Technology Brothers

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The most profitable podcast in the world.

John:

I didn't know that you backed Elizabeth Holmes' new company. Oh, we're live. Welcome to Technology Brothers, the most profitable podcast in the world. Today, we are putting the information in the truth zone. Truth zone.

Jordi:

They're back.

John:

A lot of people are calling them misinformation. We don't encourage you to say that. Just call it the information. It's classy. You don't need to call it the misinformation.

John:

But there's a new article in the information about the antichrist and the new apostles and it's talking about Christianity being so back in Silicon Valley. It's a great piece. Breaks down a lot of people we know. Basically, everyone mentioned in here. It's funny.

John:

A Bloomberg reporter actually reached out to me about this exact story, like, 6 months ago. And the pitch was basically, like, I think Christianity is having a moment in tech right now.

Jordi:

Oh, so this was a different

John:

A different reporter. Right. Ellen Hewitt at Bloomberg, completely different reporter, but was was smelling the vibe and could tell that this would be a good trend piece to write. And this happens a lot. You know, they they write a trend piece about Gondo and everyone writes that piece.

John:

Similar similar thing happened with this antichrist and Christianity and tech, story. And she she was texting me about it. And I was like, I just I don't think it's that much of a trend. Like, yeah, Peter, Trey, but they've been, you know, prominent Christians for a long time. No one's really talking about Pat Gelsinger.

John:

And then, yeah, you got Augustus. But beyond that, it's not that big of a deal. But the information hunted it down and put together

Jordi:

a very compelling narrative. Somewhat of an old, I brought Augustus to a a buddy of mine's house who is, has a venture fund, and it was early days of rainmaker. And Augustus, this is over a year ago at this point, was wearing a huge, shirt with Jesus on it, like bench pressing Nice. With a gold piece hanging out. And so this this story almost feels like old news.

Jordi:

Right?

John:

Yeah. Yeah. It it, like, in in one way, it could have gone just like, oh, wow. Another puff piece for Augustus

Jordi:

Yeah. Which

John:

you love to see.

Jordi:

You love to see it. They try to everybody tries to do, like, you know, they try to write a hip piece on the guy and it comes out as this glowing profile.

John:

Riz vest. Yeah. Yeah. I had it all written up as hippies, then I hung out with him, and he's the real deal.

Jordi:

Maybe he gave him a horse.

John:

Maybe. I love Augustus. It was good seeing him. Did you get to talk to him on Saturday? We saw him at some VC holiday parties.

John:

We gotta give you the update on the VC holiday party.

Jordi:

It's such a bummer. I saw him and his mullet from across the room. Mhmm. And then I couldn't get to him.

John:

There were just too many people there.

Jordi:

There were too many there was legitimately too many people. I

John:

I said hello to like half the people I wanted to. It was really tough. But I do have some tips for VCs throwing their holiday parties now that we're out of holiday party season. The main one is you don't wanna gild the lily. It's a good phrase.

John:

You know, lily, beautiful flower. You don't wanna dip it in gold. You don't wanna add a bunch of jewels. Yep. You know, if you're in a beautiful house, just be tasteful with the decorations.

Jordi:

Just

John:

couple Christmas trees, couple carolers.

Jordi:

A little fake snow. Nothing too much.

John:

Actors acting like they're from the matrix.

Jordi:

Yeah. Who

John:

knows? But

Jordi:

Just the basics.

John:

Just the basics. You don't wanna go over the top. Yep. And you wanna keep it tasteful. Did you have any tips, takeaways?

John:

The one thing that I noticed from our from our, our our guide on how to get the most out of attending a venture capitalist Christmas party that I didn't anticipate was that you not only need to bring a swimsuit to go in the pool, you might also need to bring a chainsaw because sometimes they cover the pool with plywood to put it

Jordi:

in the dance floor. This was super unfortunate. So John and I showed up to the party, obviously wearing suits, but we did bring some bathe bathing suits.

John:

Of course.

Jordi:

Because we fully intended on doing the, the Whirlpool in the center and and, you know, becoming the main character like we advised in the guide. But lo and behold, they had built this pretty complex durable wood structure over the pool to turn it into a dance floor. Yeah. And that was that was a wild card. It was like somebody had listened to the guide.

Jordi:

They said, hey. They knew. They knew they knew what

John:

was coming.

Jordi:

They knew what was

John:

coming. Coming.

Jordi:

And so we we made every effort to try to figure out how to get Yeah. Sort of dismantle it, but we didn't have power tools.

John:

Yeah. I did try That

Jordi:

was another mistake. Maybe next year's Yeah. Carry to the party, but then bring power tools in case they cover the pool up.

John:

There is one trick. You know, imagine you're at, you know, Mark Andreessen's party. You just go up. Do you find the party planner? You just grab them real quick like it's an emergency.

John:

Hey. Mark changed his mind. We gotta get that dance floor out of there. We're opening up the pool. You just shake it, put the fear of God in him like it's delivered directly.

John:

He's gonna be too nervous to go and back

Jordi:

check it.

John:

Mark's busy.

Jordi:

Yeah. Yeah. You

John:

gotta just do this now.

Jordi:

Mark's pissed off,

John:

and he's busy.

Jordi:

And he's busy. Wanna double check with him.

John:

Just open up the pool. Of course, I want the pool open.

Jordi:

You know what? But,

John:

unfortunately, that didn't work. Didn't get to go in the pool. It was, it was Tragic. Horrible. But, you know, we made it out of there and it was good.

Jordi:

So. Yeah. And it was it was, you know, there was a lot a lot of venture capitalists had election parties, right? Yeah. Everybody, you know, given Silicon Valley's somewhat conservative leaning as of late, we expected those parties to be very celebratory.

Jordi:

But, Saturday night felt like the top. Right. Like the vibes were incredible. Everybody was was everybody was just on top of the world. Great night.

Jordi:

Clear, you know, potentially a top signal.

John:

Yeah.

Jordi:

But you got to, like, live in the moment and just embrace it. Right. Just because, you know, you know, we might be staring over the precipice doesn't mean you should. Yeah. You know, not have a good time.

John:

Didn't see any journalists. Didn't see any escorts. It's pretty clean clean

Jordi:

Pretty clean. Yeah. It was well But there was other parties in the general area that seemed like they had that kind of crowd more of a journalist. Yeah. Journalistic attendee list.

John:

Yeah. It's tricky. Well, there's always next year, folks.

Jordi:

Yep.

John:

So let's go to the misinformation or the information as they like to call themselves. They opened this article saying worship at Epic Church in Downtown San Francisco last Sunday began in a darkened room on the 2nd floor of a former factory building. The shades were drawn across the tall windows while colored lights cast a theatrical glow on a band that sounded a bit like Arcade Fire. If Arcade Fire made worship music, a mostly millennial congregation swayed to the harmony, a sea of Apple Watch clad arms raised to the heavens. Oof.

John:

Rough. Gotta upgrade those Apple Watches.

Jordi:

She had to drag them like that.

John:

She did. It did. It's a little bit of a hit piece. It's not gonna rain. Yeah.

John:

Yeah. Just a little bit of a dig.

Jordi:

A little bit of a

John:

little bit of a dish tonight. Special moment for Epic Church and its congregants. With the opening of a $12,000,000 space just down the street from the headquarters of Pinterest and Airbnb acquired 2 years ago to accommodate a flock that has ballooned to nearly a 1000 people every Sunday. Epic's pastor, Ben Pilgrim, couldn't have been more pleased. We really feel called to this particular place and its people, he said a few days later reflecting on the opening day turnout.

John:

I attended the services as a guest of 2 of the more prominent people within Epic, Trey Stevens, the Founders Fund partner and Andorall cofounder, and his wife, Michelle Stevens, chief revenue officer at Phelps, a healthcare software startup. People think church is just for the poor, the marginalized, the visibly in need, but the highly rich and famous are just as much in need, Michelle told me. Then she paraphrased a bit a bit of scripture. It's harder for a rich man to pass through the eye of the needle than the for the poor man to see God. It's interesting.

John:

Pat Gelsinger has this amazing quote where he says he breaks down Silicon Valley and he calls them a bunch of, like, rich miserly pagans because San Francisco historically has been one of the most unchurched cities in the world Yeah. And also, has one of the lowest giving rates for charitable donations. And so he I just like the miserly pagans phrase. It was very

Jordi:

People from San Francisco donate so much to companies that end up going under that they feel like that is

John:

a terrible choice.

Jordi:

Ends up being a write off too. Yeah. They feel like you need to count that in a little bit. Right?

John:

Yeah. But it is good. They go on to say, Epic Church is one of the epicenters of a societal shift among the tech elite. More and more Christianity has become a growing constant part of many of their lives. Some of these people are longtime Christians who feel newly emboldened to embrace their, faith publicly.

John:

Others are brand new adherents. Together, they formed a movement with real breath that does not have roots in any one Christian denomination. It spans the country fueled by a swirling mix of different proponents. Traces of the sea

Jordi:

It really is it really is wild that even 10 years ago, you just wouldn't have seen a high profile GP be involved with religion. Yep. And if you did, everybody would be like, woah. Cool of them to make, you know, such a public statement about something like that. Yeah.

Jordi:

Like, even though it's just totally

John:

Yeah.

Jordi:

Normal, like, people are welcome to For

John:

a long time, religion was coded as anti science. Yeah. And science was essential to the development of transistors and technology. And so the idea of and Pat Gelsinger was clearly, like, a narrative violation there in the sense that he's, like, running, like, the most hard tech, the most science physics driven Yeah. Company and yet a devout Christian.

Jordi:

Yeah.

John:

But he was never in the spotlight because he wasn't the founder of that company. And so now that you see folks like Peter and Augustus and Trey who are founders and have profiles written about them in the same way and people want more of a 3 60 view of their life, it cuts through, much differently than Pat, I think. Yep. Even though he was, you know, fairly prominent in Silicon Valley, I feel like 10 years ago. Mhmm.

John:

I don't know. He's been the CEO of Intel for a while. But, then Describing

Jordi:

describing the El Segundo, brothers as as having developed a form of muscular Christianity is like an attempt to dig it seems, but it doesn't really linking patriotism patriotism, masculinity, and athletic discipline with religious moral character. Wow. What a what a dig. Got him.

John:

Got him. No. They

Jordi:

they they they They would all sell the

John:

words to make this negative.

Jordi:

Yeah. Yeah. And that's why I'm so scared. They would all, like, one of them would post that I have adopted a form of muscular Christianity that links patriotism, masculinity, and athletic discipline to form a strong religious moral character. Like, they would just post that themselves.

Jordi:

Yeah. It's actually, like, a good post.

John:

Yeah. They they highlight Peter's tour of, of the antichrist. And, Peter's obviously warming warning about the risk of a one world government and what, you know, AI might lead to that. He's long said that, you know, AI is centralizing and therefore communist and, crypto is decentralizing and therefore libertarian. And I really liked his take on Rogan where he said that if they're if aliens exist, they they must be either angels or demons because at a certain point, if you develop the technology to propel something near the speed of light, you can just destroy any planet by just accelerating an asteroid and just Yeah.

John:

Wiping them off the face of the earth. So how do you how how have we not been destroyed if there are statistically probably aliens out there? Yeah. Well, either they are angels in the sense that they have a moral virtue that stops them from just destroying everything or they are demons in the sense that there's that they are controlled by a one world government and and and they they have eliminated terrorism through complete control, which is a fascinating concept. Yep.

John:

That it must be, like, your your society must move to the extremes as you develop more and more technology because the technology becomes so asymptotically powerful. I really enjoyed that.

Jordi:

Even even it's interesting. Do you remember I mean, it feels like Sam Harris fell off dramatically. I don't know if that's actually true from viewership basis, but it feels like Yeah.

John:

He turned he turned inward and he went full paywall. So Yeah. Yeah. He he'll only post his shows on YouTube. So he has a incredibly rabid audience that pays a monthly fee to be part of the community, but he'd never escapes that little Yeah.

John:

Echo chamber. I saw a hot take about him today that, Lomez was saying that he like, you you should never forget that one of his, like, critical turning points was doing a lot of psychedelics. Yeah. And that was, like, canonical to his development philosophy.

Jordi:

And I just thought it was relevant because, like, 5, 6 years ago when I just graduated college Yep. I work with somebody that, that was just very into the Sam Harris meditation app Yep. Which is an alternative to just going to church, basically. Totally. Because it's like, hey, sit and be quiet and just sort of, like, think about these ideas.

Jordi:

Right? It's like a almost a one to 1. Yeah. It's like church in your pocket, but it's Sam Harris' like church of atheism.

John:

Yeah. Well, wasn't it Wilmanitis who posted about this today that or a few days ago that, like, the folks that get one shotted by Ayahuasca are also getting, like, they're they'd be so much less resilient or they get one shotted by the idea of AI doomerism.

Jordi:

And You can get one shot by anything.

John:

Yeah. Yeah. But it's a good it's a good phrase. It's a good turn of phrase. And and the reason is that is that because I've I've always had this interesting thought that a lot of the AI doomers are fearful of a return of god.

John:

We talked about this. Basically, this idea that, they live degenerate lives that are highly incongruent with any sort of moral framework. Yeah. And so but they also believe God is dead, and so that's fine. They won't be punished because they don't believe in traditional God.

John:

But if AI becomes a god, AI will judge them, and then AI will kill them or punish them or send them to, like, an AI hell essentially because Yeah. They haven't been living a morally virtuous life. Yeah. And and so a lot of it is, like, an anxiety about the return of God. Whereas if you at least believe that you're living some sort of morally virtuous life, it's like Yeah.

John:

Yes. There might be an AI that's super powerful, but it will think I'm cool and good, and it'll be down to hang. And, like, it'll be great. Like

Jordi:

Give me guidance in my life. Yeah.

John:

Like, I mean, there are plenty of people that are powerful that you run into, and they don't just immediately wanna kill you. Yeah. Like, because you haven't done anything bad.

Jordi:

We wouldn't have made it out of Saturday night. No way.

John:

But but but there is something about when when you dig into a lot of the most prominent doomers and you read, like, how they live their lives, you're like, wow. This is, like, pretty dark and crazy.

Jordi:

It is interesting. It is interesting. Sadist. Yeah. It is interesting that on I mean, there's there's so much talk right now about how impact or sorry.

Jordi:

How AI will impact every facet of society. Yeah. And a lot of people, depending on your industry, like, you're gonna talk it up as it's gonna have this greater impact. Right now, it's popular in crypto to be like, oh, AI is gonna adopt crypto rails and Yep. Use tokens and wallets and it's, you know, it's less regulated so they can just do this all programmatically.

Jordi:

But but there's such a crazy case to be made of how AI is gonna transform how we think of religion. Right? Yeah. Kind of what you're getting at, which is

John:

Yeah. There was a guy, Anthony was it was it Anthony Levandowski? I believe he was the the the guy who left Google, went to Uber, and then went to jail and got pardoned for stealing code from Waymo.

Jordi:

Oh, it's

John:

oh, okay. Crazy.

Jordi:

Yeah. Pardon.

John:

And and I believe he said that he was starting a church of AI. Like Yeah. Like, we will worship the AI God. And and then I don't know what happened. And I think maybe he just started building another, like, normal company.

John:

But but but there there was there was this big, like, trend for a while where it was, like Well, it's interesting. Even

Jordi:

so the reason this article coming out now is kind of funny is because I do think you could have written you could have written the exact same article a year ago. Yep. Like it's not like breaking news. There's this way of Christianity. Even 2 years ago, it had become countercultural on TikTok if you were a young man to make these vibe reels that were, like, religiously oriented and, like, oriented around social media.

John:

On the feminine side, there was, like, the trad wife content

Jordi:

Yeah.

John:

Ballerina farms, that type of stuff that got really popular recently Yeah. Which is which is, like, adjacent as

Jordi:

Mormon, but it's it's Yeah. And even Jeremy had a good post. I'm I'm trying to find it. Sure. That was over the summer.

John:

Well, let me read this while you're looking that up. They say, the interest in Christianity among some of the technorati comes at a moment when religion has been declining in America for decades. We're just a few decades removed from what from when the new atheism the new atheism movement partly led by philosopher Sam Harris, sat at the center of our cultural zeitgeist. Just 68% of Americans describe themselves as Christians in 2023 according to Gallup Research from that year. A dramatic drop from nearly 90% of Americans in the 19 nineties.

John:

That is so high 90% in 19 nineties. I had no idea it was that high. And I'm wondering are they they're they're they counting Catholics as Christians there? Do you think?

Jordi:

I would guess.

John:

They have to be. Right? Yeah. And, moreover, 80% of Americans think religion is losing influence in the country according to Pew Research, a high watermark since the organization began asking that question in 2 2001. Still about half the Pew respondents who said religion is losing influence thought it was a bad thing.

John:

Interesting.

Jordi:

Yep.

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

Yeah. The, Jeremy's post was on July 3rd this year. He says, if you can't see that we're on the brink of a religious tidal wave in young people, you have your head in the sand.

John:

Yep. So Yeah. Yep. Say, Bible sales are up 22% this year. Hollow, a prayer app raised a $105,000,000 from investors including General Catalyst as well as Peter Thiel.

John:

Let's really emphasize that. We'd love to celebrate large funding rounds. And, it became the 1st religious app to reach number 1 in the Apple App Store. And also there's that, there's that Christian film studio, Angel Studios

Jordi:

Yep.

John:

And they are producing, like, HBO level interpretations of the Bible. They've and they're also very, very good at, just online marketing. The the movies go into theaters, but then they have this great mechanism for buying tickets for your friends. So they have this kind of, like, social viral engine a little bit to amp things up a little bit more. And the team behind it, I'm, like, loosely connected them, are, like, absolute killers, like, really, really sharp.

John:

And it's it's it's completely under discussed that they're, like, probably one of the greatest new media companies because they're just, like, in the religious category. But if you put them against, like, a free press or something, you'd be like, oh, wow. This is, like, a fantastic business. They're they're, like, a 24 level, like, very, very successful. Yeah.

John:

We should do a whole deep dive on them. It's very fascinating. If there's one person at the center of tech's shift toward Christianity, it's billionaire Peter Thiel, a devout Christian who like many other techno Christians doesn't publicly align with any one denomination. Several of the Young Tech founders and investors I spoke to from Los Angeles to Austin to New York told me they had been influenced by direct conversations with Teal as well as his frequent talks on religion and his work spreading the ideas of theological philosopher, Rene Girard. For me, the logic was simple.

John:

It was, well, Teal is really smart and interesting, and he's pulling from Renee Gerard who's really smart and interesting, and both of them are pointing back to the figure of Christ. Shouldn't I look into that? Said David Perrell, founder of Rite of Passage, a tech focused online writing school who has met Teal a few times. Yeah. Very, very,

Jordi:

David.

John:

Yeah. Oh, it was I I was talking to Trey about this. Like, it's always one of the most it's one of the most, like, you know, countercultural things about Trey. It's, like, kind of personal brand, and and I'm glad to see it get more attention just because it is very interesting. You don't wanna go too far with it, I think.

John:

But, but I think this, like, really, really nails it down as, like, this is just who he is.

Jordi:

Yeah. It's

John:

not it's not like some there's not a deck about, like, let's, like, let's pick something that's edgy or something. It's like, no. This is very natural.

Jordi:

So I reached out to our our friend, the Lone Ranger Oh, yeah. To get kind of his take on this. He is a incredibly intelligent, young man who and, has found himself, one of the only, he is a sort of religious adviser to to many, different people within the tech elite. So I was interested to get his opinion. He said, his first thought was one, he'd never seen the author before, which he thought was relevant because, historically, major papers would actually have somebody that was just full time on the religion beat.

Jordi:

Right? That they would, just write articles like this and that would allow them to just engage in, like, a higher level analysis of what was happening versus, like, this is a thorough article. Right? She talks to a bunch of people, Isaiah Taylor, David Perrell Yep. New founding guys, but, but she doesn't have the, like, literary chops and expertise to, like, write something, like, truly groundbreaking.

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

Right?

John:

That makes sense.

Jordi:

And the New York Times, the original, the New York Times misinformation actually still has, like, religious beat writers.

John:

Interesting. I didn't know that.

Jordi:

Anyway, so yeah. So another thing that he kind of went into is he basically says, as of right now, he believes that this is entirely organic. Like, there's not one specific organization or public figure that's leading this.

John:

Yeah.

Jordi:

But he says what comes next is that, as this trend becomes more and more obvious, there's going to be people that are going to try to keep it, claim it, like, drift off of it in different ways. Totally. Right?

John:

Yep. Already already is something that a a young founder can put on as a costume and Totally. To feel more edgy or more aligned with, like, the Teal version.

Jordi:

But the people that were covered here, Saya, Augustus, Perrell, they're not doing this No. To be clear. They're, like, non they're nonthreatening.

John:

Yeah. So, like, I mean, everyone saw that they were doing this, like, years before this article.

Jordi:

Yeah.

John:

But you can And they're they're pretty take this

Jordi:

pretty clearly, like, not being political about it.

John:

Yeah. Just

Jordi:

sort of saying these are these are, general, you know, my beliefs and and why I was, got involved in the first place.

John:

Yeah. I like this, question here. Teal when teal proselytizes, he likes to dispense little rhetorical riddles, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about one in particular because of what it seems to suggest about the scope of the mindset he and other tech Christians hold. He posed it to the economist Tyler Cowen when he appeared on Cowen's podcast in April. The millionaire and the general and the priest, what do they all have in common?

John:

In referencing those 3 archetypes, Thiel was describing a coalition of free market libertarians, defense hawks, and religious social conservatives that coalesced in the Reagan years drawn together partly through a common dislike of communism, and it's hard not to look at the tech elite piling into Donald Trump's new administration as a second coming of those forces. Tealism can be mind stretching can be a mind stretching form of Christianity, and I think that's part of its allure, especially in a world in which lengthy, digressive, right leaning podcasts have become cultural cornerstones. Seeing a guy as smart and rational as Peter Thiel be like, the resurrection literally happened. It's real. There is a taboo that's being broken, said one person to detect to intact whose newfound interest in Christianity largely ties into listening to teal.

John:

It shows that faith is valid and real. Yeah. There is a little bit of, like, just breaking the glass and, like, jumping over the the, the the the threshold in order to make this acceptable. Like, no one, no no VC can write you off as a founder because you're a Christian, because there are now enough people who are serious

Jordi:

Yeah.

John:

That you won't be you you can wear it on your sleeve. Whereas before people used to hide it clearly. Yeah. It's wild. I I know a guy who is a brilliant brilliant, electrical engineer and grew up in a deeply religious city in Georgia, I believe.

John:

And in high school, he had a, like, a every literally everyone in his community was religious Christian, and he had this breakthrough and and wrote his thesis about atheism and decided that he was an atheist because he was so rational and so Yeah. So, like, quantitative and science based essentially. And he was essentially cast out of his society and, like, exercised. Like, literally, they got they brought in an exorcist, which I didn't even know was the thing that existed in, like, the nineties, I guess.

Jordi:

Wow.

John:

Wild. And then and then eventually, he came back to it, which was very interesting while he was, like, in this hyper rational phase for a long time. Very, very interesting. Like, how how difficult that is. And then, and then when he when he started, you know, going back into religion, he, it was still, like, very countercultural in Silicon Valley, and it was very odd.

John:

And he was always, like, seen as, like, an outsider. So I've been an outsider his entire life. It's great. It's wild. Anyway, if we go into Isaiah Taylor, one of one of the Elsa Goodman himself.

John:

Founded Velar Atomics, a nuclear energy startup, sees he sees his and his peers turn towards Christianity as a way to reject the text status quo and to shoe atheism which has essentially been text de facto spiritual guiding principle. Yeah. You gotta get out of the spreadsheets when you're deciding what to do. It is tricky. You could see it with, SPF just like the whole, like, oh, well, you know, this is like mathematically efficient to, like, steal all this money so I can give it back.

John:

Like, he might have been a true believer in his ultra utilitarian philosophy, but it clearly led to, like, a terrible bad bad outcome.

Jordi:

Yeah. He's gonna take user funds to invest in Anthropic, which he knew was gonna be a $50,000,000,000 company, and he was gonna make it all back. He was.

John:

He was. But the time mismatch SPF was on the Tyler Cowen podcast, and Tyler was like, how much of a how much much of a utilitarian are you really? Like, if there was a if there was a a 51% odds coin, like, the coin is 51% heads, 5th 49% tails. And if it comes up 51% if it comes up heads, the population of humanity doubles, and if it comes up tails, everyone dies. Would you flip that coin?

John:

Like, it's positive EV. The expected value is that the population increases. That means more happiness and utility. So, you know, the the utilitarian should flip it. And he was like, yes.

John:

I would flip it. I would flip it endlessly. I would flip it forever because he just operates off of a positive EV. Yeah.

Jordi:

And he's like He doubles it doubles it once. He's like, let's go again.

John:

In practice, obviously, that's that's how it works out. But, like, if you're just shortsighted thinking about expected value, well, yes, then it is positive EV. But, like, clearly, you need some broader guiding principle than that.

Jordi:

Find God.

John:

Yeah. Very odd. Yeah. Where else should we go? I mean, in terms of the driving force, I mean, Michelle Stevens really can't be undercounted.

John:

Like, she's she's put together, like, a really strong speaking tour and has been a driving force. They highlight here, the ACT 17 Collective, a nonprofit that aims to evangelize tech leaders that Michelle Stevens leads, and she's hosted events with Teal as well as Y Combinator president Gary Tan. The name references a bible passage about apostle Paul's missionary journey through various cities. She and her husband, Trey, originally plan plan to bring bring the group to 17 cities including Austin, Miami, and New York, but their ambition is growing. Just last month, she and Trey ran 2 act 17 events in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, the the the Theology of AI and defense and choosing good quests.

John:

Yeah. We gotta do a deep dive on choosing good quests. That is a fantastic essay.

Jordi:

Yep. Really great.

John:

And and and Trey had another recent post that I think was really great about, AI girlfriends. And in there, there was a there was a little bit of this at the end kind of saying, like, there's this natural force

Jordi:

Mhmm.

John:

That wants to just, you know, juice reward, find the path of least resistance. Let's just make everyone date an AI. And and we were I was kind of struggling with him thinking about the, the the conclusion because I didn't he like, the original conclusion was something like, you know, oh, like, you know, go to church, like, rebuild the institutions, like, meet people in person. But that's very hard and it's very it doesn't fully align with, like, the the war machine that is, like, VC's funding, like, the OnlyFans business. It's just so powerful.

John:

Like, you're it's very hard to overwhelm that culturally and same thing with the AI girlfriends thing. Like, if the business is just printing money, it's just gonna have so much more energy behind it than, like, a couple people being, like, hey. We should, like, go to that church and patronize it and, like, build our community up. Like, it's really hard to start those things. But but I do think that there's, like, the Angel Studios thing, the, the the the Halo app.

John:

There are a few ways that, you can align community building, real world relationships, some religion stuff. You can you can you can make that align with, like, the traditional venture capital model. I talked to one VC was who was thinking about incubating a, b to b SaaS company for churches, basically, like, you know, like,

Jordi:

I need to get in on the action.

John:

What do

Jordi:

I know? I know b to b SaaS.

John:

And I'm pro Christian. So total SaaS. Vertical SaaS for churches.

Jordi:

For donate payment rails for donations.

John:

Exactly. All this stuff. But then also, I mean, if you if you go, like, we we we do a lot of, like, content creation video, you know, recording and stuff. If you wanna learn this stuff, you don't go on YouTube and search for, like, what do podcasters do? You go to the megachurches.

Jordi:

Yeah.

John:

Because those guys have the best gear. It's incredible. Dial. They have all these, like, behind the scenes things, because they're all doing, like, live streams and switching and stuff. It's like NFL level, but they all talk about it because it's their community and they're giving back to each other.

John:

And so it's really, really cool. I've watched, like, a 1000000 of these videos, and I'm always like, oh my god. They they got that gear, like, sick. I want that. But, yeah, I mean, I I I think that, like, bringing some of that top tier stuff down and making it more accessible for these organizations to run really, really smoothly probably is genuinely, extremely beneficial.

John:

Anyway, you got anything else on, the information article you wanna talk about?

Jordi:

Yeah. I I thought the, I thought it was interesting. Julia Black, the writer, positions this. I don't know if this is authentic, but Michelle had said she doesn't mind if people use their X17 events to pitch their startup to her husband. Go ahead and network, she said.

Jordi:

God used everything, anything and everything to get people to turn that way. So I'm totally okay with that and actually welcome it. And Julia position that as, you know, mixing religion and work, which I guess is like one way to do that. I would just call that mixing community and work. Yeah.

Jordi:

Like, yeah, churches have always been a place for community and conversations that are not, you know, entirely oriented, around, pure religion. So, I like the, I like the call out to Newfounding, a Dallas based anti diversity, equity and inclusion venture firm anchored by a Christian ethic and ethic and worldview.

John:

Okay.

Jordi:

So there wasn't much wasn't much more on that. But,

John:

yeah, echoing that, Pilgrim is continuing to fundraise for future projects like his planned Center For Sacred Vocation. He hopes to create a space where people can come network, find people who are like minded to start a company. He told me, it won't be just for Christians, but obviously as a church, it will be, hey. We believe in we believe we believe God created work to be a good thing. We want to help you think about how to do that ethically.

John:

Yeah. I read a great book about, it was from this, like, capital allocator, some big hedge fund guy about Christianity, and it was a fantastic, embrace of Christianity or of capitalism because, obviously, capitalism didn't really exist when the Bible was written. So there's this question of, like, can you derive,

Jordi:

in the It existed. It just wasn't defined.

John:

Yeah. Yeah. Can you can you derive capitalist principles from the Bible to know, like, are we in the good timeline or not? Like, are we doing the right thing? Is there is there a Christian defense of capitalism?

John:

And, he had a bunch of really interesting things to say about that, but one was that, you know, God is a creator and created us in their image, and it's our job to create. And the and the and the role of creation is

Jordi:

Yeah.

John:

The is is business and is is capitalism and is entrepreneurship. Yeah. I I I keep finding, like, you read all these great books, and and the conclusion is always, like, start a company. Yeah. Become a founder.

John:

Like, it doesn't matter who what they're, like, what their stated angle in is. Maybe it's just me, but, like, the Strauss in reading is always, like, become a founder. Become that's great.

Jordi:

Yeah. The last thing I would say, I think it, you know, we we we generally have only, are on this podcast to talk about technology and business and the technology industry. So that's why we covered this. But generally, I think it's a very positive trend that people within the tech community are feel like they can fully express their personal life themselves. Right.

Jordi:

So the same thing of Trey and Michelle, you know, having their, events and church and being able to talk about that, that's great. There's also prominent, examples of, investors and founders from, Jewish backgrounds and, like, Rap Tefillin. And they Oh, yeah. That's true. X-ray.

Jordi:

So, like, that's another expression of it. Neither of them, like, it's it should be totally everybody should be fine with people expressing their own personal belief systems and values and cultures. So, so anyways, glad glad to see it all.

John:

That concludes our deep dive for this episode. Do you have some DMs over there? I wanted to go through some q and a.

Jordi:

The DMs come. We got some DMs. Let's hit some DMs.

John:

I got a I got a good one for you. Here, let me see if I can find this.

Jordi:

Okay. Yeah. This is a this

John:

is a fun one. Hey, Jordy. As someone with a sole male heir, are you doing anything special to prepare young master Roman for inheriting the Hays estate and continuing your dynastic transitions traditions?

Jordi:

Great question. We could do an entire deep dive on this, and we should. Yeah. I am along with my wife where he's he's turning 3 next year early in q one and we're gonna be gifting him a c corp for, for his 3rd birthday.

John:

Get him started.

Jordi:

And start start him building his own enterprise because as much as I think that all parents should generally, embrace nepotism and try to give their children and their communities, you know, the the advantages in life, I do want him to learn learn how to do it on his own. Yep. And so, yeah, I think one of the best gifts for a 3rd birthday is a c corp. Right. Yep.

Jordi:

That's great. C corp's malleable. Right? They can get strap out of it. They could raise capital.

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

Could kind of work across any industry. It's a great gift to be like, hey. It's not a not a totally inexpensive gift. Right? Stripe Atlas, like, $500.

Jordi:

It's like I got you. This is the equivalent of 30 dino puzzles.

John:

This is a PS 5.

Jordi:

Yeah. And, and now you it's up to you to make it worth something.

John:

But instead of playing, you know, some PS 5 game, you're playing the game of capitalism.

Jordi:

Game of capitalism which is the ultimate game.

John:

Ultimate game. Every It's much like the butt the dino puzzle. Exactly. Puzzle together the the capital.

Jordi:

Yeah. Exactly. To create value. So, yeah, that's big big gift coming up. 3rd birthday.

Jordi:

C corp.

John:

I have an idea for you. I think that there's a natural inclination for children to rebel. And so you might wanna use some reverse psychology. Tell them, hey. Look.

John:

I, you know, I expect you to become a tech journalist. I expect you to become a DJ in Bushwick. Yeah. And then Yeah. 23 rolls around.

John:

He said, you dad, dad, I know you wanted me to become a DJ and be the first member of our family to play a boiler room set, but I wanna start a hedge fund.

Jordi:

Yes. That's actually so smart.

John:

And you're just like, okay, son. If that's what you wanna do with your life, I will support it. I will back your first fund.

Jordi:

Yeah.

John:

But, keep listening to the EDM.

Jordi:

Yeah. The journalism side too. Every every Saturday morning, the routine is if we sit down, we open the information. Exactly. On the

John:

on the family, I have to verify that. And then he gets exhausted by

Jordi:

it and has to resign. And then he's like, but but through the process of of reading the information articles, he learns about these countercultural bad boy entrepreneurs that are like, wow, these guys Ziah Taylor, this guy kinda this sounds cool. Yep. Augustus Derico. This that this guy sounds cool.

John:

Yeah.

Jordi:

Strong moral character. Yep. Fitness oriented. Yep. So, yeah, I think that, reverse psychology

John:

Don't under

Jordi:

and a c corp. And a c corp. And a c corp. And a c corp. And a c corp.

Jordi:

Great. Great

John:

So he has the entity set up. Right?

Jordi:

If he wants to rebel. Yeah. Your give your children entities.

John:

So Yes.

Jordi:

I can't stress this enough.

John:

For sure. Well, we got a we got a question and a suggestion from Sean. He says Tech Bros pod, Have you heard heard you guys need a tie recommendation? Check out this Burberry. What do you think?

John:

Should we do some Burberry ties?

Jordi:

We should get on there and and shop. Sean submitted this last night. We just got to the studio this morning. Didn't have time to get in there. And and, but it's a great, it's morning.

Jordi:

Didn't have time to get in there. And and, but it's a great thank you for pointing that out, Sean.

John:

It's really gonna be dependent on who, writes us a bigger check to sponsor them from the high fashion world in terms of ties. But Yep. We're open. If you run a tie company, contact us. It's kind of a winner take all type

Jordi:

of The winner take all market.

John:

Yeah.

Jordi:

For sure.

John:

But,

Jordi:

this neck and that neck.

John:

Yeah. Well, we can do rival sponsorships,

Jordi:

potentially. Yeah.

John:

Hermes over here. Burberry over there. You know, we'll see. Yeah.

Jordi:

Maybe. But, thank you for the submission, Sean.

John:

Yeah. Oh, this is good. I work for a billionaire as a chief of staff. What art should I put on my wall to make a statement? What do you think about art for your office?

John:

You want when the billionaire walks in says, hey, I need you to book a flight for me. You gotta make a statement. My recommendation was, you go with Peter Paul Reubens, David, and Goliath. We'll have to put this up on the screen, but it's one of the most aggressive. It's it's a it's a it's a painting.

John:

It's it's in Pasadena at the Norton Simon. You can go see the real thing if you're in LA. And, it's a it's an amazing, painting of this super jacked David just about to behead Goliath. Goliath. Yeah.

John:

It's like one of the most aggressive, like, fire and brimstone types type paintings. Really sets the tone. Yeah. Hey, billionaire. You might be bigger than me.

John:

I might be the chief of staff. You're the boss here.

Jordi:

Yeah.

John:

But at any moment, one rock to the head, I'm slicing head off. Yeah.

Jordi:

Yeah. I'm gonna take a different approach. So if you're chief of staff for a billionaire, you have big ambitions. You you don't wanna be, you know, the the right hand man or woman forever. And so what I would do, billionaire circuit, you're gonna end up at various art fairs.

Jordi:

Yep. Art Basel might be one of them. So I think the right approach here is actually to silently and anonymously build an entire career as a sort of provocative modern artist. Right? We've seen pieces like the banana that was duct taped to the wall Yep.

Jordi:

You know, selling for, you know, significant amounts of money. And so I would take that approach, figure out a way, you know, if you're if you're hungry and a and a and a hustler, you'll be able to do this. Figure out a way to get your own art shown at Art Basel. Yep. Get it, you know, auctioned by Sotheby's Yep.

Jordi:

And and really get those numbers up and take your boss and say, hey. We should stop by. This art artist is blowing up.

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

And and then ask, once you're there, you know, the the billionaire is like we might say, like, you know, is the artist here? Like, what do they even look like?

John:

And Pull off the mask.

Jordi:

Pull off the mask and say it was me all along.

John:

The call's coming from inside the house. Exactly.

Jordi:

Yeah. But only do that after they've bought a piece Yep. And say, like, you know, you're my customer.

John:

Yeah. I would take it a step further if you're maybe you don't have the artistic inclination to pull it off yourself. You gotta get on the art circuit, figure out what artists wanna sell to your boss, rent your wall space to display, billionaire walks in, sees, oh, that's nice. Yeah. It's my friend.

John:

Yeah. It's only this much. Then you should become an art dealer. Yeah. Start selling.

Jordi:

Yeah. I mean, you could even take this a step further as find an artist you love. Yep. Buy up all their available works. Sure.

Jordi:

Work with Sotheby's to get these works listed. You buy them back from Sotheby's to mark them up to higher prices. Yep. And then just build your bidding little, you know, build the market, build the market, build the market, and then have your boss be the bag holder and have him buy the piece and be like, I own this entire market and then flood the market. Right.

Jordi:

It's your recommendation. There we go. It's,

John:

Peter Paul Rubens.

Jordi:

What a piece.

John:

It's, it's beautiful. It's gonna look great on on your wall. Good luck. Here's a serious one I got from somebody. Do you think there's room in the market for a robo advisor with a modern all weather portfolio such that it entails inflation hedging via crypto and black swan hedging via far OTM near expiry options?

John:

It's interesting. The robo advisor market, I haven't followed too much. I know that isn't Wealthfront the main

Jordi:

big one? So so I think what's been interesting is the for a long time, there was a lot of robo advisors. Yep. It was unclear if any of them were working. Yep.

Jordi:

And then Wealthfront came out and they were like, we have 200,000,000 of revenue and like we're profitable. And like this is actually like a great business. Yeah. Right. Because people park their funds and they don't really think about it and the number goes up and presumably retention is pretty high until maybe I think there's a certain point where people are like, well, I have 5,000,000 in Wealthfront.

Jordi:

Maybe I should give this to like a traditional money manager type person. But turns out they're pretty good businesses. You know, we know like the autopilot team, he's built a great business already, having a more opinionated robo advisor that has, like, a set strategy. So I think there's a lot this I have no way to, like, analyze Yeah. On the on the on the show whether or not this is a strategy.

Jordi:

But I think, like, highly opinionated robo advisors

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

Are a great way to get your first 20,000,000 of AUM. And then from there, maybe you can, you know, build Yeah.

John:

I think you kinda need to abstract it. Like, there's one which is, like, the actual, you know, back testing and risk modeling and just making sure that what you're proposing here is a good strategy. And then number 2 is, like, how are you wrapping that and distilling that into marketing language? So Yeah. I remember there's 1 robo advisor that was, like, every time you make a transaction, it will round it up.

Jordi:

Yeah. And

John:

it will just take 15¢ and you'll never really notice, but then you'll save a bunch of money along the way. Yeah. And then there's the, like, the the the other one which is like copy trading. Yeah. This one, there was another one that went through YC a couple years ago that was like, we just look at the hedge fund, the best performing hedge fund disclosures, and we trade based on that.

John:

So you're copying a hedge fund. Yeah. And that's very easy to understand. Okay. Hedge funds do well.

John:

My portfolio is copying those. I'm happy about that. I'm I'm willing to give it a try. Right? And so this, like, modern all weather portfolio, like, that could be great, but it's not jumping out to me as, like, an fantastic elevator pitch that you could put in, like, an Instagram ad or Yeah.

Jordi:

So here's here's another one.

John:

Wanna copy that. Whereas the autopilot guys, it's like you're copying Nancy Pelosi's portfolio. That is a meme. People understand that. And so they're they're in with that.

John:

It's very distilled.

Jordi:

Yeah. The the last thing I would say, so Wealthfront, if you ever used it, is very risk off no matter how much how, risk on you basically tell it to be. It's still, like, gonna be a very pretty stable portfolio, and that's part of their strategy. If I was gonna make a robo advisor and I just wanted to optimize for users and, like, attention and and potentially volume, I would just say we are the degenerate robo advisor, which is like, this is ultra high risk. You might lose almost everything.

Jordi:

But the potential content that would come out of that is like you can if if Wealthfront wants to be the stable place where people can earn 6% a year and you're like, hey, you might be go down 70% 1 year and go up 4,000 percent the next year and we're gonna, like, do it. Like, there's hedge funds that basically do that.

John:

I mean, the yeah. There's there's a crypto trader that our buddy knows who you can essentially give him a $1,000, and he'll just try and run it up to a1000000, and then he'll be robbed after. And so you gotta pull out at the right time, kind of push him, but he's just a gambler. Like, he's not even a hedge fund. It's just like a guy.

John:

Yeah. And, yeah, the the d gen, because that's gonna create

Jordi:

a lot of content, a lot

John:

of wild long tail stuff. People people want the risk on.

Jordi:

So instead of Wealthfront, you'd say maybe call it the incinerator, capital incinerator. 10. How much did you

John:

put the incinerator? I threw a I threw a 10 there.

Jordi:

I threw a 10 in. Let's throw

John:

a 10 in the incinerator and see what happens.

Jordi:

Let's see what happens.

John:

That's great. Should we move on to the timeline? Do we have No.

Jordi:

I gotta jump in. We got a, so last week, we talked about this. We have had so many incredible brothers in the comments, replying, and so we decided to make reply guy of the month a weekly award. K. Weekly award.

Jordi:

And

John:

And this one was honestly crushing. It was so high stakes for us. I was up all night thinking about this debating between the choices.

Jordi:

You barely slept.

John:

It was it's one of the hardest decisions I've ever made in my life.

Jordi:

Barely slept. And let's see. Let's talk about some of the people that that almost made Yeah. We can talk about that. Some of the people that almost made the cut.

John:

I mean, Baldo is still

Jordi:

Baldo is an absolute animal.

John:

Path to goat hood.

Jordi:

Brody. Brody's an animal. He had a great comment today in response to our driving gloves.

John:

Oh, fantastic.

Jordi:

So Brody's been in the running, but the guy that is this week's reply guy of the week is, somebody who has that post notifications on.

John:

Mhmm.

Jordi:

The first comment pretty much every time. He's a true technology brother. He's building he builds rockets down in, Texas.

John:

Nice.

Jordi:

He is, friends and I think, you know, partners with Red Bull Futurist, and he is none other than Stefan Salice

John:

Salice? Salice.

Jordi:

Salice. Stefan Salice, you are this week's reply guy of the week, and, it can't go to somebody better. I'll drop some of the the highlights here. We posted yesterday founders the next time a journalist is riding a hit piece on your company buy them a dressage horse. Most tech journalists grew up riding weekly.

Jordi:

A gift like this will let them know that you respect their culture and you shouldn't be unambiguously demonized in return. He says, this, that, equestrian opulence, I thought was very relevant. We posted about VCs. If you wanna count on a VC for a growth check, you should, hope that they, go skiing places that don't have chairlifts. He says, if you can't drop in on a double black diamond equivalent run with fresh powder, how are you supposed to, generate wealth?

Jordi:

Fact point.

John:

That's a good point.

Jordi:

Later he says, America isn't fucking around. So that's that's a deeply American post by itself.

John:

He just threw that in there.

Jordi:

Just that. I love it. Yeah.

John:

Yeah. Just do that in there. A little bit of fuel on the fire.

Jordi:

He was weighing in on on Y Combinator's success. Yeah. Y Combinator is a great Yeah.

John:

I mean, that's the thing about being a great reply guy. You don't need to drop a whole essay every single time. You can just kinda just kinda remix what we're saying, amp it up a little bit. Just give us some juice. We love it.

Jordi:

This one was good too. He said, we posted VCs with no followers love to yap about how much they value anonymity, which which, you know, if you've talked to VC with no followers, they will tell you that. Yeah. He said, I think it's funny that I see VCs VCs with 0 followers. Isn't it heavily in your favor to be able to reach an audience and get your product in front of people?

Jordi:

And I thought that was just a good way to position, position that. And then lastly, we posted and just like that venture capital holiday party season is over. Thank you to the LPs that make these events possible and our security for keeping us safe from anti capitalist. The parties may be done for now, but the back of the napkin deals will echo for eternity. And Stefan said, communists wouldn't even have napkins to do deals on.

Jordi:

They have much to learn. And that's true.

John:

It's good.

Jordi:

Anyways, so shout out to Stefan, a great American, a great reply guy, and we are lucky, to have you in our a great reply

John:

guy, and we are lucky, to

Jordi:

have you in our community of brothers.

John:

Fantastic. You love to see it. Onto the timeline.

Jordi:

Let's do it.

John:

Let's go to Eric Lyman, the CEO of Ramp. He has been on the show before. He is, quote, posting Lenny Ratchitzky, who says, companies minting the most founders out of their product managers, and Ramp is number 4 with 14.3%. And he says, we're the youngest company on this list, already top 5 in the ranking of new companies formed. Sad to see exceptional people leave.

John:

Only thing we fear more is no longer attracting exceptional founders in the first place. Just shy of 10% of Ramp's team today have started a company. Yeah. Wow. Fantastic.

John:

You you Yes.

Jordi:

So I

John:

about the pipeline of, like, ramping company founder.

Jordi:

The founder.

John:

And I didn't realize how real it is.

Jordi:

You know, the pipeline is the pipeline is extremely real. The thing that I would say that a lot of people that become founders want to be founders from very early on in their lives. Like maybe they had a small business while they were in middle school or delivering papers or flipping sneakers, these kind of things. And so there's this tendency to once you're an adult to be like, oh, I want to be a founder, I should become a founder immediately. And there's so much value in going and working for a company like Ramp, learning best practices, learning what excellence looks like, learning about the needs of customers.

Jordi:

You're not just learning how to work and how to approach business, but you're learning about the problems that businesses have. And and, you know, ramp probably benefits from the fact that they serve companies in a bunch in a bunch of different industries. And so you're getting exposure to a bunch of industries and the problems that are there. So, yeah, I give this advice all the time to people that are like, I want to be a founder. And it's like, well, you don't need to have started a company before, obviously, to be a founder.

Jordi:

Anybody can just become a founder. But a lot of people would be better off going and working 2, 3 years at an at an iconic company Yep. And then taking a crack.

John:

And most importantly, a a fast paced company that executes on products very quickly like Ram.

Jordi:

Yeah.

John:

This is why, you know, Google, former Google person was really great during the during the, like, the growth years of Google because they would just go and Paul would just go build Gmail in a weekend. Yeah. And now it's kind of been like, oh, okay. Google is a place where you just go settle in. Maybe you leave and start a company if you're in the AI group.

John:

But, like, for the most part, like, the Google PM is not as as hot anymore. Yeah. But the pattern matching still super fast paced.

Jordi:

So Yeah. And it's not just about what you learn on the job, but it's the pattern matching that that that capital allocators will do after you leave where they're like Yeah. This person's never started a company before, but they were PM at ramp and they built this feature and I talked to Eric about it and he said they're great And that just can be an extreme catalyst.

John:

Yep. Let's go to Gabriel. He says, this is how Vitalik built Ethereum. And it's a screenshot of a kid in a very awkward pose saying, look at this kid. And everyone was laughing out loud at this.

John:

It is funny. Vitalik has been I think he's been on Tech Brodrip, but he hasn't done enough. I mean, a, gotta go through a bulking cycle, gotta hit the gym, get jacked. Please.

Jordi:

This would

John:

be a great turnaround. Everyone would be singing his praises. I'm sure that

Jordi:

run a little test. Get him get him a get him a sports car, get his testosterone up.

John:

But also, he did that photo shoot, I believe, for Time Magazine or Forbes or something, and they did him really dirty. They shot him really flat. They didn't give him a lot of contrast. The camera was kinda looking down on him in the whole it was very clear that the whole thrust of the article and the and the and the brief for the, for the photographer was make him look like a nerdy kid because that was the story they wanted to tell. They didn't wanna tell him like a like a hero.

John:

And I was looking at the the Trump is on Trump is on the cover of Time Magazine, and I saw that they made him look really heroic. And everyone was like, this is crazy because the last 5 Time Magazine covers about Trump have been like, it's a disaster.

Jordi:

It's Yeah.

John:

It's terrible. But then they've they finally shot him. And if you look at the BTS, you can see that it's a really low angle that the the the photographer is basically on

Jordi:

the floor. He's looking up at Trump, which is all the way. A lot.

John:

Angle matters a lot. And there's a big soft light and you'll see, you know, we have a big soft light in the studio. It it it, creates more intrigue for your features, more contrast, and it just makes you look better. And that those details get lost a lot. But, hopefully, we can spread the word that founders should be aware of the way that they're photographed.

John:

Ryan Peterson, when he was on the cover of Forbes, who's a fantastic lighting setup. I was obsessed with it.

Jordi:

I know. His teeth look fantastic. Need to need to build into the shoot that that that this is the camera angle. Yep. I won't take photos in any other Yep.

Jordi:

Angles. I will be smiling. Yep. Because sometimes if you want it to be a celebratory piece

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

I had the New York Times come to my house once Yep. And I and they they told me they were covering my launch and they were excited about what we were doing and we did this interview. And then they told me during the shoot, don't smile. And I was like, that's pretty weird. I'm being featured in the Sunday business section.

Jordi:

Yeah. I kinda think that's good. Decently cool. At least my parents will think it'll it's cool.

John:

So then it came out negative.

Jordi:

And then, of course, it wasn't it wasn't, like, overly negative, but it wasn't, like, the celebratory piece

John:

that they'd pitched it to. The main thing is that there's still a lot of people out there that put, like, PR firms on retainer, but the PR people aren't sharp enough to actually execute that. If you look at the way, Tim Cook is shot at Apple, it is so detailed. And clearly it's like, he's always wearing an Apple watch. He's always wearing Nikes.

John:

Like he everything is thought out perfectly. The angle, the, the, the set design of his office is perfect. And if you have someone good on your team, you don't necessarily need to know how to do that as a founder, but you should have someone on your team that's that's overlooking that and and making that happen.

Jordi:

Yeah.

John:

Let's go to, Arvind Srinivas over at Perplexity. He says, your post about you post about Robinhood. I post about Ramp. We aren't the same. And this post got a lot of likes.

John:

He's he's, he's subtweeting Sam Altman who, was talking about the Robinhood gold card, which is a very cool product. But he's saying, you know, you're flexing with your gold, you know, card tied to your trading account. I'm using the Ramp card to optimize my business.

Jordi:

And this is just a crazy ad for Ramp. I mean, we've we've done some good, promote promoted posts of Ramp, but, it's hard to compete with a guy running one of the hottest, AI companies in the world to just post his personal ramp card and, brag about it.

John:

It's great. And I think once ramp launches the the meteorite card or the tungsten card

Jordi:

Yeah. Yeah. We're working with them to try to get some heavier, more exotic

John:

metals. The meteorite card is a good one. Yeah. That's gonna be that's gonna be big when they do that. But, Robin Hood will have to respond.

John:

It'll be the card wars.

Jordi:

Yeah.

John:

Much like the merch wars and going on defense technology.

Jordi:

And you're all in Palantir. Yeah.

John:

Yeah. Let's go to Delian. He says, thank God. Please end this nightmare. And it's an announcement that Donald Trump will use its best efforts to eliminate Daylight Saving Time.

Jordi:

Yeah. There's been

John:

a huge strong constituency, but shouldn't. There's been a

Jordi:

is inconvenient. Yeah. There's been a big movement here. Huberman had something. I think he's branding it.

Jordi:

He coined it. Yeah. He's got his law. He understands the value of coinage. I think he's stopped the the clock or something like that.

Jordi:

Yeah.

John:

Yeah. Sagarinjedi is big on this. He's been on this for years talking about how it's a it's it's a tax on early risers.

Jordi:

Oh, it's a tax on parents. Yeah. Sun goes down at 5. You're like, great. I've gotta entertain children for another 90 minutes.

John:

Can't just let them play outside anymore.

Jordi:

Yeah. It's it's it's I didn't really care about it until having kids. Yep. And mine go down around 7. Yep.

Jordi:

But but seriously, like, sun goes down and you're, like, okay, we have to keep them indoors

John:

Yeah. And, like,

Jordi:

try to get their energy out.

John:

Yeah. Yeah.

Jordi:

It just it's not not great.

John:

It would be exciting. It would just be the type of change where where it would feel, like, monumental for, like, a day, and you'd be like, wow. I didn't even know they could do that. That's crazy. Like, because they used to just, like, create these things.

John:

Like, at some point, it didn't exist, and then it did. Yeah. And they just did things, and then the thought of the government changing something like that or, like, moving us on a metric. Like, yeah, we could just do that. But Yeah.

John:

Like, it's gonna be a

Jordi:

big wall. Frankly, un American. Yeah. Unless we and then we base if we did a hostile takeover of the metric system and then kind of recreated the history of it and said, look. Like, we've actually been using this in many ways for much longer.

Jordi:

Yep. Native Americans actually use created the metric system.

John:

I love it. Let's go to Ryan Peterson. He's been on the show before. He says inside a Flexport 747, loading this thing to within 9 kilograms of max weight today. Nice job by our sales team.

John:

This is amazing. This is founder mode.

Jordi:

So that's I think I sent this into the into the into the stack because this is the, he's been on a founder mode tear recently.

John:

Totally.

Jordi:

And it's so cool because you you see this and anybody who is a customer is like, wow. The CEO is deep in the trenches of his company. Yep. Like, improving it daily, making sure it's running well. If you work for the company, you're like, Ryan's working harder than I am, like, that's unexcusable.

Jordi:

I should be like, you wanna be working at least as hard as your boss. Yep. And then if you don't work for Flexport and you're you wanna work somewhere Yep. Founder led, it's like, okay. This is a company that, that that, has the right culture coming straight from the top.

Jordi:

So

John:

A couple of years ago, I made a whole video on my YouTube channel about Flexport and kinda broke down his whole history, and it it was great. I I didn't even interview him for it. But I was always kinda wondering, like, oh, what would be a good follow-up? And when he got the 747, I was like, can we go do an interview on the 747? Like, that would be so sick.

Jordi:

Like And the interview and the the the bay tops in the back and he

John:

parachutes out. So cool. Right? And and we never could figure out the scheduling. It was always really hard.

John:

This makes so much more sense for him just to hop on. And, you know, I don't know if I wanna spend, like, 3 days in Hong Kong right now, but but, but we should definitely do a vlog with him on the 747. Yeah. Something like that. That'd be Yeah.

Jordi:

And CEOs, it costs $0 to go founder mode. You just have to find it within you.

John:

That is true.

Jordi:

Very capital efficient thing. You just gotta become just gotta embody the lifestyle. Yeah.

John:

It's interesting. The founder mode stuff is it's it's like you go back to Brian Armstrong. It's like this crazy bravery thing. This is not edgy or brave in that way. It's really just No.

John:

It's being authentic.

Jordi:

It's the best possible marketing for Flexport to to the entire market, capital markets

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

New hires, customers. And it doesn't require some expensive New York, you know, agency. Yep. Like, you don't have to spend 300,000 on a branding package like we did just to launch podcast. Yep.

Jordi:

Right? Yep. You literally just have to have a cell phone and just, like, talk about what you're doing and show that you're deeply

John:

Yeah. Engaged. And I'm sure there's been discussions on the Flexport marketing team of, like, should we do some sort of own content? Should we start a podcast about shipping? Yeah.

John:

And and we'll have someone, like, you know, non related to Ryan run it and it'll it's like, that's going nowhere. This is already viral. Yeah. And this took him, you know, a couple minutes to go and do. And he was already gonna go anyway.

John:

So why not? If we're right, we gotta promote post.

Jordi:

Speaking of founder mode, we got a promoted post from a friend of ours, a friend of mine, and friend of the show, Nate Bosshard. Nate says brand marketing within traditional orgs has been siloed, gatekept, and opaque. 40% of an average marketing budget is allocated to brand, yet no one really understands what it truly is. It's a services heavy practice without software to scale it. Brand AI finally solves this.

Jordi:

So Nate has has, incubated or helped start a company called Brand dotai. And what they're doing is, like, building this entire suite of tools. I know that the guy who did the the Aurora brand uses Brand AI, and Nate, generated an analysis of Technology Brothers.

John:

So cool.

Jordi:

And so they built software that that helps you understand your brand from what you're already putting out there.

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

And so Nate ran TB through brand AI, and it gave us ideas about what our brand actually is.

John:

Yeah. It was really good at, like, distilling what we've been talking about.

Jordi:

So just, like It was really good. Psychoanalyzed us Yeah. And the podcast, like, perfectly. Yeah. We didn't even have to be involved.

Jordi:

And so we're we're getting onboarded right now. And, anyways,

John:

check that out. Beautiful because, like, if you put your company through there and it gives you, like, kind of milk toast analysis, you can't write it off as just like, oh, it got it wrong. It's almost like, no. You haven't created enough exact you haven't you haven't been living the brand. You haven't created a brand.

John:

You're you're not opinionated. You should almost, you know, pull in, like, okay. Your CEO wanna invest like the best. Let's pull that into the brand AI thing as well and then understand, you know, what that is. And then once you once you dial it down, like, that's kinda your brand book.

John:

Have everyone run with that. And, and to the founder mode mode point, it's like the Flexport brand needs to be, you know, the guy who goes on the 747. The guy who goes to the, to the dock. Yep. And so what does that mean in in their all their marketing language, all their sales collateral, like, anything that they do needs to reflect this because this is the brand now.

John:

And, and it's not whatever is in some pitch deck.

Jordi:

Yep.

John:

Let's go to Ben Hylac. He's been on the show before. He says smartphones as we know them will be around the next 20 years at least. In the future, people will be using them more not less. Interesting.

John:

I I do I do think that there's something about, like, we've gone smaller with the watches, the Apple Watch. That hasn't really taken off and we've gone bigger with the Ipads and that's still not what people carry. There's something about the the pocket that is just the the platonic ideal. And even Apple, Steve Jobs didn't wanna go bigger than, like, 4 inches. Now we're up to, like, 5, like, small changes, but it does seem pretty dialed.

John:

And it also feels like as they get more powerful, it's gonna be something that drives other experiences. Like, you can clearly tell that, like, the Apple Vision Pro has this power brick. Your phone has a battery that's basically the same size. You should really just be plugging a headset into here if you're using that. Like, the phone can kind of always be around a power as, like, the central core of your personal computer.

John:

Ben Thompson, Stratechery, always says, like, we messed up the terminology. The phone should be called the personal computer It's actually the personal computer, whereas the the the laptop is like a workstation. Yeah. But what do you like about this post?

Jordi:

I people have developed such negative relationships with their phones and negative feelings towards their phone. Yep. And like, oh, what's your screen time? Oh, my screen time is so high. Yep.

Jordi:

I always joke around about this. I'm like, I actually spend, like, 90% of the time on my phone working either messaging

John:

That's great.

Jordi:

People that I'm working with, workshopping memes, sourcing posts from the timeline, whatever, talking to founders. And so I'm actually like I was actually pleasantly surprised to see my screen time go up. Yep. Last, when I got the notification yesterday, I was like, good. I've been working harder.

Jordi:

Yep. But I think people have have developed this thing where, yeah, you're if you're doing if you're doom scrolling on your phone, if you're just like doing the anti meditation where you're just injecting new ideas in your brain just like constantly, which is like what an algo feed does, That's bad. But the way that you use it matters a lot. And I don't think that more screen time is always worse for you. Just like what screen time

John:

even within the apps, like you can be scrolling x and getting all slop, but if you do click the mute, mute, mute on those, like, you can get a Who are we with?

Jordi:

We were with somebody Saturday night and they pulled up LinkedIn and it was, like, time gated.

John:

And we were like,

Jordi:

what are you doing? What are you doing? But it was funny because this founder is, like, a very hard worker. Yeah. And he was like like, in it in it in it the it was like the app notification.

Jordi:

It was like, you have used all your LinkedIn time today. And I was

John:

like, I'm so glad. He doesn't do that, he wouldn't be able to turn off and, like, enjoy the party, basically.

Jordi:

Yeah.

John:

He'd be on it. Yeah. Because he's grinding. It's great, though. Classic, like, stated preference versus revealed preference.

John:

I I wanna use my phone less. What do people do?

Jordi:

Yeah.

John:

Scroll the algo feeds. Watch our content. Shiel says, a few folks have asked me why is 3 x why is the 3 x multiple good for a lender like Bridget? Here's an answer. Question for you.

John:

So Wealthfront trades at 10 x ARR and Bridget at 3 to 4 x, is that just due to net dollar retention being much shorter at Bridget? Here's one way to think about quality of revenue. If Bridget lays everyone off tomorrow, people run off with the money and without customer acquisition, there's no ongoing revenue. If Wealthfront lays off everyone tomorrow, the majority of people won't notice and Wealthfront continues to make money off those customers for many years to come. So Wealthfront's revenue is worth a lot more in enterprise value than Bridget's.

John:

Pretty self explanatory.

Jordi:

Honestly, great analysis. Yeah. I don't really have that much.

John:

I don't know that much about Bridget, and I don't know why if

Jordi:

they Bridget was blocked. Bridget, to my understanding, was it was effectively a a fintech as a pay payday lender. Right? So they give you these, like, short term short term loans. So there's, like, a ton of a ton of demand for it.

Jordi:

Sure. Not the highest quality customers to have. Not a lot of recurring revenue. Yeah. But either way, it was like good.

Jordi:

It's just exits are good. Yep. Like, we they're they're necessary. And it wasn't the outcome that everybody I think it was quite Down for us. What their last valuation was, but ultimately, like, they created a half a $1,000,000,000 company.

Jordi:

That's right. Like, congratulations to

John:

the

Jordi:

team and hope everybody made, some money. Boom. That's great. Little little little size gong moment and great analysis by Shiel.

John:

Let's go to Gary Tan. He says, vision for 2040, every person should have a robot, universal basic robot. And Elon Musk chimes in and says, they will.

Jordi:

They will.

John:

That's exciting. 2040 not too

Jordi:

far away. So so I think it's under discussed. So so there's a lot of humanoid robot hate right now.

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

And a lot of people are saying, like, oh, it's like the iPad form factor. Like, it's not really gonna be sure. Like, what you think is going to be the thing is not really going to be a thing. But Elon's been pretty intentional guy. Like, I think he had like the fact that he's doing it says a lot.

Jordi:

So it is interesting to see. I you know, we've talked about we've had a request for robots that goes and uses computer vision to analyze a tree, figure out which leaves are gonna fall, and just quietly picks them out before they hit the ground.

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

So we're looking forward to robots like that. But hope I I expect, like, everybody will have a drone. Right? That, like, goes and picks up, like, oh, I want this drink from the grocery store. Like, go grab it for me.

Jordi:

Right? Yeah. Everybody has, like, their little leaf picker. Everybody has, like, a humanoid robot around the house or maybe it's not that form factor. Yeah.

John:

It's kind of like how, you know, the first CPU in your house or chip in your house is probably like your personal computer. Very expensive. Use it a lot. And then over the last 20, 30 years, like, the chips have just gone into everything such that you're like, your toaster has 1. And it can be very annoying when it's implemented by a non tech company poorly.

John:

Yeah. But in general, like, having tech in things is probably good and inevitable. And the same thing will probably happen with robots right now. Everyone does have a personal robot in the sense that, like, most people have Roomba or something like that. But then there's a question of, like, is the leaf picker next?

John:

Is the, you know, is the car after that? And then what else can be become robot? You know, you get the laundry one, you get the dishwashing one, and eventually, you know, everyone winds up happy or, like, the average person has 1 Yeah. On average. Right?

John:

Yeah. I'm excited. I'm excited for the age of personal robots. I don't think they're gonna rise up. And if they do

Jordi:

Watch out.

John:

I'll be shooting them with an AK 47.

Jordi:

Let's go

John:

to Kip Mach. He says, we really have to bring family crests back. I love this. You should be paying a firm half a $1,000,000 to design the crest that your sons will wear on fat gold rings for the coming millennia. I do love that.

John:

I have some friends that have the crest rings that they passed down. The best day to start a family tradition is today. Go and design this. I don't think you need to spend a half $1,000,000 if you don't have it. Obviously, if you do, if you're any sort of venture capitalist, that's kind of the bare minimum that you should be spending.

John:

But for the folks in the audience who are maybe a little bit scrappier, a little bit more bootstrapped, just, just get in Figma and

Jordi:

start designing. Calligrapher to make something.

John:

Exactly.

Jordi:

Yeah. You already have them on staff.

John:

Yes.

Jordi:

Put them to use.

John:

Yes. Exactly. But definitely get it in a gold ring and and pass that down. Start wearing it today. Gift it to your the oldest patriarch in your family.

John:

Give it to your dad. Give it to your grandpa if he's still alive. And then when they pass away, they'll pass it down to you. Yep. And then you can say to your son, this was your grandfather's.

Jordi:

Yeah.

John:

It doesn't matter that you got it to him when his when your grandfather was 85. Yeah. It will still be technically his and passed down. Yeah. And you should do the same thing with Patek Philippe.

John:

You should go and buy 1 and gift it to the oldest, you know, patriarch in the family. Yeah. And then it will pass down fairly quickly. It's the start. Hopefully not, but hopefully it'll live forever.

John:

But, you know, you you will will expect to have this at some point. But then it will be a 4th generation or a 3rd generation Patek or ring almost immediately, which is great. So get creative.

Jordi:

It was funny because I commented on that, and I was like, this is Technology Brothers bait. Yes. And it works clearly. But he then he said no. Is the Technology Brothers inspired?

Jordi:

So I just the positive thing right now is we have this virtuous cycle of brothers in the community both, you know, both men and women. Yeah. You know, you know, taking stuff from the show, creating new things. Yeah. We then recycle it back.

Jordi:

Now we're promoting family crests. And so, yeah, this is it's a very it's a great cycle that we have going here.

John:

Yep. It's great. Oh, this is should we do this one? Quantian? Quantian says this was the exchange that Beth said was one of the worst days of his life, LMAO.

John:

And it's a big long fight between growing Daniel and based Beth Jesus. Daniel says, so is Beth's company gonna ship anytime soon? Beth says hardware takes time, not building a g t GPT wrapper like many out there, wink. And then Daniel says, it's a crypto mining thing. Right?

John:

That's exciting. And then Bev says, it's not. And then Daniel says, oh, okay. Blockchain something, though? And then Bev says, no.

John:

There's literally no crypto. It's just hardware for AI. And then Daniel says, oh, right. Everything is AI now. That's gonna be big.

John:

Just like, dude, you you're you're so online, Bev. Like, how did you get trolled like this? Like, come on. But, beta.

Jordi:

Beta guy.

John:

But, I mean, just masterful poster by

Jordi:

2 posters. Collide.

John:

This is a war. This is a war.

Jordi:

Daniel verse

John:

But you gotta you gotta just post through it. The the the main thing to beff is just don't hold a grudge. Like, you know, he he won this round, you know, you gotta get him back and,

Jordi:

the best way to mock somebody is by building a a a massive, of, you can't really Mog Daniel Yeah. By having a big audience on x. Yeah. Yeah. He's one of the greatest posters of a generation.

Jordi:

Yep. But you can you can Mog by by making, X Tropic.

John:

Yeah. A great company. Yeah.

Jordi:

Yeah. X Tropic, you know, an Nvidia, you know, close competitor even.

John:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it is I'm pretty sure Beth announced X Tropic, like, a couple weeks before this post. And and so Daniel is just, like, jumping. Oh, really?

John:

It's a hardware company. Like like so he's like, is it is it easy gonna ship anytime soon? It's like even, like, you know, like, hardware companies that people are not skeptical of.

Jordi:

Yeah. It takes

John:

them a long time to ship things. Like like, you know, like, the the companies that have gone on to become massively successful in hardware, like Yeah. Andurall took a long time to ship because that's just the nature of these things. Like and so Daniel's, like, really ribbing him, like, hey. Hey.

John:

Have you shipped that brand new chip immediately? It's like, okay. Probably not, but, don't let them get to you, Beth. You gotta just move on. But, oh, well, one of the greatest interactions, very funny on both sides.

John:

And honestly, you know, nice guys.

Jordi:

Like, there needs to be there needs to be something. So that was a screenshot, I guess. Yeah. Maybe I

John:

think it got deleted. Yeah.

Jordi:

But there needs to be a a museum called the Screenshot Museum. And it's just a museum that you get to walk around and see the great moments of history that happened online that were screenshotted and then deleted. And, I'd pay to go to that. So make it in San Francisco or New York. I think you'll have an audience.

John:

Yeah. We we need a new segment for, like, wars, like and and we need Conflict. Like, timeline wars.

Jordi:

Timeline and turmoil.

John:

Yeah. Timeline and turmoil because there's been a number of these where it's been like, okay. We're breaking down J. Cal and Palmer, and we're going back on, like, 6 different posts. Yeah.

John:

There's the Robert Scoble thing. And it doesn't really it's not it doesn't really work to just react to one post. You need to really understand the full context. So, let's build out a segment for that. And this is related to our next post from creatine cycle, Atlas.

John:

He's quoting simp for satoshi. Simp for satoshi, I am ginger trash says, this is becoming a universal slop indicator. Seeing this on your website plus contact us for pricing means you know you're about to talk to 2 of the most obnoxious 23 year old Stanford grads ever, and it's a screenshot of backed by Y Combinator. Simfur Satoshi among other people have been talking a lot of trash about YC lately. Very negative.

John:

We don't like that. Let's have some positivity. Let's keep keep all this negativity towards the real the real, villains of our industry, the tech journalists, please.

Jordi:

And the communists.

John:

And the communists. YC is clearly on our side.

Jordi:

China would kill to have Y Combinator.

John:

They would. They would They

Jordi:

would literally kill us and take they would

John:

leave What if they could?

Jordi:

It would decimate everything and then just take YC.

John:

Yes. And who knows? Maybe they're funding all the tech journalists to write hit pieces and take us down. That's possible. That that that would be a great sign up for them.

John:

But at least have

Jordi:

to break they won't be able to break that scoop for themselves. But if we can get scoop that shows. Yeah. The information.

John:

People are worried about foreign money on cap tables through like 7 layers of roll up vehicle and SPV. Maybe the real thing you should be worried about is foreign money in the tech journalists. Yeah.

Jordi:

Yeah. Yeah.

John:

That's the real risk.

Jordi:

We'll be breaking that news.

John:

It happened in politics. There was a bunch of Russian money going out to to YouTubers. It was very dramatic. But Atlas says, this dude is carrying on like that weird guy at the club who approaches women, asks for their number, gets politely declined, and then calls them ugly to their face. Interesting.

John:

A little on on on on on on warfare.

Jordi:

Timeline and turmoil.

John:

Timeline and turmoil.

Jordi:

No. So so I'm I'm torn here. Yep. I think YC is great even though I was rejected by it. Okay.

Jordi:

I think Satoshi is a great thinker and has good ideas. Yep. Atlas is is right, though. I think some for Satoshi was, like, rejected from YC and told him his idea wasn't going to work. And then they, like, put out some request for startups or one of the YC partners was, like, kind of and so he has a personal vendetta against YC and he has an audience.

Jordi:

So he can he can he's, you know,

John:

he wants to be that. That want to commiserate over not being a part of YC and want it not to be that cool. So they're kind of rooting against it. So it's good bait, but it's just it's just kinda boring and played out, you know. Just go build, you know.

John:

Just just, you know, there are plenty of companies that are great that didn't go through

Jordi:

YC has yet to put a gun to someone's head and tell them join YC.

John:

Yeah. Or or stop building because we're not funding you.

Jordi:

Yeah.

John:

They never say that.

Jordi:

There's, like Yeah. They reinvite companies back all the time that get rejected. I know a guy

John:

I know a guy who applied 8 times in a row and got in, and now his company is worth, like, $500,000,000.

Jordi:

Let's go.

John:

Like, insane. Yeah. And this guy was, like, 4 point o Harvard, like super, like, like, super high status at every single moment, and it still took him 8 times to get in. And I was running an AI company and they're ripping. It's it's it's amazing.

Jordi:

It's great.

John:

Steve Jurvetson says, first time in the show, but, you know, very famous Metro capitalist. We love him. He says, the Starlink manufacturing line is the closest thing to a fully automated alien dreadnought that I have ever seen. It makes 4,700,000 terminals per year and growing. One subsection is the largest printed

Jordi:

circuit board factory in America.

John:

This is printed circuit board factory in America. This is great because we were talking to, we were talking about, Aaron Slodov saying, I don't know if there's a single company in America that builds defense technology that could produce 1,000,000 of anything in a given year if asked to. Well, guess what?

Jordi:

Starlink is 10,000.

John:

Oh, 10,000? I think he said a 1,000,000. Oh, anyway, he said a big number and Starlink's clearly beyond that, and Starlink is critical to national security very clearly. We've seen it have an impact in all sorts of different, you know, war fronts, and Elon's pulling it off. Obviously, we need this in drones.

John:

We need this

Jordi:

in DJI.

John:

We need this in robots. We need this in cars. All sorts of things. But it was it's great to see that high volume manufacturing is

Jordi:

working in there. Think about how many engineers are working in that facility that can then go work at other companies and and run that same playbook back.

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

We're doing this in many ways with the Terrence. We, the the 2 the 2 engineering leads on the team were at Tesla and Rivian doing, like, scaled battery cell manufacturing, And now they're working in a totally different sec sector but running back the same manufacturing playbook that they learned at Tesla and Rivian.

John:

Been this question about, oh, how do we bring back manufacturing? Do we just need to, like, retrain a ton of, you know, CNC operators or, you know, like, be very custom and very manual. But clearly, you know, this went from 0 to 60 very fast, and it's an entirely new system. It's probably built completely differently. And I wouldn't be surprised if, you know, you look in, like, 30 years and there's, like, oh, there's something in there, some process that's maybe protected IP.

John:

Maybe Elon's not talking about it. Maybe we just don't really understand it or have a word for it, but there's probably something in there that's like the the Henry Ford, What was it called? Like, the line? The the the assembly line. Like, the assembly line is just something that is, like, so standard now, but it was created at some point.

John:

And there's probably something in here that's that's a new way of thinking about how to mass manufacture that will eventually be canonized and used everywhere and copy paste it. And that that will be, like, the future of manufacturing, and it will all be new. And that's why we need new companies to build things that even seem like, oh, well, yeah. There are primers. Right?

John:

Why do we need deterrents? Well, it's because, like, there's probably a when you start fresh greenfield, you can build much faster in a completely different way. That's less more maybe more capital intensive, maybe less maybe less, bound by a human capital instead. Yeah. Okay.

John:

Let's go to Neil Khosla. This is a good one. He says, son of Vinod Khosla, he's a VC himself. He says, reminder that as you see these v VC transitions, that most of the time, it's someone getting pushed out or succession problem is murder. Taking it back to the, I don't know, like, 1600, probably, Machiavelli, like that that

Jordi:

Yeah. Well, so so we we posted something a lot. I I I I don't wanna guess and say say this was a response to something that we posted. But, yeah, oftentimes when a GP leaves a fund, it's very happy on the surface and everybody's like, congrats. We're really excited for you.

Jordi:

Like, can't wait to see what you do next. But then behind the scenes, like, they were forced out or, like, they hit they there was a lot of hatred between the part part partners or some of these, like, the founders of the firm were just, like, you're never gonna, like, truly see your potential here. You should leave. So there's always a lot going on behind the scenes and

John:

it literally gets on the surface. What do they do next? Like, if they're retiring, well, that makes sense. Yeah. If they're Logan, I would see him in

Jordi:

with Logan Logan. And he was like, my favorite line is I'm going to return to my operator roots.

John:

Yeah. That's great. Did we say that on the last thing?

Jordi:

No. We didn't.

John:

We didn't. Oh, but he always

Jordi:

says that's a common line if you're leaving a fruit, which is another way of saying my returns were terrible, and I'm no longer giving the best.

John:

GP at a major fund is just like the best gig ever. It's so hard to turn that down under any circumstances. Yeah. You you don't just leave that. But we'll leave it to you to read between the lines on this show.

John:

We'll spell it out as much as we can without getting murdered. Matt Marlinsky, good friend of the show, works with Mike Solana over at Piratewires. He is screenshotting a great interaction between Mike Solana and the All In podcast. He says, the so called number one podcast can't think of an original idea. And and All In launched 8 weeks of All In Idol.

John:

And Mike says, Jason, this is shameless even by your standards. And shares a screenshot of Pirate Idol, which Solana has been running for, like, 2 months. And so it's a it's a format. You know, we like to have a lot of different formats here. We got some personnel news.

John:

We got the size gong. If you see a gong on all in, call us immediately because we're going over to Jason Calacanis' house.

Jordi:

And we're gonna have to have a sit down conversation.

John:

Have a sit down conversation.

Jordi:

And it'll probably be, like, the average board meeting at Lucy. A lot of Yep. You know, basically an all out brawl.

John:

I'm wearing a vest.

Jordi:

Yeah. Bulletproof vest.

John:

Which one. It's not gonna be Patagonia vest.

Jordi:

But the yeah. This is this

John:

is ridiculous. I mean, you know, obviously, the pirate idol is a riff on American Idol, but just to, like, decide a new a new cohost. Like, it's very, very similar to what Pirate Wires is doing. And he could have switched it up and just used a different word because there are so many he could have said, we're doing The Voice, you know, or, like, we're doing anything else. We're doing

Jordi:

Survival chairs.

John:

Yeah. Yeah. Or or just just take it from a different we're doing The Bachelor. We're doing the we're doing, you know, any sort of, like, who wants to be a millionaire and, you know, and and just adapt it, but don't just literally take the exact same concept. Ugh.

John:

Rough. Anyway, Jason, you have a writer's room. Get him to do some more workshopping before you rip Solana again. It's, not happy to see it.

Jordi:

John, I gotta stop you right there. We have a promoted post, from my friend, ill science. Ill science is actually a GP over at Andreessen. He's on the, consumer, AI front. But today I'm calling him ill science because he's also a, recording artist and DJ and put out a song.

Jordi:

He says, very excited to share my new record and first collaboration with the Maestro and Molten Music label boss, Homero Espinosa, streaming on Spotify and everywhere else. You get your music. I downloaded the track. It's fantastic. Makes me wish that it was summer already.

Jordi:

That's great. And, anyways, go check it out. I love when, I love when people are excellent at one thing and then they pursue excellence in another thing. And, like, you know, we we've talked about this before, but for, ill science, a a break from investing to do music, even though making music is hard and making music is hard and intense. It's still a break.

Jordi:

So We

John:

got it. We we have to make a playlist. Yeah. Because you know who else has released, tracks? Elon Musk.

John:

Didn't know that. He released a track called RIP Harambe

Jordi:

Oh my god.

John:

With someone else. Zuck released a cover of from the window to the wall get low. Remember this? This happened a

Jordi:

couple weeks ago? Yeah.

John:

Brian Armstrong, I believe, released an entire EDM album during the NFT craze, And you could, like, get the rights to it on an NFT. It was just like a promotional thing, but he he, like, loves music. I'm pretty sure it was him. And then Justin Khan, after he sold Twitch, him and his brother, who his brother went on to cofound Cruise, produced an entire DJ set called, they were the con bros. And That's great.

John:

He was an incredible DJ set. He was on SoundCloud for a while. And when I got to YC, they he had already, like, sold this company. So he was like, god in YC world.

Jordi:

He's one

John:

of the first ones to really get serious liquidity. And they put out this, DJ set, and we would just listen to it all the time when we were grinding, coding. So it would just be Conbros. Ben? Conbros.

Jordi:

We need an official Technology Brothers playlist. Yes. I need to build

John:

yeah. Throw that on there. And there's gotta be more. I just listed off, like, 4 off the top of my head. I'm sure there's, like, 10 others Yeah.

John:

Folks who are who are in tech and DJs because it's very adjacent. I I one of my first businesses was buying and selling DJ equipment. I'd buy it in states and then sell it internationally because we couldn't You're an intern International businessman at age 10 or something. But it's very, like, nerdy. I actually produced an entire EDM album in Fruity Loops, which is like the software that you could kinda, like, piece things together.

John:

I sold one copy to a friend. I found the copy recently. It's terrible, but, you know, it was impressive for, you know, I think I was in middle school. And, and something about EDM, it's very, it's very technical. Like dead mouse is like a programmer too, and there's a lot of overlap there.

John:

So I think there's a lot of a lot of music people intact that, you know, need to just be surfaced.

Jordi:

And I

John:

think they'll play We

Jordi:

need a new music festival intact that's not Burning Man. Yeah. Like, we need a we need we we should maybe, you

John:

know Yeah.

Jordi:

I don't I don't go to live music events much. Yeah.

John:

And Justin Kon put a put a song of him. I think it was actually at burning man on his YouTube channel. Let me see if I can find this. And it was a banger song. It was him.

John:

He's just been putting up, like, live sets recently. It's so sick. He had he did, like, some interviews. He did some other, some other stuff. Where was this?

John:

Playing our 1st EDC or so at EDC. Introducing Orso, which is, I guess, is, like, his new his new band or something. But he put together this whole, like, vibe reel. And I this this song, like, really went hard. Isn't this good?

John:

I listened to this a lot. This was in my playlist for a while. Justin Kon, this guy is fucking sick. It's so good.

Jordi:

PMFs to this song.

John:

At EDF at EDC. How how is that?

Jordi:

That's awesome.

John:

You know you know all the words. I've listened to this so many times. It's really good. And it's just, like, he's playing, like, a massive stage. Like, he had goals.

John:

Like, I I love that.

Jordi:

You got it. If you're if you're super liquid in in tech, do some side quests.

John:

It's just you can just do things. Like, go win the boxing match or whatever. Go climb that. Like, get hit those 14ers. You know?

John:

Do a Do

Jordi:

the gumball 3000.

John:

Do the gumball 3000. Do a parry to car, you know. Get in the car, drive 3000 miles, do a cannonball, go to the moon, go to space.

Jordi:

You can just do things.

John:

You can just do things. There's no excuse. Don't just be sitting around your mansion, scrolling or whatever. Let's move on to Jason Way. He says, y'all heard it from the man himself and it's Ilya Sutzkever talking about how pre training as we know it will end.

John:

Compute is growing, better hardware, better algorithms, larger clusters, but data is not growing. We have but one Internet. It is the fossil fuel of AI. Lots of people talking about the data wall. Lots of people talking about how scaling will

Jordi:

scale AI is just somewhere So excited. Somewhere.

John:

Yeah. I think the stock is, like, wild too. It's wild.

Jordi:

Well, it's not public, but you mean No.

John:

No. I I I think, like, secondary demand in the south is, like, doing really well. And and and it's it's such a midwitt take to be like, oh, did you know that Scale AI uses third party contractors? It's like, yeah. That's the whole point of the business.

John:

Like, have you heard of, comparative advantage? Like, this is, like, econ 101, people. Like, you're not, like, blowing the doors off this thing by talking to it's so it's so embarrassing when I see this take. I'm just, like, yes. Like, obviously, like, you need to write a bunch of answers and generate a bunch

Jordi:

of data. Know that Uber doesn't own cars?

John:

Yeah. Or

Jordi:

hire drivers on w twos?

John:

Saying this. It's not a bear case for the company. Yeah. But, yeah, it's interesting. I I was wondering, like, okay.

John:

So what what what could drive the next era of exponential data growth? Because it has to come from humans. And I was kind of thinking about what that could be. And I think, something along the lines of, like, a friend AI thing that you're wearing and it's recording 24 hours a day, 7,000,000,000 people, I think that actually might generate

Jordi:

Yeah.

John:

1 or 2 more orders of magnitude of data.

Jordi:

Yeah.

John:

And maybe that's useful data. I think some of it would be very useful, but it requires a lot of trust because, you know, it needs to be anonymized and created.

Jordi:

But that could be like a UBI type thing. Like, if you wear the pendant, you get, like, $5 a day

John:

or whatever. The world coin pendant or something like because

Jordi:

you have to predict the Who's the super base guy at xai? Oh, yeah. Greg. Greg. I think.

Jordi:

Yeah. He was just like, it's not that hard to get more data. You just, like, take pictures. That was basically or, like, put up cameras everywhere.

John:

Cameras, video feeds. I mean, I I was talking to Matt Friedman about this and he was like, oh, people are worried about, like, you know, will the AI be able to access the New York Times or something? And he was like, based on the data budgets of these AI companies, they could just buy all of the New York Times and and and just or they could just pay, you know, way more journalists. They could hire every single journalist double their salaries, and they wouldn't even be scratching the surface of their data.

Jordi:

They could give every journalist a $1,000,000,000 Yeah. And still have $200,000,000,000 left there. Basically. Yeah. UBI for journalists.

John:

That so much heartache could have been avoided with the, New York Times lawsuits if the if OpenAI just sent over some dressage horses for

Jordi:

the work. Avoided a death potentially. Oh my god.

John:

Rough. Rough. Rough. Rough. Andrew Huberman is saying lock the clock.

John:

We just lost this. We love it. I like that he's coining a phrase, 4 k likes. People know it. You gotta have Clock the clock.

John:

Yeah.

Jordi:

I said stop the

John:

I I saw the Yeah. Lock the clock. Clock the

Jordi:

clock is good. Better.

John:

And he cites, Stanford Med. Laura Weed says, s time is 1, is the one to lock in. Standard time year round gives people greater opportunity to get morning sunlight necessary to shorten the period of their central circadian clock from 24.2 hours to 24 hours to maintain synchrony with the, I presume, the sun. Because it says show more here, but he breaks it down. Yeah.

John:

This is great. I really hope this does happen. It'd be so cool. I I mean, like, I'd probably enjoy it, like, practically, but I think I would more I would much more enjoy just the fact that we did something and the fact that something has changed.

Jordi:

Made something.

John:

Even like the Pluto thing, like the Pluto demotion. It's like you you get to tell your kids, oh, yeah. Well, back when I was a kid, like, there were more planets, and then we'd learn more and decided that there's

Jordi:

less. Petition. You wanted to keep Pluto?

John:

No. No. No. Or you wanted to remove Pluto?

Jordi:

I was in favor. Of removing it.

John:

Demoted it.

Jordi:

Don't give them the franchise.

John:

Don't give them the franchise.

Jordi:

Like, we've talked about, you know Yeah. There's people that wanna take over Canada. Yeah. They don't wanna give them the state.

John:

Yeah. You know? Yeah. It's real regulatory capture for the rest of the planet. It's just reducing the oligopoly

Jordi:

on planet

John:

hood. It's good. It's power law. Yeah. This is the way.

John:

Next step is get the gassiest giants out of here. You're not landing on those. What are you doing? Get them out of there unless there's a rock.

Jordi:

Push them out too.

John:

3rd rock from the sun, not 3rd cloud from the sun. Yeah. Yeah. Shouldn't get it. Get some land mass.

Jordi:

Get Get some get some math. Neptune. Yeah. I

John:

think Neptune's a gas one. I actually don't remember. Okay. Word grammar. He's been on the show before.

John:

He says

Jordi:

Emerging poster emerging poster of the year, potentially.

John:

Yep. Yep. Yep. Potential rookie of the year. I think I have done a complete 1 80 on Y Combinator's business model in the past 24 hours.

John:

All of the economic gains from AI startups will be made by pre seed investors. Any good AI product will be extremely hard to build but easy to scale. Interesting. Distribution is the bottleneck and moat. Put a little asterisk here behind the Frontier Labs, but they are a special case and not representative of the average startup.

John:

The funniest thing is that, like, of course, the number one Frontier Lab, like, came literally out of Y Combinator. Yeah. But I I I like that.

Jordi:

I think this is

John:

a good AI products for that. I think

Jordi:

this is a is a Good. Generally good take is that there's I've we've seen this a lot with with, AI companies that raise pre product and then generate so much revenue Yep. And are making so much money so quickly with such a small team that by the time the next financing happens, the company's raising 20 on 200. Yep. And it's just really hard to make, like, truly great returns doing that.

Jordi:

Yep. And so because these companies oftentimes are not needing to do that intermediary, oh, we're gonna do 4 on 16 or something like that. They literally get the 1 y c round, maybe another 2 on 20, and then they're just making all this money. Yep. And so if you can buy a basket of those companies super early for pennies, it's like, yeah, but but I don't think, the critique of why see everybody everybody like the primary way that people try to critique it is by saying what's an important y c company that launched in the last like 3 years.

Jordi:

Yeah. And it's like but the critique is never been this is not a good business model.

John:

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Totally.

Jordi:

Some people try to critique it of like, oh, well, you're just having it's a Ponzi scheme because you're just trying to have this company buy from this company, and it's, like, that's just, like, fundamentally, like, true. Like, yeah. Of course, they sell each other early to get feedback. If you're enterprise, you should b to b, you should sell internally.

John:

Let's do one more promoted post. We'll close with this, and then we'll get out of here and hop on.

Jordi:

I can't think of a better, ending promoted post of the day than from our friends at DuPont registry. Fantastic. They have a 2024 Ferrari Purosangue presented in blue Corsa. This has an asking price of only $679,000. 908 yeah.

Jordi:

$679,000 and, I gotta say these have been floating into the 700 frequently. Yep. This is a fantastic spec. It is powered by a naturally aspirated v 12. Yep.

Jordi:

Delivers over 700 horsepower ensuring thrilling performance and a 0 to 60 time of around 3.3 seconds. Not as fast as my turbo, but pretty good to be able to fit a family in it. And, it's just a great looking car. I started seeing these around LA and and

John:

The thing about the Pure Sunway is it is an expensive car, but think about what you get. It's a performance car. It's a luxury car, and it's also potentially a family car, but it's something you can do business in. If you're a VC, you can take the whole founding team. It's not just you and the CEO.

John:

Throw the CTO in the back. Throw the chief operating officer in the back.

Jordi:

Go out Chief of staff even though.

John:

Go out to Nobu, get some sushi, Arashimase. Arashimase.

Jordi:

Don't say it though.

John:

Don't say it.

Jordi:

Say Arashimase.

John:

But, but, you know, bring the whole team. And, fundamentally, it is

Jordi:

a lot of money, but it's a lot of car.

John:

Yep. And so, you know, you get what you pay for in this life.

Jordi:

Yep.

John:

You gotta have money to make money. Yeah.

Jordi:

And if you're buying if you're buying Ferrari, if you've bought an s f 90 aftermarket and over the last couple of years, you lost Might have lost, like, 500 k, something like that.

John:

Make it all back in pure song.

Jordi:

Yeah. I don't know if you're gonna make it all back if you daily drive it, but you'll make it all back spiritually by by being in a in a truly great

John:

Well, you will show the Ferrari dealer. You'll show your dealer that you're committed to the brand. Yeah. You took the bath on the SF 90. You're maybe you're prepared to take another bath.

Jordi:

Yeah.

John:

But when the when the f 80 comes up, you're getting an allocation.

Jordi:

Made program.

John:

You're getting an allocation. And that's what it's about in this life.

Jordi:

That's where you'll make it back.

John:

It's great. Let's close with rat limit. Rat limit has a fantastic bait post.

Jordi:

Thank thank god for posters with great usernames. It's fantastic. It would make the show would be much less interesting.

John:

Yeah. This is Steve. Steve. Rat Limitz says that Polly impulse to hack relationships with tech. I printed QR codes on my g f's panties.

John:

Her playmates get instant access to an info sheet on my and our boundaries. A bit nerdy? Yep. But what won her over? I 100% trust you.

John:

I want to trust your sweeties too. And it's a picture of some underwear with a QR code on it. And, I mean, I I this is one of those things that I'm like, I'm 90% sure this is a bait post, but it's, like, so real that it could be

Jordi:

Wait. Yeah. So I don't I'm fortunate that whatever side of tech x that we're on, this stuff doesn't pop up for me except if somebody's dunking. Yeah. Yeah.

Jordi:

This was a dunk. Like, this was a screenshot. I think it's probably deleted.

John:

But I think it was I I think it was designed to bait. And I think if you look at the rest of the post and and some of the replies were, like, crying laughing, like, okay. People will get it. Obviously, you know, polyamory is very popular in the Bay Area. This is kind of a play on that.

John:

But why I wanna, highlight this is is is not for the cultural war debate over poly, but, instead, the the beauty of the virality here that there's a picture of an item with a QR code on it. And when you scan the QR code, you actually get taken to this info sheet, this website that this person built that has more content about this post. And again, I think it's very funny. I don't know if it's real, but, but it's it creates this cycle where you have to scan the image, but the image is on your phone. So it's kinda tricky.

John:

You need, like, a second phone or something to scan the QR code, but then you're taken to this website. And I think that there's something here from a format perspective that could be very viral marketing for a company. And so it like, if we did a drop and we were like, we're dropping these coffee mugs, and the coffee mugs have our logo on one side and a QR code on the other side. But then when you scan the QR code, they take you to some video or some website that we design. It becomes this, like, online to offline to online experience.

Jordi:

Yep.

John:

And then people are going down this rabbit hole, and then they will screenshot where the QR code takes you

Jordi:

and

John:

share that, and it becomes this, like, rabbit hole for these people. And I think that's a big part of why this went so viral was that it wasn't just there's a QR code, and I've blurred out the QR code.

Jordi:

No. Yeah.

John:

It's like the QR code's there. You can see. And if you went on there, there were all these other jokes and stuff baked in. It was very high effort, and I thought it was a very good marketing stunt, if it's a marketing stunt. Even if it's even if it's real and it's cringe, there's clearly a lesson in there for

Jordi:

I respect the innovation.

John:

I respect the innovation. Exactly.

Jordi:

Do your thing, rat limit.

John:

So let's wrap up there. I gotta hop on with the Vatican. So I will talk to you later. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas.