Business as a sport, Surge AI, and Waymo vs. Robotaxi

Dude, manifest is out. There's a new word.

What?

Generative.

Wait, is high agency— are we selling high agency?

We're selling high agency at the top right now. We're spacking high agency. It's gone. Taking that cash and plowing it into generative. All right.

What'd I miss? How was the week?

Week was good. Uh, what do we do? We had Chris Corner. That episode's popped off. It's over 100K on YouTube. That's going well. And, uh, dude, there were so many replies to one idea that was in that episode. I don't know if you listened to the episode.

The golfing one?

The golfing one. Yeah, I got literally hundreds of replies of people who are like, I could do this right here in my hometown. People are sending PowerPoint decks. People are doing drive-bys, sending me videos of the lake where they think they could do it. They're reaching out cold. It's very intense. Uh, how many people have replied to this now? We're going—

and what was the idea? Was it, was it about betting as to where you could hit it?

No. So basically on the way, there's a place in New Zealand on the way to the golf course, just kind of side of the road. There's like, there's a road that's driving by a body of water. And if you just stop on the side of the road, there's this thing called like, whatever, the hole-in-one challenge. And you buy a bucket of balls and you go to try to hit this hole-in-one of this little golf hole that's floating out, you know, 100 yards away in the water. If you hit it, if you get it, you get $10 grand. And so it's just like a fun thing for you to do with your buddies, like on the way to or from a golf course. And he was talking about like, you know, sort of napkin mathing what he thinks it's making based off of the available information. He's like, I think this thing does like $300,000 to $500,000, you know, in revenue. And now the costs are pretty marginal. It's like a person standing there with an iPad. there's a scuba diver that goes in once a week and fishes out the balls. Like, that's it. And so people got— we basically said, hey, I think this idea could work at more places than just this random roadside thing in New Zealand. Let's bring this to life. And who wants to do this? And a lot of people have come out. And so we're gonna make it an MFM project. We're gonna see what we can do with this.

So, like, all the comments were like, this is what I've been missing with MFM. Because, like, we started a lot with that. And then, like, our interests have grown. And so the content has grown to be, or evolved to be a little bit different. Sometimes. And one critique is like, what is this, my first billion? Because we talk about like, you know, bigger ideas. And I was thinking, I, you know, we've become acquaintances with Joe Lonsdale, who, because of this podcast, who's worth, I don't know, billions, some amount of billions. And I was with him recently. By the way, if you need to pick that up, let me know. If you need to pick up that name drop, Uh, did I drop, did I drop that somewhere? Did I drop that name drop somewhere? Uh, no, but he, uh, and he was telling me like, oh man, or I was with him when I got my Twitter check. Like, do you know how you get like Twitter money now? Like you're like, for example, I, for some reason my Twitter was $1,000 last payment. And, uh, like the month before it was like $600 and I was like, man, this is crazy. I just got paid $600 for tweeting, which is insane. He's like, yeah, I got like, $400. And he was joking about how it feels just as exciting every once in a while to get like a $400 thing than it does however much money he's created in his lifetime. And I was wondering, do you feel like when you're talking about these things, like you just lit up when you talked about $300,000, $400,000, when that may or may not— I mean, I don't think so. That's not going to really move the needle for you in your life. But it's kind of exciting, isn't it?

Yeah. Not because of the money. It's just I think it's awesome. Uh, I think the idea, the idea itself is fun. Making it happen sounds like it's going to be fun. You know, actually, I was just, uh, watching, um, an interview with a guy who—

they—

the NBA Finals just ended. They had Game 7, the Thunder won, and there was—

hey, I watched it, I watched it.

There was this interview with one of the guys. So they, they asked J-Dub, they're like, you know, when you look back on this year, what's the one— what are you going to remember? What were the high points? And he goes, he's like, it's weird, dude. He's like, I remember if you think, if I think about this year, he's like, I remember being Chet. We would go to our hotel room, we would do film sessions, but back when he was coming back from injury to get it going, or like these team dinners that we were having, he's like, I couldn't even tell. He's like, I don't even remember what happened last series. Like, I don't remember in the recent games what happened, but those kind of like those inputs on the journey are like, just like, are so vivid to me. And this has been a very common thing where if you talk to pro players after their career is done and you're like, what do you miss the most? And you expect them to be like, the big pressure moments, the, those big games. And of course they do like those. But the thing they talk about always is the team bus rides, the locker room, the, it's all of the like camaraderie stuff that happens along the way. It's like the kind of the buildup is the stuff that they miss the most. And, um, I think, I think there's that for entrepreneurship too. Uh, I think there's that, that's a huge amount of the fun of it. And it's what you get excited about. You need the number to sort of justify it. The number gives you some air cover for why you're acting like a little kid. You're so excited about something. The numbers help because why are you taking this silly thing so seriously? But, uh, I think we would probably all do it without the numbers as well, or if the numbers were half as much or whatever.

Yeah. And I've noticed the best— the people who love MFM the most and the guests who you and I love the most are folks who, you know, I hung out with a friend of mine and she was like, because she was from a bad neighborhood, now she's rich. She's like, you know, I'm so good at going really high and going really low. I was like, what's that mean? She's like, I can hang out with like my homies from where I grew up and we could just like shoot the shit and kind of be a little like hood ratty. Or I can go hang out with a billionaire and I could— I love that too. I can— I have so much joy doing that as well. And I could blend in and get along with everyone. And I think that's like the, that's like what the pod is, is like you like talking about these smaller things as well as the big things. And it's the same type of person who loves both.

Yeah, exactly. Also, do you think about business as like a sport? Because that's more and more become my mental model is the way that, because I, you, I, you meet people and a lot of people we know have now become successful, but they're still doing it. And obviously for many of them, I, I, I call it they've already made the last dollar they'll ever spend, right? Let's say you make $30 million. At that point, you've already earned the last dollar you'll ever need to spend, especially once you take into account that that $30 million could just sit in a— whether it's a simple interest-bearing account or the S&P 500, and it'll just keep— it'll double every 7 years. So $30 becomes $60, $60 becomes $120, $120 becomes $240. And that just all happened over the course of, you know, something like 25 years. And so you've, you don't need to go earn the next dollar, but why do they anyways? And part of it is, I think it feels good to be good at something. And if you're good at something, it's hard to stop doing it because the feedback loop of being good at something is strong. But I think in that same way, if you think about business not as a mechanism to make money, but as a sport, as, uh, as a sport you play, then it's like, oh, of course, just because you're great at tennis and you won a tournament doesn't mean you'll stop playing tennis. Why would you do that? That's your sport. You love to play the sport. You'll basically play the sport till your body breaks down and doesn't let you play the sport anymore.

And it feels good to manifest. It feels good to have an idea and to see it into reality. And it's really fun flexing that model muscle.

Dude, manifest is out. There's a new word.

What?

Generative.

Generative? What does that mean?

This has happened a few times to me now.

Wait, is high agency— are we selling high agency?

We're selling high agency at the top right now. We're spacking high agency. It's gone. Taking that cash and we're plowing it into generative. Okay, so generative? On a podcast and I was like, at the end, I was like, how was that? And you could tell me the truth because I do podcasts all the time with guests. I know it's sometimes hit or miss. Like, give me the— from one podcaster to another, what was that like for you? And he's like, it was great because you're extremely generative. He goes, what? And he goes, it was also hard because you're extremely generative. I go, what does that mean? He goes, I'll say two things, like I'll give you one topic, but you can almost like bloom that or expand that into like a story, a framework of this, a related idea, a simple example. You just generated all that content off the cuff right away. And he goes, you know, biology is like that. Biology is extremely generative. You give him one thing and he's able to like take it from like the origin of man to, you know, to 100 years in the future and he can connect all those dots. So I heard it once and I was like, okay, that's cool. I don't know if I just got insulted or complimented being called generative, but I'll take it. And then James Currier said the same thing. He goes, he's like, he's like, the reason we get along is because we're both extremely generative. He's like, we like being around generative people. And he's like, you know, why do we admire Elon? It's not because he's rich. It was because he's the most generative of all of us, right? And he's the least fearful. And that's why he's able to be more generative. He's like, he literally generates businesses like The Boring Company and Neuralink and SpaceX and Tesla. He's like, he's generating kids, he's generating ideas, he generates a president, he generates— he's just doing so much. And that's admirable to somebody who is generative. And so I started using that little lens and started looking at people being like, how generative is this person? Meaning if you give them an inch, could they take a mile? And what is their overall level of output in their life? You know, like, how generative are they with, like, for example, James Currier. It's not just businesses he's generated. He, you know, at one point he also started a church in San Francisco. He like started a new religion. And, you know, then he created this, uh, like sort of incubator, this fund. Then he created a podcast. He's just constantly creating things. Because he's extremely generative and whether it's with his kids' life or it's his business life or whatever. So I started to realize, oh yeah, I'm really attracted to that. I like people who are like that and I want to be like that and figure out a way to make that work is, is a fun challenge. And so generative is the new word. Hey, I got a quick break because I want to tell you something cool. So our sponsor for this episode is HubSpot. But instead of the ad telling you about HubSpot, they just want to do something that's useful for you. So they did some research and they found that a bunch of people in our community have side hustles. They start a business on the side, they get it going, and then it becomes their main hustle over time. And so instead of just telling you about the features of HubSpot, they wanted to give you something that will be useful for your side hustle. And so they have put together a database of AI prompts. So things that you could put into ChatGPT or your favorite AI tool that will help you with your side hustle. So check it out. It's gonna save you a bunch of time. I think it's a, um, prompt database that you should be using to make your side hustle more successful. And you could use this as your little personal little cheat sheet, your toolset to be a better operator with your side hustle. So you could either scan this QR code that's on the screen or get the link in the description to get the AI prompt database. All right, back to the show.

Have you ever heard of this book called The Inner Game of Tennis?

I've heard of it, but I've never read it. Is it good?

Yeah.

So who's the pro? Who's it about?

Okay, so The Inner Game of Tennis, I randomly discovered it because I was at the airport and I was just looking for a book to read on my Kindle and I wanted something short. And I, for some reason—

You're like, I'm in a bookstore, we're looking for books to download separately.

No, like, I don't remember what I was just like. I think like I was on Amazon on my phone and like a sports psychology book came up and I was like, that's intriguing.

What are—

what's like the top sports psychology book there is or something like that? And I randomly came across The Inner Game of Tennis. It's about— it's written by a guy named Timothy Gallwey, and it's one of these books that it's about life and it just uses tennis as the analogy. And the premise of the book is that you have two selves. Self 1 is your person. So like when you say like, when you're playing tennis and you hit, you do a bad hit, you go, why do I suck so much? Or like, like that is Self 1, the critical self. And then Self 2 is like your animalistic self who doesn't, who doesn't think too much and is just your body. And that learns by observing. And it's all about how to be generative, and by, by ignoring Self 1 and letting Self 2 do all the work. And it gives you all of these tips and tricks on how to listen to Self 2. And this sounds very woo-woo, and it is a little bit woo-woo, but the book was written in the 1970s, and the coach of the Seahawks writes the foreword. What's his name? Pete Carroll.

Pete Carroll. Yeah.

And like every new edition, they still are like, they're still releasing new editions where all these like who's who of leaders are writing about it. And I think I didn't realize it, but after I started reading, I was like, oh wait, Tim Ferriss talked about this book as one of his favorite books of all time. And I've been reading it a whole lot and it applies very much to business. I think it's only a 150-page book I've been reading. I'm almost done. I read it in like 2 days. I— it's very similar or very applicable to business, which is what you said about Elon, of he's not fearful and things like that. This book actually gives you like a set of frameworks and a way to communicate to yourself in order to not be fearful when you are coming up with new ideas. It's incredibly fascinating.

Dude, this is awesome. I love this type of book. It says The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to Peak Performance. Introduction by Bill Gates and a foreword by Pete Carroll.

Isn't that crazy? I didn't know that. That I didn't— I don't have— I don't have the Bill Gates one, so I didn't know that. So he wrote the introduction. That's wild.

And so have you used any of this or give me like, has it— have you found a way to kind of apply any of these yet?

Well, so like a very simple example is like for lifting weights. Or for going for a run. When you lift weights, you're like, okay, I have to lift this weight for 3 times and it's the heaviest weight that I've ever done. So I'm really scared. You don't listen to that at all. And instead you just get under it and you go, I'm gonna let self 2 do all the work. I'm gonna trust self 2. And if I fail, I will not be judgmental. I'm not gonna say you suck. Instead I'll say, uh, you know, your knee moved in a strange way. So I'm just gonna objectively acknowledge what's happening. And then I put— and then I— when I want to lift 3 times, I get it up on me and I just observe the weight on me and I only go for 1 rep and I'd be like, all right, how does that feel, Self 2? Let's just do the second rep. So I basically am talking to myself sort of like an objective machine, not an emotional person. So the whole I'm fearful, I'm fearful, I'm fearful. You just set that aside and you go, it's Self 2 time. There is no room for that. It is only room for objectiveness.

All right. I did something similar to this in this vein. That I didn't even plan to talk about, but I'll just tell you this because I think it's kind of similar. So one thing I noticed is anytime I go into a project, you know, I obviously have a lot of excitement and have a lot of hope at the beginning, correct? That's obvious. And then the second obvious thing is that I'm going to hit some sort of obstacles, walls, plateaus. Something that I don't want to happen is for sure going to happen. I've never once experienced a project that I just simply started, everything went as planned, and it had a happy ending. Like, this literally just never happened. For me to expect that to happen would honestly be a little bit foolish. It's like, why would I think that that was the case? Yet at the same time, as soon as I hit those obstacles on those walls, I'm like, shit. Like, I wish this didn't happen. I don't want this to happen. Why is this happening? And I waste all this energy on something that was inevitable. It's like playing Mario and being like, oh my God, I can't believe these Goombas are walking at me. It's like, dude, that's the game. Like, what do you mean? Like, You wanted to play this game without anybody trying to bite you? I don't understand what you thought this was going to be. And so recently I was doing a project, and last week I wrote out a thing in advance. I'm just going to kind of read you this. So I basically wrote a simple letter to self for, like, 2 months down the road.

And by the way, 3 months down the road, according to Tim, according to The Inner Game of Tennis, when you have that feeling, you don't you do not judge it as positive or negative. You say, now this is a challenge. Okay, noted. And then you just keep going.

Do you know what I mean?

There is no— like, this is horrible. This is awful. Why me? That— that— that— there are no emotions. You do not judge.

You think you don't judge the emotion you're feeling? You don't judge yourself for feeling it, or you don't judge the thing?

Both. So you, uh, you only objectively acknowledge it. So you say, like, uh, so the ball was out. Okay.

Right.

Noted. The ball was hit too hard. And then you trust self 2 to adjust. But you don't, you know what I'm saying? You do not acknowledge or judge it as I hate this, I suck, this is bad. It's just the ball was out.

So I'm just going to give you a little sense of how I wrote this. So I was like, I was like, hey, it's me from the future. I'm writing this to you 3 months from now. First, congrats. Thing you did so good. Turned out amazing. I'm really proud of you slash me. And I said, this is a letter that is guiding you to some of the entirely predictable upcoming road bumps that are headed your way. Not only is it predictable that there will be road bumps, I could probably tell you right now what they're going to be. All right. Because like, that's true. So for example, I was thinking about— this isn't what I was doing, but just to make it a simple example, let's say you're trying to hire a head of sales. There's some entirely predict— like, you know, you want to do it, you know, you'll, you'll be able to do it. But there's some entirely predictable road bumps, which is like, Um, you know, you're probably going to procrastinate starting it a little bit because it's the idea of finding that perfect person. It's a little bit hard and you might put it off a little bit. Then, then you'll talk to some candidates who are disappointing. You may even run into a candidate who's really great, but the offer doesn't work out. Maybe, maybe they don't take it. Maybe it's not the right time in their life, et cetera, et cetera. So you can basically upfront tell yourself, yeah, these 4 obstacles are probably going to be here. I've played this level of the game before, or I could just see what's, what's coming. And so when they come, it takes the emotional edge off of it because it's like, yeah, I know. I don't feel betrayed by this. I don't feel surprised by this. I knew you were coming.

You just say hello to it.

Here you are. Hey. I thought I'd be seeing you soon. And I also had already kind of thought about what I would do to get around that before it hits me and I'm in an emotional state. So it's like, yeah, I'm probably going to meet a bunch of people who are kind of disappointing, and it'll probably feel in the moment like, God, am I ever going to find somebody great? but of course I will. I only need one and it's a numbers game and I should, I should probably just expect that I'm going to talk to about, you know, 30 to 40 people and that 25 of those people are going to be truly just a waste of time, uh, you know, in terms of the interview, but that's okay. That's, that's part of the process. And you tell yourself that up front and then as it's happening, you're like, yeah, well, I already, I already addressed this. I don't need to like react to it again because I already kind of pre-reacted to the whole thing.

And what, uh, is this project that you're doing like big or like Do you recommend doing this for a small thing or only a big thing?

I don't know. This is my first time actually doing it. Like the corny step of like writing it out to myself of like, dear Sean. Yeah.

And then it's like, P.S., you're pretty fucking lame for write this.

Yeah, exactly. It's like, all right, that's 3 pages now. This was cool when it was a paragraph. Um, I think it was, it was very helpful. I will do it again. Um, I will do it again. I mean, I don't know how much this actually, like, it doesn't, it sort of blunts the pain, but the pain's still there. You know what I mean? It's like when you get a shot at the doctor, it's like, if you really are looking at it and hyperfixated on it and you start hyperventilating about it, yeah, it's kind of a worse experience. If you look away, you might still feel a little prick, but you know, you took the edge off of it. I think that's what this has done for me.

I have, um, all right, so we're talking about like big and small. Do you want me to tell you about a small thing and a big idea that are, to me, are equally fascinating? Okay, go to patronview.com. So I was with Nick Gray this weekend. So I did this amazing vacation where my friend David owns a home in Utah, and about 8 of us, or maybe 6 of us plus our spouses and our kids, all went and hung out, and, uh, it was amazing. And Nick was there, and I was looking at his computer, and I said, Nick, what are you doing? He goes, let me tell you. And it was very fascinating. And so it's called PatronView, patronview.com. And so Nick used to own this service called Museum Hack, where it was kind of amazing that it existed, but you would pay $100 and Nick or one of his tour guides would take you to the Met and give you a sort of guerrilla tour of the, of the museum. And it was amazing. And so that's where he got really into museums and he became buddies somehow or somehow got in with the guys who do the fundraising. And because he's a business person, he was like, oh wow, it's so fascinating that one person is donating $1 million, $10 million, $20 million to these museums. And they do it every year and to tons of different museum, museums. That's really amazing. And so recently with, uh, a mutual buddy, Stetson Blake, they built this website where it's pretty amazing where all he did was if you go to the Met or one of a dozen or hundreds of other museums, they, every year they have to put out a PDF that explains who donated money and how much money that person donated. And so he's aggregated all of them, hundreds or maybe even thousands, and he used AI to upload all of them into a database. So if you are fundraising for a museum, I believe, if I had to guess, you're going to be able to pay his service money to find out who the whales are. You know, whatever. And it's crazy that because of AI, he was able to make this, he told me, uh, for $2,000.

I'm just gonna read the about page. It says, uh, we're a research platform dedicated to documenting cultural philanthropy. I've never actually heard that before, which just shows how, like, much of a noob I am about philanthropy. But that makes sense. So people who donate to things that are about culture. And then it says, where— and then it says, the data our research is pulling from annual reports 990 tax filings, institutional publications, official documents, and proprietary sources. This lets us present donor information that's never before been displayed. We like to think of it as celebrating philanthropy and enabling development departments.

Pretty cool, right? Awesome. It's great, right?

Like, this is—

I was, I was like, Nick, what's your deal here? Like, you want to turn this into a business? And he's very— Nick is happy. Like, he's not looking for anything. He's like, I don't know, I'm just tinkering. And in my head, as someone who is probably less, uh, you know, content than him, I was like, oh man, like, Nick, you could do this, you could do this, you could do this. And that's like how the entire conversation came about. But isn't this pretty cool that he's like building this and this is his hobby and the fact that AI has made this so easy?

Yeah, dude, this is great. I mean, Nick, I've already, you know, really shouted him out on here a ton of times because he's somebody who's made a big impact on me. Just seeing the way this guy rolls through life, I'm like, he just does things for his own amusement. He does things on his terms, and I think he does things with high intentionality, and he doesn't see— and he basically resisted the rat race. I think those are the people I admire the most of all, is the people that have resisted the rat race. Like, I think he neither chases money nor status. Um, and if you think about the people who are talented and successful in your life, how many do you think actually truly are resisting money and status? Very, very few.

I know probably two people, him and Jack Smith.

Yeah, it's pretty crazy. And so you just sort of watch their moves and then you look at them and, you know, you can kind of learn from them. So this is, this is extremely cool.

Like, and what's funny about Nick is every 2 or 3 years or something like that, he likes to find a publicly traded company that he loves and he'll make a big bet on it. And right now his— or for the past probably 4 or 5 years, actually, his bet has been Cloudflare. Like, for some reason, I don't know, he's got all this analysis. He, like, loves it. To the point where like when he hosted an event, he specifically hosted his event in the Cloudflare event space because he's like so loyal and he'll wear Cloudflare t-shirts, whatever. Like one time there was a race, like a, like a 5K or a marathon through Austin and he'll like hold up a sign that says like Cloudflare rules. Like just because he wants that.

You told me like at his birthday party, he had his birthday party at the Cloudflare office and then midway through the birthday party, he ran upstairs and got like to like a product manager, like a marketing manager to come down and be like, hey everybody, quick word from Jack from the marketing department. Why don't you just tell us about the great things you got going on at Cloudflare?

The guy's like, uh, yeah, so, you know, before, before he brought that guy in, he goes, I need everyone to treat Jack from Cloudflare like a celebrity. And so when he walked in, we go, oh my God, is that Jack? Are you the VP of engineering at Cloudflare?

Oh my God, he's in here.

He's here.

The stock is, the stock is up 400% in the last 5 years. So he's done pretty well.

He's done well. And if you click the about page, I know for a fact, so he lists an area that says technology. PatronView is built with modern web tech to ensure fast, reliable access to data. And he only did that so he could list that he uses Cloudflare. I know that's exactly how he thought. Um, but the reason I'm bringing this up is I think that if you're like just starting to build a business or something, you should follow PatronView. Or like go there, like go there once a week. And I, and I would bet that you're gonna see like it evolve. Like, uh, you know, it's sort of like measuring your kid on the wall. Like you're gonna see like the measuring, like, like that's what's gonna happen with this.

Well, this is cool too. I think another, another cool thing about this is this fits into like a, a genre that, you know, personal software. So, uh, or maybe social software. So basically, uh, when the internet came out, before pre-internet, the only people that made media were media companies. You know, you got your media from the New York Times and the Huffington Post, whatever, like newspapers, magazines, TV, etc. And then when the internet came out and you got Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and Snapchat, then social media became a thing and everybody became a little broadcaster, right? Everybody broadcasted little moments of their life or their content or their, their interest, whatever it was. And there was this explosion, like, you know, a sort of like 1 billion X increase in the amount of media that was created because everybody was doing it. And like one clear thing I see that's happening in the world today is that that's now happening with software. So software used to be something that only software companies and software engineers could make. And you know, there's only like, I don't know, there was less than 100 million of roughly software engineers, like proper, like professional software engineers in the world. So, you know, 100 million out of 8 billion people could do the thing. And you know, if in terms of software companies, there's even less, maybe 100,000, uh, software companies, I don't know, order of magnitude roughly. And now with like Replit and v0 and all these different tools, it's going to be like social media where like, oh, I have a, I carry in my pocket a thing that can make media. It's like, I carry in my pocket a thing that can make software. So a guy like Nick, who before this probably couldn't have taken his idea and made it into an app because he would have to either A, learn to code, or B, go hire like expensive programmers to make this happen. Like he did most of this with AI. And so you see personal software, this like you know, this personal software category, which was like, didn't exist 3 years ago or 5 years ago, um, is now going to have the same sort of like 1 billion X, you know, increase, uh, just because anybody who's got an idea can now make their idea. Now today it's like broken 3/4 of the time, doesn't quite work, but like every 6 months that number goes down by 15%. And so, you know, within 2 or 3 years that number is going to be like zero, right? It's going to be like When you have an idea, you make your app.

Everything that I've been making on Replit and Lovable and Cursor, it's basically just like a Figma replacement. Like I'm just like, it's basically just like drawing on paper. Yeah. It's just like a mockup and you still need someone to like actually do the work, but it, but it's a sick mockup.

Yeah.

Like it looks, yeah.

So somebody called it minimum viable promise. So it's a minimal viable product. It's like, ah, it's not really a product, but it's like, it kind of has like, you make a promise, you can see the promise of something. And I think that's what a lot of these tools are able to do today.

Have you heard of a guy named Edwin Chen?

Edwin Chen?

I mean, there's like, you probably have 10 friends. There's probably 6,000 of them on my Facebook feed.

I went to school in Beijing. I think I got a few Edwin Chens in my Rolodex.

Edwin Chen might be the, like, if you did like a chart of like richest slash unknown slash youngest person in the world. I think it's going to be Edwin Chen.

Is this the guy who's doing Surge?

So, yeah. So Edwin Chen, in like 2018, 2019, he worked at Facebook. And the story is, is that he was tasked with like making some type of Yelp-style product. And what that meant was he had a list of 50,000 vendors and he needed to figure out which of those 50,000 was a restaurant. And which were a grocery store. And so he went and hired a firm, some company to like parse it out. And it's like manual. You had to do it manually. Like you had to like hire some firm that had a lot of offshore talent to go through and do it all manually by hand. And he was like, it took us 4 months or 6 months, something like that, which basically just meant we had to sit and wait. Like we couldn't do anything until we had that data. So I just had to sit and wait. And so he had this idea where he was gonna make a better way to do data labeling. And the data labeling is important now because that is what a lot of AI companies use, which I had no idea they did that. And I'll explain how they do that. But basically when a company like OpenAI wants to figure out if a certain reply is unethical, so like for example, asking like, is it okay to like, hit someone, or I don't know, like whatever, like questions you would ask it, a real person, and actually not just a real person, but like a really smart person, even someone who like does engineering or philosophy, needs to spend time going through all the potential answers and to tell OpenAI, I think this one sort of fits what you're going for. But anyway, Edwin had this idea of, I'm gonna create this massive workforce of philosophers, of engineers, of Ivy League grads, grads who can go through and label all of these answers as good or bad. So AI companies can kind of— I can be like their offshore talent. And so he's done this, uh, and it started in 2020. Now he has 100,000 people who are in the marketplace working for him as these data labelers. And this company is completely unknown. So if you— I think it's Surge AI, I believe is the URL. So if you go to Surge AI, It's a landing page with one paragraph. That's an amazing paragraph. If you want, you can read it. Do you want to read it?

What made people like Hemingway, Kahlo, and von Neumann so extraordinary? Their life. The books they read, the stumbles they had, the reinforcement. Every time friends laughed at their jokes and every time they didn't. It's the people they met, the places they explored, and every decision they made along the way. Data does for AI what life does for humans. It elevates the neural networks that know nothing about the world into the intelligence capable of providing new art, sending rocket ships to Mars, et cetera. Our mission is to shape AGI with the richness of human intelligence, curious, witty, imaginative, and unexpected brilliance. We wake up every day trying to produce the data that makes this possible.

Amazing, right?

Romantic.

It's romantic.

And then this guy made like a giant fleet of overseas data labelers sound like the army from 300.

Yeah, yeah, it's the, it's the best. And so the way the business model works is they have 100,000 of these folks and they train them on different standards and whatever. And then they've also made software so, uh, they can show the, the, the basically homework or task to their folks. And a company like OpenAI or, uh, Google, whatever, whatever is gonna pay, uh, Surge millions and millions of dollars. And Surge is then gonna take something like 30 or 40% of it and give it to the annotator to do the work. So this company is only 5 years old. And it's, uh, it was leaked that they did $1 billion in revenue in the last 12 months. And this guy, Edwin Chen, he's only 37 years old and he owns 100% of the company. They have not taken any outside funding.

Holy shit.

Now listen, their biggest competitor is a company called Scale. Scale is run by this guy named Alexander Wang. I think Alex, Alex Wang, I think his name is. And it recently sold for something like 30 times revenue. I believe it. They were doing like $800, $900 million in revenue. They just sold half of the company to Facebook. I think it was for $28 billion or $30 billion.

Yeah, $30 billion.

Which means, which means this guy, uh, Edwin, who's 37 and has a 5-year-old company, presumably is worth something like $30 billion. And you can't find him on Twitter. He has no blog. You can't find photos of him. He used to have a blog, but you have to go to Web Archive in order to find it because he took it down. And his customers are like, Edwin is not online. You can't find him anywhere. And we like it that way. His business is very boring. The branding is basically nonexistent and it just does a very good job. And compared to Scale, who's like, you know, the hottest kid on the block, like Alex Wang was just on Theo Von's podcast. He was at the inauguration. He's kind of like, kind of like the, the it guy right now. These guys are the exact opposite. You're not going to find them anywhere. They only have 100 employees. They're totally under the radar. And, uh, it's super, super fascinating.

Dude, this is, uh, this is wild. Uh, I did not know that he bootstrapped the whole thing. I also had never heard this company until Scale got bought. I'd never heard of this company.

So their company is killing it now because Scale got bought. So because Scale got bought, is now owned basically by Facebook, Google, and a bunch of other companies, they go, ah, we don't want to, we don't have with you anymore. We going straight to Surge.

But they were already winning. They were at $1 billion in revenue and Scale was at $750 million.

And the reason why they're winning is because they are— they charge a premium and they're, they— he's like, I don't— we got scale, but it's like I wasn't trying to get scale, meaning I wasn't trying to grow big. I was trying to hire the best people and to train them really well. And I charged for it. I charged 3 times what Scale charges. And the results have been better and people really like us because of it. And this whole data labeling industry, I had no idea about this. I didn't know that people were behind the scenes making these decisions. It's kind of wild.

I mean, this is one of the best, like, uh, picks and shovels businesses. So if you've never heard of picks and shovels, it's, uh, the idea is like anytime there's a gold rush, who makes the money? Yeah, it's the few people who find the gold. But the more reliable way to make money is just to sell picks and shovels to everybody else who's rushing into the gold rush. And Scale and Surge were the best picks and shovels businesses, maybe besides Nvidia, because what they were doing is saying, cool, everybody, everybody wants to compete to become the— you want to make AGI, you want to make AGI, you're all raising billions and billions of dollars. Well, all of you have the same problem, and I will sell the data labeling service to all of you. And This is so funny that now that Facebook is buying, uh, Scale, it's like there's all that revenue has to find a new home. Like this, that is crazy that that's the best news ever for this guy.

And there's another company called Handshake. So if you go to joinhandshake.com, previously, or it still might be this, but they were known as a company that helped recent college graduates get jobs. And so basically they're a job board or job network for, uh, 22-year-olds.

Dude. Yeah, this was for college kids.

Okay, well listen to this. They noticed a few months ago, uh, that Surge and, uh, uh, Scale were using their service to find these, these data annotators. And so they go, ah, we're gonna do that now. And so in a very smart, short amount of time, they pivoted and that business that they have is going to be at $100 million a year in the next couple of months in a very short amount of time. Because what they did was they went and just said, oh, you are looking for a data annotation gig. We got you. Let's, let's go ahead and get you trained and we're just going to provide that service to folks. And so Handshake is building that business now.

Dude, that's so crazy. I remember using this because I was like, oh, it's interesting that nobody's really built the kind of like one place to go hire college interns or college like fresh grads. And they built this like marketplace where you could go post on a job board at my local college here and I could get— but it was like kind of crappy, dude. It was like, it wasn't great. It was very like little liquidity in the market. But I remember thinking like, this is an interesting idea. Somebody like, it's a marketplace. I like marketplaces. Somebody should do this right. And, um, I remember they were kind of like puttering along for a while, it seemed like. And, uh, this is so funny that they pivoted to this and now are going to just explode. Yeah.

And if you Google Handshake data annotation, you can find the blog post that they, that they wrote on them announcing that they were doing this. And so it basically just says that for the past decade, Handshake has changed how college students started their careers. And then it goes on to basically say, we're changing the company to like just hire, just do this thing. And it's already making— and they don't actually say this, but like it's now making $100 million a year.

And, you know, I don't know how long this stuff will last. Like, you know, this might be a business that I think in like 7 to 10 years, you may not need this anymore. Like, it seems like the way AI is going, you may not need this kind of human in the loop, um, to label all this data. Either, either they label, they label enough data where then the model learns how to label data, you don't need humans doing this, or they use a thing that doesn't have the RLHF, right? Like, you just do reinforcement learning without human feedback, and it I think some people who are kind of pure believers in AI think you won't need the human feedback, um, at a certain point. So this might be a get, get while the getting's good type of business.

So let me, let me tell you a potential counter to that. So Tim Westergen founded a company called Pandora, and I think he started it in 1990, uh, maybe '98. So it was like pre-iPhone. Um, wait, when did the iPhone come out? '08, '06? Yeah. So it was like probably like 2002 then. And anyway, uh, he told me this story because we had him talk at one of our events where he was like, I raised $7 million and all $7 million of that went to hiring basically ex-musicians or musicians who were teachers and didn't make a lot of money. And for 2 years I had about 150 of them listening to music and I gave them basically a Scantron of all types of attributes that a song could potentially have. And so if you're listening to the Beatles, you, would fill out like, okay, it sounds like it's at like, uh, 90 beats per minute. It sounds like there's guitar, like it's melodic, it's lighthearted, whatever. And after 2 years of doing this, he put all of the data, basically Scantrons, into this algorithm that he built. And he started playing like, uh, uh, he told me a Beatles song. And then, and then he clicked next and it would suggest new music that was similar to the one that the, the Beatles song that he originally played. And he said the Bee Gees came up. And he was like, the Bee Gees and the Beatles, they're not similar at all. What the hell? And then he kept clicking next. He's like, oh wait, they have the same melody, or they had— they all like have the same— like they make me feel similar. And he was like, it's working, it's working. And so originally his idea was, I'm going to create kiosks at Best Buy so you could say I'm interested in Beatles, but here's like 5 other songs that Best Buy could show you, and you will buy those CDs while you're there. And then the iPhone came out and he was like, oh my God, this is actually the exact way to apply this. and so this idea of data, data labeling has been around forever. And I didn't, when I was reading Scale or about Surge, I was like, oh my God, this is exactly what Tim was explaining to me how Pandora started. And so this has been around for 20 years. And so you say, I don't know if it's gonna be around or not, but I don't know. It's been around for 20 years so far.

Yeah, that's true. But, uh, it's kind of like, like self-driving, which is coming out now. I've taken the Waymos in San Francisco and Robotaxi in Austin. The Tesla, the Tesla self-driving just launched in Austin. um, I think like 2 days ago or something, but they took 2 different approaches. So Waymo basically has this really expensive car. I forgot the all-in cost, but it's something like $150,000 to $300,000 is the cost of the car with all the sensors on it. Right. So they have this really expensive car with LiDAR. And in addition to the LiDAR, they, um, hardcode and hard map the roads so that, you know, for, for years they would drive around and basically like map the road physically, and they could only launch in cities where they had mapped the roads. And Tesla took this other approach, which was basically cameras only, no LiDAR, and we're not gonna hard map the roads. We're gonna let people drive around, and then the car needs to have a brain that's smart enough to figure out a road even if it's never been on that road before. And, uh, it was this interesting bet because Elon was like, LiDAR is not only— we're not doing it, it's stupid, and that's a dead-end path. And everybody else was all in on LiDAR. Everyone's Like, LiDAR makes it safer. It's better. You can't do this without LiDAR. And Elon's point was, we humans drive with just eyes. We only have cameras. We don't— I don't have a LiDAR in my brain, and I'm able to drive safely, right?

And LiDAR is what? LiDAR is, uh, uh, like, uh, you're shooting some type of signal and it bounces back.

You can see through things. So, uh, I don't know exactly what's the difference between LiDAR and radar and all these different things, but like, It's another version of basically scanning that allows you to do what a camera can't. Camera can't see through an object. LiDAR can. It could sense that there's another, another object behind it. So let the classic example is like, you know, you know, maybe you're gonna do a, a turn, there's something obstructing your view, but then there's a little old grandma walking on the crosswalk, but you couldn't see the grandma until you started the turn visibly. But LiDAR would know that there's just some, there's an object there that's, that's moving. Point is, other sensors besides cameras. Whereas Elon was like, no, we're just going to put like, whatever, 8 cameras on the car and that's going to make it work. And for a long time there was a big debate. Some experts thought Elon is wrong. Some were just like, Elon is correct, and Elon we trust. And very smart people were on both sides of the debate. And it was like a very high-stakes debate because self-driving cars is one of the most valuable prizes that there is. Uh, like self-driving cars, I don't think people really realize it. I think because it's I think because people talked about it for a while, they got kind of numb to it. This actually happened with AI too. People have been talking about AI, maybe machine learning, deep learning for a long time. People didn't really realize when something actually had changed. And then suddenly like, wait, it's actually here. And the same people who had been tracking it for a long time were almost late to the party because they mistakenly wrote it off as, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've heard this before. And so the same thing's happening with self-driving cars, where it's sort of like a, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's like, wait a minute, it's actually happening now. Um, it's because it's an extreme game changer, both like for society, for Tesla's business, right? Like Tesla's business is now going to be, if you own a Tesla, when you're, instead of 95% of the time your car just sits parked, you're going to just tap a button, say, go make me some money, please. And like a dog, it's going to go fetch. It's just going to go out there and it's going to start doing rides for people. And it's going to start earning you money passively. all the time.

Dude, I think, I think Morgan Stanley or Chase, one of the big banks, like last week was like, wrote this report where they had to say what the world's going to look like with self-driving. And it wasn't like, um, it was far more grand. They're like, the economy is going to look radically different because people are going to have so much more time. Like it was like at a macro scale, it was like, oh, like the world will change because of this. But it was also like there's 60, I think, thousand car deaths a year. Like, what's the world going to look like with, with more people? Like, like, it was like a pretty meaningful— like, it was like a very grand way of thinking about it. It wasn't just like, oh wow, I could play on my phone while I'm walking or driving to work. It was like, no, everything changes.

I, I asked last night, I asked Grok, I said, what are the second-order effects of self-driving cars? Here's what it said. So it's like, cities are going to look completely different. Right now, parking lots itself occupy 30% of all urban land. in some cities. And this is gonna— you're not gonna need parking lots because the cars aren't gonna just sit parked. They're gonna be rolling around. You're gonna need way less cars in a city. Plus they don't— they're not gonna sit still. So you don't need all of the space. Just look around a city. How much space is dedicated just to parking? Like, we're gonna look back and that's gonna look sort of like a caveman style thing. It's like, because in the future those are gonna be parks.

Yeah, it's gonna be like— it's gonna be smoking in a restaurant.

Yeah, exactly. And so like The good version of this is that's like, you know, green spaces and affordable housing. But like, who knows, maybe, maybe it actually gets co-opted for some other purpose. They all just become like, you know, drone delivery, uh, you know, parking units where Amazon keeps like 10 million delivery drones. Um, the next one is labor. So right now there's 3.5 million truck drivers alone, let alone all of the like Uber and taxi drivers. And you're just not going to need that job, period. Like, and I don't know what happens to that, but there we go. Uh, the next one is, you know, basically I think the average person spends something like 90 minutes a day just commuting. And so you get, you know, of your wake time, let's say you're awake for 16 hours, you're gonna add, you know, what is that? So let's just pretend it's 2 out of 16. You're gonna add like, you know, 13% more time to everybody's day. Where they can now sleep, eat, work, play, right? You're gonna sit in a car and you're not gonna have to think about the car. You're just gonna be able to do one of those things, which also means the car becomes a new place for entrepreneurs to build experiences, right? Like today there's no one out there being like, I build car games, right? There's people who build mobile games and Xbox games, but there's nobody who builds car games. Well, car games is gonna become a thing 'cause people are gonna sit in cars and play video games. People are going to sit in cars and they're going to relax, recover, they're going to work. And so you're going to build tools that go in them. Another one is insurance. It's like the whole insurance system, like, you know, Buffett's big bets and Geico and all those things. It's all based on human driving. And so if humans aren't driving anymore, like both the risk and the risk-reward ratios change, but also who are you insuring? You're insuring the software company versus like individuals. Like, how is this all going to work? And so that whole— all the whole insurance industry changes. Um, and then basically like car ownership. So today owning a car is both like utility, but also status symbol. So it's going to be kind of interesting. Like you're a car guy. Like I wonder when there's self-driving cars and basically transportation is just on tap, like flowing like water, right? You just, you push a button and in 30 seconds, a little car, the car of your liking pulls up.

It's just going to be like, uh, it's going to be like people who like horses now. Like it's going to be a small group of people who are passionate. Yeah. It's just like, oh, you're passionate about it and you are lucky enough to have enough room or enough money to like afford it. like maybe I would like buy a Groupon and can go experience that once in my life. Like that's what it's going to be.

Yeah. Or like, you know, like horseback riding is like therapeutic. People like to like brush a horse or pet a horse. It's going to be like that with a car. It's going to be like male therapy to just like get in there and just be behind the wheel, have control over something in your life. Yeah.

It's good. Or like we punk. Yeah. You're good. Like feel the noise and like smell the gas. Like it's going to be, um, it's going to be like a hobby.

Yeah.

It's not going to, it's not going to exist. I don't think. I think it's going to be a lot longer. But like in 20, it could be 20 years, 25 years. It's not going to be in the next 5 years. But yeah, it's going to be a hobby.

Are you sure about that? Why do you think it's not going to be in the next 5 years? Waymos are now doing 20% of all the rides in San Francisco because that was zero.

Like, dude, have you like, have you ever like a large percentage of people, of Americans have to have to drive let's say 60 miles one way to, to work, or they have to like pull stuff or carry stuff. I just don't think, I think that for the urban, there's, it's not, um, oh, um, there's good, there's going to be like a, there's probably going to be like 4 sections of users. So it's like young urbanites and it's like, yeah, you guys don't need a car at all. Like you're, you're, you're doing this probably already there with Uber.

Yeah.

And then like the far end of that spectrum is like, uh, rural people who have to actually tow stuff. Of, you know, even though everyone has a truck, very few actually use it, but there's like that section and there's like the people in between and there's gonna be like a timeline because like if you ever, you can't really tow anything on an electric car right now. It's like, it's, they, you say you can, but go talk to someone who lives in rural Texas when you have to like be driving shit around all day. It's like impossible. So I think that there's gonna be like, it's gonna be like for, you know, what's that early adopter?

When you say it's not gonna be 5 years, are you saying it's not gonna be meaning self-driving is not gonna work?

It's not gonna be safe? No, it's gonna work. It's just not gonna, just the user adoption. it's going to take a minute for the whole spectrum of people. I think for the urbanites and people like that, it's tomorrow we're going to do it, I think.

Yeah, I mean, that guy towing probably still doesn't— he still has an AOL email address, right?

Yeah, yeah.

So I think it's pretty safe to say that that person's not— yeah, it might be 40 years before that person—

It's going to be a long time. But then there's a lot of people— I'm one of them. I'm romantic about my gas vehicle. I had an electric car, and I got rid of it. And in my head, I'm like, I acknowledge it's better. I acknowledge that like it's the future, but it sucks. I want—

it's like our vegan friends. It's like, I get it. Yeah, we shouldn't kill creatures, but it just tastes so good. Yeah. But when you dip them in ranch, it's fantastic.

But I'm excited too. What's crazy is in Austin, I think, or SF, people are actually paying more for the Waymos.

Yeah. Yeah. It's not— it's not that much cheaper yet.

That was— but people are— people want to not be around someone. And that was unexpected. So like when I was— when I drive my— I have a BMW that has self-driving stuff. I feel way safer on that than if it were just me. And I think that there's like 20% of people and it's usually men. I've noticed— I've noticed women tend to hate— everyone I've talked to hates self-driving and every man I've talked to likes it. And like, have you— have you— do you have any self-driving now?

Um, no, well, I don't, I don't have it. So I haven't had that, that level of, uh, uh, I haven't had a sample size to, to, no, I've noticed that. I'm curious if that's common or if you're just like indexing on 3 people.

No, it's, well, yeah, I am. But, uh, yeah, it's like 5 of my friends, like the husbands use it and the wives are like, nope, I don't mess with that. I don't use it. Uh, but I feel way safer with it. Um, you want to do one more thing or you have something?

Well, I have a, so I tweeted something out that Elon replied to. Over the weekend.

And how did that make you feel? Did you like, did you like clap and like scream? No.

So I, first of all, I played it so cool. You wouldn't— if you had seen me, you would have thought I might be under the weather. That's how cool I was playing it. And actually what happened is, um, I just texted my wife and I was like, oh, not Elon replying to me. And, uh, And then I just, I forgot about it. Next day I didn't even think about it. I moved on. My mom calls me. She's like, Sean, what did you say? I'm like, what? She's like, Sean, what did you say? Elon, what'd you say to Elon? And I was like, what? My wife put it up on her Instagram story and I was like, oh my God, I'm trying to play it cool over here. And then you made it like, you know, lame city. So that felt interesting that I got like multiple phone calls from people.

And I was like, that's like the only time your wife has shared something that Is when another person replied to you.

Yeah, exactly. And so I thought that was interesting how big of a reaction it was. But the thing I had said was, I wrote, within a couple years, not using AI while you're doing your job will be the equivalent of coming to work without a computer. Like if someone just turned up and they're like, nah, I didn't bring it today. You'd be like, what the hell, dude? Like, what are you planning to do? What is the, what's the plan here? That's how it's going to be if you're trying to do your job and you're not using AI constantly to do your job.

Yeah, I thought that was good response.

He was like, you know, sooner probably. And so that was like, and so I started thinking about that and I started thinking about, somebody else said this thing, they go, pretty soon being a doctor who's not using AI as a copilot, like let's say you're a radiologist and you're just trying to eyeball every MRI and you're not also running it through AI, that'll be considered malpractice because like you put the patient at risk by not at least including the second layer of AI diagnostics. And I thought that's pretty interesting. It's like the flip is gonna go so much from this doesn't work, you know, something we don't do, we don't even use it to if you're not using it, it's considered malpractice, whether it's corporate malpractice or medical malpractice.

My doctor friend admitted to me the other day, he goes, OpenAI is a better doctor than me. And he was like, and I knew this was going to be popular because for years he's been a doctor for 10 years. Patients come to me and said, well, Google says this or WebMD says this. And he says, over the last 6 months, the only people who have used that reasoning is with OpenAI. And I said, well, according to OpenAI, yeah, ChatGPT said this. And he goes, and they're right. A lot of times the diagnosis is right.

Dude, I got in a fight with a doctor recently about this. Did I tell you this?

What did they say?

My mom had to have a surgery, but she was on a trip. And so I'm like calling in to the doctor. Every time the doctor would make her rounds, she would FaceTime me in. Um, she's on the other side of the country. And so the doctor would come in and like doctors, doctors are very hit or miss. I love some doctors, but a lot of doctors, I'm like, wow, this is an extremely underwhelming experience. And so this one doctor comes in and she's like, yeah, your levels were fine. And then I'm like, I actually read the test through ChatGPT and the levels were like high for this. And she's like, well, which level? And I'm like, I tell her, I'm like, whatever the thing, the whatever the term was. And she's like, yeah, that was high, but you know, it depends on the exact number. So I go, what was the number? I, I would have to check. I'm like, you're the doctor, so yeah, you would have to check. Like, you know, what are you talking about? And I'm like, you know, they basically— ChatGPT said if it's above this, then you should consider doing this, like, additional, additional step. Like, do you believe that? That's like, do you agree with that? Like, do you think we should do that, that step? She's like, well, I mean, you're putting me on the spot here and I don't have the number. And I'm like— and she basically was getting pissed And she's like, well, if you're going to ask me questions, then I'm going to need to go look at the number. And I literally was like, yeah, you are going to need to go look at the number then. It's like, what are we doing here? I don't understand. Like, why are you offended by me asking if you, if you have seen the data from the test, the test you just said to run, and now you're coming back to discuss the test results and you don't want to look at the test result? I don't really understand what's happening here.

Well, I think what's going to happen is that, you know how, have you noticed So, uh, have you ever been to a doctor now with an AI scribe? So like they have like for— okay, so for a long time—

oh, I was humiliating her in front of her AI scribe? Is that what happened?

Well, for a long time they could have been human scribes. And so like, have you been to a doctor and seen like a person on an iPad? Like literally it looks like the doctor's FaceTiming, typing notes. Yeah, yeah. And that's like a scribe. Now they have AI scribes. And I think what's going to happen is like the AI is going to like talk up and be like, actually, ma'am, he's right. Like, like, I think that's what's going to happen. And if I was an entrepreneurial doctor, I would 100% start a new practice all centered around we are AI first. So we work with AI, you know, and I don't think that you— we aren't at the point and maybe we'll never be at the point where you totally trust it. Just like you always want the pilot, even if autopilot is still a thing, right? But I would like go heavy on that of leaning into like, we have all of the context here. We have all of your files uploaded to our ChatGPT or whatever it is and have an AI first. Because I think that a lot of people like you and me and people listening to this podcast, they have the similar sentiment where they're like, oh no, I trust the computer way more than a human being. But I would also want the human being to put their stamp on it.

It's also— and I want to sue them if I'm wrong. It's not even that like, oh, the AI found the problem and the doctor didn't. Sometimes it's just as simple as like, cool, the doctor came in, they talked kind of fast, they didn't fully explain. I, I still have more questions. And so you go and you ask ChatGPT to explain it to you, maybe simpler, or you ask some follow-up questions. Maybe you're not as embarrassed to ask questions. You feel like you're not like, you know, the person's not like in a rush to get out of there like a lot of doctors are. And so sometimes it's not even that the AI doctor is better because it's smarter. Sometimes it's because it's infinitely patient. Or it's an infinitely better communicator, or, you know, it knows, um, you know, maybe other things about you, or, you know, you could ask some follow-up questions. You don't feel silly doing it. Like, those are other components of the doctor experience, essentially bedside manner, that AI is better at.

Yeah. And, uh, so I'm like very eager to see how this works. I go to, um, I go to a, a doctor now, a concierge doctor, and it's not very expensive, but the reason I go there is the average at most doctors, they have to see 4 patients an hour. So they're at 15 minutes, right? Is that insane? I remember I went to a doctor and like, I had an earache. I'm like, guys, my ear is killing me. And like, he spent no time like trying to like help me like figure this out. And I went to a concierge doctor and the average time is 45 minutes. So we can like thoroughly walk through things. And so if I can just use all the information that they have and then go and ping ChatGPT to further the conversation, it is pretty brilliant. I'm very eager to see what's going to happen. I like— people act like AI is amazing for a bunch of different stuff, and it is, but what they're doing with medicine and drugs and cancer and things like that is like pretty astounding. And I think that's going to be the major breakthrough in the next couple of years.

Dude, the other one, lazy-ass parenting. So your kid's a little young for this, but it is amazing, dude. I'll open up Gemini And it has like a camera mode.

But why do you use different ones? You've said Claude, or sorry, you said, uh, Grok, and now you're saying Gemini. And then we also refer to ChatGPT. So you use different ones?

It's like, you know, you go to your different friends for different questions. You only ask me certain questions. Sometimes you go to Jack Smith, and sometimes you go to your, you know, you go to Joe. You go to different people for different things. So like, if you want to be, if you want something that's a little bit more real and objective, I think Grok is better. If you want something that's either code or creative writing, Claude is better. You know, the, the catch-all is ChatGPT. And then Gemini has some like advanced features. So this is what I was saying, like Gemini has the thing where you just turn your camera on like FaceTime. And I think it's for like, maybe you're supposed to like show it your car and be like, how do I repair this? And it like tells you what to do. But I just pointed at my kids and I'm like, hey, we're playing charades. Guess what they're doing. And then my kids will like, get on the ground and start like crawling. And it's like, hmm, seems to be a boy crawling. Maybe it's a snake. Are you a worm? And it like tries to guess it and they love it, dude. And so I'm able to just straight up chill and let them play with AI. It is amazing. Another one I'll do is I'll just be like, hey, I have a 5-year-old and a 4-year-old here and they want trivia questions. They like animals. They like Paw Patrol. They like, um, you know, they know a little bit about Pokémon, but nothing too complicated. Um, ask them a bunch of questions, cheer them on when they get it right. If they get it wrong, tell them the right answer. Keep track of the score. Here's their names. Go. That's the prompt. And it plays trivia endlessly with my kids and they love it because it's all audio, which kids can do. They don't have to like be on screens to be able to do this. And, um, so I'm just discovering like game after game I can play with them. Like I'll do like basically replaced Kumon with, hey, I need, um, advanced kindergarten math. Which like, I don't even know what that means, but it like gets you for whatever reason. Those 3 words give me the sweet spot of like the question that, that, that kind of works for my kids. And, um, it's like a tutor, right? It's an infinitely patient tutor with them. And it's not perfect in the sense of like, you know, sometimes it like starts and stops its audio. Cause if you make any sound, it thinks you're talking, but damn, it's pretty, it's pretty good. And, uh, it's like already usable for us.

I'm not. Seen— I didn't even— I didn't know much about Gemini. Gemini Live, I had no idea what this was. Is this Google? This is Google.

Gemini is like after summer break, you know, that one kid who comes back, it's like they're kind of like hot now, but you still have the old image of them, like their reputation is still being like not hot. Yeah, but objectively they're hot now, but nobody's really on it yet. That's what Gemini is. Gemini was basically out of the game. It's Google's AI tools out of the game. It's like, I was just ChatGPT, Grok, Claude.

Yeah.

And then she changed and she like, it's like, wait, like she got contacts and like she learned how to do her hair. She like watched a makeup tutorial. It's like she started rollerblading, which was like surprisingly good cardio. And now like suddenly Gemini could do things that like the other ones can't do, but nobody's on it yet, which doesn't really actually give you any benefits.

Wait, so Gemini is hot now?

Gemini's hot now.

Google's hot.

Google's hot.

Yeah. I don't know, man. That's hard for me to buy into, but—

Yeah, because you're one of those jocks at school who's just stuck in 7th grade. You forgot what happened over 7th grade summer.

All right, I'll use this. Yeah, I'm just stuck on ChatGPT. Uh, and I don't use Groq because I'm shocked when people say they use Groq. I'm like, wait, so you go to like twitter.com to use AI?

No, groq.com.

That's just, is that the same thing as, that's the Twitter one? Yeah. Because Steph Smith just got a job at this other one. What was that other one called?

Oh, no, she, she got it at Groq with a Q.

That's stupid naming, man.

Unfortunate.

Unfortunate names.

I'm a shareholder of Groq with a Q also, but unfortunate naming situation.

Yeah. And it's AI as well.

They're making chips.

Okay, well, they should change their name because, yeah, that doesn't make sense.

Or at least the pronunciation, right? Like, I don't know, like, I don't know how you all see it. It needs to be grok or something. I don't know what they're gonna do.

They could be grok, I guess. But they— yeah, Gronk is— so it's the same.

I love how you're putting the N in there like it's Rob Gronkowski.

Wait, what did I say?

You're saying Gronk.

Oh, what is it?

Grok.

Grok? Yeah, like the shoes Crocs. Uh, yeah, like Crocs. Yeah, wait, and so what is the Twitter thing?

What do you mean, what is it? That's also—

oh, that's not Gronk? Oh, I thought it was Gronk.

Yeah, there's no N in any of them. That guy's a football player. He's a retired football player.

I went to Montana to visit a friend last week and I wore overalls because they're like the best outfit.

I saw a photo of that and I just thought to myself, holy shit, this guy's got no limits. He's just wearing overalls as standard wear.

It's the best clothing because you could put your phone in your wallet right there on the chest. And so you're like holding kids and like you just have so many pockets and you have like this right here. And I love it. And she was like, oh, you got these. Did you think that we're all cowboys here? And I was like, I was like, huh? And she's like, you wore your overalls to Mount Dado? Are you trying to make fun of us? I was like, what are you talking about? I, I've worn these for years. Like, I am not pretending. No, I actually just got a commission.

By the way, I was very inspired by your Instagram post. You wrote something, the caption of your post, you go, from now on, I'm only taking photos that if my kid looked at it 20 years from now, they'd be like, My dad was pretty cool. I thought that was great.

That's, that's because you have that photo of your father, right? Of him when he was in his 30s and you're a baby and he's like doing something cool. He's wearing a cool shirt and you're like, oh wow, dad was sick. Or like, oh yeah, you don't see them like that anymore, right?

Like they don't care anymore. They're like fat now or whatever. And so you don't, you don't see that side of them, but like it lets you put a little respect on their name when you see like, oh damn, when they were young, they were actually kind of That's actually kind of fly what they were wearing.

So I was smoking a cigar and they were, which I never do, but I like was smoking a cigar and like they were going to take a photo with my kid or someone had a camera. I was like, oh, take photos. And I put the cigar— I used to hide it. I would hide it behind my back and I'm like, nah, fuck this. She's going to be proud. Like, put it back in.

Do you think smoking is going to be cool in 30 years? That's going to be like you had like a slave with you or something. It's going to be crazy that you were just smoking with a baby on your shoulder.

Brother, have you seen the photo of the 8 guys sitting on the beam off the, like, off the Empire State Building?

It's a great picture.

I think, I think to myself, those guys are crazy, they're dangerous, but they're fucking hard. That is awesome. And so I will never be on the beam of the Empire State Building 1,000 feet above the air, but at least I could smoke a cigar and look remotely cool.

Dude, we should print this out. I want this framed. Dude, 3 of them have overalls very similar to the ones you were wearing.

Yeah, what's up?

Same make and model. Yeah, you just need this like beret hat. You probably have this. What am I talking about? Of course you have this hat.

Yeah, and the courage to eat lunch 1,000 feet above, uh, the ground, which is like, even back then the co-workers were like, guys, what are you doing? There's a cafeteria like right here. Like, what the fuck?

Let's just end this episode with just this photo slowly fading away on our YouTube channel with just some great music. Let's just leave people with a good feeling and a reminder of, of the men we once were.

All right, that's it. That's the pod.