How Roberto Nickson Made a VIRAL Kanye West Song with AI

It's just so interesting to me how far we've come with music generation.

This is kind of like a cheat code for any creator out there. Two years ago, none of this stuff existed, and now it's like, central to my workflow. And that's why I think AI is so magic.

The reason I mentioned it and wanted to bring it up with you is because you had the Kanye thing. Was there backlash? Good feedback, Bad feedback?

Mostly negativity for sure. Man, I was getting lambasted.

I think that was like one of the most viral things in AI that I, that I saw.

Oh, yeah, I knew it was going to go viral. I studied this stuff really deeply. Like, there were so many things in that script where I was like, this is going to go nuclear.

Hey, welcome back to the Next Wave podcast. My name is Matt Wolf. I'm here with my co host, Nathan Lanz. And with this show, we bring you all of the latest news and information in the AI world and have fascinating conversations with the people that are building this AI world. And today we've got another really awesome conversation Today we've got Roberto Nixon on the show. Roberto is a serial entrepreneur and he's one of the top creators on Instagram and TikTok in the AI world. You may even know him from his viral Kanye west clone video that was all over the Internet about a year ago. He also recently interviewed Mark Zuckerberg on Instagram all about what they're doing in the world of AI and we have some amazing conversations with him in this episode. We talk about the crossover between content and AI. We talk about the responsibility we have as content creators to keep people the best informed possible in the AI world. And we also talk to him about how the heck did he manage to get Mark Zuckerberg on his show. So many cool rabbit holes we going out in this one. So excited to share it with you. And let's dive right in with Roberto Nixon. Thank you so much, Roberto, for joining us. How you doing today, dude?

I'm pumped to be here, man. Next Wave. First of all, congrats on the podcast. Been listening to everything. I've been a, like, religious follower of you guys for some time, man. Actually, Matt, I, I, I was introduced to you. Forget how it must have been about a year ago now. And I think I've watched every single one of your videos. It's like part of the reason how I keep updated on the space. Everybody always asks me, how do I keep updated? Like, you're one of the names that I always put out There, as well as, as, as Lore and Nathan's newsletter and everything. So, like, I'm pumped to be here, man. I'm excited to talk with you guys. Lots a lot to talk about.

Yeah, there's a lot to cover. You know, I think I first came across you, you had both Instagram reels And I think TikTok were sort of the domain you've been playing in, right? And I came across your TikTok about how you recreated like a Kanye sounding song and that video just went super viral and just I followed along to your journey ever since as well. So it's, you know, it's really cool and I think that's what we want to get into a little bit today. Let's start with your story a little bit too. How did you get into AI in the first place? Like, what was, what was the catalyst for that for you, dude?

Oh, it's a, it's a long story, but I'm going to make it short. So basically the last decade I was actually in product, so my obsession was UI user interfaces. And then I actually got into building iOS apps. So for like the last eight years, or I would say like 202013 to 2021, that's all I was doing. I was just like obsessed with building creativity software for iOS. We had something like 75 million downloads across our suite of apps and then sold some of them 2017, 2018, and then exited the rest of them in 2021. And then I was like, all right, what do, what do I want to do next? Right? Like, I kind of had no idea. I found actually Web3 and it was super interesting. So I kind of got into that. But then I said, you know what, I want to, I want to start making content personally, because for so long I've been creating content, but it's always been faceless. It's always been for my apps or faceless media brands, some of which I still run today. And I decided, you know what, I want to do this individually, personally, and I chose AI because at the time we were building this SaaS platform, it was called a Luna Media generation. So we're now pivoting and we're building this other platform called Post coming out soon, which I'm really excited about. And initially when I started making content, I was like, I'm going to make content because I'm looking for customers, my SaaS. That's it. Nothing else. I'm going to ride this AI trend just because, you know, that's how we're going to do it. But then, few months into it, I fell in love with the creative process, man. And. And, like, now I'm, like, doing stuff. Some of the stuff doesn't even have, like, an economic incentive behind it. It's just, like, me exploring my creative curiosities, and I've really just fallen in love with the process. And now it's like. It's just. I wake up every day excited to just create, whether it be business focus or just creatively focused. And that's sort of where I'm at today, man. And that's kind of like the long story cut short.

That's awesome. I mean, that's. It's the same bug. I feel the same way about video production as I feel about AI, Right? Like, for me, like, that's where the, like, coming back to this sort of Venn diagram metaphor, right? That's where it sort of overlapped for me was I loved production. I love video. I love all the toys. And then I saw AI and I'm like, this is just another of that. It's more like toys, but more. More digital, more online, more SaaS.

Dude, I. I play with so many of them, like, every time. I mean, not as much as you like future tools. This must be, like. You must be tired of actually seeing AI tools. But, yeah, I mean, I. Bro, there's probably, like, 15 tools that are part of my workflow, I would say right now I'm, like, using so many. And the thing about the space, like, you guys know, is use it for, like, two weeks, and then something better comes along, and it's like, things get outdated really, really quickly in the AI space. So that's something that. It can get exhausting. Matt, I really don't know how you do it. Curating future tools. It's like. It's just too much.

I get sick of seeing the same damn tool over and over and over again. That's the frustrating part for me, right, is the people that submit the tools now are mostly like, okay, we've already seen 15 other tools that do this exact same thing. Why do you need to go create another version of it and try to charge people for it? It just doesn't make sense. That's the part I get frustrated with. But when I see something new that I haven't seen before, like, you know, I'm still just as nerdy and excited about it as, you know, any other thing that I've seen for the first time.

Well, a bit. A bit on a tangent, like, because I was kind of guilty of it, like, candidly. With the Luna, we had this great idea. Stable diffusion's unbelievable, but there's no good UI for it. So we're like, we're going to be the first to build this up. But, you know, it was like 5,000 other entrepreneurs who kind of built the same thing. That product went, yeah, we, we hit 25k mrr pretty quickly. But it was, we, we understood very soon, all right, we don't feel like competing against Mid Journey and Google and Adobe. So now we're building something that hopefully people haven't seen before. I'll let you know when that comes out and you can be honest with me. If it's not, you know, good enough for future tools, not a problem.

I'm sure it will be because you're probably approaching it from the same way, you know, someone like us would approach it is like, all right, let's, let's us actually do something that you haven't seen other people doing yet or, you know, at least put a twist on it, right? Like put some sort of twist on it where it's like, okay, maybe it's art generation, but it's niche to this specific industry or something. Right.

Well, let me, let me ask you guys this because I actually think this is a really interesting question. I'd love to get your guys take. It's like, is, are the incumbents just going to take all or is there? I mean, like right now people have had head starts like Mid Journey came out, and to me they're still best in class. But I don't know if you guys saw Imogen 3 from Google. It's like right there, you know, and some of these other tools now, even some of these stable diffusion models that we see on Civitai, they're like very close to Mid Journey's output and some of these head starts have been kind of erased. And I just feel like there is this possibility that the incumbents, you know, Google Meta, Microsoft, they're just, they're going to take the whole pie.

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I don't know, my feeling is like, you know, like, when's the last Google, like, new Google product that like, people actually use? I can't name one. I mean, they own YouTube. That's great. You know, they bought that, but what have they built that people actually use that's new? Nothing basically. So Mid Journey has a lot of users who love the company. And so even if like Google releases something that's like similar in quality, I don't think that means everyone's just going to jump ship to the new Google product. I don't see it fair.

No. 100% fair.

Yeah, I, you know, this is actually a conversation we had with a mutual friend. We had Greg Eisenberg on the show and we actually had this conversation with Greg as, as well. And Greg's point was, you know, the tools that managed to build a community around them, the tools that managed to build like some sort of brand, maybe even in a smaller niche, will probably still get some traction over the big incumbents. I think the general population will probably migrate towards the big incumbents. Right. The Microsoft, the Google's, you know, I would say open AI, but you know, Microsoft is just building everything OpenAI does into it anyway. But I think, you know, the majority of the population will probably move to the big incumbents, but the ones that manage to build community around them will still manage to get traction and build pretty solid businesses around them. Will they turn into multibillion dollar unicorns? Probably not. And the ones that I think do things really unique, that do a good job will probably just get scooped up and acquired by Google. You know, Google has a, they don't really create a lot of new stuff that gets people excited, but they're really good at acquiring products that once people are excited about it, then Google comes in and scoops it up. Right. You know, the, the last big products that, that Google made that are really, really still popular to this day are pretty much Gmail and Android. Right. Everything else that's really popular was something that Google came in and acquired.

Yeah, I mean it's really tough. Even if like, okay, even if your model is a little bit better. If you know, I'm, I'm used to Google Search, although that's even been disrupted. I'm using Perplexity a lot. I'm using Meta AI, I'm using ChatGPT now on my Mac, which has been awesome. But I think for most people it's like this behavior that they've, it's like muscle memory over the last 20 years. If like they're probably still going to use Google Search even if Perplexity or even, you know, if these models like benchmark a little bit higher, the average person couldn't care less. Yeah, right. And so, yeah, man. I mean, it's interesting. I, like, I'm not, I'm not huge on predictions, but I love just being on a play by play like you guys, and so it'll be fascinating to watch it all play out.

I think it's fun to make predictions because the ones that I'm right, all, you know, six months from now, resurface them. And then the ones where I was wrong, I just never mention them again.

Dude, this is so like in finance, like all these stock market guys where they just, every single day they predict the market's going to collapse and, and like the one day that it does, they ride that wave forever and they just build a career off it. Totally get it.

I actually want to go back to something you mentioned. You mentioned that you were used like 15 different tools in your, your creative workflow. Let's, let's dive into that a little bit. I. I'd like to compare notes a little bit because I use a lot of AI tools, a lot of non AI tools in my creative workflow. So yeah, I'm. I'm curious. What are the tools that you find yourself using to actually put the content out?

Well, there was a video I made the other day. It would be. It was such a process. It was actually the longest I've ever spent editing a video. Probably took like 12 hours over the course of a week. And I was like, what did I get myself into? But the process behind that video was first creating a lot of images on Mid Journey. So I would be like, step one, Mid Journey's Upscaler is decent. It's not that great. So then I'd use Magnific. Shout out to Javi. I know he's a mutual friend. I think that's probably the best in class. Upscaler. So went Mid Journey and then upscaled in Magnific. Then there was a lot of work in Photoshop to be done. If you saw the video, you'd understand what I'm getting to. But basically it was like these buildings with the windows changing like different colors and different things happening in the building as it was like zooming in and out. But then I bring it into Photoshop and there was a lot of masking and like manual work in Photoshop. But I also found myself using a lot of generative fill. Like, generative fill is a huge part of my process. So Mid Journey Magnific gen generative fill. And then I needed some elements animated. So then I bring it into Runway and then I'd like mask out the Exact elements that needed animated. And I spent some time working there, which, by the way, Runway man, if they can, like, improve that product just a little bit, like, it.

It's.

It's my favorite UI and like, my favorite product, but I feel like it's lagging behind a little bit. And so that process alone, it's like, hopefully there'll be a tool that'll be able to automate all of this. And I actually think this is why, going back to the incumbent conversation, I actually think Adobe Photoshop and Premiere will be able to do all this stuff. And that's why I was asking. Maybe I won't need to use mid journey magnificent, etc. But for now, I'm using, like, those four tools. And then I put them together in Premiere, and then I found myself editing my audio in the. In the enhanced audio, which is new to Premiere. And so that is an example, five tools being used right there to, like, output this one video. And depending on what I'm doing, I'm finding myself. And. And then. And I saw this thing. Like, some kid did this thing with Kanye. He, like, developed this model and he put it on Google Collab, and it was like this discord. But I was. I was searching through Twitter. Nobody was talking about it except for, like, this small subset of people in this, like, random ass discord. And I went in there and I tried it out. I. And I ran the Google Collab, and, dude, I was like, mind blown. I said, this is going to change everything. And so I made the video, I put it out there, and it was really, I think, the first, like, mainstream introduction of this technology to the world. It went mega viral to the point where I always tell people I've had In the last 18 months, like, 70 videos do a million plus views on, like, short form. You know, I've had 5, 10, 20 million viewed videos. But, like, that's the only video that I consider viral. And the reason why, because that was like, every YouTuber covered it. Like, even the big ones. Unbox therapy, Penguins. Moist, critical. Like, every journalist was reaching out. I talked to a lot of, like, label heads, actually, like, really prominent label heads. Everybody wanted to understand the technology more. You know, like TV interviews. Everybody was, like, reaching out and I said, whoa, this is. This is crazy. And. And then, like, weeks later, it. It. Even when there was a kid named Ghostwriter. Yeah, you guys might remember that. And he was making the dude, like, he had a Drake track with the Weeknd where I was like, if this was a real song, this would be like, in. In Drake's top 10, like, it was just absurd to me. And so, yeah, that was a fun time, probably. Definitely the video that put me on a lot of people's radars. And I've been searching for, like, that viral. Viral crazy moment ever since. That's why I have my ears and eyes always to, like, the AI emerging tech world.

It sucks that, you know, Drake started going after everyone after that too. Like, yeah, that was one of my first big Twitter threads. So I learned about you, and I'm like, oh, this is amazing. And then. And then the Drake thing came out, and then the Grimes AI song as well. And. And I did, like, two big Twitter threads where, like, I wrote my thoughts on all, like, what this means for the future of music.

Yeah.

And those, you know, they went pretty big. And. And then, like, everyone who was making the. The Drake threads or sharing the song, they started getting, like, takedown notices on Twitter.

But, yeah, one, one, one golden nugget for that real quick is, like, definitely a lot of the crazy stuff happening. Like, the tinkerers in the community, they're on Reddit, they're on Discord, they're not so much on, like, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, like, some of the. Some of the more mainstream platforms. And so keeping your. Your ears and eyes to these little subsets and weird little subcultures online is. Is. Is how you can find a lot of the stuff that's, like, starting to bubble.

Yeah. There's been so many videos I've made that just kind of spun up from, like, a cool, like, subreddit that I found or from, like, a random tweet that nobody else noticed. And I'm like, why isn't anybody else talking about this 100%? But I'm curious, was there, like, backlash? Good feedback, bad feedback? Like, what was the. What was the general feeling from that video? Did you get more sort of negativity as a result of it? More positiv. How did that land?

Mostly negativity, for sure. Man, I was getting lambasted, I would say. I knew it was going to go viral, all right, because I'm like, I'm kind of a practitioner. I'm like a. I study this stuff really deeply, like, virality on the Internet, how to create content, how to best. And there were so many things in that script, and some where I was like, this is going to go nuclear. I already knew. I even. I think I tweeted before I'm about to drop a video that's gonna go super viral. Part of the reason Why? I didn't expect. Okay, so like, the woke mob came after me for digital blackface, which was like, CNN had published an article, like, right after. And so everybody is like, oh, this is racist. Like, you know, like a black dude's voice, white dude singing it. Okay, but then the other part was. That part was not deliberate. I didn't quite expect that. The part that was deliberate, like, the way that I engineered the lyrics. One part where I kind of like, took a shot at Kanye for. Remember, he did, like, the whole anti Semitism thing, and I took a shot at him, like, you know, for. For talking down an entire culture. And I said it was ignorant this and that. And then another one was I included a lyric, and I didn't mean it for it to be disrespectful, but I included a lyric about Donda, like, his late mother, right? That was supposed to be, like, endearing, but somebody was like, oh, not only is he digital blackface, he's also talking about his mom as him. This is, I think, moist, critical. Called it, like, diabolical. So, man, I was getting, like, heat left and right, which I kind of expected. So it wasn't. It wasn't too big of a deal. But, yeah, and then from the artist community, all here they come to. To steal the virtue of artists and human artists this and that. So it was just like, negativity straight throughout. But I think a lot of the technologists and stuff appreciated it. But, yeah, certainly an interesting time. That was a. It was an experience for sure.

Did that linger on? Did that continue or not?

It's. It just. And that's another thing with the Internet. Like, there's so much, like, blatant. Not to go on a super tangent, but, like, so much blatant corruption in the world. And they're just like, people don't care anymore. Because what happens online, man, for 24 hours, you get a bunch of people angry on Twitter and, like, writing mean threads comments on Instagram, then everybody forgets, and then they're on to the next thing. And so that's. You know, people are more fickle now than ever.

So how do you think the, like, the sentiment around AI music has changed? Because now, you know, you've got, like, Udo and Suno and stuff like that. And Udio actually has, like, Common and who else? There's, like, a few musicians actually attached to that product now. So it seems like more musicians are getting on board. I was actually at the Google I O event, and Lupe Fiasco was actually there at the Event wandering around and I got to talk to him for a minute, but you know, he's actually working with Google on text effects, but now they have a new one called Music Effects that they're. That they were showing off at Google IO as well. And that's where I actually bumped into Lupe was. He was actually playing around with the music effects tools in real life, like mixing beats and generating AI music. And he was like, super blown away, super impressed by it. So, like, I mean, it feels like the sentiment among musicians is sort of starting to come around. But I don't know, what are your thoughts in general?

Like, I actually think about this a lot. I think anything that's purely AI generated is actually really boring. And I don't think there will ever be a market for it. I just don't. Aside from the initial novelty, like when we first started seeing Mid Journey images, you guys probably remember, it was, it was mind blowing. But now I see an image from Mid Journey and maybe, I don't know, it's AI at first, maybe it looks like an artist, but once I learned that it's purely AI generated, I just don't care. Like, and I think as humans, we all desire that human element. And case in point, like, Sam Altman made this point, it's like, hey, we love the, we love chess as a game. The strategy behind it all this. Robots can outperform humans in chess, but we don't want to watch a robot playing a robot. Like, so there, there has to be that human element. I think the very same in art and in music. So if something's purely AI generated, I actually don't think it'll ever hit. I don't think there'll be a market for it. Now, there is a caveat. There may be a time where literally we don't know, but. But I do think there just has to be that human element, like the story behind the art. So I look at AI as a tool specific to music. I look at, you know, like, there's producers who sample old songs and like recreate them to make beats. So I think people will use AI to like create samples to then sort of remix, maybe create drums, drum kits, that kind of stuff. But I do think there needs to be that human element. Otherwise I just don't think there's a lasting market for purely AI generated media.

Yeah, no, I actually feel kind of the same way. I feel like I'll hear stuff, be really impressed by it, but same thing, when you realize it was made by AI and it wasn't like a human doing something awesome, it kind of lose something a little bit there. I feel like AI is the best sort of helpful tool out there, both for art and music and, you know, all of the creative forms when it comes to writing. Almost all of us now can spot ChatGPT, right? You could read an article and almost immediately go, okay, I feel like Chat GPT wrote this article now, right? But if you have Chat GPT write you an article and then you go back and sort of see that as a rough draft and clean it up and add your own voice and add your own comments and opinions, now you have something that people actually want to read. Same with, like, music, right? Like the. The stuff that Lupe Fiasco is doing, for instance, with text effects. He's helping. They built an AI to help you come up with lyrics and alliterations and rhyming words and synonyms and all that kind of stuff to help with the creative process. But then the musician still gets involved and creates the music. You know, the stuff that Google was showing off with their music effects, it wasn't actually doing any lyrics that sounded like a musician, but it was creating really good beats by taking styles from this musician and this musician, blending them together, creating something novel. And then a rapper or, you know, a singer can go and then put the lyrics over the top of it. That's where I feel like I really shines is like that sort of copilot that. That tool to help you do the creative thing you're trying to do.

I don't know. I think we'll see, like, if it keeps improving, right? Like, I do see it becoming maybe its own genre of music in the future, right? Because, like, yeah, we're talking about, like, AI music now, but, like, okay, three years from now, five years from now, maybe it's producing shit that just, like, blows our minds. It's beyond any human's ability to create, right? And so at that point, I don't know. We'll see.

Well, here's. Here's an interesting question that I'd be curious both of your answers on. If, let's say Drake, for instance, really got on board the AI train. And let's. I don't know if you guys are Drake fans or not, but let's assume you guys are Drake fans. Let's say he trained his voice into the algorithm and he has, like, oversight, but he's making A.I. drake songs, and it's Drake. Drake's oversight. He's sort of, you know, deciding the beats that go underneath it. He's helping steer the lyrics. But the song itself is fully AI generated. Would that change how you feel about this song?

So. So that's the tricky part. Like, if we knew. So a lot of people, once they find out Drake has an army of ghostwriters and this and that, it, like, their affinity for him just goes down a little bit as an artist because, like, oh, he didn't even write the lyrics right. But, yeah, that's the part that's the big caveat, if we know. So do you guys know Varun Maya? He's a. He's a creator. I think he's mostly on Instagram, but all. All of his Instagram content, all of his shorts, are AI generated, meaning it's like his model. And then he just goes and writes a script and it's AI voiced. AI generated. The script may even be. And. But people don't know that. But because he's a real human that had, like, this affinity in this audience and stuff, people don't really mind, I don't think. Now, if that was a pure AI generated creation, like, if that human actually didn't exist, I don't think it would work. But because there was a human and a story and a body of work behind it, it sort of does. And I think it could be the same for music, where it's like, if Drake's. If he has, like, seven shows coming up in the next 10 days, but he's got to get a song out for whatever reason, there may be a chance, like, just get. Get my model to do it. Nobody will know it's in this. It'll be. If it's not now, it'll be indistinguishable very soon. And that's kind of the uncanny valley behind it where it's like, if we know, we're not going to like it, but we probably will never know now from, like, from here on out, if, like, something is wrapped by an artist or just generated by their model, and that. That, to me, is the part where it's a little. Little eerie.

I think in the future, too, when, like, you know, some of these great artists start to pass away, there's gonna be more demand there too.

Right?

Technology gets very good. Drake is no longer around. There's still Drake fans, and now, like, maybe he sold his rights before he passed away and you can still have him in songs. Yeah, right.

I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if musicians actually start writing that kind of stuff into their will. Like, what happens to my. My voice IP once I'm Gone.

But, like, to me, it's. It's. It's still, like, we can make great Tupac songs right now with his. I will just. And he's my favorite hip hop artist of all time. I will still never love them. Like, I love the. Because it's just not. There's something lacking there. There's like, that.

You could attach a human to it, though, right? You could do, like a collaboration song, right? Where it's like, I'm the new Tupac, and now I brought in AI Tupac into my song.

Like, oh, Drake just did that, right, and got sued.

But. But even then, Even then, I think, like, the novelty is cool, but once that wears off, there's no market for it. And so my thing is, will. And will there be regulation or what will happen here? But, like, if I were a label and I wanted it to max, like, say I'm representing Drake and he died, like, do you then just say this was. These were unreleased vocals from when he was alive? Because that will hit a lot. And so then it becomes like an ethical and a moral question, maybe legal, maybe regulatory. So, yeah, man, there's so many. It's. It's. It's so fun to be at the forefront of all this stuff because there's so many questions and it's. And it's all being sort of written in real time, but.

Oh, yeah, we found a new Beatles album. It just was hidden in a storage somewhere.

Right, right. And. And that would be more impactful than we just generated John Lennon's voice. Nobody's. You know this. So that. That's where I feel. It's like we need the human element. There won't be a market for purely AI generated stuff. But the big question, will we even know?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, a lot of the vocals from these musicians, too, are from their own personal experiences, their life experiences. Right.

You.

You know, talking about Tupac, right?

He's.

He lived a pretty crazy life. So his songs are all about the life that he lived. So songs that came out now wouldn't represent his thoughts, his feelings, his life story at all. And I think there's that element to it that people just know that this isn't really him. And that just diminishes it quite by quite a bit, I think.

Yeah. I mean, in art theory, it's a concept called the aura. So it's like, hey, there's artists today that can replicate the Mona Lisa to exact perfection. But we never. It'll never hit the same because of that aura. Like, this was this was a piece of cardboard or whatever it was that Leonardo da Vinci himself sculpted. This was in different fires and a war. It almost broke down. It passed the hands of different monarchs through history. And like, that's what makes it compelling. It's not like the actual art or the design or the way that the colors are thrown together. It's. It's the story behind it. And I think it's with all media, all art, it's like we're drawn to the story behind something. Piece of art, a piece of media, not so much like the actual construction of the. Whatever it is. And so I think we'll see that play out with AI where it's like, yeah, again, to our earlier example, a purely AI generated mid journey. It's just not interesting that I don't care how cool it is or how impressive, it's like, it's not interesting. I need the story behind the art, the human element.

I'm going to shift gears here for a minute too. I want to talk about a little bit about, like, the ethics of content creation, because this is something that, I mean, I battle with it a little bit. It's not too big of a battle because I know who I'm making the content for, but there's this sort of battle between, you know, creating the content for the audience and making them aware of what's out there and what's not out there. But then you also have the creators, the creators of the products, right, the software companies. You know, in my case, lately it's been the Googles and the Microsofts of the world who will actually, like, pay me to fly out to their events so that I'll talk about them in videos.

And.

And then I have this sort of dilemma, do I, If I'm not impressed with what they're showing me, but they paid me to be there to talk about what they're showing me. Am I tailoring to the audience? Am I tailoring to Google?

Did you do that with Google?

If you've watched my Google videos, you know, I don't, but. But, you know, this is something that I wanted to talk with you about because it's something that I've struggled with a little more recently because I've had companies come to me and offer me like equity to be an advisor in the company or who, you know, may have reached out because they want. They want me to be an investor in their company or something like that. And for the most part, I've said no to almost all of them because I worry about if I'VE got skin in the game for some of these companies. Is it going to, you know, taint how the audience sees me talking about that product? Product. And so it's something that's always kind of on the top of my mind of, you know, how do I, how do I strike this balance between the thing that's going to make me money as an entrepreneur but also being true to the audience and making the best piece of content for my audience.

I think it's super important. And then, and then I definitely want to hear your guys thoughts because it's something I struggle with a lot. I actually have two recent examples. So one was I, I was doing some work for Rabbit. Obviously you know, disclose paid promo before the product actually came out. So I did two, I think sponsored posts for them and actually I should like what they were building. I thought it was like whimsical, it was charming, it was $200 no subscription. I was like there's a, there's a market for this. And then I had a paid post sponsorship deal lined up. I got the product, I was going to review it and you know, make a glowing little not so much a review but like almost like a commercial online, like a short form video. Tik Tok, Instagram, Twitter, etc. And it was just not something that I was comfortable recommending to my audience. Not that it's a bad product, I think there could be a future for it, I think there could be a market for it, et cetera. Like look, so I didn't want to like knock Rabbit or knock the team but I canceled the deal. I was like this is not something comfortable. And by the way, it was like I'm not like this super rich dude where I can just cancel deals. Not a big deal. Like right now my creator business, sponsored ships and ad and brand deals and stuff probably represents 50 to 60% of my revenue. And so, and it was like a pretty well paid thing so it wasn't like easy to do. But I do feel like as creators we got to take those short term hits if we're playing in decades for that long term trust. Because I do think that especially in the age of AI, trust is going to be the commodity like everything else can be replicated. Another example was Google. Like I was invited to, to the dinner you went to Matt. I couldn't make it because I had something to do in la. But I love Google. I love the relationship I have with the DeepMind team, etc. But I didn't really love the presentation. I thought it was lackluster. Not the technology that they were presenting, but the way that they presented it. And so I went on threads and I wrote this was really boring. Google has some work to do on productizing and on, you know, showmanship and presentation, all that kind of stuff. Like, I worry that will probably hurt me. Like they'll probably pull back some potential future deals because it's like, well, this guy's talking negatively about us online. But it's like, those are my honest and true thoughts. I don't want to hold them back just because I may get paid by them in the future. And it's really tricky, man. I mean like MKBHD obviously has been like super big news over the last month on this topic itself. And so my answer would be protect the long term trust with your audience at all costs. Even if, you know, there's some short term money that you got to leave on the table.

In the early days of my newsletter lore, you know, I had this sponsor, there was this Korean startup, I was doing like AI pictures kind of stuff early on and they sponsored the newsletter for like a month, paid very well, and then they just like disappeared and then didn't say anything, like, didn't notify me. Like, I think I may even put up an ad like right when their website went down. And then, and then some users like, you know, emailed me like, hey, I like paid for like a monthly subscription or whatever. And like now the website's just like gone. And so that was like a first experience for me. Like, oh, like you gotta be careful like which sponsors you take. You know, it wasn't huge money at the time, but it was still, it was like, God, that's a horrible experience. And then for, and obviously you lose a lot of trust by doing that. Right? And actually for a while I stopped taking sponsors for that reason.

Yeah, no, I'm on the same page. I think, I think in what we're doing, the credibility and the trust is everything. That is our biggest currency. That's what matters more than anything. And you know, when it comes to companies like Google.

Right.

I've made a lot of videos that were critical of Google. You know, back when they put out their Gemini promo video, I was very, very critical of them, kind of hiding the fact that this wasn't real time. And I put out a whole video about how disappointed I was in Google and I've worked with Google in the past and I'm working with Google again. So the fact that I'm working with Google again now shows that they get over it. Right? At the end of the day, if you build a brand that has an audience and people are paying attention to what you say, these companies are going to get over the fact that you were negative about them once because they know that you have the audience. You're, you're the trusted voice that people are checking in on. And so, you know, I would say for every one sponsor that I have on my channel, in my newsletter, There was probably 10 that I said no to. I say no. Like, I leave so much money on the table because I look at their product and go, I don't want to promote this. Like, I can already do this inside of ChatGPT. You just like put a wrapper around it and are charging the same amount as Chad. Why did I pay 20 bucks a month to do this thing when I can do it in ChatGPT plus everything else Chat GPT does, like, it just doesn't make sense to me. I'm not going to talk about it. It feels like I'd be pointing my audience to something that I don't think is valuable to them. So I've just had that philosophy of like, the trust and the credibility is 100% what we need to live by as content creators. And as soon as you lose that and they start to think of you as like a sellout, then, you know, it's all downhill from there. And again, these companies, if you've got the audience, they'll forgive you. They'll come back.

First of all, respect to you. And I think that's why you're so respected in the space and respect to Google now. I think it's important for companies to take that criticism, you know, if they got to take the bad with the good, because some companies do weaponize it. I don't know if you guys follow, like Dr. Disrespect. He's one of my favorite. I think he's like one of the greatest entertainers in the world. But like, very famously, Call of Duty is blacklisted him. He's not invited any events. He's not, you know, every other creator gets a deal from Call of Duty. He doesn't because he likes to knock the game and, and he like insults the game and he's like, these developers are lazy and this and that. He's like, he's given his honest thoughts and. But I think long term that works out even better for Dr. Disrespect because he's way more trusted than these other creators who may just be looked at as like a NASCAR with 40 logos on them. They don't like. You don't really care what they have to say just because, you know, they're just up for sale to the highest bidder.

I just think it's so important, especially as being in an industry that's so sort of uncertain, feeling like, I don't know if you guys feel this way at all, but when I started making content around AI, this was, you know, somewhere mid 2021 was when I really started to make content about AI. And then I really ramped it up in 2022. But when I was making content about AI in the early days, I had zero, zero inclination that this was a controversial topic. Like this was just me going, this is a really fun tool. Everybody should know about this. Why don't more people go play with this mid journey thing? Why is nobody talking about this? Like this GPT3 thing? Like you can go play with it on OpenAI's Playground. This is prior to chat GPT. You can go play with this on OpenAI's Playground and have it write copy for you and have it and have conversations with this thing. Why aren't more people talking about this? This is so much fun. That was like my approach when I started creating content around. I was just like, this is just fun stuff. I had no clue that this was going to be so controversial. And as you know, more and more, I don't really want to say hate, but more and more like anti AI doomerism, that kind of stuff started to bubble up and I started to get more of that kind of stuff on my comments and my feedback. It actually made me go, okay, I want to understand why people are so scared of this. Why, like what, what is the big deal with this? What are the fears? And so I've always tried to take this like very empathetic approach of like, I really, really think this stuff is cool and fun and I see a lot of use cases for it. But I also understand that a lot of people are scared of this now and I need to like sort of lean into that and I need to talk about that narrative as well. And I need to, you know, help people that have those fears kind of get over those fears and even to some degree talk a little bit about the fears that are in my opinion, like actual worthy fears to think about. You know, things like the, the deep fake scams of like the, the voice cloning where people are calling other people using cloned voices and scamming them out of money. Or you know, we talked about A story on the show about somebody in, I think it was Hong Kong that got scammed out of $25 million over a deep fake zoom call. Right? Like, and so there are like these genuinely scary things. And I think it's important to be very holistic with what we talk about because there is that fear. And not building that trust with people in this time where everybody feels so uncertain just seems like a very, very short sighted approach to content creation.

Yeah, I mean, look, some of the fears are warranted, right? Like there are voice actors on Fiverr, for example. They're probably going to get wiped out. And, and so I understand it. I. And so, but another thing that I often say is like, the more that we talk about this stuff, the more people understand what's going on. And I do think that knowledge is power. And you know, the more we talk about it and the more other creators and other people talk about it, the less chance it has to be used maliciously because now we're. Oh, wait a second, I just got call from my aunt demanding money. I saw this on Twitter. I saw Matt talking about this on, on YouTube. Like, this could be a scam. You're a little bit more aware and so the impact, the negative impact that it could have is going to diminish. So I actually just think it's, it's. First of all, forget the comments, man. Like, this is one thing I've learned about being a creator on the, on the Internet is like once you have like a really intimate understanding of human psychology, you begin to understand why different comments are happening. Okay, this, this comes from fear. This is a comment that's rooted in insecurity. Oh, I see this. And so like all of a sudden you have like this shield and invincibility surrounding you once you understand like kind of the psychology behind it. Because I think talking about this stuff is not a negative. I think it's definitely a net positive because of that, like, people have to understand what's going on. This is technology that's going to impact everybody's life. And so, you know, kudos to you guys for staying on top of it and like covering like, Matt, like your YouTube channel is. Dude, it's like an encyclopedia. It's like you can go. It's like a historical time capsule. It's amazing.

I really appreciate that. And you are as well too. I love following you on Instagram. You're. The videos you put out on Instagram are amazing. I believe you're on TikTok as well, but I mostly see you On Instagram. I'm not really on TikTok. I don't even know if Tick Tock's gonna exist in nine months or not, but that's a whole different rabbit hole.

Real quick, though. Prediction, Nathan. What is TikTok's fate like? Quick prediction.

Oh, what's. Okay, so I'm, you know, I don't.

Know if you know that.

So I studied Mandarin in Taiwan, so I'm probably biased against China.

So.

So I'm definitely very, you know, I'm concerned about China. That's actually one of the big reasons I'm like a. You know, I don't know. I don't know if I'd call myself a member of eac, but, you know, I do want to. For. For America to win at AI. I think it's very important. And so I don't think China should win at AI I think that'd be very bad for the world and for freedom. And so I'm. I. I think that Tick Tock will get divested. I think that they, like, yeah, sure, they're saying that they won't do that. And. And the reason they're saying they won't is because they. They definitely are. They definitely do indirectly have connections to the Chinese government. Like, every. Like. Like China. Like, most people don't realize this, but, like, I think it was like, maybe four years ago, something like this, you know, because I had a. I have a friend in the Chinese government, actually used to spend time out there. They try to get me to move out there and set up an office for me maybe 10 years ago. And so I got a lot behind the scenes. And probably five years ago, the Chinese government put a member of the government on every single board of every major tech company. And almost nobody reported on it. But everybody who knows people in China, they all know this. It's like, holy crap, that happened, and it happened overnight, where all of a sudden there's a board member on every single major tech company in China. And that board member, even if they're just one board member, they basically have control of the companies now. And so, yeah, I don't think we should have a company that has any connection to the Chinese government having influence on young people in America. And so my prediction is it will be divested. And I think that's a good thing.

I do think that probably some company in the US Will buy them, but they're really hesitant about giving another company access to their algorithm. Right. So I feel like if that does happen, it'll end up being a Watered down version of TikTok. And yeah, I don't really know because I'm not somebody that uses TikTok much. I've posted like three videos ever that have never gotten any traction and I've Maybe scrolled the TikTok feed twice my entire life. So I don't know a whole lot about TikTok, just other than what I hear in the news. But I do think they'll end up working with some American company to, you know, get it sold, but then there'll be some sort of weird thing where they don't actually get access to the algorithm and then it'll be a watered down version of TikTok and then I think reels will end up just taking over and replacing TikTok anyway. But again, that is a, you know, it's not a very hot take because I don't really know what I'm talking about in that realm.

We made an interesting point about reels. Like I'm so bullish on reels. Actually, the reels business already generates more revenue than TikTok's entire business. And I think we're going to continue to see that as creators, you know, sort of start spreading their eggs across different baskets. Because I do think it's going to get, I think it's going to get banned, like maybe just China sort of using that as leverage, saying that divestiture is not an option, this and that. But it is funny, man. It's like the one thing that legislators in the United States from the left and the right can agree on. And so it's like they're very determined to take TikTok out. I do think, I do think it eventually happens. And you know, just six months ago I would have told you no. That's another reason why I'm very bullish on Meta. I think they're the biggest beneficiaries of, and YouTube, Google, of course, but I think they're the biggest beneficiaries of TikTok's potential demise.

Yeah, it's funny you mentioned that. As soon as Meta started open sourcing their Llama models and stuff like that, I started buying up stock in Meta because I was like, all right, Meta's. Actually, Meta's redemption arc just started and I feel. Not financial advice, not financial advice.

I'm not telling anybody, go buy Meta stock. But I went and bought Meta stock as soon as they started open sourcing because I went, all right, Meta, I think Meta's doing the right thing here. I think, I think their, their redemption story is, is is turning the corner. Right. I feel like Mark Zuckerberg has gotten some, you know, bad press in recent years, but I think what they're, the direction they're taking Meta in is the right direction with the open source and the really putting the focus on AI and you know, I, I'm personally still bullish on like VR and the meta quest and stuff. I have a meta quest. It is really, really fun when you get in there and play with groups. So, yeah, I, I, I'm a fan of Meta.

I think the Zuckerberg arc has been hilarious, like, you know, just to see his transition. So I, I did, I got to say hi to him one time, but he has no idea who I am. He was like at a party, at a game industry party way back in the day and, but just seeing how he's changed, he looks dramatically different now. And, and there was a while, you know, there was a period where he was like learning Mandarin and he was trying to get Facebook into China.

I mean, Facebook being banned in China, that's another reason. It's like, hey, the reciprocity here is another reason why I'm not super against TikTok being banned. But yeah, coming to, dude, I've been buying a lot of Meta stock and definitely not financial advice because if you follow my trade, you're going to go bankrupt. I'm just letting you know. But, but I think if I had a, I do think Facebook's on the way to a $2 trillion market cap. I think it'll happen in the next three years and I think Mark Zuckerberg is going to be the richest person in the world. I just, I mean, 4 billion people using their products. I think again, like, I think people still highly undervalue the power of Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, the reality labs and all that stuff is, is still yet to, to be seen. But I think the, the biggest reason that I'm bullish on Metta and I just interviewed Mark Zuckerberg. So obviously, like there's a bias there, but I think it's him. Like he's a founder. He's been there for 20 plus years now. He's the, maybe the most, like, he's a killer. He's a, like he's the most competitive person I think in entrepreneurship. Like he, he wants it all, he's coming for it all. He actually just wore a shirt for his 40th birthday post that says I think Death to Carthage, which is basically it's, it's a, it's a modern day sort of Rallying war cry. And to me, it represented. I don't have any insider information, but to me, it represented like, he wants to win. He wants all the smoke. He's coming. Like, the guy is kind of like Sam Altman, just absurdly competitive. And I. That's one guy that I, you know, much like Tom Brady, much like Kobe back in the. It's like one guy that I could just never bet against.

Yeah. Yeah. Did you watch the roast, by the way?

I love the roast. And by the way, I have. Dude, I have an idea. Like, everybody, okay? Like, Zuckerberg's arc has been incredible. Like, he's been, you know, and by the way, working with his PR and communications teams. I get it. Like, these people are sharp. Like, they are so tuned into the culture. They're brilliant. I. I love the whole experience, but I think him or Elon or Sam Altman or Sundar, one of these guys should have a roast. Because if you want to, like, humanize and endear people to a founder, like, there's no better way to be humanized and endeared than self deprecation and getting shit on for two hours by famous commit. So if anybody's out there from Zuck, Elon, whoever's team, like, get one of these guys on a roast, man, I think it's a good move.

That's such a great idea. But speaking of Zuck, is there any, like, what's the story behind how you got him? I don't know if that's something you're open to sharing or not, but is there a story there? Like, how did you actually land Zuck for an interview?

Yeah, man. I mean, the. The first thing I'll say is a lot of luck involved. But then I also say that kind of just a PSA to anybody listening. You can create your own luck, you know, and. And so basically, what. What I think happened, I don't know. I haven't asked his team why me? But I've been. I've been creating content now about emerging tech on Instagram for over two years now. Not necessarily in my page, but. But on my media pages. One is called Metaverse, second is a three. The other one, Aluna AI. And I've put a lot of work into that, man. Like, a lot, a lot of work. Especially early in the day, I'd have, like, these long, you know, 10 post carousels. So much information, data rich, really well designed, and obviously caught the eye of a lot of people at Meta, and I've befriended. Dude, this is another reason why I Bought so much stock. Like I've, I have so many friends at Meta now and the teams there are just so talented man across, like all of their endeavors. And I'm doing a lot of work with Meta over this year. Like we're going to Cannes in a month and like got a lot of stuff going on. But I've befriended a lot of people in Meta and I've just like developed this really great relationship with them and they always hit me up and it's like, hey, we got some news dropping. Do you mind like covering it, maybe making a video, putting on Metaverse or whatever. And I'm like always happy to do it just because I love this stuff that you know, and I've never asked for anything in return. So like my intuition says that because I'm like an Instagram first creator and I've been like doing so much for them for two years now without ever asking for anything in return. I think it's almost like this karma that that was just put out there and they sort of honored me and rewarded me with it for that. That's my guess. I don't, I don't know for sure, but I just tell people yet. Luck. But you can create your own luck. And I think the, the last two, two and a half years creating on Instagram has, has kind of proven that.

You know, that actually leads me something that I, I wasn't planning on asking you, but now I'm, I'm curious because you brought it up. Like, how, how does like the, the monetization on Instagram work? Is it mostly like sponsors sponsoring your content or does Meta actually pay you similar to like how YouTube and Twitter does now?

No, definitely not off, off platform. And like that's another fascinating conversation that, that we can get into the economics of, of why it's. Even though TikTok with the creativity program is doing it, but I think they're subsidizing a lot. I don't think that's a long term thing. But you know, YouTube, the magic of YouTube is like, hey, you have pre roll, you have interstitial, you have like all these ad placements. And because it's an 8 plus minute video, 20 minute in your case sometimes 30, 40 minute video, it's like they can attribute that direct ad revenue to the creator bringing in these people on Instagram, it doesn't Instagram and Tik Tok, like when I say a lot people are more fans of the platform than they are the creator and on YouTube people are more fans of the creator than they are necessarily the platform. So like TikTok, Instagram is doing the heavy lifting, getting the discovery, getting people to use, making their app sticky, getting people to use it. And like you're a beneficiary of that. But it's hard to pinpoint and attribute, you know, where the revenue should be directed. So like I understand why they don't pay directors or sorry, creators directly, but yet all of my revenue on Instagram, I just use that as a discoverability and then the revenue happens third party, whether it be sponsors, ads, paid communities, whatever it might be. But yeah, they don't paid creators. Well they do, but it's not a lot. Like I think one month I had like 30 million views and I got paid like $32. So.

Yeah, Twitter actually pays better than that.

Dude, everything pays better than that. But. But yeah, that's what I say. Like Instagram, the discovery platform with relationship components built in. But if you're looking to get paid direct from platform, you. I mean YouTube is the place to be 100%.

Well, I think, you know, I think, I think we could probably have like another hour long conversation but I think we'll have to have you back on, you know, as one of our more regular guests because I feel like we could probably nerd out frequently about whatever is going on. But you know, I do want to be respectful of your time.

Dude, I could go on for hours and hours. So anytime you guys need like a third, even like co host or whatever, you just want to riff, I'm always available and. But I do want to leave with a question. What do you guys think? Wwdc. I think this episode will go out before then. So all eyes on Apple. Just we don't have to get into it. Super. But from 1 to 10, like how big of an impact or how, yeah, how impactful is that event going to be you guys think? From 1 to 10?

3. So they just now inked the deal with OpenAI. So that tells me two things. Like if they're partnering with OpenAI that means, I mean I think they're going to be quite reliant on OpenAI and so I doubt that we're going to see a major Siri update because they're probably relying on OpenAI for that. So I think a month is so soon for them to have something amazing new, you know, with Siri by then. But who knows, maybe this has been.

In the works and unless we saw a sneak peek of what Siri is going to be on Monday with the OpenAI GPT4O demo.

Yeah. That's what Siri is. Yeah, that could be.

That'd be like a huge alliance between OpenAI, Microsoft and Apple. And then I guess you'll have, you know, Amazon will be, you know, partner.

With Anthropic is really going to be a piece of that deal. I don't think Microsoft and Apple still have much love for each other, but I don't know, it'll be interesting because it feels like Microsoft and OpenAI are starting to make moves to sort of separate from each other a little bit, Right?

Yeah, but structurally that's very hard. Like unless OpenAI comes out with AGI.

Which, you know, and they determine what AGI is. So that's a whole nother. Like I said, we'll do another episode for all this, but yeah, Matt, one to ten out of curiosity, you expect, like, where are your expectation levels for wwdc?

I. Not as great. The expectation was a lot bigger last year because we knew Vision Pro was coming this year. I feel like the big thing they're going to be talking about is, you know, whatever updates they make to Siri.

And I think it's gonna be stuff that we've already seen before. Right. It'll be new to Apple, but those of us that are in the AI world paying attention, you know, that have seen a few things already.

Yeah.

Gonna feel like nothing new to us.

That's.

That's kind of what I'm expecting.

So. So my prediction is, like you just said, it's what we saw with OpenAI GPT4O and with Google's Project Astra. I think that was a sneak peek, sort of a preview of what we're going to see with iOS where it's like, Siri is going to be revamped. It's going to be powered by some sort of omni modal LLM that uses a lot of the hardware on the device. And I think it's basically going to power the entire ecosystem of Apple devices. But the difference is they're going to present it in such a spectacular way. Like I made this point where Google, it's like they're presenting this incredible technology, but they don't make us excited about it. Where Apple sometimes presents like a feature that nobody ever uses or nobody ever will use, but we're like, oh my God, it's the coolest thing I've ever seen. And so even if they just announced sort of what we already expect and what we already have seen, the way that they will announce it is going to get people psyched. So I'm like, I'm more interested in the presentation, the cinematography, the visuals, the. So I'm really excited, man. I have a lot of. I have a high expectation, so I'm just setting myself up to be let down. But we'll see.

I think behind the scenes some really big things are probably happening because like OpenAI partnering with Apple and then Apple's been saying that they're building all these new chips that are getting better and better for AI, you know, and you combine that with Sam Altman saying that the big limitation on AI right now is chips and having more chips and not just relying on Nvidia. You know, I would be surprised if there's some huge alliance going on there where like OpenAI in Apple are going to collaborate on new AI chips or something in the future.

The M4 may be a puzzle piece there, but all really interesting, man. I'm really excited for WWDC and for your video covering it, Matt. I'll be the first one that I watch.

Yeah, I want to actually be at WWDC this year. But yeah, no, I'm excited to watch the stream and talk about it.

It's better when you're not there because then you're in the lab, like ready to crank something out.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, going to these events is really cool because you actually get to meet the people in the company. And I made a point in my, my video about the, the Google IO event is that it's like really easy to sort of think of these Googles and Apples and Microsoft as these big faceless companies that they just want your data and they don't really care about the individual. But then you go to these events and you talk to the engineer that built this one feature that they're going to be announcing on stage today. And that one engineer is like nervous and anxious and excited that they're, they're. One thing that they, you know, that, that they made is being presented today and they can't wait to see how it's being perceived. And they're all giddy and dirty and excited about this, this piece that they worked on. And you start to realize the humanity at these companies. You start to realize that Google isn't a giant faceless company. It's made up of people that are just as excited and nerdy about all of this stuff as we are. But, you know, on the news and all of that, you just see it as this giant faceless corporation. And I think putting faces to these companies and, you know, having that sense of humanity behind, like, the people actually engineering these things is really, really powerful. And, you know, I'll make YouTube videos, talking about, like, the latest thing Google just dropped, and, like, half the comments. I know we need to ignore the comments, but half the comments will be things like, oh, Google's evil. Why are you even talking about them? Oh, they're all just trying to harvest our data. They don't care about you. But going to these events, you realize that's not really fully the truth. And so that is so.

Well, so well said, man. I'll end it with this. Like, Mark Zuckerberg was very similar. Like, I have. I'm living in Charlotte right now. I have, like, a lot of family who are. Who are kind of, like, suspicious of Mark Zuckerberg and that he was a.

Lizard person or whatever.

Isn't he, like, Illuminati, like, trying to just, like, ruin the world? And I'm talking to the guy, and he's just, like, the craziest part about interviewing him, he's like. It was like talking to you guys. He's just a bro. Yeah, he's just one of us. He loves tech. I mean, with $150 billion in his bank account, but he. He really loves this stuff, man. He's like a. A tinkerer at heart. Like, he was so personable. I was like, he's gonna probably be in a rush or maybe, like, you know, like, here's another funny thing. Like, I looked it up last year, you know, his net worth ballooned, and it was. It amounted to nine and a half million dollars per hour that he made. So I was like, okay, so my 40 minutes with him is worth, like, $7 million to the guy. He's going to be, like, in a rush. Like, hurry up. But we got to chat, like, five minutes before, five minutes after. Like, he. He even wanted to stay longer, just, like, shooting the shit about the ufc. But his team was like, all right, we got to go. Next meeting, whatever. But he was just so weirdly normal.

Yeah, yeah.

And I was kind of off put by that. I was expecting somebody, just kind of, like, annoyed that he had to talk to me. But, yeah, man, it was a really cool experience. So to your point, like, these people working at these companies are actual human beings who love what they're doing. They're not. They're not trying to destroy humanity.

Well, thanks again for hanging out with us today and nerding out with us.

Yeah, that was a lot of fun, guys. I love this. That was awesome.