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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.
You're watching TBPN.
Speaker 2:Today is Wednesday, 11/04/2026. We're live from the Temple Of technology, the fortress of finance,
Speaker 1:the capital of capital.
Speaker 2:Let me tell you about ramp.com. Time is money, save both, easy use.
Speaker 3:It's corporate cards, no pay accounting, and a whole lot All
Speaker 2:in one place. Historic history, historic day yesterday. Of course, fifty one days till Christmas. We missed it on the show. Yesterday was fifty one days till Christmas.
Speaker 2:That means today, fifty days till Christmas. Fifty days till Christmas. We're counting down here. It's getting pretty Christmassy right here.
Speaker 3:Apple
Speaker 2:is 50 years old. Not today, just generally.
Speaker 1:It's generally Generally, 50 year old company.
Speaker 2:Happened over the summer. We talked about it when it happened. But reminder, it's 50 years old. We're doing free association here. No.
Speaker 2:Of course, the midterms took over the timeline as a... The Wall Street Journal cover story. Democrats take Congress in stunning rebuke of Trump. This was confusing to me. This was confusing to a lot of folks in our audience.
Speaker 2:So I went over to Chad GPT and tried to figure out what's going on. So I asked, what are the midterms? And apparently, the midterms are US elections held halfway through a president's four year term. They happen every four years, two years after a presidential election. The twenty twenty six midterms, I guess they were on Tuesday, so yesterday, November 3.
Speaker 2:They're called the midterms. This is a fun fact because voters are effectively passing judgment on the president and the governing party at the midpoint of the presidency. And so Okay. Now, you're kind of up to speed. You kind of understand what's going on with politics.
Speaker 2:We said yesterday we'd get into politics deep dive. And I think we I think we went pretty deep just now.
Speaker 4:Nailed
Speaker 2:it. I think we nailed it.
Speaker 1:Deeper than we've ever gone.
Speaker 2:Extremely. Yeah. No. We've been we've been pretty out of the loop. Haven't really been covering it, but there are some interesting posts, some interesting knock on effects.
Speaker 2:Tyler Cowen had a cool reflection on the election. He said procedurally, it seems to have gone just fine. And this was a big question because the freezers are getting hacked. There were a lot of questions about like if the grid goes down now, that would be the worst time for some
Speaker 1:Reports the of like power outages Yeah. In Florida. Yeah. I was wondering, okay, is this like... Yeah.
Speaker 2:And and and and and the the important thing is that the both sides are kinda like Trump's like, yeah, we accept the results and the Democrats are like, yeah, we won. Yeah. Great. And so, it's not even that there's like rumors or or whispers. It's agrees.
Speaker 1:I don't wanna speak too soon but it seems like a functioning democracy. Yeah. Is. People were very upset Yeah. Unhappy.
Speaker 1:They sort of, you know...
Speaker 2:Yeah. No. No. The
Speaker 1:results are being accepted Yeah. Which is a nice change.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Ron Al Bahari is in the Wall Street Journal. He's the Chief Investment Officer at Multifamily Office L and W. Let's give it up for Multifamily Offices.
Speaker 2:He said, I also think equity investors are breathing some kind of relief that the president is gonna accept the results. And so I'm sure everyone's seen, but the stock market is booming today. The Dow Jones is up 3%. The Nasdaq's up 1.88%. Russell two thousand is up as well.
Speaker 2:There's a bunch of positive news in the market. But the AI trade is still shifting around. Not everything is up. It's not all green. The deck is reshuffling.
Speaker 2:And Ben Thompson had a really great breakdown. 10 hot takes that we can go through in just a minute. But Tyler Cowen, in his roundup, he says, Rising in status. Matt Yuglazia, socially moderate. Democrats did very well.
Speaker 2:Normie, social science results on campaign finance. And Nate Silver predictions all did very well. Falling in status, tariffs are on the way out, corruption's on the way out, war with Iran, wealth taxes lost in California, gerrymandering came back to hurt Republicans given the blue wave. There's actually another name for gerrymandering that hurts you. It's a different phrase.
Speaker 2:I heard it from Nate Silver on some podcast but I can't remember it. And he says, and there you go. So fun fun reflections. The prediction markets also held up well. We...
Speaker 2:I I felt like we were gonna get into a debate. Have you changed your position? Are you impressed or unsatisfied with the quality of prediction markets this time around?
Speaker 1:Overall, they called almost everything right. Yeah. I thought that obviously Texas was was a bit of a surprise. Prediction market's not that helpful if it looks, you know, one way, you know, for months and months and months, and then in the two hours before results are in, it flips completely.
Speaker 2:This is always the trick.
Speaker 1:But but, I mean, again, and it's hard to process that, you know, if if something has a 30% chance of happening...
Speaker 2:That's one three. I'll take those odds any day. Anyways, so
Speaker 1:yeah, some some surprises but but but overall, like they seem to be pretty effective. Yeah. It was interesting. There were there was a number of people both in tech and tech adjacent
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That were basically taking the stance of the polls are wrong and the prediction markets are wrong. Like, just every indicator that we have Yeah. Is And then it turns out they were actually... Those individuals were wrong like way way... They were way more wrong than I think anybody even thought they were maybe wrong.
Speaker 1:Right?
Speaker 2:So, wrongs don't make right in this scenario. Yeah. So sheet Fascinating. Call sheet came in at 95% accuracy when the polls opened. So you can always look at a prediction market and it's like, oh, right before the mainstream media calls the election.
Speaker 2:The prediction markets usually have it pretty dialed right before then. But the question is like, what's the predictive power a month, two months before? But even three months before Call Sheet was at 81 accuracy whereas Vote Hub average was 77%.
Speaker 5:Which which that's...
Speaker 2:75%. Know, like they...
Speaker 1:Just just my napkin math that feels pretty impressive given that a lot of those markets at the time were not like eighty twenty. Right? Oh, yeah. They were more like sixty forty.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And so it would appear that there... You you can maybe put a little bit more weight on average Yeah. On markets Yeah. Where there's like a definitive leader.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So from my perspective, the, people felt this way with... I think it was the Emmys or the Oscars where the prediction markets were on the were on the screen. And so, you know, the announcer comes out and says, oh, the the best picture nominees are. And then you can just see like 99% chance that this person's gonna win.
Speaker 2:And I think Polymarket called every single one correctly. So it sort of like ruined the Oh, yeah. Thrill of watching it because you're just like, oh, okay. The... Again, the one that they put on screen won.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And that's sort of how I felt where I felt like the prediction markets were calling this blue wave for months.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And... It worked. You can put odds on the screen during a football game because the result is not decided when somebody just walks out on the field and the result. Right?
Speaker 1:Whereas in some of these award shows, it literally is just like totally decided. Somebody comes out, reads the result. It's over. Yeah. And so...
Speaker 2:And so, going into yesterday, I I was very much like I like I'm not following it today. I I I just I'm... I've I've processed all of the... All of this and all the downstream effects. And I think the market had as well.
Speaker 2:I think I think a lot of the selling off in the AI stocks in some of the data center builders, I think that was because everyone was clocking that this was gonna be the outcome. And so you don't think so?
Speaker 1:I don't... I I... The thing the thing is, I don't recall seeing a single person making the claim that the Texas governor was gonna be a Democrat.
Speaker 2:That's true. Yeah.
Speaker 1:At any point....
Speaker 2:Guess that is sort of a like like a surprise.
Speaker 1:Right when the prediction markets flipped last night.
Speaker 2:But I I I would say that although the the Texas Texas race is important, the 40 odd data center bills are probably more important in aggregate. For sure. And so those have been in process that it would... That permitting would become more...
Speaker 1:And the other thing is it's not like Greg it's not like Greg Abbott was like Yeah. Doing rallies being like, we're gonna build them all here.
Speaker 2:Yeah. No doubt.
Speaker 1:He was also he was Yeah. Also
Speaker 2:enacted a moratorium of one month. So, yeah. It it was it was going back and forth. The other interesting story is, yeah, I mean, compute campuses, big loser, except for in North Dakota. North Dakota voted in favor.
Speaker 2:But Ben Thompson has 10 takeaways that we can kind of run through. He says, the AI trade got it right. The most obvious reason why the stock market has been rocky over the last few weeks is the tightening of credit markets. We are needless to say full on into the equity funding era. At the same time, it seems that this outcome is very bad for the AI trade in the short term, but much of the pain may have already been endured because we've seen that selling off even though spot markets like the value of GPU hour is increasing, The models are getting better.
Speaker 2:But maybe there's been a process over the last few months, mostly speculative, that, you know, that people have been digesting the fact that there might be a pullback in new compute coming online. And so more data centers, more GPUs warehouses as opposed to...
Speaker 1:The craziest thing to me is how little attention it's getting that prop 40 didn't pass. Like prop 40, as it was written, was going to destroy the model for building technology companies in California. Like, I... A bunch of people on our show... That have come on our show are like paper billionaires.
Speaker 2:Sure. Right? Oh,
Speaker 1:yes. Yes. If if that would have passed, of course, it would have been litigated. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It it wasn't like, you know, on November 4, go to your bank and Yeah. Get a get a cashier's check for, you know, $50,000,000 and go bring it in. But it's like California Californians like resoundingly voted against Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Know. Cool. I I think that there were, again, a lot of flaws with the way it was written.
Speaker 5:There was
Speaker 1:a lot of incentive for different groups that would normally be in favor of attacks like that to actually be against it because they weren't gonna benefit from it directly. But yeah, pretty good
Speaker 2:biggest outcome there. Loser in the California election are the jealous senties who are trying to nerf their bean air opponents. Right?
Speaker 1:Potentially.
Speaker 2:So somebody sitting on $400,000,000, they're getting money mogged Yeah. When they pull
Speaker 1:up to the terminal.
Speaker 5:The four
Speaker 1:d chest there was
Speaker 2:And
Speaker 1:they they say were
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I wanna were spending heavily on
Speaker 2:I wanna back up the truck to try and nerf my my rivals potentially. But bad news for them because it didn't pass. Ben Thompson's second take. Neo Clouds are on the edge. They've been at the forefront of the credit concerns from a credit...
Speaker 2:From a certain perspective being unable to build data centers has a silver lining in that they couldn't... If... In that they couldn't get the money to pay for them anyways. Moreover, Neo clouds facilities that are already permitted now have an asset that is going to be scarcer than expected, which is a very, very interesting... And I think every every data center project will need to be reevaluated, like what is the status of Stargate and and what's happening in in Abilene and Texas?
Speaker 2:Is all of that permitted and the moratorium will just be on new capacity because the Stargate pitch was enormous, an enormous campus. And I believe a lot of that was already approved and and and good to go. So new moratoriums wouldn't reach back to that. So that still would come online. So that could be very bullish for anyone who's involved in that.
Speaker 2:At the same time, there's there's a hard scenario if you're a if you're a Neo Cloud that has that has built a bunch of data centers, but then you sold all your compute on long contracts, so you're not taking advantage of the spot market being in contango and and being able to sell at higher rates each month after month to, you know, labs that need compute more than ever. So you're you're you've sort of reaped all the reward on your first build. You need to go build a new building, a new data center and now you can't. And so you can't bring new capacity online that you can sell into the spot market and make more money on. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So that's a little bit tricky. There is yeah, there is a... Just a tough dynamic for some of the neocludes where a lot of them have incredibly talented people that can go and build things, but they just might not have enough money to finance them and now they might not have enough political power to get them across the finish line. Although, there are clearly some states, some areas in the country that are receptive. And they...
Speaker 2:It's not that they... Like, North Dakota is getting called out as a as a as a state that denied a data center ban. Right? But what we're not talking about is the states that didn't even have them on the menu. Right?
Speaker 2:And there are a number of states that have been receptive and continue to be receptive to the point where they haven't even had legislation Yeah. To ban data centers.
Speaker 1:To me, it's great it's great data for technology industry to, like, comb through Mhmm. And look at where where people are more favorable to data centers Yeah. And go build them there. Yeah. At least try to.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Right? There's gonna be some areas where they're pro data center
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That have problems getting access to energy Yeah. Right? And and and other issues that they run into, but Yeah. They don't all have to go to space Yeah. Just yet.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. The the the the energy, I think, is is less of a factor. I think natural gas is pretty abundant, but you still have to build pipelines around it. And then the big thing is just like the overall infrastructure.
Speaker 2:Infrastructure. Like do you have big roads? Do you have the ability to move big materials around while you're in that construction phase? There are certain parts of America where even just building a house is hard because you're on dirt roads and and Yep. And that's tricky.
Speaker 2:So anyway, you can see some of the Neo Cloud reshuffling happening in the market today. Ben Thompson says hyperscalers are winners. The downside for the Neo Cloud's upside
Speaker 1:They need that.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Yeah. Jeff Bezos is doing well. Amazon's way up today. They're more likely to grow their share of AI compute than they were before.
Speaker 2:Moreover, investors may be pleased if the hyperscalers ambitions are somewhat curtailed. So investors are like, oh, okay. Maybe you'll be able to bring the dividend back or return some cash. You're not gonna you're not gonna need to tap the deck markets because you won't have anywhere to invest it. This could be something that investors are excited about.
Speaker 2:Political opposition is an excuse to moderate spending. This is the four d chess I was joking about with Joe Wiesenthal, which all of a sudden is being taken very seriously. I was kind of riffing with him and and now I've seen a number of people put that in writing as like their official take that this is good. And we'll see it. We'll see how it plays out.
Speaker 1:For NVIDIA Yeah. I think
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Nothing is ever as good or bad as it seems. Yeah. Sort of an iron law.
Speaker 2:Nothing ever happens.
Speaker 1:Things happen. No. Nothing ever happens. You did. No.
Speaker 2:That's a good point. Yeah.
Speaker 1:One thing, you know, is we got a report from from a friend who was walking up and down Sand Hill Road this morning.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah?
Speaker 1:And they sent a clip. They heard this song playing. This was playing outside of the... Was playing so loud....
Speaker 2:Windows. Yeah. Sort of sorrowful moment Yeah. On Sand Hill.
Speaker 1:They have to delete some tweets.
Speaker 2:Delete some tweets. Potentially. This is, of course, the song from the w... Is it actually in the WWE documentary or is it just overlay...
Speaker 1:I think it's just become a meme. Okay. Well... Wonderful wonderful song called Maintaining Love.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's gonna go in the heavy rotation. I've been listening to more and more meme core on Spotify. I got Queen Street Full. Heavy rotation.
Speaker 1:Full brain rock.
Speaker 2:Brain rock. It's great. Let me tell you about Cisco. Data infrastructure for the AI era, unlock seamless real time experiences and new value with Cisco. Ben says NVIDIA mixed bag almost certainly a short term loser.
Speaker 2:Fewer data centers mean fewer NVIDIA chips. But the long term bull case for NVIDIA is that if there's a set amount of data centers that exist and then you can't build them anymore, you have to get the most tokens per watt you need to be... The most efficient chip. Yeah. He has a he has a phrase for that.
Speaker 2:I forget what it's called. It's it's something good here making this point. ISO power means that power is the constraint. And so you already have power going to a building but you're running some older technology, some older chips. There's now more of an incentive to upgrade those to the latest and greatest to get the most out of a particular power envelope.
Speaker 2:So...
Speaker 1:Here's a real mask off moment Mhmm. From Harley over at Shopify. Oh, yeah. He said, you know, US voters just rejected data centers everywhere they got the chance. That investment has to land somewhere.
Speaker 1:Clean hydro, open land, cold winters. That's Canada. This is a massive opportunity for us. Generational.
Speaker 2:Oh, so he's saying the data centers will go there.
Speaker 5:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. He's hope he's hope...
Speaker 2:I thought it was just the dollars would fund... Would would flow into
Speaker 4:No.
Speaker 1:No. No. And I and I'm Of course of course, he's proudly Yeah. Based in in Canada. Matt Spokes says tonight Canada was given an opportunity to become the data center capital of North America.
Speaker 1:This is how Canada wins in AI.
Speaker 2:I love it. Go get it. Seems like there's lots of lots of room up there. I don't know. You need the infrastructure, but it's probably easier with cooling and plenty of energy.
Speaker 2:So for sure, do it. The fifth point from Ben Thompson, advantage China. So China is in the inverse scenario. The country has plenty of power, the ability to build a lot more. They don't have leading edge chips, but they've been investing in that.
Speaker 2:And I think this is the this is the the broader discussion that will emerge is, okay, if we actually slow down our build, how real is the competition with China? It's been something that's been sort of the like a... It's been fear mongered about a little bit in the AI debate. Lot of AI can can't we just slow down? If we're worried about capabilities, if we're worried about AI safety, can't we just slow down?
Speaker 2:All of those devolve into, well, we'll lose to China. China won't catch up. We're now approaching that scenario, but we'll see what happens on the other side and and how we actually react to this and and and how much the build out actually slows down. Like it could be just, okay, we got to build in different states. We got to build in some other some other areas.
Speaker 2:There's nothing that really changes in terms of...
Speaker 1:Yeah, Tate, take him shared some highlights. He says, re Texas governor election. Let's take a deep breath. Can we all take a deep breath? If companies ask for no subsidies, promise a ton of union jobs, and guarantee that water and electricity costs won't rise, plus add supply, data centers can be built under her governorship.
Speaker 1:This is directly from Gina's website. Hinojosa outlined her Texans for data center priorities for the next legislative session, which Abbott could call today, requiring American Union jobs, giving Texans a seat at the table to decide if and how data centers come to their communities, creating. And again, like, I think that there's there's clearly a lot of reasons why a data center... Why a community would want. Like, look at places like Midland where you land in Midland and you're just like in the middle of the middle of nowhere, but there's oil fields and there's billions of dollars of wealth creation and there's like, you know, kind of rough but amazingly well paying jobs.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. And it's it's probably a trade that certain communities would make again Yeah. In a different context.
Speaker 2:Elon is is taking the victory lap, I guess, saying data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now. He's like, it was all part of the plan.
Speaker 1:He's probably thinking space is seems pretty appealing for me right
Speaker 2:now. Exactly. But you know you know who else might benefit in a in a in a build out freeze on... In America on land? Panthalassa.
Speaker 2:Remember that company?
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2:Ocean data centers. We gotta cultivate ocean power. I love that company. This is a huge huge bobbing data center in the ocean that circles Antarctica and it just bobs up and down using tidal energy. Such a cool project.
Speaker 2:Incredibly difficult. It's like a true mega project. You gotta use a crane to move anything around just to get... Build these things. But, certainly more near term than, getting into space.
Speaker 2:Although the the SpaceX team seems like they're firing on all cylinders. Starship, they're gonna try and catch it on the next one. So the, like, the next Starship launch is like the one to go see because they're gonna send it up. It's gonna come down. They're gonna try and catch it with Mechagod...
Speaker 2:Mechazilla, I think is the name of the the the chopsticks. Pause. What?
Speaker 1:You started saying mecca. Wait.
Speaker 2:It is. That's what they call it. Right?
Speaker 6:Yeah. Mechazilla.
Speaker 2:Wow. I now understand how that leaked into the the the post training. It never happened. But... Yeah.
Speaker 2:So so so they're they're fully coming online with that and Starship is very much built for Starlink and and and the vertical integration there. We've heard a lot about like some of these rockets that SpaceX builds like some of them have a little bit of extra capacity but a lot of them are like, we designed this one from the ground up to just hold our stuff. And so Yeah. I wouldn't be surprised if we get some compute online 2028, maybe some tests 2027, but it does feel like it's happening. Although it won't be, you know, a story of the next six months anytime soon.
Speaker 2:Anyway, let me tell you about Railway. Railway is the only one intelligent cloud provider, user favorite agent to deploy web app servers, databases, more. And so the results are in. Data center moratoria went 43 to one. That was the final score, 43 to one.
Speaker 2:All hyperscalers must now converge on Harwood, North Dakota, the one outlier. If you're in construction or real estate, get to Harwood, North Dakota. Start picking up land, go to the gas pump, fill up your tank, do whatever you can to get power in North Dakota. Now I'm sure there are other there are other cities and states that are receptive, but fun fun to fun to watch it play out. Where where else should we go, Jordy?
Speaker 2:We have our... I can take everyone through the guest list. We have Apoorva Mehta coming on from Instacart. He's the founder, former CEO. Talk about the deal with DoorDash.
Speaker 2:Very excited. Then Alex Spiro from Quinn Emanuel, our second Quinn Emanuel partner coming on the show. Long overdue. Then Anish Agarwal from Traversal. Huge series b from Kleiner Perkins closing out with Derek Blasberg.
Speaker 2:Should we stay?
Speaker 1:I needed to... Oh, yeah. We've talked about merch for so long. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Talked about
Speaker 1:But I needed to be able to prove to everyone that it's actually happening. Mhmm. It's gonna be next week. What day did I say it was gonna be? When's the launch date?
Speaker 1:I think it's I think it's Thursday, the twelfth. The twelfth, we are launching the merch store. And this will be available as well as a bunch of other stuff. Very excited.
Speaker 2:Okay. Is Idaho actually voting on a state
Speaker 1:gun? Yes.
Speaker 2:This is real. For sure. So I mean, you... Everyone knows they've state flower.
Speaker 4:What was
Speaker 2:the result? State flower. I guess the result...
Speaker 6:It was the I think Winchester model eighteen seventy three rifle.
Speaker 2:Okay. The Winchester Winchester eighteen seventy three rifle. Interesting. Well, fun for them. Funny that the the the the...
Speaker 2:We saw someone posting about that. Somebody endorsed it in their voters guide and in that post they said it was satirical that they were just joking around. But I guess they were just joking about them actually making a recommendation but it was in fact on the ballot.
Speaker 1:Maybe they were joking because like everyone knows that it's the Winchester
Speaker 2:and so it's not like Well, a heated a real ball knower. Yeah. That we got caught out not knowing.
Speaker 1:They had to do a vote but everyone and I don't Everyone knows.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Obviously. Obviously. No. They had endorsed...
Speaker 1:The Winchester model eighteen seventy three is called the gun that won the West.
Speaker 2:Oh. It's a lever action, right? The gun that won the West? When you got a good like like subtitle name like that, I feel like you're kind of punching above your weight on the ballot. Right?
Speaker 2:Because, know, the other ones are just a bunch of mumbo jumbo, bunch of numbers, bunch of serial numbers effectively and then you got one with the superlative, the gun that won the West. It has it has its own nickname. So that's a pretty good pretty good spot. Let me tell you about Figma. Agents need the canvas.
Speaker 2:Your AI agents can now create and modify your Figma files with design system context. We talked about Cauchy and Polymarket, Joe Wiesenthal agrees, huge win for Prediction markets. My only my my only take from last night, both in the run up to the vote and on election night, the prediction markets did exactly what they were supposed to do. A big confident forecast in the run up and incredibly timely conveying the data as it dropped. Nick Carter agrees.
Speaker 2:Prediction markets were spot on last night and Matt Wong as well. Well, let's move over to what else is in the journal today because we got a new term, a new coinage. Are you excited for this?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:FOGO. You've heard of FOMO, fear of missing out. Now, you need to learn about FOGO, the fear of getting obliterated in the market.
Speaker 1:I wish that Bain Capital had come up with this one. Why? Don't they own Fogo de Chao?
Speaker 2:Oh, they do. Yes. So hedge fund Elliot warns of Fogo, fear of getting obliterated in the market. The $80,000,000,000 hedge fund firm posted flat returns in the third quarter and under a 2% gain this year through September. And that is almost impressive given how much gyration there's been.
Speaker 2:You know, there's been people that have been absolutely printing just being like long tech or something like that. And then there's other been... There's been hedge fund blowups and over leverages and all sorts of stuff. But Paul Singer's Elliott Investment Management compared the current state of the markets laden with debt fueled risk taking and bubbling with hype over new technologies to the roaring twenties that preceded the Great Depression. At present, virtually every alarm bell warning of a substantial bear market ahead is ringing, the $80,000,000,000 hedge fund firm wrote in an October investor letter reviewed by the Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 2:While Elliott is prepping for potential for potentially historic upheaval, its performance is lagging behind the broader hedge fund industry. Elliott's returns were flat in the first three months ending September 30 leaving its gains for the last nine months a little under 2% according to the letter. That trails a composite hedge fund index as well as the nearly 13% total return of the S and P 500 from the same gain. And even index even short term treasury bills were doing 3%. So they're underperforming treasuries.
Speaker 2:So are they being too cautious or are they you know seeing the future here? Elliott's quarterly letters are known for their doom and gloom commentary on the dominant themes of the day. Black pill hedge fund. Just black pilling in every letter. Its October message highlighted risks building in US budget deficits, persistent inflation, private credit portfolios and artificial intelligence hype.
Speaker 2:And it warned about market distortions caused by factors it said were more akin to gambling than investing, including traders using zero day options and betting on meme stocks, which they have come up against because of course Elliott is the the famous hedge fund that went up against Wall Street bets in the Robin Hood GameStop saga. Singer and Jonathan Pollock, the firm's two chief executives and chief investment officers run one of the hedge fund industry's largest pools of capital. And a lot of people were assuming that Elliott would be completely destroyed by that saga. In fact, they closed their position. I think Ken Griffin helped out.
Speaker 2:And they've done well because they've scaled the firm since that saga and a lot of people were like, it's over for them. And that was kind of the way they were depicted in that movie, if I'm not incorrect. It avoids swinging.
Speaker 1:And and Elliot didn't buy a bunch of like Neo Cloud stocks like They didn't. Right?
Speaker 2:I I I don't know.
Speaker 1:Hopefully not. Because that could be that could be
Speaker 2:Neo Cloud's... In a tough spot.
Speaker 1:Obliteration scenario.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Obliteration scenario. Currently, they wrote they're focused on preserving their capital and being ready to strike if the market runs into turmoil. Over Elliott's five decade existence, fallow periods have existed but these have historically been accompanied by market turbulence and followed by periods of rare opportunities. Our goal is to be well positioned, protected on the downside and with capital to deploy into the bargains when the tide turns again.
Speaker 2:In the third quarter, Elliott's unprofitable sectors included distressed debt and portfolio hedges related to gold currencies, stocks, and interest rates. Its profitable sectors included commodities, arbitrage, and portfolio hedges related to credit. The firm sees opportunities in activist investing, in healthcare companies, producing energy opportunities, and eventually buying from forced sellers in dislocated credit markets. Its recent activist positions include stakes in PepsiCo and Synopsys, a chip design software maker. So interesting.
Speaker 2:I just like the new coinage. FOGO, fear of getting obliterated. The actual quote here from the letter, so many factors have lined up to cause this great boom that it might take disruption in only one or two of them to shift this momentum into reverse leading to a cascading self reinforcing unwind of this bull market and an abrupt change from FOMO to FOGO, fear of getting obliterated. So FOMO drives the market upward. Everyone thinks, I gotta get in.
Speaker 2:I just saw somebody print a three x on Nvidia, a 10 x on Micron. I gotta get in. I don't wanna miss out. FOGO, if everyone's getting blown up, doesn't matter what you're in, you're gonna sell your dollar, sell your gold, sell your crypto, sell everything. That's what they're worried about.
Speaker 2:So some black pilling from the folks over Elliot.
Speaker 1:Well, it's a bull market for the California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy. The institute's co founder, Gary K. Mikkelsen, put a proposition Prop 38 on the ballot that passed, which gives his three person nonprofit 4,200,000,000 from the public. Really? Ahmad over at Mercury says something feels a bit iffy about California Prop 38 doing a popular vote proposed by a three person nonprofit that gives said nonprofit 4,200,000,000.
Speaker 2:That's a lot of money.
Speaker 1:It is a lot of money. Of course, I'm sure they're gonna redistribute hopefully like 99.9% of those funds to various research But still it seems like this one simple trick if you're a nonprofit Yeah. Is like get a...
Speaker 2:Well, the real move would be do that and then do the for profit conversion. Right?
Speaker 1:Trey says, man raised his series a via ballot. Yeah. Honestly, this is more like a series f. Yeah. More like
Speaker 2:But if he does conversion, he could be paying a big dividend soon, potentially. Let me tell you about console. Console builds AI agents that automate 70% of IT, HR and finance support giving employees instant resolution for access requests and password resets. Ferrari lifts guidance again on strong demand for car customizations. Fear of missing out is back in force over at Ferrari.
Speaker 2:The company's order book now reaches into 2028. That's Tesla Roadster competition territory because the Roadster's not shipped until 2028, but some of these Ferrari Taylor Made's are going out to 2028. And it still has two more launches to come this year. What are they gonna launch?
Speaker 1:They're gonna announce the...
Speaker 2:Manual V12 Luche.
Speaker 1:Right? No. I think they're gonna announce the two nine six challenge the street Yep. Street legal version of that.
Speaker 2:Okay. Maybe f f 80 variant?
Speaker 1:Are they still... Do they count the 12 c Manuela?
Speaker 2:Oh. That's the... I I think I thought that would already have been... Because that's been reviewed. Like, I I've seen reviews of them.
Speaker 2:I just don't know what
Speaker 1:the journal is counting as a launch versus
Speaker 2:Versus, like, a release or a leak or like a a Announcement. Case. Yeah. Whatever. Well, let's let let's get some context on Ferrari.
Speaker 2:Ferrari again lifted its full year guidance slightly as demand for car customizations remain strong and deliveries of newer models has ramped up in the third quarter. The Italian luxury sports car maker said Tuesday that it expects revenue of around 8,560,000,000 this year, up from a previous estimate of around €7,600,000,000. It forecast adjusted earnings up to €2,290,000,000. Margins are at 30%. They're going up.
Speaker 2:The company said it was benefiting from stronger personalization than initially expected. Lower currency headwinds and newer, more profitable models, deliveries of our F80 supercar and personalizations led by the Ferrari two ninety six Speciale family support our robust financial growth. Our order book now reaches into 2028 and we still have two more launches to come. It shipped 3,368 vehicles to customers this quarter, 33 fewer than a year earlier, but I'm sure the average price is up. So deliveries of its Amalfi, the two ninety six Speciale, the 12 Cylindri Spider and the Porosangue increased while the eight four nine Testarossa and the two nine six Speciale Aperta continued to ramp up and the eight four nine Testarossa Spider started deliveries.
Speaker 2:Shipments of the f 80 also progressed in line with plans. What is your take on the eight four nine Testarossa? It's a SF90 under the hood, but do you like the styling?
Speaker 1:I think it looks amazing.
Speaker 3:You think
Speaker 1:it looks amazing? When it's specs.
Speaker 5:Right.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:I think... I...
Speaker 2:You gotta do the... You know, grab the lead or whatever.
Speaker 1:Basically, the way they spec them for announcements I think is Rough. Really rough. Yeah. But then as soon as actual clients start speccing them, they look amazing.
Speaker 2:We saw that with the leaching too....
Speaker 1:Of the Testarossa Yeah. On the street. And when you... When it's black on black on black Yeah. It looks like
Speaker 2:Looks really good. Incredible. Yeah. Meanwhile, the Roma Spider two nine six GTS and SF 90 xx family of cars were phased out. The largest regional market, Europe, The Middle East, and Africa, which is all one regional market, shipments rose by 38 vehicles while America saw an increase of five vehicles and the rest of Asia saw a 29 unit increase.
Speaker 2:Shipments to Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan dropped by a 105 units. I mean, if they're...
Speaker 5:And is that
Speaker 1:is that because the market has just been like we're there in like deep bear market territory?
Speaker 2:Yeah. The AI bubble popped over there. That could be it. It also could be that just local car makers are coming out with something that competes at least on specs with some of these supercars Yeah. In terms of zero to 60 time And so, yeah, they might be EVs but there are certain amount of buyers over there who might want to buy a car made in China that has the same specs and it's just as fast.
Speaker 2:And then and then certainly if you were in line for the next Ferrari and it's a Luce and there's a BYD with a similar performance specs you might you have even less reason Yeah. To go with Ferrari. But we will see. Anyway, let's tell you about CrowdStrike. Your business is AI.
Speaker 2:Their business is securing it. CrowdStrike secures AI and stops breaches. The European Union is downgrading art market money laundering risk despite heists. What is going on here?
Speaker 1:They're downgrading it.
Speaker 2:They're downgrade. To downgrade art They're like, don't worry about it. Money laundering risk despite heists. Okay. So European
Speaker 4:We're it's
Speaker 1:all good.
Speaker 2:Cite limited EU evidence linking high profile museum thefts to criminal networks. So they're like one offs? They're just people taking their sticky fingers they can't resist? Sticky fingers. That's a great euphemism.
Speaker 2:The European Commission is planning to downgrade the risk of money laundering and terrorist financing in the art market even as a spate of high profile museum heists across Europe put the spotlight on crime in the sector. So few high profile cases but maybe not systemic. Minutes of a January 2026 meeting, that was a long time ago, show the commission's forthcoming super super national risk assessment will downgrade the threat of money laundering and terrorist financing in the art market and antiques trade from high to moderate compared with its 2022 assessment. A moderate level, threat level means the sector needs mitigation measures, better awareness, and stronger regulatory oversight. The previous assessment, had recommended specific measures to tackle the high risk level.
Speaker 2:I wonder if, some of this is just like the crowding out effect from criminals going to to crypto and cyber heists. You know, you see the new obliterated model and you're like, what am I doing planning a... Why
Speaker 1:am I gonna go spend a bunch of time? Yeah. In museums... When I can fire off
Speaker 2:a prompt and
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And clean up on on Binance or something. Who knows? The the the commission's financial market directorate recommended downgrading the risk setting limited EU evidence linking such thefts to money laundering and to... Or terrorist financing despite acknowledging persistent vulnerabilities due to opacity and anonymity in the sector. One art expert said the moderate classification was still too high.
Speaker 2:So someone in the art market is like, we got to send this thing to them. It's not risky at all.
Speaker 1:Got to investigate that guy.
Speaker 2:Yeah. What is he doing?
Speaker 1:What is he doing? In other news, Tyler, how do you pronounce y o y growth? Yeah. YoY growth?
Speaker 2:YoY growth.
Speaker 1:That's right. YoY. Low yield. Lucy says new hire just pronounced year over year growth like YoY. YoY.
Speaker 1:Which I think we should all adopt.
Speaker 2:Have you said enough? I mean, there was a moment when EBITDA was probably spelled out and now you just say the say the name, the acronym. Pangram is expanding into image and video detection. They already they already saved me. They already saved me because I fell for the cat with a mullet.
Speaker 2:But Pangram was to the rescue and had identified that it was an AI...
Speaker 1:You wanted to fall for the cat.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I kind of set myself up with that. I wanted to believe in the in the mullet cat. But yeah, Pangram, Max Spiro over at Pangram says, we've been working towards AI image and video detection for months. Now it's finally here.
Speaker 2:There were a lot of challenges along the way. Feels like images and video should be easier, but I don't know.
Speaker 6:I think it's because there's so many different models. And even the architecture
Speaker 2:True.
Speaker 6:You have diffusion based ones or you have like auto aggressive models. I think it's hard to like really capture all
Speaker 1:of those.
Speaker 2:Oops. We have our next guest.
Speaker 4:We have
Speaker 1:our next guest.
Speaker 2:Should we bring him in?
Speaker 1:Let's bring him in. We already...
Speaker 2:First, let me tell you about MongoDB. What's the only thing faster than the AI market? Your business on MongoDB. Don't just build AI. Own the data platform that powers it.
Speaker 2:We have Apoorva Mehta from... The cofounder of Instacart, former CEO. How are doing?
Speaker 4:Welcome. Great. Great. Excited to be here, guys.
Speaker 1:Great to have you. Massive week. Yeah. And yeah, overdue for this one.
Speaker 2:Always good to take a victory lap for y c twenty twelve, summer twenty twelve.
Speaker 1:Right. That's right. Right. We love an overnight success.
Speaker 2:Overnight success. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah. You guys, it feels great. Feels great. Yeah. Long time coming.
Speaker 4:And yeah, I just feel just a big sense of gratitude, honestly. There've been thousands of people who worked on this for a decade and a half. And, you know, when when we started the company, I'll be honest, most people didn't think we would be able to pull it off. You know? This is...
Speaker 4:Instacart is a business in the in the lowest margin category of retail.
Speaker 1:Alright? And then you're like, let's add really complex last mile logistics to that already low margin category. And Sounds like kind of an impossible...
Speaker 2:It was one of these companies like Spotify where mp3.com had failed and Napster had failed and .com. I'm sure venture capitalists when you walked in in twenty twelve, twenty thirteen were saying, oh, I've heard of web van. Grocery delivery doesn't work on the Internet. The economics are all upside down. This won't work.
Speaker 2:I'm passing. Was that the experience?
Speaker 4:Oh, my God. That happened so many times. I had a VC who literally sort of stepped out of the meeting while I was pitching. Right?
Speaker 2:Classy. Hey, at least he didn't fall asleep. We've heard that
Speaker 1:happen Was to an excuse or did he just kinda get up and like slowly like...
Speaker 2:He said he said mad boring. Mad boring. Mad boring. Mad boring. No.
Speaker 4:You didn't come back? You didn't come I'm still waiting.
Speaker 1:I'm still waiting. He
Speaker 2:might have bought $500 in the public markets at some point, got back in.
Speaker 1:Well, if you ever see him announce as a guest on the show, he's still in business, let us know. We'll ask. Hey, what what did what did you actually do back then? What what what Well, was so
Speaker 2:surprise. From the top rope.
Speaker 1:When did you when did you when was the moment where you're like, okay, think this is gonna really work? Because when you're get... When when you're in that, you know, obviously, you had conviction in the idea, otherwise, you wouldn't have been building it or raising it. But when you get a bunch of smart people that are constantly telling you, like, sorry, like, you know, this has been tried before and, you know, it can kind of hurt your confidence. But what was the moment where you felt like it was clicking?
Speaker 4:You know, to be honest, I I don't think I ever lost conviction, you know? Sick. I always had conviction from day one. There
Speaker 2:was no... Founder.
Speaker 4:I I remember... I mean, this was... Know, there were lots of ups and downs. Right? Like, you know, you obviously had VCs, you know, we we had VCs walking out on us.
Speaker 4:But, like, look, like, you know, Jeff Bezos went on stage and he was like, look, it's just unlikely that a model like this is the is the right solution. Yeah. And a couple years later, he bought Whole Foods.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:And, you know, everyone's like, okay, this company is done. Right? Whole Foods the largest partner that we had. Right? Like like, I don't know if it was majority, but like a lot of our sales, like like 50, 60% of our were were Whole Foods.
Speaker 4:Right? Yeah. And yeah, and then the company survived it. Alright? The company not only survived it, thrived it.
Speaker 4:And we we had... COVID happened. Alright? All of our competitors went down. Amazon shut down.
Speaker 4:Target shut down. You know, so many other companies I can't even remember shut down. Right? The team found a way to to not only, you know, stay stay stay online but actually sort of, double and triple our growth during that time, right? And then it survived post COVID as well, right?
Speaker 4:Like I mean, I like which was like, wow, like the all the growth, right? Like it was not COVID led at this point. It was just you know, purely organic growth that we were seeing, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:And, you know, most recently, Chris Rogers, who's our current CEO, just, you know, you know, did an earnings announcement and this was the best quarter they've had as public company. Yeah. Growth is back, profitability is incredible. I mean, you know, honestly, this is just... It makes me so proud of the thousands of people who sort of, you know, could have easily said that like, look, this is, you know, the conventional wisdom, this is not going to work.
Speaker 4:Right? But they said no, this time is different, and actually made it happen.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:And, you know, big, big kudos to the team.
Speaker 2:It's amazing. It's amazing. Yeah. People were...
Speaker 1:I love when I love when love when a business like seemingly breaks logic
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:But then establishes like some new sort of ground ground truth. Yeah. And it feels like feels like you guys...
Speaker 2:Yeah. The funniest part of the roller coaster is at the end when people try to kind of stuff you in the SaaS pocalypse narrative. I mean, I think DoorDash took like the brunt of it, but still it was like... Everyone's like, okay, that's not a great example. There's a bunch
Speaker 1:of Yeah.
Speaker 2:Legitimate discussions we can have about vibe coding your own SaaS, but the multisided marketplace is maybe a little bit further out on the agentic apocalypse curve, I think. But...
Speaker 1:Yeah. It is so crazy to think back in 2012 if you could, you know, tell your younger self, you're gonna start this company in 2012. By 2026, you're gonna sell it for $17,000,000,000 and you're gonna be like, wow. So it was just up and to the right the whole way. Of course, it was in the fullness of time.
Speaker 1:I'm very curious how... What what is your what is your point of view on on agents? Whenever whenever like AI agent founders like start talking about how much time they're gonna save consumers, I always kind of chuckle a little bit because you guys, you know, the the Instacarts, the DoorDash, you know, these other marketplaces have like spent a decade like shaving off seconds like, you know, milliseconds every single day, making this process like slightly more convenient every single day. And the compounding effect is that it's, like, extremely fast and easy to get what you want now and seemingly very difficult for agents to, like, actually meaningfully, like, improve that experience. And so it still makes to integrate with them.
Speaker 1:That's right. But, yeah, what what's what's been your view? Well,
Speaker 4:I mean, like, if you think about what, you know, what Instacart does. Right? Instacart gives people time. Right? Instead of having to schlep your your groceries, you know, get...
Speaker 4:You know, find parking, find like, you know, wait at the checkout, right? It just makes that activity, which everyone has to do on a weekly basis, you know, you know, it just makes that, you know, a few taps on your phone, right? So it saves, you know, time, saves like hours for everyone every single week, right? And so now you think about what the agentic opportunity here is, right? Is that like, okay, now the agents can save you those taps, right?
Speaker 4:And, you know... But yeah, you
Speaker 1:already saved them like 99% of the time. Right? Right. And so it's like it's it's not that compelling. Like, if you were to pitch this for a VC, it's like, you're not giving me a 10 x improvement.
Speaker 1:Like, you guys, original the original pitch was like, if you're saving someone hours, like, that is like a 10 x improvement. Right? But saving somebody like 10 times...
Speaker 4:No. I I I don't wanna I don't wanna completely sort of, you know, you know, say that agents don't add value. They obviously do and they they will, right? I'm very excited about the agents that, you know, Instacart is building and and what the agents that Instacart and DoorDash can build together, right? You know, just imagine, for example, if an agent sort of understands your whole family's dietary needs and, you know, and can reliably figure out what you want to eat and be proactive about that and make you, you know, more healthy and, you know, those things do add a lot of value as well and, you know, I don't think we've seen that so far.
Speaker 4:I don't think we're we're very early in that journey.
Speaker 1:I was telling... I was I was talking with some folks at a at a major, you know, financial institution and I was like, what you need to be pick... What the thing that you need to be focused on with agents right now is that people are trying to... Are sending their agents to your product because your product lacks something like very fundamental. I think that that's like why I am excited for individual applications to think like how can we make our own software a lot better?
Speaker 1:How can we make use natural language, understand what users want, make this whole process more convenient within the app? But I'm more bullish on that than I am, you know, the average, like, you know, go go shopping for me. Right? Mhmm. Just because...
Speaker 4:That's right. I mean, you know, if you think about it, like, Instagram is the original agentic company. Yeah. Right? You literally do send an agent to go to the grocery store for you.
Speaker 4:Right? It is just a human agent. It is a human chopper who's doing that for you. Right? And...
Speaker 4:But yeah, I agree. I think that there's, you know, a lot of improvement to be made in the overall interface and I think that companies like Instacart that have this, you know, you know, they've solved this extremely hard problem underneath can build those interfaces and, yeah, very excited about about seeing what that trend looks like.
Speaker 2:Do you think we need a new word to differentiate between an agent that you task individually? You give it a task, it goes off and does it and it comes back and it's sort of an asynchronous process that comes back to you versus something that you design that runs continuously forever. I mean, people kind of throw around continuously running agent but when I think about...
Speaker 1:Or yeah, proactive.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Like there are agentic systems that will like go push order order the burrito button.
Speaker 4:Sure.
Speaker 2:And that's a lot less interesting than when do you get the agent that actually knows where you are, what you're eating, what you like to eat and Yeah. And and is just basically handling your lunch order every day on an ongoing basis. And maybe there's Yeah.
Speaker 1:Some Yeah. Like I'm I'm sure you guys thought about this like putting sensors and fridges to Yeah. When
Speaker 2:You're out of milk. You're out
Speaker 1:of something and it automatically orders it. But but a lot of these efforts haven't... The hardware side hasn't really worked.
Speaker 4:I... Look, I I don't wanna comment too much on Instacart. I'm not... I'm no longer the the the CEO, and I think we have an incredible team there. But, like, look, like, you know, I think about agents all day, you know, for my new company.
Speaker 4:You know, we are... We are... We do have, you know, very, very, very long running agents that are Yeah. You know, continuously, you know, looking for information, getting better and, you know, in doing that in a way that is, you know, not only token efficient, right? But also, you know, in a way that is, you know, where every single day that you run it, you realize that it is just better.
Speaker 4:You're getting better results for lower cost, lower time. And so, you know, the way I think about this is that, like, you know, we're going to have lots and lots of long running agents in our lives and, you know, if you think about, like, the... What the the analog is for for humans is that, you know, when you and you onboard an employee, right, and, like, they now have... They... You know, you're onboarding them with all the context that they they they need and then over time, as they get more and more content, as they as they do more and more projects with you, they get smarter and smarter, they get better and better at that job, right?
Speaker 4:But... So, you know, if you think about that, that is effectively, you know, what we're thinking about when we think about a continuously running ongoing agent, right? And so, you know, know, hardware, things like that are just ways to plug in more context for that agent. And so, we're going see that in the consumer world but I think we're going to see that far more in the enterprise world because there, you know, you know, you're just willing to pay more for, you know, faster information, better information that gives you, you know, a massive competitive advantage as a as a as a company. You know, as consumers, I don't think anyone's really figured out how to charge people for this.
Speaker 4:Right? Like, I think, you know, we saw that Elon tweet recently where he was like, the revenue didn't make sense for, you know, the the
Speaker 2:Rock bottom.
Speaker 4:You know, for for the margin that we were spending on it or something like that. So I do think this is going to be something that we're going to see over the next few years. That gets solved. But so far, it's far more interesting in the enterprise setting.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yep. How are you thinking about agentic trading AI hedge fund activity spreading among other institutions that have frontier model capabilities? Like Google for a long time, I mean, they're spending a lot of cash but they've had a huge balance sheet And there's a pretty small treasury team, I believe, that moved that money around. They've always had the opportunity to do something more aggressive or differentiated with that.
Speaker 2:Do you think that that will take off broadly? Is this gonna be a new trend? Or would they partner with a fund on something? Do you think that that plays out as the capability becomes more diffused?
Speaker 4:Yeah. I mean, you know, so this is what's new. Right? This is what's new about, you know, AI based trading.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 4:Right? The reality is that, like, you know, have people been using machine learning models you know, algorithms to trade before? Yes. Right? Like that's not new, right?
Speaker 4:There's like, you know, Renaissance exists, for example, right? Like, you know, but the the you know, historically, the primary way they've been doing that is, you know, more what's called stat arb.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 4:Right? This is more, you know, understanding, you know, statistical, you know Patterns. Patterns, right? And, you know, basically making a call based on those patterns to say, hey, you know, these patterns are going to repeat in somewhere or not, right? And that's primarily the way ML and AI has been, you know, used.
Speaker 4:But for the first time, you can have, you know, reasoning, right? Like, know, what Warren Buffet would do, right? When they're analyzing a company, they're saying, hey, what are the moats? Right? How strong are these moats?
Speaker 4:Like, how like Mhmm. How durable is this growth, etcetera, etcetera. Like, these are very complex questions that are not, you know you know, you know, they're not necessarily, you know, stat arb. They're much more fundamental, you know, research, right? And and that's what AI trading and and, you know, AI agentic, you know, you know, capital allocation allows for.
Speaker 4:Yeah. And and so now, your question is, okay, well, is Google going to do it? I'm not sure. Uh-huh. These things are still exceptionally hard to build.
Speaker 4:Mhmm. And whatever you think is simple, right, chances are those things just get priced in and that that alpha just decays very fast.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So so are you thinking about hardware at abundance? Because I imagine you'll see the same... Like, if you're now introducing, like, reasoning into this sort of algorithmic trading, you might see the same sort of arms race that that we saw in sort of traditional high frequency trading playing out with this sort of new iteration as in like, if I can basically... If I if I can get tokens like faster and like something happens in the market and my...
Speaker 1:And I just have faster chip, I can probably get a better entry or exit or or whatever. And so do you think that's something that, like, you're gonna need to have, like, compute on prem? Or is that, like, kind of would be an adjacent strategy?
Speaker 4:Yeah. So there's several different strategies, you know, to... There are actually probably like several 100 different strategies here to to to play. And now, you know, maybe at at a high level, right, when I was leaving Instacart, there's sort of, you know, two things that I wanted to do, you know, in my next company. Number one, I wanted to be...
Speaker 4:To have the potential to be a trillion dollar company. And, you know, I mean, obviously, it's been inspiring to see what anthropical is doing. Five... Sound effect for
Speaker 1:Sorry. The trillion dollar
Speaker 4:That's right. I mean, I love that. I love that sound effect. You know, five years... Five, six years, you know, hopefully, multi trillion dollar company, right?
Speaker 4:It's incredible. Incredible, right? So that was number one. Number two is it had to be beneficial to humanity, you know? Just like...
Speaker 4:I just care about that and just like something that I wanted to have happen in my next company. And with abundance, believe that, you know, I found that. But I guess like, probably, you know, what's even the coolest part is that... Is how fun it is, And now, we've thought a lot about hardware like you brought up. But I would say, you know, for us, I think we have other ways we build advantages.
Speaker 4:And we certainly do capital allocation in the public market but, you know, we also do that in, you know, other places where we believe we have, you know, much larger returns, much more durable returns, and, you know, and and much more impactful returns as well. And so, you
Speaker 1:I gonna say I was gonna say you're like, I wanted to do something that was just like good for the world and then you're launching a hedge fund, is like a contrarian, maybe contrarian, but it sounds like you're allocating places that you'll probably be able to talk more about in let's say like a couple years once you once you get a little more established.
Speaker 4:You don't think hedge funds are doing great...
Speaker 1:I do. I mean, we've been we've been some of the strongest defenders of private equity broadly.
Speaker 2:We need accurate prices in markets. Yes. Obviously.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Look, I agree. I think that there is certainly some, you know, efficiency and liquidity that you know, hedge funds add. But, you know, but, yes, I think you're right. Like, you know, we do think that capital allocation has, you know, a bigger part to play than just adding liquidity the market.
Speaker 4:And and that, I think, is just, you know... You know what's... So the coolest thing about AI is these new... These lines of how we thought about these businesses are going to completely change.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 4:Right? Like, you know, you you would see like, okay, like, this is a SaaS company that's just going do SaaS, SaaS, SaaS, SaaS. Right? Like, now, as we're thinking about outcomes, we're thinking about, you know, you know, new type of holding companies, etcetera. So I just think that, you know, the the lines are being redrawn with AI and and, you know, we we hope to to do that in in our own sector.
Speaker 1:I love it. Very cool. Congratulations. You certainly did it with with with Instacart in a Sit that goal. In a different way.
Speaker 1:Congratulations to the to the whole team. It's really a tremendous story and, yeah, very, very happy Overnight for your guys' outcome.
Speaker 2:A classic overnight success. We'd love
Speaker 3:to see...
Speaker 1:Come back on as you can as you can talk more about about what you're doing as well. Yeah. It's very cool.
Speaker 4:Definitely. Awesome, guys. Thank you....
Speaker 2:Dude. Have a good day. Cheers. Goodbye. Let me tell you about public.
Speaker 2:Invest across all asset classes. Automate anything with AI agents. Run trading strategies, risk management, money movements, and monitor markets with AI agents for...
Speaker 1:Was who you're trading against
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Too. Take them
Speaker 2:to the cleaners or play it safe. Do whatever you want. We have Alex Barrow from Quinn Emanuel coming on the show. Welcome to the show, Alex. How are you doing?
Speaker 3:Good, man. How are you?
Speaker 1:What's Long going
Speaker 2:overdue. Sorry for taking so long to make this happen.
Speaker 1:Are these... What's behind you? Are these the ghosts of your enemies?
Speaker 3:Nobody... Exactly. These are these are people that used to exist.
Speaker 2:Yeah. They're gone.
Speaker 1:Great to have you on the show. We're big Quinn Emanuel fans. Huge. Love hanging out with John. Yeah.
Speaker 1:We we'd have him on every day if we could. Yeah. I think I think he enjoys it too.
Speaker 5:He needs
Speaker 3:somewhere to go, so you guys should
Speaker 1:be there. Yeah. We keep him we keep him busy. Yeah.
Speaker 2:We're we're close by here. Pasadena is just thirty minutes away or something. So he can just he can
Speaker 3:Exactly just hop
Speaker 2:right. Are you busier this year than in previous years? Or is it pretty steady state?
Speaker 3:It's a pretty steady state. I I change what I focus on and Yeah. You know, toggle up and toggle down, but it's pretty steady state.
Speaker 2:Yeah. How how has AI helped
Speaker 1:or hurt So this I don't think Alex needs an introduction Okay. For for some people Yeah. But it would be great if you could introduce yourself and and your role in the firm and and history before we get into the good Yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, don't know about my role in history. It's it's to be written. Yeah. But I'm a lawyer. I used to be a prosecutor and Mhmm.
Speaker 3:Try all sorts of cases. I don't really have a discipline or subject matter. And I advise a lot of founders and interesting people on stuff related to law and business and Mhmm. And do things in the business world too
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Which I'm doing more of. But that's that's sort of how I break down my time.
Speaker 2:How is working with... I mean, you've worked with a ton of high profile individuals, Elon Musk, Jay Z, many others. How is it different working or fighting a case actually going to trial with a high profile person who the jury can't just, you know, tabula rasa on?
Speaker 3:It just becomes more complicated and more three-dimensional the world is watching, people have preconceived notions. Because the other side is more excitable, more blinded in their pursuit. Sure. Confused by the the fame and the bright lights. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And so it just has more dimensions and more more sort of play to work with.
Speaker 2:Yeah. How does how does the strategy outside of the courtroom play into some of these high profile cases with individuals who are going to have to hop on an earnings call or they're going to have to do an interview for whatever their business is like the the court case might go on for a long time, but they have to continue doing what they're doing in the real world. How do you how do you square those two, the risk and reward of continuing business as usual that might flow over to the actual case?
Speaker 3:Their legacy and their story and that of the companies and their missions is far bigger than the case. Sure. And so many people go through trials and tribulations
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And they happen in private or they happen outside of the the public sphere. When these kind of folks go through this, it impacts every element of their business lives, their employees Yeah. Their legacies and beyond. Yeah. And so you just have to be cognizant of that and you have to paint a picture that takes into account those things and thinks again in sort of three-dimensional and in chapters that would go forward.
Speaker 3:So I will prep them for speeches and earnings calls and if they have to go in front of Congress or anywhere else in order to sort of assess all of the different business elements, everything going on with them, the case and try to marry them all together to tell a coherent story.
Speaker 2:Do you do you have a team that can prep people for going to congress? It feels like
Speaker 1:there's gonna be a lot of...
Speaker 2:There's gonna be a lot of for that. I mean, you know, with the with the election results, it feels like we've been overdue for the AI safety debate to make its way into congressional hearings and it feels like there's gonna be people on Capitol Hill soon.
Speaker 3:There will... There certainly will be. You know, and I've represented people in front of congress many times before and I have no doubt that'll happen again. In fact, it'd shock me if it doesn't. But that's part of our system.
Speaker 3:I've always been a bigger fan of the jury trial system than the political theater system.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 3:But sometimes I have to go there too. Yeah. If I have to go, I will go.
Speaker 2:Yeah. There there there's a scene in the the new Facebook movie, the the social reckoning where Mark Zuckerberg is... The character Mark Zuckerberg is like prepping for a hearing and it it it it... The implication is that they've created like a one to one set of the... Where he will be deposed.
Speaker 2:Do you think that that's useful or do think you're gonna over prepare?
Speaker 3:I've never created like a a complete replica of... It's like
Speaker 2:you almost named it for you level. Like that's basically what they're implying is that they're doing like the rehearsal.
Speaker 3:You know, I flew up to Tyler Perry Studios to see it in Atlanta and Tyler has a complete replica of the White House. Not... Maybe not a complete but but...
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. I think we've talked
Speaker 3:about this. Yeah. Yeah. You can practice in the West Wing if you want to like be president.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:We could we could do a scene like that. But of course, you know, a good cross examiner is gonna gonna poke at that and gonna say you were so nervous that you had to create this theatrical because you were worried about coming here and facing me.
Speaker 2:And a
Speaker 3:lot of a lot of pain could be made of that. So I don't know that that's that's necessary. I think the most important thing is to know the facts Yeah. Tell the truth
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And you know, tell it the right way. Drew?
Speaker 1:From what I know, there's other law firms that that jump at the opportunity to go up against you because it's... It would be like a badge of honor, even if they're... Even if they know they're gonna get destroyed. Talk about talk about the sort of, not specific to you, but just like general industry dynamics where like The brand. A certain, you know, lawyer will develop a brand that that like is almost like a magnet for other lawyers to try to test themselves against.
Speaker 3:No. There's... Listen. I still save emails from cases where someone will decide I'm interested in their unsolicited advice and they will send me an email saying, know, listen. I'm a professor, I'm a you know, I'm a trial lawyer your father's age and just so know this case is unwinnable or you shouldn't be going to trial or whatever.
Speaker 3:And I still have them from various trials that they were... And they were wrong and
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:We won. Yeah. And I've created a cottage industry of people that used to work for me or been up against me where I'm told because you know
Speaker 4:a lot... It's a lot
Speaker 3:of my friends sort of are one degree that are then hiring people because of conflicts and whatnot, And they're like hiring people that used to work for me like they like as if they know, you know, how I take my coffee and how I prepare for trial or something. So you know, I'm aware of this Mhmm. Industry, you know, noise, but it just it it just makes it more exciting and more arena based.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, it's funny because like this happens with athletes. Right?
Speaker 3:Somebody has to win.
Speaker 1:Like with with athletes, you can literally watch the last 100, 200, 300 games a player has played. Right?
Speaker 4:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And it's probably good to be prepared, but it doesn't mean that when you step into the arena that it's gonna go well for you. Right? Like, I could... There's a lot of tennis players that I could watch and I'm gonna have a very tough time against them Yeah. No
Speaker 2:matter How much game film you've been.
Speaker 1:What what advice do you give to lawyers at the firm that are early in their careers that want... That are thinking about how to build their own brands and for better or worse, like Aura. Right? Because, you know, it doesn't really make sense for somebody to just try to be like a mini version of you or a mini version of of John or or whoever it is. Or or is that...
Speaker 1:Or is is it flipped and you should just try to be exactly like you?
Speaker 3:No. Don't don't do that. Don't do that. No. I tell them be yourself.
Speaker 3:You know, it's it's it's a sort of sounds like a cliche, but it's true. You know, when somebody is intimidating and can act a certain way and bark, it works for them if they are in fact intimidating. If you're not intimidating, start acting like that. You look you look like you're trying to do something you're not. You look at a character.
Speaker 3:And and listen, there are many ways to be effective. There are quiet, soft spoken, methodical trial lawyers. It doesn't have to be, you know, the barbarian at the gate. And then if you are true to yourself, if you stay in that character and you win cases Mhmm. That's a good way to develop a reputation.
Speaker 5:Mhmm. Right?
Speaker 3:I mean it it's it's really not a complicated formula. When I left being a prosecutor, these these... I I mean I always have to tell these stories, there was one guy who came and he's like, well I need to see your business plan. And I and I don't have a business. I told him.
Speaker 3:I said, I'm just gonna just be myself and I'm gonna win cases. That's that's the plan. I mean, there's no... That's the plan.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. So, yeah. Best way to build a personal brand is to be really great at your craft and win a lot. Don't worry about anything Well,
Speaker 3:what I was gonna say before and I'll I'll say it here, which is it's a unique profession when there is a winner and a loser of each battle. Mhmm. You know, and and that's... That allows the, you know,
Speaker 2:But what about...
Speaker 3:That allows people...
Speaker 2:What about like so many of cases they just get settled and both sides can kind of claim victory or there's fear of victories...
Speaker 1:Feel like they lost.
Speaker 2:Or both sides really lost like how often do you actually feel like you got the full victory?
Speaker 3:If I'm going all the way, I think I have to go all the way for
Speaker 2:a Yeah. Right?
Speaker 3:And if I don't think that I'm... You know, obviously, wouldn't settle at the point that I'm settling at or or resolve the thing at the point of resolving it at if I don't think it's the the right risk adjusted deal.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So why ever to... You know, you're never really losing that. If you're not afraid to go all the way and you think you you have some edge, you're either going to get a favorable outcome or the the easy way or the hard way.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Do do you think we're gearing up for for more cases to go to trial or more cases to settle earlier because of AI tooling, automated discovery? I don't know what else you're seeing in terms of adoption of new technology. But are there any like secular shifts you're sensing coming down the pipe or maybe you're already feeling?
Speaker 3:I think AI will eliminate a layer of a lot of things including including my day job. And by eliminating that layer, it allows you to get to the truth and synthesize it faster.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:Okay? And if you can do that, then I think you can make quicker decisions on this is something to resolve, or this is something to go all the way off. Mhmm. And if you can, in maybe, the way it'll work is a lot of the fat in the middle is gonna be cut out. Cases will settle settle quickly or go to trial.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. And there won't be as much in between litigation that is pointless and
Speaker 2:Got it.
Speaker 3:And sort of ebbing between the two. Yeah. And if that happens, and maybe there are more trials frankly, because people just say, okay, this is the what... We just did an analysis of these 10 cases, these nine should settle, this one shouldn't. Mhmm.
Speaker 3:We're going all the way, and then people don't get that nervousness that they get. Where some companies, they'll think in their mind, okay, these three are gonna have to be tried, but then they end up caving because they're too risk adverse.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. And then and then in terms of actually at trial, how... Are are you gonna be more focused on a particular a particular piece of an argument or or or arguments gonna be more narrow or more broad because you you you can you can fan out easier and it's lower cost to find every possible point to argue or is that less relevant to a jury so you want to be more focused? How will that change?
Speaker 3:I haven't changed my approach to trying cases or how to present in front of a jury in twenty years.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:Like, I don't even think I've toggled
Speaker 2:One thing. Slightly.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So the human mind and the and the human mind when it is learning can only follow so many things.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:It is impacted and persuaded by certain things. There are argumentative techniques that work and some that don't, and those human beings in the jury are not changing based on AI. And so I'm gonna talk to them exactly the same way. It just may be that the people that get me the information that I distill into my arguments, there needs to be fewer of them or they have a simpler more linear path in getting me that information because they have technological tools that make it faster, sleeker.
Speaker 1:Yeah. How have you processed how have you processed AI progress? Like, have we solved this... Like, are we still hallucinating court, you know, cases that didn't exist? Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, pulling evidence that's made up? Or or was that the same kind of thing that people were experiencing with chatbots three years ago? They were experiencing with with law, but but it it's solved.
Speaker 3:I'm no expert on this. I think that case law is one thing, right, which may still have these kinks.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:Distilling documents and pulling information from the document strikes me as not something that's so susceptible to a mistake. Mhmm. So right, if I if I put a police report file into the into the widget, and it tells me detective Lam surfaced three times in this case January 3, January 8, and January 12. I doubt that's wrong. I doubt that's Yeah.
Speaker 3:Hallucinated based on my understanding of where the machine learning is at this point. So it... That factual analysis is gonna work in streamlining and getting me answers to questions that I make people run down all day when I'm investigating something or trying something. In terms of the case law, listen if they're making up case law or imagines case law hallucinates, the the team that works besides me needs to double check everything and they do to make sure there's no hallucinations.
Speaker 2:Are you are you worried about clients becoming overconfident in the in the era of AI? There's this article on the cover of the Wall Street Journal today. Divorce lawyers to clients break up with AI because this this family lawyer drafted a prenup and then his client sent him 13 pages of revisions based... It was clearly he just dumped it in his chatbot and sent it back to his lawyer and was like, I'm the expert now. And then the lawyer had to say, like, actually, like, we did things a certain way and we had more context here.
Speaker 2:But are you worried about that, like the armchair quarterbacking getting worse?
Speaker 3:I I represent almost exclusively clients that think that they know more about the law. It's it's my specialty. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3:There we go. And so I'm very used to this. I mean, I I represented lots of CEOs, world leaders and things when I was in my thirties Yeah. And had to deal with like, what do you know basically as I was representing them. Was like, well you picked me and you asked me to come here.
Speaker 3:So Yeah. You know, I didn't insist on coming to this meeting. That's part of it. Know, people armchair doctors, they armchair lawyers.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:I I think that the old adage of the Goldman Sachs days was you know, you shouldn't be picking your own stocks. Well, you shouldn't be picking your own legal arguments and and picking your own medical procedures. And since the time of Socrates, we have learned that we are not great advocates for ourselves. That we ought to rely on somebody that has some emotional independence from us that can use judgment, that can make the arguments the way they ought to be made because we're... We can be myopic and they're not professionals.
Speaker 3:So Mhmm. It... I have said to many many clients, probably clients that have appeared on on your show, if they want to represent themselves I'll just sit here and watch. They can they can make the opening argument. That's...
Speaker 3:That usually shuts them up pretty quickly.
Speaker 2:No one's taking you up on that yet.
Speaker 1:But you you like... It seems like you like working with the difficult ones. It's not just because they're happen to be the most powerful people
Speaker 3:in Don't tell anybody that you're encouraging bad bad behavior. I I don't like it other than to say that some of the most amazing minds are those that are also the most complicated.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 3:And I like being around things that I think are super interesting and I'm curious. I like watching the world move forward and a lot of these folks, difficult as they may be, doing things that are exceptional and unique. And sometimes the cases themselves are just important enough that I think they are worthy of a strong and important defense.
Speaker 2:Yeah. How how are you meeting new people? Is it all referrals through previous clients? Are there ever... Is there ever a moment where you can see from your perspective that there's going to be a ton of litigation in AI copyright and so you're actually going out of your way to meet folks in that industry beforehand or is it all just comes in when there's a problem?
Speaker 3:I'm I'm closed. Okay. I am not looking for I'm not mingling and I'm not looking for nascent industries or industries that I think there's gonna be litigation explosion in. Sure. There are enough companies and people that I'm responsible for shepherding that that I'm not gonna chase people and I don't think...
Speaker 3:I don't just believe in that as a system. Whether you're a young person looking to market or you're at at you know, been in the career a long time, I just do not believe in that. The top hedge funds don't chase people. The top doctors don't chase people. I certainly don't chase people and yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean the way that referrals come in is it's word-of-mouth.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:Where they see you, you know, being a trial lawyer is a public thing. There's people that watched the Alec Baldwin trial or the Eric Adams or the Robert Kraft or the taboocephalousia or I can keep going. And they see you and they think he... You know, hopefully they think they can... That I conduct myself honorably and aggressively and smart.
Speaker 3:And then they say, okay, I want that guy.
Speaker 2:Yeah. How do you... How do the best founders think about lawsuits as a as a tool of business, as an important piece of the puzzle, you as a potential team member as opposed to like headache, something that needs to be just dealt with on the off occasion. It's something that's more in their business repertoire that they are good in this capacity.
Speaker 3:Some of them are more adverse to that chaos and the scariness of the war, and some of them can't get enough of it. Mhmm. And what you try to do is modulate the ones that want to sue everybody that walks the earth, and the ones that are afraid that if somebody sends a letter, we've got to shut down the company.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And, you know, I'm using extreme examples, but you get the point that that some people run too risky and some people run not risky enough, and there's a there's a balance. But I mean, you can't be afraid of a fight or everyone's going know you're afraid of a fight. And if you're doing something cutting edge, either competitors that the world is a jealous place Mhmm. Regulators that don't understand what you're doing, short sellers Yeah. Who knows.
Speaker 3:Right? Know, more money, more problems. So it can... All sorts of things can start happening, and you cannot be afraid. You can't blink.
Speaker 3:You can't panic, and you got to fight through whatever storms come.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Talk about, you know, the sort of transition from what seems like at one point in your career, like pure purely practicing law to now being on the business side, being on boards. Mhmm. Is that something where, you know, it's 5050 now and ten years from now, it could be, you know, ninety ninety ten? Like, what's most interesting about actually being in the arena, at least on the other side of the table?
Speaker 3:The decision to go to hospital made at 21 on a whim. I could have easily ended up, you know, an intern at a bank or something. But but once I started doing it, I realized that the that the importance of it, the thrill of it, the combination of of forces in the arena, I don't think there's gonna be anything like it, and I've yet to find a business way to replace it. That being said, I've been doing it for a very long time, longer than I expected to. It's time for new chapters, and those are starting to begin, and we'll see.
Speaker 3:I mean, if I look at my legal career in the second or third inning, it would... It was where it was. My business career is not as long as my legal career is. And so it's it's forming on its own timeline and trajectory and it'll it'll take up more of my time as time goes on. And maybe if I'm on your show in ten years nobody even remembers I was a lawyer.
Speaker 1:Do you wish that business was more zero sum? Like I've forgiven given your history like it seems like you enjoy the fact that it's you you get to win and the other person gets to lose and one of the problems in business is that you can win and your competitor, your your your your rival can also be winning. Yeah. Even if it's on a smaller scale.
Speaker 3:Oh, I don't know that I want the other side to always lose so badly, but I I hear your point. There's something about the case that has a star, a a start, a middle, and an end. Sure. And the finality of it, the binary nature totally decrypts me. And I often have said to, you know, the Elons and Jeffs and the great entrepreneurs of our time, I don't have the patience.
Speaker 3:I don't know that I'd be... I I would have been a great entrepreneur anyway, but I don't know that I would have had the... I know I do not have the patience Mhmm. To have sifted through it for ten, twelve, fifteen years to get to the pinnacle. Yeah.
Speaker 3:So maybe it it... I I chose this path on purpose. There are business things though that that are exciting that create outside value when you put two pieces together the right way. I've got activist a bunch that is the same sort of muscle memory, and there are cutting edge things that people can do once businesses are ripe. Right?
Speaker 3:Not at the product and engineering stage, know how to do that, but as as they get riper, that that I think you can take and make magic with and do something that is very unique Mhmm. In the capital markets and in the business world that that strikes me as as awfully similar to the things that I enjoy about my current craft.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Talk about a little bit a little bit about the relationship with Tom Brady. How that developed? Where do you see that relationship going over your business career?
Speaker 3:We're partners in sports and health and wellness businesses. We don't live too far from each other in Florida, so we get to see each other every week and talk shop. You know, he's the GOAT, he's one of one, and he's a complete class act and fun to fun to work with because it's working with a close friend. Mhmm. I think that a couple of the businesses...
Speaker 3:The sports teams speak for themselves and there are more coming. Yeah. The businesses that we have that are adjacent to sports, I think people will soon learn are just as interesting. Flag one for you, is the company Escape. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Which is a robotic massage company. So you can go into Equinox, we're in a bunch of gyms, hotel chains, all over the country. You can book it online, and you can go in and you go in and rather than a human massage therapist, a robot will give you massage. It's the Tom Brady protocol. They are trained by his liability coaches that kept him playing for twenty three years and seven championships.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It has a unique method that keeps you limber, and keeps you lean, and keeps you fit, and keeps you healthy and upright. And it's remarkable what it can do. It's the only one of its kind. It...
Speaker 3:They're the only robots that are trained to interact with people this way. Most of these robots are trained to stay away from people. Yeah. And I'm and I'm telling you, it it it... This company as it continues to grow is going to change healthcare because it's an overlooked aspect of healthcare and everyone's gonna be able to get Tom Brady level massages in the coming months and years.
Speaker 3:And I think that this company is gonna be a very special thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That makes a of sense. Love it. Are you a believer in the kind of like this barbell effect that's happening in a lot of venture capitalists are investing in like AI and the most frontier technologies and then also sports teams. We see this with Thrive.
Speaker 2:And there's this excitement about something that can never be disrupted by AI, something where you have to go to the sports stadium. Is that is that an overarching thesis for you or something you you you agree with?
Speaker 3:I don't know that it's an overarching thesis, but it's obviously a fair enough hedge.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean, my view on that is is more more... Maybe more simple, which is beachfront real estate and the the unique blue chip sports team should continue to go up in in value as this generational wealth is both created in this AI technology boom Mhmm. And is the transition of wealth that's never been seen before happens in the next ten years.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:And so if you own the beachfront real estate or you own the n of one sports team, you would think that there'd be more people that are in a position to afford it as long as it doesn't get, you know, evaluations don't get too extended. Yeah. You would think that they would keep going up because it's a finite supply.
Speaker 2:Yeah. No. Makes sense. Supply and demand. I love it.
Speaker 2:Next question?
Speaker 1:What is your... Like, we're a very interesting time on the Internet. Obviously, our favorite platform is Axe. And Axe is going through something right now that I imagine a lot of your clients are frustrated with, which is that like, you know, fake news travels, you know, all around the world like ten minutes and can do real damage to individuals and brands, companies, whatever, before you can slap a community note on on something. And usually by the time something is community noted, a million people saw it already.
Speaker 1:And I'm curious, like, what... Like, is there a solution there or is it the new normal and, you know, brand... Your your brand, whether you're an individual, you know, you could be an athlete, a celebrity, or a company, is just gonna be harder to manage, indefinitely. I'm assuming you got you get like messages here and there from somebody that says like, hey, somebody just posted this thing about me or my business. It's completely fake.
Speaker 1:And right now, there's effectively no recourse. You can get, you know, posts can be taken down, but but but you know, the the original poster still has a lot of authority around it.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I get that email every day. And it is complicated. I will say that I talked a little bit about juries before and how I talk to them. Human beings have never tried to decipher this much information, noise or otherwise ever before.
Speaker 3:Right? I don't know why anybody thinks that the human mind can keep track of all of this information, disinformation, fake, bot, or otherwise. And so the question is is there become a tipping point when it's not really free speech, it's chaos. Yeah. And what to do and what to do about it.
Speaker 3:Because the other thing that happens is these nameless faceless voices are harder to also not just decipher or how many of them there are, but but the veracity of them because they're not in front of you. You know, we we are very good when we can eyeball somebody Yeah. And we can say okay, this person... I mean we do this automatically as people. This person is put together, they do not seem to be under the influence of any substance.
Speaker 7:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:They do not seem to be in a cognitive dissonant state where they don't know what the hell they're talking about. Mhmm. They seem like they're somebody that might know what the hell they're talking about and we judge this quickly. Yeah. On the internet you can't do that.
Speaker 3:And so the combination of all of these things I'm describing leads to a steady state of chaos and what the answer is I'm not sure. What I think has happened collectively is we've all basically decided that we're not going to cancel culture people as quickly as we might have in an era ten years ago. Yeah. And because we're just gonna take everything a little bit with a grain of salt and forge ahead.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And so it is unfortunate when that happens with businesses and if there's real life consequences, think you gotta do something about it. I mean...
Speaker 1:I know, but there's no but there's no solution. It's like what? You're gonna go, you know, one of your clients, you know, somebody... And again, right now on X, it's particularly bad where you can scroll now and unless you're in the community note program, you don't know that everything is getting community noted. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And so 99.9% of people are just seeing stuff. It's viral, so maybe there's some truth...
Speaker 2:And then
Speaker 1:there's the stressors. And what do you do? You get... Somebody sends you a post or whatever, you can't litigate a million cases. I'm sure you'd love to, but you don't have the time.
Speaker 3:No. I wouldn't love to. I would not love to. So so I I got a couple of suggestions. Okay?
Speaker 3:First is I'm not on social media. I've never been on social media. The second thing is put it away and don't look at it. If you don't like what you're seeing, it's not good for you. It's not good for your
Speaker 2:Close your eyes.
Speaker 3:Mental health. It's not good for your productivity. Put it And then third is what I say to people honestly when they can't do those two things is if it's having a real life impact on your business or your life, then you know you have a problem. If you're not seeing real world impacts from it, it's just noise. So for example, if nobody...
Speaker 3:If everybody refuses to go on your show and all your advertisers cancel because of something on the Internet, then you know like listen, this is not just bothering me. It's actually not catastrophic thinking. I am having a problem, a real world problem because of this issue. Then you got to solve it.
Speaker 1:Yep. Yeah. Gotta say something... Yeah. Fortunately, we haven't had this issue, but it's just like I think every every celebrity is going through this.
Speaker 1:Every... A lot of a lot of tech companies are going through this where an account... Like, accounts accounts are just incentivized to share the most inflammatory thing possible every single time. And one, they directly make money on it now. Right?
Speaker 1:They're directly profiting off of it. But, yeah, I don't know. It's not not an easy solution. But...
Speaker 3:What what you are describing has been a problem since the advent of the media in lesser degrees, which is just that the more controversial the car crash, the more incendiary, the more clicks, the more voices, the more eyeballs. And so you know, what is the solution? I mean we have a hundred years of modern media history to look at it. There's been places that it becomes state owned and then they try to make it flatter, but then it's state owned. Mhmm.
Speaker 3:Every time somebody wealthy buys a media organization or social media company, everybody then questions their undue influence and on the oligarchy of it. And when it's left to shareholders, you have then the burdens of shareholders and you need to make the prices go up. If you make the price go up, it needs more eyeballs. If you need more eyeballs, it puts Back
Speaker 2:to the same point.
Speaker 3:A burden on the system.
Speaker 5:So Yeah.
Speaker 3:Have been tinkering this as... With this as a society and frankly across the world for a long time and we have not figured out.
Speaker 1:Yeah. We've been dealing with it hundreds of years and it's only gotten worse. Right. Well well, you know,
Speaker 3:people people forget it. I mean, we may be at a chaos point where it's definitely worse, but you know, there was a time when the ability to connect with each other wasn't... Was was more important
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Than the downsides you're describing. When people in countries that didn't have internet until recently were able to learn information, were able to see that there's a bigger brighter world out there that their customs and cultures are incorrect about. There were beautiful things that happened because of it and because of social media to kept people connected during COVID
Speaker 2:Hundred percent.
Speaker 3:And and and offset loneliness. Yeah. It it... We may be at a point as you are suggesting of of too much of it, and it may be triggering loneliness. It may be triggering too much of everything you're describing.
Speaker 3:So I I I hear you, and I wish I I wish I had the perfect answer.
Speaker 2:But I but I I agree with your point. Like at the at the end of the day, find the ground truth and if it's not... If it's just noise, it's just noise. And so you you can deal with that pretty easily. But thank you so much for coming on the show.
Speaker 2:Have a great
Speaker 1:day. Great to hang. Appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Great to hang.
Speaker 1:It's been an honor.
Speaker 2:We'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 1:Have fun out there. I'll just
Speaker 2:get Let me tell you about Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform that grows with your business and lets you sell in seconds online, in store, on mobile, on social, on marketplaces and now with AI agents. And we have Anish Agarwal from Traversal, the co founder and CEO in the waiting room. Let's bring him in to the TBPN L3DOM. Here he is.
Speaker 2:How you doing? Welcome to the show.
Speaker 7:Good to see you both.
Speaker 2:Good to see
Speaker 1:you. Welcome back.
Speaker 2:Crystal clear audio. Sounds great.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Your team's cooking.
Speaker 2:Welcome to... Yeah.
Speaker 1:Good lighting, good audio, good hair.
Speaker 2:Gong has warmed up, but let's start with an introduction on yourself and the company.
Speaker 7:Awesome. Good seeing you both. So my name is Anish. I'm the CEO and co founder of Traversal. And at Traversal, we're building an AI site reliability engineer.
Speaker 7:So when your system goes down like a bank,
Speaker 1:you know, kind of a
Speaker 7:100,000 people can't log in, we help try to figure out what broke and and how to fix it.
Speaker 1:Got it. Seems like might be important right now.
Speaker 2:It's super important right now. When did you start the company? Like, what's the journey to get to today?
Speaker 7:Yeah. I feel like the... We started the company in January 2024, so I come from a totally different world. I'm a I'm a researcher by training in in my heart. So I'm a professor at Columbia University.
Speaker 7:Wow. And a big part of why I decided to start Traversal as my cofounder is we felt the best research is now actually happening in companies. Mhmm. And the best companies are getting informed on AI research. So that was really what got us going.
Speaker 7:And then our research is in a very specific niche field called causal machine learning, so we've always... We've all heard this phrase like correlation isn't causation. Mhmm. So our whole study was how do you get these systems to think about cause and effect relationships from data and that turns out to be super important for this problem of how do you troubleshoot incidents because when something breaks, everything breaks. It's like an epidemic that's flowing through your system.
Speaker 7:And so finding root cause is like finding a needle in a haystack with fake needles everywhere. So that's that's how we got started and I'd say we met when we just did a series a about a a year and a half ago. After that, the problem turned to be way way way harder than we expected. We thought we'd be off to the races, but it just turns out to be a way way way more hard problem than anyone would expect, especially for like large companies. So I'd say we were working through the desert just trying to figure out how to get something to work since the a.
Speaker 7:We finally did, I'd say, about a year... Six months ago, and since then we've been scaling and it's been way more fun.
Speaker 2:And has the nature of that scaling been more Fortune 500 logos, bigger companies onboarding or just a huge volume of smaller companies, startups? Like, where has been... What... What's been driving the adoption and growth the most?
Speaker 7:Yeah. I think part of what was difficult when we started is that we got pulled by very large companies very early in our journey. So, like, companies like American Express or Sure. Or Pepsi. And this problem really shows up at scale.
Speaker 7:So when you have a company of that size, you have every tool under the sun, every observability tool under the sun. Mhmm. You have thousands of engineers, each of them with limited context. That fragmentation of people and tools and data is where the problem really shows up. And I think that's where also typically you can't just code something yourself.
Speaker 7:Have to go with a specialized solution. We started building for them right at the start, and so that's part of why it was so difficult from the start because of the scale we had to deal with. I'd say what we found is just usage really started uptaking with these companies
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 7:And and the repeatability of what we're doing started really showing up. Yeah. We focused on them from the start of the Fortune five hundred, but now I'd say that that the pull from them is also here because they understand the the the difficulty of this problem, especially with now the coding agents are in place. They all have their favorite tools. They're all using them, but the CIOs are not really seeing the ROI because everything gets stuck.
Speaker 7:It's because they're all now really scared about is this gonna work in production? Is it gonna have... Am I gonna have a security incident, reliability incidents? So... Like,
Speaker 1:just just how on edge, like, these sort of Fortune 500 scale clients are around cyber right now? Because I I imagine, like, no one really feels safe, you know. You could be in you could be even in, you know, consumer packaged goods and and still on edge.
Speaker 7:Yeah. Yeah. I think I think, like, right now, every incident you have feels like a real heart attack to the entire company. Because you don't know, did I cause it? Mhmm.
Speaker 7:Am I getting breached by by some sort of frontier model that is acting like the way they shouldn't act? Mhmm. Is it some agents that some age pump... Someone is deployed within the company and they're over pumping my my database? So you never know whether it's a reliability a security issue because the symptoms show up in the same way.
Speaker 7:People can't log in, the slowness to my website, etcetera. And so that... That's what really puts people on edge because they don't know. And people are not writing the code anymore as well, so the context that these companies that happen... Have are dropping.
Speaker 7:So you put all these things together and everything feels like red alert every time. Mhmm. And it's exhausting for these, for these folks, especially with now Methos as well. Yeah. Right?
Speaker 7:Because if you... That so many more issues are... Pretty much every incident you have is a result of change. Sure. And a big source of change is patching.
Speaker 7:So every time you have a Methodist issue, you'll patch it. That patches the change. Typically, only thinking about the issue from a security perspective, not a reliability perspective. And so you... And so these these, again, fragmentation of purpose in context is linked to just way more incidents and and security is is a big source of that and also a big source of fear that these people are having when any sort of incident does happen.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. How how different does a relationship, a business relationship with Traversal look if you're Amex versus Pepsi or a bank versus a consumer company? I mean, I understand that Pepsi obviously has a lot of infrastructure, but being able to log in to Pepsi Rewards is not exactly as high stakes as spending Amex cards that you got access to. It's slightly different shape of a business problem. But are these companies buying from you on a consumption basis?
Speaker 2:Is it driven by the scale of their infrastructure or their employee headcount? Is it seat based? Like, how are you thinking about scaling your your your product to the size of company you're working with?
Speaker 7:Yeah. So what we find, even with Pepsi, for example, they're one of the largest supply chain organizations in the world. And so for them, when something breaks, it's typically in the factory
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 7:Where now they are, you know, their networking is not working, and then suddenly you have, you know, tons of Pepsi bottles that are getting to
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 7:To, you know, a seven Eleven or something like that. So they have some serious incidents too that they... Know, or or uptime is really important for them as well.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 7:For us, the good news is the problem is the same from our perspective. You have to talk to the code. You have to talk to your your Datadog, your Splunk, whatever the telemetry is. And from our perspective, we sit on top of these systems and and investigate when any sort of abnormality happens. Mhmm.
Speaker 7:So it's all usage based pricing. They pay as you go for the number of investigations that are
Speaker 5:Oh, interesting.
Speaker 1:Are
Speaker 7:are are running. One thing that has changed, I'd say, is when we began, we very much focused on incidents. So we're like, that's the top of the house problem. That's the heart attack a company is having. Mhmm.
Speaker 7:Now I think what we've realized is... Probably my favorite quote when people talk about Traversal is they're calling the Code moment for SRE. Mhmm. I think what we're seeing now in the market is that people want a flexible platform, not like a point solution. Mhmm.
Speaker 7:And so they want you to be used the second code is being written to figure out is it gonna break in prod. Mhmm. Right? Then when alerts get created, can you tell me is it going to be an early warning system to something that's going to break? So they want you to kind of deal with these issues the second you can fix it versus waiting for something to happen.
Speaker 7:And and so it needs to be quite flexible in how it's used, and and so usage based is typically the most common way. And probably, actually, the biggest users of the product now are becoming the coding agents themselves.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 7:So they call Traversal all the time Sure. To figure out, hey, if I deploy this, is it gonna break something? Yeah. Is it gonna cause security exposure, etcetera? Yeah.
Speaker 7:And so that's actually quite interesting as that's been probably the one... The first class citizen almost now for for Traversal.
Speaker 2:Yeah. No. No. That's great. Will you raise some money?
Speaker 2:Much did Yeah. You
Speaker 1:Talk about the round.
Speaker 7:Yeah. So this is my favorite part of... We raised a $120,000,000 and a million dollar.
Speaker 1:One b. One b. Alright. Well, I just have one ask. Don't be a stranger.
Speaker 1:Okay? I don't wanna wait another year plus for you to come back on the show. It's too long. You guys are cooking now. So let's get, you know Yeah.
Speaker 1:Quick quick fast quick fast fall. At lee... At least. At least. At At least.
Speaker 1:But quarterly
Speaker 7:I'll be back whenever you have me. And this is my favorite part. I've been waiting for fifteen months, so this is my favorite pile. Awesome.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah. I'm glad you made it through the wilder ness and... Brutal. Anish's words, not mine. Oh, You said it's like you came on, it was exciting.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Guess that is true. Yeah. You made it through.
Speaker 2:You can sell Really really fast growth. It's really good.
Speaker 1:No. It's amazing.
Speaker 2:Billion dollars.
Speaker 1:Awesome, dude. Well, great
Speaker 2:to catch up. Have a great day.
Speaker 5:Thank you.
Speaker 2:We'll talk
Speaker 1:to Congratulations team on milestone.
Speaker 2:Goodbye. Let me tell you about the New York Stock Exchange. Wanna change the world? Raise capital at the New York Stock Exchange. Just do it.
Speaker 2:And let me also tell you about Codex. Codex is the powerful workspace for getting work done with AI agents whether you're writing code, analyzing data, creating content or automating business workflows. Codex helps you move projects forward from start to finish. Grab a seat. Welcome to TBPN.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much for hopping on.
Speaker 1:You just asked me where my suit is.
Speaker 2:Derek. What a heck of a question. A good question. Gotta wear a tuxedo. That that's what we decided is if I...
Speaker 2:He always goes one notch down from whatever I wear a tuxedo.
Speaker 1:He'll have... I did I do I do have somewhat of a defense, which is that I put on a lot...
Speaker 2:It's bulking season. It's bulking season.
Speaker 1:That is a really good excuse actually.
Speaker 2:Putting on masks.
Speaker 1:It's like... But but not perfect. I do have a couple that that still fit.
Speaker 2:Yeah. We'll we'll get you one of those really oversized nineteen eighties bodybuilder suits and then you'll have no excuse. Yeah. Because you can fill it out all you want, you got plenty of space. Anyway Anyways.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the show. Please introduce yourself for everyone
Speaker 5:who's I'm Derek Blasberg. I'm a New York based writer. Yeah. And I'm here today to hock a bunch of stuff.
Speaker 2:Let's hock, baby.
Speaker 5:What do we got? I have a book coming out
Speaker 2:Let's get it.
Speaker 5:Called Richard Avadon. Yeah. It's about his years at Harper's Bazaar. Yeah. And then tonight...
Speaker 5:Yeah. Jordy's coming tonight.
Speaker 2:I don't
Speaker 5:know what you're doing tonight. You've...
Speaker 2:I thought it was last night and I
Speaker 1:and I was... Not Not invited. But
Speaker 2:what is tonight?
Speaker 5:So tonight... So Richard Abaddon, I should start with who this guy Please. Richard Abaddon.
Speaker 1:Wait, can you start with who you are? You don't need... That's important. In most rooms, you don't need an introduction, but I think for our niche technology audience You don't think I'm Yeah. Big in I mean...
Speaker 2:After this.
Speaker 5:After this. What's own map?... Today. I don't even know how to start. Guess I'm a New York based fashion writer.
Speaker 5:Yeah. I do a lot of books and magazines for Larry Gagosian, the world's largest art dealer. I have a column in every issue of Harper's Bazaar, which
Speaker 1:is a fashion magazine.
Speaker 5:I'm a special correspondent at Vanity Fair.
Speaker 2:Are you a twin dad?
Speaker 1:And I have two kids. Twins? Twins, yeah.
Speaker 2:Me too.
Speaker 5:Five year old...
Speaker 4:How old
Speaker 5:are your twins?
Speaker 1:Two. We met briefly at this dinner party in New York That's right. That our Yeah.
Speaker 5:Mutual friend, Shelby, had organized. We talked a bit about the twins.
Speaker 2:Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That makes sense.
Speaker 5:Great. But I can remember you had... What were your
Speaker 2:Boys. Two boys. Twin two year old boys.
Speaker 5:And they're identical? No. No. I have a boy and girl, so you'll be Amazing. Surprised to hear that I
Speaker 2:love twins. I'm just a fan of twins.
Speaker 5:I started kindergarten this which was Amazing.
Speaker 1:Amazing.
Speaker 5:Traumatic, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's a lot. How quickly it
Speaker 1:Emotional rollercoaster.
Speaker 5:And they're both go to single sex schools and it was and...
Speaker 2:Okay. That's lot for drop off. Anyway, tell us about Richard Avedon.
Speaker 5:So Richard Avedon was by far the most important photographer of the twentieth century.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 5:He was a high school dropout and joined the merchant marines at the end of the second world war.
Speaker 1:As most fashion photographers do. Is a real Enlist.
Speaker 5:Fertile educational traditional training ground for fashion photographers.... Shooting. Sorry?
Speaker 1:Pointing and shooting. Yeah.
Speaker 5:Well, it's interesting. So what he did in the Merchant Marines was take pictures of all the incoming marines, sailors, and so he shot them all in a white background. Wow. And a lot of the images... You may not recognize his name and and watchers and listeners may not recognize his name, but a lot of the most iconic images Sure.
Speaker 5:JFK's official president-elect portrait
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 5:Marilyn Monroe, the sad Marilyn Monroe. You know, lot of those pictures were taken in a style influenced by the early passport polls of the Merchant Marine.
Speaker 1:Fascinating. So at 21... Yeah. Every time... I mean, I feel like so many of those pictures are just amazing, you know?
Speaker 1:Mhmm. You'll be like looking through your old, you know, family photos and things like that and you're like, this is an amazing picture, you know? For... And you know
Speaker 5:what they're for sale tonight, Jordy. We can put some of the There we go. Water and cash.
Speaker 1:There we go. We can have
Speaker 5:a little piece of history. There's, you know, amazing pictures of the Beatles. Wow. This was Jackie Kennedy.
Speaker 1:Wow. Iconic. Yeah.
Speaker 2:We can see.
Speaker 1:Seamless.
Speaker 5:And so Richard Abaddon, I'm a huge fan of Richard Abaddon. Mhmm. I've done a lot with the Richard Abaddon Foundation. He died in 2004 when he was 81 years old. Wow.
Speaker 5:He was on assignment for The New Yorker.
Speaker 7:Mhmm.
Speaker 5:And on a day like this, where we've had such, you know, incredible and surprising election results. In 2004, he was doing a project called Democracy for the New Yorker. And he was...
Speaker 2:Was that the start of Bush two? Was that year?
Speaker 5:That was... It was right after the Democratic National Convention.
Speaker 2:Okay. So one
Speaker 5:of the last portraits he took was of of a young senator called Barack
Speaker 2:Barack Obama. Yeah. Okay.
Speaker 5:So he has an incredible portrait
Speaker 2:of Wow.
Speaker 5:Obama at at the end of his career
Speaker 1:Barackable. Yeah.
Speaker 5:With no gray hair. You know, because you can date it by the grays. Yeah. And he actually... He woke up with with like a, you know, a pounding headache.
Speaker 5:Sure. But he got... And he was supposed to shoot he was supposed to shoot a young... A teenage girl who was pregnant and was was gonna be denied an abortion. So he was like...
Speaker 5:He was documenting like real America who's sometimes overlooked by the the... System. By the system. Sure. And he got the shot and he went and laid down and it turned out he had had a, you know...
Speaker 2:Brain aneurysm?
Speaker 5:Brain aneurysm. Yeah. Wow. Wow. So he passed away.
Speaker 5:But he always said he wanted to go out with his boots on. Working. Yeah. So... I mean Respect.
Speaker 1:Sadly, bittersweetly Yeah. He did. Just a closure
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 2:To the story.
Speaker 5:And then I was told that you've got some film major people in here. Sure. Or some... Yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. Yeah. The whole production team.
Speaker 1:So I don't know if they all graduated, but... They wouldn't be here.... A film major.
Speaker 5:Yeah. They majorly liked film.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Fans here.
Speaker 5:So Ron Howard Yeah. Who's academy... There I've been in some some... I think they're I think they're thumbs... Thumbs up.
Speaker 5:Four thumbs up. Ron Howard directed a documentary about which will drop on that's what we say still? Do we still say drop? Do I sound like a middle aged dad if
Speaker 1:I say drop? No. We're dropping all the time.
Speaker 2:The drops are good.
Speaker 5:So it drops Yeah. On Netflix on November Cool.
Speaker 1:Eleventh.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 5:Yeah. So all fall
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 5:Yeah. All Abaddon.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And...
Speaker 2:Yeah. Take me through a little bit more of his his legacy, the style. Like, if I'm looking at modern photography, modern fashion photography, what am I seeing that triggers, oh, that's Abaddon inspired.
Speaker 5:So a lot of a lot of the things that we credit Abaddon Mhmm. For establishing is number one in in in post war Europe, he established Paris as like the fashion capital. Okay. There's a famous picture...
Speaker 2:I thought that went back like hundreds of years or something. I don't know.
Speaker 5:Well, there... I mean, obviously... Yeah. There's the... Head chopped off for being a little too closely aligned fashion and excess.
Speaker 2:Sure. Sure.
Speaker 5:Sure. So there's definitely a precedent for that. Yeah. But... And and you know, after World War two Yeah.
Speaker 5:So much of European businesses and even culture was so decimated. Yeah. So Carmel Snow, who was the editor of Harper's Bazaar, really commissioned him and challenged him
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 5:To return and capture the opulence and and inspiration and
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 5:In Paris, and the most... If we measure success around here in dollars, the most expensive fashion photograph ever sold at auction was Jovima and the Elephants, which was a picture he took in post war Paris at auction for over $1,000,000
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:A couple years ago.
Speaker 5:And one recently resold in private hands for more than $2,000,000. Yeah. It's got a lot of money for...
Speaker 1:Is that starting a new trend? Photograph.
Speaker 2:In art collecting, fashion photography, reaching into that Christie Sotheby's world a little bit more?
Speaker 5:So he... Apadon's really credited with a couple of other photographers, including Irving Penn, which was sort of his frenemy. They they sort of came up the same time. He did a lot for Harper's Bazaar while Irving Penn's entire career was spent at Vogue. Mhmm.
Speaker 5:Abaddon joined Vogue Mhmm. Later with Diana Vreeland. These are...
Speaker 4:Mhmm.
Speaker 5:There's maybe one or two people who are following me on this on this name...
Speaker 1:TBPN of fashion would have been putting up like traded cars for these moves. That's what I... That's how closely I'm following.
Speaker 5:Prediction market for how long will stay in In this
Speaker 2:a different world historical prediction markets, for sure.
Speaker 4:But he
Speaker 5:was one of the first guys to try and establish photography as a fine art medium. Sure. And it's tricky because of course when there are negatives Yeah. You can duplicate things
Speaker 2:Of course.
Speaker 5:In a different process
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 5:Than say a painter.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 5:So when he dies Mhmm. His estate prevents the posthumous printing of photographs. So it's like... Yeah. The show, when you come to tonight, you'll see the pictures have all been printed by him in his lifetime and signed.
Speaker 5:Mhmm. So there is like this
Speaker 4:It's finite.
Speaker 5:A finite amount of of images. Mhmm. And there are other photographers who have since passed away after him who have modeled their estate and their, you know, their market value.
Speaker 7:Yeah.
Speaker 5:On that sort of pretext.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But there's other photographers that when they die, they sell their their negatives and their rights to their images to like Getty Images.
Speaker 5:Yeah. And you can you can go on Getty Images right now and buy a Slim Aaron's picture of
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:The bathers at the Hotel Du Cap in the South Of France for like $15.
Speaker 2:That's cool.
Speaker 5:That will never be worth more than $15.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It might be a steal.
Speaker 5:But maybe.
Speaker 2:Might be
Speaker 5:nice But go the Dovima picture hopefully that Yeah. Someone bought for $2,000,000 will not be worth 15,000,000 Yeah. Of course. Of course.
Speaker 1:What's what surprised you, if anything, about the explosion of of AI imagery? Sort of interesting, at least in my experience. The things that I never would have gone out of my way to hire a great photographer for, I'll make images for that. But all the stuff that I historically would have hired a photographer for, I'm still hiring the photographer. I have no no demand at all to like replace those like really special moments or or things in my business with...
Speaker 5:AI to create like special moments or do you
Speaker 1:use I'm saying I'm saying like I'll use AI as a joke. Then and then anything that I care about, I'm like, well obviously we need to get the real image.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right? Because it's like Yeah. It's capturing because it's like so emotional, it's like a it's a memory whether it's in like, you know, a family photoshoot or in a business context.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Right? And so I have like no demand for what I would call serious imagery in an AI context.
Speaker 5:Or maybe precious. Yeah. Precious. We were when we were working on this book, you go into his archives Mhmm. And he would be shooting Meryl Monroe, for example.
Speaker 5:And there would be like a finite amount of negatives. Because at this time, in the early sixties... She died in 1962, so he he shot her just before she passed away. Also shot her in the nineteen fifties. Film was expensive.
Speaker 5:Processing was expensive. And the biggest difference that I see when it comes to AI created images and the golden age of photography is that we have... I have like a 160,000 pictures on my phone. I've never printed them. They're totally disorganized.
Speaker 5:But the difference between then and and now is that that was, you know, you... Sometimes you would you would draw a picture before you took it, you know, you would you would not waste the film. You wouldn't waste the... Interesting.
Speaker 1:You're like, let's test this, basically.
Speaker 5:And now I think some photographers use AI to falsify the image. Mhmm. Like if I'm taking a picture Yeah. Of Jordy.
Speaker 1:Oh, and then trying to recapture the real thing.
Speaker 5:And I would put you in a suit and try and, you know,
Speaker 1:dress you up a little, have a little respect for your passion. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Would
Speaker 5:import the image and say, you know, put this guy in maybe blue suit. Yeah. Put him on Sunset Boulevard. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And then we would try and recreate
Speaker 5:that image, but hopefully better and more realistic. Yeah. Not And without like those weird facial disfigurations that you get
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 5:In in AI. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Fashion media feels like it's completely rejected for the most Going
Speaker 5:great, don't you think? Everything's going great? Magazines, paper products?
Speaker 1:Well well, we we actually... No.
Speaker 2:Completely rejected AI?
Speaker 1:Completely rejected rejected AI. I I can think of a handful of campaigns. Thought... I remember watching Gucci come out with this thing that looked like GTA inspired. I thought it was very weird and I thought it got like the right reaction from everybody which was like, why?
Speaker 1:Like, made made no sense to me. But the area that the area that I've heard is completely disrupted is like e commerce photography. Oh, really? And specifically impacting like LA. There's a whole industry here of like, hey, we have...
Speaker 1:We made a 100 new pieces of clothing, we need to get it photographed and different styles, models, etcetera. And I think like that is just like there's, you know, a tsunami there.
Speaker 5:The bigger influence of AI on the fashion business, and this is not media specific, it's designers used to make a shirt. Right? And you would have a team of people resizing and rescaling. What does that look like? What are the measurements and the sample sizes in a small, medium, large, extra large?
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 5:Now you can pump all those numbers into OpenAI and get Sure. You know, the the idea... The scale and sizing is faster, quicker, easier, cheaper Yeah. Less human labor.
Speaker 2:I'm sure a lot of like the back office tasks and all that.
Speaker 5:And all and all that stuff is...
Speaker 2:Yeah. But the inspiration is still with the with the designer.
Speaker 5:And I also think a lot of designers now will sometimes... And I don't know if this will be ultimately beneficial to the creative process. And this is something that a... You could have a designer on here to argue with you about. But, like, let's say, if I'm a fashion designer and I'm inspired by, you know, Silicon Valley, JFK in the '19 Like you...
Speaker 5:Sometimes you could import all this stuff in Yeah. Into whatever open AI or Yeah. Program Yeah. Help
Speaker 2:We've seen some odd odd dynamics playing out in the in the car world where there's there's one Lamborghini that people are speculating like might have been designed with AI and and they think it doesn't...
Speaker 5:That the little one that Mark Neussen one?
Speaker 2:No. No. No. So so that is Ferrari. Right.
Speaker 2:And that is very clearly not designed with AI. And when it came out, everyone was making AI versions of that car and
Speaker 5:said Okay.
Speaker 2:Maybe we that's... Should have just done this and it looked like the most generic Ferrari Yeah. Possible and that was what people expected and then the car came out and was clearly designed with... Mark had been working on that design going back with Ford for like twenty years Yeah. Three years or something.
Speaker 2:So it clearly was not an AI inspired design. But a lot of people were like, no, I want the AI version. But then it seems like another company might have actually given them the AI version and they had organ rejection when they did get that because it wasn't bold enough. And so the the taste can be so so so odd that people can be longing for something that doesn't break the rules too much, but they don't want the thing that actually is just the perfect middle average that the AI produced. And so they wind up in this...
Speaker 5:Frustrating for car manufacturers or Mark Newsome that Yeah. Now using AI everyone can...
Speaker 2:Everyone thinks they're a designer... Everyone thinks they're an expert in everything now, for sure. For
Speaker 5:sure. Armchair experts.
Speaker 2:Yes. Yes. Thumb thumb based...
Speaker 1:Health of the... Let's call it coffee table books. Are aren't sales great?
Speaker 5:Oh, yeah. Do you know how much this book cost? How much? Like, a $150. I'm gonna give it to...
Speaker 5:Only brought one, so you two could fight over.
Speaker 1:Or you can fight over.
Speaker 2:Well, let's... Take it Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays.
Speaker 1:Cut it down the middle and then...
Speaker 2:I mean, work and I will be taking it home. We'll alternate weekends. Okay?... Complicated.
Speaker 5:I definitely think... Yeah. And also tonight Yeah. This exhibit... I actually think that the value of building in person exhibitions that you that you have to go to to see Yeah.
Speaker 5:Will become more valuable in a an increasingly digitally...
Speaker 1:Yeah. There's so many... We've this this happens like multiple times a week now, where we have an idea to do something. And we just think like, well, like everyone's just gonna assume it's AI. And and it's like it's sad because like a lot of like cool things are not gonna get done now because people will just assume that it was AI.
Speaker 1:Like we even... What do mean? We had pretty... So we had... I'll give you an example.
Speaker 1:So we had pretty serious Halloween costumes on last week dressed as Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. And if you missed it, I'll I'll show you I'll show you a picture.
Speaker 2:It was about four hours of prosthetic makeup starting at 6AM to 10AM.
Speaker 5:I thought you guys were
Speaker 2:You were dedicated. With 10 Hollywood makeup artists here doing
Speaker 1:This was us.
Speaker 2:The three of us.
Speaker 5:This was us. Wow.
Speaker 1:And so we sent videos before the show started This was my friends.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Strange. That's
Speaker 1:my And I would say at least half of our friends just said just said like they they responded like, This is hilarious. Like, that's funny. And then as soon as we went live, then they texted again and said
Speaker 2:I can't believe this oh,
Speaker 1:I thought this was AI, like that's you guys are completely insane. Oh, thought it was
Speaker 5:like a filter.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. They thought it
Speaker 2:was filter. On single video...
Speaker 1:And so going back to this like IRL thing, it's like we should probably do a live show
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:In the full... Oh,
Speaker 2:that's probably it. Halloween should be our live show. I think that's good. That's a really...
Speaker 1:Hot and sweaty in
Speaker 2:there? It's terrible.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's horrible.
Speaker 2:It's insane.
Speaker 1:It's horrible. It feels like you're...
Speaker 2:It feels like you're suffocating. Yeah. It feels like you're being buried alive.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It feels like you're in a submarine
Speaker 5:and a... I demand the live...
Speaker 2:You wanna come on the Halloween show? Come on the Halloween show.
Speaker 1:Or the April Fools show. We'll get
Speaker 2:you in full Richard Avedon makeup.
Speaker 5:Or maybe you should do this like seasonally.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Don't
Speaker 4:want to
Speaker 2:leave too many plans but we have more.
Speaker 1:We're... Like
Speaker 5:a turkey
Speaker 1:this month.
Speaker 2:Oh, turkey?
Speaker 5:We need Santa Claus, but also in the North America. Have we have
Speaker 2:to really...
Speaker 1:Turkey is insane.
Speaker 5:Is insane. Or maybe one of Donald Trump and pardon the Turkey.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay. But but isn't the isn't the isn't the the coffee table book industry like doing better than ever?
Speaker 5:I think anything you can touch is now becoming Yeah. Better. Yeah. I saw you guys have...
Speaker 2:Because you can't get an audiobook of that and you can't get the summary of that and you have to enjoy... The only way to enjoy it... Think no one wants the Chad GPT summary of that book.
Speaker 5:I also your coffee table experience. 100%.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Is hard. Is hard. It's hard.
Speaker 1:Way to signal it's a way to signal too to your house guests that you're more sophisticated.
Speaker 5:You know who Richard Avedon is. I saw in your lobby that you have the Vanity Fair sports issue,
Speaker 1:and in that issue Yes.
Speaker 5:Came out a couple months ago, I wrote an article about how live sports... Yeah. You know, I'm I'm sure you guys have well... Yeah. It's been well documented here that the Lakers are sold for $12,500,000,000.
Speaker 5:Like, I think the the live sports industry has exploded because in a post COVID, post AI world Mhmm. Those in person experiences have become so much more
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 5:Viable and enriching. And not only for us who who, like, want to see people and be out, but also even to the point about the the costumes you guys did, like you guys... People are now going out because they want to take a picture of themselves. Mhmm. They're looking for content.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And you know it's real because you were there.
Speaker 3:It's all the
Speaker 2:dunk you saw.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Friday Friday night, I I was walking by someone and I overheard them say, I don't even want to go to this party. I just want to get a picture and then we'll leave. And and I was like, that's actually a good use of AI. Like, you really save yourself...
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 5:But they're
Speaker 1:they're like, I wanna I don't wanna... Yeah, don't wanna fully LARP.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:I just wanna partially LARP.
Speaker 5:Yeah. Maybe that's another business, guys. Maybe the...
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 5:The be there. Arfing as a service. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. We'll send people there.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:With a... Yeah. Get me up to speed on
Speaker 2:the golden age. You mentioned the golden age of of fashion photography. Like, what what years are we talking? What were the iconic moments?
Speaker 5:So probably post war was really great.
Speaker 2:Okay. It's the boom of magazines, so that's where people are consuming this?
Speaker 1:And also, this was a moment when you could really shift culture
Speaker 5:Yeah. In magazines. There's there's an iconic portrait in here of a model called Chino Machado Mhmm. Who's an Asian model. Mhmm.
Speaker 5:And Richard Avedon took her picture Mhmm. Submitted the submitted the the film, and the publisher of Harper's Bazaar called and said reshoot these pictures on a white girl.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow.
Speaker 5:And his contract was up for renewal and he said, will not renew my contract if you don't run these pictures.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And so
Speaker 5:this woman became the first non white model in
Speaker 1:a nationally syndicated fashion magazine, not because
Speaker 5:Yeah. A magazine was suddenly progressive Yeah. It's because this guy was gonna quit. Yeah. He would...
Speaker 5:They were
Speaker 1:blackmailed into doing that. Yeah. He also, you
Speaker 5:know, the the Beatles, he shot Bob Dylan, he shot... Yeah. He he was obsessed with with young people with... What
Speaker 2:was the crossover there? Like, why why are the Beatles and and Dylan relevant to the golden age of fashion photography? Was this the moment when the musicians were becoming fashion icons? Like, always?
Speaker 5:Yeah. Well, sure. Beethoven, you know, he was obviously a... Mozart. Another great costume guy.
Speaker 5:Yeah. Oh, yeah. Another... Think of the wig....
Speaker 1:So hard.
Speaker 5:I'll come
Speaker 2:back for the
Speaker 5:wig for the wig show.
Speaker 1:Okay. Okay.
Speaker 5:Yeah. Unbelievable. All the...
Speaker 1:You're good at this. You're good at at this. In another life, you were a technology, you know, live streamer. Or
Speaker 5:a New York Post headline writer.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah.... Headline writer. We try and track... Try and channel that every time we can. It's always the best.
Speaker 2:Puns are so good.
Speaker 5:I think in the sixties, like youth quick culture
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 5:Suddenly all of these influences Yeah. Were smashed together. Yeah. And that's what I think, for me anyway, and the argument that we're making in this magazine Yeah. That was sort of the golden age of
Speaker 2:photography. What's coming back right now in terms of fashion photography? Because it doesn't feel like we are in a moment where everyone's ripping off Richard Avedon right now. Maybe that'll happen in a decade, maybe in two years, maybe it already happened. I don't know if there's been a revival movement yet.
Speaker 2:But what is the trend currently? What what is the trend calling back to currently? Do have an idea?
Speaker 5:That's a great question. Yeah. When you think of fashion photography now, you actually think of multiple deliverables. Yeah. So like when Abaddon was taking these pictures, he would take 10 shots.
Speaker 5:Yep. And now, if you're booked for a job Yeah. You're taking 10 pictures, you're taking, you know, a couple cut down reels to put on social, maybe you do a hero video for the YouTube page.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's a lot.
Speaker 1:So there's... I don't know if the... You know, so
Speaker 5:much of Abaddon's work with the white background... Do you guys remember when we were young? I think we're... I'm probably a little bit older than you, but we're probably the same generation. Do you remember the the early CK one ads, white background?
Speaker 5:Yep.
Speaker 1:Totally. That was, you know, that was Yeah.
Speaker 5:Yeah. Avadon work Injuries. Which Calvin Klein has Yep. Has recycled
Speaker 2:That makes sense.
Speaker 5:Even after his death. So there's definitely callbacks to his influence. But did you guys see the the Gucci holiday video that broke yesterday? No. It's Mariah Carey.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 5:It's Mariah Carey walking into a house party singing like and...
Speaker 2:It's Christmas themed? It's... What's... I'm in. Say no more.
Speaker 5:I just...
Speaker 1:Sounds brutal.
Speaker 5:What was the... She has a famous holiday, so the...
Speaker 2:Yeah. All I Want for Christmas. There we go.
Speaker 1:Yes. That was a test. I just wanted to see if you...
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's fifty days. I'm I'm warmed up. And... I've been on the road to Christmas for two months.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And I think that that is sadly what... Well, sadly because I I...
Speaker 2:The Kitsch revival? Camp revival?
Speaker 1:I think... Yeah. Maybe? Did you see Matt Damon and David Letterman doing cameos on the Gilded Age Sunday night? No, I didn't.
Speaker 5:I think the Easter egg, the Kitsch Okay. Revival the sweet nostalgia, I think we're...
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's where we're having fun.
Speaker 1:And maybe that is because
Speaker 5:the the the world, maybe until last
Speaker 1:night anyway, the real world has seemed so scary Sure. That we are searching for
Speaker 2:our... Release.
Speaker 1:Are there any new ideas in fashion? Because it's funny because I saw there was a there was a founder of a of a... Leave this very general, apparel brand.
Speaker 5:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:They were just completely crashing out writing this super long... All these all these were all these words complaining that like people were copying their photography style.
Speaker 5:Thought it was funny... The designer was complaining about the photography?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Just like the presentation of the Founder
Speaker 2:one brand is saying founder of other brand is making their website photos look like my website photos.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Our our brand, you know, basically just mimicking. But the photos are... Well, thought it was interesting because like they clearly had just found like from the archives like a specific style that had been done by someone else. They were the first to adopt it.
Speaker 5:So the complainer was already mimicking.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Because somebody brand new. It like, wow. This idea of like being... If I was first to it, then I own it.
Speaker 1:I... Yeah.
Speaker 5:Like, which which I
Speaker 1:don't necessarily agree with. Like Mhmm. We've had plenty of people take inspiration from TBPN and I'm always kind of, you know, however...
Speaker 5:You should write them
Speaker 1:a long email. Yeah. Well, done that because we didn't invent television. Yeah. Exactly.
Speaker 1:As much as I would have liked to invent television, we didn't. Yeah. A handful of people got there first.
Speaker 5:Yeah. Isn't that sort of the problem with AI though, is that it's it's written entirely in existing stuff?
Speaker 1:Yeah. But I feel like all new ideas are based entirely on remake, like
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:When when... Have we had a new idea in like the last eighty years?
Speaker 5:Work it out in the remix. That's what you should tell your friend who was complaining about...
Speaker 2:Work it out in the remix. Yeah. What what do think? No.
Speaker 1:But but that's the thing, like AI is just drawing from all these different inspirations.
Speaker 5:That exist.
Speaker 1:That exist. That's also exactly how like all the most creative people I know generate new things.
Speaker 5:Yeah. They're just
Speaker 2:like Take inspiration.
Speaker 1:Pulling from the archive, pulling from something that's
Speaker 5:that's not specific to fashion or photography. Think we see
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 5:Know, anytime you see a new film, there's always a... Oh, they nicked this sequence off of...
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. You you mentioned Richard Avedon had a contract that was up, and that was a a one to one relationship effectively. He he he was only working for Harper's. Is that right?
Speaker 5:And this was also a time when you could afford to keep photographers on This
Speaker 2:is changing. So I saw someone talk about how I think it was New York Magazine and a other publications...
Speaker 5:Interview Magazine, They
Speaker 2:hired the same photographer and the cover photos looked identical because it was the same photographer because the photographer needs to work for multiple publications.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so it's harder for Elle to have their look and and New York Magazine to have their look or whatever the examples
Speaker 7:were.
Speaker 5:That's a little new that that photographer doesn't have an agent.
Speaker 2:Okay. Oh, oh, because they would have sold an exclusive for this period.
Speaker 5:Think an agent or something. I don't know. I don't... So that story was everywhere.
Speaker 1:Okay. Especially in my little... Better, so tell...
Speaker 5:People were horrifying that that this guy accepted commissions from so many competing publications Yeah. And his style is so distinctive. Yeah. One would assume an agent would have been like, maybe you say yes to Elle or Vogue. Yes.
Speaker 5:You don't say yes to Elle and Vogue in interview. I think there were five or six.
Speaker 2:There were really four. And and one of them or one pair even had like the same clothes.
Speaker 5:Yes. Same Chanel dress. Look at you.
Speaker 1:Hey, Caleb. Okay.
Speaker 2:But but yes. So so so it was mostly just a mistake, lack of agent, because an agent would have intermediated that a little bit more.
Speaker 1:Yes. And I think historically Mhmm.
Speaker 5:Like even as far back as the nineties, as recently as the nineties, most publishing houses locked down photographers. Yeah. So, for example, Annie Leibovitz only shot for Vanity Fair
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 5:And Vogue. Yeah. You know, they had these million dollar contracts.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 5:And now... It's changing. Because of the diminished fortunes of the publishing world in fashion magazines. You can't lock down
Speaker 1:Yeah. This new hot... I think he's
Speaker 5:a Polish photographer. Yeah. His name is very... There's like a lot of consonants in there.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Do it. Predominantly. I'm not gonna... Please....
Speaker 1:Tempt to say.
Speaker 2:He seemed like he had a really cool style. I thought the photos were beautiful.
Speaker 1:It... Super unique style, so when you do that unique thing Yeah.
Speaker 5:The same dress in several publications Yeah. It became a...
Speaker 1:Yeah. But it's also not uncommon now... Let's bring him to tech.
Speaker 2:He's the so humble...
Speaker 1:Tech people tech people will not seen any any of these things. They'll be in the clear. Truly.
Speaker 5:You could
Speaker 1:do all the headshots
Speaker 5:and the very distinctive... Probably.
Speaker 1:It was a great
Speaker 5:picture of him with Will and Dafoe Yeah. Having like a dollhouse on his head. Okay. Uh-uh. So it'd be very unique tech world imagery.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Till you found your building a house of cards on top of their head. It was.
Speaker 1:It was, wow. Car today. No. I I really wish that we had a magazine because we we like there there's no one in in this sort of like no new media businesses and technology truly understand the gap between a good photo and a great photo. I think...
Speaker 1:That's what
Speaker 5:we can do together.
Speaker 2:It'd be fun.
Speaker 1:I think so. That's our next project. Let's do it. Let's do it. We're we're ready.
Speaker 1:I mean, there's a lot of people For sure. That that need a good photograph in this industry that have a
Speaker 2:100%.
Speaker 1:Interesting story to tell.
Speaker 5:Or I can just face tune
Speaker 1:them, you know? Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Just the sloppiest AI. Yeah. I mean, we've been laughing about the... This idea that people will eventually be nostalgic for the AI art of 2023, the six fingers, the sloppy...
Speaker 1:Did you see Katy Perry clockable.
Speaker 5:Wore six finger on the red carpet of the Met Gala?
Speaker 2:Yes. It's already coming back. It's already being adopted as as camp and ironic.
Speaker 5:Yeah. And
Speaker 2:I I think that as much as everyone really hated that era of AI art, they might come to remember it fondly because no one was getting fooled.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It was so clockable. Every time you'd see it, oh, ArtStation style, sci fi style, oh...
Speaker 1:What's fascinating about that though is how quickly that cycle comes back. Yeah. In fact For sure.
Speaker 5:In fashion we sort of joke that the nineteen eighties was just the nineteen forties on cocaine.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like it was... It used to
Speaker 5:take decades for... And if you think about it, they Yeah. Were all big shoulders in La Mei,
Speaker 1:which is what the post, you
Speaker 5:know, after the depression when people were working and they got back the big shoulders. Yeah. So it took... It used to take decades. Now we're nostalgic for the sixth finger that popped out
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 5:Much more recently.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Do you do you have wearing skinny jeans at all yet? Or is that like next year for you?
Speaker 5:You saw that Prada show with the really super super...
Speaker 1:Well, I know. It's obviously it's obviously back. It's just whether or
Speaker 2:not you I just up on the big pant trend like six months ago. Jordy was like, stop wearing the skinny jeans. Those have been out of style for six years.
Speaker 1:No. You were so close. I should have just let you. Yeah. I should have just let I know.
Speaker 1:I should've just... I honestly couldn't I honestly couldn't do one more meeting though with John and just a pair of skinny jeans. I was like,
Speaker 5:I reached my breaking point. A broken clock is is right twice a
Speaker 1:decade, maybe. Yeah. Twice a century.
Speaker 5:Twice a century.
Speaker 1:But they are allegedly back,
Speaker 5:but I don't know if I'm gonna do... I don't know if...
Speaker 1:Let's go let's go this. Yeah. No. After this, let's go get a pair and let's let's take the leap together tonight. Okay.
Speaker 1:Fine. Yes. All over this good day. There we go. Amazing.
Speaker 1:Well, where can people get the book? Where should they get the book?
Speaker 5:I mean, book's on Amazon. Okay. The exhibition is at Beverly Hills. It opens tonight. Can't wait.
Speaker 5:It's on through the holidays. And on November 11, Ron Howard's documentary about this photographer Richard Avedon
Speaker 2:Is on Netflix.
Speaker 5:Will premiere? Yeah. Will drop?
Speaker 2:Drop.
Speaker 5:Will emerge? A launch. Yeah. Will launch?
Speaker 1:I like launch better than drop. Yeah. Drop is like going down. Yeah. Launching upwards.
Speaker 1:Up.
Speaker 5:Right. Oh, okay. Wow.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Launched.
Speaker 5:So new on. Okay, Jordy. Launched. Launched. Launched.
Speaker 5:Magically appears. Magically appears.
Speaker 2:That's some great Netflix content. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. Amazing.
Speaker 1:Amazing. Well...
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for coming.
Speaker 5:We're gonna have...
Speaker 1:You're gonna close out the show with us. Always... Five stars. Wow. We're do something
Speaker 2:Sign up for earning... That you
Speaker 1:may not have seen. It's called the Flash...
Speaker 2:On tbpn.com. See you tomorrow.