xAI’s Colossus 2 Reactions, Sam Ross & Aaron Slodov LIVE in The Ultradome | Pippa Lamb, Ariana Thacker, Will Hurd

(01:21) - xAI Unveils Colossus 2 Datacenter (30:20) - Pippa Lamb, a partner at Sweet Capital, discusses the recent U. S. state visit to the UK, highlighting significant tech investments from companies like Microsoft, Google, and Nvidia, and emphasizing the UK's ambition to become an AI superpower. She also provides insights into Prime Minister Keir Starmer's leadership, noting his pragmatic approach and pro-business stance, and touches on the UK's focus on growth, particularly in the tech and R&D sectors, as it seeks to strengthen its position post-Brexit. (47:30) - Johnny Carson's Former Home Lists for $110M (53:56) - 𝕏 Timeline Reactions (01:28:53) - Aaron Slodov, CEO and co-founder of Atomic Industries, is leading efforts to revitalize American manufacturing through advanced technologies. In the conversation, he discusses the company's recent Series A funding, plans to expand manufacturing facilities in Detroit, and the integration of AI and automation to enhance production efficiency. He also highlights the importance of reindustrializing the U. S. to strengthen the industrial base and reduce reliance on foreign manufacturing. (01:46:27) - 𝕏 Timeline Reactions (01:51:40) - Ariana Thacker, founder and CEO of MoldCo, transitioned from venture capital to entrepreneurship after her personal battle with mold toxicity. In the conversation, she discusses MoldCo's mission to revolutionize mold-related illness treatment by offering accessible, evidence-based care through virtual platforms, including specialized lab tests and treatments guided by mold-trained clinicians. She also highlights the company's recent $8 million funding round, emphasizing the growing awareness and need for effective solutions to mold exposure and its health impacts. (02:01:57) - Will Hurd, a former CIA officer and U. S. Representative for Texas's 23rd district, is now the Chief Strategy Officer at Chaos Industries, a defense technology company. In the conversation, he discusses his journey from studying computer science at Texas A&M University to serving in the CIA, where he was stationed in India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, and later transitioning into politics due to his experiences briefing Congress. He highlights the importance of integrating technological expertise into government to address national security challenges, emphasizing the need for innovation in defense technologies to maintain U. S. superiority. (02:27:53) - Sam Ross, co-founder and CEO of Numeral, a company specializing in automating sales tax compliance for e-commerce and SaaS businesses, discusses Numeral's recent $35 million funding round at a $350 million valuation, following a Series A led by Benchmark earlier this year. He highlights the challenges of sales tax compliance faced during his time running a vitamin gummy e-commerce business, which led to the creation of Numeral to simplify this process. Ross also touches on the impact of AI on business models, noting that while AI is central to current fundraising efforts, it has led to increased operational costs, such as higher AWS bills, though he remains optimistic about future efficiencies. (02:48:04) - 𝕏 Timeline Reactions TBPN.com is made possible by: Ramp - https://ramp.com Figma - https://figma.com Vanta - https://vanta.com Linear - https://linear.app Eight Sleep - https://eightsleep.com/tbpn Wander - https://wander.com/tbpn Public - https://public.com AdQuick - https://adquick.com Bezel - https://getbezel.com Numeral - https://www.numeralhq.com Polymarket - https://polymarket.com Attio - https://attio.com/tbpn Fin - https://fin.ai/tbpn Graphite - https://graphite.dev Restream - https://restream.io Profound - https://tryprofound.com Julius AI - https://julius.ai turbopuffer - https://turbopuffer.com fal - https://fal.ai Privy - https://www.privy.io Cognition - https://cognition.ai Follow TBPN: https://TBPN.com https://x.com/tbpn https://open.spotify.com/show/2L6WMqY3GUPCGBD0dX6p00?si=674252d53acf4231 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/technology-brothers/id1772360235 https://www.youtube.com/@TBPNLive

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

• 0:00Jordi Hays?

  You're watching TBN.

• 0:02John Coogan?

  Today is Friday, September 19th, 2025. We are live from the TBN Ultra Dome, the Temple of Technology, the Fortress of Finance, the Capital of Capital. Thank you to everyone in the chat. It is teeming today.

• 0:15Jordi Hays?

  Love to see it.

• 0:16John Coogan?

  Uh, the first message I saw was thank you to Ramp for another TBN Friday. Thank you to Ramp, ramp.com. Time is money. Save both. Easy to use corporate cards, bill pay, accounting, and a whole lot more, all in one place.

• 0:31Jordi Hays?

  We have, we have new, uh, sound effects from the team, by the way. Hit him, hit him.

• 0:35John Coogan?

  There we go. I'm hearing multiple things. This is getting crazy.

• 0:41Jordi Hays?

  And we have a special guest today. Let's go, let's go to the wide.

• 0:43John Coogan?

  Yes, we have Turbo Puffer.

• 0:45Jordi Hays?

  Look at this thing. Look at this.

• 0:47John Coogan?

  It doesn't show how three years.

• 0:50Jordi Hays?

  I mean, it, this, this, it is absolutely stunning. Look at this thing.

• 0:54John Coogan?

  Turbo Puffer clock.

• 0:55Jordi Hays?

  And it's functional, too.

• 0:56John Coogan?

  Of course. Search every byte. Turbo Puffer. We're puffing. Serverless vector and full text search.

• 1:01Jordi Hays?

  We puffing. I'm gonna hit the gong.

• 1:02John Coogan?

  Built from first principles on object storage. 10x cheaper, extremely scalable.

• 1:09John Coogan?

  Go to the gong, Cam. Thank you, Turbo Puffer, for supporting us. Excited to dig deeper into that company. There's some fun stuff to share at some point. Uh, anyway, um, the big news, Colossus 2 XAI. Uh, it seems like it's going well. People have been, uh, saying Elon's spread too thin. Starships, you know, crashing into the firmament every two seconds. Uh, starships landed, came back. The haters are, I mean, pulled back from politics. It seems like there's a lot of progress.

• 1:40Jordi Hays?

  The huge L for the, you know, firmament believers.

• 1:44John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 1:44Jordi Hays?

  After the last launch.

• 1:45John Coogan?

  Yes. Elon made it to space and back, and he's also making progress on Colossus 2, the data center.

• 1:50Jordi Hays?

  10, 20 minutes ago, CNBC is reporting that XAI raised a fresh $10 billion at 200 billion.

• 1:57John Coogan?

  Wow.

• 1:58Jordi Hays?

  Uh, that just hit the timeline.

• 1:59John Coogan?

  There we go.

• 2:02John Coogan?

  Dylan Patel summed it up.

• 2:03Jordi Hays?

  What was the headline? Did you put a headline in the newsletter?

• 2:07John Coogan?

  In the newsletter today? Yes, XAI, if you build it, they will come.

• 2:11Jordi Hays?

  Okay.

• 2:12John Coogan?

  Because his plan is to, is to build the biggest data center, the first gigawatt data center in the world. And Semi Analysis says they have a unique RL methodology. It's focused less on these RL environments for specific business use cases. We're not hearing about them cloning DoorDash or Amazon or creating a unique browser use like GoSolve, a very specific. They're not trying to build deep research RL environments. They're building Annie, the romantic companion, which is an RL environment that feeds off of human interaction. And so Semi Analysis has a very interesting take.

• 2:48Jordi Hays?

  Harvest it.

• 2:49John Coogan?

  Potentially, potentially. But Dylan says, every time you think Elon has lost his touch or is failing, he does some crazy stuff. And you're like, damn, he really still got it. How Elon is building the largest data center in the world faster than anyone else is amazing. Also, what they're doing on the RL side is equally nuts. There's a bunch of, there's a bunch of posts here and a bunch of, a bunch of interesting hacks.

• 3:12Jordi Hays?

  Do not go data center for data center with a goat.

• 3:15John Coogan?

  Yes. So, I mean, he got into this game late. He co-founded, it's going to be the 10 year anniversary of co-founding OpenAI. December 2015 is when he co-founded OpenAI. And we're coming up on December of 2025. And he's about to have a data center that's on par. It's close to OpenAI. It's not yet bigger, but they're getting there. This is, Semi Analysis breaks down the megawatts of IT capacity, which is effectively the total AI training data center capacity. OpenAI is still ahead of XAI, but Elon's pulling out every possible trick play. To catch up to the firm he co-founded, they're now ahead of Anthropic and Meta Superintelligence,

• 3:56John Coogan?

  according to semi-analysis's data. You can go deeper and obviously subscribe. And if you upgrade to the most high tier, you get their data center model. And they'll even tell you what Google's doing, which is much more complex because Google trains across multiple data centers. So everyone loved Colossus One, built from the ground up in 122 days. It had 300 megawatts of IT power, which is now small potatoes because the next one's three times bigger. Zuck has talked about Hyperion and Prometheus shortly after going on his MSL hiring spree. OpenAI is, of course, working on Stargate in partnership with Crusoe and Oracle and others.

• 4:32Jordi Hays?

  Also, in Alex Heath, Alex Heath's interview the other day was saying that, I think it released yesterday, that he believes we might be in an AI bubble.

• 4:42John Coogan?

  Zuck didn't say that. That was an interpretation of the Zuck clip.

• 4:47Jordi Hays?

  Interesting.

• 4:48John Coogan?

  So, so I saw that post. We should pull up the actual clip.

• 4:52Jordi Hays?

  Let's, let's watch it.

• 4:53John Coogan?

  And, and, and, and review what Zuck said because I believe that this was somebody adding a caption and interpreting the vibes that were coming off of that particular interaction between Alex Heath, who just launched a new Substack and podcast. Let's listen to this interview with Mark Zuckerberg.

• 5:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, you were talking about the CapEx and the data centers. You obviously see something on the other side of that that will warrant that being worth it. But I'm wondering, do you ascribe to these, these bubble fears at all that people are talking about that were in this massive overspending, getting ahead of the skis bubble? And maybe a company like Meta will be okay because you guys do have a core business that makes a lot of money. But yeah, how do you think about this bubble talk that has been going on for the last few months especially?

• 5:36Speaker 03

  I mean, I think it's quite possible. I mean, I think basically if you look at most other major infrastructure buildups in history, you know, whether it's railroads or fiber for the internet, you know, in the dot com bubble.

• 5:49Speaker 03

  These things were all chasing something that ended up being fundamentally very valuable. In most cases, it ended up being even more valuable than the people who were kind of pushing the bubble thought it was going to be. But in at least all these past cases, the infrastructure gets built out, people take on too much debt, and then you hit some blip, whether it's some macroeconomic thing, or maybe you just have like a couple of years where the demand for the product doesn't quite materialize. And then a lot of the companies end up going out of business. And then the assets get distressed, and then it's a great opportunity to go buy more. So I think that it's not, it's obviously impossible to predict what will happen here. There are compelling arguments for why AI could be an outlier, and basically just, if

• 6:30Speaker 03

  the models keep on growing in capability year over year, and demand keeps growing, then maybe there is no collapse or something. But I do think that there's definitely a possibility, at least empirically based on past large infrastructure build outs and how they led to bubbles, that something like that would happen here.

• 6:55John Coogan?

  He's going back and forth there. Not as strong as what Sam Altman said.

• 6:58Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 6:59John Coogan?

  Right? It's possible we're in a bubble is not the same as, yeah, we're definitely in a bubble.

• 7:03Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 7:04John Coogan?

  But I think you're right.

• 7:05Jordi Hays?

  The post, whoever flipped that is right as well, in that it's much better to be in a position where you have a highly profitable advertising business that can support this, you know, that all of the AI capex could effectively never go to what we think of as like new gen AI products, and it could just go to the core business and it'd be great.

• 7:29John Coogan?

  Yeah, I mean, when we hear about Meta spending 60 billion on capex, like, a lot of that is still core AI. A lot of that is still just recommend better ads, recommend better reels, that type of stuff. And so, lot less, lot, just tons more downside protection in a company like Meta versus XAI, which is using leverage, using these deals shifting pawns across the chessboard.

• 7:52Jordi Hays?

  Having SpaceX invest, having Tesla.

• 7:54John Coogan?

  And then SpaceX employees and Tesla employees are coming over, and Tesla mega pack, battery packs are going over there. Like, it is a crazy, crazy kiretsu that Elon has built.

• 8:06Jordi Hays?

  Well, speaking of well-placed ads, Tyler Rongi just shared this moment earlier. We gotta pull this up, pull this video up in the timeline. Tyler clipped it for us. John delivered potentially the greatest host read ad in history. We're a little bit biased, obviously.

• 8:25John Coogan?

  Ramp.com. Time is money. Save both. Use corporate cards, bill payments, accounting, and a whole lot more all in one place.

• 8:30Jordi Hays?

  Four seconds on the countdown.

• 8:31John Coogan?

  Here we go. Let's bring him on. Mark Zuckerberg, live on TV PM. Welcome to the stream. How you doing, Mark?

• 8:38Speaker 02

  Good to see you.

• 8:39John Coogan?

  This is really just the pinnacle, like truly like the pinnacle of the bit that we started maybe a year ago, less than a year ago. I mean, I guess we started doing Rampads. I think we started doing Rampads even before we had a deal with them. We just thought it was fun. But this whole idea of like, let's be overly commercial. Let's really push the ad reads. It was started as a joke and then it just became like our thing and we normalized it to a point where we can actually go and do an ad read, a host read, right before interviewing a Mag7 CEO. So it was a fantastic, fantastic day, fantastic week. We had a lot of fun.

• 9:18John Coogan?

  Anyway, continuing with what's going on with XAI. There's this thought provoking part of the latest semi-analysis that article that kind of breaks down how Ani and the Romantic Companion Chatbot actually flows. We can read through a little bit of this. I mean, Elon is extremely satisfied with how the build out's going.

• 9:42Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 9:43John Coogan?

  Semi-analysis said, "XAI now has 460 megawatts of natural gas turbines installed and either operating or under construction. This includes 12 SMT 130 turbines at Colossus 1 and 7 Titan 350 turbines at Mississippi." Those are extremely cool names for turbines. Titan 350. And Elon says, "Still small fry at 1 gigawatt for serious power in the 100 gigawatt continuous range, 1/5 of USA average power consumption. It probably needs to be solar battery powered. At 1 terawatt, solar battery is the only realistic option."

• 10:19Jordi Hays?

  Elon's Elon company, companies are so good at infrastructure. They should have bought the Fire Festival IP because they actually, I believe they-

• 10:26John Coogan?

  Oh, they could pull it off for sure.

• 10:27Jordi Hays?

  They could have pulled it off. On a barren island, they would have been able to do it.

• 10:31John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 10:31Jordi Hays?

  Might not have been super- Well, you know, easy on the eyes, but it would, it would have, the festival would have run.

• 10:38John Coogan?

  Yeah, for sure. Restream, one livestream, 30 plus destinations. We're restreaming right now. Multi-streaming, reach your audience.

• 10:44Jordi Hays?

  Restream every day.

• 10:45John Coogan?

  Semi-analysis continues. The location of XAI's AI data center hub in Memphis is highly strategic as it sits at the intersection of three states. Tennessee residents are already frustrated with the environmental and noise concerns caused by the gas turbines powering the facility. To address this, Elon Musk simply placed the new turbines a few miles across the border in Mississippi, running a short transmission line back to the Tennessee hub. It is so crazy that he can even build a line, a couple of miles, like that. Like, how long does it take California to build a couple of miles of railroad? Like, a decade? The idea that you can actually, like, build even a transmission line that quickly is remarkable.

• 11:22Jordi Hays?

  I wonder, I wonder if any crazy land deals got done, like, in that two-mile stretch, right? Like, because if he had to, like, do you think he owned all the land across state lines?

• 11:34John Coogan?

  I don't know.

• 11:34Jordi Hays?

  Or was there some section where, where?

• 11:36John Coogan?

  But it gets, yeah, it gets more complex. So, so, and if Mississippi residents or regulators push back, well, no problem. He can just go a few miles west, build additional turbine plants in Arkansas, and connect them with another short transmission line. Elon Musk has also confirmed that XAI is purchasing an overseas power plant to bring to the US to continue powering his physical AI industry.

• 12:01Jordi Hays?

  But he's buying a plant that's overseas and just moving it?

• 12:05John Coogan?

  I think so. I think just, like, pick it up and put it down. Semi-analysis called it another 200 IQ first principles move by Elon due to pushback on the Tennessee, from Tennessee over environmental concerns. He built it at this intersection of three states and kind of, can kind of move, move between them. There's some, there's some really remarkable things, this genius trick. Such a crazy move. And you, and you have to think that he, he didn't run into this, like, later, he thought about this. He thought that the state regulation, it would be complex, and so picked that zone. Maybe a year ago and has been, you know, beneficiary of it ever since.

• 12:43John Coogan?

  Such a fascinating story and you can see some images from 200 megawatts to 1.1 gigawatts. And you can see the physical change of the, look at this, the physical change of the site from March 2025 to August 2025. That's just a few months and it looks like a completely different, like terraforming the earth. It's absolutely wild.

• 13:05Jordi Hays?

  Grok right now, guess, guess Grok's revenue on Sensor Tower. So the App Store last month.

• 13:15John Coogan?

  Hundred million dollars, something like that.

• 13:17Jordi Hays?

  Last month?

• 13:20John Coogan?

  I would hope that they're at a billion dollar run rate, maybe last.

• 13:24Jordi Hays?

  Five.

• 13:25John Coogan?

  Five million?

• 13:25Jordi Hays?

  So 60 million dollar run rate in the App Store. Granted, they could have other people go to grok.com and sign up and that, that, those signups wouldn't get counted towards this.

• 13:34John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 13:34Jordi Hays?

  But this is counting.

• 13:36John Coogan?

  And there's a lot of people that use Grok within X, so they have an X premium account and that gets them, that gets them access to Grok. But yeah, I mean, semi-analysis shares a lot of data around the AI lab ARR, external revenue. OpenAI is at a 14 and a half billion dollar run rate. Anthropic's at a $7 billion run rate now and Grok is not really showing up on this particular chart.

• 14:01John Coogan?

  There's some discussion in here about Elon going to the Middle East. There's the KSA's Kingdom Holding Company. They own 16.87% by the public, by PIF, Public Investment Fund. They owned and kept a 1.8, a 1.9 billion dollar stake in Twitter when Musk took the company private in 2022. And also owned an 800 million dollar stake in XAI prior to the merger. So they, they're building a position in XXAI. The UAE's privately owned Vi Capital bought, brought in 700 million in 2022 to support Elon's takeover of Twitter. It also invested in the XAI Series C alongside UAE State Fund MGX.

• 14:42John Coogan?

  And Qatar's QIA also owned and kept a 375 million dollar stake in Twitter and participated in XAI's Series C.

• 14:50John Coogan?

  And so according to the Financial Times, XAI is preparing a new round in the tens of billions valuing the company close to 200 billion with Saudi PIF.

• 14:58Jordi Hays?

  CNBC broke that that has allegedly been close.

• 15:03John Coogan?

  Yeah, so Semi Analysis earlier this week was talking about a raise as large as 30 billion. It sounded like 10 billion came in today.

• 15:10Jordi Hays?

  And remember, XAI's lawyer was on the record, I think a couple of days ago, saying the idea that XAI is struggling with fundraising is entirely false.

• 15:21John Coogan?

  Yes, it was like they're good at fundraising, right?

• 15:24Jordi Hays?

  They were performing well in fundraising is what they said. But the reporter was pushing them and basically saying.

• 15:31John Coogan?

  Yeah, I mean, you can give you can give these labs like a little bit of leeway because Anthropic wasn't making a ton of money and then when they hit product market fit on the actual model, it ramped very, very quickly. Same thing with OpenAI, obviously.

• 15:45Jordi Hays?

  The 200 billion, Semi Analysis says this is challenging because it is hard for most investors to justify XAI's having a valuation higher than Anthropic.

• 15:55John Coogan?

  That is that is tricky considering Anthropic's at like a $7 billion run rate and growing very, very quickly. Anyway, let me tell you about one of our newest sponsors, Privy Wallet Infrastructure for Every Bank. Privy makes it easy to build on crypto rails, securely spin up white label wallets, sign transactions and integrate on-chain infrastructure all through one simple API.

• 16:14Jordi Hays?

  The official wallet infrastructure provider of TBPN.

• 16:19John Coogan?

  Proud to work with them. Beyond external capital sources, Elon could generate capital internally since merging X with XAI to form X Holdings. Semi Analysis believes there's an ever-growing piece of XAI's revenue revenues are intercompany transfers. So when you call Grok, at Grok to trans- at Grok is this true on X to answer questions, X.com is licensing that LLM technology for functionality such as search, ad and even the even the recommendation algorithm. Elon has said just today that he wants it to be entirely powered by XAI, by artificial intelligence. No, they wants to rip out the older system. Tyler?

• 17:01Jordi Hays?

  And remember in July, the Department of Defense awarded a $200 million contract to XAI.

• 17:06John Coogan?

  Oh yeah, that's right.

• 17:07Jordi Hays?

  So that's.

• 17:09John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 17:09Jordi Hays?

  Significant.

• 17:10John Coogan?

  Yeah, significant. I mean, you add that, you add the 60 million in Sensor Tower. There's probably a bunch more coming just directly. There's probably some coming over from.

• 17:19Jordi Hays?

  But, yeah, at the end of the day.

• 17:20John Coogan?

  Hearing like nine figures, but we're not seeing like the multi-billion dollar revenues coming in.

• 17:25Jordi Hays?

  If you're a large scale allocator and you are having the opportunity to simultaneously invest in Anthropic, OpenAI and XAI.

• 17:33John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 17:34Jordi Hays?

  OpenAI at somewhere 350 to 500 billion.

• 17:37John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 17:38Jordi Hays?

  Anthropic, 160 or 170, whatever it is, and then XAI 200 billion. It's like, you really gotta be riding with Elon.

• 17:48John Coogan?

  It's a movie ride, baby. Somebody else just says it's moving, describes it as moving money from Elon's right pocket to his left pocket. This has happened a bunch, though. It happened with SolarCity. He acquired that company. And then we didn't really hear that much about solar from Tesla. There was this vision for a while that you would buy a solar roof and get solar panels installed in your house through Tesla. That project, it was slow and then it didn't really reach breakout speed. But interesting to see how much, like, at this point, it's been, what, a decade since you want to hold on to your pufferfish? Are you very happy about that thing? It is so cool.

• 18:29John Coogan?

  At this point, if Elon was really like, had changed his tune on solar, he very much could have pivoted and said like, now we're doing nuclear and we're not doing solar anymore and, you know, we're kind of slowly, like, the actual SolarCity acquisition was never that big. And it's been sort of like written down over the time. No one's saying, oh, Tesla needs to deliver SolarCity, the original vision there for that to happen. But yet Elon's still beating the drum of solar will be really important long term. So I wonder if he'll.

• 18:58Jordi Hays?

  A lot of people were not happy about the SolarCity acquisition.

• 19:02John Coogan?

  Yeah, but, but over time, it didn't matter because the stock.

• 19:04Jordi Hays?

  Didn't matter in the end. And that's, and that's why I've said, I think, I think if XAI eventually rolls into Tesla, I think that, one, Tesla will. Like probably pop on that news.

• 19:17John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 19:17Jordi Hays?

  And over in the fullness of time, like it probably will not be. I think it'll be somewhat of a rounding error.

• 19:24John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 19:26John Coogan?

  It would be interesting if it comes back and in another decade Tesla or Elon Inc. is a major player in solar power generation. They certainly aren't a material amount of total power generation. They're getting into a material amount of total AI IT capacity and data center capacity. Kind of bootstrapping a hyperscaler, becoming a hyperscaler just through the XAI efforts. But it would be very interesting to see if we look back and we're like, oh, they actually did wind up installing a ton of solar. They needed an excuse to do it, not just ground up adoption from everyday people putting it on the roof, but could happen. So semi analysis asked the question, does XAI have a shot at becoming a frontier lab?

• 20:12John Coogan?

  XAI has been able to catch up in many aspects to the current frontier. Grok four by some measures and evaluations was up there with some of the best models on release, yet semi analysis believes they're struggling to translate eval strength into revenue. Let's discuss the talent pool. There's a funny, there's a bunch of interesting things here. So XAI got folks from Google DeepMind, Greg Yang and Tony Wu. XAI also has renowned researchers like Jimmy Bah, co inventor of the atom optimizer. Since then, XAI has poached more talent from DeepMind Meta and in some cases Nvidia, which is interesting because they're buying a ton of chips from Nvidia, but they did get some folks. They got Ethan He, who was a senior engineer at Nvidia, working on their Nemo model series.

• 20:57John Coogan?

  And my question is, is Ethan He him? Or is he just Ethan He? At this point, they have north of a thousand employees and are continuously expanding with a new office stated to open in Seattle. They work really hard. It's famously hardcore. I like this phrase here. Part of this is the fast, extremely hardcore pace. XAI engineers, nine nine six, look easy. I think you're saying two XAI engineers, nine nine six, looks easy, often pulling what they call.

• 21:28Jordi Hays?

  I'm saying nine nine six.

• 21:29John Coogan?

  Double oh seven, which is 12 to 12, seven days a week, which I think is just 24 hours a day.

• 21:35Jordi Hays?

  Well, no, if you were doing 12 noon to 12.

• 21:39John Coogan?

  Well, that's not that much more than nine to nine, 12 to 12.

• 21:42Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 21:42John Coogan?

  Like, I think, I think what they're saying here is that basically it's like you are 100% working, even when you're sleeping, like, that's part of your job.

• 21:50Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 21:51John Coogan?

  The sleeping in the tent is like, you're doing that to enable your work. So you, you, you live at the office and you truly are working endlessly. But the talent exodus is a real issue with XAI. People are churning out, but they keep finding young people to join and their, two of their, two of their best data center folks just left to join OpenAI, but Colossus 2 keeps chugging forward. So they're able to backfill and they haven't been able to be, you know, fully destroyed. There's an interesting-

• 22:19Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I mean, there's, there's just, there's a world where even if XAI ends up just leading on infrastructure and actually being able to deliver compute, there's a ton of value in that as well, right? I, I, we were talking offline the other day. Is there some world where Oracle says like, hey, we have this crazy backlog? Well, basically like, if you give us access to Colossus, we'll pay you a premium for it, but who knows?

• 22:48John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, there, there is a question of like, it, it's super risky. There's debt. They're building out this massive cluster and there isn't that much demand from the actual API for Grok and there's not this crazy compounding advantage in consumer. But at the end of the day, if you wind up with a one gigawatt cluster, there's a lot of hyperscalers that want a one gigawatt cluster. And so you could probably just go sell that to AWS or Google pretty quickly. So it doesn't seem that crazy as in terms of like where the dollars are going. It seems like an efficient build out that creates capacity. But then we're talking about like the dark fiber world where we couldn't find a, a, a use for this today.

• 23:28John Coogan?

  So we had to sell it kind of at cost or below cost. But it's not a zero. It's not, it's not, it's not completely spent on, on, you know, something that might not materialize at all. Anyway, let me tell you about cognition, our latest sponsor. They're the makers of Devon. Devon is the AI software engineer. Crush your backlog with your personal AI engineering team. Speaking of coding, coding is today the largest API use case for AI. Devon, of course.

• 23:58Jordi Hays?

  I can't get over the team.

• 24:00John Coogan?

  Uses AI to write code.

• 24:01Jordi Hays?

  Cowbell.

• 24:02John Coogan?

  Cowbell's great.

• 24:03Jordi Hays?

  Hit that horn again, Nick.

• 24:05John Coogan?

  I love the horn. It's great. Grok 4 is priced at the same level of Claude, Sonnet 4, yet does not show the same level of coding abilities. For non-coding applications, GPT-5 is even cheaper and has better capabilities across the board. So both Anthropic, Sonnet 3.7 and Sonnet 4 are both at $4 per million tokens. Grok 4 is also at $4 per million tokens, but very quickly, GPT-5 is at $2 per million tokens. Grok Code Fast is much cheaper, but and a lot of the explosion over Grok Code Fast has been on OpenRouter.

• 24:43John Coogan?

  SemiAnalysis dug into the OpenRouter stuff and it said that there is interest in a small, cheap and performant model, but there's a catch. SemiAnalysis thinks that the spike on OpenRouter comes from XAI providing free voucher credits to kilo code users who call XAI models via OpenRouter. Real demand will be clearer in the long run as voucher redemptions run out. So they've been doing a lot to just spur adoption. Hopefully those folks stick around. There was very, there was one very interesting stat in here that they linked to. So a survey from Netscope found that Grok is used in 23% of organizations.

• 25:24John Coogan?

  This is up from like 0.01% of adoption of Grok 2 in enterprises that were surveyed. So massive, massive adoption of Grok in companies broadly. 23% is pretty, pretty high, actually. Twenty-nine percent of organizations have just blocked Grok entirely, likely due to the Mecca incident and some of that stuff. So it's unclear how Elon's influence over Grok will persist in post-training quirks. If you just want a model to optimize a manual workflow, you might not want it to take a strong stance on some political issue. You might just want it to put the tokens in the bag.

• 26:09John Coogan?

  So on the consumer side, ChatGPT is truly, truly crushing. The thirty-day app revenue indexed to ChatGPT at a hundred. Grok is at two point six relative to ChatGPT's one hundred. So two point six percent of ChatGPT revenue. And then Claude is at one point three percent and Gemini is at point five percent. And so according to semi-analysis in Censor Tower.

• 26:35Jordi Hays?

  It is pretty wild that the Mecca incident happened in the very beginning of July.

• 26:40John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 26:40Jordi Hays?

  And they were still able to announce the DOD contract for two hundred million in mid-July.

• 26:46John Coogan?

  Yeah, I mean, those things probably haven't happened in a long time.

• 26:49Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 26:49John Coogan?

  It takes time. So everyone discusses AI's weakness from model and lack of business perspective, but it's important to recognize that they do have a unique method for RL, reinforcement learning semi-analysis is continuing. So Anthropic's focused on code, automated software engineering, digital productivity as a path to automate model research, infrastructure improvements. This is clearly the best path towards revenue in the short to medium term, but XAI believes this is not a valid approach to AGI. A more generalized approach is required, says semi-analysis. While XAI is chasing code performance, they are also chasing other areas, including emotional intelligence and empathy. Ane is key to this. This is interesting. XAI's Ane is set to be one of the most diverse RL environments.

• 27:33John Coogan?

  If the goal is to maximize engagement, then the model can attempt to maximize on that. While their idea of utilizing humans as an RL environment is a crazy thing, it will be commonplace as AI evolves. Once XAI implements RL on human environments, they could dramatically improve engagement and eventually turn to other goals as well. Becoming really good at SLOP is a potential path. I think we were talking about this earlier. It's it's just a fascinating concept of like where where this goes. It's a potentially very dark, very black mirror, very black pilling, but could be could be very cool. Creating our creating many RL environments makes spiky intelligence.

• 28:15John Coogan?

  But if humans are the ones to optimize against, perhaps it will be general. It's debatable whether this leads to intelligence gains anytime soon. But if the goal is to expand beyond engagement, it could lead to impressive advancements. Or it could just lead to a dystopian future where people are addicted to some anime girl they talk to. Says Dylan Patel over at Semi Analysis. It's a wild.

• 28:42Jordi Hays?

  So the next section, the future of XAI. In the next two to three years, XAI's compute footprint will be heavily weighted towards training. Their inference demand is rising and will benefit the Neo cloud market. But in the short term, it will pale in comparison to their multi gigawatt training expansion. While that situation isn't viable from a financial perspective, we think XAI's integration into X will likely provide some cash cushion. X is already integrating XAI technologies into its core advertising engine to increase monetization per user. Again, you know, the like XAI X Twitter has never been an incredible cash engine.

• 29:20John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 29:21Jordi Hays?

  Throughout its history, but it's but it's something Semi Analysis says. But to support its LLM training build out, XAI will need to generate tens of billions of dollars of revenue and follow the path of Anthropic and OpenAI. The core question is whether XAI's success would take market share from them or create net new spending. We think it'll be a mix of both. XAI's ramp will enable GenAI to reach a broader audience, but it also increases the financial weakness of the GenAI market and the risk of market turn down as training still outspends inference. For a precise breakdown of training inference.

• 29:54John Coogan?

  Go hit a data center industry model.

• 29:57Jordi Hays?

  Do it.

• 29:58John Coogan?

  Just upgrade, pull the trigger. Pull out the, pull out the ramp card, put it down for the semi-analysis. Gig a tear.

• 30:07Jordi Hays?

  Gig a tear.

• 30:08John Coogan?

  And then hop over to Figma.com. Think bigger, build faster. Figma helps design and development teams build great products together. Get started for free.

• 30:16Jordi Hays?

  Let's go.

• 30:17John Coogan?

  And we have our first guest of the stream, our European correspondent.

• 30:22Jordi Hays?

  Our UK correspondent.

• 30:37John Coogan?

  I love this song.

• 30:38Jordi Hays?

  We actually should license that.

• 30:40John Coogan?

  We definitely are going to get demonetized for that.

• 30:43Jordi Hays?

  Great to see you.

• 30:44Pippa Lamb?

  It's my favorite sound. I'm back in the studio. We've got the soundtrack going.

• 30:49John Coogan?

  It's such a banger song. It really is. Uh, give us, give us the weather report first. How was, how was summer? How was, uh, was it Wimbledon? You went to some tennis event? What, what did you do?

• 31:01Pippa Lamb?

  I had, I had a tennis, yeah, I had a good tennis summer. It was actually the US Open as well.

• 31:05John Coogan?

  US Open, okay. Is that the same as Wimbledon? Are they, are they the same thing?

• 31:10Pippa Lamb?

  I mean, they're technically the same on like, you know, seniority, but I would say, you know, as a proud Brit, that they are slightly different.

• 31:17John Coogan?

  Okay, got it, got it. Uh, and then, and then take us through, uh, this week. What, what, what, why, why are we paying attention to Europe?

• 31:25Pippa Lamb?

  So I think, you know, the headline here, I know that, uh, Jordy sort of said, UK correspondent, not you, you, European.

• 31:32John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 31:33Pippa Lamb?

  Is that we've had this huge state visit this week from, you know, the White House delegation. We also had a huge tech delegation come over, which really sort of marks the first landmark, second state visit that a US president has been given, which President Trump likes to remind us lots of times. So it's the first time that a US president hasn't been invited for a second ceremonial visit to, to visit the royal family. So you had this sort of pageant free of this big White House delegation to Windsor Castle. Uh, there was a big state banquet. You had, you know, Jensen even taking off his black leather jacket and putting on his white tie, which is, you know, one level up from black tie. You know, we get very specific here in the UK.

• 32:18John Coogan?

  I saw tons and tons of horses.

• 32:21Pippa Lamb?

  There were a lot of horses. There was a lot of gold. We love gold as well. So so we really had one day, which was, you know, a showcase of diplomacy and tradition. And then you had a second day, which was at Chequers, which is the UK Prime Minister's traditional sort of country home, you know, historical diplomacy is carried out there. And the focus on that was not just, you know, UK trade and investment. If you cast your mind back to May, I think I was on the show. We had the UK and the US come up with one of the first trade agreements, which, given the sort of the landscape of tariffs, I think was a demonstration by the White House that they're really keen to make trade deals where they can.

• 33:05Pippa Lamb?

  So you had a continuation of that, but the real focus this time was on tech and innovation across both energy and nuclear. You had it across AI and quantum, and then also, of course, defence and national security. So that's why you not only had the delegation from the White House and a lot of key politicians, but you also had some of our our favourite tech CEOs from Silicon Valley making the trip over and and putting on the white tie and also announcing a lot of investment.

• 33:36Jordi Hays?

  Who were who were some of the the key names? Sam was there.

• 33:41John Coogan?

  I saw Jensen.

• 33:41Jordi Hays?

  Jensen, Benioff, right?

• 33:44John Coogan?

  But Palantir and Anderall as well.

• 33:46Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 33:47Pippa Lamb?

  Yeah, so so I guess the main companies, you had Microsoft, so you had Satya there. You had Google, you had Nvidia. Also Jensen was was extremely bullish on the UK and we'll maybe come back to that because he's he's sort of announced a multi-layered investment in the UK over multiple years. You also had, you know, CARP here from Palantir. You had Brian Shimp from Anderall. And yes, Sam Altman from OpenAI. So it was really, you know, and there are a few others as well across, you know, Blackstone and and Blackrock. You also had a lot of the large big pharma and healthcare companies, you know, GSK, for example, Blackstone Smith's Klein has announced that it's going to be investing a lot into US R and D.

• 34:31Pippa Lamb?

  So it was really a big showing across, you know, major industries for investment on both sides of the Atlantic, but there was a huge, you know, representation from Silicon Valley. And I mean, just some of the numbers are quite impressive. So so Microsoft announced that it's going to put thirty billion dollars into the UK over the next four years. You had Google also committing around seven billion. Thirty billion dollars.

• 34:55John Coogan?

  So much.

• 34:58Pippa Lamb?

  You had Google announcing they're going to put seven billion dollars into a data center that they've already established. But the the real number here that was impressive was Nvidia. So Jensen really wasn't just taking off the the black leather jacket for nothing. He's put six hundred and seventy billion dollars into a UK cloud computing company called N scale, which is really designed to help AI, sort of the UK, become an AI superpower, as he called it. So so that specifically is into to manufacturing and the infrastructure. And then he's also potentially talking about putting five hundred million dollars into Wave, which is the main autonomous vehicle company here in the UK.

• 35:42Pippa Lamb?

  I don't know if you've had Alex Kendall on TVP.

• 35:45John Coogan?

  No, we need to.

• 35:46Pippa Lamb?

  He's amazing founder, you know, brilliant, brilliant UK founder. So so Jensen's really, I mean, he did a whole separate event where he met with Prime Minister Keir Starmer and really announced with a lot of enthusiasm, such as the the Huang style, that the UK is going to be a a superpower, so AI superpower.

• 36:07John Coogan?

  How how should Americans be thinking about Keir Starmer as a prime minister right now? Like, where does he fit in in the left, right continuum? Or there's a lot of countries that have leaders who are leaning more Trumpian in their style or leaning more focused on innovation or leading leading less lawyerly, more engineering focused. Like, how how should people think about him who haven't dove very deep?

• 36:34Pippa Lamb?

  Yeah, it's interesting. So I think the first thing to know is that Keir Starmer came in on a landslide mandate, similarly to Trump, earlier in the year. So sorry, early in the year to Trump. So in the same way that you had a new leadership coming to the US at the end of last year and then the inauguration earlier this year, the UK had a similar thing happen about six months before. So Keir Starmer came in, you know, his party, the Labour Party, had been. In opposition for a very long time, you'd had Boris Johnson and conservatism for a long time. So it was a real big landslide change for the UK. So what that means is similarly to the White House currently, the UK Prime Minister has a pretty large mandate for change.

• 37:15Pippa Lamb?

  So even though, you know, when I was sitting in in the US at the end of last year, there was some trepidation around the fact that, you know, the party is traditionally more left leaning, it's called the Labour Party.

• 37:26John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 37:27Pippa Lamb?

  Um, however, um, what you've actually seen is one, a real ability to drive change. So, you know, the number one thing is can you actually get legislation passed? And number two, and this was a sentiment echoed by quite a lot of tech CEOs yesterday, was a real pragmatism to actually getting stuff done. Now, my personal view is that the UK, after leaving the European Union, is now very much standing on its own. It's been able to, you know, reassert its relationship with the US. It's been able to carve out its own opinion on things like AI sovereignty. Um, it can be sort of pro AI, it doesn't get held back by some of the anti, or I should say more risk averse, uh, EU legislation.

• 38:10John Coogan?

  More cookie based.

• 38:11Pippa Lamb?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 38:14Pippa Lamb?

  So even though traditionally you would, you might think of the, the Labour Party is more left leaning.

• 38:20John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 38:20Pippa Lamb?

  In the UK, everything is going to be slightly more central, central as well. It's, you know, it's just a smaller country.

• 38:26John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 38:26Pippa Lamb?

  Um, and so I think that, you know, you're not going to see as, as extremes, but, you know, what I've been really, you know, happy to hear from a lot of the, the CEOs I've spoken with is that there's this pragmatism to, to getting stuff done and, and being, you know, a pro, a pro business, open for business leadership, uh, within Europe.

• 38:46John Coogan?

  Um, what, uh, I feel like, I feel like this is a new thing where, uh, like the entire, uh, like America is going on tour, like we saw this in the Middle East where it was like. All of the tech CEOs and all the government people from the United States show up and they're like, we're all doing deals today. And then you see the Trump, uh, And it's a little competition. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Biggest deals. And yeah, and at the dinner, it's like Mark Zuckerberg throws out a number and then Tim Cook throws out a number and it feels like it was the same thing this, uh, this weekend, uh, Thank you. Thank you for saying that.

• 39:17Pippa Lamb?

  It was like that, but with, with frilly outfits.

• 39:20John Coogan?

  Yes, yes.

• 39:21Pippa Lamb?

  You know, Tim Cook was also there. I mean, um, I'm gonna, I'm gonna tweet an interesting list afterwards, but I highly recommend if you have some downtime, just Googling some of the images from, from the last few days because they were really quite something.

• 39:35John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 39:35Pippa Lamb?

  Uh, you know, the pageantry is, is quite impressive on the UK royal family side.

• 39:40John Coogan?

  Nobody does it. Nobody does it like the royal family. What are the top, uh, sort of like, uh, priorities just for the, the British government right now? In the US, I mean, there's a lot of focus on, on tariffs, immigration, the overall economy. The economy feels like, uh, running hot. Everything's at all time highs from gold to Bitcoin to the stock market. At the same time, we're seeing weakness in the labor market. Uh, how are things feeling over in the UK broadly?

• 40:06Pippa Lamb?

  I think the UK's main focus is on growth. There are definitely a lot of issues, of course, around immigration. Um, I think some of the, you know, highlighted issues on places like X have, have kind of showed that there are a lot of, uh, I guess, questions around immigration policy across Europe at the moment. The UK is definitely part of that. Um, I think, you know, from my perspective, a lot of the focus is really trying to drive, drive a pro tech, pro-growth, uh, environment. I think that traditionally, a lot of the growth in the UK has come from the city. So traditional, you know, big finance players, it was a real hub for, for financial services. And I think that there's a recognition that the UK is actually,

• 40:48Pippa Lamb?

  if you look at it, a really big hub for R and D. You know, you've had, um, you know, Google DeepMind originated in the UK. You've had a lot of advances in, uh, both synthetic bio and big pharma come out the UK. You know, hubs, not just in London, but, you know, real R and D centers like Oxford and Cambridge have, have really been leading for a long time. You've got the big semis company, ARM, based in the UK. So in the last few years, I think you've really seen, uh, Governments on both sides of the aisle try and move away from like purely financial driven growth uh into uh you know tech and and R and D. So that's something that I think the White House and and Ten Downing Street are really aligned on. And you know, this is obviously was

• 41:32Pippa Lamb?

  a big sort of PR uh campaign to also show that the the special relationship, as we call it, um goes both ways. And and I think, you know, something that was significant, a lot of people have said to me, okay, what's in it for the US? You know, we're obviously investing a lot of money into the UK. But I think that if you look at how the US thinks about exporting its own AI data stack across the world, and you you put that against some of the competition with, you know, the Far East and and China, this was a really good opportunity for the US to kind of reassert its position as the dominant AI player. And, you know, they signed a really interesting memorandum. It was called the Tech Prosperity Deal. Lovely name.

• 42:12Speaker 05

  Let's give that for Tech Prosperity.

• 42:14Pippa Lamb?

  Yeah, exactly. Which basically allows the US to align on, you know, how data models are built and and some of the kind of, you know, very core things that the US cares about in terms of ensuring that the data stack is defined by the US and not by someone else.

• 42:33John Coogan?

  Take us through an update on the private markets in Europe broadly, in the UK. Uh, who are folks focused on at the growth stage? We were at the uh New York Stock Exchange. Was that last week? I keep losing track of time. But Klarna IPO'd successfully, stock traded up.

• 42:53Pippa Lamb?

  How was the mood? I mean, it was uh, it's obviously continued to hold up pretty well.

• 42:57John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 42:58Pippa Lamb?

  But I think it's interesting.

• 42:59John Coogan?

  Yeah, the mood was good. Uh, for, it was, it was, uh, our takeaway was kind of interesting with uh, with the CEO is that uh, it was just another day for him. He didn't bring his family. He just came, raised some money, got in, got out.

• 43:11Speaker 05

  It was a fundraiser.

• 43:12John Coogan?

  It was a fundraiser. Whereas uh, with Figma, it was this huge moment because a lot of folks in Brooklyn use Figma and Manhattan use Figma. And so it, they really.

• 43:22Speaker 05

  It's an American company, too.

• 43:22John Coogan?

  It's an American company. They really focused on the story of Dylan uh, and with uh, Sebastian over at Klarna. It was, it was, it it wasn't as much of like, everyone is a partner in this ecosystem. Um, but in general, it felt like a really good moment. People had been waiting for Klarna to go out for a long time, and it was uh, great to see them get out successfully. But. Uh, who else is driving this, the, the, the, the market or the news?

• 43:46Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. Do you expect any type of spin outs from DeepMind as well into like more like application layer companies? Or do you feel like the researchers there are just going to be content to, you know, double down?

• 43:57Pippa Lamb?

  So I think just on, on that front, um, as well, as you mentioned, I think both Dylan and Sebastian, amazing founders, really exciting that we're seeing the IPO market off to, off to a good start at the moment. And, you know, I think-

• 44:12Jordi Hays?

  Although StubHub, I think StubHub is down-

• 44:16John Coogan?

  StubHub had a hard, had a hard time.

• 44:18Jordi Hays?

  From, uh, listing price yesterday, so.

• 44:21John Coogan?

  It's okay.

• 44:22Pippa Lamb?

  Okay, well-

• 44:22John Coogan?

  We'll get it all back on the next one.

• 44:25Pippa Lamb?

  But I think that, you know, in terms of names to watch here, the big elephant in the room for a long time has been Revolut. So for those not familiar in the US market, Revolut is really the largest fintech player here, uh, in the UK. Um, its last valuation, I think, was around $70 billion. The last employee, I think that was a, a secondary. So that's really been the main question. Um, some of the news stories around that have been around, you know, banking license over the years and, and whether they were going to, you know, go for an IPO. I think that one, you know, continue to watch on. And, and if you look at Jensen's comments even

• 45:07Pippa Lamb?

  on this trip, he's even said that, you know, Nvidia may also invest in, in, in Revolut. So I think Jensen's really, he's really keen on the UK. We love, we love Jensen.

• 45:17John Coogan?

  He's pumping everything. It's great.

• 45:19Pippa Lamb?

  I think in terms of, of Google DeepMind, um, I'm unclear if they're going to be, you know, spin outs. I think that, uh, you know, the UK government has always looked at DeepMind as an example of UK companies that really should have been able to stay and prosper in the UK or within Europe. And so I think that you're going to continue to see a lot of focus on, you know, UK's own AI infrastructure, um, the energy stack that's required for that. So we also had quite a lot of announcements around nuclear, um, this week because of course the energy, uh, question is a big one for the UK. Interestingly, actually, one of the other things the White House got out of this week's negotiations was that there is a commitment

• 46:03Pippa Lamb?

  to the UK from being completely, um, unreliable on, um-

• 46:08Pippa Lamb?

  On any Russian nuclear energy as well. So I think that, you know, you're really seeing both the UK shore up its its energy stack. And I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that UK really wants to try and, you know, make itself a great hub for AI talent, whether that be through Google DeepMind or some of the other really exciting companies like Wave.

• 46:30John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 46:31Jordi Hays?

  Makes sense.

• 46:32John Coogan?

  As extra context, in 2021, Demis Hassabis over at DeepMind co-founded Isomorphic Labs, which is a spin out, but still, I believe, private and owned by Alphabet and DeepMind. And they're focused

• 46:47Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I meant more to like net new companies, not Alphabet owned, that type of thing.

• 46:51Pippa Lamb?

  And he's still based in the UK, which, you know, the Prime Minister always likes to point out, but he's still working with Satya, so with Google, yeah.

• 47:00John Coogan?

  Yeah. Well, thank you so much for hopping on the show.

• 47:03Jordi Hays?

  Always great to get that.

• 47:04John Coogan?

  Always great to hang out with you.

• 47:05Pippa Lamb?

  Always fun to chat with you guys.

• 47:06John Coogan?

  We'll talk to you soon, Pippa.

• 47:07Jordi Hays?

  Cheers.

• 47:08John Coogan?

  Bye.

• 47:09Jordi Hays?

  Hopefully, we can have a new tennis tournament sometime soon. So Pippa comes back to the US.

• 47:14John Coogan?

  I'd love it.

• 47:15Jordi Hays?

  Seems like that's what that's what gets her over here. Should we talk about?

• 47:18John Coogan?

  Vanta, automate compliance, manage risk, improve trust continuously. Vanta's trust management platform takes your manual work out of your security and compliance process and replaces it with continuous automation, whether you're pursuing your first framework or managing a complex program. Back in America, we should talk about this house in Malibu. Johnny Carson's longtime Malibu home lists for $110 million. I've been to this house. An early investor in Jewel and a Hard Rock Cafe, Eris are selling the modern California house, which the talk show icon owned until his death in 2005. It's 10,000 square foot, six bedroom house on roughly four acres. And we'll go through a little bit of this.

• 48:00John Coogan?

  For more than 20 years, Johnny Carson lived in a modern triangular shaped home perched on a bluff overlooking Point Doom in Malibu. I've talked to you about this.

• 48:10Jordi Hays?

  You told me that Johnny Carson lived on the bluff in Point Doom.

• 48:13John Coogan?

  Yeah, I definitely told you this, as we were driving by it together. Probably told you multiple times.

• 48:19Jordi Hays?

  Interesting.

• 48:19John Coogan?

  Who knows? You might have been locked in. You might have been on the timeline. There might have been something more. There might have been a more pressing current thing to be monitoring. You might have been in a monitoring situation.

• 48:27Jordi Hays?

  This house is...

• 48:28John Coogan?

  It's amazing. The property, which has changed hands multiple times since his death, has been redecorated and is going back on the market. The price tag is more than double what the sellers paid for it in 2019.

• 48:38Jordi Hays?

  Made forty million in 2019.

• 48:39John Coogan?

  I know, I know.

• 48:40Jordi Hays?

  I, every time you look back at, at things that you could buy before COVID, it's painful. It really...

• 48:49John Coogan?

  Yeah, it's crazy. The famed talk show host bought the estate in nineteen, in the 1980s, about a decade before ending his 30-year run helming The Tonight Show. He owned the property at the time of his death in 2005. The current owners are the venture capitalist Rayaz Valani, an early investor in the e-cigarette maker Juul, and his wife Hard Rock Cafe, Eris Augusta Tigret. The couple paid forty million in 2019, as you mentioned. Look at Johnny Carson looking great in, of course, a Johnny Carson suit. Fantastic, interesting story about this. Johnny Carson was so, was so dominant in the culture. I mean, The Tonight Show was one of just a few late-night shows because we didn't have the proliferation of the internet.

• 49:33John Coogan?

  There were only a few things that you could watch every night, and he was absolutely dominant at the top of his game.

• 49:38Jordi Hays?

  How many, how many viewers was he pulling nightly?

• 49:40John Coogan?

  I, I believe it was like tens of millions. It was, it was massive. I might have that wrong. But the interesting story was that he was so focused on his craft, he was not interested in business at all, really. And so he had a business partner who said, hey, you wear a suit every night. We should get you a custom suit. We'll start a D to C apparel company, effectively Carson Suits, and, and we'll sell those suits and then, and then you'll be, you'll be able to market them on the, on the show. But he didn't, he didn't really care about contracts or understand business. And so his business partner...

• 50:18Jordi Hays?

  We gotta get one of these. You can find, I have them on eBay right now, 1970s Johnny Carson suit for a hundred and seventy...

• 50:24John Coogan?

  You gotta get one of those. That sounds amazing.

• 50:26Jordi Hays?

  I gotta get one of these.

• 50:27John Coogan?

  But... His business partner set up the Carson Suit Enterprise and I don't believe he had equity in it. And so he would get free suits, but he wasn't making any money off of it. What a deal. And for years Carson was not monetizing well at all, but eventually he went back and renegotiated his contract, got ownership over The Tonight Show and was one of the few late night hosts to actually own his own show, have full control over it. And then after he died and retired, The Tonight Show, the catalog and there's merch and there's DVD sales and there's greatest hits, all of those would be sold and continue to generate revenue, even though it was a

• 51:10John Coogan?

  daily show. But there were, you know, a lot of iconic comedy moments that happened on that show. So, back to the house, Riaz, Valani and Tigret. Also after homes in London and Northern California, they viewed this, the estate as an investment property where they could entertain. Tigret said, "They redecorated the two-bedroom main house and had plans drawn up to add two new houses and another pool, but didn't end up building them." It is a remarkable property, how large it is, and then it's just a two-bedroom. Because, but it has all these big, massive open spaces, you can see in those images. They are selling because they have decided to focus on real estate investments in Northern California. It was designed by architect Ed Niles. The main house is about 7,100 square feet. Triangles appear throughout the house. The dining room is a triangular shape, as is the wood and

• 51:55John Coogan?

  glass ceiling. Symbolism will be their downfall. As is the wood and glass ceiling of the central atrium where mature trees are situated. The estate also has a two-bedroom guest house, a tennis pavilion with two guest rooms, and is said to have been a gift from Carson, to Carson from NBC. Tigret said, "One of her favorite parts of the house is an outdoor dining area with a large round table where guests would congregate, violating the triangle symbolism with the round table. We had so many important business meetings there," she said. "The area is naturally shaded, thanks to a coral tree and a pepper tree whose branches grew together over time, creating a leafy canopy. And it is beautiful. There's a massive, there's a massive tree inside

• 52:37John Coogan?

  the house. I don't know if you can see this in the images, but, and the tennis court is huge." This view of the tennis court over the bluff. It's so crazy how big this tennis court is. It's wild. Yeah, you can see that. That's insane. So insane. The property is among the largest in Point Dume, where standard lot sizes are roughly one acre. This one is, of course, four acres. The main house is situated.

• 52:58Jordi Hays?

  The listing agent, Chris Cortaza.

• 53:00John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 53:00Jordi Hays?

  Friend of mine.

• 53:01John Coogan?

  Would you know him?

• 53:02Jordi Hays?

  I bought my house through.

• 53:03John Coogan?

  No way.

• 53:04Jordi Hays?

  Uh, his firm.

• 53:06John Coogan?

  Oh, really? That's funny.

• 53:07Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 53:07John Coogan?

  Uh, the main house is situated closer to the bluff than houses that can be built today, he noted. The hundred and ten million dollar asking price is warranted by recent trades, he said, including a property that recently sold for eighty million.

• 53:18Jordi Hays?

  Right nearby this, that's like a, I think it's like a two or two bedroom house.

• 53:23John Coogan?

  Hmm.

• 53:24Jordi Hays?

  That has similar views that sold for eighty mil- it's literally a shack. That's sold for, for eighty down the road. So this makes, uh, that makes one ten for this spot look like an absolute bargain.

• 53:39John Coogan?

  It's great. You know what else is a bargain? Graphite.dev code review for the age, uh, the age of AI. Graphite helps teams on GitHub ship higher quality software faster. You can get started for free. Uh, Road River Partners, I've never seen this account before, no profile picture, uh, says in the late nineteen nineties, a pal attended a dinner for tech hedge fund CIOs.

• 54:03Jordi Hays?

  All the top guys.

• 54:04John Coogan?

  All the top guys.

• 54:05Jordi Hays?

  All the top guys were there.

• 54:06John Coogan?

  All the top guys at the time. Twenty five thousand dollars of wine was consumed and portfolios were shared. My pal was sitting at a hundred and thirty five percent gain for the year and his performance was the worst in the room. By far, a week later, he'd gone, he'd, he'd went a hundred percent cash. He was the only one that survived the next three years.

• 54:27Jordi Hays?

  Pretty.

• 54:28John Coogan?

  Insane. Pretty crazy. Uh, you're looking around, too much wine, I'm, I'm up a hundred and thirty five percent and I look like the idiot. Uh, maybe it's time to.

• 54:36Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, the, the account here asking, uh, coward, Mr. Coward.

• 54:41John Coogan?

  Coward Nutleg.

• 54:47Jordi Hays?

  But why did he go a hundred percent cash?

• 54:49John Coogan?

  Because everyone else was up way more.

• 54:51Jordi Hays?

  What if he just like gave up? He's like, I'm terrible at this selling to cash. He's gonna just like distribute everything out and just quit. And then, and then he's just looking around like, wait, I'm the only one standing?

• 55:02John Coogan?

  Yeah. It's remarkable.

• 55:05Jordi Hays?

  Well, I do know my dad always told me a story about one of his, one of his college buddies just went a hundred percent to, a hundred percent to gold, like right, right before the great financial crisis and, and just like ended up just absolutely printing.

• 55:23John Coogan?

  Well, whatever asset you want to invest in, go to public.com. They got multi-asset investing. It's, it's investing for those who take it seriously. They got industry-leading deals trusted by millions. You can lock in.

• 55:35Jordi Hays?

  We're not allowed to give financial advice, but I think it's fair to ask you to take it seriously.

• 55:39John Coogan?

  In other news, we interviewed a lot of fun people at the Meta Connect 2025 event. The one that broke through on the internet, on Teapot, on X was of course, our interview with Chief Wearables Officer at Luxottica.

• 55:54Jordi Hays?

  Rocco Basilico.

• 55:57John Coogan?

  Rocco Basilico. Malin says, I'm sorry, his name is what? We live in a simulation, dog. And this got 3,000 views. There was another, there were a couple, there were a couple other posts.

• 56:08Jordi Hays?

  We need to give some background on Rocco, 7.4 million.

• 56:13John Coogan?

  No relation to Roscoe from the Roscoe Chicken and Waffles chain.

• 56:19Jordi Hays?

  That we know of.

• 56:19John Coogan?

  But we really enjoyed talking to him.

• 56:21Speaker 06

  Also no relation to Rothko, the artist.

• 56:24John Coogan?

  Oh, Mark Rothko. Yes, I don't think so. People had a ton of fun with this. Where was the other post in here? Someone else was saying something about, Richard says, my name is Rocco's Basilisk and I'm making artificial intelligence that you put on your body.

• 56:41Jordi Hays?

  So let's give some backstory. Tyler, do you want to give some backstory on Rocco?

• 56:45John Coogan?

  Yeah, what is the joke that people are making here?

• 56:47Speaker 06

  Yes, so his name basically sounds like Rocco's Basilisk.

• 56:51John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 56:51Speaker 06

  Which is like this famous thought experiment, experiment from Less Wrong in like early, like 2010s, I think.

• 56:58John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 57:00Speaker 06

  Basically, the idea is like, okay, so there's going to be some future super intelligent AI.

• 57:07Speaker 06

  And like you can do this kind of like decision making where it's kind of similar to like this prisoner's dilemma thing where there's two agents.

• 57:14John Coogan?

  Yeah, Pascal's wager. Where is Pascal?

• 57:16Speaker 06

  Where basically you can chart it out to where like the idea is you have this this this super intelligent AI. By the time it gets to becoming like instantiated.

• 57:29Speaker 06

  The idea is that it's gonna like punish people that did not like accelerate.

• 57:34John Coogan?

  Yeah, did not help it be born.

• 57:37Speaker 06

  And and the idea is actually it's not just like.

• 57:38Jordi Hays?

  If you didn't if you didn't love me at my benchmarks, you don't deserve me.

• 57:42John Coogan?

  At my ASI, yeah.

• 57:44Speaker 06

  Yes, so it's basically like the the whole thing is like it's like an information hazard. This like term, LAs are actually banned like discussion of the topic.

• 57:52John Coogan?

  Wait, why?

• 57:53Speaker 06

  Less wrong for like five years.

• 57:54John Coogan?

  Oh, because it's a justification for accelerating superintelligence.

• 57:59Speaker 06

  I think so, but also.

• 58:00Jordi Hays?

  You don't want to be the safety guy.

• 58:02Speaker 06

  Yeah, but but the whole thing is like if you chart it out, basically it only applies to you if you like learned about this idea. So like if you knew about the idea of of Rocco's basilisk then and you didn't like start accelerating AI, then it's gonna punish you.

• 58:17John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 58:17Jordi Hays?

  And this is why we covered Meta Connect and we covered.

• 58:23John Coogan?

  Isn't there some lore about Rocco's basilisk and?

• 58:27Speaker 06

  Like the the whole idea is like it's a basilisk because like if you look at the.

• 58:30John Coogan?

  What is a basilisk? Is that a snake?

• 58:32Speaker 06

  Yeah, it it's like in mythology, if you look at the basilisk in the eye, then you like instantly die.

• 58:37John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 58:38Speaker 06

  So it's like if you learn about this thing and you don't do anything, then you like will be punished by the the future AI.

• 58:43John Coogan?

  Apparently, this is this is what this is what originally brought Elon bought brought Elon Musk and Grimes together. Musk was going to tweet about Rococo's basilisk, which is a reference to Rococo, the 18th century Baroque art style. And they bonded over that. He discovered that Grimes had made the same joke three years earlier and reached out to her about it. One can only speculate about.

• 59:11Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 59:12John Coogan?

  Very, very interesting. Thought experiment. Well, we should have, we should have asked him about it because I wonder, I wonder how aware he is. It can't be the first time he's, he's heard that his name sounds like Rocco's Vassilis, right?

• 59:24Speaker 06

  Yeah, I assume not.

• 59:25John Coogan?

  He must be aware. Uh, well.

• 59:26Jordi Hays?

  He's tapped in.

• 59:27John Coogan?

  Yeah, well, we'll have to.

• 59:28Jordi Hays?

  I mean, the story of him just like cold emailing Zach.

• 59:31John Coogan?

  Hilarious.

• 59:31Jordi Hays?

  Like, hey, I think we should do some international business together.

• 59:34John Coogan?

  Let's hop on a quick call.

• 59:36Jordi Hays?

  He made it happen.

• 59:37Speaker 06

  I, I wonder if Zach knew about Rocco's Vassilis when he got that. Cause then it's like, you're getting an email from Rocco's Vassilis asking if you want to help accelerate AI.

• 59:45John Coogan?

  Yeah, you have to say yes.

• 59:46Speaker 06

  You have to say yes, otherwise you're gonna be.

• 59:48Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I think it's one of the most like underhyped like partnerships.

• 59:53John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 59:53Jordi Hays?

  Of the last few years, right? It's so strategic for both sides. It gives Meta this incredible durable advantage to be able to innovate on the technology side and not on the design side.

• 1:00:03John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:00:04Jordi Hays?

  And it gives Luxottica the ability to defend itself and actually thrive in a world where, you know.

• 1:00:11John Coogan?

  We were, we were debating.

• 1:00:12Jordi Hays?

  Everybody's wearing smart glasses.

• 1:00:15John Coogan?

  We were debating.

• 1:00:15Jordi Hays?

  I think that's, that's actually, that's actually a thing, right? It's like, there's people that don't wear glasses today that may or may not be using smart glasses in a few years. But Zach brought this up. There's like one to two billion people in the world that wear glasses all the time. And looking good.

• 1:00:32John Coogan?

  I, yeah, I mean, people were, uh, we, we were debating with a few people about whether or not the, uh, Meta AI glasses. Oh, I just triggered it. It's talking now. Um, whether, whether you can immediately clock them, whether they look like tech nerd gear or whether they, you, you can, you can pass amongst normies. The unaugmented as, as someone who's just wearing Ray-Bans. And, and I was leaning in the camp of like, if someone throws on Meta Ray-Bans and they do have the cameras on there, but they're not recording, there's no light. You kind of don't notice, but other people were saying, I don't know, like you, you, you, you can still see the camera lenses and it still reads as, it's a little like tech nerdy.

• 1:01:18Jordi Hays?

  That's just a specific, that's a specific frame though.

• 1:01:21John Coogan?

  This is, this is actually an Oakley frame with no, with no sunglasses in it, it's just eyeglasses. But, but, but the, the, the original Meta Ray-Bans, they do look exactly like Ray-Bans, an iconic silhouette and something that people are very confident in wearing. And I think even with the cameras on there, even though you can see them, people are much more willing to, to throw them on when they go out. And, and you, you do, you do face a little bit of like, oh, like you're like a tech nerd, you're trying like the new thing. Like it's not as, it's, I mean, it's like carrying.

• 1:01:54Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, but think of, think of the billion plus people that just wear glasses because they need them to see, they already wear glasses. And then you say like, hey, do you want a small display in those?

• 1:02:04John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 1:02:04Jordi Hays?

  That can give you directions and you can use to play music.

• 1:02:07John Coogan?

  Chunky frames are kind of in right now.

• 1:02:08Jordi Hays?

  You can see messages come in on.

• 1:02:10John Coogan?

  It's kind of a vibe. And so I think, I, I, I mean, I agree, it's, it is, it is an underrated partnership, it's a great partnership. I, I wonder, I'm, I'm, I'm like dying to know what the, the, well, first off, like what Apple's response will be like, because I feel like they, they, they could, I'm imagining that they're going to be white for some reason, I don't know why, but I just have like.

• 1:02:40Jordi Hays?

  Well, I also think they could do the clear one, like the old Macs.

• 1:02:43John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:43Jordi Hays?

  Where you could see all the internals, it was.

• 1:02:45John Coogan?

  They've really moved away from that aesthetic though.

• 1:02:47Jordi Hays?

  But if they brought it back, I think people.

• 1:02:49John Coogan?

  It just feels like they haven't even done black AirPods, right? Like the, like the AirPods, maybe they could do the Beats line and use some of that.

• 1:02:55Jordi Hays?

  By the way, apparently the new phone scratches like crazy.

• 1:02:58John Coogan?

  I saw, yeah, I saw a picture of it cracking, which is crazy. But, yeah, what, what, what was it? They went back to aluminum or something?

• 1:03:06Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:06John Coogan?

  People don't like that.

• 1:03:07Jordi Hays?

  Titanium, it was a good run.

• 1:03:09John Coogan?

  I don't know.

• 1:03:09Jordi Hays?

  It's a good run.

• 1:03:10John Coogan?

  I, I think, well, you, you already purchased it, so it's in the mail.

• 1:03:14Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, this is, this is bullish for Apple, the fact that I'm not going to get it for more than. Like basically, I'm gonna get it in like three weeks.

• 1:03:21John Coogan?

  Yeah, well.

• 1:03:22Jordi Hays?

  They're selling.

• 1:03:23John Coogan?

  Julius AI, what analysis do you want to run? Chat with your data and get expert level, expert level insights in seconds. Go to Julius.

• 1:03:31Jordi Hays?

  Let's pull up this video of Matthew.

• 1:03:33John Coogan?

  Matthew McConaughey?

• 1:03:34Jordi Hays?

  Be right back.

• 1:03:34John Coogan?

  Matthew McConaughey says he wants a private LLM fed only with his books, notes, journals, and aspirations, so he can ask it questions and get answers based solely on that information without any outside influence. Now, like, that's impossible, right? Just because you need to do pre-training on something or other, right?

• 1:03:56Speaker 06

  Uh, yeah, I mean, unless his books are like the length of like the internet.

• 1:04:00John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:00Speaker 06

  Uh, I don't think the model would be very good if you just train it on like five books.

• 1:04:04John Coogan?

  So, so really, he's, he's kind of saying like he wants something fine tuned?

• 1:04:08Speaker 06

  Yeah, I, I mean, it seems like he doesn't really understand how they're trained.

• 1:04:11John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:12Speaker 06

  But, yeah, you could instantiate this, I guess, through fine tuning it.

• 1:04:15John Coogan?

  Let's play, uh, the Matthew McConaughey clip and, uh, see what he has to say.

• 1:04:20Speaker 07

  LLM. Where I can upload, hey, here's three books I've written, here's my other favorite books.

• 1:04:29John Coogan?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:04:30Speaker 07

  Here's my favorite articles I've been cutting and pasting over the 10 years and log all that in. And here's all my journals, whatever, the people I, and log all that in, so I can ask it questions based on that.

• 1:04:40John Coogan?

  Right.

• 1:04:41Speaker 07

  And basically learn more about myself.

• 1:04:43John Coogan?

  Right.

• 1:04:44Speaker 07

  I stand on the political spectrum.

• 1:04:45John Coogan?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:04:46Speaker 07

  I'd like to, no, that's, that's what I'm, would like to do, which is sort of a glorified Word document.

• 1:04:53John Coogan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:04:53Speaker 07

  But it still would hold a lot more information than just, oh, can you find this term? I would be asking it and it would be responding to me on things that I've forgotten along the way. Load it with the information I'd like to load it with.

• 1:05:06John Coogan?

  Right, yeah.

• 1:05:08Speaker 07

  Maybe even like I'm saying, in this, in the words of belief, in, in the, in the man I'm working to be, the man I want. Load it with that, load it with my aspirations.

• 1:05:16John Coogan?

  I would certainly be done.

• 1:05:18Speaker 07

  And then ask it and it's giving me answers going, oh, this is, but before it's slowly learning about me through conversations, then going, oh, I think this is what you'd like based on a conversation.

• 1:05:28John Coogan?

  All right, all right, all right.

• 1:05:29Speaker 07

  No, I want the answers based on what I've uploaded.

• 1:05:31John Coogan?

  Can you play the beginning of this again? He uses some funny phrase. Well, what did he say at the beginning?

• 1:05:34Speaker 07

  I am interested, though, in a private LLM.

• 1:05:37John Coogan?

  Private.

• 1:05:38Speaker 07

  Where I can upload.

• 1:05:41Jordi Hays?

  Hey, here's three books are written. Here's my other favorite.

• 1:05:44John Coogan?

  You can do this with custom GPTs.

• 1:05:46Jordi Hays?

  Articles I've been cutting and pasting over the ten years.

• 1:05:48Speaker 06

  You can do this with like a ton of rappers in this chat with PDF.

• 1:05:50John Coogan?

  Log all that in. That's what he keeps saying. Okay, yeah. I love that he says he wants to log it in. No one's talking about logging data into your private LLM. Like, this is the future.

• 1:06:01Speaker 06

  This has been.

• 1:06:01John Coogan?

  No one's tried logging content into a private LLM.

• 1:06:04Speaker 06

  This has like been possible for like three years.

• 1:06:07John Coogan?

  But no one has.

• 1:06:08Speaker 06

  You're just embedding your.

• 1:06:08John Coogan?

  Oh, embedding? That doesn't sound like logging something in. That's what I want. I want to log it in. I want to log in my favorite book. I want to log in my favorite article. Log in the Holy Bible. Sounds like that's what he's doing.

• 1:06:22Jordi Hays?

  He should, he should hit up Salesforce for this. He's, he's.

• 1:06:25John Coogan?

  Oh, true, yeah.

• 1:06:27Jordi Hays?

  With.

• 1:06:27John Coogan?

  What do they have Merlin AI or something?

• 1:06:29Jordi Hays?

  Well, he's close with Benio. He's one of the faces.

• 1:06:31John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, he's one of the faces. And they have Einstein AI. He should fine tune it. Fine tune it on my, on my, on Matthew McConaughey mode. That, I mean, Einstein AI, I feel like, you know, missed opportunity to personify the AI much more. Should have gone, you know, Microsoft's gonna have Clippy. You know, we're getting Ani from XAI. Every company is gonna need their own personified AI and, you know, I'd be much more likely to use Salesforce's AI if I knew I was talking to.

• 1:07:01Jordi Hays?

  Matthew.

• 1:07:02John Coogan?

  Matthew McConaughey.

• 1:07:03Jordi Hays?

  Uh, in other news, Howard Lutnick.

• 1:07:06John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 1:07:06Jordi Hays?

  Is posting screenshots of his portfolio.

• 1:07:10John Coogan?

  Wait, really?

• 1:07:11Jordi Hays?

  No, I'm kidding. I mean, it's close. Pull up, pull up this next post.

• 1:07:14John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:14Jordi Hays?

  It's a picture of, uh, from Trump on Truth Social, uh, of a, of an AI slop of him sitting at his desk with bought Intel at $20. Now it's $30.

• 1:07:26John Coogan?

  He's happy.

• 1:07:27Jordi Hays?

  The, uh, so.

• 1:07:28John Coogan?

  Well, in other somewhat political news, TikTok sale announced by, we're tracking this on Polymarket. Uh, December 31st is now at a 79% chance that a TikTok sale will be, will be announced, so.

• 1:07:41Jordi Hays?

  And Polymarket also got a, um, a market.

• 1:07:46John Coogan?

  Hmm.

• 1:07:47Jordi Hays?

  Up on will Tesla acquire XAI in 2025?

• 1:07:51John Coogan?

  Hmm.

• 1:07:52Jordi Hays?

  So the market will resolve to yes. It is officially announced that XAI will be, has been. Or is being acquired or merged with Tesla?

• 1:08:00John Coogan?

  I could see that happening. I'm interested. Keep track.

• 1:08:02Jordi Hays?

  We will see.

• 1:08:03John Coogan?

  In other XAI news, Nikita Beer says the goal for your X timeline is to get out of the mainstream algo and political crusades and find your niche. You should be able to post about your interests and have friendly, relevant people chime in. And I feel like I've been able to do this. Like you do have to be proactive about it still. You have to say, I'm not interested in this post. You have to send a lot of likes and retweets to content that you actually like, engage with it, reply to people that you like in real life, that you like in your niche. But my, my algorithm's been doing, doing well and I'm hoping that they continue to improve it. Elon says, the algorithm will be purely AI by November with significant progress along the way.

• 1:08:44John Coogan?

  We will open source the algorithm every two weeks or so. I wonder how that, like, once it's purely AI, it's driven by just weights. Are they going to open source the weights? Open source, open weights or fully open source the model? Like, that sounds crazy. What do you think, Tyler?

• 1:08:57Speaker 06

  It's kind of unclear. What do you, I mean, by AI, I assume he means like LLMs? Cause like, if, if you just say like AI, like it's kind of already done by AI.

• 1:09:05John Coogan?

  Yeah, it'd be very interesting to like, open source the, open source the, the algorithm and the algorithm is just like, recommendation dot next, you know, parentheses, like, like inference the model is the, is the Python code. And it's like, yep, we didn't change it. It, it still just goes.

• 1:09:22Jordi Hays?

  This is crazy. Breaking news. Trump is adding a hundred thousand dollar fee, application fee for H1B visas in the latest crackdown.

• 1:09:32John Coogan?

  In other breaking news, fall.ai, the world's best generative image and video models all in one place. Develop and fine tune models with serverless GPUs and on-demand clusters.

• 1:09:43John Coogan?

  In the Wall Street Journal.

• 1:09:44Jordi Hays?

  Tyler.

• 1:09:44John Coogan?

  UAE.

• 1:09:45Jordi Hays?

  Project. I want to. Uh, add tbpn.com/sounds. And it's the digital version of our soundboard that people can use in their meetings.

• 1:09:57John Coogan?

  Ooh, I like that. Yeah, we gotta do that.

• 1:09:58Jordi Hays?

  Given to me in a DM.

• 1:10:00John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:00Jordi Hays?

  Um, and.

• 1:10:02John Coogan?

  Soundboard at home.

• 1:10:02Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, just try to wrap it up in the next, make it, wrap it up in the next like five, 10 minutes.

• 1:10:07John Coogan?

  And, uh. Don't make mistakes. Uh, the United Arab Emirates is buying houses in Washington DC. Uh, they have a $200 million collection now. The government's latest purchase is a $27.5 million spec home in McLean, uh, Virginia. I don't know if I'm actually saying that correctly. Uh, this week it added a roughly 21,000 foot spec estate in Virginia, paying 27.5 million in an off-market deal. The deal's the most expensive home sale to close in the capital region this year. The UAE directly or through its employees or royals owns at least 21 properties in the area worth roughly $200 million. The Emiratis have purchased so much real estate at such high prices in recent years that they've helped

• 1:10:52John Coogan?

  reset values in the Gold Coast region.

• 1:10:55Jordi Hays?

  Let's give it up for resetting values.

• 1:10:59John Coogan?

  According to real estate agents. Uh, the house was recently restated to give it a modern minimalist look. Each time they purchase something, it's a big number, says a real estate agent of Compass. Uh, the, uh, the estate is located near Langley where the CIA is based. Uh, the, with a six-bedroom main house and a pool house. It was constructed as a spec home by Ambar Homes, a luxury development firm headed by local dentist and entrepreneur, Dr. Sonu Kakkar. Kakkar said he bought the land for 2.1 million, started construction, uh, in 2022. It took him four years to start construction, completed the house four years, uh, two years later. So he's selling this big house. It was first listed

• 1:11:39John Coogan?

  for 29.9, came down a bit, but they got the deal done. Um, there's a marketing video feature showing a motorcade of Cadillac Escalades resembling a diplomatic entourage heading up a winding driveway to the newly-built modern mansion. Check this out.

• 1:11:55Jordi Hays?

  They made a hype video?

• 1:11:56John Coogan?

  They made a hype video, a startup launch video for their house. It's funny. It's like they knew they were selling this too. They're like, we got this house and we're gonna show a bunch of.

• 1:12:05Jordi Hays?

  A home hype video at the timeline.

• 1:12:07John Coogan?

  Wait, did you guys scroll that that fast? It, it plays it that fast? That's in the video. That's baked in. They're doing hype videos for sure. That's a vibe reel if I ever saw one. Uh, the UAE's residences are dotted in large clumps across the capital region, typically on prime waterfront lots. Uh, on Crest Lane, the coun- the country owns several homes on the bank of the Potomac. Where that's where the ambassador's official residence and guest house are located. Well, you gotta go, uh, hang out in DC. Do deals. And so you gotta have some big houses for your folks to come and hang out at. Uh, on Chainbridge Road, one of the area's most upscale neighborhoods, the Emiratis paid just under forty-three million

• 1:12:46John Coogan?

  uh, in twenty twenty for a riverfront estate previously owned by AOL co-founder James, James Kimsey in twenty twenty. The same year, the country purchased a vacant lot nearby for twenty million.

• 1:12:58Jordi Hays?

  Are they actually just buying these on the balance sheet?

• 1:13:00John Coogan?

  I think so. I think they got cash to, to spend. Uh, and they wanna come visit when they wanna come visit. They wanna have a nice, nice place to entertain, host, host guests, do deals, all the above. If you're a, if you're, if you're a startup, you got a couple hundred million dollars burning a hole in your pocket. You're doing deals in DC. Pick up a twenty-three million dollar mansion.

• 1:13:20Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, why not?

• 1:13:21John Coogan?

  Uh, Mark Zuckerberg did. Earlier this year, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan purchased a twenty-three million dollar mansion in Washington DC. Of course, that is, uh, much smaller than what the, what the Emiratis have been picking up. But regardless, you gotta get your brand mentioned in chat GPT. Go to profound. Reach millions of customers who are using AI to discover new products and brands. Uh, TJ Parker has.

• 1:13:45Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, this is a good post. The bull case for Apple and AI is they're going to completely avoid enormous amounts of capex spend. Get most of the consumer value from intelligently integrating Gemini and get paid a boatload of money from Google for doing so. And, uh, I agree. I think, uh, I do think it is frustrating as a user that Apple has moved slowly and somewhat ineffectively on AI. But I don't think they're in a bad spot from a business standpoint.

• 1:14:14John Coogan?

  No, no. Nothing's gotten me to consider moving off of Apple. Like even if iPhone Air doesn't have the right battery life or iPhone Pro, you know, cracks or whatever, if I need a case on it, it's like, I'll solve all of that. I'm sticking with.

• 1:14:29Jordi Hays?

  And that's a big question with, um, the big question with, uh, the meta, the new meta displays is, is there a world where, because right now, when we demo the displays, you can get an Instagram DM, you can get a WhatsApp message and it will pop up in your display, nice little notification.

• 1:14:46John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:14:47Jordi Hays?

  But the question is, will they be able to figure out a deal with, with Apple so you can get iMessage piped into their.

• 1:14:53John Coogan?

  So yesterday, Meta Connect continued and they did talk about the developer kit, the SDK, how developers can integrate, and they had a couple of integrations. They did one with Twitch, so you can live stream from the, from the, the devices, um, from the Meta Ray-Ban displays. They did one with, uh, Stream Labs and Disney, and there were a few others. Um, they're still pretty niche and they're all partnered with like pretty big, big companies, the type of companies that would do, um, like pretty big press junkets for these. Um, but some cool demos. I, I thought that they were interesting. I'm very interested in the Twitch demo. Obviously we live stream on Twitch. Thank you to Bobby Cosmic in the Twitch chat, holding it down.

• 1:15:36Jordi Hays?

  Holding it down.

• 1:15:37John Coogan?

  Um, but, uh, it, it seemed like the live streaming capability, which we didn't expect to launch very quickly, is going to launch. It is going to be live. You are going to be able to live stream from the glasses, but the, the amount of time that you can actually spend live streaming is pretty short. Uh, it didn't seem like something where you could be streaming for hours. Uh, it was probably minutes. There were different timers that popped up when I was looking at the video, kind of showing, um, okay, you know, if you keep, if you keep streaming at this, at this scale, it's gonna, the, the, the chips are gonna be on fire. You're gonna run out of battery life pretty quickly. Um, and so like there might be all day battery life, but that's more like all day battery life for the occasional picture and the occasional Meta AI LLM query, not all day battery life,

• 1:16:21John Coogan?

  stream your entire life. Like you, you were mentioning that the, the AI mode was maybe an hour max.

• 1:16:26Jordi Hays?

  Live AI.

• 1:16:27John Coogan?

  Live AI was maybe. An hour max, there's a lot, there's a lot that-

• 1:16:30Jordi Hays?

  Using it to translate, you know, a real time-

• 1:16:32John Coogan?

  And I think it's also taking pictures of what you're seeing while it's doing that for the actual, uh, for the extra context there. Anyway, whatever, if you're planning to build a product that integrates with Meta AI display glasses, you gotta get on Linear. Linear is a purpose-built tool for planning and building products. It's a double kill. You can plan and build the products. Meet the system for modern software development, streamline issues, projects, and product roadmaps. Jeremy Giffon has a post-

• 1:16:59Jordi Hays?

  Hot take.

• 1:17:00John Coogan?

  Wouldn't be surprised if this was printed in the legacy media soon, but for now, we're seeing it on X.

• 1:17:06Jordi Hays?

  Wrote it by hand, wrote some giraffes out-

• 1:17:09John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:17:10Jordi Hays?

  On a piece of paper and then transferred it-

• 1:17:12John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:13Jordi Hays?

  Had maybe, uh, a member of his team, one of his guys actually posted it for-

• 1:17:17John Coogan?

  So he says, "The chief of staff is overrated. We need more confidants." Eminence Griz- Grizes? I don't know what that is.

• 1:17:25Jordi Hays?

  Grizes?

• 1:17:26John Coogan?

  Viziers, Praetorians. There is a phalanx of different guys you can have at your side. You don't need to copy the president. Consider the king, or the priest, or the emperor instead.

• 1:17:37Jordi Hays?

  Banger.

• 1:17:38John Coogan?

  Uh, must have the title grand in front. I think we gotta give Nick-

• 1:17:41Jordi Hays?

  I mean, we do, we do this pretty well.

• 1:17:42John Coogan?

  A new title. He needs to be a confidant, or a, a grand vizier.

• 1:17:47Jordi Hays?

  Yes.

• 1:17:47John Coogan?

  I think a vizier is a good, is a good title. Uh, I mean, we recently-

• 1:17:51Jordi Hays?

  Our first hire was a vice president.

• 1:17:52John Coogan?

  Our first hire was a vice president. We have a wheel man. We have a VP of logistics.

• 1:17:56Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 1:17:57John Coogan?

  We have a few other folks, a CIO, of course.

• 1:17:59Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 1:17:59John Coogan?

  Chief intern officer, Tyler Cosgrove, over there, holding it down.

• 1:18:02Jordi Hays?

  Yep. Jim Kramer says, "That 30-year treasury better start behaving." That is bar-

• 1:18:10John Coogan?

  Get it in order.

• 1:18:12Jordi Hays?

  He also posted, uh, posted a picture of him hugging, uh, Tim Cook.

• 1:18:18Jordi Hays?

  Saying, own it, don't trade it.

• 1:18:21John Coogan?

  I love this. He said this 10 years ago. We reacted to his, his interview with Tim Cook on Squawk Box or on, on Mad Money a decade ago. The stock had sold off. They'd, they'd hit earnings. They beat earnings. They generated something like 10 billion in free cash flow, but it wasn't enough for the, for the, for the street. And so Kramer did a very interesting interview with Tim Cook where he explains that he is excited about the company. He personally is bullish on the company, but he has to get, he has to get the story straight for what the street is saying. And the Wall Street traders were saying, Apple, will this company go the way of HP or Compaq or IBM? Like have they reached stagnation? And Tim Cook says, no,

• 1:19:06John Coogan?

  we're gonna keep growing. We're gonna keep compounding. You don't even know how much revenue we're gonna make off of the App Store. And he kind of teases, he, he says, hey, services are gonna be big. The iPhones still can be very big. And he was 100% right.

• 1:19:21Jordi Hays?

  Got a great toll road going. Based 16Z says-

• 1:19:25John Coogan?

  Speaking of toll roads, the tax is a toll road on your business. Don't waste any time with it. Head over to Numeral HQ. Put your sales tax on autopilot.

• 1:19:33Jordi Hays?

  That's right.

• 1:19:33John Coogan?

  Numeral is the platform for sales tax and VAT compliance.

• 1:19:38Jordi Hays?

  And we have Sam from Numeral, the CEO, joining in just a little bit. Looking forward to that. Based 16Z just shared a screenshot of CNBC. They said, New York will soon send its, quote, "first ever inflation refund check, checks to taxpayers."

• 1:19:54John Coogan?

  Is this the state or the city?

• 1:19:56Jordi Hays?

  The state of New York will be giving you a refund for inflation.

• 1:20:00John Coogan?

  They're, they're, they're paying back.

• 1:20:03Jordi Hays?

  Concerning, concerning. What else we got here?

• 1:20:07John Coogan?

  There's news about OpenAI. OpenAI has approached Gore Tech, which assembles AirPods, HomePods and Apple Watches to supply components such as speaker modules for OpenAI's future products. One of the products, OpenAI has talked to suppliers about making resembles, a smart speaker without a display, the people said, which- You carry this with you? Would you have this in your home? OpenAI has also considered building glasses, a digital voice recorder and a wearable pin. And is targeting late 2026 or early 2027 for the release of its first devices. Digital voice recorder. I, you know who, you know who really convinced me, who was really convincing at the Meta Connect event?

• 1:20:52John Coogan?

  Was it the VP of Wearables? He was saying he believes in, in kind of Lindy form factors.

• 1:20:58Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:59John Coogan?

  You wear a watch, so you had a garment on, you wear glasses. It's, people don't wear a lot of pins. Maybe if you're the Hand of the King, you wear a pin. Maybe a crown, a cane, a smart cane is an interesting idea. But it, it does seem like it's harder to get people to wear.

• 1:21:17Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, so it's interesting that OpenAI is saying we're gonna do a speaker. Or at least that's, you know, reading between the lines, that's what they would, would do here. But Apple is, remember they're building the smart lamp?

• 1:21:30John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:21:31Jordi Hays?

  For your.

• 1:21:31John Coogan?

  Are they?

• 1:21:32Jordi Hays?

  Well, this, this was teased a while back.

• 1:21:34John Coogan?

  It is, it's not really that. It's an iPod, it's an iPad on a robotic arm that can follow you around the room in the kitchen.

• 1:21:41Jordi Hays?

  I know, I mean, I just meant more of the Pixar lamp.

• 1:21:43John Coogan?

  It does feel Pixar lamp-esque and I'm actually very excited about that product. I think it'll be very cool. But maybe they should. There was a post a couple of years ago, a couple of days ago, from someone saying like, Apple should lean into, they should make up just an actual lamp. You don't need to throw crazy AI, it doesn't need to be iPhone level internals. Just apply your design skills to industrial design all over the home.

• 1:22:08Jordi Hays?

  We've asked for this stuff, the TV.

• 1:22:09John Coogan?

  The TV, but it's not gonna happen. It's not gonna happen unless you have the full flywheel of you can take a cut of everything that happens on that device. You have an App Store, you have all the downstream stuff, you have a solid replacement cycle. When was the last time you upgraded your TV? Happens like once every five years, 10 years. And yet people upgrade their phones, they lose their AirPods, they get new AirPods, they get the latest iPad.

• 1:22:32Jordi Hays?

  But if Apple made it a battery powered TV, then you'd be forced to replace your TV every.

• 1:22:37John Coogan?

  I think you're talking about the Apple Vision Pro, which is the, the, the vision for, you know, where, where that goes. Well, speaking of Hollywood visions, Nier is shouting out Alibaba's character swap via Wan 2.2 Animate. Very impressive and free and open source. By the way, this lets you insert yourself as the main character or anyone. Here we go. Let's play it.

• 1:23:02Speaker 08

  Mr. Sorkin, you are five minutes late. Is there a reason why I should let you in?

• 1:23:08Speaker 09

  I'm just trying to ditch the cops, okay? I don't really care if you let me in or not.

• 1:23:12John Coogan?

  This is gonna be pretty viral.

• 1:23:13Speaker 08

  Mr. Spectre will be right with you.

• 1:23:15John Coogan?

  This is gonna definitely launch some startup videos.

• 1:23:17Speaker 08

  Can I get you anything?

• 1:23:18John Coogan?

  Someone's gonna use this to do a startup launch video very soon.

• 1:23:23John Coogan?

  Pretty cool swapping yourself in. It really, it really does it flawlessly.

• 1:23:29John Coogan?

  Remarkable. Look at that.

• 1:23:33John Coogan?

  I'm a fan.

• 1:23:33Speaker 09

  I have to know.

• 1:23:38John Coogan?

  Yeah, another tool in the toolkit for, for video creators, much like fin.ai. The number one AI agent for customer service, number one in performance benchmarks, number one in competitive bake offs, number one ranking on G2. We have another, it's the Madison section today, it's Friday in the Wall Street Journal.

• 1:23:55Jordi Hays?

  Another one.

• 1:23:56John Coogan?

  Kara Ross, the ex-wife of billionaire Steven Ross, who created Related Properties, the man who created the strip mall, essentially. He, she is putting her New York home on the market.

• 1:24:06Jordi Hays?

  The gemologist and jewelry designer bought the Lenox Hill co-op around the same time she filed for divorce from the Miami Dolphins owner, Kara Ross.

• 1:24:15John Coogan?

  9.75 million, she's asking. She bought it for 5.6 million in 2021, around the same time she filed for divorce. She tapped the lauded designers Tony Ingraham and Randy Kemper, who worked on the couple's former home in Columbus Circle to reconfigure and redesign the apartment. The apartment is 2,500 square feet, has two bedrooms and a large terrace. The terrace is 2,000 square feet. So she referred to it as a diamond in the rough, of course, of play on words because she is a jewelry designer. Yeah, she is a jewelry designer. They've been worn, her designs have been worn by the likes of former First Lady Michelle Obama. And so if you're looking to pick up something in Manhattan, give her a call.

• 1:24:58John Coogan?

  It was a classic old apartment with hallways and drop ceilings and beams and all in beams in all the wrong places. They focused on opening up the layout so that the terrace is visible from the entrance to the apartment, even removing one of the three bedrooms. Now the expansive living area has a backlit onyx bar that can change color to fit the mood.

• 1:25:16Jordi Hays?

  They've really got to swap out the current furniture and just redo the interior because this place is not looking as good as it's been.

• 1:25:24John Coogan?

  It doesn't look like you could just hang out here and crash. In a short time that she's lived there, Cara says she's hosted several events, including her daughter's engagement party. I love to have friends and family over to create a nice environment for them. The co-op market has been soft in recent years, but listing agents expect to see demand for this property because it is newly renovated. Apartments like that sell for a premium because time is money. Homes that require renovation are still trading at a discount. In 2022, Stephen Ross sold the couple's former condo near Columbus Circle for about 40 million, a significant discount from its original 75 million dollar price tag. That building was completed in the early 2000s by a partnership that included Related.

• 1:26:09John Coogan?

  So he used his own firm. Stephen, who acquired the Dolphins around 2009, has since launched a new company focused on development in West Palm Beach, which is very, very popular. And if you're looking to grow your business, get on Adio. Customer relationship magic. Adio is the AI native CRM that builds scales and grows your company to the next level. Ben Lang has a good purchase.

• 1:26:31Jordi Hays?

  Best $25 purchase, a Bluetooth device to connect AirPods on any plane.

• 1:26:35John Coogan?

  A couple of people post about this.

• 1:26:36Jordi Hays?

  I put this in here not for this use case, but to bring up this sort of funny state of the world where every single...

• 1:26:48Jordi Hays?

  Like hospitality-esque business, just like adopted USB.

• 1:26:53John Coogan?

  Yes, at the worst possible time.

• 1:26:55Jordi Hays?

  Everything is on USB C. So I was on a plane the other week. They had a US.

• 1:27:05John Coogan?

  USB A.

• 1:27:06Jordi Hays?

  USB A. It was a charter that I got through Preston Holland, Preston Holland. And I was just like, the plane had been refurbished in like 2020. And it still had USB A. I was like, what's going on here? And then we were at a hotel for MetaConnect. The other day and it's like, great. I'm glad I have USB A. Charging here next to the. And it seems like you could create a business, just like going around to like a lot of these different types of of companies that have installed USB A and just be like, look, like this is not a real, this is no longer an amenity. In fact, it's a frustration because I check into a hotel room and I'm like, great.

• 1:27:47Jordi Hays?

  I, I, I'm glad I could charge a USB A device here. Thank you for this.

• 1:27:53John Coogan?

  Hopefully USB C is the, the final, the final format, although you know that there are like 12 different standards for what goes in a USB C cable. So USB C is the shape. It's not actually the data transfer. And so.

• 1:28:10Jordi Hays?

  The final shape. I just wanted to be the final shape.

• 1:28:12John Coogan?

  Fine, but there are slow USB C ports. There are fast USB C ports. There's Thunderbolt four, which is a faster, faster protocol that goes over USB C. It's all a mess, but.

• 1:28:23Jordi Hays?

  Well, we have an iPhone review from Joanna Stern. Let's pull up this video. I thought this was important for the audience to see. So she has a new iPhone.

• 1:28:33John Coogan?

  This is the new iPhone. This is the Air?

• 1:28:35Jordi Hays?

  This is the Air.

• 1:28:36John Coogan?

  I thought the Air had, had, had round edges. It has sharp edges.

• 1:28:41Jordi Hays?

  That looks like the Air to me.

• 1:28:42John Coogan?

  He's cutting cheese with it.

• 1:28:43Jordi Hays?

  She's cutting the cheese.

• 1:28:44John Coogan?

  She has a little viral sense going. She, of course, is the tech reviewer over at the Wall Street Journal.

• 1:28:49Jordi Hays?

  Um, well, without further ado, we should bring on our second guest. I want our first in-person guest.

• 1:28:56John Coogan?

  Let's go.

• 1:28:56Jordi Hays?

  Aaron.

• 1:28:57John Coogan?

  Welcome to the show. How you doing, Aaron?

• 1:29:01Jordi Hays?

  Welcome to the show. Announces Series A today.

• 1:29:06John Coogan?

  Congratulations. Good to see you.

• 1:29:07Jordi Hays?

  Welcome to the UltraDome. You got a mic here, keep it close.

• 1:29:11Aaron Slodov?

  Hello.

• 1:29:13John Coogan?

  Introduce yourself, how's it going?

• 1:29:15Aaron Slodov?

  Aaron Slodov, CEO, Atomic Industries.

• 1:29:18Jordi Hays?

  Very, very few people have sat here at this table with us.

• 1:29:22Aaron Slodov?

  I thought this was appropriate, right?

• 1:29:23John Coogan?

  Yeah, it's great.

• 1:29:24Jordi Hays?

  You got a round to announce?

• 1:29:26John Coogan?

  What's the news today?

• 1:29:27Aaron Slodov?

  Well, the first news is, I got some merch here.

• 1:29:30John Coogan?

  Let's see it.

• 1:29:31Aaron Slodov?

  This is the first of kind merch, and you can take a look at the hats or some of the shirts.

• 1:29:36John Coogan?

  You're going in with wild colors.

• 1:29:37Jordi Hays?

  I'm going with brown. Brown is the most underrated color on earth.

• 1:29:41Aaron Slodov?

  That's a clay. We got a good clay.

• 1:29:43Jordi Hays?

  Oh, a clay. Nice. Here we go. Very, very cool.

• 1:29:46John Coogan?

  Who's the inspiration for this?

• 1:29:49Aaron Slodov?

  The inspo for these?

• 1:29:49John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:50Aaron Slodov?

  So, these are obviously not like our official logo. And I have, I'm gonna have to airdrop you some hoodies, I guess, too, but...

• 1:29:57Jordi Hays?

  Do it.

• 1:29:59Aaron Slodov?

  I had a great guy on Instagram who basically takes corporate logos and, you know, vintagefies them. And, yeah, so, special, special edition.

• 1:30:09Jordi Hays?

  2019, it's overnight success.

• 1:30:11Aaron Slodov?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:12John Coogan?

  Yeah, we actually met in Pasadena, we got coffee, probably 2021, something like that?

• 1:30:16Aaron Slodov?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:17John Coogan?

  Broke it all down. Yeah, we have...

• 1:30:19Jordi Hays?

  Absolutely brutal to start an American dynamism business like four years before the word was...

• 1:30:25John Coogan?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:30:26Jordi Hays?

  The trend was created.

• 1:30:27John Coogan?

  Yeah. Yeah, break down the news today.

• 1:30:30Aaron Slodov?

  Alright, so, so you're saying?

• 1:30:32Jordi Hays?

  You can hold this while I do it.

• 1:30:35Aaron Slodov?

  Oh, boy. So, we have...

• 1:30:38John Coogan?

  A lot of gong hits.

• 1:30:39Aaron Slodov?

  Yeah, a lot of gong hits.

• 1:30:40John Coogan?

  We put that through its paces.

• 1:30:42Aaron Slodov?

  So, this is kind of, you know, a bunch of great market validation. We're gonna dump this into R&D. A little bit of like expansion on the footprint, and, actually, if you want, instead of doing like a fancy render, I can actually show you guys a little clip of the new factory.

• 1:31:02Jordi Hays?

  Let's do it. Do you have video pulled up already?

• 1:31:05John Coogan?

  Let's pull it up. Wait, this is in Detroit?

• 1:31:08Aaron Slodov?

  This is in Detroit.

• 1:31:09John Coogan?

  Making Detroit, bringing it to the Midwest best.

• 1:31:11Aaron Slodov?

  Sign a lease?

• 1:31:13John Coogan?

  This is hu- wow, that's huge.

• 1:31:15Aaron Slodov?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:15John Coogan?

  That is a huge facility.

• 1:31:16Aaron Slodov?

  You make a lot of things in that. Yeah, it's a lot of, uh, we're gonna keep the floor dirt like that.

• 1:31:20John Coogan?

  We had you, we, we had you call in and you were walking around the, the previous facility. It didn't look small. Um, what, what, what goes on the floor? Are you like at the point where you're like copy pasting the same work cell over and over again?

• 1:31:32Aaron Slodov?

  Not quite yet, but you know, the idea behind what we're doing is we started kind of, uh, software first, right? To kind of prove the concept that we could actually, uh, design something in, you know, at the same clip that like a trade expert could. So we did that first. That was enough proof to actually get the first factory off the ground. Um, and then the design software started, you know, saturating into the molds that we would make, right? Like at that factory. Now we're kind of moving into the actual production of parts. So this facility, we're gonna basically have factory one and two. That's the, the footprint that we're using. Yep. Um, factory one makes the molds. We ship it to factory two to actually make the parts. So that facility will just be nothing but part making.

• 1:32:15John Coogan?

  What's the wheelhouse part that you make? What, what, what's the canonical example?

• 1:32:19Aaron Slodov?

  Name it all.

• 1:32:19John Coogan?

  Name every part. Yeah, name every part.

• 1:32:22Aaron Slodov?

  Yes, every part. You make parts, name every part. We got a lot of parts here. Um, yeah, I mean, basically what we're doing is trying to focus on taking like specialist shop knowledge, right? Like you would go to a shop that's really good at doing like automotive parts or aerospace parts and generalizing that same capability like across the board. So our envelope or constraint is kind of like size instead of industry or part. So we can't do something like the size of the table, obviously, but, uh, we can work up to that, you know? So for now, we're kind of like parts that are a couple shoeboxes are smaller, like.

• 1:32:57John Coogan?

  What was the thesis for your pitch to have every person who works in manufacturing where a pair of meta glasses and start collecting data? Like, how would that actually flow through?

• 1:33:08Aaron Slodov?

  So I started a lot of my earlier career in like self-driving cars, right?

• 1:33:12John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 1:33:12Aaron Slodov?

  Um, I worked at Google 15 years ago doing this. It's actually insane. Um, I don't even like thinking about that. Were you like 15 years old at that time? Yeah, I was, I was 10. I was a wonderkin. Um, and

• 1:33:25Aaron Slodov?

  You know, a lot of, a lot of the kind of like idea behind that is controlling a system well enough, right, like a human controlled car. Same principles kind of apply to a factory, right? If you're producing the same thing over and over again, you can dial a factory like Elon does, right? And it's just like ultra efficient. The holy grail is being able to take a factory and kind of adapt to different things, you know, over and over again. And mold making is kind of like that because every part has a unique geometry. So ultimately, the shape drives like the construction of every mold. And it's a little bit different, right? But, um, yeah, ultimately, that will-

• 1:34:02John Coogan?

  Yeah, I mean, actually pulling data from someone who's working on a line, I mean, they're gonna see, you're gonna see someone using a screwdriver one day and a hammer and then different tools and then pushing buttons and maybe sitting in front of their computer like, taking notes, like, isn't that just like a ton of messy data? Like, how do you actually compress that into something that's actionable?

• 1:34:21Aaron Slodov?

  So, the self-driving analogy is very similar to that, right? Like, being able to actually intuit, like, a mechanical task-

• 1:34:31John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 1:34:32Aaron Slodov?

  Right? Or, I don't know, anything like programming a machine or something like that, right? If we have the ability to actually collect the data seamlessly and relatively easily, that's kind of a floodgate, you know, to being able to do a lot of these things. Processing them is a different problem, depending on how general they get, but I do think that that's actually a pretty interesting use case for them.

• 1:34:54John Coogan?

  Yeah. Give us the update on re-industrialization broadly.

• 1:34:58Jordi Hays?

  There's been some headlines on the job side this year that have been not super thrilling to look at, actually, reduction in, in manufacturing workforce, but what's actually-

• 1:35:11John Coogan?

  Yeah, a lot of energy in the space.

• 1:35:12Jordi Hays?

  What's the vibe, what's the vibe like on the ground?

• 1:35:14Aaron Slodov?

  The vibe on the ground-

• 1:35:15Jordi Hays?

  Actually, and, and to be clear, I want, I want to get a sense of like what the vibe is, like, legacy manufacturing and then, like, the, the re-industrialized crowd.

• 1:35:23John Coogan?

  Hmm. No way. You gotta take that.

• 1:35:26Aaron Slodov?

  I can't, I can't do that right now.

• 1:35:27John Coogan?

  No, you can take it.

• 1:35:28Jordi Hays?

  Wait, take it.

• 1:35:29John Coogan?

  Take it right away.

• 1:35:30Aaron Slodov?

  He'll call back, he'll call back.

• 1:35:31Jordi Hays?

  That's actually, I mean, I don't know if you're fucking with us, but-

• 1:35:34John Coogan?

  Yeah, I don't know if you're messing with us, but it's fine. It's crazy. Big if true.

• 1:35:39Aaron Slodov?

  Big if true. Um, the, uh, yeah, I mean, the vibe on the ground for this stuff is- It's interesting, right, because there's a huge need for it and like economic data, you know, numbers go up and down all the time and people will panic. Businesses might not actually take on more because capex is ultra expensive or something, right? At the end of the day, stuff still has to get made, right? And there's a lot of work that we're doing right now with the admin, which, you know, maybe we'll talk about someday, but people are very aware of this problem, right? And we need to pump resources into the industrial base in a really meaningful and fast way.

• 1:36:21Aaron Slodov?

  So ultimately, there's a huge demand and need, even without the tariffs, it was still there, right? Yeah. And I mean, yeah, starting this company when I did was a really interesting moment in history and like, I was trying to front run that problem and ultimately, I didn't really do anything for, you know, 2020 at all. Yeah. But yeah, I think, I think people, you know, that are actually churning out parts and components are, you know, extremely happy with where things are at, but, you know, overall, this is something that like, we have the same conversation about over and over and over again, which is, you know, factory jobs and manufacturing jobs.

• 1:37:03Aaron Slodov?

  Like, a lot of people don't know if that actually means a specialist, you know, CNC machinist, a CAM programmer, like, somebody just pushing a button on a machine on a line somewhere. And ultimately, you'll kind of see, you know, a collapse or you'll probably see, you know, a little bit of condensing of skilled trade labor as like, technology flows more into the industrial base and we get more efficient factories that are cheaper. Ultimately, it's not a zero sum game, right? It's like Jevon's paradox for, for stuff. If you can figure out a way to make more, we're gonna make more.

• 1:37:37John Coogan?

  I feel like there's a ton of energy, like the biggest American dynamism story, or the biggest re-industrialization story has oddly been like the XAI colossus, like the Neo clouds, what Crusoe is doing, like it feels like there's an immense pull from the industry to build big things. And they're building multi-billion dollar projects in America. It's very much assembling parts from all over the place. We just got a report that Elon's potentially buying a power plant internationally and then just rebuilding it in Memphis or Mississippi.

• 1:38:18John Coogan?

  But like, do you think that that actually translates to going down the stack? Or do you think that like all the AI energy will just wind up resulting in just build a big data center, but still continue to make the transformers wherever they need to be made, or make the, you know, the networking equipment wherever it needs to be made? I mean, the chips, like the, the actual energy around moving chip production back to America, it's, it's a multi-decade project.

• 1:38:49Aaron Slodov?

  Yeah. I think, I think there's like a secret plan here that nobody's really talking about, which you, you've, you've seen Elon and like Jensen hint at this, right? In some of their public stuff that they've said, they're all driving for applying AI to like the physical.

• 1:39:07John Coogan?

  Oh, sure.

• 1:39:08Aaron Slodov?

  Right? Obviously, we have to play with LLMs for a little bit and like cool video and image tools and stuff. But ultimately, I think that like, you know, we saw, what was that, like a week ago, Elon talking about making transformers now, like just going straight for the kill. I think that ultimately, and like how Jensen talked about like.

• 1:39:27John Coogan?

  Yeah, I mean SpaceX vertically integrated a ton of, a ton of part making internally because they were, they were fed up. But what does that mean for your business?

• 1:39:35Aaron Slodov?

  Right. So ultimately, ultimately what it means is that like, you're going to have a trade off where skilled tradespeople are kind of like, you know, the replacement rate is very low. So you might actually see some kind of like conglomeration or agglomeration of these trades kind of, you know, forming like a foundational layer of.

• 1:39:55Aaron Slodov?

  Building blocks where we can make components and parts.

• 1:39:58John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:58Aaron Slodov?

  And the technology is applied to that.

• 1:40:00John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:00Aaron Slodov?

  Right, like, that's what I was saying, like Jensen, his whole thing is like using tokens for whatever, right?

• 1:40:05John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 1:40:06Aaron Slodov?

  If we can apply that to the part making layer, right? It's just foundational kind of stuff, and then from there you can build whatever you want.

• 1:40:12John Coogan?

  Yeah. Are there, I remember early on when we were talking, one of the interesting use cases for AI in a manufacturing context was you have, you have a part that needs to be injection molded, you need to build the, build the, the casting for that, right? And you need to figure out where you drill the holes to dissipate heat, right? And, and the example you gave me was like, if you're, if you're molding a bumper for a car, the, it's a very odd shape. It's not just like something you can roll out on a sheet or cut stamp or do anything else, right? You need to actually mold it. And it, it, does that have any indexing towards like what goes on the data center?

• 1:40:54John Coogan?

  Like, what, are there parts that are, that are benefiting in the data center context from that type of like injection molding optimization work?

• 1:41:02Aaron Slodov?

  Um, potentially, I mean, it's going to be a lot of like racking and componentry, right? So if, if there's some kind of weird new, you know, uh, form factor, what, probably not, but.

• 1:41:11John Coogan?

  Yeah, most of the data center just feels like it's like, like vertical racks and just bolted together, very like, I mean, Zuck's building data centers in tents now, like they're, they're, they're not going with like bespoke, like beautiful, like, you know, custom shapes or anything like that.

• 1:41:25Aaron Slodov?

  I think, I think a lot of it, like, whenever you need to form a part of some kind, right? You have to pick what type of methodology you're going to use, like whatever is most cost effective, um, and also meets the requirement. So if it's a bunch of metal stuff, you're probably going to stamp it, or, you know, it'll be made out of sheet metal or CNC'd or something. And then if it is a plastic thing that you can actually blast out in high volume and it's, it's actually worth it, that's a great problem to solve, right? And what we're doing is actually trying to lower that barrier. And not everything can be a plastic part and people don't want that. But if you actually lower that barrier, then, you know, engineering changes actually. Because now you can actually re-scope what is plastic, what is metal, and consider a different, you know, production method for it.

• 1:42:04Jordi Hays?

  How are the capital markets treating manufacturing businesses and especially tech-enabled manufacturing businesses today?

• 1:42:12Aaron Slodov?

  So.

• 1:42:13Jordi Hays?

  I'm assuming you're not getting AI multiples, but hopefully there's, there's.

• 1:42:17Aaron Slodov?

  Plenty to go around. Well, that's the thing. There's no comp for this, right? Nobody's actually done this before. So TBD on that, but I do think that even like announcing the raise earlier was a huge mistake on LinkedIn. You know, just because I now have gotten probably 100 different emails and texts from, you know, people on the other side of venture. Yeah. Yeah. They're just like loans. You know, it's just like it's a wellspring of money. There's an ocean of capital on the other side of this if you can prove something viable.

• 1:42:48John Coogan?

  Where's the, where's the business? I mean, you said $25 million Series A, massive facility that you showed us. How are you tracking with like revenue, headcount, anything else that you can share?

• 1:42:57Aaron Slodov?

  Yeah. So with that kind of progression of going like software to mold making to part making, we picked up like our first couple of big, you know, part production contracts. So interestingly enough, it's kind of like SaaS.

• 1:43:12Aaron Slodov?

  It's just like, you know, I need a widget for five years. Like you're in charge of making the mold and the part now.

• 1:43:18John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:19Aaron Slodov?

  So we're going to start stacking like multi-year production programs. So we're kind of in the mid eight-figure range for that right now.

• 1:43:26John Coogan?

  Let's go.

• 1:43:27Aaron Slodov?

  And. Let's give it up for the mid eight figures. It's an amazing place to be underrated, right? People already always talk about nine figures. Being in the mid eight figures. The next time I'm back here, we'll be, we'll be, we'll be, you know, nine figures. So.

• 1:43:40John Coogan?

  Fantastic.

• 1:43:41Aaron Slodov?

  There we go. There we go. And then, yeah, we're kind of. Come back tomorrow. Yeah. Yeah. We'll be back tomorrow.

• 1:43:46John Coogan?

  Yeah. Answer that phone call and then.

• 1:43:47Aaron Slodov?

  Roughly 50 people right now.

• 1:43:50John Coogan?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:43:51Aaron Slodov?

  And it's, it's interesting too, because. That includes people that are like in, in the factories themselves, like.

• 1:43:58John Coogan?

  Like everyone.

• 1:43:58Aaron Slodov?

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, this is one of the main reasons we actually wanted to build in Detroit, right? Because, you know, even though I love California, that talent is not here.

• 1:44:08John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:09Aaron Slodov?

  So we do have to kind of like rely on that initially to build out the footprint there. And then once we actually have. Would you come to California? Yeah. For sure.

• 1:44:18John Coogan?

  But is California anywhere near the top of the list? I feel like Texas, there's other, I mean, what's happening in Memphis and Mississippi. Like, there's so many other states that are more like, please bring your business here.

• 1:44:29Aaron Slodov?

  Yes. Yeah, I mean, we're gonna have to take a look at statewide, you know, incentive packages.

• 1:44:34John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:34Aaron Slodov?

  And see, see how that's looking. But that's, that's kind of the model, right? It's like.

• 1:44:40Jordi Hays?

  Does California offer incentives for these kind of things?

• 1:44:42John Coogan?

  Disincentives, exactly.

• 1:44:43Aaron Slodov?

  Yeah, disincentives, yeah.

• 1:44:44Jordi Hays?

  If you come here, we'll make your life hell, but the weather's great. I was so funny, I was looking at a, I was looking at the weather report yesterday. And I was like, this is, this is why we, this is why we do what we do. Seventy-five today in Malibu, seventy-five and sunny, then seventy-eight and sunny, then seventy-seven and sunny, then seventy-nine and sunny, and seventy-nine, and then seventy-nine, and then seventy-seven.

• 1:45:05John Coogan?

  I'm sure it's not that bad in Detroit right now.

• 1:45:08Aaron Slodov?

  Actually, same exact forecast.

• 1:45:10John Coogan?

  Yeah, it's probably perfect right now.

• 1:45:11Jordi Hays?

  Everybody talks about, all in California, people don't talk about fall in Detroit.

• 1:45:15John Coogan?

  Fall in Detroit. I mean, in, in Chicago, it's the same thing. Chicago has fantastic summers.

• 1:45:19Jordi Hays?

  Yes, it's the, people call Detroit the Saint-Tropez of America.

• 1:45:24John Coogan?

  It is, it is. Anyway, congratulations, thanks so much for coming on the show.

• 1:45:28Jordi Hays?

  Dude, thank you for the merch.

• 1:45:29John Coogan?

  Hit that gong as hard as.

• 1:45:30Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, hit that as hard as you can.

• 1:45:32John Coogan?

  Whoa, that was good, that was a good hit.

• 1:45:35Jordi Hays?

  You kept it, you kept it in, that's a true test of strength, being close to the gong and still getting that, that contact. Congratulations.

• 1:45:42John Coogan?

  Yeah. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

• 1:45:44Jordi Hays?

  About all the progress, go, go take that call.

• 1:45:46John Coogan?

  We will talk to you soon. And we have Ariana coming on the show in just a few minutes. In the meantime, let me tell you about Eight Sleep, eightsleep.com, get a Pod 5, five-year warranty, 30-year risk-free trial, free returns, free shipping.

• 1:46:05Jordi Hays?

  What did I do?

• 1:46:05John Coogan?

  You did well?

• 1:46:06Jordi Hays?

  I got a ninety-four last night, seven hours, fifty-six minutes.

• 1:46:09John Coogan?

  A ninety-four, eh? Ninety-four. Ninety-eight, ninety-eight.

• 1:46:15Jordi Hays?

  I was not expecting that.

• 1:46:16John Coogan?

  Ninety-eight, put that phone down.

• 1:46:20John Coogan?

  I beat Jordy Hayes.

• 1:46:22Jordi Hays?

  Great, the great sleep off.

• 1:46:25John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 1:46:25Jordi Hays?

  We should run a weekend, like weekend average, see how.

• 1:46:30John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:30Jordi Hays?

  See how we do.

• 1:46:31John Coogan?

  Sleep off.

• 1:46:33John Coogan?

  Anyway, there's a new paper that claims LLMs are better at selecting founders than venture capitalists.

• 1:46:39Jordi Hays?

  I don't believe it.

• 1:46:41John Coogan?

  V C bench, the first benchmark for predicting for founder success in venture capital. This is from the University of Oxford and Julia Hornstein shares thinking about this. Quote, but for, but for Andreessen, there is one job that A I will never do as well as living, breathing, living, a living, breathing human being, his. Think I'm kidding, on an A sixteen Z podcast last week, Andreessen opined that being a venture capitalist may be a profession that is quite literally timeless. When the A Is are doing everything else, he continued, that may be one of the last remaining fields that people are still doing.

• 1:47:17Jordi Hays?

  It is, it is.

• 1:47:18John Coogan?

  Say something too, like you could just say, oh, singularity, you just invest for a living?

• 1:47:22Jordi Hays?

  I, I agree with the, the sense that, that the high level point, which is that like humans, humans will like raise capital.

• 1:47:33John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:33Jordi Hays?

  Machines will probably deploy it.

• 1:47:36John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 1:47:37Jordi Hays?

  But I do, I do wonder, I would love to, I, we have to, we should dig into this V C bench thing more because I do think if I just like ran, you could basically run a model against like a deck.

• 1:47:49John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 1:47:49Jordi Hays?

  And even, you can even analyze things like how fast a founder responds, right?

• 1:47:53John Coogan?

  I would love.

• 1:47:53Jordi Hays?

  People talk about, people talk about some of these like smaller data points, like founders that respond fast, like can really outperform.

• 1:48:00John Coogan?

  I, the, like, outperforming, I mean, I, I'm not exactly sure how, what the outperformance was, but being in the sixtieth percentile of venture capitalist like does not matter. Like you still do very poorly, like you need to be at the long tail of the power law. I'd be fascinated to know.

• 1:48:18Jordi Hays?

  Brand is like one of the biggest drivers.

• 1:48:19John Coogan?

  Brand's super important, but also I, I think, I mean, you, you read zero to one, the value of secrets, like secrets are not in the training data. And so there's so many decisions that are made in, in a business partnership or backing a founder that are.

• 1:48:37John Coogan?

  Secrets that never make their way onto the internet, they never make it, they never make it into the weights whatsoever. Maybe they make it into a biography after someone passes away, like decades later. But so much of decision in venture capital and decision making in business is really on the backbone of whisper networks and understanding-

• 1:49:01Jordi Hays?

  Being able to accurately predict the future.

• 1:49:04John Coogan?

  Subtext. It's not just accurately predicting the future. I feel like accurately predicting the future, like broadly, like AI is not that bad at that. But AI doesn't necessarily know, like, like, all the different, all the different secrets that are going into a business before.

• 1:49:20Jordi Hays?

  I don't know, but if you're running, let's say you're running a model generally-

• 1:49:23John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:49:23Jordi Hays?

  And you asked, in 2017-

• 1:49:27John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:49:27Jordi Hays?

  Do you think that bright, young people in Silicon Valley are going to want to work in defense tech in seven years? A model might be like, eh, people have like, pretty bad taste in their mouth, like, Google engineers are protesting even having any contracts, right?

• 1:49:42John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:42Jordi Hays?

  So it just depends on-

• 1:49:43John Coogan?

  I mean, yeah, the LLMs right now are not designed to be contrarian machines. Like, they're very much consensus focused and just getting to a model that thinks independently or can take a contrarian position that isn't just, take your conclusion and add a minus sign in front of it.

• 1:50:01Jordi Hays?

  It's like, what if, what if the average redditor was deploying capital?

• 1:50:04John Coogan?

  That's, that's, that's certainly the bare case for this. At the same time, you know, potentially, like, the average redditor is deploying capital. And that might actually define the VC industry pretty accurately right now.

• 1:50:17Jordi Hays?

  You're absolutely right, John.

• 1:50:18John Coogan?

  And so I'm not surprised. Tyler, what's your take?

• 1:50:19Speaker 06

  Okay, so I'm looking at the actual, like, benchmark?

• 1:50:21John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 1:50:22Speaker 06

  So basically-

• 1:50:22John Coogan?

  What do they take in?

• 1:50:23Speaker 06

  So there's 9,000, the dataset is 9,000 anonymized founder profiles.

• 1:50:27John Coogan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:50:28Speaker 06

  And then, basically, they're either labeled like, success, or, I guess, like, failure, depending on-

• 1:50:33John Coogan?

  Do they return capital or something?

• 1:50:35Speaker 06

  Yeah. If they exited IPOed over 500 million, or raised over 500 million. And then, so it has, like, some of the stats are like, tier-one VCs are at, predict, 23%. And then, DeepSeek Chat is at 80%.

• 1:50:48John Coogan?

  That's a huge dump, though.

• 1:50:51Speaker 06

  It's kind of like, it seems hard to, like, anonymize these correctly, where, like-

• 1:50:57Speaker 06

  You're still encapsulating like what made them a good founder, but also still like different enough that a model can't just like be like, oh, that's just Mark Zuckerberg.

• 1:51:05John Coogan?

  Totally.

• 1:51:05Speaker 06

  Without his name.

• 1:51:06John Coogan?

  Totally.

• 1:51:06Speaker 06

  So like, yes, he's successful.

• 1:51:07John Coogan?

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 1:51:08Speaker 06

  So I think it's.

• 1:51:09Jordi Hays?

  The other thing is like VC is the issue is like VC is not about identifying the great founders. You have to identify them and win allocation at specific moments.

• 1:51:18John Coogan?

  100% that. And then, yeah, and then also it's identifying the next great founder, which is usually breaking a pattern. I mean, Paul Graham has a famous example where he over indexed on Mark Zuckerberg, met a founder who literally looked like Mark Zuckerberg, wrote the, wrote a check and it was one of the most underperforming investments he's ever made. And he was like, yeah, I was just like this guy is like.

• 1:51:40Jordi Hays?

  All right, well, we.

• 1:51:40John Coogan?

  Went to Harvard, dropped out of Harvard, looked like Mark.

• 1:51:43Jordi Hays?

  We have Arianna in the restroom waiting room. Let's bring her in.

• 1:51:46John Coogan?

  Let's bring her in to TBPN.

• 1:51:48Jordi Hays?

  Mold company.

• 1:51:49John Coogan?

  The Ultra Dome. How are you doing?

• 1:51:51Jordi Hays?

  What's happening?

• 1:51:52Speaker 11

  Hi Jordy, hi John. Great to be here.

• 1:51:54Jordi Hays?

  Thanks to meet you. Okay, I will start this off by saying I.

• 1:51:58John Coogan?

  Hate mold.

• 1:51:59Jordi Hays?

  I hate mold. I'm one of the number one haters. I had a rental once that had a mold problem. I got terribly sick and it ended up being this crazy saga where I was like fighting with my landlord because they were saying like, there's no mold problem. I was showing them test results that showed there was a mold problem. They were kind of pushing back. I think it's a huge problem. I went down this rabbit hole. I think a bunch of people are kind of like waking up to how prevalent the issue is, especially in like specific regions and even specific like, like local communities. So excited that you're building this and excited to hear about it.

• 1:52:41Speaker 11

  Thank you. Yeah, there's definitely a cultural awakening happening. You might've even seen HBO shows and Netflix and throughout the Reddit forums, Facebook communities, influencers on Instagram, et cetera. Like it feels like there's this groundswell of education and awareness happening beyond even our company.

• 1:52:59Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. How did you, why did you start the company? Personal story?

• 1:53:05Speaker 11

  Yeah, super similar to yours, went through that journey with my landlord as well. And prior to starting Mold Co., didn't have health issues, then experienced debilitating symptoms and actually developed something called chronic inflammatory response syndrome, which is the more formal name for mold toxicity or mold-related illness, just in a six-and-a-half month timeframe of being in my Miami unit, which was quite moldy.

• 1:53:27Jordi Hays?

  Crazy. What is the... I have an... Easy to tell what the company does at a high level, but like, how are you kind of like tackling the problem? What does the business look like?

• 1:53:39Speaker 11

  Yeah, we're tackling this in a few different ways. So, the vision is to drive the standard of care for mold treatment and mold labs. And what we do is offer labs both for health and the environment. So, that includes four different tests available on our website today, specifically a three-panel and a 16-panel for the LabCorp LabDraw. And that's based on our 30 years of research in the field. So, we have on our founding team, the world experts, the folks that not only pioneered this space, but also defined chronic inflammatory response syndrome, came up with the biomarkers, came up with the treatment, all in their lifetime, which is an extraordinary effort. So, we have that.

• 1:54:20Speaker 11

  We also have something called HLA haplotype testing to see if you have a genetic susceptibility to mold-related illness, and that impacts one in four here in the US. And we also have a test, which I frankly love over even a home inspector at times. It's just a quick litmus test, low cost, uses Swiffer pad to wipe down your surfaces. So, we have that on the lab side. And then, on the care side, we have our own in-house providers, and we built a platform to treat patients at scale. And that includes concierge care and our patient portal, and that includes a distillation of something called the Shoemaker Protocol, which is the only published, peer-reviewed treatment approach in the space. There's hundreds of publications making the mold health connection. There's really just a small body of work that demonstrates treatment and what's effective

• 1:55:05Speaker 11

  for patients. So, that's what we've done. We've translated that into a virtual care clinic, and we've done a lot of creative things to make that scalable for patients, so we can keep the costs low and affordable.

• 1:55:16Jordi Hays?

  What... If somebody...

• 1:55:19Jordi Hays?

  I guess, like, what is your recommendation? You meet somebody, like, randomly, they hear about your business. Like, what is the first step? Because I think a lot of people, you talked about people having, like, genetic susceptibility. This is, I think, important because it means that, like, a few people could be living in a house and, like, some people aren't having necessarily any issues or symptoms and, like, one person could be having a super adverse reaction. And that, I feel like, can make, can make people, like, just, like, not really be aware of the problem. Because if you have, if somebody's in college and they have some roommates that are doing fine and they're struggling, they can, it can end up being confusing. But what do you recommend to people? Where do you recommend people start if they're kind of concerned that they might be dealing

• 1:56:04Jordi Hays?

  with an issue?

• 1:56:05Speaker 11

  Yeah, absolutely. So we have testing options to meet patients where they are. So it really just depends on where they are in that journey. And you touched upon a really important topic, and that's the Canary Effect. There could be others in your household that start experiencing symptoms before you even experience symptoms. But it really just depends on where the patient is. Have they already made the mold health connection? Have they conducted a battery of lab tests to validate that? If so, those patients are often great to start care. If the patient hasn't even made the mold health connection, but they're sure that there's mold in their home, they can probably skip the dust test and even a visual inspection or having that musty, earthy odor is sufficient. So for that type of patient, we may recommend even the starter panel, which is one of our

• 1:56:46Speaker 11

  three lab panels, and that has the highest signal biomarkers based on the research that we have to date, which I'm sure will evolve. We actually have an R and D arm with the largest data set in the world for what we're doing, too. So we're looking to advance that and really drive the standard of care. Or if a patient doesn't know if they have mold in their home, but they're having the indicative symptoms, which includes brain fog, fatigue, gastrointestinal issues, et cetera, it's normally a multi-system, multi-symptom issue, nonspecific but affecting multiple systems, then we would recommend a lab panel, such as the starter panel or complete panel.

• 1:57:20Jordi Hays?

  Do you guys help, would you guys help? Like clients, customers with like legal? Because I ended up having to hire a lawyer when I was going through my issue because my landlord was just like completely just like basically like gaslighting me. Not, not, is that something that you guys would ever help people with? Or is that outside of kind of the wheelhouse?

• 1:57:45Speaker 11

  It's currently outside our scope. In terms of the next evolution of the company, the parent company is actually called The Immune Co. And our vision is to spin out Lime Co. and Long Co. next. Our thesis is that the data set we've collected, which is looking at these microbial insults, mold and biotoxins that lead to innate immune system dysregulation, leading to chronic inflammation, can actually have the underlying research to help solve some of these other biotoxin related issues. So we're more so going that direction versus expanding to horizontally within the mold economy. But I think there's definitely opportunity there for founders.

• 1:58:18Jordi Hays?

  The mold economy. We're here. How are you, how are you guys acquiring customers at this point? Is this, this feels like the kind of thing that, that one, there's a lot of influencers that have dealt with this and that'll talk about it. But it also feels like you could have an organic TikTok or real strategy or something along those lines.

• 1:58:39Speaker 11

  Yeah, we're doing a lot of different things. We actually just launched something called a content farm. We had seven million views in the last week or week and a half or so just off of that. So we are tapping into TikTok and Instagram and doing some fun things there. We had a Reddit AMA with Dr. Shoemaker, the Messiah of Mold, our founding physician, and that went viral and Reddit.

• 1:58:57Jordi Hays?

  Messiah of mold. You've got some, you've got some good, good coinages here. The mold economy, the Messiah of mold.

• 1:59:06Speaker 11

  Thanks. I don't have bots on my cap table though, so maybe next. But yeah, so we've done that. We've done, we've had shout outs from patients. At least 15% of our patient base is based on referrals and we haven't even optimized for that yet. I've been on at least 30 podcasts at this point. So we're tapping into a lot of different ways to reach patients and increase education and awareness. But there already is a large portion of the US that has made the mold health connection. So it's been pretty streamlined targeting those patients and onboarding them into our care.

• 1:59:36Jordi Hays?

  Would you do anything, last question I have, I'm curious. Would you do anything around helping people make decisions on, like specifically the moment in time where somebody's either buying a home or considering renting a property? Because the thing that's like tragic about. Like kind of the mold crisis, if that's what you want to call it, is there's a lot of homes that are brand new and they will literally have like a like a significant mold toxicity problem.

• 2:00:04John Coogan?

  On day one.

• 2:00:05Jordi Hays?

  On day one because of the way they were built or you think about it's like houses can take a long time to build. They could have leaks. They could have a bunch of weather, all these different things. And then you move into a house that you think is brand new and it already is going to like make you sick, which is just tragic.

• 2:00:23Speaker 11

  Um, thank you for touching on that misconception that new builds don't have mold issues. They definitely do. The building materials are left outside in the rain. Uh, the energy efficiency standards often have a trade off for having more microbial growth in the home. So, um, I think there's a lot of, uh, dramatic irony there for home buyers and renters. It's not something we're targeting at a deep level right now. I often say that the environmental side is off, um, more intractable than the healthcare side, just because the healthcare side already has the solution available. Um, and every home is unique, every, uh, rental is unique. So we offer free educational guidance, but I think that's also another opportunity for a builder in this space. If they want to help, um, uh, essentially renters and owners better navigate, um, which homes have mold and to avoid that. And there's also novel

• 2:01:08Speaker 11

  materials coming out like sire wall too, to prevent mold in the first place.

• 2:01:13Jordi Hays?

  Awesome. Well, congratulations.

• 2:01:14John Coogan?

  Give us the fundraising news.

• 2:01:15Jordi Hays?

  What's the fundraising news? You announced it yesterday, right?

• 2:01:19Speaker 11

  Yeah. Um, yeah. So we raised earlier this year, a bit of a delayed announcement with, uh, Kanto's and Collab Fund as our lead and, um, yeah, there we go.

• 2:01:29John Coogan?

  How much did you raise?

• 2:01:30Speaker 11

  Uh, eight million total.

• 2:01:35Jordi Hays?

  There you go. Congratulations. Great names. Great names. Love to see it.

• 2:01:42John Coogan?

  Thanks so much for helping on the stream.

• 2:01:43Jordi Hays?

  Thanks for jumping on.

• 2:01:44John Coogan?

  We'll talk to you soon.

• 2:01:45Jordi Hays?

  Cheers.

• 2:01:45Speaker 11

  Bye.

• 2:01:46John Coogan?

  If you want to get away from your moldy old home, head over to wander.com.

• 2:01:50Jordi Hays?

  That's right.

• 2:01:51John Coogan?

  Look, go wander with inspiring views, hotel, great amenities, dreamy beds, top tier cleaning and 24 seven concierge service. It's a vacation home, but better folks.

• 2:01:58Jordi Hays?

  Better.

• 2:01:59John Coogan?

  Our next guest is Will Hurd from Chaos Industries. He's the chief strategy officer, former CIA, former congressperson. Welcome.

• 2:02:07Jordi Hays?

  What's going on?

• 2:02:08John Coogan?

  How you doing?

• 2:02:10Speaker 05

  And doing fantastic. It's great to be on with y'all. I feel like I'm on with the Shaq and Barclay.

• 2:02:16Jordi Hays?

  Let's go.

• 2:02:17Speaker 05

  So thanks for having me.

• 2:02:18John Coogan?

  We love to hear that. Thank you.

• 2:02:19Jordi Hays?

  Let's go.

• 2:02:20John Coogan?

  Fun fact.

• 2:02:21Jordi Hays?

  We don't know about sports, but those sound like some big names.

• 2:02:24John Coogan?

  Fun fact, I endorsed you for president. I said, everyone else who's running is a lawyer. You're the only computer scientist. Talk to me about your journey studying computer science through working in the government. I want to, I want to get a little bit of backstory before we go into what you're doing now.

• 2:02:41Speaker 05

  Sure. You know, it was funny. When I was in high school, I had the opportunity to do an internship with a woman who was at Southwest Research Institute. They are one of the largest private research entities in the country. And I fell in love with, with computer science and decided to go to Texas A&M University, Giga Maggie's, and you know, study computer science. And when I, when I first, when I first got to college, I thought I was going to go work at IBM. And then I had.

• 2:03:14John Coogan?

  International business machines. We love international business and machines.

• 2:03:18Speaker 05

  There we go. There we go. And, and, but I had this guy who was a guest lecturer in one of my classes. That was a former CIA officer.

• 2:03:28John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:28Speaker 05

  And he told the most amazing stories. And I was like, I want to do that. And so when I graduated from college, I joined the CIA and my, I was a case officer. So my job was recruit spies and steal secrets. It was, it was the best job.

• 2:03:44Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, and that's, that's an important.

• 2:03:45John Coogan?

  Thank you for your service.

• 2:03:46Jordi Hays?

  Distinction, because I think people think about CIA agents, but those are the people that are recruited by the case officers who are doing the, the puppeteering.

• 2:03:57Speaker 05

  That's right. Or you could say the spy master.

• 2:04:00Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, the spy master. Spy master.

• 2:04:03John Coogan?

  So, yeah, please.

• 2:04:05Speaker 05

  It was, it was, look, it was an awesome gig, right? Two years in India, two years in Pakistan. I did some interagency work in New York City around counterproliferation. And then a year and a half in Afghanistan, where I managed all of our undercover operations. And in addition to collecting intelligence on our threats to our homelands, I had to brief members of Congress. And I was pretty shocked by the caliber of our elected leaders, so I decided to run for Congress. And that's kind of how that started.

• 2:04:31John Coogan?

  That's amazing. We, we had Dan Wang on the show recently. He wrote a book, Relentless, and he talks about, I hope I have that right, I might be messing some of that up, but the, the basic thesis of the book is that China has an engineering mindset and they employ a lot of engineers in the government, whereas America has become the lawyerly society. And we have a lot of lawmakers who are lawyers by training. And I'm wondering about your thoughts on the direction America should be going in terms of empowering folks who can think from first principles or have engineering mindsets to actually go and build things like high-speed rail or, you know, we got to the moon. And we're seeing a little bit of this with, with Doge and more engineers in, in the White House.

• 2:05:16John Coogan?

  What's the overall, your overall view on the level of engineering talent in government and the benefits and costs of that?

• 2:05:24Speaker 05

  Look, I, I think that thesis is, is actually correct. I've spent the last 25 years of my adult life in some form or fashion connected to national security, whether it was CIA, in Congress. I was on the House Intelligence Committee, seeing how things, our threats to our nation evolve. I was on the Appropriations Committee, making sure that we were spending trillions of dollars in, in the right way. I've been on the National Security Agency Advisory Board. When I was at Allen and Company, the New York Investment Bank, I was working with technology companies. And here's been one similar throughput to all this. The Chinese government has made it very clear. The way they're going to surpass the United States of America as the global superpower

• 2:06:07Speaker 05

  is by mastering a number of different technologies. It's about 15, 16, 17, everything from AI to, to hypersonics. And with that as the overarching goal, there is a desire and interest in, in order to win. Let's look, you, you mentioned the space race. Right now, we're, there's, we're, we're rushing to go back to the moon. And the Chinese are gonna do, the Chinese are gonna do it the exact same way we did it in the past, right? Shocker, they're gonna steal all of our plans and ideas and replicate them, you know, uh, crazy, crazy notion.

• 2:06:42Jordi Hays?

  For the first time.

• 2:06:44Speaker 05

  Exactly, exactly. But, but, but we're also seeing that in, in, in whether it's, it's AI and how they're trying to dominate it. We saw them dominate 5G, the fact that, you know, the 5G infrastructure now is, I think it's like, it's over a third in the world is, is, is Chinese tech. In AI, the issue of AI, they're trying to make sure by 2030, every six-year-old is AI conversant. And we're still having debates here in the United States of America about whether AI should, should be included. And then I don't even tell you about what's happening on the battlefield, right? You know, we're seeing, they're, they're

• 2:07:24Speaker 05

  learning from Ukraine, they're figuring out how to use autonomy in air, on land, and, and in the sea. Their focus on electronic warfare and how to disrupt our systems. They're trying to not only build more than what we have, they're also looking forward to, to making sure that they have mass and autonomy in warfare. And so this is, this is the world in which we're living in. And we need people that actually understand technology to make sure that we can make it happen. Perfect example, no company cannot figure out, they don't know that what their budget's gonna be next year, or what their plan for sales is next year. But within the federal government, you know, we don't know necessarily from

• 2:08:07Speaker 05

  year to year what the funding is gonna be. And for a trillion-dollar enterprise, you can't do that. I think at a minimum, you should have a two-year budget and appropriation so that you can, you know with some certainty of where you need to go and, and not trying to go month to month to try to get things done. And, and I think that's, that's right now, one of the issues that I think a lot of venture capital and venture VC-backed companies are trying to change with DoD. It's slow, it's going, it's, it's moving, it's changing. But we have to have, we have to bring that mentality to government.

• 2:08:41John Coogan?

  Yeah, talk about your path to chaos. It's a, it's a wild name for a defense tech company, but you're doing some very cool things. How did, how did all this come together?

• 2:08:51Speaker 05

  Look, I didn't think slinging radars was good, was on my bingo card, right? But when, when I, I got to meet Dr. Bo Mar, one of our, our, our co-CEOs and founders of Chaos. He had also previously founded Eperus. John Tennant, another one of our co-CEOs, who I've known for some time. And he's like, "Look, Will, we're doing something interesting. Why don't you come to LA and, and see our product?" And I was blown away, right? First off, unbelievable team, right? This is, these are, you know, engineers that have been, you know, quoted in, in, in Nobel Prizes, right?

• 2:09:31Speaker 05

  You have, you have real operators in government, Navy SEALs, folks that worked in, in Delta for us, CIA, you know, you have operators that have been in, in the system. And you're working on some of the most cutting-edge technology, right? Like, you know, we, we have, we have figured out a thing called coherent distributed networking. This is taking multiple things, talking to, talking to each other. And we figured out how to do that to the picosecond. Now, a, a picosecond, you know, for some, for some references, one picosecond to a second is like a second is to 32,000 years. That's really fast. And by figuring out how you have this time transfer work,

• 2:10:15Speaker 05

  we're able to build a more powerful system and a cheaper system. And, and, and, and so the, the, that, you know, amazed me. And ultimately, the, the vision of, of the company, right? Since, let's call it the end of the Korean War, right? America and our allies have had air superiority. We, and that air superiority has given our troops the ability to look forward, not above their heads at swarms. It's allowed commerce to whip around the world. And, and those days are over, right? Because of autonomy on, on the battlefield. 70% of casualties in, in warfare right now are from autonomous systems and drones. And the time to detect and do something about it is shrinking.

• 2:11:00Speaker 05

  And ultimately, what Chaos is doing is we're giving the warfighter more time. A time to understand what's happening, time to decide what to do, and time to act. And so for me to get back to my roots of national security, it was exciting. And so that's how I ended up, that's how I ended up at Chaos.

• 2:11:15John Coogan?

  What's the, what's the highest priority threat that radar can help mitigate? Is it, is it these autonomous drones these days?

• 2:11:24Speaker 05

  It, it is. Look, there's a lot of conversation right now around Golden Dome. And Golden Dome is, is, is something that we need to have. We need to be able to defend against nuclear tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles.

• 2:11:38John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:38Speaker 05

  Right? From our adversaries, primarily China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. And this is a phased approach from detecting it when it, when it launches from their homeland, to trying to identify it in space. The, the, the, the technology that has evolved and what we're able to do now sensing in space is pretty fantastic. And this is an important, this is an important problem. But the reality in my, the most recent threat, like the, the threat we're most likely to see is a, a subsonic cruise missile or a drone. And, and this can be, this can be shot from a plane off the coast of California.

• 2:12:19Speaker 05

  It could be a van that is filled with a, a number of explosive drones. These are the things that we're going to see more likely than a nuclear, nuclear weapon. And, and we call these underlayer threats. These are things that are happening under 50,000, 50,000 feet. And, and that's something that radars is, is able to help detect. And, and one of the things that we're learning, because of some of the technological advances we've made, we can see big, high and far and low, small and near at the same time. And and I always remind people, I think pretty much everybody in America watched Maverick, you know, Top Gun 2.

• 2:12:57John Coogan?

  Top Gun, of course.

• 2:12:58Speaker 05

  That's a real thing. Flying below the radar is a real thing. And and so we're able to see below that, below that level. And and that's something that that is going to be helpful against this drone threat, which we've already seen. We've seen what the Ukrainians did in in Russia. We've seen what what Israel has done in Iran. And all of that, being able to take out this this exquisite infrastructure. All right. And exquisite is actually a a has a unique, you know, phrasing or or definition in government. That means big ass expensive system.

• 2:13:35John Coogan?

  Yeah, that's real.

• 2:13:38Speaker 05

  And and so so so we're you're able to take these systems out with a system that costs a billion dollars with a drone that costs 20K, right? So that cost asymmetry is one of the things that that the right radar and what we're doing in in multi static radar is something that that that is one of the reasons why we're getting traction and excitement within DOD and and the rest of and militaries around the world, to be honest.

• 2:14:04Jordi Hays?

  I don't know if you can say anything here, but are you guys doing anything on the counter narcotics side?

• 2:14:10John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah, we've been seeing some stuff here.

• 2:14:11Jordi Hays?

  Uh, I've I've watched a bunch of YouTube videos on narco subs.

• 2:14:16John Coogan?

  Jordy's obsessed.

• 2:14:17Jordi Hays?

  Aren't true submarines, but designed to be hard to detect.

• 2:14:22Speaker 05

  Look, this is this is an issue that's actually, you know, close to my heart. When I was in Congress, I represented a district that was 29 counties, two time zones, 825 miles of the border between Texas and and Mexico. I had more border than any other member of Congress. And so what the narco traficantes, the drug traffickers are doing, they're sophisticated. The the narcos in Mexico alone are making roughly, and this is a conservative number, $60 billion in one year.

• 2:14:53Speaker 05

  The entire US intelligence budget is $60 billion, right? And so

• 2:14:59Jordi Hays?

  You add up all the all the foundation model lab revenue and you don't get

• 2:15:03John Coogan?

  You don't get there. It's bigger than AI.

• 2:15:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, it's it's it's it's wild. And so, so, yes, I, you know, there is, it is known, in the end of, in the last year, I think, beginning of this year, Border Patrol testified in front of the Senate that there were, you know, something ridiculous, like 41,000 drone sightings in just one sector of the border. So we know the narcos are using the drone warfare against themselves. Right? And and so, so

• 2:15:32Jordi Hays?

  Like against rival rival

• 2:15:34John Coogan?

  Rival gangs, basically.

• 2:15:35Speaker 05

  Absolutely, absolutely. It's like the drone warfare you're seeing between Ukraine and Russia. They're adapting some of these tactics, techniques and procedures to that fight. And then we also know the only way you get $60 billion worth of of of drugs into the United States of America is by you're bringing them in volume. And and there is, there is likely some coming via autonomous systems, air and and sea. And we've had conversations with with authorities in order to help with this with this project. And so, once we, once we learn more, we'll come back and I'll get you, I'll give you a report on on on some of the things that that we're seeing.

• 2:16:14John Coogan?

  Can you give me some, some, describe the shape or the physicality of what you're building? You know, there's been, you you look at those like Andorl submarines, they're square now, they look like they just fit in shipping containers. There's a lot of logistics that you get out of the box. If it fits in a shipping container, you can load it onto a boat, an autonomous boat. You can load it on a truck. There's also stuff that can be mounted on an aircraft or something that's, you know, getting into exquisite territory, exquisite system territory. Where do you see the opportunity to deploy new radar systems?

• 2:16:46Speaker 05

  So, so one of our, our products, we call Vanquish, is an expeditionary system. So, uh, the three of us can, can carry that. It can fit on the back of an ATV and go into, to really, really rough, rough terrain.

• 2:16:58John Coogan?

  Is that an invite? Are we going ATV-ing? Let's do it.

• 2:17:01Speaker 05

  Hey, you know, hey, I think we're just right around the corner from y'all.

• 2:17:04John Coogan?

  Amazing.

• 2:17:05Speaker 05

  So, next time, next, next time, we'll, we'll take you out, we'll take you out.

• 2:17:08John Coogan?

  That'll be great.

• 2:17:09Speaker 05

  Yeah. And, and so, so that one is, is low form factors, small, that can be deployed in, in difficult environments. Uh, we have another system called Astria, which we were just celebrating. We had a, a, a major, a finance award from, um, the, the US Air Force, uh, about this product, um, that we're deploying in Eglin Air Force Base in, in Florida.

• 2:17:31John Coogan?

  How much was that deal for? We like to ring the gong around here for big numbers.

• 2:17:35Speaker 05

  There we go, hit it.

• 2:17:36John Coogan?

  Uh, how much was it?

• 2:17:38Speaker 05

  Uh, so, uh, two million. Oh. You're correct. Seven figure. Wait, one more gong, we got one more gong.

• 2:17:44John Coogan?

  We got one more, give it to us.

• 2:17:45Speaker 05

  The House of Representatives, uh, put in 10 million in the defense bill. There we go.

• 2:17:52John Coogan?

  Congratulations.

• 2:17:55Speaker 05

  There we go, I love it, I love it. Love to see it.

• 2:17:57John Coogan?

  We like to celebrate big contracts around here. Um, what, what, uh, what else are, uh, are you or defense tech companies or the United States government, uh, focused on in terms of, uh, actual deployment? There's been a lot of talk about, uh, you know, the Ukraine war. It's been going on for a long time, very sad. Um, uh, it's unfortunately become a, a serious business for many companies. Um, there's also, uh, Andorl announced a, what, a $1 billion deal with, uh, Australia. Uh, there's deals going on in Taiwan, obviously in the Middle East. Um, where else in the geopolitical realm are, should, should founders be thinking about understanding the nature of the changing warfighter and the changing battlefield?

• 2:18:42John Coogan?

  And then building solutions for?

• 2:18:44Speaker 05

  Well, if you're, if you're a defense tech company and you have an operator or aren't operating in Ukraine, That's that's that's going to be a problem. If you're investing in companies, if I'm going to be an investor in a defense tech company, my first question is, does your stuff work and has it worked in Ukraine in one of the most difficult in environments on the planet right now? And that environment is going to make the first island chain, if we get into a conflict with the Chinese, look like a playground, by the way. And so, so, so we've been in, in, in, in Ukraine. We've been tested against the electronic warfare systems of the Russians. Ukrainians have asked us to come back. We're working on being able to do that. We were deployed in the Middle East during the 12, 12 day war.

• 2:19:26Speaker 05

  We saw Shahid drones going back and forth between, between Israel and Iran. So we've been deployed there. Of course, the, the potential for geopolitical conflict in, in the Indo-Pacific is, is an important place where we're having conversations to be able to, to deploy against there. So, so we've been.

• 2:19:45Jordi Hays?

  How quickly, how quickly can you guys set up in a new, in a new region, right? Cause like CENTCOM has been quieter, but feels like that could bubble up again at any point.

• 2:19:59Speaker 05

  Look, so, so our, our system deployed, you know, once it comes off the truck, we can put it up in about 15 minutes, right? And so, so doing that is some, but, but changing the flow with, within, within the US government. Look, the, the, the, the value of, of a company like Chaos, when we have, you know, basically half a billion dollars in our bank account from all of our, all of our, our raises, is we're able to operate in these long sales cycles or potential changes within the, within the federal government. And so, so part of us is just understanding where the threat is, making sure we're deploying. And, and one of the reasons we're kind of, you know, been a little bit more active in, in the public is that our stuff works. And we've been deployed and it's, it's, it's operating.

• 2:20:43Speaker 05

  We have, we have a year of, of, of consistent deployment in really tough places. And so that's one of the things that's important for us and we're going to go wherever the warfighter needs us.

• 2:20:53John Coogan?

  You're building a sensor, there are other companies building effectors, there are companies that want to integrate sensors and effectors, I'm thinking of Palantir, I'm thinking of Lattice from Anduril. Are those out of the box integrations, are those partnerships that you're talking to, obviously you're super close with a lot of those folks. What does, what does building a product that integrates with everything else, because I can't imagine that you're saying, oh, on day one, we want to, you know, we don't, we want to be the only defense tech company. No, you're part of the ecosystem, you're building, you know, one solution. How do you think about integrating with the rest of the ecosystem?

• 2:21:28Speaker 05

  Part of this, and what the US government needs and wants is completing the kill chain, right? So you can sense and do the effector. And one of the areas, holy grail may be too strong of a word, but getting to an effector that's cheap, right? Or inexpensive is the word I should use. And so that integration is important. And so we've already demonstrated the ability to integrate with our friends at Anduril. But Palmer and I go way back, when I was in Congress, I was talking about having a smart wall, right? And, and I get this phone call from some dude named Palmer Lucky, and, and I'm like, you know, he's like, I got your smart wall. And that began, that began a, a, a relationship and helping those guys. Again, same with Palantir, right?

• 2:22:13Speaker 05

  You know, I've seen Palantir for a really long time, you know, even back to my days when, when I was in the CIA. So our ability to integrate and work together, and, and, and the unique thing about some of the technology that we're working on, this cutting edge stuff, is it actually can potentially be a force multiplier for other systems as well. And so, so the name of the game is to be able to integrate and make sure the command, that we fit into the command and control infrastructure, and ultimately our sensor can make every effector better. So, so this is, you know, exploring those areas as we explore the kill chain and, and all of our suite of products, making sure that, again, at the end of the day, we see farther. Right?

• 2:22:56Speaker 05

  We see farther than everybody else and we give that warfighter more time. And when you have more time... Then you could decide, wait a minute, which tool in my toolkit do I want to use in order to, in order to deal with this threat? And, and the more time you have, the better it is. And when you have bombs dropping on your head and people shooting at you, even if it's five to 10 more minutes, that's an eternity. And, and to be able to give that time back to the warfighter is what we're focused on.

• 2:23:22Jordi Hays?

  What's it like for people that are starting their career on the public sector side, whether it's intelligence or something like, uh, uh, down at the border? Like, are, are, do they, do they have a feeling that, that they have, like, the tools are great? Or are they still, or is the sense if you're, if you're actually op, you know, the, the one needing to operate and, and use these tools that they can and should be a lot better?

• 2:23:50Speaker 05

  I, I, look, it depends on which entity you're talking about. An, an organization like the CIA, which is, which is, which is geared towards helping the pointing into the spear, whether that's the case offer that's collecting the information, or the, the person doing a, a covert operation, there is a, there is a belief in that. You have entities like Incutel, which is focused on bringing in new technologies into help the warfighter. Um, you know, when you look at some of the special forces units that are really good at adapting and making sure the, our, our boys and, and girls and, and those units have what it needs, it, but, but it's not, it's not uniform. And we always talk about how the procurement cycles of getting the right thing in the right hands

• 2:24:35Speaker 05

  matters. And, and here's where some startups that are, that are VC bay, um, based or coming out of Silicon Valley don't get wrong. Like, we talk about these long cycles, but guess what? The stuff has to work out of the box when it comes to, when it comes to getting in the hands of, of our, of our military. It has to work every time. And, and so the, the training and evaluation matters. And that's what adds to some of that time of getting those, getting those equipment. And it has to work with, within our system. So I think if you talk to someone on the border or first in their, in their, um, uh, early in their, their career, they may be frustrated with the lack of some of the tools, but some of the problems is that that tool has to be, you know, be, be tested and it has to

• 2:25:20Speaker 05

  have the cybersecurity to defend against, uh, the, the Chinese government.

• 2:25:25John Coogan?

  Talk to me about the path to program of record. You have this radar contract, more money coming from the House approval. The typical story that I hear from a lot of defense tech startups is they get a SBIR and then they sprint towards program of record. Obviously, over the long term, you want that durability of revenue that you can underwrite a massive manufacturing facility so you can be making this and improving it every year. What is the net, what is the future of the company look like for you?

• 2:25:54Speaker 05

  Well, look, all those things are true and we're far down. We've engaged with all of the branches on this. We're at certain levels of the buying process. You know, it starts with a user wanting your thing. And if you have users wanting your thing, then it makes it a lot easier in order to connect the dots and get the money that you need, right? And so, look, I use the Andereal example. When they did their first border technology, that was a $10 million appropriation in the budget, right? That led to one of their first program of record. And so, that's, that's an example of how you get it.

• 2:26:38Speaker 05

  If you have a product that works, if you have a product that is doing something unique and you have a user wanting it, then, and you've demonstrated that capability in the most, the difficult environments to operate, then guess what? Finding that path to program of record is not as difficult. And again, I'm not trying to act like it's, like it's easy. It's not, but, but being able to line up all of those things is something that we, that we have experience with.

• 2:27:07John Coogan?

  Yes. Well, congratulations. Thanks so much for coming on the show.

• 2:27:10Jordi Hays?

  This was super fun. The chat, the chat loves you.

• 2:27:12John Coogan?

  The chat loves you. Everyone's going crazy.

• 2:27:14Jordi Hays?

  They're saying, "Well, herd's my dog."

• 2:27:18John Coogan?

  People are big fans.

• 2:27:19Jordi Hays?

  Thank you for joining. Come back on when you have more news or if there's something in the world happening that you want to chat about.

• 2:27:24Speaker 05

  Would love to do that. Thanks, fellas. I really appreciate y'all.

• 2:27:26John Coogan?

  We'll talk to you. Have a great weekend. Let me tell you about adquick.com, out of home advertising made easy and measurable. Say goodbye to the headaches of out of home advertising. Only Adquick combines technology, out of home expertise and data to enable efficiency in this ad buying across the globe. We have our second in-person guest. Welcome to the stream. Looking good in the suit. Our second guest.

• 2:27:49John Coogan?

  Thanks so much for joining. Oh, fantastic. We love hats here.

• 2:27:54Jordi Hays?

  I'm throwing it on.

• 2:27:55John Coogan?

  We got our second guest. Introduce yourself for the stream for those who don't know.

• 2:28:00Jordi Hays?

  350 million dollar man.

• 2:28:02Speaker 12

  Hello, how's it going? I'm Sam, co-founder, CEO of Numeral.

• 2:28:06John Coogan?

  Which you know, of course, because

• 2:28:08Jordi Hays?

  Which you know and love.

• 2:28:09John Coogan?

  We have been partnered with Numeral for a number of months now. Kick us off with the news of the day.

• 2:28:14Speaker 12

  The news of the day is we've raised 35 million on a 350 post.

• 2:28:18John Coogan?

  Congratulations. Take this, hit that gong as hard as you can.

• 2:28:23Speaker 12

  Subtle, but not too hard.

• 2:28:27Jordi Hays?

  Coming off a series A from Benchmark as well.

• 2:28:30Speaker 12

  Exactly. We did a series A from Benchmark earlier this year. And so just following on there, you know, capitalizing on all the momentum.

• 2:28:37John Coogan?

  Who did the series?

• 2:28:37Speaker 12

  Double down. We did it with Mayfield.

• 2:28:39John Coogan?

  Mayfield. Classic fun.

• 2:28:41Speaker 12

  Got a classic fun, got to keep it old school.

• 2:28:43John Coogan?

  Been in the business for generations, for decades. We got to update Jordy's ad read for probably the first 50 ad reads. He was like Benchmark, Series A.

• 2:28:51Speaker 12

  Don't forget YC as well.

• 2:28:53John Coogan?

  YC, love it.

• 2:28:54Jordi Hays?

  When did you do YC?

• 2:28:55Speaker 12

  We did YC beginning of 2023.

• 2:28:58Jordi Hays?

  Okay.

• 2:28:58Speaker 12

  Actually working with my old boss at Airbnb, Gustav. So it was fun to get to work with him again.

• 2:29:03Jordi Hays?

  No way. What, uh, when did you know you wanted to automate sales tax?

• 2:29:07Speaker 12

  Oh, man. Since the womb, actually. I've been dreaming about it. You know, no, for me, you know, I was similarly as you guys, like actually running e-commerce businesses. Still own a vitamin gummy shop, doing 10 plus million a year.

• 2:29:20John Coogan?

  Amazing.

• 2:29:21Speaker 12

  And so

• 2:29:22Jordi Hays?

  Why, what is it about gummies that just sell better than any product on?

• 2:29:26John Coogan?

  People love gummies. They don't want to

• 2:29:28Speaker 12

  It's the best e-commerce business because, you know, you get that repeatability. It's easy to, it's easy to predict. You take two a day. And I think people don't like pills. Americans, we love sweets. We love candies. So

• 2:29:39John Coogan?

  Little treat.

• 2:29:41Jordi Hays?

  That's great. So you discovered the problem through that business.

• 2:29:43Speaker 12

  Exactly. So my co, uh, you know, my, my co-founder there and I of the gummy business, we were just dealing with Sales tax compliance for all, we had to register in forty plus states. And so I was dealing with, you know, local parishes in Louisiana and like on the phone with some woman in West Virginia. And I got like an argument about penalty waivers. And I'm like, this is insane that I'm trying to spend my time on growth and marketing or product and things like that. And instead I was wasting like hours just dealing with, you know, the IRS compared to these states is like working with Apple or like Google or some like amazing company, like Department of Revenue Alabama, like give them a call and it's insane. And so I think the thesis was you have, you've had these incumbent tools that have been around for twenty plus years.

• 2:30:27John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:30:28Speaker 12

  Um, the most famous one is this one called Avalara. And the problem with them is it's a, it's a kind of this very narrow tool and you have to spend hours a month dealing with them. So you get physical mail from the states and then you have to figure out what to do with it, how to call the state. And they won't even pick up the, they're all my private equity. So don't even pick up the phone when you have an issue. Um, so for us, it's, you know, we're not really trying, you know, it's software, but we really, if you're a customer, we really want it to feel like service more than software because you know, with AI, since we invented AGI, you know, we're using.

• 2:30:58John Coogan?

  Sales tax AGI.

• 2:30:59Speaker 12

  Sales tax AGI, right? And so, um, no, but yeah, with, with AI, you can deliver what feels more like a service.

• 2:31:06John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:31:06Speaker 12

  Um, but you know, fundamentally it's still a software business.

• 2:31:08John Coogan?

  What was the fundraising process like, I want, I want to know, uh, just take the temperature of like, you just went out and did a fundraising round. You talked to a lot of VCs where people trying to pull an AI story out of you. Was it vibe round, Excel round, like what is the focus of Silicon Valley VCs right now? Um, since AI has become a tool that pretty much every company is pulling off the shelf. Um, just what was the, what was the vibe on the road show?

• 2:31:34Speaker 12

  That's a good question. I think, yeah, you have to, AI has to be, you know, front and center.

• 2:31:38John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:31:38Speaker 12

  Uh, any friend that's, you know, is raising and not putting their front in the center, it's hard to actually get a meeting or be taken seriously. My sense is, you know, it's starting to get maybe a little too far over the edge. I've seen some insane, uh, same markups, like we intentionally, um, actually took like a lower markup than we could have.

• 2:31:54John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:31:55Speaker 12

  Just because, um, you know, I just tend to run these things a little bit more incrementally and, and don't want to, you know, um, overextend yourself. Um, I've, I've seen, I've been in startups where we went a little too crazy and, and like, you know, it's easy, it's easy to kind of just, you have too much money, you spend too much. So. But but yeah, it's if you're right, if you I think too, if you have like some good AI logos of companies you're working with, we're seeing I've been seeing some like hundred X, two hundred X, you know, multiples out there. It feels a little bit

• 2:32:22Jordi Hays?

  Just because they have they're working with like a lab or something like

• 2:32:24Speaker 12

  If you yeah, exactly. If you can close a lab and a couple labs, like you're going crazy. I mean, in in some cases, it's worth it, right? Look at Merckor, right?

• 2:32:31John Coogan?

  Growing so fast and and that's their core business. That makes sense with Merckor. But yeah, if you're more of like a software tool that could be used by any company, not not directly indexed revenue wise to the lab revenue, which is growing very fast. Yeah, it's a little bit of a just like it's good. Good. You know, they're obviously cutting edge businesses. They probably select the best software. So

• 2:32:50Speaker 12

  But it's definitely starting to get a little frothy, you know?

• 2:32:52John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:52Speaker 12

  I'm not putting my I'm not putting a ton of my own money into

• 2:32:54John Coogan?

  Do you think that AI is changing any of like the fundamental physics of like the the the business models? Like we we we covered the story with Notion. Notion said they normally have ninety percent gross margins. Now they have eighty percent gross margins, but they're growing. And so it's mathing out. I feel like with as we enter like the SaaS apocalypse, where the legacy SaaS players aren't moving fast enough, and we see a new generation of of companies come up. I'm I'm wondering how much people should update on the actual like foundational like, or is there something changing about the monopoly thesis, how companies accrue value, the margins, what the actual long term cash flows will be? It feels very much like like it's a big opportunity to build something new, get new customers on

• 2:33:38John Coogan?

  board, grow a big business, but it doesn't necessarily change the actual structure of the business. But what's your take?

• 2:33:43Speaker 12

  Yeah, I think each business is different. So yeah, with the with the with the gross margins, even we see some compression because we're spending so much on running agents. And yeah, we have, you know, if you have a state portal

• 2:33:57Jordi Hays?

  So many people aren't willing to admit that. You ask them, they're like, it's like, it's actually a good thing if you're spending a lot on inference, because it means you're actually using you're not just saying you're

• 2:34:06John Coogan?

  Well, a lot of people were also on credits for a long time. And so they were doing or the credits were really discounted. But now we're in more of a stable inference costs four dollars per million tokens, if you're doing something serious.

• 2:34:17Speaker 12

  Yeah, our AWS bill, I think doubled, like relative to our revenue, right? So it's like our gross margins have actually compressed.

• 2:34:24John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 2:34:25Speaker 12

  But I think our product has gotten a lot better.

• 2:34:27John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:27Speaker 12

  And, you know, the hope is eventually over time, you know, these The inference costs go down, the models get more efficient. And so I think to me, that's like a little neurotic to worry so. I mean, it depends who you are, but to me, that's like a neurotic thing to worry about, like the short term gross margins. I think for me, at least for my business where I'm excited is, you know, the services economy is like at least an order of magnitude larger than the software economy. And so a lot of what we're starting to replace now is not really, there's these legacy software providers. But again, as you're bigger companies, usually they don't even work directly with them. They'll hire an accounting firm to manage Avalara or Vertex or these old school solutions.

• 2:35:04Jordi Hays?

  They're like, this, the software is so rough, I don't even want it. Let's hire somebody to.

• 2:35:09Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 2:35:10John Coogan?

  I've literally been in that position, trying to buy the competitor product years ago and, and being like, it's expensive and also I don't have the manpower to do it. So we'll just continue to just like file whenever we can. And it's very rough, it's all done in a spreadsheet.

• 2:35:25Speaker 12

  Yeah, I mean, we are the official, I have the real one.

• 2:35:27John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 2:35:27Speaker 12

  I got the tin here, the official tax provider.

• 2:35:30John Coogan?

  Of Lucy.

• 2:35:31Speaker 12

  Of Lucy.

• 2:35:32John Coogan?

  My D to C nicotine product.

• 2:35:33Speaker 12

  They're gonna get it right. We love Lucy.

• 2:35:35John Coogan?

  We are powered by Numeral, it's fantastic.

• 2:35:37Speaker 12

  Yeah, and so it's interesting, right? So for example, we started, we filed taxes for someone this week in Tanzania, in Kenya. And like, we're the only software provider on earth that's I think ever filed taxes in Tanzania. And, and so.

• 2:35:49Jordi Hays?

  Let's go.

• 2:35:50Speaker 12

  So I think, let's go Tanzania.

• 2:35:52Jordi Hays?

  Hit the gong for Tanzania, there you go.

• 2:35:56Jordi Hays?

  You can, you can send that to the office there.

• 2:36:02Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, what, what, you guys are scaling quickly.

• 2:36:08Speaker 12

  Yes.

• 2:36:08Jordi Hays?

  And it's a category that's like not, it, it's an interesting one because it feels like, like investing in e-commerce infrastructure was at its hottest, like maybe like four or five years ago.

• 2:36:21Speaker 12

  Totally, yeah.

• 2:36:21Jordi Hays?

  And so is, do you like that it's like a bit overlooked as a category? And like, where is most of the growth, is the most of the growth coming from like online retail companies? Or is, or SaaS?

• 2:36:33Speaker 12

  Great question. Yeah, so we started the business fully focused on e-commerce. That's where I was coming from. I mean, I'd worked at software businesses before, I was a PM at Airbnb, but.

• 2:36:43Speaker 12

  We started just in e-comm and I think, yeah, that market's been really dry for, you know, people servicing the ecommerce space, like the, you know, software, the software providing for that space. Because the TAM is somewhat limited, you know, ecommerce growth is something like 5% year over year.

• 2:36:59John Coogan?

  This is a problem. Eventually, yeah, you saturate and then you're growing at 5% and no VCs are giving you call.

• 2:37:04Speaker 12

  Exactly. Most of the good businesses I've seen being built are either bootstrapped or more like a venture light model, which makes sense, just because the TAM is going to be more cap.

• 2:37:10John Coogan?

  More like an app in the Shopify App Store, plug and play, do something minimal, scale it, but it's not really going to become like a public company.

• 2:37:18Speaker 12

  Exactly. I think we were the first company benchmark funded that's actually been servicing, you know, ecommerce merchants, right? But again-

• 2:37:25Jordi Hays?

  And was that, do you think they had a sense of like, this Numeral, while it looks like a Shopify plugin or just like an ecommerce infrastructure tool, it's really going to be eating into the services revenue from these legacy tax, like, prep?

• 2:37:41John Coogan?

  I mean, it's so crazy. With Lucy, like, we did not rip out and replace to get on Numeral. We went from nothing. And this was like a seven, eight-year-old business at the time.

• 2:37:49Speaker 12

  Yeah, and so, yeah, so like, just to benchmark, like, our partner, Chathin, you know, when he was early in his career, he actually did an analysis on Avalara, you know, they were started in 2006, I think, Avalara. And so, they were just going public or something. He's like, wow, this business should be amazing. You check back 10 years later and it's just being operated really poorly. That's why they had a, you know, a private equity takeover, because it wasn't, they weren't operating well. So I think he had seen this category and was like, waiting for there to be someone to go and challenge. You know, we started fully ecommerce. Now, you know, it's a closer split. We have a lot more SaaS and ecommerce businesses, especially with our international, with our international service, with the only player in the space that can actually go and register and file in 60-plus countries.

• 2:38:32Jordi Hays?

  You feel like if you're making some consumer AI app and you're selling to users that are in Tanzania or something?

• 2:38:38Speaker 12

  Exactly, right. So Lucy's probably not selling a lot in Tanzania, but, you know, we have like these hot AI companies that, like the one in Tanzania, they're like a year, a year old, but they have, you know, $100 million of ARR. And so you have customers around the world. And, you know, your Stripe dashboard is blowing up with all these warnings and people don't, you know, they get freaked out, but they don't know what to do, so they just kind of kick the can for a long time. But, you know, sometimes you can, you know, you do that and not get in trouble, but some places will just like- Like, you know, you don't want to mess with those countries, right? You don't want to mess with Mexico, like the authorities there.

• 2:39:09John Coogan?

  Yeah, it is a pretty new phenomenon that, I mean, there were a lot of apps in the last boom of, you know, software that might be internationally distributed because of AWS and because of Google on day one, but they weren't necessarily taking money from individuals in that country on day one. It's more like there's ads that are being shown there, but the companies that are paying are in the United States. Or they're doing something else and they're just like, oh, we'll monetize it later. No, these companies that are doing new AI products or something like they're putting the credit card down in that local country on day one. And then you need to actually process that, right?

• 2:39:48Jordi Hays?

  This round got leaked by Arfa Rock.

• 2:39:52John Coogan?

  Oh.

• 2:39:53Speaker 12

  Yes, they did.

• 2:39:54Jordi Hays?

  What was that?

• 2:39:55John Coogan?

  Who do you think, who do you think Arfa Rock is?

• 2:39:57Jordi Hays?

  What was the impact? What was the impact from that?

• 2:39:59John Coogan?

  Did it help?

• 2:40:00Jordi Hays?

  Was it helpful at all?

• 2:40:01Speaker 12

  Hard to know. I mean.

• 2:40:02Jordi Hays?

  Closed when it?

• 2:40:03Speaker 12

  The round had already closed by then, so it didn't really matter. But, you know, it was a little bit low on our revenue. So I did retweet.

• 2:40:11Jordi Hays?

  Oh, yeah. You were annoyed because they clocked the revenue.

• 2:40:13Speaker 12

  They clocked the revenue, not like crazy amount low, but definitely seven figures low. And so.

• 2:40:18Jordi Hays?

  Give me some credit.

• 2:40:19Speaker 12

  Yeah, I was like, come on. Like, we have the most ARR of all the sales tax startups in the space and the most customers, the most money raised. And so, you know, you always want to be a little bit cocky there because it's hard to know.

• 2:40:30Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. What do you, like, projecting out a few years, like, what do you think happens to the category? Can the category support a number of players? Do you think some of these venture-backed competitors will just end up being like a decent little business?

• 2:40:46Speaker 12

  Good question.

• 2:40:48Jordi Hays?

  Do you think, I mean, there's a bunch of, you know, massive, massive, you know, tax prep, you know, big, big consulting.

• 2:40:55Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 2:40:56Jordi Hays?

  So maybe it can support multiple billion-dollar players.

• 2:41:00Speaker 12

  So when you look in the public markets, right, you have companies like Avalara, who is taking, you know, they're, they're gonna go public again next year. People are saying like 1.1, 1.2 billion of revenue. Thomson Reuters has a subdivision doing like indirect tax, yeah, called One Source, secretly a billion dollars of revenue supposedly. And like nobody, it's like this company, this thing, nobody's looked at, you know, it's like a plug into SAP and Oracle. And so the tool looks insane, like it's built in 1970s. But you know, if you're some big, if you're IBM, if you're IBM, like or whoever, I'm gonna be using it. And there's another one, Vertex Inc., founded in the 1970s, another public company, sales tax software. You know, it's, but companies like DoorDash still rely on Vertex and they rack physical service in San Francisco.

• 2:41:43John Coogan?

  No way.

• 2:41:43Speaker 12

  And to get the right tax rates, I think they updated with like a CD-ROM.

• 2:41:46John Coogan?

  Whoa.

• 2:41:48Jordi Hays?

  So are you, how much time are you spending, how much time are you spending, like basically, doing these like much bigger, high level partnership stuff where you're going to these sort of scaled software companies and saying like, look, the way you're doing this is insane.

• 2:42:00Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 2:42:01Jordi Hays?

  It's gonna take time to switch over, but like there's a better way. Is that where you're spending a lot of time?

• 2:42:06Speaker 12

  Yeah. So, you know, we started more in like the kind of SMB, e-commerce space.

• 2:42:10Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, just signing up into the product.

• 2:42:11Speaker 12

  And so that's where a lot of our early traction's been. Now we're starting to have conversations and starting to sign customers with hundreds of millions of revenue, work with a customer of you guys, Eight Sleep, right?

• 2:42:21John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah, nice.

• 2:42:22Speaker 12

  So that's another unicorn. And so we're starting to work with bigger and bigger businesses. Still really focused though on software, you know, kind of startups and, and direct to consumer businesses. We haven't gone and started talking to, with legacy businesses a lot. That's, you know, working with accounting firms and things like, and like the big four that, you know, this just takes a long time. And we've obviously had some of those conversations, but it's just not our focus.

• 2:42:43John Coogan?

  What's the ladder for signing bigger and bigger customers? Do you have a rule of thumb, like never jump more than one order of magnitude? Like if you, if you have a company that's doing 100 million in sales, you feel like, eh, we could probably do a company with 800 million in sales. But if a company with 8 billion showed up tomorrow, that's gonna be after we sign the 800 million dollar contract? What do you think?

• 2:43:05Speaker 12

  Yeah, good question. I think, yeah, order magnitude seems high. You know, you try to go a little bit conservatively, right? Because we are running their tax engine and, you know, you want to make sure that doesn't go down and lots of money on the line. So we try to have it, um, yeah, like, like Forex roughly.

• 2:43:20John Coogan?

  Forex, double Forex, just kind of ladder up.

• 2:43:23Speaker 12

  Or you scale up with folks. Um, we haven't, we've never had like an issue with outages and stuff. I think. You know, in 2025, it's not that hard to scale your your servers and these type of things. But we do a lot of hype marketing, but we're still kind of very conservative with the way we run our product. Just because it is, you know, a compliance product. And so we'll make a lot of noise, but when it actually comes down to the details, you got to be pretty uptight.

• 2:43:46John Coogan?

  Is it tricky to use AI in a compliance context? Like, what kind of guardrails do you have to put on the LLMs that are doing work? I can imagine a bunch of places where it's fine to have non deterministic. You know, you know, just data ingest or, you know, something where there's a human in the loop. But where have you where have you shied away from putting it in place?

• 2:44:07Speaker 12

  Yeah, what we think about it is like, there's still usually a human that does the last mile. So I'll give you a couple of examples. Like, one is we read for clients and you get physical mail from every state and country. And you'll get like a like a stack every month and it's exhausting to have to read through all this physical mail. So we get it, we scan it and we have AI take a first pass reading it. And most of the mail, you know, it's like, this is like.

• 2:44:29Jordi Hays?

  If you can take physical mail that was going to somebody, like the amount that I would, I actually should find a personal service. Like, I never want to get mail like at my house like ever.

• 2:44:40John Coogan?

  I used a service years ago where you send all your mail there, they scan it and then you get like an email inbox, basically. Obviously, that's way better now with with modern AI and I can imagine that'd be part of the workflow.

• 2:44:52Speaker 12

  Well, it's like you get a letter from California or somewhere and it's like, oh, sometimes you get a little, like, I get a, you know. Like Joel, of stress, right? Cortisol, that's what I was looking for. You read my mind. Yeah. You get a little cortisol from the IRS or whoever it is.

• 2:45:05Speaker 12

  But, you know, half the time it's like, we got one last week for a client who was, you know, breast pumps in California are tax exempt for the next three months. And like Lucy probably got this letter. And so you got the stress for nothing. But then sometimes it is maybe a letter, hey, there's a lien on your business, there's a big issue here. And so anything that like requires human intervention, we have like a mail team of six people that literally will go. They open up the, they'll read, they'll read the letters and they'll go and like actually handle the last mile compliance. Similarly, on the tax research side, you know, how do you know that Juno, I'm making this up, Juno, Alaska has a four cent soda can tax law? Often it gets passed in some city council notes. And so the way these legacy providers do it is they have hundreds of lawyers and researchers just reading this stuff by hand. And like, we asked, we hired some, we have a couple of lawyers on staff.

• 2:45:50Speaker 12

  We asked them like, how would you figure out the taxability of? I think it was like bagels in California and he's like going on the California it's like Ctrl F bread bagel like it didn't work. Okay baked goods finally worked. And so this is like such an obvious thing where AI is able to go and do that first pass of like we put in bagels a category. Okay, it finds all the baked goods. It makes a best first guess. But any single piece of tax research, it's not even that we have like one human lawyer look after. We actually have to have two legal opinions on any single fact. But it but it really makes them like hundred X lawyers. So all the busy work they were wasting their time doing, they don't have to spend time. And then the things that are really complex that requires going through, you know, huge adjudications and things like this, they can really use their legal minds for.

• 2:46:31John Coogan?

  Are you writing scrapers yet to scrape every local law that's passed?

• 2:46:36Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 2:46:36John Coogan?

  At least pipeline that in to say, hey, maybe we still need a lawyer to look at this, but like we noticed that something changed.

• 2:46:42Speaker 12

  Exactly. That's a hundred percent what we're doing. Right? So yeah, we have a lot of like this. We have a tax research group and yeah, that's like where a lot of the fun work is getting done.

• 2:46:49Jordi Hays?

  This is the real AI research that that we need.

• 2:46:52John Coogan?

  This is this is important.

• 2:46:53Jordi Hays?

  How are you thinking of scaling headcount? This feels like a business where obviously you probably will grow the team quite a bit post B, but it feels like the kind of business that you should be like, you know, not like running in the red for 12 years in a row. Like you can probably start to make like real profit.

• 2:47:13Speaker 12

  Yeah, hopefully. Yeah. So I mean, even like our raise, where I kept 10% dilution, I like I could have raised like a bigger louder round, but I think for us, you know, I've seen excess before and like excess hiring. So, you know, we don't have. So we started the year 25 folks. We're up to 65. But you know, we but we but even that, like everyone if always feels like tight, you know, there's no office manager, nothing like that. I was plunging the toys yesterday. We'll post some footage. Someone got of me. So I think, yeah, so there we go. So I think the point is though, I think we always try to run these things as as lean as possible. I think still the hardest area to scale exponentially or like that tends to scale more linearly is is your go to market sales team. It's just, you know, we have some self-service stuff we're

• 2:47:58Speaker 12

  building out, but I just think in general, AI has not replaced salespeople. It's still a very human endeavor. And so that's probably we and that and obviously.

• 2:48:06Jordi Hays?

  AI can eat steak. Play a round of golf.

• 2:48:10John Coogan?

  Not yet.

• 2:48:10Jordi Hays?

  It's gonna stay that way.

• 2:48:11John Coogan?

  We're getting there.

• 2:48:13Jordi Hays?

  You should cap off the show with us. Let's, let's, let's check the timeline and see if there's any breaking news before the weekend. Usually these companies wait until the second they see we go off the air.

• 2:48:24John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:48:24Jordi Hays?

  And then they, they publish a bunch of news.

• 2:48:27John Coogan?

  The, the, the big news that we haven't covered yet is Nvidia did one of those zombie acquisitions. They bought this company in Fabrica and they paid 900 million dollars. They hired the CF, it's the CEO. And they licensed the startup's technology. The CEO is Roshan Sankar, the guy behind Broadcom's AVGO, Tomahawk switches. So Nvidia is, is now getting into like the Apple hire game.

• 2:48:48Jordi Hays?

  Clear chat.

• 2:48:48John Coogan?

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 2:48:49Jordi Hays?

  Nvidia isn't just buying talent. They're locking down the AI data centers networking backbone.

• 2:48:55John Coogan?

  Well, congrats. Dylan Patel was an early investor in this fabric.

• 2:48:58Jordi Hays?

  Somebody should make an AI text blocker for your browser so that it detects like chat GPT generated content.

• 2:49:05John Coogan?

  It does feel like it's pretty detectable at this point.

• 2:49:07Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:49:08John Coogan?

  For some reason, uh, it's not, um, what else is, is going on in here? Uh, oh, uh, JP Morgan put out a report on Nvidia, Nvidia's investment in Intel. Nvidia put 5 billion in, marked up the US taxpayer, marked up Leopold Oshin Brenner. Let's hear it.

• 2:49:24Jordi Hays?

  Let's go.

• 2:49:25John Coogan?

  Let's hear it for Leopold and the US taxpayer. Uh, fantastic. Uh, but, uh, JP Morgan's analysis said more value will be, is seen accruing to Nvidia in the Intel collaboration. There's still no commitment to Intel foundry. So Intel's still going around trying to get enough of those customers to justify their next big fab. Uh, Nvidia is, uh, is, is going to benefit a bunch from this. So even though, uh, it's just interesting because, uh, there was one framing of this story, which was like Nvidia is, is making this investment as like an olive branch. They, they just have 60 billion sitting around. They're gonna throw 5 billion into Intel. Uh, maybe just because they think the stock will go up, or maybe that, that they'll, they'll, they'll, they'll like basically give 5 billion away

• 2:50:09John Coogan?

  as an olive branch to support this American chip manufacturer. And then they'll, they'll trade something and they'll be able to sell into China or something like that. Well, no, JP Morgan's here saying that, uh, yeah, Nvidia is actually going to get a lot of value out of this deal, which is kind of.

• 2:50:21Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, or they just, right, day after the announcement, they just nuke the chart and market sell 5 billion. We got a post here from Nat Elyson, who I saw in the chat earlier.

• 2:50:31John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:50:31Jordi Hays?

  I don't know if he's still here. It says, "The reason you can so easily pull all-nighters in college is because you're supposed to be having kids at that age." 25,000 likes. That is a true, true giga banger.

• 2:50:42John Coogan?

  Giga banger.

• 2:50:43Jordi Hays?

  You don't see that very, very often.

• 2:50:45John Coogan?

  Tyler, do you think that DeepMind solved Navier-Stokes? You see this post from Google DeepMind. "We're announcing a major advance in the studies, in the study of fluid dynamics with AI." And then they put the water emoji. "In a joint paper with researchers from Brown University, NYU, and Stanford, they, they're, they're announcing an announcement. They haven't actually announced this. What do you think? Are you familiar with this problem? Can you explain the, the significance of Navier-Stokes? Because Sam here says, 'Don't tell me they figured out Navier-Stokes.'"

• 2:51:18Speaker 06

  I don't know that I can do a really good explanation, but I did see in the comments, it's like, I'm pretty, like, 90% sure it's not.

• 2:51:24John Coogan?

  It's not that.

• 2:51:24Speaker 06

  It's just like some random math problem.

• 2:51:25John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 2:51:26Speaker 06

  That's like, not that interesting. So.

• 2:51:28John Coogan?

  Well, still, let's, let's hear it for random math problems. We want to solve all the math problems. Come on, let's do it. We also have some news in the chat. Netflix is trying to buy Warner Brothers Discovery. We thought Ellison was bidding.

• 2:51:42Jordi Hays?

  No way.

• 2:51:42John Coogan?

  Netflix might be trying to bid. This is from Puck News. Thank you to Rigav for sharing that news. Hopefully, you guys don't figure out that we'll read basically anything you put in the chat, because you could put some crazy fake news in there if you, if you wanted to. We, we talked about it.

• 2:51:58Jordi Hays?

  Paramount's, Paramount's up another, almost 6% today. 40% over the last month, so.

• 2:52:07John Coogan?

  We have one last ad read. getbezel.com. Your Bezel concierge is available now to source you any watch on the planet, seriously, any watch. You got a Series B, you gotta pick something up at GetBezil.

• 2:52:15Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. You deserve a little treat.

• 2:52:17John Coogan?

  And we'll close with this question. How long is, this guy messaged me to, quote, "Hop on a quick call." How long are those supposed to typically last? Somebody asked you for a quick call, how long do you think that lasts?

• 2:52:30Speaker 06

  I mean...

• 2:52:31Speaker 12

  Supposed to be 15, but it always ends up being 30.

• 2:52:33John Coogan?

  15 to 30.

• 2:52:34Jordi Hays?

  Okay, well, ChatGPT says a quick call can last anywhere from five minutes to two to four months. Some quick calls have even been going on since the early 1900s with ancestors continuing the conversation to loop in key stakeholders and ensure cross-generational synergies for the warm handoff. But this would be a lot easier to explain over voice mode. Do you have five minutes to hop on a call? This is clearly Photoshop, but absolutely hilarious.

• 2:53:01John Coogan?

  Hilarious. I wasn't familiar. He has access to, is the ChatGPT 5 instant a real feature? I don't have that. Mine just says ChatGPT 5 usually when I go to.

• 2:53:12Jordi Hays?

  Auto. Yeah, who's getting access to?

• 2:53:14John Coogan?

  This seems like some new feature. I don't know if it's all Photoshop, but it's clearly a very clever Photoshop.

• 2:53:19Jordi Hays?

  You guys should hop on a quick call with the weekend.

• 2:53:22John Coogan?

  With the weekend.

• 2:53:22Jordi Hays?

  Thank you for hanging out with us. Thank you for joining, Sam. It's been an honor to have you. And the progress is tremendous. And everybody in the chat, everybody listening, have a fantastic weekend.

• 2:53:34John Coogan?

  Thank you for tuning in.

• 2:53:36Speaker 12

  Thank you.

• 2:53:38John Coogan?

  Sales tax energy.