Tech Brew Ride Home - (TWTR SPC) Mark Gurman On Apple

Episode Date: March 26, 2022

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman comes on to dissuade us of our Apple delusions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome, everybody. to the TechMeme Ride Home Experience for Thursday, March 24th, 2022. We have a very special guest today, someone that I'm sure you guys are all very familiar with.

We certainly talk about a lot of his scoops, a lot of his coverage of Apple, everything they're working on. I'd like to introduce you to Mark German. Mark, do you want to say hello? Hello, hello. Thank you, Brian and Chris for having me really appreciate it. Obviously, a big fan of TechMeme and the pod in general, so glad to be here. Well, let me say this. I'm going to hazard a guess that you're the most quoted person on the pod.

Although maybe Daro Basanjo, he always has tweets that get in there four or five times a week. But in terms of actual story, Mark, you're probably number one by far. Very happy to be here. Yeah, great. For all the show. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, so, you know, let's lead off at this real quick, because you posted this. after I posted the show today.

So can we talk about your scoop today since I didn't get to, which is, I guess, we're a step closer to the vaunted Apple Prime subscription service. What can you... Yeah, go ahead.

We're definitely a step closer. You know, Google launched a thing called the Pixel Pass. I think it was last year. We're basically it incorporated. Some of their services, text support, what else? The pixel phone price itself, right? But nobody really uses it because very few people comparatively are buying pixel phones, right? But I think subscription hardware for Apple is going to be huge.

Obviously, we know where the industry is heading. We've seen this with app and software and online services already for months, for, sorry, years. That's been a long day. Instead of paying for apps outright, you're paying monthly. And so we're going to start seeing that trend significantly for hardware as well. Now, the iPhone would be the most significant product to date in the tech world to be sort of part of that package. Obviously, you know, car leases, right? Car lease is the ultimate, you know, monthly subscription service.

You pay until you're done with the car. When you're done with the car, you give it back. You turn it in and get another one. Yeah, it's running and get another one. Similar with this Apple plan, right? Every time a new iPhone comes out, you're able to swap out your current device for the next model. So that's basically what Apple's going to do here.

I believe it's possible. They'll attach it to the Apple One bundles, TV Plus, I Club Storage, you name it. And then they'll do the same for AppleCare as well. So it should be a pretty interesting bundle. I don't know. Me personally, I don't love paying for stuff. stuff on a monthly base desk, but I guess, you know, this could be interesting depending on the pricing.

I traditionally like to buy the iPhone outright. When the new one comes out, I sell it and then use that money towards the next one. And sort of, you know, there's, there's two parts of that that I'm curious about, which is number one, yeah, it does occur to me that as much as, you know, the sticker shock of paying $1,000 for a phone hasn't necessarily turned people off. But the other thing is, is that the economics of this for Apple in the sense that, like, so if I'm paying whatever, let's call it $70 a month and I get to get a new phone every year, I'm assuming that that means the economics of you turning in your old phone so that Apple can resell it, the math out for them on that? I think so, but it's also not going to be $70 a year. I would say it's

probably going to be half of that, right? Keep in mind how much money Apple is going to make off this a month and how much they're going to make off this a year now, right? How many more people are going to buy iPhones? How many more iPhones they're able to resell another market? They're going to make a ton more money because of this, right? And they're also going to be seeing people buying the phones through them directly, probably instead of the carrier installment plans because of it. So I think it's going to be a huge revenue driver for Apple, depending on how they position it. So, you know, you saw how the market reacted to this, right? You saw the stock went up, I think, almost 2% on this news because investors have already done the math and the

calculus to know that this is going to generate more money. But that's kind of what I'm asking. Is the math that this sort of guarantees Apple has, which they already kind of have done, this guarantees that Apple can just serve the lower end of the market because every time I trade in my phone from this year, Apple's going to resell it for $400 to somebody next year. Is that what the math means? Well, there's that, but it also means there's going to be more recurring revenue, right? Like, you and I might buy a new iPhone every year, but most people probably don't buy a new iPhone, you know, for every, until, you know, three years or four years or five years go by, right?

So it's almost that, it's almost that subscription business of even if you don't go to the gym every month you're still paying and they're sort of counting. Yeah, but that's not really quite right because everyone is going to the Apple gym, quote unquote, in the sense that they are using their phone every day. So it seems like the calculus is actually more about getting the device in people's hands for longer at a lower sort of price point. You look at like a firm and services like that that have sprung up that allow a lot more people to buy, you know, more things kind of in an ongoing fashion. You are renting access. And so that access then comes with the ability to do in-app purchases or other types of layered-on subscriptions, whether it's TV or movies or other

things that are a la carte that drive more value once you have that Rundle going and you, you know, the device is like the leader in that space, right? So rather than having a high price point that prevents people from actually getting the device, keeping the device, and more importantly, upgrading to the latest stuff that is going to drive a lot of the experiences, augmentation reality for 40 a months, then I'm in for other things. Well, you just don't think about it. It's just sort of like, actually, you know, the thing that's that also, Mark, you wrote about was one of the iPhone SEs hidden features, which is the ability, I guess,

to bypass the sign-up process for your, what is it, your carrier, right? And this is going to be, I guess, rolling out, as you said, in iPhone 14. Now, this raises a question as to what you're paying for. on a regular basis to live your digital life. And to what degree the carriers are actually important or essential to that as we move more towards ultra-wideband. And, you know, I've been trying to think about this, find my network and what Apple is doing with air tags.

And I think I probably have this wrong. But if we, you know, think long enough, this goes into my conspiracy theory a little bit, you know, to a world where, one, you have augmented reality and Apple glass or goggles or whatever you might have it. And you no longer need the telcos because you're using ultra wideband or 5G or there's just, you know, to the story that you had last weekend about Apple Wi-Fi, I just wonder if Apple wants to disrupt all of those relationships and all of those recurring revenue subscriptions with just the Apple One or the Apple Prime or the ultra-efficient fusion, whatever, you know, pro.

And that's where this ultimately could go by lowering the cost to getting the device, which is the lead to all the Apple universe. That's quite the conspiracy. I want to just a long time. Thank you. You're following me here, but I want to go back to, you know, why this makes sense for Apple first, and I'll talk about, you know, your,

my wild ideas. Okay, so let's say the average person updates their iPhone every three years. Yeah. Okay. What does that mean for how much Apple makes off that one customer every three years. So let's say the iPhone, let's say $1,000. So let's say upgrade every three years. Apple makes $1,000 off me every three years. Okay. Now, let's say the subscription plan costs $40 a month for that $1,000 phone. Okay?

Yeah. So right there, they're making more. 40 times 12 times three is $1,440. So there you go. Yeah. The benefit for me over those three years, I got three new iPhone. versus the benefit for Apple, they just made an extra $440 off of me. And I'm able to subscribe to newer services and buy more apps and generate even more with you. So this is why they're doing it. And this is probably the math they've done internally, right? $40 gives them a 40% extra amount of money every three years per customer.

So this is an absolute no-brainer. And I literally figured this out in five seconds using the calculator and spotlight. So that's why they're doing it. Now, in terms of your theories, I think your theories are landish. Please don't pull any punches. Yes, I don't think those are the whole, I don't think, but I do think it's the ultimate goal. I just don't think it's going to happen anytime soon, right? Like they really want to do their own satellite, internet-based service.

There's been internal discussions about their own MFNO, white labeling carriers. I don't see it happening anytime soon. I mean, don't forget, they're two years away or a year away, or two years away probably from launching their own modems, right, to connect the existing cellular networks. So they didn't put in, you know, billions of dollars and five years of engineering work on a modem just to throw it away, right? Well, but how does this actually factor, let's say, the car, right? If you're going to have an Apple car, you're going to need a network, you know, to connect to. I mean, the Tesla that, you know, I drive is always on. It's always connected.

It's, you know, got a 5G thing. like that is part of the universe that I live in. I mean, that seems like networking is going to be a big part of Apple's future regardless. And so I guess I'm just trying to also think through and sort of set you up to talk a little bit about the Apple Wi-Fi piece that you wrote about. Yeah, I mean, I would say like the Apple car would probably connect to cellular networks

in the same fashion as a Tesla, right? And the Tesla is completely white labeled. Like, I don't think you know which carrier you're a car connected to, right? That's right. By the way, they're still stuck on 4G, no? That may be true. That may be true.

I mean, I don't really know the difference. It's fine. It doesn't really say it. I'm just asking personally. Yeah. When they get upgraded to 5G, right? I remember the whole joke with Tesla early on is I was missing all these features and whatever, and they would tell you in the showroom.

Oh, software update. Software updates. Well, I don't think you can move to from 4G to 5G and a software update. Yeah, that's true. Something to look up there. What was your question? I mean, my, so, one of the things that you wrote about that got a lot of traction was about the airport extreme

and Apple getting out of the Wi-Fi business. You know, now that Apple has gotten back into the studio display and making displays, your point was, well, why don't we just go back a few more years and bring back a great Wi-Fi hub? Yeah, they should for sure just make some, you know, classic mesh networks stuff to sell, right? They can make tons of money off it. It's very high margin. We know Apple overpriced everything, so it's an easy way for them to. generate some more money. I'd probably buy it. I'm looking for a new mesh network. I have an old

airport extreme at one place, and then I have the Nest mesh network. Another, it'd be nice to replace both with some sort of airport mesh network. Obviously, the Google Nest's fine. It works well. I've never had an issue with it, but it's not as well integrated with the iPhone. I don't see Apple pulling out anything sort of fancy or any Wi-Fi tech we haven't seen before, it would basically probably operate the same way as a nest. But with the Apple brand, you would use the airport utility app, which I think is still pretty good. So I'd be shocked if they did anything fancy there. Maybe there's some interesting stuff they can do with near field communication, with the, you know, the ultra-wide band and all the other wireless technologies they have there. Maybe they would use

like an in-house wireless processor for that too. So, you know, there are some interesting wrinkles there. But in terms of end-user functionality, I don't think they would be reinventing the wheel here. Yeah, but at the same time, like, I mean, one of the things that I got to imagine that Apple really wants to get rid of is Bluetooth. You know, it causes so many problems. You know, it is what they're using, you know, to enable their headphones, the AirPods and things like that. But it feels like one, it's not super efficient from a battery perspective. And then in terms of the types of, you know, fast user switching and connecting it works, but not all the time.

And I would think that part of like, and Apple increasingly is showing more home-based functionality, you know, home OS type stuff where the home pod, you know, by its name, you'd think is the device that they wanted to centralize the home around. And yet that hasn't materialized. They seem to really miss on that product. So I don't know if the Wi-Fi device would be the device for it, but certainly something that allows you to have that mesh network that connects to everything. It's very efficient. It's fast. It connects to ICloud. You know, you can do home automation and try.

shortcuts and that type of stuff that just, you know, a lot of the Wi-Fi devices just don't offer, they don't contemplate, they're not part of the Apple ecosystem. I mean, it does feel like there is maybe an opportunity there. Yeah, first of all, the HomePod is a joke of a device. Yeah. And they completely failed there. And they basically have failed in every facet of the home. And it's pretty much unbelievable. Like, why is that, right? I mean, it feels like, like they clearly, you know, they're good at computers, they're good at phones. But when it comes, but when it comes to home devices, is it just, they're like too high end, they miss the market, they're trying to be too fancy.

Yeah, market's not big enough for them to really care that much about it. I think that the sweet place to put the airport, or put the airport would be inside of a HomePod Mini and actually make that device useful. That's what I would expect, too. So I definitely think they should look at something in that direction, right, if they ultimately do this. I mean, I haven't heard specifically. there were some rumors floating around a couple years ago that they were going to get back to routers,

but I hadn't heard anything since then. I didn't really think those were terribly reputable. That's why I didn't say anything. But the monitor got me thinking about that, right? Like if they're going to go back to making Apple-branded monitors with technology from 10 years ago, maybe they would go back to their being Apple-Broner routers. Right? Well, you know, the funny thing, right, though, to your point about how often people replace these devices,

I mean, I got to imagine people have, like, LynCIS devices, you know, back from, like, 2006 lying around that still uses like the the one, two, three, four, five, six password or whatever. Yeah, the replacement cycles for Wi-Fi are, are very long, right? Like, I don't know. I've probably only replaced the router a couple times, right? So it's not like a winning product if you're looking to generate.

And so do people, will people just bypass this and use their cellular plans then? Like, I'm not quite sure actually how people manage this. I got to imagine, like, during the pandemic, that really motivated people to upgrade the internet. and finally do that thing that they need to do. But does Apple sort of think that the world is going to have more Wi-Fi in the future, like Wi-Fi 6 or more 5G and sort of terrestrial networks and that type of thing,

or even satellite going forward? And so therefore, investing in a home router system actually isn't really the play. It doesn't make sense. There's a faction within Apple that believes satellite is the future, other that believe 5G is the future. when they were developing the M1 chip, there was a team looking at integrating a modem into the M1 chip. So there was a lot of discussion about, you know, including 5G on this new MacBook Air that's going to be coming out. To be clear, I'm not, I don't really think that there's going to be 5G in this new MacBook Air.

It's just they looked at including cellular in it and, you know, M-based devices, which would make a lot of sense, right? It would be great to have a cellular option on my MacBook Pro. will they do it one day? I think they will. Obviously they have it in the iPad at this point. So it would make a lot of sense to me. Mark, let me jump in with a listener question, which will be completely jumping to a different thing.

But how soon would we get an M-chip and an iPhone? Are Apple's chips always in two directions? There's the chips for the phones and the iPads and there's the chips for the computers or is it inevitably going to be one chip sooner rather than later? You know, these are just marketing names, right? Right.

You know, they could theoretically call, you know, the chips in the phone or the Mac, whatever they want. The M1 is essentially the A14X that they would have maybe put in the iPad last. Right? So in terms of the M1, what is the M1? what is the M1? Well, the M1 is an A14X. So the iPhone would be getting the A16

this fault, right? So it's not going to be... Let me ask that in a different way then. Would it ever benefit them to say what you get in your phone is the same thing you get in your computer, or is that like sort of defeating the marketing purposes of being like, oh no, these computers are wicked fast,

they can do things that phones can't do? Would there ever be a purpose to them unifying even the marketing end of that? I mean, all the Mac chip is, the base Mac chip, the M1, the M2, the M3 or whatever, it's basically this chip in the iPhone with, I believe, three extra CPU cores and four extra GPU cores, right? All it is is extra cores. So same chip, it's just a little bit of a different core count.

And can they get an iPhone out the door that has battery life it has today or proper battery life after jamming in three extra CPU cores and four extra GPU cores that aren't even necessary. That's not an iPhone, right? So, yeah. I mean, these are marketing decisions. And what Apple likes to do these days, they like to slap on a cool name or make cool marketing decision to drive interest in a product, right? So, for example, you know, they could have just called the chip inside the iPad, the 814X. instead they called it the M1 in order to make it a little bit more interest.

I was on a podcast a few weeks ago, and I asked a question that I thought was pretty funny. Would you buy the Mac Studio if it was called the Mac Mini Pro? And it gave a few people on the podcast, pause, oh, maybe I wouldn't buy it if it called the Mac Money Pro. I think it's interesting because it's called the Mac Studio, right? And so Apple has these marketing techniques that really, you know, germ up interest in their products. So you never know what their marketing engine is going to come up with. You were talking about them missing with the HomePod. What's your take on, I'm going to call it a miss.

Nilai at the verge called it a miss. Marquess Brownlee called it a miss. The studio display seems to have landed with a bit of a doll thud. Do you have any theory behind, why it sort of underperform people's expectations? Apple was looking for a fairly quick development process and low engineering overhead fashion of getting a cheap monitor out the door to pair with some of these lower-end Macs,

the Macs Studio and such, right? And the quickest way to do it was to take a panel similar to the one in the LG display from, what was it, six years ago now, and put an Apple casing around it. So I think it was just an engineering. nearing time thing. I think that monitor was in development for under two years, not a long time in terms of Apple's development cycles for their devices. They also want to make their 50% margin on it,

and that's why you see that $1,600 price point, right? I think the high-end display, the new 7K, is going to be quite interesting. What do you think is going to be interesting about it relative to what's out there in terms of the pro-XDR? It's going to be the same thing, except they'll be, you know, one K more. And more expensive, $2,000 a more. Who knows, right? But they'll put the iPhone chip there, too. You know, it's basically an iPad jammed into a monitor.

So why did they not actually put like an A13 in the XDR? Why did they not put an A13 in the XDR? Well, I believe the XDR didn't come out until like a month after the A13 actually came out. Maybe the A12 wasn't powerful enough. On the other hand, at that point, I don't think Apple offered any features that necessarily needed an iPhone chip. Don't forget, the XDR oddly has no webcam. True.

I struggle with this every day. Yes. I don't know if it has, I don't know, does it have speakers? No. So there's no reason to have an A chip in there. Yeah, yeah, that's true. There you go. What a joke.

I mean, a very expensive joke. I never forget that display. They tried to frame it as a good deal by comparing it to some of the displays that they have in Hollywood. I think those are $40,000. They tried to compare it. It's not an apples-to-apples comparison, but that's what I'd like to do. Same with the HomePod. When they announced the HomePod at 2017, they said, okay, the Sonos costs $200.

An Amazon Echo costs $200. The HomePod does both. So what should we charge? We charge the $400 combined? No, we're going to charge $350, right? So they have all these, Apple's a marketing-driven company, right? They are. And so that's why you see some of these things a certain way. Now, I don't want to downplay their success.

They are making tons of money. And I think that their job is a company, their job is a company with millions of shareholders and 165,000 employees is to make as much money as possible. And so they're doing exactly what they need to do. and, you know, not that I'm the CEO of Apple, but, like, I don't think you're making any decisions differently than what you or I would make. They're doing what they have to do to be the best business they can be, because at the end of the day, they like to stay their, you know, environmental, you know,

they like to talk about the environment and this and that, but at the end of the day, they're a business. This is America, capitalism, and they're doing what they need to do. And there's nothing wrong with that. Yes. Mark, let's end our time with you by listeners of the show know that one of my frustrations is I can never figure out if the Apple car is on the verge of coming, is dead, is on the verge of dying, is on the verge of, you know. So if you had to make a bet, let's not say when we'll see an Apple car. you know, on the streets, when would they announce an Apple car if you believe that they're going to even announce one?

Here's what I'll say. I would bet we see an Apple car this decade, right? I mean, I've got eight years. We've got eight years, yeah. But, yeah, I'm fairly certain they'll get it figured out. The amazing part to me is how they've basically started the ARVR project and the Apple Car project. They basically started both of those projects around the same time. We are on the cusp of the VR device being announced and going to... So you're saying that's going to be announced within 18 months?

No, within a year. Okay. It might be into this year. The ARVR project, I should be clear. Yes, go on. Yeah, within a year or so. Max, maximum. Right.

Okay. That, fine. You've seen no turnover in that division. You've seen the leadership team of that division. You've seen the head of that team in that division. all 100% the same. Okay, not 100% the same. At least 90% the same as it was, you know, in 2014, 2015, when the project kicked off.

The Apple Car project, you've seen three or four rounds of layoffs. You've seen the head of the project replaced three or four times. You see the entire management team being reshuffled multiple times, just an end-to-end disaster on that project. So the difference is so, so huge between those two projects, right? but you know Apple has so much money I still can't bet it I'm on the car I think they're going to do it I think they have to do it

there's just so much off the shelf that goes into a car right doesn't seem like Tesla did it yep if Tesla could do it Apple do it by the way Tim Cook has done an amazing job as CEO Apple has been incredibly managed

since the day he took over 11 years ago now if true that Apple was able to buy Tesla for $60 billion, you know, before the Model 3 came out or around the Model 3 launch. If that's true, I think that is one of the big, that is a very big mistake. If they, if it is indeed true that Tim Cook basically, you know, ignored that possibility or felt that, you know, Apple could do that better.

You know, I'm sure Apple spent that amount trying to develop the app. Right? Yeah, definitely. So imagine how different history would be that Apple pulled off that acquisition, right? Tesla would have been a perfect fit under Apple. Apple's operational expertise, Apple's experience in battery development, software development, hardware development, mixing the minds between Tesla and Apple, I think would have been a tremendous, would have been tremendous for both companies. Except that, like, the products would cost three times as much and you'd have a shitty display inside the Tesla. Oh, that's funny.

Yeah, who knows. Apple never going to be able to afford, I mean, technically speaking, afford Tesla, sure, will they ever be able to feasibly buy the company? Not a chance. I do think they have a competitor at some point, but they're going to be so behind. By the time Apple comes out with a car, you're going to see, you know, Mercedes, Audi, you name it. Like Rivian or some of these newer ones. You're going to see all these new generations of EVs out there. And how is Apple going to stack up? And, you know, my hope is that Apple doesn't just rush out with a car because they need a car and do something, you know, half-assed. You know, I want to see something I've never seen before. And I think... In your opinion, what would that be?

What's your dream Apple car? Well, I think the idea of them releasing a car with no steering wheel to be able to... to put a baby in the backseat and having it arrive. The true self-driving dream. The true self-driving. They have like steering wheel gate, though. You know, everyone would complain whenever they sit in the car. It's too much of a risk.

I don't see them doing it, but that would be the dream. Something I could lay back and relax on the way from the office, right? Do I think that will ultimately happen on the first gen? No, I don't. But I think they're preparing for that world. And a lot of the internal concepts and prototypes and designs they have in the car are to not include a steering wheel. And they have some ambitious goals.

Try to get a car out by 2025. Do I think they're going to hit that goal? Absolutely not. But I guess it's good to have dreams, right? I am optimistic they'll eventually get it done. I just hope they take their time with it and do it well. I can't imagine that Johnny Ive is involved in that project. I mean, that guy loves cars.

He's not. I mean, remember when they said that he left? Yeah. I think they're involved with Apple projects and stuff. Yeah. I don't actually think he's involved with anything going on there at this point. I think he's like basically 100% out of the picture. I don't think it was really even ever true that he has some partnership with them or that Apple's, you know, maybe a one-off here and there that we haven't seen or heard about in the future, maybe something.

It's probably good for the market, right, for continuity. So people like, you know. They're doing, they're good for the stock market. Is that what you mean? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That's probably the only reason they said it. You know, Johnny Ive was such a central figure in the company, but, you know, Apple showed us that it is way more than Steve Jobs.

If it could be way more than Steve Jobs, it could be way more than Johnny Ive or any one person. I think, you know, Johnny I've lived three years ago, and you've seen things like Stu Mac Pro, you've seen the iPhone 12. Everything got good again. Everything got good again, right? Apple has moved away from the old sentiment that you can fit every product they make on the table. And they've moved to just sort of doing everything they need to do to be stressful and doing as much as they can, walking and chewing gum at the same time as they say. And so I think Apple today is a much stronger company than it was three years ago, five years ago.

You know, few jobs in some respects, right? You can't replace huge jobs, marketing mind, showmanship, and ability. to sort of come up with new ideas. But I think they are firing on all cylinders at this point. And it's a joy to cover, joy to talk about. And it's a privilege to be able to have conversations like this about technology. Yeah, Mark, we thank you for your time. You're welcome to stick around.

The topic we're going to move on to, you might have something to say about it, but please dip out quietly if you'd like to. What I wanted to move on to Chris is the other big news of the day, which is the sort of the big hack. And allegedly we've got, you know, 16-year-olds in Britain and Brazil behind this hack. But the angle that I wanted to poke at a bit is the idea that the way that this hack happened was that they were going after bribing Fang engineers. and this, you know, this is something that when I've asked people about this in the past, people have been like, yeah, we can't really talk about that, or don't talk about that or whatever. But, you know, so aside from, you know, the classic ways that hackers could get into anybody's stuff is you trick me with an email, you social engineering, or you, I don't,

I click on a bad link. But this is straight up. Social engineering. Well, no. Allegedly, they were offering people like $20,000 a week. If you work at this company, that company, that company, if you can get us in. And the reason I'm bringing this up is because when I brought this up in the past, and people have said, don't talk about it.

It's been clear to me for five to ten years that the most powerful places anywhere in the world are at big companies like this. So that if I were North Korea or I were China or I were Russia and I wanted to shut America down, I would have spent the last decade having sleeper cells in Google, in Apple, and wherever. and the reason that people won't talk to me about this is they sort of wink and nod and say, yes, we're aware that that's a possibility. We're aware that that is, you know, a vector of concern. The thing that occurred to me about this Lapsis thing is that this is maybe the first time that we're seeing this play out,

where it's straight up, listen, because here's, and I know I've gone on a lot, but it's, but it's like, the vector is that if you can trick people into getting into their systems, that's one thing. If you just pay people to be like, let me into that system, that's another thing, right? And so I've never worked at a fan company. Do you have any insight or experience about, and it was a few years ago since you've worked at a fan company? Is this something that is this something that is talked about when you were there? Yes. I mean, there's a couple different ways to take this.

On the one hand, is it possible for an employee of any company to be bribed to do something that is otherwise immoral, illegal, unethical, etc. Of course. Is it going to go on in tech companies? It could. You know, that's possible. I will say that the FANG companies, the big tech companies in particular, have a great deal of internal monitoring. They have, everything is logged. You know, all access requests are, you know, down to the employee, you know, device that is used to do the things.

And so there is at least discoverability of these types of, you know, lapses. If it happens to be that someone is performing the function that they were hired to do, but they're doing it in a way that is being motivated by something else. And so it looks like all the rest of the work. I mean, I think what we're seeing is that there are a lot of contractor jobs in the support function where someone has an issue with access or permission. That's a good point.

Right? Or password resets. All of this stuff is being farmed out to third parties. So you don't have like the top engineers, the company working on those types of things. And yet those contractors have a level of access that is quite sensitive and powerful. And so all you need is one of those. That's an important distinction is that one of the problems that's always been talked about for public service, if you work for even the CIA, you're not going to make $10 million on stock options. You're going to make a low six-figure salary at best.

So one of the things that the government has always been very aware of in terms of operational security is that they're never going to pay. pay people enough. So it's easy to go to somebody to spy for another country and offer them $100,000, and that would move the needle for them. Versus if you're a fang engineer, in theory, you can become a millionaire if you play your cards, right? So the money would be more. But that's an excellent point that you made is that, again, this is still an early story. But this lapses thing is it wasn't necessarily that they were bribing people at, big companies as much as they were in theory allegedly going after and attempting to bribe the contractors, the third parties of things that are. Look, the other thing that's important in this is culture. And these companies are much older than they used to be, right? So if I think about the culture of Uber when I was there in 2016, or if I think about the culture of Google in

2010, or everything, you don't want to fuck it up because your riches are still coming. Yes, there's that. And there's also just a built-in kind of level of trust and culture in that everyone there has built this thing and is building it. Right. So on the one hand, sure, you can like point to the economic outcome and, you know, you don't want to fuck that up. Fuck that up. But on the other hand, like, these are your colleagues. These are the people that you're working with.

This is like the stuff that you're building. And there is some cohesion that comes from, you know, fighting against the darkness and, you know, not succumbing to, you know, giving up on whatever problem it is that you're trying to solve. So you get into a different state of compliance isn't the word. It's more kind of maybe collaboration or working together, camaraderie and so forth. When you get to orders of magnitude of scale of people that are no longer really bought into that original culture or feeling part of that core tribe. You get to 100,000 people, 200,000 people. Or Octa has what, more like 20,000? I don't know how many people they have.

5,000? Yeah, something like that, yeah. Some number, it doesn't really even matter. It's that a lot of, I'm sure, a lot of Octa's processes are handled by third parties. And those third parties have very little connection to the core culture, very little, you know, incentives, except obviously having the job and keep it the job. You know, to perform the task and the duty that they're doing, they probably don't see management or have a real connection to, you know, the brand, to the core and all the things that bring, you know, the shiny trappings of the work. and that leads to, I think, real vulnerabilities. And those are vulnerabilities that really can't be coded away.

So I think that's an important thing to recognize as these companies are becoming much more mature, much larger. You know, there are grievances that people have against these companies, you know, real and imagined. And that, you know, puts a target on their back. And in this case of Lapsis, you know, you've got supposedly, you know, 16-year-old kids that are highly motivated to figure this stuff out. They probably have cryptocurrency, so they have a lot of money that's, you know, not meaningful to them, but it's large sums and they can deploy it to do something. Like, the thing that was fascinating when listening to the story about the lapses thing, I guess maybe one of the hackers was doxed and, you know, photos of his home and, you know,

his mother, you know, were put out there on the internet or something, is that these 16-year-old kids are sort of jockeying to be the most elite programmer and are completely, like, they see these big companies as, like, insubborn. institutions that they can just rail against and, you know, kind of destroy. Like, it doesn't bother them. Like, they're not in that world. I don't know. I think back to, like, you know, kind of juvenile delinquent I was. And, you know, I had the same idea about institutions that were just there and that were annoying because they were, like, established. So it's a different type of threat actor because they will use whatever type of social machinery they can. And it has nothing to do with perimeter defenses or other types of digital defenses or encryption or those types of, you know, conventional

kind of security. So it is very scary. You want to just, I'm going to, I'm going to flip to the next one, because this is one that I've wanted to ask you about. Does that answer your question? It does. Okay. It does. It does. It's basically, well, kids are always going to be kids. The teenage hackers have always been there. I'm just more curious about the angle of, well, you know, the one is it's the whole idea of you rob a bank because that's where the money, is. So because these companies are so powerful now and it's like, are we at a point where it's like you can't do security well enough because someone's going to be willing to be like, I'll give you

$50 million if you get me the source code for the next iPhone or something like that. Yeah, I mean, the reason why I guess I'm speaking to this in this way is because my own personal experience, having my SIM card hacked by an AT&T, AT&T, employee so that some script kitty on the internet could steal my Instagram username and then sell it, you know, as a trophy on the OG users like forum, you know? So the fact that they went through that level of, I don't know, effort to some degree to like get someone at a low level 18T store to like reset the password and then send it off to this other person, I mean, just shows you how vulnerable these systems are because ultimately they're touching people who want the problem

solved, right? So if like, I can't get into my Apple ID because I forgot my password or whatever, you know, and I go to the Apple store, well, what are the processes that Apple has in place to make sure that someone who is, you know, not you, doesn't do the same path that you would do to get access to the account that you want access to? You know what I mean? Like, so it's very, very difficult. And when people get frustrated, because they have to, you know, recite their, you know, mother's main name backwards and, you know, their grandfather's birthday or something like that to, like, you know, get access to account or just get service. And they have to do it. do it to every new person on the service line that you've called.

These are the reasons why. It's because the people who are motivated have far more time, energy, and effort, and the payoff is so much bigger than, you know, you, lowly person who forgot your password. All right. I am jumping into the next one because I feel like you might be closer to this one. Something that occurred to me with the, and also, by the way, this might raise a bunch of hands in the room, too. Something that occurred to me talking about all the you guys.

Lab stuff and ape coin. So to reiterate if people don't remember from earlier in the week, like basically Yuga Labs bought up

the biggest IP in NFT land, three of the biggest brands, raised at a $4 billion valuation, which funny enough, I forgot to say this on the

It reminds me of a year ago they Clubhouse raised at a $4 billion valuation for $060. Okay, but what this made me think of, and I didn't have a way to, I had no way to make a point about this on the show is it reminds me of Hollywood. What do people in NFT land, number one,

think about a consolidation where there's a, like I did say, a 800-pound gorilla that is apparently UgoLabs in the space, But then what they seem to want to do, it's almost like, you know, early Hollywood. I was a film major, so I know the history of early Hollywood, and there was a thousand studios, and then they all consolidated into, you know, the big five or whatever. Let's start with this.

What do people think of Yuga Labs consolidating the biggest brands? Okay. So I think what you're kind of ultimately getting to or asking about, you know, is what is the NFT marketplace going to look like. What is it going to emerge into? Is it going to be more tech or is it going to be more media, IP, you know? Yes, you just put your finger on what I couldn't elucidate. Yeah. It feels like media to me. It is. And I think that's it's really, and I suppose actually to turn it back to you, like it's an astute sense, right, that you have, which is asking the question, like, what is this? What are NFTs? And so, actually, oh, okay, let's unpack this because I think,

I think we're getting somewhere. The idea, so what I was first going to say was that there just aren't that many people who are going to buy, own, and really care that much about NFTs, right? I don't know if we've tapped out. Let me interrupt. And when I did that article this week, they pointed out that there's only 40,000 people apparently in the entire NFT ecosystem, or was that only on those Yuga Lab type things? It almost doesn't matter.

But let's go with that point, because that is, adjacent to the point that I'm about to make, which is, on the one hand, there's only a small number of people who, you know, one can buy and afford these things, trade these things, care about these things, showing up for these things. You know, we're not seeing, you know, 10 million or 100 million or 500 million people who are super stoked about their NFTs. And, you know, we've created this amazing decentralized place where everyone has a little bit of equity of this new world that we've created in Kumbaya, et cetera. Instead, you have, you know, maybe it's 40,000 people. It's probably some percentage smaller of that. that are owners of this IP and can be all rounded up together and are maybe, you know, the bastions of kind of a new Hollywood where there's a different type of entertainment that will be created that's based on games and the Metaverse. And you want that consolidation so that you can actually build the interrupt that, you know, Zuckerberg has, you know, claimed should exist in the Metaverse. So instead of having, you know, hundreds of thousands or, you know, millions of owners of these things, you have a small number. Can I take the Hollywood analogy one

step further. Sure. For 100 years, people go out to Hollywood, a certain percentage of people to make it rich, and we've all understood that it's vanishingly small, the amount of people that are actually successful at it. I feel like there's like 50 actors and actresses that you see over and over in all the movies. Well, it's not only that. I mean, again, I went to school with these people. I know people that went out to Hollywood, and listen, I'm not friends with anybody whose name you would

But that's my point, is that I must have known from college 30 people that went out to Hollywood to make their fortune. So again, this kind of ties into the idea of some of what the critics of the NFT space say, which is it's exclusionary, it's elitist. But what if that is the natural market that sort of this is going towards where it is an IP-based? and an exclusive-based sort of market, which can be a big market? I mean, that's totally possible. I just think that, like, we're at a period where everything is on an accelerated timetable. And so, you know, if it took, you know, 50 or 60 years for, you know, the Hollywood intelligentsia to essentially, like, sort of establish themselves in culture, you know, in the studios

and in business deals and arrangements, that seems to be happening now within, three to four years. And part of it is because we already have the muddle. I was thinking about this last night. And if you think about what's going on with finance and fintech and crypto currencies and things like that, if you were to go back to the last time there was sort of a massive capitalist expansion, you know, with the rubber barons, and you think about the railroads. And you think about the steel, you think about all these sort of accoutrements that came in after that, you know, in the advent of the 60s with the bad men and the advertising. era. That era was all about kind of describing new ways to apply these industrial products

that had been brought into market, brought to scale, you know, where the cost reduced, and now you could build products for consumers with this. We've accelerated that whole process, which probably took 100 years within, you know, 10, 15 years with the Internet. And so you have these raw materials now. And crypto, forget the Internet. Crypto is 3X the speed of Internet time, you know. Which is to my point, right? So I wouldn't even say that crypto is even doing that much different from, you know, what the previous era of the internet was doing. It is introducing some new concepts, some new primitives.

But most of the things that seem to be being built are kind of rebuilding the recent past history's infrastructure and experiences and products just using some new technologies and techniques. So it's not even that inventive. It's not even that new. You know, it is applying new technologies to enable these things. And it's creating some new. incentive structures. But a lot of this is actually very familiar rather than inventing whole cloth,

new types of interactions or concepts, right? Like the follow button or the like button were actually new gestures in the Rubicon of human expression that were necessary in a digital space because you had to capture a kind of sentiment that was typically expressed through implicit signals in real life. You know, you like something cool. You kind of like express affection for it, but it's not this, you know, Rona database that says, Chris. does like or does not like that thing or, you know, following someone is something that you'd sort of like watching the newspapers and you'd see updates, but it was like really about the publishers deciding who to publishes about. But now you can literally follow, you know, sort of a person,

which is an identity on some platform where there's content constantly being renewed. Anyways, these things have sped up. So to your point, this consolidation that seems to be happening is hoovering up all the most valuable IP, you know, kind of real estate in the NFT space in order that there is an opportunity to build the next Marvel or DC universe. And that seems to be where the game is going to go. And the idea, although, you know, Andreessen talks, Andresen Horowitz and those folks talks a lot about decentralization. I don't really see how that's true.

Like, either that's what they want or that's what's going to come of this because there's a very small number of people in the world who will actually be able to build this stuff. That leads me into a point that I wanted to make. This is almost like Brian's place to make points that he can't wedge into the show. Sure. I'm going to point out something that is obvious to certain people, and if it's obvious to you, I apologize. But you're mentioning Andreessen and the going whole hog on Web 3 and crypto and things like that. And I know I've mentioned on the show before that I've heard this,

one of the things that was a catalyzing moment in Silicon Valley. was the Solana moment, which Andresen was an investor in. And Solana at its height, I think, was approaching like a $60 or $80 billion market. Here's something that you, if you don't know it, you might be interested to learn. Because I'm about to invest in a company next month that it's going to be my first token investment. And here's the deal. if you're a VC and you invest in a company, you have to wait for a liquidity moment. And that means, you know, you invest in a company at a $10 million valuation and someone buys it for $100 million.

Or it becomes a unicorn and someone takes it out at a billion dollar valuation or it goes public at a $4 billion valuation. So when you invest as a venture capital firm, you don't, it's all paper well. It's all in theory until you get that liquidity. But when you can invest in a token, the token trades 24-7. So when Andreessen and whoever else, I don't mean to pick on Andreessen, that invested in Solana, and Solana went up to, again, I can't remember it was, it was above $50 billion. market cap, I believe. I think I see where you're going with us. Yeah. So if they got in, whoever got in at the original Solana token sale, let's even say that they got in at a $300 million

valuation, the minute it was a $30 billion, like they don't have to wait for a liquidity event. And so I'm just going to point out the fact that one of the very many reasons and one of the reasons that everyone loves crypto and Web 3 now is that there's a lot of energy behind it. There's a lot of good ideas behind. But you have to understand if you're a VC, you don't have to wait 10 years for your liquidity event. You can invest in a company and buy their tokens. And the week after that airdrop happens, the week after that token comes out, if it has a $10 billion market cap, you can sell. Your liquidity event is instantaneous.

And by doing the research that I've had to do to invest in this token sale, that was like, oh, well, shit. That makes a lot of things make a lot of sense to me. So if you were not aware of that, I am cluing folks into that little nugget about why a lot of VCs love Web3 and CryptoRang. It is true. And it is interesting to sort of like see this quasi winter that we seem to be in. It's sort of hard to maybe explain exactly, you know, why we're here, you know, whether it's things going on in the world or whether it's specifically that, that, you know, when a bunch of people decided that they wanted their, you know, liquidity to be good, you know, they pulled out.

They sold a bunch of stuff. The NFTs are all off from where they were, like, you know, six months ago. And now they've taken, you know, their Benjamins. and now they're, you know, just hoarding them, holding, doing whatever it is. I do think that, and, you know, you don't have to share obviously anything about this deal that you're looking into, but there are cases where at least I think savvy and smart folks who are working with tokens. Can I give you the math? Let me give you the math on this.

Okay. Wait, wait, let me finish my point and then give me the math. Oh, yeah, finish your point. I'll give you the math, and you'll see why this is great. Okay. Well, my point largely is just that you can actually build into, tokenomics and to smart contracts and two other ways of investing that actually have similar types of mechanics as equity or equity grants in companies. So essentially you could be a VC,

put your money in, but then there's actually either a contract, like an agreement, you know, or there's something in a smart contract that says that you can't pull out or sell some share of your tokens, you know, out of these wallets for some period of time. So that is a way to actually prevent that type of, you know, drop it in, you know, pump. And then, leave because that's tanked a lot of projects. That was happening with the ICO world often. So there is a little bit of an evolution in that world. There is, but here's the economics.

Okay, so we've talked before about how I write small checks and by small, you know, forgive me for saying a $100,000 check. So let's say I write $100,000 check to a company at a $10 million with an M dollar valuation. If it becomes a unicorn, which is a $1 billion, valuation, right? So that means my $100,000 is worth $10 million with an M, except for the fact that it really isn't,

because to get there, there's multiple rounds, and so my investment is diluted. Which, if you don't understand that, I'm sorry about that math. But also, I would have to wait, even if it becomes a unicorn, that doesn't mean that I can sell because there's not a liquidity event.

So no one's Apple hasn't come in and bought it. They haven't had an IPO or whatever. So I'm still waiting. It's all on paper. Now, if I do the same investment in a token at a $10 million cap, let's say, and when the coin starts trading and I get lucky, and then all of a sudden a month from now, that coin has a billion dollar valuation, which isn't crazy in crypto land.

and it can go up and go down. But I can immediately, even if I don't sell the whole $10 million, I could take $3 million off the table. And number two, there's no dilution. So think of those two things in combined where, number one, I don't have to wait. There's no, like I have immediate liquidity. And in theory, there's no dilution.

Now, again, not every project is going to be a winner, not every, but that's the thing that has blown my mind and made me realize why all the money is flooding into. And I'm not, again, I'm not being cynical about it in the sense that, oh, they're just flooding it because it's easy money, but I am saying that it's easier money than waiting 10 years for an IPO.

Yeah, I wonder how this is going to turn out, you know, from a reputation perspective, you know, from a market dynamics perspective, if there's just going to be more movement, right? Because the thing that your narrative doesn't completely take into consideration, you know, one is, will the rest of the market start to behave in a similar way? And once you start doing that, you know, people who invest need to keep making more money. And if, you know, you do it a couple times and then other people figure it out,

you're eventually not going to be able to get your returns for your LPs because the market has I hope you're not talking to a historian.com era. Tell me. Tell me, what are the lessons from the dot-com era? Listen, if you can invest in that company and get it IPOed in six-bop and... Fair. Fair. You know?

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, it's, you know, so there's a window and then maybe, you know, winter will definitely come, is what you're saying. again. You're still going to make this investment. Oh, for sure.

I actually believe, I believe in this idea entirely. And it's a funny thing because if I could have invested in a normal equity round, I would have done that, right? But they want to do the token. And so I'm like, all right. Are they putting any restrictions on the token? I can't go into any of that. But yes, for any of these things, there are. things like that. So yes.

Okay. Well, but I mean, that sort of speaks to my point, right? It's not just a simple thing where you put your money in and overnight. Yeah, but again, but again, I put my money in. The token goes live and starts to trade. And then if I get it right, I could get it right immediately. I understand. Yeah. And I could, and I could cash out immediately. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Which is a different thing. then waiting for a company to go through... What would the founder... These folks that you want to invest in, if you do that thing, what do you think their impression would be? Would they appreciate that? I would say this,

because there's... A lot of Web3 companies, you know, there are equity investors and there are token investors, and oftentimes there are people on both sides. And for example, like for Yuga Labs, you know,

I know that Andreessen and whoever else is in on this round is in on the token, in on the ape coin, but they also are in on the equity round as well. What I'm not clear about, and this is me admitting that I'm a naive venture capitalist, is why you would play both sides of that fence. There has to be reasons that you would do that. but maybe it's sort of like hedging because again maybe if you get half of your position in a token and half of your position in equity

and then you immediately if the token you know goes to the moon you sell out of the token but you still got the equity so you can ride the company if you believe in it you know

I really feel like I'm revealing too much of my naivete in this. So I'm going to stop now and ask you to give us one more topic and then let's close with the night. Totally. You know, the one thing that I've been thinking about, you know, I feel like I'm sort of going through this process right now, which is very similar to what happened at the beginning of the pandemic, where I just became kind of a news junkie around a specific story. And, you know, it's happening now around the war in Ukraine. And one of the the things that has come up and you had a story about this and there was some coverage of it

recently. And I was listening to The Daily Today and there was some really great coverage, or at least sort of a narrative about how similar aspects of the current war and Putin's approach is similar to the conflict in Chechnya. I believe this was the 90s or something. It was late 90. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was when Putin came to power because that was sort of his play to like, I'm the tough guy that solved this Chechen war.

Yeah. So I would, you know, I would highly recommend listening to that. You know, it, one, the fact that there's like a playbook and like this is the way that the guy like, you know, does his wars and that this is actually quite consistent was, you know, surprising, I guess, to hear. And where this sort of intersects with tech and in our world, you know, is the tweet that you shared the other day from Rachel Perloff that was talking about how cyber attacks may be coming. And so with all of these sanctions, of course, that we put against Russia, Putin will want to find sort of clever and interesting ways to sort of lash out, get revenge. And, you know, I mean, where we started, you know, in this segment of the show talking about lapsus and what's going on there, I mean, it feels like we probably are. even though I think things have gotten better in terms of our infrastructure. You know, you remember the, what was the pipeline that was hacked in New York that cut on power or whatever? Yeah, crap.

I can't remember. Hold on. Let me check tech me for pipeline. Yeah. Anyways, I think that our infrastructure is safer than it was. But if Lapsis is able, you know, some 16-year-old kid to get into Octa and then get into Microsoft services and leak most of the source code for Kirtana and stuff like that, you've got to imagine that most civil, federal, you know, municipal governments are pretty exposed.

And if, as you suggest, there are these sleeper cells, which don't even need to be in the big tech companies, they could be, you know, working for municipal governments. And they open a back door or a side door or whatever it is to infrastructure. There's a lot of crazy things that could happen. And so I don't know where that leads. I don't know where that goes. But, you know, we started sort of talking about, you know, the big tech kind of vulnerability to some of these hacks. And I'm a little bit more worried about a state actor lashing out, you know, in retribution for these sanctions in ways that we can't really, you know, anticipate in the underbelly of, you know, civilization.

Well, look, man, I, I almost don't want to, I almost don't want to talk about this because I feel like we'll jinx it in a really bad way. But it is, no, go ahead. Well, I was going to say, so I guess to preview a conversation that you'll be sharing, did you decide tomorrow or on Saturday? Say within the next 48 hours. Yeah, let's talk about it. So Chris and I interviewed a startup based in Ukraine today, and we're going to put it up sometime in the next 48 hours as a bonus episode. So go ahead. Yeah.

And, you know, what Alexander had to do to, you know, prepare his team in Ukraine. you know, to go, you know, just gave me a lot of, I don't know, made me think about my own preparation and my own security and my own safety. So while on the one hand, I don't want to jinx it and I really, you know, don't wish for any type of, you know, kind of big hack to occur, it just, it does occur to me how I'm exposed, you know, personally, how I might be vulnerable, how I may not be, you know, ready to live an analog life for some period of time if that were to be the case. You know, we are very reliant upon, you know, delivery services. We have a Tesla here at home.

If the power goes out, that car is not going to last very long. So it just... Also, it's like us can't do podcast and throw ads against them and make a living. Also true. The greater economy obviously is dependent on this digital infrastructure. But, you know, like, hacking is different than just like having, you know, the power turned off or, you know, the internet, you know, disabled or slow down or something, you know. So I don't know that I... have like a real, I don't know, statement, but it really made me feel for, you know, the people of

Ukraine and what may happen, you know, obviously both physically in terms of their security, but then also digitally in terms of our digital lives and how much we do rely on these systems and, you know, how little prepared and how much ignorance there is. Yeah, but I'm going to stop you because you're jingsing it. I mean, that's the thing. It's like, let's hope not. I've talked on the show about, you know, industrial espioning. and how that's like...

I was a voice guy. I just want to be somewhat prepared, more prepared than I feel right now. Yeah. Look, man, if there's those million chemical plants in Jersey on the other side... I live in, you know, the Bay Area. You know, I literally, I follow a earthquake pot. Okay, there's that, there's that, or all the sudden,

no one can get money out of ATMs, all the sudden, all of the gas pumps in the country don't function, et cetera, et cetera. Are you telling me that I just should not be paranoid? No. In fact, what I'm telling you is what I'm worried about is that it hasn't happened. I see. So you are worried. Oh, fuck.

I 100% believe, like, because what was the big hack, the Solar Winds hack, which the government attributed to the Russians, which in theory, the whole point of that is, is that there were all these back doors. They were in there for 18 months or long time years. So in theory, the whole point of that hack is you just, again, sleeper cells, you just wait. You just wait until you need to use it, right? So, I mean, look, let me, okay, I don't want to jinx that. But you know what I would like to do, seeing as how that this episode will either, I'm pretty sure we'll do this episode after we release the Ukraine interview.

episode. I'm just curious your take, you know, personally, you and I have talked about this a lot offline. What we wanted to do was capture how many people listening to us right now work at startups. And we wanted to be like, you know, this startup that we talked to is a tech company just like yours. Yeah. And imagine that you woke up one day and bombs are falling. And what do you do, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And that's what we, you know, tried to get out of the way and let the story be told. But I'm just, just curious on personally what you thought of the conversation we had this morning. You know, it just gave me a sense for, you know, the bravery of, you know, many people who are, you know, leaders of a group of people. And, you know, for the most part,

you're a leader of a product team or, you know, building a business or making a business or making deals or things like that and you don't really think about some of these bigger issues, you know, coming to the fore. And then suddenly you're challenged and you're tested. And the world that you knew no longer exists and the way in which you relate to your team and connect and all those things goes away. Hearing that, I guess I just, you know, took stock of, you know, myself. Like, how would I respond? Would I be, you know, cool? Like, and, or would I freak the fuck out, you know, would I run and hide? Would I, you know, be able to handle it? And so, you know, the fact that we got that email after we finished recording, you know, from the woman that actually

set up the call. And she's like, well, I'm sorry, I couldn't make the call. I was in, you know, a bomb shelter because the shelling was going on, you know, it makes it real in a way that a lot of the coverage that I've, you know, been consuming didn't. And I knew it was real. And I know people. You know, I have people on my team who are in Russia, you know, and who have also had to flee and leave Russia as a result of this. But to try to imagine teams working under that type of dress and that type of stress and to keep carrying on, I mean, I think the thing that he said that was so powerful and sort of, I don't know, stuck in my head a little bit was that people in these moments do need things to work on. They need to, like, not just like distract themselves, to like distract themselves,

but to have a purpose, to keep getting up every day while things around you are turning to shit. And that just reminded me how important it is for us to take care of one another and to check in on one another and just ask how people are doing. And so it's certainly something that I've been doing a lot more of, I mean, certainly since the pandemic. But whatever that linear ticket is or that juror ticket or whatever else, like, it can wait to make sure that the person on the other end is okay. and this is just a very different moment, I think, for us and the way that we're connected to it is, I don't know, it gave me a lot of pause. Yeah, and I want to acknowledge something, which is the reason that I wanted to do that, I twice in my startup career, have hired teams from Ukraine. So when I have done stories like, oh, you know, by the way, there's a bunch of devs and tech work. in Ukraine. I knew that personally.

And this is a bit stepping into politics, so forgive me. But when you see people say, you know, and people have come down on people for this, like, oh, well, but this is happening in a European company or country. This is happening to people that look like us.

Obviously, there's privilege and racism in making that comment versus other countries that have had worse. But one of the reasons I wanted to do it is that I do know that this is, Ukraine is a country that, at least for the last 20 years, I've personally known, has a tech economy, tech workers.

They're plugged in to the larger tech ecosystem. And so I did want to just, you know, take a look at what would happen if your startup was that, where, you know, and people hopefully will have heard this by now where you wake up one day and you have to get your go bag and go. And so, and then does your company even continue? Right. Are your people safe? Some people are safe. Some people are in cities that are besieged and whatever.

I did think that it was important and I hope people. take it in the spirit, looking through the lens of, imagine that was my company. Imagine that was me. That was it. Yeah. Yeah. That's it.

Well, you know, I will, this is not meant to be, like, self-promotional at all. But I would like to at least point to something that my company is doing around raising money for this. We have just put together a donation campaign for the, essentially the first response. Anders in the Ukraine. And a friend of mine put this together. He's been working on it really hard. And I guess I want to put that out there. We'll put in the show notes and I'll pin the tweet here.

But anyways, on that, I suppose, I'm ready to close. How about you? Yes. Remind me, ping me after we sign off. So I'll put that in the show notes for the episode as well. Cool. Thank you, everybody. and thank you, Chris.

Actually, thank you, Chris, for jumping on the call with me this morning. I know you had to break into your workday to do it. And thank you, Mark Gurman for doing Apple stuff with us. Thank you, everybody for listening. And yeah, that's it. All right. Thanks, everybody. This has been another recording of the TechMeme Ride Home Experience.

Hopefully we will be back here next Thursday for more. Ciao. Later.