Cursor Acquisition Closes, Bezos x Liverpool, Flying Roadster, Car Week, Gen Z Trends & More

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Today is Friday, August 14th, 2026. We are live from the TBPN UltraDome, the temple of technology, the fortress of finance, the capital of capital. Get out of here. Oh, we got—

That's our Zoomer intern.

Yeah.

He's headed back to school.

Let me tell you about ramp.com really quick. Time is money, save both. Easy to use corporate cards, bill pay, accounting, and a whole lot more all in one place. We gotta play the See You Again goodbye like he passed away. This is the saying goodbye to our intern Ben Macklin. Yeah, we need an AI video of me and him in sports cars driving along the Pacific Coast Highway, and then we reach a fork in the road and he goes off to Canada and Jordi goes to Malibu or something. But every time this song— When the song hits, it's a good one. It's a good one. Anyway, we're very, very sad to say goodbye.

End of an era, but the story's not over.

To a web man, Ben Macklin, one of the greatest to ever do it. Yeah, the story's not over. Anyway, there are a ton of stories that are not over. We're going to take you through a bunch of them. First is that we received a Renaissance painting in the mail from a company called Gamut. They posted a video. We can play their little clip of how they put this together. Very funny go-to-market strategy. It got our attention. We opened it up. I'm like, what is this huge box that's addressed addressed to us. Turns out it's an AI image of me and Jordi dressed as Renaissance medieval knights or something, banging a gong. Got the horse in there. Got a bunch of different stuff. I would go Ben Macklin stand-up over this, but it's a close second. It's a close second. Very disrespectful to Ben Macklin's pop-up.

He's gone.

He's gone? Anyway, can we play the video of the— we asked Gamut agents to make Renaissance portraits of 130 startup founders. Found the founder, sourced their photos, ordered the paintings, found their offices, mapped the delivery route. Very cool workflow for go-to-market for attention. And funny, they're having— they're dressed up in costumes, they're having fun filming this. I feel like we are entering a new era of startup launch video. The vibe reel meta is dead, and this is unique, and the next one we're gonna show you is unique too, Uh, in my opinion. Now, uh, there are some drawbacks with this, you know. Uh, it, it will lose its luster if, uh, everyone in the world receives a Renaissance painting. Uh, it'll be a little bit, uh, it'll get stale. I love it. Uh, but this is great. I, I think this is so fun. And, uh, this goes back to Sam Blonde when he was at Oh, was it Brex or he was working with Parker Conrad at Zenefits or something like that? He said that he was in the go-to-market role. He was trying to get on the phone with companies and sell them either corporate cards or HR services at the time. I forget which company he was with, but he would send a box of champagne, a bottle of champagne very nicely. And he said that the return, the uptake on, yeah, I'll hop on the phone with Sam.

People are saying he invented corporate gifting.

Basically, I mean, that's— he's sort of the one that pushed it another notch up. Yeah, obviously corporate giving goes back decades, but preemptive, preemptive corporate gifting. And I think he systematized it a little bit more than most people do. And Gamut seems to have built an agent that allows you to do just that. So congrats to the team over there on the—

yeah, fascinating, fascinating piece of AI slop, but when you put it— when you bring it into the physical world, it transcends. It becomes something more than slop.

I want your review on this coinage that I heard from my co-founder over at Lucy. When AI slop is good, it's AI slap, because it slaps. Specifically with regard to Suno songs.

Yeah, I like that.

You're like, not quite there, but Anyway, you're— I want the production team to tell me if this video, which is not AI slop, slaps because it is an adaptation of Obsession from Jerry Zhang over at Lemma YCF25. What does F stand for?

Fall.

Fall 25. Oh, because they do quarterly now. Anyway, let's play this.

Yeah.

F.

Can we not talk about that right now? Okay.

Sorry, it's the second time they texted me that.

I'll be right back.

What is it, dude?

I'm busy. Okay, so—

What is it?

I looked into your out-of-office emails and she sent out replies to all 30,000 emails in your inbox.

Now you haven't seen Obsession. I told her to only reply to emails when I'm out of the office. But the production team has?

Look, you know it's my job to service you.

I've seen it.

These kinds of failures for you, and it may suck.

Yeah, I think it's in the same restaurant too.

Looks very similar about it.

It's either a lack of guardrails or same location, or I don't know, man.

I'm gonna pull the traces and look into it for you. They nailed the production, like the lighting, cinematography, identical. I don't think I could function without your prompts.

Calling tools on my behalf without any human oversight?

Yes, without any human oversight. Nika?

Yeah?

Okay, this is a little slow, so I'm going to tell you about Railway. Railway is the all-in-one intelligent cloud provider. Use your favorite agent to deploy web apps, servers, databases, and more while Railway automatically takes care of scaling, Monitoring and security. It definitely has the pacing of a Hollywood film. Maybe we need to go back to the reel era.

What's the product? It's— it basically monitors agents made by other companies.

Jerry says agents are taking on real economic work as runs get longer. Mistakes become expensive at best, catastrophic at worst. Today, teams find out from user complaints or never. Monitoring tools only catch what you told them to watch for. So you set up the judges. You trace the issues yourself, but agents will always fail in ways you didn't predict. That's why we built Llama. Llama understands what your agent is supposed to do, so it surfaces failures you never defined automatically. So Llama sits there, watches everything that goes on. Oh, there's something that seems really odd because it's basically taking the whole context of everything that's happening in the organization and saying, okay, well, you just sent out 100,000 emails. Like, was that the right thing? You should probably flag this. This seems like an an uptake in, like you would see if you start seeing an insane amount of traffic on a specific product detail page on your e-commerce site. It might be that, oh, something's—

Yeah, or coupon code.

Or coupon code. It might be that something's going viral on this particular SKU. Maybe you need to buy more inventory. In the best case, maybe you're being spammed or scammed in some way, or maybe you accidentally priced your product at 1 cent instead of $1, and so, or $100. So people are buying it and you need to fix that. This will do that across the entire organization in theory. Production team, what do you think about the obsession knockoff as startup launch video?

I thought it was pretty good.

Rave review.

Yeah.

Looks like the movie. Mike disagreed, maybe. Oh, Mike disagreed. Shots fired. Wrong lens? What do we got? I don't know. Take some shots. He said color's off. Oh, the color's off. OK. OK. Well, the experts have weighed in. So anyway, it's a good product, right?

No, I mean, I can see a new meta of startups just recreating iconic movie scenes to promote their products.

Yeah.

But I don't know.

Like if you're growing human tissue, you recreate Michael Bay's The Island to show— just recreate the dystopian scenario that you're creating. No, I'll—

And then be like, it's exactly like that.

No, there is something to that where Obsession is a horror film, it's very scary, and so the enemy of the product is shown. Like the lemma is the guy on the phone in Obsession, Basically, there's this curse and the woman becomes obsessed with the man, and the guy's friend calls him and says like, hey, your girlfriend is acting very, very weird. Something's going on. You need to break up with her. You need to rethink this. And so Lemma is the friend in this scenario, but it is a horror shot after all, so it does leave you—

And the woman is the agent.

The woman is the agent.

Gone off the rails.

Yeah, the agent that has gone off the rails. And so there is a little bit of like, you leave with the feeling of a horror film, which is so— just on a generic brand experience side, I'm like, ugh. But that's kind of the emotion that they wanted to deliver, right? Was like, imagine—

An agent sending—

An agent doing something really bad in your organization. So not an unreasonable scenario. Anyway, there's debate between Corgi and Sheol Monat on the Corgi becoming An issuer of the ETF business?

Yeah.

Sheel says, wild that Corgi, the insurer, is in the ETF business. ETFs are mostly distribution plus branding. So, if you can manufacture them cheaply, I get launching a ton and seeing what sticks. And they really are spraying. Here are some of them: Coffee Energy Drinks ETF, New York City Companies ETF, Beauty ETF, BNPL ETF. They have a Gambling ETF, a Surveillance ETF, a U.S. War Machine ETF, and Lifestyle Brands. They combine for $25 $5,000 in gross fees, but they have a hit semiconductor photonics. It's $506 million of the $914 million Corgi AUM and generates $1.8 million a year in gross fees. That feels like really big scaling very quickly for a company that's as young as Corgi. So it seems like the product is working at this point. I don't know. People were going back and forth on like, is this a pivot? We thought they were an insurance company. Now they're an ETF company. But I don't know, did you dig into any more of this story? Because Niko from Corgi did fire back.

Niko fires back. He says, you should never work with VCs who devote their time to dunking on startups on X. Taking money from Shiel's fund is a hugely negative symbol for the startups who do that. For this reason, he is bad for the ecosystem.

And this is—

this behavior is a pattern of his.

Wait, was Shiel dunking? It felt like he was saying just I don't think he was dunking.

Of course, I mean, I think that Sheel has probably posted about Corgi.

I mean, he just said the Shiba fund is one of the most lucrative for Corgi. Okay. Yeah.

I think Sheel has probably made other comments about Corgi historically.

Shots fired.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, they're— I don't— I think Sheel is just genuinely very curious.

Yeah.

And Niko, I don't think, likes the Likes the attention.

Yeah, the critique. So she said, I'm not sure why you are so defensive. I literally said the same thing as you. In my opinion, launching a bunch of ETFs cheaply and seeing what sticks is a reasonable strategy if your costs are near zero. And Niko says, no, it's a pattern of behavior. And rather than your own statements, you try to hide behind being imprecise or vague with your language, selectively pointing out a bunch of new ETFs without traction yet and pointing out FDRX lower AUM while ignoring our unleveraged version FDRS, which has $90 million of AUM, shows this is another dishonest, selectively vague post against us like your previous comments regarding our underwriting. So they're going back and forth and there's a whole timeline's been in turmoil over Corgi for a while. They do the cafes, they get a lot of attention. But in general, it does seem like they've broken through and it feels like there is a real product and insurance is a product that can actually grow and it's much less about—

Yeah.

And insurance and ETFs pretty much all come down to marketing and distribution.

Yeah.

And so, but yeah, feel like very different businesses to be in. And so, I wonder what the thinking is.

I mean, for most business insurance, you can get in trouble if you have a lot of correlation across the portfolio of insurance policies and you're loaning to an industry that will face like a secular downtrend at the same time, like mortgage reinsurance, for example, was the big example during the financial crisis. But if you're writing a— if you're writing a, like, a directors' and officers' insurance to a startup, it's hard to imagine a situation where there's a massive drawdown across the entire portfolio all simultaneously, at least in my mind.

Yeah.

But I don't know. I don't know, because it's not like they're insuring against, like, startup, like the market weakening and startups going bankrupt. Like if a startup goes bankrupt, they do stop paying their premiums, obviously, but it's not like there's a, like an insurance broker has to pay out a settlement. That's a different thing. It would be, the difference would be if you're doing like a ton of cybersecurity insurance, and then all of a sudden there's way more cybersecurity attacks, which honestly in the AI era, maybe that happens. Maybe there are more cybersecurity incidents. Trezor incident recently, and it does feel like there's an uptick of that. Obviously, the AI models are more capable than ever. There's open-source models. And so you could see more risk or just different underwriting of cybersecurity policies in the modern era.

Martin Shkreli says, I stand with Corgi.

Okay.

And Nico says, thanks, Martin. Fun fact, when I was in high school, my friends and I wrote you letters when you were locked up, sending letters to prison. You had a huge impact to a generation of young entrepreneurs. And looks like Elizabeth Holmes also replied, it is amazing to see how many young hungry founders write letters.

I've never written anyone a letter who's been in prison. I've also just never written a letter at all. But I mean, I don't know. I send text messages and emails. I don't really write letters. There was one person in prison that I wanted to— that I was like, oh, we should—

Yeah. My memory of processing Shkreli's whole Pharma Bro saga during that time was I thought he seemed pretty entertaining.

Yeah.

Definitely a rascal, but—

And the actual underlying elements of the case were sort of outside of the tech world because it was like a hedge fund issue. an accounting issue. I was interested in getting to the bottom of the Elizabeth Holmes story, but mostly mechanically, like how can you post on Twitter while you're in prison? That feels like the first right that they would take away. Otherwise, if you can post on Twitter, like what's the punishment? We're not really punishing people.

No.

Like lock me up, just don't take away my account. I gotta scroll. But it does seem like there was an intermediary there, and that was discovered pretty quickly, and that was transparent, and there's a flow of emails that go back and forth. And so there was a delay, but it was an interesting discussion nevertheless, but not necessary. There was also that very weird Tucker Carlson interview with SBF. You remember that? Where like he was able to do like sort of a podcast interview like over the phone. And I think that that is not okay within that.

Yeah, I think he got in trouble for that.

I think SBF got in trouble with that. But even then, SBF has been trickling out tweets for the last few couple of years, mostly taking victory laps on his startup portfolio and his investment He, of course, was an investor in Anthropic and is up like a bajillion dollars on that trade. Although the position was sold, I think. So it's more of like a fantasy football portfolio at this point. Anyway, let me tell you about Cisco. Critical infrastructure for the AI era. Unlock seamless real-time experiences and new value with Cisco. Speaking of Anthropic, there is an article in the Journal. The Information has been reporting on even Claude is in the dark about Dario Amodei's wife and her influence at Anthropic. Cami Clarke, who started what she called a revolutionary porn company She sought investment from Jeffrey Epstein, keeps a low profile, but is a key advisor to the AI chief. Its coming IPO could top trillions. And so this is— so his wife has— the actual lineage here was Dario mentioned that he was married, I believe, to— on a Bloomberg podcast, I believe.

That was recently?

The Circuit, I think. That was recently. But there was never public who this person was. And then I believe Corey Weinberg over at The Information included Cami Clark's name in a Dario profile that he published last week. And people were sort of like, oh, this is new information. We haven't seen this. And of course, there's all the debates over, is this necessary? Is this like in the public interest? At what level of power does it make sense to report on someone's life? Obviously, a lot of people are like, yeah, keep my name out your mouth. Like, don't, just don't report on my personal life. We can talk about my business, but my personal life, it's just annoying because now you need more security, now you need more, all sorts of different things that can come up from these things. But lots of people are debating this on the timeline. Like, is Anthropic systemically important at this point? Is it such an important company that it does merit this? And certainly it met the editorial criteria for the Wall Street Journal and the Information who take this stuff pretty seriously. So Clark doesn't work for us, at Anthropic, but she is often seen sitting front row while Dario Amadei talks at events such as Davos or can be found chatting up investors at gatherings like Allen Company conference in Silicon— in Sun Valley. She acts as a sounding board and strategic advisor for Amadei, according to people close to the company. She also brought Anthropic a key early investor, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, whom she had dated as it was getting off the ground in early 2021, some of the people said. But despite her influence, there are scant details about Clark online. There's one YouTube video of her pitching an earlier startup that's still up. She's on stage for about 5 or 10 minutes and sort of gives a— it's like a health company that she pitches. And it's a pretty good pitch. She has a couple note cards and sort of goes through it. But that's the only thing that's really online anymore. The pair married in 2022, apparently in Italy. But Amadei's Wikipedia page didn't say he was married until this summer and doesn't say to whom. Searches for Dario Amadei's wife on Google often turn up a photograph of his sister Daniela Amodei, who helps run the company. Even Claude, Anthropic's AI chatbot, responds to queries by saying, Dario Amodei's marital status doesn't seem to be clearly confirmed. That is extremely good because there's always this fear that when you're using an AI chatbot, whatever you say will be baked into the next training run and that the personal details will get leaked into the model. And so, like, if I'm saying, something about Jordi, like you could look up something about you and it would just show up and leak in the model. So, good. Like, I think that this is like— there's the whole like, should you be more transparent question? But just in terms of actual like removing personally identifiable information from data that goes into training runs, obviously, if you work for the company of the CEO, you probably have fully private. Don't train on anything I say ever. But just— Just good that it didn't leak through the actual model. So The Wall Street Journal writes, as Anthropic hurtles towards an IPO that could top $2 trillion as soon as this fall, Clark is one of the most influential voices shaping the decisions of the CEO at the forefront of the AI industry, a revolution remaking all aspects of work and life that simultaneously thrills and terrifies most of the public. Yes, that is 100% accurate. It's a remarkable rise for a woman who didn't graduate from college, had a previous brief marriage at age 20 to a man more than 40 years older and once declared bankruptcy. Her career included co-founding a women-focused, quote, free luxury porn company that she unsuccessfully tried to persuade convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to invest in and started a, quote, women's social dieting app that morphed into a women's healthcare AI company. That was the video that I saw on YouTube. She made connections with powerful people, including Schmidt, whom she brought into Amadei's orbit. The billionaire left his roles at Google and parent Alphabet in 2020. Oh, I didn't realize he was out in 2020 and transitioned into investing in tech startups, among other things. She also tried to persuade Schmidt to back a venture fund she would run with him to invest in Anthropic and other AI companies, although that didn't move forward. Claude, the company's chatbot, is now the chief.

Interesting. Interesting. differentiated name for a fund. I think it was the Mother of AGI.

Mother of AGI. Extremely AGI-pilled name for raising a fund in 2020. Not many people were taking that term seriously. It is a good name, Mother of AGI Fund. The goal was, quote, to be an elegant solution to formalize Cammie's involvement in Anthropic, Dario's company, and manage Eric's investment and invest in the AGI ecosystem. But I don't think it ever went through. Others at Anthropic, including Daniela Amodei and other co-founders, didn't support the plan, according to people familiar with the matter, and it didn't move forward by the end of the year. Associates said they recall seeing what looked like an engagement ring on Clark's hand, and not long after, the couple wed in Italy. Clark, known for being social and outgoing, has interacted with politicians and investors on behalf of Amodei, chatting with them and bringing them over to meet her bookish husband at conferences and events. There's also some interesting details in here about her relationship with Ivanka Trump at the Sun Valley conference in July, where she spent much of the week by her husband's side. She had lunch with Ivanka Trump, a friend, and chatted with Jared Kushner, whom Amadei had approached earlier in the year to invest, people familiar with the matter said. So a little bit of more nuance around the relationship between Anthropic and the administration. Obviously, the Department of War dust-up was a big drama cycle earlier this year. There's already communication between the two or the 2 entities to sort of, you know, maybe smooth things over. The interesting post that this made me think of, this whole conversation, was from Patrick Collison back in March 11th. And I don't remember what was going on March 11th, but I imagine it was some OpenAI drama. But he said, there's a lot of unevenness in how much attention internal drama and palace intrigue gets across different organizations. And we were joking that it was like, why is no one writing hit pieces about Stripe? Because he's like— because it's just like me and my brother running a really clean ship, and no one really complains. And there's never been a coup. And we just refuse to take the company public and just grow the business.

Building payment rails.

Yeah, we put the payment rails in the bag, sir.

Honestly, if Stripe is as successful in the fullness of time as I think it will be, there will be probably insane online conspiracies about the Collisons. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who are these 2 brothers?

Yeah, sort of a Hibernian conspiracy. They're Irish. Uh, uh, Barack Obama, part Irish, right? Goes pretty deep.

Wow. Yeah, deeper than I thought.

Yeah, that's when the company got started. Is that a coincidence? Who knows? Dig in. Uh, Patrick Collison went on to say, as far as I can tell, this is substantially a math— a matter of path dependency. We know the characters in the sitcom of certain organizations but not at others, and this creates self- self-reinforcing lock-in effects, how much does one hear about the power struggles at Chevron or the Department of Agriculture? I would love to read about the power struggles at Chevron or the Department of Agriculture. We need a banned PDF or a tell-all book, the next Sebastian Mallaby or something. I don't know. Or maybe— I don't know. Who else can tell a great business story? Maybe we'll have to dig into it. There is even significant heterogeneity between ostensibly similar companies within sectors. And so I took this at the time and sort of wrote a piece about this, calling it like tall poppy syndrome coming to America, just this idea that the intention of the public is intensely focused on like the hottest company at the time, and then all the arrows get directed at that. And I think that's something that's happening at this point. I said at the time, years ago, I was talking to an American venture capitalist about New Zealand and asked him about the startup community there. The country is beautiful, highly developed, democratic. It consistently ranks among the world's most stable, wealthy, well-governed societies, certainly worth visiting. But could New Zealand produce a power law company one day? Like, are we gonna hear, like we've seen with Spotify, and there's been a number of other companies, certainly in China, they have a number of, you know, decacorns and centacorns over there, huge companies. Will we ever see one out of New Zealand? It seems to have the recipe. And he said his assessment distilled down to something along the lines of, they are suffering from a bad case of tall poppy syndrome. Put simply, individuals who achieve visible success are criticized, attacked, or socially cut down because they stand above the others. The metaphor should be obvious, but when you cut the tallest flowers in the field, the surface appears even. Anthropologists even call this leveling behavior in hunter-gatherer societies. Good hunters might be mocked, discouraged from bragging. Sharing would be encouraged to prevent resource concentration. There's nothing all that bad about a preference for humility. America has long been suspicious of Lamborghini-driving, self-promotional Instagram course hustlers, and for good reason. They're usually selling overpriced junk food. But the strong form of tall poppy syndrome leads to slower startup formation, fewer truly scaled companies, and ultimately a talent exodus or brain drain. America has never had this problem, and I don't think we're particularly close to developing a crippling case of tall poppy syndrome. Poppy Syndrome anytime soon, but it's worth understanding how these leveling behaviors shape the narrative in tech. And I think that's a little bit of what's happening right now. Will this affect the IPO? Will this affect the stock price? Like, probably not. But John Stokes was sort of laying out why he thinks this piece was worth, you know, writing. He says, counterpoint, it's vital and overdue. Anthropic itself laid out the stakes very publicly as follows, quote, Our product is a god, and this is not an actual quote, but I guess this is like the vibe that he in particular picked up on.

It is a pretty effective summary.

He says, our product, talking about Anthropic, is a godlike intelligence that will rule over you. See how our staff endows it with morality. We even deigned to consult the Pope. Okay, so let's look at your morals, he says. This crowd can screech about the object level, Like, is the company making money? What are the margins? The more important details about risk, as opposed to the morals. But John Stokes says, by their own terms, they made morals and virtuous behavior the object level in the AI debate. That's literally Anthropic's whole frame. So why are the morals of the people who are giving AI its morals not fair game?

Yeah, if anything, it feels like it disrupts some of the brand positioning Yeah. Around morality makes that maybe less effective.

Yeah.

It is fascinating, in my view, that this kind of coverage didn't happen, like, a long time ago.

Yeah, but that's normal for the mainstream media. Like, Anthropic was not an interesting company to write about at the Wall Street Journal or the Information, even, like, last year. It was like a— I mean, it was a great—

Yeah, but even like the images that are in the Wall Street Journal piece are from February, right, where they're together. And you would think that somebody would have asked, who's this person that Daria is holding hands with? And then tried to get a little information. And the internet was mostly scrubbed, but you could just look up her name in the Epstein files, public federal database.

It actually did hit the timeline. Someone was just digging through the Epstein files in February and posted it, but didn't make the actual connection, which is very, very, very interesting. They were just like, here are all the crazy interactions that I found while digging through the files, and this was one of them, that the actual interaction, but they didn't piece it together fully. It obviously Obviously, the context of being in the journal is a very, very different thing.

Yeah.

Anyway.

Anyways, probably overall mostly just bad for the AI industry overall.

Yeah. Yeah, Nick Carter sort of summed it up here. He said, remember, if Anthropic wins and closed source wins, these are the people that will get to write the morality rules for the entire planet. And so, it maybe is worth interrogating the morality, seeing where— if you agree with it, with this stuff or not. You know, this is— This is the beauty of America. You get to read the information, the freedom of the press, and then decide where you sit on all of this. In terms of how bad this is for the AI industry, it still feels like it ranks below data centers and below ripping up old books. I don't think this will get that much traction online, but I don't know. There is a whole class of political commentators that are hyperfixated on the Epstein class. And so this could grow. It feels like it's arm's distance enough. It's not Dario, it's his wife, and it's not her going to the island, it's her emailing him for fundraising, that they didn't actually do a deal together. And so there's like a number of steps removed as opposed to with the other stories. It's much more like this data center came to town and is dirty and I don't like it. And so you post a video of that and that's like much more direct. So of the pushback, this feels like it will rank rank lower, but I don't know. We'll see where this goes. Obviously, it's tearing through tech today, but we'll see if this is something that has long-term impact on the industry or anything like that. Anyway, let's move on to something else. Public.com, investing for those that take it seriously. Stocks, options, bonds, crypto, treasuries, and more with great customer service. And there's a story that I didn't even remember to put in the timeline, This is not stocks, but it is related to trading stocks publicly. South Korea is ordering new investors to take classes. Did you see this?

Whoa!

OK, so South Korean—

Time to study the blade.

Literally.

This is a cultural pastime.

This is crazy.

You're going to learn how to use leverage responsibly.

Yes, basically. So, South Korean retail investors must now complete a week-long course before—

Week-long?

A week-long course before they can start trading in single-stock funds as regular Regulators tighten restrictions on products blamed for exacerbating wild swings in one of the world's most volatile stock markets. So the move follows an extraordinary boom and subsequent correction in South Korean equities. The KOSPI rose 76% in 2025 and then doubled again this year, peaking at more than 9,300 points in June. Retail investors poured a net $70 billion into the market. And remember, South Korea is Not nearly as big as America, and so they were all YOLOing effectively into the AI-driven rally like chipmakers SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics. The rise coincided with government efforts to boost the market. Single stock leveraged ETFs in the two companies were introduced in late May, allowing investors to magnify bets on Korea's semiconductor champions. Then at a press conference. On June 8th, President Lee Jae-myung said that the market was still, quote, somewhat undervalued despite having hit about 8,000 points. So you have the president of the country being like, we got room to run. Now is a generational buying opportunity.

I wonder, I wonder if he'll also get into selling early access to his comments on the market. Maybe, maybe that's just the new meta. A lot of people have been been sort of disgusted and disappointed by that kind of behavior. Yeah, over here. Yeah, but maybe it's just the new normal.

So the rally unraveled in July with the KOSPI falling 22% for its worst month since the global financial crisis. The finance ministry announced measures to limit access to leveraged ETFs. Many retail investors have suffered significant losses in single-stock leveraged ETF And their perception of those products has changed. Investors bought Samsung and SK Hynix leveraged ETFs in late May and held them until mid-July. They lost about half their money. New investors in single stock leveraged ETFs must now complete at least one hour of simulated trading a day for five days. So it's not a forty-hour course; it's one hour a day of simulated leverage trading. For 5 days straight, then you will be allowed to trade on these platforms.

So they also have mandatory military service. So now they have mandatory day trading.

Mandatory everything.

At the end, they go, that wasn't a simulation.

You were trading the real market. Yeah, it's Ender's Game in Korea. You just secured a generational badge. That was real money you were trading. I wonder, I wonder, it'll be very interesting to look at the data from what the traders do in simulation versus reality. Like, do they take more risk because they know it's play money? Are they actually learning?

When I'm on a— and I'm— when I'm in a racing simulator, I do drive a bit different than when I'm actually on the track.

Okay. Okay. We'll see.

Presumably, this would like teach the wrong Instincts, right? Because if you're just— if you sit there—

No, obviously, obviously they're trying to show people that if you are trading with leverage, you just lose a lot of money.

Yeah, often you're just gonna get wiped out. So you're like, okay, I got wiped out on day 3. Now I'm not gonna get wiped out when I go into the real market.

Wouldn't you want to like instill like, you should just go, you should just buy and hold, right? But if you just sit there an hour every day, like, you're not just gonna watch, like, press buy and then sit there. Yeah, it's gonna like teach you like, oh, you're gonna be doing zero day.

For sure, you're gonna be going crazy. So, uh, a quote from a soul resident of Boston.

Yeah, it's funny to think about if you were— let's say if, if as a, as a team we were forced into the date— into a week-long day trading course, you know that we would probably have some side bets on who could run it up.

For sure, for sure.

As high as possible in simulated trading.

And so, we're probably done. We were really close to actually doing that and having that be like a show segment between the retail corner, the retail corner, the retail corner. He he was having some he was having some wild swings. But a sole resident in South Korea who lost money said this: He said it does feel a bit like closing the barn door after the horse has bolted. Though it's better than doing nothing. Saying like, I already lost it all. I don't need a course.

Is that a real quote?

It's a real quote.

That feels very borrowed from like the American South.

Yeah, it's great. It does feel like closing the barn door after the horse has bolted. I like this. We gotta take a trip to South Korea. However, there are signs that tighter market regulation is cooling the market. Daily turnover in single stock leveraged ETFs on July July 30th fell from $12 trillion to just $70 billion. So that's a huge drop-off, 90% down on the actual trading volume. And for Yoon, the South Korean resident who lost money, it has done little to restore faith in policymakers. Investors like us have grown increasingly resentful. Trust in the government has been severely shattered. He was counting on the government to stop him from going too crazy in the financial markets, and they did not. And he's upset about it. He's not happy. So interesting, interesting development. We'll see where it goes. Let me tell you about Console.com. Console builds AI agents that automate 70% of IT, HR, and finance support, giving employees instant resolution for access requests and password resets.

John, it's time to talk about Car Week.

Okay, let's do it.

But first, before we talk about Car Week, we're going to talk about Tesla nears unveiling of radical new flying Roadster. So if you remember, probably around 6 months ago, whenever Elon did his last appearance on Joe Rogan, yes, he was alluding to the idea that the Roadster might be able to get a little bit of airtime.

Yeah.

Anybody that is Anyone who's done driving in the backcountry knows that all cars can get airtime. But I don't think that's what he was alluding to. I don't think that's what he's alluding to. I think he was alluding to some set of features that allow it to—

Fly.

Fly.

Yeah.

And what— I don't know what we're going to— I don't know what flying is, right? Is flying an inch off the ground? If you're moving at 100 miles an hour, maybe.

Maybe. So there is a Chinese car that can jump over a pothole. Extremely relevant for Los Angeles. We got to get this car here to change all the tariff rules. But some sort of— I think it's a BYD— can actually change the suspension so aggressively that it can jump while traveling. And we said, like, okay, the gauntlet has thrown down. Jumping is not enough to go viral. Jumping will not satisfy the criteria of, you know, flying. So it has to be able to, you know, probably go more than 6 inches off the ground, maybe a full foot off the ground. It has to be able to stay off the ground for, I don't know, a few seconds, 10 seconds. My speculation was that it would be able to use the thrusters to lift off the ground and parallel park directly That was my prediction for something that would satisfy flying without actually being just, oh, you can just fly it from Malibu to LA.

Yeah.

Like, I think that that's probably not in the cards, but I think that it has to have a crazy demo. It has to look crazy. It has to have crazy stats, but it also has to have a crazy viral video demo where you show it and you're like, wow, no other car can do that. Not even close. But anyway, information has the—

The crazy thing What's interesting is that even as far back as 8 years ago, there were patents that Tesla filed related to using effectively rocket-style thrusters in a vehicle. And people were already kind of chattering around then, is Tesla gonna make some type of car?

The collab, the SpaceX collab. They have the rockets.

Yeah, the SpaceX— if Tesla comes out with a Roadster that has SpaceX. It's like basically—

Merlin engine on it.

Some type of SpaceX engine. There's probably, I would put it, now that the company's public, there's probably 10,000 buyers for that car. Like you can imagine a lot of people.

It's 20 times the Audi new Velari. That's pretty wild.

Well, the Audi new, the new Velari is like intentionally—

Yeah. You know, the other thing that they could do is they could go out to the salt flats and they could set the world speed record, the high-speed record, because a rocket engine on the back of a Tesla going in a straight line would— they could probably break the speed of sound. And that would be amazing. It wouldn't necessarily fit the flying criteria, but it'd be flying across the salt flats. So I'd give it credit. But it needs a crazy twist, I think.

Between Elon's promises, this is Grace K. In the information this morning. Between Elon's promises of super nimble robots and interstellar colonization, the billionaire has spent plenty of time over the last decade hyping up another ambitious effort, the next version of the Roadster, the sporty electric vehicle that first put Tesla on the map. At first, he said he wanted the vehicle to be the fastest production car in the world. Then he said he wanted it to be crazier than every fictional James Bond car combined. And he wanted the car to be able to fly.

Don't the James Bond cars have guns and missiles on them?

Yes, they do. Ejector seats.

I mean, I guess you could get a— like, in order to buy the Tesla, you have to have an FFL. You have to have a firearms dealer license.

Oh, a dealer license.

Dealer license.

Okay, so it's basically a gun store on wheels.

Exactly, exactly.

Because that would be very American. Like, that would be very—

you can't get automatic weapons, you can't get silenced All these things are heavily restricted. But if you go through the process to become a gun store, you can get a lot more crazy stuff. So maybe, maybe that's just the process.

Some Musk directives sent Tesla designers down a rabbit hole that lasted years, delaying the car's release. The company first showed a prototype design of the vehicle and began accepting reservations for it in 2017. Since then, it has chucked that design completely and come up with a new one, which hasn't been publicly revealed. That could change soon. Tesla is currently planning an unveiling of the new design, which could happen as early as this month. I was trying to figure out, is there any world that they do something at Car Week happening right now?

Where are we on Tesla?

Feels very, very unlikely. It feels like much more like Elon to do his own event and not compete for attention. That event will include an elaborate stunt showing off the flying capabilities of a limited edition version of the Roadster, the result of a collaboration between Tesla and SpaceX. The demonstration is expected to take place at SpaceX's testing site in McGregor, Texas. As recently as a few months ago, Tesla's plans for the demonstration were like something out of a science fiction movie. They involve showing the vehicle racing onto a magnetized roller coaster-like ramp and driving upside down before righting itself and hovering in the air, 3 people said. Previously, Musk has said the vehicle's ability to fly would come from cold gas thrusters developed with SpaceX. Still, there's uncertainty about what Tesla will actually show at the event. Did you hear that, John? I'm gonna read it back.

Tell me.

A magnetized roller coaster-like ramp driving upside down before righting itself and hovering in the air.

Sorry, I need you to read that for a third time.

They're making a Hot Wheels-style Okay, roller coaster loop.

And this is what leaked. This is crazy. I love it though.

No, I absolutely love this.

I love it.

This is awesome. This is amazing. What is—

okay, Musk told some Tesla staffers in recent weeks that the demonstration will be difficult to pull off and could go awry, but it will be entertaining regardless.

It's such a—

it couldn't be learned whether Tesla will show the event live or share recorded footage. All spectators at the event will be stationed several hundred yards away from the vehicle because of potential damage—

demolition—

to their eardrums. Cold gas thrusters generate high-pressure gas that can create significant noise and vibrations, according to Jay Kim, a professor of aerodynamics at the University of Southampton. As a result, the car will be remotely operated without anyone inside the vehicle. Okay, this feels like we're getting farther and farther away from a production car.

It's just a rocket.

Hundreds of yards away, remotely operated, might go terribly.

Can you imagine getting—

He's just reinventing rockets.

Honey, would you mind running out and grabbing a gallon of milk? Let me start the cold gas thrusters. Boom, all the windows break in your neighbor's Let me pull out the car. Oh, that would be very, very funny. Is that the end of that story?

That's all, folks.

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Back to the story. Tesla could use some reinvigoration at the moment. Its stock has lost nearly a quarter of its value this year. Oh, maybe you know we've had this. You know you've had this theory for yeah like over a year now that if that if Tesla and SpaceX are going to merge, Elon owns a lot more of SpaceX, so he would want Tesla to be at a lower valuation.

Maybe this feels all pumped though. This feels like this.

No, but if if it's a spectacular explosion, okay, then then maybe then maybe then maybe you know the stock drops and the next day he goes. Okay, yeah, time to— time, time to buy.

So wait, do the original reservations still get you to the front of the line of this thing? They better, because I'm— I've been so close to putting down a reservation multiple times, being like, I think— I think you should— I think it's gonna be a decade, but when it comes, it's going to be so hilarious and unique. You'd be like, uh, is it legal to drive in the United States? No. Do I need to contact the FAA before I turn it on? Yes. Yes, but is it a 1 of 10,000?

Plus, you can still register for a Roadster.

Okay.

You have to put $45,000 down.

Yeah, it was like $200 originally.

Actually, no, it's $50K, $5K immediately, and then you got to send a wire.

It's the same amount of money you can come and book a plug for Plug Walk, right?

Roughly.

I think so. That's the number. Well, in other car news, Porsche heard you loud and clear. They're bringing back the manual for the Carrera S. The 911 Carrera S is back with a manual. It's North America exclusive MT package for 2027. 6 gears, 473 horsepower. That's pretty— that's a little bit higher than some of the models. Not bad. And loads of features. All the details are over at motor1.com. Jason Fried is very happy to hear this. What do you think, Jordi? What's the review?

I like it. My first sports car, a manual 911.

Manual 911.

Here it is back. Makes a lot of sense. They're listening. They're listening to their— they're talking to their customers.

Coupe is $170K. Yeah, they really are. And it's odd because I feel like the Porsche brand is strong. I feel like they've had some misadventures in the EV market, but in general, Like the actual results of the new Cayenne EV Turbo S are insane. I think zero to sixty in like plaid territory, like two seconds.

Yeah, if if it had self-driving anywhere near Tesla, maybe that would be way more popular.

Maybe that's it because we've seen that like the the the financials of the company are beaten up, but the brand still is very solid. They haven't they haven't they haven't had their like lucha moment where everyone's like oh this one looks bad. You know, they haven't had a backlash to the core visual brand, which I think is so important for longevity in this category. And so I think this will be successful. And people have been asking for this. The 911 ST sold very well. I think it's over $1 million a car now. And I still don't fully understand how all the different manual options fit together across the portfolio. The ST seems like very exclusive, but I can't off the top of my head— It's a manual.

Well, then you have the Sport Classic, you have the R.

Yeah, yeah, there's a few manual options, which I think is good. But when the ST came out, it was sort of branded as like the only way to get the full-throated Porsche experience in a manual. And so that's why—

There's also the T, which is manual. So they've been offering a variety of ways to get into a manual. Yeah, transmission 911. Ferrari is also out with the Ferrari CZ26.

Okay.

Temporary reinterpretation of the high-performance berlinetta concept through a pure and highly technical formal language. It's a special projects car.

Yes.

It develops a new stylistic identity starting from the supercar features of the SF90 Stradale, defined by a direct, distinctly horizontal design and a highly distinctive 2-box silhouette.

It looks a lot more restrained than the, than the standard SF90. Yeah, this looks cool.

Yeah, more refined version of the SF90.

Looks nice. I wonder how many— is it the overall bodywork of this hashtag Ferrari one-off design? So are they just doing one of these and they're showing off at Car Week? They're just doing one? One of one feels like—

yeah, I— so far I haven't seen anything That's everything out of Ferrari.

From Car Week? There's a bunch of other things. McLaren is introducing a first concept of its kind.

Kind of stealing the show.

The McL6 GT, a contemporary realization of Bruce McLaren's original road car vision. The McL6 GT embodies the pioneering spirit that continues to shape McLaren.

Let's get some sound here.

Oh, yeah. Connection has to be real, felt in every input.

Notice how the, the ad is shot vertically.

Oh, and they dropped it in square format on X.

I love the, the front end.

Looks beautiful. Why did they upload it square on Instagram or on, on X?

No, I think this is just how X handles vertical video.

Oh, really?

Oh yeah, it is interesting. They blur the background and kind of blend it in. Interesting. An authentic manual gearbox.

You see that? That's a little bit of a jab at Ferrari.

Oh yeah.

Manual gearbox.

Yeah, because they have those manual by wire. Okay, it's a nice shot. Built from the foundation of our founder's legacy, the MCL.

McLaren road car.

Yeah.

That answers the question. Oh, they're saying register your interest. So maybe they make a number of these.

Build today. Waitlist maxing. What else we got? Anyway, if you're designing a car, do it in Figma. Agents meet the canvas. Your AI agents can now create and modify your Figma files with design system context. Aston Martin also launched the Valen. Say that doesn't need an introduction. It interrupts me. It kind of does need an introduction. I've never heard of this before. Uh, the most powerful front-engine V12 car in our history, limited to 150 cars worldwide for the purists. And so there, uh, this is off of the Vanquish platform, presumably, but 150 versions of this.

Yeah, it looks— I mean, again, uh, looks, I think, very cool.

Yep, no manual.

They specced it in a, in a way that It's fun to have these at Car Week. I don't, I don't necessarily love, but you don't— it, it's, it, it feels very close to the Valor. It feels very close to the Valor. They also had the Victor at some point. Um, and, uh, anyways, I don't, I don't know what Aston needs to do to really get back in the game. I think the Their primary challenge is at the lower end of the market.

Shouldn't they make that COD Mobile?

Yeah, they should actually make that instead of just making it playable in the game.

It is weird that no one right now is going after what the Audi R8 was, like a more affordable supercar. All of the luxury car, supercar, hypercar manufacturers seem to be going upmarket with $500,000, million-dollar cars. But there's— and even the new Volari is up at $500,000, $600,000, $700,000, right? Like, if Audi makes a supercar, you would expect it to be cheaper than the 296 from Ferrari, right? Like, because that's what the R8 strategy was.

Yeah.

The R8 was cheaper than the Ferrari of the day. It was cheaper than the Lamborghini of the day or the base model. So it was It was like, if you want a more affordable supercar with an Audi badge—

With inflation, you could have seen Audi making a $400,000 supercar, right? The new Velari is much more limited, comes in around $700,000.

You could do a lot cheaper than that. I mean, the ZR1X, like—

Yeah, but that doesn't— every Audi is being priced higher than whatever the Chevy Ford equivalent is.

Exactly. So, so, so, yeah, okay, maybe you're right. Like slice in between a ZR1X and a 296. That's where I would put the new Volari or the Audi halo car.

I just think it needs to be priced somewhere around where the Temerario is.

Is it more expensive than the Temerario?

It's almost double.

That's an odd choice. I think it should, but It looks like a spaceship.

I got to see it in person on Monday. It is even better looking in person. It's a very special car.

Does it get absolutely mobbed by the 2027 Mustang Dark Horse SC convertible?

Maybe for you.

America's back, baby. While you have to wait for the Tesla Roadster, Ford's got you covered with a 5.2-liter V8 with 795 horsepower. 525 horsepower, which is probably nothing compared to what the Roadster will have, and 660 pound-feet of torque feeding the rear wheels via 7-speed dual-clutch transmission. The MagneRide suspension has a less aggressive tune than the coupe, and the convertible won't be offered with the coupe's hardcore track package. But fun for the Mustang fans. Mustang's been doing some special editions too. They got the— they got a bunch of different really, really high-tier options out there. There. Cadillac introduced the V1 concept.

Let's go. Ben says, still looks like a vacation rental.

Yeah, one of these Hertz. Cadillac revealed the V1 concept. It's a limited production model based on the LMDh race car. It's powered by a 5.5-liter DOHC V8 and electric motor, good for 830 combined horsepower. Looks like a, like a full-on race car. Cadillac's done this before with the Cien, their hypercar prototype that they never released. Would be very cool to see them make a road-going version of this like the Valkyrie, but feels like a big stretch for the brand and the company, right? I would be surprised if we see this make the rounds, but people are excited about it. I mean, the ZR1-X was a big moment for the American carmakers in the supercar market. And so, you know, there are— there's a chance. There's a chance this comes out. We'll see. In other news, let me tell you about Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform that grows with your business and lets you sell in seconds online, in-store, on mobile, on social, on marketplaces, and now with AI agents. Did you know, Jordi, it's now cheaper to buy— it's now cheaper to buy a private Finally. This is crazy.

We've been waiting for these lines to cross.

Yeah. No, it's actually cheaper to buy a private island than a house in Palo Alto. Earlier this week, Chris Backe highlighted a real estate listing for a 5-bedroom, 5-bathroom, 5,000-square-foot home in Palo Alto asking $16.5 million. We got to pull up a picture of this thing because it doesn't look like a $16 million house. And I think that's why this image from Chris Backe went so viral, because it specifically looks just like a normal house that might be $1 million or $3 million. But in fact—

Can you share it in the chat?

Where is it? Let me see if I can pull this up. Did we not get this? Let me put this up. Here we go. Boom.

Or here.

Here it is. There we go. And so, I mean, 5,500 square feet, that's a lot. And Palo Alto is obviously on an absolute tear on the back of the AI boom. But $16.5 million is a lot of money.

And you can get a private island for this shape.

Yeah. It just looks like one normal house, please, to me, right?

One starter home, please.

Yeah, exactly. Even though it's very clear that there's a lot of stuff going on in the back, obviously from the front, the silhouette doesn't look like a 5,000-square-foot house. But clearly that extends and there's probably lots of land back there and all sorts of things. But when you're bidding against Mark Zuckerberg, you got to pay a pretty penny. Bay Area real estate has been expensive for a long time.

It's like a quarter acre too.

Bay Area real estate has been expensive for a long time, but prices at the very top of the market have become especially eye-popping. One factor is the enormous amount of new wealth being created by the AI boom as employees of companies like OpenAI and Anthropic turn startup equity into fortunes and pour some of that money into local real estate. The result is an absurd new benchmark for Silicon Valley.

Ben is on a tear today. He says, wow, there's a patio, no pool, but there's no pool.

For $16 million, no pool on a quarter acre. That is—that's crazy. I wonder where this one will land. No garage either.

Wait, no garage?

At this—at this price, it's like you like like you could actually be driving like a hypercar for like 10% of the house price. You know, like if you live in a—if you live in a—if you live in a $1.6 million house. house and you drove a $50,000 car, no one would be like, oh wow, that's so crazy, right? But if you live in a $16 million house and you drive a $500,000 car, people would be like, okay, that kind of matches. Except you pull up to this thing in a Revuelto or something, an SF90, and people are like, what? You don't even have a garage to park it in. Anyway, the result is an absurd new benchmark for Silicon Valley housing prices. There are actual private islands around the world that costs less than a house in Palo Alto. In June, a 4.5-acre private island on North Carolina's Lake Norman sold for $12.5 million. You can pull this one up.

The agent on the listing says it has a unique feature, a glass-encased staircase. Okay. You don't see that much in a, in a modern McMansion.

Which are you going with, the Palo Alto home or this private island?

Says— Chad is saying $16 mil, turned it down, had to live there for this decade. The payment calculator, look, if you put 20% down, you're only spending $105,000 a month.

That's so much money.

Yikes.

That's true golden handcuffs. So this 4.5-acre private island in North Carolina sold for $12.5 million, and it includes a roughly 13,000-square-foot mansion on it. It was originally purchased in the '90s for $1.5 million. The Financial Times also reported in March on a 600-acre private island in Fiji listed for $12 million. That island comes with a 6-bedroom residence built near its highest point with panoramic ocean Ocean views, along with a library, barbecue area, and swimming pool. There are also five beaches, staff quarters, and a deep water jetty. This I'm gonna put all these in there. Let's see. This one is is pretty crazy. There's only one image of this particular island estate, but the Financial Times was on a tear. They they really reported on a bunch of these. If six hundred acres for your private island. Island is a little excessive. There's another option in Fiji. Mansion Global reported in March that the founder of a cannabis company and his wife were selling Vawa, a 75-acre private island. That is so many acres. Even 75 acres is so much for 15 million. Still 1.5 million less than the Palo Alto house. So if if you if you are in Palo Alto, you really got to negotiate for remote work because you could be working from Fiji. Fiji. The Vawa House includes several Olympic-sized natural swimming holes and a 5,500-square-foot main house built around open-plan living spaces surrounded by walls of glass. Its bedroom suites have outdoor bathrooms and private outdoor spaces overlooking the ocean and jungle. And it's a fascinating story showing what went into building this compound. We can scroll through some of these, some of these images because this family really, it seems like it was sort of a labor of love situation. So an eclectic travelogue had always been a top priority for the Walkers. The Los Angeles-based family of 4 are self-styled globetrotters whose wanderlust meant they never vacationed in the same place twice. They never went back. Vahua Island is a 75-acre drop in the Pacific Ocean at the northernmost tip of the Yasawa Island archipelago and north of Nadi International Airport. It is so far to get to Fiji, but people love it out there. We saw the island, and even though there was nothing there, we just knew there was something really magical about this place, and we had to go back. So we were sitting on a beach and saw this little island in the distance. This sounds familiar. We then got picked up by a local boat and taken there. We went around the island, and the locals said it had been deserted for a while. After meeting with the local elders of the tribe, To discuss the finer points of the purchase. The Walkers have purchased a leasehold and the project of a lifetime. So a lot of these different countries and island nations, they won't actually sell you the property. What they'll do is they'll sell you a lease for 85 years. Like, so it's within your lifetime, but then it eventually goes back to the government. It was like a boyhood dream, Barry said today. That pristine parcel is home to a luxurious hideaway. Built with a modern Malibu aesthetic, crafted by Danish architect, constructed by Australian builder, and curated by a Californian family. The project took approximately 5 years with a pandemic and the distance from home adding complexity. And so—

So, I've never done a proper trip to Fiji, but I did have an 18-hour layover there once on the way to Bali.

Really? Do you count that as visiting Fiji?

I count it.

Okay.

Because I went, I left the airport, I got on a boat, and I took it to a small, relatively deserted island, and I just hung out there for a few hours and then took the boat back and then went to the airport and left.

Do I have— I don't think I have very nice on here. Anyway, Tyler, you figured out the optimal route.

Great success.

Yeah, great success. You figured out the optimal route to visit every state, is that correct?

Yeah. So basically, the idea— well, the rules we said is if you land in, like, a grassy area and you step out, that counts as visiting the state.

Yes.

So basically, the optimal strategy if you want to hit every state is you basically land at the intersections of states.

Okay.

So you only need to land 21 times to hit all 50, right? So in the lower 48, it's only 19 times.

Okay.

But you can hit these kind of, like, tripoint areas, right? You can think of There's kind of the quadrant in the southwest. You can hit 4 states at once.

Yeah.

And you can do it presumably within an hour— or sorry, within 24 hours.

Within 24 hours?

Yeah, yeah.

But you have to go to Alaska and Hawaii. So, this is just lower 48?

No, no. This is all 24.

You can— But you would need a plane that can fly at the speed of sound but also land— or like near the speed of sound. Like, you can't do it in like a Cessna. You must— you have You have to do it in like a Gulfstream, but then you also have to be able to land in a cornfield, basically?

You can use like a normal, slightly larger plane than like a private plane.

Okay.

But you don't need the insane—

What type of plane are you— are you landing in a cornfield but also making it to Alaska in?

Tyler, Tyler, would you be willing to attempt this route with your current plan?

Because right now it feels a bit dangerous.

Yeah, Trey says the Pilatus PC-12 has you covered. Pilatus PC-12 is not probably fast enough to actually break a record, but the PC-24 is the— is sort of the cousin of the PC-12. That is an actual jet that will let you land on dirt runways. And so I think that the PC-24—

Yeah, PC-24 is what I had as well. A lot of species.

But you said big. It's not even— it's like a relatively modest plane. You can't even cross the Atlantic with it. You were saying it was a bigger plane.

Well, relatively.

Pure sloth. Let me tell you about CrowdStrike.

You got to work on this plane.

Your business is AI. Their business is securing it. CrowdStrike secures AI and stops breaches. You're starting in Maine and you're ending in Hawaii. Okay. So you go from basically like Washington to New Hampshire. You're kind of going— but you're going in the Pacific Northwest last, then Alaska, then down to Hawaii. You're basically starting—

you're going directly south. So you're in all the eastern—

Ryan says you need to hire a pilot from Sinaloa. True. True.

I think you're going to run into a lot of trouble. I think you'll probably get arrested the first time you land in a cornfield in the intersection of 3 states and they wonder what you're doing.

I don't think with Tyler's plan, I don't think there'll be enough time to—

You might need to do some demolition.

Some demolition?

You gotta take down some trees.

Ahead of time?

Yeah.

Oh, so that you can actually land on the corner?

Yeah.

Because a lot of these corner intersections are like tourist traps where they have like a sign on the ground like, you're currently standing on 4 states at once. And you can't just land there and bulldoze all the tourists who taking pictures. That doesn't make any sense.

Well, I don't think we stated that before, that that wasn't allowed.

Misaligned. This is misalignment right here. Terrible. Uh, anyway, uh, the good folks over at the Acquired FM, Acquired Podcast, uh, revealed a very interesting fact that we wanted to share here. The highest-grossing piece of entertainment ever isn't Avatar, Avengers, I tell Chad says, stop hazing our Zoomers. Oh, we got more Gen Z's, uh, uh, Gen Z hazing articles because there's a whole article in the New York Times about how Gen Z doesn't know how to dress. They're just taking shots at Gen Z for acting like they've never worn clothes before or something is the headline. It's a very funny piece.

My, uh, we, we was driving around with, with my lovely wife yesterday And we passed like what looked like a group of high school boys. And she said, why do they all look like they're dressed like criminals? Because they had these like big like glasses that like look like something you might wear if you really didn't want people to know.

True unk status. Why is Ben Macklin getting an American flag wrapped around him? Is this just the style now? This is my go-away gift.

This is my— Okay. I had to get a flag before. Okay, wearing that on the flight.

Yeah, the whole way. I love it. Well, let me tell you about MongoDB. What's the only thing faster than the AI market? Your business on MongoDB. Don't just build AI, own the data platform that powers it.

Ryan says if you can't haze Gen Z, why be young? Yeah, good point.

Good point. Okay, anyway, so the highest grossing piece of entertainment ever. It's not Avatar. It's not Avengers. It's not Titanic. It's not Seinfeld. It's not even Grand Theft Auto. It's The Lion King musical. Perfect cue. It's The Lion King musical. The Lion King musical is the highest-grossing piece of media entertainment ever. Absolutely insane. Since debuting on Broadway in November of 1997, Disney's stage adaptation has grossed more than $11 billion worldwide, maybe more than $10 billion. It's a ton. It's the highest-grossing stage production ever. And by box office revenue, it's the highest-grossing entertainment title in history. For comparison, Avatar is the highest-grossing movie ever, has made only $3 billion at the global box office. The Lion King passed the previous record holder, The Phantom of the Opera, all the way back in 2014 when its cumulative The cumulative gross was already $6.2 billion. I had no idea there was so much money in Broadway. So the question everyone's asking, how is this even possible? Like, yeah, The Lion King musical, it's popular, but Avatar was like a cultural moment. Everyone saw it. But it's because The Lion King musical is not just one show. It's much more complicated than that. It's this entertainment machine. So since 1997, there have been—

It's not just a show, it's a machine? Wow.

It's, it's 30 different productions around the world spanning more than 100 cities and 24 countries. So it's— so the show runs on Broadway, but also London's West End, Japan, Germany, Australia, alongside North America, international touring productions. So you can see it in multiple places at the same time. More than 127 million people have actually seen it. And unlike a movie, the same piece of entertainment can keep selling thousands of expensive tickets every night for decades. So the Broadway production alone performs 8 times a week. In one week this June, it sold 12,670 tickets, grossed $1.94 million from a single theater. And then you scale that model across multiple productions operating simultaneously. How did that—

and are all these productions paying royalties back to— Disney. Yeah, yeah. So you're thinking what I'm thinking? What are you thinking? Thrive Eternal comes in, they spin out the Lion King IP. Yeah, gets his piece back.

Yeah, so $75 a ticket.

Then they— then like Gabe says, then they take it public.

Maybe, maybe. I think this is like core to the, to the, to the Disney IP strategy. Like they, they, they have other Broadway productions Productions already in the works, already in production. And we'll have many more as different pieces of intellectual property take flight and actually find their footing. Of course, not everything's gonna be as much of a smash success as The Lion King has been. But it's crazy. It's a 29-year run, selling $75 tickets on average every night across the globe for 30 years almost, which is crazy. And so, And so, you can take the same story, perform it 8 times a week, duplicate the production around the planet, and keep doing it for an entire generation. Do that successfully for 3 days and you can make more money at the box office than any movie ever made. I was always thinking that someone would do this for music, sort of like you'd need to set up the musical act as a multi-stage production, but you know Deadmau5 performs with a—

Who?

Deadmau5, the EDM artist.

Oh, you mean Deadmau5?

Deadmau5, yes. So, when Deadmau5 performs, he is there in person, the actual artist, and he's wearing a helmet. So, you don't know that it's him. And of course, you trust that it's him because he doesn't perform in multiple places at the same time. Same thing with Tiësto. But there are other artists that have donned behind the helmets. I think Marshmello is one. There's a few others that do this sort of thing. Even going back to Slipknot.

Daft Punk.

Daft Punk, exactly. But if you could start a musical act that embraced the idea that it could be in multiple places at the same time, it could effectively have multiple residencies. So the artist, even though it was multiple people, could be performing in New York and Las Vegas and Miami all at the same time, have residencies everywhere, and bring in way more revenue on top of the IP. And then the artists themselves doesn't need to travel. Of course, that's like sort of sacrificing what it means to go to a Deadmau5 show, so you probably don't command as much of a premium. But it would be interesting to see if someone in the musical arts tries to do that.

Dylan says, this is just the Blue Man Group strategy. It's not always the same blue men. Mind blown.

Yes, the Blue Man Group has changed over. I don't know, can— are there any examples of the Blue Man Group performing in 2 different places at the exact same time with different blue men? I think that they have a single cast that rotates, and they don't actually perform in multiple places at the same time. But that's the Blue Man Group V2. is what I'm maybe hoping for. Anyway, what else is going on? The Cursor deal closed. That's a big story today. Although it's been announced several times that this was happening, but Michael Truel took to the timeline to announce that the deal has in fact closed. Gwork is imminent. Grok work is coming. They're doing it.

Is this— this is the largest First acquisition of a venture-backed private company.

Yes, and it must be probably the highest IRR VC investment of all time. Maybe there's probably something shorter term that was like 1 month and then an acquisition, but it certainly is close to that.

Previously, the record was Wiz, $32 billion. Google. So nearly double.

Yeah. Michael Truel said—

There is some— it is funny to think about, just given the dynamic between Elon and Sam. OpenAI's startup fund, I believe, was the seed investor in Cozy. Oh, yeah, yeah. Meaning that OpenAI probably now—

OpenAI shareholders own Snap.

But absolutely incredible outcome. And I think already people are realizing just how much, how necessary it is for SpaceX's hopes at the application.

Okay. Michael Truel, one of the greatest Zoomers to ever do it.

Truly.

You got to give him credit. You got to give credit to all of Gen Z for putting up amazing numbers, but you also got to take some shots at Gen Z because apparently snack companies are coating everything in pickle flavor for Gen Z. Is this true? Do you like pickles?

I wouldn't say I'm a big pickle guy.

Okay, say, but well, apparently snack companies think you are because there's a deluge of sour, briny snacks that have infiltrated the market, and apparently it's your fault, Tyler. Pickle-flavored, pickle-flavored ramen, pickle-flavored beef beer, pickle-flavored Sauvignon Blanc wine, pickle-zested ice cream. A certain flavor profile is exploding. It's sour, it's briny, it's huge on social media, and it's coating everything in its path, says the Wall Street Journal. We're just in a golden era for pickle flavoring, said the vice president of the fresh food group at Circana.

Never in my life would I imagine cotton candy with When you were a kid, did you ever take a little sip of the—

The juice, the pickle juice? Not really.

No, I did.

Like just once to experience, or was it like a daily thing? You would enjoy it?

Here or there.

I like a pickle, but I don't know, the juice I can pass on. I'm not a big pickle juice guy.

Yeah, anytime I meet people that are seemingly super into pickles, I just assume they haven't— they don't realize they can put salt, a lot of Oh, you think it's like a vehicle for delivering salt? I think it's like a—

Yeah, you're just maybe sodium deficient or craving some sodium and you want an excuse and a pickle is just a way to get your salt fix.

Yeah, it's a vehicle.

OK. Well, people certainly associate the flavor with saltiness, so it's going all over the place. In the last few years, nearly every snack food giant and retailer has piled on the trend and for good reason. Pickle-flavored items are flying off the shelves. According to data from Circana, pickle-flavored snacks grew 30% in sales over the past year compared with 3.8% growth in the snack category overall. The same category— the same goes for categories that don't seem traditionally fermentation-forward. Pickle-flavored trail mix grew by 10% as opposed to 4% for the general category. But some of this growth may come from an influx of new pickle flavors. That is a crazy, crazy item. Whole Foods began selling Daily Crunches dill pickle sprouted almonds in 2024, and within a year and a half, the product saw an 812% growth.

Foundation Lab numbers. Pickle car in NASCAR. Okay. That is a car to follow.

PepsiCo released Flamin' Hot dill pickle Cheetos. In 2025 and made them a permanent offering this year after the company said it became the fastest-selling limited-edition flavor in the brand's history. Retailers say one group is fueling the trend, a cohort they're most eager to capture. It's Gen Z. Last summer, Hormel Foods, the company behind Spam and Skippy peanut butter, cited Gen Z, the ultimate target market for snack brands, as the inspiration behind the launch of 3 dill pickle products, dill pickle corn nuts, dill pickle cashews, and dill pickle flavored Hormel pepperoni. This is too much dill pickle. I can't say pickle anymore. It's really getting on my nerves. It's over. Let's move on to Alex Cooper. Alex Cooper raising a ton of money. Podcast is doing well. Media company's doing well. Her beverage brand is doing unwell. The brand Unwell. Unwell ceased operations, announced this winding down a day after Unwell's media business took investment at a $500 million valuation. Should not be a surprise. Clearly new money coming in, new strategy.

Folks should have made it pickle content.

Maybe, maybe. But Andrea took a victory lap 2 years ago. She posted, Unwell by Alex Cooper, Prime but for the hotties. How much time do we give this brand before it inevitably flops and goes on the chopping block? chopping block. 2 years, it seems, is what wound up happening. It was— maybe they just didn't get the right team in there. It does seem like it's hard because you only have so much ad inventory. And if you're running the Call Her Daddy podcast and you're getting a lot of impressions, if there is someone— like, you could promote your product, but every time you do, you're not promoting another product that might pay pay you a higher CPM, might be able to monetize those listeners better. And so you have this tension between, okay, well, there might be a VPN company or a credit card company or all sorts of different companies that might want to come in and pay, you know, $1 million for a sponsorship with Call Her Daddy. And are you going to be able to move $1 million, not just $1 million of product, but million worth of product to justify the profits. So will the LTV that you generate from running those ads that you're taking off the, off the inventory stack actually math out? I think a lot of influencers wind up with that.

They think they have one of the— they don't. Yeah, it's interesting branding challenge to have Unwell. Yep. As the brand of the drink. Not, not, not the best association.

Yeah, I think you're right. There's something like subliminal, like what I was picking up on with the Obsession remix video where I just come away a little bit unsettled. Seeing a brand name Unwell in my face, it's just gonna stick in my brain a little bit. But oh well, we'll see where it goes. It feels like she's doubling down on media, TV shows potentially, movie studio, other podcasts. There's a lot of other things that are going there that clearly can be focused in the line of what the Unwell Network does well. So we'll see where it all goes. Let me tell you about the New York Stock Exchange. Want to change the world? Raise capital at the New York Stock Exchange. So the New York Times put out a hit piece on Gen Zers. Says Gen Zers dress like they've never worn clothes before. Time was, if you wanted to know what people's deal was, you read their clothes. As a young man working at a then-popular street fashion magazine, I used to relish taxonomizing people by what they had on. I could tell you had— I could tell you at a glance what kind of music they listened to, whether they worked, what they'd be like in bed, what sort of beer they would drink, all from the cut of their pant leg or the razor guard number on their haircut. Fleece jacket pullover, white ball cap pulled down way too far over the eyes, that's a jock. Torn up gray hoodie over enormous jeans whose cuffs are soaking up puddle water, that person smokes weed. Same hoodie but sleeves pushed up past the elbows, watch out, that's the universal signifier for meth. This person is really judgmental. These days, I'm a middle-aged man I'm a man who works the door at a bar in Chicago that is reasonably popular with the youths, and I'm routinely flummoxed by the sartorial flotsam that comes packing itself in. The other night, a guy came in—

Is this not overall just one of the oldest sort of stories of all time, which is like old person says to young kids—

Old man yells at clouds.

Yeah, this is old man yells at clouds. Yeah, it's a good point. It's a good point. But I don't know. I just wanted to take another shot at Gen Z.

I do think it's funny that Tyler dresses like the 2016 kind of like frat style, like boat shoes. I mean, he looks sharp every day, but yeah, you guys Put the shoes up on the desk. Let's get the shoes up on the desk. Throw them up. It's Friday. Let's get a side profile of the shoes. The Sperrys.

Ooh, I like that. There you go.

Sperry mode. All right, that's enough of that.

King in the castle. King in the castle. Next intern challenge, get into Caltech. Because they have a fraud squad. This is the red team. We need to red team their fraud squad. The fraud squad at Caltech will catch you if you lie on your application.

They're saying make America preppy again. Yeah, I think that you could be early to a new prep supercycle, a Sperry supercycle.

Supercycle, the funniest thing. College investigators vet every Admitted students' applications as schools nationwide battle AI-fueled cheating. So now we got to put it to the test. Can you cheat your way through a PhD at Caltech, Tyler? I want to see if you can do it. At the California Institute of Technology—

Roy from Clueless says challenge accepted.

Yeah, 100%. A little-known band of admissions— New benchmark. New benchmark for Clueless for sure. Is scrutinizing the fonts on science fair certificates, checking addresses on high school transcripts, and analyzing signatures on awards. Known as the Fraud Squad, these investigators in charge— are in charge of vetting applications to the highly selective STEM-focused school, which admitted less than 4% of its 11,000 applicants for the incoming class. Caltech created the team 2 years ago, partly in response to a rising number of anonymous accusations of dishonest applications. The 4-person team inspects every submitted— every admitted student's applications, taking nothing for granted. They scour the internet to confirm obscurities, contact competition officials and high school counselors, and use a video interview program to suss out students' research claims. As elite colleges such as Caltech— at elite colleges such as Caltech, admissions have become more competitive and applications are increasingly complex. Some requests, some requests long lists of accolades, research competitions, awards, independent projects that colleges can find harder to verify than grades and test scores. At the same time, technology like AI makes it easier to falsify submissions. And for young people, the stakes often feel higher than ever. I don't think everyone's lying, said Nick Lee, Senior Assistant Director for Undergraduate And a fraud squad member, but I can't let a small portion of the pool of our admits ruin all the greatness in the other percentage. Can't let one bad apple spoil the bunch, I think is the phrase. Many schools review applications for accuracy but tend to dig deeper only when something seems off, such as if a student's essay mentions an award-winning robotics team but the recommendation letters don't.

Oh, that's a good one.

So they're looking for needles in haystacks. Interesting. Do you think you could do it? Do you think this is fraud-proof, Tyler? Or you think you—

I mean, there's like a lot of—

Still on the shoes. Still on the shoes.

I think there's a lot of things. Like, it seems like the solution here is you just only do the SAT.

Banger. Like, it's the only thing that matters.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

You can basically get rid of all of these like fishy research things. You know, you hear about like some stories where it's like, They had their first research paper when they were like 11 years old.

It's like clearly very fake. Just like the parents doing it or the AI doing it or something. I don't know. Yeah, tricky. Nothing like the IMO to separate the wheat from the chaff. Well, over at Thrive, there's a big scoop from Natasha over now. Natasha's been on a tear. She's at Bloomberg Technology. Thrive has invested $250 million in Amazon, according to a securities filing, as the firm expands its public market strategy to back some of the world's largest companies benefiting from AI. I didn't realize that Thrive had this significant of a public book. I mean, I guess some of this was probably SpaceX pre-IPO that shifted over to the public book.

But I think this is part of a, like, new focus. Sure.

Sure. So Thrive Capital at the end of Q2 owned $3.2 billion worth of SpaceX, $250 million of Amazon. They still got some Oscar Health, $180 million of that. They own Shopify and Figma. They trimmed Carvana and StubHub but are still long lots of stuff in the public markets. Anyway, what else is in the timeline?

Another news Jeff Bezos bets on sports with Liverpool deal. Billionaire to become a part owner of the Premier League team valued at more than $7 billion.

Another one.

The billionaire founder of Amazon is among a group of investors that agreed Friday to buy a minority stake in Liverpool football. The consortium is acquiring about a 33% stake in Liverpool. Liverpool in a deal That values the Premier League team at more than $7 billion. The deal is the latest example of the enduring appeal of top professional sports teams from the world's wealthiest. The consortium buying a stake in Liverpool is led by Amit Bhatia, son-in-law of Indian steel tycoon. Let's give it up for tycoons. One of the best, one of the best words, one of the most underrated words, tycoon.

We're trying to bring that back. Very aspirational. You know you've made it when you're a tycoon.

Bezos is participating in the deal through K5 Global, a firm that did not have—

In terms of order, tycoon has got to be above billionaire, because there's plenty of people that they start a company, they get lucky, they sell it at the top.

But I would say that Michael and Brian, GPs over at K5, are emerging tycoons. I think so. I think they're on the path to being tycoons. I think so.

Would you rather be a tycoon or a magnate?

Ooh. Probably Tycoon.

I think Magnate's underrated.

Magnate is.

Tycoon is more aura.

Yeah. Tycoon feels like you really control the industry. Magnate feels a little bit like it could be Scion adjacent potentially. You know? Might just be important, but one of many. Tycoon is singular. A little more singular in its dominance of the industry. I like a tycoon. Anyway, CRM tycoon Marc Benioff hit the timeline with a question. Should Salesforce rebrand as Salesforce Slack to capture its AI-era power in bots, coding, and—

Let's watch this video because this video is sure to fire you up.

OK, let's do it. Salesforce Slack. That's a bit of a mouthful. Let's see. Salesforce Slack. One of the greatest names ever, Salesforce. Forceful. I love Salesforce. They do a lot more than sales though, and a lot of people use Slack. So which way we're going? Okay. Ooh, good license. Some good brand exploration.

Wait, put him on the tower. Put him on the tower.

Just do it.

See it.

Nothing happened. Oh, okay. You put him on the tower. Oh, we did. He already did. Okay. I can't tell if it's VFX or not. Salesforce Slack. Salesforce Slack.

Yeah. So interesting response. Currently, 68% of the voters say no. Yeah, they're rejecting Salesforce Slack. Yeah, it is a mouthful. I do think Salesforce is iconic. I understand Marc's position, right? He's battling— why not? SaaSpocalypse narrative. Yep. Slack is— no one's been sitting there saying, you know, we're going to move off Slack.

No intern has ever tried to vibe code Slack here.

Yeah, it is funny. You can one-shot a version of Slack.

But adoption was tricky. High churn. We didn't use it. It looked like Slack. We tried to vibe code Slack. And the product looked really good. It even added video calling, which was sort of crazy functionality. It's certainly there.

Sebastian says, Jordi, does not remembering Metallica songs in front of Marc keep you awake?

Yeah. Why not Slackforce? Why not just call it Slackforce? Is that bad? Am I onto something or no? Slackforce. It's less wordy than Salesforce Slack, but it hits both Slack and Salesforce. Still forceful. Yes? No? If you had to pick, Salesforce Slack or Slackforce, which one are you going with? Slackforce. Yeah, Slackforce vote over there.

What about just The San Francisco Slackers.

The San Francisco Slackers. What about just force.com?

What about s.com?

S?

Salesforce and Slack. The one-letter domain?

I like just going Force. Just Force.

Force would be a great name for a workplace messaging tool.

Yeah. Force. It's on Force. It's on Bebo. Did you check Force?

I sent you a message on Force.

How'd you get that project done? I forced it. I forced it down the throats of my employees. I was forceful. You're being a little forceful right now. A little bit too many messages on Force.

Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, best estimate of Slack's current revenue is in the $2 $2, $2.5 billion range. Salesforce overall revenue is north of $40 billion, right? Still not a huge amount of the revenue. But clearly, that video, they've done a lot of exploration.

Yeah, they're thinking about it.

They're thinking about it.

So between— final answer— between Salesforce, keep it classic, Force, force.com, Salesforce Slack and Slack Force. Which one are you going with?

Salesforce.

Oh, you're staying with Salesforce.

What about you, Tyler? Salesforce.

I like Slack Force. You like Slack Force? I think Salesforce Slack is the worst of all those. Okay.

Okay. You would rank that the last? I think that Salesforce is an iconic brand that's waiting to be revitalized. I think some of the marketing historically has just been, uh, somewhat, uh, I'm not gonna say it, uh, boomer-coded. I said it. Um, like just the random, just the random like Matthew McConaughey being, you know, um, he's, he's iconic, but, uh, I think that there's more that they can do to—

It does. When I see it, when I see it, when I see Matthew McConaughey in a Salesforce ad, I do think I need to buy a Lincoln Navigator, which is maybe like a bad sign.

Oh, yeah, because he's also—

Yeah, he has that amazing Lincoln where he's driving, giving the talk. Oh, it's such a good ad. And that one was such a good ad that it was parodied in SNL by Jim Carrey, I believe. And so it had a whole meta story to it. It really broke through.

And so I think what you're getting at is they need to get a Timothée Chalamet or Jacob Elordi to be the new face. Face. That'd be great. Someone, someone, a Zoomer.

Yeah, a Zoomer actor would be good. Uh, 5th option: what if he rebrands the whole thing to just Benioff and Co.? I like that. Would that be your top? Buy Benioff. Benioff.

Benioff and Co. Software solutions you can depend on.

He's a singular founder CEO, you know. He's not a hired gun. He's not going anywhere. It's his one major project. He doesn't have other companies.

Yeah, another point: they just had MrBeast do do a commercial, though, according to Jay. Yeah, the challenge is like that commercial, I don't know any people that unironically watch MrBeast that buy enterprise software. And so it just felt like super random.

Well, I unironically watch MrBeast, but as a student of the craft of YouTube video creation. And I will be like, Wow, OK. How is he using CGI? How is he editing? How is he—

Yeah, but the majority of the audience are not sitting there saying, oh, MrBeast, I got to use Salesforce CRM because MrBeast promoted it.

Yeah.

They're not thinking about CRMs.

There's a little bit of, like, I guess if you get people really young, and they get to work, and they're in Slack, they have a positive connotation. They go and start companies, and they Start with Slack, and then they grow from there.

But that's a long road. GR says Salesforce by Benioff. Salesforce by Benioff. Sales by Benioff.

Sales by Benioff is like a high fashion company.

Mark by Marc Jacobs. Mark by Benioff.

Mark by Marc Benioff. Slack by Marc Benioff. He didn't even start the company. Yeah, I would not give up. Salesforce— I still think Salesforce is a great name. Anyway, okay. So let's go to Mitchell Hashimoto, founder of Hashi Corp. He says, "It's so incredible. I'm so incredibly tired of seeing low effort AI designed web pages. I basically bounce off any new product immediately when I see it. Never get a chance to judge the product itself. Lots of thin lines, glowy styles, inconsistent fonts, lots of mono." You know who you are.

Not exactly.

And Jordan Singer says, this is an instant sign that I won't want to use your product. If you can't take the time to craft something that should sell me, I can't trust that you took the time for the rest of the product. Interesting. What do you think about slop pages? I think the AI-designed web pages are best when it's part of the point. Like, it's like, It's specifically like a product that would never exist without slop generation.

And so it's like, oh, you made a whole interactive video game for your friends. You can figure out a unique design and still implement it quickly using AI. But if you just try to one-shot it, then it's low effort.

It's the same thing with the Suno story of like, I'm not really listening to like actual heavy metal generated by Suno, but give me a song about John Quinn, the most feared lawyer from Quinn Emanuel, that's heavy metal, I'm in. And I actually am listening to that song, but only because it can only exist in the context of the AI.

Petra says, depends on who you're selling to. 99% of the time, ugly sites perform better. Uh, good point, but I would say that these AI-generated websites are trying to look like super beautiful and interactive. I would actually like, you know, the AI website that you generated at Berkshire, you generated like a clone of Berkshire.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That probably would perform well if you—

It also would have taken like 5 minutes to hand code because it's such a simple website. But it was fun, and it was my first introduction to vibe coding a front-end website based on a style guide. I've since gone on and built other vibe-coded websites, and I don't try and act like they're not vibe coded. They lean into the idea of the fact that this is a website that would never exist in reality and only makes sense as a vibe-coded product. Speaking of vibe-coded products, if you vibe-coded a product and you're trying to launch it, don't use another AI company's—

Phone Farm.

Phone Farm? It's Phone Farm.

Oh, is that where you're— I thought that's where you were.

No, I was talking about this post where someone tried to introduce Claude for marketing, and they're clearly using the Claude trademark against Anthropic's rules.

No, but what I'm saying— Don't do that. No, I mean, part of why I think it was maybe deleted is that they delete— the video is deleted now, but this was a video of a company that made basically a robot that you put over a real phone, and it's an undetectable way to drive engagement online.

Okay. Yeah.

Using phone farms, basically.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, this company is called PhoneFarm.ai, is the website. And they say, run unlimited accounts on autopilot, post 10,000 videos a day. So if you're a creator out there, you're trying to put out 10,000 videos, really trying to, you know, get your reps in, you could just do that in a day. You don't need to spend years honing your craft or anything like that. You could just do it all at once.

Yeah.

But yeah, it does seem, yeah, it's so funny the way they sell this viral content. content manufactured. This has been going on a ton with launch videos where you'll see a launch video that just has, you know, like 1,000 reposts and there's not really any real engagement. So I don't think this stuff works and you're not really tricking anyone except other bots.

Mm-hmm.

Here's the video. Let's pull it up.

Let's see. It's coming. Cell phone. Oh, that's a good one. Yeah, here we go.

Look at this, John.

Okay. And is this a device that you can buy, or is this a service that you pay them to do? You can—

it sounds like you can get a cloud version of it, but you can also— sounds like they'll also sell you the robot.

This is the dead internet. It's not just dead internet theory, it's how do we make money off of this? Is there any good use of this technology? What is the white pill? It seems extremely adversarial. The best I can come up with would be, as a joke, sending you 1,000 positive comments on your last Instagram post or something, and you're just like, why is this going viral? But even that is likely to sort of nuke your account when it's discovered that you're followed by bots.

That's internet reality.

Yeah.

Cooper, no white pill.

We're trying, buddy. We're trying here. We're doing our best. Um, testing, testing, quality assurance testing. If you are Instagram, you want to run your app across a bunch of different devices for a very long time, see if there's a memory leak, having a bunch of phones in the cloud makes sense. So testing, testing is the only viable white pill here maybe? I don't know. Can you come up with another one?

No. Yeah.

I don't know.

Yeah, rough.

Rough. Anyway, speaking of self-ups—

Just do— make great things. Make content that's interesting, and you'll get real attention.

This is a good point.

The funny thing with— yeah, the funny thing with, like, people are very immune to this stuff right now. So if they see a product launch and it has 5,000 1,000 likes or 1,000 reposts. They're still human. Maybe it makes them engage more for a second with the content because it's in their feed. They're like, what is this? But the thing still has to be great. And if you make something great, you'll just naturally get the attention as a byproduct.

Yeah, good point. Well, this is a good post to close on. Cell phone. Self-own. They played us for absolute fools. What did they mean by calling the cell phone so close to self-own? No, have a great weekend. Have a great rest of your Friday. Have a great two weeks. We're taking a vacation. We will be back in September, everyone. Play the wah wah. No, we we. The end of August, we are taking a 2-week break from the show. We'll be back in September. We have a whole bunch of crazy stuff lined up for the new season. We're very excited for that. We will be back in September. So sign up for our newsletter, leave us 5 stars on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Say goodbye to Ben Macklin. We'll see you next summer, Ben. And we will be back in the fall. For fall. For fall.

Yeah, I know. It's—

Very Euro-coded of us.

Yeah. It's— we don't enjoy taking time off around here. We rarely do. But we think it's important to give the whole team a proper break. This work is relentless. You cannot rest on any laurels, even if you have a bunch of You start resting on them, there's no show. And so we figured it'd be good to let the whole team take some time away. And I can't wait to be back already. We love— we absolutely love what we do.

Yeah, it's great.

And it's a blessing. And counting down the days.

Counting down the days.

Just like, how many more sleeps is it?

Like 16, 17.

Something like that.

Something like that.

So we'll be reminding the team every day, just 16 more sleeps, everybody.

Have a good week. Have a good next—

Yeah, enjoy the, enjoy the last couple weeks of like proper summer. I feel like September comes around, it's over.

It's over.

It's time to get back in the mines.

We will be back.

We'll see you soon. We love you guys. Cheers.

September 1st.