TBPN - Blue Origin Lands Rocket, Valve Drops Steam Machine, Cantor Group Surges | Diet TBPN

Episode Date: November 15, 2025

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In orange mode, it is, we're cozy maxing. Blue Origin. Massive landing yesterday. Let's watch the video. Jeff Bezos's rocket company, Blue Origin has just successfully landed. Let's play the clip. This is New Glenn, the rocket booster. Oh no. On a barge in the middle of the ocean. 25 years after its founding. Look at that, becoming the, it's only the second company in history to land, rocket booster after SpaceX. What, what a moment remarkable. Insane. It, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it's, it should be expected. It's been a decade since SpaceX did exactly this, uh, this is a wild video. This is, like, I mean, I'm always, I'm always, I'm always, I'm always amazed by, uh, the fact that they can keep the cameras even rolling or live streaming at all. It's an orbital class rocket.

Very exciting. I was thinking about the implications of this. It's interesting. It's like, on the one hand, like, yeah, you're 10 years behind SpaceX. SpaceX did this exact thing. 2015. 2015, it's been a decade. On the other hand, it's like China hasn't done it.

And they've obviously wanted to. And so that's really cool that America has two companies that are doing it. And they're now in competition. I think a lot of people wrote off Blue Origin like Virgin Galactic. It was just like billionaire side project. SpaceX was the serious. one. I think there's still, you know, there's still a decade behind. But it is just crazy that he's been able to keep it going for so long, making a lot of progress. And I was just laughing

to myself in any other industry, if a founder came to you and was like, yeah, we're a decade behind the leading category, leading company in the category, but we're staying with it for another decade. You'd be like, what? Like, you're a decade behind. You're at GPT1 level, and they're at GPT5 level. We're just trying to get to GPT2 level. Yeah. By next year, by the time you're at GPT2, they're going to be at GPT 6. Seven. So six or seven. What's interesting is that it's a massive company.

So over 10,000 people work there, 25-year project, as I mentioned. But the idea of hiring 10,000 people and rocket scientists, like not cheap people, you know, imagine. I mean, some of them are probably, you know, relatively new grads. But there are some serious salaries to bear. It's almost the equivalent of, you know, somebody working in big tech setting up a cafe that loses some money. but they get a lot of enjoyment out of it, so they keep it going. Yeah. Even though it's not, it may never be like a rational economic activity.

But in this case, I mean, if, you know, the implications are that you could end up in a situation where there's a duopoly in launch. Yeah, I mean, SpaceX is what? Multiple hundreds of billions. And, you know, Blue Origin seems to have somewhat of a similar capability at some point. Like, you know, what's the fair market value of Blue Origin? Is it a billion? Is it 10 billion? Is it 50 billion? Like if it was a public company, just like, you know,

and you're just comping it to SpaceX for whatever reason, you could imagine it trading in the billions for sure. Like you could imagine trading in the high tens of billions. Virgin Galactic is sitting at a $200 million valuation in the public markets. I know that they spacked. I thought that they had despapped. It's sitting at $1,218 dollars, a shirt. share in 2019, and it's now sitting at $3.61.

And I watched an interview, a walk-and-talk tour of the Blue Origin facility with everyday astronaut and Jeff Bezos, and it just seems like he loves it. Like, he's just doing it for the love of the game. It doesn't matter if it's going to take 10% of his net worth. I'm going to be a space man. It's got to be way more thrilling than like sports betting, for example, because it is a gamble, right? You put all the money into the rocket.

The rocket either explodes or it goes up and comes back down. It's got to be thrilling. It's got to be a dopamine machine. The other interesting thing is that because they don't do this regular tender offers that SpaceX does, there's a lot of employees on Reddit who are kind of like, hey, like my stock options are kind of worthless. I don't know how to exercise these. I've been at this company for a very long time. And if I was at SpaceX, I'd probably be cashing out a lot and like retiring very comfortably. But since I'm at Blue Origin, I don't really have the same level of liquidity.

And you could imagine Bezos running a tender offer process that mirrors SpaceX's just by himself. He just personally takes out a billion dollars of cash, which he has and buys a billion dollars of stock from the employees like what happens to SpaceX when there's a billion dollar tender offer. But that comes from other investors. It could just come from him. But it doesn't feel like that's happening. Like SpaceX has this another unfair advantage of employees who go there and think, oh, wow, I'm getting paid a couple hundred, a year, but it could be millions if we really deliver. So we got to go with the extra of my... Not just that, but I will have a consistent opportunity to get liquidity. It sounds like the people

that you found that we're at Blue Origin for a long time are probably sitting there saying themselves, if I had joined SpaceX in a worse role. Some of them literally said that exact thing. It literally said that exactly thing. But it's just interesting that Blue Origins like, it feels like they're somewhat fighting with one arm tied behind their back. They're also way behind on the actual progress of the reusable rocket. They're clearly, you know, like, they don't have an answer to Starship. Starship is four times the capability of this New Glenn rocket that just landed. Damn, Blue Origin just landed New Glenn rocket on their second flight officially become the second

company ever to do it after SpaceX did it a decade ago. Incredible moment for the commercial space industry. The orbital economy has got to be excited about this. more competition means potentially more just cheaper prices on payloads to orbit. So I also saw that Project Coopier, which was Amazon's Starlink competitor, I believe, is rebranding to Amazon Leo, L-E-O. I like that. Yeah, some people were really upset about the rebrand.

I thought it was kind of cool, but they are definitely going to be getting into the space internet. Dan Golden spoke in front of U.S. space leaders on a subject that's been weighing on. He's bored by space. By that, he's bored with low Earth orbit. SpaceX solved cheap launch and still the only, the entire commercial space economy is largely one thing. Communications. Look at this picture.

Wow, look at that. So this is taking off? Wow, look at that. One of the reasons the Blue Origin moved a little bit slower than SpaceX is that they leaned a little bit harder on the exquisite system going really big. and Elon had this idea of like, let's try and make a whole bunch of small things that we bundle together.

So if you look at the number of engines and the bottom of that, I think it has like six engines, seven engines. And if you look at the bottom of like Starship, you'll see like, what, 30 engines or something? I think 33. 33 engines.

Elon has been bigger, at least, on, hey, let's make modular pieces of equipment that can be moved around with maybe not a huge, huge crane. Maybe you can just put it in the back of a truck. Maybe to work on this engine, you can do it in one normal room instead of a massive warehouse. And so the size of the individual pieces of Starship, it adds up to a massive rocket, but each of the pieces can be worked on individually. When you start working on these really, really big systems, any small change,

like cascades through the rest. Where are my asteroid mines? Dan Golden writes, I guess in The Economist. We're all asking the same thing, Dan. Yes, yes, yes. So many Mac users wish they could play PC games, but they don't want expensive, complex PCs. For a fraction of the price and headache, they'll be able to play PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and indie games on the Steam machine.

They launched a controller, a box, like an actual computer, the Steam machine, and then a VR headset. Valve is saying that it's going to be cheaper than the $1,000 Valve Index, which is their previous VR headset. Steam has won. There's no reason to get an Xbox. There's no reason to get an Apple VR headset. They all run on Linux. It's the ultimate computer. I think that it's a unique way to actually announce something. And I liked just the way they did it. Just watch this, Jordy, and listen to the transitions. Hey, everyone. This is Steam Deck. Steam Deck is our powerful, portable. So this is the product that's already out. And this has been on the market for a couple of years. Sold, I think, very well. No one really knows because Valve is such a quiet company.

They're not publicly traded. We're excited to talk about the future of Steam Deck. But not today, because this isn't a video about the future of Steam Deck. This is a video about the future of Steam hardware. Today, we're announcing three new members of the Steam hardware lineup. All connect you with powerful PC gaming. All are optimized for gaming with Steam. And all are shipping in early 2026.

Let's start with this one. Yeah, I think it's cool how they, they start with something that's familiar and then they like bring you into the next thing. Well, the reason it's important is because it's a product that has shipped that people like. Yeah. So it's sort of like reestablishes them. Hardware gets like people have so little trust in a lot of new hardware products. Totally. Oh, this is the new steam machine.

I like that. It's like very like cute and quirky. It has like, I don't know, just like funny aesthetics. But they, that's the first time that they introduced the name. of the product, the next product. It has this like, sort of like friendly, quirky, like aesthetic that fits with the video games, but it doesn't feel like it's from anywhere particular. It feels original.

I don't know. What do you think about the black cube? The black cube? I think it's fine. I mean, it's, it looks like it fits in a media console where it's going to live next to a PS5. Oh, yep. This is Steamframe. See, they do it again.

And then they tell you, okay, we got a new V-Rexam. headset and it's such a funny way to introduce like a new VR headset. This generation VR hardware stream all your steam games VR and non-vr alike in this comfortable lightweight wireless VR headset. This was posted like you know very early in the morning this morning it's possible he just was playing around on uh okay no no no he did not do this atlas hall wakes up every day and refers to themselves as a chronicler of Michael Saylor like Like, they're clearly like a super fan.

This was something that Atlas Haudled generated. And then Michael Saylor took it and was like, he's like, yeah, I got to post this today. That's a great idea. When the stocks down like 50% or whatever. And so the reaction has not been good because, as Jez put it, brother, you are supposed to go down with the ship. Like, he's the captain of the ship.

Why is he not on the ship? It's such a crazy image. Michael Mirafloor says, so you're abandoning a sinking ship when you're supposed to be the captain. God, I love markets. Where else do you get an objective answer to whether you're a genius or a total effing moron in real time? Master is down 50% since this was published. The captain, Sailor himself, he says, unless you do the requisite 100 plus hours of studying Bitcoin on top of 100 plus hours of micro strategy, you should not enter this trade, he said, because it is a very sophisticated trade that 99.99% of Wall Street doesn't even understand.

Obviously, people are dunking on this because the stock has traded down 50% since this was published. Cantor Fitzgerald, now controlled by the son of Howard Lutnik, is having its best year ever, says Joe Wisenthal. Congratulations to Brandon Lettnick. The firm is on track to post revenue in 2025 of upwards of $2.5 billion, an all-time high and a jump of more than a quarter on last year. How do they do it, John? I mean, it feels like Cantor has been early to a bunch of like sort of risk, more risk on investments than other, even pre-administration. They were early to the stable coin thing, I believe, early to a bunch of crypto stuff. This is our Sequoia. It has always been our Sequoia. It has always been our Iraqis. Our Dune.

No, he says it was never Don's Sequoia nor Michaels, Dougs, Jims, or Rolofts from the very beginning when Don chose to build a partnership. and name it after the longest living tree on earth. Sequoia was meant to endure not through individuals, but through us, the collective strength, integrity, and vision of the partnership. I think that this was just their first, like, you know, really public statement as the new co-s stewards. Yes, but what is changing here? Is there, are they going to be focusing more on AI companies or less on AI companies?

Or like, are they being more on growth stage or less on growth stage? Like, is there a change to the strategy? No, I think, I think this is just reminding people what the firm-wide strategy. is. This has been probably the roughest year on record for Sequoia in terms of like comms, right? I mean, I guess, I guess here is the answer to that question about like, what is this a response to? And Alfred says, some people have asked if we will continue to make new investments and lead the investment team. The answer is unequivocal yes. We will source and lead new investments, and we will remain co-leads of the early and growth teams. And so they're open for

business, they're doing deals. They want to actually be investing. Switzerland reaches agreement with the U.S. to cut tariff to 15%. The deal would reduce an extraordinarily high tariff rate at 39% that had threatened to cripple Swiss exports. We all know what those exports are. The United States and Switzerland said on Friday that they had reached an agreement to lower a punishing 39% tariff on Swiss goods, a change that will help to reduce the cost of exporting Swiss pharmaceuticals, gold watches, and chocolate to the United States. The Trump admin put a 39% tariff on Swiss exports in August, blindsiding a long-time ally

in delivering a sharp blow to Switzerland's economy by significantly raising the cost of the country's exports, the United States of drugs, dairy products, gold, and watches. The tariff was one of the highest rates set for any country, which administration officials said was in response to a substantial trade deficit the United States had with Switzerland. There's going to be roughly two Swiss companies committed to making $200 billion. in investments in the United States by 2028. The United States also agreed to Cap Terrace. I didn't know Switzerland had a semiconductor industry.

Well, they do have some AI researchers over there who are like poached for meta, right? Have you been monitoring the GPD 5.1 launch? Like, has it been going well? It feels like it's been kind of quiet, but it's... People seem to generally like it. They didn't release benchmarks, so a lot of the, like, technical people aren't like super concerned.

I mean, I saw some charts that kind of showed that it's more that they're just pushing the model router like further to the edges. So it can reason for even longer if it needs to and it can reason for even less time if it just can come up with the answer quickly more quickly. In the flow, in quotes, he says, the essential question for the modern allocator, the deal guy or the venture capitalist is, do you want to be in the flow? Tyler, do you think this has something to do with having motion. It seems related. I mean, Will is kind of like unct status. I don't know if he would

whoa. Shots fired. Shots fire. Let me explain. Think of the flow as the world's greatest nightclub. It's open 24-7. Many of the coolest and richest guys are there. Guys seem to get rich just by dint of hanging around and the lights never turn on. It's a party that never ends inside the flow. The only decision you have to make is to keep partying. Sure, people get hurt inside the flow. Sometimes guys buy tables they can't afford or get addicted to habits they can't maintain. When this happens, the flow gently returned them to pedestrian life and the party continues. No one ever seems to notice. When you're inside the flow, the only thing you notice is the guys at

higher rungs dangling over a seemingly endless set of 10x markups and lifestyle expenses to exhaust your newly found carry. In my experience during Booms, most get flow curious, then pull back, the pullback comes and people become contrarian and look down their noses at flow folks without even the self-awareness to refer to their dabblings as a phase from when I was younger. And Will Manita says, you are describing being half in, half out of the flow. This will kill you. The flow takes from those who attempt to take from it without giving their all in return. The flow only gives to those who give their all.

It reads like a plot of a horror film. It's fantastic. Will says friends that have done well in the flow seem to share these traits. Oh my God. This is such a long post again. Now, he had to follow it up. He said spend 100% of net cash on rent expenses so they constantly feel pressure. Oh, okay.

Love that. Zegna sneakers, ABC cardigans. Okay. I felt very direct. Low first marriage success rates, high second marriage success. Okay. Okay. Lots of flights, constant two, three city rotation.

Couldn't be us. spend 99% of their time talking about deals that make up less than 5% have deployed dollars. Constantly holding large amounts of cash. Only physically like a tip. A couple grand. You're a notorious tipper. Can't make it through an hour without taking a call. We had a workout with one of these guys this morning.

We felt really, we felt really bad. This guy, we showed up to the gym for a workout and had breakfast with him. That's a good buddy. And he had to step away for three calls during that time. He was on the grind. Lunch guys. It's more so than dinner guys, never breakfast guys. Lacrosse or hockey in high school, not rowing.

Okay. That's Tyler. Wait, which one did you do? Lacrosse guy. I played lacrosse. Oh, flow guy right here. Zoom calls, not sell calls. Okay.

I can see that. I can't tell if, do you want to be in the flow or outside the flow? This is interesting. It's like we're peeling back the onion. We're going a layer deeper on the deals guy archetype, which has been, you know, been workshopped by Will and Jeremy Gaffon over the last few weeks. So they're having fun. Are you guys more in the flow or out of the flow, do you think?

I don't think we qualify for either because we are not deals guys. We are not capital allocators. I think step one of even deciding if you're in or out of the flow is the first line of Will's original post. The essential question for the modern allocator, the deal guy, the venture capitalist. I'm not a deals guy. I'm not an allocator. I'm not a venture capitalist.

So it's an irrelevant question. Are you more of a center or power forward? It's like, I'm a podcaster. That doesn't even apply. Just in, the stock market is an extreme fear, and the ball is being thrown at, is that Kobe? Yes, that's Kobe, John. Unfazed. He's unfazed.

Completely unfazed. Scoot's unfazed. It's new options-esque platform called Euphoria has been going viral. Ben Eifford says, honestly, this is so cute and fun. I'm not even mad. I love gambling. This is so gamified. I don't think it presents as investing or democratization.

of derivatives or whatever. It's entertainment. And look at this. What is this? Hiler, are you playing this? Should I get on this? The AI bubble has already popped. Yes, I said this too. I said this too. Three weeks ago, the stock traded down 2%. The bubble popped. The information, however, is yet to propagate evenly. At 10 times revenue to give you a 10-year payback, I have to pay you 100% of revenues for 10 years straight in dividends. That assumes I can get that by my shareholders. That assumes I have zero cost of goods sold, which is very hard for a computer company. That assumes zero expenses, which is really hard with 39,000 employees. That assumes I pay no taxes, which is very hard. And that assumes you have to pay no taxes on your dividends, which is kind of illegal. And that

assumes zero R&D for the next 10 years, I can maintain the current revenue run rate. Now, having done that, would any of you like to buy my stock at $64? You realize how ridiculous those basic assumptions are. You don't need any transparency. You don't need any footnotes. What were you thinking. Badminton is live streaming in China and you can adjust whatever angle you want. This is very cool. So they film it with a whole bunch of different cameras and then you can pick the angle. Imagine being able to pick your own angle while watching TBPN live. That would be something special. Maybe we should steal this back from the Chinese. This seems like some awesome innovation. Now, Tyler, you don't think this is gousy and splatting, right?

Gossian Spladen? No, I mean, it's not smooth. You think this is just a bunch of cameras? It looks like a bunch of cameras, yeah. But you could do this with Gossian splating. Yeah. I think that'll be the next iteration, the next version. But we're pretty far away from like real time on that, right?

Real one knows that the shuttlecock is the fastest moving object that's been recorded in sports. Really? It goes hundreds of miles an hour. Hundreds? Yes. No way. I'll put you in the truth zone there. What about rifle shooting?

Does it go faster than a gun? No. Bullet is not faster than a badminton shuttlecock. No, let's go. A badminton shuttlecock is the fastest moving object in sports, while bullets can travel at over 2,000 miles an hour. The new roadster, we talked about this in the show. Elon went on Rogan, and he said,

maybe it'll be a flying car. And he specifically said, the demo will be shocking. Like, the demo will be amazing. And so I was trying to debate with Jordy and Tyler this morning. What will the demo be? Like, what will it actually be? But what will the demo be? And there's been a couple different examples of this.

Do we ever find the video of the jumping Chinese car? The BYD Yang Wang, U-9, the supercar that jumps obstacles? Let's watch this. Yeah, look. Okay, so that is technically a flying car, all four wheels off the ground. I would call this the minimum viable flying car. And so I'm expecting the Tesla Roadster to be able to do something slightly above this, right?

But the question's like, how much above this? Like, will there be a rocket engine on there? Will there be fans on there? I love your theory. I think it would be very cool if the fans could create some amount of thrust. But I find it hard to believe that it would actually be able to lift one of these cars.

They're very, very, very heavy because of the battery. So I'm going with something closer to the ability to do something like, this jump like we're seeing with this U-9. It's potentially possible that you could use fans to create more down force. And fans, I believe, were actually banned from F1 because there was a moment where creating

artificial downforce with fans was, and I think there are some supercars that have fans that create more downforce and suction the car to the ground so you get more traction. So that is a feature that could be there. The question is, if you reverse the fans for Lyft, You need a lot more rotor area and near megawatt power to hover a two-ton sedan. Even if you could supply it, the battery would give only a few minutes before thermal or energy limits intervene.

I feel like when we're talking about demo, there's a world where the demo is like, yeah, it uses half the battery and it's just a party trick, but it does lift the car off the ground for two feet or something like that. 2.6 says, I don't think we're getting flying cars. I personally love being stuck in traffic. There is an incentive for Elon to get people stuck in traffic. They're more likely to become best friends with Grock. What if the loved ones we've lost could be part of our future? I've never actually seen a more hated line. It was sort of controversial.

Baby Charlie. See? Oh, that's wonderful. Kicking like crazy. He's listening. Put your hand on your tummy and hum to him. You're used to love that. Hmm.

He feels like he stands saying in there. Oh, what? Mom, would you tell Charlie that bedtime story you always used to tell me? Once upon a time, there was a baby unicorn who didn't know he knew how to fly. This baby unicorn was like your mom because she didn't know that she knew how to fly, but she knew how to do all kinds of fabulous things. Hi, Grandma. Hey, Charlie.

How was school today? Pretty good roto there. I mean this crazy shot in basketball. I don't really care that much about basketball, whatever. about the crush. I like that this video presumes that we'll have see-through phones too. Like maybe we should build that first. That seems like a really profitable business.

If you can create a see-through phone. You would have loved this moment. You can call anytime. I mean, it does feel like it's, I mean, it's shot maybe by the people that did black it literally seems like they hired the same team. They're thinking, okay. retention on this product. You got to get it. You got to get it before your loved ones pass away. You got to be harvesting the training data. And then at any point in the future, if you churn,

they delete your loved ones forever. Digital necromancy to capitalize on the grief of the vulnerable. Straight to jail. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Do you want this? Would you ever use this? I think I'm not in the market. I don't think this is for me. They don't. They delete the S3 bucket if you don't make the payment. It's super dark. I think this is one of those things that would actually have quite a lot of demand. Because a lot of people are just going to process this and say, I'm really fearful of my loved ones passing.

You also find it hard to believe how many people are best friends. Just chat with me. Yeah, yeah, I do. I do find it hard to believe. And there are millions of them. And it's tough because, I mean, I miss my grandparents. Potentially. I wish that my grandparents were around to spend more.

time with my kids. There's stories. They've told me. There's songs. They've sang. There's all these incredible moments that I will never relive. And I wish I could experience those moments. Yeah. That being said, am I going to be a customer of this? No. Do you think Open AI would launch a competitor to this? I don't know if they want another PR crisis. Thank you so much for tuning in. Have a great weekend. Have a fantastic weekend. Goodbye. We love you.