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TBPN is a live tech talk show hosted by John Coogan and Jordi Hays, streaming weekdays from 11–2 PT on X and YouTube, with full episodes posted to Spotify immediately after airing.
Described by The New York Times as “Silicon Valley’s newest obsession,” TBPN has interviewed Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Mark Cuban, and Satya Nadella. Diet TBPN delivers the best moments from each episode in under 30 minutes.
There's been a debate. Truth bomb dropped by Emil Michael. He says forgiving Benchmark and others would be like letting the Wuhan Institute of Virology slide back into a good reputation because the new senior manager of pandemic causation has made more friends than his predecessor. And so this got me thinking, and I'm probably gonna have to put on the steel helmet for this one because this is wading into dangerous territory, defending Benchmark. But my question is, how close are we to actually being able to to, forgive Benchmark?
Speaker 1:When is the right time? It's been a decade. Obviously, the the drama between Benchmark and Travis Kalanick was was awful. I think everyone's against what happened. But the question is, like, what is a what is a venture firm?
Speaker 1:It is its partnership. If the partnership turns over, at some point, like, is it a new is it a new team? Is it do do you get a second shot? Can you can you actually change change the reputation? And so believe me, I get the benchmark criticism.
Speaker 1:Travis is truly a generational entrepreneur and was on such an amazing run, right? So he was attacked.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Jason from Saster was reacting to our interview with Travis. And his take, which I totally agree with, is it's hard to if Travis had stayed in the role, it's hard to imagine Uber being worth less than something like 1,000,000,000,000 today.
Speaker 1:Yes. So our friend of the show, Oun McCabe, over at bin.ai said, Waymo is superior to Uber in literally every way. This was a year ago, in March 25. Actually, to the day, a year ago, he said this. Waymo superior to Uber in literally every way that matters to consumers: smoother, safer, more reliable, no chatty, weird, rude drivers, private, quiet.
Speaker 1:Self driving car services are going to dominate their human driver incumbents. And OWN says, TBT when I think that's throwback two, right? Throwback two when Benchmark pushed Travis out of Uber and canned the self driving division that he started literally ten years ago. And so this is what's so so tricky about this is that Uber survived. It's $150,000,000,000 market cap.
Speaker 1:It's bigger than when Travis was ousted. But getting a 2x over a decade is not what I think people were expecting from Uber under Travis' leadership. And Lyft has fallen to just $5,000,000,000 Like, he won the capital war, and Dara's done a great job managing the business. But I feel like a lot of the success of Uber has been built on the foundation that Travis set up. It wasn't a complete reinvention.
Speaker 1:If anything, they just honed down the core business. Yeah. And that's the thing that
Speaker 2:the thing that is holding the business back right now, at least from a valuation standpoint, is this big question Yeah. Right around self driving. Yeah. Dara has has answered this question, you know, thousands of times right now. The strategy is to invest in self driving companies, partner with self driving companies, but not the same as like having, you know, having
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Developed their own internal IP and product starting a decade ago and seeing where that would have been by now is hard to think about.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And so Uber is valued at 150 today, something like that. Waymo was valued in February at $126,000,000,000 And so, yes, Waymo's been working on self driving longer, but you have to imagine that there's another $50,000,000,000 of market
Speaker 2:cap What and you have a serious would Waymo be valued if Travis was the CEO? Yeah. That you would get some type of Travis premium on it? Oh. Just Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Just the market would be would would say Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally.
Speaker 2:You have this sort of Yeah. One of one entrepreneur Yeah. In the seat.
Speaker 1:A 100%. So, Sherwin said, in my opinion, Gurley single handedly destroyed hundreds of billions in value. Travis and Emile staying in charge of Uber would have led to a Tesla sized win, 500,000,000,000 plus, for everyone, including Benchmark's LPs. He nuked decades of Benchmark's reputation with founders. The market has spoken, and no future Travis quality founder would ever touch him or his former firm again, especially since three of the partners that approved of the ousting of Travis are still at the firm.
Speaker 1:And so my question is how many partners need to be at the firm until we can call this a Ship of Theseus. So for those who are not up to speed on their Greek mythology, in Greek mythology, Theseus is the mythical king of the city of Athens. He rescues the children of Athens from King Minos after slaying the Minotaur, which is his mythical beast, and then he escapes onto a ship going to Delos. Each year, the Athenians would commemorate this success by taking the ship on a pilgrimage to Delos to honor Apollo. Over time, because they're sailing the ship every year, various of its timbers rotted and were replaced.
Speaker 1:A question was raised by ancient philosophers. If no pieces of the original ship remained in the current ship, is it still the ship of Theseus? If it was no longer the same, when had it ceased existing as the original ship? So some people might say fiftyfifty. Some people might say, Yes, it is the same ship, because replacing one board at a time, the ship is the concept.
Speaker 1:And you can swap everything out 25 times, it's still the same ship. There isn't like a it's a paradox. There is no like right answer. It's a philosophical question. But it applies, I think, to Benchmark because back when Kalanick resigned as Uber CEO on 06/20/2020 2017 after investor pressure that included Benchmark, on that exact date, Benchmark's equal GP roster was Bill Gurley, Eric Vistra, Matt Kohler, Mitch Lasky, Peter Fenton, Sarah Tavill.
Speaker 1:Today, the partnership has changed dramatically. The only two that remain are Peter and Eric. And you have Chetan, Ev Randle and Jack Altman, who are new to the partnership post the Uber scandal. And so it's not a full ship of Theseus, but only one third of the original 2017 partnership remains. And my question for those who remain reluctant to forgive Benchmark is, like, what happens if Peter and Eric retire or leave at some point, and the full ship of Theseus is complete?
Speaker 1:Maybe you'll
Speaker 2:ship Yeah. Right now right now, 40% of the 40% of the partnership was there.
Speaker 1:33%.
Speaker 2:The question is did Chetan, Everett, and Jack come in and as part of the interview process say, like, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 1:Right. Mean, to to defend Ev No.
Speaker 2:He's gonna show good two out of the three.
Speaker 1:I've Ev had just graduated from college. Like, he he was truly, like, not involved in the Uber scandal. And yet, you know, people will visit it upon him.
Speaker 2:Knowing Everett and Yeah. Jack I'm sure I'm sure during the interview process, they were like, the storied firm Yeah. I'm excited to join, but we can never do
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:We can never do anything like that again. And so and so one one question that's worth asking is like is like, is the firm that did this Yeah. And ultimately, you know, stained this this storied Yeah. Brand and has certainly suffered the consequences. Right?
Speaker 2:They've put up an, you know, incredible returns Yeah. Since then. But I'm sure they've missed a lot of deals that would have made their returns even better because of that kind of narrative around the firm. Yeah. And so Emil, Michael, and others are upset that they're doing great deals Yeah.
Speaker 2:At all. But I think it is If they're in a situation again, right, in the same situation, kind of situation, are they more what what decision are they more or less likely to make? Right? I would I would argue, like, they are probably less likely to
Speaker 1:I would think so.
Speaker 2:Go against the founder given given how this entire situation has played out.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. The only the only steel man and this is this needs the full steel helmet because it's so hard to steel man the benchmark thing. The full steel man of the Benchmark thing is really bad. It's really bad to bench I'm sorry for everyone.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry. But it's basically that every partner at Benchmark it's an equal partnership. So every partner was going to make a clean $1,000,000,000 They were all going to be billionaires from this one deal, and it was such a power law that there was no path to becoming a billionaire from other investments, most likely. And so you see the endless twenty fourseven hit piece pile stack up, and you got Mike Isaac you know, bloodhounded on at The New York Times, writing books that turn into movies. Like, it's getting rough.
Speaker 1:It's getting rough.
Speaker 2:Mike Mike Isaac's at your door?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Mike Isaac's at is at the door. The barbarians are at the gate. And you're like, I'm either a billionaire or I'm going back to your paltry 10,000,000, and I can't I can't do that. I can't do that.
Speaker 1:And so they freak out, and they're like, we gotta salvage this thing. We gotta just push it out in the public markets. We gotta get out of this name. And so they basically just it's just too nerve racking. And yeah, it's not a strong steal, man.
Speaker 1:But I think that's a little bit more of what happened than taking a stand on, oh, this particular thing that happened was so egregious. It was more just like, Okay, like, wow, all my money, like 99% of my net worth is in this asset, and it's looking like it could be a zero because Lyft is coming from behind. There's a whole bunch of VCs that are piling into that. The narrative is totally flipping. There's a boycott Uber campaign, like Yeah.
Speaker 1:And everyone's like, like, what's going on? I got to get out of this. I I I I got to salvage this. And I think that was maybe more of the underpinning than, like, like I'm taking some sort of like moral stand on a particular hit piece or something like that. Anyway, it's rough.
Speaker 1:But fortunately, ship Theseus process. Maybe it happens. I don't know. Would Delian accept that argument? Probably not.
Speaker 1:Would Emile? Probably not. But they're not making it any easier with the Manus investment either because there was a world where it was like, Okay, yeah, the Uber thing happened a decade ago. The partnership is basically entirely new. And they're focused on
Speaker 2:But it's but
Speaker 1:But it's not there yet.
Speaker 2:Yes. It's just not there yet.
Speaker 1:It's not there yet.
Speaker 2:The I mass is still think you can rewrite this in five years.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You made this point that this is it's too early to call this. But I think it's But that's
Speaker 2:directionally, given that the firm is still putting up great returns, they've gotten to a bunch of great companies over the last five years, I think we are on a path to the benchmark.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Benchmark Benchmark is our venture
Speaker 2:ship of Theseus.
Speaker 1:And VC Bragg said Airbnb has no homes, Uber has no cars, and Benchmark has no partners. Of course, that was an exaggeration. Sora, rest in peace, Sora. The app is leaving.
Speaker 2:Ev is Ev is in the chest.
Speaker 1:There he is.
Speaker 2:Class of 17 represent.
Speaker 1:Yes. Yes. Ev was Ev was chugging beers while Uber is getting ousted. Do not visit the the the sins of the father on the son. That's what I would say.
Speaker 1:Ev not guilty.
Speaker 2:Ev was Ev was a boulder.
Speaker 1:Yeah. He was hanging out. He was What happened?
Speaker 2:See senior year? What happened?
Speaker 1:Anyway, Sora is now is it still in the App Store? I think it's, like, the announcement was that it will be leaving the App Store.
Speaker 2:Millions of people have made content on the app. Yes. Perhaps they'll leave it running
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:For some amount of time
Speaker 1:to be There's a phase out. But the announcement happened. Now it is is going out. And there's a I have a bunch of takes on this. Obviously, this is not the end of video creation for OpenAI.
Speaker 1:This will be rolled into ChatGPT, I imagine. Tyler Hodge put it well, bullish. Killing products quickly is hard. Almost no one can do it. It's a good sign for OpenAI.
Speaker 1:They're consolidating. In many ways, it's like last week, you heard about the code red was like a month or two ago, and then it was like, we're refocusing. And then it's like, here's step one of refocusing, like a single app that we're going to push everything together. And also, I've I've enjoyed making some videos in Sora. I've never enjoyed having to go to a separate app.
Speaker 1:I want all of that to live in one place. So that makes a lot of sense. Let's see what Dax said. It's lame to see all the people saying, I called it. I knew Sora wouldn't work.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Duh. Because everyone everyone thought that, including me who were working on it. They probably learned a lot trying to make it work anyway for every successful thing that exists. A 100 efforts like this had to fail, and those learnings are fed into making something that ultimately does work and provides you with a steady paycheck.
Speaker 1:Yes, it's interesting because this quote of like people saying, I called it. I knew Sora would work, that is not how I interpreted the vibes around the Sora launch. Like I went back and revisited the essay that I wrote on October 1. We had the slop versus farming debate. I was really on a tear back then.
Speaker 1:Said slop is bad. We, the timeline, don't want to be pigs at the trough. We don't like it when tech leaders treat us like farm animals, but we love farming. Farming is Lindy. We, the timeline, want to return to a world where we are filling up troughs with slop on a daily basis, I guess.
Speaker 1:So between Google DeepMind, Meta Superintelligence, OpenAI, we now have three different variations on AI video products, each met with slightly different responses. So the yeah. The the interesting thing here is that, like, Google has been, like, charging ahead, launching it. It's in it's in real it's in, Shorts, and that's just been, like, not a story at all. What was interesting was that the the vibes around both Meta Vibes and Sora were like, this is going to one shot humanity.
Speaker 1:They're like, this is going to be too successful. Yeah. That was it was
Speaker 2:like It was it was like a entertainment doom loop. Exactly. You you could imagine Exactly. It just getting so good at generating the next thing that you would wanna see better than even a billion humans on Instagram Yes. Could do.
Speaker 2:And that's not what we've seen
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:So far.
Speaker 1:And so, like, my big question was was, like, will this actually be sticky? Will people like this? And at what rate? I mean, I read LLM generated text daily, but I also read a ton of not LLM generated text. And my my ratio has grown exponentially, but it hasn't gone to a 100%.
Speaker 1:Nowhere near it. Like, probably 5% of the text that I read is LLM generated. I mean,
Speaker 2:we should actually revisit how we were processing it during launch when it was, you know, rocketing.
Speaker 1:We should just throw on that three hour stream and just watch them react to how how our teams were that day.
Speaker 2:Even at the time, I remember saying, very obvious that they built, like, a very cool creative tool. Yeah. And they have the potential to seed a network Yeah. With this. There's all this, you know, novel Yeah.
Speaker 2:Content. They had they had allowing creators and
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, people like Sam to allow people to use their their IP. Yeah. It was very, very well executed launch. But even from the beginning, it was like, okay, obviously, cool creative tool. Yep.
Speaker 2:It's a totally different ball. You know, this like come for the tool, stay for the network has been, like, an enduring It's
Speaker 1:Chris Dixon.
Speaker 2:Strategy. Right? Chris Dixon probably wrote that in, twenty fourteen Twenty fourteen. Maybe? Or Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like, a long time ago. Over 10 over ten years ago.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But just because you build a tool that is attached to a network, like, that jump is just really, really, really, really tough.
Speaker 1:Especially when there are three or four, five serious networks that are at scale that can, on day one, support the format of the file that is produced from the model. So in a world where generative AI video came out not in an MP4 file or an MOV file, it came out in some sort of format that could never be uploaded to Instagram Reels. Then you have a chance to build a network and run away with it. And this was the story of Instagram. Like Instagram just had better support for images than Facebook did.
Speaker 1:And then Vine had support for video literally before Instagram. So Instagram, it was like, I have a video on my phone. It's cool. I wanna share it. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Sharing it to Instagram was not possible. Yeah. Now on day one, you generate an AI video. You wanna share it, you can share it on TikTok.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's just to be incented. If you create if you created an amazing video on on Sora Yeah. What is the most logical thing to do if you're a creator and you want reach? Post it to Instagram.
Speaker 1:Yep. There's just Exactly.
Speaker 2:Naturally, there's billions of people there. Yeah. There there were millions of people on Sora Yeah. And a lot of energy and momentum.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And it's not lost on me that the same day that Sora was killed, you have a viral breakout reality TV style series show putting up incredible numbers on TikTok for, Fruit Love Island, I believe it's called. It's an AI generated, twist on Love Island. There's romantic intrigue and plot lines and stories and consistent characters and a lot of things that have come from a variety of AI models. And we should talk to the person that's the entrepreneur behind that project because I would be interested to know what the stack is because I imagine it's not just, going to a single Gen AI app.
Speaker 1:I imagine that they have a whole pipeline, like a workflow in place to actually generate that. And so we're at this weird moment where, Sora, the app is going away, but we're also seeing more and more AI generated content slowly see success, whether that's the podcast that's at the top of the charts that's fully AI generated. There's this Love Island show. There's a number of niches where they found the right product market fit for AI generated content. But it's not overnight, we're living in infinite just and we just can't look away.
Speaker 1:It's like for specific things, it makes a lot of sense. And so it's working there.
Speaker 2:It's interesting to think about Google's strategy with with video. Even even Google Yes. Was like, we cannot operate this for free at scale.
Speaker 1:$150
Speaker 2:a month. I still No. That was the that was the discounted rate.
Speaker 1:Oh, I think I'm at 500 a month.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Was it was like an entry. To start. It was like $250 a month.
Speaker 1:And it was And then it was brutally weight limited. Like Yeah. Even even with
Speaker 2:We were we were laughing at this because
Speaker 1:3 a day.
Speaker 2:It I remember we'd be like at the gym in the morning, you would fire off a couple prompts.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And and then you were like, rate I
Speaker 1:I got it right.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Hope I it right. Then you're rate limited. And you're like, wait
Speaker 1:a minute.
Speaker 2:Rate limited? On a on a
Speaker 1:$2.50.
Speaker 2:$250 plan that's gonna jump to 500? You're probably paying gotta check the rate.
Speaker 1:I I I
Speaker 2:I I Gotta check check our rate. It's probably paying 500 a month still.
Speaker 1:No. Seriously. And and that and that And that's
Speaker 2:and that's Google with
Speaker 1:all this Literally, would insane
Speaker 2:data advantage with YouTube.
Speaker 1:Let me tell you. Rate limits kill retention. Like, nothing nothing is worse. If you're in Instagram, the endless scroll exists. TikTok, you can you can scroll endlessly.
Speaker 1:You can use the imagine if TikTok was, like, after five minutes, you have to close the app and come back in twenty minutes. Like, how successful do we think that would be? It would be a disaster. And that was the experience for both Sora and v o three, where you would fire off a prompt, and it would be like, okay, come back in a couple minutes. Gonna take me a while to cook.
Speaker 1:And then you fire off five, and it's like, okay. No more for today. Clearly, the compute constraints are are immense, and there's just so much more value that can come from enterprise and it can come from deep research and so many of the other models that are immediately economically valued like cogen, like enterprise workflows. And it's maybe more boring and less viral and less controversial, but it's where the compute needs to go. And so I think you're going to see the chips be moved around inside of all the labs to like compute will find the most optimal output, like the tokens of the most value will always be the ones that the compute flows to.
Speaker 1:And endless random generations that aren't quite dialed yet, even the best video models, like they're just not there, they require a lot of work, is not the same as where we are in terms of knowledge retrieval, where we are in terms of cogen. It's just way more valuable. Said What did
Speaker 2:I say? In September, people overestimate how much brain rot happens in a year and underestimate how much brain rot happens in a decade. So So yes, we're still
Speaker 1:I mean, I'm using brain rot pejoratively there. But I do think that like this move does not really bend the curve of just AI generated content. But I still think it's like a slow rollout. Like it's fast in the sense that like we went from no slop on the timeline to lots and we went from like actually zero it was like one cool AI video, Harry Potter Balenciaga was like entertaining to general people. And now we get like five.
Speaker 1:And then we get like next year we'll get like 20. And then eventually it'll be like hundreds and they'll be like, oh yeah, I'm actually into that. Like are into cartoons and people are into CGI movies and superhero movies. Some people will be into it. Some people will never like it.
Speaker 1:Some people will always say, want a black and white film from the forties. That's what I want to watch. And these rollouts, the diffusion of this stuff will happen. Of
Speaker 2:We Davidson says
Speaker 1:What do what is this?
Speaker 2:Y'all are worried about the wrong OpenClaw.
Speaker 1:This is a good post. White Claw did have a fast takeoff, for sure. It went from zero to 60, and it was just everywhere all of a sudden. But, anyway, it is a remarkable story because Fiverr is running a one of the coolest out of home campaigns. Like, just from an out of home inventory, I didn't know you could do this.
Speaker 1:Let's we can pull up either my picture or we can pull up
Speaker 2:I'll just pull up this video from KTLA5.
Speaker 1:KTLA5 had a video breaking down what's going on. Let's watch this, and then we'll react to this. Let's pull up the KTLA five report about AI coming for Hollywood, the mysterious sign
Speaker 3:along Underneath, the one zero a logo for Fiverr and a search box that says, find the best AI directors. It's a brash, bold statement, AI.
Speaker 1:Brash, bold statement.
Speaker 3:Coming for Hollywood.
Speaker 1:Coming for Hollywood.
Speaker 3:Fiverr has made a name for its self connecting projects with freelancers. Now they're launching an AI video hub, which they say can make content at a fraction compared to traditional production. This Billy Bowman guy is one of the directors that you can hire. He's based in Sweden. He's made AI videos for Google, Universal Music Group, and others.
Speaker 3:As you know, AI really hasn't taken over Hollywood yet, it has certainly crept into commercials. Brands like Google and Jeep rolling out AI on national campaigns. Many are slowly or slowing rather to see the 30 foot sign, which went up over the weekend. I first noticed it stuck in traffic yesterday morning after someone was so entranced, they rear ended somebody else.
Speaker 1:It's causing accidents.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So
Speaker 3:interesting. AI director.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So it's basically someone who puts the prompt into the machine and chooses This is elite. Is Fiverr gonna pay
Speaker 2:the bottom $100 in box, buddy.
Speaker 3:Fender bender That's a great question. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Can they be held liable for such a distracting sign? I didn't
Speaker 3:You know, you can crash or something. Blush with money. Whether or not it is a bubble like you can debate
Speaker 1:That's interesting because Fiverr is not one of those companies.
Speaker 3:More of a
Speaker 2:state of being made k t l a five is not prepared for it not to be a bubble. But
Speaker 1:of course, the AI wave has not been kind to Fiverr because a lot of the tasks like, you know, generating AI is very,
Speaker 2:very, very good at $5 creative work. Exactly. At $25. Obviously, prices go well beyond Yeah. $5 since since since the early days.
Speaker 2:But in terms of the kind of projects that I always use Fiverr for, AI just one shots,
Speaker 1:all of that. And the nature of Fiverr is, like, you have to define your task in a prompt. Yeah. It's not it's not, oh, have like a long conversation, get drinks with somebody.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Was often that was often the The better. The bottleneck.
Speaker 1:That yeah.
Speaker 2:That was the bottleneck.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Totally.
Speaker 2:It was like, I need to do this task. Yeah. Because I I need like Yeah. Ten minutes to like properly Totally. Totally.
Speaker 2:All these things. Yeah. It's honestly way more time than you spend prompting normally because with prompting, you're just like, I'll just try it a
Speaker 1:few times.
Speaker 3:Bunch of times.
Speaker 2:Kinda iterate. Hit my rate limits and then
Speaker 1:fire back up. Yeah. I mean, it was always a bottleneck. I remember as an entrepreneur, found out about Fiverr, and I was like, this is amazing. I can get random stuff done for $5 But the time commitment, actually finding the right person, making sure the reviews are good, it wound up being like hours of work.
Speaker 1:And if you have a consistent flow, you're better off just hiring a person. So they got kind of squeezed in the middle.
Speaker 2:Yeah. The market is not excited about Fiverr right now. They're being valued basically at four times EBITDA
Speaker 1:But this is an interesting pivot for them. They're basically saying that you can come to us to hire someone who has all the tooling set up to actually sit there and sort of nanny all the AI models because it is a hassle. Like, as you described with me and VO3, I was sitting there like, Okay, I fire off four prompts, then I go back. Like, it's way better if you're on the API and you have Higgs Field wired up and you have RunwayML and you have access to the Chinese model C Dance, like the right tool for the job and then you do fine tune on someone's face. There's a whole bunch of things that you can do to get better results, but it takes time and it's a hassle and it's more of a professional job.
Speaker 1:It's not actually at a
Speaker 2:work Here's the main problem with the campaign
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Is that Billy Bowman Yeah. Is a real person
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:With his own website Okay. With his own Instagram.
Speaker 1:Oh, so
Speaker 2:you just go reach out to him. Which is interesting because like the primary issue with with these labor marketplaces like Fiverr is disintermediation. If a business hires somebody on Fiverr and has an amazing experience, eventually they're just going to go direct because they build up a lot of trust. And it's very different than a platform like Uber where you don't necessarily want the same driver every time because they're not around you and all these things. And so the reason that the Fivers and the Upworks of the world and there's been a bunch of other engineering focused marketplaces just have never reached like insane scale Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like Uber is because of the disintermediation. Yeah. And this campaign is effectively an ad for Billy Bowman Mhmm. Who you could just go hire today.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Disengagement has always been a problem on these platforms. Bombardier, the manufacturer of private business jets, is down 10% over the past month. A lot of people were wondering why this was happening. I think we now know why, and it's probably because the shot across the bow from United Airlines.
Speaker 1:So what competes with a private jet? United Airlines' new product, which is an entire row of economy seats. United Airlines says the entire row is all yours. Welcome to the United Relax Row. Three adjacent United Economy seats with adjustable leg rests that can be raised or lowered to create a cozy lie flat space for stretching out.
Speaker 1:You'll also get a mattress pad, blanket, and two pillows. If you're traveling with kids, a plushie too. United Relax Row will be available starting next year on more than 200 of the 787s and 777s. So what do you think, Jordy? I was telling Tyler Cosgrove, who is out of the studio today, he's in Washington, DC he's got to demo this.
Speaker 1:He's got to get on one of these. I don't know. Every time the airline announces something, it's always like five years until it actually is available. I've been waiting for Starlink for a long time. It took a long time for that to get rolled out from the pre United
Speaker 2:has pretty good pace. Okay. They've been quick to
Speaker 1:So you think Tyler could get on this tomorrow?
Speaker 2:I think if Tyler's resourceful enough, he could just if he ended up in a row Yeah. Two empty seats next to him, he could just figure out a way to detach the armrest Okay. Walking this Yeah. And just kinda kinda build your own. Yeah.
Speaker 2:They might have to land the plane and arrest him. Yeah. Potentially worth the risk.
Speaker 1:He could also he could also potentially negotiate with whoever's sitting next to him. Say, hey, you go and spend the entire flight in the lavatory. And in exchange, I will vibe code you a sloppy app, of which I don't understand what programming languages you use.
Speaker 2:I'll trade you an app for
Speaker 1:your seat. I'll trade you an app for your seat. And somebody might be like, that's amazing. I don't have anyone that can vibe code for me. This too good.
Speaker 1:No. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:Brian Peterson says, now we just need to put stairs on the food drink carts, so you can climb over the top of them to get to the bathroom instead of holding. Yeah. This just this just feels like this just feels very very chaotic.
Speaker 1:I don't know. Starlink, a relaxed row, a dream. I I think that this could be a good option. United built a product that everyone who has been who has ever been on a plane wanted, says John Collison.
Speaker 2:John, you need to work on fixing Bombardier's stock price.
Speaker 1:I don't think it's related. Oh, apparently, Air New Zealand launched this in 2010.
Speaker 2:Wouldn't No. It is related because he he should he should help them build out their pipeline.
Speaker 1:Well, he's he's just pumping his bags because he owns a a property in Ireland. How do you get there? You gotta fly on United. So, you know, one hand washes the other on this. He's he's he's talking his own book.
Speaker 2:SpaceX aims to file IPO as soon as this week.
Speaker 1:Yes. This is
Speaker 2:a Everyone is excited for the s one. Particularly, I think people will be focused on x AI. Yeah. What they have going on. I think that
Speaker 1:Are they gonna have to break it out in the s one?
Speaker 2:I would
Speaker 1:assume This might be first time we actually see the economics of inference, the economics of a foundation lab, even though, yes, they are at a smaller scale.
Speaker 2:Hard to read too much in into it because they've been investing so far ahead of Yeah. Demand?
Speaker 1:Yeah. I I just think that, like, there is a world where we get broken out financials that you can dig through and you can understand based on Grok pricing, which we see, and top line revenue and cost, we can actually see, are they serving that model profitably? And there will be a lot to dig into there. Obviously, the other labs have different strategies, different vertical integration points, different economic, different pricing regimes. I mean, the the the the true frontier, the the models that are are are dominating Arc AGI, those command a premium, a price premium.
Speaker 1:There's a wild difference between charging $15 per million tokens versus $2 per million tokens.
Speaker 2:So People were posting this as though it was fact. I think it's a very real possibility. So I think Elon will will try to aim for the company to actually go out on on 04/24/2020. Really? And I think it is possible if
Speaker 1:he goes fast.
Speaker 2:We'll see what the ticker ends up being. But Yeah. I think some people would like, knowing Elon's very millennial sense of humor Mhmm. I think the ticker s e x is
Speaker 1:Oh, you think so?
Speaker 2:Plus the Yeah. April 20 IPO. I I I would assume that You
Speaker 1:think it it is a real prediction. You're not trolling.
Speaker 2:I'm not saying I would bet on it. I would put the the April 20 at at maybe, like, you know, 30% and then the ticker may be down at at Okay. Well 15%.
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