This Week in Startups - Danny Bernstein left Big Tech to fund farm-bots | E2310

Starting point is 00:00:00 There are over 400,000 farm jobs that were posted last year, and less than 1% of them received a domestic applicant. These are jobs that domestic workers do not want to do. That's categorical and clear. Nobody wants to really pick stone fruit in the height of summer in 110 degrees heat. Like, they don't want to do it. They need to do it because they want to provide for their families. Strawberries, it's as much as 60 or 70%. And table grapes, it's 80% of production crops. There's labor. Strawberry harvest, I call it the white whale of Agtech.

Starting point is 00:00:28 We have basically built this space to bring agricultural technology and sort of deep tech folks into a world region actually solve these problems. This weekend startups is brought to you by Y security. The on-demand security team for startups. Need enterprise grade security without hiring a $400,000 CISO? Y security gives you 40 plus expert engineers matched exactly to what you need by the hour with your first six hours completely free. Go to Ysecurity.io slash twist. Squarespace. Turn your idea into a beautiful website. Go to Squarespace.com slash twist for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, use offer code Twist to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

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Starting point is 00:01:28 Boy, J. Cal here in France. I'm in Paris. The world tour continues. I had a couple of weeks in Hawaii.

Starting point is 00:01:34 What time is it for you in Austin? It's 8 a.m. Our guest is in Salinas, California, so it's about

Starting point is 00:01:38 to be even earlier over there. Which means it's 6 a.m. It means we should be respectful of our guest. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:01:44 Why don't you introduce him and let's get started. Sure. We're talking to Danny Bernstein. He's the founder of the Reservoir.

Starting point is 00:01:50 This is a fascinating thing. seed and seed incubator and studio for ag tech startups. But their core product is you get physical access to a working farm. We're going to be talking to Danny from Reservoir Farms in Salinas, California. That's his 40-acre agricultural innovation campus. Danny, thanks so much for being with us so early in the morning today. Yeah, you know, farming starts with the dawn.

Starting point is 00:02:15 So here we are. It's good to be with you guys. This is, yeah, we actually have a trial that's about to happen this morning. So this is an early start here at the reservoir. Had to get up and slop the hogs and then do a podcast, you know. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Well, thanks for coming on the show, Danny. Obviously, agriculture is being not disrupted, but it's certainly, maybe it is being

Starting point is 00:02:37 disrupted. I'll leave it for you to tell us. But how do you wind up running a gentleman's farm there and deciding you want to do the Y combinator or tech stars of agriculture? How does you come up with the idea and how's it going? Yeah, it's going well. I mean, the background, so I spent close to 20 years in Silicon Valley, and I was at Google for 10 years. And when I was at Google, I saw that sort of period of abundance where the company would have multiple applications even for the same problem.

Starting point is 00:03:04 Google famously had, what, six different messaging apps? And so I started to think about, well, where is technology needed more? Where are there a lack of solutions for really critical problems, sort of critical imperatives? And so I left big tech and started to study complex outdoor industries and landed on specialty crop agriculture as an area that needed a lot of the same kind of principles, energy and thinking at Silicon Valley has developed and really honed and perfected. But could that be applied to an area that needs it more? Specialty crop agriculture, specialty crop agriculture, SCA. That's a lot of words. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:03:44 But what does it mean? I mean, we can gas here. Yeah. So you can kind of break agriculture in a two-bushableness. buckets. But specialty crop, so you have broad acre, which is like corn and soy, that's, that's actually like big ag, subsidized ag, programmatic ag in the United States. But specialty crop agriculture is actually where our micronutrients come from. That's fresh produce, fruits, vegetables, tree nuts, et cetera. That's high value crop agriculture. It's the Western growers. It's

Starting point is 00:04:10 the Driscolls, the Taylor Farms, the Wendell's, the Tannanthals. So we're basically doing technology for produce. Okay. So, yeah, we have. We had an investment in this space that was doing, picking, using robot arms to pick, it's rude AI, to pick strawberries. And it was an incredible pitch. They wound up getting caught up in SPACs, et cetera, and it didn't work out well. But pretty brilliant idea. Computer vision, computer hands from MIT, they would know which strawberries on these

Starting point is 00:04:40 vertical farms were ripe and ready to pick. And then, you know, picking a strawberry, very delicate procedure. But with computer vision, you're basically cataloging them all the time. And if you were going to send those strawberries, I don't know, two days away, you might pick them a little bit more, a little less ripe. And if you were just going to, you know, use them in, you know, within a one day trip, you would pick them a little more ripe. And this type of stuff's been promised for a long time. Yeah. What's taking so long?

Starting point is 00:05:08 And is it just not as profitable a business or the technology needed to catch up a bit? I think the technology needed to catch up a bit. I mean, strawberry harvest, I call it the white whale of agtech in the sense that it's something that's, chase sort of every year you have two or three startups that kind of throw their hat in the ring at this. So reservoir farms, we focus on three problem sets. One of them is reducing the use of chemicals, so chemical reduction. The second is chemical replacement technologies that replace chemicals full on. So this could be electric weeders, laser weaders, steam fumigators, using UV light to kill past, etc. And the third category is automation of the hardest to fill jobs. And so automation of the

Starting point is 00:05:47 hardest-filled jobs, that category you would say is where strawberry picking comes in. And in specialty crop agriculture, 40% of the production costs are still labor. And in some of those crops like strawberries, it's as much as 60 or 70% and table grapes. It's 80% of production crops. It's labor. Yeah. And what are we seeing here on the screen here? This looks like an autonomous pesticide.

Starting point is 00:06:11 This is actually a machine called bonsai robotics. And actually the team is over my left shoulder because they're about to run a trial this morning over on the farm. And they have a machine that is running autonomously, as you can see, in this case, through vineyards. And they are doing precision application of biologicals, bio-based alternatives to pesticides. Got it. And so this would have normally been done by a human driving, a tractor of some type. It could be a human driving a tractor. It could be a human with a backpack.

Starting point is 00:06:42 So that's sort of a combination of both precision application using less chemicals, using bio-based alternatives. It also is having someone come out of the field, which is not a desirable job. These are jobs that domestic workers do not want to do. That's categorical and clear. The American Farm Bureau said that there are over 400,000 farm jobs that were posted last year, and less than 1% of them received a domestic applicant. So you're being very delicate there, but there is.

Starting point is 00:07:12 and overlay here, and I'll just say candidly, we shut the southern border. For the last 30 or 40 years, it was open. Republicans drove this for most of that time, by the way, not to make it political, because they wanted cheap labor for the farms. They waved everybody in. And in fact, NAFRA, which people don't even remember now, was designed specifically. I think, Danny, you and I are probably in the same age range here. I think you're a Gen Xer as well as Lawn.

Starting point is 00:07:36 They remember NAFRA where they were like, yeah, just let everybody from Mexico come, work for season, and then go back. this big polarizing thing, and we'll put all that aside, there's no domestic workers available to do this, is basically what you're saying. This is incredibly farcical. It's romanticized in the sense that people say things like, oh, you know, we have these incredible jobs for young people, people want to work outdoors, et cetera, but the data would very clearly state that domestic workers do not want to do this sort of work. And so we end up having these imported labor pools on a certain visa and H2A visa. And that just doesn't really scale, especially,

Starting point is 00:08:12 especially as we want to scale this type of production into new regions. We want to have sort of local food hubs and things like that. This type of work, it just doesn't scale. And so what does scale in this case is the technology. We were talking in the free interview about, you know, like nobody wants to really pick stone fruit in the height of summer in 110 degree heat. Like we all love our plums and nectarines, but that's a lot to ask. If we can automate.

Starting point is 00:08:34 I mean, even the people who are doing it, who are, you know, this is an entry-level job, obviously manual labor. Yeah. They don't want to do it. they need to do it because they want to provide for their families. Exactly. This is backbreaking, hard jobs, yeah. Dirty, disturbing, backflip breaking labor in the blistering sun.

Starting point is 00:08:53 I mean, if we can retire these jobs. He's in Salinas. There's some famous novels written by a guy from there about how difficult farm work can be, John Steinbeck. Yeah, we're here in Steinbeck. We're here in Steinbeck country. Yeah. All right, Dave.

Starting point is 00:09:06 Yeah, go ahead. No, no, no, go ahead. Yeah, you get something else over your shoulder. Tell us. Yeah, right, exactly. I was going to say that we have basically built this space to bring agricultural technology and sort of deep tech folks into a rural region actually solve these problems. So part of the, you alluded to this question of why hasn't ag tech really scaled historically?

Starting point is 00:09:26 You had teams that were based in San Francisco that really didn't have access to farmland. So we actually, when we were building this company, we surveyed startups and we asked them this question, after you raise venture capital, how long until you had access to an actual farm? And the answer was nine months. So companies were building a deck, maybe building a prototype, putting an idea together, going out and pitching folks like you, and they didn't have access to an actual farm for nine months. Crazy. For every day, your business is late to adopting AI.

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Starting point is 00:10:22 repetitive, or routine tasks. And anytime you have a question about anything, you can just ask without interrupting a colleague. And now, for the first time ever, you can try NetSuite Next for free. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, go to netsuite.aI slash twist. It's built for every industry, ready for every boardroom. NetSuite.a.i. slash twist. It's crazy. And so we basically wanted to figure out how we could reverse that, which is we actually now have a farm that's here with 40 acres. We have now multiple farms across the American West, but a startup can just give us a honk. And as long as they're insured, they can get on to our farm and they can start working. They can build a prototype. So that's the idea. And in this particular one in Salinas, we're one hour from Silicon Valley. So there's actually really no excuse anymore. Yeah, no excuses. And it sounds like this is. an open-ended invitation. You're not doing cohorts like we do at launch, accelerator, or, you know, tech stars, antler, white combinator do. This is kind of like a more bespoke thing. You'll work with any company, any stage, and then you'll just negotiate how you get on the cap table because everybody wants

Starting point is 00:11:25 to know, what's the deal? And you seem like the model. Yeah, what's the model? What's the deal? Did you start a fund? You seem like a rich guy from Google. So you're using your own money, you have LPs. Is there a fund? What's the size of the fund? What's a standard deal? Tell us everything. Yeah, sure. So basically reservoir sits across two companies. that are called interrelated. The operating company is called Reservoir Farms, and that's what runs the incubator. It's a two-year-old company.

Starting point is 00:11:48 We'll do somewhere between $5 to $7 million in ARR, and I'll unpack that in a second. And then we also have a fund, which is Reservoir VC. We did a proof of concept fund. That was a $3 million proof of concept fund. We wrote five checks. We are about to re-up with one of those companies. One of those companies was acquired

Starting point is 00:12:06 and now became Bonsai Robotics called Farm NG. So there's a pre-Mptuble. Proof-of-concept fund that's operating a pre-seed and seed. And then there's a operating company that is now 10 people full-time and is going to do over 5 million an ARR this year. The model with startups is they actually pay to be here. We're operating farmland. They need to actually be good citizens and stewards.

Starting point is 00:12:26 So they pay rent. This is like paying for your, it's like we work. You just come, you pay rent. It's like a lab space. It's like a lab space that didn't really exist. So we have 20 startups paying between $3,000 to $6,000 a month. Okay. And we just, we just open in March.

Starting point is 00:12:39 So, so that's. In other words, it's free. I mean, $3,000 a month, $6,000 a more. I can tell you, you're not making some killing over here on renting desks, nor has anybody who rented desks. In fact, going back, 500 startups just for a little Dave McClure, a friend of mine, his original model was, hey, it would give you $125K, then he would take back $25K. You would agree to spend it back with the company for office space and, you know, some other

Starting point is 00:13:04 services they had. It was a little controversial on the edges. Yeah, and that's not our model. Yeah. Yeah, it's not our model because we don't put money into these companies then ask for it back, let's say, in the form of rent. We only invest selectively. So the decision-making process between the fund and the incubator is actually separate. Which is great.

Starting point is 00:13:21 Yeah. And I think that makes a lot of sense. We don't kind of do that spray and pay thing of like putting a little bit of money into each. It just doesn't pencil. And so the model basically is that we have this revenue stream. It subsidizes and supports operations. To your point, it's not going to the moon. But it allows us to have a beginning of a relationship with these companies.

Starting point is 00:13:39 and then we can start to think about adjacent opportunities with them. And that's just beginning. I mean, we're in our second year. This is our first full year of operation. Super innovative. I think my friend who just recently passed away, Josh Baer, who was running Capital Factory, had his own innovation in this model. And just to be clear, I'm not saying Dave McGlor was doing anything shady with the 125K.

Starting point is 00:14:00 It was kind of just innovative at the time and needed a little bit of explaining. Josh Bear did something that was super easy. It's like, hey, join Capital Factory. We'll take 1% of common and we'll give you whatever, two or three years, membership. And for somebody who's just starting out, it's like, well, that would have been the same cost of my cost of capital. And if you're a breakout company, obviously it's not your cost of capital. And he would do more bespoke deals for those folks to have them in the building and capital factory. But that's actually a good model for you. I think, you know, if somebody's like $6,000

Starting point is 00:14:26 is their typical rent, you can say, hey, we'll take $3,000 a month in equity, common shares, whatever, and you can pay $3,000 in cash. So, you know, some people might prefer that. Yeah, it's possible. I think maybe the difference was us is that we have hard costs. So running a physical AI incubator, they're real costs to it. So I think that's a bit of that transition point between sort of the fluorescent lighting. I'm in downtown Austin or San Francisco and basically I just have to kind of pump out office space. For us, we have farm lease, farm production, John Deere tractor leases, multiple farms.

Starting point is 00:14:57 We're operating over 100 acres. So we can do things like trade cash for equity. But our model has been, you know what, let's get this thing sustainable and profitable. We're going to be profitable next year. We're going to be more profitable the following year. So we want to actually run this like a business. And there's a big concern in ag tech, which you alluded to with something like Root AI, which is that a lot of ag tech sort of comes and goes. And so we wanted to think about, you know, we said early on, we're only going to do this if we can actually see a path to sustainability.

Starting point is 00:15:24 So we work with Western growers, which is the largest and oldest growers association in the U.S. And then we started working with John Deere. And we kind of said to them, listen, if we're going to do this, we got to figure out how we can build something that has resilience and longevity. So that's a little bit of what's led to us so far of not doing the sort of the cash for equity thing, but that could change in the future. Well, I mean, if you did a little micro fund as a test, one might suspect. I'm not having you say anything because I know the rules around raising funds. But Lon, I'm just talking to line on the side here. We'll just chat.

Starting point is 00:15:52 Yeah, we'll sign. You and I chit chat. And once a person does a micro fund, they might do a regular fund. And if that goes, well, they might pull the string and do a macro fund. And you might just add a zero each time. The or retically. The or radically. Listen, this is a great idea, Danny.

Starting point is 00:16:07 I wish a great success with this. If somebody is in ad tech or they're considering being in ad tech, how can they get in touch with you? How can they find out more? Because we obviously need as many people as possible pursuing important things in the world, education, construction of homes, the military, and food. These are the things that are super important for America. It's interesting that we don't think about this as like a national security thing.

Starting point is 00:16:32 It's like, all these companies are like, we're making drones and missiles and having enough to eat also very important for us. Yeah, if you have a few minutes today, I would go to Google and look up three words, which is blueberries, Peru. Mm. And what? Blueberries. Blueberries, Peru. What is? This is my next travel itinerary.

Starting point is 00:16:55 This sounds great. Very good. Thank you. And so what you're going to find, what you're going to find basically, and probably some people are horrified. right now is that you're going to find that the U.S. has actually played a part in subsidizing South American agricultural production because we basically wanted to have a deterrence for South America to be doing things besides the drug trade. And so we actually invested heavily through ESAID to establish agricultural infrastructure in places like Peru as a deterrent to being in drugs.

Starting point is 00:17:25 And what it ended up happening is that they continued working in drugs, but they got significant agriculture infrastructure and created the entire South American blueberry business. Wow. Which is when you think about it, the last time I bought blueberries, I can tell you, I think pound for pound is, it's more expensive than today. If you go to whole food and marijuana, I think it's kind of close, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:17:47 So I think what Lon is saying, which is absolutely true, is like, this is national security stuff. We are importing more and more fresh produce than ever before. and it's really difficult for this to pencil, for the California grower, for the Michigan grower, etc. Because we actually have a, we've had a policy of subsidizing agricultural production outside the United States. So we need this technology. This is like resiliency tech. This is tech that is like fundamental to like grassroots production. So that's why we exist. Amazing. Danny. Just one more time. You're a humble guy. Trying to give you that window to get that plug in. Where can people find more? How can they contact you, Danny, because people want to do this, I'm certain. Cheers. So DMs are open. We're

Starting point is 00:18:29 Reservoir Farms across all platforms. You can visit us at Reservoir.com, which is our operating company. We just launched Reservoir.D.C., which is a website for our fund. So you can hit us in both places. You can kind of see that separation. Yeah, please get in touch. And we definitely would love to chat with you and get to know folks. Awesome. Well done. This is super innovative. I wish you great success. Cheers. We need more people, Danny, who are willing to do the year zero and the year one work. Everybody in Ventures, like, I'm just going to yolo into like the trillion dollar company and I'm going to get my, you know, two X, three X, you know, in three years. Okay, great. Congratulations. You made the easy bet on Anthropic when it was 500 billion.

Starting point is 00:19:11 Right. And you got your two X. You know what? Who's going to do the idea of picking the apples? Everybody wants to eat the pie. Nobody wants to pick the apples. Very good. Yeah. That's a really relevant. analogy. No, you're right. I mean, I think this is like, this is like frontier tech. This is old school. And, you know, like getting during the boots, building a thing. And so, yeah, I mean, we're seeing it live. We're seeing the actual tech work in context. We're bringing entrepreneurs from MIT into the Central Valley, California. And yeah, that's what we're doing. I mean, we're about to run a bonsai robotics machine out there and reduce some chemical use. Let's make it

Starting point is 00:19:48 happen. Awesome. Well, thank, Danny, thanks so much for being here. This was fascinating and really good stuff. All right. I will come visit. I will come visit. Absolutely. Yeah, I'd like to go, I'd like to check that out as well. He's not doing, not doing, he's not doing. But we'll get blueberries. Doing blueberries. Well, at least get, I'll at least get some blueberries. AI tools are making it easier than ever to run your own business, even as a solo founder, but you still need a beautiful attention-grabbing website to help your new company stand out in a very crowded field. And you don't want AI slop. Nope. You want to use.

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Starting point is 00:20:58 invoicing, paperwork, all your needs. Go to Squarespace.com slash twist for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, go to Squarespace.com slash twist for 10% off your first website or domain purchase. I love anybody who is, anyone who's doing something to support founders in that first year, I call it year zero. Yeah. Because, man, it's so much hard work. And I can tell you, like the number of startups that pull through onto a next round of funding when you're this early, it's like 50%, 60%, 40%, like depending on the market conditions, if people are writing a lot of angel checks or they're not, hot market. We had one time seven of seven companies pulled through during the accelerator at like peak

Starting point is 00:21:40 ZERP. Other times, like right after the market collapsed in COVID, we had like three of seven pull through or two of seven pull through, you know, in the accelerator in the six months after it. So it's really hard. And when you're doing something that's really forward thinking, that's a little different that's outside the box, it can be really intimidating because, you know, like, if you're making the kind of product that there's a lot of other iterations, there's confidence building in that.

Starting point is 00:22:01 Like, obviously there's a market for this. It's possible. If you're blazing your own trail, you're alone and people are telling you you're nuts all the time. So a lot of pressure. What else is in the news? What are we got going on here? I know people want me to, there's been a lot of stuff that's gone down.

Starting point is 00:22:15 Yes. And I think you have been watching the news and you've been watching me get in Twitter squabbles. Comment on the news, sure. I think we should talk about this Galshier design tweet and the ensuing curfuffle. So the Lemonade and Color Hunt vet tweeted AI beat me at design. He claims a former client created a logo with Fable 5 that understood the brand story, the values, the audience, the strategy, and turned it into what he calls a genuinely brilliant concept, the kind of idea that captures everything at once.

Starting point is 00:22:50 sort of like the holy grail of a logo where you look at it, you're like, that's the perfect logo for that business. He said, it's better than what he would have come up with and Fable Five did it all on its own. Here's the money quote, I think. Now that AI finally took my job, I can peacefully quit and dedicate my life to studying the only thing it may never achieve human consciousness and the pathways to God. Very, very poetic there. So Dylan Field of Figma, he responded to this.

Starting point is 00:23:18 He said, I've never been more confident in the role of design and the. impact design can have. I wish designers felt the same confidence. This is the moment to be more bold, to take more creative risk, to double down on the power of design. You then shared Dylan's comments, I think meaning to agree with him. You said, I heard the same thing for magazine designers when PageMaker came out. Then again, when 99 designs and logo contests emerged, not sure if this time is different. So my understanding is you're saying, we've heard this all before. Every time. The end of design, we've heard this before. Correct. Now, I wrote this in Paris after being at a bistro.

Starting point is 00:23:56 There might have been a beverage. There was a cigar. Yeah. There was a crepe. And it was France versus whoever they beat last night in the World Cup. So I kind of did fire this off. And it might not have been perfectly crafted. I probably could have used you editing it. My bad. Fair enough. It was Morocco. That's who France beat in the World Cup. Morocco. I'm sorry you are editor.

Starting point is 00:24:15 Well, Paris wasn't burned down. People were like, hey, if France loses, independent of who they lose to, this city might be on fire. That's fair, fair. That was my... That's when they start throwing the furniture into the streets and lighting it on fire, Lee Mistyle. Exactly. I mean, they do that also if they are worked...

Starting point is 00:24:32 If the government goes to a 40-hour work week from 32. Parisians are the best. They're the best rioters in the whole world. We're all following in their footsteps. Yes, so here we go. We stepped in it again. I'm going to tell you. So anyway, he misinterpreted.

Starting point is 00:24:47 So then he decides he's going to do a dunk on me. And he's like, oh my God, Jake Howell said this. That's the next part of the story because he misinterpreted it. Or I didn't write it clean enough. I'm a fan of Dylan. Dylan thought you were saying design is dead. I believe a fair reading of it, you were saying the opposite. But he responded, never been more bullish on design and figma than seeing Jason be negative.

Starting point is 00:25:08 Looking forward to proving you wrong again. Then Jason shot back. I don't know what the again is about. Like, I always believe in Figma. I think he was great. I think he thought you were saying, these people in the past were correct, that you were saying, designers were like 99 designs is going to kick my ass and then 99 designs was this brilliant innovation that designers were not

Starting point is 00:25:29 ready for. I think he thought you were taking the negative side of that. I agree you were not, but maybe it was not clear. Anyway, then you said we're in agreement. Design will level up across the board as a well-designed site or app moves essentially free thanks to AI tools. But finally, the culmination of this whole tale, a J-trade happened. Yes. So let me be clear here. I have been through this for a long time. So long, and this is one of the problems is I'm getting old now. I have too much history and I got to explain everything. Check this out. This is Business Insider from June 4th, 2012. Wow. Long time ago.

Starting point is 00:26:10 And I had been talking about 99 designs. Yeah. And 99 designs was very interesting. It was a spec work website where you say, hey, I need the logo for. in gadget or auto blog or joystick when I was doing blogs at Weblogs Inc. And I'd say the prize is $250 or $500. And then you would get like 20 different choices. Then you would give them feedback and eventually you pick a winner. This then really tweaked designers at the time. People were very pissed off about this. That startups adopted this technology.

Starting point is 00:26:39 But what happened was because there were so many startups, they didn't have the money lawn. Right. They didn't have the money to spend like a minimum of $3 to $5,000 is what it cost to make a logo. If you were doing the next logo, it might be $500,000 back in the day, you know, a million dollar for like a big company. Right. But it was pretty common for people to spend $3,000, $5,000, $25,000 on a logo design. And I mean, I think there's work.

Starting point is 00:27:04 Like people might be listening to that here like, oh, my God. But like there's a lot. It's not just like draw a little logo and that's it. It's like a whole color scheme. It's really like a brand philosophy design behind the whole project that you're doing. We just went through this with this week in AI. We sort of tried to do a whole design process for it. It can be pretty involved in, yes, it will run you 5, 10K or more.

Starting point is 00:27:25 Well, and then you might also not like the design, right? Which, you know, sometimes happens. It doesn't happen. It doesn't happen. Sometimes. A certain type of customer like me. So anyway, putting it all aside. I then went and I looked and I was like, whoa, Figma is worth like $11 billion.

Starting point is 00:27:40 Not sure what their revenue is now, but I did a little research on it. And I was like, whoa, figma is a screaming deal. So I put it in a J-Train and about $100,000 worth it. Figma. And I tweeted like, listen, people misunderstand, you know, have misunderstandings all the time. So, you know, all's fair and love of war. And on Twitter, you know, text, you know, sometimes the tone doesn't get down and you misrepresent something, whatever. And whenever that happens, the lesson for me is to get curious. So when I, like, this kerfuffle here is just over me writing an unclear tweet, Dylan not understanding what I was trying to say or maybe a little bit of both. Okay, fine, it happens. I either I could have written it late night. He could have read it. Maybe he's on. tilt because of something else. I do think a lot of design people were like fired up about this tweet yesterday. Like I saw a lot of people sharing this original tweet. The original tweet of the guy who said design is dead. Right. I think that put a lot of professional designers and people who really care about design sort of on edge. It's a, it's a theme that's sort of out there in the

Starting point is 00:28:40 world that I think a lot of people are trying to sort of shut down or change that trend or the idea behind that trend. So I think I think that was probably part of it. That it was a intense day for designers yesterday. Yes. And they, by the way, when this 99 design thing went down, that was the same exact thing. All the designers got real upset. And then they started a movement. No spec work. So there was a movement trying to convince designers not to do spec work. Now, if you're a young designer, young designers used to email startups like Uber or Robin Hood or whatever. And they'd be like, hey, I redid your logo. This was like a tried and true way to get customers, especially if you were an offshore designer, because this,

Starting point is 00:29:19 This is like the humans in Manila, India, learn the design tools. They stole a lot of design. They did derivative stuff. You know, it wasn't the sharpest stuff. But they would just email you, just like Clippers do now. They would just email you a couple of samples and say, hey, if you like my work, would you give me $300 for it? Yeah. This is called spec work.

Starting point is 00:29:38 And I said, you know, spec work is great if you're coming up in your career. But designers hate spec work. They hate people working for free. Now, that's an individual's choice if they want to do it or not. I'm fine if people want to do it. I'm fine if people don't want to do it. It's personal freedom here. Anyway, design, the big picture here is, is design going away? The answer is no. What's happening, though, is the average website, the average app, I would say 10 years ago, I would rate as like coming out of a startup in years one and two was probably like a six or a seven out of design if com.com and

Starting point is 00:30:13 Robin Hood were a 10. For example, if you look at the first version of Uber, it was like a six or a seven. It was clunky. Now when they started making money and they raised money, they eventually were like a 9.5 or a 10 out of 10 in terms of how beautiful the app was. But they did it over time. Now I think using the AI tools, and you know, Squarespace did this to websites, right? Well, all these beautiful templates they had. You know, the average went up. So the average design is going to go from a five, six or seven to a seven, eight, nine using these tools. I'll say, you know, seven point five to eight point five is going to be the average. And I would say the average used to be like a six. So that's like a significant jump. The team is pumped because you're about to close a massive deal.

Starting point is 00:30:59 But then the client's lawyers get involved. What happens if you get hacked? How are we going to protect your data? There's no need to panic. This is why you brought in Y security. Why security is staffed with over 40 experienced engineers who have actually worked security for world-class companies like Apple, Uber, Microsoft, Robin Hood, Brex, and so many others. But the best part is you don't even need to hire Y security. Your company can rent Y-Securities elite team by the hour. That means no massive salaries to pay, no costly consultants, just real experts embedded in your company, helping you out with your SOC-2, ISO-4200, or any security or compliance challenge. facing. You can even set a monthly cap so you know exactly how much you're spending. And your first

Starting point is 00:31:43 six hours are completely free. Head to y-security.io slash twist and book your free six-hour strategy call. That's y-security.com. T-W-I-S-T. However, when you do have money, you do wind up hiring a designer because you're saying, hey, I want to stand out from the average. So the average keeps moving up so you can have less ugly products, just like you don't have slow websites anymore. This used to be the major issue. Like, oh, your website's not optimized. It's slow. Now all websites are fast.

Starting point is 00:32:15 Like, when's the last time you used a product or serving? Right. This is slow. Yeah. That's not an issue. Yeah. I think you're right. And I think that you can already see it so much.

Starting point is 00:32:23 Like, there's so many, you know, tweets that are clearly written by Claude. And they're not, they're not terrible. But when you read a really well-written post or an article, it stands out because you're like, there's so. much sort of slop going on, this person who clearly sat down to write something thoughtful themselves, it actually is even more valuable. I think it's the same. Like, you can tell when somebody vibe-coded their landing page, it looks, it doesn't look bad,

Starting point is 00:32:50 but it looks like how Claude or how codex or how one of these programs makes a landing page. I think that's fair enough, yeah. And then, but because these things are getting better, I'll be honest, the 8, 8.5 that I said, I think like next year it's going to be like a 9, 9.5. So it's going to start, and you can prompt it, hey, do better, do better, do better, or I'm unplugging you. But most people don't. I think that's what, I mean, to me, this is a whole separate conversation.

Starting point is 00:33:14 But I think what's holding back AI in terms of the public perception is that most people don't go to that second level of like iterating, putting themselves in the loop, making things incrementally better with help from Claude or Codex or composer or whatever they're using. They just take the first output and go, there it is, done, copy paste. Yeah. I bought some figma. Why did I buy Figma? I think right now, I think they're going to figure out AI.

Starting point is 00:33:40 And if you look at lovable and you look at Claude design and like what these are capable of doing now, it's pretty impressive. Figma already has all the designers. And they're going to just, you know, Dylan understands this customer base better than anybody. They are trading at seven times sales. They are trading at a pretty high P.E. Like 70X. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:34:00 But I think their business is going to get accelerated by AI. and I think they'll be one of the top three or four players in the space, no matter what. So I did have one question. So I placed the bet. I mean, my only reservation here, I think Figma's great. We use Figma internally at launch for all sorts of stuff. It's, we all like Figma. It's no, not to Figma.

Starting point is 00:34:18 But I guess my question would be, are you not concerned there is a moat issue there? Where it's like, I mean, all of the frontier labs have their own design products. They're all thinking about this as a category. Like, is there a chance that Anthropic and Open AI just come up with the next iteration of what Figma would be and steal Figma's Thunder? I think they will have more competition, and by having more competition, what is it, steel, sharpen steel?

Starting point is 00:34:44 Yeah, there you go. Iron sharp as iron. I'm not sure what they mean. I guess it's, I think I've heard both versions. I think it's, I think it's iron. I'm not sure what the term is here, but I think, you know, this newfound competition that they have is going to make them sharper. The blade's going to get sharper.

Starting point is 00:35:00 They also have a currency. It is iron sharpens iron. It's from Proverbs 2717, I'm being told. Yeah, I was just reading Proverbs just the other week. Oh, they go. So, Iron Sharperns Iron. I think that they also have a currency as a $10 billion company to go buy other companies and teams.

Starting point is 00:35:16 So I do not look at Dylan and Figma as like, oh, my God, they're in a terrible position. They're in a great position. Designers love it. And so as they keep adding AI features, as they go acquire customers, and they'll be able to move into other adjacencies. So since Adobe didn't buy them, I would suspect Figma could go into all of the Adobe suite of products and, you know, because of how efficient it is to go into adjacencies. And that's the trend in AI.

Starting point is 00:35:46 So if you have a customer base, if you have a currency to buy companies, which they have both of those, and you have a driven founder, which they also have is three for three. That's the hat trick. They're going to figure it out. That's my belief. They're going to figure it out. And Jevin's Paradox, as we have these AI tools, we're seeing this internally. We're seeing it in the startups who apply.

Starting point is 00:36:09 People are going and building more products and services. They're going right down the line of products and services that weren't worth building because it was too niche. And now they're building them. So I think it's going to have great success. Jevis Faradax, by the way, when technology makes a resource more efficient or effective, you actually see use of it go up, not down. It's based on steam engines. Right.

Starting point is 00:36:34 Steam engines caused coal to go, used to go up, not down, was the original Jevin observation. Not financial advice, but I put a J-Trade in. There you go. Fair enough. That's what it is. Should we talk about? I know, set a reminder. Set a reminder every three months for me to check in on this J-trade.

Starting point is 00:36:48 And let's have Dylan back on this week in startups, of course. Yes, no. We just did a flashback the other day. We featured you and Dylan from the early days of COVID, talking about That was incredible because we were in the office during the early days of COVID debating. Like what would happen? I was like, yeah, this is all going to be over in April, May. I'm going to be able to do my next accelerator class.

Starting point is 00:37:07 I had no idea what was happening here. It's like, I think this could be a second wave. I was like, ah, who knows? Stay home for two weeks. We stopped the surge. We're good. No one knew in mid-March in fairness to you guys. No one, no one knew.

Starting point is 00:37:18 All right. We should talk about this. You want to talk about this colleges article you sent me about they, they have to. Yeah, let's do lightning around on that. All right. The U.S. Department of Education is rolling out a new accountability test for colleges and universities. Here's the test.

Starting point is 00:37:33 If graduate, people with bachelor's degrees who are graduating, if graduating students don't earn more than comparable workers who didn't go to college, the program that they attended could get cut off from federal student loans. The same would go for master's programs. This is the one that I think is more controversial. The same would go for master's programs from which grads earn less than someone with just a bachelor's degree. A key quote here from the Undersecretary of Education, Nicholas Kent. If a program cannot show that it leaves its graduates financially better off than if they had

Starting point is 00:38:06 never enrolled, it should not be underwritten by federal taxpayers. Critics argue that college and especially grad schools, they're not just about earning money. We need nurses and teachers, but what about artists, musicians, filmmakers, all of those kinds of people, not guaranteed to be locked into a great salary when they graduate. Here, a few more stats from the Department of education. 800,000 students, they estimate, currently attend a program that would fail this test. 18% of undergraduate certificate programs would also fail this test. So, I mean, I guess to me, the big question here is, what do you think about this policy?

Starting point is 00:38:41 And how much of college and student loans for college should be about you're going to take this degree and get a good higher paying job than you would have otherwise, versus what we used to think of college as being about, which is it's this time for growth. and learning who you are and finding a community and all that other non-payment-related stuff. Yeah, so taking the two questions. Number one, this doesn't go far enough. This should be much more cutthroat, but they're obviously starting somewhere. And the test really should be, are you able to pay the American taxpayers back or not? And if you're not able to pay them back, then the school should be on the hook. That's my belief. And the way to look at this is they should

Starting point is 00:39:22 just look at school by school, how many people graduated from this program? Let's say it's design. You got a design degree. And you took a federal loan. So you went to Parsons Design School or RISD, whatever it is. And you track that person for the five years after they graduate and they have their loan. Do you have a job? How much money are you making? If they are not making enough to service their loans, then that program should not be eligible for. these federal loans. Why? You can go spend whatever you want out of your pocket, but we're talking about the taxpayers' money here. This is you and I and everybody else in America deciding to give a loan to somebody to go get a philosophy degree, then a master's in philosophy. And what that will do is it's

Starting point is 00:40:10 going to make these colleges lower the price of those degrees, which is what you really want to do. These degrees should be priced to perfection. If you're going to go be a dentist and you want to spend three or four hundred thousand dollars, you want to be an MBA and you're going to spend two, three hundred thousand dollars. Okay, we know in those career paths that there is a job waiting right in all likelihood. In these other ones where there's not a job, why did they cost as much? Like the master's degree should not for art cost the same as the one for being a doctor or for being a lawyer. It's so obvious should those things exist in the world, of course. But these colleges need to control costs. The federal government has a way to stop this.

Starting point is 00:40:48 and I think we just need to really change. We have to put it on the colleges. If they want to have their students get federal loans, they should be on the hook for half of that loan. If that person doesn't get a job where that person defaults on it, the college should have to pay half of it. That's what I would do. And I think that's the direction we're going in.

Starting point is 00:41:05 So this is long overdue. And the reason why these colleges can charge $250,000 for an undergraduate degree or graduate one and put people in this massive debt is because there's no backstop. They just keep taking more government dollars. and they keep raising the price, and they're relying to students that this degree is going to be net positive.

Starting point is 00:41:24 Yes, not. I like your take on it more than the policy that's being proposed, because your take is, it's tied between, it's how much are you paying for this degree versus how much is it, what's its real world value? Which I think is more like a comparison. This is kind of saying, do you earn more than somebody with a bachelor's degree?

Starting point is 00:41:40 Well, not everybody who goes to grad school is even looking to necessarily out-earn anyone who has a bachelor's degree. There's all kinds of reasons. you might want to go to a master's program. And that doesn't mean you wouldn't be able to eventually pay your master's degree back. I think this is like using a weird test. Yeah, it's using a hammer when I think a scalpel would be better.

Starting point is 00:41:58 I mean, obviously we all want to bring the cost of education down. And I do think this is a real problem that we're graduating so many people with degrees in fields where there's, you know, 30 jobs. And it's like, well, what is everybody else with that degree supposed to do? Is everybody going to go to, I mean, is everybody going to go be a director and a screenplay writer? Like, it's not a lot of jobs, folks. Film school is always like this the stark example where, yeah, like every once in a while, you get a George Lucas, but that's not every person who graduates from film school. A lot of people just like movies. So, you know, I don't, the one thing that I don't like is when we like reduce people and college and studying and all of these fields to just, well, how much do you, how much do you make? Like I said, you're more, you are more than how much you make, I think, as a person. And I don't like that. I have a better proposal, and by the way, there's probably five other better proposals. But at least, at least we're starting to address the issue.

Starting point is 00:42:54 A bad proposal is a precursor to a better proposal. So I'm glad they're doing something. And that is the Trump administration tactic is just throw something out there. Now you're having a conversation. Your original idea doesn't have to be the one that gets through. You're just, it's an opening volley. And I think that's how you always have to understand all of these. We got a ship, you know, if you want to.

Starting point is 00:43:15 You can say whatever you want about the Trump administration. I've had plenty of criticism of, though. And you do do do. And I do. Any reasonable person might. But they do ship. And so you got to keep shipping. They ship products.

Starting point is 00:43:26 You're absolutely. They ship products. Sometimes too much products. Sometimes really weird products. Donald Trump moves units. I don't think you can, I don't think you can argue. Sure. Let's make a ballroom.

Starting point is 00:43:35 Sure. Let's make a new Air Force one. We're doing it. Let's keep going. I will take your... Let's focus on what matters. Education is a critical piece. And by the way, all of this is deck chairs on the Titanic.

Starting point is 00:43:44 The real issue is how do we use AI and to help people get skills? There was another really interesting thing that Paul Graham tweeted. You can go find it here. There was a study that he showed. In this study, it was a midterm occurred, and everybody, it seemed like, was using ChatGPT and had like aced the midterm. The teacher ran it through like the software, the software. software gives a lot of false positives, et cetera, to check for cheating. He's like, okay, I think you all cheated.

Starting point is 00:44:20 I think like 90% of the students cheated. And then he said, I'm going to do an in-person. We're going to do an in-person. And they show this chart. So they do an in-person final. So between the two, you have the scores of the midterm, and then you have the scores, and here it is, zoom in on this. So here we go. These are in gray on the left. Zoom in a little bit more so we can actually see it. Just like give us the first, the top part of it, please. So we can see that. Okay.

Starting point is 00:44:47 So Econ 1170, midterm and final scores. After Serrano made the final in-person, Serrano is a teacher, 18 students dropped the class and nine students didn't take the exam. The scores of the remaining 59 students are displayed here. So look at student number one. They scored 95 on their midterm, which they did on their own. and on the in-person they got 95.5. In other words, there's no gap.

Starting point is 00:45:17 Right. Then let's go down and look at everybody else and you start to see this huge gap, right? And then there's my favorite student, S-22. Good term. He didn't cheat, but he's not that bright either. They just didn't do well. But at least he's honest.

Starting point is 00:45:31 That's the guy you hire. That's the gal you hire. They're not the top student in the class, but and then scroll down and you start to see like there are people, you know, here who, you know, like obviously are cheating. And then you have students 57, 58, 59. I think they didn't even take the test.

Starting point is 00:45:50 Scroll back up. The gray dot. Look at how many people scored 100. Scroll all the way 100. So I think I may have juxtaposed it. The midterm score is the orange. Final exam score is the one in gray. That's the one in person.

Starting point is 00:46:04 So when you see these scores drop off, who's got the widest here? There's a bunch of people with 100. If we scroll down, let's find the fattest person. Who's got the biggest delta? Oh, my Lord. Who's that? Oh, yeah. Whoa, come on now.

Starting point is 00:46:18 No, look at student 52. Student 52. Shout out 52. He got 100. This mofo. 16.5 on his own, 100 with the help from AI. By the way, everybody's cheating. Well, this is.

Starting point is 00:46:36 If you're, you're paying for college and you're cheating. It's tied exactly into what I would say. I think, I think this is like work from home. People are just like work from home. People are just not using these AI tools well. Like they're not, we didn't educate people and do the back and forth that you have to. Everybody who I know who uses these tools effectively, it's a conversation. It's back and forth.

Starting point is 00:46:57 You're saying, no, that's not what I wanted. Or I don't like this or rewrite this or this is, are you sure about this fact or rewriting things in your own voice? It's a tool. It would be like going to Google and just copying and pasting a Google result into your test. That's not how you do it. It can be a great help, but you have to, like, be engaged. And it's not a shut off your brain thing. And I think that's how people are.

Starting point is 00:47:19 And here's the thing. I don't know if this was at Oxford or where this was, but is that a significant college? And by the way, they all gave this guy ish for bringing it up. Right. You know who's responsible for this? It's not the students. It's the lazy goddamn teachers. These teachers don't want to even review the work.

Starting point is 00:47:38 I can tell you firsthand, teachers in the age of AI are more culpable than the students because the teachers know this is happening. The students are writing their projects in AI. They're doing AI slop, as proven clearly here. The teachers on the other side are using AI to review it and then YOLO everybody gets an A-plus. The teachers are lazy. The students then are following the teachers down. the Primrose path, is that the right term?

Starting point is 00:48:05 Yeah, sure. The path of evil. Yeah. They're following them. Their example. The teachers need to be fired. If you're doing anything work from home, anything on your own, to Scotiaud, it doesn't matter.

Starting point is 00:48:17 I want every single test in person. No, nothing at home. I am infuriated about this even in primary education. Students are doing this right now in fourth grade through 12th grade, in college. I want everybody, you use. Blue Books? Sure. Oh, yeah.

Starting point is 00:48:35 Of course. Yeah. Sit your ass down. Scan trons and blue books. That's what it was. But going back to old school, get your pen and paper out. I want to see you compose a sentence. Now, when you get into the real world, fine.

Starting point is 00:48:49 You don't have to have penmanship. You can yolo it. You can chat GPT. It would be nice if people did. It would be, it would be nice. If people use these tools as supplements, that's what I think they're supposed to be. Like, I like Grammerly. Grammarly is helpful.

Starting point is 00:49:03 What do I do? at the management team meeting. I tell everybody, laptops closed, have a pen and have a mullskin and be adult. And I want you to write down during the meeting. This is when we have our management team. I want you to write everything down in your mullskin. You want to take a picture later. You want to look at the Zoom transcript. It's all good. No problem with that. But the act of writing down makes you present in the meeting. And what you write down is what you as a human believes is important. and that matters as well. So we have to keep the analog going.

Starting point is 00:49:35 We have to keep our brains engaged. I have, within arm's length somewhere here, I'm not going to get it, but I have my journal. I have my zebra G7.59 F and pen that writes incredibly smooth. I turn off my stuff when I'm on a podcast, when I'm doing a meeting. I write notes myself. Why? The act of writing makes you remember things and it helps you build a mental model. Yeah, it's just how your, please, for the love of God, wake up.

Starting point is 00:50:02 It's just how your brain works. It's the actual act of writing it out in your own hand helps you remember and connect ideas together. You're throttling. It's just like when you have something to memorize, you should read it right before you go to bed and then go to sleep and you'll wake up knowing it better because that's how your brain works. And we're just disconnecting ourselves from all of this stuff and letting farming out our thought to AI. And that's not, I think, what we should do. It's a supplement. It's not a replacement.

Starting point is 00:50:27 That's what people don't know. And hand speed. the speed of your hand is slowing down your brain. And slowing down increases thoughtfulness. So what you're doing actually is you have a regulator. The regulator on your brain is the pen and paper. Now, if you take your brain and our brains move fast and you turn on a microphone and you start just, you know, recording stuff and spewing stuff and then have AI spewing stuff,

Starting point is 00:50:55 you're you're you're just going a thousand miles an hour nothing remains in your brain yeah it's the same as doom scrolling when you go sit and commit in a movie theater to turning off your goddamn phone and giving yourself over to a two-hour kurosawa film or a paul thomas anderson film you know or you know pick your favorite director it it lets you slow down to the actual input. You can watch the movie, hear the dialogue at the speed of your ears and eyes can process it. Slow down to speed up and understand and enjoy this. I had to do this for appreciation of music. When I'm feeling scattered, I put on my focal, like incredible headset, shout out to my friends at headphones.com and focal. I put on my focal utopias and I listen to my co-buzz, French

Starting point is 00:51:47 streaming service at the highest bit rate. And I will slow myself down to appreciate it. an album at the highest bit rate and just enjoy that experience. And I do it on cigar time. I light up my cigar. I got my book. I'm taking notes. I'm listening to the music. I'm slowing myself down.

Starting point is 00:52:06 Yeah. It's like meditation. It's that military saying, slow is smooth, smooth as fast. It's like that same concept. Correct. That is the saying. I, by the way, I was looking for something to stream. I love Tyler Sheridan.

Starting point is 00:52:18 I'll kick it off here. There's a thing called Lion's, Sure. So it's a CIA show he's doing Nicole Kidman, Morgan Freeman. I know it. Incredible. And it's, it follows the playbook of Tyler Sheridan. This stuff just moves. Tyler Sheridan is retard max. A little bit. A little bit. No, I'm serious because he just goes with his gut. It's like mile a minute energy. It's, uh, you know, really, um, intense stuff. And it just goes there. And like, Oh my God, did he do Sicario? Yeah, he wrote the script for Sicario.

Starting point is 00:52:59 De Nivellinovill News directed, but Taylor Sheridan wrote the script. He also did this really good movie called Wind River that you should check out. Oh, okay, well, there's you off duty. So anyway, I am loving the show. I'm on the second season. Lioness is about recruiting women specifically, thus Lionesses, for the CIA program. I will leave it at that. But the two or three women who are the leaders.

Starting point is 00:53:21 Zoe Saldanya. Yeah, she's like the main lead, I think. Zoe Saldanya, I don't even know who this person is, but she is a tort. She's the main Navi lady from the Avatar movies, and she's Gamora, the Guardians of the Galaxy. She's the Green Lady, Gamora. Oh, she's Gimorah. Okay, well, who knew, who knew? Anyway, she is incredible.

Starting point is 00:53:40 The show is incredible. Just like Landman, you have these great actors and you go out of an adventure and it goes a million miles. Is it like high art? I don't know. No, he's good. I don't know. He's really good at setting. up these scenarios, these like intense, you know, rivalries or whatever, and they're just playing

Starting point is 00:53:57 them out. He's very good at what he does. I really like that one. There's a lot at stake. There's a lot at stake in the shows. He does that one, Mayor of Kingstown, too, for Paramount Plus with Jeremy Renner that I really like. Oh, I got to watch that one. Yeah, he's like a fixer in a town that's run by private prisons in, in Mayer of East, Kingsdown. All right. There is a Japanese series right now on Netflix called Human Vapor that is absolutely bananas and I'm I'm really enjoying it. It is a it's like a remake of an old like 70s series I think and they just did it in this really goof. It's a combination of a lot of stuff. It's like a sci-fi fantasy premise where there is this guy who's literally made of vapor who's committing all of

Starting point is 00:54:39 these crimes and so the cops are trying to find out who is the human vapor or what's happening. So there's a conspiracy level but it's also this really high concept sci-fi premise but it's also kind of funny and goofy. It's really in that in that way that only the Japanese would do. Like, Americans would find this show kind of all over the place and what's the tone supposed to be and how am I supposed to feel about this? The Japanese just go for it and I really admire the

Starting point is 00:55:02 creativity, the originality. I got really sucked in on like five episodes into this now. But this looks great. You know, I need a new sci-fi thriller. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. Yeah. Can not wait.

Starting point is 00:55:14 And if you've been to Tokyo, like, as I have, it's fun to watch a Tokyo. This is the first show I've watched set in Tokyo since I visited there. Okay. And what else you got? Anything else? Oh, I was just going to say, Sugar is back for a season two on Apple TV Plus with Colin Farrell. I don't know if you watch this, Jason. I have not. I don't even know what you're talking about. This is why I love you. It's an L.A. Nwar detective series.

Starting point is 00:55:38 Okay, I'm into that for sure. Colin Farrell plays a private eye named John Sugar, who's investigating missing person's cases in L.A. there is another level to what's going on in Sugar that I will not dream of spoiling. So check it out towards the end of season one, a bit of a surprise twist that upends the premise. But if you like L.A. detective noir mystery shows, I think you would probably enjoy it.

Starting point is 00:56:06 Sugar on Apple TV Plus. I like the actor. I like the actor. Yeah, it's interesting to see him bounce back and forth between this and the penguin, because sugar is like sort of at heart like a really good guy. He's trying to help people. It's a very heroic sort of kind-hearted role.

Starting point is 00:56:21 And then the penguin, he's the exact opposite. He's a real slime ball. So this book is a really, really interesting. It's about an executive, Peter Barton, who I didn't know him personally, but I knew of him because I came of age during the cable industry, boom. And the cable industry was known, like, it was kind of like the AI industry of its time or the mobile. dot com boom. And this guy just made hundreds of millions of dollars, which like he made $200 million

Starting point is 00:56:48 dollars like when it, that was a lot, a lot, a lot of money. And then he finds out he's got stomach cancer. And he writes this book in his last year and a half of life with this guy, Lawrence, shames. And it really is like a meditation on dying and what matters in life. And given that my friend O'Malley passed away, my friend Josh Baer passed away, and then a little earlier, you know, Tony Shea passed away from Zappos, my other friend and Dave Goldberg from Launch.com, the music service passed away and SurveyMonkey. I've been really meditating on, hey, life and how to live a good life. And this book, it nails it. And I think if this, and it's not a long book, but what's really interesting in terms of a device, the guy Lawrence, who is the co-revee, who is the co-

Starting point is 00:57:42 author of it, he's like a professional writer. He in between the chapters written by Peter Barton, he talks about his time with Peter Barton. He only knew Peter Barton during this last 18 months of his life, post-cancer diagnosis. But then he got to know everybody who knew him during his life. And he gets to compare everybody's opinion of this person, Peter Barton, during his career. Yeah. when he posts cancer diagnosis and he's dealing with, he's got young kids. What's going to happen to my daughter or my son? You know, they're 10 years old and they're going to say goodbye to their dad this year and, you know,

Starting point is 00:58:22 trying to get closure for all of these things. Anyway, if you're into meditating on a life well lived, this is a good book for you to do that. If you're young and invincible, you don't need to read these things, but I would recommend it. If you're young and invincible and on top of the world, at some point, you're going to deal with your own mortality. And you're going to want to start thinking about this issue of what is a good life? What is it worth focusing your energy on? It makes you think of Ben Sassy, the former Nebraska Republican senator. He is dying of cancer right now.

Starting point is 00:58:56 And he's been doing lectures and I've seen him do interviews. And you do. Like when you get towards the end of your life with one of these terminal illnesses, it does change you. And it makes people more reflective. and it softens their sharp edges in some ways. So I've been seeing a lot of interviews with him lately that are the same thing, whereas he's getting reflective at his final months.

Starting point is 00:59:16 Well, and you also become super candid because you're going to be gone. So you're kind of like, well, yeah, let me just tell you the truth. People got to hear about this now while I have time, yeah. Exactly. And here's my second thing. This is a tool. People may have seen this like Quarlesnake that was on the ranch

Starting point is 00:59:32 and it was injured and I have to put it down. but I then had a rat a rat snake on the ranch so between the coral snake and the rat ranch I bought this 60 inch professional alloy gripper the wife and the kids tried to get the

Starting point is 00:59:48 rat snake out of the chicken coop now they're not there to eat the chickens chickens are too big for this but really like you need to have this if you're on a ranch people don't tell you when you move lawn I don't know if you've had the scorpions in the house yet I have yeah

Starting point is 01:00:05 Okay. You got to be careful with your shoes. Just always give them a little tap out because people put their shoes on or their slippers and they get a nice little stinger from the scorpion. I had the large, I had a huge scorpion in my bathtub one morning when I woke up to go to the restroom. I didn't even know they got that big. It's crazy. It's crazy.

Starting point is 01:00:27 It's not going to kill you, but it's going to pack a punch and it's not going to be pleasant. You're not going to enjoy yourself. Anyway, I'm a little bit of a joke there. Listen, another amazing episode of this week in Startups, your favorite podcast, if you're a founder, where you're an investor. We got a lot of great shows for you over the summer, and I will be here for most of them. I had to, I was in transit a little bit, so apologies I wasn't here,

Starting point is 01:00:50 but I'll see you next time. Bye, bye, bye, buddy.

This Week in Startups - Danny Bernstein left Big Tech to fund farm-bots | E2310

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