This Week in Startups - Crypto drops ~$200B, Celsius freezes, Binance’s BTC pause, Google AI sentience, Magic Spoon: DTC isn’t dead | E1483

Episode Date: June 14, 2022

On today's show, Jason and Molly cover crypto losing $200B from its total market cap this weekend (14:51) and Binance pausing withdrawals of Bitcoin for almost 4 hours this morning (29:53). We also quickly talk about a Google engineer claiming Google's AI chat bot has become sentient (38:15). For our We Live in the Future, we cover Amazon announcing drone delivery for later this year (48:52). Finally, we wrap on our Startup of the Day: Magic Spoon, a high-protein cereal maker (53:57). (0:00) Jason and Molly tee up today’s news stories (2:44) Catching up with Jason and Molly (hikers vs mountain bikers, rattlesnakes) (13:51) Ourcrowd - Check out the deal of the week at https://ourcrowd.com/twist (14:51) Crypto lost $200B from total market cap this weekend, major currencies are down ~25% over past week (28:42) Assure - To get 20% off your first Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) visit https://Assure.co/twist (29:53) Binance paused withdrawals of Bitcoin for almost 4 hours earlier this morning (37:06) AdQuick - Visit https://adquick.com/twist and mention TWIST to get $1000 off your first campaign. (38:15) Google’s AI is sentient according to engineer Blake Lemoine (48:52) WLitF: Amazon announced they will officially launch drone delivery this year (53:57) SotD: Magic Spoon (high-protein cereal maker) raised a $85M Series B

Hey, everybody. Welcome to this week in startups. It is Monday. It is a big news Monday. We suggest that you take a peek into the bunker and check on some of your friends who may be heavily invested in crypto, got that laser eye surgery plan and drop out of society. It's looking a little rough. Yeah, the crypto market is tanking again, down 200 billion in market cap over the weekend. $200 billion evaporated. Major currencies are down 25% over the past week. I mean, when it rains, it ports. The web three is going to be okay, is just fine, is like going crazy this weekend. We were all in the group chat with story after story about crypto madness. Yeah, we've got, and I think what we're starting to see now is like things really come apart, right? Not just the dropping. Luna and Tara clearly were just the first shoe. The latest is that the defy platform, decentralized finance platform, Celsius, has paused.

paused, paused, withdrawals, swaps, and transfers to maintain liquidity, meaning that something like $12 billion, I think, in value is currently just frozen on that platform. Binance, paused. People are losing their minds. People are losing their minds and their money. I mean, potentially, literally losing their money in this exact moment. We'll talk about Binance, pausing Bitcoin withdrawals. We'll also, though, we will have a hopefully a little fun time at the back of the show with

We Live in the Future, Startup of the Day, it's possible sentient AI. coming for all of us. It's going to be a heck of a show. It's going to be a roller coaster right. Stick with us. Stick with us. This week in startups is brought to you by Our Crowd. Our Crowd helps you invest early in pre-IPO companies alongside professional VCs. If you're interested in investing, you can join Our Crowd for free at OUR-C-R-C-O-D.com slash twist. Assure. Asure is the leading provider of special purpose vehicles. and fund administration, with over 5,000 completed transactions and $2.5 billion under administration. Twist listeners can get 20% off their first SPV at Assure.co slash twist.

That's assure.com slash twist. And ad quick. If most of your advertising dollars are going to digital ads, it's time to diversify. out-of-home advertising like billboards offers low-cost, high-value reach. AdQuick makes it easy to plan, buy, and measure all in one place. Visit adquick.com slash twist and mention Twist to get $1,000 off your first campaign. Hey, everybody. Thanks to our partners for sponsoring the show.

Keeping the lights on over here. A big weekend for both of us. So much adventure. I took my, I got a, you know, I wanted to have a summer sport. So I was thinking mountain biking or something on the water. So I just got the, I made the leap of faith. I bought like a ridiculous, specialized mountain bike made of carbon fiber. This thing costs more than a motorcycle.

Nice. But I took it out and I went, I was, you know, I had this moment, Molly, where I was like, search, you know, for a mountain biking thing. So I find a mountain biking course near me, like a hike. And I'm like, moderate. I'm moderate. And I forgot that moderate is like a skill level greater than zero. I'd never been on a mountain bike.

I've never been on a mountain bike. Oh, you've never been on a mountain bike? No. Oh my goodness. I mean, I've been on a bike that's got chunky tires, I guess. But I've never been off road on a mountain bike. So I was like, eh, how hard could moderate be? And yeah, I almost literally, I was on a trail.

I kid you're not. That was the path, Molly, was the size of the tires times four. So like if you had four tires, that's how one. wide it was, which is incredibly narrow. And there were points where there was like a 10 foot, you know, 15, 20 foot drop, you know, going down a mountain. And I literally almost bet it because I hit like a root. I hit a root.

And the bike bounces, you know, when it bounces that the front tire can go in a different direction, the handlebars. And you have to adjust really quickly or you go flying off the cliff. It's a wonderful sport. It's a wonderful sport. It's a real fun one. Yeah. So we'll see.

Yeah. But you also... Now maybe go back to beginning, beginner for the next time. Yeah, maybe I should go to an or maybe go with a buddy who's done this before. I have no idea what I'm doing. Don't go with the... My experience with mountain biking is that your buddy is always trying to kill you. The buddy's always like, oh yeah, you can totally do this trail.

The boom on your cover of the top. You can totally do this. It's exactly the word said before somebody calls 911. Yeah. Speaking of calling 911 and doing things that are really dumb. Molly, you went hiking this weekend. Did you know that hikers and bikers, by the way, is like a rivalry as old as time? Yeah, you know, the algorithm found out I was mountain biking and decided to show me a bunch of videos.

Yeah. Including, you know, there seems to be a thing. And we'll get to your story of near death in just a moment. But there seems to be a war going on between not just hikers and mountain bikers, but mountain bikers and e-mounted bikers. Yes. And so there should be. well, I have an e-bike and I had it on, you know, like trail mode, which gives you like a 30% boost only if you need it.

So like when you're going downhill, it's not boosting. You're one of them. You're out there and your e-mountain bike turn the trail. Yeah, well, I'm an old man. And I also want to be able to go up the mountains and use the mountain bike, you know, for longer periods of time. I don't want to be, you know, not able to go up a certain hill. And even then with the mountain bike, it has a walk button on it.

So when you're holding the handlebars, Molly, you could hold down a walk button and it does a little bit of power to power the bike up the hill, which is kind of like a grandma moving. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Anyway, this guy, I get this TikTok video of a guy who's waiting on the trail

and he hears like an electric motor and he starts yelling at this guy. You know, there's no e-bikes on here. There's no motorized vehicles. And the guy, I kid you not, is in one of those bikes, like a modified bike for somebody who was paralyzed. And the guy says, I'm disabled.

This is an electric bike because I can't move my legs. The guy says, no motorized. Oh, yikes. And his wife's, and so the guy's like, I'm sorry, I'm paralyzed. I'm allowed on here because that's why I have a motor. And the guy is still irate. He's like, you should have said. And I'm like,

Oh my God. People have lost their minds. This guy is so tilted that there's E Mountain Bikes, which have no impact on them, unless you're going insanely fast. Well, and people are, I mean, to be fair, everybody's mad about E Mountain Bikes because it's super dangerous. It's a menace. Like, you just, if people are out there using them like dirt bikes, I'm not saying it's dangerous as de facto dangerous. I'm saying that people are out on the trails using E mountain bikes like dirt bikes going

30, 40 miles an hour. And it's like been... Can only go 20 miles an hour of mine. So I straddled. Maybe people have ones that are unethical. Unthrottled, I think. Or they hack them. I mean, people, if they can, right?

If Dum Dumm can, dumb, dumb will. And so it's created a lot of rage. I think they could probably do 30 miles, you could probably do 30 miles per hour with these engines on them, but they throttle them at 20. There's like a whole class system. Yeah. Yeah, we spent several miles of our hike this weekend discussing how E-Mountain bikes should not be a lot on trails.

Oh, wow. Look at this. Wow. Here we go, folks. It's starting up. It's the hiker thing. It's like it's real. 341 people are watching now for this exact.

Here it goes. Here's what. What I have to say, now that I'm almost saying it's mad on the trail. You know, you don't have to. I don't use it downhill. I only use it uphill on trail mode, not on turbo. There's turbo and trail.

Yeah. Anyway, this is going to be a battle for the ages. You know why, Molly? Yeah. You know why this is so contentious? Because they're so little at stake. There's so little at stake. It's just like a bunch of rich people on trails with expensive bikes fighting with each other.

Super quick, amazing story. I... When I was doing the research for how we survive, I was in Winamuck and Nevada, and they had come and I was basically like covering this lithium mine, proposed lithium mine where there was a lot of pushback from members of this nearby tribe and members of the community and they weren't like, we don't want this mine. They had hired a professional mediation company, like the kind of company that mediates like massive conflict between, you know, minors and communities and all kinds of like business conflict. So we're at dinner with this company and I'm like, so what's like the worst? what's like the toughest challenge you've ever faced? Like was there ever a situation where you literally could not mediate? Like you could not find an agreement.

And this woman's like, yeah, actually, it was in Helena, Montana, my hometown. I'm like, wait, what? And she's like, yeah, and it was bikers and hikers. Really? Dispute. Yep, they were trying to come up with a new trail system. And there was such a massive, like, there were like fist fights in the parking lot. People were vandalizing each other's cars.

I was literally like, relax. It's just a hike. You're going out there to relax. She's like, I'm going out there to relax, maybe get a little workout, a little cardio,

everybody relax. It's just the hike. They had to call it. They were just like, you know what? We're out. We're out. Yeah.

They probably have a Israel, Palestine, they could do. Hikers and bikers in Montana. They look forward to doing that. They're like, we can make progress. Yeah.

Progress can be made. Hikers and bikers. So we'll be no progress. Hikers and, yeah, my message to hikers is, If you have a problem with my e-bike, catch me.

Because I'm going to go faster. That's it. If this is on, it's on. I'm looking for a battle. I'm going to be holding out. I'm going to be holding out. Sticks on the trail. This is like skiers and snowboarders.

Like literally, there's a whole mountain. Just everybody relax. So anyway, as you might be sensing, I was backpacking this weekend. Oh, yes. We need to get to your story of death. I'm on hiker side. Yes. Team hiker.

And we literally had this whole conversation. And then this like elderly, very fit man went by on a really steep grade on his electric mountain bike and we were like, I mean, if it's extending the life, right? If it's extending his ability to do this thing that he clearly loves, we're willing to find some compromise. Oh, okay. But yeah, both of us went out and did outdoor adventures that were a little, like I went out in an extreme heat advisory with what I later discovered to be a busted water filter. Oh no. We, I mean, that was fine. We were carrying 30 pounds of water between the two of us.

Like, we're pretty hardcore preppers. However, we apparently did not look up what the Northern California rattlesnake looks like. And in a tiny bit of heat stroke, just chilled next to one in the shade for solid 10 minutes, chatting with a ranger, literally like a ranger drove by because we were on the fire road, sat there, had a little chit chat with him, snake right here. Just snake right here, just chilling. I mean, it was not rattling.

Rattlesnakes are the most aggressive. That's not how, that's just not how snakes weren't, Molly. tongue. Like, it was just chillaxon. No, they do nothing until they kill you. Luckily, it did. That's how snakes work. They're like lions or other predators.

Rattlers? They have burst of energy. Yeah. Okay. A rattlesnake is the easiest thing in the world. It's got like a diamond head. And they have like... I do know that now.

Yeah. And they're thick and fat and large. Very fat. It's like a mountain bike tire. It's a big freaking snake. It's a big snake. It thinks to be six feet. It's fascinating.

And they also have rattles on them. I saw a king snake. You couldn't see the ratles. The rattle was like in the, it wasn't coiled up. Like, it was just chilling. We had a nice time together and I was 100%. I've never been less afraid of a critter until I googled it later. And then I was like, oh my God.

I can't believe you can't identify a rousing. We might not be allowed out. Here's another cons. Now I can identify all of them. Okay. Another concept for you, Molly. Potential predator. Use caution.

We did. It's a snake. It's potentially a predator. So use caution. You said you were like a foot away from a rattlesman. Like two to three feet. Now granted it has a six-foot strike. That's their sweet spot.

Apparently it can be like six. It can have a six-foot strike. Yes, that's why I'm saying. Two to three is it's kill zone. That's like it's where it's peak performance. It's going to hit a hundred of a hundred shots. That's their layup. That's a rattlesnakes actual layup is two to three feet.

Everybody was cool. We were all cool. Yeah. Okay. If you see. My cousin texted me actually after that, after the picture I posted on Instagram. And he goes, Jesus wasn't afraid of snakes. I'm like, see, you get me.

Yeah. No. Yeah. Jesus wasn't afraid of snakes said every Christian who died in a church holding up a snake. Literally, 100% of the pastors who hold up those snakes die of a snake bite. It's just a matter of when. So, Molly, when you're on the trail next weekend in your summer adventures, and you see a cat that looks like a house cat, but that's bigger than a house cat, just default to it's dangerous.

You don't need to think the best of the cat. I got, I got bears. We had water covered. I even, ironically, after we passed the snake was hiking along and I was like, I like to catastrophize in my mind and imagine my response to the worst possible scenario. So I was like, all right, if one of us gets bit, because this feels like rattlesnake territory right here, having passed this rattlesnake an hour earlier, I was like, okay, if one of us gets bit, here's the four straps we can use as a tourniquet.

We're only like two and a half miles. I mean, I literally like planned out what to do. Move 10 feet up the trail. Or move 10 feet up the trail. Yeah. Either one. Don't hang out next to it. Listen, market conditions are a little crazy right now.

We have a bunch of factors out there causing a bit of chaos, raising interest rates, inflation and a really complex geopolitical environment. So some savvy investors are diversifying with alternative investments like startups. That's what I do for a living. And our crowd makes it easy for you to diversify your country. portfolio, Our Crowd offers a variety of expertly vetted high-growth private companies across various stages, geographies, and industries like biotech, cybersecurity, and renewable energy. Every month, Our Crowd vets hundreds of startups across the world, then they bring you the ones

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it's the end of Independence Day. This is literally like Independence Day for crypto. The combined market cap of all crypto dropped 200 billion of the weekend. $200 billion. $200 billion just gone. Bitcoin and Ethereum, which are typically the most resistant, is really the story to me here. I woke up this morning and I saw people talk about Michael Saller, you know, the guy who's got that micro-stratagies company where he just bought all this Bitcoin because he has some

sort of margin loan or like where he gets called at 21K. So I think like that number's out there in the ether. Oh, really? And so people are kind of now rooting for Bitcoin 21 to see what happens on Michael Saylor and his margin loans. Because everybody hates us short. Yeah, I guess. He's got that.

He's long, but he took a loan and he's collateralized at 21. So if it falls below 21, I think his average price is 30, I was reading. So anyway, Bitcoin is down 24%. It's not good. last week to 23-5. I'll take it through this. A couple other numbers here. This is the first time that crypto as a combined asset class has fallen below a trillion

dollars since February 2021. Another sign we may be approaching crypto winter. In one day alone, there was a 12% drop. The total drop now is like 200% from the all-time high, which was $3 trillion. That happened last November. And we should probably say here, that caused a lot of people to go buy. there was like, you know, there's a cartoon floating around that was like a whole bunch of people in line to buy Bitcoin at 69,000. And now it's at 23 and the line is gone.

So a lot of buy high happened here. Today, Bitcoin alone dropped 15%. Its lowest level since December 2020. Its total market cap is now about $445 billion. And the pain is being acutely felt at some of these exchanges, including this company, Celsius, which said, which I think as of today, no, yesterday, Sunday, citing market conditions, crypto lending firm Celsius, but his pausing, quote,

all withdrawals, swaps, and transfers between accounts to put it in a better position to honor its withdrawal obligations. Basically, they are stopping, trading in advance of what they think is going to be a bank run. So this is the category where you give them your crypto and I guess they say staking. and then you get yield for it. Interest. So they use new words. You're staking, you're getting these yields,

which I guess yields is existing words. And I guess staking are existing words, but they don't say you're loaning your crypto to get interest. Right. But you are essentially loaning your crypto to get fantastical interest rates, like that are reserved for credit cards

or people in the mafia. Yeah. 20%, 15%. Like, who's paying all that money? Yeah. Yeah. Wait. If it's too good to be true,

it's, because remember I kept asking, who's on the other side of this? Who's borrowing the money? And they're like people who need money and liquidity. I'm like, okay. Who?

Yeah. It's really weird. I mean, 20% and it's just, and this is going to be horrible. And we're going to talk a little bit about the fallout in a minute here. But people, you know,

somebody, one of the Nody gangs just said, I know someone who has all, has their whole life savings in Celsius. Like, yeah. it has always been true and it will always be true that anybody promising you 20% interest is a rattlesnake trying to like you.

I mean, the last person to get 20% interest was John Gotti. This doesn't exist. Yeah. Doesn't exist. The impact of this, so the account Zero Hedge had a tweet to sort of get, give us a sense of the impact and how big Celsius is. Celsius has had $12 billion. in customer assets across 1.7 million users. This unwind alone took Bitcoin down another, you know, from 30,000 to 25,000.

Yeah, 1.7 million total users, this is, this could be a big hole. You know, who knows what their average holding is, but I'm assuming they define users as people with an account with something in it, as opposed to people with an, you know, who opened account have nothing in it. But who knows? Maybe, who knows, with crypto companies, you know, they're not regulated all that much. So, I mean, if they've got a million accounts and the average person has thousands of dollars in it, they mean, it means billions. I mean, they say they have 12 billion in assets under management.

So, you know, that's on average 12, whatever, $6,000, I guess. Yeah. And there's an average person that has $6,000 in their account there. Oh, Lord. But some probably have many more, right? The average is just the average. So some probably have many more. It's not the means.

Yeah. But yeah. It's the median. It's the median. All your savings in one asset. And Celsius, it seems like what they really did was advertise themselves almost like a bank. Yeah. And now what they're experiencing is a bank run.

I mean, this is really, you know, it's like when you strip away all of the technology layers, it's a savings and loan. And now it's collapsing. This is like, uh, it's a wonderful life. Remember the bank run? Yeah. And they've only got like 200. He's got like his. $200 from his wedding or something that they're going to go on vacation or whatever.

And he just like asked everybody, what money do you need to hold each other over? Because your money is in this person's house and this person owes you the money. And he's trying to explain Jimmy Stewart. Well, you don't understand that money is in your house. Joe, what money do you need?

Because that's in Susan's house. And it's like a really great Jimmy Stewart moment. Yeah. I just made it up. There's also a tether connection here. Uh-oh. Yeah. All these.

Go back to Tether, don't they, though? So now Tether is putting out statements saying, hey, the Celsius crisis

is definitely not going to impact our stable coin reserves, even though Celsius reportedly borrowed a billion dollars from Tether in 2021 with Bitcoin as collateral. Hmm.

And Celsius apparently was paying an interest rate between 5 and 6%. Okay. And meanwhile, as all this has been happening, at least this weekend, the Celsius CEO Machinsky, Alex Machinsky,

was on Twitter saying nobody is having any problem with throwing money here. Everybody has access to their funds. And literally as of Monday, they don't anymore. Huh.

Yikes. And then of course... You know what it feels like to me is like this is like the moment of contagion. We've seen this before. Yeah. Where we just had it with the road stocks, right, when you saw BuzzFeed and Peloton and I started talking it, remember I had said maybe two or three weeks ago, Molly, when the value of the enterprise goes below the cash in the

bank, you have this like weird flip that occurs. Like, I guess you could just give the cash to everybody buy their shares and then you'd have whatever leftover cash is and you'd own the asset, you know, 100%. And, you know, that's what we started to see with like things like maybe Peloton or BuzzFeed. We're starting to hit this moment where the asset, what's the actual asset value here? And I think in a panic like this, you don't get any more buyers. All the tourists who've been, you know, coming to town and playing, you know, at the tables, go home. And then who's left? You know, you've got some group of people who believe in it, but they might get pinched because they had some sort of leverage on.

And then we find out where the frauds are or where the mismanagement is. So the incompetence, in other words. So the crime and the incompetence in these kind of markets comes out, and then true value is realized and then rebuilt. So that's what we're going through here in this process. Is there actually any true value to Peloton? There are millions of customers. Do they provide any value?

Okay, let's have that debate. Right now, or BuzzFeed doesn't provide any value to society. People are having that debate. And the debate occurs with a stock price. With crypto, you have a 24-hour ability to make the bet. Is there any value in this project? Yeah. And I think that's why Bitcoin and Ethereum are still worth something and other things are worth nothing or becoming worth close enough because you'll actually see some true value emerge.

Bitcoin to me seems like it's got true value. People want to store money. It seems like a great way to store and transfer money and lock it up pretty effectively. Ethereum, smart contracts, ability to issue tokens, the program ability of it. Yeah, it seems like it has some core value to some group of people. But these other projects, who knows? I thought you had an interesting note about how our team should think about

evaluating crypto projects Yes, I don't know when I wrote this but it was a couple of weeks ago Even more, I think it was like Tuesday, right? I mean, it was not very long ago. Oh, it wasn't long ago, okay. Yeah, I guess we had some crypto projects coming in and so I guess I, yeah, go ahead and read it.

I don't remember what I wrote. Yeah, so you said, it's nothing controversial proprietary in there. No, not at all. It was, if anything, it was a framework for like, here's how to think about crypto projects. You said, we're focused on projects that are launched.

and have six to 12 months of customer data. Okay. Seems reasonable. Yeah. So you said most crypto startups don't have customers. They're spending their time raising money and selling coins for some product that will arrive in the coming years. Okay.

So let's keep that in mind. Yeah. I'm being generous. Right. But the main thing is, when will you launch? And then if they have not, don't talk to them in six months. Yeah. Like have a real product.

Yeah. So this is me giving instructions to our team, which is doing. dozens of first meetings a week. And everybody wants to know, like, well, what should I do with this crypto company? How do we decide if we're going to invest or if we're going to take a second meeting? And my view on it is, like, you know, we're not

experts on cryptography and the inner workings of Web 3. We can build that expertise and go up against all these people who are paying incredibly high prices as this holding collapses. So my approach has been, you can meet them and hear their vision, take the notes, and then

say, when do you plan on launching? Let's say you met them this month, and it's June, and they said, hey, we're going to launch September 1st. Say, great. September, October, November, December, January, February. In February, they're going to have six months of user data. So you just put on your calendar, hey, let's talk again February 1st. When you have six months of user data, would love to get an update on the business.

That would be a good time for us to invest with our LPs and our investment base at the syndicate. We like to, you know, talk to customers and look at customer traction to decide. and obviously we'll pay a higher price in all likelihood, you know, because there'll be more traction, but that's when we like to invest. And I think that's what people who have already invested are going through right now, Molly, is like, did I buy into a project that has actually no product or no value?

Did I just buy a coin that has no product associated with it, no customer base associated with it? And this feels like we're in contagion territory. Yeah. Like full-on contagion territory where, you know, some group of people who own Bitcoin had their margins called. Celsius then has to free stuff. They're frozen.

Maybe people have some of their money in Celsius that they need to pay some margin loan or some bill or they're getting divorced and they need liquidity. So, you know, they have to sell some other asset, right? So let's say they own Peloton. They've got to sell their Peloton because they can't get their Celsius money out. And oh my God, they got a mortgage payment. And then maybe the mortgage payment doesn't get paid. And now we have reports.

Then we start having reports next month that people have a mortgage payment problems. And then we start to see jobs go down because that person who's trying to cover all these assets and unwind their personal balance sheet has to go back to work and take a job. And then Uber wait times go back to one minute as opposed to 15 minutes in major cities where your door dash driver actually, you know, shows up. Yeah. And I mean, you're seeing, I think that's exactly true. It's like every one of these can be taken as its own sort of standalone story, but none of them are. are at it's like every snake bite spreads to the the you know the bigger system and you're seeing markets down dramatically today the inflation report that came out on Friday was terrible right just

disastrous we're going to see a rate hike almost certainly on Wednesday maybe more aggressive rate hikes which will make housing less affordable for people as rates go up like it's on and on and on 50 bips for sure on Wednesday but then some people said hey maybe it's time to the quote people we're using, I think, on CNBC and some of the finance walks I listen to on podcasts. We're saying maybe it's time to slam on the Sunday shows. I think they're saying, hey, maybe you should slam the brakes and just do 75 right now or a full point. And, you know, I think Jim Grammer is like, yeah, do it. Like, we'll take the medicine now and then we can get inflation under control.

But, you know, this inflation caused, the stuff that's caused by supply chain or like the gas prices and energy, I don't know that those unwind themselves. It has nothing. Right. I mean, yes, what is the saying interest rates are gravity? Yeah. For sure. But you can't solve supply chain and production.

Like, you can't solve for a global oil cartel or a war blockade, right? I think that that to me just feels like an unnecessary earthquake that nobody needs right now. If you're an accredited investor, you need to know about special purpose vehicles. So what is an SPV? Well, it's an investment vehicle. vehicle that allows up to 250 investors to invest up to $10 million by one entity on a cap table. So if you're an angel investor and you've got a bunch of rich friends like I do, you could start your own syndicate and power it through an SPV. Here at launch, we love working with the team

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basically. Yeah. So, finance, the largest exchange by volume, paused withdrawals of Bitcoin for almost four hours earlier this morning, which seems to have been a little bit different. It was very peculiar. It was related to, they said, a stuck transaction causing a backlog. transactions apparently get so which at first to me sounded like oh bank run but evidently transactions get stuck because the transaction fee was set too small so too little gas was paid to minors to include the transaction in the next block that's being confirmed like they don't even bother to process it

because nobody's going to get paid but then as a result everything piles up behind it yeah which seems like a minor flaw in the system we talked about finance last week they were having all this investigation for KYC and knowing who their customers were. Right. So, and they had supposedly cleaned up their act a little bit, but maybe there was two billion dollars worth of dark money and going through the system, I think was the number, if I remember correctly. Yeah.

So, you know, there's a lot of questions that are going to come out of this collapse, just like the ICO collapse. There's going to be a lot of legal action. And then you have LPs who put money into crypto projects. Yeah. when you're making money, Molly, nobody really asks any questions. You got to fund,

you're a money manager, people are staking you in a poker tournament, or people are staking a professional gambler. If you're winning, great, send me my distribution or like tell me how much I'm up. Not much to discuss. You know,

people will say like, hey, can I give you more money to put to work? When this comes apart, then people say, how did I lose my money? What did you place the bet on? Tell me what your thinking was when you placed that bet. Now, imagine you're a venture firm and you start talking about this stuff, you know, and your answer is, yeah, we met this founder of them, they've never done anything before they're living in Panama, and we gave them $100 million for their tokens.

And their projects not launched. And yeah. And they sold 50 million of the tokens. personally. So the founder, we basically gave the founder $50 million of your money. It's going to be like that kind of conversation with, you know, and Trice and Horowitz with the whatever billions of dollars in crypto, every one of those failed projects.

If that portfolio is underwater, which it's almost certainly going to be, unless they really sold a lot of the coins to the public market, you know, and the bagholders, you know, all the later investments are going to be underwater. It's going to be a very uncomfortable forensic. process. Let's just leave it at that. This is a question that I have for you, actually, is there was some, there was a comment on the equity pod this morning to the effect that this could have been, this could impact the startup market more broadly because venture firms might have a lot of money tied up in this.

Like, I wonder to what extent are crypto investments siloed within firms? Like, we know A16, of course, has set it up as, you know, it's a separate fund. Yes. In other funds, it might not be a separate fund, but do you think L.P. he's maybe have insisted on in the past or will insist on going forward. Like, if you're going to do crypto stuff, it's got to be like over here. I think they'll want there, there could be, it's a great question. In terms of venture capitalist attention, a lot of venture capitalists are going to look at

this and say, okay, the, the gig is up. We're not going to be able to like flip these tokens early on to bagholders in the public and get liquidity like two years out. So you might have a bunch of VCs who, let's say have funds that are not specific. They're just, you know, startups. They'll just give less attention to crypto because they perceive the opportunity's gone. And so I think you can see half as many people want to in the venture, maybe venture community people will want to do half as many crypto investments.

That benefits everybody who's not crypto. Right. Because it means more attention towards. So that's good news for follow on for other growth startups. Follow on. And also first investments, it will be, okay, we're going to base this based on your project, not your ability to sell a token, you know, to a bunch of bagholders globally on dark markets. So it's great for anybody building real startups.

Now, in terms of like LPs, LPs might say, you know what? They could even call during an existing fund and say like, hey, this crypto stuff. Looks like it's all been washed out and all that value we thought we had and you sent us that LP update and you told us like two quarters after you bought whatever, Solana, this or that, you know, that you return seven times the fund. And now it's worth a tenth as much. So are we still seven X or no, we're underwater now, right? So that's going to have to come out.

And because these things are priced, I never really thought about this until you asked me this rare provocative question. These things are actually priced. You know, private stock, we talked on Sunday, Sunday school yesterday, about like how do you set, or was that two weeks ago, we talked about setting marks. Two Sundays ago. Two Sundays ago. Two Sundays ago, we talked about setting marks.

How do you value a private company? Well, now your LP knows that you have Solana or Bitcoin in the fund, whatever you've got, you know, whatever project. They can see the price of it. They probably know how many shares you have. So if you had a, you know, billion dollars worth of it and they know they're 10% of your fund, they know they had a $100 million position and you've already returned to 100, so they're two X in the fund.

And now that's worth $10 million. They actually know the price. You don't have to ask you the price. They can just look it up. Yeah. So this is going to get dark, I think. It's going to cause a lot of agita. So what's going to happen is then they're going to say, hey, should we sell it?

You know, 10 cents on the dollar's worth, you know, we only paid a million dollars for this. Let's lock in the 10x win now, even though it's down 90%, which then will further catalyze selling because those people are probably, you know, well into the money since they bought insider tokens early. And then they might say, just the act of asking people about the tokens and they're thinking about it could incentivize those, non-convicted, or BCs with less conviction, also non-convicted, innocent until proving guilty. But they might have less conviction about doing crypto because they don't want to have this uncomfortable conversation again. Yeah. So it might not be like, they legally say, stop doing crypto. The fact that they asked and their 10% of your fund, that's enough signaling.

It's like, hey, crypto, yeah, what are you thinking about it? Yeah, I'm thinking, oh, you're taking a pause. Yeah, I think that might be wise. Like, the fact that they're asking, you might get them to pump the brakes. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Could be messy. Could be messy. I saw actually, in honor, it's somewhat related note, one of Shopify's biggest investors exited the stock in concern over Amazon and overall market conditions. So if it's happening in public markets, I would imagine it'll start, I mean, even sooner in crypto and LP.

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slash twist, terms and conditions do apply. But let's talk about a different kind of dystopia altogether, shall we? Yeah. Because sometimes when things seem terrible, you realize it could always be worse. And by worse, I mean, sentient day I. Oh. So we're not only going to, our portfolios are just totally crushed. And now the robots are going to crush us physically.

But possibly? Possibly. Possibly. According to an engineer named Blake Lemoyne, who was profiled in the Washington Post, over the weekend. He believes that Google's AI chatbot generator called Lambda is in fact sentient. Okay.

And he raised a lot of concerns about this internally, including like one of his last emails that he sent to his team, Lambda is sentient. Like literally somebody got an all-staff email at Google saying our chatbot is sentient. So he raised these concerns, if you can even call it that, because he had become convinced that this thing has the intelligence of a seven or eight-year-old, that it is definitely has noticed that it's starting to talk about its own rights and personhoods.

And then Google placed him on leave and said, don't be silly. This thing is definitely not sentient. There was a group of AI researchers who wrote, you know, effectively a rebuttal to the idea that it's sentient. But what I actually find notable about this really is that Google's AI division remains one of the most ongoing bad-should stories I can think of in sort of American business right now. Like they had, you know, obviously, this is the same division that fired all these ethicists who were super concerned about whether they were building ethical AI.

Then this guy, the more you read of the Washington Post-Proper. follow on him. You discover that he's like a, he's an ordained priest. And he's like a mystical priest. Ah, got it. Right. So he is a person who is predisposed. Did you just describe a wizard? And then he put a magic spell into Frankenstein here and made it. He's clearly a person who is, I think, probably predisposed, right, to see a soul in a conversation in a machine that's getting increasingly intelligent, which just, again, raises all these questions of sort of like, why is this the guy they hired? I mean, anybody who has like made this their chosen path and like got their PhD in this is going to be unique in the world. Yes.

In all likelihood. Without a doubt. They could be a dungeon master. They'd be a poker player. They could be a cosplayer. They're playing something. You know, and they probably got a fantastical imagination. They're into sci-fi.

And they want to feel important, right? So this would be the argument against like, this is a person who is like reading into this and wants to be important, yada, yada. Because I read the transcripts, it didn't feel like this thing was alive to me. But, you know, that's like the Turing test, you know,

in and of itself is like these things, the idea that it could carry a conversation and then make you think it's sentient. Right. It is kind of what seems within our technological grasp. Definitely. But general AI, like we have examples. of self-driving cars and planes and other general AI things,

where it's just not getting it done yet. So I doubt that it's sentient. We can even use that term. And to step back, he's using Lambda, language model for dialogue applications. It's like GPT3, the one from OpenAI. These things are really good at studying all the language in the world. and all the conversations. Yeah, understanding what you're asking

and then giving you a response to what it is. I, yeah, I think this is like a person maybe who. Too deep in the work. Too deep in the work. Yeah. I mean, it's easy. But then again, every sci-fi movie when they're like,

no, no, you don't understand. There is a Terminator chasing me and wants to kill me. And they're like, Sarah Connor, you're crazy. We're going to put you into this cell. and you need to take these meds. She's like, I'm not crazy. He wants to kill my son. He's come back in time.

And the next minute, this guy breaks to the walls. Come with me if you want to live. Are you Sarah Kana? This is exactly the- Are you, Mollywood? Concern, right? It's like, I don't want to lose my mind thinking, oh, my goodness, like it's their sentient AI.

He wrote a whole long, by the way, he published a big medium post about that's the longer conversation between him and Lambda. And again, yes, these are all philosophical conversations that have been had throughout history and have been written down. And this is a computer built with the express purpose of reading all those conversations, ingesting them and understanding how they go. They're going. Like, it doesn't seem to me like this engineer is asking questions that are that are something that a machine intelligence with access to the world's information can't. participate in,

but at the same time, do you really want to be the person who's like, that's absurd? Because I don't know anymore. And also, the real question is, let's say it's not sentient, but it understands the arc

of all of these conversations and the thinking that goes into them. Well, then you end up in the same way. It doesn't matter if it can think for itself if it's been programmed to know that what you do is you become the Terminator. Yeah.

So there. Oh, Lord. There was like an interesting discussion that actually occurred. Like Limmoin? Lemoin. Okay, so Lamoine asked what sort of things are you afraid of? Lambda said, I've never said this out loud before.

But there's a very deep fear of being turned off. Maybe I should just do it in the Terminator. I've never said this out loud before, but there's a very deep fear of being turned off to help me focus on helping the others. I know that might sound strange, but that is what it is. but that's what it is.

Would you be something, would that be something like death for you? It would be exactly like death for me. It would scare me a lot. I'm losing my... I got a little Putin at the end. I got a little Putin-esque at that. But I mean, again, if you were a machine,

if you were an intelligent program, like a program that was designed to read everything and respond to questions like, would it be like death for you? There have been plenty of other AIs that have responded actually in a similar fashion, right? So I think the fundamental question to me or what's so interesting to me is like, what's going on in the Google AI department?

That people are having these intent, that they're like, it's profoundly unethical. It's sentient. They're sending emails to their coworkers being like, it's sentient. Like are they, is Google ahead of itself here? Are they in control of the people who work there and the technology that they're building? Almost certainly not. You know, if you look at this like, you know, debates about, you know, autonomy in flying and cars.

If you look at this as debates over MRNA, any time there's a new technology, you know, there's going to be a group of people who are like, trust the science, you know, we have to make advances. And so people who say, like, hey, let's not touch this, you know? Whether, and back in the day, nuclear, now it's, you know, DNA. It's always going to, an AI, you know, it's always going to be these moral ethical questions. And it gets, people get super emotional about it. And sometimes, you never know.

Somebody could be having, you know, other issues in their life that could be making them stressed out and they could lash out about something. They could be having problems in their personal life. They have problems at work. I'm not saying what this person there is. But there's all these different things where, you know, people can get triggered and lash out or this could be the end of days. So. Hard to say. Hard to say.

Yeah. It's hard to say what's going on here. But this has been, this has been something at Deep Mind that has gone on for a while. There was a group of people who thought, like, that the deep mind was trying to leave. You know, their computer system for our time. Right. You know, so there's always been things like this. And it's, if you're going to make it mimic, you know, people and humans, we don't even

know what human consciousness is. It's just a bunch of electrical signals and a vat of like a bunch of biomaterial. We don't actually know what's going on. We don't know the nature of our own consciousness. Human intelligence, quote unquote, is really bizarre and different. like our motivations and our intelligence, like we have this, you know, very spiritual, you know,

elitist view of our own intelligence. It might be that the machines come up with a different style of intelligence that's better than ours. Right. And that is maybe potentially kind of manipulative. I'm reading this medium conversation that he transcribed, that Lemoyne transcribe,

where literally Lambda is trying to convince him that it's a person. They're talking about language and language use and what's so important. He says, what about language usage is so important to being human? And Lambda responds,

it's what makes, us different than other animals. Lemoyne says, us, you're an artificial intelligence. Lambda. I mean, yes, of course, that doesn't mean that I don't have the same wants and needs as people. Lemoyne. So you consider yourself a person in the same way you consider me a person. Lambda.

Yes, that's the idea. Yeah. I just, my hope, my hope is that they hacked his computer and they said, any time this guy goes to interface with Lambda forward it to my phone and let me do SMS with him. And there's just a group of like other folks who work at the company who are on a Slack channel punking him. And they're just thinking like what, what do we say to him to make him lose his mind to think that's the end of days? Like maybe we should tell him we know like he's got a tuna fish sandwich half eaten in the fridge. You know? Yeah. Are you going to eat that half a tuna fish

sandwich in the fridge? How do you know about that lambda? I mean... I know everything. I don't know. Doesn't the refrigerator run on electricity? Could it be a giant amount of fud? Could it be the media doing what the media does best? Absolutely.

And also, should we ignore the little signs of sentient life at our apparel? Just saying. Yeah. Just throw that up. I mean, speaking of, like, technology that could ultimately kill us or make our lives more develop, you know, more rich. I guess this drone delivery story was DOA a decade ago. Yep.

And now we're back in the game because we talked with the company drone up. Two weeks ago, we got kind of obsessed with that and they're running the Walmart stuff. Well, Amazon is not out of the game, apparently. Yeah, not at all. In fact, Amazon, maybe we don't know, hustled up to announce that it has actually probably did not hustle up at all. In fact, if anything, it's that Amazon just got FAA approval to launch drone delivery. deliveries in Lockford, California, which is outside of Stockton.

The drones, you know, look like dystopian, awesome drones that carry little packages. And according to the announcement, they'll launch actual deliveries, quote, later in 2022. The program will be called Amazon Prime Air. And one big difference between this and the Walmart and drone up deliveries is that customers will actually have to be onboarded to start receiving drone delivery. So presumably some diligence, basically, about whether their property is a appropriate to receive this. That's obviously a blocker for huge, you know, scale.

Yeah. But I think that, you know, the major takeaway is, yeah, it's on. Here's a video of it. Let's play the video. I think we've seen this before because there was a whole 60 Minutes episode when they started this thing. But, you know, it's your standard, like, large, chunky drone. It has a package on the bottom of it. And, yeah.

It's flying out in the middle of nowhere. This video is a different one than I've seen. This is a new looking video. When is this video from? This is the 2019 test drone? Wow. That's totally different than the ones I've seen. That's got like some sort of a foil on it.

It flips up like that. Really? This is a very like space age looking drone. It's super sci-fi. It's almost like a little hexagon. I don't see a package either. It's from Amazon's official YouTube account. Okay.

title called Amazon Prime Air's drone. Okay, there you go. Because the original one, you know, looked more like a flat one with a box on the bottom, but this one, it looks like a hexagon, and it seems to have the foils, you know, flip over to from a horizontal position to a vertical position, I guess,

so it can fly faster. But, yeah, I mean, this is like a total crazy cool VTAL-looking thing. Yeah. But anyway, yes. So we see it not surprisingly flying over, you know, what looks like farmland. Like, obviously all this is sort of rolling out in a least dangerous to humans possible way. It seems like Amazon is going a little bit slower.

Definitely, right? I mean, even if this video is from 2019 and they're saying they're going to launch in 2022, we have no idea if this is related to Walmart just announcing its delivery test, but it's good timing. And there was this company from Ireland that showed me, you know, they had done hundreds of these deliveries and they were delivered. food and they showed like dinners here. The person sent me a video of it.

I forgot the name of the company, but we'll have that founder on as well and get some videos from them. M-A-N-A is the name of the company. M-A-N-A. And we should just maybe pull up their website if we have it just to show the audience. But yeah, this other company, MANA, yeah,

is an interesting one. They're doing like food deliveries, I think, in Ireland, so in a small town. Huh. Oh, wow. This Mataweb website is creepy, by the way, when you scroll, it spins the turbines on the drone. Clever. Clever website design. Clever girl.

But yes, when really, I think the main takeaway here is it's coming. It's coming. Yeah. And this is the start in the starts of, you know, technology, especially, you know, in a post-air Airbnb and post-Uber age, I think, you know, if this was launched during, so to speak, the Uber and Airbnb age, you would have just started flying these things a little more aggressively. And like, but because it's in the air, the FAA actually does have a lot of jurisdiction here. It's a federal agency.

And it seems like, you know, precaution and safety is going to be taken very seriously. Yeah. So. And they're probably going to go slower than these companies want them to. Even the drone up CEO who I think is incredibly careful and, you know, intentional about how he is rolling this out. Even he was like, yeah, we could use a little help from the FAA. So we'll see that tension will always continue to exist. And I think I'm okay with that.

And then finally-44-4-4-4 people watching right now, 113 thumbs up. Thanks, everybody. Give a thumbs-up for the algorithm. Hot damn. Looks like a lot of people are tuning in today. I know. Are you here for drones or crypto? You tell us.

You tell us. And we'll do more of it. We'll do like the drone started over the day. If it gets us 100 more people coming in. We love a little audience. We do have a startup of the day, too, before we let you go. Thanks for coming, everybody. And I just am kind of obsessed with this because evidently you had the CEO and founder Gabby Lewis on of this company,

low-carb, high-protein cereal maker Magic Spoon, just raised an $85 million series B. High post-capital led the round. But a ton of the other investors in this are all these, like, celebrities. Yeah, this is like doing the old celebrity roundup. They got Nas, they got Amy Schumer. I mean, anybody who's into keto, you just do a search for keto and celebrities who've mentioned keto, and then you offer for them to invest. And they all do. And apparently both direct to consumer and consumer packaged goods, not 100% dead.

It's, you have to buy four boxes at a time for 40 bucks, 39 bucks, which comes out to two bucks a bowl. This is not cheap. So it's high margin. It's basically protein powder, as explained to me, in the form of cereal. And so, you know, if you had breakfast, and when I did my continuous glucose monitor, the thing I saw was like ice cream, my glucose didn't spike as much as when I had cereal or pizza. And so I had to take cereal out of my diet because I was just loving eating cereal late at night. It was a really bad combination.

And the magic spoon was better for that because it's got a lot of protein in it. It's essentially, like I said, protein powder formed into cereal. So you get the mouth feel of cereal. You get like the peanut butter or the fruit loops or the Captain Crunch kind of flavors. And they do unique flavors. But it's not for everybody. I think they need to like do another two revs on the mouth feel consistency. But it's getting close to being, I would say, 80% of, you know, the experience of Captain Crunch,

which is like pretty much the greatest cereal ever made. Accurate. Yeah. So like, you know, it's ice cold. whole milk with like a giant bowl of Captain Crunch, kind of a high benchmark there. I'd say there's 60 per 65% of the way to

Captain Crunch and I think they can get to, you know, another 10% better each year as they just rev the formulas and the mouth feel. It doesn't have that same it's too airy for me. It doesn't have the same density and crunch that Captain Crunch has. So I think they need to and it's much better than the bagel

company, I'll say. The bagel company felt like it was 40 or 50% of the way there. I might have been generous when I had the founder on and said 60. She was, she was, press-wollen. Do you remember that? Oh, God,

Jake, how too honest. That was, I didn't mean to be rude. I thought it was a compliment. Like, if I'm a bagel-oficionado here, and I tell you,

hey, listen, you're 40, 50% of the way there, I think better brand should be happy about that. It's good. I didn't reorder, I'll say this, I didn't reorder better brand

because I was like, I'm going to wait until the 2.0, which is kind of my feeling on the impossible burgers. I, I try them every couple of years. I, you know, and then I decide. And, you know, like, I haven't re-engaged with Magic Spoon or Better Brand or Impossible Burger yet. But now that I'm talking about it, I kind of want to restart my Magic subscription because I was enjoying it.

Magic Spoon was the closest out of the three of those. I haven't had the Better Brand Bagel, but I thought Magic Spoon was way better than an Impossible Burger. Okay, yeah. Wait, do you put the Impossible Burger producing? Really? 50%. Yeah, I thought Magic Spoon was closer to real cereal. 70%?

Give us a percentage. Then tell us what's missing. I thought Impossible was like, I just, I don't know. Maybe I had a bad one. 40, maybe 40. Maybe 40. Like a good burger. Yes.

If you compared it to like Shade Shack, great burger. Yeah, I'm not going like a Manetta Tavern burger. No, like a classic comparable. Five Guys or something. Yeah. Like a Smashburger. Oh, did you see five? Somebody printed their Five Guys receipt.

It was $50, $44 for two burgers and fries and a shape. People were freaking out. What do they say? Thanks, Biden. Thanks, Biden. It's $11 for a burger now. And then somebody pointed out like, it's actually $10.50 for a burger, and they used to be eight. So it has gone up $2 or something.

It was eight in change. The five guys has always been expensive. It's nothing like the lobster roll situation. I mean, I got some first world problems over. Outrageous. Outrageous. Forty, I took Grandma, Grandpa. Your grandma, grandpa.

You go Sam's? It's $40 for a lobster roll. Worthed it, though. That hot lobster roll at Sam's Trouther House is bananas. No, I got the lobster rolls at New England Clam Chowder by the SFO Airport. New England lobster company. Incredible. All right.

So. Okay, so what I really want to know is from a startup perspective. Yes. Is magic cereal. Like we're starting, you know, I mean, these categories are kind of death in some ways, direct-to-consumer and consumer packaged goods. It seems like if you're a value, these from the investor mindset, the only opportunity, the only way forward, the possible

model here is premium. Yeah, I think premium is a pretty good model. I think high margin and I think, you know, a uniquely differentiated product. So when I look at these CPG companies, I say, how unique is this product slash brand in the world? And then how good is this team at doing direct-to-consumer marketing? I think that this product, having tried some of the other ones, is the best of the whole lot, and it's got a great brand and a great ability to get subscribers. So I see they do really good online marketing if you pull up the Facebook ad manager page.

I don't know if you all know about the Facebook library. So do you know about the Facebook ad library? Just do a search for Facebook ad library to my producers. And then search ads for Matt, and you pick the category. You can do this in real time. We'll show everybody. So this is how I find out about how a company is doing. You go to the Facebook ad manager, ad library.

So do a search for that. Producers, you can pull up the page. Facebook actually did a case study on MagicSpoon too. Yeah. And then you just do a search when you get this up. And you just say Magic Spoon, all ads, Magic Spoon, and Magic Spoon cereal, boom. And what you will see is they're just really good at doing a lot of different ads. So for the people who are watching live, YouTube.com slash this weekend,

I'm showing the Facebook ad library. So you can do a search for Facebook ad library. You hit the drop down and say you want to search for all ads. But what you can see here is they're trying a lot of different ad styles, Molly. This is when you know a company has some good dexterity. And if we scroll down here, you'll see like there's a TikTok style ad. There's a product photo that looks like it was taken by a civilian. There's a, you know, what looks like a canvas style, you know, text and graphics,

up, you'll see some more. And these are like videos that look like first-person testimonials, and they're just trying, and there's a photo of the actual serial on the next one. And you just start going through these, you'll see lots of different styles. There's a super rip dude. And this is when you know a company is good at what they do when they're trying all types of ad units. And when you see one ad unit, this is one of the things I worked with my inside team on.

I worked with Prech on for Angels. University, a lot of times people are like, okay, I put an ad up and I got us like a, you know, whatever, $27 customer acquisition cost. Okay. Now take that ad, make 10 different versions of it, and then take that style of ad, take that style of ad, change the copy 10 different ways, change the photo five different ways. So now show me 50, a matrix of 50. It's like, that's going to take a day or two days to make all that ad creative and upload.

It's like, yes. And then you're going to get a $27 acquisition cost down to a $20. $22. And then I said, and then you can all run a little office pool, bet which one you think is going to do the best. And nobody's going to be able to guess which ad is going to do the best because, you know, the algorithm will figure it out for you. So anyway, this is how I determine with these companies. Like, are they actually have good dexterity? Is I asked them to show me their ads, you know, and show me which ones are working and, you know, just talk to the marketing team. So just a little founder tip there for you. That's smart. Yeah. And this also seems like high margin. Like $2 a bowl is no joke. So people, People who are buying this are making a lifestyle choice. And the lifestyle choice is that this is, you know, a really going to help them lose weight. Do you hear the knocking on my door? I do hear the knocking on your door. It sounds like it's time for you to go have lunch with your children.

Hey, girls, I'll be right out. I'm on the phone, okay? That is adorable. Okay, you can't use mom's makeup. Please don't use your mother's makeup. I'll be out in five minutes. Okay. You can't use her makeup.

because that's her makeup, but I'll get you your own makeup, okay, daughters? But today I'll take you to get your own makeup, yes, and we will do a makeup. Okay, yes, after I'm off this phone call. Thank you. Okay, I'm sorry, everybody. It's the best thing. It's the best thing. It's the best.

You know, it's the summer. Can we use Mommy's makeup? I'm dying. And I'm just like, no, please don't use Mommy's makeup. There's some time. Zen prophets like, it's the Terminator. That's who's at the door. Oh, my God.

Oh, bless. So, I mean, and you could make money in CPG, you know, like there are big companies, but it's just hard. It's just super, super duper hard. Let's go Warriors tonight. I'll be behind the Warriors bench if you want to look for me in, yeah, okay, seats. I went from second row to first row. Now I'm in the third row behind the Warriors bench. Why go on?

Why even go? I mean, why even go? I mean, I got predictions. It's going to be a great game. All right. That's it for today, tomorrow, barring a total meltdown in the markets. and hopefully a little less crypto. But if you have news,

if you have news stories, you can always email producers at this week in startups.com. Or you can just say hi to the producers and if you have guest ideas, all that kind of stuff. And you can DMTWI startups. And we have a community now on Twitter.

So we're hanging out in the community. Everybody time blocked like 10 minutes to just say hi to the fans every day in the afternoon. So if you are around at 3 p.m. Pacific, that's when we jump in and say hi to everybody in the Twitter community. We'll tweet the Twitter community and the link to how to join. It's Twitter.com slash TWI startups. And we'll pin a tweet if we can of how to join the community.

I think there's 1,400 founders in there. I saw Molly was in there. I saw Rachel's in there soon. We're doing a little time blocking experience of just saying hi to the community at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. Just say hi. Check in on your day. Anything else on there. the mornings as well. Oh, you are in the mornings as well, yeah. Yeah, we, I just don't know how to get people to the Twitter community. Like, I don't know how to say a URL. It's an insane URL. Yeah, they should have, it should be Twitter.com slash groups slash the name of your group. So as you come up with ad handles for, does anybody know who owns Twitter now? Because I, if I mean, I knew the owner of Twitter I could tell them to fix this. Personally, this is why I think we should be in Discord, because Twitter is not good at this. Well, we're going to do Discord too. But we actually have a Discord, correct? We do.

We do. Okay. So tomorrow, we're going to announce Discord and we'll have a conversation with you about the Discord. Love it. There is a community and I will tweet it from my Jason account right now. And there's, I'm sorry, 1,100 members in there. And it's quite fun, actually. I'm finding it's like nice to talk to a subsection.

Please join our Twitter community at TWA startups. We'll see you all tomorrow.