Alexis Ohanian, Will Manidis, Sam Lessin, Mistow Teel, La Sombrita, Optimism on the Timeline

Watching TVPN it is Friday, March 7, 2025. We are live from the temple of technology, the fortress of finance, the capital of capital. This show starts now. We got a great show for you today. We're Talking about the U.S. jobs report, the bitcoin strategic reserve. We talked to Nick Carter earlier this week. We're going to go back, look at what we talked to him about, what he got right, what he got wrong. And a bunch of his new takes have already dropped on the timeline. We're going to be breaking them down. Also SpaceX, they've been trying to launch Starship for a while. We're going to little bit of a setback but some promising zero for age versus the firman. It was. It's been a, it's been a tough time but team still locked in a lot of optimism on the timeline and we're going to break it all down also. I mean got to shout out Elon. He's a reply guy now. He has officially replied to the show. The timeline is, is blowing up. We had the best week on X for the show in history. We are definitely gonna have to do a Don Perignon episode soon. But we also have a bunch of call ins. Will Minitis is calling in, Alexis Ohanian is calling in. Sean Sam Lesson's calling in. So stay tuned. That'll happen about an hour from now. But until then we are breaking down these stories, the news, what's going on the timeline. What's up Jordy? What are you thinking? Just excited.

I'm just not. No thought, no mind. Just purely just sort of like getting into the flow.

Fantastic golden retriever.

Very excited to have Alexis on this week. He dropped some big news both around a bid for TikTok as well as bringing back Digg. So I'm excited to get into that and hear it first person but and.

Same lesson, I want to talk to him about the should we launch a meme coin?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And also I just want to hear who his favorite creator. Who the what creator is he the most bullish on like financially? That's an interesting question.

Yeah, that's a good one. And then his one on one billboard.

Oh yeah, yeah. So that segment will be brought to you by A.D. quick of course. But we want to kick off the show with an absolute banger. Skooks on the timeline is quote tweeting a very odd interaction between JD Vance and Peter Thiel. JD what happen happened to you? And it's not just the fat childish JD meme, but it's a yassified version of that. And JD do you want to do the voice?

Okay. Yeah. This is a high risk one. What are you talking about, Mr. Teal? Is that right?

Peter says, my creation, my life's work, Is this really how it all ends? And Scoop says, imagine showing this to a regular person. And it's a very silly post. We don't talk about politics on the show.

Fortunately, we have no regular people watching the show.

Yeah, exactly. If you're in, you definitely understand every layer of this meme, for sure. But it's interesting. I do think it's weird how I was talking to Lulu about this. The JD meme has completely broken containment. And it seems like maybe it's bipartisan, like both sides are having fun with it. It's both derogatory, but also supportive. And even JD Is like, yeah, I get it. It's cool. Like, it's very different from the weird thing we've.

I don't think we've ever seen this scale of. Of. You can imagine this then happening to every public figure.

Yeah.

Like if. If it works for JD.

Yeah.

It's also funny to do it with Leonardo DiCaprio.

Yeah.

Or like any like major celebrity, public figure, politician.

It's also weird that it didn't happen with Trump because Trump feels very memeable. He feels very like he's always in these really iconic, like, images, like the, obviously the assassination attempt. But Even like the McDonald's photo, it was deliberately shot to look like pop art. And. But he hasn't gone down this path, which is like this bizarre, like very online meme world. But anyway, hilarious post. Shout out skooks.

And it's good to be starting with a post, you know, going back to our roots. We're doing guests now, but it's great to have start the show with a banger. With a banger.

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But let's move on to the jobs report. Joe Wiesenthal is the one to follow on this, in my opinion, from Bloomberg. He says breaking 151,000 new jobs, unemployment ticks up to 4.1. You know, he's writing his own post because I've never seen anyone misspell unemployment as badly as he did.

Amazing. Still did.

Still did. Numbers.

Numbers.

Fantastic poster. You know, he's just ripping this and that's what makes him an employee. Fantastic. Yeah. I don't know how Kay worked his way in there. And also two piece.

So. So we have a surprise hammering on the Keybo. Surprising number of listeners on Apple podcasts. And I feel like this is a good opportunity to give a quick disclaimer which is that the show is heavily centered around video now.

Yes.

And so you're going to get a better experience on Spotify.

Yeah. Or YouTube.

Or X. Yeah. But we're trying to. So I'm just going to say it how Joe spelled it, which is unemployment. So, yeah, it's great.

So economists had expected 160k new jobs. That was kind of consensus. And an unemployment rate of 4.4.0. So we. We missed that. Very unfortunate. You know, we want zero unemployment. We want everyone in America to have a fantastic, rewarding job and creating shareholder value at all times. So a little bit disappointing. And stock futures were up a little bit and then they went down. And in general, you know, mixed messaging on what this means for the beginning of the new administration and the economy. There's a report in the Wall Street Journal breaking it down.

The US Continue has had some interesting quotes recently where he said this administration is not focused on cheap goods or the stock market, which historically politicians would at least, you know, try to get you to believe that they cared about those. You know, two things.

Yeah, that's kind of a rough quote because he didn't. He should have. He should have immediately said, like, what is he focused on?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Just like long term for word quote. Yeah, yeah.

Little misinformation.

But I think most people, most Americans should be comfortable with like a little ripping the band aid off, a little bit of temporary pain in the form of a tariff or, you know, some sort of jobs dislocation.

Yeah.

In in the future of, oh, we're going to grow at 10% GDP or we're going to have massive prosperity. That, that's an awesome trade. People should be down for that if they think about it. But it's weird to be like, you.

Know, well, people are, people are also rightfully fixated on the present. Right. If you're, if somebody's struggling financially, they don't really care about 10 GDP growth in 2030. They care about, you know, what's happening now in this year. So we are going to be having a special guest next week to break down the tariffs specifically because we're not venture capitalists, so we don't have. We can't really comment on tariffs exactly the same way. Yeah, that.

Yeah, we should call a vc.

Yeah, we got to call a VC for this.

Yeah.

Whenever there's like something really, really wonky, really difficult, just like something you should have to spend, you know, your entire career studying, you got to call because they will be up to speed for sure.

Yeah, we need a sound effect button that's just like, you know, call a vc. I'm going to take my, like, call me.

Yeah.

Trivia or something. That's great.

Well, let's rip through some of this Wall Street Journal article. The economy added a seasonally adjusted 151k jobs in February, Labor Department reported Friday, slightly below the gain that economists polled by the Wall Street Journal expected to see. Still, this is up from 125k jobs in January. Economists believe that cuts to the federal government jobs under Trump came too late in the month to be captured in February figures. So if you hear someone saying, oh, this is because Doge is laying people off, that whatever happens there, if something's going to happen, it hasn't taken effect yet to be caught in this particular stat. So if you hear someone saying that, they're probably WR of that 3,500 jobs were lost at the Postal Service where, where employment often swings higher and lower from month to month. That's just kind of a natural process with the, with the Postal Service. The remaining 6,700 jobs lost represented the biggest drop in more than two years. Morgan Stanley economists in a note Friday said they didn't believe the decline was a reflection of layoffs, but instead was the front edge of the freeze on federal hiring. Trump put a hiring freeze in place January 20, the day he was inaugurated. And so I don't know what else we want to go into here.

Yeah, I mean, the Atlanta Fed had reported earlier this week that GDP growth was negative Two and a half percent. And all this is kind of generally tracking the government. Government spending is a major driver of GDP growth. And so when you start cutting it and cutting federal jobs and new hiring and federal, you know, card spend, as we saw this week, I think the DOGE team had ran into an issue where they couldn't close these sort of credit cards, but they could just put a dollar on one dollar. Very funny.

So anyways, strategists at Evercore ISI worry that uncertainty over contracts and grants is having an additional paralyzing effect on hiring at employers that are exposed to these funding sources or in need of regulatory approvals from agencies that are themselves public. Paris paralyzed by do. And so, you know, anytime there's a lot of chaos in the government or in the, you know, the broader markets, companies tighten up because it's a little bit riskier to invest.

Many businesses overall, like a lot of this data, it seemingly has been like, heavily politicized over the last decade. Right. And so it's hard to really know what's truly real historically. You know, you, you'd see this sort of like payroll data, but, you know, then you'd figure out after the fact that some of it was associated with, you know, contract work or, or even things like, you know, we saw at different points jobs data featuring like door, like doordash and sort of like on demand labor, which is, is that really employment or is it, you know, and how do you classify that? But ultimately, as you know, we're going to have to wait till the experts like Joe Rogan weigh in on this.

Yeah, there's more. There's some more data here. Belt tightening by government workers who have lost their jobs or fear losing them has begun to show up. Card spending by bank of America customers In the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area has slowed, according to an analysis conducted by the bank's economists. And there's also worries over tariffs, which we'll dive into next week. Even though the tariffs, I mean, it seemed like this week it kind of like they're on, then they were off and they were on and they were off. And it's the same thing with the Bitcoin reserve that we'll get into, but it's all just like uncertainty and that probably slows down. Most business leaders like decisions. A lot of business leaders are excited about the idea of like a deregulated environment, more opportunity, ability to run faster, ultimately hire more. But it's like, until it actually shows up and we get what we asked for, we're not going to bet against that when you know, we don't know where exactly the opportunities will lie.

Yep.

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To Nick Carter talking about Nick the Bitcoin reserve and how things shook out. What was that?

No, just already. This post is great. So Nick posted yesterday evening, he said, so the government made all these L1 founders come to DC to kiss the ring and the night before published the news that they're not actually buying their bags after all. And anyway, so another comment here from Wando. What's funny about this whole thing that I don't think many realize yet is that Sachs got Trump to sign a piece of paper that essentially changes nothing because they already have those coins, tokens. Anyway, so I'm interested to see. I'm going to pull up bitcoin price action over the last 24 hours because yeah, it's sort of up. I mean it's still up over the last, it's up 10% over the last week. But this certainly wasn't good necessarily.

It bounced around a long term for.

Bitcoin price action because it's basically saying now the government's not going to become a buyer, we're not using taxpayer dollars to buy bitcoin. And, and, and so the positive thing is there was sort of historical concern that at some point the US Government would come and market sell. Yeah, bitcoin.

Let's read through David Sacks official announcement. He now has, he's dropped his all in podcast badge and now just has a White House badge. Yeah. And so I feel it. I mean this is him, right? David sacks, 47 here. Yeah, I think this is the official, he has a gray checkmark now.

Interesting.

And so I think it's good to go to the, go to the source and then we'll build off of this with some other posts. Just a few minutes ago, Trump signed an executive order to establish a strategic bitcoin reserve. The reserve will be capitalized with bitcoin owned by the federal government that was forfeited as part of a criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings. This means it will not cost taxpayers a dimensional. That was something that people initially reacted to very, very heavily. They were like, why are you taxing me? Joe Lonsdale came out and was saying, it doesn't make sense to raise my taxes to buy this asset. A lot of people had had problems with that. And so this completely integrates all of that criticism and really defangs that criticism, in my opinion. I think it's, it's, it seems extremely responsive to that reasonable criticism, which is cool. It's estimated.

Yeah. And the timing was the big issue here. Right. Because if you're, if, if there's all this criticism and pushback against Doge. Right. For, you know, Doge is not a scalpel. Right. It's sort of like broadly, you know, they're trying to be precise, but then they're broadly just like cutting a lot of spend, some of which is going to be waste, some of which would have been, probably needs to be reinstated, you know, etc. So doing the Doge at the same time as saying, you know, coming out and saying we're going to be buying Cardano and XRP just doesn't make it make any sense. And so it was rightfully called out. And, and to Sachs, his credit, he went, I think on Tuesday or Wednesday and was like, wait till you hear what we're actually doing.

Exactly.

And yeah.

And so it is estimated that the US government owns about 200,000 Bitcoin. However, there has never been a complete audit because it probably sits with like FBI has a little bit, DEA has a little bit. Like different groups have them. I mean, some like random federal organization could have like seized a little bit and it hasn't been all centralized. Something like, oh, yeah, that's. That flash drive is sitting in evidence somewhere. Like that's possible. It's crazy to think about, but hasn't been centralized. This executive order directs a full accounting of the federal government's digital asset holdings. That seems like a great place to start. The US Will not sell any Bitcoin deposited into the reserve. It will be kept as a store of value. The reserve is like a digital Fort Knox for the cryptocurrency often called digital gold. Premature sales of Bitcoin have already cost US taxpayers over $17 billion in lost value because previously the government would seize stuff from like the Silk Road and then sell it. And obviously there's been massive price appreciation since then. So that's what he's Getting at now, the federal government will have a strategy to maximize the value of its holdings. The Secretaries of Treasury and Commerce are authorized to develop budget neutral strategies for acquiring additional Bitcoin, provided that those strategies have no incremental costs on the American taxpayer. In addition, the executive order establishes a U.S. digital asset stockpile consisting of digital assets other than Bitcoin forfeited in criminal or civil proceedings. So again, we're not going to go out and buy Cardano or. But if the FBI winds up busting a drug trafficking ring that happens to own some Cardano, they're not just going to go and sell it immediately, they're going to throw it in the reserve. I'm not exactly sure that Cardano is like the one, but you know, that's generally what the ego is like pointing towards. The government will not acquire additional assets for the stockpile beyond those obtained through forfeiture proceedings. The purpose of the stockpile is responsible stewardship of the government's digital assets under the Treasury Department.

To my readers made my read on this is that budget neutral strategies is equal to forfeiture proceedings. Right. Like I'm trying to think of other scenarios in which the government would be able to acquire digital assets without in a budget neutral way other than seizure or forfeiture.

I don't know. I mean, budget neutral. Yeah. I really can't give anything.

Right.

I mean, maybe there's something else where I mean a budget neutral strategy for acquiring additional Bitcoin would be you bust the drug ring, they have a million dollars in cash and a million dollars in Bitcoin and you seize both and you immediately go and buy an extra million dollars of Bitcoin instead of taking the cash. Yeah, that would be budget neutral within this framework.

Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah.

Maybe there's something where it's somewhat of.

A weak argument as to why that money should go towards digital gold versus just fighting crime. Whatever.

I agree. So yeah, I'm definitely in the wait and see category on that. But overall I think it's great that they're. But. But really they're just signaling like hey, don't worry, we're not going to raise your taxes and just start dumping money like new, new money into. Into crypto assets. Let's continue reading. Overall.

Yeah, got a. Hopefully the admin search to let Sachs lead comms specifically on this seems great. When he sort of announces these things, they tend to make sense.

Totally.

And when the announcements are going out, when the announcements go out on Truth Social a little bit more Chaotic.

Yep. And so Sachs continues. President Trump promised to create a strategic bitcoin reserve and digital asset stockpile. Those promises have been kept. The. This executive order underscores President Trump's commitment to making the US the crypto capital of the world. I don't. I want to thank the president for his leadership and vision. I also want to thank the presence working group, especially Scott Bessant and Howard Letnick for their help. Interesting. So I don't see a lot of. I think it feels like they got this to a good place, but I'm not seeing crypto capital of the world in this announcement. I'm seeing they, like, like, I wouldn't call us the gold capital of the world because we have Fort Knox. Right. I would call us the gold capital of the world because we have, you know, really clear laws around how gold is regulated and, like, how you can promote it and what. Whether it's a commodity or a stock. Right. Like, yeah, like, we have clear, like. Like, legal stuff. But all of that is harder.

It is a step forward to say that the government is going to hold digital assets and, you know, benefit from potential price appreciation of those assets. But they're also saying they're not going to sell them.

Yeah.

They're just going to, you know, hold them.

Yeah.

And so Nick Carter, who knows how this will actually benefit.

Carter is. Yeah.

There is an argument to say that the taxpayers would benefit the most if.

The assets were sold and then just refunded the tax.

Yeah, refund. You know, more. More realistically just used to fund operations. Right. What does Nick Carter have to say as opposed.

The announcement could not have gone better. He's very happy about this. He says campaign promise kept. Bitcoin reserve clearly distinguished from altcoin stockpile. Bitcoin gets official US Government seal of approval. No other coin does. No taxpayer money spent to acquire coins. So no backlash and future acquisition of coins likely left to Congress, as it should be. And then he says, bonus. If Satoshi really is the NSA, as I suspect, and they have 1 million Bitcoin sitting on a dusty hard drive in Fort Meade, this EO just ensured that they don't ever sell those. And so he's talking about kind of the, The. The. The market pressure that, like, the government had 200,000 bitcoins, he thinks that the government has a million more bitcoins. But there was always this element of, well, what if Satoshi gets active and sells everything? That would create downward sell pressure. So that's always kind of baked into the price, I guess.

Satoshi was bearish. If, if, if Nick. So if the NSA gets bearish, starts market selling.

Yeah, exactly.

A million coins would be rough for the price, but.

And so this should be somewhat bullish in the sense that, hey, yeah, those 200,000 coins, they're not going to be dumped anytime soon. They always could be. It was always. There's always a chance that that happens. And so that creates some sort of downward price pressure, but no longer. And so, yeah, should be somewhat bullish, but not, hey, let's go. And 10x the price.

Yeah.

Which is. Seems what the market is reacting to. Yeah, it's cool. Anyway.

Well, you know what the market or what the government isn't market selling, John.

What?

Submariners.

Let's go. And where do you get a submariner?

The government. We're coming out. We're saying, you know, that the government needs a strategic reserve of, you know, luxury watches, collectible watches.

Absolutely.

Lots of Daytona Bezel to do that.

Yes.

Spending money on the ramp card.

Yes.

On Bezel.

Yes. They should take all of the gold in Fort Knox and convert it to gold Cartier Santos.

Yes. We're just going to meme it into existence.

Yes. But if you're sitting on a bunch of bitcoin and you're happy with it, why not take out a loan against it and go buy a watch, which is something you can actually do now. But if you've made a bunch of money on crypto, why don't you step up your wrist game, get a watch.

Transition from digital assets to hard, hard physical assets.

Everyone's. Oh, yeah, Bitcoin. So good because, like, you know, it's a store of value. If you had to leave the country, you could just take it with you. Well, yeah, you can do that with a nice watch too.

You can hop on a flight, sort of. They'll hassle you.

Yeah.

With. With watches. I don't know if you've.

Yeah, yeah.

It's a real issue. Yeah.

A little bit different if you just memorized a seed phrase, but yeah, in most cases it's still fantastic option. And the place to go is Bezel. They have over 23,500 luxury watches fully authenticated in house by Bezel's team of experts. We love Bezel. I bought a watch on Bezel. Jordy bought a watch on Bezel. I'm constantly scrolling and our producer is looking for a watch on Bezel now. And it's been a lot of fun. I love Bezel. And yeah, go, go check it out. Download the app, start scrolling. It's fun. Scroll. Anyway, let's move on to starship. Delian says, okay, the starship blow ups obviously suck, but damn, are they beautiful. He shares a nice photo of the video. Video which we're still working on getting playing. We'll figure this out soon. But the videos are the technology.

Daily show has not figured out how to reliably play video.

We got a lot of stuff going on here. There's. There was actually a little bit of debate over this because people know that these videos go so viral that what they'll do is they will take videos from the previous crash and then say like seven. Yeah, yeah. So I think this was what, this is flight seven.

This was eight.

This was eight. So they'll take the flight seven crash and put it up and be like, flight A just blew up. And they're right that it did, but that's not the right video. But they have a good video and they know it'll go viral.

I think this is 0 for 8.

0 for 8.

It's right. I texted a size Lord Capital allocator that is invested, I think, a couple hundred million dollars in the space economy. And I said, why does the Rock. Why does Starship keep blowing up? And he had a very sophisticated answer, which is space is hard. There have been rumors flying around that it had something to do with, you know, potential firmament.

Yeah.

Biblical analysis. But. But not for this show. We're not going to deep dive that. But it is this, this is the, this is the challenge. You know, I've gotten a bunch of space pitches. I'm underinvested in space personally. Sure. I just, you know, it's, it's very, very hard. And when you think of just comparing, you know, a YC founder, you know, goes out and they're talking about some SaaS product. Right. That they're going to make and they ship a V1 and it doesn't work. Yeah, it's. The stakes are pretty low. Right. You can just sort of like ship a V2. Maybe you spend a weekend, you know, staying up late and get it done. Space, you ship your V1, it's extremely, extremely expensive. If it doesn't work in this case, they're on V8. It's still not working to the degree. I'm sure they're making incremental improvements. But it's just the stakes are so much higher. And the other thing that's very real is the pace of iteration can't possibly be as fast because if you, even if you're just benefiting from the Falcon 9 and leveraging their payload capacity, you're not getting, you sort of have one of these errors and then you have to wait months to get to get even a second shot. And that could be millions of dollars. It's a bunch of lost time, not even factoring in the burn. That's sort of like OPEX that you're going to incur during that period. So stakes are very high and it is even challenging for the man taking us to Mars. So not easy.

It's interesting because. So this is launch eight. Falcon had three failures, but they had a lot longer in between. So the first starship test launch was April of 2023. So we're coming up on two years of Starship testing. Falcon 1, they failed in March of 2006, then March of 2007 and then August of 2008, and then in September of 2008, like later that year they got Falcon 1 Flight 4 successfully reached orbit. And so there's this thing where like they're on a timescale, they're hitting a similar. Like it's taking them a few years to get this right.

Yep.

But they're just blowing up way more stuff because they're iterating faster.

Yeah.

Which I think is probably fine and good. Like, I think obviously it's expensive and you want it to work the first time, but you'd rather just get through as many of the problems as possible and launch more. But it does feel more dramatic. Whereas there are plenty of companies that are like, yeah, it took us two years to iron this out because it was really hard and we didn't make any mistakes during that time. Like at the end of the day, you just want to get the thing working. It doesn't really matter.

Yeah.

So let's go to some reaction from the timeline. Sunday girl is taking a shot at old. He says if NASA had the fail failure rate that SpaceX does, Elon Musk would be firing. Everyone in Congress would be demanding to know where the money is going. And Kane chimes in and says, NASA doesn't build rockets. Its contractors, including SpaceX do. SpaceX Falcon had three failures in 458 launches, making it the most reliable rocket system used by NASA. NASA Starship is still in testing. And so, yeah, I don't even know if they're selling. I think it's still full test runs like one. I believe one of the. Sometimes they'll sell like basically discounted rates to be like, hey, yeah, there's like a 10% chance that this works. So we'll charge you one tenth the price if you want to ride on this thing. Yeah, but Andy, Nex, you should have.

Somebody on like, I feel like Josh Wolfe would be a good guest to specifically talk about what is, what is happening between. Obviously you have Falcon 9 taking payloads up reliably with companies like Varda.

Yeah.

But then something sort of happens with Starship specifically that, you know, basically what is the actual, what is actually happening that causes Starship to break up into hundreds of pieces and put on this incredible light show for all of us down on Earth. But, but what is the exact sort of process mechanism and has it been different every time or is it sort of reliably? You know, it'd be if you're working at SpaceX and it's sort of reliably doing the same thing. That's like somewhat comforting, right, because it's like sort of a fixed problem that you need to solve. Um, but, but we should actually, you know, we should definitely have somebody on the show to talk about it.

Yeah. Andy next.

Honestly, Sean McGuire would be able to, would be able to speak to it.

But yeah, Scott Nolan worked at SpaceX early in his career, really has done a bunch of breakdowns on this stuff. And then some of the other, some of the other early SpaceX guys that have gone on to found other companies talk about this stuff and break it down. Be cool. Andy says, remember, the funniest outcome is the most likely. Guys you get to catch super heavy on the first attempt. If you accept Starship blowing up on the next five flights in a row. This is how the invisible hand of the free market keeps everything fair. Trust the process.

Good post. Xander says Flight 8 hit me hard. Watching Starship fall after pouring everything we had into it cuts deep. It hurts because we care, because we know what's at stake. But the pain is the price of progress. We'll carry this loss, rise from it and push harder than ever. Onward. Starship.

Love it.

Great post. 19,000 likes Humanity is on Xander's side. He says the support has been overwhelming. Thank you all. In moments like this, it means more than words can express. Every setback is painful, but they remind us why we push forward and how many believe in this journey. We'll keep going ad ass at Astra per aspera.

Yeah, I like this. John edwards with the SpaceX tag says never give up. After Falcon 1, Flight 3, we learned the hard way that night is darkest before the dawn. Keep your heads up, keep pushing. We're going to get there. So lots of optimism from the SpaceX team. Sam D' Amico has a funny one. Did you see this? So I don't know if you've heard of La Sombrita, but it's this little shade that is built, I think, in la. Have you seen any of these? They're at like bus stops. And it's, and it's a very expensive, very slow infrastructure project. And Sam says, fun fact, La Sombrita and Starship took the same amount of time. Democrats put an enormous amount of money into infrastructure investments, like chips.

I actually don't understand. Is it, is it. It's meant to be an overhang for one person or it's meant to be a chair if it snows a lot.

No, no, no, no, no. It's a, it's, it's a sunshade, so you can go and stand under it, but it's like a sunshade for just one person, I guess. And I think it's designed to be like you can't destroy it. Basically. It's like very like Vandal resistant. But it's just. How did they come up with this thing? It's just so ridiculous. And I guess it's called La Sombrito, which is very funny. Starship isn't. And then Sam says, starship, by the way, isn't just the rocket, but the entire city factory that produces it. And yeah, obviously got to work out some other things. Sawyer Merritt summed it up. He said, breaking SpaceX just successfully caught its starship. Super heavy rocket.

Yeah, I love this description.

Mid air for the third time, they.

Parallel parked a building.

It's great.

It's more than parallel parking. Yeah, it's playing catch with a building.

And so I mean, maybe this is just like a very stupid take, but it seems like catching the buildings, like the harder part and like getting the rocket, getting this actual starship just not to break up.

Seems like stay in one piece.

It seems like once they solve that, it's like pretty much game over. So I don't know. But base Baron, of course summed it up very well by saying the blue origin afterparty for the starship launch is effing lit right now. I don't know. I think they're all rooting for each other in a somewhat serious way. But funny to imagine. Of course, we love Based Baron. Having fun on the timeline, poking fun at the rivalry between.

Yes, base is such a different category. You know, if you're, if you're in a highly competitive market, let's say project management, SaaS and your, your direct competitor has a product launch and it goes terribly and it gets rejected by the market. Like, the stakes are pretty low there.

Right.

It just doesn't, it doesn't set the industry back broadly, totally. And so there's competitive dynamic that encourages dunking and people don't want to see other people do well. But Blue Origin and SpaceX, obviously Blue Origin is going to benefit from SpaceX's progress. Right, because they're sort of generating, know how that. Yes, it's, you know, actual IP for SpaceX, but at the same time, I'm sure you have, you know, like, if SpaceX does really well, there'd be a bunch of people that have learned how to do space better and they'll be able to go and start other companies and work at Blue Origin and all this stuff. And yeah, it's, it's, it's good for the entire industry, so. And humanity.

Yeah. But we're blowing all these up. I still feel like, like, yeah, I'd probably go on one of these in like a few years, which is like the exact opposite of how I feel about, like Boeing, you know, Boeing, like one, like little, like, like, you know, wing, like breaks off and I'm like, I'll never fly on that again. Yeah, but it's different because it's like, I understand that, like, you got to blow up a lot of stuff to get to where, you know.

How many successful starship flights do you need in a row to feel good about jumping on?

Probably three.

Three?

Yeah.

Okay.

I think, like, I go on the fourth, maybe to the moon or to the Mars.

Anywhere.

To the moon, probably. I'd be like the second dude on the moon. I'd probably be the first one. I mean, people have already been. So, you know, if they send up some robots or something, I'll be the first human on the ship. I think it's pretty low risk.

So if you just had your rocket blow up in front of the whole world and you'd been pulling all nighters, what kind of.

I'm crashing on an eight sleep for sure. Nights that fuel your best days. Turn any bed into the ultimate sleeping experience. Go to 8sleep.com, use code TBPN. Check them out. My sleep score is back up. I'm off the sauce, back on the wagon. Off the wagon. On the wagon means you're not drinking. I did not drink last night and I feel great. And I got an 84. Only missed on the routine. I think that's just because I'm all over the place. With falling asleep. But I got almost eight hours. 7:48.

You have me beat. And that was a. That's a fair and square. You know, I don't have any excuses. I had. My routine was at, you know, something like 93%. I just didn't. Didn't get the hours.

Yeah. I think what will be really interesting once we get it dialed and we're doing consistent hundreds every night, the DOM episodes, I think that we might have an advantage here because we drink in the morning and so it's fully out of your system. So we could probably get Brian Johnson to approve that. Right. To be like, yeah, it doesn't count if you drink it at 11am but I think the real alcohol problem is when you're drinking right up until you go to bed, then it's still in your system.

So I think that's it.

I think that's the secret. Don't drink only Dom Perignon and only at 11am After a major, major celebration.

Before noon.

Before noon, yeah. Only drink before noon. Anyway, China is coming for our semiconductor supply chain. We've talked about some of these companies I've been looking for. I was thinking about doing a thread on this, like, years ago and trying to, like, break it all down. It's very, very hard. Yeah. I mean, I thought it would go super viral, but it's very, very hard because all of these Chinese companies that work in the semiconductor supply chain, they all have websites that look exactly the same and like, they're very hard to translate. It's actually hard to understand who the real players are if you don't speak Chinese and don't really work in the industry. But Nick says China will produce the entire semiconductor supply chain in house. Obviously they want to try and do this. They want to get away from tsmc, they want to get away from Taiwan. This is what's driving Ben Thompson's pitch right now for rolling back the chips act. Let's keep China dependent on Taiwan. So then there is no incentive and the thought of a. Of a Taiwan invasion is. Is unthinkable. But if you cut them off early, they're going to have to pull forward their homegrown strategy. And as soon as they're successful, then it's game on. Potentially, hopefully not.

Yeah.

So in design software, they got Empyrean in fabless chip design, they got hisilicon, Unisoc and Byren in lithograph equipment. That's the competitor to ASML out in Denmark. Or where. Where's asml? It's in. It's in Europe somewhere they have SME and CETC in photoresist they have Ding Long and Rungda and then in etching and deposition equipment they have NARA Fabrication smic which is their equivalent of TSMC Packaging and testing. They have two companies, tongfu and jset nand, which is the memory and dram, also Memory and hbm. They're competing with that SK Hynix, the South Korean company that makes all the memory that has been super important in the GPU scale out. I think here's most people haven't been focusing.

One of the counterpoints to Ben Thompson's argument, which is just that, you know, we should, you know, let China maintain their dependence on TSMC is I have to imagine that China would have done this exact same thing even if they had unlimited access to all the chips they wanted in the world from Nvidia, you know, you know, buying directly from TSMC, etc. So yeah, I think this would have been the natural path. In the same way that in the US in an ideal situation we would also have a full in house, you know, silicone supply chain, semiconductor supply chain.

I think that's true except for the fact that when I look down this list, America is not really working on very many of these.

No, I'm not saying in theory we should.

Yeah, totally. But I guess there is a question of like how much political will does it actually take? It's a huge investment. China seems to be willing to make that because they're kind of backed up against the wall. But we're not doing that in America. We are doing it kind of more broadly. In the west we've always kind of seen this, even the ASML stuff. Uh, it's not an American company, but they built on a lot of American intellectual property which is how I believe the CHIPS act is in for. Is is enforced. Yeah, it says that if you're on this restricted list, you can't buy products from companies that use American intellectual property. Even though it's not an American company, they're an ally and then they play ball with us.

Yeah.

And so anyway, very tricky. So good time to build one of a competitor, one of these companies because they're coming and we've seen this with it feels like every few years there's like oh, China has a very, very serious competitor in Unitree, for example Deepseek, all these different companies kind of pop up.

Yeah, we missed this. Earlier this week Unitree released a demo of a humanoid doing kung fu which was very cool.

And I mean the Unitree demos are looking so good now. They often get flagged on community notes as, like, this is AI or this is cgi. Look at the shadow, it's not matching up. And then sometimes there'll be a fight over, like, no, this is actually real. And I think obviously then people are also playing into it and making fake videos too. But in general, like, it is real and the tech is getting very, very serious. And the production scale of that is also really risky. I wonder if they'll do.

Yeah, it's an interesting situation where Unitree doesn't care if a bunch of CGI videos release because it's basically information warfare, whereas the other humanoid robotics companies would get completely dragged. They obviously can't produce any of these sort of falsified or sort of videos, but Unitree is happy to just sort of show off capabilities that may or may not even be real.

Yeah. I wonder when we will see a. You know, there's like Chinese drone shows, fireworks. It's like a dragon in the sky. It's all the drones flying in unison with LEDs on them. I wonder when we'll see a unitary level demo of that with humanoids. Like, you know, there's like Soviet marches of like, oh, wow, they have a thousand, like, soldiers just marching down the street. Like. Like Unitree is still in, like the. Oh, we have one cool demo. Like, but imagine you see a thousand of those and you're like, yeah, this isn't AI generated. That would be. Yep, that'd be a big moment. It's coming. And at that point it's kind of like all the infighting between all the humanoid companies really doesn't matter.

Yeah.

And I become a bull on all of them.

Yeah. One of the challenges is that Unitree. Unitree humanoids are still pretty expensive. Like, I think that the. The solid ones. I mean, like, I'm just saying if.

You want to get. If you want to get a thousand.

And the good ones are more like 100k. And so you're looking at. To get one of those demonstrations of a thousand, you're looking at potentially $100 million that you just have to.

If I'm the Chinese government, that seems like a steal.

Steal.

Yeah.

Lunch money.

Yeah. Because you want to force the industrial capacity to say, no, don't just make one great Robot, make me 100,000. Even if they don't go anywhere, at least you got the reps in to scale up your manufacturing to that point. And then V2, make another 100,000. Always be making 100,000 because the product is not one robot. The product is a machine that produces millions of robots.

Yeah, right.

Anyway, yeah, if, when that happens, I hope that there's like a little bit of unity between the American humanoid companies, because it's game on and everybody's got to be building stuff. Yeah. I mean, you forget that like In World War II, like, people weren't like, oh, like I care more about like, you know, my, my, my fighter jet needs to have a Ford motor engine. It's like. No, I think there was whatever will get me.

I do think there was the channel. Yeah, sure. It was more about reliability and people definitely had favorites around equipment. But, you know, in. In specific moments, it didn't really matter as long as the thing. Just build it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Any. Anyone who's helping is better than nothing.

Totally.

Yeah.

We got some more agents. We got news from Sheeran, who is a writer for Bloomberg. She says former leading DeepMind researchers coming out of stealth with a new startup aimed to build super intelligence. Starting with autonomous coding agents. They've raised 130 million from Lightspeed, CRV, Sequoia, Alex Wang, Reid Hoffman at a $555 million valuation. Nice little round to come out the gates and good little photo shoot they did here.

Yeah, another foundation.

I mean, this one seems aimed, you know, it's more. More like an eight, you know, agents. So who knows if they're actually building an actual foundational model or it's more of sort of an orchestration type play.

It's just crazy that this is another one. Like there's just so many I can't keep track of. It's the first time you really do need the market map because there's just so, so many of these. But good luck to them. Hopefully they find an interesting, you know, go to market, interesting distribution channel, interesting product differentiator. We've seen that there are obviously a lot of different ways that you can differentiate the product and make it better, but it's hard to break through. It'll be interesting.

There was also news today that Google co founder Larry Page is reportedly developing a new AI startup.

Why isn't he just doing it at Google?

Yeah, yeah, that's a big pushback. He's launching a new company called Dynatomics, which focuses on using artificial intelligence and product manufacturing.

Okay, that's so weird that he's not just doing it at Google. Company throws off a trillion dollars in cash or something.

Yeah, somehow I missed this until now. I'm going to just read through it since we're talking about it. So Google co founder Larry Page has formed a new company, Dynatomics, to upend manufacturing with artificial intelligence. So his argument here would be, Google's not focused on manufacturing. I want to do something here. Hence Dynatomics. Paige and a small group of engineers are working on ways to use large language models to create highly optimized designs for wide variety of objects and then have a factory build them. So sort of some type of autonomous, I mean, very cool conceptually use AI to generate, you know, schematics, you know, designs for something and then just build it autonomously. The stealth company is run by Chris Anderson, these people said. Anderson was previously the chief technology officer of another pageback company, Kitty Hawk, an ambitious project to build small electric airplanes, potentially revolutionizing how people get around cities. A company shut down in 2022amid failed prototypes and regulatory concerns. Anderson did not respond to requests for comment for the information. So, yeah, if Paige is excited enough to incubate or invest in or be a large part of a new AI startup, I'm sure the Google shareholders are sort of bummed that he's not rolling up his sleeves and getting back into probably the biggest opportunity in AI is just Google having a coherent, effective AI strategy which, which doesn't feel like they have right now because we've talked about this. You pay for Gemini and half the time you don't know where to find it in the Google, in the Google verse.

I wonder how he genuinely feels it's going at Google. Yeah, because there was this whole report about, oh, maybe with the AI boom, the Google co founders will get back involved, come more in day to day and there is a view that you could have that, hey, Google is still, I think, the number one website in the world. They can stuff generative AI into the search bar, they can adapt and iterate on the product and they've made it through so many other challenges. Like people forget about these because it's the survivor bias. But there was a whole moment when people were saying that Google was going to be eaten much in the way that Craigslist was by vertical search. So the idea that like Yelp was going to be Google for restaurants and that was going to take, that was going to reduce the size of Google's market. But over time Google just kind of destroyed Yelp and destroyed everything else. And so maybe he truly believes, I don't know if I believe it but, but maybe he truly believes that like things are going perfectly and I, and I don't need to change anything there because like Google is succeeding in its mission of organizing the world's information. I mean, Gemini is doing great on evals, they're doing great on capex. They're building things out. They have TP's.

Meanwhile though, somebody, I think it was Shkreli, was making the Google AI repeatedly hallucinate this morning. All he had to do was type in Sam Bankman fried UCSF and it would like hallucinate that he had gone there or just like add the name of a college at the end and it would hallucinate that the person you were typing to that school. Which kind of makes sense that Google like something in the product is basically saying that when people Google this, they are expecting this outcome. Right. Even if it's false.

Yeah, I mean, I feel like the Google DNA for correcting those types of things is pretty strong. Do you know the story of how Google developed, I think it was like it's autocomplete or like spell check or something. They realized that, that if you just look through the massive Google data set of like, I mean, there's like billions of searches happening all the time. When someone, when someone searches for something and they don't get what they want, they almost always just correct it themselves. And so when they, when they type, when they, you know, mistype something or they, or they enter a fact that's incorrect, they will often correct it on the second search. So you can just look at like this person searched for, you know, well, how did Joe Eisenthal spell unemployment with a K? Unemployment? And then the next search immediately after will be unemployment spelled correctly. And then, and then they can just bake that in and you can look across the entire data set and just assemble like this amazing autocomplete autofill prediction algorithm. And they should be able to do that with all the AI queries that they're getting because they have to be getting a lot because they have good distribution. So I don't know. It's interesting though.

Yeah, I mean overall the thing with Google is it's seemingly many of their most talented builders continue to just spin out and start new companies. And when you have the ability to go out and raise $100 million basically while still in stealth without any type of product, there's clearly a lot of appetite to do that.

Yeah, I mean, this is an example of light speed. These guys are DeepMind, they're Lightspeed.

We can ask Michael from Lightspeed is coming on the show on Tuesday and we can talk about how Lightspeed even sets up their sort of investment team Specifically around these different investments because they obviously are big investors in anthropic reflection AI. This new company out of DeepMind is going to be competing directly or indirectly with Anthropic. I have to imagine maybe they're going to be using, clawed in some way, but it's hard to really say at this point. And many of these companies on a long enough, not even on a medium term time horizon are going to be directly competitive.

Yeah. So it is interesting that so few VCs. It feels like so many, so few VC firms have really said, hey, we have our bet and we're happy and we're like sticking with it.

Yeah.

Like almost every VC firm's been like, well, like maybe I'll get to, you.

Know, and they're like, maybe 4 to 5 feels like the right number.

Yeah, 4 to 5 is really like the right number of like, of like foundation model companies that directly compete with each other and hate each other. It's very funny, but I mean, I don't, I don't know. I mean, I guess there are plenty of firms that have figured that have that strategy and they're open about it. I know plenty of seed funds will say, like, look, like we, we just, we, we're going to invest in a lot of companies at the early stage. You guys are going to pivot. We love you, we support you, but like we're not going to play that. Is this competitive game at seed stage because it's just impossible.

Yep.

When we're writing so many checks and so many people are like pivoting around and stuff. But if you're like taking board seats and like really deeply invested, I mean, at the same time, you know, Mark Zuckerberg or Mark Andreessen was on the board of Facebook. They invested in the Instagram competitor. What was that called? Hipstamatic. I think they invested in that and I think they also invested in, they also invested in Instagram. Andreessen did because. But they couldn't write a huge check, I believe, because they were invested in Hipstamatic. But both of those companies were competitive with Facebook, which they also had a big slice. And so I don't know, the whole competitive thing is Trekkie just got to make money.

Yeah. At the end of the day, I've never seen a VC that was invested in two companies actually have a tangible impact on one of them winning over the other one.

Yeah.

Like, I would say that overall, I think founders do have to be wary that investors do clearly pick favorites internally. But they are, they do it generally a Very good job of not expressing that or showing that publicly. Right. It's not like they're going out and saying, you know, we. If you're an angel investor, it's much easier to get conflicted. Right. Because you're not taking huge positions in companies. You're generally just wanting to back great teams and people that you like. And sometimes two people that you like decide to work on very similar problem areas. Right?

Yeah.

Or they pivot into that area. So overall, I've never, I personally have never seen an investor, you know, materially damage a company because they were invested in one or the other. If anything, if anything, investors just want to see all their companies do well, 100% and markets are big enough that. And, and there's very rarely like some sort of like, secret that a company has that doesn't become obvious. Like the, the classic concern from a founder is like, oh, I don't want my competitors to know that this acquisition channel is like working really well. But any, anybody that's competing them that's halfway decent is going to figure out where they're spending money quickly and, you know, leverage that channel themselves. And so it's not sort of like a real concern. Another one is supply chain stuff.

I don't know.

I don't want my competitor figuring out how I get this product or service at this price. And again, that information will come out over time. Right. Because usually the supplier will just be yapping like, oh, we work with this company, you know, and like, trying to find other customers. So all these things, at best, you have sort of like a momentary gap between when your competitor figures out what you're doing, how you're doing it, etc. And you can leverage that. But usually it's not VC, just sort of like forwarding, you know, an investor update.

It also, it also matters the, the carry structure at these funds because, I mean, Benchmark is an equal partnership, so there's not going to be as much like infighting between the partners. But some funds have like, very specific deal by deal carry, such that if you're invested in two different companies, the firm cares a lot less about the winner. But the individual partners could be like, yeah, we're technically in two different companies that are competitive, but as a partner that only has major carry in one, like, I really don't care about that other one or I actually want that other one to fail almost.

Yeah. So firms like Lightspeed that are making investments, you know, broadly in a category are setting up, you know, very clear sort of firewalls yeah.

Yeah. I actually don't know about the carry structure at most funds. It's kind of hard to figure out. It's mostly just like lore.

It's going to need a way for a newcomer to scoop it.

Yeah, even. Even that, like, it just doesn't leak out really. Yeah, it's pretty.

Really pretty rare.

Only Benchmark has really, like, made it part of their, like, marketing, I think.

Yeah.

Anyway, should we move to some breaking news from David Senra, Founders podcast dropped two episodes at the same time. We talk to him about serious podcasting. Serious podcasting. You know, David, you know, they say you should never podcast weekly. You should only podcast strongly. And he is a strong podcaster.

Strong podcaster. He also doesn't have a fixed publishing schedule.

He doesn't, which is cool.

He releases episodes when he finds them, that they're ready. I'm excited to listen to this one from Just released or there's two for Michael Ovitz, who is Michael Ovitz is a fantastic book. I read it when I was, I think in college or just, just graduated. And then I had the chance to meet Michael Ovitz in 2021. My buddy Rompton had me over with, with Michael at Michael's house in la. One of probably the single coolest property that I've ever been on in my entire life anywhere globally. Truly a one of one house. And he's got fantastic taste in, in all things cars, watches and art.

Did he talk about his history with CIA at All Creative Artists Agency?

I was just impressed with Ovitz's ability to understand exactly our playbook with Party Round, which we were building, you know, Party Round at the time. So he immediately, he immediately understood the opportunity. And it was just despite having at that point already been out of CAA and mostly focused on investing, he's one of those guys that will just be doing very significant deals for his entire life. So excited to dive into this one.

And you know, one of the best things about these particular founders episodes.

What's that?

They open with Ramp ads right away. Right away, right away. As soon as you click that in your RSS feed, David Senra is going to be dropping.

He's one of the best adsmiths of all time.

He is.

He gives you a run for your money.

He is. And you know, he makes it clear time is money save. Both easy to use, corporate cards, bill payments, accounting, and a whole lot more all in one place. And so we love David and we love that he's also partnered with Ramp.

Also promoting Ramp, and I got to give a shout out to Logan Brand. He posted this morning at 5:40am he said, who's putting up numbers like TBN, TVPN in the battle for ear share? It's hard to compete with the, with the brothers when they just love it more. Hashtag Ramp. That's true. We love what we do and we feel very lucky to be able to do it every single day.

So it's great. Well, we got three minutes until Will Menitis is calling in.

Yeah, we can quickly cover this post from Rex Salisbury. So he said Amex is losing market share to companies like Ramp that have a better product. Their answer, Buy an expense management company for 600 million built by the founder of Concur and his son. Wonder how that will work out. And so Center I had never heard of.

I mean it seems like it worked out really well because the founder got $600 million.

Yeah, yeah. They just personally wired him 600 and that was it.

Yeah. I mean starting a business with your dad and then quickly selling it to a legacy, incumbent, goated, goaded. Congratulations on the deal. Good luck. But Ramp's going to be you.

Yeah, I mean the challenge here is this does not, I don't, I never had the ability to, or the opportunity to use center, but it's hard to actually feel like this, is that this is suddenly going to make Amex's product competitive with Ramp or alternatives. And you know, because the issue is center clearly didn't have penetration within this sort of like high growth market and obviously it's possible that they serve a lot of mid market companies but.

And so it goes into the big organization and it kind of like languishes and dies.

I saw some other posts about how, you know, is this a business acquisition? Like are they buying it for the, you know, customer base and cash flows? Is this a product acquisition? Like is this going to make Amex's product more robust or is it basically an Aqua Hire feels, you know, way too expensive for an Aqua Hire. But the thing I like about this, I like to see M and A getting done. Center had raised a series C of $30 million back in 2023. So good to get some liquidity for the founders, the employees and the investors.

I do feel like, you know, Amex is like bleeding cash. They're spending 600 million on this thing. If they really want to compete, they should get on Ramp. Yeah. Because they need to control expenses and they need to save time and money to really compete. And so Amex execs, if you're The CFO of amex. I'm sure you're listening. You should sign up for Ramp. Check it out, check it out.

Tell them the technology brother sent you. Anyway, I'm excited to have Will.

This is perfect timing. This is exactly how I wanted to time it up. We have two posts that were coming in. I believe Will's here in the chat. Let's bring him in. Can we hear him? Will, how you doing? Welcome. How are you guys doing to tbp?

There he is. You're a little out of frame there, but let's see if. There we go. You're perfect right away. I got to give you credit for something important, which is introducing John and I.

Yes.

You did it.

Thank you for the 70% equity in the Technology brothers. I was really excited to tender that in this most recent round. Really proud of what you guys have done.

No, you had amazing and, you know, taste. You, you. I remember you. The intro was basically like, you guys are the only two people I like in la. You should meet something like that.

So glad TPG could buy all of my equity in this beautiful brand in this last round. At 200 times forward.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's amazing to have you on. You've been on the show many times before as a poster. As a poster. First time as a guest and yeah, it's. We're looking forward to having you as a regular.

Yeah. So I want to get your reaction to this post from. From Ayla. She says going for aimless walks is one of the worst things. Give me a coffee shop, a bookstore, friend's house, I will walk eight miles, no problem. But around the block? Are you insane? Why would you want each step to be meaningless? Your outdoor time dumped into an empty void? And I feel like you've had a couple bangers about walking. I have one here from you. I've met many people who turn their lives around by walking around aimlessly for a couple hours a day. What's your take on walking? Would you recommend it to the next generation of Will Menitis?

Yeah, I think you gotta walk like it's the only way to get comfortable with yourself. You're sitting alone, you're silent, you're not staring at a wall, you're moving. I think Ayla's life might be meaningfully different if she's hitting 20k, 30k, 40 steps. 40k steps a day, really? The difference between, you know, boys and men happen in between that 10,000 and 20,000 step a day goal. So for a Prescribe, you know, 50,000.

Steps.

That'D be a good start.

Did you actually put up 20k yesterday? Like, are you on, are you in that tier? I feel like getting to 10k, no brainer. But what do you actually recommend?

But to be clear, getting to 10k is extremely difficult.

It's very difficult.

Our lifestyle now, which is show up to our building, we're getting treadmills.

So we're going to be walking while we do the show. Do you think that's, do you think that's a suitable substitute for actually walking outside or should we just have a film crew activity?

You got to be outside, you got.

To be in the gym.

It only counts.

Worthless. It's not good for your soul.

So you think we should have like a, you know, TV camera production trailer following us while we shoot the show? While we're walking around?

Yeah.

I don't see a reason why this desk can't be on wheels. Moving with you. Like, this show should be happening in the Loop Central park all day.

That makes sense.

Yes.

Yeah. How is New York these days?

Beautiful. Spring's here.

Yeah. Already.

The issue with New York is that 20k steps a day in the winter is like deadly. Right. Like you just can't do it. But in the summer, like you can hit 40,000 step days, no trouble, right?

Yeah, yeah, 40k days.

I mean, last time I was there, you actually, the meme worked on me and I walked all the way from, I don't know, uptown to downtown and back. And it was fantastic. And it took like hours and hours and hours.

Doing the Loop of Manhattan is like a great once a year, traditionally, it's.

A uniquely amazing or whatever walk all.

The way down to the Loop. Like that's, that's a perfect day in the city.

Yeah.

Talk to us about hobbies. You've got one that we're particularly interested in.

Well, he won an award for it.

Yeah.

He's an award winning model boat. Enthusiastic.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I think like the best hobbies in the world are the ones where the average participant, it's like 85 years old and post economic. And I'm a proud member of Central Park Mobile Yacht Club selling, you know, comically small and some comically large model boats. Really hard to get out on the water in New York. And it's much easier to get on the water in Central Park. You know, you can sail around remote control, go quite fast when some races, it's a good time.

Is that a model boat right behind you? Is that the sail of a boat?

6Ft of model boat right behind Me, my office has been relegated to storage.

Talk about the rise of Christianity in tech.

I think you're tracking a greater rise in Christianity in the West. I think we tried this post religious thing through the 80s, 90s, 2000s and it just seemed like it led to universal depression. I mean particularly in tech. Trey Stevens leading the way there. Trey Michelle right on the west coast. But I also think in New York there's an incredible young Christian movement happening. Like Church of the City of New York is baptizing a couple million people a week at this point. It's incredible how quickly this is going. The question is how do you turn this into a durable movement that lasts over time? Slightly worried that this is going to be like a five year wave, going to be trendy, going to fade out. Christianity is the most important thing that's ever happened to me. I don't know how we fade that out over 20 years, but feels like a relatively important thing to focus on.

Are you worried about Christianity becoming a LARP or cultural Christianity being a substitute?

Yeah, this feels like the issue even when you go to service in San Francisco. It does feel a little bit like this is a networking event. Why am I here for services and also pitching my startup? It seems like it's good that there's an elite, an elite Christianity that, you know, elite somewhat lead cultural taste here. This seems good, but the fact that we're treating it somewhat like a golf club is a little concerning. I do think the LARP like all love to the Gundo Burrows, but the things that come downstream of that feel, feel not particularly great.

That makes sense. What, where, what, which companies specifically in the private markets are benefiting most from the sort of, from AI within healthcare. What, what companies are you excited about? I'm sure you get pitched pretty much every company in the space. If they're not pitching you, what are they even doing? What, what areas do you think are, are actually getting? Maybe not, you know I, I would say like consumer adoption, but like real enterprise adoption. You obviously worked in this, in this problem space for, for quite a long time.

Yeah, I mean the take I have here is that legacy healthcare companies are actually going to be the winners during this wave. I think as you see kind of AI adoption happen in healthcare, you're starting to see widgets get adopted, right? Doctors requesting ambient scribes. You see big companies like a bridge coming out of that. But ultimately ambient scribes are the front door to the electronic medical record system. They're certainly not the entire suite of software that a physician might use. And unlike the world we're used to in tech, the person who purchases software and the person that uses software in healthcare are not the same person.

Right?

Physicians are using it, hospital admins procuring it. There's a big divide there, which means they have different competing priorities. I am radically more excited by the opportunity of big legacy healthcare software businesses taking modern AI innovation, installing it onto their user base and scaling that out than I am any kind of novel Nendu startup. I think we will see a thousand AI enabled executive fiscal startups happen over the next six months. I don't think any of them are going to last. I think we'll see a thousand pill mills that will spin up over the next six months. I think they're all going to jail. Right. Health care is just not a place that rewards this kind of net new novel distribution plays. But I do think legacy distribution in health care is the most underpriced asset in the world right now. And if you can take that, plug AI on top of it, very interesting outcomes.

Do you think there's alpha in being young cracked AI engineer implementer, but instead of starting a company, going to work for one of those legacy companies working your way up becoming the CEO?

Yeah, tremendous alpha. I mean if you think about like how big like install base is the most underpriced thing in software right now, I think everyone's used to seeing these companies go, you know, zero to 100 and then you know, probably back down to zero. Right. This is Jeremy's thing, the iron Condor law or whatever. Right. But I think there is like something really underappreciated about a company that has had like you know, 140, 40 million in reoccurring revenue over decades. Like that switching costs, that install velocity and the ability to pilot software on top of that install base at scale is just something you can't beat. Like I don't think you can do that from a net new startup that trusts that brand that install. It's pretty cool.

Do you think any of the bigger VC funds maybe going public will have the money to buy into that and then drop AI on top of it?

Hard to know. I mean I think a lot of this is ground up adoption. Like I work at a large, you know, publicly traded EMR right now and we're certainly seeing AI happen in every aspect of our product suite, but it's really a matter of making these tools accessible. Right. And I think as you see a commodification happen at the model layer. Right. Maybe OpenAI is not worth $140 billion or whatever. When you can sell a llama and run them locally and build these product features, if we upskill software engineers in these companies and very smart people go and work for them, I think the outcomes will just be better.

Yeah.

Do you have any insight into why SBF is getting to podcast from J Jail? Because John posted about this yesterday, which was a good line. If, if you can now tweet and podcast from jail, is that not sort of putting out a signal?

What is the punishment?

Yeah.

Like as a VC pulled off your sentence, right? Like this feels like punishment.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. What's your take on that? Broadly, you always, at least within the group chats, you always have good takes here.

I just think SBF is this incredible fixture. I will be shocked to see if he serves this whole sentence. He has very strong proof that if you donate enough money to the right people, you can kind of bend the world around you. And I sincerely hope he stays in jail for a very long amount of time.

Interesting. Can you tell us, do you have any good anonymized, you don't need to name names, but good stories of frauds or, or malfeasance in the startup or financial world that you think might be illustrative or educational for the listeners?

I mean, I think like I have a great tweet about this about kind of the deep tech fraud playbook of how to build a billion dollar company without shipping any technology. And I think we're seeing some incredible innovations happen in the deep tech fraud arena right now where we have companies that are raising hundreds of millions of dollars on technology that does not exist, will never exist, and is plainly impossible on the face of it based on, you know, a basic and rudimentary understanding of physics.

I mean, that's happened for years with like Solyndra, Theranos like this. This playbook seems to be repeating itself forever. Is there anything.

Yeah, but I feel like we're getting like incredibly tested, you know, playbooks here. Right. The acquisition of mass amounts of LA based real estate, right arm tattoos from the CEOs.

Sure.

Biceps like this is just like fundamental innovations on the art that we haven't seen in a long amount of time.

Got it, got it.

Well said. Will, you are, are you 27 now?

26.

26. You've come of age in a kangaroo market. You've played it very well. The kangaroo market for those that don't know. We talked about this on the show yesterday. You know, historically you had bull markets where things go up, bear markets where Things go down. Kangaroo markets, you're just sort of like bouncing all over the place. What's your general read? In my view, we've seen more top signals in the last three months than any point in my adult life. Is there any more gas in the tank? Are we. Are we in a sort of like tech, tech super cycle or is it just down? Only from here on out.

I think we got a couple more 10x's left to go. I think we got. The ceiling is far from where we're at now. I just think we have a couple, you know, 10x sell downs on the way too. It just feels like the rate of, you know, up, down, up, down is only going to increase. Fragility in the market's going to skyrocket too, right? As you see, like billions of dollars in venture chasing, you know, Claude plugins that, you know, write some basic code for you. We don't understand how any of this stuff works. Fragility is going to go up, market's going to cycle a bunch. Mega cycle. Feels crazy. It just feels like if you're not making money along that path, I don't know what you're doing.

What are your thoughts on leverage right now?

Great Jeremy Griffon idea. Two kinds of guys in the world. Cash chads, leverage kings. I am a cash chad. I run my accounts, net cash. I've never had leverage in my life. No credit cards, debit cards only. There are certainly guys that live on the leverage hierarchy are able to run that. Not my playbook. Two different kinds of people in the world.

Interesting.

That makes sense.

Just advice for young people.

Advice for young people. Don't take out credit cards. No credit card debt.

Okay.

Buy comically large model boats are a very good store of value.

I got another one. Speaking of young people, do you think there's an opportunity to go downstream of the Thiel Fellowship and offer funds to middle schoolers to drop out of middle school to pursue deep tech, hard tech.

I'm thinking about this with ramp employees, right? Like we find every 14 year old that works at ramp. Ramp, right. We find everyone that Zach Frankel has recruited from local Bay Area middle schools and we give them a million dollars to start an expense tax startup. I feel like that is just like Clear Alpha in the market right now. We need to go younger. We need to go into the benches at ramp.

Yeah, the benches. The benches. From the benches to the trenches.

There you go.

That's where we need to go.

What are you. What are you reading these days? I know you've Got rare books and manuscripts. Maybe some of them you can't talk about. But what's top of mind?

I am working on republishing an amazing book that I cannot say the title of, but it's a history of political corruption in Louisiana in the 1960s. It is so good that the author that wrote it was shot 14 times in the chest with a shotgun by the subject of the book. That's how you know you're writing something important. That's how you know you're writing something good. I recently purchased the rights to that. That should be coming at some point in the next two to seven years as soon as I figure out how to actually publish this thing. But really focus on political history right now. I think there's a huge amount of alpha left there.

What about a book that's already in publish or already in print?

Best thing I read recently was a Brent Be sure recommendation that I am scrolling through my Amazon trying to find the name of.

Okay.

Oh, another good one. Santa Monica Partners. Letters, letters on small cap investing. Kind of a classic of the genre on finding undervalued businesses traded on very weird and esoteric markets.

Yeah, for sure.

Talk to us about the transition from semi illiquid startup founder to much more liquid post exit founder. Have you been focused on getting illiquid again by making a high volume of startup investments? Are you more interested in focus on.

Getting a liquid by buying very large model boats? I think this is kind of where the market's going. I think it is clearly an underpriced asset and I'm moving size in the model boat industry right now.

Are you looking at any startups that might act as marketplaces for model boats?

No, I think liquidity is a bad thing. You never want to mark to market. You never want to be able to liquidate assets. Ideally, the perfect asset is impossible to liquidate and impossible to mark. It's just like a black hole you put money into. And this model boat I have my eye on, built from wood from Henry Kissinger's desk in the West Wing, just, it's a perfect asset. It's impossible to mark.

Cool.

Impossible to mark.

Awesome. Well, it's been great having you guys.

Well, we look forward to as the cycle, you know, continues to, you know, make progress and unravel. We'd love to have you back on the show to discuss. Good to have you guys to collect.

My equity on this enterprise.

Yep.

Yes.

You deserve it.

You deserve it. You worked hard for it.

Yeah, you did. Thanks for. Have a great Friday.

Bye.

What a guy.

What a character. Yeah.

I mean, the character on X is a very authentic representation of. Of will that. It's always refreshing when you meet somebody that you sort of know online or that has a sort of online Persona. The online Persona is, you know, exactly the same as the offline Persona.

He had some riff a while back about, like, VC ghostwriters making, like, like $700,000 a year or something, and it, like, threw all the VCs into it, into like, a complete frenzy because they're like, wait, are people doing this? Like, should I be spending this much money on my ghostwriter?

Yeah.

And he's a fantastic way to manifest these.

I would. I would really love to know if there was any truly exceptional posters that were just 100% ghostwritten, because ghost writing is pretty easy to track when it's. When it's sort of like, mid posting.

Oh, totally, totally. Yeah. Everyone can buy like the. Yeah, the mid. The default just kind of like the threads, the. The current thing memes. All of those are very commoditized but truly inspired bangers. Very, very difficult. For example, Pavel Asperuhav posts. I've got two and only two hiring criteria. One, do you have that dog in you? Two, are you nice with it? Not ghost written.

We got to put that in Bangor Archive.

Not ghost written. I think it actually has been on Bangor Archive. I think that's where I found on this. But yeah, when we ran into Pavel, he said the nicest thing anyone could possibly say about your posts, and he was like, do you guys write those? Yeah. Because he was like, you guys, like, Like, I love the equivalent.

We specifically decided to turn it on.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because we realized we were covering the top posters in the world. Yeah. We need to prove that we could compete.

Totally, totally. You got to be in the arena.

You got to be in the arena.

Yeah. Otherwise you won't be respected.

Let's cover some posts. Alexis should be joining any second.

Okay. So, YC Paul Graham.

Yeah.

Paul Graham says it will be y combiner's 20th birthday in four days. I'm pleased to. I'm pleased by how young yc still feels as an organization. It would be dangerous for YC to become too established. Since YC is training startups, it has to remain startup ish itself, but it requires a constant effort to stay that way. We talked to Gary Tan yesterday about that and it's. Yeah, it's so interesting because it'd be so easy for YC to scale up and become just a massive asset manager. But of course, it would lose a lot of what makes it special. Yep. And I think Gary is. Yeah. Reinventing. What do they call it, like, refounding the company when you take over. Like, he needs to make aggressive changes. And so people see those and they're like, oh, like, you know, AI is writing all the code or they're doing defense tech now. It's like, no change would have been death.

Yep.

He has to take risks. And then some of those will be rolled back, some of them will be successful. But you only get power law outcomes when you're. When you're testing lots of, like, really high variance stuff.

Yeah. And the YC is in a situation where they are in a highly competitive environment. Right. There's so many alternatives to YC's capital. You can go raise. If you're a exceptional founder, you could go and raise from the Collison brothers, from the Airbnb founders.

I mean, I truly think that the biggest change was that when YC started, it was. It was $17,000 and then it scaled up and now it's 500. But, but Sandhill Road VC firms, their doors were closed to Stanford new grads, which is unthinkable. Now every single Stanford new grad can easily get a meeting at a Sandhill Road venture capital firm that is completely ready to write a 500k check.

Yep.

And so all of a sudden what YC is, is not just, hey, we're willing to take a shot on a kid with a $20,000 check and see what they do. Like, the Airbnb guys could not have gotten funded directly. Like, yeah, like, they were not.

There's some iconic pass emails out of the original where people, like, clearly weren't taking it seriously. Weren't taking a meeting.

It used to be if you wanted to start an. If you wanted to start a company in tech, that meant you're going to build a website. And building a website required racking servers and buying hardware. But of course, the cloud computing era happened right as YC started. And so all of a sudden there was a big opportunity to do a whole lot more with a lot less. All the AI. It's interesting. It's like, it's like, could they go back to 18K because, you know, like.

They'Re giving 500, you made it work.

Yeah, like, like, like, maybe, you know, like, I'm actually, you know, I'm excited. I mean, I love that, you know, the yc founders get 500k and they can go and do stuff. And I think it's great But I think it's interesting to, to, to. I'm very interested in following what happens with PMF or die because they're spending a lot less. They're spending 25k, which is very much in like the 2005, the Alexis Ohanian era of YC. Like, it is crazy that they, that he built Reddit with. Yeah, 20k to start.

Yeah. Wild.

And, and you can still do that. And maybe you can do it more now because of the AI tools. It's not quite as different as, like from going from CapEx to OpEx.

Yeah.

Because it's, it's going from hiring extra software engineers to write more code to paying a bill. So it's, it's. So it's not a, it's not like a cash flow management change.

Yeah.

But it is interesting. The Willmanitis Group chat is popping off, I assume.

Yeah.

Judging by your face.

Sure is. They're live texting us.

It's great.

I, I say I want to pull up this video and watch. Ben, I'm going to send it to you quickly if you can pull it up. I want to, I want to play the video of the Dig announcement that we're going to be discussing with Alexis.

Yeah, let's play that. Jason Kerman's texting me. Those live numbers look good, baby. I haven't checked them, but thank you, Jason. I'm glad that you're looking at my stats so that I know. I'm sure we'll review after.

What's the book that Raboid recommends?

Score takes care of itself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The podcast downloads take care of itself. Yeah, yeah. I mean, Jason fully believes that, like, he just goes and makes something like, brilliant for like months and months and months.

Yeah.

Goes viral every time because he's not like, over engineering it. Anyway, Ben, let's kick it over to the Alexis Ohanian video announcement. So what we've got today is dig.com.

It'S the two G's.

Digg.com.

Come now. It's like, give the power back to the people.

Dick rewrites the Internet's front page tech darling Dig skyrockets with millions of loyal. I was not startup. Please welcome back to the show. Were you like, none of those images of Kevin Rose on all the different, you know, magazine covers?

No, I was pretty. I was posting. I'm sure I visited it.

Our perspective on the world has shifted a lot. You don't want to live in the past, but now we actually have the technology to make better, healthier community experiences. This is a Team up. I never would have imagined 20 years ago this is.

So it makes sense that you would.

Be relaunching dig.com as its original, original founder, but teaming up with Alexis.

Oh, good shot.

Oh, that's a great shot.

I love it. Whoever shot this is really good for.

A long time, and rightfully so.

Anyway, like, I'm excited for this as, like, a media project, like a story. You know, I. I don't know if. If I've been like, oh, I really need Dig right now, but I'm. I'm down.

No, I think this was one of those things where the asset had been. Been basically languishing.

Yeah. Yeah.

And I remember I advertised on Digg at some point, I think, in 2018, 2019, and it was. It was seemingly like the content quality was down dramatically.

Yeah.

And so trying to return it to its former glory is a worthy undertaking. And then the other news from Alexis this week. We're basically just going to start covering it and we'll get some. At the very least, we'll get some good backstory. Oh, Alexis just tweeted that he's coming on in five.

Okay.

I guess the. I guess the audience guilt tripped him in. Guilt tripped him in. Thank you, brothers.

Thank you, everyone. Tweet.

I want to cover the Alexis TikTok announcement, and then with him, we can.

Yeah. This is so funny. I mean, we need a. We need a board of, like, people that have Talked about buying TikTok. Add it to the list.

Yeah.

But my.

My. My true and. And hardline stance is I will support literally any American buying TikTok. I don't care if you have $5. If you say you're gonna buy TikTok, you have my support.

Yep.

Because I'm. I'm there for it.

And so we.

Magic is real.

We got at TVPN on TikTok.

Yeah.

And I. I think we're gonna just post a video up there that says, like, posting this video every day until an American owns Tick Tock.

Yeah, I think that's a good strategy.

Really willing to. To sort of invest in building an audience on the Chinese platform. So I'll read this Time article. It says Reddit co founder Alexis Ohanian has joined billionaire Frank McCourt's bid to acquire TikTok. McCourt's Internet advocacy organization, Project Liberty, announced this week that Ohanian, an investor married to tennis star Serena Williams, had joined a consortium called the people's bid for TikTok. Alexis had posted. I'm officially now one of the people trying to buy TikTok US and bring it on chain, Ohanian said in a series of posts made on X. Project Liberty says that it will provide more users more control over their online data if successful in its bid. Project Liberty said the technology will serve as the backbone of the redesigned TikTok, ensuring that privacy, security and digital independence are no longer optional, but foundational. When asked by an ex user on Monday what he would call TikTok if you purchased it, Ohanian said TikTok Freedom Edition. Amazing. Under a federal bill passed with bipartisan support and signed into law by President Joe Biden last year, TikTok was required to cut ties for the China based parent company ByteDance or face a ban by January 19th. And as our audience knows, Trump extended the deadline for TikTok to find new ownership until early April. So we're really coming down to the line here. And McCourt has a consortium which includes Shark Tank stars Kevin O'. Leary. We got to get Kevin on the show to talk about that.

He's got to get Trump's attention. I know Alexis isn't huge Trump supporter or anything, but he's got to get the attention of the President.

Yep.

If he wants to get this deal done, I say he goes and buys a bunch of billboards outside of Mar a Lago.

That is a play.

And you know how where he would do it.

Ad quick.

Ad Quick.

And you know what? Ad quick.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I'm thinking what you're thinking. You're thinking what I'm thinking what you're thinking. Ad Quick raise their. Alexis is a big backer of ad Quick and Alexis is joining the chat. So we'll bring him in and we'll do an Ad quick Ad read. Ad Quick is out of home advertising made easy and measurable. Say goodbye to the headaches of out of home advertising only Ad Quick combines technology, out of home expertise and data to enable efficient, seamless ad buying across the globe. Let's go. Welcome to the stream, Alexis. Thank you for being here.

How you doing, gentlemen? Sorry.

You're all good.

Was running late. From the pediatrician. You're looking. Not for me.

Yeah.

But for my youngest.

Hey.

Of course. We understand. We have kids too.

Business dads too. Thank you for leading this important family first.

Always. Always.

I'm sorry.

It was. It was a tough one too. Because it was one of those immunization days. I'm the parent who does the pain.

Doctor visits.

My wife does the sort of run of the middle normal ones that's rough. Poor dear.

A lot of hand squeezing.

So should we start with. Should we start with tick tock or dig?

There's a few things to talk about, aren't there? Yeah, yeah.

Busy week for you.

I love it.

I love it. Well, we just watched the dig video announcement and we have to find out who shot that video for you because the cinematography was fantastic. The reveal, when they pulled to the side of the. Of the laptop and they reveal your face there, Perfect storytelling movie magic. So, yeah, break it down. How did this come. Come around? Was this just like a crazy group chat idea that then just got out of control and now you're just doing it?

Gosh.

How did it start? You know, I had never spoken to Kevin Rose until like five or six years ago.

No way.

And.

And when we started talking, we just realized we had so much in common. I learned I had, in all of that animosity and jealousy, a tremendous amount of respect for him that it probably took me a little bit more maturity to appreciate. And we just vibed. And then every now and then he would text me and be like, hey, dude, do you think I should buy dig.com and resurrect the thing? And I was like, yeah, sure, go for it. In the way that one supports a friend thinking about a thing that seems a little outlandish and a little crazy. But, you know, it had gone through a few different owners and actually when it was first on sale, I had debated buying it. When the company. Later, I was like, I debated actually buying it and then just redirecting it to Reddit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like this one last fu. But I'm so happy I didn't do that. And. And then, I don't know, five months ago, he was like, dude, I'm gonna do it and I would love to do it with you. And I said, that sounds like a great idea.

That's amazing.

This sounds like a fantastic idea.

Talk about so.

And there you go.

Talk about, like the competitive. The actual competitive dynamic between you guys back in the day. Because looking at, like, even looking at the video, you guys were clearly battling for cover stories on magazines and things like that. How intense.

It wasn't even in my mind. I thought it was a battle. And this was a sign of being a first time CEO and frankly being focused on the wrong things in this regard. But I was so jealous of the fact that he was the Silicon Valley poster child. Remember, we were in the first batch of Y Combinator, which was in Cambridge, Massachusetts, working out of an apartment in Medford and then Somerville. We had raised a total of $72,000 at demo day. And you know, here was Kevin Rose, who was this tech celebrity who had millions raised from true Silicon Valley VCs and yes, was on the covers of magazines, was getting so much press and I felt like, I didn't feel like we were getting a fraction of that press and that coverage. And I was very jealous and again, I think focused on the wrong stuff. But it just felt like he was an easy, he was an easy target. And look, in his defense, he was first. Dig did come first in our defense and I have the email to prove it. We did not know about it when we started Reddit. It was about a month into the company we'd already launched that we'd finally learned about Dig. So shame on us for not doing enough competitive analysis. But they had about a seven month, eight month head start. And what can I say, we won the long run. But now we both get a second chance. Second chance to do it again.

So what are you envisioning for the product? Have you announced anything or are you ready to think about what will be different? I mean, I'm sure you don't just want to resurrect it exactly as it was.

Maybe for V1, let's say, okay, the goal for V1 is just get a thing back online that makes people feel nostalgic for digging where it left off. Maybe not version 4, but just before that. And then modernizing some of the obvious stuff. But look, this will not be, you know, the first version that gets out there is not going to be feature complete with some of the big, you know, forum platforms out there. But it's going to hit the nostalgia notes. And then, you know, some of the stuff we've talked about publicly is, and this is what was going on in the chat, which was, you know, technology, it's cliche, but in the last couple of years we've all had our brains melted by what software can do and AI in particular. And just even simply some of these foundational large language models are capable of doing some really dope stuff that if you were building a text based forum software today and you built it from first principles and you said, okay, well what are the most important parts of this platform for the most valuable users? It's the less than 1% of your user base that's actually doing the heaviest lifting of community management management. And so how do you start there? By saying, how do we build the best tools using AI so that you don't spend your job being a janitor, having to go through an inbox of wading through things that are violations of community norms or just violations of the terms. And actually, if you talk to enough of these folks, and Kevin slyly ran ads polling thousands of them to just say, what are the things you wish you had? What are the things that should exist? And it turns out even again, using today's technology, you can solve a lot of those problems out the gate. So that as say, a volunteer community manager, you're now spending the bulk of your time not doing janitor work, but actually like doing the fun part of community building. Right. Coming up with cool contests, you know, highlighting memes and great submissions from the community. And so that's what I would expect to come pretty quickly, do you think?

First version?

Yeah.

Do you think that X killing links? You know, we all kind of understand that it probably makes sense for X as a business. Right. But it's disappointing as a user, is that part of what's creating an opportunity for Digg to come back and potentially thrive?

I had not thought of that. It is so annoying that we all have to put it in the second tweet, but to your point, it does make sense from their standpoint. Look, at the end of the day, if you build a community platform well enough, I'd imagine, you know, at least a majority, more than half of the content that will be talked about will be stuff from the community. Right. At Reddit they were self posts and that was just an invention by some random Redditor who guessed how to sort of hack and make self referential links. But, but I do think there is an opening as you, as you mention it. Yeah, there is an opening for like more traditional just link sharing. Like here is some cool thing on the Internet, go take a look. And, and you know what? Actually as I'm thinking about it, live the other wild trend you've seen this guy levels, who's building who's code vibing. The flight simulator.

Yeah.

Like we have not fully processed apps as content.

I love it.

Yeah.

And that, that might be because. Right. How does one get to that app? Well, it's going to have to be a URL, at least for the time being. And so maybe that's, maybe that's the other secular shift we're seeing is that people are going to be spinning up entire apps as content that will obviously need a place to get to and links.

Yeah. Related to that, obviously Beachheads are super important when you're building a platform that can kind of, anyone could use it. Reddit now has Reddits for all sorts of different communities. What was the first beachhead for Reddit? And how are you thinking about early beachheads that could be interesting communities for Digg to kind of latch onto?

Early on, I think the Reddit beachhead was Alexis.

Yeah, it was just you, right?

You know, being kind guys.

It was.

No, I mean it was. Weren't you like the first 20 users? I mean, I mean it in both ways, right? You were in.

In defense of that strategy. It was. So you got to understand we had to convince people that you would want to come here to this site, this spartan site and submit a link for other people to vote on. But. But we didn't have comments, so it wasn't like we were like congratulating one another for our great posts. But yes, the first few months we had a bunch of alt accounts we were posting under to make it look like there were different people, not just nothing over. That's my username over and over again posting like. But then, you know, again it was also. It's hard to learn lessons from because back then it was actually novel. And so like the first community needed to be R programming because we started it with a bunch of other developers as our early adopters. And then we realized normies would not want to see like an erlang tutorial on the homepage. So we shoved, we created those communities as a way just to basically keep the front page looking a little bit more open to everyone. But I do think, I think the first beachhead for Dig relaunched ends up being the look. I'm 41, almost 42. It's like the, it's like the old head nostalgia for a vibesy Internet. Now, you guys don't know that because you are so young. But, but for the Graybeards, there was a time when the Internet was just like a much chiller place. And, and I think it's the nostalgia for that. So I assume it's going to be a lot of the like older geeks who were, you know, big dig fans who love, you know, video games and comics and, you know, a few other things.

Yeah, I like the idea, this just general idea of the vintage Internet. Right. There's so much demand for vintage, broadly in consumer products. Vintage. Vintage cars. Right. Records, etc. Pokemon cards. Right.

I was just playing on my Chromatic here before.

There we go.

I do actually, actually take this with me everywhere.

It's amazing.

Yeah, but yeah, it makes sense. You know, before we get into TikTok, I wanted to ask you, how would you, if you were in control of X as somebody who built, you know, one of the biggest social, you know, platforms in the world and Reddit. If you were in control of X, how would you control this sort of dynamic where this quote unquote slop content is what this sort of of stated verse revealed preference issue. Right. Where on X people say they want to learn and get informed, but then the videos that actually get real engagement are some type of meme or it's JD Vance, how would you approach it? Because I think every X user, given at least our corner of X, we're tech native, many people are building similar products, everybody's got an opinion. What's yours? How would you. Is X perfect in its current state or do you see ways that you would improve it?

So full disclosure, you know, I launched it's not a television series but a content series offseason on X in partnership with X. I probably use. If you looked at my tracking on my apps, I'm sure I use X more than any other social media platform today.

Totally.

So I am. But why? The best question, right? Why? Because the people and trends that I care most about in our little insular world, like that's where the news is made, that's where in order to do my job well, that's how I rationalize it to myself as a builder, as.

A tech builder, as an investor, it's work.

It's a work app.

I mean it's work. No, it's obviously not. But when I'm doom scrolling I comfort myself saying like no, actually this is helping me identify trends and things.

Totally.

And I know that it could be better and it probably. I think it's more fundamental and if you could apply this in different ways to. I think Instagram has its version of it, TikTok has its version of it. The algorithm rewards the thing that pushes to extremes because it generates outrage. And people love gaming systems, especially when those systems mean more attention and more money. And so you see it across all these platforms and some places it's a little bit more benign because YouTube is longer form content. You know, it doesn't feel as aggressive, but there's definitely a flavor of it there. But I think as long as what you're optimizing for is me opening my phone and you as the developer or head of product trying to get me to spend as much time as possible, you're going to eventually end up with some version of the algo feeding you more of the stuff that gets more of the attention and the outrage and the whatever which just feeds more I think community platforms have the best shot that I've seen because what you're signing up for there truly is the intent of I like this community. Right. When a community website gets to scale and I'll never forget. So I started R Gaming and to this day the culture of R gaming is a reflection of me, an old gamer. Because what I was talking when R Gaming was more nostalgic even back then in 2005 than what was the new game. And at some point the gaming community on Reddit said listen old man, we want to know about new titles so we're going to create R games which is much more about new releases. And you could see a cultural rift in something that seemed pretty obvious but like, or maybe subtle but to the people in it was really important. So I think if you're subscribing to based on community, you're coming in with a different set of expectations and so you have a chance to build something that doesn't necessarily lead to the can you make a thing that'll piss as many people off as possible, which is what Twitter does so well. And I've got, I've got friends who, who I think kind of make a living. Shit posting.

Yeah.

And it's an incredible art form and I have to commend them on it. But like it's a symptom. The, the reason that exists and is so, so viable is it's a symptom of the platform just rewarding, you know, what gets you to, you know, stay in the app for longer.

Yeah, that makes sense talk. I mean we gotta hear about, we gotta hear about the TikTok bid. Needs to be a decision made by, by April you're entering the mix. We love to see it break down. Kind of like your guys angle, what you want to do with the platform post acquisition and maybe some of the other people involved.

Sure.

Well look, I, you know, Frank McCourt's the Big Dog here. He called me up and was like hey, I'd love to get you involved. And he already had his instincts were around building something on chain, you know, using this and the massive user base of TikTok to you know, basically overnight, not literally, but overnight bring a bunch of people into this world where they now actually control like say their reputation online to a certain extent because they, they have the, the sort of currency they've created there with that account and that identity. Look, it seems like, I mean Elon even replied to my tweet saying there are more people bidding on TikTok than not at this point. That's right. There's a lot of people.

Yeah.

Not.

I support them all. To be clear, I support them all I want.

You're not doing it yet.

I don't care if you have $5. If you have $5 trillion. I. If you're in America and I support you buying Tick Tock.

Well, that's exactly. And that, that was my, that was my reply. As long as it ends up outside of the control the Chinese Communist Party, great, it's a win. Like, obviously I, I'd rather us win, but any of those options that's not Chinese controlled is a win. And I've been outspoken about this for years and it is what it is. But I do think there's something really interesting about. We're at this point where. And look, I've been a day one seeded Coinbase in 2012, like ETH presale. I've wanted to believe in a version of this future for a long time. And right now you've got amazing CEOs like Brian Armstrong, who've brought us so far, so far into making it even just a standard and a store of value. And I'm Bitcoin, really specifically. But like, can we get to that next point where we have a technology that just sort of underpins a lot of people's lives casually? And again, no one's going to use any of these apps because of the technology, they're going to use it because of what it does for them. And you either spend years building it up and you know, everyone's got a version of it, everyone's doing it, but nothing's really broken through or come close yet. This is such a fun hack to getting mass, mass adoption for this technology. And that was the thing that was most interesting to me. And, and I wouldn't be surprised, look, if it did come to fruition, there's still lots of things to figure out and solve for. But there are enough bright minds who are already in my inbox who are very excited on the crypto front to lend their axes. So look again, as long as it ends up in American hands, I'm thrilled. But I'd obviously love for us to take a stab at it and really see what it takes to bring over a bunch of netizens to the onchain world.

That'd be great. We have five minutes. I wanted to know, are there any underrated Reddits, Reddit communities that you think might be worth taking a little tour into, like live? No, no, not right now. Just I. Whenever I Reddit.

There's a lot.

Yeah, there's a lot of questions.

Our kids watch this show. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Hopefully it's a safe for work one, but. But every once in a while I find a Reddit where like I got into 3D rendering and there was. Was read it on the Houdini for and it was just like, these people are the, they're the CGI artists who do the, the, the horses on Game of Thrones and they're just amazing artists and they just know so much more. Right. And, and I was just like, I need to know everything about this. And I'm getting really up to speed even with their memes. I learned through osmosis from that. And I love when I find a little community that I can just be like, oh, I'm not an expert. I'm totally tourist, but I love that stuff. I'm wondering if there's anything that pops up even. It's just like, you know, nostalgic. Like, I don't know. I see you have a microphone there from teen anything.

Oh, God, I got to remember the URL Dig dot com.

Oh, yeah, there we go.

That one. We'll be on there.

On there.

I actually have a. I have another, Another question for you. You're. You're like pretty much a pure play consumer Internet guy, right? Obviously, in the, in the, in the, in the. In the great history of your investing career, you've invested all over the place, but you seem to be somebody who, you know, when others sort of, you know, sour, you know, especially, you know, it almost became a meme of like, consumer Internet investing is just so hard that a lot of people just give up. We. It's very obvious now that there's a bunch of, you know, we've seen this with, you know, one of the players that we have in PMF or DAI has taken multiple consumer apps to like, millions of dollars in revenue and in super short period of time. How do you think about, you know, consumer investing now in the age of AI? You're sort of in many ways refounding Digg, but I'm sure you're looking at, you know, hundreds of deals a month, I would imagine, or at least a quarter. What's most exciting to you right now? It feels like the kind of a moment that you'd been waiting for, similar to crypto, but this feels like, you know, obviously the next wave.

Dude, it is consumers definitely gotten exciting again. And look, I got weird, right? I think the best, the greatest gift that I've had with my investing track record is having a certain amount of freedom from LPs. And 10% of our AUM is my own money too, which doesn't hurt. But you got to think 2020. The year I left Reddit, one of the first investments I made was in a women's soccer team called Angel City City. Starting that team up for it cost a million dollars to buy a franchise back then in the same league. Today, an expansion fee, like literally just the amount paid to start a team was 110 million. So the valuations have gone up. Angel City is now the most valuable women's professional team in the world at just shy of 300 million. And literally five years ago, that was the craziest idea. And I tweeted the entire grand plan and just said, this is an undervalued opportunity. It's venture scalable. Here we go. And so I love being told I'm going to lose all my money, and it's crazy. And so I found opportunities to your point in consumer, that still Turns out the business model of a sports team is actually very similar to Reddit, but with AI software, got exciting again, and Shameless Plug. The latest one that we just talked about was called Doji. Now, I am clearly not a fashionista, but this team figured out how to make AI avatars. I mean, look at those pants. Figured out how to make AI avatars with just a few new reference photos. Actually, look. I mean, I could never.

Yeah, it's a wild fit.

This is.

This is.

This is gonna be. And again, it all comes back to user experience, right? We spent a year or two seeing, oh, look at that. Like, we blew the Turing test out of the water. We're seeing all these dope bells and whistles applications, and we're just. We're just now starting to see what people can do with that tech. And it's gonna be fun. And I think we got through the first wave of, like, get rich quick apps. No disrespect, Hustle's gonna hustle. I love no tea, no shade. But we're now getting into what's. What's a consumer app that's not just gonna make you, I don't know, turn into a piece of cake and get cut in half. But what's an app that's gonna make a fun social experience? And it might just be remixes of old things.

Dig.

I know from another old consumer founder that you might hear another one of these types of stories in the next couple weeks. Maybe it's out by Southwest. And I think you're Going to get to see this rebirth of apps that we all knew that can be demonstrably better now because of this technology. And then we'll see some new stuff like doji that just like this try on app. There's a version of that that has existed and sucked for decades. And what it took was a few technological breakthroughs and a great user experience, and voila. And so, yeah, it is a great time for consumer. It's a great time for hard tech. I've done a few space tech companies now. I obviously love hardware. Like, it's. It has never been more fun to do this job. And. And again, the world does not need more investors. So if you hear this and think, oh, I want to do that when I grow up, start a company first, it's so much better. You'll be so much cooler. It's better for society. You'll make more money. Like, do that and then come over to the dark side after.

After.

That's great. We see you pop up on paparazzi photos on the world tour. What's the next big event you're excited for? Is there anything on the calendar that you're looking forward to in 2025?

My wife was like, do you want to go to the Vanity Fair party? I was like, no, of course not. No, I. That was the last one I guess I missed out on.

If you have a plus two, I mean, we'll tag along.

You got to marry up guys. That is the secret. That's how I did. No, I. There's. There's nothing.

Okay.

I don't know. The.

Yeah, I don't know. I'll just surprise you. In fact, if it's a true paparazzi photo, I won't even know that it's happening.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, subscribe to Alamy Stock Photos and you can see the latest of what Alexis is up.

Here's a. Here's a good question. I. I asked John this yesterday. So starship, you know, disintegrated last night. It's unfortunate, but obviously they're iterating quickly. How many. How many successful SpaceX, you know, sort of trips to the moon you need to see before you're gonna get on it yourself? John's answer was. Was 3.

Does John have kids?

Yeah.

I know, I know, I know. He's got. He's got three.

I have three kids and a very high risk.

You have three kids now. Congrats. Holy. It's come a long way from the solid days, man. I know, man.

Man, it's wild.

Wow.

Oh, that's nuts. No, I would not do that. I. Stoke. Stoke is my horse in that race, okay? As an early investor there, and I love Andy. I love that team. I. I'd say the same thing. SpaceX has changed the world. We're all in their debt. They've opened so many doors for humanity, civilization. But I don't need to be in the first million, okay? I have no interest. I. Not interested. Now, supersonic plane. I told Blake when I sent the wire, I was like, bro, give me a seat on the boom. Let's go again.

I don't need to be the first.

Right? Let the professionals do that. But, like, that's way more appealing to me because space. No, Alien and Aliens were my favorite movies as a kid. And so no good comes from space as far as I'm concerned. And that's without even not knowing that xenomorphs don't really exist. No good comes from that. That's why there's a pulse rifle on my wal wall.

There we go.

There we go. Yeah, I mean, stay strapped with the pulse rifle. Anybody that has a man cave like yours is. Is not in any hurry to leave. It is truly, truly a work of art.

Well, this is fantastic. Thanks so much for joining the stream. We'll have to have you back.

You're always welcome.

I appreciate it. One more shameless plug, I want to say. And you guys, you got to keep me honest on this. Was I the first investor to ask if I could invest in this pod?

Yeah, you actually were.

Yeah, you were.

And I think.

And I think it would have been. I think it's.

I.

It would be a thousand X. Yeah. And I'm still here, guys.

I'm still here.

You saw. You saw the potential. You were. You were. You knew. These guys aren't building a podcast. They're building empires. An empire. The tv.

We appreciate the support, for sure.

You'd be one of our first calls if. If we ever did.

It is so good. It's so good for the ecosystem. Yalls vibe is. Is perfect. The branding is on point. Like 10 out of 10.

Taste.

You've heard enough people say it. It is so true, though. Taste in this era is going to be a hundred times more valuable as intelligence, thank God, is getting democratized than a commodity. And so it's an amazing time to have great taste, and this is the time to be better for what you've done.

Here's our vision for it. Since it's very relevant to you. We want to give, you know, interesting people that are doing big things. All the benefits of having their own big podcast with none of the work. Right. Because like, you don't. You don't want to. You know, you could work on. Spend all this time making a podcast and maybe even put sponsors on it. Make a million dollars a year. It's not going to change your life. What if you could just come on TVPN anytime you had big news? Because that is what we're setting up. The next time you've got news, I. I'd love to have you back on. Specifically when all the tick tock stuff is getting worked out for sure. Hopefully you win it. But whether or not you know, you'll have some great points. We got Sam lesson here. It's a party.

Alexis, what's going on, man?

What's up?

How you doing?

I'm sorry, buddy.

I was gabbing with these guys.

I was whacking some tennis balls. I was late. Look, we got the microphones and white hats. You're like, you're my technique. Technology, brother.

Teenage engineering. That's the best.

The subtle way to say I paid too much for my microphone.

No, you paid the exact right amount for quality.

Exactly.

There you go. There you go. What's going on, guys?

Alexis, thank you so much.

Thank you for having me all peace, guys.

See you, Alexis.

See, not too much. Sam, how are you doing today?

How is tennis?

You know, I'm just, just. I'm only bummed because I really had this vision in my head. I was going to come join you guys and wear a tuxedo. I just didn't have time. Today.

You guys have that iconic photo on your website. I think the slow. So everybody listening? Just go to go to slow co. It's just. It's just the partners, the partnership wearing tuxedos.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's a great photo.

Ben, you should work on pulling this up. But. But no, you have a good excuse. You were playing tennis. If you had more. If we had more time in the transition there, you could have. Maybe we could have got Serena on for a second to give you.

I'm heading to. I'm heading to Indian Wells in a few hours. You guys, Wells fans, we.

We actually do nothing but podcast show and we never go hang out with our families, basically.

Fair enough. I'm just trying to fit the role of stereotypical venture capitalist for. You come from tennis, go to tennis.

Yep.

Wear tuxedo.

What I like is the. The honesty. Too many venture capitalists like try to of basically they're larping like they're not venture capitalists. You know, they, they put on, like, a. I advise my friends, like, don't put up, like, a fake zoom background to try to hide the fact that you're in this sort of, like, $30 million home. You know, like, just, Just embrace it. Like, founders want to partner with people that are very successful. Right?

So it's just authenticity. And I mean, we saw this with the SBF thing. Like, people fake like, oh, I'm not rich. And then you, You. It blows up because he was, like, complete fraud. And the whole, like, I don't know. I, I, I, I'm. I'm very, I'm very short, like, faking that you're not, like, successful.

I am pro honesty and pro authenticity.

That's what it's about. It's not about, like, the flexing or, like, showing off. It's just about, like, just being who you are.

No, I agree.

There's. Hopefully you've. You've got a full kind of 30 minutes here before you head to Indian Wells. I feel like there's a ton of stuff to cover. I want to give you an opportunity to talk about your billboard that you guys.

Oh, yeah, we're very proud of our billboard. This is our first slow outdoor marketing.

Okay.

So if you're cruising north on the 101, you're gonna see our billboard, which, you know, is a burning pile of money around a castle. And the, and the tagline is, AI is not your mode. And it's just like, we were just driving on the 101, and every fucking billboard is like, AI this, AI that. And we're like, this is just, like, piles of money burning on the 101. So we decided to burn a little of our own money to kind of make the opposite point. So it'd be fun. I like having a billboard. I think we're doing more billboards.

I love it. Yeah.

Yeah. Billboards are extremely underpriced.

Well, we're sponsored by a billboard company. Next time you buy billboards, go to.

Adquick.Com and tell them we sent you.

Tell them he sent us. I love it.

So talk about it.

Outdoor advertising is the future, gentlemen. None of this targeted stuff on the Internet.

Yeah, no, it can go. It can go much more viral. It's a lot of fun.

Talk about. Yeah. Basically break down some of the ideas behind the billboard. You know, we've covered every single big AI fundraise this year. We've covered the big companies that are trying to roll it out. Some are doing it better than others. Just Today there was a new DeepMind team that spun out and raised at a $500 million valuation to do oh, cheap, cheap, cheap. These aren't typical slow deals. But you, you have a good perspective on the market. Like give us.

We've been pretty consistent on this for, for two plus years. I mean I wrote a deck in 2013. I'm sorry, not 2013, 2023. Not that long ago. That was kind of about, kind of with a moment in venture capital. What the fuck venture capital. And the basic point of it was don't confuse the fact that LLMs are powerful technology. Like there's stuff you're going to do with them that are going to be great for all sorts of businesses with the disruption itself being a good business. My partner Will says this a lot. The big guy on the website, he's always like, just because technology is disruptive doesn't mean that's where the money is made. You have to think about the business model disruption and what's really going on. And you know, I think we are in a super cycle of mimetic venture capital money lighting on fire in AI right now because. And there's a bunch of structural reasons for it we talked about then. It's like LPs have too much money in too big of pockets. They got to figure out where to jam it, right? Gps. There's no narrative that makes sense. But guess What? If your LPs are going to pay you to jam money into AI companies and get paid the fees on it with a go fish card, it's not a bad deal, right? If you're willing to just spend a lot of money. But we've just been incredibly short of this. Now it doesn't mean we don't love companies that are enabled by AI. I like what I call AI Cherry on top businesses, which is a business that fundamentally is great, right? It's fundamentally. But then there's a non obvious ideally cherry on top right, which is that AI gives it new leverage. You know, I'm working on a new company with Joe Lonsdale and their team which is called Merit first and that's an example of a company where like actually structurally and sociologically AI does add something new as a type of company that should have always existed. It was hard to build before, now you can build that stuff is all great. But this like large model fight to zero, I mean it's just, it's kind of wild to watch to be totally honest.

Talk about Facebook's just Meta's opportunity broadly in AI. If you were still working at the company, how would you, you know, do you think they're. Our position overall is like they're doing a lot of things right. There's been talk recently about, you know, having a standalone own, you know, app, which could make sense, but it doesn't even feel like they've been that aggressive with sort of productizing it. Productizing it.

Well, yeah, my, my view on meta in AI is quite simple. It's a classic, which I love, heads you win, tails you win situation, right. It's the best way to. The reason the stock has gone up so much I think if anything is you look as an investor, you're looking around, you're saying, where do I definitely win on AI, regardless of how the brakes go? And the answer is going to be meta, right? They're, unlike Google, aren't going to get disrupted in their core business on this. They don't have a search business, they don't have a lookup business to disrupt. They have a shit ton of engagement attention and they sell ads. And you know what definitely gets better with LLMs ads? The targeting gets better, the creative gets better. You just win, right? And so at that point, you know, the reality is like, I think they're incredibly well positioned. You know, people are argue that these numbers are huge, they're spending on Llama, whatever, but you got to look at it as a percentage of market cap. It is a tiny percentage investment, right, to cover their ass and to make sure that whatever innovation happens in AI, enough of it's open source and the funnel is wide enough that it all ends up backing them. They don't get cornered and stuck out in the wilderness. Right. But it's an incredible, I think they're an incredibly good place. I think they're probably in the best place of any large tech company. And I'd say, moreover, the way I've always thought about this and what I see is, is AI, unlike prior innovations, like, unlike the transition from shrink rack software to the Internet is just so good for the big companies, right? It's easy to slot in, it commodifies. I mean there's just like, you can't, you cannot think of a better extending innovation for a large company, right, that already has the infrastructure, the data center teams and the whole nine yard. It's like this is just all upside for them.

And so I think what you see is margin.

Well, unless, unless you're Apple and somehow you got stuck way out in the wilderness. But like they're, you know, the Googles, the, the Amazons, the Facebook, I mean, metas, they're in great shape. And then if you're a tiny company, there's just so much leverage all of a sudden that, you know, there is a lot of cost cutting. There's all sorts of things you can do that's cool. You just don't want to be in the middle. As with most things in life, you never want to be in the middle. And you know, candidly, even companies like OpenAI, or should we say nonprofits like OpenAI, the problem is they're kind of in the middle. You know, they can't compete with the hyperscalers from just access to capital perspective. If this is a capital game, they're going to lose. Right?

So do you think.

And if they're. And if it's not a capital game, it's a deep sea open sourcing, they're also going to lose. Like the key in life is just never be in the middle.

Do you think that SoftBank can realistically spend $3 billion on agents with OpenAI this year?

Look, all I can tell you this is I joke. It's a joke, but it's true. One thing we've learned, we've been doing slow for 10 years. Whenever SoftBank buys, you sell, right? Like, they are the worst investors in the history of the world. Right? And so it's just like I've watched them crush so many companies by overcapitalizing them, by get. They like, you know, it's hilarious. I love their decks. But no, it's like it's complete house of cards.

House of cards.

Was it always that way?

Masa's nuts, right? Every once in a while in his history, he's been nuts enough to nuts his way into some amazing opportunity that saved his ass. Ass, right. But like, you know, I mean, you can. He was the original LOL deck guy. Remember his unicorn deck with the unicorns and the egg? He's an incredible marketer.

So, so why haven't, why haven't we seen Masa taking bigger swings, you know, in the early stage? It seems like because Moss always comes.

In late and overpays. That's his thing.

Yeah, right.

But, but, but obviously like a massive infrastructure just put $1 million into every new company. Just write tons of seed checks. Like. Like, is it just an infrastructure problem?

Like why they just don't index the entire seed market?

Exactly, yeah.

I mean, it's an interesting question. I wonder. So historically speaking, when big funds try to index the seed market, there are two problems. One is someone wakes up and does the math. And like this doesn't make any sense, right? Like, even if you have the million dollar check at Seed, if you're trying to deploy billions of dollars, like it's just an irrational business model because the multiples don't make up for the fact you have to move gross dollars. Right? So the best case you're doing at Seed then is just marketing, right? You're like, I do Seed to market.

Yeah.

Hey, Des, I'm on the Technology Brothers podcast. You want to say hi?

Yeah, come say hi.

You know my wife Jessica?

Of course.

She came over to the pool house.

Hey, how you doing? We wouldn't really be able to do the show without your team, your team's coverage. We basically feature your article, you know, every day, daily. So. And I'm grateful. Congrats on all the success, you guys. Yeah, so we're. No, we subscribe to the information. I have to think we're one of the number we have. I hope we're one of the number one referral partners because we get the paid wall articles and then, and then we cover them, but we don't cover the full thing, you know, so we basically are, you know, pushing people behind the paywall. So it's great.

We gotta strike a deal.

So I'll leave you guys, but then let's do it.

Let's figure it out.

Referral revenue your way. Well, no, no, we're just, we're happy to support.

Happy to support.

Great, great to meet.

Oh, look at that. It's a guest on the guest. I love it.

Well, I'm just delivering your mail.

Thanks, Bye.

Fantastic.

Okay, I want more hot takes from you on, on kind of all the, on all the hyperscalers. So, so what's going on with, with Apple? Are they just a luxury goods? Are they the, the LVMH of tech? Are they just going to of continue to make the same products forever? Are they done innovating?

Look, here's the reality. It's really fucking hard to make phones, right? And like really hard, especially in the modern era. It's really hard to imagine that they're going away anytime soon because of that. At the same time, you know, I don't know if you guys get the Apple intelligence summaries of your text, but they're like comically bad. They're hilarious. They literally tell you the opposite of what the text is says. Right? Like it is useless.

Right.

And so I think it's, I think it's valuable in that it's so funny because I'll Screenshot them and send them into the group chat and be like, really, you guys are talking about this or something. And that's funny. But it's all. It's purely accidental humor.

It's insane. Right. And so I actually think that I would argue that Apple's intelligence text message product might be the perfect exhibit for an antitrust case. Right. Where you're like, like, you talk about consumer harm, right? As like the kind of bar for this. It's like, this is what we're going to get out of AI, right? Like, it's comical, right? It is really funny as a. I love ls, so, like, I'm into it. I think it's funny.

Yeah. You know, it was the first time.

I swear to God. Jessica's phone, on their newest iOS update, it deleted all somehow, like, all the contacts and so she now just has phone number. Like, it is comically bad. But the problem is on the flip side is, like, the camera's good and it's hard to make phones, right? So, like, I don't. I'm still like, and who.

Who.

No one likes green bubbles, Right. And so the reality is, is like, I think we're a long way away from Apple going away, but my God, are they in a weird place right now, right?

It is. My point of view is like, I just want better AI, and I know that they'll just be able to wait and just dominate the monopoly and then eventually roll something down.

Yeah.

Like, the very basic thesis is, is if LVMH is a luxury goods conglomerate and they're working worth hundreds of billions of dollars, should the sort of digital tech equivalent, consumer tech equivalent of that be worth trillions of dollars? Like, yes. Like, they're not.

Well, maybe. But look, lvmh, there was an interesting moment. Do you guys remember, I think this is like a few years ago where there was this moment where lvmh, or guess the CEO of lmh, is the richest guy in the world. Right? And somehow, like, it inverted and like, tech was worth less. It was like a crazy inversion. You're like, wow. So the meta story of our society right now is that it's not the innovators that are worth the most. The meta story is that it's like fake luxury signaling. That's the most valuable thing in the world. And that was not a good thing. That was not a good model.

You contributed to that with, with, with, with Facebook. Right? Like, Facebook was a huge catalyst for, you know, tech becoming the number one source of wealth.

Or.

No, no, no. No luxury spending, right? Because now it wasn't like, oh, your watch or your car is no longer just like, you know, being seen by your local community, but it can be seen by the whole world and you can sort of signal out.

Yeah, it's an interesting. It's an interesting social dynamic because on one hand I'd argue that Instagram has made it so that the real luxury consumption is experience and travel and being hot, right? Like all of a sudden, like fitness is cool because, like, you can say you're hot and being hot is like way more expensive than a watch, right? And so like, actually that's the way like being well rested is the luxury good, right? And like, so, you know, kids, kids are like the most expensive thing in the world. So all these things that you can like now socially signal as like, I'm fucking rich easily. And like those certainly supersede your Birkin bag. Like those that's like cheap luxury, right? That's like mass luxury at best. And so like, there's this weird dynamics going on. Now you all on the flip side. The reality is, is like, look, I've got. I don't know if you guys, you guys play with the. The Meta Ray Bans. Yeah, yeah, we freaking great.

Yeah.

Right.

And like, like I do think that young about luxury and fashion. Like if Meta had released not Ray Bans. Yeah, right. They then like, they wouldn't be as cool even if they were exactly the same and they probably wouldn't have sold as well. So like, I'm not like a luxury guy. Like, I don't have perfect insights or taste on this. But there is. There's weird stuff going on about how you, what. What luxury really is, how you display taste, how you display wealth. And certainly things like Instagram had had a big impact on that.

Totally related to the Meta Ray Bans. Are you at all like a dau MAU of any other augmented reality or just like consumer hard hardware technology like Apple Vision Pro, Oculus, any of these products at all.

Apple Vision Pro has got to be the most expensive product per minute of use in the history of the world. I obviously bought one immediately. I used it precisely zero times since the first week I have. It's an incredible demo. Right?

You think about.

I've actually tried to do the math on this. Like it's more expensive than private planes per minute of use. Right. If you looked at like the overall like the exact same experience, I was a big Oculus. I think that Oculus is actually pretty good at this point. I, you know, Look, I'm a Facebook loyalist, so I, like, bought every version. I, like everyone else, played a bunch of zombie shooting games during the pandemic with friends, and it was super fun. Like, I'm into it. I think it's a really hard, hard sell, though, when, like, your life is pretty good, right? Like, I think the reality is like, VR and like, immersive experiences and all other realities are kind of great if your life sucks, right? Because then you're like, I'm like, live in a video game. But, like, I think a lot of the problem with that type of stuff is, like, it's just, it's not. If you have a good life and kids and like, do stuff, like, what's the point?

Go play real tennis instead of VR tennis. Yeah.

Like, I like Wii tennis, but I like real tennis better.

Yeah, yeah, it's great. It makes sense. One more. Do you have a prediction around Google? Do we have a new CEO there at all in the next five years? Are they all in on Sundar?

On Sundar? I don't know. Is that just like, based in some news or rumor?

Or is that just like, it's purely based on. Google has not managed to release an AI product that hasn't been riddled with. With issues. And it feels like it does. You know, you obviously can poke fun at Masa's picking ability and call him somebody that sort of signals the top or whatever, but, you know, OpenAI and ChatGPT have hundreds of millions of users and, you know, maybe they're not replacing that sort of commercial search activity, but like much of the informational search, it feels like the golden goose is threatened for the first time.

It's a really good question. I mean, here's the way I would think about it, is Gemini is actually a pretty sweet product. The problem is no one uses it, right? Like, you know, so is like, the notebook product, like, Google actually has a bunch of very, very good products, right. I think their problem is they're so big and they're. The marketing and, like, driving of those products is extremely hard for them. And yes, I think they are the company that more than any other company in the world is in the position of both being way ahead in certain elements of AI and like, has a huge advantage, but they also have the most to lose. Right? And so I think that's a very challenging thing for any company. If you look at, you know, the history of companies like that, the best example from history is, was it Kodak, right, that invented the digital camera? Right? Like, they invented it and like they fucked it up, right? And like. And you understand why though, right? Which is you have a bunch of these business concerns. Now the interesting about Google is I think Sundar is a very good guy and competent manager managing an enormous infrastructure. But you do actually still have founders with meaningful control in the picture. And I actually think that's good because I think they do really tough things. It's extremely helpful to have the broad sort of founders, right? The question is it just has to be wielded. And so I think the bigger question is you look at this like letter. It was at Larry Page's letter about please try to go to work 60 hours a week for AGI. Did you see this, Larry?

It was like a new startup today or yesterday.

It was like a wildly funny thing to leak, right? Because everything's going to leak. But it's like, I actually think it's less a cinder question and more like do the founders step up and just like broadsword this? Right, because that is if you, that is kind of, I think what probably has to happen. And it's not a technology problem. Like honestly I, I think Gemini is actually probably for a lot of things the best product. It just is like terribly marketed.

Yeah, makes sense. That makes sense. You know, you guys, you know, you've spoken out against you know, venture becoming this sort of asset management business starting to look more like, like you know, private equity in some ways. At the same time, you know, that's on the fun side. On the company side, we've seen the sort of venture style roll ups where people raise venture capital dollars to buy you know, companies they're going to and it's a great deal for the founder, right, to raise 20 on a hundred and then just buy like profitable companies. In theory it's better economics than, than traditional pe. But you guys at SLOW have supported and blanking on the name of the portfolio company. But, but what's, what's your portfolio?

We've done a bunch Metropolis team shares, whatever. I mean like so here's, here's basically talks I gotta give you one is I'm not, I am personally a snob about venture capitalists being asset managers because I don't think it's that creative or important or interesting. I will say as a gp, it's a great fucking business model, right? And so like the seed business model we run is definitely less, less consistently and meaningfully profitable than like being a 16Z in a platform. There's no question, right? Like so if you just want to make money as A and saying I earn DPI to justify more aum is a very smart thing to do, right? It's just not that fun, right? And so like I'd rather do the fun part of the business which is saying I take money in, but I take in the money I know how to make lots of money on. And then I run around saying haha, I told you so. I was right from seed. That's like more fun for me. Right? And so I think you have to like separate those as like I do intellectually dislike it. I don't think it's a bad business model. On the roll up thing, look, we started doing this before all the cool kids were doing this, right? So if you look at like the two probably most important deals we've done in this one is team shares, we see that from zero. I bought four, I bought 10% of the company originally for $400,000, right. We've kind of bought up from there. They've acquired well over 100 small businesses. They built a whole platform for scaling them. It's a killer business. It's kind of. And they've done a lot of really smart stuff. But there is kind of a technology leverage roll up strategy to it. You know, you can look at something like Metropolis, which is another pretty iconic deal which again we were the seed investors in, we were early seed investors in when it was a tech company and we realized that it turns out that SaaS is a terrible business model, right? In a lot of verticals it's SaaS is just like everyone has this idea that SAS is a great business model. It's not right. You get paid later, it's hard to sell. And you know the thing, if you think about something like it's a transformative technology, you go to a CEO and say I have a transformative technology going to change your whole business. It's going to make you 50% profitable. You can't then say give me 40% of the profit, right? They're like fuck you, we'll give you your SaaS fee, right? So if you have an actually transformative technology and you can swing it, you're better off buying your customers, right. And then deploying your technology. But that's predicated on actually having a better technology, right? And so, so this is the thing I think people get wrong is when venture capitals go fund roll ups with the yada yada yada, there's some tech leverage in them or no tech leverage. That's ridiculous and it doesn't make any sense. If you're a smart venture capitalist, smart founder, you say, hey, I'm going to prove that I can be way better at this than my competitors, than anyone else in the industry. And then by the way, it turns out for a reason. This is a hard software to sell. It's conflicted. I can't get paid what it's worth, the whole nine yards. Then going to PE folks and saying, hey, we're going to prove this out. We want cheap capital. We're going to go buy all our customers, I think is a great strategy. Right? So the kind of the devil's in the details in terms of how you do this. And we're into it. I mean, we did this one called tml, the lumber manufacturer we're really excited about. We definitely do this, but we have a pretty specific bar on what this is. And it's not just like buying pool cleaning roll ups.

Yeah.

Can you talk about creators? I want to hear.

Yeah, yeah, we love creators. I mean, yeah, yeah, I want to.

Hear, I want to hear who you're bullish on and then what the anatomy of a deal that looks like a banger with a creator. Looks like.

Yeah. So here's the basic upshot, as you guys maybe know, like, we just announced this $65 million vehicle which is pretty groundbreaking, right? What we invest in is not C Corp. We invest in seed creators. So think I own a niche, right? I'm doing a million in top line. I've got a million followers. I'm growing really quickly. And here's the key fact, as you do the breakdown, you're like, I'm an awesome creat built this community. I am the leader of it. I'm admired. I have this scarce thing. I have, you know, low cac on high ltv, folks, it's fucking sweet. But you're doing a million in top line. After expenses, taxes, you're living fine, but you don't have investable capital. We're like, we'll give you the investable capital to build C Corps and businesses, right? This is a new pattern of C Corp generation and building. We really believe in at seed now. How do we get there? We got there because it's really hard to invest in seed creator businesses because the equity and the value of the community is held outside the company. And so Jane wakes up in five days and we love the community. We love her. She's like, oh, fuck. It's actually not this, it's that. It's not Mr. Beast Burger. It's fucking feastables. You do not want to be in that scenario, right? Like no one wants that. It's bad for everyone. We want to be able to invest as aligned a way as we possibly can with creators. And so we were like, look, we do this effectively with founders anyway. We don't take board seats. We want to be first check in. We're trying to be collaborative holistically with them. We want to be aligned with them. If they win, great. If they lose, lose, C' est la vie. What is the equivalent in creator? And like that's kind of what we're bullish on. So I think, you know, it turns out in creator, like most things, the transparent deals, the super buzzy ones, masa style, they always get super overpriced, right? Because everyone knows them and they say, oh, we like creator, creator important by creator, right? We're much more interested in providing capital where it's scarce, which is we think seed creators and we think on this.

Model, what about putting those two things together? Have you thought about going to a creator and saying, hey, you would be perfect if you owned this business that already exists. We buy the business, give it to you, repackage it and then you're kind of the marketing front end. Is that a crazy idea?

It's not a crazy idea. And we get pitched it all the time actually, you know, in different verticals. Like you have the God of lawn care who wants to buy the lawn care companies. It's not crazy. But I do think it's complicated to get right, right? And I think like, you know, there's a thing I like to say about seed stage investing, which is no fucking bank shop dots, right? And the more variables that have to be right domino style, the less likely it is that the thing actually happens, right? And so for me it's like, ugh, like so you want tech leverage and a roll up and we're going to put a creator on top and da da da. It's like something will not work, right? And like that makes it a hard bet, but it's intellectually not wrong, right?

With kind of two follow up questions on the creator fund. Do you guys have like a no zeros policy? Right. A lot of these creators generate revenue from ads, right? So if you invest a million dol and they generate, you know, a couple million bucks a year in ad revenue, like even if they don't make a banger company, like you'll get your money out eventually or how do you think about it?

So here's the way we think about it. It's a great question. We're not that interested in your ad business, right. Like we just don't really care. Like there's no enterprise value generated in that. It's really nice non dilutive financing sometimes but like it's not what we're playing for. We also are not interested in taking some creators ladies last cent, right? Like if you're just like you're making a million bucks after you pay taxes and whatever else you're living, okay. We're not going to be like hey, by the way, we want our 10% of your ad revenue. We like we don't care. Now there is a scenario we do care about protecting, right? Which is if you take our money, you know, we're doing the seed thing, we start a few companies, they don't quite work, but in the process of spending our money because you marketed yourself and whatever else, you get 10 times bigger and then you're like, you know, I kind of just like super bowl ads. I'm just going to do a bunch of super bowl ads and I'm going make to make 15 million, $20 million next year on that. We'll, we'll want our piece of the upside on that in that model. Right. But like our whole thing is about alignment and we're certainly not primarily interested in your ad dollars. Right. It's not like a slope, you know. Now look, it does not dilute financing.

Right?

Makes sense.

Mr. Beast is marks around $5 billion right.

Now private Mark, I wouldn't read that much.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, but, but I'm assuming that everybody that's investing hundreds of millions of dollars into Mr. Beast or billions wants to get their money out eventually. It's hard to imagine anybody buying it, you know, outright. Right. Do they? Do you see Mr. Beast going public in the next few years?

I am sure that's what they want to do.

And how is that? Is it a stock that trades, you know, kind of like true social where it's just based around attention and, and does.

I think it's a meme stock. It's a meme stock if it gets out. Right. It's just a meme coin on steroids. You know. The reality is is like it's not. Again, I actually credit Jimmy Mr. Beast. He's done a few very important things for the creator space. Right. One thing he did is he's made a lot of creators dream a lot bigger. And that's great. Right. Like I appreciate that. Right. From a perspective. I also think, you know, he's really, I think been a good example on a beacon of of creators aren't just creators. Like they can start businesses like, whatever. So there's been an aperture opening that he's really helped with that I think has been great for the industry. Now that said, you know, I do think there's some structural problems with his quote unquote business, right? As a creator business, like I'll give you example, like one, we, we care a lot about the LTV of customers, right? And his audience is so broad and candidly personal pretty poor, right? Which means that like they're not great customers, right? Like there's a reason you sell chocolate because it's one of the only things you can sell to everyone that's cheap, right? And like, so there's like, it's not like the best audience. It's also, you know, the reality is he does a lot of this media stuff. Like you know, you know, everyone's excited that he gets $100 million Amazon contract, but then he spends more than that on the show, right. Like, and so it's like, it's just not clear to me that in the hyper competitive entertainment space with a broad general audience that that's like an amazing business. But look, it is definitely a cult and I'm sure there's a bunch of like 20 year old kids that will grow up and trade it like a meme stock, right? And like that could be fine, right? It's just not like a thing where you're looking at it like this is a money printing machine, which is what I'm more interested in.

To my knowledge. You're thinking about the slow creator program where you would want one of the creators underlying companies to go public, but not the creator holding company to go public. Public, and that there's some brand risk to the creator if you're having a financial asset that's trading based on your popularity and if your popularity goes down, you get even more unpopular because.

Yeah, so we've, I've been interested in this kind of. How do you think about financing people with equity versus debt for a very long time. I started my first company in 1999 when I was in high school. It's called lifecapital.com and the idea was basically some version of this, right. And so I think that thematically makes, makes a ton of sense, right? As the world gets more unequal and outcomes are more discontinuous, debt financing does just broadly not make sense for people, right. The equity model. And we've invested in a bunch of versions of this, right? Including some that recently. So I do think it's a very interesting spit specifically for the creator fund. Again, you know, you kind of are, you know, you are what you eat. Right. In this case, we like eat LP dollars and like from an eating LP dollar perspective and like what the structure is, the good news is, is we really think there's an opportunity to deliver normal ass. C Corps, skims, whatever you want to call it, right. That start with creators, but are perfectly huge, amazing companies to back from seed. Right. And so that is what we do with that. Is there residual value to the Holdco pieces? Yeah, there totally is. Like in 10 years, because these are 10 year funds. Do you have to figure out how to wrap that up or resell it or like retrace? Absolutely. But like, candidly, this market is moving so fast that the way I think about this is like we're investing in launch pads for amazing C Corps that are driven first and foremost by amazing communities that are led by amazing founders that are creators. Like, that is what we're doing. And yes, at the end of a 10 year cycle, which then has a bunch of extensions on it, you do figure out what you do with the residual assets.

Yeah, that makes sense. I have so many other questions here. I mean, the main one is how quickly are you pushing creators to. Are you thinking of these creators as a catalyst for the C Corps that they're spinning out? Because one thing I've seen from spending millions of dollars with influencers is like oftentimes you'll spend $100,000 with an influencer. It performs well. Like if it's sort of like a broad consumer audience and then the performance can drop off over time because there's only so many buyers in the audience. Audience. How do you think about, you know, the almost no creator is big enough to sustain a venture scale, you know, C Corp. By themselves, right?

Well, it depends on verticals and how you're looking at it. Again, like, when you think about creators, it's such a broad space and used so broadly that I think you can, you can mean a lot of different things, right? And so look, one of the dirty secrets which, you know, it sounds like is in the venture capital world, entrepreneurs all day long will pitch you about how their CAC is very high. But the CAC will come down. Down. Here's a secret. CAC always goes up, right? It always goes up like there CAC goes up, not down, right? And so like what you're experiencing is that it's like if you spend money with an influencer, they're the people who want to Buy the thing anyway. You reach them, it's cheap. And then they hit a wall. Like if it's just like a general product you're selling, right? And so you have to think about it as a launch pad from that perspective. You know, we want to back found creator founders who come in and are. They want to be entrepreneurs. They like pitch us business ideas. Ideas. Like, they have their list. They're like, okay, I know my audience in lawn care, in terrariums, and you name it better than anyone in the world. Here's the 10 things that no one knows. And by the way, I can sell them. And I know I'm selling it to myself. Like, I'm the leader of this and I understand the space better than anyone and I have access to the community and they trust me. That's what we want. Right. We don't need them to come in and be like, here's the business plan 100%. In fact, we kind of just. But we do need that list because if you come in, like, I'm a creator, I have the audience, but I don't know what to do. We're like, well, we don't. Are you an entrepreneur or you just gonna make more media? Right? And we're like, the media is fine, but the media has to support real businesses.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Cool. Anything else?

That's all I got for today. You're the man.

Last question. Who's a better grill master? You or Zuck?

Oh, definitely Zuck.

Okay. I had to know.

I mean, look, I wouldn't say I'm bad, but, like, I think that man has invested in the craft of grill in a way that I have not.

I love it. I love it.

That makes sense.

Well, thanks for coming on.

We'd love to have you as a regular.

Yeah. Anytime you guys want to reach out. I really love the show. It's super fun. I love what you guys have done and we love bullshitting, so it's great.

You love to yap. We love to yap.

It's a match made in heaven.

It's a match made in heaven.

We'll collab on a billboard someday. That'd be fun.

We should. Yeah, we should. That'd be great. Well, enjoy. And Dane Wells. Enjoy the weekend. Have a great year.

Have fun.

I noticed on his website, Slow Co, it looks like they have the biggest guy and they made him.

They made him sit in a chair.

That's worth starting to do because John do that before. Oh, wait, how tall am I?

Jordy? Six, eight.

Thank you.

A lot of people just don't even believe it. They say there's never been a podcast. Six, eight Podcaster.

Yeah, I'm kind of the Conan o' Brien of tech podcasting, I suppose.

Sure.

Many have said that he's really tall. Let's go to. Speaking of physical appearance, let's go to Ali Demeau. She says the only moat, it's not AI, it's drop dead gorgeous good looks and generational wealth. I love it. Very TV coded post. I had to throw it in there. She sent me a text message because she. We featured her show. She was actually getting dunked on, but we featured it. We had a lot of fun.

Fun.

And so thank you to Allie for keeping the timeline.

She knows how to post the perfect amount to, you know, get engagement. Engagement.

A little bit engagement.

And she's got a. She's got a social app. I believe it's for swish. Swish. Yeah. For photo sharing, which is cool.

And they're partnered with some huge. Rolling Loud, the largest concert or something like that, and they're powering it. She's really good at doing these like, deals, even though it's a small company.

Yeah.

Teal fellow too.

Yeah. It was funny when Apple. Apple came out and. And announced their sort of, you know, their photos app is rough. So I'm sure she's not super threatened by that. But they also came out with event. Yeah. Part. And it was, I think, competing with what Ally's doing too. But I don't see Tim Cook dead getting deals done with Rolling Loud. He's. He's too busy at the John Summit show.

At the John Summit backstage, you know, who knows?

So Ali in control, but great post.

Oh, well. Should we move on and finish out the timeline and wrap up the show?

Let's do it.

Okay. Let's go to Visakon Versami. He says even kings and billionaires want to be posters and podcasters. King Charles is launching his own Apple music radio show to showcase his favorite music.

You know, they brought the Brinks truck for that.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Signing King Charles. I love it.

I mean, we're a network. We should explore. You know, maybe he does some angel investing. He could host, you know, an angel invest.

I mean, we were, we were pitching Trump getting back in the media game, you know, because he had his own reality TV show we were talking about. Maybe JD is the first one with a, with a podcast or something, but. And who's the California guy who. Nome has a show now?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So why not? Why not a radio Show. I hope King Charles gets on there, introduces every song, takes requests, does some radio stuff, winds up doing the news. Who knows, maybe we'll have him on the show.

King Charles open invite.

Should we go to George Mack?

Yep.

My most contrarian belief, we could increase the global economy by 2 to 3% by installing large whiteboards in every home. I love George so much. This is such a funny, funny idea to just like mandatory whiteboard. I mean George, if you don't know, I mean, he's a fantastic thinker and writer and poster and he's like very into modeling things out, creating frameworks, creating flowcharts and so of course he thinks you just need to be one foot away from a whiteboard to whiteboard out the problem and solve your problems at any moment. But we need to get a whiteboard in here. We don't do nearly enough whiteboarding. What's your take on the whiteboard walls? Do you think that paint is toxic and terrible?

I don't.

You don't?

Using whiteboards. Love kind of making graphics and figma and using that Figma Maximalist.

Yep.

I've just never been. I love, you know, creative pursuits and writing and all these things, but I went to a Waldorf school. I ever told you about this? Are you familiar with Waldorf? They have like. Similar to Montessori.

Yeah, yeah.

I went to the.

To school at a five star hotel.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. No, I think it's, it's, it's. It's an educational philosophy.

Okay.

From Rudolf Steiner, emphasizing a holistic approach to education that nurtures intellectual, artistic and practical skills with a focus on imagination and creativity.

Well, that's fun.

So I credit my Waldorf education for my, you know, a number of my sort of creative abilities. But they forced us to paint and draw and knit and do all these things as kids. And I wasn't good at. I didn't have the patience for drawing. I just didn't have the patience. So I thought, I didn't like art, I thought I didn't like, you know, creative tasks as a kid, but I just didn't like. I've never liked drawing, writing.

And now you're an artist and your paintbrush.

Keyboard warrior.

Shure. SM7B.

Exactly. Keyboard warrior.

Keyboard Warrior. Podcast.

Twitter Fingers. Yeah.

Yes.

But, but generally I'm. I think that people seem to love whiteboards. There should be more of them.

Yeah, I like it.

Be fun to have one here that we could write on. You know, KPIs, stuff like that.

Yeah. Let's go to nick. He says 500 people run the world, but they collectively use like 50 therapists and listen to everything they say. So really, 50. 50 therapists run the world in the.

Follow up, and those 50 therapists have been trained by, like, five teachers.

Oh, it's all downstream from something.

Yeah.

I don't know. It's funny. Funny conspiracy. I wonder if this is actually true at all or just like something that was completely hallucinated.

Yeah. Billmanitis post.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I can't. I can't imagine that this is true, though, that, like, Satya and Sundar are using the same therapist or something.

It's funny because therapy so often. I haven't had a therapist since I was like, in high school or something like that. It never worked. I was never big into that world, but.

Or the Tom Cruise route.

Yeah. I just watch Tom Cruise movies and get fired up. I think it's more about talking out loud about the things that you're working through and coming to. To many of your own conclusions. Right.

Or going for a long walk.

Yeah, a walk.

50K steps.

50,000 steps. Billmanitis putting up 50,000 steps in a day. Five times. Most people's goals.

It's so much that's walking all day long.

Yeah.

Anyway, let's move on. Speaking of walking, running, going long distances, Zach says, package your obsession into one thing that compounds one brand, one output, one core product. When all thoughts are directed towards one channel, a violent rainstorm is captured in one infinite well that sustains and compounds beyond your wildest imagination. Good writer.

He's writing a book.

He is, yeah. Oh, that's fun.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Cool. Yeah. I bet he'll sell a ton of them.

Yeah.

I mean, he has over a million on Instagram now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, and I mostly want to highlight his execution on his new consumer app, which is building kind of a social layer on top of of these fitness trackers.

And good name, too. It's called Aura. Right. It's a very on trend. You were trying to get Aura farming to go viral, and we were kind of. We were almost too early on it.

I failed.

But I think it's probably breaking through now, and I think people will now start to get it. Maybe.

Yeah. If you want to make money on Aura Farming, though, you. You had to be in it, you.

Know, early months ago. Yeah, probably.

Probably.

Should we go to. Emily is in sf.

Okay, I'll read this one. Pissed off a lot of people. It did. So, timeline and turmoil, folks. Timeline and turmoil. Not my content, but let's see what Emily has to say, she says to me, the greatest sadness of all is the banality of most people's lives. I'll spend time with my non elite friends and it's clear that their lives are devoid of heroism and lore. They lock in, clock in, but they fight no great battles and they dash no great foes. They drop by thy club or thy bar, but find no great loves there. They travel the world, but is by no means an adventure. They return home, but they are not welcomed by a triumph. No, all they have are their succulents and the pile of dirty laundry they failed to do before they left. Brutal. Absolutely brutal.

Does the, does the golden retriever long for great battles?

Brother Will is in the comments here, here. There was quite a lot of comments but it's ranking people that are in the TB verse and Will says what's your net worth? Which is a great follow up question to a post like this.

I love it.

Yeah, but, but no, great, great.

It's the Chad homonym. Yeah, good argument. What's your bench press?

Yeah, no, I mean I think there.

Is some truth here.

Obviously there's, there's always some truth to any. Anything viral post, controversial.

Yes, yes.

There's no truth, there's no controversy.

But again, we are in the you can era. So if you are surrounded by succulents, maybe, you know, lock in, clock in.

I would say let's invite Emily on the show. I want to see how the heroism and lore in her life, how she's locking in and clocking in to fight great battles, how she's finding great love at the club or the bar, how she's adventuring around the world.

You can just sign up to be the first person to go on starship.

Yeah, yeah. Hey, Flight nine. Flight nine is coming up.

Strap me in. You can just choose to change everything.

The firmament has an 80 lead against SpaceX right now. But we're feeling good about the ninth flight and Emily. Take it on.

Yeah, let's do it anyway. Fun post. I love this one from Palmer. Lucky we've talked about Call of Duty and how important it is to the global economy before he says the Call of Duty franchise has done more to engender support for UK use US military cohesion over the past two decades than just about anything else. Especially with military age males. Change my mind.

Accurate.

100% accurate. Yeah. Who's that? Soap McTavish. Do you not know the characters in Call of Duty?

It's coming back.

Oh, little three finger moment. Oh, I can't I can't identify soap McTavish.

No, I know. I remember what he looks like. I just.

I just blanked on the name because I'm not a real gamer.

Oh.

Oh, mogged. It's great. Yeah. We need more Call of Duty games.

We need to get a soap McTavish like sound effect.

If I'm wrong on that, I'm dead. I think I'm right.

But John Soap MC. No, you actually are wrong.

I'm wrong.

McTavish is the guy with the buzz cut.

Oh, no, I'm wrong.

Who is it?

Okay, I don't know. It's someone from Call of Duty. I don't even know. I, I. I played the first Call of Duty. The very first one, when it came out, played Call of Duty.

Captain Price.

Captain Price. That's right. Captain Price.

Price.

Oh, Captain Price. It's great. Anyway, wait, Ben, can you Call of Duty.

Can you pull up best Captain Price moments?

Yeah, can you. Can you pull up a Call of Duty compilation? Let's just watch that for the rest of the show. I want to see some.

Okay, I've got some quotes from Captain Price.

Yeah, yeah. Learn some lore.

History is written by the victor. History is filled with liars. If he lives and we die, his truth becomes written and ours is lost. They say truth is the first casualty of war.

We got to just start tweeting these out. Bangers.

Shepard will be a hero. Because all you need to change the world is one good lie in a river of blood.

I love it. I love it.

We get dirty, and the world stays clean.

Yeah, we get dirty and the world stays clean. The story of podcasting to throw this on, right?

What the hell kind of name is Soap?

How a Muppet like you pass selection.

Watching Call of Duty.

These are core childhood memories.

Kaboom. Oh, this is so good.

Open fire.

We need.

I need a sound effect that says open fire.

For sure, for sure. I mean, if AI takes all the jobs, I think I'm gonna be doing just fine just playing Call of Duty on Endless Mode.

Don't do anything stupid.

I'll be fine.

Loyalists are expecting us half a click to the north. Move out.

Loyalists. Anyway. Oh, Call of Duty. But I would love to just take.

What kind of name is Soap? Eh? How to Muppet like you pass selection.

I love it.

I love it.

It's great to just go back to the top.

Nikolai, we got to get Soap out of here.

Yeah, it's great.

Shepherd is using site Hotel Bravo. You know where it is. I'll see you in Hell, it's great.

Anyway, moving on to something extremely important. A lot of Pro America VCs out there have been asking us for car recommendations. We got a good one for you. 2018 Ford GT asking Pro Price 8990.

Giving it away.

Giving it away. Finished in shadow black with re entry black, white and white interior complimentary by Anarchy forged wheels and Bowden Auto House titanium exhaust system. Go check it out.

I really don't like the wheels. Those are easy enough to swap out but this is a whole Bowden Auto House. This is like their, their entire aesthetic which for some is exactly right.

Not enough. Not enough VCs with the Mansory body kits and the stance under lighting.

But we know what they say, build.

A house one brick at a time.

Truth is the first casualty of all.

It's great. I don't know how many more we should do. Let's go to Yaxine. Of course he's been on the show before. He just says this is the most important website in the world. Tag with the X tag. I love it. Yeah. If you're ever just having a low period in your in your timeline, just post this is the greatest app and bunch of people will come out. The stands will support. Very self referential but you got to put up numbers every once in a while. You know you love it. Should we go to Jeff Lewis?

Yeah. This is an interesting post. He says I now talk with categories of quote unquote people in this order of frequency. My family, my team at Bedrock. Our broader battle be bedrock. Business Relationships across entrepreneurs, LPs, top talent across industries, government and others. Ultra close friends. LLMs friends other so LLMs climbing the ranks. Others like the H vac guy.

Yeah. But it's odd. What I thought was interesting about this is that I use LLMs a lot. I don't think of myself as, as talking with them. Like I don't think. I don't think I'm having a conversation with Google. I don't think I'm talking to ChatGPT or Grok when I use it. I feel like it's much more in the tool realm for me. But I'm wondering if I'm missing out on something. I know voice mode's getting better, but I haven't really gone down the sesame rabbit hole or the voice mode where I'm really just like chopping it up with them for a long time. I did have a pretty good experience driving in and I asked the voice mode on GPT 4.5 just to kind of like Tell me the. The top stories in the Wall Street Journal, kind of break them down. And then I could kind of steer it, but it was still a little awkward. It didn't feel like actually talking to a person or a friend who's very much just like comes up and then, you know, ask the next question. Should we move on to Blake Robbins? I thought this was a great take. And under discuss. Yeah, this is great. So we've talked about levels before. He built a flight simulator game. He vibe coded it with a bunch of AI coding tools. Went viral. He's now making something like $56,000 ARR. Or something. He's climbing. He's making money. He's selling blimp ads in them. He's selling f. F16s he has in game purchases. It's very cool and he's documenting it all. But Blake has a good point here. He says the success of levels, flight simulator game is really a story about effective distribution, leveraging his massive audience, not just AI game development. And I think that's 100. Right, right.

And he is using that audience, but then the audience is remarketing his game by just raging at it and raging over the quality or his monetization strategy. And so it's really a great story of not having distribution, but then properly leveraging that distribution by building something somewhat controversial.

I'd love to close there, but we got one more. We gotta go to Nat Friedman, former brother of the week. Nat Friedman is preparing to transport scrolls to the scanner. He's not stopping. He's not resting on his laurels. He's scanning more scrolls. The scrolls must be scanned. I love it and I'm very excited. So good luck to you on that transportation. Hopefully it goes smoothly. Hopefully they aren't damaged in transit. I've really enjoyed following the scroll story and, you know, we. We got to talk to more of these scrolls folks. They're always super interesting people. The scrolls universe, the cinematic universe of everyone working on the scrolls. Casey Hanmer, a bunch of other people. Very, very fascinating.

Anyway, the scroll verse.

The scroll verse. Stay tuned for more. We'll see you on Monday and have a.

Have a great weekend.

We'll talk to you soon. Bye bye.