TBPN Live - Apple Unveils iPhone 17 Lineup, OpenAI & Oracle's $300B Cloud Pact | Nico Rosberg, Josh Machiz, Nir Zicherman, Amjad Masad, Alex Mashrabov, Stefan Cohen, Rohan Kodialam, Timothy Luchini, Marc Boroditsky, Michael Tannenbaum

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're watching TVPN. Today is Thursday, September 11th, 2025. We are back in the TVPN Ultradome, the Temple of Technology, the Fortress of Finance, the Capital of Capital. Rough day yesterday, rough day today. Our show, we're going to stick to covering tech and finance news, but there are some fantastic journalists out there who are in media outlets who are unpacking the Charlie Kirk story and its implications, new developments. elements as they unfold. So we want to recommend following those folks if you are interested in that story. And we just want to say rest in peace. Rest in peace to Charlie Kirk. And sending prayers to his loved ones and family and everyone in his life. It's absolutely devastating. Yeah. So today we're going to be catching up on the news that we touched on over the last two days, but we're pretty swamped with Ycombinator Demo Day.

Starting point is 00:01:01 I had a great time there. Interviewed a ton of founders. And I liked the change that we did this year where we asked everyone, their favorite entrepreneur, everyone, how they made their first dollar. I saw some folks posting that,

Starting point is 00:01:14 like the meme of us asking that question on X to other people. And so it seems like we sort of broke through with that. Yeah, it was interesting to see how many patterns there were in that from trading. The opposite. I thought there was no,

Starting point is 00:01:27 oh yeah, so there was a huge pattern in how you made your research. money. There was like almost no pattern in who's your favorite entrepreneur. I thought it was going to be like all Elon and Steve Jobs. And it was like all over the place. Yeah. But yeah, the patterns and how they made their first money, it was Minecraft servers. Yeah. Oh, there was definitely eras, right? And so many different eras. Yeah. Some crypto traders. And then some people who definitely just took the question is like, well, like after I started the business, I made a sales call,

Starting point is 00:01:55 and we were like, that wasn't really what we're asking, but we're in the lightning round, so we're just going to move on. Anyway, stay tuned. We will. We'll be putting together a recap video of both of those questions soon. And so you can get the full view of that. And, of course, you can watch our coverage from the New York Stock Exchange or YC Demo Day in the feed. Yeah, yesterday was a strange show. It was amazing to speak with Sebastian, the founder and CEO of Klarna. I think his story is amazing.

Starting point is 00:02:25 He's just very cool. I think I came away from that feeling like people have. a people generally have a lot of misconceptions around the category yep I'm not going to go out and make the case that that it's some incredible business but I do believe this is a business that will you know continue to to compound and be a much bigger business and you know a decade from now I don't think it's going anywhere but the the kind of his intentionality and like why the company you know why the company even needed to exist or it exists

Starting point is 00:03:00 all these different things. My most botched interview question was asking Andrew Reed like, so like, what was it like investing in Clark? And he's like, well, I was a child because it was 15 years ago. I was a boy. I mean, he was in college, but I didn't realize how long. It was a few years. They made the investment

Starting point is 00:03:14 I think like two or five years before he joined them. Yeah, yeah. So obviously they ended up investing more money. Yeah, yeah, but still, it was just wild. And we missed everyone in chat. It was rough. We're going to figure out how to get chat involved when we're on the road. We're still figuring that out.

Starting point is 00:03:29 but thanks everyone for tuning in today back to the normal schedule john exley's here you know it's great to see you guys we miss that we got david kyle techno chief we see you techno chief uh saraj and a bunch of other folks david yeah yesterday being um yeah being nature of vlog tv yeah it's nature of very rough yeah but anyway um let me tell you about ramp dot com time is money say both easy use corporate cards bill payments accounting and a whole lot more all in one place they hit one billion in an ARR, we have been asking Eric Lyman, the CEO of Ramp, is the job finished? He confirmed with us on the phone. So it's not finished.

Starting point is 00:04:08 So if you sign up for Ramp, just know he's going to keep building. Anyway, we need to dive into the Apple and the iPhone announcement briefly. Obviously, this has been talked about. It happened a couple days ago. But the post that stuck out to me, there were a few about the design, but the big one is that the iPhone 17 Pro now has more graphics power. than an M2 MacBook Air. This is a MacBook Air.

Starting point is 00:04:33 I don't know if this might be the M3 or M4 version. Would it have clocked here as an Air guy? I just went for it because I was like, I'm traveling more. I'm less in workstation mode. And so, like, let me give this one a try. And let me see. I have the, I have the M4. So I think I have more power here than the iPhone 17 Pro.

Starting point is 00:04:51 But even just two years ago, it's crazy to think how quickly the chips are shifting from workstation which is huge you know you know laptop to phone and so I wanted to talk about what the downstream implications of this are and did you did you see the camera functionality apparently if you take a you can take a photo holding your phone vertically and it will give you the horizontal yeah because again it's I think it's four I think it's a square sensor that's maybe 48 megapixels are you feeling about the the orange do you think this is this is Tim Cook signaling that he's a BTC maxi. Oh, I thought it was him talking, giving a little nod to Gary Tan my combinator. That's one or one of the other. Clearly I had to be one or the other. It is the

Starting point is 00:05:38 colors. I like I like orange. I think it's an under underrated color in general, but still the color options were interesting. Like no map, you would have thought they would have done a matte black. They didn't do matte black this year. They just, wow. They have a silver and a black and like a blue I think, something like that. I like orange. I think it's a cool, bold color. I think it's one of the ways to stand out. It's McLaren orange, you know?

Starting point is 00:06:04 McLaren orange. It looks like F1. Maybe it's a nod to that. Who knows? But they're having fun with it. Hopefully next year, the color I'm pulling for, ramp yellow. Can you imagine the ramp yellow iPhone?

Starting point is 00:06:15 It just might happen. Maybe we'll make it happen. But on the tech side, you know, people were pretty, like, there were a couple takes early that were pretty, like, bearish like oh like nothing changed nothing changed and uh ben thompson summed it up i mean i mean tim cook i mean you had a funny banger about this i mean tim tim cook posted um he did post yeah the morning of and he was like days like this make apple you know like like like basically like hyped it up as if as though it was going to be this

Starting point is 00:06:45 dramatic announcement and yeah and i think people were pretty yeah pretty let down at this point they if it's not a change in the overall form factor like you're going to folding phone, it's not going to be as easy just to talk about completely. But at the same time, it has a bunch of improvements that I think will have downstream effects that might be interesting and might actually have kind of these like viral moments. And I'll get into my thesis here. So it has a vapor chamber in it that allows it to cool. So if you're in the sun or you're running, you know, you're running some heavy duty app, you're not going to get your, your phone's not going to be as hot anymore. 50% more RAM. Obviously, that's important.

Starting point is 00:07:24 important for AI. And then they have a new chip that's designed with the LLM transformer architecture in mind. So the Apple A series of chips, they've always been somewhat AI optimized, but more for just broader machine learning tasks. Now, they're doing the same thing that OpenAI is doing with NVIDIA Broadcom on chip design. Same thing that Google DeepMind TPU team is doing over at Google and Anthropics working with Amazon and Traneum. Here's my post introducing iPhone 4,000, and Newer, better iPhone. That's lighter, faster, newer, and better by... Where did this land? How many likes did this wind up getting? Six thousand? Six thousand.

Starting point is 00:08:07 And the funny story here, the little inside baseball, Jordi posted this exact post like five minutes earlier. Well, so I originally had this post as a draft, and then I altered it. Yep. And I posted it and it completely... I had a different picture and I did iPhone 472. and it was just completely flopping. It got like one like on like 300 impressions. Like people hated it. The timeline hated it.

Starting point is 00:08:31 I just went back to this version, posted it, and then it completely ripped. So never give up. Never give up. You think you have a good bit. But the, the funny thing here, I mean, obviously it is funny that Apple always comes down. It's our most powerful iPhone ever because it's like,

Starting point is 00:08:46 well, if it was a less, if you guys messed up and accidentally created a less powerful iPhone, you would just keep selling the current one. You're never going to come out. be like this year we're selling one the latest iPhone but it's less powerful because just sell the last one then just be like no new iPhone because we couldn't make it any more powerful yeah we actually made it we made it perfect we made it perfect so we're yeah i mean that uh what are you are you feeling about the air i think that's going to sell incredibly well i don't know i'll i'll need

Starting point is 00:09:14 to like feel it and and uh and try it i've never had any iPhone that's not just like the biggest and most of the the biggest screen the maxed out one I've always gone for like the most power, the biggest one. I've actually considered carrying an iPad mini just as a phone because I'm so big that my pockets are big enough to carry an iPad mini. You just put it in your back pocket. Yeah, no, no. I was feeling it and I was like, you can get it with cell service and so I think you can get

Starting point is 00:09:42 a phone number on there and so you can just have like pull out your giant iPad mini. But I never did that. I've always just stuck to like the Pro Max, the big one, the big one, the big screen, but it's easy. The, I don't know, the interesting thing about the, the iPhone air was this, you know, the whole computer is in the camera bump now, and basically everything that drops down is just battery and screen, battery and screen all the way down, and so people are wondering, like, you know, they could clearly take out the battery in the screen and maybe make, like, a pin.

Starting point is 00:10:17 They're getting so good at miniaturizing, like, what it means to be a computer, that they can put that in all sorts of different things. would be would have been really excited to have an iPhone that doesn't that will sit flat on a surface without a case on it yeah i haven't used cases in in many years i just like the the feeling of the phone it is crazy that it's so funny that's just perpetually like on you know it just give me like a flat surface like i'm happy for the phone to be as thick as necessary to just give me a flat surface and it looked like they were going to do that with the iPhone pro because it has this wider notch so at least if you did if you did the notch evenly all the way to cross

Starting point is 00:10:53 I guess it might be nice if it's kind of like sitting at an angle. Yeah, that's fine, I guess. I don't know. But it's also so funny, the idea of, like, you have this incredible camera. Yeah. And then you're just, like, putting it on, like, I really want you to buy a case. Like, it's, like, a lot of the product design seems driven by you're going to buy a cake. I don't think that's the real, I don't think that's the real reason.

Starting point is 00:11:13 I think it's, I think it's, I think it's genuinely, like, people don't like heavy phones. And so you have to balance, like, you need, you need the optics of a camera, the certain thickness. and then you need the phone to be thin so that people actually carried around and aren't like, this thing's heavy. Tinfoil hat, yes, it's the case. I think they, I don't think they make that much money. How much money do you think they make from cases? I mean, they're adding what percentage of people do you think

Starting point is 00:11:38 when they go to that, buy an iPhone, buy an Apple case? I would estimate that it's less than 1% of their overall revenue. Cases, yeah. Totally, but you're talking to the goat of profit maximization, Tim Cook. There's just so many other ways. I feel like you can sell 1% more iPhone. if you if you actually choose this odd choice because people are like well yeah it's it's the lightest iPhone

Starting point is 00:12:01 it's lighter than the Samsung one yeah it's thinner it's lighter it looks great and then there might be something about like the notch kind of holding on your finger and so you can actually hold the phone easier with that as opposed to if it was just like fully fully smooth anyway but yeah I mean when you start thinking of when you start like the incremental sales from like design driven decisions like this. I do think I do think it would be significant but anyway a huge keynote filmed on an iPhone obviously a lot less graphics this time around if you're doing a

Starting point is 00:12:39 keynote do it on Restream one live stream 30 plus destinations multi-stream and reach your audience wherever they are and we have a bunch of people joining from the Restream waiting room. Oh yeah later today we're gonna have have Josh from Lightspeed, Nico Rossburg. Look at that lineup. We'll be joining. Mike and Neer from Obo. Amjod.

Starting point is 00:13:03 Amjod from Replit. Alex from Higgsfield. Stefan Cohen from Bain Capital Crypto. Rohan from Sphinx AI. Timothy Lucchini from Intramotive. Mark from Nebius, who just signed the 2017-ish-billion-dollar deal with Microsoft. And then, of course, Michael from Figure, who just IPOed today on the NASDAQ, and the stock is trading up, I believe, 35% right now. So he is going to be joining us as well.

Starting point is 00:13:35 Yep. So my take on the iPhone Pro was we're getting to the point where you could run an LLM on device. And even if it's not Apple Intelligence, you know, through that API, just the, ability to actually distill something that's like GPT4 level and have it be free, not even an API call that you need, not even cheap on a per token basis, but actually just have something that you can basically drag and drop. Cost of the energy. Cost of the energy.

Starting point is 00:14:08 And no one thinks about it because they charge on the edge because they charge their phone every night anyway. So I was talking to Tyler about this earlier. Try and put into context how powerful an LLM running on a, an LLM running on. on device could be with this next iPhone. Because currently people have done it, I feel like people have distilled models to the point where they can run locally on phones,

Starting point is 00:14:30 but they're not fast or they're not smart, but it feels like we might be at a point where you get to some sort of like touring, touring test passing plus not waiting forever. Chad is asking if it's Niko Rosberg. It is, it is Niko Rosberg. Yes, it is. The former F-1 world champion.

Starting point is 00:14:50 And now a capital allocator. Now a capital allocator. So, yeah, Tyler, what is your take? As this gets into people's hands, how solid do you think the actual interactions with LLMs could be on device? Yeah, so I think it's 12 gigabytes now, up from 8. Yep. So you can probably run like a very solid, like 7 billion parameter, like not super quantized model. We've had those for a long time that are like very solid.

Starting point is 00:15:18 Obviously they're going to pass turn tests, whatever. sure um you're probably not going to be using it for like doing your your like hard physics homework yeah um but like most like things that you want from like a non-device model like helping look at your emails or like doing stuff that like you would think of like a really good Siri product would do yeah i think it's like totally capable of doing that um i mean it's like i don't think that Apple Intelligence was bad because the hardware was lacking. It was like, like, I mean, you can, it'll be a little bit slower probably to run on cloud, maybe. Yeah, I mean, with my experience with Apple Intelligence was, it was just, just instantiated in very odd ways.

Starting point is 00:16:06 They didn't really have like a killer app there. And it was like a bunch of different things that kind of piped in and you could like highlight text and then just say rewrite this. all sort of like very incremental games. Boughts summaries. Yeah. Oh, the summary is botched, but sometimes that might be the best feature, actually. Yeah, it's hilarious.

Starting point is 00:16:24 It's a feature, not a bug. We just saw, you just saw one in our group chat where I posted some fake news and Apple summarizes it. It's like, Gabe says shouldn't be, shouldn't Tyler be back in school? Gabe, you must have missed the episode, but Tyler is taking a gap semester. He is riding with us. Yeah. And so I think it's, I think there's like, there's something magical about getting the ability to inference a GPT4 level model on the edge for free.

Starting point is 00:16:56 Like, you can, you can quibble about the level of intelligence that is, but it is actually too cheap to meter because you won't even have to set up an API key. And so you can vend in a GPT4 level model and then go viral and not have a bill show up. and not need to think about monetization, not need to think about anything that's a drag on your just pure virality. You can have a free app that just grows and grows and grows and figures and figure out the monetization later.

Starting point is 00:17:26 And I feel like this sets us up for maybe something interesting to happen in consumer. We haven't really had that moment of, you remember the Lenza moment, the magic avatars, you upload your picture and it turns you into Superman or something and then the studio Ghibli moment. We haven't had that many, like, viral apps that are purely based on LLM interactions, like text interactions.

Starting point is 00:17:50 There's been a couple, like, there was one called, like, Generative Dungeon. Do you remember this? It was, like, a dungeon crawler, text thing. So it would say, like, you walk up to the Dragon's Lair. What do you want to do? And you could just type, like, I brandish my sword. And then it would say, like, the Dragon. That was like GPT, too.

Starting point is 00:18:07 Yeah, there was super low level, right? So imagine that plus, like, but you can do it on device at a reasonable level and you can bring in some other UI elements from the iPhone, bringing the camera, bring in GPS, bring in, you know, all the other tools that are available just in the iOS, like, SWIFT, like, you know, developer kits, the SDKs. I feel like there will be a ton of people that are just building cool, interesting things on the iPhone that could potentially, like, go viral and, and then become real businesses. Yeah, I don't think this will be that, like, meaningful for, like, Apple intelligence, because it's not, like, that's, like, a product issue.

Starting point is 00:18:48 It's not, like, a hardware issue. But yeah, I definitely think for, like, third-party developers, this will be, like, pretty big. You can do, like, if you make some random game, you can now have, like, avatars or whatever. Yeah. Like, if you make the SDK really easy, where, like, it's very easy to inference on LM,

Starting point is 00:19:02 you don't have to, like, figure out how to, like, download and then do inference and all that stuff. If they, like, abstract that away, I think it could be interesting. And I just feel like we've seen so many, there's been so many companies, we talked to some folks at Demo Day who are doing this where they were like, we have this cool AI agent that like scrapes your emails and does this. And it all is, it's all predicated on you installing a Mac app, which is a really, really hard thing to do. Whereas like, how many Mac apps do you think you've installed this year? Oh, it's super rare. It's super rare. You know, I got something to put the decks together. Like, I literally have. Chrome. Like, that's the one I installed. I'm looking at my home row, and it's like, it's just Chrome. Well, and this is why everybody's obsessed with the browser.

Starting point is 00:19:47 Truly, truly, because if you can get people over there, then you're there. But I have installed apps, and I've installed little tiny apps. We were talking about the workout tracking app strong. That I saw my friend at the gym, he was using an app to track his workouts, said, what app is that? I went and downloaded it. You went and downloaded it. It was very easy for that app to, like, loosely go viral, and it's a free app,

Starting point is 00:20:07 but it doesn't have any like AI doesn't really need any AI but you could imagine that the viral coefficient of someone downloads an app they have a magical experience with some twist on top of an LLM something storytelling something

Starting point is 00:20:22 astrology who knows what it'll be I can't predict it it's as hard to predict as Instagram or Uber but it's unlocked by having this ability for free on the iPhone and then people are sharing screenshots of oh I have this hilarious interaction or this was incredible or I love this app.

Starting point is 00:20:40 They create some viral loop. They do some McKee to beer type stuff. And then everyone's downloading the app. And then it gets actually really, really big. And I don't think it's going to be a competent. I don't think it's going to compete with chat chit. I think it's going to be a completely different thing. And it's very hard to predict.

Starting point is 00:20:54 But it feels like we might be seeing it. Yeah. And it's going to require some like really, you know, cracked level of creativity like what we saw with Harry Potter, Belenziaga, where it's like the technology existed. And then someone came up with the great idea to actually go, like, instantiated. So if you're going to be walking that app up, you're going to do it in figma.com. Think bigger, build faster.

Starting point is 00:21:17 Figma helps design and development teams build great products together. You can get started for free. The Wall Street Journal was also covering the Apple's iPhone Air. They had a whole interview. They had really good coverage of the iPhone event. There was a few, there was one thing in the, the reporting from the Wall Street Journal. I don't have this particular article, actually,

Starting point is 00:21:41 but they did an article with the Wall Street Journal, and Apple revealed that I believe they said the majority of iPhones, 51% or more, that are shipping to America are going to be made in India. And I'm not sure if it was this cycle, but it seemed like they were taking the tariff stuff really seriously, moving the actual manufacturing capacity around. Obviously, Foxcon, their manufacturer partners at Taiwanese company, and so they're worried about geopolitical risk as well.

Starting point is 00:22:12 And so just another data point around Tim Cook, he is not loudly shouting like, America, I'm all in reindustrialize, but he is making moves. What was the number he threw out at the dinner last week? I don't know if he had a number. Because who was it? It was, Zuck had a number. And did Apple have a number two? There was $600 billion or something? Apple has thrown out a number at one point.

Starting point is 00:22:41 You're completely right. My point is that we've seen a few data points. Oh, yeah, yeah. The number of thank you. This is a lot. But we've seen he's invested in some rare earth developments in the United States and starting to think about manufacturing internationally. And, you know, the pro bullish bet on Tim Cook is that, like, if he was able to set up this in China and he's the reason he can set it up somewhere else because he's the guy who did it.

Starting point is 00:23:13 And so even though he hasn't been really loud about his moves, because obviously if he says, like, oh, yeah, I'm not going to be manufacturing in China anymore than like his important business partners over there are probably going to be like, well, yeah, like, we're not going to take your business seriously anymore. there are a ton of different geopolitical considerations it's such an iconic line from the dinner what is that book says i've always enjoyed dinner and interacting yeah if you're getting dinner this weekend with one of your boys just like how to say something that like no one can can't cancel you for it's like i've always enjoyed dinner and interacting two things i've enjoyed he's a dinner and he's not saying i've always enjoyed dinner with you yep and interacting with you he's just saying, I've always enjoyed dinner and interacting.

Starting point is 00:24:03 Incredible. Putting it on a claim. I feel like for watching somebody's like I was watching the Tucker Sam Altman interview and there's a certain level of polish that some of these CEOs have when they get to a

Starting point is 00:24:17 certain level of media training and public speaking experience where I think of them more as like word rotators than word cells or shape rotators. Like they can they can so quickly like shift a sentence to be like that, like so perfectly balanced where you're like, wow, every word in that sentence was calculated so that it's the rides this perfect line like, uh, like Sam was going

Starting point is 00:24:42 back and forth with Tucker and Tucker's like, I didn't accuse you. I didn't accuse you. And you, and if you run back the transcript, you're like, yeah, technically he didn't. It was not, it was not an accusation. But then, you know, they're, they're rotating the sentences around and try and like in each other. It's like watching a wrestling match. It's crazy. Tim Cook said, they would be investing $600 billion. $600 billion, yeah. Okay, so Apple says the majority of iPhones shipped to the U.S. are now assembled in India, meaning they face no tariff,

Starting point is 00:25:09 yet Indian suppliers aren't yet capable of delivering as many of the pro models that U.S. consumers demand, so most of those still come from China. So this is the majority of iPhones in total, because Apple makes a ton of those, but they can't make the leading edge. And then the other thing that everyone always talks about with this, like, assembled in India is not the same as fully manufactured in India. Obviously, the advantage to Chinese manufacturing prowess is that you'll walk across the street and there's a CNC shop with 25,000 CNC machines that can just immediately make you

Starting point is 00:25:45 any part and make a million of those parts if you need. So obviously, it's going to be a long road for them to set up manufacturing anywhere other than uh other than China but uh it does see i would love to understand tim's actual strategy here because i don't think he's saying i'm going to invest he's not going to be in a huge hurry to invest that 600 billion right uh he may you know he may not actually believe it's it's at all the right decision for apple and he's feeling like he needs to yeah placate the admin and then if and then in and then in 2028 comes around and you just you know can pull back or pull out There's also, like, so much to 600 billion of CAPEX over, what, five years or something

Starting point is 00:26:31 like that, like that includes HQ. That includes data centers for ICloud that need to be local. If you're streaming the F1 movie on Apple TV Plus, you don't want that stream coming from a data center across the world necessarily. It needs to be cash locally. So there are like so many different pieces of the business, building more Apple stores. Like that counts as KAPX if they build them and they, you know, so 600 billion doesn't necessarily mean like, yes, like we're building like the one plant.

Starting point is 00:27:01 Because, you know, this is like a rainforest of complexity that actually delivers the iPhone. It's not just like one iPhone factory, please. It's like a whole network of things. Battery life appears to be a challenge for the air. Apple always says like all day battery life, but people are like, what kind of all day are we talking? Are we talking scrolling for 8. Are we talking a proper scroll? Proper doom scroll?

Starting point is 00:27:28 Apple announced a new battery accessory that will attach to the air. And obviously that's no longer as thin. The company added what it calls a plateau on the back of the air and pro models, adding thickness at the top of the device to fit bigger and hotter chips. Not a bump. It's a plateau. It's a plateau. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:27:46 Oh, they're rebranding. Maybe they're signaling that we're, maybe this is Gartner, hype cycle code. I mean, they have plateaued in productivity for sure. The hype cycle, they've been through it. They're like, first hype cycle? First hype cycle? I've been here. I'm plateauing.

Starting point is 00:28:04 I'm getting productive. Anyway, we also talked to AirPods Pro, heart monitor, Apple Watch to detects if the wearer has high blood pressure and more news. So we'll keep moving on. Ben Thompson also had a great article. You can go read it on Stratory. what was he alluding to with the sugar water trap the sugar water trap i don't know if i want to give away the game we can pull up the actual let me see sugar water that is an interesting phrase i like a good coinage uh it apple took the liberty of opening yesterday's presentation with a classic

Starting point is 00:28:40 steve jobs quote design is not just what it looks and feels like design is how it works that's a great quote from Steve Jobs setting aside the wisdom of using that quote when the company is about to launch a controversial new user interface design that's iOS 18 is that what it's called? Yeah, which one did we have you update?

Starting point is 00:29:02 That was iOS 26. 26, they're on the year release now. But they haven't updated the iPhones to be on the annual release. I can't wait for iOS 4,000. 4,000. They really should just move to the year. you're on the iPhone too then. It's like, yeah, I have the iPhone 26. Oh, because you bought that

Starting point is 00:29:22 in the year of 2025 like a car. I know. It would make sense. Match it all up. Maybe they'll do that. Maybe they'll do that next year. They'll just skip five. Because they wound up doing that for the iPhone 10. I believe there was never an iPhone 9, right? They went from 8 to 10. And then for 10, for 10, they called it the X. And they were like really dancing around with the names for a while. It was like iPhone 6 and then Max Pro. They were like testing all these different. And they were like testing all these different things and they finally kind of like defined the the no like i like modeling it after just cars it's just the year i i think that's the future here for sure uh so that wasn't the steve jobs quote this presentation and and apple's general state of affairs made me think of says ben thompson

Starting point is 00:30:04 what i was thinking of was the question jobs posed to then pepsico president john scully when he was recruiting him to be the CEO of apple in the early 1980s Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or come with me and change the world? This is what Steve Jobs asked John Scully, then PepsiCo president, trying to recruit him, said, hey, you're selling sugar water? Come over here and actually build something that matters that changes the world. So Ben Thompson says, iPhones are a great business, one of the best businesses ever, in fact, because Apple managed to marry the malleability of software with a tangibility and monetization potential of hardware.

Starting point is 00:30:44 Indeed, the fact that we will always need hardware to access software, including AI, speaks to not just the profitability, but also the durability of Apple's model. The problem, however, is simply staying in their lane content. What can be a hardware provider, can tend to be a hardware provider for the delivery of others' innovations, feels a lot more like Scully than Jobs. Jobs told Walters, Isaacson, for his biography, My Passion has been building an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products. Everything else was secondary. Sure, this is Steve Jobs talking to Walter

Starting point is 00:31:19 Isaacson. Sure, it was great to make a profit, but that was what allowed you to make great products. But the products, not the profits, were the motivation. Scully flipped these priorities to where the goal was to make money. It's a subtle difference, but it ends up meeting everything. The people you hire, who gets promoted, what you discuss in meetings. So Ben Thompson goes on. He says, Apple, to be fair, isn't selling the same sugar water year after year in a zero-sum war with other sugar water companies. You know, no one's talking about the Pepsi 2026 edition. It's the same thing every year. Apple is making improvements.

Starting point is 00:31:58 The sugar water is getting better, and I think this year's seasonal concoction is particularly tasty. That's great. What is inescapable, however, is that while the company does still make new products, the company has in the pursuit of easy profits constrained the space in which it innovates. It's somewhat true. I mean, they did take a big shot on Vision Pro. They're probably going to continue there. Maybe they'll, but, yeah, I mean, until they launch the I-KIN or...

Starting point is 00:32:29 Scott in the chat says the Xbox naming convention is in an abstract liminal space. That was a wild one. Are you familiar with the Xbox naming convention? The X, the S, the 360. Yeah, well, it was the 360. and then they should have just done 720, 1080, obviously. That's no brainer. But then they wound up doing the Xbox Series X and then they did the Series S

Starting point is 00:32:52 and then they did Xbox. It wasn't it Xbox Edition? I think it was Xbox 360 and then Xbox 1. And then there was XS and then now there's like... You got to keep them on their toes. Yeah, going back to one, he's always a crazy, crazy move. But people love doing that. Anyway, that didn't matter for a long time.

Starting point is 00:33:11 smartphones were the center of innovation and Apple was consequently the center of the tech universe. Now, however, Apple is increasingly on the periphery and Ben Thompson thinks that more than anything is what, that's what bums people out. No, Apple may not be a sugar water purveyor, but they are farther than they have been in years from changing the world. Well, if you are trying to change the world, you need to be compliant, you need to be on Vanta. Automate compliance, manage risk, prove trust continuously. Vantus trust management platform takes the manual work out of your security and compliance process and replaces it with continuous automation, whether you're pursuing your first framework or managing a complex program.

Starting point is 00:33:47 This is Vanta Country. So other reactions to the iPhone news will run through these. Andrew Claire had a bunch of funny observations. Yeah, yeah, I was just pulling this up. So you go through this and then I'll run through it. Yeah, so Andrew Claire says, things I've learned since the iPhone 17 series was announced. Everyone hates the color orange. I don't think so.

Starting point is 00:34:08 I think this is going to be. You said on the day, you were like, I'm getting orange. And I would get orange too. I like orange, but I feel like if you have orange and then I have orange, it's like a little bit too much. Did I say it would get orange? That's what you said to me. You were like, I'm getting the orange. If you don't get it, if you're passing on the orange, I'm doing it.

Starting point is 00:34:22 I mean, I think there's just nothing options. There's only room in this town for one orange iPhone pro. Well, we actually already have the same color of phone and we only get it mixed up like twice a day. That's true. The display or the background does a lot of heavy lifting there. But no one. So Samsung Mobile, U.S. Twitter was going off. Yeah, love it.

Starting point is 00:34:45 Responding. They're boys. 48 MP times 3 still doesn't equal 200 MP, hashtag, I can't. And then was quoting MKBHD saying actual innovation is greater than hype, slash hashtag, I can't again. Wow. then they said hashtag I can't believe some people had to wait five years for sleep score

Starting point is 00:35:11 what is this from the Apple watch then they said Apple just announced live translation at the ZZZZ note like sleep it's calling oh wait so yeah Samsung is is taking shots at Apple the whole time but they put some on every single so they put some you know probably Zoomer social media

Starting point is 00:35:32 person on it's not a zoomer though because they're using hashtags. Oh, interesting. Okay. And Samsung had posted in 2022, let us know when it folds with like one of these emojis. Okay, okay. And then they said, hashtag, I can't believe this is still relevant. So they really were going for this, that's like, I hashtag I can't campaign. Rough, rough.

Starting point is 00:35:53 Which is interesting. Well, the other observations, iPhone Pro is for pro TikTokers. Mr. Beast will now solely be using iPhones on his channel. That's super interesting. Um, is this, do they have a paid partnership or, I think he just is, realized you can achieve. Yeah. So if you tour Mr. Beast's facility, you'll see that he has like closets with like hundreds of cameras because, uh, they all need to, uh, they need to record. So they like gopros and, uh, you know, FX3s and all sorts of different cameras. But a lot of the reality TV is just like, random stuff's going to happen. You have to have a camera on it. And your budget for that camera, it can't be a hundred. thousand dollars for like a pro cinema rig you need just like oh yeah throw a two thousand dollar phone there it's super light plugs in over usbc how cool would save everything to the cloud

Starting point is 00:36:45 how cool would an apple be oh yeah i mean this is what apple should be doing i mean uh they should be just constantly going up against dj i and just really keeping the screws to dj i and just yeah it's tough because the gimbled the gimbled might be like a billion dollar a year product DJI has one and that unlocked the gimbal that goes on the drone, which is also the gimbal that goes into Hollywood, which is also the gimbal that goes on the RC car. And like the DJI, they now own Hasselblad, so they have lenses and cameras all the way down to the drones, and then they have vlogging gear and DJI has great microphones now. And so they've realized DJI has really leaned into this trend of like the prosumer content creator who wants like just one notch above but can't afford a steady cam operator. So they just need the Ronin or the Osmo to have a gimbal. And a lot of people put iPhones on those.

Starting point is 00:37:41 But that would be a fun challenge for Apple to go and take the fight to DJI. But oh, well, the conclusion of this post is Tim can still cook. Hopefully he is putting his team on graphite. com. Code review for the age of AI. Graphite helps teams on GitHub, ship higher quality software faster. Get started for free. also trung fan said apple after spending $100 billion on R&D over the past five years nothing really changed in the design language from the 11 pro max to the 16 pro max but Sebastian comes in with a quote post and says during these six years Apple managed to develop the best CPU architecture in the world outpacing both AMD and Intel also their GPU is nowadays state of the art which we talked about beating invidia in some areas invidia is a $3 trillion GPU company I'd say

Starting point is 00:38:30 Chad has spent their 100B. Corrected, so Mr. Beast was at the Apple event. Yeah, he was at the Apple event, but I don't know if it's a direct partnership. Like, I think he might just be like, I'm all in an iPhone, I'm buying them. But maybe there's some sort of deal, but he was at it. And that's where he announced this, that he was like, I'm the other thing. And the big one is that there's GenLock so you can have one time code across a whole bunch of different iPhones. Again, very valuable.

Starting point is 00:38:54 So if you're filming Beast games and it's like American Ninja Warrior and a bunch of people are going to be running around, you're going to have 25 different angles. It's like, oh, well, like, we need a telephoto lens for this shot. Just put on the 48 megapixel 4K, you know, telephoto. Put on the wide angle. And then sync it all. So when you bring it in the timeline, you can be like, let's cut from this angle to this close up to this one to this handheld. And they're all in perfect sync.

Starting point is 00:39:21 So I'm sure there's going to be a ton of really creative stuff. Unfortunately, I don't know if we'll ever be allowed at Apple, considering I posted the I-1-4,000 meme. might have got us banned for life but we love apple we'll see we'll figure it out love apple um also the new iPhone when you throw it in the orange iPhone when you throw it in a green case it looks like master chief from halo very cool that's also got a little michael angelo from ninja turtles vibe to it i think it'll be popular with the kids um blake shoal says everything's battery and shows that the entire iPhone air is just up up top uh very cool to just see the

Starting point is 00:39:59 miniaturization of electronics just flow through so, so completely. And of course, Duolingo traded down on the news that Apple is bringing live translation to AirPods Pro 3. Morning, morning, Bruce saying that Al is going to break into Tim Cook's house tonight. Well, well, if you're looking for not quite duolingo, but AI for data analysis, go to Julius. What analysis do you want to run? chat with your data and get expert level insights in seconds, loved by 2 million plus users and trusted by individuals at Zapier, BCG, and Princeton University. Legends. In other news, Larry Allison got the number one spot as the world's richest man with a $70 billion

Starting point is 00:40:45 gain after Oracle reported quarterly results after the market close. Oracle searched 40%, and he made $100 billion. There was a funny post in here. Well, he didn't make it. Well, he's not selling. Yeah, he's not selling. And you pointed out a couple other things that, you know, this is the biggest gain since 1999.

Starting point is 00:41:05 What happened after 1999? A trillion-dollar company is trading like a penny stock. There's the circle of money going on in AI where NVIDIA sells GPUs to Oracle. Oracle uses it to power its data centers. Oracle builds cloud on those GPUs. NVIDIA rents compute back via signed deals from Oracle. And so if there's like if the economy needs external, the economy

Starting point is 00:41:27 cannot be entirely self-sustaining just on a few companies. The actual top story is, people were wondering, like, how did they get this backlog so huge? And the answer is open AI. So, Oracle signed a contract with, Open AI

Starting point is 00:41:43 signed a contract with Oracle to buy $300 billion in computing power over roughly five years. People familiar with the matter said, the deal is one of the largest ever cloud contracts signed, reflecting how spending on artificial intelligence data centers is hitting new heights despite mounting concerns over a potential bubble. And the Oracle contract will require 4.5 gigawatts of power capacity, roughly comparable

Starting point is 00:42:05 to the electricity produced by not one, but two Hoover dams, or the amount consumed by 4 million homes. Oracle shared shares searched 36%. When they revealed, it had added $317 billion in future contract revenue during its latest quarter. So Larry Ellison and Sam Altman are clearly in cahoots working together to build a next-generation hyper-scaler. They're teaming up. And so the question that I had was, everyone thinks this is crazy.

Starting point is 00:42:39 Like, this is somewhat like a revision on the Stargate story. Like, the Stargate story was at a high level. The people in the room with Donald Trump that day wanted to do a $500 billion project together. It wasn't like the money had been wired and it's in the company. It was like, it's a variety of companies. It was like a vibe around. Let's go big. But the vibes were, let's go big.

Starting point is 00:43:02 And so this feels like just one notch more clarity into how Stargate and the other projects might kind of come together. I don't think you should look at this as like its own separate, its own thing. It's a piece of the overall story that we're getting around Stargate and just big data center investment around Open AI. So my question. Reminded me of the you remember that exchange

Starting point is 00:43:29 between Elizabeth Holmes and Sunny Balwani when they said, this is our year, Tiger. That was kind of the original Stargate meeting. They were just kind of getting together. Yeah. This is our year.

Starting point is 00:43:40 So it was Masayoshi Song, Larry Ellison, Sam Altman, and Donald Trump saying that the plan was for those four loosely, plus a couple other people, to invest, roughly 500 billion over a series of years.

Starting point is 00:43:57 And they were early to use in the half a trillion dollar number. Now you got Mark throwing it around. You got Tim throwing it around. Yep. Everybody's throwing it around. And so I guess I'm in the steel man category today figuring out how crazy is that number? Like how should we be thinking about that number? How can we put it in other context? And so one context that I thought would be interesting is if you assume, if you assume that

Starting point is 00:44:28 Chachybt, like as a consumer product, as an internet company, is going to be roughly the same scale as Google, Amazon.com, and Facebook.com, and like the Facebook apps, like it will have similar revenue, similar scale, similar user adoption, similar monetization. You get like one ultra-compounding trillion-dollar, like consumer-style website at the end of the day. It's like an internet company, right?

Starting point is 00:45:03 You have to support that with data centers. Not just like be a hyperscaler and then build a cloud business. Like you need servers to run Instagram. You need servers to run G. email. You need servers to run YouTube. You need service to run AWS. You need to, not just AWS, but Amazon.com needs service. That's why AWS grew out of Amazon.com was because they were investing so much, so many servers in just supporting Amazon.com. Also, Prime Video, Twitch, these all of their internet properties, aside from their resale business in AWS and aside

Starting point is 00:45:41 from Google's resale business, GCP, you need a ton of servers. So my question, is like, Sam Allman saying, I'm going to be one of those. Like, think of OpenAI as the next Google, the next Amazon.com, the next Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, right? How much did those companies spend to support their trillion dollar businesses? They have a trillion dollar in a business? How much do they invest? And so I tried to pull all the CAPEX that they've spent roughly that doesn't go into their cloud business. And the numbers are big.

Starting point is 00:46:14 Amazon, retail, X, AWS, this sort of, this includes like fulfillment and transportation, so it's like, it's really, it's very significant, but $250 billion, uh, meta, meta's core apps. So X new AI, X gen AI. So not counting the Lama stuff. Uh, that's $130 billion in CAPX. And we've seen that these hyperscalers are all spending 60, 70 billion a year and they've been ramping. So if you work, back from that ramp, you're spending 60, 50, 40, you add all that up. You're in the $200 billion range. Google's core services XGCP, and this is probably the best comp because they don't have warehouses for fulfillment. Google's core services, not including Google Cloud Platform, $210 billion is like the reasonable estimate for how much they've spent on the servers just to serve YouTube, Google Search,

Starting point is 00:47:10 databases, all that stuff, Gmail, all that stuff. And so, when I'm, think about opening i what they're trying to do become in the conversation with as as many user minutes as big of penetration as facebook as google as amazon dot com that feels like a couple hundred billion in capex and so you project it forward and the capex is way more expensive because you're doing AI inference instead of just pull the search results out of the database put the did, put the search results in the bag. 300 billion seems like it could,

Starting point is 00:47:45 if Open AI succeeds, if in five years we're talking about it as like, yeah, Amazon.com, Google.com, Facebook.com, chat.com. Like, these are all, these are the new Mag4, Mag 7, or Mag 8, Mag 9, whatever. Like, if they're in the same conversation as, like, dominant internet companies that are used by everyone all the time for everything,

Starting point is 00:48:06 not a niche, not a Pinterest, like outcome, not a Snapchat like outcome, but a Facebook. Yeah, and you factor in that Amazon like outcome. Inferencing language models today and various, you know, all the models. It's just extremely compute intensive in a way that serving Gmail is not. Exactly. And this was the story of YouTube. Like, I believe that the compute, like the CAPEX that went into supporting YouTube

Starting point is 00:48:29 was way more than Google Search. Because Google Search needed, you know, it's just like. I was just thinking this yesterday. there was a number of Hassan Piker was streaming on Twitch and had 200,000 live viewers, which probably is costing Twitch

Starting point is 00:48:45 you know, multiple dollars a second. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Somebody ran the numbers just on the Apple stream because the Apple stream on YouTube had like millions and millions of views and they were talking about the data just the data transfer cost.

Starting point is 00:49:01 And so the economics of scaling a consumer consumer AI company like chat GPT is different. And so it is going to be more costly. Well, and the reason that, the reason that, so Oracle and OpenAI are now incredibly linked, they're betting on each other, and both have to execute pretty much perfectly. Otherwise, there's going to be absolute chaos. And so on the absolute chaos, the bare thesis, it's, this feels like 1999.

Starting point is 00:49:31 So, so, yeah, the concern is like, okay, so Oracle just had a double miss. on earnings, right? And we'll see how they do this next quarter if they come out and blow out earnings. I'm assuming, you know, like if they can get sort of like back on track, it'll be, everybody will be very excited. But the question is like, everybody is struggling to get the infrastructure, you know,

Starting point is 00:49:54 the various like components necessary to build data centers right now, right? Elon's talking about making his own transformers, right? Everybody needs energy. We know, electrical transformers? He said that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was another thing we missed.

Starting point is 00:50:06 That's crazy. Okay. And so you have to assume that Oracle can develop this capacity on a reasonable time horizon in a heavily supply-constrained environment where they're competing with, you know, five or so other heavily-funded players. Yep. You have to assume they can execute perfectly. And then you have to assume that Open AI is going to be able to scale revenue to the point

Starting point is 00:50:32 where they can actually sort of pay for this $300 billion of compute, right? Yeah. It has to come from somewhere. I don't think, I don't know, you have to wonder, can Sam Alden raise $300 billion? Sounds way. Has anyone ever raised $300 billion? I was talking to Brandon about this. Like, you sort of need to.

Starting point is 00:50:58 What is the most money ever raised? I don't know. into crazy, crazy comps? How much did... Because even a lot of the best and biggest companies end up getting to the point where they're like, we got enough cash. I mean, Google was cash flow positive at IPO, right?

Starting point is 00:51:14 So they were not... Yeah, I mean, the single biggest is Open AI's $40 billion raise, but even that, again, was... Didn't they only draw down like... ...tronches and it's contingent on the for-profit conversion? Yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah, wild.

Starting point is 00:51:31 it is it is a it is unprecedented territory um but it's an unprecedented technology like you use it and you're like yeah this is going to be around larry prayed for one more bubble like this then he hit he hit hard just one more yeah i mean it will be interesting to see like like the the the the the the the the the the the investor should be looking at oracle and and saying okay you have this backlog like how how quickly can you draw down from it like next quarter can you convert that backlog that backlog into serious revenue and profit if not and it's just staying out in the backlog it needs to be discounted a lot anyway if you're looking to scale your generative media strategy go to fall generative media platform for developers the world's best generative image

Starting point is 00:52:25 video and audio models all in one place, develop and fine-tune models with serverless GPUs and on-demand clusters. Trusted by over a million developers. And Adobe, Shopify, Canva, Kora, perplexity, and many more. Here we go. Really enjoyed having founder on the other day.

Starting point is 00:52:45 Chris Bakke, who somehow hasn't been on the show yet. I feel like we would have overlapped at some point, but we've reacted to a ton of his posts. He says, my son's preschool teacher asked me to read to his class next week and bring three kids that, three books that the kids will enjoy. These four-year-olds are in for a treat and he has zero to one by Peter Thiel, high-growth handbook by Alad Gill and Titan by Ron Chernow. I love it. The kids might enjoy some of those books, but some of them are a little bit dry for the kiddos. Robin Hood has

Starting point is 00:53:20 launched a social app. This was in the journal. Robin Hood's for you. Says Near Cyan, Robin Hood's 4-U will let you tweet positions with your real profit loss, supporting both options and crypto. Vlad has been in the trenches grinding, launching new products all the time. Dalton Caldwell announced a new fund, or I don't know, maybe he announced it prior. He was at Y Combinator. But he's come out with Standard Capital, standardcap.com, the AI Native Series A firm. The reason I thought this was particularly interesting is they're doing it, they're doing effectively like seasons.

Starting point is 00:54:04 So they do, they're basically doing batches, right? And so they say standard capital operates on a quarterly, on quarterly funding cycles. Applications are now open for standard capitals fall 2025 funding cycle. So interesting to take this sort of like, you know, systematic model. of funding and apply it to Series A. They're differentiating as well by they're only looking for 10%. Obviously, plenty of Series A firms will happily take 10%. But this might be particularly interesting

Starting point is 00:54:40 to founders that are generating a lot of revenue already want to get a series A done, but just don't want to be peer pressured by the current capital and the new entrance to the cap table to just raise closer 15, 20%. Yeah, who else is running standard capital? I feel like he got someone else on the team. Paul.

Starting point is 00:55:02 Paul Buckeet? Yep. I love Paul. We got to have both of them or one of them on at some point. I'm interested to know how the fund is structured if each does an LP get exposure to a fund that's a specific season cycle? I think it's pretty straightforward. It's like, hey, we're going to fund.

Starting point is 00:55:21 I don't know how many they're actually doing. Let me try to find it. They're doing five, so they're going to do five companies per cycle four times a year. So 20 companies a year. They can, I imagine they're planning to write like five to $10 million checks, depending how overheated the rounds get. But it's pretty easy to plan out. You can go to your LPs and say, like, look, we're going to fund this many companies

Starting point is 00:55:48 for the next two years. Obviously, there'll be edge cases. Sure. they'll they'll end up doing like off cycle investments here and there but it's pretty cool to see some experimentation with the model and you know leaving y Combinator he can this this becomes like a net positive asset to Y Combinator to provide downstream funding yes and there was always this dynamic of is YC going to cherry pick the best companies is it like a counter signal if you get to demo day and none of the partners have been like yeah I want to invest in the next round

Starting point is 00:56:23 and YC continuity was a thing for a while and there was this odd dynamic of like well like if YC continuity was a fantastic fund but people were always asking questions about like what does it mean do they have like extra insight so it's an extra good signal or is it a bad signal because like you couldn't do it with somebody else and and this yeah sort of solves that potentially which is good somebody else posted today at YC Demo Day I ran into a multi-stage firm that has invested in 600 YC companies over the last five years. Of those, one, has raised a Series A. They still invest in 10, invested in 10 companies.

Starting point is 00:56:57 That seemed like a low hit rate, but how young are the companies? I mean, it's been over many years? Incredibly low, incredibly low hit rate. I mean, they, they, I don't know. I feel like Gary has shared other stats where, like, way more. Well, yeah, you have to, we have, you would have to study this firm and understand, like, how. Seems like, they're under. Like figure out and do basically the opposite of what.

Starting point is 00:57:21 Yeah, because you could just do random and be at the rent. Yeah, just like, don't meet the founder. Just like have a database and just like offer money. Maybe they're printing. Maybe they're only investing. Maybe they're really good at going in and finding the companies that never need to raise again. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, none of them raise the series A, but they have 12 IPOs.

Starting point is 00:57:40 Maybe they're fine to just make it all back in one trade. They have 75. Yeah, maybe that one company is like, it's coin base or something. It's like, yeah. Yeah, so apparently they only picks consumers. consumer companies. Okay, that's right. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:57:52 Consumer is like extremely power law. Y Combinator. Consumer. But very hit or miss. Yeah, very power law. Sorry, sorry, not Y Combinator. Open AI. I guess they weren't a consumer company

Starting point is 00:58:04 when they were going through YC. Nope. It pivoted. Classic. Anyway, let me tell you about turbo puffer. Search every byte. Serverless vector. Serverless vector in full text search built

Starting point is 00:58:15 from first principles on object storage. fast, 10x cheaper, and extremely scalable. We got to have Simon on from Turbo Puffer ASAP. He's so fun to talk to. Should we be investing in Turkish bombs? Turkish bombs. Did you see this? Turkey just cut the interest rate from 43% down to 40%.

Starting point is 00:58:35 And Maine says, did bro say 40? So like, I mean, I don't know, but like if you go over to Turkey and you put your money in like their equivalent of T-bills, you just earn 40%. gains? Like, is this not inflation adjusted, I assume? I assume they have like really high inflation and whatever it's denominated in. But DC investors says, we need to be farming this.

Starting point is 00:58:59 Yeah, that was my first turkey too. Put your bonds on chain. Let, let hyperliquid go. Let the trenches decide the fair value of your bonds. Let the trenches decide. Andrew McAulip answered our TVPN question that we were asking at YCDemaday.

Starting point is 00:59:15 How did you make your first dollar on the internet? he says, mine was at 13 years old. I was contracting CNC shops to produce parts for my online RC car business, cold fusion racing. Good name. The Traxis crowd will remember me as the steel differential guy. Made thousands of upgraded steel planetary differentials after the brushless motors hit the market and were shredding the OEM plastic ring gears. I literally rode my bike to the gas station for money orders. What a fun time that was. Wow. Amazing. Amazing. It makes a ton of sense why he's doing what he's doing now. He, of course, works at Varda and is building.

Starting point is 00:59:52 We've got to have him on to come on and talk. Yeah, I want to hear about the project. Andrew, come on the show. You're welcome. It's time to Bob. And if you want to get Project Bob mentioned on Chatchipti, go to Profound Andrew. Get your brand mentioned in Chachipati. Reach millions of consumers who are using AI to discover new products and brands.

Starting point is 01:00:10 Hunter shared this interesting fact. If you become a billionaire and then you lose it all, Forbes still keeps you. you on their real-time net worth tracker as some sort of dark humiliation ritual. And so Elizabeth Holmes, Renee Benko, who I'm not familiar with. Just throw you at the bottom. And Sam Bankman-Fried is at $0.0 billion. I'd want to put that in the truth zone on SBF. He might have $100 million tucked away somewhere in crypto. I think Elizabeth Holmes is seriously zeroed, but SBF, it would have been so easy for him to have some random salana on a USB stick. somewhere on one of those like offline drives and and and and and and just have it

Starting point is 01:00:52 waiting for him because he buried it you have to imagine I I'm not saying it's a hundred percent but you have to imagine that he is like tinfoil hat you have to imagine he's like placing like he's he's getting printouts yeah of charts yep and he's like basically figuring out a way to day trade behind bars yeah probably uh anyways no that's an interesting uh do you think we'll do you think back in the chat says SBF might have a bill i think wouldn't be surprised possible i would put i put uh him having a billion at like 2% or 5% and him having a hundred mill at like 20% maybe so i would still probably put him at point 1b on the forbes tracker but yeah yeah not that hard to just remember a passphrase just just memorize the the seed phrase and

Starting point is 01:01:46 you know, go to jail and when you come out, you know, some unusual whales account will see, oh, a bunch of stuff's moving that hasn't moved since the day SBF got locked up and now it's moving and it's grown a ton because it's just been sitting there. The, the, the, potentially the underweighted way to diamond hands is to go in the clink where diamond handsing is the only option. Anyway, Antonio Garcia Martinez says part of Facebook's baked in advantage was slash is having the same user ID across devices and apps from browser cookies to mobile devices, why Apple leaned into privacy was nuking everybody else's ability to identify the same user across apps on the same phone. Identity is king, he says. Interesting. Well, if you're building something

Starting point is 01:02:34 that's built on top of identity, do it on linear. Linear is a purpose-built tool for planning and building products. Meet the system for modern software development, streamline issues, project, and product ramps. We are going to be talking to the new CEO of O.O.S. open today. And going deeper into the open door story, Martin Screlli says the new CEO is a big win for open. Not sure how you turn around this business, which seems fundamentally broken, but that's what good managements do. And it'll be interesting to see. The stock has been way up. The retail army is marshalling. Up 70% today. Keith are boys back on the board. We had them on the show when there was rumbling on the timeline about what might happen with

Starting point is 01:03:16 open door. He is getting back involved, but not in a day-to-day capacity. But anyway, such an interesting, I mean, such a wild story. Yeah. I mean, interest rates are high. That should be, you know, a reduction to liquidity and transaction volume. Probably a headwind, but they might come down, which is a potential, they picked up a tailwind. An absolute doc. They did. Caz is the man. I've talked to him before. He's great. Hello, 2.6 million. Welcome to the stream. Tech Sales says, imagine being the sales rep who closed the OpenAI Oracle $300 billion computing deal. What's your next move? Obviously, this is done between Sam and Larry Ellison directly, but it's funny to imagine that you're just some SDR.

Starting point is 01:04:03 And you're like, yeah, like today I'm going to call up Oracle. Like, can I? Or vice versa. You're at Oracle. And you're just like, you know who needs computers? Open AI. My brother-in-law was telling me about this new app. I'm going to see if Sam wants to grab a dinner tonight.

Starting point is 01:04:20 Yeah, yeah. Just calculating. Maybe invite him to some sort of sports game. Yeah, we got a box. Yeah, the Warriors. Yeah, that's probably how it happened. That's what Sam will want to do. Yeah, that's how it went down.

Starting point is 01:04:32 And then all of a sudden, the rest is history. Well. Eliezer Utikowski has a new book. Yeah. Did you read it yet, John? I have not read it. I was thinking about reading it. It seems like he distilled his thesis.

Starting point is 01:04:51 Neeritt Weiss Blatt says, post some highlights from a review in new scientists. No AI isn't going to kill us all, despite what this new book says. Utikowski has a number of policy prescriptions. All of them basically nonsense. Wow, putting Utikowski in the truth zone. First is that GPUs, computer chips that have powered the current AI revolution should be heavily restricted. They say it should be illegal to own more than eight of the top 20-24-era GPUs without submitting to nuclear-style monitoring by an international body. By comparison, META has 350,000 of these chips.

Starting point is 01:05:32 Once this is in place, they say nations must be prepared to enforce these restrictions by bombing. Do you see what the title of the book? What is it called? if anyone builds it everyone dies why superhuman AI would kill us all I don't know I like the real thesis

Starting point is 01:05:51 but Perry Metzger had a good take on it he said it's starting to look like the worst thing Eliezer Yudikowski ever did for his cause was actually write down all of his arguments in a form compact enough that a normal person could read them in a few days before the arguments were scattered

Starting point is 01:06:09 all over tens of thousands of pages of really wordy blog posts and only extremely dedicated people could bother to go through them. You get nerd sniped by them. In truth, the whole thing could be summarized in a few pages. Now that he's at least condensed it down to 256 pages. Good number of pages. I like that. He's using a factor of two. Which normies might consider reading. If they read it, though, they will learn that the argument isn't at all persuasive. You get people like the New York Times reviewers saying the book reads like a Scientology manual, the text interspersed with weird unhelpful parables and extra notes available via QR code. So that's very cool. Tyler, what's your take on Utikowsky? I think he's like people hate on them too much, I think. Also, like there is

Starting point is 01:07:01 already a book about AI safety that's like very famous that's like readable. Bostrum. Yeah, Super Intelligence, Nick Bostrum, which is like a good book, I think. Yep. Yep. Yep. um i don't there's a good um there's a good actually young macro post about you're going to say fang pneumonia i'm just kidding young macro there's a good young macro post it says um bay area rationalists continuously getting spat on for warning us about their very rigorously researched and thought out eschatology must be one of the most flagrant cases of unfair maligning they should be treated more like christian missionaries worried about hell which i agree yeah yeah i think it's like people just like dunk on them constantly which like I've read a fair amount of like less wrong

Starting point is 01:07:41 post I don't I'm not like a crazy dumer but it's like you can understand the the trade ops yeah it's a valuable it's a valuable public service to just spend your time for at least some people in the world to think about what if this goes incredibly wrong yep yeah like I'm very great that most people are thinking about how do we make this go right but it's not necessarily it's like it's not it's not net negative for the world to have to have of course unless like you know, you figure out that the ideas catch on to such a degree that it makes it so that humanity can't, you know, again, it's like a, it's a fine line between, you know, some of the policies that have been proposed, like, around the U.S. at the state level have been, like,

Starting point is 01:08:26 crazy so far this year. Right. Yeah, like people anthropic who are, like, doing safety research, that's, like, obviously a good thing. Yep. There's, like, you know, they publish it openly. It's, like, open source. I think that's, like, good.

Starting point is 01:08:37 Obviously, I'm not in favor of bombing data centers. Yeah. But I think it's reasonable to, like, I think people will dunk on him way too much. Yeah, it's interesting. I think that when, yeah, when the dunking on the Dumer, when the Dumer dunks were at an all-time high, people, like, there was probably a group of, like, I don't know, 80% of tech that was like, let's dunk on this. This is not good. This is nonsense.

Starting point is 01:09:02 But I feel like over the past two years, you've slowly picked off like 20% chunks of that group and said, well, actually, I'm interested in safety in this context. And so the example they'll give her, like, there's a lot of people that are like, yeah, I don't think I'm going to get paperclipped anytime soon. But I love AI safety research. If it can tell me if DeepSeek is trying to, you know, poison the American population against capitalism. and it's like a geopolitical weapon. Or I'm worried about people getting one-shoted and going crazy from chatting with 4-0 for days and days and days.

Starting point is 01:09:41 That's a safety research problem. You know, are people using it just to go and, you know, like the classic example is like, oh, like someone develops like a chemical weapon or biological weapon, but what about just like an actual weapon? What about just like a normal, like, you know, like any sort of we just saw this with the terrible Charlie Kirk story. Like, like, if you're, if you're, if you're, if you're sending into any LLM, sketchy questions that, that highlight, like, you're planning something, there is, we need to do, we do need to have a discussion about, like, when does it call the cops on you?

Starting point is 01:10:15 When does it flag this? Like, how anonymous is this? Like, if someone's blaring and obviously going to Google and saying, like, I'm trying to do a bad thing, like, should that flag things, there's a whole discussion to be had there. but I put that within the broad context of AI safety and AI Doom, and I don't think it's unreasonable to have those discussions at all. So, I don't know. Yeah, I think also, like, even if you're, like, an accelerationist, you, like, think Doomers, safety is, like, completely useless.

Starting point is 01:10:45 You can probably make the case that LAs are, like, writing about AI in, like, early 2000s accelerated AI in general. Totally. Totally. So, like, yeah. So, like, yeah. Totally. I mean, it's certainly, like, marshaled capital to be like, oh, well, like, if this is the final innovation,

Starting point is 01:10:58 like, if it's going to be able to do that. Like, then we got to get into this deal. It has an anti, like it has the opposite effect that he wants, which is, he says, this is the most dangerous technology ever. And people are like, I got to find a way to make money on this. Yeah. I mean, that was the story of just nuclear power. It was like the bomb went off at Trinity. The bomb went off in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Starting point is 01:11:21 And people were like, wait, like, this is a terrible, like, disaster. Like, so, like, awful. And, like, there's a true doom scenario, which is. is we all bomb each other and nuclear holocaust happens and everyone dies. But very quickly people were like, wait, there is a positive way to use this and that's with a nuclear reactor and that's with positive energy.

Starting point is 01:11:40 The interesting doom scenario that I think you could get from Utikowski's fears like really running wild is just a stagnation where if we actually say as a society we agree with this and we say

Starting point is 01:11:55 yeah, we're never going past one gigawatt for a data center ever and we will bomb them and we all agree like well then yeah you do wind up in the nuclear energy scenario where we stop building them and basically the amount of nuclear power just kind of stagnated and we had the technology but we didn't really ramp it we were just like yeah we'll find other ways to do things and like we found other ways to generate electricity with oil and gas but also solar and wind and we stayed away from nuclear for decades now we're getting back into nuclear we could find other ways to generate images and and deep research reports

Starting point is 01:12:30 It's like we could say, hey, we're not going any further as a society. If everyone agrees, now, there's geopolitical considerations. There's a lot of things where I don't think that's going to happen. But it is something that could happen. P. Stagnation is also like a key metric to be tracking alongside P. Doom is the response to P. Doom is P. Stagnation. Anyway, I believe we have our first guest of the show in the Restream waiting room. Josh. Oh, look at this background.

Starting point is 01:12:58 Wow. Wow, impressive. How you doing? Long-time listener, first-time caller. Hey, guys. Great to have you on. And congrats on the new gig. I'm thrilled to be at Lightspeed.

Starting point is 01:13:11 It is a very exciting moment for my career for, for LightSpeed. We're going to be doing a lot of fun things. You know, LightSpeed's AI, like we're Anthropic, we're Mistral, we're XAI, we're Glean, we're Pika, a bridge. Diversified. You've got the AI hits. Love it. Got the hits. Talk about your journey.

Starting point is 01:13:34 What were you doing before? Yeah, I was at Red Point for the last four years, building the platform team. Wow, poached, trade deal. We love our Logan Bartlett. Yeah, he's fantastic. That's two and all the content we built there. That team is exceptional. They're going to continue to absolutely crush.

Starting point is 01:13:55 But this was just an incredible opportunity. I think when I was younger, I was Chief Digital Officer at NASDAQ, and I worked on, you name the IPO, I worked on it. And Lightspeed had just always been that kind of like aspirational venture firm for me. I got to work on the Nutanics IPO. I did App Dynamics, and then the night before App Dynamics was going to go public, like they got acquired by Cisco and I had to take things made. Like, this is a firm that I wanted to work at when I was that age. and it's just such an honor to even have been considered for their CMO role. And I'm just very, very thankful to Robbie and Bajal and Romano and the whole Lightspeed team for

Starting point is 01:14:38 for giving the trust in me to to shepherd this incredible brand into the future. Give us the master plan. Tell, tell all. And we'll, no, tell it. Exactly the same stuff we did at Red Point because that wouldn't be any fun. But look, I wouldn't be here on TBPN if it wasn't a new media landscape. You guys have changed the game, like created a way for founders to tell their story in an authentic way without like shock journalism of being asked about like crazy news that doesn't apply to what they do

Starting point is 01:15:13 and actually having deep questions of people that understand venture-backed businesses and how they grow. I think we're in a new landscape of just finding ways for founders to tell their story in a compelling way and that's the same kind of stuff we're going to be building at light speed we'll obviously not be caught catting tbpn uh but we've got a lot of stuff we'll be really you know forward on ticot and instagram as you could imagine but um yeah we'll we'll be everywhere um so red red point uh red point i mean you guys must have been getting like millions of views on instagram on your account there for like a long time like what how value has that been as a channel because I feel like I feel like X is like especially noisy with like

Starting point is 01:16:01 venture right you have tech Twitter it's like you know every single day there's there's funds and companies piling in to try to get get the word out on what they're doing and their strategy and thesis and all that stuff but Instagram is like relatively it's not an area that we've focused a huge amount on but but how important do you think that is as a platform for investors yeah I mean Instagram was really the tip of our sphere at Red Point, right? Like when I joined, of course, they didn't have an Instagram and then I had to get the keys to it from the Instagram team and start building. But I think, you know, when I started it, people thought I was kind of crazy and they're like, this is, this is going to be good for the Red Point brand? And then, you know, we very quickly changed when you go to a pitch meeting and the founder goes, love your TikTok guy or that video is so relatable.

Starting point is 01:16:53 Like, it just creates a brand affinity that you just can't buy. And I felt like a lot of firms were a little scared to dip their toe into Instagram. But, you know, quite a few have followed us there and very proud of what the team will continue to build there. But it really is an important channel. And I think that the great news is that's where founders are in this decade, right? Like, today's founders are on Instagram and TikTok. Like, yes, X is still the place to show. They're the clips, but that's where people consume their content.

Starting point is 01:17:27 And so I felt like while it was an unlikely channel for success for a VC firm, I think it's actually really important because it's like the place that everybody actually goes to just have a good time. Do you see venture funds eventually following the same path as other financial institutions in terms of advertising and let's say like print media, right? You can imagine like Black Rock will run, you know, a print average. advertisement in the Wall Street Journal, right? Do you ever see, do you think that's an interesting way to potentially build the brand with, I don't know that many founders that read the journal, at least as religiously as us, but certainly there has to be, in the role of CMO, you have to be marketing to founders,

Starting point is 01:18:12 but also LPs, right? Yeah. Well, actually, interestingly, my gig at NASDAQ when I was pitching IPOs for a living, that was something we would put in every single proposal. get like a full page ad in the Wall Street Journal. But I think today's founders that that resonates as much, I think honestly they're better off buying a piece of your hat on TBPN than they are buying a page in the journal. Like spend that money on on Instagram advertising and TikTok ads and well I meant I meant more I meant more for you at Lightspeed like I think it would be iconic for

Starting point is 01:18:47 Lightspeed to have a page in the journal that says like look at all like we are in all the AI winners. Like that light speed is AI with just like the list of companies that we're in. Yeah. Get ready. We're, uh, we will be on every media platform. Legacy media still has a very special place in my heart. It's like, you know, I, I spent a decade on the floor of that exchange, working with every media outlet to help get companies as much noise as we could make them around an IPO. How is, how, how do you think, um, Like, how is the, how is like IPO marketing changed over the last decade since you're at NASDAQ? I mean, we have so much activity this week.

Starting point is 01:19:30 We were at, we were at the Klarna IPO yesterday, which honestly felt incredibly quiet in comparison to Figma, which which was actually we figured I was intentional. The founder was like really celebrating back in Sweden, right? So he just came in. He didn't even bring his family. He just handled business and got out of there. And then you had Figma, which very much was like a celebration of, uh, uh, They have an office in New York. They have an office in New York, but it was a celebration of, like, the entire community.

Starting point is 01:19:57 It was really like an event. It felt like being a festival. Just in Manhattan. There's probably tons of things. But, yeah, like broadly, how do you think that landscape is shifted? Well, that was the fun thing about that gig. I got to work with every great CEO, CFO, and CMO, and you kind of get to see them almost in, like, what is their Super Bowl for their company and how they perform at the top of their game. Sometimes people are looking for that more muted response that I think you saw with Klarna,

Starting point is 01:20:26 which I just think is like stylistically that company. But I think if you're looking for IPO excellence, what Figma did and what they pulled off, what, you know, some of the VC firms that helped them behind the scenes on their comms, like it was a massive win for noise making. And I think it was like kind of the gold standard for what you expect from an IPO. I think the thing is, is a lot of companies don't realize that, like, this is your one day to make the noise because you've got the quiet period before and you've got it afterwards. And so really, you have to squeeze as much juice out of the fruit that you can. And what I would always advise companies to do is spend every dollar you can across the, you know, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, promoting.

Starting point is 01:21:20 the fact that you went public because this is your opportunity to tell those enterprise customers who weren't necessarily ready to sign on to you when you were a private company, no matter the size, that you're ready for that. It's the best branding ever to be like, yeah, we're a public company. We're public. It's on par with a great.com. Yeah, yeah. Probably more significant. A great ticker. Works well. how are you thinking about positioning light speed in the venture ecosystem like I feel like there's a couple funds that have carved out like kind of just a very clear definitions of like

Starting point is 01:22:02 okay we're we're a crossover hedge fund we have publics and then we have a growth fund but like we're not even trying to be known for early stage maybe we write some see check and like just getting that clear message of like when to call what fund I feel you like is the first job to do of a VC marketing arm maybe how are you thinking about either narrowing or expanding or like defining the definition of like what is light speed how does it fit in how is it different that's a great question look I think actually it was one of the things that drew me to light speed yeah right when I was on the floor of the exchange as a young guy like companies were going public in like seven years and then while I was working there it

Starting point is 01:22:50 became 10 years and I'm chasing companies for you know from series B for like seven years before they would go public with us and now it's 15 and I think honestly light speed strategy is what attracted to me to it because literally we support companies from C through IPO and beyond and I think that focus of saying we are going to be great early stage investors and then we're going to take the ones that are really winning apply our full muscle to giving them all the tools that we can give them for an unfair advantage as they you know go up against the goliaths in their industry and then bring them through IPO and provide them that that added lift that they need in those later growth rounds, I think it's a really unique offer that is quite differentiated in the venture space

Starting point is 01:23:48 and actually that that multi-stage thing is why I'm here, right? Like, I get to give early-stage companies the noise-making. I get to help the late-stage companies with their IPO prep. It's truly like a dream job to go and take this into the future. And we're going to be doing a lot of branding about why that model is so different than everybody. else. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to hop on. This is great. Congratulations. On the new gig. I'm looking forward to my TBPN, a traded card. Can I get that? Oh, yeah, for sure. We'll work on it. We'll work on it. Logan, we might have to use it. I don't know if we want to upset Jeff Brody. I mean, he did go to my high school. So, yeah, I got to keep

Starting point is 01:24:32 things friendly over there. I know you've got some other light speed people coming up too. Yeah, yeah. Good buddies with Bucky. We'll have them on soon. We'll talk to you soon. Cheers, Josh. Congrats. Thanks, guys. Bye. See you. Quickly, let me tell you about numeral sales tax on autopilot.

Starting point is 01:24:48 It's super intelligence for sales tax. They said if they build it, if they build it, everyone will spend less than five minutes per month on sales tax compliance. Anyway, I think we have our next guest already in the re-stream waiting room. Nico Rossburg. We will bring that in the studio. Nico, how are you doing? Welcome to the show. Can you hear us?

Starting point is 01:25:15 Sorry for keeping you waiting. We got a bit of lag. Oh, we got some backgrounds. Can you hear us? Can you hear us? Hello. Testing, testing, testing, one, two, three. Can you hear us?

Starting point is 01:25:29 Let's try and get him on the call. In the meantime, let me tell you about fin.a.I. The number one AI agent for customer service, number one in performance benchmarks, number one in competitive. Makeoff. Number one ranking on G2. Also, people having fun meming the AirPod 3 live translation. It immediately became a meme format.

Starting point is 01:25:52 I was disappointed that I couldn't workshop one in time to get a banger up, but people were having a lot of fun with it. I just like this picture, this picture of being like, Ola, and it just says, hello. What is Ola mean? Yeah, I knew you were going to ask this. So Ola is a Spanish word. for hello.

Starting point is 01:26:09 Okay. Yeah. So if I pay $300, put in my headphones, you would be able to do that. Yeah. It is incredible technology. I mean, the whole, you know, I have no idea how to, how to kind of judge Duolingo as a, as a, as a public company and what, what the fair market value of Duolingo is. But I do think there is, like, like, studying language has never been about. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:26:34 I mean, I shouldn't say it never, but it's like for 90%. of people is not about the like practicality it's about stimulating your mind and and yeah new things and even if this existed i still would have done years of Wikipedia exists and like founders podcast exists and they're very different products like they can both tell me what what what was larry ellison up to in the 90s yeah and when and when the oracle news broke i actually went to both i looked at the Oracle Wiki, and I also listened to the Foundish podcast on Larry Allison. And they're very different. And I feel like Duolingo plays this, like, fun game thing. Tyler, what's your take on Duolingo versus the AirPods 3? Well, so about the AirPods, like, unless both parties have them,

Starting point is 01:27:22 then it's like not that useful, right? Because if you only speak Spanish, I only speak English, you're talking to me. I can't, I can't reply. There are a variety of ways to use it with one person. So if I'm going around, you speak to me. And then when I speak, it can go into an app on my phone, can just hit play and it will play the audio from my phone or it will show you words. So if you're speaking Spanish, I'm hearing English and my phone as I'm talking is displaying Spanish text. And so I can actually hand you my phone and you can read what I'm saying in English in Spanish. So they've thought of some of the stuff. It still does seem like there's a little bit of a technological handshake going on where I need to say,

Starting point is 01:28:04 Ola, like, would you like to use AirPods Pro 3? See if you can translate this. Let's put... See if you can translate this Mandarin. Well, hunch you on Pijo. Of course. I would like a beer, please. Close.

Starting point is 01:28:18 I really enjoy beer. I really enjoy beer generally, of course. Yes, this will be huge for ordering aibruski. Noah Smith called it the Universal Translator from Star Trek. Yeah, it's very cool. Vitalik said he can't arbitrar, can't translate. arbitrary alien languages it hears for the first time with any with only a tiny sample though although maybe what happened in star trek is that every species realize that it's a good idea to

Starting point is 01:28:43 expose a clean API that blurts out like one terabyte of all your historical cultural works and that is enough to generate the embeddings for their language i've seen AI work before that suggests that if you have the embeddings for two languages you only need a very small amount of translated word pairs to find the mapping between the two not sure if this holds for languages that evolved in totally separate worlds, but maybe it still does for convergent evolution reasons, and that gets you a translator.

Starting point is 01:29:12 And so it ships, and so ships just always scan for, give me a terabyte of your culture, API, and always end up finding it. That's very funny. Speaking of alien languages, Tyler, you were mentioning that we discovered alien life on Mars,

Starting point is 01:29:28 or it was fake? What was your take on that? You were saying that the moon landing's fake, and you don't believe in the moon landing, right? You don't believe in space. You said that off mic and you didn't want me to talk about it on the screen? Space is fake, yeah. Space is fake. Going up high is fake.

Starting point is 01:29:41 Plains. When you get in a plane, why do they always have the windows down? It's because they're changing out the set decoration around you. That's right. You just get on the plane. You sit there for six hours while they rebuild the city around you. You get off and then you're in the New York City. Oh, I'm in New York City. Oh, really?

Starting point is 01:29:56 You didn't just move the buildings around now. I moved thousands of miles in a two. Put the boards up? Yeah, okay. I'll believe about what I see it. Anyway, what was the news? NASA got a photo. How is there a new photo on Mars?

Starting point is 01:30:11 The rover's just going around? Yeah. Okay, so the rover's going around looking for stuff. Wait, can we pull up the picture? It's in the deck. It's later in the deck. So who took the photo? The rover.

Starting point is 01:30:22 The rover of itself, like kind of like selfie sticks. Yeah, the rover has like a 360 cam on the end of an arm. And there's someone who gives instructions, I think like once a day. gay because there's such a delay to get the message there that they say the rover's kind of semi-autonomous then they say hey go look around over here the chat just to defend uh tyler's honor he's not a flatter he's not a flatter we're just joking around just joking around anyway uh we believe we have our next guest nico rossberg how you doing nico hey how's it going guys welcome to the show welcome to the show thanks so much for taking the time how are you doing thanks a lot pleasure

Starting point is 01:30:59 to be here i've been good thank you you you can't catching me in Monaco. Monaco is where I've grown up here. Fantastic. Classic. How is it this time of year? Actually, it's lovely because it's kind of still summer. Still really warm and we're still enjoying the outside, going on the promenade, going

Starting point is 01:31:15 to the pool with the kids, because I have two kids. They're seven and nine. Wow. And they just started school again after the summer, but still really warm here. So it's lovely. South of France is beautiful. That's fantastic. What about you guys?

Starting point is 01:31:28 We've been traveling a lot. We were in New York City yesterday, San Francisco. They did four for the Klarna IPO, and then Y Combinator Demo, and then back to L.A., so a little bit too much travel, a little frazzled. Yeah, I don't know how you, I don't know how drivers actually do this, right, just because when we go on the road for 48 hours with that kind of pace, it really throws everything off. But we're here. Anyway, can you give us a little bit of backstory on your path to venture? from your racing career. Yeah, sure.

Starting point is 01:32:06 So obviously it's not the most natural switch, yeah. And racing career, yeah, I was on it. I was at it for 20 years. You start when you're 10 years old. And then I ended up winning the Formula One World Championship at the age of 31 with the Mercedes team. Thank you very much. Lovely to hear that.

Starting point is 01:32:24 And I did the pretty extreme thing of retiring like five days after I won the championship. because it just felt like my dream was complete. I achieved what I set out to do. And it's an insane, I mean, all the founders listening, it's an insane lifestyle to pursue relentlessly your goal, just like for founders, but it's the same for athletes. It's really, really madly intense.

Starting point is 01:32:51 And so I was quite happy that it was all achieved and I just wanted to move on to the next life. But then I had no clue what to do. So I was really searching a lot of things. And now it's nine years after. Before you dive into that, do you have any idea what percentage of drivers that end up as a Formula One driver, actually even podium at any point in their career? Isn't it extremely low?

Starting point is 01:33:18 Yeah, I'm sure it is. I don't know the exact numbers, obviously, but if I had to guess, it would probably be less than 10%. Around 10%. If I had to guess now, oh, that's just a... That's just a wild guess now. And then, of course, in terms of world champions, there's 34 or 35 world champions in the 70-year history of the sport. And there's been thousands of F-1 racers. So it's an extremely small percentage.

Starting point is 01:33:48 So, yeah, talk about the transition to investing. I've heard a little bit of the path, and it is unconventional. But when I heard it explained, it made perfect sense. but I'd love to hear it from you. No, it's just, I mean, I always, I've always appreciated the startup world a lot. When I retired, mobility was just going through this extreme transition. Suddenly there was like autonomous driving, there was connectivity, shared mobility, and it was all kicking off exactly when I retired.

Starting point is 01:34:18 And I was the mobility world champion. So it's kind of natural for me. You're going to get around. Yeah, it was kind of natural to take a first look there. And Mercedes also helped me out. and because they were investing in startups. So I got going that way, really loved it, was fascinated. And it's been a journey ever since.

Starting point is 01:34:37 It's been up and down. And now, finally, I kind of found my venture capital North Star. And I'm building Rosberg Ventures now, which is a venture capital asset manager. And we have multiple products, strategies, but very much, you know, focused on the US. So it's kind of bridging Europe with US. That's really our big focus.

Starting point is 01:34:58 And yeah, I'm really excited. And so that means sort of like European LP base, but investing in America. Yeah, that's exactly, yeah. That's one facet of it. But also then the European corporates connecting them with the breakout generational startups in the U.S. Because there's a great connectivity between the startups in the U.S. and the corporates in the U.S., but sometimes that link to the European and German corporate. where it's quite weak, and also surprisingly, like the German large caps, they don't have a very

Starting point is 01:35:34 deep understanding of what's going on in the U.S. venture capital landscape. So there's a great opportunity for us to add value in creating those connections. And as you know, to win. What's the openness to partnering with, like, if you're a, if you're like a German, you know, a multi-billion dollar company, what's the openness to even, using products from startups is it is it high low it really depends i mean one of our one of our most famous car manufacturers i'm not going to say the name but the likes of bmw mercedes etc we're working with them and we're introducing startups and then the other day they said

Starting point is 01:36:17 sorry we have no more budget to explore and and you're like okay but you guys are facing insane like insane threats from Tesla China and you're telling you're telling us here that you don't have budget to like explore transformational solutions from the from the startup landscape like that was yeah the the point of enterprise software for the most part is help people save money or help people make money ideally do both exactly so actually we so we brought them like a tool that is going to analyze their whole procurement contracts and everything, and they actually, their revenues are only, they are part of the cost savings that they generate. Yeah, and then this car manufacturer, BMW, Mercedes, Audi, whatever, they're like, oh, okay, so we don't

Starting point is 01:37:12 need to invest anything up front here. They just take a cut from the savings that they generate for us on procurement. And then they're like, okay, this is great. This will definitely have a look at. So it depends. But anyways, in general, there's a great readiness, which is reassuring nonetheless, but they're not really like very in depth at the moment in understanding what's coming in terms of transformation. AI, you know, it's a big, big challenge, as you know, for enterprises to adopt that. Outside of the corporates, what does the family office or ultra-high net worth individual landscape look like out in Europe? Are they more? more risk on now? Are these the type of folks that you met through your F1 career that became

Starting point is 01:37:57 LPs eventually? Yeah, sure. It's many of the families that I got to know in racing that were like big sponsors or even the car manufacturers. So that's kind of the link back to my racing, which is nice for me as well. And in general, it's very risk off in Europe compared to America, which is a real weakness. Because risk doesn't even necessarily have to be risk. If you have a long, long-term time horizon, even something like the NASDAQ becomes low risk, even though on a three-month horizon, it's a high-risk investment. And that's the one thing, that's the thing that the Europeans, yeah, I don't know. They don't really get that right. They're very conservative, but in a bad way. So very often, they hardly, like the endowments, they hardly beat inflation, but there was the high

Starting point is 01:38:44 inflation, they were hardly beating, or not even beating inflation. It was pretty shocking. But for me, it's awesome also because I can take all my learnings now from sports into this venture capital business that I'm building. One of the main things, like us athletes, I think we're pretty good at this relentless pursuit of our goals. Like second place just does not exist. Giving up does not exist. It's like absolutely, it's pretty insane. I think that's one really big strength of hours, which is really appreciated in the venture capital ecosystem. Yeah. Because, of course, the best founders are exactly the same.

Starting point is 01:39:23 Yeah. Talk to me about some of those best founders, the relentless, the risk takers, the ones who don't accept second place. Who do you look up to in the American entrepreneurship world or see someone where maybe they didn't, maybe they weren't belt for F1, but you think they could have done well if they were a racer? well that's a hard question now i have no idea i mean the racing skill the racing skill is hand-eye coordinated okay sure but what about a more abstract level the foundation of everything

Starting point is 01:39:58 then of course in terms of being relentless in the pursuit of of winning there's there's many many examples um and i'm personally involved with the likes for example uh i'm an personal investor in like applied intuition oh yeah yeah yeah he's fantastic castor there is a is a like He's a machine as well. You know what I mean? It's like unbelievable. The energy and the determination and grit. Or some European companies, examples are like 11 labs.

Starting point is 01:40:25 Oh, yeah. Which I'm personally invested in or lovable. Yeah. And like lovable, Anton is also a pretty extreme. Pretty extreme. Yeah, for the level of commitment. But I'm also excited. You know, by now I really have really cool portfolio also in terms of my personal investing.

Starting point is 01:40:41 Yeah. And yeah, it's just, it's, it's, it's, it's, great to see how these companies are growing and unfolding. Yep. How have you, what, it feels like over the last few years, founders have started to sort of adopt the health practices or the approach to health that athletes do. There's been a bunch of viral stuff recently, people joking around about this. What has there been, what was sort of most impactful for your performance,

Starting point is 01:41:15 during your driving career that you still apply to building like a venture firm from a health standpoint? Yeah, I mean, so I was really quite a perfectionist when it came to preparing myself in the best possible way. So I've been through everything. I had a psychologist working with me. I did two hours of psychology and philosophy every two days. Like I was absolutely flat out on this because I could feel and it was obvious that I had more, I had capacity to improve mentally as an athlete. I was under pressure, you know, scared, worried, distracted and all these, all these things. So there was a lot of capacity there for me to improve. And I found incredible, incredible progress mentally. And so I did a lot of meditation. I simplified my life.

Starting point is 01:42:05 I removed all emailing, news, everything was gone. Instagram, social media, there was nothing on my telephone, on my pursuit to become a world champion. So it was really quite extreme. Would you do caffeine or any stimulants or does that just throw you off in terms of, you know, we've seen like Mark Zuckerberg doesn't do caffeine. And I could imagine in a driving setting, you're just like a slightly more twitchy or nervous because of caffeine and you, you know, crash the car and your race is over.

Starting point is 01:42:38 Yeah, no, so I didn't do caffeine also because the problem I have is when I take caffeine, I can't sleep at night. so that would be counterproductive then even like for example when it came to jet lag I had a Harvard sleep professor working with me who actually now has created an app based on

Starting point is 01:42:55 what we had been pursuing at the time which is called time shifter and it actually was App Store app of the day it has like a million subscribers by now it's like becoming quite a success and this Harvard sleep professor was supporting me at the time and

Starting point is 01:43:10 I did a whole year with no jet lag You were saying before earlier how traveling is destroying you, and you don't know how the athletes do it, I think. And I did a whole year no jet lag. So it was all about like one and a half hour steps per day, maximum in time zone shift. Even before you start traveling, the last five days you leave home, one and a half hour steps, blackout glasses, 10,000 blocks like Brian Johnson in the morning first thing, all these tools.

Starting point is 01:43:39 And it was incredible, it was incredible to do a whole year traveling, continent, no jet lag. So it's really all these things that, it's just really, essentially what it is, it's putting together all the little details, incremental gains and focusing on them. Because you all know that many incremental gains are a huge progress. And sometimes we kind of neglect them and are lazy and don't focus on the small steps as well. And that was probably a strength of mind, which I'm now taking into venture capital as well, Just all the details, putting them together.

Starting point is 01:44:14 It comes back to being relentless again. Yeah. What's your state on the read of, what's your read on the state of F1 broadly? It feels like from an American perspective, Drive to Survive was a big moment. Cadillacs coming into the, the Cadillac has an F1 team joining next year. There's a few other milestones and key storylines, but what's captured your attention over the past few years in the story of f1 broadly my attention has been how f1 has managed to conquer america yeah and 40 percent of the new fans are women so it's almost like 50 50 male women uh male female yeah which is

Starting point is 01:44:55 uh which is so cool and and this is a big change and it's all it's thanks to netflix yep it's thanks to social media they've opened up social media like in my time social media wasn't even allowed nine years ago because it was taking eyeballs off the television product yeah but actually it's a multiplier you know so that was a bit short-sighted yeah i remember liberty media you know who owns f1 who's done such a great job and netflix has been so powerful because they actually managed to capture the humans behind f1 and and it's like a reality tv show rather than documentary and that's what we love we love to see emotions we love to identify with the connect with the humans behind the sport and they just managed to do such a great job so that's really what i'm uh what i'm finding so cool is

Starting point is 01:45:41 how our sport is growing, developing, the excitement is growing, super, super thrilling. Yeah. How are you thinking about the rollout of autonomous vehicles over the next five to 10 to 20 years, even over the long term? Is it something you spend a lot of time trying to invest against any type of thesis? So I am, I invested in a teledriving, remote control driving solution, so teledriving. And at one point we were like, oh, this is going to go wrong because we're going to full autonomy now, but it looks like someone like Tesla is actually having much more troubles than

Starting point is 01:46:20 they perhaps expected two or three years ago. And especially in the edge cases, they're still having too many issues. So, and you know, they had to launch their, their robotaxies with safety drivers in their cars, et cetera, et cetera. And the questions is still there. is their camera-only solution actually ever going to be good enough? Yes, they're learning on millions of miles every year, but can the camera solution only deal with all these edge cases of fog and rain and snow and et cetera, et cetera?

Starting point is 01:46:54 So there's still a very, very big question mark. And no one really knows. Then you have the Waymo, which certainly is better tech, but of course, unit economics, I mean, it's super expensive hardware per car. So how scalable is that? Also, difficult still to judge at this point, even though they seem to be going strong at the moment. But yeah, so it's really not clear yet who is going to be the eventual winner there. But it's, yeah, again, fascinating time, but it will take some more time for us to finally know who wins.

Starting point is 01:47:25 And then the worry, though, is like Europe, Europe, for example, unfortunately, is almost missing out completely on this value creation. because they don't have they don't they're they're going to end up like the mobile phones that just became hardware yeah so the the the um the the system was done by android or apple yep and then and then they just became hardware hardware suppliers you know and that's a threat for the european car manufacturers sure because they won't have the autonomy i wonder if they'll even have the connectivity to their to their customers but isn't isn't applied applied intuition is a is could potentially save them um in terms of that interface connecting to the to the customer who's riding on board etc so a very tough moment for european uh the car manufacturers and also

Starting point is 01:48:19 honestly many of the american car manufacturers they're pretty much in the same situation yeah we have formula one we have formula e which showcases electric vehicles do you think we'll ever see formula a to showcase autonomous vehicles? So we had that already. There was Robo Race, I think it was called. They're still somewhat slower than us, like 15 seconds a lap or something, 10 seconds to left. So it's going to take some more time there too.

Starting point is 01:48:47 I don't know if that's because we love the gladiators, the humans in the sport. And if it's just tech racing each other, I don't know if that. Of course, it can find its niche, but I don't think it's going to be a huge, fascinating global success story. Who are you guys rooting for in F1? I'm super interested in this, like, you know, we've seen the benchmarks of human versus AI in so many different categories, and I want to know when an autonomous vehicle will put up like a sub-7-minute Nürberg ring time.

Starting point is 01:49:22 And it seems like it might be years. It might be a long time, actually. Especially if it was a manual. Yes, especially if it's a manual, and it has to be driven by a humanoid. So you can't just plug in like you do with a Waymo. You have to actually put the physical robot in the seat. The robot has to buckle itself in. Very dexterous, very difficult to slide into a cockpit properly. Do you have any favorite? I'm impressed. You know your Nureberg Ring times. I'm very impressed. So Nureberg Ring, for all the viewers, it's the greatest racetrack in the world.

Starting point is 01:49:55 and it's this crazy 15-kilometer roller coaster through the forest in the middle of Germany and it's called the Green Hell and all car manufacturers set benchmark lap time is there and if you manage to break the record you've got like global news and everything so it's a very very important racetrack is it I haven't I haven't driven it myself

Starting point is 01:50:19 is it but I did the last time I was really I mean obviously we'll watch when the manufacturers doing lap times, but the last time I saw footage from, I saw a GT3RS get just absolutely destroyed on the track. Is it safe to go out and just do public laps? Or would you stay away from something like that? I'm sure when you want to race. I wouldn't do it. I would be scared. It's the craziest racetrack in the world. And you have a bunch of people from all over the world coming and just like they want to go fast. They want to go fast. Yeah, of course. But it's very, very dangerous. So I'll be careful with that. Yeah. What else are you tracking in the automotive

Starting point is 01:50:59 world broadly? There's, yeah, have you been tracking what's happening in China? Are there any other interesting dynamics with any of the upstarts? I feel like most of these companies are post-start-up rounds at this point with Rivian and being public at this point. But have you Have you been tracking any just future next generation OEMs? So I was in China recently, and shocking. You know how Porsche, Porsche, Porsche, I can't remember how you're supposed to say it. They have the Porsche Taekan, yeah? The electric, they're electric superstar.

Starting point is 01:51:39 And then you go to China, and there's Xiaomi, who has this, I don't even know what the Xiamese's fault. I think it's the Sue 7 is the one you're thinking of. That's Sue 7. That's exactly like the kind. And I rode in this car. So first of all, the Taekan is $120,000 or $130. Yeah. This thing is $40,000.

Starting point is 01:51:56 Yeah. And it looks the same. So they just copy the look of it. And I get in. And like five years ago, seven years ago, the interior quality then was rubbish. Everything was cracking. It felt like it was going to fall apart. And then you start driving.

Starting point is 01:52:09 And the drive, the handling also then feels rubbish. And now I'm in this. The interior quality is perfection. It's just beautiful. It drives awesomely. has more power than the Porsche Taekan, has more range than the Porsche Taekan. So it was proper scary.

Starting point is 01:52:27 I was like, oh my God, like, this is like, this is shocking. And then let me just finish. You would say, okay, but Porsche still has their brand. But even that is gone because the Xiaomi founder is a rock star in China. He's like the Elon Musk of China. He has a huge social media following. So even the brand. moat is gone in China.

Starting point is 01:52:52 So it feels like it's just complete game over there. And it's happening, and they're coming to Europe too, which is so scary. Now, BYD just overtook Tesla as the best-selling, best-selling electric car in Europe. So it's a really watershed moment and super critical moment for the automotive sector. Yeah, but and then in terms of startups, I think I'm not seeing much at the moment, really. It's really KAPX intensive and a lot of those businesses have to go up against EYD, for example. So if you look at BYD and Neo, I believe, they got 10 billion in government subsidies in order for them to get to where they are now in terms of taking on the world. But that is never going to happen in Europe.

Starting point is 01:53:35 You're never going to have the European government supporting a startup with 10 billion or cargo with 10 billion in order to become global electric vehicle manufacturer leaders. you know so yeah tough to compete against that isn't that um last question from my side um did you have a reaction did you see the f1 movie did you have a reaction to apple's f1 movie uh what'd you think if you saw it yeah so uh the honest answers i haven't seen it yet because because i was i was holding out to see it with my wife and then that didn't work out for some reason whatever you're kids we're still holding We're still holding out, and we're probably going to do a cinema night at our house here in Monaco with any friends left that I have not yet seen it. Maybe we'll do a cinema night next week or something.

Starting point is 01:54:20 But I hear great things. Of course, it's Hollywood, it's fake, but I hear great things. And it was amazing. I was at the racetrack, and Brad Pitt was on the real grid just before the race starts with his race car. And he had a real garage in the pit lane with his race car, like at the real race. Like the race start and he's there. like it's so crazy how they put that together and and then with augment virtual reality they overlaid his car onto one of the real racing cars in the race yeah for this it's like

Starting point is 01:54:52 it's pretty impressive so anyways i hear good things and i think it's a great uh great step again for for f1 yeah total american what are you guys what are you what are you guys most excited about in the startup world what's the last thing that you've seen which which you're raving about That's really hard to put on the spot. In the startup world at the earliest stages, I mean, we've been seeing a lot of folks work on new AI hardware devices. And there was one that just put out a video about where it looks like headphones, but it measures the electrical signals in your jaw. And so you're just whispering, you're not even making any noise, but you're talking like making mouth movements. And it can transcribe that into an app or so I can be talking to you across a crowded room and you can hear me and I can hear you, but no one else can hear us.

Starting point is 01:55:58 And if you imagine about voice interfaces in the future where you're talking to chat GPT or any LLM all day long, being able to do that in a public. place or randomly. That feels like that could be the next big thing. There's a rumor that Sam Altman's working on that with Johnny Ives. So that was something where it's like there's going to be a new wave of some sort of input technology. Pre-neurrelink, but. Yeah, on my side, this has been such an insane year on so many levels. You have geopolitical chaos. You have warfare. You have assassinations. Tragedies. There's so much uncertainty. There's so much negativity in the world. And from our point of view, we get to interview talented builders every single day. We've interviewed hundreds of founders this year.

Starting point is 01:56:45 And that is like the bright spot to me is like across every industry and any sector that's important to the world. There are bright, bright optimistic people that are dedicating their lives to solving problems from logistics to, you know, autonomous vehicles to new consumers. or hardware. Like any, any category, there are bright people that are dedicating their lives. And so I think that's like the white pill for me is when I think about how chaotic and crazy the world. And there's a lot of, like John said, tragedy. But at the same time, there's people at an individual level are committed to changing the world. And so I think it's much easier to be like incredibly optimistic about the future and not give in to the doom when you have our job. And I know it's the same for you as well in terms of meeting talented people

Starting point is 01:57:42 that are dedicating their lives to solving real problems in the world. Yeah, I mean, it's lovely. There's so much hope in the startup world, so much ambition. It's really, really impressive. By the way, I met the founder that you were talking about with that optical device on the year. I know him. I know him very well. Klein of Perkins, which is like perhaps one of the, I mean, the best VC firm at the moment

Starting point is 01:58:07 or one of the best, they're backing him. Fantastic. So I know, I know him well. I think you, I wonder if you just broke the news. That's amazing. Yeah, I mean, how often do you visit? No, I don't know. You didn't mention any names or anything.

Starting point is 01:58:24 Yeah, yeah, yeah. We know nothing. It's just a rumor. How often do you come to the U.S.? So I have to, I mean, of course, yeah, it's important for me to be there. So I'm there about once every two, three months. So quite a lot. I mean, there quite a lot, yeah.

Starting point is 01:58:40 Well, next time you're in L.A. I love hosting at F1 races also. So I'm constantly hosting all your friends from the Bay Area and New York also at the races. So I host everybody in Miami, hosting everybody again now at Vegas, which is lovely. It's very cool. That's amazing. Amazing. Well, thank you so much for taking the time on a late,

Starting point is 01:59:00 evening to chat with us. We had a lot of fun talking to you. Come back on any time. Yeah, we'd love to talk to it. I just got an email in my top right corner where I'm going to find out if I get accepted to one of the very best funds in the U.S. And now I'm going to click on it.

Starting point is 01:59:14 Amazing. And it's been a five-day fight with all-nighters and everything because of technical complications, whatever. Because it's so hard. They're like, everybody's like 2X oversubscribed. It's like crazy times in the U.S. Just for the best. Do you want to open it live right now?

Starting point is 01:59:28 Open the email. Give us the reaction. If I get a negative, if I get a negative... Thanks for your patience. Can you still... Oh man, we are going ahead. Yeah, yeah. Okay, yes. Can you still see me actually?

Starting point is 01:59:45 Yes, yes, we can. We get it. We get it! Yes! Hit the gawk! Congratulations! We got a fun allocation for Rossburg Ventures. Let's go.

Starting point is 02:00:00 I was going to, I was going to, we were going to end the show. Yeah, we were going to give them a car and we were going to drive to St. Hill and say, correct this right now. This is an injustice. That is fantastic news. Congratulations. Let me narrow it down for you as well, who it was. Come on, at least for some fun.

Starting point is 02:00:14 It's between something like Thrive, Axel, Green Oaks, or Elad Hill. Oh, these are great firms. It's one of those four. Okay, those are great firms. Let's go. Shout out to all the absolute boys. Amazing. Well, you should get the other three, too. Yeah. Get the full stack. We'll make some calls.

Starting point is 02:00:35 Maybe we have all of them already. Thank you so much for hopping on the show. This is fantastic. Yeah, great to hang. Have a good one. Talk soon. Bye. High stakes. He lives his life on the edge. That's a real F1 driver move to open and he had a potential rejection email. We have our next guest in the restream. Michael.

Starting point is 02:01:00 Really quickly. Let me tell you about Adio, customer relationship magic. Adio is the AI data of CRM that builds scales and grows your company to the next level. You can get started for free.

Starting point is 02:01:08 We have our next guest. Two-timer. We got Michael. With the TBPN hat. Let's go. Great sign of respect. I got to do my part, guys. Thank you so much for hopping on.

Starting point is 02:01:20 I didn't have one of the hats. We will get you one. We will get you one. One day, one day, near. We were oversubscribed, actually.

Starting point is 02:01:27 I think we made a couple hundred of them and not nearly enough. But thank you so much for hopping on the stream. Let's just kick it off with some intros for those who are listening. Neer, take it away. Take it away, here. I'm Neer Zickerman. Thanks a lot for having me.

Starting point is 02:01:42 I'm the CEO and co-founder of Obo. And the other co-founder is my good friend, Mike, here. What's up, guys? Great to be back. Obviously, we've spoken a number of times. I'm one of the co-founders of Obo and also a partner at Lightspeed. And Neer and I had previously co-founded Anchor, which we sold to Spotify.

Starting point is 02:01:59 No way. Putting the gang back together. I love it. Anyways, let's get into the news. So you guys launched, are you guys, what's the product? How are you positioning? Yeah, is it a beta? Is it, is it, is it a thing, GA?

Starting point is 02:02:17 What's going on? Yeah, so we're out there. Obo is live to the world, and it is the easiest way to learn anything. So you come to our website, obo. oboe.FYI, single prompt, we will magically create a course to teach anyone, anything. When I say anything, I really mean anything. Mike and I were talking earlier. What was the example we had? We had, you could learn about how to cook pasta and you can learn about the quantum physics of why, of how cooking pasta works if you wanted to. So truly a broad range of

Starting point is 02:02:48 topics. And with OBO courses, we learn in a variety of different ways, right? So you come in, Again, we magically create a course, and it is made up of everything from the ability to read about the topic, short form, long form, to listen to a podcast about it, two hosts like yourselves talking about whatever the topic completely personalized to the user. We have games, we have quizzes, a totally immersive experience to let you learn. Yeah, I saw a screenshot from none other than Martin Screlly saying this was very cool, and it showed, I mean, it felt like a lot of the anchor DNA was in there in the sense of when I think about anchor, it's like. like you have an MP3 and you need it on a lot of different, and you need to instantiate it in many different ways. Distribution is multi-platform. And you have essentially like some sort of deep research project

Starting point is 02:03:38 going on under collecting information, organizing with LLMs, I'm sure, but then instantiating it in a summary, a deep dive, an audio product. So talk about the multimodality, where you see that going in the near term. When are we going to get video in, here at some point I could imagine with VO3 and some of the advances there eventually you'll

Starting point is 02:04:00 be able to just like sit in on a one hour generated video lecture if that's what you want. I don't know if anyone wants that long term, but where do you see all the different multi-modalities going? I actually think a lot of people do want video. It's in the works. We are working on it. And to me, you know, I mean, people spend hours on YouTube constantly trying to learn and, you know, explore curiosities.

Starting point is 02:04:21 The reality is people are online learning constantly. You just don't think about it as learning. You know, you're on tons of different websites, tons of different apps, trying to, like, figure out understanding things in the news, understanding what you read, trying to get, you know, you're curious about things and you want to dig in. People do not learn in one path, and they don't learn with one format. So a core philosophy of ours is, if you're going to build a learning platform, you have to learn it the way that people actually learn. And the way that people actually learn is multimodal, right? It's immersive. Mike, what do you want to add?

Starting point is 02:04:52 Yeah, I mean, look, I think the beauty of the multimodial. is it lets people learn on their terms. You know, one of the reasons we started this company is we sort of looked at education and we looked at learning and we realized that the way people learn right now is too rigid. It's too one size fits all, right? You have higher education and traditional education teaching every single person on the planet,

Starting point is 02:05:14 the same thing in the same exact way. And that's just not how we all learn. We all learn in different ways. Some of us like to read. Some of us like to listen. Some of us like to watch TikTok. And so what we realize is, is we have this technology now

Starting point is 02:05:26 that can personalize learning for anyone on the planet. And so it would be a shame to not actually do that and make the most personalized form of education ever before. How are you thinking about gamification? I seem to remember you guys had badges in the first app and to kind of help someone

Starting point is 02:05:43 get over the curve of actually distributing a show. We're seeing both like resilience and the stocks all over the place with Duolingo, but it feels like Duolingo has done a great job of taking an education product and making it fun and repetitive and maybe even a little addictive. And it seems like that is a piece of the goal.

Starting point is 02:06:03 But how do you think about the various tradeoffs there? Look, I think gamification is key. I think the main reason gamification is key and accessibility in making it fun is key is because learning is intimidating. Most people who want to learn something new, they look at how you do it and they just get intimidated and they turn away. And that's why so much of what we've built and what will continue to build is around making it really diverted.

Starting point is 02:06:24 adjustable, really piecemeal, like Mike said, putting it in the control of the user so that they could decide how they want to navigate things. I think any course on OBO should be presented to a user today and in the future as you can do this. We're going to help guide you through it, right? But we're going to put enough tools in your hands so that you could be the one to guide the system and let it know how to effectively teach you. How are you guys thinking about solving for hallucinations? If I, if, you know, if you can remember a teacher that taught you something and it was wrong, it's like it just completely destroys the trust. Like, it's hard to, you're like, you said that this event happened in 1970 and it actually happened in 1950. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what would,

Starting point is 02:07:08 what would we be as a 2025 AI startup without a multi-agent architecture, right? Near, let's give it up for multi-agent architecture. Let me, let me tell you about a multi-agent architecture. Look, the big challenge in a lot of what we spent resources on over the last year building this thing was on how do you present to the user really high quality engaging content that is accurate extremely quickly because for this content to be lightweight and accessible, it has to happen fast, right? So the way that this works under the hood is like this, I think honestly the toughest challenge is an orchestration challenge is how do you simultaneously have an agent generating, you know, the skeleton of course and the references that it's going to pull in and the script for the audio and factional. check all this stuff, agents correcting other agents, and all that happens within seconds of you generating a course, and it's going to continue to get better. Look, hallucinations, I think, are reality is, I think right now people primarily learn through resources that are completely unchecked.

Starting point is 02:08:06 And so I think one of the biggest advantage that, advantages that we want to invest in is making sure that when people come here, they feel confident that they're getting the highest quality and the most accurate. Well, congratulations on the launch. I'm excited to try it out. My challenge for you, I don't know if either of you play the obo, you need to use obo to learn to play the obo. You need to dog food your own product.

Starting point is 02:08:26 Next time we have you on the show, that's the goal. I expect a solo on the obo. Obo solo. Obo solo. Let's make it happen. I think it's a great idea. You should. Guys, let me just say one more thing, if you don't mind.

Starting point is 02:08:37 I know you got another guest coming on. We are investing a lot of money in AI. We've invested like what, a trillion dollars at this point or something? It seems crazy to us that we have invested so much money into a third. technology that's going to make an alien life form that's actually smarter than us. And so the whole purpose of this company is to actually use the artificial intelligence to make the humans smarter. That's what we're trying to do here.

Starting point is 02:08:59 It's actually, let's pour that investment back into human intelligence, all right? We're bringing human intelligence back. Organic intelligence, farm to table. That's right. Farm to table intelligence. I'm excited to check it out. We cover like hundreds of topics a show. There's oftentimes where we're coming into a show and we have like 10 minutes to prep on

Starting point is 02:09:18 something that we know nothing about. And I have a feeling that Obo is going to be a great solution for it. So thank you guys for joining and congrats on the launch. Fantastic. We'll talk to you soon. Cheers. Have a good rest of your day. Next up, we have. I'm John from Rapplet. While he's coming in from the restroom rating room, I'll tell you about 8Sleep.com. Get a Pod 5 Ultra, 5-year warranty, 30-net risk-free trial, free returns, free shipping. You heard Nico Rosberg talk about the importance of sleep. You need an 8-sleep. Anyway, we have Amjjad from Replit in the Restream waiting room, bringing him in.

Starting point is 02:09:53 He has some fantastic news for us. Break it down. Welcome back to the show. Great to see you. Thanks for having me here, guys. Good to see you again. Look fantastic. You look, yeah, just great lighting.

Starting point is 02:10:05 You look healthy. You look like you're dead left more than ever. I feel like there's been a PR in the recent history. I won't hold you doing it. I've done a bit of PR on just getting healthier in general. Actually, weightlifting is really bad. for you powerlifting especially you get because he wants to start chasing weights sure you you know you you're fine with getting fat and you're fine with anything you're you're willing to

Starting point is 02:10:28 die to to add that extra pound on your lift and it's just a bad sport in general yeah well yeah john and i john and i go back and forth here john's john's uh very fixated on you know constant improvement in the gym i'm i'm more so like you know uh i want to be strong and healthy Uh, but, uh, anyways, it, uh, you're, what did Delian say the other week? It's like you're always either like adding to your one rep max or, or losing, losing. So it's one way or the other. Uh, well, uh, do you see what PR, do you see what growing, grown Daniel, uh, powerlifting? What do you say? It's like if you, if you want to look ugly and feel shit, take up powerlifting. Yeah, it's not for the aesthetics, for sure. Yeah. Anyway, uh,

Starting point is 02:11:15 PR on fundraising. So congrats on that. What's the news? Thank you. Yeah, we raised $250 million. Congratulations. Let's go. Let's go. At a $3 billion evaluation, led by PRISM Capital with AMAX and Google joining the round. And a bunch of our lovely investors, such as Andreessen, Y, C, and others kind of doubling down.

Starting point is 02:11:42 Fantastic. Massive takeoff, fast takeoff in revenue. and users like the vibe coding error is definitely a narrative that's that that's you know on a tear right now correct yeah but we're actually trying to change the game a little bit like like i think vibe coding is is is awesome yeah but ultimately like what replet is and what i've been trying to do for a long time is make it so that anyone can make software sure i've coding is still somewhat coding you're still sitting in front of an idee and like most people don't want to do that Like, a lot of people like it, but people just want to solve problems, start startups.

Starting point is 02:12:18 That's why they do, you know, coding. And so Replit Agent 3, we, our target is for it to feel like a human developer, for it to work on your behalf. And so the main target we set from like a research perspective is can we make it run for 200 minutes? So when we went from Agent 1 to Agent 2, went from 2 minutes to 20 minutes. So now from 20 minutes to 300 minutes. And actually I'm seeing people show me apps they've built that it's taking four hours on its own. It can boot up a browser window, test the app for you. It can run unit tests.

Starting point is 02:12:59 It can review its code. And we have this adversarial relationship between like Claude and GP5 and Gemini arguing and fighting. And so it's like this multi-agent system. And it's really the state-of-the-art autonomous coding agent. And so the idea is not to vibe code. The idea is to build things. And oftentimes you don't even have to be in front of the computer for that to happen. How big of an opportunity is mobile?

Starting point is 02:13:23 Mobile is huge. So a lot of our customers are actually executives. So I was at the Olin Summit. We hosted AI dinner, brought down from Seattle, Lloyd Frank, from the co-founder of Zillow. And he is Replitt's champion at the firm, right? This is executive chairman of the board. And, you know, a lot of his times in between meetings and things like that. So he can, like, boot up Replitt on his phone.

Starting point is 02:13:51 And we have a lot of other CEOs. I've heard the story secondhand that, you know, Vlad from Robin Hood would, like, prototype applications on Replit on his phone in meetings to kind of show engineers what they should go and build. And so I think it really changes the game. It's no longer about being a computer nerd sitting in front of a computer. It's about making things, whether it's on your phone, on your, you know, hopefully in the future, even, you know, you can just talk to Replit via your headphones. And it just goes and does the thing. Yep.

Starting point is 02:14:25 No, no, I think that there's, there's that meme of like where you sit in the org is correlated to how many monitors you have, right? And it's like the person who's like keeping the entire. app online, like the genius systems engineer has three monitors, then like the product manager has like, you know, one extra monitor in a laptop that they take to meetings, and then the CEO is just on their phone all the time. And giving the CEO or executive who's just on their phone, the ability to express themselves in software is extremely powerful. I'm interested, oh, sorry. How do you think about projecting and forecasting market size of code generation broadly because Repplet was early to this space,

Starting point is 02:15:08 but it's heavily competitive with via, you know, there was even, now that I think about it, at Demo Day, there was a, the other day, there was a company that I was kind of thinking when I heard the pitch, like this feels like basically like a feature of Replit, right? So it's just like hyper-competitive space, but at the same time the world wants.

Starting point is 02:15:28 To test flight specifically, is that the one you're talking about? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the world just wants more and more and more code and the cheaper you make it to make code, the more the world wants it. But I'm curious how you think about kind of the overall market opportunity. First of all, super vindicated, right? Like, I've been talking about this since I was a teenager. I was working at, you know, Code Academy and we were saying, anyone can learn to code. Everyone wants to make software. And everyone's like, well, you should learn to be a plumber because everyone needs plumbing. I was like, no, it's

Starting point is 02:15:58 different. Like, we need an abundance of code. You don't need an abundance of plumbing. And, and And some people, but it's a great time. Yeah, and so it's awesome. Like, I think we lit a fire and now the forest is on fire, right? But, and that's, that's always, I think, good. I think the, look, there's a zero sum market and there's a positive sum market. The zero sum market is a professional engineering market. You see the co-pilot versus cursor chart.

Starting point is 02:16:27 And as, as cursor is rising, co-pilot is going in market share. That's a zero-sum market. Now you see it with codex and clot code. And so there's only so many tools that software engineers can use, but like I said, we're bringing, we're, you know, executives are making software, salespeople, marketing people, doctors, nurses, everyone. I haven't, like at this point, I've, over the past year, I've heard every profession under the sun has used replet in some use case. And so I think the market size is, is probably the market size of software, the market size of computers. right and by the way this is the original vision of computing when the original creators of computers that's what they envision they envision that you buy a computer and you program it that's how you use it they didn't like envision the software industry and i think that's that's the true essence of you know how computing could be really really powerful is the ability for anyone to program it so

Starting point is 02:17:27 that's one another sort of we did it like a one more thing as part of our agent three announcement And it's sort of this low-key launch that I think will transform our business over time. And it's the ability for Replit agent to make other agents. So we've gotten really good at making agents. And now we're imbueing that knowledge into the agent itself. And what we're finding in the enterprise is that a lot of people want to solve problems. Software as a means of solving problems. You create an app and then you use that app to take an action, right?

Starting point is 02:18:03 but a lot of times an agent can take an action on your behalf and so you can create an HR agent that sales agents you know there's there's so many things that could be automated and there's an entire industry that's going to emerge around vertical agents and that's fine but all times you need very domain specific like HR onboarding agent for the idiosyncratic bespoke way we do onboarding in our company and the only person who knows how to do it is one HR ops person at our company And so, you know, now agent can make other agents, and that market size is also disingenly large, because that starts to displace white-collar labor in many ways. On the topic of just more and more code endlessly, I'm interested to know how you think

Starting point is 02:18:55 instantiation of code will live in the consumer world over time, and I'll give you an example. So I've fired off deeper research reports in OpenAIS chat GPT. I've also once gone to Claude Code and said with the same prompt, do all the deep research, but then instantiate it as an HTML site that is mobile responsive and can use all different HTML tables. And you can tell that when deep research fills in from chat GPT, it has the ability to use markdown and create a table. But it can't just pull a random JavaScript. script library and create an interactive bar chart. It can't randomly throw images in and add all these different divs that you could possibly

Starting point is 02:19:38 do on HTML. And so I was thinking about, you know, are we going to get to a world where you open up your favorite LLM chat app and in order to answer the problem, it's building a widget, building a piece of software, the same way when you go to Google and you ask for 2 plus 2, it just gives you a calculator, an actual HTML calculator. You can instantiate that calculator in code. And so I'm wondering how you think the market will look in like five, I don't know, 10 years or something. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:20:06 How much code is. Yeah, I think you hit on something super important. I think it is easier to look at this and say this is the market for Kodgen. Yeah. You know, it's a market for software. Yeah. Again, if you go back to history when, you know, Turing wrote his 1936 paper that, you know, invented the computer, the Turing machine, it's about universal computation. is that, you know, computers can be these dynamic systems, right?

Starting point is 02:20:34 And, you know, initially computers were these fancy calculators. You couldn't program them in software. You had to kind of, you know, rewire them. And then von Neumann in the, you know, 40s, 50s created the stored program computer and the idea is that you can suddenly program them. And, you know, every computer we have right now is a Von Von Neumann machine. And I think this moment is as big as that moment. You went from static computers to programmable computers.

Starting point is 02:20:59 Now we're going from static software to dynamic and malleable software. So every piece of software application you're going to be working with will be generating software on the fly, pulling packages on the fly, and creating bespoke software for your use case. So, you know, instead of like going and buying Tableau to do this one exact thing, you can go to Replit or Manus or even Chachifee will do it in the future and all of that. and depending on how depth of the power is, I think Replit is going to be the most powerful. Sure.

Starting point is 02:21:32 But of course you can use any of the other tools and they're going to generate the bespoke software that you need for that exact use case. And I think that's a very exciting future. Yeah, there will be sort of like continual mode. When you see some of these insane cloud backlogs where you have like Google and Microsoft and Oracle and everybody's reporting like we have backlogs

Starting point is 02:21:53 in the hundreds of billions. And I think Wall Street looks at that. And they say, okay, where is this, where is this revenue really going to, where is this, how is this revenue going to material? I mean, sorry, but like, that's not what Wall Street's reaction was. Wall Street's reaction was like, oh, the money's in the bank. Like, let's drive the stock higher. Well, well, sure.

Starting point is 02:22:11 I'm saying to more critical investors or thing. Like, that's a lot of money being thrown around, a lot of numbers. Where, what, how do you, you know, make it? But, but on your side, as you see, you know, the entire market of software shifting. from, you know, we make software and we sell a lot of times to we make software continuously for the needs of our business. Do those kind of backlogs start to make sense to you? I think so. Look, I'm not an investor. We might be in a bubble in the short term, but I am confident that the long-term value of this technology, especially as it pertains to LLM's

Starting point is 02:22:51 making software, is massive. In some sense, it's going to displace existing value, so that in the vertical point solution SaaS space, I think it'll start doing some jobs that otherwise humans have been doing so that the existing value capture from the existing market. But it's also going to fundamentally change how we use computers, how we run our businesses. Businesses can be a lot more efficient. And I think that like an economist or philosopher need to start thinking about what the future of work would look like when everyone has a fully autonomous programmer in their pocket. It's, you know, every company is bottlenecked by software, every company in the world from

Starting point is 02:23:38 one person company to a 100,000 person company. So when your finance team needed this like data to be pipeline from like Stripe and other places so they can run certain analysis, they're bottlenecked by data engineering. But if I can like let loose. you know, Replit or clock code, whatever, and just say, like, go figure out these data sources and plumb them in so I can run SQL queries on them. And then three or four hours later, you have that ready. Then, you know, you unblocked yourself. You created massive improvements to your processes. And also, you don't need the engineers to go work on this site quest. And they can focus on the core software that the company is building. Fantastic. We went viral last time

Starting point is 02:24:25 asking you advice for young people let's get your updated thinking should you learn to code in 2025 what do you want to do i would say like do you want to start a startup go fucking start a startup like go to replica put your idea in and you know in 20 minutes you'll get a prototype and then once you have a better idea of what you want to build you can put in a larger prompt and have it run for three hours and then come back to you with a product that maybe you can release even in the first day. Is that what you want to do? Now, you want to be a specialist. You want to go work on, you know, writing C soft, provable C software for the, you know, next Apollo program. Yeah, go get a PhD in computer science. But really it comes down to what

Starting point is 02:25:11 you want to do. I think the future is entrepreneurship. And not just entrepreneurship and building businesses, but also what we're seeing is there's a lot of entrepreneurs within companies that are creating tremendous value we hear of companies all the time employees using replet creating millions of dollars of revenue for their company and they're not engineers they're operations people product managers and all sorts of people are now empowered to do that but i think the main skill uh the main set of skills is going to be resourcefulness uh i think the worst thing you could do is be do what you're told today the worst thing you could do is perhaps listen to your parents.

Starting point is 02:25:51 Here we go. Maybe that goes, there we go. That was a great answer. Because, you know, look, I think that, you know, all the advice is outdated. And I think we're entering a very dynamic era. And I think, you know, especially young people need to think for themselves. They'll know much better than their teachers, their parents, everyone else, what they

Starting point is 02:26:12 need to focus on, what kind of skills they need to learn. Thank you so much for taking the time. The robots will do all of the process. Yep. You just need to. ideate and great things. Yeah, that's true of the human spirits. We're never going to lose that.

Starting point is 02:26:26 That's the human spirit. I agree. Thank you so much for taking the time. Congrats on the new round. Always pleasure. We'll talk to you soon. Always good. See you.

Starting point is 02:26:33 Cheers. Bye. Let me tell you about public.com investing for those that take it seriously. They got multi-ass investing industry leading yields and trusted by millions. Up next, we have Alex from Higgsfield AI in the restream waiting room. Let's bring him in to the TB. on Ultradem. Welcome to stream, Alex. Great to see you. How are you doing? Doing great. Thank you for having me. Fantastic. Give us the news. Do you have anything to share on the

Starting point is 02:27:01 fundraising side? Yeah, for sure. Guys, happy to announce that we raise 50 million and we purposefully pick you guys. Oh, what? Yeah, you represent a new media. Yes. Sorry to interrupt. Thank you so much. I got a little excited. Continue. I think you were saying something very nice about how we're neatly organized. We're just like banging gongs and stuff. Anyway, I'll let you talk. Sorry. Yeah, I mean, we're just excited to support this new wave of creators who are social media native. Yeah. And I think TBPN is a great example of what that means to be social media native and don't be the gatekeeper. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:27:51 So that's for us, we also are excited to share some stats today. Please. We, in just five months after the launch, we probably crossed over 1.3 billion views on social media. All the counter generated with Hicksfield crossed over a billion views on social media. That was crazy. Congratulations. What, uh, what kind of, what kind of power law is there? is there one because if you had the Pope wearing the puffy jacket

Starting point is 02:28:20 that could be like 200 million views or is it more yeah what does the power law look like what's the most interesting image you've seen look I think I think what matters today is consistency you guys go out every day right Higgs will releases every day and successful creators they have to post

Starting point is 02:28:40 like five times a day on social media some short snippets I think frequency and relevancy is what matters. What are the most interesting use cases that you're seeing? There was obviously the Studio Ghibli launch where we got the ability to create cartoons. Nanobanana, I saw a lot of people just like swapping clothing. Has there been kind of a killer use case that you've seen

Starting point is 02:29:07 where you've gone to maybe friends who aren't reading the deep dive, how to prompt all these threads, but and just said, hey, we got this specific thing covered. You're going to have a great experience if you use Higgsfield in this way. For sure. Primarily Hicksfield stands behind creators and really supporting creators is the primary goal. And we integrate all the best tooling including the Nana Banana, which you mentioned. One of the most surprising use cases where we see a lot of traction is actually product placements.

Starting point is 02:29:41 And we are excited to see Hicksfield being. adopted by Fortune 500 companies to really put their products to work, to get traction on social media. And this is where Higgsfield proprietary models like Higgsfield Soul come into the play. As those large brands, they create own AI digital spokespersons to really promote the brands. Talk about Higgsfield Ventures. pretty uncommon for companies to launch venture funds so early, but obviously Slack had a fund,

Starting point is 02:30:17 Stripes invested a ton. What's the thinking there? First and foremost, we just received a lot of in-bounds. How can we get the access to Higgsfield models? Sure. How we can grow the same way as Hicksfield. And we thought that there is a need to, to explain to developers, to support the next way for AI startups.

Starting point is 02:30:45 And that's why we launch Kixel Ventures. So really, the program is not focused on just on a traditional venture investing. It is around sharing the growth playbooks and providing unique access to the technology. Are you worried if you give people the playbooks and the models that they'll come and compete with you? or is it or you're positive sum we have contrarian view on that to be honest look i think that there is a traditional um there is a traditional way to build a company and that's very often in a very often in the technology space before it really required to raise a lot of funding and burn and burn money and we we have seen that recently and rison and martin casado they they pushed these

Starting point is 02:31:34 consensus-driven investing narrative a lot, which obviously benefits them, as they probably have the largest fund in the world. In the same time today, what we are observing is that there is a new next generation of E.I. Lean startups like Hicksfield, which are actually profitable, profitable almost from the day one. And we believe that this is, this next wave is probably going to be as large as VC-backed startups. And I think we can, we can support the creation of this next generation startups how how did you pitch this latest round you know if somebody's giving you 50 million dollars i presume they would like you to at least be a billion dollar company someday what is what is higgs field as a you know multi billion dollar

Starting point is 02:32:24 company look like and and what's your kind of if you had a crystal ball uh what would paint us a picture for sure. I think it is quite simple. A lot of people got super superpower with self-expression on thanks to social media and mobile phones. A lot of people are probably still shy to do that and Jenny I is just going to propel self-expression and essentially we believe that in three years every second video is going to be AI generated and it's going to be AI generated and it's going to be AI generate with Hicksfield. So the impact is going to be way bigger than just, let's say, building video version of Canva. I think this is going to be a transformative movement in the social media space. And that's because today every piece of content that's produced has some

Starting point is 02:33:23 sort of cost. And as more and more content is produced with AI, you guys can effectively capture some of that, some of the costs that would have been spent on, on traditional video production, whether it's just somebody with the phone and their time and their hand, or it's sort of a more produced shoot. Is that, my hearing that right? Yeah, for sure. The cost is an important factor, but it's not just that. Like, look, I mean, for a live show, you guys clearly kill this. But you bring the best people in the industry. Like, you see the lineup today. No one else can bring that i'm not talking about myself obviously right but there are other people whom you bring and they they didn't they do not typically show up in the live shows um but many people cannot

Starting point is 02:34:10 really do the same stuff which you do but people have ideas like how they can make shows uh like let's say cartoons for kids how they can make fantasy contents um and so on and before that before Gen AI, it was impossible for those creators to really, to really create content for social media. And all the con which we have, which we are seeing today is primarily, um, is primarily just live content. Like people just, uh, recording themselves. So Gen. AI is just going to like, I think we, we should expect that amounts of number of different genres or types of the content is just going to 10x from what we have today. Totally. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for stopping by.

Starting point is 02:34:54 Great to get the update. You guys have been crushing it. The round. We will talk to you soon. Have a great rest of your day. Thank you so much. Cheers, Alex. Our next guest is already in the roost room, waiting room.

Starting point is 02:35:05 Let me tell you about adquick.com. Out of home advertising made easy and measurable. Say goodbye to the headaches of out of home advertising. Only ad quick combines technology, out of home expertise, and data to enable efficient, seamless ad buying across the globe. Our next guest is from Bain Capital, Stefan Cohen. Welcome to the GDP and Ultradine. What's happening?

Starting point is 02:35:24 Great to meet you. Welcome to the show. Good to meet you guys, too. Thanks for having me. Give us a quick backstory on yourself, and then there's a bunch of stuff to talk about. Yeah, a quick background of me. So I've been at Bain for 10 years now. I joined from one of our portfolio companies in the Data Center software space called Turbonomic that we, I was an early employee there post-Series A. We sold that business to IBM for a couple billion. And I joined BCV as a partner, focused on early stage investing. And about five years ago, we decided to spin off a dedicated crypto business being capital

Starting point is 02:36:05 crypto, which I'm one of the co-leads on. And it has been a really fun and interesting run. We've been investing in the space for about a decade now. Awesome. What is like the crypto strategy? Is it a mix of private? and, you know, active trading, like, what's the actual strategy? Yeah.

Starting point is 02:36:28 So the setup is kind of the core premise when we launched the firm was that we thought that a lot of value would accrue to protocols. And so we felt like we needed a flexible mandate to be able to buy liquid crypto and also invest in early stage projects. So the fund is very flexible in that manner. We have liquid tokens that we purchase on the open market. And then we also have, you know, seed through series, C, D investments that we've done. Yeah, we try to not be active traders.

Starting point is 02:36:57 We don't think that's the most productive use of our time. We think of these as like kind of longhold positions that we'll build real concentration in. How has it felt like for so, you know, when you think about the, you know, not deep history in crypto, but let's say like 2020 to 2024, it felt like. it felt like the, I mean, the technology was just handy, like being handicapped by the regulatory environment. You had this mix of, you know, as an investor, you'd be investing in. You'd invest, let's say, on a, on a SAFT or a safe plus a warrant. And then there's these sort of like two assets. You have a token that's trading. And then you have like the actual equity in the company. And that always felt like there were some key areas that it made sense. But then a lot of points

Starting point is 02:37:47 who are like, what do I actually own here? Where's the value going to accrue? With the updated regulatory environment, meaning that kind of feels like you can do almost anything now, where is value going to accrue? Are we going to see crypto projects really try to tie the equity value to the token? Or are we still going to see these kind of like dual, dual approaches.

Starting point is 02:38:18 Yeah, I think it really depends on what folks are building. You know, my, you know, the sort of like early premises of investing in crypto protocols, which are these like decentralized apps or blockchains themselves, was that the tokens kind of are like equity-like looking instruments where based on the usage of the protocol, they accrue fees through usage, and then they have a cash flow profile, and you can kind of fundamentally value them. And they're not owned by any single party. They have governance rights where they kind of vote

Starting point is 02:38:51 on code contributions to the application or the blockchain that they're tied to. And I think that core principle hasn't changed. And so for those types of protocols, that's very true. I think structurally, things have shifted. We had to do a lot of sort of heroics pre this administration to ensure that we were protected from a regulatory standpoint when we were doing token launches.

Starting point is 02:39:16 And so a lot of these teams would basically have like an equity company, you'd be issued token warrants. And then at the point of issuing the token, you would have an offshore foundation that would actually issue the token itself and the investors would have rights to that. We have, I think most projects right now have kind of have that legacy model.

Starting point is 02:39:36 I don't know that many are actually trying new and different models for- Yeah, I guess what I was trying to get out is like how do you, what's after or this sort of foundation model, is there enough regulatory clarity that you could establish kind of a new model? Or is it now been workshopped enough and trialed enough that it actually is the right model for the future? I think the model works fine. I mean, I suspect people will try other different structures. But the fundamental problem with the model is you end up with

Starting point is 02:40:08 this equity company that it oftentimes doesn't have any real value associated with it. And there is some, you know, we've had to deal with some things with legacy portfolio companies where they either need to shut those down or sort of allocate their balance sheet over to the foundation. But that seems to not be like the fundamental shift from a regulatory standpoint right now. I think the fundamental shift is that founders are now emboldened to be able to go build again, which is really exciting. Tell me about the hyperstition investing thesis.

Starting point is 02:40:37 I've never heard any VC put that in such, you know, stark terms. before. Yeah, I think there's sort of this like consistent pattern that we've recognized with the most outstanding founders and companies that we've had a chance to work with, which is that their ideas are initially disgusting and really hard to believe. You know, it's sort of a, you know, if you think of this like, you know, this bell curve of companies at the beginning, it's like offensive. And then once you get closer to mass market adoption, everyone's kind of like, okay, yeah,

Starting point is 02:41:10 that makes sense. And then usually there's like a trough of illusionment. where everyone's lost faith in it, and maybe that was like post-2020 crypto in a way. But there's been this consistent theme with founders, which is that many that are starting out that have sort of these views of what the world should look like and how the world should be sort of shaped

Starting point is 02:41:31 around their values and principles in the beginning seem kind of unreal. And we increasingly have learned that the real art to this is to invest with these sort of long-tail outcomes is to work with those founders and believe in them and believe in them with capital and not just with our belief as a group.

Starting point is 02:41:54 But we're really like in search of those types of ideas. And I think the two examples that we really point to, one was Crusoe when they were raising their seed financing. It was kind of an unbelievable idea, which was like we're going to go off into the oil fields and build data centers that are capturing flared natural. gas and we'll scale those to eventually handle AI-level compute. I mean, it was so crazy that at the time, like, they actually had to go and build a box

Starting point is 02:42:24 at the time it was in Colorado to show that the model actually worked. And, you know, more recently, we've had the privilege of being involved with WorldCoin, which, you know, outside in is this sort of decentralized identity network. But the real notion is that in the future, and I think we're starting. to feel this more and more now it's very hard to tell what's real and what's not on the internet and we sort of view that this like this model of trust in the internet is breaking right now and one of the core premises of trust is like are you even talking to me right now you know did i tweet the thing that i tweeted earlier and and so this notion that proof of humanness

Starting point is 02:43:05 and proof of identity in a sort of globally distributed internet native way is very important so So we're on the hunt for those types of ideas, and that's part of what makes the job really fun. Do you believe in the Landian idea that capitalism is a time-traveling artificial intelligence? I don't know that I've heard this idea. You'll have to explain it to me. The idea is that artificial intelligence existed in the future at some point

Starting point is 02:43:36 and built a time machine and came back and invented capitalism, because capital acceleration will, by nature, create artificial intelligence. And that is the landian acceleration path that we're on. I don't know, I'm getting too deep in the weeds. I like it. I mean, I like it. You know, one of the things that I'm always kind of struck by is how, like, innovation breeds solutions.

Starting point is 02:44:00 Sure. And, you know, AI is like obviously a manifestation of that. But, you know, even in the crypto world, like stable coins weren't really invented, just solve the U.S. debt issue, but like a byproduct of inventing these like digital dollars. You socialize the debt across the entire world. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, I'm sort of like, I continue to just be like hit in the face with these moments where like, man, it's almost too perfect. And so maybe maybe that's right. Yeah. Stable coins are now regulated in the U.S. or have a framework. And which is wild thinking about the stable coin businesses that were

Starting point is 02:44:36 started when there just was no real clarity. So. you know obviously credit credit to them for for having faith how do you think foreign governments will respond over time to USCC and USCT and other stable coins getting gaining adoption in there because like as an American the idea of sort of like outsourcing our debt problem or spreading it around the world sounds sounds great but if you're a foreign government you know you want people like Turkey's paying 40% you know on their bonds right now and you know if everybody in the country can get access to I mean I guess that's a mechanism for them to get people to keep their capital in the in the Turkish system but but yeah how do you

Starting point is 02:45:29 expect foreign governments to respond yeah I mean it's an interesting one because like on the one hand they already were doing it right they were buying our debt all over the I mean, it's just, it's more recent than not that other governments have sort of been, you know, moving out of U.S. treasuries. But, you know, what I view is happening right now is really we're transitioning from sovereign governments owning our debt to other people holding our debt, right? It's like, if you think about like really what's happening with stable coins is that businesses and individuals outside of the U.S., particularly right now, I mean, I think over time the U.S. will become more of a center of adoption here. But really, the like $250 billion of issuance is just people and businesses offshore that want a more stable access to dollars. And I think government, some governments, obviously, will try to do capital controls and prevent that from happening. I think many view it as if they can plug into the system well.

Starting point is 02:46:30 Like Brazil in particular is, I don't know if you guys have tracked what's happening with New Bank and Picks and Stable Coins, but there's, you know, There's quite streamlined interoperability there. And if users have to transact in local currency in that economy, then they're forced to go back and forth. But certainly some governments will take an adversarial view of it. Yeah, but some governments have more gain than lose, so they'll take it. Which is great. Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 02:46:54 Play that eagle sound, Jordi. There we go. America. Thank you so much for having a hug. Thanks for joining, Stefan. We'll talk to you soon. Thanks so much. Bye.

Starting point is 02:47:04 Yes, good. go to getbezzled.com. Your bezel concierge is available now to source you any watch on the planet, seriously any watch. Our next guest is in the re-stream waiting room. We will bring him in. And to the TBPN Ultrodome

Starting point is 02:47:17 and continue today's show. Here we go. From Sphinx AI, I believe. What's happening? Welcome to the show. He's driving me. Thanks so much for hopping on. Give us a breakdown.

Starting point is 02:47:29 Introduce yourself. What are you building? What's the news? Yeah, so I'm Rohan. I'm one of the co-founders in this. CEO of Sphinx. Sphinx is a company that is solving AI for data and specifically we're razor focused on the idea that large language models in AI today are really good at text, they're going to code, which is just a type of text, good at images. What they're not

Starting point is 02:47:47 good at is the type of tabular semi-structured time series information that makes most of the world work, everything from supply change to high finance to manufacturing. We're bridging that gap in delivering co-pilots that can think about data natively and help people get from piles of raw information to valuable business ideas, what we call alphas in finance, but can be extended to almost any industry. Interesting. Who's the first customer in finance then? Yeah. First customer in finance, don't know if I have the rights to name them, but we do have the head. I mean, like the architect, private equity, hedge fund, quine, high frequency. So, yeah, so someone who's like analyzing a stock on a quarter by quarter basis almost.

Starting point is 02:48:28 That's right. Yep. That makes sense. Quarter by quarter. Faster than quarter by quarter really. Sure. We're working with a lot of quons. So people who are, maybe day by day or even faster than that. Sure. But yeah, the hedge funds are the target market initially. They are able to solve these problems where they find a single insight that can make billions in the year. That's interesting. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:48:44 And then I imagine that if you go any faster, the customer wants to write their own, O Camel, if we're talking about Jane Strait. And so it's for a specific quant that's looking for, yeah, day by day analysis. Interesting. Yes. So what is the go-to-market like? I imagine that maybe it's more of like an enterprise software deal. You're actually going outbound, meeting with folks, steak dinners, signing deals, or is this kind of like general sign up on the website?

Starting point is 02:49:15 Both, right? So we are going to people, maybe not steak dinners yet, don't know if we have that budget, but we certainly are talking to a lot of different companies across industries, but it also is a bottoms up motion. There are a lot of people, myself included in my past role. I used to be at Citadel. I ran a quant team. So I was very frustrated, the lack of tools like this to help me get from idea to value.

Starting point is 02:49:36 So we do have quite a robust set of data scientists, quantitative researchers, who are just using the product off the shelf, but we're also making those enterprise sales as well. That's awesome. What is, give us your read on the talent wars between the Citadel's of the world and the Frontier Labs and now, Sphinx, of course, because I'm sure you're. Yeah, no, we've gotten people from hedge funds, not from Citadel. I do have a non-solic, but we have gotten people from other hedge funds and we have gotten people to take our offer over, say, anthropic or open AI. Look, like, it comes down to what you're

Starting point is 02:50:07 optimizing for. I think if you're going to these foundation labs, you're betting on AGI, and if you win, it could for you. That's a great bet. Hedge funds are betting on almost nothing. I think if the AI bubble pops tomorrow, so it'll make a hell of a lot of money, and that's great for them. And really, for us, we're focused on our specific application. So it comes down to what you're passionate about. Is it money? Is it AGI or is it just like razor sharp? focus on solving one problem. And that's who we hire. What's your take on Microsoft co-pilot in Excel? We've talked to probably four different companies that are building Excel add-ons. There's that world. How does that fit into your strategy? Are you doing something different?

Starting point is 02:50:48 Or do you see that on the roadmap? How do you think about that? Look, I think Excel has been the tool for data for like however it's been out there. but we don't see that as being the transformative layer. It's kind of serious data work, the kind of data work that makes people billions of dollars is done on a slightly different stack, a stack that can scale a little bit more that translates more naturally to production.

Starting point is 02:51:08 And we really want to target that. And Excel is easy to use, but what's easier than Excel is writing problems. So over time, I'm not saying I'm killing Excel today, right? But over time, I see that as kind of becoming a less relevant layer, almost just the interpretability layer on top of something like Sphinx,

Starting point is 02:51:25 actually getting worked done in XLex. Excel, I feel, is going to become a thing of the past. We're going to be able to build much more serious models with a lot more financial impact. How do you charge for Sphinx? Because it feels like, you know, the best companies create a lot more value than they capture. Percent of AU.M. Just 2% of AU.M. Just give me 2% of your AU.M. Citadel.

Starting point is 02:51:45 We're good. Yeah, your entire manager. Yeah, I love that. No, but it's like, you know, if you help somebody make, if you help people make money, they're happy to pay you a lot for that. Yeah, look, we don't only work in finance. We're already quite horizontal, and it's very hard for us to tell the exact nature of the value we're delivering. But some of our customers, of course, they're open with others, like hedge funds, they're not going to tell us, like, what they found.

Starting point is 02:52:10 So the kind of way of, like, capturing that value, you know, it's hard. It's hard for us, but really for us, the focus is on building something transformative. And, you know, this is step one, as we're able to get more and more autonomous and we're able to eventually say, you know, we can solve large-scale data problems in a couple seconds, fully autonomous. I think the value becomes enormously clear. So we're not overly focused on that right now. Really, right now, we just charge our usage. We want to deliver people something that they use. When they use it, they have to pay us to get that service.

Starting point is 02:52:38 That makes sense. Well, thank you so much for taking some time out of your day to come talk to us. Yeah, it's great to meet you. Congratulations. We'll talk to you soon. Have a great rest of the day. And I will tell you about Wander. Find your happy place.

Starting point is 02:52:49 Book of Wander with Aspiring Views Hotel Great Amenities, Dreamy Beds, Top-Tier Cleaning, 24-7 Concier Service. It's a vacation home, but better. Our next guest is in the Restream Waiting Room. Timothy, welcome to TVPN. Fantastic background. How are you doing? What is behind you?

Starting point is 02:53:06 Break it down, introduce yourself. What are we looking at? Yeah, guys, good to be on the show. We're excited to share what we're doing here at Intramotive. We're building the battery electric autonomous rail car. So when you think of trains going across the country and two or three mile long strings, we make every single one drive themselves.

Starting point is 02:53:22 No way. Crazy. Train maxi. That's amazing. We've been waiting for this. This is the, I think this is the first. We've interviewed hundreds of founders. I'm blown away.

Starting point is 02:53:34 This, this doesn't seem like something that, like, give me the why now. Like, why didn't this happen 10 years ago? Like, you don't have the same problem as Waymo where you have to steer as much or do you? Like, why is this just happening now? No, it's a great question. And it's a great natural place to start from. And really, rails out of sight, out of mind for a lot of people, especially when you think about our tech. workforce and the people that are trying to solve really hard problems out there.

Starting point is 02:53:58 And that's exactly why there's so much opportunity here in rail to do exactly that. Take the technologies that have been pushed forward, maybe for a decade on the perception models, the control systems, the electrifications happen in industry, and bring that to rail and to build a team of tech workers around it. That's really what we're doing here. It naturally makes sense. You do have fixed infrastructure. You've got track.

Starting point is 02:54:19 You've got points of rail that go across the country. You've got a 160,000 miles of track, generally utilized at a 3% utilization factor. And all that stuff just stacks up to make this a very logical place to implement these types of technologies first. And we're excited that we're in production. We've got vehicles out in service running four customers every single day. We're going to move over 3,500 car loads in production this year. And really just focused on getting America's rail system back on track, where it's forefront and the front part of people's minds.

Starting point is 02:54:52 and let people know this is an exciting place to come put technology in. It's important for the U.S. economy. It's important for our customer stakeholders in agriculture, energy, mining, any of those places, and just get that supply chain right with rail. It's fantastic. When did the idea click for you? Yeah. Well, I'm an engineer by training.

Starting point is 02:55:15 I did my undergrad in South Dakota, the Ph.D. Michigan State. And then I went to work in the defense industry. So I went to go work on cruise missiles, fighter jet platforms, a bunch of unmanned systems. And that's really an industry that's been doing some of these things since the 70s in a lot of ways, building systems that can fly themselves. And then 2017 came and everybody was going to fly to work. So I got to build a flying car on a package delivery drone and help build a team of 40 engineers behind that. And then as many founders know, you've got the right co-founder in the team that gets you to go look at something different.

Starting point is 02:55:49 and he was doing his MBA at USC studying supply chain logistics and looking at rail in 2019 and looking at competitive threats of autonomous trucks, electric trucks, and then came to me and said, what do you think happens if we bring these technologies to rail? And that's really what got us off and running. So we have built a system that's backwards compatible with the existing strengths of rail. So if you think of a two-mile-long train running across the country from the Porta Long Beach to Chicago, we can fit in that train. We can hybridize the whole train and ride along with.

Starting point is 02:56:19 a large diesel locomotive unit. But really, that two miles of stuff isn't consumed in Chicago. You've got to break it down and get it to Gary, Indiana, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Peoria, Illinois. And that's really where we can make short trains with the unit economics of those two mile long trains. So you can now say, I need five cars in Gary. I'm going to cut those five cars off, use intramotives products, and get it there. I need ten cars up in Milwaukee. I'm going to go feed a brewery somewhere. I can cut ten more cars off and just send them on the unit economics of a short train. And that's really a game-changing paradigm shift for speed and flexibility on rail. And it already has a cost advantage.

Starting point is 02:56:55 So that's really how we think about it. And where we build out and where we started is in some places like mining and plant railroads. And facilities just like this one in St. Louis where we're headquartered and continue to build it out and utilize that infrastructure better. So you guys have track that runs into your facility? Yeah, this car is sitting on track. We've got two parallel production lines here in St. Louis. And honestly, St. Louis is the right type of place to be for this because we can access all the railroads in the entire country from here. And it's a hub and spoke model.

Starting point is 02:57:27 And we're at one of those hubs in St. Louis. And we can get to all the spokes from here. Talk about the electrical systems. How do you charge this? Do you swap the battery? Or does I imagine it takes a ton of time to charge the actual train or maybe it doesn't, I don't know, break it down. Yeah, that's the beauty of the system. So when you think about rail, you think about where it came from, came from.

Starting point is 02:57:48 a steam engine in the 1800s or the smallest power system that they could make was this giant steam locomotive. But maybe it pulled 10 cars with it at that point. And that necessitated steel track and steel wheels because of how heavy that system is. And also drove the infrastructure the way it is. So that's why we have these tracks and run across the country. Get one, two, three percent better every year for the last 200 years. And now you look at a system where you have a two or three mile long train. But what happened there is that you had the right of ways at all the crossings. You don't start and stop a lot. You go through mountains and sit around them. And all that energy efficiency that goes into that then just makes a battery system actually

Starting point is 02:58:24 work pretty well. We granulize it. So we get down to the single car size where we can make a battery pack the size of a Tesla car battery or I drive a electric truck. So the size of my electric truck battery. And we can actually move 100 tons of freight several hundred miles with that system. And if you want to go further, you just add more of our units and you get really granular. But that leads to us to be able to use level two charging infrastructure and a lot of the investments that the automotive industry is done to get those standards up to par. And also not try to recharge what a locomotive would be, which is 50 to 200 megawatts of power on that unit loss. This is fascinating. What's the state of the company? Like how big are you guys? Have you raised

Starting point is 02:59:05 money? Like how big is the business? Yeah, we're in St. Louis here. We've got a 67,000 square foot The production facility, we've raised up to a series A at this point to fully deploy these assets. Congratulations. Generally, we're around 50 employees at the moment with largely engineering coming from automotive aerospace and rail, kind of this perfect mix where you can guarantee something cool is going to come out the other side and about five years old at this point. Fantastic progress.

Starting point is 02:59:36 Remarkable. Last question from my side. Is there anything that you're, I mean, this is obviously like an American. re-industrialization project in many ways, but are there any top of mind asks for D.C. or American lawmakers, like, if you had to make rail great again agenda, like, what would you change? What are you asking for? What do we need to do more of? Just at a high level, like, what else would help that's maybe just outside of your control? Yeah, no, I think really we just need to talk about it a little bit more. So people talk about highways. They talk about a

Starting point is 03:00:13 autonomous trucks. They talk about autonomous cars. It's in the news every single day. We're getting people to talk about rail and talk about that infrastructure, because in reality, to make rail better, all it is is making stuff move more frequently. You don't need a hyperloop type of technology where you fire packages in a tube. You just need to keep stuff on the rails moving more frequently. We don't really need to rebuild anything. We just need to unlock that massive network and uncongest it. And we can make this extremely competitive. And our technology positions us to do exactly that. And then from the regulatory perspective,

Starting point is 03:00:45 they've been very open to these types of technologies in a really positive way. And we've proven it out in a whole section of the market that's unregulated. So we can just go out there and use those use cases, collect the data that's necessary to get to the regulated use cases from there. And then generate that data

Starting point is 03:01:02 that then goes directly to how we would certify these products in a regular use case. Well, thank you so much for taking some time out of your busy day to come talk to us. Thank you for train maxing. somebody had to do it somebody had to do it we will talk to you soon it'll look obvious in hindsight i think have a great rest of your day awesome talk to you see the man thanks bye up next we have nebius which was in the news just uh yesterday or the day before

Starting point is 03:01:26 chief revenue officer mark oh he's the guy that did the deal who uh certainly would have played a part in this new deal with we're very excited to bring in mark from the restream waiting room let's bring you in mark how are you doing mark what's happening Hey, John, A, Geordy. Fantastic to be here today. Thanks so much for joining it. You look like you're in a pretty good mood. Any reason?

Starting point is 03:01:49 Any good news that happened recently? Oh, man, it's been an exciting week, and I think you already called it out in the wind-up to my showing up. It's extraordinary what's going on at Nebius today. Give us the high-level couple of bullet points on the deal this week. Well, we announced a landmark partnership with Microsoft. one of the leading AI labs that is out there to support them with AI infrastructure under a five-year agreement valued at at least $17.4 billion with the potential

Starting point is 03:02:23 to get a $19.4 billion. Did you think you could get a deal like that done when you join? I mean, I have to imagine that you joined roughly six months ago, was it? I joined a little over three months ago. So maybe the deal was in the works, but it sounds like... Yeah, did they see Satcha Nadella on the Dwar Keshe Patel podcast say, I'm happy to be a leaser, and you said, oh, we'll lease you. Is that exactly how it played out?

Starting point is 03:02:50 I think it's a little more subtle than that. Okay. Because he really didn't hold up his hand and say, hey, come pitch me, and people did. And you got the deal done. Congrats. It's extraordinary to have them as a partner. I mean, Microsoft is by itself an amazing company. and for us to be winning the honor is a landmark for the company and it's helping us to accelerate

Starting point is 03:03:13 all of our plans fantastic talk about the collection behind you the chat's calling it out crazy technique uh that's uh those are legos man that's a that's a Ferrari Lamborghini and a McLaren and uh holy Trinity almost that's the Trinity over there there's another Trinity over there of Land Rover and G-G wagon I love it I love making the Lego cars. Those are fantastic. Give us the state of the company. We've covered,

Starting point is 03:03:42 we've covered Nebius on the show before we know, we know kind of the back story. But, yeah, talk about kind of the kind of more recent history. And, you know, I'm sure you got up to speed as you joined and first learned about the company. Well, the company is very laser-focused on building the AI infrastructure of choice

Starting point is 03:04:04 for startup. all the way through enterprises. And we are making big strides against that vision. We continue to support the most innovative startups. As a matter of fact, one of our customers was on your podcast today, Higgsfield, which is amazing company, amazing company, and very privileged to have them as a customer. Likewise, all the way up to major enterprises like Cloudflare and Shopify.

Starting point is 03:04:32 Wow. And in all cases, we're helping them to not only, only service the near-term model creation or early development works that they have, but also helping them to scale their applications and deliver the inference that they need. So it's a very exciting time. That's fantastic. What, yeah, going forward, you set the bar pretty high here with this recent deal with Microsoft. What, what's kind of the focus over the next, you know, like how I guess I'm curious to understand, you know, with it, with, With the news around Oracle and Open AI this week, a lot of people are, a lot of people

Starting point is 03:05:11 were just kind of questioning like, okay, you're going to build something that's like AWS scale in a very short amount of time here. That seems pretty challenging. How much is a lot of the effort at Nebius really around just like scaling infrastructure and knowing that the demand is there, but it's just like you have to build that capacity? Well, we've always had the vision. and Arkati, our CEO has said it for a long time, that we would do some of these super lab deals.

Starting point is 03:05:41 Today's market, it happens to be a fantastic opportunity, but we believe in the fullness of time, the real opportunity is more along the lines of what you described, which is delivering the AWS equivalent for AI, and that's where the priority is right now focused. So continuing to build out our software stack, being able to cater to that single engineer that's trying to build something from scratch

Starting point is 03:06:04 that signs up with our self-service experience and then being there with them as they scale and their needs expand. At the same time, we're pursuing all of the other high-scale AI consuming customers out there. And we think that the next several years are gonna be a crazy time as capacity supply is being chased by a lot of different people,

Starting point is 03:06:28 but ultimately the long term, the $100 billion plus business opportunity is servicing the equivalent of the hyperscaler requirements for the new class of AI customer. Friend of the show, Dylan Patel, over at Semi Analysis, gave you guys a gold medal in the Cluster Max ranking of GPU clouds. Give us one layer deeper in terms of how you frame what Nebius does best, uniquely,

Starting point is 03:07:03 among the competitive landscape. You know, semi-analysis called you gold, but I'm sure there's a lot more details of how you stand out. Well, we're delivering the software tier that's giving the AI engineer, the tools for them to operate a small or large cluster

Starting point is 03:07:22 or multiple clusters as they see fit, and we're seeing more and more of that. We give the AI engineer the tooling to create a model and optimize a model, and we put at their fingertips, all the open source models. We give the AI engineer the ability to conduct their training and retraining capabilities. And through our AI Studio solutions, we also give them the ability to deliver inference. So you can think of it as a full spectrum set of AI capabilities for the AI

Starting point is 03:07:53 engineer. We're going to continue to innovate and add to those capabilities so you can think about all the adjacent spaces that the AI engineer is likely to need to tap from data pipelines to repositories to who knows what comes next. But our intention is to be fully catering to that AI engineer and being able to serve them, whether they're in a small company or a large organization. Yeah. How does the future of the actual inference API business look? Is that the, the, the, Is that more of a focus for growth versus going more of the construction and real estate route and building megaprojects versus creating like a fantastic API? Do you want to do both? What does the next couple of years look like?

Starting point is 03:08:44 The simple answer is we're going to do both. And the reality is at the foundation is we're chasing demand. So today there is a fair amount of construction taking place. So being there for all of these new model development and retraining requirements is critical. As those projects and customers move into, you know, real production, inference is picking up. And we're seeing it. The redistribution as people succeed is very real. And the fullness of time what we should all want, and this is thinking about it from the standpoint is

Starting point is 03:09:17 end customers or investors, is we want to see all of these projects turn into inference driven because that means that they're actually in production being utilized by hopefully commercially paying customers somewhere. Makes sense. Real value. Well, congratulations on the deal. Thanks so much for stuff. Yeah, great to catch up, Mark.

Starting point is 03:09:35 Congrats on. Pleasure to be here today. Thank you both. Thank you so much. We'll talk to you soon. Have a great rest of your day. We've got to get more Legos around the studio. We do.

Starting point is 03:09:44 It was envious there. I mean, Tyler's over there, just waiting to put them together. That's right. He just needs a time trial. Assembly line over here. Yeah. Well, without further ado, we have Michael from figure from figure coming in from the restroom radio. Michael, how are you doing? Good to meet you. Hi, how are you? We're great. We're

Starting point is 03:10:02 great. How are you doing? Yeah. Big day. Big day. Just another day at the office? Yeah, no, look, big day for figure, big day for all the employees, super proud of what we were able to accomplish. So it's been awesome. Take us through the story. What happened? So today was our IPO. So we You rang the bell Didn't ring the bell So actually when you do that Yeah

Starting point is 03:10:26 You can ring the gun off Like you don't ring the bell You push the button To open the market All digital It's digital But you know We're blockchain so we like that

Starting point is 03:10:36 Yeah it makes sense And yeah So it's been It's been about a six month process Getting ready You do a bunch of meetings Testing the waters They call it now

Starting point is 03:10:46 So for my understanding IBOs have changed a bit since COVID, and now Moore's virtual, more's done up front, and there's actually a little bit less pressure on the road show itself, which was kind of a learning for me. But let's talk a bit about figure. Yeah, yeah, please. Yeah, what was the story about the position of the company, the why now of the IPO, take us through kind of the roadshow narrative?

Starting point is 03:11:12 Yeah, I think folks were focused on probably three things. one is rare combination of growth and profitability. And we have both of those, which is, which is awesome. I think number two is just huge market. So we're in a $185 billion Tam. Basically, we are standardizing all the private credit, starting with mortgage. We also do crypto back loan, a few other things like that. And we're standardizing those rails on blockchain. And then I think Lastly, we are one of the few companies that adds value with blockchain into the real world. So we're in kind of the real world asset space, which also is called tokenization. We're the market leader in debt for that.

Starting point is 03:11:56 We're about 75% market share. And so what we do is we partner with about 170 really well-recognized brands that work with us to originate or tokenize assets, put them on a capital market that's all based on blockchain. And what it does is it ultimately saves a ton of cost and time and just improves both the investor experience and the consumer experience. Yeah, take us through a case study of one of those brands that you work with and walk me through some of the value or the differentiated benefits of being in the crypto world. Is it just access to international capital, speed of transactions? You can move money around on the weekends, nights of weekends. Is it regulatory hurdles or being able to access certain markets?

Starting point is 03:12:40 walk me through all that. Yeah, no, happy to. I think to start, I'd take something like House, just given the audience, I feel like people are probably familiar with them. Sure. They are a kind of housing and home design marketplace, and normally somebody like House would not really want to get involved in the loan origination process or really be comfortable with like mortgage or anything of that nature.

Starting point is 03:13:07 but because figure is so simple to embed, you know, in Houses' case, we work with an API, we can kind of integrate with them and help their end customers take equity out of their homes for things like home improvement and financing contractors and pools and those types of things. And so what we actually do in the process is we take the attributes of the loan that, you know, houses coordinating. And those are hashed on a blockchain at once up front. And then as the loans move throughout the capital markets, there's way less checking and confirming of those details because people can just verify it on blockchain. And so what we actually do in doing so is we save about $11,000 of cost out of the production process out of 12. So it's a really big

Starting point is 03:13:59 savings. And we can do it in five days versus industry average of 45. So, it's a pretty material different. It's so funny because like the, like the very like popular like anti-crypto take is like, oh, well, you can just do this in a database with like Python and, you know, high for goods are trading doesn't need a blockchain to trade stocks really fast during the market open. But like I just I just paid off a car loan and like I'm waiting on the title and I have to like go to an app and like text with somebody. It's going to take me like weeks to just get that.

Starting point is 03:14:29 And it's like, okay, yeah, like that other path is not happening. And it's been years of like, we would like to speed up the normal rails and it just hasn't happened. But so, yeah, what, I mean, raised a ton of money in the IPO. What are the, what does that do? What does that change about the company now that there's more cash on the balance sheet? What was the structure of the deal and like the rationale for that amount? Yeah, it's interesting. So one thing to point out is with, you know, at figure I'm working alongside.

Starting point is 03:15:03 Mike Cagney, who was also worked with me when I was at SOFI. So he was the CEO there. I was Chief Revenue Officer. Here I'm CEO. He's chairman. And together back at SOFI, we actually raised the largest private capital raise at that time. In 2015, it was a billion dollars from SoftBank. Yeah.

Starting point is 03:15:22 And what it did was it really catalyzed SoFi's growth over the years. And if you look back, that was one of the big differentiators. And I think it's one of the reasons why SOFI is such a big. company today, it really stood out amongst its fintech peers. And so I think from that background, you know, this IPO is similar. It's going to be a major catalyst for Figures growth. It's a big opportunity for us to really raise a lot of capital, come out as a market leader, use that to seed out the marketplaces that we've been doing, right? Figure actually started direct to consumer, then when embedded B2B, then went pure marketplace. And you need capital to do that to show

Starting point is 03:15:59 leadership position and to keep adding to that 170 partner base that we have and we're really proud of. What are your lessons from the kind of the SPAC era, the 20-21 era? So far is like one of the examples that we keep coming back to as a company that has performed really well. Stocks trading at $26 today. Obviously went out of 10. I think it's at all-time high is doing very well. 30 billion company. It's no joke. Yeah, I joined with 75 people. Wow. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah. But, but I mean, obviously there was a lot of, there were a lot of different decisions that

Starting point is 03:16:37 were made at that time. What lessons are you, are you looking at 2021, seeing anything now and deciding any structure of the business or decision making currently based on what you learned during the last cycle? I'm glad you asked because it's actually something I've been thinking about a lot. I feel that post kind of 21 and what happened with SPACs, a lot of people became very negative ongoing public. And I don't have it all figured out. This is, you know, our first day. But that said, I do think from going through the process that going public is something that companies should consider, I found the markets to be receptive. I thought, you know, there's a big premium on growth. And I think

Starting point is 03:17:19 in the tech world that we all live in, everyone's so used to, no, growth, but you meet these kind of investors and the kind of this the pantheon of investments they can make you know when you're growing 20 30 40 50 60 percent that's just so impressive and unusual and so there's a lot of excitement and I do feel that in the case of and in the wake of what happened with 21 and that hangover people soured on the public market and everyone thought you know let's not do it and of course there's obviously drawbacks and there's definitely going to be days where I'm going to think, you know, this is a challenge. But at the same time, I found the capital market to be very receptive. And I also found it to be a great branding exercise and really a great way to

Starting point is 03:18:05 kind of get liquidity for shareholders. So I do think that ultimately it's something that people should consider and not necessarily be afraid of what happened in 21 because there are cycles. And I think that's just part of the U.S. capital markets. And it's frankly one of the reasons why we're excited about blockchain and its ability to continue to add value and disrupt in some ways. What's the, what's the, what's the, what's the 10 year vision? Yeah. So right now, we are just about 35 basis points of private credit in terms of our market share. So even though we're a big, rapidly growing company, we do see, you know, we've started by standardizing the mortgage process on blockchain, in particular using our integration between the origination system and the capital market, which really has never existed before, right? everyone's doing their own thing. I see Ramp, for example, sponsoring this podcast. I have

Starting point is 03:18:58 background at Brex. Those are two companies that are both building separate capital markets and separate underwriting processes, whereas if figure had existed when both started, they could both be on figure, just as an example. And so for us, we started in mortgage, we started standardizing and homogenizing those assets and making them tradable on a blockchain. We can do the same across every single private credit asset class and beyond. So we're really in the early innings makes a ton of sense it's exciting very cool uh congratulations thank you for i'm sure you for making time yeah we appreciate you taking the time on the big day for for you and the team and uh little celebration is in order take uh you know feel free to take uh you know back back to

Starting point is 03:19:40 work tomorrow but uh but got it well i'm a big fan of you guys so really appreciate it uh it's an honor to be here so thanks for having come back come back on anytime we'll talk to you soon. After the, I guess when, when does your quiet period start? Is it? Well, not until rings. Yeah, okay. Okay. Well, fantastic. We'll coordinate. We'll talk to you soon. Awesome. All right. Thanks, gentlemen. Really appreciate it. Talk to you soon. Bye. And that concludes the guest section of TVPN Thursday, September 11th, 2025, live back from the TBA. Gary, Marcus, hit the timeline with the article, peak bubble. Peak bubble. It's hard to see how this

Starting point is 03:20:21 won't end badly. He says, he starts the post by sharing the tulip mania, Wikipedia. Famously, so the deep learning is hitting a wall now. Yeah. He said, I don't know when the Gen. AI bubble will end, but this has got to be peak bubble. He's highlighting the Oracle OpenAI signed $300 billion cloud deal.

Starting point is 03:20:42 And he said, in short, OpenAI doesn't have $300 billion. They don't have anywhere near $300 billion by their own. That's not how that works. Optimistic projection, they won't turn a profit. Yeah, well, obviously, we can steal man for Open AI and Oracle. But by their own presumably optimistic rejection, they won't turn a profit until 2030. And all of this is from a company that thought or claim that GPT5 was going to be close to AGI for good measure. Oracle doesn't have the chips.

Starting point is 03:21:14 They would need to fulfill the contracts or even the cash to buy them. I won't say this is all make-believe, but, well, you do this. the map. He says, if Oracle actually collects its $300 billion, I will be truly astounded. And Martin Screlli commented on the original post and said, do you want a short open AI at a $500 billion market cap, which I think is an interesting question, right? And, and, but that's not even necessarily the take that we've been debating, which is not necessarily open AI. It's Oracle. Is Oracle overheated because of this deal?

Starting point is 03:21:55 Like, Gary Marcus' claim is that Oracle will not draw all that $300 billion down on schedule. And if they fail to pull that backlog through, then that would be a cause for concern, potentially. Anyway, I wonder what Warren Buffett has to say about all this. Did you see that he was at the 30th birthday party for Squawk Box yesterday? He's hanging out with Jim Kramer, yeah. We were hanging out with Jim Kramer. I know. I didn't realize it was 30th birthday.

Starting point is 03:22:25 It's the 30th anniversary of Squawk on CNBC. Happy birthday to everyone over there. We got to briefly hang with Jim yesterday. He is incredibly fun to talk to. Yes. Exactly like he is on air. Encyclopedia knowledge of stock prices can just go back. Oh, yeah.

Starting point is 03:22:46 In 2015, Broadcom was it this price and just rattles it off to the same. sense it's remarkable he knows his stuff such a legend i'm i'm honestly jealous of of his engagement hack which is by people by people believing that he always gets trades wrong yes which is just like fundamentally not yeah it's not true at all not true um they they constantly engage with his post no matter what he said so it's like a way to get a bunch of real accounts to drive like real engagement yes and and and you can imagine he gets an incremental five, ten times the impressions because people are just like quoting it, commenting, things like that, but a master at what he does and a great entertainer.

Starting point is 03:23:29 Tyler, what was your reaction to either this or Gary Marcus' post? Well, I think for this, I think maybe a good segment we should start doing is right after founder comes on, you just immediately say long short. Yeah, that'll make everyone super happy. They will love that. And then also, regarding the Gary Marcus thing, I think. There's that joke about Michael Berry where it's like he's predicted eight of the last two, like, market crashes. Totally.

Starting point is 03:23:55 I think there's something, you know, something there. Yep, yep, yep, yeah. So you're saying this time's different. I think Gary Marcus has said many times, like, oh, this is the end. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like, you know, just look at the fund returns, I guess. But he doesn't have a fund, so you just kind of have to, like, like, the nature of investing, puts your thesis in extremely concrete terms. Like, you are short to what degree?

Starting point is 03:24:25 Are you going along with leverage right now? Maybe you're 60% long and 40% bonds. Like, you can be a variety of risk levels. You don't need to be purely, I'm bullish or bearish. You can be anywhere in between that. You can be 100x levered long to 100x levered short. Like, you can take wild swings in either direction. So you can express like, I'm,

Starting point is 03:24:48 not feeling great about this particular evaluation in a bunch of different ways. And as a pundit, I mean, someone in the chat was asking about the inverse Kramer, it is a meme, it's an ETF, it's done somewhat well in various times. I've seen a whole bunch of different reports where someone tried to take every single one of Kramer's calls, put it into a spreadsheet and see how it would perform, but it's very hard because if he says, I'm bullish on this company, he doesn't necessarily revisit that company every day to tell you when he would sell. So he could say, like, we watched that Apple interview and he says, I love Apple. It's a stock you own. You don't trade it.

Starting point is 03:25:31 And so, like, how much credit are we giving him for his Apple call? Like, at some point, five years later, he might have seen earnings and been like, oh, Apple's in trouble. And then they quantized that as like, he's flipped bearish. When really it's like, he didn't necessarily say sell Apple. just said, like, this data point is, is negative. And so there's a bunch of ways that it becomes difficult to actually understand, like, if the mind of Jim Kramer was actually running a fund actively, what would the return profile be? The other interesting thing is that there was one analysis that did look at all of his buy and sell ratings. They tried to get as close as possible to, like, what it would look like to just take every recommendation and put it in their portfolio.

Starting point is 03:26:13 and they found that it did actually outperform the market, but it outperformed the market when the market was going up and it underperformed the market when the market was going down because it was effectively like beta on, it wasn't producing alpha, it was producing beta. And that sort of makes sense in terms of the content creator world because when things are going up, it lends itself to enthusiasm,

Starting point is 03:26:37 and when things are going down, it lends itself to misery. And so, I don't know. Overall, nice guy. It's hard to, you know, perfectly quantize the value of a call on live TV. Anyway, Jordy, anything else we should talk about before we get off? Nepal. Yes. The Gen Z of Nepal overthrew the government and have chosen their new leader via poll on a Discord server.

Starting point is 03:27:06 That is wild. They overthrew the government? That is crazy. Yeah, it's been crazy over there. I don't know anything about Nepal, really. crazy crazy time in the world interesting well we will keep monitoring the situation hopefully you can monitor the situation and we will see you tomorrow why cannot wait have a great day cheers folks love you

TBPN Live - Apple Unveils iPhone 17 Lineup, OpenAI & Oracle's $300B Cloud Pact | Nico Rosberg, Josh Machiz, Nir Zicherman, Amjad Masad, Alex Mashrabov, Stefan Cohen, Rohan Kodialam, Timothy Luchini, Marc Boroditsky, Michael Tannenbaum

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.