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The most profitable podcast in the world.
Welcome to Technology Brothers, the most profitable podcast in the world. Jordan and I just got back from Heretic Con in Miami. We wanna do an overview, a deep dive. When did you actually get into Miami?
Speaker 2:Got in Monday. Got back yesterday.
Speaker 1:Pretty sure.
Speaker 2:It was, apparently, the World Series happened. Yeah. There was a 100,000 people on the streets outside of the studio today. Yeah. And, not even they could stop us from
Speaker 1:recording today. Nothing can stop us.
Speaker 2:Too much to talk about.
Speaker 1:It was, like, a crazy time for stuff happening, and I was completely disconnected from it. Like, I didn't see any of the world series.
Speaker 2:I didn't know the world series.
Speaker 1:And did you see what happened in the stock market while we were there? Like, everything ripped. Bitcoin went above 70 ks. Yeah. Red and then as soon as the reticom was over, everything crashed.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Classic.
Speaker 2:Makes sense.
Speaker 1:It was, like, the vibes. We were just, like, summoning all the capital allocators together in Miami, partying. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Always in their terminals. People just get offline, like, good things happen.
Speaker 1:No one can sell. Yeah. All the biggest hitters were there, and they were all drinking and partying, so they couldn't sell. Yeah. So the market just ripped.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And then they got back and they were hungover and they're, like, actually, I need to hedge.
Speaker 2:Hedge. Hedge. Worse.
Speaker 1:Worse. What was your favorite, like, moment? Or did you come away, like, with any, like, interesting takes? The main thing for me was that at the first reticon that we there there was some alien stuff and I didn't really buy it. I'm buddies with Jesse Michaels who's, like, the the main aliens guy and he hosted a talk, with this guy Carl Nell, who I think is gonna be, like, really, really big soon, like, Joe Rogan soon.
Speaker 1:And, it materially updated my my, like, expected value of aliens being real.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Now, I probably went from, like, 3% to 10%, but it was good mostly just because the guy that Jesse brought, this guy Carl Nell, he speaks he's not like the strung out hippie burner guy being like, oh, yeah. I saw some stuff. And it's like, okay. You were probably on drugs and that happened. He's like straight up they test for in in the government, like, in his, like, in his, like, world, they test even for, like, Ibuprofen because it's, like, you have the button you have the you have your finger on the button, like, the nuclear button.
Speaker 1:So, like, they they need to know everything. So these people aren't on drugs. And then he puts things in terms that I think tech people and skeptics like me can understand and actually open things up. Because, like, the classic, like, tech person defensive, like, aliens aren't real. It's just like, well, we're listening.
Speaker 1:We have the SETI project and it's quiet. Like, there's no one's broadcasting. And we and we're broadcasting. Right? But his point is that actually the SETI program does not broadcast.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:We assume that we would broadcast because we broadcast television, like, I Love Lucy. I Love Lucy once we got to, like, the fifties, I think. We started broadcasting with these really high powered satellites or these dishes. They go out and they should be findable in deep space. And so you would assume that, you know, aliens really far away, they got I love Lucy, you know Yeah.
Speaker 1:A 1000000 years ago and we should be able to get this. But his point is that we have actually humans on Earth have stopped broadcasting because we switched to using fiber Technology Brothers. That's the
Speaker 2:perfect show to send up.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We we should broadcast it.
Speaker 2:We should do that.
Speaker 1:Even though everyone gets it over the Internet, which is fiber and Starlink and satellite Internet. And and Now
Speaker 2:I wanna send it into deep space. Yeah. That'd be so traumatizing. Yeah. We have We're, like, probably fans are listening.
Speaker 2:They're, like, what about the timeline? Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. So he's he was good at, like, bridging from, like, the dark forest and then providing a bunch of evidence. And so Jesse is, like, very convinced now. And I I think it's good.
Speaker 1:And he's also, like, super straight edge now. I'm Yeah. That makes me believe it more.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That I feel like we are we were trying to be cognizant of that with our talk of, like, dressing nicely. Yes. You know, our anybody that wasn't there, our talk was on, you know, the case for performance drug use in Silicon Valley. And so doing any type of talk about drugs, we wanted to make sure that we, like, looked Yes.
Speaker 2:You know, presentable.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And
Speaker 2:I think we did. Yeah. I think we were probably the best dressed people that day.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, the whole thesis was that we need to go back to the mad men era of the 19 fifties where there were an intense amount of nootropics consumed. Alcohol was drank at work. Caffeine was drank at work. They were smoking using nicotine constantly in the office.
Speaker 1:And now we've turned, like, all of technology has turned into, like, oh, like, you need, like, some stack. It's a nootropic. It's, like, no. It's just a drug and it's cool to use it at work.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You basically wanna short the companies where the founder is, like, even thinking about what their stack is versus the founder that's just, like, flow state ingesting. But, yeah, I guess 2 things that stood out, that were interesting. The talk that most stood out to me was, I mean, there was a lot. I wouldn't say it was the one that stood out the most, but it was the one that that I think would be interesting to listeners.
Speaker 2:So Brian Johnson gave his, like, don't die speech, and talk. I think the thing for me was realizing that he puts so much content out there about, like, his, you know, basically his, like, penis.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right? Because it it's, like, the perfect, like, lead
Speaker 1:gen viral
Speaker 2:thing. Yeah. But there is an extreme level of depth depth to death. Extreme level. No.
Speaker 2:Extreme level. Extreme level of depth to what he's talking about. And, I think it's a lot more interesting than just the surface lever level, like, billionaire spending money on
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:His health. One thing that I think think the audience reaction that was interesting, I think, like, 50% of people were, like, this is super cool. I'm gonna download the app. 50% of people were, this is a death cult. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like, of the 20, you know, of the of the 21st century. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like, this guy, every single person that's ever had a death cult was, like, this sort of, like, charismatic figure who's promising. We're on the precipice of something very significant, which in this case is AI. And you need to figure out how to learn live forever, and we're all gonna live for, forever together. And his example from the talk was that, he he said something to the tune of of, like, what I took away is, like, basically, he's creating an algorithm that tells you exactly what to do all day long. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And his big pitch to the audience was, like, would you use the algorithm? And some people were, like, well, what if I wanna, like, I'm hanging out with my friends and having fun and the algorithm says go to sleep. Yeah. He's, like, would you do that? And he was really just, like, sort of trying to find this Are
Speaker 1:you willing to do that? Yeah.
Speaker 2:Cultural ground. And then the other thing that was funny is wearing a make America great again hat was, like, the most noncontrarian thing you could do
Speaker 1:I was thinking where
Speaker 2:I I shouldn't give a blanket statement, but it felt like most of the the most normie people there were wearing the Make America Great Again hats and Delian was not. Yep. And Delian is the guy who, like, 3 years ago was getting haricially, like I
Speaker 1:was, like, it was, like, 6 years ago.
Speaker 2:6 years ago.
Speaker 1:He got canceled on Twitter. Horrifically canceled.
Speaker 2:Just as like
Speaker 1:There was probably He didn't even endorse Trump at the time. It was like it was like a performance art piece just to see what would happen in San Francisco. And there was a big backlash. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:In fact, the most the most heretical talk that I heard on politics was the case for Kamala Harris, which is very interesting. And it was pretty much a trollish way.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. The most the most
Speaker 1:But but there actually was in that talk, like, very serious criticism and very, like, like a deeper level of analysis around the flaws of Donald Trump. Yeah. And I'd seen elsewhere certainly in, like, the media which I think was cool.
Speaker 2:And yeah. The most triggered I saw anybody was maybe Max Myers after the diesel talk where this guy was basically saying
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And he was just like like like, basically rattled.
Speaker 3:You do
Speaker 1:have to respect Chatham House rules to some degree. But
Speaker 2:and, yeah. Another favorite moment, like, David Centro would show up and then, like, every 2 hours he'd be, like, alright. I gotta home, like, edit the podcast. Yeah. And I, like, never knew if he was just like, this is getting, like, too crazy or he actually just had to get home and edit the podcast.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I think he's just like, you know, hanging out with a small group of people. Yeah. And when you have, like, 500 people packed in a place, he's just like, what's
Speaker 2:the point? Yeah. Yeah. The real heretic on was on the 14th floor. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, that's how it always is. I mean, last last time I met Will, which is the reason I met you, was because of heretic on. And it was all just because we just sat at a dinner table together.
Speaker 2:Will is who injured us? Yeah. That's so funny.
Speaker 1:Will introduced us and I met him at Hereticon. And and he had he was telling me, like, oh, yeah. I quit smoking with Lucy. And and and afterwards, we were just, like, yeah. We were, like, got it wrong really, really well.
Speaker 1:And we're just had a really good time. Yeah. We got put in a couple, like, group chats together and stuff. And then it
Speaker 2:just kind
Speaker 1:of, like, continued from there. History. But yeah. There's always, like, that type of connection is, like, much more valuable. In general, I mean, all the talks, it's so odd because of the, like, the vibe shift.
Speaker 1:There's not that much stuff that it's like, oh, if this were to leak, like, it would be it would be career ending for them. Like, most people have kind of sorted into organizations. It's not like they're, like, middle manager at some, like, tech company that is actually gonna, like, have HR and compliance be, like, hey, you can't be out there. Most of the people that are attending are, like, either running their own company or aligned with venture capital firms that would support them or, like, they have a big following. And
Speaker 2:not the real the interesting thing was there wasn't that many people that had to put in, like, a PTO request to be there as I would say. Yeah. Yeah. There was a handful of people that had to put in a PTO request, and we're on, like, a vacation
Speaker 1:in Miami. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But
Speaker 2:then most of the people were just, like, that was work. Oh, I'm kinda like a 100%.
Speaker 1:That was
Speaker 2:the most productive days ever.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:And we were very much working A 100% work. The entire time. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But, yes, because of the vibe shift, like, there there aren't that many things that are, like, oh, this person, like, said some something that, like, if if it got out, it would be really bad. It's more just, like, there's somebody putting something out there and they're laying out a little bit more of a rigorous case for aliens or something like that. And it's it's on you as the viewer to just kind of say, like, okay, I'm I'm getting another, like, another ball is being thrown at me. Like, am I gonna swing at this one?
Speaker 1:Like, do I believe this a little bit more, a little bit less? And so the the ideas are, like, not controversial in, like, the you can't say them realm as much as controversial in the sense of, like, 50% of the audience is, like, I'm not really into this or whatever. Like, you made the case for, like, Brian's thing is, like, it's somewhat authoritarian. Like, there's a lot of libertarians. That is kind of a, like a debate point for people even if it's like he could talk about it publicly and it's fine.
Speaker 1:Because it's not that controversial to talk about. It's just like it's an idea that not everyone is down and that's why it was split 5050. And that's like the ideal scenarios you go into every talk and and people come away. Like, even at our talk, people there are multiple people who came up with with after us. And we're, like, no.
Speaker 1:Psychedelics are great. And and our basically, our pitch was, like, no. Psychedelics are terrible. Yeah. And, it's just it's just, like, I think that that's that's kind of like what heretical meant this time around as opposed to last time it was very much just the only place in the world that you could go at that moment and say whatever you wanted because Elon did on Twitter yet.
Speaker 1:And there was still, like, massive, like
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's interesting how I mean, if if it was the most unique event that I've ever been to.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And, like, truly yeah. An amazing product. Yeah. Thinking of it as, like, a product. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like, and it, you know, but, but it's it's one it's interesting, like, would it ever have existed if if Twitter wasn't where we all were having conversations but couldn't say things that we wanted to say.
Speaker 1:And and COVID. I mean, I know Mike was planning it before, before COVID hit. But once COVID got really bad, that really, like, amplified it and made it, like, it was the first conference that 90% of attendees had been to since the lockdown started. Yeah. And it because it was just, like, there was everything was canceled.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And here at
Speaker 1:a con still got pushed a few times the first time, but then Yeah. Eventually happened and it was, like, this big celebration of, like
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay. And and the vaccines has actually dropped. So it wasn't that dangerous for people who were down with that. And so Yeah. It was a little easier, but still companies weren't, like, all all of the big tech conferences were still
Speaker 2:virtual. Yeah. One of the things that was cool and maybe under discussed to date is that there was this really good combination of intellectuals and people that were focused on theory and people that are technologists, business leaders, investors that are much more pragmatic.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:And so I went to the talk on terraforming Mhmm. And ended up talking with the guy that hosted it afterward. And I was, like, cool. You know, his his his high level point was there's this point there's these depressions around Earth which are below sea level. So if you just get water to them, you can make these huge lakes or seas or whatever.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:And I went to him and I was, like, okay, cool. What's the next step? And he's, like, I don't know. Like, I just sort of, like, talk about this. Like, terraforming is, like, my things.
Speaker 2:I just talk about it. I'm not the guy to actually go and do it. Yep. So I very quickly, like, came up with a strategy for one of those depressions, which we can talk about off air.
Speaker 1:Okay. Cool.
Speaker 2:Which was basically, like, to buy up a ton of land around that specific area Sure. For nothing because it's worthless right now.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then go spend, like, 10 times more money lobbying to get water to that place. Sure. And there's, like, a really interesting arbitrage where, like, you could turn, like, a $100,000,000 into 1,000,000,000 of dollars. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Just through this, like, weird mechanic. So Yeah. We're gonna keep talking and, like, see if there's Cool. Cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. The water rights thing is fascinating. Goes back to, like, Chinatown, like, fascinating movie, like how L. A. Wound up with water rights.
Speaker 1:But, I remember, there's a politician who was saying, like, like we like all of Nevada, New Mexico and, Arizona could have, like, way, way more water if there is actually, like, a technological solution, which is nuclear powered desalination in California. Yep. So you you have the ocean, unlimited water. Yep. Nuclear, unlimited energy.
Speaker 1:You put those 2 together. Desalination is really energy intensive, so it doesn't make economic sense now. But if you can do that, then you can reroute the Colorado River back to, like, kind of where it should be, basically. And then and then all of a sudden, the the southwest becomes not, like, a desert anymore.
Speaker 3:It
Speaker 1:just becomes, like, lovely because there's just water everywhere.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And there's just, like, so many other little plans like that. Obviously, it took a long time. But, like, with the right combination of, like, technology lobbying, economic incentives and
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And, like, pandemic type
Speaker 2:of influencers. You you did come away from it feeling like the biggest place in the world right now from a business standpoint combine technology with lobbying.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Interesting.
Speaker 2:The because, like, the biggest opportunities in SaaS Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like, even AI is,
Speaker 3:like,
Speaker 2:lobbying driven right now. Yeah. Also, just the fact
Speaker 1:that, like, a lot of these are, like, like, there's at least one idea there and you kinda got a hunt for it that, like, will become consensus. Like, this is the whole idea of, like, contrarianism, which is kind of heretic con just, like, a different a synonym. Yeah. Is that, like, the attendees for this one will just be, like, the entrepreneurs for the next, like, 2 decades. And and everyone will be like, oh, like, why is that guy here?
Speaker 1:His thing is not contrarian anymore. It's like, well, yeah, but you're not gonna stop working on it. Like, last RedditCon, I gave a talk on nicotine is good for you. Right? And this and this year, like, I was like, I'm not just gonna run that back because, like, everyone knows about that.
Speaker 1:Like, that's, like, super normy at this point. And same with, like, the Anduril guys. Like, if they were just set up there, like, we should build a defense company. Like, it's, like, okay, dude. We get it.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But at the same time, you don't want the Anduril guys being, like, oh, I'm moving on to the next hot thing because I just care about doing contrarian stuff. It's like, it's okay that they've gotten that they that they they did the contrarian thing. They they they took the bet. They were correct.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But
Speaker 1:now, they have to go live that life for basically ever. Yeah. And that's good. And that's the way it should be. But it lends itself to this, like, give me a newer hot take.
Speaker 1:And it's like Yeah. Okay. Like, you can. I'm sure they have good ideas, but Yeah. It's not always gonna be as big as, like, the one thing that they Yeah.
Speaker 1:It comes to life work. Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. The contrarian thing from this event that will become mainstream is goo.
Speaker 1:Goo?
Speaker 2:The is goo. Is that right? It was Volta.
Speaker 1:Yeah. John Theo from the Fiorentini family.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Fiorentini family. Fiorentini family.
Speaker 1:They made their money in hospitality. Right? Yeah. Yeah. And he I mean, we talked about his his his, like, prolific hiking regimen.
Speaker 2:Yeah. 6 Yeah. Basically, a lot of people were starting to skip the coffee. They were. Espresso.
Speaker 1:Yeah. For the goo. A lot of people.
Speaker 2:And there would be people running around really wired 3, 4 AM Yeah. On off the goo. And you could just see this crazy look in there. He needs It was almost like it was almost like a divine spark Yes. In their eyes.
Speaker 1:Yes. Is is it the collagen, the colostrum, the caffeine?
Speaker 2:Yeah. We don't know what it is. This is a combination. Sacred combination. And he talks about something that is interesting is, like, there's no difference between invention or discovery.
Speaker 2:And so this it's this thing of, like, did he create goo or did he invent goo? Did he discover it? Are they all the same thing? Mhmm. But by next here at a con, well, I think we'll have figured that out.
Speaker 1:Interesting. I'm bummed that Packy couldn't make it. But did you see his tweet?
Speaker 2:Was he having a child? How on earth did he make it?
Speaker 1:I think so. Something like that. But he he said, I sadly didn't make it to Herediton, so here's my talk. We should flip these lines. And it's the amount of venture capital investment, year over year and then the amount of charitable giving and the charitable giving line is much higher than the venture capital.
Speaker 2:So that that by itself is, like, we probably shouldn't even talk about it because it should just be a talk at heretic on. Yeah. That just becomes, like, a normie, like, thing that, you know, if it if it ends up being, you know, world positive.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, that's the fascinating thing about, all of the, like, climate funds. Not even even the climate VC funds didn't do that well. There was a big, I think it was Kleiner Perkins had a big push. They had a fund that was, what was the term back in the day?
Speaker 2:That almost, like, destroyed their brand for, like, a decade.
Speaker 1:It was it was tough. I mean, Al Gore became a partner there. Is that crazy? He's, like, hanging out there. But I forget what it was called.
Speaker 1:There was some there was some term for this, like, green investing or something like that that was, like, really popular. But Tesla was not considered in that category.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But if you bundle but if you bundle Tesla and
Speaker 1:And then the returns
Speaker 3:go great.
Speaker 1:For for for for for for for for Exactly. And so it's like there's all this almost like this misclassification of, like, the thing that solves the problem might not even look like it's in that category. Just like, you know, if you were, like, starting, like, okay. We're we're we're an inner we're an Internet infrastructure fund. Like, do you get into the seed round of SpaceX?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. No. Yeah. The the,
Speaker 1:But you should.
Speaker 2:I You just start
Speaker 1:with these
Speaker 2:guys. I do think that VCs that are not there that are feeling FOMO should probably feel an order of magnitude more FOMO. Like, I'm not I'm not kidding. Like, they're when the event was very expensive
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But I guarantee you it will result in a massive return on this fund and the other VCs that were there. Right? Because, like, there's people there. I wish the missed opportunity was getting a photo of the entire group.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2:Because it would have just looked like the it's the most eclectic group ever.
Speaker 1:Like, a
Speaker 2:lot of, like, kind of strange, you know, a strange mix of people.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And you could look at that picture 30 years from now and be, like, this guy, like, annexed Cuba.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And then, like,
Speaker 2:this guy, like Yeah. I like that. This guy guy did a hostile takeover of SpaceX.
Speaker 1:I liked, Palmer's tweet. What was that? What did Palmer say? He said, Hereticon was so good. Banger after banger, hit after hit.
Speaker 1:As if all the best threads on 4chan came to life. But with a level of mutual respect and discourse lifted from the best stereotypes of the Victorian explorers club.
Speaker 2:No. It was one there was a conversation that was being had and Senra kept saying, like, what does that mean? Like, what does that mean?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And they were all, like, 4chan slang. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And he
Speaker 2:was just, like, what? Like, what is it? What's going on right now? And
Speaker 1:So we're so delightfully offline with his, like Yeah.
Speaker 2:Book and That's that's why that's why founders is what it is Yeah. Is because he does the read for you. He's not well, yeah. He's focused on things that were written Yeah. Mostly in the 20th century.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that's why there's so much alpha in the podcast. Yeah. If he was extremely online, like, refreshing the timeline, like, the podcast would not be he would not be who he is. Yeah. And so I think that that was a cool thing.
Speaker 2:Like, everybody there is, like, authentically themselves. Yeah. And I didn't feel like most people weren't there. The only time that I got offended was a guy, like, trying to be heretical. Oh, okay.
Speaker 3:Sure.
Speaker 2:Not actually being.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it was for, like, a very, like, political topic that we need to talk about because we don't we don't talk about politics on this podcast. Yeah. But, yeah, everybody was there being them authentically themselves and the combination of all that just made it amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I liked Gabby's tweet overheard to Heretic Con. The real nootropic is being on a mission.
Speaker 2:I'm kind of I'm kind of mad. She didn't credit me for that.
Speaker 3:Did you
Speaker 1:say this?
Speaker 2:That was my line.
Speaker 1:That was your line? Yeah. Yeah. We did say that
Speaker 3:in the
Speaker 1:in our talk or just randomly.
Speaker 2:No. During the talk.
Speaker 1:Oh, really? That's Yeah.
Speaker 2:It was at it was at the end. I think we were honestly, talking about a certain presidential candidate who who clearly does all the wrong things, like crazy schedule, overworked, Diet Coke, McDonald's, It's like eating terribly. And the argument there was that there's no the real the most powerful drug on the earth is the human spirit. And being on a mission.
Speaker 1:Makes sense. Yeah. I liked Daniel. I don't know how to spell his last pronounce his last name. Tenreiro.
Speaker 2:Is he at Teal Capital?
Speaker 1:He worked at Teal Capital for a while, but now he's independent. I hold my own private version of Redicon every day on the inside of my brain.
Speaker 2:That's, like, really that's, like, really true because I think it is a place where you can say the things Yeah. Like like, that's kind of a
Speaker 1:point in time. Energy.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. You're just, like, saying things that aren't normally said.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But there was there was, like, a when I did I didn't really go on Twitter during the conference, but there was a little bit of, like, pushback. Like, Rune tweeted, like, when people go from SF to Hereticon Miami, the average IQ of both cities go up, which is this, like, copypasta of this, like, incredible tweet by, product manager, Raul. Yeah. But it's just it's just, like, oddly written.
Speaker 2:Well, it's funny. I saw another I saw another tweet that was, like, come on, sweetie. It's time for your quarterly beef with Founders Fund. Yeah. He's, like, okay.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, yeah. Rune Rune's like a prolific hater, but, you know, I think you should put your journalist hat on for a minute, like your traditional tech journalist and just, like, follow the money. Think about it. Like, Rune works at OpenAI.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:Peter co founded OpenAI. He's invested in OpenAI. Like, he needs an enemy. He needs someone to to beef because you don't wanna be at the top. You don't wanna have no enemies.
Speaker 1:That's that's the worst. You need someone taking you down. Yeah.
Speaker 2:If we didn't have the working if we weren't failing against the working class
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Exactly.
Speaker 2:There would be no podcast. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And, I mean, a similar thing happened with Sequoia. Like, Sequoia was, like, you know, the the untouchable firm, no enemies. And then Sean Maguire, you know, decided to wage a holy war against Islam. And so now they have an enemy, and and now they're not just this, like, untouchable brand.
Speaker 1:They need, you know, it's it's again, it's David and Goliath all over again, which is the ideal scenario. You you always want to be the underdog. And so even if you have to pay someone to talk trash about you, it's totally worth it. That's the summary.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Thanks for the clicks, Rune. Yeah. Yeah. I do think it's funny because our talk was closer to a comedy sketch
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Than a real Yeah. Talk. And I realized that, like, midway through Yeah. Where we would say a line and if we didn't get a laugh,
Speaker 3:it's
Speaker 2:like, rework that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But you know that the that somebody came away from that not realizing that it was, like, a more comedic sketch than anything else.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And they're just they were probably, like, these guys are fucking crazy. Yeah. Exactly. Awesome.
Speaker 1:This is the craziest talk I've heard.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But, I mean, a lot of it was, like, you know, comedy shrouding around, like, a true idea or, like, teasing a true idea. But just, like, amplifying things to, like, help it stick in people's mind and become, like, memes. And then, our boy, Theo, got destroyed by some IV or something. So the cost of admission to reticon was expensive this year, but it was worth it because he became a blood boy, which, of course, is another joke. There were no real blood boys there, unfortunately, but
Speaker 2:Not in any of the rooms you were in?
Speaker 1:No. Not not in the rooms. Anything else to talk about reticon?
Speaker 2:I'm sure it'll come up later.
Speaker 1:Yeah. What should we move on to next? I think it's time to tell you about today's highlight, Sotheby's. Since 17/44, Sotheby's has been the premier destination for art connoisseurs, collectors, and enthusiasts alike, offering an unparalleled platform for buying and selling fine art jewelry, rare books, and collectibles. From classic masterpieces to contemporary works, Sotheby's brings together world class expertise and global reach, connecting treasures with those who truly appreciate them.
Speaker 1:So whether you're looking to acquire a timeless piece or explore the vibrant world of modern art, Sotheby's is where extraordinary finds a home. Tell a story about a piece of fine art. I I really like this Peter Paul Reubens, David and Goliath. Have you seen this? No.
Speaker 1:It's it's currently kept at the note Norton Simon. Hopefully, it'll be at the Sotheby's in, a few years. Right. You can pick it up. But, it's iconic because, like, Reubens is like he really explored, like, the the human form and, like, musculature.
Speaker 1:Like, it's a very, like it's this, like, jacked David, like, about to behead Goliath. It's a very, very aggressive piece. Yeah. But it's interesting because, like, when you first when I first heard the story of David Goliath, you think about David as this, like, tiny little underling. And Goliath has this, like, over this, this, like, massive, massive Kinda like unit.
Speaker 1:But but in but in this in this painting, David is actually, like, very powerful and jacked and, like, yes, he's smaller, but he's still, like, he's still, like, put in the work. And I think that I think that there's actually a good metaphor there where it's, like, you can't just be, like, oh, I'm some startup and I'm going against the big company and they're huge and I'm small. Therefore, it's a David and Goliath situation. I'm gonna win with it, like, by throwing the stone. It's like, no.
Speaker 1:David clearly, like, put in the work at least in this talent and I like that.
Speaker 2:And that's another thing with Sotheby's. They're not afraid to put in the work. They, you know, you know, in addition to the art that they have listed and some of the private catalog, you can go to them and and get their help, you know, finding specific works that, you know, that you feel something about.
Speaker 3:You
Speaker 1:recently had luck here. Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So we were looking for basically a lost copy of the Wealth of Nations. We have a copy there just, you know, for sentiment sentimental value.
Speaker 1:For But
Speaker 2:yeah. So the Technology Brothers, you know, collect collector division was, looking for a copy that, you know, a lot of people thought was, you know, completely lost. Sotheby's was able to help us get it. Took about 3 weeks, but basically no lift on our side and it's now safely in the vault. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's kinda like the holy grail of capitalism Right. In some ways. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And just
Speaker 1:get Which is the primary absorb the energy.
Speaker 2:Yeah. The primary inspiration for this podcast.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:So, anyways, thank you to Sotheby's.
Speaker 1:Should we move on to some tweets or should we do brother of the week?
Speaker 2:We just jump into the brother.
Speaker 1:The brother of the week.
Speaker 3:You have
Speaker 2:to go to the mansion section.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. So, in the Wall Street Journal today in the mansion section, there's someone that we have to highlight. So his name where is his name?
Speaker 2:Famed LA
Speaker 1:George Ron. Ruan, r u a n. Is that Ron? Ron? So this is the co founder of Honey, sold the company to PayPal for $4,000,000,000 and he essentially got a free $44,000,000 house, which has now been profiled.
Speaker 1:It's 16,000 square feet, 9 bedrooms, in Los Angeles. The Coupon King buys again. So how he got this house for $44,000,000 effectively for free. This is real. Like, he, so in, in 2020, he paid $60,000,000 for a 21,000 square foot house in Bel Air.
Speaker 1:And then just 2 years later, when the market was ripping, he topticks it and puts it on the market for a 150,000,000, almost 3 times the price. And he he actually gets the deal done, sells it for 1.12. Yeah. So that's a $52,000,000 gain, pays a little tax maybe.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:Gets the $44,000,000 house for free.
Speaker 2:Rolls it in. Yeah. I think this is probably the the real story from this is that if you're a founder out there building something like a Chrome extension, which everybody says Chrome extension, this is silly. Like, this is not a real business. If he had if this guy had never built a Chrome extension, that he never would have had gotten a free $44,000,000 house.
Speaker 2:So don't ever let anybody tell you that your idea is small or not worth doing. That brings up I saw that Grammarly is that, like, basically 300,000,000 of ARR. Wow. Do you see this? No.
Speaker 2:Like yeah. So Chrome extensions. Yeah. If you're at heretic if you're at the heretic con that didn't happen in 2012 Yeah. It was it would have been all about Chrome extensions.
Speaker 1:Probably. Something something weird about that. I mean, there Yeah. It feels
Speaker 2:it feels fake.
Speaker 1:Yeah. The the the Honey and the and the Grammarly that those companies like, people love to say, oh, AI is gonna, like, destroy this or, like, there's gonna be some new thing that's, like, it's not gonna work. But people seriously underrate this, like, in the key to beer point, but people seriously underrate, like, just, like, good management and good like and a well run company being valuable even in even in, like, a little bit of an odd industry that might feel a little fragile. And so I think the Duolingo stock hasn't fallen at all, even though everyone's like, oh, of course, you just learn how to speak a different language by talking to chat gpt. And it's
Speaker 2:maybe Part of it's just a distribution thing. Like, I actually am more bullish on much more bullish on Duolingo than Grammarly. When Grammarly feels like, okay, you're built on top of this browser that actively wants to roll out features that differentiate it from Yeah. All these other browsers.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But who knows? I mean, maybe Google gets it wrong and there's just, like, it's never properly, it's never properly rolled out.
Speaker 1:But, congratulations to this week's brother of the week. Let's move on.
Speaker 2:We almost should get something in here that's like Yeah.
Speaker 1:Employee of the month, brother of the rich. Yeah. Image. That there is a good tweet in here that I wanna I wanna pull up, but we should just go through them in, like, somewhat reverse order. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Since we have a whole stack here. So let's start with this one by, Andreas Larson. He just posted a meme. I bet he saw it somewhere else, but oh, wait. This is, I know I follow this account on Instagram.
Speaker 1:QS. I forget it is. It's like quant strategies or something. Oh, really?
Speaker 2:It's a
Speaker 1:meme page. It's good. What people think ESG is, we must save the planet. Invest in my fund. Here's my money.
Speaker 1:What ESG actually is, I have created a synthetic securitization so that BlackRock can buy mezzanine trenches of forests in Zimbabwe nobody planned to cut and large mining groups can declare themselves carbon neutral while using child labor. Great, great riff on ESG.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's what ESG is. What is the just kidding. It's
Speaker 1:I mean, actually, there's a great, like, economic analysis of the problems with ESG from Aswath Damodaran, this, finance professor at NYU. And he kind of laid out the, like, the bear case for ESG and just how it was, like, kind of misaligned. It had been abused by Yeah. Capitalists, which but the question is, like, now with this, since it's making everyone so much money, are the capitalists gonna come around and, like, should we be supporting ESG?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:We should be, like, actually, ESG is amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah. ESG
Speaker 1:I feel like you have to wait its way into startups, like, but, like, I feel like there
Speaker 2:were Yeah. Can you imagine if term sheets were getting issued with, like, ESG baggage attached to them? Like, if if if somehow
Speaker 1:Or vice versa.
Speaker 2:The funds had gotten.
Speaker 1:Sort of ESG kicker where, like, oh, if it became a meme, like, you know, everyone knows that you can attach, like, dotai to your Yeah.
Speaker 3:It's the
Speaker 2:big thing. SaaS
Speaker 1:company and double your valuation. Right. That never really happened to ESG just because I think the money that was actually flowing was mostly in the public markets from these funds that, like, needed to flow and through the ESG scores and stuff. It was heavily gained.
Speaker 2:But couldn't you imagine if if if big LPs had gotten pressure from various groups and were, like, telling their the VCs that they invest in, hey. If you can get your companies to follow these principles and track it, like, that's a very dystopian
Speaker 3:sort
Speaker 2:of, like, thing to imagine. But what if they were, like, well, we'll give you 25% carry
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:If you can get on any deals that have, ESG attached to it. Like, it's it's scary that it's not that difficult to imagine
Speaker 1:No. No.
Speaker 2:No. Actually being the case. And then there would have been this whole dynamic of, like, oh, don't work with this fund because, like, they're gonna force you to, like, follow, like, ESG.
Speaker 1:At the same time, like, how hard is it if you're, like, doing some b to b SaaS company to be, like, yeah, we're carbon neutral.
Speaker 2:But, like, the whole gundo is, like, being, like, yeah, we're putting up solar panels.
Speaker 3:Like, you
Speaker 2:have to spend, like, at the office because,
Speaker 3:like It's baggage.
Speaker 2:Like, what's his name? Isiah from valor is, like, being, like, yeah, like, we're working on this nuclear thing, but, like, we have to put up solar panels.
Speaker 1:In the meantime.
Speaker 2:Yeah. In the meantime.
Speaker 1:Or no, even worse. Just, like, we we we have to spend, like, 10% of our fund raise on, like, carbon credits.
Speaker 2:You know the you know the thing that actually going back to her at a con. I I didn't I didn't talk to her, but do you remember that girl, like, 4 years ago who's going viral for making nuclear energy cool?
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. Isadope. Yeah.
Speaker 2:She was the last one. Yeah. No. She was she was Yeah. She was at this point too.
Speaker 2:I didn't get a chance to talk to her, but, it's so funny. That's, like, a perfect example of something that was contrarian Totally. Like, less She
Speaker 1:was on stage of the first one.
Speaker 2:Less than 4 years ago.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And now there's, like, a whole So Normandy,
Speaker 2:there was a bunch of nuclear energy, like, founders there.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I
Speaker 2:just thought that was cool.
Speaker 1:Next week, I'm going to, like, MC a whole, like, nuclear conference, and it's, like, the least heretical thing. It's all, like, government people and, like, companies and DCs and, like, there's whole funds around this and stuff.
Speaker 2:She wasn't giving a talk Yeah. Because, like You need to.
Speaker 1:She would accomplish her mission.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And she can just kinda, like, move on.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And that's why we're oriented around capitalism, which is the only so if capitalism stopped being a thing, we would have nothing to talk about and we would retire the show and commit to suffook. But, so anyways
Speaker 1:That's great. Let's move on to the next one. Rico's revenge says being broke at the book fair as a kid turned me into a monster.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Why was this personal for you?
Speaker 2:I just remember that. Like, I remember the book I just remember the book fairs and, like, honestly so the topic of Halloween, this is cool. Mhmm. So Halloween every single year, my entire childhood as early as I can remember, my parents, I would go regular trick or treating. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And then my parents would say, pick your 20 favorite pieces of candy. You can keep those. And the rest of them were gonna take and give away in exchange for you going to be able to buy a new book. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:So my
Speaker 2:parents were very into the library, so we rarely bought books. But that would be the moment where I would buy, like, a fresh brand new book. Yeah. And it was just, like, the best thing in the world. So thank you to my parents for doing that.
Speaker 2:But I do remember being at, like, the book fair. And to be honest, like, being at, like, the book fair. And to be honest, like, with our kids now, you can imagine a book fair is happening. You'd be, like, yeah, like, go, like, buy everything. Like, buy whatever you want.
Speaker 2:Like, because, like, parents are just willing to spend money on, like, education, but it just wasn't a part of my, like, family.
Speaker 1:And there's just that many times
Speaker 2:money. Yeah. Money is just so emotional. Right? And so, like, any you have these sort of, like, intense blood memories around money and, like, this tweet brought back that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. There was also that, like, meme or, like, study that, like, the the, like, educational achievement in children is correlated with, like, the number of books in a house Yeah. Growing up, which is clearly just correlated with, like, wealth and, like, a million other things. Interest in learning.
Speaker 3:But
Speaker 1:yeah. But but but then but then people kind of took that and kind of flipped the correlation around. They were, like, oh, if I just buy a bunch of books, then my kid will do well, which is also probably true. But it's just like it became because
Speaker 2:you're absorbing just like why would we spend 7 figures on the wealth of nations? Yes. And it's because you wanna absorb that energy. Yeah.
Speaker 1:You wanna have that
Speaker 2:Even if you're not gonna read it, you wanna be able to absorb it.
Speaker 1:I actually have read the Wealth of Nations.
Speaker 2:That's a classic.
Speaker 3:It's a classic.
Speaker 2:It's a classic. If it's one of those things, like
Speaker 1:It's so dry.
Speaker 2:If you had to if you could only have 3 books, it would be the Bible Mhmm. Wealth of Nations, and then the book that Justin Maris will eventually write
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:On health Okay. Just to support the boys. Yeah. Of course.
Speaker 1:Of course. So Yeah. It is it is it is a fascinating read in that it's you're watching someone work through the discovery of capitalism essentially.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And that's and that's fascinating. Yeah. But most of the actual takeaways, you can get much more concisely from just, like, an econ 101 textbook. Yeah. But it is very cool.
Speaker 1:Okay. So let's talk about the Arc Browser situation. We there was actually someone from Arc there at the at the party. There's a company called the Arc Browser Company. They've raised a fair amount of money over a $100,000,000.
Speaker 1:Is that right?
Speaker 2:Thought it was 150. Yeah.
Speaker 1:They've raised a lot of money and they have a very, like, know, hipster kind of aesthetic. They post these high production value videos updating the community on what they're building, and they've built a new browser. So it's a replacement for Chrome or Safari and they've applied a number of different design, you know, elements to that. So pin tabs, vertical sidebar spaces, and they recently announced that they're essentially pivoting, launching a new product. They're gonna leave their existing arc browser in kind of maintenance mode.
Speaker 1:So they're not gonna, like, piss off their existing community and then they're gonna launch some new things. Sound like a lot of stuff is gonna be AI based, and they're trying to, like, get through that transition of being, like, okay, we're gonna pivot to AI, but let's not make it, like, too dramatic. And so, Astrowave Andric writes, I don't fully buy the reason that pin tabs, vertical sidebar, and spaces are too complicated for normies. We live in a world where even mainstream browsers, Safari and Edge have sidebar tabs, collections, synced tabs, pin tabs. Heck, Chrome has had pinned tabs since a decade ago.
Speaker 1:I used pinned tabs in Chrome. It's fine. I think the reason Arc feels complicated honestly is that they're a bit too focused on that circa 20 tens hipster aesthetic and gaudy visual design that gets in the way of usability. Did you so do you buy this? Do you this is a good take?
Speaker 2:Generally, I'm extremely pro Arc in a browser company because I'm not an investor, but I'm generally, like, in favor of people taking on these sort of, like, commoditized products and categories and saying, like, let's try to reinvent it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think what they ultimately found is that the browser is, like, pretty well optimized. And the other thing is that it's really difficult to compete with platform companies that are $1,000,000,000,000 companies that are giving away the product for free.
Speaker 1:And and pre installing it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Pre installing it. They have the distribution. Google doesn't care if Chrome loses money forever. Ever.
Speaker 2:Right? They'll spend 1,000,000,000 of dollars on it. Apple, on the other hand, like, needs to have, like, an installed browser. Yep. And they don't care how much it costs to run.
Speaker 2:And they're pretty pretty good products. I think, like, them trying to they basically were trying to solve, like, the the tabs issue. Like, everybody has too many tabs open. And for me, I actually this this sounds it's gonna sound bad, but I've never I never installed ARC because I got fatigue around these sort of, like, new note taking Yeah. Type things where I'm just, like, now, like, Chrome's pretty good.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I even think Safari is pretty good.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:I alternate between the 2 on my phone. Yep. It's just, like, I don't really think about it. But I think, like, the thing the thing that's more real here is that they, got really interested in AI Mhmm. As everybody did.
Speaker 2:Yep. Realize that there's much more ability to create, like, a viral consumer product with 100 of millions or hopefully billions of users doing that. And they are really well suited to, like, go try to tackle that problem. Now the hard thing is that they're, like, a really big company now, which, like, most VCs, you know, I would say, like, contrarian VCs would say, like, companies over 10 people can't innovate or whatever. And, like, do they need this, like, really massive team?
Speaker 2:But I think the issue that they ran into is they create a product that a small group of people really, really love. And they're in this position where they cannot they can't just they really should kill the product probably or, like, spin it out. But then it puts them in a position where they say, like, well, why do we why do why are we worth $500,000,000 if we only if we don't have a product yet or we don't have a live product? And so I think it would have been cool if they, like, spun it out and made it open source and, like, let the community keep building on it or something like that. But, but, yeah, now they're kind of in this weird position, but I'm super excited for their like the product coming up.
Speaker 2:Devin gave me, like, a little bit of a
Speaker 1:Oh, sure. Preview
Speaker 2:on on what it is. It's gonna be awesome. They've they they, like, clearly build great products. Now it's finding that, like, they do there are they they they raise money, like, with the understanding that they needed to build something with, like, 100,000,000 plus users. Otherwise, they weren't gonna, like, live up to the expectations that they set.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Tough to sell a browser.
Speaker 2:No. I'm just saying, give
Speaker 1:it Tailors need one. They all have one.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:No. I'm just saying give it away to the community, like That might be better. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Or just yeah. Like, spin it out as in, like, hey, we're not because now the thing is, like, they have they're they're gonna have this, like, competing thing where their power users that love the brand are gonna be, like, why aren't you maintaining this? Yes. Or, like, why aren't you adding to it? And, like, there's, like, the I don't know.
Speaker 2:Some amount of entropy Yep. That is gonna happen naturally when, like, the whole team is focused on the new thing. And then, like, it's, like, one designer and, like, a few engineers that are running a browser.
Speaker 1:And and and the tough thing is, like, to be on that team.
Speaker 2:Yeah. The tough thing is this is coming off them having, like, a pretty big security vulnerability from, like, a month ago that, like, they got a lot of heat for. But I think the heart that what this comes down to is if you do a lot of things really well and you have a lot of attention, and you're relevant to a lot of people, which a browser is, everybody has an opinion. Mhmm. A lot of people, like, see, like, a really well produced video and are just, like, I wanna, like, hate on this.
Speaker 2:Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so, anyways, I'm rooting for the browser company.
Speaker 2:I'm rooting for Arc and,
Speaker 1:well,
Speaker 2:I guess I'm not I'm not I'm not rooting for Arc anymore because I don't, you know This doesn't they
Speaker 1:don't even wanna take it anywhere. Arc's gonna arc. I do wonder about, like, it what was, like, a design focus, like, the right go to market for this. Like, the other browser that's done, I think, reasonably well is Brave.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But Brave is focused on, like, these crypto micro payments and they have this whole, like, economic model that you could be very, like, oh, it's just a crypto Ponzi thing. But, like, at least, like, if it works, there will be some sort of, like, incentivization there. It's kind of, like, creator payouts for x where you're, you know, ostensibly, like, paying to use the browser. And then when you visit a website, if they're on your team, they get paid for every time you visit. And then and then they have an incentive to actually put up a banner, like, hey, stop reading my website in Chrome.
Speaker 1:You should read my website in Brave because I'll get paid for that. And so you have some sort of distribution, like, economy. Whereas if it's just, like, really cool, yeah, it can be cool and people can say, oh, what's that? Oh, that looks really nice. Like, it can kind of go viral, but it's just word-of-mouth and that's really, really hard to scale into, like, the normie crossing the chasm is gonna be really, really difficult.
Speaker 1:Anyway, let's move out on to Nicole Whiskoff. Whiskoff Ventures founder shuts down company that never really got off the ground. Emails investors, you are welcome into you are welcome to invest in whatever I build next on a $100,000,000 post money safe. Sometimes I hate it here. She got almost a 1,000 likes on that.
Speaker 1:I the biggest problem is a 100 mils too low. Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, I know she seems to back really great companies. So knowing the kind of caliber that she looks for, I don't think it would be absurd to pay a 100,000,000 post for whatever they whatever they do next. I think what I I just want more details, to be honest. I'd love to see, like, did he send the, like, filled out space?
Speaker 2:Like, was it already signed on his side and he's just, like, here's wire instructions, like, countersign?
Speaker 1:I mean, a lot of founders try and mock investors when things are going well.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Takes a special breed of founder to try and mock investors when things are going poorly.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. The, it's funny. I I talked to a founder recently that had, like, 2 very high profile failures in, like, a very specific category, and he was going back for a 3rd company in the same category. And I wanted to I didn't ultimately get there on investing, just from, like, nothing to do with him or the category.
Speaker 2:Just, like, talked with some people that I knew. Yeah. And they said, like, you know, but just the fact that he was, like, back to back, these sort of, like, big basically blow ups and was, like, yeah, I'm going back again. Like, just, like, you wanna support that guy. Right?
Speaker 2:Like,
Speaker 1:I mean, under under discussed Parker Conrad, Rippling is his 3rd company, not a second company. And the first the first one was a little bit adjacent. It was, he was like a Fintech company, but it was still, like, kind of in that same realm. There's something for, like, charts and visualizations for, like, financial stuff. Exactly.
Speaker 1:He left and it actually is still going on. Like, it's it's still alive. It's not like a phenomenal company, but, like yeah. And it's just, like, I talked to a big investor in the firm or in in Rippling and was just, like, he can't like, I don't know if he could build anything outside of this, but he's just, like, destined to do this.
Speaker 2:That'd be a weird thing, like, working at the first company watching
Speaker 1:The 3rd company.
Speaker 2:The 3rd company, and you're just, like like, your your company hasn't your share shares haven't been marked up in, like, 3 years. And you just see rippling with, like, the $12,000,000,000 valuation. You're just, like
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, I mean, a lot of people moved over and some people didn't. And that was like a big
Speaker 2:Well, the real hero's journey is that he buys back the first company. Right? Yeah. And, like, merges it into Rippling because Rippling is the last SaaS you ever need.
Speaker 1:There's been a couple of examples of that. I don't wanna, like, say it because I don't think the deal is done, But there's, like, a big YC founder who had a company that blew up and the early team is, like, gonna go back and buy the IP and, like, you know, use it for something else, which I think is really, really cool. I think there's something about, like, like, owning your your owning your child or your baby and, like, just, like, keeping keeping working on it and having another shot on goal. If it's, like, an interesting name or an interesting dotcom or, like, it'll have some Party
Speaker 2:round dot com.
Speaker 1:Cache. I mean, we gotta talk about getting party round once, once Chamath is head of the SCC, you should just be able to text everyone in America. I I do you wanna buy shares in my company? We gotta get rid of all the all the, what was it, accredited investor laws. We gotta get rid of those.
Speaker 2:I didn't even think about, like, Sachs gets a role, obviously. He's, like, well, I gotta I gotta support boys.
Speaker 1:The best guess?
Speaker 2:Chamath, SCC. Yeah. And then it's just, like, a new American renaissance. J.
Speaker 1:Cal press secretary?
Speaker 2:Let's go.
Speaker 1:Incredible.
Speaker 2:Let's go. He's there's, like, the White House verticalizes podcast Yes. Podcast. You know, we gotta break out, like
Speaker 1:The DOP, the Department of Podcasting.
Speaker 2:It's if J. Cal was running the White House Yeah. Media strategy, it would be heavily monetized. Yeah. That that would be, like
Speaker 1:It's, like, secretary of state.
Speaker 2:It's kind of, like, a green scenario. Like, imagine, like yeah. White House press secretary is up there and they're doing podcast ad reads Yeah. Between the announcements for, like, obviously, big multinational companies, like,
Speaker 1:why not why not just the the bond issuances? Like, the government sells debt. So it's, like, hey, did you know the 30 year? It's at 4%. You want to buy some?
Speaker 1:Brought to you by T Bills.
Speaker 2:T Bills.
Speaker 1:I mean, they used to do that. Like, during the war, there's like posters and essentially advertisements for government bonds. Now, it's all distributed through banks and it's very abstract, but it used to be very much like going direct to the American average American citizen. Exactly. Because you just wanted everyone to chip in and buy war bonds.
Speaker 1:It's great. But, yeah, that's probably the future of party round. It's specifically those those political texts. So you know how you get those those texts from politicians, like, every 2 hours on your phone now and you can't opt out of them?
Speaker 2:I don't know why.
Speaker 1:You don't get me? I don't
Speaker 2:get any text.
Speaker 1:Is that just because you've never voted?
Speaker 2:No. No. I have. I I I, like, I I I've been trying to figure it out.
Speaker 1:Because you're so extreme politically that they're just, like, oh.
Speaker 2:We can't turn this Yeah. To waste of money.
Speaker 1:Yeah. There's there's no anarchy candidate.
Speaker 2:No. I don't. I I I haven't got a political text.
Speaker 1:Wow. But I have
Speaker 2:made everyone's have made efforts to, like, go and, like, you can do this, like, blanket opt out of, like, remove my remove my info from this. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:But but that's where we need to get with, like, you know, fundraising. It just needs to be, like, okay. I'm hiring a firm to spam my roll up vehicle to 10,000,000 Americans.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Send out send out the Vibreel that went viral on Twitter.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Let everyone know I'm building AI for dogs. Let's get some money in there. General solicitation. This is the future. There's a couple of companies that, like, figured out how to do that.
Speaker 1:I've seen some Instagram ads for, like, crowdfunding efforts, and I'm like Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. My friends,
Speaker 2:my my friends run the biggest agency for advertising crowd funds in
Speaker 3:the world.
Speaker 2:They're good. Yeah. Shout out John The
Speaker 1:job guy. Tyler.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:The job guy.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And it's, like, what it's an amazing, like, thing, you know, sort of, like, example of capitalism where companies figured out if you spend a dollar on Facebook, you can drive $10 of investment. So why would you not just do that? Yep. It's like an infinite money glitch, basically.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's a the the ratio of cost to capital raise is probably right in line with, like, big investment. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. If you take a company public, you're probably paying some massive fee.
Speaker 2:But you're giving an opportunity for everyday Americans to, you know, earn real yield. Exactly. Real alpha.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:With, you know, the next great robotics company or whatever.
Speaker 1:Let's move on to Apple. Do you have Apple Intelligence on your phone yet? It's, like, almost here. Right? You can install it if you go to beta, but you don't have it.
Speaker 2:I don't have it yet. I don't
Speaker 1:have it yet either. I I used to install the betas and they're always, like, kinda kinda sketchy, so I just wait. Yeah. But, Schmidt writes, my mom, that hike almost killed me. Apple's AI summary attempted suicide but recovered and and hiked in Redlands and Palm Springs has 14,000,000 views.
Speaker 1:I predicted that this was gonna happen on a podcast with
Speaker 2:And did you also say you think you think a lot of these are
Speaker 1:I I think a lot of these are fake and I think a lot of these are photoshopped. I don't know that this one is, but obviously, we know LLM hallucinate and they get things wrong and they're rough. But that is Apple that is not Apple's Yeah.
Speaker 2:That was a good take.
Speaker 1:That is not Apple's brand. Like, I was talking to a a a a, like, a really, really big filmmaker in Hollywood, and he was predicting that Apple TV would not be successful. He he works with, like, HBO and and Netflix and stuff. And it is specifically because Apple's brand is Perfection. Perfection.
Speaker 1:Everything needs to look perfect. And so that's not Hollywood. Hollywood is almost more like venture capital where there's gonna be some dogs, even the best. And you can't you can't have everything be guaranteed because it's art Yeah. Not engineering.
Speaker 1:And so, the AI thing has been really, really difficult for Apple in my opinion because they're they're 2 years behind chat gpt and get like, the day chat gpt came out, they should have ripped out Siri and had an LLM replace it, in terms of just, like, what consumers would want. At one point, I actually had a, like, a macro on my phone where instead of saying, Hey, Siri, I could say, like, Hey, chat gbt. And it would, like, take a shortcut and route it into chat gbt. It was slow. It didn't really work.
Speaker 1:But that's essentially what they're doing now, but they're still gonna have problems. And maybe that's why they did the OpenAI partnership just because, like, if they have some really bad hallucinations and they need to, like, respond, they can be like, oh, this is a partner. We switch partners. They're the scapegoat. Like, we can move on to something else.
Speaker 1:Hey, we revamped it. I again, like, I think that I think the right frame of mind when you're interacting with, like, an LLM is that, like, it is a little sloppy. And as long as everyone goes into
Speaker 2:It's like a human.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's a human it's a human assistant that might get something wrong or just, like, when when you're online and you and you're scrolling, like, a feed, you kind of know that, like, there's gonna be there's gonna be slob. How many There's gonna be jokes. There's gonna be fake news. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so you just kinda go into that. You're not and you're not rattled.
Speaker 2:The issue is unlike an executive assistant, you can't berate, like, you can't berate Apple Intelligence. Right? Like, if app if your EA makes a mistake, you can get on the phone and scream with scream at them for, like, 20 minutes and then hang up.
Speaker 1:EA? What's an EA?
Speaker 2:Executive assistant. Like a secretary? Yeah. It's like a secretary.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:You can't it's you can't call up Apple Intelligence. Yeah. You know it's gonna be a robocall and berating a rope, you know, an AI, like, voice bot is not gonna feel the same.
Speaker 1:Maybe that would be a good, like, instead of an AI girlfriend, it's just, like, an AI that you can practice berating. So you get better at just, like, really giving Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because those moments don't come up that much.
Speaker 1:They don't. But when you're ready, you need to be able to scream at someone. Like, if, you know, if you're raising your 2nd company, if you're raising for your 2nd company after everything failed, you're gonna have to get on the phone with all your all your VCs and tell them that they don't know anything.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Like, look look at, like, Jeremy Goffon. Right? He he was here. We got to spend some quality time with him over the last few days and very, very calm guy.
Speaker 2:But he's from he's from the world of finance. Yeah. He goes to tech conferences, but don't it's like a wolf in sheep's clothing. Yeah. Like, he's clearly, you know and the classic, you know, behavior in finance is that if something bad happens, you, like, scream and yell.
Speaker 2:Yeah. The funny thing is I can't imagine Jeremy yelling at somebody, like, intensely, but I know he's gonna have to do it.
Speaker 1:He needs to get friends,
Speaker 3:his reps.
Speaker 2:And so he needs to get his reps in. So with If I was an indie hacker right now, I'd be creating, like, a prosumer Yeah. Like, verbatim is if that's a word, practice application. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It gives you a score at
Speaker 2:the end.
Speaker 1:How intimidated was the
Speaker 2:AI? Yeah. Yeah. I don't think you're gonna get a million Did
Speaker 1:you go too far? Do do were you dialed in perfectly?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because you don't just wanna be, like, you know, a stream of, like, HR.
Speaker 2:Like, it had a feature where, like, HR joins a call. Yeah. Dial it back.
Speaker 1:Dial it back. Okay. Dial it back. But, you know, you got your point across. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I think it'll be good. I I think Apple will eventually dial it in. I mean, the tech is just so good at this point. It's, like, really easy and they have a bunch of interesting ways to integrate with all the data in your phone. So you'll just be able to talk to Siri more and it's so it's so overdue because Siri has been so bad.
Speaker 1:Like, Siri I only used to ask if the weather maybe set time.
Speaker 2:Features, like, this feature is silly. Like, I would turn it off if I had it because, like, text should be text should be short.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I shouldn't
Speaker 1:Well, I think it's valuable in the sense that, like, the the real use is that the AI should be able so, right now, if you want to get rid of this political text, you can go into your Imessage and say, but it's all hard coded. So you can say, if I don't have the number saved, put it in a different folder, like a junk folder, but then you miss 2 factor codes, you miss, like, things from doctors and stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, the issue But I can actually I
Speaker 1:I could actually go to the AI and say, like, if it's a political text, just throw it in a different
Speaker 2:Sorting is cool. Yeah. Summarization is not cool. Sure. If Nancy Pelosi text me and and the Reddit stocks going up and she says go long, soy, go long.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's great. Always other things. But then if the AI solutionates
Speaker 1:But but politicians, if you're gonna text me every single day, throw a stock tip in.
Speaker 2:There you go.
Speaker 1:Throw a stock tip in and then I'll be like, well, yeah. Okay. So you told me to go into your
Speaker 2:Poly Market coupon code.
Speaker 1:You told me that you're gonna make oil great again and you're gonna drill baby drill. And so you told me to buy Exxon. I doubled my money. Sure. I'll give you a 10% cut, politicians.
Speaker 2:That That should be how politicians raise money. Exactly.
Speaker 1:You should give a stock
Speaker 3:to it.
Speaker 2:This out.
Speaker 1:And then monetize it by saying, hey, if it works out,
Speaker 2:give me my cut. Some wheels. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Come on.
Speaker 2:That is this is good. Is how you drive American
Speaker 1:like, I can't wait for the Yeah.
Speaker 2:The senators and various politicians would be focused on Yeah. Seeking out
Speaker 1:Yeah. Hedge funds would be setting up, oh, how can we get the text first? We don't wanna be No. No.
Speaker 2:The issue is hedge funds are going and paying off politicians. Direct.
Speaker 1:They're going direct
Speaker 2:to the stock tips.
Speaker 1:They're getting their tax over signal.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And we're we're just stuck with SMSes. Yeah. Yeah. Plebs.
Speaker 2:Anyways, that's a point there.
Speaker 1:There's a point there. You see Vivek Ramaswami. He's now the 2nd largest holder and shareholder in BuzzFeed. And he posted a vlog of him.
Speaker 2:One of mine's back, BuzzFeed.
Speaker 1:What? Really?
Speaker 2:Yeah. No. Cool. Great guy.
Speaker 1:So he he posted a vlog of him going to BuzzFeed headquarters. And so, George here summarized it. He said, this is so ruthless. Vivek got it on his plane and went in flip flops and shorts, flew to California, went into the BuzzFeed headquarters and handed them a list of conservatives to hire. It's kind of a funny thing to do.
Speaker 1:They had no choice but to listen because he's one of their new owners. He's now their 2nd largest outside outside shareholder. Maybe he'll buy the whole thing and turn it into a non woke organization. This is how we win the culture war. So I can completely disagree with that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I don't think I don't think anti woke BuzzFeed
Speaker 2:is a I do think the thing that's interesting about that is that Bezos was in the news this last week Sure. For saying, like, one, obviously, the Washington Post not endorsing a presidential candidate. Yep. 2, being, like, you need to hire some conservatives. When I see these things, I'm, like, why like, we need to have media companies, like, sort of, we'll never do this.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But other media companies should have to label, are we hyper politicized or are we a news source?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right? Because, like, when I'm when I'm seeing that that it's just like I don't know. It just feels like newspapers have this legacy newspapers have this, like, sort of, you know, permanent, label of being able to be arbiters of truth. Right? And so but if they're hyper politicized and, like, the truth is gonna get kind of lost in that.
Speaker 2:So
Speaker 1:I was looking at the New York Times endorsements since 1960. They have endorsed every single Democratic presidential nominee. Kennedy, Johnson, Humphrey, George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton. It's just like, you know You
Speaker 2:gotta respect the conviction.
Speaker 3:I mean,
Speaker 1:at least you know, like, where they stand, I guess. Yeah. But it's just odd that, like, you would never be, like, hey, actually, we switched around this time. We're mixing it up.
Speaker 2:Do we need to put journalists in our enemies bucket or that would be too political?
Speaker 1:I don't know. Maybe.
Speaker 2:I like journalists.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I like them far away. Depends.
Speaker 1:Some of them are great. Some of them I'm sure are good people. But, but this Vivek thing is interesting because not because of what he's doing with BuzzFeed. I mean, I I I hope it works out. I hope he makes a ton of money.
Speaker 1:But, it's because the did you actually watch the vlog of him going and doing this? That was interesting because I have this theory that, like, Andrew Yang was the first presidential nominee to go on Rogan. Bernie Sanders went on. Tulsi Gabbard went on. And so they were, like, the fringe candidates that were pulling very low had to go on Rogan in 2016 in that cycle.
Speaker 1:And then in this cycle, all the major party candidates are doing these huge, huge podcasts. Meanwhile, the more like fringe candidates, like, I mean, Vivek's not running right now, but he's clearly gonna gear up for more politics stuff in the future. And I think having a having a a candidate that does, like, vlogs and direct video and actually, like, owns their own media and puts stuff out,
Speaker 3:I think
Speaker 1:that will be Why is there
Speaker 2:no. It's actually insane that Yeah. They don't no one else Even Trump doesn't log. No. He's putting out, like
Speaker 1:And Kamala puts out these little short Like,
Speaker 2:I want, like, UFC. Have you ever seen UFC embedded, which is, like, the week prior to a fight? Yep. They vlog all the fighters. Yep.
Speaker 2:And it's the most engaging content.
Speaker 3:That will
Speaker 1:that will 100% be the future.
Speaker 2:And and you can make it narrative driven. So it's very easy for a political candidate to make it look like, oh, are so much momentum building in the campaign, like, make politics is, like, more about likability than Paul's policy.
Speaker 1:A 100%. Like like, with the whole RFK endorsing Trump thing.
Speaker 2:Is, like, this Paris this is what Senra always talks about the value of podcasting if you're in business is, like, he's developed, like, a real friendship. It's a one way friendship with 1,000,000 people. Yeah. Right?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so if I'm shocked that a political high profile political candidate hasn't used the vlog format or even having their own podcast.
Speaker 1:Or their own podcast, like, with the RFK Trump endorsement, like, they both got on stage at a rally and both, you know, gave their talking points and gave independent speeches. I think that that would honestly do better if it was, like, the Donald Trump podcast, RFK is the guest and and they're just having a conversation about health. Yeah. And so you're just
Speaker 3:watching
Speaker 1:you're just in the room with them watching them have
Speaker 2:a conversation. Or it's, like,
Speaker 1:JD and someone who, you know, knows about, like, you know, industrialization. And JD is, like, look, I don't know if this guy's gonna be in the cabinet, but he's a buddy and we're gonna have a conversation about how we actually, like, revitalize the rust belt. Yeah. That's something that he cares about a lot. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Instead of him having to go to Joe Rogan and Joe Rogan being or or, you know, or Kamala going to, Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's it's a way to it's a way to stay active. Like, over the last couple weeks, I think people have been, like, really hyperfixating on what did this candidate do today. And the thing with the podcast is, like, we can record I mean, for us, we we publish live effectively, like, within, you know, a couple hours of of recording. But other candidates could save up a bank of content and put it out when they, like, wake up and they're feeling a little tired. Yeah.
Speaker 2:They don't wanna hit the campaign trail.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
Speaker 2:I don't tip politicians or I don't donate to tell politicians hit the campaign trail. Hit the campaign trail.
Speaker 1:Should we do, this one? Mike Dudas says pump dot fund is the fastest company in tech in history to $100,000,000 in revenue. I feel like there's a new company that claims this, like, every day.
Speaker 2:Well, so the cool thing with this company is you can look on chain and verify that's happening. Like, actual, like, dollars in the wallet. Because it's the reason that
Speaker 1:I Give give me the overview, like, what is pumped up on? It's Solana, meme coins. Right?
Speaker 2:So, basically, historically, people would make meme coins and they'd have to combine all these different things and they were actually writing code.
Speaker 1:Yeah. They were always, like, ERC 20, like, forking projects and
Speaker 2:stuff. Yeah. It was, like, basically everything. This is, like, Shopify for creating a meme coin. Okay.
Speaker 2:Got it. That's the way to Shopify for meme. Yep. Shopify for meme coins, it's basically Shopify for memes because it just allow anything happens and There's a coin, like, Joe Biden, Trisha. Coin or, like, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, like,
Speaker 1:there's one for, like, Mudang, the hip hop
Speaker 2:or whatever. And so the thing that's crazy about this is that, one, they they they made it they built the perfect product to enable crypto speculation Yep. Because I think I I haven't used it, but I think you can actually invest on the platform too. So it's like 2 sided marketplace like, Shopify. So you can create it.
Speaker 2:People can invest.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:It actually is good for consumers because it's, like, easy like, they, like, help, it's creating more standardized Yeah. What, you know, sort of underlying structures.
Speaker 1:Well, it's, like, it's you're still likely you you could still get rugged very easily if people just decided this means Totally.
Speaker 2:Not hot because the coin is
Speaker 1:not going hacked as much.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Less less hacked.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:There's, like, meme coins were historically extremely complicated. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Totally. If you're on Shopify site, like, the product might be bad, but you're not gonna get your credit card information stolen. Yeah. Because the credit card information is with Shopify.
Speaker 1:Shopify is reliable. Now the product might be white labeled and, like, junk. But at least you know that, like, your credit card information didn't get leaked.
Speaker 2:So what's interesting about this is what, I think this could be a company where they end up returning 1,000,000,000 of dollars to investors without any liquidity event or through, like, stock buybacks or something like that or just distributions because I don't know any company that could buy this because it's in such
Speaker 1:a Coinbase
Speaker 2:base or something. Well, yeah. But it's in such a regulatory, like, gray area of, like, you're creating the government. Like, the SCC wants to say that these are securities. And, like, every crypto company has had to, like, fight back and, like, like, make their case.
Speaker 2:They're, like, this isn't a security. And so I just don't think you're gonna see, like, Goldman Sachs, like, buy a company like this, like, pumped up fun. But they're making so much revenue.
Speaker 1:Buy or underwrite? Like, would they would they not even touch it from an underwriting perspective if they wanna take the company public?
Speaker 2:I don't know if this company could be public because it's got so much regulatory baggage. Right? Maybe in a Trump, administration it could go public.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Because, like, he's launching, like, his own meme token. But but, yeah, I think this is one of those things, like, they might end up returning, like, 1,000,000,000 of dollars to their VCs. Yeah. And I don't think they raise that much money.
Speaker 2:I don't know how much they raise, but, like, I think it's like under $10,000,000. And there's doing well. And they could just distribute great return. But I think this is you're
Speaker 3:distributing, like,
Speaker 2:tokens that are liquid. This is yeah. This is such an amazing example of a product with, like, really good execution. But in hindsight, it's like, why didn't this exist in 2020 or 2021? Like, it's just, like, the most obvious thing, like, Shopify for me.
Speaker 1:It just seems like
Speaker 3:there yeah.
Speaker 1:There weren't that many, like, actual builders, Like, the ratio of, like, scammers.
Speaker 2:But even but even yeah. Even before this product was created, like, this probably increased the number of tokens by, like, an order of magnitude.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Totally.
Speaker 2:And even before that, there was, like, 100 100000 per day.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Something something absurd. Right? Because the cost to create them is low. Fascinating.
Speaker 2:I like how I like how this guy got, like, fucking
Speaker 1:I don't know. I I don't even know who this guy is. Yeah. Yeah. That was really funny.
Speaker 1:Just like yeah. Wow. I love it. So, Peter Levels, the indie hacker extraordinaire says, where do I start with robotics? I wanna code and build my own robots at home for fun with with the potential for world domination.
Speaker 1:And Matt Bogus, Matt v says, the raw volume of software engineers who have asked this exact question in the last 20 days is insane. So all software engineers are pivoting to robotics apparently.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think what's interesting here is that there's gonna be a bunch of like really the thing about indie stuff is that it's oftentimes, like, could have been fundable, but wasn't oftentimes, it's just, like, unfundable. Like, it's just, like, weird, like, some, like, clearly very small TAM. The thing that's interesting here is, like, it it will be dependent on how cheap robotics get, which I think everybody thinks, like, robots are gonna continue to, like, get cheaper and cheaper. But, like, right now, it's expensive.
Speaker 2:Like Mhmm. Robotics company I'm involved with, Deterrence, like, 100 of 1,000 of dollar like, we're gonna need, like, 1,000,000 of dollars worth of robots over time. So it's not like something you can just kind of, like I don't I'm I'm sort of, like, very for the trend, but sort of, like, I'm not wouldn't go super long on it just because of the part of the nature of like I don't know. I think I think it could be like, you know, it's probably like a decade plus.
Speaker 1:There are a couple, like, kind of cheaper open source robotics platforms like
Speaker 2:like Arduino. Arduino. But you
Speaker 1:can also, like, get, like, a Roomba and, like, open like like, a hack it, and then you and then you can just, like, have a draw.
Speaker 2:The death Roomba that's a Roomba with a Glock attached to it. It looks like it just patrols your house.
Speaker 1:And then your boss dynamics does sell the dog for, like I think it's under 10 k. It's, like, around there. So it's, like, you get someone to do a little bit.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That brings
Speaker 1:us You can also rent those, but those are much more close to us.
Speaker 2:But if we had a dog that could go to the fridge and bring you a beer.
Speaker 1:Probably with the arm.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:We could. And then, George Hotz has a has a it's basically, like, 2 wheels and, like, a stick. And it's, like, the comma body. And then you can and then so you can, like, write code for it to, like, do stuff. But it's very limited.
Speaker 1:It's just, like, it's just 2 wheels and it balances. It's, like, a segue, basically. Yeah. But, yeah, I mean, it's it's always hard with that. It's, like, these should be at, like, every single hackathon.
Speaker 1:So, like, the next generation of, like, college hackers can, like, try a bunch of different stuff even if it's, like, really junky. Totally.
Speaker 2:My, my dad as a teacher ran this thing called Project Make, which is basically, like, wood shops. Wood shop meets robotics, meets, like, air but aerospace and just, like, hacking.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so he had at at his school, he had this, like, warehouse
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:That was just filled with, like, robots and Arduinos and Raspberry Pi's. I think that's kind of, like, starting to happen, you know, in high schools
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Which is very American.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Innovation is American.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's always it's always hard to
Speaker 3:tell, like, where the where where
Speaker 1:the real value will be, like, even even if it's, like, okay, you had if Waymo had an open API, like, what would you do with that? You know, it's, like, people really just want the one thing.
Speaker 2:I'm excited to see more, like, I think, like, Nat Freeman tweeted out, like, I want, like, a not a leaf blower, but, like, a little robot to, like, go
Speaker 3:So we
Speaker 1:built it?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. They'll, like, pick up the leaves and, like, I'm so for that. Like, leaf blowers, we should add it. Can we add then can we add this to the enemies list?
Speaker 2:Is it like leaf blowers? Because, like, I've lived in places where, like, leaf blowers are just, like, I'm, like
Speaker 1:So constant.
Speaker 2:Insane. Like, not only is it loud, but, like, you're blowing particles
Speaker 1:Like, everywhere.
Speaker 3:Getting out
Speaker 2:of my yard. Yeah. And, they're hitting my window. Yeah. Like, I'm I'm going to Yeah.
Speaker 2:Go postal.
Speaker 1:Well, this one's related. Yacxin, writes, we need more we we really need more software engineers to enter fields that are very easy, like electrical engineering and mechatronics. We can bring so much fresh perspective with our relatively high degree of skill compared to them.
Speaker 2:That's, like I love it. Perfectly intellectual rage bait.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So good. 3000 likes, of course.
Speaker 2:3000 likes. Poor poor person, probably had, like, a 1000 engineers in their DM just being, like, you are the world's biggest idiot. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Everyone who's an electrical engineer is like, come on, dude. But, it's great. Great rate rate. But, yeah, I mean, I I do think that there should be more, like, intellectual flexibility between the disciplines, especially with, like, just how easy LLMs translating between different, languages will be.
Speaker 3:So
Speaker 1:it's like, oh, yeah. There's some sort of, like, little bit trickier lower level language that you need to learn. But now you can just write Python code and the llm can, like, transform it into whatever very quickly. So there's, like, there's, like, a seed of, like, truth there even though, like, it's the it's a great bait post. Let's go to this will tweet absolute banger 4 k likes less than a day ago.
Speaker 1:Do you really post this at 6:50 a. M. On Halloween? Is he up that late or early? Maybe this is a East Coast West Coast thing.
Speaker 1:It might have been.
Speaker 2:That's a good question. I don't know. Ben would have screen shotted it.
Speaker 1:I think he just we probably He just posts in the middle of the night. He just wakes up. Yeah. Yeah. Something divine divine,
Speaker 3:No.
Speaker 2:But it's very I think I'm gonna guess that it was 9.52 in Miami. Okay.
Speaker 1:So Will says the real measure of wealth is how many problems you can solve by calling one of your guys. Yeah. It's great.
Speaker 2:It's very real. This is
Speaker 1:This is the phone CEO.
Speaker 2:I think I think, like, Jeremy may have brought this up, like, at Centro's event. But, but, yeah, like, it's about everybody's, like, oh, I have, like, my car guy. Yep. I have, like, a barber is, like, a form of a guy. Yep.
Speaker 2:You know, like, a hair guy. Yep. I've got as you get down, it's, like, oh, I have, like, the stylist or I have a watch guy or I have Feng
Speaker 1:shui guy.
Speaker 2:This, you know, specific type Feng Shui guy. Yeah. And, you know, at Hereticon, the conversation is
Speaker 3:more like,
Speaker 2:who's your antichrist guy? Yeah. Right? And Who's your aliens guy? Who's your aliens guy?
Speaker 2:Who's your terraforming guy? If you need to terraform, who's your first call? Like, a lot of people are gonna come up blank on that.
Speaker 3:We're not.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Yeah. We're not.
Speaker 1:There's also the shift from, most people have, like, an app. Yep. And when you when you reach a level of wealth, you
Speaker 2:have a guy.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Like, instead of and instead of DoorDash, you have a personal chef. Instead of Uber, you have a personal driver. Instead of United Airlines app, you have a private plane
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:A pilot or 2 of them since you always have to have 2 flying.
Speaker 2:Sorry. I had to make a note. I need to text back my Feng Shui guy.
Speaker 1:Oh, you do? It's great. Feng Shui is real. We'll do a deep dive on it soon. So there's news in TechCrunch that Dropbox is laying off 20% of its staff.
Speaker 1:And Packie McCormick writes, you're laughing, but one out of every 17 Americans just lost their job, which is hilarious because he's thinking of DocuSign. Yeah. Not Dropbox. I'm sure Dropbox has a lot of employees, but it's nowhere near right. Slander.
Speaker 1:What what what That's
Speaker 2:the most that's the most attention Dropbox has gotten.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And it's so funny they got 8 k likes and a 1000000 views because, like, it's wrong, but it's, like, kind of spiritually correct. And then it's, like, okay. No one really knows. But Dropbox is definitely going through a change because Drew Houston is doing, like, videos and going direct.
Speaker 1:I've actually gotten this from a few people.
Speaker 3:Is he
Speaker 2:just working with Lulu?
Speaker 1:No. No. No. Lulu has, like, straight up created, like, a zeitgeist shift even in, like, public company tech CEOs. I've gotten text from a few, people who were, like,
Speaker 2:here's the thing. So Lulu was
Speaker 3:at HerettoCon.
Speaker 2:We just got to spend some quality time. It's interesting because, like, she's she's done the public market stuff. Right?
Speaker 1:She's currently on Shopify's board.
Speaker 2:Okay. Yeah. I didn't even know that. And
Speaker 1:she and she was, like, the the, you know, the comms person on the Activision Blizzard and Microsoft deal.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Exactly.
Speaker 1:But then she's also, like, watching, like, seed stage companies.
Speaker 2:Yeah. She's working with these, like, really hot seed stage companies helping them do it. But, like, is the real is that a waste of time when she could turn a $20,000,000,000 company into a $21,000,000,000 company?
Speaker 1:Like, imagine if she goes turns around Boeing.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Exactly. That would be crazy.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And, like, probably more value creation
Speaker 1:than, like, getting some c stage company The
Speaker 2:c stage. Yeah. That's, like, charity work.
Speaker 1:It is. Yeah. That should be her pro bono work.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. She should be, like, yeah. She should literally have her charity division. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But, yeah, it's, Gabby who's also, Gabby Goldberg, whenever they're that's gonna end up being, like, a crazy I don't know if it's gonna be a mafia or just, like, a generational firm Yeah. If they keep creating this, like,
Speaker 1:orbit. Totally. Yeah. One of those, like,
Speaker 3:one of
Speaker 1:those firms is, like, behind the scenes.
Speaker 2:And I guess, like, to go back to Will's tweet, like, a guy is not necessarily a guy. Yeah. It's spiritually, like Yeah. You know, as a spiritual There's,
Speaker 1:like, a meme, like, call Lulu. If you're there's a hit piece that's coming out or you have a comms crisis, Like, there's really only one person. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And if
Speaker 1:you have someone that can actually solve your problem, that's really valuable.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And if you think about Heretic Con, the highest percentage, like, any, like, tech conference, the highest percentage of people that have had have been doxxed or had a hit piece against them is, like yeah. It's, like, half the people.
Speaker 1:Everyone. Yeah. But yeah. Yeah. It's fascinating seeing, like, the the, like, the text that are getting passed around from, like, oh, this tech CEO who is running a public company, I'll get a text from someone being like, what podcast do you think they should go on?
Speaker 1:Like, they want they want to they want to do the Zuck playbook now.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And it's like they're running like a $20,000,000,000 public company and they're just like they're just getting pilled on this now. And it's like it's been like, what, 2 years since, like, all these people started going on lax and Rogan. And I'm I'm, like, okay. Well, here's the
Speaker 2:You got a little bro them a little bit. Yeah. Dude, you're 2% of the size of meta, like
Speaker 1:But I think it's doable for some of these people.
Speaker 2:No. Interesting.
Speaker 1:A lot of them are interesting. They've just been beaten down by, like, the the HR app or AppTrex.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's actually a way to, like, you know, kind of, like, pull up the ladder for Yeah. For these public company CEOs being, like, no. No more startup founders on, like, these big podcasts.
Speaker 1:Only, like, real Volars.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, the
Speaker 1:the guy that I'm thinking of runs, like, a like, a massive public tech company, and there was a hit piece on him younger when he was, like, coming up because, I mean, he was already, like, a billionaire, and he was from a very wealthy family. But he bought, like, a McLaren or, like, a Ferrari or something, and they were, like, using that as evidence of, like, him, like, I don't even know, like, being materialist or something or being a capitalist. Like, it it is the economy. And and and you know that you know that his takeaway from, like, his comms team was, like like, if you're gonna do something nice, like, make sure there's no cameras there. Like, the press cannot know that you went on a boat or, like, went on a vacation.
Speaker 1:And and but he but what's interesting is that, like, if he actually like, now Zuck is like, yes, I have a boat that follow I have one boat that follows me while I'm surfing so I can take videos.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I show up to UFC through the back entrance because I'm such a VIP. Yeah. And Zuck just realized that, like, wait, actually, like So, well, he's going to
Speaker 2:be authentic.
Speaker 1:And he's just authentic about it. And so, if if the public company CEO that's been, like, beaten down can actually and that's what Lulu does. Even even the CEO
Speaker 2:I don't know who you're referencing, but the CEO from a wealthy family, like, it's just okay to own it. The only way that you could legitimately get criticism is if he tries to go with a story of, like, I I, like,
Speaker 1:grew up Exactly. Yeah. Just don't
Speaker 2:be fake. Just don't be fake. Yeah. Authenticity wins every time.
Speaker 1:Exactly. But but, you know, the the the comms teams of the 2010s, their entire mandate was to destroy authenticity
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And and hide as much as possible, which is just very
Speaker 2:Unsustainable. Unsustainable. Arguably leads to the hip piece.
Speaker 1:Exactly. Because people smell that, like, oh, there's something off here. Like, this person's being cagey. And so, like, there must be a bigger story here. When really it's just, like, no, the person, like, created a lot of shareholder value, created a lot of consumer surplus.
Speaker 1:Consumers love the product. They're making money and they're enjoying it. And that's great. If they become a car guy, that's great. Or if they become a hype beast fashion guy, like, that's great too.
Speaker 1:Like, it's fine. Yeah. Very silly. But I hope he I hope he breaks through and gets out of his shell and does some cool stuff because, I've been a fan of his for a long time. So be good.
Speaker 1:This we we've had signal. We've we've reacted to this guy a few times now.
Speaker 2:I don't even honestly, is a testament to him crushing the x algo because I don't know if I follow.
Speaker 1:I don't know. I mean yeah. I don't know. But, most great founders are after vengeance in the form of success. They have been wronged in some way either by being passed up, ignored, or overruled by people that they feel are inferior to them.
Speaker 1:The possibility that somewhere the person who fucked you will potentially read a headline where you succeed beyond belief is better than sex. And headline where you succeed beyond belief is better than sex. It's kind of like a more aggressive, like, hold grudges take. Yeah. The the the example that pops into mind immediately is
Speaker 2:is is Palmer. Palmer luckily. But, like, Parker Conrad is
Speaker 1:the same thing.
Speaker 2:And, like, yeah, if you're Jason, it's funny. It's all in guys. You know, we don't have anything against all in. We just have things against Well,
Speaker 1:I mean, I don't like that they don't advertise.
Speaker 2:It's more of, like, we're
Speaker 1:against It's not not the punches here.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Against under monetized podcast. Generally not against all in.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But David and Jason having to watch, Palmer and Parker Conrad both build these
Speaker 1:Big
Speaker 2:decacorns. Decacorns, like, the most, like, important company in SaaS.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Is a SaaS
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Focused investor. And the most important company potentially in the 21st century in America, Anduril. Yeah. That's gotta hurt.
Speaker 2:So, like, yeah, like, I think this is probably real. And I and I think that Palmer and Parker, like, they're they know that they're only, like, 5% through the mission. Yeah. They're, like, I'm sure they they appreciate the headlines.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah. I I mean, to your point about the 5% through the through the mission, I I wonder if the motivation dies down once you have, like, total cultural victory over your, you know, nemesis. Because at this point, it's, like, it's, like, the the the Palmer viral clip of him at All In, like, like, trashing Jason, like, that goes viral, like, once every 6 months and gets, like, millions of views. Like, it's, like, it's not, like, it's it's widely accepted that, like, Palmer has won that beef. And so I wonder if he needs
Speaker 2:a new Jason arguably doesn't.
Speaker 1:Accept it? Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Otherwise, he wouldn't keep poking the bear.
Speaker 1:That's good. I mean, maybe he needs to keep doing it because we gotta keep Palmer motivated. It's good for Palmer.
Speaker 2:It's good for America.
Speaker 1:Exactly. Yeah. Palmer's like, I could take off this weekend, but, yeah, I could play more,
Speaker 2:d and d. I don't think
Speaker 1:I gotta I gotta get on the grind because I gotta I gotta keep proving that I'm
Speaker 2:It would be since since Parker and Palmer are both p names strong. Yeah. Since they're both billionaires, we'll eventually allow them to call in to the to the Polycom. But, but, yeah, I don't think you I would be shocked if they were, like, yes, Byte was the only reason. Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's more like I want to Parker wanted to revolutionize SaaS. Yeah. Palmer wanted to build Yeah. The most advanced weapon systems in the world. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And, like, there's some, like, product there has to be some product. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Whenever you hear Palmer talk about it, it's it seems like a lot of the like, the reason he gives that talk is is because he feels like there are dozens of founders who were destroyed and didn't get the opportunity that he did.
Speaker 3:And
Speaker 1:so he wants to, like, kind of do a cultural reset there, which I think is very valuable. So I think his his victory lap is less for him and it's more for the community. Yeah. It's good. Let's go to, Tariq Mansour, who says he posts a screenshot from what looks like WhatsApp.
Speaker 1:It looks like an investor said, you should you should receive $12,400,000 today, 5.4 from Neo, and 7,000,000 from me personally. I've already sent in the wire requests. We can figure out the terms later. Go. Go.
Speaker 1:Go. And he's posted with a comment. It's in times like these that investors show their true nature. Ali Portovi and Neo have just redefined the term conviction. Why do you like this?
Speaker 2:I mean, I like it for I like it for a lot of reasons. 1, I like it because it's great for Google and and Meta shareholders because I'm sure a large part of that $12,400,000 was immediately dumped into the ad platforms. Right?
Speaker 3:I actually
Speaker 1:don't know what he's building.
Speaker 2:This is the this is Calsheet. This is a competitor to
Speaker 1:Oh, really? No way. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So so the reason They
Speaker 1:also advertise on podcasts.
Speaker 2:The reason for the speed was because the it's an election betting marketplace
Speaker 1:Makes sense.
Speaker 2:And the election is coming up.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And they needed they probably just wanted to spend a lot of money on ads. Otherwise, you know, why the 12,400,000 with no terms? Yeah. So anyways, I honestly, props to, props to the to the Nio guy. And yeah.
Speaker 2:I hope I hope they're able to agree on terms, you know, mutually agreeable terms. But but yeah. It's kind of, like, it's kind of, like, crazy because what's I don't know. The guy's full name are upper Toby.
Speaker 1:I think it's Ali.
Speaker 2:Ali. Ali upper Toby.
Speaker 1:Ali partovi.
Speaker 2:Ali partovi. Yeah. But, like, that's either gonna be, like, something that each of them, like, scrub from, like, their Twitter or it's gonna be, like, framed in his office. Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's fun about, like, conviction. It's it's long tail.
Speaker 3:It does
Speaker 2:feel like it does feel like a highly I don't know if people are gonna be betting on, you know, sort of, like, state and, like, localized elections to the same degree as the presidential election. I would have imagined, like, the volume dropped significantly.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:But it'll either be a legendary investment. It's very binary. Legendary investment or, like, that guy is gonna be, like, a month from now being, like, what was I thinking? But I'm sure their metrics are insane.
Speaker 1:Right? Yeah. I'm sure everything's ripping. It's great.
Speaker 2:Yeah. One one thing I was thinking on that note on the topic of, election betting markets is what happens if, the election results are contested by either side? Like, are the funds released when the winner is announced? Or are they is, like, Poly Market and these other platforms gonna have to hold funds until the person is actually, like
Speaker 1:Yeah. I don't think it's as much of an issue as you think because there's a lot of liquidity in the market. So what happens is, like, I don't I don't know if Poly Market had the 2020 election on there, but let's say that they did. Like, obviously, January 6th happened. The transfer of power happened on January 20th.
Speaker 1:But the election was, like, up in the air the night of. A few days later, it was, like, being called by, like, CNN and Fox and all of that. Then there was a lot of chaos and and discussion. But through that time, like, let's say we just reran the 2020 election where it was, like, in question. Well, throughout the 2020 process, even on January 5th or January
Speaker 2:7th, it
Speaker 1:would it would be at 99% Biden. So you could sell your Biden shares for 99¢ or or you could be buying Trump.
Speaker 2:Very cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So so so there's still liquidity. And I think the actual, like, payout mechanism is less relevant or it's not as critical.
Speaker 2:Maybe maybe, this investor is thinking I'm gonna we're gonna make 1,000,000 and $1,000,000 in fees over the next we just wanna be super capitalized so we can outspend.
Speaker 1:And so even if there's, like, a battle, like, it's, like, you have 2 full months before the certification and then the transfer of power. And then it becomes pretty easy for PolyMarkets to say, okay. Well, on January 20th, on the inauguration day, like, everyone watches. We have close it. Get inaugurate.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like, we can close it now. And it's, like, yeah. Maybe you had your money locked up for an extra month or 2, but you could have gotten out at 99¢.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But
Speaker 1:then you get the full 100 or whatever later. So if you're
Speaker 2:Do you wanna talk about, Robinhood's betting market?
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. Is that in here? I don't know. We can just talk about how Robinhood launched, betting markets as well. It seems like every firm is is launching them.
Speaker 1:And I mean, Vegas has had it for a long time. They've been all over the place. I don't think they're in here, maybe. Let me see.
Speaker 2:Going going to Vegas on election night and just live betting in the casino sounds like, I actually don't. I only like
Speaker 3:gambling on private companies. I don't enjoy, like, other forms of
Speaker 2:gambling. Yeah. Companies. I don't enjoy, like, other forms of gambling. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But it sounds like it'd be fun. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I don't think
Speaker 2:I have it in here. But either way,
Speaker 1:Robinhood also launched election betting, which, makes lots of sense. Within 24 hours
Speaker 2:of that investment.
Speaker 1:Because everyone saw that, like, okay, this is just huge. But, yeah, I mean, just making it easy for people to to bet on it. I wonder I wonder if it'll increase, turnout. I wonder if we'll see turnout increase. I I I'm fascinated to see, like, that That
Speaker 2:would be awesome.
Speaker 1:Because this is really, like, the
Speaker 3:first That would be
Speaker 2:very American.
Speaker 1:It's the first election with, like, serious, serious liquidity in the prediction markets. There's always been predicted and whatnot, but the liquidity has always been really, really low, like, a few million. Now we're in, like, the billions.
Speaker 2:But it would be very American if turnouts increase dramatically because people want it. They're like, I made this bet.
Speaker 1:No. I have to. I wanna win.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Or people start betting against
Speaker 2:themselves because they're just like
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, that's the thing with the prediction market is, like, you could want one candidate to win and you could bet on the other one as a hedge. Right? Like, oh, I I think my business is gonna suffer under Trump or under Kamala. So I'm gonna I'm gonna bet on the other one.
Speaker 1:It's like a hedge. So if I lose, at least I have more cash on the balance sheet. So it's, like, it's, like, not that irrational.
Speaker 2:At what point does the Fed start
Speaker 3:betting on
Speaker 1:the market? Imagine if the I mean, we went like, what, 4 orders of magnitude of liquidity in the in the last election to this one.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like, imagine if next Poly Market is like, oh, yeah, there's $4,000,000,000,000 being bet on the election.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Pension funds.
Speaker 1:Pensions.
Speaker 2:Saudi Arabia.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Like Masa gets it on it.
Speaker 2:Sovereign wealth funds are just like and it's just like, oh, don't do the prediction markets. It's just whales duking it out. Yeah. Yeah. You're gonna get smoked.
Speaker 2:So, like, it has no it's completely uncorrelated with with the mark with the actual, like
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:The long range. Now it's just, like Yeah. Like, raw financial markets.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's gonna be fascinating to see, like, you know, how accurate these things are. And and I'm sure
Speaker 2:It used to be new we should maybe do, like, a, TV markets and turmoil that just analyzes, like, the betting, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, if if if it's if the final poly market is 51 to 49 and they get it, quote unquote, wrong, the the narrative is gonna be like, it's useless.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:People do not understand probability and statistics at all. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's it's just gonna be such a meme. But if they get it right, even if they're up by 1% or something, it's gonna be like, who's But it's but it's
Speaker 2:partly an entertainment product.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, I think that's why it's in the news category. And and that's another thing that's interesting between Kalshi and and, and PolyMarkets is that they're both I think they're both marketing as, like, we are the number one app in the app store, but they're in separate categories.
Speaker 3:I don't
Speaker 2:think Kalshi's has that. I think they say they were the legal
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, that that that's their main one. But I I have seen a screenshot of, like, oh, congrats congrats to Cal sheet. They're, like, now number 1 in the app store, but they're in they're in a different category. PolyMarketing is in, like, news, which I think is, like, more competitive, maybe.
Speaker 1:I'm not exactly sure. But, you you you gotta call Nikita beer to figure out, like, how to game the app store and get to the top.
Speaker 2:If he just gets his intro numbers up, he can call into the Polycom.
Speaker 1:He's gonna get there soon. Yeah. But, we should we should stay on Masa. Masayoshi Son, the head of SoftBank, is here quoted saying that $9,000,000,000,000 of CapEx for artificial superintelligence is very reasonable. In fact, it may be too small.
Speaker 1:I love this guy. Amazing. 9 trillion numbers get big scaling laws. We'll see if they hold. GPT 5 is pretty important.
Speaker 1:Doing the build out now.
Speaker 2:My only critique of Masa is that he hasn't made the AI boom enough about him. Like, it's He's
Speaker 1:getting there.
Speaker 2:He started. This is the beginning. Yeah. Hopefully, this is the start of a trend because, because, yeah, like, SoftBank, like, was every other headline
Speaker 1:Just high volatility.
Speaker 2:During 2021. And so I just like I like him. I would you know?
Speaker 1:Didn't they only 10% of NVIDIA, like, a couple of years ago, and they sold at the bottom or something?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:A lot of few people did that. Rough. Rough. But, yeah, I think, the guys had some he's had some big bets that went very right.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:So gotta give him that.
Speaker 1:It doesn't have
Speaker 2:to be right every time.
Speaker 1:Like, just being a conduit from, like, like, Asia to these incredibly CapEx intensive businesses, like, the money's gotta come from somewhere.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's important. Like, it's not gonna all be, you know, Silicon Valley VC firms as they scale. But 9,000,000,000,000 is a big number. I mean, that's even bigger than what Sam was saying. Right?
Speaker 1:I mean, there was, like, that kind of jokey report that Sam was, like, oh, we're gonna need, you know, 1,000,000,000,000 of dollars. But it was like he was kind of, like, memeing about it and was like, this is kind of fake news. But, yep, Moss is just like, no, it's real. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm more bullish than the founders who are running the companies. Yeah. That's always good. I mean, that's that's the story with Adam. Right?
Speaker 1:Adam Newman, like, they get in the limousine and and Adam's like, you need 500,000,000? He's like, we need 500,000,000. He thinks it's, like, crazy. He's like, no. You need 5,000,000,000 or something like that.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's great. Highly related, Farzad says, it feels like we're about to enter the golden age of the United States. Well, I mean, we covered this last time with The Economist cover. The the United States is in a phenomenal position. The dollar is very strong, the economy is ripping, There's a lot of chaos and it feels like we're more divided than ever.
Speaker 1:But I firmly believe that things are
Speaker 2:not actually more American than ever.
Speaker 1:They're more American than ever. And I was thinking about this when people were like, American politics have never been crazier. So crazy. But then I was The
Speaker 2:craziest thing I experienced I had recently was, like, 3 hours ago trying to drive to the studio with Yeah. LA Dodgers having just won the World Series
Speaker 1:The World
Speaker 2:Series. Not the American baseball league series. The World Series. They just won the World Series. There's a 100,000 people turned out on a Friday morning.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But, you you think about, like, okay. Yeah. There was, like, this Trump assassination attempt. There's all like like, the the Biden, comma, hot swap.
Speaker 1:Like, politics does seem kinda crazy. But then I was going back and looking at, like, the timeline for JFK, and it was like, there's a massive Cuban missile crisis. He avoids the apocalypse. 6 months later, his, Marilyn Monroe is, like, singing him, like, his his, what what's the word? Like, not concubine.
Speaker 1:Like, his mistress is openly serenading him on TV. Happy birthday, mister president. You know that one? No. Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:So she's, like, public
Speaker 2:monarch not
Speaker 1:It was No. I'm sorry.
Speaker 3:It was
Speaker 2:in Maryland in Brooklyn.
Speaker 1:No. No. This is, like, Marilyn Monroe. But but, like, it's very clear to everyone in America that the president is, like, openly having an affair with this, like, Hollywood starlet as opposed to, like, with Trump. There's always, like, weird stuff, but it's,
Speaker 2:like, very, like, tangible minor. And
Speaker 1:then issue
Speaker 2:with it back then?
Speaker 1:No. They they endorse him. And then and then 6 months later, he gets shot and killed. It's, like, that is unquestionably a more crazy time in American politics than right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like, we're we're we're not even close. We're at, like, a 6 out of time.
Speaker 2:Imagine listening to a Technology Brothers episode from that era. Yeah. We wouldn't have talked about any of those things because we don't talk about politics.
Speaker 1:Exactly. It would have been all about, I don't know, DARPA and the Internet or something.
Speaker 2:Then can we add to the sheet we don't, not discussing podcast? Or sorry.
Speaker 1:Politics? Politics. Yeah. So Miranda Nova says the market is wide open for a Raya esque LinkedIn. I think this is a good idea.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Didn't that there was an address in back company that just, like, paired you up with, like, a relevant connection every single week.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I I joined one of those. There's a couple of VC firms that do that kind of just, like, it's, like, speed dating for business people.
Speaker 2:Centro would absolute His
Speaker 1:head has slowed. Worst nightmare. Worst nightmare.
Speaker 2:Just getting connected with a random person. Yeah. Except what if we created the founder's podcast app that just connected? It was only him on one side. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Just connected him to a different founders listener every single week. He would he would he'd be He'd pay a lot of money for that. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like, organized, like, you you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. If you're an indie hacker out there, go build the founders connect.
Speaker 1:This this is not an indie hacker project. This Raya esque LinkedIn, like, you have to be you have to be super connected.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Same with
Speaker 1:the Sendra app. This is something that someone, like, some like, the All In podcast or someone who's, like, really connected can start because, like, the the whole the whole thing is, like, you're you're just gonna be going down market the entire time. So but so you have to start with, like, the absolute top, like, the cream of the crop, and then move
Speaker 2:down slowly. Is basically that.
Speaker 1:Clubhouse did a great job of that. But I don't know. Difficult, like, scale too fast or something. I don't really know.
Speaker 2:I should have gone fully in the dating.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I I think also, like, they didn't, like, I I hired an engineer who worked at Tinder once and he said that one of the tricks that they had was for the for, like, the bots and the really, like, toxic users, they wouldn't ban them. They would put them in a shadow pool. So they were, kind of, on their own network within Tinder.
Speaker 2:Just banning them would hurt the metrics.
Speaker 1:No. No. No. It wouldn't be. I mean, I'm sure.
Speaker 1:But, no. It's because if you ban them, they'll just create another account.
Speaker 3:So you
Speaker 1:don't wanna ban them. You wanna say, like, everything's normal for you, but you're just talking to bots and you're just living in this, like, you know, matrix world. So. And so and so that that's kind of what Clubhouse should have done is is been like the the Marc Andreessen, the tech people are in a bubble. They're in a filter bubble.
Speaker 1:But then but then the people that launch like, there were there were a lot of people who started joining Clubhouse and they were like, why do I have to follow this Marc guy? I don't like him. Like, I don't know anything he talks about. Right? Because they're just, like, wanna be on there and talk about sports or whatever.
Speaker 1:But Clubhouse was still, like, funneling people into, like, tech.
Speaker 2:Like, Alicia Horwitz. Right? Isn't that Ben Horwitz? Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like, she's, like, Felicia. Sorry.
Speaker 1:Yeah. She she held, like, a whole dinner series on there and stuff.
Speaker 3:And that
Speaker 1:was cool. But it's like but it's like as you they probably need to be a little bit more deliberate about being, like, okay. We have we have dominated the tech community. Now we're going to go after, like, the sports community
Speaker 2:or Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:The wrestling community
Speaker 3:or some other micro community. Get designers
Speaker 1:or get, you know, community. Get designers or get, you
Speaker 3:know, whatever.
Speaker 1:And and and bring those people on, but do it in a really smooth way where it's, like, okay. We're we're gonna go after the gardening community. So we got the biggest YouTuber who talks about gardening on here, and he's gonna be hosting stuff. And if you're a gardening person that gets acquired through our gardening foundation goes in, and then you're in this bubble and you don't even see the tech stuff stuff that's happening. So Instead, you just scroll and be, like, it'd be tech conversation here and then just, like, complete nonsense.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It didn't even filter by language. At a certain point, I would scroll and it would just be, like, completely a different language. And it's, like, you should know that I don't speak that language. You should just not show me that.
Speaker 2:It does feel like the product would have been benefit in a lot of ways from Gen AI.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Boy both, like, imagine being able to join a room full of bots and, like, have a conversation, like, full, like, maybe somebody should build, like, clubhouse with just bots where you could, like, join a conversation and just rage about politics.
Speaker 1:This goes back to just berating people.
Speaker 2:Yeah. If you
Speaker 1:get on stage and just be, like, you're fucking wrong.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And it's, like, wow. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't think it's it's still under discussed the fact that Twitter Spaces just destroyed 4,000,000,000, one new feature because I was just thinking, like, wow, I miss Clubhouse. I miss, like, those, like, you would have party around. We would put our stand ups on Clubhouse. Oh, really? Anybody could just join.
Speaker 2:Awesome. And, yeah. Those converse a lot of those conversations are still happening. They're just now on Twitter basis or Discord. Yeah.
Speaker 1:We're also under under discussed that, like, the Twitter was the company that did it. Like, a lot of other a lot of other, you know, social networks did launch They were like clones. But Twitter, everyone was saying, oh, it's so slowly, poorly mismanaged. But there was this moment where something was happening at Twitter even before Elon bought it where everyone was like, we gotta make something happen.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So we've got to Yeah.
Speaker 2:And and
Speaker 1:And so, they launched, like, the community notes thing. I don't think that was, like, Elon showing up and being, like, I have an idea. I think it was, like, in the pipeline and he was, like, get this out now. Like, what's good? Just ship it.
Speaker 1:We'll work on it. And and spaces is the same thing where they actually moved just as fast as Facebook Yeah. To get that get that out because they saw it as an, a risk which it was. Makes sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And the, this is an example that the Andreessen Clubhouse x relationship, dynamic is an example of the markets working as they should, which Andreessen ended up losing money on Clubhouse, but they'll make it all back on x. Right? Love it. Which I just I appreciate.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. Do you do you know this account, Grit Cult? I've never seen them before, but
Speaker 2:I am familiar with you.
Speaker 1:This post is, two words, live intensely. Read the intensity manifesto now, all caps. Yeah. The intensity doctrine. Intensity is the universal language of God gifted to humanity.
Speaker 1:All other animals live according to their nature. Humans are made to surpass it. And it goes on for, like, a couple
Speaker 2:couple paragraphs. The reason I thought this was relevant is I think we should create the American manifesto. Like, this is what it means to be American. This is why you should be American. This is why you can be spiritually American.
Speaker 1:So I should not be un American. Even if you're
Speaker 2:in, you know, even if you're born in Singapore, you can be spiritually American.
Speaker 1:Sure. Sure.
Speaker 2:And I think we should give out spiritual citizenship
Speaker 1:Oh. To to foreigners
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That that feel more at home in America even if they they're, you know, still getting through the immigration system. So, yeah. So anyways, hey, Chad GPT, please write me the American Manifesto.
Speaker 1:I wanna go to oh, we were just talking about Mark, but we're back on Mark Andreessen. He says, Claude knows and, posts like a massive screenshot of a huge block of text. But, basically, he asked, Claude, hey, Claude. Noble creation of Anthropic. Tell me, my good man, if a company in a nascent industry started to gain traction and become a leader in the space and then began pushing for government regulation and said incipient interest industry, What would you call this strategy?
Speaker 1:And, it seems like whoever wrote this prompt is kind of, like, baiting Claude into admitting that they were doing regulatory capture. Is that why you found this interesting?
Speaker 2:Yeah. And it's just such a perfect, like, example of why l l m's are so magic is because historically, you would have needed your a a comedian, somebody that's as funny as a comedian that understood government regulation and the history of government regulation and regulatory capture. And you would have needed your guy and you would have had to pay them, like, $5,000 to do this. Instead, it's free. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so this is an example. It's the perfect, perfect meme because it's showing how incredible the technology is while absolutely just
Speaker 1:Doesn't mean
Speaker 2:they're Desensated anthropics, like Do
Speaker 1:you think it's real? Because you could just write this prompt and then just, you know A human couldn't
Speaker 2:write anything that good.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You don't think so?
Speaker 2:No. No.
Speaker 1:No. I
Speaker 2:don't even think my my regulatory capture guy could do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's interesting.
Speaker 2:I just remember, like, the thing with LMS for me is, like, some of my core childhood memories are sitting around a campfire with my dad Yeah. And him being, like, I'm gonna write a song but about, like, Jordi's love for soccer, you know. And then he would just, like, make that song and I would just be, like, head, like, exploded. But now you can just be, like, write me a song that talks about Jordy's love for soccer, and it will do it as good as my dad. And it right now, I just can't play the guitar yet.
Speaker 2:But when indie robots create
Speaker 1:It's getting close.
Speaker 2:A car playing
Speaker 1:Have you played with Suno? The music generation
Speaker 2:one? Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I haven't played with it, but I think it it's
Speaker 2:I've actually tried to do it and and it didn't get very far.
Speaker 1:It seems like it's still in, like, a pretty early stage, but it's really good for, like, like, the stems. So you just need, like, a little drum riff instead of going to a sample website and buying one. You can just say, like, I want it to be a little bit louder, a little bit quiet, a little bit faster.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It'll just generate that. Move on to the next one. We have, a tweet from David Sachs of the All In Podcast. You know, we talk a lot of trash about how he's failed to monetize his podcast as much as we'd like, but obviously a dear friend. And, David writes, it takes effort for a search engine not to be able to find an interview with 34,000,000 views between the biggest
Speaker 3:podcaster in the world and the most famous person
Speaker 1:in the world. You got 60 k caster in the world and the most famous person in the world. He got 60 k likes. 60 k. Can we just talk about how many likes 60 k is?
Speaker 2:There's so many. Like, I think I've maxed out at,
Speaker 1:like, maybe, like, 5. 5 k is, like, a good, like, tech banger. I think I've hit, like, 20 or 30 on, like, something a little bit more generic.
Speaker 2:I actually
Speaker 1:But it's hard. But that's why politics this is this is the this is the thing about all in is, like, they're going broader for a good reason. Like, there are more people that are interested in politics than tech. It's just a more it's just a bigger addressable market. It's totally rational, and it's also a good service to tech because I'd rather have David than Cara Swisher talking about tech to in the politics realm.
Speaker 1:And this was something that tech people just completely obviated themselves from. They just didn't talk about it at all. Anyway
Speaker 2:We should do a GoFundMe for Cara Swisher to try to make her a billionaire so that she just has a more positive view on tech.
Speaker 1:Yeah. For sure. She I mean, I'm pretty sure she's rich. And, like, I I don't know. Balaji is always talking about how she comes from money too.
Speaker 1:So, but, this is talking about YouTube censorship of the Joe Rogan and, and Donald Trump episode, which was weird because when when this originally came out, Rogan was, like everyone was, like, oh, like, why is it not showing up on YouTube? And Rogan was, like, we literally just had a problem with the uploader. Like, they are not, like, messing with us. Like, it's not a big deal, guys. Like, there's not a conspiracy.
Speaker 3:Turns out.
Speaker 1:I don't
Speaker 2:think it's
Speaker 1:shadow banned at all. Like, I
Speaker 2:Where's my tinfoil hat?
Speaker 1:I think it's I I think it's I think it's widely available. I don't think you can get 34,000,000 views on a shadow banned thing. I I think it did I think it was getting pushed in the algorithm and stuff. I think think it's I think I think YouTube is very seriously pulled back on that. And for good reason.
Speaker 1:There probably wasn't anything As a YouTuber. Yeah. Well, I mean, I do have takes on on, like, the YouTube stuff which is that, part of the reason Joe Rogan blew up so huge on YouTube originally was because he chose the 3 hour format. So Yeah. The algorithm like, the YouTube algorithm is a is a expected value machine.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:So it takes the average view duration, which is how long on average someone will spend watching that piece of content. So for a 10 minute video, if it's really engaging, the average view duration might be like 5 or 6 minutes. Mr. Beast is like he's like the most cracked at, at, like, retention. So, like, you have to watch to the end because you wanna see who makes this the the who who wins the $1,000,000.
Speaker 1:And then every few seconds, he's reengaging you with a new storyline or a new thing. There's no slow parts where you're like, actually, I'm gonna go back to whatever. So Mr. Beast on a 20 minute video might be getting 12 minutes at average view duration. Now, Rogan with podcasts, it's slower because it's just conversational.
Speaker 1:So there's lots of opportunities to be like, oh, I'll stop listening. But by going longer, even if he has the same average view duration as a 1 hour show, he'll have 3 times the amount of, like, expected value. And so that's more time to to sell ads. And so the algorithm wants to sell more ads and keep you on the platform. And so it gets pushed.
Speaker 1:And then it multiplies all that by the thumbnail click through rate. So if you see Donald Trump in the thumbnail of a Joe Rogan episode, you're more likely to click that than just someone, you know, talking about Trump, like, randomly. Right?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think a better I mean, would a better test be, like, how many people saw that in their recommended. Right?
Speaker 1:Sure. Sure. Like Joe
Speaker 2:Rogan Joe Rogan No one is claiming that somebody uses Yeah. Joe Rogan just or uses YouTube just to watch Joe Rogan.
Speaker 1:Did it show up in their feed or did they have to click in and
Speaker 2:see Exactly.
Speaker 1:And I didn't see any reports
Speaker 3:of that.
Speaker 1:I didn't see any reports of that.
Speaker 2:But those people are not really on tech Twitter. They're the guys that are going Maybe. Youtube.com and But
Speaker 1:but the big the big the big comparison this this week is about, the Kamala interview that she did with Shannon Sharp, I believe.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I watched the whole thing.
Speaker 1:And that was only 1 hour long. And the Trump Rogen was or or they were comparing it to the JD Vance episode, which has more views, but it's 3 hours long. And so it it just naturally, even if it has the same retention, percentage, it will have more average view duration. And so ceteris paribus, it should get more views in the YouTube algorithm. This is why a lot of YouTubers are moving to longer and longer form content.
Speaker 1:Like, it used to be you do, like, whatever because you could just upload any file
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:5 minute episodes, then everyone shifted to 10 minutes because you could put 2 ads in. Amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, part of it is YouTube longer. Part of it is YouTube viewership is now, I think, predominantly on the TV.
Speaker 1:Yep. TV is huge. It's not I don't I don't think it's more than half, but it's it's growing huge. And also just people wanna throw something on and then just go do the laundry. It's laundry TV.
Speaker 1:Right? And so a lot of times when you're scrolling through YouTube, you don't wanna just, like, oh, a 5 minute video and I gotta find another one.
Speaker 3:Did you
Speaker 2:hear that?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. People are having outside.
Speaker 2:We are hearing gunshots at the Dodgers.
Speaker 1:Fireworks probably. Alright. That's right. Oh, here's the Robin Hood one. I don't know if we need to cover this, but we we already did.
Speaker 1:Let's skip it. Okay. Let's move on to people are going hard. Let's move on to, Max. I don't know how to pronounce his last name.
Speaker 1:Says, we are looking at buying some land to eventually build a home. Wife has Zillow open. I'm like, that's the wrong app. Proceed to pull up Onkshunt. I don't know what that is.
Speaker 1:Immediately identify 10 10 landowners in the area that we want to be in with either multiple tracks or tracks large enough to subdivide. Time to start knocking on doors. Do you understand this at all? The
Speaker 2:next yeah. So so, basically, the the next tweet is from his family that says, unfortunately, Max was attempting to contact, somebody while walking on their land and was shot. No. No. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:No. But the the app is something that you can use to find land that you're available that's available to hunt
Speaker 1:on. Oh, okay. Okay. So if I have a ton of land, like, it's like Airbnb for hunting territory.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Got it. Okay. So I have a huge ranch.
Speaker 2:Thing. It's just, like, understanding, like, land use and, like, where you can go and Got it. Okay. I just thought this was, like, the the I I thought it was funny because it's, like, mansplaining, like like, the most complicated way. I mean, there's a lot of alpha and just, like, not being, like, only dependent on Zillow for, like, trying to find your next piece of property.
Speaker 1:It's gonna be more competitive. This is less competitive.
Speaker 2:And, like, that's how you're gonna find, like, actual, like, deals.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, in my neighborhood, like, it seems like almost everything transacts, like, off market, and we're always getting, like, phone calls from real estate agents being, like, hey, you wanna sell? Like, that type of thing. As opposed to, like, Zillow where it's kind of a zoo and a mess. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Interesting. If you to buy
Speaker 2:Competition is for losers.
Speaker 3:If you
Speaker 1:had to buy land in some far off place, where would you go? In America, obviously, you're not leaving.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Montana? Idaho? I think Montana.
Speaker 2:I think Montana is cool. I I think the real play, going back to the heretic con piece on terraforming is land around the Salton Sea.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's
Speaker 2:good. And then re getting a new pipeline.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And that's pretty easy to connect to America to California and LA. Yeah. If you need to. I'm I'm also I'm always super bullish on Alaska.
Speaker 1:I got canceled on Alaska Twitter because I was too bullish on Alaska.
Speaker 2:So they were like, don't talk about Alaska. They were like,
Speaker 1:don't come up here. You protect. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it was my my point was that you need to be bullish on Alaska because if climate change is real, like, it'll be the last bastion of, like, beachfront property.
Speaker 1:You get a mountain up there. Sea level sea levels rise.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Los Angeles is a 100 We need
Speaker 2:to be making these big big bets.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, this is what inspired me because I had a friend who, I think they're, like, great grandfather got back from World War 1 with, like, a payout of, like, I don't know, like, 50¢ or whatever would the money was worth back then, but that was, like, a ton of money. And so they go out to California, go west, and they buy something like a 100,000 acres in what is now Napa. And so the family just has generational wealth from a guy that just made a good real estate deal, like, was never really in business.
Speaker 2:Oh, so that's actually so an interesting one on that. Growing up in Northern California, in Sonoma County, you can still buy, like, a 100 acres for, like, $600,000. Amazing. Yeah. Nothing.
Speaker 2:And
Speaker 1:so yes. Like, that's getting harder and harder to do.
Speaker 2:And I think the interesting thing is buying land based on bets that firefighting technology will get more advanced. Sure. There's a lot of areas of Santa Monica Mountains
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:Near where I am. And there's, like, really cheap land because to ensure a 2 bedroom home would be $60,000 a year against fire. So nobody buy it's not economical to buy there. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But if drones, like, totally, you know, revolutionize firefighting and you just have, like, Los Angeles County Fire is just swarms of drones that can, like, quickly attack and, you know, dismantle, you know, fires before they start or protect against arson or these different things, a lot of that land suddenly becomes pretty valuable and interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah. My my other flip side of, related to the technology advancement thing is, like, if you think that will, like, solve climate change essentially, it means that they'll probably be, like, on demand nuclear. So you can just go up to what is still Tundra because the the climate hasn't warmed. Yeah. And then you can just run AC and heat and, oh, it's dark artificial light.
Speaker 2:Just melt that ice melt that. Yeah.
Speaker 3:You can
Speaker 1:just do whatever you want. You can terraform it. Yeah. Essentially, to be
Speaker 2:Localized terraforming.
Speaker 1:Exactly. And then Starlink makes the Internet really fast up there. You have your power generation. Like, you can live a very modern life in, like, what is essentially, like, complete Tundra.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And and you can still go by people
Speaker 2:that complain about the cost of homeownership. It's like, yeah, you can get a really nice house for a $100.
Speaker 1:In Alaska.
Speaker 2:In Alaska.
Speaker 1:Go do it. In fact, there's still homesteading there. So you can get paid by the government to go live on land because we want to, like, defend it from the Russians because they'll just, like, move over and be like, no one's living here. We'll just take
Speaker 2:it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Move now. It's great. The next stage of capitalism is love, says Jacob. Love your customer and your supplier.
Speaker 1:Love your investor and your lender and your creditor. Charge fair market price with heartfelt gratitude. Pay fair market price with heartfelt gratitude. Love capitalism.
Speaker 2:I think if I had to define one if I had to use a tweet to define this podcast, it would be this. So I don't know this guy. No. But but that is what this show is all about. Right?
Speaker 2:If you start a podcast because another podcast is under monetized, that's basically an ode to capitalism.
Speaker 1:It is.
Speaker 2:So I don't think there's much else that needs to be said except frame it.
Speaker 1:Just love capitalism. It's fantastic. Luke Ferriter, did you meet him this, this week? He was there.
Speaker 2:What's his Luke Ferritor
Speaker 1:is a genius hacker kid who, was either the main winner of the Skrull prize that Nat Friedman did or a winner. And he I think he wrote a bunch of machine learning code to help translate the ancient scrolls that were
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Basically impossible to see. K, Casey I forget what his name is. Hanmer. He is also, like, just a genius scientist, but he, he just looked at them and realized, like, everyone was, like, struggling to decipher this. We should do a whole thing on scrolls.
Speaker 1:It's fascinating. But the scrolls, these ancient scrolls that are, they're, in Herculaneum. Is that where it is? Or Athens? What was the it was after the volcano?
Speaker 2:Yeah. The library of was it no. It wasn't.
Speaker 1:Vesuvius. The Vesuvius scrolls. That's what
Speaker 2:it is.
Speaker 1:So Mount Vesuvius explodes. Ash covers everything. And there's this library with ancient writings scrolls that are entombed and they find them, but they're so calcified, I guess, would be the word. I don't even remember. They're they're they're just, like, petrified.
Speaker 1:And so if you try and unwrap them, they just disintegrate immediately. So it's impossible to read them. But, Nat Friedman went over there and, like, put one in, like, an MRI machine, I think Yep. And scanned them. And then to put that data on GitHub and put out a reward for a couple $100,000, maybe $1,000,000 if you could if you could decipher these with the raw data.
Speaker 1:And so there's a bunch of people that worked on this. There was, like, a discord and a bunch of people kind of, like,
Speaker 2:came up with interesting people. Is, like, the new tech elite, like, Matt Freeman, you know, Gil, you know, Gil. Yep. They're all starting to, like, do things with their money.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:And Elad Gil was on, a podcast recently, and they were, like, the hosts repressing him. I'm, like, well, how do you, like are you gonna monetize this or whatever? And he's just like, no. I just think it's cool.
Speaker 3:Well, this
Speaker 1:is the thing. People have been saying, like, we need better elites because for a long time, the elites would make a ton of money, and then they would just, like, constantly money launder all their money through, like, these fake nonprofits that just, like, made the world worse Yeah. Instead of actually and building, like, just a huge new library that everyone can enjoy. Yeah. It it it's just, like, there's so many amazing institutions.
Speaker 1:Like, going back to, like yeah. Yeah. Like like, so many great monuments and, like, the Louvre and, like, all these, like, cultural monuments that live on for so long. We're just, like, some rich guy. That's that's a lot
Speaker 2:of thing is, like, trying to build new monuments.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Or or just, like, oh, someone built, like, a huge house, like, Hearst Castle, you go and visit. It's, like, it's, like, kinda crazy guy, but now it's, like, this monument that just lives there forever. And that's amazing.
Speaker 1:Instead of just like, oh, cool. You have, like, 6 different glass boxes that look identical in every major city. Like, who cares? Like, stop spending your money that way. Go build a castle and then turn it into an art museum in 50 years when you're when you when when your descendants are are fighting over the estate and can't sort it out.
Speaker 1:So it just turns over to the to to the public or something. But anyway, Luke is the is is great, and he, just open sources his ideas, I guess, and just gives out these great ideas for free. He says, he wants to start or he proposes a space based pizza delivery in 100 seconds that uses reentry heat to cook the pizza. It's kind of like, It's like it's like what what happens at what happens after Varda, you know? Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. If you make stuff going in
Speaker 2:in space
Speaker 1:You can make pizza in space. Yeah. And so
Speaker 2:I mean, it it, I mean, Domino's should ask, you know, one of the best performing stocks of all time, should be calling him up and, like, giving him, like, a 8 figure contract
Speaker 1:to
Speaker 2:figure this out.
Speaker 1:It's like, Rod's kind of odd. Now they'll be, like, you know, garlic bread from God. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:No. I I I'm excited for the future. I yeah. It is interesting to think about, like, even, you know, is somebody doing, like, drone pizza drone delivery? Right?
Speaker 2:Because, like, doing all your packages, like, kinda doesn't make sense. So, like, if you could get a pizza
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like, within, like, 2 minutes. Yeah. That would be so cool. Yeah. So who's doing, like, you know, drone delivery for food?
Speaker 2:Because, like, if you think about it, it's, like, the issue with drones is, like, they can't carry, like, that much weight. Yeah. So, like, ordering your, like, from Whole Foods, your grocery run doesn't make sense. But, like, getting, like, Domino's, like, absolutely makes sense. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it makes a lot more sense than these sort of, like, surface based, like, autonomous, like, delivery devices. So
Speaker 1:Love it. Should we stay on drones with, Jason h Lou says
Speaker 2:We talk about What? We've got an order of magnitude more tweets.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. I mean, it's gonna it's gonna be, yeah, 5 hour show. So buckle up. Get in here. You were like, when I when I look in our chat where we post these tweets, like, Jordy was posting them at, like, 3 AM and then again at, like, 7 AM.
Speaker 1:So it's the the strongest evidence that money doesn't sleep.
Speaker 2:Exactly. It's
Speaker 1:just you scroll in the timeline and
Speaker 3:just chilling.
Speaker 2:I kinda at her head account, I feel bad because I'm, like, John's out there, like, having, like, a good time. And I'm just, like, blowing up his phone. Like, it's, like, 4 tweets in the podcast. 3 minutes.
Speaker 1:This is more important than any other work. Yeah. So, there was a scoop. The biggest US drone maker Skydio, which supplies Ukraine, faces a supply cranes crisis after China bans the company from selling batteries to the group. And Jason says, 1, if you're in a US if you're in if you're a US based drone manufacturer, you really should not be using Chinese made batteries.
Speaker 1:Not only in principle, but also China can ban you from buying 22. Jesus, Skydio has been using Chinese made batteries. I mean, this is true in, like, so many hard tech companies where it's just, like, there's no other option. Like, for a long time, like, small drone motors, I I look I did, like, a survey because I was I was thinking that, somebody should I don't know if it'd be a good, like, venture company, but somebody should start, like, the American drone motor company and just focus on motor manufacturing. There's one there's one company that makes these small, like, brushless motors that go on the corners of the DJI drones, basically, in the US.
Speaker 1:And, and they outsource to China after a while because it was, like, some family owned thing. They needed better margins. It's very rational at the time. They didn't think it was a big deal. And now they do make some motors, but only, like, larger motors in the US.
Speaker 1:And I was, like, it's almost, like, it would be, like, a charity project that needs to be some government incentive or something. Like, it is very, very hard or just, like, a big meme and then all of these things can just pile into it. And then we get we we get, like, this dividend of this company that might not be, like, a power law winner because it's just manufacturing one part.
Speaker 2:I figured it out. What is it?
Speaker 1:Tell me.
Speaker 2:I'm not gonna say it on the podcast.
Speaker 1:Okay. Okay. But, we'll figure it out.
Speaker 2:TV, incubation. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But, but, yeah. I mean, it's tough. A lot I I like retooling supply chains takes decades.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And because it's not just it's like you say, like, Chinese made batteries, but it's like, well, what are the ingredients to those batteries? Where did those come from? Who does the packaging? What about the machines that package the batteries? Like
Speaker 2:This is so critical in defense tech specifically because it's the first thing that somebody's gonna turn off. Yeah. You know, when
Speaker 1:And the average tech person, like, only understands the supply chain, like, maybe in chips in the sense that they know that, like, you know, OpenAI
Speaker 2:is partnered with
Speaker 1:is partnered with Microsoft who who is a hyperscaler who builds a data center that buys NVIDIA chips and NVIDIA is built at TSMC and TSMC uses ASML and ASML uses Trump mirrors and lasers from Philips and stuff. And so people understand a little bit of that just from like the chip war book and a few other books that have been out there and like, as anometry and, Dylan Patel and whatnot. But beyond that, like that that same like complexity of like, oh, there's like 7 different companies in the supply chain that are critical. Like, that applies to more than just chips. It applies to everything.
Speaker 1:Chips are just, like, the hot thing right now, but it's important for motors. It's important for batteries. It's important for so many other, pieces of supply chain. So it's gonna be a lot of upheaval for these companies.
Speaker 3:A lot of
Speaker 2:Yeah. The the even I've I've tweeted about DJI before, but that that Americans buying
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:A spy network for China is, like, the most insane thing.
Speaker 1:Well, I I I interviewed a guy at Hereticon who is buying a ton of DJI stuff because he's figured out how to run open source software on it. Because he says that the Chinese, code will call home and talk home. We actually proved this in, in Sunnyvale back in 2012. We were in this, like, hacker house and we downloaded from the Internet Red Star Linux, which is the Linux fork that North Korea uses. And when we put it on a computer, we installed it on a computer on a private network so we could monitor the traffic.
Speaker 1:And as soon as you fire it up, it starts calling home. And it's just like, all the keys are logged. So if you install this anywhere not even in North Korea, it's, like, all going back to home. And, obviously, you know, DJ
Speaker 2:is probably doing
Speaker 1:the same thing. But it but the hardware is the hardware. And so he's, like, I I don't wanna say exactly what he's buying, but he's, like, he's very bullish on, like, some of their products that are that are very high quality as long as you.
Speaker 2:Yeah. The hardware is fantastic. And it was probably heavily subsidized because it is a spyware.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Should we move on to Brandon? Says AI is going to take our jobs. I'd like to see AI take my job. It's 3 monster energy white ultra zero sugar, dumbbells, steak, and just a Creed album.
Speaker 2:The only thing it's missing is,
Speaker 1:is XL nicotine pouches. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's, like, what how is he describing his job? Just just eating steak, lifting weights, drinking energy drinks, and listening to Creed, like
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think this is, like, I think this is more of, like, it's more it's more of, like, you you need to look at the deeper meaning of the tweet which is that, like, your job is to create and maintain this vessel that allows you to, carry out God's will.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Right? It's more about building the vessel that that builds the thing. So, I think that probably went over people's heads, but I think more that's all the more reason to cover it.
Speaker 1:Somebody needs to build the monster energy for LMS. Something like, you know, how you can adjust the temperature on LMS to, like, make them a little bit more creative or not. Like Yeah. When are they gonna create the stimulants for these? Like, can you get them drunk?
Speaker 1:And then can they
Speaker 2:That is, like, that's an awesome product for somebody to build, which is just, like, it's a layer. It's a thin layer of LLMs, but you can just, like, make it drunk. Yeah. Exactly. Give it a monster.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
Speaker 2:Give it a Percocet. Yeah. Give it some Fentanyl. You know, like like that.
Speaker 3:You can
Speaker 1:kinda do that where where where you in the prompt, you can just say, like, you are you are drunk. Like, you
Speaker 2:know, you
Speaker 1:are you are a McKinsey consultant.
Speaker 2:It's like bad cocaine.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Give me your best ideas. Yeah. Let's go. Should we move on to liquidity?
Speaker 1:He says Harvard Business School graduates after starting a search fund and acquiring a Kentucky based trash management company doing 2,000,000 of last 12 months EBITDA. And it's, Vivek Ramaswami, I think getting out of a trash truck or something like that as a as a as a politics stunt. Yeah. But, what is he saying here? And and what is the trend of Harvard Business School, graduates starting search funds and acquiring, like, real businesses?
Speaker 1:This is like a big name right now. Right?
Speaker 2:So all of this basically started because of Twitter Mhmm. Which people were like, hey, instead of going and working a soul sucking job at Goldman Sachs, you can buy a business that does $3,000,000 of EBITDA.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:You can lever it up, use some debt to acquire it, and then you could be, you know, make your investors whole within the first few years. And then from that point on, like, you know, you could work 20 hours a week and be making a few $1,000,000 a year and, like, living the dream. Right?
Speaker 1:And you're kind of like an owner operator at
Speaker 3:the moment.
Speaker 2:You're an owner operator.
Speaker 1:And it's it's the entrepreneurial dream without needing to go from 0 to 1 in a very competitive area. Yeah. All that.
Speaker 2:And so there were some big there were some big successes and people that had figured this out, like, decades ago or a decade plus ago where they were creating these things called search funds which is, like, you fund you create it's like an SPV almost to buy a company that you haven't identified yet.
Speaker 1:So it's basically, like, investors come to you and they say, Jordy, I I trust that you'll be able to find something good and manage it well. So Yeah. When you find the company, I'm in for a $1,000,000.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Or I'm in for
Speaker 2:And I think sometimes there's, like, some
Speaker 1:some some upfront as a management
Speaker 2:fee. Yeah. Yeah. Where
Speaker 1:yeah. I'll give you I'll give
Speaker 2:you some spend because it's better to spend 2 years and buy the right
Speaker 1:Flying around and meeting people. So there's gonna be some operational expense for their salary upfront, but most of it is gonna come in the purchase. Right?
Speaker 2:And the challenge here is that people, when they are looking at a business, they're, like, okay. I found this trash company. It does 2 and a half $1,000,000 a year of earnings. Like, it's been operating this place for 20 years. It has these contracts.
Speaker 2:It's basically a localized monopoly. Like, it's awesome. Oh, and by the way, they don't use computers.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right? Like, they they, you know, look at all the, like, software that we could add and all this stuff and
Speaker 1:It's paper and faxes.
Speaker 2:That that's the reason that that, like, there are great opportunities there. Yeah. They're they're still using a fax
Speaker 3:machine.
Speaker 2:Right? Yeah. And so that's, like, what people get
Speaker 1:fixated on. The move on
Speaker 2:to DocuSign. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It'll be cheaper.
Speaker 2:And we'll have 5 account reps. Reps. Yes. We'll have a great customer experience. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But in the trap is that they think that, oh, it's our it's just fundamentally a great business, and we're gonna layer in technology and make it even better business.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And the the the the tough truth is that a company is basically as good as its management. Mhmm. And if that person had been let's look at the trash company in a local, you know, small local market that's doing a few $1,000,000 a year in EBITDA. That person running the company, yes, he may have, like, used a really old generation iPhone and, like, not checked his email that often and used a fax machine or whatever. But if he was, like, effectively the the mayor of the town and everyone loves him and he can call anyone up at any point and get anything done.
Speaker 1:This is guys.
Speaker 2:He's got his guys in town and he's got a relationship with the person that decides, like, which contract, like, it's, like, basically, you know, if you come in and you're this, like, search fund MBA bro who comes in and you're, like, yeah, I'm just gonna buy this company and, like, digitize it. And you realize, like, the employees are, like, difficult to find and retain and they hate you. Like, the contracts are, like, much more oriented around, you know, much more oriented around, like, relationships. And you're getting in there and you're realizing, like, woah, like, this company doesn't need to be digitized. Like, it needs somebody who's spent their entire life running a trash company in this small town.
Speaker 2:And the owner sitting there being, like, wow, this company was unbelievably time intensive. Mhmm. They just gave me $10,000,000 and now I'm, like, one of the wealthiest people in my town. Oh, and by the way, I get to buy back the business for nothing, like, 3 years when you, like, run it in the ground and I'm gonna hire back all the old employees I'm gonna get all my old contracts back so like
Speaker 3:I'm a
Speaker 1:lot of a DocuSign contract?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Cancel DocuSign. Add add another
Speaker 1:Buy buy a new fax machine for $50. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I think a lot of like The Polycom? People talk about these search funds and they're, like, oh, be careful. You're just gonna buy a job. If you buy if you buy a company with less than half a1000000 of earnings, you're, like, buying a job.
Speaker 1:A job. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But, like, in that the real risk is, like, you lever this thing up and you realize that it was a great business because that founder was a great person. They just didn't look like, you know
Speaker 1:They didn't fit the normal mode of, like, oh, they're like a Stanford dropout hacker and they know programming. So they're so good. So they can install DocuSign. That's great. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Interesting. I wonder how it'll shake out. Maybe the Harvard Business graduates will move on to something else. It is interesting how there's, like, you know, these eras of trendy, you know, career paths that come out of HBS, like, you know, as banking.
Speaker 1:Then it was, like, y c for a while. Now it's, like, the search fund. I wonder what the next thing is gonna be.
Speaker 2:Search funds are just financial innovation, which is very American, and there's always gonna be a next one. Maybe the next search fund is just pumped up.
Speaker 1:I was talking to, Sebastian Malabai about this. Do you know him? He wrote the power law, and, he wrote, More Money Than God about hedge funds. Kinda he the kind of historian. And, I was asking him, like, what do you think the next, like, big, like, you know, VC tech bubble will be?
Speaker 1:And he was very bullish on biotech. He wants to, like, write and write the next book on, like, the flagship pioneering model, the company that, like, incubated Moderna and all those companies. And, like, as that becomes, like, more, like, productized Biotech's American. Yeah. And and and just biotech becoming, like, right now, it's in this weird, like, it's it's a very financialized, but not in, like, the VC realm where you take a company public really early.
Speaker 1:There's all this, like, tech transfer between the between the, the the universities. It's, like, very complex. But if it becomes a little bit more easy, like, oh, you're just, like, installing some LLM and there's an AWS for lab
Speaker 2:Pumped up
Speaker 1:on for biotech. Exactly. That's the thing. Well, stay tuned because I think next week we're gonna do a deep dive on Ozempic. It should be fun.
Speaker 1:Let's move on to this. Spain says every name is, like, completely ridiculous.
Speaker 2:The nation the nation of Spain.
Speaker 1:Yeah. No. S p a n e, which is Sperry's and Nike something. I cannot believe BlackRock invited a bunch of influencers to their ETF launch party like it's like it's a tequila brand. Truly incredible stuff.
Speaker 1:So there's a TikTok here that I imagine is someone pumping some ETF.
Speaker 2:So why is is BlackRock the creators of, what's that big festival in the desert?
Speaker 1:Burning Man, creators
Speaker 2:of Burning Man. Why is Blackrock, you know, like, innovating with, like, understanding media and, like, doing, like, tequila style launch parties when our presidential candidates haven't figured out they should be vlogging yet.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Right?
Speaker 2:So, like, this is an example of the private markets at work
Speaker 3:Sure.
Speaker 2:And understanding how to generate and capture and monetize attention. Yeah. I'm the only thing I can say about the street is I'm pissed that we weren't invited.
Speaker 1:Seriously, BlackRock
Speaker 2:has anybody been is anybody more publicly a fan of BlackRock and their various financial products and services than us?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'll wait for sure.
Speaker 1:I wonder what the ETF is for exactly. I need to dig into it. But
Speaker 2:doesn't matter what it is as long as people can speculate.
Speaker 1:They need the ETF more things. Like, the the the the Bitcoin ETF was a big moment. The the, the Ethereum ETF as well need need more ETFs. I mean, they're essentially yeah. Like shitcoins for in the public markets.
Speaker 1:So you can just trade. Yeah. It's great. Back to American exceptionalism, since I'm in Europe right now, I figure it's time for another reminder, says JSON based man. If we all just consumed less and then Batman slaps him and says, fucking build something, 10 k likes people.
Speaker 1:Yeah. This resonates with people.
Speaker 2:I think I, I put this in because at hereticon, the gut the thing that triggered the most people was the the deceleration. Yeah. She was saying, like, we need to, like, stop so long and put a bunch of stuff in the atmosphere to, like, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But yeah. Well,
Speaker 1:he's kind of building something too.
Speaker 2:It's awesome that this is now the the the dominant Yeah. Thought on x.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And there, I'm sure, will be some negative externalities to that. But, but overall
Speaker 1:Yeah. Europe struggling with the innovation. Not much.
Speaker 2:Yeah. The the the craziest one, who we could overlay this is, like, out of Europe's, like, top 100 firms, like, all of them or 95% of them were created over a 100 years ago.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's all, like, the legacy fashion brands, the the car companies. Yeah. Really stylish. It's interesting that that there's no, like, you know, dividend from that.
Speaker 1:Like, you don't hear about, like, oh, yeah. This guy who spent his time at LVMH, like, has spun out and started some, like, new hot brand that, like, grows and, like, runs the same playbook in the same way that, like, you know, Instagram was, like, wasn't, wasn't the founder, like, an intern at Twitter. And so it was clear that, like, like, he, like, you know, cut his teeth in social media.
Speaker 2:That's the thing with moved on to
Speaker 1:the next thing.
Speaker 2:I do think it happens in fashion, but the issue with fashion is you could be fashion's such a weird market because you could have there's, like, a brand here in LA called, like, Cherry, which is, like, seemingly really big. Like, they have partnership. They did a partnership at at f one with, like, Red Bull. And, like, they're, like, they have a ton of attention, but, like, they're small business. It's really
Speaker 1:hard to break it through in this.
Speaker 2:And so a lot of these people go work at LVMH and leave, but then they build a business that does $50,000,000 in revenue, and you're never gonna hear about it. And maybe in a 100 years, it'll be, like, iconic.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's hard to become an iconic brand.
Speaker 1:Especially if you take that example. You gotta you gotta own a 100% of that business and make your life's work. Yeah. Oh, well. Let's do, this
Speaker 2:We should do a deep dive on Laura Pianna and Brunello. Could
Speaker 1:be good.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. I'd like that. And we just I
Speaker 1:don't I don't really know anything about the business.
Speaker 2:Yeah. We should only cover the beef, though. Okay. And, like, the drama. Yeah.
Speaker 2:No politics, but drama. Business
Speaker 1:drama is good. I I like business drama. There's tons of that. So Didi says, I gave AI control of my computer and asked it to solve homework 1 of Stanford Discrete Math class, math 61 d m. It found the problem set, downloaded latex, solved every question, and compiled it into a PDF in 5 minutes.
Speaker 1:Will any college student ever do homework again?
Speaker 2:Why do
Speaker 1:you like this?
Speaker 2:So I like this because it validated a bet that I'm planning to make Okay. In the EdTech space Mhmm. Around generative AI. And the core thesis of the bet is that Gen AI and LLMs have completely disrupted all the primary learning modalities that we have, which are tests, essays, and homework. Yep.
Speaker 2:And those are, like, the core things that you do in education as a middle school, high school, college student. And it's clear that they have massive potential for learning, like, creating learning products and having learning experience where we can go to notebook l l m and say, like, generate me a conversation about the Wealth of Nations as though I've read it 500 times. Yeah. Like, get into the real meat of it because I already know what it's all about. But, but, but, yeah, I just think it's, like, fascinating how a technology has so much potential and is simultaneously, like, so disruptive where imagine a college student today is taking a test on some, like, esoteric book.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. And they're, like, okay. I'm they, like, hit a point where they're, like, oh, I don't know what to say anymore. I don't know this point or and they can go to the bathroom and be, like, Chad GPT. Like, how would you compare, like, this book to this book?
Speaker 2:And what would you take away from it? And it comes up with this, like, brilliant thought
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That the college student didn't have themselves. And they go back in the classroom and, like, finish the essay. So it's sort of just an extension of everything that happened with, like, people's fears around Google. It's, like, well, if people can just Google the answer. Like, I remember being in, like, high school, my dad having my dad's math class and being, like, trying to Google the answer to a math problem.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Remember there'd be, like, these, like, forums and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:And Google was, like, very much for, like, knowledge and LLMs are For solving intelligence.
Speaker 2:Intelligence as a Knowledge
Speaker 1:and intelligence, 2 very different directions. Right? But, like like yeah. No one needs to, like, memorize facts anymore or even, you know,
Speaker 2:you memorize your time. Era, it was about Yep. Like, oh, you don't need to memorize facts. Now it's, like, you don't need to think.
Speaker 1:You don't need to think. Well, yeah. I mean, I I was interviewing Tyler Cowen and, talking to him about how AI has changed, like, his teaching because he's a professor, and he says that, now yeah. To your point, like, all of the existing measurement tools are just completely pointless. So who gets the good grade in his class is the student that teaches him the most, which is a complete inversion of the normal professor student relationship.
Speaker 1:Normally, it's the professor teaches everything and the student who learns the most gets the good grade. Now, it's the opposite. The student needs to come in and teach the professor something novel and interesting and then they get a good grade. Which I think is awesome. And I think that's actually, like, a bull case for wanting to go to George Mason and study under Tyler Cowen.
Speaker 2:Totally. Totally. Very interesting. I I think that, yeah, it
Speaker 1:might be, like, you know, overrated in the in the short term and underrated in the long term to still go into a highly intellectual sparring zone even if even if a lot of the traditional measurement tools are irrelevant. Just just being on the path of, like, having those intellectual conversations is still valuable even if you're not even if you don't come away with, like, a test score. But I mean, h p s Tyler
Speaker 2:being at Reticon Miami 2024 at the Faena at the pool with Tyler Cowen before our talk Yeah. Drinking out of a raw coconut
Speaker 1:will be
Speaker 2:a core memory.
Speaker 1:Exactly. That's
Speaker 2:something that I'll Yeah. I'll the LLM of me will be telling my long descendants, you know, like, Jordy did that. He was there. He drank the coconut.
Speaker 1:It's great. Let's, let's close on our final tweet out of the stack of 75 tweets. Trunk fan, prolific poster, posts breaking the new Call of Duty Black Ops 6 has released its 1st integration with Excel and PowerPoint, an important first step to unlock synergies for Microsoft's $69,000,000,000 acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Obviously, just like a hilarious shitpost of, like, excel, like, poorly screenshotted or photoshopped on top of some cod gameplay. But, very very funny that you can these are both, like, highly addictive products.
Speaker 1:We talked about this. How, like, the dudes take I I knew some baseball players in college at UCLA. I didn't go there, but I knew them. They went there. And they would take Adderall when the new Call of Duty came out because they wanted to be able to hit prestige, like, before everyone else.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so they would just stay up for 3 days straight when the game came out and, like, max it. And now, like, you know, 10 years later, they're taking Adderall to, like, work in Excel, and they're still using Microsoft software the whole time.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's all Microsoft. All the way through here. It's all Microsoft.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, I think it's yeah. It's an argument that Microsoft is, like, a 33 160 degree lifestyle brand almost
Speaker 1:360 almost like scope.
Speaker 2:Yeah. 360 no scope. No. It's like it's up there with them on for me because I can go I can play call of duty. I can get on my Thinkpad.
Speaker 2:I can do excel. I could be playing I could be using excel and playing call of duty on my Thinkpad at the same time.
Speaker 1:Fantastic.
Speaker 2:Or even on 2 Thinkpads at the same time. Right? There you go. But, yeah, it it was cool to see, Activision, Microsoft advertising Call of Duty on Joe Rogan. It's one of those things, like, advertising a product to your exact user base.
Speaker 2:It's almost like sending, like, an email, like, blast
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because, like, every single person on Joe Rogan plays Call of Duty actively. But, yeah, I think this goes back to, like, talking about Roblox the other week and, like, being, like, if you're Activision, like, looking at Roblox, if that many users not making money, like, I've I've never heard a Roblox ad. Would they be making more money if if they were advertising me? Like, it's possible. I've got money to spend on Roblox if you just talk to me about the right games, though.
Speaker 1:I I want to play the new call of duty so badly, but I have no time.
Speaker 2:It's just not gonna happen. I know.
Speaker 1:I know that this is what I'm just gonna miss.
Speaker 2:It's awesome that I still want to play it.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't.
Speaker 1:I wanna play it so badly, but oh, well, moving on. Let's do listener q and a. This is a new segment for the podcast. We have our first call in, or or email, from a friend, of the show. So, Steven writes in I'm not gonna say his last name.
Speaker 1:Hi, John and Jordy. I recently had a 9 figure liquidity event, and I'm in the market for a new car. And I'm wondering what you would advise me to buy between the McLaren w 1, the Ferrari f 80, and the Porsche Mission X. So this is kind of like the new holy trinity. Are you familiar with the original holy trinity?
Speaker 2:So, like, back
Speaker 1:in, like, the 20 tens,
Speaker 3:there was the LaFerrari, the McLaren P 1, and the
Speaker 1:Porsche 9 18 Spyder. And the 3 supercars, you know, the 9 18 was, $850,000 at launch. The LaFerrari was 1,400,000. The P1 was over a 1,000,000. They all had 900 horsepower.
Speaker 1:Some controversial features, you know, 918 was, hybrid. And so, but owning owning 3 of those cars, like, it was a really interesting collection because usually people just collect, like, in one brand, but people started collecting across them and kind of all three of those brands, like, it was like a rising tide situation. But we're on the cusp of a new one because McLaren, I think, like, a month ago announced the w one. Yep. But they've announced, like, a bunch of other special cars in between.
Speaker 1:So, like, like, the Sena and some other ones. Yeah. Yeah. And then Ferrari launched the f 80, and they're back on, like, the numbered track. It was, like, a 40, a 50 Yeah.
Speaker 1:Enzo LaFerrari, which would have been the 60 and 70, 70th anniversary. And now they're back on the f 80. It's a $4,000,000 car. Yep. It's v 6 Hybrid.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Controversial, but beautiful. And then there's the, Porsche Mission X, which is all electric
Speaker 3:Yep.
Speaker 1:Which is also super controversial because, I think I think orders have been a little bit weak because a lot of the Porsche fans, they like the they like the the Carrera GT. They like a really manual, really, like, engaging, naturally aspirated e ten or something like that. But what would you go with between the the 3 if you'd had just pick 1?
Speaker 2:Well, to answer Steven's question, you know, 9 figure exit, he the real the real the right answer is buy 2 of each car.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Put 1 put 3, you know, total into storage.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Keep them in the pocket.
Speaker 2:Keep them wrapped. Drive the other ones daily then. Put 30, 40000 miles on them, however much you drive.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But, yeah, it's hard to answer that question without more context. I think that, if he's looking at it as, you know, the guy clearly likes making money. Mhmm. If he wanted to buy a car, drive it, basically get paid for owning it, you have to look in the last generation. LaFerrari is an incredible buy in that $3,000,000 to $5,000,000 range.
Speaker 2:I think that the f eighty coming out only makes a lot of Ferrari more
Speaker 3:valuable. Yep. I think that, there's a lot of issues with the Ferrari brand right now.
Speaker 1:Like,
Speaker 2:issues with the Ferrari brand right now. Like, if you you know, they're making some very questionable decisions
Speaker 1:Camilla gas. Which I feel like
Speaker 2:I can comment on as a as a you know, I recently sold my Ferrari, but, as a, you know, a a enthusiast and consumer of the brand. But the interesting decision right now is they made their family SUV.
Speaker 1:Poor Sanguay. Pure blood.
Speaker 2:And then they That has the 80. The the family car has a naturally aspirated v 12 Yep. Similar engine to mine. And then the f 80 sounds like you're when when it's on track running hard
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Sounds like my Roomba. Yeah. Like, it sounds like a Roomba going on in the other room.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so it's just, like, I don't know I don't know if it's European regulatory bodies because these manufacturers are over there, like, putting this intense pressure on to be, like, nerf your cars, nerf your cars, like, make them quieter, make them, you know, and they're gonna argue, like, oh, it actually has more
Speaker 1:power. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so with LaFerrari or, sorry, the f eighty, it is an award winning, you know, system. Right? They they went and they won Lemont with it. Lemont Drive. And, like, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But I just think that you're they're clearly going all the big Ferrari launches that I've seen recently, like, the 12 cylinder you got a ton of hate.
Speaker 1:I thought that was a beautiful car.
Speaker 2:Really? I I think it's beautiful.
Speaker 1:I I don't like the front engine, but I just think the design language is fantastic. And they took a lot of that design language over into the f eighty. I think it's a little controversial, but I think over time people are gonna warm up on it and it'll be beautiful.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like, the black front end is so weird, but it's interesting and I think it'll I think it'll work.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think a lot of these cars too when they announce them, they're specked in, like, a very distinct way. And if you spec them differently, they'll just look dramatically different. Like, I didn't like the 12 cylinder, like, the way, like, the color blocking was. Yeah.
Speaker 2:If you did it in, like, a black
Speaker 1:You could do all black.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I would definitely look like I
Speaker 1:think they won't sell you that, actually. Like, there's or there's something, like, they won't they won't sell it without the 2 tone. Like, they want the 2 tone. They wanna force that in their in their design language interestingly. But, my I mean, so Jordy's pick is get 6.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's 6. Get 2 of each. I think mine would be, wild card go for ignore the holy trinity and get the AMG 1.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:Because the AMG one look. It's a it's a, what, turbo hybrid v 6 or whatever. Yeah. But it's a f one derived v 6. So it's actually a smaller engine.
Speaker 1:It's 1.6 liter. But at least you can say, you know, it's an f one car for the road. Yeah. And it's not It's probably the
Speaker 2:most collectible. It it could easily be the most collectible out of the
Speaker 1:I think so. I mean, they they don't do that many supercars, whereas McLaren, you know, that every few years they're coming out with a speed tail. That was a really special one. But then it's like the center is also really special. And so
Speaker 2:Porsche one is gonna if it follows the Taycan to Ros path, it will be worth half the price in literally a year.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's the real flex.
Speaker 2:Even if you don't drive it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. If you can just buy a new Taycan every year, take 80 k in depreciation, everyone
Speaker 2:will know that's part of that's part of Porsche's, like, effectively, like, scam operation Yeah. Is that they they're, like, oh, you wanna buy the GT 3 RS? Like, buy 3 Tysons.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Exactly. So,
Speaker 3:yeah.
Speaker 2:It's, like, you can pay a $100 over MSRP or you can buy 3 Ticones.
Speaker 1:I just like the AMG one because it's this I mean, it's destroying your Nurburgring records, like Yeah. I don't think any of the these new holy trinity will come close.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I think the Mission X will wind up being too too heavy.
Speaker 2:I would respect Ferrari a lot more if it was actually, like, the fastest car.
Speaker 1:If it's set some sort of record.
Speaker 2:Yeah. If it's set some sort of record.
Speaker 1:They need to do something. There was there's a new car. The isn't the new c 8 Corvette, the the z r one setting, like, a speed record? They went, like, 2:30 something with it. Or it's the fastest American made car.
Speaker 1:And and the sick thing is in the video of them, doing the speed test. The guy driving it is, like, the CEO of the company or like the Oh,
Speaker 2:so I think you're talking about the Ford. Are you talking about the new Ford g like GT?
Speaker 1:No. No. No. No. This is the this is the this is the Corvette ZR 1.
Speaker 2:I think we're gonna see an American car renaissance.
Speaker 1:I hope so.
Speaker 2:Because it seems like the American CEOs are locked in driving their actual cars.
Speaker 1:Yep. Well, kind of. The Ford CEO was caught driving, like, a Chinese car. Do you see this? And he's, like, this is the most amazing thing.
Speaker 2:Oh, maybe I saw the the, like, PR response to that. I'm, like, him getting out of the new Ford Mustang GT car that looks like it's gonna be pretty cool.
Speaker 1:All these guys just need to start tweeting and going. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm concerned. Yeah.
Speaker 1:The beauty of the AMG 1 is that, like, you can just tell people, yeah, I just drive a Mercedes.
Speaker 3:And they'll
Speaker 1:be like, oh, you probably have, like, a Metras or a G Wagon.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And little do they know you're driving, like, limited production multimillion dollar car.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You gotta daily it, obviously. Yeah. With, it has active DRS. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So you
Speaker 1:can, like, change that.
Speaker 2:That's the thing to respect most about Sam Altman is that you dailies hypercars.
Speaker 1:Full sense. Hypercars. That's the most important reason to get him equity in OpenAI because we're gonna see a renaissance in San Francisco and the new car guy.
Speaker 2:More hypercars.
Speaker 1:More hypercars street parked. Yeah. This is the way.
Speaker 2:The techno elite.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening everyone. See you next time.