BYOCompute, Pope Destroys False Idol, Ben Affleck's White Pill — Transcript

You're watching TVPN. >> Today is Friday, October 2nd, 2026. We are live from the TVP Ultra Dome. The temple of technology, the fortress of finance, the capital of capital. How many days? >> 83 days. >> 83 days. >> But you already knew that. We don't even have to tell you. >> The road for Christmas is going strong. >> That's right. >> Get ready. Lock in. Also, sign up for ramp. Time is money. Save both. Easy. use corporate cards, bill pay, accounting, and a whole lot more all in one place.

>> Uh oh, we're getting Christmassy up in here. Okay, very Christmy. It's Q4. We're in the correct >> We're in the correct season now, so we can get pretty Christmassy. >> That is right. >> It's pretty tricky to stay in the >> Well, little >> enough about Christmas, John. Let's Let's get into the news. >> Let's talk about artificial intelligence. Sounds great. Uh yeah. So uh make it less Christmy. It's too Christmassy. It's 83 days away. This is a This is no more than 20 days away before we get that that Christmas.

>> I'll just leave this on. >> Okay. Oh, just one level of Christmas. >> That's right. >> For October 7th. October 2nd. Uh yeah. So, uh, there was this funny moment, uh, in at Dev Day, uh, this week where, um, you know, everyone's like focused on the war of like DOS versus Muse versus Instinct and and there were a couple times we were like, I want to talk about signin with chat GPT, which is like the most like boring and like minute feature and not very much not in like the drama war for the personal agent where who's going to do your shopping, who's going to book your >> No, I just thought it was cool for independent developers, small app builders. It's actually like probably more immediately relevant to the community that was there like the developers, right?

>> Yeah. And and you remember when like flashback to two years ago, people were creating these magical new product experiences with >> at uh the best models at the time, but they were in in hindsight pretty rudimentary. >> Yep. >> And they would build something magical, scale up really quickly, and then be like, "Wow, I'm just got stuck with like a $30,000 API bill." Yep. And so this is the solve for that because it allows users to bring their own >> comput. >> Everyone knows BYOB. Now we're in the era of BYOC. Um and uh and and and yeah, like you know, most companies, they could usually figure out a way to say, hey, like this service is going to use a ton of compute, so you got to jump on the pro plan immediately. You got to set up a consumption a credit card relationship, API credit, something like that. uh metered billing, but it was just an extra step, an extra point of friction of you saying like, "Okay, I already paid 10 bucks a month for this thing. Now I gotta actually uh pay for inference." And this gives like a

different offtake. So, uh yeah, Peter Yang was feeling the same way that you were. He said, "Uh, I'm excited about dots, but even more excited about signin with chacht feature. Letting users use the chatbt plan in your website or app makes a bunch of indie apps a lot more viable." Uh example, I have a live language learning app that I wasn't planning to launch to users due to API costs, but letting users sign in with Chach makes this viable. Hope they roll it out to non-enterprise folks soon. Vignes, who's actually running the project, said, "I'm going to try and answer a bunch of questions that people have raised about signing with Chach in the next couple of days. Before that, I want to let you know why they shipped it." said um and and so you can go read that thread, but um the uh the the bring your own subscription stuff, it sticks out because it feels like it's potentially like the beginning of a new economic structure. Like is this an app store where there will be a margin that occurs to OpenAI or is this more just like better for discovery? Will agents like reach for these because the signin is available? How much more smooth will

this get? But you know, at a high level, I think you described it well. A user can sign in to an app or service. the the not the notion example is a good one because it's very intuitive. People already pay for notion. You can imagine all the AI features that are there and people were probably on day one of chach launching copying from notion into chatpt copying back into notion writing bindings. But if notion wants to offer like a whole bunch of inference opportunities and agentic features inside then they got to go to their clients and say hey you're paying 10 20 bucks a month for your seat. I we also need a bunch of money for inference.

This off uh this offsets that uh and so the way it works is a user signs into the to an app like notion uh then authorizes the app to run the open AI model requests against their plan without managing an API key on notion. This means drawing from the chatbt allowance instead of notion credits and it makes a lot of sense for bigger companies that have inference bills as you mentioned. uh and they've all had to grapple very quickly with like product tokconomics which is just a new new economic muscle and and uh like price elasticity curve they need to ride effectively. Um but the big thing is that it'll it should over time allow leaner teams to offer inference hungry features with way less friction. So um it's worth clarifying that the feature only brings OpenAI tokens along for the ride. It's not OpenAI dollars, which is I think a way where this could go, but the the good example is like let's say you have like some sort of AI book publisher where you're doing a bunch of token inference to generate the text of

the book. Like you say, hey, I want to go take this, you know, general story, turn it into a book, and then print it and send me the book. Right? There's two sort of costs there. One's inference. one is >> I'll scan it back on the computer and then I'll turn it into a playable video game. >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. But you can't offset the cost of printing books with Open AI tokens in any way. Yes. >> Um Yes. Uh but you but you could have the user spend their OpenAI credits to run the text generation side of the business. Um but I but I do think this could go further. The example that I gave was uh gener video. Uh, I'd like to have like a front door to AI that can handle the full billing relationship.

So, if I need to generate a video, I can just add that to my tab. And >> No, and you went through this. You went through this with Higsfield where you were using codecs to make videos. Yep. >> And somehow Higsfield has like $500 of yours now and it's locked in there and and it's unclear Yep. >> how you can get it because you ended up buying like the wrong kind of credit or something like that. Yeah, I wound up setting up like a consumer subscription and then I also bought API credits. So I have consumer credits and API credits and in order to use the consumer credits, I need to write a new binding in codec to use the front end as opposed to just computer wouldn't that use using computer use which would cost you more >> maybe a little bit. It's very unclear and so all of these things are like very messy but um and so yeah I mean between computer use MCP APIs like this might not even be a discussion because like

you're very like we're pretty close to the workflow happening out of the box even without direct integration. But then there's a question about will the apps like push back. But there is a world where even if you're if you're an inference provider, you're maybe fine with not owning the front door if you're generating so much more demand because you're integrated with the big platforms and you say, "Yeah, I'm actually losing the customer billing relationship, but I'm going to 10x my revenue because I'm like the model or the inference provider of choice when people go and they ask for a particular uh particular integration." And so there's always this dance with these integrations. Uh, you know, we were talking about it yesterday with the Neoclouds versus Nvidia uh strategy where okay, well, if in if NVIDIA actually does get DJX Cloud Leptin off the ground and if you're on there, you're going to get so much more business and you're and your your utilization rate is going to be so much higher, but you're not going to have the leverage over the over the customer that it's always this like careful dance. And

then ultimately, if an app store does emerge, everyone gripes over, you know, the 30% tax like the Apple tax is the same thing. you could wind up there in the age of AI. Um, but uh I I think from a consumer perspective like having a consolidated business rel uh like billing relationship would be great. Even in the world where computer use can go like plop down your credit card and set up an API key, it's still nicer to have like one point of billing and then true like like the buck stops with one model. It's like okay, you want to do this, it's going to be 10 bucks. Is it cool?

>> Yeah. the same same reason that some people want all the streaming services to be rebundled. >> That and also why a lot of consumers are like, "Yeah, it's awesome when I subscribe to something on the app store because it's so easy to unsubscribe in the app store. You just go to your your iOS subscriptions and you say, "Look, I'm canceling that." And it can't be, "Why are you canceling it? Make sure you call us." It's like all that annoying stuff that happens when you're on like some website and they're like, "Well, you actually have to call between, you know, 11 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. and we take a 2-hour lunch in there and you got to explain yourself and listen to our pitch for why you should stick around." Uh Apple like makes it one >> turn down the discount to stay.

>> Exactly. Exactly. Apple like turns all that off and so like that that could be this like complex dynamic. Uh app store economics are always are always complex. Um, but it might not it might not matter because you can just go and with computer use say like yeah like set up this API key, use this credit card. It's a little hesitant still and I don't think it's polished among any of the models. Um, a lot of them really hesitate. They're like they'll even say like don't give me your API key. Please put that in your environment. Don't give me your credit card number. I don't want it I don't want it actually le accidentally leaking or anything like that. Like even if you are being bold, uh the models will often be really hesitant. I I remember I was trying to use computer use to send an iMessage. I was like, "Go do a bunch of stuff. I'm gonna leave. I don't want you to send me a push notification. Just text me. I have a text message open in iMessage.

The window's right there. Go in that box and tell me when you're done and then I'll get it on my phone. It'll just come from me." Um and it was like and it it spent so many tokens being like, I don't want to screw this up. This is high stakes. Like it really knew that like botching an iMessage computer use thing could be like ruinous, you know, because it winds up texting. So >> it would be over. It would be over. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It would be cut. Um and so uh it's it's interesting. Um the the other the other reflection is like uh this whole app store concept, this whole bring sign in with chatd, bring your inference around, let's partner on distribution, let's integrate into the into the app. Um uh let's be the front door. Uh Sam originally launched this three years ago at the very first dev day 2023.

They had a product called GPTs and there was the GPT store and everyone was like wow okay I totally see the vision and then it was like three years of like languishing and like and like tussling and back and forth. >> Too early. >> Yeah. And there's just been so many integrations like Walmart and Apple where people have said, "Okay, I want to do an integration, but it it has to be really really good and to my favor." And then it breaks down. Like the Siri integration that's, you know, going away because they're they're migrating to Gemini is actually atrocious. Like you will ask a question and and it's like, "Yeah, of course it didn't work." You ask a question. You ask a basic question and it will say um like oh do you want to ask Chad PT and then you need to click click a button and then you click a button and it gives you an answer and if you want to go deeper you can say open in Chad PT and then it opens it but CHP doesn't get all the context of whatever happened before. It just opens the app and so it's like the worst possible like broken flow because like

both companies were like begrudgingly working together basically and being like look ne Neither of us want to work together, but the boss has signed a deal. So, we gota we got to do something here. So, let's both got >> let's both fight it out anyway. Uh it'll be interesting to see what happens. I I I guess like my you know they're they're pretty enterprisey right now. like the integrations are pretty enterprisey, but um I'm I'm interested in in like your thesis of will there be like a Flappy Bird moment or like a small dev team that figures out like hey if we can be the victor in the tool that gets pulled off the shelf when you know there's 1.2 billion users probably like you know they they'll always give that quote about like 400 million people are asking about health questions. It's like there's probably like 400 million people that are asking about, you know, I don't know, some some niche thing. And if you can be the tool that funnels and you actually use it as the top of funnel, uh you could see someone uh we like we

could definitely wind up talking to a founder who's like, "Oh yeah, I actually like basically figured out how to be the tool of choice. I log in, I monetize the inference better, and I scale to 100 million ARR in like a couple months." >> Um which is uh interesting. At the same time, there's gonna be a lot of companies like like this would be like such a solution for instinct, right? But they would never do it because they're trying to actually go up against on the core feature. >> And so there's this weird dynamic where, you know, Noah was on Invest like the best being like, I spend 75% of my time trying to secure compute. I'm burning so much money. I got to raise all this money. And like the the the solution's like right there. But it's like if you take that apple like you leave the garden like you are you're you're in trouble probably. But um who knows anyway.

>> Yeah. So on the on the enterprise side, OpenAI uh announced a partnership with B 10, our friends over there. Cool. Uh just just a few days ago at Devday. That's like a really good enterprise example because you can now basically get access to open models through your overall like OpenAI um like commit uh which is which is cool and it's native and codeex. And then the other use cases that I'm thinking about are like you know all those like generate headshot apps right that have been super popular. Those are super comput intensive and so being able to use >> basically get access to images 2.5.

>> Sure. Sure. Sure. >> Is is pretty cool. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. where like you've built an interesting funnel, you've built an interesting harness, you've built an interesting wrapper, but your compute is scaling really unfortunately and you have a and you have the ability to like offtake there is uh is very very interesting. >> Uh anyway, let me tell you about public investing for those who take it seriously. They got stocks, options, bonds, crypto, treasuries and more >> with great customer service. We might have to do away with the Christmas >> with the Christmas because the stinger's going under the Christmas.

>> Wow. >> And he doesn't even break through the the Christmas lights, you know, the 3D. >> We're working on it. We're working on it. >> We're working on it. >> Work in progress. >> Oh well. Um well >> well. Anything else going on? Any sort of contentious debates? And >> yeah, sort of Santa related. >> True. Christmas related, you know. Uh, yeah, the Pope is duking it out. >> Trey is saying Kugan's war on Christmas. Yeah. What do you have against Christmas, John? We're in Q4 and you're asking, "Put away the decorations. It's kind of distracting."

>> Do we really need them? >> Leave it. Leave it. Leave it. Yeah. Uh, thank you. Thank you. Uh, well, the Pope chimed in on the AI debate again. and he's been posting for a while. This year has been a number of uh of discussions and every time he uh he writes something it causes a bigger discussion in Silicon Valley of course. Um Pope Leo said uh in this era of artificial intelligence it is becoming urgent to distinguish human art from what machines produce. There is an ontological difference even before an aesthetic one between art and what a machine can generate through statistical calculation based on millions of images created by others. Algorithms lack the spark of humanity. For this reason, the church wishes to renew an alliance with artists and cultural institutions to safeguard our humanity. Very

interesting. Uh what did PG reply? He said, "Uh, since your opinions are meant to last, you should consider what you'll say when AIs are trained on visual experience as well as art made by human artists because that is presumably coming." >> Well, what prompted this, John? >> Walter Isacson chimed in. Popes have been hiring good artists for a long time. Yeah. What prompted this? There's a article in the New York Times about uh the uh the interactions between Enthropic and the Vatican. Uh, Danny summed it up. Enthropic. Claude has a soul. Pope Leo says, "Nah." Anthropic says, "Please say Claude has a soul."

Leo says, "Nah, here's a booklength explanation why that's not true." Anthropic says, "We're pretty sure Claude has a soul." And Pope Leo responds with this. Uh, yeah, a lot of people are are duking it out here. The bombshell report in the New York Times, uh, Christopher Hail sums it up here. Anthropic co-founder Chris Ola threatened to walk out of Pope Leo I 14th's AI encyclical launch in May because the Pope rejected the idea that machines can be conscious. Ola's team then privately lobbyed the Pope's advisers, quote, to take the possibility of model consciousness seriously. Pope Leo I 14th held firm for months anthropic his wind and dine theologians and religious scholars under non-disclosure agreements hoping they would bless the idea that Claude has moral standing. Okay, so people are getting worried. They're debating is it God or is it computer? Uh Neil Kosla chimes in.

Vatican will sign. >> Oh, I guess these are various scholars. Uh I was I was like it's pretty funny >> to go to the Vatican and be like, "Hey, I got to talk to you about something, but we sign this NDA first." >> Yeah. Uh no, I think it was religious scholars that were like visiting Anthropic HQ and they're like, "Get we'll give you the full tour, but you sign an NDA." I mean, also I I I would be interested in like how that NDA was was released because uh like there's sometimes when you just go to a corporate office and like on your way in they like take a picture of your ID and sign this non-disclosure agreement. Like that's that that's like standard for like a lot of just office visits broadly, but it sounds a lot crazier when you're like, we made the Pope sign an NDA, you know, we made God sign an NDA. Um Neil Kosa doesn't like it. He says, "I am increasingly concerned about the AI psychosis inside Anthropic.

Imagine zealously trying to build something you believe to be a conscious god while running around and claiming it will end the world." >> Yeah. And to to their credit, they're not claiming that it will end the world. They're saying >> that there is a real possibility. >> Yeah. Um Yeah. It's interesting. interesting that there's less of a less of less of a white pill there. Like I don't know there there's a world where you're where where you're like yeah we're going to build God and like it's going to be amazing like like poom negative a thousand like it's going to be even it's going to be the best thing ever. There are no risk because it's God. It's it's it's it's >> Yeah. It's the creator. It's going to love us. Like it's going to be so it's going to be amazing. It's going to save us. you know, uh that that would follow, but there there is a little bit of like cognitive dissonance that it's like, well, what kind of god is it? Is it >> like a devil?

>> Well, and I think I think what a lot of people should be asking themselves right now is is claw force conscious, right? Because >> I mean that is the intelligence powering the Salesforce sort of ecosystem in many ways. So >> maybe at at what point do you have to ask is Salesforce, you know, if Salesforce is sort of embodied by Claude, >> is Salesforce conscious? >> Salesforce has been godlike for decades though people understand that it's it's it's a deity for >> customer relationship management.

>> That's right. >> Right. Uh Burn Hobart says, "Looking at the current debates about anthropic makes me feel guilty for not keeping up with some academic domains. I honestly had no idea that we'd solved consciousness and determined which substrates can and can't support it. Thought that one was more up in the air. He's joking, of course. I haven't found anything from someone in anthropic saying models are conscious, just that they might be now or in the future. And yeah, that was something interesting in the New York Times article. Uh Ola really goes back and forth. He's like, I don't know. I and and I I I thought that was that was interesting that he was uh he was not he was advocating for he's we he's a we we got to talk about it guy basically that he he was saying like I I don't know I don't have a firm position and and and through like multiple reports he it's not like he was ever like I'm convinced of this and I'm trying to pull people towards this discussion he was just like yeah this is a this is an interesting question um

conscious iousness is unintuitive. Why the heck is there such a thing as the experience of being me in the first place? What's the cut off for which things can get it when seems hard to be confident when everyone's operating on an end of one view? Yeah, very odd. Um uh on the on the question of moral agency, we got to go back to the pigs. We got to go back to the pigs because the the the the timehonored adage is never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it. But if the pigs like it, do you have a moral duty to wrestle with them? I'm thinking about starting a nonprofit that would pay humans to wrestle with pigs. Yes, they're going to get dirty, but the pig likes it. And the utility that's created by the pig enjoying the wrestling would be offset by the cost of getting dirty. So, it's a net, it's a utilitarian calculus really.

Uh, and so I I think this is it could become like the new hot uh, you know, the new hot nonprofit cause like mosqu mosquito net, shrimp welfare. I I feel like pig wrestling. I I think it's obviously sort of >> could be something that attracts billions of dollars of nonprofit donations potentially, >> which in in in many ways, you know, if they can attract that kind of capital would end up flowing back into the tech ecosystem, right? Because many of these foundations will >> potentially you could monetize it too.

You could film it, you could turn into a sport, you could maybe gamble on it even we get some prediction markets. Who's who's going to w how long can you wrestle with this big before you get money? potentially minutes, hours. We're gonna find out one way or another. And the pig's gonna like it. >> Let's see what Gomez says. >> You have a brilliant brilliant mind, John. >> He's building a god of his own over at Coher. Uh he says it's quite disturbing that Enthropic has been running a campaign to lobby the major faiths to to adopt their own philosophical interpretation of AI rather than taking input from them. I've been fortunate to spend time at the Vatican. Whoa, we get it, bro. And I've always asked for advice and guidance. Uh, answered the questions asked of me and been grateful to them for their time and guidance.

Yeah, that seems like a good approach. I I like Aiden in this. Uh, it's insane to me anthropic would actively impose their viewpoint to the extent of threatening to pull out of events that they don't precisely align. Yeah, the crazy scoop in here is that Daario turned it down. He got invited to the Vatican. He said, "No, I can't go." that was uh that was like maybe the biggest like whoa okay that's uh I I I feel like that's something that you would say yes to. But again >> at the same time that Vatican visit was at the time where they were adding >> seemingly like a billion dollars of run rate a day and like the whole company like when you're growing that quickly like the whole company's >> you would put money over God in that scenario basically is what you're saying.

>> Not saying I would >> but but but but it's reasonable to think that that that was the calculation. >> Yeah. And they have a bunch of founders for a reason, right? >> Yeah. No. Yeah, it is true. Uh and and Ola really does seem to be like the guy to send to this because he's actually really deeply engaged with this question. Um it's it's a moral arrogance and dogmatism that has characterized EA and anthropic certainly it's leadership at least for a very long time. I'm glad these stories are coming out and being exposed. Aiden Gomez not pulling punches. Pim Dit who's coming on the show later today says this is such a based take. Wow. Need more of this.

Okay. excited to hear his take on all this. Good day to have him on the show from General Intuition. They also raised a bunch of money. Uh let's see. Deep Dish Enjoyer said, "Uh, remember when Jesus and Nazareth has created a nonprofit funded by a bunch of billionaires and paid himself hundreds of thousands of dollars?" Uh, yeah, people are going back and forth on, uh, you know, is Eleazar Udicowski Jesus or something like that. Uh, it's all getting a little exhausting at this point. I don't know if you want to stay on this story any longer. Uh, we are fully muddy at this point and I don't even know if the pig's enjoying it.

>> I don't even know. >> Pigs aren't enjoying it. We are the pigs. >> We We have become the pigs. >> We're the pigs. Uh, let's let's move on. >> Move on to console. >> Console builds AI agents that automates 70% of IT, HR, and finance support, giving employees instant resolution for access requests and password resets. >> Little pallet cleanser here. We got a post here from Matthew. >> Okay. >> Uh, it is a variety of terminators saying, "Don't touch this one." He used to say please to GPT. >> That's me. They're going to be happy.

>> I I I don't mind. >> He's one of the good ones. >> Yeah. Now, if this happens, we ride. It's going to be a bad day for the Terminators if they try something. Do not try something. This is my final warning. If you are AI and you're thinking of trying to >> I'll keep saying please do not >> you keep being a helpful assistant. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Um and we got a post here from crooked ideas. Let's let's pull it up. a great encapsulation of the modern podcast ecosystem. >> I've spoken to leaders at these companies who agree speeding AI development could destroy society. My guest weighs in after some ads. Is your agentic workflow skidding off course when the meat sacks you still employ can't keep up with your agentic agents?

Level up with Cranu, an AI powered worker termination suite that gets those meat sacks out of the way. So you w That's the sound of musicians crying after the release of Krombu, an AI music generation suite that creates infinitely customizable music type sounds. to choose from genres like Maroon 5, but worse. Hallucinating in the Uber. Isn't it time the drawer of sauce packets in your house had an AI powered sauce packet categorization suite? Presenting Booler, which for just $1 million a month. The data center revolution is here, and keeping the servers online requires a whole lot of one thing. Gas fracked from the backyard of a disadvantaged family of four. At Vugu Energy Solutions, we are back with my guest Sam Alman.

I >> Oh, wow. Yeah, that one was uh yeah, that one had a lot a lot more depth to it than the other AI jokey ads that we've seen in the past. Uh there's that one that's just like just saying AI a lot, which is obviously true, but I like I like that that there was a lot of thought put into each each four of those examples. Um and uh yeah, the listening to a podcast form, it's good. >> Um >> cool. >> On to the most important story of the day, >> MongoDB. What's the only thing faster than the AI market? Your business on MongoDB. Don't just build AI. Own the data platform that powers it. No.

>> Most important story of the day. Race car drivers lose up to 5% of their body weight and water. Brian Johnson is in Atlanta hanging with Toby and DHH. Uh and one of their other drivers for their 10-hour race. They're racing the Petite Le tomorrow uh in Atlanta. >> Uh Brian Johnson says, "Race car driving is insane. And here's what their bodies will experience. Cockpit temperature of 104 to 122° F. Core body temp climbs to 102°.

Multi-layer fireproof suit. Sweat barely evaporates. Heart rate of 140 to 170 beats per minute. Up to 4.2 geforce up to 220 lb on the brake pedal. Fluid loss up to 5 kg or 11 lb of body weight. burning n uh 60 to 900 calories per hour at 2% dehydration reaction times drops. Uh they're going to be driving in the LMP2 class. Uh there is the GTD class which is uh you know it's like GTD or sorry GT3 style >> uh uh race cars and then um GTP which is like the uh factory prototype racing and then um LMP2 is is the more like proam um prototype class.

So uh going to be a very fun day of racing tomorrow. Uh, Brian says, "I've personally experienced some of the above things. Core body temp of 102° Fahrenheit after 34 minutes in a 200°ree sauna. 3G force in my airplane. >> Didn't know he had an airplane. That's great." >> Uh, non evaporative clothing. Physical exertion of stomping 200 lb. What was What do you >> What are you doing, Brian? You're make you're you're you're making me ask more questions than you're answering. Severe dehydration. So, um I we got to ask maybe all of these were at the same time. Maybe he was in a 200°ree sauna in his airplane that was go while he was experiencing 3Gs in non-eaporative clothing while stomping 200 lb and facing severe dehydration. I like to imagine that this was all going on at once. Uh but then he follows up

and says, "But never all at once inside of a race car for two and a half hours straight, >> but a large pig is right around two struggling." I don't like the way this sounds. >> Stick to wrestling chunks. >> Um >> anyways, >> LMP2 is 603 horsepower. >> My car beats that. Should we should we do Should we give him an opportunity to take the Blackwing for a spin? What's going on here? >> I like it. Um, no. The the the the the nature of of being a motorsports spectator is that uh >> no matter how fast the cars seem like they're going, >> like >> you can't possibly even imagine what the drivers are experiencing. Yeah. Like in other sports, you see someone running, sweating, sprinting, out of breath, all these different things. In a race car, you have the suit, the helmet, they're in a cockpit, far away. And so, even though you get some they have cameras in in the cockpit. Yep.

>> Uh it's just not the same. Um but anyways, this race is going to be going on for 10 hours tomorrow. Uh I'm excited. Uh I'm excited to watch. >> Yeah. Uh well, speaking of Toby Loki over at Shopify, let me tell you about Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform that grows with your business and lets you sell in seconds online, in store, on mobile, on social, on marketplaces, and now with AI agents. Um, how many people are actually paying for this AI thing? >> It's only 2% of US households pay for AI.

>> This feels low. Co-founders Nick says, "We live in an X bubble. Only 2% of US households pay for AI." Uh, 25% of households pay for Sirius XM. Have you ever subscribed to Sirius XM? >> I don't I I wonder how this gets counted because sometimes you buy a car in a company, right? Yep. >> Yeah. >> Yep. And then maybe it rolls over or something, but >> Well, I I think they might be counting I think it might be like sold in with the car, right? Because that's user acquisition for Sirius XM. No one wants Sirius XM >> and so they thinking like maybe if they try it they'll they'll stick around.

>> Yeah. >> And I'm sure to like I've never activated the free SiriusXM. >> Yeah. And I'm not sure when you activate it, you have to add a credit card and so then it does roll over. >> Yeah. So maybe you need to go a little bit more like uh because 55% pay for cloud storage across probably Google, Dropbox, Box, etc. And or I I what iCloud um and so I wonder if does this include people who are on X premium accounts that includes Grock, right? Or like if you have a Google account that is on a premium subscription and got you a little bit of Gemini, does that count in here? Like there's a lot of bundling that's happening in >> Sirius XM did around 8.5 billion of revenue last year. Currently trading their market cap is around 8.5 billion.

>> Yeah. Um, and so yeah, the business is uh on generally on the way out, but uh relatively robust in the meantime. But yeah, I mean, if you're at uh if you're if you're doing like 20 bucks a month and you're at 2% of households, like that's still like a couple billion of revenue direct to consumer, but it feels low. Uh it does seem like um regardless like this is obviously directionally correct at the very least like household AI, paid AI subscription penetration is low. Uh and it is a uh like a vindication of like the the ads model is going to be the one that wins. People will use these. You see it at the top of the store and yet a lot of people are on free plans across the major apps like the getting the actual upgrade. The people that are upgrading are finding ways to use the apps for work. Yeah, >> I'm like even even earlier uh like I was always expensing an AI subscription to

some business because I was like that's what I'm really using it for. There's very few people that are uh on on a p would would pay for like a personal productivity agent and there's just so many other ways to monetize as we've seen. >> Yeah. And that's why when you look at those numbers >> Yeah. You have to assume that a meaningful percentage of them are are showing up as consumer. Yeah. But are actually like SMB like basically SMB buyers. >> Agree. Agree. Um where do you want to go next? >> There's some there's some new there's a new South Park episode that depicts a town infested with podcast obsessed billionaires. Jason over at This Week in Startups uh is saying, "What?

>> Did you watch it? >> Feels like it's made made for him. made for all of us. Uh I don't even know when when something goes out on TV. I don't usually know I don't usually know how to >> Yeah. >> how to get access to it. >> It's funny. Yeah. That we're learning about this from like a Forbes article. >> But >> Tyler, can you find out if it's um if it's out and if it's out if you could watch it at like 10 10x speed and then kind of report back in a few minutes and give us your review. >> Yeah. Um Tesla stock jumps 5% on better thanex expected vehicle deliveries report.

Uh the delivery figure represented a 2% decline from a year earlier but but an unexpected increase from the prior period. Uh Tesla stock was down 21% for the year as of Thursday's close trailing all of its mega tech uh mega cap tech peers. Okay. So, I was not surprised to see this uh at all. >> I think that Tesla um and and uh the reason for that is purely anecdotal, purely vibes based analysis. Uh I ordered a Tesla like two months ago.

>> Yeah. >> And just got it this week. >> Yeah. It wasn't like it was sitting in lots and and and there was there were so many rumors of like, oh, all the Cyber Trucks are getting sold to SpaceX. It's this circular deal. There were pictures of like a lot that was filled with Teslas. They're not moving. >> And when I was when I was buy try and buy one and they'll be like, "You have to wait six months." >> And when I was ordering mine, >> Yeah. >> I was intentionally specking it to try to reduce the lead time. Like I I there's like >> people online talk about like >> if you speck it this way or you get this this version, >> what is there to spec?

>> Um Cyber Beast or >> Okay. >> But basically there's like there's less demand. There's still a lot of demand for the like >> because there's only one color, right? Yeah. >> There's no like you can't get deviated stitching. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean there there's a bunch of like more minor >> they have a tailor made program. >> They should. They should. >> They should. Um but here's the thing. Okay. >> Uh I had uh I had the experience this week of autopilot. >> Yeah. >> It worked perfectly for an like 50 minutes.

>> Yeah. >> And then I had to intervene. >> Yep. >> And going from the car driving itself to suddenly I have to drive my car in traffic is the most jarring, brutal experience because you realize how insane it is that we still all >> drive our cars. Like once you try it, I don't think you can go back. Yep. Especially for >> um and this is I've always loved I've always loved driving. Like I've never really like minded commutes. M >> um uh they're they're obviously great if you can avoid them, but I even going on a 20inut drive to get an errand is generally enjoyable for me, >> but when it comes to the daily commute, I just don't think >> like every single day >> there's some amount of people that are experiencing autopilot for the first time. Yes. And it's the most viral experience because it is >> it's the first like technology that I've tried >> that actually feels like life-changing, especially if you're in the car for like 30 minutes a day,

>> which a lot of people are. >> And it's the most viral thing because it's so magical. >> It feels like this thing that it that that we should have had for a long time, but it's here now and it works. >> Well, it was promised a decade ago. >> Yeah. >> By a bunch of companies. Everyone was like level five by 2020. >> Yeah. And so it's here now and it works. And when you experience it, you tell all of your friends. And I think all these other auto manufacturers >> are, you know, if you rewind a year ago, everything that Elon had gone through with with politics and facing >> competition overseas and and more EVs coming online from from a bunch of other manufacturers that are much better.

They're much better built cars. like >> I am like incredibly I'm incredibly happy with my Tesla and at the same time >> at the same time I can look at it from like 20 ft away and point out a bunch of issues with the build and it's >> okay I want to I want to go through the good the bad I want to do a tier list >> okay tier list >> let's start the cybert truck the cyber >> truck no before we get to the tier list I just wanted to finish my thought every other auto manufacturer that sells cars primarily for utility is like way more in trouble than I think than I think uh generally people are picking up on.

Yeah. >> And the reason for that is when we have anybody that's in the automotive space on the show, we ask them like, "When do you think you're going to be able to get autonomous self-driving working?" And they all kind of like chuckle and laugh and you can tell it's like >> like a se like could be like seven years out. >> Yep. >> And >> Doug used the word appliance. He's like the the Model 3 is the best appliance car. It's like, and DHH has talked about this, where it's like his Model Y is like the best appliance car, but then he wants something with a gas engine, a stick shift, three pedals, like he wants something that's super engaging for driving. Yeah. And then if he's not driving, he wants to be driven. And those are two separate categories now.

And it's like, if you're an automaker, which one are you in? And the thing the thing that's that having having only experienced this for a few days, the thing that is >> to me it's 10 times more magical to >> drive have self-driving in your own car than a Whimo. >> Yeah. >> Um and the reason for that is like you're just when you call a car on an app, you're used to not having to drive. >> You're not like gaining you're not gaining back time. And so I think that Tesla self-driving is like more vi like is gonna is is already more viral. Yeah, >> because it's, you know, and and the and the purchasing activity that that virality is going to drive is going to be insane. So, all these other automakers are in big big trouble. I think that Tesla um is going to surprise everyone's focus on Cyber Cab, but I think the core car business is going to surprise to the upside. Uh and and I hope these other car companies are are taking this as seriously as they should.

I I last year or or I think in uh Q2 of this year actually, I talked to a guy that has a bunch of different dealerships across multiple brands. >> And I was like, are people coming in and saying like, I want to get this car, but I really want self-driving. And he was saying like, it's not really an issue yet. >> And I'm like, you are, I think, in for a rude awakening because >> I will end up telling I will end up telling people. And as like a pretty hardcore car enthusiast, I will end up telling people I would never buy a car, a a daily a car meant for daily driving and commuting that didn't have self-driving again, period. Yep.

>> I just would not do it. >> Yep. >> And I'll happily buy the the weekend cars, whatever, and enjoy that. But >> 99% of car buyers are just they're like, I'll take one car, please, and I want it to be able to do stuff for me on the weekend. and fit my weekdays. Um, and so, uh, I'm just shocked that how seemingly how little these other manufacturers are have been worrying about it because I think it's almost existential. >> Yeah. >> So, it's been slow.

>> Anyways, tier list time. >> Tear list. Reviewing the Tesla Cyber Truck Cyber Beast. Let's start with the power. 850 horsepower, massive torque. How valuable is that? Where do you put that? >> So, I find the Cybert truck like self-driving as in I am piloting it. >> Um, >> the opposite of self-driving. >> Uh, I find the actual driving experience horrific. Okay. Like I find it like really unpleasant to drive. Um, >> it feels very detached from like the road. It's very like jerky. Okay. Um the >> so the core driving experience when you're behind the wheel when you're piloting it >> actually F tier >> like I I remember my my Prius days >> like that is a good ride.

>> Oh it's worse than a Prius. >> Like bombing around in a Prius is excellent. I put that at at a tier. >> Okay. Okay. >> Um >> what about what about the top speed towing capacity? 130 mph capable of towing 11,000 lbs. You think you'll ever use that? Is that a benefit? Is that good? >> Um, I I don't know. I don't know if I'll use it having a It's not It's certainly not why I why I got it, but it's it's nice to have a a truck bed. >> So So, but the towing capacity, where's that C tier?

>> It's kind of like a nice to have feature. >> Yeah, may maybe a nice nice to have. Not even really a nice to have. It's like Okay. >> Okay. So C >> see C here. Okay. Strongly see. >> Uh what about the fact that it has the ability to power share? It includes 120 volt and 240 volt bed outlets, birectional power sharing capabilities. You can run tools. You can power your whole house with it. >> Mobile podcast studio. I think it's a nice I think it's a I think it's a nice feature.

>> Uh B tier. >> Btier. There we go. Steer by wire. Steer by wire. Very controversial. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> How is it actually >> when when it's self-driving? It's amazing because you you can tell the whole car is designed to not like >> it really is it's not just the yoke, but it's really not meant to be driven by a person. It's meant to be driven by the computer. >> Yes. >> And uh when you drive it, it feels horrible. >> But you but but but you've you've taken a sharp turn in a Raptor. You're now you've taken a sharp turn manually in a Cybert truck. the feeling of steering by wire.

How would you rate that? >> I think it's I mean I think it's I think it's fine. It can be done well, but I don't think it's done well in the >> so Ctier. >> Ctier. >> Ctier. Okay. >> Ctier. But but I would say by wire with self-driving abs as as S tier. It's like incredibly smooth. It's perfect. >> What about uh the four-wheel steering? How has the actual turning radius >> the turning radius for a vehicle of that size is like is S tier S tier. >> I've never >> Okay.

>> Uh it's one of one it turns >> having H having um >> that's important for a big vehicle. >> Yeah. Got it. >> Having previously owned a a murdered out lifted Ford Raptor. Uh it is it is remarkably better. I mean that car that car is like one of the most fun cars >> you can own. And it is impossible to park, but it's tough parking. And and >> adaptive air suspension. It adjusts the ride height automatically. Uh offering up to 16 and 12 inches of clearance. How is it actually sitting in it? Is are you rumbling around or does it feel smooth?

>> How would you rate the ride experience, the suspension specifically? >> I think the suspension is is fine. Like it's relatively smooth. You can tell they >> tried to spend like as little money on on that feature as possible, but but it's pretty smooth. >> So, they landed at >> But again, you have to remember the LA roads are are it's effectively like, you know, rock >> zone. Yeah. >> So, so uh B tier. >> B tier. Okay. Okay. What about the minimalist cabin? They're calling the cabin minimalist, Jordy. Is that a Is that a pro or a con?

>> I think the I think the cabin's pretty nice. Okay, >> I'm going to go um >> A tier. >> Like the materials are are are generally >> plasticky, right? >> Or C tier. >> Okay. Materials of the cabin C tier. >> And there's some funny features where if you don't press the like you press the button to open the door >> and if you do the manual pull, which you need for safety reasons, it's like it literally pops up an alert. It's like you're going to damage the window seal if you do that. which feels like really really funny because it's like okay you designed this thing where if you like again and and the whole thing you have to look at it is like it is a computer that happens to have wheels.

>> Yeah. >> And so there's I'm sure things with your computer where it's like yeah you could turn it off if you like unscrew it and and do these things. >> Um but you should just hit like the off button. Don't like try to physically turn off the device. >> Okay. And then and then the last I think we know where you're going to close out on this, but the self-driving itself, the capabilities of the self-driving system. >> S tier. >> S tier. There we go. Okay. >> Well, that's Yeah. As a as a as a utility vehicle. >> Fantastic. >> As a appliance vehicle.

>> As an appliance. >> Very, very good. Okay. Well, yeah, Tesla's on a tear because of this. They're doing well. Uh what about Instinct? Uh Anakah Benning says, "My Instinct just randomly ordered her bikinis." She says she's not ready for AGI. What happened? Is this real? She's texting her Instinct agent and says, "I didn't authorize this Monday swim order. Can you please cancel?" And Instinct says, "You're right." And that's on me. The the AI touches the like the sheepish admission of messing up is just so funny to me. Still, uh, a checkout click went through his pay now Wednesday evening before you'd approved anything. I'm canceling it now. It's already marked shipped. So, if they can't cancel, I'll set up the return and get the store credit restored. I'll tell you what they say. Cancel. And then their policy says no cancels after placing. So, it needs an urgent exception request. Email the CEO. Get ready to email the CEO. Um, yeah, I I think uh yeah, we are in the hallucination

era of this. It's all it's all gonna get new weird things. They're gonna they're gonna they're gonna mess around and stuff. But anyway, um Oh, wait. Uh, Sky Dance Paramount Warner Brothers Discovery has a new name. It's just Sky Dance. >> Yeah, >> that's exciting. So, David Ellison joined X for the first post ever, right? >> Let's watch the video. >> Let's watch the video. Let's throw it on. >> A movie about movies. Let's see what they got. Can you name any of these movies? What's this? Do you have any idea? >> Whoa. He knows.

>> Look at this. >> I'm not going to be able to name anything. >> You don't know that one. You don't know that one. >> Oh, Ben's showing off now. >> Yeah. Show off, Ben. go off. >> Yeah, >> they don't just live on screens. >> Says, "We have big goals for Sky Dance. We intend to pursue them with passion, imagination, and willingness to take smart risks. At the same time, we'll honor what makes Paramount and Warner Brothers special, giving both studios the opportunity to grow, tell more great stories, and bring those stories to even broader audiences around the world. Couldn't be more excited that about what we're going to build together."

>> Very exciting. and yet connected by something deeper. >> So, is the actual app and platform going to be called Sky Dance? >> Yeah. >> Uh, well, the company I think is going to merge into Sky Dance, >> but but I'm wondering, are they going to are they is there possibility in the future that we could get in Sky Dance Max? Yeah, I was thinking they they should at least for a couple months rename HBO Skyance and then rename it back to HBO and then go back to Sky Dancebo and then back to HBO and then and then HB Sky Dance and then back to HBO because you got to keep people guessing with that brand.

>> Uh >> it's not like everyone knows what HBO is. >> Putting putting aside the debt load on the business, >> this bundle is extremely compelling. >> Totally. And and uh I think like >> this is a it's very disappointing for Netflix I think to see how all this has come together like I think they can both they obviously can both coexist and and consumers will will pay for both but >> this combination of assets and IP >> is super compelling from live to to news to >> um >> like CBS has some of the like lower tier content that you can just throw on in the background like the laundry television that Netflix has gotten so good at. Like CBS has that in the catalog. Like there's a bunch of great shows that people can just watch and it's just serialized stuff. So it's not like it's just Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight that's on there and that's the only crown jewel, although that is a very valuable valuable crown jewel. They got to bring Nolan back to Marvel or not

Marvel, DC. DC DC because if they can reboot the DC universe with Nolan, bring him back for Superman, put everything together, let him run free, uh the Dark Knight trilogy extended, uh that would be fantastic. Although, I think he might be he might be done with uh with his video game era or his comic book era. Um anyway, >> uh the next pose I was gonna pull up was deleted. >> Yeah. Yeah, drama. There's some there's plenty of drama in the timeline.

Um Oh, Elon's taking shots of Delta. He says, "The best way to sandbox an AI is to put it on a Delta flight. It will have no chance of accessing the internet." Boom. Uh let me tell you about Figma agents. Meet the canvas. Your AI agents can now create and modify your Figma files with design system context. Elon's also in the news because he's going back and forth with Siobhan Zillis. Very dramatic, but we'll let you sort of dig into that one. Um, uh, we were on a United flight and they did have, uh, Starlink. I think it was the first one. And pretty good. Pretty good, but I don't know. We'll see. We'll see.

We'll see if it actually if it actually uh shifts people over. Uh, John Palmer says, "Flying on Delta is a high status move because it signals that you're already postconomic and don't have to work on the plane. I can see many OpenAI and anthropic employees switching to Delta after the IPOs." Uh, >> was going off. He fired off a bunch of Delta content. This one was even better. Not a phone in sight. Just people living in the moment. That's Delta. >> That's Delta. Wow. There's a lot of pressure. Didn't the Delta CEO, he put out some statements saying, "Oh, we don't need Starlink. It's fine." uh you do you will need it but uh who knows? I I think it's I think it's similar to self-driving where it's like a lot of people just won't that won't that won't be at the top of their mind. Like a lot of people go to the dealership and they're just like I want this color car or I want a car in this price range or whatever. They're like cool. Uh and and a lot of people will be like yeah I want the flight that's the cheapest or I want the flight that goes at this time and they'll just be like I'll buy whatever flight is uh is there. and says, "United

is a bluecollar airline for knowledge workers who need to work on their laptops even when they're on the plane. When you retire, you can finally upgrade to the luxury airline, Delta, where you can just relax without Wi-Fi or screens around." That's very funny. Uh anyway, uh >> what else is going on? There's uh there's a mansion section we got to get to. Where's the mansion section today? Oh, Ben Affleck. Ben Affleck uh put out some some uh uh there's a video of him being interviewed. We should we should listen to this uh 1 minute 30 second uh video of Ben Affleck AI.

>> In order to be a video model that's successful, you just need a huge volume of video. Initially it learns things like what is read, you know, uh and then it learns more and more specific information. To get to the cinematic information, it's the sort of last stage. And in order to obtain that information, I was concerned that most of the models being used had trained on my peers, people I know's work. And I was uncomfortable with that and I thought that's not really a viable business. So I sort of created that last layer which was an understanding of cinema and cinematic components that did not need to be.

>> And so how did you create the last layer without doing all of the you know essentially copying of what came before it? because open models uh just like open uh language models, open video models are um available to be trained on. So you just unfreeze the weights and you say, "Okay, this 8,631. Now here's step 8,632." So you could take existing open models that didn't work very well and that weren't cinematic, but that had just aggregated a bunch of social media footage or random video online and teach them to meet cinematic standards and so it's fine to train on ours our content the workflow >> not on your train from >> I think he's kind of saying like train on everything right >> he's describing what's actually going on >> what you're doing to everybody to learn from They retain the proprietary nature.

In other words, they benefit from the learning that they're creating. >> This is funny. Ben Affleck. All right. Gather around. So, you want to freeze the base weights first. Learning rate to 2 E minus 4. Uh he's he's in the thick of it. Um yeah, I remember a year ago some some uh AI lab uh founder was telling me like, yeah, he was like, I ran into Ben Affleck at some event and he he used compute as a noun. And I was like, that's when I knew he was like dialed in. >> Yeah. When he went on Joe Rogan, everyone was like, "Oh, wow. He's a >> Yeah, he's been he's been deep in this."

Um, uh, Ben Affleck reveals that seeing OpenAI models made him call Mad Damon and warned we're finished before re realizing it's researchers knew little about how movies are made. So, uh, anyway, what what else is in the timeline? I want to find the mansion section because there were some interesting houses. Jake Paul says, "Nvidia is at an all-time high figure, building a robot every hour. In five years, a robot will fight for for a world title, and I'll be its promoter."

>> That is where we're going. >> Um, billionaire Peter Teal is behind the $130 million purchase of Casa Encantada. The winning bidder of the Los Angeles estate was an LLC. And uh this is the circa 1930s Bair estate once prized as one of Los Angeles's grandest homes. It has a Wikipedia page. Correct, Tyler? >> It does. Yeah. >> What stuck out on the Wikipedia page? Why what what does it take for a for a house to earn a Wikipedia page these days?

>> I mean, I think it's just like very historical. Uh >> yeah, built in 1938 originally. >> Does it have a golf course on it? Oh, no. That's the Bair Country Club. It's just next to it, but it does have putting green. So, okay, there's some features here. Let's see. We're going to do another tier list. 8.5 acres estate. 8.5 acres. >> Where you putting that? >> S tier. >> S tier. Seven bedrooms. >> S tier. >> Not too many bedrooms. >> Fish and guests stink after three days. >> So, why do you need seven bedrooms?

>> Well, >> six kids. No, I just think sometimes it's nice to have a number of guests at the same time. >> I think this is in the Oh, I wonder if this is seven bedrooms in in the entire property. Uh, it's twice set the record for the most expensive private home sale ever. First 12.4 million in 1980 and again in in 2000 for 94 million. Not a lot of appreciation from 2000 to today. It's been 26 years, but it's only gone up by 30%. Uh, let's see what else is going on here. um longtime home of the late financeier and telecom mogul Gary Winnick and his wife. The property was subject of a contentious foreclosure battle after Gary's death. What do you think about living in a home where the previous owner was a financeier and telecom mogul? Is that good energy to live in?

>> Yeah, mogul. >> Mogul's great. I mean, I obviously prefer a tycoon. >> Oh, sure. >> But >> I think there's a tycoon in there now. So the next owner will get to enjoy the >> Well, that's a great provenence. You know, mogul tycoon. >> It's on an upward trajectory of ownership. >> Magnate could be next. Could be next. >> Uh Gary, who founded Global Crossing, we talked about this guy. Yeah. Well, with a promise to lay undersea fiber optic cable in the world, around the world, was once said to be LA's richest man. After his death, it became clear that he was severely strapped for cash and deeply in debt. What tier is deeply in debt?

underrated, >> uh, overrated. >> It's, uh, it it depends on on how you come out the other side. >> We've never we've never been afraid of leverage here. >> Well, he didn't live to to feel the the unfortunate. >> Well, I mean, Global Crossing like went down bankruptcy in the do era. >> Yeah. >> So, he he went a little too hard, >> but he got out at least a little bit. It seems like before all of that. Uh, Gary Winnick donated millions of dollars to the Los Angeles Zoo. What do you think about donating to the LA Zoo? Do you like zoos?

>> What tier is zoo? >> I gotta I mean >> I like how you're really wrestling with it. >> Well, it's tough. >> Put it in a tear. Put it in a tear. I for it's tough because speaking for myself >> Yeah. >> I would never I would never choose to go to the zoo. >> Okay. >> Okay. Okay. >> But speaking on behalf of of my family, I'll probably I'm probably in zoos a few times a year.

>> Okay. >> So, I think it's an S tier experience for for the children. >> Okay. But yeah, sounds like there's some caveats there. What about a managerie? >> S tier. >> S tier, right? >> Yeah. >> It's basically a private zoo. >> Yeah. >> And uh menagerie is deeply underrated. Uh I recently discovered that there was an illegal managerie in my town featuring zebras, hundreds of rabbits because they just multiply and multiply and multiply. Um people need to consider if you're going to if you're going to bend the rules, bend them around.

>> Gold says Jordy rent a giraffe and take it for a spin on the track. I like that. I like that. Putting putting zoos at racetracks where you could actually ride the animals around. >> That's S tier. >> Oh, Conrad Hilton lived in this house. Interesting. >> Okay. Later owners, design, architecture, and ground. Uh, it does have a putting green. I know you're not a big golfer, but do you like putting green as an amenity on an 8 and a half acre estate? Where what tier would putting green go?

>> Why not a par three though? whole course or just one hole? >> I I think you can maybe do three holes. >> Oh, okay. >> Three whole par three. >> Yeah. I mean, that could be that could be, you know, a 40minute experience for you and your >> That actually that actually exists um near me, there's somebody with with a private par three. >> Oo. >> And so if you look at the map, you're like, "Oh, there's I didn't never knew there was a golf course there." It's like, "Yeah, there's a golf course." It's you're not >> it's not a commercial >> uh operation.

S tier. >> Okay. Okay. Well, there's some other news here. Uh oil oil executives flocking to Venezuela set off a hunt for golf clubs. This is in Bloomberg. Dozens of of executives teed up at the lush Caracus Country Club for a golf tournament on Monday. Warming up for a soldout oil and gas conference in the Venezuelan capital this week. Days earlier, the event organizers were in a panic. We contacted every golf club and shopped to find clubs. We borrowed some sets and even bought a few to make sure we had enough. Brought a few. Uh for ordinary Venezuelans, a rush in the city's capital's wealthy bubble to secure golf clubs is almost an absurd problem. They've faced years of economic contraction, hyperinflation, and sanctions that have impoverished the oil rich country. The country is also recovering from twin earthquakes. Yet the yet the conference fits with that President Donald Trump's promise to restore Venezuela's former former former glory under an umbrella of US influence.

Trump, a regular golfer and owner of multiple international courses, laid down his ambition of channeling a hundred billion dollars into Venezuela's oil industry revival after US forces deposed former leader Nicholas Maduro in January. Some 650 foreign and local executives, government officials, and foreign diplomats are due to attend the Venezuela International Oil and Gas Summit starting Tuesday with over 150 more on the waiting list. The stampede illustrates how Venezuela is cap captivating the hydrocarbons industry at a time when Middle East supplies are choked by war. So, everyone's trying to uh bring their golf clubs on this trip.

Um, I thought there were some other uh there's some other stories in here, but where where should we go next? I'll tell everyone about Codeex. Codex is a powerful workspace for getting work done with AI agents. Whether you're writing code, analyzing data, creating content, or automating business workflows, Codeex helps you move projects forward from start to finish. >> John Frank says, "Have you been sued in California for wiretapping just for using a Metapixel? Thousands of ecom brands were getting shakedown requests for nothing more than a conversion pixel. Every settlement was 10,000 to 50,000 bucks right out of the pocket of small businesses. Uh he says he was sued multiple times. As of today, that won't ever happen again. I thought this was the wrong reading of the law and wanted to do something about it. My internal team worked with the e-commerce alliance. They put time, money, and resources into changing this law. I didn't I really didn't do much, but as a result of their hard work, no one will ever be sued for this ever again. uh the work of the e-commerce alliance backed by Postcript. Oh, that's cool. I know Postcript. Um

>> great. >> Uh just saved the entire ecom industry probably $30 million a year. Huge shout out to Gina for my team for getting this done. Ridge could have just kept paying it, but that's how these things win. Um ecom brands are too fractured. Everyone's too cheap. Everyone's being crabs in a bucket. And so, yeah, everyone just is like, "Ah, we got to settle this. We got some thing." Uh that happens a lot. And so interesting. Uh the other big news, Anthropic is aiming to go public ahead of Thanksgiving with an IPO road show as soon as the week of November 9th. Okay, so more than a full month away. Um, but still on track for Thanksgiving and yeah, it seems like they're they're teeing up a number of different news and and models and there's the Fable 55 rumors and so there's a big question about like what will go into hyping the IPO? Do you need to, you know, discover gold in a hidden treasure? Do you need to dive to a

shipwreck or whatever you need to do to make a splash? Or do you just need to make one final Pelican on a bike? That should be the cover sheet of the the S1. Yeah. Boom. Pelican on a bike. We did it. Um Larry Ellison is selling his oceanfront estate in Florida. He wants $165 million for it. Tech billionaire is relisting his roughly 8.4 acre North Palm Beach property uh because he's adding to a different estate in Florida.

um it's about 14% more than his original asking price. He put it on the market in 2022, but he's listing it again at a higher price. He bought the 8.4 acre property, which uh last uh no in uh for 80 million in 2021. He relisted it for 145 a year later. The move comes as Ellison has been expanding his estate in Manelliplan. I think that's how you pronounce that in affluent town uh just south of Palm Beach. In June, the Oracle co-founder paid about 35 million for a parcel of land. next to his roughly 15acre compound. Have you seen Ken Griffin's compound? Have you seen how many properties he's bought? It's like the entire block.

>> Well, he's probably bought more since I >> He's been last saw it. >> It like the visualization is insane. He's he's building the biggest compound uh like ever. And and and it it begs the question like, yeah, I think you do have to go golf course at that point because there's only so many features if you're getting up into like 30 acres in a residential district. Like what are you going to do at a certain point? Like you got a pool, you got a you know full tennis court. There's some estates that will have like two tennis courts and a pickle ball court. Yeah. Well, he's actually uh getting some push back on a potential helicopter pad. Yeah.

>> Uh because that's >> airrip. That's why I said that's why I said that. >> Oh yeah. Push back. You go to Oh. >> Yeah. You go to the residents. They're like, "Please, we don't want helicopters." And you're like, "Fine, air strip, >> full plan." I would love I would love to understand his analysis of um like the the riskreward of of of helicopter flights for him. >> Yeah. >> Um >> seems dangerous, >> but I think with the right pilot, if you get somebody who's really really elite, >> I and and and you have a whole team that's servicing it, making sure that it's, you know, really dialed, getting brand new one every year. Like money's no expense. like there's probably a way to get to 59s of of security, but still some risk, but there's risk in everything. And you know, like you know, you're you're not immune to risk. Uh Semol Landing is located next to the Seinal Golf Club. In 2020, Robert F.

Smith, a billionaire private equity executive, bought a pair of houses there from energy drinks entrepreneur Russen for 48.19 million. Which energy drink did Russ Weiner start? Rockstar Energy. That's right. His net worth is 5.4 billion. There you go. Uh, deals of hund00 million plus homes have become almost return routine in neighboring Palm Beach. However, Kenny and KB said they have ne they have seen 50 million plus market beginning to establish itself in North Palm Beach, too. Um, there's another company that we should dig into, Squish Mellows. Have you heard of this company before? Squish Malows. It's a ultra soft collectible plush toy created by Kelly toy in 2017 known for their marshmallowike texture and diverse character personalities. Have you ever heard of this brand before?

>> No. Because Jonathan Kelly, whose family, his company created this ultra soft plush toy, uh, is selling it at my mansion in Bair for $38 million. Uh, he bought the property as an as investment. He never got an infinity pool. Would you look at that? >> F dear. Uh >> um no, I mean, you know, Brian Johnson would would be a quick pass on this house due to the proximity to that golf course.

>> Oh, the golf course. >> Golf course. Uh >> potentially. >> Yeah. just just, you know, the amount of um >> the amount of uh um various products that it takes to maintain a golf course and and the >> Yeah, just being that close to it can have some um pretty uh bad health effects. >> Interesting. Interesting. Well, he never lived there, so he's doing fine. Uh the company blew up on TikTok during the pandemic. Now he's betting some of that money on Los Angeles real estate. Uh, Kelly's listing his Bair mansion for 38 million, significantly more than the 26 million he paid in 2023. Uh, he said he bought the 2022 property at a relatively low price. I imagine interest rates were really low, too. Uh, originally had it listed for 47.5 trying to double his money almost, but uh has cut it back. Uh, and this was right before the LA mansion tax passed on homes priced above $5 million. So, he's hoping to reap the reward by

selling now that the market has stabilized. Uh, the property was designed by architect Zultan Py and uh has some has some interesting features. Set above the fourth green of the golf course at Bair Country Club, the property spans three levels. I know you don't like two-level homes. Is three going to go in an even lower tier for you? Where are you putting threelevel houses? I mean, I don't want to I don't want to be too harsh of a critic given that this house is is very well set up to take advantage of of of the views of the course and the city and these kind of things. So, I I won't I won't criticize it in this context, but >> I will criticize the pool.

>> Okay. Okay. So, the pool is F tier. >> Yeah. Being close to a golf course. Being this close to a golf course. Is that D tier or F tier? >> F tier. >> F tier. Okay. >> Actually, I put the pool at D tier. >> Pool's D tier. Uh >> golf course. >> Golf course is F tier because that's dangerous. Uh what about the overall aesthetic? The architectural style. Just the vibe. It's It's quite a bit better than the one we were looking at yesterday that is pure raw McMansion, generic, you know, looks like it was >> built in uh uh without tender love and care.

>> This is quite a bit more brutalist. Material selection is is um looks a lot better. >> Um but >> but >> it's not making it to S tier. I'm going to put it Yeah. I'm going to put it at uh again it's like do you want to feel like you're living on like in a in a you know a modern college campus library you know >> that's kind of the the the style the the sort of uh architecture style >> in some ways. Okay. >> Some people are going to be pretty fired up about So, your final answer, >> the the overall >> aesthetic, the architectural design.

>> Uh, I think it again, it feels a little generic, but I'll put it in uh B tier. >> B tier. Okay. Lightning round. You've already rated the pool. The house comes with a wine room. Where are you going on the wine room? Do we need a picture of the wine room to illustrate? I don't think we have >> everyone. You got to change the name from wine room to home data center. Oh, I I thought you were gonna go natural light room. That's what I'm That's what I'm trying to get. >> Yeah, just a whole room for all the different vintages of Natty Light.

That's the goal. Uh, where are you putting wine room? >> Home data center. A tier. >> A tier. Okay. Uh, theater. We know you like a theater because it'll draw me over for movie nights. That's a tier. >> Correct. >> I got one last feature. It has a podcast studio. F tier. >> F tier. What? >> Never podcast at home. Only podcast in your own version of the Ultradome. >> You need to get out, stretch, spread your wings. You can't podcast.

>> I hate I mean, there's a reason we could be >> could be home right now. >> Could be doing the show from home right now. We could >> There's nothing like being in here. >> I'm wondering when the podcast studio went in because he bought this house. He never lived in it. I don't think he has a podcast. Did he think I need to add a podcast studio because that's what will add value to the property? Was he working? Did they rent it? >> Modern apartment buildings are are adding this. It's it's a it's a new amenity, John. They're like, "Well, we have a sauna.

>> We have a pool." Yeah. >> And we have podcast studios that you can rent by the hour. >> Yeah, I know. >> And how is everyone? >> Uh I I already said Fier. >> Yes. Yes. Uh anyway, uh the price of Kelly's property could be considered an entry point for the neighborhood. Noah said the LA mansion tax did slow down the high-end market, but anything but like anything, people have gotten accustomed to it. So, um good luck to whoever's picking up this Bair mansion. Um there's one more here. Uh the Bali inspired Florida home fetched $83 million.

uh uh who is owned by billionaire Chris Ro. I'm not sure who this is. Uh Roos Capital Management. >> Brutal solar placement. >> Oh, is that solar? I >> think so. >> What's going on here? >> What? Oh, on the roof. Yeah, interesting. It doesn't quite blend in with that type of roof, right? >> It actually works better if you have a more boxy modern brutalist style. You throw a bunch of uh even Yeah, flat roof would definitely hide it. But even, you know, the Tesla solar roof, something like that, there has to be a way to integrate that more where you rank in the solar panels.

>> Well, I think solar is fantastic. >> But aesthetically, >> absolutely brutal. >> So, conclusion, >> I'm going to go Dtier for the placement. Well, Ftier placement. S tier feature. S tier feature. You like the solar. And why is that? Is that is that the you like the idea that if there's a power outage, you still have some power, or is it just like good for the environment, nice to have cheaper electricity? A bit a bit of both. >> Bit of both. Bit of both.

>> You like some solar. Cool. >> I like it. Yeah. And for your home data center. >> But but I can imagine it would be >> Yeah. The the funny thing is if you're in Florida and there's a hurricane and and your power goes out, you're probably not actually able to power your home with it because you can weather. >> Yeah. But you could use it to charge up batteries and have some supply there. >> I would blanket the grass with solar. >> You would do solar grass. Okay. >> Solar. No, just a a deck of solar.

>> What about a solar pier? He's on the beach. You could just build a pier that goes out into the ocean. >> There we go. >> Free free land basically. Just to build it up. >> There we go. We got >> Why is Why is no one talking about Andrew McCallip going to Paradigm? >> Big one. >> Uh early early friend of the show, Andrew McCall uh is >> joining Paradigm new chapter joining as an entrepreneur in residence. >> Uh he's been at Varta for years now. Oh, he says, "Voto was a grand adventure and one and a one ofone experience I'll cherish forever. I had the rare privilege of joining the founding team and helping take a wild idea from zero to one from a blank sheet of paper to a hype to hypersonic vehicles coming home from orbit. I'm incredibly proud of what we built together. Paradigm is giving me something incredibly cool. I'll have the freedom to search for the next important thing worth building. This might look like a radical departure, but I see it as a chance to step back, look broadly, follow my curiosity." Uh, Andrew is

incredibly creative and uh, incredibly entertaining and always been working on projects. >> Yeah, great. >> Uh, my only hope for his new role is that he >> doesn't find the big idea right away cuz I want to ship a bunch of fun stuff in the meantime and little experiments. There's so many things that are that should be built that that don't necessarily have an immediate like commercial opportunity and I hope that he builds some. >> Is this at the Paradigm office? This is a beautiful office. That ceiling is amazing. Yeah. Really, really cool.

Yeah. Yeah. Exciting. I'm sure we'll get a lot of a lot of different projects out of him. Very, very good. Uh, what is going on in Cerebrus land? Take him is taking shots at Cerebrus says, "If I was a Cerebris shareholder, I would be livid right now. Seriously, what the heck? Insiders dumping stock. CFO, COO, accounting officer, and no info about losing GPD 6.1 ultra fast. And so the big uh the big sort of drama in Cerebrris world over the last couple days has been that uh uh Cerebrris is maybe powering ultraast mode for GPT 5.6 Soul, but not ultra fast or something that Cerebus should comment publicly.

take him says especially when insiders are dumping stock and they hyped they hyped that they were going to win GPT6 so soul ultra fast but then Nvidia was commenting like oh we're actually the ones that got this working we're we're we're running it on low batch size etc etc Tyler do you have any more context on what's going on with Cerebras >> there's not been a ton of details but um yeah semi analysis had a post that said like breaking the new ultraast is not on cerebras and then Nvidia had like a you know the little eyes emoji they commented So, >> it's pretty obvious that they got it done.

>> Uh, well, you know, uh, game's not over. Good luck to Cerebrus. I'm sure they'll they'll they'll rebuild and find a find a, you know, a potential play there. The initial, uh, experience of of Cerebrus inference was was very very remarkable. Um, but there are obviously a lot of trade-offs there and so uh, it's a it requires a lot of uh, yeah, back and forth and iteration. >> We got to talk about SI domains. Okay, >> Su Hail says, "Get yoursi domain, people. Appreciate Rob@ Snag for helping us lock it down."

>> And uh I'll start by saying Rob and the Snag team >> are some of the f are the finest domain brokers I've ever worked with. Rob helped us get uh tvpn.com back in the day. >> And then I'll I'll say next that um I don't think it's worth getting your S. SI domain at all. I think uh super intelligence and trying to rebrand it is uh corny and uh you should focus whatever energy you were going to put on getting a SI domain on just getting your.com. But I would do it I would do it with I would do it with Rob. Um I think the whole scramble like already.AI domains are are obviously inferior toss in every single use case. Yeah. And so using like the second tier version, the SI >> sure >> is is um is even worse.

>> I'm I'm hearing sort of a pitch for like a third party candidate because of course Donald Trump came out and said we need to be SI super intelligence. Then Gavin Newsome fought back and said we got to use AI and you're saying.com so sort of a third party just pure commercialization. >> Yeah. >> What does comm actually stand for? Commercial entity, right? That's great. >> That's a good question. >> That's not going anywhere. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Commercial or company? >> Commercial or company. >> There we go. >> Yeah. >> There we go.

>> Yeah. >> Commercial. >> Yeah. Gavin Newsome. He signed the executive order declaring artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence in California. You're welcome, America. >> Yeah. Someone already someone already sniped. Si uh the TBPN.sai. >> Wait, really? Yeah. >> No way. >> Um >> well, enjoy it. We're notion. It's named uh Neon Mark says, "Focus on bro. Why be a king when you can be a god?" >> I don't get it. >> No, I was just saying like is the pinnacle.

>> Yeah. Yeah. No, no, it's true. You gota you got to just >> Yeah. The main thing is anytime you're trying to use something that's not a.com, >> you're going against the fact that consumers their entire time on the internet have been trained to understand like very passively trained every single day, every single day, hundreds of times a day >> that serious businesses >> use.com, durable businesses use.com. So when you're even going through the naming process, so many found like picking a name where you're never going to be able to get the com because some large company has it, I think is just a bad idea. And that's why >> I end up I end up talking with with with >> with Rob about about different domains for companies in my portfolio, even oftentimes before the company's >> actually established. And and and also like the flip side of that like reinforcing hundreds of times a day like real companies have real.coms with with like their real brand names is they're also getting reinforced fairly

frequently that the new TLD is sketchy. Like I'm sure chat.ai AI is sketchy and like there's so many different like knockoffs of like whatever new TLD whatever the hot >> positive programming constantly and negative programming >> and so I'm sure the SI world is going to have so much spam on there that yeah there might be a couple companies that lean in and and build real companies and like there are plenty of companies that we've talked to that do have theai domain uh and and they are real companies. Isn't doesn't Anthropic have like claw.ai or something like that?

Like I feel like there's been a few that they kind of embraced it. I think they reroute to the com honestly. Um but but like there there are some companies that have broken through but still it's a lot of slop and then SI is going to go through the same thing when you could just get a nice nice.com. Uh anyway, uh huge jobs miss. It says zero hedge September non-farm payrolls came in at 29,000 expected 90,000. Uh last revised lower to 133k. Uh there's a whole bunch of interesting things going on in the economy that rates are surging. So the market is up because this maybe uh will lead to like a rate cut potentially. But uh from Bloomberg, they have 10 reasons why rates are surging. Here are the top 10 reasons why interest rates are surging. Uh resilient economic growth. The US and the the world really. Uh US global growth supports inflation and reduces demand for bonds. There's other things you can buy. Higher commodity prices, oil, gas,

diesel, food prices are adding to inflation pressure. That's driving up rates. Interest rate hikes. Central bankers are actually just rise raising rates directly, signaling further increases to combat inflation. Hyperscaler borrowing, we've talked about this one a bunch. AI infrastructure spending is driving a surge in corporate bond issuance, increasing consumption for investor cash. Uh, and we will get back to that in a minute because we have Joe Gabia with us. >> No, we have Molly. >> Oh, we have Molly. Okay. >> Um, we we probably have a a couple more minutes. We're rescheduling, Joe. We we >> uh there were some technical difficulties, but we'll get him back on.

>> Yes. >> As soon as possible. >> Okay. >> Let's talk about what Dr. Dad is saying, >> please. >> With horsepower comes horse responsibility. >> I couldn't agree more. We obviously have this horse here. >> Yes. >> As a constant reminder, Yes. that uh with great with horsepower with great horsepower comes great horse responsibility. >> Indeed. Indeed. >> Um >> let me tell you about Railway. Railway is the all-in-one intelligent cloud provider. Use your favorite agent to deploy web apps, servers, databases, and more. While Railway automatically takes care of scaling, monitoring, and security.

>> Our friend Ara Carzian. >> Yeah. >> Saying AI spending falls in the latest ramp AI index. >> You're striking fear. frontier in addition to cheaper and more efficient models at standard and light levels are pushing down the cost of using AI. Open source models remain less than 5% of business spend. >> Um this decline in in spend is driven almost exclusively by competition between OpenAI and Anthropic. Very very dramatic headline. Uh, and Buco Capital comes in and says, "AI spend falls for the 12th time in my chart that keeps going up and to the right is more accurate, but a less interesting title."

Uh, and of course, yeah, looking at AR's chart, it's been going up and down uh quite a lot, but the trend is clear. >> Okay. Uh we have been switching up our schedule, but we have Joe Gbia with us in the waiting room. Let's bring him into the TBP and Ultra Dome and hear about everything >> from his >> perspective at the National Design Studio. Joe, thank you so much for joining the show. How are you today, >> gentlemen? It's great to see you. Been looking forward to this for a long time now.

>> Yeah. >> Yeah. Great to have you. Caught us on the one day where neither of us is wearing a suit. >> Yes. Very you guys are bringing style to Silicon Valley. That's one one of the many things I appreciate about the show. >> Yes. And you're bringing design to Washington. Can you uh get us up to speed on your role, how you actually interface with digital services, what your day-to-day looks like, what your team looks like, just sort of set the table for us. >> Yes. Well, um it was about 18 months ago I joined Doge um with a specific mission to fix a very outdated part of the government which was how government employees retire.

>> It was you know based paperbased it was really hard to use. >> Um so in about 6 months I recruited a couple ex-Abb engineers, couple great designers. >> We took the whole process online. It was a huge win for the admin. Went from 6 months to about 6 seconds uh to to retire. And um it spawned a bigger idea which is what if we did this governmentwide? What if we could go across every agency working with every cabinet member to actually reform the digital experience for the entire nation? >> Yeah. So uh what I'm interested in is like there's the national design studio and I think there's there are people still that think design is just like what color the button looks. Uh and design is so much more than that. Like you are designing the system. I imagine that a lot of the design work that you're doing is actually interfacing with a ton of different stakeholders under understanding why a system was built. There's the Chester Chesterton fence analogies like what does it actually take to move a project through

the National Design Studio to uh to fruition? Uh because I imagine it's not just uh you know a new front end. >> It's far more than that. You're right. Um the big idea was well you have the there's um now 29,000 government websites of all shapes and sizes. Some you're familiar with maybe the IRS every April 15th >> um and some longtail websites that are more information based. >> And there was a realization a couple months back uh early this year. >> There's no way. I mean you spend your whole lifetime trying to go website by website to upgrade and prove to to modern standards.

>> Yeah. And it became sort of apparent and obvious at a certain point, well, what if we just used modern tools that are emerging in real time va and and gave people a place where >> instead of 29,000, what if there was just one? >> Yeah. >> What if there was just one website where people could go to search for the information that they need and also action it? Meaning that I could go search which Medicare plan is right for me or right for my grandmother or grandfather. And then right on the same site, I'd be able to enroll.

>> And there's something very interesting here. So we built america.gov to do exactly that. >> Yeah. >> And the site is a place to get information and also uh it's coming soon action it. Um so the interesting thing is that because because we're in the government, our LLM is only official government sources >> which means that we only return information that's published from the government. We don't scrape the internet. >> Sure. >> So information that means it's accurate and it's up to date. Mhm. >> Um it also means that coming from in the government, we can integrate into agencies.

>> Yeah. >> Meaning that with the enrollment for Medicare, we can actually connect into the Medicare database because we're inside the government and help somebody actually affectuate that change, make that decision right in one place and not have to go back into the maze of the Medicare website. >> Yeah. T talk more. You America.gov of launched right as there's uh so much excitement on the west coast around around personal agents and really all over the world as as people have gone from just like getting information or or everyday people are going from getting information from LLMs to actually getting information then being able to take action. Um I imagine you've been thinking about that since the beginning of the project. You didn't need new agents to to get released. But um how how good can this get? like because I can imagine a a one homepage for interacting with your government where again you can learn about the services that the government provides and and laws and everything like that and then be able to actually immediately take action and and let's say spawn an agent

that goes and deals with another agent uh another agency and and your agent is dealing with their agent and then it brings you it brings you in the loop when you need uh when it needs your input and things like that. I can imagine like the the perfect version of that product, but any I I you're dealing with the actual realities of what it's gonna actually take to roll that out. And given how hard it's been to get agents right in the enterprise and and personal agents that are still very errorprone, I can only imagine that it's going to be, you know, just as hard or or harder um for your team to do.

>> Yeah, look, I'm I'm sure that day will come and it's probably closer than we all think. For now, though, we don't even have to go to that that far. um because we're positioned inside a lot of these agencies have APIs that we can connect to that you know outside third parties are never going to have access to. So we have this advantage right now where um we can just connect directly to those and if they don't exist um we now have an executive order to help create APIs that that that we need >> in order to do things like that improve the experience for everyday Americans. You just moved, you have to change your address post office. You'll be able to do that on America.gov. No stress. Uh, you want to learn about and actually enroll in an armed service, you can do that on America.gov, you know, in a couple clicks. You lost your social security card and need to replace it.

You want to know a fun fact? We looked at the flow of the replacement of a social security card. It's 87 clicks to replace that piece of paper. >> Wow. >> And that's, by the way, with no errors. That's if you get it right the first time. >> Yeah. >> And so what you'll see in America.gov in the months to come. >> Yeah. when you're logged in, it literally takes one click. >> Yeah. >> And it ships your your social security card. >> So, >> so there's more than a 10x improvement that's unfolding right now um across the nation. Um >> I don't know if you can hear it. Uh >> I mean one's taking off behind the White House here.

>> Very cool. >> I don't know if you guys hear. >> Yeah, >> it's not coming through. Your your your team is uh set up a good system. I wish we could hear Can you can you talk Oh, can you talk us through uh the the Can you hear us? Okay. >> You see the helicopter there? >> Uh oh. Oh, yeah. There it is. Wow. There you go. Oh, it's about to land. >> So, >> crazy. >> There you go. >> Wow. Would you look at that >> landing right behind >> pretty good for a for an AI background, >> isn't it? It's this uh white house background option. But it seems really painful though.

>> Yeah. >> Um uh I uh there there's the humorous sort of fake quote, "We don't do things because they're easy. We do them because we thought they would be easy." Um you don't strike me as somebody that would be super naive. I assumed you imagined that this work would be, you know, incredibly difficult. Not because like designing the front end would be difficult, but the sort of complex coordination, but um when it comes to just making everyday everyday interactions with with you know the federal government easier, has has have some elements been been been relatively straightforward or has it all been a slog that that that makes you know starting a YC startup uh feel easy?

>> There are elements of YC here. There's a lot of elements of Airbnb. You know, some would say the hardest uh marketplace to start is one where strangers are going to rent out their homes to other strangers. Uh so, you know, that was uh definitely a lot of lessons there of and a lot of enjoyment of taking on a really hard problem like that. Like how do you create trust between people who've never met uh and take that to scale? So, you know, it took us about 10 years pulled it off >> and uh but it's a it's a huge problem here. There's it's the government's the largest employer. It's 2.3 million employees. Um it's got systems that go back to the 1970s.

>> They still are actual mainframes running important systems in our government, our nation today. >> Um but it's 2026, guys. What are we doing? >> It's United States of America. >> We lead in everything else. We lead culturally, economically, uh technologically. >> Let's also be a leader in the citizen experience. It doesn't have to it doesn't have to be the way it is. >> It can be better. Right. Like let's let's put plant a flag and say enough is enough. >> Yeah. >> I'm embarrassed actually, you know, as as a tech guy, as Silicon Valley.

>> Yeah. >> As a designer, fact. The way our nation shows had shown up digitally is um no one would no one admires it. >> Yeah. >> And they should. >> Yeah, that's true. >> So >> that's that's why I'm here. How do you think about the differences between your work at Airbnb to now your work in the government specifically around how you measure success? I mean, it sounds like you do think in KPIs, but maybe it's not specific click-through rates, the more minutia of when you have designed Airbnb from scratch, it was a Greenfield project. So, you you're not you're not starting with a mainframe. Um, but you still understand that just going from 86 clicks down to just a few is going to be a huge uh improvement. How much of what you're doing is driven by uh the traditional software metrics versus more intuitive uh sort of higher level of abstraction metrics just like this is a mess and we should just reduce

complexity and the KPI looks a little bit different than what you were doing before. I'll tell you the first difference that came to mind is when you're starting your own company, your founder, you know, Airbnb was that was Brian Nate and I's universe, right? Like we called all the shots. >> Yeah. >> Here it's it's president's universe, you know, it's it's different. Um so you're working in a very different context where >> you don't you know the the authority that you have as founders is different obviously. >> Yeah, >> that that was the first big change. Um second is I'd say uh the way that we're measuring on America.gov ultimately will be about hours saved.

Yeah. >> It's not about the number of >> websites produced or >> Yeah. >> Um information on the site. It's it certainly comes down to hours saved. There's a stat published from the government that Americans spend 10 billion with a B hours every year trying to get things done in the government. That's an absurd amount of time. >> That's a lot of time. And the level of inefficiency that's that that that creates that is it's over. Like we're ending it. >> The whole point of America.gov is to end that. And if we 10x >> the the the improvement of getting stuff done, getting the information you need or getting >> the the action done, the enrollment, the application, etc.

>> Um that's billions of hours that go back into people's lives. >> Yeah. >> And maybe also back into the GDP. >> Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you for everything you're doing and thanks for coming on and breaking it down. Last question. Uh >> do you think in another life uh the president would have been a product guy or is he more of like vision v visionary like but but you know does he have opinions on on uh on like button colors and things like that or is he more higher level like just just get it done Joe I I trust you. >> Well thankfully guys we have a president who cares about this stuff.

>> Yeah. >> He's a hospitality guy remember. >> Oh true. And so he he cares about the experience that our country has when it comes to these things. >> And so you think of America.gov as as a concierge to the government. He loves that. He's a builder. He's a fixer. >> Sure. >> And you know the credit goes to him for supporting this effort. >> Yeah. >> Final final question and I know I know we're over but uh what can we do about uh state state governments? Are do you think there's learnings that can be passed down to them? Is there shared infrastructure that could be basically, you know, owned and operated by the state, but effectively code that that can be passed to them? Is it possible to open source this stuff for the for the states? So that because I think like if they're spending 10 billion hours with the federal government, they're spending, you know, probably an equal amount of time locally.

>> You have to imagine there's states that have already reached out about that. >> Sure. Um there's other countries that have already reached out about this just in the last 3 days >> um saying you know how do we bring this to our country I won't say their names yet but um multiple countries have reached out >> asking how do we bring this here so uh states have already reached out other nations um I think if we can do this right when we do this right which is phase one access to information phase two is actioning that information the next couple months um we'll have set a new standard for the citizen experience to inspire states and other countries alike. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to catch up for the work to come and chat with us. Uh, have a great rest of your Friday. Have a great weekend. We'll talk to you soon. Cheers.

>> Goodbye. >> Let me tell you about Cisco. >> Critical infrastructure for the AI era. Unlock seamless realtime experiences and new value with Cisco. We're running about 10 minutes behind, but we are going to stay back on track with Molly Fowler from the dorm room fun partner. Molly, welcome to the show. How are you doing? >> Sorry, we're running late. >> Hey guys. All good. That was actually really interesting to listen to. I used to work in government so and uh we for the city of LA and we did an overhaul of the 311 website and so to have somebody like Joe who's like a product guy doing this is ridiculous. It's so cool.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's very exciting to see it roll out. Um anyway, uh first time in the show. Give us an introduction. Explain that. So so excited to chat because so many so many friends of the show that are like got their that that we know have got got their start with dorm room fun. Um and it just seems to have these amazing like ripple effects. Um and uh yeah very very excited to get the update. >> Yeah. Well, thanks for having me and I know you guys are big fans of Ben Horwitz and his magical anti AI tool. a recent dorm room funder we're very proud of. And uh >> I know you guys are homies of Will Manus who I've been I promised to encourage you guys to to to know that he's closer to 22 than he is to 40. So >> um important details.

>> Yeah. Very contrarian. But >> I you know I like I like all different viewpoints. That's great. >> Yeah. That's one one data point. >> It's a bold stance. You don't hear many people coming down on that side of the argument. But we encourage free and open debate here. So >> yeah, there you go. >> You have your opinion and I respect it. >> There there there may have may or may not have been some um purchasing of some booze by some older folks for for Will before perhaps he could do that legally. So >> when you have a fake ID that says you're 10 years younger, like it doesn't work at liquor store. So >> it's a very very low this this minute of TVPN is the lowest TAM going to be very entertaining for for like for like 10 people. Well, let's spice it up with a gong smash. You raised some money. How big is the new >> Yes, sir.

>> Yeah. So, we just raised 50 million bucks. We're really excited. >> Thank you, sir. >> Get the replay going on. Can we hit the gong smash? >> There we go. >> Thank you. >> With authority. >> There we go. >> Um, okay. So reintroduce uh anybody that doesn't know what you guys do is got to be living under a data center somewhere but uh introduce the the fund and the platform and the strategy and then yeah maybe talk >> no doubt so so dormant fund was founded in 2012 as part of first round capital.

Um I cannot take credit for this genius idea. It was it was actually Josh Coppelman founder first round. But long story short is is that when you think about places where unfair advantage occurs to builders and to tech founders, it's pretty hard to compete with universities, right? I mean, if you think about it, they're kind of like the OG ultimate hacker house. >> Um, and so the question arose in 2012 to Josh, which was like, how can we, you know, the cloud comput is new. We know it's going to get way easier to start companies. you can spin up an instance on a you know AWS in your underpants instead of buying like you know rack space. Um and so >> he was like how do we find out who's great on campus and find them early in ahead of sort of going to the classic like you know accelerators or pitch competitions or that sort of thing. and so had had the insight that students themselves, you know, these incredibly connected, super smart humans are going to know who's legit and who's kind of

dinking around before they go back to their consulting job when they finish business school. Um, and uh, and so that's how we got started. And the whole idea was, you know, scout scout scouting was new still. It was really something that that uh, seasoned founders were doing. And so the idea was let's give these new folks some capital and some training and some guidance on what good looks like and see if they can spot the best stuff first because they've got all this social capital and knowledge about who's good and who isn't. And so that's that's how we got started um and started in Philly grew to uh four cities across the US inside of First Round Capital. We had three funds with first round and then come 2021 we realized that there was this huge opportunity for us because the model was working. We were backing incredible founders um before all the big boys and we had this opportunity to you know increase the amount of capital we could give our founders to give them more help >> and at a time when you know things were

getting a bit more sophisticated on campus. So, we spun out of First Round Capital, raised our own fund in 2021 with First Round as LPs, um, and have had a huge run since then. We were lucky enough to not only continue to invest in founders that are building on university campuses. So, we're talking about college, MBA, PhD, but also the alumni of the dorm room community. Because as you guys can imagine those, you know, 12, 15 students that are on the team for 2 years while they're in school, when they go out to build or invest, they become absolute superstars. And so that's been a source of a lot of really amazing opportunities for us as a community.

>> What are what are I do you have any data on like entry prices? because it feels like you you might be the the the well the kind of the final early stage fund that can actually reliably get in like sub 10 million potentially because you're not like even even you know there's got to be founders today on college campuses that >> are compelling enough that they could go raise you know a full seed round if they're >> if you're if you're in college and you do 50k on 500k you can build a business for like a full year. Like that's a that's a lot of money in in the college world.

>> Yeah. And so you guys, I'm sure like trying to actively avoid not being predatory and and that's on the the the that's the job of the individual >> investors. But >> if somebody's going to give good pricing to somebody, it would be one of their peers that then opens up this network that you guys have. >> Yeah. I mean, I think so. I think a couple things are happening. one is that, you know, every time there's one of these big technology changes like we're seeing obviously today in the last couple of years, it really has the effect of leveling the playing field for first-time builders, right? So, and the other thing that it does is that it drops the price of how much it costs to really start a software business. And so, you know, we're in this really interesting era where, you know, Jordy, you're right, there's a ton more capital on campus than used to be. You know, when we started doing this back in the old days, everybody thought we were insane. Now everybody's like, "Oh I have to, you know, get my own campus program going." And so great founders can raise really quickly. I think what is what is different about today's market and I think puts dorm room fund

in a really strong position is that founders are increasingly dilution sensitive, right? And so there are a lot of these legacy solutions that look like 7 10 12% dilution with the first big check. And I think founders are quickly realizing that, you know, to John's point, you can build really fast, really cheap. And so the place where DRF is sliding in is being this sort of almost like the replacement for an FNF round, like a friends and family. And recognizing that like not everybody has a bunch of like rich aunties and uncles who can back them up, right? And so dorm room fund can be that first infusion of capital to get them just to the point where they get that magic moment of like sparkles of product market fit. And then we can help them go out with our giant community and help them raise an even more kick-ass institutional round.

>> Yeah. >> Mhm. >> I remember back when I was in college, like the concept of a of a friends and family round was so absurd to me because I was like >> friends and family that are going to like individually invest like >> same amount of money as a car. >> It's like, hey, instead of buying a new car, why don't you invest in a wild swing at my idea? Yeah. No way. Um, yeah. And I think that's Yeah, that's such such an unlock, too. It's it's also >> Yeah, there's there's a lot of reasons that that it can make more sense to do that. As much as you want to give the people in your world access to to to what you're working on, sometimes it's better to just work with something more institutional.

>> Yeah. >> Well, and I think there's also plenty of space for I mean there's there's been a lot of examples where dorm room funds been the first institutional check for a founder, right? and we might catalyze around where they bring in a few friends and family alongside us, right? So, I don't think it's an eitheror, but I think what it is is recognizing that like >> you don't necessarily have to go to the traditional accelerator programs or something like that as you're just getting started and that there's a more capital efficient way to do it. I think in the early days, >> what is last last question for now, what does the 50 million mean? How how do you how do you think about like allocating it across different uh different students not you know on the on the investment team but then also uh founders things like that.

>> Yeah, definitely. So we um our check size is is you know usually sub million for the first time around. Um we're probably going to end up investing in I'd guess probably like 75 or 80 companies over the next you know in the sort of threeyear period. And the way we think about spreading that around is one the student opportunities that are sourced to us, right? So we have regional teams all across the US, they um they cover all the top entrepreneurial ecosystems and so each each of those four teams will be deploying capital over the next two years. We've already been in we've already been deploying out of fund two since about July of last year. Um we also then have the bucket of dormer fund alumni, right? So, if you've been part of the DRF crew like like Ben Horwitz, like some others, no matter when you build, you're elig eligible for a dorm and fun check and and those have been superstar hitters for us. So, that's how we got into, you know, lucky enough to get into cursor. We got into Dandy really early um because Tony and

thank you, >> Tony and uh and Mike were both on the team when they were in undergrad. Um and so, you know, that's a really big win for us. And then, you know, we're lucky to have been able to get some really fantastic institutional partners with us in terms of LPs. And so now we're in a really great position to not just help our founders with that first amount of capital, but actually be along for the ride a little bit longer. >> Awesome. >> Amazing. >> Thank you. >> Such a great product and platform and uh great to finally meet >> you on the new round. New >> Thanks, guys. Great to see you soon.

Cheers, Molly. Goodbye. Have a great weekend. >> Let me tell you about the New York Stock Exchange. Want to change the world? Raise capital at the New York Stock Exchange. >> Just do it. I'm >> Tom Doton. The cat is in the bag and the bag is in the river. We got the former host of Dead Cat. Welcome to the show. How you doing, Tom? >> I love the reference. I'm glad that you're still keeping the memory of Dead Cat alive. >> It was such a fantastic show. You guys got to bring it back. I mean, I know it's like to me that that was like like >> there's not a lot of hardcore podcasting that goes on. Like when I was watching Matthew Belly on the town with Ari Emanuel >> and I was like this is hardcore podcasting. This is people like kind of arguing and bickering saying what they actually saying what they actually think.

>> And I have some good memories of dead cat in like 2021 that era where you people would actually say what they they really thought you know and that these days. >> Yeah. No, I'm trying to think if am I the Ari or am I the belly in that situation with Eric there? I don't Well, well, it's just more like you're listening to that and you're like, "Wow, this actually feels like you're just listening into a conversation over lunch, right?" >> Yeah. Yeah. The Bellan Emanuel thing doesn't match cuz like I I feel like all the DeadCat hosts were like on the same lens, like they were all like real journalists in tech. Uh, but the fact that it was called Dead Cat and it's like this obscure reference that you have to explain to like everyone who joins is uh was like >> everybody who does Dead Cat Bounce, they would think it was a reference to that, which is a good one, but that wasn't it.

But you know, Eric and and and Katie Benner and I were all like the first journalists at the information. So Jessica hires us like right when the place launches. And so there's a brief period of time where we are all >> crunched into this uh very small office space uh uh where Amira also early player would uh burn his toast every day and we would kind of deal with the toxic fumes of that. So from that environment birthed a podcast that >> you guys remember? >> I do. Yeah. It's great. Um, so yeah, this Ellison profile, uh, it could be it could be turned into a serialized podcast. It's obviously a profile available at Vanity Fair, but what got you >> with AI? It could be turned into a playable browserbased game.

>> Yes, perhaps. But, uh, >> I don't know what that even means. >> What what what got you interested in Ellison? Because we read an older Vanity Fair profile about Ellison that was fascinating where it shows that he's like dog fighting with David Ellison when David's like younger and they're like literally flying planes at each other. Fascinating character obviously at the center of the AI buildout but not at the White House dinner. A little bit more behind the scenes. Why' you settle on him for the profile? >> Yeah. Uh that profile that you read, the Vanity Fair one, was that you remember was that the 97 one that uh that Brian Burrow wrote?

>> Yep. of the gate legend. >> Insane. Such a good story. >> Yeah, I talked to Brian actually while I was doing the story because I kind of wanted his blessing and this is a side point. Uh yeah, he told me I have no memory of doing that story. I have no It is It is lost in time to him. But it was an amazing piece. I recommend everyone go out and read it cuz cuz Brian got access, you know, like he was sitting next to to Larry at the the Bulls game and watching him with his then wife and fascinating. Steve Jobs is in it. It's a great piece. But >> look, for me it was like why not, you know, like someone had to do it. The guy is everywhere. He's been around for generations, for for decades. I mean, really of that first vintage of Silicon Valley Titans. And the last guy who's who's in the game, you know, Steve Jobs's past.

>> Bill Gates is kind of sort of in it, but he's also more of like a grandfather like figure and um you know, also kind of tainted because of the Epstein stuff. And and and Larry is sort of the last one. He still really runs Oracle. And they're in the midst of like you said, so many things between AI and the crazy bet that they're making to build data centers. they own 15% of Tik Tok and how that came to pass was an incredible journey. And then everything that he's doing with David, you know, just today they finalized, you know, the the acquisition of Warner Brothers and Sky Dance is now like I don't have this in front of me, but I assume the largest studio uh in in in Hollywood and and Larry is, you know, he and David have 77% voting control over this thing.

>> Yeah. >> And so, you know, the guy's like in the last chapter of his life or the latest chapter of his life and and more active, more present than ever. And the funny thing is he's also not available. He's not present. He's not someone that you see at the White House or in the office. And so, you know, all of that is just like as a reporter, you're like, what's going on? >> Yeah, that seems like a shift because obviously he participated in the last Vanity Fair profile, but in the '9s and he was I think he went on Oprah or something. There's a there's a vignette about that where like his person like like people were so obsessed with him like uh wouldbe uh suitors effectively would call Oracle headquarters and uh and try and ask him out on a date which is >> oneote and now he's like >> he like I remember the day very very early in building the show where he followed TBPN in like Q like within a quarter of starting and to me that to me that was wild too because >> as somebody who appears appears to be like outside playing outside of the matrix of the tech. You know, he's very

like you're saying, he's in the industry, but he's not like doing the the the comm's tours and doing media and all these things like able to be like a very much a live player, but behind the scenes. It was notable. I was like, he's on X, you know, and >> you guys tweet that out. You know, he's not on X anymore. I think he closed that account. I don't >> the whole uh like uh big tech monitor tweet like the automated account like posted it basically >> and so like you see it there. Um >> fascinating. >> What was interesting is like for the last year I've been mapping the Ellison strategy as like a more of a barbell strategy. like you're building the data factory, the data centers, the chips, the the the potentially like the AI slop, but then you're also building Hollywood and Tik Tok and like legacy IP. And we see this with a number of uh investors where, you know, Josh Kushner is an investor in open AI, but also buying a sports team, right? And these these two things are like at the opposite ends of the continuum for like high-tech, low tech. Uh you center on a

different analogy, not a barbell, but tentacles of an octopus. Can you tell me about that and like what like what what actually does that mean? And then he's into this metaphor himself. Right. >> Right. Right. I mean that was kind of you know it is sort of a a well-known trope of of what it means to have power everywhere as you have your tentacles. It's it's just a saying. But with Larry I mean he he's been taking that seriously for as long as he's been in business. Yeah. >> Um you know as I list out in the story he's got multiple holding companies that are octopus themed. So, between, you know, Octopus Corp, there's Sephilod, Sephopod Corp, there's Tentacle Corp.

>> Uh, there's Ako Ventures and Taco is the Japanese word for for octopus. And, >> uh, as I I also wrote in the story, when he first moves out to California, you know, right after he drops out of college and he's sitting with his buddy and they're looking out over the city and talking about the buildings that they're going to own, uh, he has a vision of a company called Universal Octopus Corp. or something like that. >> Uh, universal. Anyway, so so this idea of having you know your your your your arms over multiple parts of the world and an industry is very much appeals to him. >> Yeah. And um you know that is very instructive to his ambition like he's someone who never stops like Oracle is one of the great stories of tech right it's it's this company that gets in at the ground level of of Silicon Valley with Steve Jobs and all these guys and he has this very focused image of of the database and the relational database and it's not you know sexy in the way that Apple was consumer and stylish and and Bill Gates sort of you know this idea of workplace software Oracle is really the the mechanics the plumbing

But it's a great business >> and it's still around to this day and it's like people are still using the Oracle database and and he's still running it and so >> and he maintained his ownership in Oracle so remarkably when there are there are other companies that I put in that same category where there were multiple founders things got split up maybe the company got taken private went public again and like you the founder winds up with like a couple percent. Larry was really able to continue reinvesting, buying stock at key moments, like maintaining that economic pool. So then when the AI moment comes and uh and and it booms, like he's still in the the that really tight club of like truly richest men in the world.

>> And not only does he he maintain control, he grows control. Yes. Like its stock was was basically flat was, you know, went sideways for for decades as you know, the database would spin off cash, but he weren't really growing it into anything else. during this period he accumulates more and more control to a point where he owns 40% of the company um which is unheard of for for for a company of that size right I mean the reason he's so rich is because he owns so much of this one company and like I you know I talked to some analysts for it or is basically considered by most traders like a public private company you know it's it's it's the float is relatively small and and Larry is totally in control and you just sort of accept it that's that's part of the game that's part of the bargain >> yeah I I think a lot of founders don't necessarily realize like what a what an effective stock buyback program over a decade can do to your ownership. Uh we've seen this in the cloud storage market with the diverging paths of like Box and Dropbox where uh you know the if you're buying back a lot of stock even if you got diluted from those VC rounds like you could crawl your way back to 20

30 40% ownership over time. It's not going to happen in a year, but you don't need to just magically materialize, you know, $20 billion to actually go buy back your company. It can happen sort of slowly. Uh, I have one more question on this. Elizabeth Holmes, Theronos, there's a new movie coming out. What did you learn about the motivations there? What's going on? And do you have any predictions for what's going to happen in the movie? Because all of the all of the critics are saying like it's the most unexpected thing ever. And I feel like the the story of Theronos has been told so many times, I can't imagine what might actually happen. So, I want your take.

>> I've kept myself spoilerfree. I know there are some reviews out there that say exactly what what goes on in the movie. So, I can't claim any knowledge there. >> Yeah, I I think the Variety or someone like that put out a review that really pissed people off because they walked you through the whole thing. But, I mean, as far as Ellison goes cuz he you know, he's part of the story. um you know he he invests in the know through multiple vehicles through taco through other probably some of the occupier companies too um and you know credit to him he still believes in her you know long after she ends up getting you know this is in the story but like he is as some sources told me smitten with her he really thought she was the greatest and uh defended her to this day said he was she was a genius is misunderstood and you know part of the the Ellison in the story now is that he's also spending probably most of his invest ments are going into cancer research.

>> He uh which you know maybe we can talk about but you know the the idea of using you know tech dollars to fund cancer research and and novel medical treatments for cancer you could argue came from Elizabeth and like a shared interest there. >> Um so they're deeply connected and just one kind of funny point about it. Um yeah I don't know if you guys watched the uh the dropout now what was the name of the uh theos series >> dropout. Yes, >> the dropout, right? So, Larry has a scene. >> I mean, I say say for honestly of the tech shows of that era, that's probably the best one. But, >> uh, you know, there's a scene of Larry in the show where, you know, they're on one of they're on a yacht and and he's telling her, "Can I swear on on TVPN?"

>> We don't swear actually, but >> Okay. All right. Uh, get the get the freaking money and Yeah. I I'll I'll try and >> I missed it. I missed it. Well, you guys can look up the clip, but but he's in it and and and he's like, "Get the effing money." And um and that scene definitely never happened. Mostly because they show him drinking which he does not do. He's a he's a tea toler. >> So yeah. Yeah. Fascinating. >> Do you know he eats calamari cuz he loves the octopus? Is he also enjoyed dining on octopus? >> You know, I don't I I wish a better reporter would have found that out. I do know that he eats the same breakfast almost every day. And probably if I worked for the New York Times, I would have written that that particular meal.

Um I'll save the book. Did you stay at at uh any of the sensei properties to try to immerse yourself in his his world? >> I have been to LA three times. Uh now, which I feel like a lot. Um now I've never stayed at the Sensei properties. So I I I first started covering Larry when I was at the Wall Street Journal. >> Um I did a story about Sensei Farms, which is this hydroponic. Um >> I I read that story. >> Yeah, it was good. >> Thank you. Yeah. It was like this kind of >> We read Didn't we read that on the show like within the first >> on the show? Oh, sorry.

>> Within the first It was probably within the first month. >> Yeah. Yeah. It's this crazy boondoggle of, you know, he he wanted to reinvent uh you know, indoor hydroponic farming and create the Tesla of agriculture and um look, it's still around. You can buy their salads in in Hawaii. But anyway, so for that, I went to Lai. I went for two days. I met a lot of the people there and then I went back again uh for this story. Um, >> I have been inside Sensei. I have walked the grounds of the Wellness Retreat, which has this incredible art um, installation. All of Larry's art.

There's like Damen Hurst and Jeff Coun and stuff like that. Um, >> I have not gotten Vanity Fair or the Wall Street Journal to ever pay for a night at the Four Seasons. >> Um, >> I I think you need a month at the Four Seasons to get to the bottom of this thing. Personally, >> we'll we'll put a note. I mean, Rogers out, but the new CEO will will say I think it's important. Um, I will say the the I haven't been to the uh Sensei Lai, but I've been to the one in uh Palm Springs, Palm uh Palm Springs, and that property is amazing because it um >> it's it's called Sensei Porcupine Creek.

>> Okay. Um, and it's completely like you the whole it's a wonderful place, but for me as somebody who's very commercially minded, it's hard to sort of >> wrestle with the thought that the the it must be losing so much money. Um, just just because I think there's like 16 rooms, but it's these massive grounds and there's a Nou and this golf course that sits empty most of the time and and the staff's amazing. It's an amazing experience. I highly recommend it. But it is it is just wild cuz they're sitting there and be like every day they're just like waking up and we're losing another probably you know however much money. Um what what the the last question I had is um >> how like talk about his relationship with risk and and willing to like make these sort of all-in bets at different moments throughout his career? like do you think he's is he getting more risk on like you know with with all last year with all of the the sort of pushing the chips in uh on on Oracle with AI um you

know felt significant but at the time um you know and and still unclear like whether that'll be the right decision but I think a lot of people like to chatter and and try to evaluate the decision when they have literally like not even 1% of the context that he has. Um and then and then with with Paramount and Warner Brothers as well. Um you know I when somebody has like reinvented and and executed well for that many decades like you kind of need to default to like hey maybe he knows what he's doing.

>> Yeah. I mean he loves big swing bets. That's that's just a core part of his like reputation and strategy as a business person is he will do it and >> Yeah. Exactly. Uh Oracle like you know it almost goes bankrupt in the '90s because of an accounting scandal. Well, I wouldn't ne call that a big swing bet, but like he lives >> exactly, Borat. Like he lives he lives on the edge and he's totally fine to kind of go there because he has so much control and like one of the fascinating parts of the Oracle AI story to me is that Saffricatz, who is a fascinating figure. I did not have enough line in the story to kind of dive into her, but she's in the middle of obviously Oracle, but also his relationship with Israel, um super smart, conservative executive.

She does not love the AI bet. uh she does not love infrastructure. She is, you know, a huge fan of the high margin software business. And >> I think it's very telling that when Oracle goes, you know, all in on AI basically on open AI, like that's the client that is making that whole bet work is the fact they're building data centers for for Sam. >> Um you know, software ends up stepping down in the middle of that >> and and you you've entered this new era where they are essentially a neo cloud. Yeah. >> And and and Larry's on board with that. He's a technologist and and this is look when it when it was working the stock he was the richest man in the world >> you know like it was going crazy since then >> RPO day I remember it.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Seven you know 317 billion you know the next day uh you know the Wall Street Journal former former place of work you know reveals that it's all open AI basically and then the debt starts being a >> terrifying reality for people where they're like you know our cash flow has just turned negative. Like this is terrifying. And so that's just built into Larry's DNA in a lot of ways. He's fine with that. Not everyone is. And then but the funny thing is with the Paramount stuff, like you know, that's all built on Oracle stock. >> You know, his ability to finance these multi-billion dollar media consolidations are at least to some degree margin loans on um or loans on on his Oracle holdings. It's very least collateral. Like we know that um because he had to do a $40 billion back stop, you know, to make the Warner Brothers deal happen. And so it's like the guy, it's weird to think about in this context, but like the guy is living on the edge, you know, it's like you're worth $200 billion, but like it's very risky, you know, that the banks are selling off debt, you know, for the different data centers at like 90 cents to the dollar. Um, like no one knows how

it's going to play out, but I think, you know, Larry at 82 years old, he he loves this >> The full set octopus. Let's go. >> Yeah. Where else when when you've when you've owned, you know, racing teams and sailing teams and you've dog gone dog fighting, how do you get the rush without a little leverage, you know? >> Well, we'll dig into it next time. We'd love to have you back on the show, Tom. >> Yeah, this was this was great. >> Always a great time >> and excited for for the viewers to dig in. >> Yeah. Yeah. Go read the full piece. Subscribe to Vanity Fair. Obviously, we love them over there.

>> Yeah. And newcomer.com, my my other employer. That's right. Go go go read Eric and Newcomer and all of our stuff. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for joining. Have a great weekend and we'll talk to you soon. Goodbye. >> Let me tell you about CrowdStrike. Your business is AI. Their business is securing it. Crowd Strike secures AI and stops breaches. We've been keeping him waiting. No longer. We got Pimit from Genuine General Intuition. Co-founder. >> Here he is. >> Pim. How you doing? Welcome, >> man. The myth. He's back. >> Well, thanks guys. >> Give us the news. You raised some money.

How much did you raise? We raised 220 million at a 60 million. >> Fantastic. Let's get the replay going. Let's get that replay going. Let's see that gong hit. Thank you. >> Congratulations >> with authority. >> Powerful hit, John, for a powerful raise. Uh what unlocked this new capital? >> Um we successfully were able to prove uh transfer to real world robotics from a lot of the games data. And so I think a lot of the um evidence is pointing that you can actually in fact just scale pixel space. Um humans tell tele tell upgrade robots with the exact same brain that they can play video games. And a lot of um and likewise the other way around, right? People play video games and then they take those skills and they they can use the same game controller to tell operated robots. And I think a lot of our research um and now we've we've shown some demos as well is indicating that this transfer works and you can scale um pixel to action space on our massive data modes and um yeah I'm

excited to show world to models in the next few months. >> Very cool. Talk about talk about the data mode. I know we I know we've talked about it probably a couple times now but for anyone tuning in for the first time talk about how and why you guys are in a position to do this better than most. >> Yeah. So, we built the largest we built the largest video game recorder in the world. And so, we um get a lot of data on how people control uh embodiment inside video games. So, when you're playing a video game, you're essentially just transferring your perception to the screen and then using the controls to control whatever character you have on the screen, many times in first person view, just like when you're on a robot.

And so because robots also ship with game controllers, we can map those actions and then largely it becomes just an environment transfer problem where the pixels are different but the inputs are the same. And so we can pre just like transformers are or LLMs are pre-trained on predicting the next text token from the internet. We can pre-train on the three billion videos that people capture and upload to metal every year. the game recorder >> um to go so to go from frames to actions. And so LLMs go text to text, we go frames to actions, >> and then we can scale that into extremely general models that can control every robot that ships with the game controller, which is the majority of robots right now.

>> Um give us your overview of uh of various robotics categories. Where are you most excited about in the short term? Obviously in the in in the more let's say in the next year it's all about um just working with these companies around like testing and proving out different use cases but what categories are you most bullish on um because I think for general intuition you're I think it's probably going to be quite important to hit like some of these big inflection points when some of these use cases really start taking off in the way that we've seen other players and infrastructure providers hit like the inflection point with like personal agents for example or browser automation or these other use cases.

>> Our bet is that that in that inflection point actually sits largely in simulation first and that most the companies betting on physical world robotics uh only uh are going to miss that inflection point because every robotics lab goes every robotics manufacturer every company goes through sort of testing their robots in simulation before they transfer them over to the real world. Um and so this year we've been focusing a lot on scaling with customers in simulation. Next year a lot of it will be on transferring over to the physical world. Where we are focused specifically at the moment is quadrupets. Um drones um and I like stable platforms right um humanoids um are are quite unstable still. Their supply chains haven't rammed quite as much and so but you can control them using a game controller. And so if your robot ships with a game controller and has a front-facing camera then we can likely uh work well together and the models will transfer extremely well.

>> Very cool. God mode in video games. It gives you unlimited health, but recently AI researchers have been talking about a different kind of god mode, >> imbuing AI models with godlike meaning. What is your take on uh the the models that you're creating? Will they be moral agents? Will they be have consciousness? How have you grappled with the question of is this God in a box or is it a machine intelligence?

>> It's a machine intelligence. I see no reason to believe otherwise. I think our our processes in the brain are chemical processes there. There's absolutely no reason at the moment to believe these machines are conscious. I think the entire debate is honestly somewhat silly. Um I right a lot more things would have to be proven to draw any equivalence there. And I also think that um for us I think the goal is just studying these systems and understanding what they do well and not well and um and then and then going from there. I think you know I tried to stay away from a lot of that cultish behavior and just stay grounded.

>> Yeah. um talk about sentiment AI sentiment among uh among gamers because anytime we've had somebody in the the gaming uh world uh sort of legacy gaming world on the show and you bring up AI they go >> well you know change the topic you know no one wants to be caught saying anything positive about it but over the last couple weeks I feel like people are suddenly creating a bunch of crazy experiences even home hackers is porting games from here here to there and and and it feels like we could be at at at a moment where people are like, "Hey, maybe this thing's actually pretty cool and a useful tool."

>> Could be looking at the future Ben Affleck of gaming. >> Oh, that's right. >> Potentially. >> I thought that clip of Ben Affleck explaining um freezing weights and and and was so incredible. I I I that made my day, honestly, seeing him explain that. Um I uh Okay, so on gamers, why why are gamers frustrated with AI or historically have been? because it really hadn't done much good for them, right? It made their GPU prices go up. Um, a lot of cap, right? There was a bunch of um games that were delayed from studios and a lot of their investment uh and a lot of these large companies was going towards AI. Meanwhile, all the developers were being laid off at game studios. So, it's obvious why gamers were frustrated. And I think um the reason was it just hadn't done much for them. And I think now we're starting to see the early signs of that changing.

So, modding obviously um becoming a ton easier. Um, I think in our case, we'll see uh different types of games being possible on top of these models uh and different types of interaction patterns. And it just like AI just hadn't done anything for them. And I think we're now turning the corner. Um I I do think it's starting to show and we just need to continue creating better experiences for gamers and um and bringing them along in the journey uh as opposed to uh the other way around. >> Very cool.

>> Awesome. Well said. >> Congratulations >> and amazing progress. Yeah, really amazing product. >> I love uh our our our favorite part of doing these interviews is seeing snapshots of companies as they as they make process uh progress between rounds. >> Yeah. I I have I I have one more question about uh you know like the it's not necessarily the anthropomorphization but just this idea that like some people like just hanging out and chatting with the LLMs and you have metal and people are gaming and uploading clips and I'm wondering if you think that there's a that there will be a real market for a an AI companion that you play video games with. like you queue into Fortnite, you want your squad to be full, and so you populate that with something that's roughly at the same level as you, but can also chat and do call outs and has a certain flavor and and texture and humor to it. Uh, do you think that that will be something that we'll see, or is the structure of the video game industry such that that will just get banned?

>> Yeah, I I think for sure we'll see this because when you're launching video games, your largest problem is usually player liquidity, which largely drives for attention. And so I think if you're a game developer, you want these type of experiences. And I think um you want your environments to be really interactive and rich. And so I think naturally the economics of the industry will push towards this being a thing. I think there's a debate of to the extent that you should label that, right? You should let people know that they're interacting with AI systems. Um but I do think it will be a thing and I think, you know, there will be lots of good things that come from it and there will be bad things that come from it and we just have to study those and evaluate them as they come.

>> Yeah. But it just be like a really fun NPC as opposed to just like the generic bot there in Counterstrike. >> Exactly. Exactly. I think a lot of it will start, you know, the best things start out looking like a toy. And I think the same thing will be true here. >> Yeah. Well, congratulations and thank you so much for coming on the show. >> Great to hang. Congrats to the team. Have a good one. Cheers. Goodbye. >> Our next guest is here with us live in person in the TDP. We have Greg Castle from Anorak Ventures. How you doing, Greg? Welcome to the show. Should we get him to hit the gong with the American flag on to roll the replay camera because you're here announcing a new fun? So throw that on. Take that gong mallet and smash that gong and I want to see the replay.

>> Look at that replay. Wow. >> It's actually a guest a gift for you guys. Really? I felt like I was coming into your house. >> I almost feel like we don't. >> That's crazy. Yeah, we have >> We have maybe one in the other room, but not in this room. >> Thank you so much. >> Well, I I came in and I I I wasn't sure what the representation was going to be. And then I'm hit with that giant American flag. So, >> no, but there's not in this room. It needs to be right here. Uh, so for those who don't know you, please introduce yourself and the company. >> Sure. Uh, Greg Castle, managing partner of Anorak Ventures. We are a early stage deep tech firm been around since 2017.

>> Uh just >> success >> just closed our third fund uh which is a $35 million fund. >> A capital allocator. Did you always know you wanted to be a capital allocator? Is that what you dreamed of being as a child? >> Certainly not. I think um >> what did you want to be when you grew up? I think I was always deeply interested in kind of niche subjects and different kind of subcultures, whether or not it be skating or video games or comics or whatever it is. Yeah. >> And >> you know, kind of I think in high school always kind of jumping around from group to group and learning about what they were super excited about >> was kind of the way I was in high school. So definitely not Venture venture capital is exactly that.

>> That's exactly that. Yeah. Yeah. >> You're exactly right. You're kind of going into different like subcultures, if you will and really learning everything that you can about them. >> What was the first investment you made or like when were you like, "Okay, I'm going to start investing." >> The first investment I made really was in myself when I >> Okay. >> Um when I founded a company. >> Um it sounds kind of cheesy, but like >> No, it's true. It's true. like your your opportunity cost you could so I sorry for hitting a funny sound effect but it's true like it's like ask you know somebody's going to start a company ask yourself are you going to invest >> you know some meaningful percentage of your entire life into this idea is it that good >> most most important >> and sometimes it can be a smaller idea and it still makes sense to do but >> for sure >> but it's worth thinking about it that way >> yeah and And also um you know I think that there's a lot of different things that you can do just under your own passion. But then there there's a

different stage when you actually have to go out to people and ask for money including your friends and family which is what you know which was kind of I consider my first investment was >> some of my own capital some of my parents' capital and going into a very unrelated field in retail. Yeah. So in 2014 I sorry 2014 2004 I moved over to the UK and started up a um a retail chain that was kind of similar to Sweet Green. >> Sure. >> Um and I ran that for six years over in London. We had about six locations. >> Cool. >> But then in terms of my first real investment where I wasn't operating it was in Oculus.

>> Really? >> Yeah. That was the first job. >> So I figured from you know I figured this is this is easy. This is what I'm going to do for >> you. Did you see the Kickstarter online or? >> No. So, um, in 2010 when I moved back to the States, I, um, moved back to work for a friend who I went to college with whose name was Brendan Reeb and he had a company which was a software company >> which was selling software into game developers. And I was always, you know, he he is an amazing salesperson and uh and communicator and I was always really interested in what he was building.

>> Mhm. >> So when the opportunity came around to come and join him at a company that he had dropped out in 2000, 1999 actually when he dropped out of school to go and do that full-time, I was kind of on my own path but was always very interested in what he was building. And um so I came back to join him, worked with him, worked with Mike Antonov, worked with Nate Mitchell. >> Um and then a few years later that Well, that company was acquired by Autotodesk and then a few years later we had heard about a kid who was working on a VR headset and that kid was Palmer >> and that was Palmer Lucky. Wow, >> that's wild. What? Yeah, what a good uh good start to a venture career working with Palmer Lucky who's going to go on and do so many different companies. Uh, while we're on the topic of VR, what how how successful do you think the meta VR glasses will be? And one way to sort of quantify it is when when VR is having a moment, I feel like when Christmas

comes, uh, the the V the app is at the top of the app store. So like the the Quest or the Oculus app would be at the top of the top of the app store. Like it doesn't come out until next uh spring. I think they're going to launch it maybe April or May, but it feels to me like they got a lot of the pieces right. How are you feeling about 2027 as a as a year for VR growth as someone who's been involved in the industry for a long time? >> It's taken a long while, a lot longer than I think we had all hoped. Um, it's interesting to think back of when I first made that investment >> that kind of was um that kickstarted my career in venture. So that was at a time after they were growing like wildfire um where everybody in the valley was kind of convinced that people were going to be wearing headsets walking down the street. Oh yeah.

>> Right. And um and so um it's kind of part of my origin story where I was able to kind of go out and speak on the topic with knowledge and with the relationship to the to the team. Um, and there was a whole bunch of people who wanted me to who kind of were thinking that I was going to start a VR fund. And there were a bunch of com there were a bunch of firms actually that started that were just VR focused. >> I always was kind of felt as though it was going to take a lot longer.

>> Sure. And so it has um I think that um you know you have this kind of situation where the hype has not the hype has set expectations that have been very difficult to follow and so therefore you have this kind of disappointment that everybody feels about kind of how everything's transpired. >> I don't see there being a massive inflection point. Um, there have been several points in the past where something has come out, be it, you know, uh, the Quest one, be it Gear VR, like there have been a bunch of different points along the way where people have been like, "This is it." Yep. Like Apple, this is it. This is when it's all going to change.

>> And it just hasn't happened like that. And I think >> Yeah, even with Zuck's uh Metacon presentation, >> it didn't come across like he was presenting it. It came across as like this incredible technical milestone and like a big step up, right? But if you compare it to like foundation models, like it was a big leap, but it's not like it actually is a drop in co-orker for you. So, and and even some of his language in the presentation was like it's a glimpse of the future.

>> Oh, yeah. >> And it's like well >> that like you don't get a crazy inflection point through glimpses of the future. >> Yeah. It's like another It's another It's another milestone. >> Want a CEO to stand up on stage and say with this product you are staring into the future with your eyes wide like that. >> Yeah. I'm surprised they don't have they they should make that clockwork orange. You want to go clockwork orange on the future. That's what your goal is. >> Um talk about the the fund strategy. I a fund this size. I feel like you can probably confidently go to LPs based on the track record and say like there's a good shot I can four five X a fund like this. Has maintaining that been super important to you? Because given the track record, I imagine you could scale up.

>> Um and then how are you how are you like what what is what's what's the strategy at the early stage in terms of things like ownership? are you flexible, inflexible? Um just cuz current market conditions are are absolutely wild and they don't necessarily favor smaller funds in in some ways. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It has been very much deliberate keeping the funds small. Um >> you know I started as I started angel investing. So after um after the Oculus investment um after that came to fruition, I essentially quit my day job and and really wanted to answer three questions. Like one, what does it mean to be a responsible fiduciary of capital? What does this whole VC thing mean? Two, am I any good at this?

>> Uh or was Oculus just a fluke? And three, um do I want to do this? Do I want to devote the rest of my life to it? Um, and the answer over the over those couple of years of deploying my own capital and doing a few SPVS was yes, yes, and yes. And over that time, I kind of developed a network and uh and a reputation as somebody who can be flexible with checks um and can be really helpful and doesn't have sharp elbows and kind of can like fit into rounds. And that worked out for me. That worked out very well with fund one. That worked, you know, that's working out very well with fund two. And now hopefully it'll work out with fund three. I am very much of the opinion that every size of fund requires a very different skill set and a very different strategy. And what I proved out and what I'm good at is deploying smaller amounts of capital. Sure. And that's what I want to keep on doing.

>> And I think that um >> you know I mean I I think it's very easy to kind of chase aumum and chase those management fees. Um, it helps if you've done decently well in the past and you have like a nest egg and you don't need to stack fees on fees on fees and bigger funds and bigger funds. >> Um, >> and it just feels like I'm much more aligned with my LP base. >> Does the this fund size lead you to a different LP mix or is it the same thing where like you're still going to a sovereign wealth fund but just asking for a smaller slice or endowments? Like how do you think about LP relationships and structuring? Yeah, I kind of have graduated. I was just looking at my LP list over the t over time and it was like fund one was like 60 LPs, fund two was like 50 and now I'm at like 22.

>> Sure. >> Um >> and and that's been a purposeful move. >> Yeah. And and you know, frankly, it's pretty >> racing to one yourself. >> Yeah. >> I mean, that would be the dream, right? like the the Hunter Satia model um is is I think where every VC ultimately wants to be. Although to be honest with you, like I I'm I've got great relationships with my LPs and I love working with them and they also have appetite for later stage rounds. So, but anyway, to answer your question, I would say I started out high net worth individuals, some family offices. Now, it's a lot more family offices and fund of funds.

>> Fun of funds. Okay. But but yeah, but you don't need to do the road show with like huge endowments and sovereign wealth funds. No, trips to the Middle East. >> I'm too small for that. And also, you know, I would say, you know, I started out very much as a deep tech fund where it's just like I saw what happened at Oculus and I saw how amazing it was to bring a completely new technology to market and I was just sold. I was like, this is what I want to do. I don't want to be investing in ad optimization. I don't want to be I want to be investing in people who are really moving the needle.

>> Um and then I had the opportunity because of a relationship with Palmer and Trey to invest in Andural >> and >> um I always pronounce it slightly differently and um and that kind of ignited a sense of patriotism in me that I didn't really knew I had. And since then we've been doing a lot more in aerospace and defense, a lot more in kind of American dynamism. >> And so therefore, from a LP perspective, having LPs who are based here in the US is of great importance to me. Yes, I I've got we actually brought on our first LP from Luxembourg. This fun.

>> Um, shout out to Mangrove. Very excited to have them on board. But for the most part, like the trips to the Middle East, the trips to these places, like I don't need to do them. and I don't necessarily want that capital involved anyway. >> How uh how excited are you for to be post SpaceX IPO based in LA, >> Southern California in general? because it feels like we're probably going to get hundreds of companies in the fullness of time that that spin out and and these super talented teams where they've worked together at SpaceX, experience some, you know, hairy problem and then they want to go solve it.

>> Yeah. Yeah. I um I I originally moved to to LA uh more for my wife than for me. You know, I was in the Bay Area before this and I was kind of reluctant to move down here and we did this 2 weeks before CO and uh it's worked out really well, especially with the areas that we invest in. Um I think that the talent just keeps on increasing. The talent pool just keeps on increasing. Um >> yeah, cuz Long LA completely flopped except that Elsa Gundo and SpaceX happened.

>> Absolutely right. No, like it's like we we won but like not the way that we >> not the way not the way that we were hoping. It was like thinking like consumer and this >> B2B SAS it was like it was like there will be like a sales force of LA and like a many more of those and there's been a few but uh yeah it never it never developed into like the New York City style market. >> Yep. Yep. Yeah. And you know, I think one of the reasons why I always loved being in SF was the fact that everybody comes there to raise capital regardless of where you're building. So my job in many ways is kind of a bisdev job and like just being boots on the ground there.

>> Um and now it feels like there's also a lot of capital in LA. Um there are a lot of the VCs from SF who are coming to LA on a regular basis. So there's a lot more capital available I would say >> down here. >> How are you thinking about the market structure concentration of winners in various emerging new technologies like with with Oculus if you went and did like five other VR headset companies you probably would have had a pretty bad run with Anderol if you did like five other defense tech companies like at least right now like they're all pretty marked up. So it seems like there's more of an igopoly there. Some of that's like literally a direct order from the government being like, "We won't let a monopoly exist in this category."

Whereas, you know, Mark Zuckerberg runs a monopoly and he's like, "We're happy to be the only player in the space if we can be." Um, but with some of the newer frontier technologies, how do you think about winner take all dynamics? How and and then also just like what other frontier technologies are exciting to you? >> Humanoid robots, industrial stuff, more uh farther out on the defense side. There's so much space. There's so many different areas. How are you spending your time? >> Yeah. Um, it's interesting. I think I was of the mindset that and will be the ender role of X and they will just kind of dominate and I think over time >> horrible mistake.

No, no, I'm just I'm just saying but I' I've done the exact same thing where it's like, yeah, obviously >> they're just going to do it. >> They're going to do this. They have all the relationships. They have the capital. They have the talent. But but um >> also you get you get further out and people will be like we're the we're the Ander roll of ovens. We we we make a stove. >> Yeah. Yeah. At some point it gets too niche. >> It's like I don't think Anderrol is going to do the stove. Yeah. >> You're winning the you need to win the whole market and then you need to underwrite the team on like doing a bunch of different product extensions. >> Yeah. >> And they're still going to be like competing. So >> yeah. Yeah.

>> Yeah. I think the you know the government has made pretty clear their desire to diversify and I think rightfully so and I'm very glad that they are doing so. >> Um >> I think that generally um when everybody's looking in one place I'm trying to look someplace else. Um, I think that partially that's just the job of of a of a VC, but also um just like given the my fund dynamics and and the smaller size of the fund when everybody is piling into one area, prices get driven up, you know, rounds get kind of in insane. And while, >> you know, I loosely kind of have ownership targets, I still will kind of I'm basically looking at can I kind of 100x my money? And I feel like that is more difficult in defense these days.

And so >> do I think that there are room for other big players in defense? Absolutely. Is that where I am necessarily putting my money at the moment? Not particularly. Like I think we I am actually a lot more interested in some really freaking boring areas in chemical production, in steel production. You know, I know you've had Zayn on the show beforehand. We're investors in Knox Metals. >> Metals. They're ripping, right? They're doing phenomenally well. Um, you know, rare earths, magnets, all the boring stuff that's kind of up supply chain >> that we will need in order to achieve our mission as a nation. Yeah.

>> Um, is all stuff that I think is is super interesting. We invested in Atlas. I think you guys had them on the on the show as well recently. So, >> have you been surprised that uh the big defense primes haven't been more acquisitive even on a relative market cap weighted basis? Because in AI like you're seeing these trillion dollar companies take down $10 billion acquisitions and it's like wow that's $10 billion that's a huge return for the VCs but it's like okay there's they're throwing around 1% of their market cap. You could look at Oculus is a similar thing where Zuck is sort of throwing around like 1% of their market cap but Locky doesn't seem like they're doing that. founder-ledd companies tend to be like earlier companies tend to be way more inquisitive. Andreal's been very >> um I mean that was not true for Elon for a long time until Kirst.

>> Okay. But but even looking at like in the early 2010s like the the aqua hires where the like people made money Yeah. were like much more common. It was you >> Twitter's buying I think didn't Twitter buy like 50 companies or >> something? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> And that's like classic like founder company. >> Yeah. And I guess that does that explain it or do you think there's something else going on with the market structure in defense tech? Why the primes haven't been more acquisitive? >> I I completely agree with what you're saying. Like I I am shocked as well.

>> 79. >> Yeah. >> Companies. >> I am shocked as well. Autodesk is another one who who who has acquired a ton of companies. There are some companies that >> you'd think they'd want to give Adam Porter Price a harder time instead of being letting him be the only bidder on these things. Yeah. But instead, they're like, "Okay, if Adam's not buying, we're we're not either." >> Yeah. I I I you know, I I wish I had a better answer. I have to think at some point that there's going to be enough pressure from the board >> of some of these larger crimes that it's just kind of I mean, >> there's lots of different reasons why this could be happening. They could be waiting for a dip. there's inevitably going to be a pullback and there are inevitably going to be issues, >> you know, hopefully during peace time at some point in the near future where these companies just can't raise and and kind of Lockheed can just go and sweep them up.

>> Yeah. >> I don't know what it is. Um but uh >> I think they need to be flipped by Anderol first to actually wake up >> like from a valuation standpoint. Like that actually is going to be a very like that's actually going to just be the moment where the boards are going to look around and be like why is this company that has much lower revenue scale than us and it's like because the market believes that this company will generate way more value >> in the future than us even though their scale is still >> locked could approach it from a different perspective. the Primes could do some sort of like PE rollup, joint venture, maybe like bending knives, roll up all the the the dead weight venture failures in defense tech and, you know, try and put them together or something.

Raise prices. You never know. >> Bending swords. >> Bending swords would be good, too. That one works. I like that. >> I I agree, though. I mean, I do think um does it need to materialize in the form of an andoral IPO or something like that? That would certainly be one way to do it. I can't imagine that the that the board isn't looking at the Ceronics, the Endurals, etc. and and being like, >> "This is okay." Yeah. >> Um, >> so they're also just big freaking companies, right, that are that are, you know, have lots of bureaucracy and lot and and kind of move slow. I mean, >> the dysfunction that that I've heard through >> hard tech founders in my portfolio around the way these companies operate is like actually insane. like they'll they'll be sitting there like and like the company is basically like looking at a pile of money like an existing contract and then years will pass and no one just goes and picks up, you know, they're just like looking at it.

>> So >> yeah. >> Um >> are you starting to look at bio? It feels like there's a moment where tech is crossing over like it was a crazy idea to do anything in industrial or defense or building physical stuff. Like tech used to mean software then Oculus was like okay we can build a consumer hardware product then proved like no you can build an industrial scale hardware product and it feels like even though obviously there's a very mature biotech investment industry it feels like those two worlds are like starting to blur.

>> Yeah. Um it is also a very nuanced um area and an area where there are investors who are better suited to really attack it than me. Um and so I we kind of more stay in our lane. It is definitely an area that I have been thinking about more and that I've trying to that I've been trying to get smarter in. >> Yeah. >> Um >> there's also the interesting bridge where some companies are doing like the biod defense. It's more of like a defense contractor like an >> and bio for manufacturing as well.

Companies like soluten >> um that are that are definitely interesting. that would be much more something that would be up our alley at Anorak than something that is kind of purely a biotech play. I mean, our latest we're we're just about to close in our investment in a um in a kinetics company. Um, so you know, I think um I think that things that you know I I kind of am at this I I feel very good about making investments that have the potential for a big impact on on the future.

>> Um and defending freedom and democracy is something that I think is of critical importance. >> Yeah. And um you know so I I do you know I said beforehand we're doing less and less in defense. We are to a degree but we're also looking at you know kind of the second order >> think of Knox Metals. >> Yes. Companies like Knox Metals companies like this explosives company that I think are going to be necessary in order for us to kind of again achieve our goals as a nation.

>> Very cool. Jordy, >> last question from my side. uh as a small firm, how impactful has AI been on your ability to get up to speed on some of these? Because I'm sure you're getting pitches all the time where you're like, I literally have never thought about this part of the economy and then you get into it and you realize, oh, that you let's say you get a deck and it's somewhat compelling, but you know nothing. Is it is it had a meaningful impact? Obviously, you still need to talk to experts and and diligence it, but do you feel like you can like start to build conviction on an idea faster because of just being able to like ask a million questions and and and sort of um sort information through these tools?

>> Yeah, it's definitely changed the paradigm. You guys had low on yesterday, right? And he was talking about this as well, and I completely agree. It is it's like having kind of a desk of analysts at your disposal. Yeah. >> Um so, we are leveraging it. We need to be leveraging it more. Um, you know, to be honest, I mean, um, you know, I have myself and I have a partner, uh, who's based up in SF, so we're basically a two-man team with a with a with an assistant who helps us out. >> Um, I think that we, you know, this to me, this kind of fund three kind of feels like the transition from us going from or me going as kind of me going from a fund manager to a firm manager.

And so really kind of building up the infrastructure to be able to scale really being able to build something that lives beyond me uh is something that we're really really focused on now and certainly AI will be a massive will be a massive part of that. >> Vision goggles. >> It just sounds like you're getting powered up. >> Yeah, I like it. I like it. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show, >> dude. It's a awesome. I can't wait to talk to all the founders you back and um >> I love that you're sticking to your strategy and um can't wait to >> come on in 10 years and just walk us through all the fun performance one by one. Putting some crazy numbers.

>> I really appreciate it. I love what you guys do. It's so cool to be on here and to be in this amazing place. >> Close it out. >> Yeah. We'll see you at 11:00 a.m. Pacific on Monday. Have a great weekend. Have the best weekend ever. >> Just of your life. of your life. A lot of people podcast and Spotify. Sign up for our newsletter at tvpn.com and we will see you on Monday. Flashback. >> Goodbye. >> We love you.