EP 8: AMC’s Gold Mine, The Business of Memes, Glossier Article, and We’re Joined by Packy McCormick and Roseanne Wincek

Foreign.

Welcome to the eighth episode of three Cartoon Avatars. I'm your host Logan Bartlett and I'm joined today by my esteemed co host, the George Costanzo Venture Capital, Zach Kukoff. And a special guest appearance on the pod, Mr. Not Boring himself, Packy McCormick. How are we doing guys?

Doing well.

First ever guest on the pod.

I mean I really appreciate it. I was feeling left out from ban crypto so to be the fourth white host on this podcast.

Yeah. What did you, what, what did we say before we came on? We're, we're two Asian men away from being the bank crypto team. Is that right?

Two Asian men and one one white men.

Yeah, exactly. So, so for people listening, Nikita is on a flight I think down to Mexico for a vacation this week. So we asked for a, a pinch hitter. Paki and I have known each other actually at this point dating back 12 plus years. I think we were, we were in New York together as young 22 year olds, bright eyed and not yet wise to the world. And somehow our paths have collided now into this, into this tech universe. So yeah, we had some fun.

We, we took party buses down to the beach together.

That was your original business.

Like was my original startup. Yeah, it was. Was. I would run party buses from New York to the Jersey, the Hamptons on the weekends. Logan would be sitting there either in the house once we got down or sometimes I think even on the bus on his laptop doing investment banking work.

That's right. I feel like I, I stayed with your family once while we were down there. We had like a, a beach house that was whatever like 20, 22 year olds or 23 year olds.

No, no, it was better than that. It was a two sided house with one side of the house was 35 girls and the other side of the house was 35 guys. It was, we were so much cooler then.

Yeah. That. Yeah. I can't believe we actually did that. That was. Yeah. Very, very interesting. But Pack, have you ever told the story, I mean has the, has Thorogo ever made an appearance at some point and like how that all led to not boring as an entrepreneurial endeavor.

Yeah, I don't know if it's necessarily a straight line. Led to not boring. Although it helped me get a job at Breather because our CEO is an iconoclast and didn't want, didn't want an investment banker. But because I had done some like really shitty startup, I think that that helped startup like quotes, if you're listening at home, you know, really shitty thing on the side that helped me get the job. And then, you know, here we are six years later and I'm here. The other story we haven't told is that Logan and I also went to Alabama to watch watch my tide, in fact became my tide that weekend just absolutely destroyed the balls. And I've never seen Logan or maybe anybody as sad as he was sitting in the stands as Alabama just picked Tennessee.

Here I am sitting in like this ridiculous 1996 Tennessee Polo after, after Tennessee had a good first round showing in the March Madness tournament. But I had actually, I had actually forgotten that sometimes on Facebook that picture will re emerge of us in Alabama like Ewing Kirk in in like Alabama gear, me and some oversized pants and and some Tennessee polo. Well, thank you for, thank you for joining us. The first guest that we've had will I think the level of you have a observational lens into this weird world that we live in that I think will bring in a unique angle here. So thanks for coming on.

My pleasure. I hope not to disappoint. This will be fun.

So the first topic we want to hit this week is AMC. One of the OG meme stocks from a year ago invested $28 million into Highcroft Mining Holding Corporation, which owns a 70,000acre mine in Nevada. AMC reports that they are sitting on some 15 million ounces of gold deposits and some 600 million ounces of silver deposits. Their CEO, Adam Aaron, characterized the investment as a bold diversification move. He went on to say, our strategic investment being announced today is the result of having identified a company in an unrelated industry that appears to just be like AMC of a year ago. So went on. They got criticized by a bunch of people. Michael Pachter of Webb Bush called the move idiotic, specifically pointing to AMC's debt. He said, it's embarrassingly stupid. By that, I don't mean investing in a gold mine is embarrassingly stupid. I mean that it's inappropriate for a movie theater to step so far out of their core business and into something completely unrelated that will not drive any traffic to theaters. Paki, do you have any thoughts on this? As someone very attuned to the meme

world of investing, Matt Levine, in one of the best articles that I've read recently on anything not just this topic, compared it to kind of like the meme stock final exam. Like 2022 was a lot less fun in the markets. 2021 was so much fun. There are meme stocks everywhere. There are SPACs everywhere. And this has everything. Highcroft was itself a spac that had some absurd projections about its silver and gold production that it would have in 2021 and 2022. It's fallen like deeply, deeply, deeply short of that. It actually isn't producing any silver or gold right now. And he also said he had this gray line about Warren Buffett. He said one way to interpret this is that Adam Aaron is the sort of Warren Buffett of meme stocks. Yes, sure, in the sense that he is now apparently building a diversified conglomerate of unrelated businesses. But also the basic way that Warren Buffett works is when he announces an investment in a stock, that stock goes up. He knows that and companies know that and he charges them for it. And I think it's a really funny way of viewing AMC's role. It's never going to work like this falls apart so quickly. But it is funny to view AMC that way.

I like. I'm with you, Paki. I just can't imagine a world where anyone ever looks at this outside of the lens of meme stock investing and thinks it's a smart choice. Like it just doesn't make any sense for me at all.

Well, I mean, you've said it there. Like outside of the lens of meme stock investing is just not a way that anybody would ever look at this. But I think that Hycraft's stock has already come down, still up 250% over the past couple of weeks, I guess as whispers and they're buying started getting out. So it's successful there. There's another piece of this which apparently is they had a 5 million or $500 million offering ready to dump on retail as well. And so they're probably unloading some of that. And so they're hoping that the same thing that happens to an AMC happens here, which is a business that was deep, deep, deep trouble, might actually raise the equity cash that it needs to raise to get out of that trouble. If they pull this off again, maybe there is an actual path where AMC just does this and that's its job. But will be very interesting to see

if retail falls for this.

It's pretty funny. This guy, Adam Aaron, like I was looking up his bio and he seems like once upon a time he was a pretty serious dude. Like he was a, he's a co owner of the Sixers. He was their CEO. Before that he was the President CEO of Norwegian Cruise Line. He was the CEO of Vail Resorts. And like I just. He's 67 years old and he went to Harvard cum laude, like government major and defined himself as, like, a strategy, leaning into this crypto or this meme stock world as a way of financing, like, debt and to cover their obligations. I just wonder if he's sitting there being like, what the fuck did I get myself into? Just, like, rubbing his hand into his eyes being like, I think there's a path here and it involves leaning into the joke and investing in gold, right? Like, what's actually going through this guy's mind right now?

I think Covid broke a lot of people's brains, and I can't even imagine being in the center of one of these huge meme stock plays. I can't imagine that it doesn't just warp for the rest of your life the way that you view the world, and that any real hard work that he's put in in his previous 66 years before this seems kind of silly when you can just sit there and become a meme and make and add billions and billions and billions of dollars to your market cap. So I think it's probably as much that as anything else.

It's more depressing than silly. Like, imagine how, what it feels like imagine, by the way, like, you're starting your career right now and the options are, do you want to come share to college and work really hard and build a traditional career, or do you want to fuck around and find out and see if you can build a huge business that way? Like, I. I can't imagine being a fresh grad and not picking option B around. And find out when you look at the most, well, some of the most, at least successful people in the modern economy who have made phenomenal, phenomenal fortunes by fucking around, well, you can take

the wrong lessons from Elon, too, and be like, look, the richest man in the world is just fucking around on Twitter all day, forgetting that he launched a space company, an electric vehicle company, solar company, and a boring company. But, yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people do take that wrong, that wrong lesson.

I think for every Elon, there's 15 Adam Aaron, right? Like, how many people are going to say, sure, I'll do the thing of working really hard, launching five different companies, and maybe on top, I'll sprinkle in some engagement enthusiasm with the meme world versus some people say, hey, the core of what I'm going to do is be a fun meme, and maybe on top, I'll sprinkle in the occasional bout of hard work.

I'm actually kind of surprised there aren't more. Like, this guy's 67 years old. He's kind of an old white man that, you know, went to Harvard from Philly, and I'm surprised. And then there's Elon on the other end of this extreme, who's this South African multi company entrepreneur founder. And clearly they're both leaning into jokes in very different ways. Right. But there aren't that many founders in between, really. Like, there isn't a $4 or $5 billion public software company that I know of that's out there just like trolling with their stock or whatever. It's sort of like there's one Elon and then there's a handful of like random people at the edges. And so I wonder if there's going to be like more and more of these people that are embracing this shtick and leaning into this. And I'm kind of surprised there haven't been to date.

We know that there's incredible amount of institutional pressure that gets put on you the closer you get to becoming a public company CEO. So the idea that anybody who is serious enough to start and grow a business could also be the right kind of weird to actually go out and run a meme stock or go out and actually run a meme engagement. It's sort of like threading a very small needle of people. I actually don't know if it's even structurally possible to get there.

I mean, look at your Twitter kind of before and after going to a larger fund.

Right?

Like, you got way less fun.

Yeah, I do this. That's exactly Zach. You know, Zach, Zach. Zach went one way, I went the other. I went from a firm in which I had more constraints to one that liberated my ability to post on Twitter a little bit. And I will say one of my partners gives me a hard time. He blames me for like breaking 10 VCs brains. And now there's like all these shitty versions of like meme posters out there in vc. And he's always like, this is your fault. He'll send me some terrible joke that someone's making and he's like, I actually personally blame you for this. And it's a pretty running bit internally.

Who do you think is the worst at this?

The worst at posting on Twitter?

Yeah, like the worst at playing the Logan game.

The Logan game, yeah. I'm glad. I want to embrace that specifically. You know, I. I would say the. Initially, the, the one that we've talked about in the past that. That just sort of willed their way into it, obviously, was, was Marc Andreessen that sort of was out there. And it seemed like, went from not posting at all to, like, discovering what a meme was, but the obviously very bright. And so his feedback loop and how he iterated on it, like, the progress he made in a very short time. He started with this very raw MVP of ship posting and then, like, he took feedback and actually built up and so now it's actually far more entertaining. When we started this podcast eight weeks ago or whatever, it was at the, like, peak of cringe. We could probably come up with some like, you know, slope of enlightenment or some gartner, like, rise of where it was. But he's actually gotten to be a decent follow with good entertainment.

I actually would argue that even Pete Cringe Mark was pretty good. Like, if package really asking who are the worst of the worst. Yeah, like, even in Mark's trough of disillusionment. Right. I would still take Mark posting over, like 80% of the VCs who we know, even with the help of ghostwriters, are still not as funny. I'll put it this way. They're not. I don't feel like they're as funny as me post joining a regulated group, let alone Logan, who's in the wild west of, like, shooting from the hip.

I mean, I. I thought. I think the. The fun thing about Mark's tweeting was, you know, Jack came out in that battle and was just having more fun clearly doing it than. Than anybody on the A16Z side. And then it looks like they're just like, wait, we could just have fun and win this thing. And then Mark has just had as much fun as humanly possible on Twitter for the past couple of.

It's amazing. I mean, it's. Honestly, it's amazing. You get to that point where you just really don't care what anyone thinks. And the weird feeling that these people have with millions of followers, just that they put something out, and the number of people that have notifications, like, are instantly engaging with it. It must be such a weird hit of dopamine to your brain, like, to have this and then instantly, like, Elon post something and every single thing he posts have hundreds of thousands of likes and, like, instant engagement. I just think how weird that must feel as a thing. And so I actually like that Andreessen's, like, having a good time, you know, messing around now. I think at times he walks the line of bully, which I've certainly been accused of as well. But I, you know, I think he has a much bigger pulpit and more influence than I do in that regard. And so at Times I feel like antagonizing some of these founders isn't the best look.

But yeah, I mean, we know that he's having a good time. I will say we're going to talk about glossier later, but did you guys see what he posted about Glossier, where he posted a screenshot of his shopping cart, adding a bunch of stuff after the article came out? Like, that's. I love that reason.

Right.

That's why I love, I love that kind of interest in posting. Like, there's a way to do it that I think doesn't feel like bullying.

Right.

There's way to do it to use the bully pulpit. That's supportive and certainly we all missed the mark on that. But hopefully your brain isn't broken enough by the constant dopamine hit of having thousands of people simping for you in your replies that you don't forget how to be positive.

Yeah, I mean, I, you know, I, I can speak as someone who has like three or so times as many followers as Logan. It's. It's a real kind of constant dopamine.

Did you see how subtle. Subtle pack he worked? That is like, as someone who's actually far more popular than Logan Bartlett myself, I can tell you my brain isn't nearly as broken as his.

Packy. I can only imagine. I mean, you've had quite a glow up here, though. I, I can only imagine the early days of shouting into the void here. Now, two years later, I mean, what was your Twitter follower account? Whatever. Two years ago was it. Did you have a couple thousand?

So when I started like writing and I did a per my last email first, when I started doing that, I think I had like 300 followers and I tweeted like the Eagles and stuff like that. And then it took a year and maybe I got to like 500 followers. And then I started doing not boring full time and then it's kind of grown. But it does get weirder.

Right?

Like, you know, everybody always says that over 10,000 is where it shifts. And for me, and you'll learn this one day, maybe over a hundred thousand is where it really, it really felt like it shifted in a pretty big way, but it shifts.

Like, what was the. What broke your brain? I mean, I know obviously you're not the same person. You know, your ego is so big and your head and all this stuff as you were padding. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just. Is it everyone gassing you up every time you post something or what?

It's not that as much the thing that I think is tough is that things leave your, like, circle of people who know you much more quickly. And so, like, the one that actually broke my brain because there was, like. It was a very weird one where I made a joke about Apple or Shopify being worth more than Apple just based on, like, their share prices and the amount of people who got on there and called me an idiot for not understanding the difference between a share price and a market cap. And, like, just little things like that.

Yeah.

Where I know that. I know the difference between those things. And it still kind of felt weird and hurt a little bit.

It was.

That was the one where I was like, wow, this can get really weird.

I've had a couple of those. I had one where I tweeted something about superhuman. Remember the controversy a couple of years ago over the superhuman email location tracking?

Yeah.

I tweeted something to the effect of, like, you know, every marketing tool you've ever been exposed to is exposing your location superhumans. Not the problem here. Something like, very mild to that effect. People sending me, like, death threats over that one. That was, like, the worst that the context bubbles ever been broken. And then the other harmless sides. Like, I did the dumb tweet about, you know, Jeff Bezos can give every American a billion dollars or whatever. Some, like, dumb thing like that. And that went. A lot of people, a lot of math explainers coming into my mentions, hoping to teach me basic arithmetic.

I know part of it is, like, the personal thing where you're like, no, no, that's not what I meant. And part of it is, like, you weep for humanity a little bit that, like, there are so many people out there who, one, both don't get the joke. But then, like, two are big enough assholes to feel the need to, like, tell you how wrong you are. It does make you a little bit sad about humanity.

That's. I always really enjoy that, though. Like, the circle of. When you get to a certain amount of followers, that there's a circle of people that are in on the joke and like it, and then you feel it when it's escaped that cocoon. And, like, you know, I remember I posted an email, I think, on the same day Airbnb. Airbnb and Door Dash went public. And I posted a fake email that I was passing on both of the CEOs at the same time. Right. And I was like, listen, my G5 wi fi is cutting out. And, like, so I just figured I would consolidate the pass emails. And then I tweeted out, like, so proud to have been there from the early days or something. And it started and you could see it, it was like starting to get there and you could tell it was kind of taken off. And I knew it was going to hit some escape velocity in which people were going to get very upset about it. And so I leaned into the joke and then I got people, this is very meta. But then I had people upset that I wasn't correcting people and like embracing fake information and stupidity on the Internet. Right. And it's just like all these things end up being very meta and navel gazing.

You had one of those about this even podcast where I saw that happen. You tweeted something that was like obviously a fake text between you and a drizzly delivery person, you know, offering to give your autograph as a host of the podcast.

Remember?

Like I, I saw that in my timeline a couple times. People kept engaging with it earnestly and I'm like, how? Like I, I, I could not believe someone read that and thought, well, maybe Logan's ego is so big that he does think the drizzly guy is.

Honestly, everyone thinks it's like, you know, life of a podcaster is just like women being thrown at you and, you know, parties all the time and all that. And I, I get how you could be confused about the autographs that people would want from you as like, you know, a, as a very modestly successful podcaster. But I thank to keep my, keep my, you know, roots about me.

Yeah, it's funny. It's, it's us, the Red Scare Girls and the Cometown boys who just constantly are being chased by people everywhere we go.

Are you not the Cometown boys?

Oh, yeah. Did you not realize we actually are part of the shit the dirtbag left as well? People always forget that about us.

Roseanne Winsack, who has been a longtime friend of mine and we've collaborated on a number of deals over the years. She was a partner at IVP for, for a number of years and now has recently started her own fund, Renegade Partners. Roseanne, do you want to give a quick, quick intro?

Hey guys, thanks so much for having me. Yeah, I've known Logan and I used to hang out a lot more when he was like bugging me to mark up his deals. Doesn't do that too much these days. That's what tiger really knowing now you should be marking up mine because we like switch.

I know, I know.

Yeah. But I was previously at ivp. I'm one of the two founders of Renegade Partners, an early stage venture firm.

And Roseanne sat On the board of glossier for. For four years. We.

I invest. We invested, like, September of 2016, and I left at the beginning of 2019.

Got it.

And.

And Roseanne, how big do you have to get in terms of Aum to be a target of your very own hit piece?

I don't know if you guys could find out for me, like, that would be great.

Hopefully, we'll get some. We'll get some contributions from people weighing in on, like, when they're really chomping at the bit to take me down. Yeah. As. As much fun as we thought, three straight white men weighing in on the issues of female founders being written about hip pieces. We thought it made sense to have someone else with a little more credibility on the subject join us here. So, Roseanne, thanks for coming on.

Oh, wow, fancy. You have a whole fancy setup for the mic there, too.

I do. I. I don't know how much you guys can see, but I joked that this is, like, my only fan setup.

But, like, the way that everything turned up.

Okay, okay, that's great.

And also, we just added a woman to the team here faster than Bain did. I have to say,

That's gonna get in trouble. You can't make that joke.

No, no, listen. So last week, just for a little inside baseball. So last week we had a bit. Lydia Helton had already joined Bain crypto from our team. And so we were talking about it last week. I knew she had joined. And so we had this, like, extra three minutes of the pod sort of talking about her joining and me being like, guys, why didn't you just wait a fucking week to announce her joining? Right. And then I realized we were going to run it before she actually joined. And so I didn't want to, like, front run her announcement. And so we had to cut it. But lost to the archives is. Is. Yeah. One of our. One of our former employees joining. Joining bank crypto. So good. Well, let's dive in. Well, Roseanne, thank you for joining us. I think one of the things that we wanted to get your insider take on was an article from Business Insider this week, and it was about a company in which you were formerly or were invested and formally on the board entitled How Glossier Founder Emily Weiss's Tech Dreams Derailed the Hottest Millennial Beauty brand. So I'll read a little bit here for people that didn't have a chance to read it, and we'll link in the show notes. But they went through and said Glossier is valued at 1.8 billion. Financial success belied A sometimes chaotic, unstable work environment. According to 17 former employees who has recently as January worked at Glossier's New York headquarters. They describe a founder who sometimes overvalued employees. Social media clout editors note on this. Like social media is pretty important obviously. So I, I mean you know, if it's Twitter followers then I think I'm on board. But in appearance and whose years long obsession with transforming the beauty brand into a tech company spark internal tensions. New hires from Facebook and Amazon clashed with veteran employees. While Weiss's nebulous vision for an in house social e commerce platform led to stalled progress and wasted resources, they said. So they kind of went through the whole thing. I guess this is a little bit of a. It's a little bit of a recurring trope at this point that female founders get these takedown pieces that ultimately get run about their business and it feels like something that seems to happen too often. So Roseanne, would love to get your take about how media covers female founders in general or Glossier specifically.

Yeah, no, I'd rather talk in general. I mean I just think, I don't know. I tweeted about it yesterday but like I didn't want to like retweet it or give it like any additional like that additional like article, any additional poll or reach now that I have like followings like you guys, right? I have like you know, hanging out like 3,000 Twitter followers.

You missed a lot. I missed a long bit of us all navel gazing. Gazing about our Twitter followers. So that's actually going to work in very.

I don't know who this. We all. You missed packing able gazing about his Twitter followers. Man comes on pod one minute and he's like, oh, by the way, I have a fuck ton more followers than the rest of you have combined. So you all get fucked on your pod.

Packy McCormick 50x of Roseanne Twitter followers. Yes.

Wow. That is. The faction is actually very true. Yeah.

Yeah,

good point. Yeah.

So 50x packy from now on.

Yeah, exactly. That's. I love it. We'll do it. We'll, we'll, we'll do an intro.

10x engineers, 50x packies. We'll start controversy.

I mean, I don't know. I feel like this trope is just so a. Like how is this even news, right? Like all of this stuff like a they're always female takedown. There are always female founder takedowns. Like yes, there have been male founder takedowns, but they have to do with like generally like broad. Right? Or you know, when there's, like, real bad things happening. I feel like female takedowns are just about, like, oh, like disgruntled or like, former employees that are no longer with the company, speaking on the record anonymously. Like, how is that news? And, like, people are trying to do hard things, and it's hard, and not all of them work. Like, what do you want somebody to do?

Like, yeah. And I think. I mean, when we talk about the list of fat, like, the recurring nature of this. So I compiled a little list here, and all of them are different. Right? But it is.

Is.

I mean, as a percentage of. Of negative stories that get covered about founders, it's definitely disproportionate. And so the ones that I came up with, Theranos, is obviously kind of its own beast. But then away, the. The Luggage Company, the Wing, Outdoor Voices, Modern Health, Spring Health, Museum of Ice Cream. So it's. Honestly, I mean, it's probably a smaller fraction of female founders that haven't had a takedown piece written about them at this point, but it feels like you

could write something about any founder, right? Because, Roseanne, to your point, like, every startup is hard to build. We all know that. Like, every startup is going to have cultural rough patches. So the head scratcher is like, if you assume that every startup could have a piece written like this, the motivation to go after only female CEOs or predominantly female CEOs, it makes it feel far more malicious.

I mean, I think it just, like, sounds, like, more salacious. And what's so funny to me about all of these is that, like, they always bring up, like, pettiness and cattiness, and I'm like, this article is just pure pettiness and cattiness. Like, hot pedal. Like, what the hell, right? Like, it's like you're. This is, like, what you're complaining about. And in the. In that exact, like. And this is your medium, right? It's like. It's just so, like, ridiculous to me. And actually, I remember, like, when away happened, like, I had two of my male CEOs text me and be like, oh, I've written, like, I've written slacks like that of, like, of course, cto until you. Until, like, you know, there aren't, like, until there's no longer a ticket backlog. And they're like, is some, like, is somebody gonna publish this? And I'm like, no, don't worry, right? Like, you're a dude. But it's. I don't understand, like, why, Like, I don't know. I don't understand, like, why, like, why people also think it's an interesting story.

The Spring Health one was the least interesting ever to me. Like, you know, like, at least there were fired employees in some of the other ones. In the Spring Health one, it was really kind of just like the CEO and the marketing person were, like, kind of pushing back and forth on what the marketing goal should be. And like, he wanted to sandbag it and she wanted to be more aggressive, which is, I think has never not happened between a CEO and head of marketing in the history of companies. And that was like the core piece there. And like, that his team had worked hard then because of that. Like, there was nothing in that one. That was absurd. But I mean, the away one, my brother actually was at away when. When that one happened, he was totally, totally Team Steph in that. That whole kind of situation. Cause he was like, look, the people who got fired, many of them got fired for a reason because they were like, attacking other employees. The CS lead who got, you know, who was kind of upset in the story wasn't hitting his numbers at all. Like, there's very clear metrics. Like, there's all this stuff that happens that obviously doesn't get reported on. And then the story is like, this female founder is out of control, and it just is wild that that story keeps happening.

So in full disclosure, I've known Steph for probably as longer than I've known Paki. And so this is dating back whatever, 12 years, and was actually an investor in a way. And so, I mean, she's a friend of mine. And as all this stuff was going on, it's just. It's ridiculous. The same terms that get used for men, like, get flipped on their head for women. And I don't think it's just reporters doing it. If you go read Glassdoor, I think some of the terms that employees will also use, like about the. About the female leader. It's like a male will be irreverent versus a female will be vulgar, right? Like, a male will be introverted. A female will be standoffish. Like, one will be hard charging, the other will be like a psycho, right? And it's like all these things that are just veiled in more negative sentiment and how people talk. And then the. The. These are coming from somewhere, right? There's like kind of a formula. That exists. It feels like there's a bunch of focus on the rise. I feel like in general, society only wants to hear the rise in the fall. Like, those are the only stories that exist. It's like, you build someone up, and you take someone down, and then you build someone up again. And that's true of Tiger Woods. It's true of Kanye West. It's true of, you know, whoever, right? Lance Armstrong. And so I feel like the. The way these narratives play out is, like, build up expectations, wait for company to hit speed bumps, like, find former employees, get them to talk, and, like, particularly if they're recently laid off. And then, like, the culture gets compared to mean girls. And then you magnify, like, normal business things, like, put a microscope on it and take it out of context, right? And, like, all of them sort of follow that same formula in some way.

And, like, I just don't understand how that's, like, interesting or compelling anymore, right? And I think a big part of it, too, is that, like, in that rise, I kind of got into it with somebody on Twitter about this this morning. Like, you know, it's like, oh, when people get all this attention on the rise, it's like, it's because they're made out to be these, like, perfect, like, godlike humans. And then it's like, no, they're just people and they're flawed. Like, we're all flawed, right? Like, we all have ups and downs, and, like, this is all hard and. But I think, like, it's like, you can't have one without the other, right? Like, you need to have that, like, hype cycle to, like, get these people up there, because otherwise it's not interesting to tear them down.

If Nobod Rosanne, specifically about Glossier, like, Emily Weiss had this very polished image, right? And to some extent, she. She represented so many idealistic. Even the article, it sounds like, you know, employees treated her in this messianic kind of way, right? And they just so looked up. They followed into the gloss all the way through. And so is it. Is it somewhat that these reporters want to report on any deviation from, like, the narrative? Or is it just that? Is it. Is it like that, hey, it's not as perfect as it seems, and they want to poke it in some way, or. Do you have any perspective on that?

I mean, I think a lot of this is that, like, when. Like, when the press kind of presents, like, any of these people, like, any of these leaders to, you know, like, you know, publicly, it's like, everything is perfect about them, right? Like, they have these, like, perfect homes and perfect lives and, you know, perfect partners and children and families and all of these things, right? And so it's, you know, it just kind of like I think it just opens the door for all of these like pokes and holes and I think

that,

I mean, I just like would think, I think when you like interview, right, like, I mean packing your earlier points about like away, right? Like when you interview former staff or people who aren't, you know, who aren't performing at their jobs at like anonymously, right. Like they can say whatever they want because it's not going to be tied back to them. Like, you know those, to me those are just cheap shots.

Yeah, it's interesting. This is not a point about any of these companies specifically, but more generally like the one thing I will say is startups we all know use vision so much to hire that when you sell a bunch of 22 year old fresh grads on changing the world and convince them that they're going to be making a major impact and it doesn't matter what the company actually does. Right? But that's the pitch you've given them whenever you ultimately come back to them and have anything that goes off the rails culturally, an employee who underperforms whatever the normal speed bumps that we know companies face are, it becomes magnified because the expectation has been set so high. So not, this is not about glossier, any company in particular but like we know certainly in, in Logan and My and Roseanne, all of our portfolios, like we know folks use the lure of vision to get people to come work for them versus going and collecting a check at Fang.

I mean I think it's not only like yes, people sell vision and also like entrepreneurs as a class of humans, like have to be compelling and have to be people that you know, others want to follow. But also, you know, when you are hiring a bunch of 22 year olds and they've never had like this is their first or maybe second jobs, like if you think about like, oh, what's my worst job experience in this? Or like, you know, what's the, my job experience? And this is 100 or 50% of it, right? Like everything feels like a big deal. Yeah, right. And you feel like old person like me and like you just kind of start rolling with punches because you realize like this shit happens all the time. Right?

That's what I think. So interesting about these, these things is like what they're reporting on for the most part. It's like normal business stuff that you could talk about any company and so it always sounds very, just like, like an alien has dropped into startup culture. And it's like everything that gets reported makes it sound like it's this sensational thing, but I feel like the reporters are just so outside of like how startups actually run. And to some extent, I don't know, I mean, I was, I, I got such a kick out of some of the stuff they reported on in this. But like, for example, they, they went on like a full paragraph about how clean a desk needed to be. Or they, they spoke for a while about. I'll just read the excerpt. Inside a sprawling executive conference room that Weiss often worked from. A round show stopping fish tank that bulged out from the wall, often sat empty. I think it had fish in it for a short period of time before they were taken out or died, a former employee said, adding that the tank had water filtration issues. Sometimes a paper insert from a photo of marine life was placed instead and it's like, what are you talking about?

And half the time that was a funny joke that somebody in the office played and like put up a picture of a fish. It wasn't like an evil corporate thing.

Yeah, I was like, you know what, let's kill the fish and then let's put like some artificial. Remind everybody.

Do you think, do you think, are they like trying to build a metaphor of like, you know, like, is this supposed to be something that they tie back of? Like life is, you know, startup life is short and fish don't survive and neither might startups. Or, or is it just there's something

fishy going on at glossier?

Yeah, no, I'm thinking it's just like, I think. Logan, I think your first point is like, spot on. It's like, you know, it's like, oh my gosh, these people, they use slack and they'll email after 5pm and oh my God, that's a startup. Right? Like, I think it's like. Or like, oh, there's a, like there are tons of companies, tons of companies that make you have your desk because. Or that won't let you. Like, it's not like that's new or been like introduced everywhere. There's plenty of companies that like had fish tanks that don't have fish in them anymore. There are lots of fish tanks in the world that no longer have fish. Like, how is that news work?

But this is the problem, right? If you're, if you, if your job is to go out and find sensationalistic stories and Packy, as the only quasi journalist here, I'd be curious to get your take. But like, if your job is to go out and find sensationalistic stories and you tweet every Morning. I'm eager to hear from ex employees of company Y or company zed. Right. And all you get are comments from employees who have left this company voluntarily or otherwise. Of course you're going to only hear ridiculous shit. You're not talking to people who are happy. And we know the silent majority of these employees are probably perfectly content in their jobs not going and talking to folks who are reaching out to them

on Twitter or they're. I'm sure they're getting reached out to by people who are happy or have good things to say, but that's just.

I don't even know if they are. I actually don't even know if they are.

What do you mean?

I'm sure in their reach outs they only get some people who are positive.

I tend to. I mean, I'd be curious to think, like, if you tweeted, if you're a reporter and you tweet, I want to hear from X employees of company Y about crazy stories. Right? Or about. Or how is your experience working? The kind of person who's motivated to reach out, I have to imagine it's like 90, 10, negative, positive.

And it's also what I would imagine happens is there's probably a group chat of those former employees going on where they're like, hey, this person reached out. Are you going to talk? Are you going to talk? And so I do think there's like kind of that social kind of reinforcement that happens where like the group of people who are negative and fired and have nothing to lose, I'll tell each other that they're going to go on. And then people who are there and happy are like, I'm not going to risk my job that I like. Yeah, talk to insider about their 17th female hit piece in a row, which, by the way, the last two were insider. I don't know how many of those on the list are Insider pieces. But they've also, I think, found a formula here. And like, the really cynical view of this is not just like the takedown of the woman piece sells because, you know, that's kind of on all of us. We, you know, we read these pieces and they write what we read. But the other thing is, I think there's a meta point now where they know that they're going to get everybody pissed off. And that glossier article had a hundred times more readers than if it weren't a hit piece on a female CEO for the 50th time in a row. Because everybody's talking about that, that point. And so everybody's reading it now.

I hate to talk about the business incentive, but think about the incentive for the reporter too. Right. I'm going to write my hit piece on Company X. I'll sell my book proposal about Company X. If they're influential enough, I'll get my Brian Koppelman Showtime show about Company X. Right. And maybe, God willing, I'll win an Oscar. Like that's the, whatever, an Emmy. Like, I don't know that that's necessarily what's at play in this specific story, but like, there certainly is a pipeline of negative coverage to book proposal to television that we've seen play out.

Out of the glass.

Yeah, exactly. Don't, don't. Yeah, don't give people shortcuts of how to, how to come up with stuff here. I think, I mean, honestly, this is the way I feel about social media in general, but media especially is like, it's actually a reflection of us and of society in so many ways. And so the reason that there are these take, it's like so self fulfilling. Right. And we're talking about it now. And Roseanne, you did a good job of like not sharing the thing, but it's totally circular and it compounds on itself of like, like they wouldn't keep doing these if they didn't keep getting attention if it wasn't good for the business. Right. And so that's why I always feel like I'm a Facebook defender because I'm like, well, maybe humanity wasn't meant to connect all the weirdos together, right? And like, maybe that's on. Maybe that's on humanity. And I realized Facebook should do a better job of like trying to constrict flow of information and all that. But I was like, we need to acknowledge that there are like a lot of fucking freaks that exist in the world and like connecting them with other freaks isn't going to lead to good outcomes. Right. And so I think these are all kind of go back to business incentives.

It's that and there's also like, there's algorithms that like are fairly easy. Like it kills me now and I've tweeted about it recently. Like it kills me now that it is so easy to say here's 10 anything colon on Twitter and then do a thread on it and it's going to get thousands and thousands of likes and there's a disappointing amount of humans who are like just down to go play into that format in order to, to grow. And so I think like, as, as there's like some relationship between how easy it is to figure out the algorithm and then, like, just how many people are gonna go do what the algorithm says, no matter what that thing is? Which I think probably is a play. There's, like, some meta algorithm at play with the inside of pieces here, too.

Well, I think our, like, br. I think social media is, like, such a great, like, it's, like, a perfect reflection of, like, our brains, right? Because, like, basically, like, the things that get us riled up are all the, like, all the stuff that, like, hits our amygdala, right? Our, like, little animal brain that only knows how to be angry, like, doesn't have any critical thought. Like, it loves to get stuff, like, really, like, that's, like, short and fast, Right. And, like, just piss you off.

Right.

And that's, like, that's what's engaging. Right? So it's just like. I don't know. I feel like it's such a. Like, yes, a reflection of humanity, to your point, Logan, but also just, like, a reflection of, like, yeah, our brains are not ready for, like, are not. Have not evolved to this. And basically, it's just like, an anger engine.

Yeah. Nuance gets lost in everything here. But I. The insider is just waiting, chomping at the bit to take down some female influencer. So, Roseanne, I. I hope you can get there. Yeah. Just so they can continue to drive clicks.

That's why I keep my Twitter follower count low, so that, you know, that's cancellation. They're just gonna take me down. Nobody cares.

You have to get through a certain point pretty quick because you run the risk in the, like, some thousand or, like, some thousands of followers. You really run the risk of being canceled. But then you get to the, you know, some point that you can just power through it. Right. And people forget. So, Roseanne, anything else that you want to hit on this? Like, any points you want to convey that we didn't sort of get to.

I don't know. I mean, actually, guys like, you live warmed my heart today because, you know, this conversation is like, the conversation that, like, the groups. Like, groups of women are having all the time. And, like, hearing you guys say it.

No, that's good. Yeah.

Let's definitely calling us the best male feminists in the world in the clip this week. That's like, make sure. Let's make sure we keep that just in circulation, please.

My pink hat over here. That

guy host. But, like, really good for.

But, like, really good. Were the.

But were some of the good ones. Packy, don't worry.

Not. Not all men.

Yeah, exactly. That that's actually my brand is not like VCs but also not like the other men. You know, I'm like, I'm just different than that. So another thing we wanted to hit this week were Google employees. CNBC had an article about Google employees are becoming unhappy with pay promotion and execution survey results show. So Google's annual employee survey came out called Google Geist and it showed that a growing number of staffers don't view their pay packages as fair or competitive of what they could make in a similar role elsewhere. They're also questioning their employers ability to execute. The surveys were taken in January and released to employees last week. CNBC reviewed the results from the company overall as well as individual groups. In addition to this, Google is about to bring most of their employees back into the office. The numbers here briefly only for 46% of survey respondents said their compensation is competitive compared to similar company similar jobs at other companies. That was down 12% from a year earlier. And 56% said their pay is fair and equitable which was a drop of 8% from the year prior. So I will say something in this in general is. So I think you guys know we have a TikTok presence as well. And we made a joke about Google engineers being privileged in their pay packages and their benefits and all that. And I'll tell you that is a group that will get very wild, riled up. We kicked the hornet's nest and we got a lot of comments back from people. It was, it was very angry. So do you guys have any opinions on this on Google?

Who are the 50% of people at Google who think they can make more money for working three hours a day somewhere else? Like I love my Google friends, I really do. But like one of my Google buddies who now since left and is a founder when he was a PM at Google he was rolling in around 10:30, 11, getting in a quick workout and breakfast, doing maybe two or three hours of work, right? Getting a haircut on campus or doing laundry, whatever, then leaving by like 4 to beat traffic. What is the job that pays you like mid six figures to work four hours a day somewhere else and can we all have that job? Because I would love to find out what it is I was going to say.

I mean like the thing doing the most work in all of this was the similar, similar role elsewhere. Nobody else has a similar role to what Google does. I was talking to somebody a couple of weeks ago and this is not like revolutionary but it was like by far the company that could slash the highest percentage of its employee base and not see a single bit of hit to the business is Google that you could probably, you could probably cut Google down to what, 500 employees and probably even less and retain like 98% of the performance of the business. So it's just like very funny that they have all these people kind of hanging out doing nothing at Google and there's probably complaining about it.

There's probably a direct correlation between like amount of internal company drama and employee free time. Like if your employees have so much time they can get into like message wars on the internal message board, they probably aren't working as hard as they could somewhere else.

That's always my favorite trope by the way. There's always videos about like boomer worker talking to young worker and it's like, hey, I think I'm going to take this weekend off because I'm going to drop dead. And then the like young employees, like. So I think a VP title is probably commiserate with my work. And I'm just wondering after three or six months, what's your promotion cycle?

Right, yeah. By the way, Logan, to your point, do you guys remember that Twitter thread that was going around of the guy who interviewed the startup founder, who interviewed the kid and he was like the, the like 22 year old, asked him for a board seat as part of the negotiation for an IC role?

Yes. I honestly, you have to shoot your shot with that stuff. I, I honestly, I think someone came in to me and said like, hey, you know, like to own half the LP relationships, I'd be like, well, it's an interesting ask. I mean, no, obviously, but it's an interesting. I respect the ask. Right.

Logan's future analysts are going to be like, I actually want to be on management committee. So how do we make that happen? Like I really would like to be part of the management company now.

Is it a two or three year path to. Yeah, to investment committee on this? You know, it's, it's interesting though. I mean one of the things that was kind of buried in all of this is that Google is bringing people back to work in person. Right. And I do think that's going to be particularly interesting of. I was talking to a recruiter recently and they were saying, you know, a lot of people, not only have people joined into remote work Right. Over the course of the last, whatever, two years, but there's actually a lot of people that have entered the workforce having never been a part of office culture at all.

Right.

And so for us it's like, hey, this distance thing that we remember and we remember all the benefits and trade offs but like, like it's interesting of getting people to actually go back into the office. It's going to be funny to see how lavish the perks are that they have to like, you know, the foosball doesn't really work as like the only thing you can use anymore. It's going to need to be, I mean, I don't know where Google could take it to, but they have massages. Back when in office culture was like a normal thing. Like what are they going to need to do to get these employees back in office now?

I think that's one way of looking at it. I think the flip side is if you're starting your career remote, how lonely must that be? Like, if I was starting my career in a remote work sense, I would be desperate, in fact, I am desperate to go back to an office every day. Cause I would miss or I would crave the ability to talk to other people who do this job or do my job in a, in a relative way.

I'm laughing like craving human touch. Like I would crave, you know, I just want to be around humans. Honestly, the remote work absolutists. It's such an interesting thing. Talk about another like hornet's nest to kick. But, but we've walked into that before and there's so many people that I got notes when we talked about remote work that someone said, love the pod, but you have no idea what the fuck you're talking about with remote work. And I was like, oh, interesting. I mean there's a lot of things I don't know what I'm talking about. But like, you know, I'm a man with a microphone, so obviously I deserve a podcast, right? And so it's. But it's just so funny how angry people. Of all the topics I've gotten like backlash on remote work and then Google like culture are the two that I've gotten people by far the most angry at me.

I get the most toxic takes about remote work. I did a tweet on viral, right? Tweeted something along the lines of if you're a fresh grad coming out of undergrad and you're starting your career remotely, you're probably taking a career hit if you work remote versus working in person. And the amount of people, first of all, the amount of 22 year olds to my point a second ago who DM me privately and were like, yeah, I'm feeling the work hit was astronomical. The amount of people who were like posturing for likes and my replies by talking about, you know, I'm an evil person for thinking we'll have to go into the office every day. It was insane. I couldn't believe the backlash. And then I couldn't believe the gap between the people who were actually living this, who were craving the ability to go in office and be mentored and have a cohort of folks around them versus the folks who were, you know, like, it's, it's like a religion. Who had taken religion on working remote and now wanted to push for it.

I think in both remote and Google too, there's probably the segment of people who are like, yo, shut the fuck up. Don't ruin this for us. Because, like, some people are super, super happy. And that's probably, you know, older people certainly like me. I have my kid here. This is great.

No one likes to feel the virtues of remote work more than like comfortable 36 year olds or 38. Totally like making 500k or whatever a year. Right. Meanwhile, these 22 year olds are like living in New York with five roommates and they're jammed into shoebox apartments and like, you know, they can hear each other through the fake walls they've put up and they're like, we crave human. Human.

I'm desperate to get to the office and not be in my like, triple subdivided living room situation with me and my like, one shitty fake house plant that I'm trying to keep alive.

Thank you so much for joining the eighth episode of three Cartoon Avatars. A special thanks to Roseanne for coming on as well as Paki for filling in for Nikita today.

That was a lot of fun. I do this anytime.

Yeah, well, that's good if you already told Nikita that he's gone on.

Perfect. So Zach and I will be back next week with either Paki or someone else we bring in. So listen in for, for the ninth episode. Appreciate everyone joining.