Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
TBPN is a live tech talk show hosted by John Coogan and Jordi Hays, streaming weekdays from 11–2 PT on X and YouTube, with full episodes posted to Spotify immediately after airing.
Described by The New York Times as “Silicon Valley’s newest obsession,” TBPN has interviewed Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Mark Cuban, and Satya Nadella. Diet TBPN delivers the best moments from each episode in under 30 minutes.
We have our next guest ready to join us live in the TBPN Ultra. We have Travis Kalanick. He is the CEO of Cloud Kitchens. Welcome to the show, Travis. Great to meet you.
Speaker 1:Appreciate you coming on down to our studio. Our humble boat. Great to meet you. We are
Speaker 2:Truly an honor. I'm just down the street.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's right. That's right. Yeah. We we were actually we started the show in Downtown LA at the Jonathan Club on Figueroa. And so I think we were even closer then.
Speaker 2:There you go.
Speaker 1:Still not far. How are things going? How's life? Woah. Can we turn that down?
Speaker 1:We're getting some feedback.
Speaker 2:That was crazy. Man, that's crazy. Yeah? What's crazy? The building doesn't stop.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:I mean, don't know how much you guys I mean, I've just I've been in hiding. Mhmm. So I've been I've been doing I've been doing this. We've I I run a company called City up until today Yeah. Let's just say.
Speaker 2:I was running a company called City Storage Systems. Mhmm. Okay? Which was basically about the future of food. A conglomerate operating in about 30 countries.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. The whole idea was can you get a meal that's prepared and delivered to you so efficient that it starts to approach the cost of going to the grocery store?
Speaker 3:Yep.
Speaker 2:Because if you do, you do to the kitchen what Uber did to the car. So I've been doing that since 2018.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And after just the intensity of Uber from in terms of like being in the public sphere
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Dealing with a 100 headlines every day, deciding what you do or the actions you take based on what the New York Times is gonna write. Yep. I was like, I would like to
Speaker 3:That's tough way to run
Speaker 2:a business. It is very tough. So I was just like, I gotta wake up every day and sort of just get to work and build. So did you think of So I went under the radar.
Speaker 1:Did you think this as stealth mode? Is that the right term?
Speaker 2:We've been in stealth mode for eight years. Okay. And that's like till today
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Employees were not allowed to put the name of the company Mhmm. On their LinkedIn.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:We have thousands of employees. Yeah. That's crazy. Okay. So today, what happened was it's like, for my company, and I just got up in all hands and then came right here Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Is we went out of stealth.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:Now, City Storage Systems is like a hilarious name.
Speaker 3:It's like It's like the most, like, let me choose the most generic name that no one will ever notice.
Speaker 2:Of America. It was on purpose. Yeah. Okay?
Speaker 3:And it worked.
Speaker 2:It was like we had two choices when we when we launched. Yeah. We had what my sort of normal instinct was. Mhmm. Remember, it was only seven, eight months after I left Uber when I started this.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's let's just say the mission is infrastructure for better food. Yeah. Okay? We have hardcore real estate assets. Yeah.
Speaker 2:We buy the assets. We do construction. We sell restaurant tours on a delivery only location. I have a software stack Yep. That's like ARR.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. ARR life. I've got a robotics company. Yep. I have a marketplace for for corporate lunch.
Speaker 2:Like, there's a ton of stuff going on. We use it, man. Oh, yeah. That's right. That's right.
Speaker 2:Of course. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's great. Alright.
Speaker 3:That's great.
Speaker 2:Okay. So shit. I forgot what I was saying. So so Well, it's just
Speaker 1:a very different business from company and be like, I'm gonna start the exact same thing. I got the playbook.
Speaker 2:Well, this is what this is what the Uber guys, when I left, were were like a little bit worried about. This is we're talking about 02/1718. Yeah. They're paranoid. So my my instinct was, okay, left.
Speaker 2:It's seven months later. I'm gonna name my company Super. Mhmm. He's like, you leave it. I'm call it Uber.
Speaker 2:You call it Super. I'm like
Speaker 3:Or call
Speaker 2:it Giga. I'm like, you go from Uber to Super. You're like, no. That that cannot be a thing. And so I did the opposite.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Full underground, full stealth, put the toothpaste back in the tube, the genie back in the bottle, and built literally thousands of employees. It's like a vacuum of information, full lockdown. It's been great building, but today we sort of came out and we renamed the company. We renamed what we do.
Speaker 2:We call it Adams. Adams. Okay? Beautiful. But we started a new company at the same time.
Speaker 2:And so, let's just say like like physical AI and robotics Mhmm. Action and movement through the physical world. Mhmm. Of course, on the food side, we already have all the things I just talked about. But but think of it as like I'm trying to get the mission, like, we're so It's fresh.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's so fresh. But but basically it's yeah. So so the I'll I'll leave it at that. Let's get we can get rolling here.
Speaker 2:I'm like super caffeinated on four hours of sleep.
Speaker 3:So I love it. I love What how much harder in in many ways, I think building in stealth for so long made a lot of things easier. Right? You're not running your business based on headlines Yeah. Or thinking about what headlines are gonna come.
Speaker 3:What are the what are the ways in which you made it harder? I imagine there's a lot of there's a lot of there's a lot of talent out there that wants to go work at the hot company that's Yeah. In the news constantly. Mhmm. I'm sure you got the benefits of people maybe still opting out of that path and saying, hey, just wanna come in with you Yeah.
Speaker 3:Build and I don't care about the hype and I don't want I don't need every recruiter hitting me up constantly because of whatever's on my LinkedIn. But what were the kind of key challenges and what are why why was now the right time to to come out and and start to get loud again?
Speaker 2:So, like, first I mean, a 100%. So imagine every recruiter has to be outbound. Yeah. Every salesperson has to be outbound. Yeah.
Speaker 2:There's no inbound.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's where it starts. You get good at your craft when that's what you have to do. Like, I believe we have some of the best recruiters in the world because of it Yeah. And one of the best recruiting systems. Now, they leverage.
Speaker 2:Okay. You're working with Travis, former, you know, founder Like, of there's leverage there.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But then you you have a name like City Storage Systems and it's like, so do you guys just have like these these like boxes sitting in parking lots? Like what is this? And that's sort of like the reason it's different now is because, look, number one, lots of time since the Uber, you know, having to live that life. Yeah. But two is the world is different.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Like, in 2016, 2017, the world of, let's call it business press, was just beginning to say business is politics, but people didn't know it. They're like, if New York Times says something, everybody just treated it as the gospel, like it just must be true.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And and if they say something bad, it must be true. I believe everything I read on the Internet as an example. Yeah. And so and by the way, it's this sounds crazy, but 2017, the media world was actually more negative then than it is today.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I think partly because it even shows like this. No. And it It's like, let's bring some optimism to the party. Sure. Can we get excited about what the future looks like and what's being built?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that's the difference between today and then. And so when you go 95% of all press is negative, you're like, why engage? When the world is used to business being politics, let's just say, And if I thought of my favorite journal sorry, my favorite politician and say, does the internet say that's bad about them? And it's like an insane amount. What does the internet say that's or sorry, untrue about them?
Speaker 2:And it's a ton of stuff. And you go, well, that's how they're gonna think about our company too. That's how it's gonna play. Yeah. We're now we're desensitized to that stuff and now we can get back to optimism and building and not be so worried about, you know, 95% of the media just being negative.
Speaker 3:Sure. Yeah. I mean, is pre like go like whole trend of going direct, like Lulu. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I'm sure you've met it at some point. Basically coached a generation of CEOs on, you know, you just can't if you if you wanna have any control
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 3:Over how people perceive you, you need to you need to tell your story.
Speaker 1:You have counteract with, like, a story, not like a statement. And the Yeah. And the the boilerplate, like, you know, official statement just doesn't it doesn't entertain people as well as a full read,
Speaker 2:a long And it's also guys like Elon owns Twitter now.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's x. Yeah. Right? Pre post is like a massive difference in the mix of sort of ideas that can get out there. And again, you're allowed to be optimistic about things where maybe before Yeah.
Speaker 2:Everything had to be negative and and sort of Yes.
Speaker 3:You talked about the initial idea of naming the next company super that would have in many ways, I'm sure turned into a basically a spite company. In this case, like kind of taking the high road was I'm just gonna be quiet. I'm gonna do the years and years and years and years of just like chewing glass, building up infrastructure, getting to scale, getting to thousands of employees, getting to operating globally before you even poke your head up again, which I think is to any of your former critics, that's to me, that's taken the high road, basically. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And what you get when you create a culture around that is you have you then build a culture of builders. You build a culture of people that want to build and do not need to be famous when they do it Yeah. Which basically means emotional intelligence. Mhmm. Now, it's a human nature.
Speaker 2:I wanna be acknowledged for the things that I do.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'd like the things I build to be seen and I I'd like somebody to know that I did it. Mhmm. And so this is when you cut against sort of the core of human nature and we sort of went all the way. Mhmm.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so we have a very high EQ culture, but like it is like you have to go the extra mile to recruit, the extra mile in sales, etcetera. Again, world's different, LFG.
Speaker 1:Are the laws of physics of of the different businesses slightly different? I'm just thinking about your career arc with, like, Red Swoosh's enterprise communications. You're in a very particular industry. Yeah. Uber's a consumer company.
Speaker 1:Now you're working on something that looks you probably run-in, like, real estate developers. It's like a different industry, different community. Has there been adjustments in what's different? What's the same? Like, what can you just be like a good business operator and power through?
Speaker 1:And what do you actually have to learn about the new industry?
Speaker 2:Look, I think probably the biggest one is when you go from consumer to because I have a I mean, when you go from consumer to b to b Yeah. The number one mega challenge that you must master is called LTV to CAC. Mhmm. Yes, you can make that argument on consumer, but when you have a sales funnel that starts with I'm going to talk to customers and I'm going I have to make LTV to CAC work versus like my LTV to CAC is the app store. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:It's a whole different ballgame. Mhmm. And LTV to CAC with a sales machine, especially if you go small business
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:This is like life in hard mode. Yep. And talk to anybody who's who's crushed it on SMB. Yeah. Like, those guys are special individuals who've made that happen because life in the SMB b to b world is no joke.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Right? So talk about moats. I feel like
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Uber is the greatest example of network effects Yeah. And runaway scale. What do what did moats look like at Red Swoosh? What were you thinking then? And then and then what does it look like now?
Speaker 2:So, like, nobody knows what Red Swoosh is. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. It's all good.
Speaker 2:So, guys, I started a company in 2001. Yeah. That was, let's call it BitTorrent meets Akamai.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Sold to Akamai.
Speaker 2:Before BitTorrent existed.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay. That's crazy. You click on a link and you can pull from other PCs that already have that file Sure. Or that video stream, but it looks like the Internet.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's basically what it was. The first four years, no salary. Wow. Yeah. Lived it monthly.
Speaker 2:Had some famous investors. Famous investors.
Speaker 1:You know,
Speaker 2:like Mark Cuban was on the board of Red So before that, Scour was Ovitz and and Ron Burkle. That was the
Speaker 3:company before. Oh. Oh. I've So anyways That was confusing to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Anyways
Speaker 1:So there's a network effect there once you get the CDN up and running.
Speaker 2:That company wasn't meant to be and I willed it into being. Okay. And I sold it to Akamai for like, I think it was like $19,000,000. Yeah. And probably to this day is still the happiest day of my life.
Speaker 2:I guess so. Okay. Was crazy. It was like, I cleared 3,000,000 and I was like,
Speaker 1:crazy the Lord. Okay. So then Uber, very obvious very obvious moats and and and scale economies. What like, what does this look like with Adams? What does this look like in both, you know, the food delivery kitchen model, real estate model, but then also where we're going in in autonomous robotics?
Speaker 2:Look, I if you look at where moats are and really you're looking for network effects in different places. Right? So right now, I have these facilities. There's 30 restaurants in each of them.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Picnic is like a perfect example of this. Yes. Right? You order from your office. It looks like Uber Eats or DoorDash.
Speaker 2:You get a 100 options except all the meals are coming out of my facilities. Mhmm. There's one courier that brings a 100 orders at a time.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Yep. But it's on demand and it's personalized for you and we've got enough facilities near here that you can basically get anything. Mhmm. And so who's gonna who can play ball?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like, you gotta have the real estate. Mhmm. That's a freaking mode. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You have the network effect now of like, what if I sell every floor on every tower Yeah. Meaning every office floor is on this and I More efficiency then. In all of these floors. That means that one courier can bring a 100 oars and by the way, have five couriers going to a single office Yep. With 500 oars hitting every shelf and you get notified when it arrives.
Speaker 2:Yep. If you even took one floor, you would be like sad because your economics are gonna be screwed. Yep. Because you don't have the efficiency or the operation sort of depth to make it work.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So there's network effects of a building. There's network effects on a on a facility with kitchens in it.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:There's but then there's the moat of like, we own real estate.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay? So like, if you wanna
Speaker 3:compete compete with us, go buy a 100,000,000
Speaker 1:So so very high variance.
Speaker 2:Billions of dollars of real estate Yeah. In every major city in the world Mhmm. And then we're gonna go head to head.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Talk about capital the
Speaker 3:other the I don't I don't know exactly what what bucket this falls in, but just just the mode of you would have to be absolutely insane to compete were.
Speaker 1:People were. Like, this is how I remember the Uber versus Lyft battle was Uber was and then all of a sudden a whole bunch of VCs were like, I want a piece of that and I didn't get Uber so I'm funding
Speaker 3:the But I'm saying in the context of of cloud kitchens Yeah. City storage, like, even though people generally figured out what you were up to. Right? You did have to share some little things along the way or you buy this company or or sit there.
Speaker 2:You gotta you gotta go to website and say, what are what what is an what is a delivery only location? What the hell is that?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so somebody had to know. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But even then, we're like, we're gonna we're gonna say the cross streets of the facility, not the actual address. Like, these are the little moves you do to be stealth, you know?
Speaker 3:True. In in you know, when I look at the the new site and and how everything's positioned
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:A lot of it feels insulated from all the changes and progress that we're seeing in AI and in many in many ways, like, accelerated because you get you get a lot of the, you know, the benefits of of AI progress and progress in robotics. But you're moving physical atoms around the Yeah. World in in an era where, you know, you can generate any piece of software fairly quickly. This this feels like you've been kind of planning for this type of Yeah. Technology progress
Speaker 2:sounds great, dude. I love that. Mhmm. I love it. Yeah, dude.
Speaker 2:It's big. It's all in the plan. Let's go, dude. Look, I think it's always been the plan. A meal that's efficient, you know, so efficient it starts to approach the cost of going to the grocery store.
Speaker 2:A meal that's prepared and delivered to you. Yeah. That's real. You must do automated production of food. You must do automated delivery of the meal.
Speaker 2:I call that autonomous burritos. Mhmm. Which is why I'm moving into this Mhmm. Making this move on Adams, which is okay. We're still doing the food thing, but then we're adding mining and transport.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Okay? Mining being like more, you know, we like to say more efficient mines for Earth's industries. Or on transport, it's just robot wheelbase for robots.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Okay? Because if you're gonna do specialized robots, not humanoids, but specialized robots, they need to have wheels. Okay. Right? I like to say, like, if you saw the Beijing in Beijing, they had the humanoid Olympics Yeah.
Speaker 2:Or whatever. And the half marathon and you're watching a humanoid cruising up like, dude, could you imagine if that thing had wheels? That'd be crazy. So, like, humanoids have their place, but there's there's a lot of room for specialized robots that that do things in an efficient sort of industrial scale kind of way, which is sort of where we play.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:I'm I I'm I I wanna go back to Capital Wars, lessons from Capital Wars when these play out because we're seeing
Speaker 2:this OG. OG. Yeah. And you yeah. My final mod.
Speaker 2:Well, well, you said
Speaker 1:you the OG because or or when this capital war kicked off, were you looking to lessons from the nineties?
Speaker 2:I mean, look, you can always say there was the guy before. Yeah. Okay? Like like, you know, Rockefeller was the OG.
Speaker 1:I guess. And then before him was
Speaker 2:it like the Medici. Yeah. I don't know. But I was I was the goat for a period of time and now I'm a baby goat. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that's okay. Okay. And so then one day the baby goat will grow up again.
Speaker 3:Yeah. That's
Speaker 2:fine. It's gonna be fine.
Speaker 1:I I I I just mean, like, this idea of, like, you have a network effect that's growing, and then you see a bunch of venture capitalists sort of throwing money at, like, the second place, and there's this debate over catching up. And, like, how do you what motes do you retreat to in that moment? Like, I feel like that's the that that's the lesson from the Uber story that gets missed amid all the random drama is that there's actually, like, a very interesting financial war happening. Yeah. And it played out very well for you.
Speaker 1:And I'm wondering, like, what level of confidence you had? What did you do strategically to set yourself up for success?
Speaker 2:It's a super interesting thing because, of course, all the AI AI guys are playing that game right now. Right. Which is the ability to attract capital. Cap the capital wars becomes a strategic weapon. Capital becomes a strategic weapon
Speaker 3:Yep.
Speaker 2:Which means you must be the best at getting capital in order to win. Mhmm. And we realized that early on in the Uber days. Of course, that's happening times 10 Yep. In the sort of, let's call it the digital AI wars.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And look, the last round of funding that I did at Uber, we were like a 70,000,000 or, know, I know it was like a $6,070,000,000,000 dollar pre. Let's see that. Yeah. When that used to be a thing. Now, like, that's small stuff.
Speaker 2:Seriously. But we had four rooms. This was our our how we'd fundraise. We had four rooms in our New York office Okay. Booked for a week Mhmm.
Speaker 2:With an hour and a half slot on each. Yeah. So like for twelve hours in a day. Four rooms going in parallel. I was
Speaker 3:in Are bouncing between?
Speaker 2:No. I'm in the $250,000,000 and over club.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:That's one room. And it goes all there's all these other there's these other rooms to the fourth room is like $25,000,000 checks.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Okay? There's a guy who works for a guy who works for a guy who works for me who's doing that room. Yeah. Okay? And then but we're oversubscribed, so we started putting multiple investors in the We're same like, dude, we're just out of slots, dude.
Speaker 2:Like, let's go.
Speaker 1:It's remarkable.
Speaker 2:And but what it means is it's about the system.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:It's about the system for sort of acquiring that capital at scale and super efficiently.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And what it means is that storytelling that we did anybody in my team could tell that story, let's say, on the strategic finance team
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Could tell that story and make it happen.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:And that was a big part. It was a story that's just like, of course, like if I'm pitching it, people are like, holy shit. Let's go.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:Then there is making it scalable so that there are 10 different people in a company that can pitch it at any given time. Mhmm. Yeah. And that's when you take it all the way. And And then there's like even auction dynamics of how we would do it.
Speaker 2:We would basically, once they said they were interested, we would then give them a piece of paper. It was like digital. But it was like, you need to fill out this table Yeah. Which is this valuation, how much money you want to put in. This valuation, how much money.
Speaker 2:This much This this valuation, how much money.
Speaker 3:And then
Speaker 2:you And then we would aggregate the
Speaker 1:IPO book.
Speaker 2:Yes. Wow. But like done way better because you don't respect to the bankers. But like Yeah. I was in charge of pricing.
Speaker 2:Sure. Sure. And so and then you're like, oh, we're trying to clear $5,000,000,000. That takes us to this price. We would tell all these guys, hey, your price isn't big enough because Yep.
Speaker 2:You don't make it under the curve. Yep. And then they would move their price. Yep. And then that would change
Speaker 1:the curve and you would do it again. Makes sense. Were you you bringing new investors to private markets at that time? I feel like if I go back to Facebook, I think they IPO ed around 50,000,000,000. You're doing a $70,000,000,000 raise.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of different it's a completely different shape of investor. What were those conversations like?
Speaker 2:Look, I like, I I in some ways, I have to give some credit. The this was it it was an era Yeah. Where this was happening. Yeah. You had like the fidelities of the world and other guys that are moving in.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I have to give credit to Drew at Dropbox. Oh. He was like the first guy in that game.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And, you know, Drew and I meet up and we'd, you know, have like flex. I'm like, dude. I love Drew.
Speaker 3:You're like, this is my our little safe space.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Was like at Airbnb. Like, that was the crew that was doing it in the February. Yeah. And sort of pushing the boundaries of what it meant to be like people didn't even know what private equity what is a private what is private equity?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Now, we're just like, yeah, private equity. Yeah. That's VC. It's the same thing. And but back then, private equity is like, I do leverage buyouts.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And so you're bringing private equity, mutual funds, those guys into the game in a way that didn't exist before. Now, it's just old hat.
Speaker 3:Have you have you coached any of the AI founders on
Speaker 2:the company?
Speaker 1:Culturally, like that crew that you just described, we've most of them have been on the show. It feels very different aesthetically than what we're dealing with today.
Speaker 3:Yeah. But I'm sure Chesky's pumping up Sam.
Speaker 1:I love I love these guys.
Speaker 3:I love them all.
Speaker 2:That's so interesting. Look, the times when I get hit up Yeah. Are usually when the shit is about to hit the fan.
Speaker 1:I do what you're saying. Or it's
Speaker 2:actually hitting the fan. They're like, dude, somebody needs to call Travis immediately. He'll know what to do. So I this shit so my
Speaker 1:Travis is casting movie about me.
Speaker 2:My phone's like, what are the crazy, wild, wackiest things going down or like here because that's when I usually get the call and I'm so underground.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's what happens. But like I should, you know, I should give, know, I know these guys. I should give them a call and be like, dude, we should
Speaker 3:Let's cook.
Speaker 2:Let's let's cook. Yeah. Let's cook. I still think we probably did things better than anybody that some of those things probably are still better than anybody even today. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:But obviously, the check size is much bigger.
Speaker 3:Is that approach like systematizing, fund productizing it? Do you apply that across the entire is that like everything that you do that is important? You're Yes. You're creating like a ground up kind of solution for it? Yes.
Speaker 2:Else do you Well, like, for instance, I mean, this will you know, this is just crazy. But like, how about when you do construction? Mhmm. You know how effed up construction is?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I tell my guys that in the in the real estate department, I'm like, your entire department is the anti fraud department. Oh, yeah. Know?
Speaker 3:These guys just are incentivized to just run
Speaker 2:out the bill. How do you do epic high quality construction at an insanely efficient price? There's a way. Mhmm. I'm not gonna tell you.
Speaker 3:I'm not gonna tell you.
Speaker 2:But there's a way. Do you have do you
Speaker 1:have any, like, white pills or ideas that potentially AI speeds up the rate of building broadly, like solving the housing crisis through Like, permitting. Permitting, stuff like that.
Speaker 2:This is so one of the things is that and I think people are starting to come out of this now. Mhmm. This whole like, the jobs are gone. Like, I know still people still say that. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But there's another side to this story. And like, I'll just make this because I'm the Adams guy. I'm like, let's just talk about plumbers. Mhmm. Okay?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Let's say the entire world, everything in our world was automated except for plumbers.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Okay? You had machines making buildings. You would basically have like a thousand buildings a day. Yeah. A thousand buildings being built at a single time in Los Angeles alone.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:Just machines doing. Yeah. Except plumbers.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:How valuable would those plumbers be? Extremely valuable. Okay. Those guys are each and every plumber would be like LeBron. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay. Why? Why? We have because because plumbing is the long pole in the tent to progress. Sure.
Speaker 2:That you can't get those thousand buildings unless you have a plumber.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:And by the way, you've got so much efficiency everywhere else that you need millions of plumbers. Yeah. And then the plumbing is like Yeah. What's up? And so once you once you realize that
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Then you're like, until we get super AGI
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Humans are valuable. Mhmm. And they are going to become more and more valuable because they will be the long pole in the tent to progress. That progress is going to accelerate and get faster and more, you know, more robust except if you're a plumber Mhmm. You're crushing.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. And so until we get to humans are replaced like Fully. Fully.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yep.
Speaker 2:And by the way, I have I think we have solutions for that. I think Elon's got that at Neuralink where it's gonna be all good. Mhmm. Okay. And then people are like, oh, God.
Speaker 2:But but until we get there, we're gonna I believe we're gonna be super fine. That's my white pill. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It does. If you have plumbers that are getting paid like LeBron, it obviously increases the, you know, the prize pool of automating. But again, there's like these kind of windows
Speaker 2:of moving. But there's gonna be a bunch of things like plumbing and it's not just plumbing. It's gonna be all over the place. Yeah. And even when it comes to software.
Speaker 2:So like for instance, look at like autonomous cars. They like like Waymo has people that oversee the rides. Yeah. Okay? And it starts with like, okay, five five rides for every person.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Then it goes to 20. Then it goes to a 100. But like if we get to this place where autonomous cars are everywhere. Okay?
Speaker 2:And let's just say it's one in a thousand. Mhmm. And like nobody owns cars. There's just ride sharing everywhere. I mean, some people own cars but it'd be the top of the the top of the pyramid, let's say.
Speaker 2:Okay. So what do we replace? Billions of cars with ride sharing?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:If it was a thousand to one, you still probably have, I don't know, 20,000,000 jobs? Yep. 50,000,000 jobs? I'm just riffing on just Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:The concept of this. You will see this everywhere
Speaker 1:is absorbed. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Is that until humans are fully replaced Mhmm. We become the long pole and the tent to progress. And that progress, by the way, is to serve us.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Robots yet don't yet have bank accounts. So that plumber gets paid.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Anyways, you get the idea.
Speaker 1:You mentioned mining? Yeah. Have you been to a mine recently? Have you visited a mine? Like, what what's going on in mining?
Speaker 1:What how I mean, I imagine that mines are fairly automated already. There's thousands of employees at Okay.
Speaker 2:At a given mine. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And and that's work that he has.
Speaker 1:And there's so
Speaker 3:many resources. Children children yearn for the mines. They do. Minecraft. Yeah.
Speaker 3:But it's not the best the best time.
Speaker 2:But like, maybe that's actually how it gets you know, maybe that's where it goes. Oh, Ender's game situation. Ender's game situation. The it's interesting. You go a lot of times, they're like, oh, oh, well, is labor really the issue Mhmm.
Speaker 2:In my you know, is that really a thing? But what it really comes down to is productivity.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Right? So if if a mine is automated, then it can run all hours of the day and night. It doesn't have Yeah. It doesn't have off hours. Yeah.
Speaker 2:The way machines queue up, doing that really efficiently like computer science style, I call it digitizing the physical world.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You can make that mind substantially more productive. What is the value of a more productive mind? And by the way, let's say, let's get to the real sort of the the outcome here. Yeah. Is does the world as we enter this sort of new golden age that's about to come Yeah.
Speaker 2:Do we need more minerals? Do we need more materials? Look around us Absolutely. Like Like look around us in this studio Yeah. Or walk outside.
Speaker 2:Everything you see is grown or mined.
Speaker 3:Yep. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Manufactured and moved. Yeah. So if you're not in the mining business
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like you're like let's just say the mine like I shouldn't say that but like it's it's a very critical part of the situation. I can't wait till we're putting some machines on SpaceX's rockets to go mine an asteroid or a planet or whatever. In the meantime Yeah. Lots of mines on planet Earth.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So what level abstraction do you wanna operate at? Do you wanna go and find land and mine it? Because that's sort of on the table. If I look at what you're doing in food, you you you own real estate.
Speaker 1:Or do you wanna sell tools to mining companies that already have explored and they understand and they're running up and running?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Like, I'm How do you think? I'm not I'm not buying land for mines anytime. That's just not anytime soon. But
Speaker 1:In the next three months.
Speaker 2:Yeah. He's like, what? A hundred and twenty days out, I Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I just think it's super fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. Again, it's just like like I'm an Adam's guy. I'm like all about digitization of the physical world.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I have this framework for it, which is like CPU manipulates bits Mhmm. Storage stores bits, network moves bits from point a to point b. I was a computer engineer at UCLA.
Speaker 2:Didn't graduate, but it but I loved it. Yeah. Those are the three core computing resources that you're told about on day one.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But if you're treating atoms like bits, digitizing the physical world, CPU manipulates bits. What manipulates atoms? Manufacturing. Storage stores bits. What stores atoms?
Speaker 2:Real estate. Network moves bits from point a to point b. What moves atoms? Transport, logistics. I didn't know it then or I didn't think about it that way exactly.
Speaker 2:But at Uber, we were building network for the physical world, also known as digitized transportation. Yep. City storage systems then make sense. Yeah. Storage for the physical world.
Speaker 2:That's real estate. We're building atoms based computers with a real estate foundation. Storage.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right? But now leveling up and saying, okay, we have a food computer. What about a mining computer? And what about platform to serve industry generally?
Speaker 1:Yeah. If I look at the last two decades of your career, you're uniquely good at managing very geographically spread out workforces.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:What is the secret? I I I can I could never get behind the remote work thing? Everyone
Speaker 2:Me neither.
Speaker 1:Here works in one studio. Respect. I'm all about it. Yeah. But you you've had to do it, basically, because you had to have a presence in New York.
Speaker 1:You had to have a presence in LA, and you can't be in 10 places
Speaker 2:at once. There's a difference How do you do it? There's a difference between remote work Yeah. Where somebody works at home and they're like in boxers and then a Sure.
Speaker 3:A suit.
Speaker 2:Okay? Versus we have an office in every major city in the world Yes. And whatever city you're in, you're going to that office every day, five days a week and sometimes six or seven. Mhmm. And that's it.
Speaker 1:But satellite offices still feel like a headache. How how did you solve it? Because you can only be in one place.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I guess I just I cracked the code so thoroughly in Uber times before I think maybe even before anybody else. Yeah. It almost feels like normal. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But, like, I basically have figured out sort of the the management and leadership structures where you the real the real thing is about empowerment.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Is you must be able to empower teams. But I I it's like I like to say the fewest number of rules while staying out of chaos. Sure. And once you have those systems in place, your imagination is only constrained by management capacity.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So once you figure out the management piece, your imagination can go pretty damn far. And so it's just figuring out the management part of this is the thing.
Speaker 1:Talk about empowering young people. We've had a ton of founders on the show who have the origin story of like, yeah, I was the GM of Miami or so or the he's he sent me to Atlanta, and I was me in a hotel room with a bunch of energy drinks, and we had to open up this market. So we had to do a stunt and Yeah. Hire some people. And it just felt like a lot you know, startup within a startup is a bad phrase that gets sort of misused.
Speaker 1:But why why were you you you know, you weren't this wasn't your first company with Uber. Why were you so heavy on leaning on young people, empowering them, pushing them?
Speaker 2:It wasn't on purpose. Mhmm. It was just the right answer.
Speaker 1:Okay. Why?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, once you have a Citi team and you're like, okay, I need to find people that can run this, like old people aren't the answer. Mhmm. Like, I need fresh I didn't think of it as like I gotta get youthful people or not. Sure.
Speaker 2:I'm just like, I need good talent that can go do x and who has no judgment on what it is we gotta get done. Yeah. And it it was just like water flows downhill. Mhmm. So, what do you look, it was a you know, like the the first driver ops guy that we brought in in San Francisco in 2010, we basically took 200 cards and put names on them and we said alphabetize them.
Speaker 2:Click. And we just would measure how much time it took to alphabetize. We would give them like crazy analytics tests and then we're like, okay, this is our guy. Yeah. You know what I mean?
Speaker 3:Free free AI.
Speaker 2:If you're on the marketing manager, if you're on the marketing manager, but even today, you'd still want that guy. Yeah. Even today. So like, you can't use AI. Now alphabetize in the most efficient way.
Speaker 2:Now, if you're if you know computer science, sorting is like a big freaking deal. Yeah. Sorting efficiently and being able to do that in your brain, not in software, is a thing. That's what ops people do.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense.
Speaker 2:So I don't know. I don't know how to answer that question other than problem solving whether you're young or old, executive or junior, who can solve problems is number one. Mhmm. When you interview, simulate what it's like working together so that day one is really like week two. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And you're already pumped because you saw them in action.
Speaker 3:Yeah. How are you with Adams, how are you thinking about recruiting and how are you gonna change your approach to building the company? You've been kinda hold up in LA. This is your kind of hideout.
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally.
Speaker 3:But I imagine like do you push into back into SF, go Well, back to being the
Speaker 2:here. So first, let's just be clear on December 18, I moved to Texas.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:You know? Great. Yeah. I don't know what's so specific about December 18, but let's just say it's prior to January. Yep.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I'm a primary resident of Texas, but the action for a lot of this ADAMS type technology I'm talking about, of course, like the Bay is a real thing. My head of the advanced technology group at Uber is running my robotics division at Adams. It's called Lab thirty seven. That's Anthony?
Speaker 2:In Pittsburgh. No, no, no. That's Eric Meijofer.
Speaker 1:Okay. Eric Meijofer.
Speaker 2:So, that's robotics on the food side. Yeah. Anthony Evidowski was running Pronto. I was the largest investor in Pronto and then we just were basically right in the final, like, we're checking off the list maybe closing today or tomorrow on that deal.
Speaker 3:Amazing. Let's talk about that deal. Yeah. Give us, yeah, give us like What's the plan? Kind of background on Pronto and then how it fits into the Empire.
Speaker 2:Well, look, I I I sort of broke out how mining fits.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right. So we got that. Look, I've been I'm the largest investor in Pronto. Mhmm. And it's super inspiring work.
Speaker 2:Like like go to a mine, right? Check out how these things work and let your mind imagine what that might look like when you bring automation to it. And how much more productive it is and what that means for industry when all mines are producing more. Where does that go? And in some ways you could say low hanging fruit on the autonomy problem.
Speaker 2:Because, yes, there are different problems off road but they like, they're way more controlled than what's going on on road. Mhmm. Okay? But then you get into the physical action, like cars on the road, the Weymos on the road, you know, they're moving. But they're not acting on atoms.
Speaker 2:Right? So, when you think about excavation and you think about crush like, when you get the material and then you move it, then you are basically crushing the material and then you process it. You think about all of the automation through that stack. It's fantastic. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's like, it's hard. Right? Like I somebody asked me, like, we have a bunch of roboticists that make some of our food machines. And somebody came like, hey, like is AI gonna help us design food machines? We're like, dude, let me show you.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Like this thing has like an insane number of parts and let me show you just the design of a single part.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like, the like the the the that AI can't even do freaking math. You know what mean? It's like, this is not we're not there yet. Now, could it get there? Yeah.
Speaker 2:But then you're really an AGI. Yeah. If you look at how much harder it is the physical world, how much harder it is AI in the physical world versus in the digital world, and I'm not defeating it in any way. I'm just saying it's like a maybe let's call it a different problem set.
Speaker 3:Yeah. You're we're just far away from one shotting way less
Speaker 1:training data.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. It's like one shotting on software. Yep. Shotting on designing a machine or a robot.
Speaker 2:We're just not there yet.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Not there
Speaker 1:yet.
Speaker 2:But that makes it more fun. That's the point. It's like, do the hard things. If you are in the Adam's world, you have decided, I like hard things. I like pain more than anybody else.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:This is kind of what you gotta be about.
Speaker 3:Chewing glass. I love it. So I can see how AVs at Adams fit into mining. What other and just heavy industry broadly, what other kind of categories of of AVs are are exciting? How do you see the space evolving?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Look, I anything I mean, we the mission is wheelbase for robots.
Speaker 3:Yep.
Speaker 2:So then you're just like, okay, what moves?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right? And you go, okay, where you have to find the businesses that make sense, of course. So we're like, okay, mining is a no brainer.
Speaker 3:How do think about sizing for wheelbase for robots that can scale up and down like Yeah.
Speaker 2:I tell my team like, dude, there's like a ton of silver medals here. And there's actually a few other gold medals just in the category. So let's just go with delivery robots like food delivery, which of course is near and dear to my heart.
Speaker 3:You make a lot Your
Speaker 2:20 yeah. Your 30 your $15 bowl became $30.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay?
Speaker 3:Two this is this is like, I would put it up there as like one of the number one annoyances of the average American Yeah. Regardless of where they are in society. Oh shit. Just it's food inflation. Food is just the cost of food delivery.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Everybody wants food fast, cheap, hot, etcetera.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And there's all this data that just came out this week that just shows like it doesn't matter even how much money you're making. Yep. You're spending a lot on this category.
Speaker 2:Isn't it interesting? Right? Remember I talked about the plumbers? Yeah. But like you could take whole categories become the long pole in the tent.
Speaker 2:Food. Boring. To a lot of people, boring is that. For me, fucking interesting. Let's go.
Speaker 2:Let's go. But I look. I did taxis. I did taxis Yeah. When they're like, people are looking at me funny.
Speaker 1:It was a weird idea.
Speaker 2:Okay. They're looking at me super funny.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So Jason Kalanick is the most famous investor in Uber of all time.
Speaker 1:More famous than you in some Whenever I meet
Speaker 2:with them, like, dude, I'm so honored to be meeting one of our early investors.
Speaker 3:He Shout
Speaker 2:out me. There was like an angel group that I pitched to. Yeah. Yeah. There were like thirty, forty people in the room.
Speaker 2:I think it was like three or four that invested.
Speaker 1:It's crazy.
Speaker 2:Okay? The $10 check became like a $100,000,000. It was crazy. Wow. But the boring places are the places.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You know?
Speaker 1:Less competitive.
Speaker 2:But also just weird and hard. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, yeah. The reason
Speaker 2:why it's that way.
Speaker 3:The the graveyard is stacked of tech guys that thought they could crack food which is why which is again like Yeah.
Speaker 1:Go back to what they are.
Speaker 3:I mean, you can go you can go compete in but this you have to actually be insane and you have to have Yeah. And and then you have to attack at all all
Speaker 2:these Yeah. In my so my head of the robotics division
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:We're like, yeah, let's do this. Get the band back together. Let's go. Right? This is Eric Meijofer.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And and he's like, okay, we can make a food robot. I'm like, there I got one there's one requirement though. I got one with hay and cheddar, one string attached. He's like, what? I'm like, you're gonna have to build a restaurant that the robot serves.
Speaker 2:So, my roboticist team in Pittsburgh made a restaurant that is the restaurant that our first robot went into Because we had to make sure that we understood how a restaurant worked. We had to make sure that this wasn't just a machine that made food, but a machine that makes food in the ecosystem of machines called a restaurant. And people don't understand, but a restaurant is a manufacturing facility. In fact, if you look at like the labor statistics, etcetera, restaurants fits under manufacturing Yeah. For obvious reasons.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It just hasn't changed in fifty years.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Anyways, back to Sorry.
Speaker 2:I'm all over
Speaker 3:the place. No. I love it. I love it. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Firing on all cylinders. Yeah. But but so so again, are are do you wanna move people with AVs? Do you are you do you care more about commercial?
Speaker 2:Look. The the industrial thing is sort of like probably our our main jam. But the bottom line is once you once you crack once you crack movement in the physical world, there's lots of people who want access to that.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And in fact, you need partners because, you know, you're gonna be putting billions billions of dollars to work to make it happen. Yeah. So there's gonna be lots of partners across different categories that are gonna probably want some of that. And I have no issues with that. We're not like a, you know, this is ours and this thing.
Speaker 2:It's more like, hey, there there may be ways to work with ours. We're happy to do it. Yeah. What about We've pick our our spots, but you get the idea.
Speaker 3:What about manufacturing broadly? You're doing it in food. Are there other categories that are interesting? Are you happy to be kind of the transport rails?
Speaker 2:Look, I think once you are in physical AI, you should basically understand that manufacturing is part of your tech stack. Like, it just is. And by the way, energy is part of your tech stack. Land development, real estate is part of your tech stack. That's just what it's gonna be.
Speaker 2:People don't think about it like that, but it's true. Of course, they're, you know, I I've you know, Tesla just crushes. If you look at this list of things, you're just like Yeah. They got it all. So good.
Speaker 2:But there's just so much to do. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I mean?
Speaker 3:And that's like Is that is that the
Speaker 2:Tesla's can see all the doing. That's cool. I'm like
Speaker 3:There's a million
Speaker 2:can still help you mine. Yeah. I I could still I can still get some food to to some peeps. You know what mean? So you get the idea.
Speaker 3:Is that is that is that really when you're pitching investors around Adams in this new vision, is it basically like, there's a lot of jobs to do in the world. We're gonna do it with physical AI and you're basically betting on applying my general ethos to all these categories over time?
Speaker 2:No. You got you got to be able to pick your spots. If you are too broad, people are like, dude, what's wrong with you? Now, you know, I think every entrepreneur always gets that. Like, you know, I I joke around like, in the nineties dude, I'm an old guy.
Speaker 2:What are you gonna do? In the nineties, it's like, dude, Microsoft's gonna kill you. Like, why do you think? Then in the February, it was like, why isn't Google gonna do In the February, it's like, dude, that looks like Uber's thing. Yep.
Speaker 2:And the, you know, now it's like if you're talking about physical AI, it's like that's Tesla. They are the they are the incumbent. They are and not just the incumbent. They're also just doing great awesome stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Find your spot.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Know yourself. Know what you're good at. Be self aware and find the thing that is your business soulmate for sure. But also know that you're in an ecosystem and you need to find your spot.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Was your experience like in.com and the the financial crisis broadly in 2008?
Speaker 2:Okay. So basically, I sold I sold my peer to peer CDN
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Akamai Meets BitTorrent in 2007 to Akamai.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:So I was earning out Yeah. When that happened and I was Failed. I just started I think I didn't last very long in that earn out. Sure. So I was the CXO.
Speaker 2:I was like an advisor and a CXO. Okay. Little known fact, I was a I was blogging. Okay. I was like a tech influencer blogger.
Speaker 2:There we go. There is a a blog still out there called Swooshing.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay. Crazy, amazing, ridiculous content.
Speaker 3:Okay? We're we're gonna dedicate
Speaker 2:I was in the click economy, guys. I was in Okay. So I was I was an advisor in CXO for like five different companies at a time.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And so I'd help them on their deals or I would be their CTO.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Or I would, you know, help them sell Yeah. Or product or whatever. But I could always just put the phone down and forget.
Speaker 1:So somewhat insulated from like the mortgage crash. Like
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, my thing was I was trying to figure out. I was getting a bunch of my friends together and saying, okay, do you have a mortgage with Bank of America? I do too. Let's pool our thing.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna go to Bank of America and say, I will buy these mortgages off for 40¢ on the dollar. Because you're selling them on the market for 10¢.
Speaker 1:Interesting.
Speaker 2:Could be fun. And then they're like
Speaker 3:Get out of here.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, you're just a crazy You're not a hedge fund. It's wild. What about .com?
Speaker 2:You're talking about the nineties?
Speaker 1:Yeah. The nineties, like late nineties. Like, I mean, you're you're at that point, you're, like, sort of starting your career. Right? Yeah.
Speaker 1:It it's an interesting place to start a career in tech. Like, a lot of people watched that and said
Speaker 2:that So look, that was a we did peer to peer file sharing at a company called Scour.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay. So some people did Napster. Some went to like, you know, all the ones that came after BitTorrent all the way to like what was the one that Zensstrom did? Kazaa or some of these others. Right?
Speaker 2:We were the OG file sharing.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:K? Michael Ovitz was on the board. Ron Burkle was on the board. LA.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:K? Doing a tech doing tech in LA was like being a finance guy in Fresno. They're like, don't know what the hell is going on. They're like, who are you? And you're a little bit sheltered from it in LA.
Speaker 2:Every time you went to the the Silicon Silicon Valley, it was like wild and crazy and like every bar was like packed. Like after hours, like happy hour thing, like things were bubbling. And the crazy part is not just what happened during the the run up, It was post.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I was raising money on this peer to peer CDN that I didn't have I didn't pay myself a salary for for four years. I was raising money in two in late two thousand one for a networking software company. Are you freaking kidding me? And so I remember going to one of these going to a bar to meet up with a VC. And this is like 2002 and it's empty.
Speaker 2:Like this thing that would be mega packed just two years earlier. I mean, we're talking dust bowl tumbleweeds, empty. And this VC, I wish I remember who it was because it'd be amazing. I was like, yeah, Travis, dude, I think I think it's all done.
Speaker 3:It's over. It's over.
Speaker 1:I told you it's over.
Speaker 2:I'm like I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, all the software that could be invented has been invented. Wow. We're done. And he meant it.
Speaker 1:The old man it's like,
Speaker 2:it's been real dude. Let's have a whiskey. Let's go.
Speaker 3:We're done. That's incredible. How have you how have you processed the last two years when people are able to raise an amount of money that took you four different rooms in this, you know, entire Yeah. You know, process and they can just raise it literally without a without a deck often. They can just pull pull it together.
Speaker 2:Look, it's all good. Like, I don't I I just have because, you know, when you build a company the way I built it, which is like my current one, where you're literally under the radar Mhmm. It means that you are powered by you have an internal fulfillment. You're not like caring what others think you. You get internally fulfilled with building.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't look at somebody and go, oh, dude. That's I had it so much harder uphill both ways to school, whatever. You know, I don't think like that. It's it's it's more about the excellence of the process.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I'm like, well, how do you raise money? And they're like, oh yeah, just throw a deck to the guy. I'm like, okay, well, that's not a thing. Yeah. What is a thing is going all the way until it hurts.
Speaker 2:If you're doing something and it's easy, it's not valuable. And I'll I'll explain. Like let's just think of like a like a marathoner.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:World class marathoner on mile 21. Is that dude smiling? No. He's not smiling. By the way, if he is smiling, you know what's about to happen?
Speaker 2:He's about to get his ass whooped. Okay?
Speaker 3:It's over.
Speaker 2:Because why? Because somebody else who's down for the pain will go harder and further and pass him.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so if you're getting money easy, I'm like why didn't you go harder? You could have done it better and more. Mhmm. Now, you don't do things hard just because. Maybe it's like, it just doesn't matter, dude.
Speaker 2:Like, I gotta go do something else that's hard. Mhmm. But the key is like, if money matters, which I think we would say it does, especially in Totally. Certain categories you need to be the best in the world at it. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's not enough to say, it was easy. If anybody comes to me and says a strategic thing was easy, I'm like, you messed up. Mhmm. You could have been way better Mhmm. And gone way further.
Speaker 2:More competitive advantage, more differentiation, get it together.
Speaker 1:Give me the update I feel
Speaker 2:like Tony Robbins right now.
Speaker 3:I love it. I love it. No. Think people I think people need to hear this.
Speaker 1:They do. They do.
Speaker 3:And and yeah, the challenge is like when when if raising money is super easy and then you actually start building and you're like, woah, actually money doesn't money makes this possible but it doesn't make the work easy.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And it is funny that some of the greatest fundraisers, the the critique is always like, oh, well, they are raising too much money. You look at Elon, Sam, all these crazy deals and people are like, well, like, okay. Well, you it's nice that you're good but like are you too good? It's Look, here's
Speaker 2:the thing. You know, back in the day, February reference, like, there was a problem with getting MASA money. Yeah. There was a problem with that. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because it was easy money
Speaker 3:Sure.
Speaker 2:And it was too loose. Yeah. And so people would get loose with the culture of the investor that they were getting the money from. Sure. And so you had to be careful.
Speaker 2:So if somebody got Massa money, I'd be like, dude, you gotta you gotta grind. It was it was maybe a little too easy. Yeah. You still Keep
Speaker 1:your mindset.
Speaker 2:Still to this day. So so there's nothing wrong with money as a as a sort of a competitive advantage or a strategic weapon. It's okay. Like that's part of business. It's necessary.
Speaker 2:But treat it with respect.
Speaker 1:Last question about Texas. For the Californians, they're thinking about making a trip out there. Austin, Dallas, Houston, what do you recommend?
Speaker 2:Well, I'm Austin. Now, I own a place in Austin. I've owned it for five years. I'm a avid, I would say, almost professional water skier. Nice.
Speaker 2:No way. Slalom skate.
Speaker 3:No way.
Speaker 2:I'll send a video
Speaker 1:put it up. Video. That's amazing.
Speaker 2:It's sick. Don't
Speaker 1:even get me
Speaker 3:started. So
Speaker 2:I've owned a place there for five years. Right on the lake, Lake Austin.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Twenty minutes from the city.
Speaker 3:There you go. Okay.
Speaker 2:Lake Life. Hell yeah. Go for it. Okay. I get a little bit FOMO on like these people going to Florida.
Speaker 2:I'm like, dude. Yeah. I know.
Speaker 3:It's it's it's been a it's been a bloodbath for every every But
Speaker 2:like, yeah, like every weekend this year I've had this year is in Texas. Yep.
Speaker 3:Do ever take calls while you're water skiing like AirPods?
Speaker 2:Dude, I should.
Speaker 1:Be good.
Speaker 2:I love it. Don't get me excited. Well, well, I went to Cyronic, which does the boats, the autonomous boats. Yeah. And I'm like
Speaker 3:Build me a water skiing
Speaker 1:trip. Water skiing boat. Oh, okay.
Speaker 2:I just wanna water ski. That's weird. And like You're skiing behind a Silverado boat
Speaker 3:is so funny. So good.
Speaker 2:I'm like
Speaker 1:Dude, I love it. Pretty viral.
Speaker 3:Who should who should come you're you're poking your head up. Who should come work for you? Yeah. Sixty seconds. Who do you want?
Speaker 3:Not not any individual, like one individual person
Speaker 2:I but have like a message for this one guy who didn't take my offer. Look, think the thing is is like we're just getting the best. This is so cliche and like whatever banal, but look, we are in the physical AI space. So it's a mix of sort of, let's call it, sensors, compute, the software that sits on top of those things. I mean, it's just it's just gonna be great engineers.
Speaker 2:And then you go through what I would call the physical AI stack and you would you know, but
Speaker 1:It's long project. It's someone for who wants
Speaker 2:a career. It's like infrastructure software guys because you've got to have epic AI on the back end and the way to use that Yep. Sort of has to be epic. You have to have physical AI model people Mhmm. Who are sort of translating foundational models into the physical world and and and there's some core research and some just like, I know all the white papers and we're just gonna we're and going end to end, or some hybrid version of that.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. You have just normal software because you've got applications that sit on top that then, of course, customers see in some fashion or another. Actuation and manipulation on the mechanical and sort of robotic side of things and mechanical engineers that build machines.
Speaker 3:Wow.
Speaker 2:You know? And then, of course, remember, I've got construction, real estate. Like, I could go on.
Speaker 1:That's amazing.
Speaker 2:It's lots of cool stuff. To the website. There's lots of stuff
Speaker 1:website, folks. Atoms.adams.co.
Speaker 2:And by the way, adams.co/vision. I just threw down.
Speaker 3:Oh, okay. I know. Read it. So that's amazing.
Speaker 2:Check it out.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you.
Speaker 3:It's amazing. Thank taking the time
Speaker 2:to come
Speaker 1:with us. Yeah. Yeah. This was awesome.