TBPN - Meta Introducing Class C Stock, iPhone Duo’s Botched Launch | Diet TBPN

Episode Date: October 23, 2026

Diet TBPN delivers the best of today’s TBPN episode in 30 minutes. TBPN is a live tech talk show hosted by John Coogan and Jordi Hays, streaming weekdays 11–2 PT on X and YouTube, with each episode posted to podcast platforms right after.Described by The New York Times as “Silicon Valley’s newest obsession,” the show has recently featured Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Mark Cuban, and Satya Nadella.TBPN is made possible by:Ramp - https://ramp.comPublic - https://public.comCisco - https://www.cisco.comConsole - https://www.console.comCrowdStrike - https://www.crowdstrike.comFigma - https://www.figma.comMongoDB - https://www.mongodb.comNYSE - https://www.nyse.comRailway - https://railway.comShopify - https://www.shopify.com/Follow TBPN: https://TBPN.comhttps://x.com/tbpnhttps://open.spotify.com/show/2L6WMqY3GUPCGBD0dX6p00?si=674252d53acf4231https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/technology-brothers/id1772360235https://www.youtube.com/@TBPNLive

Yeah, the show yesterday was good. Tyler did a good job. But I think he had the deck stacked in his favor. You had a stacked lineup. You got Nikesh Aurora on, Aden Smith from flapping airplanes, Akulair, Max from Ligora. It was easy mode for Tyler. I want to see Tyler do a show with just Jordi, tier list of a mansion where Jordi doesn't want to say his true opinion because he knows the guy that owns the house. That's what makes a great co-host. If you want to elevate from sub host to come up. host, I think that's what you got to do. You got to put the screws to Jordy when he doesn't want to give his true take and get him to crash out. That's what I want to see. But no, fantastic job. Yeah, you didn't get me to crash out. No, no, no.

But you know who did crash out. You got to ban. Who? Trevor Milton. Trevor Milton. Oh, yeah. Crashed out in the... You crashed out.

I crashed out, and he responded. Yeah. So, we had a... We talked about Trevor Milton's new jet company. He had an announcement, a launch, an event where he put the plane on its wheels? Yeah, so the plane. The plane was a full-scale mock-up. It was not meant to be a real plane.

They have a real plane separately. This is a build of the new plane. Yes, yes. Okay. And anyway, so we posted the video, and what did Trevor actually say? He was firing off in the comments. He responded to our video saying haters are going to hate. We already have

more than 50 on order slash LOIs by real buyers. Not bad. It might be the most successful jet launch to date. Keep on talking smack. It makes us work harder and we love the trolling hate. Living rent free in your head.

He was also going back and forth with some other people in the comments. A lot of people were saying definitely not buy a plane from Trevor Milton, and he responded, we wouldn't sell you one. And I go the other way. I think finally a plane exists for the thrill-seeker. Flying private is such a luxury, but we know that once you get to a certain level of wealth, you've got to put it all on the line. You've got to climb Mount Everest. You've got to be risking it all in the track, skydiving.

You've got to be into extreme sports. So a plane that's a little rough around the edges is going to bring you back down to Earth. it's going to give you some thrill, some excitement, get your heart racing. And for a certain buyer, that's going to be very attractive. So I think that's actually probably a risk to the upside in this case. So another... You've got to be greedy when others are fearful. You've got to be grateful when others are fearful on these planes. Okay.

Another media company, the VIP seat, said we were there for the unveil, posted about how poor the presentation was and he started attacking everyone on X. And Trevor says, you're the only clown who was. would be dumb enough to allege that. Literally, the entire NBAA has been raving about us about us by the thousand and landed almost a billion in orders.

What else did he say? A billion in orders. Keep posting your Tesla, you telltled troll, want-to-be comments, and we'll keep building an incredible plane that you only wish you could fly. Your hate fuels us, living rent-free in your head. So he's living rent-free in a lot of

heads. The plane was supported by a post, And again, this was a mock-up. But when Trevor Milton responded to the picture of the post and said, you're literally misleading the world, see the real picture, at least report honestly LMAO. And he posted a picture of a different picture of the plane. Different picture of the plane. But most importantly, understand the aesthetics of what he just did.

This is elite posting because he should have photos of this plane saved to his camera roll. He didn't. He went to what appears to be Google Images or something, found a horizontal, a landscape picture of the plane, took a screenshot of it in portrait mode to make the image of the plane extremely small, didn't crop it out so you can see his battery level and the time at which he took this screenshot. That is just a level of unc posting that you very rarely see on the internet these days. Most people, even if they go for the screenshot, they'll do the courtesy crop before they share the screen. screenshot and maybe they won't crop out the the little perfect crop yeah occasionally some of the chrome some of the extra buttons might get in there a little watermark might sneak in but you're still doing the person the courtesy of cropping it down so they can see the the image basically full screen

if they want he didn't do that he drops the portrait screenshot of a landscape photo that's elite unk posting i don't know how else to describe it i was somewhat confused because the picture was posted by Preston Holland and he said you're literally misleading the world see the real picture at least report honestly LMAO and I was very confused by this because it seemed like he was implying that that wasn't how they presented the plane

but I went and checked and saw actual video of the plane in the post and so he seems to be alleging that this poster of the VIP seat slash Preston is misleading the world when in fact that is just a real picture of the presentation. Maybe.

The wing had a post. It could be a conspiracy where someone went to the presentation, took a video of the plane without the post, took that video, loaded it into After Effects Cinema 4D, Houdini, an advanced 3D modeling software, modeled a post, composited that into the video, and then uploaded the final product after blending it in perfect. We got eyewitness reports.

Zach Debo says, Trevor is like the kid in school who always tries, studies all the time, and just never passes the test. And Trevor says, except I did and built the first ever production hydrogen and better electric semi-truck from the ground up that went from idea to priloduction five years before Tesla.

Yeah, the priloduction. That is another elite misspillar. Priiladuction five years before Tesla, built six companies, three successful and three not, broke the world's speed record for light jets as a pilot. That's sick. Can we fact-check that? We got to fact-check that, but if that's true. and launched the most advanced light jet in the world. Incredible history and achievements.

What have you done? And Zach just replies your chop, dunk, which I thought was a little funny and a little rude. Trevor can come on the show, but I really think that he should spend time with Nathan Fielder. Oh, yes. It needs to be coming to your. You can fly anything because Nathan's a pilot.

Nathan can fly it. That's literally the perfect. It's the perfect you can see everything too. Oh, hopefully. So, Trevor, you're welcome on the show. But we do have to. live with you for two weeks before. You come on the show. So for the record setting flight, I think he was he was on board. Oh. He was not the pilot. Wait, what? He said he's the pilot.

Dude, this guy is constantly... That's a little fib. I'm not going to say he's lying, but he's, he's veering towards fibbing, at least on a couple occasions, just in this one Instagram thread. Stretching the truth a little bit. I want to see him behind the sticks. Yeah, stretching the record. Stretching the truth twice. How much can you actually set? How much can you actually push? when you're the pilot. Can you just like floor it and go a little bit faster than you should? Is that an option? Can you go up high and then go down and put the engines on max and just like, it's dangerous,

but you can actually break the speed of sound in a Gulfstream if you try, if you're, if you're risk gone. Is that possible? No idea. We'll find out because we're going to make Tyler do it. Meta is introducing new Class C stock. The plan is to distribute one Class C share for every existing A or B share at the start. of the next year. So it's basically a two-for-one stock split. It's not a fundraising opportunity.

It doesn't make Zuckerberg richer, and it doesn't dilute anyone's ownership percentage, but it does have a bunch of interesting knock-on effects. And basically, there's two wildly different narratives. I sent you both of these posts, and I was like, it's the same story, but the New York Times and Semaphore have completely different rationales for what's going on. So I wanted to get to the bottom of it. So this is not the first time they proposed this Class C stock. It happened in 2016, Meta, which was then called Facebook, of course, proposed creating non-voting class C shares. The reasoning back then was that Mark Zuckerberg said, hey, I'm doing the Chan Zuckerberg initiative.

I'm giving away a lot of my money. I'm doing a lot of philanthropy. I want to do both. I want to be able to run meta as the sole decision maker with the super voting stock and be able to not be fireable and be able to have control over the company that I founded and I want the super voting. but I also want to be able to sell down my economic position or donate it to Chan Zuckerberg. They can sell it to fund philanthropic initiatives, build hospitals, do a bunch of great stuff. And so he tried to do this, actually got challenged by shareholders.

There was a Delaware trial that was scheduled, but Facebook withdrew the proposal in September of 2017 before that trial. And after the trial, Zuck was like, I don't even need to sell because my stock's ripping. He actually said this. He said the share price appreciation in meta has allowed me to fund everything with a Chan Zuckerberg initiative, which is probably true. Because at a certain point, you're just like, oh, I have to deploy $50 billion in nonprofits. Like there's only so many projects you can do before stuff gets unwieldily. And so he was probably in a pretty good place. But it was still an interesting motivation and didn't go through.

then so the goal, the overarching goal hasn't really changed in the last decade. The goal is to allow Zuckerberg to sell or donate or pay taxes with the economic portion of his meta stake without losing control over the company that he founded two decades ago. So in the intervening years, things have come up, tax bills, philanthropic opportunities, AI buildouts, and Zuck needs to manage his control against these issues as they arise. And so the NYT tells the story as basically entirely tax related, which is interesting because there's obviously a lot of different things going on. So the New York Times said, Mr. Zuckerberg has been negotiated with Meta's board board members on September 9th. He effectively gave them an ultimatum.

If a deal wasn't struck, he would sell his home in Palo Alto, and the listing would be public. And so I assume what he was doing here was like all the other Metta board members have huge homes in Palo Alto. And if he sells his, it's going to tank their real estate prices. So he's saying, I'm going to. I'll do it. I'll do it. I assume that that was the, that was the veiled threat. Do you think he's trying to have his cake and eat it too? I think he is actually. I think that's exactly what's happening. I think this might serve multiple purposes. Yes. But the market will probably say, yeah, go ahead, have some cake, eat it too. I don't think they'll, I don't think they'll care because for a long time, you bought meta class A shares.

So he has class B, which have 10 voting, 10 votes per share. You bought Class A shares, which have one vote per share. Now you're going to get Class C that has zero votes per share. Never mattered because you were never going to get more than 50%. The votes never really, like they never really sold meaningful voting stock. And so when meta goes to the market, investors just say, what is the economic opportunity? What is the economic return? And so in theory, you can go to the market with something that's preferred, plus a board seat.

We do this all the time in Silicon Valley. We say, yeah, we're selling 20% of the company. You get a board seat. You get information rights. You get pro rata. You get a million things. It's so much value, and we're only going to charge you $100 million for that or whatever a startup selling for. META will do the same thing.

Sure, the shares might be slightly less valuable because they have zero votes instead of one vote. Realistically, the buyers of this are only interested in the financials. they don't care about the votes. So it doesn't really matter. So what's your takeaway? You think he wants to scratch two inches at once? Yeah. I mean, I do think he cares about the billionaire tax, and I do think that it's completely rational to get out of California before it hits. And I'm surprised that this is even a discussion. I thought that the reason he bought that Florida home was that he was going to claim residency outside of California as of 2026. It seems like this was mostly going over throughout the year, but if the tax passed, it would be retroactive. He would still

be on the hook for it, but at least he could challenge it in court. But it's funny because it would be, it would be litigated, and then during that time he would leave and so that you would have this like worst case scenario, that one time five percent. But the interesting thing is that like the Google co-founders have done the exact same thing. They've done a stock split and they've maintained control, voting control while relocating to Florida, avoiding the billionaire tax potentially. But no one really cares because Sundar is the face of the company. The interesting thing is like the board the way the new york times frames is like the board wanted zuck not to sell his palo alto home because it would be a negative signal to the employees no not the fake

reason i was joking about no no no no no i'm just laughing at tray he wants both birds in the bush to be in his hand yes but but as let's say you're a board member do you care if mark zuckerberg can't spend more than 180 days a year in the headquarters where all the researchers are, where they're building MSL, where they're building Muse. Does he need to be on site? I think he has to just want to be. Like he is the only, not the only, one of a very, very small group of people running a company at that scale that is like truly in founder mode.

Yeah. No founder, no elite founder that I've ever met says, yeah, I love working remotely. I love being away from my team for half the year. And he probably travels at time. So it's much more like the board is probably like, yeah, kind of do whatever you want. Yeah. Like live wherever you want. But you can imagine he's the one being like, I want to be in the office as many days as possible with the team.

That was not the NYT report. The NYT report was that he wants to avoid getting diluted past 50% losing control of the company because he has to spend 186 days a year in Florida and can't be on site in Menlo. that often and would have to be more remote. And he's like, look, if it's between being in the arena, in the, in the, in the Mendovo office, a ton, and losing control because of this tax, I'm choosing, I'm choosing Florida. 305. Yeah.

Mr. Worldwide. He's being Mr. Worldwide, potentially. That was at least the, that was at least the debate, the way it was put to the board, and now it's a non-issue because they are going to issue the Class C stock. So if he does get hit with a five percent, he's, he's, he's a lot. tax he'll sell the economic stake, not the controlling stake, and he'll be able to stay in TBD labs in the building. I don't know why you're laughing.

But it's interesting because both of these rationales are completely justifiable from like the PT lens of framing, which is like, of course, leave California if they're going to tax you and you can just go to Florida. And then also like, of course issue a bunch of equity if you have a really, if there's a new technology that you can actually invest against. You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. Yes, without issuing some new equity. But this is the critique of Google.

They have $100 billion in cash. They don't spend it. They're just returning into investors. They are stagnated. They're out of ideas. Now we're in the era of there's tons of new ideas. There's tons of new ways to deploy capital at a high rate of return. Go and invest.

There's a debate over meta's ROI on AI CAPEX. But like, at least the company is thinking, like, let's go. big. Let's not be the stagnation company. Let's not just buy back our stock and pay out cash to shareholders. Let's go pursue the next great thing. Let's go try and do something bold. And so both of these stories are framed. At least a lot of people are, oh, it's bad. But I see them both is like, yeah, totally rational and very good for a leader to be doing that in tech. You know who's got a download Figma set up an account? Anyone with an iPhone app who wants it to run on the iPhone duo, you've seen these screenshots of all the app.

that are not optimized for the duo yet. The YouTube app is looking kind of rough. They did stretch out the screen, but it still has this black bar on the right side. It's a new design challenge. Very doable to solve, but, yeah. As Apple, how do you release a device without having... Especially in the era of AI agents?

No, not even that. You're launching this device. It's the biggest update to the iPhone since the iPhone got lighter, faster, stronger, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, it actually is a new. It actually is the biggest update to the iPhone since the original iPhone. Yeah, yeah. Right?

Yeah. And you don't bother to make sure that YouTube and Instagram and Spotify have like amazing. Do you think it's the opposite? Because what happened with the Apple Vision Pro was Apple said we have this amazing new VR device. Developers are going to be able to build apps for it. There's a developer program where you can get the software a little bit early, optimized things. And basically every tech company was like, no. Like we are not jumping on your new ecosystem.

Go kick rocks because they were like, you're going to take 30%. We don't want to do you the favor. You're going to have to suffer a little bit. Just an extension of the iPhone. Yeah, no, I agree. Update to the iPhone, the most popular consumer, the number one hit product in the history of consumer hit. products. So why do you think it happened? Do you think that the developers of the YouTube iOS team didn't get devices early enough and they didn't get software previews? The Germinator

said that people had had access to the device for about a month. The device and you're a big developer. And maybe an emulator too? It's like on one hand, on one hand it's the fault of the big companies. But on the other hand, I think Apple has to like take the responsibility for it because it's your product that you're selling to customers and they're having a bad experience. Yeah. So I think it comes down. The buck stops with Apple, but overall it's just like such a embarrassing launch for Apple. People have even been poking at the like iOS, like issues with the actual. The actual software.

Like native software is not optimized yet. It's not great. Like, you know, you have a, if you're running a timer with a certain angle, you can only see one of the numbers. So the whole thing was just completely botched and it's super embarrassing because. because now a billion people have seen like, hey, if you buy the iPhone duo, it's going to be this, like, clunky experience. And all this stuff will get fixed in the next couple weeks,

but massive unforced error. We have a take here from, like, I don't even think this doesn't, what it comes down to, it doesn't reflect badly on, like, Spotify. Okay. I thought Spotify was the one that was optimized correctly. Maybe. Spotify looked good.

But yes. People are, people are, it doesn't look that bad for all the different apps. And they're also dunking on Apple. This is from Tech Droider, which I assume is an Android publication, so they're bound to take a victory lap here. But they say Apple literally mocked other foldables at its launch events saying vertical scrolling feels compromised. And watching movies means dealing with oversized black bars that make the screen much smaller. Now look at Apple doing the same thing.

And suddenly Apple fans and some influencers are defending it. LMAO, the hypocrisy is unreal. But, I mean, it is a good point. Like, to release something that drops black bars on day one is a rough, rough. Here's the one that I was referencing. Yeah. This is Apple Software Quality in 2026. This is supposed to be a 15-minute timer.

Oh, and it's not rendering properly. That's very odd. So, again, it's like... Well, is it scrolling? Oh, I guess even if it's scrolling, that's like a weird feature. But yeah. I mean, just do 15M instead of 15 men.

Apple's just better than this. Yeah. I'm not going to, you know, I don't think it's on the new CEO. Yeah. I mean, the grubinator, John Gruber over a daring fireball said that it feels like. The gruberonator, you mean? What? The gruberonator.

No, it's the gruminator. The germinator and the grubonator. The grubinator was saying that it feels like he's gotten used to an extraordinary, he's gotten to use an extraordinarily polished prototype, but not a finished product that he'd want to buy and carry. Which is not a good review. Just to go back to back with the Vision Pro and the duo getting just appalling reviews. Oh, God. No, getting the, it's a good prototype, right?

Yeah. Getting the, it's a good prototype review is just like not Apple's standard, right? I don't know. Patrick here seems to be having fun. He says he says he's perfected. at the one-handed flip and I think this might, oh, that's a good look. Hold this video up. Apple is no longer better than this. They should be, but they're not. My disappointment is immeasurable. Yeah, but watch Patrick flip this thing around. Tell me this isn't fun. This is great. Look, okay, flips it around, flips it with one hand. Boom, slaps it open. That's fun. That's great.

You want to do that. Yeah. Click. That's going to be satisfying. It's a fidget spinner. It's got the same dynamic as a fidget spinner. This is going to be a hit. Doesn't matter. The software doesn't need to run. Just, just brick it. Give me something just to play with. Put just, brick it and just put one, one page of text on there that I can just read my mantra. And then that's good enough. I don't know. Unbelievable, the iPhone duo display has been hiding a shocking secret. Somebody finally dare to peel off the mad film covering the iPhone duo's display what they discover. Yeah, this is. Yeah, this is. It looks surprisingly on. Way too dramatic. Who cares? Don't pull, don't pull the, don't pull the, don't pull the matte film.

them off. Yeah, the map. I ripped the product apart and it didn't work as expected. That makes no sense. Anyway, yeah, people are, you know, the polish is not quite there. Joanna Stern's been testing the product. She's folded it. Oh, she built a device or had a friend build a device that would fold it 32,000 times over

and over and over again. And it seemed like it held up pretty well. So, I don't know. Take Kim doesn't like it, though. He says, half baked. read this review before ordering the initial enthusiasm on the neat opening duo animation has faded

hard it may all but disappear after the first wave of Apple fan early adopters this is a very bad iPhone experience I don't know I think the software gets patched pretty quickly these things move pretty quickly and I feel like they should move very quickly in the age of

AI coding like if you're a small app developer and you're like ah like yeah 1% of my audience is using the iPhone Duo. Do I really want to open up Xcode and sit there and rewrite all the views and get an objective C or Swift and actually hammer out a layout that looks good? If you can point an AI agent at this and get it to get 90% of the way there, maybe you'll do it a little bit faster. So I would expect some acceleration towards the software being good and functional very quickly.

But it does look like after a bunch of folds, you can see the crease a little bit more. I don't think people will really care. I don't know. The crease doesn't seem like that big of a deal. Anyway, Ben Thompson has, I think, yet to review the iPhone do. I'm sure he'll discuss it. He's talked about a little bit. But he's also presented by Stripe now.

That's huge news. I think we put up a card for it. Very, very great to see the techery partnering with a fintech company. Great partnership because Stripe is obviously a very successful company, but not the hottest, most dramatic. Oh, you've got to track earn. Who knows? Maybe they'll never IPO. So Ben will never be called upon to cover Stripe earnings because they will never be reporting public numbers to be analyzed. But also a long lineage of working with Ben because he built his entire business on Stripe. And so very, very excited to see that. And excited to hear some ads in Stratory. Finally, this has been our mission. This is our moment. The first episode. As much as this is Ben and Stripe's moment, it's also our moment. Yeah, it really is.

We've got to pat ourselves in the back here. Take a little victory lap because when we started this show, we said our goal was to get every tech podcast to have advertising, and we're pretty close to done. One step closer. Pretty close to done. I don't know. Is there anyone that's missing? I think Tyler Cowan conversations with Tyler, although Tyler Cowan Conversations with Tyler Fantastic Show,

a little low on the ad load personally. I don't think I've heard an ad in there ever. Occasionally promote live shows and specific events. that are happening. I don't really count those. I want money in his pocket for those ad ads. But he's maybe moving over, it feels like he's moving over to the New York Times, hosting Ross Douthit's old show, Interesting Times with Tyler Cowan now. New York Times, that's an advertising monster. So that's some good news in the world of advertising. You're going to be able to buy ads on a Tyler Cowan product for the first time. You can buy ads on

a Ben Thompson product. You can buy ads on an all-in product. Of course, a TBPN product. We got any of that space. Yeah. Lock in. Anyway, anything else that we want to talk about. Let's end here. There were a couple of things going on.

Let's end here. Yes. This is kind of the dream daily. This is the, this is Eliezer Yukowski's car. We finally saw it. This is what he's doing. Can we get some sound?

Because this thing sounds amazing. Someone please be my ops. Is this real or is this AI? I can't even tell. This guy, I think, actually builds a bunch of insane vehicles. We got to get them on the show immediately. This is really, really cool. Mad Max C7.

Look at that. I like the chains on the side. That's a really nice touch. Is this like a moving truck or not a moving truck or like an old dump truck? It looks like an old ambulance or something. Yeah, yeah, dump truck or something. But this is the car of the future, everyone. This is going to be how you get to work. When the grid goes down, this is what you're going to want to be driving. Get this vehicle. lock it in, get this, get this going. Anyway. Anything else you want to talk about today?

Oh, one more, one product suggestion for Lucy. I wanted you to build. I wanted you guys to make this. Okay. The Gum watch. Oh, this is good. I hadn't thought about this. This is a hitter.

The Gumwatch. This is a real product. Called Crazy Planet. This would be a good drop from them. I'm going to send this over to the team. Crazy Planet. I'm surprised. I've seen a lot of like pouch holders, different ways to hold your nicotine pouches, your nicotine gum.

But in the watch is... Having it on the wrist. It's a hitter. It's a hitter. It's a hit with you. And the final post of the day, just put the lightning in the bottle, bro. Just do it. Stop making excuses.

Just put the fries in the bag and then put the lightning in the bottle. You caught lightning in the bottle. When you caught lightning in the bottle, when you caught lightning in the bottle, in the bottle, it's time to double down, maximize, maximize the ROI on whatever you did that was described as lightning in a bottle. It's rare. So when it hits, you got to go. You got to burn all the, all the other ships and focus. That's right. Good lesson. Good lesson. Anyway, that's right. Leave us five stars on Apple Podcasts in Spotify. Tyler got that wildly wrong yesterday. He said, follow us on Apple Podcast. We don't ask for Fala's around here. We ask for five-star reviews. If you're

thinking this is a four-star show, Don't tell us. Keep it to yourself. Keep it to yourself, please. Keep it to yourself. Also, sign up for our newsletter at tbpn.com. Don't just sign up for our newsletter. We don't leave the viewer to figure out where to sign up.

We tell them exactly where to sign up. It's on tbpn.com. And I also remind the viewer that we will be live the next day. We will see you Friday at 11 a.m. Pacific. So tune in then. And thank you. Can't wait. For watching us today.

Goodbye. We love you.