This Week in Startups - Bolt cancels $1.5B Wyre deal, $ROKU adds TikTok-style feature, Deere's self-driving tractors | E1558

Episode Date: September 13, 2022

J+M are back recapping this week's episode of All-In and how to stop brigading on Twitter (1:42). They also cover Bolt cancelling its $1.5B acquisition of crypto payments startup Wyre (19:46), Roku ad...ding a TikTok-style feature (30:31), and two We Live in the Future stories! (39:48) (0:00) J+M tee up today's topics! (1:42) All-In recap, how Twitter can reduce brigading, and more (18:26) This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp - Get 10% off your first month at https://betterhelp.com/twist (19:49) Bolt cancels $1.5B Wyre acquisition (29:05) Liquid IV - Get 15% off at https://liquidiv.com using promo code TWIST (30:34) Roku adds TikTok-style feature to its streaming software (38:17) OpenPhone - Get an extra 20% off any plan for your first 6 months at https://openphone.com/twist (39:51) We Live in the Future: John Deere's self-driving tractors (49:48) We Live in the Future: $5B Moon-themed hotel might be coming to Dubai (56:22) China is ramping up its moon operations due to discovering a new mineral 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

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 All right, hey, everybody. It is Monday. Welcome back from your weekend, which if it was anything like mine lasted one nanosecond and it's already a brutal weekend for me to. Just catching up on sleep after being in four different cities in a week and then getting brigaded all weekend. So my moderation on the all in pot episode 95. I'm going to start a reverse brigade, I think. Reverse brigade. It's a plan. Our favorite startup bolt is back in the news this time for canceling a $1.5 billion deal to acquire crypto payments. Startup wire crypto payments. Still not ready. All right. And then Roku is integrating TikTok style promotions into the platform. We punch up their idea and talk about my favorite TikTok account, Chef's Reactions.
Starting point is 00:00:39 He's coming around. Just saying. And then we have a couple. We live in the future segments for you. One amazing. One again, maybe need some punchups. A couple of edits on that way. It's going to be a great show.
Starting point is 00:00:51 Stick with us. This week in Startups is brought to you by BetterHelp provides access to easy, affordable, and private professional counseling. Anytime, anywhere. Get 10% off your first month at BetterHelp.com slash twist. Liquid IV. Making hydration a priority will help you feel better on a day-to-day basis. Get 15% off Liquid IV by using promo code Twist.
Starting point is 00:01:19 And open phone. As a startup founder, a lot of mistakes are easy to roll back, but using your personal cell phone number as your company, number isn't one of them. Open phone makes it easy to get business phone numbers for you and your team right on top of your existing devices. Visit openphone.com slash twist to get 20% off your first six months. Hey everybody, it's Monday. I have no tolerance for any bullshit today. Believe that out. I got a BS in the first five seconds. Molly, how is your weekend? Please time is better than my. No, this weekend's stupid. This weekend barely didn't even happen because there was like a week's worth of
Starting point is 00:01:57 chores all backed up because of the heat wave. And then guess what happened on Saturday morning? Power out is three hours. Boom to California. I was looking at houses. I spent, you know, I spent the weekend doing my wife and I in bed. iPad? We weren't Netflixing and chilling. Nope. We're looking at Redfin houses in Austin. That's what we're doing. What I don't get out of this hell old? You know what I was looking? Zillow, Maine. I'm all about Maine. That's it. Perfect. Maine is where my pumpkin spice house is going to happen. I mean, that would put the show at 1 p.m. you. I mean, how great is that going to be for energy? That's freaking delightful.
Starting point is 00:02:30 And then I, if I'm in Austin, that's two hours. Nick and Rachel, they are so happy right now. They're like, one hour closer to Eastern Time Zone. Two hours closer to Eastern Time Zone. Let's go. We get our dinners back. Dinner's back. There it is. Yep.
Starting point is 00:02:44 Rachel's like, oh, here's the good. Here's Maine. She sent me the fall main look. Yes, it's happening. Nehyes. I love Nehyeyes. I love a good cashmere. Like I still, I think I still like it here and I think I still want to stay, but I just need my pumpkin spice house
Starting point is 00:02:57 from Labor Day to Thanksgiving. I had... Just to ride out the fall, the worst season. I just want to say, I have an apology is due. I've told people before, pumpkin spice is garbage, and I just, this whole pumpkin spice latte thing, too much for me, blah, blah, blah, blah. I've never been into pumpkin.
Starting point is 00:03:16 Yeah. I went to the cafe X at S-A-F-O, and they had an iced pumpkin chai, which I'm a fan of iced chia. Yeah, pumpkin is delicious. You put a little pumpkin in a chai? that's delightful right there. I mean, just enough little cinnamon-y, cinnamon-y, mm-hmm.
Starting point is 00:03:32 It is delicious. A pumpkin spice latte is way too much. It's too much. Like, it's just like too sugary and gross. You can ask for like one pump. But I just, I don't do that anymore. I hold out for that. But I used to be such a big PSL fan that Starbucks actually sent me a box of fancy swag for the 10-year
Starting point is 00:03:48 anniversary of the PSL, like a collector, like a really like a bedazzled. Yeah, hashtag PSL, pumpkin spice latte. There's an acronym. You literally, there's an acronym for, you guys say pumpkin spice latte so much, you need to shorten it. PSL. PSL. Okay. They said me like, I'm a bedazzled, like a, what's the, a swore off?
Starting point is 00:04:10 What is SZN? I don't know, PSL, SZN. I don't know what that is. Stop speaking millennial. I don't speak millennial. Okay. Season. Oh, say it then.
Starting point is 00:04:22 The show, I'm not going to lie, because Monday has started out, train wreck. But this show puts it all back together. We're going to try to. You already feel better. This is my weekend. Brigaded, big time. I got, this is the worst brigading I've gotten in a long time.
Starting point is 00:04:38 I think not since I made Bloomberg my avatar. Have I been graded this bad? And the Bloomberg thing tweaked everybody because Democrats were like, how are you not for Biden? Mag of people like, how are you for this guy, Jewish guy in New York was short? guys please can I can I pick a candidate is that so crazy can I live can I live a little I want to pick a billionaire and no tech leader for president it's on brand how do how would I how would you expect me to pick anybody I would have seen that coming I'm just saying yeah come on yeah that one you see coming a mile away so I had to literally put my Twitter on only people I follow
Starting point is 00:05:18 because it's it's gotten crazy now and it's always the same group they're maga people like I I hit their likes. This is like my two-step process. Look at their profile. Okay, was this created in the last 24 months? Look at their likes. Are they liking Pepe the Frog and like,
Starting point is 00:05:34 okay, Brandon? Okay, great. I know what I'm dealing with. And so I just put them on my little list and I just, you know, take a little screenshot.
Starting point is 00:05:41 I put in my folder. I'm like, okay, here's the maniacs. Just keeping track. But I mean, I'm getting savage because apparently I spoke, I moderated too much last episode of All In. And I am getting just,
Starting point is 00:05:53 it's a little crazy. Like, I don't want to say scary, but it's, it's tipping over into, like, hey, guys, calm down. It will get scary. Yeah, like all caps. You're going to punch me in the face. Like, I get that you're saying, like, somebody needs to punch J-Cal in the face. It's like, you don't mean it literally, but somebody might interpret us literally. So just don't, you can criticize me all you want with intelligent critique.
Starting point is 00:06:13 If you're like, hey, you interrupted too much, just put a timestamp on it. Hey, you could have not interrupted at this moment. Let the person speak. I'm fine with that. Yeah, but don't threaten to punch me in the face. Even if it's a joke, it's not. cool because like literally I literally had a guy put me in a headlock at South by Southwest one year. Like that was kind of scary.
Starting point is 00:06:32 The guy was a fan too. It was just a little, he was drunk. Yeah. But he was clearly drunk. But literally I had a guy jump on me at, um, Dignation in the VIP room. I know. You told that story. Put me in a headlock.
Starting point is 00:06:42 Here's the thing. And I'm like wrestling. I'm MMA fighting. This is not about being even a remotely rational and they're never going to. This is literally about brigating. It is a, it is fundamentally. And it is like, It is our culture now.
Starting point is 00:06:55 And you see it in politics, like this idea that like if you, if, if I don't share your opinion, you should cease to exist like fully. It's this sense of entire. Oh, man. Meanwhile, Nick is over here making pumpkin spice latte memes with me and Rachel and J. Cowell's head on him in Maine. We're going. Show that.
Starting point is 00:07:10 Show that. This is beautiful. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. I love to go upstate.
Starting point is 00:07:15 I love to go upstate. Anyway, it's a fully terroristic society and it's fully enabled by Twitter. And this is why we have to go to Maine and get. I just have to say. Your two headshots make it look like your sisters or something. It's actually kind of true. It's like big sister, a little sister. It is.
Starting point is 00:07:32 It looks like we're all siblings. Or maybe I'm dad. I'd be the dad. This photo. I might be dad. It looks like I'm dad with my daughter. It's like taking him to college. I cannot wait for this.
Starting point is 00:07:43 I cannot wait. I can't wait for pumpkin spice. The boots are the, the boots is perfect. I'm going to create a reverse brigade. I want to have a reverse brigade. Because I have fans, too. Everyone thinks it's a reverse brigade, but it's still a brigade.
Starting point is 00:07:58 Where's my brigade? I have an army. I want my army who go into episode 95. And I want you to just write what a delightful moderator am. But I want you to, the code word is delightful. Delightful. I want you to say delightful somewhere in there so we know that it's part of the brigade. So just, you know, what a delightful episode.
Starting point is 00:08:17 And the moderation was so deft and delightful. Just put a little delightful in there for us. just go in there and counter the vitriol. But I'm going to get, how do you, I think they do it in Signal, I'm told. Like Signal and Slack rooms. Or I'm sorry, to organize it.
Starting point is 00:08:33 Yeah. So my understanding is like, they're like, attack this guy and they just put the thing. Because I can tell because it's like, I'll have 10 tweets and then one of them all of a sudden gets 50 replies. And I'm like, wait a second,
Starting point is 00:08:43 why that one? There's like three more of that are a little more, you know, anti-Trump than that one. So that's like the strategy is like, just go after this guy. This particular, it's like a sniper shot, right? Maybe you've just made it.
Starting point is 00:08:56 I guess so. This is what, unfortunately, this is what success and even a modicum of controversy brings in American culture today because it's totally terroristic. I had this conversation with like, you know, one of the Commonwealth Club folks. Ah. And was, and I don't remember what it was about. Oh, and I was like, there are just hard truths that we're going to have to say about climate. You and I have had this conversation on the show, right? Which is like, hey, guys, we're not going to solve racism before we address climate change.
Starting point is 00:09:22 And it can't be a blocker, right? It cannot be the reason. Like, equity cannot be the reason that we move forward on climate mitigation issues. I appreciate you taking that stance and vocalizing it. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's the completely right stance, by the way. Obviously. Thank you. Obviously.
Starting point is 00:09:38 It's obviously the right stance. However, in our society today, for you to say something like that is to put yourself at peril for people to say, well, Molly's a racist. Exactly. Why are you so racist, Molly? It's like, did you not watch Molly for the last 25? year, sorry for the second one. I'm sorry, guys.
Starting point is 00:09:55 The last 20 years, fight for social justice. Yeah. To the point of like, you think she works at a social justice. Right? And I'm just like, oh, like a knee jerk Molly's reaction. I'm like, you know what?
Starting point is 00:10:07 I may be a Bay Area liberal, but I grew up in a red state. Like, believe me, when I tell you, you don't always know what you're going to get here. And this is one of those cases. But so this guy was like, I mean, yeah, but wow. Just like you're saying, oh, it's hard to say that, right? Without getting yelled at.
Starting point is 00:10:21 And I was like, yeah, because we live in a completely terroristic society at this point with respect to speech, no matter what it is. And I'm not a free speech absolutist either. But it's true that we are, we're like curtailing our media, the things that we say, our politics, who runs for people will not run for office because it's just like considered a normal part of discourse to get a bunch of death threats for like a thing that you've said. And it's just like it's what social media has rot. Once we let Gamergate not be a big deal, that was it.
Starting point is 00:10:51 Then it was like, great. here's the playbook. Let's go. It really has to be a playbook. And it's like, is it so controversial that like two friends, Sax and I, like, Sax has like a position that is like, we should appease Putin and like end this war and give him what he wants. And we shouldn't like be as aggressive towards him and put NATO at his doorstep. You know, Sax's kind of position is pretty clear on this. He's kind of actually a dove, like, which you think he would be more hawkish because most Republicans are hawkish about Putin and want to like start a war. And he's doveish. So it's like, well, how do you reconcile that position? He's kind of doveish. And then I'm like, we should hold the line with Putin and all dictators. The West should be a united front. So I'm a hawk. But people are upset at me for being hawkish, which is, I think, the Republican position. Yeah, they're just upset at you for disagreeing with sex. I think they're just upset that we disagree.
Starting point is 00:11:37 It's okay for the two of us to disagree because we agree on everything else. Yeah. It's okay. And by the way, in terms of strategy, the purple pill strategy is quite effective. And the purple pill strategy works for both sides. You just purple pilled yourself on free speech. you're like, I'm not an absolutist, but I am concerned about how we're shaping speech right now with threats. No, I'm concerned that we're allowing this completely that we just basically decided,
Starting point is 00:12:03 but I'm concerned that because of decades of, you know, or at least a solid decade of totally hands-off moderation, like allow all the harassment you want, that now that horse has left the barn. Like, there's no putting that back in, but we have to have a frank acknowledgement. that that is now our standard discourse and political interaction is to basically try to shout someone out of existence. And if we don't face up to that and be honest about it, like on both. So this guy is like, so you think there's something to the right saying that, you know, people can get. And I was like, come on. I'm like, you, yes, dumb, dumb, and also the left. Like, it's happening on both sides. But are you really going to sit here and pretend that like you don't know as a good Bay Area liberal
Starting point is 00:12:47 that there's stuff you don't say because you don't want to get yelled at? Like, give me a break. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the idea that anybody in San Francisco would outwardly say, I think if somebody breaks into your home, we should arrest them. It's like, so you hate poor people. And it's like, what? Right. If the person was rich from robbing 10 houses and they broke into my house, I would feel the same way. Like, it has nothing to do with the person's net worth or a lot in life. You just, there's a societal idea that you don't break into somebody's house. And if you do, there's a price to pay for it so you don't do it again. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:13:20 This is not racist. This is not classes. Consequences matter. Accountability matters. Yeah. It's like, yeah. It's the whole, but this is what I'm trying to do on this podcast and the other one is just, hey, everybody, can we have a conversation from first principles and listen to
Starting point is 00:13:35 each other? Just listen to each other. So for the people who are, you know, fans of either end or pod, maybe just understand, like it's just a couple of different people's opinions. And you can have an opinion too. We can all state them and. listen and work together towards evolving it. And you can disagree without wanting us to go away completely.
Starting point is 00:13:54 I mean, you engaged just, I think, there was somebody in our Twitter community who was basically just like, I want Molly to go away. I don't like the stuff she says, right? Like, that's just a standard. I remember writing a letter about a commentator I didn't like to a news organization when I was like 23 years old and getting an extremely thoughtful response back.
Starting point is 00:14:14 That was like, you know what, like, thank you for this feedback. I really appreciate it. we think it's really important to surface all these ideas and that you may not always agree, but like, you know, it's not, we don't think it's an option to not publish someone. And I was like, oh, you're totally right. Okay. And I like never, it worked. And I never thought that way again. And yet somehow that lesson has just eluded American society right now.
Starting point is 00:14:37 Because it's because it works. We let it work. It's like how the dog thinks when they bark at the mailman and the mailman leaves, the dog is like, I win. Yeah. Success. No, he's on to the next house. You only get the mailman for 30 seconds a day, buddy.
Starting point is 00:14:50 But that's what we think. Like, people on Twitter are just like, it works. I got an apology. I got the new, I got a recut. I got the Zach Snyder recut. Keep it going. You know what? I think I figured out a really unintended hack on Twitter, which is I am now following 500
Starting point is 00:15:04 people a day who like my tweets. I just pull up the like on a tweet and I just follow everybody. If they liked it, they're probably a good person. It's my thesis. Then only people I follow can comment on my. my stuff. And then I say to people, if you quote retweet me, I'll see it. And if it's intelligent and thoughtful, I will follow you back. So now people are like, oh, if I want to get a JCal follow, all I got to do is say something intelligent and they follows me back. And by the way,
Starting point is 00:15:36 what does that do? It's actually a growth hack. Because they're quote tweeting me to their followers. Totally. And they're saying something intelligent about me because I've instructed them to do so. So now I've instructed people to say something intelligent about something intelligent I've said. So instead of- I chef kiss my own move. Right? So maybe instead of appeasing the dictators and terrorists on Twitter by apologizing every time they yell at us or changing our behavior or whatever, we can do positive provocations. Yes.
Starting point is 00:16:03 And find it off-ramp. That's my off-ramp. I also think this, I had another idea. If ever Twitter changes management for some reason, not that I can talk about anything in that spectrum. But if there was somebody else running it. Don't even get me started on which direction it's going to go if that happens. Well, anyway, no, I think actually here's the idea. Your first Twitter account with your phone number and email is free.
Starting point is 00:16:26 Your next Twitter account, you know, if you use the same phone number, is a dollar. The third one is $2. The fourth one is $4, $8, 16, 32. You just double what it costs for each subsequent account. You've created maybe 10 accounts in your life, I'm guessing. different projects, whatever. Two. I think you like two.
Starting point is 00:16:49 You created two. Yeah. If you had to pay a dollar for the second one, but it got to use the same phone number. Right. And it was nice and easily organized. And it was like for work because it would be. It wouldn't just be the yell at people.
Starting point is 00:17:00 So either a dollar to create or a dollar a year or $2 a or whatever. So then there's no barrier for you to participate. First account always free. But every subsequent account, there's an increasing dollar amount. So people don't create, there's some friction to creating many accounts. Like right now, when I get brigaded by the MAGA folks, they're creating 100 accounts. It could be one person just with 100 windows open doing it, you know, and they just tab between them. It's not easy to do, folks.
Starting point is 00:17:35 But, you know, phone numbers have a cost. It's hard to create another phone number. I mean, it's not impossible, but there is friction. It's not impossible, but there's some friction. What is the friction to have a second phone numbers? It's a $5? Not very much, right? What's it cheap as you could get?
Starting point is 00:17:46 GoogleFi. But you still have to pay for it. You just have to pay for it, right? So it's like five or ten bucks. Yeah. That's a lot of friction a month. Like, you're not going to create a hundred accounts and spend a thousand a month or $500 a month on those phone numbers.
Starting point is 00:17:58 So that's where like, I don't know. Can you get burner phone numbers for free? Is that a thing on the internet? I don't think so. You could do it as a free trial. There's a, there's a GoogleFi has like a 30-day free trial. So you could probably like go crazy on that. It's still a lot of work.
Starting point is 00:18:12 But it's still credit card. Yeah, exactly. It's still... I think the phone number solves the whole thing. I think, I mean, friction is the key here, for sure. Yeah. Some friction. Love it.
Starting point is 00:18:19 Let's get to the news. All right. Let's talk some tech news. There's a ton of craziness. I feel better, though. Thanks. And now a word from our sponsor, better help. The startup grind can be overwhelming.
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Starting point is 00:19:49 Our formerly favorite newsmaker before Adam Newman and the Fire Festival guy's back. Talk about that soon. The trifecta. Ryan Breslo is back. He still got me blocked because he says I abuse founders. And by abused founders, he means I disagreed with him. You know.
Starting point is 00:20:09 I mean. I disagreed with him about something. So I abuse founders. But okay, Ryan. It's pretty abusive. Let's do the boss. Anyway, Ryan, okay, so Bolt, which Breslow founded but is no longer the CEO of, to be fair. Yes.
Starting point is 00:20:23 Evidently, I feel like there are two headlines here. One is Bolt was going to acquire a crypto payments company called Wire, W-Y-R-E, a blockchain-based crypto payments company, for $1.5 billion. Apparently they had agreed to do this back in April. I feel like I sort of missed the fact that they were. were making a billion and a half dollar acquisition. Yeah. But that's okay that I wasn't paying attention to that because it's not happening. They called it off because maybe they don't have a billion and a half dollars anymore.
Starting point is 00:20:54 Well, it could have been a stock deal. You know, if the company was, because they were valued over $10 billion at some point. So maybe they were going to give like maybe. 50 million in cash and then $1.45 billion in. Yeah. Yeah. Either way, it's off. The merger.
Starting point is 00:21:08 It would have been the largest ever in the crypto space, not including SPAC. which are technically mergers, right. But that's like, they're financial mergers. They don't really count as mergers. It's not two products coming together. It's a, right. It's like a bank account with mine and connecting with. So this, this has come apart probably because the deal, I love, I love when Axios goes full, like, dry humor.
Starting point is 00:21:34 The deal may have been overpriced. Okay. Bolt, of course, was valued at $11 billion. by VCs after its last round of funding in January. And then since then, the growth stage and public tech valuations have been crushed. Stripe and Klarna, just as sort of public-facing comps, have both seen valuation cut. Stripe dropped their own valuation, 28%. Clarna raised at a 30% valuation cut.
Starting point is 00:22:01 And the same month, they're private companies, to be clear. It's just the ones, they're the ones that we have some information on. They did that just so people know proactively. Proactively, yep. And the reason to do that, we've talked about. for her on the program is you want to give stock to your employees. If the stock is at a very high valuation, they would be what's called underwater. Underwater means you told them they can have an option to buy a share at $10, but the market is trading those shares at $6 or $7. So it's like,
Starting point is 00:22:29 well, thanks. You gave me a $100 bill and I have to pay $130 for it. That doesn't make any sense. You just gave me something that loses me money. So the optics become really hard for a company to tell somebody, hey, work for two or three years to get nothing. Your $70 share will become worth $100 in three years. So that was the reason they did it, although the press sometimes doesn't understand, you know, that's a smart thing to do for your employees. They just think it's like, oh, you know, let's dunk on the company. It's actually a very savvy thing to do.
Starting point is 00:22:59 You want your employees to have low-priced stock options. The lower, the better, in fact. In fact, a lot of people take these 409As, which is the private company valuation, designation, it's called the 409A. The 4R9A for the common is typically, a little mini VC Sunday school here for you, is typically valued at less than the preferred shares, much less because they have to go second in the stack,
Starting point is 00:23:24 like we talked about when we did our VC's liquidations. If you missed yesterday's show. If you missed yesterday show. Go check it out. Go check out Sunday, VC Sunday. So that's really the issue here is, you know, you're really trying to make those even lower
Starting point is 00:23:37 than the preferred share. So if people are trading the shares for $7, you make the argument, listen, the common shares, they probably will never see the light of day, so they're really worth four. So then your employees, if you do IPO, get the gain between four and if the IPO price was 20, they get a $16 per share gain.
Starting point is 00:23:54 And employees are increasingly becoming savvy on it. The employees who are not savvy on it, first time startup employees. Right. People who are savvy on it, second, third time. So if you were at Uber, Google, yeah, they. Because the last thing, yeah,
Starting point is 00:24:07 the last thing you want is a high strike price. So, and it's possible, and it's interesting because the noties are kind of suggesting, there's one notie suggesting it wasn't so much the valuation, it was maybe about closing conditions that wire couldn't meet. You know, we don't know. We never know. The, like, pretty easy and obvious narrative here is everything has dropped in terms of valuation. And Bolt, I think, did have some layoffs and things like that.
Starting point is 00:24:32 And so it's very possible that everybody was like, this deal is too rich and we can do better separately, or it fell apart for some arcane business reason that we don't necessarily know. But we do know that at the time that this was announced, Breslow's tweet thread was like, this will be the everything. It will supercharge shoppers, businesses, developers. It'll make like every bolt retailer and shopper will be able to use cryptocurrency easily and seamlessly. Tens of millions of bolt users will be able to buy real stuff with crypto.
Starting point is 00:25:01 Like really was positioning this as a way to mainstream crypto purchases. Nobody wants to buy with crypto. In a way, we still have to see it. Here's the thing. Crypto, everybody who participated in crypto, bought tokens, NFTs, ICO, future tokens.
Starting point is 00:25:25 Why did they buy those? Why did they buy these things? They bought them as an investment. The end. The end. So if you bought them as an investment, if you go to J-trading and I bought shares in Disney, I didn't buy the shares in Disney
Starting point is 00:25:38 to go buy a A pumpkin spice latte A PSL I wasn't PSLing I don't want to take my Disney and PSL it Especially not after I saw the Tales of the Jedi trailer this weekend
Starting point is 00:25:53 It was gonna be great Especially if I saw the Little Mermaid trailer Great I'm gonna buy more Disney Because of that little mermaid trailer Inclusivity Representation You know what that means
Starting point is 00:26:06 That means dollars. You know what I saw when I saw that? Lers. I didn't see black, white. I saw green. Yep. You're opening up the aperture so more people can be involved in the Disney family? That's more money, people.
Starting point is 00:26:19 That's a buy, buy, buy, by, Jim Kramer. Buy, bye, buy. Did you see the story? I know this is not in our lineup, but did you see the story today about Bob Chappek, Chappek saying that ESPN, the reason to keep ESPN in the Disney portfolio is betting and that they're working on a sports betting app? Let's go. I mean, jeep, sorry.
Starting point is 00:26:37 Cursed again, I'm so sorry. It's genius in the bye, bye, bye, bye, department, but I was like, that's a very family-friendly. Listen, I'm going to Disney, and I'm going to bet three to one odds that Minnie is going to lead the parade down Main Street. That's what you're going to do. Go to Disney.
Starting point is 00:26:52 They're going to be like, hey, how much do you bet? That's amazing. How much do you bet that Kylo Ren is going to lead the Star Wars Brigade versus, is it going to be the dark? That's what you're going to do. You're going to go to the parade. and you're going to bet Darkside
Starting point is 00:27:08 droids or Jedi are going to lead the parade and then the parade's going to start and you're going to be like goddamn droids again you got to get your bets in you got to get your bets in
Starting point is 00:27:17 there's literally a window you can see like five year old kids ripping up their tickets god damn it droids amazing smoking cigarettes just throwing them down god dang it's going to turn Disney
Starting point is 00:27:28 into what's the off TV a bunch of old guys smoke retirees smoking cigarettes drinking Schlitz and they're going to be like God damn it Tricking Sh3PL again
Starting point is 00:27:40 Amazing God damn it 40 to 1 odds that it was going to be R2D2 I will bet on Disney Oh my Lord I'm going to bet
Starting point is 00:27:49 One stinger 2 stinger On Disney At Disney Listen You're going to go to the movies And you're going to be like You know what I'm betting
Starting point is 00:27:56 In Dr. Strange There's going to be Two Stingers versus one That's the big gamble Every time I go to these movies My kids run up to me three daughters, they jump on me, one stinger or two stingers. One stinger or two stings.
Starting point is 00:28:08 Look it up, Dad, and I have to look it up. There's websites now. Oh, you mean the post credit scenes? Post credit scenes are called stingers. Oh, yeah, yeah, totally. So they're like, PCS, PCS, post credit scenes, you know what I'm saying? So I'm having a PSL. They want to know if there's a PCS or two PCS's.
Starting point is 00:28:23 I'm like, everybody, calm down. Dad's going to look it up. So we went to see Spider-Man again this weekend. They re-released it. My kids love that Spider-Man with the Thirteen. three Spider-Man's in it, spoiler alert. So much,
Starting point is 00:28:36 we went to see it again. It's better the second time. That was a good, good, I was like, Toby's my guy. I watched Thor on Disney Plus this weekend.
Starting point is 00:28:48 Oh, did it come out? That's 11th, Thunder is out already? They just replaced it. 11thunder, it's out already, which I appreciate. Those windows should be short.
Starting point is 00:28:55 Short window. I'm fine with short windows when I'm in Tahoe and I have the theater. But when I'm home, I don't have a theater. I'm like a long window. Okay, listen, you heard Molly and I talking about this crazy Bay Area heat wave.
Starting point is 00:29:10 Maybe you're in France, China, Austin, Florida, SoCal, and you're experiencing this insanity. Well, thankfully, we have liquid IV to keep you hydrated. It's delicious. It is great for your body. And it is so affordable. And you don't have to waste plastic bottles. I love everything about liquid IV. I pounded six liquid IVs this weekend, two or three a day.
Starting point is 00:29:32 You know, I've been doing the treadmill. I've been out there. I'm trying to live that active lifestyle. And if you've got a crazy schedule, this is a great thing for you to do in the morning. I've been doing Liquid IV in the morning. Just keep my hydration game tight. Liquid IV will hydrate you two times faster than water. It comes in great flavor.
Starting point is 00:29:48 Pina colada, Concord grape, my favorite, tropical punch, and more. I love the grape. Some of the grape flavor is just underrated. Go to Liquidiv.com and use the promo code twist at checkout. That's your best bet. That's your best deal. Liquidiv.com, L-I-Q-U-D-I-V.com. And then use the promo code twist at checkout.
Starting point is 00:30:05 you get 15% off and it's already super affordable. If you're a Costco person, just go buy it in bulk there. It's available nationwide at Costco. We actually ordered it from Costco one time. We ordered it to rec one time. Both great experiences and both great for you. Stay nice and hydrated and be at the top of your game all week long. And when you're on the weekend, yeah, you want to keep it there.
Starting point is 00:30:24 I keep it in my bag too. I like to keep it when I'm traveling in my bag. So when I was on the road, boom, I just emptied one of them into a water bottle. I shake it up. Now it got Concord great. Delish. Let's go. Speaking of streaming, let's keep going.
Starting point is 00:30:36 Roku has announced a, so everybody is just trying to be TikTok out here, even Roku, which has announced a software update for its streaming devices and says it will include a feature offering short form TikTok style promotional content from entertainment partners. The feature will be called The Buzz, which I take exception to because the daily buzz was, in fact, my CNET.com front page segment that led to the podcast Buzz Out Loud and the video show The Buzz Report. But okay, you do you, Roku, good idea.
Starting point is 00:31:11 And it will let users discover content in a new way. Posts and the buzz can be video clips, images, trailers, interviews, and other content. Okay, but they're going to be... I would be called Portrait Mode. I don't know the dimensions of Portrait Mode on your phone. It must have a dimension. It's not 16 by 9.
Starting point is 00:31:28 It's not 4 by 3. it's 9 by 16. Okay, 9 by 16. So 9 by 16 on your TV is going to look really whack. So how do they do that? They just have a little thin strip on your TV. Here's my idea for the interface.
Starting point is 00:31:44 You put the 9 by 16 in the middle, and to the left of it is the one you just saw, and then to the right of it are like the next three to come. So they are preloading, and you can see what the next three recommendations are. So somebody make that for me, you know, five, five across nine by 16 of it.
Starting point is 00:32:03 I would check that out, actually. I think that'd be pretty cool because sometimes watching TikToks together is kind of fun. But I don't, they're not going to actually put TikToks though. Well, what they're saying is they're going to allow partners to embed content so that when you go to the Roku homepage, things will start streaming TikTok style and they'll be like promotional or like this is the buzz or whatever. So when I'm in my maximum efficiency mode and I'm just there and I'm like trying to get to HBO Max, a bunch of stuff is going to start playing. only watch one TikTok. And I'm gonna be annoyed. I have one TikTok and I'm having a meeting with this individual
Starting point is 00:32:36 next week or maybe this week. It's called Chef's Reaction. We don't want to talk about the news. We don't want to watch this. This is the greatest account on TikTok. Oh well, I already know I'm not Spongeworthy. So let's see how much I hate myself by the end of this video. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:32:52 Like this guy is an artist, a genuine artist, a master. I said it before an evil genius. like look how many steps are involved just to make this one dessert yet some is going to complain when it costs like 1299 who passion fruit not a huge fan of passion fruit it's a texture thing for me the flavor's fine but just the texture I just I don't know I don't like it in this I would I would eat it though so what he does is they just anytime you see a cooking video on TikTok you just put at chef's reactions and then he watches them and he's a chef I
Starting point is 00:33:29 I won't docks them, but, um, and, uh, he's, he's making a living as a chef. And then he started reacting to stuff. He's not got a million people. I was like, this guy's so brilliant that there's a business in here. I don't know what the business is. He's, he's doing merch. I bought a hat. So everybody go by, if you hear my voice, go to chef's reaction.
Starting point is 00:33:49 Just buy a hat or a t-shirt or something. But I think this guy's brilliant. Because what he'll do when he reacts to these things, Molly, is he will say, oh, you're cutting your chick's. on a woodboard. Okay, now you're cutting your onions on the same board. And he's giving, he's criticizing as he is uniquely qualified to do as a chef, the technique or praising. And then he gives a score. And he's like, six out of ten, I would eat it, but I hate myself for eating it. Or he's like 10 out of 10, you know, I'll never be that person, but, you know, this is obviously incredible.
Starting point is 00:34:22 And you just get a sense of what good food is and what good technique is. It's almost like going to, it's almost like being in the kitchen with like 10 chefs and Anthony Bourdain's there with, you know, whoever and Martha Stewart and they're just watching other chefs cook and critiquing them. I like that he's like, I mean, this is a time honored YouTube construct, by the way, the like video critique of another video. And it's sort of the most genius way to make money and get views. What's great about this guy is that he is in fact such an expert. Like a lot of times it's just, I mean, to be fair, when YouTubers critique other YouTubers, that's, they are an expert at that craft, right?
Starting point is 00:35:02 And so that's, but this is like, I always, I think that this particular art form, creator art form is so fascinating because you don't actually really even have to do that much of work. You just go find stuff. And I mean, it's literally like it's the evolution of the art critic or the theater critic. It's just like, oh. This one is, he always responds to that pastry chef who makes unbelievable pastries for a, events. Yeah. So, like, he will make, he made a robotic arm for a robot company.
Starting point is 00:35:30 And he literally made the hinges and made the robotic arm out of chocolate. You could move the arm around. Like, it's crazy. But what's better, it was when chef reactions roast somebody. Jill, my guy. Like, is it worth saving 10, 15 minutes of time to make this? I bet it doesn't taste good. Textural nightmare.
Starting point is 00:35:56 And even sound shit. Zero. Zero. That was like a quick one, but sometimes you roast people. He just goes in. It's pretty awesome. But this is what Roco should do. Roco should go to a guy like him and say we just pick 20 of these great TikTokers
Starting point is 00:36:12 and say we'll give you $1,000 a month. So that's $20,000 a month, $250k a year. It's not a lot. But we'll give you $1,000 a month if we can feature your stuff here. Hopefully that's part of the plan. With our Roku logo, $1,000 a month each, 20 of you. And so then when you go there, you put the best of TikTok in between the clips of the other partners, right? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:36:37 But do we really do want that, though? And I think those TikTokers would appreciate the money. Yeah. And you'd have people would open their, people would become addicted to open their TikTok by opening their Roku. Mm-hmm. Because there would just be good stuff to watch. Yeah, exactly. If it all feels like ads, if it all feels like, oh, stars, like a stars preview, that's annoying.
Starting point is 00:36:55 But if it is like great content, new. You can watch this kind of interstitial while you think about what you want to watch, or just only watch that and then get tired and go to bed, which is what I'm doing on my phone anyway, and that hurts my neck. So, like, let me have it on my big TV. Now you're going to associate opening your Roku with laughing. Yep, totally. It's being entertained.
Starting point is 00:37:13 So this is the way I would do it. I would play five pure content TikToks for every one AMC Walking Dead preview or, you know, BET or Hallmark movie nonsense, right? Because those are going to be really terrible. yeah we need to get chef's reaction on the british baking shows that would be pretty great that would be hysterical yeah that's what roku should do roku should pay him to make original content yes oh my god nick you're a genius you're a programming genius they should do a crossover here are shows on roku about cooking and here's chef reacting to them click here to watch that episode oh my god
Starting point is 00:37:50 nick you're a programming genius well imagine if roc just said like hey we have like if netflix is like okay, we want to promote Best British Baking Show. And then Roku was like, okay, we have these six TikTok food creators on retainer that do reaction videos. Here's the metrics from each of them. Which one do you want to choose to react to these things? And then they can do different ad campaigns based on who they have available. And the worst it is.
Starting point is 00:38:10 And the more they roast them, the better the click through is going to be to watch the episode, probably. So you just let them go ham. All right, everybody on the phone today is Open Phones founder, Dorena Cooia. Welcome to the program, Doreena. Thanks, Jason. Great to be here. Now, what mistakes do most founders make with phone numbers in their startups?
Starting point is 00:38:29 Great question. First one is they use their personal phone number for their business. And it's an easy mistake to make because you don't necessarily think about it much. You know, you incorporate your company, you put your phone number. There's all these forms you fill out. It very quickly goes from being your personal number to being the number for the company. And when that happens, there are all these data aggregators and all kinds of services that take your number and put it everywhere. Yeah. Suddenly now there is this uptick in spam text messages. It's the worst. Yeah. And people just wonder like,
Starting point is 00:39:01 how are others getting my number? Well, let me tell you, you put it in different places and it kind of snowballed from there. So that's the first mistake. The second, which is initially as a founder, you're the salesperson. You're the only sales sales rep. And then you hire a first sales rep. And sometimes founders let that person use their personal phone number. Oh, no. That number, the data, everything that happens is just fully belongs to the sales rep. And if that person leaves, you lose the entire history with your customers. Yeah. And then what if that sales executive goes to a competitor? Exactly. Yep. Okay, everybody, Twist listeners can get 20% off any plan for their first six months at OpenFone. Just go to openphone.com slash twist. If you got an existing number, they'll
Starting point is 00:39:45 put it right over for free. Head to O-P-E-H-O-N-P-H-O-N-E dot com slash twist today for 20% off. We do live in the future, Molly. We do. We live in the future, Molly. We do. We live in in the future. And we now have random chefs in between service becoming having a million followers. Like literally random chef from around the world is now reacting and has got a million followers. Yeah. And it's becoming a brand. This is literally the future, right, that we all wanted. It's like talent rising to the top. But there's other we live in the future items. And Monday, we always like to do something positive. Every Monday we're going to do, we live in the future. So if you have, we live in the future moments, of course, email producers at this week in startups.com.
Starting point is 00:40:28 What's on deck today, Mullen? This has been, I think, in the works for a while. We live in the future in tractor land later this year. So, you know, like autonomous driving in terms of cars, tiny bit of a stall. But John Deere is straight up stone cold rolling out self-driving tractors this year that can plow fields by themselves and sprayers that can disallow. that can distinguish, I want to see this, weeds from crops. What? Love it.
Starting point is 00:40:58 Can tell the difference. Easy. Yeah, computer fission, easy. Come on. Easy, lazy. Why have we not invested in them? Love it. Well.
Starting point is 00:41:06 Actually, I did meet with a company that can, that could autonomously weed. That's true. Those exist. Oh, is a robot that smoked weed, you're saying? We definitely live in the future now. Imagine it's like a robot that automatically smoked weed. No, just makes sense because if you think about computer vision, I showed on, I showed on, all in the other week,
Starting point is 00:41:24 Route AI, which was a company we invested in that then got bought by app harvest, another company that's doing vertical farming, but they were doing computer vision and it was one of the guys
Starting point is 00:41:35 had figured out how to do arms at MIT, I believe it was, that were so sensitive that they could pick a cherry tomato. Now, a computer has better vision than a human. And you could have
Starting point is 00:41:50 multiple cameras looking at a cherry tomato plant. And it's very quickly, like a thousand times faster and more accurately than a human, going to be able to go, beep, beep, beep, beep. These ones are ready to be picked. And the arm is going to be able to navigate and pick those cherry tomatoes and leave the ones that need another day to ripen. And it can just go down, up and down. Now with this, that tractor has that big, long arm behind it, that's spraying pesticide. Now, I wonder if what it's doing is, let's say there are 100 spickets on it. I'm just making a number up here. Maybe 50 is more reason. There's 50
Starting point is 00:42:25 spickets. And they're numbered one through 50. But there's a camera on the front aligned with those 50 spickets. Now it knows, hey, listen, there's a breakout over here of weeds. We don't need to spray the whole field with pesticides. We can just do that area. So turn it on and off. I wonder if that's what it's doing. I mean, it sounds like that's what they're describing. Yeah. And if that is If that's the case, that would be phenomenal because we do, I've talked to a couple of ag tech companies who have explained to me that we way overuse pesticide. Because nobody, because farmers don't know. And it's really hard to pinpoint. Like there's one company that is developing seeds that have biomarkers in them so that if they start to get a mold or a pest infestation, they glow like an infrared color that you can see from satellites.
Starting point is 00:43:16 So you can see it from overhead. like, oh, there's this glowing yellow blob. So you need to, you know, target spray there, stop the infestation. So you don't have to just spray and pray and hope for the best and you poison people. And also you just use too much pesticide, which uses like all these, you know, chemicals that are all contributors to climate change. So the idea that you could be doing this as you are tractoring, like all day, every day in agriculture is huge. It would be massively impactful. This is a great idea. This is also happening with the use of fertilizer and taking soil samples. So, you know, you look at all the soil and you're like, well, where should we put the fertilizer? And they're like, okay, we took a sample. We're going to lay it down. Okay, well, what if you took a hundred samples? And you said, we're going to make custom soil. And, you know, these 10 need this type of custom fertilizer. These 50 need another version and the other 40 need nothing. Now, yeah, pattern.
Starting point is 00:44:16 A.G. Pattern A.G. Is a company we invested in with Freiburg. It's one of Freeburg's Climate Corp companies and the syndicate.com invested in it. It wasn't a climate syndicate one, although could arguably fall into that. But anyway. We'll talk about that in the future because we do
Starting point is 00:44:32 sometimes get some of those from there and then they would be great for that. Yeah, but Pattern A.G, it's like a lab and data provider for doing soil analysis and like sort of trying to deeply and analyze the it's all about at the end of the regenerative agriculture and being able to use soil more efficiently.
Starting point is 00:44:51 Super interesting. Pretty cool homepage. Pattern.ag. I guess the AG domain is out now. I didn't know we had an AG domain happening here. Oh, yeah. Pull up the screen, so just give them a little shout out since they have a good looking website. Whenever our portfolio companies have a beautiful website with a lubed video, we should totally
Starting point is 00:45:05 show the page because it looks good during the show. But shout out to Pattern AG doing that. Here's pattern AG's home. Your soil is talking. It's time to listen. Pattern AG offers the most advanced soil. to optimize your crop protection and fertility plans. So they do two things, Molly. If you're looking to
Starting point is 00:45:22 have babies, they also are doing that. So they've got a fertility clinic for humans and they're doing, oh no, wait, that's for fertility for plants, not for humans. Somebody's dad is in here. Did I make you laugh? Did I get a laugh? That's it. I just, that's why I come every day. I just come here to see if I can get you to chuckle. I just make nothing, I'm like a 12 year old boy. It started into, it started as a disgusted snort and turned into actual hysterics.
Starting point is 00:45:49 I'm still the same 12 to 15 year old boy. This is what I was able to make girls laugh in high school. God bless America. At breezy point, I can make a girl laugh. It was like, wow, this is amazing. I can get attention from girls by telling a joke. Let's do it. And thus the career.
Starting point is 00:46:07 And done. And done. It literally is for guys out there who are short, fat, bald. otherwise not able to score with chicks. I highly recommend just try to be funny. Then the Nodies are like red flag. Is it a red flag? I kind of feel like I'm like a good uncle
Starting point is 00:46:28 explaining to you how to be a normal guy. I feel like this is good advice. Like stop playing video games. Take a girl on a date. Make people laugh. Make them laugh. Make them feel special. Come on.
Starting point is 00:46:39 Sorry if I'm old school. And dad jokes work. Dad jokes. My daughter's now. We have another. We actually have, this is what kind of Monday it is, we have a double whammy we live in the future. We do. It's just that. By the way, and I also try to make my daughters laugh. So the dad joke I've been doing for now 10 years for them, they request it. So the bill comes at the restaurant. I ask for the check. I open the bill. This is me opening the bill. Let's pretend this is like the sleeve. The bill comes in.
Starting point is 00:47:12 Got it. Uh-huh. Yeah. Uh-huh. And then I look at it and I go, oh my God, $14 for bread? Who ordered a fourth bottle of Pellegrino? $18 worth of Pellegrino? You couldn't just have the tap water? And I just do this. And sometimes if I really want to do it next level, I do it until the waiter comes over and notices. And they're like, sir, is there something wrong?
Starting point is 00:47:38 And I'm like, do you guys charge for bread? He's like, we don't charge for bread, sir. And I'm like, oh, okay, I'm just read the bell. I'm just joking. I'm like, I just love it. do you send him back in the kitchen like you guys are going to have to work I'm sorry I didn't bring enough money for this pretty it's a great joke it's a classic it's a classic if you want to make people laugh I suggest you do this but don't tell them you're going to do it just go ahead and do it at your next dinner
Starting point is 00:47:59 and report back to me and maybe take a video and make a TikTok out of it it's a classic dad joke if you have classic dad jokes I love to hear classic gag jokes but you should just take that and do it you know and then just but you have to lean into this joke I know you got to be able to sell it I can't make people uncomfortable you have to be willing to make people uncomfortable. It's sort of like, who is that comedian who died recently who used to do SNLs? Oh yeah, Norm, Norm McDonald. I'd be watching some Norm, you know, you get down the rabbit hole on YouTube, and I just clicked on a couple of Norm McDonald's when he died, and I get them once or wrong. He makes people so uncomfortable. Yeah, I can. And the last five years, he knew he was
Starting point is 00:48:40 dying, and he leaned into, like, I'm going to make people really uncomfortable. And, man, Super uncomfortable. It's comedy. We have been watching Impractical Jokers, which Nick and I discussed. Wait, is Impractical Jokers the puppets? No. It's like four dumb, dumb friends who go out and challenge each other to make people uncomfortable in public.
Starting point is 00:49:05 That's always dangerous. It's, you would think, I am shot. What you discover watching this show is how much people will put up with in public. It's phenomenal. So, and it's a, you know, it's like you got to say, whatever like it'll have two guys in a back room and two guys in a shoe store pretending to be the the you know workers at the shoe store and it's like you have to say whatever we feed you through your earpiece no no oh yeah that's so brutal you're doomed you're gonna watch it there's nine
Starting point is 00:49:30 seasons of this and it's become a genre on it'll be like you got to go take food off of people's plate at a buffet just take and they go and they just like pluck food off people's plate oh god you be careful man like from where i'm from like that stuff don't fly you would think Turns out people are very docile. Let's talk about our other We Live in the Future that may or may not be. We're doubling down on We Live in the Future because we're so excited to either visit this or watch it all unravel as a giant scam. A Canadian architectural company is pitching a moon-themed resort to Middle Eastern and North African countries. The architectural company called Moon World Resorts Inc. or MWR is pitching the idea of a $5 billion.
Starting point is 00:50:16 dollar resort that literally looks like the moon. Wait a second. It's just a big old moon. You're saying they're putting a resort on the moon? No, no. They're building a version of the moon. I see. I see it.
Starting point is 00:50:31 I'm looking at the picture now. It's like the Eiffel Tower in Vegas, except it's the moon and it would be a Dubai scale. So like super gigantic. It is expected to have an overall height of 735 feet. Now, for a reference, the Salesforce tower is a thousand, 70 feet. So a little, you know, shorter than that. But just things like, wait, this is like 80 stories high or something you're telling me? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:50:53 Is it hollow or is there hotel rooms in it? And apparently 80 stories wide, too. Hotel rooms. It's hotel rooms. So you live inside the moon. You live in the moon. But the outside of it is designed to look and lighted like the moon in terms of the craters and everything. Yeah, exactly. Wow. Okay. So but then you have a, do you have windows? I guess they're one-sided windows so you can look out? I guess they're probably disguised windows, or maybe they're going for the full, like, moon experience. And you live in like, you're like in little burrows, you know, and you're pretending you have artificial air.
Starting point is 00:51:26 I mean, you can really, like, do it up and make it like a moon colony. I say just make it hollow and then have it be like a giant hollow experience inside that you can walk around, like a spiral staircase and put cafes in it. But I don't want to be in a hotel room. You're not going to make enough money that way. You need a, you need sky villas with private residences inside the superstructures disc bill. buildings. What can I do on the outside of the structure? Am I going to be able to repel down it? That would be amazing. If you could do like a moonwalk on the outside. That's what I'm saying. They should give you boots that are magnetic and you should be able to walk around the surface of the moon.
Starting point is 00:51:58 That's amazing. That's amazing. There is a mockup from the company's website showing this big old moon. The idea is that they say they'll build this in 48 months and attract two and a half million space enthusiasts every year to experience, quote, affordable space tourism. No, that's dumb. That's not what you're doing. What you're doing is you're creating an Instagramable moment where a bunch of Instagram people can take a picture in front of this and say, look, I'm on the moon. Or if they could walk on the top of it, then you could get like a serious camera of like,
Starting point is 00:52:32 I'm walking on the moon in a moon suit. You're creating an Instagramable moment. This has nothing to do with going to space. Kind of like, this is like the least built out website I've ever seen. too. So this is one of those where we live in the future, but the future might just be like a huge money laundering operation. This is a lame. But I love, I mean, I'm kind of obsessed with Dubai in this way, how they just like build whatever, right? It's like how Vegas used to just build whatever. Like, yeah, we built this huge, you know, pyramid. The luxur and you can see it from space and whatever
Starting point is 00:53:00 and da-da-da-da-da. And so they're like, we're just going to build a moon in Dubai. Honestly, that wouldn't shock me. I just, yeah. I mean, I like it aesthetically, I guess. I don't. like the way they're selling it. I don't know. I guess they didn't want to do the sun and just have everybody be incinerated into a fiery ball. Come stay at the sun. Well, just, it's really hot inside. You can do pick for yoga. Once you have the moon, you could start doing other planets all around the world, though,
Starting point is 00:53:30 which would be kind of cool. Because then you, if you got all the planets in a row, and then a little Jupiter and then our little baby, uh, a little baby Pluto. And you could like, you could spend a year. staying in all of them, it would become like a tour. This is we live in the past. This is we live in the past. This is Epcot Center.
Starting point is 00:53:51 This is the World's Fair, which I wish we had a World's Fair again. We should have a lot of it's fair. This is living in the past. What I think we should have, a much more interesting idea is to put a hotel on the moon. That's going to be dope. Yes. I'm also, by the way, I'm going to the moon. I've made a way.
Starting point is 00:54:10 Exactly. I'm like, you're going to the moon. I mean, they do make. They do make the good point that 12 people have been to the moon. We can't even get, you know, I'm going when I'm 60 currently. So when I'm 60. Well, that sounds great for you.
Starting point is 00:54:23 I will be in Dubai. I will be in the Dubai version. I think it's going to be, we'll have regular trips to the moon for civilians in 10 years. Yep. I'm not going to have a luxury hotel. You can do a bet. Let's do a long bet.
Starting point is 00:54:35 Long bet right now. Great. I'm going to set the over under that tourists can land on the moon. That's it. A tourist, somebody who pays, can put their feet on the moon. I'm going to set the over under at 2032. At a tourist, a paid passenger, not an astronaut, puts their feet on the moon. Do you take the over or the under mode?
Starting point is 00:54:59 I think I'm setting a great line here, Nick. And Nick and Rachel, you're in on this too for a hundy. It's a hundy each. Yeah, but you just took the under. No, no, I set the line. I might take the action on either side. I just want to get everybody's over under and see if I said a good line.
Starting point is 00:55:15 Literally land on the moon. I'm going to go over. You're going to say over. Okay, Nick, you got over under. 232. Are you just landing? You're landing and your feet are touching. Like you're not doing anything.
Starting point is 00:55:25 Your feet are touching and then you fly back. That's it. Well, you have to make it a very specific fashion. Get out. The Neil Armstrong. You're landed on the moon. You just bop out. It could be that your feet actually touch the surface
Starting point is 00:55:37 or you're in a moon base or your capsule lands on the moon. any of those counts as being on the moon. Isn't this kind of like we live in the past? We did this 50 years ago. I know, but we haven't done it since. In 1969, we can't even get Artemis off the launch pad right now. That might have been also CG.
Starting point is 00:55:52 Stanley Kubrick. Even though CGI didn't exist, that might have been CGA. Can you imagine you're like such a maniac that you believe that the mooner landing was? I mean, I will say, I'm feeling like kind of a maniac right now. And Nick points out we did this 60 years ago and I still am like, I'm taking the over. Like that is kind of... We're clearly capable of doing it. It's just a matter of if we have the will to do it.
Starting point is 00:56:15 Exactly. We have the ability. That's been proven. Wow. Do we have the will to do it? Because let's face it, not much happened last time. Although there is a new rub. I don't know if you saw that other story that came out this weekend.
Starting point is 00:56:26 Yes, I did. I'm super into the story. The China one about how they discovered a new mineral. There was a story that said that China is really ramping up its moon operations because they have discovered this new... They, not only they, it was like they became the third country to discover this new mineral that could potentially be used as a future energy source. It's like a type of hydrogen, I think.
Starting point is 00:56:50 Hold on. Let me look at it up. Yeah, it's called like some hydrogen three or something. So it was an insider. So who knows, you know, they tend to rewrite stories from like some other news. Insider, I'd say, nine and ten. It was first reported by Bloomberg. Yeah, nine.
Starting point is 00:57:05 Oh, was it? Okay. Because a lot of times they'll just, Insider's game is to take a story. behind a paywall and rewrite it in bullet points. Right. So I don't know the origin of this, but sometimes it's like a Chinese news site. So I think they have some Chinese folks.
Starting point is 00:57:18 But in this case, evidently it was in fact. It was in Bloomberg. And Bloomberg said, it's called helium three. It's called helium three. It contains helium three. Contains helium three. Um, the samples were retrieved by China's Chang E5 mission. And they call this mineral Chang's site.
Starting point is 00:57:35 It's a colorless, transparent columnar crystal said to contain helium 3, an isotope that's been speculated as a future energy source. And so China's space agency is going to, I think they're trying to do three moon missions. This is what they want to get. They want to get this element. You knew this was going to happen. Oh, yeah.
Starting point is 00:57:53 Because where are the chances that every element in the world is in the universe is on our planet? Right. That would seem unlikely. There must be things out there that are not part of our planet. Right? They're like planets where it rains diamonds and stuff. I mean, yeah, there's tons of stuff out there that's not. It must be part of our planet.
Starting point is 00:58:13 If it's part of our planet, it's in teeny, teeny, teeny, teeny quantities. That's another possibility, right, yeah. So there must be minerals, elements, whatever, that exist on other things. So the question is, why are they not on our planet? Because our planet is only one small subset of elements in the universe. And then what happens when we bring it to our planet and introduce it? Because that also seems fraught with possibilities. Like maybe there's things that if they were on our planet.
Starting point is 00:58:39 if that's scary. Helium 3 is not new, but apparently this mineral is somewhat new. Yeah. Great. Awesome. I mean, this is what they've been saying. Well, I mean, I think this is like the beginning of like at least two dozen horror films is that some element or end or goo, you know, is found. And then somebody decides to touch it and take their mask off. Right. Which always seems like, really? You're that guy. You got to touch it. That is when I checked out of that movie. That Permethius movie. talking about Prometheus? Yes. When the guy's like, oh, look at this cute little, I don't know, looks kind of like a viper, like a snake, but with bigger teeth. Let me just go say hi to it. And then the second one where they detoured to a planet that's not on their agenda and then land on that planet and promptly take their helmets off.
Starting point is 00:59:25 Like I was like, nope. That's always my favorite. They're like, oh, look, oxygen readings. Let's take our protective gear off. And I'm like, really? Really? Of course, nothing to keep it on. They're like, yeah, but aesthetically, this movie's going to suck if we're all in helmets
Starting point is 00:59:37 and you have to hear us through like a space microphone. So for the sake of the audience, we're taking our helmets off. Right. Even though we're, we're scientists. And we definitely do know about things like microbes and bacteria and viruses. But we would just pop them off. No problem. We're taking them off.
Starting point is 00:59:51 I mean, do you want to watch a whole movie where they have, you know, had things on? It's kind of boring. I mean, exactly. That's no good. No good. All right. Listen, this has been Monday. We got through it together.
Starting point is 01:00:02 We did it. We got a big week. I feel better. I feel better. I'm ready for the week now. I can do it. All right, enough fun for today. But we have more.
Starting point is 01:00:09 Don't worry. There is much more fun coming up. We've got a whole packed week, as always, the final segment of the blueprint. Another crypto roundtable. It's merge week. The Eith merge is happening. It is officially kicked off. So Sunny and Vinny are back from the Pliya.
Starting point is 01:00:26 They both were at Burning Man. I did not hang with them in their crypto yurt. But we will get a report on the crypto. yurt, life. And there was some crypto stuff going down on the ply, I'm sure. They were both there, though. I saw from their social. Cannot even wait. Crypto plus burning man. Like that certain those two circles overlapping. It's just great. We do live in the future. Yes, yes, we do.

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