EP 14: Lux Capital’s Josh Wolfe Talks Musk, Adobe’s Scott Belsky Talks Twitter, Bolt and Breslow Again, and Entering The Golden Age of Fraud Lawyers

(00:00) Introducing Josh Wolfe (02:41) Elon Musk Buys Twitter Because No One Told Him He Can Buy Other Stuff (39:58) Bolt, Katara, and the World’s Greatest Time to be a Law Firm (56:53) Introducing Scott Belsky (57:18) Trying to Explain Twitter (67:55) Algorithms and Free Speech Follow the show: https://twitter.com/cartoonavatars https://www.instagram.com/cartoonavatars/ https://www.tiktok.com/@cartoonavatars Follow the hosts: https://twitter.com/loganbartlett https://twitter.com/wolfejosh https://twitter.com/scottbelsky Mixed and edited: Justin Hrabovsky Produced: Andrew Nadeau and Rashad Assir Executive Producer: Josh Machiz Music: Griff Lawson Musk buys Twitter: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/25/technology/twitter-employees-elon-musk.html Sam Lessin article: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/elon-musk-is-silicon-valleys-new-hero-for-better-or-worse Jack Dorsey’s tweet on Musk’s purchase: https://twitter.com/jack/status/1518772753460998145?s=20&t=njyqUGHJChL4oAQdEkkTCw Bolt Sued by Forever 21: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-26/forever-21-parent-authentic-brands-sues-bolt-startup Katera sues ex-CEO: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/bankrupt-startup-that-blew-2-billion-from-softbank-sues-ex-ceo-board-directors-over-self-dealing Softbank cuts spending: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-25/softbank-cuts-back-spending-leaving-startups-desperate-for-cash Executive Producer: Rashad Assir Producer: Leah Clapper Mixing and editing: Justin Hrabovsky Check out Unsupervised Learning, Redpoint's AI Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@UCUl-s_Vp-Kkk_XVyDylNwLA 🎥 Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCugS0jD5IAdoqzjaNYzns7w?sub_confirmation=1 Follow on Socials 📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/theloganbartlettshow 📱 X - https://twitter.com/loganbartshow 🎬 Clips on TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@theloganbartlettshow About the Show Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, and Netflix. In each episode of The Logan Bartlett Show, we sit down with the people behind today’s most important startups and extract the tactics, lessons, and frameworks they’ve learned the hard way. Conversations span hiring to GTM, product, growth, fundraising and everything in between - collectively forming the ultimate playbook to make you a better CEO, investor or board member. Tap follow and enable notifications to stay ahead of the game.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Logan Bartlett?

  Welcome to the 14th episode of Three Cartoon Avatars. I'm your host, Logan Bartlett, and I am joined today by two special guests. Josh Wolfe, who is co-founder and managing partner at Lux Capital. Josh and I recorded on Thursday afternoon. That was actually before a bunch of details came out of Elon's financing strategy for the acquisition of Twitter. But Josh and I talked through a bunch of the different deal dynamics. And Josh has been a public critic of Elon and Tesla specifically. And so some interesting stuff there. And then I am also joined by Scott Belsky. At the end of the episode, Scott is Chief Product Officer at Adobe.

• 0:47Logan Bartlett?

  Adobe is a $200 billion company that I'm sure people are familiar with. In addition to that, he was a co-founder and CEO of a company called Behance that was essentially a LinkedIn for design. So we talked to Scott about different directions that the Twitter product has taken and where they can go from here. And so you'll hear that at the end of the episode. Thanks for joining me here today.

• 1:10Speaker 01

  Awesome to see you, man. By the way, I only came on because I'm hoping that I leave the show with a cooler name. I need a cool name. Logan Gardlet. That's just a badass name.

• 1:19Logan Bartlett?

  Oh, I appreciate that. It seems very, I've been told it's very WASPy. So, but I appreciate that. I will tell my parents that it seems badass. They'll be very appreciative of it. Thanks for doing this, Josh. Maybe provide a little, I know I did, I gave a little bit of your background, but maybe quick overview on yourself and Lux Capital? And we can go from there.

• 1:38Speaker 01

  We're $4 billion today, doing everything from early-stage de novo companies to late-stage growth and special situations. Mostly out of New York and Menlo Park. Everybody at Lux is a generalist and we do everything from cutting-edge biotech to robotic surgery, to aerospace and defense, and NLP, software, AI, ML. There's very little that we don't do. I tend to be a little bit psychotic about competitive advantage and trying to find tech that is like singular and there are like maybe five competitors in the space instead of 50. But the team here is pretty diverse in their interests and everybody's got freedom to go pursue at all stages and all sectors and increasingly all geographies. So, yeah.

• 2:16Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, well, and Josh and I got to know each other, so I sent him a cold email saying, "Hey, I might do boring software stuff and you do cool hardware stuff, but we're both in New York and we're investing, and we like rap music and all that stuff." And then he ignored that email, and then we, and then, three years later, we were introduced through your colleague Brandon, so here we are.

• 2:37Speaker 01

  My, well, I'm a big fan of yours originally through Twitter, and I think that you've got, you know, a sense of humor and wit that conveyed intelligence, and you were just like on, on point and on spot on like all the timely topics, and, you know, saying things in a subtle, cool way that everybody was sort of thinking, so I admire that a lot. And by the way, my record, my track record of the errors of omission of emails that I have missed, I did not not respond by intent, but like, we have this one entrepreneur, we've now put several hundred million dollars behind, and I still laugh, he sent a, an email like 12 years ago to like info@luxcapital that went totally unanswered, and he was trying to get an internship, and then like, I don't know, but in the end, it all works out, so.

• 3:19Logan Bartlett?

  Totally, and it's all the way it's meant to be, and, you know, everyone finds their own little internal petty slights to motivate them, and I certainly won't hold this over you for extended period of time. I appreciate you atoning for that, that email omission, coming on and talking through stuff with us today, but, well, yeah, no, this is, this is great, I mean, so, we have a host of different things we can, we can talk through, and I'm sure we'll have a fun time doing it, but, in the news, most notably today, something that I was very skeptical about, to say the least, I think both of us are probably, have been at different times, Elon skeptics, it seems like Twitter is actually going to be acquired by Elon, so, earlier this week, the board agreed to sell the company

• 4:03Logan Bartlett?

  for roughly $44 billion to Elon, that money's going to be comprised of 13 billion of commitments from banks that are collateralized against Twitter itself. Interestingly, the balance, which is a large number, 12 and a half billion are loan commitments that are collateralized against stock pledged by Elon, a margin loan, if you will, and then... Twenty-one billion dollars of unnamed equity commitments, so cash that needs to come up somehow. There's about a billion-dollar breakup fee. The purchase price represents, it's actually a billion-dollar breakup fee on both sides, which is interesting. The purchase price represents a 38% premium of the unaffected trading price before Musk's

• 4:47Logan Bartlett?

  stake was revealed. Josh, did you think we were going to end up here?

• 4:52Speaker 01

  Think, no. I did not have this on any bingo cards, but, you know, anything is, anything is possible now. I really, like somebody would say, suspend disbelief, and I don't think there's anything that you could tell me in a headline right now that I wouldn't believe. Sure, yeah, it's possible.

• 5:07Logan Bartlett?

  You know, Elon, I would say, the Tesla's thing, I think both of us have been publicly skeptical about that as a, you publicly, me privately, and my bank account, unfortunately, skeptical about that company able to get to where it was, has gotten. And so, I will say, of someone that's humbled me most from a learning standpoint, and their ability to will things into existence, I think Elon's probably been number one from, from my perspective. So, I guess at this point, I am, I'm done doubting what he can or can't do, but I am kind of shocked that the Twitter board actually agreed to it.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  Well, there's two things to parse there. There's the Twitter thing, and then there's the Tesla thing. And so, yes, I've been a public critic, and I've, I've, I've ended up in the sort of homogeneous criticism where everybody's like, oh, Josh hates Elon, not true. I have enormous respect for SpaceX, in part because it's run by Gwynn, and I think it's just truly like a superior competitive advantage to that industry. I think what they've done is clever. I think the people that they've hired are brilliant. I think the people that are coming out of SpaceX are brilliant. And so, I truly applaud that. I have been critical about Tesla, specifically about Elon's relationship with the truth, what I consider to be the mendacity that at times have felt like the monorail man, the monorail man from Simpsons, you know, coming into town. You have a guy who like abhors government intervention, but has gotten tens of billions

• 6:26Speaker 01

  of dollars of government subsidies. Almost all of the profitability from Tesla today is still not from selling cars. It's actually from zero energy credits that the governments force other people to pay Tesla for, and that is 100% margin revenue. And so, what I would say is that there has not been, in many generations, and maybe in history, a better storyteller. Leader, and when I say leader, I don't mean necessarily like a presidential leader, but a cult leader, or a capital raiser than Elon. I think he is the world's greatest banker in the history of modern technology and finance, bar none. And so I think anything that I underestimated was his ability to continue to sell and get true believers.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  And in the presence of any information that might have cast doubt, that people would shake that belief, and it really became a religion. Maybe four or five years ago, I started to notice that people were getting Tesla tattoos. It is very hard to ever short something where people are tattooing the brand on their body. And I've actually looked at this, and if you look at the exponential chart that I used to show people, and I would ask them, what do you think this is? And they would say, I don't know, Tesla stock price. And while it did match that, it was actually the number of Mormons in the Mormon church. And it grew exponentially, in part through conversion, in part through birth rates. And Elon actually raises more money on an annual basis than the Mormon church. It is the greatest techno-utopian religion, and he is exceptionally good at that. So I massively

• 7:52Speaker 01

  underestimated his ability to continue to sell, or maybe I underestimated the credulity of the masses to provide the capital. I still, and I will sound like I'm absolutely crazy, but I still believe that there is massive accounting fraud, and maybe it gets uncovered one day, maybe it doesn't.

• 8:07Logan Bartlett?

  It's interesting, I don't know about the accounting, I mean, you've gone deeper into the books and all this stuff, but it is interesting. Sam Lessin actually had a piece in The Information about how, he called Elon Musk Silicon Valley's new hero, for better for worse, and it's an interesting piece. But basically, goes through and says, most of success stories today have applied to engineers and academics and the history of companies starting. But he really, Elon has willed these things into existence, right? And been able to raise money for things that otherwise wouldn't be possible, and actually weaponized capital to the advantage of shareholders and the ability to get to where they're going. And I think he has had a loose relationship with the truth. But if you project these

• 8:51Logan Bartlett?

  things, and you can motivate people into it, right? You can actually bend the curve of these outcomes. Some material way, right? And clearly it's happened with SpaceX and I, you know, Tesla works until it doesn't from a financing standpoint, right? And that's what's actually so fascinating to me about this Twitter thing is there's a fair bit that's collateralized against his Tesla stock. And so if Tesla starts going down as it has, ultimately, like, that could be a flywheel that actually undoes it, undoes itself over and over again, right? And so it's like, he's playing this very high, high-risk game of capital raising and all that. It's interesting, the same week we see Bill Huang going to jail for playing a

• 9:34Logan Bartlett?

  very different type of high-risk game here. We sort of see Elon do this between Twitter and Tesla.

• 9:40Speaker 01

  And Tesla was probably the largest holding of Arc Invest, maybe still is when Arc was put in business or significantly seeded by Bill. So that complex, you know, will be interesting as that unravels. You are right about about Elon's ability to, you know, both conjure belief and credibility and turn that into capital and use that capital to fund. I've always compared, you know, Bezos and Amazon as this, to me, true heroic capital allocator, somebody who raised, you know, just, I don't know, 50 million in the IPO and went from a $300 million market cap to, you know, what they are today and just compounded internal generation of cash. Now, you could sort of put a footnote there and say, well, stock-based compensation played a key role there. So, you know, there was some element of infusion of capital, but just tremendous business builder,

• 10:25Speaker 01

  true capital allocator. But Elon has, you know, just, I mean, to your point, he's absolutely crushed it and crushed critics along the way. The Tesla thing, I mean, sorry, both the Tesla collateralized piece of this and the Twitter thing are interesting because there are two extremes, you know, unlike any dialectical, you can sort of hold both of these ideas at the same time, still retain the ability to function. One view is this truly is about free speech, that this platform that he used to help build the brand through provocation, communication, accessibility with the masses, who in turn became true believers and either tithe or bought into Tesla, that then he used

• 11:06Speaker 01

  to borrow against effectively either using as an ATM or mortgaging to then buy Twitter. Was this beautiful sort of circular thing, you know, through, it was almost like his, his grand plan, part deux or part trois. The, the more skeptical or cynical view, and let's put low, low probability on this, is what a brilliant way to actually potentially cash out of, of Tesla. I mean, either he's got to sell stock to be able to finance this, and now this is an excusable one, right? So some months ago, he took it to the public, socialized it, you know, do, should I sell? If the majority of the people who aren't necessarily shareholders, right, they're just fans, think I should sell, then I'll sell, right? He didn't put it out to a shareholder vote, he put it out to a Twitter vote where he knows that his, you know, his 60, 80 million plus fans are gonna be like, yeah, sell.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  Do great, good with, with the money that you.

• 11:52Logan Bartlett?

  And he had already made the decision, right? Like, the filing came out, he had already sold at that point.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  But again, just like, incredible ability to be very subtle in how, I mean, he's, he's very clever with the words that he uses and the timing of which he does it and the manipulation of the masses. It, it really is, in a sense, admirably artful, even though, you know, I might criticize other stuff. So, so the cynical view here is, he can use Tesla stock as an ATM and sell down and finance part of that $20 billion of equity. The $20 billion of equity might be a special purpose vehicle, friends, other, you know, participants that want to participate in that and just provide the equity. The 12 and a half billion that is pledged, notably to your point, you know, I think it's 20% loan to value coverage, so you multiply that times five, you've got, you know, 62

• 12:39Speaker 01

  and a half billion of Tesla stock, and whatever the number shares is, I think it's 70 million thereabout, at the price that it was announced. Tesla's price has gone down, I think, 20% over the past month. When the deal was announced, it was over 1,000, now it's eight, I don't know, you know, 800 something. So it's not inconceivable that this could actually, you know, drop another 20 or 30%. I think 740 or 750 or so is a break even point where he might actually get margin called. And so there was, there was, interestingly, as people looked through the deal and the economics when it came out a day or two ago, the, the value of Tesla's equity dropped, either because the market was looking through, or possibly Elon was selling, or somebody else was selling.

• 13:22Speaker 01

  I think by 2X the amount of the Twitter deal. So, you know, 46 billion versus like 120 or 130 billion dollar worth of equity loss, which has only since increased. So. Market doesn't love the deal. Certainly, if you were a classic, you know, governance-oriented investor, you would want somebody that's singularly focused on the company at hand. And then you've got the whole free speech thing, which we can talk about.

• 13:49Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, no, no, let's go there in a second. You know, it's interesting. Zach Weinberg, actually, two weeks ago was on and he, his theory was just diversification, right? He's so consolidated in a few positions. And if this can help him diversify a little bit in a way that doesn't send Tesla's stock price totally tanking and a lack of confidence in what they're doing. I mean, clearly, it's at, it's at a high watermark, right? Or it has, I mean, lower today, but it's certainly at a high watermark. And so that definitely is the cynical view is that ultimately, like, that's where they're, that's where they're headed with all this. So I don't know if I, you know, it must be such an interesting worldview. I don't know Elon beyond, you know, what I've read, but it must be, it

• 14:32Logan Bartlett?

  must lead you to a very interesting worldview to have had basically everything plus or minus you've tried, maybe with the exception of like, you know, personal relationships or whatever, have succeeded. And so it's one of these things that at a minimum, I think even the biggest Elon zealot would have to say, this was not the most thought-through thing, right? Like, it just the whole way it came to be. If you just play back the timeline of the decisioning and the investing and joining the board and then not joining the board and all of that, like, this was not thought through in a premeditated way, right? And so it just must lead to this deterministic upcoming or something that like, hey, the world as I want it to be has always kind of gotten there ultimately. And so who really

• 15:15Logan Bartlett?

  cares? If I can send someone into space and I can will the world to electric vehicles, this bot and disinformation and this whole Twitter issue that they have as a fundamental business is, you know, well within my ability to bend the curve on what ultimately can. And you see even some of the things he talks about from a product standpoint and like the thoughtfulness he gives to free speech and all of that stuff, like, it's not deeply rooted in, in principle. And everything he sort of says is against good business practice, it almost feels like. Like, he'll say, hey, I agree with the laws of countries in terms of what speech will ultimately look like. And that's actually very bad business. Like, I guarantee, you know, you can say racist

• 15:59Logan Bartlett?

  stuff, you can have beheading videos, like, that's not illegal. None of those things are illegal. But surely advertisers won't want to exist alongside that, right? And so it's interesting, he's like, talking on both sides of this, and then he ends up, you know, it'll be interesting to see if anyone else steps forward, because I'll tell you, Tomo Bravo's the one that's reportedly talking to him about funding some of that 21 billion. And I'm sure they are not doing this as an altruistic good to, you know, allow free speech to reign on the internet, right? And so it's interesting, it just doesn't feel that premeditated.

• 16:32Speaker 01

  So a few provocative things there. The first is, I think one of the things that is most maybe admirable and attractive, certainly for people that are true fans of Elon, is two of the things that you named, which I would say impetuism and irreverence. There's a feeling of like, I'm just gonna go do this thing. And people like that sort of impulsivity about it. And then the irreverence is the very thing that we all love in our entrepreneurs, which is somebody that is looking at an institution that exists and either routing around it or breaking through, like the Kool-Aid Man, they just, they don't care about the system, right? And so I think people applaud that irreverence. You know, I don't, I don't like the disrespect of the SEC, right? I mean, that is like blatant, like, but, but to your point, that's really the only thing, and it feels like it's a tiny slap

• 17:16Speaker 01

  on the, on the, you know, not even on the wrist, on this pinky, you know, for 20 million to him, 20 million to Tesla. But everything else, you know, from calling somebody a pedo to, like, he has gotten away with, right?

• 17:26Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, 100%.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  If you were to put it in a zeitgeist moment of time, it was very Trump-like, right? Trump was like, I can shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and get away with it. And he was right. Like, there was nothing that would stick to him, you know, sort of Teflon Don. And I think that's the same sort of thing, that when you are, when you are so big as a cult of personality, that you're almost too big to fail. I mean, there's, there's really nothing I can see. Other than if Elon actually, and I actually think if he actually shot somebody, he'd probably get away with it as, you know, self-defense or whatever. Like, there's very little at this point that I actually see taking him down, unless it ends up being some weird, you know, Al Capone-like thing that they get him on tax evasion or some, you know, weird thing. So.

• 18:04Logan Bartlett?

  And I just can't imagine that would possibly happen. And so, yeah, no, it's 100%. I mean, the Trump analogy is a good one, and we've talked about this before, but it is, I mean, there's so many parallels between Twitter as a platform to, you know, willing things that would otherwise seem impossible into existence to some level of grander and petulance and dealing with critics or whatever. And it's actually a fascinating comparison between the two. And I think they clearly have been, you know, more successful than I could ever aspire to be in their respective different domains. But it does feel like

• 18:45Logan Bartlett?

  they're at all times very, very close to setting themselves on fire and being wiped off from, you know, they're playing a very high-risk, high-stakes game that isn't totally thought through. And it's one of those things of like, someone once said, do you take Trump literally? Or do you take him like figuratively in what he's saying? Like, what is the intent versus the thought? And for the longest time, I thought, I don't know if you ever watched the show Lost, but Lost was a television show, and I convinced myself for the first three seasons that they were playing this like super complicated game of eight-dimensional chess, and everything was going to tie together in perfect end. And it was like, huh, okay, they were actually just kind of making it up as they went along.

• 19:26Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 19:26Logan Bartlett?

  And that polar bear that they showed in season one, they're actually not going to bring that full circle, right? And that's sort of the way I feel about these guys is like, we're actually not going to be brought full circle on it. And to some extent, like, who am I to throw stones at someone that is, at least in Elon's case, Trump, I will gladly throw stones. But in Elon's case, like, the person that's willing these things, I mean, Twitter objectively has been a fledgling business, right? And I think he actually, in a brilliant, I don't know, accident or purposeful, but the product innovation that they've Actually done and moving from the monolith that it was in 2016 and actually decoupling into microservices and breaking out, you know, whatever the feed from the, from the DM, from the, um, you know, whatever, the follower graph and all that stuff. It actually feels

• 20:11Logan Bartlett?

  like it's on the precipice of experimenting and trying to figure out what actually works in an interesting way. And so hopefully he doesn't come in and totally blow it up because I think what, uh, Kavon or whoever the, the head of product is that's taken on, they've, they've actually seemingly made up and corrected a lot of the past sins from a product standpoint. And now you see the velocity actually moving in a meaningful way. And so he might've actually timed this perfectly and it could be a, a master stroke of genius, but when you hear him talk about it, it doesn't seem like he's that impressed with, you know, the rate of innovation. Clearly this level of granularity aren't some of the inputs that, that are actually going into it.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  Well, well, here's the interesting thing. First of all, um, it's going to be a private business or let's assume that the transaction consummates is going to be a private business.

• 20:54Logan Bartlett?

  Which by the way, speaking of the transaction consummated, right now it seems like it's trading that implies like 80% probability, right? Which is, it's fallen, uh, as people kind of unpack the financing and all the different considerations and thought through Elon as the wild card, right? And so normally as you, as you know, like at this point, you would expect a margin of like, you know, 98% or something. And the only risk would be regulatory or something coming up there. And that's actually not really a concern here. It's just the impulse that he might walk away from it.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  The, right. And it's, and it's a billion dollars to, you know, hit to him unless he can find some way to weasel out of that. But, uh, no, you're right. I mean, the merger arb folks would make a killing here on a levered basis on that 20 point, 20% spread, uh, to the closing price. Uh, a few things. One, private company will need to raise capital, right? Currently not significantly indebted. Uh, this would be an enormous amount of debt. They're generating, I think around somewhere between 600 and 900 million of operating cash flow a year.

• 21:48Logan Bartlett?

  Yep.

• 21:48Speaker 01

  And so you put the interest, I think it would be like four and a half percent on the deal docs, uh, on that amount of debt. And, you know, it's basically eating all the operating cash flow. So, so then what do you do? Well, you either have to raise prices, you know, or you have to cut costs, right? So you need more revenue and less cost. Duh. So the raising prices, I think there's room for that. You know, there is a, probably a power law. I would guess that 20% of users would pay significant multiple. I would pay, I don't know. What would you pay a month for Twitter?

• 22:14Logan Bartlett?

  It would be hard to come up with a price that I couldn't talk myself in, unless it got so high that other people weren't on the platform, right? But to get some advanced, I don't know, analytics on followers and some likelihood that, hey, at least this many people that follow you are going to see this post and whatever, there's a bunch of power user kind of tweet deck functionality that would be nearly infinite in my willingness to pay, assuming other people stay on the platform.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  Right. Definitively a multiple of three bucks, right? Would you pay 30? Yes. Would I pay 100?

• 22:44Logan Bartlett?

  Probably.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  Yes. Would I probably, you know, so I don't know, 1,200 bucks a year, you know, and as a professional, like, it's sort of a no-brainer, right? I mean, I think about what I pay for cable and the utility I get of just consuming something versus being able to produce and push out to an audience. So I think that there's pricing power, and I think that there's probably pricing power on a few different fronts. Individual subscribers, paying users, members, I think that there's opportunity for corporates. You might even have a messaging element there akin to Slack for some elements of newsworthiness, timeliness, that's siloed in their own sort of corporate DM channel that you could at least get corporates to pay for, whether or not they'd actually use a TBD. And then I think you could actually do it by verticals where, you know, you could actually sell advertising to specific verticals around sports, and you're starting to see this a little bit with the group segment being rolled out.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  But there's a ton of ways to monetize and experiment, and I don't think that they will piss people off enough that people will abandon the platform entirely, it's just too valuable. And then on the cost piece, it's really just going to come down to headcount. And that's the, that's the stuff where, you know, are you going to be able to keep morale and a culture where, on the one hand, if you look at Elon's other companies, SpaceX, super high-performing, super high-intensity, the people that are coming out of there and some of the entrepreneurs that we're backing, they might have started at SpaceX, they were 25, they'd been there five, six years, they're 30, 31 now, they're coming out, I mean, they're lights out, they're awesome. A lot of people that work at Tesla, you know, it's just like, some of them are like abuse victims, right, coming out and they're just like, you know, coming into 12-step programs.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  So the culture under Elon, unless he taps somebody to, you know, maybe he becomes chairman and finds some amazing CEO, which itself is a question of like, if you were, if you were in charge of picking a CEO for this company, who would it be? I just think that you're gonna have a lot of panic internally and maybe the people who are morally panicking because they're too far on the left or something are gonna, you know, self-select themselves out. Other people that are really committed to the platform will stay. Maybe that itself, you know, doesn't cost anything. But, you know, you've got tens of thousands of people and a lot of these people are gonna have to be laid off, um, uh, you know, to be able to meet that debt burden, which is very significant, unless he's gonna access the capital markets again in some way. If you try to refinance that debt as quick as you can, it's likely only to be more expensive, you know, in the

• 24:53Speaker 01

  near future. So, so it's a, it's a sort of, that's the thing that worries me because I like Twitter. Uh, and aside from the fact of, you know, the non-zero probability of Elon kicking off critics like me and other people, even though he says, it's almost like he's staring at the floorboards when he says that kind of stuff. You know, I want my critics to stay on, almost as like I'm kicking every one of you off.

• 25:11Logan Bartlett?

  Yep.

• 25:12Speaker 01

  But, uh, yeah.

• 25:14Logan Bartlett?

  It's interesting. I don't, I don't know what to make. Again, all those, all these things, like there's kind of three parts of the product, right? There's the monetization, which clearly they haven't built the infrastructure, right, to do, like, they, they should be able, with an interest graph as they have, to be better at targeting than they are in direct response. And like, right now, the only brand, the only type of marketing that exists on the platform is like, brand-based marketing for the most part. Like, no small business could use it for anything that's like, you know, direct response to go purchase something on, on whatever Shopify. And then, then there's kind of the, the activation of new users and there's the retention and engagement of existing ones, right? And all of these things, like, I think there's so many levers to pull from a business standpoint in all

• 25:58Logan Bartlett?

  of those. And I imagine you can cut costs, like, there has to be fat in this business for how efficiently they're, they're running. Like, there has to be a ton of fat that exists. So all that stuff makes, makes sense to me. It also exists at such odds with, uh, the, it's seemingly what he said is his stated reason for buying it, which is something related to free speech and what should be allowed to exist on the platform and that the, the center curve of the company, or the bell curve of the company, has gravitated too far to the left and they need to pull it back to the center. And like, maybe that's all true, but all of those things seem to exist somewhat at a tension to this free speech, uh, component of it. So I know you referenced that earlier, but I'm interested in your thoughts about.

• 26:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, let's, let's, let's take the two extremes of that, right? So one extreme is, he truly is a First Amendment free speech advocate, cares deeply about conjecture and criticism, the two necessary ingredients, you know, for, for true intellectual progress, and, and for the preservation of institutions that support those things. And he's a great champion of the First Amendment. The, the other alternative is that it's a convenient, and the other extreme is it's a convenient excuse. Obviously, I have my biases, and I, I lean that it's closer to that. I think, you know, I think he does not like being censored by the SEC or having to have the proverbial Twitter sitter. I think he'd like to be able to say whatever he likes without, with impunity.

• 27:27Speaker 01

  But, but this is somebody who has a history of silencing critics. I mean, there are not like one, or two, or three, but like dozens of examples where he has gone hard after people. In some cases, they were anonymous, in some cases, they were not, but, you know, gotten them fired, threatened litigation, you know, I mean, you know, a guy said that he was doing a, he thought it was a PR stunt, and he, you know, called him a pedophile, right? Yep. And now you can say, well, that's free speech, countering free speech. But, you know, there's other examples where he went after people's bosses and said, you know, your guy's writing blogs criticizing my company. You know, there's this old quote that, that the truth doesn't mind being questioned, and a lie doesn't like to be challenged.

• 28:09Speaker 01

  And so I am very skeptical about Elon suddenly having this transformation of, I really want open criticism, you know, into invited. I think, I think he abhors criticism and critics. The second part of this is Twitter's sort of the ultimate platform, that if you don't want to listen to somebody, or you don't want to hear a word, you mute them, or you unfollow them, or you block them. And so the greater risk arguably is that people have put themselves into silos and, you know, in, in information echo chambers, and let information cascades occur in, in, in not exposing themselves to alternative views. But that's also a, a measure of free speech, as you get to choose, you know? I'm not forced to watch Fox if I don't want to, or MSNBC, or CNN, you know, you listen

• 28:53Speaker 01

  to who you want, and you expose yourself to who you want, that's a personal choice. So. I find it to be just, you know, absolute, I don't know, at times, I guess, who's the garden of earthly delights, Hieronymus Bosch? You know, at times it's like that, there's just like this chaotic orgy of like both brilliant intellects and just toxic stuff, but you sort through it, you know, and you discount the really ugly stuff and you ignore it and you pay attention. And I've just found some of the smartest people on Twitter, some of the most, I mean, the Russia-Ukraine phenomenon, like, real-time reporting, the analysis, the insights from people globally, it's just been absolutely incredible. Like, is that something around my book?

• 29:33Logan Bartlett?

  In Arab Spring and Black Lives Matter and all, like, the information that just gets disseminated on the platforms, absolutely remarkable. And that's one of the most interesting, I mean, it's sort of like, is this a, is this a protocol, or is it an application? And ultimately, like, one of the things, and we can talk about open sourcing the algorithm and letting people pick what they see, or transparency of like what you're seeing and all that, but even if you're making a chronological decision that the timeline's going to exist like that, right? That's a, something of an editorial decision that you're making, like, that's, that's the way it's going to exist, right? And again, that's not, as proven by every other platform, algorithmic is a better business than chronological.

• 30:15Logan Bartlett?

  Like, every other social media platform has proven that again and again, okay? So, like, we're in this-

• 30:20Speaker 01

  By the way, I forget the image of it, who deserves the credit for it, but there's this image of a guy sort of leaning forward, and it's Instagram, and leaning in, and it's Twitter, and, you know, Instagram is almost like, it requires more algorithmic manipulation to get you engaged, right? And you're just sort of scrolling and consuming, and same sort of thing with TikTok. Twitter, it's like, intellectual battle, right? You're like, you get to a pine, you want to fight with somebody, you know, you forward something, you comment on it, there's snark, and like, the good and the bad of that could be, in my mind, reduced, the bad, by just ensuring that every- Account is an actual human, right? And so just like eliminate the bot.

• 30:57Logan Bartlett?

  Which is one thing he said he does want to do is authenticate that, that get the bots off the platform, right? In his sort of not fully fleshed out plan, that is something.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  And by the way, there's a Russ, I forget his last name, from the LA Times, has documented how brilliantly Elon has used hundreds of thousands of bots over the years, right? So again, it's like looking at a floorboard, you know, after you've committed the murder, like, yeah.

• 31:23Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah. It's a, it's a, you know, I can't decide, like, I think this is, I mean, certainly one of the most interesting things that I imagine we'll encounter in our, in our lifetime in terms of just like business spectacle personalities. I mean, he literally two days ago, like tweeted a cocaine joke about putting cocaine back into Coca-Cola, right? And so it's like, it's, it's constant entertainment. It also feels like there's a materiality here that you almost can't talk about it enough in terms of how fascinating it is, how important it is as a platform, how interesting the story

• 32:03Logan Bartlett?

  and the machinations of it are, how the outcome, I'm still not totally sure which way it's gonna go, right? It's just like, it's, you actually couldn't make all this up.

• 32:13Speaker 01

  He is the embodiment of the, and I think it was like the internal survey, it was like, you know, like 40% of people, or whatever, 30% of people didn't really care one way or the other, 27% loved him, 27% hated him inside of Twitter, right? Which itself, we would have thought, but it's like loved, hated, never ignored. And he is the embodiment of that. And what's interesting is Trump used to consume that, right? And people were like almost exhausted from the constant need for love, hate, adoration, attention. And, you know, right now, there isn't a day that goes by, and I, it actually is sort of marvelous, like, you've got SpaceX launching astronauts, you got him doing Twitter thing, you got Tesla reporting record profits, like, there isn't a day right now in this current moment where it isn't, you know, Elon all the time. So it's.

• 32:58Logan Bartlett?

  Totally. No, he's, he's certainly captivating. I mean, it's, it's 24 hour entertainment.

• 33:03Speaker 01

  So here's one, let me, let me get your take on. China.

• 33:07Logan Bartlett?

  Yep.

• 33:07Speaker 01

  China and Elon is an element that I have not really seen talked too much. I mean, Bezos actually tweeted sort of one of these like, huh, interesting, you know, alluding to it, but the relationship with China is very significant. He is, and I don't know this for sure, but I've heard from a reliable source, he is one of the few foreigners, maybe the only, with Chinese citizenship. I don't know if that's been verified, and I don't know if that was like a precursor to receive something or other, but he produces half of Tesla's vehicles there. Half of Tesla's vehicles are produced in China. A quarter of its revenue comes from China. China has banned Twitter. What do you do?

• 33:48Logan Bartlett?

  You know, so Bezos tweeted this out, and I was kind of, I mean, again, like, hard to believe, people always tweet, I can't believe this app's free, or whatever. But Bezos tweeted out, interesting question, the Chinese government just gained a bit of leverage over the town square, which was interesting to see him say that. It's, I would love to see someone that, I mean, clearly neither of us are totally pro Elon, Twitter, this is good. I, I, I'm not on the other end of that side. I don't know that it's bad. I think Twitter has floundered for a long time, and I think this could be a brilliant move. If I were thinking from a pure capital allocation standpoint, and I were Elon, this is a master stroke of like diversification that I really respect.

• 34:32Logan Bartlett?

  And so in that case, like, I don't know inherently that this is a bad thing. That said, the most ardent people that I'm sure you follow on Twitter, that I follow on Twitter, that are championing this deal for free speech are also very anti-China, right? And will say things about anyone that invests in China, will call out anyone that, that caters to China in any meaningful way, right? All the social apps, TikTok, and everything that, that, you know, are Chinese owned or managed, right? And so that is interesting dichotomy of how do you reconcile those two things? Like Tesla as a business is, as you mentioned, very rooted to China. This is, it's clearly, if Elon has all these ties there, right?

• 35:16Logan Bartlett?

  Clearly, someone that is rooted in China now has the town square, as Bezos tweeted. And so I don't really have an opinion about that, other than to say it's another interesting subplot in this. And when the Walter Isaacson biography gets written, or the Netflix documentary gets made, or the HBO Max eight-part series is done, right? That needs an episode. That is a full episode. We need to talk about the relationship with China. And I don't know what to make of it. This entire thing, I don't really know what to make of. And I feel like I'm I'm kind of mealy mouthed on both sides of it, because I'm like, oh, this is cool. It's interesting. He was able to do this. I also think he has a loose relationship with the facts. But he's entertaining sometimes. I don't happen to think 420 jokes are funny. But like, I kind of respect someone out there is doing that.

• 36:00Speaker 01

  By the way, I don't think I don't think he thinks it's funny either. I think he knows that it is catnip for an entire demographic. And he's just been brilliant at audience building. Does he love anime? Maybe. Does he know that there's a segment that loves anime? Definitely, you know?

• 36:17Logan Bartlett?

  I have a feeling we're not going to stop talking about like, this is going to be, I don't know when the I'm still sort of convinced if I would be, if I can get five to one odds with that 80% likelihood of closing, and someone said, hey, you know, whatever, here's 100 bucks, and I'll give you five to one odds, it doesn't, I still think it's going to fall apart in some way, shape or form. But I've also been wrong, like my track record of betting against Elon, I think at this point is 100% wrong. So if someone were to look at the statistical relevance of me not believing.

• 36:46Speaker 01

  Here's a broader question, which is, you know, applicable to many companies. You know, Gurley would say that it's really important that companies go public, right? Because they have to stand. I mean, it's the same sort of thing, if you actually care about free speech, by the way.

• 36:58Logan Bartlett?

  Yep.

• 36:59Speaker 01

  You want conjecture in the public square, so that it can be criticized. And you need both sides.

• 37:03Logan Bartlett?

  And this is this is Bill Gurley, partner at Benchmark, for people that don't know, a friend of Josh's, someone else that I hold in great respect. So yeah, no.

• 37:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. And he would say that companies should go public, because it forces them to really hold themselves accountable to an accountable public. When you take a company private, you can say one of two things, either A, you can get Out of the scrutiny of short term shareholders and you can focus on the long term. It is a question and I don't know that there is a right answer. But you have a company at one end, which is the antithesis of Tesla, which is like Berkshire Hathaway.

• 37:37Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 37:37Speaker 01

  Where he is out in the public, you see everything that they're doing on the, both their public market purchases and their private market companies, the logic behind why he's purchased them. Uh, and so there's nothing really there in the shadows. I mean, maybe some of the backroom dealings about these deals, they get done very quickly. But, but, but Twitter being public is interesting because management on the one hand needs to make sure that its shareholder base thinks it's doing a good job.

• 38:01Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, it's a, I mean, you know, the sunlight is the best disinfectant or whatever. I, I, I happen to believe that companies operating in the public market is, is ultimately the best outcome and the best hygiene for 95%, maybe 99% of scenarios where you get to that scale and it forces an operational rigor and accountability and all that stuff. But, you know, whatever, if it's 5%, 1%, 10%, whatever it is, there are these crucible kind of moments or, uh, times where you do need to lift and shift and Michael Dell, you know, will team up with Silver Lake and take Dell private and, and pivot the business and, and fight off Carl Icahn and all that stuff. Like there are those times that, um, you can make much better changes in the private markets

• 38:44Logan Bartlett?

  than you can in the public markets when you're not thinking quarter to quarter, you're thinking year to year and you're investing much more long field or downfield intended intentions of what you're doing. And again, I would love that outcome, but that's not what he, or that, if that was what he was saying and he said, hey, you know, we got to pivot from subscriptions. We're too addicted to this, uh, to this advertising brand based model and it's not working. And interjecting ads with text feels very unnatural and it doesn't lead to the same factor of engagement. Like if that were the answer, I would be like, awesome, game on. But I just don't think that, like, again, there's not that level of thought to it. So maybe he gets there, but it's, it's, it's going to be antithetical to some of the stuff he's.

• 39:22Speaker 01

  I just don't understand, even with a 9.9% position.

• 39:27Speaker 01

  On the board or not, he's one of the most vocal and influential people. I mean, from Dogecoin to space, like, you know, if Elon says people ought to be doing something, people listen.

• 39:37Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 39:37Speaker 01

  It is a great power. I don't know why, as a public company, he couldn't say, "I believe that Twitter should only be communicating with the shareholders once a year, Buffett-style. I want long-term shareholders. I am going to be one of them. I'm in it for the long haul." I don't know why you would burden the company with the amount of debt, because that is a different forcing function. When, um, you know, I think, I think it was Jack that was like, you know, "We're free, we're, you know, embracing the light of consciousness and freeing ourselves from Wall Street slash letting Wall Street lend $20 billion and be senior in the cap table that we're behold..." I mean, just, that whole structure just doesn't make sense, which is why either you're correct

• 40:19Speaker 01

  in the possibility that this was just impetuous and not well thought through, or, and, and being so wrong about Elon's ability to pull it through in the end, that there is a, another, a bigger plan here, and that this was a great asset to diversify and get out of Twitter stock, Tesla stock, and get into this and then, you know, figure it out later.

• 40:40Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah. Will be interesting. Yeah, I, I, we'll keep, keep following this, and I imagine there's going to be a lot of permutations and, uh, and things to come from here, but, um, no, this is great. All right, so I'm going to bucket a bunch of these things into one, and, uh, maybe we'll, we'll zoom out a little bit, and Josh, I would love to get your take on this, but, um, so, we, we've talked about, I mean, we had Ryan Breslow on, we've, uh, talked about, uh, Bolt numerous times, to the point that we jokingly said he would be another cartoon avatar that actually led to him coming on, but Bolt this week is, is being sued by one of their most prominent customers, uh, Authentic Brands Group, which is behind Forever 21. Um, so, just an interesting other saga in Bolt.

• 41:21Logan Bartlett?

  Uh, we, we saw, um, we saw that, uh, that bankrupt startup, startup, Ketera, uh, is now being sued, or their ex-CEO is being sued for self-dealing that existed over the course of the last couple of months, or a couple of years, that was a... They have raised $2 billion from SoftBank, Cosla, a few others as well. We saw Hopin, the Financial Times, it had been one of the darlings of the pandemic, a virtual event startup. Financial Times sort of reported on their challenges that they had. And then also Robinhood and Rocket Mortgage both have announced pretty significant layoffs. Robinhood to the tune of 9% of staff, about 30 people, and Rocket, or sorry, 300 people.

• 42:02Logan Bartlett?

  And Rocket Mortgage to the tune of 8% of employees, which would be about 2,100 people. So a lot of stuff going on in the tide coming out in the market standpoint and just a lot of things rearing their head. Josh, we'd love your opinion on any one of those specifically or them in aggregate.

• 42:19Speaker 01

  I think you would be very well served to be long law firms. Law firms are going to crush right now. The amount of litigation and I don't, I mean shareholder litigation, class action lawsuits, employee founders against, you know, the power struggles. It's actually sort of notable, right? Because Uber had this to an extent, you know, and SoftBank was a player there. We are in this weird moment and I think the moment started 12 years ago with the Social Network, the Sorkin movie, that then preceded by two years Facebook's IPO and a decade-long bull run, the likes of which frankly, anybody since 2007 who has not really lived in a downturn.

• 43:01Speaker 01

  So anybody that's 22 to 37 years old coming out of college in the past 15 years has not seen massive down rounds, rifts, reductions in force, layoffs, a downturn. And so now we have these shows all produced, you know, in the past six months, all running at the same time right now, super pumped on Uber, WeCrashed on WeWork, Inventing Anna about the sort of fraudulent socialite, the dropout on Theranos, and there'll be a bunch more, right? But it feels like it is art imitating life imitating art that we are suddenly of a moment or a zeitgeist where that tide, as you say, is coming out and everything is starting to be reported. And now the zeitgeist starts to change and people start thinking, my God, we are like in the golden age of fraud. And so I think that there's going to be just massive litigation everywhere you look.

• 43:46Speaker 01

  There's going to be lots of bad morale and bad news. Shoes are going to drop and I think in our business, you are going to go from entirely founder-friendly

• 43:55Speaker 01

  VCs tripping over themselves to just get allocations to suddenly people saying, well, let's do a flat round, you know, or an extension of the last round on the same terms. Meanwhile, revenue or fundamentals might have doubled, which basically means you're doing it at half the valuation that it was before. And then people are going to say, no, you know, I think we got to, you know, get some kicker that is an inducement for participating investors as an extra reward. So maybe there's some warrants, just some extra liquidation preferences so that those investors, you know, get more money back in the event that it doesn't work out or in the event that it does. And then, then you'll start to see pay to play rounds and, you know, they'll start nominally punitive, two to one conversion, five to one conversion, then 10 to one conversion of non-participating investors. So I think things are going to get ugly.

• 44:38Speaker 01

  I think that people will get a lot of losses and a lot of education.

• 44:44Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, it's interesting. I joke that, so I started my career in venture, I started my career 2009, 2010, started my career in venture in 20, end of 2013, 2014. And I joke, I started my job as a hedge fund or private equity analyst and my job became being a Hollywood agent. And it went from like all the numbers and analytics and all that to like the dinners and the, you know, whatever, the taking, taking people out on town and all that stuff. And it's, it's interesting. Clearly we're going back to more of the fundamentals and the analytics and, and the numbers and all that. And I think some of the self-dealing and the resentment, you talk about WeWork specifically, but the, you know, all of these things get bucketed in together and we just, we just did it there. And as we talk like Uber, WeWork, Theranos, right?

• 45:27Logan Bartlett?

  And all of them are kind of on this continuum of malfeasance or fraud, right? And like Uber, you could say, hey, bad culture.

• 45:36Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 45:37Logan Bartlett?

  You know, bombastic CEO, but like nothing criminal, nothing like totally malicious in intent. I'm sure there was stuff with like state, you know, whatever, local governments and things like that.

• 45:50Speaker 01

  I would bucket it as Uber aggressive, WeWork absurd.

• 45:55Speaker 01

  Theranos fraudulent.

• 45:57Logan Bartlett?

  A hundred percent. And we're going to see that whole spectrum of all these things that come out, right? And some of them are just going to be, hey, how much secondary did that founder take, right? And that was one of the criticisms I've heard from Fast in a meaningful way is like, hey, you know, people fail, but how much did he take out, right? Or the hop in story, they said, hey, now they're talking about whatever down round or layoffs or whatever it is. But the Financial Times, interestingly, had that the CEO had taken out $200 million in secondary. They had that number, right? And so some of these things are just going to be employees looking around being like, wow, that person in the Adam Neumann case got paid, he made a billion dollars or whatever, and walked away with nothing, right? And so some of it's just going to be like, hey, that's a very selfish approach to all of

• 46:41Logan Bartlett?

  this. We know there's fraud going on, right? And the level of diligence and board and governance and all that stuff, like, we know that that exists out there. Actually, it was an interesting lesson I had in 2014, when I first got into the industry. We were looking at a company that I was at Battery Ventures at the time, and the CEO ultimately ended up going to jail for fraud. It was actually funny enough, a Miami-based company before Miami was a thing. And it was, it scared the shit out of me. We found a random number generator. There was an Excel sheet of API calls that we had asked for, and he hardcoded the top row, and the subsequent rows said random number generator between zero and like 10,000 or something. And so we caught it at that moment in time, right?

• 47:25Logan Bartlett?

  And it's always scared, like, that I found religion so quickly to that you could be defrauded by people that seem well-intentioned, that there's a ton of sociopaths that exist out there. And like, they will defraud you to, I don't know what ends, right? I don't know if this guy, if we actually funded the company, if he was going to like, move to, you know, some, some island without extradition policy or whatever it was. But like, those people are out there. And I learned that lesson very early, and it scared me shitless that, hey, I just need to make sure this isn't fraud. And some companies that have proven to be very successful have kind of smelled like, oh, interesting. I mean, a notable example that a bunch of my friends have made a ton of money on was UiPath. And I was like, hey, this is a Romanian company. It's existed for 20 years. It's growing at

• 48:10Logan Bartlett?

  this exponential rate. It just something feels off to me here, right? And I, and I, I was scared of it. I was like, hey, you know, my spidey senses are a little off here. And had I not learned that lesson in 2014, maybe I would have pursued the company differently. Right? And clearly it's been an amazing, I mean, stock's taken a little bit of a hit, but it's an amazing company and they've executed really well. But I, I know these exist out there and so it'll be interesting as, as people start going to audit the customer contracts for follow-on investment and the pay-to-play rounds and all of that stuff. We're going to start hearing about these stories more and more, and it's not just going to be Theranos and it's not just going to be headspin was the one reason, or whatever, a year ago or two years ago that came out. Right? We're going to hear more and more of these that look a lot more similar to Theranos.

• 48:54Logan Bartlett?

  And Theranos, the VC industry was able, actually able to say like, hey, you know, this wasn't us. It was only, uh, Tim Draper put in a personal investment, but it was all these rich people, uh, that were actually betting the boss or whoever it was. Right? It wasn't actually us doing the diligence. But there's going to be some credible people that are, if not sitting on the board of fraudulent companies, uh, maybe made investments, maybe were, uh, involved in some way, shape or form. Right? And so I think, I don't know, back to the disinfectant, light being the best disinfectant, I feel like we're going to see a lot of that.

• 49:25Speaker 01

  Totally. And so by the way, uh, the random number generator, one of the things that accounting fraud forensic people look for is like, I think it's Zipp's law, you know, where there's like this pattern of like, like they, they can't help but like put certain numbers in, in a lot of these frauds and like, uh, they're, they're computationally detectable pretty easily.

• 49:42Logan Bartlett?

  Is that right? There's a certain, there's certain numbers that like instinctively people just put in because it's random.

• 49:47Speaker 01

  It's just almost like those things like you don't want a lot of zeros or fives. So there ends up being like a lot of like weird threes and like.

• 49:52Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, seven, three. Andrew just said seven and three are the ones that show up a lot.

• 49:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, there you go. So, uh, so, so it's just one of those interesting like tells. It's like, like when they, when you go to the, um, you know, the restaurant, you're not supposed to order like the cheapest bottle of wine. So they give you like the cheapest one is like the second cheapest one is the same sort of thing. Like we shouldn't use zero and five, we're going to use seven and three and like, I'll never know. I, I, I am perennially, uh, terrified of being defrauded just, you know, because it's so embarrassing. And so I had this, uh, coined this little thing that instead of, um, uh, FOMO, fear. Missing out, it was sob, shame of being suckered. And so I'm so like squinty eyed, you know, like, what's this person trying to pull the wool over my eyes? Kind of thing.

• 50:29Logan Bartlett?

  I don't answer that on a very specific way because you'll invest in hard, deep tech. That and one of my paranoias and going off the deep end to the extent of this cool stuff that you invest in is like, how do I actually validate these things that I?

• 50:42Speaker 01

  So, you know, I had a friend. I had a friend in a large bank who, um, you know, thirty billion dollar fund at a big bank and they were going to visit Theranos. And he's like, what would you ask? And, um, like, what are your top questions in, in doing the technical diligence? Does it work? And like, so, so that's the thing, like, we're typically asking how much money accomplishes what in what period of time? And who will care? What can you show, you know, in your first round that demonstrates that this thing actually works? And, and the, the who will care part matters because if you're doing something in biotech, you know that you're going to like pre-clinical or phase one or phase two, and there's certain milestones. The science has to be replicable, it has to work or not. Um, if you're doing stuff in the, and I stay really away from like things like quantum computing, because I think that there's so much fraud and BS in this, that somebody's like, oh, we got, you know,

• 51:24Speaker 01

  thirty two nanoseconds of annihilation and, and, and people like, oh, that sounds amazing. But the ignorance arbitrage that people are afraid of being stupid, they never stop and ask like, well, who cares about that? And so there's all these like fraudulent people in the super high tech stuff that, that, uh, you know, and you can see it because the people that they get as investors are like these family offices that, you know, just want to be involved in something cool. Uh, so, so going back to the, the, the sort of golden age of fraud where you're, I think you're right, that a lot of these things are going to come out, you're, you're going to see it probably first in really loose contract stuff. You know, in the same way like the SEC rightly came down on a lot of the SPAC booms and the accounting involved in that. And people just making these ridiculous projections, uh, you know, five years out.

• 52:03Speaker 01

  I think that you're going to see, uh, a lot of the contract stuff, whether it's ARR or MRR, whether it is companies who have made equity investments in other companies with an implicit or explicit, uh, exchange saying, we will invest five or 10 or 15 or 20 or more million dollars into your company. And we need a contract for you to buy. And so they're buying revenue by investing in equity. It's a great way.

• 52:29Logan Bartlett?

  Heard about some of those, there's been some, uh, reporting about even public companies doing that.

• 52:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. So, you know, without naming names, like, uh, that is what happened in the telecom boom and bust, uh, you know, 20 years ago. They were investing in these startup companies and then the startups were repurchasing. So it flowed out of the balance sheet of the, um, Of the big company as an equity investment, or if it flew out of the income statement as an equity investment, and cash went out, they got equity, the company got cash, and then they booked it as either account payable, and then the other company that was giving the equity investment booked it as a receivable or a sales. But it was just literally like them buying stuff from themselves, and they didn't care whether the

• 53:11Logan Bartlett?

  It's like a wash trade, right? It's like flowing, flowing all the way through. It's interesting, yeah, I don't think people intend, I mean, maybe, maybe I'm ignorant in this, and some people intend, like the fraudulent example that I lived through in 2014, I don't think he woke up and said, hey, let me start a Ponzi scheme, or like, let me, let me lie in my books. And I don't think Bernie Madoff, I don't know, I haven't analyzed him psychologically. But I think what happens is everything starts so small, right? And, and it's like, hey, this customer's closing the day after the board meeting, but, you know, if they close the day before, that would just be so much better, right? And then they don't close that next day, and now they, you know, and then it slips, and then they never sign up, and they're like, well, but I got so much validation from that. And honestly, I think

• 53:55Logan Bartlett?

  they're going to come back around, right? And then it just leads to this little web of like, toothpaste only goes one way out of the tube, right? And you have to come back and come clean with it, and it just spirals. And so I think we're going to see a lot of these different things on where you get caught in the flywheel, and like, at what point we catch it, right? Some of them are probably going to be just like, very small, and they never get spoken about, and they have to restate their revenue, and maybe the board loses trust in the CEO, and CEO quietly bounces, right? And you never hear anything about it. At the scale of Theranos, especially with the health implications of that, I hope we don't see another one of those. But there's definitely a lot of this stuff going on. And yeah, it's going to be interesting as the, you know, as if your funding rounds get held contingently.

• 54:36Speaker 01

  If you worked in banking, in capital markets, in M&A,

• 54:42Speaker 01

  If you are a lawyer involved in cleanup, distressed, bankruptcies, debtors in possession, like I just think that that segment is going to be lit up in a really positive way, unfortunately, for the next like two, three years. It's what happened during the dot com boom bust. And then you had a wave of people from 2000, 2002 or three that were just all focused on M and A consolidation, cleanup, distress, people dropping in as interim CEOs, you know, boards cleaning stuff up, litigations left and right, inside companies, between companies, between the board and shareholders, between shareholders and the CEO, just trying to reclaim,

• 55:22Speaker 01

  to your point, the sense of inequity and fairness when people walked away with money undeservedly, even if- Is this a venture backable idea? Can we go, can we go incubate? I'll tell you, I got a friend, I got a friend, I got a friend, and I actually wanted to invest with him in a totally uncorrelated asset class. His name's Nate Anderson. He's not very popular for some public companies that like to do things in the dark. On Twitter, he's Hindenburg Research. But he's been pretty widely covered now, calling BS on a lot of companies. What he used to do is go after SEC whistleblower stuff. And so he would find frauds, and the SEC will pay you 15% of whatever they end up recovering. And so he would get these big payouts by going after companies that he either thought

• 56:07Speaker 01

  were fraudulent, would find the evidence, or knew were fraudulent and find the evidence. And then, you know, it sometimes takes a while for the SEC to do their thing. And they often come, you know, more as the coroner after the shareholders have lost their money as opposed to the doctor doing the diagnoses. You know, they're more autopsy than, than, than checkup. But, but yeah, he would, I mean, it's a, it's an interesting fund strategy, uncorrelated, you know, with any sort of growth thing. It's basically just being, you know, short frauds. But by being long, SEC's ability to award you for whistleblower claims. Yeah. And some of these things have been record amounts. If you look up SEC whistleblowers, it's like- Billion dollar settlements. And so, you know, that's $150 million payout.

• 56:52Logan Bartlett?

  That it's the it's the white shoe, highbrow ambulance chasing, I think, that exists out there for people, probably investigating a lot. I imagine SPACs are going to be the ones that ultimately, the ones that weren't held to the rigor is nature of of the IPO bake-off process. I have a feeling that's probably where we're going to find a lot.

• 57:10Speaker 01

  I think we had said that 90% of SPACs are going to be craps. And I think that between litigation and activists coming in and basically saying, you have nothing, you've sold on a PowerPoint and some like visual rendering, which by the way, going back to Elon, like Elon has done that. He's raised a lot of money and sold a lot of stuff on renderings of future products that don't yet exist. But yeah, a lot of these things are just going to be liquidated. So.

• 57:32Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah. Well, this is this is fun. Josh, thanks for thanks for doing this. I yeah, I really appreciate you coming on and on short notice. And yeah, hopefully we can get you back again sometime. I really enjoyed it.

• 57:45Speaker 01

  Good to hang, Logan.

• 57:47Logan Bartlett?

  Okay, well, joined today by Chief Product Officer of Adobe, Scott Belsky. Scott was formerly a CEO, sold his company to Adobe as well as in a prolific angel investor. So I wanted to have Scott on a little bit here today to talk about Twitter as a product and where they've come from, where they are today, and where potentially they're going. So thanks for joining us, Scott.

• 58:08Speaker 02

  No, thanks, Logan, for having me. It's a product that I am deeply passionate for and somewhat obsessed with. So happy to happy to jam.

• 58:16Logan Bartlett?

  You and me both. So I don't want to relitigate the past, but maybe maybe talk a little bit. It's we've talked on the show about how they've had to decouple themselves from the monolithic application it once was and how that sort of stifled some of the potential innovation. So one question I guess I have is what's your opinion on like what the last five, 10 years of Twitter had been from a product strategy standpoint?

• 58:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I think that there was a period of time where those I know who have worked there in many years past say that the company kind of was tripping over itself. There were fiefdoms, there was a, there was a kind of a, an inefficient effort to modernize the platform and, you know, and, and certainly like speed and agility was not, you know, uh, top of mind. It sounds like, you know, for, for the way the organization was working, which I, I understand being in a large company, how that can very easily happen, happen and how, how hard it is to overcome. I also, you know, believe quite strongly in some of the more recent product leaders there, you know, and I think we have to all remember, despite what the narrative suggests, you know, whatever goodness happens in the next 12 to 18 months,

• 59:25Speaker 02

  was likely planted in the last, you know, couple of years. And as anyone in a big product organization knows, it takes years to, you know, lead, make culture change, make organizational change, develop product narrative and strategy and get people to actually execute and ship and iterate it. So, you know, that's also something I like to keep in mind.

• 59:45Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, no, a hundred percent. I, I think we've seen, uh, I, I, last year, or I, I am a small Twitter shareholder and I did it just because I, I finally saw them shipping features, uh, that at least it's experimentation, right? They're trying stuff and shutting it down and all that, but how much of, uh, the, the like historical product or issues, do you think that's like, does this end up being a cultural thing? Does this end up being like the types of quality people that were there? Is it just like all the different things that you'd expect in a bureaucratic, big organization? Like, how do you end up in a place that you can't ship product in an innovative way?

• 1:00:19Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, it kind of comes back to what the, you know, ambition and vision is for the company. You know, having been such an intimate user of the product and it's a product that's changed my life in so many different ways as an entrepreneur, author, product leader, executive, I've learned so much.

• 1:00:33Logan Bartlett?

  Podcast guest, right? I mean, you wouldn't be here for, if not for a DM in your inbox, right?

• 1:00:37Speaker 02

  A hundred percent, right? This is how, you know, so the, the tragedy of Twitter is that the, the world kind of runs on Twitter, even though the world doesn't necessarily use Twitter. You know, Twitter is a connectivity source. It's how news spreads and a lot of people get the benefit of that network without even ever needing to be a part of it, right? And when I look at Twitter, I think about. The most passionate and experienced people in every topic are deeply engaged with this product. It's how they learn from each other, it's how they share ideas, et cetera. And yet, it's not a topic centric platform. Up until only recently, you used to curate your own timeline and, you know, the first mile experience was all about finding a few people to follow.

• 1:01:22Speaker 02

  And still to this day, I think it matters more how many followers you have on Twitter than how, how, you know, credible you are in a particular topic that you're commentating on. And I think that's the source of a lot of the problems we have in the world these days, you know, from, from, and it also within Twitter specifically. Because people can just amplify whatever, you know, headline or fake news article happens to jump their interest. And, you know, of course Twitter now makes us read an article or at least suggest that we read an article before sharing it. But I don't think that's a long-term solution. You know, I'm sure you'd agree.

• 1:01:56Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, no, 100%. I, I appreciated that feature, but it's one of these interesting things where they actually are the interest graph in so many ways. But you can't be, you have to be a singular person on the product, right? To some extent, like I have interest in Tennessee football, right? And I can't tweet, but my followers came here for jokes, right? About the tech industry. And if I deviate from that too much, people are like, what are you doing? Why are you talking about, I don't care about Tennessee football. I came here because of, and there's no, like, I'm a singular person and I can't have multi-dimensional, multi-dimensional views or interests or whatever, right? And so it's kind of this fundamental thing that everyone ends up being a caricature of themselves if they want to drive engagement.

• 1:02:38Logan Bartlett?

  And that's one of the things when you see people posting threads and all that, threads and ship posting seem like the only two ways to grow followers. And one of the things I tell people is like, you know, be careful. If you become a thread poster and that's what people come for, that's what they're going to stay for. And like, the bed you make is what you're going to stay in, right? And so this interest graph, I guess, is that just the, from a product standpoint, is that just a fundamental issue that they didn't solve from an AI ML? Cause if you look at TikTok, like they actually can solve the interest graph thing in a very interesting way. And I would think NLP extraction of text would be easier than all the, the things you have to intuit from, from TikTok's videos and stuff, but maybe that's not the case.

• 1:03:17Speaker 02

  First of all, whenever TikTok's a new platform, but when you take an older platform, of course, as you remember, when we all got the algorithmic feed one day, everyone complained about it and Twitter even had to make an ability to switch between feeds. I mean, think about the paralysis that happens when you're trying to both bring legacy customers along and also entice a new generation of customers, which is something I think about all the time in the creative tool space. So I can only imagine what a product the size of Twitter deals with. But let's suspend disbelief for a moment and imagine a couple assumptions. One is that every one of us in the world is a topic expert on something.

• 1:04:02Speaker 02

  It could be your small little town somewhere. It could be machinery workshops. It could be bonsai cultivation. It could be the Chicago Bulls. It could be design. It could be architecture. Whatever it is, there's something that we go deep in and we are obsessive with. And the long tail of topics has its experts. Imagine if every piece of content shared on Twitter was through natural language processing or AI assigned a topic, right? And the person who was sharing that content, the engagement they got from other people who had high ranking in that topic, gave them ranking in that topic.

• 1:04:42Speaker 02

  And so it was a community curated platform where everyone who has some sense of signal and credibility from the algo on a particular topic gives juice or has juice to give people credibility based on what their content is tagged with. And so as a result of this, a couple of things happened. One is that every topic, as big or small as it might be, as local or worldwide as it might be, has a leaderboard. A leaderboard of people who are deemed most credible in that topic by other people with credibility in that topic, number one. You know, number two is the algorithms can really surface a topic-driven experience that makes fake stuff or stupid stuff kind of sink.

• 1:05:24Speaker 02

  You know, number three is when someone makes a polarizing claim on vaccines or something like that, if we know who's in that leaderboard of that topic, their responses can be kind of prioritized, almost Wikipedia-style. Like, they can almost be an editor, not really, but like, right under the thing, it's like, no, actually, this is true. And by the way, I'm the boss in this topic, so you should probably [bleep] me. And so it promotes free speech, but it also promotes credibility in a way that could really help us all orientate and consume topics, almost like media channels, which I think really is intriguing.

• 1:05:58Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, no, it's interesting. I mean, I certainly opine on stuff that I am not an expert in, right? But, and experts, I guess, can be wrong, for sure. I mean, you know, a lot of the stuff that came out in the early days of the pandemic had proven to what was once considered conspiratorial or now increasingly maybe mainstream, right? And so I, it's an interesting perspective of like, that feedback loop of experts. And I'm sure some people will say, well, experts don't know everything. But it is at least some validation of, you know, just because I developed a big following because I post VC jokes, I'm not using my bully pulpit to also weigh in on, you know, vaccine efficacy, right? Or whatever it is. And to some extent, these things get conflated.

• 1:06:38Speaker 02

  I think that, I think that's right. And so there's a, there's a aspect of this, you know, construct I just described where, where you would, you would avoid, you know, or at least have a very, like, enriched conversation with people that are deemed by the community of people that are really credible as credible, right? And number two is, you know, this what gets me really excited, you know, Twitter could actually be the world's largest media company. And what I mean by that is, I mean, look at media today. Fox, Netflix, CNN, whatever channel, whatever source of media, it's programmed by a small number of people and it's generalized for the masses. That's the media model. That's how they make money.

• 1:07:22Speaker 02

  Twitter could be the inverse, right? You could have the masses curating and they are the programmers. And then it's actually personalized for you. So it's in some ways like the invert model and inverted model. And I think that if you had that, imagine all the video that is curated by the people that are deemed most credible in landscape architecture can all then be stitched together in a feed on landscape architecture, you know, with some merchandising and interstitials and stuff. And I actually have a sit back mode or a feed mode to consume this channel. Like, that would be amazing. It just doesn't exist in the world.

• 1:08:02Logan Bartlett?

  It's amazing how micro when people talk about like what their, uh, what their feed is on the FYP on TikTok. It's amazing how micro, like my girlfriend loves to see Montessori schoolchildren, right? And like getting dressed and all that. And I'm like, you know, you could get to a very granular level from an AI standpoint of the speed and feedback loop, right? Versus right now, we're existing in like tech, you know? And sometimes I made a joke about, um, I forget what it was. Uh, I made a joke about, oh, that our ancestors didn't come to America on the Mayfield or Mayflower in 1776 or something. And someone sent it back to me and it was a total joke. Uh, and someone sent it back to me. It was tagged history and I was like, oh my gosh, uh, we're, this is scary that that's

• 1:08:47Logan Bartlett?

  getting tagged history. But yeah, no, I agree with the, the utopia or like that, that state of this. It feels very solvable. One of the questions that I have is just like, from a business standpoint, it feels like algorithmic is the best, uh, business because it drives engagement. Like every other social media platform has proven algorithmic is better than chronological, I think, right? And I, I, I don't know if you agree with that, but from a business standpoint. Now, um, it's some level of editorial decisioning is going on when you start feeding an algorithmic. Even chronological is somewhat of an editorial decision. You're making the decision to make it chronological, right? But let's, let's say there's going to be some level of AI ML that exists there. Do you think that all this free speech and all these like ideals that I

• 1:09:32Logan Bartlett?

  I think we all collectively agree with, right? Um, I, I, at least in the United States, we all agree with them. Uh, it feels like, one, uh, they're just at odds with what people want online. And also what makes good business, right? And so like, if you have, I use the example of like ISIS beheading videos aren't actually illegal, right? Like those videos aren't illegal. I will tell you that Disney or some, uh, call to action, direct response advertiser probably doesn't want to exist along a feed of that as well, right? And so it's all these like utopian ideals that sound good in principle, but ultimately present a lot of business problems there. And so I wonder, do you, do you have any opinion about like how you reconcile?

• 1:10:17Logan Bartlett?

  It's obviously getting framed in typical Twitter style as like this or that. And it's totally binary and there's like a gradient of stuff that exists in between. But do you think like free speech as people seem to want to define it on Twitter? Is at odds with making this a good business and a good product that people actually want to use?

• 1:10:35Speaker 02

  Well, I can imagine that there are brands that would not want to advertise in certain topics, right? And would want to advertise in other topics. And when brands say, oh, well, I'm not going to advertise on this platform because of one particular topic that's prevalent on that platform. It's a little, you know, hypocritical because at the same time, they are paying AWS to host their content and AWS is hosting that platform's content. Or they are, you know, playing ball with Comcast, which is a cable provider that is actually streaming all of the content into our house, regardless of what it's, what it is. And, and so I think that, you know, we're, we're somewhat myopic when we're playing at a, at a, at a single

• 1:11:18Speaker 02

  layer of the stack and saying, oh, I have really, you know, strong, um, opinions about this layer, but not this layer, this layer, or this layer of the stack. And, and, and so I, I think that that's not like a real sustainable solution to the problem. And I think, you know, again, If you can, if you can really start to have confidence in, in topics, you know, then you could say to brands, hey, do you wanna, do you wanna, do you wanna participate in advertising in the NBA topic stream? Because all the NBA fans, you know, consume all of the media from people that are most credible and obsessed with the NBA. And it's the like, most, you know, it's, it's the unmatched, you know, quality and fascination stream of NBA stuff that is community generated

• 1:12:02Speaker 02

  in the world. I think everyone's gonna want to advertise in that. And they may just not want to advertise in, I don't know, guns and ammo stream, or something like that. So I feel like that's more the solution.

• 1:12:13Logan Bartlett?

  Do you think Twitter has an obligation to host? Or just like, I guess to some extent, there's the application versus the protocol, right? And you think Twitter has somewhat of an obligation as a protocol to allow this content to exist? And then the application is where the decisioning and advertising should be, as long as it's not against the law, like a, you know, a racist tweet would be, or a whatever, a beheading video?

• 1:12:39Speaker 02

  I do subscribe to that notion. I mean, I generally actually think that, you know, private services are, I mean, Disney's allowed to say that everything on our platform is gonna be family-friendly. Like, I don't think there's a problem with that. But what I, what I, you know, I do believe that a protocol should rise to the occasion and try to promote the principles that, that, you know, define it and the country that it's in, you know, and, you know, ideally, you know, if you're in a democracy, if you're in a country like ours, that is, you know, kind of been defined and saved a number of times by the principle of free speech, like, let's rise to the occasion and enable that. And I just think, though, that with the, kind of, the lubrication

• 1:13:24Speaker 02

  effect of social technology and how easy it is to see something from anyone, you know, that's a bit of a, it's a bit of a Times Square on, or a Town Square on steroids. There need to be product solves for us to digest all that. You know, in a town square, like if someone crazy comes over to you and starts telling you something fake, hopefully there's someone around you who's like, actually, it's just that one person that's telling you this and we all disagree. Right. And actually, I'm the expert and I'll tell you why that's wrong. But it's harder to have that happen in the digital world. And I think we're seeing that at scale. That's a product solve. That's a design solution in my view. And, and I, I'm excited by that, actually.

• 1:14:06Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah. Well, I know, I know we're short on time. I'll give you some, some quick hitters here. Do you think, do you think the incrementalism that Twitter's been on here from a product innovation standpoint? And some of the stuff they're doing, does that feel like that could or would get them to where, you know, a much better business than they are today? Or does it need a wholesale free speech? Hey, maybe we switch to subscription monetization, all that stuff.

• 1:14:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, listen, I mean, and we're all like commentators on the stands here.

• 1:14:32Logan Bartlett?

  That's my job, by the way. When they put a mic in front of me, my job is to weigh in on things I'm not an expert on. So.

• 1:14:36Speaker 02

  You know, I think as, what I can say is very, as a customer, as a user and as a passionate like beneficiary of Twitter as a product. You know, of course, like, you know, I, like many, have been frustrated with the iteration over the years. You know, I do believe that the team probably has some bold visions and they also have some practical realities that they're overcoming. And who's to say, you know, whether, whether it's blue sky, the decentralized project they have going internally, or some of the other probably longer term things that just take a lot to, to address. I also wonder though, whether being a public company and having the scrutiny and having to kind of build a ship in flight is hindering the bold ambitions even of the existing team that's there today.

• 1:15:20Speaker 02

  And so, you know, there's, there's kind of a contrarian view of mine. This is maybe one of the most powerful things from Twitter going private is just being able to unleash the current team that may or may not be the right team. That's for the owners to decide, not for me. And maybe that's all the difference because as you and I know, like having the ideas is kind of the easier part. The execution, especially in the current conditions, is extraordinarily hard. And if you can make it 50% easier, who knows what's possible?

• 1:15:50Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, it's a shame that they have to be laid in with the debt to do that. And ultimately, the layoffs that are probably going to come. And maybe that'll lead to inefficiencies and all that. I wonder if there was another path here. But last one, are you excited? What's your, what's your like overall sort of at a personal level? And as a user of the product, are you excited by this path? Are you disappointed that they weren't able to see through what Parag and Kavon and all those guys were trying to do on the public market? Who knows who's going to stay in place from an existing team? But what's your perspective as a user in person that, you know, knows the stuff?

• 1:16:24Speaker 02

  Well, what I'm hoping, you know, and I have no idea what Elon Musk's mentality is going into this. But if I, you know, were in his shoes, I would want to deeply understand, you know, what the team's vision is. And I'd want to challenge them on the parts of the product that I'm most frustrated with and measure my degree of confidence in both the solution underway, as well as the people leading those solutions, right? And when you have real confidence in those people and you have real confidence in the vision and strategy, then it's like, okay, how do I unlock this for you? Like, what do I, how do I clear the path? What resources do you need? You know, what mandate do you need that you don't currently have to achieve it? And when you don't have confidence in the people or the vision or strategy, you jump in, get your hands dirty and course correct.

• 1:17:07Speaker 02

  So I hope he takes that listening tour, right? And because he's inheriting, you know, this amazing product that obviously all of us love so much that we even care to have podcasts and always constantly critique it on the platform itself. So that is undeniable product value right there. And, you know, I hope he takes that approach. And, you know, and he's a smart guy, like, and he seems to have a good knack for attracting talents and empowering talents. So I'm actually hopeful. I mean, listen, my biggest strength and weakness is optimism. I'm always like, you know, I have faith that people will, you know, find the right, you know, the right direction and, and, and find like the muster to make it happen. And, you know, I just. I just want Twitter, though, to remain as valuable, if not more so than it's been for

• 1:17:52Speaker 02

  all of us, because it is in some ways a unique, communally owned product, right? We all feel some degree of ownership for some strange reason.

• 1:18:01Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, no, well, I agree 100%. So, yeah, amen. Hopefully, the product gets better in whatever form it takes over the next little bit, and we continue to have all the good stuff and get some incremental stuff on top of it. But, oh, cool. Well, Scott, thanks for joining us today, and we'll, yeah, I know people are going to be excited to hear your thoughts here.

• 1:18:19Speaker 02

  Absolutely, Logan. To be continued.

• 1:18:25Logan Bartlett?

  Thanks, everyone, for joining the 14th episode of Three Cartoon Avatars. As we mentioned on the last episode, we're going to be evolving the format and having people like Josh come in and co-host, and so thank you, Josh, for joining us, as well as Scott, and we look forward to seeing you guys next week on the 15th episode.