, oh, this is going to kill me.
1:12:54
And then also the leaders are saying totally this is like going to take your job.
1:12:59
>> It's kind of all bad news. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:13:01
It jumps straight to the consequences instead of actually dwelling and spending enough time in the tactile tactile like uh impact of a technology uh like like Steve Jobs was uniquely good at.
1:13:13
He could he could talk about the the future and the and the long-term implications, but uh would spend a lot of time just talking about the bicycle for the mind.
1:13:20
And he had these great metaphors that really stuck with us for a long time. >> Yeah.
1:13:24
He'd be saying it's a he'd be talking about how how this chatbot in your pocket seems Yeah.
1:13:30
>> simple, but it's a it will teach you languages.
1:13:33
It will uh help you become an artist, help you become a mu musician.
1:13:39
>> Uh it will diagnose a condition that you have.
1:13:41
It will diagnose a condition for somebody that actually can't afford healthare wherever they are in the world, right?
1:13:46
Like these are magical magical things and yet >> but even if you go and you say those exact words, people will >> say, "Oh, he's being too earnest.
1:13:53
It's some Steve Jobs impression."
1:13:55
Like it's hard for that to land.
1:13:56
I think it just not >> Yeah. I don't know. >> I don't know.
1:14:00
Maybe it just never >> I think there's space for it.
1:14:01
It's going to take uh it's going to take a future Hall of Famer. >> Yeah. Yeah. Maybe. And I don't know.
1:14:09
It's also interesting because uh I mean the business of Apple was was different than today.
1:14:14
There was I mean it was much less capex intensive so you need less fundraising.
1:14:18
Um so you had to you didn't have to message to the financial markets as much as you do now.
1:14:22
You could just kind of make a widget and if you sold it at a profit the business would continue to grow.
1:14:29
Uh, and so with the the capex dynamic in AI does make it a little bit different because you have to message to everyone that they need to put their money in to actually get this future and then there's the consequences of that.
1:14:41
>> The Wall Street Journal had an article. >> Sure.
1:14:43
First, let me tell you about Finn.
1:14:44
AI, the number one AI agent for customer service.
1:14:46
If you want AI to handle your customer support, go to Finn. ai.
1:14:50
Uh, the journal had an article at the end of the year, December 29th.
1:14:56
PhDs can't find work as Boston's biotech engine sputters.
1:14:58
A job in life sciences was once a sure path to a high-paying career in the city, but empty >> empty labs and unemployed grads now uh, herald tougher times.
1:15:08
Uh, Jeremy Lou, 31 years old, moved to Boston from New Jersey in 2018 to study for a PhD in chemistry, and he hoped a career in the city's bustling biotech industry.
1:15:18
We have a very depressing image here of uh Cambridge if we can pull that up.
1:15:23
But after earning his uh University of Massachusetts Boston degree last year, Lou said he has applied to about 500 local jobs with no luck.
1:15:32
Raised in Hong Kong, he said he had also started considering LinkedIn messages uh from biotech recruiters uh much farther away.
1:15:41
The industry is really booming in China and that's what a lot of people have told me that I should consider applying there.
1:15:45
Boston's biotech sector, long a vital economic engine for one of America's wealthiest metro areas, is sputtering.
1:15:52
A double whammy of cutbacks in venture capital and government funding have taken a toll, leading to layoffs and struggles for job seekers, for workers who thought they would easily launch into a well-paying science career.
1:16:01
The downturn has been especially harsh.
1:16:03
Lou temporarily signed up for government food assistant.
1:16:06
Uh food assistants kept a tight budget and later started working part-time for an AI startup so he could continue to afford rent in a Boston suburb.
1:16:13
Massachusetts experienced a slight decline in its roughly 65,000 biotech R&D jobs in 2024 after years of mostly strong increases including during the CO9 pandemic.
1:16:26
Uh the numbers indicate that job losses continued through at least June while hiring remain sluggish.
1:16:32
By the end of September nearly 28% of Boston uh greater Boston's lab space sat empty according to the latest estimates from CBRE.
1:16:39
every stage of the life cycle has been impacted by policy or regulatory uncertainty this year.
1:16:46
Uh says uh Ken Kendall Okonnell, C chief executive at Mass Bio and Industry Trade Group.
1:16:53
Uh the impact has hit startups especially hard.
1:16:55
Uh and so anyways, hopefully they can turn it around, but I think uh what Will is saying around uh kind of network collapse is very real.
1:17:05
If people graduate from your universities and immediately bail, it's hard to uh it's hard to stop that. >> Yeah.
1:17:13
I went to college in Boston and there was like a flourishing tech community because of MIT, Microsoft had a massive the the nerd the New England research and development center and a bunch of interesting tech and tons of like tech talks.
1:17:25
And uh the default path was you would meet people at Boston tech fairs and it was easier to get a job in tech in Boston if you went to school in Boston.
1:17:34
But uh quickly I did get out of there and went to San Francisco, >> went straight to the tenderloin >> and and a lot of that was because of the internet, because of Twitter and meeting tech people on Twitter and seeing tech people on on uh on Twitter and just sort of like understanding the networks.
1:17:49
I remember interacting with not Sean Parker, but Sean Parker did an interview with a few VCs and I was able to like go back and forth with them on Twitter just being a reply guy basically in like 201 uh 2011.
1:18:03
Um >> I wish I got to experience your reply guy.
1:18:08
>> Reply guy arrow was strong.
1:18:08
Yeah, you know it was electric when I when uh who was it the first VC in Facebook or something?
1:18:16
Someone someone liked my post and replied and it was like the best thing ever.
1:18:19
I was like, I'm I'm a kingmade. You know, >> I'm goated. >> I'm goated. Exactly.
1:18:23
Uh but it did it did uh just like illuminate the networks of like what's going on.
1:18:28
It gave you a much easier picture of like who the live players are.
1:18:32
And even if you couldn't just, you know, ask them for jobs directly, like you could at least be aware.
1:18:38
Um and >> Ben in the chat is is saying the person that article in that article actually just has a terrible resume. Look him up. Yeah. Who knows?
1:18:46
Yeah. Who knows? I mean plucking one person that's struggling to find >> you sort of have to do that in these articles because you don't want to just do the article with the chart and so you have to do the chart the data point which is that the employment is declining in Boston R&D jobs
1:19:00
>> seven years into his PhD and only publish one paper >> time to lock in brother um let me tell you about Plaid >> hit me >> that's a white pill powers the apps you use to spend save borrow and invest securely connecting bank accounts to move money fight fraud and improve lending. Now,
1:19:17
Now, >> uh Brian Halligan is organizing a session with the governor at his home in Boston.
1:19:22
So, the governor is uh paying attention. >> Mhm.
1:19:27
>> Uh well, we have some breaking news.
1:19:29
There is a new tab in the chat GBT app. That's right.
1:19:32
Greg Brockman and Fij Health Chat GBT health is now live.
1:19:36
Uh Fiji gave some amazing stats here with more than 40 million people globally turning to chat GPT every day for health questions. What does that mean?
1:19:48
Does that mean 40 million people are asking health questions every single day or or >> the founder from doctrronic yesterday said like 20% of all the queries are >> okay yeah >> are health related.
1:19:58
So yeah, the question here is uh how how quickly does chatbt health try to do the other things that doctrronic is doing?
1:20:08
Doctrronic is actually trying to be an AI doctor.
1:20:10
He talked about being uh able to uh effectively be a doctor, you know, write prescriptions in Utah. Yep.
1:20:19
>> Going to fight to expand that.
1:20:19
The question will be from a >> strategic standpoint how they they have their own doctors on staff as well.
1:20:28
They're operating a tele medicine business and I'm sure they do referrals out.
1:20:31
Uh it's hard to see OpenAI ever employing doctors themselves but they probably would try to build a network around it.
1:20:39
Um so we'll see where this goes but um it's going to be an exciting space to watch. >> Yeah.
1:20:45
>> Yeah. Uh so they say today they're launching chatbt health a dedicated private space for health conversations where you can easily and securely connect your medical records and wellness apps like Apple health function health and pelaton um we have the
1:20:59
founder of function on right um >> so you can put all your blood results in there that feels like a really enduring place my one of my big uh push backs against the the lab the quest lab rappers is that uh they haven't historically been very enduring. So you
1:21:13
So you go and do them and then a few years later the product's sort of degraded and then you're like oh well I have six different like amazing web UIs for my health records.
1:21:22
But if I'm keep importing them into chatbt I feel like I'll have an account on there for a very long time because it's an enduring company. Uh makes a ton of sense.
1:21:29
Uh this allows chatt to offer more relevant personalized support like when you're preparing a doctor's for a doctor's appointment or looking for guidance on a meal plan or exercise routine that fits your needs. That's very cool.
1:21:39
CHTP health is another te step towards turning chatbt into a personal super assistant that can help support you with information and tools to achieve your goals across any part of your life.
1:21:52
We're starting at the very beginning of this journey.
1:21:54
Uh but I'm excited to get these tools into more hands says Fiji Simo.
1:21:57
Uh you can sign up to request access. Interesting.
1:21:59
They're not just rolling it out.
1:22:00
Um and uh and and they talk about their input from POS physicians and privacy protections. Interesting. Um, yeah.
1:22:08
One of my big questions for this year is like is like there's always been this there's always been this uh this narrative of like do if if you build a wrapper that depends on the models not getting better, you're going to have a bad time because the models will just get better.
1:22:22
So if your thing is oh it can't do long context windows or it can't answer in pages and pages and pages, well the models are going to get better and they're going to do that or they're going to do better math.
1:22:32
So don't build the the math wrapper that's just a little bit better.
1:22:36
Um, but if you're building something that's unique and special and off in the side and doesn't really depend on that, maybe you're good for a long time.
1:22:43
But obviously, CHCHP's matured a lot and they are going after certain verticals.
1:22:49
And I wonder if we'll see one of the foundation labs go after legal since they're already going after code so effectively like >> and people are >> that would be interesting.
1:22:57
>> And they're making money there.
1:22:57
So, it's a big pool of opportunities. >> Yeah.
1:23:01
I wonder if people could they could make you could people are using LLMs to do legal work now, but they're just on these standard subscriptions.
1:23:09
You can imagine a lot would pay $100 a month for >> kind of a more robust version.
1:23:16
>> And and Sam's talked about this where your conversations with Chad GPT are not are definitely admissible in court.
1:23:20
And so it's like a Google search.
1:23:22
It's not like talking to your lawyer.
1:23:24
So if you go to CHP and you ask how do I do crime >> client privilege >> you don't have client privilege but maybe there could be a tab where you sign up for some specific plan and you are getting legal advice effectively and it is attorney client privilege in some ways.
1:23:40
Now I'm sure that's a whole uh whole rat's nest of legal uh prediction uh problems but uh maybe they'll figure it out. Who knows? Anyway, Shopify.
1:23:50
Shopify is the commerce platform that grows with your business and lets you sell in seconds online, in store, on mobile, on social, on marketplaces, and now with AI agents.
1:23:58
Um, >> very excited to see everything that Shopify does.
1:24:04
>> Very excited to have Robbie Gupta back on the show.
1:24:06
Andrew Reed says he may be ank, but he's our unc.
1:24:08
Uh Andrew and I were were texting the other day and uh someone had told him uh that a Gen Z person told him that unc meant uncool >> and he felt very unc thought it meant like uncle.
1:24:23
>> I think it's related, isn't it?
1:24:25
>> Uh it's definitely uncle. I'm pretty sure.
1:24:27
But but >> you might be and that's just why you think >> you're Yeah.
1:24:32
It's the uh uh the the connotation and the denotation.
1:24:35
Like it literally means uncle, but the connotation is that it means uncool.
1:24:41
>> Yeah, it's a clipping of uncle originating in African-American vernacular English. >> Okay, there you go.
1:24:45
It is a uh Yeah, it's it's slang. >> There you go.
1:24:49
It's >> speaking speaking of slang, Tyler, can you take us through what you've learned about looks maxing slang because we're trying to get uh this is our 2026 resolution to ascend and so we need to be up to speed on all the terms. What do you have for us? >> Yeah.
1:25:04
So, I've been getting into looks max thing.
1:25:05
I've >> obviously clearly working.
1:25:08
>> I've been uh I asked some people for some peptide advice.
1:25:10
I'm gain weight 50 plus pounds. >> Oh, yes. Yes.
1:25:13
And I think we have an image of what that might look like. Let's pull it up. Let's pull it up.
1:25:18
double up the the image of uh Tyler.
1:25:20
This came from Brandon Guerell.
1:25:20
Uh Tyler's looking very prosperous here in the timeline.
1:25:25
You said, "Are there any peptides for gaining large amounts of weight, 50 plus pounds?"
1:25:31
>> We're like Tyler's like, "Yeah, I'm trying to gain 50 lbs of muscle and then just gains 50 lbs straight to the >> That looks like more than 50 lbs.
1:25:36
That looks like 100 pounds." Uh slop. This is You look elite. You look elite. This is truly art.
1:25:43
This is and the and the the grin on your face is so funny.
1:25:48
It really translates well.
1:25:48
What a beautiful AI image.
1:25:50
Anyway, so so you're not going this direction. You're trying to ascend. What's the plan? Take us through it. >> Okay. Yeah.
1:25:58
So I mean there's a couple things especially when you're when you're looks maxing.
1:26:01
It's a lot about your face, right?
1:26:03
So there's a bunch of terms you want to be looking at.
1:26:06
>> Um so the first one you hear those thrown around the maxilla, right? >> Yeah. The maxilla.
1:26:08
Where is the max >> people have the you know they have a recessed maxilla.
1:26:11
So the the maxilla is the it's kind of the bone that goes around your nose, right? >> Oh, okay.
1:26:17
Nose and bone in your nose, right?
1:26:19
So it's kind of this this area right here and then your upper maxilla is basically the top part here.
1:26:23
So when it's recessed, it means you kind of have a flatter face shape almost. >> Okay.
1:26:29
>> Um and you don't want that.
1:26:30
>> So you don't want a recessed maxilla. >> Okay.
1:26:32
You don't want a recessed maxilla.
1:26:33
And is bone smashing a way out of having a recessed maxilla? Yeah, bones.
1:26:36
I mean, you got to be careful with bone smashing because uh sometimes you hear about, you know, they they ruin their nerves, right?
1:26:42
They nerve you get nerve damage.
1:26:45
>> Do you really need the nerves there? >> Well, yeah.
1:26:47
See, like a lot of people personally, I think it's fine.
1:26:49
I don't really need him there.
1:26:51
>> Do not look maxing, right? Yes. >> Um so, okay.
1:26:54
So, next thing you want to look for um your infraorbitals. >> Infraorbitals. Okay. What are these?
1:27:00
Your infraorbital is kind of um it's like part it's actually kind of similar to your maxilla but it's basically there's two like kind of points right here >> okay >> below each of your you know eyes >> um
1:27:12
>> and so sometimes these can get slightly inflamed >> and these are bones or muscles >> uh I believe >> yes they are >> uh what even >> is this actual science that they're that they that they've adopted and and twisted or is it entirely made up? It's
1:27:24
It's like a section of your of the >> maxilla. Got it. Got it. Got it. Okay. What else we got? >> Okay.
1:27:31
So, also this is a pretty obvious one.
1:27:33
Everyone knows this, but your your kind of facial uh width tide ratio. >> Yes.
1:27:37
The midface ratio or just the overall facial >> difference. Yeah.
1:27:40
Midface is is kind of >> Okay.
1:27:41
It's like do you have a long face or a wide face? >> Exactly. Got it.
1:27:45
>> Um you want to look at your uh nasal labial folds. Nasal.
1:27:48
>> So, this is on older people, right?
1:27:50
You'll see these kind of wrinkles. >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
1:27:53
>> So, you want to be looking out >> minimizing those.
1:27:55
>> Uh generally if you want to look younger. Yeah. Um, makes sense.
1:27:58
>> You want to look at your baxillary protrusions.
1:28:01
>> Bimaxillary protrusions. Okay. >> Yeah.
1:28:04
Um, so this one I actually uh I'm not exactly sure what that one is, but >> but it's got to be good.
1:28:10
>> But you got to look out for it.
1:28:10
You got to look out for it.
1:28:13
>> Uh, your nose bridge, right?
1:28:13
You don't have to be too wide.
1:28:14
This is something you can see.
1:28:17
>> Um, and then your inter pupilary distance, right?
1:28:19
So this is how far >> and that feels like something you can do nothing about.
1:28:24
>> Uh, so I actually a way to make your eyes wider or narrower.
1:28:26
I >> I think there are ways to do it. Uh glasses, right?
1:28:31
Because it changes like how big your eyes look. >> Okay.
1:28:34
>> I think actually um >> uh in >> also potentially with makeup, you could maybe accentuate the the IPD.
1:28:42
>> I only know about IPDs because of uh VR goggles.
1:28:44
Different VR goggles need different IPDs.
1:28:48
>> Timothy, >> I got to interrupt you guys to talk about the the universe universe 25 experiment conducted by Eth ethologist John B.
1:28:57
Calhoun between 1968 and 1973.
1:29:01
The experiment was the rodent utopia experiment.
1:29:05
Calhoun built a paradise for mice where every physical need was met.
1:29:10
They had unlimited food and water.
1:29:10
So there was no competition for uh survival. There was no predators.
1:29:15
They were completely safe from external threats.
1:29:19
They had climate control.
1:29:19
So it was a perfect environment uh for living and reproducing. It was disease-free.
1:29:27
The initial mice were chosen for their health.
1:29:29
And so despite having space for 3,800 mice, the population peaked at 2,200 and then became a began a rapid irreversible decline to extinction.
1:29:42
There was a specific group called the beautiful ones. Mhm.
1:29:45
>> Uh it was a generation of males born during the peak of overcrowding because the older dominant males had become hyperaggressive.
1:29:52
These are the boomers in our society and the social hierarchy had collapsed.
1:29:56
These younger males never learned normal social behavior.
1:29:58
So I think we see this with like clvicular and people like that >> uh like defending territory or courting mates. Yeah.
1:30:07
>> Uh they were called the beautiful ones because uh their physical appearance of course unlike the older alpha males who were covered in scars.
1:30:13
Again, these are these are these are the boomers, right?
1:30:16
They bought their homes for like 20 bucks and and uh you know, maybe maybe were in the military, etc.
1:30:21
Uh uh the the alphas were covered in scars and and bitten tails from constant fighting.
1:30:28
These males had perfect healthy fur.
1:30:28
You can see Tyler's hair.
1:30:31
He's got perfect healthy fur behavior.
1:30:32
They withdrew completely from society.
1:30:35
So again, you see these streamers, they're just like in their rooms, you know, smashing their smashing their face with with hammers.
1:30:42
Uh they spent their entire lives doing only three things.
1:30:44
Eating, sleeping, and grooming themselves. Asexuality.
1:30:45
They lost all interest in mating or interacting with females.
1:30:50
Again, you see these with the the looks maxing guys.
1:30:53
They're they're not looks maxing seemingly for like >> women.
1:30:58
They're looks maxing to try to mob other dudes, right?
1:31:01
This is this is uh talking about uh Gavin Newsome mogging mogging JD.
1:31:06
Um, and uh, so anyways, something something to think about with this >> lesson is become the beautiful ones.
1:31:15
Like in in the rat colony, you want to be the beautiful one. >> Absolutely not.
1:31:19
>> I think Tyler's on board. >> Absolutely not.
1:31:20
You want to be the you want to be the scarred alpha, you know? >> Okay.
1:31:23
The scarred alpha, >> but you want your tail to be bitten. >> Yeah.
1:31:25
Well, I I I've always said I want to be whized.
1:31:27
I want to be old man maxing.
1:31:29
I want to look like Warren Buffett because I feel like there's a lot of people that are doing the younger thing, look maxing.
1:31:34
There's Brian Johnson, obviously.
1:31:35
But I feel like if I could become more austere, I would hold more my words would hold more weight.
1:31:41
And I feel like that's actually what's valuable.
1:31:42
So I want to look as old as possible. I want to be leathery.
1:31:45
I want to be I want to be wizzy. I want to be leathery. >> Just one more thing. >> Dye my hair gray.
1:31:51
>> I forgot about this one.
1:31:51
They mentioned in the chat, but your canal tilt, right?
1:31:54
So So candle tilt is is kind of the angle of your eyes, right?
1:31:56
So you want I think it's called hunter eyes. >> Hunter eyes. Okay. Yeah. All this for nothing. >> Yeah.
1:32:04
All this for for nothing.
1:32:04
What a what a crazy time.
1:32:06
Well, we have our first guest of the show joining.
1:32:08
I'm sure we'll continue the looks maxing conversation.
1:32:11
While we bring him in, let me tell you about public.
1:32:13
com investing for those who take it seriously.
1:32:15
Stocks, options, bonds, crypto, treasuries, and more with damn great customer service.
1:32:23
We have Venenzo Landino in the TV Ultra Dome. Welcome to the show. How are you doing? >> There he is. >> Thanks for having me.
1:32:28
I listen to this conversation and I'm like, do I have the written? >> You look fantastic.
1:32:33
So you you you're one of the people that's actually been doing this.
1:32:36
You've been look maxing for years clearly. >> Oh, of course. Yeah. Yeah.
1:32:39
I didn't even know I was doing it, but Okay. >> Yeah.
1:32:43
>> I do agree with you though, John.
1:32:43
There is something about looking a little older so that people take you seriously cuz >> But you you just graduated high school.
1:32:51
You look about like 1920. Is that correct?
1:32:54
>> Uh yeah, actually I turned 21 yesterday. >> Congratulations. That's fantastic. That's fantastic.
1:32:58
Yeah, you look very young.
1:32:59
Anyway, uh for those who don't know you, please introduce yourself.
1:33:03
We'd love to get the introduction for everyone. >> Yeah. B Chenlandino.
1:33:05
I run um Business of Speed.
1:33:07
So, a podcast, newsletter, and a consultancy for brands that want to get into uh motorsport or businesses of speed actually.
1:33:15
So, it's more than just motorsport, but >> we call it businesses of speed. So, mostly racing. >> That's a good brand. I like that. Fantastic.
1:33:21
How did you get into this?
1:33:24
You know, it's uh to keep it short, I was I was a motorsport fan for a long time.
1:33:29
And Formula 1 >> years and years ago, like when I started watching it back in the early 90s, >> like right after Drive to Survive happened, you got into it?
1:33:39
>> Right after Drive to Survive. >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:33:40
That that's when you got into it, I'm sure. >> Just Yeah.
1:33:43
I just jumped in right then and there. Yeah.
1:33:45
>> Early early to the sport. Really? Yeah. >> Real early on.
1:33:47
Which actually is really funny because now people that came in maybe two years before >> Yeah.
1:33:52
The drive to survive boom are considered like >> old old heads >> in watching motorsports. Yeah, hunks. Exactly. >> Yeah.
1:34:00
>> But uh no, back or you know, >> like I said, 35ish years ago, >> Yeah.
1:34:04
>> there was nobody watching it in the United States and >> being of Italian uh heritage and and whatnot.
1:34:11
I had a lot of motorsport fans in my family and we used to watch it. We used to go carting.
1:34:14
We used to, you know, go to racetracks all the time.
1:34:16
As I got older, I saw there was opportunity that not many people are talking about the business side or at least the behind the scenes aspect of of uh in that case Formula in this case Formula 1.
1:34:27
But everyone wanted to talk about how hot the drivers were and you know >> the engineering aspect was another you know element or even just handicapping who's going to win like the actual the actual results of the sport. >> Actual results. Yeah.
1:34:42
As opposed to the business everywhere. >> Yeah. It's everywhere. >> Exactly. Exactly. >> Amazing.
1:34:47
What was the first what was the first piece of content?
1:34:49
What was the first initial like go to market with building content in the category?
1:34:54
>> Uh I don't even really It was probably It was Twitter for sure.
1:34:56
Um and I would I mean I was just tweeting about different things, you know, deals that were coming through and >> um whenever you could get any information about race fees or whatever, you know, a a race track was paying for to host an event, you're like, "Okay, this is interesting."
1:35:11
And you start building a following.
1:35:13
People thinking like, "Wow, that's ridiculous." Wow, that's crazy.
1:35:16
Didn't had no idea what went into it.
1:35:17
And then >> just kind of snowballed into what it is now, which has become >> still building it, but really an opportunity for me to to keep a tab on the the business behind it. >> Yeah.
1:35:30
Uh, can you give us a broad view into the health and state of motorsport, the the business of of motorsports in America?
1:35:38
Because a lot of a lot of people in tech are just >> not that not that into uh automotive racing broadly.
1:35:46
Maybe they watch F1 here and there.
1:35:49
Maybe they go to an event, you know, through for, you know, with with some SAS company >> uh that they're involved with.
1:35:53
But uh to maybe zoom out for a second and then I want to get into a bunch of the subcategories.
1:36:00
>> I'll say anecdotally, let's just this is something I heard in Las Vegas just a couple months ago.
1:36:05
Um tech company in San Francisco CEO wanted this is literally the conversation I heard.
1:36:13
Wants to get involved in Formula 1 somehow.
1:36:17
>> Knows nothing about motorsport.
1:36:17
Knows nothing about racing.
1:36:19
just knew that it was somewhere where there was attention and he wanted to get his brand in front of it.
1:36:24
And so hearing conversations like that happening and partnerships and commercial deals happening just because they think it's cool again from someone who's been who's seen the trajectory over decades, not just like a few years.
1:36:40
That's fascinating to me.
1:36:40
Still fascinating to me that that level of interest is there.
1:36:44
Um but that's not the overall health.
1:36:47
I mean, Formula 1 is definitely healthier than than most.
1:36:49
Um, in the United States, you still have series like NASCAR that dominate, at least in viewership, but there's issues there as well.
1:36:59
Uh, Indie Car, great racing, but still trying to work out who they want to be.
1:37:05
And so there's >> there's definity in F1 in America actually hurt indie indie car because it feels like some potential overlap or is it kind of a rising tide lifts all boats?
1:37:19
rising tide lifts all boats? I think it's actually so I think it is there is a level an aspect of rising tide has raised all boats but it's also hardened the die hards like they are the indie car dieards I feel like have come out more now
1:37:36
>> um because they're like we don't want to be run over taken over by this European thing this formula one which is the actual conversations that happen I mean it's it's kind of funny but >> um so Indie Cars has seen it but what >> no one has been able to figure out that Formula 1 did was the content aspect. Drive to Survive was one of many, many
1:37:53
Drive to Survive was one of many, many things that they've done behind the scenes, right?
1:37:58
ESPN didn't get enough credit for the growth.
1:38:00
You know, everyone said, "Oh, Netflix Drive to Survive effect, all of that."
1:38:05
I mean, including myself at one point, I it was like, "Wow, this Netflix thing is really this is what's causing all of this." But it wasn't.
1:38:13
ESPN did put a lot into it.
1:38:15
and and so um I would say that you have seen a lot of rising tide but no one's figured out the content aspect it's for whatever reason it's like not for whatever reason I know you know we know what the reasons are formula 1 is just the attractive it's the flavor of the day month year right now maybe the next
1:38:37
couple years but it's it's sexy right it's European so if you want an audience it's global let's not say it's not just European it's global >> yeah it's a travel in addition to being a race, in addition to being a reality TV show, in addition to being a dating show, it it sort of scratches every itch. So, a household
1:38:53
So, a household can sit down and everyone in the >> family the business I always appreciated the the business side, seeing how the owners were kind of processing uh being in being in that uh >> understanding that dynamic where you have this like desperation to win.
1:39:09
have this like desperation to win. you badly want to win and then every single decision that you're making throughout a season is like >> okay how much like techn like you know >> how much do I want how badly do you want to win how much do you want to actually spend how much do you like how how
1:39:26
>> how much are you willing to personally invest so that happening at the owner level and and the athlete level >> and at one point it was you know you it was whoever could just keep spending right now we have the the the the salary or not salary cap the spend cap And the spend cap has created more competition. You can't spend over 140ish
1:39:44
You can't spend over 140ish million.
1:39:46
It's going to go up a little bit more, but you can't spend over that amount of money.
1:39:50
And so that's caused better competition.
1:39:54
Everyone has to kind of get to a point.
1:39:56
But at one at one point in Formula's history, it was just you spend spend spend.
1:40:01
There were way more teams on the grid, way more drivers.
1:40:05
You know, we actually had on our podcast um Mark Blendell who was a driver from the late 80s, early 90s.
1:40:10
He drove with Senna and some of the other greats and he was saying, you know, it was like we had to qualify to qualify. You don't have that now.
1:40:19
You've got now there's going to be 22 drivers on the grid. They all will start. >> Yep. >> Come Sunday.
1:40:25
That didn't happen, you know, 25 years ago, 30 years ago.
1:40:27
It was you had to qualify just to get onto the grid.
1:40:33
And there was plenty because there was so many cars that were just like they would allow anybody that could come up with a car would be on the grid and >> it couldn't compete.
1:40:41
It wasn't reliable, whatever it was or they'd be so slow that obviously wouldn't put them on the grid to qualify.
1:40:47
And so all of that has led to the popularity, but also the financial health of it. Look at the valuations. Um, >> yeah.
1:40:56
I wanted to get your read on like team valuations because obviously the people that were like just pure enthusiasts in it for the love of the game have benefited to some degree >> uh just based on the appreciation and the value of the teams.
1:41:08
There's so much more attention.
1:41:10
They can build uh they can bring in a lot uh more sponsorship.
1:41:15
Uh we were at the Vegas event and just walking around and seeing how the different Yeah, it felt like being at a tech conference.
1:41:21
you every team has a major tech company on it now or yeah multiple multiple sometimes uh yeah valuations >> uh but yeah valuations of teams uh George over at CrowdStrike uh we we work with Crowd Strike saw you know he recently uh uh bought into Mercedes in a big way after being a partner for a while but uh how do you how do you uh do you think that uh do you expect valuations to actually trade down at any point.
1:41:51
Could we be at a at at somewhat of a local >> top >> top?
1:41:57
>> I think at some point we I it has to max out, right?
1:41:59
Like some of the valuations seem almost insane to me.
1:42:01
Mercedes just the team itself 6 billion is what it's right around McLaren 4 and a half.
1:42:10
Ferrari is a little bit different.
1:42:11
They've got this a global brand.
1:42:11
They're a little over six and a half billion.
1:42:16
Um, and even at the bottom of the the grid, you're still looking at 2 billion.
1:42:22
I I remember Zack Brown, CEO of McLaren, had said, and I actually had a conversation with him in in Vegas, but he had said 2024, 2023, maybe it was at one point, all of the teams will be valued at a billion dollars.
1:42:36
And PE, we all thought that was like, no way.
1:42:38
This is like, are you kidding me?
1:42:41
And here we are not even a full two years later and every team is has a valuation of roughly you know two billion.
1:42:49
Of course there's private equity now uh investing.
1:42:50
You've got some big you know bigger players that want to put money into these teams and so valuations just shoot up.
1:42:58
I think >> it it has to cap somewhere.
1:43:02
I don't know where that cap is.
1:43:05
I I have said 10 billion.
1:43:07
I thought it was like absolute max.
1:43:09
But I think I think even that might be ridiculous.
1:43:11
But you know, >> I know that if I say that now than in two years when >> But the average So the average net new investor, are they really going into this expecting a return or do they want to be an owner of a Formula 1 team?
1:43:26
>> They want to be the owner of Formula 1. I mean, it >> it's cool.
1:43:30
>> You can't put a price on cool.
1:43:30
You can't put a price on being in the suite.
1:43:31
Like you said, it's a tech conference. It's who's who.
1:43:34
It's who can I be seen around.
1:43:37
Look at all the celebrities that show up.
1:43:39
Look at all the major, you know, tech companies or all the player, all the network.
1:43:43
It's it's a level of networking you can't really put a price on.
1:43:46
And that's what you're buying into.
1:43:47
You're buying into the opportunity >> to entertain your clients, entertain your friends, entertain other executives to be seen as, well, I'm the CEO or I'm the founder, whatever it is. I'm the boss.
1:44:00
>> There's there's there's so many levels to it.
1:44:02
you know, our friends at at Public who we went to Vegas with are uh they're a SP, you know, multi-year sponsor of Aston Martin, but then the level beyond that is like, yeah, actually, you know, buying into the team and becoming a >> Yeah, I I noticed uh over the holiday like the the the global elite were in St.
1:44:18
Barts and they all all pulled up their yachts.
1:44:21
And when you read the articles of like whose yacht is there and and who they are, it'll say the person's name and then like probably half of these people, they're described as like owner of the, you know, Pistons or over of owner of the Red Sox, owner of some sports team.
1:44:37
And you always look them up and it's like they didn't make their money starting that sports team.
1:44:42
They started some boring oil and gas company or software company or something.
1:44:46
But as soon as you own, it's like writing a book.
1:44:48
As soon as you own a sports team, that's what you're known for forever.
1:44:51
And like you're just the Dallas Mavericks guy.
1:44:55
>> So it goes back to you guys were talking about um Steve Jobs earlier.
1:44:56
We don't have and how they're right now we don't have somebody that is like Steve Jobs for AI and to just like >> snap a finger, tell a story.
1:45:05
It it's the story, right?
1:45:07
And I don't know if that's what you were looking to say at one point, but um it's a story.
1:45:10
It's it's a it's an instant story.
1:45:14
you go and sponsor Williams or you go and Atlassian, you go partner up with Williams.
1:45:18
Now you're going to be part of their comeback because William Williams the team is coming back and they are more financially healthy.
1:45:24
They've got great investment now.
1:45:25
Uh great team, great leaders in place.
1:45:30
>> Well, Atlassian is going to be right behind, you know, they are right there. They builtin story.
1:45:34
>> People that didn't know them outside of Australia, which or maybe even like the U whatever, >> they'll know >> globally instant global recognition, right?
1:45:43
You can't buy that anywhere.
1:45:43
You know, you can't buy that story, that level of story.
1:45:47
There's no price that you can put on that.
1:45:48
And so I think that's what we're, you know, we see with Formula 1 specifically.
1:45:51
What is the dynamic of So, so Audi's joining the grid this year, how how does that work?
1:45:57
Is it is the number of teams going to effectively be fixed forever?
1:46:02
Like part of the reasons why NBA and NFL teams are are valuable is because you effectively have a monopoly, right?
1:46:09
We're not creating more teams.
1:46:11
So you don't have new uh competition and and pricing pressure and things like that.
1:46:16
How did that dynamic how do you actually they're taking over from another team?
1:46:22
Like break down that dynamic and will we see more?
1:46:24
Could we see a future where there's 30 cars on the grid?
1:46:30
>> So Saber was the team that Audi bought to get into.
1:46:34
So they they took a spot, right?
1:46:36
And so that m for the I'm trying to think of how many years but let's say the at least the past decade maybe 15 years you've had a pretty fixed number of teams on the grid 10.
1:46:46
of teams on the grid 10. Cadillac is entering the grid as team 11 >> and that is was a big big deal in the in the charter from 2022 the uh dilution fee was 200 or 300 million and because no one thought >> and that's a fee that goes to all the
1:47:06
teams effectively >> that's a fee that goes to all the teams it's split up so everybody gets like 10 >> yeah 10 million 10 million >> which is which is nothing in inre that would have to be updated And I imagine >> it and it did it got updated and when this was there. So the big issue that
1:47:21
So the big issue that came up was when they were looking for team 11 Cadillac was uh came in.
1:47:25
It was Andredy that was trying to put in their offer.
1:47:30
Michael Andred uh Mario Andredy, >> his son Michael um and a group was trying to buy in.
1:47:38
>> There was politics behind the scenes that were going on. They they had the money.
1:47:41
They had all the the things together ducks in a row.
1:47:43
uh they didn't some people don't like them and so they got kind of pushed out.
1:47:48
Now we have Cadillac that entered but at the time they came to the table with their $300 million dilution fee and they had facilities and all the things that F1 wanted to see.
1:48:00
>> Well, they quickly said, "Wait a minute, 300 million is not enough money.
1:48:02
Like we this is this is crazy.
1:48:04
The sport has completely ballooned in valuations and how much revenue.
1:48:10
>> We we need to do something different."
1:48:11
So I think it ended up around 600 million.
1:48:12
So double >> just as just to enter just to say now that's not to say that you you're done at 600 million you need to have facilities you need to invest in in in people so you you're all in way over a billion dollars. >> Wow.
1:48:27
>> That's the price just to say like yeah we'll entertain you. >> Yeah.
1:48:31
>> Um so six you know $600 million.
1:48:31
So you're not going to have anybody just come in and say I want a I want a team because you need to have >> is there is there a hard cap at all in the charter?
1:48:41
Obviously, you could update >> the charger says 12 is the max right now.
1:48:45
>> That's what the chat was saying, too.
1:48:47
>> How does uh the max have the manufacturers, how much do they try to track or how much do they worry about how on grid or ontrack performance impacts car sales?
1:48:55
I had a Ferrari at one point and uh you know, anytime I'm watching F1 and I see Ferrari with uh technical difficulties, I'm like, "Yeah, big surprise."
1:49:06
Cuz I had a lot of I had a lot of those things, right?
1:49:10
>> Disconnected, but it I don't know.
1:49:10
It's just uh like just >> so there's some concern of like if we if we you know have a team and we're and we're just terrible >> uh who Yeah.
1:49:20
Why why is somebody going to want to go and and spend 400 500 you know or more on on one of these cars? >> Yeah.
1:49:29
I So I I remember Lawrence Stroll in 2020 what year are we in? 26.
1:49:33
about 3 four years ago, he made a comment that because Aston Martin had the safety car, >> uh they actually split safety car duties with Mercedes, >> but because they had one safety car, he estimated about $80 million just from having the safety car in sales.
1:49:49
Um, so I think it was the Vantage and they had like the Vantage F1 edition, sold about 300 units, whatever, $200,000 a piece, whatever they were, and they sold out pretty instantly because it was a car on the grid.
1:50:04
Uh, Mercedes has really pushed the AMG badge a lot over the past, I'd say five to seven years >> while destroying what made AMG great in the first place.
1:50:15
>> And and I had, you know, I had an AMG, loved it.
1:50:17
Uh, it was great until I started seeing everybody with an AMG.
1:50:21
I'm like, well, AMG doesn't even mean anything anymore.
1:50:23
It's just kind of like it's the standard car.
1:50:24
They don't even you don't see a regular Mercedes.
1:50:28
Everyone's got an AMG at this point.
1:50:28
But that was >> they're going to make a V a V4 AMG. >> Well, not anymore. So, >> no, I know.
1:50:36
They are they are starting to they got the >> Was it the C43 was the one that people really didn't like? Yeah. >> I mean, for what?
1:50:42
It was kind of pointless.
1:50:44
I mean, I I had Mine was an eight and it was the last eight.
1:50:46
2019 and and I you know people it was very desirable to aftermarket folks because because of that.
1:50:53
But >> but yeah, even when I when I think about Aston, if if Aston can win a championship, >> I do think that that could be very beneficial for the brand in America.
1:51:04
McLaren McLaren, I'm sure I'm sure they they're they're going to benefit in some way.
1:51:10
But Aston, I feel like really like I mean that dynamic is interesting because you have kind of the same owners in both the Formula 1 team and and the and the actual manufacturer which are different entities.
1:51:20
And so there's real incentive to like, hey, let's actually win a championship because uh they make some of the most beautiful cars in the entire world, but they're just not as desirable as the Ferrari at the same price point.
1:51:34
Well, Ferrari is also I mean what Ferrari does to buy a any Ferrari is just it's like it's the luxury playbook.
1:51:41
You know, you can't buy the one you want until you buy 10 others and then maybe we'll let you buy.
1:51:45
I mean, it's just a scarcity thing.
1:51:46
But I'll say with Aston Martin and McLaren specifically, they're still I would say they're booied by Mercedes doing well because they're they're AMG power plants.
1:51:56
So >> that makes that makes a difference especially to the level of enthusiasts or the the the collectors that are buying these cars.
1:52:03
But they are beautiful and they're gorgeous.
1:52:04
It there is a direct correlation and you will hear conver have conversations with folks within the teams that are are absolutely tracking that kind of thing. It's what is the list?
1:52:14
I don't I don't know the number, you know, for every car maker, but um it's, you know, Red Bull doesn't make a car, right?
1:52:21
So, they've got nothing to worry about.
1:52:22
Williams doesn't make a car. >> What about the RB7?
1:52:24
They they made two of those. >> Well, all right. All right. All right. All right. All right. To be fair, to be fair. Yes. Yes.
1:52:29
Yes, they I just meant like like a regular car.
1:52:33
>> That thing does look incredible.
1:52:35
>> What's happening in in sim racing uh broadly?
1:52:37
Like how is the I mean do you look at sim racing as its own kind of subindustry?
1:52:43
>> Is there >> I don't I I mean so I don't track it as much or I'm not paying as much attention.
1:52:48
I know that um it is there's a a higher interest in sim racing because most people realize well it's too expensive to go get a track day.
1:52:58
It's too expensive to um try and even go racing, right?
1:53:02
To be to go from carding to you to the different series levels and then to get to F1.
1:53:07
It's it's imp almost impossible, right? And you need >> Yeah.
1:53:11
People were running the numbers on like how much Lando's dad had spent to get him actually in the game and it was like they clocked it at like $40 million over the career. >> Yeah.
1:53:20
>> Uh just either you have a very rich >> Yeah.
1:53:23
rich parent or a sponsor, you know.
1:53:26
>> But I think you need both. You need both, right?
1:53:28
Or you don't need both, but like it helps to have both.
1:53:30
It's not just one or the other. >> It helps.
1:53:33
I mean, you It's a different lifestyle, right?
1:53:35
So, it's a lifestyle that is you're traveling.
1:53:37
You're often times, unless you're already in Europe, you are likely going to Europe.
1:53:41
We had Connor Dailyaly on our podcast, uh, Indie Car Driver, and actually that episode comes out in a couple weeks.
1:53:47
But he did say to us in the conversation that, you know, he had to go to Europe to race an open wheel because that's where it was like he couldn't do it here. There was no ladder.
1:53:57
The ladder system wasn't robust enough to get where he wanted to go.
1:54:00
That takes dollars right now.
1:54:02
His dad raced in Formula 1. >> But could I do it?
1:54:05
Could you guys I don't know.
1:54:07
Would we be able to start?
1:54:09
Would my kids be able to start? >> Yeah.
1:54:10
>> It's it's it's just it.
1:54:10
So that's where sim racing comes in.
1:54:12
And sim racing is made more popular because the current batch of drivers are very tapped into the sim racing world.
1:54:20
>> Max Versstappen races sim cars in between races between qualifying and the actual race the next day.
1:54:25
He's like, I'm gonna go home and I'm gonna go race on the sim and he takes part in competitive, you know, racing. Um, Lando races. Yeah.
1:54:33
Charles, they all they all they all race and most of them are racing pretty competitively on sim.
1:54:37
So, that's also made it more popular.
1:54:39
The the >> allure of being able to maybe race with Max for Orlando North or get, you know, boot up online and play that.
1:54:46
Those that's all increased tremendously.
1:54:48
Um, I'd have to actually look at the numbers.
1:54:51
I want to see if they're >> What about the What about the the health of individual tracks around the US?
1:54:57
We're going to uh we're going to uh doing a track day out at Willow Springs later this month and I think they changed ownership recently.
1:55:06
>> Uh and uh but but yeah, how how are these doing as businesses?
1:55:09
Are they the kind of things where it's like fun to own but actually just a terrible uh business or is anybody actually doing really well?
1:55:18
>> It's a tough business.
1:55:18
Is anyone doing really well?
1:55:20
It's the ones that are, you know, are backed by dollars that have big races at them.
1:55:24
It's It's hard to maintain >> a pure enthusiast track. You're saying? >> Yeah.
1:55:32
>> A pure enthusiast track. Yeah.
1:55:32
You You really have to uh be like a Kota right now to be immensely successful.
1:55:38
Now, that's smaller regional tracks are still hosting, you know, plenty of racing, but to say they're extremely healthy is tough.
1:55:45
Also, there's a lot of folks that think, "Oh, we want F1 to come race at our track, or we want F1 to come to Road America, F1 to come."
1:55:52
It's like, no, you don't because it's a whole spectacle to come build this.
1:55:55
And often times, it destroys what makes your track unique or appealing or, you know, charming.
1:56:01
So, there's a lot of And those are conversations I'm always tracking.
1:56:04
you know, how does >> I have a I have a kind of a a not quite baked thesis, but an idea that the track business might actually become a great business in the future if it becomes effectively illegal to drive cars on the road just via autonomous vehicles where >> guys and girls are not going to like suddenly if at some point it's like humans can no longer drive. It's just too dangerous.
1:56:29
Like you can imagine that scenario happening in the next 10, 20 years and people are still going to want to drive.
1:56:36
So they're going to take their cars to tracks and that you could see a resurgence of enthusiasts driving because it's just made illegal on normal roads. >> Yeah.
1:56:45
I mean that's actually I that's fantastic.
1:56:47
I didn't even think about the autonomous driving aspect of that and how if people can't drive, people that like us that like you know have gotten a taste of driving, we know what it's like.
1:56:58
Also, driving on a track, driving your car on on the road versus the track is just it's completely it's incomparable. >> Yeah. >> Totally different. Totally different.
1:57:05
I mean, you >> you know, you wonder sometimes how people get their licenses, but you're like, I'm not going to drive. >> Yeah.
1:57:14
>> I'm not going to drive the way I want to drive on a track on on, you know, the I95 over here.
1:57:17
Like, it's just not going to tragedy recently.
1:57:19
The um was it the Activision >> founder of Call of Duty?
1:57:25
>> Founder of Call of Duty was driving.
1:57:27
I've driven Angelus Crest a bunch.
1:57:27
I I had uh the scariest moment of my life in a car on Anggeles Crest uh at around 6:00 a. m.
1:57:35
probably 5 years ago uh driving a 997 that I had and uh I yeah it uh >> you can imagine at some point that I mean that what a lot of people do at a is already effectively illegal, right?
1:57:50
They're driving 30 40 50 mile, you know, 60 70 miles above the speed limit.
1:57:53
uh tailing each other very closely.
1:57:56
It is like reckless driving.
1:58:00
>> Uh but uh yeah, but yeah, that wouldn't if that same situation had happened on a track like everybody would have been fine. >> Yeah, for sure. Usually.
1:58:07
Um walk me through uh a conversation real quick.
1:58:13
Just >> No, I just want to add one last thing to that.
1:58:16
There's a lot of the um you know, private membersonly >> Yeah.
1:58:20
>> clubs coming up now at racetracks for enthusiasts. >> Yeah.
1:58:23
I think that's an opportunity for racetracks to become maybe a little more popular or increase their health because they can offer and Kota's doing it right.
1:58:31
They're offering luxury condos and garages and a whole club membership or a membership.
1:58:34
So, I I think that's something that can happen more.
1:58:38
>> Can you take me through uh what a successful F1 track build looks like?
1:58:40
Uh what's the how is how is Vegas looking?
1:58:46
We went and they were very much bragging that uh it was a permanent facility. It's remarkable.
1:58:51
feels like it's working, but how does this actually work? Who's paying? And how is it in Vegas?
1:58:58
>> I mean, you've got you've got some public money pump, public funds needed.
1:59:03
>> Um, and of course, there's plenty of complainers about that non-stop.
1:59:05
Just open up open up Twitter and you'll see people complaining, locals complaining.
1:59:11
Um, the the permanent facility in Vegas is actually a new thing.
1:59:15
So I there's really not much to compare it to because street tracks don't usually have anything permanent.
1:59:22
Like you go to Monaco, there's they're they're putting that together months ahead of time. >> Mhm.
1:59:28
>> Um so that for Vegas is pretty unique.
1:59:31
They are filling it with the Grand Prix Plaza while it's not race.
1:59:33
Uh I see they I think they cut off around September October and so then it becomes a business with the the Grand Prix Plaza.
1:59:43
They have the F1 um experience.
1:59:43
It's kind of almost like a museum. There's simulators. There's a restaurant.
1:59:48
So, they're they're trying to keep people tied to the F1 brand all year long. That's unique to Vegas.
1:59:55
In terms of the the layout of the track and whatnot, I mean, the build of the track, the permanent pieces of it, I believe they are trying to add some permanent um like lighting fixtures so that those don't have to go up every single time.
2:00:08
But there, I mean, you guys were there so you saw it.
2:00:12
I mean, there's so much of it that has to go up in real time because you can't close down >> the strip all year round.
2:00:18
You can't have um >> um what is it?
2:00:22
You know, you can't have all the things they have up around the track, the stands.
2:00:26
There's there's not even really stands.
2:00:28
Everything's like luxury over there.
2:00:29
So, it's you're either in a suite or you're not.
2:00:32
>> Um >> so, yeah, all of that has to go out in real time.
2:00:35
you know, when you have um when you have a permanent facility like a Kota or even not Miami is kind of half and half, but when you have a permanent facility like Kota, you know, you it's obviously there, those are more expensive to maintain overall.
2:00:48
Um because you have to keep them occupied and you have to do something in them year round after that one race.
2:00:56
>> Vegas, you know, you kind of take the good and the bad.
2:00:58
You have to take the locals complaining and you have to do the shutdowns and all that.
2:01:03
I mean, you guys were there.
2:01:04
So, you remember how like they had to shut down from like Wednesday at 2 o'clock >> basically from 2 to midnight every day after that was was closed down.
2:01:12
I mean, those are things they have to deal with.
2:01:14
And I think that's just unique.
2:01:16
Las Vegas is really really unique.
2:01:18
It's also new to Las Vegas residents, whereas you take like a Monaco that's been around since the 20s, >> those folks are they're used to it.
2:01:26
It's part of the identity.
2:01:28
And that's that's where I think there's >> also I mean the difference in Monaco too is like if you're a resident and you and you own or rent a like a condo or an apartment and then F1 comes to town, it's super exciting.
2:01:39
But if you're a Vegas resident and this track springs up and everything gets more expensive and you're kind of like boxed out, it's not as much it's and you're not necessarily an F1 fan.
2:01:50
It just becomes much more of an annoyance than like a celebration of the city. Mhm.
2:01:55
>> And I think that's where the like we still haven't gotten peak saturation, right?
2:01:59
It's not people aren't excited about it just because like it's not ingrained in their identity.
2:02:03
Whereas you go to, you know, you go to Europe and they are have more of a motorsport culture or at least F1, let's just say F1 where that culture is understood.
2:02:11
So track tracks are very interesting.
2:02:14
They want more street circuits.
2:02:16
There are more street circuits coming.
2:02:19
>> Uh Madrid is being added this year.
2:02:19
So that'll be interesting to see how that build goes.
2:02:23
We actually talked to >> Why do they want more uh street circuits?
2:02:26
I feel like an American Nurburg would be incredible.
2:02:27
I would love an American Nurburg ring maybe in like uh Idaho or something going through the forest.
2:02:34
>> I don't dis I don't disagree with you.
2:02:36
The reason they want more is because it is actually more appealing and more sexy to say >> sure, >> hey, come to our city.
2:02:42
Come to Madrid and we can sell Madrid.
2:02:45
So >> and I mean Vegas, everyone goes to the nightclubs.
2:02:50
There's like a huge economic impact. the hotels.
2:02:52
Whereas if you're out in the in the sticks, yeah, you might be in some cheap hotel, but you're not going to go spend a ton of money.
2:03:00
>> Spa in Belgium is arguably every driver we've talked to, every any motorsport enthusiast says spa is the best track to drive, to race at. It's awesome.
2:03:07
But you know where a spa is?
2:03:09
In the middle of the Ardan Forest. >> Yeah, it's awesome.
2:03:13
>> Like it's it's not right.
2:03:13
It's cool if you're really into motorsport, but if you're trying to sell F1 or you're trying to sell this brand as this is appealing to sponsors and it's sexy and well, I don't I don't I would rather do it in I don't know, Brussels or something like that.
2:03:28
>> Yeah, because you're basically holding a you're holding a conference for your company.
2:03:31
A lot of the sponsors will invite key clients and partners to come with them.
2:03:36
And if you're out in the forest, it's a little bit different.
2:03:39
>> And the playbook has been written. >> Yeah.
2:03:41
>> So like it's it's become a festival.
2:03:43
It's, you know, it is a festival >> and that's what they want the new like >> if you're going to pay $70 million to host a race.
2:03:52
>> You you need to recoup that.
2:03:52
You can't recoup that by just having a race in the middle of nowhere.
2:03:55
And that's why you're seeing a lot of these things happen with the smaller tracks in Europe. They can't afford it. They just don't have it. >> That's funny.
2:04:03
>> Uh I uh next time you come on, I want to talk about the possibility of an AI driver at some point.
2:04:08
I think imagine if imagine if Google bought a team and they had no human driver.
2:04:13
>> This is my new AGI test is I want a humanoid robot in a manual gearbox shifting with three pedals around the Nurburg ring in under seven minutes.
2:04:24
>> Now did you guys see the Abu Dhabi autonomous racing league?
2:04:27
>> Uh I I I saw it like briefly, but tell me >> it's it's it's autonomous racing and it's teams of of engineers basically with no drivers in the car. It's clunky. I It's clunky.
2:04:38
It's like, you know, oh cuz the cars I mean are they are driving by themselves but they they still have to process.
2:04:45
So like >> you have a car cut in front of you like >> Yeah.
2:04:48
What do you do about that?
2:04:49
>> Imagine a Well, imagine a Whimo and something jumps in front of it's going to stop, right?
2:04:52
So it's kind of like the same thing happens with this race.
2:04:56
>> Um so it's kind of if you had a chance to look it up, the autonomous racing league and it was in Abu Dhabi.
2:04:59
They're trying to make it a thing.
2:05:01
I I I don't know about it's not there yet.
2:05:03
I would love to see some uh the the track times, how they compare, and also all of the Oh, the blooper reel I'm sure is really funny.
2:05:11
A >> lot of there's a lot of blooper reels, I'm sure. For sure.
2:05:14
>> Anyway, we'd love to have you back. >> So great to hang.
2:05:15
Uh let's make it a regular thing.
2:05:17
Uh and appreciate you uh giving us the full overview of everything. >> Have a great day. We'll talk to you soon. >> Goodbye.
2:05:25
Let me tell you about Vanta.
2:05:28
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2:05:28
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2:05:33
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2:05:33
And our next guest, Nigel Vase, is already in the Reream waiting room.
2:05:39
Let's bring him into the TVP Ultradome. Nigel, good to meet you. How are you doing?
2:05:44
>> How's your new year going? >> Off to a good start. >> Thanks for having me. Great to be on. Yeah, it's great. >> Thanks so much.
2:05:50
Uh well, we'd love to kick this off since it's the first time on the show uh with a little bit of an introduction on yourself and uh and how you introduce yourself to everyone who's watching.
2:06:00
Yeah, I I run Sapient, which is a enterprise AI software and technology business.
2:06:05
Sapient was founded about 30 years ago in the early days of the internet, building some of the world's first online banks, the first time you could trade equities, the first time you could pick a seat on an airplane.
2:06:14
So we've had about 30 years of building digital systems to really build uh intelligent enterprises in the first wave of digital and now leveraging AI.
2:06:26
We're all about how we can actually unlock real transformation beyond pilots uh for some of the largest enterprises in the world.
2:06:34
So what we really do is bring together deep industry expertise across sectors from financial services, retail, healthcare and then combine it with our digital DNA um alongside a a few AI products that stem from agentic orchestration through to accelerated software development and then finally managing uh IT systems using AI.
2:06:56
managing uh IT systems using AI. How did you process that data point that kind of shook the internet a little bit for a couple days last year where it it suggested that a lot of the AI demos at the enterprise level the experimentation those those experimental budgets uh that
2:07:15
they weren't getting renewed that they weren't seeing the level of adoption >> they weren't getting renewed it's just that they weren't like >> they weren't converting or they weren't working and it was some crazy high number like 93% of enterprise AI tests >> yeah yeah so how do you process MIT study. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's right.
2:07:29
>> Yeah, it was an MIT study that came out and actually what we did is we had a bunch of professors evaluate from MIT our work almost as a counterpoint to that data.
2:07:37
Um because what we were seeing is of course there was a ton of experimentation in the organizations around AI.
2:07:44
around AI. But trying something out and then scaling it across the enterprise was one of the biggest stumbling blocks largely because building a proof of concept in a small organization and scaling it is a lot easier than when you are one of the largest automotive manufacturers in the world or when you're one of the largest banks in the
2:08:02
world because you have to actually think about the tool chaining of the organization and how these systems deploy in the context of that right most of these organizations I mean Davos is coming up in a couple weeks and Every time I go I over the last couple years AI has been the dominant conversation
2:08:20
but more and more clients are now saying hey we understand the concepts around AI we understand all of the conversation is around compute and all the conversation is around models but how am I as an enterprise leader getting value from this in the context of what I do dayto-day >> and that is exactly why that stat is so critical because I think essentially the
2:08:42
bridge from you experiment experiment with a little bit of AI to you can actually start to see meaningful gains outside of the obvious use cases of you're deploying AI in the call center to route some calls more efficiently or you're deploying AI in uh the context of enabling your sales teams to be more efficient, right? We're talking about
2:09:02
We're talking about largecale uh agentic mesh deployments that are allowing businesses to reimagine a car build that used to take 18 months in 18 weeks. Yeah.
2:09:16
>> Or allowing an insurance company to monitor worldwide events and on a dynamic basis allow you to react to the fact that I heard one of you guys talking about your house getting burned down in California.
2:09:27
down in California. And this is an actual piece of work we did for a client where um they were monitoring the air quality post fires >> and alerting people who have significant issues with asthma to actually, you
2:09:43
know, make sure they had uh uh inhalers or maybe even perhaps moved out of those zones proactively, saving themselves hundreds of millions of dollars in health care and better outcomes for these folks who otherwise might have gone through a traumatic health event, right? >> There's a white fil that's the way
2:09:59
>> There's a white fil that's the way >> completely different orchestration uh than I think a pilot or two.
2:10:07
>> Could you share uh some more as as much as you can like who your actual like clients are because I think that'd be helpful to ground the conversation because it's some of the biggest companies in the world. >> Yeah, it is.
2:10:18
It's it's it's some of the biggest banks in the world going all the way from retail banks to investment banks like the likes of a Goldman Sachs for example in the investment space in the in the um retail space we work across the um uh uh the retail space across essentially grocery retail and then uh fashion retail as well as uh general product retail.
2:10:46
So we work with the likes of a car 4 in France or a Walmart in the US uh Tesco in the UK.
2:10:52
So a number of big businesses there.
2:10:54
Uh in the context of the automotive space, the likes of uh a big a number of the big German automotive companies, a number of the big US automotive companies, Asian automotive companies.
2:11:04
So we we serve multiple sectors uh across uh countries around the world.
2:11:09
And in many cases that's one of the complexities there, right?
2:11:14
Because these are global organizations.
2:11:15
There's different data governance rules.
2:11:17
There's different legacy enterprise journeys that they've gone through.
2:11:22
Almost every one of these enterprises is sitting on, you know, a few hundred million dollars of tech debt which you have to kind of work your way through before you can actually deploy any one of these AI uh, you know, ideas.
2:11:35
How are how are some of these like uh management teams that you work with uh approaching messaging uh AI internally?
2:11:46
Because I feel like the broad fear in the economy right now is related to job loss.
2:11:51
And so one of the reasons you'd bring in an external partner is so that they can take just kind of a pragmatic view at the business and really understand where you can get leverage out of AI.
2:12:01
Whereas uh if you're running a thousand person organization in a company, there's maybe some more tension around implementing AI, you know, you'll probably lose your job as an executive if you don't implement AI well.
2:12:11
But if you uh but uh depending on how you implement it, there's going to be some job loss and you're and people are looking out for their team and maybe they like having a bigger headcount, etc.
2:12:22
So, how um yeah, how how is that even uh being messaged at the moment?
2:12:26
even uh being messaged at the moment? I look I think the conversation is definitely um across organizations right I mean people in most enterprises are very tuned to the fact that this is a moment much like the internet was and we saw this in the early days of the internet I mentioned some of the things
2:12:44
we did back then right um a moment of re-imagination of business in a very fundamental way this is not one of those incremental you know progressive overload type moments this is a significant transformation so I don't think anybody body in your organization sitting there basically saying, "Hey, I think nothing in my world is going to change." I think people expect the
2:13:03
I think people expect the change.
2:13:04
I think what most folks aren't clear about is what is the journey from here where we have existing systems, existing processes, existing ways of working that the business is running on and you know making sure that you can fundamentally rebuild this plane while you still have targets and commitments and shareholders.
2:13:24
uh and you recognize that if you don't do it soon enough to the point you're making, you're going to start to give up margin or you're going to start to give up speed or you're going to start to give up market share.
2:13:34
Almost every conversation we're in is about how can I actually drive more growth?
2:13:39
How can I actually create a better experience for my customers and this isn't coming just from leaders in the organization.
2:13:44
This is coming from people across the organization.
2:13:46
What we are seeing though is that at the level of enabling these people to do um work in this new context, organizations are very much separated by execution.
2:13:57
So you know so many clients will talk about you know an AI strategy right but do you have a data strategy?
2:14:04
Are all your data sets connected?
2:14:06
Or actually, are you doing AI pilots on sales data on this ERP system over here and doing, you know, uh, you know, marketing pilots on that ERP system over there, which will eventually evolve to agents on this ERP system for sales, not talking to agents to that ERP system on marketing.
2:14:25
And those agents not talking to each other across sales and marketing resembles a traditional baton passing organization of today, right?
2:14:35
So you're mimicking a lot of what you do >> larger enterprises.
2:14:39
How it felt like uh last year was the year uh of uh was all about just like coding, right?
2:14:46
Uh every single founder that came on our show would talk about the leverage that they're they're getting.
2:14:52
We're getting that leverage internally.
2:14:54
We've uh built a bunch of software to run the show that we never would have built historically because it just would have been too time inensive.
2:15:01
But now we can have one great engineer Tyler on our team who can uh build an entire product end to end.
2:15:08
>> Uh please don't try to poach him because he said that.
2:15:11
But uh but yeah, how how is uh how have like how have coding agents and uh products been adopted in some of these companies?
2:15:19
Uh is there any type of restrictions?
2:15:20
Part of the reason that it got adopted so quickly is it was somewhat permissionless.
2:15:25
Engineers could just sign up for a product >> uh and go bottoms up.
2:15:28
But I don't even know how how adoption would work at someone like a McDonald's or someone like a Mercedes or someone at a bigger bank where I don't know that an engineer can necessarily just say like I'm going to start using this uh product. >> No. And and No.
2:15:42
And you and you can't, right?
2:15:44
Um you can't because um the fact of the matter is it's not just Tyler or one engineer.
2:15:49
It's one engineer with another engineer with a third engineer with a fourth engineer where a lot of them share context around a bigger application.
2:15:58
Whereas if you start using one tool chain and the next person starts using the next tool chain and the third which is by the way what happened in the early days right which is why you got those pilots up and running really fast and people were starting to see real leverage but then very quickly that started to devolve to basically but we're not seeing the net output actually move the needle across big things.
2:16:18
So I'll give you an example of a you know we um we did a piece of work for a large healthcare company which was on a 10-year modernization journey migrating millions. >> Wow. Thinking in decades. Thinking in decades.
2:16:34
People say you should think in decades.
2:16:36
These people are actually doing it. I love it. >> It's amazing. >> Yeah. And it's crazy, right?
2:16:39
It's millions of lines of cobalt code written in the 60s and 70s by dudes that are not not only in the company, they're not probably on the planet, right?
2:16:46
and and and and you have individual developers going line by line by line trying to interpret what the intent behind the code was.
2:16:56
But more importantly, because this is HIPPA compliant data and has serious healthcare outcomes tied to it, um you have to be really thoughtful about what of this code you need to retain, what logic it holds, uh and how much of this you can actually uh you know um do away with, right?
2:17:11
That journey u going from like a 10 years to a few years, 2 years or 3 years requires you to be able to have all of the current business context of the organization.
2:17:23
It requires you to have a future state that you understand really well and you need to have a group of people working on a very similar tool chain so that the code that you are ingesting then gets created into a spec that a bunch of humans can look at and say is this the spec that we actually want and then that spec can actually get migrated into new code.
2:17:44
So we built this platform called Slingshot which is our um software modernization platform and how it differs from a lot of the consumer uh grade you know platforms that have got crazy valuations right now is they were all built for uh individual users writing apps like Tyler for small organizations or for themselves.
2:18:02
But the minute you start to deploy them into large enterprises, what you find is that enterprise context graph that is missing or permissions like what part of the app are you allowed to see versus me or what is my relationship to you on a dev team, right?
2:18:16
Um how do you actually start to manage authentication permissions?
2:18:18
This is the kind of stuff uh that really makes those pilots go ary in the context of these big scale changes. um a lot of work.
2:18:30
>> What what can we expect uh in uh AI and advertising uh this year specifically?
2:18:34
I feel like we went from large companies making an ad and saying we're going to serve this to a million people or 10 million people or 100 million people, right?
2:18:45
A Super Bowl ad is is an example of that.
2:18:47
And then as you have, you know, platforms like Meta really really really specific targeting.
2:18:52
You can basically make an ad and serve it to like a tiny group of people. Very, very specific.
2:18:59
You can imagine a world in the future where an advertiser even as big as McDonald's would effectively make an advertisement that's meant for like one individual person just because you could generate it on the fly.
2:19:08
>> Jordy, you're going to love this. >> This big for you. >> Yeah. Effectively.
2:19:11
So, uh, what what are you expecting on that front?
2:19:14
because the models have gotten a lot better and and it does feel like companies should generate maybe at least 50 times as much ad creative this year than last year.
2:19:26
>> Yeah, >> I I think the output's going up.
2:19:27
The question is whether the quality and the targeting are going up simultaneously, right?
2:19:32
Because Meta sees incredible stuff in their wall garden.
2:19:33
Google sees incredible stuff in their wall garden.
2:19:37
But how are companies leveraging their first party data to understand that you're Jordy, this is your context, this is the car you drive, or this is the burger you eat or this is the hotel room you like to stay in.
2:19:47
>> I tell them everything about myself.
2:19:47
I want them to target me as specifically as they possibly can. Personalized ad.
2:19:54
>> You'll be you'll be so surprised though, right?
2:19:56
I'm sure you do that all the time.
2:19:58
But how often do people actually use what you give them about yourself to actually give you something back that's relevant?
2:20:04
The the the hard part is not getting consumers to give data.
2:20:06
You know, there's been a lot of conversation about data privacy.
2:20:09
And of course, I think consumers are all about like, if you give me value back, I'm going to give you my data because I get something back in return.
2:20:17
So, if I if I'm watching Netflix and you know what I like to watch, you're going to show me something back that I care about. Great. I'll give you my data.
2:20:23
But most companies can't do that.
2:20:25
They can't actually serve up what you want.
2:20:27
I mean I'll I'll you know we work with a very large hotel brand Marriott globally and we uh we're basically working with them to basically say how do we capture intent in the context of what people are searching for.
2:20:39
So when you actually go to their villas platform, you know, historically what you might say is, "Hey," or a hotel platform, you might say, "These are the dates I've got free.
2:20:48
This is the city that I'm searching for and this is the kind of product that I'm looking for." Right?
2:20:54
And now you flip that around to say, how can you ingest all of the intent and context that they're willing to give you?
2:21:00
So give them a white box and all of a sudden you say, "Hey, I'm I've got young kids. I've got a pet.
2:21:03
Uh, one of my children is autistic and really sensitive to noise."
2:21:11
blah blah blah goes up people who have the ability to leverage firstparty data combine it with second and third party data from a targeting perspective and then building production tool chains that allow them to use that to really personalize content is really powerful like to give you an example large pharmaceutical company doing a vaccine launch in 115 countries.
2:21:43
How this works normally is the marketeteers would have to come up with a bunch of concepts then talk to the lawyers to basically say what are the regs in each of these 115 countries about vaccines.
2:21:52
And you'll find crazy stuff like in New Zealand you're not allowed to smile in the ad because a smile implies an outcome.
2:21:59
So they want like straightfaced people because you don't actually know if the if the vaccine is actually going to work.
2:22:05
So hard to So hard to advertise if people can't smile. >> Yeah.
2:22:10
So >> just like you're going to if you if you take this jab, you're going to have a bad time. >> Yeah.
2:22:14
So So you've got this crazy process that goes for like 12 months where the marketeers and the lawyers are having a conversation about what can and can't be done content-wise and then the content gets tweaked and produced, right?
2:22:28
And what we built using both the Argentic platform, we ingest all of the regs into our platform.
2:22:33
We then basically look at the creative concepts um that were originally created by the team and we'll test them against the regs almost on a real-time basis and then regenerate to your point using whatever models uh are more efficient for the kind of content regenerate versions of that content appropriate to every one of these countries and then allow that work to be deployed at significant scale.
2:22:59
More importantly, if we discover an issue once it's actually live in the context of that, our monitoring agents are monitoring the content to ensure the the reactions to them and then can actually start to do AB testing about what's actually working better.
2:23:13
But all of this is in one synchronous orchestration in the same way that like these orchestrations might connect supply chain data to store inventory to advertising.
2:23:23
So we're basically, you know, Black Friday this product's already gone off the shelf.
2:23:29
the ad isn't still hitting the same product because those people in the store are only going to get more frustrated and you start to close the loop. >> Awesome. Well, thank you so much.
2:23:36
Thank you for coming on, breaking it down.
2:23:40
What an exciting time to be in this particular business >> to be modernizing advertising.
2:23:44
>> I mean, a decade will happen in years. >> I love it.
2:23:48
Nobody likes advertising or modernizing more than us and maybe you. So, rest of your day.
2:23:52
We'll talk to you soon, Nigel. >> Take care. >> Great to hang. >> Hi.
2:23:56
Before we bring in our next guest, let me tell you about Reream.
2:23:58
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2:24:00
If you want to multiream, go to reream. com.
2:24:06
And up next, >> it's steward time. >> It's steward time. We're stewarding.
2:24:09
Uh we are joined by Sequoia Capitals, Pat Grady, and Robbie Gupta. >> What's going on?
2:24:16
>> How are you guys doing? Great to see you. >> How you see you guys? >> Happy New Year.
2:24:20
Uh we might need you guys to scoot back a little bit. Is that possible?
2:24:24
We're just >> We don't want half of you, Robbie.
2:24:27
We want the whole Thank you so much.
2:24:30
Uh uh massive start to the new year.
2:24:33
Take us through the news today. Very exciting.
2:24:34
Um but but we'll hear from you.
2:24:38
>> The news today about XAI is raising money.
2:24:40
Is that the news that we're talking?
2:24:41
>> Yes, >> that was yesterday actually. >> Oh, okay. My >> We've moved on. We already covered that.
2:24:46
We're here to talk about >> You guys are looking fantastic today.
2:24:49
Just letting you guys know.
2:24:49
Particularly good, I think, >> dude.
2:24:52
So, what happened today was, as you recall from my last TVPN appearance, um I want my children to be AI researchers so they can support the family.
2:25:00
And yes, >> it wasn't obvious they were going to get hired anywhere else. So, we're like, it.
2:25:04
Let's I'm going to start my own company. >> Epism, right? Epotism for the back.
2:25:12
>> Um those are the links that I will go to to, you know, make my children happy.
2:25:16
No, what happened was today uh I announced that I am going to be starting a new company. I'm super pumped.
2:25:19
And then also um getting to do it while still being part of Sequoia is pretty special and I think uh >> my my brother Pat here, you know, was cool about letting that happen and uh we're excited. >> Yeah.
2:25:34
How did you two first meet?
2:25:39
>> Was it was it was it Abramson? Yeah, of course.
2:25:42
I think we had a partner named Michael Abramson um who was involved with Instacart back in the day >> and uh I think Michael was the original connection >> and then Ruby we got to know RVY over a period of years and I mentioned in a tweet today that we always have this shadow list which is not long.
2:25:57
It's like literally half a dozen people but you know the shadow list of the people we would hire if we ever got a chance was on that list for a few years and finally were lucky enough to get him back in 2019.
2:26:08
Whenever someone asked me about my Sequoia interview process, John and Jordy, I said it was either five years or five minutes. I don't know.
2:26:13
It was one of those seemed to happen quick at the end, but you know, I guess it took a long time.
2:26:20
>> Being gangsted by the Sequoia partnership.
2:26:21
Uh I would love to see that list, but uh it's certainly uh key intellectual >> property. Yeah. Key >> stewarded.
2:26:28
One of the things that you steered that's a steward's greatest responsibility.
2:26:31
>> How are you settling into the new role? >> Uh it's been great.
2:26:34
You know, we uh first off, Alfred and I have been working together for 15 years.
2:26:41
>> And uh he's been >> success. >> How do you two meet?
2:26:48
>> You guys are big on this question, huh? >> I just like lore.
2:26:51
>> I didn't think we were going to answer it the first time.
2:26:52
I thought they were >> We could do, but I also like lore.
2:26:56
>> Well, I think the um I think most people know Alfred before Sequoia was the president and COO of Zapos, which was a play investment.
2:27:03
And so we got to know each other a little bit through that, but I wasn't point on the investment.
2:27:06
So it was just kind of seeing each other at Sequoia events or whatever.
2:27:11
>> And then he joined I want to say 2010 he joined Sequoia somewhere around that time.
2:27:16
>> And at that point I was mostly focused on growth investing.
2:27:18
He was mostly focused on early investing.
2:27:19
Um by 2015 or so he was co-aptaining the early business.
2:27:26
I was co- captaining the growth business.
2:27:27
And um we just had a great partnership for a very long time. >> Yeah.
2:27:32
How are you thinking about the divide of responsibilities now?
2:27:33
Is there more nuance to it than just early and growth?
2:27:38
Are there other is there someone who likes to do more personnel management, more recruiting or more marketing or whatever, more fundraising?
2:27:46
Is there any division there?
2:27:48
>> So, once upon a time, Fred Luddy, who is the founder of Service Now, handed over the reigns to Frank Slutman.
2:27:52
And I remember shortly thereafter, Frank Slutman had the line, uh, I'm the workhorse, he's the show pony.
2:27:57
So Alfred and I have this wonderful relationship where the plan that we've agreed to certainly agreed to is I get to go on TVPN. >> Okay.
2:28:09
>> He gets to show compliance.
2:28:13
>> You know, well, Alfred's welcome anytime, too. Uh it's fantastic.
2:28:14
Well, >> no, no, I'm kidding. I'm kidding.
2:28:17
The the the honest answer is um our team, we have so many we have so many awesome people at Squa, not just on the investment team, but on all the operating teams.
2:28:27
there isn't a lot of management that needs to happen.
2:28:29
And so, um, over the last couple of months, I think one of the things we've realized is it's it's like very it's a very small amount of incremental load to, um, to do the the steward job.
2:28:42
It's mostly just serving as a thought partner for other people in the organization who kind of already know what the right answer is.
2:28:50
And so there's not there hasn't actually been that much incremental work, which has been a nice uh nice surprise.
2:28:53
What is the what is unique about Sequoia's surface area of work to be done?
2:28:58
I mean, I know there's the RAIA transition.
2:28:59
Is there a public markets desk? Are there traders now?
2:29:04
Like, how big is the organization outside of what people think of from like a classic VC partnership?
2:29:10
What else are what else is going on at Sequoia? >> Why you do that one?
2:29:14
>> Yeah, I mean, you know what's funny, guys?
2:29:16
I think people would be surprised at how small Sequoia is.
2:29:17
at how small Sequoia is. you know like the I mean we I think we barely have doubledigit general partners in the business right the entire firm is pretty small and so I would tell you this and I mean this sincerely like I think people tend to overestimate like surface area
2:29:34
right of what we have in terms of like management scope >> and realistically the most important thing is that the stewards are awesome investors and people that great people want to work with you know and so the thing I didn't say that's what you guys were I said that's like an important thing for you That's the ideal. >> That's like the That's the standard.
2:29:50
>> That's like the That's the standard.
2:29:52
Now, now we'll talk about it.
2:29:52
That's what they're supposed to be.
2:29:54
No, but obviously like so truly like I would tell you the thing that's most important for these guys is to be great investors. Yeah.
2:30:02
>> It is to sponsor investments in the best companies and to continue that because like Sequoia's entire thing needs to be that we back the best companies in the world, right?
2:30:09
And if we keep doing that, everything else kind of follows.
2:30:11
If we don't, you're going to be the best manager ever. >> Yeah.
2:30:15
It's like it's like a a GP or or a steward that's not investing is like a CEO with bad product sense.
2:30:20
It's like can they can they really be a truly incredible CEO if they don't understand the product? >> Yeah.
2:30:28
You lose your moral authority and we're too small of an organization.
2:30:32
There's no there's no management job available at Sequoia.
2:30:34
It's just too small of an organization. >> Yeah.
2:30:37
Uh Ravi, how are you thinking about uh the specific advantages of starting a company from your experience at Sequoa?
2:30:43
There's obviously going to be endless industry plant allegations that you'll have to beat, but uh I'm sure you'll take those on head first.
2:30:52
>> Well, I guess one question would be >> how much of the company do you build beforehand?
2:30:55
How do you actually think about uh how you want to build this company?
2:30:59
What are the axioms that you're following? >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead.
2:31:02
Jordy, were you going to say something? >> Well, yeah.
2:31:04
>> Well, yeah. I was going to say like what what qualifies as an opportunity that is worthy of of you know leaving an institution >> because a lot of the ideas that you think are good somebody will come to you and be like I'm going to do it and you're like that's great I just write you the check and then you know you you
2:31:18
go do the hard work but this is >> well the pressure is immense like you basic you basically have to put on an absolute master class here right there's no excuses right you have you have to you have to achieve greatness >> you don't think I can just yell at myself to grow faster and burn less not that's not how this is going to work. >> That was one of my one of my favorite
2:31:35
>> That was one of my one of my favorite portfolio reviews is Revy Revy was unfurling this beautiful monologue about what was going on at some company.
2:31:41
It was probably a five minute speech. It sounded great. >> Yeah.
2:31:44
>> And then when you boil it all down, he basically said, "Grow faster, burn less."
2:31:48
Five minutes of the thing happens at the ear. Okay. Um and you know, okay.
2:31:51
So the real answer I guess the first thing is Jordy like you know this I'm not leaving.
2:31:58
I'm changing my role, right?
2:32:00
I'm going to go from like a general partner to partner on the boards, all that.
2:32:04
But look, it is a high standard. This job is amazing. I love this job.
2:32:06
I love our team and I love the founders I get to work with.
2:32:10
I think the real thing that pulls it towards is not the specific idea.
2:32:14
It's the specific moment we're in.
2:32:17
>> I do think that AI is changing everything.
2:32:19
>> I think that like I I wrote this thing maybe like a year ago, AI or die, which was just sort of like can you see the progress that's happening?
2:32:26
And I really believe the world belongs to the fastmoving, reactive, responsive company right now that can get the best people in the world.
2:32:33
And it doesn't matter if they're an incumbent or they're a startup.
2:32:36
But I think that you like being able to move quickly and respond to that is the biggest advantage that you can have.
2:32:42
And I found myself thinking about that all the time.
2:32:44
And after writing that, I was like telling all these companies I work with and even companies I don't work with, like look, this is what I think it's about.
2:32:50
This is what I think we got to be doing.
2:32:51
And then I was like, man, I like really do feel passionate about this.
2:32:54
I want to do that myself.
2:32:56
And so the real thing that happened was I just wanted to be on the field again.
2:33:00
I wanted to build a team.
2:33:00
I wanted to go after this.
2:33:03
And I think the thing that I uh found was that the fact that I could then do it while still maintaining my relationships with my partners, the fact that I can stay on some boards that made it so much more like something more I wanted to do.
2:33:19
And then the other thing is, and I haven't shared this yet, and I'll share it with you guys when the time is right, but like I have a co-founder who's out of this world. Truly out of this world. Like way better than me.
2:33:28
Someone that will make you guys bang the gong when you guys hear who it is.
2:33:32
>> So, are you going to be the show pony or or work?
2:33:36
>> I mean, I think it's going to be both.
2:33:38
>> It's pretty obvious the good looks of the operation.
2:33:40
I mean, I'm surprised that you'd ask.
2:33:42
Um, you know, but but put it this way, like when I told the kids like, "Maybe what do you think of dad starting a company?"
2:33:47
dad starting a company?" They were somewhat like, "Well, I don't like you know you know what do you think the implications are do we have to move if this doesn't work that kind of >> dude uh basically okay and I was like how would you feel if this person was
2:34:02
the co-founder and then my kids were like well we actually have $750 of accumulated birthday money maybe we could lead your >> get him on the sequoia list for future >> they did not call me but uh Andrew's tweet was an alltimer today all time >> so good how how are thinking about uh timelines with the new company. It feels
2:34:20
It feels like you can build products so much faster today than maybe you could two years ago that there's maybe more of a a value in in staying uh really really quiet, actually staying in stealth and and making some more uh progress before you come out the gates and then invite a bunch of people to try to come compete with you.
2:34:42
>> Yeah, I think listen, we're going to talk when we have something to say, right?
2:34:45
We got to go and build this thing.
2:34:46
thing. I do think to your point that you know the Sierra guys are very good about this and they have this language of like in AI world a year is a month right or you know whatever whichever way make it faster but basically like a month is a year you know uh you know a week is a month and a day is a week and the idea is like you got to go fast you need to be super responsive you guys know I'm
2:35:06
big basketball guy coach K has this great quote you know I'm not a world class predictor but I am a world class reactor like that's what we got to be and you got to be fast and truth seeeking And I think the other thing that's nice about being, you know, with Sequoia is like we get to see the best companies in the world, you know, and we get to learn from them and see the pace that the best ones go. And, you know,
2:35:25
And, you know, Pat, you can talk about that, but I I think that's certainly something that is helpful. >> Yeah.
2:35:32
How do you think about uh the particular AI opportunity right now?
2:35:35
I feel like there's there's a little bit of a meme that the best time to start a a AI company is probably 10 years ago as a lab and wait around and then have this breakout moment and the second best time was probably like the day Chat GBT launched and everyone sort of realized that this was real but we're now two years into this a lot of you know the the the default categories the market maps exist.
2:35:57
How do you think about just finding opportunity?
2:35:59
Is it unlocked by just last year's advances or do you think there's new categories that were not on the table two years ago that are now on the table?
2:36:09
And I mean, this is your thinking, but also for anyone that's watching uh who might want to start a company in 2026.
2:36:18
>> I I kind of think that the premise that those other people have is flawed, >> right?
2:36:23
And I'll tell you for real, like the biggest thing that makes a difference in whether a company succeeds or not is the people that are building it, >> right?
2:36:29
And the I believe that we have the most fierce competition ever, you know, right now.
2:36:34
And it's only going to get more fierce, right?
2:36:35
And I think that you're gonna be fighting every day.
2:36:38
And there's no like actually Sarah Pat's wife wrote this awesome post yesterday about like uh relevance decay, right?
2:36:47
And how much more quickly it's happening.
2:36:49
And basically like you have to fight for your relevance every day in the venture world.
2:36:54
>> That is even more true at the company.
2:36:56
Like it doesn't matter what you did yesterday.
2:36:58
Look at think about recently the the goodness that's happened from Google, right?
2:37:02
The best thing that happened to them is the competition that they have from OpenAI cuz all of a sudden it lit them up and then they had to go and rein all this stuff and re that mojo back.
2:37:12
So even like the deepest moes in the world, you got to go fight for them every day.
2:37:16
for them every day. So the real answer you know John is it all we want to do is be in a space that we are willing to fight for every day and apply the latest technology every day and have AI native people working on it every day so that
2:37:29
every day we get we fight again and earn our spot and I I in my heart I believe that more than anything which is that like there's nothing to protect right now even at Sequoia there's nothing to protect the only thing is what we go do tomorrow and that'll be true at the company too. So, I think that like
2:37:43
So, I think that like honestly I think when people are like, "Oh, the best time was before."
2:37:47
I think that's like low agency thinking and I'm like, I don't have any time for that.
2:37:52
Like you got to go out and get it. >> Yeah.
2:37:54
>> I can make a specific case for why now's the time, too. >> Please.
2:37:58
>> So, the I think if you want to start a foundation model lab, yeah, you're probably better off to have already done that.
2:38:02
You know, we kind of already seen that play out. >> Yeah.
2:38:05
>> One of our core hypotheses in the world of AI is that the values at the application layer.
2:38:08
I think even for the foundation model labs, we're starting to see that that's true.
2:38:11
Um, I would argue that now might actually be the single best time to start an application layer company.
2:38:18
Not because everything is whites space, but because it feels like the playbook is finally starting to emerge.
2:38:22
And specifically, if you think about like the three major inflection points that we've seen in the world of AI.
2:38:29
I think the first was November 2022 when uh chat GBT came out and the world was exposed to pre-training.
2:38:36
>> I think the second was fall of 2024 when 01 came out and the world was exposed to reasoning. Mhm.
2:38:42
>> I think the next one was actually the last couple of weeks where you see cloud code with Opus 45 >> and all of a sudden we see what long horizon agents can do. >> Yeah.
2:38:50
>> And it's hard to like we're venture capitalists.
2:38:52
We're not in a position to try to define AGI.
2:38:54
But from a functional standpoint, if you have a piece of technology that can just like keep going and overcome obstacles and use resources and eventually think its way to the outcome that you wanted. I don't know, man.
2:39:09
seems pretty close to AGI for me.
2:39:11
And I think if you >> we have we have goalpost physical goalposts here that we'll continue. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Exactly.
2:39:18
>> Yeah. Exactly. And so and so anyway, I think now that that playbook has kind like not quite been written, but you can kind of see it, you I think I think the ability for these application layer companies to go from a chatbot that in best case scenario people use four or
2:39:33
five times a day to an agent that is always on running six instances in parallel 247 doing the work of six human beings like there's just a dramatically different impact that application layer companies can have today using the most recent playbook versus what they could have done two or three years ago. So I
2:39:50
So I think for that reason it's a great time to start a company real quick. Yeah. Yeah.
2:39:57
>> Dude, I I think that I so agree with that.
2:40:00
I think also if you just kind of think about this idea of like a 10x engineer that has become so popular in Silicon Valley.
2:40:06
I think Steve Jobs talked about it. Whatever.
2:40:09
>> I think that the leverage available to great people is it's never been higher and it's only going to get higher. Right?
2:40:17
All these things you guys see about the value of agency and it's like all about like how much do you want to get your idea into the world.
2:40:21
I think that I don't know how to do the math perfectly of like is it a hundred times person or a thousand times person but I think that the leverage available to the best people is insane.
2:40:31
That's a huge aspect of the new thing that I want to build too and I want to build with our co-founder because this idea that I believe in of like people are power laws, right?
2:40:40
People follow power laws.
2:40:40
I think that's true and it's only going to get more defined.
2:40:44
And so what Pat's saying about like you know the leverage you can give to somebody with today's technology has never ever ever been higher.
2:40:55
>> Do you guys have any type of internal philosophy around it feels harder than ever to predict like 2 years out?
2:40:58
Like I think in 2020 you had a good sense of like what the world and what software was going to look like in 2022 and it feels much harder to do that today.
2:41:08
Do you guys have any internal philosophy, you know, similar to Bezos thinking around people are going to want things like cheaper and faster and I'm just going to focus on that.
2:41:18
The world's going to change, but people will still want things that are cheaper and faster.
2:41:22
Do you guys apply any thinking like that around when you're looking at investments Pat maybe at the at the late stage or Ravi with with with your new company around like okay a lot of things are going to change potentially you know we can imagine a century of progress in
2:41:38
you know 20 years or 10 years or eventually yeah two hours uh who knows um so how do you build something that's going to be durable and and again like relevant uh as you get increased rate of change >> what's your thing on inevitable Yeah. Yeah. I think you I think there's Yeah.
2:41:52
I think you I think there's a few things.
2:41:55
So, yes, I think and I think Pat and I agree on a bunch of this uh too, but I think one you want things that are early and inevitable, right?
2:42:03
Like I think that there are things that when you see them, they're like, "Well, that definitely is going to happen."
2:42:06
And just to like go back in time, I think, you know, when I joined Instacart in 2015, this idea of like, are people really going to shop for their groceries in 100 years the way they shoed for them 80 years ago?
2:42:16
Like it certainly doesn't seem like we will do that.
2:42:18
it it you know this is inevitable that it will go and it be different.
2:42:22
I think that to your point it is harder to figure out what things are inevitable right now because the world is changing super fast.
2:42:29
So I think one you got to be like more limited in that right of you know what are the what are the industries that will be durable.
2:42:35
I think the there are two things I would tell you to answer your question though.
2:42:39
One, I think network effects are still potentially even more powerful than they've ever been, which is I think if you get a company with a network effect and you execute with excellence and speed, I think you can keep going and build it even up more.
2:42:51
And I, you know, never want to predict what the AIs are not going to be able to do, but I think it would be hard to say press this button cloud code and create a network effect of highly fragmented buyers and sellers.
2:43:03
And so I do think network effects can endure.
2:43:05
And then I think the biggest thing is the people which is you need the people that you will trust to go and face these realities.
2:43:11
And it's the same way honestly like I know I got called on Twitter today but I'm going to I'm going to go with this dude.
2:43:17
It's the same way with your kids which is you want to prep them for every possible situation that's ever going to happen in their life.
2:43:24
>> But the reality is you can't.
2:43:24
And all you can do is make sure that they're actually good at reacting to tough things as a general matter.
2:43:29
And that's the same thing I think that >> in a value system. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
2:43:34
What's the changes we're going to see?
2:43:35
What you want is to trust that the people you have are good at responding to those things with truth seeeking, with agency, with aggression.
2:43:42
Uh and I know on that dimension, I know Pat and I agree.
2:43:47
>> There's also there's a Jamie Diamond line which is it's easier for me to predict the next 10 years than it is for me to predict the next quarter.
2:43:54
>> And part of what goes into that is the forces that shape the next 10 years are kind of so big.
2:43:58
and so obvious that you can actually make in some ways higher fidelity predictions over a longer period of time.
2:44:05
And I think similarly with our business, if you look at um like for example, can you imagine a version of the future in which doctors aren't using all of the world's medical knowledge on an application in their pocket to make better decisions at the point of care? Of course not.
2:44:19
Like of course that's going to be a thing.
2:44:21
And you know, like there happens to be a company, Open Evidence, that is doing that today for a decent chunk of the doctors in the country.
2:44:28
But like obviously that's going to be a thing.
2:44:29
Or by 2050, are people going to drive cars in 2050?
2:44:34
I have a hard time believing they will.
2:44:37
Like it's going to be the way people ride horses today.
2:44:38
Like you might do it as a novelty, but it's not going to be the way you get, you know, to and from point A and point B.
2:44:43
And so there are some things where you just like know that it's inevitable and it's a question of okay, well, what's the path from here to there and who is it that blazes that path?
2:44:52
And that's where it can be tricky.
2:44:53
And I think that's where RVy's commentary on the people really come in because one trap that it's easy to fall into is theorizing on market structure and different technical approaches.
2:45:03
And the reality is if you can figure out the best people, they're going to figure all that stuff out.
2:45:08
Like they'll they'll figure out the right technical approach and the right business model and all that stuff.
2:45:13
Like if you just figure out the right people, they'll probably find the path.
2:45:16
I think one one challenge right now uh for founders that are trying to navigate the world is like you know 10 years ago if you were looking and trying to understand the dialogue and different narratives and conversations happening in tech it would be like 99% kind of like market analysis product analysis 1% science fiction fanfiction and now the the narrative and and the conversation is like 50/50.
2:45:38
It's like some like kind of like tangible analysis of what's actually happening and how markets are evolving and then 50% like sci-fi fanfiction of people writing like it's possible that in two months a galaxy like you'll be able to buy a galaxy.
2:45:53
What does this mean for so like you kind of need to you you kind of need to like drown that out and like pay attention like that goes back like just talk to customers what do they what do they need today for sure >> react to the the game on the field.
2:46:04
Do you guys think that uh we were debating earlier it feels like AI is is doesn't have its Steve Jobs from a messaging standpoint?
2:46:14
Like I would love an hour an earnest, you know, conversation of an hour from a from Steve Jobs or or a Steve Jobs like figure talking about because I feel like society broadly underrates AI.
2:46:26
They see the slop videos and they see the idea that their electrical bill might be going up and they're like, I hate this.
2:46:33
they're like, I hate this. or they see the slop and they they hear they might lose their job in a couple years or they can't find a job and they're like I hate this and it feels like we don't have anybody right now that can go on that can go like when when you know as as
2:46:45
great as the Elons and the Sams and and the Darios and people like this are as operators and builders and visionaries when they go on podcasts and those videos go out the comment section are all like please no stop turn it off you know and so it feels like we're missing we're missing a >> maybe it' Impossible. I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. What do you think?
2:47:06
>> Oh, uh I I I agree with you.
2:47:06
I think we we are missing that person.
2:47:09
I think Pat and I were both in the meeting yesterday though that this kind of reminds me of and I will share it on his behalf.
2:47:15
But like Alfred shared a story the other day, yesterday about his dad. Okay.
2:47:20
And I think it is pretty instructive in terms of this thing.
2:47:26
So Alfred's dad, I don't think this is going to surprise you, was a pretty brilliant guy, right?
2:47:33
Um, but what his job was was to be a human human calculator. Okay?
2:47:36
Like literally like sit in a row like do math, like you know, be a cell in Excel, right?
2:47:44
And just be a human calculator.
2:47:46
>> And at some point, what technology allowed was for him to not have that job anymore, right?
2:47:51
And someone with this giant brain and this ability to produce and help society could all of a sudden not do math and put numbers into one cell anymore.
2:48:01
And he could have way more impact and build an accounting system for the company that he worked with.
2:48:05
And all of a sudden all those other people who have huge brains, right, could go do that because of technology.
2:48:11
And he made this point which is like look technology is neither good nor bad.
2:48:15
It's what we do with it, right?
2:48:17
The same technology that powers a nuclear bomb can power a nuclear power plant, right?
2:48:21
And so the idea it's like what do we do with it? What do we do with it? What do we do with it?
2:48:25
I do think that a lot of what people are doing when they go and talk about the technology is they talk about all the things that might happen.
2:48:32
I would rather us talk about the fact of it's going to get more and more and more powerful and it's more and more incumbent on all of us to make sure we use it for something that's great.
2:48:42
>> And I actually genuinely believe that like I I' I've written about this before, but like you know if I could give my kids one thing, it wouldn't be kindness, it wouldn't be curiosity, it'd be agency.
2:48:49
And this is that same point which is like listen the technology is going to be what all of us make of it you know and I think Alfred's point sat with me which is like he talks about his dad being able to do more with his life so that his son could do more with his life and a lot of that's due to technology like nothing better than that. >> Yeah.
2:49:06
Well that's a great place to wrap it.
2:49:08
Thank you so much for taking the time to come chat with us and congratulations on the the the move and everything.
2:49:15
We're very >> super excited for the new company and evolution of the role.
2:49:17
buried the lead, but we got to have you back on as soon as we know more about what you're building, and we would love to do it here live.
2:49:24
Uh, but congratulations to you both on all the progress.
2:49:26
Hope uh 2026 is a fantastic year, and >> happy new year to the whole team.
2:49:32
>> Happy New Year to the whole team. >> Thank you guys. >> Cheers.
2:49:36
>> Uh, he mentioned Jamie Diamond.
2:49:36
There's some breaking news about Jamie Diamond.
2:49:39
JP Morgan is taking over the Apple Card program from Goldman Sachs. That's very exciting.
2:49:44
Uh, also let me tell you about Turopuffer serverless vector and full text search built from first principles on object storage fast 10x cheaper and extremely scalable.
2:49:53
And you know who we got next?
2:49:56
We have Ben Smith from Semaphore on the best day of 2026. >> What's going on? Look at this again. >> Look at this setup. >> Thank you. Thank you for having me. Upgraded setup. >> New round. New round. New setup. >> New round. New setup.
2:50:10
Wait, the dollars are already at work.
2:50:11
I see this spend $30 million on a podcast. I mean, look at us.
2:50:17
We have a gong, we have a horse, we have all sorts of stuff.
2:50:19
We need to ring the gong. Give us the details.
2:50:20
What was announced today? >> Media is back. >> Yeah.
2:50:25
You know, media is a hard business.
2:50:26
I' I've spent my whole career uh mostly at media startups and and and it's exciting to be at one that's working as a business.
2:50:33
You know, we're we're profitable last year and and wow, one one person clapping. Incredible. Um, sorry. Whole team.
2:50:41
>> I had to hit >> whole team for this. We love profit. We love profit. Cha-ching.
2:50:47
>> I mean, honestly, that that is how I feel like I'm a journalist and it like took me a large part of my career to realize that the that you're trying to bring in more money than you spend because I'm mostly, you know, obviously trying to hire more journalists.
2:50:57
But, but, you know, it's a tough business and having been through a bunch of ups and downs, it's just very exciting to feel like we've kind of figured out a sustainable model to do really quality journalism. >> That's great.
2:51:06
um >> talk about why true journalism, not you know a newswire account that's sharing fake news is more important uh than ever because it it feel like it feels like like act like >> actually getting information from a journalist that did original factf finding on a story is actually more important than ever.
2:51:26
I've when I uh I I I used to trust stuff.
2:51:28
I I feel like you actually could trust a headline on social media a lot more 5 years ago than you can today.
2:51:37
>> And I think it's only going to get more insane as you can't even trust like you will get to the point where you can only trust in in some situations somebody that actually did the factf finding because somebody else could make >> a video easily uh of some news that just or an interview that just never even happened. >> Yeah.
2:51:55
Yeah, I mean I think the you know that and particularly for our audience who in these different verticals that we're in from you know from tech to finance to to DC are often the most informed the most plugged in people the people who ought to have access to the best information.
2:52:07
They probably like you and me feel like on one hand you're totally overwhelmed by the volume of incoming and then on the other hand don't know what to trust.
2:52:16
don't know what to trust. And so we've just focused very very intensely on delivering kind of careful straight up the middle trusted information from journalists who like goodbe reporters are real experts and often in the kind of traditional journalism you're supposed to kind of hide your point of view or find some way to smuggle it in through expert quotes or adjectives and I think like our view is you know the
2:52:38
audience particularly sophisticated audience has caught on to that and you'd rather just hear directly from a journalist who knows what they're talking about hear what they think with some room for disagreement but really the the place we found value as a
2:52:48
business too is both in these email briefings and in these big convenings in this big one we do in Washington that people are just like very hungry for trusted really smart dense information from the source. >> Yeah. What are the underrated strategies >> Yeah.
2:53:01
What are the underrated strategies that you use?
2:53:03
I feel like Semaphore is interesting because it's a place that it has the patina of like legacy media almost and I mean that in the best way possible in the fact in the fact that yeah you land on a semaphore page and you trust it with the authority of other larger older institutions and that's not true for every new blog or substack that pops up because anyone can spin those up.
2:53:25
Anyone can spin up a website but you've built a credibility very quickly.
2:53:30
Do you know like how as you reflect on that like how did that come together?
2:53:34
>> I mean I think it is partly that you sort of have to realize that we're living in this very kind of talent driven moment. Sure.
2:53:40
>> And and we definitely kind of built it to provide a platform for great reporters and great beat reporters who mostly with some exceptions but mostly aren't going to go out and do a substack because you know particularly if you're a beat reporter you might be telling this side what they want to hear today but the other but tomorrow you might be telling them what they don't want to hear. Yeah.
2:53:56
And that's not always the best sort of creator model.
2:53:57
And so, so in any case, we provide this sort of platform.
2:54:02
>> Not to mention, not to mention some of some of the stories like a great there's certain stories that take 6 months to do properly >> and you can't do that if your audience is like, I pay you monthly for this thing up and you're not delivering. >> Yeah. And Yeah.
2:54:16
And you might need legal support.
2:54:18
You might need a team, some editing.
2:54:19
I mean, we've we've broken a lot of news because we have some a guy in Riad and a guy, you know, and somebody in Silicon Valley.
2:54:23
And a lot of the a lot of the chip stories are really Gulf Washington Silicon Valley stories.
2:54:28
Um but you al you need legal support.
2:54:30
But no but I think you know it's funny almost what you say about our design is true.
2:54:33
Like that's definitely we are trying to you know take the best of the values of of legacy media in terms of fairness and reliability but then also give a real kind of condensed intelligence.
2:54:43
I actually think the thing that people that helps people trust you now is if you can pull in points of view from people who disagree.
2:54:49
A lot of what we do is try to read across the whole internet.
2:54:52
say here's what the Chinese media is saying, here's what the Japanese media is saying, here's what the right's saying, here's what the left's saying, and not not try to shove our own perspective through. >> Yeah.
2:55:01
What about uh the events business?
2:55:04
I'm very interested in understanding how you're splitting your time, how Seaphore is thinking about these two.
2:55:08
They're obviously a lot of synergies, but they are two different projects.
2:55:11
I imagine there's different folks staffed on each side of the business.
2:55:15
Walk me through the thesis there.
2:55:19
Yeah, I mean this is actually sort of a nerdy journalism industry point, but a lot of the events business in newsrooms, the news rooms I have come up in, it's like you have a journalism business that's often based on scaled web advertising that starts collapsing and you panic and look for other businesses that work better and staple on an events business.
2:55:36
That's what a lot of news organizations have done for, you know, two better and worse degrees.
2:55:39
We definitely started with the premise that we're talking to an audience who and it's the same audience.
2:55:45
We're reaching them in emails, but these are decision makers.
2:55:47
makers. These are people the tops of government and of businesses reaching them in emails and convening them in person and they want to hear from the same journalists and they want and and so our journalists are you know who are writing the briefings are the ones doing the interviews are the ones figuring out how to structure an event so that it's
2:56:02
interesting I mean but of course as you say also you know like in some sense as you know an old blogger like it's incredibly easy to sit in your pajamas and type things and then like incredibly hard >> to put on an event where the security is perfect and the food is perfect and the music is great and the staging is great. So we do have a unbelievably capable
2:56:19
So we do have a unbelievably capable team of people who do that.
2:56:22
>> Is there something uh just understanding like the journalism that happens at an event?
2:56:27
I experienced this for the first time last year where uh every interview that happened on stage, the key quote or the key fact that was discovered was turned into an article.
2:56:37
Is is that sort of a virtuous cycle where the events businesses and the actual publications can work together synergistically when it's done right?
2:56:47
Is there something that they're they're maybe less desperate when they're done well? >> Yeah, for sure.
2:56:51
And I would actually put it more on the other end which is like you definitely go to events that are not journalistic and that are fundamentally kind of promotional and the interview is often like the chief marketing officer of company A is interviewing the chief marketing officer of company B.
2:57:02
And the thing is like journalism like and tough interviews bring a kind of tension and drama and interest and you lean forward that you if you and >> the deal book this year was amazing.
2:57:12
It was just like it may as well have been a pay-per-view boxing fight in some of them and it was amazing content. >> It was great content. It was so good. >> Yeah.
2:57:22
And people want to watch you know like us in well-informed interviewer and again like whether they're a journalist or not actually they like professionally like ask hard questions.
2:57:29
So, the thing is like smart CEOs would also rather be asked hard questions than sit on stage for an hour and like recite monologues that they memorized. >> Yeah.
2:57:38
I want to watch a serious journalist ask a public official a hard question and have that public official turn around and call him a pop pop pop historian.
2:57:46
That's what I want to see. >> Exactly. >> Yeah.
2:57:50
>> We were we were uh uh off air.
2:57:50
We were doing uh we got invited to like moderate a panel last year and there and the a PR person gave us some question.
2:57:59
And here's like here's some qu we'd love if you ask some of these questions.
2:58:02
And the first question was like you have changed the world in so many ways.
2:58:05
How could you possibly do this?
2:58:08
And we're like, "Yeah, we're I don't think we're asking that, >> right?"
2:58:13
Because you're thinking about the audience, right?
2:58:14
In the end, >> having an interesting conversation, >> right?
2:58:18
>> But um >> uh what why uh what was the real catalyst to raise your profitable and that that gives you the luxury of saying like we're going to be here for a long time, but I imagine there's a lot that you want to do with the money besides your new your new podcast setup. >> Yeah. Yeah.
2:58:33
Well, once you know with with with what's remaining from this uh lavish room.
2:58:36
Um yeah, you know, I mean I think really two things.
2:58:40
One, we're going to hire some more journalists.
2:58:41
Like we're, you know, we're very light team.
2:58:43
I think we're about about 50 journalists.
2:58:44
And I think in their places, particularly, you know, the Trump story in DC and the global business story where we just have some hires we want to make.
2:58:51
Um I don't think the newsroom of the future has a thousand journalists the way the old ones did.
2:58:56
It's like kind of like in a post-industrial world, it is fewer people, I think.
2:59:00
But between the technology that helps you and and the audience wanting to connect with individuals, but still we are very eager to hire some more great journalists and then as you as you would imagine the uh the convening business.
2:59:12
It's like a expensive business like we're we're renting out a we're renting out the Conrad Hilton for a week uh in Washington in April and that's like it's it's >> amazing. Um that's great. That's great.
2:59:24
Uh I want to ask you about the anatomy of hard questions.
2:59:26
I was listening to Joe Weisenthal talk about this and he said that oftent times uh audiences want people to ask hard questions and they imagine a situation where uh interviewers sitting down someone and they say are you a fraud and the interviewee just says ah you got me I am a fraud instead of just them shutting down and just delivering a talking point.
2:59:47
So what makes for a great hard question where something's actually learned >> and when's the right time to move on from a hard question because we we'll get we have a chat right so if we're talking to somebody People be like, "Ak, >> is that does that need to be rehashed?"
3:00:06
I mean, there's like 50 other interviews that that got into that.
3:00:08
It was not great, but can't let's focus on like what matters now. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. You know, it's funny.
3:00:15
I think I was I think I may have been Laura Loomer's like first victim many years ago when I was at BuzzFeed and she came up to me and she was still like kind of young nervous Laura Loomer and her hand and her hand was shaking on the camera and she just asked me if I was fake news.
3:00:28
>> Oh, >> which is like one of those questions like what are you going to say?
3:00:29
You're not like >> you got me.
3:00:31
Um but um but >> Ben fake news.
3:00:34
>> Ben fake news. I think it's um I I I think actually it's a sort of about creating an environment of mutual respect almost in a certain way where they are they feel committed to the conversation and you're asking serious questions and you're hopefully ask things they they haven't >> necessarily been asked before but that are really top of mind and whatever is
3:00:53
like the core question like why did you like why did you make this decision like like when I look at this decision it looks kind it looks kind of reckless like why would you do that and just sort of are sometimes like kind of verbalize the criticism in a respectful way and really but push them to actually respond like bull fighting, you know, like the journalist has the thing and the bull's running. Sometimes the bull runs
3:01:12
Sometimes the bull runs straight into the journalist, right?
3:01:15
But, >> you know, it's a dance. It's a dance.
3:01:18
>> It's a great metaphor. Nailed it.
3:01:20
>> And sometimes you want to just run right into them though.
3:01:21
I do think like >> Yeah, exactly.
3:01:23
>> If you feel weird and bad asking the question, sometimes that's a really good question.
3:01:27
Like if you feel like, ah, this is a little awkward. >> Yeah. Yeah, that's wild.
3:01:32
>> Uh, we got to hit the gong. >> Yeah.
3:01:34
>> Yeah. Uh g give us the details of the fundra who came >> yeah who who came into the round because it was it was really a who's who of uh saw Henry Kravis and uh >> yeah it was a it was really I mean it was honestly like a great vote of confidence a number of our invest
3:01:48
existing investors um came back in including Henry Kravis David Rubenstein George Palo Leman the Gallup organization um and then some new investors including a couple of great European media investors a guy named Thomas Leen Um and uh and Penny Pritsker, the former commerce secretary. >> That's right. That's right. Well, we're >> That's right. That's right.
3:02:06
Well, we're excited to see you put it to work.
3:02:08
We're very excited for the event next year or this year and uh and the rest of the year. >> Yeah.
3:02:14
I hope we can get you there.
3:02:14
Do you ever do you travel? Do you go east?
3:02:17
Can we can we like drag you to this event?
3:02:19
>> That would be a lot of fun. Yeah.
3:02:19
Uh we I mean, we have to check the schedule.
3:02:22
We we we're working on figuring out how to bring the show on the road and still do our show while we're at other things.
3:02:28
It's a lot of the show must go on.
3:02:30
That's our non non-negotiable. The show must go on.
3:02:32
>> I would love to like find a way to get you on the road.
3:02:33
It's April 13th to 18th in DC. So, >> yeah. Yeah, we'll talk.
3:02:37
>> Prepare for your Trump interview. Yeah. >> Fantastic.
3:02:39
That sounds >> I don't know if we'll ever uh >> purely business and technology focused.
3:02:46
>> We could talk to him about Truth Social or World Liberty or, you know, any we get Sachs.
3:02:51
I bet Saxs would talk to you.
3:02:53
I don't know if he'd talk to me. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We'd have fun with Sax. >> Let's work on this.
3:02:57
>> I I introduced him at Miami Tech Week uh three years ago or something.
3:02:59
and I was the MC and I introduced him.
3:03:02
>> You got asking hard questions. >> Yeah, that'd be fun.
3:03:04
Uh, well, thank you so much for coming on the show.
3:03:06
Congrats on all the part.
3:03:08
>> Yeah, congrats to the whole team. It's it's awesome.
3:03:09
Uh, like you said, vote of confidence and and I mean I'm I'm excited for you guys.
3:03:13
Sometimes you're like a company raising money and it's it's like, okay, they have more money.
3:03:18
But I'm genuinely excited for you guys to have more money. Yeah. >> Be able to do more. >> Thank you guys. >> Yeah. >> Thank you.
3:03:23
And thanks for having me on. Awesome.
3:03:25
>> We'll talk to you soon, man.
3:03:25
Have a good rest of your day. Goodbye.
3:03:26
Uh, our next guest is Jacob Richaki.
3:03:30
He's written a fantastic piece about humanoid robots.
3:03:34
Before we bring him in, let me tell you about Console.
3:03:36
Console builds AI agents that automate 70% of IT, HR, and finance support, giving employees instant resolution, access request, and password resets.
3:03:46
Uh, let's bring in Jacob to the TBP Ultra Drum.
3:03:49
Jacob, how are you doing? >> Hello. How are you guys doing?
3:03:53
>> We're doing fantastically.
3:03:54
>> Great to have you here.
3:03:55
>> Is your 2026 off to a good start? I think it is. Yeah.
3:03:58
Since to be honest, like just some backstory for why I'm here.
3:04:03
Uh I about a month ago, a friend of mine was like, "Oh, you have some interesting thoughts about robotics, about kind of the data center market.
3:04:11
You should like write something up."
3:04:11
But it's kind of like a small piece.
3:04:15
>> And then it it took a month instead of like, oh, a couple days it spiraled.
3:04:18
We had a whole section uh Dwar released a piece, so we have a section on that.
3:04:22
We have a section about uh kind of the future. We have short stories.
3:04:26
We have like a whole like financial model we've built out.
3:04:30
Um it really spiraled and no I'm having a great January cuz it's now it's no longer raining in San Francisco.
3:04:37
It's actually sunny today.
3:04:37
I think this is a good omen believer in omens in 2026. Omens are in maxing.
3:04:46
>> That's a great omen maxing. Yeah.
3:04:46
I think Tyler he speaks a lot about this. >> Yes. Yes.
3:04:53
I need to be on the You need to be open to omens to find them when they're sitting through. >> I think so.
3:04:57
I think that you do have to be open to >> strange things happening.
3:05:01
Uh since I think that's kind of like, you know, the talk my book for a little bit, uh like that's kind of the point of this essay is that not only is this going to happen a lot faster than I think people are realize, it's going to be a lot stranger.
3:05:15
Like one thing I've heard people bring up is this idea that as you could call it like the bifurcation theory.
3:05:23
This idea that as we get whether it's on AI or whether on robotics, we're going to get this like robot produced quantities of goods, maybe it's images, it's media, maybe it's clothing, maybe it's food, maybe it's these other sorts of opportunities.
3:05:39
You have people like Ari Manuel kind of betting on the idea that there's going to be this split.
3:05:44
there's going to be the live world and that you're going to have like the human rare quality stuff and then like the infinite robot slot.
3:05:51
>> But I think that's you can add a little more nuance to it.
3:05:53
Like for example, I think that the idea that human only fashion is probably it's going to be very niche and the reason why is simple.
3:06:03
If we look at something like shine and we say, "Okay, we can cut the costs another 10 times and the quality is something you would wear at the Met Gala."
3:06:11
Most people, frankly, aren't going to be able to tell the difference in their tailor.
3:06:14
Maybe we could get like the men's wear guy on, maybe he could tell.
3:06:18
But I feel like most people, they're not going to be able to tell the difference.
3:06:22
They're just going to like click the buy button and go.
3:06:25
>> But there is something where I think that like in healthcare within an industry, you can split it up into subportions.
3:06:30
subportions. like the logistics of actually bringing medicine to people in like an urban hospital or someone like in NYU uh that's probably going to be done by robots but the actual care for people like people want if your child is sick and about to die unless if you know this doctor is about to do an operation
3:06:48
you don't want to see a robot looking over your child you want to have somebody to be able to kind of absorb that fear to absorb these emotions and if you take that and you say okay wow that was like maybe slightly different than what I would have expected and apply that to literally every part of our society in the next decade. Yeah,
3:07:03
Yeah, it's going to be a lot.
3:07:06
It's going to take you a month. It's going to be hard.
3:07:09
And I'm glad that people starting to see this.
3:07:12
Um that's kind of why I wrote it.
3:07:15
>> Where are we in terms of humanoid robots or or would you would you even use that term?
3:07:21
Is it more just useful to think about physical instantiation of artificial intelligence just robotics broadly?
3:07:27
because maybe they won't look like humanoids, but it's still going to be transformational.
3:07:30
Are we like uh you know, you you see these stats where I think Amazon employs a million robots already.
3:07:37
Do you see it more as like a continuous process?
3:07:39
Will there be an iPhone moment, a chat GBT moment?
3:07:41
Like what are you waiting for?
3:07:44
>> Okay, so I think there's a couple of ways we can look at this.
3:07:46
Um one of them is a really interesting split.
3:07:49
It's between manipulation and navigation. Mhm.
3:07:54
>> So navigation has been a much easier problem.
3:07:57
And the reason it's an easier problem is that we've been able to use classical methods.
3:08:00
We don't need to collect a lot of data for you know a warehouse robot to kind of like move around and move the boxes around.
3:08:07
Even self-driving like it's not self-driving wasn't the hard problem.
3:08:11
Getting it reliable enough so it doesn't kill people was the hard problem.
3:08:14
Uh but manipulation is difficult. How do you encode this?
3:08:19
Is like an idea that Entre Karpathy kind of spoke about in software 2. 0.
3:08:24
You can't really you can write a program to say, "Oh, I want a robot to go forward and it's going to go to left.
3:08:30
It's going to go to right."
3:08:30
How do you encode this idea of I want it to pick up this goldfish?
3:08:34
You know, I'm not sponsored by them. Maybe someday.
3:08:38
>> And like I think that uh you know, that's kind of a weird thing about the robot future is that um I've written about robot holidays.
3:08:46
I think there's going to be probably some weird religions.
3:08:49
There's going to be all sorts of cults.
3:08:51
It's going to be, you know, there's uh um I also wrote I >> what is what is getting oneshotted or or having l psychosis like like humanoid robot psychosis that feels >> well I mean I think that like Isaac Azimoff he wrote about this back in the 60s.
3:09:05
You have robo psychologist like they literally wrote about like this robot going insane cuz the posatronic brain it got modified the three laws.
3:09:14
you kind of, you know, I think if you kind of remove the rule of like, wow, maybe we shouldn't kill people, that would be bad. >> Yeah.
3:09:21
>> Uh what about uh there we we we were talking uh reading a post earlier about uh Tesla with Optimus like doing a bunch of supplier selection seeming seems like they're gearing up to actually make a lot of these things.
3:09:35
And I think some people are somewhat surprised by that because everything we've seen so far from humanoids has been like kind of like cool cool demo but not like oh I need this in my home today or I need this at my warehouse today. >> Yeah.
3:09:53
I mean I think there's a couple of things.
3:09:55
One is that on the home versus enterprise enterprise is going to be a lot more valuable.
3:09:59
Um not only because home is distributed you have safety stuff the costs.
3:10:02
There's also this weird tax thing in the one big beautiful bill.
3:10:06
It's called the 100% bonus depreciation clause.
3:10:09
CFOs, you should listen to this.
3:10:11
Uh you can depreciate whatever asset you want.
3:10:13
It's uncapped uh in a year instead of 5 to 7 under this as long as it's kind of in the US.
3:10:18
So you can do it for data centers, robotics.
3:10:20
Like I think there's just a lot of things that are going to push for enterprise adoption first.
3:10:24
But then within enterprise, I think the supply chain, why people are going to get side, you're just going to get blindsided by this is that a couple of things.
3:10:33
One, um, if you're focusing on how bad America is at manufacturing, you're focusing, it's important, but you're focusing on the wrong thing.
3:10:40
You need to focus on how good Asia is at making stuff.
3:10:43
in particular, uh, Pyong in, uh, Malaysia, um, Bakni in Vietnam, um, Taiwan, um, underrated, uh, South Korea, Japan, obviously, China, Shenzhen, um, Wong, you lots of places.
3:10:58
So, Asia is going to be really important.
3:11:00
You can also repurpose other industries.
3:11:02
industries. I talked about this with rare rare earths processing since rare earths rare earths aren't rare you know as Trump said uh but like the actual uh processing of rare earths in the same way like standard oil became a monopoly off of processing China has like a processing monopoly there you can just repurpose the oil and gas industry for
3:11:21
uh processing rare earths which I haven't spoken about people have spoken about it you know for finding the rare earths but not reprocessing and in the same way you can repurpose the automotive industry uh for like humanoid robots like you already have Honda, you have Toyota, these are already people that are integrating it. You have the
3:11:35
You have the same actuators, you have the same battery management systems, you have everything else.
3:11:40
It's something where the auto OEMs were in a secular slump right now.
3:11:43
So if you're not if you believe that's kind of it's like the subrini thesis in some sense of that, you know, auto is in this sort of like secular slump and then as we kind of like in order to break this slump, we're also going to have robots.
3:11:57
So, it's going to be this double whammy of people are expecting, oh, you know, this sort of dying industry, it's stagnating.
3:12:02
You know, profits are being competed away.
3:12:06
Tesla is kind of it has to sell the energy story, the AI story, the robot story.
3:12:10
The cars aren't, you know, doing it as well.
3:12:11
BYD, like I think this is a Dan Wang point about uh China.
3:12:14
Um, it's weirdly more capitalist than us.
3:12:18
Like the Tian idea of capitalism is bad in some sense because you're competing.
3:12:24
You're constantly you're trying to compete everything away.
3:12:25
Um, so in some sense, China is more capitalist than us. Everyone's competing.
3:12:29
That means that the auto industry is in a slump and it's looking for something to save it.
3:12:33
I think robots are probably going to be it.
3:12:36
And even China right now, like Unitry, there's kind of it's whispers of that, oh, are they going to delay the IPO this year or stuff because the hardware is getting ahead of the software.
3:12:46
So, it's something where I'm like, I don't see the hardware and you can just rely on if you have like, you know, uh, expensive precision reducers or some of these other things like you don't need rare earths to make a motor.
3:12:57
You don't need inspect expensive precision reducers to make an actuator.
3:13:01
You can rely on cheap stuff.
3:13:01
The thing that's going to like do my like, you know, surgery or stuff is not the thing that's going to stock shelves.
3:13:07
And we just have like ooi or like how people are collecting data now with the gloves.
3:13:13
you can 3D print stuff that's like a pretty good embodiment match.
3:13:15
Like I'm just incredibly bullish.
3:13:17
Like a few years ago, you could have asked me, I would said no.
3:13:22
But now it's like no, it's a sign that this is going to be big.
3:13:25
It's going to happen fast.
3:13:25
You had mentioned before, John, about you know, humanoid versus other form factors.
3:13:28
The key word to think about is payback times to borrow something from finance and that >> the faster your payback time like the more that creditors are going to want to lend to your business.
3:13:41
Since it's not just going to be venture capital, it's going to be the entire private credit industry.
3:13:45
It's going to be private equity, it's going to be RAS, it's going to be all of these other things.
3:13:47
Um, so you got to think, okay, how do I drive my payback time down?
3:13:51
Yeah, >> capex is one component.
3:13:53
You get rid of the legs, you have a wheelbase or you just even get rid of the mobile stuff.
3:13:57
You just have arms on an assembly line assembling, you know, AI servers or GPUs and you just crank the infinite money printer.
3:14:03
But even more so, it's not even the capex.
3:14:05
I feel like a lot of investors and a lot of people, they focus on the bomb, they focus on the capex.
3:14:10
They should be focusing kind of on the opex on OEE on all of these metrics of saying, "Wow, if this thing is going to run like industrially rated robot arms already exist, it's fine.
3:14:20
This thing is going to run for 30,000 hours and I I built a calculator on the website so you can play around with it yourself.
3:14:25
This thing is running 30,000 hours and every day it's like 22 hours with some maintenance and it's like pretty close to a human or stuff.
3:14:32
That is going to be the dominant term for like whether I'm going to get a good return on investment.
3:14:38
return on investment. what my I like my blended levered IR is going to be all of these other sorts of things like there's just a lot that goes into it and um I that's why like I want people to read this like I don't want this to kind of be like oh I like this and then we had like a discussion once it's like no I really tried to talk to as many people
3:14:59
as I >> put your butt down and study >> yeah basically it's like it's going to be big it's going to be a big deal and I I try it to be fun I don't want it to be homework like I feel like the idea of like I tried to write it in a way that's fun and not, you know, cuz you could just go down and and read some textbook or some like schizophrenic supply chain reading or whatever. It's like that's just not
3:15:21
It's like that's just not fun.
3:15:23
Um but I tried to make this fun.
3:15:23
Um >> what's your what's your thesis on land?
3:15:29
I've had this idea that >> Oh, it's in there.
3:15:33
So yeah, I I I uh I was trying to find it, but but basically I've had this idea that like >> if uh if you can build things, you know, 10 100 times faster, let's say you could build a a factory or multif family apartment building, um you can potentially start getting a return much
3:15:52
faster and it's cheaper to, you know, make infrastructure, things like that that but yet physics, the laws of physics will presumably still apply, which means that it might be more convenient to have a factory like next to a city versus some somewhere random. So, I've had this idea that like it's
3:16:06
So, I've had this idea that like it's possible there's like a situational in uh awareness style like real estate fund that could start thinking about how the value of land will change as you have advanced robotics that can uh kind of accelerate progress and and just build things uh quite a bit faster.
3:16:23
But how are you thinking about land in the context of u advanced robotics? >> Yeah.
3:16:30
So, I'm going to back up a second.
3:16:32
I think that the four factors of production classically are land, labor, capital, entrepreneurship, and all of those are covered in this, but we're going to focus on the land for a second.
3:16:41
Um, you can split it up into what is it going to look like from a consumer and then an enterprise perspective because consumers and enterprises, they're going to be looking at this differently.
3:16:47
From a consumer side, I think that like the originals will appreciate in the sense that like long Europe, long like historical sites, long existing cities of that it's going to be very hard.
3:17:00
Like the idea of, oh, we're going to get cheap housing because construction is now done by robots.
3:17:06
I think for Austin, for the South, we're going to have a lot of that, but I don't think that's going to solve San Francisco or New York's political wos.
3:17:14
Um, and then from the enterprise side, I think you're correct.
3:17:20
I think that in some sense the final offshoring may be the greatest reshoring we'll ever have in America of that you go from being constrained by not having this like tacet knowledge of manufacturing or enough people or it's all expensive to now you have the energy resources, you have natural gas, you have IP.
3:17:36
Um, that's going to be very important.
3:17:38
And yeah, maybe we don't have to put it right next to San Francisco, but you know, you go out west, you go down south, you could just kind of let things start to rip.
3:17:46
I know that taxes in particular seems very primed from a regulatory perspective.
3:17:50
I would also say I think that like for the idea of land taxes or land appreciation or stuff that feels somewhat deep into the curve like I think this is why like George's um has always been like this great idea in theory but not in practice.
3:18:07
And this is kind of what Doresh and Philip talked about in their essay is that there's so much of the gains initially are just going to come from capital. Who owns the factories? Who owns the energy?
3:18:17
The data centers that by the time you get to the point where oh I am just going to be Leopold.
3:18:23
I'm going to raise a trillion dollars. I'm going to buy Iowa.
3:18:24
Um like at that point like you should have just been buying like Stargate 2.
3:18:29
You should have been going to New Taipei.
3:18:31
You should have been with Jensen.
3:18:32
You should have been in all these other things.
3:18:33
An interesting thing of land though is that uh I'm totally a big believer in the whole orbital data center stuff.
3:18:40
Um not just because of you know being friends with a lot of teams kind of at the the SpaceX XI some of these other places but also like I think that the thing about orbital data centers I want to keep this short since you could go on a whole rant is that it trades off one problem which is cooling.
3:19:00
Um, it makes cooling a lot harder in space because you can only do radiative for all of these other problems.
3:19:07
You don't have permitting, you don't have land, you don't have a lot of this other stuff.
3:19:12
Maybe you'll need to do some radiation hard and things.
3:19:13
But I do think that the idea of space data centers like is not going to be crazy in some sense.
3:19:20
Like I also think because I spent a lot of time saying if you're a robotics company really be focused on the AI like infrastructure buildout as a market. It's really good.
3:19:29
Like every robotics company that wants to be big, you know, is secretly a Dyson sphere company.
3:19:35
They just don't know it yet.
3:19:36
Like if you think about in the end of what can we do with robots, like everyone's thinking so short term of like if I had 100 million laborers, a billion, 100 billion, a trillion, like what would they do at a certain point?
3:19:47
You can only make so many like mocha lattes or stuff.
3:19:49
It's like you got to start, you know, building the Dyson sphere.
3:19:53
We got to start cranking >> Dyson sphere before 2100 or after 2100. Yeah.
3:19:57
And if you enjoyed this conversation so far, this is like basically 80 pages of this. >> Awesome. >> Um, except worse.
3:20:06
>> What's your what's your prediction for a Dyson sphere timeline? 2100 before or after?
3:20:15
>> What do you count as a Dyson sphere?
3:20:15
Cuz I feel like if I'm sorry to be like a pedantic like about this, but like what what do you count? What do you count as?
3:20:22
Is it like Oh, >> it doesn't need to it doesn't need to capture 100%.
3:20:25
Let's call it >> like a meaningful percent.
3:20:27
a meaningful let's call it over 10% and definitely like a structure that is uh like like gravitationally locked to the sun not the earth so it's not just like a bunch of random starink sc like like scattered about in the in the stars it's it's truly like around the sun >> before 2100 um but then I think that it but the problem you know we can hit the gong on that one uh >> pages >> we're going to pull this when it happens.
3:20:58
We're going to pull this clip up. >> I don't know.
3:21:01
But I think though for like the whole Dyson sphere stuff, um it feels very much I don't know if you've ever heard of like the parable of the back half of a chess board that you know this king when they ask you a kind of a checker board, one grain of rice on the first one, two on the second, four on the third.
3:21:18
By the time you get the 32, by the time you get the 64, like it just, you know, swallows the earth.
3:21:22
I think it's something very similar here.
3:21:26
like this idea of robots building robots which is again in the essay people should read it like that's the point of this like read the essay but um Fanic has been doing they're like this robot arm company uh they've been having robots building robots for 25 years now like that's older than me which is
3:21:42
astonishing um but it's something where granted it's in a very limited narrow capacity of that you you have to scope everything for safety and whatnot but it's the idea of like oh robots building robots that's some like sci-fi like some of us don't have to live in Berkeley or whatever but you
3:22:00
know I do think that it is going to be more plausible than not particularly because you know talking about the AI data center builder stuff the ODMs that are making all the AI servers all the GPUs everything all the chillers everything that's going into the data centers or even from it as a prefab perspective are also the people that
3:22:18
could do consumer electronics they're the people that could actually build the robots so if you're servicing these customers or stuff you're servicing these these industries, it's like, wow, you know, they're going to want to start building it themselves because it lowers their cost. It increases their margins.
3:22:30
It increases their margins.
3:22:31
It's going to be something where the market forces are going to be very powerful here.
3:22:36
And that's also why like we spend a lot of time on the social sections of this of thinking about taxes, about I think sovereign wealth fund initially like between Bessant and Lutnik um there's a lot of really interesting ideas that you can start off with so you don't drive away the business community.
3:22:51
business community. But I do think that there's a lot of factors pointing to like it's going to go from 2025 people maybe they saw a physical intelligence video or something to 2027 it's like holy this is actually happening like guys
3:23:08
I know that you wanted a uh a robot horse John or something >> yeah we have the dog I need the horse I don't know I feel like the robot dog's a little played out the robot horse that's that's it for 2026 nobody has that A ste that's a very good name for
3:23:24
>> you would think they could just scale it up just scale the dog up >> make a bigger dog they kind of have I mean the MIT cheetah stuff they they kind of did scale it up but it was like uh but it's not the same it looks lame it has to look hores
3:23:39
>> but also have to look cool I feel like that's also part of this essay was like um like between clog code and other stuff like I got a lot of compliments on what it looked like or so on I think that the marginal cost of making a good website's going to zero. Same like
3:23:50
Same like physical labor.
3:23:52
Marshall cost of physical labor is going to zero. And my website as well. Like, might as well.
3:23:57
Like, you got to make a good website now. >> Yeah.
3:24:00
>> I'm totally being clapped out. So, I'm going to leave. >> No, no, no. You did.
3:24:01
I was clapping for your website. It looks fantastic.
3:24:05
>> We making a beautiful uh making a beautiful website for an essay is the new meta.
3:24:09
You just you just maybe the AI 2027 people maybe they get some new PDF.
3:24:16
Is this available as a PDF? >> Yes, it is. It's available as a P.
3:24:18
And also, if you want the secret, here's how you make a good >> here's how you make a good uh >> you want to make a good PF. Okay.
3:24:29
>> So, if we start with the thesis that like Claude Code like is God and does everything.
3:24:34
Um then >> of course kind of well obviously I mean have you seen the new anthropic price 350?
3:24:40
I mean uh >> price the the market capitalization not the not the share price.
3:24:48
Yeah, I mean I think it's still grossly undervalued.
3:24:50
Like add another zero or something at this point.
3:24:52
Like um sorry Morgan Stanley, sorry Michael.
3:24:55
We're gonna need to add that one.
3:24:57
But uh I think that like uh he >> Yeah.
3:25:02
Well, I mean I I think he's busy with XI and all of that stuff.
3:25:04
But uh they also had their recent round.
3:25:06
Um but I I do think that if you treat like what in my life can is secretly a code generation problem.
3:25:14
I think that making really beautiful PDFs is that because latte, which is mostly used by like math nerds um to render um math research papers is a programmable way of creating documents and PDFs.
3:25:27
Like if you wonder how Leopold, I never I didn't do the footnotes here cuz my side notes and footnotes were completely crazy and it just like cluttered up the side and looked on aesthetic. It looked awful.
3:25:37
Um and the website was the better medium for this anyways.
3:25:41
But I do think that the idea of saying, "Oh, I have this really great piece of writing.
3:25:45
I'm going to put in the cloud code.
3:25:48
It's going to render it in latte.
3:25:49
You can get an Overleaf account. It's free. Overleaf. com. Um, and then sign up.
3:25:52
You can just like make these documents.
3:25:55
You can have it be very expressive for someone.
3:26:01
And then you can make like a really nice website to go along with it.
3:26:04
Since it's not just about the raw content, it's also how you say it and then how it's presented.
3:26:08
In the same way of that, oh, you know, I see John and Jordy.
3:26:12
Um, they're going down the tartine, which I thought was an SF thing.
3:26:16
I was told by Michael it's now like it would start in LA, which is a bunch of Like it really like that's some I >> open people go to.
3:26:24
This is not like you guys ordering the um >> we invented Open AI near me.
3:26:32
>> Yeah, we exported it to you.
3:26:34
>> We exported it to San Francisco.
3:26:36
>> First time that's happened.
3:26:36
Um, I think that, uh, but the thing though is that, you know, if you had like John and Troy, if you both had like, oh, we're going to, you know, write about technology and business, which I mean, I I'm a daily active reader of John's newsletter, so I think that, you know, we can pump that. Um, >> let's go. >> TBR. com.
3:26:55
>> Maybe I should turn it into a 90page PDF every day. Just call it.
3:26:59
>> I think you could render it as a website or you could you could spice it up. I feel like it's 2026. You got to not same old.
3:27:05
You gota you got I wasn't at the whole Lulu stuff is like you got to be real.
3:27:09
You got to be You said you can't be like all these other people.
3:27:11
I mean, >> yeah, there's opportunity.
3:27:14
>> Well, we've talked about doing a daily print newsletter somewhat like a newspaper. >> Yeah.
3:27:20
>> Oh, I think that like um the only problem though is that it's kind of like Well, I mean like Colossus does it better.
3:27:27
So, it's like >> Colossus is evergreen. That's Evergreen.
3:27:31
This is more just you you literally throw it out at the end. You're not collecting. Yeah.
3:27:34
collecting. Yeah. not like you're not keeping most people are not keeping >> and the key would be it would be a beneficiary of robotics because it needs to be it needs to be printed and delivered within like 2 hours of the news breaking so it's like uncannily
3:27:48
fast and that's a unique product but who knows maybe it's too sci-fi >> maybe I I feel like that's a little too >> make it a newspaper they write this thing it gets delivered every day make it make sense >> yeah it doesn't work out can we interest you in like some New York Times like games inside. Can we actually go
3:28:05
Can we actually go an app?
3:28:08
We can >> Yeah, you should add some games to this.
3:28:11
>> What's your game strategy vibe code or something? Sh's building RTS.
3:28:13
What are you doing for whole thing?
3:28:15
Like he wanted some games or others have fun.
3:28:17
I was like, "Oh, you I'm just keep economics and this."
3:28:20
I mean, it's a slider, but that's not fun.
3:28:24
>> No, we we'll add games in the second version of this.
3:28:26
>> Build an entire Stellar Stellaris or Hearts of Iron 4 spin-off game. Dwarf Fortressto.
3:28:32
This was like Schulta was doing over Breaker.
3:28:34
He was honestly also I have to say like shout out to him.
3:28:36
He was a very I already knew he was going to be a very thoughtful editor.
3:28:40
He was like even more thoughtful and I think that his quote tweet in addition to others are starting to bring attention from people that >> you know I'm not going to be like the class or say who's reading or who's like following now or stuff.
3:28:54
It's like oh wow a lot of people look up to him like I'm for him. Like he's he's the goat. >> He is the goat. >> He is the goat.
3:29:02
Let's give it up for Shalto.
3:29:03
One of the greatest ever doing. >> Yeah.
3:29:07
>> Well, thank you so much for coming on the show.
3:29:08
Always good to hang out anytime you want to help. Great to see you. Great to see you. Oh, thank you so much.
3:29:13
>> And uh I'm glad your 2026 is going well.
3:29:16
Dropping start >> and just try to, you know, use the tool.
3:29:19
Try to get one of these out every day.
3:29:21
This one took you whatever a couple months. Try to get one.
3:29:24
>> It took me a month, but I feel like Yeah, we got to you got to get down an hour.
3:29:28
Every minute you got a new essay.
3:29:30
Yes, faster than I can read.
3:29:32
>> A thoughtful essay every minute forever.
3:29:35
>> Thank you so much for coming on the show.
3:29:36
Hope you have a great rest of your day and we will talk soon. >> Goodbye.
3:29:41
>> Well, uh, is there any breaking news that we have yet to cover?
3:29:44
Or is that where we should conclude today's story, today's show?
3:29:49
Um, >> uh, Reggie James built the situation monitor. >> Amazing. Thank you.
3:29:56
>> Global activity monitor.
3:29:56
has a TVPN integration, an Intel feed, tech, finance, politics, news feed, stocks, crypto.
3:30:03
>> So funny, >> prediction, markets, tech, layoffs, tracker, AI race news. Is the Fed >> tracker? Oh, wait. It keeps going. Wow.
3:30:10
>> It's just a bunch of it.
3:30:12
>> Is the Fed printer on? This is amazing. >> This is great.
3:30:14
Turn this into a like a Chrome.
3:30:16
>> Wait, it has today's episode live streaming on it. This is amazing.
3:30:18
You can refresh everything. This is very cool.
3:30:22
I like uh I like a >> Yeah, we need this on the projector all day all day long.
3:30:27
>> This is this is great. Yeah.
3:30:27
Uh >> this is cool that it has a map.
3:30:29
You can click around and see new stories. >> This is really cool.
3:30:32
I I I love a project like this. This is awesome.
3:30:34
Uh and and in other news, the team got to the bottom of the large 3D holographic volutric display. It apparently exists.
3:30:45
It's a 3D display with no glasses uh required.
3:30:48
Uh much bigger, almost the size of the table. Not quite.
3:30:50
Looks a little bit bigger, but uh pretty cool.
3:30:54
We'll have to get a demo of that soon, but that looks fun.
3:30:56
Uh anyway, thank you so much for tuning in today.
3:30:59
We will see you tomorrow at 11.
3:31:02
>> We'll be back tomorrow.
3:31:02
Big surprise, I know, but we'll be back tomorrow. >> We're coming back.
3:31:06
Uh we got a bunch of great guests for you folks and we will see you tomorrow.
3:31:10
Leave us five stars on Apple Podcast, Spotify, subscribe to the newsletter.
3:31:13
com, and we will see you tomorrow. Goodbye. >> Cheers, folks. We love you.