This Week in Startups - Bing to integrate ChatGPT, Microsoft’s first union + Flux Gourmet review with Lon Harris | E1651

Episode Date: January 5, 2023

M+J kick off the show by discussing the news that Bing will integrate ChatGPT into its search service. (1:21) Then they chop it up about ZeniMax forming Microsoft’s first union. (15:06) And then Lon Harris joins the show to review Flux Gourmet and chat about the economics of streaming (27:11) (0:00) J+M Kick off the show (1:21) Bing to integrate ChatGPT into search (13:30) Crowdbotics - Get a free scoping session for your next big app idea at crowdbotics.com/twist (15:06) ZeniMax forms Microsoft’s first union (25:45) Squarespace - Use offer code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain at https://Squarespace.com/TWIST (27:11) Lon, Molly and Jason discuss Flux Gourmet (41:31) Founder University 2-Day Intensive Course - learn more at intensive.founder.university (42:31) Starz cancels Dangerous Liaisons, Becoming Elizabeth and Step Up + the economics of streaming FOLLOW Lon: https://twitter.com/lons FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis FOLLOW Molly: https://twitter.com/mollywood

Hey, everybody, welcome back and happy Thursday. We're going to do a little bit of news, a little bit of lawn. We have a great show coming up. First off, we cover the announcement that Jason was right. I know. Once again, Bing Search is going to integrate chat GPT. One assumes, although one does not know for sure that Google is likely freaking out. We will also talk about the unionization effort at a gaming studio owned by Microsoft and the ongoing labor issues that are going to define 2023.

and beyond. Then, Lon Harris joins us to review another movie from A.O. Scott's top movies of 2022 list, Flux Gourmet. Jason, though, went rogue and watched his own movie. We'll talk about that, too. Plus, the economics of streaming and why some services are canceling titles. It's going to be a great show. Stick with us. This week in startups is brought to you by in crowd robotics. Great ideas can change the world. And crowd robotics is the fastest way to turn those ideas into code. Get a free scoping session for your next big app idea at crowdbotics.com slash twist. And Squarespace, turn your idea into a new website. Go to Squarespace.com slash twist for a free trial.

When you're ready to launch, use offer code twist to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. All right, Molly, it is Thursday. We got Lon coming on for streaming. But let's start with the big news. Yeah, the big news. I can't believe about it. how often I have to say this on the show. One more time?

We're only five days into the new year. One more time. You were right. You were so right on this one. Say more. There had not been a whisper of whether Microsoft was specifically going to integrate Open AI and its technology into Bing, its search engine, until Jason on the show said, I mean, to be fair, like, it had been thought, I'm sure.

But Jason was like, listen up Microsoft. Get this done by Q1, 2023. It's going to be part of Bing. It's going to be incredible. You were like, Google, get it done. Because Microsoft is coming for you. And they're going to put integrate chat GPT like features and open AI technology into Bing. And we were like, okay, we'll see.

And then not 19 days later, the information publishes a big scoop saying, hey, turns out, Microsoft is going to challenge Google by integrating chat GPT. with Bing Search and the bells are tolling for Google right now, potentially. Yeah. So, I mean, the question you have to ask is, did I have inside information or did I follow breadcrumbs? Did I have inside information? I mean, did you follow the breadcrumbs?

The breadcrums. It feels like a breadcrum thing. Okay, sure. That's one interpretation. You could either say JCal has inside information. Or, yeah. Or, boop, boop. Didn't make a trade.

or I could have followed breadcrumbs. Could be either of those. But the breadcrumbs were there. Open AI. Oh, so let's play the clip. So let's play the clip. We like a victory lap on this show. Yeah, we like that.

We'll get a victory lap for Jacob. I want to know the relationship between Microsoft search and OpenAI. I know this investments. I know all this other stuff. They're using Azure I understand as their cloud. I want to know if they have the exclusive right to search. I'm going to make a j-trade right now. I'm going to get out of my Google shares.

and if Google doesn't release a competitor in 100 days. I think Microsoft Bing has the exclusive on this for search. If that is the case, and if Google and Sundar do not release something competitive in 100 days, I'm selling my shares in Google, and I'm moving them to Microsoft. This could be the Google search killer. This is red alert for Google.

This should be an existential moment for Google. and I don't perceive them taking it serious enough. Look at this. That's hilarious. Thank you to my producers for giving me a little... Bravo. Anyway, listen. That's amazing.

It's so obvious. You know, and the branding writes itself, why search when you can get an answer? Bing, powered by chat, GBT. Why search when you can get an answer? This is going to F with Google for the next 24 months. Why search when you can get an answer? I mean, please tell me they're going to use that.

That's incredible. Why search can get an answer? I've trademarked that phrase. It's a service mark in use. So if anybody wants it, it's available for $1 million. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah.

I mean, I mean, Bing is now all of a sudden live in rent-free in Google's head in a way that has never happened before. Let's just, like, set the context here, too. So, Google search. I think we have the, the, we have the market share of each. I believe that Bing is second.

It's basically 85, 90% around the world. And Bing is second at 9% market share. That's probably, I remember that state. But I think globally that follows. And that's their largest competitor. Yes. So like, here comes Bing. So then the question becomes, is this going to work?

Right? So chat GPD we know has, so this is a way to get inside Google's head without question. It would potentially, especially if they integrated it and marketed it in the way that you just said for $1 million to payable to JCal, be an absolute murder bot, if you will, if it works. Like we know that chat GPT has confidently given some extremely wrong information. We know that the cost per search is really. high. It sounds like you and Keith Rabeoy had this same conversation recently about the cost per search. If the cost per search, you know, is a fraction of a penny for Google. So as Google, fixed cost of their network of computers, right, you know, stays about the same, right? You know, they may have to spend a little bit extra every year. You know, as a number of searches

increases, the cost per search goes down. But people are saying this might be like a nickel or 10 cents every time you have chat GPT do something. But of course, they're on Azure. And Azure is a fixed cost business as well. So Azure's like, well, we got all these computers set up. up. But the point is, you have to be able to make more per hundred searches than it cost you per hundred searches. If let's say it's a nickel, molly, 10 searches 50 cents, 100 searches $5. 100 searches, if you get one click per hundred searches, that means that one click has to be more than $5 for you to break even. So you can just kind of do the math here. But exponential technology, it'll keep going down. I agree. Obviously. If you come down in magnitude or two,

like it's got to go down 10 times and then 10 times probably, got to go 100. down. Well, and I think we talked about this when you made your prediction, too, which is that Google, Google, Microsoft, it's impossible to even talk about search without saying the G word. Like, that's, it is so crazy to even contemplate this future. But it seems to me that it's worth it for Microsoft to integrate this as a loss leader because they can also license this technology on the back end. Like, this is an interesting case where most likely do we think that Bing is going to make money. Like Google makes money when you click on stuff and they make money with ads.

Bing may move to a completely different business model, like a subsidized search business model where you get an answer. And then they just, they're to, and then this, every time you and I use it, it trains the machine so that as they license it for Azure and for enterprise clients and for, you know, the defense department, like it just gets more and more and more valuable. and we actually become like mechanical Turks. I got a really easy idea for you, Molly. You get 10 chat GPTs a month for free.

And then, if not, it's $6 a month, $49 a year. And then people pay for it. And when you pay for it, you have no privacy track. You have 100% privacy, nothing's track. And for 50 bucks a year, you get an answer as opposed to a bunch of blue links. Yeah. And, you know, you get 10 free a month. So if you want to hack it and create a new browser window and do incognito,

change your IP and play games, you can. Or maybe in other countries, you know, you're coming from another country, you get it for free, but in the, you know, developed world where people can afford it, you know, the highest cost per, you know, person, in America and Europe, you charge. And then everywhere else in the world gets it for free for now. And then you just, you know, slowly boil the frog and, you know, raise the prices or whatever. But there is an ad model here. So I said before, hey, listen, it's, this is existential for Google because they have the cost per click model. Here's a great model. If you have the free version, every three. answers, it plays a video first, a 15 second video with the five second skip ahead, you know, something like that. So between, let's say, every second or third query, while it's writing the query, which takes a little bit of time, it plays you a 15 second ad. So imagine an app on your phone, full screen, you say, hey, what are the best ways to do a holiday party like we did?

What's the best way to do a Christmas party that also includes Hanukkah and, uh, Festivus, right? I want to do something with all three. Boom, it starts giving you the answer. But before I gives you the answer, it plays your target commercial because it knows.

Right. Based on not what your query was, but the answer it's building. So if the answer, it's building, Molly. It could even do that within the answer. I remember, like, that was my feedback for chat chbt.

I was like, this would be perfect if I had links to buy all the things you recommend it. Sure. Boom. It could be out about links, can be affiliate. There's an affiliate.

Yeah. There's something about if you, the, instead of the, okay, let me, let me rephrase this. Imagine if the AI did two results.

One was the answer to your question, and the second was the best custom-built ad for you having read that answer. So the AI builds the series of links. And then you train an AI serving, like an ad serving AI. I mean, the thing we're not thinking about or the thing that I feel like people don't think about

very much when they consider the economics of this is that every interaction is also, a training exercise. And so every time you roll this out, you make it better. Like, you're outsourcing your marginal cost of improvement of the AI itself. Like, shut up. It's crazy. And this is where Google has to take the hit, cut 10% of their team, get some 10% in a room and say,

you have to get this out by this date. They've got to be more hardcore. He already said Sundar over and over again. We're not performing. People are not, people are phoning it in. You know, the whole Hoolie concept from Silicon Valley the H-R show was people F-off at Google and they hang out on the roof.

We all know that's true. Rest and fest. Anybody who sells our company at Google is like, yeah, I'm going to take four-year sabbatical at Google. Yeah. I'm going to do my laundry. Which sounds awesome, but those days are over. They really do.

I also understand some of the fears about doing this, which are that like, you know, there was in that Reddit thread, actually, the reasonable argument that Microsoft did try already rolling out like an AI-based chat bot and it immediately went full racist, sexist. There are going to be real concerns about algorithmic bias when you roll out something like this at a massive level to everybody. Because it is going to start feeding answers that are socially unacceptable based on

100 years of training data in which people have acted in unacceptable ways. Like, that's the Apple card. The Apple credit card is the perfect example. If you look at 100 years of data in your computer, you're going to be like, wow, ladies are crappy credit risk because women weren't allowed to have their own credit until like the 80s. So there's no record, right? So there's all that stuff that's going to be hard to correct for in a mess consumer product. Uncomfortable truths and uncomfortable bias in the existing data set. Both of these things are going to happen.

We might find out, you know, fat Greeks who are half-onounce. who are half Irish, their DNA results in them, you know, having lower IQ points of being worse at chess because you're going to have my chess app and you have my Greek heritage and my DNA. It's like people who are from Greece score 15 points less than people who are from, you know, England or from Egypt or from China on, you know, chess.

Like these are the things that will come out eventually. Right. They're flawed conclusions. Yeah. Based on... Some will be wrong conclusions and some might actually be uncomfortable truths, right? And this is just going to make the world. world lose their minds. I know.

I mean, that's what I mean. It is a real brand risk. And I would argue that that is one of the reasons that Google may have slow walk to this and that Microsoft has already been burned once by this. And they're going to have to be real careful. Yeah. I mean, and then there's all the IP issues and the lawsuits that are going to come out of this because if you're giving an answer and, you know, the party planning came from

Bon Appetit and 17 other magazines and websites that spent thousands of or hundreds of thousands of dollars collectively to do party planning stories. And those riders' content is now been ingested. And then you came up with that answer. Somebody's going to say, how did you come up with that answer? Show me. And that's going to be the uncomfortable loss. Do you have a great idea, but you don't have a technical co-founder?

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You got nothing to lose and you got everything to gain crowdbotics.com slash twist. All right, let's do five, four minutes on Microsoft's first official union, which is kind of interesting. because what we're seeing is the gaming industry starts the fight back. Historically, there's been a lot of reports, right? Of people not getting paid overtime, who are hourly people, or just mushugina and craziness. Oh, yeah.

The sprint stuff that they do. I mean, the gaming industry is sort of like notoriously abusive to its developers, its engineers. Because people want the job, right? Like, people are having affinity to working video games. They're like, oh, it's so fun. I totally want this job. And then it's like, cool, whenever a game is coming out, you'll work.

I mean, EA is notorious for this. Activision has had a lot of, like, social issues and complaints. Every day, shit, when they're on under the guns. 100%. 100%. Like, working on a movie, I guess. Like, if you're working on Top Gun and the movie's got to come out at a certain date, you know, like, it's going to become, everybody's got to work a hundred hour a week

to get this out to make it perfect. Right. So I think, so Zeni Max is what is unionizing. It's not, you know, it's not specifically Microsoft. It is a holding company of game studios that Microsoft bought in 2020 for $7.5 billion. It owns Fallout, Elder Scrolls, Doom, has about 2,300 employees, and 300 of the employees who work as quality assurance testers have voted to unionize in Maryland and Texas, which includes Doom makers in software, Arcane and Bethesda,

the teams that are behind Red Fall and Starfield, which are the big 20, 23 Xbox exclusives. This isn't a huge surprise because evidently it was part of Microsoft's deal when the FTC opposed, sued to block the Activision acquisition. Microsoft said, well, okay, one of the concessions will make in advance is that we promise not to oppose any unionization efforts at Activision. So presumably these employees saw this opening and went for it. Okay. Why do people join a union? They feel like they're being mistreated. When do people not join a union? They feel like there's a hot market for their talent and they're better off being a free agent. this is the dynamic, Molly.

I'm talking about on an individual basis. If you are at, you remember Gimlet had like a whole union thing and the reply, all people were like, we're all stars. We make the best, the number one show here. We do not want to be part of the union. We want to negotiate for ourselves. And they got semi-cancled inside the organization or high pressure like, oh, you guys think you're better than everyone. They're like, well, we are.

We are better. Look, here's our book of awards and here's our ranking. We don't want to be part of a union. We do not want our salaries to exist on a table and a chart somewhere because we're already off the charts. We don't, you know, and so like, and you know, Karas Swisher at the New York, she was never a New York Times employee. She don't want to be part of the New York Times union.

Yeah. She wants to, you know, negotiate directly, right? I suppose. Or anybody who is a high end individual, you want to have control. But if you have no power and you're abused, that's when people go towards this. Right. putting all that aside, that's the dynamic. So if you are making this decision for yourself, that's how you should make the decision. Am I in the top 25%? You don't want to be in the union

because you're going to be dragged down to the salary in the means of the other 75%. Yeah. If you're on the bottom 25%, F yes, you want to be in the union because you'll get pulled up. And a lot of times, I mean, listen, I can tell you, and I'm not going to name names here, but everyone knows where I worked or before. I can tell you that sometimes managers, although it is a huge headache when a union is formed and unionization happens because it can lead to lawsuits and it's a whole long contract thing and it costs you a lot of money in lawyers. It also makes your decision,

your jobs in some ways a lot easier. Yes. As a manager, because if somebody comes and is like, I'm a power law performer and I want a 20% raise. Yeah. They can be like,

I'm so sorry because we have this table. So unionization can be a fail for both the employees and the managers. And I sort of feel like, I feel like for companies, it's so easy to head this off. Like it really is because there is a fine line between asking people to come all in and work together on a project and then rewarding them and motivating them for doing that because there are plenty of people who really like to work really hard on something they care about. So then give them a freaking bonus or some equity.

Right. Yeah. If we had a billion sold units, everybody gets a week off. Everybody gets an extra brand, whatever it is. Come up with some incentive and make people feel like hard work is rewarded. People do this when they feel like they're, yeah. know, under the thumb and they don't have self, you know, any kind of like self-determination, autonomy, right?

All of these things start to come into play. There's also another way as a manager to avoid all this. Just fire the low performers and then reward the high performers and explain what you're doing to the team. These are our highest performers. That's why they have these titles and they have this consideration, these things they can do, these parking spaces, whatever the perks are. Totally.

And then this is the rest of the company. And then here's the people we fired. And we don't need to like dunk on those people, but they're not here. for a reason. And no dig to them. They can work at the post office or some other place, Target, I don't know, some other place where I don't know who has a lower standard than us. Or they might be fine at another company.

Like, let's not, you know, like, come on. They're not like, they have value, but they may use. But yes, bad managers refuse to acknowledge that some employees are better than others and manage accordingly. Good managers reward the people who work harder. And then it sets an example. But you still got to cut the bottom 10, 20%. That's what I think is missing in some of these cases.

So that you have this dynamism. But anyway, you're correct, Molly. The ultimate hot take here is yours, which I will build on. Managers love this. Managers love this because it basically, all of the employees who join these unions, they basically are going to a dormitory, putting themselves in a room and locking themselves in. You have now locked yourself in to the asylum. You are now on rails.

You have a limited career path. You have to play by the rules. You got to wait in line. You have to become level one, two, three, three, four, five, et cetera, et cetera. And you've got to climb the ladder. Managers love this. And this is what I heard from all the journalism CEOs, because I'm friends with them. They all tell me, Jake Al, this is the greatest.

starting salary at this company is now 48k. When somebody comes and they want 62K, we just point them to 48K. And then all of them are like, well, I guess that's what I have to do. The union says, the book says, that's the starting salary.

And in order for me to get to 62, I've got to put it in five years. Okay. And now it's easy. But there's another rub, what they also love about this. And this is to the movement against stock comp that Brad Gersher and people have been talking

about and remote work. Systems are dynamic. There are multiple systems converging at once here, like a superstorm, right? One of them is remote work. One of them stock compensation, right? I joined up. Stock compensation. And what is this unionization. What these unions are going to do is management's going to look. You're going to say, okay, unions, great. Okay. These are the new structures. Great. We have an office in India. Got an offer, you know, we got some group in, you know, these eastern block countries that are doing great. We got people down in Brazil now. We got the Mexico office.

We got this office and this other, you know, Manila, Singapore. What are their salaries? Oh, and do they get stock? They don't get stock comp. Their salaries are half. Can I see the work output? Okay, it's 67%. But they cost one third?

Great. Let's move this entire unit there. And that's where these unions in the media space, they were squeezing, trying to squeeze, the last bit of blood out of that rock of like failing media companies like BuzzFeed or vice and when the unions tried to squeeze BuzzFeed and vice

there's nothing left to give those are broken businesses so then the unions just like yeah we'll just lay off those positions or remove those to freelance positions or it's really fascinating we're at such a really fascinating

because it's sort of like the conversation about raising the minimum wage and it's like well all these companies will go out of business all these restaurants will go out of business if you raise the minimum wage and it's like well yeah maybe they

not to be awful, but they probably shouldn't exist. If they can't afford to pay people, right? Like, restaurants should probably cost more. And if they don't, they will go out of business, right? Or they'll find really, really low-price people to abuse. Oh, the right amount for me to pay to go out to eat is that that person needs to get paid 15 or 20 bucks an hour to be my server. And if I'm not willing to pay, you know, if that person serves three people an hour and

I'm not willing to pay seven bucks additional for my food, for that person, my pro a share of their salary, then maybe I should eat at home. Yeah. And we're going to be having that conversation about productivity right now, too. It's really, it's a weird, it's such a weird time. We're going to be talking about labor, like 2023 trend. I think we even said this in the prediction show. We are going to be talking about labor constantly.

It is like versus globalization. It's going to be a big story. And if you have any ideas around it, where you're having experiences inside your startup email producers at this week in startups.com, we live to hear about it. Hey, next up, it's Thursday. Let's talk to Lon Harris. Let's go with the lawnster. I was a movie I'm going to talk about.

I didn't say it during my review here, but I might have gotten a little emotional. Aw. Well, spoiler alert. When he talked about it, I was like, keep it together,

keep it together, keep it together. I'm scared to watch it because it's going to be an ugly cry. The movie I talk about, just to keep you from, you know, changing the channel,

I did cry at the end of the movie. Because I just thought about my daughters and my relationship with them and yeah, they're trying to be a great dad and it was just like, bink. And I was like,

oh no, I'm crying. I'm not supposed to cry. And I was like, oh, no, it's okay for me to cry. I'm not a toxic male. And then I have this whole thing in my head,

but I'm not supposed to cry. I'm supposed to be samurai jay cow. But it's okay for me to cry about something that matters to me, like my relationship with my daughter. So I was like, okay, it's okay to cry.

But this is what goes to run in the right now. It is, God, it is really hard to be you guys. It's hard to be a guy. You know, Molly, who's looking out for J-Cal?

He can't even cry. Thinking about it. And we're done here. Yeah. So, uh, next up, Lon. So, I mean, really. Like, you were so close. You were so close.

Hey, you know, who's looking out for Lon Harris? So close. Lon is coming up next. Listen, if you want to be an entrepreneur or you want to do a side project, Square Space is an amazing place for you to start. Why? Well, it's the platform where you can build or sell anything. I've been talking about Squarespace for a decade because it is the absolute.

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manage appointments great you want to take payments for content or for a product you can do that you don't need to hire an army you just need to go to squarespace.com slash twist and start a free trial that's all you need to do squarespace.com slash twist and make sure you use the offer code twist for 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain you can get your domain there at the same time we love you square space thank you uh on behalf of all the startups, capital allocators and tech enthusiasts who listen to this podcast for being our longest running partner. It means the world to us. Squarespace.com slash twist. Use the promo code twist, please. Hey, everybody. It is the first Thursday of the new year.

We have some unfinished business from last year. So we're working our way through some of the movies. Still, we're going to do two more, two more from the A.O. Scott list. Tantilizing title this week. Yeah. I'm excited. And then exactly. And then we have some streaming news and not a lot of time with launch. Should we start with Gourmet Flex? Should we just open there? I didn't get to watch it. So I have a confession. I didn't get to watch. I feel so I'll let you two go. It's really a shame we did not. I'm going to tell you about the one I did see. Okay. We should have recorded our pre-show. Well, Gourmet flex is the first one that I couldn't do. I had to turn it off. Flux Gourmet. I'm sorry. Thank you.

Flex Gourmet. So this is on A.O. Scots list of top 10. Do we remember where it was? This is number eight on the E.S. This is number eight. This is number eight. By a British filmmaker named Peter Strickland. He's previously made films called InFabble. He's fabric, Berberian Sound Studio, sort of an offbeat peculiar horror and genre

films are his specialty. This one, even mixing it up even more, kind of a dark comedy, satire of the art world, but with some horror elements as well, I would say. And it's a really long, it's a meditation on farts. It is. It's a lot

of fart humor. A lot. I mean, that's basically the plot. It's set. Except at an art collective, they do what's called Sonic Catering. So every month, a different group of artists come in and does a residency there. And it's always about making interesting soundscapes and music out of food. So chopping food, cooking food, blending food, anything having to do with food. ASMR for food?

It's totally an ASMR movie. Like performance art involving food stuff, basically. But it's all being told from the perspective of the sort of writer who chronicles, he stays there all the time and he chronicles what every group comes in and does their experiments, their take. He's our narrator. And he is suffering from terrible stomach problems, indigestion, gastric troubles, including he can't stop farting. And so we're following the film and all these adventures from his perspective, but it's largely about his digestive issues. him not and then one of the members of the collective becomes kind of fascinated by his issues and they start pushing him to start doing these gastric tests so he's getting colonoscopies as part of the

performance art now and there's there's there's fecal integration in like his stool samples become part of the performance art. I don't know if it's I turned it off. I turned it off. This is the first one that I actually turned off. I was like, you know what? No. I was like the power is going to go out.

second now and I'm not wasting my last few minutes on the rest of this movie. I know exactly where as soon as I see her spooning poop into a little jar and wanting to be more. And the whole setup is that she's like wanting to push the envelope more and more and more. Now, we find out later. It's not exactly what you think. I will. Yeah. Spoiler alert. It's not. Even in the context of the movie, it's not real poop. Its performance art, she's using chocolate to simulate. So we don't know that at first, it's that you get hit by the disgusting, oh my God, you smearing poop on herself. And then the next scene we find out it wasn't. It wasn't.

Yeah. It's fine. Look, it's fine. I will tell you one thing about this movie and one thing only. Well, okay, two things. This is the one that should have been Maverick. Sorry. Like, I'm now fully on the J-Train.

Like, the Maverick could have gotten at number eight because this is not a movie as Lon and I were discussing before the show. This is not a movie that like everybody, like, you could come to Neptune Frost and be like, this is a hurdle to get into it. But okay, all right. I'll challenge myself. That was interesting. You get that kind of smugness that makes you feel like I went to a museum and I'm proud

of myself. I enjoyed some art, right? Like, Neptune Frost makes you feel good. Boom. This, no. This is a, it's a cult movie for cult movie fans. As soon as I saw this, I had seen this movie before Aos got published his list because I'm a Peter Strickland fan.

I like Barbarian Sound Studio. I like Durkof and some of his other movies. So I checked out this as soon. as it popped up on Shutter. But this is, this is a, this is for movie people. This is for weird,

experimental, odd, thoughtful, R.C. kind of movies. One thing, though, one thing.

The actual real one thing, Gwendolyn Christie from Game of Thrones. Brian of Tarth from Game of Thrones. Is in this and she's so amazing and fantastic and mesmerizing and kooky. And I'm just going to basically go and watch everything that she's in. That's my new list for 2023. What is Gwendolyn Christi? in. In real life, she's like famously, she's always dressed. She's got like this crazy wardrobe and

she's always dressed in like big showy, exotic. She's very flamboyant dresser and always always in these crazy gowns and whatever at events. I feel like they purposefully played on that in this. Her character always is in really weird, wild, elaborate costumery. Like if Oscars were really given for the full breadth of all kinds of movies. This would be one of those things you'd look for. This would get a costume or an art direction. Right. Oscar 100%.

Those always go to like period films or whatever. But like the costumes in this are wild. Her outfits in this are absolutely crazy. Amazing. So there's no reason on planet Earth for anybody to see this movie except if you're not true at all. It's funny. It's weird.

It's interesting. He's making a lot. He's doing a lot of interesting stuff with sound. I mean, it really is like. Legit, Arnie movie people. It's a very old. totally see this. And it's about how like the only way human, I think here's what I think it's about. You could take up, it could be about anything. It's very ambiguous. But I think it's about as humans,

we only have sensory, these weird sensory ways of integrating with the world. The only thing we know about the world is what we can see here, smell, taste, touch. And it always, it's deceptive. And it's, it's, it's odd. And it's sort of mechanical in this weird way. And I think that's what he's exploring is like how how different our experiences are of the world because we're all accessing it through these senses sensory experiences that are able to be manipulated and are subjective and are and if you have to you have to fart all the time you can't pay attention to anything right all right what did you watch okay so i watched after sun uh because uh after this a o scott uh horrific list i thought you know what neptune

whatever, kind of felt like, yeah, I kind of felt like that I want those hours on my life back. Oh. I'm just saying,

I would, I would reallocate that to another film. And that other film is the one I saw. Which is a very personal film called Afterson. Now,

I'm very glad that I got into Tar. Tar is a film I want to see again. So on my spectrum, this is how I think movie review should go. And I would like all movie critics hearing my voice,

including AOS Scott, to now adopt a new system, which is, would you watch it again? Not would you say you watch it again, but would you actually sit through it again? Because time is precious, right? You got to give other things with your time. There are definitely movie experiences that are valuable, but that you don't necessarily want to go through it a second time. Like, you know, I mean, I think the classic example would make like Schindler's list. I don't think any of us would deny it's a great movie, but it's not like, hey, it's Saturday night.

I'm going to throw on a film. Let's watch Shindler. I'm not saying it's like the godfather where if you stumbled upon it, change it or gladiator or a blade runner, and you happen to catch minute 15 or minute 150, you're watching it until the end. I'm not talking about rewatchable. That's the ultimate height of a film in my mind,

in terms of a great piece of art. But just would you, after you saw it and your spouse or a friend wanted to see it again, would you actually go through seeing it again? Neptune, Frost, no way. Tar? Absolutely. Okay.

You're like part of the elite film circles. Molly would not see Neptune Frost again. I'm speaking for Molly here, but she might see her again or might not? I might. Yeah. Might. So it's like,

but it's more than Neptune Frost. And you would. Oh, 100%. I would want to say it again to show somebody else and be like, yeah, just stick with it. You know,

so with that framing, I saw this film after Sun. And it is a very personal film. It is a low budget film. It is the story that I think takes place, you know, more like in the 90s. And it's a very slow burn. It's an A24 picture. But it's a dad who is clearly suffering from some mental health issues, maybe depression, anxiety, feelings of self-worth. He's a single parent. He's probably 30 years old or something in that range, they kind of allude to.

And he's on vacation with his 11-year-old daughter, Sophie. And they go to a Turkish resort. And it's a coming-of-age film for Sophie. You get some sense of like, drenuous. or something could go wrong, but that's not really what the film is about without getting into sort of spoiler territory. It's really about, in the film, juxtapositions between Sophie being older and younger, but just on this one trip. And it will hit you if you are a father or a daughter like a ton of bricks. Because the relationship between a parent and a child, you know, and perhaps a father or a daughter, a mother and a son, whatever combination it is, you know, if it, if it, if it, there is some imperfection there. And if there is some regret or there is something missing

that didn't get completed, our relationships with our parents are very complex. And this film just hits that cord. And it hits it so perfectly. The empathy that the daughter actually has for her father, the father struggles. And yet, there's nothing happens in the film other than being at a Turkish resort, which is kind of like a cheap version of ClubMed. And And the father's broke, and there's poignant moments in it, and I'll just point out one, which for me describing it, you would not get the poignancy. But they're basically snorkeling. And the dad has bought a pair of goggles for his daughter.

And the daughter drops them, like, you know, kids do. And it sinks down to the bottom of the ocean. The father tries to retrieve it because he's broke. He can't afford it. And they're in, he's, they're from like London or something. And it's obviously he's estranged from, you know, the mother of the child as well, and not clear if they ever were married. And the daughter feels so bad, not because of the goggles,

but because she knows her dad's broke and he paid for the goggles. And by the end of the film, it has a final scene that is slightly ambiguous, that maybe you look up on the internet, and then you start meditating on it. And like the film, TAR, this is where I get the chills with the film, is if it stays with me. and this is a film that stayed with me. Whereas Neptune Frost, next year I won't remember it. I'm not singling out that film.

Or maybe this flux film for you, Molly, just, you know, doesn't hit the chord. But this is an independent film that hits a chord. And the performances are tremendous. And I highly recommend it to anybody who is maybe a daughter or a parent or, you know, if you have a parent or if you're a child, if you're in that category. And I kind of get my joke. You will like it. I think, I feel like it.

like 824, too, is I'm happy that they are, that that studio is like carrying the torch for independent movies. And I am, you know, and I will, before we move on to talking about streaming, like I am happy about something like an A.O. Scott list insisting, it insists upon itself, insisting, though, that we not only watch Marvel movies. Right. And that I not only default to Jack Ryan. But like it's, it's a good, like it seems like even for you, Jason, it's opened your aperture. Like, maybe you wouldn't have watched After Sun if you weren't sort of in the mood to step outside of Star Wars for a minute. So like, thank you for the provocation, A.O. Scott. And this is a first time feature Charlotte Wells. This is her directorial debut, feature directorial

debut. She's made some shorts. So like, this is exposing a new voice. You know, I mean, now this is a filmmaker that the next Charlotte Wells film, you'll be like, oh, she made after. And I want to see this. I will absolutely, I wish there was a website where I could just track, like, and get a Google alert that would just send me the next time that person does. You could just somebody, it could send a Google alert for the name Charlotte Wells. You're going to get all kinds of other stuff.

Here's an idea for IMDB or somebody, Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic. If you could follow any person in their database. When you hit follow, it sends alerts based on any time that person. There's got to be a service already. That must exist, right? You know where you can do that, actually, is you can do that, I think, in Roku. I think in the, if you have a Roku TV, I think with the Roku interface.

Interesting. And I bet Apple TV. Like, their previous films. So if you put on Apple TV will do it too, I think. Yeah, I want this now for my Gwendolyn and Christy. I just, I bet there's one of these like, like real good, one of these just watch kind of services would probably let you do something like that. All right.

I won't know that. Now that work for her own's Medicare. Hold on. Let's move on. One thing to Molly was very generous to A.O. Scott. I'm not letting him off the hook. He screwed. He screwed his own list.

If he had put Maverick on there, then the list would have been credible. And then the thing next to Maverick would have looked that much better. It's his list. We wouldn't have cared. And maybe he shouldn't work in New York Times. No, here's the thing. If he hadn't. No, this is where.

No, you have to turn lemons into lemonade here. Because if he had done that list, then we would have been like, check and moved on. And it never would have created all this content for us. And we would not. So you're saying it's a grand troll. You're watching these movies. It's a grand troll. Okay, I'll take it.

He defeated us. Lon's position. Lon Harris was official position. He exposed you to art. You never would have experienced. Moving on. Moving on. Moving on.

Great service. Hey, everyone. It's Molly Wood, co-host of this week in startups and managing director here at launch, where our mission is to back builders and help build founders. One of the ways we do that is with our two-day intensive Founder University workshop. It's free for any founders who have launched their product but haven't yet raised a series A. You'll learn from industry experts on sales, hiring, product, growth, the true nuts and bolts of starting a company. Previous topics in Founder University include how to run a sales team, negotiating a term sheet, raising your round, how to build features that move your metrics,

storytelling for investors. I do that one. That's my course. It's tactical. It's intensive and it's free for founders. To date, we have actually hosted 24 Founder University two-day classes and had over 2,000 founders participate. Apply now at intensive.foundor.com University and I'll hope to see you there.

We got to keep going. Maybe now that all these streaming services are facing so much competition, they could consider innovating with cool new features like follow your favorite artists and get notified when they release something new as opposed to their current strategy, which is just kill everything that you like real quick because it's too expensive to keep making stuff.

So streamers have been dropping content like crazy to save money. This is now spread to stars. It includes Netflix, which canceled 1890 after one season, a show that people apparently loved. It's from, the, I don't know if you guys ever saw Dark, that very well-regarded German, it was a German

language series that had a real strong sci-fi kind of puzzle box element time travel, very well received. One of Netflix's first big international hits, like one of the first indications like, oh, they can grab stuff from foreign markets and make it a worldwide sensation. I think this was even before money heist. Definitely before Squid Game. So the creators of that show, is their new one. So of course, everybody who was in the dark jumped on board and it had a same kind of puzzle box J.J. Abrams bad robot lost kind of hook. They were planning on a three season arc. So season one ends on this huge cliffhanger. And then Netflix just and then they killed it. See, this reminds me of like my brother and I have this long, years long joke that's not

a joke, which is like never get into a Fox show. Because I feel like Fox was legendary for this. They would always like you would get into something that was kind of like almost human is the example that always comes to mind for me. And then they would just be like, it's out. So, but this is also becoming more and more common, like not just killing stuff when it's, you know, still the baby in the crib, but also removing content, presumably to save money. So stars hold three titles, dangerous liaisons, becoming Elizabeth and step up from its streaming

service. It's not clear why they pulled those, of course, HBO Max, pulled season 16 through 31 of Looney Tunes and 78 episodes of the Flintstones and Westworld and all of that. So like, talk about how the economics are becoming a lot more ruthless in streaming, whether it's killing stuff because it just didn't get, what, a big enough audience? I thought we didn't have to care about audience in this new world of streaming. Yeah, I mean, obviously Netflix was looking at 1899. Number six, season one cost about 60 million. So that's a big expenditure for that. them. That's a costly show. So they were looking at, look, if we go in for another season of this, that's 60 million more we're throwing at this show. And I have to figure that the season one

viewers were disappointing or really well below what they expected post dark. So that's got to be the explanation there. The Looney Tunes thing, we found that it was, there was like a deal between HBO Max and Warner Brothers. Like HBO Max was paying a certain lump sum every year to Warner Brothers for these rights and they just didn't want to do that internally anymore. So they pulled all of that content. So that was a personal deal like, I don't want to spend money with you because you're a competitor, yada yada. Well, it was intra-company. Warner Brothers's own HBO Max. They're both owned by Warner Brothers Discovery. So it was just this intra-company deal that they stopped doing. Possibly because they're going to start licensing Looney these Looney Tunes episodes somewhere else.

They're going to move Flintstone somewhere else. Because they're not explaining the economics of why this is happening. Sometimes it leaks in the trade press like you're explaining a lot. But one of the problems here is expectations. People sign up for a service, Molly, expect that they get everything because that's what you said.

Okay, it's Paramount Plus. You get everything on Paramount Ever Did, plus some new stuff. Hey, it's HBO max. You get everything HBO has ever done, plus, right? CNN Plus. You're going to get all the CNN,

plus some other garbage that you would never watch. That was the promise. And so managing expectations is the issue here. and then they don't explain any of this because explaining it would seem kind of running. It's like, well, we'd have to pay 17 million residuals for this. We'd need to cut 175 million. And this is 10% of the cuts we have to make.

And so it was an easy cut to make. I heard people on another podcast or, and they were kind of going crazy. There was another Netflix series that people were like, oh, they're canceling this series. And it's another example of canceling a series. series that includes, you know, this identity politics type, you know, whatever. I bet it was warrior none is the other big recent cancellation people are very mad about.

They're very mad at this. And they're saying, hey, this has something to do with identity politics. I like that word better than woke because woke is just a stupid way. Honestly, don't use either. Representation. There is some representation. The claim was this is being taken off air because of who the person is. It's a, it's a trend I saw.

Right. Right. And I mean, there's, listen, this is a, we don't know if that's happening. This is a, this is a large scale trend that's happening to all kinds of shows. But I think the point would be, yes, Warrior None, it's got a diverse cast. It's a show that's good for expanding Netflix's representation. And so when you cancel shows like that, you're narrowing the field once more. But is there something to Netflix cancels because this was the trend? We have no idea, right? Well, they're not going to say that. I mean, does Netflix, is Netflix canceling more of these shows than the average show? I don't, I would have to, you'd have to look at numbers. Like, I don't, I don't, I don't, that's another thing that David Zazlab has been accused of many times with HBO. Like, you know, they're cutting stuff like legendary, which is that ballroom drag culture, reality show and a lot of stuff like that, then these groups are coming and saying, well, this is narrowing the representation that's available on HBO Mac. Right.

And there was a cancel Netflix trend. But whether or not, it's intentional. is almost secondary. It's happening. It's happening. Yeah. I mean, I would say that the answer to whether shows with greater diverse, more diverse cast and greater representation are being canceled at a higher rate is almost certainly yes.

And here's why. Because of audience. Right? Like what, what the one of the promises, one of the expectations of streaming was what I just said, which is that we would be freed from the expectation that everything had to be a huge watercolor hit because that's not how streaming was. supposed to water cooler hit. Thank you. There would be the opportunity for lots of different flowers to bloom.

Long tail. With potentially smaller audiences. And so if you make an audience, if you make a show that primarily appeals to, let's say, young Asian women. Yep. I'm not saying nobody else is ever going to watch that show. I watched a few episodes of Warrior None. I thought it was fun as hell.

But what I'm saying is if you make a show that primarily appeals to that audience, it is likely that it will have a smaller audience. Right. And if you achieve that. And if you achieve that and then all of a sudden, your economics get way more ruthless and they hadn't had to be for a long time because there wasn't any competition. You were Netflix. You just could keep out pumping out content. Then yeah, that is the first place you're going to start economically. And then socially, that sucks and is going to look bad. But it ultimately comes down to the real thing that we've been saying about content. I mean, I must have said this on this show a million times and always before. It's a freaking sinkhole for money. Yeah. Making content is expensive.

So this is where, so I think you'd be a great point there, this is where Alon, I think communication and transparency. Because what people were saying is, you know, Netflix, Warner Brothers, Zob's Love, they all make these decisions willy-nilly. There's some metric, they're not, you know, they got to their own internal bullshit metric, oh, sorry, BS metric that they go by. In a vacuum, this is my message to General. Zad's love and to

HBO and everybody else who's canceling stuff. It's reasonable in a down market. You gotta cancel stuff. We understand. Right. A couple of budgets. You have to explain yourself. And you have to be kind to that piece of IP. So what does it mean? Well, you should say, listen,

we have four tiers of shows. These are our blockbuster shows. These are above average. These are our average. And these are the ones that are more niche. You don't have to call it underperforming. You say these are more niche. Call it niche. You can say this falled into our boutique budget and our boutique budget has been cut.

And that's it. Just a little bit of explanation. You don't have to give the raw viewership, although I think Netflix should, but I think they don't want to tip their cards to competitors as to what's working. They don't even give, Lon, correct, your viewership to Adam Sandler or anybody. I've heard like Adam Sandler or other people, Chris Rock, talk about when they do a show now on streaming. They don't know how many views it got. They literally don't give it to them.

So the unions, and this is what Ben Affleck is doing. with Matt, Damon, is they're coming up with their new studio. I think they should say, hey, if we're going to give you content, you've got to give us the metrics. So no more hiding metrics. We may be on the verge of this trend reversing or changing anyway because of advertising. It sponsors demand specifics. They don't want, oh, 40 million hours of this were watched in the first three days, like all

Netflix's little games that they like to play. Yes. Hershey. Minutes watched. Yeah, Anheiser Bush. Like, they're not playing. Impressions. Or doesn't play those games.

They're like, how many people are, is this being shown to, you know, just give it to me straight? Because we're seeing the ruthlessness, but not the transparency, like 100%. Right. So there's a lot of people. Now that Netflix and all these platforms, Disney, they're starting to integrate ads, they're going to have no choice but to have more transparency around viewership on at least some of these shows. Yep. All right, on that note, we got to go.

We got to go with Lon. We got to go. We'll be back next week. Lon, tell us what to watch this weekend. Yeah, do it. Oh, my God. You're watching. It's a rainy weekend.

There's kaleidoscope on Netflix, which is their new heist show, with Giancarlo Esposito. You can watch it in any order. Oh, I heard about this one. And they're an narrative experiment. Yes, every episode is named after a color, but except for the finale, which you have to watch last. So, kaleidoscope, you can watch in any order.

You can watch any order. orders that people are saying are the right order. Should we? Well, it'll change your perception of what's happening based on what you, what you see you watch it this weekend. Should you pick, should you go on the internet and say what's the proper,

what's the best kaleidoscope order or not? I would just let it go. Like let Netflix pick and go random. Yeah. Okay. All right. You say go random. That's,

that's what I would. That's what I would do if it were. Okay. You haven't seen it yet. All right. No, I haven't watched yet. I have checked out on Peacock.

There's also Paul T. Goldman, which is from Borat to director Jason Walliner, a random every man sent him a copy of his book, which he says is about this real crazy experience that he had. And together, they're turning it into a TV show. So you're getting both this guy's story presented in a scripted TV drama format, but you're also getting behind the scenes interviews with him and discussion with him about making this show about his life. Another meta, like the rehearsal, kind of... A bit like the rehearsal, a bit like a borat kind of thing.

Yes, a meta-contextual sort of comedy series. I watch the first two. It's very interesting and fun so far. So there's your tips for the week. Fabulous. Thanks long. We'll see you next time. See you next week.

All right, everybody. Thanks for tuning in. We will see you back here tomorrow with 2023's first edition of OK Boomer, plus news from the week and whatever breaks overnight. See you then. Bye-bye.