TBPN - Soham Parekh Exclusive Interview | Chris Miller, Aaron Ginn, Bridget Harris, Pryce A. Yebesi, Jacob Rintamaki, Auren Hoffman, Mehran Jalali, Kushal Byatnal, Avlok Kohli, Nico Christie, Flo Crivello

Episode Date: July 3, 2025

(04:05) - Soham Parekh, an Indian software engineer, has been accused by multiple U.S. startup founders of simultaneously working at several companies without disclosure, leading to his termination from firms like Playground AI and Antimetal. In a recent conversation, Parekh admitted to his actions, attributing them to financial difficulties and expressing regret for his decisions. He emphasized his commitment to focusing solely on his new role at Darwin, an AI-driven video platform, and discussed his plans to rebuild trust within the tech community. (35:31) - Top Stories (42:21) - Nat Friedman Confirms His Start at Meta (01:05:12) - Chris Miller, an economic historian and author of "Chip War," discusses the historical and ongoing global competition in semiconductor technology, emphasizing its critical role in military and economic power. He highlights China's extensive investments to reduce reliance on imported chips, particularly from Taiwan, and examines the strategic implications of U.S. export controls and the challenges in enforcing these regulations. Miller also explores the complexities of China's semiconductor industry, noting the mix of market-driven competition and state intervention, and the difficulties in replicating advanced chip manufacturing capabilities due to the intricate and capital-intensive nature of the industry. (01:38:12) - Aaron Ginn is a writer and entrepreneur known for his work on technology and innovation. In his recent article, he argues that robots will democratize luxury by making services once exclusive to the wealthy accessible to the general public, thereby enhancing the quality of life for average Americans. He emphasizes that, like past technological advancements, robots will follow a pattern of starting as luxuries for the rich before becoming widespread, ultimately benefiting society as a whole. (02:00:45) - Bridget Harris, an Associate at Founders Fund with a background in early-stage crypto investments from her time at Pantera Capital, discusses the decentralized nature of the crypto industry and the significance of stablecoins as a key development within it. She highlights the challenges posed by stablecoins to traditional banking systems, emphasizing their potential to disrupt financial institutions by offering safer, one-to-one backed alternatives to conventional bank deposits. Additionally, Harris touches on the complexities of tokenizing equities, noting that while it serves as a regulatory workaround for delivering U.S. equities to international investors, it may be less compelling for domestic markets where traditional systems are already effective. (02:13:40) - Pryce Yebesi, co-founder and CEO of Open Ledger, introduces his company, which provides an embedded accounting API enabling vertical SaaS platforms to integrate comprehensive accounting suites without building a general ledger from scratch. He discusses the challenges businesses face with fragmented financial data and how Open Ledger's APIs and components simplify embedding full accounting functionalities into products, enhancing efficiency and user experience. Yebesi also highlights the role of artificial intelligence in automating bookkeeping tasks, reducing the need for human intervention, and positioning Open Ledger as a transformative solution in the embedded fintech space. (02:21:47) - Jacob Rintamaki, a Stanford student and early supporter of AI art, discusses his collaboration with artist Ophira on creating artwork using large language models like ChatGPT. They have launched a platform, beautiful.aiart.com, to sell AI-generated art, achieving initial sales and planning to expand by adding more artists. Additionally, they mention a forthcoming documentary by Grimes and filmmaker Matt Zien, focusing on AI artists and their interactions with AI models. (02:31:41) - Auren Hoffman, an American entrepreneur and investor, is the CEO of SafeGraph and co-founder of LiveRamp. In the conversation, he critiques venture capitalists for not adhering to the ambitious advice they give to startups, highlighting their reluctance to take their own firms public, merge with others, or maintain single leadership structures. He contrasts this with private equity firms, which he views as more ambitious and proactive in scaling their businesses. (02:40:25) - Mehran Jalali, a tech entrepreneur and AI startup founder, discusses his recent project using lidar technology to uncover ancient Mayan civilizations hidden beneath dense rainforests in Belize and Mexico. By flying planes equipped with powerful lidar scanners, his team has identified previously unseen pyramids, buildings, and extensive road networks, revealing structures unseen for over a millennium. Jalali emphasizes the importance of integrating technology into archaeology, aiming to expand these efforts to scan larger areas and explore other regions like the Amazon and coastal areas to uncover submerged cities. (02:50:47) - Kushal Byatnal, co-founder and CEO of Extend, discusses his company's recent $17 million funding across seed and Series A rounds, which will accelerate their mission to transform unstructured documents into structured, validated data using AI-powered solutions. He highlights Extend's platform, built on large language models, that delivers over 95% accuracy in processing complex documents, including degraded scans and handwritten forms. Byatnal also emphasizes the platform's ability to handle various document types, such as PDFs and Excel files, and its application in industries like healthcare, finance, and supply chain, where accurate data extraction is critical. (03:07:30) - Avlok Kohli, CEO of AngelList and a serial entrepreneur, discusses the surge in venture capital activity during Q2, highlighting increased M&A and IPOs leading to significant returns for limited partners, which are being reinvested into emerging and micro VCs. He notes a 50% quarter-over-quarter increase in LP dollars flowing into these smaller funds, attributing this to a cycle of liquidity and renewed optimism in the venture ecosystem. Kohli also addresses misconceptions about the decline of emerging managers, emphasizing that real-time data from AngelList contradicts such narratives. (03:25:22) - Nico Christie, co-founder of Fundamental, introduces Shortcut, a superhuman Excel agent designed to enhance productivity by automating complex tasks within Excel. He highlights Shortcut's superior performance compared to existing tools like Gemini and Copilot, emphasizing its ability to generate code at runtime through a novel approach called Cogen. Christie also discusses plans to scale Shortcut's capacity to meet growing demand and shares insights into Fundamental's mission to develop digital humans with advanced cognitive capabilities. (03:32:54) - Flo Crivello, founder and CEO of Lindy, an AI assistant platform, discusses the challenges of maintaining trust within Silicon Valley's culture, emphasizing the importance of ethical behavior and the potential consequences of compromising on ethics. He reflects on the necessity of building a company culture centered on customer obsession and excellence to ensure long-term success. Crivello also highlights the significance of human-centric collaboration software in the evolving landscape of remote work. TBPN.com is made possible by: Ramp - https://ramp.comFigma - https://figma.comVanta - https://vanta.comLinear - https://linear.appEight Sleep - https://eightsleep.com/tbpnWander - https://wander.com/tbpnPublic - https://public.comAdQuick - https://adquick.comBezel - https://getbezel.com Numeral - https://www.numeralhq.comPolymarket - https://polymarket.comAttio - https://a...

watching TBPN. Today is Thursday, June 3rd, 2025. We are live from the TBPN Ultradome, the Temple of Technology, the Fortress of Finance, the capital of capital. And we have some breaking news. Soham Parique. He was fired multiple times yesterday, I believe. He's been fired many times in his career. First person to be fired by five startups, five plus startups in a day. In a day. In a day. The positive news, any timeline exploded, any companies that he works for that are predominantly on LinkedIn, Yep. He's safe for at least a week. Another payroll cycle will come through. For sure. And so there's a big debate raging.

Is he a scammer? Is he a misunderstood builder? How wrong was what he did? The headline here, India-based engineer is accused of juggling multiple jobs and misleading WISC startups. He defends his passion for building and lands a new role at a video AI startup after online backlash. Yeah, break it down. Atlas says they hated so hum. because he was profitable probably was extremely profitable it is wild to think you know if if five plus companies came out yesterday and you know realize they were

all employing him how many others was he was he is he actively working for that just didn't happen to pop up on X that day yeah yeah the only it seemed like the what do they call it in manufacturing where there's like the the single rate limiting piece of equipment is the one that you need to like build everything else around. Basically, like, there's some choke point, and for him, it was probably like stand-ups. And so could he do 10 stand-ups at the same time? It's tough. It's hard to juggle those. But, I mean, it seems like he got the numbers up there. I bet you his T-C was, on average, significantly higher than the ARR of the companies that he would work with.

Oh, his personal T-C across all the jobs. Grouped. Which you put as over 2 million. Over 2 million. It's my estimate. I was thinking over one. That's five. Let's say like T.C. 200K years. Are we ever thinking cash not equity or are we accounting the equity as dollar value? He interviewed very well. I think pretty universally people were impressed by him.

He could easily go in and get 180K for cash comp and then you add some equity into that. The big question, Matt from anti-metal who had hired him over two years ago, said that he was joking about how. much equity he'd actually left on the table over the years because probably unlikely that he was hitting the cliff. Yep. Because he's getting managed out so quickly. The new CS grads, Ben Hylach called out they are poor, poor CS grads.

Soam getting all of the jobs. Well, the market is ripping. Wow. Bitcoin's almost at 110. $110, $110,000. So we are in white suits to celebrate the jobs news and the market news. We'll be doing a deep dive on the news and doing our normal interviews in just a minute, but we believe we have Soham Parikh joining the show in about four minutes.

So we can go through. We've been coordinating this, but we will keep you up to date. Hopefully it happens. We can go through some other posts. We have a post here from Anna Mostarak. She says the tech industry needs a, are we dating the same guy group? These are groups that pop up on Facebook and things like that where people coordinate and see if, you know, girls see if they're dating the same guy.

Clearly we needed something like that or we needed. I think the big question that we were kind of debating is, you know, was he, you know, a lot of these companies don't typically have something in their offer letter that says you legally cannot have other W-2 income. Yeah, that's a big question. Yet he probably was signing full-time job offers, who knows, you know. So we'll have to dig in. dig into it with him, but we believe he's here in the studio with us here. So welcome to the stream.

Soham, good to meet you. How are you doing? There he is. Welcome to the man himself. Thanks so much for joining. Why don't you, why don't you introduce yourself and just take a few minutes to just give us what's going on in your world. What's the last 24 hours been like? How would you describe yourself? What do you have to say to people? Let's go back to the very beginning. Who are you? Where do you come from?

I mean, I'm originally from Mumbai. I kind of grew up here all my life. Obviously, drove into computer science, like, you know, coding and everything, kind of without a choice, kind of process of elimination. Fell in love with it. You know, as you're aware, at this point, I'm like everyone's like favorite founding engineer, pretty much, or worker 17 or whatever you might call it, like AI bot or, So home as a service, I don't know.

But yeah, don't have much to my story, essentially. I've just been always passionate about, you know, building things. Who was your first job? My first job was actually at a company called Allen. It was like a voice-assisted, like, conversational startup. You know, this is back in like 2020, 2021. 2020-20. And when did you come to the States?

Because I know I was talking to Matt, and he said you would go to the anti-metal off-sites and you're very much a part of the team. So to be honest, I have family in the East Coast. The first time I ever visited US was in 2018. And then I was supposed to do grad school there. You know, different financial circumstances couldn't do that. Had to kind of like, you know, not go with that plant. But obviously, you know, I have visited, you know, America mostly for like off-sides and stuff just

to catch up with team members and things like that. Okay. So the main claim that was levied against you on X yesterday. day kind of started with Sue Hill over at Playground. He accused you of working at multiple jobs simultaneously. Is that true? It is true. And yeah, I would love to add color to it, but you know, that is true. Yeah. I guess the question is, do you believe that you were in violation of your own employment contracts? Or do you believe that there was some sort of legal loophole that allowed you to do this without committing any sort of legal violation?

I mean, honestly, I think going back to like how it even like started to happen and what the motivations were, you know, obviously I would want to like preface with saying like, I'm not proud of what I've done. You know, that's not something that I endorse either. But, you know, financial circumstances essentially like no one really likes to work 140 hours a week, right? But I had to do with this kind of out of necessity. Like, I was in extremely dire financial circumstances and somehow like you know I don't I'm not a very people person I don't share much in terms of like what's going on with my life and sure kind of in my internal thought process you know was kind of like getting more stressed with like

hey you know I want to like come out of the situation what should I do so it's more not more so kind of outbreed but essentially like necessity and just like thought that if I work like multiple places you know like I can basically like help myself like alleviate the situation I was in much faster. No, it's very economically rational. What about the conjecture that you had a team of junior developers underneath you helping you actually accomplish the tasks? Is there any truth to that?

I wish I had the money and I wish that was true, but that is not true. Any of the founders that, you know, I worked with can vouch with that. I have multiple locations like that program with people. You know, I've written every single inch of the course. But anti-metals, one of the companies I worked at. They have pretty high bar for design, as you might know. They did a launch recently. There were two occasions where, you know, just before the launch,

like, you know, the contractor who was going to do the front end for us essentially had bailed out. And, you know, we as a team had to figure out and do everything, which was a team of only three engineers, right? So how did it originally happen, though? You started with one job in 2020, then you realized, hey, I could add another. and then you realize you could just continuously add them. Did you create any type of financial models to kind of model out potential churn as you would get, you know, I'm curious if you were operating this looking at as basically a SaaS business,

the SaaS of Soham. This was not a business to me. Every company that I have worked with I have deeply cared about, like, you know, and again, people who spend, you know, a lot of time with me can, like, back that on multiple locations. the and again I did not have any financial model the like I said the only motivation for me was hey you know I'm in a financial jeopardy you know so I didn't do this until 2022 2020 is actually when I was you know running into issues I had deferred my you know grad school admit and you know did like an online degree but basically you know did not have like enough you know like essentially like you know

just to get out a situation I was in. I don't want to talk too much deeply about it. No, that's fine. Yeah, so that's kind of why. Talk about your own, talk about your own abilities. It seemed universal that the teams that you worked on said that you were extremely talented that you interviewed incredibly well. It's, you know, easy for, you know, new CS grads to be frustrated

because you were probably running laps around them in the interview process. But, yeah, it's very, very, you know, it's very, you know, impressive if you actually didn't have a junior team and you were just you know juggling you know it seems estimates seem to put it at maybe five five companies at once yeah are you just are you just like hyper productive are you leveraging AI tools and coding assistance are you just able to move really quickly in a startup environment or are you also like talented like systems engineering and algorithms and like solving really really hard computational programs so i preface with this um you know some of these companies I worked at was before the co-pilot boom, right?

There were no AI-asseted program at least three startups have went on the record like saying this. People who have pro-pre-programmed with we can also watch with this. The real truth is there's this funny line in some of my intramers like TLDR, I don't do anything outside coding. That is very true. And if you're like spending hours like, you know, sitting in front of the computer, you will eventually like at least I'll hope so like get good at it. I, I, there's obviously a lot for me to learn in general. I wouldn't say like I'm like a like a I don't know what they call like a platform engine or something like you know top principle or whatever but I would like to believe that I was a decent enough

good enough engineer to essentially be able to work at three places because that's the only thing I did the entire day. So an average week for you it feels like basically maybe you sleep for six to eight hours and then you're basically programming for 12 to 14. hours every single day for seven days a week. But as some of these new coding code gen tools came out, Claude code, cursor, devon, etc., did you feel like you could add maybe a few more jobs? Were you getting more efficient? Or do you still handcrafted code, farm to table, organic, you know, handmade? Obviously, like, you know, having more like, you know, AI assisted

tooling like definitely help, but it did not amount like me working on more jobs. Because, like, Like, I would still love to spend, you know, a justifiable, like, working on something. And it doesn't have, like, a measure. It's not like, hey, you know, I'm going to split time, like, four hours for this company, for that company. Like, I was essentially, like, working until I got something done for that day. And I think people around me will probably say this, that I am notoriously known for not sleeping. I am, you know, I'm a serial, like, non-sleeper at this point is what I would say.

In Zalviak. But, yeah. And as far as the interviews go, right? So one, there's also been a lot of things around like, hey, you know, I probably used, you know, some sort of like tool like Cluley, which, you know, I would love for the founder to essentially go on record and say if I'm a paying customer, I'm not. But or some sort of like, you know, how to game the system. The truth is a lot of these companies did not have lead code style problems. And if they did, I would have bombed interviews, you know, because I don't practice lead code as much. I know my data structure as well.

I know what to use when, but, you know, like typically a gun for my head. Well, you're also great at cold email. I saw some of these cold emails. You got a great format. It pulls people in. It shows your personality. It shows that you care about, you know, coding. And I think that helped a lot as well.

Totally. Yeah, I mean, I do care about coding a lot. But again, like, you know, most of these companies essentially had a take-home assessment or a work trial, right? So it's very difficult to, like, game a work trial or game a take-home assessment. Like, you have to do it and then deliver it. And I did everything on my own. Like I was also doing the work trials on my own. And yeah, like I guess I'll leave it at that.

If they did have lead code, I would have bombed the interviews. But luckily they didn't. Like startups usually just like care more about like. Talk a little bit about the companies that you chose to work for. You applied to. Do you think you could have pulled this off with Microsoft, Google, Amazon and split three times? or do they have defenses in place that would make this difficult? There's a variety of memes around maybe big tech companies.

It's easier work. Maybe startups are harder. I'm just kind of curious about it seems like you went for a lot of startups. What was the reasoning behind that? Yeah. So it feels counterintuitive. Like if I wasn't by any need of money, like why would I work for, you know, startups as opposed to big tech because they clearly pay well.

They have a 9 to 5 schedule. For the most part, like I would say, you know, people don't really care about. like what you are essentially like doing. The thing with me is like if you're spending you know multiple hours a week like working on something you would have to at least decently be passionate about it because otherwise you'll just like burn out. Like I said you know each of these companies that have worked for and again you know founders some of the founders who spend meaningful time with me can vouch you know would say that I actually cared about these companies so it wasn't like cold

email without context like I deeply read into what a company was doing, what the business model was, you know, who their customers were. I had great ideas about, like, you know, what to build for them, what not to build for them, you know, what the platform is like. You know, I did deliver like beyond engineering for a lot of these companies. And yeah, like, it was more kind of like, hey, if I'm spending like 140 hours, like, I want to do something that I actually care about. Like I don't want to like, you know, do nine to five and kind of like center a div in like six hours or something. You know, that's, that's just not me because I do like what I do.

And that's kind of cold email hack. Send the cold emails from the heart. Put some real thought into them. Talk to me about other alternatives that you may be considered or maybe didn't. Did you ever think about going to a startup and saying like, hey, I'm doing a great job. I'm working 40 hours a week. I need to make more money. I'd like to take on a second job.

Would that be amenable to you? Do you think that founders might be actually open to that? Or say I'm working 18 hours a day. Can you pay me three times as much? I'm doing the work of three devs because there is a world where you could have allocated all that time. And one startup would have gotten three times as much value, but they probably should have paid you three times as much maybe to make that balance out. And so did you ever have those types of decisions? Like we're seeing this with the AI talent wars.

The 10x, you can think of yourself as like a three to five X engineer, I guess. No offense. You know, the 100x engineers are getting 100. You could maybe be 10x if you just if you really focused. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so it's almost a question of like, why couldn't you get the money that you wanted from a single job? What was the what was the stumbling block there? Yeah, I think the part where, you know, I should have basically done is like come clean with my situation.

You know, to be very frank with you, like I mentioned, like I'm not a good, you know, person with sharing what my internal conflicts are. I do like to keep boundaries between my personal and private, you know, like whatever's like going with me, mentally, and that's true with any person I'm with as well, like, you know, that's outside of work. So one, there was an embarrassment to essentially, like, admitting that, hey, you know, I have this struggles mentally, you know, like, and talk in open about it. And then the second thing is, you know, I really did not, like, think through this because, like I said, it was an action that was done more out of, like, desperation to get out of the situation. I was in rather than, like, I mean, the flip side here is that you, you don't necessarily need to have something going on in your family

to justify a $10 million salary. one million dollar salary like LeBron James doesn't need to say oh like you know I have a sob story and that's why I need to get a million dollar he's like I'm delivering this value to you and you should pay me the value that I'm creating and so I'm wondering if you ever considered just coming to a founder and saying like I can do the job of three engineers but you got to pay me three times as much honestly I again feel counterintuitive like I don't really care much about the money I was really into it for building so like greed was not like an incentive for me Again, regardless of my financial circumstances, in most of these companies, I always took the lower, you know, pay higher equity offer.

Again, like equity for me was not even like vested until I would make the move to US, which like I said, you know, I was based out of India. So I had to go through a whole visa process in order to make that happen. So I wouldn't even be getting equity as long as my immigration was uncertain which it was. So the decisions seem counterintative. Basically for me is like, hey, you know, I have to do something to kind of get out of a situation I'm in. I also want to spend time like building something meaningful. You know, as long as I like the startup and as long as it's not like hand to mouth, it did not matter too much. Like, you know.

So what are you going to do now? You have the intention of the entire tech ecosystem. And I appreciate how candid you've been with us. I want to talk about DevShop. Yeah. I mean, there's a few angles here. could do the dev shop of Soham Parikh. I think you would be able to get a handful of clients immediately.

I think you could sign a max-out contract with Cluelly. They would probably pay you a pretty penny to join the team over there. And I also, it sounds like you're interested in joining as a founding engineer of a new AI startup. So how are you thinking about your opportunities right now and how can you turn this into a win? Yeah, look like I've, you know, regardless of the situation, like I've been privileged to like work with some of these companies like, you know, anti-metal, you know, shares in Matt, the founders, like Sync Labs, you know, Pradi, you know, Rutherba. They're one of the most, you know, practice is I've been at in general, partly because they had me, maybe not, I don't know, I guess I'm with that. But I think the main thing is, like, I am really excited about what I'm going to be a part of next. So, you know, working with a company called Darwin, they are essentially like building a new, like,

AI-driven, like, data, like, you know, video platform essentially for more kind of, like, you know, UGC-style media. And we're going to release to the market very shortly. This is the only thing I'm going to focus on. I think, you know, they've put a bet on me. I have a lot to prove. And there's not a lot of me to say. How do you rebuild trust?

How do you give them the confidence? that this isn't just, you're focused on it for a couple weeks, and then the second job creeps in, and then the third job creeps in. Is there something that you see happening down the line around worker monitoring or checking when the GitHub commits are coming in or doing something to understand if someone else is working multiple places?

Somebody was saying, like, tech needs some sort of service to see, hey, are we employed? the same company how do you how do you rebuild trust and and guarantee that you won't be working multiple jobs against the will of the current employer so i think like you know all all of this that has taught me is like you know just coming in kind of like probably makes people understand your situation after all like we all are humans um i don't anticipate like working on multiple periods again but you know my financial circumstances have not changed so even if it did came to them which it won't like right now very clear that this is my

focus, you know, I would probably like approach with like being very candid with the founders and just letting them know. And if that's not a possibility, you know, that's fine. You know, maybe I can figure a way out where, you know, there's like a higher pay or whatever. Kind of like to your point, right? But in another spectrum of the world, I think like what I've really realized is that I just, you know, I just want to be a part of like building something that I can like focus on a longer term. And that's always been the goal. You know, is always a goal with any of these companies I worked with. So, you know, I obviously, you know, like I believe in actions more than words.

Like, I guess what we built and launch in a month would probably be a testament to, you know, what we've been able to build. Well, you're certainly going to have a lot of attention around that launch. I hope you, now is probably not the right time to renegotiate your offer letter for the new company. You should probably, you know, stick with it. But I think you're going to bring a lot of marketing value to Darwin, the new company you're joining. What's the reaction been like at home? You're getting a lot of messages from friends?

Has this broken tech acts and broken containment into kind of your world beyond? Just people asking you about this? Yeah, I mean, obviously, you know, reaction is natural. Like a ton of people have been asking about this. What's also funny is like, you know, some of the memes, like, I am very new to Twitter. I joined Twitter yesterday. So this was a lesson for me in social media in general. Like I am not a social media person.

So I was like, you know, very over-vened with it in general. Obviously, you know, feeling shitty about it as well. Like I, like I said, you know, I'm not very proud of what I did. I think there was a way where I could have course corrected in a much different manner. So there was a lot of like reflection in general. But I think friends and family have been strong. You know, like I said, I was lucky to work at some of these places where I had really close relationships with the founders. or a lot of them reached out, you know, they, to essentially be like helpful here, kind of give

advice on what I should be doing next. Even like, you know, sometimes like staying through with me, like, you know, just to make sure that I'm like all right. You know, like, I think it says a lot that a number of the people that that you work for that fired you because you were working multiple jobs still care about you. It shows that when you were working for them, at least, you know, it does seem like you really you really did care. Are there any startups that you've worked for in the past that you were working multiple jobs for that you haven't gotten a chance to

apologize to yet that you plan to? I mean, in general, like, I plan to apologize to everyone. Like, that's what that goes without saying? Any companies that you still need to resign from? None whatsoever. It's the only focus I have. That's great. Okay.

He's on the record. You're on the right path. On the right path. Well, I'm reading for you. I hope this is a story of redemption. I believe in forgiveness. I believe in mistakes and I'm optimistic that this can have a good ending. Me too.

So to be clear, your ex account is at real Soham Parikh. Right? Yeah. That's the real one. There's a lot of fake ones floating out there trying to take, trying to ride the hype wave. Yeah, I mean, 100% that there's been so many fake accounts and a lot of fake narratives as well. But yeah, that is my real account. There's one person who asked me to post a picture of banana on my head with a fork in my hand.

And I did not have banana at my home at that point in time, but I was trying to do that just to show you. Perique. Okay. Yeah. But it's been it's been interestingly like, you know, while to like notice how people are like taking this in different ways. But yeah, that kind of helps like, just feel a little bit less shitty about it. Yeah. Yeah, what are the questions here?

Remote versus in office, U.S. versus international. Yeah, I mean, I think we had this post from Amad at Mercury. I think the reason this struck such a chord is, you know, again, it's this remote angle, the international angle, the ideas around a 10x engineer, the potential of new AI tools. But this has been really helpful. It's been very helpful. And I think you were getting, you provided. entertainment for a lot of people the last 24 hours. So I'm glad to hear that you're going to

apologize to everybody that you misled. And I am excited to follow what you do next. Yeah. Thanks for stopping by. Thank you so much for having me. Cheers. We'll talk to you soon. We'll talk soon. Bye. Fascinating. Fascinating. I think he's handling it quite well. Yeah. And I do think this is a situation where the damage is hopefully minimal to the companies. It's not it's not like he was working, multiple jobs, and then there was like, you know, the customer database leaked because he wrote bad code because he was working multiple jobs too stressed out. There's no, there's no one

alleging that, at least that we've seen. And I think the founders that hired him and then fired him in general probably noticed it pretty quickly. This is not like somebody joining a big tech company and working there for five years, not doing any work and just sort of like being a cog in the machine. And so, yeah, ultimately it's unfortunate. Silicon Valley runs on trust. Yes. He violated that trust, but I was happy to see that he was, you know, really apologetic. Yeah. And that's the thing about the startup ecosystem. Like we like Silicon Valley has really, really leaned into the trust thing to the point where a venture capitalist can shake your hand and say, I'm going to invest a million dollars. And the expectation is that they

actually do that and they don't back out. And if they do back out, it's, it's a big thing. It's a big deal. And so, yeah, even, even though, you know, I don't know how, I don't know how ironclad, every work contract is, like we were going back and forth on like, does, is there a specific no moonlighting clause that describes exactly what you can do in your free time? And can you go do DoorDash or Uber Eats on the side or can you take a, you know, can you earn an X creator pay share, like RevShare? Yeah. Like does that count as moonlighting? You're posting. You're making 200 bucks or a thousand bucks from X. Is that moonlight? You know, maybe there's not very different, but people know what full-time means. And if I send you an offer, I'm offering you a full-time job. I'm expecting

you not to take another full-time job. Like maybe, yeah, maybe, you know, someone throws you 50 bucks to, you know, walk their dog once, you know, once on the random on the weekend. But the idea is that you're not taking a very similar job at another company. So it seems pretty clear even if there's no major like legal ramifications. So I don't know, he seems, he seems like he's handling it well and going on the correct apology tour. And there could be the good ending here. Yeah, Lulu said, come clean, be sorry, he did that. Be willing to laugh at yourself, embrace a good meme. Yep, Worker 17.

He did that. Feed the curiosity. What was it like? What did you learn? Don't sugarcoat. I thought it was interesting that he would have been hilarious if he came out and said, oh yeah, I'm running, you know, 10 codex agents. I'm running Devin.

I'm using Claude Coat. He was just like, no, I just worked really hard. Yeah. And I don't do anything other than eating. Yeah, it is always tough with this stuff. because somebody who would lie about working multiple jobs might just come on here and lie to us, but he seemed, he seemed sincere.

And so I'm inclined to believe that he is an insomniac and just was working three jobs, 40 hours a week each. And that's 120 hours and that's, you know, Morgan Stanley Investment Bank Associate. Yeah, you know, work. But it does raise this question of like, like there are people out there who are willing to work 100 hours. And if they go to Wall Street,

they get comped on that immediately and startups don't really have a mechanism. Not necessarily immediately. No, but the comp and the expectation is matched and like I think Wall Street has like absorbed that latent demand for work and capacity of young people who are down to grind basically. And they can choose to opt out of it and getting a different job.

But they kind of know what they're going into. Like no one, no one shows up at Goldman Sachs and is like, oh my God, I had no idea. I was going to have to do a slide deck on Saturday, right? But in startups, there's kind of this like, hey, we have this, you know, good work culture. It's kind of chill. Let's, you know, do 40 hours a week. But then, you know, also there's no real way to make three times as much if you're willing to work three times as hard. So, yeah, it's an interesting story. Yeah. And to be honest, he posted yesterday. He said, there's a lot being said about me right now. Most of you don't know the full story. If there's one thing to know about me, it said I love to build, which I do believe.

he said that's it I've been isolated written off and shut out by nearly everyone I've known in every company I've worked at that doesn't feel completely true because he's in conversation with the CEOs that had hired him but building is the only thing I've truly known and it's what I'll keep doing earlier today the timing of this is amazing earlier today I signed an exclusive founding deal to be founding engineer at one company and one company only they were the only ones willing to bet on me at this time I actually think there's a lot of companies that would take a bet on him now. And it just has to be, you have to promise me that you're going to work for this, just for us. Exclusively. And, and I think the right thing to do for this next company is try to bring him out to SF or wherever their base. For sure. Because you

will probably spend 18 hours a day in the office. Yeah, it's so much easier to deal with a with a known unknown or like a known risk factor. It's the devil you know. Like forever. This will follow him as like, hey, monitor this guy. Make sure he's not working a second job. If you scroll down on this post, he says, I'm pissed and I've got something to prove. He had a very aggressive posting style and he came on and was just very sweet and nice and just like kind of contrite. It seems like he got in a bad spot. He made some bad decisions. He's sorry about it.

And he's now got something to prove. Yeah. And he's now infamous. Yeah, infamous. Well, that's a fun story. I'm glad we were able to get him on and cover it. That's part of the beauty of the show live, baby. Anyway.

Newsmaxing. Yeah, and I think that provides some good closure to this chapter of the timeline. Yeah. We have a million messages coming in from various sources. I can go through a little bit of the stories if you want. We've got to ring the gong, though, because the U.S. economy added 147,000 new jobs. Let's go. Manufacturers are...

It's a... It's like a very, very slight job speed. It's not actually bad. We're very excited. Joe Wisenthal has a post in the stack somewhere where he says... Breaking. It's a beat. 147,000 new jobs.

Unemployment rate falls to 4.1% last month revised higher. Analysts had expected 106K new jobs and a 4.3% unemployment rate. So we love to see it. Stark contrast with the calls from our president to reduce rates. If jobs report is good, it's hard to argue to drop them. So manufacturers are pausing, hiring amid tariff uncertainty,

while unemployment fell partly because fewer people are looking for work. So that's never a good sign. But it does seem like the American consumer seems resilient and things are, we're staying in the kangaroo market. We're neither, you know, it's not so over. but we're maybe not so back just yet. We're kind of right back where we started at the beginning of the year,

in terms of the stock market rates. Anyway, the CEO of Ford had a controversial quote in the Wall Street Journal. He's AGI-Pilled. He's AGI-Piled. He's been talking to Dario overanthropic. Clearly. So the CEO of Ford said,

AI will replace, quote, literally half of all white-collar workers, which is something that was definitely said on Dwarkesh Patel first. I think Shulto might have mentioned that, and then Adario mentioned it in the post as well. And Anthropics been kind of noodling on this, and then Open AI and META have kind of stayed back from that.

And a lot of the other labs have kind of said, like, I don't know, like, you know, I think the quote from Sam was like, Dario is a scientist, like he should apply more scientific rigor here to like do this prediction. Like this is a very jar and bold prediction. That's right, Brad, like cap.

At Open AI, it was pushing back a little bit. Yeah. But look, when he was making these comments, he was also talking about just how advanced Xiaomi and these other Chinese EV manufacturers are. So this was coming from a broader conversation. And it's a good, ultimately, whether or not he actually believes this is true, he's signaling to the market that he's on top of this trend.

And if this does turn out to be the case, it's very possible that, you know, Ford, will be a beneficiary in some way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a, it's a tough business. And I'm sure he's looking to the Chinese manufacturers and looking at their, their cog structure and their SG&A spend relative to revenue and seeing how they can benchmark.

Not that, not that the Chinese EV manufacturers are necessarily adopting AI any faster than Ford, but it's certainly the idea of like how the shape of the business will be. A little bit. They do like facial recognition. to tech. I think it will like you walk up to your car for you. I think there's a story about the

Ford CEO dailying a Chinese car just to get a taste of like okay we need to step it up in a bunch of different ways. Yeah. There's no reason that Ford can't catch up on these type of things. In other news we have a massive story out of the United Kingdom

folks. Britain's Royals gave up their luxury train citing fiscal restraint uh this is sent to us by a friend uh in an era of hard choices for economies around the world britain's royal family is also playing up its part waving farewell to perhaps its most extravagant mode of transport of the royal train the house of windsor's personalized service that chugs the royals to engagements will be axed in twenty twenty seven after a review concluded that it no longer offered value for money and that two new helicopters would be a reliant. I know.

Nothing is sacred anymore, they're getting rid of their train. The locomotive service, which features bedroom compartments, a dining room, and a study has been a lightning rod for anti-monarchy campaigners who pointed to its costs as emblematic of royal excess. Shows the power of democracy that we have anti-monarchy campaign. You can't even be a king with a private train anymore.

What's happening to the world? It's ridiculous. You know, royal excess, what is royalty, if not excessive? It's the brand. It's terrible. Last year, King Charles, the third undertook a 190-mile rail trip to the capital from England's East Midlands, which was billed at nearly $62,000. It's like the price of a Model S.

Wait, the trip was 62. It was 190-mile rail trip on a private train car. And so they have to staff it. They have to load it up with fuel and food and all this different stuff. And the study has that bucks. Strike you as, I mean, it's a, it's $62,000 for 190 miles. It's a bargain, right? Yeah, but 190 miles.

It's across maybe a few days. Probably bringing multiple people too. He's having meetings on there. Yeah, it's cheaper than, you know, taking a zipping around in a, in a peasant. Well, a review by the government concluded that buying two new helicopters would be a relative, a reliable alternatives or a viable alternative. What about safety, though? I have to imagine trains have a better safety record. I would think so. I would think so. James Chalmers, who manages the royal finances as keeper of the privy purse, said the decision to halt the personal train would mean the fondest of farewells, yes. This is the Wall Street Journal. In moving forwards, we must not be bound by the past, he added.

Oh, rough. This kind of public fiscal self-flagellation is nothing new to the British monarchy, which is often at pains to point out its value to UK taxpayers who bankroll the franchise. The late Queen Elizabeth II gave up the Royal Yacht in the 1990s in the name of financial prudence. But this latest decision is all the more surprising. given that the royal family's finances are arguably stronger than they've ever been in modern times. The Royal Train. Let's go it up for the Royal Family's Finance.

Let's give up for the Royal Families finances. Thank you. I don't think ramps in the UK yet, but they'll be able to get to the next level. Obviously, when that happens. The Royal Train will stop rolling for the first time since Queen Victoria first commissioned coaches to be pulled by a locomotive in the 1860s. The train's importance in an age of air travel has repeatedly come into question. Once the train is mothballed Charles, who has long advocated protecting the environment, will instead use two newly leased helicopters that run on sustainable aviation fuel.

The train will be taken on one more tour of Britain before it is retired and can be placed on display. So, RIP, to the Royal Train. The Royal Train. Hopefully it makes a comeback at some point. Yeah. I think American Train. You know, the Royals are backing off. Let's get an American train.

Yeah, this is actually could be bullish for trains because them shutting it down, it creates an opportunity for them to start it back up, which would be a positive catalyst for the train. Yes, yes, I agree. Well, you mentioned ramp. Time is money, save both. Easy use corporate cards, bill payments accounting, and a whole lot more all in one place. If you're trying to expense train trips, do it on ramp.

That's way to do it. Ramp travel, baby. Ramp travel. What else is going on in the news? J.P. Morgan is revamping its bank for the super rich to cater to global clientele. David Frame, named Global Head of Private Bank, helping deep-pocketed clients invest more abroad. Oh, there's also big news. Not very American.

No, not very American. Ilya Sutskiver has issued a statement on Daniel Gross with Safe Super Intelligence. So, Ilya writes, of course, the Open AI co-founder now at SIF. says, I sent the following message to our team and investors. As you know, Daniel Gross's time with us has been winding down. And as of June 29th, that's three, four days ago, he is officially no longer a part of SSI. We are grateful for his early contributions to the company and wish him well in his next endeavor. I am now formally CEO.

Reading between the lines. Do we think he hit his cliff? I don't know. When did SSI start? Probably when your cliff or your best? You think he went default? I don't know. When was SSI founded?

1970, Scuba Schools International. Wow. Super Intelligence has not arrived in Jordi's web browser just yet. Oh, he may have hit his cliff. It was founded June 19th, 2024. No way. But it's very possible this was resolved prior to that. Absolute dog.

Anyway, so I am now formerly CEO of SSI and Daniel Levy is president. The technical team continues. used to report to me. You might have heard rumors of companies looking to acquire us. We are flattered by their attention, but are focused on seeing our work through. He's a missionary. We have the compute. We have the team. We know what to do. Together, we will keep building safe superintelligence, Ilya. So, DG has entered the trade portal. I don't even know what that means. I'd never heard that term before, but I understand that it's vaguely. It's portal time. It's portal time. It's portal time. But,

Anyways, the rumor is that he's going to Meta, but we will have to see. Yep. Well, speaking of Meta, Nat Friedman officially posted that he has, in fact, joined Meta. This was rumored and leaked multiple times. It seemed pretty confident. Everyone seemed pretty confident in the reporting. But he has confirmed it. He said, I started work at Meta this week.

This is Nat Friedman tweeting. My job is to make amazing AI products that billions of people. people love to use. He's in the application layer, baby. He's productizing. He's in the app layer. We love it. I'm excited. I'm so excited for what he's going to build.

Will says, taking the balance sheet of the world's largest megacorp and using it to develop the technology to find Noah's Ark, the Ark of the Covenant, and other biblical artifacts is top tier stuff. Congrats, King. Ashley Vance says, if you're not hiring an intern to use ground penetrating radar to find the ancient first copies of Solaris buried under Building 12, I'll be disappointed. I love it. He says it won't happen overnight, but a few days in, I'm feeling confident that great things are ahead. Yeah, I posted something when the news leak that it's like it's 2026.

I put on my meta quest for Lama, open Instagram, and pull up the latest Vesuvius scroll. Because I certainly hope this means more Nat Friedman side projects. Obviously, he's going to be incredibly locked in. It has a huge task in front of him catching up to the big labs. He's, you know, has an incredible team now. A lot of funding, but it is a big challenge. And I'd certainly hope that he has time for some side projects. I wonder what this means for AI grant.

I wonder what this means for the rest of the Nat Friedman cinematic universe of kind of cracked interns that have gone on to the. The Nat Friedman diaspora is really illustrious at this point. Sort of a new Teal Fellowship. So breaking news, the big, beautiful bill has passed. No way. The house. I had a polymarket just about 45 minutes ago. It had rocketed up to 99%. It's now sitting at 100%. So Axios had...