This Week in Startups - Amazon to lay off 10K employees, FTX saga update, Shopify's reverse AR platform & more | E1612

Episode Date: November 15, 2022

First up, J+M break down Amazon's reported ~10K employee RIF (4:27) and try to wrap their heads around the current recession. (15:54) Then, they give an FTX update (26:25), break down the mobile gaming industry (38:12), discuss Shopify's reverse AR platform (47:43), and more! (0:00) J+M tee up today's topics (1:58) Weekend catch-up! (4:27) Amazon will reportedly cut 10K corporate employees this week (14:41) LinkedIn Jobs - Post your first job for free at https://linkedin.com/twist (15:54) Why this recession is so unique, advice for founders (25:16) Policygenius - Go to https://policygenius.com to get a free life insurance quote (26:25) FTX update: SBF's confusing tweets, FTX's interesting corporate culture (36:54) Fitbod - Get 25% off at https://fitbod.me/twist  (38:12) Current state of the mobile gaming industry (47:43) WLITF: Shopify's reverse AR shopping tool (55:18) SOTD: UpKeep lets users find, book, and pay for MedSpa treatments FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis FOLLOW Molly: https://twitter.com/mollywood Subscribe to our YouTube to watch all full episodes: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkkhmBWfS7pILYIk0izkc3A?sub_confirmation=1

Hey, everybody, welcome back. It is Monday. It's going to be a big week here on this week and start us. We'll start off today with more layoff news, the mighty Amazon. So now we have Facebook slash meta and Amazon of the big four or five tech companies have both laid off over 10,000. News today that Amazon's laying off 10,000 in the white collar suite, not the factory workers, not the delivery, not the blue collar side, the white collar side. Big news. 10,000 employees. Big news. And then we're going to talk. about the latest updates because we cannot help ourselves on the FTX saga. There's kind of an interesting report today about the state of mobile gaming and the decline in advertising hitting that previously untouchable space. That's fascinating. And what it means for investors who may have gotten into that space back in the day. And since it's this week

in startups and we try to keep at least 50% of the content startup related, even if these big companies blowing up and laying people off and everything, we're going to end the show with a We live in the future. Augmented reality segment. Very cool. And a very cool startup of the day in the med spa space. Mm-hmm. Med spa, new acronym, new word.

We'll just call it, fix in your face. The fix in your face. Fixing your face. Startup. Yeah. All right. It's going to be a great show. Stick with us.

This weekend startups is brought to by LinkedIn Jobs. A business is only as strong as its people and every hire matters. Post your first job for free at LinkedIn.com slash twist. PolicyGenius. You could save 50% or more on life insurance by comparing quotes with PolicyGenius. Head to PolicyGenius.com to get your free life insurance quote and see how much you could save. FitBod. Tired of doing the same workouts at the gym, FitBod will build you personalized workouts to help you progress with every set. Get 25% off your subscription or try out the app for free when you sign up now at FitBod.me slash Quest. Hey Molly, happy Monday.

How was your weekend? It was good. We're roller skating like a hipster. I think I did see that on your private social. I don't say where. So not rollerblading, roller skating. No, skating, four wheels and everything. They'll light up.

There's a really cute pop-up rink right now. Right by City Hall in San Francisco, you should take the girls. It's so fun. You reserve just like a 90-minute slot. They got the disco light. and they're you know and you get skates are included with your like $15 ticket and the skates have light up wheels it's actually really outdoor shockingly fun it's outdoor it's like under a tent and oh and are they are they playing like fun music and like 70s music or something yeah

sometimes like all of it it it's freaking delightful I watch these like old men who like were into skating in the 70s so you get like these five or six guys doing like they're kind of going in the circle, but their feet are in sync. So you got five old dudes dancing in sync on TikTok. I don't know how, you know how TikTok like figures something you like? And then TikTok realizes I'm going to be an old man soon, but I'm like the old man who won't age. Who will be roller skating?

Who will be roller skating. But, you know, this used to be, people forget Molly, a thing in the 70s and 80s to do when you were looking for something to do before video games were big. They were just starting. And there was, you know, you had movies, but there were only two or three new movies out at a time. And if you saw them all, you'd be like, hey, what are we going to do Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday? And roller skating was a bona fide activity. So in Brooklyn, we had multiple roller skating halls. They were giant. Bowling was a thing to do. And people enjoyed life a little bit more because

they were out doing fun activities, correct? Oh, absolutely. We used to go to the roller rink on the regular every weekend. And you could always tell, like, who was dating because they'd be skating and holding hands and then you got like all your social points came from could you skate backwards or not which was I should say the only time I fell down on Saturday was trying to skate backwards. Oh, you tried? I was like, you know, I haven't done this in 30 plus years. I'm just going to go for it. Sweet. I used to be able to ski backwards. If you don't fall down, you're not trying, you know. I used to be able to ski backwards and I was almost tempted to do it last year, but there's snow in Tahoe.

They opened the ski mountains a week early. Of course, I'm going to have to sacrifice the first month of ski season, I think, just to work on, you know, special projects as it were. But let's get back to work here. I noticed a Amazon, the mighty Amazon sitting on tons of cash, was in the news for a 10,000 executive layoff. This is after Facebook's 11,000 last week, and the week before you had Twitter, Stripe, I can't remember all the ones. That week there were six. Yeah, it was like everything. It was everything. So let's go through this because 10,000 seems like a very low number considering how many people they have. And I'm not sure if this is warehouse workers or executives with a company like Amazon.

It's a little more nuance. I doubt they're getting rid of warehouse workers. They're definitely not getting rid of exactly. No drivers, no warehouse workers two months before Christmas or a month and a half or whatever right before the holiday start. The layoffs could start as soon as this week and would focus specifically on corporate employees in the devices organization. So Kindle, Alexa, Firestick, the retail division, and human research.

resources. That would represent about 3% of its corporate employees. Amazon has 330,000 corporate employees, has 1.6 million total global employees when you include the delivery drivers and the warehouse workers. Three percent is the smallest Rift reduction in force that we've seen. It's almost not even worth announcing a 3% RIF could be accomplished with a performance-based review and cutting the bottom 5%. It was Jack Welch who said cut the bottom 5% every year. Some people buy into that management philosophy of cutting the bottom 5, or actually in this case I believe it was 10,

and then just hiring another 10%. So this is odd. It's a signal to the market, but it's not enough to make any kind of impact on their earnings, I would say. I feel like it doesn't, isn't even a signal to the market. It feels to me like it's just sort of an opportunistic reorg, you know, more than anything else.

because Amazon, like we did their Q3 earnings, which were fine. Like we did not get any sense. I don't think from those earnings that there was a concern. Like AWS revenue, the big profit center was up 27% year over year, up about a 4% quarter over quarter. That was a slight miss in expectations, but its revenue grew 40%. Its operating income was $5.4 billion.

Now, to be fair, all other Amazon segments lost money other than AWS, which is why I actually think this is an opportunistic reorg that's all about what kind of we've been thinking that Andy Jesse was going to do all along, which is focus on AWS. That makes all the money. It feels to me like this is the start of austerity measures at Amazon. Remember, I said these things are like a contagion. I said this maybe in the first quarter when they started. And at some point, you're looking around saying, we're the only ones who haven't

taken any action. We haven't batten down the hatches. And Amazon's founder, Jeff Bezos, said, hey, it's time to batten down the hatches. He has said that exact statement. So, this is the start of battening down the hatches. What does it mean? You can always hire people back is the common management philosophy. So in a down market. In an up market, people had the philosophy. I was talking to a very high profile founder yesterday. And they said, you know, management teams are now going from, we can't afford to lose this person to, well, we need to make dollars today, as opposed to dollars tomorrow. So if we need them, and it turns out we made a mistake or if we need them, I'm not talking about Twitter, by the way, I'm talking about another company. We will hire

them back. And so this is a very small amount. I would suspect they're going to do this two more times to get up to 10% maybe. And this also is, you know, not enough to have a dramatic impact on the overall economy. So despite, how hard this is, Molly, for the people impacted. This might be peak compensation for them for the next, you know, couple of years. I would suspect it will be. So people who are getting laid off right now, I do think instead of what happened in the last, what, 10 years,

you could always expect to make 10% more at your next job, 20% more. Now it's going to be the opposite. You should probably expect to make 10% less, 20% less is. And so that's hard for people. People are going to have to rebalance their balance sheets if they had high spending, private schools, mortgages, vacations planned, 401K contributions, all that stuff, just like companies are. So this is how the economy reorganizes in real time, all caused by the Fed raising rates and everybody being focused on the dollar that you can make today, which comes two ways. That's spending or make more.

And so austerity measures hitting all aspects of the economy. Can you think of an area where austerity measures haven't kicked in yet? Molly. Oh, oil and gas is having a party. I do want to go back to actually a prediction that I made around Amazon, which is that I said if things do get particularly tight, because again, Jassy is all about AWS. That is what's making the money. Everything else is sort of like, you could see why you would start with like the Kindle Fire. There are the little Alexa devices that plug into TVs that just are not like necessary. One of the things I said was if things do get really tight at Amazon expect Andy Jassy to cut a bunch of those big Bezos Hollywood projects,

the billion-dollar shows on Amazon Prime. So I feel like if that company really moves into true austerity, then that's where we'll see it. But I don't think anybody, I don't think any industry is contracting its hardest deck right now. Yeah, crypto is collapsed. Tech is tightened. If you put those in the same bucket, I do not because they act so differently. Those two, I think real estate is happening as we speak. Real estate's happening. That's true. Real estate's happening. Wall Street and Finance was happening. Redfin had a richlymouth. Yeah.

And then I understand for my friend in Hollywood, he said the last six months, every single streamer is on pause. And so they were pitching something and they said, don't even bother pitching us. We have to digest what we have. So to your prediction, my friend who's a director in Hollywood,

and I was at a party and he had a bunch of his friends there, they were all lamenting, oh, no more cash coming in. So almost like startups, they operate, you know, like, hey, I got a script. You want to option it. Hey, I got a project. You want to develop it. All of those checks have now stopped. So they're looking at, well, what checks did I get in the last two years? I got to make those payments coming to me, you know, last. And so this is how an overheated market on wines. Government seems to be a place where we don't see any of our serious measures happening yet. I haven't heard of any cuts in government agencies or pay cuts or, you know, belt tightening. And so we'll see if that happens next. That would be an interesting one. I always said, when these last four or five big companies do their layoffs, that's when we know that's like right before the bottom. And so here we are, Facebook, Amazon, and now we wait, Google and Apple. Hiring Freeze, Google, I think hiring freeze.

Let's see if they make actual rifts, I suspect. What we'll see before the end of the year is Google do a full-on riff. And I don't think Apple has the guts to do it. I think they have too much cash, they're too profitable. So I think what they'll do is performance-based, as we call them, gentlemen's layoffs, too proud to actually make a cut. So they just cut people based on performance or not coming back to up. Or they just don't need to.

I mean, that's what's so interesting about this, right? It's like there's contagion. And then there's like, it's like, it's totally fine to say when things are tough, you look at the parts of your business that are not that necessary. And you might be like, you know, it's just not like devices has never been our core competency. Maybe it hasn't taken off like we thought, you know, people aren't using their echo for anything but weather and timers. Not profitable too, right? And not profitable. Exactly. People, they might be selling a ton, but I don't know what profits there is and selling echoes.

But like, other than that car project, is Apple doing a single thing that's not profitable? No. They're super profitable. So like, why cut? Like, I'm sort of just like, if you don't have, there's like, there's the like pure pressure factor. That's the contagion part. And that Wall Street expects it. So I guess the question would be if the stock is not right. then that would be the reason to cut. So I think Amazon stock has been getting clobbered, and this would be an effort to make the stock rebound, to show Wall Street, hey, we take austerity measures in the bottom line,

because the bottom line is contracting a bit, so if growth is slow. But I think everybody's now scared of this double-dip recession because we did have 2.6% growth in the third quarter. I think everybody expects negative growth the next two quarters. I just don't understand how we're going to have a recession if there's 10 million job openings. I'll tell you a story, an anecdote. if I can, Molly.

Dot com bust happened. And there was a really cool digital magazine about digital filmmaking in the 90s and some blogs in this company and my friend's company. And there was somebody who was like the art director. And I was going out with my then-fiancee, now wife, mother of my three beautiful daughters, and we went out for Thai food. And the server comes up and I look up and I say, hey, oh, I'm going to just make up a name here. Jane, she looks at me and it's the art director from this company. She looks at me and she

said, oh, Jason, Jade, how are you doing? I'm so ashamed that you're seeing me as a server. I lost my job at this, you know, dot com. And I looked at her. I said, I was a waiter from the age of 10 years old to 22 when I started the magazine. I learned to be ashamed about being a server's like, good work. She can get it. And she, she like got cheered up. stood up and gave her a hug. And that's the humanity that's happening right now is I think there's going to be a lot of people. I wonder if that's what's going to happen right now.

That's what I can't figure out. There's 10 million jobs, Molly. Are people going to have jobs? Are they going to take six months off and do like little stacations with their six months severance? Or they make the six months severance last for two years by making austerity cuts as an individual. Right now, every potential new hire

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you give me you something for free. It's very hard to understand this recession. It really is. I agree. I think everybody who says they do is lying because it doesn't, it is not following normal patterns at all. I think we can say without question that once you have layoffs in just tech, numbering in well into the tens of thousands, right?

Like we're close to 50,000 total layoffs. That's in the last two weeks. It's got to be hundreds of thousands. It's got to be over 100. Yeah, hundreds of thousands since the beginning of year, I would say. Exactly. And so there's no, so that, so all talk of, you're all going to be fine, soft landing for everybody.

That's out the window. Like, that's just not, that's not going to be the case. So we are going to see a real disruption and dispersion, kind of, you know, similar to the dot com crash to 2008. Like, the tech industry had a bit of a lost, and not even the industry, the individuals. Individuals, yeah. People had a bit of a, like, I feel like I had a bit of a lost decade where my salary was

kind of stagnant for five or six years. Wow. And I suspect that that something similar is likely to happen. The good news is, not like there's any inflation. Oh, wait. Right. Oh, wait. Your salaries sideways for five years as inflation is whatever it winds up being, you know.

Yeah. Spending more at the pub and spending more on whatever. It's hard not to see. I mean, you are definitely going to see a lot more like there's been, you know, class-based rage. And I think that's, that's only going to continue because you're going to see companies that were profligate, that just, you know, overhired, that were undisciplined, that threw money at things.

And then they, all of these tens of thousands employees end up being the sacrifice. And then you have like Bezos out here saying today, I'm going to give away my $127 billion to charity. I'm not going to say how. And I have no history of doing this so far. didn't sign the giving pledge, but I'm definitely going to. And it's not even a reasonable comparison between his fortune exactly and layoffs at Amazon because, you know, I'm not even in charge. But just expect so much more of that.

The optics, certainly today, I saw somebody tweeted like the two screenshots. There might have been Ian Bremmer. Like everybody did. Yeah. And it's like, okay, same day, this happening. And, you know, obviously that's, those are two separate events. And one of them is laudable and one of them is necessary. But certainly optics wise, it's like, oh, well,

Well, instead of, why don't you just not fire those people and be a little less profitable? But if the stock crashes, obviously, that's not good for anybody who's at those companies. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, just expect that. I don't even, I'm not even cheering for it. I'm just saying, expect a lot more of that. There's because people will feel resentful.

Yeah. If, in fact, they don't land on their feet, you know, and don't find a job. Because, you know, it's so weird to have a recession where we're not having, when all these jobs are available, and, you know, people are still spending money. I was talking to another person who is in a delivery business. And they said in the United States, people are still doing, you know, delivery of food. In Europe, it slowed down a little bit, they said.

People are now maybe picking up their food, looking at home. So expect that as well. You might see people who are delivery businesses. You know, people will just maybe, I'm going to do one less DoorDash, one less Uber Eats, one less postmates per week or month, right? So it's all happening. It is. As it were, it's all happening.

I was looking up the year-to-date stock charts, stock price charts of Apple and Amazon to see if I could use them to make a bit of a prediction on Apple in particular. Because you do see this dip in spike model that isn't too different. Like if you were to look at this chart and compare it to Amazon year to date. Yeah. Amazon maybe has a little bit more of a steady decline, but it's not that different. So if stock price alone is the reason, like, yeah. But that doesn't, yeah, I don't know.

Well, this is going to get, as I had said about my Facebook prediction that they'll start buying back their own stock at these low prices, that's also going to put an interesting rub in here. Hey, you're laying people off, austerity measures, buying back your stock at low price. But the good news is, if that all is happening, what that means is the companies will become stronger, then they'll hit more earnings and profitability, and then we will change the mindset from one of scarcity to one of abundance. And so this is just for people who are going through it the first time. This is how it goes. People get really scared. People then clench up.

They cut spending. They try to understand their spending. They look at all units. I did this recently. I just told them, hey, tell me every SaaS piece of software we're working on. Tell me every reoccurring charge on our credit cards. Let's see if we're can clean some of that up. So in a time like this, that's what business owners do. And so, and I've seen it in some SaaS companies, some SaaS companies that had low product market fit with some of their customers, had people churn. And so, you know, you're going to see SaaS businesses churn.

You'll see people cancel consumer subscriptions, 10, 20%. And so now you have that headwind. Plus, you have to work harder to get each sale. Each sale might be lower dollar amount. So it's just going to be work. And this is the process. The good news is all these people will start. companies. And that's another way that after the fire rips through, you have the new seedlings,

right? So you have this crazy forest fire. It's part of nature clearing out the brush. And then all of a sudden new, new oaks, new evergreens, new redwoods will start growing. And starting tonight, November 14th, I'm teaching Founding University week one. And I was in there. And I, you know, despite all this like negativity out there, Molly, I spent a couple hours last night, instead of binge watching TV, just decided I would, you know, just do a little chat room with some of the founders for Founding University. And we're using a cool piece of software called Circle. It's kind of like Slack plus Notion. And I'm evaluating all the software, but it's kind of neat. Like they're, I wish Notion and Coda had chat rooms in it. But the idea of having like a chat room associated with the page is going to be coming.

So that is something I'm really interested in. And I was just talking to founders. And it's just great to see people who are working at other companies quitting and starting companies or at night moonlighting and learning how to start startups. That is the viable option. Instead of sitting around, which are, you know, sitting on your hands, why not put those hands to work? If you do get laid off, find two of your friends. If you're builders, if you're just idea people, you know, you probably want to learn a skill beyond ideas. Those are the first people to get cut. The marketers, HR people.

Like, if you could actually build a product, you know, I'm talking about just if you want to, do a startup, right? I'm not saying those aren't skills, but to actually be able to build a product is like the ultimate skills. I think we like to invest in builders. There are plenty of people who are able to start startups and do and outsource their dev

and, you know, I mean, there are a lot of idea people who can run great businesses who don't necessarily have to know how to code. They don't. I'm going to push back on that one a little bit. Just say like, look, you have a preference for a reason, but also like

the Liquid Death guy is a brand ninja. Right. So it can happen, especially for serial founders. And in a hot market, investors will, you know, back idea people. The biggest piece of advice I can give you is even if you learn no code or growth hacking, specifically those two skills or product management being able to build designs in Figma, those three, you can learn. Developing is not for everybody, but those other three, growth, product management, and making Figma designs. If you do those three, UX, you can learn those in six weeks. weeks, 12 weeks. And if you do those, it'll signal to investors, angels that you'll have product velocity without product spend. And that's what's attractive. So I'm just, I'm not saying those people Yeah. I mean, to be fair, you shouldn't just sit there being like, I have a super idea like a queen or whatever. And then like someone go do it. There's something in between. There's something in between the two statements here. I'm trying to just get. We're not saying that you have, if you don't know how to,

you know, if you don't know how to like literally build your product from scratch and be in the code, don't even bother because that's, I think, not quite what we're about. The thing that has happened that I notice is for just for the part of this week and startups that startups is during a hot market, you could have three idea. People start a company, raise a million or two million bucks. And you're like, okay, yeah, one's, you know, all three. None of them are actually building the product or product expertise. And the market might allow that.

That when the market contracts like this and people really clench up and they're going to invest in one startup every quarter instead of one a month, the one that, the one that they'll pick will be the one with the builder founders and the two they'll pass on will be the one with the idea of people. So I'm not saying two journalists learn to code and trolling them, but learn to code. No, I mean, copywriting is a valid skill. I'm a copywriter myself. But yeah, I also like to mix it up. So just learn those skills if you can and your chances of or find two people to be your co-fitt. That's the other thing. It's a solo co-founder also is going to become less attractive in this market, having three co-founders, two of which are builders,

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Well done. Another tip in case you don't already know is don't fall for giant crypto hustles. We're just going to do a fraudster. Don't be a fraudster. Don't unpack it. Don't steal your customers' money. We just keep coming back to this over and over and over. We're going to go back in a minute to a story about consumer spending,

but we just have to check in a little bit on everybody's favorite mini-series, docudrama, if you will. The Young and the Bankrupt? The Young and the Bankrupt? Let's see. Over the weekend, over the past 40 hours, several other exchanges experienced, like I think BlockFi maybe just went under. Because everybody, there was a bank run.

Crypto.com experienced a run as everybody was trying to sell and cash out. Oh, yeah. Like, I wasn't aware of that. Some other small exchange was like, yeah, we're not sure we're going to survive the pressure because, you know, people are selling. They're just like launching these runs everywhere. Finance started coming to the rescue, Sam Bankman-Feed style. Okay.

And then as for everybody's favorite little micro-dosing, polyamorous weirdo, He has. No, I mean, if you're Polly, more power to you. Fine. Totally fine. All cool. All cool. And if you're microdosing with a therapist, maybe okay, but the speed thing was the thing I got concerned about. Did you see that?

Yeah. Then he was just like doing speed constantly, constantly. But he was also telling his team to do speed? Is that the room to do it? Exactly. He was living in a Bahamas penthouse and they were all sleeping together. And I'm sorry. That's, that's salacious.

but do you really expect me to walk on by? No, I mean... It's not a marker for fraud, but it's salacious as hell when you're putting together your movie script. And probably not the best way to run a corporation. So if you are living in a commune, hippie, whatever, that's cool,

but maybe not start a company in that because that kind of gets crazy. I mean, for example, when we are talking with founders and we meet married couple founders. Yes. Right? It's not a huge red flag. but definitely disclose it

and it's a notable it's something to have a discussion about thing right like what happens if you break up do you have a plan? Do you have a plan? Yes. For what happens to this company and a divorce kind of thing. So if you got 10 of them Yeah, that's a bit of a matrix

is it not like it's like hey we have Hey HR we have to disclose something A and B B and C and D D and A and F F B C D D is like what? It's like okay I learned

this phrase actually from Ed Zitron as this has been unfolding, which is a polycule, which is a romantic. Like a molecule. Like a molecule, but it's a polycule. And it is considered to be a romantic network or subset of relationships within a romantic network. And he just keeps tweeting constantly about his obsession with the polycule situation. Anyway. I'm sorry, man.

I'm just so old school. And then somebody was like tracking a jet and trying to figure out if he had like fled to Argentina and then he showed up in an e-sports tournament. And then... That was the one I saw. Yeah, this is getting crazy. This morning, right? Is when the tweets began? The tweets is the thing that is a cry for help.

And I, now I'm going to be a little bit more serious because if you were writing this, if my judge was writing this as like, you know, like the comeback season of Silicon Valley, it would be so unbelievable, people would tune out after the first episode, right? This is just too crazy. Yes. As crazy as Silicon Valley was, it looks completely... realistic compared to what's happening. You wish.

You wish you had thought of this storyline. Exactly. But now we are reaching the point of concern about the health of this young man. Yeah. So if you're on speed, just knowing the history of speed, Edie Sedgwick and Andy Warhol's factory,

the Nazis were on speed and amphetamines. You can look that up. I watched a documentary on that. Speed is like one of the worst possible drugs. Now we have speed being given to people, kids, adults, it's been getting prescribed at it, you know, and no judgments here for people who are been prescribed, you know, whatever, Adderall, whatever thing. But there is a serious amount

of abuse that can occur here. These are serious drug speed. And in fact, part of the homeless or reticent to call it homeless problem, people experiencing homelessness as a result of drug abuse as a result of mental illness, whatever combination tragically is happening there, Methamphetamine and people smoking meth is the same thing. Honestly, it's all in the same rubric. Speed makes your mind go crazy. It makes you super agro.

It makes you do stupid. This is a- It also makes you feel unbelievably confident. Like people, you know, like what happens is that people take this and they feel like they took the limitless pill and they're getting everything done. And they're like crushing it and the blah

and the confidence goes through the roof. And, I mean, they say that they come out of it later and look at the quality of work they did and are like, oh, my, that's terrible. but they think that they're just, that they can do no wrong. And, you know, stop me if that sounds familiar in this story. Yeah, I'm just going to put it out there. You know, if you were a friend of mine and you told me, you know, you were thinking of getting on any of these speed, you know, even prescription stuff, God forbid, stuff that's illegal.

I'd stop you, I'd sit you down. And I said, let's talk through this decision. This could be a very bad decision. and I have had a dozen friends who have been put on stimulants and I think out of them now, I'm talking over decades, like since I was in my 20s, I've had friends. I think maybe nine out of 10 have told me it was the biggest mistake of their life.

They regret it. They lost portions of their life to these drugs. And again, your mileage may vary. But when somebody starts tweeting out like acronyms or like what he's doing right now, this to me seems like a psychotic break. I don't think it's trolling. I think there's a good chance that this kid could kill himself, God forbid,

or do something terrible that he regrets. Somebody needs to sit this kid down and check on him. If this is, in fact, him tweeting from his own account, I'm deadly serious here. People make really bad mistakes under pressure, like this level of pressure. So he started tweeting, one, what? That was 15 hours ago at the table.

Then an H, then an A, then a P, then a P, then an E. So obviously he's going to type, what happened or what's happening. This is, you know, this is like Kanye level disturbing behavior. And we see social media is the, the canvas for people who are under,

you know, severe mental distress. And somebody's got to come for this. And his parents need to go there and pick them up. I don't know where his parents are, but get out of a plane and go pick up your son. I'm not joking. Like,

this is serious stuff. Or maybe he's in jail and this is somebody else, or maybe he's been picked up already and this is somebody else. I don't know. What is your take on this moment? I don't know. I mean, I think there's no question that at some point, we had a very similar conversation about Doe Kwan when he was on the run and tweeting, you know, all kinds of bizarre things. Like, it is a not unexpected response to having your entire empire come crashing down and potentially authorities coming for you, I guess, to kind of fall apart. I think we just have no.

I think we just have no idea. We just have no idea. And I saw the penthouse. It's a weird thing. You put his penhouse up for sale. 40 million dollar penthouse looked terrible by that. It did not look like 40 million dollars. I wouldn't pay $4 million for that.

Gross. Plus it's been home to a polycule for however long. So I'm just saying. Yeah. Oofa. I think that there's, it's really interesting, right? Because you see these tweets, which seem to represent somebody who's not okay.

And then you see, these very specific actions. Like he put his penthouse up for sale. Right. Which is a, you know, so logical. Which is logical,

which is in control of yourself. Like, I just am not 100%. You may be absolutely right. About what the tweets represent. It could also be a giant troll. If he's also putting his penhouse up for sale and he's showing up in e-sports tournaments.

I don't really know. But I do know like a lot of people have lost a lot of money and it appears that he was doing it at least on some level on purpose. I mean, this is the equivalent of if, imagine Bernie, Bernie Madoff or Elizabeth Holmes was like tweeting cryptic messages and Bernie Madoff was putting his, you know, penthouse or his Hampton's home for sale,

doing this all while people had their accounts frozen, had lost their wife's savings. I mean, we have to remember. I'm not trying to be super cold here. Like, I know I'm usually the mom in the room. Right. But like, sure, go pick them up and get him some help or whatever. But none of like, none of what he did.

was the result of us. Like, he took a bunch of drugs and he stole customers money. Allegedly. And now he's on the run. Allegedly. Allegedly. Allegedly.

Allegedly. Allegedly. Anyway, we'll keep. He tweeted about the drugs. That one's totally true. He actually just tweeted that. He did tweet about it. Yeah.

A year ago or something. It could be prescription drugs. It could be under a doctor's care. Oh, no. I mean, a year ago, he tweeted about how like you got to do it. He was like, oh, yeah, you got to keep yourself in a constant buzz all the time. And then you take a down for this and then you take it up for. Yeah.

I mean, like. Just this terrible advice. By his own admission, the drugs part at least. Let me give people some advice here, what worked for me. I slept like a baby last night because I ran for like a mile and a half. I got my heart rate up. And then I did three sets of reps on my tonal. Shout out to Pelotonin, Tonal, not sponsors of the pod right now.

But, you know, I did like a hardcore workout. I just said, hey, let me do like one or two more reps. I need one. And my body went to bed like a baby. And I put on my blade runner. I have a Blade Runner, I have a Blade Runner playlist, like a Tears in the Rain playlist. on a YouTube, like two-minute soundscape, you know, these soundscapes.

And I use those on com.com and on my Blade Runner on YouTube. You find the one you like that works for you and just get some goddamn sleep, people. How about that? How about you drink a glass of water? You get some sleep. You work out. And then you go hang out with your friends. And, yeah, I hope you're sharing this advice liberally with your other friend.

All my friends, good. Equal advice. Get some sleep. Always good. Drink some water. Get some sleep. Get some sleep, everybody. Okay, you know I've been on a health kick over the past year or so,

and you know I care about optimization and data-driven solutions. So if you listen to this podcast, I bet you do too, right? And so let me tell you about FitBot. It is a data-driven workout app. And it blends machine learning with exercise science. So they will create for you. I kid you not, a custom dynamic program based on not only your fitness goals, but also your experience and what's the available equipment.

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I want to hit my chest, triceps and abs. But I'm staying at an Airbnb with no equipment. FitBod creates a perfectly optimized workout for you based on these parameters, right? Very simple. FitBod takes the guest workout of fitness. just open the app to start making progress. You're going to get 25% off your FitPod subscription, or you can try the app out for free when you sign up now at FitFod.me.

slash twist. F-I-T-B-O-D. dot-M-E slash twist for 25% off. One of the great companies in my portfolio, some of the greatest founders I've ever worked with, go check out FitFod. Me slash twist for 25% off. Let's talk a little bit more about an industry trend that seems to represent some consumer spending trends.

So, you know, mobile gaming yeah I know mobile gaming yeah pretty big industry like 90 billion dollars a year and for a while it was just like it could do no wrong like you will just build mobile games forever

and everybody will continue to make money and it will be amazing but even the mobile gaming industry is now starting to see a slowdown primarily because of the collapse of the digital ad market so okay that makes sense the free versions of these games that sometimes my daughters like to play them you know I give them a little iPad time

if I have like a little technique here you probably didn't have to go through this Molly because your kid missed this did they did your kid miss I don't know what's this what's the strategy oh sorry my strategy they want to get the iPad time so I said okay we're going to have an art contest

all three daughters one hour of art and I just come up with some idea I would like you to make a painting or arts and crafts and craft project and that I'm going to rate them on a scale of 1 to 10 based on my favorites and the clock is ticking. I set the time timer at an hour.

And if you do that, you get an hour of screen time. They come back. The amount of art I am having my oldest here from my daughters is going through the roof and they're so proud of themselves. And you'll be amazed. You'll be amazed that when dad rates these, the last three times, it was a three-way tie of 10 out of 10 each time. I can't believe it.

Yeah, because I am a connoisseur of art. And I'm like, oh my God, the composure, the color of this, 10 out of 10. And they just go crazy. So adorable. And they're like, Daddy can't hold me tens out of tens. Give us different ratings. I'm sorry, I'm being objective. As an art critic, these are tens of tens.

Exactly. But this makes sense to me because I got them Apple Arcade. Speaking of Apple. And it's included in my Apple bundle. I have the Apple bundle. I got the family plan. They all have Apple Arcade. And if they want a game,

I say, go to Apple Arcade. You know why? They take out all these stupid ads. Right. And there's not like weird spyware and they're just aimed at children. Like there is on all Android games. However,

interestingly, we are seeing mobile gaming, which of course depends on the advertising industry. That industry, the advertising industry, strength 7% in the second quarter according to data from Nielsen. All the gaming companies,

you know, the whole industry has been hurting. Roblox is down 67% year over year. Take 2, which owns Rockstar, which does Grant Theftado, NBA2K, is down 41% year over year. Unity is down 84.5% year over year. But it's this mobile gaming one that is just this kind of huge hit. Like Q2, mobile gaming revenue fell 9.6% year over year to $11 billion. Downloads fell 2.5%.

And it's just this kind of perfect storm, I guess. of the ad industry collapse and maybe people like leaving the house? Yeah, well there's probably people were probably you know, the reopening doesn't hurt year over year statistics

so you'd have to look back two years pre-pandemic in 2019 what were these companies doing? I'm sure their consumption is way up overall from that. But this is where subscription revenue versus advertising revenue can be a nice blend.

So if you can blend the two like the New York Times has done successfully or now we see Netflix trying to do Netflix had subscription. Now they're trying to add ads. Other businesses had ads, and they try to add subscription. Having multiple at scale, having the dual revenue streams can make the business a little more formidable. I tend to like the subscription business is better.

I wish these games were just more subscription-based. And I just hate advertising in a video game specifically. I don't mind a nice, classy ad for things that are targeted. I kind of like them, in fact. I find Google ads. Sometimes when I do a search, if I'm searching for like a SaaS company, the Google ads to me are better than the organic results. Why? I know those people are seriously strong businesses who want me as a customer.

And so I kind of like, I see it as a signal that they're trying to spend to get in front of me. Same thing if I'm, you know, buying a car. Like I want to buy a, I want to get rid of the minivan and I want to buy like a SUV. When I was doing searches, I was getting really like, okay, these are the dealership. that probably really want my business. I can probably close a deal quicker with them. So anyway, I consider it a bit of a signal. It's just tough to be in the mobile gaming industry.

I know VCs are now starting to dabble in it, but it's a hit-based business. You really need the subscription-based ones in order to make this great. Yeah, I had our producers pull. There was some interesting data from Pitchbook from 2016 talking about the top investors in the space. And I just thought this was interesting,

like as a historical look at what, startups did. So in like between 2010 and 2016, 514 mobile gaming companies got BC backing, including seven that raised more than $100 million. And I totally want to go find out which ones those were. Even then, activity was waning. It was really like 2010, 2011, that all of that money was going. But it made me wonder as like a baby VC Sunday school situation. If a bunch of money went in 2011, 12, 13, 2016, what what does that mean? mean for those funds if these mobile games and companies are collapsing now. Probably most of them already got acquired or had some sort of exit, I would imagine,

because there was so much consolidation. The theme here was some of these really boomed in such a major way. And you can always tell by the number of edge thing. Remember clash of clans that game, which was kind of farmville. So you had Zinga, then you had Super Sal, Zingo went public, Supercell got bought for $8 billion. You had the Angry Birds Maker. So Angry Birds was the other one that did very well for a while.

And so a lot of those companies got sold, right? Rovio. I'm not sure if Rovio got sold or not. But I do know Clashel fans and Zinga, you know, all had great exits. And so that's what happened. And Roblox, of course, and Minecraft. So there is money to be made here. Mm-hmm.

It happens in two ways. Either you have a hit, like League of Legends, like Minecraft, or you have sort of, I should say you have a hit or you have a platform. Hit or platform. Minecraft and Unity.

These things were platform plays, so was Roblox. And Zingo was a platform as well. Many games under one platform that they built out. And then some of them are just hit-based businesses. You get like a legal legends. I think it's a hit-based thing.

So it can work for VCs. It's a hard business. Most VCs have shied away from it. And I think if you're a founder, if you're one of those people we just talked about who's going to go found a business or startup, found a startup,

make it subscription based. Probably do not come to anybody with an ad-based business right now. Yeah, I mean, you can have it as a backup. I agree with you, I go subscription.

I think the really clever thing is the wordels of the world, those kind of like very simple to make games where, you know, that are not capital intensive. When you're trying to make these tier one,

games, I think they call them, you know, the call of duties. You're talking about spending hundreds of millions, you know, high tens of millions. So when you start getting $50 million in, in order to find out if consumers like the product, that's super dangerous for VCs. But if you can build a game, like a puzzle game or a clash of plans or a, what's the one that everybody is addicted to that's like little puzzles. I've got the name of it. You know, like your aunt plays it and they can't get enough of it. no it's like that but it's like you know they have like cut the string kind of games it's like oh yeah i see those all the time the ads for them there's like oh there's like they're like like bejuled yeah your aunt plays bejeweled i see them and like i see i used to see missa mayor and i candy crush candy crush that's it those kind of games are not too especially back in the day marissa mayer and i used to of yahoole of google fame we used to play bejewed and we were since we were friends we would like be on leaderboards and we were like when we'd see each other. We talk about our bejeweled strategies.

Like, I was like, it was like Auntie Marissa Mayer. Yeah, I was like, Auntie J-Kow. Oh, but like, but like I think a lot of that, yeah, Candy Crush is the one I'm thinking of. Those kind of ones are. Candy Crush. Interestingly, I would have wondered if it was, I would have thought it was like Flesh with Cash because recently Candy Crush like,

blanketed the skies of New York with a big drone ad for Candy Crush. In fact, a guy I know was like furious about it. And he was like, hello, FAA. Like, you shouldn't be, you know, you should not be allowing people to pollute the skies with this giant billboard or whatever, but maybe it's because they're actually, their revenue is declining. I don't know.

Yeah. They're like, hey, everybody keeps playing Candy Crush. I played a lot during the pandemic and then stopped because. This stuff's mad addicted. I had a three's addiction that I've been dealing with. Yeah. I know Sam Bankman Fried has been, you know, dealing with his speed addiction.

I'm dealing with my three's addiction. I love those like speed and threes games. And I play it with my daughters too. Because it's like a math, alleged. We play this math. Self-admitted. I don't know. You know what I love as a segment that we do here? We live in the future. W-L-I-T-F.com, which will become its own series

at some point. We Live in the Future is going to become its own show. I'm going to get a streamer to buy this, Mottling. We love it. We do it here as a segment. W-L-I-T-F. We live in the future. This is where we talk about a product or service that seems like science fiction, but has actually become reality thanks to entrepreneurs and startups. What do we got to

Yeah, love this one. So we talk a lot on the show about how like VR is super cool, but kind of niche. And you really have to have a reason to put the glasses on. And then we often say, and so do many, many others, that AR is the platform of the future. And on the theory that the future is here, let's look at this Shopify project. There have been lots of people attempting to nail augmented reality shopping. and this demo from Shopify, which is building a reverse AR shopping experience,

might have finally nailed it. So they basically create rooms around... Very nice. The furniture. So it's like, oh, here's a couch, but here's what the whole room would look like. Got it. Built around the couch.

Yeah. So this is great. You could do this with your phone. You don't need glasses. You take your phone out. You've seen this before. And it places a sofa in your room. But what this is doing is,

is it's not just placing the sofa. It then says, hey, you know, if you're doing the sofa, you might want to do the rug, a side table, you know, and whatever. So, yeah, this, these are great. Shows you how to style it, right? Which, like, currently, I think you actually pay designers for, which is kind of awesome.

There were, actually speaking of this, there were a number of virtual, what do they call the people who saw your home? Oh, here we go. What's a person? Do you sell your home? A designer. Interior design.

Interior designer. Yeah. I see. So, like, they just showed this couch literally just in a warehouse. Mm-hmm. And then built an entire room all around it.

And you can move it around. You can, like, imagine how you would decorate around it. Wow. I know a couple interior designers are going to be upset about this, actually, because they do charge for this. They do.

But I think what it will do is they'll just move to, like, you know, you use this yourself and then you come to us and we finish it up for you. So it's sort of like what I think is happening with AI. You might work on your logo or your album art for your podcast using Dolly or one of these services. And then you'll say, hey, here's what I want it to be. Can you finish this for me, right?

So I think what's going to happen is you'll say, hey, this is what I think looks good. and then you'll go to your interior decorator, and instead of them spending 25 hours on your living room, they'll spend five. Instead of charging you 25 times, whatever they get paid, I don't know, 50 bucks an hour, 100 bucks an hour. But there are now virtual ones of this where you just take pictures of your space

and then they will, you know, do it for you. So that's what, okay, so that was the missing piece. I didn't totally understand what the goal of this was. And now thank you for the notes. The concept here is that you scan your own home. Yeah. And then that information about the scan of your home is stored like in your glasses. And then when you're in the store and you look at the couch, you would just tap tap your glasses or activate this shopping app.

And then you would literally see your own home in these glasses being rendered all around this couch. So you would actually see what it's interesting. Yeah. So the opposite of how you go online now and you like upload a picture of your living room and then you see what the Wayfair rug looks like. it. This is like you shop in the real world with glasses on that have a stored image of your home. That is cool. That is the future. Yeah, the two startups in the space, I think, are Havenly's one, Moodys, M-S-Y, is the other. There's a number of these where you take pictures of your home and then they will design it and send it to you. So I don't know how much they charge, but it wasn't

absurdly expensive. I've never used it. I tried to get my wife to use it because I wanted to save money she wasn't having it. But yeah, you can have virtual consultations. And I think like if you're in your 20s or 30s and you got your first apartment or something, they can do this. This is pretty cool. The reverse thing is really,

the idea of being able to do this out in the world, I think is what is so compelling. It's like you're at a store. You have your presumably low profile AR glasses and you're just like, oh, boop, boop. That's smart. It's super smart for like physical retail. Good times, good times.

We do not know, by the way, if this has launched yet. I don't think that glasses exist at the size and... I think you're doing this through your iPad or phone. You hold up your iPad or phone and you see a rendered picture. Eventually, those will be through glasses, that are lightweight. And I am getting increasing signals from my network. I'll leave it at that, which, you know, if you have... talk to a lot of startups,

you're going to have a pretty good inside information. And I don't have this as inside information. I'm not making a J-trade on it. But I might want more Apple stock. Apple's product is kick-ass. And what's coming out next year is going to blow people's brains. That's what somebody told me, and I've had multiple people tell me like,

imminent, imminent, imminent, imminent. Like, it's coming, it's coming. And we've had people in the show say it. But now I'm getting it from startups. and people in the tech community, which means the last time this happened with the watch and the iPad. Right.

It's making its way to developers and they're starting to actually see. The developers are leaky buckets. So the developers tend to get access to this stuff first. So if your Apple, you look at the top 10 apps, you know, and you might say to one of the top 10 app builders, hey, we have a watch coming.

You can be sure if Strava's the number one app for sports and fitness. I don't know if it is or not. Apple then goes to them, brings them to a room. They only bring two people. They sign their life away, and they let them start coding in a room at Apple's headquarters, is how I was told this happens.

And boom, you start revving on some specs. And they start telling you, hey, here are some sizes for a device that we have not announced yet. And you're like, well, that device is like the size of a postage, two postage stamps. Like, where is this device going to live? And they're like, yeah, you can use your imagination. They kind of give you just enough information.

So I think that's what's happening right now. And if you're a developer or a designer or somebody who's working on this and stuff, you can feel free to talk to Uncle Jaco and give me some information. And, you know, I might be able to repay you at some point with information or, you know, a supportive tweet or something. I'm not saying that I would pay for leaked information. I would never do that. I'm just saying I'd love to have any more.

Conversations with people about their vision for the future. I'm going to leave it at that. I don't want you giving me. don't break any agreements you have. No. But I'd love to have a thoughtful decision about the we live in the future segment with people who want to whisper.

Yeah, like a little whisper network. That's kind of how it was now. A little whisper network. Not the kind of the kind of the other kind. No, no, no, no, no. No, I don't want that whispered more. Let's do. I think we have time for a quick startup of the day.

Please. There was a little complaining online. Hey, there's enough startups in this week and startup. So we're, we hear you. That's just people who, if I'm being honest, don't want us to bash on crypto. But whatever, we hear you. We hear you.

We hear you. Because it is and we think it's fun. So this is a super interesting startup of the day that of course, Rachel reporting found. Oh. Upkeep. Yeah. Upkeep is an app that lets users find book and pay for med spa treatments. Med spa, I think being this like middle ground between medical treatments and

spa treatments. Like things that just make you look and feel good. I'm talking about Botox. And fillers. Can we get a two for one being you? Can we get a two for one? And facials. I think we're kind of in the zone.

You can tell we're on re-stream today because we're like, ooh, boy. I think we're in the zone, Molly. Maybe we can get a two-for-one here. Can we expense this against advertising? Don't you think it should be a tax right now? Maybe. It feels like you should. Yeah.

Botox fine. Like, come on. I don't know. Mess with your, just messing with your face thing. But. Well, so that's what's so interesting is that Rachel and I had this exact conversation. She was like, I am not sure how I feel about, like morally about how promoting this app because it's like to help you find and pay for Botox, fillers, you know, facials, laser hair removal.

Sure. It's a one-stop shop for everything. The company raised $2 million in a seed round co-led by the Anthemis female innovators lab fund. There you go. And they're the 1517 fund. And it is true that for a long time there have been a lot of like coupons and you could go to this place and whatever. Like, you don't really want to mess around with your Botox provider. It is nice to know that the person with the botulinum toxin in a needle knows what they're doing.

Yes, it should be, there's a couple of things you don't try to save money. And one of them is sushi. And another one, jeans. Yeah, you're not trying to save money there. No. Yeah. And this is a place where you're not trying to save money. So this is not to save money.

This isn't like Rupon. this is just to find providers. Yep, and have like reputable places. It'll offer some suggestions to safe med spas, you know, you can't because, and again, even Yelp reviews, Yelp, I find to also be hit or miss. Like I like the idea that there could be and I don't know what kind of validation mechanism there is. But I'm curious, but it's sort of, it is like class pass kind of or there's like a couple

spa type subscriptions. This lets you do in-app booking so that you don't have to call. to make an appointment. And then Rachel had this fundamental question. Like, is it better for society to just have this all aggregated in one place? And I'm like, yeah. People are good. Like, people want to mess with their faces and people want to make themselves like younger.

So at least give them a nice place to find it all in one safe location. I guess. Yeah. I mean, listen, no judgments. If people, if it makes people feel better about themselves and it's not dangerous, I guess I'm okay with it on the margins. want to be more attractive, I guess, or it makes it more confident.

I'm okay with plastic surgery. I haven't had it, but maybe I need to. I don't know. I just like losing weight. I just think as a guy, like my face, like I just want to go Harrison Ford style.

You know, I kind of feel like if you get a little, I had to have like a little lymphoma removed on my arm. And like they had a plastic surgeon do it. And it's just like a little growth. And it's just, you know, like a little,

and it wasn't cancer or anything. So it was great. Okay. Yeah. But like they were like, oh, you have to see a plus extortion so that you don't have like a little tiny score. I'm like, what are we talking about? It's like two stitches. Who cares?

And they're like, well, you have like a little line there. And I'm like, why would I care? Like, if I was Harrison Ford, it would look good. But the imagery on the web, upkeep website is pretty funny. Like, look at this, uh, woman with the red hair. Like, look at that picture. What's going on there? God, getting a filler right in your face.

No. And she's just like really thrill. She's looking at me like she's dead inside. and then somebody with a bunch of bejeweled, a bejeweled hand is getting a green injection into a lips. This looks like some crazy horror film. I'm not sure about the art direction. That's messed up.

Okay, that's messed up. That is like some sort of insane, terrifying. She looks like a real doll. It's like a Blumhouse movie or something. I don't like this. Pull up, um, pull up if you would not mind. My absolute favorite influencer,

Julia Fox. Oh God. On this very topic today. A cup jabs. Today. On caught jams. We're going to need sound. We got to hear this because it's amazing.

Hub is booze. Oh, I did see this. This was trending. This is outstanding. And I just feel like it's a good time to drop this in. Well, this is her also with no makeup looking like a normal human. Mm-hmm. Except everyone's doing the bleached eyebrows right now, which are.

Just so you guys know. aging is fully in like fully dirty girl ugly um not wearing clothes that fit your body type just fully just wearing anything you want um all those things are in and if i see another product that says anti-aging on the label i'm suing i'm going to sue i'm going to sue because i'm going to age regardless of if i put the $500 serum on my face and you all know it and we know it so let's stop lying to ourselves. Getting old is hot. Okay, it is sexy. It is probably the sexiest time in life actually because being pretty and hot in your 20s is the f*** trenches, okay? And I'm not going back there. Like, she's such a fascinating creature and a fount of both like nightmare and wisdom. And in this

clip she's like aging is fully fully in you could see her over and over even like my approach I'm going Harrison Ford exactly so she was literally like you guys like she's like ugly is in wearing whatever the hell clothes you want that look ridiculous on you in aging is in and she's like I'm not putting your $500 serum on my face because it's not going to be anti aging I'm still going to age and I don't want to hear about it anymore and like F off basically Basically. And she talks about, she's like, that whole like being young and pretty in her 20s thing, she's like, that is the trenches. And I'm not going back to the trenches. I like it. I love her. Well, this is how guys thing, by the way. This is just, I hate to make, I hate to admit that genders are different on this program. I'm going to get myself canceled. But this is how guys always thought. We're, I mean, except for some guys in L.A. that I was hanging out with. And I was like, I don't know if I can be friends with you guys, because you're just a little too. You know, when you have like, guys, When guys hang out, like, when I moved to LA, all these guys were looking in the mirror all the time and like doing their hair. And it just, it was very weird as a kid from Brooklyn to see guys like frimping and all this stuff, like going to the bathroom.

And there were guys. Listen, again, no judgments. But like, I don't wear eye makeup. I mean, it's, I will tell you, tread carefully here. Because a whole new generation of people, the manscaped customer is like looking in the mirror. So I just, there's just a lot more. me manscarra. Upkeep overall. I'm not going to wear

a mascara. I'm not going to wear a mascara. I'm saying this now, but maybe you never know. Maybe I'll manscara. They look amazing. I like both of these things. I like balancing upkeep us the app with a reminder that other than devoting your whole entire life to how you look and bleaching your own eyebrows, like aging is fully in. It can be as ugly as you want.

I this is how guys think. Or not. Or not. Do whatever you want. You know what society likes? A weight loss story. Since I lost the weight, people like me a lot more. And people want to know how I did it.

People want to get me a hug. And I talk, I'm going to be on the Tim Ferriss podcast. I talk a little bit about weight loss in the Tim Ferriss podcast. So I reveal everything. But coming up. But I think if I keep losing weight, I add some muscle. I might be able to do a shirt off selfie next summer. And if I can do that, if I can get a Bezos Chimoth shirt off, I'm going to be good.

I'm going to be good. I haven't seen the Chimoth selfie. Like I just heard it referred to a lot of times. Oh, you ran into it recently? I did see it. Whoa. Yeah. I mean, that was crushing for me.

I mean, God damn, Chumot. He works, you know what? He walks sideways and backwards on a treadmill. I've been with him when he does it. He's like, he seriously puts in the work. And you know what? Here's how I feel. Revenge body, he's going to put in the work.

He can take a shirt off. I'm going to be, this is me next summer. I'm maybe 12 pounds. I'm like eight to 12 pounds away from the shirt coming. I mean, you can look, up here, up here, I'm just saying like, I know that looks like the white whale, but like there's some muscle coming out. I was like, I had my shirt up the other day. I was talking to my wife.

I was like, am I getting close? She's like, you're getting close. I'm like, how close am I to shirt off? Just don't forget the self-tanner is the thing. Like you're an Irish guy.

I'm Irish guy. You got to, you got to, the self-tanner is just to literally do otherwise a won't show. It's like trying to take a picture of a black cat, you know, you never get the definition.

I got a, yeah, I got to think it through, but like I need to, yeah, if I can just maybe add five pounds of six pounds of muscle and lose six more pounds of fat.

I am possibly at the right angle. It's not at all angles, but I could maybe get an angle in a lighting that could be the J-Cal shirt off selfie. We're within spitting distance now, folks. Put it on your calendars. Put it on your calendars. I'll do it here.

I'll do it here on this podcast. All right. I think that's enough show for today. I think that's enough show for today. Congratulations to Upkeep. And, yeah, just I don't know about the art direction. I mean, try it. That's the thing about art direction.

tip for founders. Yeah. I'm criticizing that art because it looks dystopian and crazy to me. But you never know. They could have done the right thing and tried five different versions of that imagery. And that one that's like shocking and crazy. Mm-hmm. Got the most click-throughs.

So that's what you need to understand. Yeah. Yeah. Go out on that limb. Go out on that limb because Gen Z probably likes it better than us boomers. All right. that's enough. You know what today?

Great show. Great show. It was a real Monday. Monday and not all dystopian big tech news. Exactly. We've got some startups in there. Yes. Love it.

Which is good. Which is good. I like the up-e. Back to basics. I might want to find out, maybe we need to take a meeting with that. You don't ever wet my beak on that one. I don't know. I have questions as well.

Because honestly, like this is a huge, all of this is so huge right now. Whether you want it to be or not, it's also huge. I've done the Botox. I'm not ashamed. Oh, you did Botox? You tried it? Yeah. I've tried it like twice.

And then I always forget, I always forget to go back. But did you, did anybody, let me ask you this. Did anybody notice it? I don't think so. Nobody noticed. Did anybody say, hey, you look great? I mean, I got it like nine months ago, so I worked here. Oh, okay.

I never noticed, yeah. I know, exactly. Nobody noticed. Because you get, here we call it Berkeley Botox. Like, they're like, these dermatologists are like, we do Berkeley Botox where it's like light. Light. Yeah. Did you notice a different?

shiny forehead. I definitely did, yes. Yeah. And in fact, now I'm noticing it wearing off. I'm like, oh, okay,

I can see the different. But honestly, like, do what you want, people? Like, I was like, I don't know,

I want to look at my same age. My friend has really big, my friend Brooke, it's been public about it on her Instagram. She, you know,

like the bags under my eyes that I have over years. She had those done. And she looks great. I don't know what that's all. Wow. Yeah, they do something with like your eyes.

If you get like old and you've got like, bags under your, your eyes. Like, mine aren't that bad, but I guess you can, you can get something done to get rid of the bags under your eyes. So she did that. Under eye filler, is that what it is?

Under eye filler. Okay, sure. What I, the only reason like that I, I, I had a hilarious moment with a, I was, it was like, me and my public radio producer, who's my same age, who was kind of a hippie. And then like, real young sound engineer. And real young sound engineer was like, women, like, I don't understand. why you get the Botox and you don't need it. It's just like beauty standards and the male gaze and da-da-da-da-da.

And literally like me and this other 40-something woman, we're just like, hmm, talk to us in like 25 years, sweetie. Yeah. Yeah. It's just I'm here for it. I think people. Real it in and the judging for just a minute. I am totally fine with people.

I think it's awesome that people are getting healthier. And as long as you don't become obsessed with the stuff. Like if you're like. Exactly. That's my concern is. I have one friend and I'm watching her face really change a lot on... That's when it gets weird. But I don't like that.

No. When you're... That's something with the lips is the place I see. Yeah, the fillers is yikes. The lip is a little much. Like when I see people with the too much lip action going on, I'm like, is that? And Jade's like, yeah. My wife's like, yeah, that's injections into your lips.

I'm like, I guess it gets, there's just a point where I think if you notice it, like, when I get my haircut, I'm like, just cut it. So nobody notices I got a haircut. That's what I have my instructions are, you know. Then once in a while I'm like buzz it. So I look like a cop and like, you know, I go really short. But most of the time I'm just like, yeah, just give like a little cleanup and that's it. So I think a little cleanup is my philosophy.

All right. Happy Monday, everybody. Good luck at your Botox. Anybody who's tuning in. And just use the promo code twist to get an extra 10% of your Botox. Get the Berkeley Botox. He's the pro code Molly. But you're great.

It's coming. It's coming. Thank you. Yeah. You know, all right. I'm pretty happy with my face. overall but it doesn't mean you can't like a little bit here and also we're on air I mean that's another thing to think about is I you know there's like a you don't know there's any

pressure here but Zoom made me just hate my own face and I think a lot of I bet that's partly why upkeep is like really popular right now is everybody who was staring at their own face on so long okay everybody thanks to all of our uh thanks for all the noties everybody who watch live if you want to watch live go to youtube.com slash this week in and hit the subscribe but then hit the bell. 206,000 of you subscribe. And we get, you know, three, four, five hundred people

tune in live. We try to do it around 10 a.m. every day, depending when we get to our desk in the news breaking. All right. Another great episode. Monday's show was produced by Rachel.

So Rachel gets credit today. Rachel reporting. Great job. Great job. See you tomorrow. See you tomorrow. Bye. Bye.