This Week in Startups - The 2022 TWiSTY Awards! | E1647

Episode Date: December 29, 2022

Molly and Jason present... the 2022 TWiSTY Awards! Join them in commemorating all the best, worst, and craziest moments from this year in startups, markets, and tech! (0:00) J+M intro today's show (1:37) Introducing the 2022 TWiSTY Awards! (3:18) Best prop (7:51) Best behind the scenes emoji (12:38) Mixpanel - Apply for $50K in credits at https://mixpanel.com/startups  (14:04) Best meme (19:12) Best gadget (22:44) Nutrisense - Use code TWIST and get $30 off at nutrisense.io/twist (24:14) Best media (39:40) Best Twitter follow (42:55) Founder University - Apply at https://course.founder.university (44:32) Main Character of the Year (54:54) Bag Securer of the Year (1:02:07) Best CEO of the Year (1:10:03) Startup of the Year (1:15:35) Defunct Startup of the Year (1:20:52) News Topic of the Year (1:26:55) Surprisingly Awesome Guest of the Year (1:30:28) Interview of the Year (1:32:56) Best Guest Chemistry of the Year (1:39:28) Episode of the Year 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

Okay, everybody, it has been an amazing year from Frank Slootman joining us back in January to breaking down this SPF crypto drama in the fourth quarter, Molly. It's an incredible amount of news we covered this year as co-host, your first year as co-hosts of this week in Startups. So now it's time for the Twisties, the annual of this week in Startups Awards. What can people expect today? The Twisties, people, we have like a lot. There is a lot going on because it was a hell of a year.

We've got best memes. We got best props on our. show. We have notable people. We have great startups, of course, this weekend startups. And the best content from our show, the best interviews, the best co-hosts, it is going to be a wild romp. Best chemistry. I mean, it's just a wild romp through some of the greatest events in a very memorable year. Going to be a great show. Stick with us. This weekend startups is brought to you by Mix panel helps startups find product market fit faster by offering powerful, self-sense, serve product analytics. Apply today to join MixPanel's startup program and get $50,000 in credits at

Mixpanel.com slash startups. And Nutrisense combines cutting edge technology and human expertise so you can see how your body responds to different food, exercise, stress, and sleep in real time. By pairing a CGM with their app and expert dietitian guidance, Nutrisense can help you reach your health goals. Use code Twist and get $30 off at Nutrisense.io slash twist. Hey, everybody, welcome to the 2022 Twisty Awards. And there is the famous 22 Twisty Awards opening. Yes, it's a gala event. I'm wearing my sequence.

Molly is dressed to the nines. Jason is not. Well, Molly, I am wearing a very exclusive black t-shirt made by Versace. I mean, honestly, all the cool kids are rocking the black t-shirt. What are you wearing? What are you wearing? All the crowd wants to know here on the runway, Molly, what are you wearing? I'm wearing rent the runway, obviously. Rent the runway.

Rent the runway. Free shot out of. I couldn't even be bothered to look and see what the brand is. I just was like, Sequin Jessica Rabbit Dress, done and done. Okay, well, there you have the folks. Martinelli's. You got your monies. And we are ready.

Yes, it's a very festive 2022 Twisties. Now, this is Molly for your first time. Yeah. This is where we take all the great moments that happened during the show and the Academy, the Twisties Academy, then nominates their favorite moments and the Academy votes for the winners. We don't know the winners. You and I as the co-hosts. We do not. This is very exciting.

It's very exciting. And there are going to be envelope rips. We've created a sound rich. I mean, this is a show. Wait, were you on this just Twissies or? No, I listened to them. As an audience member and I thought, how fun is this? I cannot wait to do this for myself.

All right, here we go. All right. We have a bunch of wonderful categories for you. It is going to be a great show. All right, Molly, our first category, let's get right to it. Let's do. Everybody loves, we start off with a bang. everybody loves our props during the show.

Our props. Yes. For example. Oh, there it is. There it is. The red flag. One of our nominees, the red flag. Absolutely.

To, now, some people think that this is because of my propensity to make inappropriate comments on the show. Others think it's because of Jason's propensity to make inappropriate comments on the show. Either way, the red flags have come in useful many times over the course of 2020. All right. So let's see. We have episode 1379 red flag metrics for VCs. Episode 1610, red flags in crypto. And episode 1512, Zach Coley's answers how much dilution after seed rounds turns in to a red flag. All of those different ones. Now, Molly, one of the great props is not just a red flag. Something that you and I love. It's a gadget. Sometimes it has a little. Sometimes it has a

logo on it. Yep. We both have them here with us today because that's how ever present this prop is. It's the good old ember mug. We aren't as users. We're gifters. We frequently give away the ember mug. All right. So that's prop number two in our, this is a very coveted category. It is. And then finally, need we say more? Rivka. Rivka. Good old Don Julio. This was a one-time prompt. One time only prop. So far. When Jason gifted us all with Don Julio.

And it's not finally, by the way. There are more props in here. Don Julio, though, high on my list, has a very delightful prop. I think you may notice over the course of the year that the level of my Don Julio went down a little faster than Jason. I was about to say I was talking to the prop department last week while I was doing the end of year audit. And they said we had two cases of Don Julio props in. inventory and suddenly they're all missing. But we're just trying to track those down, Molly.

I don't know if you have any... You know, sharing is caring. Okay, there it is. And then finally, my beloved Café Dumont, Chikri Coffrey, the backbone of the live shows. It's delightful. You make iced coffee with this.

You leave it 22 hours overnight, 20 hours. So rich, such great flavor. And it comes in that beautiful, iconic can. I got my very own courtesy of our producers and you here at this weekend startups. I had never had it. You were so horrified that toucans showed up the next day. And then I taught myself how to make cold beer. It's huge.

It's huge. All right. So these are. Those are the four. And we like that drama. Molly, the winner is, I'm showing my in the card. The winner is. Is.

Don Julio. Of course. Of course. Rivka, who could not pick the Don Julio special edition. Could it not. And, you know, it was really inspired by WeWork and the debauchery over there and the fact that, you know, played such a prominent role in one of the little bit of debauchery. I mean, it was the most iconic company in terms of misbehavior and shenanigans of the last cycle. Not crimes.

Just shenanigans. Some of them funny. Some of them loathsome. but the Don Julio did play a big role in the show. And congratulations to Don Julio. Congratulations to Adam Newman wherever you are. And Rivka. Thanks.

Thanks for all the delightful days slash weeks of imbibing Don Julio. And I want to say that the reason that it wins prop of the year, according to our producers, is that although it only appeared for a brief moment in time, one time, each of us got one bottle. Yeah. We still get fan messages about it. We do. It just was so impactful.

People loved the Don Julio experiment. In a way, you know, there might be other props that are more important to the show, you know, dare I say the flag. I thought flag was going to be bigger because it happened so consistently. But the truth is, you know, sometimes fan favorites, sometimes there's a little virtue signaling in the voting. I don't want to say the academy is trying to make themselves feel good about their vote, but there has been some controversy. Twisties. So Julio. Here we go.

Hashtag so Julio. So Julio. All right. This next category. Now this is one that most people don't get to see, Molly. Tee this one up. This is a very important one to our producers. This is like, yeah, exactly.

This is a little honorable mention from the producers of the most used specific emojis. Yes. That defined the culture here at Twist. This is so good. All right. We have. We have. number one is when I have to repeat myself.

All of these are basically sub-tweeting me. But when I have to repeat myself for the third or fourth time where something goes wrong, I use the slapping your hand on the face emoji, but also the producers have adopted it when, Molly, maybe takes it too far. What? I don't know what you're talking about. Okay.

Well, you'll have to talk to HR about that. Amazing. Our second behind the scenes emoji slash sub-tweet is, one of my favorites. I remember the day, I think I dropped this into your chat and you were like, what is this? And it became emoji I'm waiting for. Briefly, our favorite. There it is. The stand up and salute emoji.

Yes. This is fantastic because when you are an authoritarian dictator like myself and you have have an edict. You just want a yes chef. You want a confirmation that it's been heard. You know, sometimes you ask for something and you just, you don't need a big sentence back or an explanation of why it didn't have or whatever. You just want a quick yes, chef, the bear, you know, salute. And sometimes it's a salute in recognition, Molly, that you got the message. Or it could be like, well done. So we will sometimes have somebody nail it as on the production side or a great hot take and, you know, any of those reasons.

The salute can come up in the producer chat. And it can. It can. And it really, it ripped through here like wildfire. We were in love with this one. Obviously, took on some larger cultural significance later in the year as well. So I think we can just say the salute had a big year in 2022. Wait, what was the larger culture reference of a salute?

That's what all the resigning Twitter employees were posted. Oh, oof. Yes, that is true. Oops. Oh, no. zone. Okay. No fly zone for 2020.

So it's over now. It's over. We don't use that one anymore. Yes. But yes, the salute always. Yes. Used by many people.

Many people. Salute how to big year. This last one, it could be problematic. I'm surprised this emoji hasn't been canceled. What? Really, this emoji is the the chef's kiss slash. I guess you're right.

It's a little excited Italian hand gesture. Like, oh, what are you doing? I thought this was chef's kiss. Put two of these up. Mike Savino will talk to you in the meeting. What are you talking about?

This thing's got no reoccurring revenue. The accounting is crazy. Mike Savino is going to give you one of those. This is not gap accounting. Did you see the little girl that went viral on TikTok who is like a little Italian girl ranting about something or other? I mean, she's probably like four. Oh, I did see that.

Yes. She's got the hands. Like she's doing the, it's amazing. It's unbelievable. She looks like Carmella soprano. Okay. We like to think of this as the chef's kid. emoji. But also it could be a little bit of the like. Come on. What are you talking to? But it is a,

it's a capish, understand. Yeah. Or just well done it. It, it, it, it, it, you have to interpret this one. All three, you know, to me, I don't, yeah, I mean, go ahead, Molly, open the envelope. This time, you open the envelope. And the winner is. Okay. Of course. Oh, the face palm. It's the face palm. Because it's so versatile. It could be for when we make a mistake. It could be for Molly is inappropriate. In other words, Monday, Thursday, Friday, and Sunday. Or it could be some human being in the world in our industry

just as something just absolutely... Yeah. Just stupid. And my lord, the stupidity this year... A lot of face-pom. The stupidity train has not ended. So, yeah, I think FacePom earned it in a way just for the effort of the performance.

You know, I feel like salute. you know, it was great. It didn't put in a lot of work. You kind of went through the performance. Capish, great, a little bit niche. But I think everybody can appreciate that 2022. There was a lot of face palm going on this year. It earned a blue collar.

It's an homage to producer next PTSD. The face palm emoji. Internally and externally. Two things we always talk about on the show. Number one, how to build the best product possible. That's critically important. You want to have a great product. obvious. But number two, you have to find product market fit fast, right? Speed is what startups are all

about. And those things usually go hand in hand. But relying on your gut is not how you should do it. Many VCs, they don't want to wait around for that. It's not about your gut, right? You need to have data. Investors are looking for founders that can use data-driven solutions to find product market fit faster. So you need to check out Mix Panel right now. And they will give you $50,000. dollars in credits when you join their startup program. They want to help your startup find product market fit, and they want to help you do it a little bit faster by giving these powerful pools.

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at Mixpanel.com slash startups. That's MIX. P-A-N-E-L-com slash startups. That's startups with an S, plural. And if your startup was founded under five years ago, has raised $8 million or less, and isn't currently on any of Mixed panels,

paid plans you're eligible to apply. Terms and conditions do apply, because they're giving you $50,000 in credits. Now, here we go. All right. Now we got the good stuff coming up. You guys not. Why would you do this to me?

This poor guy. This is elder abuse. It is. Come on. This is elder abuse. It's not cool people. I mean, listen, you know, the Academy selects what it selects. What can you do?

I'm out of this. You did have to do this. Okay, best meme of the year. Okay, this is a great one. Candidates, first up, the Will Chris Rock, the Will Smith, Chris Rock, slap. You all had a lot of fun with this. I did not approve this or make this one less. No.

Prof. G. G. gets a restraining order against me. We've been doing so well. haven't brought them up in forever. I've literally been, I've been listening to pivot. I'm like becoming a fan. And yet, this was such a versatile. We just, we only pulled this up to show an example of how versatile this meme became. It became the new like guy walking down the street looking at the other girl. Like for a while, that was the one. But no, once you had the Will Smith, Chris Rock slap. It was endlessly, endless opportunities. I had a good one I thought. You know, I, this

This was my response after I saw the Will Smith smack. I was like, oh, Will Smith at the end of the Oscars. I thought this is pretty good. That was funny. The day after. Yeah, the day after he's like, I'm just going to erase everybody's memory of this.

It's the picture from Men and Black. That's a good one. Yeah, the memory. Good one. Second, on the list, Molly, is for meme of the year. Meme of the Year, the Minions Rise of Gru, theater shenanigans.

All of these young men, inexplicably, an idea. Nobody knows exactly where it started to go to the Minions movie, which of course was one of the first big releases back in theaters. Like this was pre Maverick. This was a movie that people were going to and they were getting all dressed up in suits and having like a little Rocky Horror Show picture party. And then of course all the theater owners were like, boo, we don't like fun. But it swept the nation. All right. The next one, man, this is the one that's my lead candidate. Guy explaining to girl or vice versa. This is.

People had a little fun with these memes by putting Molly and I in them. There was the one of the very tall, attractive blonde with the short, like, jacked guy. You remember that one as well? Yeah, we might need to find that one. We need to pull that one up and post. That's what started it. That's what started it. But these, I think these are bookends, right?

Which is person absolutely feeling dead inside while the other person enthusiastically explains something to them. So here, Molly is explaining to me. And crypto this year. That was all of us. Crypto dudes. She's a crypto gal. Just.

But there was something about the album covers, the This Weekend Startups ones and they were matching. There were his and hers ones. And I'm sorry, they made me laugh out loud so hard every time. Even when I saw this in the awards as a nominee today, I burst out laughing. Okay. And then of course, Molly, this next one for Halloween was absolutely brilliant. It swept the interwebs.

There somebody even made a couple of these of me. this one wasn't me. This is just your generic. What would they call these costumes? These are like the costumes of the shack, off the rack? Off the rack from the Spirit Halloween store specifically. And it's always like, which sexy nurse, cat. Noddy, cop.

And so then everybody. Sexy. I don't know where the blank one came from, but it was freaking genius. And it was such a funny meme that Spirit Halloween stores tweeted about it and was like, it's come to our attention that people are. making these into other costumes. And just so you know, that's not like peanuts. Just it went right over him, just whiffed.

The venture capitalist one. People coming into the store with venture capitalists comes with generic advice, fair term sheet, sense of superiority, Patagonia, invest, not included. Imagine somebody coming and saying, can I get this? And the poor teenager behind the counter like, I don't know, there's a wall of these. Go take a look. We don't have this. And they're like, in the V's.

And they're like, sexy vampire. Sebra. Sebelahlofo. Fireman. It's got in here somewhere. Seeked her. It's got to be here somewhere between X and Z. This is the Halloween we grew up on.

Oh my God. Fair term sheet, we should say. That's in quotes. This is a tough one. This is a tough one. You know, I hate to prejudge before we open the envelope, but I am going to give my prediction. I think it's got to be.

It's got to be the guy slash girl screaming a deer. That's the frontrunner for me. This would be like Goodfellers losing to dances with wolves if it doesn't win. I don't know how you feel about this one. I think explaining. Bro slash explainer chick cannot cannot be robbed. Let's find out. I mean, and I'm also a little confused, that stunning.

And maybe that was just a little too popular that stunning didn't make it here, but okay. Maybe. It was niche. You're the only person I heard do that. Okay. Here we go. The winner is. Guy explaining to girl.

Of course. Explaining to guy. Yes. Wow. We're moving at a great pace, Molly. Best gadget. better than the Oscars. Of the year.

Best gadget of the year. It's a tough one. Okay. Candidates included. Mm-hmm. Because not a big gadget year. Apple Watch series 8. Yes.

Mainly because you said all the watches sucked until the 8. Mm-hmm. So there we go. And I think both of us discovered pay with your watch, which is cool. Yeah, I started using it. Yes. I knew it existed, but Apple Watch 6 or Apple Watch 8 was the one where I think it became a good product. Took them eight swings at back.

Steve Jobs would have never released it until it was like at seven, I think, but it's just me. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. That's a whole other discussion. Let's keep going with the award with the nominees. Headphones had a big year. Over the ear headphones went wild.

There was the release of the AirPods Macs. There were these like cool looking Sonys. There were all these like super sleek over the year headphones and even AirPods because this was also the year that everyone discovered that your AirPods are never freaking connected to the right thing if they are not if they are connected at all. Yes. Headphones. Big year.

I was a big fan of the pixel buds myself because they're $99 and they're flush with your ear. So when you sleep with them and you go to sleep with an audio book or this week in startups, you get that nice pillow feel. iPad Pro with the floating keyboard. That's a big one amongst venture capitalists. Harkens back to my major 2010 troll of me having the iPad early. Right.

causing Steve Jobs to have even more eye rolling when I heard the name Calacanus. That was my relationship with Steve Jobs. It was just him hearing Calacadus and rolling his eyes. Why do I even know this guy's name? That is hilarious. And then on our list, the smart home gym, specifically the tonal for making this thirst trap tweet possible. It's coming. It's coming this summer.

Jason writes. my thirst trap this summer is going to break this website. Yes, I'm referring to. He tweeted on November 26th. And then the Tonal, it's a solid experience when a hotel has Tonal like the proper hotel in Austin does. I mean, this is the year that Peloton faded. I don't want to use the D word.

Faded. Yeah, I was, that is exactly what I was going to say. And my mental red flag stopped me. Yeah, they hat the bed. Just say hat. They had the bed. They had the bed. And Tonal took the crown.

swooped in. People love their channels. Oh, we got this. Yeah. All right. And the winner is for best gadget of this year on this week in startups. The envelope please. Over the ear.

Headphones. Oh, the headphones. Very good. I think everybody feel very good about the new wave of headphones, anything other than AirPods, which you make you look like a dork. Congratulations to all the new over the headphones. I'm a big fan of the anchor ones because they're affordable. My wife buys the

I buy the anchors How was anchor Not in this list? Anchor all, all anchor Oh, yes anchors you can get for under 50

and if I would give you the anchors The sound cores and I gave you I literally put anchor sound cores on Put on Pink Floyd the wall

Or dark side of the moon Dark side of the moon Even better And then I put on the Apple $600 ones And I put the bows on I think you

couldn't You would randomly pick Really randomly pick It would be There's no, none of us can tell the difference. When COVID hit, I was struggling with my weight. So I tried a continuous glucose monitor.

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It was a big part of my journey. Visit nutrasense.io slash twist and use the code twist to save $30 and get one month of free dietitian support, N-U-T-R-I-S-E-N-S-E-E-N-S-E-E-E-O-S-T-E-W-S-T-E. for $30 off and one month of free dietitian support. All right, best media of the year. Yeah, we got to choose this all by ourselves. This includes movies, TV shows. This is our version, if you will, of the A.O. Scott choice. Okay.

We got to choose number one. Okay. Okay. We watched a lot of good stuff. Thanks to our buddy Lon. Yes. And this week in streaming every Thursday, is Lon Harris, follow him at Lonz on Twitter.

He's hysterical, and he writes our inside streaming newsletter. And thanks to him, Watching TVs and movies became a very unexpected part of my new job as a VC and podcast host. Yeah. All right. Things we watched. Pop culture. Pop culture.

To choose from. We crashed in which we popped open bottles of Don Julio and started sipping at 1030 in the morning. That did happen. That happened as we watched and enjoyed. We crashed. Top Gun Maverick. Okay. Film of the year, clearly.

I'm a little embarrassed. It's test. to the workload that I've only watched it three times. That's not trying to watch it four times. I'm going to watch it a second time in my home theater. Oh, yeah. I think I need to see it again. I saw it twice in theaters.

And then I've watched it twice at home. It's been, and it just keeps getting better. I don't mean to name drop it. But I was talking to Jeffrey Katzenberg when it first came out. I said, what's the best film in the year? Because we always talk cinema, both cinema buffs. And Mr. Katzenberg, I call it Mr. Katzenberg. Of course, I try to be respectful.

He said, Maverick, I've seen it three times. And this is when the movie Chris came, I said, hey, you know, after the poker game, let's both win. Let's go see it a fourth time. I haven't seen it yet. And he said, yeah, let's go. We didn't wind up going. But I did see it and I do have to confirm that this was pure spectacle, made you feel great.

It's amazing. They didn't try to give you a message other than American exceptionalism, individual excellence, and sacrifice, all the things that Americans are now ashamed of being. Or some group of Americans are ashamed of our military might, individual, excellence, sacrifice, teamwork, egoseness, not being like a snowflake. This is great movie. Macho BS. It was awesome.

Also, I think we got the chance to show the Chinese what our airplanes really can do with that one scene with the, you know, the fifth generation fighter. We have that. That's a warning. I don't know. Is this triggering for, was this triggering for Gen Z's, do you think, to watch Americans? This is not a car. Honestly, I love Top Gun.

So the original Top Gun is my favorite movie. in life. And I don't, this is a conversation that if a Gen Z started it with me, I would immediately shut it down. I would just be like,

you know what? You do you. I don't want to hear it. This is my favorite thing. You will not ruin this for me. It was a distinct. No. It was a distinct difference

this film when you talk to generations, I think, Gen Xers, you know, because we had this, we had top gone in our childhoods. Yeah. You know,

we had that affinity for it. But a lot of people, I think, are like, anti-military for some reason. Maybe it's because they don't remember any war. and America having to go kick some goddamn.

But to save democracy around the world, and you all think that you can just make webpages and TikToks, and that's going to save your ads. It's not. When you get in the thick of it and you're up to your knees in the shit, and you got that M16 and you need some fighter support, then you're going to realize you need Maverick. Okay?

I don't mean to get crazy here. I changed my profile picture and it fixed everything. I don't know what you're talking about. producer rachel our gen z correspondent confirms that this movie was in fact loved by all there we go why was it is your reason no she just said it's loved by all like there wasn't it didn't get canceled because it was freaking awesome and because because one hot guys two big planes yeah fast planes and hot guys all right sounds good to me it's a winning formula scenes on the beach all good they brought in some hot girls like it's they did

I mean, okay, everybody was attractive. Everybody had a buff body. I mean, this is triggering. It's a very triggering movie. My God. Why are you trying to ruin this? You're literally going to ruin it. I know.

I have to. I can't help myself. You're trying to ruin it. So great. Our third candidate for media of the year is the dropout. Yes. Which we loved. You even said that there should be a follow up to the dropout in five or ten years to see who's still in prison.

Absolutely. I want to see Elizabeth Harms in prison. That's Orange is the New Black. season eight, whatever it is. Like, can you imagine Elizabeth Holmes in prison? Like, I would love to see that show. Rights itself. It kind of does.

It kind of does. It was a fantastic show, fantastic performance by Amanda C. Freed. We loved it. We also loved, though, and this is where it's getting tougher because we still have two candidates left. Obi-Wan Canobi. Man. Great, great.

Obi-Wan Canobi gave me everything I wanted. Could not find a bad thing to say about it. And then Andor isn't even on the list. I think we got to add, I'm going to call it audible and add Andor here. Me too. Boom. Ed and or here as well. Typed it in.

Andor. So, Obie on andor. Okay. And then finally. And then finally. Severance. Oh, right. Right.

Severance. So cerebral. So haunting. About which you said, it is a manifesto. This, I really hope that we can pull the clip of the conversation that we had about this in which Jason goes, it seems like maybe like work can be kind of soul-sucking for people. I have a lot of feelings about the corporate architecture here. Yes.

That I would like to share. I think that this is, is the word treat. Treaty, Tris. What are the other words? Treaties. Treaties is like a statement, right? Yeah, like a manifesto kind of. Like a manifesto.

I feel like this is a manifesto on the worst of capitalism and corporate culture. because they are being indoctrinated to a culture. And the culture is told by these weird historical figures in the company and they're in a hall and they are praised and lauded.

It's a blend between what we think of as a corporate history or the corporate way of talking about the company and religion. Like it's a cult. It's a cult. And I think what they're saying is, you know, hey, look, you're, when you go work at a company, you're giving up your life.

And you're giving up your life. And the way they get you to give up your life is through this culture and through this, you know, ceremony. And it is modern day religion. In fact, corporate culture borrowed a lot from religion. Hey, what is our mission here? Mission statement. What are our values?

When we use those things in startup land, and I encourage people to use those in startup. I worked on our mission statements, you know, at companies, at companies we've invested in companies I've created. We Back Builders is our new credo here at launch as an investment firm. And I worked on that. Like, what are we really about here? And can I get it down to its essence? And can I get people to give up their lives to then come on this mission?

And that's a commerce decision on one level. People are getting paid for time. But they are also giving up a significant. portion of their waking hours, right? And the show shows that when they are outies, it's always nighttime, it's always dark. They've given up the best hours of their lives. So I think what whoever wrote this might be signaling or their ax to grind. And I don't know who wrote this or what their ax to grind is.

It's a relative newcomer named Dan Erickson. Okay. I need to meet this guy. Yeah. I'd love to meet dinner. Because somebody gets it. Because I think what he's saying is like, be careful who you decide to give your waking hours to.

Yeah. And they would rather, the ideal capitalist society would be for you to not even question or think about this. And it's manifested, I think, brilliantly, in the inter-corporate, or the inter-department, rather, relationship.

Yes, where they're not even supposed to know one another. Don't know it. And nobody's allowed to know what we do in a way. So you know what you do. But then there's Christopher Walkins group and what they do, nobody's allowed to know. And then when they meet each other, they're breaking. Yeah, they're breaking all kinds of rules here.

And I immediately thought about the disparity between an Amazon warehouse worker and an Amazon corporate worker in Seattle, an Apple store worker and an Apple store worker. and an Apple corporate worker, a postmates, Uber, Lyft, DoorDash driver, and the corporate executives who are making the software. And they're not allowed to talk to each other.

They're two different classes of employees. They're in different buildings. They don't fraternize. And it's part of a control culture because if the people incorporate, right, the Apple employees at the Space Station, who are getting paid hundreds of them, thousands of dollars probably on average and who have perks that are absurd.

There was a huge disparity. They used to pay McDonald-level wages from what I understand, like, you know, $9, $10, $11 at Apple until they were shamed into hitting 14, 15, 16. And a lot of it has to do with people who work at Apple going to the Apple stores and saying, is this right? Right. Well, and imagine them going to Foxcon. Right.

And then Foxcon is another level. The people who are in the Apple store would be looking at. those folks and saying, well, we get paid now $25, $30 an hour, whatever is we get health care benefits. Those people are jumping off buildings. Yeah. I mean, I think. I'll stop there with what the guilt slash realization. Without a doubt.

Without a doubt. I started to have watching the show. So whoever wrote it, mission accomplished. I'm a rabid capitalist and it made me think, what are we actually creating here? Like, maybe this might be about corporate culture. And those of us who have not been the boss of it. everything since we were 30, we're like, yeah. It is.

22, but whatever. I'm sorry, 22. 30 years of being. Let's just say the man was crowned early and there's still some things we have to teach him, such as work and be soul-sucking in corporate culture. I don't get it. I'm sorry. For people.

I'm like, what? There's blood on your sword? Well, that's what happens with swords. They get blood on them. It's okay. Oh, you got some blood on your armor? That's why you're wearing armor. That's the other person's blood.

It's okay. I truly, I truly tell people often when they ask about what it's like to work for you. I'm like, Jason has been a king his entire life. That's it. It's so weird. Like,

it's just like, that's just the deal. It is. Well, I mean, you have to be self-aware. If you have to, I always use humor.

I think you have to be self-aware. And, you know, this is a great collection of shows. This is a tough one. This is a tough one. I mean, so,

I mean, I'll tell you why this is, such a good list. Lon is such a great curator of this stuff. And we could have done this in two separate categories. I mean, we could do this. We're doing this with Lon on this week in streaming to a certain extent by going through the top ten films.

But all of these are worthy of your time. And all of these are worthy of a second viewing. And in fact, Molly has done second of their feelings of Maverick. But I watched the last three or four episodes of Andor with my wife a second time and got more out of them the second time. Just unbelievable. Andor is fantastic. We crashed in the dropout.

We're so relevant to us. And so incredibly done and performed that both of them stick with us. And now we have to choose. And like we might not even agree. I don't know what's going to happen now. Well, why don't I ask before we open the envelope and see what the Academy decided, right? Because the Academy does, this is their moment to shine. We are just but the hosts.

For you as the host, give me your, who do you think the Academy will pick? And who do you actually pick? Who do you think the Academy will pick? Who will you pick? I have my thoughts here. Some recency here, too. Recency bias. I know, recency bias.

I mean, you know, I'm going to pick Maverick because of everything I just said about how it's my number one favorite movie of all time. And literally, like, my timer ringtone is the top gun music. Like, that's what a nerd I am. That's your mother. And what do you think the Academy is going to do here? But I could see the Academy. It's a very difficult decision for the Academy. I could see the Academy going Star Wars because we spent a lot of show hours talking about it.

I think they're going to reach back to. Obi-1. Okay. Because it was such a revelation. Yes. I, you know, I believe the Academy is going to be biased towards something that is topical like the dropout or we crashed. And we had a lot of laughs about we crashed. We did. Don Julio. But the dropout was better. So I think Academy is going dropout. Okay. Because they want to stay in line with the theme. You know, they're very much into startups. This Academy is very much into that, right? The culture of startups and the building of companies. But for me, it's Andor right now. And I think it's, I'm suffering from a little recency bias because that is the most recent of this list that I've watched.

But I felt like it added something to my favorite science fiction after Blade Runner, you know, childhood. It added something to my childhood as an adult in the same way Obi-Wan did, but even better. Because Obi-Wan was what I expected and Andor was something I didn't expect, right? So in a way, Obi-Wan series fed my childhood in just fill my like 12-year-old heart, you know, not to be sentimental. But then Andor, you know, really spoke in the same way Severance did to my more adult self and more thoughtful. Life is complicated, right? Like Andor is about complicated issues and nuance, as is severance, the nuance of authoritarianism in the workplace and soul, rushingness and corporations not having a soul and an individual's having to buy into it.

Andor is like, well, I'm a terrorist or am I a freedom fighter? Right. And am I, are these authoritarians? And am I the hero? Against terrorists. Exactly. And am I the hero of my own story? Like my mom would tell me growing up always.

Every villain is the hero of his own story. And no, I think story told that better than Andor. The winner is, the academy is, Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan. Wow. Wow. Okay, there it is. I mean, I think they really did also get into the joy of it.

Congratulations to John, everyone. It also brought, I'm going to say this is a, this is a well-thought-out choice by the academy because Obi-Wan, like, rescued the Star Wars franchise, right? Like, it was on the ropes a little, Lando didn't land. That's right. And they had canceled the yearly releases, and it was kind of like, Book of Boba, Phat was a little, people weren't digging it. It was like, fine, it definitely did.

It definitely did. Scooter things. All right, here we go. Now, let's get into notable people. Everybody loves the people. Best Twitter follow of the year. Okay? Best follow of the year.

That guy, Casey, Casey. Casey, what's his by? Good old Casey. He had last name. I always get his last name. Matt Damon. Newton. Casey with the good hair.

That's what I'm going to call. He's got great hair. I am so jelly. I mean, listen, I'm a straight, I'm a straight boring guy. If I was gay, Casey would be kind of my guy. That's like, that's kind of my type. I'm just saying, great hair. I love it, Casey.

He's got a sense of humor. He's a, he's an entrepreneur. Very funny. Very tall. Listen, I'm just saying if you were, if I, because, you know, like I'm a kind of macho, toxic male. He seems like a nice person. I think he's like a very nice person. He's also an entrepreneur, great hair.

I feel like you misunderstood last show of the year, and you're just trying to make it last show ever. Just get canceled in every segment. Because I'm just saying, like, if I was, that might be in my zone. No, it's lovely. It is a weird compliment, but it's a compliment. So we've included Casey Newton. Right now Casey with the great hair is just like, no thanks. He was like, I'm good.

I'm out. I'm out. Thank you, though. However, his tweets, This is here. Outstanding great newsletter at Platformer, some incredible reporting on topics we don't discuss, but just really like, he is on it. And we included some of their top performing tweets as we go through them.

Casey Newton responding to Jack Nika saying Google has suspended parlor from the Play Store until it better polices its app. And then he wrote, wait until Google finds out what's on YouTube. Hey-oh. Funny guy. That's a good one. That's a good one. All right.

Next up, Eric Newcomer, a friend of the show. and he also is sub-stacker, independent journalist with an independent podcast that I was on recently, Dick Cap Bounce. And he is previously from Bloomberg in The Information, and we've had him on the show forever. Yeah, extremely like thoughtful, good eye for what's happening in the world. And then my favorite, I'm making no bones about this one. My favorite follow, Bucco Capital, at Bucco Capital. parody account

Yes Absolutely producer Nick's parody account Like we often joke That this had to be Artie Bucco of course From the Sopranos Tony's childhood friend

Who has the Italian restaurant Totally And Bucco Capital As it so imagine Artie Bucco tweeted about Venture and investing Basically

It would be Bucco Capital And we joke often internally Part of the reason this is so funny Is it always sounded like it was producer nix burner account. Yes. Because some of the insights were so on point in the way that Nix are.

Let's go to the academy's choice. Who's the winner, Molly. Who won? Oh my God, I'm stressing. Best follow. Okay. Got the envelope and the winner is. Boogro Capital, my favorite.

Of course. Of course. The first Bucro Capital, yes. So funny, so insightful. So hilarious. Hey, everybody. It's Molly Wood, co-host of this week in Startups and Managing Director. here at launch. And our mission at launch is to back builders and help build founders.

Founder University is one of the ways that we do that. We've got a 12-week online course to help you build and launch your MVP or idea. It's a hybrid course, meaning there are live presentations virtually twice a week and asynchronous learning. At the live sessions, those include presentations from industry experts and you'll get a Q&A with these experts and members of the launch team, plus deep dives every week to cover what you're learning. And then asynchronously, we're going to give you homework, a little extra videos and reading each week. And we'll go step by step with you as you build your MVP. Now, I know you're wondering, how much does this cost? Okay, so we want founders to have skin in the game, but we don't want to take money from our bootstrapped

builders. So here's what we do. We charge $500 up front for the founder university 12-week course. but if you attend the live sessions and you launch an MVP, we'll give it back. In other words, this is our ethos in action. Do the work and we return the entire $500 at the end and it's free. So do you have an excellent idea for a startup but you don't know where to start? Or are you in the early stages of launching your MVP looking for those first customers? Founder University is a place to guide you through those early stages. Cohort five of our 12-week Founder University will kick off in March, 2023.

You can learn more and apply at course. Founder. Dot University. Hope to see you there. Main character of the year. Now we're into the big stuff. This is big stuff. This is like best actor in a way, right? This is your, I don't want to say villain, but this is the notable character in this week in startup universe.

So it's related to us, right? Yeah. This one goes to the wild ones. Criminals, the felons. Indeed it does. The dummies. I think you know, I think you can guess immediately who are first candidate for. main character of this week in startups is

Sam Bankman-Fried, founder and CEO and scammer at FTA. Chief Scammer at FTX. We talked about him so many times that I believe we started to get emails begging us to stop. That's how you know you're the main character when people are like, okay. Yes. Next up, Ryan Breslo. He stepped down as the, he quietly stepped down as the CEO of a payments company.

I forgot the name of it. Mm-hmm. Anyway, some payments company. Bolt. And became the executive chair, but he decided he would burn the building on the way out and did a thread criticizing Wycombinator and the mafia and the Stripe Mafia. And he tried to dunk on B on Twitter. That was amazing.

Yeah, we got into a whole back and forth. And, yeah, I think now he is doing dubstep dancing. and I think he's the chairman of a psychedelic company. Yeah, he's got the psychedelic. I think psychedelic research is very important. So congratulations to him. But he did say that he thinks his superpower in moving into a health company

is that he doesn't know anything about it. Oh, okay, great. Sure. Elizabeth Holmes also have that same approach. Hopefully, it works out for you better. So, you know, great, great. We backbuilders. Bolt.

Was it Bolt? It was Bolt. Yeah. It was Bolt and fast. It was bolt and fast. Fast, fouled. Bolt did not fail. Bolt did not fail.

But Ryan's struggling. But yeah, I mean, we spent a lot of episodes on the mafia thing. There were a lot of callbacks. He would just like juice us with a tweet thread anytime, you know, we stopped talking about him. And then he just went quiet. It was a great three week dissented to madness. It was a good time. And so congrats to him.

And I'm blocked now. So I don't know what his activity is on Twitter. Oh, I don't know if I ever fall to him. If I'm being honest. All right. Also in main character nominees, Adam Newman. How could he not? Who we unironically kind of love.

after watching, we crashed. I mean, it's Jared Leto's fault that we all like this guy so much because he did such an incredible job portraying him. Adam Newman then had his triumphant return at the deal book conference with an interview that charmed us all anew. And then he like put one of his own new startups out of business with the second startup. Like he came back with flow carbon. Chaos.

You know, put the carbon credits on the blockchain thing. And then turn that into flow, the real estate thing. So still add. like killed, you know, and then we had to have flow carbon on the show to be like, are you dead? And they were like, no. Like the Tom Hanks of the Twisties where like just every other year he's got an Academy

Award winning performance. Uh, shout out to Adam Newman. Um, you know, just always, you know, it's kind of like life's like a box of chocolates, Philadelphia, uh, you know, just the cast away. Tom always puts in, Adam and Tom always put in a great performance. They do. make for great content here. And then finally, a friend of the show and criminal on the lamb, allegedly, Doe Kwan, who famously tried to explain to me staking, which I couldn't understand,

and red flags and face palms, uh, galore to do a little callback to earlier. My lord, he was on episode 1251 and then we talked about him on 1570. I mean, this show has been going on for a While our folks were still out of it. Yes. He was on last year. I was not here yet, episode 1251. And then we were talking about the fact that he was on the run. There was an Interpol notice put out for him on behalf of South Korea.

And on episode 1570, we talked about how he was just like tweeting away. And then being like, I'm not going to tell you where I am unless you want to play a game, like a location based game. Gen Zee criminals are awesome. Right. They're just like, Genesee criminals are just, they hit defense. They're like, you know what? we're going to, they all think they're like the riddler or something or like the Joker. They can't just commit a crime and disappear.

They're like, some people just want to watch the world burn. You and I need each other. And Tocuan's like, come and get me. I'm in the Philippines or maybe I'm in your backyard. Literally. And then Shrelly comes out of hiding. And Screly is like, oh, by the way, on some live stream, the Legion of Dopes comes out. And they're like, you know what?

Jell's not that bad. Jell's not so bad. Don't love it. Shrelly, Adam Newman, Sam Bankman Fraud, who's the lady boss who flipped on him this week? Carolyn Ellison. I mean, they're just, she's like poison ivy.

She is like Poison Ivy. I mean, she's just like Carolyn. I want to know everything about Carolyn Elson. She is totally. Like Wonder Woman's adversary Cheetah? Yes. They're just such a. Oh my God.

And none of them can just stop. Dokes. You, if you give, if, can you imagine Bernie Madoff on live streams or tweeting? Can you imagine Bernie Madoff tweeting? And this is true from like March to July, four Doquan tweets. One, you still poor? May. Pretty sure he's poor.

January. I don't gamble against the poor. Oh, my God. What I said was, have fun staying poor. I mean, it's just. Imagine, imagine ripping off investors. and retail investors and everybody in your life and then just going on the lamb and tweeting about

how it sucks to be poor. Like that, yeah, it's just crazy. It's crazy. Rounding up villain of the year. This one I forgot. Yeah,

me too. I forgot about this. And this one is a doozy. Yeah. T.com. Better.com. Better.com CEO Vishal Garg. Remember this guy?

He was on the layoff train early. He fired 900 people over Zoom. And then he said, quote, we probably pissed away $200 million in a layoff meeting. He accused at least 250 of the fired workers of stealing from the company through a lack of productivity. And then he was sued by a former executive for allegedly misleading investors. And this person is just, I remember this story and we had to cover it multiple times.

Yeah. And it was just like, dude, if you're laying people off, like, come on. Like, there's a way to do this. like treat people fairly, have some compassion, whatever, like you don't have to blame them on the way out.

Anyway, was that this year? That was all in 2022. Wow. I mean, these villains, they piled up. I mean,

if you want to know why socialists hate technology and companies, here's exhibits A, B, C, and D. It's these marauding capitalist nightmares. I mean, they're just,

and the lack of self-awareness, you know, I will say about Adam Newman, he made people money. he had a good spirit about it I kind of feel like he stands out on this list as maybe just being precocious more than being

just sinister. Eccentric, you know? Yeah, I'm misunderstood. I don't feel that he's a robber. He's kind of like an anti-hero in a way. But who's the winner here, Molly? He is, all right, but let's open the envelope. Let's give that a good rip.

And the winner is Bap, Bap, Bha. Sam Bankman-free. I mean, I feel it's sort of like when Merrill Streep is nominated. Right. Everybody else is like, it's an honor to be nominated. Thanks. I'm glad I got to get dressed up.

Everybody else is like, I'm glad to be here. I put the sequence on. You know, like, yeah, don't want to speech. No need to prepare our speech. You're not winning. This guy, he's going to be the main character for a while. Oh, next year is going to be so great. The coverage of him next year, I mean, he's, I guess he's going to go to trial.

I guess he's going to try to go for it. I don't think he's, I think he's, I think he's going to be. to go for it. I think he's going to go to trial. I think he's going to agree to be extradited and everybody was like, bro, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Also, we talk about how he went and said that he had $100,000 in his bank account in one of his media interviews and then somehow posted a $250 million bail. I mean, I know you only have to post 10% of it, but still, that's more than a hundred grand. A lot of us are trying to figure that one out. Hmm. I, you know, I, it's a, bail is a

complicated thing. Yes. You want to make sure people don't go out on the land. there are people who are dangerous. So is he dangerous? Like, is he going to go murder somebody? No, he doesn't have a violent history. He's not like an armed robber or something, right? Like, if you were a rapist or a murderer, like, we get it. Like, what do they call it when you don't get bail?

You don't get bail, right? You don't get bail. We understand. That's what we call it. Yeah. So you denied bail. In this case, like, I guess you should get bail and they take his, he's, give him an ankle bracelet, they give him, they take away his passport.

I still think this guy could go on the limb. I think it's a small percentage. I think he's like so delusional. He doesn't think he has to. If I was him, honestly, I don't think he understands like he's going to spend 30 years in jail, 40 years of jail, the best year's life. This kid should shave his head, get on an e-bike, and head to the mountains and like just disappear like Grizzly Man. Somehow get yourself up to Alaska and go work like Superman did on like a fishing boat. Remember in the Man of Seal?

Like Superman's like working on a fishing boat just to be like hitting. out there and then it gets discovered because he has to save somebody's life or whatever. This kid should just go be a fisherman. Do it. Go, Doquan. Go go, Doquan. Go play geolocated video games with Doquan and tweet about it. Like the two of them should go on the lamp. Well, Toguan's on the lamb. The two of them should go on the lamb. She should find Doquan and they should just get a fishing boat with a couple of Bitcoin. They should McCaffey this. Remember McCaffey? Yes, totally. McCaffey was on the lamb until he died.

He died in a Spanish prison, which if you're going to die in a prison, Spanish prison sounds kind of romantic. It's not the worst end. It's a good dramatic end. All right, let's keep going. Bag secure, as long as we're on the villain train. I love this category. I love that this exists.

Who secured the biggest bag or secured it the best this year? All right. This is reaching in deep here. Candidates, Michael McCaffrey, the former CEO of the Block. This is so great. This was amazing. secured a large bag. It came to light earlier this year that he received three loans from Sam Bankman-Fried.

Let's remind everybody what the block is. It's a publication. A blog. It's a blog. It's not a newspaper, right? But it's news that covers the crypto industry. And then it came to light that this guy, Michael McCaffrey, former CEO of the block, secured $43 million in loans from Sam.

Bankman Freed, one of those loans was to help him buy a condo in the Bahamas. Hmm. No red flags there. No red flags there. This would be like the head of Engadget, you know, receiving $43 million in loans from like Apple or something. Right. The person you're covering every day, you're like Samsung. Or even more than that would be like if Macworld, right, because they only covered one thing, the freaking crypto industry.

Fair enough. It'd be like if you found out that the CEO of Macworld had a couple of condo of the Bahamas that Apple bought him. Yeah, or Steve Jobs, yeah. Maybe, my favorite is, and this is, this is my lead. I don't know what the academy is thinking. You know, it's hard to read them sometimes. It is.

But Hopin CEO, who was, I believe, I believe, no, maybe he wasn't on the pod. I don't know if he was on the pod or not. I don't think so. I think he was, but this was the Johnny Bufaret. Mm-hmm. He cashed out, I kid you not, $195 million in second. when Hoppin raised at a $7.8 billion valuation, Hoppin is Zoom plus Slack

plus like a little area to put like a web page with some chat rooms for like what would have been the trade show area. In other words, it's virtual conference server. So during the pandemic, every corporation was like, we need to do virtual conferences. Hey, they work.

And so there is something to it, right? We use this software called Circle for $200 a month. same functionality basically for what he's charging 100,000 a year. Oh, is he? I think so. I mean, it's commodity software, let's be honest.

It is like message boards plus Zoom plus Slack, you know, it's not, doesn't take a lot to build it. Let me just say that. I'm not being derogatory here, but it's pretty basic. It's basic software.

And even the thing is that even if we say they built a real thing at exactly the right time, right? It's a real thing. It still exists. No good to it. During COVID, when apparently everybody, this is, I find this like human, this specific human behavior to be so interesting when everybody decided, oh, it will always be a pandemic. The pandemic will never end.

This is the most valuable company ever. Yeah. They value hop in at $7.9 billion, $7.8 billion during the peak of COVID. And then Johnny Bufarhot, who is among the humans who is smart enough to realize it will not always be COVID. And his company was not worth $7.8 billion. His company was in no way worth $7.8 billion, but this guy is no dumb, and he cashed out almost $200 million in secondary sales.

Unbelievable. Secured the bag. I always tell people, like, if you're going to, you know, as a venture capitalist, as a collection of board, you know, like if somebody, and this was, this company was a very young company, hadn't been around a long time, hadn't had this valuation. So to let the CEO take out more than five or ten million bucks is insane. The capital allocators here who gave LP money to him at this level, they got some explaining to do.

They got some explaining to do. By September 2021, there were stories about him in the software report.com saying he is Europe's latest self-made billionaire. Oh, well, it's on paper. But he materialized 19.5% of a billion. And that's what it's all about, turning those paper returns into paper. Well played. Congratulations on securing the bag. Well played.

Another SBF Contagion is our third nominee in this critical category of securing the bag. Yeah, wow, he really passed the bag around, if you will. Oh, yes. Sam Bankman-Fried's parents secured quite a bag for themselves, if only potentially for a short time. he of course kept them in all kinds of good care. He bought them some pretty pimp real estate, a $16.4 million mansion in the Bahamas that was listed in the name of the company. But like maybe their names were on this.

Either way, they were just living in the parents who, the parents who were, you know, respected law professors at Stanford live in the dream in this 16.4 million dollar mansion in the Bahamas, thanks to the hard, hard work. Better than my house. Well, maybe. Close. I'm not saying for a professor.

Remember, kids, he got there through. Yeah, exactly. I'm not for my money. I got lucky, too, but I mean, I certainly didn't secure it from, I certainly didn't secure it for, I didn't secure my bag from. Oh, that's right. Yes. SBF said he has no idea how the house ended up under his parents name. Oops.

Wow. I just have no idea. It must have been the patch. The patch defense. Whatever that patch is, he obviously had him. All right, let's open this up. And the winner is. The bag secure of the year is.

Oh, it's so hard this one. McCaffrey. McCaffrey. Wow. Michael McCaffrey has won the Twisty for Bag Secure of the Year. It's a little bit of an upset over Hoppin. That's a wild card. It's like Moonlight.

What was that? Moonlight that won the best picture. Remember that indie film? one a couple years ago. Yeah, totally. And they had that controversy. They thought it was La La Land. No, no, no, it's Moly.

That's, this is our moment. Yeah. I thought for sure to be Poppin C. Hoppin CEO. I know. Totally. But you got to admit. We went with the smaller bag, the indie bag.

The indie bag. But the, like, the dirty bag. I mean, that's such a dirty bag. Such a dirty bag. It's such a, like, deliciously dirty bag. That was kind of hard not to give it to him. This kid is getting pinched, too. All that money's going back.

Yeah. Oh, Michael. You got some. You enjoyed that bad. Southern District of New York. Hello, Michael. It's the Southern District of New York. SDNY.

Yeah. Oh, man. Can you imagine you got your phone and like, and it says SDNY. Oh, God. You just throw that thing right in the ocean. You just chuck it. Just chuck it and run.

Throw it right into the Bahamas, right off the shore, right off the dock. Right to the lagoon. Just, all right. Best sea of the year. Here we. Love this. Candidates, include.

Barry from Peloton. Why would we pick Barry from Peloton? Joined in February after an eight-year stint at Spotify to try to save this company. We're trying to get him on the show. He's a little podcast shy. I know. But, you know, come on the show. I'm a big fan and proponent of, uh, and I, you know, I gave him some flowers. Oh, my Lord. We know the jury is still out on Peloton. It's a tough, tough road to ho here, but we have just really liked his style. Like, he's been a really honest communicator. He's not been afraid to shake things up over there. No. I think Barry is like,

these are the CEO we're rooting for. We are rooting for you, Barry from Pelotomi. I think it's a great product, great team. And they clearly got ahead of their skis and they spent money like drunken sailors. And you got to clean up the mess. He's like, you know what he's like? He's like dad comes home after like long weekend and the kids had a rager for two nights and the police showed up and there's like a couch on the front lawn that's been lit on fire. and like the fire department and police are there and he's like, uh,

yes, this is my house. Yeah. Now. Okay. How do we, how do we clean this up? Uh,

so wishing him luck. I hear people are buying the debt. Because I was going to buy the stock. Somebody said, you know, the debt holders are going to own this company in all likelihood. Don't buy the stock by the debt. The equity could get wiped out.

That's the back channel. Next up on our list, my guy, General Sazlov of Warner Brothers discovery. I mean, whatever you think of these moves, this guy has been making them. Yes. He is making moves.

Zazlop has been completely shaking things up as the new head of Warner Brothers Discovery. He brought on James Gunn and Peter Saffran to revamp the DC universe. He's been killing fan favorite projects left and right. I mean, he is not afraid to piss people off. No. And I like his move that they're going to make Max their kind of Hulu equivalent. Let HBO have its brand. that Discovery has its brand and everything in between.

I think that they come in number two or number three, ultimately, in the streaming race. I think it's Disney, Netflix, and Warner Brothers Discovery will be, you know, one, two, and three in perhaps that order. But it could get shaken up because HBO does TV better than anybody. I know, I wasn't even sold on the, like, the Max umbrella, and now I am. I'm coming around. Yeah, I mean. Zahzla. Bulu, world's off the time.

Like short term, big impact. Next up. Big Bob. Big Bob one and Bob three. The Bob. Bob is back in the seat that you never quit. You never quit. A hit rock band.

Roger Waters, Pink Floyd. You never hit a great TV show. David Caruso, NYPD Blue. You never quit a movie franchise where you could do many movies like Batman, Michael Keaton. comments to mind. You want to milk those franchises and the best seat in the industry? Most enjoyable job is being the CEO of Disney. Parks, premieres, merch, every cruises. Can you imagine the job? You got it all.

ESPN, you're going to the Super Bowl, you're going to movie premieres, you take your friends with a park. What a job. Look at this picture of Bob Iger in his office. Look how happy is. Look at the contentness. That says, I'm having lunch with a movie star. And then I'm going to go to the parks and, you know, meet like some president of another country that I'm getting on my private jet. And I'm going to go to Disneyland in Japan, Tokyo, France, somewhere. And then I'm going to go to Davos.

That's what that smile says. And then I'm going to be courtside at whatever game is on whatever sport I want. I'm going to go to the Laker game with Leo or whoever. That's what it says. Bob Iger, of course, as we covered in detail. Left appointed Bob Chapec. You could almost say sandbagged Bob Chapec, who then flamed out. And Iger...

And who's number four on this list? It looks like it's beep from beep. Number four is beep from beep. You know, just because like, come on, are we going to ignore that? You have to put Elon from Twitter on this list. You have to put Elon in there. And you have to say, why? Because Twitter.

Well, you know, listen, there's a lot of controversy. in the first six weeks. Obviously, I'm very close to it. But putting aside of all the controversies, missteps, and mayhem that happened during that story of the year. I think it's the story of the year. It's the story of the year.

Yeah. Putting it all aside, the reverberations inside of Silicon Valley about austerity and hard work and what it takes to run one of these companies and essentialism, all of that, has had a profound impact on all CEOs. So say what you will about, you know, mercurial decisions on the margins

or, you know, spicy tweets here and again. I think it has had a major impact on how VCs, capital allocators, and of course, founders are running their companies. Well, to me, that's the story is what we will find out about that approach. Like, what to me is interesting is the willingness and even eagerness to take away the lesson

that like we should also do this. And I will be very curious to see in 2023 how that plays out. And beyond. And beyond. Massive earnings for the people who take that lesson and profits and higher stock prices. No, no, no.

You're doing the prediction show. Oh, sorry. Save it. Save it. Save it. Zip it. All right. So those are our nominees.

I think you can all agree. Those are all good nominees. I'm surprised to see. that you know, I thought maybe Microsoft would have gotten in on this but Microsoft didn't make the list here.

Satea has the quiet storm. Yes, Sot. Yeah, very interesting. Okay, sorry Sotter. All right, who's the winner? Who's the winner? All right. Who is the winner of Best CEO of the Year?

To recap, we have Barry from Peloton. We have General Zazlov over at Warner. We've got Bob Iger and we have Elon at Twitter. The winner is General Zodzlov. Oh, wow. I don't even call Zazlav anymore. Even Zod's Slav. Because you're putting,

the joke is, the Super Round 2, General Zod comes in and says bow before Zod when he came in there, not to similar to Elon's approach with Twitter, is, hey, listen, we got to get fit here. We're going to, we're going to clean this up.

This is a bit of a mess. And I do believe that this could be one of the breakout companies of the next five years. What a collection of assets, including the D.C. universe, I think this James Gunn move, based on what Lon said,

the mess that is DC, I think could become a huge success for them. Man, those characters, the way Marvel shepherded their characters compared to Disney, it's like night and day. They really just,

I mean, the fact that we don't have Green Lantern, Hawkman, Hawk Woman, like all of these other Martian Manhunter. There's so many, the Justice League,

the Legion of Doom, none of this has come together. The only thing that's really come together is Batman and Wonder Woman. and Aquaman. They basically scratched the surface of what's possible here. And they scratched all of those, except for Batman and are going back to the drawing board with all of them, which is super interesting too. I mean, this, I think you can definitely say, I'm going to agree with the Academy on this one.

I think he gave us great content throughout the year, first of all. So thanks for that. But then also is having this really big impact on a very struggling company that will have, I think, really broad reverberations, like beyond the valley for everybody. Start up of the year. Here we go. This is the big one. Start up of the year. Very good.

We have Open AI. Open AI coming as our first nominee. Obviously, chat GPT is just taking the world by storm. Yeah. Just unbelievable. And it dolly is theirs as well. Dolly is theirs as well. Yeah.

So you get those two. I mean, seriously, Open AI like blew the doors open as a startup this year. Ble the doors open. Also, drone up was our second nominee here. People have been sleeping on drones because you know, it was another one of these false starts, but they are now partnered with Walmart, and there are going to be dozens of cities where, you know, a couple of pound packages from Walmart will be, you know, coming down from a drone in your front yard.

That this is going to, this is going to arrive. I think it's going to be drone delivery, VTALs, then full self-driving in that order of what we experience about the future. And so drone up, that is a wild, wild. That's a good one. Plus, we loved that CEO. Tom, like military guy. He just had it buttoned up. He was a really, I have him on my list actually, like, a reminder went off about a week ago to follow up because I was, you know, it was like follow up with him in six months. Really interesting startup. And then, pipe dream, another startup that we became enamored of discussing, which is the company that's going to enable 30 second delivery times through underground pipes in cities. Now, to be clear, we have questions.

sure about how doable this is but it was it's ambitious it's interesting it seemed pretty well thought out you know all things considered nomadic tubes we used to have them they used to be sending letters uh you know around wall street and uh there was a pneumatic tube system for the post office to send post around Manhattan and we we pulled those up during that episode uh uh episode 1443 it's a very cool idea why shouldn't we you know you look at the the boring company You look at tunneling. These don't need to be giant tunnels. Well, they weren't even talking about tunneling.

They're like just use existing infrastructure where there are already pipes. Like every building has plumbing and electrical and the pipes are already dug. So they didn't even, I mean, it was really like the more you dug into it, the more you were like, oh, actually, they could just kind of do that. I mean, imagine you go to your garage and, you know, if you lived in a planned community. Yeah. And there's a Walmart. And let's say they build a thousand homes in the planned community. When they build it, when they're building the plumbing, if they just put one of these and like literally it goes by your house and you go to your garage and like you have your garbage cans and then next to it you have this and like, you know, a small package comes, batteries, burritos, medicines, whatever it is.

I mean, this could be amazing. I'm glad somebody's working on it. I like this. Next up, Andrew, the defense contractor with my favorite CEO, of course, Parm Milwaukee. Mm-hmm. I'm doing very important drones. Such terrifying. But awesome.

It's great. Yeah. You know, I mean, this is a really, really impactful startup, like no question and got a lot of attention this year. And then, of course, the startup that all the cool kids are on. Oh, no. Be real. Front and back photos at the same time, all shared by your friends at the same time, obviously

a huge contribution to bettering our society. But it was seriously, it arrived. I mean, social apps come and go, right? There was like a whole handful of them. But it arrived and the next thing, you know, TikTok was ripping it off. Instagram's been ripping it off. Like, it hit. This one landed.

It hit different. It hit different. Who's the winner here? I mean, I, you know, I kind of feel like chat cheap, open AI has to run away with this. But, you know, you never know with the academy. I know. You never know. We got some Gen Zs on there.

All right. The winner is, the envelope, please. It's open AI. Oh, good. There's no way we're going to do. Be real. And I was just going to be like, you know, I don't want them virtue signaling. and ruining the Oscars again.

I'm sorry, the Twisties with this like, oh, we're going to go with the social app again. You know, like, how would that be virtual signal? I don't even understand how people use these words. Social justice, social message, social media. Always social these academies. They always go social. And here they went with tech.

I like it. You know, this would be like the Oscars if they picked a science fiction film as best film. How often do they do that? Never. They would never do that. What if they, what if they pick the comic book film for best picture. Never.

They never do that. They never do that. It's always got to be something with sadness or somebody suffering. You know, it's always too much for me. I think that's the mainstream. I think that's what the people like. God help us. No, they don't go mainstream. Their Oscars has stopped going. Titanic?

That's a long time ago. That's what they used to do is they used to be like, oh, what did people like? And they were okay with, you know, I don't know. Now they got to be all A.O. Scott. in here. Well, that's basically it. Like, Moonlight was like a mid picture, like a six out of ten.

And they're like, Moonlight and la la la, everything's got to be artistic and whatever. You can't have a maverick win. Not good either. Both of them are mids. The problem is, the only thing that happens in movies right now

is Marvel and Star Wars. So then they're kind of left with a little bit of a like a turd bucket. Well, not here at the twist. Not here, though. Feels like very, uh, not heavy-handed. They're not trying to, smack the chalkboard with the pointer like a teacher and say,

hey, you have to pick this one for this reason. They pick the one that actually, I think, is going to make the biggest impact. Okay, defunct startup of the year. These are things that went out of business, okay? This is in memoriam. This is in memoriam. Some surprises on this list.

I got to say, I was very surprised to see Argo AI, the Ford-backed autonomous vehicle platform, unicorn. We talked about it in May of 2022, which is when they actually launched self-driving test cars in Austin and Miami. I mean, Argo was off to the races. They had all the talent. I was there at the launch, actually, when Ford made the announcement and they had scooped up, like, top-tier autonomous

vehicle talent. Just went poof overnight. It's, there were a lot of people going after this. It's incredibly hard. Yeah. A lot of companies are 85% of the way there, 100% of the way there, or 99% of the way there on grid systems, limited, you know, areas. But it's the edge cases.

You know, when you get snow, You get rain, you get people, you know, who are drunk or high out of their minds walking in the middle of the street. Like, autonomy doesn't work very well in those situations. It's going to take a lot of time to deal with, you know, being up in the mountains, being in the tenderline or being on a street, you know, in Italy or something where it's, it's tiny little streets that were built hundreds of years ago. Yeah. In Arizona, you're going to get it right. So it's self-driving is taking a long time, but it's a big prize. and we're going to see like,

what do they call that? Like attrition. It's going to be like, it's like an ultra-marital. People thought it was a marathon, Molly? Right. I think it's an ultra-marathon. It's like one of those 100-mile things.

100%. 100%. 100%. 100%. Under Dom Hollins, Fast.com which went poof. It went poof.

And he was insufferable at times. I had him on an episode. He begged to be on the show many times. because the art people were begging to be on the show. And, you know, I was like, ah, okay, fine, I'll do it. And that was episode 11.03 back in September of 2020. But it was like one of those things where you bring somebody on the show and you know they're just there to promote and they're just like hyper.

Yeah. I'm just like, it's not enjoyable because they're not having a discussion. They're on talking points. It was like one of those kind of moments. Well, there were a bunch of stories that came out after that said that there were some likely red flags about Dom Holland and things that he had done before. Oh, my God. His history was brutal.

His history was brutal. And yet they, you know, raised a ton of money and fast burned through $165 million in venture money. Yeah. And then just poof, went poof, shut down. But they did do a nice hoodie. They did a great hoodie. Nice hoodie.

They sold a gazillion of them or $10. And the kid who made the hoodies, by the way, I shouted him out on Twitter. He's made a merch company now. And he gave me a thank you on Twitter. So it was a very smart move. Like they had one, the most innovative thing they ever did was, for their company was they did a hoodie

that was unbelievably cheap. I think they may have sold it for 10 bucks at one point or five bucks. They sold a gazillion of them. It was a very smart move if they were a clothing company. It would have been there like... What is it?

IKEA, you guys told me IKEA has something like meatballs for cheap and then at Costco, you got something. What did you guys tell me? There's chicken sandwich at Costco. It's hot dogs. It's hot dogs for a buck 50. And the meatballs at IKEA, man.

Yeah. Anyway, you guys were telling me about this thing. I took my kid to dinner at IKEA and I was like, dude, dude, dude, dude, Jason's never bent IKEA. This is the fast hoodie wasn't 30 bucks. There was a cheaper one. Yeah. You know what?

We would like to offer to take you to dinner at IKEA because the meatballs are a delight. That's just an experience you have to have in life. It was five bucks for the hoodie. But yes, I will get the meatballs. Yeah, it was five bucks. And I think they probably lost five bucks on it, but it just made everybody link to the site. Right. So it was an, I think it was like a secret covert.

CEO strategy, you know, buying an inbound link, what does that cost? Like, 500 bucks or something? Oh, and you had to make an account. So it was kind of like, open an account, you get the five bucks. If you're used, if you keep one out of 10, then your customer acquisition cost is 50. So there's kind of unique things like that that are smart to do. I, uh, I, I, like, want to retroactively out of category. Don't worry about you don't have to do it producers, but like biggest VC whiffs because this was

one of them. Yeah. This kid, a little diligence could have caught this dude early. Well, you know. got $165 million and he's good at marketing, but not one-click checkout. We will talk about this in the prediction show. Yes, we will. After the Twisties.

We've had a lot of feelings about that prediction of governance. Okay, How's Low Alcohol, Aparatif was on episode 14.29. Delightful, but they hit hard times like most D-To-C companies, direct-to-consumer companies, very hard, and they went out of business. Who is the defunct startup of the year? Who is the defunct startup of the year? The envelope, please. A rip

Pretty obvious It's fast Of course Of course It was a spectacular Flowout And nobody liked the kid And he was like a bit

You know what they say Like the empty can makes too much noise It was a little bit of that kind of situation Where he was just like The noise was greater than the substance Right? And you're just like Maybe less noise

More product You know Yeah Okay And then here we go We're almost to the end The biggie News topic of the year

news topic of the year. I mean, all right, there were so many to choose from because as we said on basically every single show all year long,

the news just kept on coming. We had the crypto collapse encompassing Terra Luna, 3AC, Celsius, FTX, Blockfly, Voyager, SPF. I mean, like,

it went on and on and on and on. Okay. That was one. Big topic. The next one was working isn't working. Which we, We made a catch-all.

You had the quiet quitting. You had the great resignation. You had remote work. You had riffs. Nobody wants to work. This basically, everybody, the hand-wringing around work

became one of the stories. The working class, the management class, the riffs, doing more with less, quiet quitting, overworking, people working two or three jobs.

Just the relationship that we have as humans to work, labor, as in juxtaposition to management, the coddling, the callousness. It's really interesting, isn't it? Like, we've really hit on, like, a whole, like, thesis. This is like a PhD year in terms of talking about labor

because it is actually fascinating. And then just the fact that the Fed spent the whole year trying to, like, put millions of people out of work, and it just all it did was, like, hit the stock market in billionaires. Like, it didn't help. I mean, listen. Maybe we're like, can you stop trying to put me out of business? Like, it's just fascinating.

What a great, great observation, Molly. Like, the fed's like, you guys made too much money. We're going to raise interest rates. Please stop hiring people. And then finally, but we're like, fine, we'll stop hiring people. It was like, yeah, and lay people off. And it's like, okay, we'll lay off some people, but we still need people to drive trucks. And we need waiters and we need people to pick strawberries.

And we need nannies and we need Uber drivers and DoorDash drivers. Okay, fine. We'll get rid of all the high paid people. Like, what do we think is going to happen here? And we're finally seeing if you get rid of a bunch of a bunch of white collar workers, then maybe it will break housing. And then if you break housing, maybe you can break this, you know, unemployment. And I mean, isn't it weird?

Yay? Like, it's sort of like, like it's supposed to be like a victory. That's supposed to be a victory. But then you're, all the people who got the jobs as waiters and Uber drivers. Strange victory. Are also probably going to get fired because it's a strange victory. It's just a weird, but it is like, it is a, it's been a fascinating year in work. Basically.

You know, and we really do need to start thinking about immigration. Like, if we let some people immigrate to this country, that would be vital. Let's, let's clean that up. You know, you get two or three million people coming in here illegally. Let's give up a path. I mean, I love the idea of people having a path, you know, to being great citizens of this great country. Let's recruit some great people. Anyway, AI for everything.

My Lord, did that become the theme of the year towards the second half of the year. I think the dolly stuff was like kind of, yeah. It was like a toy. It was like a toy. Deep fakes, right? Those were kind of interesting. We started seeing some deep fakes of different people. And we're like, huh, that's getting a little scary, right?

We started across the uncanny valley. But then chat, GPT broke it open. It did. And let's not forget that Google's AI became sentient. Allegedly. Allegedly. And I have a big year for AI. And one person was like going to go talk to the daily mall of the sun and be like, yeah, no, it's over.

It's Terminator 2. Yeah. He did. They fired him because he emailed everybody that he worked with. and was like, our machine is alive. And they were like, hey, stop microdosing, brough. Stop my brainosing at work. I'm just saying, if AI got intense enough, like, that's how intense AI got this year.

That somebody in that field was like, like, cracked. And speaking of fungi. And speaking of fungi. Mushrooms are. Remained a big story and a huge subtopic in climate is mushrooms. Ayo. But not like that. Mushrooms are huge.

Yeah. I mean, they work for so many different things. I'm going to people. You can use. So I did at least three specific interviews on this week in climate startups about mushrooms and how you can use them to make a new material in place of leather. You can turn toxic waste material into other building materials of renewable materials using mushrooms. And then obviously you can turn it into food.

Like this company, Hafei is making a much like fungi flower to replace flour. I mean, it just is like a sub, this is a subgenre. I had that on my English muffin. I had a hyphy fungi English muffin this morning, and I am seeing two rainbows on the mountain behind me. It's a double rainbow morning for me. All right. This is for me very hard.

This is really tough. I'm looking at the first three topics. Work and labor, AI, and crypto. This took out a lot of our cycles this year. I don't know which one. Who do you think is going to win, Molly? Who do you think is going to win? Who's your winner?

How could you even choose this? Oh. I mean, AI for humanity feels like the future. Crypto feels like the review mirror. And working feels like the now. Well, and the thing is that AI is also all about work. Oh, stunning. I think you nailed it.

I think it's a lot. For me, it's got to be AI, right? Because AI also is, it's all of those things. I was going to go with the story the end of the year was the work thing. But you kind of pulled me into AI with your dove telling. Who's the winner? Who's the winner? Yeah, who's the winner?

All right. Let's find out. Let's find out. Okay. News topic of the year. Working. Yes. Okay. Right.

You have to remember the award. Right. It is the topic of the year. You're right. AI is the topic of next year. Correct. Which we will discuss more in our prediction show. But this is the topic of this year.

Quiet kidding. The great resignation. These crazy riffs. No one wanting to work. People doing overworking. Remote working. Back to office. It never ended.

and it still has not ended. We're still in the midst of it. We 100% are. It's fascinating. All right, good choice. Good choice, Academy. I agree with you. The best twist exclusive content.

Forget about what the rest of the world we're doing. This is about what we did on this show. Okay. And crushed it. This category is for most surprisingly awesome this week in startups guest of the year. Let's get into the candidates. My new mentor. in life.

Sally Crotch. The awesome guest of the year. Surprisingly. Surprisingly awesome. Yep. Wildcard. Would not have thought. In fact, this is what, so I interviewed

L of S CEO, Sally Krochek about her women-focused investing platform. And I was like, really? I don't know how I feel about a women-focused.

Why does that have to be a woman-to- And I talked to Sally Crock- Yeah. And then I talked to Sally Crock- And she was like, well, at first, I was like, like, I don't want to do a women's investing program. But then she was like, here's why we need to, because men die sooner and women live longer. And then also were just like not taught to, and I was

like, oh my God, completely sold. And also she was just a phenomenal guest, total boss, super interesting. And then we had canned water company Liquid Death CEO on the program, episode 1584. Mike Cesario, a great example of a creative turned founder, a different kind of builder, basically a freaking brand genius. And by the way, he does hardly any press. So this was like a great get. I had a great conversation with my sister. I loved our next candidate Bloomberg's Mark German. He has the Apple scoops. I mean, I think this guy bugged the Apple office. He kept coming on to talk about Apple's AR future next year. And I made a trade based on it. I think Apple's going to win AR. I think AR is going to be important. I think VR is nonsense. It's like, you know, the big, the try, oh my goodbye of VR. will become the AR, always AR. I think some people are going to be always AR.

They're going to keep those AR glasses on. They're not taking them off, just like people who are addicted to phones. I believe always AR will be, I'm giving a future trend here. We'll save that. I'll expand on it in our next show. I do think AR is the future. And it's super compelling. And I think those glasses could get small enough that I might be skiing down this mountain

with AR goggles, you know, two or three years. And you're never going to take them off. Once you put them on, you get that. You're never taking them. off. And then we have a little bit of a wild card for most surprisingly awesome guest. Now former reporter for the information, Malik Morris, came on episode 1449. This is when Ryan Breslo was being the main character with the Bolt Stories. He gave the best Bolt breakdown ever. This was his headshot for the information which looks like a student ID, which is just a delightful, like kudos to you. That's so

awesome. And now he's at Business of Fashion and he was just, he was a fantastic guest. Yeah, wild card who also got every single bit of information about bolt shout out malik yeah good job on that investigative for who's the winner here i mean i i like the two reporters but you know hey could be one of two cos here we go i know i like how we have two reporters and two CEOs too the winner is envelope malik morris oh i like it you know why i like it i like it because nobody would expect it like uh just you know an unknown reporter uh or lesser known reporter comes in and does the work and gets the reward. So congratulations. I think we maybe also sent him a bottle of Don Julio. I think he was the only reporter that we straight up bribed. Yeah, we just sent him a bottle of Don Julio. Hopefully that did not

impact his career at the information. I think maybe his employer was like, wait a second. I think so. Hopefully that's not why he's not there anymore, but Malik, right on. Interview of the year. This is always a coveted one. Edina Heffitz, you know, she talked about the hit piece and layoffs, the struggles of a female founder on episode 1600. Yeah. Great interview. She just, I was so. impressed with her for coming on and just taking on that hit piece head on. And it was just a really good conversation. Legendary VC Doug Leone was on episode 1403. Wow. Hope is not a plan. Let's make a plan. What a legend. Yeah. What a legendary interview too. That conversation was amazing. I mean,

I just kept rewinding it. Yeah. I'm listening to chunks of it. That's like a, that's, that's one of them that you listen to twice. Toby, Lukey, uh, coming on and talking about the state of e-commerce, layoffs, everything. You know, it's just always a great interview. We have. have such a great rapport. He and I, episode 1568, another great one. Mm-hmm. And then Frank Sluppman. General. The general. Full of great quotes. All products start with great architecture. He talked about hiring top talent to lead to victory. And he said, if you were, and by the way, if you're wondering, Frank Sleutman's definition of victory is breaking the enemy's will to fight. He said, ubiquitous win-win deals are not possible. He just came on and was like,

hi, I'm Frank Slootman and I'm a stone cold killer. It was like an action movie of a news interview. This is so tough. You know, for me, it's Doug Leone or Sleuteman, I think. Just because, you know, being on the top of their games, you know, I think the other two are up-and-comers, right? So the amount of wisdom for Toby and Adina is going to triple, quadruple over the next couple of decades. But for Doug and Sleutman, you know, these are five decades, four decades of knowledge, right? It's hard to compete because wisdom compounds in those final decades out of much higher velocity

because it's building on each other. I think it's got to be Sloot or Doug Leone. Who is the winner of this one? This is a tough one. I know. The winner is... Who shorts is Molly before you read it? Too late.

I already saw it. However, I agree with the Academy's choice here of Sluutman. See, I would have went Doug Lione, but okay. I can't argue with the Academy. Doug Lione was amazing, but there's something about that Sluutman interview that's just so... You know what it is? It gets you fired up. Yes.

It makes you want to storm the beach. Like Leone, you learn from and it's like sitting around reading an incredible, you know, nonfiction book and like, that's really well done. It's like a Michael Lewis nonfiction. Like it's very engaging. Very inspo. But Lubin made me want to fight. Yeah.

All right. Let's do chemistry. All right. Chemistry is an important one. We have our spicy debo. CNBC's Debo. We've had her on the program a couple times. We got into it on CNBC.

She and I. I love, like, hey, if you have, asked me the question, you got to let me answer, then she came on, she was spicy. She's, you know, she's a firecracker. I'll leave it at that. I love, Deirdreboza. And she and I have such a fun time on the show. I think we did one where you weren't here. We were taking pot shots left and right. Like, just a blast, Deerbosy. What is it about her? That makes her so compelling to you in terms of rapport. Tell me. I think that she is a rare combination of a person who has strong opinions.

and has done the work. Okay. She can back them up. She does the reporting. She's honest. And she listens and turns the tables and asks you questions too. So she's the perfect talent because she's great talent. Yes.

And she has great opinions and she states them, but she does not take over the show. Ah. So just very good at passing the ball. You know, what we always talk about, you know, that warrior style of basketball, you know, just keep moving the ball, keep looking for that better shot. An extra pass never hurts or almost never hurts. Next up, Acquired's Ben Gilbert. He comes on, he's prepared every time.

And very much like your, and look at the great headshot too. I mean, great hair, great hair, great smile, the whole thing. But he's a capital allocator who comes prepared. He reads every possible book on entrepreneurship. Acquired FM, great podcasts for going deep dive into companies, something I want to try to do here a little bit more because we're so topical. I think some of those deep dives would be just good for you and I, Molly, to explore that Acquired FM History Channel kind of format.

Absolutely. make us smarter be like something where I really want to put on our docket for next year. But I have a great report with him because he also, same thing with Debo, likes to turn it around and ask me a question. So just great at a follow-up question or building the conversation. You know, like what do they say in improv? You always do certain words. Yes, and.

Yes, and. He's like a yes-end. And Debo is like a yes-end type of guest. Of course, my ask an angel and a fan favorite. Zach Collius. He's been on so many times. I don't need, I've lost count. But he's just even, he matches my candidness.

Sometimes he's even more candid. Self deprecating. Total fanfave. Like this is the, if we have a people's choice, he's a people's choice here, I think. But great report. Back to reporters. TechCrunch is Alex Wilhelm. We always have such a blast with Alex.

And it feels like he, you feel like you can just tell that he comes in here and he's excited to get to let loose a lot. bit. Like maybe, maybe his bosses don't watch when he's on Twist. Okay. Also, uh, in this group, Bestie Altimiter Capitals, Brad Gershner was just on, uh, episode 1639. He is just awesome on the show. And Glenn Kelman, my guy who's on all the time. I bring him on quarterly. Um, he's always up to date. Again, very candid. And that's what you're looking for. You, if you, if you make an X, Y and you make four quadrants, you know, extremely prepared and knowledgeable, I'll make one of the axes, but then articulate and honest, right?

So there's your knowledge and preparedness, and then your ability and your willingness to speak candidly. If you put that top right quadrant, you get a Glenn Kellman, you're going to get a Brad Gersner, you're going to get an Alex Wilhelm, you're going to get a Zach Collist, you're going to get a Ben Gilbert, and you're getting a Debo. These are five great nominees. I mean, we are lucky to have such a bench. This is a great bench, and I don't even know.

how do I even begin to pick a favorite here? Who's your, who do you feel? You have the best chemistry. We don't have to. We don't have to. For me, for you, the person that I want. There's two hosts here. So there's chemistry with me and chemistry with you.

How about you do me, I do you? Who do you think I have the best chemistry with? And I'll say who I think you have the best chemistry with. I'm going to say for you, Glenn, Glenn Kalman. Oh, I love Glenn. And Glenn and I have a great relationship. but when I'm on with the two of you, I don't need to be here.

You two are just having a little bromance. It's still, he asks you questions. He turns the table on you all the time and it's hysterical. Hellerous. You just have a special thing, a special thing. Okay. Now, the easy choice here would be Debo for your chemistry. However, even though it's only, I think it's only,

Brad's only been on once with you. Is that correct? Yeah, yeah. The chemistry of this last episode where you were kind of challenging each other and he's a super fan of yours. You didn't know that, but I had to tell you that because every time I see him,

he brings up Molly. And he says, oh, you Molly said this, Molly said that. And I'm like, all right, easy on the Molly. You know, I was your first. You're like, oh, my top liver. I'm right here. I just, you know, I did create the show.

I mean, but I'm like, okay, fine. We'll talk about Molly. So I'm going to... It's very hard because, you know, the chemistry that was very strong. But I'm going to get...

give it to Debo because it's been multiple appearances now and right it's been multiple debo. I just love Debo. I want to hang out. I want to go shopping. Like she is so great. Although I will say I agree with you. That was a really. Special. Surprisingly fun. Yes. Brad episode where I was like, I kind of surprised myself. Yeah. On that one. Yeah. It was really fun.

Well, like it makes sense. Your marketplace experience. It's a right. It's a market guy. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I saw like a little bit of this marketplace. slash market participant, and then you now straddling that by becoming a venture capitalist. It was all kind of happening there. So I think the potential is there with Brad,

but I'm going to give it to Best Chemistry, Deer Jrabosa. Me too. But now we got the trifecta. Who is the best chemistry with both of us, all three of us together making the magic. And the winner is... What? A tie.

A tie. Who could imagine? I'm going to allow it. Brad Gerser and Deeribosa. I like it. I like it as a concept. Two hosts, they both work great with both of us.

I think what we have to do is a foursome here. We got to go out in the golf sense. And the four of us together could be amazing. That could be amazing because you got CNBC. You got Brad in his deep markets knowledge and his charts. I mean, the man breaks charts. Like, that's amazing. Let's make an episode of the year.

All right. Can you believe it? We did 300 episodes this year. what a great year and so many to talk about but you know, here we go. What was the best episode

of the year? We have five candidates here, Molly, lightning round. Episode 1607 emergency pod, FTX sells to finance, which they didn't end up doing with Vinny and Sunny.

They joined to break down the whole potential cell and they talked about who the bagholder could be. They covered the FTX fundraising breakdown. Audience loved it. Absolutely. that episode 1446, we crashed in Severance finale's two amazing shows.

We were laughing about this. We were a little drunk in the morning. We were getting a little drunk on the show. Absolutely fantastic. Always a great time with Lon, which leads to our next episode. That's right. A.O. Scott Gate. Oh, man.

Episode 16138. This is, I mean, Guillermo del Toro got involved. Jason triggered the internet so hard with his comments about A.O. Scott. No, slice of the internet. Critics. Nice. Film.

Movie critics. Twitter. Movie critics. Lost their damn minds. But as a result, it has led to even more great content because here now we're watching movies that, frankly, I found myself at a dinner party last night recommending TAR. Thanks to A.O. Scott Gate. It's a really cool thing to be able to lord A.O. Scott's recommendations over people.

I get. I get why A.O. Scott these people do this. You get to be elitist. Yeah. And you get to lord it over people that you've seen these things. and you have been thoughtful about them before they have. I understand the appeal. Brad Gopnik plays himself in New York.

I mean, like, really, it's... Anyway, that was a outstanding episode. Yes, there's three different endings. Okay, praying for exits, episode 1492. He's always great. Oh, yeah. Mr. Exits, as he's called. One of the few times we have somebody on,

we know who he is, but, you know, we just, we'd like to give him his anonymity, and, you know, it's just another great... I think we've had, yeah, anonymous guests on very rarely, but he was great. And then finally, episode 1535. Adam Newman raising $350 million from A16Z for his new startup flow. Okay.

Which is basically rental properties with perks. And then we got into Bay Area Housing Hypocrisy. We went right for Mark Andreessen over housing policy. He supports flow, but like not housing in their town. It was a very spicy, very spicy episode. Very spicy. Okay. episode of the year.

Here it is folks. The winner is? The winner is emergency pod. FTXLs to finance with Vinnie and Sonny. Well done. Congratulations Vinny and Sunny. What a combination. My two pals.

I'm surprised they're not in our chemistry list. Hmm. Well, you know, there's only so many awards here. The Academy likes to spread the love. It's been another great twisties on January 2nd, that Monday. We will have our predictions episode. So you got the Twisties. That's what happened here in our world on the shell.

Hope you enjoyed this roundup, but January 2nd, Molly and I make our predictions. So, happy. See you next year. We'll see you in the new year.