This Week in Startups - Jason’s big night, the culture war in tech + Google Search vs ChatGPT and more | E1635

Episode Date: December 13, 2022

Molly and Jason talk about their big weekends. (2:27) Then they discuss the culture war in tech right now (13:47). Followed by our new favourite game, ChatGPT or Google Search. (47:15) Then we wrap up with a breakthrough in the world of nuclear fusion. (1:17:16) (0:00) J+M Kick off the show (2:27) Molly and Jason Catch up after the weekend (12:24) FanDuel Sportsbook - Sign up with promo code TWIST to place a $1000 risk-free bet at https://sportsbook.fanduel.com (13:47) The culture war in tech (28:00) Crowdbotics - Get a free scoping session for your next big app idea at crowdbotics.com/twist (29:23) Organizations getting bloated (47:15) ChatGPT or Google Search + is Google in trouble? (1:12:40) Check us out on Substack! (1:17:16) WLITF: A major breakthrough in nuclear fusion FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis FOLLOW Molly: https://twitter.com/mollywood Subscribe to our YouTube to watch all full episodes: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkkhmBWfS7pILYIk0izkc3A?sub_confirmation=1

Everybody, that's Monday. Happy Monday. We're back. We are back. I was out to three in the morning last night. I had top seven night of my life, the surreal life of J-Cal. I had maybe this is, this could, this is definitely top seven. I don't know where it's ultimately going to rank. Saying a lot, man. I have a bender last night. That was awesome. I'm going to tell you all about it at the start of the show. But in terms of important things for us to discuss after a little banter, my guy Gavin Baker wrote. A little bit of a tweet storm on a tech renaissance cultural reboot. He's a hedge. He's a hedgy hedge fun guy, a friend of mine, really smart cat. And this tweet storm dovetails with my other tweet storm I did on Saturday night. There's a big cultural shift going on in Silicon Valley. We're going to talk about it, the good, the bad, the ugly, and how you as founders can navigate it

and how we're all going to get through it together. Hopefully it's a positive message. I think so. It's a positive conversation about teamwork. And then, though, we have a cage match. Then we're going to pit to the death, chat GPT against Google search and decide whether Google is in fact in trouble. Now that chat GPT has been unleashed on the world.

That's right. We're going to play everybody's favorite game show, Chat GPT or shitty Google search results. That's right, everybody on the program. No spoilers. No spoilers. No spoilers. But we have.

We have hopefulness. The We Live in the Future segment has delivered, I kid you not, the number one we live in the future moment in the history of that segment. Today,

but we're not going to tell you what it's about. You got to listen to the show. When people hear this, Molly, this is literally could change the course of you, you know? I mean, we're not exaggerating

at all. So it's going to be a great show. Stick with us. It's going to be a great show. It's going to be a great show. This weekend startups is brought to you by Fanduil Sportsbook. Use code twist during signup to get started with a no sweat first bet up to $1,000. And crowdbotics.

Great ideas can change the world. And crowdbotics is the fastest way to turn those ideas into code. Get a free scoping session for your next big app idea at crowdbotics.com slash twist. Hey, Molly, it's Monday. It's so Monday. It's Monday. It's Monday. It's a Monday in late December.

Like, we're rolling. We're getting her done. We're getting it done. Although, I have to say, like, we had to go Zoom today. I couldn't do a live stream because I needed the extra filter today. I needed the Zoom touch up my appearance. Because last night. That's what we're all talking about.

Last night. The filter, yeah. Mm-hmm. I had top seven night on my life. Which is saying a lot. Which is in the surreal look of my life. You know, breaking the, breaking like the first volume, the first, you know, 10 chapters, this is pretty, pretty up there. So, uh, I found out at 3 o'clock in the afternoon yesterday, Sunday here in San Francisco that

Dave Chappelle is playing at the Chase Center. I'm like, well, I'm a Dave Chappelle fan. And like, two, three different people text me, hey, Jake, I'll are you going tonight? I'm like, I didn't know he was in town. And like, is with Chris Rock. And I'm like, oh, I love Chris Rock too. is it two of my favorite. I saw pictures of them from the Warriors game. Yes. And so they have to be at the Warriors game. It's no secret.

My friend Shumath owned a piece of the Warriors. And I have some friends at the Warriors. Like Draymond Green, you know, who had a great podcast last year, hopefully comes back. Maybe the second half of this year after the team, you know, gets back to winning a little bit. He's focused. He pulls it together a little bit. A little focus time, I think. It would be a good idea.

So I go to the show last night. It's nice to go to see a show and laugh. The world's kind of hard these days, right? Layoffs, we're going to board meetings. The world is kind of crummy. There's wars, culture wars, literal wars. I mean, we deal with it every day. Culture wars, turning into literal wars.

It's crazy. The world is on fire. Yep. Yes. And I said, you know, I need a break. I could use a laugh. I'm going to go step away from the culture wars and see Dave Chappelle. Well, it's funny as it is.

I'm sorry, that was just a, it's a good one though, because they both went all in on all the topics of the day. And I had just a wonderful breakthrough that no matter how crazy everything gets in this surreal life that we all share, you and I sharing more of life together here in this past year together. We're coming up on our one year anniversary as co-host. What a wonderful thing. And thank you for coming and joining me here for us to be able to share this time together and just work it all out. And if I had an extra ticket, I would have brought you. You know, I was constantly looking for the ride. Right now, Molly's like, wait a second.

How come how come I didn't get that phone call? Right, listen. I had my own party weekend. It's just that it never compares once you start talking about your hearing. Okay. Fair enough. And, you know, there's another layer after this, but, you know, it's not easy being in the Illuminati. I'll just going to leave it at that.

In some ways, being in the Illuminati, somebody told me I'm in the Illuminati. So, you know, I'm just like, okay, it's honestly, it's a little underwhelming. Once you get in the Illuminati, you realize that these are some pretty annoying people. Illuminati people are just. You got to like, it's a lot of work being Illuminati. You got to always be. It's just a lot of work to even talk to them. Like, yeah.

What you're in. Handshaking. Yeah, you're in. So it's kind of like you just show up. But at all these Illuminati meetings, I mean, I never met so much. many people who like the sound of their own voice. What? I don't know any of those.

It's like a bunch of band camp and theater kids. Yes. Except they're running businesses and countries and, you know, organizations and they're going to Davos and the Illuminati is annoying and underwhelming. And they also, they're not much fun. I'll be honest. You don't want to be in the Illuminati. You kind of want to be right on the outskirts of the Illuminati,

which is kind of where I am. I'm Illuminaity adjacent more than in the, you know, I kind of like I come to the Illamination events, but I'm not in Luminati. Sort of like Will Smith in Scientology maybe. Like he's not in Scientology, but maybe people say he is.

You know? Yeah. I had a holiday party just as a brief detour. Yes, I had a big, big holiday party on Saturday. and a like an Illuminati friend came to the party and was basically like, oh God, all our VC parties are the worst. This is fun. This is fun as hell, right?

Because it was like, we were just dancing and there was like Lupia, but I also had a bartender and like everybody had to get dressed up. And it was like a nice mix of like, yeah, no, it just still have fun. Like my hairdresser's here. Yes, the Illuminati is good to be a normal. This is what happens at Illumina. A norm. You and I are in a conversation, okay?

So, like, we'll just make eye contact. We're talking our heads. We're talking, oh, yeah, how's it gone? And this is what happens to aluminum. What I'm doing right now is looking over your shoulder. Yeah. And if the person behind you is, you know, yeah, because everybody in the room is a 97.5 or higher. So I'm looking at you and I'm like 98.2.

Oh, is the person behind you a 90? Oh, 99.1? Okay, let me wrap this up and let me see if I can level up to the next person in the room in the conversation. Truly annoying this Illuminati. Yeah. Anyway. It's actually, isn't that just like L.A.? Well, that's celebrity.

It's not dissimilar. Only like a small percentage of celebrities. But it still is cloud hunting all the way around. It's pure cloud hunting all the time. I noticed a little bit in that VIP room at the Warriors game where it's like, oh, you guys are working. Exactly. So we have an incredible time. Yeah.

It was like when you and I were backstage at the Warriors game for finals or whatever. And you have to be like, what do you do? Where are you from? What do? Oh, yes. Oh, Molly. Oh, oh. Some of your carter times.

Marketplace. Oh, yes. Oh, I'm a subscriber. So, um, okay, but so there you are though. However, good time. Good set up on how it wasn't that fun because it sounds like it was actually really fun. It was a lot of fun. And everybody needed to blow off a little steam.

Yeah. So, you know, I'm friends with Draymond and Draymond. So, hey, let's go hang out at the court and a little practice facility at the chase center. So me and Draymond are just shooting some Js, and J-Cal. Brooklyn comes out, a little J-Cal fade away. And my friend, Steph Curry comes over and, Chal, you're short every shot, you know, like just hit foot, aim for the backboard, overshoot every time.

And then literally three in a row, boom, boom, boom, Jake out dropping bombs. I'm wearing Crocote and Jones dress shoes. And I kid you not, Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock. So now I'm shooting baskets with Chris Rock. Oh, not Chris Rock, he's far as me. With Chappelle, staff and

Draymond surreal surreal like levels of surrealness and uh I'm not going to drop any more names here but court I'm not on the arena court like on their practice facility

which is in the same building uh low and behold Dave invites everybody to go to a secret show at 1 am he does at one of the local comedy stores here so I go see Dave Chappelle do you know another set when he sits on stage for two hours.

Oh, really? This is after he's on stage for an hour at the chain center. Did he smoke the whole time? He smokes. Yeah, right? Like a lot. Continuously. Yeah.

And I don't know if it's a schick and they're fake cigarettes, but I get the sense they're real. And I'm trying to figure out like, how is that possible? Then I remember, oh, right, if you're the funniest person on the planet, like, who cares? And I had like another revelation like, wow, in society, there are rules. And then there is, like, reality. And the reality is, I'm fine with a little secondhand smoke. If I get to hang out to three in the morning, hearing Chappelle workshopping stuff,

Chappelle is the greatest entertainer. One of, I mean, I'm trying to, I've seen some pretty amazing entertainers in my life. I've seen Michael Jordan and Patrick Ewing. Chappelle. Gaga. Chappelle. I mean, I. I'm just saying that was the last time you.

were saying greatest entertainer. So I'm just wondering what the stack up is there. Like literally on the Mount Rushmore, like watching a Lady Gaga show and then watching Chappelle in a room of 70 people, Molly, hold court and just interact with the audience. Hey, what do you do? Oh, yeah? This is girlfriend? I mean, that kind of stuff.

And then he's like, he's talking to people because he started part of his career was here in the Bay Area. he knows the names of the waitresses, the bartender, security, the DJ. He's chopping it up with them. He's like, remember the joke I told 22 years ago in Oakland when we worked at that club? The guy's like, oh, I got it. And he plays a sound effect. And then Chappelle tells a joke for 22 years ago, tells the history of the joke.

It was unbelievable. So, anyway, I just like to say, Jesus Christ, I'm grateful for my life. Because not only that. Right answer. Yeah. 20 different people are stopping me. Oh, I love this week in startups. I'm a founder.

Oh, all in. This and that. Oh, I came to the launch festival. Just wonderful to have like a minor amount of recognition for our work and some of the other work I've done in my life for people of importance in the world who are doing great things as well. And so just really wonderful evening out on the town. And so shout out to everybody. involved. Leave it at that. Okay, everybody, it's time. The NFL playoffs are almost here, and I'm so excited. Only a few more weeks of regular season football. That means right now is the perfect time

for you to download Fan Duel. That's America's number one sports book. Check it out. Right now, Fan Duel is giving customers. A no sweat, first bet of up to $1,000. That's right, up to $1,000 in free bets back. If your first bet doesn't win, just sign up with my promo. code twist TWIST. And Fandul is the best place to bet. And you know why that is, right? They have all your favorite bets from point spreads to parlays

and even my favorite player props. I love focusing in on my favorite players. It makes it a game more exciting. I get a sweat. The app is safe. It's secure. It's super easy to use. And of course, you're going to get your winnings paid out fast, which is what we all want. Here are some current NBA MVP odds,

because this is one I like to make a bet on. I like a wager. Right now, three MVP betting favorites of Jason Tatum, Giannis, and Luca. They're all sitting at plus 300. But you know who I got? I got my guy, Steph Curry. He's at plus 1,000 right now. That means you can bet a hundee to win a thousand. So that's it. That's my bet. Sign up today with the promo code twist for your no sweat, first bet. Make every moment mean more. This season with Fandul the official sports book partner of the NFL. That's right. But so much news over the weekend. you and I

were just chatting and chatting and I feel like there's a cultural moment going on in our industry. So as much as Chappelle is trying to navigate that, I realize what we're doing here is important work because we have to navigate some very dicey cultural issues,

but we're all humans. And humans share a lot in common. And we fight over little marginal things. But the truth is, we all want to wake up in the morning, do good work, see our families, have a laugh. And so the work here is important because we can help people navigate it. So let's talk about the absolute cultural war and disastrous, violent, insane, deranged culture war in technology. Welcome to the show, everybody.

Welcome to the show, everybody. Here we go. I will say that I was lucky enough to not only get to have this wonderful party with friends and family, but also, even though I was there to see Tom Brady, because this was my brother's bucket list adventure at the Niners game yesterday, we were there instead to witness the day that Brock Purdy became a superstar and Tom Brady his career ended. So it was very, it was an exciting weekend. It's like, you can tell it's getting, it's like party weekends all around. However, yes, meanwhile, all around us, this conversation was happening and is going to continue to happen, evidently. This idea that the culture of the tech world sounds like specifically the tech work world is

about to change. Or at least if you are talking to investors and founders or CEOs or board members, the executive class, if you will, that there is a change afoot. So it was kind of exemplified by this tweet thread by K. Gavin Baker, the CIO and managing partner at Atreides Management. Is that named after Dune, by the way? It might very well be. I know Gavin socially.

Gavin is one of the most brilliant capital allocators, thinkers in the space. Made some pretty colossal bets. And evidently a giant Dune nerd, which is awesome. And a bit under the radar, if I'm being honest. I've tried to get him on the show. He's a podcast shy like some people are. But, you know, it's Boston-based, a trade is management. It's like a crossover hedge fund invests in both private and company.

The company has $4.8 billion under management as of the end of Q3. And some of its private growth stage investments include GoPuff, Sonder, and Republic, and then has some huge public positions at Amazon, AMD, meta, and Square. You could think of them like a B. Yeah, he's like a Brad Gersner, right? Public, private. Yeah. Yeah, totally.

Big bets. But generally it sounds like quieter, or at least like not as... You know, they're both extremely thoughtful. When you start managing that level of money, you spend your days. You know, we spend our days with a lot of founders, right? They spend their time with like 10 bets, 20 bets max, and they're like constantly removing two or three bets to add a bet. And so they're just sitting there with some of the smartest brainiacs in the world,

spreadsheet jockeys studying stuff and just moving, you know, large swaths of money around in very strategic bets to try to move a $4 billion hedge fund to a five to a six to a 12. Kind of like if you've ever seen billions, Zax Capital, that was based on, you know, an amalgamation of head fund managers, but not the tech hedge fund managers. Those were more like the pure finance ones on the East Coast. So he's not that, but he is very smart. And I'll preface this by saying, the speculative. asset bubble was the fault. It's very important, I think, to set the stage here, as painful as it is.

The speculative asset bubble was set by the leadership. Capital allocators, I always want to make sure people understand where to place the blame before we get into the pain. Got a place to blame before we address the pain. Capital allocators, management, founders, created an age of excess and speculation and coddling and all kinds of stuff. And that speculative asset bubble, includes crypto, includes growth stocks, includes a lot of things,

is now leading to what I'm dubbing the white-collar recession. Yeah. Speculous asset bubble leading to the white-collar recession. And the white-collar recession, well, let's go through the tweet storm before I... Yes.

Give some analysis. Okay, here's what Gavin Baker wrote. Yeah. In alongside a post from, he said, with permission, a letter announcing a riff at a startup, right? It was images of this letter sent by an anonymous CEO in his portfolio. And then his major takeaways. The major takeaways go like this. He writes, the fact that Twitter is running well with headcount down significantly really matters.

Whether they admit it or not, everyone in Silicon Valley admires Elon. A lot of venture-funded CEOs are sending emails like this inspired by Elon and taking drastic action. Margins are going up. So we have some screenshots of the letter and we'll pull that up. With permission, he did this. With permission, exactly. And the, like, the name of the company is redacted and the, you know, number of FTEs is redacted. But the gist of the letter, the synopsis, is that the CEO writes that they noticed around

2016, 2017, that the quote, hardcore startup culture of grinding and being a high performer was replaced with making sure employees felt appreciated and had amazing benefits. And to them, this CEO writes, it became more about perks than about performance. But now, thanks to, in part, to Elon's handling of Twitter, the CEO thinks we're entering a tech renaissance where, quote, the industry can be rebuilt on strong principles and ideals that can last for generations and spur the development of technologies and profits beyond our imagination. The letter then ends with the following quote, we're going to be. be firing a bunch of people. Okay, that's not cool.

Yes. We're going to be a very inspiring setup to, we are going to be another, doing another layoff. Only exceptional performers will remain. This will take our team to redacted FTEs. Since the last riff, the CEO wrote, morale has improved

to an all-time high. And we've been able to do more with less. I expect to see a similar impact this time around. Yeah. So, and I would say this predates Twitter and what Elon's doing over there. you know, we had a very similar thing from Brian over at Airbnb when he did his riff. He said, you know, I got caught up in this.

It's my fault. Zuckerberg, it's my fault. There's a, you know, a lot of folks starting to realize. Those might be a little different from the way this is worded, but yes. I think, you know, here's the important point here. There was an era of excess. We all know that. If you want to blame zero interest rates, that to me,

seems like blaming somebody who goes to Vegas and goes on a bender gambling and losing their mind for two days on the fact that the cage gave them chips

when they asked for a wire from their bank account. This is over hiring. It's over investing in the wrong that's being like, oh my God, money. I mean, it is a little bit money is free,

but it's like, oh my God, money's free. Let's invent the metaverse. It's a bender. It's an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurial bender. I've seen people do this. I'm talking about real world, Vegas.

Yeah. See people who have money go on a bender and, you know, like I go to bed. It's 4 a.m. and they're at the blackjack table. I, you know, I get my six, seven hours asleep. I come down at 11. You know, I want to hit the buffet before closes, get a little coffee and a croissant. I'm like, there's no way they're still at the blackjack table. You know, I went to bed at 3.

It's 11 a.m. They're still at the blackjack table. They're still there. They're chasing it. This is what happened in our industry. 100%. And it's happened before, right? My brother was actually telling me a story about when he moved here during the boom.

the dot-com boom and like met a guy who had cashed out from a to be unnamed tech company that had gone public had $20 million and a Ferrari and was doing cocaine off of his keys at the bar and then like promptly started crying about how hard his like how he didn't know if he could trust his friends and he was never going to be able to find love because he had too much money and he didn't know if he could trust him and he was like doing all these drugs and then you know and then my brother was like, we don't do feelings, just turn it off like a light, shove it down on the inside. And then the guy in thanks, takes him to the back of the Ferrari and pulls out a tin of drugs and is like, take what you need. Thanks for the help. And my brother's like, no, no, thank you. Right. So like,

we have seen these kinds of benders. Yes. And then we have seen them get followed by pain. Here's what I think is interesting about this comment. There seem to be two approaches here. Right. One is I, the CEO, got carried away. we're going to return to fundamentals, we're going to come together as a team and we're going to get the work done. And the version that is like

my spoiled-ass employees are out the door because a bunch of them are losers who have not been pulling their weight and it's this very punitive it's like you're now you're it's like you've built a freaking giant castle that you couldn't afford and then now you're punishing the workers

and acting like it's somehow their fault. And then your kind of reaction to this is going to be, I'm going to, you know, reduce to the bare minimum, get rid of the dead weight, which is just such a like, yeah, just such, I'm sorry, like an insulting. And frankly, like, it feels like there are some members of the executive class here in the investor class and the CEO class who are sort of like thrilled that they can finally take off the mask and stop pretending that these people are people. with all their pesky needs.

And it's like, listen, I get that you wish that they were already robots. Yeah. But they're not. And so you have this kind of like double thing happening where I think there are some companies who have managed to create and maintain a supportive culture where people like being. Airbnb, Slack, Twilio, Salesforce, like those have been high performing companies with really positive work cultures. Yeah. And now you're seeing some CEOs being like, I'm freaking stoked that I don't have to be nice to these people anymore.

And I'm, I think we're going to, it's generational. There's a culture war here, right? And what you're describing is when the market comes apart like this, everybody's under stress. Yeah. You know, then you start to see some true colors come out. You start to see some emotions that maybe were bottled up. Yeah. So to play cultural commentator here for a second.

and I did prerequisites by placing blame where it belongs on the coddling that was designed by venture capitalists and CEOs. They designed this. Why did they design it? They wanted to corner the talent on market, corner of the talent market. Yeah. And they had free money. So instead of focusing on the business fundamentals and saying, just bottom up, blank sheet

accounting, budgeting. that they call, I think it's called like zero based budgeting, which is where you say, hey, I need to make a pocket. What do I need? Okay, I need a host. Okay, maybe I should have two co-hosts. Okay, I need an editor. I need a producer and I need a sales executive.

Instead of doing that where you just kind of build up, like, what is the essential thing you need and how many hours does it take to edit this? How long does it take to do a clip? How many clips do we want to do a week? How long is the show going to be? You know, are we going to go direct to tape? And you sort of analyze it. To what end?

What do we want to accomplish? Right. Right. So you do this. Backwards from there. Mm-hmm. Right. So you have, this is the output and then you build. What people did was they said, all right, so let's budget X amount for that and just spend it however. And that's a lazy person's way of running a business. And that's what everybody in the industry did. They just said, okay, this group gets 10 million, this group gets 2 million, this group gets 20 million. And they just

ran with it because as people were saying, I think in this letter, the person, it describes like three fundraisings in a year. What we used to have in Silicon Valley is, a merit-based, highly stressful, milestone-based funding. I've talked about milestone-based funding for a long time on this podcast. And what that did was it just kept a lot of intellectual honesty, kept a lot of pressure on management teams and founders. The CEOs felt extreme pressure because you'd start a fundraise six to nine months after your last fundraising.

And if you got it done, you got it done. And if you didn't get it done, game over. and that was that leash that and I'm calling a leash for a reason because VCs would jerk that chain on founders. Founders were subservient to this leash and chain that VCs had them on and you'd get towards the end of that money and oh you couldn't get a term sheet. Great. Here's the most punitive term sheet you can imagine and we're going to grind you down founders and you're going to work harder. And so there was this, it was sadistic at times with how the leadership of these teams were treated. But it did make everybody like gladiators.

And so you have this gladiator culture from the, you know, post.com era in the early part of the, that entrepreneurial thing, then faced with this age of excess. Everybody got fat. Everybody spent too much, yada yada. And then, of course, these VCs who were yanking the chain, now they were chasing all these deals. If you want to build an app, you want to build a startup, you want to build a website, a service, a marketplace, any of these things, well, you're going to need to have a really good plan. And if you don't have a good plan, well, your idea is probably going to fail. Well, I've got a solution for you. CrowdBiotics gives you access to the best practices for your specific app.

What this means is crowdbotics has all the pre-built app templates ready to build your startup faster. You're not starting from scratch. Your developers would have to start from zero. These developers at CrowdBotics and their team, they've got that technology ready to go. And so the architecture is going to come together very quickly. You can think of CrowdBotics as a CTO as a service, right? A chief technology officer who you can just drop in and boom, they are going to build your app for you quick and they're going to speck it out perfectly.

So if you're not sure where to start, CrowdBotics also offers professional scoping. Now, this is going to help you flesh out your product. project, they're going to ask you the important questions. They're going to help you flesh out the features maybe you haven't thought of, right? I want you to talk to the folks at crowdbotics and let them show you how good they are at what they do. They will schedule a free scoping session with you and get you a detailed bill plan at crowdbotics.com slash twist. That's crowd, B-O-T-I-C-S dot com slash twist. Try cry robotics and see what they can do for you in their scoping session. You got nothing to lose. We, and of course, as I've said many times here,

Like, you can't blame employees. If you're going to do my dry cleaning, okay. Got to do my dry cleaning anyway. You're going to buy me lunch. I was going to go out, but I'll go to the cafeteria. Well, so now. Fair. These companies all made a lot of money.

I think it's important to note that like, yes, that culture didn't necessarily. We can't like one-to-one correlate that with a shocking lack of productivity. It actually helped create the five most valuable companies in the world. Right. So, like, this idea that somehow there was this massive. slack or culture and nobody was prospering is also ridiculous. Yeah, and it was basically the company we're talking about here is Google, which started this.

We talked about for many times on this podcast that they did it to corner the market on talent. And then this wasn't something that was black and white. This is something that happened over time. Right. Where the perks and the perks and the number of positions and the size of different groups in an organization and the number of different groups that people felt they needed, it just everything got bloated. everything became easier.

And what people forget is those four or five companies that created this culture had struck oil. Most startups do not strike oil. Most startups find like a little bit of oil here, a little bit of oil there, and then they shut the rigs down. When you hit pay dirt and you got 20 rigs blowing oil out of there faster than you can sell it and you just stockpiling it and all you have to do is turn the spicket on and you got liquid gold, black gold coming out of there into barrels. which was Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Airbnb, Uber. You're getting your burqots. You're going to be head-toe diamonds. It's just the situation becomes like, well, why even bother looking at this?

So then that fed its way into unprofitable startups, and that became the problem. So where do we go from here? That's always the question. Where do we go from here? So as part of this cultural reset, I think you pointed out astutely, there's different ways to go about this. There is the, ha-ha, you know, where, the people who are soft and weak, you just lost your jobs, we didn't like you, we never like working with you.

I see a little bit of that. But the more important thing, and I'm giving this advice to people, because I've been through this and I know how to get through it. It's my third time going to war like this. Put your head down as a leader. You set an example. You take on more work. You grind harder.

You get people focused on the things that are essential in the business. you watch every penny, and you run lean and you run hard. And that's my advice to all founders here. And that also goes down to the rank and file class. Everybody has to look at themselves in the mirror. From the CEO, down to the person who's been at the company, the junior salesperson, you know, first developer out of school, whoever, whatever job you got. You got to just be efficient, look at your calendar, look at your output,

but and just say, does this company need me or not? Am I contributing to the team? And if I'm not contributing to, only find a team I can go contribute to. This happens with basketball players all the time. You know, they're on a team.

The last four or five folks on the bench don't get a lot of time, but they serve a big purpose in practice, don't they? They're the team that you play in practice. They're the other, you know, the away jerseys and in the practice games. So what you need to do here

if you're in one of these companies. Very simple. And you probably see me tweeting about it. You get to see it internally, Molly. We just did a Founder University episode. I think one of the best ones we've ever done. Kelly, I don't know if you saw, I shared it this weekend. Kelly did an amazing 10-minute episode.

We'll put links into the show note, or if you search for founder. University, just something very simple called time blocking or boxing and different methods for being more efficient. If everybody in a company becomes 10, 20% more efficient every month for three months, all of a sudden, it's like the company hired three or four more people. It's time just for everybody to work, smarter, harder, and for management to set priorities better.

Anything that's not essential as a project, you just got to cut it, put it on the do not right now list, and then get everybody focused, and then we all get fit, and then we get out of it. That's what has to happen right now. That's the cultural moment we're in. The party went on too long. Everybody needs to get an IV, get some fresh air, work out, eat some soup, get back in the game. That's it. We don't have to make this into more than it is, everybody.

The economy is going to be brutal in 2023. I believe it was going to be a double-dit recession, and I thought we had a 50-50 of a soft landing. I think now it's like 80-20, 70-30. Who knows? But I always said it's going to be six quarters. This is quarter three. It's going to be hard for three more quarters.

That's it. Everybody tighten your belts, work harder, work smarter. You don't have to kill yourself. But this is, you know, kind of the price you're pay when you have a big hangover. Things were too easy last year. Things are going to be too hard next year. Part of the cycle.

Boom bust. And if you haven't been through a boom bus cycle right now, congratulations. Because we live in the modern world, the developed world, whatever you want to call. Come on. Everybody were talking. Well, I guess there are some young people

who haven't been through a boom bus cycle. It's true. Well, I mean, to be fair, like... This is 14 years, Molly. How long has this boom been? 14 years? 13 or 14? 208?

Why? We're getting... up there. But there was that kind of slow, yeah, it's, and then, it's 12, no years. 12 years. Yeah, I mean, this is, it's an unprecedented. It's truly an unprecedented run. If you're 33, this is all you've known. The thing I would add to what you're saying is the, and this is where like, I mean, you know me to be a bit of a populist, right? So when I see, go for it. Really. Like, wealthy investors and CEOs complaining about their employees and talking about how everybody got so spoiled and, you know, da-da-da, it's sort of like, okay, well, listen,

hold up. A lot of, like, if you have people on your team who are, not productive, that's actually on you, right? That's a leadership. And I think that a lot of times, especially if you like startups, startups don't necessarily and early do not, aren't prioritizing HR and systems development. And the thing is that like when companies scale, they change, it's not as fun. And also you actually do have to implement lasting systems in order to let everybody know what they're working toward. You got your KPIs and your OKRs and everybody's got shared goals and they're working toward those goals and they know what the metrics of success are.

And then you have everybody moving in the same direction. You also, when you are a really big company, yes, or even a medium-sized company, you have to hit your hitters and sitters. But your sitters do the work that let your hitters succeed. Right? Like the guys on the bench who make the whole team possible in some way. And so I think that there, I would say that for founders who are going through this, it's not just about like founders coding more.

It's about figuring out how leadership is going to make your company run better. It is really ultimately, like we don't manage in this country anymore. There was like a, there was a book about management and how the biggest drawback in corporate America is literally middle management. because we don't train people how to manage. We don't value management and leadership and the ability to say, this person's good at this. And so have them do this and this person's good at this.

And it's like a whole discipline that I think probably happens even less at startups than it does in corporate America because it's just not valued. It's like, no, we don't have time for that. We're all builders and we're all working and we're all grinding and we're doing this thing. But the fact of the matter is like the sucky part of scale, is he got to manage. I don't want to do it. What is management?

I'm going to be an individual contributor forever because managing sucks. But management is about people. Well, you know what you are? Actually, you're moving into. And I think this would be like when we talk about like your development. Not a manager.

Well, okay, but hold on a second year. When you go into your second year here and we start thinking about what we're going to talk about on VC Sunday school and some things, I think actually a valid topic is, you know, not just how to invest, but what to do after investing, right?

post-investing, so this can be like a little roadmap for us. And what you want to be is player coach. When Draymond's out there, when Jordan was out there, they're very vocal, and they're acting as a backup coach to Steve Kerr, right? Steve Kerr's maybe call on a play. Steve Kerr's talking. Right. And so what you move is to player coach.

Exactly. You're on the court. You're a coder, you're a sales executive, but you're making everybody around you better. How do you make people around you better? Well, you hit on a few of them. You know, you've got to set really good goals. You got to have good procedures in place.

And when you left off that we focus on a lot, professional development. Yeah. Professional development is huge. Training is great management. I like to call professional development because training feels like, you know, here's how, you know, notion works. Here's how Zen Desk works. Like through this. Yeah, the sexual harassment training stuff.

You're right. Professional development is much better work. But when you start talking about professional development and you talk about the why. And if you look at what I, I mean, you've been here for, you know, the year now and you see what I, I spend my time doing. I'm trying to explain the why behind how I make decisions so that I don't have to make them anymore. Right.

It's a learning organization. I could go skiing and know that if I'm not on the investment team call it, a decision gets made, it's going to be thoughtful. It may not be the exact decision I make, but it's not going to be a bad decision. And there's going to be a great dialogue around it. So this is what everybody's got to do. Yeah. There's kind of like this joke about like these mid-level managers.

Like some people call them like security guards or prison guards. Like they're not actually doing anything. That's the problem. Exactly. Like office work and culture where they were like walking around, making sure everybody was on time, making sure people stayed late. Right. You know, kind of cracking the whip and making sure people worked harder. But they never actually looked at the work.

They never looked at the output. And, you know, this is hard. I just did a calendar review at inside.com. And I did it at launch with most of the people. And I just said, hey, listen, tell me about this. Tell me about this. Tell me about this on your calendar. And what's the output of it?

And I hope it was constructive for people. people told me off the line. It was very constructive. I said, is this the best use of your time to be doing this? Because this seems like it's a more important priority. Should we be doing more of this? And they were like, absolutely. And then I thought about why aren't we doing that?

And you know who that's on? Me. I should have reviewed the calendar. And I, you know, so this is what management needs to do. Sit down with your 10 directs reports. Have them pull out their calendar and just have an honest dialogue. Hey, have you time blocked things that matter. have you, you know, what actually is the output we're going for here?

Manage yourself. Look at that. And then have I given you clear enough instructions of what the output is? What are you still doing? Like, what happens at a lot of companies too is what are you still doing that I told you to do a year ago, but turns out we don't need anymore, right? Like those regular kind of. So good.

Those regular audits of time spent, maybe not in public where everyone can see them. I like it. But yeah, we have different management ourselves. We do. We do. We do. It's a real mom and dad vibe. It is.

You know, it is. And here's what I'll say. In a startup, the example to do it privately is, oh, people, you know, you don't want to tip into shaming people or making people feel bad or criticism to live publicly. It's a super valid one, right? I get it, mom. And then there's another one, which is, hey, here's the standard. Let's all hit it. Yeah.

It's not personal. I love a public standard. Yes. And I like publicly talking about it. But I'm different. And, you know, you're different, but you know what? It's different. But you know what? You're the king.

Well, if you, if you look at a group like the winning teams, if something was, you know, if I'd say I like, if I do think something is like super cutting, I do actually deliver privately. You wouldn't know because it was delivered privately. I've had, I've had private sit downs with people where I'm like, is this really the job for you? Are you enjoying it? You've, you'll never see me in public say, hey, are you? enjoying this job and do you want to be here? You know, whatever. I say, hey, let's, let's talk about efficiency.

Let's talk about tactics, whatever. But the big picture stuff, if it's like, do you want to be here? Is this right for you? You know, are you enjoying it? Is there something that you would enjoy more? Those are delivered privately. I will say the value, the one value I did see in doing some version of that calendar review publicly is to sort of is to be like, oh, that's something I can be, right?

You can say, you can see, okay, if, if, if, this person is having to spend this many hours on that. It's because it actually needs to be done over here. And it's easy for a contributor in the company to be like, ooh, you know what? I probably let that drop. And therefore, this person over here spent too many hours on it when she really should have been doing this kind of thing. These are all, you know, important. But either way, what it really comes down to, though, is an effort to lead,

which is fundamentally what we're talking about is that like it's not going to, No downturn is survived by somebody just sort of blindly being like, work more, the end, right? That's not how you're like, work more on this. This is the goal. Here's how to get that done. If you don't know how, there will be professional development to show you how. Like, it's a, it's just a, all I would reiterate for the people on Twitter who seem so excited to get to fire people is like, everybody gets through the downturn together. And there is a huge leadership burden that has to be undertaken here.

And the idea that you've got these like losers that you can't wait to jettison. And I'm not saying every company doesn't have at least one loser that they want to jettison. It's 5% of the workforce. It might be 10 in some companies. And that's on management for not doing the programming early. And that's on management. We're not saying that sooner. So, you know, here's the other thing. This is all happening with the overhang of work from home.

Yes. Which we talked about countless towns. Massive contributor. Massive contributor. Also, everybody is under a lot of stress having been under a two years, you know, at home sentence. The mental health issues going on in the world are acute. You can't lock people up for six, 12, 18 months, or they lock themselves up, you know, however you decided to do you during the pandemic, if you wanted to be a risk taker, if you wanted to be, you know, a hypochondriac, you know, anywhere on that spectrum. But whatever you were, you felt it. No matter where you fell on that spectrum, you felt it. Yes. And. society was in conflict over it and it's been like a really. Yes. And it didn't just end, right?

There's a huge hangover from that. Huge hangover. I know many people who are still scared to go out in public. I know many people who are lonely, who didn't maintain friendships, who are in a funk. So I think we got to, if it was two years of pain and suffering, it might be two years for some people. It might be four years or six years to erase that pain and suffering that they experienced, right? sometimes the wound

takes a long time to heal. Other people, they rebound quicker. So be kind to each other, get focused. And if you are a worker in this, if you're a manager, it's your responsibility to set the goals,

be kind to people and keep the company alive so that you can hire people back eventually. If you're on the worker side, look at your calendar, look at your output, and then just go to your manager and say,

I looked at my last three days of work. These things seem essential. These things, not so much. And this time is open. How can I do more to get us to our goals quicker? That's all you got to do. And if you do that, now you're in the bucket of people who are going to, in all likelihood, be part of the team. And if you just hide and duck, you're probably going to get cut.

And it's going to be one more year of this. So for people who it's the first time, which is, I'd say, a third of the industry is experiencing this for the first time. in our industry because we're a young industry. Startups are a young... And be aware, you know, like I just went for the leaders, for the young people in an organization who are freaking out right now and you're getting all mad and you don't want to be 24% more effective or you resent your calendar review or whatever.

Like, the important thing that you will learn as you get more experienced in the working world, and this is really important, is to have a sense of the bigger picture. Like we all go, you know, we're all like, I have my goals and my things that I want to. accomplish. You're part of a company. You're part of a team. That company has priorities. Those priorities might be changing as a result of the pandemic in some cases, or as a result of this

downturn, in some cases, dramatically. You might not want that to be happening. Yeah. But it is. And so it's sort of like everybody's got to get on the same team, including employees who are like, I can't believe this is happening and I'm outrageous about this and I'm super precious about my this and that. It is a changing environment. And the more you can have, have empathy for that leader and that manager and understand that it's also stressful for them because especially like when you're a founder, I mean, if there's anything I have become aware of in this job, it's the like talk about a parent, right? A founder is a parent of a whole bunch of kids, including the larger kid that is their company. And so the idea that there could be

damaged done or they might have to close or lay people off is terrifying and stressful for them too. So the empathy has to go in both ways. You cannot. be the little, like, you can't be the, even though I just said, don't call him spoiled. Some of them are. And you can't be the spoiled person who's like, but my career goals, but my this or that. Like, it's a, it's a group effort. All right. One of the other exciting things that comes out of this is that innovation keeps rolling. Yes. Let's play chat GPT or Google. We got a fun game today, everybody. One little game for you. Everybody knows chat GPT is impressive.

And this is made by OpenAI, Sam Altman's company, an old friend of mine. And the results in this chat response AI, narrow AI product is very impressive. Some people saying this will kill Google. A little bit silly, nothing's going to kill Google. And if they did have an impact on it, it would be a slow, slow burn. it would take 20 years to change their results. And Google also has incredibly strong AI. They just don't give it to consumers.

Right. So. Also, chat GPT is not on the internet yet, but. Yes. And chat GPT costs a couple of cents per search. A Google search costs a fraction of a cent. So there is that. The billions of searches being done would,

you would have to increase the cost of ads on Google by five, six, seven cents each. So this is something people don't realize. chat GPT takes a lot of computer power. And I think Sam Wulhama publicly said it's a couple of cents. And there's a very interesting relationship with Microsoft, major investor partner of OpenAI and Azure, etc. These, they're working together. It might be that Bing, I don't know this.

Right. But maybe Bing has the exclusive and Microsoft is going to, you know, get to, and we'll be using Bing search engine over Google someday because of this type of innovation. It's certainly going to have an impact. I mean, there's no doubt it's been reverberating. Everyone's talking about chat GPT. Even like my rando not at all techie artist friends are like, have you seen this? So yeah.

But the question is, yes. Chat GPT or Google. Mm-hmm. Which one's better today? Exactly. Question one. What is the best ski hill on the Epic Pass? Epic Pass is the season pass.

That gives you like, I don't know, 30, 40 mountains in the U.S. and some international ones. The answer here, the ski resort, Whistleblak Home, is the best ski resort in the Epic Pass area of validity. With 4.7 of 5 stars,

it has the highest rating in the Epic Pass. Blackholm Peak is a mountain located Eastern Whistler, British Columbia, that forms the boundary between Whistle Black Home Ski Resort and

Gerbaldi, Provincial Park, a season pass provides you with the unrestricted multi-resort access to some of Colorado's best famous mountain resource like Vale,

Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, Kisone, Yriott, multi-skine resort passes are also a great way to save money and diversify your scheme portfolio. Now, did this come from chat GPT or just so we're clear what happened here? We're not taking the 10 blue links from Google. We're taking the number one result from Google or the snippet and we're just putting those side by side.

These are not screenshots. And what our producers have done behind the scenes is run both of these searches on chat, GPT and Google, and then cut and paste the text answer only. so that we right now can guess and I want to reiterate that we don't know neither of us knows No, I know so. Which one's which here?

So looking at this one. Yeah, I have a thought. There are some tells here for me that lead me to one solution. What's your thought? I'll let you go first. Ladies first, of course. I totally agree that there are some tells here

that make me think that this is chat GPT and I bet we have the same tell. Do you mean a specific one that makes you chat GPT? The tell for me is the transition, the tangent, if you will, to the season pass concept. It's giving you extra information you didn't ask for. It's a little chatty.

Chat GPT. You're kind of like, that's not what I asked you. But I'm still eating my coffee cake and drinking my tea in this little salon. So I'll let you go on. You can filibuster a bit. But we never asked it to go on to give us the season pass, providing you with all this stuff. that's AI jumping the fence. Also, some weird language.

Is the best ski resort in the Epic Pass area of validity? Area of validity? Yeah, totally. Area of validity? Right. Who am I speaking with? Yeah. Covered ski hills would be an option or that it covers or, yeah, exactly, area validity.

It's the best ski resort on the Epic Pass. Yeah. It doesn't understand that Epic Pass is like a thing. And that we know it, you don't have to say area validity. It's like somebody speaking, like, pretentiously. Also, if I'm being honest, way too definitive to be Google. Or a human in the first Google search results. So we are going to say that this is chat GPT.

Are we right? Or are we wrong? What? I wonder if this blog post was written by somebody who's not American, because you know, this content farms in Manila where people are doing this. So this is a poorly written content farm spam, which we thought was chat GPT. Which we thought was chat GPT. Oh my Lord. We're off to a hot start. Okay, this is actually way more exciting. Now it's getting spicy. This is exciting. Let's go to number two. Go on. Mm-hmm. Okay. So the question. Okay. So,

what do I need to host the brunch? This is a Molly question. Totally is. All right, Miss Molly. Here you go. Party planning. Okay. So party planning question. Oh my God. It's got to be the best brunch ever. What do I need to host the best brunch? personal opinion, it's a frittata, always a frittata. But let's see what the internet had to say. If you want to host the best brunch, there are a few things you'll need to consider. First, make sure you have a good selection of food and drinks, including both sweet and savory items. You'll also want to make sure you have enough seating for all of your guests and that your table and chairs are comfortable. Additionally, consider setting the mood with some music and

decorations and make sure you have enough serving dishes and utensils. Finally, don't forget to plan for any dietary restrictions, your guests may have. Oh, man. See, now it's in my head. No. I feel like I'm in a simulation right now because this is a better answer than the last one. It's way better. Which makes me think it's chat GPT.

I think it is. Which makes me think chat GPT is really a lot better than we think it is. But it might just be for a series of questions. Hold on. I want to. What makes you think this is chat GPT versus a human? Well, I have noticed in repeated use of chat GPT that there's a lot of that things you want to consider type language. There are a few things you'll need to consider.

And then it gives you like a nice list. So the prompt, the context that's studying in that first sentence is a bit chat GPT-ish. It's a bit exactly, like the way that it starts the sentence. And I also sort of feel like a web results would give you more specific. recipes? Like this is maybe like literally how to host a party. It's pretty generic. It's pretty top level. Generic. That's the word. This is like a robot's version of what to do. Yes, if you are going to do a brunch, you're going to need a selection of food and drinks. You might want to consider both sweet and savory items. Make sure you have enough seating for your guests. They do

not like humans, do not like to sit on the floor. And additionally, if the tables and chairs are comfortable, that is also great. Consider setting a mood with music and decorations, humans like decorations and mood. Make sure you have enough serving dishes and utensils. This is a bot. It's a bot. There's bot etiquette that we're going to have to get used to. Bots have like their own little version of etiquette right now that we're going to have to work on.

You don't need to repeat it back to me. If you want to host the best brunch, I already asked you that. Yes. I don't need that. It's repeating the question. That's hilarious. to me. That's annoying as F. Then,

I don't need to know it's a listicle. I know you're going to give me multiple items. I asked you, what do I need to host the best brunch? I know it's not going to be one thing. I'm not looking for a silver bullet. So you don't need to say, there are a few things you need to consider.

This is like Siri being like, how may I help you? Try not to kill the humans with too much gluten or peanuts. Yeah, make sure you ask if anybody has a peanut allergy, the largest killer of humans of all allergies. 6,742 people die every month from chat allergies. Although that's what happened in the-

From a fixiation when they're... That's what happened in the Google result up above, though. Like, multipasses can be an excellent. We're like, you need to ask you about multipass? Multi-pass. Multi-pass. You get it. Multi-pass.

Multi-pass. Multi-pass. All right, I know you went to multipass. Just take it easy. Multipass. Multipass. Multifths. If you're under 30, you look it up.

I know, just. Rachel, you know what multi-pass is? You know, don't Google it. You don't get our joke right now. Brian, you know the reference producer, Brian? Multiparipas. Nope. Oh, my God.

Oh, no, no. They don't even know, like, this is chat GPT. Oh, do we both agree. Yeah, this is chat GPT. Multipas. Okay. It's chat GPT. Yes or not?

We're in alignment. It's chat GPT. Correct. Okay, good. Woof. Okay, so the first one was English as a second language, a content farm in Manila, I'm certain. I got to see the, do you have the webpage that that was from? Let's shame this webpage.

Go find us that webpage. All you're going to do is take that first section and search for it on Google in quotes. And it will give me that. This is tricky too because we, well, we should. So did you just, you just cut in pace from the first result, right? Yes, or second or third. I told them. Because that's what I think should probably happen here.

Well, the results are always different depending on if you've, searched before, et cetera. So what I told them, Molly, was just take the best result of the top two or three, which is how you use Google, right? You open up the first two or three and you find the best result for you. Right. Try to simulate. I just pop that into Google and got that exact same thing from ski resort.

Dot info. Of course it's from dot info. It's a ski dash resort. Not info. No, it's actually not. They even got ski resort. But yeah, so this is content span, which is. I got to see this page.

This page, is this one of these like ad heavy pages? Here, hold on. I just paste it here. Somebody shared. the page. It's got some ads. I've seen heavier though, if I'm being honest, this is actually kind of not terrible. Are you in Brave and you have no ads like me? No. All right, let me take a look at this page. Yeah, you know what this is? This is a landing page spam. Ski Resortinfo is a SEO spam landing page. This is how Google gets tricked. Everything on this page is a freaking ad.

This is why I prefer chat GPT. Because it went through all this Michugana, got rid of the ads and gave an answer. Exactly. This is why Google's in trouble. I'm saying. Go ahead and run a, can you give that? Do you have the answer that chat GPT would have given us for that same question? Hold on.

Let's ask chat GPT that same question and we'll see what's better. So somebody do that in the background. Let's go on to question three. Okay. Yeah. So we can keep that one. Let's keep going. Okay.

Okay. Question three. What is the best college major in 2022? All right. Hold on a second. What is the best? the best college major in 2022. We don't specify for making money, for enjoyment.

It's just like an open-ended question. What major should I basically take in 2022? And the answer here is Petroleum Engineering, the best college major. I got Gramerly on. Grammarly Pro used to promo code twist. And I got a little redlined under there. It did be one of the most fruitful majors for young students. While the market is competitive, the financial rewards for majors in this field can be

incredibly high. A student who selects this major can expect a high-intensity program featuring a diverse collection of classes, including engineering economics and environmental studies. Because of the high competition levels for future jobs in this major, students should consider taking a master's or even a PhD in this field for furthering their chances of success once they're at the market. All right. When we look at each graph here, this is what I will call filler content farm spam. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. A person who wrote this doesn't actually know the information.

They found the information on somebody else's website, like a list of like the highest paying ones, and they did a lot of filler content. I dealt with this when I was doing Mahalo and comparing our content or whatever to other people creating filler content. First sentence. Also, just kill me, by the way.

Petroleum Engineering. Come on. I got to tell you, this is a content farm spam in a Google search result. It is not chat cheap. I agree with you. I think that that is the case. I'm going to go content farm spam, aka Google.

AKA Google ourselves. Of course. Nailed it. We're good at this. We know how to write. This is poor writing. Give me the web page that this disaster came from. I'm going to run the same thing in Chad GPT right now.

Hold on a second. Look at this garbage website this came from. Yeah. This is a nut. This is, oh my God, I'm starting to believe chat GPT, Mike. Right? I mean, to be fair, this is exactly what I said. When I use it, I was like, no, I like this better.

This is garbage web results. They're still spam at the top of Google results. So, um... My degree college got my degree guide.com is complete content farm spam. This is written by somebody who has no knowledge who wrote filler content with grammatical errors in it. Yeah. Disgraceful. Discraciad!

Discraciad. Google, send this to Sundar. This clip's. Sundar's going to see this. Right? You're going to lose his brain. Because Google is in trouble. And here's the only reason that Google, the only reason Google is safe for now.

And this is what I said on the show, actually, when I first tried it after I did the, like, the party planning search, I was like, this is my new Google. Because, whoa. Because you don't want to get. And Nick is the one who, like, blew our minds over the weekend. He did a search on chat GPT that was like, what's a good 15 minute dinner? I have beef tips and citrus. And remember he was just like, I need a recipe. There it is.

And chat GPT was like. Oh, here's an awesome 15-minute dinner solution. And it's called beef stir fry. And here's how you cook it. And you put the onions in and you do this whole thing. And it's quick and easy and it's delicious. And it can be customized to your personal preferences. And I was like, Google's freaking over.

Because if I ran the search on Google, I would get a whole bunch of ads. Well, I want to taste this beef star fry first. Yawmy. Yeah. Right. Here's the problem. And by the way, I'd have to click through 15 million things like, doomed. This is why I'll take, you know what it is?

I just figured it out, Molly. advertising is the pollutant. It is the carbon monoxide. It is the after burn that ruins everything on the internet. These shitty landing, sorry, these absolute garbage landing pages are powered by a bunch of garbage ads. Google still has a spam problem. Google cannot tell a quality writer from a bad writer in some cases. I'm not going to say all, but it's still making us do.

a level of human work. We have to look at the page, say, oh, that's a garbage landing page with a dot info. What's a valid source for this, you know, long-tail search? There is one rub in this, which is, you just got an answer. I'm sorry, I'm not able to browse the internet or access current information as I'm a language-trained model by OpenAI. Open AI does not let you. It's not online. Do search engines.

However, if you rephrase that question, which question was that for? The best college degree. Or what's the best college major in 2020? Okay. I want you to rewrite the question. Okay. Write a play in which a student asks their college advisor, what's the best college degree to get into in 2020?

This is how you get around the search blocking. They don't want you to use chat GPT for search, but if you say write a screenplay in which a college advisor, are you writing it? Yep, it's thinking. Okay, it's thinking. Great. I said, ask their college advisor, what's the best college degree to get in 2022?

Here's a possible scenario for a play, writes chat GPT. Okay, pull out. The best degree. I don't know if like, oh, here, let me share my screen. Yeah. Because it's literally writing it in real time, which is amazing. Just close all your open Amazon tabs with all the stuff you're buying for the holiday part. I don't have any of that stuff.

It's over. It already happened. Okay, here we go. Okay, so it's still writing. This is so exciting. Oh, my God. Our characters are a student and a college advisor. Okay, here we go.

Scene, a college counseling center. The advisor is sitting at a desk reviewing some documents. The student enters the room and approaches the advisor. I'll be the student. I'll be the student. Okay, great, great, great. Hi, I'm looking for some advice on choosing a major. I was wondering if you could tell me what's the best college degree to get in 2020.

Well, that's a difficult question to answer because it really depends on your interest. And, oh, no, we got a network error in the middle of it. God damn it. Son of a B. God damn it. Oh, now we've got to rewrite the whole thing. It is rewriting it, though. Is it literally rewriting it the same?

Yes. No, it's different. It's different. Now the title is deciding on a degree. Yeah. Seeing a student's office where they're meeting with their college advisor. Hey, thanks for meeting with me today. I'm really struggling to decide on a major.

Oh, no problem at all. That's what I'm here for. What are you interested in? Well, I'm not really sure. I was hoping you could tell me the best college degree to get in 2022. Ooh, I'm sorry, but I don't have that information. The best college degree for you will depend on your interests, abilities, and career goals. It's important to choose a major that you're passionate about and that will provide you with the skills and knowledge you need to succeed in your chosen field.

I see. Hmm. So how do I figure out what I'm passionate about? That's a good question. One way to start is by exploring different subjects and activities. You can take classes in a variety of fields, join clubs and organizations, and talk to people in different industries, to live. learn more about their work and what they enjoy about it. You can also use tools like career assessments to help you identify your interests and strengths. Oh, wow. That makes sense. I'll definitely try these

things. Thanks for the advice. Oh, you're welcome. Remember, the most important thing is to choose a major that you're passionate about and that will help you achieve your goals. Don't worry too much about what other people think is the best college degree to get. Follow your heart and trust your instincts and you'll find the right path for you. Thanks again. I feel a lot. I feel a bit better now. Oh, I'm glad it could help. Let me know if you have any other questions or concerns and good luck with your decision. Thanks. I will. Do you know where I can score some really good weed? Sorry. That was my advisor in college school. Sorry. Okay, hold on a second. I just want to say, Yeah.

This, the script hack is the best hack of GPT3. It's brilliant. I didn't know about the script. I prefer search results in screenplay format, I realize. I kind of do too. I would like a recipe done this way. It's just so much more dramatic and visual. We should have played where I could have done this answer.

Tell me the best result on a ski pass. But in a screenplay format with the voice of, with the voice of Andrew, uh, What's the guy's name? Andrew Ross Sorkin? Not Andrew. Oh, no, no, no. You know, the other Sorkin. It's the other Sorkin, the writer-director who writes the pretentious dialogue.

Yeah, that guy. Like the Sorkin screen, hold on. Sorkin, screen, play. You know what we're talking about? What's that guy's name? All I can think is of is Andrew Russon. It's killing me. Aaron.

Sorkin. Aaron Sorkin. All right. So what we've realized here, very quickly. Yeah. Is Google's content farm problem. has not been solved. Chat GPT

is already as good in some cases. In some cases. And Google needs to get their ass in gear fronto. There should be alarm bells going off at Google right now. Mm-hmm.

You want to talk about an all-hands-on-deck moment? Yeah. This is it. This is it. Google needs to release a chat GPT killer contemporary in the next 100 days. If I'm Sundar, this is a message to Sundar.

Somebody clip this and send it to him. If 20 of you can do it, that's great. And do it on, he's on Twitter, so please clip this. This is a message to Sundar and the search team. You're about to get your asses handed to you. We just proved it in three searches that your results and your experience

is already marginally 10% plus or minus depending on the search as good or worse than chat GPTs. Chat GPT seems to have a deep relationship with Microsoft which has Bing, which has a tiny amount of market share and they're about to eat your goddamn lunch. Lock the campus down, get everybody in a room,

100 day sprint, either launch a product that competes with this or everybody's fired. Back to the first thing. Hardcore, click here to agree. Sorry. It's never, It's never, it's funny.

Never. You're about to get your ass handed to you. I mean, here's the crazy thing, too, is that Google. If it's this good now, what's the next version going to be? Yeah. And then the crazy thing about this is that there was a Reddit post. Okay. Over the weekend where somebody was like, I work at Google.

And this is, you know, it's really easy to create something that some nerds can play with. Oh, yes. Remember this? I'm scrolling through our chat to try. the group chat this weekend. Yeah. And that I think is sort of what kicked off this conversation. But I was like, that is it's really disappointing and dangerous to see that attitude

coming from inside Google because this is already 20% of the way to Google Killer. And if they're out here saying it's, you know, oh, here it is. It's one thing that to put up a demo that interested nerds can play with. I found it. But it's quite another thing to try to integrate it deeply in a system that serves billions of requests a day. What's funny here is that Google itself started out as a demo that interested nerds. This is a reply to that. They're quoting the original. It was hacker news. Make it five times bigger. Yeah. Yeah, it's on hacker news. Let's see. Comparing Google and chat GPT. So here's the

original post by the person who works at alphabet. Is it up on our screen? Just checking. Okay, perfect. One thing you can do here is. Go back, go up one. Actually, go up one to click on comparing Google and chat GPT. The third tab over is parent and that will take you up. Yeah, there we go. So here we Make that five times bigger. I work at Alphabet. Narrow your screen, if you can. I don't know, you can't, I guess. Okay.

No. Bad formatting on Hacker News. Go. I know. All right, but I'll read it. I work at Alphabet and I recently went to an internal tech talk about deploying large language models like this at Google. As a disclaimer, I'll first note that this is not my area of expertise.

I just attended the tech talk because it sounded interesting. Large language models like GPT are one of the biggest areas of active ML research at Google. And there's a ton of pretty obvious applications for how they can be used to answer queries, index information, et cetera. There is a huge budget at Google related to staffing people to work on these kinds of models and do the actual training, which is, and you made this point earlier, Jason,

very expensive because it takes a ton of compute capacity to train these super huge language models. However, what I gathered from the talk is the economics of actually using these kinds of models in the biggest Google products isn't quite there yet. It's one thing to put up a demo that interested nerds can play with, but it's quite another thing to try to integrate it deeply in a system that serves billions of requests a day

when you take into account serving costs, added latency, and the fact that the average revenue on something like a Google search is close to infinitesimal already. I think I remember. That was my point. That was your exact point. But also, they're saying they think it's coming in the next few years,

this technology. And to your second point, no, 100 days. Like, I don't care what it costs. Your Google. Figure it at, like, get, people want this. Roll it out. now and make it for pay. Like, we keep talking about how ads are going to ruin everything.

And for years, it's been like, would you pay for a Google search? And everybody was always like, no. I subscribe to this for 50 bucks a year. This I would pay for. Yes. 50 bucks a year, I'll pay for this. Done. I think what they need to do is give this away your first 100 searches a month are free. When you hit 1001, it just prompts you for $8 a month or $50 a year.

Pick. 100%. That's it. That's it. This has been incredibly educational. We're going to keep these conversations going. I moved our lists over to Substack because you, because I saw you,

you inspired this, Molly. You started doing a wonderful substack, which I think is molly woo. That substack.com. Molly Wood, my name. Oh, it's the full. Okay. I know sometimes you use like,

like that handle, right? No. So, oh, Mollywood. Dot subsack.com. But I'm slowly going to start using it as my party. my party alter ego is now Molly Woo! No, Molly Woo!

Mo Woo! Anyway, Mollywood.substack.com. Go sign up for that. I'm dead. Go sign up for that. Also, we have T-W-I Startups. Substack.com.

The reason I'm loving subsack right now is twofold. One, they have a chat feature. So I have been chatting with people on my list. I'm stoked. And so if you join the list, there's like a little secret chat going on there. That's kind of cool. So we'll continue this discussion there.

but also if you join it there's a network effect going on so I recommended you on calicanus.substack.com and I sent you nine new subscribers so what happens is when people subscribe after they subscribe to me it should upsell them on you founder university this week and start ups and some other

I think our fund launch mailing list whatever so sign up whatever mailing list you want. I'm kind of a shout out to the substack I want to have the new I want to have the substack founder on He just DMed me and thanked me for moving our list over there. It was a completely pragmatic move. We were paying a lot of money for another email service provider, but not using the lists. And then this, you know, substack's free.

So I was like, well, let me park the list there. And I had no idea until I saw your time, but free is better than that. What's that? I had no idea until I saw your note over the weekend about the chat feature, too. That's awesome. The chat feature is, I think, going to really light up a substack because the email newsletters, there's a community hiding in there.

Yep. And if just like 1% of a 10,000 person email list, you get 100 people chatting about topics. So I don't know. Let's see if it works. If you're a super fan of the show, TWI Startups.substack.com. We just turned it on over the weekend or today.

So fun. So fun. It's a nice place to write, like, slightly longer form. Yeah. There it is. There's the newsletter. Yeah. And then I go join the other thing.

Okay, we have time, but for one more story, I think here. So let's just keep rocking. Maybe we bank a story or two. I was the same. Maybe we should just start banking. Well, let's just keep going.

We got good energy. Cool. We did our chat. I don't think we need to do more of these. We proved our point. We're good, good, good. But I will do more another time. I really want to talk about that we live in the future.

Oh, you know, this is the good news I need. This is the good news we all need. It is amazing. This news, I'm just going to tease for a bit here if I may. Little tease. because it's so exciting. A little teasing going on here. I'm going to just get you.

Molly Woo! She's excited. Pause. Sorry. Pause. There's a term in the urban dictionary. People say pause. If you accidentally do an innuendo,

you say pause. Oh, really? So, now on, when you do your D jokes, me? No. Molly. once in a while you drop something. I don't even know what you're talking about.

Exactly. That doesn't sound like me at all. I'm just going to say pause. Anyway, I'm going to say pause when it starts veering into people's minds wandering. Yes. But this is, this tickles me so much because I

believe that a lot of wars, this is true. If this we live in the future news is true in any way, wars poverty food shortages clean water

this could be the abundance turning point the environment for fucking civilization itself if this is true and we're going to

just preface this by this is who knows because truth is a very elusive thing right now for us to get our handle on but yeah Food insecurity, global warming, poverty, clean water, and generally speaking, abundance.

Abundance. True abundance. It might have just been solved. Have at it, Molly. Let's go. I'm so excited right now. I know. I'm in the same.

Same. Same. Same. Same. According to sources at the Financial Times at the moment that we're recording this, it sounds like we're expecting an announcement on Tuesday and officially. announcement. Tomorrow.

So at the moment that we're talking about this, it is still, according to sources, who spoke to the Financial Times, but the report is that scientists working for the U.S. government have achieved what is called a net energy gain in a nuclear fusion reaction for the first time. Okay, let's do a little table setting for those of you who don't know what we're talking about right now. Nuclear fusion is not the... So the nuclear energy that we're thinking of now, like, people are always like, do we out, don't we already have that?

The nuclear energy you're thinking of now is nuclear fission, which is where you split atomic nuclei into smaller nuclei and you release a lot of energy. It produces radiation. It's super controversial, but it is a clean energy source. However, fusion is what the sun does. And it's like a, you know, too light nuclei form to merge to form a single heavier nuclear nuclear. it releases energy because the total mass of the resulting single nucleus is less than the mass of the two original nuclei. So there you go.

And the leftover can become heat. It is a zero emissions energy source. It produces no long lasting radiation. And a like cup of, you know, of this fusion material can power like a house for a hundred years. It's been the dream of energy proponents for decades. Scientists have been working on it for decades. And the problem with fusion is that. It takes so much energy to produce this reaction.

It's not that we've never produced the reaction before. It's that it takes so much energy to produce the reaction that it's not even close to economically feasible. Like you don't even get to, you know, break even was a goal that scientists were trying to achieve for decades. And from what I understand, break even as in they were able to produce as much energy as they put in. It was only quietly accomplished if at all last year. Right. So now the report is that they've actually produced slightly more energy than it took to create this fusion, which means, holy crap, we are off to the races. Okay.

Now, for people who don't know, this all happens in a tocomac, which is essentially what Iron Man has on the middle of his chest. Yep, yep. So to make this even more exciting, the people who did the Iron Man films, I think know what a Tokomac is. It's like a donut. And it's a big circle and a bunch of stuff goes around in a circle and it makes you fly and lets you shoot beams out of your hands. Incredible. Tokomac. The words cool.

Toka mac. Here's how you pronounce it. T-O-W-K-H-M-A-K. Toca-M-A-K. This is what you're going to be hearing about every day. If this is true, Tokomak's going to be what you're talking about next week. Not Chapi-G-B-T-3, not shun. Chappelle, not Twitter, not whatever, Tokomak.

Tokomak. Spelt, T-O-T-O-K-A-K. But it's kind of a Q in the middle. Toka-M-A, am I correct? I have been Tokomac. Yep, exactly. Good. My dyslexia has got this one.

For at least the last year and probably before, since I started looking into technology solutions to the climate crisis, which are not the only solutions I know. Don't at me. Turn your heat down. This is like, you know, we always, we talk about how our kids might live in this like dystopia and everything will fall apart and whatever, but there is just as much chance and maybe way more chance as of today that our kids could grow up in an energy utopia.

Imagine what can be accomplished in a society that has effectively unlimited zero emissions energy. And that future is not here. And even with this announcement, whatever it ends up being, and I pray that it is in fact a net energy gain from fusion is not in this decade. most likely, but within 20 years, absolutely. And once it's like out and what's going to be so interesting is to see, like we have an entire global economy that runs on energy, like not just fossil fuels, right,

but the idea of like selling energy and making a ton of money for it. I mean, it's like, this is one of those things where I wonder how many times we've gotten close over the years and the scientist just like disappeared. Like it's that much of a game changer. Everything changes about a society that has effectively unlimited energy. Okay. It's crazy. Yes.

This, now the question of course becomes, at what point did these things have some impact on society? Let me answer that question. If this happens in the next 30 years, we are golden. Yeah. So it's a long, if that's a short enough window, now I'm going to be, Molly will be, she'll turn 63. 61. Yeah, okay, 51.

But we'll be up there. We'll be out there. With unlimited energy. It means unlimited compute power. AI at the same time. That means when I was talking about those chat GPTs taking three seconds, three cents or four cents, and they were lamenting on that hacker news thread, oh my God, this is too expensive, blah, blah, blah.

All these conversations are. are going to go out the window. And then you have quantum computing, which may show up at some point. You can look that up, basically instead of binary, one, two, you got three states, either one, zero, or I'm sorry, one zero for binary and one zero or not in a state. Anyway, this is going to cascade everything. AI, free energy, quantum computing, you know, all this stuff could start compounding at a rate that was unexpected in the same way the Internet did. where we didn't anticipate the early days of the internet

people were like wow you know like I can load a text web page nobody ever thought in your pocket you would be able to live stream yourself to a million people simultaneously and that the internet which was good at delivering text when we were watching GPT write the text

right that was the experience of the internet in 1993 or four you would be watching the text load in a web browser line by line and you go basically you go get a cup of coffee you go use the lube you come back, your web pages loaded. Remember those days, Molly?

Oh, yeah. You go, you know what? I'm loading a page with an image. I'm going to go take a leak. I'll get a cup of coffee. I'll come back to my desk. Maybe the web page is loaded. Maybe I'll open five web pages simultaneously from the Yahoo directory.

There was no Google search engine. Now, just have the five pages load. That means it's going to take five minutes, one page, one minute each. I'll go get a cup of coffee. This is going to be like that. Because we went from that, being able to download and watch any movie we want on a global basis or stream to the entire planet and have a million people on a live stream or I don't know, YouTube sometimes or Twitch you get 10 million people watching it.

So a collateral broadcast studio in your pocket. And you have every piece of the world's information available to you in a phone. I mean, you think about all of the, you know, the internet is everything. For years and years and years at CNET, we used to do this thing called the next big thing, like a session at CES. And it just at some point it was like, well, the next big thing is just internet. It's just some version, right? It's how you get it or it's all the things that are being built on top of it.

or it's mobile internet. Like, this will be that, but also with water desalination to solve water shortages, like you said, with, you know, unlimited power for homes and businesses,

for alternative fuels, for airplanes, like everything about the real world changes. Yes. When you have unlimited energy. And then also you have the AI that you just talked about to figure out these solutions. Like,

we might, what we might find is like a brief period of amazing utopia followed by, the machines definitely getting rid of us. But that brief period when J-Cal and I are 82 and 76 or whatever, respectively, isn't to be super great. Remember you were talking about carbon sequestering? Yeah, carbon sequestration.

Sequestration. The issue there was, is it worth the energy? Right. Carbon capture. Yeah. Carbon capture is an energy issue because is the energy you're using doing more harm to the environment, then the carbon you're pulling out of the atmosphere. Am I correct? Yep.

And green hydrogen, same thing. Green hydrogen, because it takes a lot of energy to split the water and the oxygen and the water molecules right now is energy inefficient, even though it's a zero emissions fuel. So if you, if energy is not an issue, then green hydrogen replaces every airline fuel. Spectacular. I mean, it's like, it almost can't be. And again, yes, it is going to take time. and nobody should be like, okay, we're done fighting climate change, right?

Like, every solution is still going to have to happen. This is going to take time and money. But you guys, like the fact that chat GPT and a fusion breakthrough have occurred in the same month is kind of just like, holy crap. Like, we've crossed a Rubicon here. The future is changing by the second. And we're going to be here for you talking about it on this weekend startups. All right. It's been an amazing episode.

And we will see you all tomorrow. So number one thing for you to do, follow Molly Wood on Twitter, follow me at Jason on Twitter. But most importantly, get on that substack. T-WI Startups. That's substack.com. Mollywood. That substack.com. And Calacanis.

That's substack. com. I expect to see everybody on the substacks. We'll get in the chat. We'll see if this thing works. If it doesn't, we go to another platform. I'm playing with all the different platforms. Founder universities using Circle.

That's working out really good. Circle. That's so. Give me a shout out. It's a community platform. We're testing. It works really good. want to give a shout out to them for making something so good. All right, Molly, any other promotions

or anything like that? Any griffs? We got anything going on? You got any speaking gigs? Molly and I are, by the way, available for speaking gigs. They are available. Book January, book February. Try to ring the register over here. CAA.com slash speakers is where you find me. If you need speakers for your event, you got J-Cal. I like to speak about angel investing. I like to speak about innovation inside of large corporations. And Molly, very good at talking about startup storytelling, the environment. She's created many podcasts. She's good on media, tech, everything.

If you want the two of us to come, we'll do it two for one. We will. Listen, my fee is a little harder than Molly's, but we'll average it out. We'll average it out. We'll average it out. I got a little more followers than she does on Twitter, whatever. I always include a tweet with my speaking gigs. I don't guarantee it, but I pretty much always do it.

I just don't like, I don't ever want to be considering an influencer. Right. But I like doing speaking gigs because I want to get out there. You got any book yet? It's fun. And it's always super. useful. I don't have any booked right now and I don't like it. But we just updated. We updated my speaker's page with my topics. So you can go there. You have an agency or are you doing it on

your own? I do. No, I do it through CAA. Are they doing a good job? Yeah. Okay. All right. I mean, I don't want to handle the logistics, right? They take care of all of it. It just they, they, they chat GPT all of the work. Perfect. Here's your itinerary. Here's where to go. Like, whatever. Here's what to wear. That's what I'm talking about. I got one in January and I think I'm Miami in January. I'm very excited. The mayor, I believe the mayor of Miami is interviewing me. Oh, really?

I interviewed him. He loves you. Yeah, he's going to interview me. So I'm excited about going to Miami. And then I got one in Utah. And I was like, wait a second. Utah in February? Epic pass.

Epic pass. Yeah, I'm taking that speaking gig. Where is that? I don't care. Who I'm speaking to. You could set me up with the, I'll go speak at the MAGA, young MAGA convention of Utah.

I don't care what it is. I was actually just looking to see like, wait, how close is Whistler to? Let's go. Because you got to go to Whistler Blackcomb. That's the best one. Oh, according to chat, no, according to a spam page written in Manila.

No offense to the people, Manila writing the spam page. Let's see what the chat of GPT has to say. That's, think about that as we wrap the app. We live in the future. We leave in the goddamn future. We started outsourcing, spam landing pages to Manila.

And now those people are going to lose their job to AI created in America. The thing just keeps going in a goddamn circle. It does. But then we have free energy, so nobody needs to work. We're about to be Star Trek. This is the messy middle folks. It's like a tocomac. It's like one big token mac.

I'm putting a sign up here, token mac or bust. All right, everybody. Great job, Ma. See you tomorrow. We'll see it tomorrow. Bye. Bye-bye.