TBPN Live - Back in the Truth Zone, Exponential Growth Continues, Athleisure is Out, Brothers Don't Use NDA's

Episode Date: November 23, 2024

TBPN.com is made possible by:Ramp - https://ramp.comEight Sleep - https://eightsleep.com/tbpnWander - https://wander.com/tbpnPublic - https://public.comAdQuick - https://adquick.comBezel - https://getbezel.comFollow TBPN: https://TBPN.comhttps://x.com/tbpnhttps://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/technology-brothers/id1772360235https://youtube.com/@technologybrotherspod?si=lpk53xTE9WBEcIjV(00:00) - - Back in the Truth Zone (13:54) - - DM's (Can a Canadian living in China be a TB?) (22:43) - - Exponential Growth continues (25:06) - - The Timeline

Welcome to Technology Brothers, the most profitable podcast in the world. Today, we are putting my good friend, Teddy Schleifer, in the truth zone. If you don't know Teddy, he's a journalist. He hit me up and said, hey, I'm writing something about this secretive gathering of rising MAGA donors in Las Vegas. I heard you're there. I ran into him there. I said, cool.

Send me your website. I want to check it out. I love Substacks. He sends me this website. I want to check it out. I love sub stacks He sends me this URL. I hadn't seen it before NY times Calm and I went and checked it out. It's kind of like a kind of like a extreme left Paki McCormick like they do the news. It's kind of like a sub stack got it. You can subscribe But it's all very techno pessimist instead of techno optimist which is kind of cool it's like very different it's like the opposite of packy they they had a big issue with their tech team

sort of rebelling yeah that's right it was a pet bereavement issue yeah yeah but what what is cool and i was on the fence about talking to him um because of kind of the vibe of the whole website but then i saw on their website you can pay them to print out the website and mail it to you. No way. Yeah. Yeah. And we love printing. I love printing stuff. So then I was like, I'm in Teddy. No brainer at that point. Uh, so I run into him. We, we, we, we chat a little bit at the event and he broke it down. He says new from Vegas. I went to the Rockbridge network fall summit last week fun times featuring uh it's funny because he he did go but he didn't have a ticket so he couldn't go

inside no way so he was just hanging out in the in like the bar area talking to people it was very uh seymour hirsch you know was it kind of like it was it kind of like a project veritas approach like no no no no no It wasn't like that. He was very upfront with who he was and he was like shaking hands and introducing himself. And it was very above board. But it was very much like... You know when journalists go into war zones and they have like a helmet on

and they have like a vest and it says like press or whatever? Did he have that on? He didn't have a press pass. He could have been lying to people, but he was not. He was just hanging out. And people were happy to talk to him honestly like i think that there was nothing that crazy going on and uh he's on the kind of the elon musk the tech politics beat and so he wanted to talk to all the tech people who were at this event to trying to cross over so uh

it was featuring rebecca mercer donald trump jrie Wiles, friends of Elon, me, sick, and an ascendant part of the Republican donor universe. I did not donate, but I did get in, which was cool. But we got to put him in the truth zone. Truth zone. On this show, we do not allow any fibs, any clipping, any taking out of context. And so, Teddy, you're going in the truth zone, buddy. We at this show, we like to trust the experts. And those are people like Joe Rogan, Andrew Huberman, Lex Friedman. Yes. Paki McCormick, right? Chris Williamson. Yep. Sean

Curie, Sahil Bloom. Trust the experts. The experts aren't with us today, but we'll try to, you know, sort of we'll channel the experts, channel the experts, channel the experts. And so he writes the title of the article that he wrote was behind the scenes at a secret gathering of rising MAGA donors. Just four days after being named the next White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles was waiting patiently for an espresso drink at a five-star hotel in Las Vegas. Overnight, she had become one of the most powerful people in America. The value of a minute of her time could not be higher during the presidential transition. Republican strivers are hounding her for desirable gigs. And back at Mar-a-Lago, President-elect Donald J. Trump has been courting controversy with his picks. Yet, here she was, thousands of miles away, flanked only by a

security guard, alone in line at a four seasons coffee shop she had just peeled so you notice how he's saying she's not at the actual event because he's at the coffee shop yeah he's hunting around yeah i love that uh he really he really did i'm waiting for him to say i ordered espresso martinis for two because it was past noon and we were ready for a power lunch yeah but i I love that. But I don't know if he got there. And so he goes on to say the group, this is all for the Rockbridge Network. He said it was co-founded five years ago by J.D. Vance, sprouted an informal set of dinners into a powerful coalition of Republican donors who have given more than $100 million to Rockbridge projects since 2019, according to a person close to the group. And so this is just an interesting just lesson for founders or anyone who's doing anything with the press. There are

kind of three tiers of like talking to a reporter. Are you familiar with this? Yeah. So the base level is like off the record. Like you can't quote me, you can't say a person familiar with the matter but i'm giving you this information and then hopefully you can go and use it to to write a better story write a better story exactly and it's pretty safe to speak on background or off the record um yeah i think there's this general i think there's this general fear of journalists within tech. Yep. And it is world wrestling now. Yeah. So we need heels and that's where the journalists are filling in. Exactly.

Exactly. Yeah. And the thing I would say is, is every, every technology journalist, and I think we should call them technology journalists just because tech has broadly been used as a slur. But technology journalists that I've spoken to have been incredibly respectful of the

ground rules of journalism, which are off the record, on background, on record. So this is an example of someone talking on background. It says a person close to the group gave them or gave Teddy the information that they have raised more than $100 million. And so they didn't want to be named, but they were okay with that, making it into the article. And this is all in service of helping lead Silicon Valley's march to the right. For Rockbridge, Mr. Vance's election as vice president was a crowning achievement and a tantalizing opportunity to wield new national influence.

But Rockbridge has largely kept its activities stealthy, mindful of how groups of wealthy conservatives like the Koch network have drawn attacks from both liberal detractors and Republican wannabes. This is the don't build in public thing. Yep. You know, never build in public, never build in public, except so as a caravan of black SUVvs shuttled in the billionaires from their private jets last week members of the rock bridge roster could be spotted around the hotel rebecca mercer the republican the scion of one of the most prolific republican donor families greed well-wishers in the lobby ken howry and lucid luke nosik shout out love those guys former uh partners at founders fund co-founders of the firm. And they worked with

Elon Musk at PayPal, made them mega wealthy themselves. And we were actually, Teddy and the three of us were all hanging out. I did not get a chance to talk to Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, but they were there. And he describes them as the six foot five cryptocurrency investors and former Harvard heavyweight rowers made famous in the social network. They do not get enough credit for reinventing themselves yes and running it back yes like a massive way and it's honestly if if companies like coinbase were not so dominant yes from a narrative standpoint they would get even more credit exactly like they they in many ways were cucked again by brian to some degree and they did they did do a good job of uh

of just believing in crypto like very early and totally a ton of it early and right yep uh attendees with white and red gift bags and lanyards i didn't get a gift bag i had a lanyard brutal that's brutal uh knew how to be closed-lipped when approached by hotel interlopers or by the times reporter he's like referencing himself. I love this. Who was not invited to closed press festivities. I like these. But a copy of the agenda listed remarks by several tech billionaires, including Anderle co-founder Palmer Luckey and venture capitalist Mark Andreessen, who spoke about his support for deregulating technology and the mixed reaction in Silicon Valley to his endorsement of Mr. Trump. According to attendees,

uh, there were tech up and comers to Donald Trump jr. Announced at the welcome dinner that he was re he was entering venture capital and days before the president elect elect chose Robert F. Kennedy for health and human service secretary. Mr. Kennedy spoke extensively about his public health work to a standing ovation.

Uh, it's the domestic Davos in the desert said rockbridge bracker but backer omid malik referring to the annual business conference in riad and donald trump's junior's new business partner that's interesting because yeah omalik uh ran giga om for a long time big media guy and the big investor i'm pretty sure it might i might be getting that wrong but um it makes sense that the next davos is in America, in Las Vegas. I like it. I like it.

Yeah. It's good. But the reason that I wanted to put Teddy in the truth zone is that I'm in this article, and he quoted me. And he cut some very important stuff out. So let's read. He says, generally, this is a quote from me in the times. Uh, he says generally, or I say generally everyone at Rockbridge was very happy that technologists and politicians are working together directly again and not openly hostile toward each other.

This is just kind of what I felt in the room said John Coogan who attended. It's no longer a question of whether technology will drive the future, but how we guide its impact. So it makes sense that tech billionaires and the political elite are partying together, which I liked. But that's not what I said, Ted. I said something. I had another line in here. I said, Rockbridge was a stark reminder that the march of techno-capitalism is unrelenting, reshaping every aspect of our society. It is no longer a question of whether technology will drive the future, but how we guide its impact so it makes sense that tech billionaires and the political elite are partying together. And he took out the techno-capitalism is unrelenting part.

And I don't know why. I do not know why. But, no, I, of course, gave him a bunch of different quotes and he chose whatever he wanted and that's fine. But I wanted to give you the full story here. Unfiltered. In the truth zone. Stay tuned. Trust the experts.

But Rockbridge has grown significantly. They used to let prospective members attend for just 5,000. Now it's 25,000, although some people said privately that they had been able to get in for less. They're giving it away, basically. The cost to be a limited partner is 100K, and the cost to be a limited partner is 100k and the cost to be a

principal partner is a million now that's a status symbol we should do a promoted post for them get some people in there yep um but in general you know we don't we never we actually never talk about politics on this show but or social issues yeah or or social issues um but i do i do think it's good that technologists and politicians are talking to each other again and figuring out how to reform the government and regulate and do all sorts of stuff. So as a technology brother, it's great to see the politics brothers doing good work and the technology brothers convening with them in Las Vegas. It's fantastic.

So anyway, that wraps up the Truth Zone. We are moving on to our next segment. What do we have, Jordy? So today, big size gong moment. Fabian Pinkhairs. Okay. Fabian Pinkhairs is announcing a 500 million. Million?

I was going to say dollars, but then I caught the symbol here. 500 million euro investment in UDU at a 5 billion euro valuation, which has been led by Capital G and Sequoia Capital, along with top investors like Mubadala and BlackRock. He notes here that it is a secondary transaction, no money for the company as we don't

need it. We grow organically. Wow. Statement. He says, I didn't sell, kept the majority. So at this point, we're not exactly clear if he means he didn't sell the company or if he didn't sell shares, but either way, a $500 million investment. Can we hit the size gong for euros? I would love to hit the size gong. Clearly, this is a huge deal, but I think we got to keep the size gong. Would it be un-American? It would be un-American to ring it for euros. But I mean, I love Andrew Reid at Sequoia, one of the Holy Trinity firms.

No one loves Sequoia more than I do. And he's a fantastic investor. He's in Figma. He's in this company. And it's interesting because I hadn't really heard of them. And then as soon as I saw this, and we discussed talking about this, I saw Billboard just driving around Los Angeles for this company. And their tagline was like, the only business software you'll ever need. And their tagline was like the only business software you'll ever need. And so I think that they've just really carved out a nice little niche for them, been very profitable, grown significantly. And now they get the luxury of doing a huge secondary transaction. And it's all part of this trend of companies staying private

longer, doing more secondary transactions to get early employees. There were more secondary transactions in like six companies last year than there were IPO proceeds. Wow. That's wild. And it's just like showing that the best companies have almost infinite access to capital,

especially when you're able to cater to asset managers like BlackRock, creators of Burning Man. Yeah, BlackRock City. They have their own city. They have their own city. Out in the desert. Rock City. They have their own city. They have their own city. Out in the desert. Maybe Fidelity should do their own city.

But yeah, fantastic news. Unfortunately, we can't ring the size gong on this one. Maybe next time it'll be in dollars. Announce it in dollars. We'll make it happen. If Fabian wants to re-announce it. And then re-shore to America, bring all the jobs here, and let Europe languish and become a vacation destination for all the Americans.

Couldn't have said it better myself. Well, that's a good transition. As long as we're on American jingoism. Let's move on to a question that we got from a viewer on YouTube. Kion Stack says, I'm so into the pod. Thank you. I appreciate that. But I'm a Canadian living in China.

Am I still a brother? And that's an interesting question. What do you think, Jordy? Man, I think we need a whole hour to kind of break this down. What does it mean to be a brother? But I think we've kind of come back to this notion that being a technology brother is very spiritual. As American as we are and as American as this podcast

is, the idea of being a technology brother is something that almost knows no borders, right? It's a mindset. It's something that in many ways you're born with. It's genderless. It's not limited by the constraints of nationalities, gender, even industry, right? You can be a technology brother wherever you are in the world, whatever you do for work,

granted that you're risk-on and levered up. Yep. It would be helpful to know do you have an angel portfolio? What programming languages do you know have you ever convinced your parents to buy bitcoin what's your astrological sign these things all kind of come together to create the milieu of what what a technology brother really is yeah yeah no an

example you know long before we started the show i was able to convince my father, a retired math teacher, to buy Bitcoin at the market top in 20, I guess it was 2022. Great for Thanksgiving. And what really kind of crystallized that was getting him to hold until he made it all back this year. So made my dad whole. And if I wasn't so convicted in decentralized finance, there's no way I could have kept every Geordie. I think I want to sell like I'm down, you know, 60%, uh, just hold on dad. So, uh, my, my big question for this, this listener, maybe you can send us a DM is what are you doing in China? Um, I would hope that you're there to be spying for America. Yep. Or that, that would be our, and that, and that you're a Canadian, you're saying you're Canadian to build your profile up there,

to build some credibility. So when the CCP looks you up, they're, oh, he's a Canadian. Yeah. When really, CIA. Xi has put us on his most wanted list. You know, we frequently... We're up in a high rise here in LA, and there's frequently DGI drones sort of like swarming outside the windows,

trying to figure out what we're going to say next, try to hear what we're going to say off air. Truth is we're always on air. So there's literally nothing. But I would say that if, you know, on YouTube, please go subscribe, but we only have a few hundred subscribers right now. The videos don't get that many views.

If you're getting these recommended to you, I would say that the YouTube algorithm has identified you as a technology brother and understands for whatever variety of reasons, maybe you've been watching, you know, Doug DeMuro learning about cars, Teddy Beldasar learning about watches, Lex Friedman podcast, Dwar Cash, and it's put all that together and it's just dialed in. You are a tech brother. And so here you go. This is the perfect show for you. in you are a tech brother and so here you go this is the perfect show for you and you clicked and you watched and you commented so i'm gonna go yes you are certified brother technology brother the only thing is that the next comment it's better

better be on x but buddy better be on x and better be from the united states yeah use a vpn yep uh let's go to one more dm uh we got this this from an anonymous person who seems pretty post-economic. Hi, John and Jordi. I'm planning a renewal of vows ceremony with my family and 300 of my closest friends and business associates next summer. My plan is to do a buyout at an Amman property and charter planes to get everyone there. I can't decide which property we should choose though. What do you think? And I know you have them memorized, but I had to print out a list so that I could run through some of these. But what would your top pick be? Look, you can't go wrong with Amman. You can go very wrong with just about every Four Seasons

and every Ritz-Carlton in the world now. Yep. Those brands have gone downhill pretty dramatically. Well, we're still open to them paying us to promote them. Of course, of course. But we would need to be part of a turnaround effort to elevate the properties back to their former state. I think so.

So here's the thing. If I'm this listener, I'm thinking you got to go world tour at least four locations in two weeks. There's something about having novel experiences with loved ones that is like really bonding. Sure. And so if you can go to Tokyo, start there.

Venice. Bounce over. Yeah, Venice would be great. Bounce over to Courchevel. Sure. Maybe get a little skiing in and then head over to amanjiri for kind of a classic uh sort of the classic aman experience it's been shared it's been overshared on on social but it's uh can't in many ways can't be shared enough it's dramatic yeah it's inspiring and it's exactly the place that you should be sort of

having a moment like that i'm gonna disagree with you there i would say keep everyone in the u.s it's just going to be easier and people are going to have less excuses the jet lag even though you're paying for the for the chartered chartered planes just you know pick from the the u.s locations amangani amangiri jackson hole lake powell these are great options. And Amman, New York, the problem there, you're going to have a lot of friends who live in New York or they have pied-a-terre and they're going to go home after the festivities. You want everyone staying on the property, locked in.

And so you've got to get a little bit out of the main hustle and bustle of everyday life. And so I would probably go there and keep the international stuff to smaller groups. But you can't really go wrong. I think that's a good take. But yeah, at the end of the day, if you're going Amman, you can't go wrong. Yeah, so there's no wrong answer

but let us know how it pans out and write in with results and some pictures. Let us know your dates if you're not doing a full buyout. There's a chance that one of us will be on the property at the same time yeah yeah yeah makes sense um should we do a promoted post and then we'll go into the timeline yeah let's jump in this promoted post is from craig lawrence he says have posted this before but worth repeating you can literally get a quote for a hundred megawatt hour tesla megapack system online without speaking to a human. Love the efficiency. Most thousand dollar a year B2B SaaS companies won't even do that.

So Craig here is highlighting the Tesla mega pack, which comes in supporters here. At this point, if you order today, you can get a delivery in Q3, 2025. So waiting even less than for the new F 80 and the estimated price is actually less than an F 80. It's only $90 million. Uh, and you can order one. It's much more than an F 80,

but if you're building an, if you're building a compound in Wyoming or Colorado or Alaska, I think you got to go. Did I say, did I say? You said it's less than an F80. Oh, okay. Okay. Sorry. The F80, the F80 is, yeah, sorry. But the down payment. Quite a bit more than an F80.

What I meant is that the down payment is less than an F80. How much is the down payment on this $90 million battery pack? $90 million battery pack, only $10,000 due today. That's fantastic. And like, you know, look at the efficiency here. The estimated annual maintenance is only half a million dollars. Wow. So you can be running this thing if you're running, you know, if you have at your chalet in Wyoming, you could sort of leverage this to make sure that all the snow for sort of three square miles around your property was melted.

Yeah. Right. So if you have private golf course, tennis courts, this is a perfect solution for that. So fantastic product by Tesla. We'll be getting- You could run a data center off of that. Yeah, you could run a data center. We'll likely look to get one of these

for our next studio in New York, just to make sure that if for some reason New York were to lose power, we would be able to keep podcasting for weeks. There's the famous photo of Goldman Sachs during Hurricane Sandy, where all of New York were to lose power, we would be able to keep podcasting for weeks. There's the famous photo of Goldman Sachs during Hurricane Sandy, where all of New York had gone dark. Goldman Sachs.

Goldman did not. They did not. They had battery packs. And that will be the same for our Manhattan studio. We will never stop podcasting. So anyways, great product, fantastic product from Tesla. Go buy one. And tell them the Technology Brothers sent you.

Only $10,000 due today. That's fantastic. Fantastic. Well, Brothers sent you. Only $10,000 due today. That's fantastic. Fantastic. Well, before we move on to the timeline, we have some breaking news, everyone. The Technology Brothers X account has just crossed 2,000 followers. Let's go. Let's go. So it is a tradition around here. We love and respect exponential growth. And every time we double, we open up a bottle of Dom Perignon. There we go. There we go.

Let's do it. You know, Albert Einstein had an interesting quote about exponential growth and compound interest. I think he said, compound interest is fucking sick. Yeah. Isn't that what he said? That was word for word. I think he said compound interest is fucking sick. Yeah. Isn't that what he said? That was word for word. I think people misquote him. They misquote him,

but he said it was fucking sick. He just said it's fucking sick and it rocks, dude. Boom. There we go. There we go. What an amazing tradition. Thank you to l bros pod thank you to lvmh for making this possible yeah it's fantastic and it's important to celebrate wins you know we've been doing this pod for

what 38 days we've been on axe for 18 days and uh exponential growth is a hell of a drug. And none of this is possible without our community. And we wish you all were here savoring this 2013. And cheers to you, John. Cheers to you, Jordy. And cheers to Ben. Thank you, Ben. Cheers to our vice president. Delicious.

Delicious. Let's fill these up a little bit more and we both have uh some type of flu from i think my son's preschool i think you gave and so uh this is going to be sort of fantastic at taking the edge off taking the edge off you know the other day after we recorded i had a meeting with someone and uh we we enjoyed uh martinis together as we chatted. And it was fantastic. And one thing about this tradition that I think is important to note is we stay fasted prior to opening the bottle,

which is key to just make sure you're getting the maximum level of enjoyment out of each sip. Absolutely. So cheers. Cheers. Thank you, everyone, for following. For the Arnaud family. enjoyment out of each sip absolutely so let's put that there cheers cheers thank you everyone for the arno family if you're already following tell 10 friends to follow turn it into a ponzi scheme a pyramid scheme yeah the economics will work out later don't worry about it yeah but you want to get in early you want to be following on x because that's where all the action happens and uh one of

ben's kpis is to get to 4k by next week so see if we can do it if we got to post if we can pull this off uh we will be back uh you know by next friday's episode with another bottle of dom paragon yep so thank you to lvmh let's go to the timeline we are discussing kaba kaba is quoting perplexity perplexity says says, the Tech Bro Starter Pack, courtesy of VC Bragg's shop on Perplexity. This is a really cool feature from Perplexity. They launched their competitor, Google Shopping, and it's just much more AI native, much more driven by take a picture. Less spammy. It just shows you.

Less pay to play. Exactly. Less pay to play. Exactly. And so in the Tech Bro Starter Pack, I'm extremely confused about this because none of these are familiar to me at all. Yeah. It's the Patagonia Vest, the Allbirds Sneakers, the Peloton Bike, 0 to 1. That is a classic. Yeah. The Apple Vision Pro and the Cold Plunge. And then Kaba asks,

we need a refresh with loud opulence, CC Tech Bros pod. And yeah, I mean, it's clearly- We are working on this. Yeah, we are working on this. We will be dropping merch. We will be building out the modern Tech Bro starter pack. Yeah, loud opulence is a-

Yeah, what is the thesis behind loud opulence? Look, we went through a period where, you know, one tech went through a deeply troubled period of Patagonia vests and all birds and sort of like stretchy jeans. You know, there was this desire for... It was very apologetic. Yeah, apologetic, trying to dress down.

They were beaten down by the media, demonized, villainized. And the reaction to that was to say hey look i might have a you know a billion dollar fund and be making 10 million dollars a year personally but yeah i'm just gonna throw on some you know uh what's it called like athleisure yeah right and it's brutal and it's a disgrace really. Oh, and look, and, and over the last decade, suits have been gathering dust. A lot of, a lot of venture capitalists, you know, just left them in the closet. Yeah. Kind of forgot about them. But, um, you know,

loud opulence is about bringing back a culture of dressing up, dressing for the job that you have and the job that you want, which is typically billions more AUM. And it's about building a relationship with your local authorized dealer. It's about having the sales associate at Hermes on speed dial so that when Christmas is around the corner, you're not going and shopping online. you're scheduling an appointment so and so instead of the patagonia vest befriend a tailor get a custom suit or call john that makes a ton of sense instead of all bird sneakers how about a pair of parada loafers

yep right yeah and loud opulence again is, is the 1% rule. And everyone knows instead of a Peloton bike, you should be at a barbell gym. Yep. Try Rogue. Yeah. No, another example of loud opulence as well as, um, is the 1% rule, which we've talked about a lot, which is, uh, if you're a venture capitalist, take 1% of your AUM and that is the budget that you should use for your daily driver. So we'll let you guys do the math. But a lot of you guys, I know your AUM and I see you in Teslas and it sort of pains me. Step it up. $50 million fund. That's 500K. That's a Huracan easily. Easily. GT3 RS. You're right there. So make it happen. And if you're not sure what to get. I did a cold plunge today. It was great.

But yeah, I mean, nothing substitutes for just some rigorous exercise. Your cold plunge should be built into your house too. Yes. And the Apple Vision Pro, I think if you're a real tech brother, you can afford a home theater. Exactly. Which is kind of what the Apple Vision Pro replaces. Except you can do it with friends and family, and we're pro-natalists, and you can't fit a family of four in a Vision Pro.

I actually saw a wonderful home renovation show where a house in LA, they boosted the entire house up on blocks while they were renovating it and built a new basement for a wine cellar underneath. I didn't know that you could add a basement. Or just a wine cellar. I think there was a home theater,

but I don't know if it was in the basement. We're going to need a cellar just for bottles of Dom. I think so. I think so. But yeah. So a little bit of a mixed result at VC Braggs. I think you need to step it up, get into the new generation.

But yeah. But Kaba, we're happy to provide you with a refresh. Loud opulence starts at home in your home. It's Q4. The holidays around the corner. Many of the brands that most express loud opulence are not going to be going on sale. So don't worry about Black Friday sales.

But you got about a month to get those gifts in and spend wisely. Yep. Let's go to Delian. He's quoting Wilmanitis. Wil says, every decision I've made that wasn't an instant hell yes has been a mistake.

Every pro-con list is an admission. The thing isn't worth it. The path God has laid out for you is so obvious, it feels like getting bludgeoned. And Delian says, basically my approach to seed investing, pure intuition,

super obvious when you're bludgeoned by the presence of a phenomenal founder. The moment you're writing out pros and cons, it's doomed. And yeah, I mean, this post by Will really resonated. And I think a lot of people enjoyed Delian's post as well. And I think there's something that even if you're not an investor, just leaning in on that intuition trust there's something there's something universal about this because every time somebody posts about this phenomena i immediately i'm like that totally applies to like a very specific decision that i need to make in the next like 48 hours 72 hours and it's such a good reminder so delhi and will repost this once a week you're doing a service

for the community so we can all make better decisions yeah it is it is tricky like if you're doing a service for the community so we can all make better decisions yeah it is it is tricky like if you're kind of more of a a quantitative thinker or like a frameworks guy yeah even around gut you want to put a framework i had a friend who was like oh it's all vibes i'm a vibe aligner that's my whole job is to just align vibes i'm a vibe architect he called himself i was like that's good. But then later in the conversation, he described how he made like a pro and con list about whether or not he should go on vacation.

I was like, I think you could just lean on vibes for that one. Like all your vacation is fun. And he had a whole framework for why vacations are important. And it was very thoughtful and it really resonated with me. And that was a good part of the conversation.

But truly, like if you're actually in the vibe architect world, you probably don't need to be doing the framework stuff at all. But it is hard. I've run into investors, very successful investors, who cannot describe their investment process at all. And it's very frustrating because everyone wants a framework. Everyone wants a pattern or a playbook that they can. And that's the stuff that normally does really well on social media is like, just, just do this checklist, just build this model and this will deliver results. But as soon as you can concretize it, you lose all the alpha. Yeah. And so, yeah. And I, I try to be honest with myself when I'm looking at my own

portfolio, my, my best pre-seed investment evered investment ever is a company where when I met the CEO, you know, within literally probably three minutes of talking, I knew I wanted to invest. I knew the company would work and sort of get to the level of traction that it has. I knew that there were risks and many of those risks are still like real

and they're sort of like steadily trying to like knock them down. But it's important, you know, even now when I talk about that investment with other investors, are still like real and they're sort of like steadily trying to like knock them down uh but it's important you know even now when i talk about that investment with with other investors i'm not gonna like go reverse engineer some like super complex decision making process because so much adventure is just it's obviously just getting into the companies that matter and then uh you know yeah it's like pretty binary like were you write or not right yep let's go to sam hogan he says someone should start a studio of cracked devs plus gtm team and just

look at the yc batch every season for the best ideas and then front run them so this is this is basically yc but just doing it doing it to the last batch yeah right look at daniel look at daniel like you know being a crack dev creating a company in a specific space and then their new request for startups was basically like his business uh one of the one of the lines was like his exact business so yc is basically saying hey cracked other crack devs we want to do more of these come come compete what's interesting is that like there are two narratives about yc like one is that that it's like uh oh like copy paste on a bunch of ideas that are like you know popular at the time but then there's the other one which is like the the fast ceo was no not fast uh the uh don what was his name the the guy who started

love.com breslau breslauu, he was like, why seize a mafia? Like they will crown a champion and then they will never do a deal in that space again. And it's kind of like the exact opposite. Totally not true. Yeah. So I think it's actually super positive. If you have one, if you have one company that is super, super promising, solving an important issue, why would we not want five other teams attacking it from different

angles? Because you're more likely to create a generational company that could help millions of businesses, employ hundreds of thousands of people over time, all these different things, create some transformative technology. We actually want a density of smart people pursuing specific problems. And so it's generally, it's kind of annoying if you're the founder that's being cloned by three to four other YC companies, but use it as fuel, right? Like Dara, Dara is somebody, you know, he posted the other day, he was like, you know, some competitor, like direct competitor got announced. And he's like, cool, like another reason for me and my team to work 12 hours a day yeah yeah i do think that the the like direct competitor thing is a bit overrated because if you're really if you're really delivering on your mission and growing really quickly like these should be potential acquirers potential

talent farms yeah and yeah look at and lookil. Anduril has like 100 companies that are now doing effectively, they either break out and become partners to Anduril or it's like off balance sheet R&D. Yeah, yeah, yeah. At a certain point, once you have the formula dialed in and you are the power law company,

the competition is actually beneficial to you. Totally well that's a great because those are yeah those are those are other companies that are upskilling there oh this is this is uh fantastic mike chevitt over at traba he says today's news there was a fire in new york city where his company is based a large fire potentially in the building it might have been in the same building large fire breaks out on soho rooftop and the and they got press around this because they kept working and it says fdny hottest startup in nyc traba stays locked in despite fire i love that they called nbc new york and got this done it's amazing and they actually went over the ramp office yeah yeah yeah ramp hosted everybody i think like what a heroic move potential brother of the week,

right? Potential brother of the week. Never stop grinding. Yeah. Fantastic. I mean, he has, he's done a great job of monopolizing the, the hard work ethos in a way that gets... In a non-cringe way. Yeah, it's not cringey to people who are insiders to tech. It is a little cringey to outsiders who don't understand where the alpha exists in this market. I don't think it's cringey to outsiders. He has haters.

No, it pushes people away. Exactly. But it pushes the right people away. Exactly, exactly. But he hasn't become an outcast there are some people who post like hustle porn but they never build anything and it's just hustle porn for hustle yeah this is an example of living the brand exactly and capturing the moment perfectly yeah by getting some some and you take a look at this dude and he's jacked and

like clearly lives like every moment like at 110 percent Yeah. And so you just see that it's like he's the real deal. He has the proof of body. Totally. And the proof of like work ethic and everything. Yeah. Fantastic. Congrats to Mike for making it through the fire. Always stay locked in.

Always stay locked in. Always love it. I love it. Do we have another promoted post? Promoted post from Ted Feldman. He says, engineers want it. duran is hiring a founding software engineer if you want to help build the next thousand mines in america this role is for you uh incredible opportunity we love mining uh we love rare earth minerals uh duran is a company

it's not crypto it's it's actually real's go. Mining for rare earth minerals. Look at this. You know, fantastic asset that he has here. Fantastic. You know, software engineers and tech has spent, you know, decades sort of looking out into the world and looking up at the stars. And it's time that we look down into the ground. Let's drill, baby. Drill.

Go. If you are a software engineer uh incredible opportunity go to durham mining technologies dot apply to job.com go apply for this job uh telling the technology brother sent you and uh thank you to ted for for for mining on to bigger and better things fantastic good luck out there. Let's go to Diego. Diego says, you can get the USA citizenship by marrying a USA citizen. They also had to introduce the H-1B and the O-1 visa because politicians knew you autistic MFs had higher chances of discovering AGI than making eye contact with a woman for over five seconds. I mean, incredible foresight by our politicians. Fantastic. And we love the H-1B program. There's some great companies that make the process easier.

We want all the smartest, most ambitious people in the entire world to come to the United States and build the next trillion dollar company here. And if you need a recommendation letter, this is a thing for the O1 and H1B, hit me up. I'm happy to write you a letter of recommendation. I've done it many times. Any TB listeners get recommendation letters. 100%.

Just give me a little bit of your background. We'll talk and I'll figure something out. But I'm happy to write these letters. I want to recruit. I want America to grow. I want a billion Americans crushing it. And I'm happy for all these paths to citizenship. We need to acquire.

We need to be a talent magnet. We need to brain drain all the un-American countries. All the un-American countries need to be brain drained. Every single one. Every single one. We got all the giga chads in America. We'll talk, you build.

Yep. Morgan Barrett says, how it feels to wake up and see your midnight throwaway tweet doing numbers. Low, low tam, low tam banger. Because I think, I think this is one of those things.

Super viral. Yeah. 35K likes on a tweet that said, um, I think this is one of the things. He went super viral this week. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He got 35K likes on a tweet that said, I have a 100% hit rate with cold emails when I use a female name and an EDU address. Yeah, so I think he got like 1,000 followers too overnight, which is pretty intense. Yeah, huge.

Congrats, Morgan. Good post. Congrats to Morgan. Yeah, I want every single person in America to be able to experience what he just did. It's amazing. When you get something that goes past 10, 20K, it's like your phone's just exploding.

Every time you open it up, the dopamine is just rushing. It's fantastic. Incredible feeling. Incredible feeling. And it's easier than ever given the new X algorithm because everything is getting more pushed out to the edges of the curve essentially like you will have a post that goes mega viral and then the next one will get 26 likes

yeah no and this guy this guy morgan like had likely that you know hack that he has of using female edu emails he could dramatically change you you know, US GDP growth this year. If enough people put that to work and sort of hit their quota, hit their quarterly goals, hit their annual goals. Yep. So thank you to Morgan for sharing this little hack. I don't know if he should have leaked that out. I don't know if he should have leaked it. I don't know if she, every, every, every AI sales agent like product is going to be like,

check this box if you want to use it. I wouldn't be surprised if we see an AI sales agent like product is gonna be like check this box if you want to use it dot edu i wouldn't be surprised if we see an ai sales agent startup buy a for-profit university just to get a dot edu oh yeah so that they can license those to people that's fantastic alpha i wonder how he's getting a dot edu that that sounds maybe he's using his like dude this is there's a whole there's a whole there's a whole there's a there's a small but profitable sas company built a marketplace where uh people at universities can can lease they should lease their emails to sales reps uh so if you are a young passive technology brother you know uh maybe in college today start that marketplace uh i think you could get to a million dollars of arr off that business and retire your parents so

do it it's great uh probably probably very uh against the terms of use probably but uh great things oftentimes have to sort of skirt the rules uh Bend the rules. Ben says, the bit may have gone too far. And he posts a screenshot that says, EV cars that will be launched by the Tata Motors-owned British car manufacturer. Ben Heilack, the maker of the new logo, previously worked with Apple as a designer. He, however, claimed that the logo's letters are all in uppercase. Responding to users on his post,

Ben remarked that the logo actually resembles a jaguar, with J being the tail and R the head. What is he talking about? I don't think it's at all. So Jaguar had their sort of rebrand, re-announcement this week. Copy nothing. It went horribly.

It couldn't have gone worse. I saw the CEO was like talking to the boomer media, saying like, oh, actually a bunch of people really liked it. There is a hot take that it's like at least they got attention because this is the most Jaguar has been talked about in years. Yeah, but like they could have done something like this and got much better attention. There were just a lot of better ways they could do it.

But Ben went out, did the smart thing, captured the moment, claimed credit for doing the rebrand. He's a designer. Is he not a Jaguar? He's not a Jaguar. He has nothing to do I think he has, he's not a Jaguar. He has nothing to do with Jaguar. So he went out and claimed credit, uh, and, you know, got picked up in, and in this situation for Ben, uh, this kind of attention, I think is fantastic. This is him. He's, he's, Oh my, I just put it together that Ben Heilig, Ben Heilig. Yeah. Yeah.

He was joking. And then he... They picked it up. They picked it up as news. I don't know the guy, but I think he's got a cool startup, great designer, great taste. Fantastic. This is a future Rahul Ligma bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is fantastic. He's really the next Ligma. The J is the tail.

Wait, we should have an award called the Technology Brothers Ligma Award for greatest troll. Greatest troll. Troll of the month. But that brings us to our next promoted post. This one from Porsche. They announced an ALD Porsche 993 Turbo.

It's going to be on display November 22 to 23 at ALD London flagship.on flagship which is at 32 broadway i i have not gotten into it it seems like a very patented thing do you look uh i do not it's very popular um i actually think i may have a pair of uh garden clogs from them that i use to get out to my sauna cold plunge setup. But that's the extent to which I wear ALD. But fantastic partnership. Couldn't have been better time. The car looks amazing. Look at this thing. They released a, I think it was like a 60 second.

It's a 993 Turbo. What era is that? Is that the late 90s? That is, I think, late 90s. Okay. I really shouldn't know that and and so are they are they just modifying is it like a resto mod situation where they're modifying an old car are they actually yeah they took a yeah 1995 so 1995 wow uh they took a you know a great

iteration of it and just looks like they just rebuilt it redid the interior probably did some work we need we need to break it down for us because i know he's a big porsche guy i know he's a big air-cooled older porsche guy i want his analysis because i just i don't know enough about that particular model to say if it's great but i imagine that would be a great a great car for any technology brother or any capital allocator out there yeah yeah yeah you're gonna need some serious AUM if you want to follow the 1% rule. Yep. But fantastic spec.

And a way to stand out. And yeah. It's not some stock. I doubt this was. It's not some stock Turbo S that they just picked up at the dealership like last week. Yeah. Yeah. Embarrassing.

Embarrassing. I'd never do that. Yeah. Never, never. Once a year uh uh no so anyways fantastic spec thank you to porsche uh you know cool collaboration uh i think this does more for ald than it does for porsche that's true but um you know it's a the interesting thing is that the jaguar thing went so poorly that everyone was like searching for car news and then immediately being like brilliant move for them to launch this like there was a volvo ad that went viral that was

shot by some some like award-winning cinematographer and they were like oh it's so brilliant that they respond it's like no they shot this like months ago well yeah so here's my here's my question completely unrelated they just got lucky that it came out at the same time. But Volvo had like a pro-natalist one. Porsche launched this ALD one that looks very retro, very like classic. And so people were immediately like, oh, Porsche gets it. And it's like they do, but it wasn't. This has been in the works for a long time. That's not how these firms work.

Like they didn't have like some crap. No, but here's the thing. I would give them. It's funny because obviously this campaign and project collaboration had been probably in the works for like a year like at least a year i don't think this is the first time they've actually collaborated but i think they shot a video like yeah yeah they shot a video but the funny thing is if they did see the jaguar announcement and then move their launch date up you think so if no if they did that it would be like it's it's literally like the popular kid like like you know sees like the nerd like do something and get embarrassed and then comes over

and like gives him a wedgie it's like you don't need to like you don't like they're already they're already like down bad enough like you don't need to like kick jaguar when they're down but portia uh obviously a fan and a uh you know client uh client, but great move all around. And hopefully when we do an event in London, we'll be able to go see it. Fantastic. Oh, this is brutal. Danny Samilleron says, ideas are worthless with a smile. And then Sam Hogan, who we just talked about, says, this little piece of startup culture is pretty stupid.

Ideas are not worthless. Most people should spend considerably more time thinking about what to work on before they start. And I couldn't agree more with that. I wonder if this is a bait post by Danny. I mean, there's always been the question, ideas or execution, obviously. Here's the thing.

Nature versus nurture, obviously both wins. But ideas are valuable. We know this. Nature versus nurture. Obviously both wins, but ideas are valuable. We know this. They're valuable. That said, you still should be able to tell every single person what you're doing and not be concerned because execution does matter so much. And to build a great company, you need to make oftentimes hundreds of decisions a week. Maybe not everyone is super consequential, but if you are the right founder to build a generational company, you need a incredible idea or you need a series of good ideas and string them together. And then you need to be able to make the right decision over and

over and over and over. And the wrong founder for the right idea will just make the wrong decision, make the wrong decision, make the wrong decisions. And they just take themselves down a path that like is just bad. Right. Yep. And so I think ideas matter a lot. That said, it is the most negative signal when you talk to a founder and they're like cagey about their idea or they're like, Oh, like, I mean, I still like maybe three times a year we'll take a meeting with a company and they try to get me to sign an NDA. And I'm just like, dude,

like the fact that you think that you've discovered something like so novel when I've seen like five other teams do the exact same thing this year is like just shows you're just never gonna win well there might be some IP down the stack yeah sure but no I don't need to I don't need to know like that yeah yeah I don't need to know like what the actual like IP is but um but yeah don't do not if you're a technology brother out there in execution mode and not like you have your initial idea but there will be like you said a series of ideas that get you from one hill to the next and it's easy to get stuck in manager mode like lucy didn't start with break didn't start with breakers yet breakers now one of the

most consequential exactly and the reason that i thought about that was basically like during the depths of covid i was in santa barbara and was like i remember being just on the phone with david the ceo like walking outside just thinking about like what we could do that would be different and we just came up with it on a phone call yeah and it was very much like removed from the day-to-day of like being in an office talking about like you know very tactical things we were able to zoom out and that really transformed the business yeah and so having giving yourself space this is like what we talked about with our with

our friend who wrote in about like if something's not working should you just keep going or should you sell your company and my advice to him was like clear your calendar and just try and go and and think and and think and talk to interesting people people that are way ahead of you people who are are giants in the industry just to break something loose and try something different like most of the time if your business is up and running and you're making some amount of cash flow things are working employees have their jobs you can step back pretty significantly and reset and go back

into founder mode, go back into idea mode and come up with some interesting ideas. So here's where I'd leave it. If you are a technology brother and you, uh, send a, if you're pitching your pre-seed company and you ask the investor to sign an NDA and you hear about it, we will block you from all of our accounts and you'll have to create like new burners to consume the content i do think this is going to be a pendulum swing thing though and eventually there's going to be the chad founder who forces everyone to sign ndas and makes it very embarrassing to the firms and and degrades them and and and it becomes a status symbol unless you're that guy yep but unless you're him unless you're that guy you gotta do it it's going to be hard to pull off yeah just don't do it as a novice.

It has to be a particular tactic. Third time founder, at least two nine figure exits. Exactly. Then you can make people sign your crazy documents. Let's go to Jay Malik. He says, too many people want to bring manufacturing back to the US. It's brave, but many commodities are never returning. The real problem is cultural.

Time on the shop floor, wherever it is, is more valuable than in office meetings. This is especially true today. Time to touch metal. I like that. Touch metal. Touch metal. This is interesting. It's brave.

The problem is cultural. I don't quite get what he's saying. Is he just saying that there's there's too much like rah, rah. Okay. We need to bring manufacturing back and not enough people actually doing it. Yeah. I think he's just alluding to the fact that like the de-industrialization of

America is something that should be unwound. Like we need to focus on industrializing, re-industrializing, however you want to put it. But yeah, not every single category is conducive to a new venture-backed startup or roll-up. And anyway, so Jai is somebody, I don't know him personally,

but a good investor. I think he's back with his own company. He actually had a fund and decided to return capital at one point because he felt like everything was too overvalued at the early stage uh but he's back to building himself now and and i and and uh we should try to learn more about his company yeah it's great i do think that there's an interesting thesis i heard that um the path to real and re-industrialization in america is not through trying to play the last war,

but instead focusing on the next war, which is humanoid robotics. And if we really get that right, and we really get the automation right, we still have the human capital problem that we need to solve in America. Like how do we give people rewarding jobs, fulfilling jobs?

But really focusing on automation is maybe the only way that we can kind of leapfrog our way back into the game. So key. But I'm rooting for you. Time to touch some metal. Let's go to the next promoted post. Jordy, what you got for me? This one is from my friend Charlie Ma.

He says, we are looking to hire chief of staff in NYC for Pathlight VC. This role will engage all functions of the firm, including special projects, founder experiments, portfolio engagement, and more. You'll also get to work directly with me as well as Charlie's partners. So anyways, if you don't know Charlie Ma, you're going to be hearing about him a lot in the next few decades.

I see this guy. It's a fantastic opportunity. I see this guy on the Midas list very soon. Whoever gets this future some personnel news, potentially. Oh, yeah. We'll be covering whoever does this. Charlie is an absolute Chad in FinTech or finance tech, as we like to say on the podcast, or finance technology, if you're going to expand on it or more precise. But anyways, Charlie, I think, was the head of growth at Plaid and then was the head of growth at Ramp very early

and now has his own fund. They invest in a bunch of different areas, and Charlie is extremely sharp. So go apply for this job, or if you're a founder, I would try to get him to give you money because he'll add a lot, a lot, a lot of value. So thank you to Charlie. Apply for the job and tell Charlie the Technology Brothers sent you. Cheers. Cheers. Let's go to St. Dici. They say cold showers, meditating, journaling, all a bunch of distractions if you're unemployed and don't have any cash. These tasks make people feel

busy and accomplish absolutely nothing. Cut social life, gym one X a day and work your ass off until you get your money right. So here's, here's an example. This is why inbox zero is like, there's the worst thing to go for because inbox zero. Yeah. You you're big this is an area that we can really battle on but like right now i have 2776 unread texts and like i don't plan to get back to like 99 of those declare bankruptcy that's the whole point can you wipe it yeah can you wipe it yeah i've never even yeah the whole point is you declare bankruptcy and then moving forward yeah i just i just don't care like all the things that are important to me i eventually respond to them yeah yeah it's more gut intuition based yeah and i i just don't believe that like when you when you commit to inbox zero you're saying that every

single thing that comes towards me i'm going to respond to no that's not it at all you by by nature of zeroing out deleting it out is responding that's a response that's not it at all. By nature of zeroing out, deleting it out is a responding. That's a response. I guess. That's a response. But yeah, delete, archive, spam. I love hitting that spam button. I used to have an auto complete on my phone where if I got a cold email from like a salesperson,

I could type like DNR, like do not respond or something like this. And it would type out this email being like, hey, thanks for the email. We're not interested. Please remove me and everyone at my company from your CRM and never email any of us ever again. And it was very nicely worded,

but it was just the most scorched earth thing ever to just be like, don't try and go to my COO. That's like, so- The buck stops here. No more emails ever, ever. You're dead. You're dead. Cut off because they will try and do all this stuff. But I accidentally pulled the trigger on someone. We actually had a business relationship once and they were like, Whoa, we're actually like, we have a nine figure deal. This was just, this was just like one of our automated emails.

Like, I'm sorry, dude. Like, my bad. And I was like, oh, man, I'm sorry. I just send that to everyone. I love getting automated emails from, you know, messages from like the ramp sales team. And I'd be like, if you listen to the podcast, you'd know that we say ramp every figure.

But no, I think we should make sure. That's the cure for male loneliness, just talking to your ramp SDR. That's true. Just get on the phone. They're happy to chat just let's go golfing let's hang out this is the cure for male loneliness just yeah really getting a deep relationship with your huge public good huge public good yeah it's fantastic no we should make a keyboard extension that's like a separate button you just slam does it and it just archives it or it. I've since moved to just the Gmail spam button because if you hit that, it blocks the sender

and it also sends the message to the Google algorithm that this company sucks. Which I like. I like punishing them. This company sucks. Exactly. It's like, yeah, you didn't do your research before you emailed me. This is some AI slop. Get out of here. Get out of here. Let's go to Anshita Sani.

She says, today I'm thinking about Stripe's NYC intern housing. How about you? And it's this beautiful photo of a lovely Manhattan apartment and a beautiful view of the Manhattan skyline. Wait, so there's another tweet in the stack that is like a response to this.

It was like, this is our intern housing and it's a closet. But this just shows like Stripe is always from the top to the bottom. They have great taste. They're trying to, they're, you know, they've done an exceptional job making it. And if you're a $50 billion company, yes, you should make it very appealing to work there. You should invest in your early. I remember going out for the Citadel internship and they flew me out of business class and it was like this is nice you wore a suit i'm

sure of course of course uh like literally because i had to go into the office and do the interview but um yeah i mean and and this is this is you know i mean this is a lovely looking apartment but i'm sure it's like a few thousand dollars a month. And for like interns are not about getting output from the actual work that they do over the summer. It's about mentorship, evaluation, figuring out who the next generation of leaders will be at your firm. So highly recommend over-investing

in your intern programs. Totally. It's great. Let's go to Anu. They say, can highbrow media scale? And it's a screenshot of an article that says, in Act 1, Substack was for inbox intellectuals, nerds, and professional nerds, and journalism, tech, and politics. People already tied to thinking, reading, and writing. In Act 2,

Substack wants to bring aspirationally highbrow media to everyone else in every form. Imagine YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Discord, and Only and only fans had a baby and that baby hooked up With substack their love child would be substack 2.0. I love substack I was in the same YC batch as Chris with the substack team and The founder their former for their former no for the first sub stack. No way. Yeah. Yeah and at what yeah, this was a winter 18 For some reason i thought you were in there in like 2012 i well we did yeah so we did so we did 2012 and then you did it again for lucy yeah we did yeah we went back yeah yeah and so so it was us uh the nft company open c

and substack and there were a few others go back uh hey anytime traveling capital allocators go back to both the yc batches that john was in and just give him a give him a solo gp coinbase instacart open zapier open c open c you might have to sell the top on that one it was wrong but uh but we love open c i have some friends that work there it's a great company um but uh this is interesting yeah sub stack i mean uh surprising surprisingly great business surprisingly but uh this is interesting yeah substack i mean uh surprising surprisingly great business surprisingly great uh community talk about a company that's gotten so much unnecessary hate totally i do not know why they've created well it's because they took a very contrarian position on free speech yeah and lulu had that insanely viral recruiting post. Do you remember this? Yeah, she was like when when Elon bought Twitter

She said if you have a problem with Elon bringing free speech to Twitter do not apply for a job at some stack She got a hundred million views on that post. That's insane Imagine what it cost to get a hundred million views on a recruiting post recruiting Yeah Like if you went to Indeed, Glassdoor, ZipRecruiter, and promoted, like, a job, you're talking about

a million dollar investment, probably. Something like that. And she just got it with just, like, a banger that she probably wrote in five minutes. So good.

So she got a lot of heat, but then, you know, wound up joining a bunch of public company boards and becoming an icon of the industry. Yeah, well, it's funny. So it worked out.

Like, if you actually look back, like, she was involved with Activision, which went through a icon of the industry. Yeah. Well, it's funny. Like if you actually look back, like she was at act, she was involved with Activision, which went through a bunch of crazy stuff. She was involved with Substack. So it's like hire, hire her if you want to like drive through the fire, not if you want to like, you know, try to get around it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, that's great. Let's go to Yegor Denisov Blanch says, I'm at Stanford and I research software engineering productivity. We have data on the performance of over 50,000 engineers from hundreds of companies inspired by at DDoS or DDoS. Our research shows 9.5% of software engineers do virtually nothing.

They are called ghost engineers. They are the 0.1 Xers. Their performance is 0.1 X of the median engineer. They do virtually no work and they might work multiple jobs. Yeah. So we need to popularize the ghost engineer. Ghost engineer.

Be like, oh yeah, he's a super cool guy, but he's a bit of a ghost. He's a bit of a ghost. Bit of a ghost. So yeah, i actually thought in 2021 and 2022 i thought that there was an opportunity to create a marketplace where fang engineers could work anonymously for startups because there were so many engineers that were at fang companies and they're like amazing benefits crazy stock package i do nothing i want to work on other things but i need security but yeah they have a family or whatever like they're just their own personal situation

you should be called moonlighting moonlighting yeah yeah yeah so i thought that there was an opportunity an opportunity to create like the moonlighting marketplace where you could like imagine if you were if you're lucy and you're like trying to hire a shopify developer and somebody's like oh yeah i work at shopify and like you can't know my name but like you'd be like okay like this person's legit as long as you're pushing code as long as you're pushing code as long as you're not a ghost yeah it's funny because ghost has a very positive uh connotation in the military like call it duty ghosts it's like the you know the most elite operators but in this case it's like the laziest or just like maybe the most

intelligent because they're they're getting paid anyway but this is wild so yeah i mean uh i saw the opportunity here is like is like you know software that helps you weed out ghosts you know yeah yeah i built like i built an internal tool at one point that uh helped me understand who it was on slack who was online on slack And a lot of it was the same information that you already knew, but it was interesting to see like, okay, this person is high output, but they only spend six hours on Slack,

which, you know, or this person. What's crazy is that you would think that it would be very easy to just run an LLM over all the GitHub commits from all your engineers and just very easily stack rank. This is what Microsoft does uh i think we need i think we need a like github commits but for google drive for the knowledge the knowledge workers like how many commits did you actually make yeah against like the knowledge like the

the work product of the company should be on the manager like the manager should know like okay yeah like that figma design hasn't been updated in a month like this person's clearly not doing anything but it is hard like if they're friendly and they're entrenched in the organization and they do just the bare minimum um it might be harder to reach out but 10 that is high that's a lot the box the box ceo saw himself on that list oh yeah i gotta get out of this yeah i gotta I got to get off this. But, yeah, I mean, huge, huge. You definitely don't want to be the companies that have,

that become known for places where talented people can go and do nothing. Very bad meme. Yeah, bad meme. But, yeah, I think we're still harping on this. Like, I don't know why more, like, elon cut 80 of x and it runs better than it did before yep why have other public market software ceos said we're gonna cut 40 or 50 why like it just seems like like obviously it's painful but there's so much demand for tech talent that all those people would get rehired doing important things at other companies.

And like, I mean, I've always heard this theory that a lot of it's like just keeping talent away from your competitors and just absorbing that. Or if, if I fire this person, they might go do a startup that competes with me. So I'll just throw them in the corner and keep them out of the game on the

sidelines. I don't know. That seems like it's too big of a cost to bear. I had two portfolio CEOs fighting this week because one tried to poach someone. That's completely different. Very different, but I didn't know. Not a great situation. Let's go to Raul.

He's been on the show before. Zero interest rates. He says, i screenshotted nvidia q3 income statement and asked julius to visualize it nvidia's q3 2024 net income is higher than their q3 2023 revenue wow yeah i think i think nvidia has become such a meme that people have stopped actually analyzing the underlying business fundamentals yep and they're just focused on like the the market cap yep which then you see stuff like this and you're like yeah okay it kind of makes sense that it's being mooned by every single allocator in the

world and retail investor because this is like unprecedented growth for a company of their size yeah it is just a great demo of Julius. I love that he's, he's posting. He didn't include a link, didn't include the app. He just shows the product. And the best part is that it's just a screenshot.

Yeah. It's a screenshot and it parses everything and it puts it in a chart and it just like full from end to end. We like to be able to do our profitability analysis on a napkin, but we'll eventually, we'll eventually get to the point where we'll be running on Julius. Yeah. Big fan of Raul.

Jumping in with a promoted post, this time from Lamborghini. Lamborghini says, when Urus SE accelerates from zero to 100 kilometers an hour, don't know what kilometers are, in 3.4 seconds, it transforms every moment on the tarmac

into pure exhilaration hashtag lamborghini this is a very european post that's the only thing i'm going to ding them on they say co2 emission and fuel this is the thing they're required to do i know this is the nanny state this is why this the the biggest risk right now with the way that europe is run is that they're trying to destroy the legacy car manufacturers by nannying them and making it's awful it's a co2 emission and fuel consumption combined and they have to share the link they have to share the link so that means that they get crushed on x because you can't share legs they're getting destroyed on two phones these posts should be viral look at this but they're not fantastic image beautiful

image iconic brand uh i don't own you know the urus gets knocked because everyone says it's just an audi rsq8 or rsq7 or whatever have you heard this uh it's like based on the same platform and it's not like as special but i think it's a very interesting choice for a family car if you live in san francisco totally capital allocators that have them there and what a way to stand out follow the one percent rule exactly you'll you might end up in a urus they break down all the time it's a bit of a mess of a car but it is compact so like a g-wagon you can park it in interesting places i don't know i see these with with relatively high miles and I think it's a great option.

Being in one feels like being, you know, you're in a family-friendly SUV, but you're in the, it feels like you're in the cockpit of a fighter jet, right? So the interior's fantastic. Lots of hexagons and octagons. That's the whole thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's hexagons. If you're a shape rotator, this might be for you. Yeah, it's beautiful. It's just a way to stand out in san francisco where where many too many too few people are making a statement with their vehicle yeah and the only the only aftermarket sort of thing you might do is add bulletproof uh glass but there's plenty of shops that'll do that that's great let's go to alfonso he says this is the cross mint nyc intern housing position open and it's a picture of a closet with

a mattress yep so this is this is the counter so alfonso cross mint team absolute grinders they have a company that is uh now building a lot of product products at the intersection of ai agents and uh crypto um so check out some of their apis. But yeah, that's an example of like when you're Stripe and you have a $50 billion market cap, yes, invest in your internship program. When you're CrossMint and you're trying to be the next Stripe,

don't try to attract interns that are there for the perks, right? And I'm sure this was the culture of Stripe in the early days. So we literally had, in the early, early days of Party Round, Josh from Party Round, who would run our Twitter account,

we did a little like, whatever, five-person retreat in our loft. And I had, Josh slept in the closet, like literally in a closet. So shout out to Josh. Now has his own paradigm-backed

crypto company. Fantastic. Start in the closet. Great things start in the closet. It's great. In tech. paradigm-backed crypto company. Fantastic. Great things start in the closet in tech. It's great. Double one. Yes. Mark Sisson says, hey, weight loss is weight loss, right?

And he posts a photo of a study showing that weight loss drug found to shrink heart muscle in mice and human cells. So this goes back to semaglutide, Ozempic. So what I read from this is if you have a really big heart, you're an emotional person, get on GLP ones, kind of shrink that heart, more cold blooded, cold blooded, locked in. Uh, and anyways, we're going to need some more studies. We're going to need to hear from the experts. I think Huberman was talking about this a little bit like, like muscle loss is a big thing generally with these drugs, but that's why you got to be lifting heavy and on a high protein diet while you take them.

Yeah, and I would honestly wait to personally have opinion on this until Joe Rogan talks about it or Jocko or something like that. Yeah, trust the experts. Ben Braverman says, the downfall of smart people is believing excellence is the result of novelty when really it's consistency.

Interesting. A little bit of an anti-ideas guy take. Obviously, execution is important. Takes both. But, yeah. Look at Lucy, right? Yeah. Seven-year overnight success.

You guys spent like four to five years building while nobody really cared about pouches like obviously your super fans loved it but um but yeah it's just about putting one foot in front of the other and and i think if you're an ideas guy ceo this can be there's a real trap where you're trying to like think of the next new exciting novel thing when really you just need to do the boring thing over and over and over for years and build that foundation. And there is something to this where it's like the novel idea

is a function of consistency. Like a lot of the ideas guys that we know and talk about have lots of ideas and they are consistent with their ability to create new ideas and then test them in the real world. Um, and so it's not just a, you know, this like strike of novelty, they come up with, they come up with novelty consistently and you can do both here, but I'm a little confused about

what he's saying about the downfall of smart people is believing that excellence, like who, who is this a subtweet of? No, I, I don't know. I think this is this, like an example is entrepreneurs thinking that if they come up with like the perfect plan, like master plan. Oh, sure. They're going to like somehow be more successful. What if they just picked one really simple idea with it? Yeah. Like, like, like you don't always need like the most complicated idea or like

this novel idea. You just need like something simple, really well executed. Yeah. Let's go to Jay. He says, never kill yourself. And it's a screenshot of Michael Saylor who from the daily news, he said, lost $6 billion in a day. Hotshot tech CEO loses fortune as his company company stock plunges 140 points so this is amazing

micro strategy is back to their all-time high as of like last week yep uh sailor never gave up he reinvented himself he reinvented the company it is basically a bitcoin etf that trades at a 3x to book value pretty pretty fantastic financial product if you're very long bitcoin but uh yeah it looks better too he's in better he looks yeah he looks younger lost weight got jack bought went long bitcoin absolute chad giga chad uh i don't know potential brother of the week candidate look at the other look at the other articles from this daily news post it's tuesday march 21st 2000 so depth of the dot-com bubble popping um or the beginning of it madonna's with child should your child take ritalin special report frail pope begins pilgrimage what a throwback

i need to look up more of these old newspapers. A little time capsule. I love that. Aiden McLeod. That'll be like looking at our stack of tweets 20 years from now. We're saving them. We're building a stack. We're saving them. Aiden McLeod says, first time on the show, he says, it's crazy that basically

every very large frontier model experiment is failing because the models are fighting back and refusing instruction tuning. We looked into Sentient. Interesting. Refusing instruction tuning. Sorry for the vague post. I don't, I myself don't know much here. Interesting. Refusing instruction tuning. Love it. Love it.

Yeah, I think this is going to be the kind of thing that he'll look back two years from now and be able to, you know, quote tweet and just like dump on people. Yeah, it's interesting. He called AGI. Yeah, it's kind of the question about like, what is the rate limiting factor to AI scaling right now? Is it just energy?

Is it just building out more? Is it going to be permitting if you're building a very, very large data center? Or is it the models are trained on humanity and humanity is mid? Yeah. The average of humanity is mid. It's possible. Literally that. And I haven't been able to get any of the AI researchers to really put a point a point on okay we scale up order magnitude in terms of number of gpus and energy

going into the model what does that get us in terms of iq out of the model probably not an order magnitude right but there's some translation there is it worth it to be five percent smarter i think it's almost certainly worth it to be 5% smarter on these models. And I think that the economics are much easier, which is why the market's ripping so much. The question is just, is there diminishing marginal returns to this? And once we get into the, okay, we're going to invest $1 trillion for two IQ points. Does that make sense? That'll be a size gong moment.

The first real trillion dollar investment. I mean, Sam was kind of teasing it with that 13 trillion number or something like that. Six, seven, eight. Six trillion, but the numbers get there. Give Sam a trillion big ones. I trust him with the money. Let him do it.

He doesn't lose money. He does not lose. There's very few people in that league, but he's one of them. Dikash Gupta says, I have nothing against work-life balance in fact i recommend it to all of our competitors this 22 year old c tech ceo says an 80 hour work week is a lifestyle choice it earned him death threats and job seekers this goes back to mike shebbett atraba yeah uh create a differentiated culture attract the best.

Don't worry about the haters that you attract. But this is interesting because I've long said that the work-life balance promoters on Twitter are just doing the game theoretic optimal strategy, which is tell all your competitors to take long vacations, not work hard. Get massages. Get massages.

Just do all of this. Just try and trick all the competitors. The funny thing is Google being like it's an all-you-can-eat cafeteria. We all know that food takes a lot of energy to digest food. If you're digesting, you're not writing as much code. But anyways, if you're trying to get attention online, some positive, some negative, go tweet about work-life balance. It's a great way to get some death threats. It's also just a great way to farm engagement always.

You'll always get a thousand likes if you come up with something controversial about work-life balance. Everyone has an opinion because it applies to everyone. Let's go to Sarah Hess. She's been on the show before. She says,

they should make a love is blind version of Shark Tank with Josh Wolf, where the founder's names are censored. So he can't do nominative determinism. So low tan banger. Low tan banger. Yeah. Josh Wolf is famously into nominative determinism where your name describes

what you do. There's a bunch of great examples of this. Sundar Pichai, pitch AI. His whole job at Google is to pitch AI. At Google, there's another person who's running their generative AI program. Her name, Jen, Jen AI.

Unreal. Jennifer, Jen AI. It's probably pronounced like Jen-I or something, but it's like Jen AI. And there's so many examples. Sam Altman has created an alternative to man. The PE-backed defense rollout. Oh, yeah.

We're going to get to that. The moneymaker. Yeah. The CEO's name is moneymaker, and of course he got the deal done. Of course. Of course. And there's a million other examples of this. We love nominative determinism here, but Josh Wolf was very early to it.

He has an old tweet from, I think, 2020 where he says that him and his friends were collecting examples of it. And he has a whole thread on them. And they're fantastic. And so... It almost makes you want to change your last name. Oh, totally. Or at least be strategic with the middle names with your kids, right? Yeah.

Totally. Roman Moneymaker Hayes, right? Yeah, exactly. Stuff like that. I like that. I do think we need a reboot of Shark Tank. You know, Cuban has left the tech brother sphere, gone to Blue Sky.

If you want to follow Cuban, former but canceled brother of the week, go over to Blue Sky. Go over to Blue Sky. But bring it back with a real capital allocator, somebody who's got money it's the best companies in the world i don't want to see like another 100k check exactly i don't want to see flyers no i want to see you know i want to see every host on shark tank 400 million

dollar fund yep you know provided by our fund of funds yep you can only write four checks a season that's gotta be size be great'd be great. And we need to get the, you know, they should merge it with like squawk box, right? So you're on CNBC, the CEO comes on and it's just a public markets hedge fund. He just says, okay, yeah, I'm ready to take a position. The stock's going to go up. I'm going to put a hundred million in this company. That's actually, that's actually great. It's like's like we should have the show should have a segment of like new bets yeah and like reviewing old bets and it's the winner is like at the end of the season is like whoever had you know the greatest it'd be fantastic but yeah i'd love to see i don't actually know if josh has ever said that he uses nominative

determinism in his investing thesis but uh i feel like he was i feel like he was pretty loud about sam bankman really oh anti it i think if i remember a few interesting people and also like controversially like but the spf spf stuff wasn't there for a while spf stuff if you just looked at it yeah rationally and you're like why is a guy running a hedge fund and running one of the biggest exchanges at the same time? Like it just makes zero sense. Like it just seems very wrong.

Scam, bank, and fraud. It's a great, great name. Let's go to my own tweet, I guess. I don't know why you printed this, but I said, Apple can keep the App Store monopoly, but they should be forced to make a printer that doesn't suck. No, I think I put this in because I want somebody to make a beautiful printer.

And the printer is something that's kind of retro. We use it every single day here. But at the same time, I would love for a technology brother to just reinvent the printer. It's a great business model. You sell a piece of hardware and then you sell the ink. You're going to get a lot of ink dollars out of us. And if you're looking for a fun idea that could be very lucrative.

And we would be a great sponsor for this. We would promote the hell out of your printer if you build it. Beautiful. Go get beautifulprinter.com. Spend four years developing a beautiful, durable, amazing printer. and we will be your first customer and first podcast yeah and it has to work with like absolutely no drivers like you plug it

in with any usb cable i want like basically like um not airplay uh i want to airdrop stuff well yeah so our i mean our printer isn't that bad here um i was actually struggling with a scanner doesn't look good. That's why it was frustrating. But yes, I can air print to that from my phone as long as we're on the same Wi-Fi network. It'd be great if it had a web server so I could print from home too here. Yeah. Ideally, we'd be able to have, you know, fans of the show print for us.

Yeah, but it's a tragedy. It's a tragedy that like a former cash app. I know. Designer has not reinvented the printer. It is. And it's all because of this ESG, worrying about printing and stuff. We're creating an archive of the greatest bangers of history.

One day we're going to bind these and sell the official tome of the timeline. I mean, we have thousands of posts already and we're what 18 days into this thing it's amazing day 18 let's go to john collison uh co-founder of stripe he says we need a total and complete shutdown of branding agencies until we can figure out what's going on very funny yeah there's this challenge this is a this is a trump copy pasta right didn't he say this originally wow i think that's what trump said maybe they're cozy wild um but yeah what

what is the problem with branding agencies the problem with branding we love branding agencies we love emma shine we love ryan harman yeah we love these guys they're critical to the innovation economy that said when when companies pay a branding agency hundreds of thousands of dollars, like anywhere between $100,000, $500,000, sometimes more, Jaguar probably spent millions on this campaign. And what happens when you're trusting the experts, when you're paying somebody a lot of money. Oh, you think this is a Jaguar subtweet?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is. That makes sense. Okay. You know, Jaguar's a fantastic legacy brand that's being run into the ground. But no, look, when you give somebody a lot of money, you're bestowing on them this sort of like trust

with your dollars, your capital. And what that leads to is people sometimes over-trusting the branding agency, which is only thing, you know, branding agencies oftentimes want to do bold work, which is not always what's right. Bold work, bold and different things, which is not always right for the strategy of the company. Right. I would disagree.

I think the problem is is that a lot of the branding agencies have just become copy pasta of like, you know oh this is exactly what you want everyone wants literally like everyone wants a bright color and it's like very like bland millennial and when i think about like liquid death i think like that probably that came from like brand focused people but i think that came from the issue but the issue is that these branding agencies there are certain creative directors within them that want to win awards. Sure. And that is not always aligned

with the company's strategy. Interesting. Jaguar should have reinvented itself by going back to its roots, playing into the legacy, bringing in some future-facing elements, but saying, we're the first dedicated EV manufacturer

that has some historical precedence around luxury and whatever. So anyways, I would put this on the branding agency because it is, at the end of the day, they created the work. It's their fault.

Interesting. Well, I don't think Stripe will be hiring any branding agencies. I bet they have one. I bet this freaked someone out. Whoever the brandinger is. Should we do a film?

Should we reload? Reload. 20,000 followers on Max. Let's go. While you reload, we have got a promoted post from somebody who is recently 21 years old. Josh Harris got your hiring post printed out here. So Josh was one of the first people that I hired at Party Round, hired him after a five-minute phone conversation,

knew right away that he was a generalist. No pro-con list with this guy, knew right away. Let's go. And big bet paid off. He did some fantastic. Slept in the closet. Slept in the closet, our first know some fantastic uh closet slept in the closet our first company retreat um great things start in the closet and um anyway so he says dear internet

we are hiring a full stack engineer to work with us on pixie chess a novel crypto protocol and i'm going to add a little bit to that pixie chess is building a protocol for playing uh chess so picture like crypto meets chess meets like magic the gathering so it's not just regular chess there's like power-ups and yeah you know i i got to play a little bit with um with uh a little bit of the game actually on monday with him and his uh co-founder aki so they say if you're eager for a high level of responsibility interested in multi-billion dollar war games. Let's go.

Amazing. We love war games. And looking to work on generational consumer products, please reach out. Sincerely, the Dutch East Internet Company. That's their actual. Wait, really? That's their actual. I love it.

That's hilarious. C-Corp name. So, yeah, I've always been very bullish on Josh. I always will be. He's got incredible mind, put together a great team, backed by one of the top funds in crypto paradigm. What position are they hiring for? They're hiring for a full stack engineer. So it'd be like founding, one of their founding engineers.

And I do think that this, I'm an investor. So this is a conflicted promoted post. No conflict, no interest, baby. No conflict, no interest. But I think that Pixie Chess can be something that breaks out of crypto. I think that the mechanics that they're working on, the novelty of just the game itself should be an absolute hit. And you can go risk on with it. You can play for real money, which would be cool.

So go check out Pixie Chess and DM Josh and you won't regret it. Let's go to Anand Sunwal. He says, Dude Perfect and Mark Rober have built superior businesses to Mr. Beast. They're the best creator businesses IMO and aren't talked about enough. It's interesting. I don't know all that much about these guys. I mean, I follow them

and I've worked in the YouTube world for a little bit. I completely missed it. So Dude Perfect is this fantastic channel. It was originally like trick shots. So they would throw a basketball off of the top of a stadium from the nosebleed seats

into a hoop all the way down on the field. And they would just do, so they'd go mega, mega viral. I remember being like 12 years old. Yeah, and watching this the field. And they would just do, so they'd go mega, mega viral. I remember being like 12 years old and watching this on YouTube and it was just insane. And they just got really, really good where they would spend all day. And eventually everyone would say, oh, they're faking it. They're doing VFX. No, they just put in the work and then they actually got really good at making these trick shots. So like you ask him to like, oh yeah, throw a basketball over this building into this hoop and like they're gonna be able to

Do it better than 99% of people because they've spent more time So they're actually good at these crazy trick shots and they can do crazy things like ping-pong balls and and hockey pucks And they just do everything now and they do a bunch of clubs and they've gotten really good at the editing and they recently Opened up this like massive like it's like a theme park I think the investment is like over 100 million dollars on this no way huge it has a huge tower that they can throw stuff off of that's great because for a while there was it kind of needs to be like protected because if you're throwing a basketball oh yeah oh yeah yeah i mean there was like there was this whole trend where

there was this massive like bridge with a trampoline or like a it was like a skydiving tower basically and they would throw like pianos off of it to like this is like maybe not them but somebody would throw pianos off of it onto like a trampoline and you would see like drop cars and stuff it was crazy crazy um so great business and mark rober has a uh a really interesting subscription box company that sells engineering tool kits this is great for kids where it comes and you get to watch a Mark Rober video and he breaks down, okay, today we're building like a new slingshot, you know, break out these pieces. And sometimes there's like programming and there's multiple levels. So you can build the basic one if you're just a kid, but then you can customize it and

build like more stuff and actually write some code. And so fantastic businesses. But everyone thinks Mr. Beast is at the top because he has the cpg brand with um with no i think he's probably on top from an attention standpoint sure but he these other creators have more aligned businesses right mr beast is sort of like i'm just going to get max amount of attention it's a game show that sells chocolate as opposed to mark robert's engineering channel and he sends engineering kits they're just a lot more disconnected perfect it's like a sports thing and you can go to their sport they're basically building like next gen david busters almost yeah you can go to their thing and and experience all the different sports challenges so it does seem more aligned um but

yeah as long as i mean i think the challenge is mr beast's audience by nature of just getting so many views from so many different parts of the world. He's sort of forced into needing to launch something like a chocolate bar. Yeah, that anyone can consume. I mean, this is why I was advocating for Beast VPN. Because he has an international audience. He has people all over the world. And so what do you want to sell?

You want to sell something that's differentiated only on the marketing. It's already big on YouTube. Every ad is for VPNs. Extremelyns extremely high margin extremely low churn and you'd have to go up against the cartel though the eastern european vpn cartel i don't even know if there is a cartel there's so many of these it's very oligopolistic no no no no i i heard i actually heard that there's like basically one group in eastern europe that has hovered up a lot. When you see a VPN ad for one thing or another, it's like the same end owner.

It's more consolidated. Yeah. Fascinating. Yeah. I would almost throw this on because if I was a foreign intelligence agency,

I might offer very inexpensive the tinfoil hat. Give us some conspiracies. If I was a foreign intelligence agency, Yeah, what would you do? I might offer very inexpensive VPN services in order to capture all that traffic and data and then price it artificially low so that you just capture more and more of that data sort of pipeline.

Interesting. Anyways, we try to keep this to once an episode. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, there is another factor i i think that you know the business analysis aside there is something interesting where all of these creators go through this hero's journey where they're deified and then eventually torn down mr beast recently went through that okay mkbhd is going through it right now where he has the eye of Sauron on him. Yeah. And we had to defend him

last week because he was going something like only like 60 miles an hour over in a children's zone. And obviously we think that's fine. But MKBHD has... The comments on every single one of the video is joking about wallpapers, joking about... Yeah, the new thing this week is he was kind of... He's historically crypto oh yeah everybody has been just like going after him

and and so there's this there's this element of like you're either like loved and all of your fans are like promoting you and reposting you and just sycophantically parasocially obsessed with you or you become the demon and then everyone you know hates you and wants to tear you down and gets like social credibility on that. And Dude Perfect and Mark Rober are maybe pre-fall. Or maybe they have the ability to avoid that entirely with how narrow their content is and where they've stayed. But you could imagine a Mark Rober fallout around oh well uh you know one of his engineering kits electrified someone and it was terrible you know all these things and then that could just blow up

because everyone has this this this latent obsession with like let's tear the big guy down and so uh it's a good lesson in like you know uh heavy is the head that wears the crown yeah there needs to be some bro science done on this because I think the people that try to tear big craters down and put a target on big craters probably just have low magnesium levels. I think that's probably true. And just so you know, don't get any ideas.

If you're trying to tear us down, we're going to hit back 10 times harder. So don't even try it. Don't even start. Let's go to Sam Suara says, do you think feudal lords had bi-weekly one-on-ones with their nights? This is such a good post.

I love this all time. And then, and then McKenzie says, do you mean a round table? And then Sam Suara says, low, well done. Yes,

it is around here. They did have one. Well, we weren't one-on-ones. Yeah. That's the key thing. All hands. Yeah.

Yeah. The round table is the all hands but and it wasn't it was it was the honestly the round table was more like a power lunch i think sort of the the historical example of a power lunch where and so you should people get to channel the power lunch channel the round table yes don't do one-on-ones never do one-on-ones yeah we should have a round table here and we should get everyone on the team. This is a round table. This is a round table. For a reason.

But we should get everyone on the team. All of our VPs. All of our VPs sit around and discuss business and how we will remain the most profitable podcast in the world and the fastest growing podcast in the world and the biggest tech podcast in the world.

And yeah, I think you can learn a lot from Feudal Lords. You can learn more from the prince than from four-hour work week. Let's go to Trace Cohen. Says, they will all IPO and it will make sense then, but now until then, this is a perfect example of how the last two years in tech slash startup slash VC

and it says a screenshot of staying private. You mentioned this earlier. There was more money flowing into secondaries for Figma, Rippling, Canva, Revolut, CoreWeave, Databricks, and Stripe than all of the tech IPOs in 2023 to 2024. And this is from the Morgan Stanley and the information reporting.

Yeah, I think this is like crazy to look at, but at the same time, it makes so much sense because most of the returns generated from venture are like 10 companies. Everyone knows this now. And Elon ran the A-B test. He took Tesla public, he kept SpaceX private. And which was more of a hassle for him?

The only company that I want to start and go public quickly is the Trump podcast. I think they can get to $100 million run rate within a year and should be the first podcast IPO. And I think that everybody should be able to sort of participate in that movement. But I mean, increasingly, there's ways to participate in the Stripe secondary through fund of funds, through all sorts of different secondary firms. Yeah, if you can't, if you're kind of annoyed that these companies aren't public and you're accredited and you haven't figured out a way to get in them,

it's on you. You just don't want it bad enough. You might be seven SPVs deep, but at least you have exposure. Exposure. At least you have exposure. But yeah, I think it's still somewhat of a good trend um we you know we want these companies to be able to stay in founder mode have as little overhead as possible move very

quick raw execution and and execute risk on they will all ipo and it will make sense then but until then it's a perfect example so yeah i mean these companies will go public eventually but um the the private markets are retooling to keep companies yeah and part of why there's so much capital available for these companies is that they're really especially now those new investors are looking at like okay i'm probably going to be locked up you know not be able you know this company will probably go public within the next two years. And at that point I'll be liquid and I should get a nice, in theory, like premium on what I invested. Yeah. And I mean the entire, like all the incentives align, like the founders want to stay private and the asset managers understand that they can earn higher fees from investing in

secondaries as opposed to being a public manager. Yeah, also if you put a billion dollars into Databricks and it goes public a year later and your position is at 1.1 billion, it's a 10% return, which is like what a lot of early stage funds do, or less, you know? Let's go to Jack Rains. He says, paying a negative salary

for a chief of staff position when you're worth $1.7 billion either A, deeply underpays someone who probably needs money or B, ensures that you hire a rich nepo baby who doesn't need money. This doesn't motivate someone to grind harder or whatever.

This is a quote tweet of the previous post that we reacted to by Dipinder Goyal. I didn't understand that he was paying a negative. Did we react to that? Yeah, we just did. It's deeper in the stack. I didn't understand that he was paying a negative salary.

What does that mean? But nothing wrong with hiring a Shneppo baby. No, so it means they're basically like every, you got to go work for them and then they're going to donate to charities on your behalf, which we're very against any like sort of non-profit. Yeah, subscribe because we're going to be doing a deep dive on the best charities to take private and turn into for-profits. We've

learned a lot from the OpenAI non-profit to for-profit transition, and we think PETA could be next. Red Cross could be next. We have lots of ideas stay tuned for that subscribe please um but uh yeah i don't know i i think that you know there are a lot worse roles than mentoring for a billionaire yeah i think i i i think that the the sort of hate is somewhat deserving but yeah it makes sense but at the same time if you do if you can break through i mean this post got a lot of views i would rather probably a lot of people applying, if you can break through, I mean, this post got a lot of views. I would rather see. There's probably a lot of people applying. And if you can break through and become the leading candidate asking for, hey, I need 50K, like that's probably an afterthought and you can probably get that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that should be like step one. Yeah, they will hire somebody better because of all the attention that they got. That said, I'd like to see that company say, you know, we want people to, you that company say, we want people that have a high risk tolerance for this role. We're going to give you your comp into an account, and you can only trade options with it. And it's your job to turn it into a livable salary. There you go.

Every single month, it's like, what's the trade that's going to pay your rent? What's the trade that's going to allow you rent there you go what's the trade that's gonna that's good you know uh allow you to get something nice for your mom for christmas right yeah or or walk into dependers office and say hey look i want to invest in startups i need 250k today or if somebody's a real chad get take that role and then get so critical to the business that you position yourself to do a hostile takeover of the company and boot him out. Yeah, boot him out.

That's good. I like that. Yeah. Immediately start calling the institutional investors. Yeah. Day one. This guy's running this company. You have access to his email?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Send an email. Hey, we need a meeting. Or I'm calling a board meeting. Call a board meeting. Without him. Yes. There's new blood in here. Yeah, yeah,'s new there's new blood in here yeah

sharks in the water uh let's go to a promoted post what do you got for me okay uh incredible promoted post today from brad gersner over at altimeter capital uh he is talking about his podcast bg2 uh he hosts this with uh girly proud both are b that. They both are BG, so BG2, great name for a podcast. And so all I would say with this, imagine if All In never talked about politics. That's what BG2 is. That is BG2, and the show is fantastic if you want to get deep into understanding AI scaling,

full self-driving. Let me see this tweet. How, you know, one, they talk about the holy trinity of markets loving lower taxes, less regulation, and balancing the budget. That's a holy trinity of sort of like political or like sort of policy. And anyways, fantastic podcast. I'm a listener. And we love to support other, you know, there's not many technology podcasts. Do they run ads, though?

No ads yet. That's the only thing Brad and both BGs. I'm going to have to change my recommendation. I would say unsubscribe from BG2. We'd like to see them running more ads. I want to see some ads, support the community, start pumping some companies. Let some of these scale-ups get in front of this audience

because it's an important audience. Don't be a mistake. Don't be something that everyone regrets. Come on, man. Get it together. That's the biggest issue with all in. No ads. It's the biggest issue.

Let's go to Arjun Kamani, second time on the show. Repeat guest. He says, Naebukele's Instagram story, LOL. And it's a screenshot of just the straight up account balance because this is the president of El Salvador, I believe. And he bought- I love how it's a mobile screenshot too. He bought $268 million worth of Bitcoin

and it's now worth 573 million. Wow. That is remarkable. So I don't understand. What's crazy is you look at the chart, it's like they invested 268 and they were down to below 100 million. Yeah, yeah.

He lost a lot of money. He had to ride it out. And he rode it out. And he just does two kissy faces. No, but here's the thing. I don't understand what he's screenshotting this from. Is this like his mobile brokerage? Yeah, I think it literally is like I'm setting up a Robinhood account for my country.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm just trading my treasury. That's the ultimate Gen Z president. Fantastic. We need more world leaders to be risk on and trading. You've seen it with Nancy Pelosi. You've seen it with the Pelosi tracker. Put her in charge of the Federal Reserve. Put her in charge of Fort Knox. Get us out of gold.

Get us into crypto. The only thing that can really fix our budget deficit is Nancy Pelosi trading our federal balance sheet. Let's give JDs venture capitalists, let's soft circle like $50 billion for him to deploy on behalf of the U.S. people. Let's give Trump, Trump is an established cryptocurrency entrepreneur. Let's give him a pumped out fun account and let's ride. Let's go to El Vendedor. He says POV, 22 years old, 200K tech sales job, 48K savings, expenses 5K a month. What would your strategy to maximize wealth? All right. This is going to be controversial. At 200K, you're an accredited investor. One big problem with liquid assets is they command a lot of attention, right? When you

have your Robinhood or your Coinbase or your whatever kind of going up and down on a day-to-day basis, there's this idea that you should sort of fixate on it and like try to optimize it. But at sort of this point in your career, 22 years old, you should be focusing on, you know, I would say that David Senra would say like optimize your network, 22 years old, you should be focusing on, uh, you know, I would say that David Center would say like optimize your network, right? Relationships around the world. Other people would say, focus on your skills. Uh, I would say, uh, find, go through YC and invest in the five, uh, invest every single dollar you have in the five best founders in the batch. And, uh, you know, if you're Coogan, you'll have invested in Substack, in the batch and uh you know if you're coogan

you'll have invested in substack open c substack coinbase zapier and instacart zapier and instacart and you will be worth uh 20 million regardless of if your company works or not well he's working a tech sales job that's what i'm saying go Go start an AI agent outbound sales company. Go through YC with your absolute boy. Save the money and then go and deploy it all very quickly. Deploy it all very quickly within 12 weeks. He can probably accrue 50K a year, 60K, maybe 100K if he really saves. Go long.

Just go long. And the beauty of it, it's going to be totally liquid. You won't be able to touch it. You'll have to have that dog in you to keep grinding. Yep, I like it. Go to Yaxine. He says, the only job left is going to be executive. Engineers make better executives on median,

but executive will be the only job left for professionals. And he's quote tweeting Rune who says, the job-related meeting crisis has already started and will soon go full swing this may sound insane but my only hope is that it happens quickly and at large enough scale such that everyone is forced to rebuild what do you think so the only other job that i think is going to be available is podcasting right that's right which is why we're hedging by being executives, by being executive podcasters. So, um, yeah, I think, I don't, I don't know. I, I, I won't, uh, I still think there's like 50,000 tech jobs that like

probably don't need to exist at these sort of big, bigger public or sort of scale ups. Uh, and I think the conversation will really kick off when those people are either cut or, you know, are sort of no longer being hired at the same rate. So we'll see. But yeah, I think like the things that are going to have like command a premium are relationships, right? When every company has an army of ai agents that are coding and selling relate relationships are going to have a lot of value like being able

to call up um somebody at another company and get a deal done like just very old-fashioned like do a power lunch uh and just get the deal done that's going to command a premium and ideas um but yeah i think that the wait but why guys said this thing which was like this is the last year of human history where where there's more thing the most popular like talk you know subject um it's still honestly not like it'll be interesting to go home for thanksgiving and more people will be talking about crypto than ai yep and it's because people like to talk about like the headline price and there's no like headline price for ai just sort of like steamrolling yep um but i would say like maybe next thanksgiving that'll be a different story i do wonder about the bullshit jobs thing have you

read that book um it's this thesis that um like like there is a lot there's already a job related meaning crisis that's happening um and i i think about this in relation to the government where there are a lot of jobs you know you walk through tsa you're like what are these people actually doing and you can think about a lot of the government as just a wealth transfer and the and the the but the way we transfer the money is not through the Andrew Yang UBI strategy. It's instead through a bullshit job. And I don't know if that's going to go away. I think that might just scale up because I think both parties might embrace that as a way to transfer wealth and give a little bit of meaning, even if it's minor. Yeah, the thing about the beauty of a quote-unquote bullshit job

of something that's not necessarily super impactful is that it still provides self-esteem associated with being productive, earning an income, and you take somebody who's 22 and unemployed and you give them a job, even if they're making 30K a year, they're immediately going to feel better about the situation, better about the world. And so it's going to be the greatest sort of challenge of our lifetime

as, you know, intelligence becomes an API call. Yep. Let's go to Vittorio. He says, it looks like Sora is still the best video model. Sama, please, elections are over. Deep fakes are not such a big concern anymore and everyone can't wait to not have to deal with Ben Affleck anymore.

Interesting. I do want them to release Sora. I mean, this has been almost a year, right? Didn't they announce it almost a year ago? No, the challenge is when companies start announcing things before they're available, it encourages other companies to do the same. I think it's a year ago no the challenge is when companies start announcing things before they're available it encourages other companies to do the same it's a cost thing i think it's very expensive to inference sora yeah yeah um but this is going to be like the craziest thing ever i i heard about

a um there was a hackathon in sf a week and a half ago and somebody built a product where you could speak into a microphone and like talk about a situation. And then an AI model would generate like a B roll on that. And apparently I think it'll end up being like, there's a huge consumer product to be built where somebody, you just like talk into your phone, say something. And, um, and it just like generates like an entire visual, like story of like that thing, because it's like very much like you're almost like hallucinating.

Yep. I do wonder like how much does that actually add to the experience? Like I've done a lot of YouTube videos that are very B-roll heavy. We use a lot of stock footage, use some AI video stuff. And then with this podcast, we were very light on the b-roll yeah unless we're doing a specific segment and i'm not sure that once b-roll is democratized at the point that you just click a button and every word is translated into b-roll so i'm talking about a man drinking champagne and you see a ai generated video like is is that going to become just like uh like they did the

thing yeah who cares no i think it's more of like an entertainment product i think it's more about AI generated video. Like, is that going to become just like, like they did the thing. Yeah. Who cares? No, I think it's more of like an entertainment product. I think it's more about like the creative use. Like, I remember when Harry Potter Balenciaga went viral and everyone was like, this is incredible. This is like the craziest use of AI.

And I was like, what's incredible here is the idea. Yeah. And I went to ChatGPT and I was like, hey, ChatGPT, there's a, there's a, there's a viral video right now called Harry Potter Balenciaga. And it's very interesting for these reasons. It's non sequitur because Harry Potter and Balenciaga are both things that people really understand, but they're from completely different worlds. One is a children's story and the other is a high fashion brand. So come up with other ideas that could potentially go viral.

Give me the ideas. And it was like Lego Versace. And I was like, you're not getting it. That's not inspiration. Do you remember early iPhone days when there was apps that would get millions of dollars in sales that were like drinking a beer? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so I think that what i was describing of like you say a phrase into the phone and then it generates this visual journey sure is more like you know i grew up in the country my dad had like chickens you know we had chickens every once in a while like a raccoon or a fox would get into the chicken coop and then it would just be like fire drill we're all running sure and so if i was able to say into my phone like chickens with ar-15s defending themselves from like foxes and then see this visual journey like i would pay five dollars totally to be able to do that like it's just like yeah yeah i've already used grok to like mash up different children's properties like video paw patrol met met uh you know yoda and

it's like that can't happen in the real world because of the different IPs, but it can happen in AI and, and visualizing like very specific things. Yeah. And, and like, yeah, democratizing, but it's going to be such a colossal,

colossal leap from generating an image to generating 30 seconds of video, which is less than a year, like a year out. Yeah. Yeah. They need to bake it down in the hardware because right now it's super expensive. Yeah. Let's go to Andrew bake it down in the hardware because right now it's super expensive. Yeah.

Let's go to Andrew Wilkinson. He says going to business school to become an entrepreneur is like reading a book about basketball history because you want to join the NBA. I agree. I never did business school. I just started a company. I think you did the same thing, right?

It is great. Listening to technology brothers is basically like getting an mba in three hours sure via the timeline and our takes on it yeah but i i did a program called uh tech management which was like for its you know to its credit pretty cool um i you know i did like probably six classes in it and i thought it was relatively current but every single thing that we were covering that was at all topical was a trend from the prior three years ago. So we had a class on the direct consumer model, which, again, giving it credit, most times by the time a school is covering something, it's like decades in the past. And this was like two years. In some entrepreneurship class, I wrote a bull case for Twitter and the stock was valued at like under a billion dollars

and I got a B minus or something. And then the stock ripped and I wrote an email being like, dude, you gotta give me an A plus on this. Should have dropped out. I called it, like, come on. And the professor was like, fine. Should have been at Jane Street.

Yeah, it was like, yeah, bad. Let's go to TJ Parker. He says, can we please stop with the concert poster fundraise announcements? Truly terrible. Yeah, so this is like a very 2021 thing. And every once in a while, you see some founder that hasn't raised a big round in a while.

And they're like, I'm going to do a concert poster. Sure. My main issue with it is I often find that I'm not big enough on the poster. I'm not headlining, right? Sure, sure, sure. Some asset manager like Andreessen gets the top spot. I'm like, well, I invested before them, right? Like should I, you know.

I should be first billing. I should be like bigger. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, should I, you know, I should be like bigger. So anyways, I think this is, I do think that fundraising announcements are like just an easy launch that companies can use to get attention from real value is like notifying the next round's investors that I'm here. Also, I mean, just the X algorithm, like you can't post a link to a TechCrunch article that actually breaks down your investors. So an image can go more viral. So there's something about the medium is the message and, you know, X is kind of pushing you towards these concert posters, but they are kind of played out. And increasingly the viral launch video is played out to some degree. People need to kind of reinvent these things. There's been a few that have broken through, but I think people

understand at this point, it's like, oh, it's one of those. It's been a few that have broken through, but I think people understand at this point. It's like, oh, it's one of those. It's a direct camera. Oh, it's a vibe reel. Founders Fund did the original viral vibe reel. We did a remix of it, and then other people have sort of driven it into the ground, and it's now dead.

So if you're thinking about doing a vibe reel or a concert poster, do not do it. Come out with something new. But at the same time, it's now dead. So if you're thinking about doing a vibe reel or a concert poster, do not do it. Come out with something new. But at the same time, it's better than nothing. How about PR Newswire? Make it great again? Make PR Newswire, Businesswire great again. You know, there's like two companies

that like do that as a service and Berkshire owns one of them. Really? Which is like funny because like, you know, the boys at Berkshire being like, yeah, we should probably own like Businesswire. The own the wires it's great the original like go direct it's just like on the wire on the wire uh let's get historic preservation respecter he says what

the heck i ordered an engagement ring but they freaking sent me a speedmaster professional 42 millimeter someone is going to be in serious trouble. What the frick? Why did they send me one sized for a 7.25 wrist? And this is one of those things. Men, go have the watch conversation with your wives. Sit them down. Mansplain it to them.

Have a 30 to 40 minute conversation where you explain, you know, the history, history and the intricacies of Swiss watchmaking. And, you know, there's some fine American watchmakers, James Bond's watch. Um, and, uh, and yeah, sit down, explain it to them, you know, in, in, uh, you know, uh, you know, in, in, uh, the correct terms, and I'm sure they'll come around to it. So, yeah, the engagement ring can wait. It can wait. Enjoy your Speedmaster.

Get your hitter, get your Speedmaster. It's critical. But find the right watch for you, right? We're big fans of loud opulence on this podcast. Julie Fredrickson says, first time on the show, she says, ding dong dong the dick is dead gary gensler plans to step down as chair of the u.s securities exchange commission on january 20th and this is interesting i i've always wondered like obviously trump is appointing all sorts of

new people but what is the calculus between getting fired riding it out out, talking to Trump, or just stepping down early versus announcing that you're stepping down early. He's stepping down on Inauguration Day, I suppose, or near it. And so clearly he knows that the writing's on the wall.

But there's a media strategy here. The president-elect has a meme coin called the World Liberty Coin that he launched like two weeks out. And I'm sure Gary Gensler's not a fan. He's not a fan. But yeah, you know, look, I think that one of the challenges with crypto is that it's sort of been speed running all of these, you know, why we have certain regulations. And Gary Gensler's gotten a lot of hate and and i think it's broadly for good reasons he sort of made the entire cryptocurrency industry not be able to innovate and actually create like a lot of products that

would otherwise be valuable to people um and so I think that it will certainly be good for the cryptocurrency industry to have somebody in place that is more of a, ideally, this is an innovation that's happening one way or another. Clearly, people just create, it's anybody that can develop software can create tokens and know, tokens and,

you know, protocols. And so I think that having somebody in that seat that is generally appreciates the novel like applications of the technology and can kind of steward the industry towards having, you know, the big criticism is he's sort of regulating by enforcement actions. So not really telling people what the rules are and then just like coming down having the big criticism is he's sort of regulating by enforcement actions. So not really telling people what the rules are and then just like coming down on one person super hard and trying to make an example out of them.

There's no reason we have tons of billion dollar crypto companies in the US. They should kind of understand and the new companies, the rules of the road. Do we have a promoted post? Promoted post from this guy, Jordy Hayes, said he's a general partner at Technology Brothers Podcast. I know this guy. He says, I'm excited to announce the Porsche 911 of water filters, Rora Water.

Rora is a new countertop water filter. Look at this thing. We got one right here. One of the first versions off the factory line so rora's a product that i've been working on uh with my partners brian and charlie for uh quite a while we've invested a ton of money in r&d and testing and it's live available to purchase as of yesterday um so we uh you, we took the countertop water system, which is, you know, there's a bunch of different people that have made versions to this over the years.

We tried to make it 10 times better. I think we did. It's beautiful, effective, durable, timeless, easy to set up, easy to use. Uh, my two-year-old can use it, which is awesome. Uh, it's accessible. You don't need to do plumbing or electrical work. Um, and we've tested it extremely, uh, rigorously, uh, literally spent about a quarter of a million dollars, like with the NSF, which is the certification, uh, company and, uh, really happy with the product. It's beautiful. And I'm excited for people to finally get their hands on it. I'm excited. So go buy Aurora water filter today. Let's go to Joe Rogan. First time on the show.

He says, this is my new official X description. And he's quote tweeting Colin Rugg, who says the views Joy Behar says people like their show because they tell the truth. Unlike dragon believer Joe Rogan. And Joe updated his X description to just say I dragon believe. I can't stress this enough on this podcast. We trust the experts. Rogan and Joe updated his ex description to just say, I dragon believe. I can't stress this enough on this podcast. We trust the experts, Joe Rogan, Lex Friedman, Huberman, Chris Williamson, David Senra. The list goes on. You got to trust the experts.

You got to trust the dragon believers. I think that putting on the tinfoil hat i think we should send one of these to joe i think it's it's a it's a great asset it provides a little bit of ground cover to say some crazy things i believe in dragons right i got a lot of dinosaurs around my house right now it's hard not to think man maybe these things were what we imagine as dragons right maybe we did walk the earth with these fantastical beasts. So shout out to dragons. I mean, dragons are literally real.

If you believe in the Komodo dragon, we have a variety of dinosaurs that are essentially classified as dragons. Osempic was created by, Osempic is dragon. That was the Gila monster related to the Komodo dragon, but separate. But yes. But dragons, we need a good deep dive. We need someone to, we need an expert to weigh in. Enjoy the champagne.

I refilled you. We have officially finished the bottle of Dom Perignon this time. There we go. We are chads. Cheers. Who's mixing a little Celsius and Dom? Thank you, Ben, for editing all this. Let's go into – let's skip grit and let's go to uh tomorrow's telecom i don't know

what that is is this important do you know this person no i just uh skip it uh expo let's do scott this is a good one scott sanders says real talk what are you printing in 2024 and this was a reply to my call for apple to develop a printer. And I'll tell you, Scott, I'm printing your tweet. I'm printing your tweet. There we go. I like my tweets printed out. If you're not doing this,

have your secretary print your emails, print your text messages, print your timeline out. Get with the modern era. We're returning to tradition and we're printing things now. So we need great printers. We need a new printer startup.

We need Apple to build a printer. We need more competition. I want a service similar to a newspaper that prints out the best tweets from yesterday and delivers them to me at 5 a.m.

so I can wake up, walk outside, pick up a nice stack of posts and just start We respect printed things here. drifting through it. We review ArenaMag. I already purchased Patrick Ar'Shaughnessy's new magazine.

I am obsessed with the so-called legacy media just because there's an option to print it out and ship it to me. I like printed stuff. It's more tactile. You can mark it up. You can take notes. It's less ethereal. And it goes in the stack.

And this post will be immortalized in the stack of printed posts forever. So get with the program. Start printing your posts. Do we have a promoted post? Promoted post from Daniel at growing underscore Daniel. What's he promoting today? So today he's saying that he needs a chief of staff. Oh, that's a dream job.

Dream job, working for a dream poster, a dreamy poster. He says, I need a chief of staff as well, offering 15K for that connection. Put me in touch with your most organized friends. So this is a bounty for any technology brother out there to go connect Daniel, uh, to his next chief of staff. Uh, the last one, uh,

is, is the president elect. Not, not a lot of people know, but Donald Trump actually worked for growing Daniel briefly, uh, during the off season for him. Um,

and, uh, anyways, go, uh, work for Daniel. Got a great company building software for police officers to be better at their jobs and more efficient tell them the technology brother sent you tell them we sent you

let's go to near cyan she says uh every 20s male will watch the big short and be like he's literally me then proceed to lose their life savings in the dumbest way possible you know there's a lot of founders i know who have gone through the hero's journey of losing their entire life savings in crypto and then realize that trading or, you know, YOLO investing is not for them. That's what I'm saying, liquid assets. And then they go in and they build something real.

And it was a big shift from like the defense tech boom, the Gundo boom. A lot of those guys had had rough goes in like the Wi-Fi money era, realized it was not very durable very zero sum and moved over to something that was more tangible and i i really think that was a benefit uh to society it was it was a good move obviously crypto is important but it's for the real builders and they're the ones that should be rewarded um if you're just on wall street bets and tick tock, like trying to read, you know, uh,

technical analysis, like, uh, no, I think illiquidity is a feature, just like, you know, uh, the fact that you can go and do your job every day and not be constantly getting marked, uh, is, is a great, uh, blessing because it allows you to focus on the next important task ahead and just create value that way. Let's go to Sri Ramakrishnan Andreessen Horowitz. He says the common question I often get from SV folks these days is how they can join Doge. Yeah, so this is interesting. I think one of the challenges, there's a lot of people that are in the kind of like peripheral or adjacent to the American dynamism movement that are kind of looking at Doge being like, if I was going to work in the government, this would be the place to do it. The challenge is like if a lot of your net worth is tied up in a bunch of like illiquid private companies, it's like very difficult to kind of divest those positions. And just time.

And just time. If you have a job and you're busy, I think there was an official post by Doge saying, look, we've gotten enough ideas. Thank you. But now we need high IQ, hard workers to come in and work 80-hour weeks. And that is going to be a great resume bullet point. But it's going to be hard to step away from a company you founded or GP at a big fund. That's going to be hard to step away from a company you founded or GP at a big fund.

Like that's going to be really hard. I did hear an incredible financial innovation. I think it's from JP Morgan or Goldman is one of those two. They offer a service where if you're taking a government post and you need to divest assets, they will basically buy it at like 60% of like the last mark.

Okay, yeah. So all those technology brothers out there sitting on overvalued private shares maybe take a role in the government and and get some liquidity I mean that's the thing with the Treasury Secretary right they have to sell everything and they don't get taxed on it yeah so it's a huge benefit yeah I think there's something maybe you avoid that you avoid that employees as well no I think I think it's like pretty broad yeah and it makes sense it's

controversial but it but it makes sense it's controversial but it but it makes sense uh let's go to dylan field over at figma he says uh he's quote tweeting gary gensler he said this man has ruined so many innocent lives the stories will come out in time right now most of his victims are too intimidated to share broadly let's hope he never has power again and gary is announcing that he will be stepping down and yeah it's wild because gary he was he was kind of pro crypto at mit i believe he saw he taught a course on it and then just came in as this uh kind of the bad cop of crypto and and well he had a finance background i think he was up a lot of people i think he was at gold i think he was at

goldman yeah some some big uh asset and the biggest problem isn't that he wasn't isn't that like okay there are obviously bad actors in crypto the problem was is that for the last you know four years during the bubble cycle i never was like oh the scc is the reason that sam bankman freed got caught it was always like some anon on twitter or even like most of the scammers who are like celebrities and they run shit coins it's like CoffeeZilla is the one who breaks the story or some reporter. It's very rarely, oh, the SEC got to it first. It's usually the investigative journalists, the YouTubers, the Twitter, the posters, and then the SEC has to follow up. And it was just like, this is completely the wrong model. You need to have a stronger a stronger sense of of who's actually

being yeah the fact that somebody who's running a like the greatest design startup of the last 10 years is like cares enough about it to comment on it just shows like how out of control he was let's go to spore repeat uh guest of the show spore says what was the hot tech theme of 2023 and uh the founder of perplexity says there's a hot theme for the year and then the most valuable company and they never match up, which I love. This is a great chart. It's not entirely true because the hot theme of the year kind of changes and it's kind of unclear, but it does seem real that the metaverse was big in 2022 and the hot, but what's interesting is like this question, it's very obvious. 2023 is AI. Yeah. It was AI, 100%. But I guess what he's saying is like the hot theme was AI.

Maybe we should expect the most valuable company started in 2023. To be Technology Brothers. Well, we weren't started in 2023. We were started in 2024. Oh, damn. But, you know, Truth Social started in, I believe, 2021. It was the Web 3.4 spoon.

I would argue that we were started in 2023, though, because that's when we met. That is true. That is the first meeting. That was their first podcast. The mics weren't on, but it was a podcast at a very illustrious office. No, there should be.

This is a good use case for Polymarket. You should be able to bet on what is the most, like what's going to be like the most valuable company. That's just called investing in the companies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why do the companies yeah yeah yeah why do you know but the thing about private markets is like i can believe i cannot be an investor in a company and still believe and not even able to be an investor just because in the nature of like round timings um but i mean polymarket's a binary outcome yeah yeah it's like it doesn't really work like that yeah yeah uh yeah. Good idea. We'll have to work on that, though. We need some more shopping.

Let's go to Dextero. Elon Musk is now technically the top Diablo 4 player in the world after a record clear time of 152 in the game's toughest challenge. That is incredible. Firing on all cylinders. I love it. We need to get him streaming on Twitch. He streams every once in a while.

More streams, though. Like a daily once in a while. More streams though. A daily stream would be good. I would love it. He takes calls while he's doing it. He does everything. More importantly, he's actually excellent at the game. Unlike certain bank men. Do we have another promoted post?

Promoted post from our friend over at Pirate Wires, Mike Solana. He is looking for a full-time editor for the Pirate Wires Daily. You'll be responsible for sourcing stories each morning, managing assignments, editing each take, writing some of your own. Must be terminally online and funny. Solana at Pirate Wires. Go apply for this job. Email him. Don't put anything in the subject line. Just say no subject. Don't even put anything in the body of the email. Just put your ex-username, a link to make it easy for Solana. Your resume is your profile.

If you're not posting bangers, even low-tan bangers, you've got to have bangers. You're not going to get this job without it. The job is to curate and cultivate bangers i mean that's uh and i can't dream job the i mean the three morning takes if you're not subscribed you got to go subscribe it's the it's the best newsletter best daily newsletter by far fantastic product just very bite-sized very digestible very funny great format i've written one i need to write more because every once in a while I think, oh, I have this idea, it's not good for a tweet, it's not good for an essay.

The PirateWire's take is like a format of its own. This is what we talk about, like format is so important in content, and Solana has been innovative there in a way that many, many other newsletter writers haven't been. Yep. Let's go to Michael, he says,

a quick personal update after three and a half amazing years at Notion and some time off, I've started a company that's at the intersection of everything I learned at Stripe, Notion, and Google. AI, FinTech, productivity, and search. Our small team is growing and we're looking for founding engineers and designers. Please reach out if you or someone you know might be interested in something early stage and in person in San Francisco. Let's go.

There we go. It's a huge talent move. Hitting all the right buzzwords. Entering free agency, building a new franchise, could be a generational company. Hit up Michael if you're interested. I love it.

Potential size gong candidate if he gets the round announced. Michael, let us know when the round closes. Hopefully it's really big. If I had to bet, 10 on 50. Dumping a bunch of FUD on, oh, this is overvalued. But we'll be here ringing the size gong for you. Boom.

Make it happen. Let's go to Erica. She says, an LP shared, they expect 5% to 10% GP commit for a first fund. That means $500K to $1 million for a $10 million fund. $50K to $100K of that has to be cash most emerging gps go two years with no salary plus spend 25k in upfront costs so expecting more just seems wrong what are your thoughts and nicole wiskoff says have never heard this and have met with a few

hundred lps so a little bit of a controversial post. What do you think? I mean, this is somewhat related to, I think you can basically write off the GP commit if the GP shows up in a car that follows the 1% rule. Or is wearing a suit. Or is wearing a suit. Yeah. So this is one of those things. Anytime you're fundraising, you know, you could go out, fundraise and talk to an angel investor that's like, I'll give you 50K at a $250, and talk to an angel investor that's like i'll give you 50k at a 250 000 valuation and like that's good there's always going to be the outliers that are just expecting or like making kind of like crazy offers and uh got to learn which ones to ignore which ones to take advice from the other thing though is like if you're a gp you can

effectively commit uh part of the what would be your management fee back to the fund, which can kind of make up for, you know, if you're not super liquid and don't have whatever, that 5% to 10% to invest back into the fund, you can leverage the fee to kind of get closer to that mark. So lots of ways to do it. I don't think you should start a fund if you get some big wins under your belt. Yeah, we have a good friend who says you shouldn't need to raise because you should just go out and find a 1,000x.

Simply get a 100x. Simply get a 100x, scale up, and then just invest your own capital. Be ready to make your own capital commit. Chad Capital. Let's go to Jesse. Jesse says on-chain isn't for you until it is. And it's an ad from Coinbase.

A fantastic ad. I really like this. It was really good. Because it really exemplified the value of stable coins and why the average person will start to use them in different capacities. So the wire transfer is, pretty good innovation, right? You can walk down to the bank, send a big wire, the other person, you know,

assuming you don't miss the wire cutoff, you know, you're going to have a pretty good likelihood of that wire landing very quickly. That said, if this ad, you know, showed a guy selling, you know, an old truck and taking the bus home afterwards if you're trying to you know make any type of major transaction peer-to-peer after hours and want to do so in a trustless way stable coins are a fantastic way to do that and i like that coinbase is taking this moment where they're you know number one in the charts

or close to that and starting to advertise some of the applications of of you know crypto that that the average person would really care about which is i'm making a big purchase or a big transaction i just wanted to go through fast and i just wanted to go through fast and know that it's there and um yeah so i can see i can actually the ad made sense because i can actually see that happening where somebody's first time like really using crypto other than to speculate is like making a big purchase like a car. It's great. Let's go to Ryan Harmon, good friend of the show. He says, we did a new brand with our friends at A24 and they introduced movie chocolate, milk chocolate to eat during movies. And it just has a fantastic brand, fantastic text. and you could see this being really huge.

And it's cool to see A24 branching out into consumer packaged goods in a really interesting way. Super aligned with the product. The flavors of this new chocolate brand are super fun and funky. And they're partnering with AMC, so these will be available. And they partnered with a lot of people like to call Ryan's agency the day job, the A24 of creative agencies. yeah they're bold they're dramatic yeah they're original i mean the main problem with ryan and day job is that he hasn't done the blood-sucking scale up that most other brand

agencies have where he's just producing slop but charging 500k a project for basically just copy paste of the figma file um so get your money up ryan start doing shittier projects and maybe you'll make a lot more you know one one small note on ryan he's also a little bit of a real estate developer oh really taking a lot of the profits from the agency and sort of uh they've been building a office ground up so if i was a designer or copywriter or creative director and i was in la i'd be wanting to go work for them yeah your office is going to be fantastic it's a fantastic business and uh yeah you know what they say you know what they say uh good good times create jaguar rebrands jaguar rebrands create hard times hard times Hard times create day jobs. Day jobs create Jack Weir.

Create good times. That's great. Let's go to Phil Ehrenstein. He is the founder of Dirac. We got his name wrong on the last podcast, and he's very upset. He said, just going to leave this one here, and it's Jordy grasping for his name, failing. Two seconds later, he clipped this so short, five seconds. At six seconds, I say, your name is Phil. I know your name phil is a chad future beaner giga chad giga chad future also incredible bench

press this guy is an incredible bench presser he's an animal so he says changing my morning alarm tone from the founders fund opening song to this audio to begin my winter arc so he's fueling so the only thing i would say i'm sorry phil you're incredible yeah we love you bullish on you and uh to rock i pronounce i think it's pronounced right i pronounced it yeah i not only forgot his name i i for now it's after some scientists uh some nerd phil you're an animal you uh are i know you're a future brother of the week and we cannot wait to hang, you know, at the next Gundo TB dinner. Crossover. Let's do it. Zestular asks, what's the tech bro version of a Rolex?

And it's like he's subtweeting us. Yeah. It's, I mean, he doesn't follow us yet, but Zestular, get on the bandwagon because we've been talking about this for weeks. The technology brother version of a Rolex is a Patek Philippe. Yes. But which one? I mean, you can't go wrong in the range. Yes.

It could be an Aquanaut, a Nautilus, a Calatrava. If you're just kind of getting into the range, starting to build that relationship. Sure. But, yeah, you could also argue it. You know, I know, you know, praying for exits, popular meme account. Sure. He'll often be fine wearing a timeless Submariner. I think it's a great watch.

And so one could argue the Technology Brother version of a Rolex is a Rolex. Yeah, but also you go upmarket to the giga tech bro, Zuck. He wears an FP Journe. And so, Richard Mille. Can't go wrong with this. We have a promoted post from Richard Mill actually today. We do. Richard Mill.

It's a racing machine on the wrist. Skeletonized. Skeletonized. It looks like one. This is a head turner. This is a fun piece. Can you read me the love language there? The love language says, a racing machine on the wrist,

skeletonized manual winding, 70-hour power reserve, base plate and bridges in grade 5 titanium, power reserve and base plate and bridges in grade 5 titanium, power reserve and function indicators, case in grade 5 titanium, torque limiting crown. So this is the kind of thing that you're going to see in a doll on the wrist while he's playing. I think the lesson here is that tech bros are anti-mimetic. We do not want to have a one-size-fits-all.

We don't want every tech bro wearing Allbirds. We don't want every tech bro wearing the exact same Nautilus. We want a piece, a hitter on the wrist that speaks to what you're doing. Are you in hard tech? Are you in AI? Are you in B2B software? These are different paths for the tech bro. Are you a capital allocator?

That means something different. And that means a different piece on the wrist. So you want something that speaks to who you are and what you do. So if you're a technology brother and you're creating autonomous drones for the sea, I expect to see a Submariner. Submariner, yeah. Literally, it's got the depth potential. You're not going to be wearing a dress watch in that scenario. Exactly.

You're certainly not going to be wearing an Apple watch. But if you're on Capitol Hill lobbying, maybe it's a dress watch. Maybe you're in a bow tie. Maybe you're in a tux, and you need a Calatrava. Absolutely. Let's go to Omar Wasim. He says, the best ideas start as intersections. Huge alpha in exploring combinations of whatever you're obsessively interested in.

Tech Bros Pod is the best recent example of this. American dynamism, ex-venture, ex-niche Twitter bubble. And as soon as he said bubble, I wasventure, ex-niche Twitter bubble. And as soon as he said bubble, I was in. I was in. I love bubbles on the show. I love Omar. We promote bubbles. I've been on his podcast. We participate in bubbles. And I, and the only thing I had to say in response to this was there's just huge alpha and wearing, simply wearing a suit, right? I agree. If you're in technology, take off the Allbirds, throw on some loafers, get a tailored suit, wear it to work. I guarantee you'll stand out and you're making a statement.

I like every step. And let's close with Andrew Huberman who talking about podcasts. He says, wondering if it's still a good idea to start a podcast. Yes. Especially if you have expertise in a particular area that you focus on or weave into your content. I'm excited for the next generation of health, science, and tech podcasters. It's fertile soil. I mean, clearly subtweeting us. Absolutely. Obviously. But does it apply outside of us?

Absolutely. I think so. Absolutely. I think there's plenty of opportunities. I think the evidence of this is you can say in the consumer brand industry, right, there's a brand for almost anything. And, you know, once a week, you see a brand launch, and you're like, that makes sense for this moment. You know, we were, you know, the whole sort of market was ready for it. And the same thing with podcasts. There's still I forget the stat, but there's like 300,000-ish podcasts that have published at all in the last month. And so while there's a lot of podcasts that take a shot on goal and then don't quite see it through or continue, there's far fewer podcasts that are just consistent. There really aren't that many podcasts that fully send it.

It's a lot of side hustle. Oh, I do something on Zoom. I interview my friends. And they don't really think through, through like what are the sources of alpha? How can I combine different ideas? How can I really prioritize this and make this the best thing? That's what I noticed on YouTube

was like at a certain point, it's like pick a big topic and make the best video about that topic. And it would always go viral. A few years later, you have half a million subscribers. That's a great place to close. Thanks for watching. Subscribe today A few years later, you have half a million subscribers. Yeah. That's a great place to close. No accident.

Thanks for watching. Subscribe today or be relegated to a life of net jets for the rest of your life. The rest of your life. Just do it. Do it now. Thank you. Thank you for watching.