EP 6: Super Pumped, BitConnect’s Possible Ponzi Scheme, Homebrew and Randi Zuckerberg’s Music Video

(00:35) 3CA Team Meet in Real Life (04:01) Competing in VC Funds (09:54) SNL Live (13:54) Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber (29:22) Randi Zuckerberg and “We’re All Gonna Make It” music video (36:23) DBT Labs (42:31) BitConnect Ponzi Scheme (46:02) Homebrew Operating as an Evergreen Entity Randi Zuckerberg's Music Video: https://twitter.com/randizuckerberg/status/1498425277734690816? Follow the show: https://twitter.com/cartoonavatars https://www.instagram.com/cartoonavatars/ https://www.tiktok.com/@cartoonavatars Follow the hosts: https://twitter.com/zck?s=21 https://twitter.com/nikitabier?s=21 https://twitter.com/loganbartlett?s=21 Mixed and edited: Justin Hrabovsky Produced: Andrew Nadeau and Rashad Assir Executive Producer: Josh Machiz Music: Griff Lawson 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 sixth episode of Three Cartoon Avatars. I'm your host, Logan Bartlett, and I'm joined today by my esteemed co-hosts, the Don at the G-Wagon, Nikita Beer, and the George Costanza of Venture Capital, Zach Kukoff. How are we doing, guys?

• 0:17Speaker 01

  Doing all right.

• 0:19Speaker 02

  Only all right?

• 0:20Speaker 01

  That's about it, yeah.

• 0:22Logan Bartlett?

  Last week was much more dour, so I guess we've, uh, everyone hanging out together was, uh, put a little pep in, pep in Nikita's step. Um, how has the, uh, how's the week been since I've seen you guys laugh? So, I think we alluded to this last week, but, uh, we, we did all get dinner. We broke bread on Monday for the first time since we've been doing this. Um, how's the rest of the week been? Zach, you're still in LA?

• 0:41Speaker 02

  I'm still in LA. Uh, you can't get rid of me. I, in fact, I'm trying to see Nikita a whole second time. I liked hanging out so much that we all broke bread together.

• 0:49Speaker 01

  If you're lucky. I didn't know Zach's drink, though, was a gin and tonic. It kind of resonates with his old man, uh, persona.

• 0:57Speaker 02

  I was gonna say, you know who I learned that from? My grandparents turned me on to it at a, at a too young age to be drinking.

• 1:04Logan Bartlett?

  It was the hottest drink of the 1950s, so that makes it.

• 1:07Speaker 02

  That's right. Yeah, thank you to, uh, Lydia and Ben Kukoff for turning me on to, uh, the gin and tonic at the age of like 14 years old.

• 1:15Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, well, that's good. That, uh, yeah, I'm sure there's nothing illegal, uh, with that, or, uh, I don't think there's like, there's probably some statute of limitations that exist on your, your grandparents feeding you alcohol at 14.

• 1:26Speaker 02

  I will say, the G and T is a, I think, chronically underrated drink. I actually think, all right, ready for this? A special martini we all know, well, used to be the hot drink. I think the next hot drink? Gin Negroni. That's where I'm, that's where I'm, I'm putting my foot in the ground.

• 1:41Logan Bartlett?

  Isn't a gin negroni just a negroni?

• 1:43Speaker 02

  Well, there's, isn't there also a, uh, another kind of negroni?

• 1:46Speaker 01

  I, I think it's just a negroni.

• 1:48Speaker 02

  I'm almost cer- I gotta look this up now. Let's see if there's another kind of negroni.

• 1:51Logan Bartlett?

  I'm pretty sure a gin Negroni is a Negroni.

• 1:54Speaker 02

  There's a, yeah, but there's also a vodka Negroni.

• 1:56Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, I think when people say Negronis, they mean gin Negronis, but.

• 1:59Speaker 02

  All right, fine. Well, then how about this? I think the Negroni is gonna be the hot drink this year, regardless of what the base is.

• 2:06Logan Bartlett?

  It's pretty hot already.

• 2:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. I'm accurate. It's called seeing the present clearly. Perhaps you've heard of that. Venture capitalists do it all the time, Nikita.

• 2:14Logan Bartlett?

  Yes, exactly. When Zach says he means, uh, he means, what's the, what's the, the big nursing compound in Florida? That's where it's really starting to pick off.

• 2:22Speaker 02

  Oh, Boca Raton?

• 2:23Logan Bartlett?

  No, no, no, no, no.

• 2:24Speaker 02

  The city of?

• 2:25Logan Bartlett?

  No, no, no. Uh, there's the big, um, uh, it's like, it's the number one, uh.

• 2:31Speaker 02

  Oh, the villages.

• 2:32Logan Bartlett?

  The villages.

• 2:33Speaker 02

  The villages. Yeah, the villages. Yeah.

• 2:35Logan Bartlett?

  Well, Nikita, what'd you think of hanging out with, uh, VCs for, uh, a night, two nights? Uh, it feels like you're kind of getting indoctrinated into the culture.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  Uh, you know how every founder just dreams of being a VC after they have an exit or whatever? And, uh, for me, I was like, I was potentially thinking about that career path. But after going to a VC conference, I realized how fucking boring it is.

• 3:01Logan Bartlett?

  It's a lot of networking. It's a lot of schmoozing for people like calling that work, right? It's professional networking, I think.

• 3:08Speaker 01

  Uh, it, it felt like mildly adversarial, like everyone's trying to like be the better VC or they're like, we're all fighting for this, like for our set of, uh, deals and LPs.

• 3:21Logan Bartlett?

  Well, especially with you, right? Uh, yeah. Why do you think we started? We started a podcast and like we exist on Twitter just so we're not like the other VCs, you know? Like, that's the whole thing. We're trying to stand out here. So, yeah, everyone's kind of like, everyone's friends, but also everyone's willing to stab each other in the back, like at a moment's notice if it, if it benefits them. So it's a.

• 3:38Speaker 02

  I think that says more about Logan's approach to VC. Logan's like, everyone is friends and also everyone is willing to stab each other in the back. Not any, any individual person who's talking, just everyone.

• 3:49Logan Bartlett?

  I will, I, I will knife someone if the situation benefits me and, uh, yeah, our returns. I, uh, yeah, you should sleep with one eye open, Zach Kukoff.

• 3:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's clearly, I know it's coming to me. It's good to know.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  But what surprised me was like, everyone had like a, literally everyone had a 500 million dollar fund, and it just showed how much liquidity is in the market right now. And yeah, these are people that I've never heard of. They've, you know, they have no, you know, pedigree or professional reputation. It just seems like, like there's just too much money competing for too few deals right now.

• 4:26Logan Bartlett?

  I mean, one of the things is that's the case right now, right? But I spent a bit of time with a bunch of LPs over the last week, and there's definitely a liquidity crunch that's happening, right? Like you hear a bunch of LPs feel like everyone's back in market raising bigger and bigger funds, right? Zach, I know you can't comment, but General Palace raised a fund recently. Insight had a $20 billion fund that they announced, and there's probably four or five more kind of 2, 3, 4 billion dollar funds that I know are being raised right now. And so I think the LPs are kind of like, what the fuck?

• 4:59Speaker 02

  Well, it's not hugely surprising, right? Like, I can, our fund closure is public. We can, we can talk about the fact that it happened. But ultimately, like, because every fund has to get really big really fast, or has to stay super disciplined, all of the funds who kind of sort of grew a little bit, now are like frantically trying to grow aggressively. Otherwise, you know, to be, which is going to say crazy sound out loud, like, to be merely a 500 million or 700 million dollar fund is sort of a no man's land right now.

• 5:28Logan Bartlett?

  Well, you say that. I mean, that's what we are. And I think you sort of need to purposefully do that, right? Like, you kind of need to pick. It can't be on the path to a step along the way, right?

• 5:40Speaker 02

  Right, exactly.

• 5:41Logan Bartlett?

  We're staying that way purposefully, and we've sort of been that way for a long time, right? And so we're not aspiring to be a 4 or 5 billion dollar fund. I think the folks that have gone from 100 to 300 to 500 to 700 or whatever, I think if your path is just trying to grow and continue to go up, I really do think there's going to be a cleaving off there. Versus, you know, there are groups that have decided to stay, I mean, benchmark famously, right? And we'll, we'll get to talking a little bit more about them, but staying smaller intentionally, so.

• 6:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that's right. My point is less about the enduring managers, more about the emerging managers.

• 6:15Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 6:15Speaker 02

  If you're on your way to a 5 billion and 500 million to stop, that's the death zone. If you're disciplined and you've always been 500 million, right, that's a very different situation.

• 6:24Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah. Well, I think it was funny Nikita's observation that like, that there were a lot, there's a lot of like 2, 3, 4. This was before we got on the podcast, but a lot of tier 2, 3, 4 VCs. And I feel like every VC thinks that they're, you know, Sequoia is 1A or something. And then everyone thinks that they're 1B or like tier 2 at worst, right? Like every VC is like, yeah, I mean, we're like 1B. Sequoia, sure, we'll give them their credit. But like, we're just right that next tick below. And I think there's like 70 funds telling themselves that they're fun, they're number 1B in the order.

• 6:57Speaker 02

  Do you think these funds actually believe that? Like, I don't know if people are actually like from a truth serum, they'd be like, yeah, we're like number 2 to Sequoia? Or is that like a marketing thing they're doing?

• 7:07Speaker 01

  They were defending their egos at the party I was at where they were like saying, yeah, we did, we did this deal from 20, in 2013 that returned 100X, but they kept referring to that deal 10 years ago that they did.

• 7:19Logan Bartlett?

  That's my favorite group as a board member is just like try to bring everything back. Like the, the, the old board member that like had one big win in, you know, whatever, 2009 or something. They like sold Doug DoubleClick and they're like trying to vector the conversation back to the one big win they had. Zach, your question, I think everyone thinks that they're on the ascension, right? If they don't think they're firmly 1B, they think that they're like, you know, that their star is on the rise, right? And that they're very close to being that. I don't think anyone's like, yeah, you know, we're tier 3, but this is probably going to be our place for the next bit, right? Cause the ground's moving underneath everyone. And so if you think, like, if you don't think you're ascending, then you're definitely falling in a very meaningful way.

• 8:04Speaker 02

  I think that's probably right. I also would say, by the way, Nikita, to your point, like the weird structure of venture such that you can basically be set for life if you're a small fund and you happen to do one great deal, right? If you're like a $300 million fund and you're the early investor in a $10 billion outcome and you own 20% of it, right? That is like a life-changing outcome for three to four partners. And so, but then because you only do one of those to really be successful, you end up with all these folks who have only done one of those and think forever they're like the greatest investor in the world because they had one phenomenal outcome.

• 8:37Logan Bartlett?

  Well, and I think at the end of the day, like being rich is different than like feeling important, right? And so there's a lot of people at these conferences that are worth, you know, tens of millions of dollars or whatever it is, right? But no one gives a shit because it happened, you know, eight years ago, or, you know, they never had a big win, but they've just been at a big fund and hung around for a while. And so they're like walking around and puffing their chest out and they grew up under the world in which the VCs had all the power, right? And they're used to Nikita groveling to them to get the fund raised. And now the dynamic has totally shifted. And so I think all these people just feel they're like, five years ago, I was so important and now like no one gives a shit that I invested in, you know, whatever exact target 10 years ago or whatever it is.

• 9:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, five years ago, all I had to do was do like the most obvious deals in the world and that made me unfathomably wealthy. And today I can't do that and people are no longer calling me a genius. Is it me or is it the macro? Was it, am I good or was the macro environment really good? It's impossible to answer.

• 9:39Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, it turns out, it turns out like if multiples appreciate by five X, like, and you get your pick of SaaS companies, it might not be like you. That's actually the generation of faster.

• 9:48Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 9:49Logan Bartlett?

  A little index to the circumstances of the time. Yeah. Well, I, I, I saved this story. We were at, uh, we were at dinner on Monday night and I wanted to hold off on, on this because it was a cool experience. And so I told these guys I wasn't going to tell the story for them twice and that I would actually do it on the pod. But before we, before we hung on Monday night, I actually got to go to SNL for the first time. And this is something I've been sitting on. Like I had this friend who had a friend and he said, if ever I wanted to go to SNL, like, let me know. And I was like, ever? And he goes, yeah, ever, if you want to. And so I've been sitting on this for like a year. And I saw whatever a month ago it came out John Mulaney was hosting and Zach I know

• 10:34Logan Bartlett?

  you're a big John Mulaney fan as well, Dikita, I don't know your, your take on it, but what? Were you shaking your head?

• 10:40Speaker 02

  I would not call myself. I've seen Mulaney in person once and actually think it's courtesy of Logan, so thank you for that. But that was like the only time ever and I don't like Mulaney's choir boy shtick. The only time I enjoyed Mulaney was post rehab.

• 10:52Logan Bartlett?

  Oh, interesting. It must be the Catholicism, like there's enough Jewish comedians for you to focus on that, the Catholic comedians, yeah, that's sort of-

• 11:00Speaker 02

  The Jewish comedians don't do the choir boy act. I think it's a whole other, that's like a whole other neurosis that I don't subscribe to.

• 11:06Logan Bartlett?

  It is a real irony that like his whole shtick was Catholic, you know Georgetown dude and like he had to, you know, go to rehab for three months for cocaine use, right? That is like kind of an irony. But yeah, no, he, he, it's worth people going back and watching his SNL open. But I went to the dress rehearsal and yeah, he did a whole bunch of thing about like, you know, his friends calling in, uh, to his, uh, into his intervention, right? And going to rehab for a while and having to delete all his drug dealers phones and all that. Pretty funny bit, but, uh, so I'm sitting there and you know, this is a, it felt like a once in a lifetime experience. And so I'm excited to see John Mulaney, LCD, LCD Sound Systems also playing, who I like. Um, and I have two seats open for me right

• 11:49Logan Bartlett?

  before it starts and, um, and Chris Rock walks in with his daughter and sits down right next to me. And so now I'm like, you know, center stage SNL, uh, Chris Rock sitting next to me, trying to play it cool. And, uh, so it ended up being a super cool show. I think the rules were a little different of what I got versus what, uh, versus what Chris Rock had to do. Me, they were like, you show up at 7:46, you're out, right? Chris Rock rolled in whatever an hour later. For me, it was like no cell phone. Chris Rock was like texting away the entire show, but it was cool. They had, uh, Paul Rudd, Steve Martin, Conan O'Brien, Tina Fey, Candace Bergen, cause it was like, uh, the five timer thing. So the whole thing was like a super interesting, cool, uh, sort of only in New

• 12:31Logan Bartlett?

  York experience. So while I love being in LA in the warm weather this past week, I, there are some benefits to, to staying in New York.

• 12:38Speaker 02

  Did you, did you love being in LA when you took the first- Flight you could is the second the conference programming was over to get back.

• 12:43Logan Bartlett?

  You know, I.

• 12:44Speaker 02

  Nikki and I are gonna have a whole fun weekend together. Logan was like, I will be on the first red eye back to New York. Thank you very much.

• 12:50Logan Bartlett?

  Did walk into a party, survey the scene, walk out and catch a red eye. So I enjoyed, I enjoyed my time.

• 12:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I enjoyed it, Jason.

• 12:59Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  I would say that this, this week was more representative probably of San Francisco than LA because it was a VC conference.

• 13:07Logan Bartlett?

  I think that's right.

• 13:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a.

• 13:09Logan Bartlett?

  It's interesting that like, you know, we talked about this a couple of weeks ago, but it's clear these destination events that like everyone just flies in for like boondoggle networking everyone at once, right? I think that's going to be a rotating thing that, you know, is it was Art Basel once upon a time and now it's it was upfront this month. And I'm sure there's going to be another, you know, Miami Tech Week's coming up, right? And so I'm sure that's going to be the same thing that, you know, everyone just drops into a city, takes over. It's the worst East Denver. It's the worst week for everyone on Tinder and Bumble in those cities that all these bros are swiping away.

• 13:41Speaker 02

  I can't imagine to be a USC sorority girl this week in LA must have been a hellish experience.

• 13:47Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, there was a lot of swiping to get to the, yeah.

• 13:52Logan Bartlett?

  Well, good. So I think first topic we wanted to cover this week was the first episode of Super Pumped, The Battle for Uber. So for people that don't know, this is a Showtime show based on the 2019 book by Mike Isaac, by the same name. The show was created by Brian Koppelman, who is the creator of Billions and Rounders. And I had looked through his Wikipedia, seemingly didn't do anything else between the years like 1998 to 2016. It seems like he took those years off and just did Rounders and then Billions, but.

• 14:23Speaker 02

  How was that different from VCs?

• 14:24Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, exactly. He's basically a VC.

• 14:26Speaker 02

  He did two good deals and then didn't work for 10 years. Yeah.

• 14:29Logan Bartlett?

  So the show focuses on the, um, the rise and the fall of former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, who's played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Uma Thurman plays Ariana Huffington. She hasn't made an appearance yet. It's narrated by Quentin Tarantino. The shoot, the series has, has actually already been renewed for. Another season in which they're gonna go into into Facebook. So they're it sounds like they're gonna keep doing these little like mini series type things focused on some plot in the tech ecosystem. So I guess just as a backdrop before we dive in, I did my just a quick flag disclosure, blah, blah, blah. My partner Elliot,

• 15:10Logan Bartlett?

  who recruited me into Redpoint, his sister's Austin Geith, who is a character on the show. She's featured prominently in episode one. And so I I'm not totally unconflicted in my, you know, my perspectives on this. But yeah, I'd be interested. Nikita, what'd you think?

• 15:28Speaker 01

  Uh, I thought it was extremely cringey to watch. Uh, like, I I think they were trying to go for the same vibe as the social network. But it just came off so awkward. But at the same time, I was really trying to separate whether uh, like, it was actually the show or that tech culture in 2010. Was that cringey? Cause I mean, in 2010, it was like the post-Facebook like frat era of tech. Uh, and you know, you people were wearing collared shirts and, uh, you know, drinking, they had a beer keg in the office.

• 16:10Speaker 01

  Uh, and I I think it's it's like, most of us like, don't really remember that because it was just, we don't, we kind of repressed it, actually. That that that's how an office was run back then. Um, so, yeah, I, but I mean, it's still interesting to watch, seeing Hollywood's portrayal of of all this. Uh, and I mean, it it the story definitely needed to be told.

• 16:34Speaker 02

  I I couldn't stand it. I mean, I I felt it was like not, I don't think it was endemic to the time. I think the show was just not a good show. I I just read the book. I didn't read the book.

• 16:42Speaker 01

  No.

• 16:42Speaker 02

  I can't speak to the book. But I I thought the show was like. Cringey to your point, Nikita. All of my ex Uber friends said, by the way, didn't even feel accurate. Like, the actual story is so much juicier, at least from the first episode that we were shown. Like, the actual story is so much more interesting than what they ended up focusing on. Like, here's a good example of this, right? They talked about the safe rides fee, and they called it a Michael Eisner moment. Have any of you ever heard anyone in sex say something is a Michael Eisner moment? Like, any year? 2010 or today?

• 17:13Logan Bartlett?

  No, yeah. Michael Eisner-

• 17:14Speaker 02

  No, of course not.

• 17:15Logan Bartlett?

  I don't think people have been taking inspiration from Michael Eisner, right?

• 17:19Speaker 02

  The old, like, I mean, seriously, like, I was just so off the mark in both the big ways and the small ways, that I, I mean, you know, there was the Twitter thread going around from an ex Uber employee who said that Joseph Gordon-Levitt had pinged him to hear about what it was like to work for TK, and apparently, he like, made a point of not talking to Travis himself when he did the actual prep for the show. So, the whole thing to me struck me as like, kind of willfully a little bit, telling a story perhaps that was not necessarily a one-to-one mirror of reality.

• 17:53Speaker 01

  What I thought was kind of like, missing, and I, they always do this for any of these like, tech stories, is they, they don't actually tell the origin story. And I think that was probably the more interesting part of Uber, of like, Travis didn't really take the company that seriously at the beginning, because Ryan Graves was running it. It was more of like, a side project. And I think how it eventually became like, a core part of his life, and it just became his magnum opus, I think that would have been more interesting to tell. But they just kind of glazed over that and acted like he had conviction on day one that this, this company would be the big one.

• 18:29Logan Bartlett?

  Garrett Camp did take an L in the first like, two minutes of, that was just like, a brutal opening for him, just like, yeah, and then I shoved you to side, dork. It was like, basically, they took him to a proverbial locker and like, shut the door.

• 18:41Speaker 02

  My new drinking game is every time they have him say, "Are you sure TK?", in like, the world's kind of dope-iest voice, "Just take a shot and you'll be completely blacked out within five minutes."

• 18:50Logan Bartlett?

  Zach, I'm impressed you, you went with TK as well. It's like, you're, you're basically on the show at this point. Now, you know, I actually- Enjoyed it. Um, maybe to some extent I've lived like this period in time and so I found it interesting. But you know, I think it had the, the, the thing that they struggled with, which I don't know exactly how the social network pushed through and didn't have this problem in my mind. But they, they're both trying to stay true to the fact that these are real, uh, people, right? And capture some of their essence, but also make them compelling characters. And so I, I thought it was interesting, like the Travis as a character was far less interesting in my mind than Travis as the actual person, right?

• 19:29Logan Bartlett?

  Normally these things you sensationalize the character on television and it's actually far more boring than what you get in real life. And here it was actually the, the opposite. Joseph Gordon-Levitt felt like he was, I don't know, he felt like he was trying way too hard. Like Kalanick had this, this kind of intimidating energy, but also this charisma. And like the whole bro-y thing for Travis, it was kind of a shtick. At the end of the day, he was kind of a nerd that cared about like the engineering culture and he put on this like bravado over it all. And I, I just think he was a much more interesting, like complicated person. And Joseph Gordon-Levitt, like the guy that was in 500 Days of Summer, like just couldn't really convey that.

• 20:13Logan Bartlett?

  And so I sort of scrolled like just watching him. I actually think someone had this observation on, on Twitter, but Kyle Chandler, the guy who coached Taylor from Friday Night Lights who played girly here. Um, I think would have actually been a better Travis Kalanick. Like I, I think he could have captured that essence of like intimidation, but charisma, but you know, like could be a little dorky, but also like a leader, right? And Joseph Gordon-Levitt just doesn't really have that for me.

• 20:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think you're right. There was a total miscast. I, I again, like it's not shocking when he didn't take the efforts to actually go out and talk to the character he's playing, who's very much alive, right? And presumably would have spoken to him. Like to me, that's just emblematic of like the whole approach to the show, which is it's not even, at least the social network for all of its flaws was a good movie. Like it's a really good movie as a matter of fact. Travis was robbed for best picture. Like that was a fun, great narrative, true or not, probably not, at least it works as art. This to me is, it fails on two levels. It's, it doesn't feel like it's true. And also I don't think it works as a piece of art either.

• 21:13Logan Bartlett?

  What do you think the difference is that Social Network did? Like, do you think they they just casted it better? Because this certainly has elements in the plot. Now, they went into more of the origin story and all of that. But what do you think like this is missing that Social Network got right?

• 21:28Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, Social Network was directed by David Fincher. I mean, one of the greatest directors of all time. Cinematography was beautiful. The score was amazing, like the way that it-

• 21:39Speaker 02

  Written by Aaron Sorkin, right? My absolute favorite screenwriter because I'm trash, but- By Aaron Sorkin, who's incredible.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, the dialogue was was great. The the characters were all had very strong identities that were like like most of them were pretty likable. And I I think seeing it start from the dorm room level made it feel like this, you know, rags to riches story. So I I mean, and everyone was flawed and they were flawed in a way that you could understand where they came from. I don't I I think, yeah, I think it was really robbed of best picture. And it was just an amazing film. I I don't I it felt like they were trying to chase after that vibe with this show. And they just totally missed the mark.

• 22:24Speaker 02

  I almost would rather have seen them not take it seriously. Like, I felt like the Social Network, because it was so well written and it was so well directed, Nicky, to your point. The score was so great and it was so well acted, Logan, to your point, right? Like, it it works as a serious, self-serious piece. Although there are still some lines, the, you know, sorry, my product is at the cleaners. There are still some lines that are sort of ridiculous on their own merit. But like, this one, it because the dialogue was off and all the small things they got wrong and the things didn't ring true. I almost would rather have seen them like go really campy and kind of play it up really big and and be kind of winking and knowing they're they're ridiculous rather than try to like straddle this line of not being hyper accurate or at least not feeling accurate in an impressionistic sense,

• 23:08Speaker 02

  but also not being funny enough to to be a fun hate watch either.

• 23:12Logan Bartlett?

  Do you think we're like too close to the circumstances around this, both from a time period as well as like our careers and understanding that like the little offness of the power dynamic with VCs and, you know, all that stuff is actually bothering us more? Like, it's kind of weird for me to internalize seeing Gurley, who, you know, I I know, know of a little bit, and seeing him as like this, you know- Handsome, smooth-talking Kyle Chandler character with his two dorky associates like Kohler and Fenton. Like, that was actually high comedy, that girly, so girly is actually friends with Koppelman, which is funny. But girly gets played by this handsome, handsome, smooth character and then Kohler and Fenton take these like, these dorky Ls with the, with the characters that they got.

• 23:57Logan Bartlett?

  But I don't know how much is like, it's bothering me that I have more of an appreciation of the essence of these characters than, than the social network, right? Obviously, I see Zuck, but I don't have an opinion about Zuckerberg, like, and the nuances in the early days. Or I see the Winklevoss brothers, but like, I don't really have an opinion stylistically about how they operate. Versus like Kyle Chandler throwing on all these like hokey Texas mannerisms about, and like, "Oh, I'm gonna finish your sentence" and, you know, all of that stuff. It just, I don't know, it kinda made me uncomfortable with how dorky it was.

• 24:30Speaker 01

  I, I think Hollywood just wants to portray tech in a certain way. That they know what their audience wants to hear. They want to see the CEO as the adversary, the VC as this Texan oil man who, uh, like, doesn't look at numbers and just makes, uh, shoots from the hip. So, yeah, I think he's been portrayed pretty unfairly over the years. I mean, he's had inexcusable workplace problems, but to, to be fair, like Uber has probably saved like thousands of lives from drunk driving. And I, I think, uh, when, when these Hollywood writers and reporters cover it, they, I don't think we should like overlook the mistakes, but I, I think the fact like preserving human life as a company is a big deal.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  And it deserves like more recognition than what pundits typically give him.

• 25:18Logan Bartlett?

  I mentioned the convenience on the worker side, the convenience on like our ability to get around, like, you know, drunk driving is certainly part of it. And I think they made a mistake of, of, part of what they did super well Uber in the early days was just kind of power ahead and take over cities and, and have their users as evangelists behind what they were doing, right? And I think they missed the mark on not also doing that from a PR standpoint. They used it from a like government push. Back standpoint, but the number of stories that they could have told about, you know, not driving drunk or whatever. And the number of studies that they could have done, Lyft ultimately did some of these studies of like lives saved from drunk driving and all that. But like, it was so patently obvious to me, the benefit of Uber.

• 26:03Logan Bartlett?

  And Travis really let that narrative get away from them, which I think was a mistake. And there's kind of this hostility of the media that I think really started in that period of time, right? In the tech ecosystem. And I think if he had been a little bit more proactive and collaborative about this, like they could have owned that narrative in a better way.

• 26:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm not sure I agree with that. I think it was about saying, by the way, we didn't even talk about some of the biggest stuff, saving human lives, incredible, but also the fact that taxis just routinely wouldn't pick up people of color. And that's a totally normalized thing for years and years, right? The idea that most taxi drivers were in hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt to the medallions. Yeah, the taxi commission here is not the good guys in all of these shows. But I think Uber, if I recall correctly, I'm pretty sure they did have partnerships with Mothers Against Drunk Drivers and all the sort of usual suspects you'd suspect. I think Travis culturally, right, like TK culturally was not the New York Times Cocktail Party stylistic character. And that's, by the way, most people in tech, right? Most great founders are not the like New York Times Cocktail Party attendee.

• 27:07Speaker 02

  And that's, that's fine, but you know, the challenge is then you get the sort of assorted PR problems that not fitting into that crowd socially creates for you.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's the, it's the, the pattern of like, it's not what you do, it's how you say it.

• 27:22Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 27:24Speaker 01

  Because of his, his sort of, you know, personality and identity, it didn't matter how many lives he saved. It was more just, he rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.

• 27:33Logan Bartlett?

  And you know, the taxi cab locally was much more in bed with media and all of that stuff, right?

• 27:43Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 27:43Logan Bartlett?

  And so the narratives that were being spun were going to be much more rooted in the local companies and all of that, rather than the, the social good that was actually happening. But yeah, it's interesting to see all this. Stuff portrayed, it's disappointing that we don't have more of like a three dimensional character. I wonder if there's like constraints given to the time, but it felt like it felt like they kind of cut, took shortcuts on the character development with regard to, I mean, all of, all of the characters we saw on screen. It felt like they, they just kind of force fed us that this person's bad. This person's, you know, how many references did they make to like, we don't at Benchmark Capital, we don't shoot our founders. We leave that to Sequoia, which one?

• 28:23Speaker 02

  Oh my God, Benchmark Capital. By the way, it was the funniest part of that.

• 28:27Logan Bartlett?

  That sounds so awkward, right? Clearly no one like listened to any of this. I, I was talking to a friend at Benchmark and he was like, I've never heard it called Benchmark Capital, right? And so it's just like, like, come on, these little things that, uh, and so I think they just tried to set up a little too much of like the foreshadowing that, oh, Bill is in his camp. And now they're using like filling each other's sentences or whatever, and like setting up for the, the, you know, thing at the end, when everyone knows the story, you don't need to bang us over the head with what's going to happen.

• 28:57Speaker 02

  By the way, I will say, as much as we're all close to this and certainly not unbiased observers here, like the Rotten Tomato score is like 50%, right? So this is not necessarily being widely recognized as some beloved piece of cinema outside of the tax scene.

• 29:11Logan Bartlett?

  Well, uh, I guess referenced in the show, uh, there was a line about Travis Kalanick, that Travis Kalanick conveyed to his brother, uh, about Randy Zuckerberg getting rich, uh, from, uh, Mark Zuckerberg. Now, I actually didn't know Randy Zuckerberg was a person, uh, until that line happened. And then it just so happened she popped up in my life twice this week. So, uh, for people that don't know, uh, Randy Zuckerberg is Mark's older sister. Um, it seems like she's become a, something of an evangelist for Web three and she's making these short form videos to raise awareness for crypto and NFT and blockchain or the

• 29:52Logan Bartlett?

  things like that, I guess. Earlier this week, she posted a video that was set to Twisted Sisters, we're not going to take it. And it was called, uh, we're all going to make it. Um, so Justin, I don't know if you can queue this up for us and we can give at least a little bit of a snippet for people to hear.

• 30:15Speaker 03

  We're all gonna make it. Yeah, we're all gonna make it. We're all gonna make it, everyone.

• 30:32Speaker 03

  It's just the start, so GM. Carpe your crypto DM. D Y O R and pick a coin.

• 30:46Logan Bartlett?

  We'll link the full thing in the show notes for other people to watch the entirety. I think I've watched it eight times now or so. But Zach, any thoughts on Randy Zuckerberg's presentation of Web 3 here?

• 31:01Speaker 02

  I couldn't believe she made a video about the future and the entire thing looked like it came out of 1985. That was a little bit surprising to see. I don't know, I just feel like it was a strange, I just felt like it was a strange video to put out. Did any of you guys remember the first round Capitol holiday videos they used to do?

• 31:18Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 31:18Speaker 02

  So I was in one of those a long time ago and that felt like the good version of this, right? Knowing sort of tongue in cheek and on the joke. Listen, I have nothing against anybody involved in the video, but it did have like big theater kid energy to me in a way that was like sort of incongruous to everyone I know in crypto, none of whom have theater kid energy.

• 31:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, for me, it just marked the top for crypto. I think that, I'm selling a ribbon today.

• 31:43Logan Bartlett?

  I actually heard a story, speaking of top of crypto, of like a secondary round going down at multiple billions with all of the money being taken out and it's called a seed round. And so that was like, I think it was a couple of days before this video was posted. So I think it's fair to not mark the top of crypto with Randy Zuckerberg. Yeah, no, I mean, Mark. Like literally created a platform that people conspired to overthrow the government. And somehow I felt like this was was actually worse in some ways like I I Zach, you said, I don't have any problem with people that made the video. I I don't know. I don't know if I could agree there. I mean, I did get whatever three minutes times eight times watching 24 minutes

• 32:26Logan Bartlett?

  of enjoyment out of it. So I can't say I'm totally against it, but it was the production quality was actually quite well done. And Lord knows what this actually cost to make. But um, yeah, no, I I don't know if I if I could chill for this one.

• 32:40Speaker 02

  I will say I've gotten more enjoyment out of watching the video lately than I have out of using Facebook. So in the Zuckerberg power ranking, Randy has outstripped Mark in my world.

• 32:48Speaker 01

  My favorite comment on that video, though, was it was like a guy that was based in Ukraine said, I'm in a bunker and this made my day worse.

• 32:59Logan Bartlett?

  Ah, that.

• 33:00Speaker 01

  It got like 3000 likes, like ratioed the video.

• 33:06Logan Bartlett?

  That is up right there. So I made a list of all the uh, all the Zuckerberg family videos here, and I would love to get your guys best and worst uh, from an enjoyment standpoint, what you what you uh, like the most. So there was the Randy Zuckerberg, we're all gonna make it video. Uh, there was the Mark Zuckerberg smoking ribs, uh, the the meta announcement video. There was the wakeboarding video where he uh, was flying with the American flag on the 4th of July. And then there was the the super sweaty all things D conference where he basically, you know, looked like he was gonna collapse on stage because he was uh, pouring sweat so much. Zach, favorite video and least favorite video of the Zuckerberg family here?

• 33:45Speaker 02

  I mean, it's it's this is a real tough one. I think this is the hardest power ranking we've ever done in all six episodes of the pod so far, but it's close. But I think the number one has to be Mark Zuckerberg smoking ribs. I mean, that is like an iconic all time video that I will spend my whole life. I I will never make content as good as that, no matter how hard I try. I gotta say, least favorite video, probably the 2010 all things D, because I could very much imagine myself being uncomfortably sweaty at a conference. That feels a little too empathetic to me.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  You seem like a sweaty guy.

• 34:16Speaker 02

  I don't know that I'm a sweaty guy, but I feel like in that scenario, I could be a sweaty guy.

• 34:19Logan Bartlett?

  You give off sweaty guy energy. No, I agree. I agree.

• 34:23Speaker 02

  Wow. Wow. A little, a little, a little harsh on the pod this week.

• 34:27Logan Bartlett?

  Nikita, as a former Facebook employee, this was your grandmaster once upon a time here. What was your number one video and what was your least favorite from the Zuckerberg clan?

• 34:38Speaker 01

  I mean, he's fully embraced the smoking ribs, you know, the video of Sweet Baby Ray's. I mean, he has it in the background of all his All Hands videos every week.

• 34:51Speaker 01

  But I have to say that the wakeboarding video, dropping that on the 4th of July, was a power move. And when it actually was released, it was like, it actually resonated with a lot of people.

• 35:04Logan Bartlett?

  There was Mark trying to interview at Founder's Fund, which was actually, that was a big hit. Mark was really embracing the American flag and flying. It was actually in Tahoe. I had a buddy that sent me a video before Mark had posted it. And he sent me a video and he goes, "I think this is Mark Zuckerberg trying to wakeboard with an American flag." And I was like, "That seems very weirdly specific." But yeah, no, I agree. That was also my favorite, my favorite video. The smoking ribs one, I actually, I'm gonna rank it last on my list if only because now he's in on the joke, right? Like, I want the ones that he's not quite in on the joke all the way. And he's embraced that one a little too much for my liking. So originally, I was very high on it, but it's fallen off since then.

• 35:49Speaker 02

  See, I believe in death of the author. I'm not concerned with what Zuckerberg thinks is the best of these jokes. To me, like, the moment of seeing him smoking those ribs forever is so powerful that he can put as many Sweet Baby Ray's sauce packets as he wants on his bookshelf. I'm still gonna be a big fan of that video forever.

• 36:07Logan Bartlett?

  Hey, by the way, one thing, the most awkward part of the podcast here is our request to like and subscribe and tell your friends if you're enjoying it. So here's me shilling once again for our own podcast.

• 36:21Speaker 01

  Shameless.

• 36:22Logan Bartlett?

  So one other topic I actually found really interesting this week was DBT Labs, which is a data orchestration company. It's kind of indexed to the rise in data manipulation, indexed to Snowflake and Databricks and all these, Amazon Redshift and Google BigQuery and all of that. They were set to raise a big round at $6.2 billion was the valuation they originally had, originally targeted. And they actually proactively lowered the round to 4.2 billion. And not only that, but they actually came out and admitted that and said as much, right? And I knew there were a bunch of reporters sniffing around that knew that they originally had it at six and lowered at four. And so I actually

• 37:04Logan Bartlett?

  thought it was fascinating. DBT, kind of in a masterclass of like PR management, actually owned the story from the start and said like, yes, here's why we cut it. And so what Tristan Handy, the CEO, said was, the investors were ready. It's that we have another set of stakeholders that we care about, the employees. He said, the last thing that we want is for our employees, or the 300 people that we're set to hire over the coming year, to feel like we're not giving them the full opportunity to participate in the upside. So I thought that was actually super interesting. Both DBT handled the PR really well. Instead of, you know, the information or someone running a story that, hey, this valuation got slashed. They actually owned it and said, hey, this is what happened. And then they actually

• 37:48Logan Bartlett?

  took the narrative of it and said, and here's why we did it for our employees, right? And so I think that's an interesting kind of PR move that we're seeing more and more. And it sounds self-serving when I say this as a VC. That's like, hey, lower valuation can sometimes be better in recruiting companies. But you are getting more sophisticated engineers and more sophisticated executives that are asking about the 409A price, which is going to be anchored off of these private round valuations, right? And so I think this was actually really smart, not in a VC-centric way, but for Tristan to proactively recognize that the public markets are down 50%. And that even though he could have gone higher

• 38:30Logan Bartlett?

  in valuation, setting the bar a little bit lower is going to be enticing to employees.

• 38:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think a lot of the best CEOs are increasingly realizing that overly aggressive valuations, particularly when there's not a lot of traction to go on. And like so many of these open source projects, and this is not about DBT specifically, but so many of these open source projects are raising so far ahead of their monetization skis, that I actually think a lot of the great CEOs in them are realizing it's to no one's benefit to do that, right? Maybe actually only to a VC's benefit to pump up these valuations aggressively, because it means you can win the deal more easily and you can deploy more capital into these companies. But if you are the, you know, if you're the CEO of a company and choosing between a billion or two billion valuation on maybe a million dollars revenue of an open source project, I think you're making your life a lot harder. I think a lot of them are realizing they're making their lives a lot

• 39:19Speaker 02

  harder to raise that higher valuation.

• 39:21Speaker 01

  But I mean, for at least his justification, he's saying he can give out, you know, equity awards that won't, that won't go down when it IPOs. I mean, it still would probably be better to give these grants to executive hires that have high headline numbers. Like instead of giving 10, 10 million over four years, they offer 15. So I don't see how it actually helps with recruiting. I mean, certainly they might quit if it drops a lot, but they'll still be essentially in the money compared to other offers.

• 39:58Logan Bartlett?

  Well, two things. One, the strike price on the options, right, is the first. And so that gets set lower. But then two, I do think there's a sophistication that exists with executives, in particular, you've made this point in the past, that are coming from the public markets and they're saying, like, hey, that number is made up, right? And just because one VC said that at a moment in time said that that is what this is worth. And maybe, maybe that was below market, maybe it was market, maybe it was above where the rest of the market would have come in. They're saying, hey, you know, I can't figure out what this is, is worth. And so I just can internalize how, how big of a number the billions are in the, in the business. And I can figure out how much revenue the company

• 40:43Logan Bartlett?

  has. And I can do that math of, hey, this is a 100X or 200X or 500X and my company in the public markets is trading at, you know, it used to be at 30, 40, 50 times revenue and now it's down to, you know, 1520. And so I think it's more that element of it. And so you're right, you could just say, hey, I'm giving a $15 million package instead of 10. But I do think there's some other, you know, sophistication that that play in the more polished executives or engineers.

• 41:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think you're right, Nikita. If you're, if you're certain, but if you're, you know, hiring the director who's now first time VP, you're probably right. The headline number is the thing people are optimizing for in that case.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, but yeah, the 4.9 valuation really fucks up a lot of things for for all these companies because I mean, if there is, if there is a down round or if the they're struggling to raise capital, a lot of these employees aren't going to fork over money to pay for those options.

• 41:39Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, totally. And then that leads to like perverse incentives and then, you know, whatever, like the employees aren't actually bought into everything. And so, yeah, it's a, it's an interesting conundrum to get in. So I imagine we'll see more and more of this. I actually think it's smart to potentially advertise where interest was from a valuation standpoint. I'll tell you, VCs aren't inherently the ones that are capping price of what people can go to from a valuation standpoint. It's, it's more and more founders saying, hey, this feels like a fair place where there's still a ton of upside that exists for our employees. We still want our investors to, you know, if we execute do well, right? And I think that's a, it's a healthier dynamic than what it's been at the path in the past

• 42:24Logan Bartlett?

  six months ago, maybe where people were just trying to raise at the highest absolute valuation that they could. Okay. Another topic of the week was Bitconnect founder Satish Kobandhi was just indicted by a US grand jury on charges that he orchestrated a global Ponzi scheme that raised 2.4 billion from investors on a fraudulent cryptocurrency investment platform, the Justice Department said. He was charged in San Diego with misleading investors about Bitconnect's purported proprietary technology which falsely promised returns based on phony volatility software that trapped cryptocurrency exchange markets. Nikita, your thoughts on this?

• 43:05Speaker 01

  I feel like the SEC is just taking a dart and just throwing it at the entire crypto industry and just whichever wherever it lands, they're they're auditing and investigating that company. Because right now, effectively, everything happening in crypto is illegal. Because when you're when you're issuing this either NFTs or stocks or whatever,

• 43:27Speaker 01

  these buyers are expecting a return and it constitutes a security. And legally, every buyer must be an accredited investor. So virtually all like everything happening in in crypto are these is illegal securities. And it's funny how the SEC framed this as a Ponzi scheme. My impression was everything in crypto is a Ponzi scheme. I mean, so, but I've, you know, I've I've talked to quite a few lawyers in this space over the last few weeks. And it seems like the the perception right now is that there's going to be a big crackdown on all these companies. Maybe what Satish was doing was maybe more egregious.

• 44:12Speaker 01

  But I think it's it's just a matter of time before the government catches up or changes the laws on needing to be an accredited investor to invest in these these non-public securities.

• 44:26Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, I mean, it feels like the line between what what constitutes fraud and what constitutes a business is increasingly narrow in the world of crypto and NFTs these days.

• 44:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, realistically, I don't see how the SEC goes after all these types of cases. Because it just seems like we have, you know, millions of people working on these sorts of this this technology. And and the public wants it. Certainly, a lot of people are losing money through through scams. But I just don't I don't know how this is going to play out.

• 45:00Logan Bartlett?

  Nikita, pro fraud, pro wash trade here. He's saying, "They can't catch you, everyone. Just keep running and you'll get away."

• 45:08Speaker 02

  Where you think all the G wagons are coming from? Follow it all the way back, people.

• 45:12Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, pump and dump, wash trade beer. I know eventually I'm gonna go down.

• 45:19Logan Bartlett?

  Matter of time.

• 45:21Logan Bartlett?

  About the G-Wagon trade you made with 100K or whatever bump you got after purchasing, so they're like...

• 45:27Speaker 02

  Well, once they saw that the seats hug you as you turn, this is a new feature that Nikita showed me in the G-Wagon this week. When you make a turn on them, the seats hug you. Is that right?

• 45:37Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah. And what I usually tell if a girl's riding in the car is, it's like having a boyfriend.

• 45:44Logan Bartlett?

  Nikita beer, so alone, he has his car hug him. Yeah, that's fantastic.

• 45:49Speaker 02

  Logan's a little sharp this week. Has some zingers.

• 45:53Logan Bartlett?

  Lack of sleep flying back on that ride. Yeah, you guys are all collateral damage for me at this point. So, so another thing this week that was, I found interesting was Homebrew, which is Hunter Walk and Satya Patel's fund. A nine-year-old, San Francisco-based seed firm has announced that they're making their last new investments out of their third fund. And that the fund going forward will operate as an evergreen entity, backed only by Hunter Walk and Satya's money. So, Zach, do you have any thoughts specifically about this structure?

• 46:31Logan Bartlett?

  I think some of us know the Homebrew guys, and so I actually don't have any inside baseball on the decisioning. This is all sort of outside in speculation, but would love to hear your thoughts as well.

• 46:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I have nothing on Homebrew specifically, and by the way, I'm a big fan of Hunter and Satya's both. So, it makes a lot of sense for them.

• 46:52Logan Bartlett?

  Keep the deal flow coming, guys. That's what I...

• 46:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, please. Yeah, Hunter and Satya, we're big fans. What I will say is like, I think it does make sense. I mean, just look at the market for a second. There's a swath of GPs who have done phenomenally well in the last 10 years, right? And some portion of those are gonna retire. And say, hey, you know, no more. And we saw that happen this summer, a bunch of those folks, right? And some swath, I actually think an increasing swath are going to do what Hunter and Safia have done, right? And say, hey, we've done well. This entire macro tech market's done quite well for us. Why wouldn't we now go and transition to only managing our own money and avoid the stress and the hassle of, of all the things that are involved when you take money from others? Right? I actually think it makes a lot of sense. And by the way, you see it all

• 47:37Speaker 02

  the time in every other financial vertical, why not in venture?

• 47:41Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, that's what I think is actually, I mean, the, you know, point 72 and Steve Cohen was actually kicked out of trading other people's money for a long time.

• 47:50Speaker 02

  A different, a different outcome, certainly.

• 47:52Logan Bartlett?

  In the, in the hedge fund industry, like the people have made so much money and have moved more and more to being family office structures, right? And yeah, whether or not it was illegal or not, the reasons that they, that they were forced into doing that. So I think it is interesting. I mean, it's a lot easier to make, you can write smaller checks and you're not dividing the money you get back by, it's not 20% or 25% or 30% or whatever in the carried income that you get back. Like all of it's yours. And so you can be a fifth the size, a fourth the size, a third the size, and actually be able to generate more money for yourself. And I think it actually aligns interest with founders as well. If you're going to stay small, right? Like it aligns interest

• 48:37Logan Bartlett?

  for Satya and Hunter to be able to stay small and still generate returns. And also it aligns interest from the founders that they're able to, they're able to still get their involvement without needing to be force fed huge chunks of capital.

• 48:51Speaker 01

  I, I mean, as, as an investor, I probably want to follow on, on all their deals because now it's their own money at stake.

• 48:58Logan Bartlett?

  A hundred percent. We all have to put our own money at stake. But yes, a hundred percent of their own money, to be clear.

• 49:05Speaker 01

  I mean, all my, like, everyone, everyone I know has their own rolling fund and they constantly send me deals. And I'm like, uh, how much of this is your own money? Like, because I don't have my own fund. I'm just putting in my own checks. And they're like, well, all my deals are marked up 5X. I'm like, what does that even mean?

• 49:22Speaker 02

  So syndicates and rolling funds are like the least amount of your own money, right? Like, that's like the least levered relative, or sorry, the most levered, sorry, relative to like, the Logans of the world who have to put, uh, yeah, I don't know what Logan's GP commit is, but. Sizable.

• 49:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. My, let's, yeah, my debt is bigger than my, uh, my assets versus liability math is not great.

• 49:44Logan Bartlett?

  I do think that's, it's an interesting point. Do you structurally, do you know with these rolling funds, do you have to put up 1%? I assume legally you have to put up, that's the, I think that's the legal bare minimum that you have to put up.

• 49:53Speaker 01

  I, I think so, but, um, I, I think that percentage drops very quickly once the checks start rolling in.

• 50:01Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 50:01Speaker 01

  The strangest thing about them is, so I, I'm in a couple and you put in your bank information on the Angel List page and they just pull money from your account like on a quarterly basis without even you telling, without even telling you. Uh, and I, I eventually logged in. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what's going on? I had to like turn them all off because they were like just depleting my entire bank account.

• 50:23Speaker 02

  What's easier to cancel, the New York Times subscription or a rolling fund subscription? Two very insidious things.

• 50:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, you have, you have to like, uh, email, uh, Angel List to get, get it turned off. So it was kind of an ordeal.

• 50:36Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, I bet you have to show up in person and like, yeah, you actually have to track down the ball and grab him and wrestle him to the ground. You have to turn off Angel List, yeah.

• 50:45Speaker 02

  I have to personally fight each rolling fund lead to get your money back.

• 50:53Logan Bartlett?

  I guess, uh, as our usual outro here, normally we do a tease of Nikita's revealing his app. We actually, uh, just found out for the, the joke, I guess, has been that we actually didn't think Nikita had an app. And so there was nothing to reveal, but it sounds like Nikita, we, uh, you actually are building something now.

• 51:10Speaker 01

  I am building an app.

• 51:12Logan Bartlett?

  Wow. So we don't even need to tease it. It's actually something real. Do we have a name yet?

• 51:17Speaker 01

  Uh, not yet. Uh, I don't know if it'll even launch, but, uh, toiling away.

• 51:22Logan Bartlett?

  Wow.

• 51:22Speaker 02

  I can't wait.

• 51:23Logan Bartlett?

  Well, what I just heard is everyone send name suggestions to Nikita's inbox. Maybe just tweet at him, uh, and give him your best ideas.

• 51:31Speaker 02

  What I heard is if you just start wiring money to Nikita, he has to take it. That's how I interpreted that sentence.