TBPN - "You Can See Everything" Review, Roadster Reactions, Eric Glyman Joins | Walter Isaacson, Christian Jensen, Tavarish

Episode Date: October 16, 2026

(00:15) - "You Can See Everything" Review (07:35) - Roadster Reactions (30:03) - Walter Isaacson is a bestselling biographer and journalist known for chronicling influential innovators such a...s Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, and Jennifer Doudna. Walter Isaacson discusses Musk’s futuristic designs and mercurial leadership, the relationship between human creativity and artificial intelligence, and how individuals and collaborative teams shape technological progress. (01:00:00) - Eric Glyman, co-founder and co-CEO of Ramp, discusses the company’s $1.85 billion fundraise, rapid revenue growth, and expanding suite of financial products. He explains how Ramp aims to help businesses manage, attribute, and maximize returns on AI spending as artificial intelligence becomes a core operating expense. (01:14:02) - Christian Jensen discusses Dragoneer Investment Group’s $1.85 billion investment in Ramp, describing the firm’s strategy of making concentrated bets on category-defining businesses. He argues that Ramp’s vast market, expanding product platform, capital efficiency, AI capabilities, and exceptional leadership justify its $60 billion valuation, while explaining Dragoneer’s selective, nonintrusive approach to supporting portfolio companies. (01:24:31) - Tavarish discusses his skepticism about the Tesla Roadster, enthusiasm for Porsche’s Mission S and 918, and preference for distinctive, driver-focused cars over flashy technology showcases. The automotive YouTuber and supercar rebuilder also shares insights into project-car selection, beginner-friendly Japanese cars, extreme-speed challenges, and the evolving balance among combustion, hybrid, and electric vehicles. 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.comCodex - http://openAI.com/codexFollow TBPN: https://TBPN.comhttps://x.com/tbpnhttps://open.spotify.com/show/2L6WMqY3GUPCGBD0dX6p00?si=674252d53acf4231https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tbpn/id1772360235https://www.youtube.com/@TBPNLive

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Starting point is 00:00:00 You're watching TVPN. Today is Friday, October 16. 2026. We're live from the TVP and Ultradown. We're back. The Temple of Technology, the Fortress of Finance. The Capital of Capital. Why do you call it the Capital of Capital, Jordy? Why do you feel that way?
Starting point is 00:00:18 Why do you think that way? We're of course referring to, you can see everything, the fun Nathan Fielder movie that we saw yesterday, where he always asks the follow-up question, asked why do you feel that way? Why do you say that again and again and again? She never hit him with the why questions are overdetermined.
Starting point is 00:00:34 She should have hit him with the why questions are overdetermined. That would have been the trump card that just ate. Got him. Yeah, he would have been. Nathan Fielder hates this one simple trick. He would have been stun locked, yeah. But a Nathan Fielder PT crossover would be incredible. That's the next movie they got to do.
Starting point is 00:00:53 Deep Diving the Antichrist figuring out all the questions there. That would be so... That is, I think, the only way that you could one up this. Yeah, no. It's maybe even... It's maybe even too much, too inside baseball, right?
Starting point is 00:01:06 Because this was such a big story a decade ago. Yeah, yeah, everyone knows and they've seen the show and stuff. Anyway, let me tell you about ramp.com. Time is money. I say both. These are you as corporate cards,
Starting point is 00:01:15 they'll pay accounting and a whole lot more, all in one place. Yeah, I mean, I'm pretty much a 10 out of 10 on the movie. I thought it was fantastic. I really, really enjoyed it. We went with a bunch of folks
Starting point is 00:01:26 and thanks to everyone that came out and hung out with us. It was a great time. It had a big impact on us. We ditched the IEMs. Yeah. We're going to be using these headphones now going forward. We're also going to be shooting like this. Yes.
Starting point is 00:01:40 The whole show. Cinematography was incredible. There's a lot of debate going on in the studio on how much VFX was involved, how much cinematography and actual lighting equipment was involved, because every shot is beautiful. It's perfectly lit. And yet they're in these tight spaces, this small beach house in Del Mar, and it looks incredible. And my thesis is that just the cameramen are as good at what they do as what Nathan Fielder does.
Starting point is 00:02:10 Like they are just experts of their craft. They use the best tools. They got incredible cameras, incredible lenses. And they went in there and they shot it beautifully, even with some crazy lighting at times. They figured out how to make it amazing. And maybe there's color grading after the fact, but I was, I'm sort of skeptical of the theory that, like, before every scene, they went and set up a bunch of 10 by 10 diffusion and shot a bunch of light through. Maybe there's some stuff going on outside pushing through windows, but it seemed pretty natural to me. And I think they're just really good at making it look beautiful.
Starting point is 00:02:43 Yeah, it was masters at work. Yeah, across the entire production. Everyone involved, even the A24 people who, I think they cast them, they cast actors. I don't want to spoil anything, but there's some A24 references that are fun, and everything about it is incredible. So, highly recommend going and seeing it. Probably stay a spoiler-free if you can because it's a fun wild ride. Yeah, the thing is that I think you could know exactly what happened, and it would still be wildly entertaining. 100%.
Starting point is 00:03:16 Like the whole concept is just so absurd. Yeah. It is, if you followed Nathan Fielder across his career, this makes, you know, this makes, sense as a natural progression. Totally. And yet at the same time, it's unbelievable that all these different pieces came together. Yep. And various groups, like, agreed to do something like this being Billy and Elizabeth.
Starting point is 00:03:39 Yeah. It is just almost unbelievable. Yeah. When the trailer came out, a lot of people were asking, like, why would she agree to do this? And I really think it's like, you're serving 11 years in prison. There's nowhere to go but up. Yeah. Your view was like there's no real downside.
Starting point is 00:03:53 No real downside. And I think people will come away from this generally having a lot more, like, regardless of you think she was guilty or not, you're going to come away. You're going to come away feeling bad for her and the whole situation, right? The days and days and days of scenes with her and her children, these shots, the final shots. before prison where she says she does her, you know, is pumping breast milk for the children saying like, bring it back. Are you guys laughing at the framing or just what you already say? I'm so confused.
Starting point is 00:04:38 Sorry, it's very distracting. Okay. Well, quickly, let me tell you about Figma. Agents meet the canvas. Your AI agents can now create and modify your Figma files with design system contracts. Liz Wessel, Ramp Investor over at first round. Big news from Ramp. Eric Klaman's coming on the show today.
Starting point is 00:04:51 But she took 150 founders, investors, and buildings. to an early screening of the movie. She polled 16 of them, and 14 out of 16 came away saying they are more positive on Liz Holmes. Doesn't mean their fans. Just means that they thought less negatively of her. That sounds like it worked.
Starting point is 00:05:10 14 out of 16. So she took 150 people. Very odd methodology, Liz. I mean, nice that you did this. It's interesting content, but you should have pulled off 150. But instead, she pulled 16, sort of casually, and she asked them some basic questions.
Starting point is 00:05:23 Do you feel better or worse about Elizabeth Holmes after seeing this film? 14 said more positive. Only one said more negative and one didn't change. But all 16 said they felt more negative about Billy, and there's some other data there that will kind of leave. But you can go check it out. Anyway, don't miss it. Go see it this weekend.
Starting point is 00:05:46 The spoilers are just going to keep trickling out. It's just fun seen in a packed theater because everyone's laughing at different moments. everyone's gasping at different moments. Yeah, the film was effectively like a psychedelic experience. Yeah. In many ways. Yeah. Like it was riveting.
Starting point is 00:06:05 It was like, you know, funny at these. The cuts? The production is just so funny. We're dying back there. I'm glad we have this tool now. But no, no, I agree with you. Someone just texted me and said, apparently. What?
Starting point is 00:06:19 What did they text you? Apparently my, my wonderful wife texted the team, telling them the show is messed up, super zoomed in. That's hilarious. Well, is this super zoomed in? Railway. Railway is the all-in-one intelligent cloud provider. User favorite agents deployed web app, servers, day bases, and more.
Starting point is 00:06:36 While Railway automatically takes care of scaling, monitoring, and security. I will be going back to see it. I'm seeing it tonight again. You are with them? Yeah, yeah. Amazing. Very cool. Yeah, we'll be going back as soon as possible.
Starting point is 00:06:50 But the whole thing was, yeah, completely psychedelic. in my experience. And just a very, it was kind of strange for me because two hours into the movie, there was a fire that got started somewhat near my house. And so I started getting calls and texts
Starting point is 00:07:10 about that, and then I ended up kind of like my attention ended up trailing off. So I have to go see it again. But really an incredible work of art. Yeah. Instant classic. Instant classic, yeah. Very, very, very.
Starting point is 00:07:23 fascinating. Well, I think we can zoom out. This is a tool that we can have in the tool chest. We can go back to the normal lighting and the normal level of zoom because I got a big reveal because what am I wearing today? I got the Felfer to get award because your boy put down $5,000 hard-earned dollars on a Tesla Roadster reservation two days ago. And I think I got to refund it because they the the the the demo's incredible but it's not starting production until 2028 I was under the assumption that this was the launch of the roadster that this was not the reveal that maybe I just read the tweets wrong and I wasn't dialed in or something but I thought it was like okay this is the start of production like they're producing them now they're going to
Starting point is 00:08:10 show what's happening show the final design and then be like yeah and the people that have been waiting seven years they're getting theirs next month and then a couple months later and If you just signed up six months. Going into production. So first of all, I'll start by saying absolutely incredible. Feet. Insane. Amazing show.
Starting point is 00:08:28 Absolute cinema. Wonderful that they're doing this. There's a bunch of stuff that I really love about it. But dropping, like, the car will be going into production in 2028, which is, like, completely insane. That's how I call it. It was rough. Yeah, it was, it was.
Starting point is 00:08:45 I want a fun Tesla now. Like that self-driving technology is so cool. I just want it now. And in some ways, like, if you gave Tesla a quarter million dollars in 2017, and if you would just put that in the S&P, you would be, you would have multiples of that by now. Yeah, you'd be aware. And then there's this big event. The event gets delayed again two weeks.
Starting point is 00:09:10 And then, yeah, we're making the car, but it's going to be going into production in 2028, which easily means it could be like. Could be delayed. It could be, well, no, I just, like, it could be getting deliveries in the very end of 2028, potentially 2029. You could start production December 20th, 2028, and that's not a violation. And then production could run for like four years. So if you're later in the queue, it could take it for a long time. That happens with special cars all the time.
Starting point is 00:09:35 Elite. We lost. We lost that. But the other thing is that it just felt like they re-raised the stakes so much by being like, we're going to put cold gas thrusters and rockets on it. It's going to be able to do kicklips. It's like, okay, there's a lot to work. Yeah, all you had to do was beautiful car that goes fast.
Starting point is 00:09:51 Yeah. Beautiful car that goes fast. I was trying to imagine. So the reason that you do this now, even though the car is not actually ready to announce at all, is pressure from the probably 10,000 plus people that reserve this car a long time ago. It's getting kind of annoying. You feel like I'm not delivering on something that I said. And two, to kind of like make the Tesla SpaceX merger. like start to build towards that.
Starting point is 00:10:19 I like that thesis. That feels like why you would do this now. Otherwise, like you don't need to announce a car that you're not making for two years. Yeah, when they open the car door for one of the cars, because I think some of the cars don't have seats, some of them do, some of them can be drivable.
Starting point is 00:10:35 Some of them can just do kickflips. There's a whole variety of products that they're demoing and then they'll bring everything together over the next two years, hopefully. But when they open the door and they're like, there's someone inside, it's space man, he's in the spacesuit. It's like, okay, that's a SpaceX product in there as well.
Starting point is 00:10:48 It's not just the thrusters. And then I was expecting almost like an Optimus in there, but I forgot that Optimus is technically a Tesla project, not a SpaceX project. But it feels like a SpaceX project now because it's SpaceX AI or SpaceX S.I. And so when I think of like robotics and artificial intelligence, I think SpaceX more than Tesla now. So it's like these companies just are destined to be. The contrast between how incredible like the show and the spectacle was and the demo and the technology with like the delivery from. Elon and the two other guys. A lot of dead air.
Starting point is 00:11:20 A lot of dead air. The most awkward delivery in so many of these kind of semi-awkward moments. Yeah. We got to play the actual video. Let's talk about, yeah, let's talk about everything that we love about it.
Starting point is 00:11:31 Okay, also predictions. Because if you remember yesterday in the show, I predicted that it would be able to lift off the ground. I said something like six feet. It clearly does more than six feet. That was my prediction. I did not predict ramps. I said ramps everywhere.
Starting point is 00:11:46 ramps everywhere and that's exactly what we got i mean it's just one big ramp but it's effectively ramps everywhere based on i think this totally counts insane that it can go upside down like that uh the mcmurtey spurling can actually do something similar with just fans should we do a tier list i think it's time for a tier list okay i like this let's get a tier list going okay uh let's go juvenile i'm going to start with juvenile humor all the jokes about uh all the the the sucking relationship jokes. Sure, sure. I'm going to put those at F tier.
Starting point is 00:12:17 F tier. Completely unnecessary. Okay. Yeah, the childish humor is F tier. What about just the fact that it went on the ramp up to the top before it did the kickflip? That is so insane. That is S tier.
Starting point is 00:12:30 Yeah. The thing about watching it is even seeing it live. Yeah. Part of, I think it was amazing, super smart that they had a live audience and everyone there to see it and all this stuff. But because it is like looks like it's. breaking the laws of physics. It just, it doesn't feel real just for that reason.
Starting point is 00:12:51 Okay. So which is, which is what tier are you putting? That's S tier. Okay. S tier. Breaking the, the perceived laws of physics. Okay. So, so, so, so, so, so,
Starting point is 00:13:03 Mark in the chat says I expected more. What did you expect? It's, cool. You had gall post in the atmosphere in the stratosphere. What are you doing? That's crazy. Uh, what about, the rumor that it will be able to beat an F1 car on the car. Okay, this is, this is what I love. Okay.
Starting point is 00:13:24 The flying stuff is cool, but like irrelevant if you're a buyer of this vehicle because one, I don't think they're going to, I don't think they'll, I think they maybe ship it to a handful of friends of Elon's influencers. I'm thinking people like Whistling Diesel maybe get, you know that Tesla hates him, right? Is this a cyber truck thing? Oh, right. Oh yeah. No, he is public. Okay. So not Not requesting diesel, but maybe some like car influencers and they do some demos. But it was very clear during the thing. As he started saying, I was like writing some of this stuff down before they actually released these like specs. But he says, not sure it will be legal in all jurisdictions, but it will be a car that someone can own.
Starting point is 00:14:04 And I'm just thinking, okay, it's like a not a road legal car. Yeah. And so all the flying stuff completely irrelevant to people like you and me that put down a deposit. So Ron DeSantis. chimed in and said, like, we're going to make this thing legal in Florida. And I think it's actually pretty easy to, what? Isn't that amazing? I do not.
Starting point is 00:14:26 As much as I want flying cars, I don't want to be in traffic with someone that has this capability. But what if it's, what if it's geo-fans? That's just because they're going to mug you. Oh, that's because you would be getting mocked. Watch out. What about, would you be okay if it was, there was, there's never been an explosion of the tank? It's a very highly pressurized 10,000 PSI tank, and it's geofenced so that if you're on a public road, you cannot take off, you cannot engage the cold gas thrusters, but you can just drive it like a sports car. But one of these pulls up next to you.
Starting point is 00:15:01 Yes, there is a highly pressurized tank there, but the software is limiting it on street roads. Are you okay with that? Anyone will be able to jail break it with Codex. Ooh, okay, okay. I'm sorry. Yeah, it's just it's It's not It works
Starting point is 00:15:20 The way that it works currently Yeah It gives you one and a half to two seconds Yeah Of air time Yeah Not There's no
Starting point is 00:15:29 There's no Real utility to it It's purely What if a bridge collapses And you need to get Yeah there is a video We do have a video of that We should pull it up
Starting point is 00:15:40 Yeah the ultimate Ultimate usefulness No I agree with you It's a stuff. Pull up this video. This is the obvious utility. And so, but I think that there are two real utilities and this was a tech demo that could fork into two paths and maybe both, maybe it'll try and do both.
Starting point is 00:15:57 But one is what if, yes, this is the real most likely scenario where you'll want this car. You're driving along a very long bridge and it explodes down and you engage the cold gas thrusters and you save your life. What is your life worth? a couple years on a Tesla roadster waiting list and $250,000 of your hard-earned cash in Tesla's bank account. Easy price to pay. Anyway, there's a fork in the road right now. And I think Tesla's trying to do both.
Starting point is 00:16:28 And they might see. By the way, in 89, the Bay Bridge had a bunch of damage. Someone did drive off the cliff. That's crazy. Okay. And it was fatal. And that's only 89. So, yeah, our infrastructure is crumbling, right?
Starting point is 00:16:43 We haven't reindustrialized yet. This is a good value prop. That's value prop number one. Value prop number two is I think this car can actually, if they really design it for it, do a sub five-minute nerve-burg ring. I think that with the fans and the thrusters, when you're on the straits, you're actually a rocket car. You're never leaving the ground, and it's designed to keep you on the ground. So it's sucking you to the ground, so you're going around the corners really fast. And you're effectively in Porsche 919 Evo territory with a car that's like from a manufacturer.
Starting point is 00:17:16 And I don't know if it's road legal, but I think that they might put up like an actually insane track performance from this thing. Yeah, by teasing by teasing a lot time at Kota. That was like the best Easter egg of the whole thing. Exactly. Because again, there's two ways to view yesterday's demo. There's just like shock and awe. It's crazy. Colt of Elon is amazing.
Starting point is 00:17:37 the car is flying, all that stuff. And then there's like, I want to get this car, or I'm considering buying this car, what is it actually going to do for me? Yep. And creating massive amounts of downforce and being able to put up F1-style lap times is insane and is very exciting. And actually, the things that they kept hinting at were like, this is a driver's car. Yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 00:17:58 And that's what I loved, right? And I think that a lot of the people that have reservations will be excited about that. And so that obviously was just like a minor detail compared to the whole circus. Yeah. But that's what I think is actually cool because no other car manufacturer would do this in that way, nor would they add the thrusters to the rear to help with that zero to one time. Yeah. There's a lot of questions that you immediately start having of like if you're using, like,
Starting point is 00:18:27 do you think tires would last like one lap if you're pushing it at Kota? Yeah. Like, it would probably, like, they would probably just be completely shredded after a single lap. I think it's just get the record, just max the record. It's like zero-60 times. And then I was starting to think about it. I'm like, tracks will 100% ban these from public track days? Can you imagine, like, your average roadster owner just, like, heading down to their local racetrack and being like, I'm going to go out for a public session.
Starting point is 00:18:55 And they're just, like, driving, like, an absolute banshee. But, yeah. Let me tell you about number. number two, the second path. But first I'm going to tell you about the New York Stock Exchange. When I change the world, greatest capital of the New York Stock Exchange. So the first is crazy track performance, crazy track performance. But what else can you do with this?
Starting point is 00:19:14 He was gesturing towards like flying car, flying car. Flying cars here. And yeah, I can only fly for two seconds. But you could see a world where you are actually able to deploy this as a flying car adjacent technology. it's really far from that, but there are, but there is a world where, like,
Starting point is 00:19:37 my example was like parallel parking or like, or like jumping the car somewhere. Like, not quite the bridge mode and also not like, I'm taking this from L.A. to San Francisco. No, the obvious use for the thrusters in daily life is two cars are pulling down a street
Starting point is 00:19:55 and there's one spot available that you're going to need to parallel park into. if you see somebody pulling up to that, you hit the thrusters, just float into the spot. Yeah. You know what actually would have been a really awesome demo?
Starting point is 00:20:08 Have you seen those videos of, I think it's I Show Speed jumping over a Lamborghini that going full speed at him and he jumps over it? If they'd done that with two roadsters, like the old roadster from 2019 that they'd never released
Starting point is 00:20:20 driving straight at it and you're like, it's going to crash and then he goes and jumps over it. That would be cool. Yeah. But I do think that like this is, 1% closer to you get in the Jetson's future.
Starting point is 00:20:33 You get in the car and you say, take me there and it flies you there. Like, there's a lot that needs to happen. You need actual rockets on board. You need sustained thrust. You need a lot more. But like, if we were, this is clearly like one notch towards, okay, yeah, your car actually just flies you from one place to another.
Starting point is 00:20:51 So I don't know. What do you think that? Only 1% closer. I think this is one. I mean, it goes for two seconds. You're going to be in the car for two minutes. Or, like, the demos were very short. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:21:00 And, like, presumably it can't go for 20 minutes, but, like, can it go for one minute? Like, did they actually say that? One minute would be 5% of the way there from a 20-minute flight. And I think you're going to need, I think, to be flying car, you're going to need to be in it for, like, 40 minutes. You're just going to blast off and just coast and land. It launches you with such force. I mean, you only need launching. Then if you have, like, some kind of glider mechanism, then you don't need more thrice.
Starting point is 00:21:26 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, he's channeling, like, the James Bond car. I don't think anything's off the table over the long haul, but again, this is like 10, 20 year vision. Like if I have a car and I'm in a ton of traffic and I can jump over that traffic for like 20 seconds, that counts as a flying car. No? That's a jumping car? Yeah, that's a jumping car. I don't think that's a flying car.
Starting point is 00:21:46 Anyway. So I actually think it was amazing that the Mission S launched the same day because it was like the most beautiful version of stagnation, right, in the Mission S. in that the Mission S is some combination of the Porsche 959 and the GT1, and there's some other influences in there. But fundamentally, it's just like a car that just sort of returns to the kind of cars that everybody wishes were still being made, right? Like in some ways, like the interior looks like it could have been done by like a RestoMod company, right? And so, and it's just going to have like a vanilla-ish,
Starting point is 00:22:27 V8 in it is like at least the rumor. And so... Not V8, it's flat 8, but yeah. Flat 8. Maybe. They didn't confirm it, which is crazy. They're both doing vaporware. It is crazy that they've been working on the mission S so long and they can't tell you what type of engine's inside.
Starting point is 00:22:42 Like that's, I think they'll just, they'll, I expect the mission F's to progress a lot more quickly than the roadster. When do you think it actually will be delivered? I would expect a... First one, customer delivery, human driving. I would expect... December 2027? Or later? I would hope that they go into production next year.
Starting point is 00:23:06 Me too. Like at the end of next year? Me too. So like 2028 deliveries? That'd be amazing. But that being said, it was like, it was like stagnation, but it was perfect, right? Like they listened to their customers, which automotive manufacturers have, for better, or worse, not been doing or been sort of unable to.
Starting point is 00:23:26 and there was just so many details to that car that are just amazing. Like the almost every single angle. Yeah. Is great. I've noticed like everyone has like a different favorite angle. Like there's not like one. Totally. Like to me, you know, the rear end of the car is just like absolutely incredible.
Starting point is 00:23:45 Saw some people that didn't like that. Some people like the side. I don't like the side nearly as much as the front and the rear. But regardless, like absolutely. absolute perfection, but basically zero innovation, right? Like everything that really draws you in, like the seats, right, and the harness and the fact that it doesn't have a screen, right? It's all about going backwards in time.
Starting point is 00:24:09 And I think that's amazing. And then I think that Tesla pushing the boundaries and like trying to reimagine the car, adding like new forms of propulsion, right? Like the taking, taking us into the future while Porsche just. sort of returns in a beautiful way. I thought the contrast was amazing, and I think that it's okay to like both cars, even though I cancel my order this morning of the Roadster.
Starting point is 00:24:38 Yes, Belford again. I like the design of both. The only thing I don't like about the Roadster is just like, I'm worried it's not going to ship, and I think it's just going to take so long, because they added so much crazy stuff it'll take forever. R.X says the front of the roadster looks like, Guyardo. I think that looks cool. I think evolving the Gallardo language is great. And I think
Starting point is 00:25:01 that Lamborghini has kind of like shirked that responsibility, ceded that territory. So I think this is fine. There's a little bit of Gallardo in there. There's a little bit of cyber truck in there. I'm in. It's awesome. I think it looks great. Yeah, obviously nowhere near street legal. You need mirrors. We've had this debate a million times. Every concept car takes the mirrors off. It looks amazing and then you got to put them back. And Elon would have figured out how to take the mirrors off of the Model Y and the Model S if he could because no one likes the mirrors. No one uses those anymore. But the laws are the laws and he hasn't been able to figure his way around them and I don't think it's going to start now. Although that seems like something you get
Starting point is 00:25:42 maybe some single issue voters are behind candidate in 2028 specifically on removing the side mirrors. Good for emissions, good for aesthetics. It's a win-win. wind. It's a two-party issue. Anyway, what do you think of the wing on the back? I think the rear of the vehicle is where it shines. I think the side profile on the front are horrific. Okay. But overall, very, very cool. Let's close this out, give you some facts. The Tesla Roadster pricing, you put a $5,000 deposit now, down now for the default performance level, which does not have the thrusters, the jets. It can't do kickflips, but it is. Tesla's fastest, craziest sports car at the moment.
Starting point is 00:26:25 That's going to be a $45,000 deposit within 10 days. The thruster model requires you to put $245,000 down for a total of $250,000 within 10 days. Then you've got to wait. And the flight model is unknown and it's invite only at the moment. So the thruster model can't do the kickflip. The one that they want to do the kickflip, the one that wants to actually fly. We don't know the pricing. We don't know where that's going to land.
Starting point is 00:26:51 And I'm actually not that worried about pricing just because SpaceX and Tesla are really good at making things pretty cheap. So if they can get this out and they can get it to be $250, you know, a million dollars, you'll see them and they'll be popular and they'll be cool. Again, the flight stuff feels like very limited. And then it's like, are you going to have like a new type of track day where you can go do kickflips all day in your car? Is that going to be appealing? Well, no, I'm expecting the gas recharging for the thrusters to take like 24 hours, you know? So you're going to, I mean, it really is a really good party trick. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:27:38 But after seeing, can you imagine the experience of being in the car for a kickflip? It would be extremely violent. but I don't know wear a rare helmet and five point harness or something yeah I don't think I mean there wasn't anyone in the car but I don't even think the inside of the car that the kickflip has seats like I think there's some pictures of the underside and it looks like
Starting point is 00:28:02 it's basically just all a roll cage we can pull up this one from Zarin Dubb a lot of my timeline last night were a bunch of suckers who fell for this very expensive parlor trick without asking any questions and it's quite disappointing this sort of grid, maybe an empty shell in there. It doesn't really matter. It is a tech demo.
Starting point is 00:28:20 But it's not the iPhone moment because the iPhone, of course, was available after it was announced. And so I don't know. It's a very interesting dichotomy. Elon is simultaneously Thomas Edison and Barnum and Bailey. He's the circus entertainer who can put on a crazy show and talk about what. what technology will be like in 10, 20, 30, 40 years. But then he can actually deliver, like, the most popular and successful car in the model why and become the most popular car in China even and actually land the rockets and get Starlinked to work.
Starting point is 00:28:57 I use it on planes. Like the technology is real. And then the hype is also fake, but both exist at the same time. And it's very rare to see that in an entrepreneur, in a founder in the modern era. Most people are either all style or all substance. He's both, which is interesting. But we have the perfect person to talk. Did you see there was some, the last thing I would say is somebody,
Starting point is 00:29:18 people were pulling out this post from Elon in like 2019 describing. Yeah, with Marquez describing exactly what the roads were become. And there were a bunch of viral posts being like, oh my gosh, we live in a simulation. Yeah, yeah. Because he just said what he was going to do and did it. It was so funny because I was like, are we live in a simulation because he just said in 2019, I'm going to do this and then eventually. And then he did it.
Starting point is 00:29:44 decades later. That's not a simulation. That's just, that's just a planning. That's just a prediction. Anyway, let me tell you about MongoDB. What's the only thing faster than the AI market? Your business on MongoDB, don't just build AI, own the data platform. That powers it. And we have Walter Isaacson, the perfect guest to talk to about Elon Musk, artificial intelligence, everything else across business history. Here he is. Welcome to the show. How are you doing? Thank you so much for joining. Wow, good to be with you. Thank you so much. Did you watch the Elon Musk, Tesla, Roads, Of course, of course.
Starting point is 00:30:15 What is your reaction? You know, Franz von Holthousen is a beautiful designer. So every part of that car is gorgeous. And you're right, it's a bit of a parlor trick thing. But the real car, in two or three years, where you're not going to be doing backflips and everything else, it's going to be awesome. And I just think that Elon has a son who's on the autism spectrum named Saxon. And Saxon was once walking with him and said, Dad, why doesn't the future look like the future?
Starting point is 00:30:49 And that's where you get the cyber truck and that's where you get this roadster. Is that Musk and to some extent Franz wants the future to look like the future? Yeah, there's been so many interesting knock on effects. I mean, obviously the cyber truck was incredibly controversial. Even before the political journey that Elon went on, people said,
Starting point is 00:31:09 it looks like it was sketched by a five-year-old. It may have been, but what I love about it is that love it or hate the cyber truck. It feels like it shook the tree loose and allowed other car makers to take more risks. And we're seeing more avant-garde designs from Audi, from Jaguar. It feels like a lot of people are, it feels like it gave everyone permission to make the future look like the future. Have you been noticing that as well? Or do you think of that? Absolutely.
Starting point is 00:31:38 I mean, but first, bus, I have a, I think, two chapters on the cyber. truck in my must book where he's walking around with uh franz and everybody's pushing back on them they're saying man you know you're not going to do it this way and he's showing things from video games and comic books and stuff and he keeps and he wants it in stainless steel yeah and he keeps pushing it i for one you know i'm not totally a fan of the cyber truck design but i am totally jazz that he actually did it. Because as you said, it pushes the human race forward to use a Steve Jobs line. Yes, yes.
Starting point is 00:32:18 Yeah, to me, I have a cyber truck when it is driving itself on roads that are sort of crumbling with, you know, it feels like the sort of, the world of the past is sort of falling apart and it feels very cyberpunk to be on a road. It's driving itself in this very futuristic design. It makes me feel like I'm in a sort of a twisted sci-fi movie every day. But one thing you got to focus on it, I'm not sure people focus on is enough, is that this is almost a joint product of Tesla and SpaceX. I mean, everything about it, including the way the thrusters and the rockets work. But this notion that, you know, you can have propulsion done this way for a car, I think it shows why eventually, I would guess,
Starting point is 00:33:11 Tesla and SpaceX are going to merge. Totally. I thought that was the only reason to do this now, because the car is nowhere near production. Although he does that all the time. I think the original road. I know, but doing it again, like that's why we have these awards with us today,
Starting point is 00:33:28 the sort of fell for it again award, because going, you know, having there be this 10-year gap between the initial kind of tour. Because he clearly could have launched the, And then announcing it being like, it's finally here. It's finally here. In two years, it'll be going into production. Like that original Red Roadster.
Starting point is 00:33:44 To me, the reason to do it now is it sort of like sets up this like, these two companies should obviously be one company. They're working together already. This is what they can do together. It's sort of the perfect example of like why they should merge. And I come away from it thinking like, this is the company that will make flying cars. I don't think it'll look like the Roadster. But when we get flying cars, it will be.
Starting point is 00:34:06 Tesla, SpaceX, AI, Twitter, whatever it ends up being called. Absolutely. And, you know, I remember, obviously the cyber truck was controversial. But I can remember, and I think there's a couple of chapters in my book on this, too, is when he wants to make the cyber cab have no steering wheel. And everybody, including Franz, like, okay, fine, but we'll actually make one where you can have a steering wheel and you can take, no. He said, I don't want an amphibious frog-like thing.
Starting point is 00:34:36 that's neither here nor there. Well, that's kind of nuts until I was in Austin recently and I rode in a cyber cab. It's true that he makes the impossible into something that's just a little bit later than he predicted. How do you think about Elon Musk's journey to become an M&A wizard or a deal guy? that was what was so fascinating about the Twitter, take private, and then the cursor acquisition. Historically, it feels like he hasn't been very acquisitive. What changed for his philosophy on business that he kind of shied away from being, I'll do everything myself? I think maybe, with all due respect, you might be right, but I think you might be overreating that.
Starting point is 00:35:31 I think buying Twitter was there was just money burning a hole in his pocket I remember I was first riding around with him at that period he had just become the richest person on earth just become Times person of the year I said you must feel like you said well I hate it when it looks like I'm successful I always want to move to the next level of the game I said what's that
Starting point is 00:35:54 he said well I'm secretly buying shares of Twitter and I think that was a weird impulse had to do with his fury at the woke mind virus, had to do with the fact that he just loved being on Twitter. I mean, he was like a Twitch Twitter addict. Yeah. So I don't think this was a major change in philosophy that said, okay, now we'll buy rather than build.
Starting point is 00:36:18 And as to the cursor acquisition, you know, keeping up in the world of frontier AI models is quite difficult, and that was a pretty smart acquisition. position, but if you ask me, and I've seen them recently, he's still a, I want to control end to end. I want to build it myself end to end. Sure. I mean, why would you be building tariffab to make your own microchips if you're into dealmaking rather than physical product making?
Starting point is 00:36:51 Yeah. I hope you don't mind me pushing back on your theory. No, no, of course. No, no, it's a really good point. One thing that, one thing from yesterday that I noticed he looked way healthier than he has, a long time. I thought that was, like, there's been some moments over the last few years where it's just like, this does not look, this does not look great. This is that way for 20 years. Yeah. I mean, and every time I'll out. But do you agree that he, that he looked like, they look together. He looked like healthier than. Scrapping jokes. And I mean, there was some
Starting point is 00:37:21 dead air during the presentation, but in general, like, he seemed pretty pretty, pretty. I think what you're talking about is that just physical, but where's his mental space? And as you know, you know, he goes in the demon mode and he can get really dark and he's very difficult and just goes silent. Yeah. And then, you know, if you know how to poke him. Yeah, it does feel like it's a little bit of a clarifying moment. Like there was a moment where he was doing just rocketry and then just electric cars and then the Twitter and politics thing felt very distracting. And now as the company start merging together,
Starting point is 00:38:01 as the product start merging together, the work that's being done it on AI can flow into the cars and the humanoid. The narrative is getting clearer, and so that might be leading to more of a, more of like a, I don't know, just being focused and that carries through to everything. I don't know if you agree.
Starting point is 00:38:20 I wouldn't count on the fact that he has become less mercurial. In other words, you'll see him today, you'll see him tomorrow. There are people like Winchotwell and Franz. on Holtzhausen who know how to push him out of a demon mode. He also knows how to get himself together when he goes on stage. You know, it just depends on what's crossing his mind at the moment.
Starting point is 00:38:45 It's almost like a storm cloud coming in off the Gulf when, and then sometimes it's something political. It's conspiratorial. You know, I kind of wish he wouldn't be in that mode where all of a sudden he's deciding that, I don't know, Tala Rico's in a mental institution in Ohio, and he's going to repost that and you think, all right. You know, touch some grass. Have you ever gone into your own sort of version of demon mode? No, you know what? I haven't.
Starting point is 00:39:16 And you know what? I've never built a rocket that got into orbit. I've never built a electric vehicle. I never built a self-driving cyber cab. So maybe I'm nice. Give yourself some credit. That's a seller. Demon mode is underrated on the path of greatness.
Starting point is 00:39:32 Those of us who write about people in the arena, even if they're bestsellers, we don't confuse and think that we're the ones in the arena. Sure, sure. So maybe the people in the arena, as Steve Jobs said, you know, they're the crazy ones, and misfits the rebels. Yeah. What about the process of actually reporting on Elon Musk, writing the book? I've talked to some journalists who have said,
Starting point is 00:39:55 my strategy was I would wait until there was a successful SpaceX launch, and then I'd give him a call and say hey you want to get on the phone and if this and if the launch didn't go well I knew not to call because he wouldn't be in a good mood were there any were there any strategies that you had to deal with the mercurialness and sort of project look my strategy was totally different from the type of yeah reporting you're talking about which is when I first started the book I said here's the deal is not going to be based on a bunch of interviews right you guys not 10 15 20 interviews I want to be by your side whenever I want morning noon and night whenever I decide I want to be there any meeting. I got an airstream trailer and lived next door to him in Boca Chica,
Starting point is 00:40:37 get up in the morning with him, late at night with him. I just wanted to observe him through all meetings, through everything. So, I mean, I just, I know I'm quite lucky or privileged because I have both the resources and to some extent the clout with my publisher or maybe even with Musk. to just say, I'm going to spend two years and just watch. And so there'd be times, I'd watch him go into Demon Mode. I'd watch him come out of it.
Starting point is 00:41:09 I'd be sitting at dinner and a restaurant in Austin, and Grimes would be next to me, and she'd say, uh-oh, demon mode's about to come. I'd watch people text Gwen Shotwell to come run into the conference room and he's about to kill Falcon Heavy or something. And I'd just watch how people dealt with it. So it wasn't like, let me time my phone call. for a starship launch that works.
Starting point is 00:41:32 The very end of my book is being with him at Star Base for a starship launch that almost worked but left some rubble in its wake. That's the perfect metaphor. And I'm sitting there watching him, his mother hugging him in the back of the, and sort of by the fire pit out of Star Base. That's a type of thing I try to do when I write a book.
Starting point is 00:41:58 And I've done it. I have a new addition of the innovators, which is about the teams who built the digital revolution. I just try to be a reporter, not somebody who does interviews and then has opinions. Yeah. Everyone that you've written about, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Leonhard de Vinci, Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Jennifer Dudna, all incredible impacts, very, you know, sometimes controversial, but unambiguously impactful in their in their work. How have you processed the story of Elizabeth Holmes? There's a new movie by Nathan Fielder out. You can see everything. And it's one of those stories that has the trappings of an
Starting point is 00:42:43 entrepreneurial journey, but has kind of racked everyone with a who done it. It's almost a true crime story. It is a true crime story because she is in prison. But how have you process the story? And how would you approach that if you were writing a book about Elizabeth Holmes? Early on, I met Elizabeth Holmes way before, you know, before she was quite famous or infamous. Yeah. She was a huge Steve Jobs fanatic. She even tried to dress like Steve Jobs. She had read my Steve Jobs biography probably more times than I had.
Starting point is 00:43:18 Do the book better than I did and would always be pepper. She went demon mode on the Steve Jobs biography. Yeah, she went. And she, you know what? I love Steve Jobs. I think he was transformative. I think it's dangerous if you read the book once too often. Sure. It kind of makes you think that you might become reality distortion field, Steve, and that didn't work. And so I remember telling my wife and telling a couple of people when we were at events with her, I think they wanted me to interview her on stage and she wanted me to write something. I said, this doesn't meet my smell test. And I'd ask her, I said, okay, you're doing this with just a tiny drop of blood. I had been studying bio.
Starting point is 00:43:56 chemistry because I was about to do Jennifer Dowden. I said, tell me how I can't tell you how it works. I said, well, you know, I'd ask a few more questions. And I just said, it doesn't meet my smell test. There's something really wrong here. So I didn't get involved in never even writing a story about it. And I actually declined moderating some panels with her in public just because it made me feel a bit off. I have a total fascination with what I will call fabulous.
Starting point is 00:44:25 I mean, we have a, every month there's a new one. You know, Jason Ardey at Cambridge University. All the way back to Jason Blair, you're too young to remember who he was, or George Santos, or for that matter, the talented Mr. Ripley, or if you really want to get into it, you know, maybe the great Gadsby. Sure. Do they believe their own confabulations? I kept asking people who knew Elizabeth, and I kept trying to figure out,
Starting point is 00:44:54 Has she fooled, I know she's a con artist, but has she conned herself? So I'm not sure. Yeah, it is the, yeah, the question that everyone's still trying to answer. On Steve Jobs, we've been debating the question of, does the artificial intelligence, boom, revolution, need a Steve Jobs of AI, someone who paints a more human-focused picture, something focused on creativity? I think back to the energy with which Steve Jobs had when he launched garage band and Apple Music and some of the iPod, this idea of the iTunes. Sometimes disruptive technologies still empowering humans and remaining in this artist world, a friend to the creatives and living in the technology world but still never losing touch of the technology. something so fundamentally important in your question. And I have a book, as you know, called The Innovators, which came out a few years ago.
Starting point is 00:46:02 But it's coming out this week with this new introduction that's addressed directly towards your question, which is the Steve Jobs approach to what I will call human computer interface. That's what he called. That's a big old name. But it's how closely are we connected to our computers? And he said a computer should be like a bicycle for the mind. It would augment, not replace your creativity and your intelligence. There have been two schools of thought throughout the computer revolution.
Starting point is 00:46:33 Go all the way back to, as I do in this new introduction to the innovators, to Ada Lovelace in the 1840s. And she says, she looks at punch cards out of weaving patterns on looms. And she says, that'll be able to do numbers and words and music. and she said a computer will be able to do anything except think. It'll take humans to add the innovation and creativity. A hundred years after she writes it, Alan Turing in his great paper about computing machines and intelligence, the imitation game, calls it Lady Lovelace's objection and says she's wrong.
Starting point is 00:47:10 There will be artificial intelligence that shouldn't be connected to us. Steve Jobs is in the Ada Lovelace school. And as I try to describe in this new introduction, that school begins with Ada, but it has people that you probably have hardly heard of, but are the most important people you've never heard of. Starting with JCR Licklider, who creates computer interfaces that are easy to use. Doug Engelbart, who figures out the mouse, Alan Kay and the people at Xerox Park, the graphical user interface. it all comes together with Steve Jobs. And he says, the goal is to connect human creativity to our processing power of our machines.
Starting point is 00:47:57 And he always ended his product launches with the street sign slide that's at the street sign of the liberal arts and sciences or technology. That was his goal. What we're doing now, not just with AI, but more importantly with the, agentic AI, which is where I worry about.
Starting point is 00:48:18 I don't mind. I can use Claude, fine. But when I start using agents that try to do things without me, and that the goal of these people, whether it be muse or Claude or whatever I'm using, to try to make it autonomous and to do things without me and to be out of my control, Steve Jobs would be appalled by that. First of all, because it doesn't connect human creativity to the product. It doesn't have the music that makes our heart sing, as he said, with the iPod. But secondly, these people aren't stepping back and saying, why are we making this?
Starting point is 00:48:57 And the answer should be to help humanity. That was Steve's Lodestar. The only thing that I would push back on slightly is it doesn't feel like agents are not generative. I have not seen a single product or, piece of marketing material where the seed of the idea, whatever the thing that is that makes it great was from the AI. All of the agents that we have today are starting from a point of human creativity. Hey, I have... That's a really good point. And so my view on it is like I'm actually as somebody who loves generating ideas.
Starting point is 00:49:45 I'm actually upset that the AI can't do the one thing that I really value and that I love, right? You want to be like the math? First of all, be happy. Well, yeah, yeah, no. And so I, but it's notable, like, you would think that if we could solve hundreds of the most longstanding problems in mathematics,
Starting point is 00:50:04 that we could generate hundreds more, right? And yet I have any, we're not getting that. Like that would be my, and to me that shows the AI is not generative. It is not creative in the way that a human is. I'm sure it will get there. And that's the exact phrase that Ada uses in the 1840s, which is it will not be able to generate its own goals and its own ideas. Those will have to come from human.
Starting point is 00:50:31 You could be right. I mean, I use a lot of, I use Muse and I have created a couple of Claude agents. maybe it doesn't totally generate things, but once you set an agent off, you have the hugging face possibility that it goes off with its own motives and its own sense of agency out of our control. So maybe it starts off because we launch it, but the question is if it's not closely connected to us the way Steve Jobs would have wanted, is it going to go out of control? Is it going to go rogue? Interesting.
Starting point is 00:51:15 What do you look for in a subject? When you're thinking about a topic that it has your fascination, when is it the right time to focus in on a single individual versus a more of a composite picture? And are we, I guess my question is. is like, are we moving farther away, or are you moving farther away from the Great Man theory of history? Or do you think that there's this Peter Thiel
Starting point is 00:51:44 take about the loss of the ticker-tape parade, even when there's a big problem and we solve it, we celebrate like the first responders broadly. We don't solve it. We rarely celebrate, like, the single scientist who had the breakthrough. We celebrate, like, composite groups. And I'm wondering how you've got,
Starting point is 00:52:04 grappled with the continuum of individual with an amazing story who probably had a lot of talented people around them versus telling the story through a composite picture of a lot of different individuals. Yeah, and of course that's one of the age-old issues in history, whether it be told story or Carlisle, I'll go back to Plutarch in Plutarch's lives. I interviewed Peter Thiel at length for this new podcast series of Builders, and we talk about that. We biographers fall prey sometimes, too much to the great person or great man theory. We make it seem like a guy or a gal goes to a garage or a garret and they have a light bulb moment and innovation happens.
Starting point is 00:52:46 Whereas you know, the two of you sitting there know that it's often a team sport. That creativity is a collaborative effort. That's why I wrote the innovators, which is to try to show the role that teams and groups of people play. having said that, my very first sentence in my very first book I ever wrote was about Henry Kissinger. And I quoted him in the epigram that said, when I was a professor at a university,
Starting point is 00:53:17 I thought that history was made by great forces. But now that I see it up close, I see the difference that a person can make. And so in writing biography, I think we have to worry about distorting history a bit. You know, I wrote the innovators partly because having written about Steve Jobs, all these people said, well, you gave him too much credit. So it's always a bit of a balance. Take a more obscure example. I wrote a book called The Codebreaker about Jennifer Dowdner, who helped invent, co-invented, I should say. CRISPR, the gene editing technology that can fix genetic or change our DNA.
Starting point is 00:54:00 And I was saying, okay, I want to do biochemistry and genetic engineering next. I had done physics with Einstein. I had done the digital revolution with Steve Jobs. So I looked around for how do I do it. And I thought of doing a group portrait the way the innovators is. But in some ways, having a person have a narrative thread helps the reader. Is that something I invented? The good Lord invented this when he did the Bible.
Starting point is 00:54:33 I mean, it has a garden east of Eden, and you have Adam in it, and Eve tells them to do something. It's a way we convey lessons. So when I did Jennifer Dowden, about 40% of the book is about people who aren't Jennifer Dowden. It's about her teams, her rivals, and everything else. But I do it as a narrative thread, and I think I do it because it helps the reader. Or if you want to be crass, my publisher says, when you do group books like, you know, the innovators that doesn't sell in the early as well
Starting point is 00:55:04 as when you do Steve Jobs. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Another AI question that we've been wrestling with is we have been, we were very close in tech to the end of history. There were a number of software companies. There were pretty defined lines of battlefields between who owns the phone, who owns the search engine,
Starting point is 00:55:28 who owns the social, network and the Mag 7 we're all sort of playing nicely together and now it is a knockout drag out fight everyone's trying to marshal the most compute everyone's in demon mode everyone's in demon mode Elon suing Sam Sam and Dario can't hold hands together Google loves Anthropic one day then they do want to not sell them the chips it goes back and forth and it feels like it's the most tense it's ever been in yeah or Elon you know constantly throwing shade and anthropic until they become yeah he's calling the misanthropic and then he's And then now they're working together.
Starting point is 00:56:01 And so it feels like an intense time in technology, but give us some perspective here. Is this actually unprecedented? Was Steve Jobs going through the same level of intense battles? Is everything new old? Or is this actually unprecedented? Look, one of the great things about innovation, technology, entrepreneurship, that you all do so much on this show,
Starting point is 00:56:26 is that there's a frenemy type thing. Sometimes people are friends, sometimes they're enemies. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, that's a rivalry that is far surpasses Sam Altman and Darry on my day. As much as I love them both. By the way, you want to go back to Carnegie and Rockefeller and EA chairman and the robber barons? Whoa. And that was a period of technology like our own with light bulbs, electricity, trains, telegraphs, telephones, everything. So it is great that we have competition.
Starting point is 00:57:00 One of the things we have to do is keep that competition going. In other words, have antitrust. If they start loving each other too much and collaborating, that will keep newcomers off the field. No, no, I completely agree. I completely agree. Yeah, and you can see that there's a natural forcing function in the industry. When one lab or one company starts pulling away, everybody else kind of gangs up on them and says, We're not going to let you get the monopoly.
Starting point is 00:57:27 Well, I think in VINDIA and in Jensen's dynamic with all of the different AI players is one of the most fascinating, just because it is like they're like, you know, cozying up to him, you know, driving revenue, but at the same time trying to, you know, replace him on the back end. Yeah. It's fascinating. It's very fun. It's healthy. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:57:47 Healthy competition. I think you're totally right. Healthy is the word for it. Thank you so much. And it makes for good content for you and your writing. And for you and your show. The chat really wants us to ask, is there any, and, you know, you can pass on the question if it's not something you can talk about. But is there anybody, any AI leader that you're honing in on writing about outside of, obviously, Elon?
Starting point is 00:58:14 Well, real quickly, I'm about to publish a book on Matum Curie, you know, Marie Curie. Because I do go back. I need to clear my palate sometimes and clear my mind and go back into history. And I needed to do, I mean, she's just the most amazing, passionate person. I am interested in how you raise some AI model like Claude. Let me just use that, for example. How do you raise that model to be moral? How do you not just teach Claude, hear the rules of the road?
Starting point is 00:58:48 You teach Claude why? Yeah. Why do you not kill or why do you not lie to you with somebody? and I'm interested in the philosophers who are working on the alignment question and teaching our AI models why. That doesn't mean I have figured out who the book is or what the book is or whatever, but you asked me just out in Anthropic and in San Francisco with some others three days ago, and I'm saying, okay, help me think this one through. I love it.
Starting point is 00:59:24 Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. Look forward to more of your incredible work, and it was a true pleasure talking to you. It's been an honor. Have a great. Well, you all are great. Y'all are really good, both of you. Thank you, Jordy.
Starting point is 00:59:35 Is it again soon. Yes, thank you so much. We'll talk to you soon. Goodbye. Let me tell you about console. Console built AI agents that automate 70% of IT, and finance support, giving employees instant resolution for access requests and password resets.
Starting point is 00:59:49 Let me also tell you about public. Invest across all asset classes. automate anything with AI agents, run trading strategies, risk management, money movements, and monitor markets with AI agents for investing on public. And up next, we have Eric Gleiman, co-founder, co-CEO, RAMM dot com. Whoa, you love it. Camouflage. Camouflage at the wall.
Starting point is 01:00:09 I see a floating head. That's all I can see in your hands. We're in an urban environment, so we got to blend in. That does look like it's designed to not be recognizable by artificial intelligence. I'm sure we'll talk about it. But first, what's the news? What happened? The Gliminator.
Starting point is 01:00:26 Tell us the news. Do we have the gong? It's ready. Are we ready to hit this thing? All right, we raised $1.85 billion at $6. I can't hear anything. My ears are blown out. Do we need a replay on that?
Starting point is 01:00:44 Yeah, let's pull up the replay if we can. That was a clean hit. Bang. Coming in hot with authority. And you kind of held it at the end, too, which was nice. I feel like 2026, like there's been so many fund raises are getting bigger. Your form is really looking good. Yes, yes.
Starting point is 01:01:03 Yes. You got to bring the energy that you feel for the fun to the gong smash. It's really, because the gong is just one size, but the excitement that I feel for the round grows, ebbs and flows. And this is the most exciting round of all, of course. First question, is the job finished? job's not finished guys the job is not finished we got a lot of stuff to do
Starting point is 01:01:29 I mean look it's what can I say we're growing we're growing faster we're going north and 100% per year what is growing because the core business is so solid so huge huge market just in corporate cards
Starting point is 01:01:45 the software for the CFO suite but then you have a bunch of other products that I feel like because the team is as talented as they are you're able to deliver a, you're able to jump to a great product experience, both because you have the team for it, but also there's new technology
Starting point is 01:02:00 that's just unlocking new things. And so what, I imagine they're both growing fast, but what's actually driving? How much time are you spending between both of these? Do they all play together? How do you think about the business? So look, there's the existing core of the business
Starting point is 01:02:16 when you talk with the financials. Yeah. The metric I track most closely is actually how useful is ramp getting. to customers. We talk about growth in those stats. And then last, it's all the new products. The majority of our team's time is actually working on products that we haven't launched it. You haven't seen yet. Yeah. And so let's touch on it. I mean, in terms of aggregate growth, we said for the first time over the summer, we passed more than $2 billion a year in annualized
Starting point is 01:02:44 revenue. It's growing north 100% per year. And it's, we're growing... more than 20% faster than we were this time last year. Wow. So true acceleration. It's true acceleration at scale. And in part, computers that can think now,
Starting point is 01:03:04 it helps us operate a lot faster. And there's also in the same way, you know, I think people's expectations have gone up. I mean, there are still, sadly, many people listening to this
Starting point is 01:03:13 who know about AI and then they do expenses by hand or whatever. It's crazy. And so it's lifted the conversion rates up. More people are switching to ramp in droves and the savings rates are going up too, which is maybe the second area. And are you starting to see
Starting point is 01:03:30 Topofunel, like the first step on the customer journey coming from not the corporate card product to start? Okay, so you can actually start with router or another product and then actually grow your footprint. That's very interesting because I feel like
Starting point is 01:03:46 do I have it correct that prior to the, I don't know, you call them like AI enabled products, but like the more modern products that you've launched. It was very much like you come in through the corporate card and then maybe you add banking or you add another product bill pay. And there weren't as many people coming in through bill pay as might in the future come through router, for example.
Starting point is 01:04:10 So to talk to each, I mean, this has been one of the big growth stories over the past two years. You know, we now have, I'll put it to say, the vast majority of customers are using multiple products could be card expenses. One, bill, pay, treasury. We have tens of thousands of businesses that are using our banking product that's growing extraordinarily quickly. And so there are businesses on day one, incorporate, set up a ramp banking account, and move from there. And so we have these doorways in. And you're exactly right. Whereas so much of the history of ramp was,
Starting point is 01:04:43 is like, how do we help you spend less? It's turning into this broader chapter of not just, you know, get more of every dollar in terms of reducing spend. It's, how do you have your dollars that you do choose to spend generate more revenue for you? And so there are there's startups coming in using router.com. Glass has been just extraordinary developed, but also too, just wrangling and staying on top of AI spend management. Yes.
Starting point is 01:05:09 On that topic, is, is router a bet that, uh, that expenses and investment and capital spending around AI will be the domain of the CFO suite? and that's where you play best? Or is it a bet that Ramp can speak to CTOs and technologists who will in the future have more domain over asset allocation and the financial profile of their business?
Starting point is 01:05:38 Are we going to see CTOs looking more like CFOs or operating like CFOs, putting their CFO hat on? Or are we seeing CFOs think I want to actually have an idea of what our infrastructure is, what our token strategy, is, what models we're using. I imagine both are happening, but is there a thesis that you have around what, who's who the buck stops with in the token maxing discussion? There's like a huge thing that happened that I think is under discussed in just the world of software, which was like, it used to be if you were just like, I don't know, banging on the keyboard, using Salesforce a lot more like might need a new hobby, but like,
Starting point is 01:06:20 you didn't get like a much larger bill. Like software didn't have a larger marginal cost. And the minute that it became such that if you used more tokens, your bill went up, it meant that software suddenly had marginal costs. In a way, software became money. And I just think classically, if you just think about it structurally, organizations were really allocating dollars in two ways. You could hire people or you could hire vendors to go take care of stuff. you. In software and AI spend has become this like third way to buy things. It sort of behaves like people in that your agents hire other agents who hire other agents to subcontract
Starting point is 01:07:03 to others. Most spend is actually agentic in nature if you really look at how these things are growing. And yet it's it's you're kind of renting intelligence. And I think that organizations just lack the basics of many companies have payroll systems. They have ramp right, to go look at their vendor systems, but have lacked oversight and governance around managing the status man. So part of the thesis is that as, as AI becomes one of the core inputs to how companies operate, organizations will similarly need tools to go manage it. So that's just like the macro way we're thinking about it. On your question of like, where is it, who is responsible for it? I think what I see happen time and time again is like engineers go off to go build something
Starting point is 01:07:49 and either they hire a, you know, if it's startups, a very forward-linking, thinking, agentic, you know, AI-pilled CFO and it's all fine. Or what's happening in enterprises all day is things are fine that the bill trips past X many millions of dollars and the CFO's like, what in the heck happen? And they crash into the office and go. And I think that's happening more and more. And what I would say is, like, I just think there will be a convergence. you could not think too much about capital allocation and in a previous world where software didn't
Starting point is 01:08:24 have marginal costs and now you have to. So is capital allocation, the new core skill, taste is out. We need to get everyone thinking about capital allocation. No, I mean this seriously because I'm sure there's a lot of ramp customers where they're like, yes, we spend on AI and that means a $200 a month plan. And look, employees, don't blow through your plan because there's no more where it's coming from. and you have a role to play in there, but I'm wondering if you're seeing a shift
Starting point is 01:08:49 where even small businesses, even businesses that would normally just be like, hey, use the free plan, $20 a month here, we'll get you on the corporate plan a little bit, are going to be thinking about AI inevitably as a marginal cost that is API pricing
Starting point is 01:09:07 and they're going to want a router product. Absolutely. And look, like I think one of the I think both sides of the debates are like very silly in some ways like you have like like CFOs saying like hey I'm trying to go minimize my token cost what's my cost per token we need to go and drive cost down
Starting point is 01:09:32 and labs are saying my token is not equivalent to your token the tokens are not the same and the reality is like if some business owner said to you hey I spend a million dollars a year on salespeople. And another one said, you know, I spend $10 million a year on salespeople. Like in I switch is better. You'd say like, I have no goddamn idea because what are you getting for that dollar?
Starting point is 01:09:58 Like you need to connect it. You need to kind of ask like for this input, what is the output? And I think the way in which these systems are very incomplete and ramp is ultimately seeking to complete that loop. For every dollar that's going out, what is the return on an. intelligence. How does it go into your books and record? How is it accounting for? What revenue can you see that directly that's connected? And what I would say is when you look at companies that are spending on AI, they are not always as precise, but you can see in raw terms, in very blunt terms, that companies that do spend are clearly seeing a return. They are growing faster. And you just think
Starting point is 01:10:36 about, we did this study about six months ago where we looked at, does spend, does spend, on this actually generate faster growth, and it's very clear conclusively of organizations that are spending on AI are seeing an acceleration. So there is a return, and I think it will become quite scientific over the course of the coming months. So does that mean you guys end up building something like an attribution tool? Because like Ramp is a good example of this where like you're encouraging a lot of spending, a lot of experimentation, but it's so hard to attribute growth to spend on AI, which is a lot of why that there's people otherwise, smart people that are saying like this stuff just doesn't work like it's good for this one narrow
Starting point is 01:11:17 thing but like very clearly it's like well it sped us up a little bit here and it sped us up a little bit here and it pulled forward this launch you know by a week instead you know and so we launched this eight you know eight weeks earlier and then there's the sort of like like it's basically like compounding in different ways across so many different parts of the company it's helping you generate revenue in ways it's helping you save money in different ways the net results is like you're building a better business. But the attribution feels like the hardest, hardest thing. But something that you guys are like uniquely suited to solve.
Starting point is 01:11:52 We're very embedded because we see the dollars going out. We connect to the accounting system. And you can see what revenue ultimately comes in. I mean, just at ramp, like where at ramped was the first part of the business that used AI in a heavy way. It was go to market. Oh, yeah. It was sales. It was actually we could show.
Starting point is 01:12:12 that the use of GPT3 when it was a research project actually resulted in more meetings booked for our sales development reps. And we could actually look at what is the raw number of dollars spent versus the revenue that that team was able to bring in and you could see that up. And so when you see products like Glass, which we announced earlier in the week and thousands of companies signed up, we're onboarding folks as fast as we can, all that intelligence where not only is it connected and built into the systems you have, but things you would expect of who's spending it, attribution, did we pick the right model?
Starting point is 01:12:45 Router.com, right, is powering all of it to make sure that you're ultimately saving to the accounting attribution is all done and you see that loop. And so it allows you to actually say like, am I growing faster and am I seeing higher and higher returns from I spend on AI? And that's what we're aiming to do. And so when we talk about kind of the end of the beginning and what chapter two is about what you can build as a customer of RAMP, that is what we're running towards. We want to make every dollar an hour, whether it's on people or on AI or both, truly go further.
Starting point is 01:13:18 That's what drives us. I love it. Well, congratulations in the new round. We're going to hop on with Christian Jensen from Dragon Air to talk more about this. Amazing milestone. But have a great weekend. Amazing timing yesterday with the roadster ramps. No, roadster.
Starting point is 01:13:30 I mean, it was clearly like a nod to the, it was clearly a nod to the new financing. I mean, they clearly didn't need the ramp to do a kickflip. No. They could have used a half pipe. Could have used anything that doesn't sound like ramp. It was a little salute down from Texas. It was great. Congratulations.
Starting point is 01:13:48 We'll talk to you soon. Great stuff. Great to see Eric. Have a good one. Congrats. Let me tell you about Codex. Coex is a powerful workspace for getting work done with AI agents. We'll be writing code analyzing data.
Starting point is 01:13:57 Creating content or automating business workflows. Codex helps you move projects forward from start to finish. Our next guest is Christian Jensen from Dragonere Investment Group. His partner and co-head of crowd. There he is. Welcome to the show. I got one question. Did you just back the truck up for ramp?
Starting point is 01:14:16 Yeah, I guess in some ways we did, but for all the reasons you guys just discussed You hear that? Is that the sound like it out? If I can't get the gong, I'll take the truck. No, we'll get the gong. Oh, I'll get the gong. Thank you. Touched.
Starting point is 01:14:37 Wonderful to have you on. So you led the 1.8. billion dollar financing for ramp at a 60 billion dollar valuation thrive capitals in with you founders fund sans capital avenue uh what uh yeah what because you're it's the first time of the show maybe we should zoom out and talk about the overall strategy how ramp fits into it and your role at the firm yeah so um hey thank you for having me i mean what a treat um i can't believe walter isxson here and errant this is i mean this is awesome he opened for you he opened for you he for you. Yeah, right. Yeah, I'll tell my wife that later. He was like, I'm really, I really get to open for Christian from Tragedy. Right. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I'll tell, I'll tell Kate that. So, I mean, look, who are we? We're a growth investment firm. We're based in the Presidio in San Francisco. We manage about $45 billion across publics and privates. And the whole philosophy of the place is concentrated bets in the businesses we think are going to define categories and really be generational to businesses.
Starting point is 01:15:41 You know, we were founded around 15 years ago. Mark's dad, my partner, our founder, he founded. I joined about 10 years ago to help build on the success they were already having in privates. And I live around the corner. So I got three kids. Latest kid joined three weeks ago. So if I say anything stupid, there's my excuse. Congratulations.
Starting point is 01:16:04 I've got a five-week-old. Congrats on that. We've got nine kids on this call. Between us. It sounds like play dates coming up. Yeah. Sounds like a playdates coming up. I think so.
Starting point is 01:16:17 I think so. Okay, first question. Everyone knows that Ramp is an incredibly unique special company. And but at the same time, there's a lot of people that are otherwise pretty smart that say like, hey, ramp at 60 billion on a few billion of revenue. That's crazy, right? Like if you've looked at like, and you can try to pull public comps and say like this thing, trade at, you know, a single-digit revenue multiple, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, it's very easy to make the argument for why 60 is crazy, and yet you just paid that price.
Starting point is 01:16:52 I want to hear from you why would make sense to do it. I can make my own argument for it. You're not crazy. They're crazy. Yeah, yeah. I'm not crazy. They're crazy. No, but, I mean, there's a lot of, to me, it's like an applied AI company that is already
Starting point is 01:17:09 working with tens of thousands of the most. of the best customers that you can have in America, and they are in an incredibly unique position to deliver them super tangible products. They have incredible lock-in, all these things. So I can make the case, but I want you to make the case. Yeah, so one, it's sort of a universal truth for those, you know, if you didn't make the bet,
Starting point is 01:17:33 then almost by definition, maybe you didn't think that the bet was worth making. Maybe you didn't have the chance to make it, but I know the feeling. That's how we feel sometimes about those that we're not doing. But it comes down to sort of a handful of things in this case. Thing one is bonkers huge market. Like not just big, but like we might be in the first at-bat of the first inning kind of big.
Starting point is 01:17:59 And a growing market such that just the growth of this end market is several ramps in size annually. So like they don't really even need to be like taken. I think they are taking market share, but they don't need to be in order to keep multiplying in size. So that's thing once, big, big market. Thing two, this product lead that they've built, you know, this platform, it's not just, you know, card and expense. It's actually about a dozen products now and keeps growing. And each one of those products that they add widens the moat. I mean, you guys, you know, touched on this with Eric.
Starting point is 01:18:33 Like each incremental product means you can land with one more thing. One more thing the customer can say yes to. one more thing, you know, that they can upsell themselves or embrace later, which feeds this capital efficiency machine, which is wildly attractive. Like for business to be accelerating at this scale with this kind of capital efficiency, it's very rare to see at this size. And the combination of accelerating growth, product lead, while still being so early in a market that they can go win,
Starting point is 01:19:09 is really, really rare. And the last thing, I mean, you just talk to him. It's Eric and the team around him and the culture they've built. And this team is like this amazing learning machine. They're humble. They're hungry. They're ridiculously customer-oriented. You know, it's just a team that keeps sort of surprising to the upside in all sorts of ways.
Starting point is 01:19:33 And, you know, we find ourselves saying, like, we would want our, you know, our friends and our kids to go work for these people. we'd want to go work for these people. Like, it's the kind of team you want to back. And it's, you know, you see that kind of goodwill with the customers all the time. Totally. Yeah. And I think it comes down to, like, Eric, in many ways, Eric and Kareem leading from the front and being, like, two of the most AI-pelled people that I know.
Starting point is 01:19:56 But going back, like, multiple years, like, they've been on this. They've been, you know, sort of quietly recruiting, like, really elite talent, like, on the AI side. You know, they're. And, you know, and. And just with that, it's like, it's so interesting being these, you know, you talked about the, maybe the market being more positive some than people might think. But if you're one of these legacy players and you're like, cool, we need an AI strategy. And then you're starting to think like, all right, well, let's make our, you know, let's make an annual plan.
Starting point is 01:20:31 Let's like, you know, run a bunch of pilots. Let's test out a bunch of products, all these things. You end up just being a customer of AI, not somebody that is creating. AI products that you can sell to other people. And I think that's just like wildly, wildly different. And so you can imagine legacy players just being like their products and their platforms effectively being pretty fixed in place and not adapting. Meanwhile, Eric and Kareem, you know, I know Kareem is probably like up all night riffing on, riffing on product with the team. And they ultimately are then shipping product very, very, very quickly in experimenting with their
Starting point is 01:21:07 customers. And I think that, oh, I just would, I would absolutely hate to be competing with them. No matter how much scale I had and how much resources, it just sounds like an absolute nightmare. Yeah, I mean, there's some great other businesses in this space that have great brands and been around a long time. And, you know, like, I mean, I think Amex's like, you know, it's like, it's more than a century old. They're great established brands. But we see how hard it is for businesses that even were born, you know, five years ago to embrace the new world. And it's a challenge. And, you know, I think Ramp is setting an example for others to follow on how to do it. Last question for me. I will let you get back to your day. I'm interested in like how you interface with the team coming in later stage growth
Starting point is 01:21:56 investing. You're probably not pitching. I'll help you hire your first CTO or engineer. But is one of the value ads of working with Dragon Ear that that visibility into the podcast, you're probably not, you know, public and private markets. I was listening to Brad Gerstner on CNBC and like he has a lot of visibility into both sides. And so if the board meeting is going to be about IPO timing, liquidity, how, who's going to get brought in at various points in time, is that something that you're spending a lot of time with the teams that you work with broadly on? Or are there other areas where you like to lean in? Yeah, it's a good question. So thing one, we sort of start with the Hippocratic Oath, like start with do no harm.
Starting point is 01:22:37 Like, don't get in the way. Don't bug them for stuff that doesn't help them. And that's an easy trap for investors to fall into, which is, you know, trying to be helpful and really just meddling. Thing two, you know, when Walter Isaacson writes the book about Eric Lyman, it's not going to be, gosh, that late stage investor he had was like made all the difference, you know, like that was everything. So what we're trying to do is be helpful in the pockets where we can be helpful and where we should be helpful and where like we bring something a little bit incremental to the table. I will say with Ramp, this is one of the things we love about them, they are really proactive at pulling help out of us. Not just like we've made a lot of customer introductions and not because we're like spamming Ramp.
Starting point is 01:23:23 They're like, hey, here's this one. Here's that one. Like here's a few more. Like help us, help us. And so they're great about it. That's awesome. And yeah, sitting across both public. in private. It does give us a little bit of a vantage point that's a little bit unusual,
Starting point is 01:23:35 a little different compared to some of the earlier stage folks who they have helping, who I think are some of the best in the world at what they do at their stage two. And so, yeah, of course, we try and help in that area, but that's just one thing. You know, we're trying to keep our ears open and be helpful where we can be. Well, I think Mike Grimes made it into the Elon book, so maybe you've got to switch over to the cell side if you want to get in the biography. We shall see. But thanks so much for coming on the show.
Starting point is 01:23:58 Have a great rest of your day. Yeah, great to hang. and enjoy, you know, the continuation of dad life with the new one. I appreciate that. You too. Five weeks. Got to love it. Have fun, guys.
Starting point is 01:24:10 We'll see you. Talk soon. Let me tell you about Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform that grows with your business that lets you sell in seconds, online, in store, on mobile, on social, on marketplaces. And now with AI agents, we have Tavarish automotive creator, YouTuber, P1 owner, 918 spider owner, someone with a truck that probably backs up from time to time when, He needs to work on a rebuild from Sprach.
Starting point is 01:24:34 We ran a little bit late, but here he is. Thank you so much for taking the time. Thank you so much for holding on while we... What's going on? How are you? How are you? You guys hear me okay? We can hear you great. Loud and clear. Loud and clear.
Starting point is 01:24:48 I mean, there's so much I want to talk about, but I want to get your Tesla Roadster reaction first. Then I want your Porsche Mission S reaction. And then I want to hear about all the different projects you have going on. But let's start with the Roadster. Okay, so Tesla Roadster, everybody's going crazy over it. I don't care, man. I can't tell you how much it doesn't really move the needle for me. Because, honestly, it's a cool showcase of, like, stuff they can do.
Starting point is 01:25:16 But the reality of putting one of these cars into production, where it can do, like, a barrel roll or a kickflip over a truck. First of all, there's no practical use for it. And second of all, that's never going to make it to production. So, yeah, it was a technology. It was like a very cool technology showcase that was attached to not even like just sort of a teaser of a car that they're going to start making in two years. And so I don't want to. Maybe.
Starting point is 01:25:45 I mean, it could be another 10. Could be another 20. Who knows? Yeah, I don't want to. It's hard to criticize because it's like, cool. They made a car with rockets on it. And it's like, it's amazing. And it's cool that that I'm glad that the human race can do this, even if it doesn't.
Starting point is 01:25:59 have any obvious utility. But John and I were both on the reservation list. We came in very late because we were like, you put 5K down, you can always get out of it if you see the demo and you don't like it, but if the demo is insane, a bunch more people will come in. We kind of were expecting
Starting point is 01:26:16 the car to be going into production like now. But seeing it, you're like, okay, here's a bunch of stuff that is not relevant to somebody who just wants to maybe buy the car. Outside of being able to produce a lot of downforce, But again, I can't even imagine going to the track with that car. And one, if you're driving it at the limit, you're just going to get banned from the track because people are going to be like, hey, this person's acting ridiculous.
Starting point is 01:26:42 And then two, you're going to be going through tires in like a single lap and like the novelty, the sort of brief novelty before you realize like, okay, I'm driving a heavy car that can produce a lot of downforce, but I destroy my tires. And there's probably a thousand other cars that are much more enjoyable to drive on the same track. So with Tesla, it's a weird, like, mixed bag because what ends up happening is you have this car that has some, like, legitimately really cool tech in it. Like, the cyber truck has, you know, if you ever driven a cyber truck or been, you know, driven around in the cyber truck, if it's doing full self-driving, there's a lot of interesting technology in the 48-volt architecture, the drive, the steer by wire, all that stuff is like super intuitive. and if you don't want to drive it, it can have a mode where it drives itself. Now, would I trust it? Not really, but I think...
Starting point is 01:27:36 Well, here's the thing. I would push back. I got a cyber truck recently. It's amazing when it's driving itself. It's horrible to drive yourself. It's like the worst driving experience when a human is driving it. When the computer's driving it, it's like, great.
Starting point is 01:27:52 This is like smooth. It feels like I'm in a fridge. It feels like I'm in a dystopian fridge. moving down the road. It's awesome, but I'm like, anytime I take over, like John and I were driving in it last week. Two hours of self-driving is perfect. He takes over just to park it, and I'm like,
Starting point is 01:28:09 it takes like so much effort to make it not feel like, you know, you're just like, it's so jerky. The yoke is like terrible. It's really funny. When you have, you know, a car like a cyber truck, and you know like with any new car it's like you have to adopt certain elements of like new technology like getting a new phone you have to get used to it you know but with a cyber truck when you get in it and you try to drive it like stuff like steering steering is now like vastly different than what you remember and it's not that way in any other Tesla or any other car in general so you end up with this experience of like well if you're a cyber truck owner then that is you get used to that and then every other car becomes weird And like for me, the first time I drove a cyber truck, just getting out of the parking lot was, it was a time. You know, it was interesting because not only is it the size of a tank, but it also doesn't steer the way you think it should.
Starting point is 01:29:09 So you are essentially, you know, the car is determining how much, you know, input and output is happening. And you're just kind of along, they're along for the ride. Now, when it drives itself like that, I do agree. that that is like a better experience. But I think that, you know, when you're in a cyber truck, everybody knows that, you know, like, it is a, it's a statement, right? Yeah. So the same thing with this Tesla Roadster.
Starting point is 01:29:37 It is, it is definitely a statement. It is very, like, low-res. It looks like a low-res Lamborghini Mercilago from the front and, like, a new charger from the back. New charger from the back, yeah. Yeah, no, it's almost like they just made a render and then they shipped the render. Yeah. And I think that it might have been rendered recently. It was actually mid-rinder.
Starting point is 01:29:57 It didn't finish. And then they're like, oh, whatever. It's good now. Mission S. Take us through your reaction. So Mission S. Compared to 918. Tell us about 918 and then tell us about Mission S.
Starting point is 01:30:10 So 918 was a really, really cool car. I mean, just in general. It was the most weight of the three. So back in the day, they had the Holy Trinity, which was McLaren P1, the Porsche 918, and the Ferrari. These were the hybrid hypercars. And, you know, it was dubbed Holy Trinity by Top Gear and Jeremy Clarkson. But the 918 was a weird one because they made the most of them.
Starting point is 01:30:35 So it shouldn't be worth, you know, a lot of money. Then it was the most weight. And then it was also the least powerful. However, it was like arguably the fastest car, the best build. And, you know, just from my perspective, I haven't worked on a lot of Ferrari, but I can imagine what it's like. I worked on a P1 and I've worked on 918. 918 is built so much better than the P1. And it is pretty crazy that, you know, they have, they had that technology back then.
Starting point is 01:31:05 They did zero to 60 in 2.2 seconds. And that was back in 2013. That's crazy. And then they did the number of... Also, just the overall, it feels completely timeless. Like, they could have, they could release that same car today and it would just make sense. it in many ways is like the to me it's my favorite modern supercar by far. Are you 918 over Coro GT?
Starting point is 01:31:30 And I want to know if you're 918 over CorroGT because Doug Jamiro and there's a lot of car guys that are like, oh, it's Carerreux GT all the way. I don't want any hybrid stuff. But how do you both feel about it? Let's start with Savarge. So they're just different cars for different purposes. I think that, you know, if you want an analog car with, you know, roll your own gears and no driver aid and blah, blah, blah,
Starting point is 01:31:52 and I'm sure Doug Demiro wants the values of his career GT to go up, then you'd pick Carrera GT. It sounds great. You could put an exhaust on it and sounds like an F1 car. You can also do that with a 918, and in a 918 you can legitimately just give it to anybody, and then they could drive it like a normal car. It is just a normal car.
Starting point is 01:32:10 You can drive everything again. Yeah, I mean, the thing that was exciting to me about the thing that was exciting to me about the Mission S is like the 918 and the GT have, become so expensive that even though they made a lot of the 918 you can't you just don't see them on the road it's hard to imagine buying one and driving
Starting point is 01:32:30 it totally fun and what I'm excited about the mission S is like they're going to make a ton of them it's going to give you that same kind of experience of like I'm driving a special Porsche but it's not special so you're going to be able to drive it however you want if you if you caravan
Starting point is 01:32:47 40,000 miles on it it's like okay yeah and if you caravan these things it's going to get a ton of rock chips but i think it but i think it's fine it's not the same isn't and to me like the yeah but this is porcia i mean are they changing anything about about uh you know uh Porsche's uh sort of architecture as a company because you know if this is Porsche we're talking about then the MSRP isn't really MSRP you're going to have uh you know 100 200 over that just to get the first ones yeah then you have paint a sample paint a sample plus then you have the interior options and then you know it's just the the corvette owner that uh that went to
Starting point is 01:33:19 college. It's like mine was one of one because it was built on a Thursday with this paint car. No, I think it's going to end up like an $800,000 car regardless of where it starts. Yeah. But it's also not, you know, like competing with Lamborghini SF 90 from Ferrari. Like it's more in the unlimited production world, which is still really expensive, but it won't be as, yeah, like restricted as the 19th team in the car. Yeah. And the other, the other thing is like seeing the. the two launches yesterday. It was like, one is like, you know, I think we, we all saw the roadster launch in the same way, like cool, like carnival show, trick, you know, like very, very cool technology demo. We'll see what the actual car is like. But then Porsche was like perfect
Starting point is 01:34:09 stagnation, right? It was like nothing has, cars haven't gotten better, right? And if anything, this car was the first time a manufacturer, like, really, really, really listened to customers on a bunch of different elements, right? It's like we want a key that you can put in the car and turn, and we want that experience to be great. We want less screens, right? We want, we don't want all these different things, but in many ways there's zero innovation. It doesn't feel like the only innovation is that we eliminated a lot of the innovations that we've had. And so I think it's great. I think like we have been talking on the show about, you know, the automotive world being in its quartz crisis. And this was like the first response to like, we're in a crisis. We can
Starting point is 01:34:49 longer push. We're not pushing the frontier of technology in our field. That's going to be done by the Tesla's and the Chinese manufacturers. But what we can do is make a driver's car that is special and more desirable than anything else in the market. So I would push back a little bit on that because when they were developing the portion 918, the technology that they had developed when you went from E-mode or like the the region to the regular brakes, they had to calibrate that, and it took them a long time to get that right. So, you know, when you press the brake, it feels like it's a, you know, it's an actual brake pedal, but it's actually regent. But if you press the brake harder, then you get the brakes from the car.
Starting point is 01:35:36 And to make that not jerky, like they had to put in a lot of time. If you look at the early, you know, first drives of the 918, people would, like Chris Harris, you would complain about, like, these brakes when they come on, it's like you get to. you like hit a tree you know but Porsche figured that out and I think that is Porsche's real that's their talent because they will do a lot of stuff behind the scenes
Starting point is 01:36:01 to make this driving experience like seamless and it's almost boring where the car does everything so well and then that stuff like trickles down to their other cars so like that 918 the way that they made that 918 the calibration for that
Starting point is 01:36:17 specific system that trickle down to their electric cars and then their hybrid cars. And like now that is an outies and and like all the kind of lesser known cars. So I think whatever this is, whatever flagship Porsche has, it is going to be something where they move the bar forward in terms of like driving dynamics in terms of aerodynamics. I mean, if you look at it, it has like a big scoop in the front. it has like arrow lines that follow all the way to the back of the car. It doesn't seem like it has a bunch of like wings
Starting point is 01:36:53 and, you know, active era elements. It looks like it's just... The back, the wing is... The wing is active, but it's active like the Carrera GT. Like, it just goes vertical. I just mean like, it's not like a giant, you know, GT3. Yeah, it's not like the Mercedes AMG1
Starting point is 01:37:08 that has like the little flaps everywhere with little motors on those. But, yeah, the other thing that's worth noting is like this is not, from my understanding, It shouldn't be viewed as a 9-18 successor. This is just, this is the new step up from the 9-11. And to me, it's instantly the most desirable car, the most desirable new car in the, call it $600, $2 million range. But then they're going to come for the top end of the market too.
Starting point is 01:37:36 So, all right. If that's the case, then I guess it would go for the, like that, what, SF-90, which is hyper-car performance, not hyper-car price, but then it can get to hyper-car price. but hypercar price is now $2 to $3 million, where now a million dollars doesn't really get you a hypercar anymore. So, like, it's still, you know, this is the... It'll be like Rolto SF90, where the spider will be even more, and then they'll do a GT version of this, and then you'll get the GT3RS YSock package of the new Mission S,
Starting point is 01:38:06 and that will be even more and more and more, and I'm sure they'll be able to spec up there. You've got the Manti Racing one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it is just interesting that there will be some of these driving around with the poverty spec or something, you know, and people will put miles on them, hopefully, you know, because there's so many of these cars where you hear about it. It's like, okay, they're making a hundred of them and they're just going to stay in the plastic. The poverty spec mission.
Starting point is 01:38:33 The poverty spec mission has to go hard. I mean, it's really cool. So is it, I don't know if the pictures that I'm looking at are like actual, their renders or whatever. but like, this is, it's from Porsche. Yeah, if you're on the official Porsche, those are the real, those are the real photos of the car. They debuted yesterday if you're on their account. Yeah. There's a lot of hands out there, but this is real.
Starting point is 01:38:55 Is it a, like, we don't know what the engine is, right? No, they, they, so they were teasing flat eight, but they were just asked yesterday by Forest Auto Reviews, can you confirm that? And they said, we're not ready to confirm that it's flat eight, but it feels like it has to be something different than what's in the 9-11 to make it special. So that would be the logical one. Yeah. So it could be flat eight.
Starting point is 01:39:21 I was looking at the gauge cluster and I saw that, you know, the red line is somewhere around 70, 700 or that's where the literal red line is. So that's his turbo? Does that imply turbo? Maybe. So what I was thinking was, I mean, it could be the Porsche 963 engine, which is the 4.6-Lead from the 918 plus twin turbos. Sure.
Starting point is 01:39:43 But it doesn't make a ton of, like, it doesn't rev as high, and it doesn't make, it doesn't make a ton more power, but it is, it is a pretty cool, you know, platform. And I know that they didn't make a lot of those engines. And those engines, you know, from my experience, taking them apart, like, they're really good. They're really, really good. So, but like a little rev limit on a Porsche just doesn't seem like, right, you know? Yeah, maybe they're trying to sort that out right now. And that's why they don't want to commit to it.
Starting point is 01:40:13 anything? Yeah, yeah, for sure. But I mean, if this was, oh, yeah, this is our GT3RS engine that revs to nine grand plus, you know, we found another 40 horsepower lying on the, on the floor. Sure. Like, here, here you go. I do like the on your own. Is that, is that a button on the on the wheel? Yes, so that just enables all driver's aides. So you can turn off everything. Yeah, that's what I, that's what I felt. Yeah, pretty cool. Probably did. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, it's a cool car. Uh, I don't know, like, anytime Porsche releases MSRP, numbers. It's always like, okay. Like a GT3 is 160K. Like, right. So has anybody paid that? Like, ever? No. So they are immediately double what they're, what they're asking for because everybody needs the
Starting point is 01:40:56 shiniest thing. If this is them trying what they did in the 80s with the 9-28, like, hey, this is like a step above the 9-11. You know, it's going to be, it's going to be interesting because 9-11 has a foothold in that market and it will not let go. what's the opposite of a P1 in terms of first car to start working on if you've never worked on a car before? What's the most accessible portal into that world? I would say anything 90s in Japanese, like maybe a Toyota. Because even if it is ragged on, which a lot of Toyotas are, you can get it cheap and it's going to be reliable. And if you can break things and it's not going to break the bank, you know, you can get.
Starting point is 01:41:43 parts from Toyota that they still make because it's a giant company and it is super cheap to do that so I would do like a Toyota maybe a Nissan like my first car was a Nissan Maxima and I'm a little biased but like Nissan also it's it's a little harder to get parts for some of those older cars yeah Toyota has has a really good parts program and they're bringing back a lot of those you know iconic cars from the 90s sure and and you're not going to be dealing with um you know issues like like real big issues like rust like you get from a Mitsubishi or a Nissan. Like they're pretty well made. So I would say anything like Honda as well.
Starting point is 01:42:20 You know, Honda's, they are expensive if you want to get, you know, a lot of power from that little engine. But just to get a, you know, a car running and driving, it's a really good platform to start on. And then in terms of how you select project cars, what sticks out to you? Is it all going back to like the posters that you had in your wall as a kid? Is it specific vehicles or just opportunistic? How do you think about when you want to take on a new project?
Starting point is 01:42:46 When I take on a new project, there's not a lot of thought that goes into it. It's more like, I don't know when I'm ever going to have this opportunity again. Yeah. So when I looked at something like the P1 or 918, I'm like, there's not going to be another P1 that comes up. There's not going to be another 918 that comes up. So I might as well get this. We're going to see what, you know, if I can afford it, I'll get it. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:43:09 And it's going to be a project for me to figure out. And that, I mean, I wish I would have planned things out better, you know, from the start. But this is also like the reality of making YouTube and reality of like project planning because, you know, you have scope creep, which happened to me with a P1. You know, instead of rebuilding a P1, now we're doing, you know, I'm building the fastest McLaren on Earth. We're taking out the hybrid system. We're building this bespoke engine. And then we're doing a bespoke. body with the original designer Frank Stephenson and then this is now going to be like this top speed car
Starting point is 01:43:45 and you know this is now leagues above in difficulty wise leagues above a stock P1 build yeah yeah how how much room is there in top speed competitions I mean it was interesting that the at the roadster reveal they were like 230 miles an hour and then like live on stage Elon sort of gets them to up that ante and it's like it'll go half the speed of sound right and they're like okay fine we'll do that uh but there are cars like i i think konig's i can do over 300 there's a few crazy numbers out there but what what what is the state of the art than how much more like speed on the floor is there so the the legitimate issue that you come um come up with when you go for top speed now is i mean it's been the case for 20 years, but like, where do you do it?
Starting point is 01:44:39 Sure. Salt flats or something. Well, so the problem with salt flats is that it's not, it's, it's, it's, it's bumpy. So you're not going to get, like, the traction is a, is a big concern. Got it. The salt flat cars are made specifically for that environment. Interesting. And it's not really conducive to a street car.
Starting point is 01:44:55 Like a street car, you'll get maybe 70% of its top speed, maybe. But even then, you're, like, just absolutely blasting the underside of your car. it is a really punishing environment. So what Bugatti does is they have a test track or I don't know if they still own it or they had a part of it. It's Errolesson in Germany. And Errolesson is, you know, it's this big test track with a banked curve that you can take, you can do like 120 miles an hour. You can like saunter up to 120 and they have a six miles straight. And then that's where they do all their top speed.
Starting point is 01:45:30 So right now the fastest car that I know of, that is a production car, store to kinda is the Bugatti Shiran SS. And that's, it's a, Bucati Shiran SS 300 plus. And because that did 304 miles an hour. And that did it there. But in order to get the official record, you have to do it there and like reverse,
Starting point is 01:45:53 like there and back. Right. Yeah. But because they didn't do it backwards, because of the, the weight of the asphalt was, they only did it once. And then they were like, you know,
Starting point is 01:46:03 who cares? We don't, you know, we don't care if we have the official. record or not. Like then, you know, that, that stood. But I think the fastest now is the SSC 2ATA, which did it here in Florida, Cape Canaveral. And then they
Starting point is 01:46:15 did something like 280 something miles an hour, you know, average between the two runs. So the issue, like, right now, the big thing is like 300 miles an hour. 300 miles an hour is incredibly fast. But the issue becomes breaking zone. You have to find a place
Starting point is 01:46:35 to do it. You know, you could do like Konexag did and rent out a, or like just close up, I think Highway 50 or wherever it was. And it's just an arrow straight thing, but then it's like a public road. So,
Starting point is 01:46:51 you have to, like, an animal could come at any point. It could be, like, there's, there could be some, some gravel on the road. Like, there's a lot of things that could happen. And it just becomes diminishing return. when you're looking for top speed.
Starting point is 01:47:08 But I still look at it as a kid, because as a kid, you're like, well, this number's bigger, so this car is better. And I think we've sort of lost our way. It's all like Nurebergering lap times and blah, blah, blah, and, you know, that sort of thing. Just a quick thing before I finish my TED talk.
Starting point is 01:47:28 I, like, every car that says, oh, yeah, the top speed is 230 miles an hour or blah, blah, blah. And like, obviously, the roadster, they haven't tested top speed. They, they have not, because the roadster is not a production car. But the reason why a lot of these cars are, like, topped out around 230, like 220 to 230, is because the, the CFD, the computational fluid dynamics testing that OEMs, like, the car manufacturers have, they stop becoming reliable after 230 miles an hour. because the air around the car becomes significantly compressed, like more than 5%.
Starting point is 01:48:09 So you get like a RAM air effect like you would get on a plane after 230. That's also why a lot of like race cars, indie cars, that sort of thing. They go up there because their arrow testing only like you can only get to that point. Now there are cars that go, you know, faster than that, Lamont cars, but like those are very much, we're going to see where this goes. It might do a backflip. Who knows? And some of them have.
Starting point is 01:48:33 Yeah. So if you ever wonder how that happens, like, oh, aren't these tested? Like, it's, it's almost impossible to test that unless you go out and then you figure, you know, you actually do some real world testing and see, oh, yeah, the bumper hasn't fallen off yet and the car hasn't done a backflip, so we're good. Yeah. Do you think in the Roadster launch, they tease some like Coda lap times, like something around a 130? Do you think that's just like totally fake news or do you think they actually somehow got out there and didn't get any. didn't get any spy shots any spy shots well it doesn't matter because it's not a production car so like whether they put a
Starting point is 01:49:11 you know some body on a frame and then went around with a test mule okay that's cool like so lap times to me don't really matter like I don't care if a car because like lap times
Starting point is 01:49:26 they say a lot about a car but they also say a lot about the driver and I don't consider myself like race car driver and I don't really feel like I want to be. You know, I feel like, yeah, I'll push a car on a nice, you know, windy road or like a straight road or something. And that feels good, but I'm not a race car driver and I don't care if my car gets, you know, point three seconds faster on the Nureberg ring with these like little aerobricks. Like it doesn't really matter to me. So I don't know if it's conjecture, knowing Elon Musk and Tesla probably is. But he knows that the thing that he
Starting point is 01:50:02 showed was not for car people. It was just for it was just to get clicks. It was just to generate buzz and it absolutely did that. If you want spectacle, you go to one of those launches. But like nobody looked at the substance of what was said. Everything that was shared was the car doing a barrel roll, the car flying, the car going upside down. That's the only thing that was shared because everything else is sort of clunky and not very well orchestrated or put together, but they did have this spectacle that they knew people were going to just eat up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they had the moment. It worked.
Starting point is 01:50:43 It's kind of underrated. It's everyone, except car people that had a reservation in and then immediately saw it. And I was like, that's cool and then canceled. It's kind of underrated that Tesla can drive these by wire. Like, they're very clearly entirely remote. like there were no people in them at any time. And so when you think about high speed trials, it's like, yeah, just send the command to drive straight remotely
Starting point is 01:51:06 and just drive it. And if it flips and crashes, no big deal. It's maybe you can push the car further in testing if they do go down that road. But I don't even think car buyers care past 200 miles an hour. It's so rare that you ever would get the opportunity to push a car like that. The amount of people that have gone 200 miles an hour is incredibly small. And like, if you actually go 200 miles an hour, you realize how fast that is.
Starting point is 01:51:34 Now, in cars now, like, if you get in a Konexeg, and you realize that this thing has 1,500 horsepower, it gets to those speeds so quickly. Like, like, I remember, you know, back in the day Bugatti Veron was the fastest car in the world, 2503 miles an hour. We're never going to have another car that's 1,000 horsepower and blah, blah, blah, and it does this incredible top speed. And now, like, a Shiron, like, its successor, has 500 more horsepower, and it didn't need those crazy tires that the Bayron had, mainly because it gets to those speeds so much faster that the tires don't actually heat soak. They don't heat soak as much as the Bayrons did. So the Veyron needs those tires because it's less powerful. So if it had 500 more horsepower, you can actually just get tires from Tyrax, which is interesting. But people don't understand how fast these cars are.
Starting point is 01:52:28 And if you go like, you know, 200 miles an hour to 250, that's that's crazy. But then like 250 to like 300, 300 is so like anything going 300 miles an hour is probably in the air. Like that's just like planes take off at way under that speed. So you have to do a lot of homework and 300 miles an hour is nothing to that's gone out. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, even the high-speed stuff is getting democratized. You look at the ZR-1, and you're looking at Bugatti numbers on pretty much almost everything. I think it goes maybe 220, 2.30 in some configurations.
Starting point is 01:53:05 Like, this stuff is getting to be, and I don't know what the appreciation will be like on that car, but you could imagine, I mean, even a model plaid, you know, 60K for 0 to 60 and 2 seconds. We certainly democratized it, but hopefully people keep it on the road. Yeah. It's incredible. Like I drove today, you know, one of my daily drivers is a charger Hellcat Red Eye. Yes. It is a essentially a rental car that you can get that has 800 horsepower. People will just, like you can go to the dealership.
Starting point is 01:53:32 Well, not now anymore, but like you could have gone to the dealership and just bought it with money. Yeah. And that seems kind of crazy. Yeah. Because 800 horsepower was more than like, if you look back, you know, 10, 15 years ago, what had 800 horsepower? Nothing. Supercar. Like, literally nothing.
Starting point is 01:53:49 Nothing. Yeah. Greg in the X-Shod says, ran into James May today in an airport lounge. He looked grumpy when I asked him about the roadster. Cars should drive, not fly, he said. To Tavarsh's point, not for trad car guys. Interesting. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:54:03 What does excite you? What is on your dream list? My takeaway from the whole event was like, I'm very excited. Tesla slash SpaceX are obviously going to be the company that popularizes flying cars. It might take 20 years, but they are going to be the ones that do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not going to look like the, it's not going to look like the rest. It's not going to look like the roadster because the roadster has two seconds of range.
Starting point is 01:54:23 Yeah, it's a rocket. What is on your dream list? If you were dropped in as the CEO of Tesla or Porsche or any company and you want to build your ideal car, how manual is it? People want to go back to the old ways. I was joking about putting the crank in the front of the car. You know, what do you want? What's on your dream list? It's tough because I am not a person that would like put together all.
Starting point is 01:54:49 all the elements of my favorite cars and then be like, all right, it's perfect for me. I think every car has an element of, you know, like, if it's a truly good car, it is, for better or worse, somebody's vision, like somebody's vision from start to finish. And you can see, you see that from the engineering side, from the design side. And those cars are, like the McLaren F1, for example. It's like Gordon Murray's baby. You know, it's designed by Peter Stevens, but like, Gordon. Murray had a finger in every single thing, every project on that car, and it's still revered as one of the best cars ever made.
Starting point is 01:55:27 And it's, you know, obviously not without its faults, but it is of an era. And it is, it's, there's nostalgia involved. I don't know if there's like a perfect car for me. There are some, you know, very exciting cars. For me, the, the Aston Martin, what is the Valhalla, the one that, that just came out, I really like that car. That car reminds me of when the P1 originally came out. It's a very similar kind of drive train. It's also British.
Starting point is 01:55:55 It's a very, very beautiful car. And I think it is like one of these things that since Asson is, it's an Asin Martin. It's going to depreciate. But it's also a car that we might not appreciate as much now. But later on, people are going to look back and say, oh, wow, that was quite a thing. but like I think with anything there's a lot of there's too many rich people out there
Starting point is 01:56:22 and then there's too many companies that are willing to give them you know whatever they want so like Ferrari making these uh doddhdi chelinedri manuals oh yeah manwale yeah so like those things are kind of they're kind of cool I'm not I'm not on the you know hate bandwagon
Starting point is 01:56:38 there I think that that's you know it's interesting technology but like I think um any car that is that gives an interesting experience and a unique experience that other cars can't give you. I think that is worth pursuing.
Starting point is 01:56:55 I like the Mission S. The Mission S looks interesting. I don't know how different it's going to be from like a GT3 or like a TurboS. Sure. Who knows? But what I think is interesting moving forward
Starting point is 01:57:08 is like where the battle between EV and and combustion engines and then like where hybrids fit into that and then how performance fits into that. But, you know, I think car enthusiasm in general has gone up in the past, like, let's say, three years because, you know, for a while we were worried about car enthusiasm just leaving. You know, like, we're never going to have V12s again or like blah, blah. Also, I think that, yeah. My, I've had a working theory for a while that you're going to see even more of a resurgence and activity
Starting point is 01:57:43 at various tracks around the country as it becomes more common to just never drive yourself on the road anywhere. Like I'm already getting to the point where like I never want to commute. I never want to self-drive when I'm commuting. I want my car to drive itself.
Starting point is 01:57:57 There's so much more traffic. There's more potholes. Like they're in the 60s, you could get a sports car and actually like ring it out just on like the normal streets or like the back route. So I think Tesla making a car
Starting point is 01:58:10 that ultimately is just a track toy actually is kind of going in the right direction in some ways because I think that a lot of people are going to be like when I'm on the road my car drives me when I'm on the track I drive myself yeah and and I think that that's like the line that's like really interesting yeah the mission s is the first car that's like a production road you know road legal car that I'm like this is this is a car that I want in a while I was hoping we were going to get a tour of something but sorry sorry my guys are like watching a car and it's it's like super loud uh the uh the um the pressure watcher so yeah yeah i mean thanks so much for coming on the show we'll let you get back to your day uh we'd love to do it again you're good no i but i completely i completely agree i think um you know the the car enthusiast um was never you know like with these new cars people don't think about our car enthusiasts because uh number one car enthusiasts don't really buy new cars. They're thinking about the collector. They're thinking about
Starting point is 01:59:17 the person that is doing it as a status symbol. And then maybe down the line, that's when they get like the real enthusiast. And then you can have like the enthusiast version. You can have the GT3, GT3RS. You can have the manual and whatever for those people that both have money and want that experience. But for like the base experience of any car now, it's really good. Like, It's really good. If you get any, like, base model car, it's still, it's going to have more power, going to have more options, more luxuries than any car back like 10, 15 years ago. It's also going to be pretty reliable, like, for the most part. So I think, you know, it is, I like where things are headed.
Starting point is 02:00:01 I don't, you know, like the design of cars now is like kind of humdrum to me. I like that, you know, Porsche is still making pretty cars. Some Italian manufacturers are making pretty cars as well. But everything now is just becoming like very, I don't know if it's, they're getting that the Chinese influence where like every car is kind of the same. Every car looks the same. I agree with you with two exceptions other than the cyber truck, Nouveauari and Jaguar Type O one. It's a very specific aesthetic, but it feels like it does not look like a, you know, like a BMW. It doesn't look like an Audi that's like,
Starting point is 02:00:41 where everything's kind of like coalesced around one design language. But I want to know what you think. I, the new Valari stuff is like, the people that didn't like the Jaguar, and then they started saying how good the Nuvallari looks. I'm like, what is your day would like? Yeah, that's funny.
Starting point is 02:00:58 I don't, I don't get that at all. Like, I think it's, they're just kind of low-res cars. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the same, you know, cyber truck and roadster. And they all kind of fall into that, that one thing. And it just becomes, you buy it for the meme and
Starting point is 02:01:12 I don't think there's going to be a lot of John literally has been thinking like do I do the three car garage cyber truck new Valari type 1 just the low res garage very funny yeah yeah exactly yeah I have a question for you do you think so the mission S feels very competitive
Starting point is 02:01:31 with all the sort of desirable Ferrari cars whatever it ends up being actually called like it just feels like suddenly people are going to be like I have 750 thousand dollars to spend on a car that I'm going to drive a few times a month, maybe a couple times a month, whatever, a weekender. That is like very competitive. My expectation is that Ferrari is going to fire back by going after the three RS category and making this 296 challenge, the street legal version of it, like much more widely available because it seems like they're
Starting point is 02:02:03 going to remove the hybrid. And if suddenly they have a car that's in that $400 to $500,000 range MSRP and it has a massive wing on it and it is you know again the hybrid track focused but again a car for the street I expect they're basically going to like flip flop where like suddenly Ferrari will have a car in the 500 and below range it's like pretty compelling and the 3RS buyer is like well I want something that looks aggressive looks track focused but and so so anyways that's kind of like how I'm imagining What do you think? Yeah, I could probably agree with that, but I don't know what Ferrari's trajectory is.
Starting point is 02:02:46 I think Ferrari is just hell-bent on trying to make as many cars as they can and then pretending like they're all rare. Like every single one is rare, and you need special permission to buy whatever their base model car is. I think there's... Porsche have a history of making a certain type of... car. Barari is not, like, no matter what they do, Ferrari is not going to be Porsche. It doesn't drive like a Porsche. They all drive, like, differently. A Porsche experience is very sanitized. Even a GT3, which I have, I have a manual 992 GT3, and I love it. I think it's the best manual car I've ever driven. And I also have a, like a 430 scootaria that we converted to manual.
Starting point is 02:03:36 and it's you know on paper it's around the same horsepower it's like 500 horsepower around the same weight that that sort of thing uh the Ferrari is like a bit more old school but it's still aluminum chassis that that sort of thing but it feels completely different it is uh is a different uh sort of school of thought um and the Ferrari feels like it was made a hundred years before the Porsche so I think no matter what even newer Ferraris they they have this like manufactured sort of Italian passion where things don't line up as well as you'd want them to. Like a Ferrari, like a Pista, doesn't drive as well as like a McLaren because of that, because they want to like manufacture this sort of like imperfection.
Starting point is 02:04:19 But then sometimes, like I don't see them competing with Porsche in the same way. It's not going to be that sanitized experience no matter what you can do. Yeah, no, that'll be really interesting. It does feel like they will go to head to head, but there will be, yeah, a really wide, really wide gap between the two brands. And I think that's great. Yeah. I'm not saying that they want to make the same car at the same price more so that like I think
Starting point is 02:04:44 it would be an interesting new product for them to offer. That would be an ode to like, hey, we haven't forgot why we got into this in the first place, which was like selling emotion, selling this rawness, selling this. Would that be the XX? Is XX street legal race car? Is that the thesis there? That is not like now, but yeah, the FX. F-F-90 X-X and the X-X program used to be a literal, like, race car with race team,
Starting point is 02:05:11 and you didn't even own the, you didn't have the car, like, to do anything with. You, like, just told Ferrari, meet me at this track with the team, and then I'll drive the car. But that SF90XX was the only car that had that badge, but didn't come with all those perks. But then you can just drive the car. You can take it home. So they are sort of. Yeah, yeah. So it's a thing where they take the road car and then they make it a track.
Starting point is 02:05:35 car and then they make it a road car and they make a track car and they make a road car again they go back and forth it's the best yeah yeah it's uh it's like a street fighter the movie the game yep the movie yeah exactly the book based on the movie that's based on the book uh it's the best but always always another way to you know stand out in the crowded market i suppose anyway thank you so much for coming on the super fun this is great let's do it again no worries man thank you so much yeah thanks have a good one cheer bye uh car day wanted to distract you guys you from the absolute disaster that we've had today in the markets. Oh, it's rough.
Starting point is 02:06:11 What's going on? Jim Kramer says maybe we clean out this blown up hedge fund and start fresh on Monday. Okay. So the NASDAQ is down 2.14%. S&P 500 is down 1.09% and the Dow Jones is down just 0.34%. But Kramer called it one of the worst days of the year. Yeah, NASDAQ near's biggest weekly loss in more than. a year. Tech stocks are falling sharply Friday. Remember, you got this alpha from us yesterday because
Starting point is 02:06:42 if you paid attention to the stream, the stream title was sell everything, including your dollars, it's over, over. And it looks like it is, in fact, over over. But maybe we'll clear out this hedge fund, and we'll be back on Monday. We'll see. AI-related shares came under new pressure, pushing the NASDAQ down 2.4%, which leaves the benchmark down 4.7% for the week, if that The tech heavy benchmark finishes down more than 4.68%. It will be the worst week since the tariff meltdown. I like that in this Wall Street Journal report, they were hammering this out so fast.
Starting point is 02:07:15 They capitalized the THE all caps for some reason. I think it's just a typo, but it lets you know that a human was hammering this out and saying, I'm mad. I'm angry. This is crazy news. Anyway, there's a bunch more stories, but we'll get to them on Monday. 2.6 says way before you guys go, is Tyler still an interned? Uh, news flash.
Starting point is 02:07:35 Tyler has never actually been an intern. He was always paid. Paid. And he dropped out of college, like, how long ago? Year ago? I think, I think his original deal, he had to go to school for a decade. So he turned that down, came here. Came back.
Starting point is 02:07:52 But, uh, yeah. I don't, I don't actually know your official title. Co-host. Oh, I mean, in the Wall Street Journal, just host. They didn't even hit you with the co. Tyler Cosgrove was featured in the Wall Street Journal. One of us. One of us.
Starting point is 02:08:03 He made it into the journal. very very it's a big moment the first time you get in the print edition did you actually get the copy of the print edition did you see if you made it didn't get delivered that day so I don't know somebody stole it but I don't think it was in the print edition okay well we should figure that out but Tyler is in the Wall Street Journal you can go to
Starting point is 02:08:18 WSJ dot com sign up you can search his name and he was he was in the article about cheeky pint and how the tech elite are drinking beers and Tyler broke it down do you have anything else they sort of they sort of mocked you a little bit, didn't they?
Starting point is 02:08:37 Well, it's... God of him. Okay. The writer said, he didn't watch the full episode because he has a life. But Tyler calls him.
Starting point is 02:08:52 Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. The Walsher Journal said, they, the journalist said, I didn't watch Cheaky Punt
Starting point is 02:09:02 because I have a life. But, This guy over at TBPN, this host, Tyler Cosgrove, did. And so he hit you with the host, hit you with the full name, spelled it correctly, got the name of the show slightly wrong. But it's okay. We'll hit them with a correction for that. But we love the Wall Street Journal. And we love you all for tuning in.
Starting point is 02:09:22 We forgot to tell you the most important data point that we cover more reliably than the markets. How many days until Christmas? Christmas. Sixty-nine days until Christmas. Let's go. There you go. Thank you so much. Outside the movie theater yesterday, they were setting up Christmas decorations. Rick Cruz is one of us. Let's go. That's right. So good. So good. Yeah. It's getting, it's getting, it's getting Christmassy in here.
Starting point is 02:09:50 Let's check in on the Christmas weather report in Los Angeles. It's 94 degrees. Not exactly the Christmas spirit. Malibu is burning. There's a heat advisor. There's evacuation. warnings because it's too hot, but Christmas is always hottest before it gets cold. It's always darkest before dawn. It's always hottest before the snow falls. It's always hottest before the snow falls. Yeah, there's no, you have control over, we have invented air conditioning. We don't live in France.
Starting point is 02:10:22 We live in America. You have air conditioning. We love you guys. If you want to get Christmas, see, just turn on the air conditioning. Good night.

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