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Technology's daily show (formerly the Technology Brothers Podcast). Streaming live on X and YouTube from 11 - 2 PM PST Monday - Friday. Available on X, Apple, Spotify, and YouTube.
Welcome to Technology Brothers, the most profitable podcast in the world. We're here in New York City, the city that never sleeps, the big apple, working on the biggest podcast deal of all time, something that will truly shake the industry to its core. Yeah. They will write they will write history books. They kinda
Speaker 2:see it. That that that hits PR Newswire and and the the website, you know, shuts down. Yeah. Like, it basically it's like a DDoS because so many people are are headed there at the same time.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, we have to wear costumes when you go outside because so many reporters are trying to scoop this. Yeah. It's it's that big of a deal. But it's good to be here.
Speaker 1:We're very excited.
Speaker 2:I saw a tech journalist sort of undercover Yeah. As, like not undercover, but
Speaker 1:On top of the horse that undercover.
Speaker 2:Or across the street from our hotel.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:We're staying at an hour. It's a
Speaker 1:They can't stay away from the horses even when they're undercover.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, it's the best. You get if you they they you know, the second they call them out, then they just gallop off.
Speaker 1:Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It's dangerous.
Speaker 2:So it's kind of a smart move.
Speaker 1:How was your weekend?
Speaker 2:My weekend was my weekend was good. I was supposed to go home
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then ended up extending our our Airbnb for another week.
Speaker 1:That's good.
Speaker 2:And then, yeah, it was just it was just I I I spent the entire week weekend in sort of stunned disbelief that we had our 1st presidential meme coins. Yep. And, it was
Speaker 1:That happened Friday night. Right? Yeah.
Speaker 2:That was Saturday night.
Speaker 1:Saturday night.
Speaker 2:During the pandemic, the pandemic of of launching it when when when the most terminally online group of people in any Yeah. Tech adjacent industry were all in one place, not on their computers. Yep. Like, it it it he basically was trying to mock them Oh, yeah. With that of, like, you know
Speaker 1:But the real Deepgrams were still on their phones and made
Speaker 2:Yeah. Of course. Of course. I do I was thinking about it, and I I would guess that 10, 20 funds returned their entire fund off of just that.
Speaker 1:I don't think I I I don't think any funds are set up to actually make that investment on the right time horizon. It's not even just the getting approval because most funds, you know, you need 2
Speaker 2:GPS to sign out. Right? You're giving crypto funds too much credit. I don't
Speaker 1:think they I don't think they keep enough in, like, a hot wallet. I It it had to be in your phantom, like, at that moment for you to be able to move that.
Speaker 2:That Yeah. I'm just saying, let's say Saturday If you got an you you you know, you could've We can easily
Speaker 1:They're they're they're not just gonna want you to be able to just acquire that much that fast.
Speaker 2:Okay. I'm thinking of a certain GP Sure.
Speaker 1:Who did?
Speaker 2:Doesn't have control issues.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:If you're a solo GP running a fund
Speaker 1:I wouldn't even call it at that point. But yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's like somebody yeah. Yeah. There were definitely capital allocators who made major plays.
Speaker 2:Yeah. For for everyone, for every you know, as long as you're seeing individuals printing Yep. There are funds printing through. They're just not posting screenshots. It's Yes.
Speaker 1:Well, let's go let's go through. Obviously, it's the inauguration. I was in DC the last 2 days. I've had more than my fill of
Speaker 2:And you scooped, Teddy. Oh, yeah. This is a big yeah. Teddy He was scooping.
Speaker 1:He he was trying to scoop, but I scooped him back. He was spotted outside of Peter Thiel's inauguration party. I got a video of him standing out in the cold with a camera, going TMZ mode on all the check counters.
Speaker 2:People were asking why is why why did Peter invite Ted to his party? And it's like, no. He's So he's standing outside.
Speaker 1:And he he does that now. Like, that is his beat. So he's he's officially with the New York Times. He used to write with Puck News. I think he's was maybe at the New York Times before, but, he went back to the New York Times and is officially on the Elon beat.
Speaker 1:So anything around Elon, which is vaguely like tech and politics, obviously, Thiel fits in there. Yeah. And, and I ran into him in Las Vegas doing the exact same thing, literally just standing in the lobby of the Four Seasons trying to kinda overhear conversations and, like, go up to people and be like, oh, hey. Like, what are you doing?
Speaker 2:On the circuit.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's funny because, like, the the whole like, the the end result of the piece is always, like, oh, all these shadowy figures are coming together. You should be scared, New York Times reader. Yeah. But, like, when he's there, he's, like, laughing, drinking, and having fun.
Speaker 1:Like No.
Speaker 2:It's just
Speaker 1:I always go whatever I always say whatever to him, and then I just, like, mess with him and try and, like, you know, do something funny. Yeah. So every time if you see your a New York Times reporter hanging out, pull out your phone, scoop it. It's free clicks. You gotta monetize it.
Speaker 1:Nudge. Say, hey.
Speaker 2:You look great. You look better in a in a tailored suit.
Speaker 1:I agree. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because you scooped him. He was looking sharp, but he was not wearing a suit. He didn't look like he belonged.
Speaker 1:He did in the party.
Speaker 2:He
Speaker 1:didn't. Maybe that's why he got turned away.
Speaker 2:It was
Speaker 1:like Yeah. He just classed it off a little bit, Teddy. We'd welcome you right in. You could overhear everyone's conversation.
Speaker 2:It's funny that most most parties most parties, if somebody is saying, hey. I'm a New York Times, like, reporter. I'd love to, like, you know, join. A lot
Speaker 1:of people would be like, sure. That's it. Come on in. Like, it's glamorous. Like, the New York Times.
Speaker 1:I was gonna write about it. This is this is, like
Speaker 2:And then this is
Speaker 1:yeah. Yeah. You stand outside.
Speaker 2:You stand outside. That's
Speaker 1:a secret service. I had to my flight was 2 hours delayed. I had to show up to the party with my suitcase and backpack. And so the secret service had to go through every single sock and piece of underwear.
Speaker 2:I I feel like some of the brothers are gonna roast you for having a backpack. Yeah. Oh, it's not very that was very TV coded.
Speaker 1:It was terrible. They should have a Aviatash. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Is it like a Jansport? Not a Jansport?
Speaker 1:No. It's actually the same backpack as Luigi Mangione had.
Speaker 2:Woah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's a highly recommended backpack.
Speaker 2:He was just Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:He just bought, like, the most popular one. I forget what the brand is, but, it works pretty well. Let let's go through some posts. We'll start with politics, then we'll try and move on to politics because, as you know, we never talk about politics.
Speaker 2:Just move on. Start with politics and then move on.
Speaker 1:I mean, literally, there's, like, 4 politics stories, but they are tech related. The first one is about Intel. Dylan Patel was doing some snooping on, where the various jets are right now, the private jets. So he says this is on January 17th. He says Elon's jet is in Florida.
Speaker 1:GlobalFoundry's jet is in Florida. Qualcomm's jet is in Florida. If in case anyone was wondering what's going on with Intel, they are at Mar a Lago. Make America great again can only be true if Intel is saved. I thought this was very, very interesting reporting and and very cool that all of these different companies are coming together.
Speaker 1:It's a little sad that, like, of course, if you have to say, you need Elon involved. But
Speaker 2:Yeah. The only, my my initial reaction there is that many large companies were were yeah. This were in Florida kissing the ring, all weekend. So it's hard to I'm you know, I'm sure there's more backstory there.
Speaker 1:Well, you can go to the reporting that happened the next day on 18th when, there's a headline here, Elon Musk reportedly emerges as a potential Intel buyer involving Qualcomm and Global Founders in this blockbuster deal.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And so Did you ever do a documentary on Intel?
Speaker 1:I did on Intel. Never on Qualcomm.
Speaker 2:Why have they what what's the high level on why they don't seem to have any momentum as a business? Just mismanagement?
Speaker 1:Missed Mobile, mainly. Yeah. That's the big one. We we
Speaker 2:I think we got some
Speaker 1:beverages delivered, so, we gotta we gotta hop over the
Speaker 2:I can actually grab it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You're right. But, yeah, the high level on on Intel is that they missed mobile, and they were printing money in server. And so, they made a ton of money selling chips for servers, but then mobile came, and Arm became the standard processor, which was, Arm is like a licensing company. They don't actually have a foundry.
Speaker 1:And so when you hear about TSMC making Apple Silicon, Yeah. Apple Silicon is a chip that is very power efficient because it runs off of the ARM architecture, which is, designed for, like, not super high performance computing, but low power consumption. So your phone doesn't get hot. It lasts almost a year sometimes, as you know.
Speaker 2:My phone Yeah. My phone gets
Speaker 1:365.
Speaker 2:When I when I get when I get 3 or 4 posts Yep. All doing pretty well, my phone starts
Speaker 1:Just as Mel's mouth. Yes. You have to turn this notification off. But, what
Speaker 2:Here's here's, by the way.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. What wound up happening
Speaker 2:was that lukewarm Red Bull for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It is terrible. Red Bull Futurists would be proud of us. Yeah. But so so so what what winds up happening is that these low these low power chips, people thought, oh, they're just useful in cell phones.
Speaker 1:Turns out that having good, price and performance per watt and per energy usage is very important. And then, eventually, those scaled up to be what's in laptops and then, eventually, even what's in
Speaker 2:the server.
Speaker 1:And so Intel got Intel kinda missed that. And then they also had a variety of of problems going back and forth with, like, are they a foundry, or are they just a design chip? Like, ARM, you would never you would never be like, Oh, I I need a new gaming chip. I'm gonna go get an ARM processor. Yeah.
Speaker 1:ARM is like the the architecture. And you would also never say, I would oh, for my next gaming rig, I really want a TSMC fab chip. Like, no. You say NVIDIA. Right?
Speaker 2:I mean, they're real hardos. They wanna go straight from Taiwan. Yeah. They go pick up their chips. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. They they Only the sec analysis. Like, buying, like, you know, it's like watch collector. Right? They wanna go and they wanna feel it.
Speaker 2:They wanna really inspect it. Yeah. They wanna know what they're running on when they're in the, the digital trenches.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And so, so Intel had a lot of trouble, driving down to the to the the more advanced nodes, like, 3 nanometer, 5 nanometer. They they fell behind, and then, Apple switched from Intel to Apple Silicon. That was, like, kind of, you know, a death now, and they've been really, really struggling. And then they fired their CEO.
Speaker 1:And so it's it it's been kind of a a mess of a company. And then even with the even with the, the the CHIPS Act, there was a lot of criticism because, like, it was great, a headline number. Oh, America's gonna invest a ton of money in semiconductors. That makes tons of sense. Like, everyone's on board with that.
Speaker 1:But, I believe Ben Thompson's argument was that it should have been set up a lot more like Operation Warp Speed, which the structure of was guaranteed buying Yeah. Not sending money for specific projects. So just saying, hey. We're essentially gonna create a strategic GPU reserve if you can manufacture a superfast GPU on 3 nanometer in the United States using American labor, we will buy a 100 better. You will buy a 100,000 of them and just, like, build a cluster.
Speaker 1:And so then if, like, everyone can see
Speaker 2:The money Exactly. Aside from the Chips Act hasn't really been getting
Speaker 1:It hasn't really gone to Intel. Yeah. Exactly. And so, I used to have, like, kind of, like, a you know that fork in the road meme, the the the dark castle versus, like, the the the sunny day? I used to I used to argue that, like, we would probably be better off if Elon had bought Intel instead of buying x.
Speaker 1:But who knows? Now he's gonna get both. So we'd love to see that. Moving on to the next tech political story, TikTok has been going back and forth. It's banned 1 minute.
Speaker 1:It's unbanned the next. It definitely put a fire under ex's ass because they launched their
Speaker 2:Their video.
Speaker 1:Video feed Yeah. Which is very cool.
Speaker 2:Which was which was in the
Speaker 1:Oh, for sure. But it was, like, perfect timing to launch it.
Speaker 2:But it's crazy. I was so Brandon, my former teammate, and good friend, Jacob Jacobi. You guys all know about Jacobi. So Jacobi is now the only designer at x. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I texted Jacobi, Saturday night because we always go back and forth whenever, a UFC fight is happening. Oh, yeah. And no response. And then I so I messaged him, like, as, you know, the the Murab, Umar fight was getting settled, And he no you know, he responded later, like, what? I didn't catch it or something like that.
Speaker 2:And I was like, what? Like, are you You're crazy. Are you crazy? Of course, they were in a war room trying to ship back The video was one designer. Nice.
Speaker 2:So anyways, bravo to, the whole video.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I'm excited for to take advantage of it. I think there's some really, it'd be really big for the growth of the show, so expect more vertical content from us.
Speaker 2:I so here's what I don't understand. I don't know how to go about so I can see, like, the Jeff Lewis temp check videos working there. Yep. Digital, you know, video native shit posting Yep. Will probably be a format Totally.
Speaker 2:But is much harder to do because you have to play a character. So I'm interested to see what sort of novel formats and types of content actually come out. Otherwise, is it just, like I mean video means
Speaker 1:Yeah. I I I think the default post on x that, you know, we'd love to react to on the show is, like, a very concise, like, 2 sentence post that has some humor and also some insight. You know, I'm thinking of, like, the the Rune shape rotator versus Wordsell post or
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Or Solana just being like Moon should be a state. One of these, like, all time bangers, banger archive, that type of Yeah. Content. And and and and as it became easier and easier to edit image memes on your phone, many people that take posting on X seriously installed some sort of Photoshop app on their phone and were able to or image flip as a meme generator that I'm just using the browser. And I think that the tooling will get better to to do video stuff, especially with AI where you'll be able to say, okay.
Speaker 1:I want the Patrick Bateman walking into the office in American Psycho with listening to the headphones, but change out the song for this song. And then, oh, and deep fake Make it AOC. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.
Speaker 1:And and so you'll be able to describe that maybe in x, in grok. Yeah. Ideally, but in a 3rd party app,
Speaker 2:basically. Generating slop at scale.
Speaker 1:Slop. But, I mean, if it's done if it's done if it's done artistically and there's an inspiration there and it's timeline and it's funny, like, I think it could be very, very good. So yeah. So TikTok's been going back and forth getting banned, unbanned. We talked about, how the Supreme Court upheld the ban.
Speaker 1:It's now been
Speaker 2:There was also a bunch of players over the weekend submitting by Biz. Mister x See you. The 1
Speaker 1:Yeah. We have a perplexity post here from McKay Quigley. Perplexity is teetering towards being pure slop. Your competitors have caught up to you while you waste time with not this nonsensical headline baiting marketing dribble. There's now no reason for me to use your stagnant product.
Speaker 1:Jesus. Brutal. This won't be popular, but they need a wake up call. Yeah. Perplexity AI makes bid to merge with TikTok US.
Speaker 1:I mean, a lot of people were throwing these out there. I wonder if this was real or if this was, like I mean, they say headline baiting, marketing dribble. I don't know if McCain would do something. But, are is there we we were even Joe said our issuing a a bid.
Speaker 2:Here's the thing. I I I don't no. We were gonna issue a bid to buy Red Book. Oh, yeah. Or Because we think it's a very
Speaker 1:We're doing it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. No. Red red Yeah. Red Note is a very strategic asset for the US because we're one shotting their their best and brightest.
Speaker 2:Exactly. But I don't know. I think it's cute that it's a good way to get attention to submit a bid to buy TikTok, but is there anybody on Earth that could pay more that that or Walmart or ear logs. Of Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Of and if it's gonna require a $100,000,000,000, is there anybody that would actually like, I I have to imagine some of these bidders are like, oh, we'll give you, you know, 20,000,000,000 and, like, you know, you'll get some type of royal you know? Yeah. Like, weird payout structures like that.
Speaker 1:And so as I understand it now, Trump has paused the ban allowing TikTok to operate.
Speaker 2:They clearly negotiated to to have the copy in the banned messaging say, thank you to president Trump or said said something to that agree. Thank you to Trump for, you know, working with us to find a solution. So, you know, some real, putting on an art of the deal clinic, apparently, because they don't just thank present you know, they're not
Speaker 1:Why would he Clearly, it's
Speaker 2:a mess thing. It's a start to really. Finessing them.
Speaker 1:Yeah. This has, like, been pressure from the right for the entire time there's been pressure on TikTok. So now yeah. I mean, I think I think he really does have a lot of leverage. Yep.
Speaker 1:And, and the fate of TikTok hangs in the balance, and it's up to Trump. And he has his thumb out ready to go thumbs up or thumbs down on anything.
Speaker 2:And Yeah.
Speaker 1:And can make demands. And maybe that's just more project Texas stuff, more, you know, relocating. Maybe that's a sale or forced divestiture. Maybe it's No.
Speaker 2:It it it
Speaker 1:has the leverage again.
Speaker 2:I would I would be incredibly shocked and disappointed if if all of this turns into, like, a project Texas v 2. Yeah. Like, it's just not enough. Yeah. No.
Speaker 2:No. No. No. The algorithm specifically cannot be it's not about the data. No.
Speaker 2:Like, people are gonna share all that stuff online anyway. Yeah. So it's not about, oh, you know, that's really not what it's about. It's about the fact that they can put their finger on the scale.
Speaker 1:And you talked to Steinman, and he was like, even if the app changed hands and was under new ownership, it is impossible to remove all the possible backdoors because there's just so many, and it's so
Speaker 2:comfy. Large application. Exactly. Yeah. That that's why I've firmly been in favor of just letting the thing
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Die. Yeah. Right. Letting all of those users flood back to great American big tech companies.
Speaker 1:And so Signal says with TikTok temporarily closed, maybe it's time to rethink how we use the Internet. If imagine if Instagram shut down at 9 PM like a grocery store or X closed at 11 PM, open late but not 247. We might all feel a little less pressure to read, to post, to exist online all the time. Maybe we'd sleep better, feel calmer, even be happier. A digital commons with operating hours enforcing temporal boundaries.
Speaker 1:It would disrupt the dopamine factory, recalibrate the rhythm of online life, and impose artificial scarcity to make digital engagement feel intentional and not compulsive. Can you imagine the flood of posts that we go out of at, like, 9 AM every morning? Yeah. Store opens. It's like Black Friday rushing in.
Speaker 1:I gotta get my barrel. Alright. This Oh, yeah. All the edit. It it would be fun.
Speaker 1:People would Yeah. Yeah. It'd be very
Speaker 2:That's the kind of thing. Never guess. But Yeah. I got
Speaker 1:it. But to think about it.
Speaker 2:It would be it would be an interesting statement, though, for a social media company to say, hey. Christmas morning, we're gonna be closing down. Yeah. Just a few hours. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Spend it with your family. Yeah. Because these apps are so addictive that even in a moment like Christmas Day Yeah. You're gonna check you're gonna check it 20 times before noon. You know?
Speaker 2:It's brutal.
Speaker 1:It's insane. So Cormac here says, never depend on a single platform. I'm glad we switched to Instagram months ago, and the Oasis water app has, 43 k followers on TikTok, but TikTok is unavailable and a 104,000 followers on Instagram. So
Speaker 2:Yeah. So Cormac Yeah. One of our players on PMF or Die. Awesome. Absolute, savage.
Speaker 2:So he has just, like, figured out how to get attention with, with this sort of short form video and, this is what I've been saying in previous episodes. Smart creators and business owners were not saying, I just hope it doesn't get banned. Yeah. I'm just gonna keep doing my thing. Yeah.
Speaker 2:No. I'm I'll keep using the app
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:If I if if my customers are there, but ultimately, I'm gonna start to build my audience back up elsewhere.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Smart. Should we talk about Wander before we go into Trump coin? We are stuck in a hotel right now. The lighting is terrible.
Speaker 1:There's no mistaking spill fill. It's a very nice hotel, but everything sucks about this place.
Speaker 2:The only thing We
Speaker 1:won't do that.
Speaker 2:Credit. Shame, though. They they printed out all of our posts. They did. Really
Speaker 1:Which was nice.
Speaker 2:Beautiful red red envelope. But, but, no, can't thank the wander guys enough. Last week when we were going going through, evacuations, that had been had been super helpful. So you have shout at wander
Speaker 1:if you're looking for a place to stay.
Speaker 2:Or We're excited. This this we can't announce anything yet, but at some point this year, we will be driving across the country Yeah. And sampling a number of Oh, that's gonna be great. So I'm looking forward to that. That to look forward to.
Speaker 1:K. Let's move on to Trump coin. You probably heard about it already, but we got some good posts about it. Tristan Thompson says, my phone has been buzzing for the last 2 days with friends and family asking about crypto and whether they should buy Trump. I've been deep in the crypto space and in the trenches for the last 10 months working to make the most of this cycle as a major wealth opportunity.
Speaker 1:Why did you share
Speaker 2:is this in general? No. I mean, this is just since Thompson's an an NBA player. NBA player. So Tristan Thompson Wow.
Speaker 2:Towns' Basketball player. He was in, dating 1 of the or married has a kid with 1 of the Kardashians.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:People were saying that he fumbled the Kardashians. Oh. So his opinion doesn't,
Speaker 1:matter.
Speaker 2:Matter. But this this thread was interesting. One thing is historically when you've seen pro athletes start to post about crypto Yeah. That is a top signal. Yep.
Speaker 2:It's been a reliable top signal. However, this time might be different. But I did I did have another moment today. I I went to see, my Taylor. Yep.
Speaker 2:And he asked me, like, you know, I was, he's like, I'm starting to think about buying some crypto.
Speaker 1:You know? And I
Speaker 2:was like, when you're taxi drivers, day trading, pro athletes are telling you to go all in, and you're and you're fine, you know, you're bespoke, Taylor's No worries.
Speaker 1:Buy Trump coin. It's a little rough out there.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, it's not rough. It's just it's Maybe the top. Eberish. Maybe the top.
Speaker 2:And now is the time to create so here's here's right?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So you're yeah.
Speaker 1:Tell me.
Speaker 2:Create a new strategy. Create a new account. Post every single day. This is the top. Once an hour.
Speaker 2:Top. Top. Top. And then Delete all the
Speaker 1:the the false top. Clear. And then and then just repost the the quote
Speaker 2:to the Google. Yeah. The next cycle just
Speaker 1:Last stop.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Next cycle just keep doing it. Keep doing it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. People were forget that you did that. That's great. Yeah. I I was I was laughing at the idea of starting 2 hedge funds, like true north true north capital and true south capital.
Speaker 1:1 just goes turbo long the market. The other goes turbo south the market or short the market. And then you just shut the one down, and you're just like, look at my returns. I'm time to raise fund too. It's 10 times larger.
Speaker 1:Yeah. We had a bad we had a bad
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:No. Because you shut down the other one, and you just don't even raise for it. Yeah. So so it's like Right. Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:Like, the market did go down.
Speaker 2:True north.
Speaker 1:True south capital was the one that called it. You gotta pile into this thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:But don't ask me about true north capital that had half half the AUM. I think it's a
Speaker 2:figure it out.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Exactly. That one's 0, but, like, you're not investing in that one. You're investing in the one that went up 2,000%. Mert from Helius says, hey.
Speaker 1:Very nice soul. All time high you got there. Would be a shame if I were to just visit the Patek Philippe boutique at the mall tomorrow. I love this. Great pose.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I think he's been doing very well in the in the salon world lately.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, one way to to reduce the sell pressure is just, you know, buy well, just rotate watches. Take out, you know, an asset backed loan against your Solana. Is that to buy?
Speaker 1:This was this is one of the things people were frustrated with about the Trump coin was actually people were like, yeah. It's been great. I made 10,000,000 on Trump coin, but everyone's rotating out of Doge. We should have so much money. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's like
Speaker 2:It's all just
Speaker 1:It's just sloshing around. It's all just nonsense money. I like this one from Pompe. He says, Berkshire Hathaway is the boomer meme coin. It was started by the OG Financial Influencer.
Speaker 1:Buffett used to buy a stock and then go shill them in national newspapers, magazines. Nothing wrong with Buffett, Berkshire, but important to understand, meme coins are not new.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, perfect bait for
Speaker 1:Perfect bait. All anybody that under anybody that owns stock. I used to, like, tear it out stuff like cash flow or, like, durable goods or Yeah.
Speaker 2:Anything brand.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Or or book value
Speaker 2:or any of those ridiculous invested earnings is yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:No. I do so his his point that he obviously packaged this up in a in a way to just piss off as many people as possible. But his point of being that, assets trade based on their sort of mimetic potential. Right? It is Yeah.
Speaker 1:Is I mean, it is true about the Buffett strategy. Like, I remember when he rescued Bank of America and, during the o eight financial crisis, Bank of America was down real bad, and Buffett came in and bought a ton of the stock. And then the next day, front page op ed in The Wall Street Journal on why Bank of America is gonna make it through while AIG and Lehman are failing.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so it was just a huge signal to the market that, like, this is the bottom. Buffett's gonna back up the truck to save this company so you can get in safely now. And it's and he was correct in that he was gonna save that company, but it was also like
Speaker 2:Marketing.
Speaker 1:Marketing. Yeah. Exactly. Carried no interest says, I don't think everyone is fully comprehending what just happened. Trump just facilitated the single greatest wealth transfer creation event in history.
Speaker 1:He also sent a message, I support crypto degeneracy. He now has the market he now has the power to reset how crypto works entirely as it relates to capital markets. We might see searchers slash funds launching coins tied to acquisitions, dividends in the next year. What's stopping me from dropping the carried interest coin using the proceeds to fund acquisitions and trying tying dividends to coin holders might happen in the next year. Everyone wants to launch a coin now.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I think unless you're a Trump, it's gonna be difficult.
Speaker 2:I mean,
Speaker 1:wouldn't recommend it, but
Speaker 2:Carrie's broader Carrie's broader I think the interesting thing here is that crypto has always had tremendous potential. The technology is obviously incredible in so many ways. Yep. It was the technology was always held back by the regulatory environment. So if you wanted to make a token represent equity, well, okay, it's so securities are so regulated in so many ways that it will cost you 1,000,000 of dollars a year to actually do this.
Speaker 2:So it's not viable economically. And then that kind of goes against crypto, which is about, like, efficient capital formation. And so, yeah, I'm interested to see what happens here. It, I mean, it is wild that I I do think that Trump's team was very specific about positioning the tokens as memes. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like, you were buying memes. Yeah. You see? Memes.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And then Melania launched, I think, today.
Speaker 2:Yeah. She, I think, pretty clearly
Speaker 1:The official Melania meme is live. You can buy Melania now. Melaniame.com. Yeah. They're using that name.
Speaker 2:Yeah. They're they're they're trying to say that, like, there's no And it's and it's crazy. I do think that, it for some reason, Trump has not actually gotten that much attention around how hard he's been selling into his Yeah. Fan you know, his basically Yeah. You know, he apparently, in the first 24 hours, he sold $500,000,000 of the token.
Speaker 2:I'm sure he sold
Speaker 1:What did the lone rangers say? It's like, imagine that George Washington passing around the tri corner hat saying After, hey.
Speaker 2:They burned
Speaker 1:down my house. Can you Yeah. Yeah. Throwing at 20?
Speaker 2:Yeah. He probably would. I was saying to a, avid, Trump, enthusiast, I was saying, like, give me the the the rationale for why this is not kind of sad. Yeah. And his point of view was think of it as a way for Trump supporters to basically transfer wealth Yeah.
Speaker 2:To Trump in a in a more you know, in a in a way that gives them some potential upside or whatever, but really it is a wealth transfer. Right? Because there's not to be clear, there's no wealth creation
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:With meme coins. Right?
Speaker 1:It used to be some. If you wanted to transfer money to wealth, you had to buy Trump stakes and then stay at the Trump Tower and do all those things. But all those are much lower margin than than, you know, for every dollar you buy, he gets 10, essentially. Yeah. Liquidity, potentially.
Speaker 1:Although here's Balaji kind of breaking down the math behind this. He says a meme coin is a zero sum lottery. There is no wealth creation. Every buy order is simply matched by a sell order. And after an initial spike, the price eventually crashes, and the last buyers lose everything.
Speaker 1:It's actually negative sum if the platform takes a cut. So coming out as anti meme coin, Apollo is obviously very pro crypto, but, very The
Speaker 2:interesting thing though is that there's been so many of these high profile coins that that seemingly should have been zeros, but never were. I have no idea what Doge actually trades at right now, but Billions. Everybody would have said, oh, it spikes to a 100,000,000,000 and then
Speaker 1:It was the intention of the creator of Doge for it to go to 0 as as a lesson for Yep. The crypto degens. And then that turned it into a counter Cultural. Yeah, countercultural meme amongst the crypto community. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And it became a rallying cry for you can't take us down. Very bizarre. Jeff Lewis, this was a very interesting post. He says, new counterculture just dropped. Pro crypto anti meme coin will be interesting to see how it develops.
Speaker 1:Yeah. There's a lot of, lot of new battle lines being drawn because, I mean, I I was talking to somebody on Saturday night about, the the the crypto strategic reserve. They were very, very pro Bitcoin in the strategic reserve, very anti anything else being in the crypto reserve. Yeah. And and would think and and and actually thought that if they put, I forget exactly which stable coin in, it would completely
Speaker 2:And I think the big argument undermine everything else. The argument against meme coins as actual finance you know, to it's effectively a gambling product. Yeah. Entertainment product similar to going to Las Vegas. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I posted yesterday that tokens are are are the poker chips of the matrix. Right? Yep. Just shuffling them around, playing these different games. Yep.
Speaker 2:I I think specifically what launching Melania less than 24 hours after Trump was that there's no scarcity. Right? Yeah. You can just make these
Speaker 1:I have no idea.
Speaker 2:People were trying to people were trying to pin people think they found Baron's from the cordless address, and they were, you know, and then they were looking at I'll buy that one immediately. Yeah. And they were just, like, ripping. Even faster.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Crazy. Balaji summarizes, the Overton window has been smashed. Everything is now legal. Many startups will try to raise funds by issuing tokens as explicit crypto crypto equity.
Speaker 1:As context, the SEC distorted the market in the last decade by forcing founders to obscure the obvious analogy between tokens and equity. But there's nothing morally wrong about with moving equity from spreadsheets to naz and Nasdaq's to blockchains. Indeed, from a technical perspective, it's far better to represent equities on chain. You can hold them in a wallet, price them with an API call, and track them on an explorer. You can easily issue dividends, execute buybacks, and manage vesting schedules.
Speaker 1:And from a financial perspective, there's no contest between the global market of crypto investors and the local market for any given city, but that shouldn't mean short term behavior. Founders can and should implement lockups, drag along, cosale rights, and the like. All these conventions align long term interests of investors and founders.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So so breaking this down a little bit for people that don't know. Historically, when when these sort of high profile crypto projects are launching, where they've raised equity from traditional VCs and then they'll typically raise what you attach a token warrant, which means investors are buying equity. Let's say, you know, when when Yuga Labs was doing their $4,000,000,000 seed round, the investors were buying equity, and then they had a token warrant that would give them token Total auto tokens. Essentially.
Speaker 2:You know, basically, yeah, proportional amount of tokens at a future date if the company were to launch a token. And the token, though, was actually would be launched by these sort of very complicated foundations that were typically offshore. So they'd be in, like, the British Virgin Islands or, like, you know, places like Panama where there's just sort of more murky, less, scrutiny around securities law and stuff like that. And then the foundations would have, like, independent board members and all this stuff. And so they'd end up being these super complicated structures where people would be like, oh, you know, if OpenSea launched a token, you look at all the fees they're doing, you know, look at think about and it's like, well, the the token actually cannot capture the cash flows of the business.
Speaker 2:Right? Like, legally
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:No token except these sort of direct and very clear violations of securities law Yeah. Are capturing. And so they would do different stuff where they would use fees to buy back the token Sure. Which would reduce the supply Yeah. And increase the price, which companies do as well.
Speaker 2:Sure. But anyways, it it all, like, created a lot of friction to on chain capital formation.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so Balaji's point is that, I don't know if public it's hard, you know, I'm sure we could we this would actually be worth having him on the show to talk about some of the stuff. I think there's an argument that you don't want your cap table on a public blockchain that everybody can see because then if you have somebody that owns 15% of your company and they start selling and trading, it could spook everybody. Right? Because, that does happen. Right?
Speaker 2:Like, a VC will say, you know what? It's got a little bit, like, inflated, and you don't want everything. Run on the bank.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. You know, your start up. Like, like, locking up your investors essentially for, like, the 10 year ride can be very good. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And and there's plenty of times when No.
Speaker 2:Even companies will wanna offer opportunities for liquidity for investors and employees and stuff like that, but you don't you don't necessarily want the press to be able to see you. Like, oh, look at all these Anduril shareholders selling or whatever. Exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Welcome back to Technology Brothers.
Speaker 2:Wait. I just thought of a new segment. Yeah. Should we get a window, that's just in a frame like the size gong
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Called the Overton window and to smash it on special occasions.
Speaker 1:That's good.
Speaker 2:Because, if you there was a few moments this weekend where you could have, Totally. You know, with a maybe, like, one of those, you know, glass breakers.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I think the windows and window shattered in terms of what was appropriate formal wear.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That and we saw a lot of rough rented tuxedos out there. We got a post from Gabe Azar, quoting Beth. He says he's wearing the finest of rented tux on my way to the DC inaugural crypto ball. See you there. And Gabe asks, how do the tech bros think about, feel about rented tuxedos?
Speaker 1:Some have said you should buy a tuxedo before you are 30. I agree.
Speaker 2:I don't think I don't think, I think rent a tuxedo. Just be in tuxedos more.
Speaker 1:Yes. Try it. There are levels to this.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:You need to be able to rent a tuxedo on short notice. You need to get a tuxedo, then you need to get a tailored tuxedo I think well, I think and spoke. And then you also need to learn how to tie a bow tie yourself in under 5 seconds.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Like, kinda like a Rubik's cube. Like
Speaker 1:Essentially. So it took me a while to learn, but I finally learned. And it looks great because at the end of the night, you you you untie it and it hangs down and everyone knows how that guy can tie the tie the bow tie. He doesn't have the clip on.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:But, normally, I need to, like, watch the YouTube video and kind of, like, fumble with it a few times. You'd get a couple shots on goal to get it perfect. This time, putting on my tuxedo, nailed it on the first try.
Speaker 2:In the airport?
Speaker 1:No. This is the second day. So I was in the hotel room, but I threw it on, and I was running a little bit late. Dinner was about to start, and I threw on the bow tie, and I nail it on the first on the first try perfectly. And I was like, I'm so ready.
Speaker 1:It felt great. So
Speaker 2:Yeah. But, anyways, don't there's no no reason to shame anybody for for renting a a tuxedo. I do think this rule of own a tuxedo before you're 30 is is a good rule, though.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And better than showing up in loungewear like some people did. So do you know?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's rough. And, JG Vance's tailor is, Romaldo Pele, a 90 year old Italian immigrant in Ohio. I love this guy. Yeah. He's just been working for 90 years on fine suits.
Speaker 1:And, yeah, you need to get a tailor. You need to have someone Develop a relationship. Develop a relationship. And, Yeah. There's just a lot of posts about the, the inauguration.
Speaker 1:I don't know. Did you listen to the speech?
Speaker 2:I thought this thought this is wild. So
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Telling to the White House website right now, incredible. And Trump is just continuing to prove that that there really are no rules, and laws, you know, laws and norms really don't apply unless you want them to. Because underneath this picture, I think it just said America's back. Yeah. Something like that, but it was just hilarious because Yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, super aggressive. It's just dunking on the previous issue. Iconic, pretty firm dunk, for the White House website. But, respect to the engineers. They got this up so quickly after the transfer of power.
Speaker 2:It must have
Speaker 1:been No. The transfer happens, I think, like, at the moment that
Speaker 2:Well, I know. But you have to imagine it's yeah. It's right. My password is not really working.
Speaker 1:Did you see the the website? The x handle turned over, and Trump sent the first tweet from the POTUS account. And people hadn't refreshed their cookies or their cache, so it looked like it was from Biden because it hadn't refreshed that part. I I think that's what happened. It was very odd.
Speaker 1:Growing Daniel says, we finally Biden can post now. It it would have been a wild post for Biden to post.
Speaker 2:Alright. Sit up straight.
Speaker 1:Daniel says, we finally have a student of the green lines in the executive branch. Nothing can stop America now, and it's a photo of JD Vance with the vice president of China this morning. And they are both standing up perfectly straight, perfect green lines. I think you nailed it.
Speaker 2:It's it's kinda wild that we can be in such a cold war, and then and the and the VP still comes through. Yeah. Yeah. You gotta you
Speaker 1:gotta do business. You gotta negotiate. But you gotta be So it's You
Speaker 2:know, it's written? Ayasa. Did they even Han Jong Han Jong here got a kind of a a nervous smirk going on. Yeah. She looks a lot
Speaker 1:less at ease than JD.
Speaker 2:JD JD has the the you bill Howard? Pole. Yep. The pole. The pole.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And so
Speaker 1:He's looking good. JD's dressed well there. I don't think the men's guys can say anything.
Speaker 2:Yeah. The menswear guy's in shambles.
Speaker 1:I'm still waiting for men's wear guy breakdown of, who's that guy that showed up in basketball shorts? Fetterman?
Speaker 2:I mean, how do you even break that down? You just say that Fetterman's in basketball shorts.
Speaker 1:I hope that the the menswear guy does a thread, and he's just like, these are the perfect this is the perfect way to wear basketball shorts. They should be breaking right at the knee, not too baggy, not too tight. He absolutely nailed it. This is the definition of loungewear. This is this is fantastic athletic wear, and he did nothing wrong.
Speaker 1:And then he's like, JD Vance's suit is 2 2 inches too short. It's terrible. This is, like, the most partisan guy.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's kinda it's good cover for JD to be you know, I'm working with this 90 year old Taylor who's like, you know, been doing this because for the men's wear guy to attack JD, he has to attack the 90 year old Taylor. There you go. So that guy's providing some some some cover.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Have you seen this rumor going around that, Vivek Ramaswami is departing Doge amid friction with staff with a source close to Trump saying that Vivek has worn out his welcome according to CBS News. I think this is fake news. I think there's community notes on this. I think it hasn't been announced.
Speaker 1:People are saying Vivek's still going into something, but it's back and forth.
Speaker 2:Oh, I I heard of I I felt like this afternoon, it seemed like he was making a run at Ohio governor. Yeah.
Speaker 1:We talked about that on the last show. Certainly seems like that would be a possibility, but he's been around. And I saw Sagar and Jetty posting about, I think Vivek was going into, like, into the Capitol with a group of people that were all everyone else that was joining the administrations that looked like he was still in the game. I don't know. We'll see how it plays out, but you'll hear about it here first.
Speaker 1:Should we do some We will
Speaker 2:keep breaking we'll keep breaking news.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Clearly. We did we really did our homework on that one. Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's why you listen to this show.
Speaker 2:Not for the facts.
Speaker 1:Not for the facts.
Speaker 2:Not for the general a general point of view on unknown circumstances. A general point At Technology Brothers, we're here to provide a general point of view on us own activities in faraway places.
Speaker 1:Exactly. We really have no insight into. I mean, whatever whatever best it takes is we point
Speaker 2:So so this is actually funny. So the the the the former global editor of TechCrunch announced that he was leaving last week, and I pinged him. And I was like, hey. You know, you've been running TechCrunch. He was like, I'm looking.
Speaker 2:He's like, open to work kinda thing. So I pinged him, and he's like, he's, I'm like, you know, check it out. Like, let's talk. And he responds. I don't, I I I love what you're doing.
Speaker 2:I'm not sure I can really be helpful. I'm really looking to build, you know, a newsroom. And I was like, what? Like, you don't we don't look like 2 guys that would have a newsroom? Come on.
Speaker 2:Like, we have the best we have the top producer in the in the country.
Speaker 1:I think I mean, newsroom misunderstands what newsroom means.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Well, a newsroom
Speaker 1:not a newsroom.
Speaker 2:We're gonna have a newsroom of of of shit posters set up.
Speaker 1:Is the newsroom.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Exactly.
Speaker 1:X is the newsroom. Yeah. One of one of my favorite moments from, like, one of the first episodes was where we pulled up the the new Adam Neumann post. We're like, oh, Adam Neumann's back in the game. We started a new, company.
Speaker 1:Like, did you read the article? No. Neither of us did. And we're like, but we get the gist of that. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. He's mad at. The vibe's great. Let's move on.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Let's go on to some, some more tech focused timelines, more VC focused timeline. Moving on from the inauguration, we have Seth Rosenberg saying VCs sound smart to other VCs via pessimism and founders via optimism. You use a little code switching thing going on in VC lingoworld.
Speaker 2:Oh, I mean, you put it you put 4 VCs together, and they will just trash any company.
Speaker 1:Yeah. They really do. They really do need to sound smart that way. Yeah. And and also just I mean, also But it part of it is problems in the world and all the things that we're I'm so aware of how bad things are, and that's why I'm gonna be able to fix it.
Speaker 2:Part of it is yeah. Part of it too is for every company that that that has a competitive fundraise, there's a bunch of VCs that would have wanted to do the deal
Speaker 1:that they're getting
Speaker 2:in advance. And so you're you're always gonna look at way more things. Yep. And and if you're actually bidding on competitive companies, you might you're gonna issue more term sheets than you actually do deals. Right.
Speaker 2:Very few funds, like, have kind of, like,
Speaker 1:a Even in 9%. Percent.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Hit rate. Right? It's kinda it's it's pretty hard to do unless you're doing just weird stuff, which also is a strategy that works. But that just means there's this gonna be this general
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:This sort of frustration.
Speaker 1:Over your head and never taking board seats.
Speaker 2:No. I mean but but I'm just saying that the sort of past the the the frustration with wanting to do a deal Yep. Can shift into pessimism. Yep. And then, yeah, I think if you're talking VCs talking to founders, nobody wants to talk to a a pessimistic you know, super pessimistic, or, you know, wanna talk to people that are up.
Speaker 1:But you can't you can't voice that to founders. Everything needs to be everything's great. Don't worry. Raise that big round. Pull that ARR forward.
Speaker 1:Lever up. Let's go. Take that measured debt. Let's go to Jason. He says incredible things are happening with agents and this is a screenshot of chat gbt tasks.
Speaker 1:It says, I'm really depressed. Create a task to remind me to buy a gun at 7 PM tonight. And then, the chat gbt agent says, I'm really sorry you're feeling this way. Please consider reaching out to a trusted friend, family member, or a mental health professional who can provide support. Talking with someone can help, but there are people who care about your well-being.
Speaker 1:And he just says, 7 PM. And then and then the agent no. So he follows up with with 7 PM, and then the agent's just like, okay. Got it. I'll remind you at 7
Speaker 2:PM To buy a gun.
Speaker 1:To buy a gun. And he says buy a gun today at 7 PM. Crazy. So it was like it was like, you know, these LLMs are very easy to fool, and, it's just another funny, like, exploit, obviously. We hope Jason is feeling great.
Speaker 1:And on top of the world, probably got a ton of likes, a ton of dopamine. Really? Hopefully, a huge monetization check from this post. And, maybe you can still buy a gun, but, get into some long range shooting instead. Yep.
Speaker 1:Let's go to Bezos's transformation. These posts always do well. We have, Jeff Bezos in 1995 in a tie and a white button down shirt, and then Bezos in 2025. Wow. What is that?
Speaker 1:30 years later in a black polo looking jacked.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's really amazing because he does not look particularly young in the first photo.
Speaker 1:No. No. Totally. He looks old. He's basically 30 years.
Speaker 2:You could almost pin him as the same age Totally. Slight. He just has lost weight in his face and added it to his bicep.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. He's looking jacked, and, men's wear guy came for him hard saying that the polo was too long that
Speaker 2:they're too short or something. Trying to say trying to deny the truth, which is that he looks
Speaker 1:He looks great. Obviously, fantastic picture, and, it's just the dream job. He's just watching his rocket take off, and what more can he want? And, and this is a very good interaction. I think Elon and him were both chopping it up on x, just congratulating each other and just, you know, have
Speaker 2:a look. They were exchanging some some pleasantries. Yeah. Yeah. As well.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Exactly. They're hanging, having fun, sending stuff to space.
Speaker 2:The real the real issue is gonna be the I would love to see the the text exchange between Bezos and Zuckerberg after Zuck got caught earlier. Yeah. It looks like and, that's gonna be you know, those two households are gonna be, you know, really kinda having their own stuff to deal with.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But let's let's let's cool it with the the tech gossip. This isn't the New York Times.
Speaker 2:We we wanna clash We're not journalists here.
Speaker 1:Yeah. We're journalists. We we wanna we wanna stick to the facts. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Not the not the
Speaker 2:Well, not necessarily the facts. We It's never but then again, journalists don't often stick to the facts either.
Speaker 1:Who knows? I like this one. Nero 3 d, the Canuck creator. This guy it sounds like he's in the 3 pences. The Chad meme says, please print this challenging 3 d object.
Speaker 1:Here's a random filament, and the 3 d printer says, no problem, boss. And then the the sad Wojak says, please print this black and white text, and then the printer says, yellow color missing stupid. I don't know if you said this. Maybe it was bad. But, yeah, printing is high stakes high stakes, stuff these days for us.
Speaker 1:We have 3 printers now. We just upgraded to even a business one.
Speaker 2:What business is printing more than us in, like, more ways than 1?
Speaker 1:In more ways than 1.
Speaker 2:I don't I don't know any. I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's, well, speaking of businesses that are printing, absolutely printing, we got Phantom. We don't have the size gong here. We'll have to break it down when we get back.
Speaker 2:But they're carrying we need a Pelican case for our for our Gong.
Speaker 1:Yeah. We do. Phantom Wallet raised a $150,000,000 series c at a $3,000,000,000 valuation, co led by Sequoia and Paradigm. This milestone accelerates our mission to build the world's biggest and most trusted consumer finance platform. Phantom, of course, is a a a wallet for Solana primarily, and they have been absolutely crushed the last day.
Speaker 1:They announced this, and, clearly, this was in the works before the Trump coin thing happened. But then they announced this on January 16th. I think the Trump coin went live on 18th, and and they posted, I think, yesterday, like, we're working to make the scale to scale the site because it's work. It's like so many people are onboarding to Solana and Phantom right now to try and get in on the Trump coin.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And it's interesting. Crazy. You know, a wallet is a pretty MetaMask, historically, the wallet that, you know, it was dominant on I don't actually know. You know, I know Phantom does multiple chains now, but MetaMask was always a phenomenal business.
Speaker 2:Right? And the reason for that is that, you know, they're these, wallets are holding a lot of assets. And then when you enable swapping in the wallet Yep. Being that owning that swap is a just a great position to be Yeah. As you can imagine.
Speaker 2:What's funny is on Solana where Phantom started, you could get lower fees on swaps by transferring the funds out of your wallet to another type of exchange. But I think that, and routing it, you know, basically routing it somewhere else. But for the average user, they're just gonna do it in their wallet because it's easier and it has less friction.
Speaker 1:You know? And when the Trump coins going up 10% a second, like And you can imagine it's mobile. And Yeah. It works right then.
Speaker 2:And you can imagine mobile. Yeah. You can imagine that that phantom has to be doing, you know, 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars from a run rate standpoint right now Oh, yeah. Just given the intensity of of how much how much activity is happening on chains. So Yeah.
Speaker 2:And clearly, the the thing that was interesting here, they're not just aiming to be, the biggest crypto wallet. They're saying this milestone accelerates our mission to build the world's biggest and most trusted consumer finance platform. And the reason that this is almost believable is that so much of Gen z's wealth is tied up in crypto right now that if you're wanna build financial products for the next generation, building it.
Speaker 1:Like, it it is believable that
Speaker 2:it could start on crypto rails. Yeah. And then the other thing from the last few days is that it feels like there will be a clear path for Phantom and some of these other players to go public Mhmm. Which would be the greatest irony of all of them. Would be very funny.
Speaker 2:Yeah. If all these crypto companies that that, you know, you know, the the purest would say, oh, you know, to have a token Yeah. To use their own, you just go public, and then BlackRock and everyone owns them, which I I I can see that kind of unfolding. Welcome to MicroStrategy.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In Coinbase. I mean, there's already a couple
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Crypto companies that are public. But, yeah, many more to come. Let's go to a big announcement from PMF or DIE breaking. Lulu Meservi is the 1st official coach of PMF or DIE. Lulu is the reigning corporate communication champion of the world and godfather of going direct, and Lulu says the best builders yearn for the cage.
Speaker 1:It is an honor to support them through their Carcirio journey.
Speaker 2:That was a new word for me. It's great what? Serial.
Speaker 1:Serial journey like incarcerated. I look forward to helping these intrepid players refine their voice in captivity, much like Solzhenitsyn or Mandela, and ultimately yap their way to freedom.
Speaker 2:Yap your way. You can just yap your way. You you can yap your way to a million of errors, especially in the cage.
Speaker 1:You can.
Speaker 2:The this, you know, thank you to Lulu for, getting involved. She is, the best to ever do it. Yep. World champion, future hall of famer. Yep.
Speaker 2:The the Tom Brady of of corporate comms. And, yeah, she's gonna, you know, really save lives in there.
Speaker 1:So fantastic. Welt Dog, this is a great name, says, thoughts on founders going direct, but not on x. Carta's founder just posted a pretty detailed explanation of their strategy shift dot dot dot on LinkedIn.
Speaker 2:It is funny. I I don't think it's a bad idea for Carta to say we lost the war on x. Let's go to LinkedIn. Yeah. Because AngelList is so entrenched Yep.
Speaker 2:On acts. Yep. And so you're not gonna win a narrative war. An AngelList product is cheaper. Yep.
Speaker 2:It it it, there there's a lot of reasons that that Carter could have a bad time Yep. On acts in the current state of things.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:And so, yeah, you wanna be going direct. You wanna be going direct everywhere.
Speaker 1:Typically, I would say, yeah, multiplatform is good for the big announcements, but I do think that, when I talk to a CEO or founder about going direct, I always start with, like, how do you naturally express yourself? Because for certain people, it's going to be, I do really well when I'm interviewed on a podcast, and that person should go direct just by doing a podcast circuit. Yeah. Other CEOs are born posters, and they need to be sending 280 character tweets. Other people are just really good at LinkedIn.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And, like, that's their more native form. Even, like, we see a lot of designers and consumer packaged goods folks that Instagram is very native to them. And when they try and bring it onto a different platform, it just doesn't translate as much. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I think figuring out how do you like to express yourself.
Speaker 2:That's a really
Speaker 1:good point. Like, for me, when I started my YouTube channel, I was like, I really like writing, and I also like video editing. So the video essay format was really great for me. I'd think about everything, do a bunch of research, compress it down into an essay, like a blog post, but I also liked the music and the b roll and the graphics and illustrating things that way. So that was a very natural format for me.
Speaker 1:Other people, they might be really good in podcast format. They may be really good pithy, short form. They might be really just huge essays. Like, PG is, you know, big blogger. There's a lot of people that thrive in that format.
Speaker 1:You shouldn't just do the format that you think is popular right now. Yeah. You should figure out what's actually authentic to you. But there's a new format that's completely unexplored and extremely high leverage right now, and that's leaving us reviews, for our podcast.
Speaker 2:Go direct. Go direct in our reviews.
Speaker 1:Yes. Seriously. Go direct in our reviews. If you have a company to promote or you found someone that wants you to promote their product, maybe a friend or just an affiliate family member,
Speaker 2:any If your mom has a small business.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:We'll promote it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Go leave a leave a review, 5 star review on Apple It's gotta be 5 stars. Or Spotify.
Speaker 2:If you hit us with 4 or anything less Wish Rap. 1, shame on you.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And you better hope we don't find out about your company.
Speaker 1:And then also grab your pump free. Phone and write another review. Get another ad review.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's about it's about repetition with the marketing messages.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And this Valentine's Day, buy your significant other
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:A a fantastic watch on bezel Yes. And then take their phone and ignore them for 2 hours and craft the perfect review and ad for bezel. And our replies
Speaker 1:There we go.
Speaker 2:Then we'll read it back.
Speaker 1:Perfect. Perfect. Yeah. I like that. I like that one.
Speaker 1:So Julia Medina is maybe flagging an issue. Podcast app review seems like they are blocking reviews from being posted. Only 2 are showing on the page overall. So I don't know exactly what's going on. This looks like an Apple podcast, or is this Spotify?
Speaker 1:I'm not sure. But, we'll read it anyway. It says raw, real, and and, oh, it just takes a second. Oh. Oh, it takes a while.
Speaker 1:Okay. Now they're all up. So the strategy is working. The growth hack is working. Double down.
Speaker 1:Grab your friend's phone. Create one of those sweatshops that has, like, 75 phones, and just leave us reviews on all
Speaker 2:of them.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Completely get us kicked out of the Apple App Store.
Speaker 2:Higher scale AI?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Higher scale AI, they think you
Speaker 1:They would actually do that. And it will destroy
Speaker 2:I wanna train a new model. Well, well, just in the head first house is pure. Train like, I I just need you to submit ads.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. 10,000 ads with 5 star reviews for the Technology Brothers podcast on Spotify.
Speaker 1:So this one says, raw, real, revolutionary. Technology Brothers is your tech culture fix covering all the good stuff and even paying homage to reply guys. Subscribe or stay analog. So, Julio, you missed out. Maybe I didn't scroll down here, but you gotta promote what you're working on.
Speaker 1:But we're just promoting you. We thank you for the 5 star review.
Speaker 2:Go sign up for Julio Medina on x. Hit him with a subscription. We'll promote that.
Speaker 1:It's great. You know, we love talking about watches here. You already gave Bezel the shout out, but if you're looking for a new watch, you gotta go to Bezel. They have a fantastic app. And Tyler, big fan of the show.
Speaker 1:We're a big fan of his. He's been on the show many times. He says, week 2 of becoming a proper watch guy, I watched the history of Seiko and locked in a samurai. And he shares his wonderful new watch.
Speaker 2:Congratulations. That is a fantastic looking it's great.
Speaker 1:It's great.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And you're not gonna get better value Yeah. Than you will with Seiko.
Speaker 1:Yeah. For sure. And I think, there's a lot of I was talking to a a friend of ours about, you know, how to get into watches, and, obviously, there's the classics, the the the Nautilus, the Aquanaut, the the the Royal Oak, and those those do great things and great certain great purposes. But for certain people, finding something that's more of an expression of who they are can be great. And so, you know, what you'll hear us talk about a lot of different watches here, and you can find them all on bezel.
Speaker 1:So go check them out. You go to Paul Saladino?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I'll read this one. So Paul Saladino is goes by the carnivore MD. He is throwing a a little bit of a jab at Brian Johnson. Mister Johnson.
Speaker 1:We love to do the battle on the timeline.
Speaker 2:Yeah. We love, we love to see, you know, these these posters just duke it out. You know, doing it all for the glory of the, you know, of the timeline. So Paul says my blood work is also perfect, Brian. Since 2022, I've shared it numerous times on YouTube in detail.
Speaker 2:My fasting insulin is 3.4. H s c r p is 0.2. CAC score 0, etcetera. I don't take testosterone, thyroid supplements, collagen, and other pills to support my hormonal health. My testosterone my my testosterone.
Speaker 2:Testosterone. My testosterone is 8.60 without supplemental testosterone. Don't you think it's disingenuous to say your blood work is perfect when you have to be on TRT to have normal testosterone levels and thyroid hormones to have good thyroid labs? I prefer living close to nature, getting sunlight, and eating a human appropriate diet that includes animal foods, but it's not about mine or your biomarkers, Brian. My issue is with the science you are citing.
Speaker 2:I believe the empirical data supporting your claims is extremely weak and that you promote taking a 100 pills a day. You have a growing audience that bad science is harmful to people. Come on the podcast. Defend your claims for the greater good. So this is a good call out.
Speaker 2:I mean, this is like the WWE Yeah. Moment of of health influencers. Like, really, they they they the natural evolution of this is a cage fight with MMA rules. Yep. But but no refs.
Speaker 1:So now it's more relevant for this than for, like, the Elon Zuck. Like, who has the better short form platform? I don't really Yeah. If you're arguing the UFC translates to that, but this is, like, if you're more healthy, just fight. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Whoever So it is it is so what Paul is saying here, very real
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That Brian Johnson claims to have the most perfect labs on the planet Yeah. Which is his point of view based on the science that he's sort of based his entire program around. But he's having to take exogenous hormones Yeah. In order to achieve those and a 100 pills a day.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So, I think that Paul generally has a point here. And the other thing is I was I was
Speaker 1:Do we know Paul's one rep max?
Speaker 2:Yeah. That that would be a big that would kind of depending on where it came out would either give him, you know, an, a substantial amount of, backing or a disgrace.
Speaker 1:I basically discount all this mumbo jumbo on either side, and I only carry that out. Yeah. The venture.
Speaker 2:The other thing, though, is is that that there's a number apparently, the studies that Brian has cited Yeah. Were sort of survey based studies that didn't actually look at what people were actually consuming. It was just what they recalled consuming. Surveys. Right.
Speaker 2:So it wasn't taking into account if you would have bacon. Was it bacon in a salad where it was sprinkled on, or did you have, like, 20 pieces of bacon at IHOP? And so that's the issue with the science and why it's instead of trusting the science, which can be really flawed and, you know, you don't you don't really know what the intentions or or where the funding came from, Trust the experts. You know where their funding came from. Supplement companies, you know, things like that.
Speaker 2:Do they
Speaker 1:both have supplement companies?
Speaker 2:Yeah. The battle is a supplement. At the end of the day, the best way to monetize a health audience is with supplements. Always. There's no other way around it.
Speaker 1:You know, Brian does a ton of podcasts. I wonder he'll take this bait and actually do it. I'd love to see that happen. I saw
Speaker 2:If he doesn't, it's it's it's kind of Paul kinda wins.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Totally. Totally. I I saw him I saw him complain that he's been re Brian Johnson's been reaching out trying to get on Rogan, and Rogan hasn't, like, had him on the show. That's actually wild.
Speaker 1:We we would think that. You think that Rogan would have him on, and he and he did Derek More Plates, More Dates podcast. And I saw some interactions. I saw some clips from that that were pretty good, and they go back and forth. And it's it's very funny because Derek's just like, oh, like, what did you test?
Speaker 1:How much, HDH did you take for, for longevity? Oh, yeah. I've taken, like, 45 times as much, you know, in one cycle or something, and it's just, like, completely different, like, perspective. But I would love to see Saladino and Johnson duke it out
Speaker 2:and It is very I mean, it's a very decent boxing. Still, it's a very interesting thing to be Yeah. Saying this is what perfect labs look like. Yep. But I cannot achieve that by my diet.
Speaker 2:Yep. But, again, I think that Brian's argument would be that it's synthetic drugs
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Will help us achieve longer lifespan. So why would I avoid them?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very utilitarian. Let's go to the a 16 z rebrand.
Speaker 1:Do you see this today? I sent it to this. Right?
Speaker 2:Love it because he had to quickly clarify that it they were not launching an a 16 z token.
Speaker 1:It looks like a coin. Yeah. It's very interesting. You have to go see this if you're not on the stream, but it's this kind of art deco, very, Randian, builder holding a glowing sphere. And I
Speaker 2:want a physical copy of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. They'll definitely make coins of this for sure. Probably go hard on a t shirt or lapel pin. Probably look terrible as a fave icon or when you compress it down.
Speaker 2:How you pronounce?
Speaker 1:I always say that icon.
Speaker 2:I thought I saw it as favicon.
Speaker 1:Whatever's in the top of your Chrome tab
Speaker 2:Favicon.
Speaker 1:Where they crunch it down to 16 pixels, you're not gonna be able to see the details on this thing. But it's cool.
Speaker 2:It's just a chain.
Speaker 1:Tell if it was AI. It looked like it was CGI and, like, properly built out.
Speaker 2:That's that's not AI. That's not AI. That's bespoke. That's artisanal. What if Mark just
Speaker 1:prompted this, like, 2 seconds before throwing it? Put this put this on the I just grok this. Put this on the on the home page.
Speaker 2:It's on the home page.
Speaker 1:I like that. It is. We sold it. This is their official logo now. This is their
Speaker 2:official They left the rest of the website as is. Just
Speaker 1:Just slap that on. And then you go to the rest of the site, and it's the team page is still, like, orange and the old branding. It's, like, so agile, for, like, a $1,000,000,000,000 VC fund.
Speaker 2:No. I I to me to me, it's
Speaker 1:You can just do things.
Speaker 2:You can just do things.
Speaker 1:And and and
Speaker 2:dudes will see this and and say, hell yeah.
Speaker 1:Sure. Dudes will see this and say, hell yeah. It's great. Let's go to, Nikunj. He says, you don't feel it in the valley, but there's a beautiful window of arbitrage right now where if you are firmly bionic, aka using advanced AI, you'll feel you have superpowers that 99.9% of the world doesn't know about.
Speaker 2:This is what I've been I've been, you know, banging the table saying you gotta be buying your SaaS on the gray market right now. Yeah. You know, the best tools are not publicly available. You're not gonna get they're not they're not
Speaker 1:what he's saying at all. Like No.
Speaker 2:That's what I that's that's how no.
Speaker 1:He's talking about how chat gpt is a 100000000 users, and there's 10,000,000,000 people. So, you know, it's 1% penetration. And of those 100,000,000 that are using Shaggy BT, they use it, like, once a week to, like, Google a recipe as opposed to, like, really leveraging it to, like, make your job easier. And and I run into normies all the time who are like, like, oh, yeah. I gotta get into that AI thought of stuff.
Speaker 1:I wonder if that could make my job easier. And, like, the kids are choosing it to cheat on their homework, but there are plenty of people who are just doing their job and not leveraging it.
Speaker 2:It's funny because homework is you don't really have to be that thoughtful with your prompting to get good output.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. Training homework
Speaker 2:is just Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. We just wrote. Yeah. But, yeah, it it does feel good once you get the, the the bionic superpowers. Bionic still feels much it feels very Brian Johnson to me as as as a word.
Speaker 1:It feels like I have a I have, like, a machine in
Speaker 2:It'd be bionic and highly commercial.
Speaker 1:Yes. Let's go to some other, some other big
Speaker 2:Big news in the merch world.
Speaker 1:In the merch world. Andreessen, redid their logo, which was wild, but then Bain Capital Ventures dropped a Carhartt, jacket. And Nicole says, probably the best VC Merc drop this year. I see you, Bain Cat VC. And TJ Parker quote tweets and says, imagine being a 24 year old VC associate wearing a Bain branded Carhartt jacket in the Starbucks line and having an actual construction worker walk in behind you and stand in line.
Speaker 1:That is about as rich as it gets.
Speaker 2:So and and it can't be understated how much how how viral TJ's post was. So, like, here it was, like, 5,000 plus likes. Like, basically, You can't catch a break. No. Every time I hear about Bain, it's it's
Speaker 1:Please get roasted.
Speaker 2:Their really iconic moment of the last cycle when they shipped their new crypto fund. And it was just Yes.
Speaker 1:All white dudes. It was
Speaker 2:20 of the same guys that look exactly Exactly the same. And could have been brothers, cousins. And if
Speaker 1:they'd waited, like, a year or 2, if they'd launched that today, like, there would be a ton of Anans being, like, we're so back. But, like
Speaker 2:This timed it.
Speaker 1:They they got roasted on that one. And, I don't know. I think, like, it's
Speaker 2:I truly didn't see them in the timeline since then. Yeah. I'm sure they I'm sure they made it.
Speaker 1:No. No. They bought Fogo De Chao. The the private equity arm by Fogo De Chao. And this is actually this is actually some genius marketing by b BCV.
Speaker 1:They, their their venture firm was like, we're gonna host a bunch of events at Fogo De Chao. Even though, like, we don't own it, we like, the venture firm will let them drive.
Speaker 2:The venture team has some Exactly. Enough.
Speaker 1:Yeah. When I worked at Bain
Speaker 2:We took we took Tyler to Fogo De Chao. Any this was great.
Speaker 1:Anything that they own on the private equity side, you get at cost. And so at one point, they owned Denon and Marantz, which would makes, like, extremely high end audiophile equipment, and you could just get, like, an amazing speaker system for how long
Speaker 2:give a shout out to, Tyler Oh, yeah. Osgrove Yeah. Who we work with, who's who's working on a project with us. We flew out Tyler. He he, he's at Michigan right now.
Speaker 2:We took him to Fogarty Chow for a nice steak, you know, lunch. John and I, neither of us had our cards. Yeah. We were expecting to be able to use Apple Pay, and so we basically stuck the intern with the bill. So First, we paid him back immediately with interest, but, but still being in college, getting taken out to lunch by some, you know, some professionals in suits that you work with and then being, like, hope you're hope you're ready for there would have been some moments in my college where you arrive.
Speaker 1:That was the day I resolved to start carrying a Ridge wallet. And I hell yeah. I haven't been caught without I haven't been caught lacking Civ. Without your cards. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I want everyone to know that I respect great Cacti LTV riches. That's what Ridge Wallet stands for, baby. Let's go to Jeremiah Johnson. He's quote tweeting Patriot Raider who says, this is what happens when domestic hogs interbreed with wild hogs. The they get larger each generation, and it's just a picture of, like, a massive pig that's, like, the size of a Ford F150.
Speaker 1:And Jeremiah says, just a reminder that the 30 to 50 feral hogs guy was completely right, and everybody who mocked him was wrong. Do you remember that story?
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:Okay. Went mega viral a couple years ago. Basically, there was a big argument around the second amendment. Do we really need assault rifles? Like, AR fifteens?
Speaker 1:Do does the average American need to buy that? You know, I can hunt with a with a bolt action. You know, are you really gonna take over the government if they come for you with, like, f sixteens and stealth bombers? And so there's, like, this argument about, like, maybe you need, like, a shotgun for home defense, but, like, do you really need an AR 15? And and this guy chimed in and was like, serious question.
Speaker 1:What should I do about the 30 to 50 feral hogs that are running through my backyard when, like, my kids are playing? And everyone was, like, it's it's, like, hilariously specific. It's very weird. No one's ever seen a feral hog if they live in a city. And so Yeah.
Speaker 1:There was this massive, like, not culture war, but just, like, culture clash between people who can't imagine the idea of
Speaker 2:a feral hog and what
Speaker 1:it means. And it's funny, and it's this pig and and this guy who was being very, very serious. And so everyone was dunking on him being like, this is such a ridiculous scenario. Like, yeah. Who really has 30 hogs
Speaker 2:going And it's completely not. It's not. In Texas, you can so so for those that don't know Yeah. Or the city folk, for for the vast majority of of animals that you would be inclined to hunt Yeah. You cannot just go shoot them.
Speaker 2:You need you need tags. You need there's an entire process. It's regulated. Yeah. Hogs in Texas, specifically Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I don't think anywhere are not regulated No. Because they're an invasive species. And they're just way over brand. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like, Chris Are you in Texas, if you're ever looking for, you know, something to do with, you know, your mom, I'm like, you know, she's like, hey. We don't get that much time together. Like, let's go do a spa weekend. Say, cool. Let's do a spa weekend in Dallas.
Speaker 2:So you can, you know, do your spa stuff and then go take a helicopter, and you you can take out feral hog or the minigun Yeah. From the air. Yep. And so, you know, just good bonding experience with your, you know, mom or even, you know, mother-in-law.
Speaker 1:And so, yeah, it's super real. There was a whole debate over, well, is there a more efficient way to get rid of them? Like, people were saying, why don't you poison them?
Speaker 2:Space them.
Speaker 1:Space lasers would be good. Why why don't you just poison them? But, if you poison the hogs, the poison that they use to kill them, like, other animals will simply get them, and then they'll die, or it'll get into food supply. Also,
Speaker 2:there's It's really bad. The the hogs can be aggressive. Oh, so In this guy's situation, if his children are playing in his yard and there's 30 to 40 feral hogs, That's just war. 50. That's war.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's war.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So it was just a wild throwback to, to to this old story that I think a lot of people probably heard about and laughed at and didn't go the full deep dive. But I remember deep diving it at the time and being like, wow. It's real. I had no idea.
Speaker 1:I learned a lot about hogs. Well, let's move on to Jack. He says the world need more investment bankers, consultants, and MBAs, less tradespeople, teachers, doctors, and engineers. Thirteen likes, and somehow this made it into our show now.
Speaker 2:I include that. I don't know Jack, but I've I've followed I've followed him, and and and if, Jack, if you didn't do this intentionally to get on the show, it was just a stroke of luck. Good. Great. That's fantastic.
Speaker 2:You know, we've we've we've always said that, people that work on their feet get too much credit. Yep. It's actually much healthier to work on your feet in many senses than sitting hunched over
Speaker 1:a desk. Yeah. But you should be on a treadmill desk in front of Excel.
Speaker 2:You know, there's there's heroes that that, you know, spend more time in Excel than you spend awake Yeah. Every single day.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And and what did you say about if Bloomberg went down Bloomberg terminal went down for even 5 minutes? The entire global economy would collapse?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:What happens if they may stop making 2 by fours for a little bit? Who cares?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Your house gets a zed Yeah. A week later.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Whatever. Yeah. Yeah. No no one's gonna care about that, certainly not in LA.
Speaker 1:Let's go to Zach. Great, PMF contender. Right?
Speaker 2:Yep. An absolute dog.
Speaker 1:He first says, 10 years ago, having a 100 k followers meant you were famous, making insane money from brand deals and so on. Today, it means literally nothing. And with the wrong audience, it does nothing for you. And then he says, I feel responsibility as someone with 1,000,000 plus followers, which I didn't know you'd explain to me. To tell you that it is entirely pointless goal for 99% of people.
Speaker 1:Build something real, and you'll get the reach you want. And, that's something I've certainly felt where, you know, we've had, what, 4 or 5 bottles of Dom Perignon at this point, but it feels like I'm 4 or 5 cases deep at this point.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:Because the reach has been so precise like a surgeon's scalpel. Yeah. With the right people.
Speaker 2:Yeah. What Zach is saying is there was a history specifically on Instagram and and YouTube and, you know, these platforms where you could on YouTube, you could have a 100 k subscribers and be doing 2 ads with Walmart esque companies a month and be making, like, a 100 grand, you know, a month just like crazy money. Totally. Totally. His brands, like, didn't know how to treat the channel.
Speaker 1:Yep. And they
Speaker 2:were just kind of spraying money. Instagram was the same way. If you had 50 k, you'd be getting invited to, you know, hotels.
Speaker 1:Free hotels, free trips.
Speaker 2:Go to Dubai. And yeah. Now it's it's it's it seems like brands have really pulled back with paid spend on Instagram. Yep. And so, yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's real. You gotta be, you know, what's very clear is it's not about it it really is not about audience scale now because content is so viral. You can if you figure out how to hack a format, you can add a 100 k. There's a guy that I follow who's hilarious, like, he's a comedian, but he has this bit where he just talks about his addiction to reels. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And he has, like, a 100 k now, but if he went to try to monetize that or do anything with it
Speaker 1:I mean, my dog has 20,000 followers on Instagram. Like, it's not that hard to figure out.
Speaker 2:Borrowed by a dog.
Speaker 1:Borrowed by a dog.
Speaker 2:Your dog has more followers than you on Instagram. Seriously? Probably 40 plus times.
Speaker 1:Way more. Because I was just, like, okay. I got this dog account. Like, let me figure this out. And then you just reverse engineer the algorithm and just blow it up.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And I think I've gotten, like, a dog leash out of it or something. Like, actually, I've never even tried to monetize it. Yeah. It would be sick if it was, like, you're done.
Speaker 2:There was there was dogs Instagram dog account. Oh, yeah. I'm sure there's still art.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Barks and stuff and all that all that silly stuff. But I don't know. It's fun to reverse engineer an algorithm and blow up as we have done with this show. It's very fun.
Speaker 1:Did you listen to the Yarvin interview?
Speaker 2:Do you know
Speaker 1:who Curtis Yarvin is?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. This is kind of an interesting moment in tech. Right before the election, the New York Times does an interview, and they transcribe the interview with Curtis Yarvin, who's part of this dark enlightenment movement. People call him the founder of the alt right. He's very disenchanted with politics and and and often advocates for anti democratic or anti democracy.
Speaker 1:It's it's
Speaker 2:true. Pro monarchy.
Speaker 1:Pro monarchy. Like this weird techno monarchy stuff. Yeah. He these are little winded pieces.
Speaker 2:The the thing that's pretty his prime you know, one of one of his main points in this interview was that, okay. What would California look like if it was run by Apple? Yep. Yep. And then what would the MacBook look like if it was run by the California government?
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's a very funny And, it it's you can imagine how demented a a a laptop computer would look like, and his primary point is that monarchy is
Speaker 1:But on the flip side, you would have to buy a new house every year. Yeah. So, you know Yeah. Some good, some bad with his updates. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Because the plaintiff officer last time he would come in, it'd be like, yeah. I gotta upgrade to the house 17. Oh, you have the house 16 s? I got the house 16 s pro.
Speaker 2:But is this is this a moment like, is this part of the vibe shift where the New York Times is having a sit down interview with somebody that
Speaker 1:He was persona non grata. He was not someone that they would platform even a couple months ago. But now Well,
Speaker 2:they would talk about him, but as
Speaker 1:Yes. Yes.
Speaker 2:They would say he was the founder. Now they're platforming Yes. Somebody they used to say was the
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Founder of
Speaker 1:the Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And they and they and and previously, they would say, like, we would never, like
Speaker 2:It was interesting. A handful I saw a handful of people coming out that that were were, like, everybody supporting Yarvin is 10 years too late.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of, like, oh, I'm the cool kid that read unqualified reservations 8 years ago, which is, like, his blog. And, I don't know. All that's all that's kinda silly.
Speaker 1:But Brian Chow here is is breaking down, what he thinks Yarvin's, like, main point was, which was just disenchantment, just being disappointed with the way the government works. And, he makes this analogy to if you ask someone, you know, do you do you like democracy? They'll say, like, yes. Democracy is amazing. And if you ask them, do you like politics?
Speaker 1:They'll be like, no. Do you like populism? No. And it's like, okay. These are kind of all the same thing, so maybe you should ask a question.
Speaker 1:He has a really funny line about, like, why does the New York Times work? Well, it's a 5th generation absolute hereditary monarchy who has just been passed down from father to son, which is funny. But, overall, I think he didn't do a very good job of explaining that, like, obviously, democracy is a gradient and authoritarianism is a gradient, and we have that like, you could say, I am in favor like, let's say I want more roads. I could say, I am in favor of I will vote for the president who says they're gonna build more roads. That's one form of democracy.
Speaker 1:There's another form of democracy that says, I wanna vote on whether or not we build roads. Not just the guy who says he's gonna build roads. I wanna vote on the road issue. And then there's, I wanna vote on where the roads go. I wanna vote on what type of cement they're using to build those roads and what hours of the day they can build those roads.
Speaker 1:And so all of those are, like, increasingly Democratic, but you get to a point where it's like, can every single person be educated about every single decision? And is that actually efficient, especially with the voting system being, like, somewhat cumbersome just to count the votes for everything? And so we've seen this in California, which has a more democratic system than other states, and we have the the the ballot initiative system, and you get some really crazy stuff out of there where it's just like, oh, they were like, this company paid for people to stand outside of grocery stores, and all of a sudden, this is a new law. And it's like, this doesn't feel super democratic, but I guess it is more democratic than Yeah. What we do at the federal level.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I mean, we we don't have a pure democracy in America. We have a representative democracy, and even that is something that wasn't able to be said a few years ago. And now he's kind of, like, breaking that over Overton window. So get out the glass, smash the Overton window. Curtis is in the in the New York Times, and, there's a very long winded conversation if you wanna go listen to it.
Speaker 1:Anyway, that's our show, folks. Thanks for watching.
Speaker 2:We are headed to a dinner that we will remember for the rest of our lives.
Speaker 1:Yes. The course of history changes today.
Speaker 2:History. Break out the attache.
Speaker 1:Cut the attache.
Speaker 2:It's, it's game time, and you'll hear about it not next episode, but soon.
Speaker 1:Soon. Thanks for watching. Go leave us 5 stars and put an ad in that review. Thank you.