You Are Not a Lottery Ticket, Book Recommendations, Bucket of Crabs Theory, The Psychedelic Trap

I didn't know that you had North Korean investors in your first company. That's wild. Is that hard? Welcome. Oh, we're live. Welcome to Technology Brothers, the most profitable podcast in the world. Today, we are doing a deep dive on a classic Peter Thiel talk at south by Southwest back when south by Southwest rocked. It's called you'd are Not a Lottery Ticket. And it's a big discussion of luck versus skill and hard work. And a bunch of amazing frameworks came out of this. Most people know this, but I think even if you've seen it and you haven't seen it in a while, you're still going to get a lot out of this, because we're going to take it in a bunch of different directions, give you the high level, give you a bunch of analysis, and see how all of his predictions played out a decade later. So let's start off with.

Wait. Before we get into that. Yeah, I just wanted to highlight one of our own posts. We spent a lot of time highlighting other people, other people's posts, and we wanted to highlight a post that's near and dear to our heart, which is a simple post, a low tam banger, where we said last week, we fucking love podcasting. And we're trying not to swear too much because we want our children to be able to listen to this.

It's also just low class and vulgar.

Swearing is low class and vulgar. But every once in a while we slip up. We slipped up this post, but we just wanted to say, John and I really enjoy podcasting and we're glad that people listen to the show, but we'd still be doing it even without any listeners. We'd still be recording, recording, putting it out. So, anyways, we're grateful to get to do this and thank you, thank you to everybody that's actually tuning in and participating in this cultural movement towards technological progress.

Yeah. So let's kick it off with you are not our lottery ticket. The core question that Peter is asking is to what extent is success in startups and life driven by luck versus skill, planning or effort? The traditional perspective is luck can be overcome or influenced by hard work, but there is a contemporary bias that success is often seen as a function of random context, the lucky sperm club, or birth circumstances. And Peter aims to debunk this, and he has a whole host of great examples asking the question, was it luck or not? It's always hard to say when you go back and look at these. These narratives. Elon Musk went from PayPal to start SpaceX and Tesla, Jack Dorsey with Square and Twitter, Steve Jobs with Apple and Pixar. Thomas Jefferson once said, I'm a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more of it I have, suggesting that it is something that you can overcome. Samuel Goodwin said, the harder I work, the luckier I get. And I think that no matter what you think about luck, it's worth redefining it and thinking about it as a. As something that is a product of all the hard work. My working definition of luck is something that it is the reward for incredible networking, independent thinking and relentless work ethic. In contrast, today's dominant view is that success stems from the whole context, which is random. Maybe you were a member of the the lucky sperm club, the lucky egg club. Maybe you're lucky where you were born and that's what drives everything. There's a version of this that applies to startups. The successful ones were accidental and it's pretty clear how big a role luck plays.

Yeah, it's funny, being born and raised in California, I, from a young age had a sense of how lucky that was because I feel like I would travel and people globally would tell me, oh, I can't believe you're from California. I've always wanted to visit there. And then when they could, they would do whatever they could to go visit. And the thing about tech that's interesting is it doesn't matter. Like, a lot of the most successful people in tech were born far from the golden land of California and made the effort to move here. And so it doesn't, you know, being born here, maybe you have some level of advantage, but you can create luck by simply moving to California.

Yeah. I always love the story of the founder of Discord, Jason Citron. He grew up, I think, in Florida in not even a major city, and then went to a college that was like a trade school for video game development and then started one company and I don't think it went anywhere. But there's this old video of him demoing it at TechCrunch Disrupt. Crazy. Finally figured it out with Discord and has just built a beast of a business. And it was clearly just built differently. But Peter starts off by explaining that there's a difference between going from 0 to 1 and. And going from 1 to N. And so he has a 2, an X and Y axis chart. 0 to 1 is technology doing new things. It's vertical. 1 to N is globalization. It's copying existing things and it's horizontal. And this will echo through the rest of the presentation. And there's a very interesting conversation in here where he says, I agree with Paul Graham on a lot of things, but I think this is a place where we just automatically channel our society's default bias. And it's worth asking how much of this is true and how much of it is not. Not. And we, we discussed on a previous show the, this idea that maybe the advice of PG and the advice of Peter Thiel are actually at odds in many ways.

So like talk to customers versus call your shot.

Exactly, yeah. And. And it, and it, and it goes into the way that they've tried the concentration strategies where Peter will try and be, you know, anduril series C, A, D, D. I think they just put more money in the latest round, which I don't even know what the letter is F or G. And it's just concentration, concentration, concentration. Whereas YC has been diversify, diversify, diversify. And you know, they both worked, but they're very different strategies. And so there's been this, you know, shift in cultural attitude. In the past, luck would be mast was something to be mastered, overcome by effort and vision. But in the present, success is seen as heavily dependent on uncontrollable external factors. And that it makes you very docile and it makes you very. Just indeterminate, which is something he'll go on to.

And there's a big, there's a, there's a line from, from Peter, something about failure is not valuable at all. Like it doesn't matter that you didn't. Don't like pat yourself on the back being like, I learned a bunch because you could have failed in like 50 other ways. You just happen to fail that one way.

Yep.

And it matters a lot more of like how you actually won.

Yeah, no, I love that one. And so Peter starts breaking down. The whole crux of this you are not a lottery ticket speech is about this two by two matrix with four boxes and it defines two axes. On the Y axis we have optimistic versus pessimistic. How do you feel the future will play out? And then on the X axis you have determinant versus indeterminate. And so he uses a number of different examples. Maybe we should start with the general category. So in the optimistic determinant category, you have engineering and art. You believe that you can change the world. You could believe you can do something, but you have to go and instantiate it yourself. In the optimistic indeterminate category, you have finance and law, which are tracked and heavily diversified. In the determined pessimistic Scenario you have wartime rationing and an indeterminate pessimistic, you have insurance. Something bad is going to happen and you're creating a safety net. And, and then he also maps this to eras in geopolitics. And so in the US in the United States, between the 50s and 60s when we were going to the moon, we were very extremely optimistic, but extremely determinate. We realized, you know, JFK stands up and says why do we climb mountains? Because they're there. You know, why, why do we go to the moon? Because we choose to go to the moon. And we did. And the indeterminate optimist has, is what the US has fallen into currently where the government doesn't build anything anymore. It's all just wealth transfers. And Peter calls out this, this fascinating concept of the government doesn't know what to do with the money so they just give it to people. And then the people don't know what to do with the money so they put in index funds and then the index funds don't know what to do with the money so they give it to companies. But then they div. And then the companies don't know what to do. Money or California.

My, my favorite, the optimism of the California government that we're just going to build this like high speed rail line and then spend billions of dollars barely going a mile. That's sort of the.

And that's, that's one of the greatest segments. I mean Peter's always good at like keeping a very high level theoretical framework that he's breaking down but then grounding it in a bunch of historical examples. And I love these he talks about to illustrate what determin optimism looks like. We can, we can consider historical examples. The construction of the transcontinental railroad in the 19th century was a radically different future, connecting the entire country. By today's standards, no one would do it. People would say it cost too much. But at the time it was a self fulfilling prophecy. Another example is Robert moses in the mid 20th century New York who built parks, roads and infrastructure. There were many specific plans for a bigger, better future. It stopped in the mid-1960s when people questioned whether building another highway was really better one. Once there was no longer a definite view of the future, no one could build anything new. Nothing major has been built in New York City since then in any meaningful scale. And the last one is crazy because it's in California, in the San Francisco Bay area. It never happened. But the Weber plan in the late 40s, building dams, freshwater lakes and a 32 lane highway. It was a radically definite view of the future. Such a plan is unimaginable today. He was a schoolteacher. He wasn't even some Chad. Yeah. And he was an amateur theater producer. And he could propose such a grand plan, and it was taken seriously enough for congressional hearings.

Yeah.

Today these sorts of grand, definite visions don't exist.

So another example here that's interesting. So there's. There's some terraforming projects happening in the Middle east and. And. And potentially happening in parts of Africa where they're basically trying to divert large swaths of. Of. Or basically turn, like, desert land into lakes and rivers and things of that nature. And so this guy gave this great talk on it, and one of the areas that he identified was potentially able to be terraformed was the. There was this place called the Salton Sea outside of Palm Springs that used to be a lake. And I believe it was the Colorado river was changed, which diverted at one point, and it ceased to basically, and it just evaporated over time. And I asked the guy who gave the talk, how would you actually make this happen? And he's like, I have no idea.

Yeah.

And it would take an extremely determinant plus optimistic view to actually get something like this done. Because if you just say, oh, we should terraform the Salton Sea and return it to being this lake because it'll create all this agricultural land surrounding it, you're just. You're not gonna. It's not gonna happen unless there's, like, this very, very intentional approach from a large number of people to say, like, this is really hard. We're gonna do it. Like, we're not gonna just, like, hope that it happens. We're gonna make it happen.

Yeah. The terraforming stuff is fascinating because there are entrepreneurs who are talking about this. Like, Augustus, I went out to the Salton Sea with him.

Oh, really?

Oh, yeah. And we filmed a whole video, and he's talked about that. And Mike Solana wrote a piece about it a long time ago, but it's just not culturally taken seriously at all. And all of those projects are laughed at.

Yeah.

If you look at top YouTube results for Elon Musk's tunnel project, the Boring Company, it's all photos of Elon with a red clown nose on. And it's just somebody who's not a scientist at all, just a YouTuber just laughing at how preposterous this is, how it will never work, how there are better solutions. And it gets.

Yeah. For every. For every hundred feet of tunnel, he could put 20 kids through school.

It'S just shuffling the chips around the board endlessly. And it's like, okay, like people always say, oh, well, like we should just build bike lanes. It's like, okay, like, yes. And let's also do the tunnels and let's do the bike lanes and let's also do bus lanes and let's also do planes that are supersonic. Let's do it all.

Yeah.

And, and that's not the, that's not the vision of a lot of people that are pessimistic and a lot of people that are indeterminate. And so it's the same thing with the Dubai projects. I mean, I find myself even like laughing at like the idea of the line and like how crazy that is or Dubai building like these incredibly like insane like islands that are man made. All of that. It's hard to resist the urge because there's such a cultural pull.

Yeah.

From just like.

Isn't it interesting though? In many ways, the Gulf, the, the gcc.

Yeah.

Countries are very determinant and optimistic. They're like, not only are we going to buy the pga, but we're going to terraform this part of our country and we're going to build this city on a line that like, looks like it's pulled out of the future.

Yep.

And so it, in many ways, it's playing out over the world. It almost takes a monarchy to bring that approach to governance today or very, very, very strong leadership.

Yeah. I love this framework. I mean, obviously, like, the quadrant model is very important and Peter breaks it down in a bunch of different ways. He shows the different philosophers that fit into these coordinates. So Hegel and Marx are in the determined optimist quadrant. Determined pessimists are Plato and Aristotle. Indeterminate optimists are Rawls and Nozick. And then pessimistic indeterminate is epicurious and Lucretius. And I remember when I first got on Twitter, there was a guy, the epicurean dealmaker, who wrote about Wall street and, and, and seeing this, it's kind of like it's all clicking about his worldview.

Yeah.

And he was like a little bit pessimistic in finance and that's why his account grew because he was always pouring cold water on things. But he was also very much like, you know, the broad, the broad diversified investor. Not saying. I mean, even Mike Burry is pessimistic, but determinate.

Yeah.

Michael Burger is saying we need to short this exact thing right now.

Yeah.

And he's wrong. A lot but you know, every once.

In a while, what's the phrase? Pessimists sound smart, optimists make money or something like that.

Yeah, it's clout versus wealth.

Yeah.

And I, and I love this other frame. Just simplifying it just to what's the difference between determinant and indeterminate. So you can really put your finger on it. Determinant is substantive and indeterminate is process based. So when you hear someone talking about what their business is or what they're doing and they're talking about the process that they're working on, that's a signal that they don't have a concrete vision and they're running a playbook instead of actually thinking independently and building something specific. And so Peter goes on to break it down in a bunch of different realms. In finance terms, the determinant optimistic is invest in concrete projects and engineering. And this is like a lot of his investments. Anduril, SpaceX, Airbnb, Stripe rippling ramp. All these companies are very concrete changes in the worldview. How will the world work after this gets built heavy on engineering. The indeterminate optimist is low savings, low investment, rely on indexes and diversification. The whole efficient market theory is very much propagating that idea. And then indeterminate, pessimistic is high savings, fearful, no plan, insurance based mindset. And that goes to, to China where you know, they, they, they do operate very aggressively but towards a scarcity mindset for sure. So there's implications for society and business. In indeterminate optimism you do nothing specific. You have minimal savings, minimal targeted investment. Without a vision. Money becomes an end itself. Accumulated but not invested in big ideas. Nothing changes, it's zero sum and real interest rates go negative because no one knows what to do with cash. And this was the famous fight that Peter got in with Eric Schmidt over at Google saying you are out of ideas, you don't know how to innovate. You have $50 billion on your balance sheet, you should easily be able to invest that in something productive. But the fact that you can't, just the fact that it's on your balance sheet tells me that I've already won this debate. And it's like one of the most like famous debates in Silicon Valley in my opinion because he just had him dead to rights. He had him dead. And Eric was so used to arguing like the TED talk like philosophy way of oh well like you know, we, you know, shareholders and we want to be prudent with this stuff and like you know, there's a bunch of good reasons for why we're doing this. We're waiting maybe, but you know, it was like, it was like the sign of a pattern.

Gotcha.

I think, I think, I think he clocked it correctly. And it's one of the greatest, greatest moments if you're ever hanging out with Peter, bringing that up. He loves it. He loves it. I tried to make it happen again. I wanted a round two debate because I think Eric has evolved a lot and I think that they would have.

Maybe we should have a TV debates product where we get. Because we're so pretty neutral party. We try to tell it how it is and we're conflicted in many ways due to our investments, but we try to keep, keep things, you know, generally aligned. But having having a debate stage and being able to run back version 2.0.

Of that would be, would be great even. He even pulls it to literature. We've moved from definite science fiction futures like 2001 A Space Odyssey to ones that are static or unchanging like Neuromancer, Blade Runner, 1980, 1984. It's fascinating seeing how the sci fi has instantiated these different ideas of what the world looks like. Whether it's an optimistic scenario or negative in the future. We need positive sci fi. That's clear. Hilariously, that Stallone movie, what's it called? I'm blanking with Wesley Snipes. It's called I'm completely blanking on it. It came up on a previous show but. But it's fascinating. They predicted like all the self driving cars, all the. Also Demolition Man. Demolition Man, Yeah. Great movie. And so he starts to close it out with talking about startups and innovation. The official religion of today is that everything is statistical, luck driven and incremental. You need to a b test your way to success. You need short term horizons. And I'm sure you've seen that with like brand development and marketing campaigns is that ab testing is like the very last segment of this. And in general, like you need a unique idea. It's the era of the ideas guy.

Yeah.

John FIO is not ab testing his way to coming up with a new idea.

The only thing he does is use the Instagram polls product. Oh, he does that. He does collect data that way.

I love it.

If you're building consumer products, copy FIO and leverage Instagram polls to gather feedback. It works well.

Yeah. And he tells this great example. I mean he highlights that Apple under Steve Jobs, they had a multi year vision, very definite optimism. The Smartphone will be the dominant platform. Let's put an immense amount of R and D resources towards this. Spend years getting it perfect. Don't release it until the screen can be glass, because I don't want my phone scratched by my keys. And Steve apparently just came in one day and was like, my demo phone is getting scratched. It has to be glass. Go figure it out. Right? And that's something that you probably could have run some study and found that, oh, well, like, the customers will still buy it, so we don't need to do it and it's more expensive. But he had a vision. And then the best example, which I still love so much and such a great bull signal, if you can pull this out of a founder and they're not lying to you, is Facebook's refusal to sell to Yahoo for $1 billion in 2006, which is like literally a year after the company started. They walk into, into a board meeting, and it's Peter and Zuck and I believe, Jim Breyer over at Excel. And Mark's just like, well, this will be a quick board meeting. Like, obviously we have to formally discuss this, but we're obviously not taking this deal. And. And Peter and Jim are like, we should probably talk about it. Right. Like, you know, probably there's a lot of money. At least five minutes, you own 25% of the company. There's a lot that you could do with $250 million. Like, this is the, this is a reasonable thing. And Mark was like, but I don't know what I would do with the money. I would just start another social network. And I kind of like the one I have. Like, why would I do this? And so eventually, you know, they talk about it and they pass. And looking backwards, Peter realized that it'd be somewhat unscientific to do this analysis, but if you, if you looked backwards at all the companies, every time someone refused a billion dollar offer offer, ebay, Google, it had turned out to be right. More importantly, Facebook's refusing.

That's interesting.

Yeah.

Because there's a lot of companies that don't take the $100 million, you know, option to sell and then end up regretting it.

Yep.

I do feel like there's a ton of. We don't need to say them on the, on the show, but you'll meet guys that still kick themselves for not selling when they had a deal on the table because the next year things soured or whatever. But for some reason, if somebody's willing to pay a billion dollars for something, there's probably some real magic.

Also the quality of the acquirer you're talking about. If a founder mode company is making you a billion dollar offer, a significant portion of their, of their market cap, it's a signal that you're onto something really, really serious as opposed to oh yeah, some strategic like, you know, like public company was going to write us $100 billion check but they're $100 billion company and I didn't even talk to the CEO because it was such a small deal for them. Like they probably take that because they're not evaluating it properly. Whereas if Zuck is taking you on a walk and being like, hey, like here's a billion dollars, like, you know, you should really come work with us, you might be really putting the screws to him in a few years. And I think we kind of saw the counter of that play out with Instagram, which could have been huge.

Yeah, Nikita's company too.

Yeah.

Zuck was. Yeah, was worried.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so there's a bunch of takeaways here. Purely luck driven or incremental approaches may not yield breakthrough innovation. Having a definite idea of the future can guide bold investments and enduring companies. The best future, a determinant optimistic approach where big visions drive real progress and transcend mere luck, including thought. Overcome luck by defining and working towards a radically better definite future. And he quotes with not just a static future like a dead channel on tv, but a definite future that's radically better.

Yeah. And I want to, I mean one of my favorite parts of this actually is, is not even Peter's thinking. It's just Thomas Jefferson quote the I'm a great believer in luck. I find the harder I work, the more I have of it. And I think that having that definite vision but understanding it's not enough to just have the vision. Right. Look at Augustus. Like he's got a very clear vision of what he wants to execute towards, but he's also putting in 14, 15 hour days every single day. So it's like that balance of you can overcome luck, but you also want it to work in your favor. So just work harder.

Yeah. The reason I actually pulled this up, the reason this resurfaced was because I had a friend who is considering joining the government and was doing kind of an informational interview with one of the partners at Founders Fund and, and was like, what should, how should I go into this interview and get advice? And I was like, the most important thing is figure out what you want in life, where you want to be. It's the classic question of like, what do you. Where do you see yourself in 10 years? And that's such a silly, played out question that we didn't, we stopped asking it. But it's actually incredibly important to ask that question. And so go do some thinking. And I often find it's useful to go back to what did you want to do as a child?

Yeah.

Because maybe after you get past astronaut, there might be something serious there.

Astronaut influencer. What's the next.

What's the next one? And there's probably a moment when you were like, yeah, I actually wasn't dreaming of being a lawyer. I was dreaming of being, you know, a business person or something else or building something or doing something. And uh, and I remember when I interviewed at Founders Fund, I got on a call with Trey and towards the end he was like, yeah, like, what do you want to do? And I was like, kind of giving him a wishy washy answer and he was like, you can just tell me, like. And it was like, very informative. It was like, he kind of like beat me over the head with like.

I want to be the number one technology podcaster in the world.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and, and just. And I mean, honestly, I hadn't really figured it out at the time. Yeah. But it was, but it, but it's a very, very good framework and I think people need permission to, to just say out loud what.

They have so many, so many questions like, where do you see yourself in 10 years? That got kind of canceled for some reason.

Yeah. I don't know. Why.

Because it was like, oh, well, some people just want a job or whatever.

Yeah.

And then the question, it got. You got in trouble for asking people, what do you do at parties?

Okay.

Because it's like, you remember this, like, have something more interesting to say than what do you do? And for me, for me asking somebody, what's your story? What do you do? Yeah, that is the. If I'm meeting somebody for the first time, I'm trying to understand who they are. That's probably some of the best information I can get.

Yeah.

They're going to choose what they want to share and then that will say something by itself.

Yeah. I mean, asking someone like, tell me your life story feels like kind of cringe. But it's, that's cringe. But, but saying, what do you mean but? I think that, I think that if you can pull that out of someone, like, that's the most interest that they have to say.

Yeah.

And, and if you, if they can actually, a Lot of people will just kind of give you the resume, but if you can actually get, like, the highs and lows and, like, all the problems that they solve throughout their life, like, that's. That's very interesting and a good way to get to know someone.

Yeah.

And I feel like we got there, like, in our, like, first meeting. It was, like, we were very open and, like, actually telling the truth about, like, the full arc of our careers, which I think was totally. But, yeah, I remember. I remember.

I actually remember that when we first met, I was like, wait, so do you want to be, like, president or something? I didn't really.

I don't.

You know, we're all figuring it out at the time, but I was like, is this guy gonna be, like, the mayor of Pasadena? Governor of California, maybe President?

I mean, podcast run for content. Before, it's a clear playbook, now it's a clear playbook. Reagan was an actor.

Yeah.

Trump had a reality TV show. The next president will be a podcaster. Why not?

Yeah. The bodybuilder to governor. Pipeline.

Fantastic. Also movie star.

Yeah.

Yeah. Got to be able to communicate. But, yeah, think. Think really hard. I know. Even. Even outside of the teal verse, this guy who runs Strauss Zelnick, he runs Take two Interactive. They make GTA and a ton of video games. And he takes, like, an immense amount of, like, coaching calls from people. He makes himself very available. He. He wrote a book just called Success. It's. It's private.

I wrote the book. Yeah, I wrote the book on. I wrote the book. Success.

Yeah. Yeah. And he wrote it when he was young, too. It was crazy. And he. I mean, this guy is a badass career, but he. You can only get it by emailing him, and he sends you a copy. It's not published. Like, you can't get it anywhere. It's amazing. And. And in there, he will always just start with, like, what do you want? Because if you don't want to be the CEO, like, you'll never get there. If you don't want to be a founder, you'll never be there. Like, what? And figuring that out and being honest with yourself. So the exercise is usually like, that, ick, a guy thing. Like, what. What are you good at? What makes money? What do you love doing? Find the intersection of that. Then be honest with yourself about what that is. Because if you're the best dentist in the world, you're going to wind up building a massive dental empire. If you're the best pottery artist in the world, like, you will, but you have to excel instead of just being okay. Yeah, I happen to like, you know, dentistry, and I'm just going to do it to pay the bills. And I never have any ambition, like become an entrepreneur still in whatever field you're excelling in. Yeah, I love that. I love that talk. It's one of the best.

Good one.

Go watch it. If you haven't watched it, it's fantastic. It goes way deeper than we went. Welcome back to Technology Brothers, still the most profitable podcast in the world. We have some DMs, some Q& A from the fans. Let's go to Pete Campbell. He says, dear Tech Bros. Pod.

Not the fans, the brothers.

The brothers. Let's go to the brothers. Pete Campbell says, dear Tech Bros. Pod, can you think of anyone more accomplished or deserving to deliver next year's Stanford commencement speech than Gary Tan? I can't. That's a fantastic idea. And I don't know if you thought of this yourself, Pete, but we should definitely get this trending. We love Gary.

Gary went on. Gary went on a campaign to save San Francisco. Pete is going on a campaign to get Gary to do the Stanford.

I mean, Gary's too humble. He would. He would never lobby for himself for this, but that. This would be a fantastic fit, I think.

And pretty good marketing for Y Combinator, for sure. Event marketing moment, you know, talking to a bunch of Stanford grads. Hey, by the way, I run a small accelerator called Y Combinator. You know, a few times a year we give a number of startups. Yeah, those are money.

That was a thing. When I got to Silicon Valley, every big shot would come in and they loved being like, well, I got to Silicon Valley and then I started working for a little company called Yahoo. And we started, like, hearing it again and again, and we were like, this is such a played out, like, meme. Like, every VC loves saying, like, yeah, I went to a little company called Microsoft.

It's like saying like, I was one of the first hundred employees, but it sounds cooler to be like, yeah, I worked for a little company.

And then you're all like. You were just like some product manager. Then you go to their house and it's like a $50 million mansion in Menlo park or something. You're like, okay, yeah, okay. It's real. The Yahoo money was wild. Those guys made a lot of money early. It's great. Anyway, let's move on.

We got a good idea. Good idea.

Pete from Tyler, he says, help Tech Bros. Pod. I'm looking for a book that covers the intersection of brand history, technical innovation and collecting watches. Give your take. I'll make a specific recommendation and we'll go from there.

So you don't need to read books on brand history. You can listen, just listen to founders podcasts. So you can go listen to like, you know, 50, 100 episodes back to back. Just block off like a few weeks and do that. And then the other categories, I would just say I think one of the most underrated things that you can do is if you're interested in a topic, read parts of a few different books in the category. Like you don't even need to. The whole trap of having to read the entire book. Like it's totally fine to just read some number of pages and if you get bored, just like go on to.

The next kind of skip around.

Yeah, or skip around. But yeah, just like read, read the top, you know, five books on on watch watches.

That's good. And I have a specific recommendation for you. It's a book on the history of Rolex and there is a fantastic episode of founders351. I'll just play you the intro here.

The book I'm going to talk to you about today is nearly impossible to find. It was first published in 1946. There's only a thousand, 000 copies ever made. It's called Rolex Jubilee. And then the subtitle is actually in Latin, but when you translate it from Latin into English, it literally means go with me. And so It's a tiny four volume. Like History of Rolex Volume 1 was written by Hans Wilsdorf, who is the founder of Rolex.

So go listen to episode 351 of Founders. Maybe pick up the book, try and get a copy. I think that will probably hit all three of these. And lastly, just keep listening to the podcast, man. We're going to cover all three of these every single day.

We're trying to give a proper analysis of every business ever because we love business. So in the total history of technology, brothers, we hope to cover every business at least once, even if it's just one promoted post.

Yeah, exactly. Let's go to Based Baron. He says, yeah, I'm Poly Polly. Gonna beat the shit out of some EA Teapot post. Rat God Virgin. If they get up in my grill on this app one more time. And yeah, very funny post. Got him getting in fights. Getting in fights. We wanted to highlight Based Baron because he claims to be an analyst at Tech Bros Pod. He's not officially affiliated with us, but we're always open to supporters. But as we reviewed your timeline, Based Baron, maybe a little bit too based a little bit too negative. We want to keep the, Keep the momentum up, keep the optimism. Don't want to be the definite pessimist on this show. You want to be optimistic and a lot of the things you're saying, a lot of the shit you're talking, not unreasonable, but where's it going to get you? Yeah, pessimists get clout, optimists get the key.

So base Baron in seem seemingly in group, emerging poster. It's got some, got some good takes, got some takes that are kind of trying to take down some of our buddies, things like that. But here's what I'd say. Based Baron, you want to get to the point where two years from now when you got a hundred thousand followers, people, you're. You're allowed to share who you really are without burning a bunch of bridges. Because like at the trajectory that he's posting, he's going there.

Oh yeah.

Going to 100k for sure. That said, you've got to make sure to not make too many enemies along the way so that you, when you do that big face reveal.

Yep.

It's like you're sort of confident in doing that not, you know, attacking too many people.

Will have, you know, two levels of reaction to an account like this. The first one is like, haha, like dunking on all the, you know, the lolcows of tech and. Are you familiar with lolcow?

No.

It's a, it's a person that is milked for luls because they're, they're, they're so downtrodden that you. That the whole like, it's from 4chan. So the 4chan community will pick someone who they just like laugh at endlessly. And they just like anything that they do. They're just like getting dunked on. And then it creates this really vicious cycle. But it's all related to the bucket of Crabs theory. Are you familiar with this?

Yeah.

So yeah, the crabs, they pull each other down and as soon as one is about to escape the bucket, the rest of them get pulled down. If they were just working together, they could lift each other up. And so level one is like, okay, yeah, this guy's funny, he's got some good dunks. He's talking trash, he's naming names, he's unhinged. That's great. But level two is like you're revealing that your financials are not intertwined with 25,000 different startups.

Yeah. You're not consistent enough.

Not enough Conflicts of interest.

Yep.

Not enough conflicts of interest. Call us once you've LP'd into 25 different funds and can't talk shit about anyone anymore because you're a bag holder on even the worst companies. Yeah, so you wouldn't say a word.

Bright future based baron. And we, you'll definitely. We'll ship you the JD when we open up the analyst role.

Fantastic. Fantastic. Let's go to Dan Gray. He says why are so many startups pitching the same ideas? This is the result of startup catering where founders work on the problems they believe VCs care about rather than problems they are connected to. It occurs whenever there is a strong and vocal consensus among investors on the opportunity of the day, for example agents, vertical AI gaming, et cetera. Obviously this is a negative influence on innovation. The purpose of startups is to build novel solutions which others are unable to anticipate. Consequently, the best VCs focus at most on broad problem areas rather than solutions. Yeah, interesting. This is something like, it's always like, it's always like the bear case for like the YC requests for startups. It's like, are the best founders, do they need that or should they already building it? I've built two companies that like didn't fit into any trends at all. And that's been good, but also extremely painful because I haven't been able to just flip them to meta for $100 million in a year. Extremely painful, extremely painful. But it's all worked out. And yeah, you got to have the definite optimist view of the world and oftentimes that also can coincides with the contrarian vision and seeing something different and having everyone tell you that you're wrong for years and this was the case with Coinbase and Airbnb and Stripe. Oh, why are you doing this? Sometimes something already exists. Unnecessary. This isn't trendy.

The one positive, the positive about the YC requests for startups is if you're working at a fang and you see that you're like, oh that's interesting. And then you, that catalyze you catalyzes you into starting a company and then you start that company and maybe you end up pivoting to something else. Like at least it made you, it provided that initial activation energy to get you to go and do it. But yeah, I've seen this, I've seen this so, so much. Just as an angel investor, seeing people come pitch me an idea and I'm like, you're hitting all the right buzzwords. But yeah, it's not an original idea. I've seen a bunch of other pitches for it. And then there's no reason you're not like, there's no reason why that you should win versus anyone else that's doing this. In fact, it's usually the opposite. It's like, well, you picked this idea because you thought you could raise a $2 million seed round and, like, basically play founder.

Yeah. And a lot of times you're a year too late or there's some company that's more well funded in stealth mode. Or you're just like.

Yeah.

You're just behind the ball.

Yeah.

Let's do a promoted post.

Promoted post.

I'm excited for this one.

We love promoting the fantastic inventory over at Dupont Registry. Today we're talking about a 2017 Lamborghini Centenario Roadster, one of only 20 produced. It has an ask a very modest asking price of only 2.9 million. Great spec things in white on black. It's got a nice wing on it. Killer. And just, like, you can tell when something's been specked properly. And this is very intentional. Not over the top. And it's got a nice, like, arrow kit on it. And I don't. You know, they're just not making Lamborghinis like this anymore. And this is one of 20. So pick this up.

This is like a crypto VC, great for the GP Cryptocentric Street park in San Francisco.

Yeah.

Make a statement. Statement.

Yeah. And don't buy this if you live in Miami. Buy this if you live in sf.

Exactly.

This is a great daily. Yeah. If. If you're gonna be stuck in front of a behind a waymo.

Yeah.

And you get your sandwiched by waymos. You want to be in a white Lamborghini Centenario Roadster just to mog the. The people.

Yeah.

That.

I want to hear some that are.

Filming the steering wheel being like, oh, look, it's turning by itself. And you're like, yeah, it turns out, you know, when I do it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to hear some noise complaints in Menlo park and Los Altos.

Yeah.

Yeah. In Incline Village. Let's tear it up out there.

And if you need some driving lessons. Mkbhd. Oh, yeah. His videos aren't explicitly driving lessons, but he certainly learns how to drive.

Read between the lines. And when you head to your Lamborghini dealership, tell them the technology brother sent you. Let's go to Lulu. She says it's very hard for public company CEOs to state their unfiltered beliefs and principles that the pressures are immense among public cos. It's basically Toby Lutke, Brian Armstrong and Elon Musk holding the Overton window open. Yeah, we talked about this with the fuck you money post from Marc Andreessen. Like you get so entrenched that saying any unfiltered belief or principle could slice your customer base or your employee base or your investor base. Like you have like thousands of.

Well, it's more. So they're hovering over, they draft a post, they're hovering over the post button, the weight and then they're thinking, oh, this pension fund or institutional investor owns 4% of my company. And I'm going to immediately get an email saying, hi Mark, let me know if you can talk. And you're like, okay, great. But I think the key here. So the interesting thing about the examples that Lulu gave is the approaches are dramatically different. Elon very clearly seems to just say whatever he's thinking off the top of his head, be liberal with emojis. Like, you know, I don't think he has like posts are not the opinions of any of my companies. It's like, no, the, his posts are the opinions of his companies. Yep. And then Toby, Toby is the opposite approach of like seemingly very intentional, like sort of using his megaphone. It's like, you know, it's very curated. It's not, it's not on the fly. And so both ways work.

And Brian too. Brian writes a long post, very thoughtful. He puts a lot of work into it. But it. But he's not afraid to be unfiltered and controversial. And controversial.

Yeah. I don't even know if unfiltered is the right like, yeah, the best thing is to be is to be, is to be. You can be controversial but be filtered and tasteful in the delivery of that.

And I do wonder if there's. If this is going to change as more companies go public because, you know, public company CEOs. Okay, well what happens when a world goes public? Or what happens when there are a lot of founder led companies right now that just aren't public yet but will may it'll be probably be easier for them to maintain their unfiltered nature than retrain an era, a generation of public company CEOs.

It's interesting to think about the X long post and how that's kind of changed the platform from a communication standpoint because if you historically you wanted to share a lot, you had to post a thread, but then somebody could screenshot one, tweet and be like, look, this guy hates this type of people.

Yeah.

But then now, in a long post, it's like, it would be disingenuous to not show the full context based on one thing that they said. So it actually opens it up.

Yeah, it's great. Santiago been on the show before. He says you can just not do psychedelics. Lol.

Bold statement, Cotton. Very true. We, We. We support this message. Just because. Just because psychedelics are popular in Silicon Valley does not mean you have to do them. Doesn't even mean that you're going to benefit from them. I think we've maybe talked about this on the show, but psychedelics can provide this novel experience that makes people feel like it's super monumental and maybe that they just hadn't put their phone down for a while. It's like, a lot of people, the only time they go for a long hike is when they're taking lsd. So they're like, oh, this is amazing. But you could just take the hike.

The best metaphor was that post we read about. I took so many psychedelics that at a certain point I had a meta epiphany that the drug was just leaning on the epiphany key in my brain, and it was just making me think, I'm having an epiphany. I'm having an epiphany. I'm having an epiphany. And that's actually not having an epiphany. And that same thing happens with a lot of cannabis where it's like, oh, everything was so funny last night. Oh, tell me the jokes that you were laughing at. Not funny at all. Only funny in the moment because it was completely synthetic.

Yeah.

And so, yeah, you want to stay away from that.

Yeah. And I. I've talked about this before, but when I was in college, when I was in college, Tim Ferriss was directly or indirectly massively promoting psychedelic, like, basically as, like, a lifestyle to the. One of the biggest podcasts in the world, just telling everybody, like, how great psychedelics are. And I think that that's irresponsible. I think it's. I think it's something that can be done in small circles but doesn't need to be on a megaphone. It's degenerate.

I agree. Let's go to Bryce. He says we're in multiple golden agents ages at once. Quoting Jeff Bezos from this fantastic interview that Bezos did that there's a great breakdown on David Senra's X page, and he did a whole deep dive on it, got reshared By Ivanka Trump. I believe. Believe and. Or. Or. No, no. It got reshared by Jeff Bezos wife. That's right. Lauren Chance. Lauren Sanchez. But I. I agree with this. Multiple golden ages at once. We're. We're doing space travel. We're doing AI, we're doing bio. There are a ton of.

We're doing Doge.

Doge. Making the government.

Innovation in government.

It is. It is a fantastic time to be alive. I just like that he put this quote out there. That's great.

Thank you, Bryce.

Thank you. Let's go to Andrew Reed. That's over at Sequoia. He says, although he doesn't have the tag anymore, I got to check these. Still there. He says, never make the same mistake twice. Make it at least three or four times. So you're absolutely sure you're wrong, then change your approach. I like it.

So I've had this with people, like, early in my career. Not even that, not even that long ago, I would start talking with somebody maybe about investing or partnering in some capacity or a hire, and I would have, like, a little something in my. In the back of my head that wasn't a really strong, intense sort of intuition, but there was some intuition that I shouldn't, that there was some red flag. And over the last, like, two years, I've really tried to be intentional. Intentional about listening to that. And I had to make the mistake of not listening to it four or five times. And so now when it happens, I'm very. I know what kind of comes after making that mistake. So I'm just like, yeah, I'm just not going to start, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. It's almost. It's almost hard to make the mistake once and fully learn the lesson.

Yeah. You need multiple data points to prove. To prove out a, you know, real thesis there.

Yeah. I remember a friend of mine in high school, I think we were. We were in college, and one of his younger brothers came out with everyone partying, and his younger brother was, like, drinking, like, trying to keep up with the college guys. And one of our friends, you know, the older brother is like, hey, take it easy. Like, we are college guys. Like, you're just not gonna be able to keep up with us. Our tolerance is, like, way higher. You gotta go easy. And one of our other friends just, like, grabs his. The older brother's hand and says, like, look, some lessons have to be learned the hard way.

Yeah.

And to this day, they refer to this as, like, DES lessons because, like, that's the type of. Of, like, lesson Learned the hard way.

And yet alcohol, Alcohol is a very positive feedback loop. It is a poison. People consume it, they feel good, but then they feel really bad. It creates less desire to do it again, even though you might feel good for a little bit.

Yeah, hopefully. So, yeah, some things you gotta learn the hard way. Let's go to Justin Mares, brother of the week this week. He says the FDA literally has a 10 second rule. If a company fries something in oil for less than 10 seconds, there's no requirement to add the oil to the ingredient. Label reform can't come soon enough. Fascinating. Yeah, the FDA has a bunch of these weird rules, just like little archaic.

Things that get, you've dealt with it.

Exploited more than us. Tons of weird stuff that just like this, this, this has to be on. This can't be on. I mean there's a ton of stuff in the tobacco industry where you like, like, because the, because the cigarette companies were making claims about like low tar. Now you can't even make a claim about any tobacco product, including a tobacco free product, that it's sugar free or it doesn't contain seed oils or it doesn't contain microplastics. Like you legally cannot make those claims even if it's true. And it's just like super.

Is that regulatory capture?

Basically, yeah. For the cigarette companies.

Yeah. Every, every law, you can't market. Again, you can't market product benefits against us.

Oh yeah. I mean like the whole backlash against the tobacco companies was just like a master class in like jiu jitsu and getting, getting a good outcome. Everything was like, oh yeah, you'll totally tie our hands on this. And also create the strongest monopoly in American history. Oh yeah. Well, yeah, no one will be able to advertise. Who would that benefit? The entrenched incumbents. Absolutely.

With crazy distribution.

Yeah. Oh yeah.

Like, and yeah. Durable brand.

Exactly, exactly. So every decision that they made was just like very long term focused for the, it was a long term win for the tobacco companies and a short term win for the, you know, the health regulators. Regulators. And so they got to say, hey, there's no more cigarette ads. It's like, okay, well you know, let's see how this plays out. Will people still be smoking in 40 years? Absolutely.

Yeah. My take, with, with, with, I, I had no idea about this rule and it's crazy. But I think you basically, if you're not consuming foods that you watched being made or you just assembled the ingredients and made that yourself, it is just default going to be less good for you than Than that. Right. Like, there's no amount of, oh, it's gluten free or it's seed oil free, or it was made with beef tallow. Like all that stuff, like, sort of matters. But then, oh, there was lead in the, in the process. And you know, now, now you know, it has whatever. So anyways, if you're really optimizing for health, it's got to be whole foods.

Let's go to boring business. He's quoting someone who says, is there a job where they just pay you for being a chill guy with good intuition about stuff and boring business? Says venture capital. Great post.

I, I had the post today about like, everybody wants to be a vc. Why wouldn't you want to just be an lp? Yeah, you know, you just, that's also a chill job to meet VCs, hang out ski resorts, go cat skiing, heli skiing, you know, deploy a little capital, sit back, watch it, watch it work. But, but yeah, I do, I do think if you're, if it's funny ideas guys, you know, monetize well through, through just building companies. But there's a lot of VCs that are ideas guys and they basically just sit on this buck, you know, this like, basket of really good ideas for years and wait for the right entrepreneur to come to them and say, hey, I'm gonna build this thing. And they're like, oh, I've thought about this for a long time. This is great. Now I'll give you money to do it and I get to watch my. Your vision kind of play out.

Yeah. Let's do a promoted post.

Let's do a promoted post from our friends over at Montclair. We've talked about this at length. Ski season is in full effect and Moncler says diamond run extraordinary layers for every angle of mountain life. Explore grenoble fall winter 2024@moncler.com so Monclair, proving that they are excellent posters here, they're putting a link in even though they know it's going to hurt them in the algorithm. But this jacket that they're showing off is so fantastic that I'm sure it'll still do numbers. That's a great, great post from Monclair. And if you get invited to go cat skiing, heli skiing, or have a more humble, you know, if a VC says, hey, do you want to come up to Aspen? And you know, we'll ski at the resort. If you get more modest VC like that, grit your teeth, go. Anyway, any of those environments, Montclair would be A good fit. So thank you to Monclair.

It's fantastic. Let's go to Vittorio. Let's stay on the topic of things with pockets. He says a lawyer in your pocket.

There we go.

He's showing that with grok, three court cases are being added to the training set, aiming to provide GROK with the ability to offer compelling legal verdicts. Pretty exciting.

So this is.

This is away from this.

Yeah. So this is going to be already. When people talk about what's wrong with America, it's. It's the lawfare that's just constantly being waged. It's good business for good. One reason why it's great to be a lawyer in this country for the most part, but it's going to be really insane when these sort of consumer AI products and do not pay was an early version of this, but it was less like, I'm going to sue somebody, and more like we're giving you the tools to kind of fight back against different laws that maybe you don't or, like, work with laws. And there's a world in the future where GROK can launch a lawsuit for you against one of your ops. And it's just 10 times like, most of what stops people from launching lawsuits is the cost of the lawsuit. You know, if you have some type of dispute, let's say you're disputing over $10,000, it doesn't make sense to enter into a lawsuit because it's going to cost you $100,000 to even get to any type of conclusion, or maybe more. So when that cost goes to zero, what happens?

I do wonder where the Nash equilibrium will be for all this, because yes, there's a world where it gets a lot easier to sue people, but then the AI should also be used to defend people. And so you'll have all of these lawsuits that are kind of being fought by AI and don't really bubble up. Well, this, this is a real thing.

We should create a data center just for the bullshit lawsuits.

Oh, it's going to put them out.

Put them out. And like, you know, there's.

This has already been happening for years in legal billing. So there is. There's software that companies use to read through bills from law firms to determine what was a billable hour and what wasn't, so they can effectively redline the invoices when they come through and say, oh, this was just like an associate reading case law. That's their homework. That's not something that's billable. So we want to pay you 25% less.

Yeah.

And if you save 25% on your bills with your massive law firm and you're a Fortune 500, like that's a huge amount of money. But then the law firm's got the software too and then they, when they submit their bills it goes through a review and says okay, what's, what's going to get thrown back at us, let's not put that on the bill. And so it just became this like you know, equilibrium fight of like the AIs essentially. And the result is that like I think just as many hours get billed. But now there's a, there's a tax from the AI, from the tech companies.

Yeah.

On both sides.

Love that.

They'll probably continue anyway. Let's go to Isaiah Taylor. He says guys I've had enough. I'm leaving X and heading to the other app. I'll still post occasionally and like an rt my friends content to be supportive of them, reply to a few comments, a scroll here and there, perhaps a rare dm but trust me, my heart will be in the other app.

Boom banger. Shots fired at Cuban.

Such a good. Oh, this a Cuban. I was thinking about a cocoon but it just generally.

Yeah, I mean it's applicable to many, many different types of people who are.

Now the conversations still happen on X baby.

Yeah.

Going anywhere.

It's greatest app of all time or.

I, I, I tried to log into Blue sky to see like okay, has anyone actually moved over and it was pretty minimal over there, pretty sparse but we'll see.

Yeah, it's, it's funny that if you're building any products that are, that you want to get in front of the sort of tech audience, tech elite, whatever you want to call it, you still gotta be on X to promote it.

Yeah. Let's go to Zach Weinberg. He says the trend that confuses me most as a tech angel investor is the juxtaposition of A incredibly cool new AI driven seed stage ideas with B early stage valuations that do not make economic sense given C increasing competition from everywhere. Great time to be a customer though. And then he goes on to say it's become so easy to be a seed stage software founder with all the incredible tools out there. Top of funnel ideas is huge. Prototypes are increasingly easy and cheap to build. Will be interesting to see how VC returns work in an environment like this.

Yeah, this is, this is the bull case for Y Combinator right now because they have a set structure to their investments. They've held negotiate it.

Yeah.

And so they've they are able to buy into companies effectively artificially low because of their program and brand and then everybody else has to pay a premium once they are a part of that program. So big, big bull case for yc. I did see recently I had a, I was pitched by a company that, that was started by some guys that had started a big consumer tech company in the like sort of like early like Facebook era. They were coming back for a new AI infrastructure product. They told me like oh we're you know it's going to be down at like 60 posts. Like we're just waiting on terms. And then I just heard yesterday it got done at 12 post. So there is, there is some. Okay, there is some pushback on that. There's some pushback but still like the super crack teams are still getting these egregious valuations out the gates.

Yeah. I mean 60 posts, that's like going to be a 10 million dollar round. That's like you're just a 50 person company on day one. Like it's almost like working against you is there's just burning a hole in your pocket and you're going to have a overly large team for hunting for that product market fit.

But those rounds, I mean they're happening.

Yeah. Unless you really have capex that you need, whether it's R and D or some sort of, you know, data center build out, like you really got to think through that. Does your business need that much to get to from 0 to 1? It's a big question.

No. But I think it's some, some weird thing. It's even like second time founders are drawn more because they're used to measuring themselves by numbers. Like if you, if you start a company and you get to $50 million run rate and sell it.

Yep.

Then when you go back to square one you're like, oh yeah, it'd be pretty nice to have 10 million in the bank because like I've, I've spent this much money before effectively. But it's much different to go and spend it from 0 to 1.

Yeah.

To do that versus spending your series A and your last company.

It's also just extremely jolting to go from a company that you're building where you have teams for everything and then you go into, you know, seed stage and you're like wait, I have to do this stuff myself or I have to. I only have a person instead of a team. Everything's like, it feels like it's maybe kind of moving slower.

Yeah, well I had, I had one, I Mean, part of what happens is I just think this is like pretty relevant. Part of what happens is you get a really smart team that goes out and they have a good idea, good team, and they go, yeah, we're going to raise $4 million. And then one of these bigger multi stage funds just goes, well, okay, well like, we really want to lead you around. We love what you're doing. We want to own at least 12% or whatever, 14, 15%. And then they're like, we'll give you eight on 40. And then the founder's like, it's objectively wrong for me to turn this money down in many ways if I can get way more resources for the same level of dilution. And then all the smaller investors and the angels, like, I've invested in multiple rounds over the last 12 months where I'm like, this price doesn't make any sense, but I want to be in the company. Yeah, it's my friend.

Yep. And it can be so hard because it's like, okay, so then you could push down the amount of dilution, but then your valuation's still high and you have to clear that hurdle for the next round or you push down the valuation and then you get diluted more and it's just like all tension everywhere. It can be very, very, very fraught. But just gotta go get the engine humming on the building and build something. So let's go to Molly o' Shea. She's been on the show before. She says, coming off a week of holiday events and I couldn't feel more optimistic and grateful for LA's unique tech community. Everyone is crushing it. 2025 is going to be incredible. I love it. Just an optimistic post to end on. Maybe we should do one more.

But we should do one more. No. I do love the optimism. LA's tech ecosystem gets so much hate.

But it's great.

But one of the reason, one of the reasons I'm grateful for it is we were connected because somebody was like, you're the two people in LA's tech world that I actually like, really like and like, you guys should meet each other. And that was like basically the whole.

Yeah, yeah.

Reason we got connected.

Yeah, yeah. It's a small world out here and I don't know, there's, there's some benefits, like there's, there's plenty of events. We saw a ton of people, people fly in. It's close to San Francisco.

Francisco people are happy to travel to la.

Yeah, exactly.

Because.

It'S not so great. Holiday parties and it is Spread out enough that you're not getting. Like, it's not the. Oh, come this part of full every single day. And, like, the FOMO is not nearly as bad here.

I get particles every week that I'm just like, I'm not going to drive an hour.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah. Just.

No way.

No one in LA has really understood that. It's like Europe.

Yeah.

It's like. No. LA is the most Germany of Los Angeles, AKA Santa Monica.

You want to go to France tomorrow?

That's Malibu, something like that.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, it's. It's significant to get around here. Well, let's go to some boom news. Blake Shoal has announced a new fundraising round as XB1 approaches Mach 1. I'm happy to share that Boom Arrow has raised $100 million in new financing, fully funding the first symphony engine prototype. And Paul Graham says, I invested more in Boom than I've ever invested in a startup before. But this company is important for America. They'll also make a huge amount of money if they succeed. No one else is anywhere near having a supersonic airliner. So I think we got to raise. Hit the size gong. Light size gong for the $100 million round. But this was very rough. This was a down round. This was a recap. I believe it was 100 million on 100 million pre. So the new investors took about 50% of the company. But, you know, it's sad for all the early investors and probably some of the employees that got diluted, but it's great that Silicon Valley has kind of rallied the troops and said, circle the wagons. We want this to be a thing and we are keeping it in business and we're keeping the story going. It's better than just washing our hands of this.

It would be absolutely tragic. Like, for example, if. If. If China had a company like this, they just wouldn't let it fail. Like, there'd be, like, a government intervention. Say this technology is critical enough.

Yep.

That we're going to just make it work.

Yep.

At whatever the cost.

That's literally the story tsmc.

Yeah.

It's literally the story of TSMC could not fail because they had the backing of the Taiwan government. This is critical.

Yeah. And so I'm really glad to see it. And that's like a beautiful. It's created a beautiful moment out of an otherwise sort of unfortunate set of circumstances to see a bunch of the most, you know, successful, influential people in the Valley say, this company is too important to fail. Let's make it happen.

Should we take a moment of silence for the early investors who got wiped out and crammed down.

Yeah.

This moment of silence is brought to you by Bose QuietComfort Headphones. Find your moment of silence@bose.com. okay.

All right, I'm back to the show.

Back to the show. Should we close with databricks? This is a real size gong mode.

Real size gong.

Databricks is on track to raise a $9.5 billion round at a $60 billion value.

Easter famine, baby.

This is amazing.

Let's go.

We should do one gong for every billion that you raise. Yeah, we need, we need nine. Nine gongs for this. This is fantastic. I don't know enough about databricks. We should do a deep dive on the company, break it all down. I know that they're doing very well. Everyone's excited and it's very, very cool. And the, the founder is available and like does podcasts and I've seen him at conferences and stuff and he's probably under discussed because it's one of these B2B, you know, database companies. It's a little bit not sexy or consumery, but I love that he's out there talking and they have some really cool investors and I'm really excited to see where this goes. So should we close with one more promoted post?

I love ending on an ad.

Yeah.

Because if there's one thing brothers love, it's ads.

Yep.

And I got a good one for you today. We have a 2021 Mercedes Benz AMG Black Series. These are grails. Yeah, this is a grail car. I mean, this is like one of the last, like truly great cars Mercedes has made.

Oh, me, I, I just drive a Mercedes. Yeah, I just have a Mercedes.

You just have a Mercedes?

Yeah, I, I just, I, I, I, you know, I commute in a Mercedes 80s.

Yeah.

Just happens to be an AMG black series.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, it's probably got a sub 7 minute Nurburgring.

Yeah, sub 7. And this mean AMG is finished in one of 16 graphite gray Magno over black, exclusive Napa leather. And what a great spec. I mean the, the full, the Batman black series doesn't really get better than that. And yeah, go pick this up if you're still listening to the show. You love ads, which means you probably have an extra $415,000 laying around.

Yeah.

Go buy this car.

You know what, you know what you need? Upgrade that mattress Metris black series.

Yeah, you can do that.

They made the R63, which was the AMG minivan, yeah. 6.3 liter.

That's a real grail. Dad's like us. That's a grail.

That's a grail. There's only like 50 of them in the U.S. i know they're not that expensive really, but. Yeah, yeah, they're just like, they're so weird and they don't even have the, the sliding doors.

I need to go.

This is a grail car as well. But, but go to Mercedes and say, I'm cut. I'm, you know, equivalent to the Sultan, the Brunei. I want a custom metris AMG black series. Put a V that thing.

Wow. They one just sold on. Bring a trailer R63 for 39,040k for a minivan. I mean, steel.

Why would you get Honda Odyssey when you could have a. A 6.3 liter V8?

What an insane car.

It's so insane. When you hear the engine note on that thing, you pull up to the school, dropping off the kids, 0 to.

6 sub 4, get it lowered.

It's great. So, yeah, you know, AMG GT Black Series for the weekends and the daily. But when you drive the R63, we recommend them both. We recommend them both firm. Sometimes when you sponsor the podcast, you know, we'll promote the main thing, but we'll, we'll promote your whole catalog.

Yep, yeah, yep. Multi, we love multi product companies. More, more products to promote and that's a good place to end. Folks, thank you for listening. It's been a great week.

Yeah, it's been a fantastic week. Merry Christmas and thanks for listening. Subscribe on X subscribe on Apple Podcasts. Please leave us five stars. Add on Spotify. We have video up there now. YouTube. There's short form, there's long form. Any different things?

All different forms. And we're coming to LinkedIn soon, folks.

Get ready.

Big bold move. And everybody said, oh, you guys, you guys don't have what it takes to hang on LinkedIn. Never do it different. It's a different ball game over here. Coming to the big leagues of professional networking. But we're going to go over there, we're going to make a statement.

We are.

And we're going to bring those people back to X. Just the base ones. We'll bring them back to X and we'll sort of help them find their footing over here.

So stay tuned. Talk to you later.

Thank you.

Bye.