"You Can See Everything" Review, Roadster Reactions, Eric Glyman Joins | Walter Isaacson, Christian Jensen, Tavarish

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The temple of technology, the fortress of finance, the capital of capital. Why do you call it the capital of capital, Jordi? Why, why do you feel that way? Why do you think that way? We're of course referring to You Can See Everything, the fun Nathan Fielder movie that we saw yesterday, where he always asks the follow-up question, asks, why do you feel that way? Why do you say that again and again?

She never hit him with the why questions are overdetermined.

She should have. She should have hit him with the why questions are overdetermined. That would have been the trump card that just got him. Yeah, he would have been Nathan

Fielder. He would have done this one simple trick.

He would have been stun locked. Yeah, but a Nathan Fielder PT crossover would be incredible. That's the next movie they got to do. Deep dive in the Antichrist, figuring out all the questions there. That'd be sick.

That is, I think, the only way that you could one-up this.

Yeah. No. So, I mean—

It's maybe even too much— too inside baseball, right? Because this was such a big story a decade ago.

Yeah, yeah. Everyone knows, and they've seen the show and stuff. But anyway, let me tell you about ramp.com. Time is money. Save both. Easy-to-use corporate cards, bill pay, accounting, and a whole lot more all in one place. Yeah. I mean, I'm pretty much a 10 out of 10 on the movie. I thought it was fantastic. I really, really enjoyed it. We went with a bunch of folks, and thanks to everyone that came out and hung out with us. It was a great time. It had a big

impact on us. We ditched the IEMs.

Yeah.

We're going to be using these headphones now going forward. Yeah. We're also going to be shooting like this—

Yes.

—the whole show.

Cinematography was incredible. There's a lot of debate going on in the studio on how much VFX was involved, how much cinematography and actual lighting equipment was involved. Because every shot is beautiful. It's perfectly lit. And yet they're in these tight spaces, this small beach house in Del Mar. And it looks incredible. And my thesis is that just the cameramen are as good at what they do as what Nathan Fielder does. Like, they are just experts of their craft. They use the best tools. They got incredible cameras, incredible lenses, and they went in there and they shot it beautifully. Even with some crazy lighting at times, they figured out how to make it amazing. And maybe there's color grading after the fact, but I— I was— I'm sort of skeptical of the theory that like before every scene they went and set up a bunch of 10 by 10 diffusion and shot a bunch of light through. Maybe there's some stuff going on outside pushing through windows, but it seemed pretty natural to me, and I think they're just really good at making it look beautiful. But yeah,

it was masters, masters at work.

Yeah, across the entire production. Everyone involved, even the A24 people who I think they cast They cast actors— I don't want to spoil anything, but there's some A24 references that are fun. And everything about it is incredible. So highly recommend going and seeing it. Probably stay spoiler-free if you can, because it's a fun, wild ride.

Yeah, the thing is that I think you could know exactly what happens, and it would still be wildly entertaining. 100%. Like, the whole concept is just so absurd. If you followed Nathan Fielder across his career, this makes sense as a natural progression. Totally. And yet at the same time, it's unbelievable that all these different pieces came together and various groups agreed to do something like this, being Billy and Elizabeth. It is just almost unbelievable.

Yeah. When the trailer came out, a lot of people were asking, why would she agree to do this? And I really think it's like, you're serving 11 years in prison. There's nowhere to go but up.

Yeah, your view was like there's no real downside, all upside. No real downside, yeah. And I think people will come away from this generally having a lot more— like, regardless if you think she was guilty or not, you're going to come away feeling bad for her and the whole situation, right? Yeah. Days and days and days of scenes with her and her children. These shots, these shots, you know, the final shot before prison where she says she does her, you know, is pumping breast milk for the children saying like, bring it back.

Are you guys laughing at the framing or just what Jordi's saying? I'm so confused.

Sorry, it's very distracting.

Okay, well, quickly, let me tell you about Figma. Agents meet the canvas. Your AI agents can now create and modify your Figma files with design system context. Liz Wessel, Ramp investor over at First Round, big news Eric Kleinman's coming on the show today. But she took 150 founders, investors, and builders to an early screening of the movie. She polled 16 of them, and 14 out of 16 came away saying they are more positive on Liz Holmes. Doesn't mean they're fans, just means that they thought less negatively of her. Wait, how many? That sounds like it worked. 14 out of 16. So she took 150 people. Very odd methodology, Liz. I mean, nice. It's nice that you did this. It's interesting content, but you should have pulled off 150. But instead, she pulled 16 sort of casually, and she asked them some basic questions. Do you feel better or worse about Elizabeth Holmes after seeing this film? 14 said more positive. Only 1 said more negative, and 1 didn't change. But all 16 said they felt more negative about Billie. And there's some other data there that we'll kind of leave. But you can go check it out. Anyway, don't miss it. Go see it this weekend. The spoilers are just gonna keep trickling out. And it's just fun seeing it in a packed theater, 'cause everyone's laughing at different moments. Everyone's gasping at different moments. You can feel people leaning in at the same time.

Yeah, the film was effectively like a psychedelic experience.

Yeah.

In many ways.

Yeah.

Like, it was riveting. It was like funny at these—

The cuts, the production department is just so funny. We're dying back here. I'm glad we have this tool now. But no, no, I agree with you.

Someone just texted me and said apparently—

What? What'd they text you?

Apparently my, uh, my wonderful wife texted the team telling them the show is messed up, super zoomed in.

That's hilarious. Well, is this super zoomed in? Railway. Railway is the all-in-one intelligent cloud provider. Use your favorite agent to deploy web apps, servers, databases, and more while Railway automatically takes care of scaling, monitoring, and security.

I will be going back to see it.

I'm seeing it tonight again.

You are? Yeah. Amazing.

Yeah.

Very cool. Yeah, we'll be going back as soon as possible. But the whole thing was, yeah, completely psychedelic in my experience. And just a very— it was kind of strange for me because 2 hours into the movie, Mal, there was a fire. Crazy. That got started somewhat near my house. And so, I started getting calls and texts about that. And then I ended up kind of like my attention ended up trailing off. Yeah. So, I have to go see it again. But really an incredible work of art. Yeah.

It feels like an instant classic. Instant classic, yeah. Very, very fascinating. Well, I think we can zoom out. This is a tool that we can have in the tool chest. We can go back to the normal lighting. And the normal level of zoom because I got a big reveal because what am I wearing today? I've got the Felper again award because your boy put down five thousand hard-earned dollars on a Tesla Roadster reservation two days ago, and I think I got to refund it because they the the the the demo is incredible, but it's not starting production until 2028. I was under the assumption that this was the launch of the Roadster, that this was not. the reveal that— maybe I just read the tweets wrong and I wasn't dialed in or something, but I thought it was like, okay, this is the start of production. Like, they're producing them now. They're going to show what's happening, show the final design, and then be like, yeah, and the people that have been waiting 7 years, they're getting theirs next month and then a couple months later. And if you just signed up 6 months—

Going into production— so, so first of all, I'll start by saying absolutely incredible feat. Insane. Amazing show. Absolute cinema. Wonderful that they're doing this. There's a bunch of stuff that I really love about it. Yeah. But dropping like, the car will be going into production in 2028, was just like completely insane.

That's how I felt. It was rough.

Yeah, it was, it was, it was—

I want, I want a fun Tesla now. Like, like that self-driving car. Yeah.

Technology is so cool.

I just want it now.

And in some ways, like, if you're— if you gave Tesla a quarter million dollars in 2017. Yeah. And if you had just put that in the S&P, you would be— you would have multiples of that by now. Yeah, you'd be well. And then you— there's this big event. The event gets delayed again. Yeah, 2 weeks. And then, yeah, we're making the car, but it's going to be going into production in 2028, which easily means it could be like—

Could be delayed.

It could be. Well, no, I just like— it could be getting deliveries at the very end of 2028. Yeah.

And we could start production December 20th. 2028, and that's not a violation. And then production could run for like 4 years. So if you're later in the queue, it could take a really long time. That happens with special cars all the time. Elite, elite.

We lost, we lost Sandra.

But the other thing is that it just felt like they re-raised the stakes so much by being like, we're going to put cold gas thrusters and rockets on it. It's going to be able to do kickflips. It's like, okay, all you had to do. Yeah, all you had to do was beautiful car that goes fast. Yeah. Beautiful car that goes fast.

I was trying to imagine. So the reason that you do this now, even though the car is not actually ready to announce at all, is pressure from the probably 10,000+ people that reserved this car a long time ago. And it's getting kind of annoying. You feel like, I'm not delivering on something that I said. And 2, to kind of make the Tesla-SpaceX merger start to— Build towards that. I like that thesis. That feels like why you would do this now. Otherwise, like, you don't need to announce a car that you're not making for 2 years.

Yeah. When they open the car door for one of the cars, because I think some of the cars don't have seats, some of them do, some of them can be drivable, some of them can just do kickflips. There's a whole variety of products that they're demoing and then they'll bring everything together over the next 2 years, hopefully. But when they open the door and they're like, there's someone inside, it's Spaceman, he's in the spacesuit. It's like, okay, that's a SpaceX product in there as well. It's not just the thrusters. And then I was expecting almost like an Optimus in there, but I forgot that Optimus is technically a Tesla project, not a SpaceX project. But it feels like a SpaceX project now because it's SpaceX AI or SpaceX SI. And so when I think of like robotics and artificial intelligence, I think SpaceX more than Tesla now. So it's like these companies just are destined to be together.

The contrast between how incredible like the show and the spectacle was and the demo and the technology with like the delivery from Elon and the, the 2 other guys. Oh yeah, a lot of dead air.

A lot of dead air.

The most awkward delivery and so many of these kind of semi-awkward moments.

Yeah, we, we gotta play the actual video.

Let's talk about— yeah, let's talk about everything that we love about it.

Okay, also predictions, because, uh, if you remember yesterday on the show, I predicted that it would be able to lift off the ground. I said something like 6 feet. It clearly does more than 6 feet. That was my prediction. I did not predict ramps. Jordi said it's going to be a night for swings. I said ramps everywhere. Ramps everywhere. And that's exactly what we got. I mean, it's just one big ramp, but it's effectively ramps everywhere based on— I think this totally counts. Insane that it can go upside down like that. The McMurtry-Sperling can actually do something similar with just fans.

Should we do a tier list? I think it's time for a tier list.

Okay. I like this.

Let's get a tier list going.

Okay.

Okay. Juvenile. I'm going to start with juvenile humor. All the jokes about All the sucking-related jokes. Sure. I'm going to put those at F tier.

F tier.

Completely unnecessary.

Okay. The, yeah, the childish humor is F tier. What about just the fact that it went on the ramp up to the top before it did the kickflip? That is so insane. That is S tier. Yeah.

The thing about watching it is even seeing it live.

Yeah.

Part of, I think it was super smart that they had a live audience and everyone there to see it and all this stuff. But because it is like, looks like it's breaking the laws of physics, it just, it doesn't feel real just for that reason.

Okay. So which is— What tier are you putting that?

That's S tier.

Okay.

Breaking the perceived laws of physics.

Okay. So the key point about the—

Mark in the chat says, I expected more.

What did you expect? You had goalposts in the atmosphere. In the stratosphere. What are you doing? That's crazy. What about the rumor that it will be able to beat an F1 car on the track?

Okay, this is what I love.

Okay.

The flying stuff is cool, but irrelevant if you're a buyer of this vehicle. Because one, I don't think they'll— I think they maybe ship it to a handful of friends of Elon's, some influencers. I'm thinking people like WhistlinDiesel maybe get— You know that Tesla hates him, right?

He's the Cybertruck guy.

Oh, right. Oh, yeah.

No, he is publicizing.

Okay. So, not Whisting Diesel, but maybe some like car influencers and they do some demos. But it was very clear during the thing as he started saying, I was like writing some of this stuff down before they actually released these like specs. But he says, not sure it'll be legal in all jurisdictions, but it will be a car that someone can own. And so, I'm just thinking, okay, it's like not a road-legal car.

Yeah.

And so, all the flying stuff.

Yeah.

Completely irrelevant to people like you and me that put down a deposit to actually get a car.

So Ron DeSantis chimed in and said like, we're gonna make this thing legal in Florida. And I think it's actually pretty easy to— what? Isn't that amazing?

I do not— as much as I want flying cars, I don't want to be in traffic with someone that has this capability.

But what if it's geofenced? That's

just because they're gonna mog you. That's because you would be getting mogged.

Watch out. What about, would you be okay if it was— there's never been an explosion of the tank. It's a very highly pressurized 10,000 PSI tank and it's geofenced so that if you're on a public road, you cannot take off, you cannot engage the cold gas thrusters, but you can just drive it like a sports car. When one of these pulls up next to you, yes, there is a highly pressurized tank there, but The software is limiting it on street roads. Are you okay with that?

Anyone will be able to jailbreak it with codecs. Ooh, okay.

Okay. I like it.

I'm sorry. Yeah, it's just— it's not— it works— the way that it works currently, it gives you 1.5 to 2 seconds of airtime. Not— there's no— There's no real utility to it. It's purely—

What if a bridge collapses and you need to get—

Yeah, there is a video. We do have a video of that. We should pull it up.

Yeah, the ultimate usefulness. No, I agree with you. It's a stunt.

Pull up this video. This is the obvious utility.

And so— but I think that there are 2 real utilities and this was a tech demo that could fork into 2 paths. And maybe both, maybe they'll try and do both. But one is, what if— yes, this is the real most likely scenario where you'll want this car. You're driving along a very long bridge and it explodes down and you engage the cold gas thrusters and you save your life. What is your life worth? A couple of years on a Tesla Roadster waiting list and $250,000 of your hard-earned cash in Tesla's bank account? Easy price to pay. Anyway, there's a fork in the road right now, and I think Tesla's trying to do both, and they might succeed.

By the way, in '89, the Bay Bridge had a bunch of damage. Someone did drive—

Over it?

Off the cliff.

That's crazy. Okay, so—

And it was fatal.

And that's only '89. So yeah, and our infrastructure is crumbling, right? We haven't re-industrialized yet. This is a good value prop. That's value prop number 1. Value prop number 2 is, I think this car can actually, if they really design it for it, do a sub-5-minute Nürburgring. I think that with the fans and the thrusters, when you're on the straights, you're actually a rocket car. You're never leaving the ground, and it's designed to keep you on the ground. So it's sucking you to the ground, so you're going around the corners really fast, and you're effectively in Porsche 919 Evo territory. with a car that's like from a manufacturer. And I don't know if it's road legal, but I think that they might put up like an actually insane track performance from this thing.

Yeah, by teasing, by teasing lap time at COTA. Yeah. That was like the best Easter egg of the whole thing. Exactly. Because again, there's 2 ways to view yesterday's demo. There's just like shock and awe, it's crazy, Colt Velon, it's amazing, the car is flying, all that stuff. Yep. And then there's like, I wanna get this car or I'm considering buying this car. What is it actually gonna do for me? Yep. And creating massive amounts of downforce and being able to put up F1-style lap times is insane and is very exciting. And actually the things that they kept hinting at were like, this is a driver's car. Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's what I loved, right? And I think that a lot of the people that are, that have reservations will be excited about that. And so, That obviously was just like a minor detail compared to the whole circus. Yeah. But, but that's what I think is actually cool because no other car manufacturer would do this in that way, nor would they add the thrusters to the rear to help with that 0 to 1 time.

Yeah.

There's a lot of questions that, that you immediately start having of like, if you're using, like, do you think tires would last like one lap if you're pushing it? At COTA. Like, it would probably— like, they would probably just be completely shredded after a single lap.

I think it's just get the record. Just max the record. It's like 0 to 60 time.

And then I was starting to think about it. I'm like, tracks will 100% ban these from public track days. Because can you imagine, like, your average roadster owner just, like, heading down to their local racetrack and being like, I'm going to go out for a public session.

Just,

like, driving, like, an absolute banshee. But

yeah, let me tell you about number 2, the second path. But first, I'm going to tell you about the New York Stock Exchange. When I change the world, raise capital at the New York Stock Exchange. So the first is crazy track performance. Crazy track performance. But what else can you do with this? He was gesturing towards like flying car, flying car, flying cars here. And yeah, it can only fly for 2 seconds, but you could see a world where you are actually able to deploy this. as a flying car adjacent technology. It's really far from that. But there is a world where, like, my example was like parallel parking or like jumping the car somewhere, like not quite the bridge mode and also not like I'm taking this from LA to San Francisco. But—

No, the obvious use for the thrusters in daily life Is 2 cars are pulling down a street and there's one spot available that you're going to need to parallel park into. If you see somebody pulling up to that, you hit the thrusters, just float into the spot.

Yeah. Land perfect. You know what actually would have been a really awesome demo? Have you seen those videos of— I think it's IShowSpeed jumping over a Lamborghini that's going full speed at him and he jumps over it? If they'd done that with 2 Roadsters, like the old Roadster from 2019 that they never released, like driving straight at it and you're like, it's going to crash. And then it goes— And jumps over it. That would be cool.

Yeah.

But I do think that like this is 1% closer to you get in the Jetsons future. Like you get in the car and you say, take me there, and it flies you there. Like there's a lot that needs to happen. You need actual rockets on board. You need sustained thrust. You need a lot more. But like if we were— this is clearly like one notch towards, okay, yeah, your car actually just flies you from one place to another. So, I don't know. What do you think, Todd?

Only 1% closer.

I think this is one— I mean, it goes for 2 seconds. You're gonna be in the car for 2 minutes.

Do we know that? Or like the demos were very short.

Yeah.

And like presumably it can't go for 20 minutes, but like can it go for 1 minute? Like, did they actually say that?

1 minute would be 5% of the way there from a 20-minute flight. And I think you're gonna need— I think to be a flying car, you're gonna need to be in it for like 40 minutes. You think you're just gonna blast off and just coast and land? It launches you with such force. I mean, you only need launching.

Then if you have a Like kind of some kind of glider mechanism. Yeah. Then you don't need more thrust.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, he's channeling like the James Bond car. I don't think anything's off the table over the long haul. But again, this is like 10, 20-year vision. This is not—

Like if I have a car and I'm in a ton of traffic and I can jump over that traffic for like 20 seconds, that counts as a flying car. No? That's a jumping car?

Yeah, that's a jumping car. I don't think that's a flying car. Anyway.

So, I actually think it was amazing that the Mission S launch the same day. Yeah. Because it was like the most beautiful version of stagnation, right, in the Mission S. In that the Mission S is some combination of the Porsche 959 and the GT1, and there's some other influences in there. But fundamentally, it's just like a car that just sort of returns to the kind of cars that everybody Wishes were still being made, right? Like in some ways, like the interior looks like it could have been done by like a restomod company, right? Yeah, the interior is so good. And so, and it's just going to have like a vanilla-ish V8 in it, is like at least the rumor. And so—

Not V8, it's flat-8, but yeah.

Flat-8.

Maybe. They didn't confirm it, which is crazy. They're both doing vaporware. It is, it's crazy that they've been working on the Mission S so long and they can't tell you what type of engines I think

they'll just— I expect the Mission Fs to progress a lot more quickly than the Roadster.

When do you think it actually will be delivered?

I would expect a—

First one, customer delivery, human driving it.

I would expect—

December 2027 or later?

I would hope that they go into production next year.

Me too.

Like at the end of next year.

Me too.

So like 2028 deliveries?

That'd be amazing.

But that being said, it was like stagnation, but it was perfect, right? Like they listened to their customers, which automotive manufacturers have, for better or worse, not been doing or been sort of unable to. And there were just so many details to that car that are just amazing. Like almost every single angle Yeah. Is great. I've noticed everyone has a different favorite angle. There's not one.

Totally.

To me, the rear end of the car is just absolutely incredible. Saw some people that didn't like that. Some people like the side. I don't like the side nearly as much as the front and the rear. But regardless, absolute perfection, but basically zero innovation, right? Everything that really draws you in, like the seats and the harness and the fact that it doesn't have a screen, right? It's all about going backwards in time.

Yeah.

And I think that's amazing. And then I— and I think that Tesla pushing the boundaries and like trying to reimagine the car, adding like new forms of propulsion, right? Like the—

Yeah.

Taking, taking the— taking us into the future while Porsche just sort of returns in a beautiful way. I thought the contrast was amazing. And I think that it's okay to like both cars, even though I canceled my order this morning of the Roadster.

Yes, fell for it again. I like the design of both. The only thing I don't like about the Roadster is just like, I'm worried it's not going to ship. And I think it's just going to take so long because they added so much crazy stuff, it'll take forever.

RX says the front of the Roadster looks like a Gallardo.

I think that looks cool. I think evolving the Gallardo language is great. And I think that Lamborghini has kind of like shirked that responsibility, ceded that territory. So I think this is fine. There's a little bit of Gallardo in there. There's a little bit of Cybertruck in there. I'm in. It's awesome. I think it looks great. Yeah, obviously nowhere near street legal. You need mirrors. We've had this debate a million times. Every concept car takes the mirrors off. It looks amazing. And then you got to put them back. And Elon would have figured out how to take the mirrors off of the Model Y. in the Model S if he could because no one likes the mirrors. No one uses those anymore. But the laws are the laws and he hasn't been able to figure out his way around them and I don't think it's going to start now. Although, that seems like something you get maybe some single-issue voters behind. Candidate in 2028 specifically on removing the side mirrors. Good for emissions, good for aesthetics. It's a win-win. It's a two-party issue. Anyway, what do you think of the wing on the back?

I think the rear of the vehicle is where it shines.

Cool.

I think the side profile and the front are horrific. Okay. But so overall, very, very cool.

Let's close this out, give you some facts. The Tesla Roadster pricing, you put a $5,000 deposit down now for the default performance level, which does not have the thrusters, the jets. It can't do kickflips, but it is Tesla's fastest, craziest sports car at the moment. That's going to be a $45,000 deposit within 10 days. The Thruster model requires you to put $245,000 down for a total of $250,000 within 10 days. Then you got to wait. And the Flight model is unknown and it's invite only at the moment. So the— so the Thruster model can't do the kickflip. The one that they want to do the kickflip, the one that wants to actually fly, We don't know the pricing. We don't know where that's gonna land. I'm actually not that worried about pricing just because SpaceX and Tesla are really good at making things pretty cheap. So, I like if they can get this out and they can get it to be $250,000, you know, $1 million, you'll see them and they'll be popular and they'll be cool. Again, the flight stuff feels like very limited. And then— It's like, are you gonna have like a new type of track day where you can go do kickflips all day in your car? Is that gonna be appealing? Because—

Well, no. I'm expecting the gas recharging for the thrusters to take like 24 hours, you know? So you're gonna— I mean, it really is— Yeah. It really is a really good party trick.

Yeah. But—

But after seeing Can you imagine the experience of being in the car for a kickflip? Oh,

it would be extremely violent. But I don't know, wear a helmet and 5-point harness or something. Yeah, I don't think— I mean, there wasn't anyone in the car, but I don't even think the inside of the car that did the kickflip like has seats. Like, I think there are some pictures of the underside and it looks like it's basically just all a roll cage. We can pull up this one from Zarin Doob. A lot of my timeline last night were a bunch of suckers who fell for this very expensive parlor trick without asking any questions and it's quite disappointing. This sort of grid, maybe an empty shell in there. It doesn't really matter. It is a tech demo but it's not the iPhone moment because the iPhone, of course, was available after it was announced. And so, I don't know. It's a very interesting dichotomy. Elon is simultaneously Thomas Edison and Barnum and Bailey. He's the circus entertainer who can put on a crazy show and talk about what technology will be like in 10, 20, 30, 40 years, but then he can actually deliver the most popular and successful car in the Model Y and become the most popular car in China even and actually land the rockets and get Starlink to work. I use it on planes. The technology is real, and then the hype is also fake, but both exist at the same time. And it's very rare to see that in an entrepreneur, in a founder in the modern era. Most people are either all style or all substance. He's both, which is interesting. But we have the perfect person to talk—

Did you see there was some— the last thing I would say is somebody— people were pulling out this post from Elon in 2019 describing— With Marques. Yeah, with Marques describing exactly what the Roadster would become. And there were a bunch of viral posts being like, Oh my gosh, we live in a simulation? Yeah, yeah. Because he just said what he was going to do and did it? But he hasn't said it in a decade. I know. It was so funny because I was like, oh, we live in a simulation because he just said in 2019, I'm going to do this, and then he did it.

Eventually, and then he did it a decade later. That's not a simulation. That's just—

That's just called planning.

That's just a prediction. Anyway, let me tell you about MongoDB. What's the only thing faster than the AI market? Your business on MongoDB. Don't just build AI, own the data platform. That powers it. And we have Walter Isaacson, the perfect guest to talk to about Elon Musk, artificial intelligence, everything else across business history. There he is. Welcome to the show. How are you doing? Thank you so much for joining.

Wow. Good to be with you.

Thank you so much. Did you watch the Elon Musk Tesla Roadster?

Of course. Of course. What is your reaction? You know, Franz von Holzhausen is a beautiful designer, so every part of that car is gorgeous. And you're right, it's a bit of a parlor trick thing. But the real car in 2 or 3 years where you're not going to be doing backflips and everything else, it's going to be awesome. And I just think that Elon has a son who's on the autism spectrum named Saxon. And Saxon was once walking with him and said, Dad, why doesn't the future look like the future? Yeah. And that's where you get the Cybertruck and that's where you get this Roadster. Is that Musk and to some extent Franz wants the future to look like the future.

Yeah, there's so— there's been so many interesting knock-on effects. I mean, obviously the Cybertruck was incredibly controversial even before the political journey that Elon went on. People said it looks like it was sketched by a 5-year-old. It may have been. But what I love about it is that love it or hate the Cybertruck, it feels like it shook the tree loose and allowed other carmakers to take more risks. And we're seeing more avant-garde designs from Audi, from Jaguar. It feels like a lot of people are— it feels like it gave everyone permission to make the future look like the future. Have you been noticing that as well, or do you?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, but first, Musk— I have, I think, 2 chapters on the Cybertruck in my Musk book where he's walking around with Franz and everybody's pushing back on him. They're saying, man, you know, you're not going to do it this way. And he's showing things from video games and comic books and stuff. And he keeps— and he wants it in stainless steel. Yeah. And he keeps pushing it. I, for one, you know, I'm not totally a fan of the Cybertruck design, but I am totally jazzed that he actually did it.

Yes.

Because as you said, it pushes the human race forward to use a

Yes, yes.

Yeah, to me, I have a Cybertruck when it is driving itself on roads that are sort of crumbling with, you know, it feels like this sort of the world of the past is sort of falling apart and it feels very cyberpunk to be on a road. It's driving itself in this very futuristic design. It makes me feel like I'm in a sort of a twisted sci-fi movie every day.

So that's one thing you got to focus on. I'm not sure people focus on this enough, is that this is almost a joint product of Tesla and SpaceX. Yeah, I mean, everything about it, including the way the thrusters and the rockets work. But this notion that, you know, you can have propulsion done this way for a car I think it shows why eventually, and I would guess Tesla and SpaceX are going to merge.

Yeah,

totally. I thought that was the only reason to do this now because the car is nowhere near production.

Although he does that all the time.

I know, but, but, but doing it again, like that's what— that's why we have these awards with us today, this sort of fell for it again award, because going, you know, having there be this 10-year gap between the initial kind of—

because he

clearly could have launched and then announcing it and being like, it's finally It's finally here. In 2 years, it'll be going into production.

Like that original Roadster.

To me, the reason to do it now is it sort of like sets up this like, these 2 companies should obviously be one company.

They make sense together.

They're working together already. This is what they can do together. It's sort of the perfect example of like why they should merge. And I come away from it thinking like, this is the company that will make flying cars. I don't think it'll look like the Roadster, but when we get flying cars, It will be Tesla SpaceX AI Twitter, whatever, whatever it ends up being called.

Absolutely. And, you know, I remember obviously the Cybertruck was controversial, but I can remember, and I think there's a couple of chapters in my book on this too, is when he wants to make the Cybercab have no steering wheel. Oh yeah. And everybody, including Franz, like, okay, fine, but we'll actually make one where you can have a steering wheel and you can take— no. He said, I don't want an amphibious frog-like thing that's neither here nor there. Do it. Well, that's kind of nuts until I was in Austin recently and I rode in a CyberCab. It's true that he, he makes the impossible into something that's just a little bit later than he predicted. Mm-hmm.

How, how do you think about Elon Musk's journey to become an M&A wizard or a deal guy. That was what was so fascinating about the Twitter take private and then the Cursor acquisition. Historically, it feels like he hasn't been very acquisitive. What changed for his philosophy on business that he kind of shied away from being, I'll do everything myself?

I think maybe with all due respect, you might be right, but I think you might be overreading that. I think buying Twitter was— there was just money burning a hole in his pocket. I remember I was first riding around with him at that period. He had just become the richest person on earth, just become Time's Person of the Year. I said, you must feel like you're— he said, well, I hate it when it looks like I'm successful. I always want to move to the next level of the game. I said, what's that? He said, well, I'm secretly buying shares of Twitter. And I think that was a weird impulse. Had to do with his fury at the woke mind virus. Had to do with the fact that he just loved being on Twitter. I mean, he was like a Twitter addict.

Yeah. So

I don't think this was a major change in philosophy that said, okay, now we'll buy rather than build. And as for the Cursor acquisition, you know, keeping up in the world of frontier AI models is quite difficult. And that was a pretty smart acquisition. But if you ask me, and, you know, I've seen him recently, he's still a, I want to be in control end to end. I want to build it myself end to end. Sure. I mean, why would you be building TeraFab to make your own microchips if you're into dealmaking rather than physical product making?

Yeah.

I hope you don't mind me pushing back.

No, no, of course. I know it's a really good point.

One thing that One thing from yesterday that I noticed, he looked way healthier than he has in a long time. Oh, interesting. I thought that was like, there's been some moments over the last few years where just like, this does not look, this does not look great.

He's been that way for 20 years.

Yeah.

I mean, and every time I—

But do you agree that he looked like maybe— Put it together. Yeah. He looked like healthier than—

Scrapping jokes. And I mean, there was some dead air during the presentation, but in general, like he's

I think what you're talking about is not just physical, but where's his mental space? And as you know, uh, you know, he goes into demon mode and he can get really dark and he's very difficult and just goes silent.

Yeah,

yeah. And then, you know, if you know how to poke him—

Yeah, it does feel like there— it's a little bit of a clarifying moment. Like, uh, there was a moment where he was doing just rocketry and then just electric cars. And then the Twitter and politics thing felt very distracting. And now as the companies start merging together, as the products start merging together, the work that's being done on AI can flow into the cars and the humanoids. Like the narrative is getting clearer. And so that might be leading to more of a— more of like a— I don't know, just, just just being focused and that, and that carries through to everything. I don't know if you agree.

I wouldn't count on the fact that he has become less mercurial. Sure. In other words, you'll see him today, you'll see him tomorrow. There are people like Wynn Shotwell and Franz von Holzhausen who know how to push him out of demon mode. Yeah. He also knows how to get himself together when he goes on stage.

Yeah.

You know, I, I It just depends on what's crossing his mind at the moment. It's almost like a storm cloud coming in off the Gulf when— and then sometimes it's something political. Yes. Conspiratorial. You know, I kind of wish he wouldn't be in that mode where all of a sudden he's deciding that, I don't know, Tallarico's in a mental institution in Ohio and he's going to repost that. And you think, all right. You know, have you ever gone in—

have you ever gone into your own sort of version of demon mode?

No, you know what, I haven't. And you know what, I've never built a rocket that got into orbit. I've never built a, uh, an electric vehicle. I never built a self-driving CyberCab. So maybe I'm nice. Give yourself some credit.

Demon mode is underrated on the path to greatness.

Those of us who write about people in the arena, even if they're bestsellers, we don't confuse and think that we're the ones in the arena. Sure, sure. So maybe the people in the arena, as Steve Jobs said, you know, they're the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels.

Yeah. What about the process of actually reporting on Elon Musk, writing the book? I've talked to some journalists who have said my strategy was I would wait until there was a successful SpaceX launch, and then I'd give him a call and say, hey, you want to get on the phone? And if this— and if the launch didn't go well, I knew not to call because he wouldn't be in a good mood. Were there any— were there any strategies that you had to deal with the mercurialness and sort of present—

Look, my strategy was totally different from the type of reporting you're talking about, which is when I first started the book, I said, here's the deal. It's not going to be based on a bunch of interviews with you. It's not 10, 15, 20 interviews. I want to be by your side whenever I want, morning, noon, and night, whenever I decide I want to be there. Any meeting. I got an Airstream trailer and lived next door to him in Boca Chica. Get up in the morning with him, late at night with him. I just wanted to observe him through all meetings, through everything. So is— I mean, I just— I know I'm quite lucky or privileged because I have the both the resources and to some extent the clout with my publisher or maybe even with Musk to just say, I'm going to spend 2 years and just watch. And so there'd be times I'd watch him go into demon mode. I'd watch him come out of it. I'd be sitting at dinner in a restaurant in Austin and Grimes would be next to me and she'd say, oh, demon mode's about to come. I'd watch people text Gwynne Shotwell to come run into the conference room when he's about to kill Falcon Heavy or something. And I just watch how people dealt with it. So it wasn't like, let me time my phone call for a Starship launch that works. The very end of my book is being with him at Starbase for a Starship launch that almost worked but left some rubble in its wake. That's the perfect metaphor And I'm sitting there watching him, his mother hugging him in the back of the— and sort of by the fire pit out at Starbase. That's the type of thing I try to do when I write a book. And I've done it. I have a new edition of The Innovators, which is about the teams who built the digital revolution. I just try to be a reporter, not somebody who does interviews and then has opinions.

Yeah. that you've written about— Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Jennifer Doudna— all incredible impacts, very sometimes controversial, but unambiguously impactful in their work. How have you processed the story of Elizabeth Holmes? There's a new movie by Nathan Fielder out, You Can See Everything. And It's one of those stories that has the trappings of an entrepreneurial journey, but has kind of wracked everyone with a whodunit. It's almost a true crime story. It is a true crime story because she is in prison. But how have you processed the story, and how would you approach that if you were writing a book about Elizabeth Holmes?

Early on, I met Elizabeth Holmes way before she was quite famous or infamous.

Yeah.

She was a huge Steve Jobs fanatic. She even tried to dress like Steve Jobs. She had read my Steve Jobs biography probably more times than I had, knew the book better than I did, and would always be talking—

She went demon mode on the Steve Jobs biography.

Yeah, she went— she— you know what? I love Steve Jobs. I think he was transformative. I think it's dangerous if you read the book once too often. Sure. It kind of makes you think that you might become reality distortion field Steve. And that didn't work for me. And so I remember telling my wife and telling a couple of people when we were at events with her, I think they wanted me to interview her on stage and she wanted me to write something. I said, this doesn't meet my smell test. Mm-hmm. And I'd ask her, I'd say, okay, you're doing this with just a tiny drop of blood. I had been studying biochemistry because I was about to do Jennifer Doudna. I said, tell me how— oh, I can't tell you how it works. I said, well, you know, I'd ask a few more questions and I just said, Doesn't meet my smell test. There's something really wrong here. Yeah. So I didn't get involved in ever even writing a story about her. And I actually declined moderating some panels with her in public just because it made me feel a bit off. I have a total fascination with what I will call fabulous. I mean, we have— every month there's a new one. You know, Jason Arday at Cambridge University. All the way back to Jason Blair. You're too young to remember who he was, but— or George Santos, or for that matter, the talented Mr. Ripley. Or if you really want to get into it, you know, maybe the Great Gatsby.

Sure.

Do they believe their own confabulations? I kept asking people who knew Elizabeth, and I kept trying to figure out, has she fooled— I know she's a con artist, but has she conned herself? So, I'm not sure.

Yeah, it is the question that everyone's still trying to answer. On Steve Jobs, we've been debating the question of, does the artificial intelligence boom revolution need a Steve Jobs of AI? Someone who paints a more human-focused picture, something focused on creativity, I think back to the energy with which Steve Jobs had when he launched GarageBand and Apple Music and some of the iPod, this idea of—

Yeah, the iTunes Store.

Sometimes disruptive technologies still empowering humans and remaining in this artist world, a friend to the creatives and living in the technology world, but but still never losing touch with that connection.

There's something so fundamentally important in your question. And I have a book, as you know, called The Innovators, which came out a few years ago. But it's coming out this week with this new introduction that's addressed directly towards your question, which is the Steve Jobs approach to what I will call human-computer interface. That's what he called it. That's a big old name. But it's how closely are we connected to our computers. And he said a computer should be like a bicycle for the mind. It would augment, not replace, your creativity and your intelligence. There have been 2 schools of thought throughout the computer revolution. Go all the way back to, as I do in the— this new introduction to The Innovators, to Ada Lovelace in the 1840s. And she says she looks at punch cards that are weaving patterns on looms and she says, that'll be able to do numbers and words and music. And she said, a computer will be able to do anything except think. It'll take humans to add the innovation and creativity. 100 years after she writes it, Alan Turing, in his great paper about computing machines and intelligence, The Imitation Game, calls it Lady Lovelace's objection and says she's wrong. There will be artificial intelligence that shouldn't be connected to us. Steve Jobs is in the Ada Lovelace School. And as I try to describe in this new introduction, that school begins with Ada, but it has people that you probably have hardly heard of, but are the most important people you've never heard of, starting with J.C.R. Licklider, who creates computer interfaces that are easy to use. Doug Engelbart, who figures out the mouse, Alan Kay and the people at Xerox PARC, the graphical user interface. It all comes together with Steve Jobs. Yeah. And he says, the goal is to connect human creativity to our processing power of our machines. And he always ended his product launches with a street sign slide that said, the street sign of the liberal arts, And sciences or technology. That was his goal. What we're doing now, not just with AI, but more importantly with agentic AI, which is where I worry about. I don't mind. I can use Claude fine. But when I start using agents that try to do things without me, and that the goal of these people, whether it be Muse or Claude or whatever I'm using, To try to make it autonomous and to do things without me and to be out of my control, Steve Jobs would be appalled by that. First of all, because it doesn't connect human creativity to the product. It doesn't have the music that makes our hearts sing, as he said with the iPod. But secondly, these people aren't stepping back and saying, why are we making this? Hmm. And the answer should be, To help humanity. That was Steve's lodestar.

The only thing that I would push back on slightly is it doesn't feel like agents are not generative. They're not. I have not seen a single product or piece of marketing material where the seed of the idea, whatever the thing that is that makes it great, was from the AI. All of the agents that we have today are starting from a point of human creativity. Hey, I have—

That's a really good point.

And so, my view on it is like, I'm actually, as somebody who loves generating ideas, I'm actually upset that the AI can't do the one thing that I really value and that I love, right?

You want to be like the master.

First of all, be happy because you're being able to learn.

Well, yeah, yeah. No. And so, I But it's notable, like, you would think that if we could solve hundreds of the most longstanding problems in mathematics that we could generate hundreds more, right? And yet, I haven't— we're not getting that. Like, that would be my— and to me, that shows the AI is not generative. It is not creative in the way that a human is. I'm sure it will get there.

And that's the exact phrase that Ada uses in the 1840s. Which is it will not be able to generate its own goals and its own ideas. Those will have to come from humans. You could be right. I mean, I use a lot of— I use Muse and I use— I have created a couple of Claude agents. Maybe it doesn't totally generate things, but once you set an agent off, you have the Hugging Face possibility that it goes off with its own motives and its own sense of agency. out of our control. So, maybe it starts off because we launch it, but the question is, if it's not closely connected to us the way Steve Jobs would have wanted, is it going to go out of control? Is it going to go rogue?

Interesting. What do you look for in a subject when you're thinking about a topic? that's— it has your fascination. When is it the right time to focus in on a single individual versus more of a composite picture? And are we— Yeah. I guess my question is like, are we moving farther away or are you moving farther away from the great man theory of history? Or do you think that there's this Peter Thiel take about the loss of the ticker tape parade Even when there's a big problem and we solve it, we celebrate like the first responders broadly. We don't solve it, we rarely celebrate like the single scientist who had the breakthrough. We celebrate like composite groups. And I'm wondering how you've grappled with the continuum of individual with an amazing story who probably had a lot of talented people around them versus telling the story through a composite picture of a lot of different individuals.

Yep. And of course, that's one of the age-old issues in history, whether it be Tolstoy or Carlyle. I'll go back to Plutarch and Plutarch's Lives. I interviewed Peter Thiel at length for this new podcast series, The Builders, and we talk about that. We biographers fall prey sometimes too much to the great person, a great man theory. We make it seem like a guy or a gal goes to a garage or a garret and they have a light bulb moment and innovation happens. Whereas, you know, the two of you sitting there know that it's often a team sport, that creativity is a collaborative effort. That's why I wrote The Innovators, which is to try to show the role that teams and groups of people play. Having said that, my very first sentence in my very first book I ever wrote was about Henry Kissinger, and I quoted him in the epigram that said, when I was a professor at a university, I thought that history was made by great forces. But now that I see it up close, I see the difference that a person can make. And so in writing biography, I think we have to worry about distorting history a bit. You know, I wrote The Innovators partly because having written about Steve Jobs, all these people said, well, you gave him Too much credit, so it's always a bit of a balance. Take a more obscure example: I wrote a book called *The Code Breaker* about Jennifer Doudna, who helped invent co-invented I should say CRISPR, the gene editing technology that can fix genetic or change our DNA. And I was saying, okay, I want to do. Biochemistry and genetic engineering next. I had done physics with Einstein. I'd done the digital revolution with Steve Jobs. So I looked around for how do I do it? And I thought of doing a group portrait the way The Innovators is. But in some ways, having a person have a narrative thread helps the reader. It's not something I invented. The good Lord invented this when he did the Bible. I mean, it has a garden east of Eden and you have Adam in it and Eve tells him to do something. It's a way we convey lessons.

Sure.

So when I did Jennifer Doudna, about 40% of the book is about people who aren't Jennifer Doudna. It's about her teams, her rivals, and everything else. But I do it as a narrative thread. And I think I do it because it helps the reader. Or if you want to be crass, my publisher says when you do group books like You know, the innovators, it doesn't sell nearly as well as when you do Steve Jobs.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Another AI question that we've been wrestling with is we have been— we were very close in tech to the end of history. There were a number of software companies. There were pretty defined lines of battlefields between who owns the phone, who owns the search engine, who owns the social network, and The Mag 7 were all sort of playing nicely together. And now it is a knockout, drag-out fight. Everyone's trying to marshal the most compute. Everyone's in demon mode. Everyone's in demon mode. Elon's suing Sam. Sam and Dario can't hold hands together. Google loves Anthropic one day, then they want to not sell them the chips. It goes back and forth and it feels like it's the most tense it's ever been.

Yeah. Or Elon, you know, constantly throwing shade at Anthropic until they become—

yeah, he's calling them misanthropic. And then he's— and then now they're working together. And so it feels like an intense time in technology. But give us some perspective here. Is this actually unprecedented? Was the— was Steve Jobs going through the same level of intense battles? Is everything new old or is this actually unprecedented?

Look, one of the great things about innovation, technology, entrepreneurship that you all do so much on this show is that there's a frenemy type thing. Sometimes people are friends, sometimes they're enemies. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, that's a rivalry that far surpasses Sam Altman and Dario Armada, as much as I love them both.

Yeah.

By the way, you want to go back to Carnegie and Rockefeller and E.A. Chariman and the robber barons?

Yep.

Whoa. And that was a period of technology like our own with light bulbs, electricity, trains, telegraphs, telephones, everything. So it is great that we have competition. One of the things we have to do is keep that competition going. In other words, have antitrust. If they start loving each other too much and collaborating, that will keep newcomers off the field.

No, no, I completely— I completely agree. I completely agree. Yeah. The— and you can see that there's a natural forcing function in the industry when one lab or one company starts pulling away, everybody else kind of gangs up on them and says, oh wait, we're not going to let you get the monopoly.

Well, I think Nvidia and Jensen Huang's dynamic with all of the different AI players is one of the most fascinating just because it is like they're like, you know, cozying up to him, you know, driving revenue, but at the same time trying to, you know, replace him on the back end. Yeah, it's fascinating.

It's very fun.

It's healthy. Yeah, healthy competition.

I think you're totally right. Healthy is the word for it.

Thank you so much for coming on the show.

And it makes for good content for you and your writing.

Yeah. And for you and your

show. The chat really wants us to ask, is there any— and you can pass on the question if it's not something you can talk about— but is there anybody, any AI leader that you're honing in on writing about outside of obviously Elon?

Well, real quickly, I'm about to publish a book on Madame Curie, you know, Marie Curie, because I do go back. I need to clear my palate sometimes and clear my mind and go back into history. And I needed to do— I mean, she's just the most amazing, passionate person. I am interested in how you raise some AI model like Claude. Let me just use that for an example. How do you raise that model? to be moral? How do you not just teach Claude, here are the rules of the road?

Yeah.

You teach Claude why.

Yeah.

Why do you not kill, or why do you not lie to somebody? And I'm interested in the philosophers who are working on the alignment question and teaching our AI models why.

Yeah.

That doesn't mean I have figured out who the book is or what the book is or whatever, but you asked me and just out at Anthropic and in San Francisco with some others 3 days ago. And I'm saying, okay, help me think this one through.

I love it. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. Look forward to more of your incredible work. And it was a true pleasure talking to you.

Yeah, it's been an honor.

Have a great weekend.

Y'all are great. Y'all are really good, both of you. Thank you, Jordi.

Let's do it again soon.

Yes. Thank you so much.

You're the man.

We'll talk to you soon. Goodbye. Let me tell you about Console. Console built AI agents that automate 70% of IT, HR, and finance support, giving employees instant resolution for access requests and password resets. And let me also tell you about Public. Invest across all asset classes, automate anything with AI agents, run trading strategies, risk management, money movements, and monitor markets with AI agents for investing on Public. And up next, we have Eric Lyman, co-founder, co-CEO Whoa,

camouflage. Camouflage into the wall. I see a floating head. That's all I can see in your hands.

We're in an urban environment, so we gotta, gotta blend in.

That does look like it's designed to not be recognizable by artificial intelligence, which I'm sure we'll talk about. But first, what's the news? What happened?

The Gliminator.

Tell us the news.

We— do we have the gong? Are we ready? Are we ready to hit this thing? All right, we raised $1.85 billion at a $6.1 billion valuation.

All right, I can't hear anything. My ears are blown out.

Do we need a replay on that?

Yeah, let's pull up the replay if we can. That was a clean hit. Bang! Coming in hot with authority, and you kind of held it. You kind of held it at the end too, which was nice.

So first, 2026, like There's been so many fundraisers, they're getting bigger. Your form is really looking good.

Yes, yes, yes. You got to bring the energy that you feel for the fundraising to the gong smash. It's really— because the gong is just one size, but the excitement that I feel for the round grows, ebbs and flows. And this is the most exciting round of all, of course. Uh, first question, is the job finished?

Job's not finished, guys.

The job is not finished.

The job is that we get— we got a lot of stuff to do. I mean, look, it's— what can I say? We're growing. We're growing faster. We're growing north of 100% per year.

What is growing? Because the core business is so solid, so huge, huge market just in corporate cards, the software for the CFO suite. But then you have a bunch of other products that And I feel like because the team is, is as talented as they are, you're able to deliver a— you're able to jump to a great product experience, both because you have the team for it, but also there's new technology that's just unlocking new things. And so what I imagine, though, they're both growing fast, but what's actually driving— how much time are you spending between both of these? Do they all play together? How do you, how do you think about the business?

So, look, there's the existing core of the business. I mean, some of the financials. Yeah. There's the metric I track most closely is actually how useful is Ramp getting to customers. We talk about growth in those stats. And then last, it's all the new products. The majority of our team's time is actually working on products that we haven't launched yet. You haven't seen yet.

Yeah.

And so let's touch on it. I mean, in terms of aggregate growth, we said for the first time over the summer we passed more than $2 billion a year in annualized revenue. It's growing north of 100% per year. And we're growing 25— more than 25% faster than we were this time last year.

Wow.

So it's just— it's true acceleration at scale. And in part, computers that can think now, it helps us operate a lot faster. And there's also in the same way, you know, I think people's expectations have gone up. I mean, there are still sadly, many people listening to this who know about AI and then they do expenses by hand or wherever. It's crazy. And so it's lifted the conversion rates up. More people are switching to Ramp in droves and the savings rates are going up too, which is maybe the second area.

But we're starting to see top of funnel, like the first step on the customer journey coming from not the corporate card product to start. Okay. So you can actually start with Router or another product and then and then actually grow your footprint. That's very interesting because I feel like— do I have it correct that prior to the— I don't know what you call them, like AI-enabled products, but like the more modern products that you've launched, it was very much like you come in through the corporate card and then maybe you add banking or you add another product, bill pay, and there weren't as many people coming in through bill pay as might in the future come through Router, for example?

So to talk to each, I mean, this has been one of the big growth stories over the past 2 years. Yeah. You know, we now have— I'll put it this way, the vast majority of customers are using multiple products. Could be card expenses, one bill pay, treasury. We have tens of thousands of businesses that are using our banking product that's growing extraordinarily quickly. And so there are businesses on day one incorporate, set up a ramp banking account and move from there. And so we have these doorways in. And you're exactly right. Whereas so much of the history of ramp was in is like, how do we help you spend less? It's turning into this broader chapter of not just you know get more of every dollar in terms of reducing spend. It's how do you have your dollars that you do choose to spend generate more revenue for you? And so we're there. There's startups coming in using router.com. Glass has been just extraordinary developed, but also to just wrangling and staying on top of. AI spend, AI spend management. Yes.

On that topic, is, is, is Router a bet that, that expenses and investment and capital spending around AI will be the domain of the CFO suite and that's where you play best? Or is it a bet that Ramp can speak to CTOs and technologists who will in the future have more domain over asset allocation and the financial profile of their business? Are we going to see CTOs looking more like CFOs or operating like CFOs, putting their CFO hat on? Or are we seeing CFOs think, I want to actually have an idea of what our infrastructure is, what our token strategy is, what models we're using? I imagine both are happening, but is there a thesis that you have around what Who's it— who, who the buck stops with in the token maxing discussion?

Well, there's like a huge thing that happened that I think is underdiscussed in just the world of software, which was like it used to be if you were just like, I don't know, banging on the keyboard using Salesforce a lot more, like might need a new hobby, but like you didn't get like a much larger bill. Like software didn't have a larger marginal cost in the minute that it became such that if you used more tokens, your bill went up, it meant that software suddenly had marginal costs. In a way, software became money.

Yeah.

And I just think classically, if you just think about it structurally, organizations were really allocating dollars in 2 ways. You could hire people, or you could hire vendors to go take care of stuff for you. In software and AI spend has become this like third way to buy things. It sort of behaves like people in that your agents hire other agents who hire other agents and subcontract to others. Most spend is actually agentic in nature if you really look at how these things are growing. And yet it's, it's you're kind of renting intelligence. And I think that organizations just lack the, the basics of— many companies have payroll systems, they have ramp, right, to go look at their vendor systems. But have lacked oversight and governance around managing the SaaS spend. So part of the thesis is that as AI becomes one of the core inputs to how companies operate, organizations will similarly need tools to go manage it. So that's just like the macro way we think about it. On your question of like, where is it, who is responsible for it? I think what I see happen time and time again is like engineers go off to go build something and either they hire a, you know, if it's startups, a very forward-thinking, agentic, you know, AI-pilled CFO and it's all fine. Or what's happening in enterprises all day is things are fine, then the bill trips past X many millions of dollars and the CFO is like, what in the heck happened? And they crash into the office and go. And I think that's happening more and more. And what I would say is like, I just think there will be a convergence. You could not think too much about capital allocation in a previous world where software didn't have marginal costs. And now you have to.

So is capital allocation the new core skill? Taste is out. We need to get everyone thinking about capital allocation. No, I mean this seriously because I'm sure there's a lot of ramp customers where they're like, yes, we spend on AI and that means a $200 a month plan. And look, employees, don't blow through your plan because there's no more where it's coming from. And you have a role to play in there. But I'm wondering if you're seeing a shift where even small businesses, even businesses that would normally just be like, hey, yeah, use the free plan, $220 a month here, we'll get you on the corporate plan a little bit, are going to be thinking about AI inevitably as a marginal cost that is API pricing, and they're going to want a router product.

Absolutely. And look, like, I think one of the— I think both sides of the debates are like very silly in some ways. Like, you have like CFOs saying like, hey, I'm trying to go minimize my token cost. What's my cost per token? We need to go and drive costs down. And labs are saying my token is not equivalent to your token. The tokens are not the same. And the reality is like If some business owner said to you, hey, I spend $1 million a year on salespeople, and another one said, I spend $10 million a year on salespeople, and he asked which is better, you'd say, I have no goddamn idea because what are you getting for that dollar? You need to connect it. You need to ask for this input, what is the output? And I think the way in which these systems are very incomplete and RAMP is ultimately seeking to complete that loop of for every dollar that's going out, what is the return on intelligence? How does it go into your books and records? How is it accounting for what revenue? Can you see that directly that's connected? And what I would say is when you look at companies that are spending on AI, they are not always as precise. But you can see in raw terms, in very blunt terms, that companies that do spend are clearly seeing a return. Yeah, they are growing faster. And you just think about, you know, we did this study about 6 months ago where we looked at does, does spending on this actually generate faster growth? And it's very clear conclusively of organizations that are spending on AI are seeing an acceleration. So there is a return and I think it will become quite scientific over the course of the coming months. Yeah.

So does that mean you guys end up building something like an attribution tool? Because like Ramp is a good example of this where like you're encouraging a lot of spending, a lot of experimentation, but at it's so hard to attribute growth to spend on AI, which is a lot of why that there's people, otherwise smart people, that are saying like, this stuff just doesn't work. Like, it's good for this one narrow thing. But like, very clearly, it's like, well, it sped us up a little bit here, and it sped us up a little bit here, and it pulled forward this launch by a week instead of— and so, we launched this 8 weeks earlier. And then there's the sort of like comp— It's basically like, Compounding in different ways across so many different parts of the company. It's helping you generate revenue in ways, it's helping you save money in different ways. The net result is like you're building a better business, but like the attribution feels like the hardest, hardest thing, but something that you guys are like uniquely suited to solve.

We're very embedded because we see the dollars going out, we connect to the accounting system, and you can see what revenue ultimately comes in. I mean, just at Ramp, like, where at Ramp was the first part of the business that used AI in a heavy way? It was go-to-market.

Oh yeah.

It was sales. Yeah. It was, it was actually, we could show that the use of GPT-3 when it was a research project actually resulted in more meetings booked for our sales development reps. And we could actually look at what is the raw number of dollars spent versus the revenue that that team was able to bring in. And you could see that up. And so when you see products like Glass, which we announced earlier in the week, and thousands of companies signed up, we're onboarding folks as fast as we can. All that intelligence where not only is it connected and built into the systems you have, but things you would expect of who's spending it, attribution, did we pick the right model? Router.com is powering all of it to make sure that you're ultimately saving to the accounting. Attribution is all done and you see that loop. And so it allows you to actually say like, am I growing faster and am I seeing higher and higher returns for my spend on AI? And that's what we're aiming to do. And so when we talk about kind of the end of the beginning and what chapter 2 is about, what you can build as a customer of Ramp, that is what we're running towards. We want to make every dollar an hour, whether it's on people or on AI or both, truly go further. That's what drives us. I

love it. Well, congratulations on the new round. We're going to hop on with Christian Jensen from Dragoneer to talk more about this

amazing milestone. But

have a great weekend.

Amazing timing yesterday with the Roadster ramp.

Roadster. I mean, it was clearly like—

it's clearly like a nod to the— it was clearly a nod to the new financing. I mean, they didn't— they clearly didn't need the ramp to do a kickflip. No, right.

They could have used a halfpipe. They could have used anything. They could have done a lot of stuff like ramp, but it was a little salute.

Down from Texas. It

was great. But congratulations. We'll talk to you soon.

Great stuff. Great to see you, Eric.

Have a good one. Congrats. Let me tell you about Codex. Codex is a powerful workspace for getting work done with AI agents, whether you're writing code, analyzing data, creating content, or automating business workflows. Codex helps you move projects forward from start to finish. Our next guest is Christian Jensen from Dragoneer Investment Group. He's a partner and co-head of private investments. There he is. Welcome to the show. I got one question. Did you just back the truck up for ramp?

Yeah, I guess in some ways we did. But I mean, for all the reasons you guys discussed, we couldn't do that.

Is that the sound of a truck backing up?

If I can't get the gong, I'll take the truck.

No, we'll get the gong.

Thank you. Touched.

Wonderful to have you on.

So you led the $1.85 billion financing for ramp at a $60 billion valuation. Thrive Capital's in with you, Founders Fund, Sands Capital, Avenir. What— yeah, what— because it's the first time on the show, maybe we should zoom out and talk about the overall strategy, how Ramp fits into it, and your role at the firm.

Yeah, so, hey, thank you for having me. I mean, what a treat. I can't believe Walter Isaacson here and Eric. This is— I mean, this is just awesome.

He opened for you. He opened for you, right?

Yeah, I'll tell my wife that.

He was like, I'm really— I really get to open for Christian from Dragonair.

Right. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I'll tell Kate that. So, I mean, look, who are we? We're a growth investment firm. We're based in the Presidio in San Francisco. We manage about $45 billion across publics and privates. And the whole philosophy of the place is concentrated bets in the businesses we think are going to define categories and really be generational businesses. We were founded around 15 years ago. Mark's dad, my partner, our founder, he founded it. I joined about 10 years ago to help build on the success they were already having in privates. And I live around the corner. So, I got 3 kids. The latest kid joined 3 weeks ago. So, if I say anything stupid, there's my excuse. There we go.

Congratulations.

I've got a 5-week-old.

Congrats on that.

We're in the same boat. We got 9 kids between us. 9 kids on this call. Imagine.

It sounds like playdate's coming up.

Yeah.

Sounds like playdate's coming up. We got to do it.

I think so. Okay, first question. Everyone knows that Ramp is an incredibly unique, special company, and— but at the same time, there's a lot of people that are otherwise pretty smart that say, like, hey, Ramp at $60 billion, on a few billion of revenue, that's crazy, right? Like, if you looked at— and you can try to pull public comps and say, like, this thing would trade at a single-digit revenue multiple, blah, blah, blah. It's very easy to make the argument for why 60 is crazy, and yet you just paid that price. I want to hear from you why it would make sense to do it. I can make my own argument for it.

Oh, you're not They're crazy.

Yeah, yeah. I'm not crazy. They're crazy. No, but I mean, there's a lot of— to me, it's like an applied AI company that is already working with tens of thousands of the most— of the best customers that you can have in America, and they are in an incredibly unique position to deliver them super tangible products. They have incredible lock-in, all these things. So, I can make the case, but I want you to make the case.

Yeah. So, one, it's sort of a universal truth for those, you know, if you, if you didn't make the bet, then almost by definition, maybe you didn't think that the bet was worth making. Yeah, maybe, maybe you didn't have the chance to make it. But I know the feeling. That's, that's how we feel sometimes about those that we're not doing. But it comes down to sort of a handful of things in this case. Thing one is bonkers huge market. market. Like, like not just big, but like we might be in the first at-bat of the first inning kind of big and a growing market such that just the growth of this end market is several ramps in size annually. So like, yeah, they don't really even need to be like taking— we think they are taking market share, but they don't need to be in order to keep multiplying in size. So that's thing one. Big, big market. Thing 2. This product lead that they've built, you know, this platform, it's not just, you know, card and expense. It's actually about a dozen products now and keeps growing. And each one of those products that they add widens the moat. I mean, you guys, you know, touched on this with Eric. Like each incremental product means you can land with one more thing, one more thing the customer can say yes to, one more thing, you know, that they can upsell themselves or embrace later. It's— and which feeds this capital efficiency machine, which is wildly attractive. Like, for a business to be accelerating at this scale with this kind of capital efficiency, it's very rare to see at this size. And the combination of accelerating growth, product lead, while still being so early in a market that they can go win is really, really rare. And the last thing, I mean, you just talked to him. It's Eric and the team around him and the culture they've built. And this, this team is like this amazing learning machine. They're humble, they're hungry, they're ridiculously customer-oriented. You know, it's just a team that keeps sort of surprising to the upside in all sorts of ways. And, you know, we find ourselves saying like we would want our, you know, our friends and our kids to go work for these people. Like we'd want to go work for these people. Like it's the kind of team you want to back and it's You see that kind of goodwill with the customers all the time.

Totally. Yeah. And I think it comes down to, like, Eric, in many ways, Eric and Kareem leading from the front and being, like, 2 of the most AI-pilled people that I know. But going back, like, multiple years, like, they've been on this. They've been, you know, sort of quietly recruiting, like, really elite talent, like, on the AI side. You know, they're Totally. And just with that, it's like, it's so interesting being these, you know, you talked about maybe the market being more positive some than people might think. But if you're one of these legacy players and you're like, cool, we need an AI strategy, and then you're starting to think like, all right, well, let's make our, you know, let's make an annual plan. Let's like, you know, run a bunch of pilots. Let's test out a bunch of products, all these things. Things, you end up just being a customer of AI, not somebody that is creating AI products that you can sell to other people. And I think that's just like wildly, wildly different. And so you can imagine legacy players just being like their products and their platforms effectively being pretty fixed in place and not adapting. Meanwhile, Eric and Kareem, you know, I know Kareem is probably like up all night riffing on products. with the team, and they ultimately are then shipping product very, very, very quickly and experimenting with their customers. And I think that, um, oh, I just would— I would absolutely hate to, to be competing with them, um, no matter, no matter how much, no matter how much scale I had and how much resources. It just sounds like an absolute nightmare.

Yeah, I mean, there's some great other businesses in this space that have great brands and been around a long time, and, you know, like I mean, I think Amex, it's like, you know, it's like it's more than a century old. They're great established brands, but we see how hard it is for businesses that even were born, you know, 5 years ago to embrace the new world. And, um, and it's a challenge. And, you know, I think Ramp is setting an example for others to follow on how to do it.

Last question for me, and we'll let you get back to your day. Um, uh, I'm interested in like how you interface with the team coming in later-stage growth investing. You're probably not pitching, I'll help you hire your first CTO or engineer, but is one of the value adds of working with Dragoneer that visibility into the public and private markets? I was listening to Brad Gerstner on CNBC and like he has a lot of visibility into both sides. And so if the board meeting is going to be about IPO timing, liquidity, how— who's going to get brought in at various points in time, is that something that you're spending a lot of time with the teams that you work with broadly on, or are there other areas where you like to lean in?

Yeah, it's a good question. So thing one, we sort of start with the Hippocratic oath, like start with do no harm. Don't get in the way. Don't bug them for stuff that doesn't help them. And that's an easy trap for investors to fall into, which is, you know, trying to be helpful and really just meddling. Thing 2, you know, when, when Walter Isaacson writes the book about Eric Lyman, it's not going to be, gosh, that late-stage investor he had was like, made all the difference, you know, like that was everything. So what we're trying to do is be helpful in the pockets where we can be helpful and where we should be helpful and where, like, we bring something a little bit incremental to the table. I will say with Ramp, this is one of the things we love about them. They are really proactive at pulling help out of us. Yeah, not just like we've made a lot of customer introductions and not because we're like spamming ramp. They're like, hey, here's this one, here's that one. Like, here's a few more. Like, help us, help us, you know? And so they're great about it. That's awesome. And yet sitting across both public and private, it does give us a little bit of a vantage point that's a little bit unusual, a little different compared to some of the earlier stage folks who they have helping, who I think are Some of the best in the world at what they do at their stage 2. And so, yeah, of course we try and help in that area, but that's just one thing. You know, we're trying to keep our ears open and be helpful where we can be.

Well, I think Mike Grimes made it into the Elon book, so maybe you got to switch over to the sell side if you want to get in the biography.

We shall see.

But thanks so much for coming on the show. Have a great rest of your day. Yeah, great to hang. And enjoy, you know, the The continuation of dad life with the new one.

I appreciate that. You too. Five weeks. Gotta love it. Have fun, guys. Best.

Talk soon. Talk soon. Let me tell you about Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform that grows with your business and lets you sell in seconds online, in store, on mobile, on social, on marketplaces. And now with AI agents, we have Tavarish, automotive creator, YouTuber, P1 owner, 918 Spider owner, someone with a truck that probably backs up from time to time when. He needs to work on a rebuild from scratch. We ran a little bit late, but here he is. Thank you so much for taking the time. Thank you so much for holding on while we— What's going on? How you doing?

How are you guys? Hear me okay?

We can hear you great.

Loud and clear.

Loud and clear. I mean, there's so much I want to talk about, but I want to get your Tesla Roadster reaction first. Then I want your Porsche Mission S reaction. And then I want to hear about all the different projects you have going on. But let's start with the Roadster.

Okay, so Tesla Roadster, um, everybody's going crazy over it. I don't care, man. Like, I, I can't, I can't tell you how much it doesn't like really move the needle for me because like honestly, it's, it's a cool, uh, showcase of like stuff they can do. But the, the reality of putting one of these cars, uh, into production where it can do like a barrel roll or a kickflip over a truck. First of all, there's no practical use for it. And second of all, that's never going to make it to production. So, yeah, it was, it was a technology.

It was like a very cool technology showcase that was attached to not even like just sort of a teaser of a car that they're going to start making in 2 years. And so I don't want to— I don't want to—

I mean, it could be another 10, could be another 20. Who knows?

Yeah, I don't want to— it's hard to criticize because it's like, Cool, they made a car with rockets on it. It's like, it's amazing. And it's cool that— I'm glad that the human race can do this, even if it doesn't have any obvious utility. Well, here's the reason why you should be. But John and I were both on the reservation list. We came in very late because we were like, you put $5K down, you can always get out of it if you see the demo and you don't like it. But if the demo is insane, a bunch more people will come in. We kind of were expecting the car to be going into production like now. And, but seeing it, you're like, okay, here's a bunch of stuff that is not relevant to somebody who just wants to maybe buy the car outside of being able to produce a lot of downforce. But again, I can't even imagine going to the track with that car. And one, if you're driving it at the limit, you're just gonna get banned from the track because people are gonna be like, hey, this person's like acting ridiculous. And then two, you're gonna be going through tires in like a single lap and like the novelty, the sort of brief novelty before You realize like, okay, I'm driving a heavy car that can produce a lot of downforce, but I destroy my tires. And there's probably 1,000 other cars that are much more enjoyable to drive on the same track.

So with Tesla, it's a weird like mixed bag because what ends up happening is you have this car that has some like legitimately really cool tech in it. Like the Cybertruck has, you know, if you've ever driven a Cybertruck or been, you know, driven around in a Cybertruck, if it's doing Full self-driving. There's a lot of interesting technology in it. 48-volt architecture, the drive, uh, the steer-by-wire, all that stuff is like super intuitive. Um, and if you don't want to drive it, it can, you know, have a mode where it drives itself. Now, would I trust it? Not really. But I think—

Well, here's the, here's the thing.

It comes in a package.

I would push back. I have— I, I got a Cybertruck recently. It's amazing when it's driving itself. It's horrible to drive yourself. It's like the worst driving. It's the worst driving experience when a human is driving it. When the computer's driving it, it's like, great, this is like smooth. It feels like I'm in a fridge. Feels like I'm in a dystopian fridge moving down the road. It's like, it's awesome. But I'm like, anytime I take over, like John and I were driving in it last, last week and the self-driving—

2 hours of self-driving is perfect. He takes over just to park it and I'm like, It's

like, it takes like so much effort to make it like not feel like, you know, you're just like, it's so jerky. The yoke is like terrible. Like, it's, it's really funny.

When, when you have, uh, you know, a car like a Cybertruck and, you know, like with, with any new car, it's like, uh, you have to adopt certain elements of like new technology, like getting a new phone. You have to get used to it, you know? But with a Cybertruck, when you get in it and you try to drive it, Like, stuff like steering. Steering is now like vastly different than what you remember, and it's not that way in any other Tesla or any other car in general. So you end up with this experience of like, well, if you're a Cybertruck owner, then that is— you get used to that, and then every other car becomes weird. And like, for me, the first time I drove a Cybertruck, just getting out of the parking lot was— it was, it was a time, you know? It was, it was interesting because— not only is it the size of a tank, but it also doesn't steer the way you think it should. Yeah. So you are essentially, you know, you're— the car is determining how much, you know, input and output is happening. And you're just kind of along there, along for the ride. Now, when it drives itself like that, I do agree that that is like a better experience. But I think that, you know, When you're in a Cybertruck, everybody knows that, you know, like it is a— it's a statement, right? Yeah. So the same thing with this Tesla Roadster. It is, it is definitely a statement. It is very like low-res. It looks like a low-res Lamborghini Murciélago from the front and like a new Charger from the back.

New Charger from the back. Yeah.

Yeah. No, it's almost like they just made a render and then they shipped the render.

And I think that it might have been rendered recently.

It was like, it was actually mid-render. It didn't, it didn't finish rendering, and then they're like, oh, whatever, it's good now.

Yeah. Uh, Mission S, take us through your reaction. Mission S, compare it to 918. Tell us, tell us about 918, and then tell us about Mission S.

So 918 was a really, really cool car. I mean, just in general, um, it was the most weight of, uh, of the 3. So like back in the day, they had the Holy Trinity, uh, which was McLaren P1, uh, the Porsche 918, and the Ferrari LaFerrari. Yeah. These were the hybrid hypercars and it was dubbed the Holy Trinity by Top Gear and Jeremy Clarkson. But the 918 was a weird one because they made the most of them. So it shouldn't be worth a lot of money. Then it was the most weight and then it was also the least powerful. However, it was like arguably the fastest car, the best built. And just from my perspective, I haven't worked on a LaFerrari, but I can imagine what it's like. like. I worked on a P1 and I worked on 918. 918 is built so much better than the P1. And, um, it is, it is pretty crazy that, uh, you know, they have— they had that technology back then. They did 0 to 60 in 2.2 seconds, and that was back in 2013. That's crazy. And then they did the Nürburgring.

Also just the overall— the overall, it feels completely timeless. Like they could have— they could release same car today and it would just make sense. It, it, it in many ways is like the— to me, it's my favorite modern supercar by far.

So wait, are you 918 over Carrera GT? And I want to know if you're, if you're 918 over Carrera GT, because Doug DeMuro and there's a lot of car guys that are like, ah, it's Carrera GT all the way, I don't want any hybrid stuff. But how do you both feel about it? Let's start with Tavarish.

So, um, they're just different cars for different purposes. I, I think that But if you want an analog car with row your own gears and no driver aids and blah, blah, blah, and I'm sure Doug DeMuro wants the values of his Carrera GT to go up, then you'd pick Carrera GT. It sounds great. You could put an exhaust on it and it sounds like an F1 car. You could also do that with a 918. And a 918, you can legitimately just give to anybody and then they could drive it like a normal car. It is, in essence, just a normal car. You can drive it every single day.

Yeah, I mean, the thing that was exciting to me about— The thing that was exciting to me about the Mission S is like the 918 and the GT have become so expensive.

Totally.

That even though they made a lot of the 918, you can't— you just don't see them on the road. Yup. It's hard to imagine buying one and driving it. Totally. For fun.

Yup.

And what I'm excited about the Mission S is like they're going to make a ton of them. Love it. It's going to give you that same kind of experience of like, I'm driving a special Porsche, but it's not special, so you're gonna be able to drive it however you want. If you, if you, if you caravan—

40,000 miles on it, it's like, okay.

Like, yeah, and if you caravan these things, it's gonna get a ton of rock chips, but I think it, but I think it's fine.

It's not the same as a 992.

And to me, like, yeah, yeah, but this is

Porsche. I mean, are they changing anything about, about, uh, you know, uh, Porsche's, uh, sort of architecture as a company? Because, you know, if this is Porsche we're talking about, then the MSRP isn't really MSRP. You're gonna have, uh, you know, $100,000, $200,000 over that just to get the first ones. Yeah. Then you have paint to Paint to Sample Plus. Then you have the interior options, and then, you know, it's just the Corvette owner that went to college. It's like, mine was one of one because it was built on a Thursday with this

paint color.

No, I think it's gonna end up like an $800,000 car regardless of where it starts.

Yeah, but that's also not, you know, like competing with Lamborghini SF90 from Ferrari. Like, it's more in the unlimited production world, which is still really expensive, but it won't be as restricted as the 918 and the Carrera.

Yeah. And the other thing is seeing the 2 launches yesterday, it was like, one is like, I think we all saw the Roadster launch in the same way, like cool carnival show trick, very, very cool technology demo. We'll see what the actual car is like. But then Porsche was like perfect stagnation, right? It was like nothing has— cars haven't gotten better, right? Mm-hmm. If anything, this car was the first time a manufacturer like really, really, really listened to customers on a bunch of different elements, right? It's like we want a key that you can put in the car and turn, and we want that experience to be great. We want less screens, right? We want all these different things, but in many ways, there's zero innovation. It doesn't feel like the only innovation is that we eliminated a lot of the innovations that we've had. And so, I think it's great. I think like we have been talking on the show about, you know, the automotive world being in its quartz crisis, and this was like the first response to like, we're in a crisis, we can no longer push, we're not pushing the frontier of technology in our field, that's gonna be done by the Teslas and the Chinese manufacturers, but what we can do is make a driver's car— Special. So

I would push back a little bit on that because when they were developing the Porsche 918, the technology that they had developed, when you went from E-mode or like the regen to the regular brakes, they had to calibrate that. And it took them a long time to get that right. So when you press the brake, it feels like you're braking. like it's a, uh, you know, it's an actual brake pedal, but it's actually regen. But if you press the brake harder, then you get the brakes, uh, from the car. And to make that not jerky, like, they had to put in a lot of time. If you look at the early, um, you know, first drives of the 918, people would— like Chris Harris, he would complain about, like, these brakes, when they come on, it's like, it's like you get, uh, you like hit a tree, you know? Okay. But Porsche figured that out. And I think that is Porsche's real— that's their talent. Totally. Because they will do a lot of stuff behind the scenes to make this driving experience seamless. And it's almost boring where the car does everything so well. And then that stuff trickles down to their other cars. So that 918, the way that they made that 918, the calibration for that specific system, that trickled down to their electric cars and then their hybrid cars. And like now that is in Audis and like all the kind of lesser-known cars. So I think whatever this is, whatever flagship Porsche has, it is gonna be something where they move the bar forward in terms of like driving dynamics, in terms of aerodynamics. I mean, if you look at it, it has like a big scoop in the front. It has like aero lines that follow all the way to the back of the car. Doesn't seem like it has a bunch of like wings and, you know, active aero elements. It looks like it's just—

The back, the wing is active.

It's active, but it's active like the Carrera GT. Like it just goes vertical. It's not articulated.

Yeah, I mean, like it's not like a giant, you know, GT3.

Yeah, it's not like the Mercedes-AMG One that has like the little flaps everywhere with little motors on them.

Correct.

Yeah, the other thing that's worth noting is like this is not From my understanding, it shouldn't be viewed as a 918 successor. This is just— this is the new step up from the 911. And to me, it's instantly the most desirable car, the most desirable new car in the, call it, $600,000 to $2 million range. But then they're gonna come for the top end of the market too.

So, all right, if that's the case, then I guess it would go for the, like, that SF90, which is Yeah, hypercar performance, not hypercar price, but then it can get to hypercar price. But hypercar price is now $2 to $3 million, where now $1 million doesn't really get you a hypercar anymore. So like, it's still—

It'll be like the Revuelto SF90, where the Spider will be even more, and then they'll do a GT version of this, and then you'll get the GT3 RS Weissach package of the new Mission S, and that will be Even more and more and more, and I'm sure there'll be a spec. You gotta get the Manti racing one. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it is just interesting that there will be some of these driving around with the poverty spec or something, you know, and people put miles on them, hopefully, you know, because there's so many of these cars where you hear about it, it's like, okay, they're making a hundred of them, and they're just gonna stay in the plastic. Poverty spec Mission S. The poverty spec Mission S.

I mean, it's, it's really cool. Like, so I— is it, uh, I, I don't know if the, um, the, the pictures that I'm looking at are like actual, they're renders or whatever, but like, uh, this is— it's from Porsche.

Yeah, if you're on the official Porsche, those are the real— those are the real photos, uh, of the car that they debuted yesterday, if you're on their account.

Yeah,

so there's a lot of AI stuff out there, but this is real.

Is it a like, uh, we don't know what the engine is, right?

No, they, they— so they were teasing flat-8. But, uh, they were just asked yesterday by, uh, Forrest Auto Reviews, uh, can you confirm that? And they said, we're not ready to confirm that it's flat-8, but it feels like it has to be something different than what's in the 911 to make it special. So that would be the logical one.

Yeah, so, um, it could be flat-8. I was looking at the gauge cluster and I saw that, you know, the redline is somewhere around 7,500, or that's where the literal redline is.

Is that— does that imply turbo?

Maybe. Um, so what I was thinking was, uh, I mean, it could be the Porsche 963 engine, which is the 4.6-liter V8, uh, from the 918 plus twin turbos. Sure. Um, but it, it doesn't make a ton of— like, it doesn't rev as high and it doesn't make, um, it doesn't make a ton more power, but it is, it is a pretty cool, you know, platform. And I know that they didn't make a lot of those, uh, those engines And those engines, you know, from, from my, uh, experience taking them apart, like, they're really good. They're really, really good. Um, so, but like a low rev limit on a Porsche just doesn't, doesn't seem like right, you know?

Yeah, maybe they're trying to sort that out right now and, and that's why they don't want to commit to anything. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

But I mean, if this was, oh yeah, this is our GT3 RS engine that revs to 9 grand plus, you know, we found another 40 horsepower lying on the, on the floor. Sure. Uh, like, here you go. I do like the on your own. Is that a button on the wheel?

Yes. So that disables all driver's aids. So you can turn off— Okay.

Yeah. That's what I felt. Yeah.

Pretty cool.

Felt like it probably did. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, it's a cool car. I don't know, like anytime Porsche releases MSRP numbers, it's always like, okay. Like a GT3 is $160K. Like, right. So has anybody paid that? Like ever? No. They, they are immediately double what they're, uh, what they're asking for because everybody needs the, the shiniest thing.

Yeah.

Um, if this is them trying what they did in the '80s with the 928, like, hey, this is like a step above the 911, you know, it's gonna be, it's gonna be, uh, interesting because 911 has a, has a foothold in that market and it will not let go.

What's the opposite of a P1 in terms of Uh, first car to start working on if you've never worked on a car before? What's the most accessible portal into that world?

Uh, I would say anything '90s and Japanese, like maybe a Toyota. Okay. Uh, because even if it is like ragged on, which a lot of Toyotas are, um, you can get it cheap and it's going to be reliable. And if you can break things and it's not going to break the bank, um, you know, you can get parts from Toyota that they still make because it's a giant company, and it is, uh, super cheap to do that. So I would do like a Toyota, maybe a Nissan. Like, my first car was a Nissan Maxima. Yeah. And I'm a little biased, but like Nissan also, it's a little harder to get parts for some of those older cars.

Yeah.

Toyota has, has a really good, uh, parts program, and they're bringing back a lot of those, uh, you know, iconic cars from the '90s.

Sure.

Um, and, and you're not going to be dealing with with, um, you know, issues like, like real big issues like rust, like you get from a Mitsubishi or a Nissan. Like, they're, they're pretty well made. So I would say anything like Honda as well. Um, you know, Hondas, they are expensive if you want to get, you know, a lot of power from that little engine. But just to get a, you know, a car running and, uh, and driving, it's a really good platform to start on.

And then in terms of how you select project cars, what sticks out to you? Is it all Going back to like the posters that you had on your wall as a kid? Is it specific vehicles or just opportunistic? How do you think about when you want to take on a new project?

When I take on a new project, it's, uh, there's not a lot of thought that goes into it. It's more like, uh, I don't know when I'm ever gonna have this, uh, opportunity again.

Yeah.

So when I looked at something like the P1 or 918, I'm like, there's not gonna be another P1 that comes up. There's not gonna be another 918 that comes up. So I might as well get this and we're gonna see what, you know, if I can afford it, I'll get it.

Yeah.

Um, and it's, it's gonna be a project for me to figure out. And that, I, I mean, I wish I would've planned things out better, um, you know, from the start. But, uh, this is also like the reality of making YouTube and reality of like project planning because, uh, you know, you have scope creep, which happened to, to, to me with the P1. Yeah. rebuilding a P1. Now we're doing, uh, you know, I'm building the fastest McLaren on earth. We're taking out the hybrid system. Yeah, we're building this bespoke engine, and then we're doing a bespoke, uh, body with the original designer Frank Stephenson. And then this is now going to be like this top-speed car. And, you know, this is now leagues above in difficulty-wise, leagues above, uh, a stock P1 build.

Yeah, yeah. Uh, how, how much room is there in top speed competitions. I mean, it was interesting that at the Roadster reveal, they were like 230 miles an hour. And then live on stage, Elon sort of gets them to up that ante. And it's like, it'll go half the speed of sound, right? And they're like, okay, fine, we'll do that. But there are cars, I think Koenigsegg can do over 300. There's a few crazy numbers out there, but what do you think? Yeah. What is the state of the art, and then how much more like speed on the floor is there?

So the, uh, the legitimate issue that you come, um, come up with when you go for top speed now is— I mean, it's been, it's been the case for 20 years, but like, where do you do it?

Sure, salt flats or something.

Well, so the problem with salt flats is that it's not— it's, uh, it's, it's bumpy. Um, so you're not going to get like— the traction is a big concern. So salt flat cars are made specifically for that environment. Interesting. Uh, and it's not really conducive to a street car. Like, a street car, it'll get maybe 70% of its top speed, maybe. Um, but even then, you're gonna— you're like just absolutely blasting the underside of your car. Um, it is a really punishing environment. So, uh, what Bugatti does is, uh, they have a test track, or I don't know if they still own it or they had a— had a part of it. Um, it's, uh, Ehra-Lessine in And, uh, Ehra-Lessheim is, you know, it's this big test track with a banked, uh, curve that you can take. You can do like 120 miles an hour. You can like saunter up to 120, and then they have a 6-mile straight. Sure. And then that's where they do all their, their top speeds. So right now, the fastest car that I know of, um, that is a production car, sort of, kinda, is the Bugatti Chiron SS. And, uh, that's— it's a Bugatti Chiron SS 300+. And because that did 304 miles an hour, um, and that did it there. But in order to get the official record, you have to do it there and like reverse, like there and back,

right?

Yeah. Um, but because they didn't do it backwards because of the, uh, the, the way that the asphalt was, they only did it once. And then they were like, you know, who cares? We, we don't, you know, we don't care if we have the official record or not. Um, like, then, you know, that, that But I think the fastest now is the SSC Tuatara, which did it here in Florida, Cape Canaveral. And then they did something like 280-something miles an hour, you know, average between the 2 runs. So the issue, like right now, the big thing is like 300 miles an hour. 300 miles an hour is incredibly fast. Yeah. But the issue becomes braking zone. You have to find a place place to do it. You know, you could do, uh, like Koenigsegg did and, uh, rent out, uh, a— or like just, uh, close up, uh, I think Highway 50 or wherever it was. Um, and it's just an arrow straight thing, but then it's like a public road. Yeah. So you, you have to— like, an animal could, could, uh, come at any point. Um, it could be like there's— there could be some, uh, some gravel on the road. Like, there's a lot of things that could happen. And it just becomes diminishing returns when you're looking for top speed. But I still look at it like as a kid because like as a kid you're like, well, this number's bigger, so this car is better.

Yeah.

And I think we've sort of lost our way. It's all like Nürburgring lap times and blah, blah, blah. And, you know, that sort of thing. Just a quick thing before I finish my TED Talk. Fuck. I like every car that says, oh yeah, the top speed is 230 miles an hour or blah, blah, blah. And like, obviously, they, the Roadster, they haven't tested top speed. They, they, they have not because the Roadster is not a production car. But the reason why a lot of these cars are like topped out around 230, like 220 to 230, is because the, the CFD, the computational fluid dynamics testing, that OEMs, like the car manufacturers have, they stop becoming reliable after 230 miles an hour because the air around the car becomes significantly compressed, like more than 5%. So you get like a ram air effect like you would get on a plane after 230. Whoa. That's also why a lot of like race cars, IndyCars, that sort of thing, they go up there because their aero testing only like you can only get to that point. Now there are cars that go, you know, faster than that, Le Mans cars, but like those are very much, we're gonna see where this goes. It might do a backflip, who knows? And some of them have.

Yeah.

So if you ever wonder how that happens, like, oh, aren't these tested? Like it's almost impossible to test that unless you go out and then you figure, you know, you actually do some real-world testing and see, oh yeah, But the bumper hasn't fallen off yet and the car hasn't done a backflip, so we're good.

Yeah.

Do you think, uh, in the Roadster launch they teased some like COTA lap times, like something around a 1:30? Do you think that's just like totally fake news, or do you think they actually somehow got out there and didn't get any— didn't get

any spy shots?

Any spy shots?

Well, it doesn't matter because it's not a production car. So like whether they put a, uh, you know, some body on a frame and then went around, uh, with a test mule. Okay. Like, that's cool. Like, so lap times to me don't, don't really matter. Like, I, I don't care if, if a car— because like lap times, um, they, they say a lot about a car, but they also say a lot about the driver. And I don't consider myself like a race car driver, and I don't really feel like I want to be, you know. Mm-hmm. I feel like, yeah, I'll, I'll push a car, uh, on a, on a nice windy road or like a straight road or something, and that feels good. But I'm not a race car driver, and I don't care if my car gets 0.3 seconds faster on the Nürburgring with these little arrow flicks. It doesn't really matter to me. So I don't know if it's conjecture. Knowing Elon Musk and Tesla, probably is. But he knows that the thing that he showed was not for car people. Yeah. It was just It was just to get clicks. It was just to generate buzz. And it absolutely did that. If you want spectacle, you go to one of those launches, but like, nobody looked at the substance of what was said. Like everything that was shared was the car doing a barrel roll, the car flying, the car going upside down. That's the only thing that was shared because everything else is sort of clunky. Yeah. Not very well, you know, orchestrated or put together, but they did have this spectacle that they knew people were gonna just eat up.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, they had the moment.

It worked.

It's kind of underrated.

It's kind of underrated that

Tesla can drive these like by wire. Like they're very clearly entirely remote. Like there were no people in them at any time. And so So when you think about high-speed trials, it's like, yeah, just send the command to drive straight remotely and just drive it. And if it flips and crashes, no big deal. Maybe you could push the car further in testing if they do go down that road. But I don't even think car buyers care past 200 miles an hour. It's so rare that you ever would get the opportunity to push a car like that.

The amount of people that have gone 200 miles an hour is incredibly small. And if you actually go 200 miles an hour, you realize is how fast that is.

Yeah.

Now, in cars now, like if you get in a Koenigsegg and you realize that this thing has 1,500 horsepower, it gets to those speeds so quickly. Like, I remember, you know, back in the day, a Bugatti Veyron was the fastest car in the world, 253 miles an hour. Well, we're never gonna have another car that's 1,000 horsepower and blah, blah, blah in it. And it does this incredible top speed. And now, like, a Chiron, like, its successor has 500 more horsepower, and it didn't need those crazy tires that the Veyron had, mainly because it gets to those speeds so much faster that the tires don't actually heat soak. They don't heat soak as much as the Veyrons did. So the Veyron needs those tires because it's less powerful. Oh, interesting. So if it had 500 more horsepower, you can actually just get tires from Tire Rack. Which is interesting. Wow. But people don't understand how fast these cars are. And if you go like, you know, 200 miles an hour to 250, that's crazy. But then like 250 to like 300, 300 is so like, anything going 300 miles an hour is probably in the air. Like that's just like planes take off at way under that speed. So you have to do a lot of homework and 300 miles an hour is nothing to this car. Yeah,

yeah. And I mean, even the high-speed stuff is getting democratized. You look at the ZR1, and you're looking at Bugatti numbers on pretty much almost everything. I think it goes maybe 220, 230 in some configurations. This stuff is getting to be— and I don't know what the depreciation will be like on that car, but you could imagine. I mean, even a Model Plaid, $60K for 0 to 60 in 2 seconds. We certainly democratized it, but hopefully people—

Yeah, it's, it's a, it's incredible. Like, I, I drove, uh, today, you know, one of my daily drivers is a Charger Hellcat Redeye.

Yes.

It is essentially a rental car that you can, you can get that has 800 horsepower. People will just like, you can go to the dealership. Well, not now anymore, but like you could have gone to the dealership and just bought it with money.

Yeah.

And that, that seems kind of crazy. Yeah. Because 800 horsepower was more than like, if you look back, uh, you know, 10, 15 years ago, What had 800 horsepower? Supercars, hypercars. Literally nothing.

Nothing. Yeah.

Greg in the X-Shot says, ran into James May today in an airport lounge. He looked grumpy when I asked him about the Roadster. Cars should drive, not fly, he said. To Tavarish's point, not for trad car guys.

Interesting. Yeah. What does excite you? What is on your dream list?

My takeaway from the whole event was like, I'm very excited Tesla slash SpaceX are obviously going to be the company that popularizes flying cars. Yeah, it might take 20 years, but they are going to be the ones that do it. Yeah, it's not going to look like— it's not going to look like the Roadster because the Roadster has 2 seconds of range.

Yeah, it's a rocket. What is on your dream list if you were dropped in as the CEO of Tesla or Porsche or any company and you want to build your ideal car? How manual is it? People want to go back to the old ways. I was joking about putting the crank in the front the car, you know, what, what do you want? What's on your dream list?

Uh, it's, it's tough because, um, I am not a person that would like put together all the elements of my, my favorite cars and then be like, all right, it's perfect for me. I think every car has an element of, uh, you know, like if it's a truly good car, it is, um, for better or worse, somebody's vision, like somebody's vision from start to finish. And you can see that from the engineering side, from the design side. And those cars are like the McLaren F1, for example. It was like Gordon Murray's baby. Yeah. You know, it was designed by Peter Stevens, but like Gordon Murray had a finger in every single thing, every project on that car. And it's still revered as one of the best cars ever made. And it's, you know, obviously not without its faults, It is of an era and it is, uh, it's— there's nostalgia involved. I, I don't know if there's like a perfect car for me. Um, there are some, you know, very exciting cars. Yeah. Um, for me, the, uh, the Aston Martin, uh, what is it, the Valhalla, the one that, uh, that just came out, I really like that car. That car reminds me of the— when the P1 originally came out. It's a very similar kind of drivetrain. Um, it's also British. It's, uh, it's a very And I think it is like one of these things that, um, since Aston is— it's an Aston Martin, it's gonna, it's gonna depreciate. But it's also, um, a car that we might not appreciate as much now, but later on people are gonna look back and say, oh wow, that was, uh, that was, that was quite a thing. Um, but like, I think with anything, there's a lot of— there's too many rich people out there, and then there's too many companies that are willing to give them, you know, whatever they want. So like Ferrari making the, the Purosangue, These Dodici cilindri manuals.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, manuale.

Yeah, so like those things are kind of, they're kind of cool. I'm not on the, you know, hate bandwagon there. I think that that's, you know, it's interesting technology. But like, I think any car that gives an interesting experience and a unique experience that other cars can't give you, I think that is worth pursuing. I like the Mission S. The Mission S looks interesting. I don't know how different it is going to be from like a GT3 or like a Turbo S.

Sure.

Who knows? But what I think is interesting moving forward is like where the battle between EV and combustion engines and then like where hybrids fit into that and then how performance fits into that. But, you know, I think car enthusiasm in general has gone up in the past, like, let's say 3 years, because, you know, for a while we were worried about car enthusiasm just leaving, you know, like we're never gonna have V12s again or like blah, blah. Well, so I think that, yeah.

My, I've had a working theory for a while that you're gonna see even more of a resurgence in activity at various tracks around the country as it becomes more common to just never drive yourself. on the road anywhere. Like, I'm already getting to the point where, like, I never want to commute. I never want to self-drive when I'm commuting.

Yeah, in LA, like, there's so much more traffic, more potholes. Like, in the '60s, you could get a sports car and actually, like, wring it out just on, like, the normal streets or, like, the back roads. Like, now it's like so much more—

So I think Tesla making a car that ultimately is just a track toy actually is kind of going in the right direction in some ways because I think that a lot of people are going to be like, when I'm on the road, my car drives me. And when I'm on the track, I drive myself. And I think that that's the line that's really interesting. The Mission S is the first car that's a production road-legal car that I'm like, this is a car that I want in a while.

I was hoping we were going to get a tour of something.

Sorry, sorry, my guys are like washing a car and it's like super loud, the pressure washer. So yeah.

But yeah, I mean, thanks so much for coming on the show. We'll let you get back to your day. We'd love to do this again.

No, no, you're good. But I completely agree. I think, you know, the car enthusiast was never, you know, like with these new cars, people don't think about car enthusiasts because number one, car enthusiasts don't really buy new cars. They're thinking about the collector. They're thinking about the person that is doing it as a status symbol. And then maybe down the line, that's when they get like the real enthusiasts. And then you can have like the enthusiast version. You can have the GT3, GT3 RS. You can have the manual and whatever for those people that both have money and want that experience. But for like the base experience of any car now, It's really good. Like, it's really good. If you get any like base model car, it's still, it's gonna have more power, gonna have more options, more luxuries than any car back like 10, 15 years ago. Mm-hmm. It's also gonna be pretty reliable, like for the most part. So I think, you know, it is, I like where things are headed. I don't, you know, like the design of cars now is like kind of humdrum to me. I like that, you know, Porsche is still making pretty cars. Some Italian manufacturers are making pretty cars as well. But everything now is just becoming like very— I don't know if it's— they're getting that Chinese influence where like every car just

looks the same. I agree with you, except with 2 exceptions other than the Cybertruck: Nuvo Lari and Jaguar Type 01. It's a very specific aesthetic, but it feels like it does not look like a, you know, like a BMW. It doesn't look like an Audi. That's like where everything's kind of like coalesced around one design language. But I wanna know what you think. Yeah.

I—

Yeah, go for it. The new Velari stuff is like, the people that didn't like the Jaguar and then they started saying how good the new Velari looks. I'm like, what is—

Oh yeah.

What does your day look like?

Yeah,

that's funny. I don't get that at all. Like, I think it's— they're just kind of low-res cars. It's the same, you know, Cybertruck and Roadster, and they all kind of fall into that, that one thing. And it just becomes— you buy it for the meme. And I don't, I don't think there's going to be a lot of—

John literally, John literally has been thinking like, do I do the 3-car garage? Cybertruck, new Velari, Type 1.

Type 01. Just the low-res garage. Very funny.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.

I have a, I have a question for you. Do you think So, the Mission S feels very competitive with all the sort of desirable Ferrari cars, whatever it ends up being actually called. Like, it just feels like suddenly people are gonna be like, I have $750,000 to spend on a car that I'm gonna drive a few times a month, maybe a couple times a month, whatever, a weekender. That is like very competitive. Yeah. My expectation is that Ferrari is gonna fire back by going after this the 3RS category and making this 296 Challenge, the street-legal version of it, like much more widely available because it seems like they're going to remove the hybrid. And if suddenly they have a car that's in that $400,000 to $500,000 range MSRP and it has a massive wing on it and it is, you know, again, the hybrid—

Track-focused, crazy near-burnout time.

Track-focused, but again, a car for the street. they're basically gonna like flip-flop where like suddenly Ferrari will have a car in the $500,000 and below range that's like pretty, pretty compelling. And the 3RS buyer is like, well, I want something that looks aggressive, looks track-focused. But, and so, so anyways, that's kind of like how I'm imagining.

What do you think?

Yeah, I, I can, I could probably agree with that, but, uh, I, I don't know what Ferrari's, uh, trajectory is. I, I think Ferrari is, uh, just hell-bent on trying to make as many cars as they can and then pretending like they're all rare. Yeah. Like every single one is rare and you need like special permission to buy, you know, whatever their base model car is. Yeah. I think there's— Porsche have a history of making a certain type of car. Ferrari is not like, no matter what they do, Ferrari is not gonna be Porsche. It doesn't drive like a Porsche. They all drive A Porsche experience is very sanitized. Even a GT3, which I have, I have a manual 992 GT3 and I love it. I think it's the best manual car I've ever driven. And I also have a 430 Scuderia that we converted to manual. And it's, on paper, it's around the same horsepower. It's like 500 horsepower, around the same weight, that sort of thing. The Ferrari is like a billion dollars more expensive. But it feels completely different. It is a different sort of school of thought. And the Ferrari feels like it was made 100 years before the Porsche. So I think no matter what, even newer Ferraris, they have this manufactured sort of Italian passion where things don't line up as well as you'd want them to. Like a Ferrari, like a Pista doesn't drive as well as like a McLaren. Because of that, because they want to like manufacture this sort of like imperfection. But then sometimes, like, I don't see them competing with Porsche in the same way. It's not going to be that sanitized experience no matter what you can do. Hmm.

Yeah, no, that'll be really interesting. It does feel like they will go head to head, but there will be, yeah, a really wide gap between the two brands. And

I think that's great. Yeah, I'm not saying that they want to make the same car at the same price. More so that, like, I think it would be an interesting new product for them to offer that would be an ode to, like, hey, we haven't forgot why we got into this in the first place, which was, like, selling emotion, selling this rawness, selling this—

Would that be the XX? Is XX a street-legal race car? Is that the thesis

there?

No, that is not. Like, now that— yeah, the SF90XX and the XX used to be a literal like race car with race team. And you didn't even own the— you didn't have the car like to do anything with. You like just told Ferrari, meet me at this track with the team and then I'll drive the car. But that SF90XX was the only car that had that badge but didn't come with all those perks. But then you can just drive the car. You can take it home.

So they are affordable. But it was basically street legal.

Yeah, yeah.

So it's the thing where like they take the road car and then they make it a track car and then they make it a road car. And then they make a track car, and then they make a road car again. They go back and forth. It's the best.

Yeah, yeah. It's like Street Fighter, the movie, the game, the movie.

Yeah, exactly. The book based on the movie that's based on the book. It's the best. But always another way to stand out in a crowded market, I suppose. Anyway, thank you so much for coming on the show. Super fun. This is great. Let's do it again soon.

No worries, man.

Thank you so much. This was awesome. Yeah, thanks for having me. Have a good one. Cheers. Bye. Car day.

Wanted to distract you from the absolute disaster that we've had today in the markets.

Oh, it's rough? What's going on?

Jim Cramer says maybe we clean out this blown-up hedge fund and start fresh on Monday.

Okay. So the NASDAQ is down 2.14%. S&P 500 is down 1.09%. And the Dow Jones is down just 0.34%. But lots of—

Cramer called it one of the worst days of the year.

Yeah. Nasdaq nears biggest weekly loss in more than a year. Tech stocks are falling sharply Friday. Remember, you got this alpha from us yesterday because if you paid attention to the stream, the stream title was Sell Everything, Including Your Dollars. It's Over Over. And it looks like it is, in fact, over over. But maybe we'll clear out this hedge fund. And we'll be back on Monday. We'll see. AI-related shares came under new pressure, pushing the Nasdaq down 2.4%, which leaves the benchmark down 4.7% for the week. If the tech-heavy benchmark finishes down more than 4.68%, it will be the worst week since the tariff meltdown. I like that in this Wall Street Journal report, they were hammering this out so fast they capitalized the THE all Caps for some reason. I think it's just a typo, but it lets you know that a human was hammering this out and saying, I'm mad, I'm angry, this is crazy news. Anyway, there's a bunch more stories, but we'll get to them on Monday. Thank you.

2.6 says, wait, before you guys go, is Tyler still an intern? Newsflash, Tyler has never actually been an intern. He was always paid, and he dropped out of college like How long ago? A year ago?

I think, I think his original deal, he had to go to school for a decade, so he turned that down, came here,

came

back. But, uh, yeah, I don't, I don't actually know your official title. Co-host? Oh, I mean, in the Wall Street Journal, just host. They didn't even hit you with the co. Tyler Cosgrove was featured in the Wall Street Journal.

One of us.

One of us. He made it into the Journal. Very, very— it's a big moment the first time you get in the print edition. Did you actually get the copy of the print edition? Did you see

if you didn't get it delivered that day? So I don't know.

Somebody stole it.

But I don't think it was in the print edition.

OK. Well, we should figure that out. But Tyler is in the Wall Street Journal. You can go to wsj.com, sign up. You can search his name. And he was in the article about Cheeky Pint and how the tech elite are drinking beers. And Tyler broke it down. Do you have anything else? They sort of, they sort of mocked you a little bit, didn't

they? Got

him.

Okay,

but the writer said he didn't watch the full episode because he has a life, but Tyler Cosby of TVPN gave us the breakdown.

So yeah, yeah, that's great. Yeah, the Wall Street Journal said they— the journalist said, I didn't watch Cheeky Pine because I have a life, but this guy over at TVPN, this host Tyler Cosgrove did, and so he hits you with the host, hits you with the full name, spelled it correctly, got the name of the show slightly wrong, but it's okay. We'll hit we'll hit them with a correction for that. But we love the Wall Street Journal, and we love you all for tuning in. We forgot to tell you the most important data point that we that we cover more reliably than the markets. How many days until Christmas? 69 days until Christmas. Let's go.

There you go. Uh, thank you so much. Outside the movie theater yesterday, they were setting up Christmas decorations.

Rick Cruz is one of us. Let's go. That's right. So good, so good. Uh, yeah, it's getting, it's getting, uh, it's getting Christmassy in here. Uh, let's check in on the Christmas weather report in Los Angeles. It's, uh, 94 degrees. Not exactly the Christmas spirit. Uh, Malibu is burning. There's a heat advisory. There's evacuation warnings because it's too hot. But Christmas is always hottest before it gets cold. It's always darkest before dawn.

It's always hottest before the snow falls.

It's always hottest before the snow falls. Yeah, there's no— you have control over— we have invented air conditioning. We don't live in France. We live in America. You have air conditioning. We love you guys. If you want to get Christmas Eve, just turn Turn on the air conditioning. Good night.