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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.
You're watching TVPN. Today is Thursday, 09/11/2025. We are back in the TVPN Ultra Dome, the temple of technology, the fortress of finance, the capital of capital. Rough day yesterday, rough day today. Our show, we're gonna stick to covering tech and finance news, but there are some fantastic journalists out there who are and media outlets who are unpacking the Charlie story and its implications, new developments as they unfold.
Speaker 1:So we wanna recommend following those folks if you are interested in that story. And Yeah. We we just wanna say rest in peace.
Speaker 2:Rest in peace to Charlie Kirk Yeah. And sending prayers to his loved ones and family and Yeah. Everyone in his life. It's absolutely devastating.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So today, we're gonna be catching up on the news that we touched on over the last two days, but we're pretty swamped with Y Combineer Demo Day. Had a great time there. Interviewed a ton of founders. And I Yeah.
Speaker 1:I like the change that we did this year where we asked everyone their favorite entrepreneur, everyone how they made their first dollar. I saw some folks posting that the meme of us asking that question on X to other people. And so it seems like we sort of broke through with that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It was interesting to see how many patterns there were in that from trading
Speaker 1:The opposite. Sneaker. Thought there was no Oh, yeah. There's huge pattern in in that how you made your money. There was like almost no pattern in who's your favorite entrepreneur.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I thought it was gonna be like all Elon and Steve Jobs. Yeah. And it was like all over the place.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But yeah, the patterns and how they made their first money, it was Minecraft servers.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Oh, there was definitely eras.
Speaker 2:Right? And were so many different eras.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Some crypto traders. And then some people who definitely just took the question as like, well, like, after I started the business, I I made a sales call, and we were like, that wasn't really what we're asking, but we're in the lightning round, so we're just gonna move on. Anyway, stay tuned. We will be putting together a a recap video of both of those questions soon.
Speaker 1:And so you can get the full view of that. And of course, you can watch our coverage from the New York Stock Exchange or YC Demo Day in the feed or
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yesterday was a strange show. Yep. It was it was amazing to to speak with Sebastian, the the founder and CEO of Klarna. I think his story is amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah. He's just very cool. I think I came away from that feeling like people have a people gen generally have a a lot of misconceptions around the category. Yep. I'm not gonna go out and make the case that that it's some incredible business, but I do believe this is a business that will, you know, continue to to compound and be much bigger business in, you know, a decade Yeah.
Speaker 2:From now. I don't think it's going anywhere. But the the kind of his intentionality and like why the company, you know, why the company even needed to exist or exist, all these these different things.
Speaker 1:My most botched interview question was asking Andrew Reid, like, so, like, what was it like investing in Clarins? He's like, well, I was a child because it was fifteen years
Speaker 2:I was a boy.
Speaker 1:I I didn't yeah. I mean, he was in college, but I didn't realize
Speaker 2:how It was a long few year they had they made the investment, I think, like, four or five years before he joined
Speaker 1:the firm.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. So But obviously, they ended up
Speaker 1:investing crazy more money. Yeah. Yeah. But still, it was just wild.
Speaker 2:And we just stepped out
Speaker 1:in chat. It was it was rough. We're gonna figure out how to get chat involved when we're on the road. We're still figuring that out. But thanks, everyone, for tuning in today.
Speaker 1:Back to the normal schedule. Jon Exley is here. You know it's gonna
Speaker 2:be great
Speaker 1:day when
Speaker 2:Jon is We missed chat.
Speaker 1:We got David, Kyle, techno chief. We see you techno chief, Suraj, and a bunch of other folks. David,
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yesterday being yeah. Being It's
Speaker 1:the nature of live TV?
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's the nature of live
Speaker 1:Yeah. But Anyway, let me tell you about ramp.com. Time is money saved both. Easy to use corporate cards, bill payments, accounting, and a whole lot more all in one place. They hit 1,000,000,000 in ARR.
Speaker 1:We have been asking Eric Lyman, the CEO of Ramp, is the job finished? He confirmed with us on the phone. So it's not finished. So if you sign up for Ramp, just know. He's keep he's gonna keep building.
Speaker 1:Anyway, we need to dive into the Apple and the iPhone announcement briefly. Obviously, this has been talked about. It happened a couple of days ago. But the post that stuck out to me there were a few about the design, but the big one was that the iPhone 17 Pro now has more graphics power than an m two MacBook Air. I I I have I this is a MacBook Air.
Speaker 1:I don't know if the this might be the m three or m four version.
Speaker 2:But clocked here as an Air guy.
Speaker 1:I just went for it because I was like, I'm traveling more. I'm less, like, in workstation mode. And and so, like, let me give this one a try. And let me see. I have the I have the m four.
Speaker 1:So I I think I have more power here than the iPhone 17 Pro. But even just two years ago, it's crazy to think how quickly the Yep. Chips are shifting from workstation, which is huge, you know, you know, laptop to phone. And so I wanted to talk about what the downstream implications of this are. And
Speaker 2:Did you did you see the camera functionality? Apparently, if you take a you can take a photo holding your phone vertically, and it will give you the lens Horizontal.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Because, again, it's I think it's four I think it's a square sensor that's maybe 48 megapixels. The the How
Speaker 2:are feeling about the the orange? Do you think this is this is Tim Cook signaling that he's a BTC Maxi?
Speaker 1:Oh, I thought it was him talk giving a little nod to Gary Tan, my combinator.
Speaker 2:That's I'm one of one of the one or the other. Clearly. I I Had to be one of the other. Yeah. It is the color the colors I like I like orange.
Speaker 2:I think it's a under underrated color in general. But still, the color options were interesting. Like, no matte you would have thought they would have done a matte black.
Speaker 1:They didn't do matte black this year. They just wow. So they have a silver and a black and like a blue, I think. Something like that. I like orange.
Speaker 1:I I I think it's cool, bold color. I think I think it's one of the ways to stand out. It's McLaren orange, you know? McLaren orange. It's like f one.
Speaker 1:Maybe it's nod to that. Who knows? But they're they're having fun with it. Hopefully, next year, the color I'm pulling for, ramp yellow. You imagine the ramp yellow iPhone?
Speaker 1:It just might happen. Maybe we'll make it happen. But on the tech side, people were pretty there were a couple takes early that were pretty bearish. Oh, nothing changed. Nothing changed.
Speaker 1:And Ben Thompson summed it up pretty well.
Speaker 2:Tim Cook
Speaker 1:I mean, you had a funny banger about this.
Speaker 2:I mean, Tim Tim Cook posted he did post Yeah. The morning of. It was like, days like this make Apple, you know, basically, like, hyped it up as if as though it was gonna be this sort of dramatic announcement. Yeah. And I think people were pretty Yeah.
Speaker 2:Pretty let down.
Speaker 1:At this point, they if it's not a change in the overall form factor, like, you're going to folding phone, It's not gonna be as easy just to talk about completely. But at the same time, it has a bunch of it has a bunch of improvements that I think will have downstream effects that might be interesting and might actually have kind of these, like, viral moments. And Yeah. I'll I'll get into my thesis here. So it has a vapor chamber in it that allows it to cool.
Speaker 1:So if you're in the sun or you're running, you know, you're running some heavy duty app, you're not gonna get your phone's not gonna be as hot anymore. 50% more RAM, obviously, that's important for AI. And then they have a new chip that's designed with the LLM transformer architecture in mind. So the Apple a series of chips, they've always been somewhat AI optimized, but more for just broader machine learning tasks. Now, they're doing the same thing that OpenAI is doing with NVIDIA and Broadcom on chip design, same thing that Google, DeepMind, TPU team is doing over at Google and Anthropix Here's Amazon my and Trainium.
Speaker 2:Here's my post introducing iPhone 4,000, a newer, better iPhone that's lighter, faster, newer, and better by
Speaker 1:How many where did this land? How many likes did this wind up getting?
Speaker 2:Six.
Speaker 1:6,006. And the funny story here, the the little inside baseball, Jordy posted this exact post, like, five minutes earlier.
Speaker 2:Well, so so I originally had this post as a draft. Yeah. And then I altered it. Yep. And I posted it and it complete I had a different picture and I did iPhone four seventy two and it was just completely flopping.
Speaker 2:It got like one like Yeah. On like 300 impressions. Like people hated it. Yep. The the timeline hated it.
Speaker 2:Yep. I just went back to this version, posted it, and then it completely ripped. Never give up. Never give up. You think
Speaker 1:you have a good bit. But the funny thing here I mean, obviously, is funny that Apple always comes out. It's like, it's our most powerful iPhone ever. Because it's like, well, if it was the if you guys messed up and accidentally created a less powerful iPhone, you would just keep selling the current one. You're never going to come out and be like, this year, we're selling one, the latest iPhone.
Speaker 1:But it's less powerful. Because just sell the last one then. Just be like, no new iPhone, because we couldn't make it anymore. Keep going.
Speaker 2:We actually made it. We made it perfect.
Speaker 1:We made it perfect.
Speaker 2:So we're gonna sell
Speaker 1:them. So what
Speaker 2:are you are how are you feeling about the Air? I think that's gonna sell incredibly well.
Speaker 1:I don't know. I'll I'll I'll need to, like, feel it and and and try it. I've never had any iPhone that's not just, like, the biggest and most of like, the the biggest screen, the maxed out one. I've always gone for, the the the most power, the biggest one. I've actually considered carrying an iPad mini just as a phone because I'm so big that my pockets are big enough to carry an You iPad put
Speaker 2:your back pocket.
Speaker 1:Yeah. No, no. I was feeling it. And I was like, you can get it with cell service. And so I think you can get a phone number on there.
Speaker 1:And so you can just have like, pull out your giant iPad Mini. But but I never did that. I've always just stuck to, like, the Pro Max, the big one, the the big screen, but it it's it's easy. The I don't know. The the the interesting thing about the the iPhone Air was this, you know, the whole computer is in the camera bump now, and basically, everything that drops down is just battery and screen, battery and screen all the way down.
Speaker 1:And so people are wondering, like, you know, they could clearly take out the battery in the screen and maybe make, like a pen. Like, they're they're getting so good at miniaturizing like what it means to be a computer that they can put that in all sorts of different things.
Speaker 2:I would be would have been really excited to have an iPhone that doesn't that will sit flat on a surface without a case on it. Because I haven't used cases in many years. I just like the feeling of the phone.
Speaker 1:It is crazy
Speaker 2:that That's they've for just perpetually, on just give me a flat surface. Like, I'm happy for the phone to be Yeah. As thick as necessary to just give me a flat surface.
Speaker 1:And it looked like they were gonna do that with the iPhone Pro because it has this wider notch. So at least if you did if you did the notch evenly all the way
Speaker 2:across nice if it's kind of like Yeah.
Speaker 1:At an angle
Speaker 3:That's
Speaker 1:fine. Then, I guess. I don't know.
Speaker 2:But it's all it's also so funny the the idea of like you have this incredible camera
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then you're just like putting it on like Yeah. I really want you to buy a case. Like it it it's it's like Yeah. A lot of the product design seems driven by
Speaker 1:I don't think that's the real reason.
Speaker 2:I
Speaker 1:I think it's genuinely like people don't like heavy phones. And so you have to balance you need the optics of a camera that's a certain thickness, and then you need the phone to be thin so that people actually carry it around and aren't like, this thing's heavy. Tinfoil hat, yes, it's the case.
Speaker 4:I think
Speaker 1:I just don't think they
Speaker 2:don't don't think they
Speaker 1:How much money do you think they make from
Speaker 2:a year? Mean, they're adding What percentage of people do you think when they go to the buy an iPhone, buy an Apple case?
Speaker 1:I would I would estimate that it's less than 1% of their overall revenue.
Speaker 2:Cases. Yeah. Less than Totally. But you're talking to the GOAT of profit maximization, Tim Cook.
Speaker 1:There's just so many other ways. I feel like you could sell 1% more iPhones if you actually choose this odd choice because people are like, well, yeah, it's the lightest iPhone. It's lighter than the Samsung one. Yeah. It's it's thinner.
Speaker 1:It's lighter. It's it it looks great. And then there might be something about, like, the notch kind of holding on your finger. And so you can actually hold the phone easier with that as opposed to if it was just, like, fully fully smooth. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Anyway But
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, when when you start thinking of when you start, like, the the incremental sales from from, like, design driven decisions like this
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:I do think I do think it'd be significant.
Speaker 1:But Anyway. Anyway. Huge keynote. Filmed on an iPhone, obviously. A lot less graphics this time around.
Speaker 1:If you're doing a keynote, do it on restream, one livestream, 30 plus destinations, multi stream, and reach your audience wherever they are.
Speaker 2:And we have a bunch of people joining from the restream waiting room.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2:Later today. We're gonna have Josh from Lightspeed, Nico Rosberg
Speaker 1:Look at that line.
Speaker 2:Be joining. Oh. Mike and Nir from Obo. Amjad. Amjad from Replit, Alex from Higgs Field, Stefan Cohen from Bain Capital Crypto, Rohan from Sphinx AI, Timothy Lucini from Intramotive, Mark from Nebius who just signed the Massive.
Speaker 2:$20.17 ish billion dollar deal with Microsoft. Huge. And then, of course, Michael from Figure who just IPO ed today on the NASDAQ and the stock is trading up, I believe, 35% right now. So he is gonna be joining us as well.
Speaker 1:Yep. So my my take on the iPhone Pro was you're we're getting to the point where you could run an LLM on device. And even if it's not Apple intelligence, you know, through that API, just the ability to actually distill something that's like GPT-four level and have it be free. Not even an API call that you need, not even cheap on a per token basis, but actually just have something that you can basically drag and drop Cost of the energy. Cost of the energy.
Speaker 1:And no one thinks about it because they charge on the edge, because they charge their phone every night anyway. Yeah. So I was talking to Tyler about this earlier. Try and put into context how powerful an LLM running on device could be with this next iPhone? Because currently, have done it.
Speaker 1:I feel like people have distilled models to the point where they can run locally on phones. But they're not fast or they're not smart. But it feels like we might be at a point where you get to some sort of, like, touring touring test passing plus not waiting
Speaker 2:for Chad is asking if it's Nico Rosberg
Speaker 1:former It is.
Speaker 2:F1 World And now a capital allocator.
Speaker 1:Now a capital allocator. So, yeah, Tyler, what what what is your take as this gets into people's hands? How solid do you think the actual interactions with LLMs could be on on device?
Speaker 5:Yeah. So I think I think it's 12 gigabytes now Yep. Up from eight. Yep. So you can probably run like a like very solid, like, 7,000,000,000 parameter, like, not super quantized
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:Model.
Speaker 5:We've had those for a long time that are like very solid. Like, obviously, look they're gonna pass Turing tests, whatever. Sure. You're probably not gonna be using it for like doing your your like hard physics homework.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 5:But most things that you want from a non device model, like helping look at your emails or doing stuff that you would think of a really good Siri product would do. I think it's totally capable of doing that. I mean, it's like I don't think that Apple Intelligence was bad because the hardware was lacking. It was like I mean, you can it'll be a little bit slower probably to run on cloud, maybe.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Mean, with with my experience with Apple Intelligence was it was just just instantiated in very odd ways. It what they they didn't really have like a killer app there. And it was like a bunch of different things that kind of piped in, and you could like highlight text and then just say rewrite this. All sort of like very incremental gains.
Speaker 2:Botch summaries. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh, the summary's botched, but sometimes that's might be the best feature,
Speaker 2:actually. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's hilarious.
Speaker 2:It's a feature, not a bug.
Speaker 1:We just saw we just saw it in our chat in our group chat where I posted some fake news and and Apple summarizes it as like
Speaker 2:Gabe says, shouldn't be shouldn't Tyler be back in school? Gabe, you must have missed the episode, but
Speaker 1:He's taking a gap semester. He's gap semester.
Speaker 2:He is riding with us.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And so I think it's I think there's like there's something magical about getting the ability to inference a GPT-four level model on the edge for free. Like, you can quibble about the level of intelligence that is, but it is actually too cheap to meter because you won't even have to set up an API key. And so you can vend in a GPT-four level model and then go viral and not have a bill show up and not need to think about monetization, not need to think about anything that's a drag on your just pure virality. You can have a free app that just grows and grows and grows and figure out the monetization later.
Speaker 1:And I feel like this sets us up for maybe something interesting to happen in consumer. We haven't really had that moment of you remember the Lenza moment, the magic avatars? You upload your picture and it turns you into Superman or something and then the Studio Ghibli moment. We haven't had that many viral apps that are purely based on LLM interactions, like text interactions. There's been a couple there was one called generative dungeon.
Speaker 1:Do you remember this? It was like a dungeon crawler text thing. So it would say, you walk up to the dragon's lair. What do you want to do? And you could just type, I brandished my sword.
Speaker 1:And then it was like the dragon That was
Speaker 5:like GPT, too.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It was super low So level, imagine that plus but you can do it on device at a reasonable level, and you can bring in some other UI elements from the iPhone, bring in the camera, bring in GPS, bring in all the other tools that are available just in the iOS, like Swift, like developer kits, the SDKs. I feel like there will be a ton of people that are just building cool, interesting things on the iPhone that could potentially, like, go viral and and then become real businesses.
Speaker 5:Yeah. I I I don't think this will be that, like, meaningful for, like, Apple intelligence because it's
Speaker 1:I agree.
Speaker 5:Not like that's like a product issue. It's not like a hardware issue. But, yeah, I I definitely think for, like, third party developers, this will be, like, pretty big. Yeah. You can do, an you know, if you make some random game, you can now have, like, avatars or whatever.
Speaker 5:Yeah. Like, if if you make the SDK really easy where, like, it's very easy to inference an OLM, you don't have to figure out how to download and then do inference and all that stuff. If they abstract that away, I think it could be interesting.
Speaker 1:And I just feel like we've seen so many there's been so many companies. We talked to some folks at Demo Day who are doing this. They were like, we have this cool AI agent that scrapes your emails and does this. And it's all predicated on you installing a Mac app, which is a really, really hard thing to do. Whereas like Yeah.
Speaker 2:How many Mac apps do you think you've installed this year?
Speaker 1:Oh, it's super rare. It's super rare. I'd you know, I I got something to put the decks together. Like, I literally have a a Chrome. Like, that's the one I installed.
Speaker 1:Yep. I'm looking at my home row, and it's like, it's just Chrome.
Speaker 2:Well, and this is why everybody's obsessed with the browser.
Speaker 1:Truly, truly. Because if you get people over there, then you're there. I have installed apps. And I've installed little tiny apps. We were talking about the workout tracking app, Strong, that I saw my friend at the gym.
Speaker 1:He was using an app to track his workouts. I said, what app is that? I went and downloaded it. You went and downloaded it. It was very easy for that app to, like, loosely go viral.
Speaker 1:And it's a free app, but it doesn't have any, like, AI. It doesn't really need any AI. But could imagine that the viral coefficient of someone downloads an app, they have a magical experience with some twist on top of an LLM, something storytelling, something astrology. Who knows what it'll be? I can't predict it.
Speaker 1:It's as hard to predict as Instagram or Uber, but it's unlocked by having this having this ability for free on the iPhone. And then people are sharing screenshots of, oh, I had this hilarious interaction or this was incredible or I love this app. They create some viral loop. They do some Makita beer type stuff. And then everyone's downloading the app, and then it gets actually really, really big.
Speaker 1:And I don't think it's going to be a I don't think it's going to compete with Chattypitae. I think it's going be a completely different thing. And it's very hard to predict, but it feels like we Yeah. Might And be seeing it's going to require some like really crack level of creativity, like what we saw with Harry Potter Balenciaga, where it's like the technology existed and then someone came up with the great idea to actually go like instantiate it. So if you're going to be mocking that app up, you're going to do it in figma.com.
Speaker 1:Think bigger, build faster. Figma helps design and development teams build great products together. You can get started for free. The Wall Street Journal was also covering the Apple's iPhone Air. They had a whole interview.
Speaker 1:They They had really good coverage of the of the iPhone event. There was a few there was one thing in the the reporting from The Wall Street Journal. I don't have I don't have this particular article, actually, but they did an article with The Wall Street Journal, and Apple revealed that I I believe they said the majority of iPhones, 51% or more, that are shipping to America are going to be made in India. And I'm not sure if it was this cycle, but it seemed like they were taking the tariff stuff really seriously, moving the actual manufacturing capacity around. Obviously, Foxconn, their manufacturing partner is a Taiwanese company, and so they're worried about geopolitical risk as well.
Speaker 1:And so just another data point around Tim Cook. He is not loudly shouting like, America, I'm all in, re industrialize. But he is making moves.
Speaker 2:What was the number he threw out at the dinner last week? Wasn't it
Speaker 1:an I don't know if he had a number. Because who was it? It was Zac had a number. And did Apple have a number too? There was 600,000,000,000 or something?
Speaker 1:Apple has thrown out a number at one point. You're completely right. My point is that we've seen
Speaker 2:The number of thank yous.
Speaker 1:Data points? 12. Oh, yeah. Yeah. The number of thank yous is a lot.
Speaker 1:But we've seen he's invested in rare earth developments in The United States and starting to think about manufacturing internationally. And the pro bullish bet on Tim Cook is that, like, if he was able to set up this in China and he's the reason, he can set it up somewhere else because he's the guy who did it. And so even though he hasn't been really loud about his moves because, obviously, if he says, like, oh, yeah. I'm not gonna be manufacturing in China anymore, then, like, his important business partners over there are probably gonna be like, well, yeah. Like, we're not gonna take your business seriously anymore.
Speaker 1:There are a ton of different geopolitical considerations. It's
Speaker 2:an iconic line from the dinner.
Speaker 6:What is that?
Speaker 2:The cook says, I've always enjoyed dinner and interacting.
Speaker 1:Yeah. If you're getting dinner this weekend with one of your boys,
Speaker 2:just tell It's how how to say something that like no one can can't, you know, cancel you for. Yeah. It's like, I've always enjoyed dinner and interacting. Two things I've enjoyed.
Speaker 1:Is dinner and dinner? He's not
Speaker 2:saying I've always enjoyed dinner with you Yep. And interacting with you. He's just saying I've always enjoyed dinner and everything. Incredible.
Speaker 1:He put he put it on a cliff. I I feel like for watching somebody's like, I was watching the Tucker Sam Altman interview, and there's a certain level of polish that some of these CEOs have when they get to a certain level of media training and public speaking experience, where I think of them more as word rotators than word cells or shape rotators. They can so quickly shift a sentence to be like like that, like, perfectly balanced where you're like, wow, every word in that sentence was calculated so that it's the rides this perfect line, like Like Sam was going back and forth with Tucker, and Tucker's like, I didn't accuse you. I didn't accuse you. And if you run back the transcript, you're like, yeah, technically, he didn't.
Speaker 1:It was not an accusation. But then they're rotating the sentences around to try and pin each other. It's like watching a wrestling match. It's crazy.
Speaker 2:Tim Cook said they would be investing $600,000,000,000
Speaker 1:600,000,000,000. Yeah. Okay. So Apple says the majority of iPhones shipped to The US are now assembled in India, meaning they face no tariff. Yet Indian suppliers aren't yet capable of delivering as many of the pro models that U.
Speaker 1:S. Consumers demand, so most of those still come from China. So this is the majority of iPhones in total because Apple makes a ton of those, but they can't make the leading edge. And then the other thing that everyone always talks about with this assembled in India is not the same as fully manufactured in India. Obviously, advantage to Chinese manufacturing prowess is that you walk across the street and there's a CNC shop with 25,000 CNC machines that can just immediately make you any part and make a million of those parts if you need.
Speaker 1:So obviously, it's going to be a long road for them to set up manufacturing anywhere other than China. But it does seem that I would Tim Cook's love taking
Speaker 2:to understand Tim's actual strategy here because I don't think he's saying, I'm gonna invest. He's not gonna be in a huge hurry to invest that 600,000,000,000. Right? He may, you know, he may not actually believe it's it's at all the right decision for Apple, and he's just feeling like he needs to placate the admin. And 2028 comes around,
Speaker 1:and
Speaker 2:he just can pull back or pull out.
Speaker 1:There's also so much to $600,000,000,000 of CapEx over, what, five years or something like that. Like, that includes HQ. That includes data centers for iCloud that need to be local. If you're streaming the F1 movie on Apple TV plus you don't want that stream coming from a data center across the world necessarily. It needs to be cashed locally.
Speaker 1:So there are like so many different pieces of the business. Building more Apple stores, like that counts as CapEx if they build them and they so $600,000,000,000 doesn't necessarily mean like, yes, like we're building like the one plant because this is like a rainforest of complexity that actually delivers the iPhone. It's not just like one iPhone factory, please. It's like a whole network of things. Battery life appears to be a challenge for the Air.
Speaker 1:Apple always says, like, all day battery life, but people are
Speaker 2:like Allegedly.
Speaker 1:What kind of all day are we talking? Are we talking scrolling for eighteen hours?
Speaker 2:Doom scroll.
Speaker 1:Are we talking proper scroll? Proper doom scroll?
Speaker 2:Apple announced Somebody was adding the
Speaker 1:accessory that will attach to the Air. And obviously, that's no longer as thin. The company added what it calls a plateau on the back of the Air and Pro models, adding thickness at the top of the device to fit bigger and hotter chips.
Speaker 2:Not a bump. It's a plateau.
Speaker 1:It's a plateau. Yeah. Oh, they're they're rebranding that.
Speaker 2:Maybe they're signaling that we're maybe this is Gartner hype cycle
Speaker 1:little code. Plateaued productivity. I mean, they have plateaued in productivity for sure. The hype cycle, they they've been through it. They're like, first hype cycle?
Speaker 1:First hype cycle? I've been here. I'm I'm I'm plateauing. I'm I'm getting productive. Anyway, we also talked to AirPods Pro, heart monitor, Apple Watch to detect if the wearer has high blood pressure and, you know, more more news.
Speaker 1:So we'll we'll we'll we'll keep moving on. Ben Thompson also had a great article. You can go read it on Strathecory.
Speaker 2:What was what was he alluding to with the sugar water trap?
Speaker 1:The sugar water trap. I don't know if I wanna give away the the game. We can pull up the actual let me see. Sugar water. That is an interesting phrase.
Speaker 1:I like a good coinage. It Apple took the liberty of opening yesterday's presentation with a classic Steve Jobs quote, Design is not just what it looks and feels like. Design is how it works. That's a great quote from Steve Jobs. Setting aside the wisdom of using that quote when the company is about to launch a controversial new user interface design, that's iOS 18.
Speaker 1:Is that what it's called?
Speaker 5:Yeah. With the new one?
Speaker 1:Which one did we have you update update?
Speaker 5:That was iOS 26.
Speaker 1:'26. They were on the year they're on the year release
Speaker 2:now.
Speaker 7:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But they haven't updated the iPhones to be on the annual release.
Speaker 2:I can't wait. I can't wait for iOS April. April?
Speaker 1:They really should just move to the year on the iPhone too then. It's like, yeah, I I I have the iPhone '26. Oh, because you bought that in the year 2025 like a car. You know? I know.
Speaker 1:It would make sense. Match it all up. Maybe they'll do that. Maybe they'll do that next year. They'll just skip five.
Speaker 1:Because they wind up doing that for the iPhone X. I believe there was never an iPhone nine, right? They went from eight to 10. And then for 10, they called it the X. And they were really dancing around with the names for a while.
Speaker 1:It was like iPhone six and then Max Pro. They were testing all these different things. And they finally defined the note.
Speaker 2:I like modeling it after just cars. It's just the year.
Speaker 1:I I I think that's the future here for sure. So that wasn't the Steve Jobs quote this presentation and and Apple's general state of affairs made me think of, says Ben Thompson. What I was thinking of was the question Jobs posed to then PepsiCo President John Scully when he was recruiting him to be the CEO of Apple in the early 1980s. Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or come with me and change the world? This is what Steve Jobs asked John Scully, then PepsiCo president, trying to recruit him, said, Hey, you're selling sugar water?
Speaker 1:Come over here and actually build something that matters that changes the world. So Ben Thompson says iPhones are a great business, one of the best businesses ever, in fact, because Apple managed to marry the malleability of software with the tangibility and monetization potential of hardware. Indeed, the fact that we will always need hardware to access software, including AI, speaks to not just the profitability but also the durability of Apple's model. The problem, however, is simply staying in their lane. Content can be a hardware provider content to be a hardware provider for the delivery of others' innovations feels a lot more like Scully than Jobs.
Speaker 1:Jobs told Walter Isaacson for his biography, My passion has been building an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products. Everything else was secondary. Sure this is Steve Jobs talking to Walter Isaacson. Sure, it was great to make a profit, but that was what allowed you to make great products. But the products, not the profits, were the motivation.
Speaker 1:Scully flipped these priorities to where the goal was to make money. It's a subtle difference, but it ends up meeting everything. The people you hire, who gets promoted, what you discuss in meetings. So Ben Thompson goes on. He says, Apple, to be fair, isn't selling the same sugar water year after year in a zero sum war with other sugar water companies.
Speaker 1:No one's talking about the Pepsi 2026 edition. It's the same thing every year. Apple is making improvements. The sugar water is getting better. And I think this year's seasonal concoction is particularly tasty.
Speaker 1:It's great. What is inescapable, however, is that while the company does still make new products, the company has, in the pursuit of easy profits, constrained the space in which it innovates. That's somewhat true. I mean, they did take a big shot on VisionPro. They're probably going to continue there.
Speaker 1:Maybe they'll but, yeah, I mean, until they launch the the iCain or the
Speaker 2:Scott in the chat says the Xbox naming convention is in an abstract liminal space.
Speaker 1:That was a wild one. Are you familiar with the Xbox naming convention?
Speaker 2:Max, the s, the three sixty.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, it's the three sixty. And then they should've just done seven twenty, ten eighty, obviously. That's a no brainer.
Speaker 8:People have
Speaker 9:But then
Speaker 1:they wound up doing the Xbox Series X, and then they did the Series S, and then they did Xbox it was the Xbox edition was the one?
Speaker 5:I think it was Xbox three sixty and then Xbox One. And then there was X, S. And then now there's like
Speaker 2:You got to keep them on their Yeah.
Speaker 1:Going back to one is always a crazy, crazy move. But people love doing that. Anyway, that didn't matter for a long time. Smartphones were the center of innovation, and Apple was consequently the center of the tech universe. And now, however, Apple is increasingly on the periphery.
Speaker 1:And Ben Thompson thinks that more than anything is what that's what bums people out. No. Apple may not be a sugar water purveyor, but they are farther than they have been in years from changing the world. Well, if you are trying to change the world, you need to be compliant. You need to be on Vanta.
Speaker 1:Automate compliance, manage risk, prove trust continuously. Vanta's trust management platform takes the manual work out of your security and compliance process and replaces it with continuous automation, whether you're pursuing your first framework or managing a complex program.
Speaker 2:This is Vanta country.
Speaker 1:So other reactions to the iPhone news, we'll run through these. Andrew Clare had a The funny observations.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. I I was just pulling this up.
Speaker 1:If you go
Speaker 2:through these
Speaker 10:and then I'll
Speaker 2:run through it. Yeah. So Andrew Clare says, things I've learned since the iPhone 17 series was announced, everyone hates the color orange. I don't think so. I think this is gonna be
Speaker 1:You said on the day, you were like, I'm getting orange. And and I I would get orange too. I like orange. But I feel like if you have orange and then I have orange, it's like a little bit
Speaker 2:too Did I say I would get orange?
Speaker 1:That's what you said to me. You were like, I'm getting the orange. If you don't get it, if you're passing on the orange, I'm
Speaker 2:doing it. I mean, I think there's just options.
Speaker 1:Have this town for one orange iPhone Pro.
Speaker 2:But we already we actually already have the same color phone, and we only get it mixed up, like, twice a day.
Speaker 1:That's true. The the the display or the background does a lot of heavy lifting there. So
Speaker 2:But no one so so Samsung Mobile US Twitter was was going off Yeah.
Speaker 1:Love it.
Speaker 2:Responding.
Speaker 1:They're boys. So it's on
Speaker 2:US 48 m p times three still doesn't equal 200 m p hashtag I can't. Okay. And then then was quoting MKBHD saying, actual innovation is greater than hype slash Ican'tagain. Wow. Then they said, I can't believe some people had to wait five years for sleep score.
Speaker 1:What? Is this from the Apple Watch?
Speaker 2:Then they said Apple just announced live translation at the z z z note, like sleep. It's calling
Speaker 1:Oh, wait. So, yeah. Samsung is is is taking shots at Apple.
Speaker 2:Shots at Apple
Speaker 1:on every on
Speaker 2:every single
Speaker 1:So they put some, you know, probably Zoomer social media person on on it.
Speaker 2:It's not a Zoomer, though, because they're using hashtags.
Speaker 1:Oh, interesting. Okay.
Speaker 2:And and Samsung had posted in 2022, let let us know when it folds with like one of these emojis.
Speaker 3:Okay. Okay.
Speaker 2:And then they said hashtag I can't believe this is still relevant. So they really were going for this
Speaker 1:The juggle.
Speaker 2:That's like I hashtag I can't campaign.
Speaker 6:Rough. Rough.
Speaker 1:Which is interesting. Well, the the other observations, iPhone Pro is for pro TikTokers. Mister Beast will now solely be using iPhones on his channel. That's super interesting.
Speaker 2:Is this This is because of paid partnership? Or
Speaker 1:I I think he just is realized you can achieve Yeah. So if you tour mister Beast's facility, you'll see that he has, like, closets with, like, hundreds of cameras because they all need to record. So they have GoPros and FX3s and all sorts of different cameras. But a lot of the reality TV is just like random stuff's going to happen. You have to have a camera on it.
Speaker 1:And your budget for that camera, it can't be $100,000 for a a pro cinema rig. You need just like, oh, yeah. Throw a $2,000 phone there. It's super light, plugs in over USB c.
Speaker 2:How cool would
Speaker 3:it be?
Speaker 1:Could save everything in the cloud.
Speaker 2:Cool would
Speaker 1:it be? Yeah. I mean, this is what Apple should be doing. I mean, they should be just constantly going up against DJI and just really keeping the screws to DJI and just saying Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's tough because the gimbal the gimbal might be like a billion dollar a year product line.
Speaker 1:DJI has one. And that unlocked the gimbal that goes on the drone, which is also the gimbal that goes into Hollywood, which is also the gimbal that goes on the RC car. And the DJI, they're now in Hasselblad. So they have lenses and cameras all the way down to the drones. And then they have vlogging gear, and DJI has great microphones now.
Speaker 1:And so they've they've realized DJI's DJI has really leaned into this trend of, like, the prosumer content creator who wants, like, just one notch above but can't afford a Steadicam operator. They just need the Ronin or the Osmo to have a Gimbal. And a lot of people put iPhones on those. But that would be a fun challenge for Apple to go and take the fight to DJI. But, oh, well.
Speaker 1:The conclusion of this post is Tim can still cook. Hopefully, he is putting his team on graphite. Dev code review for the age of AI. Graphite helps teams on GitHub ship higher quality software faster. Get started for free.
Speaker 1:Also, trunk fan said, Apple, after spending $100,000,000,000 on R and D over the past five years, nothing really changed in the design language from the 11 Pro Max to the 16 Pro Max. But Sebastian comes in with a quote post and says
Speaker 2:True zone.
Speaker 1:During these six years, Apple managed to develop the best CPU architecture in the world, outpacing both AMD and Intel. Also, their GPU is nowadays state of the art, which we talked about, beating NVIDIA in some areas. NVIDIA is a $3,000,000,000,000 GPU company. I'd say
Speaker 2:Chat Apple has
Speaker 6:spent their 100 beats
Speaker 2:So MrBeast was at the Apple event.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Was at the Apple event, but I don't know if it's a direct partnership. Like, I think he might just be like, I'm all in on iPhone. I'm buying them. But maybe there's some sort of deal, but he was at it, and that's where he announced this, that he was like, I'm out of the And the big one is that there's genlock, so you can have one time code across a whole bunch of different iPhones.
Speaker 1:Again, very valuable. So if you're filming Beast Games and it's like American Ninja Warrior and a bunch of people are gonna be running around, you're gonna have 25 different angles. It's like, oh, well, like, we need a telephoto lens for this shot. Just put on the 24 the 48 megapixel four k telephoto. Put on the wide angle.
Speaker 1:And then sync it all so when you bring it in the timeline, it can be like, let's cut from this angle to this close-up to this one to this handheld. And they're all in perfect sync. So I'm sure there's gonna be a ton Unfortunately, of really creative
Speaker 2:I don't know if we'll ever be allowed at Apple considering I posted the iPhone 4,000 It might have got us banned for might have got us banned for life. But we love Apple.
Speaker 1:We'll see. We'll figure it out. Love Apple. Also, new iPhone, when you throw it in the orange iPhone, when you throw it in a green case, it looks like Master Chief from Halo. That's cool.
Speaker 2:That's good.
Speaker 1:Also, got a little Michelangelo from Ninja Turtles vibe to it. I think it'll be popular with the kids. Blake Scholes says everything's battery and shows that the entire iPhone is just up up top. Very cool to just see the miniaturization of electronics just flow through so so completely. And, of course, Duolingo traded down on the news that Apple is bringing live translation to AirPods Pro three.
Speaker 2:So Good morning. Morning, Bruce, saying that Al is going to break into Tim Cook's house tonight.
Speaker 1:Well, if you're looking for not quite Duolingo, but AI for data analysis, go to Julius. What analysis do you want to run? Chat with your data and get expert level insights in seconds. Loved by 2,000,000 plus users and trusted by individuals at Zapier, BCG, and Princeton University.
Speaker 2:Legends.
Speaker 1:In other news, Larry Ellison got the number one spot as the world's richest man with $70,000,000,000 gain after Oracle reported quarterly results after the market closed. Oracle surged 40% and he made a $100,000,000,000. There's a funny post in here
Speaker 2:that Well, he didn't make Well, he He's not selling.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he's not selling. But and you pointed out a couple other things that this is the biggest gain since 1999. What happened after 1999? A trillion dollar company is trading like a penny stock. There's this circle of money going on in AI where NVIDIA sells GPUs to Oracle.
Speaker 1:Oracle uses it to power its data centers. Oracle builds cloud on those GPUs. NVIDIA rents compute back via signed deals from Oracle. And so if there's like, if the economy needs external, the economy needs to it cannot be entirely self sustaining just on a few companies. The actual top story is people were wondering like how did they get this backlog so huge?
Speaker 1:And the answer is OpenAI. So Oracle signed a contract with OpenAI signed a contract with Oracle to buy $300,000,000,000 in computing power over roughly five years. People familiar with the matter said the deal is one of the largest ever cloud contracts signed, reflecting how spending on artificial intelligence data centers is hitting new heights despite mounting concerns over a potential bubble. And the Oracle contract will require 4.5 gigawatts of power capacity, roughly comparable to the electricity produced by not one, but two Hoover dams, or the amount consumed by 4,000,000 homes. Oracle shared shares surged 36%, when they revealed it had added $317,000,000,000 in future contract revenue during its latest quarter.
Speaker 1:So Larry Ellison and Sam Altman are clearly, in cahoots working together to, build a next generation hyperscaler. They're teaming up. And so the the question that I had was, everyone thinks this is crazy. Like, this is somewhat like a revision on the Stargate story. Like, the Stargate story was at a high level.
Speaker 1:The people in the room with Donald Trump that day wanted to do a $500,000,000,000 project together. It wasn't like the money had been wired and it's in the company. It was like it was a variety of companies. Was like a vibe
Speaker 2:Let's go big.
Speaker 1:But the vibes were, let's go big. And so this feels like just one notch more clarity into how Stargate and the other projects might kind of come together. I don't think you should look at this as like its own separate, its own thing. It's a piece of the overall story that we're getting around Stargate and just big data center investment around OpenAI. My question Reminded me of
Speaker 2:you the remember that exchange between Elizabeth Holmes and and Sunny Balwani?
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:When they said Tiger. This is our year, Tiger. That was kind of the original Stargate meeting. They were just kind of getting together. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like, this is our year.
Speaker 1:So it was Masayoshi Son, Larry Ellison, Sam Altman, and Donald Trump saying that the plan was for those four loosely, plus a couple other people, to invest roughly $500,000,000,000 over a series of years.
Speaker 2:They were early to using the the half a trillion dollar number. Now you've got Mark throwing it around. You've got Tim throwing it around. And everybody's throwing it around.
Speaker 1:Everyone's throwing it around. And so I guess I'm in the steel man category today figuring out how crazy is that number. Like how should we be thinking about that number? How can we put it in another context? And so one context that I thought would be interesting is if you assume that ChatGPT, like as a consumer product, as an Internet company, is going to be roughly the same scale as Google, amazon.com, and facebook.com and the Facebook apps, Like, it will have similar revenue, similar scale, similar user adoption, similar monetization.
Speaker 1:Like, you get like one ultra compounding trillion dollar, like, consumer style website at the end of the It's like an Internet company, right? You have to support that with data centers, not just, like, be a hyperscaler and then build a cloud business. Like, you need servers to run Instagram. You need servers to run Gmail. You need servers to run YouTube.
Speaker 1:You need servers to run AWS. You need to not just AWS, but amazon.com needs servers. That's why AWS grew out of amazon.com, was because they were investing so much, so many servers in just supporting amazon.com, also Prime Video, Twitch, these, all of their internet properties, aside from their resale business in AWS and aside from Google's resale business, GCP, you need a ton of servers. So my question is like, Sam Allman's saying, I'm going to be one of those. Like, think of OpenAI as the next Google, the next amazon.com, the next Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, right?
Speaker 1:How much did those companies spend to support their trillion dollar businesses? They have a trillion dollar internet business. How much did they invest? And so I tried to pull all the CapEx that they've spent roughly that doesn't go into their cloud business. And the numbers are big.
Speaker 1:Amazon, retail, ex AWS, this sort of in this includes, like, fulfillment transportation, so it's like it's Which
Speaker 2:is significant.
Speaker 1:It's very significant. But $250,000,000,000 Meta's core apps, so ex new AI, ex gen AI, so not counting the llama stuff, that's $130,000,000,000 in CapEx. And we've seen that these hyperscalers are all spending $60,000,000,000 $70,000,000,000 a year, and they've been ramping. So if you work back from that ramp, you're spending $60 $50.40 dollars You add all that up, you're in the $200,000,000,000 range. Google's core services, ex GCP and this is probably the best comp because they don't have warehouses for fulfillment Google's core services, not including Google Cloud Platform, dollars $210,000,000,000 is the reasonable estimate for how much they've spent on the servers just to serve YouTube, Google Search, databases, all that stuff, Gmail, all that stuff.
Speaker 1:And so when I think about OpenAI, what they're trying to do, become in the conversation with as many user minutes, as big a penetration as Facebook, as Google, as amazon.com. That feels like a couple 100,000,000,000 in CapEx. And so you project it forward. And the CapEx is way more expensive because you're doing AI inference instead of just pull the search results out of the database, put the search results in the bag. 300,000,000,000 seems like it could if OpenAI succeeds and if in five years we're talking about it as like, yeah, amazon.com, google.com, facebook.com, chat.com.
Speaker 1:These are the new MAG four, mag seven, or mag eight, mag nine, whatever. Like, if they're in the same conversation as like dominant internet companies that are used by everyone all the time for everything, not a niche, not a Pinterest like outcome, not a Snapchat like outcome, but a Facebook
Speaker 2:Yeah, you factor in
Speaker 1:that thing. Amazon like outcome.
Speaker 2:Inferencing language models today and various all the models is just extremely compute intensive in a way that serving Gmail is not Exactly.
Speaker 1:And this was the story of YouTube. I believe that the compute the CapEx that went into supporting YouTube was way more than Google Search. Because Google Search needed it's just like I
Speaker 2:was thinking this yesterday. There was a number of Hassan Piker was streaming on Twitch Yep. And had 200,000 live viewers Yep. Which probably is costing Twitch, you know, multiple
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Dollars a second.
Speaker 1:Something yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Somebody somebody ran the numbers just on the Apple stream because the Apple stream on YouTube had like millions and millions of views, and they were talking about the data, just the data transfer costs. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so the economics of scaling a consumer AI company like ChatGPT is different. And so it is gonna be more costly.
Speaker 2:Well, the reason that the reason that so Oracle and OpenAI are now incredibly linked. They're betting on each other.
Speaker 11:Yep.
Speaker 2:And both have to execute pretty much perfectly. Yeah. Otherwise, there's gonna be absolute chaos.
Speaker 1:And so on the absolute chaos, the bare thesis, it's this feels like 1999.
Speaker 2:So so, yeah, the concern the concern is like, okay. So Oracle just had a double miss on earnings. Right? Mhmm. And we'll see how they do this next quarter.
Speaker 2:If they come out and blow out earnings, I'm assuming, you know like, if they can get sort of, like, back on track Yeah. It'll be everybody will be very excited. But the question is like, everybody is struggling to get the, you know, the various like components necessary to build data centers right
Speaker 1:now. Yep.
Speaker 2:Right? Elon's talking about making his own transformers. Yep. Everybody
Speaker 1:needs Wait. Electrical transformers? He said that?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. I was Oh, I missed that. That's something we missed.
Speaker 1:That's crazy. Okay.
Speaker 2:And and so you have to assume that Oracle can develop this capacity on a reasonable time horizon in a heavily supply constrained environment where they're competing with, you know, five or so other heavily heavily funded players.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:You have to assume they can execute perfectly. And then you have to assume that OpenAI is going to be able to scale revenue to the point where they can actually sort of pay for this $300,000,000,000 of of compute. Right? Yep. It has to come from somewhere.
Speaker 2:I don't think I don't know. You you you have to wonder, can Sam Altman raise $300,000,000,000?
Speaker 1:It's on his way.
Speaker 2:Has anyone ever raised $300,000,000,000?
Speaker 1:I was talking to Brandon about this. Like, the I thought they sort of need to
Speaker 2:what is the
Speaker 1:What's the most money ever raised? I don't know. You get into crazy, crazy comps. How much did
Speaker 2:because even a lot of the best and biggest companies end up getting to the point where they're like, oh, we got enough cash.
Speaker 1:Mean, was cash flow positive at IPO. Right? And so they were not
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, the single biggest is OpenAI's $40,000,000,000 raise. But even that, again, was
Speaker 1:they only draw down, like,
Speaker 2:three tranches, years and it's contingent on the for Yep. Profit
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Wild. It is it is a it is unprecedented territory. But it's an unprecedented technology. Like, you use it and you're like, yeah, this is magical. Like, this is gonna be around.
Speaker 2:Larry prayed for one more bubble like this.
Speaker 1:Then he hit he hit hard.
Speaker 2:Just one more.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, it will be interesting to see. Like like, the the the the the Oracle Street, like, the investor should be looking at Oracle and and saying, okay, you have this backlog. Like, how how quickly can you draw down from it? Like, next quarter, can you convert that backlog into serious revenue and profit?
Speaker 1:If not and it's just staying out in the backlog, it needs to be discounted a lot. Anyway, if you're looking to scale your generative media strategy, go to Fall, generative media platform for developers. The world's best generative image, video, and audio models all in one place, develop and fine tune models with serverless GPUs and on demand clusters.
Speaker 2:Trusted by over a million developers. And A million. Adobe, Shopify, Canva, Quora, Perplexity, and many more.
Speaker 1:There we go.
Speaker 2:Really enjoyed having founder on the other Chris
Speaker 1:Bachie, who somehow hasn't been on the show yet. I I feel like we would have overlapped at some point, but we've reacted to a ton of his posts. He says, my son's preschool teacher asked me to read to his class next week and bring three kids that three three books that the kids will enjoy. These four year olds are in for a treat, he has Zero to One by Peter Thiel, High Growth Handbook by Elad Gil, and Titan by Ron Chernow. Love it.
Speaker 1:The kids might might enjoy some of those books, but some of them are a little bit dry for the kiddos. Robinhood has launched a social app. This was in the journal. Robinhood's For You, says NearSyanne. Robinhood's 4U will let you tweak positions with your real profit loss, supporting both options and crypto.
Speaker 1:We Vlad has been in the trenches grinding, launching new products all the time.
Speaker 2:Dalton Caldwell announced a new a new fund or I don't know. Maybe he announced it prior. He was at Y Combinator. But to come out with Standard Capital, standardcap.com, the AI native series a firm. The reason I thought this was particularly interesting is they're doing it they're doing effectively like seasons.
Speaker 2:So they do they're basically doing batches. Right? And so they they say Standard Capital operates on a quarterly on quarterly funding cycles. Mhmm. Applications are now open for Standard Capital's fall twenty twenty five funding cycle.
Speaker 2:So interesting to take this sort of like, you know, systematic model of funding and apply it to series a. Yeah. They're they're differentiating as well by they're only looking for 10%. Obviously, plenty of series a firms will will happily take 10%. But this might be particularly interesting to founders that are generating a lot of revenue already, wanna get a series a done, just don't wanna be peer pressured by the the current capital and the and the and the new entrants to the the the cap table to just raise, you know, closer fifteen, twenty percent.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Who else is running Standard Capital? I feel like he got someone else on the team.
Speaker 2:Paul.
Speaker 1:Paul Bouquet?
Speaker 2:Yep. I love Paul.
Speaker 1:We gotta have both of them or one of them on at some point. I'm interested to know how the fund is structured if each does an LP get exposure to a fund that's a specific season cycle? I actually
Speaker 2:think it's pretty straightforward. It's like, hey, we're gonna fund I don't know how many they're actually doing. Let me try to find it. They're doing five so they're gonna do five companies per cycle four times a year. So 20 companies a year.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. They can I imagine they're right they're planning to write, like, you know, 5 to to $10,000,000 checks depending how overheated the rounds get? But it's pretty easy to plan out. You can go to your LPs and say, look, we're going to fund this many companies over the next two years. Obviously, there'll be edge cases.
Speaker 2:And I'm sure they'll end up doing off cycle investments here and there. But it's pretty cool to see experimentation with the model. And leaving Y Combinator, he can this this becomes like a a a net positive asset to to Y Combinator to to provide downstream funding.
Speaker 1:Yes. And there was always this dynamic of, is YC going to cherry pick the best companies? Is it like a counter signal if you get to demo day and none of the partners have been like, yeah, want to invest in the next round? And YC Continuity was a thing for a while. And there was this odd dynamic of like, well, if YC Continuity was a fantastic fund, but people were always asking questions about, what does it mean?
Speaker 1:Do they have extra insights so it's an extra good signal? Or is it a bad signal because you you couldn't do so with somebody else. And this, yeah, sort of solves that potentially, which is good.
Speaker 2:Somebody else posted today at YCDemoDay, ran into a multistage firm that has invested in 600 YC companies over the last five years. Of those, one has raised a series a. They still invest in 10 invested in 10 companies.
Speaker 1:Seemed like a low hit rate. But how young are the companies?
Speaker 2:I mean
Speaker 1:It's it's been over
Speaker 2:Incredibly low. Incredibly low Yeah. I mean Wild. They they I I don't I don't know if it's
Speaker 1:I feel like Gary has shared other stats where, like, way more
Speaker 2:Well, yeah. You you you have to we have you would have to study this firm and understand, like, how Seems like they're underperforming now. Out and do basically the opposite of
Speaker 1:what Yeah. Because you could just do random and be at the the Yeah. Like, just like Like, the purely random
Speaker 2:Don't meet the founder. Like, have a have a database and just, like, offer money.
Speaker 1:Maybe they're printing. Maybe they only invest in Maybe they're really good at going in and finding the company.
Speaker 2:Maybe they're
Speaker 1:gonna make it all back. Yeah. True. None of them raise the same as they but they have 12 IPOs.
Speaker 2:Maybe they're fine to just make it all back in one trade.
Speaker 1:Maybe 75 Yeah. Maybe that one company is it's Coinbase like, or something. It's like, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So apparently, they only picks consumer companies. Okay. That's right.
Speaker 1:So Yeah. Consumer is like Such a big example. Extremely power law.
Speaker 2:Why combinator? Consumer.
Speaker 1:But very hit or miss.
Speaker 2:Consumer AI.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Very power law.
Speaker 2:Sorry. Sorry. Not Y Combinate. Open AI. I guess they were they weren't a consumer company when they were going through YC.
Speaker 1:Nope. The pivoted classic. Anyway, let me tell you about Turbo Puffer, Search every byte, serverless vector serverless vector and full text search built from first principles on object storage, fast, 10 x cheaper, and extremely scalable.
Speaker 2:We gotta have Simon on from Turbo Puffer ASAP. He's so fun.
Speaker 1:Should be investing in Turkish bonds?
Speaker 8:Turkish Did you
Speaker 1:see this? Turkey just cut the interest rate from 43% down to 40%. And Maine says, did bro say 40? So like, I mean, I don't know. But like if you go over to Turkey and you put your money in their equivalent of T bills, you just earn 40% gains?
Speaker 1:Like, is this not inflation adjusted, I assume? I assume they have really high inflation in whatever it's denominated in. But DC investors says, we need to be farming this. Yeah. That was my that was my first turkey too.
Speaker 2:Put your bonds on chain.
Speaker 5:Let let the
Speaker 1:Let Hyperliquid go Let the trenches decide
Speaker 2:the the fair value of your of your bond.
Speaker 1:The trenches decide. Andrew McCallop answered RTBPN question that we were asking at YCdom and A. How did you make your first dollar on the Internet? He says, mine was at 13 years old. I was contract I was contracting CNC shops to produce parts for my online RC car business, Cold Fusion Racing.
Speaker 1:Good name. The Traxxas crowd will remember me as the steel differential guy. Made thousands of upgraded steel planetary differentials after the brushless motors hit the market and were shredding the OEM plastic ring gears. I literally rode my bike to the gas station for money orders. What a fun time that was.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:Amazing.
Speaker 1:Amazing. Makes a ton of sense why he's doing what he's doing now. He, of course, works at Varda and is building drones.
Speaker 2:You've to have him on to come on and talk
Speaker 1:to Yeah. Want to hear about the project.
Speaker 2:Andrew, come on the
Speaker 1:You're welcome.
Speaker 2:It's time to Bob.
Speaker 1:And if you want to get Project Bob mentioned on Chateapiti, go to profound, Andrew. Get your brand mentioned on Chateapiti. Reach millions of consumers who are using AI to discover new products and brands. Hunter shared this interesting fact. If you become a billionaire and then you lose it all, Forbes still keeps you on their real time net worth tracker as some sort of dark humiliation ritual.
Speaker 1:And so Elizabeth Holmes, Renee Benko,
Speaker 3:who I'm
Speaker 2:familiar with. Just throw you at the box.
Speaker 1:And and Sam Bankman Fried is at 0. I'd wanna put that in the truth zone. On f b SPF, he might have a $100,000,000 tucked away somewhere in crypto. Tucked. I think Elizabeth Holmes is seriously zeroed, but SPF, it would have been so easy for him to have some random Solana on a USB stick somewhere, on a one of those like offline drives, And and and and just have it waiting for him because he buried it.
Speaker 1:You have to imagine. I I'm not saying it's a 100%,
Speaker 2:but like You have to imagine that he is like
Speaker 1:Tinfoil hat.
Speaker 2:You have to imagine
Speaker 1:He still has a 100%.
Speaker 2:He is like placing like he's he's getting Yeah. Printouts Yep. Of of charts Yep. And he's like basically figuring out a way to day trade behind bars Yep. Probably.
Speaker 2:Anyways
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:That's an interesting you think we'll do you think
Speaker 1:we'll Max see in the chat says SBF might have a bill. Think Wouldn't
Speaker 2:be surprised.
Speaker 1:Possible. I would put I would put him having a billion at, like, 2% or 5% and him having 100 mil at 20% maybe. So I would still probably put him at point one b on the Forbes tracker. But I don't know. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Not that hard to just remember a passphrase. Just just memorize the the seed phrase and, you know, go to jail. And when you come out, you know, some bla unusual whales account will see, oh, a bunch of stuff's moving that hasn't moved since the day SPF got locked up, and now it's moving. And it's grown a ton because it's just been sitting there. The the the potentially, the underweighted way to to diamond hands is to go in the clink where that where diamond hands ing is the only option.
Speaker 1:Anyway, Antonio Garcia Martinez says, part of Facebook's baked in advantage was slash is having the same user ID across devices and apps from browser cookies to mobile devices. Why Apple leaned into privacy was nuking everybody else's ability to identify the same user across apps on the same phone. Identity is king, he says. Interesting. Well, if you're building something that's built on top of identity, do it on linear.
Speaker 1:Linear is a purpose built tool for planning and building products. Meet the system for modern software development, streamline issues, project and product roadmaps. We are gonna be talking to the new CEO of Open today and going deeper into the Opendoor story. Martin Scrawley says the new CEO is a big win for Open. Not sure how you turn around this business, which seems fundamentally broken, but that's what good managements do.
Speaker 1:And it'll be interesting to see the the the stock has been way up. The retail army is marshaling.
Speaker 2:Up 70% today.
Speaker 1:Keith Ruboy is back on the board. We had him on the show when there were when there was rumbling on the timeline about what might happen with Opendoor. He is getting back involved, but not in a day to day capacity. But, anyway
Speaker 2:Such an interest I mean, such a wild story.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, interest rates are high. That should be, you know, a reduction to liquidity and and transaction volume, probably a headwind, but they might come down, which is a potential They
Speaker 2:picked up a
Speaker 1:tailwind?
Speaker 2:An absolute dog.
Speaker 1:They did. Kaz is the man. I've I've talked to him before. He's great. Hello, two point six million.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the stream. Tech Sales says, imagine being the sales rep who closed the OpenAI Oracle $300,000,000,000 computing deal. What's your next move? Obviously, is done between Sam and Larry Ellison directly. But it's funny to imagine that you're just some SDR.
Speaker 1:And you're like, yeah, like today, I'm going to call up Oracle. Like, can I or vice versa? You're at Oracle. And you're just like, you know who needs computers? OpenAI.
Speaker 1:My brother-in-law was telling me about this new app.
Speaker 2:Gonna see if Sam wants to grab a
Speaker 1:dinner tonight. Yeah, yeah. Just calculating. Maybe invite him to some sort of sports game. Yeah, get a box.
Speaker 1:Get Warriors. Yeah, that's probably how it went.
Speaker 2:That's what Sam will want.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's how it went down. And then all of a sudden, the rest is history.
Speaker 2:Eliezer Udakowski has a new book. Yeah. Did you read it yet, John?
Speaker 1:I have not read it. I was thinking about reading it. It seems like he distilled his thesis. Nirat Weiss Blatt says, posts some highlights from a review in New Scientist. No, AI isn't going to kill us all despite what this new book says.
Speaker 1:Udikowski has a number of policy prescriptions, all of them basically nonsense. Wow. Putting Udikowski in the truth zone. First is that GPUs, computer chips that have powered the current AI revolution should be heavily restricted. They say it should be illegal to own more than eight of the top twenty twenty four era GPUs without submitting to nuclear style monitoring by an international body.
Speaker 1:By comparison, Meta Meta has 3,005 350,000 of these chips. Once this is in place, they say nations must be prepared to enforce these restrictions by bombing
Speaker 2:Do see what the title of the book?
Speaker 1:What is it called?
Speaker 2:If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies. Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All. I
Speaker 1:don't know. I like the real But Perry Metzger had a good take on it, he said. It's starting to look like the worst thing Eliezer Yudakowsky ever did for his cause was actually write down all of his arguments in a form compact enough that a normal person could read them in a few days. Before, the arguments were scattered all over tens of thousands of pages of really wordy blog posts and only extremely dedicated people could bother to go through them. You get, nerds sniped by them.
Speaker 1:In truth, the whole thing could be summarized in a few pages. Now that he's at least condensed it down to 256 pages, good number of pages, I like that, that he's using a factor of two, which normies might consider reading. If they read it, though, they will learn that the argument isn't at all persuasive. You get people like the New York Times reviewer saying the book reads like a Scientology manual, the text interspersed with weird unhelpful parables and extra notes available via QR codes. So that's very cool.
Speaker 1:Tyler, what's your take on Yudakowsky?
Speaker 5:I think he's like people hate on him too much, I think. Mhmm. Also, like, there is already a book about AI safety that's, like, very famous that's, like, readable.
Speaker 1:Bostrom?
Speaker 5:Yeah. Superintelligence, Nick Bostrom, is, like, a good book, I think.
Speaker 1:Yep. Yep.
Speaker 5:I don't there there's a good there's a good, actually, Young Macro post about
Speaker 1:think you're gonna say fang pneumonia for real.
Speaker 2:Just kidding. It's Young Macro.
Speaker 5:There's a good Young Macro post. Yes. It says Bay Area rationalists continuously getting spat on for warning us about their very rigorously researched and thought out eschatology must be one of the most flagrant cases of unfair maligning. They should be treated more like Christian missionaries worried about hell. Which I agree.
Speaker 5:Yeah. Yeah. I think it's like people just like dunk on them
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 5:Constantly which like I've read a fair amount of like less wrong posts. Yeah. I don't I'm not like a crazy doomer, it's like you can understand the
Speaker 1:The trade offs.
Speaker 5:Yeah. And the risk.
Speaker 2:Valuable It's public service to just spend your time for at least some people in the world to think about what if this goes incredibly wrong.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 5:Yeah. Like, I'm very grateful people
Speaker 2:are thinking about how do we make this go right, but it's not necessarily It's like It's not it's not net negative for the world to have to have of course, unless you figure out the ideas catch on to such a degree that it makes it so that humanity can't again, a fine line between some of the policies that have been proposed around The US at the state level have been crazy so far this year.
Speaker 5:People anthropic who are doing safety research, that's obviously a good thing. They publish it openly. It's open source. I think that's good. Obviously, I'm not in favor of bombing data centers.
Speaker 5:But I think it's reasonable to I think people will dunk on him way too much.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's interesting. I think that when yeah, when the dunking on the doomer when the doomer dunks were at an all time high, people like there was probably a group of, like, I don't know, 80% of tech that was like, let's dunk on this. This is not good. This is nonsense.
Speaker 1:But I feel like over the past two years, you've slowly picked off 20% chunks of that group and said, well, actually, I'm interested in safety in this context. And so the examples I'll give are like, a lot of people that are like, yeah, don't think I'm going to get paper clipped anytime soon, but I love AI safety research if it can tell me if deep seek is trying to poison the American population against capitalism and it's like a geopolitical weapon. Or I'm worried about people getting one shotted and getting and going crazy from chatting with four point zero for days and days and days. That's a safety research problem. Are people using it just to go and like, the classic example is, like, oh, like, someone develops, like, a chemical weapon or biological weapon.
Speaker 1:But what about just, like, an actual weapon? What about just, a normal, like, you know, like and you sort of just saw this with the terrible Charlie Kirk story. Like like, if you're if you're if you're sending in to any LLM sketchy questions that that highlight, like, you're planning something, there is we need to do we do need to have a discussion about, like, when does it call the cops on you? When does it flag this? Like, how anonymous is this?
Speaker 1:Like, if someone's blaring and obviously going to Google and saying, like, I'm trying to do a bad thing, like, Should that flag things? There's a whole discussion to be had there. But I put that within the broad context of AI safety and AI doom. And I don't think it's unreasonable to have those discussions at all. So I don't know.
Speaker 5:Yeah. I think also even if you're an accelerationist, you think doomers, safety is completely useless, you can probably make the case that liaison writing about AI in early 2000s accelerated Totally. AI in So like yeah.
Speaker 1:Totally. I mean, it's certainly, like, marshaled capital to be like, oh, well, like, if this is the final innovation, like, if it's if it's gonna be able to do that, like Yeah. Then we got got got to get into this
Speaker 2:deal. Anti it has a a anti like, it has the opposite effect that he wants, which is says, this is the most dangerous technology ever. And people are like, I've got to find a way to make money on this.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, that was the story of just nuclear power. It was like the bomb went off at Trinity. The bomb went off in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And people were like, wait, like, is a terrible, like, disaster.
Speaker 1:Like, so, like, awful. And, like, there's a true doom scenario, which is we all bomb each other and nuclear holocaust happens and everyone dies. But very quickly, people were like, wait, there is a positive way to use this and that's with a nuclear reactor and that's with positive energy. The interesting doom scenario that I think you could get from Yudakowsky's fears like really running wild is just a stagnation where if we actually say as society we agree with this and we say, Yeah, we're never going past one gigawatt for a data center ever and we will bomb them and we all agree, like, well then, yeah, you do wind up in the nuclear energy scenario where we stop building them. And basically, the amount of nuclear power just kind of stagnated.
Speaker 1:We had the technology, but we didn't really ramp it. We were just like, yeah, we'll find other ways to do things. And like, we found other ways to generate electricity with oil and gas, but also solar and wind. And we stayed away from nuclear for decades. Now we're getting back into nuclear.
Speaker 1:We could find other ways to generate images and deep research reports. Like we could say, Hey, we're not going any further as a society. If everyone agrees, now there's geopolitical considerations, there's a lot of things where I don't think that's gonna happen, but it is something that could happen. Pea stagnation is also like a key metric to be tracking alongside pea doom is Yeah. Is the response to pea doom is pea stagnation.
Speaker 1:Anyway, I believe we have our first guest of the show in the roostering waiting room, Josh. Oh, look at Look
Speaker 2:at this background.
Speaker 1:Wow. Impressive. Production. How you doing?
Speaker 4:Long time listener, first time caller. Hey, guys.
Speaker 2:Great to great to have you on, and congrats on the new gig.
Speaker 4:I'm thrilled to be at Lightspeed. It is a very exciting moment for for my career for That's great. For Lightspeed. We're gonna be doing a lot of fun things. You know, Lightspeed's AI.
Speaker 4:Like, we're Anthropic. We're Bistral. We're XAI. We're Glean. We're Pika, a bridge.
Speaker 4:Diversified. We've got the AI hits.
Speaker 1:Love it. Got the hits. Talk about your journey. What were you doing before?
Speaker 4:Yeah. I was at Redpoint for the last four years, building the platform team.
Speaker 1:Wow. Poached. True deal.
Speaker 4:Brutal. Our Logan Bartlett.
Speaker 1:Yeah. He's fantastic.
Speaker 4:That's two and one. All the content we built there.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 4:That is exceptional. They're gonna continue to absolutely crush.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 4:But this is just an incredible opportunity. I think when I was younger, I was chief digital officer at Nasdaq, and I worked on you name the IPO, I worked on it. And Lightspeed had just always been that kind of, like, aspirational venture firm for me. I got to work on the Nutanix IPO. I did AppDynamics, and then the night before, AppDynamics was gonna go public.
Speaker 4:Like, they got acquired by Cisco, and I had to take things made. Like, this is the firm that I wanted to work at when I was that age, and it's just such an honor to even have been considered for their CMO role. And I'm just very, very thankful to Ravi and Faisal and Ramona and the whole Lightspeed team for for giving the trust in me to to shepherd this incredible brand into the future.
Speaker 2:Give us the master plan. Tell tell
Speaker 11:all and we'll we'll we'll
Speaker 2:No. No. Tell it.
Speaker 4:Exactly the same stuff we did at Redpoint because that wouldn't be any fun. But look, I wouldn't be here on TBPN if it wasn't a new media landscape. You guys have changed the game, like, created a way for founders to tell their story in an authentic way without, like, shock journalism of being asked about, like, crazy news that doesn't apply to what they do and actually having deep questions of people that understand venture backed businesses and how they grow. I think we're in a new landscape of just finding ways for founders to tell their story in a compelling way, and that's the same kind of stuff we're gonna be building at Lightspeed. We'll obviously not be cutting TPPN, but we've got a lot of stuff.
Speaker 4:We'll be really, you know, forward on TikTok and Instagram as you could imagine. But, yeah, we'll we'll be able So to
Speaker 2:Red Redpoint Redpoint, I mean, guys must have been getting like millions of views on Instagram on your account there for like a long time. Like, how valuable has that been as a channel? Because I feel like I feel like X is like especially noisy with like Venter. Right? You have Tech Twitter.
Speaker 2:It's like, you know, every single day there's there's funds and companies piling in to try to get get the word out on on what they're doing and their strategy and thesis and all that stuff. But Instagram is like relatively it's not an area that we've focused a a huge amount on. But but how how important do you think that is as a platform for investors?
Speaker 4:Yeah. I mean, Instagram was really the tip of our spear at that point. Right? Like, when I joined of course, they didn't have an Instagram, and then had to get the keys to it from the Instagram team and start building. But I think, you know, when I started it, people thought I was kinda crazy.
Speaker 4:And they're like, this is is this is gonna be good for the Redpoint brand? And then, you know, it very quickly changed when go to a pitch meeting and the founder goes, love your TikTok guy, or that video is so relatable. Like, it just creates a brand affinity that you just can't buy. And I felt like a lot of firms were a little scared to dip their toe into Instagram, but, you know, quite a few have followed us there and and very proud of what the team will continue to build there. But it it really is an important channel, and I think that the great news is that's where founders are in this decade.
Speaker 4:Right? Like, today's founders are in Instagram and TikTok. Like, yes, x is still the place to share the clips, but that's where people consume their content. And so I felt like while it was an unlikely channel for success for a VC firm, I think it's actually really important because it's like the place that everybody actually goes to just have a good time.
Speaker 2:Do you do you see venture funds eventually following the same path as as other financial institutions in terms of advertising and let's say like print media. Right? You can imagine like BlackRock will run you know, a print advertisement in the Wall Street Journal. Right? Do you ever see do you think that's an interesting way to potentially build the brand with I don't know that many founders that read the journal at least as religiously as us, but certainly there has to be in the role of CMO, you have to be marketing to founders but also LPs.
Speaker 2:Right?
Speaker 4:Yeah. Well, actually, interestingly, my gig at Nasdaq when I was pitching IPOs for a living, that was something we would put in every single proposal. You get, like, a full page ad in the Wall Street Journal. Yeah. But I think today's founders, that that resonates as much.
Speaker 4:I think, honestly, they're better off buying a piece of your hat on TBPM than they are, like
Speaker 1:Thank you.
Speaker 4:Buying a page in the journal. Like, spend that money on on Instagram advertising and TikTok ads and
Speaker 2:Well, I meant I meant more I meant more for for you at Lightspeed. Like, I think it would be iconic for Lightspeed to have a page in the journal that says, like, look at all like, we are in all the AI vendors.
Speaker 4:Like, that Lightspeed is AI with just, the list of of companies that we're in.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Get ready. We're we will be on every media platform. Legacy Media still has a very special place in my heart. It's like, you know, I I spent a decade on the floor of that exchange working with every media outlet to help get companies as much noise as we can make them around an IPO.
Speaker 2:How is how how do you think, like, is the the how is like IPO marketing changed over the last decade since you're at Nasdaq? I mean, we have so much activity this week. We are at we are at the Klarna IPO yesterday, which will honestly felt incredibly quiet in comparison to Figma, which which was actually, we figured out was intentional. The founder was like really celebrating back in Sweden. Right?
Speaker 2:So he he just came in. He didn't even bring his family. He just handled business and got out of there. And then you had Figma, which very much was like a celebration of
Speaker 1:of of of They have an office in New York.
Speaker 2:They an office in New like the entire community. Creators. It was really like an event. It felt
Speaker 1:like Just being a in Manhattan. There's probably tons of Figma.
Speaker 2:But but yeah, like broadly, yeah. How how do you think that that landscape has shifted?
Speaker 4:Well, that was the fun thing about that gig. I got to work with every great CEO, CFO, and CMO, and you kinda get to see them almost in, like, what is their Super Bowl, like, for the company and how they perform at the top of their game. Sometimes people are looking for that more muted response that I think you saw with Klarna, which I just think is, like, stylistically that company. But I think if you're looking for IPO excellence, what Figma did and what they pulled off, what, you know, some of the VC firms that helped them behind the scenes on their comms. Like, it was a massive win for noise making, and I think it was, like, kind of the gold standard for what you expect from an IPO.
Speaker 4:I think the thing is is a lot of companies don't realize that, like, this is your one day to make the noise because you got the quiet period before and you got it afterwards. Yeah. And so, really, you have to squeeze as much juice out of the fruit that you can. And what I would always advise companies to do is spend every dollar you can across the, you know, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, promoting the fact that you went public because this is your opportunity to tell those enterprise customers who weren't necessarily ready to sign on to you when you were a private company, matter the size.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:That you're ready for that.
Speaker 2:It's the best branding ever to be like, yeah, we're we're a public company.
Speaker 4:We're public. We're public It's
Speaker 2:it's it's on par with a great.com. Yeah. Truly Probably more significant.
Speaker 1:A great ticker. Works well. How are you thinking about positioning LightSpeed in the venture ecosystem? Like, I feel like there's a couple funds that have carved out, like, kind of just so very clear definitions of like, Okay, we're crossover hedge fund. We have Publix, and then we have a growth fund.
Speaker 1:But we're not even trying to be known for early stage. Maybe we write some C check. And just getting that clear message of like when to call what fund, feel like is the first job to do of a VC marketing arm maybe. How are you thinking about either narrowing or expanding or, like, defining the definition of, like, what is Lightspeed? How does it fit in?
Speaker 1:How is it different?
Speaker 4:That's a great question. Look. I think, actually, it was one of the things that drew me to Lightspeed.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Right? When I was on the floor of the exchange as a young guy, like, companies were going public in, like, seven years.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 4:And and while I was working there, it became ten years, and I'm chasing companies for you know, from series b for, like, seven years before they would go public with us. And now it's fifteen. And I think, honestly, Lightspeed strategy is what attracted to me to it because, literally, we support companies from seed through IPO and beyond. Mhmm. And I think that focus of saying we are going to be great early stage investors, and then we're gonna take the ones that are really winning, apply our full muscle to giving them all the tools that we can give them for an unfair advantage as they, you know, go up against the Goliaths in their industry and then bring them through IPO and provide them the that added lift that they need in those later growth rounds.
Speaker 4:I think it's a really unique offer that is quite differentiated in the venture space. And, actually, that that multistage thing is is why I'm here. Right? Like, I get to give early stage companies the noise making. I get to help the late stage companies with their IPO prep.
Speaker 4:It's truly like a dream job to go and and take this into the future. And we're gonna be doing a lot of branding about why that model is so different than everybody else.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for taking It's exciting. On. This is great. Congrats on the new gig.
Speaker 4:I'm looking forward to my TPPN traded card. Can I get that?
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. For sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah. We'll work on it. We'll work on it. Logan Logan, we made decision.
Speaker 1:Wanna upset Jeff Brody. I mean, he did go to my high school. So, yeah, I I I gotta keep things friendly over there.
Speaker 11:Got next.
Speaker 4:I know you've got some other light speed people coming out too.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. We have good buddies with Bucky. You'll have him on soon. Awesome.
Speaker 1:We'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 2:Cheers, Josh. Everyone. Congrats.
Speaker 4:Thanks, guys. Bye.
Speaker 1:See you. Quickly, let me tell you about Numeral sales tax on autopilot. It's super intelligence for sales tax. They said if if they build it
Speaker 2:LEAs are
Speaker 1:they build it, everyone will spend less than five minutes per month on sales tax compliance. Anyway, I think we have our next guest already in the restream waiting room, Nico Rosberg. We will bring in one. Studio. Nico, how are doing?
Speaker 2:Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1:Can you hear us? Sorry for keeping you waiting.
Speaker 2:We got a bit of lag.
Speaker 1:Oh, we got some backgrounds.
Speaker 2:Can you hear us?
Speaker 1:Can you hear us? Hello. Testing, testing. One,
Speaker 2:three. Hear us.
Speaker 1:Can you hear us? Let's try and get him on the call. In the meantime, let me tell you about fin dot ai, the number one AI agent for customer service, number one in performance benchmarks, number one in competitive
Speaker 2:Make off.
Speaker 1:Number one ranked Also, on g people are having fun memeing the the AirPods three live translation. It immediately became a meme format. I was disappointed that I couldn't workshop one in time to get a banger up, but people were having a lot of fun
Speaker 2:with it. I just like this this picture Yes. This picture being like, hola. And it just says, hello.
Speaker 1:What is what what does hola mean?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I knew you were gonna ask this. So hola is a Spanish word for hello.
Speaker 1:Okay. Yeah. So I so if I pay $300 put in my headphones
Speaker 2:You would be able to do
Speaker 1:that. Yeah. Is it is incredible technology.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, the the whole you I know, have no idea how to how to of judge Duolingo as a public company and what the fair market value of Duolingo is. But I do think there is like I don't think it's Studying language has never been about Yeah. I mean, shouldn't say it never, but for 90% of people, it's not about the practicality. It's about stimulating your mind doing new things.
Speaker 2:Even And if this existed, I still
Speaker 1:Wikipedia
Speaker 2:would have
Speaker 1:done years of exists and Founders Podcast exists. And they're very different products. They can both tell me what was Larry Ellison up to in the '90s. Yeah. And when the Oracle news broke, I actually went to both.
Speaker 1:I looked at the Oracle Wiki, and I also listened to the Founders Podcast on Larry Ellison. And they're very different. And I feel like Duolingo plays this, like, fun game thing. Tyler, what's your take on Duolingo versus the AirPods three?
Speaker 5:Well, so so about the AirPods, like, unless both parties have them, then it's, like, not that useful. Right? Because if if you only speak Spanish, I only speak English, you're talking to me. I can't I can't reply.
Speaker 1:There are a variety of ways to use it with one person. So if I'm going around, you you speak to me. And then when I speak, it can go into an app on my phone, and I can just hit play, and it will play the audio from my phone, or it will show you words. So if you're speaking Spanish, I'm hearing English, and my phone, as I'm talking, is displaying Spanish text. And so I can actually hand you my phone and you can read what I'm saying in English in Spanish.
Speaker 1:So they've thought of some of the stuff. It still does seem like there's a little bit of a technological handshake going on where I need to say, Hola, like, would you like to use AirPods Pro three?
Speaker 2:See if you can translate this. Let's put See if you can translate this Mandarin. We'll hunt you on pjo.
Speaker 1:Of course. I would like a beer, please.
Speaker 2:Close. I really enjoy beer.
Speaker 1:I really enjoy beer generally. Of course. Yes. This would be huge for ordering an ibruski. Noah Smith called it the universal translator from Star Trek.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's very cool.
Speaker 1:Vitalik said it can't arbitrary can't translate arbitrary alien languages it hears for the first time with any, with only a tiny sample, though. Although, maybe what happened in Star Trek is that every species realized that it's a good idea to expose a clean API that blurts out like one terabyte of all your historical cultural works, and that is enough to generate the embeddings for their language. I've seen AI work before that suggests that if you have the embeddings for two languages, you only need a very small amount of translated word pairs to find the mapping between the two. Not sure if this holds for languages that evolved in totally separate worlds, but maybe it still does for convergent evolution reasons, and that gets you a translator. And so it ships.
Speaker 1:And so ships just always scan for, give me a terabyte of your culture API and always end up finding it. That's very funny. Speaking of alien languages, Tyler, you were mentioning that we discovered alien life on Mars or it was fake. What what what was your take on that? You were saying that the moon landing's fake, and you don't believe in the moon landing.
Speaker 1:Right?
Speaker 2:You don't believe in space.
Speaker 1:You said that off mic,
Speaker 2:and you
Speaker 5:didn't want me to talk about them. Space is fake.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Space is fake. Going up high is fake. Planes. When when you get in a plane
Speaker 2:Rockets.
Speaker 1:Why do they always have the windows down? It's because they're changing out the set decoration around you.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:You just get on the plane, you sit there for six hours while they rebuild the city around you. You get off, and then you're in the New York oh, I'm in New York City. Oh, really? Oh, I travel. Didn't just move the buildings around.
Speaker 1:I moved
Speaker 2:thousands Put of miles in it
Speaker 1:boards up? Yeah. Okay. I I I'll believe it when I see it. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right. Anyway, what was the news? NASA got a photo? I I how is there a new photo on on Mars? The rover's just going around?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Okay. So the rover's going around looking for stuff.
Speaker 2:Wait. Can we
Speaker 1:pull up the
Speaker 2:can we pull
Speaker 1:up the picture? In the deck. It's later in the deck.
Speaker 2:So With 20 pages. Took the photo?
Speaker 1:The rover.
Speaker 2:The rover of itself, like, kind of like selfie stick
Speaker 1:stuff. The rover has, like, a three sixty cam on the end of an arm. And there's someone who gives instructions, I think, like, once a day because there's such a delay to get the message there that they say, the rover's kind of semi autonomous. Then they say, hey, go look around over here.
Speaker 2:The chat just just to defend Tyler's honor.
Speaker 1:He is not a He's flattered a flattered member.
Speaker 2:Just joking around. Just joking around.
Speaker 1:Anyway, we believe we have our next guest, Nico Rosberg. How you doing, Nico?
Speaker 11:Hey. How's it going, guys?
Speaker 2:Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the show. Thanks so much for taking the time. How are you doing?
Speaker 11:Thanks a lot. Pleasure to be here. I'm doing good. Thank you. You're catching me in Monaco.
Speaker 1:Monaco is where
Speaker 11:I I've grown up here.
Speaker 2:Fantastic. Classic.
Speaker 1:How is it this time of year?
Speaker 11:Actually, it's lovely because it's kinda still summer. Still really warm, and we're still enjoying the outside, going to the promenade, going to the pool with the kids because I have two kids. They're seven and nine. Wow. And they just started school again after the summer, but still really warm here.
Speaker 11:So it's lovely. South Of France is beautiful.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic. Yeah. What about
Speaker 11:How about you guys?
Speaker 1:We we've been traveling a lot. We were in New City yesterday, San Francisco.
Speaker 2:Did tour
Speaker 1:for the Clarna IPO and then Y Combinator demo day and then back to LA. So a little bit too much travel, a little frazzled, little
Speaker 2:crazy. I don't I don't know how how you I don't I don't know how how drivers actually do this. Right? Just because when we go on the road for forty eight hours with that kind of pace, it really throws everything off. We're here.
Speaker 1:Anyway, can you give us a little bit of backstory on your path to venture, from your racing career?
Speaker 11:Yeah. Sure. So, obviously, it's not the most natural switch. Yeah? And and, racing career, yeah, I was on it.
Speaker 11:Was at it for twenty years. You start when you're 10 years old. Wow. And and then I ended up winning the Formula one World Championship at G at the age of 31 with the Mercedes with the Mercedes team. Thank you very much.
Speaker 11:Lovely to hear that. And I I and I did the, yeah, pretty extreme thing of retiring, like, five days after I won the championship. Wow. Because it just felt like my dream was complete. I achieved what I set out to do.
Speaker 11:And it's an insane I mean, all the founders listening, it's an insane lifestyle to pursue relentlessly your goal just like for founders, but it's the same for athletes. It's really, really madly intense. And so I was quite happy that it was all achieved, and I just wanted to move on to the next life. But then I had no clue what to do. So I was researching a lot of things and
Speaker 1:Well, and
Speaker 2:and now before
Speaker 11:nine years after.
Speaker 2:Beef before you dive into that, what do you have any idea what percentage of drivers that that that end up end up as an a Formula One driver actually even podium at any point in their career? Isn't it
Speaker 1:Extremely low.
Speaker 2:Isn't it extremely low?
Speaker 11:Yeah. I'm sure it is. I don't know the exact numbers, obviously, but if I had to guess, it would probably be less than 10%. Yeah. Around 10% if I had to guess now.
Speaker 11:Oh, that's just the Yeah. That's great. Wild guess now. And then, of course, in terms of world champions, there's thirty thirty four or 35 world champions in the seventy year history of the sport, and there's been there's been thousands of f one racers. You know?
Speaker 11:So it's a it's an extremely small percentage. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, talk about the transition to investing. I've heard a little bit of the path, and it it is unconventional. But when I heard it explained, it made perfect sense, but I'd love to hear it from No.
Speaker 11:It's just I mean, I always I've always appreciated the startup world a lot. When I retired, mobility was just going through this extreme transition. For sure. Suddenly, was, like, autonomous driving, there was connectivity, shared mobility, and it was all kicking off exactly when I retired. And I was the mobility world champion.
Speaker 11:It was kinda
Speaker 2:natural for me. You're good at getting around.
Speaker 11:Yeah. It was kinda natural to take a first look there, and Mercedes also helped me out and because they were investing in startups. Sure. So I got going that way, really loved it, was fascinated. And it's been a journey ever since.
Speaker 11:It's been up and down enough. Finally, I kind of found my venture capital North Star, and I'm building Rosberg Ventures now, which is an a venture capital asset manager. And we have multiple multiple products, strategies, and but very much, you know, focused on The US. So it's kind of bridging bridging Europe with US. That's really our our big focus.
Speaker 11:And, yeah, I'm I'm really excited.
Speaker 2:And so that means sort of like European LP base but investing in America?
Speaker 11:Yeah. That's exactly yeah. That's one one facet of it. But also then the European corporates, connecting them with the with the breakout generational startups in The US. Makes sense.
Speaker 11:Because there's a great connectivity between between the startups in The US and the corporates in The US, but sometimes that link to the European and German corporates is quite weak. And also surprisingly, like the German the German large caps, they don't have a very deep understanding of what's going on in The US venture capital landscape. So there's a great opportunity for us to add value in creating those connections. And as you
Speaker 2:know What's the to win. What what's the openness to partnering with like, you're a if you're a, like, a German, you know, multibillion dollar company, what's the openness to even using products from startups? Is it is it high, low?
Speaker 11:It really depends. I mean, one of our one of our most famous car manufacturers, not gonna say the name, but the likes of BMW, Mercedes, etcetera. We're working with them, and we're introducing startups. And then the other day, they said, sorry. We have no more budget to explore to explore.
Speaker 11:And and you're like, okay. But you guys are are facing insane, like, insane threats from Tesla, China, and you're telling you're telling us here that you don't have budget to, like, explore transformational solutions from the from the startup landscape. Like, that was
Speaker 2:the Yeah. The the the point of enterprise software for the most part is help people save money or help people make money. Ideally, do both. Right? Exactly.
Speaker 11:So, actually, we so we brought them, a a a tool that that that is gonna analyze their whole procurement contracts and everything, and they actually their revenues are only they are part of the save cost savings that they generate. Yeah. And then then this car manufacturer, BMW, Mercedes, Audi, whatever, they're like, oh, okay. So we don't need to invest anything upfront here. They just take a cut from the savings that they generate for us in on the on procurement procurement.
Speaker 11:And then they're like, okay. This is great. Let's let this we'll definitely have a look at. So it depends. But, anyways, in general, there's a great readiness, which is reassuring nonetheless, but but they're not really, like, very, yeah, in-depth at the moment in understanding what's coming in terms of transformation.
Speaker 11:AI, you know, it's a big, big challenge, as you know, for enterprises to adopt that.
Speaker 1:Outside of the corporates, what does the family office or ultra high net worth individual landscape look like out in Europe? Are they more risk on now? Are these the type of folks that you met through your f one career that became LPs eventually?
Speaker 11:Yeah. Sure. It's many of the families that I got to know in racing Yeah. That were, like, big sponsors or even the car manufacturers.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 11:So that's kind of the link back to my racing, which is nice for me as well. Yeah. And in general, it's it's very risk off in Europe compared to America, which is a real weakness. Yeah. Because risk doesn't even necessarily have to be risk.
Speaker 11:If you have a long long term time horizon, even something like the Nasdaq becomes low risk even though on a on a three month horizon, it's a high risk high risk investment. And that's the one thing that's the thing that the Europeans yeah. I don't know. They don't they don't really get that right. They're very conservative, but in a bad way.
Speaker 11:Yeah. So it's very often they hardly like the endowments, they hardly beat beat inflation. But there was the high inflation, they were hardly beating it or not even beating inflation. It was it was pretty shocking. But for me, it's awesome also because I can take all my learnings now from sports Yeah.
Speaker 11:Into this venture capital grow business that I'm building, you know. And one of the main things, like us athletes, it's we I think we're pretty good at this relentless pursuit of our goals. Like Yep. Second place just does not exist. Giving up does not exist.
Speaker 11:It's like absolutely it's pretty pretty insane. I think that's one really big strength of ours, which is really appreciated in the venture capital ecosystem. Yeah. Because, of course, the best founders are exactly are exactly the same.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Talk to me about some of those best founders, the the relentless, the risk takers, the ones who don't accept second place. Who do you look up to in the American, entrepreneurship world or or see someone where, maybe they didn't maybe they weren't built for f one, but you think they could have done well if they were a racer?
Speaker 11:Well, that's a hard question. No. I have no idea. I mean, the racing skill the racing skill is hand eye coordination.
Speaker 1:Okay. Sure. But what if yeah. What about at a more abstract level?
Speaker 11:Foundation of everything. Then, of course, in terms of being relentless in the pursuit of of winning, there's there's many, many examples. Sure. And I I'm personally involved with the likes. For example, I'm an in personal investor in, like, applied intuition.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:He's fantastic.
Speaker 11:There is is a like, he's a he's a machine as well. You know what I mean? It's, unbelievable.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 11:The energy and the determination and grit. Yeah. Or or some European companies, examples are, like, eleven Labs
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 11:Which I'm personally invested in, and or or Lovable. Yeah. And, like, lovable. Anton is also Yeah. Pretty extreme pretty extreme Yeah.
Speaker 11:Terms of level of commitment. But but I'm also excited, you know. By now, I really have really cool portfolio also in terms of my personal investing.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 11:And, yeah, it's just it's it's great to see how how these companies are are growing and unfolding.
Speaker 2:Yep. Jordy? How have you what yeah. It feels like over the last few years, founders have started to sort of adopt the health practices or the approach to health that athletes do. There's been a bunch of viral stuff recently, people joking around about this.
Speaker 2:What, has there been, what was sort of most most impactful for for your performance during your driving career that you still apply to building like a venture firm from a health standpoint?
Speaker 11:Yeah. I mean, so I was really quite a perfectionist when it came to preparing myself in the best possible way. So I've been through everything. I had a psychologist working with me. I did two hours of psychology and philosophy every two days.
Speaker 11:Like, I was absolutely flat out on this because I could feel and it was obvious that I had more I had capacity to improve mentally as an athlete. I was under pressure, you know, scared, worried, distracted, and all these all these things. So there was a lot of capacity there for me to improve, and and I found incredible incredible progress mentally. And I so I did a lot of meditation. I simplified my life.
Speaker 11:I removed all emailing, news. Everything was gone. Instagram, social media, there was nothing on my telephone, on my pursuit to become a world champion. So it was really quite quite extreme.
Speaker 2:Would you do would you do caffeine or any any stimulants? Or does that just throw you off in terms of, we've seen like Mark Zuckerberg doesn't do caffeine. And I could imagine in a driving setting, you're just like a slightly more twitchy or nervous because of caffeine. And you crash the car and the race is over.
Speaker 11:Yeah. No. So I didn't do caffeine also because the problem I have is when I take caffeine, I can't sleep at night. Mhmm. So that would be counterproductive.
Speaker 11:Mhmm. Then even like, for example, when it came to jet lag, I have a I had a a Harvard sleep professor working with me who actually now has created an app based on what we had been pursuing at the time Mhmm. Which is called time shifter. And it actually was app store app of the day. It has, like, a million subscribers by now.
Speaker 11:It's, like Wow. Becoming quite a success.
Speaker 1:Awesome.
Speaker 11:And this this Harvard Sleep professor was was supporting me at the time, and I did a whole year with no jet lag. You were saying before earlier how traveling is destroying you, and you don't know you don't know how the athletes do it, I think. So and I did a whole year, no jet lag. So it was all about, like, one and a half hour steps per day maximum in time zone shift even before you start traveling. The last five days you leave home, one and a half hour steps, blackout glasses, 10,000 lux like Brian Johnson in the morning first thing, all these tools.
Speaker 11:And it was incredible. It was incredible to do a whole year traveling continents, no jet lag. So it's really all these things that it's just really essentially, what it is, it's it's putting together all the all the little details, incremental gains, and focusing on them. Because you all know that many incremental gains are a huge progress. And sometimes we kind of neglect them and and are lazy and don't focus on the small steps as well.
Speaker 11:And that was that was probably a strength of mine which I'm now taking into venture capital as well. Just all the details, putting them together. It's it comes back to being relentless again.
Speaker 1:Yeah. What's your state on the read of or what's your read on the state of f one? Broadly, it feels like, from an American perspective, drive to survive was a big moment. Cadillac's coming into the Cadillac has an F1 team joining next year. There's a few other milestones and key storylines.
Speaker 1:But what's captured your attention over the past few years in the story of f one broadly?
Speaker 11:My attention has been how f one has managed to conquer America. Yeah. And 40% of the new fans are women. It's almost like fifty fifty male women, male female Yeah. Which is which is so cool.
Speaker 11:And Yeah. And this is a big change, and it's all it's thanks to Netflix. Yep. It's thanks to social media. They've opened up social media.
Speaker 11:Like, in my time, social media wasn't even allowed nine years ago because it was taking eye eyeballs off the television product. Yeah. But, actually, it's a multiplier, you know, so that was a bit shortsighted. Yeah. I remember It's Liberty Media, you know, who owns f one, who's done such
Speaker 4:a great job.
Speaker 11:And Netflix has been so powerful because they actually managed to capture the humans behind f one, and and it's like a reality TV show rather than documentary. And that's what we love. We love to see emotions.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 11:We love to identify with the connect with the humans behind the sport. And they they just managed to do such a great job. So that's really what I'm what I'm finding so cool is how our sport is growing, developing, the excitement is growing. Super, super thrilling.
Speaker 2:Yeah. What how how are you thinking about the rollout of autonomous vehicles over the next five to ten to twenty years even over the long term? Is it something you you spend a lot of time trying to invest against? Any type of thesis?
Speaker 11:So I am I invested in a teledriving, remote, remote control driving solution, so tele driving. And at one point, we were like, oh, this is gonna go wrong because we're going to full autonomy now, but it looks like someone like Tesla is actually having much more troubles than they perhaps expected two or three years ago. And, especially in the edge cases, they're still having too many issues. So and, you know, they had to launch their their robotaxis with safety drivers in their cars, etcetera, etcetera. And the and the questions is is still there.
Speaker 11:Is their camera only solution actually ever gonna be good enough? Mhmm. Yes. They're learning on millions of miles every year, but, can the camera solution only deal with all these edge cases of fog and rain and and snow and etcetera etcetera. So there's there's still a very, very big question mark, and and no one really knows.
Speaker 11:Then on the then you have the Waymo, which certainly is better tech, but, of course, unit economics, I mean, it's super expensive high hardware per car. So how scalable is that? Also, still to judge at this point even though they seem to be going strong at the moment. But yeah. So it's really not clear yet who's gonna be the eventual winner there, but it's, yeah, again, fascinating time, but it will take some some more time for us to finally know who wins.
Speaker 11:And then the worry though is, like Europe Europe, for example, unfortunately, is almost missing out completely on this value creation because they don't have they they don't they're they're gonna end up like the mobile phones that just became hardware. Yeah. So the the the the system was done by Android or or Apple
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 11:And then and then they just became hardware hardware suppliers, you know. That's a threat for the European car manufacturers. Sure. Because they won't have the autonomy. I wonder if they'll even have the connectivity to their to their customers.
Speaker 2:But isn't isn't isn't applied gonna be applied intuition is a is a is could potentially save them?
Speaker 11:In terms of that interface connecting to the to the customer who's riding on board, etcetera. So very tough moment for European the car manufacturers. And also, honestly, many of the American car manufacturers, they're pretty much in the same situation. Yeah.
Speaker 1:We have Formula one. We have Formula e, which showcases electric vehicles. Do you think we'll ever see Formula a to showcase autonomous vehicles?
Speaker 11:So we had that already. That was robo Roborace, I think it was called. Yeah. They're still somewhat slower than us, like
Speaker 1:Oh, okay.
Speaker 11:Fifteen seconds a lap or something, ten seconds a lap. So it's gonna take some more time there too. I don't know if that's because we we love the gladiators, the humans Of course. In the sport, you know. And if it's just Yeah.
Speaker 11:Tech racing each other, I don't know if that of course, it will it can find its niche, but I don't think it's gonna be a a huge fascinating global global success story. Who are you guys rooting for in f one?
Speaker 1:I well, I I'm I'm I'm super interested in this in this, like you know, we've seen the benchmarks of human versus AI in so many different categories, and I wanna know when an autonomous vehicle will put up like a sub seven minute Nurburgring time. And it seems like it might be years. It might be a long time, actually.
Speaker 2:Especially if it was a manual.
Speaker 1:Yes, especially if it's a manual and it has to be driven by a humanoid. So you can't just plug in like you do with a Waymo. You have to actually put the physical robot in the seat. They have to the robot has to buckle itself in. Very dexterous, very difficult to slide into a cockpit properly.
Speaker 1:Do do you have any favorite
Speaker 11:I am impressed. You know your Nurburgring times. I'm very impressed. So Nurburgring, for all the viewers, it's the greatest racetrack in the world.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 11:And it's this crazy 15 kilometer roller coaster through the through the forest in the middle of Germany. Yeah. And it's called the green the Green Hill, and all car manufacturers set benchmark lap times there. And if you manage to break the record, you've got, like, global news and everything. So it's a very, very important racetrack.
Speaker 2:Is it I I haven't I haven't driven it myself. Is it but I I did. The last time I was really I mean, obviously, we'll watch when the manufacturers are doing lap times. But the last time I saw footage from I saw a GT three RS get just absolutely destroyed on the track. Is it is it safe to go out and just do public laps?
Speaker 2:Or would would you stay away from something like that? I'm sure when you wanna race
Speaker 11:I wouldn't do it. I would be scared. It's it's the craziest racetrack in the world. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And you have a bunch of people from all over the world coming and just, like, they wanna go fast. They wanna go fast.
Speaker 11:Yeah. Of course. But it's it's very, very dangerous, so I'd be careful with that.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:What else are you tracking in the automotive world broadly? There's yeah. There there there have you been tracking what's happening in in China? Are there any other interesting dynamics with any of the upstarts? I feel like most of these companies are post startup rounds at this point with Rivian and being public at this point.
Speaker 1:But have you have you been tracking any just future next generation OEMs?
Speaker 11:So I I was in China recently Mhmm. And shocking. You know how Porsche Porsche Porsche, I can't remember how you're supposed to say it. They have a they have the Porsche Taycan, you know, which is the electric their electric superstar. Yeah.
Speaker 11:And then you go to China, and there's Xiaomi Yep. Who who has this I don't even know what the Xiaomi
Speaker 1:is Su seven is the one you're thinking
Speaker 11:The Su That's
Speaker 1:exactly the Cayenne.
Speaker 11:And I rode in this car. So first of all, the the Taycan is 120,000 or a 100 and Yeah. This thing is $40,000.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 11:And and it looks the same. So they just copy the look of it. And I get in, and, like, five years ago, seven years ago, the interior quality then was rubbish. Everything was cracking, felt like it was gonna fall apart. Yeah.
Speaker 11:And then you start driving and the drive the the handling also then feels rubbish. And now I'm in this. The interior quality is perfection. It's just beautiful.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 11:It drives awesomely, has more power than the Porsche Taycan, has more range than the Porsche Taycan. Yep. So it was proper scary. I was like, oh my god. Like, what this is this is, like, this is shocking.
Speaker 11:And then let me just finish. You would say, okay. But Porsche still has their brand. Mhmm. But even that is gone because the Xiaomi founder is a rock star in China.
Speaker 11:He's like the Elon Musk of China. He has a huge social media following. So even the brand moat is is is gone in in China. So it feels like it's just complete game over there. And and it's happening, but and they're coming to Europe too, which is so scary.
Speaker 11:Now BYD just overtook Tesla as the best selling best selling electric car in Europe. So it's a really, watershed moment and super critical moment for for the automotive sector. Yeah. But, and then in terms of startups, I think I'm I'm not seeing much at the moment, really.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's really CapEx intensive, and a lot of those businesses have
Speaker 11:I mean, even BYD, for example. So if you look at BYD and NEO, I believe
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 11:They got 10,000,000,000 in government subsidies in order for them to get to where they are now in terms of taking on the world.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 11:But that is never gonna happen in Europe. You're never gonna have the the European government supporting a start up Yep. With 10,000,000,000 for cargo with 10,000,000,000 in order to become global electric vehicle manufacturer leaders. You know? So, yeah, tough to compete against that, isn't it?
Speaker 11:Last
Speaker 1:question from my side. Did you have a reaction did you see the f one movie? Did you have a reaction to Apple's f one movie? What'd you think if you saw it?
Speaker 11:Yeah. So the honest answer is I haven't seen it yet. Okay. Because I was I was holding out to see it with my wife, and then that didn't work out for some reason, whatever.
Speaker 1:And you have kids.
Speaker 11:It's natural. We're still holding out, and we're probably gonna do a cinema night at our at our house here in Monaco Yeah. With any friends left that have not yet seen it. Maybe we'll do a cinema night next week or something. Well, I I But I hear great things.
Speaker 11:You know? Of course, it's it's Hollywood. It's fake, but I hear great things. And Yeah. And it was amazing.
Speaker 11:I was at the racetrack, and and and Brad Pitt was on the real grid Yeah. Just before the race starts
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 11:With his race car. Yeah. And he had a real garage in the pit lane with his race car, like, at the real race. Like, the race started. He's there.
Speaker 11:Like, it's so crazy
Speaker 1:He's really
Speaker 11:how they put that together. And and then with Augment virtual reality, they overlaid his car onto one of the real racing cars in the race
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 11:For this it's like it's pretty impressive. So, anyways, I hear good things, and I think it's a great great step again for for f one.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Total American f one dominance.
Speaker 11:What are you what are you guys most excited about in the start up world? What's the last thing that you've seen which which you're raving about?
Speaker 1:Oh, that's really hard to put on the spot. In the start up world at the earliest stages, I mean, we've been seeing a lot of folks work on new AI hardware devices. And there was one that just put out a video about where where it looks like looks like but it measures the electrical signals in your jaw. And so you're just whispering. You're not even making any noise, but you're talking like making mouth movements.
Speaker 1:And it can transcribe that into an app. Text. So I can be talking to you across a crowded room. And you can hear me, and I can hear you, but no one else can hear us. And if you imagine about voice interfaces in the future where you're talking to ChatGPT or any LLM all day long, being able to do that in a public place or randomly, that feels like that could be the next big thing.
Speaker 1:There's a rumor that Sam Altman's working on that with Johnny Ives. So that was something where it's like there's going to be a new wave of some sort of input technology pre Neuralink.
Speaker 2:Yeah. On my side, this has been such an insane year on so many levels. You have geopolitical chaos. You have warfare. You have assassinations.
Speaker 2:Tragedies. Yeah. Tragedies. There's so much uncertainty. There's so much negativity in the world.
Speaker 2:And from our point of view, we get to interview talented builders every single day. We've interviewed hundreds of of founders this year. And that is like the bright spot to me is like across every industry and and any sector that's important to the world. There are bright bright optimistic people that are dedicating their lives to solving solving problems from logistics to you know, autonomous vehicles to new consumer hardware. Like any any any category, there there are bright people that are dedicating their lives.
Speaker 2:And so I think that's like the white pill for me is when I think about how chaotic and and crazy the world and and there's a lot of, like John said, tragedy. But at the same time, there's people at an individual level are are committed to changing the world. And so I think we it's it's much easier to be like incredibly optimistic about the future and and not give in to the doom when you have our job. And I know it's the same same for you as well in terms of meeting meeting talented people that are dedicating their lives to solving real problems in the world.
Speaker 11:Yeah. I mean, it's lovely. There there's so much hope in the startup world, so much ambition. It's it's really, really impressive. By the way, I met the founder that you were talking about with that
Speaker 1:Oh, no way.
Speaker 11:Device on the year. I know him. Yeah. I know him very well. And Kline of Perkins, which is, like, perhaps one of the I mean, best VC firm at the moment or one of the best
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 11:They're backing him.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. So
Speaker 11:I I know I know him well.
Speaker 2:I think you've I wonder if you just
Speaker 1:Broke the news. Broke the news there. You know? I thought that's avidly married.
Speaker 2:That's amazing.
Speaker 1:But, yeah. I mean,
Speaker 2:yeah, famous How often do you visit the news?
Speaker 11:Breaking news. Come on. We don't know. You didn't mention any names or anything. We're
Speaker 2:all Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We know. Nothing.
Speaker 2:It's just a rumor. How often do you come to The US?
Speaker 11:So I have to I mean, of course, yeah, it's important for me to be there. So I'm I'm there about once every two, three months. So quite a lot. Coming there quite a lot. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, next time you're in LA.
Speaker 11:Love hosting at f one races also. So I'm hosting all your friends from from the Bay Area Mhmm. And and New York also at the races. So I host everybody in Miami, hosting everybody again now at Vegas, which is lovely. It's very cool.
Speaker 1:That's amazing.
Speaker 2:Amazing.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you so much for taking the time on a late evening to chat with us. We had a of fun talking
Speaker 2:to you. Come back on anytime.
Speaker 1:Yeah. We'd love to talk to So
Speaker 11:I just got an email in my top right corner where I'm gonna find out if I if I get accepted to the vet one of the very best funds in The US. And now I'm gonna click on it. Amazing. It's been a five day fight with all nighters and everything because of technical complications, whatever. Yes.
Speaker 11:Because it's so hard. Yeah. They're like, everybody's like two x oversubscribed. It's like crazy times in The US. Just for the best.
Speaker 2:You wanna open it live?
Speaker 1:Open the email. Give us the reaction. Let's let's
Speaker 11:If I get a negative if I get a negative Thanks for your patience. Can you still oh, man. Are going ahead. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 11:Okay. Yes. Can you still see me, actually?
Speaker 1:Yes. Yes. We can. Wait. We did it.
Speaker 2:We did it. Yeah.
Speaker 1:We did
Speaker 2:it. It's a go.
Speaker 1:We got a we got a fund allocation for Rossberg Ventures. Let's go.
Speaker 2:Because I was gonna I was gonna we were gonna end the show.
Speaker 1:We were yeah. We were gonna give them a call. And we're gonna drive to the
Speaker 2:hill and
Speaker 1:say thinking.
Speaker 2:Correct this right now.
Speaker 1:This is an injustice. Fantastic news. Congratulations.
Speaker 11:Let me narrow it down for you as well who it was. Come on. At least for some fun.
Speaker 1:Okay. Yeah.
Speaker 11:It's between something like Thrive, Accel, Green Oaks, or or Elad Elad Elad Elad Elad.
Speaker 1:Okay. Oh oh, these are great firms.
Speaker 11:This is one of those four.
Speaker 1:Okay. Those are great firms. Let's go. Shout out to all the absolute boys.
Speaker 2:Amazing. Well, we you should get the other the other three too.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Get the get the full stack. We'll we'll make some calls.
Speaker 11:Maybe we have all of them already.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for for hopping on the show. This is fantastic.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Great to hang.
Speaker 1:Good luck to you guys. A good one.
Speaker 2:Talk soon.
Speaker 1:Bye. The live
Speaker 2:High stakes.
Speaker 1:High stakes. He lives he lives his life on the edge. Like, that's a real f one driver move to open and he Live.
Speaker 2:A live audience of potentially getting rejected.
Speaker 1:We have our next guest in the restream meeting
Speaker 2:room. Michael.
Speaker 1:Really quickly, let me tell you about Adio, customer relationship magic. Adio is the AIDA of CRM that builds, scales, and grows your company to the next level. You can get started for free. We have our next guest. Two timer.
Speaker 1:We got Michael.
Speaker 2:What's up, guys?
Speaker 1:With the tvpn hat.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Great sign of respect.
Speaker 3:I gotta do my part,
Speaker 2:guys. Thanks so
Speaker 1:much for hopping on.
Speaker 10:I didn't I didn't have one of the hats.
Speaker 1:Will get you on we will get you on one day. One day, Nir. We were oversubscribed, actually. We I think we made hats. A couple 100 of them and not nearly enough.
Speaker 1:But thank you so much for hopping on the stream. Let's let's just kick it off with some intros for those who are listening.
Speaker 12:Nir, take it away. Take it away, Nir.
Speaker 10:I'm Nir Zickerman. Thanks a lot for having me. The, CEO and cofounder of Oboe, and the other cofounder is my good friend Mike here.
Speaker 12:What's up, guys? Great to be back. Obviously, we've spoken a number of times. I'm one of the co founders of Oboe and also a partner at Lightspeed. And Nir and I had previously co founded Anchor, which we sold to Spotify.
Speaker 1:No way. Putting the gang back together.
Speaker 2:200. I love it. That's Let's get let's get into the news. So so you guys launched are are you guys What's the product?
Speaker 1:How are you positioning it?
Speaker 2:Is it a beta? Is it is it is it GA. Thing? GA? What's going on?
Speaker 10:Yeah. So we're out there. Oboe is is live to the world, and it is the easiest way to learn anything. So you come to our website, oboe.fyi. Mhmm.
Speaker 10:Single prompt, we will magically create a course to teach anyone anything. Yep. When I say anything, I really mean anything. Mike and I were talking earlier. What was the example we had?
Speaker 10:We had, you could learn about how to cook pasta, and you could learn about the quantum physics of why of how cooking pasta works if you wanted to. So truly a a broad range of of topics. And with Oboe courses, we let you learn in a variety of different ways. Right? So you come in.
Speaker 10:Again, we magically create a course, and it is made up of everything from the ability to read about the topic, short form, long form, to listen to a podcast about it, to hosts like yourselves talking about whatever, the topic completely personalized to the user. We have games. We have quizzes, a totally immersive experience to let you learn.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I saw a screenshot from none other than Martin Screlly saying this was very cool. And it showed I mean, it felt like a lot of the Anchor DNA was in there in the sense of when I think about Anchor, it's like you have an MP3, and you need it on a lot of different. And you instantiate it in many different ways. Distribution is multi platform.
Speaker 1:And you have essentially some sort of deep research project going on under collecting information, organizing with LLMs, I'm sure, but then instantiating it in a summary, a deep dive, an audio product. So talk about the multimodality, where you see that going in the near term. When are we going to get video in here at some point? I could imagine with VO3 and some of the advances there, eventually, you'll be able to just, like, sit in on a one hour generated video lecture if that's what you want. I don't know if anyone wants that long term, but, where do you see all the different multimodalities going?
Speaker 10:I actually think a lot of people do want videos in the works. We are working on it. And to me, you know, I mean, people spend hours on YouTube Yeah. Constantly trying to learn and and Totally. You know, explore curiosities.
Speaker 10:The reality is people are online learning constantly. You just don't think about it as learning. You know? You're on Yeah. Tons of different websites, tons of different apps trying to, like, figure out, understanding things in the news, understanding what you read, trying to get you know, you're curious about things and you wanna dig in.
Speaker 10:People do not learn in one path and they don't learn with one format. So a core philosophy of ours is if you're gonna build a learning platform, you have to learn it the way that people actually learn. And the way that people actually learn is multimodal. Right? It's immersive.
Speaker 10:Mike, what do you do you wanna add?
Speaker 12:Yeah. I mean, look, I think the the the beauty of the multimodality is it lets people learn on their terms. You know, one of the reasons we started this company is we sort of looked at education, we looked at learning, and we realized that the way people learn right now is too rigid. It's too one size fits all. Right?
Speaker 12:You have higher education and traditional education teaching every single person on the planet the same thing in the same exact way, and that's just not how we all learn. We all learn in different ways. Some of us like to read. Some of us like to listen. Some of us like to watch TikTok.
Speaker 12:And so what we realized is we have this technology now that can personalize learning for anyone on the planet. And so it would be a shame to not actually do that and make the most personalized form of education ever before.
Speaker 1:How are you thinking about gamification? I seem to remember you guys had badges in the first app and so you kind of help someone get over the curve of actually distributing a show. We're seeing the both like resilience and the stocks all over place with Duolingo, but it feels like Duolingo has done a great job of taking an education product and making it fun and repetitive and maybe even a little addictive. And it seems like that is a piece of the goal, but how do you think about the various trade offs there?
Speaker 10:Look. I think gamification is key. I think the main reason gamification is key and accessibility and making it fun is key is because learning is intimidating. Yeah. Most people who wanna learn something new, they look at how you do it and they just get intimidated and they turn away.
Speaker 10:And that's why so much of what we've built and what we'll continue to build is around making it really digestible, really piecemeal. Like like Mike said, putting it in the control of the user so that they could decide how they wanna navigate things. I think any course on Oboe should be presented to a user today and in the future as you can do this. We're gonna help guide you through it. Right?
Speaker 10:But we're gonna put enough tools in your hands so that you could be the one to guide the system and and let it know how to effectively teach you.
Speaker 2:How do you How how are you guys thinking about solving for hallucinations if if if I if if, you know, if you can remember a teacher Yeah. That taught you something and it was wrong, it's like it just completely destroys the trust. Like, you it's hard to you're like, you said that this event happened in 1970 and it actually happened in '19 yeah.
Speaker 12:Mean, what would what would we be as a 2025 AI startup without a multi agent architecture? Right? Nir, let's explain our multi agent architecture.
Speaker 10:Let me let me tell you about our multi agent architecture. Yeah. Look, the big challenge in a lot of what we spent resources on over the last year building this thing was on how do you present to the user really high quality engaging content that is accurate extremely quickly. Because for this content to be lightweight and accessible, it has to happen fast. Right?
Speaker 10:So the way that this works under the hood is like this. I I think the honestly, the toughest challenge is an orchestration challenge. It's how do you simultaneously have an agent generating, you know, the skeleton of course and the references that it's gonna pull in and the, scripts for the audio and fact check all this stuff, agents correcting other agents and all that happens within seconds of you generating a course, and it's gonna continue to get better. Look, hallucinations, think, are, reality is I I think right now people primarily learn through resources that are completely unchecked. And so, I think one of the biggest advantage that advantages that we wanna invest in is making sure that when people come here, feel confident that they're getting the highest quality and the most accurate.
Speaker 1:Well, congratulations on the launch. I'm excited to try it out. My challenge for you, I don't know if either of you play the oboe. You need to use oboe to learn to play the oboe. You need to dog food your own product.
Speaker 1:Next time we have you on the show
Speaker 10:That's the goal.
Speaker 1:I expect a solo on the oboe.
Speaker 2:Oboe solo.
Speaker 1:Oboe Let's make it happen.
Speaker 2:Congrats. Think it's a
Speaker 12:great idea. You should. Guys, let just say one more thing, if
Speaker 6:you don't I
Speaker 12:know you got another guest coming on. We are investing a lot of money in AI. We've invested, like, a trillion dollars at this point or something? It seems crazy to us that we have invested so much money into a technology that's gonna make an alien life form that's actually smarter than us. Sure.
Speaker 12:And so the whole purpose of this company is to actually use the artificial intelligence to make the humans smarter. Yeah. That's what we're trying to do here. It's actually let's pour that investment back into human intelligence. Alright?
Speaker 12:We're bringing human intelligence back.
Speaker 2:Organic intelligence, farm to table.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 1:Farm to table intelligence.
Speaker 2:I'm excited to check it out. It's you know, we we cover, like, hundreds of topics a show. There's often times where we're coming into a show and we have like ten minutes to prep on something that we know nothing about.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And I have a feeling that Oboe is gonna be a great solution for it. So thank you guys for joining and and congrats on the launch.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. Thanks, We'll talk to you soon. Cheers. Have a good rest of your day.
Speaker 2:Next up, we have I'm John. I'm John. The Rapplet.
Speaker 1:Coming coming in from the restroom rating room, I'll tell you about 8sleep.com. Get a pod five ultra, five year warranty, thirty day risk free trial, free returns, free shipping. You heard Nico Rosberg talk about the importance of sleep. You need an Eight Sleep. Code, two VPN.
Speaker 1:Omjad from Replit in the Restream waiting room, bringing him in. He has some fantastic news for us. Break it down. Welcome back to the show. Great
Speaker 2:to see you.
Speaker 8:Thanks for having me here, guys.
Speaker 5:Good to see you again.
Speaker 1:Look fantastic. You look yeah. Just great lighting. You look healthy. You look like you're Thank dead you.
Speaker 1:Than ever. I feel like there's been a PR in the recent in the recent history. Won't hold you
Speaker 11:to it.
Speaker 8:No. I've done I've done a bit of a PR on on just getting healthier in general. Actually, weightlifting is really bad for you. Powerlifting, especially. You get because once you start chasing weights Sure.
Speaker 8:You, you know, you you're fine with getting fat and you're fine with anything.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 8:You're you're willing to die to to add that extra pound on your lift, and it's just a bad sport in general.
Speaker 1:Yep. Well
Speaker 2:Yeah. John and I John and I go back and forth here. John's John's very fixated on, you know, constant improvement in the gym. Mhmm. I'm I'm more so, like, you know, I wanna be strong and healthy.
Speaker 2:But anyways, it it it you're what what did Deleon say the other week? It's like you're always either like adding to your one rep max or
Speaker 1:Or losing. Or losing. So it's one way or the other. Well Did you see what p o
Speaker 2:Did you
Speaker 8:see what growing growing Daniel What say? Said about power lifting?
Speaker 1:What did say?
Speaker 8:It's like if you if you wanna look ugly and feel shit, take up power lifting. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's not for the aesthetics, for sure. Yeah. Anyway, PR on fundraising. So congrats on that. What's the news?
Speaker 8:Thank you. Yeah. We raised $250,000,000. Congratulations.
Speaker 5:Let's go.
Speaker 2:Let's go.
Speaker 8:At at a $3,000,000,000 valuation
Speaker 1:dollar valuation.
Speaker 8:Led by Prism Capital with Amex and Google joining the round and a bunch of our lovely investors such as Andreessen, YC, and others kind of doubling down.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. Massive takeoff, fast takeoff in in revenue and users. Like like, the the vibe coding era is definitely a narrative that's that that that's, you know, on a tear right now. Correct?
Speaker 13:Yeah. But but we're actually trying
Speaker 8:to change the game a little bit. Like, I think vibe coding is is is awesome. Yeah. But ultimately, like, what Replit is and what I've been trying to do for a long time is make it so that anyone can make software.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 8:Five coding is still somewhat coding. You're still sitting in front of an IDE and like most people don't wanna do that. Like a lot of people like it Mhmm. But people just wanna solve problems, start startups. Yep.
Speaker 8:That's why they do, you know, coding. And so Replot Agent three, we our target is for it to feel like a human developer Mhmm. For it to work on your behalf. And so, the main target we set from, like, a research perspective is can we make it run for two hundred minutes? So when it went from agent one to agent two, went from two minutes to twenty minutes.
Speaker 8:So now from twenty minutes to three hundred two hundred minutes. And, actually, we're I'm seeing people show me apps they built that it's taking four hours on its own. Wow. It can boot up a browser window, test it test the app for you. It can run unit tests.
Speaker 8:It can review its code. And we have this adversarial relationship between, like, Claude and GPT five, Gemini arguing and fighting, and so it's like this multi agent system. And it's really the state of the art autonomous coding agent. And so the the idea is not to vibe code. The idea is to to build things, and oftentimes, you don't even have to be in in front of the computer for that to happen.
Speaker 1:How big of an opportunity is mobile?
Speaker 8:Mobile is huge. Like, so a lot of our customers are actually executives. So I I was at the all in summit. We hosted AI dinner. I brought down from Seattle Lloyd Frank Frank from the cofounder
Speaker 2:of
Speaker 8:Zillow, and he is Replis champion at the firm. Right? This is executive chairman of of of the board and, you know, a lot of his times in in between meetings and things like that. So he can, like, boot up Replit on his phone, and we have a lot of other CEOs. I've heard the story secondhand that, you know, Vlad from Robinhood would, like, prototype applications on on phone in meetings to kind of show engineers what they should go and build.
Speaker 8:And so I think it really changes the game. It's no longer about being a computer nerd sitting in front of a computer. It's about making things, whether it's on your phone, on your, you know hopefully, the future, even, you know, you can just talk to Replit via your headphones, and it just goes and does the thing.
Speaker 1:Yep. No, I think that there's that meme of where you sit in the org is correlated to how many monitors And have, it's like the person who's keeping the entire app online, like the genius systems engineer has three monitors. Then the product manager has one extra monitor and a laptop that they take to meetings. And then the CEO is just on their phone all the time. And giving the CEO or executive who's just on their phone the ability to express themselves in software is extremely powerful.
Speaker 1:I'm Oh, interested sorry.
Speaker 2:How how do you think about projecting and forecasting market size of code generation broadly? Because Yeah. Replit was early to to this space, but it's heavily competitive with via, you know, I there was even now that I think about it, at at demo day, there was a the other day, there was a company that I was kind of thinking when I heard the pitch, this feels like basically like a feature of Replit. Right? Mhmm.
Speaker 2:So it's just like hyper competitive space but at the It same time
Speaker 1:prompt to use flight specifically. Is that the one you're
Speaker 2:thinking Yeah. But but the world just wants more and more and more code and the cheaper you make it to make code, the more the world wants it. But I'm curious how you think about kind of the overall market opportunity.
Speaker 8:First of all, super vindicated. Right? Like I've been talking about this since I was a teenager. I was working at know Code Academy and we were saying, anyone can learn to code. Everyone wants to make software.
Speaker 8:And everyone's like, well, you should learn to be a plumber because everyone needs plumbing. I was like, no. It's different. Like, we need an abundance of code. You don't need an abundance of plumbing.
Speaker 8:And
Speaker 1:That's hilarious.
Speaker 8:Yeah. And and so it's awesome. Like, I I think we lit a fire, and now the forest is on fire. Right? But and that's that's always, I think, good.
Speaker 8:I think the look. There's a zero sum market, and there's a positive sum market. The zero sum market is a professional engineering market. You see the Copilot versus Cursor chart.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 8:And as as as Cursor is rising, Copilot is going in market share. Mhmm. That's a zero sum market. Now you see it with Codex and ClotCode. And so there's only so many tools that software engineers can use.
Speaker 8:But like I said, we're bringing we're you know, executives are making software. Sales people, marketing people, doctors, nurses, everyone. I haven't like at this point I've over the past year, I've heard every profession under the sun has used Replit in some use case. And so I think the market size is is is is probably the market size of software, the market size of computers. Right?
Speaker 8:And and by the way, this is the original vision of computing. When the original creators of computers, that's what they envisioned. They envisioned that you buy a computer and you program it. That's how you use it. They didn't, envision the software industry.
Speaker 8:And I think that's that's the true essence of, you know, how computing could be really, really powerful is the ability for anyone to program it. So that's one. Another sort of we did it like a one more thing as part of the our agent three announcement. And it's a sort of this low key launch that I think will will will, you know, transform our business over time. And it's the ability for Replit agent to make other agents.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 8:So we've gotten really good at making agents, and now we're imbuing that knowledge into the agent itself. And what we're finding in the enterprise is that a lot of people wanna solve problems. Software as a mean means of solving problems. You create an app, and then you use that app to take an action. Right?
Speaker 8:But a lot of times, you an agent can take an action on your behalf. And so you can create an HR agent, a sales agent. You know, there there's there's so many things that could be automated. And there's an entire industry that's gonna emerge around vertical agents, and that's fine. But a lot times, you need very domain specific, like, HR onboarding agent for the idiosyncratic bespoke way we do onboarding on in our company.
Speaker 8:And the only person who knows how to do it is one HR ops person at our company. And so, know, now agents can make other agents, and that market size is also dizzyingly dizzyingly large because that starts to displace white collar labor in many ways.
Speaker 1:On the topic of just more and more code endlessly, I'm interested to know how you think instantiation of code will live in the consumer world over time. And I'll I'll give you an example. So I've fired off deep research reports in OpenAI's ChatGPT. I've also once gone to ClaudeCode and said, with the same prompt, do all the deep research, but then instantiate it as an HTML site that is mobile responsive and can use all different HTML tables. And you can tell that when Deep Research fills in from ChatGPT, it has the ability to use markdown and create a table, but it can't just pull a random JavaScript library and create an interactive bar chart.
Speaker 1:It can't randomly throw images in and add all these different divs that you could possibly do on HTML. And so I was thinking about, are we going to get to a world where you open up your favorite LLM chat app, and in order to answer the problem, it's building a widget, building a piece of software, the same way when you go to Google and you ask for two plus two, it just gives you a calculator, an actual HTML calculator. You can instantiate that calculator in code. And and so I'm I'm wondering Understood. How you think the market will look in, five, I don't know, ten years or something.
Speaker 1:Like
Speaker 8:Yeah. Yeah. I think you hit Yeah. I think you hit on something super important. I think it is easier to look at this and say this is the market for cogen.
Speaker 8:Yeah. No. It's a market for software. Yeah. The again, if you go back to history when, you know, Turing wrote his 1936 paper that, you know, invented the the the computer, the Turing machine, it's about universal computation is that, you know, computers can be these dynamic systems.
Speaker 8:Right? And we know initially, computers were these fancy calculators. You couldn't program them in software. You had to kind of, you know, rewire them. And then von Neumann in the, you know, fifty forties, fifties created the stored program computer, and the idea is that you can suddenly program them.
Speaker 8:And, you know, every computer we have right now is a von von Neumann machine. And I think this moment is as big as that moment. You went from static computers to programmable computers. Now we're going from static software to dynamic and malleable software. So every piece of software application you're gonna be working with will be generating software on the fly, pulling packages on the fly, and creating bespoke software for your use case.
Speaker 8:So instead of going and buying Tableau to do this one exact thing, you can go to Replit or Manus or even ChatGifti will do it in the future and all of that. And depending on how depth of the power is, I think Replit is gonna be the most powerful.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 8:But but of course, you can use any of the other tools and they're gonna generate the the bespoke software that you need for that exact use case. And I think that's a very exciting future.
Speaker 1:Yeah. There will be sort
Speaker 2:of like continual complexity. When you see some of these insane cloud backlogs where you have like Google and Microsoft and Oracle and everybody's reporting like we have backlogs in the hundreds of billions and the and and I think Wall Street looks at that and they say, okay, where is this where is this revenue really gonna where is this how is this revenue
Speaker 1:gonna materialize? Mean, sorry. But, like, that that's not what Wall Street's reaction was. Wall Wall Street's reaction was like, oh, the money's in the bank. Like, let's drive the stock higher.
Speaker 1:Well, yes. I I I think some
Speaker 2:more critical Critical. Investors are saying, like, you that's a lot of money being thrown around Totally. Lot of numbers. Where what? How do you make it?
Speaker 2:On your side, as you see the entire market of software shifting from we make software and we sell a lot of times to we make software continuously for the needs of our business? Do those kind of backlogs start to make sense to you?
Speaker 8:I think so. Look. I'm I'm not an investor. We might be in a bubble in the short term, but I am confident that the long term value of this technology, especially as it pertains to LLMs making software, is massive. In some sense, it's gonna displace existing value.
Speaker 8:So that's in the vertical point solution SaaS space. I think it'll start doing some jobs that otherwise humans have been doing. So the the existing value capture from the existing market, but it's also gonna fundamentally change how we use computers, how we run our businesses. Businesses can be a lot more efficient. And I think that an economist or a philosopher need to start thinking about what the future of work would look like when everyone has a fully autonomous programmer in their pocket.
Speaker 8:Mhmm. It's you know, every company is bottlenecked by software. Every company in the world from one person company to a 100,000 person company. So when your finance team needed this, like, data to be pipeline from, like, Stripe and other places so they can run certain analysis, they're bottlenecked by data engineering. But if I can, like, let loose, you know, replit or clock code or whatever, and just say, like, go figure out these data sources and plumb them in so I can run SQL queries on them, and then three or four hours later you have that ready, then, you know, you unblocked yourself.
Speaker 8:You created massive improvements to your processes, and also you don't need the engineers to go work on this side quest and they can focus on the core software that the company is building. Building.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. We went viral last time asking you advice for young people. Let's get your updated thinking. Should you learn to code in twenty twenty five?
Speaker 8:What do you wanna do, I would say. Like do you wanna start a startup? Go fucking start a startup. Like go to Replit, put your idea in, and you know, in twenty minutes you'll get a prototype. And then once you have a better idea of what you wanna build, you can put in a larger prompt and have it run for three hours and then come back to you with a product that maybe you can release even in the first day.
Speaker 8:Is that what you wanna do? Now you wanna be a specialist, you wanna go work on writing provable C software for the next Apollo program, yeah, go get a PhD in computer science. But really it comes down to what you wanna do. I think the future is entrepreneurship. And not just entrepreneurship and building businesses, but also what we're seeing is there's a lot of entrepreneurs within companies that are creating tremendous value.
Speaker 8:We hear of companies all the time, employees using Replit, creating millions of dollars of revenue for their company. And they're not engineers. They're operations people, product managers, and all all sorts of people are now empowered to do that. But I think the main skill the main set of skills is gonna be resourcefulness. I think the worst thing you could do is be do what you're told today.
Speaker 8:The worst thing you could do is perhaps listen to your parents. Here we go. Maybe that goes
Speaker 1:we go. That
Speaker 9:was answer.
Speaker 8:Because, you know, look, I think that, you know, all the advice is outdated. And I think we're entering a very dynamic era. And I think, you know, especially young people need to think for themselves. They'll know much better than their teachers, their parents, everyone else, what they need to focus on, what kind of skills they need to learn.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much. Be
Speaker 2:able make the time. The robots will do all of the process. Yep. You just need to That's right. Ideate create things.
Speaker 2:Be ideate
Speaker 8:and Yeah. That's true to the human spirits. That we're not we're never gonna lose that. That's a human spirit.
Speaker 1:I agree. Thank you so much for
Speaker 2:taking Congrats on the on the new round.
Speaker 1:We're always a pleasure. We'll talk to you soon, John. See you.
Speaker 2:Talk to
Speaker 3:you soon. Bye.
Speaker 1:Let me tell you about public.com investing for those that take it seriously. They got multi asset investment, industry leading yields, and trusted by millions. Up next, we have Alex from Higgs Field AI in the Restream waiting room. Let's bring him in to the TBP and UltraDump. Welcome to the stream, Alex.
Speaker 1:Great to see you. How are you doing?
Speaker 9:Doing great. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. Give us the news. Do you have anything to share on the fundraising side?
Speaker 9:Yeah. For sure. Guys, happy to announce that we raised 50,000,000, and we purposefully beat you guys.
Speaker 1:Oh, what?
Speaker 9:As you yeah. You represent the new media. Yes.
Speaker 2:Sorry to interrupt. Thank you so much. I got a little excited. Continue. You said
Speaker 1:you you picked saying something very nice about how, like, we're we're we're neatly organized. We're just, like, banging dongs and stuff. Anyway, I'll let you talk. Sorry.
Speaker 9:Yeah. I mean, we're we're just excited to support this new wave of creators who are social media native.
Speaker 6:Yeah.
Speaker 9:And I think TPPM is a great example of what it means to be social media native and don't be the gatekeeper.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 9:So that's for us. We also are excited to share some stats today.
Speaker 1:Please.
Speaker 9:We in just five months after the launch, we probably crossed over 1,300,000,000 views on social media. All the content generated with Hicksville crossed over a billion views on social media.
Speaker 1:That was crazy. Congratulations. That's
Speaker 2:What what kind of what what kind of power law is there in that
Speaker 1:Is there one it do because if you had a pope wearing the puffy jacket, that could be, like, 200,000,000 views. Or is it more yeah. What does the power law look like? What's the most interesting image you've seen?
Speaker 9:Look. I think, I think what matters today is consistency. You guys go out every day. Right? Yeah.
Speaker 9:Hixloud releases every day. Mhmm. And successful creators, they have to post, like, times a day on social media, some short snippets. Mhmm. I think frequency and relevancy is what matters.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. What are the what are the most interesting use cases that you're seeing? The Nano there there was obviously the Studio Ghibli launch where we got the ability to create cartoons. Nano Banana, saw a lot of people, like, just, like, swapping clothing. Has there been kind of a killer use case that you've seen where you've gone to maybe friends who aren't reading the deep dive, how to prompt all these threads, and just said, hey, got this specific thing covered.
Speaker 1:You're gonna have a great experience if you use Higgs Field in this way.
Speaker 9:For sure. Primarily, Higgs Field stands behind creators, and really supporting creators is, the primary goal. And we integrate all the best tooling, including the nana banana, which you mentioned. One of the most surprising, use cases where we see a lot of traction is actually product placements. And we are excited to see Higgs field being adopted by Fortune 500 companies Sure.
Speaker 9:To really put their products to work to get traction on social media.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 9:And this and this is where Hixfield proprietary models like Hixfield Soul come into the play. As those large brands, they create own AI digital spokespersons to really promote the brands.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Talk about Hixfield Ventures. Pretty uncommon for companies to launch venture funds so early, but, obviously, Slack had a fund. Stripes invested a ton. What's the thinking there?
Speaker 9:First and foremost, we we just received a lots of inbounds. How can we get the access to Higgs field models?
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 9:How we can grow the same way as Higgs field?
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 9:And we thought that, there is a need to to to explain to developers to support the next next wave of AI startups. Mhmm. And that's why we launched Kicks of Ventures. So, really, the program is not focused on, like, just on a traditional venture investing. It is around sharing the growth playbooks and providing unique access to the technology.
Speaker 2:Are you worried if you give people the playbooks and the models that they'll come and and, compete with you? Or is it or are you positive sum?
Speaker 9:We have contrarian view on that, to be honest. Look. I think that there is a traditional, there is a traditional way to build a company, and that's, very often in the very often in the technology space before, it really required to raise a lot of funding and burn and burn money. And we we have seen that recently, Andreessen and Martin Casado, they they they pushed this consensus driven investing narrative a lot, which obviously benefits them as they probably have the largest fund in the world. In the same time today, what we are observing is that there is a there is a new next generation of AI lean startups like Hixfield, which are actually profitable.
Speaker 9:Profitable almost from the day one.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 9:And the and we believe that this is the the this next wave is probably gonna be as large as VC backed startups. And I think we can we we can support the creation of this next generation startups.
Speaker 2:How how how did you pitch this latest round? You know, if if somebody's giving you $50,000,000, I I presume they would like you to at least be a billion dollar company someday. What is what is Higgs Field as a, you know, multibillion dollar company look like? And and what what's your kind of if you had a crystal ball, what what what paint us a picture?
Speaker 9:For sure. I think this is quite simple. A lot of a lot of people got super superpower with self expression on thanks to social media and mobile phones. A lot of people are probably still shy to do that, and GenAI is just going to propel self expression. And, essentially, we believe that in three years, every second video is going to be AI generated, and it's gonna be AI generated with Higgs field.
Speaker 9:So the so the impact is going to be way bigger than just, let's say, building video version of Canva. I think this is going to be a transformative movements in the in the social media space.
Speaker 2:And that's and that's because today every piece of content that's produced has some sort of cost. And as more and more content is produced with AI, you guys can you effectively capture some of that some of the costs that would have been spent on on on traditional video production, whether it's just somebody with the phone and their time in their hand or it's sort of a more produced shoot. Is that am I hearing that right?
Speaker 9:Yeah. For for sure. The cost is is an important factor. But it's not just that. Like, look.
Speaker 9:I mean, for a live show, you guys clearly kill this. But you bring the best people in the industry. Like, you see the lineup today. Yeah. No one else can bring the I'm not talking about myself, obviously.
Speaker 9:Right? But there are other people whom you bring, and they they didn't they did they they do not typically show up in the live shows. But many people cannot really do the same stuff which you do. But people have ideas, like, how they can make shows, like, let's say, cartoons for kids, how they can make fantasy contents, and so on. And before that, before GenAI, it was impossible for those creators to really to really create content for social media.
Speaker 9:And all the content which we have which we are seeing today is primarily is is primarily just live content. Like, people just recording themselves. So GenAI is just gonna like, I think we we we should expect that amounts of number of different genres or types of the content is just gonna 10 x from what we have today.
Speaker 1:Totally. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for stopping by.
Speaker 2:Great to get the update. Congrats.
Speaker 1:You guys have been
Speaker 2:crushing it.
Speaker 1:The round. We will talk to you soon. Have a great rest of your day.
Speaker 2:You so much. Cheers, Alex.
Speaker 11:Thank
Speaker 1:you. Our next guest is already in the restream waiting room. Let me tell you about adquick.com. Out of home advertising made easy and measurable. Say goodbye to the headaches of out of home advertising.
Speaker 1:Only ad quick combines technology, out of home expertise, and data to enable efficient, seamless ad buying across the globe. Our next guest is from Bain Capital, Stefan Cohen. Welcome Here
Speaker 2:he is.
Speaker 3:To EVP and Ultradigm.
Speaker 2:What's happening? Hey, guys, everyone. Great to meet you. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 6:Good to meet you guys too. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:What's, give us give us a quick backstory on yourself, and then there's a bunch of stuff to talk about.
Speaker 6:Yeah. Quick background on me. So I've been at Bain for ten years now. I joined from one of our portfolio companies in the data center software space called Turbonomic that we I was an early employee there post series a. We sold that business to IBM for a couple billion.
Speaker 6:Yeah. And I, yeah, joined BCV as a partner focused on early stage investing. And about five years ago, we decided to spin off a dedicated crypto business being capital crypto, which I'm one of the coleads on, and it's been a really, really fun and interesting run. We've been investing in the space for about a a decade now.
Speaker 2:Awesome. What is, like, the crypto strategy? Is it is it a mix of of privates and, and and, you know, active trading? Like, what what's what's the actual strategy?
Speaker 6:Yeah. So the the the setup is it's kind of the core premise when we launched the firm was that, we thought that a lot of value would accrue to protocols. And so, we felt like we needed a flexible mandate to be able to buy liquid crypto and also invest in early stage projects. So the fund is very flexible in that manner. We have liquid tokens that we purchase on the open market.
Speaker 6:Then we also have, you know, seed through series, seed, d investments that we've done. Yeah. We try to not be active traders. We don't think that's the most the most productive use of our time. We we think of these as, like, kind of long hold positions that we'll we'll build real concentration in.
Speaker 2:How has it felt like for so you know, when you think about the, you know, not not deep history in crypto, let's say, like, twenty twenty twenty to 2024, it felt like the the technology was just being handicapped by the regulatory environment. You had this mix of, as an investor, you'd be investing in, you'd invest, let's say, on a SAFT or a SAFE plus a warrant. And then there's these sort of like two assets. You have a token that's trading and then you have the actual equity in the company. And that always felt like there were some key areas that it made sense.
Speaker 2:But then a lot of points you were like, what do I actually own here? Where's the value gonna accrue? With the updated regulatory environment, meaning that kind of feels like you can do almost anything now, it Where is where is value going to accrue? Are we gonna see company You know, crypto, projects really try to tie the equity value to the token, or are we still gonna see these kind of, like, dual, dual approaches?
Speaker 14:Yeah. I mean, I think
Speaker 6:it really depends on what folks are building. You know, my you know, the sort of, like, early premises of investing in crypto protocols, which are these, like, decentralized apps or blockchains themselves, was that the tokens kind of are, like, equity like looking instruments where based on the usage of the protocol, they accrue they they accrue fees through usage, and then they have a cash flow profile, and you can kinda fundamentally value them. And they're not owned by any single party. They have, you know, governance rights where they can vote on code contributions to the application or the blockchain that they're tied to. And I think that core principle hasn't changed.
Speaker 6:And so for those types of protocols, that's very true. I think structurally things have shifted. We had to do a lot of heroics pre this administration to ensure that we were protected from a regulatory standpoint when we were doing token launches. And so a lot of these teams would basically have like an equity company. You'd be issued token warrants.
Speaker 6:And then at the point of issuing the token, you would have an offshore foundation that would actually issue the token itself, and the investors would have rights to that. We have I I think most projects right now kind of have that legacy model. I don't know that many are actually trying new and different models for
Speaker 2:Yeah. I guess what what I was trying to get at is, like, how do you what's what's after this sort of foundation model? Is there enough regulatory clarity that we could that that that that these that you could establish kind of a new model, or is it now been workshopped enough and trialed enough that it actually is the right model for the future and that
Speaker 6:I I think the model works fine. I mean, I I suspect people will try other different structures, but, you know, the fundamental problem with the model is you end up with this, like, equity company that often oftentimes doesn't have any real value associated with it. And
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 6:There is some you know, we've had to deal with some things with legacy portfolio companies where they either need to shut those down or sort of allocate their balance sheet over to the foundation. But that seems to not be, like, the the fundamental shift from a regulatory standpoint right now. I think the the fundamental shift is that founders are now emboldened to be able to go build again, is really exciting.
Speaker 1:Tell me about the hyperstition investing thesis. I've never heard any VC put that in such, you know, stark terms before.
Speaker 6:Yeah. I think there's sort of this, like, consistent pattern that we've recognized with the most outstanding founders and companies that we've had a chance to work with, which is that their ideas are are initially disgusting and really hard to believe. You know, it's sort of a if you think of this, like, you know, this this bell curve of of companies at the beginning, it's, like, offensive. And then once you get closer to mass market adoption, everyone's kinda like, okay. Yeah.
Speaker 6:That that makes sense. And then usually, there's, a trough of illusionment where everyone's lost faith in it, and Mhmm. Maybe that was, like, you know, post 2021 crypto in a way. Yep. But there's been this consistent theme with founders, is that many that are starting out that have sort of these these these views of what the world should look like and how the world should be sort of shaped around their values and principles in the beginning seem seem kind of unreal.
Speaker 6:And we increasingly have have learned that, like, the the real art to this is to investing with these sort of long tail outcomes is to work with those founders and believe in them, and believe in them with capital and not just not just with our belief as a group. But we're really like in search of those types of ideas. Know, And I think the the two examples that we really point to, one was Crusoe when they were raising their seed financing. It was it was kind of an unbelievable idea, which was like, we're gonna go off into the oil fields and build data centers that are capturing flared natural gas, and we'll scale those to eventually handle AI level compute.
Speaker 3:I mean, it's it's sort of
Speaker 6:it was it was so it was so crazy that at the time, like, they actually had to go and build a box in they were at the time, was in Colorado to show that the the model actually worked. And, you know, more recently, we've had the privilege of being involved with Worldcoin, which Mhmm. You know, outside in is this, is this is sort of decentralized identity network. But the real notion is that in the future, and I think we're starting to feel this more and more now, it's very hard to tell what's real and what's not on the Internet. And we we sort of view that this, like, this model of trust in the Internet is breaking right now.
Speaker 6:And one of the core premises of trust is, like, are you even talking to me right now? You know, did I tweet the thing that I tweeted earlier? And and so this notion that proof of humanness and proof of identity in a sort of globally distributed Internet native way is very important. So we're on we're on the hunt for those types of ideas, and and that's part of what makes the the job really fun.
Speaker 1:Do you believe in the Landian idea that capitalism is a a time traveling artificial intelligence?
Speaker 6:I don't know that I've heard this idea. You'll to you'll have to explain it to me.
Speaker 1:The idea is that artificial intelligence existed in the future at some point and and built a time machine and came back and invented capitalism because capital acceleration will, by nature, create artificial intelligence. And and that is the Landian acceleration path that we're on. I don't know. I'm getting too deep in the weeds.
Speaker 6:I I like it. I mean stuff. I like it. The know, one one of things that I I'm always kind of struck by, is is is how, like, innovation Yeah. Breeds solutions.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 6:And and, you know, AI is, like, obviously a manifestation of that. But Yeah. You know, even in the crypto world, like, stable coins weren't really invented to solve The US debt issue, but, like, a byproduct of inventing these,
Speaker 1:like, digital dollars the debt across the entire world.
Speaker 6:Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, I'm I'm sort of, like, I continue to just be like hit in the face with these moments where, like, man, it's almost too perfect. Yep. So maybe maybe that's right.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Stablecoins are now regulated in The US or or have a framework which is wild thinking about the stablecoin businesses that were started when there just was no real clarity. So obviously credit to them for having faith. How do you think foreign governments will respond over time to USDC and and and USCT and other stable coins getting gaining adoption in there? Because, like, as an American, the idea of sort of like outsourcing our debt problem or or spreading it around the world sounds sounds great.
Speaker 2:But if you're a foreign government, you know, you want people like Turkey's paying 40%, you know, on their bonds right now. And if everybody in the country can get access to, I I guess that's a mechanism for them to get people to keep their capital in the Turkish system. But yeah, how do you expect foreign governments to respond?
Speaker 6:Yeah, I mean it's an interesting one because on the one hand they already were doing it. They were buying our debt all over the place. It's more recent than not that other governments have sort of been, you know, moving out of US treasuries. But, you know, the the what I what I view is happening right now is really we're transitioning from sovereign governments owning our debt to other people holding our debt. Right?
Speaker 6:It's like, if you think about what like, really what's happening with stablecoins is that businesses and individuals outside of The US, particularly right now I mean, I think over time, The US will become more of a center of adoption here. But but really, the the, like, $250,000,000,000 of issuance is just people and businesses offshore that want a more stable access to dollars. And I think government some governments, obviously, will try to do capital controls and prevent that from happening. I think many view it as if they can plug into the system well. Like, Brazil, in particular, is I don't if you guys have tracked what's happening with NewBank and PIX and stablecoins, but there's, you know, there's quite streamlined interoperability there.
Speaker 6:And, if if users have to transact in local currency in that economy, then they're forced to go back and forth. But Yep. Certainly, governments will take an adversarial view of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But some governments have more gained than lose, so they'll take it, which is great.
Speaker 14:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Play that eagle sound, Jordy. There we go. America. Thank you so much for having
Speaker 2:for joining, Stefan.
Speaker 1:We will talk to you in second.
Speaker 3:See you guys.
Speaker 1:Bye. Best of luck. Go to get bezel.com. Your Bezel Concierge is available now to source you any watch on the planet. Seriously, any watch.
Speaker 1:Our next guest is in the restream waiting room. We will bring him in and to the TBPN UltraDome and continue today's show.
Speaker 2:Have Here. Rohan Go.
Speaker 1:From Sphinx AI, I believe.
Speaker 2:What's happening? Welcome to the show.
Speaker 7:Nice to meet you. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much for hopping on. Give us a breakdown. Introduce yourself. Are What you building? What's the news?
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 7:Yeah. So I'm Rohan. I'm one of the cofounders and the CEO of Sphinx. Sphinx is a company that is solving AI for data, and specifically, we're razor focused on the idea that large language models in AI today are really good at text. They're good at code, which is just a type of text, good at images.
Speaker 7:What they're not good at is the type of tabular, semi structured time series information that makes most of the world work, everything from supply chains to high finance to, manufacturing. We're bridging that gap and delivering Copilot that can think about data natively and help people get from piles of raw information to valuable business ideas, what we call alphas in finance, but can be extended to almost any industry.
Speaker 1:Interesting. Who's the first customer in finance then?
Speaker 7:Yeah. First customer in finance, don't know if I have the rights to name them, but we do have No.
Speaker 1:I mean, like, the the architect, the private equity, hedge fund,
Speaker 14:quant hedge fund.
Speaker 1:High frequency.
Speaker 7:Really hedge funds.
Speaker 1:So yeah. So someone who's, like, analyzing a stock on a quarter by quarter basis almost.
Speaker 7:That's right.
Speaker 2:Yep. That makes sense.
Speaker 7:Quarter by quarter. Faster than quarter by quarter, really. Sure. I've we're working with a lot of quant, so people who are maybe day by day or even faster than that.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 7:But, yeah, the hedge funds are the target market initially. They are able to solve these problems where they find
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 7:A single insight that can make billions in a year.
Speaker 1:That's interesting. Yeah. And then I imagine that if you go any faster, the customer wants to write their own OCaml, if we're talking about Jane Street. And so it's for a specific quant that's looking for, yeah, day by day analysis. Interesting.
Speaker 1:Yes. So what is the go to market like? I imagine that maybe it's more of like an enterprise software deal. You're actually going outbound, meeting with folks, steak dinners, signing deals? Or is this kind of like general sign up on the website?
Speaker 7:Both. Right? So we are we are going to people maybe not steak dinners yet. Don't know if we have that budget, but we certainly are talking to a lot of different companies across industries. But it also is a bottoms up motion.
Speaker 7:There are a lot of people, myself included in my past role. I used to be at Citadel. I I I ran a quant team.
Speaker 11:So,
Speaker 7:I was very frustrated at the lack of tools like this to help me get from idea to value. Yeah. So we do have quite a robust set of, data scientists, quantitative researchers who are just using the product off the shelf, but we're also making those enterprise sales as well.
Speaker 1:That's awesome.
Speaker 2:What is, give us your read on the talent wars between the Citadels of the world and the Frontier Labs and now Sphinx, of course, because I'm sure you're
Speaker 7:Yeah. No. We we've we've gotten people from hedge funds. Not from Citadel. I do have a non solicit, but we have gotten people from other hedge funds, we have gotten people, to take our offer over, say, Anthropic or OpenAI.
Speaker 7:Look. Like, it comes down to what you're, optimizing for. I think if you're going to these foundation labs, you're betting on AGI. And if you win, good for you. That's a great bet.
Speaker 7:Hedge funds are betting on almost nothing. I think if the AI bubble pops tomorrow, so it'll make a hell of a lot of money, and that's great for them. Mhmm. And really for us, we're focused on our specific application. So it comes down to what you're passionate about.
Speaker 7:Is it is it money? Is it AGI, or is it just like razor sharp focus on solving one problem? And that that's who we hire.
Speaker 1:What's your take on on Microsoft Copilot in Excel? We've talked to probably four different companies that are building Excel add ons. Yeah. There's there's that world. How does that fit into your strategy?
Speaker 1:How how are you doing something different or or do you see that on the roadmap? How do think about that?
Speaker 7:Look, like, I I think Excel has been the tool for data for, like, what however it's been out there, but we don't see that as being the transformative layer. The kind of serious data work, the kind of data work that makes people billions of dollars is done on a slightly different stack, a stack that can scale a little bit more that translates more naturally to production. And and we really wanna target that. And, you know, Excel is easy to use, but what's easier than Excel is writing prompts. Yep.
Speaker 7:So over time, I'm not saying I'm killing Excel today. Right? But over time, I see that as kind of becoming a less relevant layer, almost just the interpretability layer on top of something like Swinx. Actually getting work done in Excel, I feel is gonna become a thing of the past. We're gonna be able to build much more serious models with a lot more financial impact.
Speaker 1:It's exciting.
Speaker 2:How do you charge for Sphinx? Because it it feels like, you know or the best companies create a lot more value than they capture.
Speaker 1:Percent of AUM. Just 2% of AUM.
Speaker 9:Yeah. Just give
Speaker 1:me 2% of your AUM, Citadel. We're good.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Your entire
Speaker 3:management I love that.
Speaker 2:Entire management team. No. But it's like, you know, if you help if you helps somebody make if you help people make money, they're happy to pay you a lot a lot for that.
Speaker 7:Yeah. Look. We we don't only work in finance. We were already quite horizontal, and it's very hard for us to tell the exact nature of the value we're delivering. But some of our customers, of course, are open with others, like hedge funds.
Speaker 7:They're not gonna tell us, like, what
Speaker 1:they found.
Speaker 7:So the the kind of a way of, like, capturing that value, you know, it's it's hard it's hard for us, but really for us, the focus is on building something transformative. And, you know, this is step one as we're able to get more and more autonomous and we're able to eventually say, you know, we can solve large scale data problems in a couple seconds fully autonomously, I think the value becomes enormously clear. So we're not overly focused on that right now. Really, right now, we just charge for usage. We wanna deliver people something that they use.
Speaker 7:When they use it, they have to pay us Yep. To get that service.
Speaker 1:That makes sense. Well, thank you so much for taking some time out of your day to come talk to us.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It was great to meet you.
Speaker 1:Congratulations. We'll talk to you soon. Great meeting you. Have a great rest of your and I will tell you about Wander. Find your happy place.
Speaker 1:Book a wander with aspiring views, hotel grade amenities, dreamy beds, top tier cleaning, $24.07 concierge service. It's a vacation home, but better. Our next guest is in the Restream waiting room. Timothy, welcome to TVPN. Background.
Speaker 1:How are you doing? What is behind you? Break it down. Introduce yourself. What are we looking at?
Speaker 3:Yeah, guys. Good to good to be on the show. Excited to share what we're doing here at Intermotive. We're building a battery electric autonomous rail car. So when you think of trains going across the country in two or three mile long strings, we make every single one drive themselves.
Speaker 2:No way. Crazy. Train Maxi.
Speaker 1:That's amazing.
Speaker 2:We've been waiting for this. This is the the I think this is the first we've interviewed hundreds of Yeah. Founders.
Speaker 1:I'm blown away. This, this doesn't seem like something that, like like, give me the why now. Like, why why didn't this happen ten years ago? Like, you don't have the same problem as Waymo where you have to steer as much, or do you? Like, why is this just happening now?
Speaker 3:No. It's a great question, and it's a great natural place to start from. And, really, rail's out of sight, out of mind for a lot of people, especially when you think about our tech workforce and the people that are trying to solve really hard problems out there. And that's exactly why there's so much opportunity here in rail to do exactly that. Take the technologies that have been pushed forward maybe for a decade on the perception models, the control systems, the electrification's happened in the industry, and bring that to rail and to build a team of tech workers around it.
Speaker 3:That's really what we're doing here. And it naturally makes sense. You do have fixed infrastructure. You've got track. You've got points of rail that go across the country.
Speaker 3:You've got a 160,000 miles of track generally utilized at a 3% utilization factor. And all that stuff just stacks up to make this a very logical place to implement these types of technologies first. And we're excited that we're in in production. We've got vehicles out in service running for customers every single day.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 3:Gonna move over 3,500 carloads in production this year and really just focused on getting America's rail system back on track where it's forefront in the front part of people's minds and let people know this is an exciting place to come put technology in. It's important for The U. S. Economy. It's important for our customer stakeholders in agriculture, energy, mining, any of those places, and and just get that supply chain right with rail.
Speaker 1:It's fantastic.
Speaker 2:When did the when did the idea click for you? How did Yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, I'm I'm a engineer by training. I did my undergrad in South Dakota, the PhD in Michigan State, and then I went to work in the defense industry. So I went to go work on cruise missiles, fighter jet platforms, a bunch of unmanned systems. And that's really an industry that's been doing some of these things since the seventies in a lot of ways, building systems that can fly themselves. And then 2017 came, and everybody's gonna fly to work.
Speaker 3:So I got to build a flying car and a package delivery drone and help build a team of 40 engineers behind that. And then as many founders know, you got the right cofounder in in the team that gets you to go look at something different. And he was doing his MBA at USC, studying supply chain logistics and looking at rail in 2019 and looking at competitive threats of autonomous trucks, electric trucks, and then came to me and said, what do you think happens if we bring these technologies to rail? And that's really what got us off and running. So we have built a system that's backwards compatible with the existing strengths of rail.
Speaker 3:So if you think of a two mile long train running across the country from the Port Of Long Beach to Chicago, we can fit in that train. We can hybridize the whole train and ride along with a large diesel locomotive unit. But, really, that two miles of stuff isn't consumed in Chicago. You gotta break it down and get it to Gary, Indiana, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Peoria, Illinois. And that's really where we can make short trains with unit economics of those two mile long trains.
Speaker 3:So you can now say, I need five cars in Gary. I'm gonna cut those five cars off, use Intramoto's products, and get it there. And I need 10 cars up in Milwaukee. I'm gonna go feed a brewery somewhere. I can cut 10 more cars off and just send them on the unit economics of a short train.
Speaker 3:And and that's really a game changing paradigm shift for speed and flexibility on rail, and it already has a cost advantage. So that's really how we think about it. And where we build out and and where we started is in some places like mining and plant railroads and facilities just like this one in Saint Louis where we're headquartered and continue to build it out and utilize that infrastructure better.
Speaker 2:So you guys have track that runs into your facility?
Speaker 3:Yeah. This car is sitting on track. We've got two parallel production lines here in Saint Louis, and honestly, St. Louis is the right type of place to be for this because we can access all the railroads in the entire country from here. Wow.
Speaker 3:And it's a hub and spoke model. And we're at one of those hubs in St. Louis, and we can get to all the spokes from here.
Speaker 1:Talk about the electrical systems. How do you charge this? Do you swap the battery, or does I imagine it takes a ton of time to charge, the the actual train, or maybe it doesn't. I don't know. Break it down.
Speaker 3:Yeah. That's the beauty of the system. So, when you think about rail, you think about where it came from. Came from a steam engine in the eighteen hundreds Yeah. Where the smallest power system that they could make was this giant steam locomotive.
Speaker 3:Yeah. But maybe it pulled 10 cars with it at that point.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And that necessitated steel track and steel wheels because of how heavy that system is. Sure. It also drove the infrastructure the way it is. So that's why we have these tracks across the country. Get one, two, 3% better every year for the last two hundred years, and now you look at a system where you have a two or three mile long train.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:But what happened there is that you have the right of ways at all the crossings. You don't start and stop a lot. You go through mountains and sit around them, and all that energy efficiency that goes into that then just makes a battery system actually work pretty well. Mhmm. And we granulate it, we so get down to the single car size where we can make a battery pack the size of a a Tesla car battery or I drive a electric truck.
Speaker 3:So the size of my electric truck battery, and we can actually move a 100 tons of freight several 100 miles with that system. And if you want to go further, you just add more of our units and you get really granular. But that leads to us to be able to use Level two charging infrastructure and a lot of the investments that the automotive industry has done to get those standards up to par and also not try to recharge what a locomotive would be, which is 50 to 200 megawatts of power on that unit plus.
Speaker 1:This is fascinating. What's the state of the company? Like, how big are you guys? Have you raised money? What what like, how big is the business?
Speaker 3:Yeah. We're we're in Saint Louis here. We've got a 67,000 square foot production facility. Yeah. We've raised up to a series a at this point to fully deploy these assets.
Speaker 1:Congrats.
Speaker 3:Generally, we're around 50 employees at the moment with largely engineering coming from automotive, aerospace, and rail. Kind of this perfect mix where you can guarantee something cool is gonna come out the other side Yeah. And about five years old at this point.
Speaker 1:Fantastic progress. Remarkable. Last question from my side. Is there is there anything that you're I mean, I I this is obviously, like, an American reindustrialization project in many ways, but are there any, top of mind asks for DC or American lawmakers? Like, if you had to make rail great again agenda, like, what would you change?
Speaker 1:What are you asking for? What do we need to do more of? Just at a high level, what like, way like, what else would help that that's maybe out just outside of your control?
Speaker 3:Yeah. No. I think, really, we just need to talk about it a little bit more. So people talk about highways. They talk about autonomous trucks.
Speaker 3:They talk about autonomous cars. It's in the news every single day. Yeah. We're getting people to talk about rail and talk about that infrastructure because in reality, to make rail better, all it is is meet making stuff move more frequently. You don't need a a Hyperloop type of technology where you fire packages in a tube.
Speaker 3:You just need to keep the stuff on the rails moving more frequently. We don't really need to rebuild anything. We just need to unlock that massive network and uncongest it, and we can make this extremely competitive. And our technology positions us to do exactly that. And then from a regulatory perspective, they've been very open to these types of technologies in a very positive way.
Speaker 3:And we've proven it out in whole section of the market that's unregulated. So we can just go out there and and use those use cases, collect the data that's necessary to get to the regulated use cases from there Yep. And then generate that data that then goes directly to how we would certify these products in a a regulated use case.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you so much for taking some time out of your busy day to come talk to us.
Speaker 2:Thank you for train maxing. Somebody had to do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Somebody had to do it. Will talk to you soon.
Speaker 2:It'll look obvious in hindsight, I
Speaker 1:Have a great rest of your day.
Speaker 2:Awesome.
Speaker 1:Talk to
Speaker 3:you soon. See you, man. Thanks.
Speaker 1:Cheers. Next, we have Nebius, which was in the news just yesterday or the day before. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Chief revenue officer. Mark
Speaker 1:Oh, he's the guy that did the deal.
Speaker 2:Who, certainly would have played a part in this new deal with Mike.
Speaker 1:We're very excited to bring in Mark from the Restream waiting room. Let's bring him in here.
Speaker 2:Mark, how
Speaker 1:are you doing? Mark. Good to meet you.
Speaker 14:Hey, Johnny, Jordy. Fantastic to be here today.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much Great to
Speaker 2:have you. You you look you look like you're in a pretty good mood. Is any any reason?
Speaker 1:Any good news happened recently?
Speaker 14:Recently. Man, it's been an exciting week and I think you already called it out in the wind up to my showing up. It it's extraordinary what's going on at Nebius today.
Speaker 1:Give us the give us the high level couple bullet points on on the deal this week.
Speaker 14:Well, we announced a, landmark partnership with Microsoft. One of the leading AI labs that is out there
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 14:To support them with AI infrastructure under a four a five year agreement valued at at least $17,400,000,000 with potential fuel tax and a 19,400,000,000.0.
Speaker 1:It's fantastic.
Speaker 2:Do you think you could get a deal like that done when you join? I mean, I have to imagine that you you joined roughly six months ago, was it?
Speaker 14:I joined a little over three months ago.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay. So maybe the deal was in the works, but it sounds like Wait.
Speaker 1:Or yeah. Did they see Sachin Adela on the Dwarkash Patel podcast say, I'm happy to be a leaser? And you said, oh, we'll we'll lease you.
Speaker 2:Was that
Speaker 1:was that exactly how it played out? Or I thought you guys probably conversing
Speaker 14:I think it's a little more a little more subtle than that. But Okay.
Speaker 1:Because he really did hold up his hand and say, hey. Come pitch me, and people did. And and you got the deal done. Congrats.
Speaker 14:It's it's extraordinary to have them as a partner. I mean, Microsoft is by itself an amazing company. And, for us to be winning the the the honor is a landmark for the company, and it's helping us to accelerate all of our plans.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. Talk about the collection behind you. The chat's calling it out. Crazy Oh. Technic.
Speaker 14:That's, those are Legos, man. Legos. That's a a Ferrari, a Lamborghini, and a McLaren, and
Speaker 1:Holy Trinity, almost.
Speaker 14:That's the Trinity over there. There's another Trinity over there of That's fantastic. Land Rover and g g wagon.
Speaker 1:I love it.
Speaker 3:I love making
Speaker 14:the Lego cars.
Speaker 1:Those are fantastic.
Speaker 2:Give us give us the state of the the company. We've we've covered we've covered Nebius on the show before. Know we know kind of the the backstory. But, yeah, talk talk about kind of the kind of more recent history and, you know, I'm I'm sure you you got up to speed as you joined and and first learned about the company.
Speaker 14:Well, the company is very laser focused on building the AI infrastructure of choice for startups all the way through enterprises. And we are making big strides against that, that vision. We continue to support the most innovative startups. As a matter of fact, one of, our customers was on your podcast today, Higgs Field,
Speaker 2:which is No way.
Speaker 14:Amazing company. Amazing company and very privileged to have them as a customer.
Speaker 2:That's interesting.
Speaker 14:Likewise, all the way up to major enterprises like, Cloudflare and and Shopify.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 14:And in all cases, we're helping them to not only service the near term model creation or early development works that they have, but also helping them to scale their applications and, deliver the inference that they need. So it's a it's a very exciting time.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic.
Speaker 2:What yeah. Go going forward, you you set the bar pretty high here with this recent deal with Microsoft. What what what's kind of the focus over the next, you know, like how I guess, I'm curious to understand, you know, with the, with the news around Oracle and OpenAI this week, a lot of people are, a lot of people are just kind of questioning like, okay, you're gonna build something that's like AWS scale in a in a very short amount of time here that seems pretty challenging. How much is a lot of the effort at at Nebius really around just like scaling infrastructure and knowing that the demand is there, but it's just like you have to you have to build that capacity?
Speaker 14:Well, we've always had the vision and Arkady, our CEO has said it for a long time that we would do some of these super lab deals. Mhmm. Today's market, it happens to be a fantastic opportunity. But we believe in the fullness of time. The real opportunity is more along lines of what you described, is delivering the AWS equivalent for AI.
Speaker 14:And that's where the priority is right now focused. So continuing to build out our software stack, being able to cater to that, you know, single engineer that's trying to build something from scratch that signs up with our self-service experience. And then being there with them as they scale and their needs expand. At the same time, we're pursuing all of the other high scale AI consuming customers out there. And, you know, we think that the next several years are gonna be a crazy time as capacity supply is being chased by a lot of different people.
Speaker 14:But ultimately, the long term, you know, the $100,000,000,000 plus business opportunity is servicing, the equivalent of a hyperscaler requirements for the, new class of AI customer.
Speaker 1:Friend of the show, Dylan Patel, over at Semi Analysis gave you guys a gold medal in the ClusterMax ranking of, GPU clouds. Give us one layer deeper in terms of how you frame what Nebius does best uniquely among the competitive landscape. Know, Semi Analysis called you gold, but I'm sure there's a lot more details of how you stand out.
Speaker 14:Well, we're delivering the software tier that's giving the AI engineer the tools for them to operate an a small or large cluster or multiple clusters as they see fit, and we're seeing more and more of that. We give the AI engineer the tooling to create a model and optimize a model, and we put at their fingertips all the open source models. We give the AI engineer the ability to conduct their training and retraining capabilities. And through our AI studio solutions, we also give them the ability to deliver inference. So you can think of it as a full spectrum set of AI capabilities for the AI engineer.
Speaker 14:We're gonna continue to innovate and add to those capabilities so you can think about all the adjacent spaces that the AI engineer is likely to need to tap from data pipelines to repositories to who knows what comes next. But our intention is to be fully catering to that AI engineer and being able to serve them whether they're in a small company or a large organization.
Speaker 1:Yeah. How does the future of the, the actual inference API business look, is that the the the is that more of a focus for growth versus, going more of the construction and real estate route and and building mega projects versus creating like a fantastic API? Do you wanna do both? What does the next couple of years look like?
Speaker 14:I mean, the the simple answer is we're going to do both.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 14:And the reality is at the the foundations, we're chasing demand.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 14:So today, there is a fair amount of construction taking place.
Speaker 11:Mhmm.
Speaker 14:So being there for all of these new model development and retraining requirements is critical. Mhmm. As those projects and customers move into, you know, real production, inference is picking up. And we're seeing it. The redistribution as people succeed is very real.
Speaker 14:And the fullness of time, what we should all want, and this is thinking about it from the standpoint is end customers or investors, is we wanna see all of these projects turn into inference driven because that means that they're actually in production being utilized by hopefully commercially paying customers somewhere.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Makes sense.
Speaker 2:Real value.
Speaker 1:Well, congratulations on the deal. Thanks so much for
Speaker 2:great to catch up, Mark. Congrats on Pleasure
Speaker 14:to be here today. Thank you both.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much. Cheers. Talk to you soon. Have a great rest
Speaker 2:of We gotta get more Legos around the studio.
Speaker 1:We do.
Speaker 2:I was envious there.
Speaker 1:I mean, Tyler's over there just waiting to put them together.
Speaker 2:That's right. Just
Speaker 1:needs time trial.
Speaker 2:Assembly line over here. Yeah. Well, without further ado, we have
Speaker 1:We have Michael from from Figure. Figure. Coming in from the restroom waiting room. Michael, you doing? Good to meet you.
Speaker 1:Hi. How are you? We're great.
Speaker 2:We're great. How are you doing?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Big day.
Speaker 2:Big day. Good. Just another day at the office.
Speaker 13:Yeah. No. Look. Big day for Figure, big day for all the employees. Super proud of what we were able to accomplish, so it's been awesome.
Speaker 1:Take us through the story. What happened?
Speaker 13:So today was our IPO. Fantastic. We You
Speaker 1:rang the bell? Didn't ring
Speaker 13:the bell. Ring the bell. So, actually, when you do that
Speaker 11:in Nasdaq
Speaker 1:Yeah. I'm gonna ring the bell. When you
Speaker 13:do that in Nasdaq, you don't ring the bell. You push the button to
Speaker 1:All open the digital. All All digital. Digital.
Speaker 13:It's digital. But, you know, we're blockchain, so we like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It makes sense.
Speaker 13:And yeah. No. So it's been, it's been about a six month process
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 13:Getting ready. You do a bunch of meetings, testing the waters, they call it now. So from my understanding, IPOs have changed a bit, since since COVID, and now more is virtual, more is done upfront. Yeah. And there's actually a little bit less pressure on the roadshow itself, which was kind of a learning for me.
Speaker 13:But, yeah. We'll about Figure.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, please. Yeah. What what what was the what was the story about the position of the company?
Speaker 1:Why the why now of the IPO? Take us through kind of the roadshow narrative.
Speaker 13:Yeah. I think I think, folks were focused on probably three things.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 13:One is rare combination of growth and profitability.
Speaker 11:Mhmm.
Speaker 13:And, you know, we have both of those, which is which is awesome. Yeah. I think number two is just huge market.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 13:So we we're in a $185,000,000,000 TAM. Basically, we are standardizing all the private credit starting with mortgage. We also do crypto back loan, a few other things like that, and we're standardizing those rails on blockchain. Mhmm. And then I think, lastly, we are one of the few companies that adds value with blockchain into the real world.
Speaker 13:So we we're in kind of the real world asset space, which also is called tokenization. We're the market leader in debt for that. We're about 75% market share. Wow. And so what we do is we partner with about a 170 really well recognized brands that work with us to originate or tokenize assets, put them on a capital market that's all based on blockchain.
Speaker 13:And, what it does is it ultimately saves a ton of cost and time and just improves both the investor experience and the consumer experience.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Take us through a case study of one of those brands that you work with and walk me through some of the value or differentiated benefits of being in the crypto world. Is it just access to international capital, speed of transactions? You can move money around on the weekends, nights and weekends. Is it regulatory hurdles or being able to access certain markets?
Speaker 1:Walk me through all that.
Speaker 13:Yeah. No. Happy to. I think to to start, I'd take something like Houzz. Just given the audience, I feel like people are probably familiar with them.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 13:They are a kinda housing and home design marketplace. Yeah. And, normally, somebody like Houzz would not really wanna get involved in the loan origination process or really be comfortable with, like, mortgage or anything of that nature. But because Figure is so simple to embed, you know, in house's case, we work with an API, we can kinda integrate with them and help their end customers take equity out of their homes for things like home improvement, and financing contractors and pools and and those types of things. And so what what we actually do in the process is we take the attributes of the loan that, you know, houses coordinating, and those are hashed on a blockchain at once upfront.
Speaker 13:And then as the loans move throughout the capital markets, there's way less checking and confirming of those details because people can just verify it on blockchain. And so what we actually do in doing so is we save about $11,000 of cost out of the production process out of 12. So it's a really big savings, and we can do it in five days versus industry average of 45. So it's a pretty material difference.
Speaker 1:So funny because, like, the the, like, the very, like, popular, like, anti crypto take is, oh, well, you you could just do this in a database with, like, Python and, you know, high frequency trading. Doesn't need a blockchain to trade stocks really fast during the market open. But, like, I just I just paid off a car loan, and, like, I'm waiting on the title. And I have to, like, go to an app and, like, text with somebody. It's gonna take me, like, weeks to just get that.
Speaker 1:And it's like, okay. Yeah. Like, that other path is not happening. And it's been years of, like, we would like to speed up the the normal rails, and it just hasn't happened. But so yeah.
Speaker 1:What yeah. I mean, raised a ton of money in the IPO. What what what are the what are the what does that do? What does that change about the company now that there's, more cash on the balance sheet? What was the structure of the deal and, like, the the rationale for that amount?
Speaker 13:Yeah. It's interesting. So, one thing to point out is with you know, at at Figure, I'm working alongside Mike Cagney who was also worked with me when I was at SoFi. So he was the CEO there. I was chief revenue officer.
Speaker 13:Here, I'm CEO. He's chairman. And together back at SoFi, we actually raised the largest capital private capital raise, at that time in 02/2015. It was a billion dollars from SoftBank. Yeah.
Speaker 13:And what it did was it really catalyzed SoFi's growth over the years.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 13:And if you look back, that was one of the big differentiators, and I think it's one of the reasons why SoFi is such a big company today.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 13:It really stood out amongst its fintech peers. And so I think from that background, you know, this IPO is similar. It's gonna be a major catalyst for Figure's growth. It's a big opportunity for us to really raise a a lot of capital, come out as a market leader, use that to seed out the marketplaces that we've been doing. Right?
Speaker 13:Figure actually started direct to consumer, then went embedded b to b, then went pure marketplace, And you need capital to do that to show leadership position and to keep adding to that 170 partner base, that we have and we're really proud of.
Speaker 1:What are your lessons from the, kind of the SPAC era, the the the the 2021 era? So far, it's, like, one of the examples that we keep coming back to as a company that has performed really well. Stock's trading at $26 today. Obviously, went out of 10. I think it's at all time highs, doing very well.
Speaker 1:Dollars 30,000,000,000 company. It's no joke. And Yeah. Joined with 75 people. Wow.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Okay. So But I mean, obviously, there was a lot of there were a lot of different decisions that were made at that What lessons are you looking at, 2021, seeing anything now and deciding any structure of the business or decision making, currently based on what you learned, during the last cycle?
Speaker 13:I'm glad you asked because it's actually something I've been thinking about a lot. I feel that post kinda '21 and what happened with SPACs, a lot of people became very negative on going public.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 13:And I don't have it all figured out.
Speaker 3:We this
Speaker 13:is, you know, our first day.
Speaker 6:Yeah.
Speaker 13:But that said, I do think from going through the process that going public is something that companies should consider. I found the markets to be receptive.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 13:I thought, you know, there's a big premium on growth. And I think in the tech world that we all live in, everyone's so used to, you know, growth, but you meet you meet these kind of investors and the kind of the the pantheon of investments they can make Yep. You know, when you're growing twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty percent, that's just so impressive and unusual. And so there's a lot of excitement. And I do feel that in the case of and in the wake of what happened with '21 and that hangover, people soured on the public market and everyone thought, you know, let's not do it.
Speaker 13:And, of course, there's obviously drawbacks and I'm there's definitely gonna be days where I'm gonna think, you know, this is a challenge. But at the same time, I found the capital market to be very receptive, and I also found it to be a great branding exercise and really a great way to kinda get liquidity for shareholders. So I do think that, ultimately, it's something that people should consider and not necessarily be afraid of what happened in '21 because there are cycles, and I think that's just part of The US capital markets. And it's frankly one of the reasons why we're excited about blockchain and its ability to continue to add value and disrupt in some ways.
Speaker 2:Yeah. What's the what's the what's the ten year vision?
Speaker 13:Yeah. So right now, we are just about 35 basis points of private credit in terms of our market share. So even though we're a big rapidly growing company, we do see you know, we started by standardizing the mortgage process on blockchain, in particular, using our integration between the origination system and the capital market, which really has never existed before. Right? Everyone's doing their own thing.
Speaker 13:I see Ramp, for example, sponsoring this podcast. I have background at Brex. You know, those are two companies that are both building separate capital markets and separate underwriting processes. Whereas if Figure had existed when both started, they could both be on Figure, just as an example. Interesting.
Speaker 13:So for us, we started in mortgage. We started standardizing and homogenizing those assets and making them tradable on a blockchain. We can do the same across every single private credit asset class and beyond. So we're really in the early innings.
Speaker 1:Makes a ton of sense. It's exciting. Very cool. Congratulations.
Speaker 2:Thank you for I'm
Speaker 1:sure you
Speaker 2:have for making time.
Speaker 1:Yeah. We appreciate you taking the time.
Speaker 2:On the big day for for you and the team, and a little celebration is in order. Take you know, feel free to take, you know, back back to work tomorrow, but but
Speaker 13:Got it. Well, I'm a big fan of you guys, so really appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much for
Speaker 13:an honor to be here. So thanks so
Speaker 4:much for
Speaker 1:having me.
Speaker 2:Come back come
Speaker 1:back on Anytime.
Speaker 2:Whenever you want.
Speaker 1:We'll talk to you
Speaker 7:soon. Alright.
Speaker 2:After that, guess your when when does your quiet period start? Is it
Speaker 13:Well, not until the rings.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Okay. Okay. Well, fantastic. We'll coordinate.
Speaker 1:We'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 2:Awesome.
Speaker 13:Alright. Thanks, gentlemen. Really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Talk to you soon. Congrats.
Speaker 1:And that concludes the guest section of TV PM Thursday, 09/11/2025 live back from the TV
Speaker 2:Gary Ultra Dome. Gary Marcus hit the timeline Oh, with a
Speaker 1:article What's he saying?
Speaker 2:Peak bubble.
Speaker 1:Peak bubble. It's hard
Speaker 2:to see how this won't end badly. He says
Speaker 1:What's saying?
Speaker 2:In the the fur he starts the post by sharing the Tulip Mania Wikipedia.
Speaker 1:He famously so the deep learning is hitting a wall now.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Calling He said, don't when the Gen AI bubble will end, but this has got to be peak bubble. And he's highlighting that Oracle OpenAI signed $300,000,000,000 cloud deal.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And he said, in short, OpenAI doesn't have $300,000,000,000. They don't have anywhere near $300,000,000,000 by their own.
Speaker 1:That's not how that works, but
Speaker 2:Optimistic projection, they won't turn a prop yeah. We'll obviously, we can we can steel man for OpenAI and Oracle. But by their own presumably optimistic rejection, they won't turn a profit until 2030. And all of this is from a company that thought or claimed that GPT five was gonna be close to AGI. For good measure, Oracle doesn't have the chips.
Speaker 2:They would need to fulfill the contracts or even the cash to buy them. I won't say this is all make believe, but well, you do the math. He says, if Oracle actually collects its 300,000,000,000, I will be truly astounded. And Martin Shkreli commented on the original post and said, do you want a short OpenAI at a $500,000,000,000 market cap? Which I think is
Speaker 1:The expression.
Speaker 2:An interesting question. Yep. Right?
Speaker 1:But but that that's not even necessarily the the the take that we've been debating, which is not necessarily open AI. It's it's Oracle. It's it's is Oracle overheated because of the this deal? Like, Gary Marcus' claim is that Oracle will not draw all that 300,000,000,000 down on on schedule. And if they if they fail to pull that backlog through, then that would be a cause for concern, potentially.
Speaker 1:Anyway, I wonder what Warren Buffett has to say about all this. Did you see that he was at the thirtieth birthday party for Squawk Box yesterday? No way. He was hanging out with Jim Kramer. Yeah.
Speaker 2:We were hanging out with Jim Kramer yesterday. I didn't realize it was the thirtieth birthday.
Speaker 1:It's the thirtieth anniversary of Squawk on CNBC.
Speaker 8:Happy birthday
Speaker 1:to everyone over there and
Speaker 2:got to got to briefly hang with Jim yesterday. Yeah. He is incredibly fun to talk to. Yes. Exactly like he is.
Speaker 1:He's fantastic. Encycloping knowledge of stock prices can just go back, oh, yeah. In 2015, Broadcom was at this price and just rattles it off to the cents. It's remarkable. He knows his stuff.
Speaker 2:Sentient legend. I'm I'm honestly jealous of of his engagement hack, which is by people by people believing that he always gets trades wrong Yes. Which is just like fundamentally not
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's not true at all.
Speaker 2:Not true. They they constantly engage with his post no matter what Yep. He said. So it's like a way to get Yes. A bunch of real accounts to drive like real engagement Yes.
Speaker 2:And and you can imagine he gets an incremental Totally. Five, ten times the impressions because people are just like
Speaker 1:100%.
Speaker 2:Quoting it, commenting, things like that. But
Speaker 1:100%.
Speaker 2:A master at at what he does and and a great entertainer.
Speaker 1:Tyler, what was your reaction to either this or Gary Marcus's post?
Speaker 5:Well, I I think for this, I think maybe a good segment we should start doing is right after founder comes on, you just immediately say long short.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. That'll make everyone super happy. They will love that.
Speaker 5:And then also regarding the Gary Marcus thing, I think there's that joke about Michael Burry where it's like he's predicted eight of the last two, like, market crashes.
Speaker 1:Totally.
Speaker 5:I think there's something, you know, something there.
Speaker 1:Yep. Yep. Yep. You're
Speaker 2:saying this time is different?
Speaker 5:I think Gary Marcus has said many times, like, oh, this is the end.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, it's kind of like, you know, just look at the fund returns, I guess. If you but he doesn't have a fund, so you just kinda have to, like like, the the the nature of investing puts your thesis in extremely concrete terms. Like, you are short to what degree? Are you long are you going long with leverage right now?
Speaker 1:Maybe you're, you know, 60% long and 40% bonds. Like, you can be a variety of risk levels. You don't need to be purely I'm bullish or bearish. You can be anywhere in between that. You can be 100x levered long to 100x levered short.
Speaker 1:Like, you can take wild swings in either direction. So you can express like, I'm not feeling great about this particular valuation in a bunch of different ways. And as a pundit, I mean, someone in the chat was asking about the inverse Kramer. It is a meme. It's an ETF.
Speaker 1:It's done somewhat well in various times. I've seen a whole bunch of different reports where someone tried to take every single one of Kramer's calls, put it into a spreadsheet and see how it would perform. But it's very hard because if he says, I'm bullish on this company, he doesn't necessarily revisit that company every day to tell you when he would sell. So he could say, like, we watched that Apple interview, and he says, I love Apple. It's a stock you own.
Speaker 1:You don't trade it. And so like, how much credit are we giving him for his Apple call? Like, at some point five years later, he might have seen earnings and been like, oh, Apple's in trouble. And then they quantized that as like, he's flipped bearish, when really it's like he didn't necessarily say sell Apple. He just said like, this data point is negative.
Speaker 1:And so there's a bunch of ways that it becomes difficult to actually understand. Like, if the mind of Jim Kramer was actually running a fund actively, what would the return profile be? The other interesting thing is that there was one analysis that did look at all of his buy and sell ratings. They tried to get as close as possible to, like, what it would look like to just take every recommendation and put it in a portfolio. And they found that it did actually outperform the market, but it outperformed the market when the market was going up.
Speaker 1:And it underperformed the market when the market was going down because it was effectively beta on it wasn't producing alpha. It was producing beta. And that sort of makes sense in terms of the content creator world because when things are going up, it lends itself to enthusiasm. And when things are going down, it lends itself to misery. And so I don't know.
Speaker 1:Overall, nice guy and hard to perfectly quantize the value of a call on live TV. Anyway, Jordy, anything else we should talk about before we get off?
Speaker 2:Nepal. Yes. The the Gen Z of Nepal overthrew the government and have chosen their new leader via poll on a Discord server.
Speaker 1:That is wild. Overthrew the government?
Speaker 2:That is crazy. Yeah. It's been crazy over there. I don't know anything about that. Crazy crazy time in the world.
Speaker 1:Interesting. Well, we will keep monitoring the situation. Hopefully, you can monitor the situation and we will see you tomorrow.
Speaker 2:Live. Cannot wait.
Speaker 1:Have a great day.
Speaker 2:Cheers, Love you.