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Today is December 16th, Tuesday, December 16th, 2025. Merry Christmas.
5:16
We are live from the TBP and Ultradome, the temple of technology, the fortress of finance, the capital of capital, uh the North Pole, [laughter] >> the North Pole of net income. Uh ramp, time is money. Save both.
5:29
Easy to use corporate cards, bill payments, accounting, and a whole lot more.
5:32
You know what to get for that loved one in your life this Christmas. Get them on RAMP.
5:39
Introduce them to a RAMP SDR. they will appreciate it.
5:41
It's the gift that keeps on giving. >> It really is.
5:45
>> Anyway, you know what else is the gift that keeps on giving?
5:46
Hiring a storyteller, which apparently is the is the hottest topic in Silicon Valley, thanks to our friend Katie Dayton over at the Wall Street Journal, who made this go mega viral by posting an article in the Wall Street Journal um all about how startups are hiring storytellers.
6:03
Uh companies are desperately seeking storytellers is the headline of course.
6:10
Um, we are going to dive into it. Jordy wrote a take.
6:13
Uh, if you have a storyteller, you want to tell a story, why don't you tell it on all of the streaming platforms simultaneously with Reream, one live stream, 30 plus destinations.
6:21
If you want to multiream, go to reream. com.
6:26
Uh, storytelling is the only way to impose meaning on abundance, says Signal.
6:30
Coherence on noise, legitimacy on power, strategy, ops, and capital are all downstream.
6:35
Without narrative control, none of it will ever stick.
6:39
This has been one of the core premise of my account.
6:40
In a world of infinite output, story is the scarce primitive.
6:45
He's a very good writer signal.
6:45
Uh, whoever can compress chaos into something people can feel, remember, forgive and rally around actually runs the system.
6:53
This skill is worth more than the entire seauite combined. Okay.
6:59
So, lay off the CEO, the CFO, the CTOM.
7:04
>> You just need a storyteller. You're good to go. Is that the pitch? Uh, no.
7:05
People are having fun with this one.
7:08
Uh, what was your take, Jordy? Break it down for us.
7:11
>> Uh, so I >> How did you frame this?
7:11
How did you process this?
7:14
>> I mean, should we should we read through the article briefly or at least summarize it? >> Yeah, for sure.
7:17
So, Katie writes, "Companies are desperately seeking storytellers.
7:20
Brands trying to rest great greater control from their narratives are seeking storytelling skill sets without a campfire in sight."
7:29
Uh, maybe some of them have a have a warm hearth like we do.
7:31
Um, anyways, corporate America's campfire thing.
7:35
What is >> normally you'd be telling a story?
7:40
>> Oh, around a campfire. Yeah, that makes sense.
7:41
Fire and be telling a story that way.
7:43
>> I usually think of smoking cigars around uh campfires. That's what I associate.
7:48
Mostly focused on the cigar.
7:49
>> But you like to yap between puff. >> I do. I do.
7:52
>> Uh, corporate America's latest hot job is also one of the oldest in history. Storyteller.
7:56
Some companies want a media relations manager by a flashier name.
8:01
Others need people to produce blogs, podcasts, case studies, and more types of branded content to attract customers, investors, and potential recruits.
8:06
All seem to use the word differently than in its usual application to novelist playrights.
8:12
Uh, as storytellers, a Google job ad said last month, "We play an integral role in driving customer acquisition and long-term growth."
8:19
The listing sought a customer storytelling manager to join the company's Google Cloud storytelling team.
8:25
That sounds like a fantastic opportunity in another life.
8:30
Personally, I'd be on the Google cloud storytelling team.
8:32
In some ways, in some ways, we are.
8:34
Uh, one article the unit published this year was titled Lowe's Innovation: How Vert.
8:38
Ex AI helps create interactive shopping experiences.
8:44
>> Uh, Microsoft Security Organization, meanwhile, is recruiting a senior director overseeing narrative and storytelling.
8:48
Described as part cyber security technologist, part communicator, and part marketer. >> Sure.
8:53
Uh, Vanta is also hiring a storyteller.
8:56
Uh, Notion uh recent >> head of storytelling >> productivity apps notion recently merged its comm social media and influencer functions into one 10person team, a so-called storytelling team.
9:07
And >> so anyways, it go Katie goes on and on.
9:11
She talks about uh how uh more and more of these listings are popping up.
9:16
They're they're growing year overyear.
9:18
They're showing up in earnings calls. >> Yeah.
9:20
And I went to I have a different take on this.
9:23
I think uh as soon as as soon as there's a Wall Street I mean we love Katie, but as soon as there's a Wall Street Journal piece about a trend, the trend is effectively dead.
9:30
And so there is no more alpha in hiring storytellers.
9:34
You need to hire a yarn spinner.
9:37
[laughter] You need to hire a fabulist.
9:39
Someone who will go around to group chats and tell wild lies about your product, your company, how successful you are.
9:46
You recruit this person and then they go around seating little little anecdotes, little tall tales and they spin yarns.
9:55
>> I think that's called securities fraud.
9:58
[laughter] >> I don't know. It certainly depends.
10:00
Maybe if there's no securities changing hands.
10:03
>> Anyway, so I went telling tall tales.
10:05
>> I tried to find a storyteller from a long time ago. >> Okay.
10:09
>> And I found none other than the legend Steve Clayton.
10:11
He's currently vice president of Microsoft's communication strategy.
10:16
But [clears throat] back in 2010, what was he hired for?
10:20
>> The chief storyteller. >> No way.
10:22
>> They were using that term 15 years ago.
10:25
It feels like a very modern.
10:26
>> He held that title from 2010 to June 2021.
10:30
>> Uh and he says, "In this role, I led a team of 40 who engage in a wide variety of storytelling inside and outside Microsoft."
10:37
>> And anyways, goes goes on and on.
10:37
Uh I was trying to also kind of understand the uh from like the early 1900s to the 1950s you had copywriters like that it was it was like pretty elite to be a copywriter.
10:51
This was like a high status job.
10:53
You were using >> Don Draper. Isn't Don Draper?
10:54
He was a creative director but also a writer and the people that he worked with were copywriters because at that time print media >> you could uh being able to use your words >> to uh get people to take action that you want that you benefit from is a very elite skill set. >> Yeah.
11:12
>> Yeah. um at some point marketing >> one one one more example uh that I mentioned earlier early storytellers in Silicon Valley Guy Kawasaki uh he was he was one of Apple's employees originally responsible for marketing their
11:26
Macintosh computer line in 1984 he actually popularized the word evangelist in marketing the Macintosh as an Apple evangelist and the concepts of evangelism marketing and technology evangelism platform evangelism in general and uh and and he became you
11:46
know this this idea of like word of mouth marketing not quite storytelling different different keyword around it but he was also sort of uh you know one of the early uh you know turning points in in tech marketing anyway >> yeah and around that time you started to
12:00
get content strategists right yeah uh and and if you look back to the to the 80s and 90s it was about um it that was kind of like the boom of brand strategy brand identity think like the Nike kind of era of marketing. >> Bology recently went viral because there
12:15
>> Bology recently went viral because there was a clip from an older podcast that was re reposted on Axe went viral and it was his take a few years ago during the creator economy boom arguing that uh companies need a founding creator or like a or like a co no it was it was higher than creator and residence.
12:38
It was like it was like on the co-founding team you should have a CTO and then you should have a creator.
12:42
And it was like you know it's an interesting thought experiment probably good for some companies maybe not good for every company you know like any piece of tech advice or or wisdom you know there's going to be a variety of of cases where it makes sense but it went viral and everyone was saying like oh this is so it's he's so behind and I and I had to correct someone.
12:59
I was like no no no like that clip is actually a couple years old when he was saying it it wasn't.
13:04
So it was sort of interesting that >> early insight. Yeah.
13:06
Anyways, I wrote a piece for the newsletter today at tbpn. com.
13:11
And of course, I titled it, "You don't need a storyteller."
13:14
Said, "According to a friend of the show, uh, Katie at the Wall Street Journal, companies are desperate to hire storytellers.
13:20
Hiring a storyteller is not a new phenomenon, but it makes sense that companies feel the need to hire them right now. Why?
13:26
Because it's never been more obvious that the best storytellers in the world create billions of dollars of value for their companies and create massive advantages using only their words.
13:33
Their words are so powerful that no matter where they appear on the internet, they draw millions of views and create a vortex of talent, capital, and customers. >> Yeah. Yeah.
13:42
There's this thing where like if you have a hot take, you don't actually need to own the platform.
13:47
You can just go do a circuit of appearances, >> a podcast tour. Anyways, I'll continue.
13:54
So, the reality distortion field that emerges emerges often results in 100x PE ratios.
13:59
Of course, every company in the world wants this.
14:02
The problem is that it's impossible to hire the most elite storytellers because they are founders.
14:08
Think Elon, Karp, and Palmer.
14:11
>> Uh I new coinage alert.
14:11
I call these types Joe Rogan CEOs, right?
14:13
You know, if you have a Joe Rogan CEO, it's fine if you don't.
14:18
There's great CEOs that are not Joe Rogan CEOs, >> but there's a certain type of CEO that's a Joe Rogan CEO.
14:24
>> And to to be clear, you're not saying that the that the CEO has to have the same aesthetics as Joe Rogan or the same style.
14:31
The harp has not been on Joe Rogan. >> That's true.
14:34
>> But you know that if he went on it, it would be a it would be electric. It'd be electric. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. No.
14:39
So, it's more about being able to put on a performance in that particular environment makes you >> capture people's attention for three hours just like rambling basically.
14:50
>> Whereas there there have been CEOs that have gone on Joe Rogan successfully, but they just haven't delivered a Joe Rogan experience.
14:57
And I think if you think about I think if you think about uh like early stage founders uh who who would deliver who would go on and just crush Joe Rogan Augustus. Yeah.
15:07
It just like immediately comes to mind.
15:10
You know who these people are and there's there's CEOs founder CEOs of his generation.
15:16
>> He's a JRC >> that are amazing even though they wouldn't necessarily >> they're not necessarily a JRC. >> He's a JRC.
15:22
Uh, so I continue, the internet is noisier than ever with thousands of startups competing for mind share.
15:27
When every startup has a great launch video, no one does.
15:29
And yet these storytellers consistently break through and dominate the timeline.
15:33
Even though Genai allows marketing teams big and small to massively increase their output, it is often not even 1% as effective as one of these uh elite storyteller founders going on a podcast or just posting stream of consciousness on X.
15:46
The white pill for savvy marketing teams is that even as we're seeing an exponential increase in content production, I'm not sure we're seeing an exponential increase in great ideas.
15:55
That means that companies large and small that don't have the luxury of having an Elon or Palmer on the payroll still have a chance to break through the noise and be remembered.
16:03
As I was personally reflecting on 2025, there were only a handful of like truly corporate storytelling moments that I remember.
16:12
And each of them worked for different reasons.
16:14
one uh don't work at Anderil. Uh iconic campaign.
16:16
Palmer makes like a cameo in it, but he's not the star.
16:22
He's just like a he's he's like a >> kind of he's just like a character in it, but it's you could remove Palmer and the and the ad would like still >> carry weight.
16:31
I thought that was uh one of the best campaigns of the year.
16:35
>> The other one was Astronomer.
16:38
Uh their reaction to the to the crisis and the viral moment they had.
16:40
Uh the the campaign is titled thank you for your interest in astronomer.
16:44
It obviously featured Gwennneth Paltro.
16:46
I think this one will be studied in 10 years.
16:51
It was like really a perfect reaction to that moment and uh I did not know >> astronomer >> before then I do now.
17:00
I will never forget them.
17:04
>> Uh I thought ramps expenses should do themselves with Squan.
17:06
Uh that one was this combination of like luck uh incredible execution and timing uh and and ultimately it it just like having the Eagles got it done and that like was the cherry on top. It was a great campaign.
17:23
It was a great you know first Super Bowl commercial for them.
17:26
>> Uh next is Keep Thinking from Anthropic is felt like very Apple inspired.
17:28
They even had the piano >> crashing and then sort of like reversing up right. >> Oh yeah.
17:36
um which I felt was a reference to that iPad ad in some way.
17:41
>> Uh and then finally uh AI Schiffman's campaign which I call buy every billboard.
17:46
He literally bought every billboard.
17:48
We've talked about this before but near our office there was a billboard that you could only see like a third of it.
17:54
You could only see it sayn.
17:55
com because it was just facing it was like 10 ft away from a apartment building.
18:00
Um and so I said friend did something absurd which we can call the buy every billboard strategy.
18:04
Many people criticize the campaign and the product, but the results from an awareness standpoint are undeniable.
18:09
AVI spent 1 to two million was my estimate and became a household name, at least on the coast.
18:15
And a lot of other brands have spent like 10 times that amount. Yeah.
18:20
>> And you don't even know who they are, right?
18:22
You you you wouldn't um uh somebody could rattle off a handful of them, you'd be like, "What?"
18:27
Like I'm actually not familiar.
18:29
Um, so that that campaign was notable to me because I think if you utilize that for the right product, it could be super impactful, right?
18:38
It could have a, you know, I don't know if that campaign transformed friend as a business, but it certainly uh put them on the map.
18:46
Uh, and I think like it's very possible that billboards can have increasing returns to scale.
18:51
So you might buy two billboards, >> not really see any noticeable like lift and awareness and attention and and traffic.
19:00
But if you buy like 200, it's sort of undeniable. You can't miss it.
19:02
I kept I >> we well we had a great result with literally two billboards.
19:07
Could have just been one basically just one billboard.
19:10
But we were able to get a lot of photos taken of it and so it broke through in a very interesting way.
19:15
Um, and so we we probably got way more value out of that just because it was such a small just one billboard.
19:22
Uh, and then Avi went the opposite direction and bought every billboard.
19:27
When he came on the show and was like, "It's the biggest billboard campaign in history."
19:30
I was like, "There's no way."
19:32
And then I saw it everywhere and I was like, "Okay, maybe it is."
19:36
But I thought it would it cost more than a million dollars to get that big of a billboard buy.
19:39
I thought a billboard buy of that scale would be like 10 million or 20 million, but I guess not.
19:46
I guess >> I I know he didn't spend that much because he hasn't raised that much.
19:50
>> He hasn't raised that much, but I don't know.
19:52
He also he was like financing his uh his do his his. com.
19:55
So, is there possible that he has like financing agreement to like pay these billboards down over time or something?
20:01
Like >> I don't know about that.
20:03
>> I don't know about that. I don't I don't the do you can finance a domain because the domain gets held in like a third party like custody and so if somebody stops making payments you just claw back the domain whereas billboards it's like you ran the ads you you took the spot of
20:17
another advertiser that could have been cash today so >> I don't really know about that I wouldn't be surprised if a levered up in more [laughter] way than one anyways I said hiring a storyteller to craft narratives and tell your story internally and externally is fine but if the goal is to be remembered and you lack a Joe Rogan CEO. Remember that one
20:33
Remember that one great campaign is worth 10,000 posts.
20:39
And yeah, I would just like to see people uh companies instead of, you know, frantically just trying to make a lot of noise in a bunch of random ways as you go into 2026, how do you have one breakout moment campaign uh and truly be remembered?
20:58
>> Yeah, that's interesting.
20:58
Uh I I have more to say about that but first let me tell you about fall the generative media platform for developers develop and fine-tune models with serless GPUs on demand clusters.
21:08
Um yeah I I I'm trying to I'm trying to square like the problem that these job posts are trying to solve.
21:16
So, in the Wall Street Journal article, it says, "The percentage of LinkedIn job postings in the US that include the term storyteller doubled in the year ending uh November 26th, I guess, um to include some 50,000 listings under marketing and more than 20,000 uh job listings under media and communications that mentioned the term storyteller.
21:37
Storytelling uh executives on earnings calls uh and investor days mentioned it.
21:44
uh 469 times relative uh which is like three times as much as 10 years ago.
21:49
So clearly clearly people are you know business leaders are interested in storytelling both as a you know a narrative for investors but also uh as an actual physical job.
22:01
But I'm wondering like you get in the seat.
22:03
wondering like you get in the seat. It does feel like a little bit of what this what this story is what this journal article is saying is like is like you're going to be storytelling every single day that it's kind of counter to what which I guess is what your whole point
22:18
was but it's very much counter to your point of like one big campaign one breakthrough idea and I'm wondering just like I don't know is there is there a world where you need both where you need inspiration but you still need like you know at a certain at a certain point. Um, you know, there was an example here.
22:35
Um, you know, there was an example here.
22:37
It's like, you know, they did a Lowe's case study on how Vertex AI helps create interactive shopping experiences.
22:41
Like, is that going to be >> Well, the standout standout moment for me this year from Microsoft was Satia saying, >> "I'm happy to be a leaser >> and I'm good for my I'm good for my 80 billion." Right?
22:54
So, when you think about when I you know, >> I I think >> what does that do for Lowe's partnership?
22:59
you know, like if you're like like this was actually Google's cloud storytelling team.
23:03
They published an article and so if they just have to get out a blog post, maybe there is some benefit to just like shifting their mindset to at least being like, hey, instead of just doing like a list of facts, like why don't you try and like tell it like a story, meaning like the react structure, conflict, resolution, characters, antagonists, like you know, like because like a lot of like it sounds like a low bar.
23:27
They didn't want Lowe's to have efficient cloud infrastructure.
23:32
[laughter] >> They didn't want the the shopping experiences to be interactive.
23:35
But then Google came in and changed it up, changed up the game.
23:39
I mean, that is a little bit, >> you know, if I'm at a big company, if I'm an employee at a big company, it would be cool to have a re like a centralized resource that's like here's how we talk about this product.
23:48
Here's how we talk about our mission.
23:50
Here's how we talked about talk about our roadmap in the near term and the medium-term and the long term, right?
23:57
But ultimately that when you think of the companies that are great at storytelling, it is because the CEO >> is a great storyteller. >> Yes.
24:08
I mean, yeah, there's two >> like I would I would argue that Apple, who's historically been an amazing storyteller, is not is not currently an incredible storyteller because Tim Cook is like 11 out of 10 operationally >> and he's not the guy to go on.
24:32
He's not like I I I don't see Tim Cook popping up on a bunch of >> also paying him enough to go do extra stuff.
24:38
Like if you know if I if he if you're making that type of money like you're not going to be like yeah I'm going to go work on the weekends.
24:44
>> You're going to 5:00 rolls around. Exactly. You're bailing. >> You're bailing. >> Um but >> no.
24:50
So so again in that that's not it hasn't mattered like he's told the story through the company's performance which is that he is one of the most elite operators.
24:58
Last night, last night I feel like we had dinner with a great storyteller and he told us his entire life story.
25:04
And what was interesting and why I thought it was a really great story was two things.
25:08
Like one, the facts of the story, just the truth was a lot of up and down, a lot of conflict, a lot of it was riveting. >> Failure wins.
25:19
>> He's the protagonist, but there were antagonists and there were and there were mentors and trials and tribulations.
25:24
Like it really did fit the hero's journey.
25:26
Um, so, so the facts were there and you could go fact check them and be like, "Oh, yeah, there were there were these story points."
25:32
But then also the way he told the story didn't hide those.
25:37
There was there's another version of that story where he only tells you the good moments in the story and he doesn't tell you about any of the trial and tribulations.
25:44
And we're like, "Okay, yeah, we get it. You're successful." You know, it's boring. Yeah.
25:49
>> Um, instead we were like, "Whoa, like another another downturn, another up, another swing." It was emotional. It was a roller coaster. It was a great story.
25:58
And I feel like if if there if there's anything that comes out of like the storyteller era of corporate marketing, it should be giving marketers, writers, storytellers permission to actually inject conflict into their marketing materials. >> Yeah.
26:15
Look at the way that Palmer responded to that journal piece about how Anderol had a fire at one of their test sites, right?
26:21
He was like, "Yes, we had a like I'm I'm paraphrasing, but it was effectively, "Yes, we had a fire at the at the missile test site or whatever it was, at the explosive test site, right?"
26:32
Like, "Yes, we" and he was trying to do that.
26:35
>> He was he was he was trying to do that in the journal article when he clearly when he was talking to them, but they they pulled out moments where it was like, "We fail a lot."
26:44
>> Whereas Palmer was trying to tell a good story, which is like, "Yeah, we fail a lot because we test a lot and we're trying to iterate faster than our competitors."
26:50
and through that we'll succeed.
26:53
Um, so >> yeah, I don't know.
26:55
Um, I wonder I wonder what the net impact of that journal article will be.
27:00
>> Yeah, ultimately ultimately I think tech needs to >> fall like fall in love with advertising again. Advertising is amazing.
27:07
Like I want to see companies hiring advertising specialists.
27:11
Somebody that >> that's funny.
27:14
>> Somebody that is just focused on doing really great advertising, right?
27:16
Not just like, you know, I think I think this gets lost because we're in this era of uh rapid testing, iterating through a bunch of assets, you know, volume, right?
27:27
You see this with uh you know, companies that say like, yeah, we just need to create a hundred new ads for meta every single week forever and we're trying to get to 200, right?
27:36
Um but in in that it can often times get lost of like what what story are we telling, right?
27:43
like what is the what is the through line between all this noise that we're creating and all this attention that we're getting. >> Yeah.
27:48
Numeral compliance handle numeral worries about sales tax and VAT compliance so you can focus on growth.
27:57
Uh >> do you think companies we have some >> Ben made some new sound effects.
28:04
>> Let's have a couple naughty list just got a bit longer.
28:06
[laughter] >> What was that one?
28:08
>> Santa's naughty list just got a bit longer.
28:12
There's a couple other good ones.
28:14
>> You're surrounded by enemy snowmen. Walk it down.
28:17
>> You're surrounded by enemy snowmen.
28:19
>> Hostile drummer boy on your six.
28:21
[laughter] >> Take the shot. Hostile drummer boy. It's very funny.
28:26
>> Friendly reindeer inbound.
28:26
[laughter] >> Friendly reindeer inbound. I like it. >> Oh, really fun.
28:32
Anyways, >> so so so do you think do you think it's going to be hard for companies to hire great storytellers? Uh ties here.
28:37
Bronco says uh the ven diagram of people who get tech, get people, can explain complex things simply and can make people care is tiny.
28:52
So will these folks be >> I think a lot of these I think a lot of these people actually are at advertising agencies and and uh if you're Coca-Cola, you've been working with hundreds of advertising agencies for decades and decades and decades, right?
29:08
this has worked well for them.
29:09
You're bringing in >> new ideas, new perspectives. You're hiring it.
29:13
It can be great to say, "Hey, we're going to give this agency like $100,000, but in exchange, we're going to get a great campaign out of it." Right?
29:21
So, I just think people need to know what they actually want.
29:23
I think what they want is to be remembered and to be thought about and to be um you know, have certain ideas associated with their company, right?
29:32
And uh and I think just people that are like, "Oh, we want we want to be remembered.
29:38
We should hire a storyteller."
29:40
I don't think that's going to work really that well, right?
29:43
Because >> I mean for for again just because like in order to it's about like cutting cutting through the noise.
29:49
Like you need an idea that is so good like don't work at Anderol >> that it will just break out and people will remember it, right?
29:55
And people will will watch a two-minute ad. >> Yeah.
29:59
>> Yeah. there there's a little bit of like the uh just like the you know the story still has to be we're talking about you we're not talking about yarn spinners we're talking about actual real stories that potentially could be fact checked and so you do have to do a little bit of the hard work to actually deliver some facts and some story points which is
30:19
probably why it's extremely hard to tell a compelling story as like a seedstage company because you're young company that's why usually your story leans on like your backstory like you grew up or what you were doing before, why you quit that big cushy job to go out into cross into the unknown and become the the intrepid entrepreneur. Um, I was I was
30:37
Um, I was I was reflecting on uh Keller at Zipline as having a great story this year in particular.
30:45
Um, that sort of manifested itself in Zipline's solar punk style launch video and Keller going around on different shows, coming on our show multiple times and talking about the progress of the business.
30:58
Um, but a lot of that story is just the fact that he's been running the business for a decade and it's now finally working and it's this thing that the story of drone delivery was told a decade ago.
31:08
Like I remember in San Francisco people were saying there there was somebody who was like building a drone delivery company as like a small startup and it would basically just be like a DJI drone that he would just like clip it to and like fly it to you like but it was like >> well an example also in the drone space of good storytelling is the nearest guys.
31:27
So like Saurin for example when he comes on he's like yeah I was competitive drone racer.
31:32
>> Yeah >> it immediately doesn't matter that he's like young and doesn't have the most experience in the category >> but you're like okay the guy that is making >> killer drones you probably want him to be one of the best in the world at actually flying.
31:46
>> Yeah I completely agree with that.
31:46
The hard part is that like if you're if you don't have that background, if you don't have the the the the plot points, if you don't have plot, then no amount of storyteller hiring can fix that if you have a boring plot.
32:01
>> Um, so you got to go do things.
32:03
>> It's easier to be a great storyteller if you have motion than if you have aura. >> It is.
32:07
But also, yeah, I don't know. Plot points.
32:12
Plot points are are things happen.
32:15
happen. things they like facts occur like you know things the the you know Saurin actually competed as a drone racer like >> or emotion that that ties to it but it's really >> you're saying that adds to the aura right if you think about like uh
32:32
>> if Saurin rewind a little bit he starts fundraising for his company >> like that that kind of >> just by that that gives him a huge advantage if that's just circulating of like there's a new startup raising and the founder ers were competitive drone racers, right? I mean, even even just
32:46
I mean, even even just like being on your second company, having sold your first company, that's just a plot point.
32:52
No storyteller can come in and say like, "Hey, why don't we go tell everyone that you sold your last company for a billion dollars?"
32:57
It's like, "Yeah, that would make your story better, but it's not a fact, so you can't use it."
33:02
And so, >> yeah, there's always, you know, there's always something to latch on to.
33:05
I I think about with the the Ridge Wallet guys, uh, they never raised money.
33:08
There was never any hype surrounding the business.
33:12
And like as a storyteller, everyone's a storyteller.
33:16
So when I introduce them to people, I'd be like, "You should talk to Sean and Connor." >> Yeah.
33:22
>> They've bootstrapped this business to hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue >> and profit by being truly elite marketers.
33:31
And that like creates like a catalyst for people to be like, "Wow, I'm paying attention now."
33:34
So >> yep, Figma, think bigger, build faster.
33:39
Figma helps design and development teams build great products together. Um, Ally is chiming in.
33:43
She says, "Wow, 23K likes."
33:46
She says, "Tech bro obsessed with storytelling, but hasn't read a book in the last five years."
33:50
Uh, probably not a good sign.
33:52
Uh, a lot of the classic stories have been told again and again and again and go back to the classics.
34:01
>> Instead of a launch video, somebody should just write a announcement in the full hero's journey.
34:04
[laughter] >> That actually sort of works.
34:08
I mean, I would I would uh I would use the story circle when I would write YouTube videos.
34:13
Uh Dan Harmon's story circles.
34:15
It's basically like a three-act structure, but in eight parts.
34:16
Um and so there's like the crossing into the void.
34:20
I would try and map out uh like, you know, all the different story beats pretty deliberately.
34:24
Um and try and map them on there. It's It's hard though.
34:28
>> I would like to see a um a launch [clears throat] post uh written in verse >> like getting back into poetry. Yeah.
34:33
Uh I mean home you should maybe drop an epic poem like a true true like thousandpage book of poetry >> or the way >> or you could drop 20 hi coups on your startup. >> Yeah. Uh graphite.
34:50
dev code review for the age of AI.
34:53
Graphite helps teams on GitHub ship higher quality software faster.
34:57
Uh this really did become the current thing. Um there's a clue.
35:00
Eric Zorski says, "There's a big clue in the middle of the viral Wall Street Journal article by Dolly Dayton."
35:07
Uh, that explains uh why the people who would otherwise crush the role of storyteller, the hot new job at hot startups rarely get the gig in the end.
35:19
As designer Stefan Sagmeister observed back in 2014, it's all the people who are not storytellers who now suddenly want to be storytellers. Interesting.
35:32
um says every so often an article like this drops remember brands the new moat or taste can't be taught that lays bare the repackaging of an oft taken for granted concept in communication humanto human relation uh just enough that it entices reaction discourse today it's
35:49
the idea that stories are is uh sto telling stories is an important function of extending the lifespan of companies a familiar debate on the timeline many are correctly pointing out that this is nothing new marketing 101 on always has been.jpg tier stuff. So, how did jpg tier stuff.
36:01
So, how did storytelling and an an idea fundamental to our existence get Rubik's cubed into a novel optimization strategy? That is that is funny. Rubik's cubed is good.
36:12
Um >> yeah, I just I just think a title like this >> uh would I think a good uh a good test if you're trying to hire for a role like this is would the person be >> do they want the title storyteller? >> Yeah.
36:27
>> Or would they be okay with the title copywriter?
36:29
copywriter? M >> right because in my view if you're hiring somebody to be a storyteller their job is to like write down words in a structured impactful way >> and help the entire organization like share those words in a in a in a consistent manner >> and I would say a lot of the people um a lot of people like want the title
36:49
creative director but do they want to be a project manager like no they want to be a creative director right there's just like a >> uh status associated with that Yeah, >> there's maybe a status associated with storyteller, >> but at the end of the day, if you're trying to hire for this, >> do you want somebody that is obsessed with >> writing? >> You should be willing to take the job of
37:09
>> You should be willing to take the job of storyteller.
37:11
If I come to you and you say you want to work for me as a storyteller, I say I'm going to start you off with a title fabulist and if you're cool with that, then maybe we'll upgrade you to storyteller.
37:21
If you're if you're okay coming in this organization with your with your title being yarn spinner [laughter] just tall tall tail smmith >> first project you just hand them a bunch of yarn say spin this for me >> just tell me a lie tell me a lie about my company like you're you're you're actually a generational founder you sold your last company for10 billion like yeah write the blog post and post it.
37:45
Uh anyway, uh what is this?
37:48
Uh Andrea Norwoods has a uh laws of new media coming from Marshall McLuhan.
37:54
The laws of media, the new science. There are four of these. The laws of media.
37:58
One is enhances awareness of inclusive structural process.
38:03
Obsoles dominance of the logical method.
38:06
Reverses into technology hardware becomes software.
38:10
Retrieves metaphor logos.
38:10
Um that is I like some of the cluin.
38:15
Where where else is this?
38:16
Xerox enhances the speed of the printing press, obsolesces the assembly line book, reverses into everyone becomes a publisher, retrieves the oral tradition. That's a cool framework. I like this.
38:28
Dig through uh you know different value props essentially. The iPhone 1.
38:32
It enhanced bringing the world into your yourself into the world.
38:36
The world into yourself into the world.
38:38
Who obsoleses the house is home.
38:40
Flips the end of the individual.
38:42
Retrieves the nomadic hunter. What?
38:43
That's weird for the Here's here's one of his tetrads on the computer.
38:48
Um, the computer enhances instrument replay of information. It obsolesces hardware. It retrieves Hunter.
38:56
It flips pattern recognition. Huh.
38:58
Uh, what a what a fascinating uh framework.
39:01
Um, Chat GBT has a new image model.
39:05
Uh, they just launched this.
39:05
Sam Alman teased it with a photo that at this point, you know, him and a bunch of uh him and a bunch of polos. Looks great.
39:15
He says uh most likely to launch a new image model.
39:17
And Sam Alman says, "Launching something really fun today."
39:22
Um what is the actual announcement?
39:22
How is this how is this framed?
39:24
I know I know the model got better, but what is [laughter] >> but what is uh >> It's a good model. It's a good model, sir. >> Yes. Yes. Okay. So So >> image 1. 5. >> Image 1. 5. What were they before? >> GPT image. Now there's GPT image 1. 5. >> Were they on 1. 0 before? >> Yeah. >> Okay.
39:41
Today we're releasing a new version of chat GPT images powered by our new flagship image generation model.
39:48
Now whether you're creating something from scratch or editing a photo, you'll get the output you're picturing.
39:51
It makes precise edits while keeping details intact.
39:55
And it's four times faster.
39:57
You know that's a big deal.
39:57
You know that that like like that is the real thing where Nano Banana's been very very fast.
40:02
They got to speed this thing up.
40:04
uh and they clearly figured out a way to do it.
40:06
Alongside we're introducing the new images feature within chatbt designed to make image generation delightful to spark imagin inspiration and it is cool.
40:14
It's like it has its own little corner of the app it own little surface area.
40:18
Um before I tell you more about this let me tell you about fin.
40:23
ai the number one agent for the number one AI agent for customer service.
40:28
Automate the most complex customer service queries on every channel.
40:31
Uh, why is DHY going over to the gong? It's gong. Just check is gone. >> Oh, Finn. Fantastic.
40:38
Uh, so around here we have a benchmark for images for image generation.
40:45
You come to us, you come to us with a new model.
40:48
You know, we're going to try and generate a Where's Waldo?
40:53
And we have some Where's Waldos pulled up and uh we're we're getting better. We're getting closer.
40:59
They're not ready for prime time, though. >> Not ready for print.
41:06
>> We didn't pass our personal internal benchmarks. >> Can we pull it up?
41:10
>> Let's pull up uh this this first image of this Where's Waldo.
41:13
It's going to be very small.
41:15
So, I don't know if you'll actually be able to see that.
41:16
Can you zoom in a little bit? Yes.
41:17
So, so this is the where's Waldo. >> Okay.
41:20
The important thing is that from far away, this looks This looks >> It looks like a We's Waldo. It looks ready to rock.
41:25
Now part of where what makes where's Waldo special is it has this unique perspective like the uh it has uh it's like infinite depth of field.
41:36
It's uh it's this 40 it's this 45 degree angle isomorphic.
41:39
It's an isomorphic image.
41:42
This is not perfectly isomorphic. Uh but it's not bad.
41:45
Uh and there's a lot of interesting detail and texture but as you zoom in you start noticing >> isometric. >> Oh isometric. Isometric. Thank you.
41:54
Um, and so as as you zoom in, you start to notice that like some of the people are not quite to scale.
42:01
And the telltale sign of a Where's Waldo is that there is story. Back to storytellers.
42:07
The creators of Where's Waldo are storytellers because as you move around the image in the Where's Waldo, you see little scenes playing out.
42:18
It will be a dog that is hungry for a ham, a Christmas ham.
42:23
And as he goes for the ham, as he goes for the ham, he knocks over a ladder where someone is painting and the paint bucket falls and and and it tells you like there's these little vignettes that are playing out.
42:36
>> That's what makes it enjoyable to look around for Waldo >> 100%.
42:38
Because you notice and in fact if you go to the back of the book in Where's Waldo, oftentimes there will be bonus things to search for.
42:44
So you will so you will get a list of prompts for what to hunt for outside of just the main Waldo.
42:50
You will also be prompted to Is this a real Waldo >> or is this an AI one?
42:56
>> No, this is you made this. >> I made this one. This is the >> by hand.
42:59
>> It looks great from this direction, but as you zoom in, you'll see that you're not quite getting the the uh the level of storytelling.
43:05
And also the the final the final check is like there must be one and only one Waldo.
43:13
And I'm not I'm not actually sure that this one included a Waldo.
43:17
>> Put it back in chat GPT and say where's Waldo? >> Where is Waldo? Can it find it?
43:20
So, I'm not I'm not seeing a Waldo on this one.
43:25
Um, on the beach, there are a number of people that look sort of like Waldo, but they none of them have the precise like walking stick backpack.
43:34
>> Rock in the chat says, "Couldn't you just generate that picture and then drop in a Waldo with an edit feature?" Which is true.
43:39
You could just say generate a Where's Waldo scene, but don't include Waldo and then add him afterwards?
43:44
>> No, I think I think you're 100%.
43:45
>> Where's Waldo was created by Martin Hanford, a British illustrator. >> Yes.
43:50
He gained worldwide fame in 1987 with the release of the first book.
43:52
Uh he prior to that specialized in drawing massive detailed crowd scenes for commercial clients >> which ended up becoming the foundation of the Where's Waldo series.
44:03
A single illustration would take him up to eight weeks to complete. >> Wow.
44:09
And uh and also imagine um kind of like a a generator verifier setup uh where like the the generator gets better and better at generating them and the verifier can find them.
44:18
So soon you'll have kind of where's Waldo super intelligence.
44:22
>> Do you think that' be it' be adversarial?
44:25
>> One could say that >> it could be generative adversarial network potentially.
44:28
They could network these two together.
44:30
>> Can we work on uh So Martin is based in the UK just under 70 years old.
44:33
Uh we should get him on the show.
44:36
>> The creator where's Waldo? Yeah.
44:36
Let's go that >> uh new challenge, new challenge for the team. Let's let's get Martin.
44:44
>> Yeah, we got to on the show.
44:45
>> Um but yeah, uh the the OpenAI news uh the model excels at editing, uh adding, subtracting, combining, blending, transposing.
44:52
Um, it seems very clear that with a little bit of a harness, dare I say a wrapper, you could in fact create a proper Where's Waldo, but you probably need to generate the images tile by tile, one tile at a time and kind of work piece by piece and then combine it all, blend it all together.
45:12
And then yes, you probably want to add one Waldo at the very end in some random spot, but uh you would not want to just uh just oneshot the full image because it's still a little bit too complex. But it's remarkable.
45:23
I mean, the these images are are are remarkable.
45:25
And yet and yet there's still room for improvement. It's crazy.
45:30
It's like we're we're every time we see one of these, I'm like, "Okay, this is the final thing. We're done. It's good enough. It's great."
45:38
And then another year goes by and there's more challenges.
45:41
>> Pull up pull up this post that says, "Also very fun way to use it to easily get fun images." And then scroll down.
45:45
I thought this was somebody messing with Sam as a reply, but it is Sam himself >> as a firefighter with a with a calendar.
45:56
And then there's a there's a Sora video from Ramp Capital. Let's pull it up. >> Huh, that's funny. Um I'm the product.
46:04
>> Oh, it's showing up in my replies but not your replies. I'll put it at >> odd.
46:09
Um yeah, going back to the Open AI announces chat GPT images.
46:14
Um creative transformations.
46:19
The model's creativity shines through transformations that change and add elements.
46:22
Here, let's play this one.
46:26
>> Well, this is not what does it say? >> Impressive. >> Oh, >> very nice. >> That's pretty funny. I like it.
46:32
>> Now, let's see more slop. >> Oh my god.
46:33
[laughter] the the the ability to use Sora to make jokes at Sam's expense is truly new territory for I mean I guess there were probably people that were in MS Paint making fun of Bill Gates back in like the 90s but >> mocking him. >> Yeah.
46:53
Mocking him and and he's just like you you wrote this takedown of me in Word [laughter] like you wouldn't have been able to do this without me.
47:02
Uh but but the but the feedback loop the the the the iteration cycle is like way way faster there.
47:08
Uh let me tell you about Cognition.
47:10
They're the team behind the AI software engineer Devon Crush Your Backlog with a personal AI engineering team.
47:19
Um so these transformations work on both simple and more intricate concepts and are easy to uh try using preset styles and ideas in the new chat GPT images feature.
47:30
No written prompt uh required. That's very interesting.
47:33
So um in in an in an effort to make it easier to prompt, we are now instantiating more UI.
47:44
So as that image shows you, uh it's like >> as the models get better, we need more SAS.
47:52
>> Yeah, it's it's something like that.
47:52
>> Yeah, it's it's something like that. It it's just that like it is I mean this was uh David Holes's insight during the midjourney boom was that uh if you gave someone a blank text box and said this is a magical text box it's artificial intelligence it can generate an image of
48:09
anything they would just type like dog and they would just get a picture of a dog and the picture of the dog was so photorealistic it was just like okay cool you could go to Google images and get that like what is special about this there's nothing special about it because like we have images of dogs like yes
48:24
it's amazing that a computer can generate it from nothing like that's remarkable but that fades away and so and he was like then you ask them again you can do anything and be like dog dog happy dog you know and and people just weren't fully inspired and so the beauty of midjourney was putting everything in this big chat room on discord so that
48:44
>> letting people inspire each other >> each other each other and it became this collaborative thing and so with this it feels like uh it feels like openai and and the chatpt app are definitely uh sort of embracing this idea that you will need to bring a little bit of uh of idea generation. I mean on on when
48:59
I mean on on when images and chat GPT launched for the real for the first time um I wasn't the person that came up with the idea of Studio Gibli, I needed to see that and then once someone told me this is a great prompt, I was like okay I'm in.
49:14
I'm I'm going to go create a few more.
49:14
I needed a jumping off point and they're bringing that jumping off point to their users in the images tab and you know there's going to be Disney in there pretty soon and that's going to be very cool as you wrote in the newsletter.
49:29
>> Ty in the X chat says no beards.
49:32
>> I've never seen >> beards are coming. Beards are coming.
49:34
>> Well, thank you for supporting the coziest podcast in all of in in the entire world right now.
49:38
Uh we really complete victory on the on the cozy maxing.
49:42
We've been going back and forth on, well, does it look ridiculous?
49:44
I think the answer is yes.
49:46
Um, >> and that's why we do it.
49:50
>> But merry Christmas to everyone.
49:50
And only a few more days. Only a few more days.
49:54
>> Uh, one really good Christmas gift.
49:57
>> Turbo Puffer >> serverless vector in full full text search for grandma for your grandma.
50:03
>> This is a >> built on fantastic.
50:05
>> I know your grandma's saying you get me a sweater every every year.
50:07
Well, this year, what about serverless vector? Exactly. Linear.
50:16
>> She's gonna she's gonna ask she's she's gonna unbox turbuffer and she's going to say, "Well, is it built from first principles on object storage?"
50:22
You're going to be able to say yes.
50:23
And she's going to say, "Does notion use this? Does notion use this?"
50:28
>> You're going to be able to say yes. >> Yes. Yes.
50:29
She's going to say, "Well, is it is it extremely scalable?" >> Absolutely.
50:34
>> That's what that's what most grandparents care about when it comes to Christmas. >> Scalability. scalability.
50:37
They want something scalable.
50:40
They want something fast.
50:42
And they definitely want it to be 10x cheaper.
50:43
[laughter] And so get your grandmother Turbo Puffer this this Christmas. Get them.
50:50
>> Bobby Bobby already got his grandma Turppuffer.
50:52
She says he says she's going to be so happy. >> That's amazing.
50:56
>> Uh OpenAI hires an executive from Google to lead M&A >> according to Walter Bloomberg according to the information.
51:03
Uh, [laughter] more notably, OpenAI hire uh, Comm's chief Hannah Wong is departing the company.
51:11
Okay, just came out yesterday. >> She's stepping down.
51:13
She's going to depart the company at the end of January.
51:16
Axio says why it matters.
51:16
Wong was the AI giant's first uh, chief comms officer and guided the company through the launch of Chad GBT, >> heightened regulatory scrutiny, controversies, and a slew of deals and lawsuits.
51:27
The bigger picture, her departure part departure comes as the company is pushing on a variety of fronts. 1. 4 trillion.
51:36
>> Do you think that she asked for the storyteller title and she didn't get it, so she quit in protest?
51:40
>> Very very possibly, John. It's very possible.
51:43
>> Uh yeah, I feel like she deserves uh she deserves like a a little bit of a of a vacation at this point.
51:49
I can't I can't think I can't think of a more stressful job since 2021.
51:54
>> Some gray hair >> uh as as uh the OpenAI >> PopCom's role.
51:59
uh she joined OpenAI from Apple in 2021 >> and uh anyways so vesting vesting cliff reached >> well um first off let me tell you about public.
52:13
com investing for those that take it seriously they got multiasset investing and they're trusted by millions.
52:19
Uh speaking of merry Christmas there is a fantastic article in the Wall Street Journal.
52:24
We got to go through it in the business and finance section.
52:26
Uh it says, "Advertisers start Christmas season early." This was written for us. This is fantastic news.
52:35
Uh brands chase inflationweary shoppers with plentiful TV spots.
52:38
There's a whole bunch of interesting article interesting stats in here.
52:42
And so it starts with a very controversial question.
52:45
It says, "Are you tired of Santaas and relentlessly cheerful snowmen filling every screen?" >> No.
52:54
says, "Blame the advertisers."
52:57
[laughter] This is so funny.
52:58
Advertisers kicked off the holiday season even earlier this year, and they are inundating televisions with commercials.
53:05
The activity comes despite continuing efforts by many businesses to rein costs to contend with tariffs.
53:13
Holiday TV ads started in earnest in early October, and companies have spent a combined $1.
53:20
47 47 billion dollars over the past nine weeks, a 13% jump compared with the year ago period according to ad tracker ISPOT. So keep this in mind, 1.
53:34
47 billion on holiday TV ads.
53:38
Guess how much holiday retail sales are expected to be this year?
53:48
>> Counting counting Black Friday? >> Everything. everything. >> What do you mean? >> It's big. >> All retail spend.
53:54
Are you asking for all retail spend in Q4 or do I have to like pull out grocery and >> sales from November and December each year?
54:03
>> Does it include grocery spending, food spending?
54:06
>> I think it I don't know.
54:06
I think it might include everything. I'll give you a hint.
54:09
In 2020, it was uh it was. 7 trillion 700 billion.
54:12
Then it went to 850 billion. Then 900, then 950.
54:16
last year came in around 99 something really close. What was it? It was.
54:27
98 trillion 9980 billion.
54:29
This year it's expected to be over a trillion.
54:32
We got to hit the gong for that.
54:34
That is that is a that is some fantastic news for this holiday season.
54:41
The first the f truly the first holiday season in history that will be over a trillion dollars.
54:48
Uh there's a bunch of interesting facts in here.
54:49
So um there are massive investments in digital promotions flooding social media, email inboxes, and text messages. So of course, the 1.
54:57
47 billion that's happening on TV is just a small slice of the overall advertising that's happening this holiday season. Retailers spent 5.
55:06
8 billion on digital ads in the US from November 1st to November 7th, a 4% increase from last year.
55:15
Holiday shopping season remains a critical moment for retailers with inflation still weighing on household budgets, but brands aren't taking any chances of losing out on the action.
55:24
The National Retail Federation is s is projecting.
55:29
>> Let's give it up for the national holiday sales will surpass one trillion.
55:33
[applause] >> A handful of retailers are proving particularly busy on the TV ad front so far.
55:39
Walmart's ads feature a Dr.
55:39
Seuss inspired world starring Walter Gogggins as the Grinch.
55:44
Target, meanwhile, brings brass brings back Chris Kay, a jolly bearded Christmas enthusiast introduced in a 2024 campaign.
55:53
In Target spot, a woman who with whom he is on a coffee date gets a peak at his gift list and leaves him confused by referencing his his naughty list. Interesting. Amazon. com.
56:05
This is the most interesting stat.
56:07
So, um, so total minutes of US advertising by retailer.
56:10
So, Amazon last year was in 2023 they were around 7,000 minutes of US TV advertising.
56:19
And to be clear, that's right in line with Walmart.
56:25
Target was around 67,000 minutes.
56:28
Macy's was around 67,000 minutes. >> The joke's old.
56:32
>> Even Verizon, >> it's an old joke now. John, stop making it. >> What? What? What joke? >> Said 67. >> Oh. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That is ridiculous.
56:39
That's actually where it is.
56:41
Um, but they doubled in 2025.
56:41
They went to uh they went to 14,000 minutes.
56:49
>> Um, yeah, they they they went up to they So, Amazon has doubled the amount that they're spending on on TV advertising.
56:57
Um, >> AB in the chat said Coca-Cola invented the red and white Santa.
57:01
Uh, I was trying to I was trying to fact check it a little bit.
57:06
Apparently, it's an urban legend that Coca-Cola invented the red and white Santa.
57:10
Uh, in reality, Santa Claus was already appearing in red suits long before he appeared in soda advertisements.
57:18
But apparently, they did standardize the Santa look, right?
57:20
They're spending probably more on advertising than >> uh most most other companies in the world for like many decades, right?
57:28
world for like many decades, right? they have an opportunity to really uh define the look you know define the look that >> we are uh delivering this >> delivering today uh let me tell you about Adio the AI native CRM Adio builds scales and grows your company >> to the next level friendly reindeer
57:46
[laughter] I'm glad it's good to hear that it's it's a friendly reindeer >> did you see the journal going after core weave >> yeah yes we should get to that where there's one last stat that we need to share so so I mean basically it's like There's a lot of jitters in the economy as AI overheated. We're going to go into
58:01
We're going to go into the core story, but uh overall the health of the consumer seems to be good.
58:07
Uh holiday retail sales are higher than ever in history and over a trillion dollars now.
58:13
Uh everyone's advertising.
58:15
There's one interesting stat in here which is at the bottom of this Wall Street Journal article.
58:19
Uh they they pulled consumers, how do you feel about the timing of holiday ads?
58:24
And so when holiday ads start.
58:28
So Amazon, one of the largest advertisers in the country, aired its first holiday TV ad on October 13th. >> Okay.
58:39
But you got to you got to give me more.
58:41
Was Santa in the at >> because I I'm I'm kind of a purist.
58:44
I like I like to go full speed ahead on on on uh the Christmas spirit.
58:48
The day after Thanksgiving >> day after Thanksgiving, Black Friday, >> I got I got our tree.
58:53
Yes, we went and got our tree on Black Friday.
58:58
>> And I that that just feels like the right moment, right? I'd like to have enough.
59:03
>> So, you don't want to see Santa until the day after Thanks, >> but then I want to see him everywhere. >> Yeah. No, of course. I I I agree.
59:07
It should be zero to 100. I So, so I'm with you.
59:11
I I generally agree with that.
59:11
Uh Tyler, how do you feel?
59:13
When When is it appropriate to see >> after Thanksgiving? >> After Thanksgiving. >> Anytime before.
59:18
I can't even listen to them. >> Okay.
59:19
So, I will describe the ad.
59:19
And we we could potentially pull it up here, but um Amazon home for the holidays was the name of the ad.
59:26
So, uh let me Oh, damn it.
59:29
Um >> we got more Christmas lore in the chat.
59:32
Red and white Santa is because of ammonita muscaria mushrooms. >> Huh? >> Reindeer eat them. >> What? [laughter] What is that? Okay.
59:42
Anyway, >> no, I can see you know the the red and white mushroom.
59:45
>> Uh I know candy canes, [laughter] sugar plum player, plum fairies.
59:48
So, uh, October 13th, they write they they run an ad.
59:54
It shows a college student arriving home to see that her child her their childhood bedroom now contains a treadmill with her father running on it awkwardly wearing short shorts.
1:00:03
The young woman checks the Amazon app for more appropriate workout gear and it's called Home for the Holidays.
1:00:11
So, no Santa, at least that I can tell from this ad.
1:00:17
We can we can actually pull this up here.
1:00:18
the the Amazon TV spot home for the holidays.
1:00:21
Maybe maybe it's not playing. Oh, it is. It is here. I have it here. If we can pull it up. Um, >> yeah.
1:00:27
So, so I we we we need to determine whether or not Jordy Why [laughter] are we zooming out like this?
1:00:33
Uh, we need to determine whether or not Jordy Jordy decides that this ad is uh is uh is too early. Too early.
1:00:39
Uh, and so let's pull up the the Amazon TV spot. on our side.
1:00:46
We have been drinking this podcast in a can all year, right?
1:00:48
It's very Christmas themed.
1:00:52
>> Okay, I think we have it here.
1:00:52
So, Jordy, based on this is what is the what is the earliest day you could >> I'm getting red flags already. >> Red flags already. Okay, play it. Play it.
1:01:01
>> You're home for the holidays.
1:01:01
You've dreamt of [music] this moment back in your old room.
1:01:09
>> Oh, [music] hey, kiddo. I'll be right there.
1:01:15
>> [music] >> At least you can get a deal on new shorts for dad.
1:01:20
>> Something with a little more coverage. H >> there's no Santa. >> Way too early. Way too early.
1:01:28
>> You think that's too early?
1:01:28
What's the What's the earliest day?
1:01:30
You still you you wouldn't even run that before Thanksgiving.
1:01:34
>> And that's like two that's like almost two months before winter.
1:01:39
>> It's before I mean they ran it before Halloween. >> Well, so yeah. I mean this is October.
1:01:42
There are some places in the US where it snows in October, right?
1:01:43
You go up to Alaska, this could be like this could be their the college students fall break. >> Yeah.
1:01:48
This could be >> coming back for a weekend.
1:01:50
>> They could be targeting Anchorage. Yeah. >> Or Juno. >> Yeah.
1:01:53
We don't know where it ran.
1:01:53
So, I did I did find an article from the Fungi Foundation called the influence of hallucinogenic mushrooms on Christmas.
1:02:02
The story of Santa Claus is not the creation of Coca-Cola nor Staint Nick or a children's story.
1:02:07
It exists because of a small living being with great powers.
1:02:11
the ammonita muskaria mushroom.
1:02:15
>> So, I'm gonna I'm gonna go out on a limb and say like the the fungi foundation might have a little bias [laughter] built.
1:02:21
>> Are you doing this research on Gemini 3 Pro, Google's most intelligent model yet?
1:02:26
State-of-the-art reasoning, next level vibe coding, and deep multimodal understanding.
1:02:31
Why don't you vibe code something for your family for Christmas?
1:02:36
Um, so would you say that the Christmas ads are a much too early, b slightly too early, c about the right time, slightly too late, or much too late in terms of the the timing of holiday ads this year?
1:02:56
>> I think you can start doing holiday advertising without putting snow on the ground and without >> How would you do that?
1:03:00
How wait, describe a holiday ad that doesn't at least have a little bit of snow.
1:03:03
I would like to see Amazon do a star a plain text ad that's Star Wars style where the text is just scrolling and it's like get ready to buy stuff.
1:03:13
This is about to be the Super Bowl of just buying stuff. >> Yeah. >> Do it on Amazon. com. Okay. >> It's time to buy.
1:03:20
>> It's [laughter] time to buy. >> It's time to buy.
1:03:22
Uh but but but so do it sounds like you think that the holiday ads are are you know at least slightly too early, maybe much too early.
1:03:31
much or do you think it's about the right time?
1:03:35
>> I think Amazon should start dropping a billion dollars on ads just on Black Friday.
1:03:40
I mean, they probably already do >> because So, so this is this is the interesting stat from here.
1:03:44
They they pulled a bunch of consumers in.
1:03:45
Uh and boomers complained the most about the ads being too early.
1:03:50
We're all We're all the boomers >> because they're locked in.
1:03:54
They're paying they're paying >> for Gen Z.
1:03:56
Uh over 50% said, "Yeah, Christmas in October is great. Sits perfectly with me."
1:04:03
Uh only 20 something% of boomers said, "Yeah, the holiday ads are about the right time."
1:04:11
Um whereas over 25% 30% of boomers said the ads are much too early. Only 10% of Gen Z said.
1:04:19
>> How many said that they were too late?
1:04:21
>> Uh >> did any say that? >> Yes. Uh millennials.
1:04:23
Millennials actually led the whole pack by saying 4.
1:04:27
3 4% of millennials said that the holiday ads started too late this year, which is funny.
1:04:32
Uh Gen Z only 2% were in the were in the too late camp basically ABC.
1:04:39
>> And the boomers the boomers actually less than one less than 2% of them said slightly too late.
1:04:44
They were all saying too early too early.
1:04:47
>> Do they hate Christmas? >> The boomers. Yeah.
1:04:49
AB in the chat says, "Santa discovered chat GBT and now Christmas is 30% faster and the elves are unemployed."
1:04:57
>> Trey says, "Every time Jordy pitches back on Christmas when Christmas starts, I'm going to move it up one month.
1:05:01
It starts September 1st now."
1:05:04
>> September 1st is great. September 1st.
1:05:07
Uh well, let let's uh >> here's here's a I would like to see Coca-Cola >> Yeah. >> get a blimp.
1:05:13
You know, I'm a blimp Maxi.
1:05:15
I want to see more companies leveraging blimps for marketing.
1:05:17
They get a blimp, but they hang >> a sleigh and a bunch of reindeers.
1:05:21
And so they fly the blimps in the crowd and they have sort of like clear, you know, uh >> uh wiring so that it just looks like Santa's flying over the United States. >> Okay.
1:05:34
>> Somebody's got to do it. >> I like it. I like it.
1:05:35
Um >> well, let's talk about Cororeef.
1:05:37
But first, let's talk about Julius AI, the AI data analyst that works for you.
1:05:43
won't join millions who use Julius to connect their data, ask questions, and get insights in seconds.
1:05:48
>> Uh, very aggressive title.
1:05:48
Core Reef's staggering fall from market grace highlights AI bubble fears.
1:05:53
The data center providers terrible six week slides picked up speed when a famous short seller piled concerns on top of delays.
1:06:02
[snorts] Uh, Core Reeves's value dropped by 33 billion due to AI bubble concerns, a failed merger, and short seller criticism.
1:06:09
Core, we've the largest of a new breed of companies driving the AI boom has watched 33 billion of value vaporize in six weeks.
1:06:16
The share price plunge of 46% comes as investors worry about a possible AI bubble, fallout from a failed merger, and public criticism from high-profile seller Jim Chanos, known for predicting the collapse of Enron. Yeah.
1:06:30
Um, but some of the high-tech company's biggest problems began with a very low tech uh nuisance, unexpected turbulent rainstorms in North Texas over the summer.
1:06:40
Heavy rains and winds caused a roughly 60-day delay at a construction site in Denton, a small city north of Dallas, preventing contractors from pouring concrete for a major complex.
1:06:48
As a result, the completion date for the huge data center cluster consisting of about 260 megawatts of computing power that Cororeweave plans to lease OpenAI has been pushed back several months.
1:07:00
There were additional delays caused by revisions to design plans for some of the data centers a partner is building for Cororeweave in in Texas and elsewhere.
1:07:07
According to filings, the slowdown was compounded by mixed messaging from Core Weave's chief executive officer Michael uh which spooked investors and accelerated the company's share price decline at a particularly vulnerable moment for the AI trade.
1:07:21
Core's business model involves using high interest debt to pay thousands uh to buy thousands of advanced chips from Nvidia, installing them in server racks inside data centers that it leases from third party landlords, then renting access to the chips.
1:07:35
As capital spending on infra has intensified, coreweave, which is 7% owned by Nvidia and backed by hedge funds such as Magnetar Capital and CO2 management, has become the standard bearer for both the promise and the risk of the AI boom.
1:07:48
Some critics point to the high levels of debt it has taken on to finance its data center buildout, while others worry that the company depends on just a handful of large customers such as OpenAI, Microsoft, and Meta for the bulk of its revenue.
1:07:58
Core Reweave saw sales more than double in the most recent quarter to nearly 1.
1:08:02
4 billion from half a billion a year earlier, but the company is unprofitable and lost 110 million in its most recent quarter.
1:08:10
in early November before the construction delays were widely discussed in intraour played down fears of an AI bubble at a Wall Street Journal event in Northern California.
1:08:20
If you're building something that accelerates the economy and has fundamental value to the world and the world will find ways to finance an enormous amount of business, he said, adding that the number of buyers of data center computing services had convinced him that there is not a bubble inflating.
1:08:35
I think this was the same Wall Street Journal event where Sarah Frier made the backstock comment that um sort of went super viral.
1:08:41
I think he I this quote is actually pretty reasonable.
1:08:47
Uh this is something that I agree with.
1:08:50
Uh the the the question is always just like the dance of like how much is it accelerating the economy?
1:08:56
Is it showing up in the economic statistics yet?
1:09:01
yet? uh how much how much value is there being created and then how are you financing that because naturally the capital markets will push everything to the edge um and if you're underwriting it against 10% GDP growth and that doesn't show up you could have a bad
1:09:18
time but if it's more like oh yeah like you know new SAS boom bunch of great companies building on top of us like >> I think it's super important to put it into context too their last private valuation in November 2024 was uh $650 million secondary. Jane Street was in
1:09:33
Jane Street was in that magnetar.
1:09:35
So again, the the company today is at a $34 billion valuation.
1:09:38
So meaningful premium from the last private round. >> Private round.
1:09:44
>> Uh >> like it was in the tens of billions. >> 23 23 billion.
1:09:47
>> So it's still up 50% since the last private round, but it's round trips.
1:09:51
>> Yeah, it was seven in December.
1:09:51
Seven in December of 2023.
1:09:55
>> And I mean even just today the >> 23 in November 2024. >> Rough rough rough go.
1:09:58
Anyways, it's a lot of debt, but it's a lot of demand. >> Yeah.
1:10:04
>> Uh it was interesting yesterday there was a pretty viral post from an account called Hunterbrook. Okay.
1:10:10
>> They said Bethany McClean broke the Enron scandal.
1:10:12
Tomorrow she publishes her first investigation for Hunterbrook on a company that may epitomize the AI bubble. Sign up.
1:10:20
And >> do they say what it is or is it >> And then uh they shared it this morning.
1:10:26
So I'm expecting like she broke the Enron scandal.
1:10:27
She is her new investigation is on the company that epitomizes the AI bubble.
1:10:36
>> And the company >> I saw something >> Radnet. >> Whoa. Okay.
1:10:41
>> Do you know the No, >> I wasn't familiar. >> I'm not familiar.
1:10:44
>> I'm I'm somewhat of a bubble enthusiast.
1:10:46
I used to pray for a bubble.
1:10:48
>> And I I did see a clip of her talking about how it's not the hyperscalers.
1:10:50
So, it's kind of like we're on the hunt for the for the >> Yeah.
1:10:55
Radnet Radnet is a as of today it traded down on this report. It was a $5. 37 billion company.
1:11:00
I was expecting something in the hundred to trillion dollar range. Right.
1:11:06
I wanted I wanted some I wanted some real meat. >> Didn't get that.
1:11:10
Hunterbrook says >> Radnet the AI story that doesn't add up.
1:11:16
>> It's a radiology firm. >> Yeah. >> Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. Interesting. >> Yeah.
1:11:20
But but again like this company >> I like we'll dig into it but again this company like collapsing wouldn't make a dent in the broader kind of like AI trait.
1:11:30
Yeah, there's like 25 different funds that could just write this off and be like, "Yeah, zeros are part of the game, you know, like." [laughter] >> Yeah.
1:11:39
Anyway, so Hunter Brook says, "Radnet's much hyped AI business is a sideshow.
1:11:43
Less than 5% of the medical imaging company's revenue, about 65 million out of one and a half billion >> in the first nine months of 2025, come comes from its new fangled digital health division.
1:11:52
Much of that division's revenue and twothirds of its reported revenue growth, excluding recent acquisitions, come from selling software to Radnet's own imaging center imaging center.
1:12:02
Radnet also charges mammogram patients $40 for an AI read using technology that experts say is commoditized. >> Okay.
1:12:10
>> Again, I'm not seeing anything.
1:12:11
>> The pre the prei stock price of this company was around 20 bucks a share.
1:12:13
Now it's 70 bucks a share, something like that.
1:12:18
And so, uh, you you've se you have seen like a 3x pump like like the the stock has definitely benefited from, uh, the AI narrative, if that's what the they're alleging.
1:12:28
But, uh, it's it's, yeah, you know, you're going to have to do better if you're going to try and bring down the entire global economy.
1:12:37
You you got to service up something that's worth at least a hundred billion.
1:12:40
I agree with you on that.
1:12:41
>> Yeah, somewhat of a clickbait.
1:12:41
Uh and yet the company's stock has soared in value since its AI rebrand, trading at a much higher multiple than historic norms and competitors. >> Yeah.
1:12:50
>> And so again, I didn't I I think uh >> Okay.
1:12:55
Well, uh let's tell everyone about Privy.
1:12:58
Privy makes it easy to build on crypto rails, securely spin up white label wallets, sign transactions, and integrate on chain infrastructure all through one simple API.
1:13:06
Um now, uh the there is interesting like uh everyone's been hunting for the Enron of this cycle because there was one in the past.
1:13:16
There must be another one.
1:13:17
Um we of course were joking around doing the you know the letters lining up from OpenAI or Nvidia or whatever.
1:13:23
Uh when those are obviously very real businesses and no one is alleging that they are doing anything inappropriate.
1:13:29
It's more just like how fast will they grow?
1:13:31
Will they be complete winners forever?
1:13:34
Will there be will they face competition?
1:13:35
Those are the questions that people are asking.
1:13:38
Um, but Buco Capital Bloke had a good rebuttal to this question of is it possible to argue that AI is not a bubble right now?
1:13:47
Um, someone in the chat was was putting AI bubble in quotes kind of sarcastically.
1:13:52
Well, Buku Capital is arguing that AI is not a bubble.
1:13:56
He says real businesses are seeing real impact from AI.
1:13:59
Coding and tech support help are the fir are are the two clear immediate role beneficiaries.
1:14:07
Advertising is another clear beneficiary.
1:14:09
Meta has talked about it in detail.
1:14:11
We of course are sponsored by profound.
1:14:14
You can get your brand mentioned in chat reach millions of consumers who use a AI to discover new products and brands.
1:14:19
Um traditional boring companies like CH Robinson are pointing to AI and agentic workflows as making them more efficient.
1:14:25
uh the market is responding quite rationally and scrutinizing these AI input companies diligently.
1:14:31
See Broadcom and Oracle this past week.
1:14:33
So that is the sign of yeah I I agree with him like the fact people are taking a victory lap dunking on Oracle.
1:14:39
It's like this is how the market should be working like it it it should it should sort of be like okay we're regarding this future RPO five years out with some skepticism.
1:14:50
We're not going to give you that much credit for it upfront.
1:14:53
You got to actually deliver some real value.
1:14:55
You got to get some cash flow into the business.
1:14:57
You got to actually deliver on those on the buildout that you're promising.
1:15:02
Um we're not just going to, you know, moon your stock because you said the biggest number, right?
1:15:08
Uh Mag 7 minus Tesla have reasonable valuations and the hyperscalers have more demand than they can handle.
1:15:14
He says, "I've been vocal that indiscriminately gunning all AI input companies is a dumb thing to do again as Oracle, Broadcom, Neoclouds have shown this last week, but it doesn't mean AI is a bubble." I like it.
1:15:26
I think it's a good a good take. But Duchant is >> Yeah.
1:15:29
It's just it's interesting going back to this Rad Radnet uh analysis. >> Sure.
1:15:35
>> Saying that they also charge mammogram patients $40 for an AI read using technology that experts say is commoditized.
1:15:40
It's like how is that like they're they're positioning that as a bad thing when this company clearly has distribution and they're just going to like vend in >> technology into that and it doesn't >> like I don't I don't that's like it's basically making the argument that like rap a rapper can never have value when clearly like they have a captive audience here. >> Yeah.
1:16:02
>> And they can put in commodity technology and charge premium for it. >> Yeah.
1:16:07
I mean, there's a huge incentive once everyone is is giving the stuff's overvalued take to then move into the like it's fraud, it's crime take.
1:16:13
But, uh, the bar for that is so much higher because it's it's legal.
1:16:19
Like obviously like anything can be overvalued or undervalued at any moment in time.
1:16:23
But fraud is very much like binary.
1:16:25
Like the company's either cooking the books or they aren't.
1:16:28
Uh, anyway, let me tell you about Vanta.
1:16:30
You got to stay compliant.
1:16:33
Automate compliance and security.
1:16:33
the AI that powers everything from evidence collection and continuous monitoring to security reviews and vendor risk.
1:16:39
Um, let's move on to the EV debate.
1:16:42
Uh, tomorrow I want to get into how Rivian beat Ford in trucks, in electric trucks. That seems crazy to me.
1:16:53
I want to get to the bottom of it, but there's a little bit of a of an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that I thought it might be useful to go through some extra context.
1:17:02
Uh, they say Ford learns a brutal >> one.
1:17:04
>> You're taking the gloves off.
1:17:05
>> I'm putting the gloves on.
1:17:06
>> Putting the gloves on. What? What?
1:17:08
Wouldn't you be taking the gloves off to to fight it out?
1:17:11
>> I don't know if we're going to be fighting yet. >> Okay. Okay. Maybe we'll be agreeing.
1:17:12
Uh, Ford learns a brutal EV lesson.
1:17:14
The car maker takes a 19.
1:17:17
5 billion write down on its electric vehicle business.
1:17:20
And in this oped, they say, "Not long ago, automakers were touting electric cars as a future.
1:17:27
Well, now they are slamming the brakes hard on that future as market reality has hit them like a 16-wheeler.
1:17:35
See Ford Motors stunning announcement Monday that it will take a 19.
1:17:37
5 billion charge on its electric vehicle business.
1:17:41
Instead of plowing, quote, "Instead of plowing billions into future into the future knowing these large EVs will never make money, we are pivoting."
1:17:48
Ford CEO Jim Farley said as he explained the company's plan to boost its lineup of gas-powered cars and hybrids.
1:17:54
Um, Ford will also scrap its all electric F-150 Lightning pickup scrap has been full scrap.
1:18:04
They're not going to sell them anymore, which has been a favorite of the EV loving press.
1:18:07
So, it got very good reviews and obviously it was positioned in this interesting way.
1:18:13
It has the aesthetics of the F-150.
1:18:14
It doesn't have the baggage of the Elon brand.
1:18:18
Although, does that really matter to the F-150 buyer? So, it's so complicated.
1:18:23
I just hope they make a Raptor.
1:18:24
They, you know, they Raptor Raptor R, the high performance version of the F-150.
1:18:29
They need to do the Raptor R plus with a V12.
1:18:32
That's >> You wouldn't want it to be the Rax.
1:18:37
>> RAX would be good, too.
1:18:37
Um, so Ford has lost 13 billion on its EV business since 2023 with bigger losses expected in years to come.
1:18:46
Last year, Ford lost about $50,000 for each EV sold.
1:18:49
Wow, [laughter] that's so much money to lose. Don't do that.
1:18:57
>> Uh, the truth is that the business case for EVs has always rested largely on government subsidies and mandates.
1:19:02
Now that is now that this combination of government favoritism and coercion is mostly going away.
1:19:07
Most car makers have uh much much less reason to make EVs.
1:19:10
I was listening to an interview with the CEO of Ford yesterday and he was talking about some of the challenges of the supply chain.
1:19:18
Like they I think that they're doing a sort of like almost a JV with a Chinese company that has IP around battery manufacturing, but they're going to make them in the United States.
1:19:29
And so they're very much negotiating like how do we get this new technology that we haven't been really developing.
1:19:35
We this hasn't been in our our DNA for you know 20 years.
1:19:37
Uh we got to get up to speed but it's been very costly because they have to pay everyone all up and down the supply chain and then deal with tariffs and deal with you know geopolitical considerations and all this other stuff.
1:19:48
So the Biden administration sought to force feed the EV transition with ramped up fuel economy and green greenhouse gas emission rules.
1:19:58
Car makers were required to produce increasing number of EVs which they had to sell at a loss because consumer demand was weak.
1:20:05
The inflation reduction acts $7,500 EV tax credit boosted demand but not enough to make the cars profitable.
1:20:13
This year's GOP tax bill eliminated the tax credit in October, causing demand to fall off a cliff.
1:20:19
Yeah, I was talking to a buddy on Saturday who uh manages a group of dealerships around LA and he was saying that that uh I mean the market generally has been brutal for cars this year.
1:20:32
You've had just like chaos and uncertainty around tariffs uh and then also uh there was a huge uh boom right before the tax credit ended and then everything fell off a cliff. >> Yeah.
1:20:45
Um the d this uh so the deregulation uh has enabled Ford to cut its losses sizable as they are. A $ 19.
1:20:50
5 billion charge will hurt, but it's better than spending tens of billions of more dollars on making cars that are not enough uh that not enough Americans want to buy.
1:20:59
Ford can focus its investments on gas-powered trucks and SUVs that are popular with customers and earn, dare we say the forbidden word, profits.
1:21:05
If Ford makes more money, workers also make more in profit sharing.
1:21:10
General Motors this fall also rolled back its EV plans and took a $1.
1:21:13
6 $6 billion charge way less.
1:21:15
Uh the American card industry would be stronger today had its CEOs not embarked on the EV joy ride with politicians promising subsidies.
1:21:21
So yeah uh always dangerous to over rotate on uh a government mandate or government action because we change governments every couple years.
1:21:32
That's the nature of America democracy.
1:21:33
America democracy. uh you know what what might >> you don't think Ford would over rotate and and get uh like a like a maybe four V12s into a single Raptor like put them put them at an angle like they do yeah like no the Bugatti but just do it like
1:21:52
copy and paste few more times definitely definitely something there something eight liter >> it look the front of the car looks like a train and it's just it's just engine >> this is the goal this is what they should go for um No. Uh to to more
1:22:02
Uh to to more seriously investigate it, like do you can you think of a way that uh that the Ford F1 Lightning would have been successful?
1:22:13
Like it doesn't seem like it was like wildly mispriced.
1:22:17
It doesn't seem like it was I mean it had a classic silhouette.
1:22:23
So, it wasn't like you could like Cybertruck hasn't been selling fantastically well, but it's like so bold that you could easily say, well, okay, it's not doing that well because it's such an edgy choice.
1:22:34
It's such a it's such a bold design decision.
1:22:36
Like, you have to really want to yell to everyone like, "I own a I own a Cyber Truck."
1:22:43
You can get an F-150 Lightning and unless someone's really checking out the badge, they're just going to be like, "Oh, truck." You know? >> I don't know. I disagree.
1:22:49
I think real real balln knowowers can clock that from a/4 mile away. >> Okay.
1:22:57
>> I I it's it's nuanced. >> Yeah.
1:22:59
>> But I can I can clock a a lightning over the little blue blue trim. >> Yeah.
1:23:04
It's just you can just >> I know I know you can, but uh is that but it has to be So would you have gone crazier in the design and put more distance between the Lightning and the classic F-150?
1:23:16
classic F-150? I think I think maybe I I also think like truck buyers it's very possible that they're they're making purchasing decisions not for how the average person views it but how other truck buyers are going to view it right there's so much like oh you have a
1:23:32
>> I think that's true for category >> yeah even even in like the midsize >> look at look at handbags you see a handbag >> your wife might see like oh that's >> every car goes the speed limit like there is no real argument for, oh, I need this car because it's like more efficient or something like that. Yeah. Yeah.
1:23:53
Like it they all go the speed limit.
1:23:55
They all basically get you from point A to B in the right time.
1:23:57
So, it becomes very quickly about some differentiation in amenities, but really the brand and what it says about you and >> the silhouette, the trim, >> the silhouette.
1:24:09
And so, yet maybe they needed to go more like it's it's even more obvious that you made the eco-friendly choice.
1:24:14
But again, I think that the truck buyer just doesn't is is not interested in in signaling I made the eco-friendly choice at all.
1:24:21
And that seems very intuitive to me. Am I crazy?
1:24:26
But like I I I know that like the reason everyone went after trucks was because um it's just such a big market.
1:24:32
Americans buy so many trucks.
1:24:32
You had to go after that market and Rivian wound up winning it essentially.
1:24:36
It seems like um but uh but it's it is weird that that Ford wasn't able to break through.
1:24:43
So, I guess it's just like their core their core customers weren't able to to to get over the the hurdle to actually get into the into the brand.
1:24:51
I'm going to try to figure out how many Rivian trucks actually sold. >> Yeah.
1:24:59
Um yeah, we'll have to pull up all the all all the data and run through it.
1:25:02
Um maybe tomorrow, but um >> I'm pulling it up if you want to.
1:25:06
>> So, in in in other news, I mean, we can move on from this.
1:25:08
Uh we have our guest joining in just a few minutes.
1:25:10
Uh in other news, SpaceX is now initiating a bake off to select which investment banks will advise on its planned 2026 IPO.
1:25:19
Uh they are very much moving forward with the IPO. It feels very real.
1:25:25
It does feel like there's a bit of a race between uh SpaceX and OpenAI to some degree, but SpaceX has to be set up for this.
1:25:33
for this. like they have to be you know there's a whole whenever you talk to somebody about going public they're always talking about well the the financial requirements are much much more ownorous like you need to be really
1:25:43
you know like reconciling your books like understanding the business like you need to be you know uh really mature CFO operation office CFO needs to be really dialed in uh you probably need you know clarity about whether or not you're a
1:25:56
for-profit or a nonprofit right and uh and you have to imagine that SpaceX has been effectively ready to go IPO at any moment in time for a decade because it's just been such a real business and they've been working with the government
1:26:06
and so the government comes in and says, "Hey, we want to know that you are actually generating real revenue or you're knocking the books if we're going to be working with you, all that other stuff." So, we'll see. Um, So, we'll see.
1:26:14
Um, >> I just want to take a second to give it up for everyone out there that's currently in a bake off.
1:26:19
No matter what side you're on, I'm I just want you to know we are >> we are rooting for you.
1:26:26
>> Like a Christmas cookie bake off. >> Yeah.
1:26:28
A lot of people this time of year, they're winding down.
1:26:29
Some people are just getting started on some of these bake offs, right?
1:26:32
There's going to be intense, you know, it's going to be intense all the way through the end of the year.
1:26:36
So, >> I just wanted to give a give a shout out to to the bankers.
1:26:39
You're not getting enough not getting enough enough love.
1:26:43
>> If you're a banker, get yourself a nice luxury watch on getbzzle. com.
1:26:46
Shop over 26,000 luxury watches.
1:26:49
Fully authenticated in-house by bezel's team of experts.
1:26:53
Um, Bal asks Bill Gurley, shouldn't SpaceX just do a direct listing?
1:26:59
And Bill Gurley says 100%.
1:27:03
Um I would love to know how that will actually play out.
1:27:07
Um if if like like what what the decision-m will be because it has to be I mean you imagine an Elon stock like the chance that it moons on day one is like it feels guaranteed, right? >> Yeah.
1:27:21
So the question is the qu Yeah. The I don't know.
1:27:24
I >> it just feels >> so so looking at Figma's IPO, right?
1:27:30
They did not raise very much money in the actual IPO, right?
1:27:32
So they priced it around, it was around tw >> forget uh it was something around $20 billion valuation. >> Yeah.
1:27:42
>> It immediately popped like crazy.
1:27:44
>> Did >> uh but and and people were like, "Oh, you're leaving a lot of money on the table."
1:27:49
But >> uh they they never had an intention of they wanted to price the business fairly.
1:27:54
So of course people that invested preipo in that preipo round right or or as part of the IPO benefited a lot but uh again I I would there is very real possibility that they like Elon wants to sell the incremental 30 raised the 30 billion at >> one and a half and I could see there being that much demand. >> Yeah.
1:28:18
I mean, I I I wonder if you're if you're, you know, an investor who's who's supposed to potentially come in as permanent capital, stay with stay as an investor for a very long time, even in the public markets.
1:28:27
Um, if you come in at a lower cost basis, even if the stock moons and then round trips, you're like, "Okay, well, like I'm still kind of where I was. I'm not day trading it.
1:28:34
I'm my point is to like hold this company, not trade it, own it, not trade it."
1:28:39
And so I could imagine a situation where um where where going out at a logical price even if you miss the pop and then and then round trip um could be good for keeping those types of investors on board.
1:28:54
>> I just don't think people are prepared for it to price at one a half trillion and go to three on the day of the IPO.
1:29:01
>> That would be very very crazy. But it could happen.
1:29:04
I mean anything could happen with Elon.
1:29:05
It's you know he's a he's a Joe Rogan CEO. He's a JRC. >> That's right.
1:29:09
Uh um this was a funny post from Andrew Benson.
1:29:12
He says, "Peter Teal will personally make 42 billion from the SpaceX IPO at a$1. 5 trillion valuation.
1:29:20
What a recovery from the mistake of exiting Facebook early."
1:29:25
Betty never uh Betty never >> he was down to his last like 20k, I think. Maybe.
1:29:30
>> I think [laughter] so. >> I think so.
1:29:31
I've never seen I've never seen PT do a money spread.
1:29:33
I've never seen him wearing Rick Owens. >> No.
1:29:38
>> I've never seen an RM on the wrist. ever.
1:29:40
>> Never spotted in chrome hearts. >> Never.
1:29:43
>> So, how do we know that he's not down to his last 20 grand?
1:29:46
>> He doesn't have spinners on his car. >> True.
1:29:49
>> He doesn't have his his his wheels stop when he stops. They don't keep rolling. It's ridiculous.
1:29:56
>> So, it's really hard to clock.
1:29:57
>> He doesn't have hydraulics on his car.
1:29:59
[laughter] Hydraulics would be a good one.
1:29:59
You got to get hydraulics on your car. That's a lead.
1:30:03
And and 212s in the back.
1:30:03
You got to get subwoofers. Uh mod your car.
1:30:09
That's that's what real power is.
1:30:09
Um, >> should we talk about venture?
1:30:13
>> FF2 holds 10% of SpaceX.
1:30:13
PT funded 10% of that carry of 20% assuming that in the early days he was entitled to all of it.
1:30:22
Uh, I I have no idea if this math is accurate, but it is uh it's it's going to be a remarkable result.
1:30:26
Um, probably one of the greatest uh one of the greatest investments of all time, certainly in the venture world.
1:30:34
It also will be interesting because uh this will be the second this will be the second trillion dollar early stage investment for PT and there aren't that many funds that have done any like if you remember the holy trinity calculation was uh have you done the first institutional round into a mag seven company and it was just Kleiner founders fund and sequoia that fit that criteria.
1:31:01
criteria. uh if you take it to you need >> the other thing is companies were just going so much they were going public so much earlier so it's not like they just stayed private and let >> so I'm just saying if you actually the same amount of time
1:31:15
>> yeah yeah I I I don't knock that at all because like a lot of the Sequoia guys did hold the Nvidia shares right um even though they were distributed I still count it as one of the big wins um but uh this yeah >> says never seen him with a grill either >> there We go. That's a great point. No That's a great point. No grill is crazy.
1:31:34
When you have that amount of money, you got to get a grill. Get it iced out.
1:31:38
Um, did you see this venture capital compensation in the United States? DD Doss.
1:31:43
DD Doss has been in some hot water lately because he's taking shots at OpenAI.
1:31:47
Uh, lot of lot of Open AI folks.
1:31:51
[laughter] >> Well, he was right in the center of the whole Klein.
1:31:54
>> Oh, that was also dramatic.
1:31:54
But, you know, we're back we're back on the top spiral stuff.
1:31:59
He he likes being in Hawaii.
1:32:01
>> I mean, he did not stop posting.
1:32:01
So, uh, VC compensation by fund size.
1:32:03
So, this is a chart that shows what level are you at and how big is your fund?
1:32:09
And so, if you have a sub$50 million fund, even if you're the GP, you're probably only making 200K.
1:32:17
But if you're at a $3 billion fund, you might be making $1. 2 million in salary. And so, I had some car.
1:32:24
This is why these these uh smaller solo GP funds, you're really in it for the glory.
1:32:30
>> It's a it's a carry game.
1:32:32
>> Um and so one of the >> really it's one of the hardest ways to make 200K a year. >> Indeed. Indeed.
1:32:38
I mean, uh some of the associates here, if you're an associate at a small fund, you might be making 150K, 170K.
1:32:44
Uh even at even at the big funds, the associates are making 238.
1:32:48
Uh the principal VP at a big fund might be making 450.
1:32:53
So, I had some recommendations for cars.
1:32:54
If you're making $153,000 a year as an associate in a small fund, you're going to take that's about $12,000 a month, $13,000 a month.
1:33:04
You're going to put that into a a leased Ferrari SF90 street. >> Okay. Okay. Great. >> Yeah.
1:33:10
You have no money left over, so you have to sleep in it.
1:33:12
But I think it's going to make a statement.
1:33:14
You're going to get that promotion.
1:33:15
When you sleep in an SF90, you can't drive a house to work. >> Yeah.
1:33:19
When you get that promotion and now you're making 250, well that's 20k a month for your lease, you're going to upgrade to a used Bugatti Veyron. >> What about taxes?
1:33:28
>> Uh we're not >> we're [laughter] not paying taxes in this model.
1:33:31
We're deferring the taxes.
1:33:33
Uh but but but I think if you pull up if you're if you're making 250.
1:33:36
So So what role do you have to do to make uh to make 250?
1:33:41
To make 250 you have to be uh where where are you?
1:33:45
you you have to get promoted to partner at a small fund or principal at a $250 million fund.
1:33:50
So, you're making 250, that's that's 200k uh that's 20K a month.
1:33:58
That's enough for the used Bugatti Veyron lease.
1:33:59
Uh that'll get you the bump up to 350 a year. That's 30K a month.
1:34:05
At this point, you're in Ferrari F40 territory. >> There you go. show.
1:34:10
>> The other thing I was going to say is you could go to the to the managing partner and say instead of a bonus this year, will you guarantee the loan on a on a Porsche ST, right?
1:34:18
Go for something really timeless.
1:34:21
[laughter] Uh and the benefit of that, assuming you live close to work, right, you're not going to be losing a lot.
1:34:25
There's not a lot of depreciation there.
1:34:27
I mean, that's that's a special car.
1:34:30
>> And so, you got to get creative here. >> Yeah.
1:34:32
The really the really crazy thing. Okay.
1:34:33
So obviously uh so so so once you once you get promoted uh you'll be making $600,000 a year. That's 50k a month.
1:34:42
That's enough for a multi-car garage.
1:34:44
You're going to get the Ferrari F40 plus plus a daily driver peri which you'll be sleeping.
1:34:50
>> Of course sleeping in it.
1:34:52
>> But of course it at that point at that point you have some you can you can finally upgrade. You're making 1. 2 mil a year.
1:34:58
You're making 100,000 a month.
1:34:58
Uh, that's enough for the Bugatti Chiron or the Pagani Huayra Roadster.
1:35:02
Um, but the interesting question is that the current market value of a McLaren F1 is $20 million.
1:35:09
And so the carrying cost to lease that is probably around $2 million a year.
1:35:15
And so if you see someone dailying an F1, you know that they are post exit.
1:35:21
They're it's truly the most they're in the carry.
1:35:26
>> You got to [clears throat] do it. Yeah. They're into the carry. They're into the carry. mode.
1:35:29
>> Um, our speaking of Ki from Linear. He's our next guest.
1:35:34
Let's bring in Ki from Linear.
1:35:36
Uh, welcome to the stream.
1:35:36
He's in the roosting room. How are you doing, Ky? Good to see you. >> What's happening? >> I'm doing well. How are you guys?
1:35:44
>> We're doing fantastic.
1:35:44
We're in the Christmas spirit.
1:35:45
Obviously, we're dressed up like Santa Claus.
1:35:47
Both Santa Claus, >> if you didn't notice. >> If you didn't notice. [laughter] >> Yeah.
1:35:51
I mean, it's it's going to look similar what you usually look like. So, notice it.
1:35:55
When do you think is the right time for companies to start getting into the Christmas spirit?
1:36:00
Because Amazon was running kind of Christmas themed ads back in October.
1:36:05
That felt a little early for us.
1:36:09
[sighs and gasps] >> Yeah.
1:36:09
I mean like I I don't really have like opinion on this on the company level.
1:36:12
Like we don't do anything about it.
1:36:15
But um I think personally like I I believe in the >> in the like after Thanksgiving it's okay to start it.
1:36:22
Um, so you can get a Christmas tree after Thanksgiving >> after Thanksg Let's hear it for another respectctor of after I said the exact same thing earlier.
1:36:30
>> Everyone says this, but uh there's clearly been a uh a sort of erosion and and every day every year, one day earlier, and now they're running Christmas ads in October. It's an outrage.
1:36:40
Um but anyway, um we're not here to talk about Christmas anymore.
1:36:45
We're here to talk about design.
1:36:45
We're here to talk about um your essay. Design is search.
1:36:50
I would love for you to just kick us off with like the inspiration behind the essay, why you felt the need to set the record straight on this particular topic, and then we can go into some of the actual uh the actual thesis and hopefully bat around some different ideas around it. >> Yeah.
1:37:10
Um yeah, I think this whole like debate on Twitter or on X started like on on Friday.
1:37:15
on on Friday. I was just sitting on the couch and and in the midnight and thinking about this that this is probably like I don't know the 10th time I've seen a company launch this like design to code tools or code in design or like design and code kind of tools and >> I I think it's like people always kind
1:37:33
of see that that's kind of like the final form of design like now we can finally design in the actual medium like actually in the code >> and I think it's there's definitely like some benefits to that and like it it is a great tool but I always think like design is Not just the tools, it's it's like broader than the tools. And in a
1:37:47
And in a designer's toolkit, you always have many tools and then depending what you're designing and like what this like what is the environment like who we're designing for, what's the domain, what's the product, you you use different tools.
1:38:01
So I think like it's not like that clearcut that like like designing in code is the best way to do design.
1:38:06
So I kind of like wanted to like highlight that there's some like challenges with this.
1:38:11
And what I started with was that the I think that what also happened to me in the past like when I was designing and building front ends for apps.
1:38:18
Um I [clears throat] what I what often like start feeling happening to me is that like I I become less idealistic or I become more conservative because like I know that like whatever I design I also have to build.
1:38:32
So there's like already like you start hesitate yourself or like you don't believe um you can actually build certain things because like you you start to kind of collapse the design and build more too much.
1:38:42
Um but I think like also like if you are designing against an existing code base I think it's also introduces like additional bias where it's like the code base is like is this kind of collection of um decisions and architecture and layers and and and product features that have been built over the years or over the months and you are now kind of like trying to fit something new into that.
1:39:08
So like the natural tendency there is to like fit something that fits and like kind of like any kind of new or alien idea can kind of like feel like it doesn't fit and doesn't feel like a good idea.
1:39:19
So like you are too much reflecting the design against the state of the world versus like thinking about design more in abstract like what the world could be.
1:39:28
>> It's like an art artificial constraint. >> Yeah.
1:39:31
I mean it's it's not Yeah.
1:39:31
I don't know if it's an artificial constraint but it's a constraints what arrives too early.
1:39:36
So like eventually any design has to be like manufactured or coded or something like made it real like design is not real.
1:39:44
It's like it's an idea or like a concept or like it's it's something but it's it's not something people use.
1:39:50
So I think it's eventually you have to deal with the constraints similar like architects has to deal with their constraints like how does the building like uh how can we build this building?
1:40:02
How can we staying under budget or how do we make sure the materials how much usable land do we have that kind of >> Yeah.
1:40:09
But it's like I think like lot of science architects still don't start from the constraints like they might acknowledge the constraints but then they go to start sketching something what they want to see. >> Yeah.
1:40:19
>> So I just want wanted to highlight that like every tool has certain certain kind of strengths and weaknesses weaknesses and like if you're not mindful you kind of like they can influence you your thinking a lot.
1:40:30
thinking a lot. So what I worry about is that like if we start thinking design is about coding then I think we lose something like we lose that like space to think more broadly or kind of without those constraints and we jump into like let's build this solution and that was
1:40:47
kind of like the I think like some of people were pushing back on this essay or this ideas I was I was talking about that well now the design can be better because we can build it better and the quality can be better but again this kind of proves proves my point. It's
1:41:00
It's like I don't think that uh I think construction and execution is different from designing and I actually think that while it can help to construct the design better like does it really make the design better?
1:41:13
So I'm like still like looking for that like how do these tools actually make the design process better?
1:41:19
Like how do we make better things with these tools versus like we just execute them faster? >> Yeah.
1:41:25
Is your is your view that like doing design within code is something that should uh effectively happen at a refinement stage where maybe you have a process of like planning how you want to build a product or a feature and then you know you think really deeply about how you want to do it.
1:41:40
how you want to do it. You make a bunch of decisions based on your intuition and what you know about the customers and how the thing should work and then you build it and then at a certain point you're able to make like more kind of
1:41:51
like microlevel changes to it when you've already you've already done all the work of the kind of like heavy planning and and being really thoughtful about something versus I don't know I I would be I'd be worried if if um uh you
1:42:05
know somebody was like um building me a house and they just came to the land and they threw up like a box like a frame and then they started just kind of like okay we're going to add a door over here and oh we actually have to add like some
1:42:17
pipes under here so let's like dig under there uh and like you you want when you're trying to build things that are high quality and great I think like that uh that like pre-planning process and doing things in the right order matters a lot. So I feel like with these new
1:42:32
So I feel like with these new tools you have to be thinking about where do you actually like slot in that where do you slot into the tool to the overall process. >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:42:42
>> Yeah. Yeah. I think like I think these new tools can can help to blend this like so I think in the past I think there's more like this like I don't know the way things operate is much more much more that there's a design and then
1:42:54
there's a handoff then there's a engineering and then nothing crosses this border and I think that's a bad way to do as well and I think it there should be this blended mode where I like to think that design is kind of essentially like two phases like you
1:43:09
have a conceptual design so you're kind of like trying to understand the problem and then you're trying to explore multiple directions how to solve that problem and like I always tell my designers to do that like even if you know the solution you should still explore something else because like
1:43:25
maybe you find something better or like sometimes you should even explore bad ideas because sometimes the bad ideas show sometimes bad ideas actually turn out to be good ideas and then sometimes bad ideas can show why the the other ideas are good. So I think like there's
1:43:37
So I think like there's this stage where what what my essay was about was like design is a search.
1:43:43
So you you're searching for the direction and like you're searching for the concept.
1:43:48
You're kind of like removed from the execution stage of actually making it work.
1:43:52
So the conceptual design is like it's kind of like cars car industry has a concept cars like those cars are not in production yet and like they never will be but it's an idea what the car could be and like car industry never like seems like they never take anything from those concept cars [laughter] but but they could >> we took the handle we took the handle from the passenger door. >> Yeah.
1:44:15
>> Yeah. we made this crazy Gullwing super fast crazy crazy car and it's like yeah the lights >> so that that's kind of like the idea is like there's a concept that is cool and we should try to execute it but like I don't know what happens in the car industry they just kind of like can't do
1:44:29
it but I think like in a software you can do it and then there's the execution design where you like how do we actually make this work well in this context of the application or fix the like fix the problems we we didn't think about in a concept like the edge cases or performance or just like we get user feedback, we make some fixes. So at that
1:44:48
So at that stage I think the coding tools can be really useful because like you are iterating on the you're refining the the the kind of like the design but you had first this other stage where you kind of like thought about it like more like I don't know not exactly first principles way but like you started from like kind of like a pure problem or an idea and then you like created some concept that you think is worth like um executing on. >> Yeah.
1:45:16
Uh, how do you think about like it feels like so much of what AI is great is maybe I mean AI is pretty good at like search but I still feel like we probably agree that there's elements that are lacking around inspiration and and and design is certainly not a solved problem from an AI perspective but uh a lot of times translation is more or less solved.
1:45:39
So uh what stuck out to me was in your essay you you noted that a lot of architects will start by sketching with like pencil and paper and we are in the area the era of like you could sketch it and maybe you have to come up with the brilliant idea or the brilliant beautiful design but then you can just take a picture of that sometimes and get a floor plan out of it potentially.
1:46:00
Um, but do you think that something's lost there or do you think that like text like like are these all going to be lossy and so you want to avoid like text to image to code uh and you want to be able to like dip in at every single level?
1:46:18
Like how do you think about the different translation modes because some of them are really helpful like at the end of the day some of them are just autocomplete and that's amazing. Mhm. Yeah.
1:46:28
I I feel like there could be always something lost.
1:46:30
Like I think like when you actually if you draw something and then you try to like draw it again for example, you you kind of like even if you just took the sketch and then draw it again on a paper, you probably like start noticing different things like you start thinking about the problem like slightly like >> different way.
1:46:47
So I think like what the AI is kind of like always doing is kind of like it's shortcutting you to the output without actually you yourself going through the process.
1:46:56
So I think like something always gets lost there.
1:46:58
I think again and I don't think it's like necessarily a bad thing.
1:47:01
You can just like take a sketch and generate an idea and like you see it in a different way and that can be good too but I think there's that that problem and yeah like some of the comments I got that's like well now the AI is so good so you don't even have to code.
1:47:16
So it's like you just describe what you want and the AI kind of like creates it for you.
1:47:20
But then now you're kind of like adding another another layer of influence there.
1:47:24
It's like the AI is like kind of influencing the output like and the LLMs are kind of like >> statistic models whereas they're like always like looking for the correct like kind of like statistically correct answer.
1:47:38
They're not looking for the like necessarily the unique answer or your best best answer for you personally or for this like context or something.
1:47:44
So like you there there can be this danger of like everyone starts to average towards the means or the the the the kind of like the the common standard patterns or standard practices.
1:47:56
Um again like I think it's fine to use AI but it's just like kind of like you have to understand like what are you giving out or what is the tradeoff >> and like if we were trying to do something about it or are you okay with it the mdash of code?
1:48:09
Well, one one interesting example earlier in the show we were talking about uh where's Waldo.
1:48:15
We we use like Waldo bench.
1:48:15
So, we'll test like a new image model by just making like a Where's Waldo illustration >> and like none of the models can do it yet.
1:48:24
It's like really complicated.
1:48:24
They can make it visually look like it's perfect, at least from far away.
1:48:28
And then you zoom in and it's like chaotic and there's no story happening around the page.
1:48:33
And maybe Waldo is just not even on the page.
1:48:35
Like it's the ultimate where's Waldo? He just bounced.
1:48:37
Um, but we looked back at the history and the the original illustrators, this guy Martin, and he would spend like eight weeks on to make like a full spread, right?
1:48:47
And you could imagine uh I mean part of that was just like hand illustrating everything, but it's also like planning out like what is the story line and what is the experience of like being in this page and like what is the experience of finding Waldo, right?
1:48:58
And I feel like that is the that is still the thing that is ultimately going to give products edge and make products have that craft is when you know that a team that's building software could have oneshotted like a dashboard and got it like to to to the point where it's like it's functionally a dashboard.
1:49:18
Like we can functionally make a where's Waldo illustration that you can go on the page and search for where's Waldo, but is it like an enjoyable is it an enjoyable experience?
1:49:26
Like right now we're not seeing AI that like maybe that you could find the right prompts, but right now you're not doing you're not oneshotting an illustration like this and and it is still something you have to put an immense amount of like thought and planning into and and uh try things and and revert them things like that. >> Yeah.
1:49:45
>> Yeah. And I think there's different modes like I think you can use AI like creative ways of like generating a lot of output or different ideas but I think it's it's like yeah there's always like you now have this influence of the AI model like what is it what how it does how it creates those outputs and like decides things and then you have the tool that is doing like the code base versus like you're kind of directly
1:50:07
working on a sketch or a screen where there's like very little like influence like what what can be do how the design can be the the other reason like I like why I even like talked about this like like I didn't I don't I don't have any
1:50:21
tool to sell here like I don't have a design tool to sell but it's it's more like I worry about the if we start to like kind of see design as coding then or like start to see design as construction that we like already like
1:50:37
there's like the incentives to ship things fast is so strong that we start to see that oh like now we don't need to design because we can just build it and we can designers are going to like design and build it and then I think we start losing the the other phases where can we just think about the problem like can we think about the concepts like how could this be work really nicely um and then like I think we it's like very like
1:51:06
in like it's very exciting idea for companies or founders or someone like I don't have to think about design anymore it just like happens with the when we build And I think it's it's it's maybe like a good for the business, but I
1:51:18
think it's just like not good for the world or like good to get like my my kind of like motivation with linear and like talking about some of this stuff is always that like can we just have nicer things in the world? Can we like spend
1:51:28
Can we like spend more time on the craft and quality and and like value it again even if it's not like something that can be measured?
1:51:36
And I think the Silicon Valley and like technology companies always had trouble with this.
1:51:42
It's like it's hard to like value something that is not quantum available like easily.
1:51:46
It's it's like >> it's if there's no data for it then it's doesn't exist and like good design is something sometimes like it's it cannot be measured.
1:51:55
So, so I think like this again like shipping speed and and like how many things you ship can be measured, but like if someone makes a design really good, it's like it's hard to like um it's hard to measure that and and then designing things or like sketching things can be seen as unproductive because it's not directly um contributing to the shipping speed or shipping more things. Mhm.
1:52:22
>> What's your philosophy on uh story story storytelling?
1:52:25
Is is Matt your storyteller? Do you like that word? >> Yeah.
1:52:33
I mean I I like it because like I think I don't know what happened to marketing but I think marketing kind of like lost the lost the story [laughter] uh or lost the plot there at some point.
1:52:43
>> It became very quantitative.
1:52:43
It like it became more mathematical like just buy the ads and run all the AB tests and all.
1:52:50
It became more of a science and so the art needed a new brand maybe.
1:52:56
>> Yeah, that makes sense.
1:52:56
>> And like I would I would kind of like think like storytelling is kind of like I think it the same way as I think the brand.
1:53:03
I think the brand and storytelling is maybe like the same thing.
1:53:06
It's like so I and like to me brand is something just that you have a belief or like some kind of worldview and you like and you have some values or things you stand for like we always had that and planer and like that's kind of like from the place I always articulate my things.
1:53:23
It's like I try to like keep true to that brand is like can we have nicer things or quality things or or something and so the brand or the storytelling is not never about the like again about the output.
1:53:34
It's actually like it's like a deeper thing.
1:53:36
It's like do you believe in something and then I think the storytelling of the brand is just like how do you express that belief?
1:53:44
So anyone like people can't read your mind.
1:53:47
So you have to like either tell stories or you have to >> show visuals or videos or something.
1:53:50
So how do you express your beliefs?
1:53:55
>> So the problem when people are looking for storytellers is that like again like do you have the story to tell like do you believe in anything and like is that If you believe in something, is it like engaging?
1:54:07
Like do we people do people want to hear that story?
1:54:09
So hiring a storyteller doesn't help if you don't have this like a good story or like engaging story to sell. >> Yeah.
1:54:15
And someone in the chat noticed you guys are hiring a writer, which is something I was pushing for.
1:54:18
Like if I wanted to hire a storyteller, I would wanna personally I'd want to hire somebody that is very good at writing and wants to come in and write a lot and like enjoys the craft of writing and not somebody that wants like a like a pretty title that like sounds cool but then ultimately just wants to collaborate crossf functionally across the org or whatever it is.
1:54:42
Um, last question I have.
1:54:44
What are your thoughts on holiday gimmicks in products?
1:54:47
I got into my car this morning and on my profile, >> it had a a Santa hat on it and I I got I got some enjoyment out of it.
1:54:56
It had some cobwebs for for Halloween, too. >> Really?
1:55:01
>> Um but uh is that cheapen a product?
1:55:01
It feels like something that uh >> I don't I don't know which way you're going to go.
1:55:09
>> Yeah, I would think about it like again like from the point of brand is like does it like fit the brand?
1:55:12
does it like fit the brand? Like I think we we haven't done those things because we kind of like linear kind of the brand is more that it's like a serious tool for work and it's it's I think some of those kind of things can can kind of feel like off and like I don't know like for example it's always like these
1:55:29
situations where I don't know like a company is using linear and then something goes down like their service goes down like their the whole company is like scrambling and then suddenly some Santa hat appears and everyone's like what is this thing it's like we we have like like our product or like customer base is on fire and like there's some Santa has flying around. [laughter] So it's it's like it can be
1:55:50
[laughter] So it's it's like it can be distracting and so I think it's kind of depends on your brand and like how critical like infrastructure you are and where do you put these things.
1:55:58
I think it's it can be fun thing for the team to do Easter eggs like we do Easter eggs that are hidden.
1:56:04
So there there's like you can there's games you can there's an arcade you can enter in linear and then then there's like old arcade games you can play but you know you don't find them like you have to really find them to like you need to find the Easter egg to access it.
1:56:20
>> So there's like these kind of things that you make secrets but um but yeah I don't personally like the like putting the decorations on your face and in like professional tools.
1:56:31
>> Yeah, makes total sense.
1:56:31
Well, uh, great having you on and, uh, yeah, we'll save the Santa hats for the podcasters. >> Yeah, >> thanks. >> Thanks. Great. Good to see you.
1:56:43
>> Um, we went, uh, yeah, thank you.
1:56:43
We we'll talk to you soon. Merry Christmas. Um, we went way over.
1:56:48
So, we are going to skip uh, Prrenav Mayana and get him on the show tomorrow. Great.
1:56:53
Uh, instead, we will be joined by uh, Mike at Liquid Death at 100 PM.
1:56:58
Um and we will catch up with the space data center debate.
1:57:04
Prennav [music] of course uh built a first principles model on uh the economics of data centers on earth and data centers in space.
1:57:11
Uh I'm really enjoying the way the space [music] data center debate has evolved.
1:57:15
We are now vibe coding full applications to get to the bottom of uh the economics of these uh the the decisions and uh people on it.
1:57:27
>> Santa came early for light speeded this year. Yes, that's right.
1:57:30
>> We have 9 billion in new capital for a new family of funds.
1:57:34
>> Bring the gong >> their largest raise in 25 years.
1:57:38
>> AI is rewriting the rules for backing the founders building next.
1:57:43
Congratulations to light speeded guest Aaron Michael >> and all of the folks over there >> hanging out with you guys. Um interesting.
1:57:52
Hey, we I mean we saw that chart of like the new venture funds raised really falling off a cliff.
1:57:59
>> Something like 50 billion to date.
1:58:00
>> This feels like a huge chunk of it potentially.
1:58:03
>> That chart was already getting debated or >> Yeah, potentially.
1:58:07
>> Maybe maybe stuff been reclassified like it's possible that this 9 billion will some of it's in a growth fund reclassified it or something like that.
1:58:14
Wait, do do you have more context there on that one? No.
1:58:16
Okay, let me tell you about wander. com.
1:58:18
Book a wander with inspiring views, hotel grade amenities, dreamy beds, top tier cleaning, and 24/7 concier service.
1:58:23
It's a vacation home, but better folks.
1:58:25
Um, Pavle Praa says, "Look at Haystack Ventures Fund Three. It was 8. 2 million fund."
1:58:36
>> Uh, Sea >> Seml, >> former guest on the show, >> bought three decacorns. Wow.
1:58:41
>> Invested early in Door Dash. >> Sentacorn. >> Senticorn. >> Centacorn alert. Figma. >> Yeah.
1:58:46
Figma, >> public company, Instacart, 12 billion, Carta.
1:58:51
>> Well, he did Instacart and Door Dash.
1:58:53
That's that that's interesting.
1:58:53
You'd think that that would be uh like a little bit of like, hey, what are you what are you doing investing in a competitor, >> but it was restaurant delivery versus grocery >> grocery, which is different.
1:59:02
Yeah, I guess it's different. Yeah.
1:59:04
>> Uh Hashi Corp, >> Carta Open, >> 7 billion, open door, 6 billion.
1:59:09
>> Best solo GP fund in history. Best fund solo though.
1:59:13
I >> a says applied intuition was also in this fund currently at a 15 billion.
1:59:19
>> Wow, that's very very impressive.
1:59:19
Well, congrats to sever >> legend.
1:59:24
We got to have him back on the show.
1:59:29
I'm liking the gong today. Not warmed up.
1:59:31
Still has a nice little ring to it.
1:59:34
>> Kind of a wild ring to it.
1:59:34
Uh Harry Stebing says, "Venture investors are going through an existential crisis.
1:59:37
If you are not in OpenAI, an entropic cursor mour etc etc.
1:59:41
you you do not freaking matter.
1:59:46
>> Uh and we were with somebody yesterday for dinner and they were in OpenAI and Anthropic in they were doing fine >> back in back in 20 early 2023.
1:59:57
>> He was feeling pretty good.
1:59:57
I I I I do I do know some VCs that have been early to the category but missed all of those and it is a hard story to tell.
2:00:07
Uh you know to bring it back to storytelling if you're if you're a VC right now and you're and you haven't done anything like that.
2:00:16
Um at the same time um I I I if you're if you're early early stage if you're early stage um it it doesn't seem that crazy.
2:00:25
there are only so many people that could be in these firms really really early.
2:00:28
Um, but if you're if you're a growth investor, I mean, we've we we've seen many growth funds that are in both anthropic and open AI, which is like typically a no no, but they they figured out how to do it.
2:00:42
>> Um, >> well, why don't you and Tyler read this post from Dee? I will. >> I'll be right back.
2:00:47
So, DD Doss says, "A few software engineers at some of the best tech companies told me this week, my entire job these days is prompting cursor or clawed code with Opus 4.
2:00:58
5 to do what I need and then sanity checking it." Tyler, do you agree?
2:01:04
Is that this is the new life of a software engineer?
2:01:10
Um, I mean, yeah, kind of like FOD code is like really good and and I mean also Codeex, the the Gemini CLI, basically all they're all like very similar.
2:01:18
>> Um, but that form factor is like really really good.
2:01:20
I find it to be >> he says we've crossed some intangible threshold of AI generalizing to most software. Uh, Opus 4.
2:01:26
5 is the is my is the first model that makes me actually fear for my job.
2:01:30
All models so far were okayish at best. Opus 4.
2:01:33
5 really is something else.
2:01:36
People who haven't tried it yet do not know what's coming for us in the next two to three years.
2:01:40
Hell, even next year might be the final turning point already.
2:01:44
I don't know how to adapt from here on.
2:01:46
Sure, I can watch Opus do my work all day long and make sure I to intervene if it fs up here or there, but how long will it be until it's not even until I'm not even needed anymore? Um, yeah.
2:02:00
Yeah, I mean I uh is the do do you think there's any sort of like overweight here on the type of like you know vibe coding small apps new features like in are you are you hearing about uh big like like big hairy code bases things that need to be very uh you know fault tolerant where um it's not just throwaway software still >> yeah I mean I think you know he says uh you know he still has to intervene if it messes Yeah.
2:02:33
>> Um, which I think is like that's extremely valuable.
2:02:35
Like you need someone to do that.
2:02:36
It's like it's like the law firm thing where people talk about you can't just replace everyone with AI because so much of like a law firm is like you need to have them be accountable. >> Yeah.
2:02:44
>> Um where I think it's very similar with engineers.
2:02:47
>> Uh I also think like a lot of the stuff I do is like kind of fairly like low risk.
2:02:52
Like it's not super important if it messes up a little bit.
2:02:55
>> So there I can like really models.
2:02:58
[laughter] Well, it's it's not going to bring down like a nation state or it's not like important government data or whatever. Yeah.
2:03:02
Um so if it if it's like not super efficient or stuff like this, it's like not that big of a deal. Yeah.
2:03:08
>> Where I I think it's still >> it's much harder like I I often find that um if I if I'm trying to like completely oneshot a project >> um and then I keep iterating on it, a lot of times I have to do some sort of like architecture rework because it just like doesn't make sense.
2:03:20
If you really want to keep scaling it. >> Yeah.
2:03:22
where the tech debt then you can use the model to do the to fix the tech debt, but it's still it's kind of like not as smooth as you would really like ideally want it to be. >> Yeah. Um interesting. Anyway, eight sleep.
2:03:34
Maybe you just hit clog code and then you go to sleep, >> take a nap on a sleep, exceptional sleep without exception.
2:03:39
Fall asleep faster, sleep deeper, and wake up energized.
2:03:41
Um >> eight sleep should really make overnight success into a campaign. >> That would be good.
2:03:48
That's a great tagline for them. Overnight success. I like it.
2:03:52
Uh, what most discussions of AGI feel like nowadays, says ROA.
2:03:54
Cars have windows and can move.
2:03:57
Houses have windows and can't move.
2:03:59
So, it's not the windows that make the car [laughter] go.
2:04:04
It's something else entirely. Wow.
2:04:08
Yeah, that's a good point. It's not the car.
2:04:11
It's not the windows that make the car go.
2:04:13
It's something else entirely. What a great post. >> PJ cooked.
2:04:17
>> PJ cooked with this one. It's fantastic.
2:04:21
Uh what is what is this long post? >> Crazy image.
2:04:25
>> That is a crazy image.
2:04:25
Uh Martin Skrey shared some uh clearly a screenshot of a of a spreadsheet.
2:04:31
I don't know how accurate this data is, but he's he's pulling minutes spent on AI sites last month alone.
2:04:39
64% were on Chad GPT, 15% on Gemini.
2:04:43
Deepseek and Grock are the only two on a trajectory to come even close. Grock uh grock.
2:04:47
com is only at 3% of the total uh of these users that were on web but it's growing very fast. Deepseek.
2:04:57
com is the same thing 3% but growing very fast whereas some of the other ones are shrinking.
2:05:03
Uh in interesting to see yeah Perplexity is at 2% um clawed AI is at two at 2%.
2:05:08
Some of these have uh they vend themselves into other systems and also these are of course websites.
2:05:18
So you know appbased LLMs are not going to be quite captured here but you know continues to tell the story that um that um you know GBPT is still the dominant consumer platform for uh for just hopping on an LLM and answering some questions.
2:05:37
Um, anyway, let me tell you about adquick. com.
2:05:40
Out ofome advertising made easy and measurable.
2:05:43
Plan, buy, and measure out of home with precision.
2:05:45
Our next guest, Mike from Liquid Death, is in the ream waiting room.
2:05:50
Let's bring him into the TVPN Ultra Dome.
2:05:54
>> What's happening, >> Mike? How you doing? >> Great. >> Welcome to the show.
2:05:57
What's new in your world?
2:05:59
>> You didn't get the memo. >> What memo? Oh, no.
2:06:00
He's not wearing [laughter] He's not wearing a Santa.
2:06:03
>> Yeah, we're the only ones wearing Santa suits today, >> but we are feeling the holiday spirit. Merry Christmas. >> Merry Christmas. >> Yeah. Um, welcome to the show.
2:06:13
Uh, first time on the show.
2:06:16
There's a ton of stuff I want to talk about about marketing and launching this business and how comedy scales, but maybe can you just take us back and really quickly give us the intro on the actual launch?
2:06:27
I feel like is it fair to say that Liquid Death had like a viral launch video strategy?
2:06:32
Was that the cornerstone of the launch or were there other pieces that were at play in the early days?
2:06:42
>> Um, well, the way we launched Liquid Death was actually a bit different.
2:06:45
So, when I had the idea, it it was a little bit too crazy to most people to find investment to make it.
2:06:53
So, I basically created a Facebook page and we made it seem like a real brand just to see like what kind of traction did it get in the world if people thought this was a real thing.
2:07:06
>> Then we shot a cheap commercial for the product that didn't exist yet.
2:07:10
And the we probably spent 1,500 bucks to to shoot the commercial.
2:07:14
And, you know, we put a little bit of paid media behind the video, maybe like a few thousand dollars.
2:07:21
And then after five months, the video had three million views.
2:07:26
The Facebook page had, you know, 60 70,000 followers, which was more than Aquafina had on Facebook at the time.
2:07:34
>> So then I used all that kind of >> market traction to then go raise like a small >> I'm so surprised that that more CPG brands don't do that.
2:07:43
Like it takes so long to make even a like like if somebody's making a drink like this, right?
2:07:49
If they actually start working hard on it today, they might have something close to a product that they can sell in six six to 12 months, something in that range to like really go through rapid iteration and getting it made and scaling up production and testing and all that stuff when you could just actually make an image of something like this and just like start running ads against it and see like do people care at all?
2:08:09
Do they click through at a good rate even with ads that aren't super refined?
2:08:12
Uh I did that once on a project in uh in college.
2:08:15
I had the idea I was shooting a lot of film photos and I was super frustrated.
2:08:23
It was like a 30 minute drive to the place you drop off film and so I wanted to make like basically like kind of Netflix model for film so you could just like get send a roll of film, send it back once you were shot it and I was shocked.
2:08:35
I just ran ads against it and uh I had like immediately like a $10 like customer acquisition cost.
2:08:41
Of course I didn't actually have the service set up so I just refunded everyone immediately.
2:08:46
But it it's so much easier to validate stuff and I think people waste so much time and when you're in that sort of like pre-ro pre-product in CPG is just like the death zone.
2:08:55
Like it's just so hard to get people to care and like actually risk capital when it's like you don't even have a product that I can like sample and you want me to give you like $100,000 or 250k.
2:09:04
It's just it's a big ask >> completely and it's something I hear from people you know who are aspiring entrepreneurs or or have an idea.
2:09:14
I think there's just like a general sense that, oh, I have this great idea for something.
2:09:21
How do I now go raise money?
2:09:24
>> Well, the reality is investors like to invest in businesses, not ideas.
2:09:26
So, how can you start in some way to prove out that there might be some traction, however, you might be able to do that.
2:09:38
And that's going to get you a lot further than just saying, "Hey, I have this great idea.
2:09:42
You know, give me some money."
2:09:44
So far >> the first uh so so that video that you described was that the animated video or that animated video happened later.
2:09:51
Can you take me through like how like the the I mean I imagine that cost more than $1,500 to produce that.
2:09:58
What was the story behind picking animation?
2:10:01
I feel like a lot of brands were doing sort of like the founder testimonial direct to camera.
2:10:08
you tell the vision of the business or you know you go on a podcast tour and and Liquid Death came out with that really aggressive uh animated style.
2:10:17
What was the story behind that particular video?
2:10:21
>> Yeah, I mean with most most businesses I think you need to look at where are your strengths, what is your network, what are your connections and utilizing what you have near you to the best of your advantage.
2:10:33
So, you know, another way [clears throat] put is play the hand of cards that you have. >> Yeah. >> That's unique to you.
2:10:40
>> So, for me, [clears throat] you know, I was a big fan of this animated TV show on Adult Swim called Mr. Pickles.
2:10:47
It's this bizarre acid trip >> of a violently funny cartoon.
2:10:51
And I ended up reaching out to uh the guy who was the creator of it.
2:10:58
Um there was two creators. He was one of the two.
2:11:00
and in the early days of Liquid Death saying, "Hey, I'm a huge fan of your show.
2:11:04
I feel like we have similar creative sensibilities.
2:11:08
Maybe you'd want to be involved in this Liquid Death thing I'm trying to get going."
2:11:11
And sure enough, he responded. We met.
2:11:13
We got along really well.
2:11:15
And he's actually the one who drew the skull that is the logo on all of our cans to this date.
2:11:22
And then once the we actually got the brand off the ground and we had real product and we were selling and we were making, you know, real revenue, we had slightly bigger marketing budgets, you know, we were able to use the the animation firm that he was working on his TV show with and they said, "Hey, we'll do this for super cheap because Will's already here.
2:11:46
>> He could just do this on the side and you know, we can we can make it happen."
2:11:50
So animation is very expensive.
2:11:50
Like >> you know 30 seconds or 40 seconds of animation is very expensive but we were able to get I think we spent all in like >> 30k on that but that should have costed probably a4 million dollars if you >> were just trying to go do that normally minimum.
2:12:08
>> Um so yeah I was kind of like that that was something that was in our in our quiver and we were a big fan of it and uh we had some great resources there to make a really funny and that was always our thing.
2:12:18
How do we make something that's the funniest thing someone's gonna see? Yeah.
2:12:20
In their feed and spread it for us for free. >> Yeah.
2:12:24
I I I mean, obviously, we love comedy here.
2:12:25
You're being interviewed by two Santa Clauses.
2:12:26
Um I I'm interested to know, take me a couple years into my future.
2:12:32
Do I regret this or or or or do I lose this?
2:12:36
Um, like how does how do you maintain a level of humor while still, you know, coming to the customer and the business partners with like, hey, yeah, we're not joking around about quality assurance or something like there's a serious side of the business now.
2:12:52
There's still some humor that's still there.
2:12:53
At the same time, the marketing is probably not last minute anymore.
2:12:56
How have you thought about like scaling comedy?
2:13:00
>> No, it's it's a really great question.
2:13:01
It's something that I've had to push through multiple departments of the company, which yes, we're a funny brand in the way we market, but if you think about a brand like a person, >> like think about someone you know that's funny, like they're not funny in every scenario.
2:13:20
You don't tell them that, hey, my dad died and they crack a joke.
2:13:22
Like, >> yeah, >> people, a lot of really funny people, they just know people really well.
2:13:28
like they know how to make people laugh.
2:13:30
They know when to tone it down.
2:13:32
Like the number one rule of comedy is like know your audience.
2:13:36
>> So >> I think it's important that it's always like hey when someone sends in an email saying hey my case of liquid death from Amazon got all screwed up in the mail you don't crack a joke like act very earnest.
2:13:47
Hey >> I am so sorry about that. Like that sucks.
2:13:52
Like >> we will completely figure it out.
2:13:53
So, it's all about knowing where it's important to be, you know, real and authentic and caring and then where it's important to be funny and irreverent and that you always got to be cognizant of.
2:14:13
>> How much did you predict the death of the alcohol culture?
2:14:15
It feels like this is perfectly timed.
2:14:18
Um, we've talked to so many folks on the show about the next generation just drinking way less and it feels like you've been a beneficiary of this, but was that something where you had seen a chart and you'd actually seen a trend line or you just had a vibe or it just kind of came to you naturally or you just got lucky?
2:14:37
Like how do you frame the fact that you're selling an alternative to alcohol in a ton of bars? I see it all the time.
2:14:43
Um, at a time when people are looking for an alternative.
2:14:49
Yeah, it was a little bit luck.
2:14:49
I think the bigger conceptual drive behind Liquid Death's inception was that how do we make a truly healthy beverage company that markets more like a fun alcohol or junk food company?
2:15:07
>> Because you think about all the funny irreverent marketing over time, it's all like stickers, Cheetos, dockies, like it's beer, it's candy, it's fast food. >> Yeah.
2:15:16
My biggest criticism of of like healthy brands historically is they it's so hard to build a brand if you're not making people feel any like real emotion, right?
2:15:26
Like how many healthy brands are funny at all?
2:15:28
Like almost almost zero, right?
2:15:31
It's like toned down colors, uh like just kind of like simple straightforward copy.
2:15:37
There's not a lot of there's no energy coming through the brand.
2:15:41
So, how are you going to make somebody feel something?
2:15:42
And if you want to be remembered, you have to make somebody feel something.
2:15:48
>> Yeah, I I completely agree.
2:15:48
And I think it's also just strategically unhealthy brands like in their marketing boardrooms, they're like, we want people to associate our products with fun.
2:15:57
So everything we do is going to be centered around fun and like that we want this to be fun.
2:16:03
Um or they think about their audience like, hey, we are selling to teenagers.
2:16:08
Like this is how we want to make teenagers love us.
2:16:11
for healthy products were not ever marketing to teenagers.
2:16:14
They were marketing to 35 plus, you know, females and they would market a certain way there.
2:16:22
So, yeah, part of what I love about Liquid Death and why I wanted to do it is so many healthy companies just preach to the choir, people who already make healthy decisions.
2:16:31
How can I use a brand to get people who don't typically make healthy decisions to now every once in a while pick up a low calorie water just because they identify with the brand and they think it's cool. >> Yeah.
2:16:43
>> Um then you still get the healthy people because they're already buying in those categories.
2:16:46
But how do you start bringing new people into healthy categories who weren't there before?
2:16:51
>> What's your what's your philosophy on storytelling on on X?
2:16:53
The last 24 hours everyone has just been debating.
2:16:57
Everyone's been debating like do you need to hire a chief storyteller?
2:16:59
I took the point of view of like truly the most elite storytellers are founders, CEOs who are the ones communicating to >> customers and you know vendors and uh the media and and all that kind of thing.
2:17:14
And if you're if you're feeling like you need to hire a storyteller, it's very possible that you just don't know what story to tell.
2:17:20
But I don't know that hiring somebody off the street to to tell your story is gonna actually get you what you want, which is like a plot and, you know, meaning and and all these other things that great great stories and brands have. >> Yeah.
2:17:37
I mean, it's like storytelling is such a broad thing.
2:17:42
It's like storytelling isn't everything.
2:17:44
And as a founder specifically or if you work in sales, it's like just being able to tell a story is not just important to a consumer.
2:17:52
How do you get employees to want to follow you if you can't articulate a vision, a story that gets people excited and believing in the mission?
2:18:00
Like you're not going to be a very good leader either.
2:18:01
Um because it's it's so important.
2:18:04
So I don't know if hiring a a chief storyteller is like the equivalent of having like you know a language translator.
2:18:12
Hey storyteller, tell everybody in the company why what I say, you know, matters.
2:18:16
So, >> but I think that, you know, great CEOs have been have been successful because they're great storytellers naturally and that goes far beyond just knowing how to tell a consumer story, but how to get investors excited, how to get employees excited.
2:18:32
You got to be able to speak in a way that makes people believe. >> Yeah.
2:18:37
>> You have an you have an advertising background.
2:18:38
How do you work with ad agencies today?
2:18:41
My another thing I was, you know, kind of sharing with the audience.
2:18:47
My point of view is that more tech companies should work with traditional ad agencies to actually just like come up with like novel campaigns to try to cut through the noise.
2:18:55
I think people get too focused on we just need a pretty website like that will solve our problem or we need a nice logo and it's like spending not enough time thinking about like really clear messaging and actually thinking in campaigns like I know companies that will spend $50 million next year on marketing and they're not thinking about they're not even thinking about like what campaign what campaigns are we going to do.
2:19:23
They're just thinking about like what channels are we doing, how are we spending, who are our segments, and they're not thinking of this like kind of like throughine messaging.
2:19:28
And so I think that that's an area that traditional ad agencies, not necessarily the biggest ones in the world, but the the sort of classic ad agency uh can actually really be really helpful on. >> Yeah.
2:19:42
I think another way to think about it is thinking about all different kinds of companies, tech or what have you, thinking about more of the full funnel because when you talk about campaign, you're kind of talking about top of funnel, like more general awareness around the brand and then you've got other marketing assets further down the funnel that are focused more on converting somebody into a customer.
2:20:01
converting somebody into a customer. I think you have so much focus especially in the tech world on the lower funnel where you know hey I put this money in and then this much money comes out because of conversion but what happens is if you're not bringing in enough
2:20:18
people at the top of funnel at the brand level you don't have enough people to convert then it starts getting really expensive to convert low-level performance people because you start running out of people and it just starts getting more expensive and I think like a great example is like AI. All the LLMs
2:20:33
All the LLMs now are fairly comparable in what they can do.
2:20:40
But still, Chat GPT is by far the biggest because it's the most notable brand.
2:20:44
It's just [clears throat] the thing that people Oh, Chat GPT. It's easy to say. It's fun to say. I know that.
2:20:49
I'm just going to use that one. Look at Google.
2:20:50
How many other search engines tried to come about and just because of Google's brand and something that's emotional just made that the go-to place where nobody else could really come and and take it away.
2:21:01
And to your point, a lot of that has to come from more brand marketing and not just like nuanced performance functional marketing.
2:21:12
>> How are you thinking about the new sparkling energy drink?
2:21:14
I feel like there's there's a sort of like positive positioning.
2:21:18
Hey, we're the only ones that have this particular benefit or there's the free of strategy where everyone else has this bad thing and we don't.
2:21:27
Is that the framework you think about when you go to launch a new product?
2:21:31
What was your thesis behind getting into energy?
2:21:36
>> I mean, we've been asked about when we were going into energy since probably like year one of Liquid Dap because people just think the brand is so much more like >> it's got a lot of energy. >> It does.
2:21:46
>> It's got a [laughter] lot of energy. Yeah.
2:21:48
Um, and even it's still funny to this day, you know, in consumer research that we have, you know, we make flavored sparkling water, we make plain water, we make iced tea.
2:22:03
Like 60% of the country has heard of liquid debt.
2:22:08
>> 20% know that we make flavored sparkling water, which is our biggest actually category now. >> Oh.
2:22:14
But 19% of the country thinks we make an energy drink.
2:22:18
So literally [laughter] our biggest category has as much awareness as a category we don't even make yet. Right. >> That's crazy. Yeah.
2:22:27
>> Because the brand just sounds more like an energy drink than it sounds like a flavored sparkling water.
2:22:31
So >> totally >> the reason we got into energy was because I think we finally found a way to stay to our brand ethos, which is to truly be a better for you brand.
2:22:39
And we were able to find a way to do what we feel is a truly better for you energy drink product.
2:22:49
>> And now that the better for you segment of energy is the fastest growing within energy, the Celsiuses of the world, Alani, C4, these other brands that are low, zero sugar, low calorie, etc.
2:23:01
>> Um, it just became the right window for us to kind of offer something that really felt better for you within the category.
2:23:07
And that's a combination of things with just we thought the category was getting a little insane with the caffeine.
2:23:13
Like Celsius, Alani, all these brands are like 200 milligrams of caffeine.
2:23:17
I think the >> We started this show, by the way, John would have three Celsius in a single show. >> It was insane. So bad.
2:23:24
Now I do three Diet Cokes, which is like I think around 100 or 200 milligrams of caffeine. It's not too bad. >> Yeah.
2:23:33
I mean, most people don't think of Red Bull as a weak energy drink.
2:23:35
It's the number one selling energy drink.
2:23:37
Red Bull is 114 milligrams in a 12 oz can.
2:23:41
So a Celsius is like pounding two Red Bulls at one time.
2:23:44
>> Yeah, it's crazy, >> you know.
2:23:46
So, and I don't think a lot of people realize that.
2:23:47
And you know, the more we've talked to people, they kind of feel like, oh, I don't I stopped drinking, you know, Celsius or Lani because I don't know.
2:23:54
I I started feeling a little like cracked out. >> That's crazy.
2:23:57
You know, I just thought there was like, you know, we we thought there was like a good opportunity to come in with something that was not weak, but this just was we're calling a sane level of energy in a category that I think is starting to go a little insane.
2:24:11
>> Do you have a tagline for it?
2:24:11
Murder your sleep or something.
2:24:13
[laughter] >> Well, we actually have on the can uh it's like it's not really the tagline, but it's a small one. It says death to drowsy. >> There we go.
2:24:21
I knew it was going to be something good. Yeah.
2:24:24
>> What uh how what's the what's the go to market with energy?
2:24:27
I I can imagine uh I I uh buddy of mine is like a pro skateboarder and like in skating there's like some fatigue around the the big energy drink brands and it feels like there's room uh like energy drinks have had a big place in the industry for a long time.
2:24:46
So I can imagine there's like an athlete angle to this.
2:24:48
there's kind of campaign uh broader campaign, but how are all the different ways you're planning to really bring it to market?
2:24:57
>> It's funny, it's actually not that at all because you know, Monster and Red Bull, both companies valued like upwards of 60 billion a piece.
2:25:07
>> They've got endless checkbooks to buy athlete.
2:25:08
And that's the thing when you do sports marketing, anybody with a big enough checkbook can buy any athlete.
2:25:15
That's how they make their money, right?
2:25:17
So, if Liquid Death tries to go in and buy athletes competing with the checkbooks of Monster and Red Bull, we're never going to make enough of a dent to have it move the needle for us.
2:25:28
So, for us, like what makes Liquid Death unique is we're arguably the funniest beverage brand in the world and we're better at being funny than anybody else.
2:25:37
And big companies have a really hard time producing comedy because you go through that bureaucracy of focus groups and layers.
2:25:45
It's hard to make something legit funny the way we can and no amount of money can fix that.
2:25:50
So, we want to focus on being the only funny energy drink brand in a sea of extreme, >> right? >> I love that. I love that. Yeah, that's great. That's great. Different positioning.
2:26:03
This is uh what a great guest for today.
2:26:05
Uh thank you so much for hopping on the show.
2:26:07
We got to jump to our next guest, but uh we'd love to have you back and go way deeper.
2:26:10
This was >> No one loves advertising more than me. Maybe you do. You're very elite in it. So, thank you. It's always great.
2:26:18
>> Super fun conversation. Let's do it. Let's do it again soon.
2:26:20
>> Let's do something again soon, please.
2:26:21
>> Congrats to the whole team on the launch. >> Have a good one. >> Appreciate it. Talk to you. >> Bye.
2:26:26
>> Uh, you heard from Ki Linear.
2:26:26
Let me actually tell you about linear.
2:26:29
Linear, meet the system for modern software development.
2:26:33
Linear streams work across the entire development cycle from roadmap to release.
2:26:37
Uh, we have Elliot Cohen from General Medicine in the Reream waiting room.
2:26:42
Next is coming in previously co-founded Pill Pack.
2:26:49
>> Merry Christmas >> with friend of the show. >> What's happening? >> Merry Christmas. How are you doing? Happy Hanukkah. >> Merry Christmas.
2:26:55
Thanks for having >> holidays. Um, >> exactly.
2:26:59
>> Please, uh, since it's your first time on the show.
2:27:01
I mean, we've talked about general medicine before, but introduce yourself.
2:27:04
I'd love to get a little bit of your journey, your story, uh, and then I'm sure we can go into a ton of different uh, aspects of the healthcare industry and, uh, and and general medicine generally. >> Also, hello TJ. >> Oh, yes. >> Hope you're watching. >> Oh, yeah. I hope so, too. >> We love you.
2:27:20
Anyways, Elliot, >> he was thanks for having me on.
2:27:22
He was joking that maybe he would have actually been better for this because he's got the nice Santa beard, you know, >> he does have the Santa beard sometimes.
2:27:31
Anyway, but dress up, you know, prepared.
2:27:34
>> It's great to meet you guys.
2:27:34
Uh my name's Ellie Cohen.
2:27:36
I was one of the other founders of Pillpack along with TJ Parker.
2:27:42
>> And uh we started that business in 2013.
2:27:45
We sold it to Amazon in 2018 and then both of us stayed at Amazon. >> Success. >> Yeah. >> Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.
2:27:50
It was like, you know, a month or two and it all just worked out. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
2:27:56
Uh what's the latest at general medicine?
2:27:59
I hear you guys are ripping. Yeah.
2:28:02
>> But uh would love uh would love for you to share kind of the state of the business.
2:28:08
>> Business is doing great.
2:28:08
Uh we launched in May and since then we just been uh expanding.
2:28:13
It's available nationwide.
2:28:13
I think it's got the most insurance coverage uh of any provider group in the country.
2:28:19
And um and even if we don't take your insurance at our provider group, we can always route you to the right care locally or uh anywhere else.
2:28:26
And really we started with uh this uh sort of first touch experience.
2:28:30
We wanted to make sure it was as easy as possible to get access to uh immediate care.
2:28:36
>> And the ambition has always been to build a entry point to healthcare where you should be able to come to us for absolutely anything.
2:28:41
And what we're launching today is a new way to do that with a chat that has all of your health history in it.
2:28:47
you know, we've been watching I think probably like you guys uh people have been chatting with chatbt and Gemini and others uh about their healthcare and you know it's something like 60 or 70% of probably uh any all adult out there and what we've uh noticed though is that those chats don't go anywhere.
2:29:08
they um they aren't connected back into the rest of your care.
2:29:11
And so at general medicine, what we've been building is the ability to go from that chat straight into uh into actual care.
2:29:18
And all of it is health history aware.
2:29:20
So we import all of your records, make it really easy for you to have a conversation with them.
2:29:24
>> How are you importing records?
2:29:24
I feel like my records are all over the place.
2:29:28
Sometimes the doctor just hands me a piece of paper, I lose it. Sometimes it's an email.
2:29:31
Sometimes there's a web form or web portal that I have access to.
2:29:35
Sometimes I went and used some oneoff like you know internet product that I signed up for did some labs have some data over there. It feels very messy.
2:29:43
I understand that AI could do cool stuff with it but I feel like I will be very lazy about actually centralizing all the data in my life since it's not ordered.
2:29:53
>> You need an agent that goes and finds every >> Yeah. Yeah. Maybe.
2:29:56
But but how do you see actually the the the the most important pieces of health information pulling those in?
2:30:03
What's the workflow like?
2:30:05
How does the How does the user actually experience this?
2:30:09
>> We um we have a bunch of elves and uh you tell us.
2:30:12
Yeah, they just right out there.
2:30:16
>> He's going [laughter] to be the gong for the elves.
2:30:20
[applause] >> We completely lost him on the camera, too.
2:30:26
You dodged him completely. >> Where am I? Here I am. >> There we go. [laughter] >> Okay.
2:30:31
>> Okay. uh you know that that's the I think we've been willing to wrestle with the complexity of healthare you know that that's the difference of being willing to take people's insurance being willing to embed yourself in the entire healthare system and so yeah you look at what traditional healthcare or sorry
2:30:45
tech companies have been doing they've given you these ways to import your records one off and the problem with that's exactly what you said you get one record from one care event um you know when I imported my records uh into general medicine I had stuff going back to 2005 you know more 20 years of records that got automatically imported. And the difference is we're an actual
2:31:03
And the difference is we're an actual provider group and we're providing real treatment and that gives us the ability to go collect a lot more uh information because it's critical to the way that we provide care.
2:31:13
Ultimately, this is the context that we're using that lets us provide this uh this much richer care uh to folks when they come through the front door.
2:31:21
So, is the goal for this to be like effectively like passive where even if I'm not immediately seeking like a treatment and I'm just trying to understand my health, maybe I have like shoulder pain and I want to understand that this is some I'm coming to general medicine to just like have a conversation with an LLM and maybe later I come back and I'm like, "Oh, okay.
2:31:43
I actually want to pursue treatment now.
2:31:46
Whatever whatever I learned, it's not going away or whatever."
2:31:48
And then and then you guys can help route it.
2:31:49
Is that is that the goal?
2:31:52
>> I think, you know, honestly, whenever anybody comes in, if you're experiencing shoulder pain, there's always uh advice that we can help support you with that's going to help you figure out when's the right time to seek imaging or when's the right time to go to PT, when's the right time to talk to a clinician about it.
2:32:08
And that's the that's the whole point of trying to have the care deeply embedded into the experience is you shouldn't have to just wait to see if it magically gets better or doesn't before deciding to really engage with the healthare system.
2:32:20
If it was easy to engage with, you'd do it right away.
2:32:22
And that's what we want to enable.
2:32:23
Um, actually, I've had foot pain for the last two years.
2:32:27
And the connection I had never made in my head, I've been wrestling this with this.
2:32:31
I've been talking to doctors about it. I've been exploring it.
2:32:32
And when I loaded all this into general medicine, it was the first time I made this connection back to an injury I had in 2005 uh on my on my left foot.
2:32:40
And it was the the LM that helped me appreciate that there might be a connection between these two.
2:32:47
and it started helping me explore you know what are the different options to figure this out.
2:32:50
We decided uh you know one one of the options that came out of that was imaging.
2:32:54
Uh I ultimately booked a visit so I could debate whether the imaging was really the right thing or whether PT was the right thing.
2:33:01
Since this had been going on for so long we decided my clinician and I decided that uh really jumping straight to imaging was probably the right next step.
2:33:08
And the imaging ended up finding these uh cysts in my ankle.
2:33:14
And uh I'm a relatively yeah >> I'm a relatively educated consumer and I read the report and I didn't really understand it.
2:33:24
>> You know, you get like that MRI, you log into your portal, you download all this stuff.
2:33:29
It's like this really technical language >> and I started reading.
2:33:31
I just didn't really get it.
2:33:33
And I dumped it all into our into general AI and it started explaining it to me perfectly.
2:33:39
In fact, uh it was so different though than my understanding of it, I had to give it to one of my buddies who's a radiologist cuz I thought it meant that this was thing was wrong.
2:33:47
And he was like, "No, no, it's giving you a perfect interpretation.
2:33:51
That's exactly what the radiologist said in the read."
2:33:53
And so that I was then able to start exploring with it all of these different pathways.
2:33:59
You know, is surgery the right next step?
2:34:01
Uh is there a different, you know, less invasive approach?
2:34:03
And ultimately, you know, this thing's not going to diagnose me.
2:34:06
It's not going to tell me what the right next step in the care is.
2:34:10
But being able to have that very exploratory, in-depth dialogue, by the time I get to the actual visit to talk about the different options with the doctor, now I've got this clear idea in my head of, man, there's these three or four different options.
2:34:21
I actually don't know which one's right for me, but here are kind of the puts and takes.
2:34:23
And just makes it way easier to then have this super rich dialogue with the doctor about which of those pathways is best for me.
2:34:31
What what is it like being a a doctor post LLM in general?
2:34:35
Like are are do you think patients in general are coming in more informed or more freaked out for no reason?
2:34:44
Everyone's been told by a doctor, you know, don't Google it, you know, don't don't don't search and then add Reddit to the end.
2:34:51
You just go down a rabbit hole.
2:34:53
But I think everybody's experienced at this point of like actually um it can be very empowering to like do research and maybe it has some negative side effects.
2:35:01
But in general um I think this is people want information.
2:35:06
They want to understand their health and you're never going to stop them from exploring.
2:35:11
>> I think we're we're pretty clearly on the side of like you want to give people these tools.
2:35:15
More more data and information is helpful.
2:35:17
You want consumers to be empowered.
2:35:19
You know it's their bodies. It's their health.
2:35:20
they're the ones who get to make the decision.
2:35:24
Uh the clinician should not be a gatekeeper.
2:35:26
The clinician should be a guide, a quarterback helping them get to the best care for them.
2:35:30
And we think AI is a really critical tool in that process.
2:35:34
It helps the consumer understand more upfront so they come to the visit way better prepared to have a really rich dialogue.
2:35:39
We also then have a bunch of tools that let us share that conversation in a nicely summarized way with the doctor.
2:35:45
So the doctor when you show up, they know what conversation you've been having.
2:35:48
they have a sense of that history and what you're interested in exploring in the visit.
2:35:52
And so in a 15- 20 minute visit, you can just dive right into the meat of the conversation.
2:35:57
You know, you don't have to spend the entire time just ramping up on the history.
2:36:02
>> How do clinicians see you?
2:36:02
Is is do they see you as just like a funnel for business broadly?
2:36:08
Like they all want to be on on general medicine um having you uh funnel customers to them.
2:36:16
Is there any sort of negotiation that happens?
2:36:18
Is all of this just happening sort of by default? Is there optin, opt out?
2:36:22
Like what is the relationship between you and the, you know, the radiologist, for example, in that example you gave, >> we've got two ways that you could work with us.
2:36:33
Um, one is you can join the platform and see patients directly through the platform.
2:36:38
And in that scenario, you're getting paid just like you would as part of any health system.
2:36:42
You're getting paid for providing care.
2:36:44
M uh separately from that we have these really rich uh tools that help us understand the quality and the different services that each physician across the country provides.
2:36:53
And so when a customer needs follow-up care um we can help them search very precisely for the exact right care.
2:36:59
So to come back to my ankle example you know I can go hunting in that uh in that database for the doctor that is going to be the perfect one to remove this cyst from my ankle.
2:37:08
not just a general orthopedist but someone who has experience in that exact surgery and that exact repair.
2:37:13
And uh I think this is actually where physicians and consumers are perfectly aligned.
2:37:20
Consumers want to get to the exact right doctor for their need as quickly as possible.
2:37:23
It's just really hard to know what that is because you didn't go to med school, you didn't go to residency, like you don't have the same expertise.
2:37:28
Same thing on the other side.
2:37:28
The doctor wants to practice, you know, they want to focus on the patients they're going to be the absolute best at seeing.
2:37:32
And today there's just no good way for the consumer to know that they're going to the right doctor for them.
2:37:40
And there's no good way for that doctor to say, "Hey, you know, these are exactly the type of patients that I'm going to be really good at.
2:37:45
You know, I'm really good at these ankle repairs, but I don't want the knees."
2:37:48
There's no way to to filter for that today.
2:37:52
>> Um, one more question from me and then you can close it out.
2:37:54
Um, in terms of like AI and health, uh, we're still, it feels like we're very much in like the abstract era of like maybe it'll cure cancer and it feels like, uh, a couple years ago when in broadly in AI we were like maybe there'll be like an economic explosion.
2:38:12
will be growing at 10% GDP and like the economic data at least this year has been like pretty fine like same it's like not bad but also not great and like the unemployment rate just came back and like sort of mixed and like the stock market's doing well but it's not like oh 10% GDP growth um and I'm interested in
2:38:31
if you know you know Sachi Nadella said like I'll believe the AI like fast takeoff narrative when I see GDP growing really really fast like what are some of the health metrics that you would look to to to judge in in five years 10 years is AI having a really dramatic impact on health. we've seen, you know, I think
2:38:50
we've seen, you know, I think everyone has expectations about what's happening with uh the the peptides and GLP-1s, right?
2:38:58
And we would expect that if the GLP-1 mission works, uh you'll see obesity rates fall.
2:39:04
But is there a broader health metric that you could imagine tracking to understand the impact of what you're doing, but also just broadly like AI in medicine uh having an impact?
2:39:15
you you want us to get a metric that's not like Chinese peptide shipments into the [laughter] country.
2:39:22
>> I mean that one would be probably worth tracking as well.
2:39:24
But yeah, I'm just wondering like like what are the highle KPIs for like the we look at a lot of like the health of the American consumer?
2:39:32
How much did they spend on Black Friday?
2:39:34
What about the the health of the just the health of the American?
2:39:37
Like how are we tracking that?
2:39:40
>> I think we look at this stuff all wrong honestly.
2:39:41
Like we spent the last 20 years optimizing for the financial relationship between the doctor and the system.
2:39:46
And so all of our health metrics, the way we talk about them, it's all about cost.
2:39:50
>> I personally, I don't think that's what we should be optimizing for.
2:39:52
I think we should be optimizing for the consumer and their enjoyment and their fulfillment that they get out of that experience.
2:39:59
So to me, it's, you know, if you want to boil that down as a metric, it's something like net promoter score.
2:40:03
Like how much do you love interacting with the system, the healthcare system?
2:40:07
And today that's a silly question because the answer is nobody. Nobody loves interact.
2:40:11
But that's the craziest thing.
2:40:13
Like it's the most it's it's the definition of wealth, right?
2:40:15
Like the most important thing that any of us have in our life is probably our own health.
2:40:20
We should love interacting with it.
2:40:20
We should love engaging with it.
2:40:22
And to me, that'll be that's the metric I would look for uh particularly around AI.
2:40:26
You know, it has this opportunity to completely shift the way consumers engage with their health and how empowered they are in it and really make them the customer.
2:40:35
You know, at the end of the day, I think so much of our health care system today, the consumer is not actually the customer.
2:40:39
And our ambition at general medicine is to build a completely new health system where the consumer gets to be the actual customer uh of their own care.
2:40:47
And my personal belief is if we do that, we will solve most of the problems in healthcare.
2:40:51
Most of the stuff we complain about, it's because the customer is the employer, the customer is the doctor, it's the insurance company, it's the government, it's not the consumer.
2:40:58
And I think healthare I think AI has a real chance to shift that back around and make the consumer the center of that. >> Drew, >> I love it. All comes back to NPS. >> It's a final metric. Final boss.
2:41:11
>> If you think about it like in in times that I've rate like like my NPS score for a company would be like one. >> Yeah.
2:41:18
>> It was like a healthcare related experience, you know? >> Sure.
2:41:21
like where if you get misdiagnosed or just get bad advice or you get prescribed >> a drug that you shouldn't be on or whatever, it's like you're going to time and a lot of that I think is avoidable with just >> um >> yeah, better better understanding, better more personalization, etc. >> Makes no sense.
2:41:39
>> Anyways, congratulations to the to the whole team.
2:41:41
Uh very very exciting and uh >> thanks for coming on the show. >> Great to have you on.
2:41:46
>> Hey, thanks for having me. This was great. >> I love that.
2:41:49
>> Have a great rest of your day. We'll talk to you soon. >> Goodbye.
2:41:53
>> So R has weighed in on the word of the year situation.
2:41:56
He says the word of the everyone's word of the year is slop.
2:42:01
Thus making the word of the year as an article category slop. What do you think?
2:42:07
Word of the year still underrated, still room to run.
2:42:11
>> Does the word of the year as an article c category have motion?
2:42:16
>> We were trying to Yeah, we were trying to figure out our word.
2:42:17
The word that we landed on was motion.
2:42:22
>> It's uh it's hard to perfectly define. >> Yes. >> Define.
2:42:26
You know it when you see it.
2:42:28
>> You know when someone has it.
2:42:28
You know when someone doesn't have it.
2:42:32
>> Uh and I just felt like this year >> when they are sleeping.
2:42:34
You know when they're awake.
2:42:37
>> You know that who's been bad and good. >> Good.
2:42:39
>> Are you on the motion list? >> Are you on the list?
2:42:41
[laughter] >> Are you on the motion list?
2:42:43
This is going to be a boner.
2:42:46
>> Um, >> yeah, it does it does it does feel like everyone everyone sort of landed on this slop thing.
2:42:51
Anyway, you you had another story you wanted to run through.
2:42:54
>> Warner is preparing to tell shareholders >> to reject Paramount offer. >> Wow. Okay.
2:43:00
>> Company to recommend existing Netflix deal as soon as Wednesday.
2:43:02
So, we'll be looking out for that tomorrow.
2:43:04
If you want to participate, >> uh, I'm I'm kind of tempted to at least I'm not a I'm not a Warner shareholder.
2:43:11
I'm tempted to buy a share.
2:43:14
participate just to vote yes or vote no. >> No, no, no. I haven't decided yet. >> Okay. Okay. You could be swung.
2:43:19
>> Yeah, >> you could be swung. You're a swing.
2:43:21
>> I want to put the word out.
2:43:22
>> I'm a single I'm Hey, I'm going to buy some and I'm going to be a single issue voter. Fog horn leg horn.
2:43:28
>> Bring [laughter] I need a new >> I need a trilogy.
2:43:31
>> I'm going to need a trilogy.
2:43:31
I'm going to need a Fogghorn Legghorn trilogy with a lot of Porky Pig on there.
2:43:35
I'm going to need uh a a a [laughter] massive cinematic universe all around.
2:43:40
you want to hold up the process until you can get clarity on how they're going to treat that that IP, right?
2:43:45
That's really >> fogghorn leg horn is very very important.
2:43:49
Um anyway, uh our next guest is already in the reream waiting room.
2:43:54
We have Alli from Datab Bricks. Welcome to the show. How are you? >> So sharp. So sharp. >> You look very sharp.
2:44:02
>> It feels like you're wearing a suit, but you're not. It's your own thing.
2:44:05
>> But good to see you again. How are you doing? >> Likewise. Good. Good. Good. I didn't get the memo.
2:44:08
I'm not dressed up the right way. We should have.
2:44:10
No, you you look fantastic. Don't worry about that.
2:44:13
>> Come back on tomorrow.
2:44:13
We'll we'll ship you a Santa outfit.
2:44:15
Can raise the next round.
2:44:17
We still have a few letters left.
2:44:19
>> But uh congratulations. Give us the news. What what what happened? >> Yeah.
2:44:24
What happened is that uh you know we're just seeing an acceleration in the business especially with respect to AI and actually we slice and dice. We're data companies.
2:44:31
We slice and dice that data in many many different ways.
2:44:33
Is it the particular customer concentration?
2:44:37
Is it the particular cloud?
2:44:37
Is the particular product? No.
2:44:38
It's like, you know, broad-based acceleration throughout the business.
2:44:42
U you know, we passed $4.
2:44:44
8 billion run rate revenue. >> Awesome. Oh, wow.
2:44:51
>> I was asking, will I get a gong? Thank you. >> Yes, of course. Of course. >> Of course. Maybe multiple. >> Maybe multiple. >> Perfect. Yeah. So, over 55% growth.
2:44:56
Um and uh but you know, more interestingly, we uh we're now passing $1 billion on our data warehousing product, which we announced four years ago. >> Yeah.
2:45:08
And we also passed $1 billion run rate in AI revenue which you know makes it you know over 25% of our revenue.
2:45:13
Um you know not that many companies you know there's a lot of talk about AI what's going on with AI is there bubble or not many companies have over 25% of their business in AI and you know over a billion dollars.
2:45:25
So um we're excited about that. >> Yeah.
2:45:28
How are you thinking about classifying that?
2:45:28
because I imagine that in some ways um a lot of the data warehouse revenue is from AI companies that want to warehouse data because there's more and more need for data because everyone's doing more things with it.
2:45:40
We're in this era where uh everything is becoming AI and yet it can feel a little disingenuous when companies slap AI on the back of their name.
2:45:50
>> It's hard to classify too because we were looking at some data earlier this week from RAMP that basically said like 50% of businesses aren't spending any money on AI directly yet they're clearly buying things from companies that are using AI.
2:46:01
So >> yes, where in the supply chain is it?
2:46:04
But how do you think about uh what is the main driver of that data warehouse growth?
2:46:08
Yeah, I mean that's kind of interesting.
2:46:10
So, you know, um we we started the company 2013. Yeah.
2:46:12
And one of the reasons we started was because we wanted to do AI and the problem is since 2013 up until November 2022, no one wanted to hear AI. >> Okay.
2:46:22
No one was interested in it.
2:46:24
>> And then come November 2022, Chat gets released and now everyone wants to just talk about AI, >> you know.
2:46:29
So now it's like, you know, well, you know, are you an AI company? Are you doing AI? What's AI?
2:46:32
But yeah, know when we we split our revenue up, right?
2:46:35
You can think of it like you know roughly two billion of data munching and securing that data >> one billion of data warehousing and then one billion of AI.
2:46:43
So you can like separate these out.
2:46:45
So it's not like over overlapping triple quadruple countering or anything like that.
2:46:48
Uh so what are they doing with AI?
2:46:51
I mean there's just lots of use cases.
2:46:52
So let me give you an example.
2:46:54
So we have this product called agent bricks.
2:46:55
Um you know one of the favorite use cases I have is that Merc actually created a model.
2:47:02
These are called transformer models.
2:47:03
these AI models they created something called Teddy which stands for transformer enabled drug discovery >> and this is an AI model instead of predicting the next word in English sentence it can predict cells and cell expressions so it's called gen gene regulatory network this is super
2:47:20
important for drug discovery because then the drug companies can target those genes that are responsible for diseases >> so that's like a game changer um and like lots of use cases like this 7-Eleven >> was able to automate most of their marketing stack. So before you would
2:47:33
So before you would have to do your own segmentation like who should I show this material to who this will be interesting to and then you would have to create the material for that segment manually.
2:47:42
Now the agents can actually prepare a lot of that material themselves.
2:47:45
They can generate images.
2:47:46
They can rewrite the text to target a specific group.
2:47:48
You can do that much faster now.
2:47:50
Um you know I could keep going.
2:47:53
RBC Royal Bank of Canada.
2:47:56
>> Basically when a earnings call comes out you guys will like this. Earning coms comes out.
2:47:59
It fetches the earnings call.
2:48:01
It looks at all the previous earnings calls, looks at earnings calls of competitors, looks at what's going on in the market, looks on, you know, the sentiment, and then writes up the equity research report using the tone of the equity research analyst.
2:48:12
And they can get this out in 15 minutes, >> which is, you know, usually in the industry, it's at least two hours or several hours.
2:48:19
>> So, every every minute, every minute matters, every second. >> Exactly. Exactly.
2:48:23
So, those are some of the use cases you're seeing out there. So, it it is taking off.
2:48:26
You know, we're kind of focused on this.
2:48:29
you know, I call it sort of, you know, uh, get stuff done or GSD AI rather than, you know, super intelligence AI.
2:48:36
super intelligence AI. How much of those examples that you I mean there's a great case studies very very tangible in a world where there's you know not many tangible AI narratives or or um how many of those how many of those um case studies came from companies that were
2:48:52
already using lakehouse or a data warehousing product and then you came to them and they were comfortable working with you or they felt like they would be sped up on working with you um on the AI side because they were already comfortable with you housing the data for probably years. >> Yeah, almost all of them. Let me explain
2:49:11
>> Yeah, almost all of them.
2:49:11
Let me explain why though.
2:49:13
Yeah, there's a reason why.
2:49:14
It's not just, hey, we know each other and I'm comfortable with you. Yeah.
2:49:17
>> Uh it's the fact that AI today, like large language models >> are actually a commodity.
2:49:21
I mean, they're the coolest thing that have ever happened, but they're already a commodity.
2:49:25
What I mean by commodity is just like oil.
2:49:27
You know, you could get your gas from this gas station, you can get it from that gas station.
2:49:30
Slightly different in price, but doesn't really matter for your car, right? Same thing with LLMs.
2:49:34
You can get this LLM or that LLM.
2:49:36
You don't even know the difference.
2:49:38
This week, this one is better.
2:49:38
That week, that one is better at, you know, coding.
2:49:41
This week, this one can do reasoning. This one can do images. So, it's a commodity.
2:49:45
So, actually, it's now a commodity to have a generative AI model that can answer any question about the world and the history and it's super smart.
2:49:54
>> What is super elusive and you can't get your hands on is an AI that can actually reason on proprietary private enterprise data. >> Mhm. >> Okay.
2:50:02
>> Okay. that's that actually doesn't exist because the techniques used to generate these AI models work on huge amounts of data like when I mean huge I mean like the whole internet like take all the data and crunch it doesn't work on a smaller data that enterprises have so
2:50:19
you how do you then make the AI work on that data that you already have inside the enterprise right this could be electronic medical records that are sensitive it could be financial models that are super secretive it's your recipe for your alpha generation um so what you need to do is you need to get a
2:50:32
good data foundation there and that's the lakehouse that you're talking about and then the governance and the security on top of that with unity catalog those are the kind of things you have to get in place first before you can unleash the AI on it so that's why it's not that they just know us it's that they've been
2:50:47
at it for a long time and actually if you haven't gotten that foundation right if your data is a mess it doesn't help if your data is sitting in on premise in some old database you know some Oracle database and it's locked away what help is this commodity AI that you have on the top Yeah. Um, what advice do you
2:51:01
Um, what advice do you have for founders that are building um, their business around in and around open-source technologies?
2:51:09
We we we talked to a lot of young founders that um, you know, are are are open sourcing something really cool.
2:51:16
They have a bunch of GitHub stars. There's energy.
2:51:18
They don't really have a business model yet, but you can see that they're delivering value and at some point they're going to capture it.
2:51:25
What are the dos and don'ts of growing up and being a good steward of an open source project or being a good partner to the open source ecosystem?
2:51:38
What would you counsel a founder in that situation?
2:51:40
>> Yeah, that's a billion dollar question.
2:51:42
It's very hard to get that right.
2:51:42
Um, you know what I would say is number one, there's actually kind of two requirements and there's like an analogy I have that you kind of have to get right.
2:51:50
First of all, realize it's a very difficult sport.
2:51:52
the sport that you're about to get into open source and to monetize and create.
2:51:55
It's like not an easy sport.
2:51:56
So, you know, preferably don't get into it because you might, you know, get hurt. Yeah.
2:52:01
>> But if you decided if you're hellbent on doing this, >> then, you know, you can think of it as, you know, your strategy basically is to hit two home runs after each other consecutively.
2:52:10
The first home run and you're banking on hitting that home run is for your open source project to take over the world.
2:52:16
Everybody wants to download it.
2:52:18
It's like the greatest thing ever.
2:52:20
If you don't hit that first home run, you just shot yourself in the foot because you just gave away all of your intellectual property and you got nothing back for it.
2:52:28
And now you have nothing.
2:52:30
So you better have a first home run and the open source project takes over the world.
2:52:34
So that's like step number one.
2:52:37
>> Now you've achieved that. Congrats to you.
2:52:39
Everybody's paying attention.
2:52:40
They're downloading your open source project.
2:52:41
The GitHub stars are just like, you know, going vertical. It's awesome.
2:52:46
You don't have any monetizable business.
2:52:48
You cannot make any money.
2:52:48
So then comes home run number two.
2:52:50
Home run number two is now you have a 10x just as good as the first one innovation on top of the open source and that's the proprietary value that you're going to provide to these companies.
2:53:02
That's why they come to you otherwise you know they can get open source anywhere u and that's how you monetize and now you have the sort of secret sauce to really successful company.
2:53:11
If you don't hit the second one, the problem is now the big guys, you know, the hyperscalers and others just pick up your open source model and they offer it up for almost free.
2:53:20
How do you compete with that?
2:53:22
How do you compete with that free?
2:53:23
That's where you need your second home run. So, it's very difficult. >> Yeah.
2:53:27
So, I want to double click on that particularly.
2:53:30
uh how do you compete that we have because we have other founders that have an open source project and it's growing and they're doing well and then uh we see the press release from one of the hyperscalers that their product is now a feature.
2:53:42
Their child has been abducted into the cloud uh and it's always a you can just tell no matter how they respond it's a scary moment.
2:53:51
It's an existential moment.
2:53:53
We know that there's a board meeting happening happening.
2:53:55
If uh if you're in, you know, a board meeting, a fly on the wall, an adviser or something, and there's a founder who says, "Oh, one of the hyperscalers just launched a clone of our product.
2:54:04
They're really going to come for us this quarter, maybe next quarter."
2:54:07
Um, what do you advise them to stay in the game while the capital cannon of the Mag 7 is pointed directly at them?
2:54:18
>> Well, well formulated.
2:54:18
So, I actually get that call from the founder day before the board meeting and they're like, "Oh my god, you know, what do I do? My life is over."
2:54:27
>> And I tell them, "Congratulations, >> you just proved that you hit your first home run.
2:54:31
They're paying attention to you.
2:54:32
So now they're coming after you.
2:54:32
So now you need to do another home run. Okay.
2:54:36
But your first home run, you just actually succeeded. Everybody's attention.
2:54:39
It's a home run business. >> They would not Yeah.
2:54:40
They would not direct all those cannons towards you if you didn't have anything.
2:54:45
So you have something now. They're direct.
2:54:46
Now they're coming after you.
2:54:47
they're coming after you. So now you need to innovate and you need to actually monetize that and that portion you cannot open source if you do they'll just keep you know milking that with their tenants right uh so that's the way to go about it and it's normal part of life and by we all went through it I went through it I remember like you know waking up you know cold sweats in the
2:55:05
middle of the night and you know freaking out about like oh my god this thing will kill us uh but you know the good news if you continue innovating you can stay ahead because you know the people that want to copy you they're always going to be a few years behind so if you continue executing you can stay a ahead and if you did a home run once you can probably do it again if you set your mind to it. So just the trick is to stay
2:55:23
mind to it. So just the trick is to stay behind stay ahead right because the way it works is that startups the ma the main thing going on is that they don't have time on their side right like if you could freeze all startups for 12
2:55:36
months all the max 7 would catch up immediately and there would be no startups right so your whole thing is outrun the big guys very very fast so that's another thing I tell them don't slow down move very very fast continue innovating
2:55:48
>> yeah I love that >> how do you uh how do you categorize everything that's happening in AI like what what is your personal framework because like what you're doing is very different than let's say a foundation model lab which is different than uh you
2:56:01
know maybe maybe an end uh rapper company >> is picks and shovels a porative is is is that a pjorative >> no I mean look Levi still around I don't know how many of those gold diggers are around >> that's true [laughter]
2:56:13
that's a great point I never thought about that >> yeah still here kicking you know here in San Francisco but I would say there there's kind of like three paradigms going on at the same time paradigm number one is the quest for super
2:56:24
intelligence and the quest for super intelligence uh you know requires bigger and bigger data centers more and more gigawatts and it's very resource intensive and the idea is to come up with such a smart model that can improve itself to the point that we don't like
2:56:36
you know it's just curing cancer and coming up with new AI models and of course we should be really afraid of the you know safety aspects of that so that's like you know what the frontier labs are doing uh I would say you know
2:56:46
category two is the researchers that created these models in the first place like Yan Lun or Rich Sutton who created reinforcement learning that technique, they'll actually tell you like, hey, that's not going to actually work. You're not going to get to super
2:56:57
You're not going to get to super intelligence that way because that's not how humans learn or animals learn and so on.
2:57:02
So, they're like, hey, we're, you know, leave us alone and we'll get get to something in 20 years, >> which to me sounds like a little bit like, hey, we don't really know. Leave us alone.
2:57:09
Uh, then there's a third camp.
2:57:11
The third camp is, hey, we already have all the AGI we already need.
2:57:14
We might not have super intelligence, but we have artificial general intelligence. I'm in that camp.
2:57:19
I believe we already have artificial general intelligence.
2:57:21
It's generally intelligent.
2:57:22
Just use it and you'll be convinced within like five minutes. It's pretty smart. Okay.
2:57:26
So now start applying it and get stuff done inside of an enterprise or inside of an organization.
2:57:32
Just GSD deliver AI value on basic tasks and if you're unsure start with the simplest mundane tasks that you know are, you know, really low cost right now.
2:57:42
See if you can start augmenting and automating them.
2:57:46
>> How did you how did you process the talent wars this year?
2:57:48
Uh I think the question on my mind is will we see you know a1 billion dollar pay package in two in two years from now or even in in next year right uh but I'm curious how you processed it as somebody >> was a one time thing or is it normal >> that was last year guys uh you know I think I think no one at character got like a billion right I mean they paid billions for character.
2:58:14
ai AI and that was literally a billion dollars for one guy at least 1 billion.
2:58:18
So that's already done that.
2:58:20
So I mean 10 billion is the next I guess package to go for [laughter] and maybe that was Alex at Meta but uh no but uh you know joking aside um I think that it's also in everybody's interest to exaggerate these numbers. >> Yeah.
2:58:32
>> Like the joke among CEOs is let's exaggerate that number right oh you know companies are making like hundred billion dollar offers for my employees >> because when you say that what happens is that first of all you must have a great team. Yeah.
2:58:44
First of all, it's like a compliment to your team.
2:58:46
Second, if someone comes after someone in your team now, they're going to expect at least that amount.
2:58:50
If they don't, they feel insulted.
2:58:51
You know, you're not even you're not even offering me a billion dollars. What's going on here?
2:58:56
>> So, that's a that's value my skill set clearly. >> Exactly. Exactly. Right.
2:59:00
So, it dissuades everyone.
2:59:01
So, I think there's also a little bit like self-reported numbers here going on.
2:59:05
numbers here going on. uh the market is not as crazy as you know people say but it has been pretty nutty and especially on the research side uh in AI but actually I think it's coming uh like it used to be the case that if you're a big shot professor in AI you could you know get funding huge amounts of funding for
2:59:24
crazy valuations and if you you could just say I want to just do research and get to super intelligence those days are over actually already it's no longer the case that you could that pitch doesn't work anymore uh and there's no capital like you're not going to get a billion or $2 billion to go just do research on AI. You need to have something more than
2:59:37
You need to have something more than that.
2:59:39
So I do think actually the market is coming to its senses.
2:59:42
>> The timeline the last 24 hours has been fixated on the role of storytelling within companies.
2:59:47
You're a fantastic storyteller like very just fun to to listen to and and animated.
2:59:53
I'm curious were you were you always goated or did you did you have humble beginnings?
3:00:01
>> There's no way to answer that question, right?
3:00:02
[laughter] It's like a trick question.
3:00:04
>> I'm saying no it's not.
3:00:04
No, I No, I No, I I I genuinely believe there are founders that come out and they're seed stage and they're hyper engaging and they're incredible to listen to and they get you excited and motivated and then there are other founders that like have to really learn and but I but I think it's like in some ways it's like you either have it or you don't. >> Yeah.
3:00:23
Look, I think that there are many things that go into like running companies.
3:00:25
Like one of them ingredient number one is to be engaging and excite people and get people excited about your vision, right?
3:00:31
But number two, you also need a good strategy.
3:00:32
If not, if you don't have a good strategy, eventually it's going to catch up to you.
3:00:35
Number three, you need to put together amazing, stellar, world-class team, right?
3:00:39
That's all that matters because if you're amazing, but your team is not, then you're not going to go anywhere.
3:00:44
Even if you have all of these, it's not enough.
3:00:47
You need to also execute.
3:00:47
Like, you need to actually get the team to execute again and again and again and get to the results.
3:00:52
And that kind of matters more than anything else. I mean, look at AWS.
3:00:55
Like, they're phenomenal at executing, right?
3:00:56
And then, uh, finally, five, you need to do it with good culture.
3:00:58
If the culture is not good, it will eat you up from inside.
3:01:01
the key people will leave.
3:01:04
Um, you know, we've seen, you know, companies that went under because the culture was bad or the CEO got fired and, you know, they went through tough times and, you know, the, you know, authorities were after them for fraud and these kind of things.
3:01:14
So, you kind of have to nail all these five.
3:01:16
Um, you know, it's the unfortunate truth.
3:01:20
>> Uh, well, uh, is it series L?
3:01:20
Now, you're quickly running out of letters of the alphabet.
3:01:26
Uh, we have to ask, are you going to be hanging out with us at the New York Stock Exchange anytime soon or are there are there no plans to go public because we'd love to hang out?
3:01:39
>> We can hang out there.
3:01:39
We can hang out there anytime at the New York Stock Exchange or NASDAQ.
3:01:42
Uh, you know, but uh but whether we're going to go public, look, we're I mean, I wouldn't be I wouldn't rule it out that we would be public by end of next year.
3:01:49
Uh, but you know, it's also not like it's guaranteed because the thing I want to avoid is what happened in 2022.
3:01:55
Yeah, >> in 2021 I had a lot of peers that were so excited.
3:01:59
They took their companies public.
3:02:00
They're ex great storytellers, great execution machines. They were awesome.
3:02:05
>> But then interest rates went up, inflation went up.
3:02:06
And in 2022, they said, "Hey man, you got to like get IBIDA.
3:02:10
You got to produce, you know, margins." So what did they do? They all did layoffs. Yeah.
3:02:14
And they all produced IBIDA.
3:02:16
And what did they cut down on?
3:02:18
All the futuristic stuff, all the innovation, all the new products.
3:02:20
And also employee morale kind of tanked. Yeah.
3:02:24
Because you know employees are like I don't trust you anymore.
3:02:25
You said this company is gonna do well but now you know you're firing my friend here.
3:02:30
So um you know and you know as you can see we're now growing twice the growth rate of many of those companies and I think staying private in 2022 had something to do with it as well.
3:02:37
Uh so you know um you know we're not trying to exactly time the rock market. We're trying to win it. >> Yeah.
3:02:43
Do you think that the the narrative around open-source LLMs is like is over?
3:02:49
Do you think it's understood?
3:02:50
Because uh you know the deepseek moment was a moment when everyone was saying oh maybe open source will win or it'll have a serious uh shaping of the market structure in AI.
3:03:02
It feels like uh folks have a much more uh concrete thesis around the shape of the AI market with you know like a you know an aggregator winning in consumer and then maybe more of an igopoly and in enterprise codegen and API businesses um and and certainly the the open source models fit into that but how are you thinking about open-source AI models uh developing maybe in next next year the year after?
3:03:30
Yeah, [clears throat] I would just say that open source has always been a commoditizer in business. >> Sure.
3:03:36
>> You know, like when Linux showed up, >> like is the greatest thing that's happening right now in the world, Linux? No. But what did it do?
3:03:41
It kind of commoditized Windows, >> right? And significantly so.
3:03:44
And we've seen that again and again and again.
3:03:47
So what it does, it really it's it sets the price of the IP of the open source project down to zero.
3:03:54
>> So that price of that intellectual property shrinks to zero overnight. Yeah.
3:03:58
>> Uh, and that's great because that basically puts pressure on the LLM foundation model layer to have lower and lower prices.
3:04:04
And the lower those prices go, the complimentary market, the, you know, market on top, which is us with agent bricks and, you know, Blakebase, our, you know, our database for agents, uh, helps that market cuz, you know, it makes our COGS, our cost of goods sold, which is we would pay for those LLMs, lower.
3:04:20
So, I think that's going to continue happening.
3:04:22
Uh and in particular one interesting trend is that China is putting the pressure on just open sourcing everything.
3:04:28
They're not just open sourcing the large language models and the weights.
3:04:32
They're open sourcing the whole stack. Everything they did.
3:04:35
This is the way we open source it. This is the data we use. Here's a research paper.
3:04:38
And they're having really fast diffusion of innovation happening in China.
3:04:42
And that also puts pressure on the west over here.
3:04:45
We're like, okay, we can't fall behind.
3:04:47
So we're doing the same thing over here.
3:04:48
So I think that's just going to continue.
3:04:50
So I mean people I I I completely understand that narrative and uh it does seem like it's feels like China's commoditizing American Foundation Labs.
3:04:59
Uh and it and you easily like fall into this like geopolitical narrative.
3:05:03
But is there a world where in China it's it's really just like uh the the classic open- source technology with a for-profit corporation wrapped around it and they're trying to build like the red hat of LLMs over there and like that's the real uh motivation more than just some like crazy wrench in the system.
3:05:25
>> Well, I think that I I don't exactly know how the communist party thinks and what they are doing, but I think that over here we will have companies that are already doing that.
3:05:31
Like if you talk to startups already, >> many many of the startups in the United States are actually using the open source models and the Chinese models.
3:05:36
By the way, what's already happened which people don't talk about openly, it's really hush hush is that they're taking these Chinese models >> and kind of distilling them and you get an American model, >> right, with an American name and you don't know that it actually tracks back to Quen from Alibaba or something like that.
3:05:53
That's already happening in this market.
3:05:55
But like look at the vast majority of startups.
3:05:56
the huge amount of open- source Chinese models that are being used by American open source models.
3:06:02
And I think you'll have actually Red Hat-like companies here, even here in the United States, that will say, "Hey, you know, we'll help you get up to speed, use the right ones, make sure it has the right safety and guard rails and you're not taking any risk and we do it at low cost."
3:06:15
That's already happening in some sense.
3:06:17
And then there are people who do that in the cloud.
3:06:18
We actually help you do that.
3:06:20
help you do that. We at data bricks we are multi-lm >> so we have OEM so openai is available natively to all of our customers and tropic is natively available to all of our customers and Gemini is natively available so it's like if you're using dataix those three are actually under the hood and then we have all the open
3:06:35
source models to let you so since we're the next layer on top right that's the complimentary market that I was talking about uh so I think this will continue and I think actually that's good for innovation that that's happening there's so much pressure on that middle layer because it is a very lucrative layer
3:06:49
right I mean you you know as judging from the valuations of entropic and open AI that are very welld deserved um you know that's an important market so uh I think this will just continue we'll see more and more open source that's not going to stop and it's going to be from China my prediction is that you're going to also see that now from Europe and
3:07:05
United States >> cuz you know do we want uh Chinese models to take over the whole planet in open source I think that some nations will say hey why don't we just get together and fund a supercomput and then build one here by the way we used to do that back in in the day was called supercomputers. Yeah. National labs that Yeah.
3:07:20
National labs that had supercomputers.
3:07:22
The largest computers on the planet used to be supercomputers state funded.
3:07:25
That's going to start happening you know in either this country or that country.
3:07:28
And once that starts you know everyone wants to get in like you know United States is going to have the biggest one right. So that's my prediction.
3:07:38
[screaming] >> What does your sales process look like at this stage?
3:07:41
Like where where are you investing time specifically uh with with uh customers that are that are in the pipeline?
3:07:48
like what's the what's the highest leverage and what is even what does even the workflow look look like?
3:07:54
>> I mean we have many different segments at data bricks.
3:07:55
There's a self-s serve segment.
3:07:58
>> Yeah, >> you can actually sign up.
3:07:58
There's a free edition of data bricks that's really important funnel for us.
3:08:02
The free edition anyone can just sign up with their Gmail and use data bricks forever but you don't get you know lots of compute.
3:08:09
You don't get lots of AI.
3:08:09
You get a little sliver >> so you get a taste of data bricks forever.
3:08:14
>> Then you know we have >> good this is your sales process.
3:08:16
you're selling selling right now.
3:08:17
[laughter] >> You should try it out.
3:08:19
You guys have an email address.
3:08:21
If you have a Gmail address, you know, go to database. com/try.
3:08:26
>> And so once you've done that, so then comes Yeah. Then comes a trial.
3:08:28
The tri, okay, but that was just a sliver of compute.
3:08:32
You know, I want to I want to process a lot of LLMs.
3:08:33
I want to use the bigger models.
3:08:35
I want to do more interesting things with agent bricks.
3:08:36
I want to have my database with Lakebase.
3:08:40
Then uh I would say get the um free trial. Mhm.
3:08:44
>> So free trial, we give you I think $200, something like that and you get to spend $200 for free with us.
3:08:49
>> And so that's sort of the funnel and then from there people convert.
3:08:51
This is really how most SMBs, mid-market companies, that's how they get started on data bricks.
3:08:59
>> I'm talking about I'm going to I'm talking about the big dogs. >> Yeah.
3:09:02
How different is the organization?
3:09:04
Do these people like the the the person who maybe is responsible at some level for the biggest deal you've ever done and the person who's responsible for the smallest deal?
3:09:11
Are these like have these people ever met in the organization?
3:09:13
Are they completely separate?
3:09:14
Is there some crossf functional opportunity?
3:09:16
Because they're very different functions.
3:09:18
I imagine one is steak dinner, the other's like UIUX.
3:09:21
I would imagine, but I don't know.
3:09:23
>> Well, believe it believe it or not, the steak dinner days are kind of over. Okay.
3:09:27
>> You know, I mean, like it's not like, hey, we'll just take you out and just we have like the best golf players and we have the best drinkers that you know.
3:09:33
>> To be clear, if you take us out to a steak dinner, I mean, we'll go to databases. com. I would >> Yeah. [laughter] Yeah. And and you pay me $0. Exactly. Right.
3:09:41
Uh but >> I was hoping I would sneak that by you and you know exactly futures are selling off massively right now. >> Exactly.
3:09:51
[laughter] Are just going down. Yeah, exactly. I'm sorry guys.
3:09:53
But what I would say is that uh you know um we actually have a funnel.
3:09:58
So uh you know you start maybe as a sales development uh leader.
3:10:03
Actually we have one at data bricks.
3:10:04
you know, guy called Matt started just, you know, hitting the phone, just getting these SMBs and then grew with the business, then got into the sort of more mid-market accounts and then now like on the enterprise side.
3:10:15
So, you know, we have people who grew up with databooks and they kind of, you know, you learn to do the whole all the way to the, you know, it's a lot of it is just getting comfortable, right?
3:10:22
Because it's like it's one thing if I'm negotiating with you a $30,000 deal.
3:10:25
>> It's another thing if I'm negotiating with you, you know, $250 million deal.
3:10:30
And, you know, a lot of folks will just get nervous and they'll just start shaking, right?
3:10:32
So, uh, but how do you do that?
3:10:35
How do you get that, you know, 200 million, $200 million deal?
3:10:36
Um, you know, it actually goes back to those free additions and those things.
3:10:42
>> In that conversation with an exec high up, we will say, did you know that you're already leveraging open source spark throughout the organization already?
3:10:50
>> Did you know that you're already having people using the free edition with their Gmail accounts?
3:10:52
Uh, you know, you have all these trials.
3:10:54
By the way, the things I'm telling you about today, if you don't trust me, you can go yourself try it out on the free edition.
3:10:59
So actually that kind of motion bottom up motion helps a lot even in the top down big enterprise sales. >> Yeah.
3:11:07
>> Um and that but there the goal is what are the transformational projects that you want us to help you with and how do we really drive business value for your organization like what's a big strategic board level initiative?
3:11:19
>> Let us help you make you successful with that.
3:11:22
>> We're trying to get to we're trying to get to 24 hours a day.
3:11:23
And so we're really trying to use AI 24 hours a day live.
3:11:27
Use AI to optimize when John sleeps, when I sleep, all that stuff.
3:11:32
Anyways, this this has been super fun.
3:11:33
Uh, congratulations to the whole team on the Milestone.
3:11:36
>> We'll save it for next time >> and looking forward to the next letter. >> Awesome.
3:11:40
>> Have a great rest of your day.
3:11:40
Thanks so much for coming on the show. We'll talk to you soon.
3:11:42
[applause] >> What a legend. >> Yeah, what a legend.
3:11:45
He's he's he's such a great uh such a great CEO.
3:11:47
Such a great conversation. >> More breaking news.
3:11:50
Kushner's Affinity withdraws from Warner Bros. >> No way. >> Takeover battle. >> Wow.
3:11:56
This is breaking news right now.
3:11:56
Um that >> Jared Kushner is exiting from the takeover battle.
3:12:01
Affinity was helping to finance Paramount's bid for Warner Brothers, but now it believes the dynamics of an investment have changed since it became involved in the process.
3:12:10
The battle for Warner Brothers stands to reshape the entertainment industry regardless of which bidder emerges victorious >> with both bids.
3:12:17
>> Read between the lines.
3:12:17
I think we know what happened.
3:12:21
Jared Kushner clearly a Fogghorn Legghorn fan. >> Yeah.
3:12:25
>> But not enough Looney Tunes in the deal. Not enough Porky Pig. >> I'm out.
3:12:28
>> Not enough Fogghorn Legghorn said I'm out. I'm out. I'm out.
3:12:30
I can't I can't support this.
3:12:32
If uh if David Ellison is going to pull the plug on the Looney Tune Cinematic Universe reboot and three trilogies of Fogghorn Legghorn live action, I'm out. I'm not doing it.
3:12:40
Um this is very exciting.
3:12:44
Uh it feels like is it going to land with Netflix?
3:12:46
We're back and forth on this now, but it feels like Netflix has certainly the upper hand, a lot of support, and barring some wild card in Washington, wild card with the with the shareholders, um, they're set up.
3:13:01
I mean, the board has accepted the offer.
3:13:03
Zlov is is moving his thumbs up on Ellison's haven't given their best and final offer, though. We know that.
3:13:10
They said that themselves.
3:13:10
So, >> and I mean, to be clear, there are other sources of capital beyond Affinity Partners.
3:13:16
So, um, like they could clearly marshall the capital.
3:13:18
I mean, Larry Ellison himself has it. He's worth 250 billion. We're talking 80. We're talking 90. We're talking 100.
3:13:25
It's a lot, but there is a lot of money there to, you know, pool around if you need to.
3:13:32
Um, anyway, >> I wouldn't be I wouldn't be surprised if in the next 24 hours we see a new a new offer right there.
3:13:38
You have uh current one likely, you know, Zazlov pushing to reject the offer. >> Sure.
3:13:48
>> This is the moment where they kind of need to up the ante a little bit.
3:13:50
Well, we got to get one of our uh our media correspondents back on the show because uh that's been the highlight of last week was um talking to uh Dylan Buyers and Ben Smith about media and getting up to speed on the the story behind the Warner Brothers uh Netflix, you know, Paramount deal.
3:14:13
Uh anyway, in other big company news, the Unilever CEO disclosed Neutrifll and Liquid IV revenues.
3:14:19
Have you ever been a liquid IV guy? >> No. >> You ever element guy?
3:14:26
>> You're an element guy. That's right.
3:14:26
You like salt, not whatever's in liquid IV. Sugar. Is it true? >> Sugar. It is based though.
3:14:31
Sugar is very good for hydration. >> You like You like it.
3:14:34
I've I I really enjoy the liquid IV.
3:14:36
Actually, I got to say I just turned from liquid IV because I'm on the new uh Chris Williamson creatine in the in the stick pack. Yeah, that one.
3:14:47
The new tonic that the elf is putting under the tree this week.
3:14:49
Uh the Newtonic creatine stick >> stick pack.
3:14:55
You can open it up and show what they actually look like.
3:14:57
Uh just pull the whole thing off. Oh yeah, that's fine.
3:15:00
So it's this little stick pack like like liquid IV like um the one that you were having, Elementi.
3:15:04
Um but it has creatine in there.
3:15:07
Five grams of creatine in there.
3:15:08
And and normally I'm used to drinking the sand, the creatine sand. And this is fantastic.
3:15:12
It's so it's so delicious.
3:15:16
Uh, yes, you can just shoot it back if you want to be the boldest elf in the in Santa's workshop >> and just text it wrist check the elf.
3:15:27
[laughter] >> Check the elf. >> That's hilarious.
3:15:31
But anyway, uh, back to Liquid IV World in a Fireside chat with JP Morgan, the Unilever CEO, uh, revealed that both Neutrifull and Liquid IV have entered the billiondoll brand club.
3:15:44
I don't know if you want to ring the bell. >> Go for it. I'll take the next one.
3:15:46
Enter the billion-dollar brand club.
3:15:48
Great execution from Unilver.
3:15:51
Sometimes when they announce these acquisitions, it sounds a little crazy.
3:15:56
They pay a lot, but they know how to scale.
3:15:57
They have the distribution. >> Yeah.
3:16:00
>> Uh they are soft circling 1.
3:16:00
5 billion euros per year for M&A.
3:16:03
I was thrilled to see this.
3:16:06
I have a lot of friends with CPG >> businesses that are starting to get to a scale where they are prime targets.
3:16:11
And uh I am I'm just very excited for them.
3:16:18
>> So Liquid IV, they bought it when it was doing 120 and now it's doing over a billion. What a good run.
3:16:23
Do we know what they paid for Liquid IV back in the day?
3:16:27
Um how much actually how much did that deal cost them?
3:16:30
That would be interesting.
3:16:32
Um because uh but but I mean it just it is it is a it is a testament to the CPG founders. >> 500 million. >> 500 million.
3:16:41
Now they're making a billion a year in revenue.
3:16:42
I mean, I don't know that they 50% net margins, but high margin.
3:16:47
I would think it's high margin.
3:16:49
And so imagine you sell for 500.
3:16:53
You're you're the founder of this of this company. You're doing 120. You sell for 500.
3:16:56
And you're like, "This is amazing.
3:16:58
I have a $120 million business."
3:16:59
But then five years later, they're making 500.
3:17:02
What they paid for you in that one year, they're making that every year for as long as the brand's around.
3:17:08
So don't underestimate just compounding at scale with these businesses. Uh get what you deserve.
3:17:15
Don't don't take >> No, I think I think liquid death will be a good case study there because they certainly would have had opportunities to sell.
3:17:21
They raised a huge amount of money and they kind of probably took them out.
3:17:25
>> And there were a lot of people saying, "Oh, it's overvalued now."
3:17:26
But you know, if you just keep compounding, getting more. I I completely agree.
3:17:31
Just let like like there's no one else that's really going after that particular brand positioning.
3:17:36
You let it compound, it becomes this unique thing.
3:17:38
It becomes Lindy basically.
3:17:39
Uh, and whenever we talk about CBG, >> speaking of compounding, >> what's compounding?
3:17:46
>> Ann over at Forb says, "Beloved productivity app, Notion told employees today it is doing a $300 million tender >> at an 11 billion valuation.
3:17:52
The company crossed 600 million, half of which comes from AI." >> That is fantastic.
3:17:59
>> Watch out for more notion rounds/nipo.
3:18:02
I expect that they will get out in uh in uh God willing in the year 2026. >> Yeah. >> Uh but we'll see. We'll see.
3:18:13
>> They are on >> on a tear.
3:18:15
Uh Notion was a $2 million seed according to Jason to 11 billion >> in 12 years. >> That's crazy.
3:18:22
>> Great case study of growing into your valuation.
3:18:24
Jason says 2013 $2 million seed. >> Yeah.
3:18:27
If you scroll down on this on this this chart, you can see a huge jump in valuation.
3:18:31
And it takes them a while to catch up. >> This was the journey.
3:18:34
So they 2013, they had a $2 million seed.
3:18:36
2019, they had 3 million of ARR and they got to an $800 million valuation. >> That's crazy.
3:18:42
>> 2020, they're at 13 million of ARR to a $2 billion valuation.
3:18:47
>> 2021 31 million of AR to a $2 billion.
3:18:51
So crazy because I mean if this number is right they they they basically triple revenue not even triple revenue and they and they see their multiple double their multiple doubles from 150x to 300 million >> but then from 2021 they grew they grew revenue from 31 million to 600 million and the valuation went up 10%.
3:19:09
>> And it was the correct Yeah.
3:19:09
It was the correct uh >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It eventually caught up. Wow.
3:19:15
Whating amazing execution.
3:19:18
Obviously these in 2021 are not involved getting an insane IR on that but not jobs not finished and story is not over >> but you're in the green. >> Yeah. What? Yeah.
3:19:29
What what a what a remarkable revenue ramp.
3:19:31
So yeah was paying for it.
3:19:35
>> Price of the brick going up.
3:19:38
>> We missed saying that.
3:19:40
>> We should have we should have hit him with the but it was good chatting with him.
3:19:43
So yeah, as we know, data bricks raised a >> Brandon Bo says, "This is crazy.
3:19:46
The Lululemon leggings to oil ratio just hit a new high.
3:19:50
You can now buy two barrels of oil for every one pair of Lululemon highrise."
3:19:56
Like this is one of the most important economic metrics in the world, John.
3:20:00
Obviously, >> this says so much about the state of of of markets. >> Yeah, it hilarious.
3:20:08
Also, uh, it it is making me feel like Lululemon leggings are made from oil.
3:20:17
>> Well, I think >> they sort of are, right?
3:20:17
Isn't it's like petroleum based polyester or something.
3:20:22
I don't >> my understanding. Yes.
3:20:23
TJ Parker is fake news posted this >> before there was TVPN. >> Look at him on Fox.
3:20:31
>> It's funny because this headline is crazy. The CBS killer.
3:20:33
He looks kind of like the guy [laughter] that would kill someone in a CVS. See, is this the Yeah.
3:20:39
Who Who is the CVS killer?
3:20:39
Did they ever find the real one or did [laughter] Did he ever got brought Did he ever get brought in for questioning? >> He does.
3:20:46
I'm going to say I'm going to say I He looks more like a young Santa Claus. >> Okay.
3:20:51
Yeah, that's a much nicer thing to say.
3:20:53
[laughter] >> I take it I take it back. >> But wow.
3:20:56
Countdown to the closing bell.
3:20:58
In three minutes, he hops on CVS killer.
3:21:02
[laughter] And uh I don't know.
3:21:03
He didn't quite kill CVS, but what a fantastic run with Pillpack.
3:21:07
Uh absolutely legendary business and uh he's already on to the next one at General Medicine.
3:21:12
So, it's uh it's fantastic.
3:21:15
>> Singer Vehicles just put up a minute 22. >> This is huge news.
3:21:19
This is the biggest news in technology these days. I I think I think so.
3:21:22
Laguna Secika, the legendary uh racetrack in California.
3:21:25
Uh this is an American hypercar.
3:21:28
So, the >> production car lap record.
3:21:31
The story here is that um the um the story here is that uh Coningseg set the lap record just a few weeks ago and Lucas Singer took it personally and he said I'm going to go and put up a better time and he did.
3:21:52
Uh but this car is insane.
3:21:55
So it it has it's a two-seater, but they're both centered, so it's like a fighter jet.
3:22:03
>> I I don't know why everyone's lie.
3:22:03
Like that's a very cool setup. >> Yeah.
3:22:06
So So you sit you sit like this one after the other.
3:22:08
And the doors we need to pull up a picture of >> Why are you guys laughing? That's just fire.
3:22:14
I've never heard of that.
3:22:14
I've never heard of that before.
3:22:16
If you go to 4 seconds on this on this main video, the Laguna Secika video here uh on X, um you can see the doors. So the door.
3:22:27
Yeah, the doors are two two doors long because you need to let two people in.
3:22:33
So when you open the >> and I'm sure they're planning to let it fly at some point. >> It's Yeah.
3:22:38
>> Don't you think part of that it's ready to like they have a secret feature trying to beat Elon to the flying car like he was alluding on on Joe Rogan.
3:22:43
So there so there has been a recent hypercar war at Laguna.
3:22:47
This is specifically for the production car record.
3:22:52
Uh Zinger Zinger just took it by two seconds.
3:22:54
So on in August of 2024, Koenigseg strikes.
3:22:57
Koenseg brought the Jesco attack to Laguna Secikka for the first time.
3:23:03
Uh they got a 12486 um beating the previous long-standing benchmark held by the Singer 12 uh 21C and the McLaren Senna at 125 120 and 127. So Singer had it at 125.
3:23:17
Then Koix shows up with the Jesco attack gets it at 124.
3:23:22
Then uh then they come back lowered the speed record.
3:23:26
There was this new there was this new uh you there's this new uh noise limit at Laguna Seiko.
3:23:35
Your car cannot make more than 90 dB of noise from the exhaust.
3:23:40
I assume Brian Johnson had something to do with this, but you have to bolt on a special exhaust so you're not too loud while you're going out and going on the track.
3:23:50
And of course that affects track performance.
3:23:51
And so uh they reset the record and coding comes back.
3:23:54
They have a specific Jesco attack for this new Laguna restriction.
3:24:00
They get a 124 and then Singer comes back on December 9th just weeks after their coding 6 November run.
3:24:09
Singer returns with their 3D printed hybrid 21C.
3:24:11
Uh driver Joel Miller runs a blistering 122.
3:24:15
And so, uh, >> and put into context, the 992, uh, GT3 RS is doing it at 12865. So, >> basically slug. Basically walking. Basically walking speed. >> Walking speed. >> Wow.
3:24:32
>> Well, congrats to Lucas.
3:24:33
>> This is is almost unbelievable.
3:24:33
I for me to believe that it's real, he's going to have to drive it into the >> I I think he is.
3:24:39
He wants us to believe that this was built by humans.
3:24:41
I I don't I It seems like alien technology probably. >> Make it make sense. make it make sense.
3:24:47
Uh no, it's a beautiful beautiful vehicle.
3:24:51
>> Uh >> um anyways, final final uh post of the show.
3:24:57
>> Uh we posted this yesterday as well, but future was named friend of the house by Louis Vuitton for embodying its values.
3:25:05
>> And uh Lewis Pasano says, "And what values would those be?"
3:25:10
>> Uh and uh >> I don't I I don't know enough about Louis Vuitton to understand what this means. >> Well, it's funny.
3:25:14
Do you know about Futur's values? >> No.
3:25:17
>> Have you ever you haven't listened to a Future song? >> I I just know.
3:25:21
>> No, I I really don't know.
3:25:22
>> I mean, I think his primary value is is getting getting the bag. >> Getting the bag.
3:25:27
>> And so that's kind of how I other people, you know, he he has I think >> a lot of a lot of children with a lot of different women as well, I think.
3:25:35
So maybe that's I don't know if that's one of Louis Vuitton's values, but >> we were talking about a friend and he was saying like the whole goal we're in the getting the bag business.
3:25:42
Everyone wants to get their bag, get the bag, secure the bag.
3:25:46
And I thought that, you know, that that is a good goal.
3:25:48
But there is an alternative, which is to secure a series of smaller bags every two weeks.
3:25:57
>> Paid directly to a bag that you have on your bank account. Yes. Exactly.
3:26:00
So, you're getting a series of small bags that then compound over time.
3:26:05
You throw them in a large sack like your Santa Claus in the But no one talks about getting the sack.
3:26:10
Everyone [laughter] talks about getting the bag.
3:26:12
No one talks about getting the Santa Claus sack.
3:26:15
Um, but you have to get the bag.
3:26:18
You get a small You get a series of small bags and over a life over a lifetime, you accumulate a bag that gets larger and larger until you have the real bag.
3:26:27
>> Well, here's another post about life from Colt Bra.
3:26:28
I know I said it was the last one, but I I I I take it back.
3:26:30
Colt Bra says a fantastic poster over the years.
3:26:37
Uh, >> he says, "You can just do things.
3:26:38
Go from Olympic snowboarder to head of cartel.
3:26:41
$50 million reward from FBI on your head. Life is short. Let it rip.
3:26:46
>> Absolutely do not let it rip.
3:26:46
I do not recommend becoming the head of a cartel.
3:26:51
Uh that is that is insane.
3:26:51
But of course is a very wild story.
3:26:55
>> Maybe become, you know, maybe become the the head of a $50 million annual revenue business in a in a sort of legal domain.
3:27:04
>> Maybe an enterprise software >> enterprise software SAS. >> Maybe a database. >> Let life is short.
3:27:07
go from an Olympic snowboarder to a sass uh icon. Let it rip. Life is short.
3:27:15
>> Uh and we'll leave it at that.
3:27:15
We are we are actually going >> breaking news from Tyler news if we want.
3:27:20
Um opening I got rid of their uh model router for for free users.
3:27:24
>> I thought that was pretty >> What does that mean?
3:27:25
Wait, they got rid of it for free users. Getting rid of it.
3:27:30
It is always there for Is it the model picker or the model router?
3:27:32
Is it always on auto or or can you still or do you have to pick thinking pro legacy models?
3:27:42
Like how do you pick the model? >> Yeah.
3:27:44
So I think it's the the router.
3:27:44
So that means that the picker is still there but it doesn't automatically do it for you.
3:27:48
>> It just defaults to fast or the basic model.
3:27:54
>> Uh I don't know which one it but I I would imagine that like if I was thinking through it like >> I I would I would think it would be the opposite, right? >> Yeah, totally.
3:28:02
Because as a pro user, I want to >> do pro all the time. >> Yeah. I want you want, right? >> Yeah. Yeah.
3:28:07
You want to get what you paid for, but the free user >> Yeah.
3:28:10
who you think is like the unsophisticated person.
3:28:11
They don't know which one to to use. Yeah. >> Interesting.
3:28:15
Well, we'll have to dig in.
3:28:17
Uh anyway, thank you so much for tuning in.
3:28:19
Merry Christmas to everyone.
3:28:21
>> Trey says, "Cartels only get a bad rap because they don't have a head storyteller."
3:28:24
[laughter] >> I feel like some of the I feel like Escobar was low-key an incredible storyteller. Uh, I don't think so.
3:28:30
I think people told stories about him.
3:28:32
I don't think he was doing anything. >> He was in politics. Oh, >> maybe. Okay.
3:28:36
Well, we'll get to the bottom of that. >> He was a politician.
3:28:39
>> Have a good rest of your day. Merry Christmas.
3:28:41
>> Thanks for hanging out with us today.
3:28:42
>> We will see you tomorrow.
3:28:43
>> It feels like a Friday.
3:28:44
>> It does when you put on the Santa suit.
3:28:46
>> It does feel like a Friday. We are going go-karting.
3:28:48
We are We are doing a little end of year team outing.
3:28:49
We're going go-karting as a as a team. came.