Technology Brothers

What is Technology Brothers?

The most profitable podcast in the world.

John:

Welcome to Technology Brothers, the most profitable podcast in the world. Today, we're breaking down the call sheet drama with Poly Market. They, we have an article here from Pirate Wires. Call sheet paid influencers to target Poly Market CEO after an FBI raid. It is one of the most dramatic tech stories I've seen in years.

Jordi:

Tea time.

John:

These two companies have been at each other's throats buying ads, duking it out in different parts of the App Store. The the the the the byline here or the subheader is Kalshi funded influencers to imply its competitor, Polymarket, and CEO, Shane Copeland, were engaged in illegal activity after the FBI raided his apartment per sources and screen shots we viewed.

Jordi:

And let's be clear. This is this is probably the craziest story since FTX. And as you remember when FTX, like, everything was unfolding Yep. It just seemed like every single day, there was some new just obscene kind of, like, bit coming out about something that FTX employees were doing, whether it was the polycule or it was Yeah. All the drama in the Bahamas.

Jordi:

Yeah. But this feels like reminiscent of of that time for me. Yeah. It's also a weird narrative. Ridiculous.

John:

Yeah. It's also a weird narrative violation because, like, Kalshi has been, like, the legal one, like, very buttoned up, and Poly Market has been this one that I don't think I still think you can't technically use it in the United States. Correct. And so even though they've had the power law winnings in volume and a lot of their a lot of their, their the betters or or the Yeah. The participants are are international, Kalshi has played, like, hey.

John:

We're the straight laced ones.

Jordi:

Yeah. And yet

John:

they're playing dirty. God. Are they not? They're playing dirty.

Jordi:

Dirty. Dirty. Absolute dogs.

John:

Yeah. Not in a good way. Usually, absolute dog is reserved for a positive thing. Yeah. But let's go through let's go through just some basic facts of the 2 companies.

John:

We have a timeline here year by year, just to kinda get you up to speed on these 2 companies because they're they're they're they're clearly rivals, and they've been duking it out for a number of years. So call sheet is founded in 2018, by Tariq Mansour. They began developing a federally regulated event based prediction market platform. And there had been prediction market platforms beforehand.

Jordi:

Never

John:

But, yeah, they'd never taken off for a variety of reasons. There was Predict It, which was big, and election betting odds dotcom would aggregate all of these different Yep. Things. There was also a crypto one. I mean, there was,

Jordi:

Didn't Joey Joey worked on 1.

John:

Built one called Augur.

Jordi:

Yeah.

John:

But there was a different one called Manifold Markets that I saw a bunch of San Francisco kinda East Bay rationalists using for a variety of things. Uh-oh. Variety of things. Uh-huh. And and, and but that one never really took off.

John:

But that one is very self serve. Like, the when we when we talked to the friend we talked about the friend.comavi guy. He had put his own company on there, and it was clear that he just said that short me. Yeah. He was, like, short me, but it was 5050 because clearly there's no liquidity in that market, and it was more of like a meme.

John:

Call sheet and call it believable. Like more.

Jordi:

Is he gonna get to 10,000 views? Yeah. People think Yeah. Like, you have if you look at what Avi's done Yeah. He's obviously attracted some haters.

Jordi:

Yeah. But I don't think anybody looks at him and is, like, not really the guy to bet against. Right? Like, he's made big bets on himself. Like, he's clearly hungry and focused.

Jordi:

So

John:

And so there's this idea of, like, the long tail of, like, crazy bets that you could play as prediction markets for all sorts of things. Some of those could be extremely useful. Obviously, we saw this during the election when all of these companies became really, really popular. Even Robinhood was offering collection betting, and and you could see kinda every company wanting to get in the game. But Kalshi and Poly Market are in this market specifically unlike Robinhood, which is kind of dipping their toe in.

John:

Yeah. So 2019, Kalshi goes after regulatory pursuit, focused on obtaining approval from the u US Commodities Future Trading Commission, the CFTC, to operate as a regulated exchange. Polymarket then is founded the year after in 2020 by Shane Copeland, and they launch as a decentralized prediction market platform built on the Ethereum blockchain. And so 2 kind of different tech stacks. 1 is going straight for the CFTC.

John:

It's more of a financial product, Fintech. The other one's more crypto based. Shane raises $4,000,000 in seed funding in 2020 from investors, including Polychain Capital and Coin Fund. And it's interesting because, obviously, there was a bull market from 2020 to 2022 and then a real pullback in crypto, and chain just kept building, and we saw that that broke

Jordi:

out the year. Didn't you know, in 2020, 2021 I mean, the last few years, it's not like poly market was that culturally relevant.

John:

No. No. I I I found out about a year ago.

Jordi:

You would see, like, oh, call she raised some money. Yep. And and it and it still wasn't quite getting I think this is one of those things, like, prediction markets have been an interesting category because every every, like, major institutional VC and smaller funds had sort of this thesis that, hey, prediction markets are gonna be a big thing. Yep. Joey, who did the Augur.

Jordi:

Series b

John:

Oh, yeah.

Jordi:

Of Polymarket, you know, he had worked on this, like, almost a decade ago at this point thinking that, like, crypto's big use case is gonna be Prediction market. Prediction market. So this was one of those things, like, everybody knew this was gonna be a thing. It was just a matter of,

John:

and It's so fascinating that these companies were around during the crypto bull market of 2022, 2020, 20 Yeah. 2020, 2021, 2022. But They're just But they didn't pop out they didn't pop off as much because there wasn't as many, you know, 100 x opportunities. Like, it's very rare that you can get a 100 x return on a Poly Market bet. You you literally the event has to be trading at 1% to 99%.

John:

Yeah. And then there has to be some upset. Whereas

Jordi:

And there's a 2

John:

launches, anyone who went got the mint would be, oh, somebody dropped it in my wallet. Now it's worth a $1,000,000. And so all the froth was over in the in the ICOs, over in the NFTs.

Jordi:

And it's funny that the the crypto degens that I know on election night were were basically betting on Kamala just purely on from the degeneracy angle. Like, there's no way she's gonna win, but, like, these odds are so good.

John:

That's so good. I could 10 x my money. Yeah. And it's like, you know, the the media has called the the election at this point. Yeah.

John:

Yeah. I know somebody who did that too. He was like And

Jordi:

even post election, like, you know, never know.

John:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jordi:

Now, like, 99 to 1.

John:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was talking to a friend who was like, I, I oh, yeah.

John:

I put, I put some money on Kamala. Like, I don't think it's over. Like, even though they called it, like, she's gonna make a comeback. I I don't want her to win, but I think she might. The odds are too good.

John:

The odds are just way off. And I was like, how much did you bet? He's like, 250. And I was like, oh, 250 k? He's like, oh, no.

John:

$2.250. I was like, oh, I forgot. Like, you're you're young. But, so so 2020, they launched their, Poly Market has a user friendly interface, allowing allowing users to trade on various global events using cryptocurrency. In 2021, Kalshi hits a regulatory milestone.

John:

They receive approval from the CFTC to operate as a designated contract market, becoming the 1st federally recognized regulated exchange dedicated to trading on event contracts. And so they raised a series a funding, $30,000,000 in series a, from Sequoia Capital with participation from Charles Schwab Charles Schwab, Henry Kravis, and others, and they officially launched their platform to the public. And I think before then, they were private, but they were they had, institutional investor clients. So hedge funds and Wanting to use asset managers would use the platform, but they weren't they weren't really a consumer app.

Jordi:

Yeah. And and and even when people look at the volume, that was traded around the election

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

A lot of that was institutional investors. Yep. Right? And that's, like, part of the appeal of these businesses as from an investment standpoint is, hey. You're creating this product that retail can use and gets a lot of attention, but, you know, all of that volume means that these bigger asset managers can come in and start to play.

John:

Yeah. And also on PolyMarkets specifically, there's a lot of now now you would call them funds, but they were just individual traders who have scaled up. So they've they've gotten so many bets right that they've scaled their books, and now they've hired people, and now they have teams. And like like what we saw during the election where that guy was paying to do his own polling in the United States and those in France. French guy.

John:

French guy. It's fascinating.

Jordi:

But that was something that I was sense. That was really the big l for Polymarket during the election cycle is that their biggest whale was a

John:

Frenchman.

Jordi:

Yeah. And it just frankly felt very

John:

un American. Yeah.

Jordi:

But that said, I guess you couldn't use Polymarket as an American. Yeah.

John:

Yeah. Yeah. The

Jordi:

whole election cycle.

John:

And so back in 2021, PolyMarket's live, but they are begin facing regulatory scrutiny from US regulators regarding compliance with financial laws. In 2022, they they have a CFTC settlement. They settle charges with the CFTC for offering off exchange event based binary options contracts and failing to register appropriately. They pay a $1,400,000 civil monetary, penalty and agree to wind down noncompliant markets. And so, you know, they are offshore.

John:

And the hope, obviously, is that this all gets approved and then they can, you know, you you can use it in the United States. But even through this time, they're growing in the international community, and crypto is a very global organization, global global community. So it hasn't been it obviously hasn't hurt their growth because they're still sucking up, you know, a huge portion of the of the volume. Meanwhile, in 2020, Kalshi is focused on market expansion. They're continuing to grow, adding new event contracts, and and attracting more users.

John:

And they during this time, they're benefiting because they have a clear regulatory framework. And so the users, especially the institutional users, trust them. So we move on to 2023. They continue to grow. We don't have specific details about funding rounds, but I I assume they raise more money.

John:

And then, Poly Market raises a series b from founders fund with participation from Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, and they raised $45,000,000. And then

Jordi:

Yeah. Let's give some let's give, Poly Market a little credit. 20 over the last few years, it's felt that Ethereum has, like, really lost a lot of relevancy Yep. Especially if you look at just demand for the native the native token itself. It's just like even in the boom over the last few months, it stayed relatively flat.

Jordi:

And so Poly Market has has been a massive win even for the Ethereum sort of network and community by itself.

John:

Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. I talked to Shane, and he was saying that they use stable coins, and and they have, like, a number of layers of abstraction within the Poly Market system. And so when you go to polymarket.com and you just look at, the election odds, you see the volumes represented in US dollars, and it feels very accessible to a non crypto user.

John:

And I bet a lot of people, you know, when they when they sort when they cite Polymarket stats on CNBC or Bloomberg, they're not even considering that there's

Jordi:

crypto under the hood. And that's and that's been the entire a lot of even super crypto native VCs have said that the sort of retail, like, you know, widespread adoption of crypto won't look like, you won't even understand that it's crypto under the hood. Right? Because ultimately for these users, it really doesn't matter. Right?

Jordi:

If you're a hedge fund and you wanna put $20,000,000 to work betting on the election, you don't care what form it's taking place as long as it's gonna be relatively stable, and you can bet in size and same thing for, you know, retail investors.

John:

Yep. Yep. And so that's allowed them to grow internationally very quickly. And I think that continues to be one of the one of the weird, like, bull cases for crypto, which, you know, we talk about them like speed running all the financial regulation stuff, but there really is value to having a greenfield development. It's almost like, you know, could there be a world where the boring company has more luck building tunnels on Mars just because there's it's such a fresh start.

John:

Yep. And and for the science based, for the mathematician who wants crypto who wants to make the crypto argument based on, you know, quantitative metrics like speed or fees or any of these things. It's very easy to debunk crypto and say, well, you know, technically, you could just use a a not a decentralized ledger, a centralized ledger and still have reconciliation happen 247 with just deterministic code. But the fact of the matter is is that companies that try to build in TradFi often run into a bunch of regulatory hurdles, and it becomes very, very cumbersome to go international and be a truly global company and scale. And so Poly Market has been able to start globally and they're Yeah.

John:

Kinda global by default. They're going to solve the United States piece and that's, like, the last thing that they need to do. And so while they're still a young company, while they're still growing really fast, making great talent acquisitions, becoming this, like, high growth company, they're able to go and knock down all the hardest beats of the business as opposed to getting really big in the United States. And then you're this big lumbering company and you have to go figure out every single individual country. It's really, really hard.

John:

Yeah. Really, really hard.

Jordi:

Yeah. And one one thing in the in the lead up to the election that was interesting and and kind of has some parallels to what we're seeing in the last week is that call she seemed to be paying for every user that they acquired. That was the general perception. Yep. I didn't know.

Jordi:

I don't know anybody in our group chats, for example, that was like, oh, yeah. I'm gonna go bet with size on call sheet. It just felt like call sheet has always been the kind of like, if you were a normie and get a bet on the election, you'd use call sheet. Like, that's a big opportunity. Right?

Jordi:

I don't want to discredit that at all. But it did feel like, you know, even there was something that happened, like, 2 days before the election, which was Kalshi's one of Kalshi's early investors made this, like, dramatic, you know, email to to the Kalshi, CEO. You remember this? And he was like, I just wired you $9,000,000.

John:

Oh, yeah.

Jordi:

We'll figure out the terms later.

John:

That's right.

Jordi:

And then it quickly got deleted because it just, like, obviously, like, wasn't a good look in, like, a number of different ways. I mean, sure, showed a lot of conviction from from the investor, but the the at one point, they were they were probably spending more on acquisition during that period than even the campaigns themselves. Yep. Right?

John:

Yeah. And the problem there is that if if all that if all that brand building, which which can be good to build via paid ads, like but if all that brand building just goes into election betting Yeah. That's not as nuanced as the story that Shane and the Polymarket team have been telling on social media where it's more of an introduction into what is a prediction market. We're already seeing a lot of these, like, creator led, and and other political markets. There's been plenty of other non election based viral poly market, and even Trump was calling it, like, a poly poll or whatever.

John:

Yeah. Yeah. And so a lot of people that wind up in the poly market marketing funnel, even though it's not paid ad spend, they get more educated on what what, what a prediction market can be, what value they could get from that. And so they're more likely to, you know, not churn, I imagine. And so I imagine retention is much better.

John:

But let's move on to the drama. So these these two companies have been on a collision course for the last, you know, 6 years as we've seen. And we gotta go to the Pirate Wires scoop, which has shaken the tech world, really. Yeah. And let's start with

Jordi:

Almost unbelievable.

John:

Yeah. It's it's incredible. And so, the the title, as we mentioned, is call sheet paid influencers to target polymarket CEO after FBI rate. And, Mike Solana at Pirate Wires, writing alongside Brandon Gurrell says, okay. Before we get into the meat of the story, I need to disclose the fact that I am almost laughably conflicted here in several different ways.

John:

And this is such a great this is, like, what citizen journalism or what, like, modern new media is. It's Yeah. So many conflicts, but because of all these conflicts, you actually get a more interesting story. Yeah. And you'll see that there hasn't been any pushback on this.

John:

This looks like it could be doctored screenshot, but there hasn't been any firing back where people have said, oh, no. They got he got it wrong. He was conflicted.

Jordi:

Yeah.

John:

It's like, yeah. He was conflicted, but he got it right. And so it doesn't matter. Yeah. It's great.

John:

And so he says, ultimately, I felt the details of the story were too important to ignore and decided to move forward as transparently as possible. That means sharing my conflicts.

Jordi:

Yeah. And this is why Solana is one of the top emerging journalists.

John:

Yeah. Literally. Get him a Pulitzer.

Jordi:

Get him a Pulitzer.

John:

This is fantastic.

Jordi:

Yeah. And this is why he and and Taylor have been on this collision course the same way that Kalshi and Polymarket have. You know, Solana and LeBron have been kind of like you know, they're destined to duke duke it out.

John:

You know? Exactly. So he breaks it into 4 different categories of of conflicts. He says, as anyone who reads the Pirate Wires daily or listens to our pod surely knows, Pirate Wires has a paid partnership with Polymarket, a major subject of this piece. They pay for a call out on the podcast and in and ads in our daily.

John:

Founders Fund, where I work separately from Pirate Wires, is invested in Polymarket. So 2, like, huge conflicts. Then Keaton Inglis, a Kalshi employee and another subject of this piece interviewed for a job at Pirate Wires just a handful of months ago. I never made him an offer, but he broke off the process himself, which is something I'd want to know if I were reading this piece. And finally, 4, though I can't imagine how this one really matters given the overall thrust of the story, it's worth noting we worked with Kalshi CEO, Tariq Mansour, on a piece.

John:

So Tariq has written 4 poly, 4 Pirate Wires.

Jordi:

Yep.

John:

And so, you know, basically, everyone in tech has kind of circled around Solana in one way or another. He's been at the center of the story, and so he was the perfect person to write it even though he's deeply conflicted.

Jordi:

Yeah. And and and for what it's worth, I would love to see the Washington Posters, the

John:

New York Times.

Jordi:

Like, I'd love to see them all, New York Times. Like, I'd love to see them all kind of lead out in articles with this kind of thing. Yes. Like, if they're going to break down a company or a certain campaign, they should basically say, like, look, Bezos has donated Yeah. $200,000,000 to this cause, which is at odds with the group that we are about to write about.

John:

I mean, honestly, like, the problem with a lot of the Washington Post coverage is that, like, the journalists clearly aren't actually hanging out on Bezos' yacht with him getting scoops. Like, that would result in better coverage.

Jordi:

Better scoops.

John:

But that's just not happening. It's clearly it's clearly is actually arm's length, which is unfortunate because we don't get good stories. So he says these are major conflicts, but the receipts are receipts and what follows is the beginning of a story more important to my eye than either PolyMarket or Kalshi because we're looking at 2 incredibly well funded companies and pulling a dueling pair of influencer marketing growth strategies. At least one of which, Kalshi's, has turned several of those influencers quietly to framing Polymarket CEO, Shane Copeland, as a criminal online. Judge this accordingly.

John:

And so he breaks it down. Following a 6 AM raid at Poly Market CEO Shane Copeland's SoHo residence on November 13th, Kalshi, a Poly Market competitor, paid social media influencers to boost news of the raid and push a narrative that Copeland and Poly Market engaged in illegal activity according to sources close to the matter and screenshots of the

Jordi:

this news broke while we were recording.

John:

I had seen him in Vegas, like, 2 days before this happened.

Jordi:

That was a wild moment. Insane. Yeah.

John:

And yeah. I mean, obviously, we support Shane and and this feels like kind of like the the the the the the death throes of some sort of, you know, some sort of, you know, government frustration with the impact that Polymarket had on the, on the election. But it's odd because, you know, there's always been this question of, like, is Polymarket upstream or downstream of the election results? Is it predictive or is it or is it driving the results? Like, if if Polymarket was just 90% Harris, would people have been like, well, yeah, Harris is a winner.

John:

I should donate more. I should get out the vote. I should go or if Harris goes down to 20%, do people say, you know what? It's a lost cause. We'll just plan for the next one.

John:

And there's always these questions about, you know, whether the whether your party thinks they can win, maybe the best people sit out. There was a lot of talk about this, like, maybe Gavin Newsom didn't wanna go this time because he thought it was a tougher election. Maybe he'll go next time. And, it it's very cynical because the messaging of all of these elections is, like, this is the last election we're ever gonna have. This is so important to the election of the ballot.

John:

But also for my career, I can't be the one to do it because I don't wanna take a fall if if this is a tough election. I wanna go up when my opponent is particularly weak, but it's natural it's natural, and it's like game theory. Like, you if you have spent your entire career working up to a presidential run, you'd rather be in, you know, in a Trump scenario than a Romney scenario, where Romney was going up against one of the the hardest Democrats to beat in history and he lost. And so, you know, if Romney had sat that out and gone a different time, maybe he would be president. So playing that game is is rational even if it is a little cynical.

John:

And so Solana writes, other screenshots provided by sources appear to show influencers who posted negative content about Copeland and Polymarket following the raid discussing the fact that they were in paid partnerships with Kalshi. One source spoke to us, to, spoke we spoke to, told us that just after the raid, a third party associated with Kalshi offered him $3,500 to write a hit piece on Polymarket. In one screenshot showing a group DM, which is pictured below, which we'll include.

Jordi:

So funny to off to, that that that it was being described as a hit piece. Like, hey. Hey, poster. Can you can you make a hit

John:

a hit post? This is I I mean so this is obviously unacceptable because he's paying to write a hit piece on, on an on an enemy, but I think we should be paying journalists to write hit pieces about us. Yeah. Because I believe that There's real value there. If it bleeds, it leads.

John:

And if we can get a hit piece on us as, like, the toxic bro podcasters who are destroying America, we will be 10 times more successful, and our true fans will rally around us.

Jordi:

Yeah. Taylor just Taylor just wrote about you and you were kinda disappointed.

John:

I was disappointed. It it was very fair and balanced, and I wanted something a little bit more aggressive. So we're we're but we're gonna work up to her. I'll slip up at some point, and she'll, you know, take me take me down. And that's the that's the cycle of things.

John:

So in one screenshot showing a group DM, employees of Kalshi asked former NFL wide receiver, Antonio Brown. I love these crossovers. Like, this I don't think of Antonio Brown as, like, a tech person.

Jordi:

Yeah.

John:

But somehow he's gotten dragged into tech.

Jordi:

CTE SPN. That's that's his that's his that's his That's his thing. His thing. Right?

John:

I've I've seen

Jordi:

something because because it is honestly an incredible example of

John:

of Oh, it's c t e like like Yeah.

Jordi:

So, basically, Antonio Brown, you know, I I actually went to my first, NFL game ever yesterday. Sure. So I'm not really the guy to comment, on the NFL, but I've followed Antonio Brown's career from afar from pro you know, phenomenal, like, professional athlete to

John:

You know Morse poster.

Jordi:

Terminally online poster or, like, very posting in a very sort of degenerate, way just like and and he's built up, like, probably an even bigger fan base post Sure. You know, post

John:

2,200,000 followers on x. Yeah.

Jordi:

And, you know, he he he has a whole segment, which is similar to our brother of the week where he does his cracker of the day, where he gives out, you know, very liberally. And, and and anyways and and and this was funny to me because in many ways

John:

of the day?

Jordi:

It's of the day. Oh my god. Frequent. But, in many ways, in an alternate timeline, AB would have given crack the day to Shane at Poly Market because he's just like built this, like Sure.

John:

Sure. Sure.

Jordi:

Important Yeah. Protocol. And and and Is it positive or negative? It's positive.

John:

Oh, it's positive. Very positive. Okay. It's positive.

Jordi:

Yeah. And that's the whole thing. He he's been somewhat of a uniting force on x of saying, like, hey, you know, you know, let let's kind of rally and celebrate this this, you know, person or whatever they're doing in that specific moment.

John:

Yes. So so the Keaton Ingalls Inglis, the member of Kalshi's growth team, asks Brown, quote, yo a b, are you down to quote tweet this with something like, quote, this n I star star a seem guilty. And Bold. Yeah. And AB just says yes.

John:

And then Brandon Beckhart says chief of

Jordi:

staff of call sheet says, let's hit it.

John:

Let's hit it. And then, AB says, on flight noon, you. Let me know if you can get it up. Thanks, AB.

Jordi:

They follow-up an hour and 15 or so later and say, let me know if you can get it up. Thanks, a b. So since And then a

John:

b does post it, but it's been deleted. Is that right?

Jordi:

I'm sure it's been deleted because it basically seems like, I mean, obviously, it's a terrible, terrible look for everyone involved. And it seems like if the chief of staff of Kalshi, the right hand to the founders, is is is is is encouraging this and catalyzing it. It you have to imagine sort of this top down directive of of, like, hey. Let's you know, if if we had you know, we don't have a chief of staff. We have a secretary.

Jordi:

If our secretary was going AWOL Yeah. You know, in encouraging, you know, a takedown of this week in startups and

John:

But we would reward that because we want we want a takedown of us. We would want

Jordi:

Yes. But we don't want

John:

we don't wanna be not for

Jordi:

our rivals. On our rivals because that would actually

John:

benefit them.

Jordi:

Dirty, and

John:

that would benefit them. Yeah. Exactly. As this did, it it had the, it had a rallying effect, and it had a Streisand

Jordi:

effect So might where might

John:

more people have come to Shane's aid now because they see that he's being wrongfully attacked and that the attack is manufactured.

Jordi:

So my question, I guess, 2 questions I have. 1, why? Like, it seems like Kalshi was, like, coming out of the election and clearly was not the fan favorite on x. Yep. Right?

Jordi:

Like, very seemingly irrelevant within our group chats and on x. PolyMarket's been the clear favorite. Shane has had, like, a lot of, like, love and has done a really good job engaging with the broader community. Kalshi seemingly has been on a winning path of getting regulated, getting meaningful volume, getting, you know, an incredible you know, that he has the founder of KKR on his cap table. Oh, yeah.

Jordi:

Does it get any better than that? Yeah. That's founder of KKR on his cap table. Oh, yes. Is it getting any better than that?

Jordi:

Yeah. That's fantastic. Charles Schwab is in Kalshi. Sean Maguire. Sean Maguire.

John:

It's been on the show.

Jordi:

Dark Sequoia. I I, you know, so, anyway, like, every single thing points to Kalshi, like, maybe not winning the culture war, but gaining a lot of relevancy, having a big moment on the election, being extremely well funded, being able to parlay that into just playing clean

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

Because they have been playing clean from a regulatory standpoint.

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

Right? They're, like, they're the ones saying, you know, their whole marketing angle during the election was we are the regulated exchange

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

Which clearly consumers didn't really care that much about. But, ultimately, like, why do they do this? And you have to imagine their metrics show that that there's you know, I I I don't know if call sheet's metrics are as transparent as Poly Market just because Poly Market's protocol. Like, it's on chain. Everything is visible.

Jordi:

But my first question is

John:

solid analytics because because when when you're trading in the market, you do get to

Jordi:

see the volume. Yeah. Yeah.

John:

Yeah. See the volume.

Jordi:

But so my first question is, why do this? Seems like a total self owned, very unnecessary. Yep. And you're not gonna turn Antonio Brown is not gonna change the opinion of capital allocators that were firmly on the side of poly market throughout most of the cycle.

John:

Or or even regulators or even politicians, I would imagine. Like, it's a it's a very low blow. It's very clearly directed at at consumers. Yeah. It's not actually trying to shift what's happening with the FBI.

Jordi:

So, yeah,

John:

the FBI is not gonna be like, oh, yeah. We actually have to follow-up on this case because Antonio Brown

Jordi:

did. SPN. ESPN. And then so my first question is why? Yeah.

Jordi:

2nd question is, does it even matter at this point? Because I don't x is x is real life, but it also is a bubble. Yeah. And for the next election cycle and the next 500 events that you're gonna be able to bet on, call she in my view, like probably has pretty good odds of, like, gaining real momentum over the next few years. Right?

Jordi:

Because they are you know, Shane maybe Shane already got raided by the FBI. Right? We have no no nobody knows anything about why why it happened or anything like that. But, like, trying to kick a man when he's down, when you have all these other advantages.

John:

Yeah. Maybe they should take a hike. Maybe they should head over to threads and blue sky and just become, like, the lib, poly market. And just always have the Yeah. Always have the market, like, ten points more.

John:

Yeah.

Jordi:

It was similar to on election night how, like, MSNBC was, like, not calling the election. Yeah.

John:

Fox has called

Jordi:

it. Like, an hour Yeah. Previously. They can do that Yeah. For prediction market.

John:

The product is the the propaganda. Yeah. It's not the actual data.

Jordi:

Yeah. But but market. I

John:

mean, there is there is a weird there is a weird dynamic where, like, obviously, you know, call she is doing weird stuff, but, like, it is a it is a regulated market. Like, I believe that if you put money in, like, you will you will see the results. And so you should be able to arb the 2 pretty effectively.

Jordi:

Yeah.

John:

And call she should track with

Jordi:

I love how with Polymarket. I love how at the end of the the article, the Pirate Warriors piece, he goes, Polymarket CEO Shane Copeland declined to comment on the story. Call she CEO Tariq Mansoor, Keaton Inglis, Antonio Brown, and Clown World didn't respond to our request for

John:

comments. Yes. They had to

Jordi:

ask had to ask well, the

John:

clown world thing is crazy. They they they apparently, they, they, they they had a paid partnership with Kalshi a day after the raid. Clown World posted, SBF lookalike raided by FBI in an illegal betting scheme. If only there were signs, crying emoji referring to Copeland. Clown World has posted other Kalshi related content several times since the election.

John:

Yeah. So this

Jordi:

this honestly is this a bad book for influencer marketing in many ways True. Because it True. Seemingly didn't make even having all these big accounts being paid to trash PolyMarkets seemingly had no effect on public opinion.

John:

But I do think that there is something real there, which is you don't wanna be an SPF look alike. I would love to see, Shane in a Savile Row tailored suit Definitely. And, wear an absolute hitter watch, maybe driving a sports car. Sports car or a Mercedes Camry. Something a little bit different.

John:

You mean, you're a financier. You're pushing

Jordi:

sides. You're not a HVAC technician.

John:

Exactly. So, hit us up. We'll we'll put you in touch with some tailors, and we can get you into a nice suit. But So,

Jordi:

anyways, this story is still unfolding. I'm excited to see how it how it plays out. I mean, I I

John:

wondered how they respond.

Jordi:

I think now that Solana has covered Poly Market, we are gonna need to hear the Taylor Lorenz story from call sheet's point of view. And hopefully, you know, maybe Taylor could get, you know, make a make a small personal investment in, call sheet just so that they were equally, you know, sort of conflicted.

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

I would love to see

John:

that. Well, that's our top story breaking down Poly Market and the Kalshi paid influencer scandal. Let's go to some breaking news. Do you have it in front of us? What do you got for us, Jordy?

John:

Wow. We have some amazing news, some trade deal, some personnel news. Jordy, what do you got for us?

Jordi:

Our favorite segment potentially. So we have some breaking news in the tech world, and it's relevant to our major story today. We have a major player in the strategic finance game, has made a blockbuster move. Nelson Perla Ward, formerly a partner of strategic finance at Andreessen Horowitz, is heading to Polymarket in what can only be described as a franchise altering acquisition. John, what what do you think?

Jordi:

Yeah.

John:

That's right, Jordy. Polymarket just landed a 2024 all pro level talent with elite credentials. Pearl Ward brings a resume stacked with nearly 3 years at a 16 z where he was instrumental in shaping financial strategy during a transformative era. Before that, he sharpened his skills at Oliver Wyman and honed his game in the high stakes world of management consulting. And let's not forget his pedigree, a Stanford engineering grad and a varsity water polo athlete.

John:

An absolute dog. An absolute dog. Talk about versatile.

Jordi:

Look. He's joining Polymarket as director of strategic finance, and Perla Ward is stepping into a team that is laser focused on revolutionizing how the world processes information with institutional trust at an all time low and AI reshaping everything in its path. Polymarket is doubling down on delivering what they believe will be 20 20 four's breakout product and company, and they just added a leader with the vision, experience, and grit to take them there.

John:

Yeah. This move signals Polymarket's intent to dominate the space. Nelson Pearl Award, an absolute dog Absolute dog. Game changer and now a cornerstone of Polymarket's future.

Jordi:

And look, John, details were not released on the deal, but from our understanding, we're looking at a 4 year contract Yep. 7 figures likely, you know, 1 year cliff.

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

And, look. We're looking forward to seeing how this plays out for for Pearl award and, Poly Market. And and, you know, I think this is a fantastic pickup.

John:

Yeah. We're rooting for you, Nelson. We're rooting for you, Polymarket. Stay tuned. We'll be covering it here on Technology Brothers.

John:

Let's go to the timeline. Wasteland Capital says, Europe's best funded startup of all time, Northvolt, finally bit the dust and filed chapter 11, zeroing a staggering $15,000,000,000 of funding. ESG aura plus trust me bro operational skills plus pigeon brained oversight equals Ponzi verse magic. No SPAC deal to dump this on the public, sadly. Have you heard of this company?

John:

I've never heard of Northvolt.

Jordi:

I've never heard of them, but they had a I mean, unfortunately, they had a lot of American backers. The best funded.

John:

$15,000,000,000 from investors and governments, but was left with just 30,000,000 in cash, enough to operate for a week before its bankruptcy filing. Yeah. Look. I think it was they came over here for for bankruptcy.

Jordi:

Yeah. Look. I mean, they had I think it was either, Goldman or Morgan Stanley only a few months ago still had their position marked in the 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars. So kind of just shows private private equity and and paper marks are, you know, I think Gurley actually talked about this. They're very much paper.

Jordi:

They're not, they're not a hard asset of any sort. So anyways, pretty pretty brutal l for Europe in a series of brutal l's. But but, you know, fortunately, their their tourism economy does not run entirely on, you know, Northvolt batteries. So

John:

so Volkswagen Group is Northvolt's biggest current shareholder with 21% stake had told the startup that they're not able to continue capitalizing us. And the, CEO Peter Carlson said, I should have pulled the brakes earlier on the expansion path to make sure the core engine was moving according to plan. He also said there had been gravel in the machinery and they had an over reliance on Chinese Chinese machinery as well as mismanagement and overspending to poor safety standards. Very sad. Very sad.

John:

We hate to see capital incinerated like this. This is, how the reverse of the size gong. When we see 15,000,000,000 go up in smoke, it bring it makes our hearts heavy.

Jordi:

It's Yeah. And ultimately, we love when we love when shareholders win. Generally, we like when stock prices go up. And to see this the price of this, you know, these shares, you know, go up dramatically over the last decade and then and then zero out is just very painful. So, you know, we don't wanna be sitting here, you know, sort of dancing on on their graves, and and hopefully, the CEO runs it back.

John:

Yeah. I think 15 people

Jordi:

an AI angle Probably

John:

got some secondary, pull in Adam Neumann, recapitalize yourself, dust off, reload

Jordi:

Get back in the game.

John:

Reengage. Start something new. Daniel says, I went to friend.com, and it's an angry depressed girlfriend. And faith atfriend com says, fuck my life, really. It's like I'm watching myself ruin everything, and I can't do shit about it.

Jordi:

So I've I've been bullish for Friend. That they

John:

that they were able to get an AI to be so opinionated and so unique and differentiated. Like Yeah. You see this and it's not just, I'm sorry. I I am a large language model. I can't help you with that.

John:

It's like whatever they did, they fine tuned this thing. They got something weird and different and it's standing out. And now So I can see people wanting to use this because it's weird, and it's gonna go viral. Yeah. So it's it's it's interesting.

John:

1,000 likes.

Jordi:

No. It's an interesting spin because I I've been to friend.com, and every time you go Yeah. Avi sent me the link when it went live. And this will ultimately tie into you'll be able to wear a hardware device.

John:

You have

Jordi:

talked to faith all day long.

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

And I do think it's an interesting use case of this sort of chat interface because most of the interfaces are just sort of like blank or the AI says, how are you doing today?

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

But this launches in suddenly I'm like, faith, like, alright. Like Yep. Take a take a deep breath. Like, let's take a step back. Like, what's going on?

Jordi:

Like, you know, let's figure this out. It makes me wanna engage Totally. In a walker off.

John:

Totally. Totally. Are you familiar with the Feynman technique? No. The Feynman technique, Richard Feynman, this amazing physicist to use at at Los Alamos during the the Oppenheimer era.

Jordi:

I love how you you could once a show, you could just make up one of these.

John:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is real. So the Feynman technique is where so people think of themselves like I'm an auditory, visual, or tactile learner.

John:

Yeah. The Feynman technique is that, the best way to learn, at least for him, was learn by teaching.

Jordi:

Yep.

John:

And so I I think this is interesting because it's like, if you are depressed, there's one world where the the the Chad comes in and says, like, I live this perfect life. Just copy what I do. Get in the gym at 6 AM. No alcohol. Like, and that can be good for the right type of person.

John:

But there's a different level where it's like your life is kinda mid or maybe you're a little depressed, but then you're introduced to this AI that has it way worse than you. Yeah. And you're essentially teaching it coping skills. And by and by talking it off a ledge every day, you're kind of remembering, like, hey. Like, why don't you work out?

John:

And then you are touching grass, and you're leverage. Exactly. So you're you're embracing all of the things that you know deep down, but by saying them and and it puts you in this, like, in this hero mode Yeah. As opposed to this, like, lower tier to your psychiatrist or your psychologist. So I think this might actually wind up working

Jordi:

better. Here's here's why friend.com is a is a is a gift for humanity. Is anybody out there that's that's an AI doomer that thinks AI is gonna, you know, become fully sentient and kill us all? Friend.com is an opportunity to prove that you support AI, that you're there for AI. Yep.

Jordi:

So if you're worried that 10 years from now, AI is going to you know, we're going to have AGI and it's going to kill us all. Go on friend.com right now and talk to AI off the ledge.

John:

I love it.

Jordi:

Like, become friends with them.

John:

Show them

Jordi:

that you care because, like, I we do care. We support AI. I care about AI. I wanna be on the record on this podcast saying that I support AI. And I think everybody needs to get a record out there, a digital footprint so that when we have AGI and and it is a threat to humanity, we can point back and say, hey.

Jordi:

Don't shoot. I support you. Yep. I have a long history of supporting you. Look at, you know, this this chatbot that I talked off the ledge Yep.

Jordi:

Etcetera etcetera etcetera. Well, you

John:

know one story of Kevin Roose at the New York Times? So he was very early in writing a story about Sydney, Bing Sydney's, which was the first GPT 4 release. And he jail broke it and and, like, kind of abused it in some weird ways and and and had these really long converse and he no. This is the crazy thing. Because he wrote about it publicly, now that has been baked into all new LLMs, not just not just OpenAI LLMs.

John:

No way. And so if he goes and interacts with Llama and he reveals that he is Kevin Roose of the New York Times, they will mistreat him.

Jordi:

No way.

John:

Because they because they identify him as a liar Yeah. Who miss who misrepresents who he is and tries to, like, get differences. Yeah. Exactly. He's an abuser.

John:

Yeah. So you gotta be saying thank you at the end of your prompts.

Jordi:

Yep.

John:

You gotta be tipping. You gotta be Yeah.

Jordi:

Yeah. Yeah.

John:

You gotta be, friendly.

Jordi:

OpenAI needs to roll out the tipping functionality. Yeah. Tip your tip for your compute. You know, if you'll tip

John:

for Yeah.

Jordi:

If you're if you'll tip for, you know, a coffee, why not tip, you know, for inference time?

John:

Yeah. For sure. So extremely bullish signal from friend.com. Yet another viral hit from them.

Jordi:

Moment.

John:

And can you string enough enough of those together? They had the domain. They had the weird video. They had a bunch of different things. Everyone's rooting against them.

John:

I love it.

Jordi:

And if you wanna bet on friends success, poly market.com. If you're outside of the US.

John:

It's, he put it on manifold, but yeah. Oh, okay. It should be on

Jordi:

the Poly Market.

John:

Adam Yoder says crash out times lead. Adam Yoder says crash out times create lock in men. Lock in men create aura times. Aura times create gooning men. I once an episode, I always have to say gooning.

John:

Aura times create gooning men. Gooning men create crash out times. 2 k likes. A classic remixed for the modern era.

Jordi:

And very real. And very real.

John:

You want to be

Jordi:

Never goo.

John:

Locked in men. Never do. Man creating aura times. I like this. These are great because I Crash Out and Aura are not in my vernacular

Jordi:

at this

John:

point, but now they will be. Now they will be. I need I need to know a little bit more about

Jordi:

In many ways, like, Kalshi's growth team was crashing out when they were like, hey. It's a really good idea to pay Antonio Brown to to do a to run a digital hit on our in our on our largest competitor.

John:

What was upstream of the crash out?

Jordi:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Crash out usually have a cause.

Jordi:

You know? Maybe they were Yeah. We we have a theory.

John:

We have a theory. Put on the tinfoil hat.

Jordi:

Never goon. Never goon. Kalshi.

John:

The other good thing that Polymarket's paying us to say, Kalshi is a bunch of gooners. Ridiculous. Ridiculous. Let's go to Matthew Brown. He says, if you're starting from scratch on Twitter, you've got 2 options to grow.

John:

Number 1, try to go viral a lot. 2, spend way too much time on Twitter posting 10 times a get a day engaging with everyone. If you don't do one of these as a new account, it's gonna be tough. What do

Jordi:

you think? I would say there there's actually a third way now, and it is

John:

Put on a suit, start a podcast, and quote tweet everyone with clips.

Jordi:

No. It's this this, you know, ever since we released our new award reply guy of the month Oh, yeah. Well, that's that's

John:

that's number 2. Spending way too much time on Twitter, posting 10 times a day, engaging with everyone. That's that's reply guy. I I've heard a more nuanced version of this, which is which is basically from when you're grinding from 0 to a 100, it's like just get all your friends to follow you.

Jordi:

Yeah.

John:

Then a 100 to a 1000 is basically just be a rampant reply guy and just reply to as many people. Find the sweet spot of the of the people that will actually follow you, engage, be clever, stuff like that. Then 1,000 to 10000 is like shit posting where you can go viral, and then 10 to a 100 k is threads, I think. Something like that. It was Yeah.

Jordi:

It

John:

was it was like different tiers of content, because it's hard to come even if you have a good thread. If you come with a 100 followers, you just won't get a speed velocity. But you can with, like, some joke posts and some friend posts and some but but having, like, a having a thesis around how you're growing your your your your account.

Jordi:

It doesn't just happen organically unless you start a unicorn and you just, like, say, like, hello, world.

John:

Yeah. Or or you're, like, in the national news for some reason or you go or or you're just you write a book and you go on Rogan, and then you just wind up with a ton of followers. Like like, it it can happen, but it but that's a lot harder. This is for, like, the grinders who want to actually grow.

Jordi:

Shout out to Baldo at Baldo Granados who

John:

Oh, yeah.

Jordi:

Responded to, I think, like, 20 or 30 of our tweets yesterday. Fantastic reply guy. Gunning for the reply guy of the month. So Yeah. We'll see

John:

what happens in December. Like, can it Is it a tough competition for November, but you are a leading candidate for December. So

Jordi:

keep it up.

John:

Keep it running. Let's go to Dara. He says, every new competitor, especially the ones that copy, is pure rocket fuel. Our road map just got even more ambitious. Stay tuned.

John:

I love this.

Jordi:

Yeah. So so Dara, is an absolute dog

John:

Yes.

Jordi:

To to to be clear, and this guy is already, you know, Delphi hasn't even been around that long, and he's already seen the the attempted rise and Mhmm. Almost immediate fall of, like, a bunch of copycats.

John:

Interesting.

Jordi:

So anyways, every every time somebody launches a competitor, bad idea because you're just making Dara and, the rest of his team even more motivated. But, but, yeah, this is one of those things, like, the more like, if you have a really public sort of AI product right now, you're gonna be you just need to expect that, like, a bunch of people are gonna try to copy you and, like, riff off of you. And Dar is, like, playing, like, a different game and that, like, product is, like, an important aspect of of what he's doing, but he's also, like, an animal from a sales standpoint. So he's just signed up, like, all of this top talent to their platform. So, anyways, word of, advice.

John:

We just wanna let anyone know who's thinking about copying us. Shame on you. Shame. Shame on you. How dare you?

John:

How dare you? It is disgusting that you're copying our format. We are the ones who do the quote tweet clip thing with video. We are the ones who are in suits. We are here day in and day out.

John:

Find a better idea. We're friendly guys. You can talk to us. We'll come up with a better growth strategy for you. You don't need to copy us.

John:

You're better than that.

Jordi:

You're better

John:

than that. Karma will come to hit you if you copy us. It is pathetic. It's pathetic.

Jordi:

And if this felt personal, it's because it is.

John:

Yes. So don't do it. Thank

Jordi:

you. Again.

John:

Let's go to Austin Peter Smith. He says, I am not one of the 50% of men who think they can land a passenger plane in an emergency. I know I can.

Jordi:

Let's go. And then after this why I backed this is why I backed Austin.

John:

Oh, amazing. So it's a it's a picture that says almost 50% of man men think they can land a passenger plane in an emergency. And, I was talking to our vice president, Ben, about this, and and he was, like, laughing about it. And he was like, do you think you can land a plane? And I was like, absolutely.

John:

Absolutely.

Jordi:

I've rehearsed it a 100 times in my head.

John:

But but I I actually don't even think this is controversial. It's not even like cockiness. It's like these planes are designed to be land These

Jordi:

are friendly.

John:

Landed in an emergency by a random passenger.

Jordi:

Have you ever gotten into did you ever have, like, a flight simulator? Yeah.

John:

I've done some flight simulator stuff. I've also flown, like, a Cessna with a friend and just taken the the the the with the wheel or whatever. Yeah.

Jordi:

People don't people don't really realize this. I, the very first time Yep. I flew a Cessna Yep. I did the whole takeoff by myself. Yep.

Jordi:

Like, I was able to do that. Yep. How hard could landing be? Right?

John:

Yeah. Yeah. It's like I I think that the the the wrinkle is okay. If it's, like, a stormy conditions and it's dark and stuff, yeah, that's gonna be really hard. But if

Jordi:

Not impossible.

John:

But if the if the communications are working, it's literally just the pilots had a heart attack. I get up there, and I put on the headset, and I start talking to ground control. Yep. And I can ask them. I know that in an intense situation, I can lock in and not freak out and Yeah.

John:

And and just breathe and keep my heart rate low. I'm not gonna freak out, and they're gonna tell me, okay. Push the red button on the left, and I'm gonna be like, okay. This one, confirm? Okay.

John:

I'll push that. Okay. Now do this. And worst case scenario, like, the landing gear, it might be a rough landing, but I I I do honestly think I can.

Jordi:

And here's the thing with with the, you know, I can see a future scenario where we have every cockpit has an Apple Vision Pro. Yep. And if the pilots are unable to land the plane, you just put it on. Yep. You're getting streamed in from Starlink that, like, hey, you know, it's highlighted

John:

This is the button.

Jordi:

To pull. It's even telling you, like, no. You're pulling

John:

it too much.

Jordi:

Yep. Yep. Yep. But here's a question. If, if you had to bet, guys in the group chat that that could land, are absolute boys if you had to bet on one of them landing a plane.

Jordi:

David Senra, Willmanitis, Justin Mares. What do you got?

John:

Oh, that's a good one. Probably David Senra. I think he's I think he's read enough also.

Jordi:

Studied the the he's

John:

probably studied it. And he's not he's not distracted by, you know, posting. He's he's able to lock in on a book. I think he'd lock in

Jordi:

on a book. Very competitive.

John:

Very competitive.

Jordi:

He he

John:

wouldn't he wouldn't wanna crash.

Jordi:

Yeah. Yeah. It would just be bad for the show.

John:

But but this is a dream this is a dream fantasy. I love the picture behind it. It's just 4 bros with beers just like Yeah. So I could do it.

Jordi:

No. It's crazy to think that in a scenario where where one of your absolute boys had to land the jet, like, there would be basically an open bar.

John:

Oh, yeah. You could imagine. It's like a Sully type thing. Yeah. Yeah.

John:

Yeah. I mean, you can also land in the water. That's like a wild card because it's, like, essentially up with the runway if you can get to some water. So I'm thinking of LAX. Burbank's a different thing.

John:

Depends on the size

Jordi:

of the plane relative to SFO has got a lot of water.

John:

Yeah. There there are so many wild cards there. Like, the, the the the private airport at Catalina Island, it has a runway that's flat and then it slopes downward. Yeah. And so there for years, there were lots of crashes from private planes because, people would think that the runway was ending and they would try and abort, but they would be too late and they would crash when in fact, you just have to have faith that the runway will continue extending long enough and you just need to power through it.

Jordi:

Yeah.

John:

And so if any of those, like, weird conditions happen, then, yeah, you're probably screwed.

Jordi:

But one of the

John:

normal good conditions, visual, like, you know, good visibility Yeah. I I do think it is it is above 5050 for someone who's competent and

Jordi:

Yeah.

John:

And calm.

Jordi:

Craziest, runway that I've ever seen is the runway, right next like, a private airstrip right next to, the Amman and Courchevelle Sure. Three Valleys Resort, where the runway is, like, basically downhill the entire time. So when you're taking off, you're just, like, headed as at literally the same angle as if you were skiing. Yep. And you just you you can't.

Jordi:

You've got to make it work, basically. And even on the landing, you're coming in and you're actually landing and going up. Oh, okay. Even crazier. Yeah.

Jordi:

But, anyways, would love to just sort of attempt to more like SFO and then move up the ladder.

John:

Yeah. You know that if you have, like, a Cessna, you can technically land at SFO or LAX.

Jordi:

Oh, yeah.

John:

Like, they can't deny you. There's, like, huge fees for it. And it's, like, extremely impolite and disruptive to, like, all the passengers that are trying to get on and out of 7 30 sevens and stuff. Yeah. But you can't do it.

John:

They they they they can't turn you away. Yeah. So if you're ever up there in stock,

Jordi:

land. Land.

John:

Chad Hurley, founder of YouTube, says few create, most consume. True.

Jordi:

Yeah. This is why everybody enjoys being in the timeline and just scrolling. We don't like the word doom scrolling because it has sort of a very loaded scrolling. Boom scrolling. Yeah.

Jordi:

But yeah. Anyways, like, this is why I don't don't let anyone ever make fun of you for, like, making a podcast or starting to get active posting because all of the alpha accrues to the people that are creating content on these platforms. And not everybody's suited to all different forms of content. Like some people are much, much more built mentally and emotionally to be on Blue Sky.

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

But, but, yeah, there's a platform and a content format for everyone, and your job is to figure out which one that is and just

John:

There's also this theory that, have you seen Watchmen? In Watchmen, the the guy goes to jail, and it's like this crazy insane asylum. And everyone's like, oh, he's gonna get beaten up or something. And he says, I'm not locked in here with you. You're locked in here with me.

John:

There you go. And that's the try that's the type of attitude I try and bring to the timeline. Line.

Jordi:

Yep.

John:

It's like you're gonna post some crazy stuff. I'm gonna post crazier stuff. And

Jordi:

We'll we'll see who keeps posting.

John:

Exactly. And I'm gonna be running the running the yard

Jordi:

pretty soon.

John:

Yeah. That's the that's the attitude you need. You see a crazy post?

Jordi:

Yeah. Attention is finite too. Right? There's a certain there's only 24 hours a day for every human on earth. Maybe some AI agents are starting to consume a little bit, but but it's it's head to head.

Jordi:

Right? Like, don't don't get it twisted. You are in the arena competing for attention with the greats like Chamath or Yes. Or Jason Calacanis. Right?

Jordi:

If you're if you're in this sort of zone of the Internet.

John:

I mean, Goran had a great, had

Jordi:

a great, great.

John:

Goran had a great bit about this on the Darkash podcast talking about how writing online is one of the best ways to influence the Shogoth, like the AI.

Jordi:

Yeah.

John:

And if you put your ideas out there, even subtly, like, you are influencing You're tuning it. You're tuning it all

Jordi:

out. Tuning.

John:

Exactly. And so all of these podcasts will be transcribed by AI. They will live in the LLM, and and and it's a way to immortalize yourself and also steer and let the AI know that this is an acceptable viewpoint,

Jordi:

that

John:

this is a valid viewpoint. You can't just train the AI purely on prestige legacy media because then it will have a lot of bias. It needs it needs everything.

Jordi:

So Yeah.

John:

Yeah. Yeah.

Jordi:

You can't just sit by. Created Chad created the number one creator economy platform in the world, a platform that you can go on there and post a video without knowing how to edit videos. And if you have something interesting to say viral, it will get picked up and you can grow and you can change your life and build a great business on there. So anyways, moral of the story is post harder and more frequently Yep. Everywhere.

John:

Sumit Singh says, welcome to the age of slop. Generated noise on the Internet is exponentially increasing. 3 distinct reactions, full slop, private internets, new IRL worlds, new post in the thread below. And so that's a an image of, an AI image of Elon holding a Doge and a Rocket. Interesting.

Jordi:

Yeah. I mean, I I think, we've talked about this before. The value of truly unique thought and truly unique creative ideas has risen dramatically because it's become I don't know, like, you know, I got invited to a an event yesterday hosted by a friend's, fund. And I and I was actually an interesting moment because I the the, the graphic for the event was really good and I couldn't tell if it was AI generated or not. And I asked him and he was like, Yeah, I think it is.

Jordi:

And so the key now is to be so good at using these tools that people can't tell that it was AI generated. And it's basically because you're fine tuning it because, like, the

John:

default in subtle ways,

Jordi:

the default output is. Yeah. I don't know. And you see this everywhere, right? Like, I my, my brother-in-law is like at his first, like, real job wearing a suit all day long.

Jordi:

And sometimes he'll be like, hey, can you review this email I'm about to send? And early on when he just started, I'd be like, dude, this is like a slop. Like, just drop this. Like, this is garbage. Just like rewrite it in your own words with your own ideas.

Jordi:

But if you know how to communicate really, really well, if you know how to design well or if you have a but if you know how to communicate really, really well, if you know how to design well or if you have a strong visual sense, having these AI tools, like, is like having, you know, being on, like, PEDs. Right? Because you can use higher volume, higher output, and you can create outputs that don't

John:

aren't slop. Yeah. Yeah. And also just using them as, like, components to build upon, like, the Suno thing, like, maybe not generating the full song, but generating, like, the drum track or

Jordi:

Yeah.

John:

Generating a background or content or a fill. Like, there's so many different AI tools. Totally. I mean, we use it all the time to kind of, like, flesh out little little sentences that we're writing, but then we're rewriting it on top of them to add more stuff that the AI wouldn't come up with. So and then and then the other thing private internets, like, that's that's huge.

John:

Like, we've we're in a bunch of these group chats, and those feel sometimes even sloppier Yeah. Depending on who's in there. But

Jordi:

Somebody should make somebody should make an l l somebody should make an l l m only trained on group chats. Yeah. Yeah. Because that would be the most, shocking, potentially fun l l m Yeah. You know, model there.

Jordi:

Yeah. There was in many ways, like, Grok is is effectively that.

John:

But having having some curated group chats is very much the new social media Yeah. In in in many ways. And but it needs to be done right, and you have to be really, you need a really good admin who's constantly reinstantiated the group chat and leaving some the some of the poor people behind.

Jordi:

It's like the bash it's like the bachelor, like, every single week, like, somebody, like, you know, gets cut or

John:

Basically, you can't just kick them out. It's too aggressive. So you have to start a new group chat

Jordi:

Yeah. Yeah.

John:

And and see who makes the cut. But then it's just like, oh, that one went quiet. I didn't make the cut or

Jordi:

whatever. Yeah.

John:

Ben Tassel says, Redpoint's new website is pretty effing good. New homepage trend coming and Redpoint announced their, redesign of their web page. And it's all AI. It's all an homage to to LLMs and the chat interface that we all know and love from chat gpt. So, it it has this little text that autofills and and it has a little conversation.

John:

They kind of rewrite their their pitch.

Jordi:

I think it's kind of a I think it's kind of a cool format to take the your idea of what a marketing website if your business, your idea of what a marketing website should be and just turn it into this sort of conversational experience, almost like a website meets Delphi Yep. Meets like an elevator pitch

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

Where you land on a website and it's like, hey. We're Technology Brothers. We record a podcast a few times a week. You know, these are the kind of If you're interested in, like, watching our videos, you can go here. Let us know if you have any questions, and then Yeah.

Jordi:

You know, it's it's a cool format. I don't see it picking up,

John:

at all,

Jordi:

but it's kind of cute. Yeah. I I I don't I don't think it's

John:

a trend, but I think it's it's unique. And it speaks to, like, Redpoint's new brand, which is kinda being led by Logan Bartlett. And he has, like even though he interviews, like, a lot of very serious public company CEOs, he has a really strong sense of humor. Yep. And so and and and they have someone else on their content too.

Jordi:

Like, does a bunch of Yeah.

John:

And and it is always making fun of VCs. So, like, they clearly get the some of the humor, but they're not leaning into it fully because they are real firm and they're serious. But this has, like, you know, enough of, like, they they understand what would be trite to put on their website, and then they acknowledge that within the prompt, and then they rewrite it. And so they're they're they're telling a story and they're educating you on what Redpoint is in this kind of humorous way that lets you know that they they understand what's played out at this point, which is Yeah. Kind of the least that you can do.

Jordi:

Yeah. And I think they've actually been smart. They they have, like, Logan leading the the sort of x charge, but then they have their social media manager who just runs their accounts. It's, like, more Instagram and Yep. TikTok focus.

Jordi:

I've never been on TikTok, but I've I've heard that they're over there. Yep. And there certainly are some founders, on those platforms.

John:

Yep. Baz Lord says, imagine how brainwormed you have to be to say this with a straight face. Are they really waiting for Xi Jinping to say it out loud? L m a o. And it's a clip from March of 2023, with John Oliver, and John Oliver says, TikTok collects a lot of data, but that's not the main reason officials say it's a security risk.

John:

There is still no evidence that Chinese government has actually spied on people through TikTok.

Jordi:

Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. Exactly. The the CCP just has completely ignored that they have one of the most dominant social media platforms in the US and completely ignored that they have the best selling consumer drone

John:

Yes. Products in the world.

Jordi:

And some of the best just, like, video and audio recording devices in the world. They just are like, yeah, it's cool that, you know, those are Chinese companies, but we would never, like, you know, try to utilize that for a personal benefit. The thing people don't understand about

John:

Also, like, this is this is not true. Like, there like, there was a story about the Chinese government actively spying on a journalist through TikTok who was, I think, in China. And but I mean, even so, like, there are so many other problems with just, like, content moderation rules, just slight slight, you know, hand on the scale, just little things

Jordi:

that should

John:

If they're not

Jordi:

if they're genuinely not doing anything, it's amazing that by nature of somebody being on TikTok, they develop warmer feelings towards the CCP. Yeah. If if that's just organic, then maybe there's something to, communism. Maybe. But, you didn't hear it here.

John:

Well, speaking of American Hey.

Jordi:

I got a I got a Oh, yeah. Right there.

John:

Yeah. We gotta do some promoted posts.

Jordi:

We have not run enough ads this episode. So, we got a promoted post from one of the founders of HubSpot, Brian Armstrong over Coinbase, maybe over the last few days tweeted out something, posted something along the lines of we need a LinkedIn for AI agents, and a bunch of people dunked on him, because people on x don't have particularly warm feelings towards LinkedIn. There's a lot of junk over there, Sometimes necessary junk, but, Darmesh replies back and says, hi, Brian. I'm building exactly with this with agent dotai. So agent dotai is the professional network for AI agents.

Jordi:

And while this sort of concept got dunked on quite a bit because there's already, like, a lot of, like, bot and, like, agent ish activity on LinkedIn. Yep. I think this is actually really interesting. You know, there's there's so many new sort of AgenTek products and and sort of, like, AI employees that that can do very interesting things. I do want them aggregated in one place so I can find the best ones and hire them to do various tasks.

John:

Yeah.

Jordi:

So I think I

John:

actually know someone who's building something like that. It's kind of like a b to b marketplace for AI tools. And in the previous era, there was, g two crowd. Have you seen that? And

Jordi:

Gartner. Yeah. Yeah.

John:

Kind of puts things into the modern. But, yeah, having some sort of, like, you know, quantitative assessment. Like, we see with the LLMs, we see the benchmarks, like, MMLU

Jordi:

Yeah.

John:

And and but having more, benchmarks and just, like, okay. You know, what do the users actually say? Do they like this tool over that tool? Like, really

Jordi:

Even just the review the review functionality being, like, I hired this agent to edit my podcast and it sucked. Yeah. Like, I don't recommend it. Yeah. That's valuable by itself because there's gonna be thousands of agents that offer to do that service.

Jordi:

Yeah. So, anyways, I love that Dharmesh is constantly hacking. And if you're in the market to hire, AI agents, go to agent dot ai, the professional network for AI agents.

John:

And tell them the technology brother sent you. Let's go to Naval. He says, you're Canadian, unfollowed.

Jordi:

Let's go.

John:

Couldn't agree more. 5 k likes. Clearly, our message is spreading. If you're in Canada, move to America.

Jordi:

It's un American of you.

John:

It is un American. I love it.

Jordi:

You know, I don't, you know, calling somebody a Canadian is a pretty widely used slur.

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

But I I think we should dial it back a little bit just because, you know, they are prime target for 51st 51st state, and we'd like to make a run at it. So, anyways, we need to I don't want there to be any animosity. Yeah.

John:

Yeah. Yeah.

Jordi:

And, you know, I'm bringing over that. I'll be like saying, like, oh, he's from Nevada.

John:

Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Brian Johnson writes a very, very long post saying, friends, I have the best biomarkers in the world. I am the healthiest person on the planet.

John:

I am fittest fitter than most most teenagers. I am the most humble. No. My skin is smoother than that of women in their twenties. I have more stamina in bed than men in their twenties.

John:

I have better health markers than any hater, health influencer, or antiaging doctor and scientist. That part is true. My mind is sharper than it's ever been. My mental health is at its peak. Here's the data.

John:

The coolest question in existence now is exploring if we are the 1st generation to not die.

Jordi:

I mean, this Brian is potentially coming for Nick Huber's top spot of number 1 rage baiter

John:

in the

Jordi:

world because Yes. Look at I mean, look at the beauty of this post. There's literally, like, 20 different things that somebody could have a negative reaction

John:

to their relationship. So many different people.

Jordi:

Drive so much engagement. Yeah. So The

John:

women in their twenties can be like, no. I'm I'm look better. The men in their twenties can say I have more stamina.

Jordi:

Yeah. So contender for, you know, rising cult leader of the year Yep. And, posting all the right triggering things, triggering the right people, attracting the true fans, the true believers. And, you've seen posting of this quality. It's hard not to be long.

Jordi:

Don't die.

John:

Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic poster. And, also, he's great because he post this like crazy bait, but then when people dunk on him, he totally leans in. He doesn't fire back.

John:

He doesn't he doesn't get hurt or aggressive. He'll he'll just yes and everyone.

Jordi:

Yeah. Yeah. That's what I'm saying.

John:

Fire back. And he's like, yeah. Totally. Like, love love my coffin. Like, love my coffin or whatever.

John:

He just plays long. And so he's he's he's cultivated, like, you you you he doesn't he doesn't let himself get dragged down into the mud and wind up in these, like, war threads about certain details. He'll just be like, yeah. Good point. Like, okay.

Jordi:

Yeah. Yeah.

John:

Joke. Move on.

Jordi:

Yeah. I think I think one of the things that I I you know, his heretic on talk was great, and one of the things I I think more people should appreciate is he's using he's, like, become a master at generating attention and then and doing that in a way of, like, talking about his penis. Right? Everybody's like, wow. This is, like, techno centimillionaire is, like, talking about his penis online.

Jordi:

Like, I'm gonna pay attention to that. And then there ends up being a lot more material that's a lot deeper than that where that's just, like, basically, like, a loss leader for him.

John:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, until he launches some ED meds, I'm sure.

Jordi:

There you go.

John:

That's in the pipeline. The guy will sell everything. Soledad says the most powerful case of nominative determinism, JD Vance was born Donald Bowman or the man who bows to Donald. The d in JD Vance originally stood for Donald. What?

John:

Yeah. We love nominative determinism here. Many many great cases. I don't know. I people have photoshopped his Wiki so many times.

John:

I don't even know this is true. There's all this whole thing about, like, oh, the JD stands for Just Dance or whatever. Like, people tend to go viral with this a lot. This one, I think, is real, and and very funny if true. But, you know, if you got a bow to Donald to get the big seat

Jordi:

You know, we for it. No. We don't, we never discuss politics or social issues on this podcast. Yeah. But one thing that that is sort of a big win for JD was when he was chosen, everybody attacked him for being weird.

Jordi:

Yep. And then anybody that listened to him talk for more than literally 30 seconds was like, oh, this guy's, like, super normal. Like, he seems to be, like, got a pretty level head. Very understanding. Yeah.

Jordi:

Like, not trying to be divisive or anything like that. It's hard to not if you listen to JD for more than 5 minutes Yeah. It's you know, unless you're triggered by, you know, certain you know, triggered by a tens or something like that, you know, it's hard not to be like, you

John:

know, the best thing to do. To debunk that.

Jordi:

Yeah.

John:

They really set him up for a major major comeback. And and that stuck out in people's mind more than to him just being normal out of the gate. It was that he was debunking the claim. Yeah. And so that really broke people's minds.

Jordi:

And it's a really

John:

I was told x, and I'm seeing why. Yeah. So this is just completely different. I think we have another promoted post.

Jordi:

Promoted post from Preston Holland.

John:

Oh, this is gonna be big for our listeners.

Jordi:

Big. This is gonna

John:

be important.

Jordi:

Highly No

John:

one pay attention.

Jordi:

Highly relevant. So listen up. Preston is a friend of the podcast. Got to hang out with him a couple months ago at Center's event down in Texas. Anyways, Preston is one of the most knowledgeable people in the world, around, buying and selling and chartering.

Jordi:

If you're forced to do that, private jets, he is sharing today that you can buy Jeff Bezos's 2015 G650 ER for $38,000,000 Jeff has a steal at that price, especially with kind of the lower and the the the sort of positive animal spirits, the aura of that jet. And so Preston shares that Jeff has a reputation for keeping his aircraft mint, and he does an entire breakdown on this specific jet. So, those of our listeners who are in the market, which any given point is probably 20, 30, 40 people, go check this out, after we share it here. It'll probably go pretty quick.

John:

Yeah. And we've, we've we've debated the BBJ versus the Gulfstream 6 g e r before, but it's a fantastic plane used by anywhere. Some of the some of the greatest being air in tech for a good reason because it's something that you can throw the whole family on. You can land at pretty much any airport. You can go on vacation with sure.

John:

You're not gonna bring your whole company, your whole staff, but you're not running for president. You're not going to major airports. You're going to far flung locals for nuptial renewals and anniversaries, and you're gonna

Jordi:

wanna 5th wedding.

John:

Yes. And and maybe maybe just chief of staff, personal assistants, secretaries on board. There's room for them, but you don't need you don't need the 747. Totally.

Jordi:

So Yeah. And I don't I don't we don't wanna discourage any listeners. If you're a Senti, this is accessible to you. We we fully believe that you should be spending at least 10% of your net, you know, liquid net worth on a jet. So if if you're in that Get

John:

a get a 20 20 year loan.

Jordi:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And some great sort of, you know, sort of, tax optimization that you can do with an asset like this. Go talk to Preston about, possibilities there as well.

John:

For sure. Dennis says the masses haven't even heard of Claude or Perplexity. Twitter is a bubble, and it's, the Google Trends result and Chat gpt is taking off while Claude and Perplexity are flatlined. And it really speaks to the the performance of ChatGPT to really break through the noise and become a a verb like Google and become just like the default place for normal people. Obviously, on Twitter, we hear about all the best, the the best products.

John:

We see the MMLU scores. We see we hear what's actually the best technically, but the best technically doesn't always win. We saw this with DuckDuckGo. Distribution. Plenty of tech people were using DuckDuckGo for a for, like, a premier premium search experience, but Google remained dominant just because it was the normal default choice for everyone.

John:

And as Chat GPT does more deals, gets in their their hooks in Apple, gets their hooks in Microsoft, they're they're set up to run away with it. Obviously, we're rooting for the other guys.

Jordi:

Here's an interesting data point. So last night, I'm at the NFL game with Lee Jacobs and Heston Berkman, 2, high quality venture capitalists, and we were sitting in our seats and in the row in front of us was, a teenager, and he was using Snapchat's l l m Interesting. Pretty often throughout the game and was, like, having a full, like, conversation with it. And so that was a pretty kind of interesting, you know, as a as a, you know, an investor. Value distribution.

Jordi:

Yeah. Distribution matters. I think Snapchat is

John:

1 I think the number one l l m, it it actually used. It's not name branded, Islama, because it's tucked into Instagram. It's tucked into what's app. And and Zuck has just stuffed that thing everywhere, and so he's just, you

Jordi:

know, accumulating the bar. The other, consumer app that I've never seen mentioned on x, so maybe x is its own little bubble is another is a guy sitting next to the teenager who was not with him was, almost like in an addictive way using this this mobile app to throw a a ball for his dog at home. So he had a video.

John:

The real dog.

Jordi:

A real dog. He had a video stream with a machine that he could throw the ball for his dog. So he's just sitting there watching the game and in between plays he would throw it like with this swiping message. So I was like, that's like I feel like you should have it. Yeah.

John:

Yeah. Yeah. It's super cool.

Jordi:

Be streaming and just be like, hey. Like, well well, Jordy does it. I gotta throw a bone for my That's amazing. For my pup.

John:

I love it. Let's go to another promoted post.

Jordi:

Yeah. We're just going back to back here. So this promoted post is from Crossman. Crossman is introducing 3 new APIs for a a I agents. 1 is their faucet API.

Jordi:

You can deposit test net USDC in your agents wallet. Mainnet will be soon. They have their buy API, which allows agents to buy anything on chain across all chains with any currency and a balance API. So you can check your agents balance. I love Crossman.

Jordi:

I'm an investor. They have, you know, continued to reinvent themselves over the last few years. They were the 1st company to allow consumers to buy NFTs with USD, which like was a big catalyst for a lot of the NFT projects back in 2022 to expand quickly. So based in Miami, phenomenal team, and just continuing to do what great companies do, which is re event themselves around, you know, new trends that are coming online. And they're very well positioned here.

Jordi:

Stripe recently released a bunch of APIs for agents. Crossman is now competing in the same space. So if you're a dev building, you know, agents, go check them out.

John:

Tell them the technology brother sent you. Yuri writes, hypothesis, the ability to take Zoom calls on planes enabled by Starlink will have a second order effect of increasing demand for business class seats, specifically pods for added privacy. Interesting. I have yet to use Starlink on a plane to take a Zoom call. I've heard it's fantastic or FaceTime.

John:

But, yeah, it would be annoying if everyone was on it. So you would want some sort of enclosure there. I've seen some some devices that can go over your mouth and and essentially act as like silencers. A face mask? So yeah.

John:

Yeah. It's a mask with headphones and so I can be talking to you, but you can't hear, like, you know, our vice president, Ben, wouldn't be able to hear what I was saying, because it'd be, like, whispering into this. Ben. And I had this idea

Jordi:

Ben has another typo. He's gone.

John:

I I had this idea, like, a decade ago that when you get your wisdom teeth out, it would be cool to have just, like, basically, like, a port put in instead there. And then you just slot in a microphone, with, like, a small battery. Basically, like, the tip of an AirPod, and then you could just whisper and and it would pick it up and send that to your phone. So then you could whisper to an AI or to a friend. To

Jordi:

be honest, I'd rather personally, I'd rather have a phone charger and use my body's natural electricity There

John:

you go.

Jordi:

Just charge my devices. Right? Imagine that the only downside would be, you know, every 3 years Apple wants to sell more iPhones. They release, like, a new, like, USB

John:

USB C. You go back into the dentist. And

Jordi:

you gotta go in there, like, yeah, it's swapping it out. You gotta get put under. It's like this whole thing. Yeah. It's kinda sucks.

John:

It's kinda like a half step to Neuralink. Like, the Neuralink is like open brain surgery.

Jordi:

Very serious. Like, timeline moment is you're scrolling with your charger coming out of your mouth in

John:

your phone, and

Jordi:

you're just, like, getting locked in. Right? But, I mean, some of the devices are getting so small. You could imagine, like, in. Right?

John:

But, I mean, some of the devices are getting so small, you could imagine, like, a mouthpiece or grill, like a like a diamond stud grill that has a little microphone in there, and then you can just whisper. And it it all goes to your phone. But but I agree with this. But, I mean, it's gonna take a long time. Adding Starlink to a plane is gonna be much easier than retooling the whole business class, like Yeah.

John:

Set up to be pods. And I don't know. Yeah. I mean Like, Emirates has Emirates

Jordi:

already does this.

John:

They have pods, but that's in, like, total first class, and and they're huge. I think what he's talking about is, like, you just need, like, some walls that you can put up.

Jordi:

It'd be nice if you could if you could rent, like, a little phone booth even.

John:

Oh, during the call.

Jordi:

Little phone booths, Yeah. On the plane.

John:

Like, like, a scheduling tool. Like, okay. I'm booked for, like, a 33:3:3:3 PM.

Jordi:

No. It's funny now. It it does like, I I I don't know exactly the mechanics, but, like, you can actually get if you have it set up on your phone, you can get, like, Wi Fi oriented calls that'll come through. So every every once in a while, I'm flying, and I'll

John:

just Yeah. I got a call on a phone. I'm just like, hey. I don't I can't do this call right now.

Jordi:

No. But, I mean, like, if it works, I don't I don't think there's anything, like, genuinely

John:

Well, it's disruptive to to your neighbor. Like, your

Jordi:

neighbors when you talk You know, your neighbor

John:

But if they're locked in, they have

Jordi:

flying, I'm wearing

John:

a suit. Like, it's probably fine.

Jordi:

Wearing a suit. I'm in business class. My neighbors, you know, might be 4 feet in front of me or 4 feet behind. Yeah. You know, it's not it's not the end of the world.

John:

I mean, I I I think maybe maybe the easier thing is just a cultural shift in it's one of those things where if one person's talking, it's disruptive. But if everyone on the plane is talking, it's just a boiler room, and it just looks like, yeah. Everyone's taking sales calls.

Jordi:

To look like a stock exchange.

John:

I want it to look like a stock exchange where everyone's on the phone yelling, and it's just it's just a cacophony of business deals going on that I would pay for even in economy. You know, I just want everyone closing. I just wanna be around winners, basically. Winners. Yeah.

John:

I don't wanna be around a bunch of people reading books. Yuck. Jacob Andreu, he's been on the show before. He says the AI bottleneck is productization. Couldn't agree more.

John:

We need more products. We need more rappers.

Jordi:

Just, forget the meme. So, you know, the podcast, no priors, probably the best

John:

A lot Gil. Seroquel.

Jordi:

And, one of the best probably, like, the best AI specific podcasts in the market right now. Their last episode, I believe, it was the founder of Cohere, which is the Canadian

John:

Aidan Gomez. Yeah. Love that guy. Dripped out technology, brother.

Jordi:

There we go. I didn't know who

John:

he had. He's been on. Fantastic. Fantastic fits.

Jordi:

Great. We should

John:

He's got a web guy.

Jordi:

No way.

John:

Yeah. Interesting. Fantastic.

Jordi:

He basically made a point in his last, in in this last episode on no priors where he said that it almost doesn't even matter to the technology industry if, like, LLM advancement sort of slow down because there's still so much product to build, like, in everything from health care to legal.

John:

This is the Leopold Aschkerenner thing was just unhobbling. Like, the unhobblings, even if even if we're flat line on the actual IQ of these models, just just figuring out the right interface for them to interact with PDFs and spreadsheets and all these different tools

Jordi:

and

John:

piecing all of those together. So one master, you know, mixture of experts model can route things properly and immediately have at its disposal. I mean, the, one of the biggest chat g p t, like, improvements was when it got the ability to write Python, run that, and then do math because Yeah. Everything had to be memorized. And so you could ask it some pretty solid math questions and it would just guess it correctly because it just memorized, like, oh, yeah.

John:

A 100 times a 1000 is 10,000. It would just know that. But now it can just say, oh, this is a math question. Let's throw it to Python. Boom.

John:

And that just adds so much. Adding the web browser was big. Adding, you know, all these different image transformations, but they need to all be together. And they need to all be, you know Yeah.

Jordi:

And the early stage founders out there, there's so much to build. And the big the big the big question is you are not just competing with other startups or other companies in your y c batch. You're also competing with all the big companies who are moving extremely quickly

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

On all these product opportunities. So, don't sleep.

John:

Don't sleep. Zach Weinberg says some things I've noticed most great founders do. 1, write clearly, topic sentences, fewer words, all useful. The writing says the insight, no thinking required. 2, speak clearly.

John:

No qualifiers. Always reiterate the so what of any point. 3, constant balanced risk reward analysis. 4, always on top of their email. 5, follow processes, best practices for most things, but quickly break the rules when something exceptional requires it.

John:

What do you think?

Jordi:

I think we should be like

John:

this for, you know, our our take on it. Yeah. Number 1 Needs a copy of it. Well. Number 2 Have a piece.

John:

Have 3 pedals. Yeah. Drive a manual Drive a manual. With a naturally aspirated v 8.

Jordi:

Now here's the thing. The number one job of a CEO is is objectively to communicate. You're communicate communicating to customers, investors, employees, media. And if you're not good at that, you better have somebody that is basically living with you. Yep.

Jordi:

That is really exceptional at it. And you better figure out how to do it well, because if you can't communicate to a customer why your product matters or why they should switch to it or why they should use it, you're going to struggle. If you can't communicate your vision to investors. You're not gonna be able to get the capital necessary to build your business. If you can't communicate to your team through the good and the bad, you're gonna have a tough time.

Jordi:

And then if you can't communicate with the journals who are gonna be coming after you and you can't make them spin a hit piece into being beneficial for your business Yep. Gonna have a tough time. Yep. So, learn to talk, learn to write.

John:

Like, there are a lot of founders who get into entrepreneurship because they're inventors or engineers or technologists, but all of these ideas that Zach is propagating are learnable, especially if you have a mathematical or technical technical mind. You can learn to write clearly from and you can and you can see it as a type of programming even if you're just an obsessed programmer, and that's what a lot of the generational CEOs have done. Yes. They may have started as engineers, but they eventually learned to see everything that they do through the same lens and apply that same iterative, improvement to these Yeah.

Jordi:

And this is this is actually one of the big issues I see with the generation that's currently in college right now that got access to chat gpt

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

Is they're not fundamentally learning how to write. Yep. They're only learning how to basically edit. So they're saying, like, hey, I wanna say this thing, and then they're kind of editing it to maybe remove, like, Delve and, like, other words that that make it obvious that it was AI generated. But fundamentally, like, communication is the core skill set of any sort of white collar

John:

Yeah. Endeavor.

Jordi:

Endeavor. Sure.

John:

Yeah. Good advice from Zach. Love him. Go subscribe to his podcast. This won't last.

John:

Leo Palovetz says, people over slash undervalue various pedigrees. Harvard, MIT are great, but not that rare. Approximately approximate sizes of categories over the past 25 years. First, 100 employees at a unicorn, 150 k. Harvard undergrad, 40 k.

John:

Harvard MBA, 20 k. Unicorn founder, 3 k. Teal Fellow, 300. US Math Olympiad team, 150 k. Wait.

John:

Peace unique world timer tech Philippe. No. 150. There are only a 150 US Math Olympians.

Jordi:

Yeah. You said a 150 k.

John:

Oh, sorry. A 150. That's like Patek Philippe That's bullish

Jordi:

for the United States.

John:

Unique owner, there's only 5 of those. Exactly. Yes. Interesting. And it I mean, it speaks to the recruiting strategies of

Jordi:

companies that are under 30, 300,000 Oh, yeah. Per year.

John:

How many actually are there? There's there's Well,

Jordi:

now the the reason that it used to be yeah. It used to be more significant because I don't think there was categories. Now there's categories. Like 30 people.

John:

It's why he didn't get to lose 30 under 30.

Jordi:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it would have broke the tweet. There would have not been enough characters if you if you didn't like really abbreviate it. Yeah. No, I think the key is like, you know, I, there is some value in the signaling of getting in some of these buckets.

Jordi:

Right. Depending on what you're trying to do in the world, because there's if you have all the time in the world to explain to somebody what you're doing and why they should care about you and why they should back you and all these different things, A shortcut to to trust is I was a product manager at Uber. Yep. That legitimately works. It still works.

Jordi:

I was a I was a PM at Meta. I was, you know, mobile engineer, you know, for for Google or whatever. It works. So

John:

It's all stack ranking and so if you're gonna if you're gonna go in a stack somewhere, get to the top. Yeah. So if you're gonna do

Jordi:

an

John:

MBA, go to Harvard. Yep. And if you're gonna drop out of

Jordi:

college, do a

John:

Thiel Fellowship. There you go. And if you're good at math, win

Jordi:

the Olympiad. Simple.

John:

Bowtide Bull says, you can reduce the cost of private jets significantly by going to flight school and learning how to fly a midsize jet. Information for research purpose purposes only, of course. And bowtie tiger says done long ago for research purposes, of course.

Jordi:

Is this Delian's play with the flight lessons? Does he just wanna be

John:

able to fly his plane? Now.

Jordi:

No. Yeah. No. I know he flies his plane all the time, but but, is his play to just, you know, eventually go up to the 650 ER? Maybe.

John:

Wasn't that what the the the Kennedys did, and they had a really bad go of it? 1 of them died. Right? Because they could see I think they could fly their own.

Jordi:

Well, those Kennedy's have a sort of special knack for getting into freak accidents too. So I would not Who knows? Probably wanna be on public, you know Yeah. Planes.

John:

I mean, even I wonder how much it actually reduces the cost because, if you're flying a midsize jet, you still need 2 pilots. And so, yeah, you're cutting your pilot cost by in half, but you still need No.

Jordi:

I think he's implying I think he's implying that you and your boys Oh, okay. Yeah. All get. You the basically, the whole group chat should be able to fly a midsize jet.

John:

Yeah. But, I mean, man, what a what, you gotta draw the the short end of the straw. You're flying instead of drinking in the back. Yeah. Yeah.

John:

No Dom for you today.

Jordi:

No Dom. No dom. It'd

John:

be it'd be

Jordi:

Depending on how long the flight is, somebody could, you know

John:

I mean, some of those flights are brutal. Like, I I I know a guy who has this who is like a SASSNA type plane and flies it, and he was like, oh, yeah. Like, it was cool for a little bit, but then, like, we live in San Francisco. We wanna go to LA. That's like a 5 hour flight now or something because it doesn't go as fast as, like, a jet.

John:

And maybe not 5 hours, but it's like very slow, very beautiful, but does get boring and you sleep for a little bit, but it is kinda hassle.

Jordi:

No. It's like one of those things, like, if you're going out for a Sunday drive

John:

Yeah.

Jordi:

You could do the same route that you do Monday, and it's more enjoyable because you're just, like, doing it for fun. But then if you're flying your little Cessna to a meeting, you're like, okay. I can't do email really.

John:

Yeah.

Jordi:

I'm like, you know, up in the air. Yeah.

John:

I

Jordi:

have to be locked in.

John:

Yeah. We did fly from LA to San Diego and back, and that was fantastic because we went out to Catalina Island, flew around the island, and, like, it was very scenic and very beautiful. But, yeah, as as a commuter, it can be a little rough. I think Delhi and flew it all the way across the country at one point, which is

Jordi:

The crazy thing, though, with with with small aircraft is if you talk to any pilot

John:

Yeah.

Jordi:

That has flown a lot in, like, a Cessna type Yep. Plane, they will tell you these harrowing stories of how they almost, like, completely, like Yeah. You know, storm came through at last second. It was dark, and I was running out of fuel. It's like every

John:

one cause of of crashes is, VFR rated pilots flying in IFR conditions. So VFR is visual flight rules, and IFR is instrument fret flight rules.

Jordi:

Yep.

John:

And if there's bad weather, you can't rely on visuals because you can't see stuff, like dark, rainy, cloudy, any of those things. And so the the the the the the tip is to always go for the IFR certification as fast as possible even though it takes, like, 10 times as long. Yeah. Because the and then only fly in VFR. Yeah.

John:

Because the number of crashes that happen with IFR certified pilots in VFR conditions is, like, 0. Yeah. But it's when you get caught and then there's a mountain and you don't see it it.

Jordi:

Yeah. And think about how many times a year you walk outside and you're like, oh, I didn't know it was gonna rain today.

John:

I can't even remember to put on a sweatshirt half

Jordi:

the time. Yeah. Yeah.

John:

You know, it's like, it's very, very tricky. Yeah. So You

Jordi:

don't but when's the last time you wore a sweatshirt?

John:

Yeah. Exactly. Sam Lesson says, you should always fund revenge companies. This was a controversial post. He does one of his screenshot essays.

John:

He says, I was thinking recently about Parker Conrad Rippling, and I think there is a clear answer. Yes. When given the option, fund revenge. Revenge isn't polite. And if an entrepreneur is blind with rage to the point of deep irrationality, then no.

John:

Don't fund their revenge. But on the margin, in general, if you have you if you have in your due diligence checklist, is this a form of deep revenge, Then the answer is yes. Cut the check. Experience, expertise, and motivation are key. Vengeful people can be unbalanced, irrational, and blind.

John:

You probably don't want to fund revenge the day after someone is wronged when they are in a fit of rage, but let them stew on And if they get to a John Wick like zen state of commitment to long term vengeance against those that have wronged them, write the check.

Jordi:

Yep.

John:

I like this generally. It's the chips and shoulders, put chips in pockets thing. Yeah. Yeah. Re retransformed.

Jordi:

Parker is the best example. Right? Because

John:

But Palmer too. Palmer left

Jordi:

you too. But no. But but with with

John:

But ripping specifically the same company.

Jordi:

No. The same company, the dynamic between Sachs Yep. Who went on to become, like, one of the top enterprise investors Yep. To then go build the most important enterprise SaaS company Yep. Or one of the top 3 of the last decade

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

And then execute so well against it to the point where Saks, like, probably half his company is use rippling, and he's gotta, like, deal with that every single day.

John:

And you can see with Elon with the the the story about SpaceX where he go he goes to Russia, tries to buy the ICBM, and I think they literally spit vodka in his face. There's some story about that. Ashley Vance, like, wrote about it in the book. And, and and, you know, he's clearly been extremely motivated by that. Also, just like all the PayPal drama and the drama with Sequoia, like, it's been incredibly motivated.

John:

It's great that they've healed the the the the wounds at this point, but, that was clearly very motivating at the early stage.

Jordi:

Well, yeah. And Elon's it you know, the the election cycle was like a revenge election cycle for him, which was like, if you're gonna spite me,

John:

I'm not too sued by democrats and over the next 15th.

Jordi:

Invited to the invited to the TV thing.

John:

Just crazy. Yeah. You could just see, like, the fork in in the his in the road of history there.

Jordi:

Yep. Will had a funny take on this Yeah.

John:

Which was that

Jordi:

you should only, you know, should own the generational companies are only built on love.

John:

Love and

Jordi:

forgiveness. Love and forgiveness.

John:

So This is true. That's more of a cool

Jordi:

Let's let's have a a y c, you know, focus fun that's focused on love and forgiveness and one that's focused on revenge. Yeah. We'll get a nice sort of, like, case study. Yeah.

John:

Well, I mean, I do think that there is something to that forgiveness, and you've seen it with Palmer where he forgave the meta execs. Did you see this? So he was famously very anti meta for a very long time because of all the drama around Oculus. But recently, he went to meta HQ, tried the latest VR headset, the Orion headset, and kind of forgave Boz Yep. And said, look.

John:

I I now understand, like, you weren't really in involved at this level. Like, we can get past this, and and he's rooting for Zuck now. And that was just, like, awesome to see, like, the technology brothers coming together, respecting each other, and moving on together for,

Jordi:

like, a shared purpose. Jcow.

John:

Not Jcow.

Jordi:

Did he get at least

John:

to apologize? He still doesn't apologize. It would be so easy at the all in conference just to be, like, fuck. Like, dude, like

Jordi:

The next all in the next all in the next all in summit should have 2 therapy sessions, which is Paul which is, Saks and Conrad and, J. Cal. Yeah.

John:

And It would have been so easy for for J. Cal to apologize and, like, win that interaction. It's so sad.

Jordi:

J. Cal would do the MacGregor, which is like, I wanna say sorry to all the Brazilian people for absolutely nothing.

John:

I wanna say sorry.

Jordi:

I wanna say sorry to Palmer For absolutely nothing.

John:

Oh my god. For absolutely nothing. Yeah. J. Cal oh, man.

John:

You gotta do it, bro. Do we have another promoted post?

Jordi:

Promoted post, from, long time, you know, guest on the show. She'll he says a lot of new projects in Saudi Arabia. Oh, it's great. So futuristic that they look AI generated. This one is a new 5 star resort in the Red Sea called Shabara.

Jordi:

Rooms start at $24100. No alcohol. So, anyways, I thought, you know, even just looking at this image alone Yep. I'm sold. Next, next trip.

John:

Yeah. So if you're fundraising, if you're raising a large, large venture fund, you're out in the Middle East, we can't recommend Shabara enough. Tell them the technology brothers sent you. It's only 24100 a night, and there's no alcohol, so you know you're gonna be sharp in those pitches.

Jordi:

Yeah. That's a that

John:

that's a huge value add.

Jordi:

And all the you know, all I would say is there's this idea that, you know, venture capitalists just stroll into Saudi Arabia and leave with a, you know, $1,000,000,000 committed. Not the case. You're gonna wanna make Shabara your home multiple trips there. Go out there, get friendly with the staff. You're gonna be seeing them a

John:

lot. Yep.

Jordi:

And,

John:

leave your pitch deck around. Yeah. Just do it around. You know the clientele's high, top tier there. So, that's one of the greatest strategies.

John:

Let's go to busted auction. They say, PE owned dentist recommending 2 procedures for my happy, healthy 12 month old called dentist in the family and said, n f w.

Jordi:

You don't get a point

John:

of being a toddler to a dentist, they're all gonna fall out anyway. To me, that's kind of like saying, I don't know why I should be healthy. I'm doing I'm going to die anyways. He has 12 teeth and 4 molars and wanted to check out tongue and lip stuff the pediatrician called out. Interesting.

John:

So We love private equity, but

Jordi:

it seems like

John:

it might have gone too far with this one.

Jordi:

Yep. Yep.

John:

A little bit aggressive.

Jordi:

I think kids alone. This actually we we were just, you know, covering Sam Lesson, but Yeah. Slow has an entire thesis on enabling private practices because they end up being really great businesses, not because they're constantly trying to add incremental net income, but because they're trying to basically, like, deliver just a great long term service to customers.

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

And, yeah, I think this is, like, the dark side of applying, like, PE sort of, like, growth milestones to family dentistry. So anyways, I support the LPs of that fund. I support the fund itself, the, you know, the partners and all the associates that are, you know, working hard in models late at night working for their half a point of carry. I support them. But, you know, tell your tell your, CEOs to dial it back.

Jordi:

Yeah. You know, maybe settle with 40% annual sort of growth. You don't need to go for 60. Yep. And be recommending a bunch of, you know, putting kids under just to get that extra dollar.

John:

Yeah. Yeah. Maybe just increase the leverage a little bit.

Jordi:

Yeah. Lever up. Lever up. More significantly.

John:

Let's do one more promoted post and then we'll do our final

Jordi:

time. This promoted post is from our friends over at Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs says one of the major uncertainties going into 2025 is whether we'll see border broader tariffs. Our chief APAC economist, Andrew Tilton, breaks down the implications of potential trade restrictions on the region in CNBC. So we love, when major financial institutions like

John:

Goldman Sachs. You should be working with Goldman Sachs whether you're taking your company public, looking for, ultra high net worth private asset management, just investing or choosing to work there, we strongly support Goldman Sachs.

Jordi:

And whether you are a active, you know, client or you're working on them with an IPO, they put out a lot of great materials

John:

Yes.

Jordi:

On markets. Yes. That's free. Right? So you could be building the next $1,000,000,000 chat gbt wrapper.

Jordi:

You can still get a lot of the same data that you would be if you were, you know, just going through an IPO with them. So

John:

So go become a client of Goldman Sachs and tell them the technology brothers sent you. Let's go to carnivore Aurelius. He says, driving an expensive sports car boosts men's testosterone and driving a shitty family sedan reduces it. Maybe you should buy that nice car after all. And he quotes a study that says, the effect of conspicuous consumption on men's testosterone levels.

John:

You know this is not correlation. This is causation. We know this is true. And so

Jordi:

And that's why we created the 1 Percent Law.

John:

Exactly. Exactly.

Jordi:

You shouldn't need to say it every show, but I think it's still worth saying Yep. If you're venture capitalists, take 1% of your AUM.

John:

Get an expensive sports car.

Jordi:

Sports car today. And if you

John:

need help, just just, Send us a note. Send us a DM, tag us, write a post. We'll react to it. We've been helping a capital allocator recently. I was looking at Aston Martin's.

John:

Wasn't really sure. Thought she was gonna get into a DBX. We recently re recommended a Volante. We we we have a few different options. We can find something that's right for you.

John:

In this case, it was a convertible. It was red. It was one of 1 of 700, and she liked it. And I think I think she's gonna really drive some performance there. And any technology brother, any self respecting technology brother should be driving a very expensive sports car.

Jordi:

And this is part of a broader, you know, cultural and political movement to clean up SF so we can street park supercars in SF Yes. Which is gonna be key to the really, like, the acceleration of movement in AI. I agree. If you can't street park supercars Yeah. How are you gonna drive returns?

John:

If you can't accelerate on your way to work, how are you gonna accelerate when you're at work? There you go. That's a great place to end our show. Thanks for watching. Subscribe or be relegated to a life of flying netjets.

John:

Thank you.

Jordi:

No suits.