Technology's daily show (formerly the Technology Brothers Podcast). Streaming live on X and YouTube from 12 - 3 PM PST Monday - Friday. Available on X, Apple, Spotify, and YouTube.
I didn't know that you had North Korean investors in your first company. That's wild. Was that hard? Welcome oh, we're live. Welcome to Technology Brothers, the most profitable podcast in the world.
John:Today, we are doing a deep dive on a classic Peter Thiel talk at South by Southwest back when South by Southwest rocked. It's called you are not a lottery ticket, and it's a big discussion of luck versus skill and hard work and a bunch of amazing frameworks came out of this. Most people know this, but I think even if you've seen it and you haven't seen it in a while, you're still gonna get a lot out of this, because we're gonna take it in a bunch of different directions, give you the high level, give you a bunch of analysis, and see how all of his predictions played out a decade later. So let's start off with
Jordi:Wait. Before we get into that Yeah. I just wanted to highlight one of our own posts. We spend a lot of time highlighting
John:Other people.
Jordi:Other people's posts, and and we wanted to highlight a post that's near and dear to our heart, which is a simple post, a low tam banger where we said last week we fucking love podcasting, and we're trying not to swear too much. Oh, yeah. We want our children to be able to listen to this.
John:It's also just low class
Jordi:and vulgar. Swearing is low class and vulgar, but every once in a while we slip up. We slipped up this post, but, we just wanted to say John and I really enjoy podcasting. And, we're we're glad that people listen to the show, but we'd still be doing it even without any listeners. We'd still be
John:recording recording,
Jordi:putting it out. So anyways, we're we're grateful to get to do this, and, thank you for listening. Thank you to everybody that's actually, tuning in and participating in this, cultural movement towards, technological, progress.
John:Yeah. So let's kick it off with you are not a lottery ticket. The core question that Peter is asking is to what extent is success in startups and life driven by luck versus skill planning or effort. The traditional perspective is luck can be overcome or influenced by hard work, but there is a contemporary bias that success is often seen as a function of random context, the lucky sperm club or birth circumstances. And Peter aims to debunk this.
John:And he has a whole host of great examples asking the question, was it luck or not? It's always hard to say when you go back and look at these, these narratives. Elon Musk went from PayPal to start SpaceX and Tesla, Jack Dorsey with Square and Twitter, Steve Jobs with Apple and Pixar. Thomas Jefferson once said, I'm a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more of it I have. Suggesting it is something that you can overcome.
John:Samuel Goodwin said, the harder I work, the luckier I get. And I think that, no matter what you think about luck, it's worth it's worth redefining it. Yep. And thinking about it as a, as as something that is a is a product of all the hard work. Yeah.
Jordi:My
John:my working definition of luck is something that it is the reward for incredible networking, independent thinking, and relentless work ethic. Yep. In contrast, today's dominant view is that success stems from the whole context, which is random. Maybe you were a member of the lucky sperm club, the lucky egg club. Maybe you're lucky where you were born, and that's what drives everything.
John:There's a version of this that applies to startups. The successful ones were accidental, and it's pretty clear how big a role luck plays.
Jordi:Yeah. It's funny being born and raised in California, I I, from a young age, had a sense of how lucky that was because I feel like I would travel and people globally would be would tell me, oh, I can't believe you're from California. I've always wanted to visit there. And then when they could, they would do whatever they could to go visit. Yep.
Jordi:And the thing about tech that's interesting is is doesn't matter like a lot of the most people successful people in tech Yeah. Were born far from the golden land of California and made the effort to move here.
John:Yeah.
Jordi:And so it doesn't, you know, being born here maybe you have some level of advantage, but you can create luck by simply moving to California.
John:Yeah. I always love the story of the founder of Discord, Jason Citron. He grew up, I think, in Florida in not even a major city and then went to a college that was like a trade school for video game development and then started one company. And I don't think it went anywhere, but there's this old video of him demoing it at TechCrunch Disrupt. And then finally figured it out with Discord and has just business.
John:Yeah. And it was clearly just built differently. But, Peter starts off by explaining that there's a difference between going from 0 to 1 and going from 1 to n. And so he has a 2, an x and y axis chart. 0 to 1 is technology, doing new things.
John:It's vertical. 1 to n is globalization. It's copying existing things and it's horizontal. And this will, echo through the rest of the presentation. And there's a very interesting, conversation in here where he says, I agree with Paul Graham on a lot of things, but I think this is a place where we just automatically channel our society's default bias.
John:And it's worth asking how much of this is true and how much of it is not. And we we discussed on a previous show, the this idea that maybe the advice of PG and the advice of Peter Thiel are actually at odds in many ways.
Jordi:So, like, talk to customers versus call your shot?
John:Exactly. Yeah. And and it and it and it goes into the way that they've tried the concentration strategies where Peter will try and be, you know, andro series c, a, d. I think they just put more money in the latest round, which I don't even know what the letter is, f or g. And it's just concentration, concentration, concentration, whereas y c has been diversified, diversified, diversified.
John:Yep. And, you know, they both work, but they're very different strategies. And so there's been this, you know, shift in cultural attitude in the past. Luck, would be, mass with something to be mastered, overcome by effort and vision. But in the present, success is seen as heavily dependent on an uncontrollable external factors, and that makes you very docile, and it makes you very, just indeterminate, which is something he'll go on to define.
Jordi:And there's a big there's a there's a there's a line from from Peter something about failure is not valuable at all. Like, it doesn't matter
John:Yep.
Jordi:That you didn't don't, like, pat yourself on the back being like, I learned a bunch because you could have failed in, like, 50 other ways. You just happen to fail that one way. Yep. And it matters a lot more of, like, how you actually won.
John:Yeah. No. I love that one. And so, Peter starts breaking down the whole crux of this, you are not a lottery ticket, speech is about this 2 by 2 matrix with 4 boxes, and it defines 2 axes. On the y axis, we have optimistic versus pessimistic.
John:How do you feel the future will play out? And then on the x axis, you have determinant versus indeterminate. And so he uses a number of different examples. Maybe we should start with the general category. So in the optimistic determinant category, you have engineering and art.
John:You you believe that you can change the world. You could believe you can do something, but you have to go and instantiate it yourself. In the optimistic indeterminate category, you have finance and law, which are tracked and heavily diversified. In the determined pessimistic scenario, you have wartime rationing. And in indeterminate pessimistic, you have insurance.
John:Something bad is going to happen and you're creating a a safety net. And, and then he also maps this to eras in geopolitics. And so, in the US, in the United States, between the fifties sixties, when we were going to the moon, we were very extremely optimistic but extremely determinate. We we realized, you know, JFK stands up and says, why do we climb mountains? Because they're there.
John:You know, why why do we go to the moon? Because we choose to go to the moon, and we did. And the indeterminate optimist has is what the US has fallen into currently, where the government doesn't build anything anymore. It's all just wealth transfers, and Peter calls out this this fascinating concept of, the government doesn't know what to do with the money, so they just give it to people.
Jordi:And
John:then the people don't know what to do with the money, so they put in index funds. And then the index funds don't know what to do with the money, so they give it to
Jordi:companies. But then
John:they diversify, and then the companies don't know what to do with money.
Jordi:Or California dividend. My my favorite the optimism of the California, government that we're just gonna build this, like, high speed rail line Yep. Yep. And spend 1,000,000,000 of dollars barely going a mile. That's sort of the
John:And that's that's one of the greatest segments. I mean, Peter's always good at, like, keeping a very high level theoretical framework that he's breaking down, but then grounding it in a bunch of historical examples. And I love these. He talks about, to illustrate what determinant optimism looks like, we can we can consider historical examples. The construction of the transcontinental railroad in the 19th century was a radically different future connecting the entire country.
John:By today's standards, no one would do it. People would say it cost too much, but at the time, it was a self fulfilling prophecy. Another example is Robert Moses in the mid 20th century in New York who built parks, roads, and infrastructure. There were many specific plans for for a bigger, better future. It stopped in the mid 19 sixties when people questioned whether building another highway was really better.
John:One, once there was no longer a definite view of the future, no one could build anything new. Nothing major has been built in New York City since then in any meaningful scale. And the last one is crazy because it's in California, in the San Francisco Bay area, it never happened, but the Weber plan in the late forties, building dams, freshwater lakes, and a 32 lane highway. It was a radically definite view of the future. Such a plan is unimaginable today.
John:He was a school teacher. He wasn't even some Chad. Yeah. And, he was an amateur theater producer, and he could propose such a grand plan, and it was taken seriously enough for congressional hearings.
Jordi:Yep.
John:Today, these sorts of grand definite visions don't exist.
Jordi:So the another example here that's interesting. So there's there's some terraforming projects happening in the Middle East and and and potentially happening in parts of Africa where they're basically trying to divert large swaths of of, or basically turn, like, desert land
John:Yeah.
Jordi:Into, lakes and rivers and things of that nature. And so this guy gave this great talk on it and one of the areas that he identified was potentially able to be terraformed was the, there was this place called the Salton Sea outside of Palm Springs that used to be a lake and, I believe it was the Colorado River which chain which diverted at one point and, it it ceased, to to basically, and it just evaporated over time. And, I asked the guy who gave the talk how would you actually make this happen, and he's like, I have no idea. Yeah. And it would take an extremely determinant plus optimistic view to actually get something like this done because if you just say, oh, we should terraform the Salton Sea and return it to being this lake because it'll create all this agricultural land surrounding it, You're just you're not gonna it's not gonna happen unless there's, like, this very, very intentional, approach from a large number of people to say, like, this is really hard.
Jordi:We're gonna do it. Like, we're not gonna just, like, hope that it happens. We're gonna make it happen.
John:Yeah. The terra forming stuff is fascinating because there are entrepreneurs who are talking about this. Like, Augustus, I went out to the Salton Sea with him.
Jordi:Oh, really?
John:Oh, yeah. And we filmed the whole video, and he's talked about that. And, Mike Solana wrote a piece about it a long time ago, but it's just not culturally taken seriously at all. Yeah. And all of those projects are laughed at.
Jordi:Yeah.
John:If you look at top YouTube results for Elon Musk's tunnel project, The Boring Company Yeah. It's all photos of Elon with a red clown nose on, and it's just somebody who is not a scientist at all, just a YouTuber, just laughing at how preposterous this is, how it will never work, how there are better solutions, and it gets millions of people.
Jordi:For every 100 feet of tunnel, he could put 20 kids through school
John:or whatever he has fixed that. It's just shuffling the chips around the board endlessly, and it's like, okay. Like, people always say, oh, well, like, we should just build bike lanes. It's like, okay. Like, yes.
John:And let's also do the tunnels, and let's do the bike lanes, and let's also do bus lanes, and let's also do planes that are supersonic. Let's do it all. Yep. And and that's not the that's not the vision of a lot of people that are pessimistic and a lot of people that are indeterminate. And so, it's the same thing with the Dubai projects.
John:I mean, I find myself even, like, laughing at, like, the idea of the line and, like, how crazy that is or Dubai building, like, these incredibly, like, insane, like, islands that are man made. All of that, it's it's hard to resist the urge because there's such a cultural pull Yeah. From just, like Isn't
Jordi:it interesting though, in many ways, the Gulf, the the GCC Yeah. Countries are very determinant and optimistic. Yep. They're, like, not only are we gonna buy the PGA, but we're gonna terraform this part of our country, and we're gonna build this city on a line that, like, looks like it's pulled out of the future. Yep.
Jordi:And so it it in many ways, it's playing out over the world. It almost takes a monarchy to to to bring that approach to governance today or very, very, very strong leadership.
John:Yeah. I love this, framework. I mean, obviously, like, the quadrant model is very important, and, Peter breaks it down in a bunch of different ways. He shows the different philosophers that fit into these coordinates. So Hegel and Marx are in the determined optimists, quadrant.
John:Determined pessimists are Plato and Aristotle. In indeterminate optimists are Rawls and Nozick, and then pessimistic indeterminate is Epicurus and Lucretius. And I remember when I first got on Twitter, there was a guy, the Epicurean deal maker who wrote about Wall Street. And and it and and seeing this, I'm it's kind of, like, it's all clicking about his worldview. Yeah.
John:And and he was, like, a little bit pessimistic in finance. And that's why his account grew because he was always pouring cold water on things, but he was also very much, like, you know, the broad the broad diversified investor. Not saying you mean, even Michael Murray is pessimistic but determinate. Yeah. Michael Murray is saying, we need to short this exact thing right now.
John:Yeah.
Jordi:And
John:he's wrong a lot, but, you know, every once in a while.
Jordi:What's the phrase, pessimist sounds smart, optimists make money or something like that?
John:Exactly. Yeah. It's clout versus wealth.
Jordi:Yeah.
John:And I and I love this other frame just simplifying it just to what's the difference between determinant and indeterminate so you can really put your finger on it. Determinant is substantive and indeterminant is process based. So when you hear someone talking about what their business is or what they're doing and they're talking about the process that they're working on, that's a signal that they don't have a concrete vision, and they're running a playbook instead of actually thinking independently and building something specific. And so Peter goes on to break it down in a bunch of different realms in finance terms. The determinant optimistic is investing concrete projects and engineering, and this is like a lot of his a lot of his investments.
John:Anduril, SpaceX, Airbnb, Stripe, rippling ramp, all these companies are very concrete changes in the world view. How will the world work after this gets built? Heavy on engineering. The indeterminate optimist is low savings, low investment, rely on indexes and diversification. The whole efficient market theory is very much propagating that idea.
John:And then indeterminate pessimistic is high savings, fearful, no plan, insurance based mindset. And that goes to, to China where, you know, they they they do operate very aggressively but towards a scarcity mindset for sure. So there's implications for society and business. In indeterminate optimism, you do nothing specific. You have minimal savings, minimal targeted investment.
John:Without a vision, money becomes an end itself accumulated, but not invested in big ideas. Nothing changes. It's 0 sum. And real interest rates go negative because no one knows what to do with cash. And this was the famous fight that Peter got in with, Eric Schmidt over at Google saying, you are out of ideas.
John:You don't know how to innovate. You have $50,000,000,000 on your balance sheet. You should easily be able to invest that in something productive. But the fact that you can't, just the fact that it's on your balance sheet tells me that I've already won this debate. And it's, like, one of the most, like, famous debates in Silicon Valley in my opinion because he just had a debt to rights.
John:He had a debt to rights. And and Eric was so used to arguing, like, the TED talk, like, philosophy way of, oh, well, like, you know, we you know, shareholders, and we wanna be prudent with this stuff. And, like, you know, there's a bunch of good reasons for why we're doing this. We're waiting maybe. But, you know, it was like it was like the sign of a pattern.
Jordi:Gotcha. I think
John:I think I think he clocked it correctly. And, it's one of the greatest greatest moments. If you're ever hanging out with Peter to bring that up, he loves it. He loves it. I I tried to make it happen again.
John:I wanted a round to debate because I think Eric has evolved a lot and I think that they would have a
Jordi:maybe we should have a TV debates product where we get because we're pretty neutral party. We we try to tell it how it is and we're conflicted in many ways to our investments. But we try to keep keep things, you know, generally aligned. But, having having debate stage and being able to run back version 2 point out of that would be would be great.
John:Even even pulls it to literature. We've moved from definite science fiction futures like 2,001 A Space Odyssey to ones that are static or unchanging like Neuromancer, Blade Runner, 1984. It's it's it's fascinating seeing, like, the the yeah. How how the sci fi has instantiated these different ideas of, like, you know, what the world looks like, whether it's, like, an optimistic scenario or negative in the future. Like, we need positive sci fi.
John:That's that's clear. Like, I mean, hilariously, that, that Stallone movie, what's it called? I'm blanking with, with Wesley Snipes. It's called, I'm I'm completely blanking on it. We it came up on a previous show, but, but it's fascinating.
John:They they predicted, like, all the self driving cars, all the
Jordi:Yep.
John:Also, Demolition Man. Demolition Man. Yeah. Great movie. And so, he starts to close it out with, talking about startups and innovation.
John:The official religion of today is that everything is statistical, luck driven, and incremental. You need to AB test your way to success. You need short term horizons. And I'm sure you've seen that with, like, brand development and marketing campaigns is that AB testing is, like, the very last segment of this. And in general, like Yeah.
John:You need a unique idea. It's the era of the ideas guy. Yep. John Fio is not AB testing his way to, to to coming up with a new idea.
Jordi:The only thing he does is is is use the Instagram polls product.
John:Oh, he does?
Jordi:That he does collect data that way. I love it. If you're building consumer products, copy Theo and and leverage Instagram polls to to gather feedback. It's it works well.
John:Yeah. And he tells this great example. I mean, he highlights that Apple under Steve Jobs, they had a multiyear vision, very definite optimism. Yep. The the smartphone will be the dominant platform.
John:Let's put an immense amount of r and d resources towards this. Spend years getting it perfect. Don't release it until the screen can be glass because I don't want my phone scratched by my keys. And Steve apparently just came in one day and was like, my my demo phone is getting scratched. It has to be glass.
John:Go figure it out.
Jordi:Yeah.
John:Right? And and that's something that you probably could have run some study and found that, oh, well, like, the customers will still buy it, so we don't need to do it. And it's more expensive, but he had a vision. And then, the best example, which I still love so much and such a great bull signal, if you can pull this out of a founder and they're not lying to you, is Facebook's refusal to sell to Yahoo for $1,000,000,000 in 2,006, which is, like, literally a year after the company started. They walk into a into a board meeting, and it's Peter and Zuck and I believe Jim Briar over at Excel.
John:And Mark's just like, well, this would be a quick board meeting. Like, obviously, we have to formally discuss this, but we're obviously not taking this deal. And, and Peter and Jim are like, we should probably talk about it. Right? Like, you know, it's probably probably there's a lot of money.
Jordi:At least 5 minutes.
John:You own 20 for 5% of the company. There's a lot that you could do with 2 250,000,000 dollars. Like, this is the this is a reasonable thing. And, and Mark was like, but I don't know what I would do with the money. I would just start another social network, and I kind of like the one I have.
John:Like, why would I do this? And so eventually, you know, they talk about it and they pass. And, looking backwards, Peter realized that it it it'd be somewhat unscientific to do this analysis. But if you if you looked backwards at all the companies, every time someone refused a $1,000,000,000 offer offer, eBay, Google, it it had turned out to be right. More importantly, Facebook's refused
Jordi:That's interesting. Yeah. That's interesting. Because there's a lot of companies that don't take the $100,000,000 op, you know, option to sell and then end up regretting it. Yep.
Jordi:I do feel like there's a ton of I we don't need to say them on the Yeah. Yeah. On the show, but you'll meet you'll meet guys that still kick themselves for not selling when they had a deal on the table because the next year, like, things soured or whatever. But Yeah. For some reason, if somebody's willing to pay a $1,000,000,000 for something, there's probably some real
John:Also, the quality of the acquirer, you're talking about if if a if a founder mode company is is making you a $1,000,000,000 offer, a significant portion of their of their market cap, it's a signal that you're onto something really, really serious as opposed to, oh, yeah. Some strategic, like, you know, like, public company was gonna write us a $100,000,000,000 check, but they're a $100,000,000,000 company. And I didn't even talk to the CEO because it was such a small deal for them. Like, they should probably take that because they're not evaluating it properly. Whereas if Zuck is taking you on a walk and being like, hey.
John:Like, here's a $1,000,000,000 like you, you know, you should really come work with us. Like, you might be really putting the screws to him in
Jordi:a few years.
John:And, I I think we kinda saw the counter of that play out with Instagram, which could have been huge.
Jordi:Yeah. The Nikita's company too. Yeah. Zuck was Yeah. Was worried.
John:Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And so there's a bunch of takeaways here. Purely luck driven or incremental approaches may not yield breakthrough innovation.
John:Having a definite idea of the future can guide bold investments and enduring companies. The best future, a determinant optimistic approach where big visions drive real progress and transcend mere luck. Yeah. Including thought, overcome luck by defining and working towards a radically better definite future. And he quotes with not just a static future like a dead channel on TV, but a definite future that's radically better.
Jordi:Yeah. And I wanna I mean, one of my favorite parts of this actually is is not even Peter's thinking. It's just Thomas Jefferson quote. The, I'm a great believer in luck. I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.
Jordi:And I think that having that definite vision, but understanding it's not enough to just have the vision. Right? Look at Augustus. Like, he's got a very clear vision of what he wants to execute towards, but he's also putting in 14, 15 hour days Yeah. Every single day.
Jordi:So it's like that balance of you can overcome luck, but you also want it to work in your favor, so just work harder.
John:Yeah. The reason I actually pulled this up, the reason this resurfaced was because I had a friend who is, considering joining the government and was doing kind of an informational interview with, one of the partners at Founders Fund and, and was like, what should, how should I go into this interview and and get advice? And I was like, the most important thing is figure out what you want in life, where you want to be. It's the classic question of, like, what do you where do you see yourself in 10 years? And that's such a silly played out question that we didn't we stopped asking it, but it's actually incredibly important to ask that question.
John:And so go do some thinking, and I often find it's useful to go back to what did you wanna do as a child. Yeah. Because maybe after you get past astronaut, there might be something serious there.
Jordi:Astronaut, influencer, what's the next one?
John:What's the next one? And there's probably a moment when you were like, yeah. I actually wasn't dreaming of being a lawyer. I was dreaming of being, you know, a business person or something else or building something or doing something. And, and I remember, when I interviewed at Founders Fund, I got a a call with Trey.
John:And towards the end, he was like, yeah. Like, what do you wanna do? And I was, like, kinda giving him a wish he was actually answering. He was like, you can just tell me. Like and it was, like, very informative.
John:It was, like, he kind of, like, beat me over the head with, like
Jordi:I want to be the number 1 Yeah. Technology podcaster in the world.
John:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and and just, and I mean, honestly, I hadn't really figured it out at the time. Yeah.
John:But it was but it but it it it's a very, very good framework, and I think Yeah. People need permission to to just say out loud what they have
Jordi:deepened on. So many questions like, where where do you see yourself in 10 years? That got kinda canceled for some reason. Yeah. I don't know why.
Jordi:Because it was, like, oh, well, some people just want a job or whatever. Yeah. And then the question, it got you got in trouble for asking people what do you do at parties? Okay. Because it's, like, you remember this?
Jordi:Like, I was, like, have something more interesting to say than what do you do? And for me Oh, yeah. For me, asking somebody, what's your story? What do you do?
John:Yeah.
Jordi:That is the if I'm meeting somebody for the first time, I'm trying to understand who they are. Yeah. Yeah. That's probably some of the best information I can get. Yeah.
Jordi:So they're gonna choose what they wanna share, and then that will say something by itself.
John:Yeah. I mean, asking someone, like, tell me your life story feels, like, kind of cringe, but it's
Jordi:That's cringe. But but But I think
John:but I think that I I think that if you can pull that out of someone, like, that's the most interesting thing that they have to say. Yeah. And and if you if they can actually a lot of people will just kinda give you their resume, but if you can actually get, like, the highs and lows and, like, all the problems that they solve throughout their life, like, that's that's very interesting and and a and a good way to get to know someone.
Jordi:Yeah.
John:And I feel like we got there, like, in our, like, first meeting. It was, like, we were very open and, like, actually telling the truth about, like, the full arc of our careers, which I think
Jordi:was Totally.
John:But yeah. I remember
Jordi:I remember when I actually remember the when we first met, I was like, wait. So do you wanna be, like, president or something? I didn't really I don't know. You know? We're we're all figuring it out at the time, but I was like, is this guy gonna be, like, the mayor of Pasadena, governor of California, president.
John:I mean, podcast hosts have run for content before.
Jordi:It's a clear playbook now.
John:It's a clear playbook. Reagan was an actor.
Jordi:Yeah.
John:Trump had a reality TV show. The next president will be a podcaster. Why not?
Jordi:Yeah. The bodybuilder to governor pipeline
John:to strong. Also movie star.
Jordi:Yeah.
John:Yeah. Gotta be able to communicate. But, yeah, think think really hard. I know even even outside of the TL verse, this guy, who runs Strauss Zelnick, he runs, Take 2 Interactive. They make GTA and all a ton of video games.
John:And, he takes, like, an immense amount of, like, coaching calls from people. He makes himself very available. He he wrote a book just called Success. It's it's it's private. It it it's private.
John:I wrote the book.
Jordi:Yeah. I wrote the book on I wrote the book success.
John:Yeah. Yeah. The and he wrote it when he was young too. It was crazy. And he I mean, this guy has a badass career, but, he you can only get it by emailing him, and he sends you a copy.
John:It's not published. Like, you get it anywhere. It's amazing. And and in there, he will always just start with, like, what do you want? Because if you don't want to be the CEO, like, you'll never get there.
Jordi:If you
John:don't want to be a founder, you'll never be there. Like, what Yeah. And figuring that out and being honest with yourself. So the exercise is usually like that ikigai thing. Like, what what are you good at?
John:What makes money? What do you love doing? Find the intersection of that, then Yeah. Be honest with yourself about what that is because if you're the best dentist in the world, you're gonna wind up building a massive dental empire. If you're the best pottery artist in the world, like, you will, but you have to excel instead of just being, okay.
John:Yeah. I happen to like, you know, dentistry, and I'm just gonna do it to pay the bills. And I never have any ambition, like, become an entrepreneur still in whatever field you're excelling in. Yeah. I love that.
John:I love that talk. It's one of the best.
Jordi:Good one.
John:Go watch it. If you haven't watched it, it's fantastic. It goes way deeper than we went. Welcome back to Technology Brothers, still the most profitable podcast in the world. We have some DMs, some q and a from the fans.
John:Let's go to Pete Campbell. He says, dear Tech Bros Pod.
Jordi:Not the fans. The brothers.
John:The brothers. Let's go to the brothers. Pete Campbell says, dear Tech Bros Pod, can you think of anyone more accomplished or deserving to deliver next year's Stanford commencement speech than Gary Tan? I can't. That's a fantastic idea.
John:And I don't know if you thought of this yourself, Pete, but, we should definitely get this trending. We love Gary.
Jordi:Gary went on Gary went on a campaign to save San Francisco. Pete is going on a campaign to get Gary to do the Stanford. I
John:mean, Gary's too humble. He would he would never lobby for himself for this, but that this would be a fantastic fit, I think.
Jordi:And pretty good marketing for y Combinator.
John:For sure.
Jordi:Event marketing moment. Yep. You know, talking to a bunch of Stanford grads. Hey, by the way, I run a small accelerator called y Combinator. You know, a few times a year, we give a number of startups.
John:Yeah. A little bit of money. That that was a thing when I got to Silicon Valley. Every big shot would come in, and they love being, like, well, I got to Silicon Valley, and then I started working for a little company called Yahoo. And we and we started, like, hearing it again and again, and we're like, this is such a played out, like, meme, like, every VC loves saying, like, yeah.
John:I went to a little company called Microsoft.
Jordi:It's like saying, like, I was one of the first 100 employees, but it sounds cooler to be like, yeah. I work for a little company.
John:And then and then they're all you're all like, you were just like some product manager, and then you go to their house. It's like a $50,000,000 mansion in Benloe Park or something. You're like, okay.
Jordi:Yeah. It's
John:real. The Yahoo money was wild. Yeah. These guys made a lot of money early. It's great.
John:Anyway, let's move on. We got
Jordi:a question Good idea, Pete.
John:From Tyler. He says, help, Tech Bros pod. I'm looking for a book that covers the intersection of brand history, technical innovation, and collecting watches. Give your take. I'll make a specific recommendation, and we'll go from there.
Jordi:So you don't need to read books on brand history. You can list just listen to the founder's podcast. True. So you can go listen to, like, you know, 50, 100 episodes back to back. Just block off, like, a few weeks and do that.
Jordi:And then the other categories, I would just say, I think one of the most underrated things that you can do is if you're interested in a topic, read parts of a few different books in the category. Like, you don't even need to the the whole trap of having to read the entire book. Like, it's totally fine to just read some number of pages. And if you get bored, just, like, go on to the next thing.
John:Skip around.
Jordi:Yeah. Or skip around. But, yeah, just, like, read read the top, you know, 5 books on on watch watches.
John:That's good. And I have a specific recommendation for you. It's a book on the history of Rolex, and there is a fantastic episode of founders, 351. I'll just play you the intro here.
Senra:The book I'm gonna talk to you about today is nearly impossible to find. It was first published in 1946. There's only a 1000 copies ever made. It's called Rolex Jubilee, and then the subtitle is actually in Latin. But when you translate it from Latin into English, it literally means go with me.
Senra:And so it's a tiny four volume, like, history of Rolex.
Jordi:Fair enough.
Senra:Volume 1 was written by Hans Wilsdorf, who is the founder of Rolex.
John:So go listen to episode 351 of founders. Maybe pick up the book. Try and get a copy. I think that will probably hit all 3 of these. And lastly, just keep listening to the podcast, man.
John:We're gonna Yeah. We're doing our best. All 3 of these every single day.
Jordi:We're trying to give, a proper analysis of every business ever because we love business. Yeah. So in a in a total history of Technology Brothers, we hope to cover every business at least once even if it's just one promoted post.
John:Yeah. Exactly. Let's go to Based Baron. He says, yeah, I'm Polly. Polly gonna beat the shit out of some e a teapot post rat godless virgin if they get up in my grill on this app one more time.
John:And, yeah, very funny post.
Jordi:Got it.
John:Getting in fights. Getting in fights. We wanted to highlight Based Baron because he claims to be an analyst at TechRose pod. He's not officially affiliated with us, but we're always open to supporters. But as we reviewed your timeline Based Baron, maybe a little bit too based, a little bit too negative.
John:We wanna keep the keep the momentum up, keep the optimism. Don't wanna be the definite pessimist on this show. You wanna be optimistic. And a lot of the things you're saying, a lot of the shit you're talking, not unreasonable. But lawyers are gonna get you.
John:Yeah. Pessimists get clout. Yeah. Optimists get rich. The
Jordi:key the key is a base baron in seem seemingly in group emerging poster. It's got some got some good takes, got some takes that are kinda trying to take down some of our buddies Yep. Things like that. But, here's what I'd say. Based, Baron, you wanna get to the point where, 2 years from now when you got a 100000 followers, peep you're you're allowed to share who you really are without burning a bunch of bridges.
John:Yeah.
Jordi:Because, like, at the trajectory that he's posting, he's going there.
John:Oh, yeah.
Jordi:He's going to a 100 k.
John:For sure.
Jordi:That said, you gotta make sure to not make too many enemies along the way so that you when you do that big face reveal
John:Yep.
Jordi:It's like you you're sort of confident in doing that, not, you know, attacking too
John:many people. Have, you know, two levels of reaction to an account like this. The first one is like like dunking on all the, you know, the lowl cows of tech. And are you familiar with lowl cow? No.
John:It's a it's a person that is, milked for lulz because they're they're they're so downtrodden that you that the whole like, it's from 4 chance. So the 4 chance community will pick someone who they just, like, laugh at endlessly, and they just, like, anything that they do, they're just, like, getting dunked on, and then it creates this really vicious cycle. But it's all related to the bucket of crabs theory. Are you familiar with this?
Jordi:Yeah.
John:So, yeah, the crabs, they pull each other down, and and as soon as one is about to escape the bucket, they the rest of them get pulled down. If they were just working together, they could lift each other up. And so level 1 is like, okay. Yeah. This guy's funny.
John:He's got some good dunks. He's talking trash. He's naming names. He's unhinged. That's great.
John:But level 2 is like, you're revealing that your financials are not intertwined with 25,000 different startups. Yeah. You're
Jordi:not consistent enough.
John:Not enough conflicts of interest. Yep. Not enough conflicts of interest. Call us once you've LP'd into 25 different funds and, can't talk shit about anyone anymore because, you're a bag holder on even the worst companies.
Jordi:Yeah. And
John:so you wouldn't say a word.
Jordi:Right. Future based, Baron. Yeah. And we, you'll definitely, we'll ship you the JD when we open up the the analyst role.
John:Fantastic. Fantastic. Let's go to Dan Gray. He says, why are so many startups pitching the same ideas? This is the result of startup catering where founders work on the problems they believe VCs care about rather than problems they are connected to.
John:It occurs whenever there is a strong and vocal consensus among investors on the opportunity of the day, e g agents, vertical AI, gaming, etcetera. Obviously, this is a negative influence on innovation. The purpose of startups is to build novel solutions, which others are unable to anticipate. Consequently, the best VCs focus at most on broad problem areas rather than solutions. Yeah.
John:Interesting. This is something where where where like, it's always like the it's always like the bear case for, like, the YC request for startups. It's like, are the best founders do they need that, or should are they already building it? I've built 2 companies that, like, didn't fit into any trends at all, and that's been good but also extremely painful because I haven't been able to just flip them to meta for a $100,000,000 in a year. But painful.
John:Extremely painful, but it's all worked out. And, yeah, you gotta have the the definite optimist view of the world, and oftentimes, that also can coincides with the contrarian vision and seeing something different and having everyone tell you that you're wrong for years, and this was the case with Coinbase and Airbnb and Stripe. Why are you doing this? Something already exists. It's unnecessary.
John:This isn't trendy.
Jordi:The one positive the positive about the YC request for startups is if you're working at a FAANG and you see that, you're like, oh, that's interesting. And then you that catalyze you catalyzes you into starting a company. And then you start that company and maybe you end up pivoting to something else. Like, at least it made you it provided that initial activation energy to get you to go and do it. But, yeah, I've seen this.
Jordi:I've I've seen this so so much just as an angel investor, seeing people come pitch me an idea, and I'm like, you're hitting all the right buzzwords, but, yeah, it's not an original idea. I've seen a bunch of other pitch pitches for it. And then there's no reason you're not, like there's no reason why that you should win versus anyone else that's doing this. Yep. In fact, it's usually the opposite.
Jordi:It's like, well, you picked this idea because you thought you could raise a $2,000,000 seed round and and, like, basically play founder.
John:Yeah. And a lot of times you're a year too late or there's some company that's more well funded in stealth mode or you're just, like
Jordi:Yeah.
John:You're just behind the ball.
Jordi:Yeah.
John:Let's do a promoted post.
Jordi:Promoted post.
John:I'm excited for this one.
Jordi:We love promoting, the fantastic inventory over at DuPont Registry. Today, we're talking about a 2017 Lamborghini Centenario Roadster, one of only 20 produced. It has an ask a very modest asking price of only 2,900,000.
John:Mhmm.
Jordi:Great spec, things in white on black. It's got a nice wing on it. Killer. And just like you can tell when something's been specked properly, and this was very intentional, not over the top. And, it's got a nice, like, arrow kit on it.
Jordi:And, I don't you know, they're just not making Lamborghinis like this anymore, and this is one of 20. So Yeah. Picked this up. This looks like a great Great
John:for VC, great for
Jordi:the
John:GP, great street park in San Francisco.
Jordi:Yeah.
John:Make a statement.
Jordi:Yeah. And don't buy this if you live in Miami. Buy this if you live in SF.
John:Exactly. This is
Jordi:a great daily Yeah. If if you're gonna be stuck in front of a behind a, Waymo Yeah. And you get your sandwich by Waymo's, you wanna be in a white Lamborghini Centenario Roadster, just to mug the the people Yeah.
John:That are I wanna hear some noise points.
Jordi:The steering wheel being like, oh, the Waymo look. It's turning by itself, and you're like, yeah. It turns, you know, when I do it.
John:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I wanna hear some noise complaints in Menlo Park and Los Altos Yeah.
John:Yeah. In, Incline Village. Let's tear it up out there.
Jordi:And if you need some driving lessons, MKBHD
John:Oh, yeah. Fantastic.
Jordi:His videos aren't explicitly driving lessons, but he certainly knows how to drive.
John:Read between the lines. And when you head to your Lamborghini dealer dealership, tell them the technology brother sent you. Let's go to Lulu. She says, it's very hard for public company CEOs to state their unfiltered beliefs and principles. The pressures are immense.
John:Among public co's, it's basically Toby Lutke, Brian Armstrong, and Elon Musk holding the Overton window open. Yeah. We talked about this with the the the fuck you money post from Marc Andreessen. Like, you get so entrenched that saying any unfiltered belief or principle could slice your customer base or your employee base or your investor base. Like, you have, like, thousands of
Jordi:hours of work. Over. They draft a post. They're hovering over the post button.
John:The wait.
Jordi:And then they're thinking, oh, this, you know, pension fund or institutional investor owns 4% of my company. And I'm going to immediately get an email saying, hi, Mark, let me know if you can talk. Yeah. And you're like, okay, great. Yeah.
Jordi:But I think the key here so so the interesting thing about the examples that Lulu gave
John:Yeah.
Jordi:Is the approaches are dramatically different. Oh, yeah. Elon very clearly seems to just say whatever he's thinking
John:Yep.
Jordi:Off the top of his head. Yep. Be liberal with emojis. Yep. Like, know, I don't think he has, like, posts are not the opinions of any of my companies.
Jordi:It's like, no. The his posts are the opinions of his companies. Yep. And then Toby Toby is the opposite approach of, like, seemingly very intentional Yep. Like, sort of using his megaphone is, like, you know, it's very curated.
Jordi:It's not it's not on the fly. Yep. And so both ways work.
John:And Brian too. Brian writes a long post, very thoughtful. He puts a lot of work into it, but it but he's not afraid to be, unfiltered and Controversial. And controversial.
Jordi:Yeah. I don't even know if unfiltered is the right, like
John:Yeah. He's the right
Jordi:the best thing is to be is to be you can be controversial, but be filtered and tasteful in the delivery of of that.
John:And I do wonder if there's if this is gonna change as more companies go public because Yeah. You know, public company CEOs okay. Well, what happens when Adriel goes public? Or what happens when like, there are a lot of founder led companies right now that just aren't public yet, but will may it'll be probably be easier for them to maintain their unfiltered nature than retrain an era, a generation of public company CEOs.
Jordi:It's interesting to think about the x long post and how that's kind of changed the the platform from a communication standpoint. Because if you historically, you wanted to share a lot, you had to post a thread, but then somebody could screenshot one tweet and be like, look, this guy hates this type of people. Yeah. But then now in a long post, it's like it would be disingenuous to not show the full context based on one thing that they said. So it actually opens it up.
John:Yeah. It's great. Santiago, been on the show before. He says, you can just not do psychedelics, Lowell.
Jordi:Bold statement, Cotton. Very true. Bold statement. We we, we support this message just because just because psychedelics are popular in Silicon Valley does not mean you have to do them. Doesn't even mean that you're gonna benefit from them.
Jordi:Yep. I think we've maybe talked about this on the show, but but psychedelics can provide this novel experience that makes people feel like it's super monumental and maybe that they just hadn't put their phone down for a while. It's like a lot of people, the only time they go for a long hike is when they're taking LSD. Wow. So, like, oh, this is amazing.
Jordi:But you could just, like, take the hike.
John:Yeah. Yeah. The best metaphor was that post we read about, I took so many psychedelics that at a certain point had a meta epiphany that the drug was just leaning on the epiphany key in my brain, and it was just making me think I'm having an epiphany. I'm having an epiphany. I'm having an epiphany.
John:Yeah. And that's actually not having an epiphany. Yeah. And that same thing happens with a lot of cannabis where it's like, oh, everything was so funny last night. Oh, tell me the jokes that you were laughing at.
John:Not funny at all. Yeah. Only funny in the moment because it was completely synthetic. Yeah. And so, yeah, you wanna stay away
Jordi:from that. Yeah. And I I talked about this before, but when I was in college when I was in college, Tim Ferris was directly or indirectly massively promoting psychedelic, like, basically as, like, a lifestyle Yep. To the one of the biggest podcasts in the world, just telling everybody, like, how great psychedelics are. And I think that that's irresponsible.
Jordi:I think it's I think it's something that can be done, you know, in small circles Yeah. But doesn't need to be on a megaphone. I agree. It's degenerate.
John:I agree. Let's go to Bryce. He says, we're in multiple golden agents ages at once quoting Jeff Bezos from, this fantastic interview that Bezos did that, there's a great breakdown on David Center's, x page, and, he did a whole deep dive on it. Got reshared by Ivanka Trump, I believe. And, or or no.
John:No. It got reshared by,
Jordi:Jeff Bezos'
John:wife. That's right. Lauren Lauren Sanchez. But I I agree with this. Multiple golden ages at once.
John:We're we're doing space travel. We're doing AI. We're doing bio. There are a ton of Are you doing Doge? Doge, making the government Innovation government.
John:It is it is a fantastic time to be alive. I I just like that he put this quote out there. It's great.
Jordi:Thank you, Bryce.
John:Thank you. Let's go to Andrew Reid. That's over at Sequoia. He says although he doesn't have the the tag anymore. I gotta check these still there.
John:He says, never make the same mistake twice. Make it at least 3 or 4 times so you're absolutely sure you're wrong, then change your approach. I like it.
Jordi:So I've had this with people, like, early in my career. Not even that not even that long ago.
John:Yep.
Jordi:I would start talking with somebody, maybe about investing or partnering in some capacity or a hire. And I would have, like, a little something in my in the back of my head that wasn't a really strong intense, sort of intuition. Mhmm. But there was some intuition that I shouldn't that there was some that there was some red flag. And and over the last, like, 2 years, I've really tried to be intentional Yeah.
Jordi:Intentional about listening to that.
John:Yep.
Jordi:And I had to make the mistake of not listening to it 4 or 5
John:times. Totally.
Jordi:And so now when it happens, I'm very I know what kinda comes after making that mistake. So I'm just like, yeah, I'm just not gonna
John:Yeah.
Jordi:Start. Yeah.
John:Yeah. Yeah. It's almost it's almost hard to make the mistake once and fully learn the lesson.
Jordi:Yeah. You need multiple data points
John:Yep.
Jordi:To prove to prove out a, you know, real thesis there.
John:Yeah. I remember a friend of mine in in high school, I I I think we were he were in college and one of his younger brothers came out with everyone partying and, his younger brother was, like, drinking, like, trying to keep up with the college guys. And one of our friends, you know, the older brother is, like, hey, take it easy. Like, we are college guys, like, you're just not gonna be able to keep up with us. Our tolerance is, like, way higher.
John:You gotta go easy. And one of our other friends just, like, grabs his the older brother's hand and says, like, look. Some lessons have to be learned the hard way. Yeah. And to this day, he referred to this as, like, des lessons because, like, that's the type of, like, lesson learned the hard way.
Jordi:Well, alcohol alcohol is a very positive feedback loop. It is a poison. Yes.
John:It is.
Jordi:People consume it. They feel good, but then they feel really bad. Really bad. It creates less desire to do it again even though you might feel good for a little bit.
John:Yeah. Hopefully. So, yeah, some things you gotta learn the hard way. Let's go to Justin Mears, brother of the week this week. He says, the FDA literally has a 10 second rule.
John:If a company fries something in oil for less than 10 seconds, there's no requirement to add the oil to the ingredient label. Reform can't come soon enough. Fascinating. Yeah. The FDA has a bunch of these weird rules just like little archaic things that get
Jordi:You've dealt with it.
John:Exploited and tons of weird stuff that just like this this this has to be on. This can't be on. I mean, there's a ton of stuff in the tobacco industry where you like like, because it's because the cigarette companies were making claims about, like, low tar, now you can't even make a claim about any tobacco product, including a tobacco free product, that that it's sugar free or it doesn't contain seed oils or it doesn't contain microplastics. Like, you legally cannot make those claims even if it's true. And it's just, like, super hard.
Jordi:That regulatory capture?
John:Basically, yeah, for the cigarette companies. Yeah. Every every law
Jordi:that's true. Market again you can't market product benefits against us.
John:Oh, yeah. I mean, like, the whole backlash against the tobacco companies was just like a masterclass in, like, jujitsu and getting getting a good outcome. Everything was like, oh, yeah. You'll totally tie our hands on this and also create the strongest monopoly in American history. Oh, yeah.
John:Well, yeah, no one will be able to advertise. Who would that benefit? The entrenched incumbents? Absolutely.
Jordi:With crazy distribution. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Like And and Yeah. Durable brand value.
John:Exactly. So every decision that they made was just, like, very long term focused for the it was a long term win for the tobacco companies and a short term win for the, you know, the help Regulators. Yeah. Regulators. And so they got to say, hey.
John:There's no more cigarette ads. It's like, okay. Well, you know, let's see how this plays out. Will people still be smoking in 40 years? Absolutely.
Jordi:Yeah. My my take with with, with I I had no idea about this rule, and it's crazy. Yeah. But I think you basically if you're not consuming foods that you watched being made Yeah. Or you just assembled the ingredients and made that yourself, it is just default gonna be less good for you than than that.
John:Yeah. Right?
Jordi:Like, there's no amount of, oh, it's gluten free or it's seed oil free or it's made with beef tallow. Like, all that stuff, like, sort of matters, but then, oh, there was lead in the in the process.
John:Yeah. Yeah.
Jordi:You know, now now, you know, it has whatever. So anyways, if you're really optimizing for health, it's gotta be Whole Foods.
John:Let's go to boring business. He's quoting someone who says, is there a job where they just pay you for being a chill guy with good intuition about stuff? And Boring Business says, venture capital. Great post.
Jordi:I, I had the post today about, like, everybody wants to be a VC. Why wouldn't you want to just be an LP?
John:Yeah.
Jordi:You know, you just that that's also a chill job. Great job. VCs, hang out.
John:Yep.
Jordi:Ski resorts, go cat skiing, heli skiing, you know, deploy a little capital, sit back, watch it watch it work. But, but, yeah, I do I do think if you're if you it's funny. Ideas guys, you know, monetize well through, through just building companies. But, there's a lot of VCs that are ideas guys, and they basically just sit on this buck, you know, this, like, basket of really good ideas for years and wait for the right entrepreneur to come to them and say, hey. I'm gonna build this thing and they're like, oh, I've thought about this for a long time.
Jordi:This is great. Now I'll give you money to do it and I get to watch my, your vision kinda play out. Yeah.
John:Let's do a promoted post. Let's do a
Jordi:promoted post, from our friends over at Moncler. We've talked about this at length. Ski season is in full effect, and Moncler says diamond run extraordinary layers for every angle of mountain life. Explore Grenoble fall winter 20 24@moncler.com. So Moncler proving that they are excellent posters here.
Jordi:They're putting a link in even though they know it's gonna hurt them in the algorithm, but this jacket that they're showing off is so fantastic that I'm sure it'll still do numbers. It's great. Great post, from Moncler. And, if you get invited to go cat skiing, heli skiing, or, have a more humble, you know, if a VC says, hey, do you want to come up to Aspen? And, you know, we'll ski at the resort.
Jordi:If you get more modest VC like that,
John:grit your teeth anyway.
Jordi:Any of those environments, would be a good fit. So thank you to Montclair.
John:It's fantastic. Let's go to Vittorio. Let's stay on the topic of things with pockets. He says a lawyer in your pocket
Jordi:There we go.
John:Showing that with grok 3, court cases are being added to the training set aiming to provide grok with the ability to offer compelling legal verdicts.
Jordi:Pretty exciting. So this is this is away
John:from this.
Jordi:Yeah. So this is gonna be already, when people talk about what what's wrong with America, it's it's the lawfare that's just constantly being waged.
John:Yep.
Jordi:It's good business for, good, one reason why it's great to be a lawyer in this country for the most part, but it's gonna be really insane when these sort of consumer AI AI products and do not pay was an early version of this, but it was less like I'm going to sue somebody and more like we're giving you the tools to kind of fight back against
John:Yep.
Jordi:Different laws that maybe you don't or, like, work with laws. And there's a world in the future where where grok can launch a lawsuit for you against one of your ops. Yeah. And and like That's great. And it's just 10 times, like, most of what stops people from launching lawsuits is the cost of the lawsuit.
Jordi:Yep. You know, if you have some type of dispute, let's say you're disputing over $10,000, it doesn't make sense to enter into a lawsuit because it's gonna cost you
John:a
Jordi:$100,000 to even get to any type of conclusion or maybe more. So when that cost goes to 0
John:Yeah.
Jordi:What happens?
John:I do wonder where the Nash equilibrium will be for all this because, yes, there's a world where it gets a lot easier to sue people, but then the AI should also be used to defend people. And so you'll have all of these lawsuits that are kind of being fought by AI and don't really bubble up. Well, this this is a real thing as well.
Jordi:Create a data center just for the bullshit lawsuits. Oh, just gonna put them out put them out in, like, you know
John:There's this has already been happening for years in legal billing. So there is, there's software that companies use to read through bills from law firms to determine, what was a billable hour and what wasn't. So they can effectively redline the invoices when they come through and say, oh, this was just like an associate reading case law. That's their homework. That's not something that's billable, so we wanna pay you 25% less.
John:Yeah. And if you save 25% on your bills with your massive law firm and your fortune 500, like, that's a huge amount of money. But then the law firms got the software too, and then they when they submit their bills, it goes through a review and says, okay. What's what's gonna get thrown back at us? Let's not put that on the bill.
John:Yeah. And so it just became this, like, you know, equilibrium fight of, like, the AIs, essentially. And the result is that, like, I think just as many hours get billed, but now there's a there's a tax from the AI from the tech companies Yeah. On both sides.
Jordi:Love that.
John:That'll probably continue. Anyway, let's go to Isaiah Taylor. He says, guys, I've had enough. I'm leaving x and heading to the other app. I'll still post occasionally and like in RT my friends' content to be supportive of them.
John:Reply to a few comments, a scroll here and there, perhaps a rare DM. But trust me, my heart will be in the other app.
Jordi:Boom. Banger. Shots fired at Cuban. Good.
John:It's such a good oh, oh, this is Cuban. I was thinking about
Jordi:a cocoon,
John:but it just Yeah.
Jordi:I mean, it's it's applicable to many many different types of people who are No.
John:The conversation still happen on x, baby. Yeah. Don't do it anywhere. It's greatest app of all time. I I I tried to log in to Blue Sky to see, like, okay, has anyone actually moved over?
John:And it was pretty minimal over there. Pretty sparse. But we'll see.
Jordi:Yeah. It's it's funny that, if you're building any products that are that you want to get in front of the sort of tech, audience, tech elite, whatever you wanna call it, you still gotta be on x to promote it.
John:Yeah. Let's go to Zach Weinberg. He says, the trend that confuses me most as a tech angel investor is the juxtaposition of, a, incredibly cool new AI driven seed stage ideas with, b, early stage valuations that do not make economic sense given, c, increasing competition from everywhere. Great time to be a customer, though. And then he goes on to say, it's become so easy to be a seed stage software founder with all the incredible tools out there.
John:Top of funnel ideas is huge. Prototypes are increasingly easy and cheap to build, will be interesting to see how VC returns work in an environment like this.
Jordi:Yeah. This is this is the bull case for y Combinator right now because they have a set structure to their investments. They've helped them with it. Yeah. And so they've they are able to investments.
Jordi:They've helped negotiate it. Yeah. And so they've they are able to buy into companies effectively, artificially low because of their program and brand. And then everybody else has to pay a premium once they are a part of that program. So big, big bull case for YC.
Jordi:I did see recently I had a I was pitched by a company that that was started by some guys that had started a big, consumer tech company in the like sort of like early, like, Facebook era. Mhmm. They're coming back for a new AI infrastructure product. They told me like, oh, we're, you know, it's gonna be done at like 60 posts, like, we're just waiting on terms. And I just heard yesterday it got done at 12 post.
Jordi:Woah. So there is there is some Okay. There is some,
John:Pushback on that.
Jordi:There's some pushback, but still, like, the super crack teams are still getting these egregious valuations out the gates.
John:Yeah. I mean, 60 post, that's, like, gonna be a $10,000,000 round. That's, like Yeah. You're just a 50 person company on day 1. Like, it's almost, like, working against you.
John:Yeah. Because they're just burning a hole in your pocket, and you're gonna have a overly large team Yeah. For hunting for that product market fit.
Jordi:But those rounds, I mean, they're happening.
John:Yeah. Unless you really have CapEx that you need, whether it's r and d or some sort of, you know, data center build out, like, you really gotta think through that. Does your business need that much to get to from 0 to 1? It's a big question.
Jordi:Yeah. But I think it's some some weird thing. It's even, like, 2nd time founders are drawn more because they're used to measuring themselves by numbers.
John:Like, if
Jordi:you if you start a company and you get to $50,000,000 run rate and sell it Yep. Then when you go back to square 1, you're like, oh, yeah. It'd be pretty nice to have 10,000,000 in the bank. Yep. It's like I've I've spent this much money before effectively, but it's much different to go and spend it
John:from Yeah.
Jordi:0 to 1 Yeah. To do that versus spending your series a and your last company.
John:It's also just extremely jolting to go from a company that you're building where you have teams for everything Yeah. And then you go into, you know, seed stage and you're, like, wait, I have to do this stuff myself or I have to only have a person instead of a team. Everything's like it feels like it's maybe kind of moving slower.
Jordi:Yeah. Well, I had I had one. I mean, part of what happens is I just think this is, like, pretty relevant. Part of what happens is you get a really smart team that goes out and and they have a good idea, good team, and they go, Yeah, we're going to raise $4,000,000 And then one of these bigger multistage funds just goes, Okay, well, like, we really want to lead you around. We love what you're doing.
Jordi:We want we want to own at least 12% or whatever, 14, 15%. And then they're like, we'll give you 8 on 40. And then the founders like, I'm not it's objectively wrong for me to turn this money down Yep. In many ways Yep. If I can get way more resources for the same level of dilution.
John:Yep.
Jordi:And then all the smaller investors and the angels, like, I've invested in multiple rounds over the last 12 months where I'm like, this price doesn't make any sense, but I wanna be in the company.
John:Yep.
Jordi:That's my friend. Yep.
John:And it can be so hard because it's like, okay. So then you could push down the amount of dilution, but then your valuation's still high and you have to clear that hurdle for the next round. Yeah. Or you push down the valuation, then you get diluted more, and it's just like all tension everywhere. It's it's it can be very, very, very fraught.
John:But just gotta go get the engine humming on the building and build something. So let's go to Molly O'Shea. She's been on the show before. She says, coming off a week of holiday events, and I couldn't feel more optimistic and grateful for LA's unique tech community. Everyone is crushing it.
John:2025 is gonna be incredible. I love it. Just an optimistic post to end on. Maybe we should do one more but,
Jordi:let's We should do one more. Let's No. I I do love the optimism. LA's tech ecosystem gets so much hate, but it's great. But one of the reason one of the reasons I'm grateful for it is we were connected because somebody was, like, you're the 2 people in LA's tech world that I actually, like, really like.
Jordi:And, like, you guys should meet each other. And that was, like, basically the whole
John:Yeah. Yeah.
Jordi:Reason we got connected.
John:Yeah. Yeah. It's a small world out here, and there I don't know. There's there's some benefits. Like, there's there's plenty of events.
John:We saw a ton of people. People fly in. It's close to San Francisco.
Jordi:People are happy to travel to LA.
John:Yeah. Exactly. Because of beer and weather's not good. But it's not so
Jordi:Great holiday parties.
John:And it is spread out enough that you're not getting, like, it's not the, oh, come to this part of full every single day. And, like, the the FOMO is not nearly as bad here.
Jordi:I get part of fulls every week that I'm just, like, I'm not gonna drive an hour.
John:Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
John:Just no way. No one in LA has really understood that it's like Europe. Yeah. It's like,
Jordi:no one in LA is
John:a mess to Europe. Los Angeles. AKA Santa Monica.
Jordi:You wanna go to France tomorrow?
John:It's Malibu. Something like that.
Jordi:Yeah.
John:Yeah. I mean, it's it's significant to get around here. Well, let's go to some boom news. Blake Scholl has announced a new fundraising round as xbone approaches Mach 1. I'm happy to share that Boom Aero has raised a $100,000,000 in new financing, fully funding the first Symphony engine prototype.
John:And Paul Graham says, I invested more in Boom than I've ever invested in a startup before, but this company is important for America. They'll also make a huge amount of money if they succeed. No one else is anywhere near having a supersonic airliner. So I think we gotta raise, hit the size gong
Jordi:Light size gong?
John:For the $100,000,000 round, but this was very rough. This was a down round. This was a recap. I believe it was a 100,000,000 on a 100,000,000 pre. So the new investors took about 50% of the company.
John:But, you know, it's sad for all the early investors and probably some of the employees that got diluted. But it's great that Silicon Valley has kind of rallied the troops and said, circle the wagons. We want this to be a thing, and we are keeping it in business, and we're keeping the story going. It's better than just washing our hands of this. It
Jordi:would be absolutely tragic. Like, for example, if if China had a company like this, they just wouldn't let it fail. Like, there'd be, like, a government intervention Totally. Say this technology is critical enough
John:Yep.
Jordi:That we're gonna just make it work Yep. At whatever the cost.
John:That's literally the story of TSMC. Yeah. That's literally the story of TSMC. Could not fail because, the backing of the Taiwan government. They're like, this is critical.
Jordi:Yeah. And so I I'm really glad to see it, and that's like a beautiful it's created a beautiful moment out of an otherwise sort of unfortunate set of circumstances to see a bunch of the most, you know, successful influential people in the valley say this company is too important to fail. Yeah. Let's make it happen.
John:Should we take a moment of silence for the early investors who got wiped out and crammed down?
Jordi:Yeah.
John:This moment of silence is brought to you by Bose QuietComfort Headphones. Find your moment of silence at bose.com.
Jordi:Okay. Alright. And back to the show.
John:Back to the show. Should we close with Databricks? This is a real size Gong moment.
Jordi:Real size Gong moment.
John:Databricks is on track to raise a $9,500,000,000 round at a $60,000,000,000 value ratio. Famine, baby. This is amazing.
Jordi:Let's go.
John:We should do one gong for every 1,000,000,000 that you raise.
Jordi:Yeah. We need 9.
John:9 9 gongs for this. This is fantastic. I don't know enough about Databricks. We should do a deep dive on the company, break it all down. I know that they're doing very well.
John:Everyone's excited, and, it's very, very cool. And the, the founder, is available and, like, does podcasts and and and I've seen him at conferences and stuff. And, he's probably under discussed because it's one of these b to b, you know, database companies that's a little bit, not sexy or consumer y. But, I love that he's out there talking, and they have some really cool investors, and I'm really excited to see where this goes. So should we close with one more promoted post?
Jordi:I love ending on an ad Yeah. Because if there's one thing brothers love, it's ads. Yep. And I got a good one for you. Today, we have a 2021 Mercedes Benz AMG black series.
Senra:I love
Jordi:this. These are
John:Grail.
Jordi:Yeah. This is a Grail car. I mean, this is, like, one of the last, like, truly great Yeah. Cars Mercedes has made.
John:Oh, me? I I just drive a Mercedes. I Yeah. I just have a Mercedes.
Jordi:You just have a Mercedes.
John:Yeah. I I I just I I I, you know, I commute in a in a Mercedes.
Jordi:Yeah.
John:Just happens to be an AMG black series.
Jordi:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
John:You know, it's probably got a sub 7 minute Nurburgring.
Jordi:Yeah. Sub 7. And this mean AMG is finished in 1 of 16, graphite gray magno over black exclusive nappa leather. And, what a great spec. I mean, the the full, the Batman black series, doesn't really get better than that.
Jordi:And, yeah, go pick this up.
John:Oh, wait.
Jordi:If you're still listening to the show, you love ads, which means you probably have an extra $415,000 laying around. Yeah. Go buy this car.
John:You know what you know what you need? Upgrade that Metris. Metris black series.
Jordi:Yeah. You
John:can't they basically are 63, which was the AMG minivan.
Jordi:Yeah.
John:6.3 liter That's a real Grail. V eight. That's a Grail.
Jordi:Like us. That's a Grail.
John:That's a Grail. There's only, like, 50 of them in the US. They're not that expensive. Really? But yeah.
John:Yeah. They're they're just, like, they're so weird, and and they don't even have the the sliding doors.
Jordi:Now I need to go.
John:Now I need to go look. This is a grail car as well. But but go to Mercedes and say, I'm cut I'm I'm, you know, equivalent to the sultan of Brunei. I want a custom Metris AMG black series. Put a v eight in that thing.
Jordi:Wow. They one just sold on Bring A Trailer.
John:How about 63 for 39,000. 40 k for a minivan?
Jordi:I mean, steal.
John:Why would you get, Honda Odyssey when you could have a a a 6.3 liter v 8.
Jordi:What an insane car.
John:It's so insane when you hear the engine note on that thing. You pull up to the school, dropping off the kids, 0 to 6 t sub 4.
Jordi:Get it lowered.
John:It's great. So yeah. You know, AMG GT black series for the weekends and the daily. But when you're r 60 3, the r 63, we recommend them both. We recommend them both.
John:Firm Sometimes when you sponsor the podcast, you know, we'll promote the main thing, but we'll we'll we'll promote your whole catalog.
Jordi:Yep. Yeah. Yep. Multi we love multi product companies. Yeah.
Jordi:More more products to promote. And that's a good place to end, folks. Thank you for listening. It's been a great week.
John:Yes. We're a fantastic week. Merry Christmas, and, thanks for listening. Subscribe on x. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts.
John:Please leave us 5 stars. Add on Spotify. We have video up there now. YouTube, there's short form. There's long form.
John:Any different thing All different forms.
Jordi:And we're coming to LinkedIn soon, folks.
John:Get ready. It's a
Jordi:big bold move. And, everybody said, are you guys you guys don't have what it takes to hang on LinkedIn. Never do it. It's a different ballgame over here
John:Don't do it.
Jordi:Coming to the big leagues of professional networking, but we're gonna go over there. We're gonna make a statement. We are. And we're gonna bring those people back to x. Just the base ones.
Jordi:We'll bring them back to x. Yep. And, we'll we'll sort of help them find their footing over here.
John:So stay tuned. Talk to you later.
Jordi:Thank you.
John:Bye.