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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.
You're watching TBPN. Today is Monday, 09/28/2026. We are live from the TBPN UltraDome, the temple of technology
Speaker 2:The fortress of finance.
Speaker 1:The capital of capital. Let me tell you about ramp.com. Time is money, save both. These use corporate cards, bill pay, accounting and a whole lot more. Let's check-in on the road to Christmas.
Speaker 1:Many days we got? I think it's eighty seven days until Christmas. Eighty seven days until
Speaker 2:And you can feel it in your bones.
Speaker 1:You can. You can.
Speaker 2:You can.
Speaker 1:You can. Well, thank you for tuning in to TBPN today. We have a great show. We have a bunch of great guests coming on.
Speaker 2:It's been too long.
Speaker 1:Get down. It has been too long. Just a couple more sleeps, but good to have everyone here with us in the chat. Anyway, the the I the the most viral video I saw over the weekend was the the parody of Dario Amade on SNL. That felt like it really took over the timeline.
Speaker 1:Martin Casado said, honestly, downplayed how ridiculous the rhetoric and broader situation is. It was a funny clip. There were a bunch of interesting nuance. I mean, first, it's like, okay. Clearly, the the the AI rhetoric and the public discourse is getting to like a a new height to the point where, like, a lab leader of a private company can be can even be parodied on SNL because the audience understands who that is.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So it's interesting to see that, like, okay. Yes. Like, Dario has done enough on Oprah and CNN and and NBC and ABC and all the major news networks to be relevant to the broader audience. Yeah. And and because it only really works, like, you can't they like, they could never pair there's a lot of people in tech that we know that wouldn't work as, you know, SNL punching bags.
Speaker 1:But he's made it.
Speaker 2:He's made It says a lot that the, like, the sweater vest thing is Yep. Iconic enough
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:To be like a part of
Speaker 1:a character. I wonder if he'll stick with that or switch it up. Because it's not it's not his leather jacket yet. It's not his Hawaiian t shirt yet. But there is such value into leaning into like a consistent thing.
Speaker 1:But I don't know. We'll see. The the other the interesting like wrinkle here is that while Dario is at the point where he is enough of a name that they can do this bit and and make jokes and it's it's relevant to the SNL audience. Obviously, it went way more viral on X than I I I think it probably did on YouTube. But when Michael Che is introducing the segment, he sort of stumbles over Dario's name a little bit.
Speaker 1:Like, he's reading it from the cue cards and he says like, and this is Dario and then he pauses. And it seems like maybe Dario Amade is not bully a household name in the SNL writers room yet, in the sense that they're like, okay. Who is this guy? Let's look him up. Okay.
Speaker 1:Get him on the cue cards. I don't know. Maybe I'm reading into it too much, but it felt like this was certainly like a crossing the chasm moment, like the first time everyone gets to know Dario. But very, very funny and it really illuminates a little bit of like the the complexity of the discourse, the irony of saying, you know, somebody's gotta save me from me, basically. But let's play a little bit of it.
Speaker 1:See see see what you think.
Speaker 3:You know, know, you know, thanks for having me, Michael. I may have been alarming in my recent interviews, but I want to assure you that if we can pressure lawmakers to create guardrails, we will be able to stop me.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Dario, can you just explain how your company isn't going to kill us?
Speaker 3:So so so so so so
Speaker 1:Not the most important question.
Speaker 3:That's a really hard question.
Speaker 4:It shouldn't be.
Speaker 3:Look, you know, come on Dario. Come on Dario. You can do this.
Speaker 1:Is is that an explicit reference to like the ring? Like Gollum like with the voices in your head?
Speaker 3:AI is the devil and eye its maker.
Speaker 1:What? It seems like it.
Speaker 5:Well, look.
Speaker 1:AI is the devil and eye
Speaker 3:its maker. This extensively and we are all on the same page here. We do not condone what we are doing.
Speaker 1:Shouldn't you very, very tough to thread the needle on this message. Cancer?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So, put it this way. In ten years, there's about a ten percent chance that cancer won't be a problem for anyone.
Speaker 1:For anyone. I don't like the way you're saying that, buddy. I mean, how is this a good thing?
Speaker 3:Look. So, Jay, it's simple. If you could drink a milk that made your life easier, but there was a ten percent chance it killed you, would you drink the milk?
Speaker 6:No. Really?
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 3:Well, what if there was a button that when you push it, everyone dies? Would you push the button?
Speaker 2:No. Really? Dario,
Speaker 4:are you okay?
Speaker 3:I'm sort of blacking out every time I talk. I'd love to start this interview over or better yet, you know, my whole life.
Speaker 4:Alright, Dario. Just tell us, what are the pros of AI?
Speaker 3:Alright. Land of the plane, Dario.
Speaker 5:I can't.
Speaker 6:You can. We can hear
Speaker 5:you, Dario.
Speaker 3:No one can hear you, Dario. Say something reassuring. Like what? Try the milk thing.
Speaker 5:Already said Then
Speaker 1:a reference to something or is that just random?
Speaker 3:Is not a It's tool.
Speaker 1:It's funny.
Speaker 3:A tool for building weapons, and I urge you to urge me to stop.
Speaker 1:Dario Amadeh, everybody. Ridiculous. Let me tell you about the New York Stock Exchange. Wanna change the world? Raise capital at the New York Stock Exchange.
Speaker 1:No. But yeah. A bunch of downstream stuff from this. I mean, obviously, getting pilloried by SNL. Not the first time it's happened to a tech
Speaker 2:Right right of passage?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. For sure. They've done this for all sorts of people. Also, there's a number of Yeah.
Speaker 2:We're guessing. Yeah. Going going pretty hard on him in some ways. Yeah. That being said, he's always like incredibly fascinating to listen to and he has incredible clarity of of thought and he does at times, he'll like pause, you know Yeah.
Speaker 2:In a in a way that would maybe scare normal people Mhmm. A little bit. But the thing that I think he can do that will have the biggest impact
Speaker 1:is I to agree.
Speaker 2:No. I actually like the I like the the whatever kind of shawl sweater thing that is.
Speaker 1:Isn't it is it Brunello?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I think someone talked it. Right? It's Brunello. So, you know, it's nice. It's quite luxury.
Speaker 1:And I feel like a power tie, some shoulder padding would go a long way. Anyway.
Speaker 2:The biggest thing he can do is to stop smiling when he is talking about really bad devastating things.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. And
Speaker 2:so I'm sure that that's something
Speaker 1:learned from like the way like Fed chairman speak or the way, you know, the the head of the FDA or the head of the military speaks. Like, we've talked to some of these folks and, like, they're very austere, very serious, and our show's very lighthearted. We just kinda have to, like, click into a different mode when you're talking to somebody like like a Megal Kracios or someone who's, like, dealing with the weight of something big Yeah. And and and puts up a wall that is it is a it is a performance, but it serves a very valuable purpose, which is Yeah. Like, I take this very seriously.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Or you can go the opposite way, the the the Mark Zuckerberg way and rip it and just be like, yeah, I'm having fun with AI, which is honestly like it feels like people are like, yeah, I kinda want that energy a little bit. Just give me the white pill. But I don't know.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And again, I I don't think that Zuck's approach is at all appealing to the people actually pushing the frontier. No. Right? No.
Speaker 2:Like, no no one's gonna Yeah. No one's gonna take no no one Yeah. No researchers like take
Speaker 1:I mean, there are there are some researchers.
Speaker 2:Dating dating back to Demis being like, you know, that moment where he realizes Zuck is just as excited about
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:VR as he is AI. Right? Yeah. Anyways
Speaker 1:But maybe
Speaker 2:I hope that Maybe VR will be bigger than AI, Jordy. Maybe. Wouldn't you like that? Wouldn't you like that, John?
Speaker 1:I would love that. Yeah Anyway, so
Speaker 2:from SNL headed straight into dinner Yeah. With the president.
Speaker 1:Sunday. I mean, he wasn't actually at SNL. But yeah, it's like you wake up to that on on Sunday morning and you have to imagine that Trump sees it. But Trump has been both he's hosted he's hosted SNL multiple times, and he's also been made fun of on SNL for years. Like, when he gets elected, they basically hire an actor to come and be him for four years for the entire tenure because they're gonna be doing the cold open with him, like basically every other week.
Speaker 1:And so maybe there's a little bit of camaraderie. They're like, hey, we've both been through this, Dario. It's not so bad. It's actually kinda kinda funny or or maybe they're both like, yeah. The news really is fake.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Got we got
Speaker 2:But yeah. As as as critical as it is at the same time, I think it's something that all founders should aspire to. Right? When you're starting your company and and the investors say, well, where do you where do you see yourself, you know, where do you see yourself in the company and
Speaker 1:Perhaps perhaps.
Speaker 2:Andrew Curran says, President Trump has personally invited Dario to a private dinner Mhmm. Tonight. That was yesterday.
Speaker 1:So it happened on Sunday night.
Speaker 2:This will be the first time they've met one on one. Yeah. Big chance to patch things up or crash the plane into the mountain.
Speaker 1:They're actually running it back tomorrow night. Tuesday night, there's a dinner in DC for all the AI leaders with the White House again. So I mean, the pace of this stuff is really, really, really picking up. There's there's meetings every every week now, basically. And yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, there's lots to work through. And no one is gonna get their put their their head in the sand. Not even the comedians at SNL. They will have chime in as well as, the politicians and the lab leaders. And so, yeah, despite, Dario being excluded from it seemed like he was excluded from that White House dinner with Xi Jinping and, and that basically every top tech leader was invited to.
Speaker 1:He was noticeably absent. President Trump, you know, followed up with a one on one dinner with Dario to hear his side of the story. And I wonder what type of leaks or reporting will come out of that. You would think that that would be going on today. Maybe there will be some news or maybe they'll put out a joint statement.
Speaker 1:Maybe everything went really well. But I mean both
Speaker 2:Or a joint. You could see Dario sign up for Truth Social.
Speaker 1:Sure. Or UFC courtside or ringside.
Speaker 2:Ringside. UFC. UFC. Be pretty electric. UFC Yeah.
Speaker 2:With with the Don. Yeah. I could see it.
Speaker 1:Nitro Circus.
Speaker 2:Yeah. We're
Speaker 1:doing the Nitro Circus thing before UFC that
Speaker 2:I wanna see Dana White, Dario
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Trump Yeah. Just squat it up.
Speaker 1:You think he'd be doing slapboxing before too?
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:For sure. Oh, yeah. For sure. You gotta do a full suite if you if you go all in. Anyway, so there's also interesting timing that I don't know if this how timed up this was, but every day there's another proposal for how to manage AI safety.
Speaker 1:This one feels like the most formal concepting exercise from a group of top AI researchers. It's published through the University of Cambridge, and it's a good list that pulls from, all over the industry. It doesn't feel like there's any lab that has, like, finger on the scale. Not that that really matters. I feel like if Demis comes out with some great thing and Anthropic and OpenAI sign on and, you know, there there there's a lot of energy.
Speaker 1:Like, people will just be like, this is great. We should take it seriously. But this one was this one was interesting because it was notably, like, diverse in the researchers. I didn't even know that there were this many researchers that didn't look at that didn't work at labs by now. But there in fact are a lot that signed on.
Speaker 1:So Jeffrey Hinton, also a Nobel laureate, but Turing Award winner alongside Joshua Joshua Dibengio, Andrew Barto, industry leaders from OpenAI, Jacob, the chief scientist from Microsoft, Eric Horvitz, the chief scientific officer, and Jack Clark from Anthropic. So this, you know, Sam was talking to it was it wasn't Axios. He he he was interviewed and he was saying that, like, maybe we're gonna sit down and get beers, basically. You remember this whole thing? Why don't you guys just sit down and have some beers?
Speaker 1:That was the that was the proposal. And he was like, I don't wanna leak anything that's gonna happen, but we are thinking about thinking about it. And, know, you he's like, you you can't just
Speaker 2:be a person. Agents are talking about getting together for a beer.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But it was very funny framing. But this is like the start of that. It's start of more collaboration between the labs, between the academic community. And what's interesting is like, they go a little bit further.
Speaker 1:You know, Tyler over there is his criticism has been like everyone comes out with an AI safety proposal and it's basically always like we gotta talk about it. And this is a little bit more concrete. So the first one is they want to set in place the ability to monitor the level of AI enabled R and D So at what percentage of the code? What percentage of the dollars? What like give us a give us firm metrics on how much of the AI r and d is being done by artificial intelligence, Anthropic, OpenAI.
Speaker 1:They've all sort of, like, mentioned this in blog posts that it's happening. But there's also this, like, vague jockeying because it's better to be further along on the RSI curve for financial reasons. So there's not really an apples to like, one really feels like they have a strong handle on, like, whether there's more RSI going on at OpenAI or Anthropic. Like, it feels like they both have very different metrics. Like, OpenAI says, like, we have a intern level, and then and then Anthropic will say, like, we had Claude spin up a thousand ideas and, like, you can't really apples to apples those.
Speaker 1:The proposal's like, let's get some metrics in place so we can actually monitor this thing. Then they also have again, it's sort of like we need to talk about it, but they want the government to create firm plans for responses to potential theoretical bad scenarios. So, like, if there's a big cyber attack and an agent goes rogue and brings down the Internet and hacks into a bunch of stuff, like, what did what will the government do? What's the equivalent of, like, FEMA? Like, we have a response for, like, there's a big hurricane, hits town, you bring in people, there's food, there's shelter, there's, like, a plan.
Speaker 1:And we don't really have that for, like, the Internet went down because, like, an agent took it down. Same thing for biosecurity. They have a couple others even like economic dislocation, that type of thing. So they want they want the they're they're not proposing the solutions to those yet, But they're saying like the gov this is where the government should be prepared. So, I don't know.
Speaker 1:It's a good read. They have an executive summary you can read and then the the full paper is is pretty digestible. It's not
Speaker 2:Did you see that China has places you can go to to simulate being in a disaster? Like high, you know, super high winds
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And and Flash floods. Flash floods. Okay. Like that. Should we have like AI disaster simulations where, you know, you can be be in a data center that's going rogue and and kind of work to to shut it down with friends.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Just to kind of like live action role play through it.
Speaker 1:I like that. I like that. I I'm kind of treating Modern Warfare four like that. I feel like that's getting me enough cycles of like the simulation of, you know, you already play against bots. You're already shooting shooting AI basically.
Speaker 1:So getting some drills in.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I know it's it's a joke, but I I wouldn't actually be surprised that a a future first person shooter or like one of these open world games is centered around the the Terminator scenario.
Speaker 1:There was there was a game. There was a game. I forget what it's called. But, yeah, like you drop in with three people and you're on this like planet. There's one that's Starship Troopers themed, so it's like the bug planet.
Speaker 1:And then there's another planet that you can drop into that's like the Terminator planet. And you're going up against like They basically like ripped Terminator's intellectual property. Like they look exactly like t
Speaker 2:Why is Tyler not back in school? He's doing internship in history. He turned it down.
Speaker 7:I turned it down.
Speaker 2:He actually turned it down just to grind for this.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, things will never be chill again. The doomers who shape the AI safety freak out. The Wall Street Journal has an article here about some early anthropic employees who are considering buying remote land in The United States to to relocate to if AI goes seriously wrong. They're getting bunkies.
Speaker 1:They're going bunker mode. Yeah. Employees also trained doomsday scenarios and preparation plans in a private Slack, while anthropic workers have their own office space inside Berkeley's Constellation AI safety community. The wider safety scene has discussed iodine pills, remote islands, and electromagnetically shielded desert bunkers. Interesting that no one's trying to go to space.
Speaker 1:I I would have thought that would have been that was George Hot's original pitch. He was like, if AI goes crazy, I want to be I wanna be on a on a
Speaker 2:But beyond starship.
Speaker 1:Spaceship leaving the light cone as fast as AI can't catch up to you, blast shield behind you and then you'll be you'll be safe from the intelligence
Speaker 2:say he's not very AGI pill because obviously, the super intelligence would just figure out a way to just go faster Go faster. To be light and catch up.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, if you if you go the maximum speed, they can't catch up ever. Right?
Speaker 1:So then you are safe. But you gotta accelerate to exactly one c.
Speaker 7:This is like an interesting example of like an actual answer to the to the teller count question, which is like, if you're if you really care about doom, why aren't you making financial
Speaker 2:This is a get
Speaker 1:a lot of debt and buy a buy a bunker, buy remote land with a massive mortgage.
Speaker 7:Yeah. Because usually the answer to the the doomer thing is like, well, I'm not gonna be able to get to my bunker because the, you know, bioterrorism will already have killed me or something. Mhmm. This is an interesting
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 7:Instantiation of this.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Thing that always the thing that always just like breaks down Yeah. With these scenarios is like, you know, every every every guy is like sort of played out the scenario in their head. Right? And where are you gonna be where are you gonna be best off?
Speaker 2:In some like remote area where you don't know any people that actually live there. Right? Let's let's pick a Let's pick Wyoming. Right? Really think that the world is like falling apart and you're just gonna head over to Wyoming and set up shop in a community that knows you've been building your bunkie there.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Right? And and they're just gonna be like, oh, yeah. Like, there's a bunker over there. It has everything you need in it Yep.
Speaker 2:To survive and You
Speaker 1:know you know what they
Speaker 2:But but you know, they paid us to set it up years ago Yep. And and and let's not we shouldn't we shouldn't just go occupy said bunker for ourselves.
Speaker 1:So the prepper community has a term for this. They say don't be a loot drop.
Speaker 6:Yeah. It's a loot drop.
Speaker 1:You're a loot drop if you do this. If you go and set up a really luxurious bunker with a bunch of supplies, but you don't actually know community. You're not integrated into like everyone What's
Speaker 2:the fabric of
Speaker 1:of Yeah. The fabric. So ideally, it's like you want your team and everyone else to all be in it together and so that, you know, there's no there's no squabbling. But yeah, you can just set up a loot drop and then everyone's like, oh, yeah. I installed a crazy safe over there.
Speaker 1:Let's go get that as soon as the the the crisis happens. Yeah. I mean, there's a whole bunch of fun game theory that you can play through there. I would I would personally I think we need to regulate because I would personally I would hate to be in a self defense situation with with a bunch of rogue agents. And imagine if all the waymo's went rogue and we were just forced because of self defense reasons
Speaker 2:You and all your best friends.
Speaker 1:Just drive around and just have to shoot them out of the windows of our cars like all day long. Like that would be that'd be a nightmare.
Speaker 2:That'd be as a nightmare. You would never you would never even
Speaker 1:If I was in a self defense situation, I would do it. But it would it would it would pain me.
Speaker 2:Totally. Totally.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Totally. Let me tell you about console.com. Console builds AI agents that automate 70% of IT, HR and finance support giving employees instant resolution for access requests and password resets.
Speaker 2:Also, a journal piece on
Speaker 1:What else happened?
Speaker 2:On Jan Jan Tallan.
Speaker 1:Tallan. Skype founder.
Speaker 2:Skype founder.
Speaker 1:Big investor.
Speaker 2:Early investor in the labs.
Speaker 1:Take a while to ask where he's from.
Speaker 2:Tallinn, Estonia. Estonia? Yeah. Tallinn.
Speaker 1:He's from Tallinn.
Speaker 2:Anyways, also the primary funder of all I would say most of the sort of AI
Speaker 1:Yeah. The
Speaker 2:doom
Speaker 1:The EA fear movement. He also dances hip hop. I wonder what that how'd they get that scoop?
Speaker 2:It's interesting. Interesting.
Speaker 1:He warns about racing to build a technology that could end humanity. Yeah. There's there's a funny there's a funny anecdote in here about champagne. I like that part of this. I didn't like the doom part, but I did like this.
Speaker 1:So they debated machine consciousness at 40,000 feet over flutes of champagne. See? White pill. Anyway, that's enough of that article. Letmepublic.com.
Speaker 1:Investing for those who take it seriously. We got stocks, options, bonds, crypto, treasuries, and more with great customer service.
Speaker 2:Let's talk about some personal agents.
Speaker 1:Okay. What we got?
Speaker 2:Noah, Shin Noah Shin broke founder his silence. Of instinct, broke his silence finally with none other than our friend and Patrick O'Shaughnessy. I'm only I was trying to listen on the way in to the gym this morning. I got maybe thirty minutes through. Patrick Who pulled out
Speaker 1:reacts?
Speaker 2:The highlights. He he summarized his own podcast before you could summarize it. He beat you to the He said a list of surprising and mind boggling stats from this conversation. 1,000,000,000 a year in transaction volume, still invite only. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:I can't remember if that's total I think that's actually total volume to date. I don't think that's like run rate volume.
Speaker 1:It says a year. So that would
Speaker 2:be Well, that's what it says in here, but I I just remember from the episode I I was I heard it as
Speaker 1:Well, yeah. Mean, if it's if it's today, then it's higher.
Speaker 2:That's what I'm saying. Oh, wow. It could it could be like Okay. Higher. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Growing 10 I percent a day
Speaker 1:read that as $1,000,000,000 of annualized that they are at $1,000,000,000 of annualized transaction volume. Yeah. But I guess it's maybe even higher. I don't know. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Interesting.
Speaker 2:Growing 10% a day, spent $0 on marketing. Crazy. They have this, you know, pretty amazing flywheel where people post screenshots, all the time. That's doing a lot of marketing.
Speaker 1:Then We we a lot of the but a lot of the screenshots are like horrible accidents. But maybe those actually drive curiosity and like people being like, well, I'm not gonna make that same stupid mistake and the service is probably getting better.
Speaker 2:You think those actually help? I think those help.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Curious. People are curious and they're like, yeah, I wanna see it. I'll be safe. I won't give it my login details, but I'll
Speaker 2:still No. And it and it and it can't be said enough. Yeah. A lot of people within tech have experienced AI doing things for them. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Making a product.
Speaker 4:Yep.
Speaker 2:Most people outside
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Have not experienced that yet. And it's just a magical thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Totally.
Speaker 2:40% of users Mhmm. Shared a personal credit card with Instinct within three weeks. Compute demand is doubling roughly every week. At five to 8% daily growth over the months it takes to bring new compute online. Instinct would reach about a 100,000,000 users on Instinct's own AB test.
Speaker 2:It matches Opus five performance at a fraction of the cost. Noah spends about 40% of his time on compute. Buying compute at the last minute cost three to four x more. Makes sense. Background work runs on setups that are three x, five x, and eight x more efficient on the same compute.
Speaker 2:50% of Instinct's transaction volume is travel.
Speaker 1:That's a crazy
Speaker 2:Instinct plans to take a cut of what users buy. Take rates, Shopify is two and a half to 3%. Amazon is 15%. Apple is 30%. Noah's personal goal is to keep Instinct free for everyone for life.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Some small businesses run their entire back office on Instinct. That's interesting. Users who connect at least one piece of sensitive information retain at about 80. Just give me one piece.
Speaker 2:Just one piece. Just give me one piece.
Speaker 1:Some sensitive
Speaker 2:Some users send more than 90% of their messages.
Speaker 1:Kind of skeletons do have in your closet?
Speaker 2:To Instinct by voice. Say an app makes 70% of its money from ads and 30% from actually selling you things. Agents could wipe out the 70%. But Noah thinks that 30% gets much bigger because people buy more when buying takes zero effort. This is a big question for me.
Speaker 2:Right? Because already Mhmm. Buying something on a Shopify store takes close to zero effort. Yeah. Like, the checkout is actually down to if I land on the website and I know what I want Yeah.
Speaker 2:I can check out within and and again, Shopify doesn't have an ads business that's not
Speaker 1:fun to shop for, though. There's lot of stuff, especially if it's like I was thinking about, like, cable management. I wanted to get some cable management stuff for my desk. And, like, I don't really care about the brand. I don't care about the the flow.
Speaker 1:I just want, like, you know, a sweet I needed some, like, command strips maybe, like, little tray, like, like, the modern solution is to, like, a couple cables, a power brick. Like, just go and get something that's well reviewed and, like, a suite that will figure out. What what kind of voice are you doing?
Speaker 2:Instinct launched to about 200 friends and family. Invites have sold on eBay for around $300. More than 50% of Instinct's traffic doesn't run on iMessage. Instinct proactively called Noah three times. That's like when when it's doing something and it and it has like a deadline.
Speaker 2:It's like Noah gave the example of like, hey, you really have to sign this like within the next five minutes. Are you available? It'll just call you.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay. Which is cool. Raised one on 10. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Less than a month after raising two and a half. So Noah Noah is 23. So very very good summary.
Speaker 1:Also, colleges that I went to. He went to Northeastern.
Speaker 2:There you go. Yeah. Yeah. So I guess an initial reactions, I He They they talk about like remaking
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Like the entire Internet. Right? And the example that they talk about is restaurant reservations.
Speaker 5:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And Noah made an interesting point about how restaurant reservations to date are all effectively like first come first serve. So like, if you just happen to be the first person Yep. To get there, you get the the prime time slot even if later someone else is making plans and it's like, you know, he gives the example of like an anniversary or like a special birthday.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And he's making the point that like the restaurant should be optimizing for the person with the special event happening. Mhmm. And there should be more of like a basically a negotiation in some ways or like a
Speaker 1:We'll exceed.
Speaker 2:Like the user should have an opportunity to sort of like make their make their case
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:For why they should get a table Okay. During a time where there's more demand than supply.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And Like I think that I think that that makes sense. That being said Mhmm. I think when everyone has a personal agent that's calling and like hammering restaurants and like trying to like I think I think it's very possible. Like, his argument is that the restaurant wants like the whole space to just be filled with people that are like, it is the most special moment of their life.
Speaker 1:25 proposals, everyone clapping for five seconds at the restaurant.
Speaker 2:And I know. It's been
Speaker 8:a while.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's been a very long I mean, I worked worked in a restaurant in in a high school. Sure. And it's been a while. But my my read on that was that it would be insane if every single table was like it was like the anniversary or the birthday. Like, restaurants are not generally like set up to like give that so may maybe it's Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like maybe it's Edward. Maybe it's like a feature not a bug Sure. That that that the reservation some at least some of the tables are like, hey, this person's a regular, like they're just Sure. Planning. They're just like they just plan ahead.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Maybe that's like actually like a higher quality customer on the average night than this somebody that's like coming in and this is like their special moment.
Speaker 1:So Okay. Got a question for you. Yeah. If you're at a restaurant and it's someone's birthday and the host brings out a birthday cake and they're singing, how close do you have to be to join in on the singing? If you're at a table over, will you start singing happy birthday?
Speaker 2:I I I could be at the other end of the restaurant.
Speaker 1:Oh, you're a birthday singer no matter what.
Speaker 2:I'm belting over Okay.
Speaker 1:I like this. Over.
Speaker 2:I might be belting over four or five tables.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Just Trying to get them involved. Yeah. You don't necessarily need to be at the same table. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So potentially, this opens the idea, you this creates the opportunity for a restaurant that's just constantly singing happy birthday on repeat the whole time you're there because everyone's The having a
Speaker 2:perpetual.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, are some restaurants that sort of lean into like they're romantic, so they're the place where anniversaries and proposals happen. And then there's other ones where it's like, yeah, birthdays happen there and there's like Yep. Kids birthdays. Like, you go to a CPK, I'm sure there's like many more like kids birthdays than like Yeah.
Speaker 1:Proposals all
Speaker 2:the Yeah. It it is interesting though because a lot of our so much of like, so much of being a a consumer like, the the benefits, the highest quality experiences typically go to the people that plan the farthest in advance. Right? Yeah. So like, if you're booking a hotel right now Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Already for like the Christmas holiday Mhmm. You're at a disadvantage. Right? Because some people that were booking like
Speaker 1:Hence why we tell you about the road to Christmas.
Speaker 2:Road to Christmas.
Speaker 1:Start planning ahead.
Speaker 2:Yes. And so Anyways, it it will be interesting if if personal agents kind of rework that. I'm I'm I'm not I don't think it's sustainable for like every single basically reservation or booking to be like a open to basically like negotiation. Right?
Speaker 1:Completely disagree. I completely disagree.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Because I think that the reservation system will be an agent as well. Yeah. And there might be, yes, a a a country of geniuses in a data center negotiating against another country of geniuses in data center. It sounds crazy, but I'm not I'm I'm not joking. Like, I actually think this is what will happen every time.
Speaker 1:If you say if you say, get me I I wanna have dinner right now. I wanna have dinner tonight with Jordy. Like, there will be it will spawn a bunch of agents, call a bunch of restaurants. It will be annoying for the restaurants that aren't on board, but very quickly all the restaurant, you know, phone systems will be equipped to handle it on the other side. They will all share all the relevant information, negotiate, find the proper answer any questions.
Speaker 1:Oh, food allergies. Oh, birthdays. How many birthdays are there? You wanna go for your birthday, but you don't want that many birthdays to be there. Whatever your preferences are, all of that will get penciled out and it will be just more seamless matching, and I don't think that's a problem at all.
Speaker 1:The the thing that I'm uncertain about is, like, are we going to move into, like, a seat geek regime where it truly is, like, surge pricing? And the rest the the best restaurants might wind up being, like, oh, yeah, you're sitting down, but you had to pay like $2 for that reservation. And then there are some that are like, it's we're selling the food like 1% above cost because like there's no we wanna fill seats Yeah.
Speaker 9:Right now.
Speaker 2:And this Yeah. This happened I'm thinking about I'm just thinking about like I'll use it. There's a restaurant near where I am Mhmm. That people will plan months and months and months and months out Yeah. For like special occasions.
Speaker 2:Yes. So like, if you go there Yeah. You there there will be a lot of people that are like celebrating the anniversary Yep. Or a birthday.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:And then, there's maybe four or five tables every day Mhmm. That the manager kind of just has on lock. Yeah. And if you have a personal relationship with them, they're gonna be offered up. Sure.
Speaker 2:Those eight those tables are never in a restaurant that has way more demand for tables than supply, the restaurant is not gonna ever take those tables and be like, hey, we're we're just like handing these over to our to our to our AI agent. Sure. Send But they were never going
Speaker 1:in the booking system anyway. Yeah. Like, were never going on OpenTable or whatever.
Speaker 2:But but I'm just saying like, in in that case for that restaurant in particular, like, the system is working as intended, which is like if you want Sure. To if you wanna be with us for your special day, plan ahead. Yeah. And, we're we also wanna take care of like
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:Friends of Yeah.
Speaker 1:This is a good this is a good that's a good point. That's a good point.
Speaker 2:And and it's just like that that that extra inventory is not gonna shift over just because
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You have an agent that can make your case. So Yeah. I think some of the some of the friction in hospitality Mhmm. Is designed to reward people that plan really far in advance
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And people that develop a real relationship with the with the business and the people that work there. And so, I'm just wondering how this sort of like new dynamic fits in where everyone
Speaker 1:agent book my birthday dinner like six months in advance very easily because he knows when my birthday is and knows that I wanna go to dinner and gets
Speaker 2:me No. And that and that's but that's but that's using the existing
Speaker 1:And then for the other one, it's it's tracking the the owner of the restaurant Instagram, sending him cigars and champagne literally and and Just bragging. Potentially hacking and blackmailing him
Speaker 2:if Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. He needs to go there.
Speaker 2:No. I'm I'm very I'm very I'm very bullish on telling your agent, hey, I know that this special moment is coming up. Yeah. Make sure that the second open up. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But that again, that's that fits into the sort of like long term planning category. Yeah. I mean, it's like my But it's not reworking the fabric of hospitality. Sure. It's just sort of like reducing friction.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I'm I'm just saying like resi and OpenTable and Toast and all these things, they're gonna they're gonna build this sort of like counter infrastructure for the onslaught of agent inbound. Yes. Yes.
Speaker 1:That's coming to every business matter. Yeah. It will it will quickly be resolved as soon as these things scale. And they and they are and they are scaling and I'm sure that there yeah. I mean, I I guess a good prediction is, like, there will probably be several breathless op eds in the various newspapers about, like, AI agents are super annoying for my small business.
Speaker 1:You know? And it's like, now I have to get some tool to solve this.
Speaker 2:Which is kind of funny because
Speaker 1:But we've been through
Speaker 2:this how much sympathy are people gonna have that business owners being like, I'm being flooded with demand for my It'll
Speaker 1:be it'll be like fake demand. Yeah. Because we because the agents will be like checking and and they'll be like, oh, well, there was nothing available at 7PM on Resi and via this API, but like maybe if I call, I can get an extra thing so they're gonna call everyone all the time and it's gonna be very annoying. There there there will be, like, some frustration that is justified from this. Like, any any time that there's a a transition, like, there will be frustration.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I I I I think, I I mean, a good a good preview of this is, what we all went through with our phones, where, like, you used to be able have a cell phone and basically just pick up the phone when it rang. And now it's, like, I have my phone in do not disturb 247. You can't call me unless I'm you're already in my contacts. Like, I can't just pick up the phone randomly because I get so many spam calls.
Speaker 1:And even Apple, like, clearly admitted that, like, the the phone lines have fallen, like, because they have a they have a separate tab in iMessage for, like, unknown now. And, like, it gets filtered off because they know that, like, the rails have truly broken, like, the spammers have won unless you wrap it in a filter. Right. And so there will be significant spam filtering that goes on at the at the at the phone level. And that's probably already happening with, you know, just there's so many services that are calling restaurants and saying, like, hey, do you wanna do you do you need more supplies?
Speaker 1:Do you wanna switch to this point of sale system? Right? And they don't want those to go through their Yeah. You know, like, cold calls and sales Yeah. Calls going through the reservation system, so they probably filter those already.
Speaker 1:Anyway.
Speaker 2:Josh Cool. Constein.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. Please.
Speaker 2:This is this is the whole instinct pitch deck by the way. And it's Christian Kyle saying, my three month old son is now twice as big as when he was born. He's on track to weigh seven and a half trillion pounds by age 10. Very funny.
Speaker 1:Such a viral post. This this is like this went super viral on Reddit. It goes viral like every couple months on Reddit and stuff. It's a it's a wild post. But I did wanna set some, like, some comps around the Instinct growth numbers that are interesting.
Speaker 1:So $1,000,000,000 a year in transaction volume, we're not exactly sure if that's annualized or to date, but it's kind of the same. For reference, it took Stripe around eighteen months to hit $1,000,000,000 of annualized transaction volume, although Stripe also spent two years building in beta before launch. Instinct got to $1,000,000,000 transaction volume in closer to six months. But it's important to note that with Instinct, the transactions flow through third party cards. So they're not making any money off of these transactions yet, but it's very clear to imagine where monetization might happen.
Speaker 2:Yeah. At the very least, they could just launch a credit like their own card. Yeah.
Speaker 9:Of course.
Speaker 1:And You sign up.
Speaker 2:Then they are getting that interchange fee
Speaker 1:and don't need to get
Speaker 2:they don't even they don't even need to get anyone to opt in. Yeah. You might be able to
Speaker 1:Yeah. Buy people a too money. Because you're you're onboarding this AI agent. You're like, I've heard some really crazy stuff about this thing. Like, yeah, I'd I'd actually like it if you used your card as opposed to like
Speaker 2:It already has basically a computer a phone number, email. Yep.
Speaker 1:Give it a credit card. Give it
Speaker 2:a credit card.
Speaker 1:And so I'm sure they're working on that. And when they do, they're not gonna make 3% because you do have to pay Visa and Master Card like the underlying rails. But earning 1%, half a percent, quarter percent, even even point 1% on, you know, they grew to a billion. You know, you're talking about getting into, tens of millions of dollars of revenue pretty quickly. And the team is just 14 people.
Speaker 1:And so you can sort of see why they raised a billion at 10,000,000,000 from Benchmark, Sequoia, Code two. Yes, you have to believe that that they won't be, you know, killed by Muse and that they will continue to scale. But if if, you know, any of the growth rates sustain for any even a limited amount of time, it's gonna be a lot of transaction volume, great business, and you can underwrite it pretty safely. And then there's still the there's still the off the the offshoot into Amazon world, I I think. Because Amazon doesn't really have a a strong play there, but could fit in very well with
Speaker 2:Yeah. They have a lot of potential dance partners and Yep. Ultimately, grow really fast because they don't just like grow really fast for no reason. No. Right?
Speaker 2:So
Speaker 1:No. Good problem. And people have and like people have been trying to do different personal agents for specific things. There's definitely been other pitches for doing commerce, doing flight booking. I'm shocked by that 50% travel.
Speaker 1:That number seems really, really high. What was the exact stat? 15 per he said Patrick summarized it as 50% of the transaction volume is travel. Okay. So volume because when you book a flight, you might be spending a grand.
Speaker 1:But when you book a restaurant, you're maybe putting down $10, $20, maybe a $100. Like you might not put down anything. Right? And so travel, it's not that 50% of like
Speaker 2:prom Activity. Travel.
Speaker 1:But that's where they're making money. And so, yeah. That's another way where they could build like an Expedia type business where they're earning fees on top of booking.
Speaker 2:We gotta give a round of of applause to Tate Hacker. Okay. Says, we're so early. Everyone will be using a full time assistant of compute like this within a year. And the reason I'm clapping is because it's a parking ticket not just any car that Instinct took care of.
Speaker 2:It's for an r a blue r eight.
Speaker 1:Blue r eight.
Speaker 2:And I just thought this was a wonderful way to sort of share a wonderful car.
Speaker 1:Potentially flex.
Speaker 2:Hopefully yeah. Hopefully, it's a v 10 with the gated manual. But a very True. Underrated underrated car.
Speaker 1:What is this? This is a very detailed parking ticket. But let's get taken to this. Paid 50% on your personal visa.
Speaker 2:Pretty cool. Like, we get it, dude. We get it. Parking ticket in your r eight. We get it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Anyway, let me tell you about MongoDB. What's the only thing faster than the AI market? Your business on MongoDB. Don't just build AI.
Speaker 1:Own the data platform that powers it. There's drama in MongoDB world because Zucked We'll
Speaker 2:get to that.
Speaker 1:Poaching. You wanna get to that later?
Speaker 2:Let's get to that later. Let's let's just let's close this out. Okay. So apparently, Adidas is running anti bot software on their store. You ran into this Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like got that. Recently not even with with Muse or or Instinct but Just Kodak. Just researching with with Kodak. Yeah. And you were thought it was pretty funny because you were actively trying to give a company Yeah.
Speaker 2:Business. I think there's a bunch of historical reasons you would want anti bot software. Yep. And then there's now a bunch of very real new reasons Totally. Why you need to update that and and figure out a way to to prevent sort of like bad bots.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:But but support like actual consumer bots.
Speaker 9:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:So Gary Tan says, anti bot is for losers. TBH. Really got him. He really owned him right there.
Speaker 1:It's just slow. It's ridiculous.
Speaker 2:Other people, the chief economist at Apollo is warning that mass adoption of AI agents could trigger a bank run as they optimize user investments. Gary Gensler spent his last few years as SEC chair warning that the exact same problem will hit the markets. The pursuit of algorithmic perfection at scale destroys system stability. Personal finance agents making simultaneous optimal decisions could potentially cause a massive flash crash. Agent, a causal coordination with no messages passed between them will show up in a lot of places.
Speaker 2:Markets will get the big headlines, but the huge number of clever advisers making very similar choices will impact all of human society. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Human laws were not written for this. They were not written for a lot of what's coming.
Speaker 1:You're have to apologize. Is
Speaker 2:is about to start happening very fast. Credit to Sattrini Yeah. For basically being the first That
Speaker 1:was a different thing, but yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't No. It's the exact
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's similar, but
Speaker 2:it is. Oh, it's just a it's like This is this idea of like there's a lot of aspects of our economy that are that that currently, like businesses that work because of friction. Sure. That friction in some ways will be Yeah. Removed when you have an always on agent that Yeah.
Speaker 2:Says, hey, you haven't touched this product in very long time. Do you still wanna be paying for this? Yeah. Etcetera, etcetera. Yep.
Speaker 2:I I don't think this is I don't know. Like, my my banker will just hit me up and say, hey, I'm gonna I'm just clearing this with you. I'm gonna sweep funds Yep.
Speaker 1:Into Money market. Market Yeah.
Speaker 2:Account or or or TBills. Like, it's not like like a good banking experience is already doing this proactively for you. Yes. Now, there's of course people that maybe they just are set up with like a simple checking account, and they could be moving those into a higher yield account of some sort that aren't doing it. And maybe the agent starts doing that, but like, great like, fundamentally a great banking experience.
Speaker 2:They're like doing this on your behalf. Like, they are they are aligned
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:To you.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I don't think it's I don't think it's as like a
Speaker 1:Yeah. I would be very like hesitant about how fast this adoption can happen because
Speaker 2:When when some says, dang it. If ordinary people get fair deals that aren't ripped off, it's the end Yeah. Of the
Speaker 1:Yeah. Because I I wonder like the personal agents are taking off, but like we're still in, like, single digit millions of people doing them. It's gonna take time for people to adopt them. And then they need to actually authenticate and add these things, link their bank accounts. And then presumably, the first version of this will be the agent coming to you and saying like, hey, is it okay if I do this?
Speaker 1:Second order will be like, I just did this. I know it's okay. You trust me. And that relationship, that trust, I feel like that's gonna take like years to build up and diffuse through. There there are still, like, there's still plenty of friction in the economy.
Speaker 1:I think I think it's gonna take a while for people to to onboard onboard to this fully. I mean, were it's the same it's the same idea of, when ChatGPT came out, people were like, Google search is dead. Like, Google no one will Google search. Google search revenue is going to go to zero, like, next year. And it was like, yeah, it was a reasonable replacement, but it took a little bit longer even though it was growing so fast, faster than any consumer product ever.
Speaker 1:Incredible revenues, blah blah blah blah blah. It still wasn't that fast. And so it's the same thing where it's like, okay, if this happens over like a couple of years, like banks adjust, money market funds adjust, like it's not the end of the world potentially, but we'll keep monitoring it. Anyway, let me tell you about Railway. Railway is the all in one intelligent cloud provider.
Speaker 1:Use your favorite agent to deploy web apps, servers, database, and more. While Railway automatically takes care of scaling, monitoring, and security. Zuck. What happened?
Speaker 2:We believe superintelligence will create significant new opportunities for all people and businesses. Meta already serves billions of people at scale and helps hundreds of millions of businesses reach customers. Today, we are starting the next major pillar of our business, Meta Enterprise Platform, to help businesses use AI to grow and transform in new ways as well. Meta Enterprise will use our strengths that few other companies have advanced models, leading agents, large scale infrastructure, and years of working closely with many businesses. Initially, we will focus on bringing our full technology stack, including the Muse Agent, Meta Business Agent, Muse API, Muse Code, and more to businesses and developers to help them grow.
Speaker 2:To lead this effort, I'm excited that, Shiratan, CJ Desai, former guest of the show, will join Meta as chief enterprise platform officer reporting directly to Zuck. CJ is an experienced enterprise leader with a track record of building full stack software and delivering results in AI infra business applications and security. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Anyways, so here's how I think this is gonna go. I think that they created this new business unit.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. They still have a lot to prove on if they can
Speaker 1:Sorry. If you scroll down, there's some wild comments. Anyway, continue.
Speaker 2:Anyways, they created this new business unit. Yeah. They're talking about apps and agents and all this stuff. I think what's really gonna happen is they're gonna do big compute deal. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And then and then it's gonna look like the the the sort of unit is doing it it'll quickly go from, let's say, 0 to $10,000,000,000 a year Yeah. Of revenue. They can sort of use that. They don't have to necessarily break out
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Initially all the what where that revenue is coming from, but they can say, like, our enterprise platform is is gone from 0 to 10,000,000,000 in Yeah.
Speaker 1:This was like the jokes. I mean, analysis was was sort of trolling with around, like, oh, like, all the growth in Google Cloud Platform is selling TPUs. It was, a little bit more nuanced than that. But but there's a bunch of ways to, like, wrap up revenue into a into, like, an enterprise platform that could be tokens, could be doing inference, could be selling compute, raw, bare metal deals Yeah. Could be could be actually selling services.
Speaker 1:Will be interesting to see where it goes. It's still an interesting off valve off gassing valve because there there's some people and we're gonna have a a niche from Andreessen Horowitz on the show at 12:35 to talk about personal agents because there's been a lot of debate over like how compute intensive is the average Instinct user, is the average Muse user. Is it like $10 a month? Is it a $100 a month? Is it more?
Speaker 1:Obviously, everyone knows it's gonna get cheaper, but then people will be in an arms race for, oh, well, like this one gives you like the best possible intelligence, so it's more expensive. And so there's a lot of business model considerations there, but it's interesting that if like if Muse doesn't fully take off, then you do have the the enterprise off take for that compute. So you have so shareholders are maybe more reassured that, okay, we're really optimistic on Muse. Things seem to be going really well. But if it doesn't Well, well,
Speaker 2:and I think I think it's important. I think I think because it would be it important to to not when when he sort of capitulates and has to sell compute Mhmm. He wants to be able to position it as like, yeah, we're we have this massive enterprise AI business. Yeah. Versus when SpaceX did it, it was like, oh, wow.
Speaker 2:They don't have demand for their models. Sure. They have to do this.
Speaker 1:They have to do compute deals.
Speaker 2:And I think that this positioning is smart Mhmm. For because it even if he is selling compute
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's not like he's doesn't have the same broader long term ambitions of Sure. Like, actually building a a durable, you know, AI business here with their own models, their own agents, etcetera. Yeah. So I just think it's a better, you know, in SpaceX needed to make a lot of moves really quickly
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:To to be in a good spot for the IPO. Yep. Had they not needed to move so quickly, they could have positioned it more like this. And I think it will sit better with people.
Speaker 1:Yes. Yeah. I agree with you on that. I just think there there could be attention. Like like imagine if they were like, hey, we're really good at video hosting from Instagram.
Speaker 1:Like, we're gonna start like a video hosting platform. Like, wouldn't the Instagram team be like, wait, like, we need all the resources we can for, you know, building out our
Speaker 8:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But that was the same exact tension that that SpaceX and Cursor have had with their own teams that are building model.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But this is like injecting that tension. Right? Unnecessarily, potentially?
Speaker 2:Not unnecessarily, I think.
Speaker 1:Why is it necessary?
Speaker 2:Why is doing this necessary at all?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Why not pure play it? Why not say, yeah, we wanna have the whole company aligned behind Muse, behind the products. And, yeah, we have a bunch of compute. We're not selling that at all because we're the best to monetize it.
Speaker 1:Why would we ever give it away? Yeah. But, of course, if they're if they're deep in the enterprise and and and they have a product that flows through, their the the margin will be there. It makes makes a lot of But you are you are kicking off tension. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right? Like we've seen this with other companies. I don't know. We'll see.
Speaker 2:Poor MongoDB down 16%.
Speaker 1:Oh, it popped. It was down 26% earlier.
Speaker 2:So Yeah. It recovered a little bit. Yeah. CJ hadn't been there But that's very long
Speaker 1:very great sign of respect. Right? Yeah. 26%
Speaker 2:Well, again, we like to see the the the, you know because the mark stock chart nuke as when a founder retires. Yes. End of an era. Just But but you wanna see that recovery instantly. Yes.
Speaker 2:You don't like it when a hired gun CEO Sure. Leaves before even investing into their grant and get sucked. Yeah. You don't like to see that?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Okay. Maybe maybe Buko put it better than I did here. Very perplexing move by Meta. It took Google a decade plus to become an enterprise company.
Speaker 1:Can Meta even get there? Much muddier story that already includes an eye popping level of CapEx and existential battle to be the front door to the new Internet. So, yeah, it is a little bit complicated. At the same time, I mean, I like semi analysis' breakdown of, hey, if you're buying from Meta, you're getting all of the Meta data. Like, there's a ton of Meta engineers.
Speaker 1:They've been, you know, their keystrokes have been tracked. And so, you know, like that's going in the training data. And so if you are trying to do something they might be good at, they might have a really good model for it, basically. That was the idea, at least as it was broken down in semi analysis. Anyway
Speaker 2:Speaking of
Speaker 1:What else is going on?
Speaker 2:Speaking of Meta, wanna try to find that video that I sent to you. Mhmm. This guy investing in in scale right now.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. That's good.
Speaker 6:Well, while
Speaker 1:you're pulling that up, Sonnet five five is out, the second model in the Quad five five family. Clear upgrade over Sonnet five runs 30% faster, costs up to 30% less for most most work. Did it make this video? Because they've been doing this thing where the where the models have been actually responsible for assembling the video. It's always a good demo.
Speaker 1:But good results on agentic coding, obviously, cheaper and will be interesting to see what people build with it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Big week.
Speaker 1:Over to
Speaker 2:Big week. Yeah. For all the labs. Pull up this video of somebody pitching Okay. Scale AI.
Speaker 4:Okay. Raise your hand if you know
Speaker 2:about for a second. So this is a group of investors getting pitched SPVs. Let's play this.
Speaker 4:Let's talk about scale. Raise your hand if you know about Scale AI. Probably very few of you, is my guess. Okay. I didn't know about it.
Speaker 4:These guys, what makes them amazing is these are the folks that are training the AI models. Right? So they provide software that helps train ChatGPT and Claude and Grok and the major apparently, 90% of the world's leading generative AI models are using Scale AI. Mhmm. So Meta says, oh my gosh.
Speaker 4:You know, Remember, if you're running Meta, your biggest problem right now is you don't got enough cash. Right? We need hundreds of billions of dollars to invest in data centers and developing our own AI system. But they they fought enough of this company to take $14,000,000,000 and put it into scale a few months ago. Mhmm.
Speaker 4:And so that's about as good a sign as you're gonna see that sophisticated people on the AI scene believe in this business. Be AI and technology companies use them. Meta, Frontier AI developers like Chad OpenAI, Microsoft, other major major model builders, robotics companies are using it. Because remember, you build a robot, you gotta train the the system that powers the robot how to operate. Right?
Speaker 4:So they're using scale to do that. Yeah. Lots of enterprise clients from the Mayo Clinic to
Speaker 2:Jack's I
Speaker 1:mean, we Howard
Speaker 2:fries with misinformation.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, we've we've No. There's on. There is some real business. The remain co is is is still in business and and and, you know, continues to produce revenue and do deals and do all sorts of things.
Speaker 1:But very odd way to represent the Meta deal, was, you know, a lot of the talent going over to Meta, obviously, the founder.
Speaker 2:Well, not to mention they they I think it instantly lost like most of the They lost a lot of customers after that deal.
Speaker 1:Oh,
Speaker 2:sure. Because people were like,
Speaker 1:I don't an exclusive deal with with with Facebook or Meta. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So so yeah. Anyways, positioning a sort of regulatory arbitrage Mhmm. Right? Meta needed to buy scale without setting off kind of alarm bells
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:From a from an antitrust standpoint. And so, yeah, very very concerning. There's gotta be I mean, imagine early scale investors. Somebody that's like, I have all this stock. What what am I gonna do with it?
Speaker 2:I'll sell it at at at almost any price.
Speaker 1:Well, the early investors got paid out. Right? That was the structure of the deal. They all got like a dividend. So Yeah.
Speaker 1:You still own the shares.
Speaker 2:But you still own the share. Okay. That's what I'm saying. I'm sitting there being like, this company has no future prospects if some guy in a hotel will will buy them, I guess, maybe sell them.
Speaker 1:Western conference room right now. I mean probably not
Speaker 2:exactly they're probably not sitting there. Whoever is providing the shares is not exactly happy that he's putting those kind of videos.
Speaker 1:It is crazy that it's hitting the the hitting the Instagram reels. Did that just get served to you or is that like uniquely viral content?
Speaker 2:I think it I think knows that I've
Speaker 1:It knows that you've interviewed the founder. Anyway, we we'll talk about SpaceX and Starship 14 splashing down Pacific Ocean later in the show. In the meantime, let me tell you about CrowdStrike. Your business is AI. Their business is securing it.
Speaker 1:CrowdStrike secures AI and stops breaches, And we'll bring in our first guest of the show, the founding and managing partner of Plexo Capital.
Speaker 2:What's going on?
Speaker 1:How are doing? Welcome to the show.
Speaker 5:Hey. Doing well. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much for hopping on. Since this is the first time on the show, would love to give everyone an introduction on yourself and just break down a little bit of your background, a little bit of your day to day. And then, well, I mean, we have so many questions about the firm and strategy and we can go through all that.
Speaker 5:Sounds good. So I founded Plexo Capital while I was at GV, Google Ventures. So I was a partner on the investing team focused mainly on marketplaces and mobile. One of the things that we had done at GV was to identify GPs that were fund one micro VCs typically investing at the pre seed stage Yeah. That we could partner with.
Speaker 5:And what better way to partner with them than by kind of meeting one of their needs which was helping them with their fundraise effort. Yeah. So we invested into about five funds that were emerging managers with unique perspectives and access to deal flow. And it worked for us and I looked at it and said, hey, I think I can build a strategy around this. So this was I think about 2016.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 5:And I switched over to an entrepreneur and resident's role. Cool. Focused on building out the strategy. Yeah. Spun out in the spring of twenty eighteen, brought on Alphabet as our anchor investor for our fund one, and also brought on some other big tech companies, Intel, Cisco, brought on some financial institutions like the Royal Bank of Canada, and some traditional institutional LPs like Ford Foundation and Mass Mutual.
Speaker 1:You explain the evolution of the the relationship there with Alphabet? Because, GV, formerly Google Ventures, had it had all the benefits of a venture capital firm financially, but also a lot of the benefits of a corporate venture arm with partnerships and potential acquisitions. And that's always been something that corporate venture arms have sort of grappled with and evolved over time. But going from alphabet to a fund of funds into emerging managers, is there any conversation of dialogue and value add there? Or is it purely we think this is a great allocation of capital, this is purely financial investment?
Speaker 5:Yeah. So a couple of questions there. So first, I think it's important to just think about the corporate VC position within the ecosystem because there's there's almost a spectrum. Right? There's kind of at the far end, are purely strategic.
Speaker 5:Yeah. And then at the other end of the spectrum, they're purely financial. Yeah. And GV was at the extreme end of the purely financial.
Speaker 1:Got
Speaker 5:it. So much so that it really operated as a separate unit, just part of the the other bets umbrella.
Speaker 1:Got it.
Speaker 5:And the investors at GV invest for financial return just like a traditional firm on Sandhill Road. Mhmm. So it's all about identifying amazing opportunities with the best entrepreneurs that are typically one of one, and then coming into those firms companies as early as possible and continuing to support them over time. Mhmm. If there is an opportunity to be able to do something within the broader Alphabet ecosystem or relationships, then GV will make those introductions.
Speaker 5:But first and foremost, the focus was on just identifying the best companies. I would even say so much so that GV doesn't really think of itself as a corporate VC. Yeah. It thinks of itself just as a traditional financially focused VC. Yeah.
Speaker 5:And so then leading to the second question that was in your in your opening, the ability to be able to identify the best deals, you know, there's multiple paths to be able to to get there. Obviously, there's the existing relationships with entrepreneurs. That's very helpful. There are folks that operate at GV, that, you know, have good relationships based on prior working at Google. And so there's a lot of Googlers that do angel investing.
Speaker 5:They're great sources of deal flow. And then you also have, you know, these GPs that are on fund ones that usually bring some kind of unique angle or some edge that they have to allow them to see opportunities that other folks don't see. And the beauty of being a Fund One GP is that you don't have to really do any fund management. You got your lawyers to do your LPA. You've probably raised your fund.
Speaker 5:You've got a back office. So you can just focus on investing. And that was the opportunity that we saw at GV was, hey, why don't we partner with some of these folks and then it'll allow us to get access to some deals that we might not have seen on our radar.
Speaker 1:So walk me through the evolution of the thesis, the pitch, the sweet spot for emerging fund manager. Was there a background that you were looking for, whether it was entrepreneurial or spin out from a traditional venture capital firm? Were there sectors or sizing criteria? How did you think about narrowing who you were going to back?
Speaker 5:Yeah. I love this question because the most important thing for me was having perspective, having worked across a few different roles.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 5:And when I had conversations with people that were in the venture space for my own personal journey, the thing that I continued to hear was, hey, if there's an opportunity to get experience as a product manager, take it. And if you can do that at a company that's known for doing something with excellence within the ecosystem on the product side, where they have great engineers, where they have a history of, you know, identifying some of the best a talent that spins out and does great things. Take that opportunity, take that role. Because a product manager is like a mini CEO within an organization and has ownership and usually works across engineering, works across engineering to help identify features and functionality and how those should be prioritized, works with marketing to think about the positioning and how to get access to distribution, works with the finance team thinking about what the business model is going to be and what's the best way to monetize this opportunity. So it's great training ground to both, I would say, be an entrepreneur, be a founder, plus that playbook for product management is very similar to early stage venture capital.
Speaker 5:You know, what do VCs do at the early stage? Well, they think about what's the problem that's being solved, what's the existing solution set, what are the shortcomings of those solutions, what are people actually doing, Is there an opportunity to kind of rip something out? Or is this kind of people have solved the problem with duct tape and Excel? And what are the best ways to be able to get distribution? All of those things that a GP thinks about Mhmm.
Speaker 5:At the early stage pre CC, it's kind of the same playbook as a product manager.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's it's interesting to to think back on the twenty tens and it really felt like the the the sort of like star power that researchers have today. Yeah. Product managers really had in the twenty tens Yeah. Where you had somebody that could have been just coming out of college, landed at a company, but then five years later they were like running a core business at one of these companies that that again, they they did their basically like tour of duty at a company that was like you said, op, you know, excellent operations, excellent talent density.
Speaker 2:And then they were just in such an amazing position to understand what what great growth looks like, understand what like insane, you know, market pull and and product quality and all these things. And then understanding like the tech stack at these companies at a deep level so that they would see all of these opportunities to invest in other software and infrastructure and things like that. And it feels like the the the humble product manager today is is has a lot less attention than, let's say, like, the star researchers. Mhmm. Right?
Speaker 2:You see that the researcher spin outs are getting kind of all the headlines. But it actually makes me think, there's probably a lot of alpha right now and ignoring, like, the new NeoLabs and just focusing on, like, who are the actual, you know, great great product managers today at these, you know, high growth companies. Interesting. Because
Speaker 1:Yeah. How are you balancing that transition?
Speaker 5:I gotta tell you, it's it's really a fascinating question right now because what ends up happening is after you get a few funds under your belt, you move to this more operational focus as well, So the thing that people might not think about a lot as they decide to transition to being a fund manager as opposed to working inside of an organization is that when I was at GV, it was amazing. All I had to do was focus on finding the best entrepreneurs. We had great finance people. We had great legal team. We had all this back office ops.
Speaker 5:We had marketing. I didn't have to think about anything. But when you are starting your own firm, now all of a sudden that's on your plate. And so I think that's one of the most difficult things is balancing it. But I'm going to tell you, one of the most beautiful things that's happened and the timing could not have been better is AI.
Speaker 5:Thanks. You now have the ability for a lot of these work, you know, things that I have on my plate that are really non investing. Mhmm. It's amazing how much leverage I can actually get from AI, which is great because you're a limited budget when you're a startup firm. And so you don't really have the management fee to be able to build out a big team to give you that leverage.
Speaker 5:But the beauty of today is that, you know, AI gives that opportunity. I can remember talking to my LPs when we were looking at Anthropic back in the fall of twenty three, and it just opened my eyes to the fact that, my god, I told my LPs I'll never forget the AGM where I said, hey, my objective is to use the AI tools that existed at that time. You got to kind of rewind and take yourself back. But at that time, my goal was, hey, if I can just have AI do the work of one junior analyst, I'm gonna be super happy. And now, you can have AI do the work of a whole team.
Speaker 1:Yeah. No. It makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Just just even just like the deep as soon as we had deep research, that was like the same thing as throwing basically a project over to a junior analyst type and saying, hey, want you to spend a week and really understand Yep. Evolution of this technology set, understand the market. And even if what you get back today is still like has like some AI slop in the writing, at least it's still like we'll communicate Yep. The ideas and get you being able to get up to speed on something Yeah.
Speaker 2:Which is is so interesting. Is and such an advantage for, yeah, these emerging managers with smaller teams or might be one or two partners and maybe no no analyst or Yeah. Associate types.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So so I I mean, the the the teams can stay so much smaller. At the same time, we've seen, you know, the funding rounds get so much bigger. Can you walk me through how the knock on effects of the ballooning seed series A, series B valuations and actual funding round sizes has cascaded through to your strategy? Have you had to evolve?
Speaker 1:Has it just been you're in the right place at the right time because you're growing your firm, so you're just growing into the new normal? Or have you actually had to step back and say, Okay, things are structurally different. We need to evolve our strategy.
Speaker 2:How do
Speaker 1:we think about
Speaker 2:Maybe more tangibly, you're you know, we have friends that have funds that they raised in 2024 where the strategy was like, wanna own five to to 10% of companies at pre seed seed and then follow on from there. And then almost all of those folks are like now being like, we're happy to get 3% of this round, you know, before and then the the markups can be quite intense, and the follow on capital can come quickly, but it feels like even in the span of span of like one deployment period, managers needing to like fully update their strategy on ownership targets and things like that.
Speaker 5:And that that was my answer. I mean, you hit the nail on the head. Because it's you couldn't have spoken a better truth. I just had this conversation with one of our LPs and her question was, you know, what are you seeing as the changes and the challenges within the ecosystem? And I went back to a point I made earlier, which is the GPs that are the best, usually they have especially in the age of AI, the thing that I really have noticed is that the GPs that are just getting started in their career, the best GPs are much more technical even within the last ten years.
Speaker 5:I think that's the biggest evolution that I've seen. And when I compare the profiles of not all GPs that are more experienced and deeper in their careers, but a significant number when you just look at their backgrounds, they don't necessarily have the depth of the technical side. And when you look at the GPs that we see today with the smaller funds, these are folks that are coming in with a very unique perspective and the edge, I think, translates directly from their technical understanding of a problem they had to tackle within one of these technology companies. And so what that does is it opens their eyes to this really unique set of problems that they know can't be solved, but they understand the technical limitations of the current solutions as to why those problems can't be solved. And they kind of have an a somewhat of an idea about the perspective of, hey, this is how I think this problem could be solved, but maybe there's one aspect that's missing.
Speaker 5:So maybe it's the compute horsepower or maybe there's a certain problem that hasn't been solved in an architecture side. There's something that's just missing, and so they know what to look for. And then when they see it, they can pounce on it immediately. And I think to your earlier point around being inside of a company, you understand two things that are really important. If you're in one of the big hyperscalers or you're in one side, one of the big tech companies that's, you know, really known for producing great employees, you know what excellence looks like in employees.
Speaker 5:You do know what a teams look like. You also know what an a organization looks like and how that organization should scale and some of the challenges that it's gonna get. So I think this new batch of GPs just has a really unique perspective that allows them to get in early. Now the flip side is being able to scale and keep that ownership stake as the companies now move so quickly through the financing rounds. That's the biggest challenge that we've seen.
Speaker 5:The fact that they don't have the ability to hold on to that pro rata like they used to. And look, GPs were very creative even within the last ten years. Right? If I look back to some of the deals that we were doing pre COVID, the GPs were doing things like going out and raising SPVs and getting existing LPs and new LPs to come on and help them keep as much of their pro rata as possible. Then they graduated to doing, you know, kind of these, you know, these massive funds that were just for kind of follow on investments.
Speaker 5:But now that's much more difficult because you've got this combination of these rounds are increasing in size so fast, plus you've got the bigger shops that come down earlier and earlier. And so those big shops are kinda already there and ready to scale up. Yeah. So this is the challenge that a lot of these firms have now.
Speaker 2:Well, for you for you, the the big question I have is like, how how do you manage and prioritize your set of co investment opportunities? You have this big base of managers that you've backed now and I imagine every single month, you're they're bringing you co invest opportunities and we're in this dynamic right now where, you know, you'll have the the top five companies in a category getting marked up like crazy and then even the five five through 10 are still getting marked up and and showing momentum and growth. And so, I imagine it's like a a massive headache, but also big opportunity of like sorting through those and but also like managing expectations with the managers on like when you'll actually lean in and and make a make a direct investment through their vehicles and when you have to sit stuff out.
Speaker 5:Yeah. I mean, Clearly, I've been looking at our deck because you understand it really well.
Speaker 2:I don't deck but I
Speaker 1:He only invests when it's anthropic. As long as it's a really good
Speaker 2:No. But I just like on a personal level being invested in some funds, it's like, I don't, you know, I do this like recreationally to date and it's like, well, I'm not gonna just, you know, I can't possibly do every deal Yeah. Even if they look like great.
Speaker 5:Yeah. Yeah. Well, this is this is the benefit of having that level of expertise where you can even apply it to a side hustle and you professionalize your side hustle because that's exactly the approach that we have to take, which is partnering with this amazing GP network that we've earned their trust. And the beauty of the GPs we work with is they invest so early, you know, an entrepreneur never forgets that first check or who took the bet on them. So that's the biggest thing for us is, you know, how do we go through all of these different opportunities.
Speaker 5:And I do go back to Anthropic because that's the one that really the light bulb went off on my head because you had a couple of dynamics that we've discussed. We it was the first time we had done an SPV, and this was the series d that closed in January '24 that Menlo led. So it started to come together at the end of twenty three. One of our GPs brought us the deal. A GP we had worked with before on on Reddit actually.
Speaker 5:We had worked with that GP on Reddit that worked out well. Yeah. And so I was excited because I wanted to get more exposure into AI and had a chance to dive in deep. But the challenge was, I mean, this was like an $18,000,000,000 valuation. Yeah.
Speaker 5:And we had never come close to anything that expensive before. Mhmm. And so I think there was this combination of, you know, getting our arms around that and, you know, thinking, god, for this thing to actually really come together to give the return, this has got to be like a $12,000,000,000,000
Speaker 1:It's like
Speaker 5:And now here here we are.
Speaker 1:Here we are. That's amazing. You you you alluded to the emergence of tranche rounds of more complicated financings of a ton of capital marshaling at the very early stages of some of the new companies. And I'm interested in the dichotomy that's emerging between the company builders versus the financing partners, the inception rounds and how GPs and emerging GPs are clarifying their position in the market. Are you seeing GPs have a good answer to where they sit in the market?
Speaker 1:Are they just starting to understand how to position themselves? And is it how accepting how acceptable do you think a like a wait and see approach? Or maybe we'll do a little bit of one and a little bit of the other versus there are some firms right now that are positioning themselves as like, we are the company builder firm, we're in the inception round. Don't come to us with the second or third tranche if you're an entrepreneur.
Speaker 5:Yeah. And I think that latter piece is where the the GPs that we've seen really clarify their position. Mhmm. That's I think the level of granularity that's necessary today. That wasn't necessary I would say, you know, five, ten years ago.
Speaker 5:Yeah. But today, is. Again, I just had this conversation with one of our LPs, an institutional LP that sits in a pretty unique seat. Mhmm. And that was part of our conversation when we started talking about how do GPs really kind of make their position within the industry.
Speaker 5:Mhmm. And, you know, now it is definitely being able to leverage some technical aspect
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 5:That leads them to an edge they have in identifying an opportunity. Mhmm. But then even moreover, really focusing in on exactly the profile of company that makes the most sense, where that company sits within product market fit, and what I've even seen the specific needs of a company. So we've even got GPs that have a specialty of being able to have a network of product managers and they can tap into their product manager network when necessary. We've seen a GP that is, you know, has a partner, is a is a two person operation and the other GP has a history of working in PR and public relations and understanding how to position a company Yeah.
Speaker 5:Which is increasingly important. Because, you know, one of the things I don't really think people understand is that one of the risks of the rapid acceleration that we see in companies achieving this incredible scale, I think I just saw Higgs Field is now the fastest Yeah. Company to 1,000,000,000 in revenues. You know, one of the things people don't talk about is when you look at the history of a lot of the entrepreneurs, you know, you look at the jobs, you even look more recently at the Larry and Sergei's, they had time to be able to develop that muscle memory of how to develop into the shoes of being a high profile CEO and having to deal with a very, you know, persnickety board at times or having to deal with a state dinner with the president of The United States, you know. You you you never saw that need Well, you meant today.
Speaker 5:How to enter those environments when you, you know, you have like maybe ten years to get there. Now, you know, companies are getting there in ten months.
Speaker 2:Now, I'll give you I'll give you the best example is Noah Noah from Instinct going on invest like the best to to announce the new round. Yeah. There was one question on security, you know, Patrick was basically saying like, look, like a lot of people just don't, you know, don't trust or aren't gonna trust a new product like this with all, you know, their email and Yeah. Payment information, all this stuff. And I I thought his answer was fine, but it it didn't it didn't Was he trained?
Speaker 2:It wasn't like it wasn't like he he hit a hit a home run. But I was like, I gotta You gotta give him like some time. He's 23. He sold the company. He's like less than a year old.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's a $10,000,000,000 company, but like, know, give him like Yeah. 10 more of those interviews and he'll probably answer wildly differently.
Speaker 1:Now now you don't get ten years. You get three and then within three years of starting your company, you're getting made fun of on SNL while you're having dinner with the president. It's such a weird scenario. Right?
Speaker 2:How do you VCs love to talk about taste and how taste is important. But how quickly do you clock a man like how many can you clock a manager's taste in companies over the fund cycle? Because every manager comes out and they say, we wanna back the most important companies in the world and, you know, back visionary founders. Right? It all sort of like blends together.
Speaker 2:But then my manager friends, you can just tell usually, maybe it takes me a few years, but I have a friend who like loves to back all the hyper controversial founders Mhmm. On x. Like almost every single one he's in. If you can think of somebody that like went viral for doing something crazy or saying something weird, he's in all those companies. And then I have like other, you know, another set of friends that are that are managers and they love to back the like super earnest Yeah.
Speaker 2:Really kind. Yeah. And they're both saying the same thing to when they're doing their fundraisers. Right? They're like, we wanna back visionary founders and yet they sort of self select into these like What
Speaker 1:kind of vision are
Speaker 9:you talking about?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Visionary The archetype.
Speaker 5:Well, I love that because it also comes back to the personality of the GP Yeah. And kind of the the type of dynamic that's gonna be most interesting for them, so kind of intellectually. Because I you know, everyone I think the best GPs that I've met, they're just so smart and they're so intellectually curious. And I think when you really break it down, birds of a feather flock together. And so you see like the most interesting pairings with GPs and founders.
Speaker 5:And you really know it holds true when you start to look at the deal flow that they're getting. So it's like people kind of can immediately identify, oh my god, this is like the perfect company for GPX over here. Right? And I think that's another piece that speaks to the edge and how a company or how a GP can should position their firm within the ecosystem. And you do start to see part of the the taste as you call it.
Speaker 5:I think that's a great way to describe it. I work with my son and, you know, we kind of track and monitor GPs. And one of the things that's a telltale sign is, hey, are these GPs just kind of chasing the next hot thing? Or is there some consistency in the approach that they're taking not only within a certain sector or a certain problem that's being solved, but also with the the personality of the founder that's going after this on this opportunity. And you can definitely start to see that certain GPs kind of always go after a certain profile of founder.
Speaker 5:And to be honest, for us at least, those are the GPs that we like the best because it means that they're they're consistent. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. And it's you don't wanna like, especially if you're evaluating new managers. If you if there's a person if you think they're gonna be going after a certain personality type that and then that personality type is not represented in the in the portfolio in your portfolio Mhmm. Already, then it actually starts to be interesting because you're not just gonna get sort of an average of everything else you already have gonna have exposure to.
Speaker 5:No. See that's exactly right because our objective is to cast as wide a net as possible.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 5:Yeah. And the best way to do that is to have unique approaches within the GP network that we've developed, which now allows us to have this great source of deal flow that's not very overlapping. So we see more unique opportunities.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. How how are you processing if if a manager comes to you and, like, how are you processing, like, Vice specifically right now or managers that are, like, principled about not touching certain categories? Because over the last five years, it seems like every major platform VC has made investments in gambling and and maybe multiple forms of gambling.
Speaker 1:But also some of those companies don't look like gambling at all when they start. It's like,
Speaker 2:oh, crypto Sure.
Speaker 8:But but
Speaker 2:but but there's been billions of dollars billions of dollars deployed from a bunch of firms that historically wouldn't have touched these sort of Totally. More more vice like categories. And so I'm imagining a manager that comes to you and says like, hey, I wanna invest in the best companies in the world Mhmm. But there's gonna be some companies that their financial performance will be amazing, but based on my values, don't wanna touch them. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:That in some ways could be not good for LPs because you theoretically should back every company that's gonna generate a great return that's operating within the general laws of The
Speaker 1:United the worst possible managers like, I'm morally opposed to AI. I sat it out for ethical reasons. Like, that's why I passed on everything now.
Speaker 2:But
Speaker 1:That'd be insane.
Speaker 2:Any anyways. Yeah. So I'm sort of rambling, but I I think you get the
Speaker 1:Yeah. Generalization with the LPA and and and the vice clauses and whatnot.
Speaker 5:Well, that's that was the first place I was gonna start, which is the first thing is to always go back and and, you know, check the LPA cause usually there are some vice clauses in the LPA and you wanna start as broad as possible, but there's always gonna be an LP or two that you kind of are balancing. Do I I really want this LP, but they've got these vice clauses and so you have to balance that. If you're balancing that correctly and we can put that aside, I have seen a couple of GPs that actually focus on vice. Like, their their whole point of view Yeah. And their whole approach is to go after the vice opportunities, particularly because there's not a lot of capital chasing them.
Speaker 5:They're often really good businesses. Mhmm. And the with the limited number, you keep the valuations much more reasonable. Mhmm. And then that preserves a lot of the upside.
Speaker 5:And I think there's another thing that just naturally happens is we evolve as a, you know, as a when you think about The United States and where we've been historically over the past hundred years, we've almost had a little bit of a pendulum swing for certain things Sure. That are considered vice and now they're not considered vice anymore. Yeah. And then it also kind of just depends on the general mood I think. Know when the economy is doing well, you know you kind of have a little more leeway with some of the things that could be a little bit more in the vice category.
Speaker 5:When things get a little more restricted or when there's, you know, a certain administration that could be in, then you could see things kind of moving in the other direction. You know, think one of the things that I've looked at right now, don't I wouldn't consider it a vice per se. Although, if you go into certain gyms in, you know, Southern California, it could probably be a vice, which is peptides.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 5:Right? So when I start to think about peptides and how the pendulum is swinging with peptides, you know, we've got the GLP ones, which are peptides. Yeah. People may not know they're peptides, but they are. Yeah.
Speaker 5:And now we've getting we're getting a little more open to thinking about having peptides be a little bit more regulated, but regulated in the right way so that we can get the research necessary Yeah. So that people can now buy these on the regular market as opposed to the gray market.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 5:So that's one where I think, you know, the pendulum is swinging in the right direction partially because of the administration, you know, it's it's RFK junior who's really a proponent of peptides. So, you know, I think there's opportunities there and you just have to I think as a as a if I'm sitting with my LP hat on, right, I've got to think about what parameter I wanna put around the LPA and how restrictive do I wanna be. Because there's some great opportunities that, you know, I I don't really think of them as vice anymore in, you know, in in the twenty twenties.
Speaker 2:Yeah. No. Well, yeah. The other the other thing is like, if you're a VC invests in a vice company and loses money on it, then they're they're gonna like, if you're gonna do it Of course. At least at least put up good returns.
Speaker 2:So that's the other thing that's been driving more LP probably friendliness around a lot of this stuff just because a lot of these companies have been performing performing quite well. But anyways, this was great.
Speaker 1:Yeah. This was fantastic. It's great
Speaker 2:to meet you. Thanks for coming on.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much. Thanks so much for
Speaker 5:having me. Conversation.
Speaker 1:This is great. Let me tell you about Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform that grows with your business and lets you sell in seconds. Yeah. Online, in store, on mobile, on social.
Speaker 2:I've First already time reading that, John.
Speaker 1:And now with AI agents. I don't know. I got too much going on today. We have a few more guests joining in just a minute. We'll see who's here next.
Speaker 1:We can give you the high level on the SpaceX launch for Starship's first orbital mission while we wait for our next guest to join.
Speaker 2:Elon Musk Next time there's a launch Yeah. And we know that that Starship's gonna be landing in the Pacific Mhmm. I say we try to get Tyler out Both. Splash zone.
Speaker 1:In the splash zone.
Speaker 2:In the GoPro. The GoPro. GoPro.
Speaker 1:What does that do? They already filmed these.
Speaker 2:No. No. But it would be it would hit way harder if it was Tyler behind the camera.
Speaker 7:If my life is at stake.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it would be a way to yeah. Put anybody who thinks it's fake, thinks that's AI video. But we filmed it ourselves.
Speaker 1:We know it's real. Anyway, speaking of AI video, we have Zach London from Gossip Goblin with us
Speaker 2:What's going
Speaker 1:on? Hey. How you doing?
Speaker 8:How's it going?
Speaker 1:Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:Where where in the world are you?
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 8:I'm in I'm in Sweden.
Speaker 1:Oh, cool.
Speaker 2:There you go. Sorry.
Speaker 8:You're up so Thank
Speaker 1:you for so late. Please introduce yourself and what you're working on specifically. It's fascinating.
Speaker 8:Yeah. Thanks for having me. I'm Zach, better known online as Gossip Goblin.
Speaker 6:Mhmm.
Speaker 8:I make make some AI videos that you guys hopefully have seen. Yeah. Yeah. And I have a feature length film coming out in a little over two months.
Speaker 1:Yeah. What was the process for making the feature length film? What do you like, I imagine there's AI tooling that can help at every step of the way, but it feels like there's still an incredible amount of human involvement. What did you start with a title? Did you start with a concept?
Speaker 1:A genre? A log line? Like, what was your process?
Speaker 8:Yeah. So so contrary to popular belief, you're not yet able to just type in make me a movie into a box. Although, there's plenty of people trying to to make that happen. Yeah. No.
Speaker 8:I mean, depending on how you look at it, this is like four years in the making maybe. I mean, I've been making AI videos since that was really a possibility, like four years ago. And at first, you know, it looked pretty terrible. But I thought there was a there there, that there was, like, actual potential to do narrative storytelling beyond just, like, Will Smith's spaghetti memes or, you know, just Twitter clickbait. Yeah.
Speaker 8:And I'd say about a year and a half ago is when the tools really hit this inflection point where it became clear that you can actually make stuff that people want to watch beyond just like the shock value of, you know, this new taboo technology. Mhmm. So, yeah, I've been kind of building out this sci fi universe for for several years now, you know, in public on social media. And it's garnered enough, you know, interest that I was able to quit my day job, start a little studio, hire a team. And for the last eight months, nine months, we've been working on this feature film, which has been a premiering
Speaker 2:in two months.
Speaker 8:Yeah. December 4.
Speaker 2:So it's pretty good. Pretty good timeline to but but talk about talk what what can you share about the movie? Like, concept and general story?
Speaker 8:Yeah. So, you know, everything I do, it's like, I would say, leaning on pretty dark, sardonic, twisted sci fi stuff. And there's, you know, there's a bit of like an allegory edge to it. It's not just like wild, out there sci fi. Hopefully, it's not too on the nose, but I think one of the fun parts about AI is the actual like, I still write the script.
Speaker 8:Myself and a co writer writes the script. We use a dozen voice actors in the film. We have musicians scoring the film. We use full year artists for the sound effects. We have a whole post production crew.
Speaker 8:So it's not just me in my dark basement in Sweden. There's like a full crew of people. And so I'd like to believe there's still that level of like craft and detail and authorship involved. We haven't just, you know, relegated this to, you know, pipeline of tools to just render the shit out. But it's been a pretty arduous process to put it all together.
Speaker 8:But even with that said, the actual production time is still pretty fast and lean relative to, like, how you would make a a sci fi epic of this scope in the past. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 8:So I'd like to believe that the topics are like a lot timelier and more tuned to the present. And that's all paired with like, we put out ten minutes of short form content a week. Yeah. So that's not quite the same caliber, but that keeps us kind of, you know, relevant and front and center. And now, we've caught Elon's attention recently with, you know, some videos that may or may not have to do with Club's wet lab in San Francisco.
Speaker 2:No. To to me to me, like, the one of the biggest opportunities at the moment is, like, taking something like soup a time very timely topic Yep. And then applying something that creating something that looks like it took months and months and months to produce. Yeah. And I mean South South Park, like part of Yeah.
Speaker 2:Why South
Speaker 1:Park of this.
Speaker 2:Always was like top super topical and would become part of the conversation. It was like the first thing out of Hollywood that was Yep. Like scripted, that was commentating on what was happening in the in the relative near term.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's remarkable.
Speaker 8:Yeah. Totally. So I mean, I kind of break out the content into like the ultra short form. So it's those three minute clips. And the goal there is like, it's part of this kind of sci fi transhumanist universe we're building out.
Speaker 8:But, you know, I feel like San Francisco like writes plots for me at this point.
Speaker 1:Like Mhmm.
Speaker 8:The shit I come up with is not even sci fi by next week.
Speaker 2:So it makes Or a techno optimist? You
Speaker 8:know what?
Speaker 2:Or a transhumanist?
Speaker 8:Can I can be both? I can say, look, I think there's a 90% chance we survive.
Speaker 2:Okay. Right? Higher fired up.
Speaker 1:There we
Speaker 8:go. Way more Yeah.
Speaker 2:Fired up. I'm not a percent
Speaker 8:I'm not a doomer. I'm not a doomer, but I'm also not like But you're calling
Speaker 2:from a bunkie.
Speaker 1:I'm not Polly Anish.
Speaker 2:Are you calling in from a bunkie?
Speaker 8:I mean, Sweden's kind of a bunker on its own. It's just It's so off the grid, like, who's gonna bother wiping it out, you know?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Where is the name from?
Speaker 8:It's just always been around. I don't know. I I I've had the same handle online forever. I think, like, ten years ago, Sticker Mule had a really good deal on vinyl stickers. And I just I needed to come up with the username quickly before the sale went away.
Speaker 8:So I committed to Gossip Goblin and I had such like a huge investment in the stickers that I it's too late to pivot.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Awesome. Well, come back on as you get closer to the to the release and I'm excited for for our audience to follow the shorts along as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Congratulations on the progress. Thanks for
Speaker 2:staying up. Yeah. You.
Speaker 1:Have a good one. Sleep. We'll talk to you soon. Let me tell you about Figma. Agents meet the canvas.
Speaker 1:Your AI agents can now create and modify your Figma files with design system context. Our next guest is on the line, Anish from Anish, the general partner coming back on the show here with us to discuss All Things AI Personal Agents. How you doing, Anish?
Speaker 10:Nothing. That's weird. They got the squawking.
Speaker 1:What was that?
Speaker 2:Oh, that's the eagle. The eagle squawking. Your audio maybe get a little closer to your mic. The you sounded
Speaker 1:a
Speaker 2:little Can you
Speaker 1:do a little sound check for us?
Speaker 10:Test. Test.
Speaker 2:Test. Okay. You. Can
Speaker 1:Personal AI agents. The biggest debate point was, it going to destroy the restaurant industry? Is it going to gum up the restaurant industry? If you run a restaurant, is it the worst time or the best time? Are you going to be flooded with thousands of phone calls every day trying to book special occasions every five seconds?
Speaker 1:Or is there a white bill here? Is there a good solution where the the the humble restaurant tour sees a modest increase to the
Speaker 2:bottom line? Our debate. We I wanna know
Speaker 1:where you land.
Speaker 10:I think this would be great, man. I mean, look, I think the last gen of some aggregators were maybe not amazing for the restaurant industry. Mhmm. But if you think about the GM of Carbon, what does she want? You know, she wants to have the highest ARB people in the restaurant with the highest frequency and have a high fill rate and have some sort of entropy so new people can try the restaurant who might be future high spenders.
Speaker 10:Mhmm. I think your ability to fill the restaurant in a way that sort of globally alkamol is way higher. It's not just who clicked the website fast enough. That's one. And then two, I think for the long tail restaurateur, you know, they don't have to be amazing at marketing game or the kind of, you know, sort of marketing to the intermediary suppliers like Resy.
Speaker 10:So I actually think you're gonna get this like long tail effect where more people will visit more restaurants and for the restaurants that are in the part of the power law, they should actually get the best customer. I think it's very, very good.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Let's maybe start with Thanks. I'm curious how you think that the the tension right now between users who have personal agents that want them to be able to do anything are running into the wall on places like amazon.com. We saw somebody today that that got blocked from just buying something on adidas.com with with Muse, which again feels like a sort of casualty, like, that that that, you know, something They have a system in place to block more nefarious style bots, maybe like maybe it's sneaker bots or something like that. Who knows?
Speaker 2:Right? But it it feels like inevitable that users will be able to get their agents to operate on their behalf everywhere in the fullness of time. But the question is like, how long do we have that sort of tension between I think it's really just gonna come down. I expect the Adidas' of the world to adapt, but it's the it's the ad plat places that are monetizing with ads. How quickly will they fall or figure out alternative solutions?
Speaker 10:I think pretty quickly. I mean, we'll have to see how it plays out. I like what Noah said on the call this morning, which is there's gonna be a portion of your revenue that is driven by attention and a portion of your revenue that's driven by fulfilling transactions. Mhmm. And then every, you know, ecommerce retailer, they're gonna know, like, you know, Amazon is disproportionately advertising perhaps or high margin advertising.
Speaker 10:They're gonna wanna focus on protecting being the destination. Whereas, Adidas, if they're more of a sort of transaction fulfillment business versus a destination car sales business, I think they wanna quickly get the intermediaries out of the way. I think the distance is gonna be a lot of studios wants wanna think of themselves as destination businesses, but in reality, they're sort of transaction fulfillment businesses. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Are you getting pitches for we solve the problem created by Instinct and Muse yet? Because there in one way, there's already been, you know, business phone trees and transcription services and things that turn text message inbound into CRM stuff. There's AI customer support companies. But at the same time, like, this does feel like a slightly new twist, a slightly new tool relevant. But how are you dealing with that question in the era of personal agents, like the secondary businesses or maybe the secondary businesses are just instinct for business, muse for business, you know, the other side
Speaker 2:of it?
Speaker 10:We haven't seen as many yet. I mean, the question is what's the most extreme form of an adversarial relationship with your customer? And there's actually a terminal story about Brazil, which has the most lawsuits per capita of any country. And the reason for that is you can sue anyone digitally and sort of trivially. What happens is when, you know, your DoorDash is late, you just fire off a lawsuit like one.
Speaker 10:That's amazing.
Speaker 3:That is
Speaker 10:a very adversarial relationship and the merchants need to buy specialized software to fend out all the lawsuits. I think things like that will happen. You know, demand for refunds and protesting payments and all of these areas where merchants benefit from kind of customer apathy or being fully informed.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 10:We haven't hit yet.
Speaker 1:I like this future. Like, if I you know, you asked me to order you a coffee the other day, you wanted regular milk instead of almond milk. I got you the almond milk one. You could've sued me for like 50¢ right then.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Sue a friend. Just Instantly.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Instantly, you know.
Speaker 2:That's really yeah. That's really crazy. If some if if if some of these systems get abused Yeah. Then they have to just remove the policy at which point as a consumer, you would have to actually press, like take like a legal Like some type of legal action to get the thing that used to be offered out of the box. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Like that's kind of like the the darker
Speaker 10:I think it's an opportunity, Jordy. Actually, take it the opposite view. Like, think of every person, certainly of their lifetime, but maybe once a year has this just bureaucratic weight placed on them. Know, maybe you move and you have to change schools for your kid. You know, God forbid, maybe you get cancer or have a DUI.
Speaker 10:Like, there's just so much bureaucratic administrative work that the entrepreneur has to do, and I don't know that they actually have equal access to the legal system. It's hard to get an attorney and it's hard to go to small claims court. So I kind of like this vision of the consumer being extraordinarily empowered with these things you used to have to have a guy for.
Speaker 2:Yeah. No, that's a good point.
Speaker 1:How are you thinking about compute intensity in the era of personal AI agents? I've seen some, like, you know, wild speculation and rumors, but we've all been through the the realization that going from LLMs to reasoning systems to agentic coding, like every one was an exponential. We started producing 10 times the tokens, 10 times the energy, 10 times the cost. Of course, 10 times the capability. So the adoption happened.
Speaker 1:But Personal AI agents, do you have a feeling for how much it costs to serve someone? Or do you have any idea for how to even think about this? Or even does it require a new mode of thinking, is it just the same old?
Speaker 10:I think right now, our best estimates are a thousand dollars per user per year, which is obviously prohibitive if you're running this I think the the couple reasons to be optimistic if you're running Well, pause
Speaker 2:pause for one second too because when you think about making that back on transaction fees, like, the average person is not gonna be spent the average person just simply doesn't spend a $100,000 a year on, like, hotels and flights and things like that. And so there there there is, like, the cost has to drop meaningfully if you wanna be able to make up
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:If you wanna be able to keep the services free and make it up with like Transaction volume. Percent or 5% Yeah. Fees.
Speaker 10:Yeah. The average American casino spends 5 to $6,000 on travel plus commerce, online travel plus commerce a year.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 10:Yeah. That's got a very high take rate. Look, the number one thing that needs to happen is cost needed to deflate and they will. Yeah. Right?
Speaker 10:We've this over and over again, like, now, has kicked ass that computer use is very expensive. It will get cheap very quickly.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 10:The actually most exciting thing I saw in the last two weeks was Jeb. Yeah. With computers, like Jeb computer use is a 100 x cheaper and faster today.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 10:So I think probably these kind of dark horse opportunities that it could deflate cost faster. Otherwise, you're kind of fighting a two front four on customer acquisition and compute capacity.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Well, thank you so much stopping by.
Speaker 2:Oh, last last question I had. We were just purely speculating earlier that it feels very natural. Like agents now have a phone number and a computer. It feels very natural for them to have like their own dedicated sort of this is the first time that I've got I've I've heard a bunch of pitches for like why agents are gonna use stable coins and this and that. And I wasn't ever fully Yeah.
Speaker 2:Sold. But this feels like like you could imagine an instinct being like, hey, we're just gonna here's a credit card that you can use. It has some of these these benefits and maybe Mhmm. And it just feels like that's an easy way to like start monetizing all of this volume Yeah. Without having to go get the opt in from every single long tail retailer and service provider that you're driving a bunch of traffic to.
Speaker 10:Mhmm. Yeah. That's that's absolutely right. Like, unfortunately, just the take rate on those things is not high enough to still assume it's a good idea. I think the more interesting question, Jordy, is what happens when agents are independent economic actors and they can go look for work and get paid for doing work on your behalf and teach them your specialized knowledge and skills?
Speaker 10:Like, the whole agent economy thing is definitely coming and it's gonna be wild.
Speaker 1:That will be wild.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Because right now there's millions of people reaching out to businesses, for example Mhmm. Offering to effectively be a meat proxy for them to just do work that the models can already do and then just give it back to them. Yeah. And then at what point, you know, I'm sure there's people out there that have just scaled up outbound to the degree that they're effectively doing this already just as a company.
Speaker 2:But at what point can you have an Yeah. Something more like an independent agent. It's fascinating. Yeah. But, anyways, great to great to catch up on
Speaker 1:this.
Speaker 2:Very Yeah. Have chat more. Parts of you and come back on soon.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much. We'll talk to you soon. Goodbye. Cheers. Let me tell you about Cisco.
Speaker 1:Critical infrastructure for the AI era. Unlock seamless real time experiences and new value with Cisco. There's a Tesla Roadster update. It's been delayed to October 15. It was supposed to be October 7.
Speaker 1:They've been tracking the weather closely, but the severe conditions predicted. And because this event can only be held outdoors, they rescheduled it. So we will have to wait until October 15 to get the update on the new Tesla Roadster. Anyway, our next guest is already with us in the waiting room. Have Emma Conrad from San Francisco Compute.
Speaker 1:He's the co founder and CEO. What's up? Overdue.
Speaker 2:So happy to only about a year overdue.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So But thank you so much for Okay. Coming on. I already know what we're gonna talk about, but please introduce yourself and the company a little bit to give everyone some lay of the land.
Speaker 6:Hey. I'm Evan. We make a company called San Francisco Compute. We're the inventor of compute markets.
Speaker 1:Okay. And what is the current state of compute markets? Mature are Where do you want these to go? Break us down for the status quo and then we can start talking about the the the future.
Speaker 6:So our impression is that right now, compute kind of looks like at the early days before there was a power grid. Mhmm. And when that happened, every factory ran its own generator.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 6:And they had to schedule that generator to exist for peak capacity. Okay. And then during idle hours, they would just sort of burn that money. And so what happened in the power markets is that utilities came in, and they pooled demand between all of these different factories. And then by doing that, you made the economics of all the factories better, and this is how we scaled up electrification of the country.
Speaker 6:This is what people are trying to do with compute markets. It's what we try are trying to do with compute markets. But I think at the moment, there's whole bunch of folks who are entering the space, and the way that they're trying to do it is they're typically trying to create some sort of index price, and then you can create a cash settled future on top of this. Our impression is that by doing this, you're divorcing it from the actual technology under the hood because the index isn't connected to anything. Like, you're not actually buying the compute.
Speaker 6:You're sort of trading on this, like, magical number.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Is there a solution here where you look at the semi analysis cluster max three, you view that more like a Moody's credit rating and you assign different tranches of compute. Because maybe we're not in a fully homogenous market for compute yet, but it's actually reasonable to trade CoreWeave for Nebius, which both earned the top ranking in ClusterMax three. And then you go down the list and maybe there's a little bit of a delta in value between compute. But within a particular tranche, if they're all rated triple a or triple b, it's okay to actually treat those as fungible.
Speaker 1:How close are we to that?
Speaker 6:I think the real problem is that you just don't have very many people at the top of that ladder.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 6:And so one of the things that needs to happen before we get to compute markets Mhmm. Is you need to sort of level up the whole market. Right now, the folks that are easiest able to enter the market are the people with lots of capital, lots of land, lots of power Mhmm. But not necessarily a lot of, like, supercomputing expertise. Mhmm.
Speaker 6:And so I think that's why we're in the current stage of the market where you have a few excellent players Yeah. Like Cory or like Anivias.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 6:But you don't really have enough actual participants Sure. That know what they're doing in order to make it possible to have a market.
Speaker 1:And what is the the the key unlock to to raise the floor here? Is it the actual chipsets, the networking technology, the software that's installed? Because I know that there's variation across basically every dimension, and that feels like the enemy of commoditization. But at the same time, there's a huge amount of companies that are saying like, look, you're not going to commoditize without me, AMD, having a say or me, another networking provider having a say. Everyone wants to bring something to bear.
Speaker 6:Yeah. So our impression or our view at San Francisco Compute Mhmm. Is that you need a market operator that has to be independent from the other con sort of other clowns. Otherwise, if it's not independent, Wall Street won't trust it. Okay.
Speaker 6:That market operator also needs to do what's called physical settlement. And in this case, settlement, we think, means running the whole damn thing. Sure. You've got to run it all the way down to the the data center itself. That includes even building the data centers in some cases.
Speaker 1:Interesting.
Speaker 6:And if you do that, then you can standardize because you can make the whole operator be the same thing, and then you can plug in capacity. You can plug in land and power and other assets into it, and you get lots of different market participants, but that's the way the grid works. There's a grid operator, and they sort of run and manage things that allows it to standardize. Right now, we're in the world where people are, you're, like, trading capacity. And imagine if we did this in the power market where I traded you a coal plant for a nuclear power plant.
Speaker 6:That's basically what we're doing right now.
Speaker 1:Interesting. I mean, at the same time, like, are there are, you know, plenty of heterogeneity in the in the oil refinery business. But then once the oil gets to be a standard crude and it's graded, then it can be traded as a commodity. Is there not some like doesn't isn't that a prerequisite that basically the vast majority of compute comes online in some homogenous market to really create like the commodity vision that people are seeing in the future as opposed to just more standardization within individual neo clouds or or compute providers? Doesn't something have to happen at a higher level of abstraction?
Speaker 6:So to some extent, yeah. So this is what we think of ourselves as doing Sure. Is by making that refinery exist. Yeah. On the other hand, it's just way more nuanced than that.
Speaker 6:These are supercomputers, not soybeans. Yeah. And so there's just like yeah. It is just frankly more complicated.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Make it easier, if only. So, yeah, what is your what is your plan right now? What's the stage of the company? I mean, you've raised money, but how close are you to do do you think to acquiring power, a data center?
Speaker 1:Is that is that the plan in the near term?
Speaker 9:Yeah. Okay.
Speaker 6:Can't say that much, but Okay.
Speaker 1:It's in it's in the works.
Speaker 2:Doing pretty well. Computer ever. Yeah.
Speaker 6:Yeah. We're we're shooting for the biggest computer ever.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And and is it is it not viable to I mean, should I think of the the hyperscalers as sort of building a like a fungible layer on top of all the neo clouds? Because you when you when you look at the neo cloud, so many of them have partnerships with AWS, GCP, the big AI labs. And in some ways, could imagine some commodity some commoditization happening like in the AWS console. But but do you think it's viable to try and come over the top and and create a new platform that marshals compute across all the different neo clouds?
Speaker 1:Or will there be like neo cloud revolt for that or organ rejection? Because they will only do that if it's Amazon and they have to play nice.
Speaker 6:So our impression is that there's a missing utility. Mhmm. We think of like the hyperscalers as kind of the old school factories. Mhmm. And they've got these sort of generators or power companies that are working with them.
Speaker 6:And they totally they've sort of abstracted over the the power companies, this case the Neo Clouds is sort of that analogy. And now they're producing goods from their factory.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 6:The problem is if you want to really scale everything up, you need to figure out how to make a market that can secure the risk for other people to scale things up as well. And if you do that, that's great for the existing participants. Like, that's gonna be great for the hyperscalers. It's also gonna be great for the neo clouds. But that market needs to be independent in order to exist, and the operation of the market, the technology needs to be co designed with the order book itself.
Speaker 6:Otherwise, you can't actually do this.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Well, congrats on the progress. Good luck.
Speaker 1:I'm excited for the next announcement. Come back when it's live. We'd love
Speaker 2:hear Yeah. Anytime. Anytime. Last last Please do. Last question.
Speaker 2:There's someone on X that's been posting about I'm not just gonna keep posting through this infrastructure build out. I'm getting in in the action. I'm levering up personally to get compute to be able to participate in this. Sure. What are your what are your thoughts on the on the humble, on the humble home supercomputer operator that wants that wants to get into the token flow?
Speaker 2:Is it an should they just be buying NVIDIA, you know, and be like levered long there and just sit back and do nothing? Or should they have their own rack at home, a little bit of power, and be be feeding the the token stream?
Speaker 6:So I think I know who you're talking about, and I would say they are they are doing more than just, you know, a rack in your your house.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 6:Okay. What what we do at San Francisco Compute is we help people become clouds, and then we help them sell those clouds on the market. We're like a supercomputer developer. And we think well, we know. We've seen this that all the money and all the capital and all the power is sort of trying to figure out how to turn itself into GPUs.
Speaker 6:Mhmm. Because there's a really strong economic reason to do that right now. And so we're seeing this happen across the market. Our gist as a company is we're going to help them do that and help make it be possible that there's a large amount of new neo clouds, new NCPs in the NVIDIA terminology. And then we're going to help them get financed by building the market that makes it possible to derisk them.
Speaker 1:That makes a lot of sense. Well Thanks for
Speaker 2:I have one Please. My second last question. Okay. And and sorry sorry for keeping you a little bit over. But you you clearly love to use these different historical analogies.
Speaker 2:And I'm wondering when when people build up bring up sort of like railroad build out and and overbuild and and try to comp it to this present moment. There are certainly variety of of strong comparisons that you can make. What what's your reaction to that? Where do you think that sort of analogy falls short? Would say one one of them is like, if you just build a railroad effectively to nowhere and there's not a lot of economic activity there and you invest all this money into it, and then there's no not that much value creation, it's obvious why those kind of things can blow up.
Speaker 2:Whereas with compute, if you can build a bunch of compute, the the current state of things is like the compute will the the demand will find it one way or another. Even if you're a tier three, four, five operator, if you have Fundamentally, if you have power and GPUs, someone will find you and and sort of force you into being competent and economically viable one way or another.
Speaker 6:Yeah. So I think kind of what you're getting at is is there an AI bubble? Are we out overbuilding like crazy? This is this is the this is the problem we're trying to solve. Right now, it's important to understand where that bubble is.
Speaker 1:He's solving. He's solving the
Speaker 5:bubble. Thanks.
Speaker 6:Yeah. So it it the bubble itself
Speaker 2:Someone had to do
Speaker 1:it. Yeah.
Speaker 6:It works like this. There's the cloud itself doesn't deploy the GPU cluster until they have the contract in hand from the customer. Mhmm. And then they force the customer to pay them a massive deposit up upfront so that they can give it to the OEM who then gives it off to NVIDIA. Mhmm.
Speaker 6:But the like, the AI lab itself doesn't have that capital yet because they need it for the future. Mhmm. And so they go off and they raise money at massive valuations. Mhmm. And all the VCs look around and say, shit.
Speaker 6:This AI lab, it's it's asking for a crazy valuation. And is that is that okay, guys? Like, is everyone cool with that? And they all look around and say, well, I guess we missed out on OpenAI and Entropic. And so maybe these people will be OpenAI and Entropic too, and so we'll go with the the big valuation, but then the venture capitalist owns the risk.
Speaker 6:So if you're looking for a bubble, it's held currently by the venture capitalists. We're we're trying to solve that problem by derisking compute in the future, by basically making it possible to know, like, what the price of GPUs will be off into the future. And that reduces a lot of this problem because then you don't have to have the big deposit upfront from the customer, which then means you don't have to have the big giant valuation that's probably maybe a little overvalued from where it should be. Yeah. But
Speaker 1:And then you're the king in the castle. King in the castle.
Speaker 2:John's out of control.
Speaker 1:I have a problem with the you asked questions Great
Speaker 2:point, Evan. We'd love to do this again soon, and we'll we'll make sure to get more time next time.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Have a good one. We'll talk
Speaker 2:to you soon. Thanks guys
Speaker 1:to Hank. Goodbye. Cheers. Let me tell you about Codex. Codex is a powerful workspace for getting work done with AI agents whether you're writing code, analyzing data, creating content or automating business workflows.
Speaker 1:Codex helps you move projects forward from start to finish. Our next guest is here live with us in the TBPN UltraDome. Here's Sean Bennett. Welcome to the show. How are you doing?
Speaker 1:Good to see you.
Speaker 2:Made
Speaker 1:it. Thanks so much for coming on down to Hollywood to the TBPN UltraDome.
Speaker 9:Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:Why don't you introduce yourself for those who maybe are living under a data center?
Speaker 9:I'm the Gstaad guy. Yes. I make videos sometimes in character. Yeah. Saturizing some of the absurd lifestyles
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 9:That exist around the world.
Speaker 1:Longer a creator, you're the CEO of a media company. Is that how do you think about yourself now?
Speaker 2:Talent and operator.
Speaker 1:Operator. Right? Because you have a team, I assume.
Speaker 9:I do. Do. I think that's the case for many creators right now. And I think the reason why people started using the media company term is because Mhmm. They felt insulted by the term creator.
Speaker 9:I actually feel celebrated by it, so influencer. Influencer. Influencer was like a slur. Slur.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Exactly. And then they're like, maybe creative's a little bit nicer, being creative's good, but Yeah. What what is it
Speaker 2:it it is an important point because I know creators that like they desperately they're like, I don't wanna be seen as a creator. I wanna be seen as a CEO. I wanna be seen as a business owner. Founder. And then and then there's actually the level above that which is like, no, I actually enjoy.
Speaker 2:I think we both experience having companies and then doing this. Yeah. Like, just being being talent and being the host is the thing that I feel like I'm best at. Yep. I got I'm pretty okay at building companies Yeah.
Speaker 2:And running companies and managing people. Yeah. But it's not the thing that I enjoy as much as just hanging out and talking with John
Speaker 1:It's way more fun.
Speaker 2:Fun the people in our And so, I think a lot of those people, hopefully, they'll get to come around and be like, actually, no. I I like just making the thing that is the business.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. All of the One of the thing yeah. One of the reasons I was excited to have you on the show is that in the same way that you use humor to talk about these sort of like lifestyles and consumption and Basically, like we started doing this in character in the most like sort of insane version of in in the case of of for us, was like Tech Bros. Right? Or we started the show, it was called Technology Brothers before we realized like, hey, maybe there's something bigger But we were being like like, oh, at at times, like, maybe too humorous about a bunch of different
Speaker 1:It was a satire on the quiet luxury trend in Silicon Valley. We called it loud opulence.
Speaker 2:Wanted to
Speaker 1:be as loud and over the top as possible, and sort of like poke fun at the fact that there's so many people in San Francisco that are extremely wealthy and they're like, I drive a Prius. And it's like, what do you drive on the weekend? He's like, no, you got a Koenigsegg in the
Speaker 2:But but sometimes it takes sometimes it takes somebody willing to just lean into humor and and to actually tell the truth Yeah. About certain things. Yeah. Thank
Speaker 9:you. I appreciate the the compliments.
Speaker 2:It's Yeah.
Speaker 9:It's fun.
Speaker 2:But yeah, think I think Yeah. Where should we start? Maybe a review of Euro Summer. Do you how do you rate it the swing? How do you rate the last quarter?
Speaker 1:Is overblown at this point?
Speaker 9:I I think Euro Summer is still on for those for those of who can can be in that position to have it still be on. But Euro summer, I think, ends in October.
Speaker 6:Okay. So we'll have to be back.
Speaker 2:We're in
Speaker 1:the fall.
Speaker 2:We're in the the final days.
Speaker 9:Yeah. We're in the we're in the final days. Think mid mid October starts to slow down. Yeah. I mean, don't forget, many people who live in Europe are professional consumers.
Speaker 9:Sure. They don't work much
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 9:And they've learned the ways of summering Yeah. Through generations.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 9:It's not a it's not a, oh, I'll do this when I make it. It's actually a, I grew up doing this.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 9:Yep. And that's, I think, where a lot of the humor comes from and a lot of the judgment comes from
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 9:Where some of the people that you interview or even
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 9:Poke fun at on the show, that's who they feel judged by because they make a lot of money, they go to Europe for the first time, they sometimes make the wrong spending decisions
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 9:Because what they thought was cool is maybe not so cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah. No, that's the thing when you when you Sure. If you're in a family that has been very successful for generations, the the next gen, the younger generation is effectively judging each other based on how they are consuming. Mhmm. Like, that that is in a here, at least in within within our networks, Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's like the judgment is like, well, what company are you building? Are you are you the category are you the category leader? How much money have you raised? How big is your team? Like Yeah.
Speaker 2:Specifically with like, you know, the people that are on the show. In Europe, it's like, you know, it's it's what watch are you wearing, but not not like how much money did you spend on it, but how unique is it and what is like the history behind it and do you know the watchmaker and how much time have you spent here or there and where, you know, not just I mean I mean, it just goes on and on and on, and and I appreciate it. I was I was I took a a driving trip to to Austria recently, and like there's I feel like I'm getting better at at spending money and I've always liked No. I'm just saying I've always I've always liked I've always liked consumption. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I I've always I've just always enjoyed it. Like most
Speaker 9:of us have.
Speaker 2:And I I've always liked You think
Speaker 1:you were bad
Speaker 2:at
Speaker 1:it?
Speaker 2:I certainly have been bad at Okay. Like, I when I when I talk about being bad at consumption it's like you buy something and you regret the purchase. Okay. Yeah. Because your maybe your taste level Yeah.
Speaker 2:Increased like
Speaker 1:You bought something that expensive.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Even as a kid I bought Yeah. A certain like piece of snowboarding gear. Then I realized like a month later, well, I shouldn't have bought that because this other thing is actually Sure. Sure.
Speaker 2:Okay. Really want.
Speaker 9:And listen, I think that's generally a good thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 9:Yeah. In the category of people who can afford to do so, think those who aren't very good at consuming aren't very good because they're busy producing. Yeah. And that's like, macroeconomically, it's kind of what's happening right now.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 9:Yeah. People in The US are making a whole lot more than most in Europe, and when they take their fourteen days off or for some, let's say slightly more, they ball out and they they make a big splash. Yes. And then these resorts like Saint Tropez, for example, actually rely on The US consumer who comes in for fourteen days and goes crazy.
Speaker 1:Interesting.
Speaker 9:Meanwhile, a European consumer gets average twenty eight days off a year. Yeah. So literally twice as much. Yeah. And they're making at least half as much.
Speaker 9:Yeah. Yeah. So they actually need to make the dollar go a lot further.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 9:While you, you're in Austria, you're you can ball out.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah. But what I what I appreciate is that, like, the friends that I was with were, going to the hole in the wall place that they'd been for Mhmm. Going to for twenty years at this point. And it's not for them, it's not at all about how much money can you spend even if they could theoretically spend just as much as the sort of like, you know, American going crazy for two What it's about.
Speaker 1:Yeah. How do businesses in Centurpay actually price discriminate? Is it like, okay, we know this is when American summer will be here, so let's raise prices? Is it just there are more expensive things on the menus? And so we know that the Americans will will gravitate towards that.
Speaker 1:Like, what what strategies do you see where you're like, oh, this is a sharp business operator? They're both keeping the European clientele happy when they're in town, but then they're also extracting max value from the Americans who are there?
Speaker 9:I think for the most part, a great case study for this is hotels.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 9:Because I think if restaurants play with prices
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 9:It's usually not a very good restaurant. Yeah. It's usually very gimmicky.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 9:Or more like a club or like a beach club. Sure. Which no one I think goes to consistently. Yeah. I think anyone who goes to like a party setting beach club and sprays champagne
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 9:Does it once or twice On as like a festive occasion Mhmm. To celebrate the moment. But then when they go back Mhmm. They go with their fiance or their wife and it's more modest and they're drinking wine instead of spraying champagne. So I think Yeah.
Speaker 9:Those occasion based restaurants would actually forget them in this conversation.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 9:For hotels, think it's just pure supply and demand. Sure. I think there's a few hotels that offer exceptional experiences and every year there's more people generating insane amounts of wealth and Yeah. Wanting to vacation there for a few years and they just raise the prices as much as they can.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 9:Some hotels though stay very loyal to the consumer you were talking about that has been staying with them for years Yeah. And that values the substance more than the status
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 9:Of that place. And the hotel loves that. And they may not be necessarily owned by a big group or a publicly traded hospitality group where they actually need to have crazy growth every year, they can just sustain. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Yeah. How do you it feels like one of the ways that you select for the more discerning generational client is like, you make things like less Instagram friendly Mhmm. Than they maybe could. Right? So you could have a hotel that has incredible service level, but it looks like kind of something more casual and country.
Speaker 2:Right? Versus the new hotel build that where every single moment is designed to like look really good on camera and there's good lighting and it and it feels like very like it has the aesthetics of being like very luxurious, but the service quality might actually be far worse.
Speaker 9:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:But it feels like like certain establishments now, they need to actually like not lean into that sort of generic global Instagram aesthetic.
Speaker 9:I I think it's it's less of an intention and more of an outcome, of actually something a little deeper. I think that the deeper thing is family owned versus massive group owned.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 9:Yeah. And these massive groups need to justify their existence, and they need to keep growing and growing and growing, and that's at the expense often of quality. And through the the method of painting things gold and having this sort of status element and making things Instagrammable, so they can market and justify their higher and higher prices. These family owned hotels, they don't care about that. They don't need the Instagram.
Speaker 9:They're sold out months in advance, sometimes years in advance, and they're just happy to exist and survive. And they can focus on the substance elements with the ingredients in the kitchen and they don't need to have the flashy things that attract people. Ultimately, really think that luxury consumers, and this is what I actually talk about in my content, sometimes out of character on my podcast or in character in my satire, but I think luxury consumption exists as a journey. And it's a journey from people jumping into this world and feeling judged and making the wrong consumption decisions and buying the wrong things and dining at the wrong places and acting the wrong way, and slowly becoming more and more discerning. And that can happen over five years or fifty years, I think it always happens.
Speaker 2:Always happens. I think it always happens.
Speaker 9:I don't I don't really know anyone who's had the financial power to consume and travel to these beautiful places for their entire life and act silly the entire time. I think they they get better and better as time goes on. And with knowledge and some judgment, they often improve faster than So you're
Speaker 1:saying there's a chance I could be the first. First person to never develop taste.
Speaker 2:Well, And it's funny because it express
Speaker 1:You know.
Speaker 2:It expresses itself in different ways like, I think like in the Alps like a Lamborghini Urus is like actually if it's specs properly can be like an incredible car.
Speaker 5:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And when I see them in that context, I think, wow, I really wish I I like I should get one of those. But the problem is you you put it in the LA context and it's just like the Yeah. The sort of the whole thing just doesn't work. Sure. Right?
Speaker 2:Just because of the the sort of local context. Yeah. How do you what how do you see like wellness as a hospitality trend? It feels like we're still at peak wellness and maybe there's room to grow. But at the same time, I personally you know, I've had saunas and cold plunges for like probably six years now, like, at at home.
Speaker 2:And so for me when I'm traveling somewhere, like, I'm not even really that's not maybe it's like on the list of things that I think are maybe it's cool if you have a sauna at the property, but that's not like why I'm sort of like
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Moving around the world to experience these things. And it feels like a lot of people say they want those things, but when they're traveling they sometimes Yeah. Like there's a bunch of other things that are maybe more worth their time. But Mhmm. Where do you see it sort of trending?
Speaker 9:I I feel like the health and wellness thing is now nearly like the final boss
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 9:Stage of consumption Yeah. Where stage one people focus on that status I was talking about. When they first make money, they want to celebrate, it's festive, they're like, made it. I want to go party and and and show people I made it.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 9:Stage two, I think, is indulgence. They go on a of wine tours, make a ton of wine, eat a lot of caviar. And it's like still somewhat status y, but they think it's more understated.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 9:But it's still highly indulgent. And then eventually they get over it and they say, you know what, I bought all the cars, I got the watches, I'm over all of this. What really matters? And they dive deeper into health and wellness. And all the people I know eventually, to be honest, that have been spending for a long time, who go from flashy to understated, eventually also go to sporty, and that's the final boss.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 9:They go from cashmere to athleisure. Yeah. Still still in cashmere.
Speaker 1:And then what's their
Speaker 2:marathon time?
Speaker 9:And then exactly. Yeah. What's their They're cycling triathlon
Speaker 1:or cycling because they wanna live forever.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Yeah. This is we were having a conversation.
Speaker 1:Ryan Johnson,
Speaker 2:we're Yeah. We were talking about for an interview that hasn't been released yet about like this sort of like tech We're a lot of Tech. No no no. It wasn't. Someone was interviewing us.
Speaker 1:Oh, Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And they were asking like who we look up to and it's actually like we look up to the CEOs that don't just like have a cool car collection, but they're actually like doing motorsports at the at a high level like Yeah. Pro am level. Yeah. They're going and they're doing like
Speaker 9:It's cool.
Speaker 2:Endurance racing and things like that, where it's not like they can buy any car in the world, but it's like if you can buy any car in the world, what are you what are you doing with that? The building, right? It's like, can you keep it on the track? Can you be at these sort of iconic races and actually be fast enough to not embarrass yourself. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that's really That's like rising up to that to that next level. Yeah. You're talking about. I think so too. I
Speaker 1:wanna talk about the characters.
Speaker 9:Sure. Please.
Speaker 1:Yeah. The the dividing line. Like, how do you think about building the portfolio of characters? You have two now.
Speaker 9:I have two.
Speaker 1:Is there gonna be a third? Is this something you're considering? Are you do you even think about it that way? And then is there how harsh is the line between you're not in character? Like, we we we have loose characters that we slip into But here and do you slip in and out of them ever?
Speaker 1:Or is it like, okay, I am producing a piece of content in this character, there's a hard line, and then I'm going to do an interview out of character and there's a hard line.
Speaker 9:Okay. I love
Speaker 2:those like in real life, you're like, who am I right now?
Speaker 9:Exactly. But I asked myself this morning. No.
Speaker 1:No. We actually had our team like text you and and be like, does he want to do it in character? Because that's fine. No. No.
Speaker 1:We just don't want to be like throwing questions at you and not be on the same page a little But you could have ambushed us. Maybe you still will.
Speaker 9:That's true. I might. Yeah. Might jump in. I'll walk you through the
Speaker 1:Yeah. Explain the characters for So
Speaker 9:characters, I have three characters. Okay. The third is just me myself, which is here, so we'll ignore that for now. Okay. The two main characters are Constance
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 9:And Colton. Yeah. Constance is everything heritage. Mhmm. He's a constant.
Speaker 9:Mhmm. He's been there a hundred years ago. Mhmm. He'll be there a hundred years in the future. Mhmm.
Speaker 9:He's the ambassador of excellence the Yes. Old world of luxury, the old world of Europe. He is old money, taste, tact, manners. Yes. He is who your grandparents wants you to be when you visit Constantin.
Speaker 9:Exactly. Constantin. He's head to toe in the finest lower piano cashmere. Yes. He's wearing the best watches.
Speaker 9:Yes. He drives understated cars. Yes. He hikes. He sails.
Speaker 1:Love it.
Speaker 9:He's chic. Yeah. Constantine. Chic. His cousin Colton
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 9:Is the anti Constantine. Sorry to say it. Yeah. Yeah. Colton is everything hype.
Speaker 9:Yep. Colton is everything status
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 9:While Constance is substance. Yeah. Colton wants to follow every trend.
Speaker 2:Yep. Colton bought the Louis Vuitton singer collab.
Speaker 1:Thought that was
Speaker 2:actually pretty cool.
Speaker 9:So so and and Colton is basically the anti constants. Sure. And I use them to
Speaker 1:Show both sides.
Speaker 9:Show both sides.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Because they're occupying the same spaces.
Speaker 9:I think they're actually occupying the same mind. And that's where I was going with the account. I think there's no pure play Yep. Mean, no is a big word. There's very few pure constants
Speaker 4:Totally.
Speaker 9:Very few pure cultums.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 9:What I see happening is on a Friday night, people want to be cultum.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 9:Sunday morning Yep. They wanna play some golf and they want to be Constance. Yeah. And actually it's a push and pull of an internal dilemma
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 9:Of a wealthy consumer. Yes. And that's where I started going with the accounts where
Speaker 1:there's not a uniform judgment on both of them. Like, there might be ones more to aspire to, but there's a reality there
Speaker 9:Exactly.
Speaker 1:Between both of
Speaker 9:them. It's a fluid emotion. It's like the angel and devil on your shoulder Yeah. It's exaggerated. And I used the characters to really storytell
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 9:The what. What is driving this world? Yeah. What matters in this Stadtgai world? Yep.
Speaker 9:Through the voices of satire of Constantin Colton. The how is the manners Yeah. The tact. You don't just buy a lower piano cashmere sweater. There's a way to wear it, there's a way to celebrate it.
Speaker 9:You don't just go to Chateau Lacoste in Provence. You appreciate the art a certain way, you drink the wine a certain way.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 9:That's the how. Mhmm. The final step, which I noticed my audience going through, is actually the why. Everyone who would eventually enjoy these beautiful experiences would sit there and wonder, why am I even here? Yeah.
Speaker 9:Why do these clothes matter? Why do these watches matter? And that felt disrespectful to do in character.
Speaker 1:Oh, sure.
Speaker 9:Because I'm talking to hoteliers and restaurateurs
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 9:And and craftsmen and and people really putting their life and passion into Yeah. Into ultimately luxuries
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 9:But with so much serious love. I had to do it as myself. Sure. So I broke character for the why. Yeah.
Speaker 9:So the what and the how, Constance and Colton in character. Okay. The why is just me here talking
Speaker 1:to you. If you want an even more insufferable term beyond influencer creator, world builder is the one that really gets people going these days. But it but it is true that shot guy is a world, and it's fascinating hearing you how they they play with each other. How much are the two characters in dialogue with each other? How do you think about if there is an event, a trend, a topic that you need to give both sides?
Speaker 1:Or is there a moment when you say, no, this is the right tool for the job. I'm gonna pull this character off the shelf for this moment. How do you think about building that world in more fullness?
Speaker 9:I I rarely use Colton now Okay. Because I think the world is exhausted of Colton. Sure. Like people when they see Colton on screen, they're like, I I just scrolled past five Coltons. They get it.
Speaker 9:I'm tired this guy. Sure. I don't wanna hear from him.
Speaker 1:I don't
Speaker 9:wanna see him. Constant is still quite novel because seeing the frown and seeing Gstaad
Speaker 2:and novel because the constants does not post their lifestyle on social media. Exactly. At to nearly the same degree.
Speaker 9:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right? They're very sure. Using the humor and being like adopting the character. Mhmm. Of the people I know that fit that archetype are like incredibly private.
Speaker 2:Yes. Maybe they have a social media account but they'll they'll post If they were just posting at constantly, it would just seem like they were just flexing on the world constantly. Right? And so there's this weird awkwardness where there are certain types of people that sort of like full time consumer that it would be very distasteful if they were just documenting their life in the same way as Austin based wellness influencer. Totally.
Speaker 2:Totally. Because it'd be like, okay, we get it. You're at another hotel. We get it. You're at dinner.
Speaker 1:Okay. Yeah. Have a friend who was like, had to stop using social media because he learned how to fly helicopters and planes. And like, he was doing all this like insane stuff. And was he like, yeah, if I just buzz this, it looks like I'm flexing it.
Speaker 2:No. And I think that's why that's why the character resonates so deeply with like the next gen.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Because they're like, okay, I'm able to see something of myself on social And even though it's through satire, it's still like real.
Speaker 9:Yeah. Yeah. And they and they never got offended because ultimately it's even though it's poking fun Yeah. It's poking fun up. So it's celebratory.
Speaker 9:I'm poking fun at people's privilege. Yeah. And by design, that can never be offensive
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 9:Because it's privilege.
Speaker 1:So How much do you think about formats and testing new formats? I mean, you're uploading a video file, an m p four. Yeah. It can be shot on a phone. It can be shot on a cinema camera.
Speaker 1:You can edit a hype reel. You can do a lot of different things within the medium of Instagram reels within the medium of Instagram as a platform. How how often do you get the itch to to scratch some other format to take the character into a more cinematic world or a a more casual world? How much do you wanna do you wanna branch out? Because I know the default is like you will be punished by the algorithm if you do that.
Speaker 1:But I think every creator feels the urge every once in a while to say, I wanna I just want the experience of doing something at at twenty minutes or two hours or or shorter or whatever.
Speaker 9:I run the account, I think, in quite a unique way. Mhmm. And I started Gstaad Guy eight years ago now. So this is pre Reels feature.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 9:Actually, Reels was pre launched, they were reaching out to certain video native creators Yeah. Creators and creatives online and paying them to start using Reels Interesting. Instead of Yeah. IGTV Yeah. Which was the past video feature.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. I forgot about that.
Speaker 9:And I was one of those early creators. So I had never the reason why I say that is I had never been led by the algorithm.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 9:I'd actually been led by my audience. Sure. And that's why I started the account. Mhmm. The way the account started was I filmed the video privately that went viral on WhatsApp.
Speaker 9:That's great. People sent it to each other. Yeah. And then someone stopped me on the street and said, hey, I got a video of you on That's crazy
Speaker 1:to get recognized From WhatsApp. WhatsApp video.
Speaker 9:And then I thought, okay, I should create an account. Yeah. There should be something here. Yeah. And I really felt at service to that first person who stopped me.
Speaker 9:Sure. And those initial followers who happened to be incredibly private, as you mentioned, and incredibly wealthy
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 9:And hadn't engaged with this sort of content before.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 9:Now I have millions of followers Yeah. Which I'm very grateful for. But before I post, I'm still trying to service that initial niche audience. Mhmm. And it seems strange and novel online, but the way I like to think about it is actually a bit more like a restaurant.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 9:And no one questions us in restaurants, but they question it online Mhmm. Where, what's a better business model? In quotes. Is it a fast food chain that sells a lot of products at a very low price? Mhmm.
Speaker 9:Or is it a fine dining restaurant that sells very few products at a high price?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 9:And the answer is whatever is right for the restaurateur. Yep. But there's no right or wrong. Of course. It's it's all up to them.
Speaker 9:Yep. And I happen to take the path of I don't actually care about the masses. Mhmm. If they're crowding around the restaurants and there's lots of people there and lots of views Yep. That's great.
Speaker 9:Mhmm. But really what I care about is the few people in the room Mhmm. That I really care in servicing
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 9:With this very unique product. Yep. And and that's why these brands work with me.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 9:The brands I work with could work with people that have far greater reach Mhmm. And far greater eyeballs. But instead, they work with me because of the fact that I have a few that they are struggling to reach.
Speaker 1:Hard to reach.
Speaker 2:That's the exact approach we took. Like, early on, now we have million and a half followers on X, something like that. But I still stand by our original intuition was that there's 200,000 people in the whole world that we really make content for, and every single show is developed for them. And you can imagine people joining the show, listening to a minute just being like, I don't know what these guys are talking about or what like, it doesn't seem important like what is super boring and and then leave forever. But then every day there's people that find the show and they're like, wow, I didn't know there was something that was like this curated around my set of interests and what I care about in business and markets and and some of the other topics that we touch.
Speaker 2:And it's like the best possible thing that you can do is just not chase like every single creator that is just doing the thing that gets them the most views on the next video, almost universally those audiences are not valuable. Yeah. And and it's actually like only only I would say mister beast is sort of doing that in a way where he's actually being like, what is the next thing that I can do that will be bigger than the last thing? Yeah. And that works for him because his whole sort of thing is like scale and how do I entertain a billion people.
Speaker 2:But for almost every other kind of like niche and category of creator, if you're just optimizing for going viral on the next video, you just lose the thing that made it great in the first place.
Speaker 9:I'm generally not an optimizer or like an engagement driven person, but there is one feature that I love on Instagram Mhmm. And that is see shared activity. Don't know if X has this. Mhmm. It's an amazing feature.
Speaker 9:Basically, it'll allows you to go to someone's profile and see how they've engaged with your account since the moment they followed you.
Speaker 1:Oh, interesting.
Speaker 9:The reason why that's important to me is because I have a table of archetypes. Sure. And I have the finance bro. Yeah. I have the The art collector.
Speaker 9:Art collector and and all these different of that I The wine aficionado. People that I talk to Sure. My advertisers about Yep. And I track how they're engaging with my content. Sure.
Speaker 9:And if I made a specific video for that archetype and that person did not engage with it, I Mhmm. Failed. Yeah. Even if it has millions of views. Yeah.
Speaker 9:Yeah. My priority was never to entertain. Yeah. Priority was to engage
Speaker 1:with It also feels like the the the characters and the brand, it would be so easy to slip into rage bait and have the entire audience be like, we hate this guy. Right? Yeah. Because like there's just a natural inclination for, oh, this is wealth stuff. Like, let's just Or even just completely fake like aspirational stuff for people that would never book a trip ever be but they're just scrolling in there like kids that, you know, would would would never have the opportunity or or maybe in, you know, years.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, dialing in that audience
Speaker 2:How you Yeah. How do you think that AI will impact luxury and hospitality in some of these categories? Because I've spent a lot of time thinking about it and I think it's like very almost like invincible to a lot of technology.
Speaker 1:If you operate a hotel in Saint Tropez, get ready for a thousand AI agents to call you every day.
Speaker 2:No. I mean, that's one way. But but but even then, it's like those kind of properties already have protections in place Yeah. The management team style of working with clients that Yeah. Is impervious to like, in many hopefully, like impervious to the Internet if if but but anyways, I've spent a bunch of time thinking of it and I'm coming up blank.
Speaker 2:When you think about categories like watchmaking, it's like I could not care less if the Holy Trinity is like using AI. Right? Mhmm. It's like, I don't I I I can imagine a way that like robotics could impact that, but hopefully it would allow them to do something that they've never been able to do before and being driven by the actual watchmakers themselves in a way that feels like they're carrying the brand forward. But when you think about like hotels, you can imagine AI agents that like you can text at all hours of the day and you get an instant response.
Speaker 2:But, again, you're still gonna be wanting to stay at a hotel where like there's a manager that you can talk to, that you can pass by in the hallway and they can support you on your stay and make it like excellent. Right?
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And so and you do the same thing with like fashion. Right? It still comes down to like what is the vision of the creative director and the people involved with the brands and the designers and all these different things. And like, again, you can imagine them using AI but I don't even I can't see it ever becoming like at the forefront or really imagining it like changing the way that like Bottega approaches like collections. Like it feels like some of these things are just like a dirt enduring and will just Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And remain the same way. But what's your view?
Speaker 9:I think we have to answer this question quite specifically. The reason why I think is because there's true luxury and craftsmanship Yeah. And there's true scale and optimization
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 9:And then there's the reality of the world which exists fluidly somewhere in between, with many hyper optimized businesses pretending to be craftsmans first Yes. And true luxury businesses. And I think AI kind of acts like a steroid, in the sense that if someone wants to be optimized, they can be more optimized than ever. Mhmm. But a hole in the wall French restaurant, if they wanted to optimize their booking process with OpenTable or Seven Rooms, they would have.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 9:So it's not like they've been waiting for this AI optimization. They've they've resented everything anyway. They still have a corded phone.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. They'd like the hotel has been resisting Everything. All this stuff for so long.
Speaker 9:They even resist air conditioning, some of the places. Yeah. You know? So like, I think it it's the optimized will become more optimized and therefore less luxurious.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 9:Therefore, these two poles we're talking about become more polarized, and the exclusive becomes more exclusive.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 9:So all the agents knocking on the door Yeah. What does that mean? The door becomes thicker.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 9:And they only allow the pre AI guests Sure. To join. And and I actually love a hotel. It's called Il San Pedro in Positano. It's a very special family owned hotel, farm to table.
Speaker 9:Over 70% of the guests are people that have stayed at the hotel for over ten years. Mhmm. And over 50% are over twenty years. So this is like a member's club without a membership. This is a true home.
Speaker 9:Yeah. A vacation home, really. And the new people who'd like to go there are by referral only. Mhmm. And that's why this whole new member's club thing actually kind of bugs me, because I think it's it's all just marketing, it's all kind of junk, where if you can just if the only barrier to joining a club and becoming a member is financial, it's not a real club.
Speaker 9:Yep. Should be based on values and knowledge and time and and connection or
Speaker 2:And some of these clubs like try to put on this like idea that that it's not like the second that you hit the form on the website. Send you By invite only. Yeah. If you
Speaker 9:pay a thousand dollars.
Speaker 2:They they they sort of intentionally they they you clearly they have an automation that's like, new user applies in two months, send them Yeah. The the sort of like
Speaker 9:It's I think I think the whole members club thing is also another topic that needs needs cracking.
Speaker 1:But
Speaker 9:it's a I think the those who have not optimized will not be optimized.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 9:But, yeah. It will
Speaker 1:be How much are you traveling?
Speaker 9:A lot.
Speaker 1:Okay. Do you have a home base? Do you have multi home base? How much time do you spend in Europe versus America? Like, how would you even describe a normal year?
Speaker 2:He's gotta be on the circuit.
Speaker 9:Yeah. I'm I'm on the circuit a
Speaker 2:lot.
Speaker 9:Okay. Which is kind of funny, because the lifestyle I I poke fun at is not the lifestyle I live.
Speaker 1:Of course.
Speaker 9:I do it kind of differently
Speaker 1:This is yeah.
Speaker 9:Where I I it's I'm working, so I'm although I'm posting videos of these beautiful hotels Yep. I'm usually working at those beautiful hotels Sure. And not indulging the entire time.
Speaker 1:Of course.
Speaker 9:But I'm not complaining here. I'm also very blessed Oh, yeah. That I get managed to indulge Yeah. In between. I'm staying at hotels around the world probably eight months of the year.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 9:Yeah. 100 Yeah. Or I'm always on the move. Very cool. It's a it's a blessing, though.
Speaker 1:It's cool. Are you getting pulled away from Europe as your platform grows? Is there demand for what you've done for Europe? Let's see. We should get him to bring his audience to Asia.
Speaker 1:So it's worth us paying up or The Middle East. Yeah. I could see there being a lot of things where that clientele, it's almost higher LTV Mhmm. To get one of your audience members to visit a new territory. And so maybe there's more pressure or incentive for you to branch out.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But I'm sure there's a trade off there
Speaker 2:for you.
Speaker 9:What's funny is that I story tell a lot in Europe.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 9:But most of my audience is in The US.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 9:And that's the same way that the nicest hotels in Saint Tropez, their biggest spending customer base are Americans. Sure. And that's exactly what's happened to my page. It's actually this incredible US curiosity
Speaker 4:Yep.
Speaker 9:Of Europe and wanting to consume in Europe
Speaker 1:Of course.
Speaker 9:That has allowed my page to grow as fast as it has. So the biggest poll right now business wise is actually in The US Sure. Of US businesses wanting to be affiliated with this US way of sorry, European way of consuming
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 9:And doing things, particularly in Switzerland and even Italy.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 9:I think luxury in Switzerland and luxury in Italy are unique to quality and craft
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 9:And substance. Yeah. While in France, example, historically luxury in French has had opulence tied to it. Mhmm. If you walk through a museum in France in
Speaker 1:these Yeah.
Speaker 9:Hallways, you have these beautiful gold and art and even the food, have this foam and cream
Speaker 2:and
Speaker 9:presentation. Meanwhile, you go an hour away to Milan or Switzerland and everything is incredibly simple. Mhmm. And it's all about the ingredients and the craft, and there's actually there's none of that gold hallway. It's actually pretty empty, simple, all about the substance.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 9:And a lot of the brands that are approaching me in The US, wanting to work with me in The US, want me to bring that touch and that storytelling to their own businesses here.
Speaker 2:So it's so key. I mean, my biggest frustration with like sort of like commercial US hospitality is you have these properties that are worth like a billion dollars on paper and the actual like, there's no substance at all. Like Mhmm. Every restaurant has terrible ingredients. Right?
Speaker 2:And so there's all these like pockets of The US where like the actual like the natural landscape is incredible. Even the the the sort of like infrastructure that they have is incredible, but then the actual experience is like sort of Disneyland quality Yeah. You know, food.
Speaker 9:I see a lot of exceptions, and they're usually all family owned.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Exactly.
Speaker 9:Like, I recently went to San Isidro Ranch
Speaker 7:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 9:A beautiful property
Speaker 2:I love that property.
Speaker 9:In Santa Barbara.
Speaker 6:Yeah. It's amazing.
Speaker 9:And you feel like you're you're traveling because not nothing seems optimized.
Speaker 2:You mean, like, feel like you're traveling outside of
Speaker 9:the Are you turning outside the country? Nothing feels optimized. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, like, back to your AI question.
Speaker 2:Wait. And you'll you'll you'll appreciate this because I saw I saw a video that was somebody saying there's thousands of of European, small European hotels that are that need to change hands in the next ten years because Privateer there's no there's no Yeah. Was basically like somebody should make it was like an American Just
Speaker 1:ruin this.
Speaker 2:There was an American guy being like, we gotta roll up all these hotels because there's no one to inherit them. And this whole And because like the the kids moved away and whatever and I'm like Move the Yeah. So let's just like ruin the thing that made them great in the first place which is that they were family owned and they were designed to make enough money to stay in business, but not to just Yeah. Like extract and scale and and
Speaker 9:Unfortunately, private equity usually ruins luxury
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 9:And doesn't actually create value and save jobs. It's usually too much optimization. And AI will ruin a lot of luxury too. Yep. And this is real luxury, I think.
Speaker 9:And if you have to optimize it, then it's kind of defeats the purpose. The whole point of luxury is that it's unoptimized. Yeah. It's a luxury.
Speaker 2:So you have a very American audience.
Speaker 9:Yes.
Speaker 2:Do you think Americans need to romanticize America more? Because I think the funny dynamic of like Euro summer is you'll have an American go over there and they'll just be like at some little hole in the wall restaurant, and to them it's like the most amazing like thing, and they're like, look, you get this just like espresso blah blah blah, you know, whatever it is. But you could actually find that like in a small town in like Idaho, you know, like if you really went looking Yeah. You could find it and you'd be like, wow, we're sitting here by this lake and there's this amazing little family owned sandwich shop. But it feels like people are only thinking in that way when they're outside of the country.
Speaker 2:But maybe that's just like a permanent truth. You can't appreciate what's in your backyard.
Speaker 9:I think saying all Americans is a stretch because this is a massive country. Yeah. I think saying the very wealthy city people in The US, let's take Miami, LA, Online New York
Speaker 1:as well.
Speaker 9:And the extremely online who are extremely exposed. Yep. I think they should really enjoy what this country has to offer before leaving every chance they get.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 9:There's so much to see and do in this country
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 9:Especially if you like outdoors and and being active. And I think the best people to learn from are actually the Swiss. What I love about the Swiss is that they really use everything around them. Yeah. A Swiss person who lives in a city or in the mountain, they ski every slope around them, they hike every trail, they sit on every bench, they try every cafe, they go to every weekend market.
Speaker 9:The Swiss really enjoy Switzerland.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 9:Yeah. And they know they have no reason to leave Switzerland. Mhmm. And I think Americans should enjoy America. Mhmm.
Speaker 9:Because you could literally like spend ten years not leaving this country and really change the way you think. And there's so much to see and do here.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Easier to do in Switzerland because the whole It's country smaller. No. I just remember I have some like sort of mult multigenerational family friends that are based in Switzerland. And so my my family has been hanging out with that family across like grandparents, parents
Speaker 9:Mhmm. And
Speaker 2:and now my generation and going there the first time you're exactly right. It's like one the whole the whole country is like when I when I was a kid visiting for the first time I was like that's a golf course. Right? And they were like, no that's just like a random hillside. But like the American the American mind can't can't comprehend like Yeah.
Speaker 2:A perfectly like sort of naturally manicured Mhmm. Like hillside. Right? You just assume like, oh, it's clearly a golf course. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But then it's like, yeah, they they go hiking straight out of their backyard It's amazing. Straight up the mountain. And then when you go around driving around, they're like, oh, yeah. That's where I like paraglide and that's where, you know, whatever. That's where our bread's made.
Speaker 2:It's like Yeah. But finding your own version of Switzerland in America is possible.
Speaker 9:It is for sure. I recently went to Montana. Yeah. That was incredible. Yeah.
Speaker 9:It's I think Montana is a lot bigger than Switzerland as a state.
Speaker 1:Places in America was like, that's where I do donuts in my Hellcat. This happens.
Speaker 2:This is where my What does it what does it take to get a new a new kind of like spot on on your schedule? You're competing like I think like the the challenge that you have I'm sure is like for every event that you go to there's maybe like 10 or 20 others that you could probably use that that time for and then some of it is like set in place. Like Montana for example, like will you be at the ice race in Montana this coming year? Does that can that earn a spot or is there
Speaker 5:some I
Speaker 9:actually don't know what that is. Sounds cool.
Speaker 2:Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. It's they do this company, FAT, which is actually an old old company based out of Europe that is now adapted into they do a couple ice races, one in and one one in Big Sky. But it's like, it's amazing.
Speaker 2:It's it's Montana at its best Yeah. With a little European flavor.
Speaker 9:That that sort of thing I'd love to do. Yeah. I I really what I like to do is and what serves my business is to do what those core archetypes that I really value Yep. Are either doing or seeking to do. I think a great example of this is ten to fifteen years ago, the ultra high net worth jet set really loved fashion weeks.
Speaker 9:Mhmm. And they really wanted to go to fashion weeks. Sure. And now they all avoid fashion weeks.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 9:And in fact, if they live in a city where a fashion week is happening, they leave.
Speaker 1:Good.
Speaker 9:And that's because it became too online and too influencer pushed, which is kind of ironic that I'm going there. But it you know, it it's something happens where they actually don't like those things.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 9:And now they, for example, avoid fashion weeks, they avoid a lot of the art events. They go to far more niche art moments, like for example, they used to go to Art Basel Miami.
Speaker 1:Most
Speaker 9:art people I know avoid Art Basel Miami at all costs. Yeah. Instead, they're in Venice, let's say, or Art Basel party.
Speaker 1:Not kidding about that.
Speaker 9:See, mean, there's if there's bachelor parties happening there, you know it's you know it's not about art. It has nothing to do with art anymore. Most people who go I think most people who go to Art Basel don't even realize there's a town called Basel in Switzerland. Yeah. They think it's a party in Miami.
Speaker 9:Yeah. And that's what makes these people kind of turned off by the whole thing. Totally. So I the circuit is not a fixed circuit. Sure.
Speaker 9:It's an ever changing thing that I
Speaker 2:as as soon as it's established as a circuit, it's already it's already out.
Speaker 9:It's too late. It's done. Yeah. It's too late. I think a good example of that is Mykonos.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 9:Yeah. Which is yeah. Over.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Unfortunately. Over.
Speaker 9:I mean, people are still
Speaker 2:Last question I'm curious about. Obviously work with a bunch of different brands and help them not only from an attention standpoint, but thinking through like their strategy to to actually improve their brands and reach the right people, etcetera. But how have you spent any time working with, let's say, like a a a newly minted tech billionaire or AI researcher type that that's just like, hey, I wanna accelerate my consumption from Mhmm. You know, the silly years one to five where they're just doing stupid stuff buying stupid cars and staying at the wrong places and helping them achieve, you know, the the next level of
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Of the latter.
Speaker 9:I am that friend to many people. Yeah. It's it's not at all a side of my business. Sure. People can watch my content and kind of grasp some of that.
Speaker 9:Yeah. But I have a lot of friends who text me and say, hey, I'm about to book this trip here.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 9:Is this cool? Yep. And I say, if you're asking if it's cool, you already know that you're gonna have a bad time.
Speaker 1:Because you
Speaker 9:shouldn't be going anywhere
Speaker 1:That's a good point.
Speaker 9:Because it's cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 9:Go and explore and have a good time with your family, whatever. So I get a lot of inbound like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 9:I love to help friends out. Maybe I should turn it into
Speaker 2:I think no. I think you because because I'm just thinking of it as like, there's people that are like, better or worse, they're like, I'm gonna spend $5,000,000 Yeah. Over the next five years on all these different things. And if you you can probably I I think you, you know, not to turn you into a course bro, but I think there's a high ticket offering where you basically say like, hey, you have to pay me like $200 or something like that, but I'm gonna help you actually design your life Mhmm. And your consumption in a way that that basically they'll make they'll basically save the money, right, that they would have spent on dumb things.
Speaker 2:So Yeah.
Speaker 1:You could also go down market to a new character sort of for like the average American, like, look. Nitro Circus is coming to Reno. You got a circuit. Get out there.
Speaker 2:I think you need to do that. Think
Speaker 1:I do. There's a monster truck rally coming around. Bam Margera's gonna appear. You gotta be there. It is cool.
Speaker 1:Get ready.
Speaker 2:That's a good place to end it.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much for coming to them. Thank you guys
Speaker 2:so much can
Speaker 8:close out the show.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Leave us five stars. Apple Podcast, Spotify. Sign up for newsletter, tbpn.com. We'll see you tomorrow
Speaker 2:Going flash bang.
Speaker 1:For a big event. Goodbye. Can't wait.
Speaker 9:You end the