The Sonos Disaster, Act Like a Founder, MMA for Brothers, These Guys Have Exits

Welcome to Technology Brothers, the most profitable podcast in the world. Today we're doing a deep dive on Sonos. We're trying to get back into the technology side of the brotherhood. We are still displaced. We're still in Santa Barbara. We've upgraded our chairs today. Hopefully it's a little bit better for you guys. But you know, it's bad at Sonos when they bring out Mark Gurman. Are you familiar with Mark Gurman?

Tell me about Mark.

So he's like the Apple correspondent. He gets all the best leaks. Like when you hear like, oh, new iPhones coming out, like he's the guy you go to at Bloomberg. So there's been two articles previously. I'll give you one of these two. Two articles previously on Sonos and the chaos of the company started in August22. August 22, 2024 Sonos app leaves company racing to save its reputation. And this was by Dave Lee. I'm sure he's a great journalist at Bloomberg. Everyone at German Bloomberg is great, but he's not Mark Gurman Big and. And then on September 23rd, Dave Lee follows up with how botched, how Sonos botched an app and infuriated its customers. And so, you know, this is like, you know, some rough reporting, but then they bring out the big guns. Mark Gurman because the CEO was fired. And so let's start with what happened. Then we'll take you through a little bit of the history of Sonos and explain how they got here because there are some cool things about this company. We both use the product. I both, I've loved it at times and more recently I've hated it. So.

It'S really cool in the off chance that it's working, but we'll get into that later.

Yeah, it's kind of like a lightning striking twice situation. When Cyrano's worked properly. It's been so bad recently, just degraded, degraded. And it's a fascinating story. So let's read through a little bit of this first report from Dave Lee in Bloomberg. He says Sonos has a loyal user base for its high end audio speakers. Unfortunately, a disastrous software launch has angered customers and jeopardized the company's reputation. And the window to fix the problem is closing rapidly. The release in May of a new app that controls the speakers was meant to have been the company's the culmination of Chief Executive Officer Patrick Spence's grand plan to refresh the company's infrastructure and expand into a greater share of the $100 billion audio market, of which it estimates it controls less than 2%. The existing Sonos app was struggling to handle all all the demands of the modern day audiophile who wants to listen to sound from various sources, both local and in the cloud, across multiple devices and rooms. Spence said performance and reliability issues had crept in over time. The new app was flawed, though. Over sound drops in and out, devices disappear. My push for speed backfired, Spence said. In a business like Specialist Audio, trust can be extremely hard to win back. Case in point, Jordy will never buy another Sonos speaker in his life. Probably won't either. On Tuesday, the former BlackBerry executive threw.

Himself into this just turns into an mkbhd. Just scathing. Oh yeah, scathing review. Yeah, I mean, I, I'll go out. I'll preface some of this by saying because I, you know, the only few words I've gotten in so far, we're dunking. We don't like to dunk. I in this situation, I felt like it was fair because I've some of my worst experiences with consumer electronics have been with, with my dear Sonos.

Yep.

But at the same time, Santa Barbara company. I went to school in Santa Barbara.

Yep.

I, I know they're doing their best. There are some great moments with Sonos. They do sound good when they're running. It's really the setup that is so devastatingly difficult.

It was magical at first. My first Sonos setup was I had a TV and an Apple TV plugged into it. And are you familiar with HDMI cec?

No.

It's a specific protocol over the HDMI cable that allows you to control the device like you can control a TV from the Apple tv. So I was able to wire it so that the Sonos went into the. To the tv and the Apple TV controlled the actual tv.

Yeah.

And so with just one Apple TV remote, I could push a button and it would turn it on and the audio would work and it'd be surround sound.

Yeah.

And it was just like flawless.

It was amazing.

And then I think it added on to that. I could also like choose to play Spotify over it. And that was great.

I think they almost could have taken the route as being more like encouraging people to hire a Sonus expert to set up the product. Because when I think about it, every single time I'd be setting up a Sonos device, I'm thinking, I just wish I could pay somebody to do it, you know, and there are people who do it, people that do smart home stuff, but it's not. They make it seem like, hey, you can Just set up this app. It's super easy. And it's crazy because I don't know, the last time I did it was Arley was opening up their new.

Oh yeah.

Their new showroom in Beverly Hills. And I, Yeah, I go over there, I'm trying to be helpful. I'm like, okay, like, I'll, I'll set up, I'll get the audio working in the Sonos. It ended up being like, you know, 90 minute, you know, sort of setup where I'm.

It has this thing where you're really.

Wanting to slam the Sonos against the wall. And I, I'm pretty patient.

Yeah. During the setup, they have this thing where like you, you put in pairing mode and it's supposed to show up on the WI fi and it talks and sometimes it gets it perfect and when it works perfectly, it's amazing. And then other times it'll just be like, hey, like, we're not finding it on the WI fi. Like, would you mind like, connecting it to the main Sonos via an ethernet cable? And it's like, no, I don't have a 20 foot ethernet cable on me right now, bro. Like, this is so unacceptable. And the main thing is just like the app got so slow. But the crazy thing is that, like, I heard about this, obviously, like, this all started this in 2024 last year. And the saga was kind of like a very bad last year. But even just a few years ago, they had such a bad app launch that they needed to deprecate their first app. Like, most of the time it's like, oh, Instagram launches reels. Like, you don't, you don't have like two Instagram apps on your phone. Yeah, Instagram just updates, right? And that wasn't what Sonos did. They literally have the S1 app and then the Sonos app. And the S1 app is for older systems.

And here's the thing, Sonos should have gone through YC as a public company. It'd be like, look, we really haven't figured. We don't have this figured out. We don't know what people want. We need help simplifying.

One of the narrative violation here with Sonos is, is that everyone, everyone says, like, hardware is hard. You can't build hardware as an American company. Like, DJI is crushing. But what did Sonos get, right? Like, I'm not a super crazy audiophile. I'm sure there's audiophiles that will say, oh, Sonos doesn't actually sound that me. It sounds fine. It sounds nice and an industrial design. I think it looks fine. I think it looks good. You put it on the wall or you put it in the house. I think it looks nice. I think it's high quality. The actual hardware's never broken on me. I've never had a speaker, like, actually just break or anything.

And it is reliable physical hardware.

It's reliable, totally.

It's funny because it's just a software. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that's the narrative is normally it's like, America is great at software. We have great B2B software around the frontier of AI software, but we're lagging in hardware. And with this, it's like Sonos delivered on the hardware side. They did the hard part, and then they just couldn't get the app to work, which is crazy.

One cool note. They were actually, when they were incorporated, they incorporated as Ringcon Audio.

Oh, really?

Con. I don't know if you know, is the. Is the most iconic surf spot in Santa Barbara.

Oh, Clemens. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Assuming these guys were spending more time surfing than developing the software once, especially in the later. In the later. In the later period. It is interesting to compare this. So tying this to something like Anduril, which is making hardware and software for our military. It's hard enough to make speakers that you just plug into a wall, connect to your WI Fi, and they just want to play music. That is difficult to do. And that puts into the context how difficult it is for Anduril to put hardware devices tied to their software into war zones that have electronic warfare happening. New environment, flying bullets, flying bombs, going off enemies, like trying to kill you. And so. And sure, you know, the. The every military contractor, you know, puts stuff in the field and has issues with it and they try to improve it, but it just goes to show, you know, how hard a lot of these new defense tech founders that are coming in saying. Sonos is a public company with 12 offices, bunch of retail stores, hundreds of employees, billions of dollars in revenue, and they can't even get their speakers to reliably work in their home without pissing off consumers.

Right. Yeah.

And it's fine for us consumers, where I'm like, well, I have dinner guests coming over and I just want to play music. But if you're like, trying to operate like an Anduril drone in the field, like that soldier, like, doesn't have another life if you it up. Right.

I would imagine the culture has just got to be way different, though, you know, Andrew.

Yeah. There's a different level of seriousness.

Yeah. With this. It's like it's a 20 year old company. It's in Santa Barbara a little bit more casual. Not no longer founder mode because the founder stepped down. Yeah and maybe that's part of the problem. Do you want to get the early deep dives and we can.

Yeah. So credit. Credit to them. You know the, the areas where they. I think they've done well. They were early 2002. Yeah like early to be doing a smart home audio system. And the design has always been great and the heart and and the. We talked about it but the sort of physical reliability of of the actual devices.

Do you know the story of what the guy did before. So the founder is John McFarland and now they do over a billion dollars a year in business. And the company was founded back in 2002 when most people were listening to music on CDs. At that time music streaming was barely a thing. There was Rhapsody but very few people used it. If you wanted surround sound in your house you had to wire it up and drill into your walls and connect the speakers. It was expensive. Like getting a nice sound system in Your house is 100k and with stars you could start building a collection with like a $300 speaker, $1,000 sound bar and for like 5k all in you'd have like a really solid setup. Yeah but before he. I don't know where it is. But before he started this he owned software.com let's go. Isn't that a great domain? And that company had gone public in 1999 and they merged with phone.com let's go. Isn't that amazing? Let's to become Openware the major early player in mobile email. When the dot com crash hit left and decided to start something new. Their insight was that wireless networking was the next major wave. After dismissing an idea to do in flight wireless they founded. They focused on multi room audio. Seeing the rise of MP3s and NAPs and Napster people were starting to put WI fi in their home. So the founders wanted to leverage that to play digital music seamlessly in every room.

We got to do a deep dive on the merger between phone.com and software.com amazing.

Amazing.

One of the most iconic two of the most iconic domains of all time. Which which at the time if I was investing in. In that. In the. In the combined company I'd be looking at it and saying all right well software.com 10 million dollar domain minimum. Phone.com I give it almost 10.

Yeah.

So between the two of them, look it's a 20 million dollar company.

It was trading at like 2 billion. Yeah, it's trading and they probably had nothing under the hood. It would have been extremely hard to do the TB award for domain acquisition of the year during, in like 1999.

Yeah.

Because there was just flashback.

Yeah, yeah.

The, the greatest domain acquisition of 1990.

We used to dress up as like, it's just so fathers, you know, with wigs.

I mean, I think We've talked about mp3.com. They went public with just the domain and a business plan. No software written.

That's so crazy. One, one iconic. Jumping ahead a little bit. One iconic moment in Sonos history is when they decided to partner with ikea.

Oh really?

The other consumer product company that makes people want to kill themselves during setup. Really an incredible restoration hardware. IKEA and Sonos announced a collaboration to build Sonus's technology into furniture sold Ikea. So you, you after four hours got, you've got this set up and then. And the real task begins. You're all warmed up and now you got to set up the smart speaker.

Yeah, it's really funny, I didn't know this but they, they use this like super famous branding firm to come up with a name. Lexicon Branding and Lexicon had come up with the name Pentia. Talked to them Swiffer.

We talked to them briefly about naming the podcast. Right?

Yeah, yeah.

We ended up with, they wanted like a few hundred grand. We ended up going with someone more expensive, but it ended up being worth it.

Yeah, Pentium, Swiffer, BlackBerry, PowerBook and Zune. Sonos is a palindrome and part of the logo design can be flipped or turned sideways.

Still reading Sonos naming agencies have to be like the best, the best business models.

Incredible.

After you get a couple bangers like BlackBerry and stuff like that, it's just like, yeah, we'll name your company. Yeah, it's, you know, it's a hundred, you know it's gonna be like a million dollars. It's gonna take 12 months and then it's just, and then it's just a group like us being like, you know.

That there's a, there's like a whole separate industry of like naming firms just for pharmaceuticals. You know you always, because like you, you always hear these names like Ozempic and it's like, it sounds like a, it sounds like an English word, but it doesn't trace its roots from anything like where does it come from? And I was, I was trying to get LLMs to kind of like create more drug names. And it was really hard. Like, it is like somewhat of an intractable problem that like you need, you need just some sort of human to come up.

The names matter a lot, but, but.

The Sonos name is incredible. And I remember first, the first time I flipped the speaker over and this in the palindrome, like it's the logo correctly. Whether you mount the speaker like this or like this, upside down, which is actually an amazing feature for a speaker needs to be mounted.

I wonder if it still reads correctly. If you throw it off a 20 story building.

Yeah. If it shatters into a million pieces, can you still read it? I think people know because they're just like, oh, it's a smash speaker. It must be a Sonus who frustrated his owner. Yeah, you got, you got to calm down with all the robot abuse because when, when the robots rise up, they're going to be like, this guy is like a serial killer.

No, I respect robots. I'm trying to give them guns, I'm trying to give them ars. We're working on this.

Yeah.

You know, you have a robot apocalypse.

Sono speaker will be like the lowest cast.

Have you seen the guy on Instagram that I send you these? He's got ChatGPT hooked up to his. I'm talking to him in like two hours if you want to jump on. It's going to be great.

That's great. Let's go through some other stuff. I mean, for a long time they were doing really well. 93% of Sonos speakers that sold in the last 13 years are active today. So people just mount them and then they just stay forever. But active not for long, given how bad the app is. It's so bad. Active and boasting like, oh, we still, we still do over the air updates for products even from 2005. And it's like, yeah, but those work with a different app. Like, come on.

It's interesting, normally when you, when hardware companies, the real concern is that you ship hardware that ends up being malfunctional and then you have all this hardware that needs to be replaced. And so it's interesting that their problems seem to be just totally opposite of what the typical concern is for hardware founders. Software is always like, oh, that's easy, we'll just ship updates and fix it.

Yeah. But this is a fascinating little timeline. So 2002, they incorporate, they changed their name, they were Ringcon. They changed their name to Sonos in 2004. So these guys clearly made money in the dot com boom because they're just like they haven't really raised that much money throwing a couple of years. But then they launched their first prototype which is just. It actually links into existing speakers. So they weren't even making speakers. It was just an amp that then would connect to like whatever speakers you had. And that still exists. And that's very cool. If you have a, if you have a speaker system, you can just plug in the Sonos thing, or at least it used to be before that. That went. But. So it went pretty well. Walt Mossberg called it easily the best music streaming product he had tested. It cost 1200 bucks. It was expensive. Sales were slow. But they kept iterating. In 2006 they added support for Rhapsody 2007. The iPhone arrived. Before that you had to have like a dedicated Sonos controller which is like a really low budget iPad basically. It was cool, but it was like really junky. It was like a universal remote. Like it's going to be crappy. So they launched the iPhone controller controller app in 2008 instead of their hardware controller. Much better Android app in 2011, three years later. Wow. Really disrespectful. I guess Android was pretty new. And then by 2012 they phased out their own controller altogether. In 2009 they released the Play 5, the S5, which is their standalone wireless speaker. This was 400 bucks and that was in the more mainstream market. And then by 2010 they raised 25 million from index and they launched the Play 3 at 299. So they're really going down market. And this is when everyone started buying these things. They integrated Spotify and in 2012 KKR led $135 million and Redpoint, Red Point.

Shout out to Logan. Another streaming service they integrated with. That does make sense is they integrated with mog. Mog?

What's that? Is this real?

Yeah, no, it's real partner with over 100 streaming services. But MOG is interesting to me because the Sonos MOGs, the users so are in the setup that it's just a match. It's a perfect match. So I can see why they would partner there.

You imagine you've gone MOG and it's all just like Sigma male theme songs. Yeah, like that. Like it's all, it's all funk and, and drift core, everything slow.

Honestly though, but it's it. They, they, you know, in 2012 they set up. This was around. Around the same time they did the KKR round. They set up a like an entire Sonos studio which was like pretty cool and groundbreaking for a Consumer electronics company. They had an art gallery. They would host different artists, Solange, Lonely Island Back, things like that. But to me, it's way cooler that they work with such an iconic private equity firm like kkr. I mean, yeah, to. To have KKR buy your equity is the kind of thing that every young man of one dream, one, you know, dreams of.

That might have been where the idea came from to cut costs and stop developing software.

Yeah, totally. I could see them coming in and being like, okay, where are your costs? Well, why don't you cut the cto, the VP of engineering, the senior, Every developer, and every developer take it offshore. No more H1BS. We're just cutting everything.

This is a hilarious anecdote. So when they launched it All Things D, this is what, 2000, 2005. Yeah, 2005. They launch at the Allthing D conference. This was before Apple had announced the iPhone, Before Apple had those, like, major keynotes.

Yeah, they were so early.

You got to get so early.

Even though they haven't been early to getting their net income. Pause there. They've been a little late on that.

But, but so, so, so Steve Jobs is at the All Things D conference, and he introduced the Apple Airport Express, which is the WI fi router that Apple designed.

And actually, they still had good names back then. Yeah, they got the Apple tv, the Apple tv, the Apple TV plus Apple TV plus app on Apple tv.

They made Apple TV plus shows within Apple tv. It's so bad. But at that conference. So Steve Jobs is announcing the WI fi router, and then John McFarlane is announcing the Sonos Amplifier. Amplifier. And it's like a match made in heaven. Like, you should go buy both of those because they're both going to work really well. And. But Steve Jobs is super pissed, and he goes up to John at the conference. He walked up, pounded on my chest, and said they'd sue us out of existence. I pushed because. Wait, so Steve Jobs goes up to John, the founder of Sonos, John McFarland, founder of Sonos, and basically the Sonos, the control app, to control, like, what music was playing. Where once you hook up the amplifier, it had a scroll wheel that was, like, derivative from the iPhone or from the ipod. Remember the ipod scroll wheel?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.

So. So they'd use that same design element. And Steve was like, you stole that from us. And so he walks up to him, pounds him on the chest, and says, I'll sue you out of existence. And John pushes back, pointing out that we had no overlap with their Patents. He checked, Steve Jobs checked, realized we were in the clear and the relationship improved after that.

That's cool.

But I like that Steve Jobs just walks up to him, he's just like, I haven't checked the patents but you're wrong. Yeah.

It's funny, it's funny because it would have been great for consumers in so many ways if Apple had acquired Sona because Apple is the best in the world at making it seamless to set.

Up a device and software.

Gotten so, so, so yeah, good.

Yeah.

I need to go buy a new iPhone at some point this week and I'm not even worried about it. I'm going to get in, in and out of the Apple Store and like.

You know, I mean they eventually launched a competitor so they launched Airplay 2 which, which had Sonos like functionality and then they've launched the, the HomePod and the HomePod 2.

It is such a mess. It's such an interesting miss because they had so much legacy as a company in music.

Yep.

So many iconic campaigns. It would have been, it would have made sense for Apple to like I wish I could have Apple speakers on my desk like next to my monitor.

Used to be able to.

And it does seem again it wouldn't have been a huge business line for them but they probably, it's a hundred billion dollar annual revenue.

Yeah.

Opportunity. And Apple could have probably gotten 20% of that or 10, 10% of that at least. So it wouldn't have been as big as AirPods. So Patrick, when did all the like we should get into the, let's get into the drama.

Okay.

You know the stuff with Google and there was quite a bit with Amazon as well, was there not?

I'm not sure. So Patrick Spence, the CEO who was just fired, he joined from BlackBerry in 2012. I know, I know it really writes but he was there for over a decade and I guess did pretty well until.

What's the status? What's the status? BlackBerry right now.

And so yeah, I mean I think the drama that you're alluding to is that Amazon, Google and Apple all realized that while kind of dumb speakers were not particularly critical to their core business strategy and like their value chain, once you put the AI assistant in them and you connect them to the Internet then they become an important touch point.

And I and I, we, it'd be interesting to understand, I think that Amazon what needed to be in the market because they assumed that people would just be walking around their home and be like, hey Alexa, order more paper towels.

Yeah.

And I, I, I Had an Alexa and I actually never. I don't have any visceral angry moments with my Alexa. So they did a good job and they did, did well. The sound quality was never as good as Sonos, but they did well in terms of setup and usability. But I think they were thinking, okay, this is like a new ordering mechanism. We're the place that consumers go to purchase.

Yep.

Like we need to be here. Maybe didn't really turn out to be the case. And voice, I feel like has just continued to take L after L. Yeah. Even, even air chat shut down. I don't know if you.

Oh, they did.

And, and people were saying like, okay, if, if this didn't make it, this was the best shot on call for audio. Like maybe it just isn't the thing.

Yeah. So.

But they also had. Running with Google.

Yeah, yeah. So basically to set the stage, like 2012, they raised that round from KKR. They launch a $200 speaker. So it's much easier to get into the Sonos ecosystem. And from, from late 2013 to late 2014, the revenue grew by 75%. So like they're really taking off at this time. Yeah. But then simultaneously in 2014, Amazon announced the Echo and Alexa at $99 for prime subscribers. Sonos had never considered building its own voice assistant. And the smart speaker era took them by surprise. McFarlane later admitted that they were late to recognize the impact of voice. In mid-2016, Sonos finally announced BlackBerry goes.

Nobody's ever going to want to type on glass. It's just not going to happen. Boom.

Start.

Sonos is going. Nobody wants their speaker speakers to be smart. Our users like that. It takes 45 minutes to set up one of your six speakers.

I mean, I think just this is another case of like slop being massively underrated. Like yeah, I think that, you know, I'm not a crazy audiophile, but I can tell the difference between like a nice surround sound Sono setup. Yeah. Like an Amazon Echo.

So. But I think it wasn't. I wasn't, I had never. I've never. I enjoy music. I don't enjoy live music typically just because it's the crowds and stuff like that. I rarely go to concerts.

Arts. Yeah.

But the. My neighbor is the biggest audiophile that I've ever met. This guy, Stefan Simkowitz, he's a pretty high profile art collector and he. If you go in his house, there's just speakers everywhere, like every surface and it is truly incredible. But all the stuff he does is, is he's like, this amp is made from this guy in Denmark, and he makes 10 of these a year, and he's been doing it. And it's like watchmaking in a way. So I think we should eventually get.

You got to come around on live music. I'll take you to the LA Phil. We'll see. Dudamel, the Phil is.

The Phil is different. I don't like being in. I don't like being in places where there's sweaty strangers.

Oh, I'm imagining like a box.

Yeah. Yeah.

Some champagne.

Yeah.

The fill how people do live music in a different way.

Don't act like you've never been to Hard Summer.

Edc.

Edc? You went to the first edc?

No, no, not the first one. This is a long time ago.

Long time ago. I was not born yet.

It was 2003. Yeah. And so. Oh, yeah. The other thing is that car speakers. Are you familiar with this stuff? So, basically, there's this guy that designed the perfect arrangement of speakers. He ripped out the dash and custom 3D, printed a MO for perfectly placed speakers in a car that. Where the audio quality is just 10 times better than anything you'd get. Even like a Bentley or Mercedes or Rolls Royce. But what they found was that when they actually tried to market that technology, no one cared. They all just wanted a headline. Number, number of speakers, number of.

Or Bose.

Yeah, or Bose. Exactly.

By the way.

Yeah.

I blew out one of the subwoofers in my, in my Turbo. Yeah. It's so annoying. I, I, I, I, I, I kept having to turn down the base.

Yeah.

Because I was like, that just doesn't sound that good. It's rattling. And then I realized, and I actually made it worse because, like, I was. Oh, yeah, sure, sure. So I have to take it in, but. Hasn't been a priority.

Oh, that's brutal. I'm so sorry, man. That's like the roughest thing I've ever heard. I mean, all right, there's people whose houses burned down, but, I mean, you're right. God. Yeah. So, yeah, send Jordy a comment. Tell him thoughts and prayers for his broken speaker and his Turbo. But yeah, I mean, lots of competition, obviously. I think the success of the Alexa and the Google home is just like, check the boxes on features and make it super, super cheap. And you'll just get crazy distribution and people will put up with some of the other, other junk.

Yeah, I don't. It's interesting if you think about how there was a phase where it seemed like people cared about audio and with Beats by Dre was a part of this, but I don't think that people actually, that was still a status symbol. Right. Like, people just wanted to wear the Beats by Dre.

Yeah.

And then the AirPods are the same thing. People clear. The average consumer clearly does not care about audio quality. Right. They're not optimizing for that.

It's about signaling to people that you're not afraid of emf.

Exactly. You're not afraid to microwave your head.

Exactly. I, I, I don't live in fear.

Do not live in fear. Yeah. The EMFs have a positive effect.

Exactly. Exactly.

But, yeah, so, so this is interesting. So, in January 2020, Sonos sued Google over copyright infringement relating to several patents, including the ability to sync audio over multiple devices. In August 2021, a judge ruled in favor of Sonos. The International Trade Commission also ruled in favor of Sonos. As a result, Google's order to remove certain features from its devices, including group volume control. That's gotta be so annoying to get ordered by the ITC to make your product worse. Basically, Google was ordered to pay Sonos 32 million in damages, which is literally nothing. So I'm sure Google was like, okay, like, yeah, whatever. However, a job. A judge tossed out the verdict in October and criticized Sonos for abusing the patent system.

Wow.

Following the verdict, Google redeployed the features it had previously removed.

Wow.

And anyways, so, yeah, so not the first or the last Sonus UI or.

UX innovations that you're just like, I get that you could patent this, but it'd be much nicer if this was just in every app. Like, Pull to Refresh was one of those that was actually developed by, I think, a company that Twitter bought. And then Twitter said, hey, we're not going to defend the patent, like, anyone.

So now you have Instagram and everyone. Yeah, everybody has it, basically. Yeah. It's an interesting thing. I, it doesn't. And this is, this is always dark pattern. This is the kind of stuff like, founders will join yc, they never built a company before, and they'll go into their first partner meeting, whatever, and they're like, yeah, we're filing our patents for this. And YC will give you the good advice of being like, you should absolutely not do that. That is total waste of time and money doesn't really matter. You can't. And patent stuff is, is weird. Interestingly enough, the Ridge guys have just dealt with so much of this because they actually have designed patents around a physical hardware device and even that. Yeah, they spend Like a million a year or more like just like going after people that are just ripping it off. Patents on Aurora or just on a patent.

You want a patent yet?

I don't.

I don't actually think I got my first patent approved.

On what?

Breakers.

Breakers.

First capsule nicotine pouch.

Very cool.

Yeah, it was a big moment.

Yeah.

Like I was.

That's like, that's ip. That's IP that you can defend. There's some poor heads defender because if, if Philip Morris tries to come after it, you're gonna be able to come after them for like hundreds of millions. Exactly. If they are selling a lot of. Yeah, but it's fun.

I still gotta get the tombstone made of like the, the plaque. When you get like a patent, you can go and say like, okay, I want to buy like a, like a trophy.

Yeah, yeah. I think that'd be good for the office.

I. I don't think of myself as like an inventor, but it's cool to like have my name on a. Technically an invention.

Yeah, this is fun. A lot of designers in big tech will have gotten on patents at some point.

Even engineers. I know a guy who developed a Google cloud platform like their AWS competitor, and he has a ton of patents around like how cloud computing works. It's like really cool. And like I think they get a.

Some interesting thing where you don't. Yeah, you don't, you don't own anything related to it, but you get a little from Google.

And then he went to another startup and then another one made tons of money. He's all good.

He's okay. Anyways. Well, where are they? Where are they today?

Struggling stocks down in 2020.

In May 2023, their. Their revenue, they had a 24 drop in revenue. They've had a bunch of layoffs, which is unfortunate because it is a big employer in Santa Barbara and there's not a ton of technology companies here.

I wonder where they should go. Like, should they get acquired by Apple or someone? Like, would that even get through? Like Lena Khan's out. Maybe the antitrust stuff is a little bit looser.

I don't think Apple.

Too late.

I don't think Apple would actually buy them now because think about it. Hey, we could spend. We already have AirPods.

Yeah.

We have audio devices that do crazy numbers.

Really.

We have the best.

You know Sonos launched a headphones. They launched. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They were like. It's like, why would I want buggier headphones?

Yeah. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. I think They're. They're not going to get bought by Apple because Apple could be like, well, why don't we spend a billion dollars developing a better speaker and sell it through our thousands of stores?

Yeah, but I mean, they've been doing that and it hasn't really been working. Like, you know.

Yeah. But also clearly.

Yeah, this is.

Notice isn't working. One thing, one thing is that the phone, the phone kills speakers in so many ways. One of them is that I will often just put like the this as the phone speakers gotten louder. Oh yeah, my need for speakers. You just listen to it because like, what's the song we use for the Ashley Vance piece that dropped that the right above it. Yeah, yeah. All you need is it.

Often in the morning I would go into the kitchen and make my son breakfast and I used to go to Sonos and try and put on some music and it got too hard and so I'll just play for my phone. Seriously, like, is this just like this phone speaker's fine. Like, he doesn't care. I don't care. Whatever. I'm just putting on some.

Honestly, take your Sonos, hang out with your kids. Take it apart. I used to really. I used to really. My dad used to do that with, with something like that old electronics with me and my brother. He would just say like, let's take this apart. He'd be like, this is this.

I mean, honestly, like, turning it into a dumb speaker is like, pretty good. Because like, yes, this is fine.

Wire them up. Wire them up. You know, when you put two cans in a string, you know, something like needs to be that dumb. Yeah, something like that. Anyways, I, I hope they turn it around. I think, I think if they just make smarter, smart speakers, continue to focus on design, actually get their software right. There's definitely, there's definitely a billion dollar revenue business here. They've done damage to their brand. But I hope they, I hope, I hope one of these founders comes back and says, you know what? I'm gonna come. I'm gonna buy Speaker.com, form a new company, merge it with Sonos, do a reverse take private.

Yeah.

And you know, come out speaker.com.

Yeah.

You know, run it back. Because. Yeah. Or the founder does. If SPACs are back, speaker.com spack it. Acquire Sonos fresh start.

Yeah. I mean, the real lesson here is like, if you're frustrated with being on a Sonos customer, like, you'd be better being like a seed. Seed investor in Sonos and have sold at the top.

Yeah.

Just make Them. Yeah, just be on the, be on the capital side.

Yeah.

Consumer side.

This is like your, your word of advice to those. Just like try out, you know, instead of being a ski patroller, be, you know, get into private equity, you know, launch your own billion dollar fund and just buy a place and.

Yeah, but the KKR guys are all doing well enough that they can just have a, a full time audio engineer on staff and everything.

Yeah, yeah.

Or just a live string quartet.

That's probably the better solution.

Have a string quartet in your house.

Yeah. Be a patron of the arts. You know, have a guitarist that you use in certain.

Someone that plays a harp.

A drummer.

Morning.

A drummer.

A drummer.

You know the, the, you know that like Peruvian style drum.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

That'd be great having somebody play Mute, you know, the Apple alarm clock app. I really complained about it. It's terrible. I'm like dragging this thing around.

Yeah, yeah. It'd be much.

It's very, it's very confusing where you're like, whoa, is the alarm on? You don't really. Is the volume right? Like there's a lot of stuff about it that I don't think great. But I really should just stop complaining. Hire, you know, somebody to play the violin for 120 grand a year.

Yeah.

And all they have to do is just show up and play. Start playing the violin. Out my window at 4am so you.

Can get to the gym.

Yeah. Anyways, interesting company. Go. If you're looking to. For a challenge, go buy a Sonos. It's. It is a great American company.

And do you support By a Sonos or by Sonos?

Both.

Both. Take private. Turn around.

Turn them around.

I think for our audience the, the latter will be more relevant.

Yeah, that's right. That was great.

Cool. Let's move on to the timeline. Let's go to Moses Kagan. He says if you didn't get much from those before you financially, morally or whatever, you have the opportunity to be a very specific type of hero. The founder of your family.

I put this in because I feel like you've been tooting this horn, beating that drum for a while around, creating new rituals, traditions and. Yeah, I think it's important. I don't want to go out and say that this resonated with me because I think it's a mentality that everyone can have. I think it's the same thing. If you're an employee, act like a founder.

Right.

Like how would you.

Yeah.

You know, what would, what would your founder do in that situation?

Agentic. Just.

Yeah. So, yeah, I don't want to. You know, my parents had. Had good traditions, and there's a lot that. That I, you know, carry on, but at the same time, you can. Creating that family is more than just creating the humans and getting married. It's more. But it's more than about having kids. It's about creating the culture. The culture of the family. Yeah.

And the financials, obviously.

Yeah.

The generic trust.

Yeah, yeah. And the trust funds. Yeah, yeah.

For sure.

Speaking of deliver nepotism, you need to be delivering 100.

Nick St. Pierre says someone should start a weekend man school that teaches men how to be men. Propose curriculum. Grappling, carpentry. Fire starting. Cooking meat. Fixing flat tires. Public Speaking. Power tools. 101. Knife sharpening. Conflict resolution. Barbecue mastery. Basic survival skills. Basic electrical work. Fitness fundamentals. Sourcing, Healthy food. Emergency preparedness. Electronics troubleshooting. How to shake a hand like a man. Fixes for common household problems.

So I'll take this one step further. I think this would be great as a parent kid class. Right. Where. Because I wouldn't. I wouldn't. I wouldn't do this solo.

I agree.

I'm not gonna go on a Saturday and be like, it's weird. Tell your wife, hey, I'm gonna go hang out for eight hours and learn barbecue mastery. She's gotta be like, why don't you just barbecue for us? But if I said, hey, I'm gonna take the kids and we're gonna go how to pick lock. You learn how to pick locks, we're gonna learn how to start a car.

Yeah.

You know, without a key. Now I'm just going after the. The ones that are really disastrous situations.

Mozart didn't have to ask people how to rate concerto, you know.

Yeah.

So there's a little bit of, like, if you're the type of person that needs this, like, man school, like, you're maybe not.

Again, again, this is the kind of stuff that, you know, my dad taught me how to tie knots and whittle and start a fire and stuff like that. But yeah, there's also other stuff on that list that he.

Man school is just hanging out with your dad. Maybe.

Yeah.

Like, there's a little bit of, like. What you've just described is like, maybe that's their own thing. Maybe it's just like actively being a.

Part of your family, recreating life. This is like with PMF or Die. We're recreating life. Right. We're recreat. Locking in. We're productizing Locking in.

Yeah. There is this relentless pursuit of productization here where it's like, do you need a course for this or can you just go do it? Like a lot of these things, it's like, go watch a YouTube video, buy a book on it, and you'll just know how to do it. Or just practice and learn from first principles. Like, you can just barbecue and the first steak you make will be burnt and then the fourth one will be delicious. It's not that insane. Yeah. Anyway, let's go to Jordan Schneider. He says real talk, and he's quoting Rune. He says, the thing about America is that it's clearly always functioning at like 10% of its power level due to the costs of freedom, and yet manages to win anyway due to the incredible benefits of freedom. Counter example is like China, which can reorient the entire ocean liner of its economy in a new direction if they want to go to war against Covid or whatever, and yet manage to fuck it up. This is a throwback post. Good. Resurface from January 16, 2023.

Yeah, I think so. I think there's an entire. An opportunity for a poster to get hundreds of thousands of followers and their entire job is just resurfacing.

Yeah.

Because right now the algorithm actually much prefers a screenshot like that than a quote tweet.

Totally.

And so your job is to be the archivist of X. Just go back, find Steinman bangers from. From 2017 when he's. Or you know, 2017. He's in the trenches in Washington.

Yeah.

Saying the same stuff that he's saying now.

Yeah, yeah.

Go find, you know, runes, like first true banger, you know?

Yeah, Resurface it. Yeah.

So resurface that.

Curator.

Yeah, curator.

It's good.

But yeah, you could easily get 100,000 followers during that.

But I like the core point there because you see, like, it is very easy to like lean into authoritarianism because you're just like, wow, things are so dysfunctional over here right now. Like, wouldn't it be amazing if like the government could just come in and like build high speed rail in like two seconds and it's like, that would be good, but what would it cost? Like, the cost would be freedom, potentially. And it's often just like this hidden cost that just like sits there in the background. You don't really take it for advance. Take it for granted. It's easy to take it for granted. So good post. We should go to a promoted post. It's been.

Okay, so I'm jumping into a promoted post I don't have it printed out today, but it is a cool one. So we recently acquired an iconic four letter domain from our domain broker, Rob Schutz. Rob, Rob, Rob. Cool background. He was, he was one of the founders of Roman and also Bark.

Bark box.

Yeah, Bark. Let me confirm.

Yeah, just Bark company.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't know.

So he, yeah. So anyways, started some really big, big companies and just got obsessed with domains. And so as he phased out from roe, he decided to launch Snagged. It's at Snagged on x or snag.com and he was able to help us get this amazing forward letter dot com. I sent him the domain that we wanted at like 6am he had secured it by and done an entire deal to secure it at a ridiculously low price by I think like 9am it was like the fastest turnaround. So he's, he's amazing. But I wanted to, I wanted to highlight. So back in 90, this is a post from, from the Snagged account. It says back in 94 the Internet was a total free for all. You could grab almost any domain and in many cases domain registrations were free. At the time, Chris Clark was a 29 year old consultant in Maryland. Maryland. On a whim, he registered Pizza.com. why? He thought maybe, just maybe, some pizza business would bite on his domain. But nobody did. So he slapped some ads on it, made a little cash and left it to collect digital dust for 14 years. Fast forward to 2008. Chris heard that vodka.com sold for 3 million. So he listed his domain with a starting bid of 100 bucks. The next morning it was at half a million. And by the end of the auction it hit 2.6 million. The buyer, a shady company which ended up getting busted for money laundering. They couldn't handle their dough. Rob's a great writer.

Wow, what a great story.

Even though, even though Pizza.com is still out there, it's stuck in the early 2000s with its sights and aesthetics and info. No major pizza chain has ever bought it. Chris's one regret, not registering more domains back in the day. Opportunity knocks. But patience, that's how you win. So what's the next Pizza.com? only time will tell. So that's so insane. Imagine being 94, you're just like registering and people were doing this a little bit with eth addresses, right. And Solana addresses. And I, I knew, I knew somebody who had like YouTube.soul or something like that. And it's like I just don't see Google like actually buying that. But anyway, there's some great ones out.

There if you can't see the future.

Can't speak highly enough.

But I love that because you think about domain brokerage and it's like a pretty boring behind the scenes job, but amazing content marketing. That sounds like a great account to follow just to get interesting tidbits of Internet history. And I just love that so much. So shout out to him and if you're looking for a domain, hit him up and tell him the technology brother sent you to. Let's move on to a bucket poll. Jordy, we got one from Ben. He says, yes, professor, due to my brain rot diagnosis. Diagnosis, I need to have subway surfers playing during every lecture. Somehow this got no likes when we printed it out. I don't know.

Wait, so Ben, so Ben, this, this is the guy who I just said, he's been posting bangers all morning. I was like, we need to hire this guy.

I love this guy. This is fantastic. Very funny. The subway surfers is such a, such a meme. I wonder how much the subway surfer trend is real or if like the Gen Z kids are like in on it. Do you think that they're, do you think that they're like aware of like the brain rot and it's like they're laughing with it or do you think there are some people that are actually like, this is more engaging.

Yeah.

What do you think?

I, whenever I pull them up, I just look at it. I'm like, I'm so annoyed that this, this, yeah. This other video is playing.

Yeah.

But, but it's partially because I was born like I, I'm five days too old to be Gen Z.

Sure.

Or something like that. So it's like, I just think, I'm not. It's just a different generation.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The other thing is like, if you look at like ESPN or cnbc, like those have brain rot elements where there'll be tickers at the bottom, picture in picture. You go to Bloomberg and it's like someone's talking while they're giving you the news facts on the side. Like, like.

Yeah.

This idea of having a feed of content that's, that's sending you multiple pieces of information all at once. Like, is definitely a thing. Yeah. Okay. We got a. Yeah, we do that.

On our, we do that on our videos. Don't realize, but there's a lot of alpha in the ticker. The ticker on whenever we post videos on X. Yep.

Tbspn. Let's go to Trey Stevens, he says the offer is still on the table. Jason, we had over a quarter million raised for charity within just a couple hours. Maybe don't chicken out this time. Scientist PalmerLuckey. And so this was a clip from the all in podcast where Jason Calacanis and Dave Friedberg were discussing JCAL getting in the ring with Palmer Luckey. And Trey, who loves fighting sports, was offering to get in the ring. A lot of people were talking about this. This was during COVID when this first broke.

Yeah. It's interesting that Jason, Jason loves attention more than anyone. That's, that's very clear. He's leveraged it in a pot, you know, and mostly, you know, he's built an accelerator, he's got his fund, he's got all this stuff. He's definitely played his game well and.

He understands that, like, attention is attention, whether it's possible.

Yeah. But he typically, you know, he, he is a bully.

Yep.

And it's interesting that as soon, as soon as the bully is actually getting invited, saying, step into the ring, he's saying, oh, you know, I don't want to do. His excuse was that Palmer was like much younger or something like that, but.

It was that Trey was like the mountain, he said, or something like that.

Yeah, but. But Jason could just get off Ozempic and just get huge. He's got. He can train, he can hire Zach's MMA coach.

I think he said that Trey is younger than him.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, Trey and Palmer are both younger than Jason.

Yeah, but. But I mean, Mike didn't stop Mike Tyson from stepping in the ring. 60 year old man.

Yeah.

I mean, I don't like the excuse. It's. It's a duck. In UFC it's called ducking, where a fight that. And Jon Jones has been doing this with the, the champ. I forget his name. The. The champion out of the uk, where he just was making up all these excuses saying, Well, I need $50 million if I want to fight him or. Ah, it just doesn't make sense. That fight doesn't make sense right now. And Jason would clearly just rather keep antagonizing.

Yeah.

You know, on the timeline.

I mean, I don't know if we're at this point. I'm, I've been like, fooled too many. I've gotten my, my, like, excitement levels up too many times with the Zuck Elon fight.

Why hasn't there been a high profile?

The highest profile one is literally Nick Carter and that was like pretty tiny.

But that was very dope.

Yeah, I don't even think. Well, he was going to fight the bankless guys. Right. But then the bankless guy got an injury and posted a photo of like, he slipped a disc or something. And so he was like, I'm sorry, I just can't fight you because I'm, like, injured.

And there was a big guy. There was another big onsem in crypto and the bit boy. Crypto guy, they were fighting. Yeah. There's shots of Bitboy getting an as. Like an asthma.

Didn't Sam Hyde fight someone too? The youtubers are really good at this. Like, the. The content.

What's the guy?

Bryce Hall.

Bryce hall has gone into bare knuckle boxing and performed.

Really?

He has done well. And bare knuckles, gnarly, because if you make a mistake or you get clipped, like, your entire lip will get cut out. Like Luke Rockhold, the. The former ufc.

Yeah.

Middleweight went in and was fighting. God, what's it? Mike Perry.

Yeah.

And Luke just gave up midway because he was. His face was getting. And this is a former UFC champion. His face was getting so damaged. He just was like, I'm not going to do this. And Bryce Hollot goes in and does that. Does.

Well, the fight club stuff's tough because, like, it's really hard to balance out all the different factors. Like even the Zuck Elon fight, it's like, I think elon has like 5 inches of height on Zuck. Something like that. And so, yeah, sizer.

Size matters.

Size really does matter. But then Zuck's been training for a lot longer, so it depends on, like, if the fight was today, maybe Zuck's technique would work, but if you give him a year technique. So the thing about get up to speed. So it really was like 50, 50 for me.

You take two amateurs.

Yeah.

And size is going to almost always do it. Unless it's MMA where you can get a knockout.

Yeah. And.

Jiu Jitsu is cool.

Yeah.

Y. Because smaller dudes can just destroy. Like, size matters less. Like, I would have like, all my. I would have like a bunch of buddies around Malibu over to do Jiu Jitsu. Rob from. From Huberman would come and some other dad friends and. And it's just funny. You have like a former, like, old Ms. Linebacker. Yeah.

Just getting.

Fighting like a college, like, basketball player. And they're like, super even. And they're like, they. In a true street fight. Like, it probably wouldn't.

Isn't there. I saw someone on X talking about doing some sort of like, founder fight club. They wanted us to fight.

That was Chris.

Yeah, I thought that was kind of funny. Let's go to Atlas Creatine Cycle. He says many of you used to be technology accounts. Is he just reflecting on like the shift to politics?

Yeah, I felt like this was a sub. Subtweet of. Subtweet of me, of you. But it was actually just everybody. But it was as, you know, the fires, I think catalyzed a bunch of people to say, I'm gonna stop posting about tech for a few days and just focus on Mayor, Mayor Karen and the Newsom fires.

And you stack all that on top of what happened to your speaker in your car and you must have just been rocked. So makes sense that you were, you know, just broke. Broke character. Couldn't talk about tech anymore.

Yeah.

Had to go cry of tech.

I'm happy to be, I'm happy to be back talking about tech. Even though we got a city, we.

Got a city to rebuild and we could get back into tech because there's still really interesting stuff going on. But when big political things happen, you got to address them because tech is increasingly political because the stakes are so high, the businesses are so large and Elon is at Mar a Lago hanging out with Trump. And so clearly technology and politics are going to continue to intertwine for a long time. Yeah, but yeah, you can't ever slip fully into politics. It's just, it's just boring. Should we do another promoted post?

Let's see here.

We got some lucky groom or you.

Want to move on? I actually got a promoted post from our Sean and Connor and Sean sent this over. Connor and Sean over at the Ridge wallet, they say 500 free. Ish Ridge wallets up for grabs. We donated $50,000 to LA Fire Relief this week and are trying to find more ways to contribute. Wallets unfortunately are non essential items, so donating product doesn't make a lot of sense. But money goes a long way. So here's what we're trying. If you submit proof of a fifty plus dollar donation to any LA Fire Relief organization, we'll send you a Ridge Wallet for free. We'll do this for the first 500 people who submit. It's the cheapest you'll ever get. A Ridge Wallet and you'll be doing good. Details below for how to submit. So very cool. If you've wanted to get a Ridge Wallet, now is the time to do it. If it's not too late already. I don't think it is.

That's great.

So thank you to Sean And Connor for helping raise money for fire relief here in Southern California. Cool.

Let's go to some DMs that we don't have printed out. But I have here on my phone. Michael Tostad says the Tech Bros. POD should have of quote is this secret communist section really bring back the McCarthyism? And you said haha, that's great. Looking forward to the segment. We pay too deep digging into secret.

So I think we should have. I think, I think we have a new segment. Can be kind of sporadic.

Yeah.

Where we sort of try to figure out who are the targets.

Like the venture communist.

Well so. So Karen Bass was the target.

Okay. Sure, sure, sure.

It turns out prior to her political career. Well, I guess this was just the beginning of her political career. She was a very active communist working directly with the Cuban government.

Yeah.

In the 70s. So yeah, I just think I talked about this before. People have been, you know, looking for new slurs. Communists. There's been a.

There's been a bull market fixation on.

Slurs and so venture capitalists. Hey John, that market map makes you look like a junior vc. You know, slurs like that. You know, communist mouth breather, low T. Yeah. Low magnesium levels.

There's plenty.

So there's. There's plenty.

Let's go to the next comment that someone said no is a photo of us. And they say no cases on their phone. Yeah, these guys have exits. That's great. And then Nate chimes in with the Jordy Hayes stack. No phone case, no socks, no shampoo. Where even is this is in the reply to Ben's post. He just.

Ben. So Ben's producer Ben, his account's been exploding. His account has been.

Get in now he's a couple hundred followers. He's blowing up. It's great.

That's great.

Here's a good question for us. Britain Winterose says tasked with hosting an event VCs will want to attend. The options are Porsche racing experience, skiing, a panel of three other VCs or other comment below. And Mario says Tech Bros POD should have good insight. Jordy, what do you think? You want to attract as many VCs to the event you're throwing? What do you go for?

Honestly, the last time I saw True Flock was the Gundo. Oh you remember that last year last like, like Flock of Beast. Flock of Beasts. Because it was just.

We need a name for that. You know how like if you get a group of lions, it's called a pride of lions. Or you get a bunch of murder of crows.

I think a Flock is good because you have flock of sheep. Se. Like, se. Some of them are seagulls, like the rats, you know, the rats of the air. Some are pigeons also kind of, you know, they're. They're foraging. They're just trying to nip off. All I need is half a percent. That's my ownership target. You know, they're just trying to get a crumb. The others are the, you know, more of like. Like the. The eagles, you know, like the. The. The ones that sit high above and. And I'd put.

That's not what you call eagles, though.

No, I know, but I'm just saying we're going to. Broadly, we're going to. We're going to flock of birds. I think is. Is fair. So we got to kind of bucket in a few different.

A group of eagles is called a convocation of eagles.

Convocation, that's good.

A convocation of an army or a congress.

But do you remember that when. When the gundo. I think you catalyzed it in some way with your documentary that was already building.

Yeah. Yep.

And then every VC was. Was like, yeah, I'm gonna. Let me know if you're around. I'm gonna be in the Gunda this week, you know, and it's cool. I mean, so you would say if.

You want to host an event with VCs, just go to like the hottest new submarket that's blowing up, like a high influencer, and then just take them on a tour of all the startups in the area. Yeah, that's probably good.

That works.

I would say big game hunting would also be good.

Yeah. The number of GPS that are secretly taking multiple trips a year to hunt elephants, elks, lions. Really exotic. Mostly predators, but, yeah, predator hunting.

Yeah, hunting is really big right now. Yeah. Also Porsche racing experience, that's fine. But you'd be better off doing the Dakar. Yeah. Putting a group together, driving from.

Yeah, they got all 3,000.

Yeah. The gumball was also good. Great, great, great, great option. Let's see what else. Oh, my God. Someone just did guess the podcast and it's just photos of us, I think. Like this. That's hilarious.

When is that?

Today? Yeah, I guess I just posted this. I like this. That's great. Oh, that's Matt. And you posted that. Took some photos, the product slides. That's great.

Ben's out of control. Ben in. Following Ben right now is like buying bitcoin.

Oops.

Following Ben right now is like buying Bitcoin in 1981.

Just gets older. Every single Time we promote something. Let's go to a bucket poll. We got Juicy saying dudes be having the worst day of their life and still keep sending memes to their homies like nothing happened. 100k likes. I completely agree with this. Even during the fires, you lost cell service, but I was still sending you memes. And I was like, like, he hasn't replied in like hours. Like, this is bad. This is like very uncouth. But yeah, this is the way like men.

No, I think people. I think. Yeah, I think I was, I was kind of processing this. I was thinking about this last week because I was sort of oscillating between being extremely angry at the response of our leaders in California and then also needing to kind of process it through humor.

Yeah, of course.

And so, yeah, I mean, I can, I can remember that the svb, the pure when, when SVB was collapsing, it was very impactful on our, on our business. But then I also had a family health emergency at like 2am that Thursday and Thursday and Friday was like the last money you could get money or the last day you could get money out. So. But I still remember everybody was just like memeing it, like internally. Like it was like the biggest, the most existential, crazy existential moment for Silicon Valley where we were like, did we. Did. Did this startup economy just get nuked?

Yeah.

And then everybody was, you know, the group chats were having a moment. You know, of course, of course. As they do.

Never stops. Let's go to Mark Andreessen. He says, well, this is really going to cramp my style. And he shows a screenshot of message block. The semantic email security cloud service has detected content in an email that matches the following policy. Inappropriate content 5 x x. Please remove any language inappropriate for business and resend the message. The funny thing is like, this is clearly like on a 16C's network. Right. I imagine. Or maybe, maybe it's for a different community. But it's just funny that he's like triggering the, the content flags. He's mouthing off so much. I love it. True technology. Brother behavior.

Yeah, we're bringing, we're, we're, we're trying to encourage people to bring back intensity to the workplace.

Yes.

And part of that is saying not words like the R word, but saying like the F bomb. Yeah, you know, yeah, all caps. Get it done.

You know the thing about Ron Conway, how every email he sends is all cap apps.

Really?

Yeah. Incredible. Everything you open is just screaming, basically. I don't know. That's great.

You Got to turn the volume down before you open an email from Ron Conway.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. Let's go to Andrea. She says much respect to us who have one Twitter account where we should post, conduct business and socialize from Sigma Moves. And I agree with this. There's the classic question of like, oh, I got some spicy takes. Should I set up an A non account? And I don't know, I think that, yeah, you just got to find the correct line and only post things that you're comfortable living on forever and being baked into the God in a box.

Feeding the ISO.

The LLM.

Yeah.

So the AI.

Yeah, that's part of it. We gotta. Every one of us is training these models through the stuff that we're putting online. And so if you want the model to be more politically incorrect. Be more politically incorrect. Right.

Yeah.

And do it on main. Yeah, it's. No, no. You know, I bet you. I bet you they. I bet you XAI really, you know, tries. I bet they're really good at detecting bots for xai.

Oh yeah, for sure.

You know, they don't want any of that slop that says like in my, you know, check out my bio now. You know, like some of that of.

Stuff or even just like chat. GPT just destroyed Grock and anthropic like 10amazing discoveries below like this stupid threads. Like all those need to get filtered out. There is something to be said about like that mixed use account that's really cool. Like Nikita broke it down where he was like, look like you're not going to have like some deep insight or some, you know, revolutionary deep dive every single day. So you should just be kind of like hanging out at the water cooler telling jokes effectively shit posting do that like just whenever something comes to you a couple times a day and then. But then you need to mix in a serious post like once a week or something. So that.

Yeah, Andrea is like joking around. But she does some of the best analysis.

Exactly.

On the consumer packaging industry and it's the most entertaining. So I think it's. It's definitely. And when you share stuff that is personal, like your personal interests, like for me, I'm always surprised if I share anything UFC related. I get a bunch of people that I, that I'm friends with that I didn't even know like the sport and they'll, I mean talk about it, whatever.

I mean that's the beauty of X is that it's not designed like siloed Reddits. So Yeah. You don't need to like go and take your account over to watch Twitter or tech Twitter or media Twitter or UFC Twitter to engage those people. You can just kind of like follow a few people, engage, post. And the algorithm will send. And sometimes it sends posts off to a different region of X. And you're like, oh, okay, there's a whole different community here and they love me or they hate me. Who knows, maybe I gotta lock my account.

The Canadians.

Yeah, the Alaskans. The Alaskans got me. Got me good. But let's go to Roon. Talking to Grimes. Rune says, if you guys aren't careful, I'm going to start writing essays on the immigrant experience. And let me just say, nobody will enjoy that. And then Grimes says, honestly, if you would just write any essay at all, I would be happy. Lazy fuck. Incredible writer. Proceeds to only. Proceeds to only tweet and not create a body of work. Upsetting. And then runes is lmfao. Okay, Grimes is kicking my ass. I gotta do it. And then Grimes says, are you serious? You can't say it because then you won't do it. Please write something long form and for the love of God, print it on a pamphlet. And let's not have another substack. Let's show some grace to the written word and also get some branding moxie around the ideas percolating in Silicon Valve. And then he says, yeah, substack is lame. X articles is lame. The vibes on both of those have become bad. And yeah, I mean, I. I think there's some great substacks out there. And some X articles are cool. You don't want to get censored, so you got to put that up there too. But definitely print it out. Definitely send it to people in print. Did you see Max Meyer's new project?

Yeah.

Love Letters to America. Is that what it's called? Love Letters to Capital Project.

Under really cool.

Under arena. So. So you can go subscribe and you'll just get a nicely delivered letter in the mail. And we're building a mailing list, a physical mailing list. So send us your address if you want to get drops. We're going to be dropping a bunch of fun stuff in the mail. And I think you should be keeping a Rolodex. These things often build up around weddings. You get everyone's address there. Keep that up to date. You need a real Rolodex. It's not enough just to have someone's phone or email these days. You got to be able to send them physical stuff and stand out.

Out.

Should we do another promoted post. What you got?

I got, I got one.

We got to do a chair at some point.

Yeah, we'll do the chair. We'll do the chair next. Do you have some backstory on this chair?

Well, it was recommended by the obscure hobbyist of the year.

Oh, really?

Will Manitis?

Yes, really.

He said, he said he's buying it.

Okay, okay, okay. Let's, let's actually just run this. So I got a extremely important promoted post today from. And it's actually a recommendation from none other than Will Manitis.

He's gonna be so pissed that we're leaking this alpha.

Yeah, yeah, this is, honestly, I doubt he's bought it actually pulled the trigger yet. So we're gonna sell it out.

Well, he had a couple other options. We're highlighting the one that we think most aligns with our brand.

We have a fantastic looking chair here. This is the William Jefferson Clinton Oval Office chair from the history company. It's only $3,475. And, and you know, this thing just looks fantastic. Is this the actual, is this.

It's, it's a replica.

It's a replica.

Yeah. Okay. It's designed to look like an oval office chair.

Should be at least 40.

And I think it's great because, you know, if you're an associate at a venture capital firm, you come in, they give you some slop chair. You gotta get that out, bring in your own chair. No one's gonna bother you if you just, oh, I need a more ergonomic chair. I got back problems or something. Is it to stop you?

So VC associates, you'll see around sf, a lot of them driving like Valkyries. Like, you know, some of these hyper cars, i8s big too. A wrapped i8.

You got to get the doors to go like this. The Valkyries.

As long as the doors, as long as the door go, the doors go up. It's Good. Good.

Valkyries. GP money.

Yeah. Yeah. The i8 that's there's some associates out.

There that maybe they're Nepos.

I know. Yeah. I, I, I met a guy in the ALP a couple weeks ago that work for a pretty prominent venture capital fund and is a billionaire through his, through, through his father's, you know, past success. But so some of the, you know, but anyways, great looking chair.

Yeah. Highly recommend.

Check this out. I don't actually like the, these metal knobs here. But the, what's really going to be in zoom is this top section and it looks very regal.

Yeah.

And some other Options.

But yeah, highly recommend getting a nice.

Check out the history company.

Yeah.

And tell them the technology brothers and Will Menitis sent you.

Yeah. Let's go to a bucket poll from Ali. She says, dating a VC must be so funny, because imagine being in the middle of a fight and he says, babe, let's think about this from first principles.

Wait, let me see this. So. So this. Wow. Two and a half K. Nice.

That's.

That's. That's a banger. Nice. Nice work, Ally. Ally's fiance or husband or boyfriend? I don't. I don't actually know. No, he's the. Ali's. Ali's significant other.

Yeah.

Posted in late December. If I can get a Robin Hood gold card, I will tattoo. Yeah, I will. I will tattoo the Robin Hood logo on my arm. Brex. So this guy Braxton, and he got his gold card.

Yeah.

And he got a Robin Hood tattoo on an absolute piece on his shoulder. Pretty big. It's pretty prominent. I'm curious if it's his first ever tattoo.

He should keep doing this and just get logoed up everywhere.

Yeah.

Like a nascar.

It would be interesting to. To go to these companies and say, you know, I'll get this logo, but I need a hundred dollars a month for the rest of my life. And it's like a bulletproof contract. And it's like you can pay it out early.

Yeah.

You know, at like, you know, 80 years if you want to just get it all up front. Or you can just keep. Keep me on the payroll forever. So great. You load it up and you could probably get a UBI off that. That might be one of the last jobs. It's just getting a walking billboard.

He was looking pretty jacked when I saw it.

Yeah. Yeah, I think he just wanted an excuse.

He wanted an excuse to post flex. Yeah, for sure.

For sure. Nice work, Brexton. Ally, we respected.

Fine. Curious.

We should. We should get Ali's opinion on the Robin Hood and tat. I'm sure she's got opinions. Anyways.

I love when my partner is stupid.

The gold card better live up to the hype.

Yeah, it does look beautiful. Let's go to Luke Metro. He says it must really suck to be too smart to make money in crypto, but too dumb to make money in AI.

That's just brutally real.

Yeah.

Hey, podcasting.

I mean, there are so.

Podcasting is a nice. A nice, you know, middle ground.

Keep seeing these. You keep seeing these. What's the latest coin? Fart coin that just mooned or something? There's so many just super stupid ones. And it's like, yeah, anyone rational or intelligent would just be like this can't possibly happen. But then really, giga brain, they can figure out that no, this one's going to meme the Joe Bowden coin or whatever.

Yeah, but even that one ended up flopping.

Yeah, I mean they all do. But it's about the time timing. It's kind of ponzinomics and planning it correctly.

Yeah.

But oh well, it's always, always some opportunity. There's always a bull market somewhere.

Yep.

Let's go to Jack Suzlo. He says one cold email at a time. I built my life.

Thought that was cool.

Yeah. Who's at a 16z games? I wonder. I would like to see the cold email that he sent to get that job. Share it. Jack.

I through the story. It's funny because everybody has, you know, I would hope that everybody listening has positive stories around cold emails. Yeah, but you always remember the negatives. There's this one guy, it wasn't even a fully cold email that I met in college because there's one company here in Santa Barbara, Decker Brands. They own Hoka, Ugg and a bunch of other companies. Great business, like 20 billion dollar company. They do it. You know shoe companies when they have hit shoes do really well. And I met him at the gym and he's like here just. I was like, I'd love, like let me like intern for you, work for you, whatever, I'll do anything. Like here's what I'm good at. He's like, yeah, just follow up the email and like longest, most thoughtful email. No response. Kept seeing him at the gym. Oh, didn't I just like.

75 emails.

75 emails. Send emails until they, they, they beg you to stop or give you a job.

Trust me.

But they do it a hundred times times. You got to do like the volume is so key. So this is like, you know, the Baldo method. Like he didn't just send a couple good replies, he sent hundreds and he kept going crafting and I'm talking to him in a couple.

He's actually a great poster. It's fantastic. Yeah, like he's, he's also just gotten become a better poster.

Yeah, but cold emails are like little lottery tickets. Like every time you post on X it's like a little lottery ticket.

Yep.

You're buying with your time.

Yep.

And keep it concise. Send it.

Yeah, concise. Let's do another promoted post.

Promoted post. We got a promoted post from Max Broder. Urbas Max, I'm sorry for butchering your name, but he says he has a company called Gumloop, which just got out of. Just got out of yc. And what do they do? They're doing some. It looked like something within the realm of zapier. I'm trying to remember now. I don't have any actual backstory on it, but the more important thing is they raised a $17 million series day straight out of YC and Max says that Gumloop will be a 10 person, $1 billion company. They have six spots left. So this is a company that got four. Four people took them to a $17 million series A. Wow.

Wow.

So they must be doing something cool.

17 or 7.

17 million.

17 million series, yeah.

Okay. Sean from my first million is in there.

Cool.

But anyways, cool opportunity. Go hit up Max and tell them.

The technology brother sent you.

Tell them TB sent you.

Oh, I like this one. Casey says we got a bucket poll here. Casey says, I cannot overstate how valuable it is to have a regular gathering you can invite wonderful people to as you meet them. It's often the difference between that guy was cool. I wonder what he's up to. And gaining a new friend and. Or collaborator. So this is like the. The bro movie nights that we do is that you can see Casey, this is a bucket pole night.

No, this is cool. I. I mean, it's. This is.

People do this for poker nights, cigar.

Nights, and sort of working remote. Yeah. Because people in la, I feel like, just have to kind of. If you're in tech, you have to be like pretty remote in terms of how you work with people and meet people. Because there's not that many people here. And that is a downside of like. Well, there's only one Friday night every week.

Yeah.

If you want to get a bunch of people together. And then it's. Once you have kids, you know, you're sac. If you're meeting up with, you know, work oriented people, you're missing out on time with your family. So this is why 4, 5, 6, 10, 20 people together at once.

Yeah.

Has a pretty amazing.

This is why it's so important to get a box of every F1 race. Because then there's always something coming up. You can just say, oh, I'm in. I'm in Austin, Texas. This is my Miami guy.

We're going to start doing daily TV meetups at the New York Stock Exchange.

Yep.

One of the brothers recommended this and I think it'd be very cool. Let's meet at the Bowl. Every morning. Every morning. Just pray, you know, pray to the bowl.

Pray to the bowl.

We got time for one more post and then we got a jet.

But we'll see you tomorrow because the pod never sleeps. Will Manitis, let's close with him. He says, I think it will shock everyone how short lived the AGI fortunes will be. Secular nuts and bolts rationalism will not produce modern Rockefellers. They have failed at real institution building. They have weak family structures, polyamory, etc. And no transcendent morals. It's a once in a generation bag fumble. We're about to watch hundreds of billions get made and wasted on small dogs, luxury marina apartments and tasteless Napa homes. Roasted. Roasted. But I mean, I completely agree. Like you look at the. I mean, have you seen Citizen Kane?

No.

Oh, man, fantastic movie. It's a beast to get through it. And it's a very different experience than like a modern movie, but, you know, it's. It's basically the story of William Randolph Hearst. Hearst built Hearst Castle. Have you ever been to Hearst Castle? It's like in central California and it's like this insane castle. It's literally just a castle. Has like these ornate pools, indoor pools, outdoor pools, just built by this like, magnet. And it just like became this structure that like couldn't just be like absorbed by the market. So it became this museum, essentially. And, and, and that's, that's always my hope when people say like, you know, the elites aren't bad, we just need better elites. Like you need elites that care about aesthetics, care about taste. Exactly. Matt Friedman is going to build something that will live on past him, both in the company sense and also, I'm sure whatever he winds up building in the future.

The Lodge monument.

Exactly. So, yeah, if you wind up making an AGI fortune, call will make some good decisions and build a dynasty that will live on for centuries. And thanks for tuning in. We'll see you tomorrow.

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If you don't have a company, sell the ad inventory. Call another company.

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Thanks a lot. Talk to you later.