This Week in Startups - Why BuzzFeed fell 40%, EU mandates USB-C, Lab-grown ear transplants, Tom Brady’s Series B | E1478

Episode Date: June 7, 2022

BuzzFeed is tanking- we talk about what it means for its employees and the company (2:07). Next, we discuss Uber Eats coming for GoldBelly (23:51), then we cover the EU mandating that USB-C ports be standard by 2024 (36:17). We close out the show with our Startup of the Day in the sports space (41:21) and a We Live in the Future in the ear transplant space (49:42). 0:00 Jason and Molly tee up today’s news stories 2:07 BuzzFeed shares dropped 41%, their worst one-day % drop 11:23 OpenPhone - Get an extra 20% off any plan for your first 6 months at https://openphone.com/twist 12:37 “Media + something,” making media viable 22:34 Squarespace - Use offer code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain at https://Squarespace.com/TWIST 23:51 Uber Eats coming for GoldBelly 35:03 Thorne - Personalized, scientific wellness. Go to https://Thorne.com/u/TWIST 36:17 European Parliament ruled USB Type-C port standard for all EU mobile phones, tablets, and cameras by Fall 2024 41:21 SotD: Religion of Sports, sports media production company co-founded by Tom Brady, Michael Strahan and Gotham Chopra, raised $5M in Series B funding 49:42 WLitF: Texas woman received 3D printed ear transplant made from sample of her cells (3DBio Therapeutics) 56:45 If you are a founder pre-series A, you are invited to our Founder University Two-Day intensive on June 13-14!

Hey, everybody. It is Tuesday, June 7th, Jake Call and Molly Wood coming at you with a big new show. I'm going full radio and I don't know why. Hey, everybody. Yeah, welcome to the show. Hey, everybody. We'll say it again. Media is a terrible business. Coming at you.

BuzzFeed is tanking. Their stock is absolutely getting decimated. Their market cap is worth less than their revenue. We're going to talk about what this means for the employees, the future of the company, and the stock market writ large. Yeah. And my new, my new motto, math is a harsh mistress. No more. By the way, bitching.

about dongles, we hope. The EU is mandating at long last that USBC ports be standard by 2024, death to lightning. Praise Jesus. I don't like the government intervention, but in this case, I'm going to go with it for the good

of the environment. And we've got a startup of the day in the sports space and a we live in the future segment for an ear transplant. It's pretty amazing. It's going to be a great show. Stick with us. This week in startups is

brought to you by OpenFone. As a startup founder, a lot of mistakes are easy to roll back, but using your personal cell phone number as your company number isn't one of them. OpenFone makes it easy to get business phone numbers for you and your team right on top of your existing devices. Visit openphone.com slash twist to get 20% off your first six months. Squarespace. Turn your idea into a new website. Go to Squarespace. Go to Squarespace. Warespace.com slash twist for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, use offer code twist to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. And Thorne.

Thorne empowers people to take control of their long-term well-being with a proactive science-based approach to health. Through a variety of at-home tests, Thorne teaches you about what your body needs and provides the right, high-quality, certified nutritional supplements for you. To get started and take 10% off your first order, head to thorn.com slash you slash twist. Buzzfeed, ouch, is the really short headline here. Buzzfeed shares dropped as much as 41% this week, yesterday, I believe, on Monday, marking their worst one-day percentage drop in trading history. Of course, BuzzFeed went public via SPAC in December 2021.

The stock since then is down. more than 72%. It's now trading at around $300 million. And if you're watching live, you can see this chart of the stock drop and it is just, we've seen a lot of cliffs. I know, this isn't as bad as like

the snap cliff, for example, but it was over 33% drop in the last break days. This is because the lockup was ended. So when you go public employees, venture capitalist, typically, private market investors will be locked up for six months typically.

And when the lockup comes up, you know, people may want some liquidity, but those people, if they have faith in the company, and they are in fact insiders and they've probably been investors or employees of the company for a long time, basically, I'm not going to say they're trading on inside information, Molly, but they're informed participants in this company. In other words, they might have invested 10 years ago or been on the board for a long time, have received investor updates, or they may have been in the building and work there for a long time. So for them to sell in such a major way, And for there to be no buyers is the problem.

Now, if there were buyers who wanted the stock, you know, great, then it might drop 10%, 20%. We saw that when Masa was clearing his position at Uber. Well, you'll see it when venture capitalists are clearing their position in any IPO if they choose to do so. But usually, you know, the insiders will stick with it. Maybe they'll sell a little bit, but they generally don't like to sell on the day of the lockup expires. So this is very telling. It is a vote of no confidence. in fact, by the insiders.

And you really need to think about that. The company is now trading at around a $300 million market cap. And that is really crazy. Yeah, like only slightly less than the total 2021 revenue, which was $397 million. But that's such a good point about the lockup and how it represents people who work there were issued early stock and are like, we're out. Yeah, the Wall Street Journal quote, a BuzzFeed spokesman attributed the volatility to the lockup period, which he said expired on June 1st.

He said the company had very low float and a few owners of its stock making it's sensitive to extreme fluctuations when major investor sells. So a float so people know is the number of shares available to trade freely. So you'll typically have the insiders own a bunch of these shares and you have a small number of people in the public who own it. And so with a smaller float, you could have more volatility. Now, to be fair, it seems like even at the time, I think, even when they did the SPAC, investors had pretty low confidence. According to the Wall Street Journal's coverage back then, it said 895th Avenue Partners, Inc. SPAC's announcement, following that announcement, about 94% of the $287.5 million the SPAC raised was

withdrawn by investors. So as soon as it went public, they cashed out, is my understanding of that. Or I think the way technically the SPACs work is they make an acquisition and then there is a redemption possibility. So if you don't agree with it, you bought it at 10, you have the ability to get out of it. So I think that might be that the investors, you know, when they found out what 890 Fifth Avenue Partners was going to buy. I said, oh, yeah, that's not for me. I'm out. I see.

So they pulled out of the actual vehicle. They pulled out of the acquisition company. Gotcha. Okay. So that's that. Again, another vote of no confidence. I mean, and this, look, this sucks. We're sitting here, you know, veterans of the media industry.

It is hard to have to face this over and over and over. But media is not a great business. It's a really tough business. Ad-based media specifically also challenged. You know, they work great as small, independent, owned businesses. They thrive. They can have solid, you know, not ridiculous margins like software, but okay margins. and so they're not really meant to be traded as public companies unless they hit a massive scale like a Disney or even the New York Times has done okay.

It's still a tiny company, but really subscriptions are maybe more in favor by the public markets. And obviously, nobody is going to subscribe to a bunch of listicles what BuzzFeed's known for, known for, right? I mean, they started doing really good journalism, to be fair. They really did start breaking, you know, and they, I think had to because they built a lot of growth on the listicles. And then they really did build a quality journalism product. But unfortunately, it's very likely that the quality journalism product didn't sell as well as the listicles in terms of clicks. Right. Like it's a tough.

The digital, I mean, what's interesting about the New York Times is that by far the fattest margins and the most money they make is on the print subscription still. Yeah. Like digital media is particularly difficult. Yeah. And just having a lot of subscriptions creates a base of users. So, you know, at least you have predictability. And the stock market does like predictability. whereas advertising is not predictable.

Going into a recession, owning an advertising business, well, what happens in a recession? Everybody clenches a little bit. Maybe you spend a little less, maybe you cut your advertising 10%, 20%. So I would say the percentage of advertising being cut will be similar to the percentage of layoffs. So when you see 10, 20% layoffs,

you probably see 10, 20% as well cut from advertising budgets. It might be more extreme in a company that's broken. And some companies might increase their spend into a recession because advertising gets cheap, they get more value for dollar and their businesses are doing well. But if we do the back of the envelope, which we love to do here, current market cap of 320, 397.5 million revenue in 2021, not even 2022. And if you look at their Q1, 2022 earnings report, Molly, they only had 74 million in cash.

Now, they don't lose that much money, but they're in a bit of a cash crunch, which might be, why people are also concerned. At that time, they had $98 million in accounts receivable, and $143 million in debt. So this business has debt on it. So the debt outweighs the cash and cash equivalence. So this is challenged. They had an operating loss of $35 million. In Q1, they lost $44 million.

So you start looking, you put all this together, Molly. The risk of ruin looms large here. It's very so much a peloton. situation where, you know, maybe people think this company could actually not be able to thread the needle in a recession. Well, and you look at the losses. This is why you want to have cash in your bank account. Seriously.

And the losses are widening, right? Like the net loss was four times larger year over year than it had been in the same quarter of the year before. Like that's, it's a because it's a hemorrhage situation now. So, yeah. Oh, my God. Could Buzzfeed go, I mean, talk about a like cultural moment. Well, we're, you know, we talked yesterday about, um,

the weird Binance SPAC situation, how it was going to Binance took a big stake in Forbes and was going to take it public via SPAC. And probably because of these signs, that SPAC was scrapped.

Like they just said, no way. And it was sort of a combination of, I think, the SPAC environment itself, but also just these hard realities about media and advertising. Yeah.

I mean, or BuzzFeed, like Fortune could take a quick investment from FTX, a finance. and they could just buy part of it, and then they could write great crypto stories. You know, you had Vice Media valued a $5.7 billion.

I think BuzzFeed's top valuation was $1.7 billion. Vox Media has been over a billion. So I think what we're going to see with all of these companies is, you know, maybe they're worth one times top line revenue, two times top line revenue, 10 times bottom line. So if you have, you know, three, four, 500 million in revenue, you're worth three, four, or five hundred million. Now, if you had a hundred million in profits, Molly, well, then you might be a hundred million times ten. You might actually be worth a billion.

So for BuzzFeed, to be worth a billion dollars again, I think they have to have at least a hundred million in profits. How do you get a hundred million in profits? They've got to cut a third of their costs or something crazy like that. I mean, they're losing money now. So, you know, not only do they have to cut the 50 million, they're losing a quarter or whatever it is, they've got to cut another 100 million on top of that. Yeah. So they got to cut 150 million in expense. And they need to get people to pay for something probably.

I mean, you look at the information and Axios, which has like a very expensive, you know, subscription tier for newsletters. Yeah. It's the companies, I think, the media companies that have figured out how to make other companies pay expensive subscriptions as part of work are the ones who I think are going to be able to pull through this down turn. Listen, lots of founders are Lucy Goosey with their personal phone numbers. They put it on their company documents, they use it on sales calls, email footers.

It's all over the place. What happens if that salesperson leaves a company? And now people are calling and that person's gone on. Maybe they went to a competitor. And now they're using their personal phone number to get sales from previous emails that they sent under your email address. But you will, you know, of all this mess with open phone. They help you create a business phone number for you and every member of your team. and it works through an app on your smartphone or desktop.

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You're going to love it and you're going to save 20%. Okay, great deal for everybody. I've come to some conclusions about the media space. Yeah. You know, in my career because we both spent our careers there. It's not a venture investment. Yeah. It's not venture investable.

Yeah. But content is king and content is super important. So the place I've come to, and you might see it in my behavior, is media plus something. Okay? So there's two businesses I am CEO of right now inside and launch. And if you look at both of them, it's media plus something. Molly, in launch's case, what is it? Media plus what?

Plus investing. Okay. Very good. Correct answer. So the media business. I was like, oh, crap, what's happening? The media business helps the investment business and the investment business and the investment business, of course, informs what we make here every day because you and I work

with a team of 21 people looking at startups. So you and I become super smart about this. Look at your first six months. We were talking with Brad Gersoner, Bestie Number 5, and he was just over the moon at watching how much you're learning. And so we share that with the audience. Now we look at inside.com. Inside.com has over four million in revenue and we've been profitable, I think, six or seven of the last eight quarters. We've got over $2 million in cash. business is doing great, email newsletters and events making money, but it is now a media business plus something. What's the plus something that I added in the last couple of months?

A social network. Okay. So here we go, folks. If you, this is what, this is just J-Cow's observation. Media businesses are great. People love media. People love content. It's super engaging.

It's top of the funnel. But you need something else. And you need something that scales. So inside.com now has profiles. It's got a social network and it's got a social news product. And next week, we're going to drop the jobs. So you will be able to on Inside, go to inside.com slash crypto slash jobs and post a job for free or browse jobs. And we added questions.

So now you can post, you can add friends like a social network. You can post questions. You can post a news story. You can comment on a new story and you'll be able to post jobs. So you start looking at that. It starts looking like Reddit and, uh, LinkedIn, right? And so that was my intent because Reddit started doing content. They started professionalizing their AMA department and LinkedIn has tried a couple of times to do more content.

So my thinking is, if you're great at content, we'll build some other business and attach a high-scale business to it. And for BuzzFeed, what would be a great high-scale business, Molly? If we were to think out loud here, what could you add to BuzzFeed with this very popular audience of media savvy coastal elites, perhaps, young people who like listicles, maybe it's very millennial driven? What could you add to that? I mean, they should start a creator business. Okay, great. What a great idea.

I didn't think of that one. Yeah. Sure. You could have podcasters. I was going to say, I know this sounds silly, but there are casual games that are the equivalent of the New York Times crossword puzzle that if you added them to BuzzFeed, you would. and I went to BuzzFeed and I was into Cats and there was a casual game about cats

or a strategy game or wordle type game or a Pictionary type game. Remember there was another viral game. So if they had some sort of a casual game studios, you know, maybe that could scale. So all these people come there and then they get into playing casual games with each other. Just top of funnel, you know, whatever.

What a 50 million people go to BuzzFeed? A hundred million people go to BuzzFeed. And then flow them into casual gaming maybe. Or games of skill, right? Like poker or foreign. Farmville type things. You know, you start thinking about those games, Zinga Poker. Imagine you had Zinga Poker like games under the FarmVille, under the content.

So I came there, 20 great pictures of cats or I read, you know, some coverage of, you know, Tom Cruise. And then it fed into, oh, here's a cool game I can play or I can play Solitaire or I can play poker with my friends. And, you know, I'm looking to, because people who are looking to waste time, right? BuzzFeed's a time wasteer, like a little guilty pleasure, if you will, a little, maybe, I don't want to say junk. occasional legitimate news. Well, you know, it's hard to, for me and my brain to remember that. I know they want a Pulitzer, right? I think they want a Pulitzer.

Sorry to the people over there want a Pulitzer. I still have. It's hard to separate those two things. It's really true that like news is either a premium subscription. Yes. Like the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or the information. Yeah. The economist.

Or it's a lost leader for the thing that actually makes you money. Like this was my experience at CNET over and over and over. it's got a good, you know, pretty good news department. I built the video department. We built podcasting. All of those were secondary to the primary goal,

which is get people to come and buy technology and get leads. Like there's, and there's a, there's a huge, and it doesn't matter to C NET if nobody knows who they are because they make a crap ton of money on people coming to their site and buying products and it generates leads. Eventually they get some affiliate revenue because you bought a laptop or you put in your

contact information to go to a webinar by some store. company because you're part of some big company and there's some enterprise storage solution from EMC or Amazon that you bought into. So yes. Now, I think they could be break-even businesses. So if you look, here's the good news for BuzzFeed. You make 20% cuts. You're at break-even or 5%.

It might be 20%. Maybe you do some salary reductions, right? That's what I've always said will be the next shoot-to-drop, Molly. When we start seeing salaries being renegotiated. Yeah. And BuzzFeed seems like a perfect example of that. They just go to the, you know, staff and say, listen, for this business to be worth anything and for your shares to be worth anything, we're going to be cutting executives 10% and everybody

else 5%. Or top executives 15%, the next tier 10%, and then everybody else 5%. That gets us there. We don't have to do layoffs. So you have that conversation, or you just cut 15% and don't make any salary cuts. So you can do that either way. People have different philosophies of that. But that'll be probably the next shoot-ed drop at a place like BuzzFeed.

and then you say, listen, we're going to break even on this business, but we're building a podcast business underneath it. We're building a creator one where we're going to have a social network built into BuzzFeed where people can share recipes and photos of themselves, whatever it is, something that's... Where we can get a crap ton of money from brands to promote those things. Like, you go straight, you know, you don't try to sugarcoat that as news. Like, it's a creator studio where you're getting paid by brands.

They had that already. They were the one of the first to do... They have to SponCon, yeah. Yeah, they were the first to do that quite controversial. because you couldn't tell what was sponsored content there. And they were pretty cutthroat about it, right? Yeah. So they're in the perfect position.

Just turn on the merch funnel. But they could do a merge funnel. Yeah, that's, I mean, Barstool Sports. Actually, here's another perfect example. Barstool Sports made a little bit in advertising, a lot in merch, some in podcasting, but ultimately they got bought by a gambling company, a wait-train company, and uses them to get barstool people. We'll gamble on sports, so they're a funnel.

Yeah. So perfect. Just like Fortune is now a funnel for crypto. Criffs. I don't think it is. 100%. Well, you know, it's been interesting.

His sole barstool to Penn National Gaming. Sorry. Pan National Gaming. That's right. Well, and like in things that I have been a little bit bitchy about, if I'm being honest. You know,

there's been this kind of ongoing thing of Justin and Ben Smith, the two Smith guys, Justin Smith of Bloomberg and Ben Smith, who was at the New York Times. And they've been sort of going around trying to like raise money for this. Yeah. media company that was like super vague. And every time somebody interviewed them about it, it was like they bolted on another thing.

Like, oh, we're for foreign readers and English language and this and that and da-da-da-da. And they've been trying to raise what sounds like venture investment. I think it probably investment overall, but even just venture investment. And you have to wonder if like there was enough of a bubble that even media seemed like a good investment. And I have to wonder if those days are over now. I'm like, those days are over. I'm all in on the public radio model, man. Like, listener-supported journalism is a great model.

We're also known as subscriptions. Like, they're donations and subscriptions are donations. And even those are, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think all the public radio folks went to a monthly subscription, a monthly donation, which could be called a monthly subscription. Which could be called a subscription. Totally. So it's, here's the thing. Venture Capital is for high growth rocket ship businesses. These are not rocket ship businesses.

These are slower growth businesses. Their trees do not grow to the moon. They're not going to have software margins, nor are they going to be, you know, $10 billion companies. And if you're in venture, you're trying to hit that $10 billion mark. One billion? If a couple of them hit a billion, that's nice. But it's not going to return your fund in all likelihood as an investor.

And these large funds need to be able to return their fund. And they're just not going to do that. So people made some frisky bets. on some of these things and they got a little too loose you know BuzzFeed, Vice, Vox. They could all be great businesses with solid margins

but not for venture capitalists for private equity folks for people with a different return profile Molly people who want to return two times their money, three times their money. You know, not, you know, a hundred times their money. So let's keep moving. And to the folks over at BuzzFeed,

you know, hopefully my tip helps. Think about a business like, you know, the people who are buying ads on your site, just if they're buying a lot of ads on your site, maybe you should be in that business as well. So who was buying barstool ads? Wagering companies. Maybe there's somebody making merchandise, you know, like Amazon basics type stuff, maybe direct to consumer. Maybe there's a BuzzFeed brand to be made. Maybe you make BuzzFeed, you know, cool design products. And that's your business and the content flows people to that high margin business. It's a great idea. It's a great

idea. Maybe they have a very trendy, like popular media and video. business, just merch it up. Merch it up. Maybe, yeah. Okay, we got some exciting news for you right now. We're going to give one twist listener, $1,000 in Squarespace credits. You ever go to a company's website and it looks absolutely gorgeous? Well, we want to show off your best web designs and it can be anything, a landing page, a feature flow, a design aesthetic, anything that would wow your users.

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And don't forget, you get 10% off at Squarespace.com slash twist by using the promo code twist. I love this Uber story. Let's talk about, yeah, are less risky bets in some ways. Uber taking a play from Apple seeing what works and then doing that. Yes. Uber Eats is coming for Goldbelly, apparently. TechCrunch has the announcement. Gold Belly's CEO, Joe Ariel, was on episode 12, 83.

As you know, I'm a huge fan of Goldbelly. And Uber CEO, Dara Khashahi was on episode 1226. Well, here we go. Uber is becoming a super app. Obviously, I have a horse in this race. I'm still a larger older. And they are doing nationwide shipping on Uber Eats. So if you're on Uber Eats and you're ordering tonight's meal, what if you want the Peking

duck or you want Blood So's Barbecue or, you know, Sarge's Daly or waffles and Dinges in New York City? I don't know what that is for my time. Someone's favorite. Yeah, exactly. Anyway, you can start doing these things where merchants will do this. Obviously, a lot of brands have been doing this direct where they ship and they make a nice living on this. So if you're a Magnolia Bakery, they were on Goldbelly, but you could also buy direct from them. And I think I've bought direct from them. So a lot of these iconic brands of food that people

loved from their local neighborhood and then they moved somewhere or they heard about it or they experienced it on vacation, let's say. You want to get great bagels? Sometimes I will order great bagels or I'll order a great pizza or I'll order the Peking duck kit. It comes to you with like dry ice, smiley and like far too much packaging for it to be just of all. for every night, but maybe only five or 10% more packaging than your normal DoorDash or Uber eats. So as a once in a while thing to celebrate some food you love from around the world, it's a great idea. And it's Goldbelly really became like a sensation during the pandemic in particular. Goldbelly's been around for a long time and has a really big catalog of local

restaurants that you can order from. And, you know, it's like a lot of the tourist favorites, but not completely. I did like a Philly night for my boyfriend for one of his birthdays during the pandemic because we couldn't really go anywhere and he went to Penn and I got cheese stick. Like I looked up, you know, what's the actual cheese stick place at the locals like? It was on Goldbelly. I had them delivered. Like it sort of became this fun phenomenon.

And it's, I think, helped a lot of small businesses. Like it's a really big small business story. And it is also, it's just Uber Eats coming for this like very popular. business and it's kind of cool competition. A friend of mine made the point that the gold Uber just would have bought him. Yeah. So now we have like competition and we get to choose. Who does it better?

I mean, you know, maybe gold belly is not for sale, you know, that's a possibility. Maybe they try, you know. Yeah, they might have. So that that's often what happens. And sometimes one of the really elite competitive tactics, Molly, I've done it myself, is to start a competitor if the competitor wouldn't sell to you. I wouldn't say which company that was. what the circumstances were, but I advise somebody.

Straight mafia. It's straight mafia behavior, but it's like, listen, if you're not going to sell to us, we're going to start a business. In fact, Google started Google video famously because they couldn't buy YouTube at some point. So like, okay, well, if we're not going to get that business, we need to be in the video business. So let's start Google video. And Google video was like the most boring, you know, utilitarian, you know, upload your video,

share it with the world that's going to come up on Google search. But, you know, you look at that. It was like, that was a scary moment for YouTube. Wait a second. If Google puts a video tab and I had written about it at the time, Google puts a video tab, that's game over because they have images and news and people are like, they'll never make a video tab. Sure enough, six months later, they put the video tab.

And I think maybe it was a year later, they owned YouTube. So, you know, it's kind of like we're either you're selling or we're competing. Yeah. And I think that's like an honest way to do. this. So for Goldbelly, maybe they want to sell to Uber. Maybe they want to sell to DoorDash. And this is Uber's way of saying, hey, we're going for this business one way or the other. Right. And we don't have to acquire customers, by the way. Uber doesn't have to acquire customers. We've already got the customers. They already have the customers. Now they need the merchants. Yeah. Some of them might say,

right? I think it's a really, it's just going to be interesting to watch. I did not even know, by the way, speaking of like the power branding. I know all about Goldbelly and that's what we all use. DoorDash does this evidently. Yes, apparently they started it too. Yeah. Yeah. It looks like maybe just Katz's Deli right now. But they're working in that direction too. I mean, I'm all for this.

Like, for one thing, I think it's great for businesses to be able to ship it. It's like Shopify, but for the real world. They don't have to do any work. You know, it's like, and here's the thing on merchants. Many of these merchants may already be on Uber-Reeds. Think about it. Cats' Deli is almost certainly on Uber-Its. Good point.

So they already have a relationship. So you're just like, hey, check this box. to ship outside of New York City. Boom. Like, it may not be like you have to go, like Goldbelly's got to go door to door and convince the merchants to do this. Yeah.

This would be like Airbnb saying suddenly, would you like to rent your home for, you know, would you like to put a conference room in your home? If you put a conference room in your home, we'll have a business section. Imagine there was a conference room availability. Like there used to be a company that did,

breather, I think was the name of it, where they would do conference rooms. So if you and I wanted to have like a this week in startups meeting every month, we could have a couple people come, we rent the place for the afternoon. Imagine Airbnb said, we're going to put a tab called office space, you know, business spaces. Man, they could compete with WeWork and then all the people who have things could say, set up, imagine you could set up the apartment with a Murphy bed where it folds up. Is that the one in the Murphy bed that you fold up like that? And you said, hey, if you're ordering this as an office, we're going to put a table

out, a conference room, Wi-Fi is going to be on, and you can, you know, we'll put eight desks around, eight chairs around a big desk. And that desk will be a folding desk, you know, we'll put a tablecloth on it. You're all set. So the person who's the host switches it from bedroom studio apartment to collaborative office co-working space. It could be killer. Why did they not do that? I don't understand. They will. Well, you know, everybody, you know, takes time. You got a lot to focus on. Well, yeah, I mean, one thing at a time. But yeah, it just is really interesting how this has become a big thing to do. And I'm excited about it. I think it's great. It's probably more work for the businesses because they have to figure out the packaging and the dry ice and, you know, the packaging is all that.

But it's a, it's a super smart move by Uber for the reasons that you say they already have the economies of scale. Well, and Goldbelly has probably gone to all of these businesses already and taught them how to do the dry ice and had webinars with them. Totally. Yeah. They're just like they literally can just take the goal belly list. Thanks, Goldbelly, RIP, Goal Belly, and the Uber Eats list. You take the Gold Belly and UberEats list, you know when you cheated in school on a multiple choice test, and the teacher holds the two things up to the light and looks through them,

and it's like, okay, you guys got the wrong ones correct, the right ones. You just hold those up and you'll look for what is, you know, maybe it's 70% of Uber Eats and Goal, maybe 70% of Goldbelly is already on Uber Eats and DoorDash. You just go after those 70, and then the last 30, you know, that'll be your slow, that's your roadmap for, for who to go after next. They've already been taught how to do dry-eye shipping.

They already have some space set up in the kitchen or somewhere in the facility and UPS is already coming there to pick up the gold belly packages. So it's no sweat off their back to do, you know, DoorDash and UberAid. So I think this is the super, the super app nature of Uber

is going to be very compelling over time. I wish Uber payments had worked. That would have been super cool if we could have sent each other money by Uber payments, you know, or like they already have splitting checks but I think gifting is a really, really powerful one for Uber

as is like theater tickets. Like I would love to see more of the experience things like last minute tickets which is in Dara's wheelhouse. Like imagine you're in New York and it's like here are a hundred last minute tickets on a tab

and it's like here's the countdown clock. Boom. Buy some tickets to you know Broadway or a concert just last minute style or hotel tonight style. or Hotel Tonight style last minute hotel rooms. Another brilliant feature. This is where I think it's really going to be interesting,

the builder buy question or the build or buy or aggregate, right? Because we talked yesterday about iMessage, potentially becoming that super app. And they won't have to build out a delivery network. They've just got apps in the app store. And if they integrate them better and stop, they're moving away from that kind of like really siloed model.

So if it's like I'm on the front, the screen, the home screen of my phone. phone and the, what is it called the red, what's the ticket thing, red, blah, blah, blah, or hotel tonight or whatever. They all have like a location enabled widget that's just like, do you need a hotel tonight? And then I can do it through my message.

Yeah. This is why I always felt like, you know, Google, Amazon, and Apple were the eventual buyers of Uber, Lyft and DoorDash and Postmates. At some point, one of those companies would say, you know what? They get a little frisky. like Amazon's the obvious one but Google and Apple are the non-obvious ones but pretty sticky

you know these delivery apps are pretty darn sticky they are so you don't even have to buy them you just support them you just be their best friend Apple becomes Uber's best friend yeah they just didn't and all of a sudden I messaged the super app yeah I know see but with Darin charge I you know I could totally see Apple buying Uber I know that sounds crazy but I could see Apple or Google

saying why buy them well because then you would get 100% of the margin from those businesses. And when you're buying a business and your Google or Apple, the business has to do tens of billions of dollars in revenue for it to move the needle. Yeah. And that's why Whole Foods was bought by Amazon. It was like enough revenue to actually be meaningful, right? And that's really what happens with these acquisitions.

Sometimes they're technical and for the talent like DeepMind, the AI company, Google, what other times you're like, hey, YouTube could actually move the needle. And we've seen that happen, right? YouTube's revenue could actually move the needle. Android actually moved the needle for Google. So it usually falls into one of those two camps. Did Beetz move the needle for Apple? I wonder, that $2 billion acquisition probably not.

But I think it got them a demographic. Maybe they didn't have access to. Like Android had such a good footprint in urban markets, you know, in cities and maybe with. And internationally. And internationally. So Beets became, you know, like, a way to sort of get the urban market, and younger market, which maybe they didn't

have a good enough foothold in. So it gets you into the store. You buy the beats, buy Dre, and then maybe you buy the iPhone because it works better with the beats by Dre. I think that was their, that was the back channel I heard. Yeah. I know that dealing with your personal health and your wellness can be daunting especially right now and by right now, I mean

something like the last three years. Well, that is why Thorne created a care system that's personalized, preventative, and holistic while still being backed by science. being any kind of a high performer is incredibly difficult. Even if you're just sitting all day long at a desk, remember sitting is the new smoking. Okay, this is all where Thorne can help. Thorne offers at-home tests that identify where you need the most care.

They offer things like a gut test that analyzes your gut microbiome, a stress test that measures your stress hormone fluctuations. These tests help eliminate the guesswork for good health by providing personalized steps for how to eat, how to exercise, and even what supplements you should take. And then Thorne has a range of multivitamins and supplements that you can subscribe to. Because again, this is personalized health and wellness. You take a quiz. You get the answer that is built for you. Get started. Take 10% off your first order by heading to thorn.com slash you, the letter you slash twist. That's thorn.com slash you slash twist to save 10%. Well, speaking of Apple,

Yeah, we got to talk about this one because this is like your wheelhouse. This is, you must be happy. I'm so delighted about this. I think we all should be. The EU is shutting down competition for dongles. Hallelujah. The European Parliament has ruled that the USB type C port will be standard for all EU mobile phones, tablets, and cameras by fall 2024. It's going to be called the amended radio equipment directive because the EU loves to give things really fun names.

Sure. Telegram. Telegraph. They're focused on the interoperability of charging solutions. It's been coming for a long time. Apparently, there was a proposal for it that was tabled back in September of 2021. And now for sustainability reasons, they're saying, well, not completely, they're saying the law is intended to make products in the EU more sustainable, minimize electronic waste, and quote, make consumers lives easier. Okay.

This is what we all want. This is what we all want. And you know what? Apple, you could have just done this, and now you're going to be stuck with a stupid rule that has USBC. Even if you want to develop some better standard than USBC, now you're going to be stuck with a rule about USBC. And I don't care and I don't feel sorry for you because my watch and my computer and my freaking phone, I'll have three different chargers. And that is ridiculous. It's super ridiculous.

You know, it's like this really is a law specifically designed for Apple. The market made this a no-brainer for everybody else. Why would I create my own standard? Well, the reason to create your own standard is because you have a monopolistic channel and you don't allow interoperability and you can charge 40, 50, 60, 70 bucks for cables or charging bricks and you can then deprecate and say accessory not supported for, you know, cables I buy with multi-head dongles. Like I was loving these, you know, cables I was buying from Taiwan on

Amazon from third-party sellers that had all three. And you can have a USBC, a USB 2, and an iPhone, lightning. And then all of a sudden, the lightning stops working. And, you know, it works last week. Why isn't it working this week? And, you know, part of me. They literally broke it. They broke their own standard so that they could sell their own stuff.

This is an example of the free market did its job. And then one company, Apple, held out. The free market did its job. You can't buy an Android phone that doesn't use USBC. You can't buy a laptop that doesn't use USBC. You can't buy anchor products or any brick that doesn't use USBC because you can sell a USBC product now without a charger. And you just say, charge are not included.

That's on you. And people are like, yeah, that's fine. Why would I need another USBC cable? I don't need one. I've got 20 in a draw. But lightning cables, yeah. So congratulations. But here's why.

Let's do we should do a little back of the envelope math here. to explain why Apple has held out this whole time and why they keep breaking those cheap Amazon cables. So since Apple stopped including accessories, they've sold roughly 200 million iPhones. Okay. The lightning cables, headphones, and the charging connectors all retail for at least $19 each.

And that's their discounted prices now. They used to be much more. They used to be much more. And you can buy the like, you know, faster charger and ones that are more. Apple's gross margin on those is roughly 38. So if you have $60 in accessories, which you need if you have more than one Apple device, times a 60% materials cost times 200 million iPhones, then Apple has made $7.2 billion.

Incredible. Yeah. It's just pure profit. Just pure profit. And these cables, you know, you're talking about billions of cables around the world that nobody knew that. A trash. And so, you know, Apple, Tim Cook, with this constant, green, you know, I don't want to say greenwashing, because I do think they are probably one of the best companies when it comes to being green. Like, you can't be green and then have a billion extra cables produced, you know, like, just do the right thing independent of all of the earlier cables, like break them, which ensures that they are trash. They are landfill. Whatever Apple has done on the green side, like, I don't care that they're recycling cobalt. The fact that

they deprecate their own hardware and the cables that quickly makes it indefensible. I just feel bad for whoever the VP of dongles that Apple is and they're going to be, to lose their job. I feel bad for them. Oh my God. These memes are going to be crazy. Oh, my God. Nick, did you make these?

These are amazing. EU mandates all mobile phones, tablets and cameras to use USBC. Apple's chief dongle complexity officer. Laid off. Looking for a job. Apple, when they can, they can't make you carry seven different cables anymore. in the EU. I mean, yeah.

Yeah. It's beautiful. It's absolutely beautiful. We love to see it. Okay, quick hit. Enough big talk from big tech today. Here's our startup of the day. Religion of Sports.

This is a sports media production company co-founded by Tom Brady and Michael Shrayhan and filmmaker and entrepreneur Gotham Topera. They've raised $50 million in Series B funding for religion of sports. It was founded in 2017. And it started with unscripted documentation. entry-style programming and has since launched dozens of shows with other elite athletes. Titles have been distributed on streaming platforms, Facebook, ESPN, Apple TV Plus, and along with creating unscripted, they're also looking to build outside projects with the funding.

One's going to be NFTs for athletes. Of course. And trading carts have out a comeback, so maybe they'll do something there. According to Axios, Religion of SportsCRO, Amith Senkaren, commented on how. how Starbacked production companies are great for streaming services. Quote, the market has grown, and that has led to an opportunity for networks to invest in niche programming when you're doing something with an athlete or talent. People already know, you don't have to set the back story.

They come with built-in distribution. I mean, you see this with Dremont's podcast, which he's doing with Colin, I guess, is doing that with him. And yeah, you know, you bring your whole Twitter following. So this is going to be a major thing. It's a hot space apparently. There's several of them already. There's Spring Hill Entertainment, founded by LeBron James and Maverick Carter,

Entertainment Production Company. There is 35 ventures founded by Kevin Durant and Rich Klyman. Unanimous Media, founded by Steph Curry and Eric Peyton. I mean, this is an interesting follow-on to the media conversation we were just having, right? Like, can, so this works when times are hot. Does this, does Star Power work? Because I feel like, I don't know, have you've gone through this, but like, I have gone through many a podcast project where the idea was, well, we'll just book a bunch of big name stars and then everybody will listen to it. And that doesn't actually.

It doesn't happen. It doesn't translate to lasting audience. So I'm super curious to know if this actually will. So, you know, I think the interesting thing that's happening here is, I think. We are having people who are stars in the league do this while they're active. So Draymond has been doing this after playoff games. And I just heard on the last Bill Simmons show after the Warriors just absolutely annihilated the Celtics, sorry, Bill.

He had actually a talk about this. And he says he sees it as just like an extended press conference, which I get. It's like a press conference where you ask yourself the questions. But he made up a good point, which is, you know, at some point, these narratives that are being done by players while the season is happening, not like postseason, not highly produced and edited, but live and live to tape kind of stuff. You know, it could become part of the storyline, which could be super interesting. In other words, Draymond says something in the post game show that now impacts the next game

or impacts the series. Now the coach has to deal with it. And I guess at some point, somebody was live streaming from the locker room. I don't remember which sport or TV team that was, but Bill mentioned. mentioned it on his show. So this is going to have an impact on it. But people have the ability to broadcast from their phones now. There are some athletes who are incredibly charismatic like Draymond. And instead of or JJ Reddick's doing really well right now. But typically it's after they leave the league. So what the real story here is is that people are going to do this while

they're in the league. They're going to be doing media stuff while they're playing in games, which is super fascinating. It is because it creates a living documentary, right, a real-time documentary of these teams. And also, of course, they're doing it while they're still playing because they're so much more relevant. Like it, you know, it's, it's sort of interesting to listen to a retired player if that retired player is like Michael Jordan. If not, it's not as interesting. So they're capitalizing on the actual moment of fame, creating drama around the sport they're already doing, which creates a lot of interest. And they're also getting, you know, maybe securing the bag while they're at the height of their fame. It's fascinating. And look, you know, people like Charles

Barkley, my understanding is he makes like $10, $20 million a year doing inside the NBA and the stuff that comes from it. He's making, I think the most he made, I actually talked to Draymond about this, was $7 or $8 million, I think, when he was a player. So now after being, you know, a top, you know, 50 player in the league, he makes more money now, we're tired, you know, just doing inside the NBA. And as he should, he's an incredible talent and draws a big audience. A lot of these projects have been vanity projects where you're doing, you know, or pet projects, you're doing media that you want to see in the world, which is what rich people have always done. They've backed movies they want to see or series or magazines, depending on

the era. And so a lot of this with LeBron James. Like the Medici's. They're patrons. They're like patrons. They're doing media. Steph Curry has one. He's doing like, you know, and they produce scripts. So it's stuff they want to see in the world. If it makes money, if it breaks even, it's, you know, affluent people, you know, making media because they get enjoyment out of it, which is also totally valid. I think what will happen is I'm going to go out on a limb here. is I think, you know, one or two of these athletes are going to become so good at it that they could, in fact, make what would be considered like the next athletic or the next ESPN or the next bar stool. So I do think this is the future of media. I think someone like a Draymond Green

who understands how to do it firsthand. I mean, he's solo doloing these podcasts he's doing, which is an incredible skill and they're really good. Like, I look forward to watching his, and as much as I look forward to watching Bill Simmons after a playoff game. So I consider those like two different complementary media types for me as a sports fan. And I could see Draymond then building enough audience in the way Charles Barkley has. Now, Charles Barkley probably has no interest in competing with inside the NBA or creating his own version, Molly. But I could see someone like Draymond doing that. I could see him making the next big media company.

So then though, back to himself, you know. Right. So then back to our earlier conversation. though about investability. This religion of sports has raised $50 million in Series B funding. Yeah, no. Right? Not a good investment.

I mean, they're not in, they're not in, their private equity, I think. I think no matter what, even with Star Power attached, like, I don't think you're getting all that money back times. Well, you make, you know, if you get two or three times your money and you get to be in business with a bunch of athletes and it's a bunch of rich people who are funding and who are capital

allocators who have an affinity for the person, a lot of media creation is because people have an affinity and want to see it in the world, movies, books, magazines, and podcasts. So that is valid. And then what's also valid is somebody could potentially build the next great media brand from this. And that's what I'm looking at is there will be one or two that come out of this,

that actually build a large standard brand. I mean, actually, you start with Obama. They did that giant Netflix deal, right? And that was that $50 million? They did a deal. And then they did it with Spotify as well. Yeah. And Obama is.

So I think these are. are, you know, actually themes here. It's a theme. People who have huge followings, host when they're playing, whether it's, you know, being the actual active president of the United States, Trump or Obama, then what do they do next? How do they capitalize on that following, whether it's an athlete or a politician? And now you see it with whatever the FACCA stupid Trump platform. What is it called? Oh, yeah. Social. Truth social. Trumpet. Oh, man, that's a good name. I think that's what Elon calls it, trumpet. So like trumpet or, you know, Obama did a really nice podcast series I enjoyed with Bruce Springsteen.

And the two of them talking, I found delightful. And so now Obama's, I think, doing that particularly well. So it's all the same themes. And most of them are going to be corny. Most of them are not going to make money. Most will fail. But they'll be one or two. That could be the next big franchise, right?

And I could see it being Traymond. I'm just saying. I put it out there. Okay, I like that. Place a bet, man. Place a bet. I would. I would for sure.

Let's do what we live in the future. We love doing startups. We love doing we live in the future. Yeah. Really, especially because, especially when the future is just like, you get a whole new ear. Yeah. Let's go.

Assuming that you need one. A Texas woman has received a 3D printed ear transplant, which a biotech startup made from a sample of her own cells. Okay. Yeah. We live in the future for sure. Okay, explain. Who's doing this?

So this company, 3D biotherapeutics, it's a biotech company based in Queens, New York, raised $10 million. Shout out Queens. I know, right? Shout out Queens. Shout out Flushing. Was founded in 2016, raised $10 million,

which actually doesn't even seem like that much, considering 3D printing ears. Ears. So, also, I don't know what's always so funny about ears, but it's funny. It's funny. They're unique appendages, yes. They're all weird looking and unique.

So this woman was suffering from a thing called microtia, a deformity of the outer ear, basically during pregnancy. While she was in the womb, the ear did not fully form. So it leaves behind this kind of smaller, like not quite complete ear. So 3D Bio and Dr. Arturo Bonilla, a pediatric ear reconstructive surgeon in San Antonio. Like they took half a gram of cartilage from her own underdeveloped ear. I mean, look at those bananas. Because- Oh, my Lord, banana pants. They ship the sample and a 3D scan of the healthy ear from San Antonio to 3D Bios Lab in New York City.

They isolate the cartilage formation cells, supplement them with nutrients, and mix in a collagen-based bio-ink loaded into a 3-D printer. And in 10 minutes... Yeah, of course. This 3-D printing is fast. They have a new ear. And then they ship it overnight to the surgeon who implanted it just under... her skin above her jawbone, boom, ear. The first of many. This will continue, and

we will see more and more complex body parts printed. People have done the valves of hearts. At some point, you ever see the fifth element when they're 3D printing, you know, based on just the hand of, you know, the woman. The movie is amazing. The fifth element's so great. Femke Jensen, I believe.

No, it's, no, the other version. Malala Blalabai. Yes, that one. Yes. The one who went on to do all the zombie movies. The zombie movies, yes. She is awesome. One of our Nodies will tell us her name.

Altawash. Mila Jovovovich. Milla Jovovich. Thank you. I was so close. No, no, I got it myself. I was about to look. You did?

I was like literally, okay, me too. Only because it's my favorite, like top five sci-fi film for me. Blade Runner, Prometheus, Fifth Al-Man. Yeah, excellent. What else do I love up in that? Kind of now, Dune. I put the new Dune on that list. That movie was amazing.

I watched the first 15 minutes. My wife said we have to watch it together and we have another time, but we're going up to Tahoe for the summer and we got the movie theater, so we're going to do it out. Don't do what I did, which was watch it on the plane.

It's not a good airplane movie. Poor Villanueva. Is that the guy named Villanueva? Yeah. He's a big fan of the show and he's crying right now. Yeah, he is. Villeneuve. Villeneuve.

Wait, didn't he also do Fifth Element? Did he? No, he did Blade Runner? 2049. Anyway, we're going off on a tangent here. The fact is like that. See, this is where the producers could find the actual clip. Oh, no, of course. That's one of my favorites. That's Luke Bisson.

Luke Bisson, yes. But anyway, they basically, in this chamber here we go. Thank you very much. YouTube.com says this weekend to watch the show live, 10 to 12, 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. most days. And you see there are 3D printing with a bunch of goo going into this thing. And they start with a little

hand that they take from the wreckage and 3D print the rest of the body from the DNA. And it's just a wonderful thing to watch because they do the bones first and then they do the. It's actually they do it very poetically, if you remember. They, they, they, they, the muscle fibers get strained over the bone after it gets built. And I think this is why we live in the future is about. It 100% is. Don't you think this inspired the open of, um, Westworld?

Yes, of course. When I saw Westworld, I was like, they just stole this straight up in the fifth element. But this is like they pull like they pull the, the, the, the, um, the muscle fibers over the body, you know, You know, like they're like almost like they're weaving. You know, it looks like a loom of some type. What a great thing. Yeah. Multi-dust.

So yeah, we're going to have organs. We're going to have body parts. Like it really, we do live in the future. And the future could be super cool. I mean, we start with the ears. They're doing valves in the hearts. We already have like, you know, they replace your hip. So each body part, you know, the brain is going to be, you know, the last one.

But, you know, other things, they might be able to. to do relatively quickly. And they're already moving skin grafts back and forth, you know, because that's just easier. But, I mean, the ability to 3D print your own skin sounds like a no-brainer to me. So burn victims, you know, tragically or, you know, you lose some, you know, in some, you know, violent accident, you lose some skin or you lose some muscle. Why can't we replace that? That seems like that's possible. So I'm just thrilled for our kids that, you know, like there's going to be like this whole.

whole level of stuff. And we got to experience, you know, maybe cancer being manageable. I was starting to a cancer doctor this weekend. And, you know, the mortality rates have just flipped, you know, like people are surviving breast cancer. Even some of the ones that, you know, we're considered pretty, pretty gnarly brain cancer, pancreatic cancer, they're now starting to be able to manage those. So I think we're going to go from management to maybe lifetime management of some of them. Absolutely. And MRNA, I mean, as, you know. As much as we've managed to like screw up the magic of the technology that created these coronavirus vaccines, we're very close to like a universal coronavirus vaccine because this MRNA technology is phenomenal. And it could eventually be, you know, there are viruses that cause cancer.

Like we really are on the verge of an incredible, right. They're literally working toward a cure for HIV that could be here very soon. I mean, we live on the precipice of a phenomenal biotechievous. Be optimistic, folks. I mean, we're sitting here in a recession, layoffs, Ukraine, China, Taiwan, China, US. There's so many things for you to have anxiety about. The reason I created the We Live in the Future segment, and I'm so obsessed with us doing

it, you know, one, two, three times a week is because when you watch this show, I want people to be, I want their, I want people's optimism, Molly, to match reality. And I feel like right now our optimism is that like a 10? I'm sorry, optimism is that a two and our reality is a 10. Yeah. And if I could get people to a six or seven in their optimism, I think we would all, you know, come to our daily lives with a little more enthusiasm. All right. It's been a great show and we'll see you next time. Bye bye. Bye. If you are a founder of a pre-series A company, you haven't raised that series A yet, which is really hard. Well, we wanted to invite you to founder university. This is a two-day intensive course. It takes place on June 13th and 14th. It's remote. It's free. We limit the number of people who can come. We asked you to apply. And this virtual workshop, is free for founders and helps you understand how to fundraise and pitch, how to hire great people, how to build a world-class product, how to execute on your sales and marketing and some growth techniques as well. The launch team and I have been doing this for a long time. It has been

amazing for us to get to know founders. And that's why we do it. Of course, we want to help folks as many as possible. That's part of our mandate. But really our mandate at launch here at this week in startups and the syndicate, which is where we invest, we meet and invest in companies. is we want to back builders. And so we use these events as a way to get to know you. And if you're building something and we see, you're credibly building something interesting in the world, well, then we want to invest in you. So truth be told, every time we do founder university, a half dozen of those people,

we wind up funding in the next year or so. So it's a great way for us to spend time with entrepreneurs. We're going to be joined by a lot of experts. My friend Becky DeGraw, who's my attorney, from Wilson Sincini. will be speaking at the event. FitBot's co-founder, Jesse will be speaking. Marlowe's CEO, Mary Fox, will be speaking. So we get a bunch of our portfolio companies

who have been crushing it and who have learned a lot and we've seen that they are qualified builders. We have them come speak at the event. So you see how we do things here at this weekend startups and launch in the syndicate. We like to create a flywheel. We invest in people who come out of Founder University.

Some number of them really crush it and become world-class companies, and it's not guaranteed. You have to do the work, folks. The ones who do, then we have them speak at a later founder university. So a lot of the great companies we've met came to a founder university. They got to know us. They learned something that was worth their time. And that's really what we do with the agenda.

We try to make it worth your time to take two days off work, essentially. Now, it's remote. So you can consider it your weekend, even though it's taking place around the week. You consider it professional development. And if you learn one or two important things about running a company, fundraising, growth, hiring. Well, those one or two things will pay for those two days. I am absolutely certain of it.

Now, you have to apply again, so you can register at founder. dot university. Yes, it's a great domain. So go to founder. dot university and sign up. We also have a course called angel. dot university. If you want to invest in the companies and you think the philosophy I've explained

here about how I invest in companies, I'm invested in over 300 of them. If you think this is an interesting way to meet startups early, help them and invest in them, well, you can read my deal memos as we invest in new companies and you can join us on that adventure. And I do this through a course called Angel University that has raised close to $200,000 for charity. And you can sign up for Angel University at angel. We do it four times a year. Great program. And it's just me and my partner,

Mike Savino, talking about how we pick companies, how we evaluate them, how we diligence them, how we source them, like Founding University is a source of investment and deal flow for us. And that three or four hour course, actually I think it's more like four or five hours is well worth your time. all the proceeds from Angel University go to charity. And again, over $175,000, I think at this point it's gone to charity. I'm very proud of that work. And founding university is free. But you do have to apply and we do pick people who have built a little bit of something. So we're looking for you to have some skin in the game. We have a Founder University 12 week program, which you can also see at Founder.comer. We'll be starting our third cohort shortly. And you can apply for that program.

If you have not started building or your very early stages haven't incorporated yet, you're nowhere near the Series A, you're kind of in the solo or co-founder situation and you're just starting to build. Maybe you've incorporated, maybe you have it. And that's a 12-week course. And that's another great one that we do. So please join us, founder.comiversity. And if you want to invest in these great companies, angel.competun.