This Week in Startups - Jack's candid Twitter takes, FB invests in African internet, Regent's electric Seaglider, Better.com layoffs | E1438

Episode Date: April 19, 2022

First, Jack is getting candid about Twitter’s board dysfunction (2:14). Then, we cover Facebook’s internet infrastructure development projects in Africa (24:31) and Better.com's new round of layoffs (33:53). Our startup of the day is Regent, which is making a regional seaplane (46:51). We wrap with a discussion of Zendesk considering a sale (1:01:34) and Telsa's third act (1:04:57). (00:00) Jason and Molly intro today’s news (02:14) “Jack After Dark” Dorsey tweeting candidly about twitter’s board (13:20) Vanta - Get $1,000 off automating your SOC 2 at https://vanta.com/twist (14:33) What were Jack Dorsey’s plans? (23:13) Embroker - Get an extra 10% off insurance for your business at https://Embroker.com/twist (24:31) Developing countries increasingly reliant on Meta for internet access (32:39) Rocket - Go to http://getrocket.com/twist and use promo code TWIST for 20% off your first placement. (33:53) Better.com started another round of layoffs (46:51) Startup of the day: Regent (1:01:34) Zendesk working with M&A advisor Qatalyst Partners on a potential sales (1:04:57) TechCrunch earnings preview saying we may get a look into Pt. 3 of Tesla’s mission FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis FOLLOW Molly: https://twitter.com/mollywood

Hey, everybody, hey everybody. Jack after dark is back. He's being candid about Twitter's board dysfunction, the takeover bed. And we do a little dreaming, Molly and I, about what companies would we like to do a hostile takeover for? I know. I'm going to keep coming with answers on this all week long because now I just can't stop thinking about it. I'm window shopping, if you will, for a public company of my very own. We're also going to talk about Facebook's Internet Infrastructure Development Projects in Africa

because Facebook just continues with its controversial attempts to figure out how to get everyone on the internet through Facebook. Yes, it's not scary or dystopian at all. No, you can trust them. And Better.com did another round of layoffs, but maybe they're getting a little bit better

at how to do these mass layoffs remotely. And if you are a CEO staring down a downturn, consider these do's and don'ts big time. We also wrap up with an EV startup that's making a regional C-Plash. It is an interesting, potentially inspiring startup of the day. Yeah, it's a really clever idea. It flies like 50 feet above the ground.

What could go wrong? So it's going to be a great show. Stick with us. This week in startups is brought to you by Vanta. Compliance and security shouldn't be a deal breaker for startups to win new business. Vanta makes it easy for companies to get a sock to report fast. Twist listeners can get $1,000 off for a limited time. at Vanta.com slash twist.

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Get 20% off your first placement at getrocket.com slash twist. Hey, everybody, welcome to this weekend startups. How you doing, Molly? It's Tuesday. It's Tuesday. Doing great. Let me guess. What's on the day? Live in the dream. Live in the dream.

I wonder if we could talk about like, I don't know, social media moderation. maybe some crypto stuff. And like if we accidentally stray into war, then it'll be. Yeah, trifecta. It'll be the 22, the 22 trifecta. Wow. Groundhog Day. So Jack Dorsey is back.

I call him Jack after dark. There was some moment in which Jack decided he'd start using Twitter. I think it was like year 12 of the service. He decided. You know, I kind of been studying. I think I'm ready to start using this. I think I can take it out of beta. And he just started saying,

wild stuff, like wild, great, awesome, candid stuff. I don't know what's causing this candor. I think he's just had enough of the bullshit. And he's been doing it again. Ever since he left as Twitter CEO, he's been doing a lot more tweeting. And then since Elon put in a bid or started buying up some shares, Jack after Dark's back.

Mm-hmm. Maybe you could recap what we got. I was going to say, Let me run us through a little bit of the drama. So the saga started on the weekend. April 16th, friend of the pod, Gary Tan, tweeted the following. The wrong partner on your board can literally make a billion dollars in value evaporate. It's not the sole reason behind every startup failure,

but it is the true story a surprising percentage of the time. So interesting. We've seen some of that play out in our various TV shows that we're watching based on real events. to which Twitter user Tren Griffin, who is an investor. Super smart. Friend of Bill Gurley's. They just had dinner together, I think.

Oh. I saw on the social media. Oh, okay. I'm like, oh. Trent's smart blogger. He writes, he writes essays. He writes essays.

He's smart. Essays. Well, so what he, then he replied on Twitter and not an essay, but tweeting, I think, to one and said from quoting a guy named Fred Destin,

saying, what I do know for sure is that this old Silicon Valley proverb is grounded in age, old wisdom that still applies today. Good boards don't create good companies, but a bad board will kill a company every time. So that's like a really interesting back and forth. And then Jack replied to Trent Griffin with two words. And those words were big facts. Big facts. Um, yeah. What? Yeah. So I mean, the last board, uh, he had to suffer through was, you know, Twitter's got a long history of, you know, the founders battling it out for who's in charge.

You've got three CEOs at different points, Evan, DeCostolo, and Jack. And, yeah, a lot of drama back in the day, perhaps a very big board with a lot of medium-sized owners, right? So it was complicated. So then it gave a frowns, yeah. And so then this went on and said what unfolded was an amazing sequence of tweets. the user I Hadrami replied to Jack. If you, and we'll just read this back and forth because it's fascinating and said,

if you look into the history of Twitter board, it's intriguing. I was a witness on its early beginnings, mired in plots and coups, and particularly amongst Twitter's founding members. I wish it could be made into a Hollywood thriller one day. And then Jack replied, it's consistently been the dysfunction of the company.

Causing user, Yit, useless thinking to respond, Are you allowed to say this? And then Jack to write back, no. Classic Jack after dark. It's Jack after dark. It's kind of like the Moon Night. Like, he just comes out.

He just comes out. Give me control. Give me control of the body. Give me control, Jack. Scott Wapner of CNBC. Give me the account, Jack. Exactly. Give me the password.

He gets on Twitter and the password. Then, you know, the daylight Jack wakes up. people are like, whoa, you okay, buddy? What do you mean? He wakes up like in a field last night. He's like, I didn't quit last night. I didn't do this. Then reporters get in the game here.

Scott Wapner from CNBC. Serious question for Jack. If you think the Twitter board is or was so dysfunctional and kept the company from being great as you imply either through your own tweets or replies to others, why didn't you do anything about it when you ran the company for several years? And Jack responded so much to say,

but nothing that can be said. and then Vinnie Lingam jumps in with the translation. Jack is simply saying that as a public company with a bunch of self-serving board members, he did not have the power or authority to make the changes he needed to because of the short-term impact to the revenue and growth numbers,

which they deemed unacceptable. I think it's probably accurate. They had Jack on a very short leash. They wanted to see quarter over quarter growth, year-over-year growth, and they had the cardinal sin. They made the cardinal sin of when you're the distant number two to a juggernaut saying you have to play according to their success metric.

For example, Google all of a sudden started dominating Yahoo. And then Yahoo kept trying to be Google. And that was not what Yahoo's strength was. Yahoo's strength was they had these content verticals. They had, you know, other services, like games, things that Google wasn't into. sports, videos, all that stuff. They should have just been Yahoo. We should have been a combination of, you know, some search, sure, but, you know.

Culture, articles, content, video, sports, mail. They had those great verticals that did incredibly well for them. Yeah. Where people, and today's day, you know, if you want to reach finance people, as terrible as finance.yahu.com is, there's a bunch of people who use it as their default stock ticker, and then you go to the page and you look at the content. I was talking to the people who are running it now and I was like,

like, we should put this week in startups up on finance.yahu.com and clip us and put us up there like, you've got no content there. What are you doing? And I was like, it really is gnarly up there. If you look at the content, it's all,

they sold all the stories. So you go to finance.com. I basically learn that if I click anything below my stock ticker, chances are it's going to be a paid marketing or ad. So it kind of ruined it. But yes, this is.

Well, so let's look at, let's, let's play a, what do you think was happening? Because it is very clear that there have been power struggles at Twitter. I mean, you point out just at the CEO level alone, the founder and CEO level, power struggles galore. Jack seems to be saying pretty clearly that the board was also messing with them all the time. let's like look at the Twitter board members and see if we can figure out who might have been right. Because you do have this sort of fundamental question. Like, did the board interference stall Twitter?

And that's why it never developed more products? Or was the leadership saying like, no, no, no, we just wanted to be this really simple thing like Craigslist all along. On the board, you had Jack Dorsey, Baragrawal, the current CEO, Brett Taylor, the co-CEO sales force. I think these are the current board members, right? This is the current board of Twitter? Yeah. And I don't know.

let's see producers who... I don't know how much turnover there's been. As an example. But I think everybody else probably was on when Jack was on. Probably. Okay. So Brett Taylor, co-CEO of Salesforce. I probably knows what he's doing a little bit.

Mimi Alamehu, senior VP for Public Private Partnerships at MasterCard, Egon Durbin of Silver Lake. That's a newer one, I think probably since that big stake. Martha Lane Fox, Lucky Voice Group, Omid Cortostani, former executive chairman of Twitter, Dr. Fei-Fei from Stanford,

the former CEO of Google, the CEO of First dibs.com, and then the former chairman of the board of directors of Alliance Bernstein holding. Okay. Who is the troublemaker here? Well, yeah.

Got a lot of Googlers on there. Yeah, I don't know that this is a terrible board. This doesn't speak to me as an activist board. Yeah, I think there were probably two iterations to the board. There was the venture board that Fred Wilson was on and Dick Costello and like that era, Evan Williams. where they were changing CEOs and who was going to run at Jack or Ev

or Dick. And then what were they running it for? Because I think Dick Costello came in to add a business model. I think Jack was always a product person and Evan was always like super considered somewhere between the two. And so, yeah, I think it's just been a dysfunctional board in terms of who got to run the company.

Who is in charge? And like people wanting to switch who was the CEO. And it's because also this company didn't have, like a tight group of founders between Ev Biz and Jack, like, all in sync of who was going to run it. Right. I mean, it sort of seems to me like none of these sort of CEO kings, right? There was like this, it's like you had this battle between the heirs to figure out who was going to be CEO. But it seems that maybe none of them had a strong enough vision or put a strong enough stamp or business model on it to keep everybody from meddling.

What this says to me is that there was just always a power vacuum. And so the board came in and was like trying to meddle. Because if you're killing it, don't board stay out of it? Generally, you would want to get out of the way. Yeah. And then if you're trying to do a reclamation project or you're trying to do a reboot or a pivot or whatever, you know, reorganization, that's like something that will take place over six to 12 quarters. Like you would have to make a plan for a year or two or three.

And so this two or three year plan was, I think, the challenge is I don't think anybody really ever got to execute against a plan or none of those plans did in fact work to grow the service. So I think Dick had a good reign coming in and getting monetization and scaling up the organization and making a public company ready. Jack, I don't think ever got a clear vision executed against it. He wanted to do the open source algorithms. I think he wanted to open the API up. He wanted to do some bold things, but maybe the board vetoed him is what I'm getting the sense of. So maybe he felt like he couldn't take drastic steps because drastic steps might mean,

as we talked about last week, if you want to solve the bot problem, you're going to take a hit on the daily active user. Right, right. You know, you want to get rid of trolling. You want to have more real names. You're going to be putting friction into the system. So do you want to have friction or do you want to have activity? You know, do you want to slow things down, increase the quality, have friction?

Or do you want to have more activity and growth? Yeah. And sometimes it's bad growth, you know? It's like not sustainable growth. The more toxic people you allow on the platform, the more bots you allow on the platform, the easier it is to start a burner account. Well, the worst somebody's experience is going to get. Listen, when you're a founder, it's fun to trade your craziest stories with other founders.

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Vanta.com slash twist, V-A-N-T-A dot com slash twist. Once again, vanta.com slash twist for $1,000 on. I guess do we have a sense? Do we know historically whether, like, that was something that Jack really want to do is clean up the bot problem? I think he was very much into opening up the API again and then opening, doing this bring your own algorithm kind of thing and letting that happen. I think he also had some crypto ambitions.

I do also think there was probably a beginning of a conflict between the two companies, Square and Twitter. That was challenging because Square is doing crypto. Twitter's got crypto ambitions. They did that NFT thing very quickly. I think that was probably under Jack. Like, hey, what if this NFT thing takes off? we could be trading NFTs,

we could be the place that people showcase their NFTs and that's largely become true, I believe. People, if you want to show up your NFT, the best place to do it, I think is Twitter. Your Twitter profile. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of a genius idea when you think about it. And if they had their own cryptocurrency inside of Twitter,

I'm not saying like this is the best vision, but it's a vision. And if your Twitter handle became your wallet, like, that's kind of dope. And you could store stuff in it, kind of dope. So, yeah, it's, I sort of feel, I mean, I feel like it's very interesting to watch this back and forth. It seems quite clear that it's true that your board can come in and break stuff for you, not for you, can come in and break stuff. And also, I would say I'm not 100% prepared to take Jack's word unquestioningly here because he was also, he was running two different companies.

He was pretty checked out. He was like, I'm going to go to Africa for six months. I'm into this blockchain thing. Like there was evident, I would say, if I were a board member, I would also. So it would probably be like, who's running the store here? Like, are you focused enough on this product or are you trying to turn it into this other product and, you know, do you have a real plan here? Like, I sort of feel like a board doesn't come in trying to big foot a plan if there's not one already. No, but they could just say, you know, you got some fractured board.

These six people, these five people want to go for growth, you know, and these six or seven people want to go for safety. You know, that's probably, you know, there's probably opposing forces in how open the platform should be in terms of the API and allowing other people to monetize that, a strict focus on making money and then radical plans for the product with regard to safety or new products, maybe acquisitions. These things could all become very controversial. Maybe Jack wanted to buy something, you know, that would have been extremely complimentary. They had a really good run of buying stuff, Periscope and Vine. Could have been, I think, like their Instagram and WhatsApp, they should have

I mean, we wouldn't have TikTok right now if they had kept on with Vine. They could have kept on that string, yeah. Bob G asked, and I think we've sort of alluded to this too, would Twitter be different if Jack had the same share as Mark Zuckerberg does in Facebook? And that is a really, really good example of like, now you have Zuckerberg being like, hey, I'm taking my giant social network and I'm turning it into a VR and AR company. I'm just doing a massive. So if Jack had wanted to do a pivot like that and had this super majority voting situation, like no problem. We're founder authority and, you know, we always debate like, oh my God, you can't build

anything in San Francisco. You can't build anything in Brooklyn. It's like, I think when you're saying like that scale building project and you're comparing it to China being able to build it, I think you're talking about you can't kick 50 people out of their homes, raise them, and then put a stadium on top of them without them having a process to fight you. Right. And it's like, oh, you mean it's like democracy?

like people have rights. So, you know, it's you, if you give up a bunch of rights, people can make unilateral decisions and unilateral decisions can have big outcomes and great outcomes. The lesson here is democracy doesn't work at all in companies.

You know, I'm totally joking, by the way. I am not. Democracy, but democracies create chaos and certainly at a company, you can't have, no, you cannot have like, a democracy will slow you down. It's a messy,

democracies are a mess. SLO process. Yes. And that's the strength of it, right? Like, you can't, you can't change how many terms the president can do very easily here in the United States. That would be a messy, decade-long project probably. We're seeing that play out right now. Yes. So, like, certain things are hard to change. And in a company, we have a God King. It's like, yeah, we're going to build a parallel company over here, and all the profits from Company A are going to fund company B. The end, you know. I mean, what is so? Yes. Let's vote. Yeah, you're in? I'm in. Great. I'm in. I'm in. That's all that matters. Super. What is so fascinating, actually, is that I've made this analogy more than once on the show, which is that Twitter, because, you know, no one is so evidently in charge operates a little bit like a Dow. And here is Jack saying like, oh, I want this decentralization and I want to pop up all these Dow's. And then we keep seeing these scams where basically somebody comes in, takes over a voting majority in a Dow, and then tanks it or steals all the money.

And so I'm sort of wondering if Jack maybe isn't taking the wrong lesson away from this. What company do you most want to run a hostile takeover for? I know. You start. Me, sir? Yeah. If you could take over, let's see. I mean, you can't take over Apple, but if I could take over Apple.

And just sleep on your bed of money? Hell yeah. No, I would just go and I would be like, I would take the brand extension to absurd levels. I would do Adam Newman as CEO of Apple. No, no, no, no, no, no. Babushka, listen. We fly. Rivka, we fly. We fly.

We fly, Rivka. Buy, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye. I buy, bye, bye, bye, bye. I buy the airline. Buy United. So I would literally come in if I was Tim Cook. I'd be like, go buy United Airlines. Yeah.

And then I would turn it into Apple Airlines. And I would double the prices. and I would change the seats and make them Apple seats. Then I'd be like, okay, what next? What else do people do every day? Okay, great. Buy me McDonald's, great. And now it's going to be Apple's fast food thing or buy me whatever salad thing.

I would make Apple brand everywhere, everything. Can you imagine what you could do with Apple if you did have a Zuckerberger, even a Jack mentality of just like, we are not going to be safe. We're not going to just live and die by the iPhone. E-bikes. Oh, my God. Apple. e-bikes. Yes. Great.

Go. Right in the store. Here's a bunch of e-bikes. Can you imagine you buy Apple e-bike? It would be amazing. I would ride the crap out of an Apple E-bike. Find my e-bike. But they're kind of like to do one thing every 10 years and make it spectacular

and then sell a billion. I mean, I understand the strategy. I would pursue a different one. All right. There's my. I'd also takeover Apple. And then Hossil take over Apple. Unlimited brand extensions. What do you last?

See, it's got to be tech, right? It's going to be a tech company. It's not going to be like, it's not going to be like. It could be Disney. It could be any company. Pick a company. Any company. Hostile takeover.

Then what do you do next? Peloton. You like the Peloton. Oh my God. That's actually a realistic one. Fill my house with peloton's. Yeah, that would be a delight. I mean, because you can obviously like, it's pretty tempting to be like,

I would take over one of the oil giants, one of the oil and gas giants. just be like, okay, we're doing it. We're doing renewable energy. Here we go. Yeah, well, you'd have to sell oil to fund it. You'd have to sell oil to fund it. You'd have to do a transition plan. Yeah, exactly.

You have a transition plan. Like the Saudis are doing or like the activist shareholders are doing. But it's not, but to be honest, like, that's not as fun. But I do think that those big oil companies have like employees with skills that we need to like, you know, pump ice onto glaciers to refreeze them or pump water. And like, I mean, you could redeploy those resources so effectively after you actually like, kickstarted the transition and made sure it was real. Maybe you buy Walmart and just change the packaging.

But right, like what if you buy somebody I think earlier, one of the notice said buy Amazon and then spin off AWS, Jay Sedu said that, which would be super fun or buy Google. Like if you can do a hostile takeover of Google and then just be like, okay, let's get real here about. What are you doing in hardware? Just like,

Google, pick six things and then do them and then stop introducing stuff that you just like, you know, bail on. Yeah. They're, they like to dabble. The Google guys like to dabble. Right, but it means you can't

I don't buy any of their stuff now because I'm like, I don't trust you. They should dabble and spin out. Dabble and spin out. It would have been great if they just spun Google Fiber out into its own company. You know? Yeah. Yeah.

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While you're there, you're going to get an extra 10% off by using the code twist. Easy to remember this week in startups, T-W-I-S-T. Go to In-B-B-R-K-E-R-com slash twist and use that offer code, T-W-I-S-T. Speaking of Google Fiber, it seems like META has been quietly working on their access program in Africa. What are we got here, Mal? So you may remember that several years ago, around about like 2016-ish, Facebook tried to roll out this program called Free Basics. And what it would do is be free Internet access for people in developing countries in Africa and parts of Asia, including India. and it was like, you get these free basics and Facebook,

and we get all your data. And all these developing countries, but especially India was like, nope, absolutely not. This is a massive violation of net neutrality for you to come in here and give us free internet access, but choose all of the things that we get to see. Absolutely not. And so Facebook sort of had to-

And was that part of it? They were going to, like, control what you saw on it? Yeah, they would hand. and pick the sites that were available via free basics. So it would be like, you know, some health websites, some education things, Facebook. How can people be so clueless as to like think that poor people in an emerging market would not understand they're being played? Like if you're poor and somebody's trying to play you, you know immediately. Yeah.

Because you've seen this movie before, people coming in trying to prey on people who have less resources. Absolutely. I mean, it's like literally what is the difference in this case between Facebook and like, a gold mining company, right? You know, like, come on. Like, this is resource extraction. Yep. And it's super painfully obvious.

So Facebook backed away from that, supposedly. And so then what they pivoted to instead is, okay, well, instead of providing an app, we'll just go ahead and literally lay the fiber. Got it. We will provide the entire infrastructure. So in 2019, Meta partnered with Maine One, a company that lays fiber optic cables across West Africa to improve the poor internet access in the southern Nigerian state of Edo specifically. 250 miles of cable have been installed.

Meta's investment came out to about $20 million. And the investment has, as you can imagine, Meda would tout, help train 2,000 teachers across four schools and try to get people online, which is great. Sure. Emmanuel Eweca, a previous senior Edo government official, says, quote, I'd say Facebook actually loses in terms of making money out of those cables, but then they gain it back in the user data that they will generate. And obviously that has huge potential in a country like Nigeria.

This is Facebook attempting to the same thing, but all the way down to the pipes. And I should point out here that Google has been trying to do very similar things. Like I have a friend who is deeply, deeply freaked out about the fact that the global internet infrastructure that's being laid and created, right now is being created by private companies who sell your data. I'm sorry, Facebook will come for me over that. Monetize your data. Yeah.

Yeah. And that there, that's something to pay a lot of attention to. And some of these, I think it is a situation where some places are just never going to get high speed. So I think some of the internet giants are like, doesn't matter who gets it there.

If we can get some internet there, we have more customers there. So it's just a way to online another set of, customers, and I guess the devil's in the details for all of these, but it does make you wonder what's going on. Also, I think this is all moot. I think a lot of this stuff is historical projects, because Amazon is doing their low-earth orbit satellites.

They just announced they're going to be deploying hundreds of them, just like Starlink has. And so there are going to be, I think, four major low-earth orbit constellations going on. So you're going to have four people with two, three, four, or five thousand of these up there. There's going to be 20, 30, 40,000 satellites up there. Seems like a lot. But if I told you, you have to put 40,000 satellite. Imagine like the earth being even bigger, you know, greater circumference than it is now. And then you had to put 40,000

backpacks where, you know, luggage rollers around the planet. Like, you would never find one of them if you walk the planet for 10 lifetimes, right? There's really actually not that many out there. It seems like a lot. But it's dispersed over a very low. large field. And so this is all going to be an incredible brave new world because all this fiber is great. But for a lot of applications, the satellite's going to do a good enough job. And it's going to be a project Kepler's coming. You end up in sort of the same situation, right, which is you've got private companies in control of internet infrastructure, whether it comes from space or on the ground. Facebook and Google, I look this up in the interim, Facebook and Google have

been investing in giant undersea cables that connect the U.S. Singapore in Indonesia. Yeah. They're, you know, they're taking over where AT&T, BT and these telco-led global consortiums left off in terms of building internet infrastructure. So, you know, I guess the question is sort of like, what does the global regulatory framework look like for this and are we okay with? I mean, but it's, but in some ways, it's not that dissimilar from.

The great thing is the internet is a distributed, the original distributed application. so nobody can own any one part of it. And if you were to try to exert control over it, you'd lose it because people would just find another way to route around you. You might not be as fast. It might be slower. But with these satellites going up and having four different players doing that, in addition to everything that's been laid,

in addition to 5G. And 5G. Yeah, exactly. Don't see how the tel goes there. I understand in New York, I saw somebody was testing in New York, like getting 6, 700 megabit on their phones and laptops with this like 5G, I got which band it is, but

you know, the highest bands are now starting to be deployed and I was just talking to a friend of mine in New York and they're like, yeah, I'm going to cut the cable and just get Verizon internet. And I'm like, what do you mean? They're like, yeah, just put this thing in your window and your whole home is your like LTE connection.

And there it is, actually. That was the story I was reading of just like this bandwidth tests. The C band, I guess they call it, is blowing people's minds in New York. So And to the people asking in the chat, like, yes, the current internet cables were laid originally by private companies, but they're private companies that have FCC regulation, right? There is regulation.

And a lot of public money went into subsidizing those. And as a result, they have things like peering agreements that require them by law to, like, share that access with other companies. And so the question is, like, if Facebook and Google put down a big undersea cable, do they have to let anybody piggy back on that ever? No. Yeah, that's a good. Well, they probably are going to want to have reciprocal arrangements with other people. So if their cable went down, their traffic people over that. So there is that. Yeah, there is that. But it's interesting. And it's fascinating that, these companies just keep trying, right? It's just like putting laptops. It's like how Apple made

the laptops cheap and Google made the Chromebooks cheap. You want to get the kids when their kids is how they're thinking about these companies of like the opportunity of the next, what is it, two or three billion to come online. It's going to be everybody. And so we're finding the pockets of people that, you know, the pockets of resistance to high speed for whatever dysfunctional reason. It could be the economies. It could be the government regulation.

It's not necessarily a dysfunctional reason. It's just timing, right? Well, I mean, sometimes it's like someone who doesn't want to let in, you know, some internet or wants to control it. And, you know, like, I think Cuba was another one where, like, the phones, people were still paying by the minute and it was, like, incredibly expensive. And it's like, all these other countries wanted to come in and compete for that business. And they're like, yeah, no, no, this is controlled by the state. You don't get to participate.

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and they will continue until morale gets boosted, until people turn around their bad attitudes. We're going to keep laying people off. Better.com started yet another round of layoffs. I can't tell if this is... It's like they're just practicing. How many people work at this company? Like, do they keep adding 1,000 people

so that they can lay people off every six months? Is that like a strategic objective here? It's like practice. It really seems to, it's like a groundhog day situation over there. They started another round of layoffs. Is there a third in five months? I can't believe how many people work at this company, but you remember. I know.

I'm wondering about that too. In December, the CEO, Vishal Guard, G-A-R-G, laid off 900 employees, which is about 9% of the company, over Zoom. In a very, like, cavalier, weird, passive-aggressive. not gracious way. It was just deranged. And here, I reacted to it, I guess, on the pod pretty viscerally. Episode 1341, 60 seconds. We are laying off about 15% for reasons.

The market efficiency and performances and productivity. If you're on this call, you are part of the unlucky group. You, dude. That is being laid off. Your employment here is. terminated effective immediately. Are you kidding me? What does this mean for what's next?

You're going to get an email from HR, ask hr at better.com, to your personal email address. Regarding the details of your severance and your benefits. For all U.S. employees, we're providing four weeks of severance, one month of full benefits and two months of COBRA

for which we will pay the premium. So three months total benefits if you elect for COBRA. You would do this in smaller groups. you would do this in a more humane way. You would give people the ability to opt into it. So the pain was lessened. You would take responsibility.

None of that's happening here. And you also have this very bizarre, effective immediately. Determinated, effective immediately. You don't have to speak to people that way. Yeah. So anyway, that was my notes to that. I don't think I'd, you know what? This is shocking, but I had not seen that video.

Like, I am astonished. I had read the, you know, summaries of it. By the way, for those. who were listening that was filmed by an employee who was being laid off of this. So the cursing that you heard there, which I at first thought was Jason. Was not Molly. Was not me and was not Jason. Yes.

That was the person being laid off. Yes. Who was, you know, gracious enough to videotape and put it on Snapchat. So anyway, that was the initial one. Then he wound up getting suspended or fired. It was a whole back and forth of how bad this was. So in March, they laid off another 3,100 employees. So that's 40% of.

of the company from its December peak. He's back, by the way. He did not get fired. I want to be really clear on that. In terms of boards meddling, some boards meddle, but some boards apparently do not, because he had a 30-day suspension. Was his suspension? That's so weird.

And then fired 3,100 people and a bunch of them found out. What do you think he did? Did he ski 40 days or in that 30-day suspension? I think he skied 40 days, didn't he? He took his plane backwards in time and- In ski 40 days? They didn't even call it a suspension. says Justin. Oh my God.

So yes, the board was not that concerned about that. They apparently were like, no problem. So then they laid off 3,100 employees and a bunch of those employees found out when they got a severance check in their payroll accounts. Not by being told directly by their employers that they were being laid off. And I think they also leaked it. So back to the present

as, you know, practice, practice, practice. Wow. Tuesday, today is the day we're recording this at 8 a.m. Better.com's chief people officer sent an email to all employees impacted by the layoffs. In the email, he mentioned that the affected employees would receive a one-on-one phone call from, quote, leaders. Yes, that's what I said to do after watching the big lesson. I know it's like we were in the pandemic and now it's over, I guess. You can fly on planes without masks. That was a really interesting video to watch.

What a day. Yesterday, it was a weird day. By the way, it's just 30 seconds ago. You take your mask off. so yolo and then everyone the plane takes a restaurant. I was like, oh God, that's freaking weird. The 16th from the pandemic is about as messy as up in.

The 16% of people without COVID just got it because everybody started yelling. Yeah, exactly. Well, no, it's pretty clear when you're talking, the vapors come out. I think that was one thing we learned about these things and keep the spit in, dumb dumps. Well, people not talking on planes is like the saving grace of why like it didn't seem like planes became petri dishes or that was one theory. I guess the ventilation system.

Anyway. ventilation. Anyway. Long story short, doing it one-on-one is the way to go. If you're going to do it, you could just let people know the company's reorganizing over the next 30 days. Each group is going to meet with our managers and we're going to resize. There's a chance you could be laid off. There's a chance we would want you to continue. There's a chance you get to choose.

We'll have an option. But we have to right-size the company. If you are looking at other opportunities, you can call HR at any time. But each group will be doing this in real time. Sadly, there's no other choice. of how to do this. And since you're not in office, it's going to seem perhaps impersonal.

We're going to try to work against that by having one-on-ones with each person who's affected and really trying to make sure you have the softest landing possible and that we do whatever we can to help you find another great opportunity and we appreciate obviously everything you did. It's 100% on management we didn't get here. It's nothing to do with you.

This is 100% on our fall. Exactly. So you see the way I just said it, like it's like just be a human and be normal. And I think that's the way. problem is some people are deranged fools like this guy they are well and you know i mean i guess the question is whether he's a founder and to what extent you like this is really relevant to every company in every portfolio right now because we may be we're entering a right sizing period

this is not the last time a company is going to find itself having to do layoffs because it's you know too too bloated because it was trying to blitz scale let's say right and that there is a playbook for how this is done and in the process of of building your company, you sort of have to plan for everything. And you have to plan for this possibility. And in fact, I think some of our curriculum in Founders University and in the accelerator includes some basic preparation for these conversations. Yeah, there's a way to do it.

You should always have a plan A and a plan B. Like, this is if we really crush it. And then this is usually when you build a plan, you have like scenarios. So this is one scenario. We exceed the expectations. We hit the expectations. And we're below expectations. 20% more, 20% less, and on target.

So you can kind of build those models and, hey, if we underperform, here's when we run out of money, 14 months. If we do it on plan, we run out of money in 19 months. And if we overperform, we actually hit break even in month, you know, 21. So we'll be just fine and we'll be default alive. And that's your job as the CEO and the management team, is actually have those scenarios and be prepared for them. Yeah.

And if the market changes, like it just did, where you can say, you know what, we had those three scenarios. Let's build a fourth scenario. We're unable to raise money and put more fuel in the tank. We're unable to raise a bridge. And we have to hit, we have no choice but to get to profitability on the money we have. In other words, no funding available. No funding secured plan. They extend the runway plan.

They'll like tighten up like you guys were talking about on all in, right? If you see the winds changing, you make preparation. for that. And it doesn't mean that you, I don't think that as a founder, it means you don't sufficiently believe, right? It doesn't mean you're not, you're failing to manifest your vision to make a plan for multiple situations because you don't know what you're going to encounter. It doesn't mean you're like not having a big dream if you prepare for the possibility that your big dream might need some editing along the way. Here's the thing. When you raise venture capital, what you're doing is you're saying, we're going to staff this company for what

it's going to look like 12 months from now or 18 months from now. We're going to spend money as if we have $3 million a year in revenue. So we're going to have eventually we'll have $2.2 million in costs to make $3 million and we'll have this 25% margin or so. That's basically what our business will look like. So we're going to go right to $2.2 million in spend now, even though we don't have $3 million in revenue, we have $300,000. And then we're going to use that advantage to get to the $3 million in revenue marker faster. So we'll have extra sales people, we'll have extra support people, we'll build a customer support group as if we have, you know, $3 million worth of customers.

If they each pay $100,000, we have $30,000 of these. If they each pay $10,000, we have $300 of them. So we have $310,000 customers. We need to have this size support organization. Okay, build it now. Let's get it dialed in. Okay, it's not efficient. What we're trying to do is use funding to get to the market.

milestone quicker. Now, what happens if you're really like going for it? You know, you're trying to get to the revenue number you would organically get to in three years. So you're spending like a company that maybe would have three years of bootstrapping. Well, I mean, you may not be able to get there. You may not be able to get there at that accelerated pace and a market that has headwinds. So you just have to adjust. And this is a company that obviously was like fast, just going too fast. Yeah. And so fast was spending money, right, if they were spending a hundred million a year and they were making 600,000, like, I mean, that is 200 X off, 150 to 200 X, like they would have to 150x revenue. That's a lot.

That's a lot of, that's a lot of doubles. You know, you'd have to double the revenue, like, a lot of times. Yeah. 1.2, 2.5, 5, 10, 20, 40. 80 about seven times you'd have to double revenue

you'd have to do seven doubles as the fast team to get to break even that's how crazy their spending was a little too much a little too much

obviously so we're going to see more of this the other thing is you got to be very careful that you have the ability when you lay people

off and you're giving them three months severance now you got another trap okay in order to get these people off the books we're going to need

to spend a bunch of money to offload them layoffs are expensive so also It argues against bloat too. I mean, the bloat thing is really real. Like, the fact that they're laying up this many people at better.com makes us question.

I think somebody said they had 10,000 employees. I'm not an advocate for working people to death, but like, maybe that's too many people. I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know what was going on there. It seems like way too many people. And, you know, it's, as we watched in the WeWork documentary,

I think it's pretty accurate. Like, you want the crazy guy on your team. until like the crazy person like goes too crazy right and it's a fine line you know you're pushing and pushing and there's you know like oh my god we hit 8.9 million square feet with the largest you know leaseholder in Manhattan and it's like largest bag holder in Manhattan you own the most did you just celebrate that you have the largest like debt in New York like that's not something to be proud of necessarily. It is a good, it's a really good point about metrics.

Like what is your, what are your metrics and what is your goal? And why are you trying to hit it? Because if your North Star is just size. Yeah, the number of least square footage. The number of least square footage. What does that even mean? That's just money on fire at some point. You would be, yeah, it's like being like, we've inventoried the most number of hamburgers.

We have the largest number of hamburgers in our walking box. It's like, how many to sell? I should be how many, how many, how many, square feet have you profitably resold? That would be better. Exactly. Or what percentage of your leases is filled? So if you had a 8.9 million square feet, the percentage leased would be, you know, percentage resold, in their case, you know, occupied desk shares, like, you know, the percentage utilized would be my North Star metric there. Because that would be like super efficient, right? Like, right? How efficiently are you running the business? So when you take that lease, how quickly

do you get it filled? Yeah. I'm not trying to blow up the biggest balloon in the world. There's no reason for that. No. Yeah. Okay, let's do the startup of the day. This is everybody's favorite segment.

We don't do it every day. But tell us what do we have today? Start up of the sometimes. I love this. I totally'm going to call them after this and see if they're raising any money. Regent is building an electric sea glider. Sea glider. I'm obsessed with sea planes.

and this is a sea glider, which is a regional commercial aircraft that flies low above the water. It can go fast like a plane, but then land in the water and then taxi to a city's ferry dock. So kind of like a seaplane, but it's sort of an alternate form of transportation, especially for like the succession people who are trying to like take a helicopter everywhere and all they need to do is just scoot across some water.

Look at this thing. Wait a second. So it looks like a plane. It looks like a plane. And it glides on the top. Oh, wait, it does come up. Yeah. It comes up and glides across the water like a ferry.

Oh, on a foil. Yeah. So it could, this is a rendering, by the way, that you're seeing on this video, but it's like a foil. And so what it would replace is ferries and water taxis. It's just a fancy ferry, but it's electric. Wait a second. It does fly right above the water. Uh-huh.

It's, oh, it comes out of the water completely. Oh, it can fly. Oh, look, it's going to the Gongay Bridge. Interesting. So it flies less than 50 feet above the water. Yeah. Okay. Now, I need to know if that is a safe thing to do from my aviation.

friends. Absolutely not. Okay. I'm like, wait a second. If you're flying, don't you want to be like 5,000 feet above? So if something goes wrong and you have time, but then you fall further, but here it's 50 feet above the water. Like it can

it could, you know, even if there was like a, it can operate, I think the same 50 feet above the water and then if there's a rogue wave, it could, I'm sure it's terrible. What if there's like a down draft and you smash into the water at what speed is it going I guess 180 miles an hour

okay that's not that fast compared to a plane going 3, 4, 500 miles yeah I mean a jet's going 550 miles per hour 600 miles per hour It's just a high speed 350 I guess It's a high speed vary Okay That achieves lift

It has 180 mile range holds 12 passengers This is why by the way This is why I'm the brand new VC Who's like I want to invest in everyone in Jason's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Careful. That looks like a place to burn money.

I see red flags. Yeah, exactly. They have plans for their first commercial flight in 2025 and have orders from regional services like Southern Airways Express, the English Channel Ferry operator, Brittany Ferries and Mesa Airlines. By leaving from boat docks, the craft can save travelers time spent going to and from busy airport. So if you just needed to zip across from Paris to England, like you could see it replacing the channel thing. Okay, so if you, let me think of another route.

If we wanted to go to, yeah, and you also need to not, if you're going 50 miles per hour, you got to be careful you don't clip a boat. 180. 180. I'm sorry, you want 180, 50 feet above the water. You got to be careful you don't clip something. Because ferries don't go that fast. FERS are going 40 miles an hour or something.

Yeah. Right. I wonder what regulations would apply at 50 feet. Is it an FAA thing or is it a Coast Guard thing? Yes. Like, you know how like when you have a slow moving boat and a fast moving boat? You get both. I think you have the unique ability to get both.

But 180 mile range. So if you, I'm just thinking if you're going up and down the coast. So if you left San Francisco Harbor and then decided to go, you know, I don't know. To Santa Cruz to Monterey. Well, Monterey is a perfect trip. That would be under 100 miles. And so you're telling me you can do that in half an hour or, you know, an hour door to door, that would be kind of cool to go to Monterey

at an hour from San Francisco, I guess. It's about the same to drive. A cool little seaplane? Now, if you wanted to go all the way to L.A., that would be 300 miles and change. I would not be a good way to do it. I mean, it might be quite beautiful.

Right. Well, it wouldn't make it. You'd have to stop and either switch to a new one or charge up, I guess it only goes 180 miles. Oh, it's 180 miles per hour and 100 AMR. Okay, so this is for Sydney Harbor or maybe Vancouver. or something like that.

Or the channel. San Diego, LA, maybe. Maybe it makes it, yeah. It is interesting because the chat is pointing out that it doesn't replace a fairy either because it's only 12 people. Maybe it's just a sightseeing thing as a proof of concept. You know, the Mediterranean probably wouldn't allow.

You let the, I mean, could go to Italy to France or Spain to France. Or you go from the Greek islands. actually could be like Santorini to, you know, whatever, Amalfi Coast, mecanos to a Mofi. I wonder, but I wonder if they would let you actually do this, but it does seem like this is from the TV social session, not from Rial. It probably is.

It's for it. I mean, honestly, though, there's nothing wrong with targeting a small niche, very wealthy audience, right? Like if you're just saying, okay, look, this is replacing your helicopter. And then we're going to build up the range. we're going to like make it go faster. We're going to sort of come up with different use cases for it over time.

The CEO founded the company in 2020, Billy Tallheimer, previously worked on EVEVTALs, basically, you know, these electric planes in many cases. Vertical takeoff and landings. Vertical take off and landings at Boeing's Research Division. Boeing bought Aurora, the company I think he was previously at, which is not the self-driving trucking company. And then this company, the Sea Glider,

one, it raised $18 million co-led by Teal Capital, Jam Fund, and others. These vetoes are starting to also get traction. I think these things are going to happen in the next 10 years. Definitely. Because it's going over water, there's just less people impacted by it. I could see this working really well between the Hawaiian Islands. Like, I'm not sure the exact distance between each one. But, you know, those are, you know, little puddle jumper flights.

I could see this doing really well in Cape Cod area, like going between Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard and the Cape and Long Island. It could be dope. I mean, short haul flights are the vast, vast, vast majority of flights. I just talked to an electric airplane company that I'm super into, and that's what they were saying. It's like 70% to 80% of flights are like a sub two hours. So if you can figure out how to electrify those routes,

massive impact in terms of fuel usage, sound. Like, you know how quiet our electric cars are? Imagine if 70 to 80% of the takeoffs and landings at regional airports were effectively silent. Amazing. That's going to be nice as well. Well, there's a company, Eviation, and they sold to Cape Air, 75 electric planes, and they're doing it this summer, is my understanding. These are test flights this summer. Yeah, and these are small.

These are real small, right? They're like... I think it's probably six people, maybe eight. I'm not sure the exact number. But we can pull it up here because we have producers who do this live. I think it's like four or five million bucks per plane and they bought them or they put the order in. So like it's actually, I think this is actually happening. And it has a small number of people because, yeah, Cape Air is like little puddle jumpers and they're electric.

Cape Air is like they use probably Cessna's or something like that. And this new Alice airplane, if you go to the EV. website, you'll see it. It's actually flying, and it's a commuter air. If you pull up the website for aviation, you'll see like a nice little looping video of it, and it's pretty good-looking. And they're very short, right?

So it doesn't have a lot of weight, but it looks like a little Pilates. It's funky-looking. I think it's designed to be super... Aerodynamic. So aerodynamic, thank you. And they have a commuter one. It looks like four by four,

so probably eight people, and then they have an executive one, which is like six. And yeah, you just charge the batteries. It is a fully EV. I don't think it has any gas engines. Fully EV, yeah. I mean, it's pretty dope when you think about it.

Pretty dope. Like when we get there, it's freaking fascinating. Yeah. And so impactful, like, so impactful in terms of pollution and sound. Like the fossil fuel impact is amazing, but the pollution around airports, the sound, the fact that you can't build houses there, it restricts our ability to build regional airports

because people don't want them in their towns. And then as a result, I don't know how often you fly to the middle of the country. But like I do because my parents live there, it can cost as much as going to Europe to fly to the middle of the country because there just aren't airports and planes. And part of the reason is because the infrastructure

is unwanted, expensive, polluting loud, etc., etc. Yeah, I think the other possibility is maybe using jet fuel to get to 30 or 40,000 feet and then being able to use electric power for some portion because I think you need a lot of energy to get this weight in the air, but once it's in the air to keep it going, you might be able to do like a hybrid car kind of situation where... There's for sure going to be hybrid opportunities, yeah.

There's a lot of opportunity in the space and I think it's really interesting. And I sort of feel like I'm fine with the fact that this, you know, regent and its sea glider is like a little funky place to start because it's all about proving the technology, I think, over time. Yeah. And the batteries as what we're seeing is really what happened with batteries for the mobile phone, then impacting what happened for batteries for cars, right? Because the original Tesla battery pack was just like a bunch of cell phone batteries in a pack.

And then you'll go to aviation and home storage. So everybody bought phones. Everybody wanted their phones to last longer. All these scientists got super, super geeked out and how to make smaller, safer batteries. Remember, they used to go on fire in laptops? They made them safer and they made them cheaper and they made them at scale. Cars, safer, cheaper at scale. Boom, now planes.

That'll be the ultimate beneficiary. And also eventually ships, right? Like, no reason a ship can't do this. Oh, 100%. Electrifying shipping will be a game changer, although you have to go across like most of the planet. So that's going to be longer. I think that's where like a hybrid solution really comes into play and it's so interesting. That's why I like Ryan Peterson who will be speaking at the Allens Summit.

I like his, you know, give me a shipping container with solar panels on it that just drives itself across. How dope would it be if like all of a sudden a shipping container like drives up the beach? You know, like in Long Island, a truck comes, drags it to a depot. It's got seaweed on it, whatever. They unpack it. And then like the trucker just drives it like it's like a baby seal. or something to the edge of Montauk. And it's like, get out of here, kid.

And like, but I want to stay. And the trailer is like little AI trailer goes into the ocean. It's like, I want to stay. No, no, you got to go back to Chez-Jad. It's like Wally. Yeah. And then this poor little shipping container has to go across the ocean. It takes it a year because it goes so slow.

It's all lonely under there. And then it comes up the beach. It makes friends with the whales and turtles. Yeah. No, it's got turtles living on top of it for a year. And it just never has a home. Its home is on the road. And it's just,

this Pixar film is writing itself right now. I mean, it really is beautiful. I hope somebody's listening to this from the movie. Containers. Containers, ships went away and the containers all became independent contractors. It was like a new gig economy for the AI shipping containers.

And then some of them unionized. I was going to say then they didn't like their working conditions because they keep getting attacked by sharks. In the middle of the ocean who would beat up other shipping containers. They surrounded it. Pirates. Autonomous pirates. Autonomous pirates.

Pirates. pirates. I mean, if I were a computer, I would definitely be like, hmm, the best way for me to reach maximum efficiency is to steal this guy's stuff. Just saying. It is, well, it's also becoming a thing that the shipping containers sometimes have, you know, they fall off of shipping. We know they all fall, these things fall off, right?

Because they're just throwing them on the top of a ship. Like, they don't tie them down, I guess. Gravity keeps them on. I'm like, really? Is that how this works? You just stack them like Jenga cards? centrifugal force? That's your plan? Yeah, but I'm assuming they're locked down, but sometimes I guess they just, the thing tips, they fall in.

Well, now what's happening is some number of those containers shipped to the bottom, right? They sink, they're heavy. Other ones have some buoyancy in them, right? This cardboard, there might be something that's a little floaty. And so they stay on the top. And then a small number of them kind of are just below the surface. And so what's happening is ships are hitting containers that are slightly under the water, you know, or float up and down under the water above the water over time as they dry out

or whatever. And no idea. And they rip the hulls off of ships. So people have been losing their rudders and halls by, it's a freak accident, but you can look it up online. So some guy was doing one of these like cross-atlantic solo suicide missions, you know, people who like, you know what? I'm not talk about self-harm coming, trigger warning. You know, some people are like, you know what I'd like to do is really risk my life in a way

that makes no sense. And I'm going to commit like a slow public suicide by going around the world alone. Or I'm going to accomplish this incredible thing through sheer force of will and training and preparation. Nope. No. No.

If you did that, you'd have two people with you. I'm talking about the solo people. What's the difference? If Alex Arnold scales, you know, L. Cap with no rope and there's somebody on a side with a rope, it doesn't take away from his achievement.

Like these, I'm talking about these yokels who were like, I'm going alone. Yeah. I know, I know. To go mad and heat your fingers? Okay, great. And so this guy got, he thinks he lost his rudder from one of these instances because he just

heard a big bang and then he has no rudder. So he has no rudder. So he has to put out those bags. You know about those bags? You can put behind a ship. So there's a, oh, I don't know so much about this. So you throw this thing off the back of your boat if it's got no rudder. And it's a bag that sinks down below the water.

And then you just pull the rope and you can steer your ship. year. With this like bag. It's like a nylon bag. You throw in the back of your ship and you get a rudder. It's pretty smart, right? It's for emergency situation. So this guy had to like somehow navigate the globe with that.

All right, everybody. And then in minor news, Bloomberg's sources say Zendes is working with M&A advisor catalyst partners on a potential sale. Zendes is trading at 15.7 billion up 6.3%. generated 1.3 billion, so it's trading at just over 10 times revenue. On modest losses of 224 million. So there's an easy buy for somebody. Interesting. Yeah, we'll keep an eye on that.

And then just so you know, in the coming days, of course, there are going to be lots of tech earnings. So just look out for us to get to geek out about tech earnings. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's actually, it's a great way to see what's working, right? because the strategy's announced last year, the year before, then we start actually seeing if those things are actually working. Also, it would be interesting to see what's going on with the economy. Because my thesis, these are going to be incredible earnings again.

We're going to see Netflix, meta, Tesla, Microsoft. I mean, it's going to be, I think not that's not all this week. Maybe Tesla might be this week. Anyway, yeah, it's going to be. I think the earnings are going to be sick. Here's my theory. Okay. Because we haven't hit the hard part yet.

No, I think people working from home. and being able to hire talent anywhere has added a dimension of efficiency to these companies that didn't exist before. So if you needed to hire somebody in some very particular thing and they had to work in one of seven offices and they weren't near that seventh off,

one of those seven, or didn't want to relocate, you didn't have that employee. Now, hiring managers is like, okay, yeah, you're some ski bum, you know, and living in Tahoe and you can do the work on your computer, do it. So I think there's going to be unlocked efficiency because of remote work.

And then all that YOLO money sitting around, I think people are buying and consuming more than ever. I mean, clearly, supply chain constraints would indicate that they are because it's not just constraints. It's the fact that they bought so much stuff they can't even get here and get unloaded from ships and containers quickly enough. Tesla is tomorrow, thanks. That's going to be fascinating.

I just think that, I mean, the scale of the production, I have no inside information, obviously. nobody does, but I mean, the number of cars I'm seeing in the scale of the production, the number of people in my circle talking about should I get a Y, I'm upgrading my S, do I want to go to the, I mean, I'm literally in multiple chats where people are upgrading their Teslas. And this is the other thing I think Tesla has done so well. They make it so easy to buy a new car that I went to, you know, I was like, I want to buy

a car. I was like, I don't want to go through the car buying process. Totally. Just wait for a cyber truck. I was just like, I don't want to go through the car buying process. I'll just wait for a cyber truck to magically appear. When I was EV shopping, like, it is just an absolute deal breaker at this point, having gone through the Tesla experience to interact with a dealer.

So the car I bought is the one I really loved the most. And also, though, like maybe there was a Hyundai that I could have tried, but I did not want to deal with the bullse dealer situation. Yes. Like, they brought the car to me to drive. And then I bought it on the internet. then they brought it to my house. Like, it was very Tesla-esque.

And like, everybody, once they copy that, you'll sell a lot more cards. Anyway, it's going to be fascinating. But I also, like, there is a tech crunch. I know we have to end. We have a whole show. But I'm curious to see related to Tesla. There's a tech crunch earning preview where they say maybe we're going to get a glimpse into the part three of the company and the mission, which is much more about the infrastructure,

the renewable energy part of it. Like, I'm super excited to hear more about that. too. I think the thing that's been hiding in plain sight is the factories, materials in one side, product out the other. So this thing that Elon's been talking about a lot and he talked about it at the Gigafactory rodeo is can you have no suppliers and can materials come in one side and then a car come out the other without you having to be waiting for somebody who makes your screen or who makes your seats, that kind of thing? Like how much of the car can one car company make?

Because a lot of this has been these OEMs, and basically you're as fast as your slowest, most incompetent OEM as a car manufacturer. Yes. Outside equipment manufacturer. So obviously, you know, there's somebody who does cigarette lighters for 99% of cars, you know,

as one bad example. There's somebody who does windshield wipers for 67% of car manufacturers. They don't make their own windshield wipers. I think what Elon's been doing in these factories, the dreadnots, the factory is the project, right? Yeah, 100%.

Anything can come out of it, right? You just snap on Y, snap on cyber truck, boom, and you're done. So yeah, that's, I can't wait to see it. So interesting, yeah, we can't wait to hear more. It was also that don't go too crazy. I don't know if you remember that. He was like, I'm just telling employees did not work so hard. Don't go too crazy.

You know, we want to build for quality and sustainability. You know, after we had all these near debts experience with the Model 3, Elon did tweet that, which I thought was like, either a sandbag or like, you know, okay, yeah, we don't have to burn ourselves out. Like, let's just play for longevity here and consistency. Well, there does have to, yeah, there's a strategy after, uh, there's a strategy after domination, right? Like, prove that you can create the first American car company since Ford.

Yep. And get cars on the road. And create infrastructure for those being, right? Like, once you have proven the concept, which is like near. impossible to prove, by the way, like all, all, all. I think I get mistaken for not giving Elon enough credit for the fact that that is a phenomenal achievement. That is an accomplishment that is like to also pair that with a spaceship company, like a rocket ship company that's actually sending people unparalleled accomplishment in human history or American history.

Once you do that. Wait until he figures out self-driving. That's going to be the next one. I mean, wait till he figures out actual electrification. Like, wait until those cars have, you know, bi-directional charging and they can power your house because you've got the panels and the battery. And like, I mean, there's so much phenomenal potential there. Anyway, but I think it is really, I think it's great that he's like, don't burn out because you now it's like you've got to build forever.

Yeah. I mean, the size of that factory, I'm just, I've never seen anything at that scale in my life. It was like going into an alien building and being like, yeah, this is how like the engineers, you know, made humanity. Like, it feels like a scale that you can't imagine. What's that? What's there?

There's like a Michael Crichton book where he goes in a building that's so big that it has his own weather. Oh, really? That makes sense. Yeah. That looks like one that might. This thing is like... Good Lord.

Look at that. It's like a mile long. I mean, this is the thing about moving to Texas. Like, you could never build this in California. You'd still be in planning. Like, and he built it under two years there, I think. Yeah. Like, it's insane.

What was the ground-breaking date on Gigafactory? Four million square feet. It's got so many square feet. I think only a third of it's being used at the start. So this thing has the ability to, like, you know, have a lot more stuff going on in it. The scale is just insane. And it was built in, you know, a couple of years. I mean, it's pretty extraordinary how big this thing is.

August 12th, 2020. This is the one in Del Valle. Wow. That's nuts. That's nuts. That's nuts. Hey, everyone. Producer Nick here.

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