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In this episode of the "Health Further" podcast, hosts Vic and Marcus dive into an array of compelling topics, including Marcus's reflections on his competitive jiu-jitsu journey, the latest inflation trends and Federal Reserve decisions, the evolving corporate real estate market, and breakthrough ventures in healthcare like bioelectric medicine and AI for clinicians. They also discuss critical societal issues, including Asian-American mental health disparities and the implications of a block...
In this episode of the "Health Further" podcast, hosts Vic and Marcus dive into an array of compelling topics, including Marcus's reflections on his competitive jiu-jitsu journey, the latest inflation trends and Federal Reserve decisions, the evolving corporate real estate market, and breakthrough ventures in healthcare like bioelectric medicine and AI for clinicians. They also discuss critical societal issues, including Asian-American mental health disparities and the implications of a blocked Kroger-Albertsons merger. Rounding out the discussion, they explore the regulatory shifts under the Trump administration, the ongoing AI revolution in healthcare, and the wider implications of political and economic change.
Links:
3:09 - Consumer Price Index comes in hot again as inflation progress slows Axios
4:20 - Hiring Bounced Back With 227,000 Jobs Added Last Month WSJ
6:33 - New York City’s Biggest Office Landlord Offers a Glimpse of the Market’s Comeback WSJ
9:14 - Cala Health raises $50M from J&J Innovation, Ascension Ventures Modern Healthcare
12:27 - Evidently Closes $15M Series A Funding FINSEMS
13:25 - Anise Health hauls in $3M for digital mental health Axios
16:38 - Kroger-Albertsons Merger Blocked by Court, Handing Victory to Biden Antitrust Enforcers WSJ
19:07 - Trump Aims to Remake Federal Trade Commission With Two Picks WSJ
22:31 - Premiums could increase substantially if ACA subsidies expire Fierce Healthcare
24:52 - Proposed ban on medical debt reporting faces an unfavorable political climate HFMA
29:35 - White House to host first-ever Conference on Women’s Health Research The Hill
31:32 - Appeals Court Upholds U.S. Ban of TikTok WSJ
39:04 - Bipartisan Lawmakers Seek to Break Up Giant Health Care Conglomerates NYT
40:49 - Death Threats for Health Insurers Highlight Long-Simmering Anger Against Industry WSJ
45:46 - Walgreens Is in Talks to Sell Itself to Private-Equity Firm Sycamore Partners WSJ
49:39 - Corti debuts AI assistant for providers with supportive computing Fierce Healthcare
52:54 - Open Source AI is Leading to Breakthroughs in Healthcare, Education and Entrepreneurship Meta
56:48 - Build a Simple AI Agent with ai16z's Eliza framework Youtube
1:06:05 - OpenAI’s Sora is launching today — here are highlights from the first review TechCrunch
1:07:28 - Google Rolls Out Faster Gemini AI Model to Power Agents Bloomberg
1:08:01 - Quantum Computing Inches Closer to Reality After Another Google Breakthrough NYT
Every week, healthcare VCs and Jumpstart Health Investors co-founders Vic Gatto and Marcus Whitney review and unpack the happenings in US Healthcare, finance, technology and policy. With a firm belief that our healthcare system is doomed without entrepreneurship, they work through the mud to find the jewels, highlight headwinds and tailwinds, and bring on the smartest guests to fill in the gaps.
If you enjoy this content, please take a moment to rate and review it.
Your feedback will greatly impact our ability to reach more people.
Thank you.
All right.
Uh, Vic, how are you today?
I'm good.
I'm, uh, not preparing to fight people, uh, and choke them out like you are.
So you're in Vegas, uh, getting ready, preparing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We're recording on, uh, on Wednesday and I will compete on Friday.
So I think by the time the show goes live.
It'll all have gone down.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But, um, but yeah, I mean, I think I'm, I'm, I'm happy to, to share with you and the listeners that, uh, well, I'm here in Vegas for the, the world NoGi tournament.
Uh, last tournament I was in was the Pan Ams NoGi and won that one.
And, um, you know, a lot of the usual suspects, you know, last year's world's champion, this year's Europeans champion.
So you kind of know that the leading folks now, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's, it's a, it's a good tight bracket of, of serious competitors.
So, um, and I think this is probably my last competition for a while.
Um, I, I, uh, 2025, I've just sort of mapped it out and there's a lot of work to do with Nova.
There's a lot to do and there's a lot going on.
And, um, I think it's a good time to take a breather, uh, from competition.
I would like next year for jujitsu to be, uh, a place where I can go to let steam let off steam.
Yeah.
And, and truthfully, like.
When I'm competing at this level, it's not a place where I can go let off steam.
It's actually a place where I have to prepare to perform.
You know what I mean?
So I'll return to competition.
I love it.
But I think, I think for most of next year, I may not compete again next year until this competition next year, you know?
So, yeah, I mean, that's how I use workout, whether I'm running or doing yoga or whatever, like it's my place to like, get away and not think about anything, not be stressed, but I'm not trying to win a world championship.
So, um, yeah, yeah, exactly.
I think you'll enjoy jiujitsu more when you're just like messing around, uh, rolling with your, your buddies in the Nashville.
I will, I will.
And, and helping them get ready for their competitions.
Yeah.
And all, all their goals and stuff like that.
So, um, it's a, it's a good time.
Uh, I, I've, I've won a bunch of stuff over the last, you know, two, three years and quite frankly, it, it, it really is their time to go win a bunch of stuff.
And I, and I almost feel like this competition is likely to be like a.
a bit of a changing of the guard even within our own, our own team and our own academy in terms of them rising up, uh, to, to really become the lead dogs.
And so it feels like a good time for me to take a step back.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Uh, anyway, uh, thank you for putting together a good show and, um, I'm looking forward to digging into all the stuff that you have pulled together.
So let's dig in.
So starting with CPI, uh, it has come in hot, uh, you know, I have to give you credit when we talked probably two months ago.
Um, you did suspect.
That inflation would take back up, um, in the months following that initial cut in September and here we are.
It is.
It is taking back up ever so slightly.
It's it's inching back up towards 3 percent coming in at 2.
7%.
Yeah, yeah.
And it's, um, I just think it's.
Difficult to get inflation down when you're cutting rates and the economy's growing.
And so, um, I don't know, I think it is probably okay to have 2.
7 or even three, but when the target is to that, that there's some cognitive dissonance that I have there, I don't think the target is too, but they just won't say that.
Well, I think, I think the key is that they don't want to change the goalpost The directional change over the course of the last 60 days, um, puts the cut in question, at least for me, the December cut, but let's move to the next story because that's, that's the next, uh, on Friday last week, I think it was, um, the jobs report, the establishment survey jobs report came out.
Um, and.
I think a good, you know, reasonably good number to 27 new jobs, but the unemployment rate ticked up a little bit, just like slightly here to 4.
2%.
And I think that was because a lot of people that had gone on unemployment over the summer, um, renewed and they did what's called continuing unemployment, uh, which is a little bit troubling.
So we had a good jobs report or or good to average to good, but unemployment rate ticked up a little bit, which is mildly concerning.
So those two things together, you would think the Fed might pause.
I would think the Fed might pause.
I would think so too.
Um, but the poly markets and all the people on wall street that I try to listen to seem like it's very likely they'll cut 25 basis points.
Well, it's what's, what's, what's, what's polymark is saying right now.
They are at 94 percent of a 90 percent likely of a 25%.
Okay.
I mean, it doesn't get that much more confident.
No, no, no, it really doesn't really doesn't as far as January sort of no change is the most likely amount.
70%, no change.
So the.
The betting markets think there's going to be one more rate cut and then they'll take the pause a little bit.
The stock market has been mixed to down over the last few days, but it's had record multiples, record top record amounts.
And so, yeah, I think the headline I saw was like the S and P at its lowest in three weeks or something, you know, it's like, they can't actually claim it's down over any meaningful period of time.
So they're talking about in weeks now.
Right, right.
So I don't know.
I think the Fed probably will cut, but we can talk about that next week.
We'll be, we'll be doing a show next week, kind of probably right as they're meeting or right after they meet.
Yep.
Okay.
Uh, next story.
You've got a corporate real estate story.
Yeah.
So, um, publicly traded company called SL green.
They have really like double a office commercial real estate properties that they own.
Um, so really high profile and very good location, high quality buildings, and they are doing well.
And, uh, this story is in the Wall Street Journal talking about, um, SL Green has a 94 percent accuracy rate across their 93.
2 across their whole portfolio.
Now, these are really excellent properties, so they, they would have better.
Um, but they raised some money to, to buy up new properties, uh, because they think there's going to be an opportunity in the next few quarters.
And I think we were talking before.
I think there's a, there's a disconnect between the, like the New York city and the, and the, you know, class a properties versus the rest of America.
It's more of the K shape economy.
Right.
Um, except for this is just reflecting, uh, what's happening in the business world.
To me, this is so similar to.
What is happening in tourism, right?
Uh, you know, these leases are multi year leases and tourism.
They're multi day leases.
Um, but, but it's still, but it's still real estate, right?
It's still real estate.
And the bulk of the real estate is in mid scale and economy.
And that is down year over year and industry experts are projecting that to be down year over year next year, but luxury and upper upscale and even upscale, um, travel is up.
Right.
So the vom from a volume perspective, right.
That's not the bulk of the volume, but that is the only thing keeping the industry up is that, you know, rich people are still traveling and still vacationing, um, middle class and poor people are traveling much, much less.
And I think it's kind of the same thing for businesses, right?
Businesses, uh, SMBs can't, can't manage these leases anymore.
Right.
You know, it's too much pressure on the PNL.
They can't justify it.
Remote work is a good alternative, etc, etc.
But at the class A level, you know, your Amazons, your JP Morgans, who have all said we're coming back into the office, um, they're doubling down.
And, and if you are an owner of that kind of real estate, uh, I, I think you're going to be okay.
I think that's right.
So, uh, we'll keep covering the real estate markets.
I think it's a pretty good bellwether for the overall economy.
Um, but it seems like there's enough positive that it probably won't in the near term cause a big crisis, like some kind of bank problem or anything like that.
So moving into the venture markets, Kayla Health raised 50 million from J& J and Ascension.
That's a big number.
And, uh, Johnson Johnson Innovation, they, they actually do a lot in early stage, um, uh, healthcare venture.
They've got J& J Labs, which are sort of embedded in accelerators all over the country.
They have, um, an impact fund as well.
Uh, but this is, this is a larger check than they typically write, uh, from a venture perspective.
So that's significant.
Um, partnering with OSF and Ascension.
So, um, OSF is a regional Ascension is a multi regional to national, uh, nonprofit.
So partnering with nonprofits here, um, for a bioelectric medicine company, share more about what they actually do.
Yeah.
So they have a, um, It's a wearable device that delivers a treatment, um, it's called transcutaneous afferent pattern stimulation, TAPS, but it's to treat Parkinson's disease and the tremors associated with Parkinson's.
I don't exactly know how it works, but it's, you wear it, And it does something through, you know, through your skin, um, to make that tremor symptom less bad and, and help people with that.
Um, cool.
It got, uh, cleared from the FDA, CVS published a study saying that, you know, it can lower costs and make it better.
So it seems pretty interesting.
I have not, I don't have direct knowledge of it, but.
Seems like great that they had got some money and there's a lot of people with Parkinson's that that could benefit from that.
So it feels to me like they're taking what was, uh, an already reimbursable method of therapy, probably in a much clunkier DME.
And moved it into a smart, smart watch sort of package.
Is that, is that basically what we've got here?
Yeah.
I don't know what the reimbursement is, um, but yes, other than that.
Yes.
The reason why I said reimbursement is I'm like, why would Ascension and OSF invest if it's not reimbursable?
I don't, you know what I mean?
Like they're not into science.
They're into generating net new revenue at a lower cost.
So that, that feels to me like it's probably already a reimbursable therapy.
Yeah, I mean, I think that makes sense, but with who is, is investing, I don't know what the reimbursement rates are.
I mean, um, they talked about a 40 minute session for the device giving more relief than an hour session.
So they're sort of trending towards doing the 40 minutes.
Of course, I think they have done a lot of trials.
They've published at least two that they've talked about in this story.
And if, if listeners want, we'll of course link to the The story and in the story, there's several publications about the actual technology.
It's not clear what the reimbursement rates are.
And that's, you know, the device approval is not the same as their device reimbursement.
Well, I just, I just Googled it.
So yes, Medicare does reimburse it.
Um, yeah, which, which, you know, again, makes sense.
And it makes sense that we've met Medicare again, that you're talking about nonprofit hospitals with a high payer mix of, you know, government pay.
So that, that makes sense.
Yeah.
Okay.
So then we have evidently, which is in Soka Valley, it's an AI platform for healthcare workers, right?
You know, what I think of as a copilot, uh, sort of sitting beside in the EHR, being able to see the data, the patient you're working with, and then, and then giving advice, guidance, helping the physician.
Okay.
We're seeing this in a lot of markets.
Um, but this week are the first two kind of co pilots in, uh, in helping with physicians.
Okay, cool.
So it's, you know, it says it's acting like an, an AI version of a resident, whether physicians can use that or want that.
I don't know, but it could be really valuable.
Seems, seems, seems like the level of, uh, seems like the level of competency that AI should be able to, to match.
Yeah.
A resident, right?
Yeah.
So then Anise Health is a digital mental health company focused on mental health for Asian Americans.
They raised 3 million.
And I was really surprised at this, but Axios Published a story that they said that Asian Americans are the only racial group where young adults, the leading cause of death is suicide.
So it's obviously a huge problem.
Yeah, yeah, and I just wanted to double check that because, uh, the, the link in the Axio story goes to, like, another news article that links to some PDFs.
It's back from, like, 2018.
So I was like, that's still true.
But I checked on, uh, on HHS's website.
And in fact, even in 2022, it, uh, suicide was still the number one cause of death, uh, for Asian Americans, I think between, uh, 15 and 20, uh, in 22 or something.
So, yeah, I mean, that's, that's, uh, that that's pretty serious and also pretty surprising.
Yeah.
And so there's way too much suicide.
Um, but then further in the story, it talks about You know, just the less acute forms of mental health.
So Asian Americans have reported the greatest increase in depression, anxiety across all racial groups.
Wow.
Um, but they're the least likely to get mental health treatment.
So I think it's really great that this company is raising, has raised 3 million to really just focus.
With, you know, culturally accurate, um, messaging to try to get people into, to get treatment to get help.
They need.
Yeah, I mean, I, I can certainly just say I can't speak for all, you know, African Americans, but I can, I can say historically, um, you know, therapy was, was not sort of, uh, a culturally accepted, you know, practice for, um, Americans, that has changed greatly.
I would say over the course of the last 10, 15 years.
Um, but historically it just wasn't really something that, that we did.
Um, and so I, I definitely think it, it makes sense.
Uh, you know, when, when you look at, uh, Healthcare usage patterns.
There's just an undeniable difference based on, um, you know, demographics and, and ethnicity in particular, uh, in terms of how groups of people utilize the healthcare system.
You know, for example, African Americans, you know, over utilize the ER, um, you know, uh, as, as opposed to, you know, You know, primary care.
Um, they overly overutilize the ER.
So these are things that the data is pretty empirical and we need to create specific solutions to sort of deal with these things if we're going to actually, you know, be willing to help people.
Yeah, and I don't know what the belief systems are in Asian American cultures or in African American cultures, but but there are people I mean, if you did a study on Asian Americans, and why do they not use mental health, then you could unpack that and bring.
educational information to help people understand that it's part of all health care and they should avail themselves of it.
So I think it's a good thing, um, that they're working on that.
Okay, so now moving into policy.
The Kroger Albertson's merger was blocked.
The judge sided with the FTC, so that merger is not going to go through.
I'm pretty surprised about this, but, but I guess it's a win for the FTC.
They've been waiting for several years to get a win, so they're able to block Kroger Albertson's deal.
Yeah, I mean, we talked about this last time, the, the, the clever categorization of supermarkets to exclude Walmart and Amazon.
And I think maybe by ownership then Whole Foods, I mean, you know, It's just it just feels like a vendetta, right?
It just feels like for some reason that they just did not want this, um, this to go through.
And it's interesting that the judge actually side sided with the FTC.
We have not seen a whole lot of judges siding with the regulatory bodies, but I think I saw in a downstream story from this.
Decision that Albertson's I think immediately has sued Kroger for loss of value throughout this whole process Which sort of seemed like a trigger, you know Reality that that would that would happen here, but you brought up That based on that that definition of what is supermarket versus what is not a supermarket that that now makes it fair game For an Amazon or for Walmart to make the acquisition of an Albertson's, right?
Yeah I I think that's the unintended consequence that By arguing that Kroger and Albertsons were not in the same competitive marketplace as Amazon Whole Foods or Walmart or Target, they kind of seeded the case that, that therefore one of those or someone else in that, in that kind of related, but apparently different space could then buy a big grocery chain like Albertsons.
I don't know how that makes sense, but that's, I think that's the natural follow on.
Albertsons did sue Kroger.
I'm not sure what grounds.
They, they get a 600 million.
breakup fee.
It seems like that was negotiated to compensate them for this exact situation.
I don't see how they have damages over and above that, but, uh, you know, lawyers are busy.
Always.
Yeah.
Um, all right.
What's the next story.
So on the FTC, Trump, uh, named Andrew Ferguson to be the The new chair of the FTC.
He also, uh, got to nominate a new member.
Cause it's, uh, I think whoever is in power gets maybe three seats of the five.
We have talked about this before.
It is a change.
But Andrew Ferguson is no fan of big tech, especially Google.
And so it's not going to take the pressure off.
It might shift it a little bit.
Then the tactics might be different.
Right.
Um, hopefully it will be better in general for the, the smaller transactions, you know, sub 500 million or a billion, but we play, you know, Hopefully we'll be fine.
I think it's actually gonna be all transactions.
So, uh, you know, there's two major parts of the Biden administration's FTC agenda.
One was big tech.
And I think Trump is going to be very aligned with that.
You know, we've we've been saying that that Trump and certainly Elon, they're very mad with Google, right?
You know, um, and so I think, yes, there's going to be continued.
Focus on big tech, very specifically Google, maybe secondarily meta.
But my sense is that, you know, Zuckerberg has been shifting his position and I think, uh, could sort of read the tea leaves and, and is, is making friends there.
So I've heard a lot less recently from Elon about.
But we have a story later from that, uh, that I think is related to that.
So he's definitely working towards that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
On the other hand, Google, I think is in the crosshairs for sure of the Trump administration, but the other big Biden, uh, administration part of the FTC was mergers period, right?
I mean, they would, they just stopped mergers from being able to happen.
I mean, and the Albertson story is kind of, you know, um, another example of that.
So.
My belief is that they are going to hold firm on the big tech agenda, but I think they're going to eradicate the merger agenda.
They're just going to say, it's, it is none of our business to stop transactions from happening.
That is how wealth creation happens in America.
And I would expect a lot more transaction activity happening and not just, not just sort of sub 500 million, right?
Because a lot of the big backers Behind them are, you know, private equity folks.
So I, I, I think we're going to be seeing, you know, multi billion dollar transactions being re enabled as well.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's healthy to think about the impact on the consumer.
So, like, if I believe that Kroger buying Albertsons is going to.
Dramatically change the price of groceries, then I might, I might agree, but there's so much competition in the grocery space that I don't think that that consolidation is, is going to affect anything.
And so taking the view of like, what's going to actually impact, especially the bottom part of the K, I think that's important is a good role to do.
And there's not many mergers that will be so.
Aggressive and buy so much market share that they need to get involved.
So it'd be, it would be one out of a hundred or one out of 500 or something to be a very, you'd have to be buying a big concentrated position in a market.
Okay, so then we have a couple of stories about transition between administrations.
This is the first one that in 2026, the subsidies for lower income Americans in the ACA are set to expire.
And this, the Congressional Budget Office just released a report, you know, talking about the impact of that.
Which is not surprising.
There's going to be, you know, a lot more in premium costs that the poor people can't afford.
That's why they had subsidies.
Yep.
It is not clear to me if the Republicans are going to pick this up as an important part of their agenda and get it extended or not.
They certainly should, I think, but that's the worry is that they, they won't do it or they won't do it in the same way.
Well, this is another one of those, you know, things that our friend Emily Evans is responsible for educating me on.
Um, she always, I think, referred to it as like the, the family glitch, uh, uh, that, that Biden turned on.
I think it had something to do with COVID.
Um, but, but they, but they extended it and she said that it was going to expire.
And I guess the way that she would always reference it is as something that, uh, Is not favorable from a Republican agenda perspective.
So I also don't know that much about it, but.
Just based on her being the person to educate me on it, that, that makes me feel like it's a, it's a flash button issue and exactly how the Republicans will take this, you know, because it's related to the ACA, there could be a million different ways that they decide to, to leverage the expiration of these subsidies, um, to sort of address either.
Knifing off the ACA, recommending doing away with it, et cetera, et cetera.
Um, but, but clearly I think they'll take it as an opportunity to get some type of legislation attached.
And I don't think they'll just simply re approve it.
Yeah.
And especially for our listeners that are in states that expanded, it could really change how a health system or a payer is navigating the space.
I mean, I don't know, it depends what they do, but we need to watch.
This is one of the stories we need to watch over the next.
Really the next year it's going to expire in 2026, but they need to take some action in 2025.
I would think that's right.
That's right.
Okay.
And then, um, well you found this story at HFMA.
So talk about this story.
Yeah.
So, um, you know, HFMA has, uh, has really good, uh, health system centric coverage.
And this one I thought was very, very important to, to pay attention to because It is one of those pivotal things that, uh, if people don't understand it, you know, that they would be missing out on, on a very impactful situation for health systems, which is the ability to report medical debt to credit bureaus, um, you know, reporting medical debt to credit bureaus is a, a stick basically, you know, from a carrot and stick, it's a stick that the health systems are able to use to ensure that medical debt gets gets paid to some percentage, right?
It's, it's, it's one of the tactics they have to try to make their, their revenue, um, you know, whole.
And, uh, There is a whole, there's, there's been large debates around medical debt, what is appropriate, you know, is, is it really worth the squeeze to be reporting this to be putting people in the collections, etc, etc.
There's been a lot of different debates and discussions around this topic, but here we have a situation where the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Um, is, is basically, you know, considering making it impossible to, uh, to, to report that medical debt to the credit, um, bureaus.
And then on the other side, we've got Elon Musk as part of Doge.
looking at, you know, this, the, the CFPB as one of the agencies that he's considering eradicating entirely.
Right.
And so to me, it, this is one of those interesting healthcare stories that's caught in the cross hairs of a bunch of much larger things.
Um, and it'll be really interesting to see in the first half of next year, whether or not this becomes, um, Uh, a real hot button issue that we see the AHA sort of really focus on.
Um, you know, we've seen the AHA really focused on 340B over the course of the last two years to great effect.
Um, and, and this could be another one, another big issue.
Yeah.
And I'm sort of, uh, I'm torn on this issue.
I mean, at one level, when the health system delivers services, the patient's share of that cost isn't.
Is not an insignificant part of the cost.
And there's a lot of health systems that that need every penny.
They have thin margins and they need they need all the reimbursement they can get and there's not a lot of excess, um, margin hanging around.
And this would really impair their body collect that.
And then I understand the social challenges of the number 1 cause of personal bankruptcy is medical debt.
And so.
It's, it's a difficult issue from both sides.
I mean, I think the more you know about it, the more complex it is.
Yeah.
And I guess I would also say from a sentiment perspective, which unfortunately, given the recent events, um, it has been viewed that reporting, um, reporting patients and their families, medical debt, To credit bureaus and sort of driving towards, um, you know, bankruptcies and things of that nature, uh, are very, um.
Unfavorable, unlikable actions that health systems take, right?
Generally speaking, I think health systems hold favorable, um, sentiment in their communities, uh, because, you know, it's full of the providers.
They have lots of great stories about the things that they do.
They end up, uh, you know, Being really big philanthropic, um, anchors in their communities, they sponsor sports teams and, you know, all sorts of like good things, but the medical debt thing is a ding, um, sentiment wise.
And so there, there have been, there, there's been a debate inside of the health system industry around what's the right thing to do, um, net net, right.
You know, ultimately, and, uh, this is just more sort of fuel on that fire.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think that's right.
And the challenge, I mean, one of the many challenges is, I think almost a hundred percent of the time, the patient has already gotten the services.
Yeah, that's right.
Like you have had the procedure or you have the new knee or you have been to the ER and gotten the treatment and you can't take that back.
So it's not like repossessing a car where like you can just.
Go take the car back.
And so it's, it's much stickier than other industries because of that.
Agree.
Okay.
And then the white house today held the first ever, I can't believe this is the first ever conference on women's health research at the white house.
And one of our portfolio companies went up there, uh, which is great comma, comma collective, but there are a lot, a lot of people in women's health research.
Um, I think it's a great thing.
Yeah, totally agree.
Look, this has been, um, at least from my perspective as someone who, who tracks healthcare as a healthcare nerd, this has been Jill Biden's You know, this has been the thing she's really been focused on.
Um, she was recently in Abu Dhabi, uh, you know, with Michael Milken, uh, pushing the, the women's health agenda.
Uh, she's been, she's been doing it for the last, you know, two, three years pretty steadily.
And I, I think why this is so important is we are, you know, just a short month away from the changing of the guard in the White House.
And, uh, I think this has been a much needed, uh, boost of awareness and even, even though the money that's, that's come into women's health, I don't think has been that meaningful, uh, certainly has been symbolic and the, the power of the brand of the White House is meaningful in terms of establishing something as important and, uh, that kind of goes away in, in about a month.
And so it will be interesting to see, um, Whether or not women's health, uh, is able to leverage that momentum from Jill Biden's time.
You know, uh, into this next administration.
I certainly hope so.
I certainly hope that that's possible.
She's been a tremendous champion, but the continuity, I think, is the question and the concern.
Yeah, I think that's right.
Um, I hope so too.
I, I'm fearful about it because I think I'm not sure the next administration will, but, but it's half the population and it deserves half the attention and it's been under invested under research under supported basically forever.
So that's right.
Okay.
And then, uh, the appeals court upheld the ban on tick tock.
I think we called this, I think we called this right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
We called this, I think we said, I think we said this is what, what the result would be.
Yes.
It, we did, and it's not surprising, on January 19th, the day before Inauguration, unless something happens, and I don't even know what, I mean, the Supreme, so they, they petitioned the Supreme, U.
S.
Supreme Court, the Supreme Court could decide to take it up.
Um, if they did, I think they would then have a, they'd put a stay to give themselves time to, to pick it up.
But I don't have any visibility if they will or not.
And if nothing like that happens, TikTok will be shut down.
I think it will be illegal for all the cloud providers and the phone companies to show it.
And it can't be in the, in the app stores.
So.
I think it's pretty real and there's gonna be a lot of people mad in the week before, I've already turned off TikTok, not because of this, just because I couldn't take it.
Um, but there's gonna be a lot of flooding of social media trying to rally the troops in January around this.
Oh man, uh, it's, you know, it was one thing to talk about it when it was theoretical, but it's, it's, you know, the deadline's a week away.
And um, a month away.
A month away.
Oh, is it a month?
It's January, January 19th.
Yeah.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Yeah.
Um, all right.
So, so, so basically that, how far after the inauguration is that it's a day before the inauguration day before.
Okay.
That's amazing timing.
Uh, you know, so it doesn't have to happen.
I don't really know, but, uh, yeah.
So Trump is not going to be president.
He won't, he can't, I mean, wow.
Trump's already negotiating with various, uh, You know, state leaders, but he won't be president to really do anything about it.
Well, he's got his own social media company as does Elon Musk.
So I don't, you know, my, my sense would be, why would, why would he care about this also?
I may get a lot of, uh, hate comments for this, for this comment, but I don't feel that bad for the TikTok influencers.
Like they, there's plenty of other platforms they can move their work to.
And I, and it's hard work to review products and.
You know, get the word out, but they can do that in other platforms.
I don't think tick tocks, the only Avenue for that.
So I don't know, this has been a really interesting, like, like so many, uh, social media related things.
This has been a really interesting one for me because, uh, I know a lot of people who really love tick tock Vic and, um, You know, I've talked to them about the whole China thing.
And I, I've sort of made my case for why I just think, uh, Like I get that it's a great app and I get there's all this like really cool stuff there.
But I mean, Guys, like national security, like, you know, influencing our, our, our young people, you know, programming, you know, state sponsored media, like this, like, it's really not a good idea.
Um, and I think the purpose of the ban was to try to.
Force TikTok to, you know, and ByteDance, et cetera, um, to put any U.
S., any U.
S.
version of TikTok into more of a compliant, you know, ownership model, um, where it could then be regulated, you know, appropriately.
You know, the same as all the other major social media companies that exist here in America and social media, clearly, you know, it's affected elections.
It's on record for having affected elections.
It's like, you know, we can't really afford to have the biggest social media platform be totally owned by China.
And that conversation has not landed with so many people.
Right.
And I just, I just think that is a very interesting.
Fact, I think it's a very interesting fact that there's been that people have a very strong.
What about what about what about?
You know to that point and look I'm not here to debate or argue I'm just saying this is this is my view, but that view is not Universally held and it's not even clear to me that it's like majority held in America Yeah, I mean I get a lot of people saying well Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, all these other platforms are also bad and are influencing people.
And so TikTok's no different than anyone else.
And I agree with what you're saying because the, the Chinese federal government has their golden share where they can, they have, you know, super preferred shares.
In all these companies, like from a VC point of view and the U.
S.
Government or no other government has that in meta.
And so we may like or not like how meta is influencing people, but they're doing it to financially benefit their shareholders in their best judgment.
Now, they may do that in a way that's good or bad for health care and society.
And, um, But it's not able to be directed from like the top down in the same way TikTok is.
It's just, it's just not, they have that power in the cap table.
And that to me, that's a clear difference.
That's listen, that is, uh, that is, I just think we're in, we're in such an interesting, Time in America that there are values that I thought once were sort of universal values and, you know, look, we're going to talk in a little bit about, um, sort of the fallout from, from the murder of Brian Thompson.
But, uh, I feel like I'm learning all the time about an evolution of values in this country.
We're quite frankly, I feel like I'm, I'm pretty left behind.
There's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of these, these types of things where I'm like, wow, when did that change?
You know, it makes me feel a little old actually.
Yeah.
And I.
I've been thinking about this a lot.
I, I'm not, I don't know that I'm ready to do it live, but I think we are as a society changing, like in real time, trying to change and figure out what our value system is.
There was a value system kind of coming out of the Cold War.
That was pretty clear, right?
Like the U S is one sort of way of thinking democracy, global institutions, like the UN and the Soviet union and other authoritarian groups were on the other side, and it was 50 years of first that struggle, and then.
The free markets and democracies winning, but that is breaking down now.
I don't think that clarity is, is there anymore.
There's, there's, I don't know that it's chaos, but there's confusion on what is the most important value to me, to you, to my sons who are younger, to my parents that are older.
Everyone answers differently, I think.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So anyway, uh, we, we will see in the, in the coming month where, where this all lands.
Okay, and so Elizabeth Warren, never, um, missing the chance to sort of, uh, draft on a story, has got together a bipartisan bill in Congress to break up what she's calling giant healthcare conglomerates, which includes United Health Group, CVS, and Cigna.
I think it's only those three.
And they have to sell their pharmacies.
years.
All right.
I feel like, uh, I'm not necessarily doing my job when I say this, but I also feel like I need to have a disclaimer before I even talk about the story, which is, uh, you know, Elizabeth Warren might be the politician who I have most lost trust in.
in, uh, in the ethics behind an initiative that she brings into the public.
I don't know what to say about that other than when I look at this, I'm like, okay, I mean, okay, fine.
I mean, I just think it's grandstanding and, and she saw the social media stuff that, that we talked about last week that honestly was kind of depressing and sickening to me.
And she, I think she saw it as a political opportunity to, this is not going to pass.
I mean, we're on December 11th.
There's no chance this is going to pass.
It is, it's just, um, throwing something out there so she can then talk to whoever about she's trying to make a difference.
Okay, fine.
Next story.
Maybe we shouldn't even brought it up.
So, um, and so the wall street journal ran a story about, um, how the, the death threats and the actual death of Brian Thompson.
is sort of highlighting all of these issues, really just sort of putting in print what we were talking about last week.
Yeah.
It's an ongoing story.
And, and Vicki Gregg from, uh, Blue Cross of Tennessee is quoted in here.
Um, we know, we know Vicki Gregg.
She just says, um, that she couldn't imagine something like that happening to Thompson.
And, you know, I don't think someone shooting someone in the street is really any solving any of these problems.
Which I agree with.
Totally agree.
The CVS is taking down pictures of their executives so that it's harder to identify them.
I mean, which I guess makes sense, but is, is sad and the whole thing is sad.
Well, we, we discussed last week that we didn't know what the response was going to be, but we knew that there was going to be a response.
And naturally, um, the initial response has been focused on security.
Right?
Yeah.
Like, um.
It's been on focusing on security.
Now I've seen anecdotal things, nothing officially reported.
I've seen anecdotal things on social media about, you know, claims, approvals going up over the last week and things like that, you can never know if you can tell if that stuff's real.
I feel like I need to say it because it's passing around social media.
Right.
You know, and we don't, we, look, Elon, uh, he, he's often talking about how.
You know, mainstream media and legacy media is dead.
And he says, you are the media now, meaning, you know, if you are on X or if you are on social, you are the media.
And, and I, I think there's a lot of truth to that.
I think there's a lot of truth to the fact that if you see something on one of these platforms, the default for many people is just to believe it, right.
The default for many people is just to believe it.
And so, you know, I think there are a lot of people who, who believe.
That this murder, uh, I'm seeing a lot of stuff around class consciousness, uh, on social media and, and, and that this murder is sort of a beginning of a class consciousness and that, that, that is going to drive change.
We will see over time.
Right?
I mean, I, you know.
I remember Occupy Wall Street, you know, and as we just said, the S& P is at all time highs, like every single week, right?
So, um, I, I think we will see, uh, but yeah, obviously, the first response from the, from these industry leaders is going to be, well, you know, if I'm going to continue to do this job, the company's going to need to significantly increase my security.
Yeah.
And, and I mean, I think there's no question about that.
And I agree with you if it's If it's on social media, it is.
It's what people believe.
It doesn't matter if it's true or not, I think.
I mean, that's almost immaterial.
The fact checking is not something that happens in social media.
One of the things that was, that used to be good about the Wall Street Journal and traditional media is they would check facts.
That doesn't happen.
They don't even pretend to check facts.
But people then believe it's true, and worse, they amplify it and talk about it and try to by making it more, more shocking, more whatever.
But I do think it is, it's, it's been clear to me that poor people are suffering.
Whether we call it the bottom part of the K or People that, you know, are living paycheck to paycheck or people that don't have great insurance coverage or don't understand what co insurance is, that there's a lot of things that are tied to either education or income.
And if you are not at a certain education level on a certain income level, it's, it's really hard given the inflation rate that we were talking about to start the show and just the American economy.
And people are suffering.
I don't like how it is manifesting in hatred for insurance companies.
I think the way I see insurance in it, but this is a fact that no one cares about.
They are regulated to have a 15 percent margin or less.
They have to spend 85 percent of every dollar on care.
So I don't see how you can love.
Instagram and TikTok that have really high margins and be mad at UHD who have a 15 percent margin, but no one cares about the facts.
It's just they're mad.
And so they're just mad.
No, no one cares about the facts.
That's, that's, that's the punchline.
Let's go to the next story.
Yeah.
Okay.
So Walgreens is.
In talks, clearly in talks, the Wall Street Journal is announcing it, uh, to sell itself to Sycamore Partners for 8 billion.
Can you recall the, uh, the wealth destruction here?
Yeah, I have a chart for it.
I have a chart for it.
Yeah, yeah, over the course of, what is it?
You're watching it on video, Walgreens, Peaked at, um, stock price of 82 a share.
They're currently at 8 a share.
So 10 X.
So, um, and then in 2019, KKR much bigger, better firm than, than Sycamore offered them 70 billion to take it private, which they turned down.
And now it's worth less than 10 billion.
Right.
So now Sycamore, so Sycamore is a retail kind of focused private equity firm.
So they have, uh, lots of retail platforms.
So they're looking at Walgreens from the convenience store, retail selling chips and soda thing.
Yeah.
They're not really looking at it from a healthcare point of view.
You know, what Walgreens is, uh, I mean, what, what, what, what to say?
I, I feel like.
When I started going to Walgreens probably was, you know, 15 or so years ago, it was like this great brand.
I thought it was, I thought it was a great brand.
Yeah.
Um, it, it is shocking that the, that the value destruction over the course of the last 10 years has been 10 X, 10 X down.
10 X down.
From what it was.
Right.
So that that is an amazing collapse, you know, right?
A just recently sort of fished itself out of bankruptcy.
Right?
Uh, we're not the CEO leave and all kinds of changes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, we're, we're definitely not not done with the drugstore convenience store.
Uh, deterioration of value, but it's not done.
And, and I, and I guess to me, this is the thing where it's like, just to hearken back to the Kroger and Albertsons thing, it's like, what is eroding that?
You know, what, what, what is eroding that is, is, is the issue that Kroger and Albertsons are eroding that, or is the issue that Amazon is eroding that?
Like.
What is fundamentally creating a situation where Walgreens is dropping in value 10x?
Was it a bunch of bad investments?
I mean, I would love a really good analysis on this.
Yeah, we should get, we should do a deep dive into it and find a guess.
But my view is that the pharmacy benefit managers have sort of transfer priced a lot of the margin away from the pharmacy itself to the PBM.
And that's fine if you are CVS and you own Caremark.
And you own the, and you own the PBM.
It's sort of that benefits Caremark and it really impairs Rite Aid and Walgreens and Walgreens.
I'm not sure that's that's totally accurate.
That's just my off the cuff like belief.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Let's let's let's see if we can find a guest to kind of walk us through.
The destruction of the drugstores, you know, it could very well be the PBMs.
I mean that that could be it.
Yeah, my goodness the Independent pharmacies are really the ones that are suffering Yeah, I'm on a board of a prescription dealer thing with maybe I'll get Mike to do it Well, the guys aren't the chairman of the board Is the chairman of this group of independent pharmacies and mm-hmm He's saying that, that they're really suffering when you have one or two pharmacies in a small town.
One, you're really important to the actual care Sure.
Because you're the only source.
But two, they don't have the scale that Walgreens and CVS and right at have.
So they're right.
Okay.
So now we're in the, in the AI section.
So similar to evidently, um, Corti is an AI scribe, uh, that's adding.
A chat, kind of co pilot, uh, product line.
I mean, okay.
I don't know why the AI scribe thing just does not move me at all anymore.
I mean, like, I think it's good that we keep covering it, both in the VC section and the AI rundown.
But I think one of the things that I'm picking up as a trend is this seems to be the only thing getting any traction in healthcare from an AI perspective.
I mean, it's all we ever see in fierce or modern healthcare.
Yeah, I think that is right.
It's it's two things.
It's revenue cycle and and scry.
And those things are intertwined because you have to get the, the, um, you know, office visit clinic documented properly in order to bill properly.
Yes, and there's a lot of time and effort in the, in the patient recording.
So anyway, yes, that has been the easiest place to go.
Um, And I think there's, my view is that they're offering this product line, this new product extension, which is not a new capability.
We've had co pilot capability forever.
It's probably because they're not getting market share and no one cares about their AI scribe.
That may not be fair, but that was my interpretation of it.
I'm just trying to figure out what stops Epic and Cerner from just rolling out their own scribes.
Yeah, nothing.
Okay.
Yeah.
I mean, I'm just trying to think from an investor perspective, it's like, you know, I get the reason why general catalyst is doing their whole thing because they've got a, they've got a whole vertical integration of it.
Correct.
And they've got a long game.
They've got the whole health assurance company thing that they're doing.
So they, they've got a different agenda that they're doing.
But I mean, if you're, if you're any of these other independent AI scribe companies, I'm like, this has to be on Epic's roadmap.
Yes.
Has to be on Oracle health roadmap.
Oh, it's it, I mean, I, I know it's on, or Oracle Health has announced it on their roadmap.
Yeah, so IJII guess this just seems like dead man walking anyway.
Uh, what's, what's well mean, I think let's talk about the entire AI business model.
If, if you're building on top of one of the, one of the for-profit models, so all the companies that are building on top of open AI or philanthropic or Gemini.
I don't, I haven't invested in any of them and I don't think I will.
I don't understand how you can build without sort of the underlying capability.
Not in your own control.
They can raise the price of a token whenever they want.
Um, so there's a lot of issues with the AI marketplace.
I think it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a feature, not a platform.
And all you're doing is a bunch of R and D for, for the platforms to say, okay, thank you for showing me what works.
And now I'll roll that out.
I mean, yes, no, thank you.
Which is why we are now going to talk about open source.
Okay.
So, uh, open source is the place to invest or to spend time or to, if you are running a department at a health system or an insurance company where you could invest time and build something.
So meta is really one of the leaders.
They're not the only leader, but.
Sure.
A reduce, they produced, um, some research in a couple of breakthroughs in, in healthcare education and entrepreneurship.
We'll link to it.
It's a pretty long article with a decently long video.
Um, but it's great.
Uh, one, it's open source to, they are releasing all the information and really just showing how great AI can be in helping.
Um, yeah.
I think they, their view of healthcare is more life sciences, inventing new drugs.
Uh, so it's more similar to Google's DeepMind probably.
Uh, and this is what I was thinking of when you were talking about Meta sort of working on their PR and government relations efforts.
This is part of that, but it, but it's, it's good.
It benefits benefits us.
Yeah.
I mean, meta branding itself as the open source artificial intelligence company, even though you have to put a big asterisk on that, as we've discussed, the license is not a.
Widely respected open source license like Apache or BSD or, you know, any of those.
Um, it's not a GNU license, so there's an asterisk there.
There is some commercial hooks that Meta has, but that that's irrelevant.
The branding and the way that they're positioning it and the enablement.
Of entrepreneurship by sharing this and continuing to train, do the hard work of, of training these models and then allowing other people to build companies on it, um, is really smart.
And also it kind of makes sense, right?
Because they don't, they're not in the cloud business.
Right.
Um, you know, if we look at Amazon, just released all that stuff last week, right?
All the Amazon Nova stuff.
Well, it's tied to AWS.
It's tied to a lower cost, you know, um, cloud LLM model business.
Um, Google has Google Cloud, you know, Microsoft.
So all the other big, uh, Model makers, uh, they're also cloud providers, right?
Yeah, they're, they're monetizing AI in, in compute on the cloud and that, that is profitable for them.
Now, maybe they'll find another source, but, um, Meta is monetizing AI through attention and advertisement.
Yeah, so they're happy to let people play with open a open models because it just sort of gives them.
I mean, they have done this in other spaces too.
I'm not technical enough to know it, but in servers and other places that they wanted the cost to come down, they have released open open tools because.
Of course it brings the cost down.
Yeah.
And it's the way for them to get their vision of an LLM into the hands of developers, right?
Cause they can't do it through the cloud, right?
So this is a way for them to, to stay relevant with, with developers.
And I think they've done very well with that.
I think there's so many developers.
We're just choosing Llama because, you know, it gives them a little bit more peace of mind and more flexibility and more freedom, even if they are using an AWS, and by the way, Amazon just released Nova last week, right?
Llama's been out for, you know, has had a head start of more than a year on Amazon there.
Yeah, and if you're at, so David, a story about City of Hope, National Center, you know, with cancer research, if you're a researcher there, yeah, maybe the open source license doesn't have a great commercial use, but you don't care about that.
You're trying to do cancer research.
That's right.
It's great and easy and you can download llama to your laptop and and be using it.
However you want.
So I think it's right.
That's right.
Okay.
And then a venture firm, uh, Andreessen Horowitz, one of the largest venture firms out there, really strong firm.
They're not, they have some health care.
Um, but really they're, they started as a tech.
Firm in Silicon Valley, they launched a open source product, uh, project.
Uh, so maybe talk about this thing, Eliza and this new brand AI 16 Z.
Yeah.
I mean, look, you're, you're more upfront than I am.
You, you listened to the bankless podcast and got a download of it, but I mean, I guess maybe I'll, I'll just start with a, with a backdrop of a 16 Z and injuries and heartwrench.
Right.
So.
Um, Andrews and Horowitz, uh, has absolutely been the leader from a venture capital perspective in crypto.
I don't think there's any question about that.
Chris Dixon, certainly the largest and most prolific, uh, you know, VC thought leader in the crypto space.
Um, and they were pretty early on, on making the connection between AI and crypto and they are big dog fooders, right?
I mean, they, They utilize all these things, um, you know, Coinbase, uh, Solana, these are, these are all, you know, basically, uh, basic CNC creations, um, and the idea that they would then take.
This, this new intersection of AI and crypto and start to create tooling and actually start to create personas, start to create mean coins, start to create AI chatbots to sort of be avatars of their actual VC, uh, partners is, is exactly what I would expect them to be doing.
So.
As we've talked about over the, probably over the course of the last like four or five weeks, agents are now the thing that everyone is talking about in AI.
You and I have not yet experienced an agent to any, you know, great, um, great.
Productivity gains or anything like that.
Uh, but that is what Eliza is.
It's a, it's a multi agent simulation framework.
Um, and it builds autonomous AI agents.
And so this, this is just another way that a 16 Z is more than a venture firm.
You know, they, they have always been more than a venture firm to me.
Uh, I.
I hold them in pretty high regard.
Sometimes, you know, I get a little annoyed with, with what they sort of how they posture, but post election to me, it's, it's pretty clear that they made a bet and the bet paid off.
And, and I think over the course of the next four years, um, they're going to reap incredible benefits from that.
And, and they have, they have incredible AUM and they have incredible talent on their platform.
So, uh, this, this is really, really slick, I think.
Yeah, yeah, I agree.
I, it's supposedly a powerful framework to allow.
Anyone who can use a mouse to set up a group of agents to make them more efficient.
I spent eight hours over two days.
I know how to use a mouse, but I could not make it work.
And so, it is It's never true.
The page is on GitHub.
That's the first tell.
If the page is on GitHub, it is not mouse only.
It's for devs.
Period.
End of story.
I don't care what they say.
And again, to me, this is a branding and positioning thing.
But I think it's going to be much more about developers.
They have so many companies on their platform.
They're just going to force all these companies to, yeah, I don't mean force, but they're going to, you know, greatly sort of, uh, you know, influence them to, to leverage this technology.
Yeah.
And, um, let's just talk for a minute about their success in the crypto, uh, markets and how that might be replicated here again.
So.
Just for the audience, they were significant shareholders in Coinbase and also one of the founders in Solana and had a significant amount of founding soul, uh, and then a whole bunch of other projects on Solana, NFTs and other projects.
And these are similar to venture markets in that you issue a, A thing in venture markets, you get a stock certificate in crypto, you get a coin or a.
I'm going to call it a coin and then you have to find a way to monetize that build value in the entity and then sell it in venture, we would, you know, build up the whole company and sell the company and there are not, uh, there's starting to be secondary markets, but there aren't really secondary markets for, for my shares in a portfolio company in crypto, the big difference is there are, and Coinbase is, is the biggest one.
It's not the only one.
There's, there's several other exchanges.
And so A16Z, and it, it was within the U.
S.
laws.
So I'm not saying anything that I'm not jealous of.
I mean, they did a good job with it.
They were able to get these coins in return for their investment and then much more quickly than traditional venture holding periods.
Generate returns.
Generate a lot of excitement and let's say at least perception of value or real value in Coinbase certainly has real value.
Solana I think has real value.
Sure.
Um, and then sell those coins.
and get dollars for that.
And I think a lot of, and a lot of them, they did have a lockup, but I mean, you know, you know, the beauty, the beauty of, of having the coins, um, or the tokens or whatever you want to call them is much easier to mark to market because there is a real market for them.
You know, with our private market assets, it's much harder, much more subjective.
It's like, who's the buyer, where's the actual exchange where you can sell these, these securities.
Um, but tokens, no, no, no.
We know what the price is.
Right, right.
And there's a, there's a market, you might be, it's like an IPO, you might be locked up for six months, maybe 12 months.
There's a negotiation about how long you're locked up.
Um, and I think they are going to use AI to sort of do the next turn of the crypto space.
In a really successful way because they, they, they know how to manage this whole process and build up value and then monetize it in a, in a way that's really, really strong.
It's not, um, healthcare has a lot more regulation.
There's actual people that need to be taken care of.
So we will not bring exactly this stuff to healthcare ever, but I think our audience needs to just keep up with it and be aware of things because it is going to filter, it already is filtering to healthcare, and I think we're going to get more and more crossover here.
We're going to keep talking about it.
And I think in 2025, we're going to probably do more than talk about it.
And I'll, I'll leave that there.
Um, but yes, I, I, I sent messages to several people after David Sachs.
We actually didn't talk about that because it happened right after our show last week, but after David Sachs, who's one fourth of the all in podcast, uh, you know, founder and exits.
CEO of Yammer, member of the PayPal Mafia and the VC behind Crab Ventures.
Once he was named the AI and crypto czar for Trump's White House.
That's when I was like, Game over crypto is legitimate now guys.
So just, you know, uh, you know, we, we don't, we, we did report on the SEC head, but the David Sachs hire is, it might even be a bigger deal.
I mean, I, I get the regulatory thing, but that tells you a lot.
Cause we were listening to all in way before anyone sort of, you know, way before the political stuff really got going back when, back when, uh, when DeSantis, not Trump.
Um, and you know, He was very, very clear that he's an accelerationist when it comes to all this technology and, you know, need to let it go, go, go, go.
He's on record.
He's a Solana holder, you know, so I think, I think we know where things are going to go.
Solana ETF, probably very bullish on that.
Um, and look, these things matter.
These things can make their way into healthcare.
So Lana can make its way into healthcare payments.
Like these are not, we're not just talking about technology for the sake of technology.
This is stuff that's about to be very, very real.
It has not been real for so long because there's not been regulatory clarity.
So the entrepreneurs and the technologists in the VCs have all gone abroad.
That changes in January.
And, you know, I can't, I can't emphasize enough, How big a deal it is to have this finance disrupting technology finally become legitimate in America.
Yes, I think we were thinking AI and crypto are both going to be really impactful things in the next few years.
And the wave is resting fast next year.
Not the next few years.
2025.
Yeah, right.
Right.
Yeah.
Okay.
And then part of the 12 Days of Christmas, OpenAI has launched something every day.
This was the most interesting one they launched on Monday.
Sora, which is their text to video platform, is now open to the public.
So everyone listening can get 50 videos made.
Um, you might have to be a subscriber of OpenAI, um, which I think is 20 bucks a month.
So good Google and Amazon, both, you know, front ran this.
And so we have three models now.
I don't know how useful it is, but, um, over time, we're going to get longer and longer duration, more and more tooling around it.
Um, it's really going to affect the.
Game industry and the TV and movie industry.
Look, it's, it's a building block and I, you know, I would say yes to everything you said, except the phone is now the primary content device and shorts are the primary form of content that people consume.
And I think these models and what they generate are going to be.
Sort of amazing for shorts.
Um, and I, and I think that's going to be the, the MVP beachhead that they're going to, you know, tackle very quickly.
And quite frankly, it's, it's where it's all going anyway.
So, um, that's, that's where I would expect to see the big impact happen in, in video shorts across Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, et cetera, et cetera.
Okay.
So Google announced Gemini 2.
0 and they call out that it makes it possible to build agents that can think, remember a plan and take action on your behalf.
Again, I have tested a lot of these things, not Google's, because it just came out today.
Yeah.
I haven't found that they work.
In a way that's faster than me doing it, uh, but they are gaining capabilities very quickly where I'm not getting that much faster in how I go on Amazon to buy something.
So, yep.
Um, and then the, we saved the, I think the best for last quantum computing, I think had a pretty good Pretty big breakthrough.
It's a little bit over my head.
You talk about this, uh, technology.
Yeah, look, uh, very, this is the story of the week, I think for sure.
So you did say the best for last, um, look for anyone who doesn't know what quantum computing is, it is the, the, the future of, of computing moving from binary bits, um, you know, into, uh, quantum, quantum physics.
And the, you know, Mirror it into the computing layer.
So, um, zeros, ones and everything in between.
And so the processing power is truly exponential.
Um, and it, it, it poses all sorts of new opportunities and threats for the world of computing.
As we understand it today, one of the clearest Potential threats is breaking all the cryptography that the entire Internet is based on today.
Um, so think about secure shopping.
Think about the entire block chain apparatus.
Um, think about secure messaging.
All of these things are based on cryptography, um, that quantum computing, quite frankly, threatens to, um, to crack and to, and to render useless, which would.
Truly be an incredible Achilles heel to this entire Internet establishment that we've built up.
And so people have already been quantum proofing things, but I think Google ending the year by showing us that they've got a quantum computer and a chip called Willow, um, that actually is, is fundamentally, uh, working again to me.
Everything we've talked about in this section, whether we're talking about, um, you know, a 16 Z and their frameworks, whether we're talking about Sora or now we're talking about Google willow.
These are all building blocks for for the future.
Right?
So I think we should think about all of these things as, you know, very viable proofs of concept.
You know, are they necessary?
There things you're gonna be able to commercialize today?
Maybe not, but these are the, these are the viable building blocks that over the course of the next 24 months are almost certainly going to change the way that we understand computing to work and the way that we experience computing.
Um, and when you start combining quantum computing with AI and crypto , yeah.
Uh, you start to get something radically different in terms of the world that we live in.
Yeah.
And I would throw for healthcare, I'd throw biotech in there.
Where you have DeepMind or now Meta, uh, kind of creating, you know, hypothetical new, uh, DNA strands that could have capabilities.
And then you have the quantum computing to, to sort of process all that.
The, the, the pace of all these technologies and they're kind of affecting each other is just really accelerating quickly.
And the regulatory bodies in health care are not going to be able to keep up.
So I think we need to keep up with it and our audiences keep up with it so we can help, help it, you know, be headed, be used for good and help people in health care.
Well, look, I, I think given the change of the administration, I think your point about the regulatory bodies not being able to keep up is going to be.
Recognized and they're going to be removed from the equation, you know, whether it looks the industry That's right.
Whether it's non profit or for profit in healthcare, industry that knows healthcare or has a reason to learn about this and, and lobby or contribute.
I think, uh, the Republicans with Trump at the lead and Doge and David Sacks, all these people.
Are going to be very friendly to industry, have an input.
And so it's, it needs to be educated.
Our audience needs to be educated to contribute.
Look, it's fully in place.
Now, Supreme court overturning of Chevron doctrine, white house, executive orders, doge regulatory regime.
Congress, everything is lined up to go max acceleration, right?
Everything is lined up to go max acceleration.
I mean, I, I I'm not on truth social, so I can't validate this, but I saw a tweet that Elon retweeted, uh, that has a screenshot of it because, you know, Trump communicates more on truth socially.
It doesn't anything else, but, but it looked like.
It's something that he posted on true social that said anyone who invests a billion dollars in America is going to get like a fast pass on all the regulatory stuff to include environmental, you know, it's, it's, it's just turning America into a full on money machine.
It's just full on full on full contact.
Capitalism is what I is what I expect except for the enemies.
Right.
Except for the enemies, except for China, except for Google, except for anyone who, you know, has, has crossed them.
So, uh, that's, that's where it feels like we're going.
Yeah.
And so I think that is the reality.
That's what we're facing.
For good or bad, and part of what I like doing in this show with you is really kind of understanding all this stuff, or at least the best I can, so that I can see how's it going to affect healthcare, how's it going to affect my family personally, how's it going to affect my venture portfolio.
My investors, that's the only thing I know to do going forward.
We're not going to put it back in the bottle.
No, definitely not.
I mean, I, I honestly think I would be totally confused about what's happening in the world right now, if we weren't doing this show, I, I have to say that.
I think I'd be very, very confused.
So, um, thanks for doing the work you do every week to sort of pull it all together.
Um, and next week we are going to do our year in review.
Yes.
A lot happened this year.
I don't know how we'll.
Put it together, but we have a lot to talk about.
Yes.
So next week we're going to do our year in review and then the following week, we're going to be taking Christmas, Christmas week off.
But we do have, um, a show in the chamber that you've recorded that we will put out that week and then 2025, here we come.
Yeah.
Right.
All right.
Good luck.
Thanks, buddy.