Meta Orion Headset, MKBHD's Panels Disaster, Volta Energy

Welcome to Technology Brothers, the most profitable podcast in the world.

For those that don't know, John Feo, world class ideas guy and entrepreneur. Usually they go hand in hand and he's very humble about it. I don't know if even you know this, but the guys climb like six out of the tallest ten peaks in the world. Never once posted a picture about it.

And they're called 14ers.

Yeah, the 14ers. Right. Never once posted a picture about it. Hardly told anyone. And Volta, he did it all without oxygen, right? Which is like, they say that can't be done. So the guy's a physical specimen, but, you know, there's got to be some edge, right? Volta is that edge. So Volta is a new concept. We were able to get some because we're also ideas guys, of course, and wanted to be able to provide some feedback. So Volta's a new concept. They're making fresh energy drinks. I think you've probably had a Red Bull or a Monster or Celsius in your day. That stuff got made months, if not potentially years ago.

Right.

Sometimes you crack open a red bowl and you're like, this is a vintage bowl. Vintage bowl. Actually, at Senra's event this weekend, I figured out a pretty interesting arb that I'll be advantage of next year. Red Bulls in this retreat center that he was hosting it at were $2, but if I walk down the street to the gas station, they're $6. Right. So they call that the Senra Arb.

Interesting. Did you get to try one of David Senra's Jocko Go in the cherry vanilla flavor that he loves so much?

I think he was randomly drinking those. But he.

That's not random.

No, not random.

He is obsessed with that.

No, I know, but he was like the only one that had that.

No, he has a. At his events, he has a dedicated fridge with just Jocko, go, Jocko go. He just. The man loves Jocko. It's incredible. Yeah. Whenever I'm hanging out with him, I drink one. In solidarity, of course.

Yeah. You feel like Jocko going forward might be Volta, some competition. So the idea with Volta is to make fresh energy drinks, Right? Fresh is almost always better. So in this case, I'm taking some sparkling yuzu, one of my favorite little cute little beverages, straight from Japan. And we're going to mix the Volta right in there. It's got. I won't give you the laundry list of ingredients, but caffeine, L, theanine and magnesium, as well as liposomal nanomolecules. Which effectively delivers what Theo will say is, all day, dynamic energy. So, like energy that's shifting based on what you're sort of embarking on, whether you're climbing a mountain or you're battling with a spreadsheet.

Right.

So let's give this a little shot. I have no idea how to dose this, so I'm going to guess that it's almost impossible to say. Was that 15 milliliters, 32 per bottle. So I don't know if this is.

Oh, wow, look at that. There we go.

I don't know if this is 200 milligrams of caffeine or like 5, but either way, we'll find out. Cheers.

Pretty good.

Pretty good. It's tasty. I think the Yuzu's doing a little heavy lifting to kind of mask the.

Nutrient cocktail.

The nutrient cocktail, the scientific formula, it definitely. It definitely has a flavor that you won't forget, you know?

Sure.

Like, you could be on top of Mount Kilimanjaro in, like 12 years and you're on your last breath and somebody squirts a little bit of this in your mouth, and you sort of like. You sort of, like, jolt a lot.

Alive.

And make it back to tell the tale. But anyways, I'm sure Excel and Volta will be doing, you know, numerous, many collaborations in the course.

Of course. Yeah. We need a. We need a good energy drink sponsor for the pod.

This was unsponsored, by the way. Just purely an idea guy supporting another idea guy. Of course. Let's get into the news. Is there anything you want to cover from the Journal, or should we just go straight into the. Straight into the timeline?

Yeah, we can go into the top story. I think we got to talk about Meta's Orion glasses.

Sorry, I'm just reading this. The Stolen Valor.

Stolen Valor. Well, I mean, that. That honestly relates to what we were talking about. Like, I've been sick this week and same. I was thinking, you know, there's a lot that you can throw at it. Caffeine, nicotine. But there's kind of a new theory that if you're sick, maybe cocaine is the thing that will get you back on your game.

Right, right.

And so I've heard that I don't have easy access to it. I'm not demoing it today, but I was wondering if that would make me feel better if I had a really important podcast. Should I be doing coke? I tend to think I would feel terrible if I was on coke while I was trying to podcast.

Doing a podcast. I'm sure, people have done that. I'm sure even people have called into CNBC at different points for post earnings to just kind of chit chat and been on it. But given that you are on track to be a public company CEO sometime within the next few years, handful of years, it's hard to say. You have to be more market dependent. You don't want that track record with the sec, Right. Like, you don't want that attached to your good name.

Right? Yeah, it is interesting. I have a friend who is product manager at big tech company and kind of lost, I mean, making, you know, a couple hundred thousand dollars every month just doing kind of nothing, but a little bit lost. And was just thinking about how to kind of get back in tune. A lot of people were doing the ayahuasca retreats. These are really popular.

Right.

But he was kind of worried about, like, you know, you go to this country and, you know, maybe you get your brain rearranged and you come back as a different person. And so he actually went on a different type of retreat. He went on a cocaine retreat. Same concept. Like, you're still traveling to a foreign country, there's a shaman there. But instead of administering ayahuasca in heroic doses, you're taking cocaine. And so instead of like sitting there, you know, all strung out, all like messed up, you know, kind of getting turbo fried.

Turbo fried.

You're locked in. You're locked in. And so they, you know, there's like cubicles with monitors and Bloomberg terminals.

Is there like, do they put like a. There's no beds, right? It's just like a pillow under the desk.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. I mean, it's a simulacrum of like an average Wall street, like, office, essentially.

And that's in Peru. Chile.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. So you fly down there to go on the cocaine retreat and just kind of lock in, and then you come back refreshed and ready to kick ass.

Right, Yeah, I can see that. We've entered back into the age of stimulants, like the 2010s. Like, things were so good. It was about, how do I dumb down like this? Life is so good. How do I. We're coming out of the Great Recession. How, you know, everybody's, you know, becoming a software engineer, making six figures overnight. People were trying to sort of like, dumb that down. Whereas now people are realizing that great, you know, men and great women, great people need to be on. It's sort of your duty to be on some selection of stimulants, whether it's Volta Excel. You know, a nice cup of coffee and some of the harder stuff. If you're in, if you're in, you know, parts of the world that allow it. Right. It's sort of, it's almost like your civic duty. Like if all of Peru was on cocaine, you know, daily or a few times weekly. It's hard to see how that wouldn't have a positive effect on the economy.

Yeah.

Which ultimately has a trickle down.

The fans really do want people to be on coke. I feel like the memes on, on Twitter are people are projecting like a lot.

Yeah.

And they're starting to search for cocaine where there's maybe just somebody who had a Celsius. Realistically.

Right.

But it is, it is funny. I don't know. I don't know if it would. I don't know how much it would be performance enhancing. Isn't it hard to stay jacked if you're on coke all day? I feel like cocaine makes you skinny.

I'm sure, I'm sure it kills appetite. A lot of stimulants do. Because you just have better things to do than eat. Right. You're locked in. Yeah.

How are you gonna.

You don't like lock. Like I've got to be fasted for 48 to 72 hours to lock in eating a meal.

Yeah.

You don't lock in when you're eating a meal. Even eating a nice meal. In my opinion, you're sort of just like, you know, good chit chat. Right.

Yeah.

Yeah. The weight loss thing was funny. I think I texted you this the other day. I hadn't at sunrise event. I hadn't been on. I don't have a scale at home. I hadn't been on a scale in like three months. And I step on a scale and I was like. I honestly laughed because I. In three months since having my daughter, my wife had stopped. She stopped cooking. She's taking care of the baby, she's breastfeeding. It's literally almost a 24, 7 thing. So stop cooking. And so that period of time, I also was extremely locked in. And the combination of being locked in and stopped, Sarah not coming in being like, hey, like you haven't eaten in six hours, like eight hours. Like, here's some food. So just every single day, 24 hour fast and drop 12 pounds in three months, like completely unintentionally. Not even like less a pound a week. Not even less body fat, just less muscle, just less everything.

And somebody said to the winter bulk.

Yeah, right. Yeah. Somebody said to Me like, dude, what happened to you? Like you, he looks super skinny. And I said I hadn't seen a scale, so I didn't know and I was just kind of offended and then the truth was presented right before my eyes. Anyways, we got to talk about, we got to talk about Zuck and I feel like you should probably launch into at least a 10 minute monologue on launching products.

Oh man, there's so many things here. Yeah, it's such an interesting story. I mean, people are so. Yeah. Meta launched these Orion augmented reality glasses. They look just like normal sunglasses or normal glasses, but they project holograms over on top of the lenses. So instead of doing the pass through, like what the Apple Vision Pro does, where you're using cameras and then reprojecting that onto a screen screen, you can just see the real world. So the resolution's essentially infinite. So same thing that the Microsoft Hololens did and that one company that didn't.

Do very well, Meta, I mean there's been so many.

Magic Leap was really strong and Google Glass too. Google Glass was a little bit of that. It was kind of just like screen in the corner. But yeah, but there's just like a million different weird things going on with this where the reaction from everyone that Meta invited to their developer day to experience this, everyone was so excited and was like, this is amazing, this is incredible. But if you look back at what happened when all of the same influencers got tours of the Apple Vision Pro, it was the same thing. They were all like, this is incredible. This is finally the breakthrough. I'm definitely going to daily drive this. And I always think back to, you know, the Pepsi challenge. You remember this like Pepsi versus Coke. This whole thing, this whole ad campaign they did where they would just go on the street and have people try Pepsi and try Coke and people would overwhelmingly select Pepsi. And the trick was that Pepsi was sweeter. And so they give you a 1 oz shot and over 1 oz people would prefer Pepsi, but over 16 oz people would prefer Coke. Interesting, because the sweetness would actually get to them. And so of course, like the market is actually roughly 50, 50 between Coke and Pepsi, but over 1 ounce people overwhelmingly prefer Pepsi. And so I'm just always worried with these VR demos that they set you up for an amazing 20 minute experience and they don't let anyone try one for a month straight.

Right.

Because I mean, Ben Thompson was kill.

The product before it actually got released. If Ben Thompson wore it for a month and was like.

And was like, actually, I Churned. Yeah, but. But you give it to him for 30 minutes, and he's like, this is incredible.

Right?

And so I'm always. I'm always hesitant about that until, like, at this point, if they want me to be stoked, I need to see them give the product to someone for a month straight. And then I need to know, were they still using it? Were they still daily driving it after a month?

Yeah. Cause I had the. I got the meta.

I got some right here.

Oh, nice.

Yeah, I ordered a bunch of thoughts.

On this one, and I got these. And I was like, these are cool. Mostly for the video capture stuff. And I took them out of the box, put them on, set them up, went and drove my Ferrari, posted a video on social media. And within, like, 30 minutes, local mom was commenting, like, very angrily, saying, like, don't ever drive like this around our house. Like, stuff like that ended up starting a bunch of drama. And that was the last time I used my meta Ray Ban. So I had sort of a bad.

Wait, wait, wait. Did she see the video?

She saw the video. Because you posted the odometers speedometer, I thought it was fairly controlled. Everybody has their own. Everybody has their own perception of speed, right? Yeah, I mean, I haven't used them since then.

Yeah, you told me that you use them for a drive. So I actually. I kind of, like, unboxed these while I was driving and just threw them on and was hoping that I could just, like, put them on, press a button, and just start recording. But you can't. You have to set them up. And this is something that always frustrates me about these meta products is that they just assume that you're, like, the biggest Facebook fanboy and that you have, like, oh, yeah, I'd love to log in.

Oh, yeah, I know what my Facebook. Yeah, yeah.

It's like, let's be realistic. Not everyone wants to log in with these things. They should let you just turn them on, take a picture, and then say, hey, don't you want to log in to get your photos? Like, push it down the road a little bit?

I don't know who these. I don't know who that. That recording functionality is for other. Other than like, the guys on Instagram that are like, hey, what do you do for a living?

I mean, I. I'm gonna try and use these around the kids and. And the dogs. That can be cool and see if that's cool and see if that works. I. I think there could be something there where it's like, they are. They really are, like, as light as just normal wayfarers. So if. If, you know, if you're. If you're going to the beach, why not just have this on there? And I do think there is something legitimate about the sunglass and the glasses being the next computing platform, the next major consumer hardware category. Because if you look at the evolution, a lot of times the devices that have gotten really popular have been just iterations of things that we've already come to expect and love. Oura Ring is, I think, doing $500 million a year. And it's like, why is that doing so well? And the pendant companies aren't doing that well, at least not yet. I think it's because people just wear rings, so they just understand it. Apple watch. It's like, I already wear a watch, so, like, I'll just throw on a watch. I get it. And then, like, a lot of the.

The question is, it'll be interesting to see what the glasses market, because I am convinced, I think we're both convinced that it is the next or at least a complementary computing platform to your other devices. The question is, does it become like, the smartwatch market, where there's just sort of like, the dominant Fang players and then kind of no one else? Like, you still, like, where, you know, it's not like, an actual replacement for what a lot of people use, like, watches for?

Yeah.

It'll be interesting to see if companies like Meta continue to integrate with, like, existing silhouettes. Like, you know, Ray Bans.

Yep.

Or if they go into the Orion route and it's just like, no, we're. We're the platform, we're the device, we're the brand. This is the only thing that matters because, like, I can't see myself wearing that frame, you know, the Orion frame, like, ever. But if you went to, I would start to get.

Why are you pronouncing it that way? It's Orion.

Orion.

Orion.

Orion.

Orion.

I don't know. Orion. Orion's belt. Yeah, Orion's belt. Sorry, sorry.

Well, I mean, the frames were, like, kind of like, built up to be like, a dev kit, basically. Like, they're not shipping that yet. And they will wind up shipping in, like, a Ray Ban frame. I mean, they have a pretty significant partnership. Imagine Panasonica, the company behind Ray Bans.

Yeah.

Which is, like, this incredible monopoly. It's like $100 billion great company.

Wait, so imagine the feeling of ripping a Volta, putting in an Excel, and then putting on Aviator versions of the Orion glasses and just locking into a day at Work like this and you're just at work, you're just firing on all cylinders. Typing on a holographic keyboard, just firing off emails three years away, three years out, basically.

Yeah, I think so.

Yeah. If we got invited to demo day, it could have been last week or two weeks ago.

It is, yeah. There's so many. The luxottica CEO reached out to Zuck apparently to be like, hey, we should do a deal. And Zuck years ago, years ago it was kind of like, oh, like have somebody on my team take this. And like somebody on his team was like, no, you need to talk to this guy. That's how they did the deal. So they just re upped. I think they have a 10 year deal, it's exclusive and Luxottica is the sole hardware. Well, so they're completely vertically integrated. So they own Ray Ban. I think they bought Ray ban in the 90s and then they jacked it with a price and stopped selling it in gas stations and became this like luxury brand. They bought a whole bunch of other. I think they own Persol and a few other brands. But then they own everything from the manufacturing to like the lenses. Yeah. How they grind the lenses, all that. But then they also own the retail distribution. They own LensCrafters and so they have more. I think there's more LensCrafter stores than there are Apple stores. And so and Meta, I think they bought 5% of Luxottica and so you can see a world where Meta winds up buying luxottica also owns Supreme. And so there's this theory that like, oh, Zuck loves hypebeast culture. So he's like, that's true. But he clearly does love fashion and so there is something.

Yeah, he's working. I didn't realize. He's working on his clothes. His new like kind of cringe clothing is with Mike Amiri, designer, very like sort of hype beastie. Like you'll. If you listen to a rap song, every 10th song will talk about like a mirror, jeans, whatever. But I think so that the interesting thing, Meta versus Apple with the next gen computing platform. And let's just ignore Snap because they're going to continue to drive returns for their employees. But which is kind of antithetical to everything that we believe in.

Yes, exactly.

So this is the ultimate matchup of founder mode versus manager mode. Right. Which is like Tim Apple building Apple headsets, trying to just sort of iterate towards something great. Who knows? Would Steve Jobs have put out that, that product or would that have been an internal product for Another three years before you could get to this platform. Right. And Zuck, who's basically been his probably only insecurity besides that he's just deep down always going to be a nerd is that he doesn't own the platform. Right. Like, that's what keeps him up at night. So that's like a, you know, basically like multi decade effort to own the next computing platform and own the hardware.

Right? Yeah. And I think glasses are a reasonable.

He's like, yeah.

The problem is, is that the. There's just this weird, like, kind of, I don't know, user hostility when you set up one of these products. It just doesn't feel like I'm in. It feels like I'm in conflict. It feels like I'm sparring with Meta when I set something up like this.

He just wants to make it.

He asked me to allow notifications on my phone for this thing twice, just before I could take a picture. It's like, I remember I was testing the Meta Quest. I think it was the second one, the Meta Quest 2. And I was like, I just want to go back to the time when you could take an N64, put in a cartridge, turn it on and it would go blink, and then you'd just be playing Mario fully, basically analog, basically immediately with the Quest onboarding, even after you've all set it up, you have to log in. There's six different logins now because I have a Facebook password, a meta password, an Instagram password, an Oculus password.

Wait, what if the meta Ray Bans is just his way of trying to get to convince Wall street that people still use Facebook? Because, like, I had to, like, I had to remember what my Facebook password is or whatever just to like, get.

If he could sell every Facebook user one of these $300 pair of glasses, I think he's gonna be doing very well. But. Yeah, but there was just this, like, it was like the demand for, like, it has to be social features. You have to be logged in, you have to be in their store, you have to be doing all this stuff. It just like took the surprise and delight completely out of it. And I feel like with this, I mean, it wasn't as bad, but it was still like, you could just tell. It was almost like I'm interacting with two devices that are like a divorced mom and dad, right? Because it's like the Apple phone is like trying to kill this as hard as possible. So it's like, hey, just so you know, they're gonna track you. So do you Want to track or no? Do you want to track? Oh, they're gonna want your. Like, do you want contacts or not? Like, be careful. Like this company's trying to fuck you, so be very careful. And these guys are like, well, we don't want you to use the phone at all. But like, also you have to install this app to use our thing. So we want to like get our hooks in there. But then it's just so adversarial and like, I just feel like I'm like torn between.

The core issue is that the meta PM who is making 200k a month, the day before one of their most important, important sprints, he got like a 50% sleep score. So he was all thrown off probably. He comes into work, he's pissed off, right? He's only had seven hours of sleep. He starts chewing out the whole engineering team, chewing out legal, and everybody's just kind of like, oh, like, you know, let's just ship it. Meanwhile, you know, with an Apple product, like the designer is just like meditating for like 12 hours and it's just like, let's just remove that part of the flow and then let's remove that.

Part of the flow. Exactly.

Let's just keep, let's just keep removing until you can just swim through at the user.

I mean, it's just, there's just so much like, maybe my expectations are too high for these companies, but it's like, you're a trillion dollar company. Why do I have to do a day one update? Like I had to install a software update just to use it the first time. It's like, just ship it with something that works basic and then let me upgrade later, like once you've converted me. And it's not even that, it's not even that like an extended setup process of like two hours is gonna be bad for immediate conversion because I'm gonna get over that, but it's just gonna leave a bad taste in my mouth. This product doesn't care about me. I remember one of the most magical things was when the iPhones started shipping and they were fully charged. And now you go and you buy an iPhone and, and it's fully charged. And so you leave the Apple Store and you're like, wow, this is awesome. It just feels like they went a little bit farther and that's gotta be a little bit cheap.

Well, Apple also improved over time. Like, don't you remember when it was like you were like, oh, I'm switching phones. Like it's gonna be such a huge. Hassle and now it's like, you know, they basically do it in the store.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The one thing that'll be interesting with glasses is glasses are always gonna be a fashion statement of sorts. It's literally sitting on your. It's like. Yeah, it's, it's the window to the eyes. Right. And not that that doesn't look fantastic, but you probably, if we're wearing glasses all the time, are going to want to have recording. It looks like. Yeah, you are recording right now. No. So I think that it's possible people might have four or five different pairs of glasses. They might have sunglasses. They might have, you know, like, I.

Mean if Meta owns luxottica.

Yeah, exactly.

They're going to own all of the good brands basically. But I think Apple would be able to come in and I mean that's the big question that a lot of people have is like, okay, so Meta announced this Orion prototype. It costs 10k to produce right now per unit and it has like maybe a two hour battery life. There's a lot of problems that they need to iron out. And so when Ben Thompson pushed Boz, it sounded like 2027 maybe it's a consumer product. And so the question is, does Apple have something that's adjacent?

Yeah. So here's my big issue with headsets and I already have tinfoil on the inside of my hat, so I'm all good. But basically, last time I checked, deep in the Apple iPhone terms of service, there's stuff that literally says don't hold this device like up to your head, like hold it here. Really, really for health reasons. There is proof that like the radiation, even though it's non ionizing or whatever, that, that your phone emits is not something that you want that close to your body. Right. It's why, you know, it's why there's a bunch of brands popping up that are like, we're like EMF proof underwear. Because if you're putting your. It's a big, big possibility that having your phone next to your reproductive organs could be contributing to the fertility crisis and other downrange issues. So for me, I'm looking at it as. As what? I don't know if there's anything that will ever be able to mitigate that. Right. And so if I'm not comfortable, I never, I haven't taken a phone call with my phone up to my ear. I'm like, you know, the asshole with wired headphones. Wired headphones. Or if I'm in a public space, I'll put on speaker and just keep it quiet because I just don't. It's seemingly like unnecessary risk to have your phone like slapped here. So that's my big thing is like, okay, if this is the next computing platform, like how do we ensure that we all don't get like turbo brain cancer? Then, you know, and that feels like a very unanswered question that historically both the cellular networks and consumer product, consumer electronics companies have completely ignored. Except they tend to bury stuff in their terms that say like, don't use this for three hours straight or whatever because it will literally heat up the inside of your brain, like deep into your brain if you just hold it up there. And so again, that's like a big question that I have and I think it's worth somebody funding like an entire documentary on cell phones because there's so much emphasis on how cellular device, like the things that we do on our devices are bad for us. Doom scrolling, you know, the dating apps and things like that. But there's actual like the physical, like physical potentially risk of the device and constantly being attached to it because we're sort of electrical beings that are absorbing a lot of different types of radiation at all times. But you know, basically absorbing really concentrated doses of it can, you know, is a risk factor.

Yeah, I think there's, there's definitely something to be said for like, there's just like this generational change of like some sort of pollutant that we find out later. Like in the 70s it was like lead.

Yeah. And then asbestos.

Yeah. And like lead made everyone. I mean there's this theory that like lead made everyone insane and like aggressive. And that's why there's like a crime wave and a murder spike. And then it's like maybe we cut out the lead and we increase the plastics and then everyone gets really docile and just kids infertile. And so it's like balancing these toxicants over time.

Well, the funny thing with lead is that lead actually stops a lot of electromagnetic radiation. So if you had lead paint, if you had lead paint in your house, you probably wouldn't get cell service.

Interesting.

So I think we're actually gonna see a trend back towards using lead paint in bedrooms. Because if you want to create an environment in your room that is, you know, doesn't have.

I mean there's other ways to build a Faraday cage.

Yeah. But it's actually pretty efficient to be like, let's just paint all the walls.

Yeah. But you get lead poisoning.

I don't know if I don't know if it's actually been proven. The lead paint, it's like, gets into you. The whole, like, kids are gonna eat the paint chips or whatever. And there's other ways to do it. You could paint one layer of lead and then paint over it. Right. Interesting. So anyways, I'm gonna get into the lead painting business. We're bringing back lead.

You gotta get some leaded gasoline.

Consumer electronics are out.

Yeah, lead gasoline. For some reason, I don't think lead is coming back. I think. I think that the answer may be. Well, it still is.

Still. Isn't it still used in X ray? Like when you're getting an X ray. Oh, yeah.

Like a lead vest.

So lead is never left. It doesn't need to come back. It's always been with us.

And it is insulated.

It's the anti here, you know, it's sort of.

People used to chew like pencil lead. Like kids used to be like, you know, nervously chewing a pencil.

The original Excel just gets you more angry. Gets you more angry and like you.

Become a murderer or something.

Yeah.

Should we talk about that MKBHD app?

Yeah.

I thought it was too cheap.

Too cheap, too cheap. 50 bucks a year for that quality of wallpaper.

You gotta go higher. Yeah, you gotta go higher. No, it's funny, like, I was seriously thinking, like, why is everyone complaining? Just don't buy this, you know, like, yeah, it's 50 bucks.

Well, no, this is the thing.

But it's because he is a critic. And so there's this, like, people like criticizing the critic and that's why they're so excited about it. But did you have a. Did you have a hot take about it? It was kind of interesting.

I mean. Yeah, here's my thing. Anybody whose job is to criticize is the number one target for all criticism. Right. It doesn't matter if you are like a poster who is posting. Right. And you just like have hot takes all the time, even hot takes. But I think he's just built up such a reputation of doing takedowns, and usually they're. I think they're very fair for the most part, 100%.

Like the Fisker Ocean. I think the bigger literally doesn't work anymore.

I think. I think the only criticism is just that it seemed like to be a pretty poorly made apple. Like, I don't have any issue with him coming out and I don't have any issue with him coming out and trying to sell usernames for 50 bucks a month.

Yeah.

Or sorry, not usernames, wallpapers. Wallpapers. No issue with that at all. It's just like, I don't know, like, have some good taste in, you know, dev shops or partners. Right? Like, yeah, there's sort of this aesthetic issue with it that I have, which is like you review technology and you put out a shitty app. It doesn't matter that I think the products also pretty. Like, to me, the product's shitty. I'm never gonna do that. You know, family men, we have. There's only one thing that should be on your wallpaper. Your wife and children. Right.

Or the office.

Or the office. Or your. Your super evil Megacorp logo.

Just remind yourself that. Yeah, yeah.

During the daytime, you know, and then when you get home, swap it back. No. So I just think that I have like sort of a general issue with the aesthetics of being the tech reviewer that puts out a poorly made app, which it was like it got completely torn apart, reverse engineered.

Everyone stole everything. And then also just like the implementation of the ad flow was just. That is always clunky.

It had an ad.

Yeah. So basically you would. You install the app and then you browse for wallpapers and there are some that look nice. They look fine. You can actually just screenshot them and zoom in. It's very weird because they have to show them to you. So you can just screenshot them. You don't get the full thing. It only shows you like three quarters. So then you have to zoom in a little bit. But it's fine. It's weird. But the weird thing is that if you want standard definition, which is like low res, which I think is actually hd. So people were weirded out about that because his whole brand is MKBHD hd, like high definition. And he's selling a standard definition product instead of giving you the high definition, then having you upgrade to the 4K version. But if you want the standard definition, you click and you have to watch two ads. And that's why they were asking for location targeting. Because if you don't have someone's location, the ad rates will plummet. And so you need to know where people are roughly just the course locations, what's important. But they asked for fine grained. So they. It was kind of like a sloppy implementation. But just if you're in an app and an ad pops up, it feels like there's this iOS like widget basically that a lot of mobile games use and a lot of just kind of like cheap apps that you download to do like one thing. Like. Oh, like, like this is the difference between like Some app that just like, puts subtitles at the bottom. And like the Captions app. The Captions app is, like venture funded. It has a subscription. It's expensive, but it's the highest quality. And it's like crafts. It's a beautiful app that works really, really well. I use it all the time. And the reason is if they just, like, popped up an ad, I would be like, ugh, this is like, so annoying. And it's like this unskippable thing and like, the X is in the corner and you gotta go find it and it's all blended in and stuff. And so that. That was just kind of like, like a mediocre experience. And then. And then I think once people, like, started digging in, they started digging into every little thing. And they found that, like, one of the artists on the app had put up a wallpaper that was just the color orange. And it's like, you don't need to pay for that at all because you can just make that in two seconds in any thing.

Take a picture of an orange and just zoom in.

Exactly. There's a million different ways to just make your background orange if you want.

But yeah, I think something that's funny is it feels like a very, like, vintage app. Like, this is the kind of, like, quality and idea that should have dropped the year that the App Store opened.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. Flashlight app. It feels kind of like that. I think the better. MKBHD has done some smart partnerships. I. Yeah.

Ridge Wallet.

Ridge Wallet.

Fantastic.

Close friends with Sean and Connor, the cmo. I think that was, like a very smart partnership from both sides for them to come together. And he's a big eight sleep advertiser.

Yeah, he does a great job with those.

Yeah. How can you not? Right. Eight sleep, if you're listening, sleep on a regular organic cotton mattress. So we're always open to our sleep partners at the world's most profitable podcast.

But I think what happened with. It's weird because there is a correct way to introduce a $50 a year subscription wallpaper app, but I think it's the Call of Duty method. Have you ever played any of those games?

Yeah, of course.

Okay, so like Call of Duty core.

Mem, I basically spawned into Rust. I just, like, have no memories. And then I need 360. No scoping off of the tower. Yeah, yeah.

So Call of Duty, the monetization, like, has ramped up a ton, but they reset the shittiness of the monetization every single cycle. So they're on annual cycle essentially every year. They come out with a new game, and every year you buy the game and it's $60, and there's no pay to win mechanics. There's no battle pass, there's nothing you can pay for. And everyone's like, oh, thank God. Like, this one isn't pay to win. And everyone's like, good. Like, I just got all the content that I wanted and I get to. And I get to, you know, make the decision of, like, what do I get and what's the price and is it good or bad? And everyone's like, it's a 7 out of 10 every time, and people play it. But over time, what happens is that, like the normie Call of Duty person comes on, they play the campaign, and they play a little bit of multiplayer. Maybe they, like get to the prestige level one, they unlock all the guns, and then they're kind of done after like a month. They get, like, burned out. Those people kind of fade off. But the really hardcore fans will play the full year until the next one comes out, and the really, really hardcore ones will stay on for an extra year on the game that they love. And so the monetization just keeps ramping up during that time, and they sell more and more skins and more and more stuff. And so if you go and look at like the, like a review, a day one review of a Call of Duty that came out in 2020 or something like that, like the new Modern Warfare, the reviews from the day it launched will be like, this is a reasonable monetization program. But if you talk to the influencers that, like, stuck with it, they'll be like, it's the worst thing ever. It's pay to win. And there's, you know, you can sing. There's loot boxes and gambling now, and they've added all this stuff on. But they do that very deliberately because they only introduce it to people that are already in the ecosystem. Sucked in. Exactly.

Like, I've spent three grand on this game. I'm going to spend the next $200.

Exactly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's funny, I used to worry as a kid, I was like, are we running out of wars that they can make games about? Right, right. Because it felt like they went from, like, they did World War I, they did World War II, and then black Ops was Vietnam. Right. And then when do they introduce.

Well, they did the future wars, they.

Did the future ones. But eventually it seem. It seems like, here's a, here's a. Here's a take.

Yeah.

Do they do Operation Iraqi Freedom? Like in the next 10 years.

Like, oh, in Call of Duty.

Yeah. Yeah.

That would be crazy. I don't think they've ever done that. Right. They've done modern warfare and it's like.

In the general area, but it's too offensive.

But it's abstract.

Like, it's too. Like if you did a war from within the last 20 years, it would be. But ultimately that would probably be the best selling version of Call of Duty.

Yeah. It is crazy because they'll do ones where it's like, oh, you're fighting terrorists in the Middle East. But it's not just like straight.

Actually, I used to enjoy the missions, you know, in the context of my great grandpa was like a fighter pilot and got shot down like multiple times. And I used to be. Yeah, yeah, he was.

How do you.

So he started. So this. This guy is a legend. He Pearl harbor happens, he enlists, lies about his age to get in. Small dude becomes the rear gunner in like B52 bombers, does two tours, gets shot down twice.

Wow.

Makes it out. And then is trains to be. It's a P51. What's like, what was the best fighter?

Yeah, the Mustang.

The Mustang, yeah. Trains to be a Mustang pilot and is en route to the Pacific theater when the war ended. Finally. Anyways, tough bastard.

Yeah. So to bring it back to mkbhd, I think what he should have done is he should have just launched with something. Just go for just the installs, just free, no ads, no tracking. Just get everyone to install this thing and then see where you're at. And then once you have everyone's email and you've captured everyone and you know who actually likes it, then you no longer have to message to your whole YouTube community. Because he put this out on. He did basically a sponsored read on his own YouTube channel, introducing the app that goes out to 12 million people or something like that.

Yeah.

But there's probably a subset of like a hundred thousand people that are actually down for this. And I. And I mean, Nikita Beer was saying he's gonna make like 3 million a year off this.

Well, yeah. And the funny thing is, I mean, the good thing is when you have a really big audience like that and people generally like you, you get multiple chances. So he'll probably still get to that end state. Yeah, but 3 million a year for somebody who makes probably 15 million. I have no idea how much money.

He makes, but it's a large organization at this point.

Yeah. And I'm sure, sure that Dell would be like, we'll give you $5 million a year to cover us a few times or whatever.

That might erode trust more than this.

Yeah.

At least this is trying.

But regardless. Yeah, he could have gotten those power.

Jesus. Like the guy reviews iPhones and Android phones like going to double.

That's the thing with being creators, right. If you get big enough you have to sell out to keep, to keep them monitor to keep growing. Right.

I mean there is something to for.

Unless you have your own.

Yeah, you want to own your own product. And that's clearly where he's going with this. And he did say that he wants to like add some other stuff to it. Maybe it won't be just like a wallpaper out forever.

But what if you could AI generate a family? So if you're an incel.

You could on the panels app. That's where this goes.

Well, I'm just, that's just what I associate with wallpapers.

Oh yeah. Because it's always. It's supposed to be your family. Yeah. This is very, very odd.

Wait, this is great. I just want you to. You're just going to see this email and last look at the subject.

Well, should we talk about another kind of iffy launch pair?

AI dude, these guys response was honestly really good. I thought like they kind of did what they needed to do. They just posted through it and sort of like reclaim their honor which was like they had posted. I think it was sort of disingenuous the way they said we, you know, we forked this and didn't mention that we also had forked this other thing.

Yeah, yeah.

But they had put out a video three months prior to this launch.

Oh really?

Saying that. Saying exactly what it is.

Yeah.

So it's not like there was a history of misleading people about what their product was.

Yeah. And I mean in AI there have been a number of those where later there's been a question about like who owns like stability. AI went through a whole thing with this with like who owns the IP and what, where does this sit and what's the relationship? Like this seems pretty simple and it is kind of silly because it's like we just forked this. But I mean, I don't know. I don't. I mean I guess there is a question about like you know, literally the licenses, like certain licenses, you can fork them but then you can't sell what you're forking and that's the problem. But I mean there are big businesses like Red Hat is a huge, huge multi billion dollar company and it's a fork of Linux. That's the red hat strategy and there's a few of those and I could see a company winning in open source AI in that way. I don't think that that's that crazy. I don't know about this specific.

Yeah, I don't know. I'm kind of, it's funny, I'm sort of generally bearish on the company purely because of the space that they're in and how competitive it is and how it's hard to imagine that. You know I think that like there's a huge willingness to try new tools right now because everybody's. Everything's changing so quickly. But is the YC company with 500k and like a bunch of haters gonna actually win now? Because like I think having the Part of why part of why developers love Stripe is because they have a lot of respect and admiration for the Collison brothers. So is the average developer like I kind of want to back pair just to spite the haters but I'm not like. But I think it's like these founders are probably going to be very successful. Will pair AI be successful?

Yeah. There is an interesting question, very unclear like what type of organization does need an open source AI code editor? There are lots of places where it's like okay, why would you want open source in that particular part of your tech stack? Well, it's flexibility around a specific thing. Avoiding lock in to a specific thing. Why go with postgres as opposed to Oracle database? Well, there's a lot more flexibility that comes with that. But in the code editor space that's usually more on the developer side. Individual developer decision kind of unclear.

But yeah, I think one factor is it's not like everybody like this next one. I guess we do turbo. I guess we do in Turbo Retarded Gen Z founders now it's like this is not new. YC has always backed I won't use that same light. Always backed young technical founders that were just like very ambitious that we're going to do whatever it took to win. And the model is like proven beyond a doubt.

Right.

There's been a lot of FUD lately on people being like, like oh YC's last six batches. There's not that many unicorns. It's like okay, I don't think there ever was like that. You know sometimes you get breakout companies or whatever. But I think the difference now is tech is so mainstream that these guys are coming in. They already have a YouTube channel that's super active.

I think I printed out that Delian tweet below, which is really, really, really interesting. Which is like. Yeah, like when, when the. For you page and the algorithm, like, these guys know how to go viral. That's clear from the way they wrote this tweet. I just quit my $270,000 job at Coinbase. Like, this is clickbait and they got a ton of attention. Yeah, but even if you wrote this Tweet, you know, 10 years ago, you would not be the front page of the Internet necessarily for your start. It would be much harder to break through.

I'm trying to see if this guy has a Cartier crash on, which would be like a crazy piece to just have on because it's. It's basically like you. I don't know, you'd have to spend like the entire YC check on your watch.

But yeah, they definitely seem like, you know, they, they definitely understand going viral.

Yeah, I'm bullish on these guys. Bearish on Perry.

I. Yeah. But who knows whether. Where they will wind up.

Like, yeah, if they're. It's a, if it's a real YC company, they'll pivot twice more.

Exactly.

They'll be a closed source code editor. Hey, actually, we didn't like being so open about what we're working on. Like, we're just going to build. We're just going to build software.

I mean, all bets are off. You can be nonprofit and then be worth 157 billion. You know, you don't need to.

Oh yeah. People, people. Fudding y Combinator. As if OpenAI is not a YC company.

Yeah. Like, came directly out of YC.

Yeah.

Yeah, you got to include that in the recent, in the recent history. Yeah, it's like the most important technology ever.

Yeah.

I mean like, you can say whatever you want about the financial ownership or whatever, but like it's clearly like, like they made something cool that everyone uses and it's awesome. And like a lot of people have built other things and we're. Because of that.

We love the economy, so we love a for profit organization.

Right. I am, I am so much happy.

I think that if every convert every single nonprofit. Nonprofit that is doing homeless related work in LA into a for profit and I, I guarantee you it solves the. It solves the homeless issue in two weeks.

Seems reasonable. What else should we do?

Should we do this? The longshoremen?

Yeah, we can talk about that. I don't really know much about it. I know that I have stuff stuck in the middle of the ocean.

Yeah. This is not about being informed. This is about sharing opinions. And you don't need to be informed to have an opinion.

That's true.

Put that on the record. Yeah. I mean, this guy just had. I mean, he looks like he's a character out of. He's like the villain out of a movie, you know, where, like, the next stage of this mutiny is, like, they just rebel and like, like secede from the union and like, the ports. The ports become, you know, the beginning of, like, the new, you know, America riffs, but not in, like, you know, but anyways, I think this is like a pretty. Somebody compared it to. To the organized crime, and I think that's like, pretty on point where it's effectively just. I mean, who. Who knows? Right? I think from his point of view, he's doing his job. He gets paid like about a million a year to represent his people.

I think. I mean, I think it will. People quote, tweeted and were like, this guy makes 780k, but it's like, that's not that much. That's less than like a fang, like, level one new grad these days. So it's like, is this guy really this. I don't know. I'm not really buying the whole villain.

I think it. I think it ultimately backfires in a big way. Right. Because everybody's like, oh, yeah, we actually really do need automation. We shouldn't be dependent on, like, it.

Does seem like a mess.

Yeah. We shouldn't be dependent on a bunch of angry, you know, value extractors that basically have a monopoly.

Yeah. I do wonder how it fits in with the election. Like, the strike began October 1, election is in November. There's some sort of Taft Hartley thing that the President can do to kind of force them to go back to work, which would, like, for four weeks, which could time up, like, perfectly so that you're not feeling it when you're voting, essentially, and then you start feeling it right when it's done. So it's just like. It's like odd timing. But yeah, I mean, ultimately it seems like he's like, pretty. Pretty bullish right now on it ending soon. Or like, you know, optimistic.

Yeah.

That it will. It will resolve.

But, yeah, I think Ryan Peterson has. Needs to verticalize and own the ports. You know, otherwise he's just going to take, like, 20 years off his life. All the stress. You know, like, he needs to own. He needs to own all the land within 100 miles of the water in Yemen. Right. Like, he needs to own the boats. He needs to own he needs to privatize the navy.

He needs a navy.

He needs to privatize the ports just so he can get a good night's sleep.

Yeah, let's get Flexport a navy for sure.

I think we can probably skip this one. I don't feel the need to, like, throw this kid under the bus. I did think, like, yeah, this is my least favorite form of. Of ad right now is like, AI generated slop.

It's not AI generated, though.

It's not.

No, it's literally just normal editing.

Really.

Just movie clips and stuff. Pictures.

Yeah. But for some reason it. For some reason it felt so. It felt so whack compared to the Excel was doing, like, handcrafted editing.

Did you see the other one that launched yesterday? The one that was like, developers, developers, developers, developers. Did you see that one? No, it was Resolve AI. Did you see this? This one was. This one. Developers, developers, developers, developers.

See, this is good.

Yeah, this is good, right?

This is the same format. It's just real. See, this is the same format, though, as the original Founders Fund Hype. Real, which we copied that capital and then a bunch of other people, and now it's in the zeitgeist and now the format's dead.

It is.

So sorry to whoever. Did you edit that video for Founders for?

No, it was Mike Petriano.

Yeah, Mike did a great thing.

He did.

We remixed it.

He created a. Yeah, he created a monster. And then it just like. Yeah, it's.

I mean, it's a very fun format. I just wouldn't do it as a company today.

Yeah, I mean, I guess the question is, like, how do you break through? Because, like, I mean, this launch for this, like, what's it called? Rewind. Yeah. Resolve AI. I mean, it's like, it'd be pretty hard to get a million views on your launch video otherwise or like your launch something. So, like, what do you do other than just like a vibreal that can go viral on dax? It's hard.

Build something great.

Yeah. Takes time.

Copy an open source project.

Yeah. Create a controversy.

Honestly, no video needed.

Yes. Yeah. Be the villain.

Yeah. The heel.

Be the heel. Or not the face. That's funny. I don't know.

Okay.

Do we want to talk about the David center event?

Yeah. Where was it so funny? So, Austin, Texas.

Yeah.

Amazing space. That was basically. It's basically like a hotel that is kind of like. I mean, it has sort of like some continuous use for some, I think, foundation out there. But Founders Podcast and Business Breakdown hosted an event. There was like 120ish people there. No other people on the property, which was cool. So you'd just be like, you know, doing something random at the gym. You'd strike up a conversation that's etc. Amazing. Amazing group of people, I would say felt like at least 10% of the people there had a net worth of over a billion dollars, which is like hard to get in the same sort of like, you know, acre that often. Unless you're in dollar doing that. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think. And the funny thing, this story came up a few times, but at Capital, we were one of the first advertisers of founders podcasts.

Really?

And at the time, it's so funny what like two years does. I think we paid him like 5,000 for the quarter.

Wow.

And now it's like you need to be doing like a seven figure multi year deal to even enter the conversation. And he's probably gonna be like, yeah, it's not a fit. But anyways, David's amazing. Matt, the other host, is awesome too. It was an interesting situation because it was clear there were some really great panels. But it was almost like the panels were just dead time because the second you'd leave a panel and just start talking, there were so many great people. And David kept saying, I want to do a conference with no panels. It's just like the space, space, which I think is, is great.

I've done that. It works well.

Yeah. And yeah, ultimately I think David left the weekend being like, I'm not, I don't even. I don't think he's ever going to do one again. But it was funny because he just would rather host a group of people.

I think the retreat with no content is fine.

Yeah, yeah, maybe. But it was almost. I told him, you should have a retreat for your audience and don't even go because it's. There's so much value in just connecting with other people that are like minded. And so you, you phone in and do your panel. Hey everyone, I'm so happy that you guys are all together. He's on the Venetian Islands because the challenge is, it's really enjoyable for everyone except for him who's, you know, basically like 48 hour, 48 hour period where people are grabbing him and all this stuff. But anyways, people were generally respectful and it was good. It was pretty funny. Like people that I was hanging out with, Jackson Dahl, Bryce from ndbc, Justin Mares, Jeremy Giffon, David Perel, Jorgensen, people like that. I don't think any one of those people had more than, like, a single one or two drinks the entire weekend, even though there's an open bar, like, the entire time. So it was interesting to. To really see, like, the death of alcohol, like, pretty. You know, pretty. Pretty plainly, the only people that were getting absolutely hammered was. Was some of the old guard, which was fun. I was asking them, you know, this. This guy's, like, borderline, like, blacked out. Only person that I think was truly, like, drunk in the whole event on Friday night. And I was like, how does it feel to just be old and just loaded? And he's just, like, laughing, and he's like, yeah, like, dude, you, like, busted your ass for four decades. You deserve to be the only person that's blacked out here. And I actually appreciate it.

Everyone else is still on the hunt.

Yeah, yeah. Nobody's got time to be hungover tomorrow. That's fun. But, yeah, fantastic event. And, David, when you listen to this, host a retreat where you're not there, you're not there, Call in from the Venetian Isles. I think his community would appreciate it. I know a lot of people came out of it. I mean, I was in the. It's funny, at the very end, I was staying an extra night in Austin to see a portfolio founder the next day, and this guy's like, hey, does anybody want to split an Uber? And I'm going downtown. I was like, sure, let's do it. And we get in the car. Wasn't really like, you know, we. I never met the guy. That weekend, we were talking about what we. What. What. What each of us do. And he's like, oh, yeah, I run, like, a $6 billion hedge fund, you know, in London. You know, it's just like, so. It's like that. That quality of people. But anyways, if it happens again, I'll be back. There needed to be everybody there was very Excel curious or already an active user. A dau. Yeah, we measure our customer base and dau. Not traditional sales volume, but, yeah, that was great. The other thing, over the weekend, I feel like I kept opening my phone and people would be talking about Excel in my mentions. Do you want to talk about that screenshot I sent you?

Yeah, we should do that.

So. So anyways, we got our first honest review of Excel nicotine pouches from Capital Cowboy on X. He says, for anyone curious, here's my honest review of Excel. Better smoother flavor than any Zyn I've had. Lasts significantly longer, too. Had my cousin that can't handle Nick upset stomach at 3 milligrams, try these. And he said, you got all the buzz without the stomach issues. So that is the power of Excel, obviously. I asked him, have you noticed anything different with your returns? Most users report report improvements after using Excel. And Cowboy said, I actually got a promotion after using Excel. No joke. And he said his buddy Mark got a promotion as well. And Mark said, using it and got a promotion a week after switching to the brand. Shit works. And I said all it did was make you more you, Right? You on nicotine is you on your best day, right? It's you on 100% sleep score, you know, fully locked in. So anyways, the reactions have been. Reactions have been great. If you're a user and you have any comments, feedbacks, product suggestions, or if you're interested in debt financing through the Excel brand, reach out.

Yeah, sounds good. Should we do this viral chain letter? I think this thing's so funny.

Yeah. Yeah. So I have to start by saying I actually don't know if I have a copy of this one.

So a bunch of celebrities have been sharing a copypasta text meme on their Instagrams and it says, goodbye, Meta. AI. Please note, an attorney has advised us to put this on. Failure to do so may result in legal consequences. As Meta is now a public entity. All space space, all members must post a similar statement. If you do not post at least once, it will be assumed you are okay with them using your information and photos. I do not give Meta or anyone else permission to use any of my personal data, profile information or. Or photos. And then the amazing thing is that Meta has appended. See why fact checkers say this is false? They added the fact check modal over it to just be like. Just so you know. This is misinformation. It's just so funny. Tom Brady posted it.

Really?

Yeah. Julianne Moore and a bunch of other people. And it's just so funny. It's so boomer. I remember this happening like, like at the dawn of Facebook, like maybe 10 years ago and it's still happening.

It would be like they changed the terms of service. One schizo person posts just like ramble. Somebody posts just like an absolute ramble.

Yeah.

And then it somehow picks up. And I only saw it on honestly shout out to the people that I follow because I only saw one person post it.

Oh, unironically.

Unironically. And that guy formerly ran a public company, so that was a bit concerning to me because I. Because I. Yeah, I honestly, yeah.

I mean, it's just like I get being a boomer and not understanding how the Internet works and being confused, but.

I would just rewrite it.

A, rewrite it. But B, like, is there any scenario as a public company where, you know, it's like, this is like the equivalent of, I don't know, like, like holding up a sign outside of the, outside of the White House and just being like, I want you to, you know. Yeah. It just makes no sense how this would be, like, legally binding or any.

Sort of, like, on an ephemeral story.

Yeah, yeah. How is it all the way that you interact with a company? Right.

Yeah.

It's like, it's like leaving a review on a restaurant and expecting that to be like, illegally buying.

And it's funny because if people are scraping your profile for data, which they are to train models, the AI, the scraper shows up at John Coogan and they just start like, sniffing around and they're like. And then they see like, oh, you added a story highlight and three months ago he posted this. And the scraper goes, hmm, okay, let's get out of here.

Let's get out of here. This person's really stupid.

Or Meta is just like, yeah, stores the data.

What if it actually winds up working? Because the AI is like, oh, yeah, we don't want to train on people that can really open up some liability or this gullible. You don't want to train on this.

But Meta, who already hosts all your data and tracks every single thing you do on the app to use. Yeah. And they're like, yeah, yeah, this guy's big, big. No, no on this guy.

At the same time, like, the fact that this keeps happening does say something about. Say something about humanity. But also it's like, it should be somewhat of a wake up call to Meta and like the actual employees there that, like, your consumers don't understand you at all. You need to probably do better to educate them about how things work.

Which is. Which is why I'm long on Zuck's personal conquest and value creation. And I'm a fan of him. I'm short on his public image because I think him getting cocky again and wearing shirts that say Zuck is inevitable. And Meta still being basically gonna be at the epicenter of all this drama around AI and, you know, generated content and all this stuff is like very short. His public image. I think he enjoyed like a sort of temporary sort of, you know.

Yeah.

Basically two year period.

I do want him to mix it up because it's like, so he's this like, fashion God. Now and is wearing, like, streetwear and, like, baggy T shirts.

Fallen valor.

But. Yeah, but, like, there is a way for him to wear, like, an impeccable suit.

Yeah.

And. And. And apply the same. The same thought process.

Yeah.

You have to looking fantastic. But it's just in a suit.

Yeah.

And just do.

I mean, we just say that because it would be good for.

Of course. But, like. Like, it is interesting that, like, he's. He's applied. Like, I. I now take fashion seriously, but I only apply it in this one very narrow, like, like, section of fashion. Like, I want to see him look as fashionable, but also in a suit or also in a variety of things.

Yeah. Just, like, dress your age.

Just, like, have. Yeah, yeah. Have some more, like, reach and some. And I think if he broadens out a little bit, he can class it up or dress it down and he'll have more flexibility there.

Yeah.

He clearly found, like, a wheelhouse, and he's just, like, doubling down on that. And he's gotten really.

Algorithm. Yeah, he's literally like an algorithm. He's like, wow, they liked when I wakeboard. So they didn't like when I wakeboarded with all the sunscreen, but when I wakeboard and I hold a flag.

Yeah.

People like that.

He's in a little bit of a filter.

I'm gonna. Okay, then if people like flags and wakeboarding, they probably like beef. I'm gonna show them my cattle ranch. Right. And then. And then they're like, oh, I wore a watch, and they like that. So I'm gonna get a more expensive watch, like an even bigger hitter of a piece. But that only. That goes. So, like, you eventually get a negative reaction to that sort of doubling down on everything.

Yeah. I wonder where that'll come from. I mean, he's done a fantastic job.

Apolitical to me. To me, the. The shirt. The. The Amiri shirt that says Zuck is inevitable is. It's like, dude, you're obviously inevitable. You're a force.

Yeah.

You don't need it. If you. Telling people you're inevitable is cringe. Right. People will already say that behind your back. Yeah. It's like a victory lap. Like, for what reason? Just. Just deliver.

I can't use sunglasses without logging into.

Your Deliver returns to shareholders. That's the only thing that matters. When the stock eventually drops, people will be. They'll take pictures of that shirt and make it say, like, $500 billion market cap is inevitable. Down from.

Do you think it was just a funny joke? Do you think there's something to that.

Is it funny?

It might be funny if you've got.

To ask yourself, is it funny? Every time I take something too far, I break character.

I think that there's always this layer of humor that is different when it's coming from someone as powerful as.

Or Elon.

I keep thinking about for years, I was like, I love Elon, but, man, these childlike. The childlike humor is just not hitting with me. The 69420 is just not funny to me. Until he was in this interview with the BBC reporter, and he says, do you like BBC? And it was so stupid. It's such a stupid joke. But he was laughing so super hard, and I was like, this is actually hilarious. Not because. Do you. Asking a BBC reporter, do you like BBC? Is that funny? It's funny because it's the world's richest man who's super powerful, asking a reporter that. The context matters. And so, yeah, this one. I'm not sure what would be funny.

Here's what would be funny to me. If Zuck was on his hydrofoil wakeboard, you know, doing his thing in his meta glasses, and then in the scenery, and he's in Kauai or whatever. He's in his retreat and on the hillside behind him. It's literally like using a lawn mower, like, carved into the grass. It says, like, zuck is inevitable, and it's not, like, so front and center. That would be funny because seeing that image of him just, like, riding his little, like, hydrofoil thing, and then you're like, wait, did he. He carved in, like, a football field of grass, Like, Zuck is inevitable. Like, that's. That's cool.

That's ridiculous.

Make a monument or. Yeah. So anyways, Zuck, when you listen to this, make monuments.

I mean, he made a monument in his backyard of his wife.

Oh, yeah. That was a piece.

Yeah. He's gonna do some stuff. I don't know.

I think I respect Zach.

Yeah. I. I don't know where there's.

There's just a difference, though. And, like, what I'm talking about is, like, respect versus likability. And I'll always respect him.

Yeah.

I've gone through periods where I sort of like him.

Yeah.

And I don't like him.

Yeah.

And you're worried. Not that. Not that it matters, but for him, he could clearly cares about what people think about him. So my advice would be, you know, dial it back. And I just think people. You know, he has, like, a PR team around him and, like, image consultants and stylists and stuff like that. It's like, just be more creative, you know?

Yeah. Definitely needs more breadth to the stunts and whatnot. More humor and more fun.

More fun.