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 are excited to talk about an amazing development in the show. We got a massive shout out in a huge newsletter by one of the best writers on the Internet. Packy McCormick put us in his newsletter in one of the most important pieces he's ever written. It's called the Trump bubble, and we're going through it today.

John:

Stay tuned. Jordie, what do you got?

Jordi:

Alright. Packie, where to start with this guy? He has been ahead of many trends and somebody who's excellent at, sort of crystallizing, and owning a moment. Right? And so in this case, he sort of, has has effectively, broken down what he believes is a new, potentially multiyear trend called the Trump bubble.

John:

K.

Jordi:

And

John:

We're already seeing, like, evidence of this just post election. Bitcoin goes up to 90 k. The whole stock market

Jordi:

Everybody's really gone.

John:

Even just normal FANG stocks were way up. There was, like, a massive trade. I was talking to a a trader who was, like, I he predicted that Trump was gonna win. He just bought everything that was Trump aligned. Like, he bought defense stocks.

John:

He bought every like, anything that he thought would would move. And, it played out very well for him.

Jordi:

Yeah. And before we jump into this article, I think it's important to highlight that Packie, like ourselves, is not a political analyst. Sure. He does not discuss, politics. Sure.

Jordi:

He's fully focused on, just analyzing, the moment and technology trends. And so he actually highlighted before he even jumped into this that he's had a number of incidences where he's covered something and made a lot of people mad. Right? That sort of people tend to get mad on the Internet. He, a while back, wrote a piece called why the democrats lost tech.

Jordi:

And he had a lot of people, got that got mad at him, for even, you know, painting any type of positive light on, Trump. And then funny enough, a lot of Republicans got mad at him as well, because, they believe that there was nothing, at all redeemable in the Democratic party. Interesting. His broader point with the article is that, there's nothing that impacts the industries that he's investing in and that he's obsessed with more than, this sort of, like, new Trump administration. Really?

Jordi:

Right? And so that's a little context for the piece. So, like John said, the last week or so has been pretty risk on. I think a lot of, you know, there's been broadly a lot of companies doing really well, except for a number of pharma companies yesterday when a certain person

John:

got RFK.

Jordi:

RFK got, appointed. But, yeah, Packie's broader point is that we're at the beginning of the mother of all bubbles Mhmm. Which, kinda makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

John:

Yeah. So it's

Jordi:

just Sort of,

John:

yeah. What what's interesting about this is, like, there's there's one narrative that's, like, oh, we're going into this bubble, but at the same time, it's, like, the business cycle always kind of restarts after a major crash. And we saw that major crash 2022, 2023, things were really rough. Yep. It makes sense that this would be the beginning of of something.

John:

It's just crazy that it already feels bubbly. But I think back to, like, when I got to Silicon Valley in 2012, like, we were doing, like, essentially y c and all these different, like, VCs would come and speak. And they and there were ton of articles in TechCrunch, like like, tech is in a bubble, like, the tech bubble, like, the the series a crunch. Like, you won't be able to raise series a. And that bubble literally lasted for over a decade.

Jordi:

Yep.

John:

But it felt like a bubble then. And I think the the the less I

Jordi:

had to do with oscillations. Right? 2017, 2018 was sort of rough.

John:

Sell offs, but, like Yeah. Like, for for the most part, like, going along through that period was, like, the phenomenal strategy. And so, even when it's frothy, like Yeah. Like, the the, like, the business cycle is more is more of a, like, a massive driver

Jordi:

than Yeah.

John:

Than, like, any specific, like like, bubbly valuation in a single stock or a single asset class. Like, I I wouldn't be surprised if, like, the true beneficiaries of the Trump administration are, you know, not necessarily realized right now.

Jordi:

Totally. Totally. It's a long term thing.

John:

Will's got shots in here besides us.

Jordi:

Yeah. Well, I mean, right away, he shouts out, Bern Hobart's book

John:

That's right. That's right. That's right. We've talked about. Yeah.

John:

I just got in the mail, actually. Tammy sent it to me.

Jordi:

Amazing.

John:

Yeah. I gotta bring

Jordi:

it. Yeah. He shouts out boom bubbles in the end of stagnation. Yep. Recommends that everybody read it because it's kind of like a a cornerstone of of his entire thesis here.

Jordi:

But read it and do a review. But, yeah, the the the high level with with the book is that there's only live once dynamics, which we love.

John:

FOMO and YOLO.

Jordi:

FOMO and YOLO.

John:

Okay.

Jordi:

Excessive risk taking and over investment. Yeah. Parallelization and coordination. Yeah. Reflexivity and hyperstition.

Jordi:

And he basically says that, he feels many of these himself right now. Interesting. I remember he tweeted maybe a couple weeks back that he is extremely overexposed to Bitcoin crypto technology. I think he's an adviser to Andreessen Yeah. Crypto and, you know, obviously, is is actively active investor, you know, both personally and through his fund.

Jordi:

But even he he was feeling FOMO despite being almost a 100% allocated to technology. Right? So that is pretty significant.

John:

I mean, if you think back to the like, the the last crypto bubble, like, a lot of people were trading with, like, 10 x, 100 x leverage. Yeah. And right now, most people weren't sitting there with 100x levered positions.

Jordi:

Yeah.

John:

They were just They

Jordi:

should have been.

John:

They they they were kind of, like, hodling, you know. I mean, like, okay. I'm getting through this bear market, but they're not sitting there with some massive margin position. So, yeah. I mean, when once that comes in, it's gonna be insane.

John:

Yeah. Yeah. So he he

Jordi:

he spends, quite a bit of time defending bubbles, which I don't think we have to do on this. Like, you and I, a lot of people like to use bubble as, like, a way to slander something.

John:

But all of our listeners are students of capitalism. Yeah. They understand.

Jordi:

Yeah. I think we can skip over that. Yeah. But, yeah. I think the,

John:

But you should go get get the book and we should do a review on the show.

Jordi:

Yeah. So he talks a little bit about signs of a bubble. Okay. I think that, you know, Manhattan Project, Apollo program, those are bubbles that had direct government oversight. Right?

Jordi:

They were, like, government created bubbles in a way. Interesting. Yeah. Massive overinvestment.

John:

Yep. Yep.

Jordi:

And his position is that the Trump bubble, is gonna look more like Moore's Law, which Verne and Tobias in the book say, is perhaps Moore's Law is perhaps the most compelling and enduring example of a 2 sided bubble, wherein the expectation of progress in one domain spurs progress in another, which then propels growth in the first. Right? And so the idea here is, like, we're in this 2 sided bubble. Right? The Trump administration is telling people that it will easier to build, invest in, and accomplish big things.

Jordi:

This is Packie's words

John:

Mhmm.

Jordi:

Which is already making people more excited to build, invest in, and accomplish big things. Right? So it's a sort of, like, incredible That's

John:

your site.

Jordi:

Podcast feedback loop. Yeah. Yeah. It's a podcast feedback loop. Right?

Jordi:

Positive. Positive feedback loop. And in our case, it's a podcast feedback loop. That is true. I'm known to have a Freudian slip here

John:

or there. Content that we

Jordi:

can react to.

John:

Eventually, this whole show will just be us reacting to our own videos. Yeah. In an endless loop.

Jordi:

Yep. And oral gorillas. Exactly. So, yeah, he he shouts out Augustus saying that he captured the sentiment as well as anyone. We have a 4 year window to go as hard as fucking imaginable.

Jordi:

Rereacting to things that we've already reacted to. We already got. We already got. Anyway, so, I think it's it's the the core kind of idea in is that just people believing that things are possible now is kind of, creating some real momentum with this bubble. And, yeah, it's across the board.

Jordi:

Education, health, everything, kinda every category is kind of moving in a is kind of moving in a positive, direction. So, at one point, Packie shouts out. He says, I obviously love Jordy Hayes, John Coogan, and Eric Gleiman's proposal to help bring transparency and efficiency to the government spending with ramp, which we talked about, last week. And we this obviously came up somewhat as a joke. Right?

Jordi:

We were we were, you know, talking about how

John:

I mean, I'm sure that's how the the government I'm sure, like, the original moon landing was like a joke. They're like, wouldn't it be funny if we, like, on the moon or, like, wouldn't it be funny if we built, like, a nuclear bomb? But then, like, obviously, people set it in and Big silly things happen. That's the reason we had the Yeah. The Apollo program.

Jordi:

Yeah. And we had you know, something we covered early in the show was, some of the government spending on sort of boring, boring line items, things like soap dispensers Yeah. Over the last few decades have gotten to be so egregiously priced due to lack

John:

of competition and lack of downward pressure to more efficiently, you know,

Jordi:

spend money. And so, downward

John:

pressure to more efficiently, you know, spend money. And so, in many ways, getting

Jordi:

the federal government running on ramp is not at all a joke because it will help us drill down and and figure out where spend is being wasted that could be invested in health care, education unreasonable. And,

John:

yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Patty,

Jordi:

for the shout out. And, what

John:

what did Sean Maguire have to say over there?

Jordi:

Sequoia Sean Maguire said he's getting messages from physics PhDs asking how they can work in the Trump government, which, again, I think part of this optimism loop is that for the first time in our lifetime, you have non political types that want to work in the government

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

Which can't be understated. Yeah.

John:

I have a friend who was, is, lives in Taiwan and and and and spent a lot of time in China. And he said, like, the biggest difference between, like, the way the Chinese government works is that they compel the best and brightest to work in the government. Yep. And a lot of that's, you know, forcible, but, they like, it's just night and day. And and if we can, you know obviously, in America, because we're the land of the free, the home of the brave, like, we need to do things differently.

John:

But if we if it's a meme, if it's a Packey post, if it's a Yeah. Tweet, like, whatever it takes to get people to actually think that working in the government is, is a reasonable path, is a valuable path to something Yep. A better life, like, that's really, really important. It shouldn't be seen as, like, oh, like, I I got stuck with this or I gotta get out of here as soon as I can Yep. And use this as a jumping off point.

Jordi:

Yeah. In China, the elite, the ones that stay in China are oftentimes the one that are in the ones that are in the party, right, in the government. Many of China's elite actually end up, you know, leaving, you know, becoming expats.

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

But, anyways, you know, back to kind of the the high level promises of the Trump admin. Make requirements less dumb. They want you know, they're pushing for regulatory reform across the board. They wanna delete things like eliminating certain Eliminating the Department of Education

John:

might

Jordi:

be a bit extreme. It sounds, like, maybe we should have an education department. Elon said that there's 425 different departments, and he was, like, I think we can do

John:

okay with just 99. Yeah. It's yeah. It's like a funny

Jordi:

So phrase.

John:

It's a funny thing to think

Jordi:

about. Yeah. Yeah.

John:

You can't even name them.

Jordi:

It would be kind of interesting to think about just putting, like, a very arbitrary rule, like, any government organization can only have 99 departments.

John:

Yeah. Yeah.

Jordi:

And so if you wanna add a new department, you have to cut 1. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Jordi:

Something like that

John:

with those are the laws too, where it's like the the the the case text and the and the law is just getting more and more complex. Everything here, we're adding, adding, adding. And we need to be doing some some, you know, code code review here.

Jordi:

Yeah. And, you know, a few others simplify and optimize. They wanna streamline, the processes that do exist. They wanna accelerate cycle times, which means speeding up approvals. So, if that stuff related to the private markets.

Jordi:

Right? SpaceX wants to launch a rocket. How do we get them, you know, approval for that faster? And then just automation. How do we monitor that modernize, like, government systems.

Jordi:

Right? We've talked about, wanting beautiful DMV apps, you know, here in California. Can we do that on a on a national scale?

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

So, and, you know, broadly kind of Pachy sums this up by saying, a willingness to make big changes is also willingness to break things. Right? And that's a willingness to take on certain amount of risk.

John:

Sure.

Jordi:

I think the government's gotten very risk adverse, over the years. But, we're now in the situation where the government the new the new admin seems to be willing to take risks. And what that is leading to is, people in the markets also going extremely risk on.

John:

Right?

Jordi:

Simultaneously, everybody's going super risk on, which could create the mother of all bubbles, which we've been praying for. So, it is great to, see things coming around. I think Yeah.

John:

I think that's where a lot of the optimism is coming from. It's like there there's been a lot of critiques about, like, you know, are the people that are going in administration, like, experienced enough? And the answer is, like, probably no.

Jordi:

Yeah.

John:

But, like, at least they might jar something loose, try something different. And there might be, you know, a few experimental successes that lead to outsized power law esque returns. And that's the value of of shaking things up. It's like how, like, a huge portion of the alpha that was generated in Silicon Valley from the year 2000 onward was literally just saying, in Silicon Valley from the year 2000 onward was literally just saying, yeah. It doesn't matter if you're a 19 year old kid.

John:

We we trust you with a $1,000,000 to go build something. Yep. And and and this is kind of that version of that. 100%.

Jordi:

Another you know, we don't talk about politics on the podcast, but, you know, it's worth calling out that a big critique of, Trump overall from the other side has always been that he is a threat to democracy. And one of the broader trends that we're already seeing, you know, we talked about a few minutes ago is this idea that a bunch of people now want to basically are more excited about participating in in our government system, in our democracy. Oh, sure. Sure. Sure.

Jordi:

And Elon is the number one example of that. Like, he sort of dominated the private markets. And then where can you go? What's the next sort of, like, battleground? He chose politics.

Jordi:

That was the biggest way that he could have an impact on his business.

John:

Mhmm.

Jordi:

But it's cool to see that the approach that he's taking with the with, Doge, the department of government efficiency. You know, they're they're already using, you know, x to, like, be highly, highly transparent and communicate.

John:

There's already an account posting.

Jordi:

There's already an account they're posting. They they've got some good posters running it. I'm sure, and Vivek has said, Doge will soon begin crowdsourcing examples of government waste fraud and abuse. Americans voted for drastic government reform and they deserve to be a part of fixing it. So That's cool.

Jordi:

This idea that the the people that are kind of, like, spearheading these changes actually do want participation, which is the foundation.

John:

Yeah. We, like, literally need, like, a whistleblower for that $150,000 soap dispenser. Yeah. Like, somebody sees that and is just like, this is ridiculous.

Jordi:

Yeah.

John:

And and there's some sort of incentive because I can basically go viral and get an Elon retweet if I if I post this. And so I'm gonna call it out as opposed to just, like, oh, it's just business as usual. Like, that's always the way the government is. Like, it doesn't have to be that way.

Jordi:

Yeah. So Reframe. Anyways, I I I I I think as as much optimism as there is in tech right now, I don't think it could be understated how much fear I'm sure there is in Washington.

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

I would love, maybe we need to go over there and do some and, you know, we're not journalists, but we could go start having some conversations with people on the ground, get a sense of, how they're feeling. Because if you are working in a bloated government organization right now or you're a lobbyist that's been reliant on the pharmaceutical industry, you know, those types of people, there's a lot. This is like, the the changes that the new admin wants to make, are a direct threat to a lot of the way of life in Washington DC Yep. From, you know, from the bottom to the top.

John:

So overall, fantastic article, Packy. We just have one bit of feedback. The name should have been the Trump pump.

Jordi:

The Trump pump. The Trump pump. Trump pump.

John:

Yeah. Trump bubble is good. I mean, Packy is fantastic with his titles. Yeah. The great online game.

John:

Like, he comes up with these really good coinages. He's, like, a master of Coogan's Law, where the more coinages the better.

Jordi:

Yep.

John:

But, this one, Trump pump, maybe somebody already said it. Maybe you needed to Yeah. Maybe you wanna talk about bubbles specifically because of the Stripe book. Trump pump. The Trump pump is, is Yeah.

Jordi:

And the last thing I would shout out, you know, we love advertisers. We love advertising. Thank you to TruMed for sponsoring Packie's piece. Yep. Justin, Mares, Cali, Friends of the Show, thank you for supporting, independent writers.

John:

Yeah. And if you're gonna review a piece, like, a newsletter, like like, a Packie piece, like, you should give credit to the

Jordi:

advertiser without them. None of that's possible. Rip his quotes and

John:

act pass it off as your own.

Jordi:

You need

John:

to pass along the ad.

Jordi:

Thank you to TruMed.

John:

Yeah. Thank you to TruMed. Let's go to Matt Grim. He asked me to fix something. He says, it's insane.

John:

It's an insane market inefficiency that we can't buy nicotine packs at airport convenience shops. John Coogan, please fix. Thanks. And, I wanted to talk about this because, like, a bunch of different things are changing in the tobacco industry, the nicotine industry. There's another viral tweet by, Peter Hasson who says, the war is over, fellas.

John:

Our pouches is our our pouches are safe, and it's RFK holding a pack of pouches. Just locked in. Locked in. And he's gonna be, nominated to run the NHS, which I I believe will oversee the FDA. And so, he will have a pretty huge say in in how those get approved.

John:

But it is it is very interesting. And and a lot of people were asking me, like, wait, like, this seems obvious. Like like, this is like people come to, you know, people come to me all the time with ideas like, oh, you should, like, you know, sell this in grocery stores. You should sell this in retail. Like, yeah.

John:

I mean, for the first, like, couple of years when we were mostly online, people would always say, oh, you should sell this in retail stores. It's like, yeah, obviously. Like, there's a lot of hurdles to do that. But the hurdles for selling in airports are even more cumbersome. So they do sell nicotine products in duty free.

John:

You know, you don't pay taxes, but you have to be flying internationally.

Jordi:

And then you have to you can't necessarily open them up.

John:

Yeah. Yeah. And, yeah, mostly, you're buying cigarettes, and and you're buying large quantities. And it's basically because that's, like, an embassy, and it's, like, in international waters.

Jordi:

We've tried to buy

John:

Dom Dom.

Jordi:

During the duty free and open it

John:

in the store, and they know that you open it in the store.

Jordi:

It's really frustrating. Even they even sell glasses. They just don't let you open it in the store.

John:

But the, but with the Hudson news thing, like, or the, you know, the the the airport stores, there's just this very interesting legacy where so in order to be a retail store that sells nicotine products, even nicotine pouches that don't contain tobacco, you still need a tobacco retailer license. And so that's somewhat cumbersome. And if you look back at the history of tobacco products, there was never a product in the post cigarette era once they banned smoking on planes that wasn't disruptive to the person next to you. Yep. So even if you could argue that it's, like, vaping on the plane is not gonna, like, bring it down.

John:

Although, you know, you could smoke on planes, and they didn't they weren't falling out of the sky. Yeah. It was more like a health issue. But even if you could make the argument that vaping next to someone is, like, safe

Jordi:

Yeah.

John:

It's, like, annoying. And so they would never sell those because everyone would be like, why are you selling these? They're annoying. And same thing for smokeless tobacco. Like, if you're chewing dip and spitting and the person has a dip cup or Gatorade bottle next to you, like, that's just gonna be kind of a nuisance.

Jordi:

I once was on a flight, back from New York and had a woman aggressively in vaping in JetBlue Mint. Yeah. And she was about I was sitting up working as I do on flights. She was lit on the lie flat sleeping

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

Secretly smoking her little vape. Yep. And we ended up getting into this huge thing.

John:

No way.

Jordi:

And she went to the to the, hostess hostess, whatever, and said kept saying he keeps accusing me of vaping. I'm not. Will you talk to him about it? I'm like, I'm like, I'm not gonna do this. But, yeah, that that that I believe that flight was from New Jersey to LA, actually.

Jordi:

So They're on brand. Yeah. Explain things.

John:

Yeah. Yeah. Totally. But so so so now, you know, obviously, tobacco free nicotine pouches are incredibly popular, and it does seem obvious, like, why hasn't Philip Morris tried to put ZYN in, in, you know, Hudson News? And I was trying to dig into, like, you know, okay.

John:

What what is the real reason? Well, a lot of it has to do with, like, the licensing. Like, you actually have to go get Hudson News new licenses. That takes a long time. I think this will happen, but it's gonna require some, like, a very aggressive move.

John:

And the reason why why I wanted to discuss this was I wanted to brainstorm with you. Like, if I make this my life's work to get Lucy Excel Breakers pouches into, into Hudson News, like, what playbook should I run? And I'm thinking, like, there needs to be a grassroots campaign. There needs to be memes. We need more guys like Matt who are taken seriously in the government and in the business world to be talking about it.

John:

But then I also need to be getting intros to the Hudson News CEO from, like, his whole network. Yeah.

Jordi:

Probably listens to the show.

John:

Probably listens to the show. So give me a call if you do.

Jordi:

I would say one

John:

one solution. Like, yeah. What else? What give me the whole kind of, you know, Geordie marketing playbook to manifest this into reality. Because I was thinking, like, I should just put out a call on x.

John:

Like, if you introduce me to Hudson News and we get a deal done, I'll buy you a text sweep.

Jordi:

Yep. Because right there.

John:

Because it it's going to be so valuable.

Jordi:

And a lifetime supply of pouches.

John:

And a lifetime supply of pouches. Yes. So so I I will happily do that because if if if we get the deal done, it'll be extremely valuable to me personally. But also, I think there will be a knock on effect from being the first pouch in airports that will even if we're, you know, not making a ton of money on the actual deal, I think we'll get press around it, and Yeah. Airport travelers will see it and be, like, what is going on?

John:

Wow. Yeah. This brand? Really? This brand?

Jordi:

Excel.

John:

Exactly.

Jordi:

So give me a point. I'm I'm I'm a pragmatic guy, an interim solution to this. We're gonna be rolling out some Technology Brothers shirts, hats, various types of merch. So what I would say in the term, once that goes live, all the technology brothers out there, if you can wear, the TV branded product while you're traveling, it's a way to signal to other brothers Sure. That, that you are basically a mobile nicotine dispensary.

John:

Right? Because I

Jordi:

think

John:

I think

Jordi:

imagine anybody anybody in our audience would be would be fine to share a pouch

John:

Of course.

Jordi:

With another brother. Of course. Maybe even a few. Right? Of course.

Jordi:

A lot of a lot of guys, you know, any any time 2 technology brothers are walking to the airport, one just closed, you know, a 9 figure, you know, licensing deal, for their company. The other one is is fresh off of, like, a pre seed pitch.

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

And maybe the pre seed founder doesn't have a ton of pouches, but the guy that just closed a 9 figure deal did.

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

And so they can make a trade. Right? Take my can, you know, take a few. That's an interim solution. But but, yeah, I like the Patek giveaway.

Jordi:

Mhmm. I think that would that kind of, you know, I think we need to see more companies using, luxury watches as bounties, to say, like, you know, if somebody's hiring for a role and they're like, oh, if you find an engineer, we'll give you $5. It's like Yeah. I don't care about that. But if if you're putting up even something of the same value like a Cartier Santos

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

I'm gonna be much more incentivized, right, to actually go and and make that happen.

John:

And it's more tangible. And it's, like but it does have liquidation value in the sense that Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I, you know, I I I got this referral fee.

John:

I got this thing. Maybe I need the cash.

Jordi:

And a watch has a

John:

story. Right? But a watch has a story and you could pass that down. You could keep it on you could keep it forever. So I I I am very serious.

John:

I need to actually, write that post and,

Jordi:

like, canonize it. That could be a product. That could

John:

be a software product. Intros before just by tweeting, oh, I would love to be in, like, this retail chain and someone will be like, oh, I'm actually, like, brother-in-law with the founder or something. Yeah. So the serendipity engine on x is insane. So, you heard it here first.

John:

We're gonna put together a plan and nicotine pouches will be sold in airports. Mark my words. But, in other news, this podcast has been growing like wildfire. You hear it every time we introduce the show. We're the most profitable podcast in the world.

John:

That's been true since day 1. Yep. But more recently, we've become the fastest growing podcast in the world.

Jordi:

That's right.

John:

And that's really huge. So we need to celebrate that. We recently hit 1,000 followers on x and Major milestone. Major milestone. And so we will be, opening up a bottle of Dom Perignon to celebrate.

Jordi:

Yes. We do. As we do.

John:

Hopefully, see it's still down. Okay. And we're gonna need to talk through this, so that the listeners have something to pay attention to while I'm working on this getting this open. So, do you, do you drink a lot of champagne?

Jordi:

I drink champagne on occasion. I, I try to, I find that if I'm drinking, it can sort of impede my nicotine Sure. Caffeine consumption. I'm not a big espresso martini guy. And so I'm

John:

a big at lunch guy.

Jordi:

Yeah. For for work course.

John:

If you're doing creative

Jordi:

work. Creative work. You would wanna get the Or deals. Or deals.

John:

Yeah. Or deals or spreadsheets or

Jordi:

Like, if you're doing an IPO roadshow, you wanna make sure that you're drinking early in the day. See it. See how this

John:

Hey. There we go. Okay. Here's to 1,000 followers.

Jordi:

1,000.

John:

To many more bottles of Dom.

Jordi:

Many more. And we're gonna be doing a bottle of Dom every 1,000 followers.

John:

Every 1,000 followers forever. Yeah. Well, it only gets it only gets more from here. Yeah. I mean, 22 bottles of

Jordi:

At 10 k, we might need to lever up and and do 10 bottles.

John:

10 bottles.

Jordi:

And do our first 10 hour episode.

John:

Our first 10 hour episode. That'd be fantastic. So the the champagne is flowing. We're here to celebrate

Jordi:

Hey. Cheers. To Technology Brothers.

John:

The fastest growing podcast in

Jordi:

the world. That. There you go.

John:

There you go. Cheers. The, yeah. The fastest growing

Jordi:

It's honestly tastes like ramp. Have you ever, like

John:

If ramp was Yeah. Yeah. A champagne, it would be the Dom Perignon. But literally, it would be tough. People say that about Ramp.

John:

They always say it's like the Dom Perignon of b to b SaaS. Right? That's, like, you

Jordi:

That's a good one. You see that flying around when people ask, oh, should I use Ramp or this other company?

John:

Yeah. Yeah.

Jordi:

A lot of people say

John:

It's the dom Perignon of Yeah. Of of b to b SaaS. And so we also, did a little celebration with the fans. We we promised that, to our 1,000 follower, we would give them one complimentary blood boy. And, Circe, vocal cry, was the winner.

John:

And so, she will be receiving one complimentary blood boy. So we'll talk to you soon, Circe. And, thank you for supporting us. We really appreciate it. Let's go to some DMs.

John:

We got some questions from the fans. Let's go to the first one. Mickey with the Blickie says, Jordy Hayes, question for the pod. I filled out this form on an investing app and lied about my income and net worth. Then at the end, it asked me if I was accredited.

John:

I'm not. And I said yes. So now I'm verified to invest in pre IPO companies. Can I get in trouble for that? What do you think?

Jordi:

Okay. So,

John:

I have a very quick solution for

Jordi:

this. Yeah. Just Go

John:

to your boss and say you need $200,000 a year. Because as soon as you're making $200,000 a year, you are you are a credit investor.

Jordi:

I thought it had to be for, like, the last taxable year or is it is it, who know? There's a lot of there's a lot of regulations here.

John:

Walk in and just demand it and say, look, I need to I need to allocate capital. I

Jordi:

need to

John:

create shareholder value. I need 200 k, boss, or I'm out of here.

Jordi:

I'm out of here. And if

John:

you're gonna get it.

Jordi:

And then if if your boss says no, run your next job hunt and tell everybody before you Yeah. Submit your resume. So I need 200 k regardless.

John:

Because I will be angel investing 90% of my

Jordi:

Yeah. Or go apply for roles that have, you know, 500 k base comp and tell them I only need 200 k.

John:

There you

Jordi:

go. I'm gonna outwork anybody. That's true. I'll save you 300 k a year.

John:

This is good. Boom.

Jordi:

Boom. Yeah.

John:

And then and then, yeah, sleep in a shed The and invest a 190 k.

Jordi:

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Move in with your parents and just and focus on capital deployment. Right?

John:

Exactly. Exactly.

Jordi:

No. So, I remember, you know, being, in Mickey's shoes when I was a young man

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

You know, getting angel investment opportunities here and there. There's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of, lack of of clarity around these things. Some founders care. Some founders don't. A lot of more seriously, run companies, sort of, well, I don't see a lot of formal accreditation checks.

Jordi:

I write most of my checks out of a fund now. So it's it's not as much of a thing. But, but, yeah, here's the thing. It's it's actually much less of an issue for, the individual. I don't think Mickey is gonna get in trouble for doing this.

Jordi:

It really comes down to the company. So if Mickey is on a platform, deploying money and, and then kick you off?

John:

They well, yeah. Of course, it could

Jordi:

kick you off. I I imagine if Mickey's not using an alt, he will after this podcast goes live, hopefully We

John:

might have burned you.

Jordi:

You might have just burned your angel investing career. But, but, no. The the bigger issue is

John:

It sounds like he's he actually hasn't made an investment, though. And I think that's where the securities laws come into. It's not No. But it's probably not illegal to sign up. It's a bigger, securities issue if you actually do the deal.

Jordi:

Yeah. Yeah. The bigger the bigger issue is for the company and the platform. If Mickey makes a bunch of investments Yep. That are very risky and they go to 0 and Mickey and other people

John:

who

Jordi:

are not accredited, say, hey. I wasn't accredited. They marketed these, you know, sort

John:

of Yep. Yep. Yep.

Jordi:

You know, investments to me.

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

And the main thing, Mickey, angel investing is very, very high risk. Yeah. You will not get your money back for 5 to 10 years. Yep. Maybe nothing at all.

Jordi:

Could go to 0. It is, one of the silliest investment activities of all time.

John:

Yeah.

Jordi:

It pays if you're good at it. But, what I would say is, whenever you are, you know, officially accredited or in your current state, start small. Don't, you know, invest, your, all of your liquid assets too quickly because then you'll start seeing better deals in 6 months and you won't have any money to put to work. So

John:

Good luck out there. Good luck. Let's go to another, DM we received. Hi, John and Jordy. I've been investing in a large growth equity VC arm of a crossover fund, and I'd love to move to one of the holy trinity firms.

John:

Can you give me a little insight in as to how they differ culturally?

Jordi:

Holy trinity.

John:

Kleiner, Sequoia, and Founders Fund. Legacy. Yeah. I mean, fantastic firms. I mean, obviously, I'm super biased here, so I can't really comment that much.

John:

But I can tell a little bit culturally. I mean, Founders Fund, everyone knows it's, like, kind of the the the pirate ship of the 3. Yep. It's a little bit crazier, a little bit, weirder. Yeah.

John:

Weirder and, like, it's always been very freewheeling in terms of, like, the press strategy. Like, you have on one end, like, Peter writing a book that sits in airports and is, like, universally recognized as, like, a great business book. The found

Jordi:

the the almost the foundation of this podcast.

John:

Yeah. And then you have, like, Delian just, like, being a mad man on Twitter and just, like, posting all sorts of crazy stuff. Too. Yeah. And Mike and and just, like, both of those are acceptable, and that's and that's very it's a And the other The other thing

Jordi:

cultural thing at at Founders Fund, and I I think the reason that founders gravitate to them, quite often is the entrepreneurial nature of the partners. So many of the partners have, have a fast growing venture backed startup

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

That they're also doing.

John:

Yeah. Ton of incubations. Peter with Palantir, Trey with Anduril, Varda. Varda. And there's gonna be more.

John:

So, it's been yeah. It's been it's it's just a very entrepreneurial firm. No matter where you sit in the organization, there's everyone like, you're never gonna get, like, here's your task list for this week.

Jordi:

Yep.

John:

And at some I mean, simply to all of

Jordi:

those ownership.

John:

If this guy's had a growth equity, like, crossover fund, there's probably, like, an element of, like, dialing for dollars. Have you seen this? Yeah. Where, you know, it's like we need a price for every company. So we gotta get in touch with, like, every single IPO candidate, every single candidate that's that's late stage.

John:

Just call all of them, get the data, just just, you know, pound and pound and pound. And, and founders, it's much more like whatever your strategy is. We're cool with that.

Jordi:

It's not a consensus partnership either. Right?

John:

So let's move on to Sequoia. I mean, Sequoia, obviously, like, long term rival. Can't can't say too many nice things about them, but, you know, we've talked about this before. We love Sean Maguire and what he's doing to pivot that brand to

Jordi:

Dark Sequoia.

John:

It's essentially dark Sequoia. Like, you know, Elon has done the dark MAGA thing Yep. And Sean has brought a very unique energy to Sequoia that

Jordi:

Kinda bucks historical trends.

John:

I mean, literally, everyone thought he was gonna get fired for what he's doing because it's so bold, and there's been even articles about, like, the pushback that he's got on, like, hey, maybe are you taking, like are you too too aggressive on some of these positions? Yeah. But he's fought the war internally, and he's it seems like he's won, which is amazing because, fundamentally, like You have to imagine. All these intra VC rivalries, like, I don't care about as much as what the VCs are doing building technology for America versus our enemies Yeah. Abroad.

Jordi:

Yeah. The other thing you have to imagine, Sean has a bit of leverage given his close relationship with, Elon, which is creating the new deep state.

John:

Right? Yeah. Exactly. So Yeah. And then and then you go back.

John:

I mean, like, I love some of the Founders Fund's, you know, legacy investments, the story of Ballantir, the the the early Zuck deal.

Jordi:

Pretty much crushed your champagne and ice cream.

John:

Yeah. Okay. Like, the early Zuck deal is legendary, Airbnb and Stripe. But, like, Sequoia is just in a different tier when it comes to the legacy stuff, like Nvidia Yeah. Google.

John:

Isn't it isn't it 4

Jordi:

out of the 5 $1,000,000,000 companies

John:

Are covered by the holy trinity. Every No.

Jordi:

Everything you've been did. Maybe they did

John:

Apple. Facebook.

Jordi:

Apple, Nvidia.

John:

And they didn't do Microsoft. Yeah. But yeah. But because Microsoft didn't really raise. But, but, yeah, Apple, Nvidia, Google, and then Kleiner, you go back even further, and you have a whole other tier of, like, amazing legacy.

John:

And, you know It's

Jordi:

almost like a Vacheron.

John:

It's exactly Vacheron. It's, like, under underrated now, but has, like, an incredible historical legacy. And, of course, there's, like, the the talent wars of the holy trinity that people talk about a lot right now where, you know, Everett Randall moves over to to, Kleiner. He brings from Founders Fund.

Jordi:

Keith goes to Khosla.

John:

Keith goes to Khosla. There's a lot of, like, you know, trade deals going on right now. Yeah. But, I I I remain extremely bullish on Sean and extremely bullish on Ev. I I think Ev is,

Jordi:

just We're just bullish on risk. Right?

John:

Exactly.

Jordi:

Anybody that's taking risk, we're excited for you. Yeah. We're happy for you.

John:

And so and so to answer the question of, like, where you fit in, you need to understand, like, okay, what is your strategy and how how much are you wanna push things culturally? How many systems do you want in place? How entrepreneurial is your deal making process? Yeah. And I think that's kind of you you go into a a a client or there's going to be a larger staff.

John:

There's gonna be more support infrastructure.

Jordi:

And and to be clear

John:

And and some people are gonna flourish in that environment.

Jordi:

It is harder to break into the holy trinity than the NBA. Yep. Hands down. Yep. Right?

John:

Just Yeah. Just statistically. Statistically. Yeah.

Jordi:

Yeah.

John:

So good luck out there. Start networking and start sending some of those firms good deals because,

Jordi:

you know, that's sending us deals.

John:

Yeah. Send us deals. And, yeah.

Jordi:

Happy to make a warm intro.

John:

Yeah. We'll make some interest. Let's, go to another DM we got. This is hilarious when I first read it. I'm gonna keep it anonymous, but someone, DM'd me and said, where does Founders Fund keep its cash between investments?

John:

And I love this. Question. I love this because it sounds like they're going to do a bank heist, and they're going to try and steal the money that Founders Fund has. But it also is a very legitimate question in that I don't think a lot of people know. Obviously, our our most of our listeners know, but, a lot of people don't know where VC firms actually do keep the cash and just the mechanics of raising a fund, when you raise a $1,000,000,000 fund, that doesn't sit in your bank account.

John:

That's just commitments from LPs.

Jordi:

Yep.

John:

And then you make capital calls on a per investment basis. So the money might

Jordi:

Or a core or Yeah. Or, like, programmatically quarterly.

John:

Yeah. Exactly. So, like, you're you're not necessarily just sitting on a $1,000,000,000 in some money market fund. It's sitting with your LPs. And when you wanna make an investment, you call the capital.

John:

It moves through your account very quickly, and you only have a few days there. And then there are also credit lines that allow you to pull things forward if you're off by a few days. Yeah.

Jordi:

And the reason so the reason that that that that is important is it is it increases the performance of the fund. Right? So if you call the $1,000,000,000 if you have a $1,000,000,000 fund, you call that capital on day 1, but then you deploy it over 4 to 5 years. That's money that's just, like, sitting there not really generating a return for your LPs.

John:

Yeah.

Jordi:

And so they would rather spread out those calls over time and be able to keep the that that capital in, actively in the market and other investments or treasury, you know, bonds or or whatever.

John:

Exactly. And this was a big thing during, like, the the SBB crisis. A lot of firms were, you know, they did have some money tied up, but it wasn't exactly a situation where the VCs were gonna lose, like, all their money because most of the most of the funds that have been raised are invested just in liquid assets because the LPs have have funds. We

Jordi:

should we should do a,

John:

Something.

Jordi:

At some point, we should do a a look back at the SVB crisis. Oh, yeah. Because I have to provide my point of view of running a new license.

John:

I was inside out of sight at the time. We were getting accused of, like, causing it. It was the most insane thing. And our buddy who we mentioned before, Brynn Hobart, was the one who, like, deep dove SVB early and broke the story, essentially Yeah. That, like, their balance sheet was messed up.

John:

So, yeah, we should do a whole thing. I've I've touched on it before in content, but, we could easily do an hour on that. Yep. But now let's go to brother of the week. Each week, we try and honor 1 technology brother who exemplifies what it means to drive innovation forward, to allocate capital efficiently, to live the lifestyle, to enjoy luxury goods, to be a capitalist and a consumerist, to be materialist.

John:

Yep. And this week

Jordi:

Loud and proud opulence.

John:

Right? Loud and proud opulence. Yeah.

Jordi:

And

John:

so this week was tough. There were there were it was a really tight race.

Jordi:

Yeah. Very tight. Yeah.

John:

There were a lot of really solid candidates.

Jordi:

And this candidate Kind

John:

of a cut above.

Jordi:

Cut above. And we'll start by saying that he is in the exclusive, club, which is residents of the Venetian Isles in Miami. And this name might be new to some, but I don't think it will be new to many. Somebody who has inspired a generation of investors and operators. He is a historian in his own right and also a capitalist.

Jordi:

Right? He's somebody that has made a living and a very good one at that, sort of telling these stories of the history's greatest entrepreneurs, handful of investors here and there. And he's somebody who less than 3 weeks ago, we met with

John:

Mhmm.

Jordi:

In Miami. And, we talked to him about the podcast. At the time, we were recording one day a week. Mhmm. And he said, you guys, are not taking this seriously enough.

John:

Mhmm.

Jordi:

You need to, go home to California, go to your studio and lock in. Mhmm. And we certainly have done that. Otherwise, we wouldn't be opening a bottle of champagne today selling, celebrating, you know, a a very large number entering the 4 figure club, on x Yeah. And being not only the most profitable podcast on earth but the fastest growing.

Jordi:

So, today's, brother of the week, this week's brother of the week,

John:

David Senora.

Jordi:

David Senora himself.

John:

So congratulations, David. You will be receiving your brother of the week Plaque. Plaque, in the mail soon. Yes. And we just wanted to highlight one, one one particularly great David Senra post.

John:

He writes, Henry Ford in meetings. And, it's a screenshot from some of his notes. He said, Ford didn't like meetings at all. Sometimes in the middle or at the beginning of 1, he spring up as if he had to go to the bathroom or mumble that he'd forgotten to check on something, always giving the impression that he'd be right back. He never came back.

Jordi:

There you go. I love that. So in many ways, you have to imagine that Cesky and his recent tirade against meetings was inspired by, Henry Ford, and he probably is a founder's podcast listener. Yeah. So thank you to David for the encouragement and exemplifying what it means to be a technology brother.

John:

Thank you, David. Let's move on to the timeline and we will start with Lulu Meservi, one of my good friends. She writes, it's incredible that there's a ramp love fest on here every few weeks. Imagine how crack the team has to be to organically build a fandom for a b to b SaaS finance product. And it's a screenshot of of someone quote to winning a question about should they go with ramp or someone else, and they say ramp by a 100 x margin.

John:

And, yeah. It it it is it is incredible, But it's a testament. I I it's interesting because it's like the the ramp fandom is it's deliberate, but I don't believe it's ever been in a deck. Like, I don't think they ever wrote, we need to build a fandom.

Jordi:

About it.

John:

It's more just like the founders and the people that they associate with. The network is really great, and it includes David Senra. It includes Patrick O'Shaughnessy. And so Includes Lulu. Right?

John:

It includes Lulu. Yeah. Exactly. So

Jordi:

Senra in Miami. Yeah.

John:

So if you're if you're, you know, you're following Lulu and you're, like, I fuck with her. I like the stuff that she's putting out. Like, who else is she fuck with? Yeah. And it's Ramp.

John:

It's Cognition. It's Andral. And so you're, like, I'm in. Here's the thing. This is cool.

Jordi:

So a lot of people think to have a great brand, you need to spend a lot of money on a branding agency. And, you know, we spent, you know, multiple 6 figures on on our, you know, Technology Brothers branding, which is still, you know, rolling out. Not that you need to do that, but we felt it was important and more podcasts should do it. But here's the thing. A great brand is not the font that you choose.

Jordi:

It's not your logo mark. It's not how pretty your website is or how many times people copy your website, or how many times people copy your choice of color. A great brand is how, is what it stands for and how it makes people feel and something that people wanna be associated with. So the case of ramp, ramp stands for operational excellence.

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

Right? And they came up in a time they they they came onto the scene during the Zurp era.

John:

Mhmm.

Jordi:

And so their position of, actually, we're gonna help you save money

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

Was very contrarian at the time. Everyone else was spend it, you know, spend, spend spend spend. Check out all the rewards you can get. They were saying, no. We're actually gonna give that money back to you, and we're gonna help you spend less on your cards even though that's not directly beneficial to us.

Jordi:

Yep. At the same time, they have built a, is it a decacorn yet? Is it close? Something around there. Something close will be soon.

Jordi:

They've done that in, you know, 5 year, time horizon, which pretty much only Donald Trump has done in the last, in the last 5 years. So, not only do they stand for operational excellence and help companies achieve that, but they have done that themselves and they've set that example. Right? And so they've created this halo effect

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

Around the brand that, other companies wanna be associated with. So now if you're a if you just incorporated your company on Stripe Atlas and you wanna make a statement to your team about what your company stands for, you're gonna use Ramp.

John:

Yep. Right? Yeah. Yeah.

Jordi:

It's how we're able to achieve our ridiculous profitability even at a small scale.

John:

Yeah. There's also something interesting about them kind of building almost like a non sequitur brand around the engineering excellence of the organization. Like, most people would be like, I don't even know if I need IMO gold medalists or IOI gold medalists to write my b to b software. Like, I'm good with, like, mid tier programmers most of the time. They don't know that that's what they want, and they want, like, the real polish in their software.

John:

And they want the software to be an expression of, like, almost art.

Jordi:

Yeah. And here's

John:

But but but but it's really stuck out. And the last company I know that did that was Google. Do you have you heard about Jeff Dean? You know this guy? No.

John:

He's like he leads leads their AI, but he was, like, the most insane programmer during Google's rise. And there's, like, these arcane websites out there of Jeff Dean jokes, and they're basically like Chuck Norris jokes. And it's, like, Jeff Dean's keyboard only has 2 keys, 10, because he, like, programs in binary. Or, like you know? And then there's, like, 20 more jokes, and, like, you really need to understand computer science to get the joke.

John:

Yep. But they like, Jeff Dean was just this, like, insane phenomenon, and and it really, like, set the culture at Google. And you could almost say the same thing. Like, you know, people, like, you know, do you need, you know, you know, gold medalist to write b to b SaaS software? Well, do you need Jeff Dean to write search and ad software?

John:

Like, yes. Yes. You do, actually. Because there's a big opportunity and it's really important. So, like, get the best.

Jordi:

Yeah. I had, having the opportunity to go to to dinner with Lulu, Eric and Karim from Ramp and and, in in Miami a few weeks ago, and they invited one of their, engineers who had actually was moving over to marketing. Oh, yeah. One interesting thing about Ramp's organization is it's so engineering led

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

That Ramp's CTO, Kareem, actually runs marketing. And they oftentimes are focused on recruiting engineers to their marketing team because they want to take an engineering led approach. And I can't comment on some of the things that they're doing in order to drive, customer acquisition using that method. Yeah. But they're, step above any other team.

Jordi:

Right?

John:

They didn't go recruit out of some big New

Jordi:

York, city, like, marketing agency. Right? They're, like, engineering culture through and through. So

John:

let's go to Josh Kaplan. He, is posting a deep dive on the gun doe from the blaze called Hard Text Main Street. It says, Augustus de Rico on the Gundo practice of office checks. If you're not in the office at 12:0:4 AM chugging white monsters and popping zins, you deserve to get your funding cut. And this is this is interesting, because Great picture.

John:

Yeah. I mean, fantastic picture, but, yeah, I've always said that it's underrated that the Gundo guys beat the allegations of being too Twitter brained Yeah. And too addicted to posting. And they very, very elegantly switched from just constantly needing to do all the work themselves to get attention in media to the media comes to them now. Because it's a very

Jordi:

interesting story.

John:

And I bet this got, like, a ton of reach. It's very valuable, very important for SEO, and it was probably, like, you know, a 1 hour lunch. Yeah. They took some photos.

Jordi:

High leverage.

John:

And Augusta's it's very high leverage. Exactly. Yeah. It's way it's

Jordi:

way easier. And credit to them, they're some of the best posters of the generation. Fantastic.

John:

But they didn't get too into it where they're,

Jordi:

like, now less than the AI people,

John:

the accelerationist. For sure. They post way less.

Jordi:

They're averaging

John:

Yep. And and I think that's good because they they they're actually able to go and build something real and and take time for the important things. And then they can still pop up and post, but it's very much, like, you know, shower thoughts. Like, it it's really, like, Slack time. Yeah.

John:

They're not sitting there being, like, let me write a whole

Jordi:

segment for Gus' shower thoughts when he's when his drones are flying

John:

around. Yeah. I mean, raining down,

Jordi:

he has a second to Yeah.

John:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Yeah. I mean, you you like like, obviously, they need to,

Jordi:

On that note they

John:

need to maintain attention.

Jordi:

Oh, yeah. Promoted post quickly. That's good. We wanted to shout out that Augustus is at Rainmaker, who is featured in that article, is hiring, hiring, hiring, need more engineers. Okay.

Jordi:

Please, sir, my tech development timelines are starving. So, if you are an engineer, feel free to ping Augustus directly, apply for a job, or DM us, and we're happy to give you our opinion on the company and, working with Augustus as he's a friend of the pot. So, great great opportunity for the right engineers out there and, make haste.

John:

Yeah. I think it's, rainmaker.com if you want

Jordi:

to makerain.com.

John:

Makerain.com. There you go. If you wanna learn more, we highly recommend it. I've made a whole video about the gundo. There's a great Jason Carman video about rainmaker.

John:

Plenty of ways to learn more and find out if a job at Rainmaker is right for you. Let's go to Blake Robbins. Good great investor. Just great guy all around. He says, the inevitable AI side hustle is to flood TikTok reels and shorts with AI edited subway surfer video plus top Reddit posts plus text to speech.

John:

Is that inevitable or is that, like, already happening? It's art I think it's already happening. I think it's already happening. So Blake is a good

Jordi:

example. A lot of people go say, oh, touch grass, get offline, go walk in the park. Blake's like, no. I'm gonna stay more online. Yeah.

Jordi:

I'm going to take, pitches while He's

John:

the investor. I I was pitching while talking while playing video games with him.

Jordi:

Yeah. It was

John:

it was amazing. And I was I was asking if he was

Jordi:

He's an example of in our very online world, I would, anybody that tells you to get offline, is maybe, doesn't have your best interest at heart because Blake is a fantastic investor and found some great companies over the years very early. But, but, yeah, we've we've seen this. A lot of people are saying, you know, you can make $10,000 a month making some AI, influencers. Not sure about that. But the clipping strategy is very established as a way to, you know, at least generate a lot of attention.

Jordi:

And you don't need to be, particularly an expert in anything yourself to get great at clipping.

John:

Yeah. And when we get into more of the, the the VC trade deals, the the the, you know, who who's who's working where, who's moving from one firm to the other. We gotta analyze Blake because Yeah. Who's that benchmark? They let him go, start another spot.

Jordi:

Detroit Fund

John:

Yeah. For a while. Yeah. Yeah. You know, he's moved around a bunch, Tons to analyze there.

John:

Would have been a top draft pick for me if I was running one of the major venture firms. But,

Jordi:

Holy Trinity.

John:

You know, we'll see we'll see how he ends up. I like that he has his own fun, though. He's he's master of his own destiny now.

Jordi:

Yep.

John:

Santiago says, wait. Did you just say Dutch East India Company? Dude, they were the OG venture capitalists. VCs today are soft herd animals. These dudes were hardcore.

John:

They'd be like, there's an island that produces something we want. And if we get it, will 30,000 x our investment? And it's I guess that's him. Yeah. Yeah.

John:

With the o v OCV, which is the the, Dutch East India Trading Company logo Yeah. On Rogan, which is funny because it's just funny. Slowed off.

Jordi:

Right? Yeah. Aaron was talking about, you know, cornering the nutmeg market. But,

John:

yeah, it's funny

Jordi:

to think about the Dutch East India company looking at, you know, a venture capitalist today is typically pretty happy with a 100 x

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

200 x. So it's kind of the range where you start to go, okay. So it's a good bet. And, you know, they probably looked at something like that being, like, man, with the risk that we're taking on, like, I need at least a a 2,000 x. Lower.

John:

Like, a lot of the growth equity funds are just, like, 20% IRR deals, no zeros. Yeah. Like, imagine, like, it it I mean, it's a good strategy. Like, it's worked. It's it's smart.

John:

It's rational. But Private

Jordi:

equity money.

John:

It doesn't feel like yeah. It's private equity. It doesn't feel like venture. Venture means needs to be there's a 90% there's a 5% chance chance this is a $1,000,000,000,000 company, 90% chance it goes to 0, 5% chance the founder goes to jail, and I'm disgraced, and I never work again.

Jordi:

Here's a That's the venture company that that practices, friend of the pod, Justin Mears, and lead the the team over at Long Journey. They practice TrueVenture today where they will back a, founder who's still working in some university on some, like, crazy project or poster that's, like, the most absurd thing you've ever heard. Yep. And they take you know, they're they're they're they're making these bets where they'll invest very small six figure checks at very reasonable valuations given the risk profile. And, I'm extremely bullish on the strategy.

Jordi:

It makes me feel like an idiot for entering companies at 15 posts

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

Yep. Or 20 posts. When

John:

I mean, I was talking to Lee the other day. He he was the 1st investor in Crusoe. Yeah. Like, fantastic company. Like, crushing.

John:

Yeah. And also, they I was talking to Sayan about something. They they invested in a diamond company.

Jordi:

Yeah.

John:

Like Yeah. Where is that on any market map? Yeah. Yeah. But they were but they were, like, yeah, we You

Jordi:

wanna be investing off market map?

John:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Off market maps for sure. I I think that the thesis was, like, well, like, lab grown diamonds are gonna get cheaper.

John:

People will eventually switch over. But now it's, like, oh, actually diamonds are important to, like, chip fabrication in some weird way.

Jordi:

Here's here's somebody I texted a I texted a market map to my friend Amar the other day, and he goes, damn, that market map looks like the menu at a TGI Friday. And I was, like, that is a good example of, like, if the market map looks like a TGI Friday's menu, probably it's past Stay away. Don't don't make your first bet.

John:

Stay away.

Jordi:

Because the game is Well,

John:

stay tuned for the Technology Brothers market map. We will be mapping out, every poster that we mentioned on the show, and we're very excited to drop our first market map. Let's go to Ken. He says by 2026, they were there will be 2 jobs, HVAC technician and YC founder. Everything else will be done by computers, and the HVAC technicians will have higher average annualized revenue.

Jordi:

So here's the thing. I I have, there's a guy a guy I use for, like, random, like, handyman stuff around the house, and I were talking the other day. He's helping me with something, and he was like, dude, I've been taking these, like, engineering classes. I've been, like, learning to build websites. And, I I I I I didn't try to dissuade him from doing that because I think it's like, you should know how to build a website.

Jordi:

You should know how to make a a an application. Right? Like, these sort of things are, like, basic skills, like, replacing a, you know, you know, screw in your house almost. Right? You should know how to, like, paint a fence maybe, something like that.

Jordi:

But I told him I was like, look. Every single person out of the last 400 people that I've texted could make a website today

John:

Yeah.

Jordi:

And ship it. Like, a tiny fraction of those people, like, know how to, properly, like, clean a gutter and maintain the gutter in a home. Right? And even smaller fraction are gonna know how to, like, you know, service an HVAC unit. So I

John:

told them I was

Jordi:

like, look, you're already very skilled in these areas. And if you really productize what you're doing and get smart about building a team and marketing, I guarantee you that you already have momentum in this area. Like, you're gonna be making more money than the average web developer in, in 3 years.

John:

Yeah. It's, like, taste and, like, arcane knowledge that doesn't exist on the Internet. It's, like, what's valuable? Like Yeah.

Jordi:

I've seen what I've what I'm seeing in the creative market right now is the truly, truly talented creatives that, that have incredible impeccable taste and execution and have built great teams around them

John:

Ideas guys.

Jordi:

Are are busier than ever.

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

Then the the bottom half of the market, like, the historical web developer, like, I'm gonna make 200 k, you're developing, maintaining a website, like, almost, like, blown out, like, nonexistent. Like, not a not a great, career path anymore.

John:

I'm gonna be an credit investor for very long.

Jordi:

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. If you wanna be a credit investor, do not become a, website Commoditized web developer. Maintainer.

John:

Let's go to Trey Stevens, one of my colleagues at Founders Fund, says, what do we want? An Anduril merch store. When do we want it now? And he is, commemorating the launch of the Anduril merch store. Very cool CGI render.

John:

They're gonna be dropping something. I don't think they've actually talked about what they are dropping, but I I've heard it's a very unique and cool plan.

Jordi:

We'll have to do it live.

John:

Let's do it. Yeah. We'll have to unboxing. I'll get Yeah.

Jordi:

So here's here's the thing. So stuff. The most hyped merch drops on on on x right now Yep. Are Anduril and Palantir. But the issue is they both stand for very similar things.

John:

Yes. Yes. There's not a

Jordi:

lot of, like, conflict. It's hard to really pick a side.

John:

Yep. Yep. Yep.

Jordi:

We need we need a 3rd, player to come in the mix so that people can kind of, like, you know there needs to be conflict. Otherwise, there's no opportunity.

John:

And, I mean, I I just imagine when I see a lot of Anduril and Palantir gear, it's a lot of t shirts, it's a lot of sweatshirts, it says quiet luxury. It says, hey, I might have written a seed check-in this company. Now it's worth a $100,000,000,000.

Jordi:

Yeah.

John:

I'm wealthy. But that's not the future. The future is loud opulence loud opulence. You need to be screaming.

Jordi:

Yeah. So I think there's an opportunity for a defense tech, you know, firm to come out that's maybe competing with these guys and say, we're going loud. Yes. We support Kipping pull ups.

John:

Gold play drones.

Jordi:

We support, you know, Palantir has been very clear. They do not want you drinking or doing Kipping pull ups while wearing their merch.

John:

Exactly. And

Jordi:

so that creates an opportunity for a, maybe, pro CrossFit, pro drinking

John:

Wait. Wait. They said no drinking in the game? Yeah. Yeah.

John:

Oh, no. No. Huge problem for us.

Jordi:

No more than no more than 2 drinks.

John:

No more than 2 drinks. Okay. I wonder if we can get, like, a Dom Perignon's, exception. I think that I think that's essential.

Jordi:

No more than 5 bottles of

John:

Yeah. No. I mean, we're gonna finish this bottle then. Yeah. It's no problem.

John:

Come on. Let's go. Matt Turk says, business trip to Europe. 6:30 AM, wake up check phone, accept cookies. 9 AM.

John:

I already see where this is going. I didn't read this one. 9 AM, meeting, use laptop, accept more cookies. 12 PM, taxi to lunch, accept cookies. Yes.

John:

4 PM, new checks news, accept cookies. 11 PM, Netflix, but first, cookies. 1 in the restroom, except cookies.

Jordi:

This is a joke, but somebody ran the numbers and they said something like Europeans will spend billions of hours accepting cookies.

John:

It's insane. It's

Jordi:

just like a constant onslaught.

John:

So insane that there's no, like, opt out. This is, like, the worst thing. Like, why can't you

Jordi:

going known for being known known for great pastries to being known for lots

John:

of cookies. Even Apple's doing this where it's just, like, every single app, I have to say allow app to track or accept or deny, like And

Jordi:

you always do because you wanna support advertising.

John:

I literally do. Yeah. Because I'd rather have targeted advertisements than non targeted advertisements. Right. Like, I wanna see an ad for a Patek Philippe.

John:

I don't wanna see an ad for, you know, some Not just. Hublot. Like, they they should know me by now. Yeah. Exactly.

John:

So, yeah. Very disappointing Europe. I I really hope we can push back back against this in the United States because, obviously, I I never go to Europe. I don't travel to

Jordi:

the national plane. For Apple, it was a brand thing. They realized that they had an opportunity to be the privacy big focus big tech company even though they

John:

And put everything on the right of the right of the right

Jordi:

Even though they yeah. Yeah. Even though they know every single thing about us already and it doesn't matter.

John:

Big tech feels like, being a user of big tech products, like, when you're using Facebook or when you're using an iPhone, it feels like you have divorced parents, and it feels like Apple is actively in in a fight with Meta. Yeah. And it's like, I'm trying to use I'm trying to log in to my sunglasses. They work together.

Jordi:

Like, I'll drop the kids off

John:

Exactly. If you

Jordi:

pick them up.

John:

And then they kinda bicker at each other. Like, oh oh oh, you wanna use these meta glasses? Like, well, do you wanna are you sure you wanna accept the terms? Do you wanna do this? It's like you said your pop ups?

Jordi:

You said you were gonna pack lunch for

John:

the kids. Exactly. When I picked

Jordi:

them up, they said that they didn't have

John:

any lunch. Exactly. What's going on? It's so it's so frustrating. And, yeah.

John:

I'm I'm getting close to burn it all to the ground, but, we'll let them keep going. The the Apple company is not happy with me, but I'll keep using that shit. Let's go to Ashley Vance. He says, my exclusive today is the big on the biggest investor in brain and longevity science that you've never heard of. James Fickle turned a crypto fortune into a research empire.

John:

I love this. So You need better elites. This is an example of better elites.

Jordi:

Is he sun gazing right now? I think he is. He looks like it. Base. Base.

Jordi:

Yeah. There you go. I sun gaze before the podcast.

John:

Yeah. I I I try and, like, tease it in. I try and go for a run outside.

Jordi:

I don't I don't raw dog it like people that

John:

we know. I try and run outside to catch some rays in the in the early morning. Yeah. I mean, if you can get to the gym or to the whatever you're doing in the run and, like, the sun's coming up, nothing's more inspiring than that. Yeah.

John:

It's fantastic. But yeah. Yep. I don't know. Longevity and and brain?

John:

Yeah. Do we think we we we need more crazy money.

Jordi:

I think a great journalist. She writes some great pieces. And and I think that, she is Hey.

John:

Hey. Hey. Easy. Easy. I'm just saying certain journalists, you know, are friends of the pod.

John:

Yeah. Adjacent

Jordi:

is Hey. Hey. Hey. Easy. Easy.

John:

I'm just saying certain journalists, you know, are friends of the pod Yeah.

Jordi:

Adjacent adjacently friendly and other others are, you know, less friendly. But, no. I think Bloomberg has been making moves. Credit to them. Right?

Jordi:

They got Kate Clark Yep. Last week. They've got Ashley

John:

Emily Chang.

Jordi:

Emily Chang. Big big momentum over And

John:

a lot of people. Yep. It's great.

Jordi:

Shout out to the journalists.

John:

Let's go to Nick Milinovic. He says, Dereg expectations are creating a lot of upward movement for public fintechs.

Jordi:

So I brought Nick up on the show before, talking about how his strategy it's very dangerous as a VC to just pick a single category and just make that your entire, make that your entire identity and focus. And Nick's strategy to date has been to have smaller funds and make sure that he's actually generating real carry.

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

Phenomenal, phenomenal investor. I think he's he's had a community and a media platform forever and really has done, yeah, good job of making sure that I think anybody that is building in Fintech that's, worth backing is probably aware of him at this point. And he kind of as much as there was a crypto bear market, there was also a

John:

huge bear market in the public markets for sure.

Jordi:

Look at dave.com. Dave dot com. Less in book value.

John:

That's up 40%.

Jordi:

Yeah. A bunch of others. So, Wait. Is this

John:

the last 7 days? Oh my God. Like, I'm looking at this and it's, like, Sizzles up a 103%. I think it's the last 7 days. I'm not I'm not sure, but,

Jordi:

like, that's the reason. Open a a Publix.

John:

Publix to, yeah, start a hedge fund, man.

Jordi:

Yeah.

John:

But yeah. I mean, I know I know a decent amount of these companies, but there there's a ton on here. It's, yeah. It's good to be back.

Jordi:

It's good to be back.

John:

Good to be back. Matt Fried writes, I don't know. I feel like Waymo can solve most of their problems by adding just one additional seat.

Jordi:

So Waymo's counteracting the

John:

turret on top.

Jordi:

Remember, we've talked about the bird how bird really suffered in LA because it became the new hot thing

John:

to throw vandalized. To

Jordi:

throw a bird off of a 10 story skyscraper. So we've seen Waymo's, get into similar situations where they're alone in a street and maybe a bunch of people decide to start doing donuts around the Waymo and maybe jumping on it, lighting it on fire. So anyways, I think I think Waymo would be smart to I would look at potentially partnering with Anduril and getting some of their FPV drones that just sort of, like, follow the Waymo

John:

Flock safety?

Jordi:

Protect it. Flock safety works, but I want, like, something kinetic. Right? Like, you need you need that kinetic potential.

John:

Didn't they acquire some of the drone company?

Jordi:

But it's No. Non kinetic. Non kinetic. So now Waymo needs, you know, suicide drones trailing it, and there needs to be laws to protect AI. Right?

Jordi:

Because I think humans are a bigger threat to AI right at this moment Yep. Than AI is a threat to humans. So Yep. To make sure we don't piss the AI off too much, we should allow, AI rights.

John:

Yeah.

Jordi:

Self defense is a is a important, principle.

John:

Yeah. I mean, everything about this the decision to start in San Francisco just feels better and better because it's, like, an extremely chaotic city where I mean, they they obviously did the the the pilot in Arizona, which was, like, a super safe, like, super wide open streets, like, always, like, dry, no hills.

Jordi:

So And

John:

then once they got that going, they went straight to the hardest mode, like Yeah. Level 1,000 going into San Francisco, like, crazy streets, tons of pedestrians, like, shoddy streets, like, all sorts of weather, fog, and also people who will vandalize you. So if they can solve that, it's gonna be a breeze to go to Chicago or LA.

Jordi:

Here's here's gonna be the big unlock for Waymo. So when Waymo instead of doing Uber black

John:

Mhmm.

Jordi:

Because all Waymo cars are, like, clean and fairly spacious, and it's nice inside. So maybe black doesn't matter, but they should have a Waymo turbo s functionality. Right? Where you call a, 992 turbo s Yep. And just say, like, hey.

Jordi:

Look. Drive however you want, but just try to keep it 15 over the speed limit, which is maybe, like, where police aren't gonna bother you, but just stay under that and, let me really enjoy the car while I'm in it. Right?

John:

I like that.

Jordi:

So Waymo, please roll out turbo s's. We will pilot them around Yes. Los Angeles.

John:

Yeah. This is correct. Elon says, use grok for answers that are based on up to date info. Chat GPT has no idea on on whom Donald Trump has assigned new responsibility of enforcing our borders. Grok is real time.

John:

Chat GPD is outdated. Interesting. I mean, there is something great about Grok being, you know, integrated with the the timeline. I love that. Yeah.

John:

But, I haven't I actually haven't used it that much. I've used it for a couple, like, generative images Yeah. Because I feel like it's a lot less restrained there. So if you wanna do something fun for, like, a kid and you wanna do, like, oh, it's gonna be Mickey Mouse and Paw Patrol together Boom. Boom.

John:

Go to Grot. Yeah. I think we should go for just, like, the the the news, the the the default l l m. It's not in my home row in that Yeah. Way.

Jordi:

Yeah. I think we should go on record and say that we we support AI. We we are excited about all the foundation models, and, but we are excited about ways that these foundation models can differentiate. Right? Yep.

Jordi:

And this is one of them. Yep. Not only is XAI have sort of an interesting distribution hack

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

Through x, but, they certainly have found ways to resonate with a broader audience outside of the college students that are using chat gpt to to solve their homework problem or write an essay for them.

John:

Yeah. It's great. So gotta mix that in more. I use perplexity. I use chat gpt.

John:

Claude every once in a while. Really? I kinda go back and forth on it. I kinda subscribe and unsubscribe. Because every once in a while, you see the meme of, like, oh, Claude's doing really well.

John:

Like, the responses are really good. And it has been good, but the UI, honestly, is is great for me.

Jordi:

So Yeah.

John:

I back off. But I think if you're programming, Claude has been had become, like, the default integration for cursor. So, yeah, I I I think, you know, we could be seeing some bifurcation, some Yep. Some specialization. Let's go to the other AI founder.

John:

Sam Altman says, more generally, I am feeling good about a bright future for cryptocurrency. Here we go. Risk on. Risk on. Yeah.

John:

It I mean, this is one of the interesting things, like, you know, there a lot of the AI people have been very, very bearish on crypto because they see it as this, like, 0 sum rivalry. Like Yeah. Either the VCs are in AI or crypto. They're going back and forth. And that's somewhat true.

John:

Same thing with talent, like Yeah. Developing for crypto is hard. Developing for AI is hard. Yeah. So you need the best do you need the best talent?

John:

You wanna be sucked away by some person that's, like, oh, I'm making I'm getting so rich working at a crypto company. But it's good that he has this perspective at the top end of saying, this isn't zero sum. We actually need both, especially as we go to, like, you know, more global payments, the stable coins, the prediction markets, the speculation, the digital gold.

Jordi:

Yeah. I think part of it is there's real competition in the capital markets Yep. For there there's there's sometimes the capital feels infinite, which is an incredible feeling. But more often than not, these bigger allocators are looking at, you know, alright. We should be deploying into crypto this year.

Jordi:

We should be deploying into AI this year. And and, both industries in a perfect world would wanna take all of that. Right? Yep. And so, but we we've talked about this before with Sam.

Jordi:

One of the re I I honestly haven't followed Whirlcoin closely enough. It does feel like they're building some pretty crazy momentum from, like, talent standpoint.

John:

Bullish on World coin from day 1 just because Sam's involved. Yeah.

Jordi:

Like Yeah. And you've said, like, Sam just makes money. Yes. Period. So,

John:

Let's go to the bear case for crypto currently or maybe just some cautious optimism from Robert Leshner. He says, a cheat sheet of things that could blow up at 200 k BTC crazy volatility. Spot exchanges missing missing coins. I I think that's, like, maybe like a Robinhood thing. Is that what spot exchange missing coins mean?

John:

Like, if you're trading, like, percent essentially synthetic Bitcoin Yeah. And you don't actually necessarily own the under the underlying asset, derivative exchanging exchanges, miners that overwrote call options, defy borrowing markets, hedge funds, high leverage traders, including you, plan accordingly.

Jordi:

Funny. I I It's

John:

all lessons from the last bubble, basically.

Jordi:

I, I I first heard that as miners, as

John:

in, like, people under the young people. I mean, so many literal miners were huge in crypto Yeah. Especially NFTs, especially in the ICOs. Yeah. Lots of young people.

Jordi:

Can you imagine the NFT boom during, like, if you're in middle school and you had, like, and you had, like, a crypto wallet?

John:

Yeah. Yeah. And you get, like, a $100 and you run it up to Yeah.

Jordi:

But the the thing that's interesting about here is people always think about, like like, systemic risk and crypto as being prices dropping a ton, but the meteoric rise and I think this is a great call out. Can and, I think I've I've talked to Robert, like, one time years ago, but, like, very early and right with crypto. But, but, yeah, people aren't sort of prepared for the systemic risk that comes from just the market crap of crypto potentially doubling in the next few months. Right?

John:

Do we have any more promoted posts today?

Jordi:

Good question. Actually, on the note of, financial crypto, we have a promoted post from BlackRock. BlackRock says our chairman and CEO Larry Fink highlights in a recent Wall Street Journal op ed, which we love

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

That the most realistic path to reducing America's debt burden is through growth. He discusses the opportunity for US capital markets to drive growth by building hashtag infrastructure, particularly in data centers and hashtag AI technology. Larry says any realistic path out of debt has to rely mainly on growth. We need to increase the size of our economy so that what we owe becomes smaller relative to what we make. So

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

Incredible. We we should consider printing this out and just kind of putting it on the wall because it's worth coming back to. But,

John:

hey, this is this is fascinating. I heard this interesting take from Ben Thompson that, that if you're if you're a government and you're in debt, there are 2 ways out of it. 1 is to kind of unstagnate yourself and Yeah. And bring about economic growth, which is what Larry is arguing for, which I strongly support. It's a very hard problem.

John:

There's a piece of deregulation. There's a piece innovation. There's a whole bunch of things that need to go right to actually get GDP above 2% to, like, the 3, 4, 5% range that would be

Jordi:

Yeah. We've talked about this on the podcast going from 2% annual GDP growth to 4% would solve, like, pretty much of our problems. Exactly. So yeah.

John:

But the other but the other way that governments are tempted to solve a debt crisis is always inflation. Yeah. But democracy has this, like, built in kind of escape valve for inflation because inflation hurts the average voter, the average consumer so much. Yep. Because even though right now, like, inflation has declined, that's the rate of inflation.

John:

The prices didn't go back to before the inflation. Look at the sec. Yeah. And so a lot of people are still hurting even though, yeah, the prices aren't going up anymore. They're they're still high relative to what people perceive, you know, a banana should cost or a gallon of gasoline should cost.

John:

And so there's a lot of pressure, and most of the US elections are, like, referendums on the economy, referendums on the right track, wrong track. How is the country doing? Yep. And so there's this hopefully, over time, there's this forcing function to, like, do not inflate the debt away. Instead, let's focus on growth.

John:

Let's focus on

Jordi:

And and going back to the Trump pump, the sort of virtuous cycle of saying, let's get government spending in control. Let's spend more efficiently. Let's spend in the right places. Let's accelerate. And let's let's focus on growing the economy, which I think is a core tenants of, the new administration regardless of your political beliefs.

John:

Yeah. Let's go to Buco Capital Bloke. He says, private company SaaS employees hearing that the IPO window is closed with markets at all time highs, Dogecoin mooning, and Carvana up 800% year to date. And it's a picture of Shane Gillis. So A great sketch So I think with a gun

Jordi:

in his mouth. This guy is very sharp on, sass broadly. Yes. I don't know. I have no idea where he works or whatever,

John:

but he's clearly, an

Jordi:

insider within that world. And I think what he's actually speaking to is all of the if you're in the top 20% private companies right now Yep. Every single one of those companies is looking at we are gonna go public Yes. Within the next 2 years.

John:

It just takes time. Like, the IPO window is open. There's thousands starting.

Jordi:

Now here's the issue, though. There's thousands of other private unicorns They're

John:

backlogged.

Jordi:

That that are no. That just don't have the traction of momentum.

John:

Okay.

Jordi:

And so he's talking about these employees that are maybe at the number 49

John:

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jordi:

Yeah. Unicorn SaaS company who's like, yeah. We have 30,000,000 of ARR, but we're only 40% a year. And, yes, the IPO window is closed for you. Right?

Jordi:

Just because you shouldn't probably go public.

John:

That makes sense. I I I just think, like, generally, they shouldn't be hearing the IPO window is closed in that scenario. They should be hearing the IPO window is about to open up in a big way. We need We are good enough. We need to double down.

John:

We need to grind. We need to gear. Yeah. We need to get into gear because this is the opportunity if they wanna go public.

Jordi:

Or I think, you know, some of those companies maybe they maybe they, you know, end up merging with others and creating enough revenue and and,

John:

Let's go to Adam Singer with a related post. He says, Dogecoin is up a 170 percent in the last month, and it's a picture of someone throwing the intelligent investor by Benjamin Graham in the trash.

Jordi:

That photo, I feel like is is very Lindy over the last few years. Yeah. Almost every single year, you could use it in some capacity Yep. Almost every single day or month.

John:

And a friend who bought bought Dogecoin or Dogecoin before the election.

Jordi:

Dogecoin. Dogecoin.

John:

I wonder if it's related to, like, literally, like, the Doge, the Department of Government Industry or

Jordi:

I think it ends up I mean, it it Doge obviously has always traded, to some degree based on Elon's attention towards it. Right?

John:

It's hilarious because the founder, like, completely distanced himself from this. You know the history of Doge? No. So the the founder of Dogecoin created it as a as a joke because he was anti cryptocurrency Yeah. And thought that all cryptocurrency was a scam and a fraud.

John:

And so he created the dumbest possible thing. The dumbest possible token, Dogecoin, based on And he did he effectively kicked off Meme coins. Meme coins. It's the first meme coin.

Jordi:

Yeah. He's the reason that pumped up fund has done, like, 2 100,000,000

John:

of of net He created an entire industry. Yeah. And he sold all his Doge, and he's been very against it. And he's put out these, like, long posts saying that, like, this is everything wrong.

Jordi:

Tiers with $100.

John:

With $100. I think he sold too early. I don't know. May maybe he still has some.

Jordi:

Did you hear did you hear about the, the the best trader last week was a trader that turned $17 into about $3,000,000 with peanut?

John:

Peanut. I've never heard

Jordi:

I've never heard about that,

John:

but I heard about this trade.

Jordi:

So and that made me think meme coins are the new American lottery

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

For the terminally online.

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

Right? And anybody, like, just that one trade will probably inspire a $1,000,000,000 of new investment in meme coins. Totally. Right?

John:

Yep. So I mean, I remember doing the last Dogecoin pump. There was this guy who was, like, the Dogecoin millionaire, and he was doing podcasts about how he put his life savings in Dogecoin, ran it up to a couple million. It completely tanked. He had, like, 10 k, was broke, and then he was like, I'm not selling.

John:

I'm not selling. So I hope he didn't sell any. I hope he's back up because Yeah. You know, we'd love to see that.

Jordi:

I wanna put the word out that we're back up.

John:

Let's go to, Siki Chen, Blader. Is that how you pronounce it? We'll see. Later. Next year feels like it will be the best year in the history in history to be in tech as a founder, employer, employee, investor, anything.

John:

He got one k likes. It has that vibe. Right? Build in winter never felt so real and so good.

Jordi:

I love Sikhi. I've actually never met him in person, but just interacts them online. Interact, runs Runway. He started that company. I think he was an early VP.

Jordi:

Yeah. He started, kinda blank on the the name of it, but it's the IRL VR. VR. Yeah. No.

Jordi:

Not playground. Yeah.

John:

I forget what it is.

Jordi:

Ben, what what's the name of the VR company that Seqy started? It's in here. Yeah.

John:

It it it it But they had a really tough time in COVID Yeah. Exactly. Because it was in person VR experiences.

Jordi:

But now he's got this amazing company called Runway

John:

that, Gary's an investor.

Jordi:

Yeah. Gary invested in it. Andreesen's in it. Cool. Anish, my friend over there, I think Cool.

Jordi:

Did led one of their rounds. But, Siki's, always been, just extremely, I would say, like, tech positive. Yep. Totally. And, his company Runway is doing something really interesting.

Jordi:

They're they're basically applying some of the same, like, kind of mechanics that you have in Figma to p and l's and pro formas and helping everybody at a company better understand, the numbers in their business. Yep.

John:

Do we have another promoted post?

Jordi:

Yep. This promoted post is from Cartier. They say, in steel, rose gold, or paved with diamonds, the tank Americana celebrates the casual chic spirit of a continent on American time. Hashtag Cartier tank. So anyways, if you are a technology brother and looking for a nice gift, for a significant other

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

The Cartier tank is a great option. Fantastic. It's a fantastic one. Investment, but it's something that has stood the test of of time.

John:

And Are you familiar with the history of the Cartier tank?

Jordi:

I don't know the tank. I know the Santos.

John:

Oh, yeah. No. The tank is, like, fabulous. Of course, I know

Jordi:

the tank.

John:

Yeah. But but it was worn by Jackie Kennedy.

Jordi:

Yep. It

John:

was worn by Muhammad Ali Yep. And, Andy Warhol. Yep. And so it's this interesting blend where it's it is sent is seen in some ways as, like, a feminine watch, but it's been worn by arguably, like, the most masculine guy in history, Muhammad Ali Yeah. And also this, like, interesting artist in Andy Warhol.

John:

And so it's cut across it's cut across all of the cultural Yeah. Barriers in a really fascinating way. And it's just a really striking design. It's beautiful. The Tank American is, is a little bit more rectangular, a little bit more Rectangular is this one is.

John:

But, but it's a but, but it's a fantastic watch, and, and I highly recommend it to anyone who's in the market. Well and and thanks to Cartier. Let's go to, Mary Guneirate, Otne. She says, Genius Bar Employees asked me what I do for work, and I didn't lie. We're so back.

Jordi:

What does she do? So Mary has a crypto protocol. Okay. I invested

John:

a few in the I'm in the preseason.

Jordi:

Round. Yeah. They, her and her cofounder Luke have just, weathered the absolute storm

John:

Mhmm.

Jordi:

Focused on fundamentals Mhmm. And actually building products that that, their users love.

John:

Mhmm.

Jordi:

They've iterated multiple times. They've stayed focused. I I love the team over there. They did this as

John:

Jason Calacanis who told me to pivot to AI.

Jordi:

Yeah. They had a lot of people like Jay Cal telling them pivot to AI, pivot to AI, pivot to defense tech, refused. Anyways, brilliant team. And, I'm happy to see that Mary's no longer embarrassed to say what she does for a living because she is a phenomenal founder and,

John:

cheers to Mary.

Jordi:

Cheers to Mary.

John:

Potential future brother of the week.

Jordi:

Yep.

John:

Let's go to Zach, the founder of Bridge. Sold this company to Stripe recently. He says, in the last week, I've heard that a dozen developers building with Bridge are raising rounds slash have term sheets. Makes me so incredibly happy. We're entirely focused on empowering these builders.

John:

Supporting their success is all that matters.

Jordi:

So it's funny when when Bridge got acquired for 1,100,000,000 Yep. About a month ago, everybody was just like, oh, stable coins, Bridge Yep. Stripe. That makes sense.

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

I don't think it was talked about enough that Stripe likely made that acquisition because they saw that the brightest, most exciting companies building in stable coins were using Bridge Sure. Which was exactly what what Stripe built their entire business on,

John:

which making

Jordi:

sure all the best new founders in the Bay Area were using Stripe. So, anyways, people that felt like that was a crazy price to pay or they were like, they only have 15,000,000 of revenue or they're paying this crazy multiple on revenue to acquire the business. Stripe was basically, I imagine, making a venture style bet

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

Into a company that they saw themselves in. So excited to see, what comes out of, developers building on Bridge. And

John:

And congrats to Zach again. Yep. Reggie James says the cost for lack of vision? A crowded market. Yep.

John:

Underrated tweet. 63 likes deserve 6 k.

Jordi:

Lotam banger.

John:

Banger. Really good point. Really good point. This is the market map thing. If it's on the market map

Jordi:

So you don't have vision. Here's an example. So Worldcoin Yep. Clearly has vision. It's had a lot of critics over the years.

Jordi:

Oh, why do you have this? Or why are you scanning

John:

everybody's clearly vision

Jordi:

Yeah. Yeah. They're scanning eyeballs, like, all over the world. And in one of the world's most competitive industries where people will switch between products very rapidly, you know, they'll cycle through multiple protocols in the same day crossing across different l twos to l ones to l threes not caring. They've carved out a lane and have a vision, and you could maybe argue that they don't have competition in what they're doing.

John:

Mhmm.

Jordi:

So, you know, Reggie is very unique entrepreneur and, I think, historically, has always tried to do the same. Right? Like, have that, unique point of view and focus.

John:

Yeah. He also just always focuses on, like, taste and design and, like, these interesting things that always get forgotten by the core Silicon Valley folks.

Jordi:

The YC crowd.

John:

Yeah. Well, it's not just the YC crowd. It's, like, you you can dismiss design and taste if you're just a developer and you only care about, like, what is the programmatic truth, what is the mathematical proof of this thing, and and maybe design takes a back seat to that. Yeah. Or if you're just the business guy, and you're just, like, whatever makes money, maybe this taste thing or having good design or having a strong opinion or a vision, that doesn't make sense this quarter.

John:

But Reggie has always been good about, like, looking further into the future. I think that calls back to, like, an earlier era of Silicon Valley, which I really respect. Let's go to Gabby Goldberg. She says, the hawk to a girl ships faster than most of us on this app. And it's a quote tweet of TechCrunch saying, the hawk to a girl launches Pookie tool, an AI powered dating advice app, and it's fine.

John:

Yeah. And I love this. You had a good take about this because there's been a lot of doubt in AI recently. Yeah. My my

Jordi:

thing is I was happy to see she wasn't discouraged by the recent potentially scaling sort of of

John:

wall Yep. Yep. Yep. There's a lot of fear in AI.

Jordi:

She's not she's just shipping. She's building. That's what everybody should basically be doing. You can't be afraid. You just gotta ship.

Jordi:

And here's And

John:

there's a lot of hate on rappers right now. There's a lot oh, you shouldn't build a chat GPT rapper. Well, what does she have? She has a cornered resource in her audience

Jordi:

She's got attention.

John:

Where, yes, who knows if this is that much better than just asking vanilla chat gpt? But if she can drive people to this app, she can monetize that. She's effectively acting as, like, an affiliate of OpenAI. Here's And sure, it's not gonna be a $1,000,000,000,000 company. It's not gonna disrupt Yeah.

John:

OpenAI, but it's going to create a lot of value. And that's what matters.

Jordi:

A potential thing with the Internet. So historically, people would have their 15 minutes of fame. Right? Yep. Talk to a girl You

John:

know her website? No. 16 minutes

Jordi:

16 minutes. That's great.

John:

Fantastic. I saw that.

Jordi:

She's she's Really good. She's smart. She clearly has a smart team around her. I actually know she does her podcast with Joey Joey from Yeah. I know.

Jordi:

Better. Better. But, but look, historically, you'd have your 15 minutes of fame, and then the traditional media would move on because you were no longer

John:

You would have captured any of that audience.

Jordi:

You couldn't capture anything in

John:

that moment. She has millions

Jordi:

of followers already. 15 minutes of fame, get your 5,000,000 followers, however many it is, and then continue to monetize that and ship against it and iterate. And so I think that's underrated. More people should be trying to get their 15 minutes of fame because it can actually convert into a very, very, meaningful career for her. I'm sure she's having the time of her life.

John:

Yeah. Yeah. It seems great.

Jordi:

So classic American story of making a sex joke or having some sex related video and then turning it into a career like the Kardashians.

John:

Yep. Fantastic. Let's go to Chris and Frank. He says, some are calling Elon the George Soros of the right. That's not really accurate.

John:

He's more like 44 George Soros's of the right because Elon Musk has $320,000,000,000 and George Soros has 7.

Jordi:

Here's the thing. Wow.

John:

Here's Okay. Put on the tinfoil hat. We're in we're in the conspiracy zone.

Jordi:

The conspiracy zone.

John:

The scientists are out of the room. It's bro scientist now. Yep. Let's hear it. Experts,

Jordi:

take a step back.

John:

Take a step back.

Jordi:

So here's the thing. I'm fully in favor of this. I like that we're rebuilding the deep state. We're making the deep state great again.

John:

Great.

Jordi:

That said, I do have to imagine that George Soros, who has, done some of the most heinous, political acts in the history of the country, is the kind of billionaire that would want his, sort of a net worth to be under, like, under projected. Right?

John:

Okay. Yeah.

Jordi:

The real billionaire class is saying, I don't wanna be on the Forbes list.

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

If I have to be, put me down at this much. Yep. Yep. I don't want people to know that I have $200,000,000,000. Like, I'd rather people just think that I'm, like, you know, a Barocchi BeanAir Yep.

Jordi:

With, you know, $7,000,000,000. Sure. Sure. Sure. He at a certain point, once you're a billionaire, like, any sort of adding numbers to it doesn't do much.

Jordi:

You're a

John:

And Soros is harder to clock because it's all in this fund and stuff. It's not like Yeah. With with Elon, it's very easy to just say, okay. He owns 20% of this big company.

Jordi:

And I have to imagine he's very pro taxation Yep. Just across the board. You have to imagine that he, does some creative things with his accounts, including, offshore activity that would mitigate that. So shout out to, the new Soros, Elon Musk.

John:

Fantastic. Let's go to Zeke, at Zeke'd up. He says, I can't wait to pump my system full of niche tech Twitter influencer, John Coogan's proprietary lock in chemicals. And then he quote tweets hell. My mom told me not to smoke cigarettes.

John:

She didn't say shit about online chewy chemical brain boost pouches sold by a handsome conservative investor with a podcast about combining technology and frat bros. Incredible. Put it on the put it on the wall. Frame it. Frame it right now.

John:

I I I I I don't even think I could reply to this because I didn't know where never reply. I didn't know where to start. It was just like Zeke thumbs up.

Jordi:

Wait. When we posted about when we posted about the blood boy giveaway, somebody said

John:

Oh, yes. RIP. RIP. He's gonna be the blood boy. I don't know.

John:

Zeke. Does he have blood boy physiognomy or something?

Jordi:

We're gonna have to do kind of a deeper analysis there. Okay. Yeah. But before we get into the next

John:

Oh, yeah. Yeah. We got a promoted post. Let's go.

Jordi:

Promoted post from Langchain. We asked you answered our state of AI agents report is here. We surveyed 1300 industry professionals from developers to business leaders on how they're using AI agents today and the results are in. What are the top use cases for agents? What the biggest challenges when building agents?

Jordi:

Who's finding success after deploying their agents to production? Go to langchain.com/stateofaiagents to get the full report. And, thank you to Lang Chain.

John:

Yeah. Thank you to Lang Chain. Let's go to Gabby Goldberg. She says coffee shops. Yeah.

John:

Gabby's in in here twice. She's she's crushing it this week. Coffee shops opening at 10 AM is the sign of a crumbling society.

Jordi:

That's always been my issue in New York. Yep. You ever go to New York and you wake up? I thought it

John:

was the city that never sleeps. You can always get

Jordi:

coffee in New York. Seriously, I'll wake up in New York. I gotta wait, like, 3 hours. What? 3 Is

John:

that real?

Jordi:

Yeah. Their their coffee shops open up super late. Weird. You gotta find, like, these random I

John:

feel like in LA, like, Starbucks opens at 6. Like

Jordi:

That's the thing. Everybody's, like, oh, the city that never sleeps. No. New Yorkers are not getting coffee at 6 AM.

John:

Interesting.

Jordi:

Maybe it's because the people that are actually getting up at 6 AM are just getting coffee at their office. Or

John:

they're drinking cocaine.

Jordi:

That's always been my yeah. That's always been my frustration with New York. Yeah. New York's gotta get it together. It literally is hurting the economy that people can't get more cups of Joe around the city at earlier hours.

Jordi:

So

John:

Yep. Yep. Figure it out. Let's go to Gary Tan. This is great because we see the follow back icon.

John:

That means he already follows us, but this is the first time on the show because we haven't followed him. After we post, we're going to follow him. Yep. And then he will be an honorary technology brother. Yep.

John:

Potential brother of the week, maybe.

Jordi:

Yeah. He he might deserve brother of the week for the recent s f election

John:

and I mean, so many wins with this guy. It's just w's every single week. It's gonna be hard. He's gonna be in the running a lot. I can feel it.

John:

Yeah. I need plaques on that. So Gary says, design for super early startups seems like it has become increasingly a lost art. This is kinda what Reggie was talking about. Great simple UX that has clear call to actions, obvious nav, good use of contrast, and no distracting ornamentation, sadly waning.

John:

How you do anything is how you do everything. What a great post. And and it makes sense because Gary is a designer. Like, he designed the Palantir logo. You know this?

Jordi:

I did not.

John:

It's crazy. Yeah. He was, like, one of the earliest employees of Palantir. Did he

Jordi:

do Coinbase?

John:

Design the logo. Too? I don't know if he did Coinbase's logo, but, I mean, Coinbase was in my YC batch, summer 12. Gary was around there. I'm sure he's super close with them.

John:

And then I think Initialize did, like, one of major rounds or something. They had a ton of money on that.

Jordi:

Wait. So you were in Wise Coinbase?

John:

Yeah. With Brian.

Jordi:

So you how much did you invest?

John:

I didn't have any money. We're gonna have

Jordi:

to cut that. We're gonna have to cut this out.

John:

But but but but you know what is crazy? In in our YC badge, the referral bonus for going on Coinbase at the time was 1 Bitcoin.

Jordi:

That's wild.

John:

It was like, dude, if you sign up, I'll give you $5 in the form of 1 Bitcoin.

Jordi:

That's amazing. Yeah. I I would say, like, small example here is the reason that more start up there's no excuse not to have great design Yep. At an early stage company is all it takes is one person with good taste

John:

Yes.

Jordi:

And even one person with a freelancer that has good taste. Yes.

John:

Yes.

Jordi:

That's, that's that's all it takes. Right? It doesn't you simply have to care about it a tiny little bit Yep. And you can make it happen.

John:

Yep. And

Jordi:

more people just, like, hire the designer that they know Yep. Or they go online and

John:

ask for recommendations. And has already Yeah. Like, there's this weird, like, trend where, you know, there's someone who has a lot of taste Yeah. And then they start scaling their operation, and they start delegating, and you're still paying $300,000 for, like, b tier, c tier talent because good taste. The real tastemaker is working with, like, the Fortune 500 clients now, and you're out the game.

John:

Yeah.

Jordi:

And I I, you know, party around had great design early because the first hire that we made was Brandon Jacoby. He was the first person to join the team. He had been at Cash App for 4 years. He was still, like, 23, 24 at the time. So it wasn't like we had you know, it wasn't like he was like, no.

Jordi:

I need to make 350 k a year base. So I think that investors should be extremely judgmental of companies that have poor design because it's basically you should figure out a way to get it done for almost $0. I agree. And then all it takes from that point on is hiring one person who's a great designer, and you should be able to attract that person. Otherwise, you're not compelling as a founder.

Jordi:

Or if you don't care about design, great designers will not wanna join your

John:

company. I agree. Bifrost Orbital says, the youngest teenagers to have built satellites at the age of 16 have made it to y Combinator. Ankar, CEO, now 19, and Gefin, CTO, now 23.

Jordi:

So You said you

John:

wanted to, like Incredible accomplishment. Yes. Congrats congrats on YC.

Jordi:

Great. Pretty good pretty good traction on this post. Yeah. That said, I wanted to invite these guys to send us a note, and we will help you learn to post because I

John:

This could have been way way more viral. If it was from the actual founder's account Yep. And it was a deep dive into tell me more.

Jordi:

Not in the 3rd person.

John:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Tell me more. Like, what were you doing at 6 I would wanna show me a picture of the satellite that you built.

John:

I wanna

Jordi:

see, like, first line, we built our first first satellite at 16.

John:

Now we're in y c. Here's the story. Boom. Exactly.

Jordi:

So anyways, we Yeah. We don't do this often.

John:

Pro bono consulting. Pro

Jordi:

bono consulting will help you guys learn This will pop.

John:

For

Jordi:

sure. And I imagine these guys, you know Yep. Within the next 10 years, we'll get

John:

brother of the week. Yeah. I I agree. I couldn't agree more. So hit us up.

John:

We will help you. Thanks. Moving on. Dennis says, g p t rapper of Chat GPT itself is $5,000,000 a month.

Jordi:

And, you know you know That is crazy. There was there was a time where you could search Chat GPT in the app store

John:

and not crazy stuff.

Jordi:

Because it was all just, like, iterations on the name. Like, the same exact name. Like, a bunch of trademark

John:

That's why they bought chat.com.

Jordi:

And OpenAI doesn't actually have to do anything really because they're all just paying OpenAI.

John:

It's all just front end.

Jordi:

I would say, like, a lot of that revenue is probably just going back

John:

to Yeah.

Jordi:

Yeah. Yeah. To to OpenAI.

John:

I do wonder where the margins are on this. Like, are they able to market up enough and and kinda fooling up people? I'm sure it's a very simple it's a very simple job.

Jordi:

You only need 1, probably 2 engineers to build that product.

John:

The one thing that I really hope is that I hope this is a kid. I hope this is some really, really young founder who will learn from this and wind up, you know, making some money, putting something away, and then winding up and going and doing something much more ambitious soon. Because just just seeing 5 million a month show up in your Stripe account, moving it around, hiring

Jordi:

people, stuff

John:

like that.

Jordi:

We're gonna claim credit for this. 10 years ago, it was trading sneakers. It was, like, the hustler thing. Today, it's a chat g p t r.

John:

For sure. The Riz app, all these different things, like, you know, tarot card readers.

Jordi:

I wanna see the Rizler Yep. Drop a Hawkgirl. I wanna see if She's gonna build something real. Brianna, the chicken fry girl do a a chat app that you can talk to abusive Zach Bryan on. Wow.

Jordi:

That would have There

John:

we go.

Jordi:

Some numbers.

John:

Here we go. Do we have another promoted post?

Jordi:

Yep. This one is from Akash, who is over at Ramp. He says the Tri Ramp, and web engineering team is hiring. Let's cook. And he chose this tweet because

John:

So this is a premier post specifically for ramp as a

Jordi:

employer. Employer.

John:

A place to go work.

Jordi:

Okay. So if you're an engineer, go go check out the jobs they have.

John:

Is there a link?

Jordi:

And the reason that we chose this one is that, Adam over at repview Oh, yeah. That's good. Ranked, a bunch of potential 2025 IPO candidates, and Wiz was just a hair above Ramp. Ramp was almost the number one, IPO candidate.

John:

Oh, by point 07. Wow.

Jordi:

Yeah. So very we would honestly could be we kinda need it Yeah. Let the experts dig in.

John:

I think when you put that in the truth zone, we'll dig in. You have

Jordi:

to put this in the truth zone. Yeah. But, go DM Akash if you're interested in joining Ramp or apply on, Ramp's, Ashby job.

John:

Yep. Dream job. Let's go to Sharif Shareem. He says, nobody gives a damn about your road maps or strategy decks. Just show them a demo.

John:

So insanely great. It feels like you stole it from 5 years in the future. 1 k likes. I love that. Yeah.

John:

I agree. I I I am pro road map and I'm pro deck. I don't know about pro strategy deck.

Jordi:

Decks are the funniest thing

John:

because necessarily show them to people other than, you know, investors need to see a deck, but I think there's still something valuable about writing memos.

Jordi:

Investors don't need to see a deck if you have a banger demo and you are super compelling. Yep. It helps if you're an insider. It helps if you speak the language. Yep.

Jordi:

It helps if you've maybe interned at a venture fund or whatever it is. But build a phenomenal demo, get some users, show people that you can ship and ship quickly, and then still make a great deck because it'll help you get that, you know, maybe 2 x evaluation, if you do it right.

John:

Yep. Michael Mirafloor says the Patek Philippe generations campaign, obviously, we're a big fan of this here, has been running for years years now. One of the best of all time in my honest opinion and I couldn't agree more. It's the famous tagline, you probably know this. You never actually own a Patek Philippe.

John:

You merely look after it for the next generation, and it's a side by side of, an old ad and a new ad, and it's essentially the same the same campaign. And it really speaks to the value of, like, getting your marketing message correct early, building that brand essence, something that you can live on for live and die by for generations. I remember, talking to the guy who did Warby early brand development. And, he said that Warby Parker, they landed on this idea of, quote, the literary life. Are you familiar with this?

John:

So you've never seen it in a Warby Parker ad. It's never been on a billboard. It's not a catchphrase that they that they use anywhere on their website. It's merely just the brand essence that they keep in mind when they're doing other stuff. What is Warby Parker?

John:

It's the literary life. So that answers the question of what do their pop up shops look like? They look like libraries because that's the literary life. What what does the website look like? Well, it looks bookish.

John:

It looks like something that, you know, someone who's reads in a coffee shop would enjoy. What about the colors, the tones, the music, the fonts? Everything comes from that essence and getting that right early is just, like, once the arrow has left the bow, it just sails. And so, the tech fleet is a fantastic fantastic representation of that. And even though it's a watch brand, you can apply that to your tech startup.

John:

Absolutely. Absolutely. We see it with ramp. Let's go to Die Workwear, Derek Guy. He says, uh-oh.

John:

I'm going to jail because Donald Trump has nominated Matt Gaetz as the eternal general for the United and,

Jordi:

Yeah. So these guys have an amazing history. Basically, Derek, Derek creates a lot of beef with powerful people. Yes. Powerful people tend to wear suits.

Jordi:

Yes. And Derek has a lot of opinions and knowledge about, suits. I'm sure when he sees this video, hopefully, we don't get dunked on too hard. Derek, if you're watching this

John:

Go easy.

Jordi:

Go, you know, you can you can dunk, but then give us some pointers in the DMs. Alright? But, anyways, Derek has historically, you know, called out Matt for having some absolutely horrendous fits over the years. Like, truly some some, like, worst fit ever worn in the White House type stuff. And so that created some beef.

Jordi:

Okay. And, you know, this new administration is ambitious. Right? There's a lot of people in Washington and, some some some posters that have been living out that are a little bit, worried.

John:

Yeah. Could be could be rough, but, you know, we stand with posters generally. So as long as he doesn't go to Blue Sky or threads, as long as Derek, you stay on x, you're safe. You're you're one of the good ones. Strong.

John:

Let's go to Kalshi. There's a bunch of drama. Rajvir says the Kalshi found founder has to be trying to get himself arrested right now.

Jordi:

It's just an intention game.

John:

Because, Shane got his phone raided by the FBI. We support Shane. We support Poly Market here. And then, Sarah says leaked email shows Kelsey, growth executive, tried to plant a news story containing false claims about wash trading and money laundering on Poly Market. Kelsey appears to be spreading misinformation about Poly behind the scenes, and it is a great time.

Jordi:

If that is a real

John:

I don't know if that's true.

Jordi:

I'm not gonna That's a real email. I don't think we can we're not journalists, so we're not, we're experts.

John:

Yeah. We do. In many things, but not journalists.

Jordi:

Yeah. We're not journalists. Yeah. We're not fact checkers.

John:

But it is it is crazy how how hot the fight between the prediction markets is. I mean, it feels like Uber and Lyft right now where Yep. You know, if you're not in the Poly Market, you gotta get into Kelsey. Yeah.

Jordi:

Raj is big picture.

John:

Is it gonna be a power law winner? Is it gonna be more alagopolistic? Like, people don't really know, so they're testing the waters.

Jordi:

In many ways, the Kalshi versus poly market thing was a political battle of platforms. Right? Poly market is stands for many of the principles that the new administration is for. Kalshi is for regulation. They've gone after being, like, we are the regulated, prediction market.

Jordi:

And in many ways, the campaign's tracked. Right? So Kalshi was spending $1,000,000 a day on Facebook

John:

Yep.

Jordi:

Just to get into the charts. Poly market had a lot more organic adoption and organic, media. So, in many ways, there's parallels. Not surprised that the current administration is is trying to come after, Poly market.

John:

Indeed. Let's go to, do we have another promoted post?

Jordi:

Promoted post. Okay.

John:

Let's do

Jordi:

it. The New York Philharmonic.

John:

Oh, I love the New York Phil.

Jordi:

Sounds of the season, a festive holiday matinee featuring New York Phil musicians conducted by Jeff Tizik on December 14th 15th. So learn more and buy tickets at nyphil.org/soundoftheseason. And I would say this could be something where we get the Technology Brothers community together. We all That'd

John:

be great.

Jordi:

Suits, and let's go to the New York, film

John:

together. I mean, we are recording this, like, blocks from the LA film. I'm a huge Gustavo Dudamel fan. My dog is named Gustavo Dudamel. Not a joke.

John:

Not a joke. I play a pretty big fan over the course. Yeah. He does. He's 20 k.

John:

But, yeah, I mean, I love classical music. It's a great way to, I find it just very meditative because you go and sit, listen to beautiful music, you're off your phone, it just clears your mind. Yeah. And it's still an opportunity to dress up, meet interesting people. The the the class of

Jordi:

And immerse yourself in truly loud opulence. Right? Truly.

John:

Truly. Truly. Truly.

Jordi:

Music is opulent.

John:

Yes. Yes. Absolutely. And so, can't recommend the New York Philharmonic enough. Please, if you're in New York or you're stopping by, go buy tickets and, Google it n y Phil at probably newyorkphilharmonic.com.

John:

And we're we're happy to support them on this show. Let's go to Michael Dubrovsky. He says that there's a beta testing opportunity. Hate hate pricking your finger, but love biomarkers. We launched a new product at Scifox, his company, and I need 5 people to beta test and provide feedback.

John:

Use the link in comments to get 50% off.

Jordi:

Right, is this We

John:

gotta try this. I mean, I think you can I think you can literally test your testosterone on an hourly like, a minute to minute basis?

Jordi:

Amazing.

John:

Seems like a massive breakthrough. Amazing. And and this Michael is the man who studied the testosterone levels of YC founders at his off-site. And so now he's gone a step further. He's being proactive.

Jordi:

Okay. We need to talk to this guy.

John:

We do.

Jordi:

I want we should we should get it. We should get

John:

Yeah.

Jordi:

This on our arm while we record and track our levels throughout Throughout the pod. Yep.

John:

Yeah. Where does it spike? Is it during the We

Jordi:

are ready.

John:

Is it during the brother of the week? You know, there there's a lot of different places where you need to be maxing out. I mean, that's a big part of why we record at 11 AM every day because that's when your testosterone

Jordi:

is peaking. Yeah.

John:

Let's go to Eclotte. Eclotte says, if you're 20 to 30 and your main circle isn't discussing buying another country, terraforming, building a new city, lengthening winter days, creating rain, building a vast industrial base powered by nuclear, then it's time to find a new circle. Couldn't we bring more? And I love this that our circle is discussing all of this. Yeah.

John:

It's like okay. This is, Praxis Dryden trying to buy, Greenland, terraforming. That's Augustine. Thomas Puero and Augustus. Creating rain, that's Augustus.

John:

Building a new city, there's a bunch of people in Kostura. Nuclear, we know

Jordi:

what a ton

John:

of nuclear people are doing. Doug Bernauer at Radiant just raised a $100,000,000 to do nuclear. It's fantastic. And then the industrial base obviously goes to Aaron Slodov and, and Chris Bowers at Hadrian.

Jordi:

Thank you to the absolute brothers

John:

The boys.

Jordi:

For, The gang. Doing your part.

John:

Yeah. Shout out to all of them. I wouldn't have my circle included Any

Jordi:

other way.

John:

Any other way. Any other way. It's fantastic. Do we have one last promoted post?

Jordi:

One last promoted post from Daniel Mason, close friend. And Daniel says, we've received 5,005 174 job applications in 2 weeks. We've interviewed 4 people. Why? We're looking for a very specific kind of engineer.

Jordi:

The kind who makes everyone else uncomfortable, which I like that. Right? Oftentimes, 10 xers kinda freak everybody out a little bit. They're, like, maybe their keyboard just has a of freak everybody out a little bit. They're like, maybe their keyboard just has a 1 and a 0 on it.

John:

There you go. Yep. Makes sense.

Jordi:

Anyway, so Daniel says, no someone. My DMs are open. So go to at d g mason on x, if you're interested, and there's more context on the role on his profile. Mhmm.

John:

Go check it out, and, we're happy to promote that on the show. Let's, close out with x gamers make great entrepreneurs, a post from Tom Beamham. We're used to locking in for fucking 13 hours straight sometimes. L m f a o. Couldn't agree more.

Jordi:

Couldn't agree more.

John:

Many, many cases. And we've talked about this before, but very interesting correlation Diablo players of all time, SBF, one of the worst League of Legends players of all time. And

Jordi:

look what happened to their companies.

John:

Clearly wasn't taking it seriously, wasn't locked in, was a fake gamer, which is Yeah.

Jordi:

And the key is

John:

the worst thing you can possibly do.

Jordi:

The key is to figure out a way to find that early love for video games that many of us had and apply it to Excel. Right?

John:

Like, you

Jordi:

and I were up until, god, probably 3:30 last night Yes. In the Technology Brothers model. Yes. Make just tweaking Making

John:

sure the profit is maximized.

Jordi:

Yeah. And, in many ways, like, it felt like being in a cod lobby. It felt like playing StarCraft 2. Right? Couldn't agree more.

Jordi:

Those those early days. So, apply that same, Xelliss, for the game to the game of business and become a student and player of capitalism.

John:

Yes. Become a student of capitalism, a player of capitalism. And that's our show. Thanks for watching. Subscribe.

John:

Give us 5 stars. Repost everything that we deliver on x.

Jordi:

Start clipping us.

John:

Start clipping us. Become an Andrew Tate disciple for this show. Yeah. Take our content. Amplify it however you want.

John:

Want. I

Jordi:

wanna I wanna do a small challenge. If you're a college student listening to this show, figure out how to make $10,000 a month clipping our content Yes. And hosting it. Yes. We will support you in that.

Jordi:

Yes.

John:

And we'll probably try

Jordi:

to hire you after you

John:

it. Fantastic.

Jordi:

That's a challenge for today.

John:

And cheers.

Jordi:

Cheers to

John:

1 k. Let's finish off the Dom Perignon

Jordi:

There we go.

John:

To 1 k and the being the fastest growing podcast in tech.

Jordi:

Delicious.

John:

And the most profitable podcast in the world. See you next time.

Jordi:

That's our show.

John:

That's our show.